A Note: This fic is very dear to my heart. It was actually supposed to be the first chapter in a longer story, but I don't know if that will ever come to pass haha. This is pretty self-contained, so whether or not I will add more chapters is totally unknown. I love Vincent to death. Please enjoy~

A young girl sat on a bench in a busy gray train station, waiting. Her steely gaze seemed as though it could pierce through all the buildings and people around her. They were not the eyes of a ten-year-old girl. And yet, that was what she appeared to be.

She had just checked her phone for the fiftieth time. It still said: East station at 1.

It was twenty past one, and still no word from him.

Not like that was unusual. He hardly ever bothered to reply to texts or voicemail, a man of few words in all manners of exchange. But generally he tried to be punctual. Shelke wasn't worried—she was sure there was an explanation—but she did wonder if he was going to show up at all...

The text referred to previous arrangements they had made together about the meeting, a couple days before. The entire chain went like this:

I'm going to be in Edge this Friday.

What for?

Paying my respects.

For whom?

My father.

Then, this morning after breakfast: East Station at 1.

That was it. The rest Shelke had to explicate herself. The eastern train station in Edge led to the new memorial grounds, presumably the location of his father's grave. So they were going there. That meant nice attire. Be prompt.

Shelke was lucky to already own a nice dress. When Tifa had taken her shopping shortly after the collapse of DeepGround, she had decided some formal clothing was in order. "Just in case you ever have to attend a ceremony." What with so many prominent people in her life, there were no shortage of those.

Today wasn't going to be much of a ceremony, but she still wanted to be respectful. It was what people did. She looked a bit like a doll in her black dress, with her carefully styled red hair and puff sleeves. She certainly had a somber air about her, and it discouraged people from approaching her. Perhaps they were afraid of disturbing her reverie, as if doing so might bring them bad luck, like the number thirteen...

Suddenly a familiar tall shadow was casting itself on the pavement. It almost seemed an exact reflection of the black-garbed man standing in front of her. She stood up.

"Vincent Valentine."

It always struck Vincent as a little odd the way she persisted to greet him by his full name in lieu of something normal, like "Hello," but perhaps it was her own personal inside-joke.

"Hello, Shelke."

They didn't exchange handshakes, only greetings.

"I thought you'd never come," she said tonelessly. That made it sound like sarcasm, which it might have been.

Vincent didn't think he was late. "Ready?"

"Yes. Let's go."

The lady at the register made the mistake of saying to Vincent, "One for you and your daughter," as she slid his tickets under the glass window. If Shelke had really been ten years old, she might have giggled. He fixed her a momentarily with a piercing gaze; then they left. The poor woman felt a chill in her bones for the rest of the day. She had just assumed, because they went together so well...

And they did, in the same way two water droplets can slide so seamlessly into each other on a slippery pane, though the metaphor of ice might have been more apt. Together, Vincent and Shelke were like a wall of ice. They were both silent, frosty and impenetrable, and people tended to allow them their space. For that reason, they practically got a train car all to themselves.

And that was all right. They liked it that way.

They took their seats. The one remaining person in the car was an old man reading the paper, and he didn't pay them any mind. Shelke glanced at the headlines, finding nothing of particular interest. In another moment, the train lurched forward and began to head towards its destination.

Shelke studied her hands folded in her lap. Clumsily, she attempted a conversation.

"So, today is the anniversary of your father's passing..."

Vincent languished in the seat next to her, one bent arm propping his head up against the headrest, his long legs spilling over into the aisle. His red eyes scanned the storage slots lining the ceiling of the train. "No. I don't know the exact day he died; today was only the day I received the letter telling me the news."

Shelke was a little surprised. "You don't know the actual date?"

He shook his head.

"But you remember the day you got the letter," she added softly.

"Of course," he murmured.

Your father died in an accident a month earlier,

said a voice in her head.

I know because I was there...

An inexplicable wave of sadness washed over her. Vaguely, she saw him dying in her memory... The sound of weeping...

Shelke fidgeted and wondered if she should say anything.

She immediately decided against it. Maybe some other time.

After a solid hour of forging through the countryside, the train terminated at a little town in the hills east of Midgar. The visitor's center was an easy fifteen-minute walk from the station.

Out of a necessity to bring closure to the recent atrocities, Reeve had organized the creation of the cemetery. Though it was much too nice to be called a mass grave, it was unnerving how far it stretched, how densely packed. Most of the headstones were fresh, and all of them had one thing in common: demise at the hands of Shinra.

Casualties of SOLDIER and DeepGround wars, governance and resource scuffles, victims of the Sector 7 plate collapse... Death by Meteor and Geostigma. In reality, there really weren't enough graves.

The place was beautiful. It was spacious and well-tended; not a wholly unpleasant way to spend eternity. Especially on that clear February day, every color, every detail stood out more sharply in the mind. White clouds and buildings, almost hospital-like in their austerity, popped against an azure sky. Greenery spread out in every direction, dotted with monuments in a variety of shapes and colors.

The harsh truth was, not every grave held a body beneath it, given the chaos of the past several years. But it was the intent, the sentiment that counted-the desire to honor the dead, and to dignify the living with a sense of closure.

There was a special partition for former Shinra employees. Specifically, those who had held positions of certain importance; for the best and the brightest of Shinra who had been so viciously cast away by the company's indiscretion. It was there that Vincent headed.

It was a rather plain and stately-looking headstone. In engraved letters read: Grimoire Valentine. Date of birth, date of death. Shelke noted with detached interest that today was his 80th birthday. She wondered if that was at all difficult for Vincent to grasp—your father would have been 80 today. Perhaps he should have been a proud old man in a wheel-chair, still with some life left in him, but no; he had died in his fifties, thirty-some years before, in a sudden accident.

Dutifully she placed the bouquet of white lilies she had bought at the visitor's center onto the grave. She stood back, trying not to show any emotion. She resisted acknowledging that other part of her, drawing her eyes away to the grass-that heavy sensation of remorse. Shelke felt as if she missed him, even though she'd never met him. She closed her eyes and could see vividly his warm smile, deep crow's feet around his eyes... Vincent never smiled like that. Without his wisdom, his patience, his encouragement, she never would have been able to finish her thesis.

Shelke shook her head. Lucrecia should be standing here, not me. These feelings aren't even mine anyway.

It was true.

But it really was because of her, wasn't it, that they were standing there, ageless, in a garden of dead souls that, in some alternate universe, would never have existed, if she had just...

He told me to slow down, but I didn't listen,

she heard a voice whisper woefully.

It's not your fault, Shelke thought firmly, to the voice, and to herself. She fought back tears that weren't quite hers.

He was... a good man.

Her reverie was interrupted when Vincent knelt down next to the grave, placing something next to the white lilies on the stone in front of it.

"Cigarettes?" Shelke asked. She hadn't expected that sort of gift from Vincent.

"They were his favorite kind." He straightened up again, still studying the grave. "When he was anxious, it gave him a peace of mind nothing else could."

This was surprising; Grimoire had always struck her—well, Lucrecia—as somewhat of a health-freak. "He smoked?"

Vincent was glad to give an explanation. "He quit when I graduated high school."

It was so long ago he could barely remember it. But he had gotten his father to quit smoking after he agreed to stop ditching his high school classes, which he had loathed. He had simply preferred to read in his room than be bothered by his half-witted classmates.

"I suppose he thought his worries were over by then."

He smiled faintly, not remembering the words so much as the fact that they had fought. It seemed quaint to him now, after everything that had happened.

Shelke's face softened a bit, perhaps in amusement, though she was unaware of his thoughts. "Do you think he's troubled now?"

Vincent didn't even shrug. "I'm not going to use them."

Shelke studied him curiously. It was a strangely indelicate gift, and it made her pause to wonder... Did he truly miss him? Or was he just doing this because visiting his father's grave was the Right Thing to Do?

He stood still as the headstones around him, eyes burning into his father's name. It wasn't as if he was a stranger to this sort of thing. How many times had he gone to Lucrecia's cave to pay tribute, in longing or remorse? What was he really thinking?

Then Shelke noticed him swallow suddenly; his gaze flickered down to the flowers; his gloved fingers twitched, obviously struggling to hold something back.

It was an understatement to say Vincent was a master of repression. He hid his thoughts from himself so he could hide them from the world, lest the two collide and disaster strike.

She looked away, feeling sorry.

"He was a good man," Shelke offered. "I wish I could have met him."

Vincent agreed, voice tight with restraint. "He was."

Everything that has definite form will one day soon fade away...

Shelke looked down at her black shoes in the grass. Lucrecia had loved Vincent and she had loved his father. Not in the same way, of course; Grimoire had been a wonderful mentor, he was like a father to her. A father-in-law, almost. Shelke saw in her mind's eye a memory of the time Grimoire had mentioned, in passing, that he had a son... The memory was accompanied by the question, Is he single? But Shelke doubted Lucrecia had ever really asked him. She found out soon enough. And by that time, it was too late.

I'm so sorry...

"Ready?"

She glanced up. Vincent was looking at her, his face still and unreadable as ever.

She wondered if he knew the full story. That his own father was the reason why she had punished herself, refused to let herself be happy and accept his proposal. But Shelke didn't think it was the time. Better not to say anything and ruin memories of Dad, huh?

"Yes, I'm ready."

An observer might have expected him to take Shelke by the hand as they walked away from the grave, but he did no such thing. Neither longed for any comfort. They each had resigned themselves to the realities of life and death long ago.

The scientists at Shinra had worked tirelessly to find ways to avoid death. The two of them were living testaments to the 'success' of those experiments, proving that death could certainly be kept at bay for some time. But even as the two of them didn't age, she knew that truly, no one could escape death. And really, who would want to live forever? Life was cruel and painful. Sometimes, in the past, she had even longed for death. It was another aspect that she shared with the solemn man beside her.

Yet the futility of it all still irritated her. That the stones, the trees, the city in the valley below—not to mention their mortal bodies—would all one day cease to exist. The way life made you meet people and then, just as you were getting to know them, it snatched them away. One minute someone was there talking to you, and the next they had vanished into the atmosphere.

Shelke just wished Vincent would say something. Something that would honor the human need to stick a stone or pair of twigs in the ground, in the hopes that it might bring back the dead...

"Life flows in a cycle."

Shelke looked up. He spoke softly, looking heavenward, as if the words were written somewhere in the sky.

"We were born from the planet, and to the planet we must return."

The words made her strangely bitter. Shalua had said that too. Her sister was still standing there with her short haircut and dorky glasses, telling her it was going to be okay, that someday they would see Mom again. Life flows in a cycle and all that...

But now she was gone too.

As they walked down the grassy hill between the tombstones, a macabre question started pushing at the back of her mind. She wasn't quite sure what made her say it out loud. Perhaps she just wanted to hear his answer.

"Do you wonder what it's like to die?"

She spoke with an empty tone that made the question seem almost boring, as if she was asking him nothing more than who was second-in-command during the Wutai War.

Vincent made a noise that sounded like a scoff.

"We're dying all the time."

Shelke didn't bat an eye at his evasive remark. "I mean to actually die. The end."

Vincent had to admit, sometimes he didn't wonder about it so much as fantasize. All those years spent in that coffin had given him plenty to time to think. At the time, death had seemed a welcome alternative to the hell he was forced to endure. It was also possible that he had died once, but he wasn't sure. In any case, his memory of nonexistence were exactly that: nothing.

"I'd assume... It's a kind of peace that can't be grasped," he answered.

"Like that feeling you get before you fall asleep..."

Vincent nodded absently; he was thinking of nightmares.

"No sight, no sound, no sensation... Nothing..."

Shelke closed her eyes slowly. She tried to imagine what nonexistence would feel like. Tried to imagine Nothing. But it was impossible to shut out the cool breeze against her face, the muted chirping of birds in the trees they passed by.

A funny thought struck her at that moment... If death was just non-existence, how was dying any more of a tragedy that not existing before you were born? How was it any different that not being born at all...?

It was the sense of loss that was so tragic. The pain came from losing, people and things you once treasured so much slipping out of your grasp. But if you never knew what it was like to have them, then you didn't have to pine after them for the rest of your life.

It was all about letting go... A choice you made between apathy, or intense pain...

Shelke believed it was something she knew that Vincent didn't. She believed his problem was that he cared too much. Stop caring and the ache would go away.

But of course Vincent knew that. His capacity for pain was simply beyond her imagination.

They boarded the train home in silence. It wasn't until they had settled into their seats that Vincent spoke again.

"Thank you for coming with me today, Shelke," he said. Shelke turned her head. He was looking straight out the window at the rolling hills, slowly turning red under the twilight sky. He had a thoughtful expression on his face, just as he did when he had spoken about the Lifestream.

"To be honest..." he began, dropping his gaze, "this is the first chance I've had to say goodbye."

Her frown softened. "Oh..."

His eyes settled on her face. They glittered with some intense emotion that failed to reach the rest of his features.

Then he did a rare thing and took her hand. Shelke felt the part of her that wasn't her flush; she tried to ignore it and just studied him uncomfortably.

At that moment they were very aware of the rushing of train tracks. It was a soothing sound. Shelke suddenly felt very tired. She leaned back against Vincent and closed her eyes. He didn't make any movement, so she felt it was all right. Soon she fell asleep.

He didn't let go of her hand until they had to disembark.

We were born from the planet, and to the planet we must return.

They were the exact words his father had told him when his mother had passed away, so many decades before.