The cave where Lucrecia slept was isolated from the outside world. No sound disturbed its silence; no whisper from the Lifestream reached its crystal halls. Far from any inhabited place, surrounded by steep mountains, it was known only to a handful of people, and even fewer ever set foot near it. Years had gone by without Lucrecia noticing. In her happy little world, it was always the same sunny summer, and Sephiroth still was the same five year old boy he had been in the very beginning of her dream.

A couple of times Lucrecia had felt some kind of disturbance, as if someone had entered the cave and was roaming around, but that had only made her dive deeper into the dreams. The real world was for other people now, not for her, and she didn't want to deal with them, or with it, ever again.

And as long as she could pretend that her small island was real, and the people that surrounded her were truly there, she was happy.

It was a warm summer night. Lucrecia was walking along the beach, enjoying light breeze and smiling at the starry-filled sky, when the ground under her feet shook violently. A moment later, a wave of pain hit her, as if she was stabbed through, and Lucrecia doubled over. The sky, the ground, the jungle, - all began to fall apart like a shattered mirror. She felt herself slipping, falling through the cracks… right onto the floor of the Crystal Cave, in a shower of crystal shards.

She sat up, gulping the cold air for the first time in years and coughing, and looked dubiously at quickly-fading cuts on her bloodied palms. Her stomach still hurt, but the pain was fading quickly. With shaking fingers she unbuttoned her red shirt and looked at the undamaged skin under it.

"What is happening?" she wondered aloud. "Am I going to die, after all?"

That wouldn't be too bad, she supposed, although it would be sad to leave the dream world behind. Whatever was awaiting her after death, she doubted it would be the same. Certainly, none of the people from her dream would be there, not after everything she had done.

She wondered if they even still remembered her… Not very likely, she decided. Sephiroth must've had another woman to call his mother; she hadn't seen him in the dream world for a while, so he must have forgotten her already and was happily living his real life with his real family. Simon had been so disappointed in her that, no doubt, he had tried to forget her as soon as she had run away. And Vincent… she was lucky if he didn't curse her name every time he remembered her.

The pain in her stomach had faded completely, but the thoughts of people she had left behind made Lucrecia feel another kind of pain. She had been right; the real world wasn't for her anymore. There was no one and nothing waiting for her in it but loneliness, guilt and pain.

"I need to go back into the dream," she whispered. "If I'm going to die, let it happen there."

She climbed to her feet and looked at the scattered pieces of crystal. Had she really been inside it? Had the crystal been what kept her asleep? And if so, how could she repair it? Closing her eyes and concentrating, she tried to recreate the thoughts and emotions she had had before she had slipped into the dream world for the first time. It seemed to be working; she cracked one eye open and saw a thin shimmering mist gathering around her.

The dream world appeared before her gradually, slowly emerging from grey mist, and gaining colors, and shape, and sense of reality. Lucrecia let out a breath of relief; she was finally home again.

"Mommy!" she heard, and turned around, to see Sephiroth who was running up the hill, knee-deep in green grass. "Mommy, you're back! I missed you!"

He hugged her tightly around her middle, and she hugged him back.

"I know," she said, "I missed you too, honey."

A rumble of thunder sounded from somewhere over the sea, and Lucrecia frowned, - thunderstorms weren't something that had ever happened here. She looked over to the shore–

On a small stripe of rocky ground between the meadow and the beach stood a tall man. Wind played with his long white hair and flapped his black coat. His bright blue-green eyes were trained on Lucrecia, unblinking.

Lucrecia stared in return, unsure of what to do. That was her dream, but she was fairly sure that she hadn't dreamt him.

The man made an aborted motion, as if he had wanted to go to her but changed his mind. His gaze went to Sephiroth for a moment, then back to Lucrecia. A moment later he shook his head, turned away, and began to walk. With every step he was becoming more and more ghost-like; through his fading form, the sea and the sand were visible. Soon he disappeared completely. With him, the storm clouds went away too, and the sky became clear again.

"Who was that scary man?" Sephiroth asked, still clinging to her.

Lucrecia hesitated. "I… I don't know…"

But she knew. She hadn't recognized the man right away, but- but it had been him. The real Sephiroth.

"How much time had passed?" she thought. "He looked twenty at the very least. How many years had I slept?"

But it didn't matter, she reminded herself. Whatever was happening in the real world, it didn't concern her anymore. The real Sephiroth lived his own real life, with his own real family… He didn't need her anymore. He had never needed her at all.

"Let's go home," she told the boy beside her, and, hand in hand, they walked towards her small house.

Half way to the house, Sephiroth spotted Angeal and Genesis and ran off to them. Lucrecia smiled at the boys, waved at Gillian who was with them, and continued to walk.

She was about to open the door to her garden when the ground began to quake again. She looked back at Gillian and the boys; they were still talking and laughing as if nothing unusual was happening. Lucrecia started walking back to them, but as soon as she made the first step, she was overwhelmed by a feeling of vertigo. She fell to her knees and grabbed at the grass to steady herself, but it didn't help. A moment later came the pain, the kind she had never experienced before; it felt like she was burning alive. She tried to scream but found out that her voice was gone. The dream around her was falling apart, but she barely saw that. Another wave of pain, and the ground under her was gone, and she was falling down again.

She came to on the stone floor of the Crystal Cave. Everything was quiet. It felt like some time had passed since she blacked out; her cuts had already healed. She sat up and looked herself over, finding no trace of whatever had happened to her in the dream. She had been absolutely sure that she had been dying, but, for some reason, she was still alive.

She was alive, but something was wrong. That weak spot of warmth that had always been with her, her connection to Sephiroth, was gone.

She tried to reassure herself. "It doesn't mean anything. He must have simply decided that he didn't want this connection anymore. Or, probably, Professor Faremis and Simon finally found a way to remove the parasite… Yes! That must be it, – they cured him, that's why the link disappeared. And that's why he came to my dream, – to say goodbye, because he knew we wouldn't be connected anymore!"

Still, she couldn't stop herself from walking to the cave entrance. She hovered uncertainly before it for while, squinting at the light of day, but then rolled her eyes and stepped outside.

The voices met her, whispering all around, as if she had never been away from them. The link she had been sharing with Sephiroth, however, was still missing.

"Lost," the voices whispered inside her head, "lost, lost forever, Sephiroth!"

"Gone," they cried, "gone, gone, lost, gone."

"What?" she asked the voices. "What happened to him?"

"Into the darkness he fell," they wailed, "and it consumed him."

"No hope," they whispered, "lost forever, no hope, no hope."

"It can't be," she muttered. "It's impossible! He… he can't be dead!"

"Dead," the voices went on, "gone, lost, carried away."

"Can't you tell me what exactly happened?" she shouted angrily, but the voices only continued to cry and wail.

Lucrecia looked around, trying to decide where to go. The grass was green, and sun stood high up in the sky, but the leaves on small bushes along the lake shore were yellow; it seemed to be an autumn, although she still had no idea what year it was. She turned northwest and pushed the ground away.

Unwilling to attract any attention to herself, she landed in a forest at a distance from Nibelheim and took off her white lab coat, folding it up and wincing at her ridiculous clothes. The rest of the way she walked along a country road that didn't seem to be used often.

The road led her to the top of a hill just out of Nibelheim, and there she stopped, surprised and disturbed by the sight that opened to her.

The town seemed to be completely destroyed. Among the black debris scurried people in yellow jumpsuits. The Mansion, at least, seemed to be intact, still standing in its usual place on the mountain slope. On a cleared-out part of the main street stood a van with Shin-Ra logo on its side. That decided it; Lucrecia didn't want to come in contact with anyone from Shin-Ra yet. She quietly slipped back into the forest and backtracked to the point where she had landed.

From there she flew farther northwest to another small town, a little more than a village, called Sieben Kiefern. As before, she landed in a forest and made the rest of her way on foot.

To her surprise, Sieben Kiefern wasn't so small anymore. New streets sprouted from it, and at the farthest end of the town a large tower was standing, slanted to the side a little. Something about that tower seemed unusual-

"It's a rocket!" Lucrecia blurted out, staring wide-eyed at it.

"Huh?" a passerby, an old man with a basket full of mushrooms, huffed. "Of course it's a rocket! What backwater village are you from, girl? The town even got a new name for it!"

"Oh," Lucrecia said, "and what is the town called now?"

"Rocket town!" the man said proudly, puffing out his chest. "Well, this one," he pointed at the rocket, "didn't make it because of one dumbass… But we launched a bunch of them in these past years! Satellites and such."

"No humans?" Lucrecia asked, genuinely curious.

"No," the man said. "This rocket was the first capable of manned flight into outer space… But as I said, one dumbass ruined everything."

She walked with the man towards the town, listening to him rambling on about rockets, and the town, and Shin-Ra, and war with Wutai, and cuts to the funding of space exploration programs… Lucrecia didn't even need to ask questions; nodding and humming was more than enough.

She was still trying to figure out how to ask about Sephiroth when the man said, "You know, Shin-Ra's in a bit of turmoil right now, what with SOLDIER Firsts dying and all. Even Sephiroth, who would've thought, eh? Not me, that's for sure! The guy was practically invincible. Monsters got him, they say. Ha! Monsters! I'd say," he leaned in to Lucrecia and whispered conspiratorially, "Shin-Ra themselves disposed of him! They only needed him for the war, as a weapon, and when war ended? They got scared of him! What if he turned against them? He would've killed them all, Turks or no Turks!"

"Sephiroth died?" Lucrecia asked incredulously, unwilling to trust her ears. "Are you sure?"

"Oh yes I am. If you're interested in what the official version says," the man smirked at her, "go to the inn, they got newspapers."

She followed the man to the town square where he showed her the inn and bid farewell.

The inn was empty save for a young man sitting behind the counter at the bar, half-hidden behind a newspaper. Its title page was turned towards Lucrecia; in big black letters, above a black-and-white picture of the same man that had visited Lucrecia's dream island, was written:

"Hero of Wutai War dies: Another loss for Shin-Ra"

The date on the newspaper was 18th of October, the year 0002. She had been asleep for twenty-two years.

"Impossible," Lucrecia muttered. "I don't believe it."

"What?" The barman asked, lowering the paper and revealing a young round face with blue eyes and a smatter of freckles around the nose. "Ah! Sephiroth's death? Unbelievable, right?"

"Yes, it is. Oh, can I read this?" Lucrecia asked quickly. "I just… want to make sure it's not some kind of a joke."

"Sure. Here, I have a spare," the boy said and gave her another newspaper, pulling it from under the counter.

Lucrecia perched on one of the bar stools and began to read.

The article didn't only tell about the circumstances of Sephiroth's death (of which it told surprisingly little), but of his life, too. Lucrecia learned that Sephiroth had trained to be a SOLDIER (a special forces of some kind, as far as she understood) since early childhood. He had gone to Wutai War at only twelve years old (that made her bristle) and soon had become a hero. They had even called him Demon of Wutai.

What the author had completely omitted was any information about Sephiroth's family. There wasn't even a photo of him with his father. It looked like he hadn't had anyone close to him, except for two other young men that were beside him in some of the pictures.

Their names were Angeal and Genesis. Both were listed as recently deceased.

For a long time Lucrecia sat there, rereading the article over and over again, unable to reconcile reality of Sephiroth's life with the image she had made up in her mind. She just couldn't understand how and why it all had happened. How had Professor Gast allowed that? Where had Ifalna been? What Simon had been thinking?

"I asked you to take care of him, Simon," she muttered. "That was the only thing I asked of you. Oh, Sephiroth, I'm so sorry…"

The barman glanced over the paper at her. "What? Take care of who? Sephiroth? You were his girlfriend or something? Wow!"

"No," she chuckled mirthlessly. "I was his mother… if I can be called that, which I doubt."

"Huh? His mother? Sure, and I'm Bahamut!" the boy laughed, clearly not believing her.

She only shook her head at that, returning her gaze to the paper.

On the way back to the Crystal Cave Lucrecia contemplated going to Midgar to demand answers from Gast and Simon. She was absolutely furious with them for making Sephiroth's life what it had been, for making him into the weapon she had been afraid he would become. But in the end, she decided against it. What was the point in confrontation with them when it was too late to change anything? As strong as her anger towards them was, it didn't even come close to her hatred of herself; it was her own fault, first and foremost, that Sephiroth's life had gone the wrong way. Had she not agreed to participate in the Project, she would have had the life she now could only dream about, with her son by her side.

But now Sephiroth was dead, and so was her last connection to the world.

Back in the cave, she returned to her place and slipped back into the dream world where Sephiroth was alive and well, a happy small boy enjoying his carefree life.

The crystal solidified around her again, effectively cutting her off from the real world.

The life on the small island went on. Between playing with Sephiroth, walks on the beach with Iffie, and dinner dates with Vincent (and sometimes Simon) Lucrecia had begun to forget what had happened in reality. She still remembered most of the events, but wasn't so sure about people; had real Simon been so affectionate with her, or not? Had real Vincent known the details of Lucrecia's life they were talking about? Had Iffie ever been as interested in Materia as Lucrecia herself?

She couldn't remember, and, she supposed, it didn't matter.

One day, in the middle of a conversation with Iffie about correlations between the usage of Materia and certain changes in brain activity, Lucrecia heard a strange noise. She fell silent and strained her ears, looking around in an attempt to find its source.

"Hey, are you listening?" Iffie asked with a laugh, noticing her lack of attention.

"Shh, I think I heard something weird."

"Huh." Iffie put her palm to her ear like a hearing tube and spun in place. "I don't hear anything," she said after a moment.

Lucrecia, however, was sure that the sound was there. As she listened, it was becoming gradually louder, - a distant voice, singing, "Sephiroth, Sephiroth."

"Sephiroth," she whispered. "Does it mean?.."

"Sephiroth?" Ifalna asked, frowning at her in confusion. "He's playing outside with the boys, remember?"

"Ah… yes, yes," Lucrecia nodded absently. The song was growing louder with every minute; now she could hear other voices as well.

"Sephiroth, Sephiroth," they sang, "our god, our hope, our salvation."

"Mother of Gods," they sang, "Your son is here, your son is with us, o Mother."

Lucrecia was dimly aware of Iffie saying something to her, but the dream world was quickly losing its colors, becoming flat and grey, so focused she was on the voices. They were silent for years, even while Sephiroth had been alive, - why had they awakened now?

Was her son not dead?

Lucrecia looked at the fading shadows of her dream, trying to understand how to wake up. She had never had to, before; it had always been something from outside that pulled her back into reality. This time she had no such luck.

Shutting her eyes tightly, she concentrated on the feeling of the cave as she remembered it, – cold still air, gentle light coming from the crystals, the absolute silence, – but as the voices continued to sing ("Sephiroth, Sephiroth!"), instead of the Cave another place appeared before her eyes. She saw her own room in the Shinra Mansion, saw it so clearly that it almost became real.

"No, no, not there," she whispered, "wake up, wake up, WAKE UP-"

She opened her eyes. She was lying on a wooden floor of a small round room. Along its wall went a low wooden shelf with multiple flower pots sitting on it and on the floor beside, some with flowers and greens, others only filled with soil. The sun setting in heavy clouds was filling the room with red light through the large and wide window.

She stood up slowly, using the shelf as a support, and turned around to look at the room. On the wall opposite to the window was a simple wooden door. Opening it, she peeked out into a long dim hall. On both sides there were doors; the one on the left side was opened a fraction. She pushed it and stepped cautiously inside.

The room looked like someone's study; to the right of her stood a large bookcase, followed by a large strongbox with several books stacked on its top. On the left, under a window, there was a table with a chair.

And under the table, a small child was sitting, curled in a ball, his face hidden in his knees, his hands hugging his legs tightly. His hair was very light-colored, maybe even white.

She crouched down before the table. "Hey. What are you doing here?"

The boy lifted his head a little, glanced at her through his bangs. "I'm hiding."

"Oh." She thought for a moment, then climbed under the table and sat down cross-legged on the floor beside the boy. He side-eyed her cautiously, but said nothing.

Silence fell. She looked at the bright red squares cast by setting sun on the walls and the floor. They didn't seem to be moving, even after a few minutes.

"Who are you hiding from?" she asked finally.

"Doctor Hojo. I don't like him," the boy said, scowling. "He says that Professor Gast is never coming back."

She furrowed her brows at that. The names seemed familiar. "I think I maybe know them," she said.

"Hm." The boy squinted at her suspiciously. "I don't know you. Are you a Turk? What is your name?"

She thought for a moment. What was her name? Something starting with an L?

"L…Lucy," she said at last.

"No, I really don't know you," the boy said with confidence. "You must be new here."

"Maybe," she said. "So, why are you hiding?"

"Because Hojo wants to take me to Midgar." The boy straightened his spine, looking warily towards the door. "But I don't want to go. I'll wait here until Professor Gast comes back. He promised."

"He's never coming back. Hojo killed him," another voice said. Lucy started and looked quickly around, but saw no one else.

"I know," the boy said softly to his knees. "But maybe if I wait just a little longer, he will come back to me. I really, really miss him."

"Whose voice was that?" Lucy asked quietly, leaning close to the boy's ear.

The boy shrugged. "Mine."

"Yours?"

"Yes. It was the other me talking. He's older, he knows things. He says I shouldn't trust people, and shouldn't get attached to them. Because, even if they say that they love you, even if they say they're your friends, they'll leave anyway." The boy sighed. "I don't believe him. He talks like Hojo."

A shadow fell across the room, and red sunbeams disappeared. Darkness enveloped them. Something roamed there, outside, something with heavy steps that made all room shake. Lucy instinctively searched for the boy's hand and took it, clasping tightly, – though if it was more for his sake or for herself, she didn't know. A few moments later, the shadow moved away, and the room again filled with ominous red light.

"What was that?" Lucy whispered to the boy.

The boy whispered back, "The monster. You should probably go."

"What? There are monsters here?"

"Only one," he said, and, hiding his face in his knees again, quietly added, "Me."

"You… are a monster?"

"Not now-me. That me is the very latest. He doesn't like this," the boy lifted his head and nodded at the room, "so he wants to destroy it. I think," he added thoughtfully, "he doesn't want to remember feeling lonely. Maybe he thinks that if he forgets, then he won't feel like this anymore?"

"I don't know," Lucy said. "But you're right. We should get out of here before the monster comes back."

The boy shook his head. "You go. I can't."

"Why?"

"Because this is just a memory," another, older, voice said. "Which he is a part of. And you don't belong here."

This time, when Lucrecia opened her eyes, she was met with the familiar sight of myriads of glowing crystals. She had finally woken up, but what had happened before that? She remembered the room with red sunset and the small boy hiding under a table, and… had he said that Professor Gast was dead, killed by Hojo? No, that was said by the older voice. The little one said…

"Maybe if I wait just a little longer, he will come back to me."

"Oh, Sephiroth," she whispered.

"I think he doesn't want to remember feeling lonely. Maybe he thinks that if he forgets it, then he won't feel it again?"

"I'm so, so sorry," she cried into the silence of the cave. "If I only knew…"

She trailed off, crying wordlessly over the lonely child who was still, years and years later (how old was he in the memory, she wondered, four years? Five?), waiting for someone who was never going to come back.