3-6. Ultimatum

The door opened into white silence. Most of the mice were gone. The stainless steel shelves, once crowded with cages, now held only Mako tanks and endless stacks of notebooks. Notes, protocols, charts, theories—this was Hojo's JENOVA Project now. Its former barbarism had been sanitized and reinterpreted, waiting for the official results to be fabricated for the public.

Most of its barbarism, at least…

The scientist writing at the paper-strewn desk looked up as Lucrecia put away her key. She met his guardedly curious gaze with stony resentment. After a moment, he glanced away, opening another notebook. In black ink he noted the date: 8/26.

"It's been over three weeks since the last treatment."

"I know."

Silence. He looked up again, and with a trace of hesitation, waved toward the black chair. Lucrecia slowly advanced to it and took her place, avoiding his increasingly critical eyes.

"One treatment, nine months of injections, in return for a lifetime of success, fame, money, power in the Corporation, whatever you desire…"

For nothing. For his greed, for his ambition.

…for my ambition.

All pointless.

Hojo stood and crossed the room to prepare the Mako/Jenova-cell drip. Lucrecia watched his back resentfully; it seemed outwardly to be the same as every other treatment, but to her it was hopeless, a futile denial of the real situation. Power and glory had been her promised reward for this hardship, but Shinra had snatched that away—

Her lungs seized up, and she gasped for air involuntarily. Her nerves flooded with panic. Suffocating—

Hojo turned. "What's wrong?" He came to her side, and wheeled the intravenous apparatus with him.

Lucrecia breathed deeply, fighting to dull the sparks of fear that crackled through her body. "Nothing."

"Are you sure?"

What difference would it make? "I think so."

She made herself believe it, calmed the struggle for oxygen. His thin fingers attached a needle to the end of the long plastic tube and released a clamp at the bottom of the bag of solution. The opaque green fluid silently slipped closer. Lucrecia closed her eyes, tired of fighting the strange attacks, and let herself slip back into the deadened hopelessness that had swallowed her throughout the trip back to Nibelheim.

Back home to Nibelheim, she'd thought, though she did not like the idea.

Hojo steadied her arm and slipped the needle into her faintly bruised skin once again. His light, careful touch on her skin was repellent. It was routine now, but that fact only made it seem more repellent.

"You seem troubled," Hojo remarked with measured detachment. Lucrecia opened her eyes. He had moved a little distance away, and watched her with his hands folded behind his back. She did not answer. "If something's bothering you, I'd rather you told me."

Some part of her longed to unburden herself, but to confess to the panic, the strange noises and voices, the crushing disappointment and betrayal that silenced her, would expose her guarded thoughts to him. She knew perfectly well by now that he fed on vulnerability, found some kind of smug pleasure in seeing others at their weakest. Hopeless or not, she would not give him that satisfaction.

Hojo sighed quietly. "Is it the conference, Lucrecia? Naturally you'd be upset by that… it was an embarrassing spectacle."

For once I hope the Cetra are wrong. I hope there is a hell, just so you can go there. She heard a faint laugh in her mind, under the Jenova-induced dizziness. It was strange, something broken and rough, but undoubtedly a laugh.

"…for you and Gast, at least," Hojo continued, his calm laced with a veiled amusement. "Shinra won't allow anything meaningful from your work to survive, after all of that. I've seen scientists' careers destroyed for less than this. The Corporation is not forgiving. You know as well as I do that in Midgar, if Shinra turns on you, you might as well be dead."

She knew he was right. Lucrecia had heard of not only scientists, but executives, inventors, Turk gunmen—anyone in the Corporation, really—falling from favor with sickening speed and unquestionable finality. Everyone at Shinra Inc. witnessed it at some time or another. It was a dire but effective means of securing loyalty. Though, she reflected, she'd never thought she would see the other side of the story…

"However." A trace of a smile haunted Hojo's face. "You and Gast have been muzzled, but the President knows that I will deliver what he wants."

No, not again, not again…

"My side of the Project continues, obviously." He glanced down at her swollen stomach with unmistakable satisfaction. Lucrecia suspected he would touch her, and a small flame of anger ignited in her chest. He did not touch her, though he inched a bit closer to her side. "They might forgive your involvement in Gast's failure if you redeem yourself… and the only redemption Shinra accepts is, ultimately, results. Whatever they've asked for. Whatever it takes."

His hands rested on the edge of the chair, a breath away from her right hand. Lucrecia entertained the passing impulse to stab him with the hypodermic. He went on quietly, "So you see, we are in quite an interesting situation, you and I. I need you to continue the Project for me." He thought for a moment. Lucrecia lay frozen as the Jenova-cell solution drained into her veins. "You need success, power, all those things you've dreamed about all this time. And now you need me to grant them to you. Only I can get you back in favor with Shinra." He reached out to her, laid a hand on her cheek. His voice was barely above a whisper. "I'm your only hope."

The silence seemed absolute. She could hear him breathing, and remembered a morning almost six months ago—the sunlight glancing over the roofs of the peaceful town, the dark sea below the cliffs. She remembered the anxious breathing of this man, waiting for her at the gates into Nibelheim, jumping on an opportunity brought about by her own distrust and fear. This man, this young, hothouse-bound prodigy with the soul of a hardened criminal. This man whom she'd followed all this time, and trusted, in a way—trusted to uphold his half of the agreement, to treat her as an equal partner and not as yet another laboratory mouse.

That morning at the gates, she'd pushed him into the dust. She realized now that she should have left him there…

No more.

"No."

Hojo's expression went blank. "What?"

"No…I will not. I will not go through with this." Lucrecia shoved his hand away. He fell back a few steps, shocked into silence. The suffocating sensation pressed on her body again as she spoke, but she fought it away. "I trusted you once and got nothing but disgrace. I don't believe you, Hojo. I don't believe Shinra will ever forgive me. They'll give you the credit and maybe let me stay on in some…some token position, but they'll never give me what you promised. I don't know if they would at the start. Maybe that was just another one of your lies."

"Lucrecia…" She rose to her feet, and he stepped back again. She pulled the needle from her arm and let it drop with a tiny metallic sound, leaking shimmering green liquid into the cracks in the stone floor.

Hojo dove toward the spilled Mako, his voice rising with a note of panic. "No…no, you can't do this…I…we have to finish it. The Project—"

She turned on him. "The Project is dead. This experiment of yours, this monstrosity, doesn't deserve to use its name. It has no rational scientific base. It's nothing but tinkering with living beings as if they were machines. Human beings, Hojo. Your own assistant. Your own child!" She was shaking with anger, all the thoughts she'd never given voice surfacing at once. However… looking down at his bent back in the too-large lab coat he wore, hearing his voice dither into undignified chaos, she felt no need to rail at him further. Enough had been said already. Almost. She spoke quietly, feeling a gathering tide of something which had eluded her for a very long time.

Power.

"You're a liar and a manipulator and a coward, Horace. Worse than that, you make a terrible scientist. You don't seem to care about humanity or truth or progress or anything else we stand for. What you've done is unethical and unforgivable, and I will not be part of it anymore."

He did not answer at first. He remained kneeling by the chair, his fists clenched around the Jenova-cell drip line. Finally, his voice laden with a tangle of barely contained anger and fear, he said, "You're not coming back for treatments."

"No."

"What are you going to do, then? I don't want…I don't want it to be killed."

"I don't know. But whatever I do, it is no concern of yours."

"It…won't be normal. We've come too far already."

"I know."

She turned toward the door. "Lucrecia…"

Lucrecia looked back at the man kneeling on the floor, the man whom she'd feared and respected and despised at the same time. His hands were streaked with the dull glow of spilled Mako; his eyes were blank, overwhelmed with fear; his short dark hair was starting to straggle over his forehead. This is what he'd come to—a brilliant scientist, a malicious liar, and ultimately…

…broken. He's only twenty-seven and I've broken him…

…no…he's broken himself.

"Goodbye."

The click of the closing door echoed softly through the corridor.



Heat had shimmered from the flagstones in town as the air cooled, but a breeze from the west cooled Lucrecia's skin and ruffled her hair as she stood once more over the cliffs. The sun was beginning to set over the water, lighting the water with reflected orange fire.

She hadn't broken down this time, though her throat was tight with harnessed emotion. The chaotic desperation of the spring had burned itself out into an exhausted calm. Ambition had fired her for so long now—ever since the spring, since coming to Shinra, maybe even since childhood—that she could not quite replace it with another passion. At least not yet.

So this is it, she thought with a small, ironic smile. I would expect the end of my career to be more spectacular, if I retired young. Not that I ever expected that…

Then again… did I expect any of this?

No… and that was the problem, before. Now… I don't know.

She no longer expected to guide the workings of mankind, to shine amid the might of Shinra by the power of her own achievement. Shinra's glory had turned out to be a cowardly front, in the end, and as for her own achievement…

The Project was over; that much she'd accepted long ago. And wondering whether it were her fault or not was a futile exercise, an answerless question. The Project was dead. She would simply have to leave it at that.

What else was there, then? If generations of flower dealers had instilled only one thing in her mind, it would be how to recover from a devastating loss. After a hard winter, after a chemical spill poisoned the air and the plants, after vandals and meddling by the Shinra and infiltration by desperate competitors, the Gainsborough flower sellers had somehow picked up what was left and moved on.

What was left?

Vincent, of course. Lucrecia folded her arms across her body, closing her eyes for a moment. Vincent was a constant. He'd decided, for whatever ungodly, misguided reason, to stay with her. Under the bright haze of her dreams of glory, Vincent's dedication had seemed threatening, a drain on her precious time and attention. Now…

"Do you forgive me?"

"I forgive you. I love you; I can't help but forgive you."

Even now, his simplistic insistence that he could somehow make everything go right—as if he could undo everything she and Hojo and all of Shinra had done by sheer willpower—seemed naïve at best, the words of a desperate man clinging to the one promise of safety in his life of senseless violence. But it was what he needed to believe, and maybe there was some truth in his beliefs…

I want you to be happy, he'd said on that dazed April afternoon, shortly after she'd ripped out his heart. Vincent's faith in her was a force stronger than pain, stronger sometimes than reality itself. He would believe in her even though her ambition had crushed his only dream. He would believe in her even though she was no longer the woman he loved, in some way; she felt as if the spirited young student who had struggled up Mount Nibel almost a year ago had been someone else, someone she'd heard about in a rumor.

Yet Vincent would stay despite all of that. He would stay despite the fact that she'd committed one of the greatest betrayals possible… Lucrecia's hands moved over her heavy stomach as she gazed out to sea. That… of course there was that.

Not "that"; him or her. It's not a thing. It's not one of Hojo's laboratory rats anymore.

It was harder to accept that, at first, that even though she'd turned her back on the shadow Project, its effects would still be borne out. The damage had been done; the child she carried was Jenova-infused, Mako-infused, and by the look of things would be everything Hojo wanted it to be, despite her refusal. Elmyra had known that after a moment: this child was not normal. And she suspected that its accelerated growth might be the least of her worries.

Even so… it existed, and that was another factor, another asset that remained. Vincent, and the child. Her child. It was no longer the Project's child, something for which she was merely a vessel. Lucrecia had to be its mother now, in a sense more real than any genetic contribution. The three of them—Vincent and the baby and herself—were all that any of them had now, really. Shinra would dismiss her if Hojo told them that she'd backed out of his experiment. If she went, Vincent would follow. And now, she knew for the first time that she would be damned if she'd let Shinra take this child and use it as just another tool, just another moneymaking scheme.

The three of them, then, Lucrecia and Vincent and the nameless one who had almost come between them…no. He—or she—hadn't come between them. Lucrecia had, her blind desire for power had. No matter what ugly mission had resulted in this child's life, it was blameless in its own making. She would have to be strong, and forget Hojo as well as she could, and treat this child as if it were hers alone. It was hers, and that was all that truly mattered.

The three of them, Lucrecia and Vincent and the nameless one, then, were what she could depend on. What then? She would have to leave Midgar, if she left Shinra; Hojo had been right about that. Shinra did not treat ex-employees kindly, especially if they had been privy to some of their darkest secrets…

So they would leave; she would leave her home behind, both the Shinra-approved apartment on the Plate and her childhood home, along with her sister, and the garden that had been her earliest pride. She would escape, like a fugitive, to an anonymous life.

How ironic, Vincent… I've found your dream after all.

Lucrecia breathed in the cool air one more time, looking out over the endless water. Then she turned again toward Nibelheim, and walked toward it with a sense of calm acceptance.

A figure in dark blue—coat and all—waited just outside the gates, leaning against a fencepost with his hands folded in front of him. He straightened as Lucrecia approached, his face an unreadable mix of worry and relief. Without a word she came up to him, looked into his eyes for a moment, then slipped her arms around him and held on tightly. She felt his hand stroke her hair as he embraced her. "I heard you'd left the village," he said quietly.

She nodded, soothed by the weight of his hand on the back of her head. "It's easier to think out here."

"It is. So what were you thinking about?" The question was threaded with a trace of hope.

Lucrecia smiled. Vincent's optimism was contagious, and the reassuring solidity of his presence, the smooth dark fabric under her cheek, calmed any lurking doubt. "I quit the Jenova treatments today."

He hugged her tightly, and his sigh of relief was unmistakable. "Finally… oh, Lucrecia, do you realize how long I've been waiting to hear that?"

"I think I know." She hesitated; the bulk of her stomach intervened between them, a chilling reminder of the situation. "You do know that it still won't be normal."

"If it's yours, I wouldn't care if it had three heads."

She stifled a squawk of laughter. "Heavens, I hope not."

"I'll protect both of you," Vincent remarked, almost absently, as if replying to some question in his mind. "No matter what happens, and no matter what that demon's experiment has done to you..."

I was a demon too, Vincent… you don't understand that… "Do you forgive me?"

"For what?"

"For…everything, for starting this in the first place."

"Of course. I've said that before. And now… I don't care what either of us have done. You've come back to me; the rest doesn't matter."

"Come back? I never left, Vincent love."

"I meant metaphorically…" After a moment's thought, Vincent let her go and retreated a step. He took off the ring on his left hand, the same gold ring she'd refused on the first day of this madness. He held it out again. His voice was low and unguardedly sweet, as he was only with her. "Lucrecia, I love you. Do you love me?"

"Of course I do, but what…"

"Then I'll keep asking you until you say you'll marry me."

I mean it, this time…I'm not going to lose him again. Metaphorically. Lucrecia took the ring from him and slid it back onto his finger. "Someday I will, love. After the baby's born, when we can get away."

Vincent nodded. "I can wait."