Penance

©®™ Lt. Commander Richie

((Disclaimer: Must I continue? Me owning Final Fantasy is like me owning Mushroom Kingdom Hearts in all its PS2 glory. Not gonna happen for at least another year or so. And before you ask, it's 'Me-ra' and 'Leer-bach (like the composer)'))

Chapter 2



The storm had lessened, if only by a bit, allowing cellular reception in the dimly-lit kitchen of the ShinRa mansion. Mira sat on a chair that was tall enough that she had to be lifted onto it, nearly drowning in Vincent's red cloak. She kicked her well cloak-wrapped legs occasionally back and forth, happy that she had a roof over her head for the first time in several weeks.

"Yes, Tifa, I know it's late." Vincent muttered, pacing back and forth on the crusted linoleum of the floor. Across the small room, Mira heard a garbled reply from through the cellular.

"No, I'm not calling for Yuffie. Why would I call for Yuffie through your phone?" The next answer Mira had a harder time hearing, but she was perfectly content with just snuggling into the warm cloak.

"A little girl named Mira found her way into the Mansion. She looks like- Yes, I know. But that's not the point. She's small enough to be five years old and she's had Mako injections." Vincent turned when Mira said something. She was holding both hands out over the collar of her borrowed cloak, making a number with her fingers.

"I'm six and a half." She apparently reiterated. Vincent seemed almost startled by this, but kept his calm demeanor. He returned his attention to the cellular at his ear.

"Name? Mira Leirbach. Tifa, could you get over here as soon as you can? She's only a child, she may even have been one of Hojo's expiraments." Vincent said. He nodded to something the woman on the other end said, even if she couldn't see it. "Alright. Goodbye."

As Vincent snapped his cellular shut, the lights went out. Mira let out a squeak of surprise and retreated into the borrowed red cloak, only the broken and burnt hairs on the top of her head showing. The gunslinger opened the cupboard closest to him, moving a few out-of-date dry foods out of the way to get the circuit breaker box open. He flipped the breaker for the kitchen, but nothing happened.

Exasperatedly, Vincent shut the breaker box and the cupboard. He crossed the kitchen slowly, sitting down on one of the three rickety chairs at the table and gently moving the collar of his cloak away from Mira's face.

"You can see, you know." He said chidingly. Mira shook her head, large blue Mako eyes glowing dimly in the darkness.

"It's too dark." She said, and shrunk back down into the borrowed cloak. Vincent nodded at the simple logic, crossing his arms across his chest and leaning back in the chair. He was ready to wait out the storm, if only to get Mira some real help in the form of Tifa.


"The hell was that?" A groggy Cloud rolled over, turning on a bedside lamp. Tifa closed her phone and set it on her nightstand, laying back down on her pillows.

"Vincent. A little girl got into the ShinRa Mansion. She's an orphan, and she's got Mako injections." Tifa said. At this Cloud shot up, ready to head out the door as-is. Tifa grabbed his arm and pulled him back down onto the bed, angry.

"Why are you stopping me?" Cloud asked. Tifa clucked her tongue and laid back down, turning onto her side.

"This is Vincent we're talking about. If she's a child super-soldier made by Hojo, he can take care of himself. Get some sleep, Cloud, it's raining cats and dogs out there." Tifa chided, snuggling down under her blanket.

"Fine, but we're heading over there first thing in the morning." Cloud mumbled, ever persistent. Tifa sighed and closed her eyes, vision receding into deeper darkness as Cloud turned off the table lamp and laid back down.

"Sure. First thing." Tifa mumbled.


Vincent awoke with a start, a krik in his neck like none before. Someone was banging on his door, and his cloak was folded neatly in his lap. Mira was nowhere to be found. He jumped to his feet, metal boots clattering on the crusted linoleum. He quickly made his way to the door, moving out of the way as he opened it. Sure enough, Cloud's hand sailed though the new opening, right where his head would have been. The situation would have almost been funny, but there were more pressing matters.

"Mira's gone." He announced solemnly, and Tifa looked heartbroken. Cloud made his way into the mansion, frowning.

"Do you know where she could be?" He asked, Tifa following behind him. She started as a little hand pulled at her skirt, and she looked down into a pair of huge vibrant blue eyes.

"You look like you need these more than Mr. Vins'nt." The little girl said, holding up a handful of colorful weeds. A stray breeze blew short chunks of hair in Mira's face, and Tifa reached down gently and brushed some of it out of the tiny girl's face.

"Thank you, sweetie." She cooed, gently taking the colorful weeds from her petite fist. Cloud turned to Vincent, steering the taller man down the hall.

"How did she get here?" The blond asked, skeptical. Vincent paused for a moment. "Well?"

"She broke in." He answered concisely. Cloud gave him a skeptic's eye, turning to the entryway where Tifa had pulled out a comb and was combing Mira's hair very gently to get all the knots out.

"She's got Mako, you didn't smell her and..." Cloud trailed off, watching the tiny twig-like girl jump forward and embrace Tifa tightly when she finished combing her hair.

"She's six, Cloud. She's an underfed orphan with a Mako injection or two, or maybe the Geostigma took on her instead of infecting her. She could have been in Midgar when you blew the reactors. There are a million reasons for her eyes, and only a few involve Hojo." Vincent said, trying to reason with Cloud. The blond nodded, but only for a moment.

"She may be six, but until we know how she got that Mako, for all we know she could have slept in Hojo's broom closet forsixty years." Cloud said. Vincent fixed him with a smoldering glare, making his way back to the front entryway. It was then that the blond realized his mistake, chuckling to himself. He looked up just as Vincent moved out of the way, to see Tifa tying a long red ribbon they had gotten from a Tonberry in the tiny girl's hair. Cloud sighed. He was being much too harsh on the kid. The blond trekked over to the motley group, gently picking the tiny girl up and setting her on his shoulder.

"Reeve's coming by with Cid later today, he can take a look through the WRO files and see if there's anything on her. Yuffie's coming with them, so we should probably close the bar for a while while she recovers from the trip..." Tifa said, getting up from the floor where she had been kneeling. Cloud nodded, heading for the door.

"Duck." He said, and the little passenger held tightly to his hair and bent forwards. Once through the door, though, she didn't sit straight again. Her hand in Cloud's hair tightened, pulling. He yelped, and Tifa ran forward out the door.

"What's wrong?" She asked, pulling the child from the blond's shoulder and placing her on the ground in front of her. Mira was moaning pitifully, clutching her stomach.

"She was in the rain almost all night last night." Vincent observed, standing behind Tifa and refastening the clasps on his cloak.

"But it can't be that... She looks like she's having some kind of attack, or- Oh no." Tifa muttered as Mira's eyes snapped open, her normally large blue eyes now blueish green with slitted pupils. She quickly scooped the tiny girl up into her arms, cradling her like someone would a toddler. Mira stared unblinkingly with her Sephiroth-like eyes straight ahead over Tifa's shoulder.

"She's got the stigma." Cloud said, startled. Tifa pulled the tiny girl from her shoulder, handing her to the blond.

"Get to the church and heal her, fast!" Tifa exclaimed, and Cloud ran for his motorcycle. He jumped onto the black monstrosity, cradling Mira in one arm and gunning the bike into life. The two flew towards Aerith's ruined church, and hopefully the healing water inside. A small red fleck floated from the sky silently, twisting and turning every which way. Vincent reached out with his claw and snagged the piece of red from the air. The long red ribbon blew around the gold edges of his hand, wrapping itself securely.

"Here." He said, holding the ribbon out to Tifa. She shook her head, and began walking the same way Cloud had run.

"You give it to her." She commanded. Vincent shrugged slightly, and turned to head back inside. In a split second, Tifa was at his side and pulling at his arm.

"What are you doing?" It was more of a demand than a question.

"Dilly-dally, shilly-shally! You found her, so you're going to be responsible for her. No matter how much you don't think you need it, Vincent, you need responsibility other than simply sitting around this place all day. Sure, you maybe kill a few monsters, but Mira is a light for you in that darkness you're always cooped up in, I can see it. Now, you're coming with me to see if she's alright, or I will throw you over my shoulder and bring you anyway." Tifa finished her last sentence with a poke to Vincent's chest every other word. The gunman glared at her, but inside he had a feeling that maybe, in the tiniest way, she was right.

"I can't be responsible for her, not here." Vincent said, turning to gesture at the roof of the ShinRa mansion with his human hand. Tifa grimaced at the sight, shingles missing and a large and very recent hole that looked as though it had been hit by lightning smack-dab over the entryway.

"You're right." Vincent turned suddenly, surprised at her compliance. "You're right," she reiterated; "we'll just have to get everyone to pitch in and help you fix it, then. Not even youcould live here very much longer with the sorry state the place is in, and you slept in a coffin for thirty years."


The door to Aerith's ruined church swung wide open, Cloud striding purposefully inside with Mira clutched in his arms. The little girl had yet to blink, her eyes still unnerving and slitted. Suddenly she cried out, squirming in pain so badly and so suddenly that Cloud nearly dropped her. He yelled in surprise, sinking to one knee to control the girl's decent. She continued to squirm, but only a fraction of the pain was behind it. With that prompting, the blond shot forward the last ten feet to the edge of the slowly-diminishing pool of curing water, pausing at the edge only long enough to pull Mira back into his arms correctly so she wouldn't drown.

"You'll be alright." Cloud whispered softly, slowly lowering her into the water. Green strands started to rise from the girl's tiny body, not only from her stomach in alarming amounts, but from above her hairline; from a smudge next to her eye that had been more brown than black, giving the appearance of a smudge of dirt; and from the bottoms of her feet, which slowly faded to her pale complexion in an alarming shower of green.

Slowly, Mira opened her eyes. Apprehensive, Cloud gazed back, relieved to see that they had returned to her own large, however un-normal, bright blue Mako eyes. She coughed and spluttered as water invaded her nose and mouth, squirming out of Cloud's grasp and suddenly falling into deeper water. The blond gasped and lunged forward, nearly falling in himself as he pulled the tiny girl from the water. Mira made an odd noise in the back of her throat that sounded like a giggle when Cloud put her down, and then spat a steady stream of water at him.

"You look like a Chocobo!" Mira warbled happily, jumping forward and latching herself onto Cloud's neck. For the first time in a while, he laughed without having to almost force it.

"I'd look even more like one if you hadn't spat all that water in my hair!" He laughed even more, grinning at the small girl. Mira nodded solemnly, screwing her face up in concentration.

"Let me fix your hair!" She declared, raising one hand to her mouth and giving it a hearty lick. With a sudden movement, she had reached forward and swiped up some of the dilapidated spikes that Cloud was known for, raising them all into a single large spike that curved up off the side of his head. Tentatively, the blond looked at his reflection in the water, Mira grinning all the while.

"Thank you." Cloud said, nodding. Mira nodded as well, latching onto Cloud's shoulder Pauldron with the lion head on it and occasionally jumping up and down.

"Carry me, carry me!" She said, grinning. Cloud shook his head, but picked the tiny girl up anyway and sat her on top of the opposite shoulder.

"I can't do this forever, you know." He said, holding the girl in place as he slowly stood up.

"Okay!" Mira acquiesced, attempting to climb her way down Cloud's arm like one would climb down a mountain. She stuck both feet on his belt and then jumped onto the grass surrounding the Cetra's pool. The little child rolled in the grass, giggling as a stray blade of grass found its way up her nose. She sat up, carefully plucking three stems of three different colored Lilies out of the ground as close to the dirt as she could. Slowly and deliberately, with tiny and thin fingers, she wove the stems into a design without once breaking them.

"That's a very good job you're doing." Cloud said, looking over the little girl's shoulder. Somehow Mira had managed to bring out the softer side in him as well, that was also only available to children and the occasional Chocobo.

"Thank you." She nodded, all traces of her burst of energy gone as she diligently toiled. Finally she stood up and turned around, holding a slightly lopsided flower crown. Mira smiled and held the crown out to the blond in front of her. Suddenly, one of the stems cracked and a flower shifted to the side, making what was once a lopsided crown look like something completely different. Mira sniffed, dropping her work of art on the ground where more of the stems cracked, and then began to cry. She sank to her knees, and started hitting the plucked and woven flowers with one thin fist. Cloud bundled the tiny girl up into his arms and picked up the crown, placing it on her head.

"Hey, I bet you're tired, huh?" He asked. Mira shook her head, large and bright blue eyes looking up at him imploringly.

"I's not tired." She said, just as sunset's first rays began shining through the hole in the church's roof. Cloud grinned, quite uncharacteristically wide, and nodded.

"Sure you're not. C'mon, let's get you to Seventh Heaven." Mira mumbled, having spent all her energy in random bursts.


Fixed some randomosities in Canon that have been bugging me for a while.