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sephirthoughts · 3 months

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Father: Verb

Epilogue (1 of 2)

Summary: 11 year-old WMD Sephiroth is assigned a new handler/bodyguard, named Vincent Valentine.

Hooray, first epilogue!!!! There are two because this one got a little heavier than I intended. Stay tuned for the second epilogue, which is the fun one!!

rating: teen and up

(prev chapter and ao3 linked at bottom)

When the first dawn of their new lives broke, they were lying together on the narrow bed of a cheap inn in Kalm, where Vincent had carried Sephiroth, after their flight from the Manor. Sephiroth’s face was buried in Vincent’s leather chest armor, which had returned with his human form, and his arms were wrapped tightly around Vincent’s narrow waist.

The boy actually hadn’t let go of him, since they arrived, not even allowing Vincent to go out and purchase food for him. He seemed to be afraid that if he let Vincent out of his sight for a single moment, he’d disappear forever. He’d eventually drifted back off to sleep, but if Vincent so much as stirred, he’d murmur in protest and constrict his arms, like a little python.

Not that Vincent had any complaints. He wasn’t even certain he was allowed this much happiness, as he lay contentedly, in the hazy twilight of early morning, listening to his son’s soft, even breathing. Every once in a while, he would lean down to press kisses to the top of his head, breathing deeply of his warm scent, reminding himself that this was real. That it was all over. That they were free and they were together.

Violet turned to yellow-gold, as the rising sun pushed lazy shadows across the floor, patiently herding them toward noon. Vincent was still holding his sleeping son, watching the fairy-glimmers of sunlight, that slipped in through the eyelets in the curtains, shimmer and glow as they were captured and refracted by Sephiroth's brilliant, silver hair.

Sephiroth finally stirred and blinked about, blearily. “Vincent? What…what time is it?”

“Almost noon,” Vincent answered. “This is officially the latest you’ve ever slept. Congratulations.”

“How do you know what time it is? From the position of the sun? Is that a Turk thing?”

“I can see the clock, from here.”

“Oh,” he yawned. “Do we have to get up, now?”

“We don’t have to do anything. Stay in bed as long as you like. I figure you’ve earned about fourteen-hundred sleeping in days, since you’ve never had a weekend off, before.”

“You’ll stay with me, though, right?”

“I have nowhere to be.”

Sephiroth nuzzled his face back into Vincent, like a cat, and lay silent for a few minutes, before he looked up at him again. “Well, now I’m too excited about having a day off. I can’t go back to sleep.”

“Do you want to get up?”

“Mm, not yet. Can we just…lie here and talk?”

“Alright. What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. Is there anything you want to talk about?”

“Yes, a few things. First of all, how did you know?”

“About what?” Sephiroth asked, though he knew very well what Vincent meant.

“About Chaos, your mother, where to find me, everything.”

Sephiroth peered up into Vincent’s face. “I…was possessed by time-traveling future versions of myself, who showed me all their memories from my potential futures. That’s how I found out you’d never abandoned me, at all, and Hojo had imprisoned you under the manor, while Shinra sent me out to commit war crimes, and be the poster boy for recruiting other innocent children into their SOLDIER program.”

“I see,” Vincent said, furrowing his brow thoughtfully.

Sephiroth blinked. “You believe me?”

“Yes. Why would I not believe you?”

“I guess, I expected some skepticism, at such a fantastic claim.”

Vincent very nearly smiled. “Seph, I’m the undead vessel of an ancient demon who can kill gods, and you are my superhuman son, conceived in a lab, using extra-terrestrial DNA. A bit of possession by time-traveling future selves seems the least fantastic thing about us.”

“But it wasn’t Jenova’s DNA that conceived me. You know that, right? It was introduced in the womb, to alter me, after the fact. My conception was purely human. I—I’m human.”

Seeing the boy’s eyes redden, Vincent wrapped him up tightly in his arms. “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m sorry. Of course you’re human.”

“You are, too. No matter what you think,” Sephiroth said, his voice muffled by Vincent’s cloak.

Borne down by the weight of their mutual trauma, the two lapsed back into silence. For a long while, they simply lay in each other’s arms, listening to the birds chirping outside, and the people on the street below, going about their daily business. Sephiroth had never felt so much like a monster, so far removed from the rest of humanity, as when he was exposed to human beings, living their peaceful, mundane lives. That feeling was magnified, tenfold, now that he was free to live as he chose. Would he and Vincent ever have such a life? Could they? He hardly dared to hope.

“Your future versions,” Vincent said, drawing him from his ruminations. “Are they still…in there?”

Sephiroth shook his head. “No. They stopped existing, once we broke fate. I will not miss them. Living so many lives, all at once, was exhausting.”

“But you still have those memories? From all the futures?”

“Some. The futures my others came from don’t exist anymore, so most of the memories are fading quickly. But it’s not like I have amnesia. I remember that those things happened, I’m just losing the memory of actually having been there, in those times and places. The others wanted me to be free of fate, and live a life of my own choosing, not following their paths. But, a man choosing a path and one stumbling onto it may still wind up at the same destination. So, they left me with guideposts, to help me avoid the patterns of events, that led to that terrible future Lucrecia showed you, in her visions.”

“And you’re certain you can trust them?”

“Yes. But it’s not just because they’re me. That would be a foolish reason to trust them, since I know myself. I trust them because of the oldest one—my final version. He hardly spoke, but he was the strongest. When his body died, he won a battle of wills with the lifestream, and kept his consciousness intact. That was how he discovered the way to defy destiny and travel back.

“During his life, he overpowered and silenced Jenova, and got free of her will. Only, it was too late. He restored his sanity, only to fully comprehend what a monster he’d become. That is the one thing, I will never forget, as long as I live. His…anguish. His abject despair and desolation, when he looked back, with clear eyes, upon what he had done, under the influence of her poison, and saw the rivers of blood, in his wake.

“I will never forget the agony, that tore his soul apart. His desperation, to find some way to make it right, to heal the wounds dealt by his own hands, to undo it all. No version of me would ever willingly walk back toward that fate. That is the reason they all agreed, one by one, to die, in order to have a chance at changing it.

“And now, they are me. I am all of us. I am Sephiroth, unbound by fate. I will take this precious gift I have been given, and dedicate my life to protecting this world and its innocent children, from the cruelty of gods and monsters.”

“You sound like such a grown man,” Vincent observed, with a sigh. “So wise and circumspect. I don’t know if you even need me, anymore.”

Sephiroth’s slit pupils contracted and he sat bolt-upright, grabbing Vincent’s arm with both hands. All at once, that look of aged weariness and hard-won wisdom evaporated from his face, and he was just a fourteen-year-old child, again. “No. No. Never say that, Vincent. I need you. I’ll always need you. You can’t…you can’t ever leave me. You’re my special person. You are the one I want to be with. P—please don’t leave me. Please don’t—”

“Seph, breathe,” Vincent interrupted firmly. “I’m not going to leave you. Not ever.”

“But you said that before and then they took you! It was our birthday! And they took you away from me! What if they try to take you away again!”

The boy was spinning out into a panic attack, shaking and chest heaving with rapid, shallow breaths, squeezing his forearm in a white-knuckle grip, that would’ve pulverized the bones of a normal human.

Vincent sat up and threw his cloak back. “Come on. Bite. Just like when you were little.”

Sephiroth lunged forward and bit into the leather, clawing Vincent’s sides, hanging on for dear life, until his head stopped spinning, and the iron bands stopped constricting around his chest. Then he loosened his grip and melted into Vincent, with a shuddering sob.

“It’s ok. It’s ok,” Vincent murmured. “There’s no one who can take me away, anymore. No one who can tear us apart. If they want to try, let them come. All the armies in the world would break on us, and be swept away like dry leaves before a gale.”

“That’s…very poetic,” Sephiroth sniffled.

“I think I read it in a book, once. I don’t remember the book.”

“Thank you, for helping me calm down. I’m better now,” he said, wiping his red-rimmed eyes with the back of his hand. “Sorry for acting like a baby.”

Vincent’s throat constricted with a tight ache, hearing the boy use these words again. “Hojo berated you for crying, didn’t he. Did he call it acting like a baby? You’ve said that before.”

Sephiroth lowered his blue-green eyes and nodded.

“Seph, showing emotion doesn’t mean you’re acting like a baby. Even if it did, you are a child. You may have grown-up memories from alternate realities and a supergenius intellect, but you’re still just a little boy. You have every right to be one. You are allowed to cry. You are allowed to be scared and sad and confused and angry. You are allowed to make mistakes and not be perfect, and know that you’ll still be loved and protected and cared for. No matter what. You don’t have to be strong, for me, Sephiroth. You don’t have to be a hero, for me. Just be my son. That’s all.”

Tears were rolling down Sephiroth’s cheeks again, and despite Vincent’s admonition, he kept brushing them away, as if he was ashamed of them. Vincent drew him right back into his arms and held him, rocking him gently, till the tears naturally subsided. Even when Sephiroth pulled away, eventually, he took Vincent’s hand in his and fidgeted with the brass gauntlet, unwilling to break physical contact.

“Vincent…is it alright if I call you father?” he asked timidly, without raising his head. “It—it’s ok if you don’t like it. Just tell me and I won’t.”

“What?” Vincent said, taken aback. “Of course you can, why would you…wait, is that why you’ve been calling me Vincent since we left the manor? You were afraid I wouldn’t like it if you called me father?”

Sephiroth shrugged, still looking down at the gauntlet, as he straightened Vincent’s fingers and curled them, observing how the articulated plates moved and interlocked. “I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about it.”

“Where is this coming from, Seph? Why would you think I’d want to distance myself from you, after everything we’ve been through together?”

“I know it’s biologically true, that you are my father, but you never asked for any of this. Lucrecia stole a piece of you,and made you a father, without your consent. She impregnated herself, with the express purpose of using your child as experimental material. If I were you, I’d feel betrayed. Violated. I’d be furious. So, I would understand if you’d rather not be reminded of…of what she did to you.”

“I’ll never understand why she did what she did,” Vincent sighed. “I knew all along that she was a scientist, first, and that she loved her work, above all else, but I never imagined that would extend to her own child. I don’t know if I feel betrayed and violated. Maybe I should. Maybe I should be angry. Mostly, I just feel regret and pity for her.”

“What happened between you?” Sephiroth asked gingerly.

Vincent shook his head. “It’s…complicated. It was never anything more than friendship, technically. I know she at least partially reciprocated the attachment I felt to her, but everything between us was implicit and contextual. Then, when she told me she’d made her choice, and it wasn’t me, I backed off. All I wanted was for her to be happy, even if her happiness didn’t have a place in it for me. Looking back on everything, now, I think she wanted me to fight for her. But I didn’t understand that, then. I believed standing aside was the right thing to do, so I did.”

“It was, though,” Sephiroth contended. “You can’t blame yourself for not pursuing her, against her stated wishes. You can’t blame yourself for not fighting for her, when she told you she didn’t want you to. It wouldn’t have been you.”

Vincent smiled ruefully. “Because I’m a coward?”

“Because you’re a kind and considerate person!” Sephiroth returned, warming quickly in defense of his father. “What is wrong with that? Since when is accepting another person’s decisions and respecting their stated boundaries cowardly? She made her choice, and you respected it. It wasn’t your fault she didn’t tell you the truth!”

“But, I should have known,” Vincent said, wavering. “I should have known her well enough to grasp the subtext, and understand what she really wanted.”

“Would you have done it? If you understood what she wanted from you? Would you have fought for her?”

Vincent closed his mouth tightly and looked away, for a long beat. Then he very slowly shook his head. “No. I wouldn’t have.” As soon as he’d said it, he let out a shaky breath, as if even pronouncing the words had cost him a tremendous effort. But now that he’d finally got them out, a dam seemed to have broken, inside him. “She…hurt me. She chose another man. If she loved me, she—she should have chosen me. I should have been good enough for her. It would have wounded my pride, too deeply, to lower myself to fighting over her, like a dog over a bone. I deserved better, than to be pitted against her lover, in a contest for her affection. At least, I thought I did.”

“You did! You did deserve better! It’s not wrong for you to have a bottom line. She had no right to expect you to sacrifice your dignity and self-esteem chasing after her.”

“The worst of it is that she never told me the truth. Not even when she tried to force my hand, and said that if she was the only one concerned, then she’d go ahead with the fetal experiments.” Vincent’s brow darkened and his eye flashed gold. “She gave me that ultimatum, while continuing to let me believe you were his child! What sane man would have pressured a woman to leave her lover, whose child she was ostensibly carrying, when she had already refused him? What game was she playing? How many dragons did she want me to slay, to prove my love? Did she want me to get on my knees and beg her not to ruin her life?”

This was the angriest Sephiroth had ever seen Vincent, and he was stunned to silence. The sudden change in the gentle, softspoken man was akin to watching a beaten dog break its chain, and suddenly realize it was a wolf. Hackles up, fangs bared and bristling—a proud and beautiful creature. It was breathtaking.

“I—I’m sorry,” Vincent faltered, misunderstanding Sephiroth’s expression. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“No more apologizing!” Sephiroth said vehemently, grabbing and tugging his hands, to stop him withdrawing into himself. “You didn’t frighten me, at all. I was just surprised to see you finally expressing anger. To be honest, I was beginning to worry that you’d keep turning it all inward and punishing yourself forever, without admitting that what Lucrecia did to you was wrong.”

“But, it wasn’t all your mother’s fault. If it weren’t for Hojo—”

“We’re not talking about him, we’re talking about Lucrecia,” Sephiroth interrupted, pointedly using her name, rather than the maternal designation. “Getting angry isn’t enough. You have to admit to yourself, that the blame for what she did rests on her, alone. She was a grown woman, years older than you. She made her choices with her eyes open. She didn’t need her twenty-seven year-old bodyguard to tell her what she was doing was wrong. She knew it was, and she did it anyway. She lied to you and violated you!

“And then what? She expected you to force yourself into the situation, in order to save her from herself? How were you supposed to navigate the tangled web she wove, when she didn’t even get out of it alive? That doesn’t mean you can’t forgive her, but you can’t keep finding ways to excuse her. Lucrecia wasn’t a saint, and she wasn’t a victim of circumstances. She was a person who made a conscious choice to destroy all three of our lives.”

Vincent’s shoulders slumped, and he gave a long, weary sigh. “I…I didn’t know you felt that way. For what it’s worth, I think she really wanted to be your mother.”

“Then she should have done better,” Sephiroth said icily. “I wasn’t a person, to her, when she decided to use me as a test subject. I was a biological process, that she could manipulate in the name of science, with no thought to the human repercussions.”

“But…she did change her mind,” Vincent attempted. “She regretted her mistakes. I doubt she ever suspected that Hojo would take you away, and never even let her hold you. By the time she realized what he really was, it was too late. She was trapped by what she’d done, and it all spun out of her control. When I saw her image in my dreams, she said that she couldn’t live with the guilt, anymore, after all the suffering she’d caused. She begged me to forgive her.”

“She also asked you to kill me.”

“Yes. That is why I doubt what I saw was really Lucrecia, in the true sense. It was probably more like an echo of her will, filled with her lingering regrets. But whatever the truth of the matter, she was still your mother. I hope you can forgive her, one day.”

“You hope that I’ll forgive her because you loved her. I didn’t even know her. All I know is what she did to us. Maybe, one day, I’ll have it in me to forgive her. But right now, she is no more a mother to me, than that thing in the mako reactor was.”

Vincent nodded his understanding, despite the pain his son’s bitter words caused him. “It’s up to you, and I won’t press you.” He paused. “But Seph, no matter what she did or how I feel about her, I would never harbor any negative feeling toward you, because of the choices your mother made. You’re the only good thing that any of us ever did. The way it came about was ugly and complicated and full of misery, but you are my son. You are the only person in the world who matters to me. Of course I want you to call me father.”

Sephiroth sighed, leaning into Vincent’s embrace again. “I never wanted anything more than I wanted you to be my father. But I feel like…I don’t deserve to be that happy. I keep expecting to find out there was some mistake, and I’m not your son at all. That I’m just a freak, with no connection to anyone, except a dead monster.”

“Well, that can’t possibly be true. Even if Hojo could have faked the DNA profiles he showed me, you look just like me. I tried to downplay it, because of his threats, but there’s a reason people always assume we’re father and son, despite our hair and eyes being the exact opposite colors.”

“That woman at the bakery didn’t. I forgot to tell you, because we ran into that boy and his mother. She thought you were my lover. She said we must be a fated pair!”

Vincent’s eyebrows went up. “Well. That’s certainly flattering to me. Except, you’re not a girl.”

“Oh, please. As if that matters to you.”

“Excuse me? What are you implying, young man?”

“Don’t forget, I’ve seen the future, father. I know all about you,” Sephiroth said, looking very wise and mysterious.

“What does that mean? I’m not—I don’t…do I?”

“Nuh-uh, I’m not telling. First of all, that would be weird. Second of all, it might be totally different, now. We rewrote destiny, after all.”

“Well then why bring it up?” Vincent groused. “Just to tease me?”

“Actually, I brought it up to break the ice. I wanted you to know that I’m aware your…horizons are broader than you let on, as far as gender and attraction. I don’t want you to feel you have to hide it from me. And also, I wanted to tell you right from the beginning that I don’t like girls and I never will. Just to spare us the awkward conversation, when I bring home a boyfriend.”

“B—boyfriend?!” Vincent sputtered. “You’re fourteen! No boyfriends!! Not till you’re twenty—no, thirty!”

“Tch. You’re such an old prude.”

“You think I won’t make it forty? Keep sassing me and find out!”

“Alright, alright, calm down before you turn into Chaos,” Sephiroth laughed. “I was just joking, anyway. I won’t be dating or anything like that. I’m waiting for my soul mate.”

Vincent squinted at him. “Soul mate? I didn’t realize you were the romantic type.”

“No, I mean I am literally waiting for him,” Sephiroth clarified. “I know he exists, because I have seen him with my own eyes. He was my soul’s anchor point, in every timeline. Our connection to each other is the reason experiencing all the other futures didn’t destroy my mind. I’m going to protect him and take care of him, this time. I will never let anything bad happen to him. I also plan to marry him, one day. He just happens to be far too young for that kind of thing, at the moment.”

“You’re far too young for that kind of thing,” Vincent grumbled, crossing his arms. “Maybe slow down on the marriage talk, before you give your father a heart attack.”

“Nice try, old man. We both know you don’t have a heart.”

“That’s because you took it.”

“Speaking of that. I should probably give it back,” Sephiroth said sheepishly.

Vincent held his hand up. “No. I meant what I said. Keep it for me.”

“You…you want me to keep your heart?” Sephiroth’s eyes misted over again, and his voice trembled with emotion. “You really trust me that much?”

“Of course I do. There’s no better place for it, that I can think of, than with you. I’ve thought about it, since we left the manor, and if you’re literally holding my heart, you won’t have to worry, anymore, when we’re apart. You’ll always be able to call me back to you, if you need me.”

Sephiroth nodded, through his tears, reflexively laying a hand on his heart. As he did, he felt the familiar shape, through his shirt. “My locket. But I gave it to Chaos, in the reactor.”

“I thought you’d probably want it, so I put it back on you, while you were sleeping.”

Sephiroth pulled the locket out of his shirt and looked at it, for a moment. Then he unclasped the chain and took it off. Rocking up on his knees, he carefully fastened it around Vincent’s neck.

Vincent balked. “Seph, I can’t take this. This is your—”

“No, you have to take it,” Sephiroth insisted, laying one hand over the locket, on Vincent’s chest, and the other over his heart, on his own. “You gave me your heart. Since I can’t cut mine out and give it to you, this is the next best thing. It’s the only thing I’ve ever had that matters to me. It represented love and family, to me, till I met you. Now that I have my father, I don’t need to cling to an old picture of my mother, for comfort. So, I want you to keep it for me, as a symbol of our love and trust.”

Vincent hesitated, then dipped his chin in solemn assent. “Then I will take good care of it, for you.”

“I think it may have belonged to your father, anyway. There’s a V engraved on the inside.”

“Huh. That’s odd,” Vincent frowned, opening the locket and holding it up to inspect it. “It does look like the V from our family seal. But my father would never have worn something silver. He was allergic.”

“It’s platinum, not silver. The chain, too.”

“I see,” Vincent said, with an odd expression. Then he repeated it, in a lower voice. “I see.”

“Is there something wrong?”

“Nothing important. Just an answer to an old question,” he said, tucking the locket away under his cloak. “Now, it’s about time we got you something to eat. You must be starving.”

“Not really. I can go days without food, before I start feeling it,” Sephiroth chirped.

Vincent’s iris flashed a warning gold. “And you know that because Hojo…”

“Father, he’s dead,” Sephiroth said, putting his hands on Vincent’s shoulders. “I cut off his head, myself. There’s no use wasting any more anger on him.”

His wrath subsided immediately, along with the gold ember in his eye. Then he was embarrassed that he could so easily be pacified, simply by being called ‘father’ and touched affectionately by his son, and scowled disconsolately, which made Sephiroth laugh again.

“Well, whether you feel hungry or not, I’m going to get you food,” Vincent announced, reasserting his authority. “It’s unhealthy not to eat, especially while you’re still growing.”

“Alright, but I’m coming with you.”

“Seph, you know we can’t risk you being seen. Your appearance is too distinctive.”

“Said the man who wears a bright-red cloak and shiny brass armor everywhere.”

“No one is going to be looking for me, and if they were, they’d have no reason to believe you and I would be together. Most of Shinra don’t even know I was at the manor. Besides, I know how to move around unseen.”

“I know how to—”

“Without mind control.”

Sephiroth made a sour face. “It’s not my fault people are weak-willed and easy to manipulate.”

“That’s true, but it’s still not nice to do it, if you don’t absolutely have to. How do you know there won’t be any permanent side-effects?”

“Hmph. Fine, I won’t go about scrambling the brains of the riff-raff, if you’re going to be so strict about it. Oh! I know! I can just disguise myself! So much has happened, that I forgot it’s one of the abilities my others left me.”

To Vincent’s horrified astonishment, the boy’s body suddenly warped and distorted, and he found himself standing face to face with…himself. Or rather, an identical copy, down to every detail. “Seph, this is…very weird. Is that really what I look like?”

“It is,” Vincent’s double said, with Sephiroth’s voice. “I can’t change my voice, though. That’s a flaw. Also, I can’t keep it up for extended periods. No more than a couple of hours, at a time.”

“That’s a pretty remarkable talent. I don’t see how you being me helps, though. We can’t both go out like this.”

“I just wanted to impress you with what I can do.” Sephiroth grinned, as his body shifted back to normal, only his hair was still jet black and he still had Vincent’s crimson eyes and ashen skin. “How’s this? No one will be looking for Sephiroth Valentine.”

That shot struck home, of course, and Vincent was thoroughly defeated. Just as he’d said, Shinra really couldn’t do much to them, even if they did send an army. But they could make things annoying for them, and they certainly wouldn’t bat an eye at hurting any civilians that happened to be in the way. He and Sephiroth weren't in hiding, per se, but it was better not to invite their notice.

Down the street from the inn, was a pub he’d visited many years ago. It had since been converted into a bakery, featuring local baked goods and some light lunch fare, such as sandwiches and salads. Because of Vincent’s knack for fading from sight, the beautiful boy with him attracted many curious gazes, but no eyes fell on him, despite the crimson cloak and brass armor. After they entered the bakery, he leaned down and whispered something to Sephiroth. The boy nodded, and Vincent actually vanished, leaving him to peruse the pastries in the glass case, alone.

Outside, Vincent alit on the ridgepole of a rooftop, crouched like a stone gargoyle, sighting the streets below for about ten seconds, before he sprang away, dissolving into crimson blur and rematerializing in an alleyway, a street over, with the massive barrel of Cerberus pressed to the base of a man’s skull, below his black ponytail. The man’s gloved hands went up slowly.

“Special Agent Valentine. Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir.” He sounded young. Very young. His voice was steady, but too stiff and proper. Concealing his nervousness behind cold formality. Vincent had been the exact same way, when he was a rookie.

“Not a Turk anymore,” Vincent growled.

“Still, I’d appreciate it, if you didn’t kill my agent,” another voice said, behind him. “For old time’s sake.”

Vincent pulled back the hammer with an audible click. “What the hell do you people want with me?”

“Come on, Valentine,” the voice behind him said, with an edge of impatience. “Point that gun where it belongs. Leave the kid out of it.”

“He’s a Turk, not a kid.”

“He’s fourteen.”

Vincent’s eye twitched. Then he drew the gun away and holstered it with an annoyed snarl. “Shinra just can’t stop turning children into killers, can they.”

The boy turned around, glancing up at Vincent, before looking to the man behind him for orders. Vincent was surprised to see a Wutaian, even more so one who wore a religious symbol so openly as this one did, with a bindi dot on his forehead. The boy was clearly surprised by Vincent’s face, too, though there was no telling which element of it he found more startling than which.

“You can go, Tseng,” the other man said. “Agent Valentine and I need to have a chat.”

The boy looked up at Vincent again, his eyes lingering for a second or two, as if he wanted to say something, before he turned on his heel and walked briskly away.

“Vincent.”

“Veld.”

The two men studied one another for a long beat. Vincent was a good four inches taller, but Veld was stockier and appeared much older, with grey streaks in his dark-brown hair, and a perpetually rugged look about him, despite his smart black suit.

“Holy hell, you look exactly the same,” Veld said, at last, shaking his head.

“You have aged,” Vincent replied flatly. “Since when does the Director of the Administrative Research Division track down targets in the field, himself.”

“Since the target is you, you fuckin’ asshole!” Veld exploded. “They told me you died, Vince! Where the hell have you been for a decade and a goddamn half!”

“I did die,” Vincent sneered. “I spent most of the past fourteen years in a coffin.”

“Real fuckin’ funny. If you're not going to—” He broke off, catching sight of Vincent’s gold iris, which he could see faintly glowing, now that it was in the shadow of his shaggy bangs. “What…is that? What did they do to you?”

Vincent turned his head away. “Nothing you want to know about. Answer my question. What do you people want with me?”

“Officially? Recovery. You’re a missing Shinra asset. In reality, I don’t know if I have the manpower it would take to haul your ass back to Shinra.”

“You really think you could bring me in, even if you had brought all your men?”

“God damn it, Vince, listen to me. I’m telling you I’m not trying to bring you in. There’s too much going on with the conflict in Wutai, and we’re already stretched paper thin, so the president doesn’t have the bandwidth to worry about you. I pushed back on hunting you down, and he agreed that it’s enough to just have you surveilled, for now, to make sure you’re not an immediate threat to Shinra.”

Vincent tilted his head. “And what does he plan to do, if I am?”

“Did you become more of a prick, in the past decade and a half?” Veld asked, eyeing him cagily. “I seem to recall you being a lot more…”

“Of a pushover?”

“I was gonna say agreeable, but yeah, pretty much.”

“People change,” Vincent answered vaguely.

“I guess so.” Veld paused and ran his hands back through his hair, which he always used to do when attempting to conceal some strong emotion. “It's so good to see your face, again, Vince. All these years thinking you were killed in action, and you know how I found out you were alive? I'm supervising the cleanup of Shinra Manor. One of the assets whose location I was to verify was you. That’s how they told me my old partner wasn’t really dead. A name, in an inventory of their property.”

“I am dead. I don’t know how much more clearly I can say that.”

“Well, you’re sure making it look good,” Veld Chuckled, clearly still not understanding. “Speaking of good looking, who’s the kid with you? Boyfriend?”

“My son.”

“Your s—your son?? But how? Who? Did you…with a woman??”

“I guess it’s hard for you to imagine, because of…back then. But yes, before they killed me, I loved a woman. He is my son, with her.”

“Well, where is she? Are you on your way to see her?”

“She died.”

“Ah. Uh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Veld, I understand that you have to keep a tail on me. I know you’re just doing your job. And I know what it took for you to put Shinra off hunting me down, even if you’re making light of it. I’ll never forget that. But if your people get within a one-block radius of my son…I’ll kill them all.”

“Fair enough. I wouldn’t want Turks snooping around my kid, either. I’ll tell ‘em to keep their distance. But in exchange, you gotta agree not to kill 'em, unless you absolutely have to.”

“Agreed.”

“By the way, I found something I think belongs to you.”

From a storage materia somewhere on his person, he produced a box, about the size of a shoebox, only a bit longer and narrower. It was wrapped in rumpled, stained red paper, and had a grimy silver ribbon with a flattened bow tied around it. The name ‘Vincent’ was clearly written on the wrapping paper, in black permanent marker.

Vincent stared at the all-too familiar object in stunned disbelief. “Where did you find this? How did you—”

“My crew found it in a trash bag, out by the dumpsters, where the garbage from the manor gets hauled away. They’re a good way from the buildings, so the stuff there didn’t get burned to a crisp, with everything else. You recognize it?”

“A birthday gift, from my son. It…was thrown away by mistake.”

“Well, I’m glad I made the boys sort through the trash, then. Despite all the bitching and moaning.”

“They should, anyway,” Vincent frowned, as he tucked the rumpled present into his cloak. “You can learn more about a target from the garbage they throw out than—”

“Than from the garbage that comes out of their mouth, yeah, I remember,” Veld laughed. “So, you’re still thinking like a Turk, after all this time.”

“It’s not something that just goes away. And I…I do miss it, sometimes.”

“You ever think about coming back, there’ll always be a place for you.”

“No. I’ll never work for Shinra again. I promised my son that I’m finished with all of that. We’re going to settle down and have a nice, quiet life together.”

“I respect that. Maybe one day, I’ll follow your example.”

“I hope you do. Sooner, rather than later,” Vincent said, as he turned to go.

“Maybe…I can meet your son, one day, too,” Veld called after him.

Vincent paused, then gave a nod, over his shoulder, before he vanished.

Back at the bakery, Sephiroth already had the middle-aged ladies that owned the place fawning all over him and stuffing him full of ‘free samples’ of pastries, like a couple of grannies that were worried he was too thin. He and Vincent took their lunch to go, and once they stepped off the main street, Vincent scooped Sephiroth up in his arms and flew them over the castle-like city walls, to the broad, green valley below.

Sephiroth chose a picnic spot in the turfy grass, beside a cheerfully babbling creek. He’d never seen a creek, in person, and was so enthralled by it, he had to be reminded to eat at least some of his lunch, before he went to play around in it.

“It’s so cold!” he shouted laughingly to Vincent, when he’d rolled up his trousers and waded into it, up to his knees. “Do you think there are fish?”

“Not here. Maybe further from the city, where it gets deeper and slows down.”

Sephiroth kicked and splashed around, till he soaked the legs of his trousers, and had to use a fire spell to dry them, before he could put his boots back on.

“How did you get rid of the Turks?” he asked, when he’d sat down again, and began working on Vincent’s half of their lunch.

“One of them was an old friend. He was willing to be reasonable. He was also at the manor, for the cleanup. He, uh. He found this, and thought we might want it.”

Vincent drew the stained and rumpled package from his cloak. Sephiroth’s eyes went wide and his mouth fell open, in an endearingly childish expression of wonder. “It’s your birthday present! I can’t believe they saved it! How did they save it?”

“Technically, you saved it.”

“Huh? Me?”

“The area where the garbage is left to be hauled away is far from the buildings, so it doesn’t attract wild animals to the areas where people work. None of the things there were burned.”

“Oh. Right. I threw it away.” Sephiroth’s face fell. “I—I thought you weren’t coming back and I just…couldn’t bear to look at it.”

“You don’t have to explain. Hojo made me watch the security feed, anyway. He knew hurting my body didn’t work anymore, so he hurt you, to torture me. I’m so sorry, for all of this. For the pain I caused you, just by existing.”

“I said no more apologizing. Now open your present, I worked really hard getting it for you!”

Of course, the custom-made holster was the most beautiful gift Vincent had ever received, and not just because it was from his son. Even more precious to him, however, was Sephiroth’s happy excitement, chatting to him about the design process and his correspondence with the blacksmith, and all the little details that made it special, while he helped Vincent remove the old holster and strap the new one on, in its place. It fit perfectly, and without that awkwardness of a new thing, as if it had been with him all along.

After that, Sephiroth was still full of energy, being exhilarated by his first foray into the great outdoors, so Vincent agreed to take a walk in the green valley, under the early-afternoon sun. He walked, rather, while Sephiroth picked up interesting rocks, stopped to investigate unfamiliar plants, found a family of frogs, and startled the local birds half out of their wits, scaling nearly every tree he saw.

“You said your other versions left you guideposts, to avoid repeating their future,” Vincent said, after a while. “So, do you have a plan?”

“I do,” Sephiroth answered decisively, hopping lightly down from the large boulder he’d leapt onto. “First, there are people we have to collect, and some we have to strategically position. Things have to be done at the right times, to be effective, though, so it’ll be a process that takes several years. The upside is, we’ll have a lot of time to relax and travel around, while we wait for circumstances to align.”

“Sounds good. Then what?”

“Then we’re going to kill President Shinra, and everyone else on the board of directors. Well, almost everyone.”

“We are?” Vincent asked, confused. “I thought you were done with killing people. I thought we were going to have the peaceful life you always dreamed of, now.”

“But I want everyone to have a peaceful life. There are powerful people who are malignant influences, actively causing suffering, to as many others as they can. Shinra's top ranks are full of them. None of them are any less monstrous than Hojo. Except one. There’s one good man, who got mixed up in Shinra, and managed to stay a good man.

“We’re going to kill the rest of them, so he’ll be installed as Shinra’s interim chairman, while they’re dragging Rufus home and filing the paperwork, for him to take over as president. By that time, our man will already have public support, and his power base within Shinra will be stable. Rufus will have no choice but to let him steer the ship. And he will definitely steer it in the right direction.”

“You seem to have a lot of faith in him. Who is he?”

“His name is Reeve Tuesti. He’s just an engineer, working in their Urban Planning Department, at the moment, but he’s a genius. He’ll be promoted to Executive Director, within a few years. Youngest executive in Shinra history.”

“How old is he?”

“Now, I’m not sure. Probably eighteen.”

“Already an engineer at eighteen? Impressive. Speaking of precocious teenagers, do you know anything about a person named Tseng?”

“Tseng? Why do you ask?”

“He was one of the Turks they sent after me, today. I just…got a feeling about him.”

“He’d be fourteen years old, right now,” Sephiroth frowned. “He was a Turk so young?”

“I don’t know why that should surprise you. Shinra sent you to war at fourteen, didn’t they?”

“Not anymore, but yes. They would have. Either way, your intuition was spot-on. Tseng is important. We can leave him be, for now, but we’ll need him on our side, later.”

Vincent glanced at him, sidelong. “Out of curiosity, what is ‘our side,’ Seph?”

“It’s…ours,” Sephiroth answered broadly. “It’s the side that wants to help people and save whoever we can. We can help the most people in this world by going after Shinra. Not by blowing up their reactors like a bunch of idiot children, but by completely restructuring the company, from the top down.”

“Blowing up their reactors?”

“There are these eco-terrorists…don’t worry about it. We’ll be ten steps ahead of them. Oh, also we’re going to need the family fortune, to fund our world-changing efforts, so we’ll have to inform the Valentine estate lawyers that you’re not dead. And also have me added to the family register.”

At this point, Vincent didn’t bother to ask how the boy knew about the family’s financial situation, and took it in stride. “You’re sure you want to be a Valentine?”

“Of course. What else would I be?”

“Well, there’s your mother’s surname. I thought you might—”

“No. Not even if I didn’t have another option,” Sephiroth said bitterly. “I may as well take Jenova or Hojo as my surname.”

Vincent looked as if he’d slapped him. “Seph…”

“Sorry, father. I didn’t mean that. I have a lot of pent up anger,” he corrected himself, lowering his head contritely. “All I mean is that, I don’t want any surname other than Valentine. I’m your son. That’s all I want to be.”

“Then you’ll be a Valentine,” Vincent agreed, pulling him close, to kiss the top of his head. “After we take control of the family fortune, what’s our objective?”

“We start gathering allies.”

“Alright. Who’s first?”

“The most important one, of course,” Sephiroth smiled. “Maybe the most important person in the world.”

THE AUTHOR HAS SOMETHING TO SAY i bet it's Reno

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