Warnings in this chapter: Suicide, Temporary character death.
The Mansion was quiet save for the persistent whistling of wind, though from under Simon's room door a weak light was coming. Lucrecia walked through the empty halls barefoot, carrying her shoes in her hand and holding her breath at every sound she made; every small creak of a floorboard seemed too loud in the silence. Several times she had to stop, squeezing her temples with her free hand and closing her eyes, trying to stop the voices, to hold back from turning around and going to Sephiroth.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she reached the lobby. Crossing it, she paused before the door and looked back over her shoulder.
"Maybe I should return, just for a moment," she thought, "write a note to Vincent, at least. He's going to be so confused when he wakes up…"
The voices inside her head enthusiastically agreed with the idea. Lucrecia hovered uncertainly, glancing between the door and the stairs, for a few minutes, until a noise interrupted her. Somewhere in the Mansion, someone's room door has opened and closed.
That decided it; a moment later, Lucrecia was outside, closing the door behind her as quickly and quietly as possible.
For the first time since forever she was out of the Shinra Mansion.
The world met her with strong wind and an annoying drizzle. She put on her shoes and stepped off the porch, right into a half-frozen puddle of water which immediately spilled inside. It should have been freezing, Lucrecia knew, but all she felt was wetness of water and gusts of wind.
She left the main road and turned to a small stone path that led deeper into the garden. Once upon a time, in the middle of an autumn, she had walked it with Ifalna and Nils at her sides, discussing their progress on Jenova's cells… She still remembered the exact moment Simon had interrupted the discussion, running up to them to tell about the first successful attempt at implanting Jenova Type-2 cells into human tissue. Now that faraway memory seemed even less real than visions of a long-dead Cetra.
The Cetra that had been infected with some kind of a parasitic organism (Lucrecia shuddered, remembering the sensation of cold entering her veins)… which was exactly what Jenova Type-2 cells where.
Lucrecia stopped in her tracks, struck by that sudden realization. How had she missed it? The visions had been telling her that for a while now; how had she not understood? The Cetra had been infected. Lucrecia remembered her visions of the old University Library – or, she guessed, the Library of the Cetra, – and not-Gast talking about people who had turned violent after meeting their dead loved ones. The Plague that had spread despite all efforts to stop it, infecting and killing whole villages in span of a few days. Jenova, the Cetra who had died in the middle of the Northern Crater in the last desperate attempt at containing the infection. Jenova had been infected, too; Lucrecia had seen and felt the very moment it had happened. And, she was fairly certain, that Jenova was the Cetra whose remains had been excavated by Gast's expedition and used for the Project.
That was it. The true Cetra cells were those ordinary cells, carrying ordinary human genes, which she herself had labeled Type-1. Jenova Type-2 cells, completely different ones, had never belonged to Cetra race at all.
A parasite that had infected Cetra people, – and now, her, – making them violent. That what they were.
She turned in place and started walking back towards the Mansion. Her own death could wait a little. She had to warn Simon first, and, for a good measure, leave personal messages for Professor Faremis and Ifalna.
Simon met her at the intersection between the small path and the main road. He looked like he just had climbed out of bed where he had been sleeping in his clothes; his shirt, quickly-soaking under the drizzle, was crumpled, as well as his trousers, and his hair was mussed. She ran up to him, slipping on the wet tiles covered with last year's leaves. He frowned at the gun in her hand, but said nothing, looking at her expectantly.
"We have to stop the experiment immediately!" she exclaimed as soon as she was close enough.
Simon raised his brows. "Why?"
"Because – I just realized– Simon, I had visions again–"
"Visions?" he interrupted. "The same kind you had during pregnancy?"
"No, not… not exactly. Remember that time I passed out and Sephiroth was distressed? That was the first time. Then I had more, and the last one… happened when I was dead."
"You weren't dead," Simon said.
Lucrecia shook her head impatiently. "Dead, dying, it doesn't matter. But I saw parts of Jenova's – that Cetra we were experimenting with – I saw parts of her memories. Just parts, and it was so confusing at first, but now, now I understand…"
Simon continued to stare silently at her. His eyebrows were climbing higher and higher.
"I think- no, no, I'm sure, absolutely sure, that Jenova Type-2 cells are in fact a parasitic organism and not Cetra cells," she said hurriedly. "And we should stop the experiment immediately and seek a way to remove the parasite from Sephiroth-"
"Why?" Simon asked again.
"What do you mean – why?" Lucrecia looked at him with wide eyes. She had expected him to be at least surprised by her words, but he just seemed… completely unimpressed.
"What difference does it make," he said, "if it's Cetra's cells or not if it does what we intended it to do?"
"How doesn't it make a difference?" Lucrecia practically shouted, clenching her fists. "It's a parasite! You see what it's done to me!"
"Yes, I see it," Simon admitted calmly. "It has made you exceptionally strong and resilient, it's given you an ability to regenerate and survive even a very severe blood loss, you've got a mental link with your child, – is all this not good enough? I'm sure Gast would agree with me on that," he added.
"It also nearly made me kill Sephiroth… and you, too," Lucrecia said quietly, her hopes fading away together with her will to fight. Simon was right, she supposed. Gast wouldn't see anything bad in using the parasite as long as it did what they wanted, would he? She had no one on her side.
"Well, all new treatments come with unexpected complications," Simon said. "We'll deal with it in time. Come back into the Mansion, Lucy," he shivered, glancing at the clouds, and put his hands into his pockets. "It's far too cold here."
"I can't," Lucrecia said quietly. "Don't you see? It's too dangerous, I'm too dangerous-"
"Stop being ridiculous," Simon said, extending his hand towards her. "Come with me."
She moved backwards a step, another. "I can't," she whispered. "You don't understand, Simon, I can't control it-"
"We'll figure it out," he soothed. Lucrecia shook her head.
"No," she said, "No, I can't, Simon. I'm- Please, look after Sephiroth," she pleaded. "Don't let him become this, too."
She looked at the Mansion windows, glowing with soft yellow light, and felt an exceptionally strong pull towards her baby, so strong that she gasped under the weight of it and made an involuntary step forward. Simon squinted at her, but didn't say or do anything. Lucrecia managed to stop herself after just one more step, and squeezed her temples between her hands, trying to come back to herself.
"I have to go," she said hurriedly, feeling the pull strengthening again. "I'm sorry."
She turned away and started walking, then ran. Simon shouted something after her, but she wasn't listening. The voices inside her head were shouting too, louder and louder the farther she got from the Mansion. After a few moments she had to return to walking. It was hard to move her legs; she felt like she was moving against a strong wind. The world blurred before her eyes.
"You can't go away," the voices told her. "You can't abandon Sephiroth."
"Mother, Mother," the voices sang, "come back, come back to us."
The pressure against her chest became so strong that she had to stop. From behind she could hear footsteps, approaching quickly.
In the last desperate attempt to get away, she lifted the gun, put in under her chin and pulled the trigger.
The darkness surrounds her. The slow pulse of purple light is the first thing she sees when she is able to see again.
She floats in space above an enormous black flower. Its petals are shining translucent crystals, and in its core a purple sphere is pulsing; Lucrecia could swear that there's a quiet slow song coming from it, raising and fading with the pulse of light. One side of the flower seems to be damaged. A small cloud of shining white particles is floating above the crumpled petals.
Lucrecia has a feeling she has seen this already somewhere.
She shifts her focus and looks up. Far, far away she can see a flickering orange light. It looks warm and welcoming like candlelight. She wants to go there, and so she begins to move.
Up and up she goes, but the light doesn't grow any closer, and when she shifts her focus again to look down, the flower isn't any farther away. Nothing seems to have changed, except for one of the particles slowly moving her way.
She reaches towards it, and this time the attempt at movement works; the particle grows quickly, turning into a snowflake-shaped crystal that grows bigger and bigger until she can't see anything else. Its white light envelops her, and when it fades-
Lucrecia finds herself in the familiar white spiral passage. She remembers it now, as well as the black flower.
"I guess I am dead now," she thinks. "Finally."
She starts walking along the passage, heading upwards where the song is sounding; just the same few tunes, the same few undistinguishable words, over and over, as if the singer forgot the rest of the lyrics and just starts over every time. And every time the song comes to a stop the lights flicker, and the ground shakes under Lucrecia's feet.
She eyes the mist-filled bowls sitting on the low ledge that stretches along the outer wall, but doesn't try to touch any of them again. Those are memories, she knows now, but she is more curious about the person they belong to, who, Lucrecia knows, is waiting for her somewhere ahead.
After another turn, the passage ends in a small, sparsely furnished round room. Its walls are the same white material as the passage, and its floor is hidden by straw mats. Through the only window Lucrecia sees nothing but swirling fog. She looks around. A narrow quilt-covered bed is tucked close to a wall. Opposite it, under the window, stands a small wooden table with a statue of a woman on a chair beside it. The statue looks old; small parts of it has crumbled off, littering the floor around.
The song pauses; the room trembles. The song starts anew, and, to her surprise, Lucrecia notices that it is the statue that is singing it.
She comes closer to the statue, bends to look at its face. It's white as chalk and seems completely lifeless, but its lips are moving, letting out words in a language unknown to Lucrecia.
"Jenova?" she asks uncertainly. "Is this you?"
The statue doesn't react, but the grey mist outside the window swirls and moves, and gives way to another view.
It's a cave filled with crystals of all sizes and shapes. A very familiar cave, Lucrecia thinks.
"I know this place," she says quietly. "It's the Crystal Cave. I- I mean, me and Doctor Valentine- we've been there. That's where we found Chaos. Why are you showing it to me?"
The view changes again.
It's of Lucrecia hunched over a box with rare Materia pieces. There is a pulsing purple aura around her body. Lucrecia sees her image reaching into the box and taking a grey sphere – Protomateria. The aura pulses once, twice, and then fades out; the past-Lucrecia slumps forward, laying her head onto the table, Protomateria clasped tightly in her hand.
"I know, Protomateria blocks the Cetra-related abi- Oh. Not Cetra-related, right? It subdues the parasite. That's what you wanted to tell me? But… I don't have it anymore."
The picture shifts back to the Crystal Cave.
"There is another Protomateria in the Cave? I can get it there?" Lucrecia asks, frowning at the picture.
The picture flickers briefly.
"But… I'm dead now, right?" Lucrecia asks. "I don't need it anymore."
The picture changes, and Lucrecia sees-
Simon kneeling on the wet stone path, looking with an expression of fascination at Lucrecia's own body. Her head, as well as the ground around it, is covered in blood, but the wound, though still visible, is closing quickly.
"I'm… regenerating again? I'm going to wake up again?"Lucrecia cries. "How is it even possible? How am I going to stop this thing?"
The picture changes back to the Crystal Cave.
"Oh. That's what you were trying to tell me? I have to go there?"
The picture flickers out, replaced again by swirling grey mist. The song stops for a longer moment than usual; the room trembles, pieces of white chalk-stone falling off the walls and ceiling. The statue crumbles further; half of its face is gone now, as well as one of its arm. When the song starts again, it's quieter than before, barely above a whisper.
Something flashes outside, and the mist disappears, leaving behind only darkness. Lucrecia looks out of the window.
The room seems to be floating above the black flower. The purple sphere inside the flower isn't dim anymore; it flashes brightly, and the room trembles again. The song stops altogether. The statue crumbles into a fine white dust. The room shakes, walls and ceiling begin to fall apart-
Lucrecia finds herself in the darkness again. Before her, the snowflake blows up, leaving a cloud of glowing shards. One by one their glow is fading out and they blend into the dark.
The purple sphere glows again. Lucrecia feels a powerful force drawing her in. She tries in vain to escape, but it's too strong.
Suddenly, black shapes appear in the darkness around the flower. As they shift closer, the purple light grows dimmer until it's barely visible. Lucrecia feels a sense of – fear? apprehension? – coming from it. The pull grows weaker, and then disappears altogether.
Lucrecia uses it as her cue to get away. She focuses on the flickering orange light above and tries to move towards it. This time it works; before she knows it, the flower looks small and far away. She sees now that it's surrounded by several giant bodies. Their outlines resemble dragons'. She doesn't know what they are, but she has a feeling that they aren't friends with the flower.
She focuses on the orange light again. It grows closer and closer, and looks slightly distorted as if she was looking at it through a thick crooked glass. It seems so close now that if she Lucrecia still had hands she could probably touch it, so she tries to do just that-
And then she's floating above it.
Below her is a surface of a frozen sea. Large waves, forever stopped mid-motion, hang over a small fire. A human-shaped figure is sitting in front of the fire. The human's white hair is covering his naked shoulders and back.
"Sephiroth?" Lucrecia calls.
The man looks up from the fire and searches the darkness with his gaze, but doesn't seem to see her.
She tries to move closer, but something is keeping her at a distance. Sephiroth's eyes return to the fire. She looks into it too.
It's a burning town. Small, toy-like houses are consumed by fire, and tiny people are running around in panic. Sephiroth looks into the fire intently, unblinking. Lucrecia tries to call out to him again, but he doesn't notice.
She is about to try and reach for him one more time when she feels herself flying upwards, towards the top of the crystal dome that covers the frozen sea. Up and up, faster and faster-
Lucrecia coughed, spitting out a mouthful of rainwater. Blinking her eyes open, she saw that the sky was still dark, and the rain was still going; she wondered idly how much time it took for her to regenerate this time. Slowly she sat up, and touched her head gingerly, wincing at the mess of dirt, blood, and tangled hair. She felt no pain; the wound had, most likely, already healed completely.
"Interesting," Simon commented. She glanced at him. He was examining something behind her back, his brow furrowed in concentration. Lucrecia turned her head to look what he was so interested by.
She was met by a heap of white feathers. Some of them were streaked with dirt and blood, but they were nevertheless beautiful. Lucrecia squinted, trying to see where the feathers were coming from. It looked like there was a bird's wing stuck to her back.
"Did I fall onto a bird?" she thought, frowning at the feathers. Trying to get a better look, she began to turn around and lost her balance for a moment. To steady herself, she leaned on her two arms… and felt her third arm flailing.
The wing on her back flapped wildly, hitting Simon in the face.
Lucrecia jumped up in horror, spun on the spot, trying to see her own back. The wing folded itself, just as her arms, and was now tucked close to her body.
"What is this?" She asked in a panicked voice. "What did you do to me?"
Simon stood up from the ground. His trousers and shirt were soaked through and covered in dirt, his nose was bleeding, but he looked amused.
"I didn't do anything. To be honest, this," he gestured at the wing, "was the last thing I would expect to happen."
"Then what… why…?"
"Oh, I have a theory or two," Hojo said. "Let's go inside, I'll do tests-"
"No," Lucrecia shook her head, remembering her last vision, "I have to go. Please, tell Sephiroth- Tell him that I'm sorry."
"Wait," Simon began, but she didn't stop to listen.
The memory of another vision came back to her, the one where she was flying over the burning world. And, just as she did in that vision, she pushed the ground away with her two feet, – and found herself floating above the ground. Her wing flapped once, twice, until she learned how to stop it from doing that, – the wing wasn't what held her up in the air.
She looked around; Simon was staring at her from below with narrowed eyes. A little farther away stood the Turk, – whom Lucrecia didn't notice before, too busy panicking over her new appendage. She was holding a gun pointed at Lucrecia. The Mansion loomed behind the Turk, dark and silent. This time, its sight didn't make Lucrecia feel the same strong pull to Sephiroth; she had a vague suspicion that it was somehow connected to the dark shapes that had scared the black flower and made its light dimmer.
Lucrecia shook her head, turning away from the house where she had been trapped for more than half a year (or half a century?), and pushed the ground farther away.
A few moments later she entered the clouds, and the damp, grey fog swallowed her.
Hojo observed Lucrecia's flight with curiosity. The wing didn't seem to have any function besides being an extra appendage (and a strong one, he thought, absently stroking his aching jaw). That meant that her ability to fly was magical in nature, – which was even more fascinating than strength and regeneration, although, he supposed, it shouldn't have been such a surprise to him.
"Doctor Hojo," the Turk, Natalya, said, "what was that?"
"A monster," he answered.
"It looked like Doctor Crescent," the Turk noted.
"Doctor Crescent is dead. I confirmed her death today at two-thirty one. That… definitely wasn't her."
"You ordered me to not shoot it."
"Yes, I'm planning on tracking it down later," Hojo lied. "It would make an interesting research specimen."
Natalya shifted in her place. "I need to report this to Headquarters."
Hojo shrugged, and subsequently shivered at the cold. "Go ahead and start the report, I'll join you later. Need to finish something here first."
He continued to look at the clouds where Lucrecia had disappeared. Natalya's footsteps began to retreat, but then stopped.
"What was the cause of doctor Crescent's death?" she asked.
"Heavy postpartum hemorrhage," Hojo said.
When the Turk had finally left him alone, Hojo crouched down, produced a small transparent plastic zip-lock bag and tweezers from his pocket and began to carefully pick up pieces of flesh and bone left after Lucrecia's second suicide attempt.
He supposed that the data collected from those samples would be of great help to the Experiment.
"A parasite," he muttered under his breath, while working. "Well, Lucrecia, you were never the brightest one. A parasite! No, this is not just a parasite. This is so, so much more than that."
The cloud cover ended over the Crystal Mountains. Lucrecia emerged from the thick fog and dived between two mountain peaks into the ancient crater. Inside the crater the air was clear and motionless, and the surface of the lake, smooth like a mirror, reflected the fading stars.
Lucrecia landed near the entrance to the Crystal Cave. Her hair and clothes were damp, washed clean by the rain while she was flying through clouds, and she was grateful for that.
Before entering the Cave, Lucrecia stopped and looked, one last time, at the lake and the mountains that surrounded it; she wasn't sure if she would ever see the light of day again. For some time she stood, taking in the sight and the sounds of the awakening world.
When the eastern horizon brightened and the last stars began to disappear, she turned towards the cave and walked in.
Inside, she was momentarily overwhelmed by deafening silence. No sounds reached into the cave from outside. Gone were the voices that had been constantly whispering to her. Though she could still feel Sephiroth, he was nothing but a tiny, weak spot of warmth; instead of making her feel better, that just made her even lonelier.
Lucrecia walked deeper inside the cave and sat down on one of the broken stalagmites, hugging herself. Her wing had, at some point, disappeared, leaving no trace, no tear in her clothes, not even one feather. "Was it even there", she wondered, "or was it just one more vision? No, Simon saw it too, must have been real."
Sitting there in the silence, she thought about Ifalna and Professor Faremis returning to Nibelheim and finding out that she was gone and Vincent was somehow alive. What would Simon tell them? How would he explain Lucrecia's disappearance? Would they look for her, would they guess where she had gone? Would they, someday, find her?
"Hopefully not", she decided, and hugged herself tighter. However lonely she was feeling, it was the best solution.
She only hoped that Simon wasn't right about Professor Faremis and that, when the Professor learned about the true nature of Type-2 cells, he would stop all branches of the Jenova Project and try to find a cure for its victims.
The crystals around Lucrecia were glimmering with gentle light. She closed her eyes and wished she could turn into one of those crystals… To sleep forever without waking up, to dream of the life she hadn't had a chance of living anymore…
Unnoticed by her, a thin shimmering mist began to appear around her hunched form, slowly solidifying into a transparent crystal, and as it was materializing, Lucrecia slowly slipped into a dream.
She dreamt of a tiny green house on a small tropic island, of walks on the beach and in the jungle, of playing in the sand with Sephiroth.
She dreamt of Ifalna living nearby in a house of her own, of her garden where flowers were always blooming, and of her small daughter.
She dreamt of her son growing up surrounded by family, together with his best friends Angeal and Genesis.
She dreamt of Simon, and Vincent, and Gast, of all people she knew and loved, living there with them, of the days that were always sunny, and night skies with countless stars.
Sometimes, she thought, in those dreams appeared the real Sephiroth, but as the time flew, he was becoming less and less real, turning into a barely visible shadow silently observing his would-be life.
And while time was a current, Lucrecia was but a rock stuck at its bottom, unaffected and unchanged by its flow.