For Lev and Cyrus, again.
Paschendale
Vincent Valentine has no idea how he ended up here.
He swore, many years ago, that he would never return to the place that had birthed him.
And yet not only has he returned, he's returned to live there, and not only is he living there, he isn't the only one. Yuffie, obviously, had to return to her home sometime. He just didn't think sometime would be so soon, or that it would include him.
And he really has to wonder what the others are doing living here.
Cloud shares the house with him and Yuffie. She asked Cloud offhand, right after watching Holy stop Meteor, if maybe he'd like to come stay with her in Wutai. And she was probably the most surprised of anyone when he said yes.
In retrospect, Vincent supposes it makes sense in an odd sort of way. He doubts Cloud would want to live anywhere where memories of Hojo, Zack, Aeris, ShinRa would haunt him- which rules out a good chunk of the world. Here, though- Cloud was too young when the Wutai War was fought to be sent to the front, and so Wutai holds no memories for him but those forged during AVALANCHE.
And he supposes, too, that this explains what Tifa is doing here, sharing the house that used to belong to Yuffie's cats with Barret and Marlene. She'll follow Cloud anywhere, absolutely anywhere he goes, his mind or the Lifestream or Wutai. And Barret protected Tifa for years before the rest of them met, Marlene calls her Mother, Corel doesn't want them- so it makes sense for them to follow Tifa following Cloud. They've renovated the house, it's much larger now and has an inside door that lets them into Yuffie's, and Tifa's landed a management position at the Turtle's Paradise. The three of them are well on their way to building a life here.
But Cid, Shera, Reeve, and even Nanaki are here as well. Cid has even managed to bring the Highwind's flight crew along with him and begin building another airship. Reeve says ShinRa can rot, Midgar is gone, and he'd much rather live out the rest of his days in relative peace. Whenever he says this, Cid wants to know what the hell he's doing anywhere near Yuffie. Not that Cid can explain this himself, why he's here with his crew instead of back in his town of engineers that calls him Captain, playing cards at night with Tifa and Barret and Vincent watching and Cloud insisting that he doesn't know how to play. He used to play cards with them, but it was Zack who really knew how, and Cloud hasn't played since Mideel.
Nanaki is by far the most surprising. He should be at the Canyon, or searching for a mate, but the Canyon has PHS and the span of their lifetimes is nothing compared to his own. The Canyon can afford to let AVALANCHE stay together, and if they should need their Guardian, he'll come home by airship and he'll bring his friends. Nanaki lives in the Da Chao caves where Vincent knows for a fact no one is supposed to live, they're sacrosanct, they're holy, but he is a friend. He is one of AVALANCHE and AVALANCHE itself defines Lady Kisaragi now, as she is after Meteor has changed the world.
Vincent likes it in Wutai, he finds. At the beginning he got some frightened looks, but he lives with Lady Kisaragi, the Dragon's Daughter, the leader of Wutai (and isn't that amusing to her friends) and she trusts him, so he must be fine. And if he has a claw-arm, well, the Wutaians wouldn't bat an eye if their Lady were to sprout claws and wings and a tail and breathe flame.
Vincent finds himself coming to realize, slowly, what they are all doing here. What the guiding light is, what draws them together, what makes them work seamlessly even though really no one should fit in here well at all, not even Yuffie herself.
It's Cloud. It's more than that. It's loyalty to Cloud. It's worry for Cloud. It's respect for Cloud. And above all, it's love for Cloud.
Because, they all know but Cloud himself, every one of them loves him in some way. Tifa loves him quietly, unobtrusively, accepts that he can't return that love because he doesn't know how. Barret loves him for the leader he doesn't know he is, and raises Marlene together with Tifa with both of them always knowing that their hearts lie elsewhere. Marlene loves him as something between a father and a brother but not quite as either one. Cid and Shera love him as a member of their family and are the ones who try the hardest to make AVALANCHE function as a family, really as a family, with celebrations on Thanksgiving and gift-giving on Christmas and photo albums. Reeve loves him as a friend, Nanaki as something of a role model although that's something Cloud would never, ever believe. Yuffie loves him in her fierce and unquenchable way but he's pretty sure Cloud sees it as sisterly love. Vincent realizes, slowly, that even he himself loves Cloud in his own way, because after thirty years of darkness he opened his eyes to Cloud's puzzled face as he helped Yuffie slide the lid off the coffin, and because Cloud didn't just leave him there but trusted him to join their team.
Vincent comes to enjoy life with Cloud and Yuffie in their too-large house more than he ever thought he could. It's a strange, simple kind of happiness, born of the fact that there is no great threat to be fighting. The little things have become so much more and it is not unusual to find AVALANCHE doing something as simple as sprawling partway up the path to Da Chao, now cleared of monsters by their frequent visits, and staring at the sky without speaking. His human hand in Yuffie's, Yuffie's hand in Cloud's, in Tifa's in Barret's in Marlene's in Reeve's…the neverending chain of memories and friendship that binds them.
Because they all stood together in the face of the end of the world, held each other up and defeated a demigod.
And the rest of Wutai, the rest of the world, can never understand the riding the wave of battle all the way to the crashing crest and the sweet taste of finally taking down the one who killed their most-loved member. Besides Cloud, of course, because the love for Cloud is never spoken of; it just is. Vincent wonders sometimes if Cloud realizes how deep their loyalty to him runs. There is a scene emblazoned in his mind, of a day when the citizens of Wutai had chosen to belittle Cloud for the SOLDIER glow in his eyes that brought ruin to their country. They never had their chance, because Yuffie heard, and when Cloud walked the streets that day she met him in full battle dress, saluted him and dropped to one knee before him, swearing her allegiance and Wutai's to AVALANCHE. Cloud was puzzled about it later, he pointed out to her in the privacy of our home that Barret's the leader of AVALANCHE, and…well there's just no explaining to him that no matter what it's him they will all follow. Always. Anywhere.
He led them into battle against the greatest threat the Planet has ever faced. They followed him, unblinking, even after he gave them the choice to come or not. Go find what it is you're fighting for. For Lucrecia, for Wutai, for Shera, for the Canyon…and all for him. He doesn't see it, maybe he never will, but it was all for him because they loved him and trusted him and followed him.
Vincent finds himself in a strange friendship with Yuffie. Living with her, he supposes it was inevitable, but it still surprises him somehow. Their personalities should clash, but then again…Yuffie is more than a bratty, thieving teenager. He's seen her drop that guise and rush into battle with her friends, her more-than-friends, her companions with a bond forged of blood and tears and sweat. She is a warrior, deep down in her core, just as the rest of them are and they'd never fit in without each other now. They were together at the end of everything and they know each other as no one else ever will.
He remembers rainy nights when they all managed, somehow, to cram into one tent after another flooded. Remembers how his aversion to touch has been negated around them, with them, because when you have that many people in that small a space…well the laws of physics just dictate that touch is involved. Yuffie sprawls, Cid snores, Nanaki is a terrific pillow. He wasn't the only one that shied away from the others; Cloud tried so hard to avoid being touched for so long, but eventually it was just easier, after a day of fighting, to just all collapse in a heap together. Eventually all barriers were lowered.
And even now, when he sits up late and watches Tifa and Cid and Barret play cards and Tifa win every hand and Cid chain-smoke, he can see the shadows in their eyes. In everyone's eyes. They disturb him the most in Yuffie's eyes, and Nanaki's, and…Cloud. They're the children, those three. Yuffie is the teenager among the adults, even if it's her home they live in and she's the leader there, which doesn't matter because amongst AVALANCHE Cloud is indisputably irrevocably the leader. She's youngest, and Nanaki is a teenager as well, among his own kind.
And Cloud? Cloud is the one they all protect.
There's something that Yuffie says, over and over again, that Vincent finds himself beginning to believe. The first time she said it she was joking. They were fighting in the forest and low on supplies and she told him these monsters couldn't possibly take her out because she was going to live forever or die in the attempt. The phrase, the way she said it, made both him and Tifa pause for a second- it was Tifa that was with them- and think about it. It was supposed to be an innocent, joking comment, but for some reason it seemed to run deeper than that. And after that, she started to say it more often. In Gaea's Cliff, when they all huddled in their tent in their ice cave and cursed the lack of warmer clothing; she couldn't die now because she would live forever. In the woods on the way to Mideel. Cloud had to be okay because they were all going to live forever. Even in the Northern Crater…They'd fought off Tonberries. He'd watched in horror as the teenaged ninja jumped in front of Barret and took what was damn near, too damn near, a killing blow and wondered when… she'd grown up. Then, when they rested for what they knew what could be the last time, with no light to see each other by but the eerie glow of the Lifestream, and it had been quiet for the most of the night as none of them could really sleep…He remembers that old child's voice.
"We're all going to live forever. Even if we don't. I mean, you guys know how strong we all are, right? I bet there isn't anyone else that could even get to where we are." Her voice had been strong. Proud. Boastful. Yuffie. "So of course we'll all live forever. You just can't kill anyone this strong, in body and mind and soul and heart." Everyone was listening now, but he didn't think Yuffie knew it. She looked like she was talking to herself now. Tifa picked up the thread of the conversation. She and Yuffie were close, the women among the men.
"Even if we die," Tifa's voice hadn't shook and Vincent had marveled at the strength in it, "we'll return to the Lifestream and then to Life and we'll just keep coming back. Always."
He realizes, now, that none of them except maybe Yuffie really expected to survive that final battle. Maybe not even her. Yeah, they would try their hardest, and maybe they'd even win. But they wouldn't survive, not all of them. Sephiroth had already taken one of their number and wouldn't bat an eye at taking another. That's…part of the problem now, he thinks. They didn't expect to survive and so they didn't plan for it. Part of why, now, they all live together. Yes, technically only he and Cloud and Yuffie are in the same house, and then Tifa, Barret, Marlene, and then Cid and Shera together, but he and Cloud are there instead of with one of the others because…Yuffie asked.
He doesn't know how long it's been when Yuffie has her first and only child, a boy. Only, because Yuffie isn't married, and everyone but Cloud knows why not and why she probably never will be. But she is the Lady Kisaragi and she does have to carry on the bloodline. Takahashi grows up raised not by the Lady Kisaragi, not by the citizens of Wutai, but by Papa Cloud and Yuffie and the rest of AVALANCHE. Vincent finds it privately amusing that all the children they raise, Marlene and Takahashi and later Maya Highwind, call Cloud Papa. Yuffie is Mother to Takahashi, Tifa is Mama to Marlene, Shera is Mom to Maya, Barret is Dad to Marlene, Cid is Father to Maya, but Cloud is always Papa. Everyone's an aunt and uncle and sister and brother, in an extended family with the surname AVALANCHE. Sometimes war orphans stay with them. Denzel is one of those.
It's a long time since the last battle when time starts to feel like it's moving again. Takahashi was supposed to inherit the leadership of Wutai from Yuffie but he doesn't want it and feels he is unfit to rule; it is a second cousin who takes the position when AVALANCHE, now plus Denzel and Maya and Takahashi, board the long-completed airship Shera and leave. They can't decide on a place to live so they live out of the airship. Yuffie has been over her motion sickness since she survived the world's end and the battle they couldn't possibly have won; Takahashi did not get motion sick.
Vincent finds himself at the edge of the ship, standing at the railing and leaning on it just a little, cape flying in the wind and he can feel the presence of a teenaged Marlene as the young girl sits with her back against the wall and reads the last book Uncle Vinnie gave her. Cloud is sleeping lightly back in their room, he knows; and the rooms are split between them the same way the houses were in Wutai.
The plane only comes out of the air to refuel, now, or to let the family out to hunt, and it is crewed by the original crew of the Highwind because they have become family as well, Lawrence and Rose and the rest of the crew, and the fuel comes from the deep supply of money they amassed following Sephiroth across the world. He knows they should settle somewhere for the sake of the children; but no one, least of all the children, wants that. Denzel and Marlene are close, and so are Takahashi and Maya; and late at night when Cid has had a bit much to drink he bemoans the fact that the Highwind and Kisaragi clans are looking like they'll meet soon. Sometimes, very late at night, so late it's morning really, Nanaki and Vincent and Cloud all sit up together in the Chocobo stable with their prize-winning Golden, Chiki, and stay comfortably silent. There is a bond between the three of them that they would not wish on any of the others, ever, because they are already too large a number to have been in Hojo's hands at all. They make frequent visits to Cosmo Canyon, where they find they have an open welcome, and it is not unusual to find everyone sprawled around the Cosmo Candle late at night.
So Vincent stands at the railing and stares into the setting sun, feeling that the sun is setting slowly on the time of AVALANCHE as well, but Denzel and Marlene and Maya and Takahashi will live on, most probably in the Canyon itself with Uncle Nanaki.
And he realizes that, finally, even though not everything is healed and some things never will be, they are together and that is enough and he is content. They all are.