Chapter 39
Aeris's unfailing sense of direction had had only one destination, and she was at as much of a loss as any of them when it came to the way forward. Their map didn't even show the Forgotten City, much less any roads out of it, and Jessie hadn't paid the area much attention when she'd had access to Bugenhagen's planetarium. Zack and Cloud had found the entrance to a cave leading into the mountains, and there was some evidence that other people had explored it before them. They hoped that was a sign that it led through to the other side.
It felt strange pressing on again so quickly, as though nothing much had happened in the city. They'd done something really important there yesterday, or at least Aeris had. But, maybe it wasn't so different from the morning after they'd bombed the No. 1 reactor. They'd been so worried when they realized Tifa hadn't made it back, and by the time they were reunited, the impulse to celebrate had passed. There was more to do.
And there was still Sephiroth ahead, in the Northern Crater. Jessie wondered if they'd take the time to celebrate after that.
She wondered if they'd all be there to celebrate.
It wasn't just Zack and Cloud. That was where the focus had fallen yesterday, but there was no guarantee that they would all make it through the battle with Sephiroth to see Holy's arrival. She thought most of them would, but...
They came to a few dead-ends within the caves, and one tough climb where Jessie needed Tifa to help her up, but after a couple hours, they saw natural light ahead, and shut off their flashlights. A dusting of snow had blown in through the cave opening, and the fields beyond were blindingly white. Jessie stopped beside Aeris and squinted.
The snow stretched almost as far as she could see, broken only by a dim glimpse of mountains in the distance ahead.
"We're a long way from Midgar," she remarked to Aeris, "aren't we?"
Aeris nodded mutely, and she took a few steps forward, boots sinking into the snow with that faint crunch that brought Jessie back to her childhood. Snowball fights through the shadows of the plate's scaffolding overhead.
Tifa stood watching Aeris fondly, but at Jessie's glance, she gave her head a shake and started out into the snow herself, testing its depth. A few paces from the cave entrance, it was about half a foot deep.
"This isn't bad," she said, "but it's going to get tiring before too long..."
"We'll deal with it," said Barret. "Just wanna make sure we hit those mountains before dark. I ain't interested in campin' way out in the open."
Tifa nodded in agreement. "All right. Let's get going."
Farther from the caves, a light wind picked up, stirring the surface layer of snow and blowing cold in their faces. Jessie pulled her hood tighter and glanced down at Nanaki, walking easily to her right.
"Are you really warm enough?" she wondered.
"I'm fine," he replied. "My winter coat is coming in."
Zack glanced back at them. "Your winter coat?"
"Don't you know anything about cats?" said Yuffie, and Zack shrugged his shoulders.
"I mean, yeah, but..."
"That's the funny thing about humans," said Nanaki. "Once you accept others as sentient, you start to perceive them as human, regardless of appearances. But, I do still have fur, you know."
"Well, I'm glad it's doing its job," said Jessie. Frankly, she was a little envious in the moment.
They soon fell into walking single-file, which made it easier following in the wake of those ahead. They took turns leading the way, but the mountains ahead still seemed far off, even as the ones behind them grew distant. Jessie couldn't help feeling very small, in the middle of all that white, walking in the footsteps of her friends.
Maybe it would be her, she thought, who wouldn't be there. It wouldn't be such a bad way to go--giving her life to save the Planet, the way Biggs had given his for the people of Sector 7. Going out in a blaze of glory. Maybe that was as much as an ordinary person like her could do against Sephiroth.
"You okay there, Jess?" Barret asked her. He'd just dropped back from the lead, letting Zack replace him, and fell into step beside her.
"You ever feel like you're out of place?" she asked him.
"What d'you mean?"
"Well... There's our fearless leader, seems like she can survive anything. Aeris is something else, and frankly a lot of our group isn't totally human. Even Yuffie's some kind of Wutai stealth prodigy."
"An' then there's us?"
It was pretty silly to leave him off that list, wasn't it? "Maybe it's just me," she amended.
"Maybe you don't got any special combat training or magic powers," Barret conceded, "but you're the smartest one here, Jess. Pretty important with all the crazy shit we've been havin' to deal with."
Jessie dropped her gaze, smiling. She wasn't sure if that was completely accurate, but she'd take the compliment. "Thanks..."
"But," he went on, "if you're talkin' about not knowin' what the hell we've got ourselves into, I feel ya there. We've come a long way from our early days, puttin' up flyers an' plannin' for months just to sabotage one factory. We're into end o' the world type shit now."
"Yeah. And I thought targeting a reactor was ambitious... We always talked about saving the world, but I guess we're really doing it now, huh?" She looked ahead at Aeris, but she'd pulled her hood up, hiding the glow of her materia. "I wonder if Holy will do anything about Shinra, in the end..."
"Dunno. Did put a bit about that in my prayin.'"
"Really?"
Barret shrugged. "Figured it couldn't hurt."
"Did you... feel like anyone was listening?" she wondered.
"I got no idea. Place was pretty spooky though. I'd believe those ghosts heard us at least."
"I'm not sure if that's creepy or not... I mean, it was Aeris's mom and all."
"I'm sure she was a nice lady, but I'm still goin' with creepy."
"Fair enough," Jessie conceded. "But if they did hear us... If Holy heard us, and it really does take care of Shinra for us, just like that... I wonder what the future of AVALANCHE looks like."
Barret glanced at her. "Dunno that it'll be that simple," he said, "but... Whatever happens, we ain't just some resistance group. I figure most of our newer recruits might go their separate ways, but you an' me, Tifa, Wedge... Aeris, too, now, I guess--whatever happens, we're still in it together."
Maybe the future wouldn't be simple, but it was simple for him to imagine her in it. That was comforting. "Yeah," she said. "I guess you're right."
"Yeah. So quit mopin' while we're on an upswing."
Barret clapped her on the shoulder, a little harder than he probably meant to, and Jessie stumbled in the snow. She caught herself and shot him a look, to which he responded with a sheepish grin.
He hadn't joked around with her so easily before, when he'd been her leader. Was it the natural progression of their friendship, with that burden of responsibility lifted, and more of his secrets out in the open? Or, a conscious choice, to fill a void?
What would Biggs have said if he knew she was thinking about the end? He'd have scolded her, too, she thought. Told her it was no good going into it with that kind of defeatist attitude. Of course by herself she was no match for Sephiroth--none of them were. It was the same as when she'd joined AVALANCHE. She'd never have had the power to stand up to Shinra alone. But put them together, and their strength grew and grew.
Just like there was no guarantee about surviving, death wasn't a certainty either. It was one thing to make sure she didn't have any regrets, but something else to resign herself to it. Besides, even after they defeated Sephiroth, even if Holy took care of Jenova and Shinra, and everything looked rosy, the Planet would still need people looking out for it. Jessie wanted to be one of them.
So why not try believing in that rosy future, just in case it came true?
They reached the mountains before twilight fell, and walked along the base of the slopes until they found a decent place to camp, where a thicket of pines provided a much-needed windbreak. As night fell, they heard wolves howling in the distance, the only sign they'd had of another living thing. They decided on a watch rotation, and kept the fire going all night, which Jessie was glad of. As cold as it was in the daytime, the temperature dropped even lower at night. By morning, they'd all shifted a lot closer to each other.
A second day walking through the snowfields, and Jessie was well over her initial wonder. A little snow was fine, she decided. Maybe even a lot of it, as long as you could get out of it when you wanted to. But Icicle Inn was at least another day away, and that was just a respite on their way to the Northern Crater. It wasn't for the first time, but she found herself missing Midgar.
The second night, they were lucky enough to stumble across a cave at the base of the mountains. Its roof was low enough that even Jessie had to stoop a little, but it was big enough for all of them. Once they got a fire going, it almost felt cozy, but when they settled in for the night, they laid their sleeping bags closer from the start.
Jessie was just getting comfortable when her phone rang. She fumbled it out and answered it.
"Hello?"
"Oh, it's late," came Lucrecia's voice, as though just realizing. "I'm sorry."
Jessie sat up. "No, it's fine," she said. "We've been waiting to hear from you."
"Lucrecia?" Vincent asked from across the cave, and Jessie nodded, switching it to speaker phone.
"We're all here," she added.
Vincent moved closer. "Are you all right? Is it safe for you to talk?"
"Yes, I'm fine," Lucrecia assured him. "Everyone else in the lab has gone home. There's only the guards waiting for me at the door."
"Then you really are with Shinra," said Tifa.
"Yes. They brought me to the headquarters in Midgar. The equipment here is excellent, but the recordkeeping leaves something to be desired."
"What are they... having you do?"
"Oh, I haven't been here long. They still expect me to be familiarizing myself with Hojo's work. Which I am, I suppose."
"Have you learned anything?" Jessie asked. "You must have, if you're calling."
"Zack and Cloud are there, too?"
"Yeah, we're here," Zack confirmed.
"I think I have good news for you," said Lucrecia. "I analyzed your samples, and as we hoped, the Jenova cells haven't spread throughout your bodies as they have in mine. They are more densely concentrated in your scar tissue, supporting the idea that they can integrate themselves more quickly during the healing process. But, in some of the other samples I took, they aren't present at all."
"So you think, the Jenova cells aren't critical to their survival?" asked Aeris.
"I think not, yes. And... that isn't the only thing I've discovered either."
"What else?" asked Tifa.
Lucrecia took a breath. "Let me see if I can explain this. I know you all read through a lot of Hojo's files on the experiment, but he had this terrible need to feel smarter than anyone. He was constantly leaving his conclusions out of his notes or making them so disorganized no one else could make sense of them. But now that I can see the data for myself, I understand what he was doing. He may have proposed the experiment to President Shinra as a way of creating another Sephiroth, but he was testing a theory he developed in his earlier experiments with Jenova."
"What theory is that?" Jessie wondered.
"Reunion," said Lucrecia. "One of the ways that Jenova propagates is by creating copies of itself from pieces of its body, and it retains control over those copies. But Hojo also theorized that if it were fragmented enough, it would eventually seek to become whole. So he injected his subjects with its cells, and waited to see if they would return here to its main body."
"Well..." Aeris began with an uncertain glance at Zack, "someone went to Midgar, for Jenova's body."
"Wasn't it missin' its head though?" said Barret.
"Sephiroth took it," said Zack, "back at Nibelheim. He cut it off."
"That's messed up."
"Tell me about it."
"And," Lucrecia went on cautiously, "you haven't seen Sephiroth's real body so far either, correct?"
"As far as we know," said Nanaki.
There was a pause, and Jessie heard Lucrecia draw another breath. "I still can't tell you... which one of them is in control of things, or if they really are working together. But I'm theorizing that Sephiroth's true body, Jenova's head... You'll find one or both of them where you're going, drawing everything to them."
Jessie exchanged glances with Tifa. That could mean they were headed for some more powerful incarnation of Sephiroth or Jenova than the ones they'd defeated before. If all they'd been fighting were pieces of Jenova, under the will of something stronger...
"But why not you, too?" Jessie asked Lucrecia.
Another pause. "I... think it's the manner in which I was infected," said Lucrecia. "We injected Jenova's cells into Sephiroth as a fetus, you understand... He grew into this hybrid inside of me. It's common enough even in normal pregnancies for something called fetal chimerism to occur--where some fetal cells pass into the mother's body and persist there. Jenova's presence made this a much more aggressive process, one which nearly killed me... But I was left with those hybrid genes. Sephiroth's genes. Ironically, he may be protecting me from his own influence, because what I have inside of me is not purely a piece of Jenova."
"So you're suggesting," said Nanaki, "that Sephiroth may not share Jenova's ability to manipulate pieces of himself? He can only manipulate Jenova?"
"Either that, or... The hybrid cells are different enough that Jenova can't control them."
Jessie tapped her lip with a finger. Neither of those possibilities could be easy for Lucrecia to consider. Even if it was Jenova manipulating the clones, Lucrecia's apparent immunity meant that Nibelheim, at least, had been Sephiroth's own will.
But if it was Sephiroth... There was something special about him, that he'd gained that ability when no one carrying pure Jenova cells had. Something that set him apart, and something Lucrecia might share, the same way she shared his talent for illusions.
"I don't suppose there's any chance that..." Jessie hesitated. "I mean, if it is Sephiroth who's controlling them, couldn't you... do the same?"
The others all looked at her in alarm, Vincent in particular.
"I..." Lucrecia faltered. "To what end?"
"Well, to break his control," Jessie suggested, realizing she hadn't exactly thought that part through. And she was supposed to be the smart one. "I don't know."
Tifa was exchanging glances now with Zack and Cloud, but still no one said anything.
Lucrecia spoke up again, slowly. "To impose my will on someone else... I wouldn't know where to begin, nor do I think I should."
"Yeah, I'd like to opt out," Zack put in, "of any more mind stuff. No offense, but one person shoving his way in there sometimes is bad enough."
"I understand," said Lucrecia. "It probably is best to let it alone."
Jessie scratched her head, threw Zack an apologetic look for bringing up that line of thought, and then decided to change the subject. "So, did you find anything on Vincent?" she asked.
"Not much, but..." She trailed off uncertainly.
"It's all right," said Vincent. "I don't mind if they hear it."
"Well... Quite frankly, it doesn't seem like even Hojo really understood the results. As near as I can tell, his aim was a more permanent transformation, but the monsters he joined to you didn't want to cooperate."
"Wait," said Yuffie. "Monsters... plural?"
"Yes," Lucrecia confirmed. "At least he wrote about using two different specimens, and implied they were both successful, to a degree."
"I see..." Vincent's brow had furrowed, and Jessie didn't think he'd known about the second monster supposedly inside of him somewhere.
"I wish I could tell you more," said Lucrecia, "or how to get rid of them, but... you did die, Vincent. And they've been a part of you since he brought you back."
Vincent shook his head. "It's fine. I didn't anticipate finding a way back to what I was."
Lucrecia fell silent, but Jessie couldn't imagine that she had nothing to say to that. She caught Tifa's eye and then offered, "You want to talk to Vincent alone now?"
"Yes. If you don't mind."
Jessie held the phone out to Vincent, who accepted it slowly. He got up and made his way out of the cave. Jessie only just made out the sound of his voice as he said something to Lucrecia. She wondered how they spoke to each other, when it was just the two of them.
About everyone was looking at her now, she realized. Sometimes Jessie regretted wearing her heart on her sleeve, and this was one of those times.
"Oh, stop," she said. "I'm over it! There's plenty of fish in the sea."
"Yeah," Yuffie agreed immediately. "Whatever that means. But the guy can turn into two whole monsters, you can do better than that."
Zack scratched his head. "Didn't realize you were suffering from losing out to a pretty woman, too. Maybe we can grab a drink over it once we hit Icicle Inn."
"Hey," said Barret, "you tryin' to say Jessie ain't pretty?"
"What? No!"
"Honestly, Zack," Aeris teased, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"Look, it was just bad word choice. I was trying to commiserate here."
Jessie smiled. "It's all right, I got the idea. I wouldn't mind a drink."
She really did need to be over it.
In Vincent's absence, they began to settle down again, but Jessie sat up waiting. It felt like a long time passed, and she wondered what they were talking about, if they really had so much to say. At last Jessie got up and crept between her friends to investigate.
Outside, there was silence; their conversation must have come to an end. Vincent glanced at her as she emerged, and he held her phone out to her as though she'd only come to retrieve it.
"Thanks," she said, taking it, "but I just wanted to check on you. It's too cold to be out here all night."
"I wonder," said Vincent, looking out into the night. "I already died once, apparently."
"You think you're invincible now?"
"No. But I am farther from human than I thought."
Jessie took up a spot leaning against the rock beside him. It was cold and hard at her back, but the night air was still. The sky was as clear as she'd ever seen it, crowded with stars and stardust, and the snowfields beneath seemed to glow in their light.
Not human. She'd known it was silly of her to be jealous in any way, of how that set her friends apart. They'd never asked for it, and certainly Vincent, Zack, and Cloud all would have preferred to be ordinary. Zack and Cloud might get that wish, she supposed, but Vincent was a different case.
And then there was Lucrecia...
"...did you tell her," she asked, "about Holy?"
Vincent nodded.
"How did she take it?"
"She already suspected we were hiding something like it. She was... hopeful. She wants to be free of the Jenova, no matter the cost."
"I guess I'm not surprised," said Jessie. All those years she'd spent looking into it in vain.
"...and she wants me to be free of her," Vincent went on, his face dropping into his cowl. "As though she's no different from the parasite that's taken her..."
"Well... I can kind of see what she means."
"What?" Vincent looked at her directly, frowning.
"I'm not saying she's a parasite," Jessie clarified quickly, "or that you're wrong to love her. It's just... You love her so completely, like nothing else matters."
Vincent looked back at the sky, but the frown remained. "Back then," he said, "it was stifled by secrecy. I was never able to love her completely. I consider it a freedom to do so now, so I'll take as much as I can, for as long as I can. I see no reason to move on until it's really over."
She'd been looking at it the wrong way, hadn't she? Like he was under some kind of spell. "You're right... I'm sorry."
After a beat, he said, "I'm not angry with you."
"Huh?"
"I believe you've been avoiding me."
"...a little," she admitted. After her initial worry over what she'd said at the crater lake, she'd had to see him around Lucrecia, and it had just... stung, a little. She'd needed some distance from that. But she didn't tell him that.
"I may not have cared for your choice of words," Vincent went on. "Hojo used to tell her she was selfish, for the slightest thing... But I think it was good for her, to leave that place. She seems... happier, doing something."
"I think it was a big deal for her, learning you were still alive. I think she'd be happy to see you happy."
"Hm."
"Something funny?"
"It's what I said to myself, when she ended it. As long as she was happy... But she wasn't."
Jessie was quiet for a moment, chewing on what to say. Maybe hers was the opposite lesson here. Maybe she'd been a little too eager to agree with Lucrecia for suggesting that Vincent was better off without her. But she knew him well enough by now to know that he would be in love with Lucrecia for a long time yet, whether or not she lived. It would be stupid to wait on him, for a lot of reasons.
She looked at him, eyes steady on the stars above, their light catching the angles of his face. The epitome of brooding.
Jessie leaned up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "I hope she lives, Vincent," she said. "I really do."
Vincent blinked, turning to her, and his brow furrowed faintly. She wondered if he'd ever had the slightest inkling.
"Come on," she said. "Let's get some sleep."
They went back inside, and Jessie gratefully returned to her sleeping bag nestled between Tifa and Barret. She could tell by their breathing that they were asleep, though Barret wasn't snoring yet. It reminded her of nights in the basement of Seventh Heaven.
To be honest, maybe she hadn't put as much thought into her own decisions as Vincent had. She'd come along on this journey without a second thought. Not because she'd had the slightest need for vengeance against Sephiroth, or even fully considered what it meant to seek it, but because AVALANCHE was her family. She'd wanted to be with them every step of the way. It was a different kind of love, but she'd followed it just as completely.
And maybe it had brought her to this place where she felt out of her depth, but she was still surrounded by her friends, and even more of them than before. That couldn't be such a bad instinct, really.