The dark-haired man lifted his face a little out of the top of his crimson wool mantle and took in a deep breath. The back of his throat stung with the crisp mountain air, but he felt refreshed anyway. He was high up in the crystalline, snow-packed mountains, far away from society, away from everything that ever reminded him of that day. That sharp, fateful day that not even time had been able to dull.

Vincent lowered his head then, averted his eyes away from the sky. He didn't deserve to look at that beautiful, eternally stretching sky, when she would never be able to see it again. Was her spirit somewhere up in that sky? Her body was trapped in a stasis between life and death; did her soul yet cling to her crystallized flesh, or had it found some way to escape? Over and again he had whispered, cried, screamed his prayer to the sky that she had found some peace after all. The sky never answered; it just kept stretching on, as vast and empty as ever.

With overflowing tears – tears he had held too long in check before his friends – Vincent turned away from the bright, cloudless sky and trudged back into the mountaintop cave he was using for a camp. It wasn't a long walk back, but every step seemed to weigh his heart down further. Snow clung to his boots and made his every step heavier, more awkward. Vincent narrowed his eyes at the ground, as if to accuse the snow of mocking the same heavy feeling he carried inside.

When he entered his cave, he blinked to adjust to the sudden low light. Something in the cave felt amiss. It was cooler than usual, uncomfortably so. Normally, warm air rose up from somewhere deep in the mountain to counterbalance the cold from the cave's mouth, but Vincent wasn't feeling that warmth anymore. Had there been a cave-in?

It was a good thing he had thought to bring that woolen greatcoat. His normal red mantle and cloak kept him warm enough during the day, but it wouldn't be safe to rely on them alone after the sun went down. He decided to throw the greatcoat around his shoulders and investigate the depths of his mountain cave camp.

Lucky for him, his cave system was a single twisting tunnel with no offshoots, or at least none that were big enough to admit a man's passage. As a result he didn't have to worry about getting lost or turned around. In some parts the ceiling, which was little more than a sheet of thick ice, thinned out enough to cast an eerie bluish tint over the glittering ice and rock below. The effect was beautiful, if eerie, but it reminded Vincent too much of her crystal prison. He kept his eyes down and kept moving forward.

In the fourth, or perhaps fifth cavern from his camp, the ceiling had thickened again and the light was much dimmer. Here the ice grew in slick stalagmites and stalactites, some of which were so large and thick that they formed complete pillars from top to bottom. There were large ice crystals with wide facets like alien flowers sitting quietly in most of the corners and crannies of the cave.

In the very center, there was the most magnificent crystal of all. It blossomed up from the ground like a jagged blue rose, its edges glinting dangerously even in the poor light. But there was something strange about it; its outer edges were translucent and glowing but its core was dark, far darker than Vincent had expected. And the dark core had a peculiar shape that he couldn't put his finger on.

He laid his hand on one of the "rose's" outer petals, then drew back instantly as he realized that the ice crystal was not ice at all, but a literal crystal, and it was warm. It was emanating a heat that must have originated within itself, for there was no other source in the cave. Had all the heat in his cave come from this crystal? That would explain why the stalactites all looked damp. But why did it cool down? Vincent laid his hand on the crystal's surface again.

As he held his hand there, the crystal began to crack, splitting at the edges of every petal like a suit with every seam torn out at once. The cracking was loud, and it echoed against the icy chamber, to the point that Vincent was sure his ears would bleed and his skull would split. The noise was so great that the snow on the outside of the cavern fell away in an avalanche. The sun shone through the ice ceiling brighter now, and Vincent could see just what was really waiting in the core of the now-shattered crystal.

It was a woman. A beautiful woman with long, slender limbs and strawberry blondish hair. Despite the fact that she was wearing uncomfortable-looking plate mail, she seemed to be sleeping peacefully on a throne inside the giant split crystal. At the sight of her, Vincent averted his eyes. She didn't look like her, but the situation was too similar for him to take. He had failed her, with disastrous result. Was this woman before him the victim of someone else's failure? And how long had she been made to suffer for those sins of the past? With eyes still turned away from the collapsing crystal prison, Vincent backed up against one of the ice pillars. He gripped his head with both hands and tried to shut out both the noise and the memories.

When the crystal shards stopped crashing to the ground and the cavern was once again still, Vincent finally looked up at the woman in the chair. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was level; she was still asleep, somehow. Though he probably should have thought better of it, he approached her. Her face looked so familiar. It was as though he had seen her countless times before, but when he wracked his memory he couldn't pinpoint from where he might have known her. With his unarmored hand, Vincent reached out to her and prodded her gingerly in the arm.

Her eyes flew open. Vincent pulled his hand away and backed off a step.

She looked around for a second and then fixed her big blue eyes on Vincent's face.

"Where's Serah?" she demanded.

Vincent of course had no idea who or what Serah was. "I don't—" he began.

The woman rose up from her throne with lightning speed and drove Vincent backward with her arm until his back hit the ice pillar. "Where is Serah?" she asked again, her voice deadly. It occurred to Vincent that he had only been pushed back because of her speed and his surprise. After sleeping inside that crystal for however-long, she had very little physical strength at her disposal. Well, at least he'd be able to contain her if she got really violent. Especially if he considered that the bladed weapon that was in her lap had skittered across the floor and was now out of her reach.

"Sorry," he told her. "I don't know anything about Serah. It's just you here."

The woman searched Vincent's face for signs of deception, but there were none to find. Then a look of surprise and shock swept over her features and she staggered away, holding her head in her hands much like Vincent had only a few minutes before. Her legs buckled and she fell to her knees, leaning against the crystal throne as she cried out in pain.

"Serah," she called, while a tear ran down either cheek. She kept repeating that name, Serah, over and again. "I'm…I'm sorry, Serah."

"Er," Vincent began, gently as he could manage with his voice raspy from disuse and chill air. "Who's Serah?"

The woman looked back over her shoulder at the man who had woken her from her crystal slumber. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. "My sister," she finally answered. She sniffled involuntarily and turned her face away. Vincent shifted his weight away from the ice pillar at his back and took a tentative step forward.

"Where is she?" was all he could think to say.

But the woman just shook her head and swallowed hard. "My sister is gone. Because of me. Because I couldn't protect her." She beat her balled fist helplessly against the seat of the throne while her tears continued to flow.

Because I couldn't protect her, the words echoed endlessly in Vincent's mind. Without thinking, he walked up to the distraught woman, slipped the greatcoat off his shoulders and wrapped it around hers. She lifted her face and stared at him questioningly. As he wiped away one of her tears it seemed to her that his eyes bore the same deep pain and loss as her own.

So, Vincent thought, it was she who had failed someone else. He, Vincent, knew the pain of that sort of failure intimately. He pulled the lapels of the greatcoat a little tighter around her slender frame and then backed off awkwardly.

"Thank you," she whispered hoarsely as her hand rose up to hold the edges of the coat in place. He made a slight nod in response.

"What's your name?" he asked her as gently as before. The woman opened her mouth and then balked, like she couldn't remember what people used to call her. But that sentiment seemed to last for only a moment, and then she answered.

"Lightning."

The man nodded. "I'm Vincent," he replied. "Come on, let's get out of this cavern." He helped Lightning to her feet and picked up her blade from the other side of the cavern. "I've got a camp further up this tunnel," he told her as he slowly led the way out of the ice caverns.

"How long have I been asleep?" she wondered aloud as they walked through the icy tunnels. "I don't remember any of this."

"I couldn't tell you," Vincent answered simply. He jumped up to a ledge and leaned back down to pull Lightning up. Her armor was heavy, but still considerably lighter than he had expected. "I've never seen armor or a weapon like yours before. I don't know if you've been asleep for a very long time, or if you're just not from around here…"

Lightning shrugged. "I guess I'll have to find out more when we get back to civilization." She paused. "There is a civilization to go back to, right?"

"You could call it that," Vincent answered slowly while he thought about it. "Every couple of years an experiment goes wrong and someone with silver hair tries to obliterate the Planet, but we have crossword puzzles on our cell phones."

Lightning stood there for a moment, staring at Vincent like he was insane. Even after he turned away, it took a moment for her to recover her wits and follow him up the tunnel. "Crossword puzzles," she muttered with sarcastic venom. "Cute."

The camp was too bright for both of them after the darkness of the caverns. But even the pain in her eyes couldn't stop Lightning from running across the cave floor to the exit. Shielding her eyes with her arm she stared out in wonder at the snow-capped peaks around them. Questions floated about in her mind. Why had she been inside the mountain? How did she get there? But the question she wanted to ask most required her to turn back to face Vincent.

"How did you find me up here?"

He drew level with her and looked out over the mountaintops. "I come here sometimes. When I need to get away from, anything really. It was by chance that I chose for my camp the cave with your crystal." Was it really chance? Or had fate drawn him to this spot? Vincent shook his head rather than give voice to something as foolish as fate. They stood in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.

"How long will it take to reach the nearest town?" Lightning's quiet voice broke the silence.

Vincent considered. "Probably three days, if we make good time." He checked the shadows. "It's too late to start today. We'll leave first thing in the morning." Vincent turned and walked back deeper into the cave.

"We?" she called back to him, the surprise as clear in her voice as it was on her face. Vincent knelt beside his half-empty rucksack and prepared to re-pack his camping supplies.

"It's about time I returned," he said with a resigned sigh as he pulled out a spare pair of gloves and packed a flashlight in their place. "I'm sure there's a summon tearing Midgar apart as it is."

A summon tearing Midgar apart? The woman took a moment to think about this. Midgar sounded like a place, and if there was something large and powerful and summoned enough to tear it apart, it would have to be an eidolon. So they were simply called 'summons' in this new time and place?

"Silver-haired men trying to destroy the Planet, summons destroying cities. Sounds like this world is all but in love with crisis," Lightning wondered aloud. Vincent gave her a wry smile.

"Perhaps. But you look like you can handle a little crisis."

She turned and walked back into the cave. "Yeah, I handled it really well last time," she muttered, barely audible to Vincent's ears.

Vincent alternated between packing supplies and staring blankly out into the emptiness of the space outside the cave exit. By the time he finished his simple task, the sunset had come and gone. The mountains had gone from blinding white to fiery orange to rosy pink to muted lavender. All these colors and more had filtered into the camp, dulled by their reflection off the grey rocks,but their silent march calmed his spirit, even as his physical body remained tense as he considered how to proceed.

He would deliver Lightning safely to Edge, that much he knew for certain. But where to from there? Where could he take her where she would be safe? Did she even need his protection? She looked capable enough. He stole a glance her way; she looked like a valkyrie from one of his old books. An angel of battle and death, a fierce warrior who could hold her own against any horde of men or beasts. In a test of battle, Vincent had no doubt she would emerge victorious.

Even so, it wouldn't do to simply bring her to highway outside of Edge and leave her.

He'd take her to Seventh Heaven, he decided. Tifa had a good sensible head on her shoulders; she'd know what to do. After that he was sure he couldn't remain involved, but he'd see his charge to safety. He put his mostly-packed rucksack aside and looked up.