She was dreaming again. This was a new dream, and yet it felt familiar in that peculiar way that only a dream can. It raised the hairs on the back of her neck in alarm, yet she couldn't stop the images unfolding before her...
For ten years she had gone by the name of Light Valentine, but here in her hazy dream-world she felt like she had been reduced back to Lightning, the cold and distant alter-ego she had built to shield herself from from the crushing terror of life after her parents' death. Lightning had a hard glint in her eye, a firm set to her jaw; her posture was always ready for a fight, and her voice was always forced into a dismissive monotone that hid all her true feelings from the world. Lightning had only one thing in the world worth living for, and that one thing, her sister, had been dead for a very long time. As Light Valentine she still missed Serah, of course she did and she always would, but her life was not empty or meaningless without her. Light had a life: a best friend, a husband, a healthy son, a worthy job, hobbies she enjoyed, and a face that smiled more easily now than it ever had before in her life. She was uncomfortable in her old 'Lightning' skin, and yet that was the costume chosen by her dream theater for tonight's show.
She was in a distinctly eerie dream land this time. Perhaps it was Pulse, but then it might have been Cocoon? The land kept shifting under her feet, here the architecture of Oerba, there the rainforest of Sunleth, then the dusty but ordered streets of Edge, and then the clouded shores of Valhalla, which occasionally shifted into the shoreline at Bodhum or Costa del Sol. The effect was dizzying at best, but Lightning, ever stoic, ever the soldier, kept putting one foot in front of the other, never fearing whether her foot would land on rock or grass or water or rusted metal. Nothing really touched her, and so nothing could harm her.
Turn around, Lightning! The tiny spark of her conscious mind screamed at her dream-self. But she could not hope to fight the progression of this dream. Her Lightning persona knew where she was going and what to do when she got there. She offered not a single word of explanation, not even a reassuring look back for the benefit of her soul's other half.
Lightning kept jogging through the shifting landscape until finally the world stabilized around her and she stopped in front of the doors of a massive stone cathedral. Bigger and better preserved than the one her conscious mind knew from the Midgar ruins, this incredible church rose up like the face of an impassable cliff. This was the structure, nay the monument, around which the entire city of Luxerion had been built.
Luxerion? The conscious mind of Light Valentine had no idea where that name had come from. Lightning certainly wasn't about to volunteer any answers on that score.
A clock far above Lightning's head chimed the thirteenth hour, and the soldier held still as a corpse until, at the moment of the final chime, the cathedral doors swung open. Lightning exploded into action, sprinting through the atrium and across a long bridge to the body of the sanctuary proper. She was running toward a figure that lay huddled and curled in on itself before the altar. If she ran far enough and fast enough, she could get to the figure and slay it before...
No. As had always been her wont in her old life, she was too late. Lightning, out of time and now out of breath, pulled up short beside the front rows of pews. At first nothing happened; surely there was still time to kill the figure. But the powers that governed the land of dreams would not let her pass. She could only watch, with a growing horror in the pit of her gut that stemmed from no rational thought processes, but still felt like the beginnings of a menstrual cramp.
The figure was that of a stooped old man, one who had once been powerful and strong, but who had been lost for a long time, floating on the edge between life and death, and was now almost as weak as a kitten. His grey hair was wild and unkempt and long, much longer than an old husk like him would be able to take care of. He wore a threadbare black dressing gown with thin vertical white stripes that frayed at the edges and may have once sported elaborate beading if the discolorations and loose threads along the hemlines were to be believed, though that was millennia ago and no one would know now what patterns or colors the beads once held.
He turned to look at Lightning. As his face rose on his wrinkled tortoise neck to meet her eyes, his mouth curled up into a weak yet disdainful and even vicious sneer. That's when she finally recognized his face: Caius Ballad. Decrepit and frail and ravaged by time, elements, and his own despair, it was yet the face of the man who had once been Lightning's bitterest rival. He was a man for whom life had lost all flavor, but death held no promise either of rest or redemption.
I was like that, Light realized suddenly. I had nothing left to live for, and still I could not die. Trapped in Valhalla, the world without time, the world between and beyond worlds...Caius has been trapped there too, imprisoned by his own mind though his body cries out for oblivion.
Now Caius was something neither alive nor dead; too weak to feel anger or hatred, but too used to such feelings to approximate anything else.
The dream would not allow Lightning to move forward and grant Caius the death he so craved. She continued to watch, and the terrible cramp-like sensation grew worse as she did, as a young girl emerged from a side chamber. She wore a flowing white dress and had leather sandals on her small feet. A thin beaded belt hung around her waist and her long silvery hair was pushed back and held in place by a similarly beaded diadem. A word resounded in Lightning's mind, a name: Yeul.
Yeul's deep emerald eyes shot a long and hateful stare at Lightning as the girl herself approached Caius and placed her soft, tiny hand upon his bony shoulder. Caius stared up at the girl he once protected. Whether his expression was one of awe or terror or love, Lightning could not have said.
"The path is open," Yeul said gently to Caius, though whether he heard or understood her words was beyond Lightning's ability to guess. "The river of life opens, as all rivers do, into the ocean, and there we floated for far too long. Now we're up in the sky again, and we shall pour down onto the planet as rain, and from there rejoin the river, and so continues the cycle."
Caius's mouth was a tight, thin line. His brows furrowed as well as they could over his clouded blue eyes, but if Yeul noticed the pain there, she didn't acknowledge it.
"But the path back to the world will only allow one of us in," she continued, like a mother lecturing her child in precise, measured language. Her hands cupped Caius's wrinkled face. "That is why we will combine ourselves into one. With your power in battle and mine in Sight, we will be unstoppable."
Then Yeul leaned forward, as if she was going to kiss the old man whose face she still held. But instead of making contact, it was as if the girl disintegrated into Caius's skin. She fell into him and her body disappeared. Lightning had no doubt that the essence of the girl was fully inside Caius's physical shell.
She only had a moment to register this, however, as at the moment of Yeul's final disappearance, a powerful shock wave blasted out from where Caius stood teetering on his shrunken feet. With a deafening crack of splintering wood and stone, pews went flying in every direction and the candles on the altar first snuffed out, then shot like missiles toward the back of the chapel. The nearest of the support pillars fractured with strain and the entire cathedral shuddered. Lightning felt herself moving backwards, but she managed to keep her feet under her, and she rolled when she landed, so the whole experience left her with sore spots that would turn into bruises later, but no major injuries.
In the moment before the dream ended, she saw Caius rise from the epicenter of the blast, tall now and full as he was in the prime of his life. His hair, once grizzled and grey, shone amethyst once more, but his clothes remained unchanged, and the worn black dressing gown now pulled tight around his muscular frame. His face was smooth again, almost handsome in its angelic features, though Lightning could have sworn that the angry, hostile glare looking out from his eyes was not his own, but Yeul's. That look promised revenge, subjugation, and finally, death.
Her field of vision went black then, suddenly, and Lightning was gone, replaced by a fully conscious Light Valentine. In the impenetrable darkness of her bedroom she sat up with a sheen of cold sweat upon her brow and a ragged sob in her throat.
Why this dream was so upsetting to her, she could have no idea, for it was neither as scary nor as tragic as her other stress-dreams; even so, she felt her hands shaking and her heart rate took what seemed an eternity to return to normal.
On instinct, Light reached her hand out until it met with the arm of Vincent, her husband, who slept at her side with the deep, serene sleep of a man well satisfied. After what the two of them had done earlier that evening, such a peaceful rest was well-deserved on his part. A small snore escaped him, the mundane sound of it comforting Light after the distress of her odd vision.
Vision? She shuddered. Hopefully it was just a dream and not so much a 'vision', but then again, Light never had dreams that were both vivid and completely irrelevant to her real life. And this one, once the landscape stopped changing, had been so vivid that it might have even been real life and she could hardly have told the difference.
At her touch, Vincent rolled over so that his body was facing toward her. Still sleeping, his arm reached out until it draped over her legs. If Light had not been sitting up at that moment, the arm would have found her waist. That was a pleasant thought. Careful not to further disturb him, Light shifted her weight back down until she lay beside her husband and his arm was where it belonged. That arm tightened around her like the coil of a snake and Light felt comforted by the snugness of the embrace, the warmth of his skin on hers, and the smell of his skin and hair. His smell reminded her of deer: a warm mixture with hints of leather and fur and clover, accentuated by his favorite brand of shampoo, which smelled faintly of pine and some wild mountain berry. With her physical form quite comfortable now, and her mind occupied with thoughts of bounding through a summer forest in the form of a doe, Light dismissed her horrible vision/dream and slowly drifted back into a blessedly dark and image-free slumber.
"Are you feeling okay?" Vincent asked as he set bowls in front of his wife and son at the breakfast table the next morning. The question was directed at Light, but it took her a moment to catch up to the present.
"Yes. Sorry, I had a bad dream last night and, I guess I just didn't sleep very well at all," was Light's answer as she began pouring cereal into her bowl.
"I had a bad dream last night, too!" their son, Hope, interjected. "There were pirate skeletons and wolves and this big ugly vampire who tried to trap me in his castle!"
Vincent narrowed his eyes at his son's description. "Sounds like someone has been playing too many video games right before bed."
"I only played for like twenty minutes," Hope protested. Vincent stared him down. "Okay more like forty minutes. Maybe an hour. But seriously, not any more than that."
"Uh-huh. Listen, son, I don't mind you playing video games, but if they're giving you bad dreams then don't play them at night, okay? And pay attention to the age recommendations. They're there for a reason."
"Okay, Dad."
Satisfied, Vincent changed the subject. "Your summer vacation starts tomorrow. Do you have any plans with your friends?" Hope just shrugged his response.
"Alex and I were gonna go digging in the rubble piles near Cloud's church."
Light stopped chewing her breakfast cereal to intervene. "Hope you know I don't like it when you dig through Midgar rubble. What if you hurt yourself and can't get help?"
"Denzel is gonna be there, he said he would watch us!"
Light and Vincent exchanged looks. Neither of them had any idea Denzel was coming back to town. They asked Hope where he had heard about that.
"Marlene said so when I talked to her last week. She sounded really excited he was coming home." The two parents relaxed a little. Marlene wouldn't lie about Denzel coming home, and she was smart enough not to spread a rumor about it if there was a chance it wasn't true.
"Sounds like I need to go visit Tifa today," Light resolved as she went back to eating.
She was true to her word. Once she was fully dressed and her son sent off to school, Light headed out. Vincent claimed some other business in town to take care of, so he didn't go with her. Light knew better than to ask what kind of "business" he had. Lately he had gotten back in touch with some of his old Turks contacts, and they paid handsomely for his skills, and more importantly, his discretion. So he was on another case for them, or else he had something to do for the Parent Teach Association. Vincent had been surprisingly active in the events and goings-on in the local school district ever since his son had begun attendance two years prior. Light was unconcerned in any case: whether it was a mission for Turks or the school, she trusted that Vincent would be equal to the task, and would ask for help if he needed it.
The neighborhood the Valentines had moved into was not too far from Tifa's bar, 7th Heaven, and taking the route by bicycle had been the premier method of maintaining physical fitness for Valentines, Lockharts, and Wallaces alike. It took Light a little longer than expected to make the journey, though, as she had not counted on the rush hour traffic delaying her at every intersection. Despite this, she arrived unharmed with plenty of morning to spare. She parked her bicycle in the alley and went in through the back door.
"Light!" exclaimed a very surprised but not at all displeased Tifa when she laid eyes on her best friend standing in her kitchen. "I wasn't expecting you this morning. Something up?"
"Nothing too serious, I hope," Light responded as she and Tifa went together from the kitchen to the main body of the bar and restaurant. Seeing an empty table laden with dishes nearby, Light automatically began bussing as she talked. "My son told me a strange thing this morning, and he said he heard it from Marlene. I'll get right to it: is Denzel expected to come home soon?"
Tifa's smile began to slip. "Yeah, yeah he is." Light stood up straight and set the glasses from the table on the bar.
"What's wrong? I thought you'd be happy to see him."
"I... I am glad that I get to see him again. I was even going to make him a special dinner for when he arrives tonight. It's just..." Tifa faltered. Her hands worried the edge of the dishrag she used to wipe the bar down. "It's the way he's coming home. I talked to him on the phone. He sounded so – I don't know – sad? Kind of disappointed. I don't know if he got fired – I can't imagine why Barret would fire him, he loves that boy and always sings his praises on the rigs – but, I just don't know."
"I understand."
"I just want him to be happy and make a good living doing a job that makes him feel fulfilled. That's not too much to ask."
"It's really not," Light agreed. That was all she wished for her own son's future. Well, she wouldn't say no to grandchildren, when the time came. But she wouldn't push Hope into having kids someday just for her selfish whims. Hope would make his own decisions about that in his own good time, and Light would support him no matter what he chose.
Tifa took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Light reached over the bar and took the other woman's hands.
"Hey, sis," she began, tilting her head to meet Tifa's eyes. "No matter what's going on with him, I know you and he and everyone will be okay. We'll work it out."
"We?" Tifa repeated.
"We. Come on, you don't think I'd leave you to face all this on your own, do you?"
Tifa laughed. A step in the right direction. "Yeah, I guess not. There's no problem that can't be solved when Sarge is on base."
Light chuckled. "Ten years and you're still calling me 'Sarge'? Can't I have a promotion yet?"
"Not yet, soldier. You've been slacking on your PT," Tifa teased. Light feigned indignation.
"I may be getting chubby, but at least my hair isn't going grey," she teased back.
Now, to be clear, Light was not 'getting chubby'. In ten years she had probably netted a gain of ten pounds, most of which had gone toward filling out a shapely backside. True, she and Tifa could no longer wear the same size pants, but no one who wasn't privy to their sharing pants in the first place would have noticed this. Likewise, Tifa was not 'going grey'; she had a small area toward the front of her head that had gone grey, but which she had partitioned off into a most fashionable streak that actually looked quite fetching on her with its stark contrast against her otherwise dark hair. Both women had determined that their appearance changes over the past decade had ultimately been for the better, but they still teased one another about them. They were essentially sisters by this point, and that's just what sisters do sometimes.
"Breaking news!" the television called out suddenly. Light and Tifa both looked up at the screen. "Wheat crops in the Corel and Nibel areas are showing signs of decay. Local authorities have taken samples from the areas and preliminary testing suggests that water contamination may be at fault. Wheat is expected to face major shortages next year as a result."
"Water contamination?" Tifa muttered. "That's ridiculous: all the irrigation water for those areas comes from the mountain watersheds. There's nothing up in those mountains that should be putting contaminants in the water supply. No factories, no power plants, and even the closest mako reactors have been closed down for ages."
"Manual sabotage?" Light suggested.
"I hope not," Tifa answered. "I'm getting real tired of these terrorist splinter groups messing up our economy."
"Preach it," Light agreed. "How do you know so much about irrigation out there?"
Tifa shrugged. "It's been a long time, but remember I grew up in Nibelheim. I did a lot of odd jobs out there in my early teen years. Farming. Chocobo ranching. The mountain guide job was the most fun, well, er, while it lasted." Tifa cleared her throat and looked away from the television. That was an old skeleton neither of them wanted to draw out of the closet any time soon.
After a moment of awkward silence, the back door opened again and Cloud came into the bar through the kitchen. As per his wont, he pulled off his helmet and set it on the shelf under the bar. Immediately he grabbed a clean glass and went back to the sink and filled it with water. Two gigantic gulps later, the glass was empty again and he was filling it up a second time.
"Thirsty there, Cloud?" Tifa asked as she gaped.
He was silent for a moment while he sipped. Then, "I feel a headache coming on. Gotta stay hydrated."
"You want a painkiller or anything?"
Cloud shook his head gently so as not to aggravate his condition. "No thanks, but if it gets bad enough I might take you up on it. But I'm gonna go lay down in my office, okay? Are there still total light-blocking blinds on that window?" Tifa nodded and gestured toward the stairs.
"Light-blocking blinds?" Light asked when Cloud had disappeared up the stairs. Tifa pulled her attention away from the staircase.
"During the Geostigma outbreak, a little before you woke up, Cloud had it, and he used to get these awful migraines. We put those blinds up so he would always have a place to go that would be dark for him if one came on suddenly."
"I thought you said the Geostigma wasn't a normal disease, but the influence of Jenova poisoning the Lifestream?" Light had never fully understood the whole Jenova business, or the resulting Geostigma. Tifa answered in the affirmative. Light continued, "So after that was resolved, there was no more risk of Geostigma breaking out again, so why keep the blinds?"
"Honestly, we weren't sure that the danger was completely over. Jenova, and her, uh, 'son', they have a way of coming back to haunt us. Even after the 'Stigma was cured, we were still vigilant for a long time. And I'll tell you a secret: if anyone but Vincent had introduced you to us back then, we might have thought you were some new Jenova trick. I mean, don't take this the wrong way, but you must have noticed that you look just like a female version of Cloud, and the Sephiroth Remnants had been targeting him not long before we met you. It would have been a logical step for us to assume that you were created by Jenova to wreak some kind of mischief on us all."
"Is that why he hated me so much back then?" That Cloud had hated her seemingly without reason had always bothered Light. He didn't seem to hate her now, ten years later, but he still kept his cool distance from her whenever possible. They were occasional grudging allies in times of distress, but never friends. Old habits must die even harder than Light expected.
"He never said why for sure, but that would be my guess, yes," Tifa replied with a light shake of one shoulder.
"Okay, so walk me through this whole Jenova thing again, because it still doesn't make a lot of sense to me," said Light with a flustered shake of her head.
"In that case, pull up a seat; this story takes a while..." Tifa replied, and as the two ladies took to their respective bar stools, she began regaling Light with the tale of the Calamity Jenova...
Tifa's story kept Light sitting in that bar all through the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. She didn't much see a point in going home; Hope was still in school, Vincent was probably still out on his "mission", and there was plenty to do around 7th Heaven in preparation for Denzel's expected arrival. Light sent a text message to Marlene asking her to please bring Hope with her to the bar after school, and another one out to Vincent to let him know where she was and to meet her at 7th Heaven later for dinner if he wasn't busy. That business taken care of, Light put her phone away and started helping out with preparations. She hated everything about cooking, but years of military service and having a young son had honed her into a top-notch cleaner, so while Tifa worked on dinner Light made the bar and kitchen sparkle.
Marlene and Hope arrived a little before four. They were too excited to concentrate on their respective homework assignments, so instead they harassed Cloud, who was feeling a little better by this point, about the details of Denzel's arrival. Cloud, meanwhile, was sorely regretting his decision to wait out his headache in his office when he had a perfectly serviceable – and more importantly, silent – church in the slums. But of course he couldn't stay in the church too long; Denzel was counting on seeing him, and he absolutely could not risk not being here when the boy arrived.
Vincent showed up just after seven. He looked tired, but exchanged an enthusiastic hug with his buckaroo before putting himself to use making up a bed in the upstairs bedroom for Denzel to sleep in; it was one of those things Tifa had meant to do several days prior, but had forgotten about for some reason or other and was now frantic about. So, to ease her mind on the subject, Vincent urged her to stay put and he would take care of it. He preferred a job like that: simple, quiet, one that did not involve other members of the PTA breathing down his neck about fundraisers for the marching band.
"Rough day?" he heard Light's voice from the hall. She stepped forward and leaned on the door frame.
"It's that obvious, huh?" Vincent answered while he double-checked the corners of the sheet.
"I didn't even see you come in. That means you still owe me a kiss, and you don't forget about that kind of thing unless you're really stressed out."
Vincent froze. In ten years, how many times had he forgotten to kiss his wife after a work-related absence? Only once that he could recall off the top of his head, though there probably had been a few other times if she had worked out a pattern around them. Oh, he was just going to kill the marching band boosters for this. He stood up properly and walked around the half-made bed to stand before Light. She snaked her arms around his waist at the same time his arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders and they held each other in that secure hug for a good fifteen seconds before Vincent pulled away enough to tilt his head properly to kiss her.
"Sorry for being late with this," he said when they pulled away for real.
"The PTA's been working you harder lately," Light replied.
Vincent tilted his head in his signature expression of confusion. "How did you know—?"
"You only forget on days when you've been doing something for the school district," she said with a teasing smile. "How telling is it that errands for the booster clubs are more stressful for you than high-risk covert ops?"
"Oh, Light, you should see some of the parents I have to deal with. Why is it that the loudest of them are also the biggest idiots?" Vincent groaned and shook his head.
"Cheer up, Valentine," Light mock-ordered as she reached up and gently flicked her husband on the forehead. "Take pride in the fact that they would just fall apart without you."
He caught the hand that had flicked him and was holding it fast, intertwining his fingers with hers. "I don't think I can handle that much responsibility anymore."
"Hey now, it's not a question of can or can't—"
"'There are some things in life you just do'? You say that all the time, but you've never been to a PTA meeting."
Light laughed, gently, then pecked another kiss on Vincent before disentangling herself from him. "You can do it. Everything you do for that school is for Hope in the end. He'll have a better education thanks to what you're doing now."
"Boy better take up marching band," Vincent replied with a petulant pout.
"If you can get him to switch from the piano to the saxophone, sure, sign him up."
That would never happen. Hope loved his piano.
"Well," he gave in, "it doesn't have to be marching band. Maybe the jazz group we're trying to get set up if marching goes well." They smiled at each other.
"Sounds perfect. Alright, I should get back to Tifa and let you finish here. See you downstairs in a few." With that, Light left the room and headed back toward the stairs. Vincent finished making up the bed and followed suit.
Denzel arrived at nine in the evening via taxi. Vincent took the young man's luggage up to the room he had prepared, Cloud paid the cab driver's fare, and Tifa wrapped Denzel in a tight hug that might have been embarrassing if Denzel hadn't been at least half-expecting it. But Denzel was a resilient young man who knew how to roll with life's punches, and anyway he was too happy to see Tifa to object to her hugs. Once extricated from that, he and Cloud exchanged manly shoulder-grabbing handshakes and Tifa herded the whole group back inside the bar.
Marlene tackled her "big brother" in a bear hug the moment he was inside. Again, Denzel was somewhat prepared for this, and took it in stride. He teased her about her hair – her left braid was a little looser than her right and the visual effect was slightly lopsided – and she returned fire by saying he looked like a hippie and needed to get a haircut himself.
Dinner was a boisterous event that lasted well over an hour, what with so much of the family gathered in one place – that was Tifa's insistence, calling everyone "the family". She always said that it didn't matter who was or wasn't related by blood; family was more about closeness and trust than about the contents of one's birth certificate. In any case, much of the family was gathered in 7th Heaven that night, and Tifa had positively outdone herself in her preparation of Denzel's welcome home meal.
After the meal proper, Denzel dashed upstairs for a moment and returned with three crystal necklaces. The light blue one he handed to Aunt Light, the deep garnet-red one to Tifa, and the rosy pink one went to Marlene.
"There are caves near the fields just overflowing with these crystals in every color of the rainbow. They're a big tourist attraction in the summer. Anyway, I thought you girls might like them," he offered by way of explanation as he passed them out. He helped Marlene with the clasp of hers while Tifa and Light assisted one another.
"They're beautiful, Denzel. Thank you," Light said when she looked down and saw her crystals glittering on her breast. Tifa and Marlene thanked him as well. Marlene attacked him with another big hug.
Shortly after this, Light and Tifa started taking all of the dishes into the kitchen.
"I'll help you with that," Denzel offered, jumping out of his seat.
"You don't have to do that. It's your first night home, you can sit back and relax," Tifa would have gone through with making sure Denzel did just that, but for the next words out of his mouth:
"Actually, Tifa, Aunt Light, there's something important I wanted to talk to both of you about." He sounded so dejected that Tifa didn't dare try to press the issue. She gestured him back into the kitchen where Light had already begun scouring the plates in the industrial sink. Light stopped and dried her hands when she noticed the serious expressions on the faces of the other two.
"What's going on, Denzel?" Tifa asked when it was just the three of them in the kitchen.
He didn't answer right away, but shifted his weight uncomfortably and thrust his hands into his pockets. "Well, you might have noticed that I didn't mention at dinner... why I suddenly decided to come home."
Light and Tifa waited patiently for Denzel to collect his thoughts and launch into his story. He took a deep breath, ran his fingers through his light brown hair, then finally he seemed ready to speak.
"First off, no, Barret didn't fire me. I had some accrued vacation time that I'm using for this visit. I just – I needed to get away for a little while.
"It started about a month ago. We were on the offshore rig south of Gongaga, and it was business as usual, until our bit hit something unusual and couldn't get through it. I mean it just paralyzed our whole system. Barret said the densest rock shelves in that area were normally really thin, so if we could we should just try to drill through it, but that just made it worse. Finally we had to get a deep sea diving drone to go down and manually remove the bit and get it out of there. None of us were prepared for what we found with the drone down there.
"The bit, the entire bit, was buried in this massive chunk of crystal. We pulled it up and found that it wasn't just a crystal. There was a person inside it. Just like what happened with you, Aunt Light."
Light and Tifa exchanged concerned looks. Had someone else from Light's time become trapped in crystal and hibernated away the millennia, waiting for someone to come along and break them out? They asked him to continue his story.
"Well," continued Denzel, "We took a bunch of smaller drills to it and got it to fracture so we could pull the guy out of there. We were preparing a chopper to take him ashore and get him to a hospital but he woke up on his own and except for the headache he had that first day he's been fine ever since.
"Barret took a liking to the guy right away. Trained him and gave him a job right there on the rig. The guy was eager to work, too. He was restless in the mess hall and in the dorms. It was like he was only happy or calm when he was working. I never asked him about it, actually I didn't talk to him much, period. He kind of scared me. But Barret loved him. They've got the same... I don't know how to describe it... they both have really big personalities. You know? When they're happy, they're really happy. When they're sad, they're really sad. When they get loud, they get really loud. It seems like everything Barret does is all or nothing, and this guy is the same way. They both take up a lot more space in a room than just their physical frames. I don't know what else to say. They're just...big. And their bigness complements each other and they get along really well. You would think they were childhood best friends, not two dudes who just met each other a month ago.
"As for me, I don't know at all what to make of him. He doesn't seem evil or anything, but, well, I wanted you both to know about him. Just in case he does end up being evil, I want there to be some record of him outside of the rig. Aunt Light, maybe you could meet with him? I thought he might be someone from your time, and it's a long shot but maybe you might know him. Maybe I'm overreacting maybe you'll say I'm just jealous of how much Barret likes him, but... I just want to be sure, you know?"
Light and Tifa exchanged looks again. Light was willing to meet this mysterious stranger. She gave Tifa a small nod.
"Barret called me about a month and a half ago and said he was almost done at that rig for the season and he was going to come visit during his shore leave," Tifa announced to the other two. "That would have been before the crystal man incident, so I don't know if his plans have changed, but I can ask him if he's still coming, and if he'd like to bring his friend with him. Light, you can meet him then, and if you think he's bad news we can find a way to cut him loose." Light nodded her assent.
Denzel was mulling it over. "Bring him here?" he repeated. "Is that safe?"
Tifa shrugged.
"We're all pretty accomplished fighters, if it comes to that," Light assured the young man. "It shouldn't be a problem."
"I'll call Barret in the morning," Tifa decided.
"Thanks, Tifa. Thanks, Aunt Light. It means a lot to me that you're willing to do this." Denzel visibly relaxed, stopped shifting his weight around.
"After a story like that, I'm too curious not to meet him," Tifa replied with a smile.
"I have to admit, I'm pretty curious myself," Light chipped in.
Denzel smiled at the pair of them, then excused himself to go talk to Cloud about machinery. The two of them had always bonded over some kind of repair work, whether it was bikes or Tifa's industrial kitchen appliances, or later, drill parts. Tifa waved the boy away and went back to scrubbing the dishes with Light.
"So what do you make of all that?" Tifa broke in after a few minutes of otherwise silent scrubbing.
"About Denzel's mysterious crystal stranger you mean?"
Tifa nodded.
Light took a deep breath. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping for it to be someone I used to know. But think about it: there were millions of people in my time. What are really the chances that I know this one particular person?"
"I dunno, Light, the people you knew back then tended to be really important for some reason or another," Tifa reasoned aloud. "What if only important people got frozen in crystals?"
"I'm just wondering how many crystals there actually are, buried around the world like I was in that mountain," Light started thinking out loud. "What if there are thousands of crystals like mine all over the world? And so many of them will never be found because they're under the ocean floor..."
Tifa stopped that train of thought in its tracks. "Hey, try not to think like that. Maybe it will take a long time to get everyone, but if there are more crystals out there, We'll find them. Okay, maybe not 'we' specifically, but someone. Someone will find them."
"I wonder if there's even a chance that Serah's out there..." Light's eyes began to mist over at the thought of her baby sister. Tifa put a hand on Light's shoulder but didn't say anything. She had never known what to say when Serah was involved. "Probably not," Light continued. "That wouldn't make any sense, considering... So, um, if there's any of that pie left over we should get that put away."
Tifa agreed and went to go check.
"Nope, it looks like the kids went and finished it."
Light chuckled. "I hope they don't hurt their stomachs."
Tifa laughed. "I hope they do; it might teach them a little discipline."
It was late when the Valentines finally left 7th Heaven and headed home. Hope was falling asleep where he stood, so Vincent picked him up and carried him.
"So, if it's not too much of a secret," Vincent said to Light as they walked back, "what did Denzel need to talk to you about?"
"Oh. Well, I don't think he'd mind if I told you a little." Light paused to collect herself. "Barret's rig dug up a person. A man. Encased in crystal stasis."
Vincent fought the urge to utter a swear in front of his possibly not-fully-asleep son. "That's incredible," he finally sputtered. "All this time we thought you were the only one."
"Not just me," Light corrected. "I might be the only one so far from my timeline, but you know as well as I that I'm not the only one who ever slept in crystal." She was referencing Vincent's old colleague and almost-girlfriend, Lucrecia Crescent, who entered crystal stasis about thirty-six years prior. Lucrecia, the last l'Cie, slept peacefully in a crystal coffin in a cave not far from the town of Nibelheim. When would she awaken? Light wondered then. How many centuries would pass her by? When the lands and seas changed over time, would Lucrecia become buried in the ocean, like the mystery man from Denzel's tale?
And what about that fal'Cie, whom people now named the Calamity, Jenova? Was she sleeping too? She had last been active before Light had awoken. She sent out the Geostigma; it was like a mad scramble to gather as many new l'Cie as possible. But in her haste she failed to complete the process. Only one person, one of that class called the Sephiroth Remnants, seemed to feel the full strength of her branding, and that one turned into a monster right away. He had to be put down for the safety of everyone in Edge. One might say that if Lucrecia was the last true l'Cie, then that man, Kadaj, was the last true Cieth.
What of the man out at the offshore rig? Was he a l'Cie, too? If so, what were the chances that he was one of Jenova's?
Light wondered if all the people who might be sleeping in crystals under the ocean right at that very moment were all former l'Cie.
Maybe it was just her overactive imagination coupled with the unusual subject matter, but her dreams that night – when she finally managed to actually fall asleep – were peppered with faces from her past. Her friend Hope was there, the small fourteen-year-old Hope she first met in Cocoon. He told her not to worry, that everything would work out for the better. But she also saw Caius again. Why did she dream of him so often?
He taunted her in that dream. "You can't stop the Chaos," he said. "Time moves in a circle, history will repeat itself, and you, warrior-goddess, cannot stop the cycle."
"No, but I can stop you," she retorted, though her voice sounded small and distant to her own ears, the echo of her dream realm.
"Don't be so certain," he sneered back, and a darkness that had been swirling around his feet began to climb up his limbs and envelope his entire body in black mist. "As long as I live in your memories, I will return. Over and over again," he growled those last words as if the prospect of returning brought him physical pain. "As long as you live in my memories, you will be the spark that ignites the flame of my eternal existence."
"As long as you live in my memories, huh?" Light repeated. "Then get out. Get out of my memories, get out of my head!"
Caius shook his head in a blurry, fluid motion that only dreams can simulate. "It's too late for that, Lightning. You took me to your grave, all those years ago. You took me out of the world. Now you'll bring me back in."
"Like hell I will," she spat back in contempt.
"Do not waste your strength fighting this. You will need it all to survive."
With that, the darkness swallowed Caius whole and he disappeared. A sudden cold wind swept over Light then, and in her discomfort and terror, she jerked herself awake, only to greet the first rays of the rising sun peeping through the crack in her curtains.