Lucrecia - 2002
Lucrecia didn't recognize the jungle around her. Lately she kept struggling to find her way, her sense of direction telling her the right way felt wrong. She stood perfectly still, because Ifalna didn't lose her way, and surely Ifalna would find her.
The canopy was so still, and unnaturally silent--of course, Sephiroth had imagined it this way to make it easier for them to speak. He stood in front of her as though he'd always been there.
As she recognized the dreamscape, Lucrecia remembered that Sephiroth was in Nibelheim. He must have learned something there that he needed her to know. They spoke like this so rarely since they had learned to control it, and almost never without asking.
No. If he had discovered something vital to the Corel resistance, he would have relayed it on the radio network. Why reach out to her?
"Something's happened," she said. It wasn't a question. The stillness of the jungle, a moment frozen in time, felt suffocating.
"She's gone," Sephiroth said. "They're moving her."
Color leeched from the trees as Lucrecia fought to remain in the dream. She couldn't be trusted when it came to Jenova, she wanted to run away, to wake, but she clung to her son's voice, and then his hands. His arms were around her, and the color returned.
"Moving... where?" she managed. No wonder she was unmoored. Jenova had been an anchored point within her internal compass for 25 years.
"Midgar," he said. "We can't let them."
"But they've already taken her."
"I know. I know, and we can't move fast enough to intercept them. If Wutai had committed their navy... But we can't let them do this."
Lucrecia drew back slowly. It wasn't only Jenova's ever-present pull contributing to his urgency, and Shinra wasn't just transporting an invaluable specimen clear of a combat zone.
"...what do they mean to do with her?" she asked.
Sephiroth turned away from her, as if he were about to say something shameful. "The pods were all empty, but the last subjects they pulled out of there weren't dead. They've finally figured out the right formula."
Human subjects augmented with a balance of Mako and Jenova cells, a short-hand version of what Sephiroth was. These would be monsters, dangerous and mindless, so that Shinra could release them against a population with the certainty that none of them would choose to defect.
"But Midgar is..." They hadn't anticipated this. Retrieving Jenova now meant returning to the heart of the place they'd been running from all these years. "We were barely ready for the first attacks on Corel. We can't take the offensive."
"We have to," said Sephiroth. "I... thought of doing it on my own."
Lucrecia inhaled sharply. "You can't do it alone."
Sephiroth's back was still to her. "I think I nearly could do it on my own. You know what I am. What we are." He shook his head slowly. "But that's why I shouldn't. I could get to her, and then what? It might be in my power to contain her, but she'd never teach me how."
"Ifalna won't want to do this."
There was a pause, and then he looked back at her. "I know. I'm on my way to Dyne. We can transport her in the prison she already has, for now, just to get her away from the Shinra. But I don't think it'll hold for long outside of their facilities, so you'll need to ask Ifalna: how did the Cetra contain her?"
Lucrecia wasn't sure that was a question she ought to know the answer to. As if her knowing might betray them, as if Jenova didn't already know.
It wasn't what scared her most, in the moment.
"You mean to go without us?"
"It's better not to risk you all. Isn't it?" But his expression said that he didn't want to go without them. He didn't want to face the lab again, without them, but he couldn't bring himself to ask it of them.
And maybe, he was afraid of them seeing what he did when he got there.
It had scarcely been two weeks since Shinra had worked out that Corel was sabotaging the reactor's construction and brought in troops. They'd marched on an abandoned town, and resistance fighters had struck in their confusion. Sephiroth had been among them.
Lucrecia hadn't, but she'd heard over the radio network a few mentions of his performance, the speakers both awed and a little frightened. Shinra had trained him up as a child soldier, but in the years since learning what he was, he'd honed skills they never knew he had. Many he'd discovered on his own, others Jenova had helped him to unlock. She knew, even so, that he hadn't employed the full extent of his power in Corel. He didn't want their allies to see him as a monster.
A return to Midgar, to a place that inspired in her simultaneous rage and fear, might not be a place he could show restraint.
But he would still be her son. He would always be her son.
She took his hand again. "I'll talk to Ifalna. Even if Dyne supports you, I... I couldn't protect you from that place, before. I won't let you face it without your family now. Promise you'll wait for me?"
Sephiroth shook his head. "I don't need you to protect me. I haven't for a long time now."
"I know you're strong," she said. "And you must think me... fragile, at times. I've put too much on you. But I am your mother, and you won't go back there alone. That place was my doing, my responsibility."
As was Hojo.
"...all right. I'll meet you at the hideout."
Lucrecia squeezed his hand, but before she could say anything, Sephiroth and the jungle were gone, leaving her in darkness.
She woke staring at the ceiling of their hut. She had rolled away from Ifalna, who lay sleeping soundly beside her. The open windows drew cool air across the room, and leaves rustled gently in the dark outside. Winter was settling into Gongaga, such as it was. The air was a little cooler, a little drier. Snow was a fantasy.
Lucrecia let herself lie there a moment, indulging in fantasy. What Sephiroth proposed wasn't an assault on Midgar, but a surgical strike on the Shinra building. In and out. Still, it was a strike at the heart of the beast, and she couldn't help think of Shinra's end. What might open to them, with Shinra gone. She could take Ifalna north to her beloved Knowlespole.
This wouldn't be the fell swoop that ended Shinra, but the Corel resistance had energized her, emboldened her. A year ago, could she have imagined returning to that lab without trembling? It had been a feat not to quake at the mere sight of Shinra soldiers.
It should have frightened her. The thought of Jenova frightened her. But not the place itself. Like Sephiroth, she felt she could walk in and tear the lab to pieces. Maybe it was because of Jenova that she felt that way. Jenova wanted them to come, not to be afraid.
Neither of them could go alone.
She wasn't sure what Ifalna's answer would be. She'd grown brave, but the lab was another thing entirely. Vincent would come, if she asked him. Maybe whether she asked him or not. He had his own score to settle with Hojo.
Lucrecia felt a little giddy at the thought of finally ending him. At last she could be a widow.
People sometimes called Ifalna her wife, but they'd never married. Ifalna confessed she and Gast had never had a ceremony either; making promises in front of witnesses, signing papers, these were human traditions. What need had they for any promises but what they spoke to each other?
Lucrecia had felt differently when she was younger, a silly little girl so taken by her first praise from a man. She had wanted to claim it, to show it off like some kind of an accomplishment, that she could secure a husband without being anyone's picture of a traditional wife. Even after all these years, she was never certain whether it had been an intentional trap, or whether he hadn't known himself either. She'd thought him so evolved in his appreciation for her intelligence, but he couldn't stand that she was the better scientist.
He'd been fine, when her genius had been his alone to remark on, but at the faintest praise from Gast, he'd had to qualify it. She couldn't claim full credit, they'd come up with that together. It was an adequate start, but had she considered this or that factor? Did she really think that hypothesis was sound enough to bring it to Gast? But if she confided it only to Hojo, then he would take it to Gast himself. She hadn't seen any malice in it at first; they were partners, they bounced ideas off of each other, and maybe he simply forgot which was hers. Forgot to give her credit.
But he never forgot to remind her that he'd had a hand in her work.
She wondered what he would make of her claiming him now. Her mistake, her responsibility. Maybe it was the same way he saw her. A mistake, an unfortunately necessary factor in Sephiroth's creation.
He wasn't necessary to anything now.
Ifalna stirred as light filtered into their home. Turning, she must have read something in Lucrecia's expression. "...how long have you been awake?" she asked.
"An hour. Maybe two. Sephiroth reached out to me."
Ifalna breathed slowly in and out before she asked the question: "What's happened?"
Lucrecia related what Sephiroth had told her: Shinra's plans, his own, and what he had asked of Ifalna. And finally, her own promise to him.
Ifalna's hair pooled in the bed around her as she sat trying to process it. "Surely... Isn't it a rash decision? To rush there now, I... I understand what he wants to prevent. But is going to the source the only way?"
"I know it frightens you. It's all of our worst fears in one place. You don't have to come. But I can't let him go alone."
"What worries me is that it's deliberately blinding you both to other options. It wants you off balance, running towards it. Sephiroth has kept his promise these past few years, but he's grown attached to it. What if, this time..."
Lucrecia shook her head slowly. "I don't know if you're wrong. What would you suggest we do? If there's another way, we can go to him, and convince him."
But they sat in silence for a long moment, neither proposing anything. Ifalna dragged her hands down her face and said at last, "The only thing I can think of is something horrible. To let Shinra do as they mean to, and bring down the ship they use to send these monsters after us."
It was an option, but it was indeed horrible. To allow Shinra to make victims of who knew how many men, leaving them to a brief nightmare existence before they were cut down. And there were no guarantees that they would be able to acquire the necessary intelligence. Shinra's monsters might well slip past them, and they would have prevented nothing.
And, more than that...
"...as long as they have Jenova, they can just keep trying."
"...I've never been able to figure out an answer to that," Ifalna admitted. "We all know it: Shinra can't be the stewards of Jenova's confinement forever. But who else could?"
"Do you know what Sephiroth asked? How the Cetra contained her before?"
Ifalna shook her head slightly. "I do, and I don't. It's magic I've never used, and it isn't something one person can cast alone. Even with Aeris... It just isn't possible, anymore."
"What if Sephiroth helped you?" Lucrecia proposed. "His magic is strong."
"But it doesn't come from the Planet. It's... different. I don't know that they can work together in the same way."
"You could try, couldn't you?"
"Maybe." Ifalna looked up at her. "I'm sorry. I know I sound as though I'm doubting him, but... it's my magic I know isn't enough. I can't stand against Jenova, so it's..."
"He can't do it alone either," Lucrecia finished.
There was a beat, and then Ifalna took her hands suddenly. "I want to come. I'll come. Neither of you should face it alone."
"Are you sure?"
Ifalna nodded. "It's my duty, in every way it could be. To protect the world from the Crisis, and to protect my family. For once, they're aligned, and it does scare me, but I can't shy away. I'll go."
Lucrecia leaned into her until their foreheads met. "...thank you."
They rose and dressed. Readying to leave would be an easy thing; they had only just come home. The packs they'd carried when guiding Corel refugees to even more secluded homes in the jungle lay on the floor, the clothes they'd worn lying unwashed in a basket. Lucrecia didn't mind the nomadic life, as long as she had somewhere to return to.
"You talk to Aeris," she proposed, tying back her hair, "and I'll go find Vincent."
"I know he'll want to come with us," said Ifalna as they left the bedroom, "but will you at least suggest he stay with Aeris?"
"Stay with me?" Aeris repeated. She had already come down from the loft and lit the wood stove for breakfast. "And where are you two going?"
Lucrecia looked to Ifalna, who answered, slowly, "Midgar."
"Midgar," Aeris repeated. "Is that a joke?"
Lucrecia shook her head. "Shinra has shipped Jenova there, to begin mass production on their 'supersoldiers.'"
Aeris set down the pan she'd retrieved, her expression tightening as she processed that. Then she said, "Sephiroth's already on his way, isn't he? That's why you've decided to go, all of a sudden."
"He's seeking help from Dyne first, but yes."
"And you just expect me to stay behind?"
"I don't want all of us marching back into that place," said Ifalna. If she could have found a way, she wouldn't have had any of them going.
Aeris planted her hands on her hips. "I can make up my own mind, thanks. I'm almost 18 and you're still treating me like a baby! You didn't do this to Sephiroth when he was my age."
"When Sephiroth was your age, we didn't even let him go to a town hall meeting," Lucrecia corrected, even as she marvelled at the difference. They had been so frightened just at the thought of revealing themselves. "This is Shinra Headquarters."
"And I'm going," Aeris maintained.
"Aeris..." Ifalna said gently. "You haven't even thought about it."
"What's there to think about? He's my brother. You're my moms. If you all got caught... you think I'd be safe? You think I wouldn't come after you?"
Lucrecia exchanged glances with Ifalna. Even as a child, Aeris's promises to flee with her brother should they be captured had been suspect. Now, she was beyond even the pretense.
"I'm not anywhere near helpless either," Aeris went on. "Seph's been helping me learn offensive magic."
"What?" said Ifalna.
"I wanted to do more for the resistance than just hide people. All we've ever done is hide."
"And he's been... teaching you?"
Aeris nodded. "For a while now, yeah. It was tricky at first since I can't feel his magic, but we figured it out. I'm not five years old. I can fight them now."
Lucrecia glanced again at Ifalna. She wouldn't say it first in front of Aeris, but surely they were both thinking it: if Aeris had been able to learn from Sephiroth, then maybe his magic could work together with that of the Cetra.
What Ifalna said was, "You want to fight with the resistance."
"I do. And I'm older than some of the boys they've got fighting with them, you know."
"I know. What I mean is that... That means fighting as a team, each person with their own role. Some of those roles aren't glamorous. I don't know whether Dyne will agree to help us. I don't know what our plan will look like. But if you come, you'll need to play a part. Do you understand?"
"As long as that part isn't 'keep watch from five miles outside the city,'" said Aeris, and Lucrecia had to fight to stifle a laugh, because she was sure it had crossed Ifalna's mind.
"I just don't want you throwing yourself into danger you aren't ready for," Ifalna said patiently. "You say you've been practicing. You haven't been in a real fight."
Aeris arched her eyebrows. "Have you?"
Ifalna drew in a slow breath. "No. Not really. And so it won't be the role anyone ought to depend on me for. I am going to support Sephiroth, in whatever way I can."
At last Aeris's posture relaxed, and she nodded. "Okay. That's what I want to do, too."
Ifalna nodded her assent. "All right."
All of them would be returning together, then. After years of taking every measure to avoid it, it should have frightened her. Instead, Lucrecia felt a kind of relief. It would no longer be at their backs.
She found Vincent leaning against the wall of the hut outside. She never seemed to catch him sleeping, something Ifalna found disconcerting, but it was no different from when he'd been a Turk. He made himself a sentinel.
"...did you hear much of that?" she asked him. He would never eavesdrop on their bedroom talk, but Aeris's raised voice would have attracted his notice.
He nodded. "You're returning to Midgar."
"Yes." She wasn't sure exactly what to say, so she let the question hang between them unsaid.
"I'll go," he said, peeling himself away from the wall. "Of course I'll support your mission, but mine is Hojo."
"Don't expect me to save him for you if I find him first."
Vincent blinked. "But Lucrecia... you've never killed anyone before."
He said it as though that was some kind of barrier to the act--not that she lacked the skill, but that she had yet to cross some threshold that would allow her to take a human life. As if that mattered when it came to Hojo.
"There's only one person I've ever wanted to," she said.
He was quiet for a moment. "...I'm glad I never made that list."
"Of course you didn't," she said, though she knew what she'd screamed at him from the confines of her room at the inn. "I always knew what happened between us was my own fault. I think... I'm better at taking responsibility, now. I hope I am."
He looked at her, and reiterated none of the apologies from when they had first released him. He probably still blamed himself, but he knew she wouldn't let him say it.
Instead he said, "It will be good to bring it to an end. I wished I could have stopped you... I'll help you end it."
Lucrecia looked out at the village. Wisps of smoke rose above other roofs, evidence of breakfast cooking, and out of sight came the cluck of chickens as their neighbor gave them their morning feed. Hidden away in some of these houses were the elderly and young children of Corel. In others were workshops crafting radio equipment, stitching together armor from monster hide, and parcelling out food. It had all the appearance of the slow village life she would have disdained in her youth, and a solidarity beneath she had known nothing of.
"Do you think you'll stay with us, after?" she asked Vincent.
"What?"
"I'm not asking you to leave," she said. "I just... wonder. I've been wondering. I know you feel like you owe me something, and I don't know if that's the main reason you stay. Once we do this, that reason will be gone, won't it?"
"...where would you expect me to go?"
Lucrecia spread her hands. "You could do anything, Vincent. Life as a Turk was so... rigid. And if that was all you wanted, then I don't think I could've tempted you."
In the end, he hadn't been suited to it, she thought-- to being an uncaring protector. The world had shown him little regard, and so he'd thought himself able to be detached in turn. But he cared, and it had come in sharp conflict with his duties.
She knew he cared about them now, but there was so much else twisted up in it when it came to her and Sephiroth. He was easiest with Aeris: a clean slate, a new experience in being her adopted uncle. He could have more of that if he left.
"Well... I suppose I've yet to find another temptation," Vincent said, his tone playful though he didn't smile. "I'm here because I want to be. Maybe that will change. It hasn't, yet."
"I guess we'll all be a little freer after this," Lucrecia mused. "Strange, to be able to imagine it."
"...yes," Vincent agreed quietly.
Lucrecia smiled at him and turned back towards the door. "Come on. We'd better eat before we go."
Dyne and his people were currently stashed in a cave system west of Corel, one group of many. Barret's was farther north, but here they were beneath the mountains that ringed the crater lake. These walls were roughly hewn, but striations hinted at the bluish stone in that lovers' cave. Lucrecia didn't often think of it. The first time, she had purported a scientific curiosity in how the lake had been formed, but the only thing she'd explored there had been Vincent's body. It felt strange to be so near to it now. Near to her old self, selfish and heedless of consequences.
She had changed, hadn't she? She wanted Hojo dead, but she would abandon that goal if her family's safety demanded it.
"We've dealt with monsters before," Dyne was saying. They sat with him and a few of his de facto lieutenants while Ifalna and Aeris helped the rest of his crew sort through the provisions they'd brought with them. "The local thunderbirds're somethin' nasty. Whatever Shinra's cookin' up, we'll handle it, but we ain't anywhere near ready to hit Midgar."
"I don't think you understand what I'm telling you," said Sephiroth. "These aren't natural monsters, or even the mutated kind you get close to a reactor. Shinra's taking humans and changing them."
"So they're men, then? Some kinda supersoldier?"
"They aren't men. They used to be, but that's all been stripped away from them."
Dyne shrugged. "Sounds like they ain't gonna be too smart then."
Sephiroth shook his head. "They don't need to be. They'll have inhuman strength, speed, and healing. There won't be any reasoning with them; even pain won't discourage them. They'll overrun you."
Dyne eyed him uncertainly. "How're you so sure 'bout this anyhow? Thought you said all they had so far were prototypes."
"I'm sure because... I know what they're being infused with."
"This Jenova thing you want us to nab," said Dyne. They'd explained to him there was a specimen in Shinra's possession, a terrible ancient monster. If he was comparing it to thunderbirds, then he really hadn't grasped what they meant by that.
"Yes," Sephiroth said. "Jenova is... what single-handedly caused the extinction of the Ancients. Even something with a fraction of its power is too dangerous to let loose."
Lucrecia reached out to settle a hand on his arm, because it pained her to hear him speak of it that way. Jenova as a thing, himself as something dangerous.
"Something mindless like that, I mean," he added, avoiding her gaze.
Dyne glanced between the two of them. "Feel like I'm still missin' somethin' here."
Sephiroth drew a slow breath. "...this is something Shinra wanted to do with Wutai," he said quietly. "They made their first true prototype a long time ago, but they weren't able to use me."
Lucrecia froze. Had he really just said that?
"You?" said Dyne. He shook his head, even as his lieutenants exchanged uneasy looks, because it wasn't so incredulous to them as he made it sound. "Don't know what you're talkin' about. You're still a man. Strong, sure, but--"
"I may be a man," Sephiroth interrupted, "but that doesn't make me human."
"Sephiroth, stop," said Lucrecia, tightening her grip on his arm.
He turned his gaze on her now, something pleading in it that belied the calm of his voice. "They need to understand," he said, "and I'm... Can't I show them what I am? I can pretend I'm something else, but it's always there, and I think they feel it. They might as well have proof."
"Have you thought about this?" she pressed. "Really thought about it?"
"...I don't want to be accepted for only half of what I am. You understand, don't you?"
Lucrecia thought of how there were no secrets between her and Ifalna, how Ifalna knew not only what ran through her veins but every worst thought that had run through her mind--and loved her anyway. She had never wanted Sephiroth to feel that there was anything wrong with him, all the while knowing that there would be those unable to accept him. But how could she act like it was an inevitability? How could she act like the only path to acceptance was to hold himself back?
Her flaws were of her own making, and Ifalna loved her anyway. Sephiroth was without fault.
She relaxed her grip, and let go his arm.
"You gettin' to some kinda point...?" Dyne wondered.
Sephiroth turned back to him. "I'm going to show you," he said. "Whatever you see, I promise you aren't in any danger now. It's only an illusion."
With that, the cave dimmed around them, darkness isolating them from sight of the nearby corridor. The lantern flames vanished, and the remaining light instead turned to the cool green of reflected Mako. A monster stepped out of the shadows: humanoid but not human. A hulking, hairless shape with a rictus grin and crown of horns. Long claws tipped its limbs and spines protruded from a greyish flesh stretched taut over its muscles. Deep-set in its face were eyes glowing a shade of pink that made Lucrecia stop breathing.
Dyne and his men all jerked to their feet, some shouting, others reaching for weapons. One man raised a rifle, his finger to the trigger, but Sephiroth was behind him in a flash, yanking it out of his grasp. He hadn't allowed anyone to see him move; one moment he was seated, the next he was simply there.
Lucrecia had seen him look and sound like other people, she had spent hours safely under his cloak of invisibility, but she'd never seen him pull together illusions like this. It was like the power he had in his dreamscape, to bend the world precisely to his will.
"The hell is this?" Dyne demanded.
Sephiroth stepped out from their midst, moving back before them with the rifle held lowered in his hands. "This creature is what you'd be facing. This magic is mine, and theirs will be clumsier, but it will come to them as an instinct. Forget your thunderbirds. Jenova's magic isn't of this world at all."
Still on edge, one of the men lunged forward, but Dyne caught him and hauled him back.
"What you're doin' is some kinda mind trick?" he asked. He hadn't let go of the other man, and maybe that grip on something real helped to steady him. "Or did you... teleport? They gonna be able to do that?"
"I didn't teleport," Sephiroth said. "I disguised my movement. They'll confuse your senses, and they'll move fast. You don't want to fight these things."
"...I seen you fight, some," said Dyne. "If Shinra already knew how to make you... why'd they take their time figurin' these things out?"
Sephiroth shook his head. "Because they made me this way before I was born."
At this, Dyne finally glanced at Lucrecia. She looked away.
"And," Sephiroth added, "because I'm still human enough to choose who I fight for."
Dyne regarded him for a long moment. He released the other man and nodded. "...glad you're on our side."
Sephiroth let the illusion fade. The monster vanished, the lanterns flickered back to life, filling the room with a warm glow, and people walked past in the corridor outside, unaware of what had happened within. Sephiroth offered the rifle back to the man he'd taken it from, who accepted it shakily.
"I didn't... want you to see me like them," Sephiroth said, his discomfort at last bleeding into his voice.
"Well, you ain't," Dyne said simply. "Obviously. Shit. It ain't you that's scarin' me, it's... fuckin' Shinra. I had no idea."
Lucrecia smoothed her hands on her pants to keep herself from clenching them until it hurt. "Shinra's done terrible things for a long time, in the shadows," she said. "We didn't think that's what we were doing with Sephiroth, but... they would have made something terrible of him, had they kept him. So we need to stop them now."
Dyne nodded slowly. Unlike with Sephiroth, she thought his judgment of her would be a slower, heavier thing. Sephiroth hadn't chosen his existence; she had. For the moment, he said nothing of it. "We ain't gonna go runnin' off half-cocked, no matter what you try to scare into us," was what he said. "But they just moved this thing, so we got some time, right? We'll come up with a plan."
"...thank you," said Sephiroth.
"Yeah. Well. This's for all of us, right?"
They left Dyne and his men to process it amongst themselves. Sephiroth turned to her, eyes searching her face.
"...I didn't mean to implicate you," he said.
Lucrecia shook her head. "You didn't say anything untrue. I'm... I've always been a harder person to accept, and that's my own doing. But I have my family. If Dyne and his friends choose to keep me at arm's length, it doesn't matter."
"I don't think you're a hard person to accept."
"Well, you're a sweet boy," she said, and when his mouth twisted at being called a boy, she smiled. "And I think, maybe, you're right. I was so afraid for you to be out in the open... afraid for you to have to carry all we gave you. But you've always faced it honestly. It doesn't hold you back."
"None of you ever let me face it alone," he said.
"Not this time either," Lucrecia said, her smile tight. There had been times when she'd leaned on him more than he'd leaned on her, and that had been unfair. She hadn't faced Jenova since their first return to Nibelheim years ago, but she wouldn't let it shatter her. It was secrets and denial that weakened them, but she was who she was. Let Jenova try.