the consequence of living
Romulus wasn't born blind. What happened was that there was a terrible flash of light and then searing flame. His leg was crushed under a beam of wood, excruciating pain that could not match the heat of the fire that ravished the laboratory. He cried out for his father and then, because the pain was making him desperate, he cried out for his brother, though he knew his brother was far away, living in the shadows of Midgar's plates.
The last thing he saw was his father, removing his cape to throw it over the shoulders of a slender woman in a long white trench coat, the flash of his father's brilliant blue eyes as he started to weep, openly, like an animal stuck in too small a cage. He wanted to reach out for his father, to tell him don't cry, that everything was going to be okay. Instead, with one last scream, his father pulled him out from the collapsed debris, lifting him from where he fell moments after the explosion. His father half limped, half crawled to an open window and he threw Romulus' bleeding, limp body to lie in the still and silence of snow. There was the warmth of blood, flowing freely from Romulus' torn leg but all he wanted was to see his father, to make sure he got out safely.
He tried and he tried but his eyes could not make out anything but grey and black shadow as blood flowered over the snow. He could not remember blacking out, but when he gained consciousness, he saw only darkness and felt, with a hand that used to be forever entwined in his father's or his brother's own, the stump of his left leg, the phantom pain. His blindness, his amputation; he took it all as eagerly as dry earth takes the rain. It reminded him, every day, the price he had to pay; it was the consequence of living when his father did not.
It took just one knock on the door to stir Romulus from his cat's nap, his eyes literally streaked with tears. He lifted his hand from Tegan's sleeping head (after a frantic search throughout the town, Tegan returned home alone and utterly depressed, both of them choosing to sleep in the living room just in case), and gently lifted his daughter off his lap and onto the sofa. Another knock came, and another, more frantic as Romulus hurried to wheel himself to the foyer, throwing open the door to let in the cool crisp of morning wind.
"Dad! Wake up Zuri, get my kit out!" The sound of his oldest son's voice on any other day would have be enough cause for Romulus to smile in joy, but the frantic nature of his words only made Romulus furrow his eyebrows in worry.
"Gilon, what's the meaning -?"
And his words were cut off as a man with fire hair charged his way into the foyer, upsetting the vase of flowers that stood by the door. The crash of the vase, the pounding of feet, the screams of Gilon and a confused Tegan was enough to send Romulus wheeling back in bewilderment.
"Please –" It was the way the stranger's voice strained against his throat, the way the words seemed to roll around his mouth to collapse against the empty spaces above their heads.
"Please help her."
It reminded Romulus of himself, years and years ago, sitting in the forever dark of his world, the cool slab of the operating table underneath his skin, crying out again and again for his brother, knowing that there will be no answer, no warm hand or gentle smile.
It was the same desperation Romulus once had, waking up and realizing that he was perhaps alone in the world after all.
--
What made her fall to her knees was the sight of the shuriken the man with fire-red hair carried. She knew it wasn't the stranger's but belonged to the unconscious girl who bled in waves on the bed she shared with Gilon, her husband busy wrapping bandages around the girl's slender, nude torso.
With a cry, she sank to her knees, the flutter of her kimono sleeves like leaves to fall like a shade across her crying face.
She spent too much time here at the village near the end of the world, where snow could cover her memories with happier times. She's forgotten what it meant to be born and raised as a warrior, as a ninja.
She's grown soft in this world of white.
So, when Zuri of the Kitsune tribe saw the daughter of Lord Godo running rivers of blood down the sides of the bed she shared with her husband, something in Zuri reawakened. She clutched her fist so tightly that her perfectly lacquered nails drew blood.
She lifted her head and remembered what it meant to swear loyalty to her city, her home and her Princess.
--
Chaos had claws that could grow exponentially with its desire. Its wings were shaped like the rounded edges of a knife, and sliced the sky easily as it flew like a shadow, heavier than thought and pain combined, over the silent city. Snow would fall on Chaos' back only to rise like steam back into the air. Its jaw snapped and tore apart the silence.
Its desire was to kill.
It spotted its prey and dived to the ground, its jaws opening wide to reveal teeth that glistened, a tongue that ran over its open, crack lips. A smell like sulfur followed its movements as it spiraled in the air once before landing in snow tainted pink.
--
Learning to crawl was a blow to his ego. What would his brother say? Through slants of his falling hair, he could see her face, lit like a star. The snow fell and fell, rendering his wheelchair useless. So what he did instead was throw himself bodily out the hard chrome chair to lie like a doll on the snow. A broken doll; the wind and chill of the early morning steeped up his broken legs like a warning. But when he looked up and up, he saw her against the grey of sky. And he crawled, summoning every bit of strength to move himself forward, sometimes falling back against the snow in exhaustion, sometimes tumbling over from a miscalculated step.
His voice never stopped, even with the wind blowing against his bowed head. "Please, no more, no more."
From the corner of his eye, Yazoo saw the story before it happened; the little girl had a face that was his brother's before pain happened and the little boy kicked up snow with his footsteps. They were running hopelessly down the quiet street and Yazoo was crawling, crawling out of the forest that stood outside the town to stop what he knew was going to happen.
The truth was a hard blow that came out of nowhere. He screamed before Yazoo could; the girl fell forward, spattering blood as she went and the boy could not catch her before the snow did.
Pulled by something greater than sorrow or hate, Yazoo turned his head and saw; his brother's gun sent curls of smoke delicately into the air and everywhere was the smell of gunpowder.
In that instant, Yazoo knew. He could not go back and death would not hurt half as bad as the sight of that little boy, whimpering and clutching to the girl who looked so much like Loz, or even Yazoo himself.
--
When Chaos descended, he was already crouching over Tynan's crying figure, one hand pressed against Soleil's still back. The fierce light in his eyes spoke more about retribution than anything he could ever say, his mouth uncharacteristically set against the soft of his face. Somewhere deep inside, Chaos could feel a cry of joy, a sudden flood of relief at the sight of this man with his silver hair and those blue-green eyes glaring up and up at Chaos' intended prey.
Yazoo spoke first, his words falling from his lips to settle against the slant of Loz's hand, still curled tight against a silver gun. "What will this bring but more hate, brother?"
"She would not –"
"And you would kill because she disobeyed you?" The smell of gunpowder overwhelmed Yazoo's heaving body, but he drew the strength he needed to speak from Tynan's cries, the hurt found there enough to give Yazoo's anger wings. "You know who she is! You killed one of us!"
"She's nothing but an offspring of an offspring."
"HER NAME WAS SOLEIL!." Tynan's voice was fragmented by the heave and strain of tears against his very being. "HER NAME!" And he charged for Loz, even before Yazoo could reach out a hand to stop him, he jumped from the spot where he crouched, his half grown hands pulling and tugging at the soft spot near the middle of Loz's neck. "SHE WASN'T NOTHING!
"STOP IT!" He begged, he pleaded and what happened was that when Loz lifted his gun once more, Yazoo's hands were already wrapped tightly around Loz's left ankle. He pressed his crying face against Loz's leather boot and inhaled the scent of anger that was everywhere at once. "PLEASE!"
"Let him go." The voice of Chaos was a deep resonant iron; it did not shine like a star but emitted a fire of its own. With a heavy claw, Chaos swatted at the back of Loz's head and sent the gruff man sprawling to the ground, Tynan clinging to Loz's falling body.
When a growl, Chaos spread out wings that cut like the night and Tynan, in his grief, scrambled from Loz's body to crouch near Soleil's own. There was no fear, there was no anger but a sadness so profound that the being that was Chaos almost withdrew from this plane of existence to bring forth Vincent, a man well versed in pain. But instead, Chaos crackled jaws with teeth that tore at the silence and turned to Loz.
"Hello, remnant."
--
He had a memory that was so sharp it stung like ice against an open wound. There was a night where lying on that makeshift bed in a cave hidden deep, deep in a glittering forest, he could not sleep, he could not waste away the hours with idle thought or small daydreams. It was night, that deep heavy hour right before the grey hours of early morning and the cave was cold, frigid to the touch. There was a sudden eruption of sound that seemed to come from all corners, all at once and he lifted himself up on one elbow to investigate.
There, by the light of the single candle on the table, he saw. Wings that unfurled in the static of air, claws that glistened and a monster from the man that he was slowly starting to trust as a brother and a friend and Yazoo knew.
He held a secret inside him that tore away at his mind; Vincent did too.
Looking up now, regardless of the snow and the blood that steeped from Soleil's still body, Yazoo saw.
Death was coming, and what could he do but prepare himself to cry and cry, endlessly as if sadness would not end even if life did.
--
A Turk knew three things as instinctively as a hawk does the sky, a fish to water and a fox to the woods. The first was to strike first from afar, and to that end, a sniper rifle was set on the roof of the church, exactly 200 ft from the intended target. For eight hours, they were trailing the remnants, both of them from high above or from across the way. It was easy enough, with one of the remnants confined to a wheelchair and the other unable to leave his brother alone for minutes at a time.
What they did not count on was the sudden appearance of a child who could have been a remnant herself, with the same hair and eyes as Sephiroth himself. They were planning on capturing her as well for testing however, things became more complicated when it was evident the young boy that followed her was an descent of Grimoire Valentine himself, there was no denying the shock of black hair and light eyes. And then Vincent Valentine appeared with his current cohort Yuffie Kisaragi and Reno lost all contact with his support unit and from Midgar, both Rufus and Reeve threatened, ordered and pleaded that not a hair should be harmed on the Valentine family, including poor, blind Romulus who was blissfully unaware that his beloved older brother was not only alive, but in the very same town as he was.
To sum it all up, perhaps Rude's response to it all best expressed the situation; "Now that's fucked up."
The second thing that all Turks knew was that emotions were a blinding veil and be damned assured that if a mission failed because someone got soft would mean various forms of punishment so after Rude, Elena and Tseng was briefed on the history of the Valentine family (and how Rufus would make amends by erasing Vincent's file after the remnants were taken care of), Tseng did little more but make a note to look further into the research of a certain Gilon Valentine, who appeared to take up where Grimoire left off and told Elena to hold off the sniper shot until Loz was in clear view.
The third was a secret, but it was what made Rude pray, for the first time in his life since joining the Turks, for a salvation he hoped was waiting for all of them someplace far off. When Chaos bared teeth and charged at Loz, Rude crossed himself once, twice, for the child who watched with eyes that did not blink nor flinch with the same passivity that Vincent was well known for. He prayed for the remnant named Yazoo, the man Rude and Reno hunted for months, Yazoo who, even from this far off, had eyes that sent fear and repulsion curling down each and every one of their spines.
Even in tears, even in broken form, Yazoo and his brother Loz and the little girl who stopped breathing all recalled Sephiroth and the days that he brought a year ago, filled with a promise of utter destruction. Sephiroth was so close to destroying everything they knew and with Cloud out of commission, the world needed heroes, even ones who attacked from afar, fast and hard.
Memory had a way of shaping present action and when Tseng gave the signal, Elena fired one clear shot and Rude glanced away, making the sign of the cross with his free hand.
There must be a place for them to go, he prayed, let there be a place where they can go.
--
Author's notes: That's right. An update and just in time for Christmas! Happy holidays everyone! I'm sorry that it took so long to write it. And everyone thought I was going to abandon this story – as if! And yes, I know the concept of Vincent having an estranged family in Great Glacier might be a bit farfetched, but somewhere in my mind it works. I know from Dirge of Cerberus that Grimoire Valentine was a researcher as well, and I always envisioned him in Great Glacier. It makes sense, I tell you! And also, the age difference between Romulus and Vincent works out as well, I think it's about 30 years since Vincent was put to sleep. So yes! Comments? Questions? Love? Send it all my way.