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Chapter Text

2007

Veld woke to the sensation of someone stirring beside him and his reflexes woke him fully and completely with little of the haziness of sleep clinging to him. He took stock quickly. It was his bedroom, warm and comfortable, lights off, early morning dawn peeking in the window, blankets slightly askew.

And his wife awake beside him. 

Short, shallow gasps were cutting through the silence of morning as she shook half propped against the headboard. Ifalna—it sounded like she was crying. 

Quickly but carefully he put his arms around her shoulders, pulling her to his chest. "What's wrong?"

He saw immediately the way her fingers were hooked into her arm, as if trying to claw something away from it. Her breath shuddered, warm tears hitting his arm as she fell against his chest 

"Just…" Her voice wavered a moment before she took a deep breath and continued, "just a bad dream." 

Veld gingerly tried to separate her fingers from her soft flesh– let her claw him instead, if she had to, and he pressed his stubbly chin against the curve of her neck.

"It's alright. I'm here. Whatever it was, it was only a dream. And whatever you need from me is yours."

Oftentimes when Ifalna told him of her dreams, they were positive or just esoteric. Walks through the lifestream, or conversations with people long lost. They were melancholy at worst. 

Sometimes she'd wake up just knowing something.

Almost never was she struck by nightmares like these. The last time that came easily to mind had been shortly after the death of her first husband, 20 years ago.

Her fingers relaxed, her breath coming again in a shaky exhale. 

"There was a man I'd never met before, and he was—" she shuddered. "It was just a dream, you're right." 

Veld squeezed her hands for a moment as her grip relaxed, and then rubbed her back and shoulders. 

A nightmare bad enough for her to wake up shaking and crying. It was so unusual that Veld couldn't quite put down the sting of anxiety in his own heart, that something might somehow be wrong, beyond a bad dream.

But that was nonsense of course.

"I'm all ears if you want to tell me about it. Otherwise, we can just make some coffee and forget all about it."

She nuzzled her head against his chest as she glanced up at him. Her eyes, bright blue-green as mako and just as luminous even through the shimmer of unshed tears, met his as she gave him a weak smile.

"I'm just glad you came for us when you did, dear. Back at Icicle Inn. I—I must have dreamed of a world where you hadn't. A man from Shinra, a worse Shinra, had taken me and Aerith to his lab to experiment on us." She winced and Veld felt it as she shifted against him. "...I was dreaming of a 'pain tolerance' test of his. It shook me." 

"Pain tolerance." 

He grimaced, thinking of a worse Shinra. An old Shinra. The Shinra that had been when he'd joined the company. If things hadn't changed, it was something that could well have happened. "Was Lucrecia talking about Hojo?"

"Not recently," Ifalna shook her head with a quiet sigh. She brushed her long brown hair from her face, and looped her arms around him."Not any time I can remember, anyway."

Hojo was a bit of a hot-button topic with Lucrecia. Enough of one that she very rarely brought him up herself ever since his death. The last time he could remember was when she'd gotten drunk and proposed a toast to 'letting old mistakes fade away', citing her fling with the former Shinra scientist as one she was glad to leave in the past. 

Veld stroked his fingers through Ifalna's hair. He didn't want to talk about Hojo either. Hojo would have done exactly what Ifalna had dreamed about. And that, combined with the fact that Lucrecia hadn't mentioned him recently, made the sick feeling in Veld's stomach grow.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. 

He shook his head. "You're stressed, I guess. Maybe you should take a spa day."

Veld kissed across the back of her neck. He'd probably be thinking about the bad dream all day, but he didn't want her to be.

"I must be." Ifalna tutted her tongue, even as she arched happily into his touch. She felt calmer now. She'd stopped shaking. She looked up at him with the same sort of radiant and mysterious smile she'd worn since shortly after he'd met her.

"I could tend to the flowers today—take a little time to speak to them before I make sure the President didn't get any terrible ideas for the planet overnight." 

"I promise we can handle the President for a little, while you're taking some time for yourself, dear." He chuckled softly, now a little more at ease with her calmer. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "He's less impulsive than his father was. We'll have at least a week to curb any of his bad ideas."

Ifalna laughed, before turning her head to catch his lips in an affectionate kiss, her arm looping around him to pull herself close.

"I never did like the old president. I'll trust you, Veld. Keep him in line. Make sure he doesn't decide it's time to go hunting the planet's protectors for sport or some nonsense." 

He cupped her chin, and kissed her in return, rubbing his thumb over her cheek.

"I think I can stop him from doing something like that for a while anyway. I'll hide his coat if I have to."

She melted against him, her soft cheek rubbing back against the pad of his thumb as she smiled. "I know that could stall him for days, if need be! So, I won't feel uncomfortable taking a day to myself. Aerith, well, she'll hold down the fort at the Shinra Building right there with you." 

"Absolutely. And I'm sure she and her sister would start fussing over you immediately if they heard their mom had a bad dream, anyway. We'll take care of everything today."

"I'll just have to show them both there's nothing to fuss over. I'll be alright. resting, maybe a little bored, but alright." She glanced towards the door. "Do you think they've woken up yet? I wasn't— I wasn't talking loudly in my sleep or anything, was I?" 

Veld shook his head. He could guarantee she wasn't. It would have woken him up even sooner. A man in his position had to be a light sleeper. "No, you weren't, my dear. But they might be up by now anyway."

It was getting close to breakfast time.

Ifalna took another moment to hold him, her light body pressed to his with another murmured thank you. At first he assumed it was for helping her with the nightmare, but then he thought it might be for saving her and Aerith back then in the snowy village of Icicle Inn.

She looked up with a nod and a sunny smile. "Alright, handsome! I'd say it's about time we got breakfast ready instead of dilly dallying in bed all day!" 

Twenty minutes later they were dressed and the kitchen was full of the smell of coffee and frying eggs. Veld had insisted that he didn't need help, and had pushed a book of crossword puzzles in front of Ifalna instead if she 'desperately needed something to do' while waiting for her coffee.

She'd huffed, as she often did the days when he took the responsibility of morning breakfast unto himself, and had long opened the crossword to poke at it with her pencil balanced between her fingers.

At one point she'd looked up with an impish edge to her smile and asked. "Darling—what's a four letter word for a pain in the butt who gives his wife busywork instead of letting her help with the chores?" 

Veld's mind flicked through four potential serious answers before he realized he was being teased. "Veld, hmm?" 

He slipped Ifalna's coffee mug onto the table in front of her and shook his head with a smile.

"That's the one," she winked, as she wrote a completely unrelated answer on the sheet. "You're lucky—you've always been just my type."

She took a sip of her coffee as a series of quick footfalls came down the stairs. 

"Breakfast's almost ready," he assured whichever of the girls was about to throw herself into the kitchen. Meanwhile he returned to the stove to make sure the eggs didn't burn. A nightmare was a bad enough precedent for the start of the day, he didn't want to add burned breakfast to the pile.

Ifalna tilted her head. "Elfe try not to slip, are you alright—?"

She always seemed to know which of them it was by presence alone, before a word was spoken or a clear line of sight. Something she'd always teasingly claim was due to spiritual energy rather than keen hearing.

Elfe half jogged into the kitchen, fussing with the sleeves of her dress shirt as she gave them each a half smile in greeting.

She'd cut her hair. By herself, it looked like. For some time she'd worn her chocolate brown hair mid length and in ponytails during her job, but at some point between bed last night and now it had changed to a short, jagged style with a braid wrapped in some of Aerith's ribbons laying over one temple and down her cheek.

"Morning mom, dad." Her voice was breathless as she smoothed out her dress shirt and started shrugging on the all too familiar black jacket of the Administrative Research Division's problem solvers. 

"Sweetheart, you cut your hair," Veld observed. It was an utterly stupid thing to say of course, but it still came out of his mouth, along with his obvious astonishment.

Elfe glanced sidelong at him with a grin. 

"I know, right? Aerith helped me last night." Her fingers deftly tightened the straps of her jacket, giving it a perfect fit over the patterned tie. "You know how the Turks let you alter the uniform? I had this crazy vision for a look I wanted to try. How's it look?"

Ifalna's astonished blink turned into a bright smile as she laughed with her hand over her mouth. "Well it looks lovely—though I'm a little curious what else is part of the look. It's very…how would you describe it, Veld? Heroic?" 

"It's definitely different." He poured another cup of coffee and offered it to Elfe as he teased her. "Forgive me if it'll take a while for me to get used to. I'll go 'where's my little girl' and completely overlook the flashy lady here."

Elfe took it, sticking out her tongue with a soft humph. "Well. I can't blame you there, I had to wait an awful long time to make my proper debut with the Turks. So I'm going all out—I'm going to make sure I'm just as strong and impressive as Sephiroth, even without those SOLDIER enhancements."

She looked at Ifalna. "I'm thinking a cloak."

"A cloak? You don't think that's too much even for the Turks?" Ifalna asked, her hand resting on her cheek as another set of far less rushed footsteps clicked down the stairs at a leisurely pace. 

Veld once again reflected that his absolute lack of desire to be his daughter's direct superior officer in combat was one of the many reasons he'd stepped aside and allowed his young– not so young now– protege take the helm.

"I think you'll have to take the cloak up with Tseng. But I agree it would look… striking."

Elfe posed in the kitchen like one of the old comic book heroes you used to see floating around Midgar's newspaper stands, but she nearly spilled her coffee in the meantime. She evidently decided the coffee was more important, because she finally sat down and took a sip.

"When I'm a hero, I'll make sure to mention you in the press releases, dad."

"Gooood morning!" Aerith chirped, slipping into the kitchen. She was already dressed in her favorite pink dress and a comfortable leather coat. One of his old ones, from the look of it. Her hair was braided, like usual, tied back with the ribbon that SOLDIER boy had given her a while back. "I'll tell you, I slept terribly last night!" 

Veld was a little embarrassed by how the knot in his stomach untightened when he saw that Aerith had not also decided to chop her hair off. He wouldn't say one bad thing about Elfe's hair. He's sure it was nice objectively, but he was not an objective man. A little stability from his other daughter went a long way.

So far a way that he almost missed the fact that she'd apparently slept badly, like her mother.

Once his thoughts had caught up, he offered her a cup of coffee and an apologetic smile. "Sorry to hear that, pumpkin."

Aerith dropped into her seat with a bob of her head. There was exhaustion written on her face that wasn't quite hidden by the eternally bright 'cetra-eyes' she shared with her mother, dark circles that she'd attempted and mostly managed to hide with makeup. Veld tried to hide that he'd noticed.

"Yeah, dunno why though. Just had a bunch of dream mush and woke up a few times." She took the cup, and took a long and savoring sip. "Great as always, dad!"

Ifalna's fond gaze turned to the two as she closed her crossword puzzles. "Poor things, I think there's something in the air. Some ripple in the lifestream, perhaps. I wouldn't be surprised if more people had issues sleeping." 

"Is that a thing?" Veld asked teasingly as he made up plates and put them on the table. "I slept like a baby but maybe I'm secretly a rock."

Ifalna laughed musically. "Maybe you are, but you're the softest rock I've ever met if so!" she shook her head with a smile. "But it is. Sometimes, if the lifestream is agitated, it can have an effect on those who are particularly sensitive."

Without hesitation, Aerith began tucking into her breakfast with a nod. "That'd explain it, huh? Though I thought Elfe had dad's 'rock-like' spiritual senses!"

Elfe turned the full force of her stuck out tongue on her sister now, as she broke the yolks on her eggs. "First of all I'm plenty spiritual. Second of all, I hardly had any dreams last night, Miss Scientific Cetra." 

"No dreams, just visions of a new haircut," Veld teased, sitting down with everyone at the table. He wiggled his eyebrows at Ifalna. "What do you think, honey, should I follow Elfe's example and get a new 'do myself? When they ask at work I can say she inspired me."

"Oh you should!" Ifalna sat up, lightly rapping her hand on the table with a laugh "I think it'll be a real hit around the office. Don't you girls?"

"Absolutely!" Aerith said, clearly holding back a laugh of her own.

"Absolutely frickin' not." Elfe drawled as she took a bite of eggs. "I'll have to shave it off just to save myself from the other Turks teasing me about it. Rude'll accept me into that ridiculous Baldies Club everyone keeps needling him about." 

Veld laughed. "Well, I don't want to take all the attention away from you anyway. So I'll hold off on changing my style for now. But watch out!"

"Trust me, dad. I'm quaking in my standard issue boots." Elfe snorted with a half smile , before moving her eggs around her plate. "Hey, Aerith…weren't you telling me about the lab yesterday?"

Ifalna twitched almost imperceptibly at her seat as she smiled and sipped her coffee. The memory, perhaps, of that dream that woke her up crying. Veld reached over and touched her shoulder with his hand.

"Oh!" Aerith looked up with a grin. "Yeah that's right! There's this new project Dr. Crescent wants me to help with, looking into the remains of some creatures that were pestering some of the frontier cities as of late." 

"Doctor Crescent. Must be a big job to have you treating it so professionally." 

As if Lucrecia hadn't had practically as much of a hand raising Aerith as her birth mother had. "I'll have to pop in to see you two later today."

"Well yeah—Aunt Lucrecia's putting her trust in me for this one even though I'm still an intern. So I thought maybe I'd treat it with some professionality!" Aerith pouted briefly, before tilting her head "you should! Mom, are you going to pop by too?"

"No, no," Ifalna shook her head. "I'm taking a day off. Tending to the garden at home."

Elfe perked up with a frown. "Really? You don't usually take days off like this. Every time it's 'President Rufus'll do this, that, or the other thing' the minute you turn your back. Are you alright?" 

Veld squeezed Ifalna's shoulder. "Your mother just needs a little time to de-stress, that's all. You know how hard she works."

It wouldn't be a hard sell of an explanation. Elfe especially considered Veld overbearingly overprotective toward all of them, he knew.

"Sadly Aerith wasn't the only one with difficulty sleeping last night," Ifalna explained. "I just need a little time to rest, de-stress and spend a little time with the plants and the planet."

"Geeze…" Aerith's brow knitted in concern, but she tucked hair over her ear with her best attempt at a smile. "I guess it even happens to you sometimes, mom. We'll be supporting you from work, alright? Say hi to the planet for me?"

Elfe sighed, her hands held up, it was clear she was thinking he was probably being 'overprotective again' as they spoke. "Alright, mom. Rest up, alright? I'll give work double the effort. Just for you."

The passenger door thumped shut, and Veld smiled over at Vincent as he backed the car out of the driveway.

"Morning, partner."

Vincent Valentine gave him a half smile as he settled back in the passenger seat. 

"Morning, partner." His longtime partner from back in the day still looked good after all these years,the strands of grey leaking into his long, dark hair only adding to his usual intensity. "How'd you sleep last night?" 

Ifalna's words about the lifestream's agitation echoed in his head. Forget the lifestream– he was the one who was getting agitated.

"Interesting question. Did you sleep like shit?"

Vincent shrugged his narrow shoulders—he'd always had a build like a scarecrow. That hadn't changed over the years. 

"Restless, I guess." He turned his gaze to look out the window. "Guessing I just had the past on my mind is all." 

"Bad dreams?" Veld guessed. "Ifalna, too."

He glanced over at Vincent again as he pulled down the street, winding his way toward the outer gates of Midgar. Often the two of them drove to work while the others took the train 'just because', but today they actually had something to check on out in Kalm.

Vincent reached out to place his hand against Veld's, giving it a squeeze just over the car's shifter. 

"Ifalna too huh?" The concern entered his low tone, probably regretting not having dragged Lucrecia over to the house for breakfast. "It was just 'what ifs'. What if this went different, what if that went different." 

"Just 'what ifs'," he repeated, again thinking of Ifalna's dreams. "Mind letting me be a little nosier this morning? I know you're not much of a talker, but I am Mr. Curious."

"I'd tell anyone else to fuck off and mind their own business," Vincent said with the trace of a smirk. "But I seem to have trouble saying no to you, Lana and Lu. …She asked me about it too this morning. It was just dream nonsense. 'What if Lucrecia had tried to push me away back then', what if Hojo hadn't died." 

"Sounds… less than pleasant." Veld's jaw set. He was at once glad that he was close enough with Vincent to get him to open up, and frustrated that he'd fed the gnawing beast of his own nameless anxiety. He put his free hand on his partner's. "So what happened? If Lucrecia pushed you away and Hojo hadn't died?"

"I dreamed he shot me, only I didn't die, then the dream got—vague" Vincent murmured. "Lucrecia did something, to save me, before I lost her too." 

"He shot you?" Veld snorted. "The little weasel. Ifalna dreamed about him, too. Indirectly, anyway."

"He did, all while ranting about being the greatest scientific mind, and so on." Vincent scoffed "---he dreamed of her too, hm? That's…"

He didn't say it, but Veld knew he meant 'concerning'. 

Veld's fingers tightened on Vincent's for a moment before he put both hands back on the wheel.

"Agreed." Veld blew a slow breath out of his nose. "I asked her if Lu had brought him up recently, but she said she didn't. Yet here the man is in both your dreams."

The second to last place he wanted the man to be. 

"No, Lu hasn't brought him up in a while. I get the sense she's trying to avoid the subject, even." He shook his head, looking over at Veld with a wry smile "Honestly, the only place I want him is still in the ground. Never saw eye to eye with the bastard." 

"You read my mind. I feel like if he hadn't had that accident I'd have had to kill him myself, the way things were going when he was head of R&D," he agreed, shaking his head. "Especially with these dreams. I don't like it."

Vincent's shoulder lightly bumped against his as he leaned across the center console. "Lucrecia didn't either. She got this face when I told her about it, like she'd seen a ghost. Wound up heading to work early, too." 

"She won't like hearing about Ifalna's dream, then. I told her to take the day off today, she was so upset about it." He shook his head and glanced at Vincent.

That the four of them lived as next door neighbors rather than in a single house was the product of a long series of discussions more than twenty years ago. In the end, it had come down to clashing desires to decorate, subtle territoriality, and the idea that the children might benefit from a slightly more separate space.

But that was all immaterial. Vincent was his partner of more than 20 years. The four of them might as well all be married to one another in all but name.

Vincent frowned, as somber as the grave for a moment. The only sound was his quiet. 'Hmmh," as he shook his head.

"She's not going to be happy to hear it, no. I take it that the dream was more than just an unpleasant meet and greet with the man." He tapped his fingers on the car's door in thought. "if it meant Ifalna took a day off." 

"Pain tolerance," he said. The phrase was burned into his mind since Ifalna had said it. "She was dreaming about her own 'what if'. Shinra was running pain tolerance experiments on her and Aerith."

He felt a thickness at the back of his throat at the very thought.

He saw the way Vincent's brow knit, and the tightness of his lips over his teeth. 

"Pain tolerance," Vincent repeated quietly "that does sound like the sort of experiments Hojo would have conducted on the last Cetras." 

"Doesn't it? And our dear president's father would have had no problem allowing it."

The bad old days of Shinra. Hojo had died in a freak laboratory experiment decades ago. The old president had reigned longer– long enough to get Shinra into a war with the entire nation of Wutai, and others. But it was his son who finished them, almost fifteen years ago now.

Vincent's breath huffed as his lips parted in almost a snarl. 

"If it meant finding his 'Promised Land', he'd have used Ifalna and Aerith for everything they had, gleefully letting Hojo play mad science with them in exchange." He waved his hand towards the city of Midgar at their back. "...he did authorize Deepground, after all. We know what he was willing to do in the name of raw power and cruelty." 

Even now, with the uncovering of Deepground and the conflict that it spawned half a decade behind them, the thought of what had been going on right under their feet sent a chill through his heart.

"And what his proteges and sycophants were willing to do after he was gone." Veld grimaced as he pulled up to the security checkpoint at the exit gate. 

Hojo had died only a year into the deepground secret project. And yet it had continued on long after him.

Vincent hissed softly, looking up at the security officers at the gate with a half wave of his hand. "Exactly. Which means it's not much of a stretch to imagine what he'd have done if he'd actually managed to get his hands on them."

There was an anger there—obviously about Hojo and ethics but….there was some additional depth to it, a sharp growl in Vincent's voice.

Maybe something about his own dream.

Veld let it drop until they were past the security checkpoint. The officer recognized them both and there was a little small talk while they went through the mundane procedure of keycard swipes and signatures. Veld was glad to see the man insist on them, even when he recognized their faces. Procedure was in place for a reason.

Vincent made a little small talk with the guards too, but it was clear he was feeling more terse than usual, mostly letting Veld field it as he swiped his ID and signed his name with a nod of his head. He often had trouble expressing these things but it was clear to Veld, if no one else, that he was troubled.

Which made two of them. Anxious about dreams. Veld wished that he could dismiss it, but even if he teasingly played it off, the lifestream was real, it was scientific fact, even if they didn't understand it.

Ifalna understood it better than most.

He couldn't push the thought away as they rumbled down the outer road into the countryside.

"Aerith said she didn't sleep well either," he said, finally. "I don't like everyone having bad dreams."

"Aerith too? That makes at least three of us," Vincent murmured. "Of course, while bad dreams are just that—dreams—does Ifalna think there's something up with the Lifestream? Some— fluctuation, maybe?"

"Agitated. She said it was agitated. But I'm going to tell you, Vincent, I don't really know what that's supposed to mean." He sighed. Sometimes he wished that he'd gotten into the science side of things. He was an investigator at heart, but that impulse had been put to military ends early in his life.

It was long past too late to change that now, he just had to get by with the wits and skills he had.

"Agitated. I'll have to ask Lu if she can conduct a few readings of her own. We may still not understand it fully, but she'll be able to check. Especially with Ifalna's help. If it's agitated, we just have to settle it."

He glanced sidelong at him with a small smile. "Isn't that what we've all been doing for the last 15 years? Walking that tightrope between the planet and progress, partner?" 

It was the way Rufus Shinra always put it.

"You're right." He put his hand on Vincent's shoulders. "And we've been walking a tightrope of our own even longer."

Chapter Text

1978

Veld was sipping coffee and reviewing security reports when he got the call from his partner to come down to the lab. He didn't like leaving the task undone, but he didn't like the anxious tone in his usually unflappable partner's voice, either.

So he straightened his tie and he headed down to the labs, hoping their boss wouldn't be too annoyed with late incident reports.

When he arrived at the lab he was welcomed by the sharp and metallic tang of blood in the air and the sound of Lucrecia attempting to catch her breath between sobs.

She was there, wrapped in Vincent's arms as he held her tight with a panicked look in his deep, dark eyes. Shaking and tear-streaked, she kept stammering about 'an accident'.

Veld didn't need a great deal of instinct to tell that something was very wrong, but somehow his intuition was screaming at him anyway, so much that it felt like the floor rocked under his feet when he saw Lucrecia there, tear-streaked in Vincent's embrace. It was like the fabric of the world had shifted.

He set his jaw, and addressed Vincent.

"What happened?"

Lucrecia twitched in Vincent's arms, trying to point towards the Shinra Manor's lab as she took another hiccuping breath.

Vincent held up his hand to calm her and answered instead with a sharp intake of breath. "Professor Hojo's dead. Take a look for yourself." 

That explained the smell of blood in the air. Veld could just about recognize the arm– the rest of the remains would need work to identify, though it was clear it was Hojo.

His jaw tightened further and his gaze flicked from his partner, to the young, frightened scientist. He knew that Vincent had feelings for her. He knew that she was pregnant. He knew that Hojo was at the very least apparently the father.

That was where his knowledge ended and his speculation began.

But Veld's speculation was not 'official record'. Only official record was official record. And the unofficial Turks procedure when you didn't like the facts, or where your speculation was going was you simply didn't record it.

"I see that he must have had a laboratory accident," Veld drawled for the official record.

"You can say that again." Vincent rested his hand atop Lucrecia's head, brushing her hair to try and soothe her as his eyes lingered on the scene.

Lucrecia took a shaking breath, before looking up at Veld. "I was feeling sick, morning sickness—so I wasn't in the lab with him, but I heard a great crash. I'd thought maybe something had happened with the Jenova project. When I managed to get over there…he was already like this."

Absolutely maimed. 

Like something had exploded and shredded him with the shrapnel.

"Whatever happened, it's a miracle no one was in the lab with him at the time," Veld announced, also for the official record. "One death is enough."

As the first on the scene, the narrative that Veld established would be the one on the record. His investigation would be the freshest one. His word the most trustworthy.

Maybe it was an accident, maybe it wasn't an accident. 

Veld didn't want to know as he met Vincent's eyes. Not until all the official inquiries were finished.

"I'll need to take some pictures," Veld said. Vincent knew he would. "Then you can tell me the details when you're calmed down."

He met his partner's gaze.

Vincent so rarely looked shaken. A model professional, he was every inch what the Turks could and should be. But right now, with the scent of Hojo's blood in the air and the woman he loved crying in his arms, he seemed almost at a loss.

"Good idea, partner," he said slowly. "The last thing we want is a lack of evidence. We don't want the President drawing the wrong conclusions, right?" 

Veld put his hand on his partner's shoulder, and smiled at both him and Lucrecia. "I'll make sure the President understands the accident that happened here."

There was an extensive inquiry. 

The President was not at all happy that his pet scientist had gone and turned himself into a cherry smoothie. Both Vincent and Lucrecia gave their accounts, and Veld backed them up.

By the time they were finished a week later, the President was still unhappy, but he was satisfied that the event was the inevitable result of Hojo's methods, and that Lucrecia, if she took over her superior's former position, would not be the type to make the same mistakes.

Even Veld was almost convinced it had really been an accident. Maybe it had been. All he knew was he wasn't going to be crying himself to sleep at night because Hojo was gone.

Their first night back in Nibelheim, Veld pulled Vincent aside for a drink in private. The first time they'd had a chance to speak privately since the inquiry started.

Vincent had his whiskey in hand, arms folded in front of himself as he tipped it back and forth with a wan smile. "That was a hell of a few days. Never seen the president so pissed." 

Veld raised his glass to him. "Hope to never see it again, if I'm lucky. Probably the only one who was truly sorry to see Hojo go."

"None of the interns certainly. Not me, neither." Vincent scoffed quietly, raising his glass before he tipped it back in a long sip. "Lucrecia, possibly. I know they'd gotten close after—" he paused for a moment.

Veld gave him a look as he paused, waiting to see what he'd say. 

"After we had that argument— where I asked her about my father." Vincent's fingers flexed against the glass in his hands. "She pushed me away after that, I thought she was happy with Hojo. Even with the way he talked about her when he thought nobody was looking." 

Veld grimaced. Everybody knew about the relationship between Lucrecia and Hojo, and everybody knew the way he talked about her behind her back. Veld didn't like any of it.

He had avoided asking Vincent or Lucrecia any direct questions about their feelings about Hojo, or about their relationship over the span of the investigation. But that was done with.

"It's been about a week now," Veld said. "And I know you've spent some time with her. Did you two resolve things?"

Vincent's cheeks flushed slightly, his sharp red eyes averting down to his whiskey with a slight smile. 

"We've talked. Quite a bit. She– she said she was sorry again. About the accident that took my father. That she pushed me away because of it. She said she felt guilty—that she couldn't look me in the eyes without reliving the accident for a while."

"Makes sense to me. The investigation's over, Vincent. how do you think she feels about Hojo?"

He looked him in the eye. He wanted to tell him, 'I don't care if you killed the bastard, or she did, but I am curious which one it was'.

Vincent looked up to meet his eyes.

"Hurt. She found out the things he'd been saying—what he planned for her child, too. Some mad experiment. She told me…she said she felt sick that she ever loved him. That she'd ever even thought about going along with it." He took a sip of his whiskey, before he sighed. "She told me that he—he wasn't the man he pretended to be. She was upset with the accident, sure—but…"

But she clearly was making quite the recovery.

Veld nodded and drained the rest of his whiskey. Thinking about it, that was what he had expected to hear. Vincent was a gentleman, maybe enough of a gentleman to be a pushover sometimes. The tragic truth of it was Veld was pretty sure that Vincent would have let Lucrecia be if he thought she was happy. He'd basically said as much.

Well. Lucrecia hadn't been happy, that much was clear.

He took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up, offering it to Veld. "Seems like she'll tough it out. She's got a baby on the way to take care of. I'm sure that'll help shake her out of whatever leftover feelings she's got from the accident."

Vincent gladly took a cigarette. He put it to his lips with a subtle smile

"We can hope. I promised her I was going to do what I could to help. Stay by her side, you know? That made her smile. I missed that smile the last few months." As he lit up the cigarette he glanced at Veld. "...though, one thing, partner."

Veld lit his own cigarette, and nodded. "What's that, partner?"

"I know you're thinking about it," Vincent took a drag off his cigarette. "...but I'm not the one who did Hojo in. Don't think it was Lucrecia, either." 

"I was never going to ask." It was an admission that that's exactly what he was thinking. "As far as I'm concerned the official story is the only story. But I'll admit, I'm curious about how confident you are."

Vincent blew smoke towards the ornate ceiling. 

"Fairly confident. Even with the distance she wanted to put between us for a while—I was still her bodyguard, wasn't I?" His brow furrowed. "....I'd seen her, nowhere near the labs, not long before. Long enough that I can say she didn't have time to set up some kind of trap unless it was set up much earlier, in which I would have been sure Hojo woulda noticed, or at least been caught in it sooner given how much he loved his machines." 

Veld nodded. It was something that had come up in the inquiries. Lucrecia had been probably far away from the scene when it was determined to have occurred.

"That was the biggest thing that made me think it wasn't her, admittedly." And for a while, he'd assumed it was Vincent. But Vincent wouldn't lie to him.

Vincent hesitated a moment before he smiled thinly at his partner through the haze of smoke. "Dunno—maybe fate finally decided to intervene in our favor? Something in that stream of lights that's looking out for us for once."

"First time for everything." Veld took a long puff of his cigarette. "But maybe it did. If you say it was fate, that's what I'll believe, partner. Can't say I don't think things are looking up for you and Lucrecia after this."

Vincent rubbed the back of his neck, the cigarette hanging from his lip.

"I'd say ...she seemed so sad, you know?" He closed his eyes. "Before, when we'd rest under the tree overlooking the manor together, I'd really hoped that we'd get closer. Even if it wasn't strictly professional—I was enraptured with her."

"It's not like the rest of the department stays very professional," Veld drawled. "Or the company. What was it I told you back then? That you should go for it if you were into her."

Vincent laughed, running his hand through his dark hair. 

"And I intended to—she even seemed to feel the same. Only after that incident, she barely agreed to even talk to me. But now that it's behind us, well." He brushed his thumb over the glass in thought. "She spent the night with me last night, Veld." 

Veld's smile widened. "Well damn. You have a good time?"

Vincent chuckled under his breath.

"I was pretty surprised. Knock on my door, and opening it who do I see? Girl of my dreams, asking to stay the night." He leaned on his hand. "...we talked a long while. And after that—yeah, you can say we had a pretty great time." 

"Cheers then," Veld chuckled. "Let me know if you two get serious and you need to stop spending the night at my place."

The smile Veld flashed him was intentionally sly, but he meant it. 

He liked what the two of them had going on, but he wasn't going to get in the way of a serious relationship if Vincent wanted to pursue one, and he'd seemed head over puppydog heels for Lucrecia since the beginning.

Vincent's face turned a deeper red than expected, his smile lopsided. "I'll let you know, partner. But—well. She seems to be rather adventurous. That might not even be necessary." 

"Adventurous, huh? Well then. You got the whole package on the hook, my friend." 

Veld stood and grabbed the whisky bottle again, topping them both up.

Vincent raised his glass with a wry smile. 

"I wouldn't say that—maybe I'm the one she's got on the hook, Veld." He chuckled. "but damn if I'm going to complain. I love her, and if old Hojo's miserable death can make us all happy—I'm going to raise a toast to the experiment tank that did him in." 

"Cheers to that, partner."

These days the Shinra Manor wasn't quite as bustling as it used to be. Lab techs no longer lingered playing music, or discussing findings in the halls. Shinra kept tabs—of course Shinra kept tabs on one of its most important external labs—but it had slowly turned into a quiet and relaxing place of respite as Lucrecia worked on experiments in the lab while pregnant with her son and Veld and Vincent watched over her.

That was why it was surprising, after he'd gotten the invitation to meet her in the drawing room, that Veld heard the sound of the mostly dormant piano ringing out through the bottom floor.

Locals had called the manor 'haunted' long before Shinra had taken up residence, and Veld suspected that their occupancy would only increase those rumors. That was what sent the thought through him that the piano might be played by some errant ghost. But of course he banished the ridiculous thought. 

Plenty of living people there to play the piano, and he didn't think such a thing was how a ghost of the man who had so recently died there would spend his eternity.

Veld poked his head into the drawing room to look.

He saw Lucrecia there, her fingers dancing carefully over the keys as the tune filled the comfortable and candlelit room. It was a quiet, but hopeful little tune that sang through the air as she smiled to herself.

However, she paused and glanced over her shoulder with a playfulness in her smile. "You can come in, you know." 

"Far be it from me to interrupt you," he murmured, coming into the room anyway, and lingering near the piano. "I didn't know that you played."

She turned. Her hair with its yellow ribbon fell over her shoulder as she smiled. Veld could easily see why Vincent was so enchanted with her. 

"I picked it up a while back— I was inspired by an old friend. I'm a little rusty though." Lucrecia seemed to look him over for a moment, one hand still on the keys as she tapped a chord with her fingertips. "Now I'm curious though." 

Veld cocked his head, looking her over again. It was a little surprising that Vincent wasn't here, come to think of it. He was almost always hovering over her these days.

"Curious, hm? Well, consider me curious about your curiosity, doctor."

Lucrecia tucked her hand under her chin, propped up on her knee as she leaned forward with a grin. "Do you play? We've been here all this time and I've never heard you tickle the ivories."

She wasn't dressed like she usually was, not in her usual lab coat and dress, though he saw the coat hanging on a nearby peg. A shortened skirt, a partially unbuttoned blue blouse that left little to the imagination—Vincent being missing wasn't the only thing unusual about the scene. 

Vincent's words from the couple of months prior echoed in his head. She's adventurous.

He wondered what sort of adventure she was keen on today.

Still he answered the question. "Do I play? Ah, badly, I'm afraid. I had a few lessons in my youth and that's about it."

"You can't be worse than me!" She laughed as she scooted over on the bench and pat beside her. "Here, come on. Give me a demonstration!" 

"Are you sure?" He chuckled, and glanced at her again. "I wouldn't want to offend your baby, if nothing else, hm? Might start crying before he even gets born."

But he sat down on the bench beside her, a respectful amount of distance between them.

Lucrecia laughed, tucking her hair over her ear with a wink. 

"I think Sephiroth can handle it, Veld. A little terrible piano isn't going to make him fuss—and maybe it'll give him an appreciation when he meets friends who can actually play, hmm? He'll go 'oh thank gaia, they're better than Uncle Veld'."

Sephiroth. That was what she'd been calling the baby for the last month or so. Not exactly a traditional name, but he wasn't about to criticize a mother.

She closed some of the distance—and bumped her shoulder against his.

He laughed, a little surprised by the sudden contact, and smiled at her. "Uncle Veld, hm? Can't say I mind being pinned with it."

She was close enough now that he could smell the perfume she was wearing, a sweet scent of vanilla and subtle florals mingled with cinnamon that tingled his nose. Her bright stare glanced sidelong at him—seeming to size him up again. One of her arms rested around her waist, and the other lingering on the keys near his hand.

"I was hoping you wouldn't. I have a feeling Sephiroth could use a couple of stable figures in his life. And I can't think of a more stable figure than you, Veld. Mr. Clockwork." Her tone was teasing—but not unpleasantly so.

"Mr. Clockwork." He chuckled again. "I'm hardly a tin man. Though I suppose I'm the more organized between me and Vincent. We're not much of an odd couple though, admittedly. We've always gotten along."

Lucrecia tapped another note on the piano, letting it ring through the room with a fondness in her smile. 

"You two do have a lot in common, don't you? And…" Her shoulder leaned more firmly against him. "Odd or not, you're still a couple, hm?"

Veld felt himself flush. He knew from her tone how she meant it. More than just partners in the Turks, Vincent and Veld were a 'couple', though they'd never exactly used those words. It had never exactly been decided, just a long series of small moments that had all added up into an easy and comfortable, and yes, decidedly romantic in its own way, relationship between them.

"I suppose we are, yes." Veld rubbed the back of his neck. He knew that Vincent had said that Lucrecia wouldn't mind, and he wasn't particularly jealous; rather he was happy to see his partner having such a nice time– but there was still that friction there. Maybe because Vincent and Lucrecia were a man and a woman expecting a baby, and Vincent and Veld were two men who had never even used the word 'date'.

Lucrecia held her hands up with a bright smile. 

"It doesn't bother me at all, just so you know! In fact, I think it's pretty fantastic! You should hear the way he talks about you!" She leaned on the piano again and urged him to play a chord by playing its complement on the higher side of the piano. "I'll admit, it got me interested, especially since you've always been very kind to me."

Veld took the hint, and rested his fingers on the piano keys, playing a few notes from a simple song that he remembered. 

So… she was sizing him up, it seemed. But what her expectations were, were anyone's guess. He felt himself flushing around the collar. 

"Well, I'm not usually an open book, but Vincent's absolutely smitten with you, you know. So I'm happy to shuffle a few pages for you if you want a look."

She played rather well, answering his side of the simple tune on her side of the piano as she smiled a little wider. 

"I'm known to be a voracious reader, Veld. I figured I should at least warn you." 

He craned his neck to glance at her, his fingers stumbling over the keys as he took his attention away from them. 

"Warn me?"

She flicked a key, eliciting a small ping as she smiled a little wider. 

"I said I was a voracious reader, didn't I? So if you give me a peek, well—" She gestured towards him with one hand, lacquered nails catching the light. "I'll be compelled to read the whole book. Top to bottom." 

Ah. 

Adventurous indeed.

The flush around Veld's collar spread quite quickly all the way up to his ears, and he chuckled.

"Why, Doctor Crescent, are you trying to seduce me?"

"That obvious, am I?" She asked, her coy, almost catlike smile belying that she knew exactly how obvious it was. 

A laugh escaped Veld's lips, and he moved his hand from the piano keys over to rest on top of her hand instead– gingerly, but not hesitantly.

"Well, Doctor, remember I am a Turk," he teased back. "Part of my job is to figure people out."

Lucrecia laughed with him, and her thumb brushed up and against the side of his hand. 

"And you've already proven yourself to be pretty damned good at it—I shouldn't keep secrets, then." Her voice dropped into a low purr. "Yes. I'm trying to seduce you—and yes, Vincent already knows." 

"Well, you answered my next question already then." He stroked his fingers over hers in return, feeling the softness of her slim hand. "I'd offer you a drink, but we shouldn't get little Sephiroth started on the habit so early."

She laughed pleasantly.

"Probably not. It's one vice of his mother's I hope he won't take to. Not too badly, at least!" She rested her head against his shoulder, her long hair draped down his back. "How about a rain check? After he's born—I'll go out for a drink with you. Sound nice? The Inn's got a pretty nice bar for a sleepy little village." 

"Sounds nice to me. You'll need some relaxation time after all that motherhood, or so I've heard." He brushed his hair out of his face, and smiled back at her. "In the meantime, if you'd like to have a meal or watch a film– I'm sure we can find an excuse to get to know one another a little better."

She looked up at him, that cat's smile still written on her face. It was easy to see what Vincent saw in her in the candlelight. "I was hoping you'd say that. It's a date, got it? A date~. After all…the lover of my lover and all."

"Well, now that you say that I'm going to have to take Vincent out on an official date as well. We've never technically been."

Charming. Lucrecia was very charming. Easy to talk to, intelligent, beautiful of course but that was secondary to the rest. Veld could easily see how he'd fallen for her, and probably changed the course of all their lives somehow.

"Never, hm? Now that's a shame!" Lucrecia played a little tune with one hand, winking his way. "After you do that—maybe the three of us can enjoy one together, too. I know I wouldn't complain—not with the company of two handsome Turks." 

"All three of us, hmm?" The idea had a strong appeal. "In that case no one would be bored."

Lucricia's delicate fingers intertwined with his—and he was soon all too aware of the warmth of her body and the scent of her perfume as she leaned in close. 

"No, I think we could find all sorts of wonderful ways to entertain one another, Veld. That's a promise." 

Chapter Text

2007

The world outside Midgar flew past the window, creating a smear of color and light as their car rumbled along the bumpy and uneven roads closer to Kalm. The occasional landmark—the wall of Midgar, the mountains in the distance, a chocobo ranch—they were identifiable but broadly ignored as his mind was elsewhere.

Even the pleasant conversation with Veld wasn't shaking his thoughts from his dreams the night before, or the fact that poor Ifalna had been troubled by them too. She'd dreamed of being an experiment. It was funny, in a twisted way. He dreamed of much the same.

Of being shot, of Lucrecia saving him at the expense of his humanity before vanishing from his life. He dreamed of howling, and of a body constantly at war with its own structure. Nothing like his current state. Nothing like the stability. It would seem for some reason in the realm of dreams he and Ifalna weren't so different.

Experiments at the hands of Hojo. 

What had brought him up? What ripple in the lifestream would bring that man back to mind after so much time?

But Vincent couldn't spend all his time dwelling on that. Waiting for them in Kalm was something else that he had a bad feeling about. Security had alerted them of something unusual; a fiend that had slipped past the town borders and attacked civilians. A fiend athat the local security forces couldn't readily identify.

That was alarming though not entirely unheard of. Sometimes the planet spat something new out in some corner of the world or another. A surprise variant of something seen before, or something wholly new and deadly to consider. 

They'd been brought to the town morgue where the thing was being kept on ice to maintain its physical integrity long enough to be inspected. The officer who had met them at the security center and ushered them there rolled the thing out on the slab.

Veld's expression said everything as they looked at it.

Fiends were one thing, but there was something instinctively revolting about the twisted amalgamation of flesh and naked bone that lay there in front of them.

Vincent's lip curled up over his sharp teeth, enough that he felt the tooth scrape the lip. It was—hideous. And too like the sorts of monsters that haunted his dreams.

"This isn't something mako-spawned." 

He watched Veld's throat bob as he swallowed, and he adjusted his gloves. 

"No. Absolutely not." He turned to the security officer. "Do you have photos from the scene?"

"Yes sir!"

"You'll give them to us. And the backups. We'll be transporting this specimen to Midgar immediately."

Vincent leaned over the beast for a moment, eyes narrowed with a growl that was a little too animalistic for his tastes. Too familiar to the dream, and to a time when his control wasn't quite so fine.

"We'll need to rig a cooling container for it. Lucrecia's going to want to see this.I have a bad feeling, partner."

Veld's calculating stare watched as the Security officer hurried out of the room, leaving them alone. It was only after it was the two of them that he nodded.

"That was exactly what I was thinking. And I don't think Lucrecia's going to like it. Look here." With visible disgust he approached the wretched thing again and pointed at it. "It looks like it has a second face peeled over it."

Looking where Veld pointed he could see the lip or ridge where the monstrous, almost human face, seemed to be stretched like a mask over something animal.

"It could be simple mimicry, but the rest of the body makes me think otherwise." Vincent felt the urge to shoot it, to ensure that it didn't leap up and strike. Like it was some sort of grim revenant.

He paced around it, taking note of the stretched face, and the several other oddities. Large, finger-like extremities lay limp on either side of its body, like a human's fingers stretched out and given too many joints.

Legs, perhaps, like a spider. Or something meant to trap its prey in a long fingered grip.

Veins lay desiccated from death over exposed muscle, covered by skin too tight for its hideous body. Tight enough that it'd split in several places, including around the 'mane' that looked once more too much like a human's hair on a stretched out scalp.

Like some beast forcing itself out of a human host. 

Veld leaned shoulder to shoulder with him, taking a moment to gather himself. HIs jaw was tight. "I wasn't the one having nightmares last night, but I may tonight."

Vincent chuckled roughly, before even the grim humor left him. "You'll be in good company. But—it looks like this may have once been a human being. If that's the case, it's possible someone…made it." 

"You know I was hoping you wouldn't say that. "Because I thought it, too. Maybe just because of the dreams you and Iflana had last night– maybe that's what brought it to mind."

Vincent shook his head. "We can only hope—perhaps it is just our nightmares giving us bias. Or perhaps it's something more. We won't now for sure until Lu takes a look. If it is human—well. The Turks will have an investigation." 

His partner nodded. "Here's hoping Lucrecia will laugh at us and tell us it's just some ugly fiend. I'll radio in for a chopper with a cooling unit so we can get this thing back to the lab."

Vincent chuckled quietly—but it didn't reach deep. Inside he couldn't stop staring into the beast's eyes and feeling a presence deep inside himself stirring in revolted fury. "Let's hope, I'll look forward to her ribbing us about it for a good long while." 

They had a tense, quiet chopper ride back to Midgar in the chopper with the corpse. Veld had told the security office to deliver his car back to Midgar later that day. Neither he nor Vincent wanted to delay the examination. 

While Vincent took the briefcase full of photographs and statements to the office to be digitized, Veld escorted the specimen to Lucrecia's lab. He'd hoped to get to greet her for the morning under better circumstances, but there they were.

The lab was lit up for the day's work, filled with lab techs and interns going about their daily business in the various sub-labs. But the main lab was Lucrecia's little sanctum. Large, wall dominating experiment chambers dwarfed command consoles.

It was about the only thing that hadn't changed from Hojo's days in charge. 

Now the lab was brightly lit, decorated in rich hardwood desks for the investigators by bookcases filled with compilations of past experiments. Photographs of everything from the Shinra Mansion to the success of the Chaos Experiments marked the walls like a measurement of progress. The great computer, with photographs of her husband and son, and Veld's own family, stood before the Lab's pride of place.

The great containment chambers held the essences of Chaos and Omega themselves. The basis of so much of her work, so much of Shinra's progress over the years since the coup. And sitting before it, tapping away at some data was Lucrecia herself.

A cup of tea sat steaming beside her as she ran her fingers through her hair with a soft hum of breath and returned to the console without yet looking up. Aerith wasn't anywhere to be seen—just yet, probably on an errand in another lab. 

Veld had radioed ahead that they'd be coming with a specimen, so she wouldn't be surprised by that.

"Doctor," he greeted, official at least for the moment, since the lab was filled with interns.

Lucrecia sat up, turning in her chair with a tired smile on her face. She was wearing her reading glasses, tipped down her nose before she took them off and folded them into her pocket. "Veld, am I glad to see you."

She gestured to her computer. "...I've been preparing one of the experiment chambers for our new friend." 

"Doesn't seem very friendly to me," he murmured. "But you're the expert. Want to have a look at it now, or should I let the team bring it to its new home?"

Veld glanced at the thing, limp under its opaque sheet and lying on a medical stretcher. Even the outline of it beneath was unsettling.

Lucrecia stood with a flutter of her lab coat, smoothing out her dress below before she drifted ethereally towards it with one of her cat-like smiles. Even with the subtle streaks of grey in her hair she still looked youthful, like a walking echo of the past.

"Let me have a look, Veld. I'm excited to tease you and Vincent a little when this turns out to be just a variant of the insectoid chimera or somesuch." 

He managed a little chuckle. "Admittedly, we were hoping that that's the case, dear. Please, be my guest."

He gestured at the sheet, the familiar address slipping out even in mixed company, probably due to his nerves.

Lucrecia didn't bat an eye, winking at him as she pulled on a pair of white gloves before pulling the sheet away.

It was then that all the confident mirth drained from her expression. "...I see." 

The door behind them opened—and Aerith's voice came calling cheerfully. "Doctor Crescent! I've finished compiling the data from the SOLDIER training facility! I—oh, hey Dad!"

Veld barely had time to register his daughter's presence before his eye was drawn away. Lucrecia shot up, her eyes wide. Veld hadn't seen that particular pinprick of horror in her eyes in a long, long time. Possibly ever—the faked terror when Hojo died was nothing like this.

She slung the cover over the fiend quickly before taking a sharp intake of breath. "Aerith, if you could…if you could go to the sub-labs for me and retrieve all materials from compartment G-25." 

Veld turned to smile at his daughter– the best smile he could manage in the circumstances, surely tight and difficult. "Hello dear. Busy day at the office."

His hand reached out to steady Lucrecia by the shoulder. Her reaction alone justified his mounting trepidation.

Aerith's expression grew confused and her eyes glanced towards the misshapen body hidden by the cloth. "I can tell, Dad. Compartment G-25, isn't that the really old stuff? From…"

Lucrecia nodded firmly, pallid and shaking under his touch. "From before I was head of R&D, yes. If …if you could take a team and retrieve that for me I'd be much appreciated. Thank you." 

The knot sank in the pit of Veld's stomach. Before she was head of R&D. Hojo's era. Ifalna's dream came to mind again.

"Lucrecia?" He kept his voice low as he gave her a probing look. There had to be more reasons for her to call out such old research materials in this circumstance than the ones that came immediately to mind– didn't there?

Aerith nodded, and turned with a flutter of her own lab coat to hurry out the door. "I'll catch up later, dad!"

Lucrecia watched her go for a minute before she put her hands on the gurney and began to roll it towards one of the glass experiment chambers attached to the lab. Her eyes were set dead ahead. "...yes, Veld?" 

He squeezed her shoulder, leaning in close. "Are you going to be alright?"

She smiled at him despite the tension wracking her a moment ago, it was expertly shuttered away in time for her to nod her head. "I'll be fine. Just—well. I'd like to test a theory." 

"Alright." Lucrecia was a strong woman, talented, and fierce. He wouldn't second guess her- not out loud, anyway. "I'm here for whatever you need for this investigation."

She clapped him on the back with a chuckle. "How steady are your hands right now? I need to take this thing apart and get some samples."

Her expression sobered as she started rolling the cart along towards the chamber "I had a sting of concern, I'm just making sure the fears are unfounded. This is likely just a horrible mutation. Perhaps mako levels spiked too high in an area—or there was a reaction with some other mutagen." 

Veld had to admit his nerves weren't the steadiest they'd ever been. But his hands? They were fine. He could have been a surgeon as easily as he had become a sniper.

"My hands are at your disposal as always, dear."

"So what kind of situation have we got going on in Kalm?"

"Nothing good, Tseng." Vincent didn't have to look up from the console as he hunted out the keys one by one to digitize the materials from the security office in Kalm.

Tseng was the current head of the Turks, after Veld decided on taking an advisory position over continuing in active command. Vincent didn't want the job, for much the same reasons he was sure Veld retired from it, and it fell to Veld's long-time protege.

He was a good choice. If anyone was able to corral the Turks, it was Tseng. Which was why he deserved to know how bad things were out there. 

"Some 'new fiend' showed up and killed several people before they put it down. We've got Lucrecia looking at the body but—I can tell you it doesn't look natural. It looks made. From a human being." 

"Made from a human being," Tseng repeated. From the sound of his voice he didn't like the idea any more than Vincent did. "So you're saying what, someone made a chimera?"

"Something like that, yes." Vincent grabbed one of the physical pictures, and flipped it out to extend to Tseng instead of scanning it for the moment. "The hope is it's just some form of mimicry. But I've got a bad feeling about it." 

Tseng took the photograph from him and peered keenly at it with narrowed eyes. "Whatever it is, I don't like it. I'll have security increased in the area to watch for any more of them."

Strange monsters turning up on occasion had been a problem for decades. In the aftermath of the Deepground Mutiny eight years ago they'd sometimes turned up in the same areas as a deepground attacks. There was some link– but no one had been able to prove exactly what it was.

Vincent had hoped it was as simple as some of Deepground's pre-war bioweapons had just woken from dormancy for some reason or another. Dropped pods or such finally releasing, or something simple and isolated as that.

But the fact they couldn't prove anything gave him a shiver up his spine. 

"Good call, Tseng. Hopefully Lucrecia's report is—comforting. Hopefully this is an isolated incident."

But in his experience, it rarely was. 

"We can hope. Let's try not to get anxious about it before we know anything." Despite his wise words, there was a tightness to his smile. "Have a coffee with me when you're done filing those?"

Vincent glanced up at him, reading glasses tipped down his nose as he managed a more confident smile than he'd felt since seeing that abomination on the slab.

"I'd be delighted to, only a fool would decline a cup of your famous coffee." 

By the time that Vincent was done with digitization, the smell of fresh coffee hung over the office, and Tseng had two Shinra mugs full of the dark, bitter liquid sitting on the counter that was specially set up just for making coffee.

They had had a perfectly good coffee maker set up in the office for years, but now it sat mostly disused. Replaced more than a decade earlier with equipment for hand making the coffee.

It was a little perplexing at first—but Vincent had to admit that there was something about the pourover coffee and the fresh beans that gave it a little something special. 

Between Tseng and Rude the Turks had had the coffee machines spoiled for them for over a decade. 

"I made it a little stronger than usual," Tseng said. "I needed it today."

Vincent took the cup from him with a low chuckle. "Good—I need it too. It's been a rough one. Bad dreams—then that nightmare in Kalm." 

"Bad dreams," he murmured, picking up his own cup. "You too, hmm?"

Vincent turned his eyes up towards Tseng, feeling them narrow in concern as he took a subtle intake of breath.

So it wasn't just him. It wasn't just Ifalna, or Aerith anyone in their interconnected family.
Tseng was troubled by bad dreams too. What had Veld said? That Ifalna said the lifestream could have felt some ripple—and had the effect of nightmares on the sensitive.

"What were yours about, Tseng?" 

"It was a weird one." He took a longer sip of his coffee. His eyes glanced up to catch Vincent's. He was hesitating.

"Mine was too," Vincent raised his mug, before taking a sip. "Maybe we can help one another work through it." 

The coffee was rich and dark– as Tseng had promised, stronger than usual, but crisply brewed as it always was.

Tseng was quiet for a moment, before he nodded. "Alright. Let's sit down though."

Vincent gestured, a sweep of the hand, towards the seats with a wry smile. "My dreams weren't suited to standing, either." 

Tseng set his coffee down on the long table and pulled out a couple of the plush leather chairs, sitting down in one of them and turning to face him.

"Your son was in mine."

Vincent raised his eyebrow, brushing his hair from his face enough to take a sip of his coffee as he settled down to look at him. "Sephiroth? You've got my attention." 

"A lot of it's fragmented," he admitted. "There was some kind of maze. A temple, I think? There was a Turks operation happening."

"In some old temple?" Vincent sipped his coffee. "...something related to the old president's old 'Promised Land' obsession?"

He shook his head. They knew now, thanks to Ifalna, what the promised land really was. Not a place, as such, as much as it was wherever the lifestream most strongly converged combined with a religious and cultural aspect.

Hardly a realm of bountiful resources to plunder like Rufus' father had thought. 

But Tseng nodded. "Exactly. We were looking for the 'Promised Land'. I'd gotten to some important chamber." His face clouded over, his eyes distant as he seemed to be trying to recall the dream. "Sephiroth stabbed me."

Vincent felt a cold chill running up his spine, and he stifled it with a sip of his coffee. "...it'd take a lot for Sephiroth to stab you, Tseng. What was he like—in the dream." 

"There was something wrong with him." Tseng stared into his coffee cup. "He was cold. He was… insane, I think. In the dream I thought he was supposed to be dead. He had died years ago."

Parts of that resonated all too well with the nightmares in Vincent's own head. "---he had died years ago, insane and cold." he repeated with a heaviness in his heart. 

Tseng took a long drink of his coffee, and nodded. "It was… a very strange dream. I didn't like it. But it was very vivid."

Vincent chuckled tiredly. "That's…not a surprise. A miserable, strange dream. Vivid...as were mine. Dreams that share a distressing amount in common with yours.."

Tseng's thin, arched eyebrows raised as they often did. He wasn't the type to waste too many words. He just said, "Go on."

"I dreamt of a world where Lucrecia and I didn't have the opportunity to raise our son." Vincent brushed his fingers over the rim of the mug with a thoughtful frown. "...where Hojo experimented on her while she was pregnant, injecting her with some foul creature's DNA that deteriorated her—and when I confronted him I was shot."

He gestured towards himself. "...and the Chaos process—Lucrecia gave it to me in a crude form that made me more monster than man to save me. But Sephiroth…"

He had the dim, dreamlike recollection that Sephiroth had…grown up wrong. A 'hero' in only name, the catalyst for calamity and death—a sin he had to make amends for.

Even lost in his own thoughts, it was impossible not to notice as Tseng's jaw tightened. He laid his hand on the table near Vincent's.

"I'm starting to think this might need an official report."

Vincent grabbed his hand tightly with a grimace—careful that his augmented strength didn't hurt him despite the way the tension rolled through him. "I was concerned you might say that. Ifalna had nightmares too. Bad ones. As did Aerith, and who knows who else." 

Tseng squeezed his hand in return, the grip of his glove like many things about him, a little reminiscent of his mentor Veld's. "I'll put out a general order to make a report if you had a bad dream last night. And see if we can put out feelers to see if this extends beyond our circle. Who knows– maybe it was just a bad night for dreams."

It was a hopeful thought, but he didn't think Tseng believed it.

"Veld tells me Ifalna says she felt some sort of disruption in the Lifestream. A ripple or some 'agitation'. Maybe it's just that—people having nightmares of what could have been." Vincent didn't exactly believe it either.

"Like some kind of shared psychic vision?" The eyebrows went up again.

"It wouldn't be the strangest thing the Lifestream's thrown our way, would it?" Vincent gave him a wan smile. "...we already figured out it's world destroying god-beings, right?

Vincent took a deep sip of his coffee. "Let's compile what people report and see if it makes a full picture." 

"Let's," he nodded. Then Tseng smiled for the first time since they'd sat down. "And don't worry. I'm not holding Sephiroth responsible for something that happened in a dream."

"Good," Vincent smiled back, shaking his head. "Because if we were holding people accountable for things that happened in some nonsense dreams—you'd have to fire me for dereliction of duty." 

Veld waited by the door for the meeting to break up, arms crossed and quiet as he looked over the board.

Things were a hell of a lot different than when he'd first become a Turk, decades ago. Veld's gaze rested on the reason for those differences, on Rufus Shinra at the head of the table. The coup was an open secret, organized and perpetrated by the now-president, his half brother, and a faction of the younger Turks when they were barely more than kids. Veld's only participation had been to turn a blind eye, and he had never been sorry that he had.

The last of the old guard executives had been ousted before the new millennium. Given that Scarlet and Heidegger's first move after their dismissal had been to organize an armed attack on Midgar, he wasn't sorry to have seen them gone. Traitorous bastards. Rufus had recruited new talent in their place. Besides Reeve, head of Urban planning, there were Madam M and Andrea Rhodea who had been recruited to the company after the scouring of Wall Market, and Jeanne Constantin—former commander of Midgar's 7th Infantry.

Lucrecia, of course, was head of the Science division, but her chair was notably empty. She was still at work on the samples from the Kalm specimen. 

Which was exactly what Veld was there to talk about once he closed the meeting.

Rufus stood, his palms braced on the table as he started to bring the business to a close "I hear Public Security's concerns regarding fiend activity around the reactors, and will grant authorization to deploy units as they see fit."

Jeanne nodded firmly, before leaning on her hand. "You won't regret it, President."

"See that I don't. In addition, I'd like a progress report this week from you, Madam M. That new materia you have cooking could be of great use to the company."

Madam M fanned herself with her crisp folding fan, her smile as composed as ever—provided nothing annoyed her. "But of course, Rufus. It's coming along splendidly." 

Veld found himself tuning out the rest of the closing remarks of the meeting. Or more accurately, he found it difficult to focus on common meeting minutes with everything on his mind.

He managed a nod at each of the executives as they left the room. Leaving him alone with Rufus With the light greetings out of the way and the room newly vacated—Rufus turned his full attention to Veld.

His deep blue eyes seemed to probe him as he stood before the window with his hands folded behind his back as the whole of Midgar stood framed behind him.

"Veld. It's a pleasure, as always." 

"As always," Veld agreed, stepping up behind him and looking out at the city with him. "Sadly this time not an untroubled one."

Midgar, the city of mako, spread out below them as Rufus looked fondly upon it with Darkstar by his side. The reactors cycled now, supplemented via other methods sprouting up around the city like tall reeds—wind, panels that converted the sunlight into power, oil—they all worked with the mako reactors to retain MIdgar's way of life with the realization that excessive consumption was harming the planet.

The plates, each one a district in its own right, had a undercity below, each one developed properly in the days since Rufus took over. 'A comfortable, satisfied people are more use to Shinra than the miserable rabble living in ramshackle huts," he'd said. But everyone knew the real reason.

Many of his friends were from the slums, and Rufus had a secret bleeding heart he tried to hide.

"Not untroubled? That's concerning to hear." 

"It's been a concerning day I'm afraid, Rufus." Veld would never have addressed the old president as anything but his title, or sir. But Rufus was much more approachable. A friend, even. "There was an incident in Kalm with an unknown fiend attack that we went to check on this morning."

Rufus reached down, scratching behind Darkstar's ears as his lips formed a subtle frown, his eyes still locked on the city. "...an unknown fiend? Those don't typically turn out to be much of note." 

"There have been a few times when they've been something to worry about. We were hoping it was nothing this time." Veld took a breath. "We brought it back to the lab for Lucrecia to look at."

"Lucrecia's looking at it?" That got his attention. His eyes finally pulled from the city and towards Veld. "...and the results?" 

Veld shook his head. "Inconclusive."

He knew that Rufus would like that answer as little as he did, and it would make him just as anxious. For Lucrecia not to be able to tell them right away that it was just some creature spat out from the earth was… not typical.

Even when they'd come across strange fiends, the concerning thing was that they had been modified– spliced together, usually. 

"She's still running tests."

Rufus' gaze darkened. 

"...my genius head of R&D is finding the results from a mere fiend to be inconclusive?" He pressed his hand through his hair with a low hiss. "It means it's hardly natural, at the very best. At worst—perhaps she's hesitant to report a definitive answer." 

Veld didn't like to consider that. But Lucrecia had always been a little bit secretive. It was.. possible.

"She says she's doing more tests." That was what she had told him. "She had old samples out that she was comparing it to."

Rufus closed his eyes "...what old samples, Veld? Should I be more worried than I already am?"

"The samples from the previous head of R&D."

Hojo had died while Rufus was still an infant. But he'd certainly heard stories.

"The madman my father favored," Rufus hummed under his breath. "With his bizarre experiments. I read a fair bit about them— attempting to synthesize an ancient, right? On top of many other wretched tests. Like Deepground." 

"Yes, exactly. He did a lot of experiments with DNA extracted from a creature thought to be an ancient– that very much wasn't."

Stomach churning experiments that had turned into the experiments Hollander ran in Deepground.

Rufus put his fingers to his chin. "...she can't possibly be worried that this new fiend carries DNA from that false ancient, can she?" 

"She hasn't said as much. But I can't imagine why else she'd want the samples."

And he had tried very hard to imagine it.

Rufus turned towards him. "I want you to follow up on this, Veld. You're very well connected with her. She and I have a rapport—I like her as well, but if this is something so dire, she'll likely confide in you or Vincent first." 

Veld nodded. "Absolutely. I'll admit– I'm concerned about this.I keep telling myself it's just anxiety, but…"

Rufus looked out at his city again. 

"But it's worrying you. Something in your gut," He closed his eyes. Like a bad dream come to life." 

Veld's jaw tightened. "Funny that you mention bad dreams, Rufus.That's something else we're following up on."

And hearing Rufus mention it without prompting. He had a bad feeling about that, too.

"Don't tell me the Turks are keen on chasing dreams and fairytale wishes now, Veld." His tone was sardonic—teasing even—but Veld could see the way his jaw tightened in the window's reflection. 

"It sounds silly, doesn't it?" Veld shook his head. "An unusual number of employees had bad dreams last night, Rufus. All revolving around the same kinds of things."

Rufus closed his eyes. 

"Dreams of what? If things went—worse? If my father stayed in power with his mad minions and twisted Midgar into something unsalvagable?" He rubbed his arm—as if soothing some phantom ache. "...unusual, unsettling—but this world is full of such things." 

Veld put his hand on Rufus' shoulder and squeezed it. "I'm starting to feel like I was the only one who didn't have any dreams like that."

"Seems you won the lottery, Veld. I'm sorry to hear your wife had a hard time of it, then." 

"She was crying when I woke up." 

He'd expected the memory of that to become more distant as the day wore on. Instead, it only stood out even more.

Rufus' cool expression softened considerably. "...I'm glad she took the day off, then. Veld—tell her I'll behave myself today. So she can concentrate on feeling better." 

Veld smiled a little at him, grimly, but still a smile. "She was a little concerned you'd jump in a helicopter and start shooting endangered animals the minute she took her eye off you. But I told her I could handle it."

"Well, now that you mention it—" Rufus said dryly "I heard there's a population of dolphins in Junon. Perhaps I'll take Reno and make a sport of it."

Rufus—as a matter of fact—had taken a trip down to see one of the Junon dolphin shows before. He'd come back as a bit of a minor fan of the sea creatures. 

Veld chuckled and patted him on the back. At least he could keep a good humor in all of this.

Chapter Text

1978

"I bought cigars." Veld touched his pocket with a smile as he and Vincent left the room where Lucrecia was sleeping. She'd asked them both to be there while Sephiroth was delivered. Vincent spared one last look at the door as it closed with a subtle smile on his handsome and severe face. 

"I knew I could count on you, partner." They'd both been there for her, and the comfort and relief on her face when it was over with Sephiroth bundled up safe was palpable. Now, now was the time to celebrate. "Join me outside for them?" 

"My pleasure, partner." Veld smiled, and pulled the pack out of his breast pocket, gesturing for Vincent to take the lead as he followed him outside. "I don't think I've ever seen her look happier."

Vincent's arm wrapped around his shoulder with a rare grin on his face, leading him down and towards the front door. "Neither have I. It came close—not too long after Hojo died. But this is the first time I've seen her look so happy or relaxed."

He opened the door to the cool night air. 

Veld wrapped his arm around him in return, leaning in to press his cheek to Vincent's for a moment. "I think she was worried about the pregnancy. Can't say I blame her."

Vincent's cheek was warm…and he could feel the faint trace of lingering tears from where he'd been holding back his emotion during the end.

He squeezed Veld tightly as the two of them made for the small ironwork table overlooking the garden. 

"I think so too—it was a difficult one. I can't blame her either—but here we are on the other side with little Sephiroth." He chuckled low under his breath. "He looks like he's going to be smart. Takes after his mom, then." 

Veld chuckled at that, and pulled out a chair for Vincent. "Hopefully got his mother's looks in the bargain, too. Got her pretty eyes, anyway."

As Vincent sat down, Veld felt like he could feel the relief in him, almost as much as in Lucrecia. He had to admit, he felt about the same.

It was like they'd all collectively been holding their breath, and it had finally exhaled.

Vincent had an easier smile on his face than he had in a while the last few months, leaning on the ironwork table and propping himself up with the back of his hand. 

"He sure does. Seems like he's gonna take a lot after her." He went quiet for a moment as he fished in his suit pocket for his lighter, flicking it open before speaking. "You know—she said something to me a while back." 

Veld cocked his head, offering him one of the fat cigar's he'd bought just for the occasion. It was a bit of a step into fatherhood for both of them, in a way.

"Oh? What did she say?"

A step together, in their unique family situation far from the norms of Midgar.

Vincent stuck the cigar between his lips, and snipped its tip before raising the lighter to it. "That there's a chance I was the father all along." 

Veld felt himself flush a little– just at the way the idea intersected directly with his own thoughts. 

"I had wondered," he admitted, pulling out a cigar for himself as well. "But isn't it easy enough to test for? Or– does she not want to know for certain?"

He couldn't blame her if that was the case. Being able to think maybe it was Vincent's and not knowing for sure might be better than knowing for certain that it was Hojo's. 

As Veld and Lucreciate and Vincent had all gotten closer, Veld had come more and more to understand that Lucrecia held a depth of loathing for the man that went further even than the things she'd told them about him. And Vincent's initial surprise had clearly waned the more he'd heard. That the assumed happiness Lucrecia had with Hojo was anything but. 

He took a draw until the cigar lit, and held out the flame for Veld with a tired smile. "It's an easy test, but I think she wanted to wait till Sephiroth was born to know for sure."

Veld leaned in and puffed the cigar to life on the offered flame with a little smile in return. 

"So we'll know for certain soon, then?" he asked. "I imagine you want to know."

Vincent shook his head as he took a long puff, blowing smoke to the sky. 

"It won't change how I feel, but I admit I'm curious." He looked at Veld with a half smile. "No matter what, I'm going to be as good a father to Sephiroth as I can. And I hope you'll back me up. Don't leave me in the unknown of fatherhood alone, Veld. I could use my partner." 

Veld took a long puff of the cigar, feeling its heady smoke tingle in his mouth. Like Vincent, the results of the test weren't going to change his actions. He'd already resolved to be there for Lucrecia and Vincent, whatever they needed.

He offered Vincent his hand across the table. "Lucrecia's already been calling me Uncle Veld, but if you want me to be 'Daddy number two' instead, partner, it's your call."

He chuckled slyly. They'd been more open with their relationship, and their feelings in the past months.If anything, Lucrecia had helped bring them closer together.

"My call?" Vincent laughed, grabbing his hand and giving it an affectionate squeeze. "Uncle Veld does have a good sound to it, admittedly."

"Probably a little more practical than 'daddy 2', as well." He squeezed his partner's hand. "On the other hand, he is already called 'Sephiroth', so he's not starting with a huge advantage on practical names."

Vincent choked on his smoke, clapping his hand on the table as he caught his breath. 

"Dammit, Veld!" He laughed as he managed to intake a few breaths. "Lu said she wanted him to sound angelic." 

Veld laughed along with him, smoke curling out from his lips. "Well, it sure as hell doesn't sound earthly. He's gonna need a good nickname."

"I was thinking of just calling him Seph," Vincent put the cigar to his lips again with a thin, relaxed smile. "Lu loves the name though. So…I'm glad she chose it." 

"I mean, I won't deny it. It almost seems like it suits him already. Maybe it's just 'cause Lu's kept saying it this whole time, but I can't imagine him as anything other than Sephiroth. But he's definitely going to be little Sephy to me."

It was true. Sephiroth was not even two hours old, but there was something in his tiny, cherubic face that bespoke the kind of fierce divinity that Lucrecia's naming bestowed him with.

Vincent chuckled quietly. 

"I can't imagine anything else either. She chose well—I'll agree there." He took another pull off his cigar , and rested his fingers against Veld's. "you're right, though. A nickname's gonna be needed. Big time. And that's coming from a guy who's dad's name was Grimoire." 

"Bunch of traditionalists," Veld teased. "And here my dear departed father gave me a good, solid name."

He rubbed his thumb over Vincent's palm. It was good to joke around like this. To clear the air. To relax together. Once Lucrecia had rested, he was sure that she'd appreciate a light mood.

Vincent chuckled. "Veld, partner…" his fingers brushed his wrist. "It's one syllable but that doesn't make it any more common than Sephiroth." 

"Well, I said solid, not common!" He laughed, trying to weasel out of it, but Vincent had him pinned with that one. "Oh well. Not like any of us are common people anyway, are we? And your boy– our boy– isn't going to be, either."

He scooted his chair closer to Vincent's chair, feeling the need in that moment to close the distance between them.

Vincent's arm found his way back around his shoulder, and drew him close as the smoke wreathed both their heads. 

"He sure isn't. Our boy's gonna be someone special—I can feel it in my bones, partner." 

"Glad to be there with you to see it, partner." He leaned into Vincent's arms, and put his cigar down for a moment. He could always re-light it. He laid his stubbly cheek against Vincent's. This was a special moment. Not the kind of moment he'd ever pictured having.

Vincent's warm skin, clean shaven as ever, brushed against his stubble for a moment. He shifted and Veld felt the heat of a kiss on his cheek. "Glad you're here too. Dunno if I could manage it on my own. A mission's one thing, this is another." 

"I wouldn't leave you on your own for either.Anyway, this is its own kind of mission, right? A hell of a long term one."

He turned, and his lips found the edge of Vincent's mouth.

"A long term bodyguard gig," Vincent chuckled quietly, before he leaned in and caught his lips in a firm kiss. It carried the taste of cigar smoke heavy on the tongue.. 

Veld turned and put his arms around his partner, holding him close as the taste of smoke passed between them. The kiss was warm, and comforting. 

The longest assignment of their lives, but they had each others' backs.

A few months after Sephiroth was born, they had another reason to celebrate. Lucrecia had been officially promoted.

With Hojo's death and Gast's self exile to who knows where, the R&D department had been in shambles trying to find a replacement—especially as the prime candidate was on maternity leave.

But when the wax sealed envelope embossed with the Shinra Electric Power Company's crest arrived at the Shinra mansion door by way of one of the other Turks, it was obvious they made the right choice.

Opening it, Dr. Lucrecia Crescent was head of Shinra Research and Development, effective immediately. 

Veld had insisted immediately that they had to celebrate properly. Surely Sephiroth, a few months old now, could stay with a sitter for a few hours while they went out to dinner. He hadn't been sure how Lucrecia would take the suggestion; like all mothers perhaps, she'd been attached to her newborn at the hip.

She'd been initially hesitant—but ultimately wasn't hard to convince. Her stipulation—have him and Vincent pick the sitter.

Someone they could trust, someone they could verify. And with that, her mood seemed to instantly lighten when she admitted that she did in fact feel like she could use a little celebration. 

Of course their pick had been a fellow Turk.

"You're sure you don't mind, Finn?" Veld asked for perhaps the fourth time as he lingered by the door. Vincent and Lucrecia were already waiting outside.

Finn laughed, pushing his sunglasses up into the auburn waves of his slicked back hair. His smile, as often, was cocky and assured as he leaned his lanky body against the door, Sephiroth cradled in one arm.

He'd forgone his usual cigar when Lucrecia yanked it from his mouth and told him to keep it outside…after he was done babysitting. "Hey, Veld. Come on. I got this, they don't call me a rising legend for nothin', right?" 

"Sure but I didn't think that was for your love of children." Veld chuckled. Funny that he was the one being overprotective now. "But if you pull this off, I'll add it to your resume."

"Hey, kids love me. Don't worry, Veld." He slapped his back with his free hand, his grin hitching a little wider. "I can see if I can teach him to read early. Maybe a nice bomb manual or somethin'."

That got Lucrecia to give him a look from where she was smoothing out her party clothes near Vincent.

"Reading's fine, but wait til he's teething for the practical lessons," Veld drawled, giving him a look of his own.

With a few more chuckles and reminders, the three of them were off. Their first official date as a… Veld realized he was struggling to find a word to encompass their relationship.

It was a unique sort of relationship, not your typical husband and wife connection you'd see back in Midgar. Maybe there wasn't a word for it.

Lucrecia seemed happy though, hanging on Vincent's arm in her casual clothes. She'd dressed up—a body hugging dress the same color as the ribbon she always wore, her hair down and free around her shoulders as heels clacked on concrete.

She'd offered her hand to him, beaming like the sun slipping through the plates of Midgar, and dragged him out.

They'd be going a bit afield. The Nidhogg inn in Nibelheim was nice, but—it was a small town. But a relatively short couple hours away by helicopter was Shinra's largest tourist trap—and home to a famous seafood restaurant.

Costa del Sol. 

Veld had been a little dubious, but if Lucrecia was happy with the idea he sure as hell wasn't going to tell her no. She deserved to celebrate however she wanted. It had been a hell of a few months.

He said as much as he guided the chopper in toward the landing pad.

Vincent was never one for the sun, but he tightened his tie with a wry smile as it touched down "Sephiroth's in good hands with Finn," he said again—he'd been reassuring her a few times during the trip.

Excited as she was, and she was excited, eagerly leaning to look out the window as the bright, sunny waters of Costa del Sol greeted them below, Lucrecia had admitted being a little nervous being so far.

But it was only a day. She smiled, and brushed her hair from her face before clapping her hands.

"Good. Then let's have FUN. If we were a little closer to Midgar, I'd have had a perfect recommendation—but well. This one comes highly recommended from an old friend." 

Veld put his arm around her from one side, and Vincent from the other.

"Just let us know if you get tired, alright? You're still recovering." Veld smiled at her. "That said, this place does have a very relaxing air."

Vincent chuckled, shoulder to shoulder with him as he stepped out onto the helipad. Their hair flew, mussed by the great blades of the chopper as Lucrecia hopped down with a chuckle. "I know, I know—but a place like this' supposed to be healing. There's a reason it's been turned into a resort villa!"

A Shinra vacation villa, it seemed, which was quickly becoming a full blown resort from the activity all around.

Luicrecia took a deep breath as she squeezed Veld's arm. 

"Smell that sea air, hear that music on the wind!" Her smile grew soft for a moment, her voice subtly somber as she murmured. "It really makes you feel alive." 

Veld had to agree. He stroked his fingers in the strands of her hair. "Just the thing to help you get your energy back for your new position."

Veld was no doctor, but he knew better than to expect a woman who'd just given birth to be ready to wrestle tigers.

"I'm going to need it," she said as they were ushered forward by smiling women in beachwear excitedly welcoming the 'Department of Research and Development's party' to Costa Del Sol on behalf of their mayor.

She smiled in bemusement at it all. "Especially if I'm going to make my voice heard over that loudmouth ape and screeching harpy."

Vincent coughed, covering his mouth to hide his smirk. His hand rested on Veld's side, and gave it a little squeeze as a chuckle leaked through. "I'd certainly say, Lu. But we can handle it. WIth enough rest—the sea air, a little good seafood. Maybe even a dip if we have time." 

Veld laughed. "We'll have to pick up some swimsuits in that case. I don't think I'm exactly dressed to get wet."

"And ruin your suits? We couldn't have that," Lucrecia squeezed his arm with a wink. "so we'll get to share the gift of you two shirtless with the world. Lucky Costa Del Sol. Then we'll really be able to get things wet."

Vincent flushed, stifling it with a soft cough. "Lucrecia—the dinner reservations." 

Veld was glad to Vincent for reminding her– he was too embarrassed to get words out of his mouth. He just laughed.

The restaurant alone was well worth the helicopter ride. A large seaside restaurant attached to the big hotel; it was open on all sides to the salty breeze and the smell of the ocean beyond, bedecked in local flowers and reeds. The table— fitting Shinra's sway over things—had pride of place overlooking the sea and instant service the moment it was requested.

A bottle of wine, and a course of fish and shellfish spread out over the table as Lucrecia laughed with a relaxation they hadn't seen in her for along, long time.

She was telling some story about her intern days when the waitress came back to swap out their bottle of wine. 

"Glad to be able to drink again?" Veld teased. "I did owe you one from our first little encounter, didn't I?"

Lucrecia laughed, twisting a lock of her long hair around her fingers as she watched the waitress top them off. "Well—I always did like a little wine to un-wined"

Vincent snorted "Lu, that was terrible."

"I know, I know." She laughed, shaking her head. "But Veld DID owe me. I had to go through that whole seduction without a drop to drink. Do you know how nervous I was? I thought he wouldn't be interested!"

"As if anyone could not be," Vincent's half smile was fond—soft, as he cut into the tender flesh of a tropical fish. 

Veld chuckled, flushing a little. "Well, I think I've gotten to know you pretty well in the last couple of months Lucrecia. My suspicion is that if I'd turned you down the first time you would have just sent in reinforcements!"

Vincent smirked at him. "She'd have convinced me to show up at your door dressed in ribbons or somesuch."

"You know me so well, sweetheart," Lucrecia's angelic face carried a smile that was anything but. "The both of you. The game was rigged from the start."

She took a long, and clearly satisfied, sip from her wine before helping herself to a scallop.

Veld gave his partner a sly look. "I wouldn't have turned down the ribbons. But I know when I'm beaten. Vincent warned me when the two of you started together that you were 'adventurous'. I had asked if he and I needed to break up."

"Break up". He wouldn't have used those words back then, because he hadn't really considered them 'together' But now they certainly were.

"And I certainly didn't want to do that. Even if what we were calling it wasn't exactly 'dating'," Vincent mused. "Glad that I didn't have to choose."

Lucrecia looped her arm around him, winking at Veld with a smile as she popped a scallop in her mouth. After a moment, she pointed the little stick at him with a wink. 

"He was right of course—I've always enjoyed adventure…i've been called a little brash, but—well. Why would I break the two of you up if we clearly get on as well as we do?" 

"You might have wanted him all to yourself," Veld offered. He swirled his wine in the glass, very glad that hadn't turned out to be the case.

She leaned in and kissed Vincent's cheek. 

"I just wanted him in my life," she said with a fondness to her smile as she went back to her wine "I saw a future where my stubbornness—my fears about old mistakes—drove him away. I didn't want that. I decided, then and there, that I wasn't going to let myself do that. But, that doesn't mean I can't share with a charming man like you, Veld."

Vincent looped his arm around her shoulders, a note of timidity in his normally composed expression. "Well—I can say with certainty that I wasn't driven away. Not when I knew you weren't happy with …him…" 

Veld felt the note of tension descend over all of them, and was determined to drive it away. He filled each of their wine glasses again.

"Let's not talk about him," he said. "After all, with Lucrecia's promotion, Shinra can put him in the past. So we can too."

Lucrecia raised her glass once it was filled. "And cheers to that! It's going to be a new era, my dears. A grand one—full of scientific discovery, progress—and of course, our dear son Sephiroth."

Vincent's expression unclouded , and he raised his glass with her. "Cheers to that. Maybe with you in charge things may change for the better. R&D holds a lot of sway with the president." 

Veld raised his glass. "Cheers, Lucrecia. To your new era at Shinra. And to all of our new era, together."

The glasses clinked together. Wine was tipped back. And as soon as it was, Lucrecia kissed Vincent then Veld on the lips before dropping back in her seat with a catlike smile. "To our new era. A whole new world of possibility." 

Chapter Text

2007

People had called it a miracle when her little garden had bloomed in Midgar. The great city of steel and mako was so different from her remote village of Icicle Inn. But she'd coaxed the flowers to bloom there in the ice and cold too when she was only a little girl.

Midgar wasn't quite as drained of the lifestream as it was back then. Life was starting to grow all over the city. A Midgar full of flowers wasn't quite the distant dream it had been back in the early days of her time with Shinra.

Ifalna had established her garden first in an atrium within the Shinra Building, and next in the comfortable backyard of the home she shared with Veld and the rest of her family. It was comfortable; lush, full of flowers and even a few vegetables to vary up their meals.

But best of all it stood as a tangible connection to the planet. Midgar, with its high walls and its plates, often felt a little stifling to her, even with the parts of it she adored. Its lights drowned out the stars and its sound sometimes made the voice of the planet all the harder to hear.

Not here—not in her garden, however. Here the lifestream drifted free, here the voice of the planet came clearly to her.

She bent down to brush the petals of a vibrant yellow flower; knelt in the dirt before it with her mother's talisman clutched in her hands. 

 It was hard not to dwell on the dream when it stuck in her memory and replayed every time she closed her eyes. It wasn't ephemeral as dreams should be, it didn't fade into the back of her mind or sort out into any new understandings…

It felt like a memory of something that had never happened. Each detail vividly represented in a short burst. The small, confined steel room covered in her daughter's paintings of an imagined world outside from her stories about her homeland—the dim lab filled with tubes of growing abominations, lorded over by a grinning madman who thought himself some kind of dark god.

Hojo, a man she'd only heard about in stories from Lucrecia. An old coworker of hers, one she'd once felt affection for 'before he showed her that all those charming words were a lie' before his untimely death and the revelation of his various unethical experiments in the wake of Lucrecia's takeover of the R&D department.

She'd never met him; only having had run-ins with the occasional Shinra scout who she'd refused to talk to, but he haunted her dream all the same. That large glass cell—the wires hooked into her skin and the shock of pain as her body was flooded with all sorts of stimuli meant to test just how high the Cetran pain tolerance levels were.

One, in the dream, she'd suspected was just a bit of fun for Hojo between the barrage of samples and 'planetary connection' tests that would theoretically lead him to the promised land.

With chemicals burning through her veins, she'd looked at him with such sorrow and hate—but she'd weathered it with as little complaint as she could manage.

For Aeirth. For he'd threatened to use his 'backup' if she'd even for a moment seemed like she'd try putting up a fight.

The nightmare was vivid. And it carried with it a heaviness in her heart she couldn't shake. It was like a glimpse into another world, or another tragedy.

She clutched her talisman tighter in her shaking hands before she took a deep breath and turned her attention to the planet's voice, whispering for an answer.

If the lifestream was agitated—if it was upsetting the sleep of her, and her daughters and who knew who else— perhaps it was a greater sign.

Her prayers to the planet didn't go unanswered, the lifestream's power flowing through her as Gaia's voice whispered through her very being.

Why was I given a vision of a world that shouldn't exist?

The planet's warmth drifted through her. The lifestream was disturbed, a thousand voices whispering at once that things were not quite as they were supposed to be.

Ifalna's brow furrowed as her fingers clasped tightly in prayer, motes of viridian light—the lifestream's voice—drifting around her, each with a whisper that the world was on an unwritten path. That something had happened—a ripple through the lifestream itself

Is it wrong? She asked. Are you hurting?

The answer was as chaotic as the surging tide.

'Yes, we're in pain', 'No—we're not hurting', 'Not wrong, as such but—' The lifestream surrounded her consciousness, rushing past her with hundreds of conflicting opinions from the planet and the spirits within it.

Ifalna hardly had time to breathe. For the first time in a long time, since she was a young girl being taught by her mother how to talk to the planet for the first time, the voice of the tumultuous planet grew to such a cacophony that it scrambled her wits and sent her falling into the flowerbed in a dead faint.

When she awoke only minutes later by the chiming of the patio clock by the door she rose from the dirt to dust herself off with a shaky intake of breath. 

Something had happened—something strange.

Part of her had feared that it had something to do with that vivid dream that refused to leave her minds eye. 

Part of her had feared that this was only the beginning.

As the lifestream dissipated, brushing motes against her dirt-smudged cheek, she didn't just fear it—she felt it in her very soul. 

This was the beginning of something terrible or wonderful or something in between.

She bent down, lifting a flower that had been struck on her way down and inspecting it for damage. A cluster of the petals fell, caught by the wind as it picked up around her and danced up and out into the busy streets of Midgar and under the footfalls below.

Elfe had been having a rough day since she'd woken up. Nightmares, lots of 'em, had kept her up all night. It was so bad she'd asked Aerith to help her, long after their parents had gone to bed, in cutting her hair exactly how she'd seen it in her dreams.

It felt strangely right, in a way, having it cut so short. It helped her at least get back to sleep and right into the nightmares again. When her dad had asked her, she couldn't answer honestly. She'd made up some stuff about 'just having fine dreams', and changing her hair to look like a hero. He didn't have to know what she was dreaming.

Neither about the jagged chunk of materia set into her hand by some madman scientist and the way it was eating her from the inside, nor about the reality of the 'hero' in her dreams. A version of her who didn't remember her father who was waging a war against Shinra and everything it stood for as head of some terrorist group.

It'd lead her to be distracted, withdrawn all day in the Turks office. Reno had finally bullied her into doing a little training instead of moping around with paperwork.

Even if she was up and on her feet, the VR mission had been going poorly. Protect President Rufus Shinra in Junon from enemy assassins. But she'd missed several attacks, the digital president only surviving thanks to Reno's speed.

She felt like her body was slower, weaker than it should be. Maybe she was just still tired. Or perhaps it was the strange, uncomfortable feeling the whole scenario brought up in her gut.

LIke it was playing at the edge of a memory. They were right at the end, framed by the great Sister Ray mako cannon of Junon, when the uncomfortable feeling began to feel like bees in her stomach.

For some reason, she imagined Sephiroth there opposite her—sword raised to clash with hers. Sephiroth , Lucrecia and Vincent's son—her childhood friend and Aerith's boyfriend, at least one of her boyfriends.

Her sword was shaking in her hands. Could Reno tell? He probably could. 

He definitely could.

There was no question of it when his hand landed on her shoulder and she suddenly realized that he had shut off the entire simulation, leaving only the echo of it there in her mind, the figure of Sephiroth a last looming specter in her mind's eye.

"You are so off your game today. What's up?"

She twitched, and a strange impulse to lash out was quickly stifled in her chest. A conflicting feeling—a strange detachment from her job in the Turks that she hadn't felt before she fell asleep that warred with her desire to rise up the ranks and her loyalty to her new mentors and friends—twisted in her gut before she realized she'd just flat out ignored him.

"...I'm fine. I just feel weak." she murmured under her breath. 

"Yeah, no shit." Reno grimaced and squeezed her shoulder again. "I was hoping some training would loosen you up out of it but looks like I fucked that one up. How about some noodles instead? Before your dad beats my ass for making you upset."

Reno laughed, but he wasn't joking and he wasn't taking no for an answer, putting his arm around her as if to help her walk.

"I can still train!" Elfe's shoulder bumped him as she swayed—far enough to almost fall against him as the vertigo hit. "I…I'm a Turk, I'm not gonna let some bad dreams throw me off." 

Even if the word 'Avalanche' and some dim memory of a dreamy rebellion against the very organization she was part of flickered up from her dreams. 

Reno's expression immediately changed. "You too, huh? Okay come on, get in the shower, and then I'm definitely taking you out for noodles."

Elfe grimaced, her eyes set on the deactivated training room. The massive canon of Junon—the president of Shinra in danger—and Sephiroth, clashing swords with her as she managed to go one to one with him.

It was an image that made her hand ache with some phantom pain as it closed against Reno's jacket. She wasn't going to win this. Not when Reno had bad dreams too. He'd clearly gotten worried.

So with a soft, sharp huff of breath, she shook her head and sighed. "After you. I can always run back off to train when you get distracted or drunk, anyway."

"Oh good luck finding the time then!" He waved to her good naturedly and pushed her off toward the showers..

The little undercity noodle shop a couple of train stops away from the Shinra building was a favorite of the Turks, and especially Reno's. He shooed her into a seat in the corner half hidden behind some beaded curtains as he chatted with the old Wutain lady who owned the place. Elfe couldn't hear what they were saying, but Reno was laughing, and the old woman was flicking his ear with her wicked looking claw-like nails.

It had been a quiet train ride. Reno had let her brood on the way. But she was sure that was going to change once he made it back to the table with the tray and their bowls.

It wasn't as if anything was going to change the way she felt. She'd brooded in near silence the whole train ride, turning over the details of her dream; the details of the way she was feeling. Even irritated with the way her dad made her do stupid desk work for years—she'd always been enthusiastic, happy.

She was happier when he'd finally backed off and let her join the Turks proper, to live her dream of being a member of the organization she'd always admired. To be a hero.

So why, right now, did she feel like parts of her had been hollowed out?

Talking to Reno, it was nice, but she was sure it wouldn't help. Even her new haircut didn't lift her spirits right away. Even the attempt to train backfired.

Noodles weren't likely to do much better, no matter how good they were. She let her head drop into her arms as she took soft and tired breaths.

Reno set the tray down on the table in between them, two steaming black-lauqered bowls piled high with noodles and cuts of meat, and smaller bowls for the bottle of sake that Reno had apparently bought for them as well.

"Did I mention I love the new haircut?" he asked, opening the bottle, and pouring a more than generous amount for both of them.

Elfe looked up, the longer, braided portion along the side of her head brushing against her hand as she raised her head to look at him with a wan smile. 

"You do, huh?"

The steam wafted between them casting his face in a haziness that felt strangely familiar. The entire world felt just as hazy and indistinct. 

"Sure do," he nodded. Reno had had the same haircut as long as she'd known him. "Did you cut it because of your dream?"

She reached out through the haze towards him and grabbed his goofy mullet ponytail to give it a playful tug. It looked good on him. And she'd been teasing him about it and tugging it for years now, wherever she saw him. Before she dropped back into her seat and stared at her bowl of noodles.

The familiar attempt to goof around helped—a little. 

"Yeah, I did. In my dream I wore my hair like this. And I had a cloak, y'know? Like a hero in one of the Shinra TV dramas." 

"A cloak huh? That might be a little much even for the notoriously lenient Turks uniform." He laughed and brushed his hair over his shoulder, good natured about the tug. Then he straightened his wide open, chest-baring shirt with a smile. "A hero. I could see you as a hero. So you were dreaming about some other world too…"

She laughed weakly

"I think I could convince Tseng to let me keep it. I wanna be a hero, you know?" She ran her hands through her hair, letting the steam send everything into that fuzzy space once more between them. "....yeah. I was. Though…though I don't think anyone would call me a hero except me. You too huh?" 

Reno shoveled noodles in her mouth, nodding as he let her ramble– maybe a little incoherently, on reflection.

"Yeah, me too." He chased his noodles with a long drink of sake. "Real nasty nightmare. I sure wasn't a hero in my dream, I'll tell you that."

She watched him shake his head, tugging at his hair thoughtfully before downing more sake.

She took a long sip of her own sake before staring listlessly into her untouched noodles. She should probably eat. He'd only get worried if she didn't.

She picked up some chopsticks and began to stir the noodles around the broth. 

"That's bad huh? I…" The hesitation welled inside her before she murmured the admission. "I was the leader of a terrorist organization trying to take down Shinra. I was trying to take out the president, the old one, not Rufus, and I ran into Sephiroth. Only he was different—colder—and I was just as strong as he was as I fought him for my 'family'. Avalanche. The anti-shinra freedom fighters called Avalanche."

She bit her lip, before slurping a bite of noodles, and looking away. "There was something inside me, killing me slowly, but I didn't care because it made me stronger, and Avalanche was all I remembered. Not dad, not my name—just that. I'd die for them."

Tears stung her eyes as she realized she started to ramble again. "...Sorry. What…what happened in your dream?" 

All the color had drained out of Reno's face.

"Did you say Avalanche? Tell me I misheard you, alright?"

Elfe looked up at him with a furrow of her brow and a frown, watching the image of him swim as she raised another bite of her noodles without eating them. 

"Yeah. Avalanche. I was their leader—at least in my dream. W-why? They don't exist, do they? I've never heard the name before last night." 

"Me neither," he murmured quietly, his shoulders sinking and he slouched on the other side of the table. "But there was a group called Avalanche in my dream, too."

She might have thought that Reno was joking, or playing some kind of trick on her– things he did often– but this wasn't his style and the look on his face was anything but joking.

Elfe felt her blood go cold, a sharp shudder rolling through her body as she dropped the chopsticks. They clicked, splattering broth on the table as they bounded off the rim and rolled across its surface.

"....Avalanche… was in your dream too? Doing—" her voice grew hushed. "Reno, what happened in it?" 

She watched Reno's throat bob as he swallowed heavily, putting his own chopsticks down too, and going for another swallow of sake.

"They were a terrorist organization. Old man Shinra, he was still in charge and–" Reno's fingers tapped nervously on the table's surface. "He ordered the Turks to take out the support pillar on the sector where their hideout was. Drop the plate."

His fingers spread against the table, and he had a far away look in his eyes.

Elfe's fingers grasped in the air towards the bottle as the weight of that sank in—

Drop the plate.

Dropping the plate would kill thousands upon thousands of people, above and below, all to wipe out Avalanche? That was the kind of thing the old president would have allowed—for certain–but…

Her hand hurt again, aching as she took soft and shuddering breaths. 

"looks like neither of us are heroes in our dreams, huh?" She gave him a weak smile "...did you do it?" 

"I… I didn't know what else I could do." Reno. Always confident, quick with a joke Reno. His voice shook. The dream had rattled him.

She knew how he felt, her dream had rattled her too. Even if she was able to feign confidence to her parents, to her sister, the minute she sat with it she knew something inside her was all mixed up.

She was scared. Was he scared too? That the dreams somehow held the same name—the same sorts of horrors?

She reached out through the steam and grabbed his hand. "If you hadn't done it, someone else woulda." her voice dropped low "...the old president was heartless like that.Just like me—in my dream, I only knew Avalanche, I only knew how to kill for them." 

Reno squeezed her hand tightly, his face twisted up in a grimace. "We sure had nightmares last night, nothing else to call it. Something in the air I guess. But… it's weird they were so similar."

"Y-yeah…Aerith told me she had bad dreams too. We agreed not—not to talk much about them when she was cutting my hair. She didn't mention Avalanche, but she told me she dreamed about dying."

Elfe swallowed thickly, her fingers rubbing against his hand as she squeezed it. "It's…it's weird how similar ours were. You think it means something, Reno? More than just—something in the air. Because if I can be honest…."

She hesitated, the strange lingering feeling from the dream latching on tight when she tried to open up.

Reno nodded, his fluffy hair bouncing around his face. "Please, be as honest as you want. I'm already at rock bottom here. You can tell me you wouldn't marry me if I asked you."

He smiled, wanly, at his own joke. Clearly trying to lift both their spirits, though his heart wasn't in it.

"I'd think about it," She tried to joke back, before grabbing the sake. "Maybe I would."

She took a long, long sip before she forced herself to admit what she'd been thinking about. "Ever since I've woken up I've felt all mixed up. Like something inside me changed, or…" she trailed off "I don't know. I don't know how to explain it." 

"Like the dream wasn't a dream?" he murmured. "Like you really were somewhere else? Somebody else?"

"Yeah , something like that." Her eyes dropped low as she ran her hand through her shorter hair. "...like I saw a vision of a world where things were different. And maybe a little piece of that world, that me, slipped through and into my waking self. Like the pain in my hand that keeps happening, throwing off my grip." 

"And I keep feeling guilty about something in a dream," he murmured. He took a drink straight from the sake bottle and offered it to her with his free hand. "Like I really did it. I donno– I'd be less freaked out if our dreams didn't have so much in common."

She took it and tipped it down—alcohol on a mostly empty stomach. Her dad would be pissed she was drinking so irresponsibly—but right now she would do anything to quiet the anxiety in her heart.

"Me too, Reno. It's freaking me the hell out. I…" She grimaced. "...I love the Turks, you know that right? I'm one of you now. And we support one another. So—no matter how creepy this whole mess is, let's stick together, yeah?" 

He nodded, and squeezed her hand again. "Yeah, I know. Promise. Nobody'd doubt it. Heh… you wanna know something crazy?"

Elfe looked up at him, her shorter hair bouncing in the periphery of her vision as she gave him a wan smile. "...crazier than the same organization in our dreams? Shoot." 

"I donno about yours but in my dream, these terrorists, Avalanche. It was all people we know. Tifa, Cloud. Barret." He shook his head. "In my dream they hated Shinra. Well, can't really blame 'em with the old man in charge, dropping fucking plates on people."

Elfe blinked, her eyes suddenly widening. 

"Wait for real? Tifa?? Cloud? Barret??? As members of my Avalanche? I don't reme—they weren't in my dream!" She leaned on her hands with a curious huff of breath. "...they hated Shinra? Well, if it was the old bastard, I couldn't blame them either. The sort of man to drop plates or exacerbate a war…." 

Reno folded his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. "Not in your dream, huh? Well hey, that's something different between our dreams, so, I guess this is all just a weird coincidence, huh?"

Elfe's incredulous smile faltered as she shook her head. "Maybe. I mean—probably.---" she trailed off with a lot more to say though, tensed and looking back down at her hands. "Probably! Which hey—means we're just being weird about n-...nothing."

As if the metaphorical hourglass of her life embedded in her hand didn't imply that she didn't make it much further than that strange encounter in Junon. Probably.

Chapter Text

1985

According to Lucrecia, a system of genetic testing on local populations had been used to narrow down the President's search for the people called 'the ancients'. 

Her research had confirmed what local folklore and superstition already whispered; that the strongest blood link to the ancient people was found in the region around Icicle inn, where decades past there had been a brutal slaughter.

'We think she might be the last of her kind,' Lucrecia had said.

Or that she would be, if not for the fact that according to the intel they had, she was pregnant, with, in some mad coincidence, the rogue Shinra scientist Professor Gast's child. Lucrecia had suggested that they should wait until after the baby was born to approach the woman, Ifalna, for fear of risking her pregnancy due to shock or anxiety, but the president had pushed the issue.

Veld and Vincent had promised Lucrecia that they'd be very delicate. The Turks helicopter was loaded down with baby shower gifts.

Veld had been expecting it to be a happy visit. He did not expect for the chopper to touch down and see blood on the snow.

Crimson against the fields of pure, crystalline white—it trailed in a telltale pattern of streaks and droplets from one of the huddled log-built cabins into its adjoining door.

A door that sat ajar amongst the accumulating snow.

Vincent's hand had gone straight for his gun, his expression grim as he hopped out of the helicopter. "...It's enough blood that you can smell it, even in this weather. Someone's dead." 

Veld was only a pace after him, boots landing in the white powder. "No time to waste then. The mission may have just changed drastically."

Vincent nodded, boots crunching as he hurried towards the open door. It was a small village, isolated and quiet—despite the blood in the snow none of the lights were on in any of the scant few houses around. 

Veld had worries about that. He worried that there was more blood. More deaths. But what they needed to focus on now was the target. He let Vicnent take point and backed him up, his own gun drawn.

Hand on the open door Vincent took a deep breath before pushing it the rest of the way open with a flurry of the loose snow that had started to accumulate in its frame.

He froze—gun aimed in the doorway, with a rigid grimace on his face. 

"Fatality confirmed." 

Veld glanced over his partner's shoulder, getting a read on the scene as best as he could. "Is it our target?"

Vincent's eyes traced the scene quickly—the corpse was obvious. 

The former Professor Gast, a bloodied mess on the floor. His arm—torn from the socket, lay in a pool of blood by a face locked in a rictus expression of horror and anger. The bullet wound was obvious too.

"Not the target. Some sort of fiend attack, but with a human involved." Vincent eased slowly inside, his gun tracing. "...fresh. Culprits could still be here, no sign of the target."

Everything was a mess—a camera had fallen into the bloody floor, lens cracked…furniture toppled. It was a struggle. 

"Locating target has priority," Veld reaffirmed. 

Even he had trouble remaining impartial, keeping his emotions at arm's length, with the thought of this woman, pregnant and presumably alone, terrorized this way.

If they were in time to save her, even.

Vincent nodded, pushing forward into the small household and tilting his head to the side. There was another corpse—some foul amalgamation. A chimera of some sort with bulging and too-human eyes set into a cross between a centipede and a dog. It lay pooled in ichor not too far from a door , its skull bashed in with force, and singe marks on its puckered flesh.

"Side room, probably a bedroom." Vincent whispered. "...sound from behind it. Looks like she may have gotten an assailant before fleeing inside." 

Veld nodded, assessing the location of the room from the outside. "One of us should circle back and check for window access."

Vincent nodded. "Got it partner…your choice. Window or door." 

"You're faster, take the window." Veld knew his partner didn't need any more urging than that. He could trust him just to go, and he indeed vanished with a nod.

Veld approached the door and grabbed the handle.

The door handle rattled—it didn't have a proper lock, but something was wedged up against it.

He heard a thunk from the other side.

"Shinra Investigation Sector coming in!" Veld barked, in case it was the woman wedged up against the door. With a quick motion he kicked it with force, right at the weakest point.

There was a high, desperate shout as the weight suddenly gave way and the door flew open. A thunk on the ground accompanied the sudden report of gunfire from outside as the room was cast in stark relief.

A woman. Long brown hair in mussed tresses around a face speckled with blood spatter—her hands crimson from where she clearly touched a dead body. A woman with luminous,dimly glowing eyes the color of raw mako— a woman who was very heavily pregnant, one hand on her bloodstained dress over her stomach.

She scooted backwards from him in terror, wincing as the gunfire erupted outside her window. 

Veld quickly assessed the scene; the woman's status, was she wounded? Someone had shot outside the window– was it Vincent and at whom? Anyone else inside the room?

The woman shifted against the bed, reaching slowly for a silvery staff with embedded orbs of materia inset inside it. She didn't look wounded. The blood was mostly on her hands and clothes with no visible tears. Her complexion was pallid—but likely only out of fear, not blood loss. The only mark he could determine was a bruise forming under one bright eye.

Outside the window, he saw a flash of his partner running by and tackling something to the ground—an altercation.

The woman seemed alone. Except for the way she kept glancing towards a sliding wooden door on the other side of the room. 

Sure that Vincent could handle himself, Veld quickly turned his attention to the sliding door. Gun in hand he threw it open, ready to fire.

There was a man; a rough looking man in nondescript military attire frozen in place in a shimmering light—time magic. A spell to freeze a single object or person in time for however long the concentration lasted.

The woman took several deep, shaking breaths as she pointed.

"...he shot my husband. He was going to ambush you, too…but…I.." Her voice hitched, as tears welled behind her eyes. She slumped on the bed, wincing as she wrapped her arm around her middle tighter with a pained expression. "I don't have a lot left in me, but I stopped him…" 

"You did well," Veld promised her. "We'll take it from here."

His gaze couldn't help but linger on her for a long moment. Alone, and frightened. Her husband murdered. And still so very brave.

By the time Vincent had returned after his scuffle and after scouting the area, Veld had the man from the closet securely contained and bound. He had dragged him out of the bedroom, into the room with the corpse, and asked Ifalna to stay where she was for now. He'd promised they wouldn't leave her alone for long.

"He hasn't told me anything yet," Veld said. "I called in backup. We'll likely have to take care of information extraction in Midgar. What was the situation outside?"

Vincent glared down at the bound, sulking mercenary. He hoped the term 'information extraction' sent the kind of fear through the man that it warranted. 

The man was uncomfortably stoic in the face of the threat of Shinra's interrogation. Vincent narrowed his eyes down at him before he shook his head.

"Fiend. It was making for the bedroom window where it seemed like it was going to make another attempt to subdue the ancient." He smoothed out his shirt. "...I killed it, but spent a few moments checking out the surrounding homes. Most of them are temporary lodgings for rent, empty."

"Empty. Good. Hopefully no more casualties than the one." His gaze fell on the Gast's body and lingered there. "I wish we'd gotten here sooner."

Vincent glanced over at him too. "...unfortunately we were too late. A little longer and his wife would have been taken or killed too."

The question was—why? "Gast—I remember him. He didn't deserve an end like this." 

"No, he didn't." Veld shook his head. "He left in disgrace after the Jenova incident, but… well. We were too late. That's all there is to it. Can I ask you to keep an eye on the prisoner for a few minutes? I'm going to check up on Gast's widow."

Vincent nodded firmly. 

"I'll keep him secure—see if I can get a little more out of him in the meantime." He knelt beside the killer, giving him a thin and dangerous smile "...I'm a conversationalist." 

Veld came back into the room and sat down next to the pregnant woman. "It's all settled out there, and my partner is interrogating the man who came after you."

Ifalna had her head in her hands, her body still shaking as she sat upon the floor with soft, hiccuping sobs. 

"Thank you, I …" Her voice quivered. "Thank you. I don't know who that man was. I'd thought he was from Shinra. I've had surveymen coming for years, asking around about the Cetra—I just thought…" 

Gingerly he put his hand on her shoulder. "I can assure you of one thing, ma'am. He wasn't from Shinra. And I'm sorry that we didn't get here sooner."

She twitched, but perhaps her need for comfort outweighed her obvious fear. She didn't pull away, finally looking up to meet his eyes with a desperate look. 

"How could anyone have known? The man who shot Gast; he told me…told me that his employer needed 'the ancient', alive or dead."

"Alive or dead," Veld repeated grimly, his jaw tight. "How charming. Hopefully we'll learn more from my partner when–"

Ifalna nodded her head. "...I…"

Whatever she was about to say was cut off when the door slammed open. Vincent, frowning sharply with a trace of sweat on his brow, pushed into the room and looked at Veld.

"He's dead. I was in the middle of asking him a question when he coughed up blood and keeled over." 

That sure as hell grabbed Veld's attention. He shot up. "He's what?"

Back in the other room, Veld stared down at the body.

"Tell me what happened again."

Ifalna lingered in the doorway, only her eyes weren't on the body, they were on Gast again as she shuddered.

Vincent gave her a brief and sympathetic look before he brushed his hair out of his eyes. 

"...I asked him why he wanted the ancient and he got this pained look on his face all of a sudden. It wasn't a poison tooth, I'd checked and he didn't seem to swallow anything. He just…doubled over, and hacked up blood before falling over." His brow furrowed. "...I wonder." 

Veld felt all the muscles in his face tighten, and he took a deep breath. He kept his hands off the body, just in case.

"A thought?"

"We should check his uniform. It's possible there's something hidden in there. It's either that or perhaps some pre-existing condition that was triggered." Vincent mused. "all I know is he seemed like he was going to finally answer me when he died."

Ifalna's voice shook as she struggled to speak from the doorframe. "He didn't…didn't manage to say anything?" 

"We'll be doing a full investigation," Veld promised. "Vincent, let's get her to the helicopter. It may not be safe for her in here."

Poisons… infectious diseases. There were possibilities. More than that though, it would be easier to convince her to go with them if she was already out of the house.

Vincent nodded. "Ma'am. If you'll come with us—please? It's not safe for you."

She hesitated, her eyes once more falling on Gast. 

"There's…I…" After a moment more of hesitation she turned and ran back into the bedroom, the sound of rustling from within as drawers flung open.

"I think she has an idea we're going to ask her to come with us," Vincent murmured under his breath. 

Veld sighed. "That's fine, as long as she cooperates. It really isn't safe for her to stay here, anyway. Especially not long term. She said our friend her told her his boss wanted the ancient alive or dead."

"Meaning they'll send another group. And next time we won't be here to stop them." His eyes fell on Gast. "...there's no way we'd even be 'too late'." 

Veld nodded. "As soon as backup gets here, we'll have them take care of the bodies, and we'll get her back to Midgar. I'm sure Lucrecia will want to give her a checkup to make sure the baby's alright, too."

"Aerith…" Ifalna's voice drifted from the doorway—wavering and exhausted. "... Will be fine. She's going to be a very strong girl."

She slowly walked back over—a small pack of items including some pale and opaque materia bundled in her arms. "You want me to come back to Shinra with you—don't you?" 

Veld nodded, his eyes drawn to her once again. 'Aerith' he was sure would be a very strong girl indeed if she was anything like her mother seemed to be.

"That's right, ma'am. We hoped for better circumstances when we set out, but I'll admit, we were here to ask you to come with us in the first place."

Ifalna smiled weakly, pointedly trying to not look at what remained of her husband as she glanced towards the door. 

"...Gast told me you'd come. He said he'd protect us from Shinra and whoever else tried to take us away." She bit her lip. "...but, the choice for me now is to stay here, alone and hope for the best— or go with you now. I'm choosing to put my faith in you, and your protection now that… that he's gone." 

Vincent nodded slowly "...I can promise you, Professor Crescent isn't going to want to hurt you." 

Veld nodded, and put his hand on his chest. "And I'll promise you we'll do our best to see you don't regret your decision."

Sephiroth, seven years old and bright as a button, was very curious about the new baby.

Ifalna imagined this was the first time a new child had graced the joint household of Mis— Professor Lucrecia, Vincent and Veld. She was happy to humor him, letting him come right up as she rocked Aerith in her arms, or watched over her in her crib. After all— life, and the understanding and camaraderie within it, were precious things.

The weight of the lost life still sat heavy in her chest— her husband, Gast, gone in an instant. But the kindness the three Shinra officials showed her in welcoming her into their home was a balm on the still open wound.

She smiled at Sephiroth when she saw him in the doorway again. 

The little boy with his big eyes and soft hair looked up at her and cocked his head. "Can I see her?"

Ifalna laughed cheerfully, and shifted in her chair to lower herself and Aerith a little closer to his eye level. "Of course. She likes you, you know."

Aerith cooed quietly, her eyes—so very much like her own, the natural lifestream eyes of the Cetra—immediately turned to Sephiroth as she reached out a grasping little hand. "See?" 

Sephiroth quietly stepped into the room and stood near them. He reached out his fingers toward her grasping little hand. "Does she want to be friends?"

Aerith's fingers closed weakly around his finger—she was already so clever too—and Ifalna smiled. "I think she does. She could use some friends, Sephiroth. Now that we're not living in such a small and quiet place." 

Sephiroth's gaze was locked with Aerith's as he nodded, raising his chin a little. "I'll be her friend, then. … is it scary? Being somewhere different?"

Ifalna chuckled as Aerith kept eye contact with Sephiroth, it was precious to see—honestly so.

"A little," she admitted. "I've lived in what your people call 'Icicle Inn' since I was born."

"Is he bothering you?" A cheerful, if teasing, tone came from the doorway. Professor Lucrecia Crescent leaned in the doorframe, her hair falling over her shoulder as she held her hands behind her back. "He's maybe the most curious little boy I've ever seen." 

Sephiroth finally turned to look at the doorway, even taking a few steps toward it, though his voice was a little sullen. "I'm not bothering them, mom… right?"

He looked back at Ifalna hopefully.

"Absolutely not," Ifalna smiled at the woman. the head of Shinra R&D, who'd opened her home to her after the tragedy before Aerith's birth, and who'd done everything she could to make her comfortable while she adjusted to life in Midgar—a place where flowers didn't bloom.

"I think his curiosity's refreshing! And—well…Aerith quite likes the company too."

Lucrecia laughed, and placed her hand on top of Sephiroth's head to rustle his hair.

"Well, good. I think." She glanced down at him "I think he and Aerith are going to get along very, very well." 

Sephiroth leaned on his mother's hip, looking up at her. "I told her we'd be friends."

Lucrecia's smile grew a little wider. "Oh ho—and how'd she take that?"

Ifalna bounced Aerith lightly, who babbled silly nonsense with a waving of her arms. "They met one another's eyes and didn't look away, and then she grabbed his fingers, like a handshake. I think it was an agreement!"

Lucrecia left one arm looped around Sephiroth's shoulders, the other on her hip. 

"Well I'll be damned. That's a weight off my chest." She was quiet a moment before she asked "What do you think of her eyes, Sephi?" 

"They're pretty." The little boy said it immediately, and then flushed, his bangs hiding his face. "Pretty cool, right?"

"Very pretty," Lucrecia winked down at him. "And pretty cool too. They take after her mother's eyes too, absolutely lovely."

Ifalna's smile softened, and she rocked Aerith slowly as she once again tried reaching for Sephiroth. "Why thank you both—and Aerith thanks you too!"

Lucrecia. She was initially a little surprised with how softly she treated her, and by the few moments where she'd go beyond simple comforting and into what was very nearly a bit of flirtation. Maybe this was just part of Midgar's scientific types? Gast had been quite the flirt before—

She shut the memory down, and let herself enjoy the rather straightforward compliment. 

"Mom…" Sephiroth tugged at Lucrecia's shirt and beckoned her down to listen to something that he said quietly to her.

Ifalna tilted her head to the side, curious what they were whispering about. Sephiroth, he was a smart boy, always asking questions and learning. Even knowing him for as little time as she had, she could see that.

She saw Lucrecia smiling warmly as she rustled his hair. "I bet you'd like that, huh?"

"You bet he'd like what, Professor Lucrecia?" Ifalna asked curiously.

"Please, please, I've said before, just call me Lucrecia. Or Lu, if you want." She smiled warmly, before wrapping her arms around Sephiroth and lifting him up in a smooth motion. "Sephi wants to know if you and Aeirth will be living with us forever or not. I admit—I'd been hoping that you might stick around, myself." 

Seph himself looked a little embarrassed to have been revealed, but still he turned his curious and keen gaze on her, cocking his head rather birdlike. "Mom likes you. I wouldn't mind if you stayed."

Ifalna flushed, turning her bright eyes to Aerith's tiny face for a moment. 

"My, my. Well…I like your mother as well. She's a lovely woman, who's opened her home to us after a tumultuous start. And—"

Icicle Inn.Sshe'd loved her hometown enough to stay, even after the massacre of her people. Even when the calamity's pawns descended when she was a little girl, taking her parents and neighbors for her and forcing her to survive on her own, she still remained there in that quiet and snowy village.

She tended to her flowers in the privacy of her greenhouse, mostly alone save for day trippers who didn't know the horror laying below the snow until she met Gast. She loved it. But, it wasn't safe there anymore. It hadn't been for a long time for the 'last Cetra'. And it was lonely. But here, among the hustle and the bustle, Aerith didn't have to grow up almost utterly alone.

"And I've been very comfortable here." 

Sephiroth nodded. "It's pretty alright. I bet Aerith would like it."

Once again he shuffled forward toward her, and held his fingers out to the baby.

Aerith once again grabbed them immediately, goo-ing and gaa-ing towards him with her big-eyed stare.

Lucrecia leaned forward with her hands behind her back again. "And you know I'd do anything I could to make the two of you properly comfortable. All you have to do is ask."

Ifalna shifted one hand from under Aerith to extend towards her. "You're a compliment to Midgarian hospitality, Lucrecia…and I think it may do me and Aerith good to be among the human race for a while yet—and we're in such charming company..."

The room got even more crowded as Veld poked his head into the room. "Lucrecia, are you in here? Ah! Found you." 

He chuckled and lingered at the edge of the doorway.

Lucrecia looked over her shoulder with a grin "Veld! Sephiroth was just spending a little more time with little Aerith and I thought I'd chat a little more with Ifalna!"

As if she needed an excuse to. Ifalna couldn't help but laugh a little as the room filled up. "What a busy little house you've got." 

Veld chuckled and pushed his fingers through his hair. "Sorry if we're crowding you, Miss Ifalna. I was just looking for Lu to straighten out our dinner plans."

Veld. He had been very kind to her since he had arrived in her life, but he often got a sad look in his eye when he looked at her for too long. Ifalna was almost sure that he felt guilty for not arriving sooner than he had on that day.

It weighed on her heart to see him blaming himself for something nobody here could have helped. It was an act of cruelty, one she still had no answers for, but Gast, Gast had gone back to the lifestream.

He was looking down on them, and she knew he was happy knowing Veld and his partner had saved her and Aerith. Even if it was hard going on without him. 

She gave Veld a smile, and offered her hand to him in greeting. "I'm hardly crowded. I was telling Lu that I'm actually rather happy. I haven't been around so many since I was little."

Aerith's hand wobbled, slightly wiggling Sephiroth's finger. 

"Well if you don't mind the company I don't mind crowding you." He chuckled, stepping further into the room. "I see that Sephy and Aerith are getting along already."

Sephiroth had curled his fingers very gently around the little baby's. "We're friends now," he said, very seriously.

"That you are," Lucrecia chuckled, leaning a bit on Veld with a grin. "I guarantee, when they're a little older they're gonna be inseparable."

She paused and put her finger playfully to her lips. "That is, if Miss Ifalna wants to keep sticking around us. I know we're an awful lot."

Ifalna laughed as Aerith's chubby little fingers tried squeezing Sephiroths' back, looking at him again. She really did seem to like him. Ifalna didn't doubt that in no time at all they'd be the absolute best of friends.

"You are. I don't think I've ever met a stranger trio than you three," She glanced down at Sephiroth. "...four, really. You've got a wonderful aura around you, Sephiroth." 

Sephiroth looked up at her with his big, bright eyes, curious. "An aura?"

Lucrecia tilted her head to the side as she listened curiously.

"Mm hmm. Everyone has one, you know. the Lifestream winds through the planet, and flows through and around us all." Ifalna explained as she bounced a quietly fussy Aerith. "It doesn't let you see the future, but it can help you get a sense of people."

She leaned down and poked his nose. "And the lifestream seems rather fond of you and your family, Sephy."

With a smile, she settled back into the comfortable chair, looking over the three of them as they turned that over. It was true, of course; the lifestream's faint traces even here on the surface and away from the splendor of nature seemed to congregate around the household and the family within, curious and probing. Ripe with potential for the future.

But the lifestream wasn't the only thing growing fond of Lucrecia, Sephiroth, Veld and Vincent. Ifalna couldn't deny the spark of fondness that glowed in her own breast as she rocked Aerith in her arms.

Maybe, maybe she would stay longer, even after her safety had been assured.

'Let me take you out', Veld had said, insisting that Lucrecia and Vincent wouldn't mind looking after Aerith for the night and that Ifalna deserved some time to relax.

It had been more than six months since Aerith's birth and Ifalna had felt herself settling in more and more as the time passed. Slowly, the weakness of the difficult birth and unsurety about being somewhere so new had begun to fade.

She'd asked for a garden and been given one in the Shinra building. She'd spent more time with the charming Lucrecia and her husband. Sephiroth visited constantly to spend time with the growing Aerith and—

Veld. Veld who had only gotten sweeter as the months passed by. Even if she was nervous to leave Aerith behind, she wasn't hard to convince. It'd been a long time since she'd relaxed after all, and admittedly, she'd never been taken 'out'.

The only thing 'out' in Icicle Inn was skiing and the snow. She'd agreed with little hesitation.

Veld had brought her to a jazzy little club in upper Midgar. One that he had told her was quiet, and intimate; comparatively, anyway. It still seemed bustling to her. There was a small band playing at the front, and even a little dance floor between the stage and the round bar tables.

Veld had gotten them a quieter spot, the VIP table apparently, with a good view of the stage, but hidden behind beaded curtains.

Ifalna had worn a long red dress, the fanciest one she'd owned in deep burgundy with traditional Cetran embroidery upon its bodice and skirt—she wanted to look nice, after all. For such an opulent place, with company like Veld, well…

She leaned on her hand, tilting her head enough to see past the beads and to the dancing bodies beyond. "I've never been anywhere like this before…" 

"I thought that might be the case." He chuckled softly, and brushed a lock of hair away. He was dressed in a suit as usual, this one different from his work suit though, with deep red accents that almost matched her dress, and a sharply cut collar. "I hope it's not too overwhelming for you."

Ifalna shook her head, smiling at him broadly. "Oh no, it's actually kind of invigorating! I used to be quite the dancer you know—everyone always told me I was the best in the village." 

He cocked his head, a wide smile cutting his square, handsome face. "Is that so? Would you care to try the dance floor after our drinks?"

The heat that came to her face flustered her, causing her to tuck her hair over her ear with a quiet laugh. "...I wouldn't be opposed. You'll have to show me the steps though. Somehow I don't think they use traditional Cetran dance steps here, and well…Gast only got around to teaching me the waltz." 

"We'd have to go somewhere else for the waltz, but I'm not above taking you somewhere else," he teased. "That said, I'd be happy to show you a few steps here. Do you like the music?"

She watched him glance out at the dance floor, where several couples were dancing close and rhythmically.

Her foot reached out to bump against his as she tilted her head to listen to it in earnest. iI had a fun, energetic sound—it made her want to move her body and dance along. "I think I do, honestly—I think I had a record of something similar to this, but a little older." 

Veld seemed surprised by the contact for a moment, but then pressed his foot back against hers. "The style's been around for a decade or so, but it's been progressing quickly. Probably because of the emphasis on experimentation."

As they were chatting about the music, the waiter came back with the tray of the drinks and appetizers. Veld had ordered tall, wine based cocktails for both of them.

The music was interesting, and its history doubly so, and she found herself bobbing her head along as she raised the glass to her lips "You know, Veld—"

He raised his glass to her as if in a little salute and then paused with a smile. "Yes, Ifalna?"

She took a sip of the drink, savoring the sweet and sour flavor as it rolled down her tongue with a little shiver. "It's really nice of you to take me out like this, to such an intimate little place." 

Veld smiled and a little of his hair fell in his face. "Well, I thought it might be nice to do something for you. And admittedly, I've found I quite enjoy your company."

HIs voice, often stern and confident, sometimes commanding, was for once a little hesitant.

"It is nice!" She agreed with a bright smile, she loved Aerith, she loved being there to raise her these past few months, but, it was nice to get out and see what Midgar had to offer. To feel like a young woman again.

She flushed as she looked into his eyes again—and found herself leaning on the table to be just a little closer to him. "...and Veld, you've been so sweet to me." 

"Well, I can't help it, Ifalna, you're very charming. It would be a crime to be anything but sweet to you." He took a long sip of his cocktail, smiling lopsidedly at her over it.

"My!" she put her hand to her chest. She sipped her drink, looking at him over the rim again. "Careful, Mr. Veld—I'm already teetering on the edge of deeply charmed! It's a real danger, you know." 

"Don't worry, most women get bored of me after the charm wears off." He chuckled, self effacing and clearly teasing himself. Ifalna knew the gossip– well, really more like household news– Veld had had an on-again-off-again girlfriend in another city who was pregnant, and apparently that turned things to 'off again'.

"I'm surprised it wears off at all," Ifalna tipped her glass back and forth with a timid smile. "Or rather, I don't see how anyone could get bored with a man like you."

She looked into the swirling red of her drink, the strains of music filtering through the air around them as she thought about this situation—six months. She'd been with Veld and Lucrecia and Vincent for six months now since the tragedy in Icicle Inn.

Her heart still ached, badly, over Gast's death, but the lifestream took him back, and she was still here.

And the household that'd welcomed her in; she was getting rather fond of them. Veld, in particular, had been spending more and more time with her as she bustled around the crowded home. 

Veld put his hand on the table close to her. "Well, I suppose I'll take that as a challenge. I'm happy to keep spending time with you until you get bored."

Her hand shifted. her pinky brushing against the side of his hand as the band picked up. 

"...I hope you know, Cetra don't bore easily. You've entered a dangerous challenge, Mr. Veld."

Ifalna certainly wasn't bored when he pulled her onto the dance floor only a few moments later. Nor was she bored when the two of them came back home, giggly and wine drunk.

She wasn't bored either a few months later when Veld came home with a baby and a rather helpless look on his face.

She couldn't stop herself from laughing a little—his face was just that cute. 

She most certainly wasn't bored when she'd kissed him on the cheek and teasingly asked if this meant Aerith had a new little sister. 

1986

They could have gotten one big house together. They'd considered it. Talked about it quite seriously for a while. In the end, they'd decided on two houses, right next to one another, sharing a yard. 

It maximized privacy, it avoided questions from people who didn't need to be asking them, and it let Ifalna and Lucrecia each decorate to their liking.. Though Sephiroth had been a little bit put off by the change, he'd been assured that he could spend all the time he wanted in whichever house he pleased.

The week after everything had been unpacked, they hosted a joint housewarming, mostly with friends from work. It was a light, bubbly affair; for the most part everyone managed to avoid talking about heavy topics like the war with Wutai, and chatted instead about the burgers, the new houses, and Ifalna's gardening plans.

After the guests had gone and Aerith and Elfe were both down in their cribs Veld relaxed back in the kitchen with his partner, their wives, and cups of coffee.

Lucrecia balanced her cup between her hands, that catlike smile on her face once more as she leaned on the new countertop with a hum of satisfaction. 

"It's like a dream, isn't it? As nice as the manor could be—and best we made due with the old house in Midgar—this is perfect."

Beside her, standing leaned against the counter as he took a sip of his coffee, Vincent nodded. "It's definitely cozier than Veld and I used to envision, eh partner?" 

Veld chuckled, cradling the warm cup between his hands. "Admittedly, I figured we were going to be in one room bachelor pads forever. So yes, much cozier."

Ifalna giggled, brushing her hair from her face as she leaned towards him. "Did you really, Veld? One room bachelor pads—my word. Though I guess when I was younger I wasn't expecting much more than that…just a lot colder!" 

It was true though, Veld had never envisioned a home. Until things had begun with Lucrecia, and escalated steeply with Ifalna, he'd always been a bachelor at heart. Most of the time he was working, and when he wasn't working he was crashing with Vincent or taking women to hotels. He didn't have time, or a reason to keep a home. But that had changed. 

He smiled, brushing his arm against Ifalna's. "A lot colder, indeed. But no. My expectations for life have changed a lot in the last few years."

Ifalna's arm wrapped around his as she leaned lovingly against his side "I'd certainly say!"

Lucrecia grinned, leaning her head back against Vincent. 

"You're welcome, by the way." It was a common joke she'd made, claiming credit for the way everyone's lives had changed and the way they'd all gotten closer over the years. 

"If you've gotten tired of me saying 'thank you' I could start cursing you instead," Veld joked. "But my heart wouldn't be in it. I think my old lifestyle might have started to get sour by the time I was this old anyway."

There was no way of knowing if he'd have wanted to settle down if it weren't for the others, but he felt like it might have been true. Since Elfe had come into their lives, after that mess with her mother, he'd sworn off random dating and hookups for the most part. Who would have time for it anyway with two women in his life, plus his partner?

"Lucky us, fate had other plans, didn't it?" Vincent chuckled low under his breath and rested his hand fondly atop Lucrecia's head.

Lucrecia grinned, extending her foot to brush against Ifalna's. "I don't think you're made for the bachelor life. Either of you, your hearts are too open for it."

WIth a musical laugh, Ifalna brushed her foot back against Lucrecia's, nuzzling her cheek against Veld's shoulder. "I like to think the lifestream thought we should be together…all of us. That even through ups and downs we met one another." 

"I like that thought," Veld agreed. "If the lifestream thinks we should be together, then it can stay."

He grinned at Ifalna. Him 'bullying' the lifestream, or acting like it was Ifalna's tyrannical boss had become a bit of a joke between them.

"It's being really gracious, you know," she joked back. "...oh wait—it's whispering to me…"
She held her hand up to her ear. "It wants to say I have to work overtime in the garden next week."

"Well damn," Lucrecia drawled. "There go my dinner plans. Vinny, wanna hit Loveless Ave with me instead?" She grinned as she nudged Vincent.

"Hmm," he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "There is that new play that opened up—what was it? Streets of Midgar?" 

"What a shame you'll have to miss it, working overtime in the garden, Iflana," Veld teased.

Ifalna's cheeks puffed out as she pouted, her arm squeezing his. "I can probably pray a little harder and get the night off, Veld, especially if you all help me plant the new roses I've got." 

He slipped his arm around her shoulder and leaned against her. "How can I say no to a request like that?"

Lucrecia chuckled along with everyone at the table, the coffee mug's warmth pooling in her palm as she leaned her head back against Vincent.

Vincent Valentine, a love she'd never let slip through her fingers, had led to unexpected connections. 

Through him, in the wake of Hojo's death, she'd found Veld. How could she deprive her Vincent of his charming partner?

She watched him smile, hugging Ifalna to his side as they joked about the Cetra's connection to the planet. 

Through Veld and her own attempts to save the last of the Cetra from Hojo's clutches, she'd met Ifalna.

Still, she clung to the heat of the coffee to ground her in the here and now she'd never been quite so happy. She'd been sure in her path the moment she cradled Sephiroth in her arms all those years ago but this only cemented it further.

No matter the cost, Lucrecia would protect this happiness; the twin houses in Midgar, the four of them so much entwined, and Sephiroth, Aerith and Elfe.

Lucrecia smiled, taking a sip of coffee and playfully retorting even as her analytical mind ticked away on thoughts she could never share. 

Chapter Text

2007

Veld's day was not getting any easier the longer that it wore on, and it was past the time when he usually left the office on a good day.

It was not a good day.

Not with the stack of reports from all of the people who had had nightmares the night before. A stack which apparently included his own daughter, who had lied to his face at the breakfast table. 

He wouldn't tell her that Reno reported in on her behalf.

He just sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, letting the next– and hopefully last– interviewee into the office.

Finn— a man called a legend of the Turks– sauntered in with his usual cocky grin and a cigar smoldering between his fingers. A strikingly handsome man, even getting on in years as he was, his swept back and tightly curled red hair was streaked with grey at the temples, but his definition had hardly faded.

He made right for the table before placing the cigar between his lips and leaning both hands on the table. "Great to see you, Veld—shame you're stuck in the office. Wifey's probably missing ya already." 

"And I'm missing her," Veld admitted with a huff that was almost a chuckle. "It's been a long day for all of us. Have a seat. Unless you'd rather loom at me."

He and Finn went back. Way back. He'd babysat for the kids when they were young. He was still pretty sure he'd taught Sephiroth how to make a bomb before he could read.

Finn's cigar's tip burned bright for a moment, before he exhaled smoke above their heads and dropped into the seat. 

"You know me. Can't help but loom when you're all so short." He chuckled, before the playful smile returned to his face. "Hey, just gotta get through me and you can pop on down and keep her company. Her and the kids. They doin' alright?" 

"For the most part." Veld smiled and he hoped wasn't as tight as it felt. "Yesterday I would have said we're all doing great. But, it's been a tough day for them too."

"Seems to be goin' around," Finn leaned back in the chair, tipping it onto its back legs as he took another puff off his cigar. 

He leaned forward, folding his hands together. "How about you, Finn? How'd you sleep last night?"

"Now why'd you ask about that?" Finn sighed performatively as the chair landed heavily back on all four legs. He folded his hands, balanced on his lap and he stared him down over the rim of his sunglasses. "Are we starting a Turks therapy group?" 

"Might have to," Veld said. He patted the stack of papers next to him. "These are the reports from everybody on staff who had a bad dream last night."

Finn stared at the stack of papers. 

"...Well I'll be damned." he murmured with more exhaustion than was comfortable.

He was a gregarious man, most of the time. Friendly, loud—the type to slap you on the back and call you by an ever growing number of nicknames. He balanced that among the Turks with a hard driving attitude to training, and a love of weapons that bordered on concerning.

He was rarely so… pensive.

"You need me to find and plant a bomb in the home of the dream fairies, pal?" 

"Contemplating it. That'd be a nice, direct solution. 'Falna woke up crying this morning. And then I find out everybody else had nightmares too."

He was getting the sense that Finn had not been spared.

Finn's brow furrowed between his thick brows. 

"...Ifalna had nightmares so bad she cried. Heard from some of the younger Turks that they had some bad dreams too. Was talking to the rookie—" He shook his head. "...I'm gonna admit, it's unusual." 

"It's deeply unusual," Veld agreed. "You know me, Finn, I'm a solid man. I wouldn't be messing around about dreams if it wasn't… unusual. Did you have a dream last night?"

Finn's smile took on a sharp edge as he waved his hand. 

"...dreamed I was wasting away in Costa Del Sol. Living the beach life—hitting on gorgeous babes. Guilt from an old war crime. Typical shit." 

"Typical shit," Veld repeated a little incredulously. He tapped down the details on his pad anyway. "Doesn't exactly sound like a nightmare but how would you characterize it?"

Finn's smile faltered.

"A nightmare....the beach wasn't bad. But the memories—the slaughter in Wutai—the smell of the bodies and the smoke. A bad weapons deal—tragedy." He shrugged his shoulders. "But hey. The beach. Beautiful place. Great drinks. Highlight of the dream." 

"Sounds like it. Lucrecia loves Costa Del Sol you know." Veld chuckled quietly, but it was hollow. He had to talk to Lucrecia next. "Wutai's come up in a lot of people's bad dream reports."

"Does she?" Finn chuckled. "...I'm partial to it too. Not a bad place for a forced vacation and observation."

He leaned on his hands with an unamused smile. "It has, huh? Lemme guess—War went on a lot longer, and a lot worse, right? Lots of dead, lots of hatred. Lots of anti-Shinra and anti-Wutai sentiment?" 

Veld nodded seriously. He'd seen it in a couple of reports from the Soldier old guard. A war with Wutai that had dragged on until the end of the end of the 90s.

"Nailed it. Which I don't like to admit. That all of these dreams are… consistent. Ifalna said she thought the liefstream was agitated. And… it certainly seems to be."

"You think it's beaming a bunch of terrible 'what ifs' into everyone's head?" Finn snorted and He shook his head. "Shitty of it, if it's so. ..who've you interviewed, pal? The Turks, obviously—sounds like at least some of SOLDIER too?" 

"All of the Turks, obviously. The SOLDIERs who weren't out in the field today. We interviewed some of the PubSec officers too, but didn't turn up much. A few cases, here and there."

"Hm…" Finn took a puff off his cigar. "...wonder if there's a pattern to it all, ya know? Some sense to it. Lucrecia might have an idea. Though…if she ain't had a dream—" 

"I'm going to be talking to her after we're done here," he said. "She's my last stop of the day. She's been… busy."

"Busy huh? Hopefully not catching a few Z's and seeing the heat death of some other world," Finn drawled around his cigar.

"Could be better, could be worse." He shook his head. It had been occupying his thoughts almost as much as the dreams had. "Did you hear about the incident in Kalm?"

"A little through the grapevine. Ugly nasty showed up, mauled a few gawkers, and was put down. Now the doc's in a tizzy about it, right?" 

"I'm in a tizzy about it," he admitted. "Vincent and I were the ones who went to go check on the thing. It's… weird, Finn. And Lucrecia didn't laugh us off about it."

"Weird huh? How bad we talking? Worse than that whole mess with the landworm epidemic in the Corel Desert?" Finn asked as he lowered his cigar. "...she didn't laugh?" 

"She didn't laugh, Finn. Here. Let me grab you the report. It's got photos." Veld briefly swiveled his chair and grabbed the report file that was still sitting on the counter behind him. He offered it over to Finn with a grim look.

Finn took the report, letting it fall open like a centerfold in a magazine as he leaned back in the chair.

After a moment he whistled. "Well. Your new friend's fucking ugly. I'll say that much." 

"You know, I noticed that," Veld drawled sardonically. "Didn't like the look of him. Anything jump out to you?"

"The face kinda looks like it's following me around. Not uh…the animal face. The human one." 

"Thanks," Veld huffed, almost laughing again. "I hate it. Listen, can I bum a cigar off you?"

Veld didn't smoke half as much as he used to, but if there was a day for it, it was today.

Finn lowered the report , before he fished in his pocket to hand over a cigar with a wink. 

"To celebrate finding this adorable bundle of joy," he drawled sardonically. "...I can see why you're so worried. Seems like he's gonna be a real troublemaker." 

Veld went down to Lucrecia's lab with a coffee in each hand, and trouble in his heart.

The lab was messier than it had been in the morning, when all the interns and Shinra R&D staff had been bustling about. Stacks of reference books were stacked and splayed open on the table by the bookshelves, a medical cart sat discarded by the computer which was running some complicated program that was difficult to decipher from a distance.

The lights were dimmed, save for the one experiment chamber off to the side where he could see the fiend dissected and splayed like a pinned butterfly.

And Lucrecia—alone now without her staff—staring up at the tube containing the essence of Chaos with her head in her hands. 

Veld set the coffee down on the table and put his hand on her shoulder gently. Clearly she'd been having almost as bad a day as he had been, if not a worse one.

"You going to be alright?"

Lucrecia jolted with a sharp gasp, and a sheaf of papers that was balanced on her knees fell to the floor with a rustle. She relaxed only a moment later, leaning back into him with a soft sigh. 

"...it's just been a long day, I'm afraid." 

"Same here, I'm afraid." He slipped his arms around her and let her rest her weight on him. He rested his chin gently on her shoulder. "I brought coffee."

She leaned back into him, nuzzling her head fondly against his shoulder. "You know—I might just call you my hero for that. I don't think I've eaten anything since breakfast—or had much in the way of a drink, either. Save for some water Aerith insisted I drink after you left." 

"Lucrecia!" He admonished gently– though he wasn't in a position to do so. He hadn't eaten anything either and had been subsisting off of definitely too many cups of coffee. "Do I need to make sure Vincent feeds you, or am I going to insist we all have dinner together tonight?"

Lucrecia tilted her head up against him with a wry and teasing smile. 

"Oh no—dinner with you, Ifalna and the girls—how terrible. Yet I simply can't refuse!" Her eyes returned to Chaos, and then over towards the room with the fiend before. "We could also take one of the helicopters—flit off to Costa Del Sol and see how that restaurant's doing. You know. Get away from it all." 

Veld smiled back at her. He was sure that the worry showed in his eyes.

"Get away from it all, hmm?"

She chuckled, her heart wasn't in it. She was bothered. Maybe even scared. 

"...Take Sephiroth…Aerith, Elfe. and get away from all the nonsense of the big city for a little while. It's not like the world will end without us." She let that hang in the air before she waved her hand. "...joking, of course. I'll be over for dinner later. I've just got a bit more to finish up in the lab." 

Veld kept his arms around her, not letting her go. He wondered if she could feel his heart skip in his chest when she mentioned the world ending.

"Lucrecia. We need to talk."

"Now? Not exactly the coziest place, hon." She swayed her leg, scuffing it on the ground as she leaned into him. "Why not wait? Tonight. After dinner." 

Veld thought about it seriously. He had a heavy, looming sensation in his stomach that after this conversation they weren't going to be in the mood for dinner and drinks as they might be.

"I promised Rufus that I'd give him a report before I left." He said quietly in her ear, holding her close. "If you tell me this conversation will be better over a bottle of wine, with Vincent and Ifalna present, I'll accept that. But…"

Lucrecia's expression fell from her face, and assumed a quietly neutral look he'd seen on her rarely—every now and again when she was in a bad place, or stuck on some dire thought.

She leaned her head against his chest ."If it's important enough that the president is pressuring you, I'll see if I can answer to your satisfaction, Veld…alright?" 

He sighed. "Let's make sure to get a drink after, even if it spoils our appetites. Come on, Lucrecia, sit down with me."

Veld finally released her, only to grab her large rolling chair and sit down on it, pulling her into his lap.

Lucrecia's slight weight fell upon his legs as she half curled against him, arm around his shoulders and a pensive look in her eyes. She tugged idly at the ends of his hair. 

"Probably the most comfortable interrogation set up I've ever seen." She smiled tiredly. "I'll look forward to the drink, Veld." 

"Me too. Interrogating my girlfriend isn't really what I wanted to be doing this evening." He stroked his fingers through her hair. "There have been two major issues that came up today, Lucrecia. One of them is sitting in your lab."

Her eyes flicked towards it for a brief moment.

"The fiend, yes. That one I'm well aware of. It's been quite a hassle, Veld. A real pain in the ass. Threw off my whole day." She turned her head enough to brush her cheek against his wrist. "But it's being handled." 

"Well, I'm pleased that it's 'being handled', dear but you're going to need to tell me more than that. Like why you went for those old samples."

She tilted back, her leg extending in a teasingly flirtatious way as she draped across his lap with a smile. "Intellectual curiosity?" 

"Intellectual curiosity," he repeated with a sigh. He rested his chin on her shoulder.

Lucrecia had always been like this, ever since the death of Hojo, ever since he'd really known her. Sometimes, when the answer was unpleasant or something she'd decided was 'her little secret', she tended to become cagey and elusive. Deflections, distraction—and sometimes a refusal to give anything close to a straight answer.

Most of the time it wasn't pointed at them, however. Today—with her goading for Costa Del Sol and attempts to steer the conversation—it was, and it was a prime example.

"Did Vincent tell you he had a nightmare last night?"

Lucrecia's brow furrowed before she sighed softly and nodded. "A bit, but he struggled to articulate the details. I reassured him, tried to comfort him. It was just a dream, after all. Fantasy." 

"I'd normally agree." Veld closed his eyes, his arms locked gently around her warm weight. He wished it felt more reassuring. "But Ifalna had a nightmare too. And Elfe. And Tseng. And Rufus. And Reno, and more than two dozen other Shinra employees."

Lucrecia wrapped her arms around him in return, leaning closer and closing her eyes.

"Maybe it's something in the water? The food supply? Have Barret have his men do a full check over. If not—perhaps the lifestream's a little upset, maybe over this fiend of ours." 

"That's what Ifalna said. That the lifestream was agitated. Which on its own isn't great. But do you know what makes me feel worse, Lucrecia?"

She tilted her head to the side. "...what makes you feel worse, Veld? Have you had a dream too?" 

"No, not me." He shook his head. "But we compiled the details of everybody's dream, Lu. And they're shockingly consistent. Like everyone was dreaming the same dream from their own perspective."

Lucrecia didn't say anything, but her expression once more grew flat as she stared off at the shifting darkness of Chaos. 

He hadn't expected her to say anything, he just held her, as he continued. "Everyone was dreaming a dream where your predecessor never died. Where the old President was still in charge."

A dream where Lucrecia's son Sephiroth had been some terrifying specter. 

"Amazing what a few little changes can create." She mused , expression still distant. "...we could have still been living in a world like that, if things had gone a little different. Perhaps that's what the lifestream wanted to show us." 

Lucrecia knew something. That was without question.

He was silent for a long moment.

She shifted—perhaps to get up, with a soft hum. "Or it could simply be an oddity, Veld." 

He held her to himself, not letting her get up. "Is it, Lucrecia?"

"What do you think, Veld?" she asked with an enigmatic smile. She reached over and brushed her hand against his cheek. "You're the one who's collected all that information about something as intangible as dreams, so what do you think?" 

Veld leaned into her hand. "I don't know what to think, Lucrecia. I'm a practical man."

He was a practical man, but ideas, theories, had been going through his mind all day.

The idea he kept coming back to was that this all had to do somehow, with Hojo.

"Practicality is an asset, even in a world that can be as odd as ours," Lucrecia looked back to Chaos. "Massive world ending deities, magic channeled through crystalized lifestream, the Cetra, and more—it's a wonder we don't see more strangeness than we already do." 

"You're right about that, of course. It's easy to slip into thinking that the world is easily comprehended, but I suppose it isn't." He sighed again, closing his eyes. "This all has something to do with Hojo. I can feel it in my bones."

Lucrecia laughed—a short, sharp laugh as she shook her head. 

"After all the—" She cut herself off and waved her hand. "After he was gracious enough to die on us? What a pain if so. What an absolute wrench in the works!"

She gestured towards the body. "I wanted to ensure there weren't J-cells in that fiend of yours. Cells from the presumed Cetra, Jenova. His pet project, the calamity from the stars." 

Jenova, the calamity from the stars.Cells from it had been used in a couple of experiments in the 1970s. The original experiment had been on pregnant women. One woman, Gillian Hewley, and her child, had been the subject of the experiment.

Lucrecia and Sephiroth had been the other planned subjects, before Hojo's demise.

"And were there any J-cells?"

Lucrecia closed her eyes again, her fingers flexing against him as her hand dropped

"Unfortunately, there seems to be a match. It would explain the particular oddities in the corpse, as well." 

Lucrecia had been worried about the presence of J-cells during the deepground incident as well, but her fears had been at least slightly mitigated. All the experiments run on the Deepground victims were what she called 'G-cells', cells derived from Angeal and Genesis' modified DNA.

"I was afraid you were going to say that."

Her fingers clenched again, almost reflexively—he could see her nails digging into her palm through the fabric of his shirt with each squeeze..

 "It means someone either discovered a part of her we somehow missed and she's back out there in the world, or some of Hojo's nasties escaped some remote containment, or…" 

He grabbed her hands– he'd rather have her nails digging into him than into her.

"Or what, Lucrecia?"

Lucrecia shook her head. "Or he survived in some form I didn't predict, and is out there creating horrors that send the Lifestream shuddering through you all." 

"In some form you didn't predict," he repeated slowly. "Does that mean there were things that you did predict?"

If Lucrecia had had dreams, dreams like so many people were having now, many years ago, could she have engineered Hojo's death in order to avert such a catastrophic future?

It seemed, if not likely then at least logical. Except for the fact that all the evidence in the case pointed to Lucrecia having no time or ability to have engineered the death.

Lucrecia chuckled softly under her breath. 

"Wouldn't that be something?" She stretched again on his lap, fingers squeezing tightly against his hands for a moment as she smiled down at him. "Me, predicting the future—or knowing the entirety of another course of events. I'm hardly in tune with the Lifestream. I'm no Cetra, and whatever else I may be, I'd be unusual if I could! Don't you think?"

Veld couldn't help but feel frustrated with her attitude, and he felt his fingers shake against her. Still, he refused to snap or be angry. If it was true, he had to imagine her position.

"It would be very unusual. But I can't think of another logical possibility at this point."

She let go of him suddenly, letting herself fall slightly back to look him in the eyes. She didn't look playful—she looked utterly miserable despite the smile on her face. Her eyes were scrunched with tears she was clearly holding back. 

"If I did somehow have visions, predictions, something like that, can you imagine what a burden it'd be? Can you, Veld?"

Veld didn't feel playful either and he was sure that he didn't look it. 

He put his hands around her wrists and met her gaze steadily.

"I can, Lucrecia. I can imagine how heavy something like that might be. Sheltering everyone from something terrible without being able to tell them."

She took a deep breath before she opened her eyes and leaned in closer. 

"Then let me tell you something, Veld, those reports you read? No matter how much was written in them, it's only a fraction of the true horror hidden in those other worlds."

Worlds. Plural. She was very clear in that. Tears streamed down her face as her smile grew tight

"If there was something like that, if someone was to remember them, they'd want to keep the variables as low as possible, wouldn't they?" 

"If they didn't, all of their information would become useless." He pulled her closer again, resting his chin against hers as the tears rolled down her face. "It would probably become more and more useless the further the timeline diverged. Over ten, twenty, thirty years. Eventually there'd be no telling what would happen."

He had been right. Somehow he had been right all those years ago. Lucrecia had somehow been responsible for Hojo's death. But he never could have imagined this as the reason.

"And when you've seen the way the world ends—when you've seen the hurt that the people you love suffer through, not knowing what might happen until you're sure it'll been truly averted is the greatest nightmare of all." Lucrecia's lips twitched in her almost desperate smile.

"Terrifying," she breathed. "As terrifying as hearing a voice whispering from your very cells to abandon 'you' and join 'Her' in a glorious reunion. Or seeing your son be slowly turned into the harbinger of the end. Or losing the one you love and having to help him move on…or being unable to die."

She raised her hands to press them to her own face, fingers splayed and squeezing as she took quiet breaths. "If you were somehow from this world and not, knowing the points on the graph that will lead to humanity's end, all you could do was keep everyone from knowing—avert the obvious points of impact, and observe." 

And live every day worried that you hadn't done enough.

Veld held her tightly even as he felt like the world was coming unglued around him. For Lucrecia, it must be even worse.

"It's alright, Lucrecia. You don't have to bear this burden alone anymore."

Lucrecia shuddered in his arms. 

"I have no choice anymore, I suppose I don't have to bear it alone. The choice was made for me the minute Hojo—Jenova—sent the lifestream into a panic." She dragged her fingers down her face, hiccuping quietly. Her eyes closed tightly. "For better or worse. I'm finally caught."

"Caught," he agreed. He pulled the handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped her face for her. "You were falling, and we caught you. Whatever's happening, it'll be easier to face it together, right?"

Lucrecia took a shaking breath, leaning into his touch for a moment—was she scared he was going to pull away? Leave her in a fury? She laughed weakly. 

"I suppose at this point, yes—and no matter how bad it gets." She shivered against him. "Jenova. At least Jenova isn't inside of me anymore, trying to make us one 'mother' for them all. Jenova isn't inside Sephiroth driving him mad. She's not inside of every SOLDIER Shinra has, turning them into husks desperate for her Reunion."

There was something unsettlingly visceral in the way she said the word. Like it meant something—something horrible. 

Some of it was familiar to the dreams he had collected. Some of it was nothing he had heard before. But every word sent a chill through him just the same.

"Jenova isn't inside you any more," he repeated, hoping it would be reassuring, even though he didn't know exactly what it meant. "And it isn't in Sephiroth either. And we're going to figure this out. But first, we're going to get you some food, and water, and a stiff drink. You can tell me and Vincent all about it after that."

Rufus could wait until the morning.

Lucrecia was limp in his arms. She hadn't eaten all day, not since breakfast…and it was like the fight went out of her as she wrapped her arms around his shoulder. 

"I'll tell you the story, you and Vincent, of the day I killed Hojo." She pressed her face into his shoulder. "...I guarantee you won't guess how I pulled it off. After that, the worlds I was a part of, the things we have to ensure don't come back to haunt us." 

Veld scooped her into his arms and picked her up like a ragdoll, holding her gingerly. 

"You're right, Lucrecia. I'm sure I can't guess. But whatever you tell me, I promise I'll believe you. And we'll help you make it right."

Chapter Text

1978

The stinging sterile smell of the old laboratory sent a wave of almost nauseous nostalgia through Lucrecia the moment she and Cloud stepped out of the anomaly. It made her eyes water, burning with more than just the stinging scent of disinfectant. It was the emotion.

The memories. 

Even in a state like they were now the sight of the old lab was like electricity through the spiritual taint of Jenova. Memories of thrashing against samples and fighting to exhaustion with the siren call in her own head. Memories of Hojo's jagged smile and the experiments on her unborn child, and memories of the countless tragedies that happened because of the foolish choices she'd made.

She clutched her chest, knowing that her body—the body that contained Jenova—was far away from her now, but it still burned inside her as she glanced up tiredly at Cloud.. 

"Home sweet home." 

"Some home," Cloud huffed. "It reeks in here. Let's fix it, alright?"

Cloud had that stoic, distant look in his eyes. She knew it was hard for him to be here, too. But this was the only thing that could be done.

After years of the madness on Gaia—the meteors, the geostigma, Chaos and Omega, and the Lifestream's dwindling reserves—after countless lives lost, they had to do something. Lucrecia had sealed herself away out of guilt for the past and a fear of losing herself to the creature in her cells. The fear of becoming Jenova, its avatar, its 'mother' to control her poor brainwashed son—had driven her into self exile even as Vincent and his friends moved on without her.

But at some point it'd clicked. Something had to be done. 

Humanity didn't have long left anymore, and it was uncertain if the planet would persevere long after it—so something had to be done.

So she'd been taken from her crystal prison and set to fixing it alongside the battle-worn Cloud Strife.

"Not like there's much choice in the matter. Be glad that the lifestream transported us the way it did." She mused as she drifted towards a rack of beakers to peer down at it. "...the smell was stronger when you haven't been deconstructed and spat out the other side of the planet's lifeblood."

"Sure," he nodded. "I'm just grateful that we're here at all. You said this is the last stop, right?"

It wasn't an easy road to get here. Lucrecia herself was the key, of course. Her memories, her history, her involvement in the creation of what was to come, it all combined to the same answer.

She, and her guest, had to enter her personal timeline and find the best place to avert the Calamity from the Stars' corruptive rise. Cloud was chosen, one of the ones with the most to gain through the alteration of their sordid history.

It meant he'd seen her; seen all of her secrets and her whole wretched life as they skipped forward through the embrace of the lifestream in bursts from her birth till the Shinra Manor. 

Cloud had seen it all; from their shared hometown of Nibelheim seen through the wide eyed curiosity of a little girl who's intelligence grew at an exponential rate that unnerved her parents, to the brutally difficult Shinra R&D training program, honing that intelligence with the mantra that results were everything.

He'd come with her through fighting for respect among her peers for her love of folklore and stories of the Cetra and the Lifestream and ancient weapons lost to time. Meeting Grimoire—the only man back then to ever share her enthusiasm for lost history, only to lose him in an accident that took his life to save hers…

She shivered, she'd tried to stop it all over again only to be held back. It was still too early to intervene, after all. They'd only really had one chance. The early days of her time with Vincent passed too quickly—until now.

Until they stood in the lab where everything started going wrong, before she'd ever been tainted by that bitch from the sky and the man she deluded herself into thinking cared about her at all.

"This is the last stop. We go any further and I'm tainted by Jenova, wrestling for control as she implants herself into more and more subjects. We go any further and she gets Sephiroth again." 

She watched as Cloud's dark impassive gaze turned hard, and sad, and his fingers clenched.

"We can't let that happen. Just tell me what I need to do. You're the one who knows the situation here."

She brushed her fingertips gently over the beaker. 

"We need to kill Professor Hojo. If I remember correctly I'm turning over his offer right about now. I've…pushed Vincent away out of guilt for what happened with Grimoire, and I'm currently working myself into knots and trying to calm down so I don't disturb Sephiroth's development."

She pointed up towards the ceiling. "All the way in my bedroom on the top floor. Meaning if we make it look like an accident, I have plausible deniability. Because Hojo hasn't injected me with her cells…" the phantom sensation of her whisper in her mind, the goading call to reunion, to what it misunderstood as 'motherhood', they both shuddered through her at once as she made a sharp sound.

"...I'm not infected yet. She's still confined to that rotting specimen she calls a main mass. Vincent hasn't confronted Hojo, because the experiment hasn't started, so there's no worry about that either."

Cloud gripped the hilt of his sword. "I don't know about making it look like an accident, but if you insist, then I'll go along with it. Where do we find him?"

Cloud's anger, his desire for revenge on Hojo was intense, and understandable. Cloud had been close with her son, with Sephiroth, somewhere long ago and far away now. And the thing Jenova puppetted and called Sephiroth had been making a depraved mockery of that bond for… lifetimes, maybe.

Lucrecia felt the hatred bubble up inside her as well. 

It was the same puppetted mockery that haunted her nightmares and led to her susceptibility—her madness, as Jenova wormed inside her. Jenova had taken her beloved son from her, but only after Hojo had done the same. Hojo—who stole Sephiroth from her arms and cast her out.

Her desire for revenge burned just as hot, but her analytical mind knew that changing things was a delicate balance. A tightrope of causality to balance down, ever wavering through worsened calamity and the hope they sought.

She folded her hands behind her back and leaned forward with the same catlike smile her son had inherited before it was wiped from his face by the abomination inside him. 

"It wouldn't help our cause if Vincent or I got arrested for a crime we didn't commit, Mr. Strife. An accident ensures everyone involved, everyone who hates Hojo anyway, has the plausible deniability to look the other way."

She spun and spread her arms wide. "One room over is her cell samples and a couple of his containment cells. He'll be heading there shortly to start another test on some fiend or another—he'll be alone." 

Cloud nodded stiffly. "Yeah, I get it. Lead the way, and I'll do whatever you need me to do."

Lucrecia's eyes couldn't look away from the growing pool of blood as it leaked out from under the mass of glass shards and ruptured metal.

An explosion—localized and perfectly engineered to strike the area Hojo would stand with iron, glass and flame—had snuffed out the life of the self-proclaimed 'Greatest Scientific Mind of the Era'. The head of Shinra R&D, and once, someone Lucrecia had cared for until she'd heard just how little he cared in return.

He had called her research amateurish and laughable, mocked her, even when he used her research to try and resurrect himself years later. He threw her aside after he took the 'specimen of his dreams' from her arms and let her fall from grace into repeated failed suicide attempts, painful regeneration, and self-isolation.

Her lips twitched into a jagged smile, her breath shaky as she took a step back and away from the blood. It hurt. Some old part of her that wished things could be different, but it felt amazing at the same time. 

Revenge…after all these years, a mother's revenge finally paid off.

He was gone. 

She couldn't help but laugh hysterically at the memory of the stupid look on his face when the panel overloaded, and the heat overtook him in that cloud of fire and shrapnel. When he fell, quite literally to pieces, her laughter took on a sharper bent. Cloud must have thought her a madwoman.

That was what she thought at first, but then when she looked at him she saw the cold, positively evil smile that crossed his face. 

Usually when Cloud smiled, and it was rarely that he did, it was a soft, almost somber thing, close mouthed and fragile. The smile on his face now was something else. It stretched widely, and it had teeth.

She turned, and gripped his shoulders for a moment. It was a shared moment of vengeance—of hate that finally had a resolution. It was a victory. She, Sephiroth's mother, couldn't have asked for a better partner in vengeance for this sordid affair.

Her smile matched his, nearly feral, almost serpentine as she gripped him in a sudden hug.

The scent of blood was thick in the air. Blood, smoke—burnt biological matter. It was strangely invigorating. 

Cloud wrapped his arms around her. She could hear him taking deep, hissing breaths through his gritted teeth.

"It's done." His voice shuddered. "I can feel it. It feels like something… changed."

Lucrecia could feel it too. The lurching shudder of the lifestream as the flow of time was irrevocably altered.

Her fingers clenched against his back, and drew him close as she rested her chin on top of his head with a shudder in her voice as well. 

The voice, the ghost of Jenova's voice inside her very soul, had finally stifled into nothing inside her. The lifestream, which wove through time and space, registered this as a real change to the future ahead of them.

"It feels lighter," she agreed. "It's changed. Jenova's spread is stopped for the moment, Vincent won't rot in his guilt, Deepground can be salvaged, the planet can be healed—"

She stroked his hair for a moment. "Sephiroth, my beloved son I never got to know, is safe from Hojo and the calamity—that kind young woman, Aerith…she won't be on the path that leads to her death. All those countless lifetimes we spent, restarting and failing to change a thing…we've finally broken free."

She sighed softly against the top of his head. "As long as we stick the landing, Cloud." 

He took another shuddering breath and nodded against her. "As long as we stick the landing. We cut the head off the snake, now we just have to make sure it doesn't come back."

Lucrecia closed her eyes, gently stroking his hair. "That'll be my job, Cloud…you can rest easy in the new world, figuring out who you really are without the burdens that were placed on you."

The 'serpent' Hojo's charred and twisted body—and the beast dug up from the ice—they were her responsibility to ensure stayed buried. Lucrecia, as she had long grown used to, would pay penance for her sins by guarding and guiding this timeline away from Jenova.

"I'll watch over you all from right here."

Cloud's sharp smile softened again, into the familiar hesitant, wan thing. "Say hi to Sephiroth for me."

Before Lucrecia could answer there was a sound at the door. A click as it opened. Lucrecia felt a strange dizzying sensation– like being two places at once.

"I promise, I'll…" She pressed her hand to her face with a smile. "...I'll…tell him as soon as I can. But it looks like it's time to wake myself up from the nightmare she's been living in."

Lucrecia felt like she could see the world through two sets of eyes. One strange—composed of the lifestream and the data found within given form—the other flesh and blood as she opened her arms towards the door.

"Wait for me for a moment, Cloud. Let me become myself." 

Cloud nodded to her, and stepped away. She could already feel him start to ebb– like the tide. Meanwhile she was pulled inexorably toward herself.

Lucrecia walked slowly towards the door as it rattled under her younger self's hands. 

She was so young then. She hadn't aged a day physically, but the years—the constant attempts to die and her isolation had changed her quite a bit from the girl on the other side of the door.

Yet she still was drawn closer. As the door opened she heard her own voice .

"Hojo? I've been thinking about the experiment, an—" saw herself sniff the air, her eyes turning towards the bloodied mess on the floor with a look of horror.

She shouldn't scream. Not yet. Lucrecia stepped forward to block her view with a smile—to herself, she was like a ghost. A strange mirror of herself in a flowing white dress, and a form that faded in and out of corporeality. A spirit, for lack of a better word, haunting the old lab as she put her finger to her lips.

"Calm yourself, Lucrecia," She whispered. "Don't shout."

True to herself, perhaps sensing some innate connection as they drew closer—she didn't scream, even as her hand plastered over her mouth. 

"...who…"

"I'm you, having traveled through the lifestream to stop the world from barrelling down a path to destruction. You'll understand soon."

Her younger self hesitated, looking at the blood on the ground. She hesitated until Lucrecia offered her hand with a sad smile.

"The world doesn't treat us kindly, Lucrecia—Hojo took our son and twisted him into a pawn for the false Cetra, her voice tries to drown out our own, the world ends in fire, and Vincent blames himself for it all."

She closed her eyes and uncurled her fingers. "We can rewrite it together. We can save everyone that Jenova and Hojo hurt."

When her younger self took her hand, Lucrecia drew her into a tight hug. 

"We just need to watch over them, we're the only ones who'll remember." She whispered in her ear, holding her tight with fingers that slipped somewhat inside of her body as the magnetic pull between them grew stronger. "We deserve the chance to do it again."

Her younger self shivered at the odd sensation of the past and future mingling together, but she still nodded. "...the chance to do it again—how can I say no to such an interesting experiment?" The jab was weak, but teasing. "I don't know about deserve—but I want a world where I can hold my son." 

The lifestream seemed to shudder again, and where there had been two, there was only one.

"Lucrecia?" Cloud said softly. He'd been watching her the whole time, his bright eyes intense even as he seemed to shimmer in and out of visibility.

Lucrecia clenched her fingers. The recent memories of her time with Grimoire, and her time working in the Shinra Manor mingled smoothly with the memories of multiple timelines—loops and loops and loops and loops and—

She was herself, wholly and utterly. Lucrecia of the failed timelines, and Lucrecia of the now. She looked up at Cloud with a smile. 

"...Cloud." She walked towards his form as it wavered in reality. "It's me. Just me. All of me…thank you for everything. I couldn't have done this without you." 

Cloud nodded, that sad little smile blooming on his lips again. He held out his hand toward her.

"Thank you, Lucrecia. Whatever happens from now on, I know– it will be better than what happened before."

She reached out, her flesh and blood hand closing around his phantom fingers as she drew him closer. 

"I promise it will be." She smiled sadly back "I promise. I won't let it rot like the last one." 

His fingers closed around hers– strange and tingling.

"I know you won't. I–" There was so much he could have said. His bright eyes swam with a thousand possibilities as his lip trembled. He just shook his head. He smiled a little wider. "See you in 20 years, Lucrecia."

There was a sensation like an inhale of breath.

And then Lucrecia was alone.

She looked at the empty space in her hand, the phantom sensation the only evidence that he'd been there at all. Tears welled in her eyes as she smiled a little wider herself.

"...see you in twenty years, kiddo," she whispered to the empty room.

If she was going to make good on that promise, she had to put on a hell of a show—stick the landing.

Memories of her trip through the lifestream with Cloud lingering in her head, and the yawning future she had to protect ahead of her she walked back to the emergency intercom by the door.

"Here goes the rest of our lives." 

She looked back at her empty hand again before slapping it on the intercom's call button and giving it her best anguished scream. 

2007

The VIP drawing room on the penthouse floor of the Shinra building was for exactly the kind of conversation the three of them were having now. Veld's hands shook as he poured another round of of stiff scotches– one for himself, one for Vincent, and one for Lucrecia, who looked like she really needed it.

Lucrecia's expression was tired and haunted, her hand visibly quivering as she reached for the glass. She'd been talking for what felt like hours, but it was surely less than that. None of them had checked the time as she rambled on about the past.

Vincent reached out, grabbing her hand and holding it firmly as she took a shuddering breath and tried to smile. 

What she'd told them was heavy— world shattering. That they'd gone through the steps of a dance fated to end in tragedy over and over again in other universes and timelines. Ones that she'd remembered and lived through only to finally realize how to stop it.

Lucrecia had told them of the mad experiment with 'the team that saved the world' to send herself and one of their number through the lifestream as constructs of memories and spiritual data, traveling through her life until she found the moment she could avert the beginning of the end.

She'd told them, sobbing, that she had to avert the biggest mistake she'd ever made. 

That she had had to kill Hojo and keep Jenova from spreading through the world as a plague. She had to save Sephiroth and Vincent. She'd whispered why she'd lied all this time, keeping the burden to herself. She couldn't risk variables that altered the world more than necessary, the more the world changed, the less power she had in protecting it. 

A long story of manipulation, timelines, and the increasing weight of keeping it all together.

It was a wonder she hadn't completely snapped under the pressure.

The three of them were crammed together on the couch, Lucrecia in the middle, and each of them protectively on one side. Veld put his hand on her leg and squeezed it as reassuringly as he could.

It was a lot to take in. 

It was so much.

"Thank you, Lucrecia," Veld said, feeling his voice's halting quality as he spoke. "Before anything else, I want to say thank you."

Vincent's fingers closed around hers, and he helped her take the glass with a quiet murmur. 

"I'd like to say thank you as well." His voice was soft—low and thoughtful—and he squeezed her fingers protectively. "You've done a lot for us."

Lucrecia took a shuddering breath and managed a shaking smile. "...You're welcome. It was what I had to do…I had to. Penance for an old sin, maybe." 

Veld shook his head, and rested his temple against her cheek for a moment. Pencance. Sins. That wasn't the way he saw the world, but he could understand Lucrecia's meaning. It was clear there was a lot she felt she had to make up for.

"Lucrecia, it doesn't sound like you knew what kind of consequences your choice could have, back then, that first time. I wouldn't call what you did a 'sin'. But even if it was, you've more than made up for it."

Vincent nodded once, leaning more firmly against her side. 

"I can understand feeling… consumed by the feeling of 'sin'. In my dreams, memories I suppose, I was lost in my need to atone for letting Hojo harm you." He brushed his fingers through her hair. "Nobody had any way of knowing how bad things would get back then, and you've fought for a way to make it right."

Lucrecia made a soft sound before raising her glass to her lips and taking a quick sip of scotch.

"I kept trying. I kept fighting, there and now, because I never wanted this happiness to slip from our fingers. Vincent—I never should have let you go back then, so… so this time I DIDN'T. And Veld, meeting you and Ifalna—and, and…Sephiroth, Aerith, Elfe, and everyone from Deepground, Cloud and all the rest. Everyone gets a new chance…"

Her lips twitched. "I couldn't risk it by letting things spiral away from where I could keep an eye on them." 

"We understand, Lucrecia," Veld kissed her cheek, still holding on to her leg comfortingly. "I won't say we don't feel… shocked. I'm shocked as hell. But I promise, neither of us feels betrayed, or anything like that, right, Vincent."

He looked over her head, at his partner.

It would be easy to feel betrayed at a time like this, finding out that your partner had been hiding something from you that was so vital. 

But he put himself in her shoes– would he have done anything different?

No, he was sure that both he and Vincent would have done the same.

Try to shoulder the burden by themselves.

Vincent met his eyes, a crimson gaze locked on him for a moment as he nodded once, and returned to stroking Lucrecia's hair.

"I'm rather shocked as well… though it makes my dreams, or memories, last night make a lot more sense. But I promise I'm not betrayed, Lucrecia. I love you. I've loved you for a long time now—and I know in your shoes I'd have done the same." He chuckled quietly. "...stubborn fools, the lot of us."

Lucrecia sniffed softly again, and she nuzzled herself against them both with a soft sigh. 

"I was worried you'd feel betrayed or hurt, but it was never about that. It was…it was the price I thought I had to pay to make sure you all lived unburdened by that unending nightmare. But…but I'm glad. I'm glad you two understand." She laughed softly, haltingly, with Vincent "...we are stubborn old fools, aren't we?" 

"Absolutely." Veld huffed an almost-chuckle himself and downed the rest of his scotch. "I was just thinking I would have done the same damned thing. I don't know why things are happening the way they are right now, but selfishly I'm glad. Because I'd like to face it together, now."

He moved his hand to rest it on her arm. Her smile softened as she tilted her head to lean it against him as Vincent kept stroking her hair.

Vincent nodded. "Whatever the reason, I'm pleased too. It'll be easier to face when we can support one another—you and I, Veld and Ifalna—like we have since we let ourselves get close and fall in love."

Lucrecia closed her eyes. "Good. Because I'm going to need you three more than ever now. I…I don't have control of this timeline anymore. I don't know what's going to happen now that people are starting to remember. We need to ensure that Sephiroth, Aerith, and everyone else the other timeline took from us are safe." 

"Sephiroth," Veld murmured. He thought of all the dream reports that he'd collected, and their terrifying mentions of Sephiroth. "He's out on a mission right now, isn't he?"

She shuddered, perhaps remembering firsthand the visions and memories of her son after he'd been, as she put it 'puppeted' by the Calamity from the Stars. "He is, he's not due back for a little bit. I can only hope he hasn't gotten any dreams yet—not where I can't comfort him."

Vincent's jaw tightened. "...we should probably send for a recall on all away teams right now, admittedly…"

"That's what I was thinking," Veld nodded. "This is serious. We need to inform Rufus and we need to bring in any teams that can be recalled. We don't know what's causing this, and we don't know what the effect will be on the people who are touched by it."

Lucrecia nodded. 

"...some people may simply see it all as an odd dream, others will be haunted by memories, and…" She trailed off for a moment and took a breath. "others may have a relapse, lost in feelings of the past."

"From what I read of Reno's report, I worry Elfe's in that last camp." Vincent murmured. "We should check on Aerith again as well."

"Indeed…recalling everyone back to Midgar is the only way to go," Lucrecia said firmly. "We can approach any irregularities as they come about—before they become an issue." 

Veld took a breath and pushed his glass away. There was business. Important business to be taken care of.

"Alright," he said, sitting up and squaring his shoulders. "Partner, which one of us reports to the president, and which one of us goes with Lucrecia to talk to Ifalna?"

Vincent ran his hand through his hair. "....I'll talk with Rufus. You go with Lucrecia and fill Ifalna in on it, and then we'll all check on the kids together alright?" 

 "Alright. Thanks, partner."

Veld nodded. That arrangement was for the best. He wanted to be with Ifalna when she heard. Especially with the way the dream had affected her.

Ifalna had died, in the other timeline. 

Died after enduring years of torture at the hands of Hojo. It hadn't just been a dream. It had been a memory. No wonder she had been so shaken. The horror of it tightened his own throat, he was sure it showed on his face.

Vincent reached across Lucrecia and squeezed his shoulder ."Of course.."

Lucrecia looked up at them, curled between them with the drink cradled in her hands. 

"Things are going to be changing a lot. But thanks for staying by my side for it all." She smiled softly. "...I'll break things to Ifalna as gently as I can." 

Veld leaned into the two of them, comforted by their presence. "Thank you both, I–" he paused. "I wonder why I haven't dreamed of anything. Lu, I existed in the other universe, right?"

Lucrecia tilted her head to the side. 

"Of course you existed. The makeup of the universes was the same between them. But—" She trailed off "I admit, I didn't know you well, but I'd met you a time or two through Vincent, before things progressed with Hojo. I believe you retired—as for why you haven't had any dreams…"

Vincent put his hand to his chin "...it's possible they're hitting at different times with different severities. Aerith said she didn't remember much of hers—and I think she'd have said something if she dreamed of…that." 

Veld smiled wanly. "We'll just have to wait and see what the future holds, eh?"

Lucrecia leaned her head back on the couch, looping her arms around each of theirs. 

"For once, I have to admit I've got no idea where it's going to lead." She looked at each of them in turn. "But…well…as I once said to young man's charming ghost when this whole mess started…'here goes the rest of our lives'" 

Here goes the rest of their lives. Veld felt himself stumbling into the future while the past roared up to meet him. 

But they'd face it together.