Chapter 9
The dirt roads of the country weren't made for driving fast, but Vincent pushed the truck as hard as he could. Cloud sat silent beside him, picking up on his grim mood but seeming afraid to ask.
Twilight had fallen on Nibelheim. The street lamps illuminated a crowd gathered in the square, and as Vincent brought the truck to a halt, something horned and hulking dragged a woman screaming from her home to join the rest.
Cloud slammed the truck door and ran ahead, forgetting his helmet. "Mom!"
She stood already with the crowd, and turned to clasp her son's hands eagerly as he joined her. There were some murmurs of surprise at his appearance, but most were too preoccupied to care.
Vincent's eyes swept over the scene, taking it in. He counted ten of the monsters hemming in the villagers, each of them tensed for action but waiting on some command. All attention was directed at the far end of the square, nearer the mansion.
Vincent approached, knowing what he would find there, and once he had shouldered his way through the terrified knot of people, he saw them: Jenova and, standing beside her with the Masamune held low at his side, Sephiroth. He hadn't waited.
Sephiroth's eyes fell on him as he reached the front of the crowd, but Vincent spoke first.
"Sephiroth, what are you doing? What's going on here?"
"So you've returned," said Sephiroth. "I wondered if you would."
Vincent drew the test results from a pocket, holding up the envelope as an offering. "You wanted proof. I have it."
"For all that that is worth," Sephiroth said dismissively, and Vincent searched his eyes for a trace of any other reaction. Just yesterday morning, it would have meant something to him, to know that Vincent was his father. To know one part of himself for certain.
What had Jenova convinced him of? Where was Zack?
But if there was one thing to give him hope, it was that everything had paused. The monsters waited, the villagers waited, Jenova looked to Sephiroth, and Sephiroth's attention was fixed on him.
"To me, it means a great deal," said Vincent, drawing the envelope back to him. Again he was left with nothing but sentiment and hard truths. "And... I learned something more, from speaking to the elders at the canyon. Something Gast learned after you were born, something he was never able to tell you."
Sephiroth's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What are you talking about?"
"Jenova... isn't one of the Cetra. She never was."
Sephiroth looked sharply at Jenova. The facade of her face betrayed nothing, but the flicker of confusion on his suggested she may have let something else slip. Even if she hadn't granted him access to her thoughts or memories, there was a link there that didn't go entirely one way. Had Vincent caught her off guard? Had Sephiroth sensed it?
"You're lying," said Sephiroth, looking back at Vincent. His tone was accusatory, no longer so cool and dispassionate.
Vincent shook his head. "No. I don't claim to understand what it means, but I think when you heard it, you knew it was true, just as I did."
"The blood of the Cetra flows through my veins. I am not a monster."
"Whether you are or not depends on what you do here today. Not on what's in your blood."
"They deserve it!" Sephiroth cried, making a sweeping gesture with the Masamune. "They stood by and allowed all of it to happen. My mother's confinement, my birth, these pathetic creatures..."
The villagers stepped back from him, knotting closer together. Vincent's eyes picked out the likely fighters. The people who would try to hold off the monsters to allow the rest to escape. But there would be no escape, if Sephiroth couldn't be swayed.
"For their ignorance, they deserve death?" Vincent asked him. "Think, Sephiroth. Don't accept what Jenova has planted in your mind. You've done worse yourself in service to Shinra."
"Shinra used me."
"You think Shinra told these people the truth about their activities? We certainly didn't tell them about the Jenova Project; they barely knew we were conducting research. We took advantage of their hospitality and committed an atrocity under their noses."
Sephiroth studied the crowd with a frown, saying nothing.
Jenova spoke for the first time aloud. "Don't let him confuse you, my son," she said. "By his own admission, he was instrumental in the experiment that birthed you. Of course he wants you to forgive these people, because he's done much worse."
Sephiroth's expression grew cold again, and his grip tightened around the hilt of the Masamune. "Let him be the first, then, to face judgment."
"You're going to kill your own father?" The voice was Cloud's, and Vincent glanced at him, surprised that he would draw attention to himself, and for Vincent's sake.
"Why not?" Sephiroth asked. "What good has he ever been to me?" He turned back to Vincent. "I suppose you'll try to fight me, as Zack did. To say you can't allow me to hurt these people, to side with them against me."
So that was what had happened to Zack, Vincent thought grimly. The ally he'd hoped to have... Jenova had separated them from each other just as she'd separated each of them from Sephiroth. She'd understood their threat to her immediately.
But what was he now, on his own? Even if he let loose the beast, he wouldn't defeat Sephiroth, much less Jenova and the monsters along with him. He understood Zack's choice; it made sense for him. But Vincent knew that to choose to fight would be to lose a different battle altogether.
"No," he said.
Sephiroth was visibly taken aback. "What?"
"I won't fight you," Vincent stated. "If you feel that what you deserve from me is death, well... It strikes me as an easy punishment to bear. I failed you, then and now. How would fighting help you?"
Sephiroth stared at him, brow furrowed, head tilted slightly to one side as though trying to see him from a different angle. Vincent hadn't responded as he'd anticipated, and it was making him think.
"Shall I take care of it for you?" asked Jenova, and she took a step forward.
Sephiroth held up a hand to stop her. He turned to Tifa, who stood near the front of the crowd, holding her father's arm. "Tifa," he said. "Describe it to me in detail. When you invited Zack to dinner last night, what did he say?"
"W-what?" said Tifa, thrown by the question. It was so incongruously mundane, Vincent didn't quite understand it himself.
"I want to know," said Sephiroth.
Tifa's father put his hand over hers, and his weight shifted in readiness to propel himself in front of her, if he had to.
Tifa swallowed, forcing down her fear. "He- he turned it down at first. He said that he'd feel awkward with Papa there, and I thought he went back to the inn. But then a few minutes later, he knocked and said he'd changed his mind."
"Do you remember what time it was when he left?"
"I... It must have been a little after eight. I remember the clock chimed the hour."
Sephiroth's gaze held on her a long moment, his expression stony, and then he turned slowly to Jenova. "It was eight o'clock when I returned to the inn, and Zack was already there. So, where were you?"
He'd caught her in a lie, Vincent realized, a lie that she had used to turn him against Zack. Undoing that rift could be the key to walking him back from the precipice. Vincent held his breath.
"Sephiroth," said Jenova, "don't get caught up in these little details. You're misremembering."
"Am I? Perhaps you'd care to share with me your memories of that evening? Or, any memories at all? What was it like in the time of the Cetra? What does the Planet's voice sound like?"
"I am offering you retribution. Greatness." She was losing him.
"I want the truth."
Jenova looked back at him in silence for a long time before she gave a helpless shrug and shook her head. "You didn't want the truth. You wanted someone to make sense of your suffering, to give meaning to the acts of a foolish scientist who didn't know what he'd found. You wanted to be special. I would have let you be."
Hurt had crept into Sephiroth's expression, behind the anger. "Then you aren't..."
"One of the Cetra? Of course not. But we were well acquainted."
Sephiroth's lips parted, and he took a step back from her. "Two thousand years ago, disaster struck this Planet..." he murmured, as though reciting from something.
"You can still make your choice, understanding that," said Jenova. "You can be the disaster, or, fall prey to it. I'd been hoping for the former, but I'll make do without."
Sephiroth faltered. "I..."
Vincent stepped closer to him, within range of the Masamune. "You didn't want Shinra to use you. Don't let her do it either."
Sephiroth looked at him, that same look in his eyes as the day he'd found Vincent in that basement. A man in turmoil, desperate for something to hold onto. "If that is what she is," he said, "then isn't it what I am, too?"
"That isn't the only thing you are," Vincent told him. He approached near enough to take Sephiroth's right hand, and pressed the envelope into it. "It isn't the only thing you have."
Sephiroth's gaze fell belatedly to the envelope, as though he hadn't noticed how it had gotten there. Slowly, he lifted the Masamune, stabbed it into the earth, and tore open the results.
His eyes scanned the document within, so much more straightforward than the countless volumes that Gast had left behind. There was no need to theorize, no room for interpretation. Just a simple analysis with a simple conclusion: the probability of paternity.
"You're my father," Sephiroth said quietly, for the first time without any doubt or qualification. He looked up at Vincent. "It's actually true."
"It is," said Vincent. "And it always will be, whatever happens here today."
Sephiroth looked past him, at the faces of the villagers, and this time he really seemed to see them. The turmoil on his face slowly settled into a cold anger. He tucked the results away into his coat and turned to Jenova.
"You deceived me."
"About what I am, but not about what we are to each other. We are connected. My true nature is your true nature. We are one and the same."
Sephiroth shook his head. "I am not like you..."
"How many lives have you destroyed, single-handedly, in your time as a soldier? Can you honestly say you took no pride in it?"
"Honestly," Sephiroth repeated, and it was clear Jenova had made a misstep with that one word. "There is the difference between us. Yes, I've killed, and I've even enjoyed it, but I never had to manipulate anyone into following me. If I were to side with you... I would be giving up on a life free from deception. I wouldn't even know myself for certain, with you always in my head... No. I am not some empty thing, to be imbued with someone else's purpose. I am... whole. As I am."
Jenova nodded. "Then... you be yourself," she said. "And I'll be mine."
Her disguise vanished, revealing not the pale woman they'd found at the reactor, but an entirely alien creature four times her size, a great tentacled monster. A collective gasp of horror rose up from the crowd, and even Sephiroth started back in alarm, hurriedly gripping the hilt of the Masamune and pulling it free from the ground. Vincent backed away with him.
"Where's Zack?" Cloud asked urgently from behind them.
Sephiroth glanced back at him, his face paling with dread. "I... I left him at the reactor."
"Is he dead?" asked Vincent.
"I don't know."
Someone screamed. One of the monsters had lunged into the crowd, tackling a man. Sephiroth's head whipped around.
"She's taking control," he said.
Zangan reached the monster first, knocking it off of the villager and engaging it. Vincent unholstered his gun, but Jenova herself was moving. "Sephiroth!" he shouted, taking aim for her head.
Sephiroth swung the Masamune, and a wall of fire burst up between Jenova and the rest of them. "Get the villagers out of here!" he said. "I'll hold onto these creatures as long as I can before she takes them from me."
Vincent didn't argue. He raised his voice. "Everyone, get moving! This is your chance!"
But fear held them paralyzed. The monsters remained like sentinels encircling the crowd, and Sephiroth stood deep in concentration. In the midst of the square, Zangan wrestled with his opponent, the only source of movement. Vincent watched for a clear shot, and fired. The monster reared back, creating another opening, and he fired again and again until it fell, and lay still.
"Come on!" Tifa shouted into the hush that followed. She pulled her father with her, and as she reached Zangan she offered her other hand to help him up. The three of them approached the ring of motionless creatures, and pushed their way through. Cloud went, too, guiding his mother with him. The other villagers followed their lead, and people began to run.
Vincent hung back. He reloaded his gun and watched for any signs of movement. One of the last people through jostled a monster, and it turned towards him. Vincent's bullet caught it in the head before it could act, and he left the square with the last of the villagers.
Cloud was urging as many people as would fit into the Shinra truck, and he tossed the keys to someone else, who leapt into the driver's seat as a knot of monsters broke from Sephiroth's control and gave chase. Cloud joined Vincent, covering the villagers as they fled.
The monsters didn't go down easily. One was bleeding from the head--the one Vincent had shot moments ago, on its feet again. They felled one for good before the other two reached them. Cloud pulled out his nightstick, and Vincent swung his claw, hoping it was worth anything as a weapon. He felt the pressure of it connecting, saw it score gashes across the monster's chest, but it retaliated in kind.
Its hand slammed heavy into his side, knocking him down, and black swarmed the edge of his vision. He felt that something in his blood quicken, the beast coming awake.
Not now, he thought, at the same time wondering if the beast wasn't exactly what he needed now. He was nearly out of ammunition, he had no materia, and just one of these monsters already had him reeling. The beast was more a match for them, and against Jenova... Sephiroth would need help.
But he couldn't control it. He didn't know what it would do, whether it would attack Cloud, or the villagers, or Sephiroth...
Not now, Vincent thought again, and rolled out of the way of the next attack. He dodged the next few blows and found an opening to strike his claws deep into the monster's side. As he pulled free, the monster lunged forward, jaws opening, but someone's foot connected with its head and it stumbled back.
"Thought you could use a hand," said Zangan, dropping into a stance beside him. Tifa had joined them, too, fighting beside Cloud.
Vincent risked a glance behind him. The truck was long gone, and he could see no one else.
"They're all away safe, I hope," Zangan added. "But we've got work to do."
He put his hands up to catch the monster's arm as it swung for them, and Vincent nodded, moving in to take advantage. Together, they managed to bring the creature down.
Cloud and Tifa were holding their own, and when Vincent and Zangan moved in to help, they made quick work of the second monster.
"There were more of them than that," said Tifa, and they all looked in the direction of the square.
Whether the rest had turned on Sephiroth, or he had cut them down before they could, they were nothing but corpses now. Vincent had seen Sephiroth in action against the weaker monsters of the Nibel mountains, but this was further proof of his prowess: one man taking down more enemies than the four of them combined, and more quickly, too.
But the wall of fire had come down, and now he fought with Jenova herself. He was agile enough to evade her grasping tentacles, but Vincent could see she had him on the defensive, struggling to shield himself from her magic.
"You brought that woman back with you from the reactor," said Zangan. "Another one of Shinra's experiments?"
"Worse," said Vincent. "The source of them."
They all stood in silence for a moment, tensed as if to move but no one moving. They all understood the difference in skill; if Sephiroth was outmatched, they'd be nothing but cannon fodder.
"We need Zack," said Cloud.
Vincent shook his head. "He'll be in no condition to fight, and it's hours to the reactor."
"Well, then he needs our help," Cloud persisted. "I'm going."
"I'll go with you," said Zangan, but Tifa exclaimed suddenly as she turned her attention to him.
"You're bleeding!"
Zangan drew his cape aside, revealing more of the blood soaking through his shirt. Vincent hadn't seen him take a hit; it must have been from his earlier skirmish.
"It's not so bad," he said.
"Mt. Nibel's a hard climb," said Tifa. "You can't go like that. You... you should go after the others. Look after Papa for me. Okay?"
Zangan hesitated, but he nodded gruffly.
"What about you?" asked Cloud.
"Me? I'm going with you." When he opened his mouth to protest, Tifa went on, "Really? You're going to argue with me after I just saved your lying butt?"
"Wha..."
"Honestly, you couldn't even be bothered to say hello until there was a crisis."
Cloud scratched his head. "Sorry."
"Well, come on. Zack needs our help."
The two of them hurried off and ducked behind the inn, taking the back way to avoid the square. Zangan stood with Vincent, watching the fight. A blast knocked Sephiroth into the water tower hard enough to crack the wood, but he rolled aside before Jenova's tentacle slammed down after him. The Masamune flashed, severing it only partially.
"This may be a fight he has to take on alone," said Zangan. "Whatever that thing is... you're no match for it."
Vincent's hands clenched at his sides, and he felt only one of them. "He is my son. I cannot do nothing. Not again."
"You'll get yourself killed."
Vincent took a slow breath and let it out. A steady buzz ran through his veins; the beast was alert, but not riled enough to emerge. What if he invited it? Would he have any more control than before? Or would it instead consume him completely?
"That isn't what I'm afraid of," he said. He glanced at Zangan. "You should get going if you want to catch up to the others. Make sure you get that looked at."
"I get the feeling you're about to do something crazy." Zangan offered his hand. "Good luck."
Vincent took it, the contact a welcome jolt to push him towards action. "Thank you," he said. Never mind past failures or uncertainties. His son needed his help, so whatever he had to give, he would give it.
Zangan turned to go, and Vincent turned for the fight.
He had a few shots left, so he ducked behind the water tower and unholstered his gun. Jenova was a relatively stationary target, relying on her magic to hold Sephiroth at a distance. Vincent took aim for her head and fired.
Her head snapped back and her tentacles writhed, but then she simply twisted, her glowing eyes falling on him. He got off another shot, and then a wave of force hit him, knocking him to the ground. Something wrapped around his ankle, pulled, and then went slack.
Sephiroth hauled him to his feet and behind the water tower as a concentrated stream of fire shot their way.
"I appreciate the gesture," Sephiroth hissed, "but she'll kill you. Get out of here."
"I can't leave you to do this alone," Vincent said.
Sephiroth threw up some sort of barrier spell and met his gaze. He opened his mouth to say something, paused, and then said, "Then let it out."
"What?"
"You're too weak as a human and you know it."
Vincent shook his head. "I might not recognize you as my ally. And..."
"You will. And you'll come back from it. You brought me back; I'll return the favor."
His dead certainty caught Vincent off-guard. The man was in his element here, in the midst of battle, giving commands. He knew himself like this, he understood this. If Sephiroth was confident that the beast would be a help to him...
"All right," he said. "But I may need the danger to bring it out. Don't protect me."
Sephiroth nodded, and Vincent risked a glance around the side of the water tower. Jenova was drawing one of the monster's corpses into herself, a grotesque scene that Vincent didn't know whether to quantify as eating.
"She's reabsorbing the pieces of herself," said Sephiroth, without needing to look.
"Are you still...?"
"Connected?" Sephiroth finished, and his grimace made the answer obvious. "Her words mean nothing to me now."
Vincent wasn't certain if that was true so much as Sephiroth needed it to be. It couldn't be easy fighting her with her voice in his head. He hesitated, then laid his hand on Sephiroth's back, wanting to convey something, wanting to give him words that did mean something.
"I'm proud of you," he said.
Vincent had seen this look on Sephiroth's face before, a quiet astonishment that said even the affection Vincent could manage to show him was more than he'd known. It was heartbreaking, and as before he swiftly brushed it off.
"Let's just get on with this," Sephiroth said. "The rest can wait."
Vincent left the cover of the water tower and fired his last bullet into Jenova's neck. Her tentacle whipped out and grabbed him around the waist, binding his arms to his sides. She lifted him into the air, and the tentacle coiled tighter. The skin of his bare arm began to burn dully, as though her flesh itself was poison, and the beast clamored in his veins.
Instead of fighting to suppress it, Vincent shut his eyes and faced it. Help me, he thought. Here is a worthy opponent for you. Fight her with me, with my son.
The shift wasn't so raw as before, though it was still more painful than anything else he'd ever experienced. It happened quickly this time, the changes ripping through his body in moments, tearing him free from Jenova's grasp.
The beast lunged for her immediately. His claws rent into her flesh, and he ignored how the ichor inside of her seemed to burn him. The owner of this body had given him free rein to tear her to pieces, and he meant to.
Do you really think that will be enough? Jenova asked him, speaking to him in his own voice. Sephiroth wondered if she always had, without him ever realizing. Which thoughts had been his own, and which had she fed to him? How had he come to look at Zack and thought nothing but traitor? How had he looked at simple villagers and seen a threat?
You always knew they weren't on your side.
Wherever the thought came from, Sephiroth shoved it aside. He had a fight to win.
Jenova had put a halt to Vincent's initial onslaught with a water spell, and he stumbled back, choking for air. Sephiroth called down a bolt spell to disrupt her magic, and in the half-second that it stunned her, he risked darting in with the Masamune.
Her tentacles lashed at him, keeping him from reaching her body. Her skin was tough, making them hard to sever, and when he didn't, the cuts he made would close up again in short order.
A fight without end.
Vincent's monster was undeterred. The instant he recovered he leapt back into the fray, tearing at anything he could get his claws or teeth on. He tore apart the end of one tentacle, snarled, and kept on. Sephiroth wondered how much of Vincent was still in there. The unbridled ferocity was unlike him, but the determination...
It was an ally, at any rate, and one he quickly realized had no sense of strategy. The beast lived to be in the fray, but as wild as he was, Sephiroth could at least rely on his unceasing offensive to draw Jenova's attention from him.
There were breaks now in her barrage of magic against him, and he could pull together more and more powerful spells with which to strike back at her. Everything he'd learned from materia, but also, everything she used against him became a tool at his disposal. Something he could mimic. It had taken him an entire day to learn to tap into this magic, but now the floodgates were open.
Then, in the middle of the fight, she vanished--gone from one place to reappear behind him--or was that only how she'd wanted it to appear to them? A tentacle bored through his middle, lifted him, and flung him across the square. His back struck a lamppost and he fell to lie crumpled at its base. He could feel his blood warm beneath him.
Vincent's beast leapt into the space between them, and summoned a wall of fire. Protecting him? The beast glanced back at him, and Sephiroth nodded in acknowledgment.
Somehow Sephiroth could feel his flesh already beginning to knit itself together, abnormally fast but not as fast as magic. He thumbed the hilt of the Masamune, instinctively feeling for his Restore materia, but found it empty. A moment of thoughtlessness. Foolish. He reached instead for the well of magic within him, and healed himself.
How deep was that reservoir? It felt limitless, but he had never tested it, never realized it existed. In the midst of battle, he didn't like not knowing.
If you had stayed with me, you would know.
Would I? We are of a kind, but I am also something different.
Diluted. Weak.
Hybrid. You don't know my limits, and that scares you, too.
Twilight had passed into night, and with it the balance shifted. Bit by bit, they tore pieces from her, and they didn't allow her to reclaim them. When she tried to fool them with her illusions, Sephiroth realized he could always sense where she really was, and they lost their power over him.
The mansion loomed dark beyond her, out of reach of the lamplight. The thoughts of vengeance he'd first had in that basement--had they been his own? Or hers? Had she been calling to him even then?
That was where she belonged, he thought, with the relics of the others who had walked those rooms and planned his creation, not his birth. To them, and to her, he'd been nothing but a tool. All of them had seen him only for what he could do.
Well, he would show them.
He and Vincent forced Jenova back against the gate into the yard, but she knew his mind, and she rallied her strength there. A spell burst upon them that Sephiroth couldn't name--a blinding green light and the absence of sound, followed by a horrific tearing in his whole body. Physically, it made no wounds, but it left him stunned, disoriented, struggling for the focus that magic required.
Jenova grabbed him, lifted him high above her as though she meant to drop him into a nonexistent mouth and swallow him whole.
You are a part of me. A stolen piece that I will have back again, bit by bit if I must.
Another tentacle gripped his leg and pulled. He swung the Masamune, but couldn't slash deeply enough.
Vincent's monster leapt for her head, his hind claws burrowing into her chest for purchase while his foreclaws raked across her eyes. She shrieked in Sephiroth's mind, and her grip loosened enough for him to break free. He landed on his feet, barely, and as he found his balance, he pushed out a wave of force to throw her through the gate into the yard.
As if he sensed what was coming, Vincent's monster leapt clear.
Sephiroth drew on the reservoir within him and recalled a spell Jenova had tried to use on him; a blazing flare burst around her, but he didn't let it die. He kept drawing on that well of magic, feeding the flames. He fed them with his fury--her manipulation, her betrayal, and worst of all, the thing she had nearly made of him. Unthinking, unquestioning, a conduit for her wrath.
Vincent's monster joined in with his own magic, revelling in it, and soon nothing could be seen of Jenova but the flames that engulfed her. An unearthly shriek rose up from within, a sound from someone who had no voice of her own. The stench was terrible, but Sephiroth took a perverse pleasure in it, in the destruction of her rotten flesh. He kept on feeding the flames.
The blaze grew large enough that it caught the roof of the mansion beyond. Before long, it, too, went up in flames, a brilliant display against the night. The smoke blotted out the stars overhead. A fire to consume everything.
Jenova's screams died out abruptly, and in the silence--
With the silence came black.