Ifalna - 1998
Lore passed down through generations said never to bring the infected home again. They were already lost, and the madness would spread. For most of her life, these had been nothing but stories of loss, stories to explain the loneliness of her present. They were not prescriptions in case Ifalna found herself with a lover whose mind had been addled by the Crisis.
Lore would have told her to leave Lucrecia in the reactor. Lock her in and flee with their children.
To hell with the lore.
Sephiroth had carried his mother back down the mountain, and not once had she woken. After settling her at the inn, Ifalna had insisted in the face of all argument that Aeris and Sephiroth wait outside. To hell with the lore, but if the thing that woke was not Lucrecia, she wouldn't have them see it.
She didn't know what frightened her most. When she had first met Lucrecia, she had doubted for a long time whether the woman were real. Ifalna had left those doubts long behind her, but could the woman she loved still be erased by the monster she'd first feared? If all Sephiroth had felt were impressions, then what had Lucrecia heard?
To steady her trembling hands, she rolled the White Materia between her fingers and tried to focus on the Planet's voice. With Jenova and the reactor nearby, there had been an undercurrent of anxiety from the moment they arrived, but it had never spiked. Nothing had happened to worry the Planet further, and when Ifalna queried it, her own ripple of anxiety brought back only a vague curiosity. What was wrong?
Lucrecia jolted up in bed. Ifalna rocked back in her chair, hands clamping around the White Materia lest it go flying.
"No..." said Lucrecia. "No...!" Her eyes were wide and staring, and she clawed at the blanket atop her. Despite the loud bang of Ifalna's chair settling back against the floor, Lucrecia didn't seem to see her.
"Lucrecia--" Ifalna interjected.
Lucrecia looked at her, startled. "Ifalna?" She took another glance around the room. "...is this real?"
"It's real," Ifalna said. She tucked the White Materia into her dress and reached for Lucrecia's hand. "It's me."
"I don't want to be here," Lucrecia breathed.
"Okay."
Ifalna pulled the blankets the rest of the way off of Lucrecia's legs and led her out into the hallway. Lucrecia let out a shaky breath on passing the threshold, and her tone turned guarded.
"What happened?" she asked.
"You passed out at the reactor," Ifalna said, watching her carefully. "Sephiroth carried you back."
"That's all?"
"...what were you expecting to happen?"
"I don't... know." Lucrecia raked both hands through her hair, nails scraping scalp, and then stopped. She stared out the window into the pines behind the inn. "When I was pregnant with Sephiroth...... I used to hear things. Like gibberish, or... when you hear a voice in the next room and can't quite make out the words. I never told anyone. I was sure they'd say I was crazy and take Sephiroth away from me. I didn't want that."
In all the years they had known each other, Lucrecia had never mentioned it. Not in her smuggled notes, not in any conversation they'd had since. Was it something she'd forgotten until now?
Or something she'd been too afraid to look at directly?
"...was that what you heard at the reactor?" Ifalna asked.
Lucrecia shook her head. "She's learned words now."
Ifalna tasted ashes at the back of her mouth. Her stomach twisted. "What did it say?"
"That... I'd done my part, in bringing her Sephiroth. That killing you and Aeris was nothing. Just two deaths. She didn't say to open the door, but she wanted it."
Ifalna had known, of course, that the Crisis was capable of words. It had stolen the voices of those it copied, weaving its deceptions. She knew no accounts of it speaking for itself, undisguised. What Lucrecia related was a horrifying window that she'd never wanted.
But Lucrecia was still herself to relate it.
Ifalna stepped close behind her, slipping her arms around Lucrecia's waist and pressing her face into the back of her shoulder.
"What...?" Lucrecia said. "I'm... You shouldn't..."
"This isn't how it happens," Ifalna whispered, pushing down the reminders that bubbled up, saying it could always be a deception. It wasn't. Lucrecia's reaction didn't match the stories. "You aren't lost."
Ifalna felt Lucrecia breathing carefully beneath her touch, as though all her focus were on that action, focused in on her own body.
"...I've carried Jenova's cells for over 20 years," she said at last. "It would never take so long, would it?"
"Something's different," Ifalna agreed.
"Maybe it's because she didn't infect me herself," Lucrecia considered slowly. "This was something we did, with our own methodology. It isn't the same virus that she gave to the Cetra."
Ifalna drew back slightly. "...that does make sense," she said. She wasn't a scientist, but she thought of drawing venom from a snake. From the same source, one could make antivenom.
Lucrecia was far from immune, but she was... resistant. She had resisted.
"We should tell the children you're all right," she said.
"Where are they? How is Sephiroth?"
"He's fine. Just worried. I... had them wait outside. Just in case."
Lucrecia nodded. She took a step along the hallway towards the stairs, then paused to look down at her bare feet. She glanced at the door to the room, mouth pressing into a trembling line.
"...I'll get your shoes," Ifalna said.
Her incredulity that the children had obeyed instead of creeping closer to eavesdrop was satisfied when they found a blonde woman had waylaid the two outside the inn. Sephiroth noticed them first, but it was Aeris who exclaimed,
"Aunt Lu!"
She leapt across the short distance, throwing her arms around Lucrecia without an ounce of hesitation. Sephiroth met his mother's gaze over her head, and stepped forward to enfold her in a gentler embrace once Aeris had pulled away.
"Oh, good," said the village woman. "I'm glad to see you're up and about. Your niece said you fainted."
Ifalna blinked. They had always understood their little family without needing the specificity of words, but being around others seemed to draw every odd facet into the light. Sephiroth was not quite her son. Aeris had called Lucrecia her aunt since she was small, but that wasn't their relationship. The two children had been siblings before their mothers had been lovers.
"I'm... feeling a bit better now," Lucrecia managed. "Thank you."
"And it's... quiet?" Sephiroth asked her carefully.
Lucrecia nodded. "It's quiet."
The village woman watched them uncertainly. "We don't have a doctor here, but Mrs. Reiher's something of an herbalist if you'd like me to--"
"No, no, it's all right," Lucrecia interrupted. "I just... overexerted myself. It happens from time to time."
"Thank you for distracting the children," Ifalna added.
The woman nodded. "An inadvertent accomplishment, but I was happy to do it." She held out her hand. "I'm Claudia."
Ifalna took it, and they introduced themselves in turn.
"I confess I did hope to ask you some questions," Claudia admitted, "but it seems in poor taste now. But maybe I could still interest you in dinner?"
"What sort of questions?" Ifalna wondered, frowning.
"Oh, it's just been a strange week, with unusual visitors. Though you're hardly as unusual as the last ones!"
"Who were the last ones?" Aeris asked.
"These great big red... dogs? I don't know what they were, but they talked. Apparently that's normal down in Cosmo Canyon, can you imagine?"
Ifalna relaxed. "Oh, yes," she said. "We just crossed paths with them ourselves."
"I don't know why everyone decided Nibelheim was interesting all of a sudden," Claudia went on, "but I've never seen anyone but Shinra go up to that old mansion, and you don't seem like Shinra."
Lucrecia exchanged uncertain glances with Ifalna and then asked, "When was the last time you saw anyone from Shinra at the mansion?"
"I don't know... A few weeks ago? The place's been abandoned since I was a girl, and then this year they decided to start checking in on it again. Maybe they're just bored now the war's finally done."
Ifalna drew a long, slow breath, fighting the urge to run, right now. This place wasn't abandoned by Shinra at all. The renovations at the reactor, people going to the mansion again. Shinra could show up at any moment and find them.
Claudia looked between the two of them. Her gaze flicked to Sephiroth, and then she said, "Don't worry. If they were going to show up today, they'd have been here by now; ships don't get into the port so late."
"What?" said Ifalna.
With a careful nod at Sephiroth, Claudia added, "His father was Wutain, wasn't he?"
Sephiroth stiffened. Lucrecia let out a strange, half-strangled little laugh while Ifalna stared. Claudia had read their fear of Shinra accurately, but for the wrong reasons. Never once had it occurred to Ifalna to think of Hojo as Wutain, even though his heritage was plain, and it had left its mark on Sephiroth's face.
Claudia surmised some connection to a man who'd fought Shinra in the war, rather than one who was happy to use the company to further his own interests. That was fine. Maybe it was a story they'd use, going forward, to explain their discomfort.
"Well, we don't much like Shinra, anyway," Aeris spoke up into the awkward silence. Her raised eyebrows as she glanced over the three of them expressed an incredulity that she had to be the adult here.
"That's all right," Claudia said, and she leaned in to add conspiratorially, "I don't much like them either."
Aeris smiled. "So, what were you saying about dinner?"
And that was how they found themselves invited to Claudia's home that evening. Claudia left them to themselves while she prepared, so there would have been time to rescind Aeris's acceptance once they gathered their wits, but against her better judgment, Ifalna found she didn't want to.
"I've never been invited to dinner before," she confided to Lucrecia.
"What, never?" Lucrecia asked incredulously.
Ifalna shook her head. "At Icicle Inn, we always... held ourselves apart. People understood that."
"We actually had dinner at the mayor's house here, a few times," Lucrecia reflected. "It was a bit awkward... but Claudia seems sweet. And, absurd as it is... maybe it's good, right now. We'll go be normal, or pretend we're normal, at least, for a little while." Her fingers curled tighter. "I'm not going to... lose myself to an alien virus while some country woman is serving us pie."
Ifalna reached over and took her hand before she could dig her nails into her palm. "No," she said. "You're not."
Claudia's home was a cozy, single-roomed house where the beds were tucked into an alcove and the dining table was two steps from the kitchen. They were welcomed by a boy about Aeris's age with wild blond hair, who shyly told them dinner was about ready. A brunette soon joined them at the table as Claudia set the last of the dishes in its center. There weren't enough chairs to go around, so the two children perched on wooden crates.
"Are these your children?" Ifalna asked.
"This one is," Claudia said, giving the blond an affectionate hair ruffle. "Tifa, I borrowed from next door."
"I helped cook!" Tifa announced proudly. "I wanted to see what was up with the out-of-towners. Mom said to report back."
"How is she?" Claudia asked.
"Just a little tired. It's not a bad flare."
There was a short round of introductions, and then Ifalna asked cautiously, "You're very close with your neighbors then?"
"Thea and I are thick as thieves these days," said Claudia. "You shouldn't let that old mansion tell you anything about the character of our town; we take care of each other here."
"But Shinra does still have a foothold here," Lucrecia pointed out.
Claudia rolled her eyes as she passed a basket of bread to her son. "For now they do."
"Mom thinks--" Cloud began, and then he stopped, dropping his gaze when everyone's attention turned to him.
"Well, go on," Claudia said gently.
"...Mom thinks, we should run them out like Wutai did."
"Really?" Ifalna wondered. It was one thing to express a general dislike of Shinra, and another entirely to think of defying them.
Claudia laughed sheepishly. "Well, I'm not quite sure how we'd do it, you know, we haven't got any ninjas here. And I don't know the first thing about shutting down a reactor!"
Lucrecia exchanged glances with Ifalna. "...but you would, if you knew how?"
Some of Claudia's mirth faded as she noted they were serious. "I suppose that's what that Sebuna--you know, from Cosmo Canyon--wanted to know, though she didn't ask it outright. I can't speak for the whole town, but we all know the reactor isn't good for the land. I'd never heard that planetology stuff before, but you can tell just by looking at the trees."
Ifalna nodded. "It is worse here than I've seen in some other places," she said carefully.
"I think," Claudia went on, her own words a little more careful, "that is, I hope, that Sebuna will be back again. We couldn't get rid of Shinra on our own, but if it's not just us... Well, you see."
"You might be able to, with allies," Lucrecia finished, and Claudia nodded.
"And then, who knows? Maybe we get something a little stronger than fireworks from Wutai and we blow the damn thing up."
Ifalna found herself smiling at that. They had kept largely to themselves in Gongaga, and now she wondered what they'd missed because of it. What discussions went on behind closed doors, among trusted friends? What precisely had brought that traveller from Cosmo Canyon? His appearance had preoccupied her without her once wondering what he might have had to say.
"I'd advise against blowing up the reactor, for now," Sephiroth was saying. He avoided glancing at his mother. "Even if it didn't risk a reprisal from Shinra, it could do a lot of damage to the mountain, if you don't know what you're doing."
Claudia nodded seriously, and then she looked over at her two charges. "You hear that? No blowing up the reactor."
"Right," said Cloud.
"No promises," Tifa said at the same time, grinning wide.
"You might be able to do something about that mansion, though," Aeris spoke up. "You get thunderstorms here, right? If it just happened to get struck by lightning and burn down, it wouldn't be anybody's fault. Things like that just happen."
Everyone stared at her, and then Claudia laughed. "Oh, you're a menace," she said. "I like you."
"Things like that do happen," Sephiroth agreed, unsuccessfully trying to hide a smile.
Ifalna exchanged wry looks with Lucrecia. They hadn't taught their children to invent cover stories for arson, but they had certainly taught them to lie. Perhaps it was inevitable.
It was after dark by the time they left Claudia's house. The faintly greenish glow of street lamps lit their way across the square, rekindling her unease. But this wasn't as much of a Shinra town as she had feared.
Sephiroth stayed outside to check on the chocobos, and Lucrecia lingered with him. Ifalna went on inside the inn and up to the room. She sat down on the edge of her bed, knowing even then that her day wasn't yet ended. There was still one more thing to be done.
Aeris sat down on the bed opposite her. "Hey, Mom? Can I ask you about something?"
Ifalna looked back at her. "Of course."
Aeris fidgeted, glanced towards the door as though checking to be certain they were alone, and then said, "No one's ever told me who Sephiroth's father is. Even he won't talk about it."
"None of us want to talk about it," Ifalna admitted.
"Aunt Lu used to work with the Professor," Aeris said quietly. She chewed on her lip. "She wasn't... He didn't..."
"It was consensual," Ifalna interrupted, sensing the trajectory of her thoughts. Her hand slipped into her pocket, tracing the curve of the White Materia. "That's why she doesn't want to talk about it. Because she chose it."
"......why?"
Ifalna shook her head. "It's complicated. He wasn't the man we knew, back then. Lucrecia and your father were just as much a part of what happened here as Hojo was. They managed to change for he better. Hojo changed for the worse."
"I guess I understand." Aeris lifted her feet onto the bed and drew her arms around her knees. "I wish Sephiroth had that--knowing he came from good people, I mean. He's got Aunt Lu, but..."
"I know. And I wish it didn't matter where he came from, but it does."
Aeris was quiet for a long moment. Then she nodded to Ifalna's pocket. "You've been doing that a lot while we've been here."
"Ah. Well. It's comforting," Ifalna admitted. She drew the White Materia from her pocket and held it out, so that Aeris might feel it for herself.
Aeris took it and sat studying the orb in her hands. "I know it's important, but it's so... quiet."
"The quiet is a reassurance. The Planet would tell us if it were needed."
"So as long as it's quiet, nothing really awful is going on," Aeris concluded. "Jenova is... contained."
"Yes."
Aeris looked up at her. "What happens to Jenova once Shinra's gone? If they shut off the reactor?"
Ifalna didn't have an answer to that. She moved to sit beside Aeris, drawing her close and kissing the top of her head. The White Materia had been passed down and down and down, and Ifalna would be the last full-blooded Cetra to carry it. Not that blood had made any difference in what Aeris could learn, but their line was dwindling and Ifalna refused to pressure her to continue it.
Was it an impossible hope that the White Materia might never be needed at all? Whatever happened to Jenova... She didn't want Aeris to bear the burden of it.
When she heard the creak of the steps, Ifalna rose. Only Sephiroth entered the room. Ifalna bid both children good night, gathered a pillow and blanket, and carried them out into the hallway. They all understood by now that Lucrecia would refuse to sleep in the room, and after the events of the day, the children wouldn't question Ifalna staying out with her for a while, even the entire night.
Instead, she and Lucrecia waited until the light went off in the room and then left the inn.
The mansion sat as a dark hulk at the end of the village. Lucrecia pushed open the door and groped her hand along the wall. "....the light switch is dead."
Ifalna conjured a small light to guide their way upstairs. After a few tries, Lucrecia remembered the combination to the safe, and they found an old key resting beneath a stack of documents. From there, Lucrecia led the way to one of the bedrooms, where she put her shoulder to the stone wall and pushed open a hidden door. She beckoned Ifalna to the entrance. A decrepit wooden staircase spiralled down into darkness.
"This is..." Ifalna began.
"...creepy," Lucrecia finished. "I know." As they began their descent, she continued, "Could you believe I used to think it was a fun game? Here we were with our secret lair, even though the villagers never set foot in this mansion. It seemed so unnecessary."
"Was it the company's idea to set up the lab down here?" Ifalna wondered.
"I think so. There's no profit in research everyone knows about, but Gast didn't care about that."
"He would have wanted to share it," Ifalna agreed quietly. If what he'd discovered here would have benefited the world, he would have wanted the world to have it.
They reached a cave passage below, and Lucrecia approached a wooden door tucked into its side. Drawing a breath to steady herself, she fitted the key to the lock. The door creaked open.
Ifalna sent her light into the chamber beyond, and the scene it illuminated was not what she had expected. There were coffins, to be sure, most of them sitting open with skeletons in plain view. And there were so many more skeletons, bones scattered across the floor and skulls piled against the back wall.
"What..." Lucrecia breathed. "W-who are all these people...?"
Ifalna didn't want to stray from the door lest it close behind them, but she knelt for a closer look at a bone near her feet. She drew back. "...there are bite marks."
Lucrecia stared at her, and anger crept into the horror on her face. "He's been... feeding something down here?"
"We should go," said Ifalna.
But Lucrecia shook her head. "I have to know."
There was a single coffin still sealed in the center of the room, the only place such a monster might be hiding. Lucrecia approached it, and Ifalna dug her awareness deeper into the Planet, ready to call on her magic. She wasn't a fighter, but she could buy them precious seconds, enough time to make it through the door, turn the lock--
Lucrecia planted both hands against the coffin's lid and shoved. Then she gasped and jerked back, hands flying to her mouth.
It was neither a monster nor a skeleton, but a man lying within. His eyes flew open and he grabbed the side of the coffin, muscles tensing in preparation to jump out--but he froze at the sight of Lucrecia.
"...Vincent?" she whispered.
This was Vincent? Ifalna stared at him. Long dark hair framing a gaunt, Wutain face. Was that Lucrecia's taste in men? She shook the thought away.
"You're... alive?" Ifalna managed.
Vincent's attention snapped towards her, and she took a step back.
"...no," he said. "I'm..." He looked urgently back at Lucrecia, less of the predator in that look and more of the man. "You can't be here, if you're here. Hojo will be coming. He... This is where he leaves the failures."
"I'm here," Lucrecia affirmed. "And no one from Shinra. I..." Whatever she meant to say seemed to escape her. "I thought you died," she said instead.
"...at first, I thought the same," said Vincent. It wasn't clear whether he spoke of Lucrecia's death, or his own. Certainly this place was a kind of hell.
"What happened?" Lucrecia asked him.
Vincent broke her gaze. "...I failed you."
"What do you mean?" Lucrecia shook her head again. "You were just gone. I went to Hojo, and he... There was blood on the floor. He pretended not to know."
Confusion furrowed Vincent's brow, and he looked back at her. "You don't remember," he realized. "You... asked me to bring Sephiroth to you, so you could hold him. You were so ill, I thought it was your dying wish. Hojo refused." His hand lifted to his chest. "Violently."
"Have you been here all this time?"
"...how long has it been?"
"Twenty years."
"Twenty..." Vincent studied her face. "You look the same."
"It's... a side effect," she said. "It seems you've been through something similar."
Vincent shook his head slowly, and finally he climbed from the coffin. He was a tall man, standing over even Lucrecia. "No," he said. "You need to go. I can't protect you."
"I don't need you to protect me. Just come with us. You can leave with us." Lucrecia cast her gaze back towards the doorway, and Ifalna.
Vincent finally noticed her again. "Who...?"
"This is Ifalna," Lucrecia said, and she hesitated.
"We escaped Hojo together," Ifalna supplied. It was explanation enough for now. Introducing herself as Lucrecia's lover to her former lover seemed in the moment... indelicate.
"With our children," Lucrecia added meaningfully.
"Your children?" Vincent repeated. "Then Sephiroth is...?"
"Staying at the inn," said Lucrecia. "You could meet him."
Something complicated flitted across Vincent's face, and his eyes flared a little brighter. "No," he said again. "You have to go."
"Vincent--"
"I can't control it." He stepped into Lucrecia's space, forcing her to step back. "Go."
"I'm not going to just leave you--" Lucrecia began, and this time Vincent grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her bodily out the door. Ifalna scurried back out of their way, and Vincent slammed the door after them, nearly catching Lucrecia's hand.
Not quite knowing what she did, Ifalna turned the key in the lock and pulled it free.
"What are you doing?" Lucrecia cried.
"I- Something isn't right with him," she said, clutching the key in her hands. What was it he couldn't control? "It's... it's just until we understand."
Lucrecia tried to snatch the key back from her. "We understand enough! All this time he's been locked away in here! Alive! All this time..."
"In a room full of human bones with bite marks," Ifalna reminded her in a whisper.
Lucrecia let her hands drop. She looked to the door, staring.
"...I don't think he intends us any harm, but he might be dangerous, Lucrecia. And he knows it."
"There has to be a way... to control it, whatever it is," Lucrecia insisted. "If Hojo didn't have a way, Vincent would have torn him to pieces."
Vincent had hardly been vigilant to their arrival, but Lucrecia had a point. Another time, he might have been. They didn't know. She looked farther down the hallway, nodding to the other door. "...is that the lab?"
Lucrecia followed her gaze. "...yes. Yes, you're right. Maybe there's something there."
The light switch for the lab did work, bulbs flaring to life and casting their greenish tinge over the room. It had nothing of the sterility of the Midgar lab, but it put Ifalna no less on edge. At its core, it was the same nightmare that all that polished metal had sought to disguise.
She reminded herself that Hojo wasn't here. No one was here.
The walls were lined with scientific journals, and Lucrecia approached them to skim the spines. Ifalna followed, cautiously. Many of them were labeled in Gast's handwriting, and some in Lucrecia's. These, they passed over, focusing on the spidery scrawl that must have been Hojo's.
"No, I think these are all from the Jenova Project," Lucrecia sighed at last. "If he made record of what he did to Vincent... it isn't here."
"...I don't know that Vincent will give us a straight answer," Ifalna said. They wouldn't know unless they saw it for themselves, and he didn't want to allow that.
"We can't leave him here," said Lucrecia, leaning back against a lab bench. "We can't. But if he is dangerous, then what about the children? And even if he isn't..."
Even if he wasn't, then what did it mean to release him? Would he stay with them, becoming a fifth member of their family that for so long had been four and only four? Ifalna had never considered herself a jealous person, but maybe it had never been tested. Life with her forced the people she loved into isolation; there was no one to challenge her for their affections.
Was that why she had locked the door? She wanted to think it was a more visceral kind of fear, watching the violence and ease with which Vincent had forced Lucrecia from the room. But maybe it wasn't.
"...maybe we just take it one day at a time," she proposed softly.
Lucrecia looked over at her. "I'm surprised to hear that from you."
Ifalna shook her head. "This man... Whatever happened to him, it happened because he cared for you. You always used to be so scared that you were dangerous, that you would hurt us. You never have."
Lucrecia was quiet for a moment, looking ahead into the dark hallway. "Whatever Hojo did to him," she said, "I don't think it's Jenova. I... don't feel him, like with Sephiroth."
"Well, then. It can't be worse than Jenova, can it?"
Lucrecia gave her a wry smile, but there was hope in it.
"We'll explain things to the children first," Ifalna decided. "He won't stay with us unless they agree, but we won't leave him here."
Lucrecia nodded slowly. "Tomorrow, then. We'll talk to them. And then we'll see if the general store still sells tranquilizer guns."
"You really think we'll need that?"
"I think it'll help convince him."
Ifalna had to concede the point. He might be more willing to leave if he believed they could subdue him. And if he wasn't, they might have to remove him by force. Either way, they wouldn't leave him for Hojo.
She wondered what the children would think, and how they might react to meeting the man, especially Sephiroth. Lucrecia spoke of Vincent when she related her time in the Jenova Project, but only in his capacity as a Turk. She hadn't explained the nuances of their relationship.
"...there's one more thing I have to ask," Ifalna realized.
"What's that?"
"You had an affair with this man. You've never once suggested... I didn't know what he looked like, before, so I thought it was clear." She looked meaningfully at Lucrecia. "Is there no chance?"
"There isn't," Lucrecia answered quietly.
"You're sure?"
"Vincent...... can't have children."
"I see."
Lucrecia dropped her head, her hair falling into her face. "I'm sorry I'm such a mess," she said. "Everything here was... I made a mess of it."
"It's all right." Ifalna stepped closer to her, catching her chin to tip her face up. "I'd rather have you and your mess than neither of them."
Lucrecia let out an incredulous chuckle, but she took Ifalna's hand. No, Ifalna thought, there was no reason to be jealous of Vincent. He had never had Lucrecia like this, in her entirety.
Come morning, both children readily agreed to bringing Vincent along. Ifalna wasn't surprised; to them, he was no different: another person to free from Hojo, another person who wasn't quite human. If he had the potential to be dangerous, well, so did Sephiroth. So did Lucrecia. They would deal with it, if it came.
Sephiroth grew pensive in the wake of their decision, while Aeris pressed them with questions. What sort of person was Vincent? Had he known her father well? What did Turks do anyway?
They impressed on her the need to be mindful of what he'd been through, and Lucrecia decided she might better persuade him if she went alone. Ifalna didn't like it, but she told herself that Vincent wouldn't hurt her. Armed with a tranquilizer gun and a flashlight, Lucrecia went determinedly back into the mansion. Ifalna would give it an hour before she followed.
The rest of them gathered their few belongings and left the inn. Ifalna helped Sephiroth to ready the chocobos, while Aeris climbed the water tower to make faces at Tifa through her bedroom window. Her memories of captivity were hazier than theirs, and it was surely easier for her to see Vincent's release in nothing but a positive light. But he would carry the time with him, always.
"I'm going to come back again," Sephiroth said, of a sudden.
Ifalna looked over at him. "What?"
"To see Jenova," he said, and the words chilled her. "I know you don't want me to," he went on, "but I don't want to just leave her alone like that."
"The Crisis committed a genocide," she said.
Sephiroth met her gaze steadily. "I know. If she were human, she could've been executed for that. But she's not, and she wasn't. Instead she's been confined all this time... I don't know. Maybe I just don't like the part of it that's like what happened to us."
Had he thought of this because of Vincent? They were freeing one of Hojo's specimens, but not the other. But she remembered what Aeris had asked her, too. "I suppose," she said slowly, "in an ideal world, we wouldn't leave it to the Shinra. They shouldn't be trusted with that responsibility."
"No. They're going to keep using her." Sephiroth frowned, looking down at his hands on the chocobo's saddle. "I don't think we can do anything to stop that right now. But I want to... mitigate it."
"Mitigate it?"
"...when we first met in the lab, you said it made it better, not being alone. I can do that for her."
"Does it deserve that...?"
Sephiroth looked back at her. "Does anyone deserve Shinra?"
Ifalna found she couldn't answer yes to that. What they had gone through was something she wouldn't wish on her worst enemy. "No," she conceded. "No one does."
He nodded. "I don't think... I don't think Mom should know, yet."
"...it would scare her," Ifalna agreed. After what had happened to her at the reactor, she would be terrified at the thought of Sephiroth anywhere near it. Ifalna didn't like it either, but she knew she couldn't stop him. If he was going to go, it was better that one of them knew.
"We'll have to tell her something," she added.
Sephiroth tilted his head. "We can say I'm visiting Cosmo Canyon."
It would be a convincing lie, for a while. As long as nothing happened, it would be convincing. Ifalna wanted it to be convincing.
The chocobo warbled uncertainly and shifted beneath her hands, but the Planet's song remained unchanged. Her anxiety was her own.
"I'll help you," she said. "But you have to promise me one thing."
Sephiroth held her gaze. "I know. I won't ever let her out."