Chapter Twenty-Four

From the Depths of Sorrow

            Vincent stalked three steps into the lab and the paused, slightly puzzled by the lack of light that science labs such as this one often emitted in high contents. His eyes promptly adjusted to the loss, pupils expanding to swallow as much light as they could possibly engulf. He took one cautious step forward, silently reaching to his side and fingering his recovered Death Penalty. The faint outlines of covered objects and a single desk met his eyes. They narrowed slightly at the sight of the form that lay slumped over the desk, unmoving and quite apparent in the white covering that hid its body.

            He moved to its side and lifted the form, recognizing the white color as the lab coat typically worn by scientists to prevent staining on their normal clothing. This coat, however, was unlike its brothers in that a large splash of slightly dried blood was spread across the front. Vincent reached out and felt the face of the person, exposed fingers traveling over cold skin and meeting with familiar, rectangle-framed glasses. Clouded violet eyes stared up at him from beneath the glass, still glowing faintly even within the sheathe of death. They held a slight amount of surprise that was still frozen within the amethyst irises, but the surprise was surpassed by the look of sheer glee each eye glinted with. Vincent frowned in disgust and dropped Rei back into his former position, and then froze and picked the scientist up again. The wound that had clearly ended Rei's reign as head scientist was not like the ones that had killed all of the people he had passed on his way to the lab. They had been killed by the clean blow of a sword; Rei had been destroyed by different means.

            Vincent flipped the scientist over onto his back and squinted at the wound, cursing the inadequate light and reaching out with his mechanical arm to touch Rei's chest. His artificial arm was just as sensitive as his real arm, with the addition of razor sharp claws that provided an extra weapon while also capable of performing delicate operations. He traced the gaping, bloody opening with a claw, feeling it meet with the bone of Rei's broken ribcage and enter further to brush against his spine.

            There was no heart.

            Slightly disgusted, Vincent withdrew and wiped his claw off on the clean portion of Rei's lab coat and stepped away from the corpse, leaving it in the position he had rearranged it into. He turned as the others finally caught up with him, Aeris in the lead with a strangely familiar lion-like creature beside her. Vincent subtly blocked his daughter's view of Rei's garish wound, glancing over her head as Cloud and the rest peered around his form to catch Rei by the light of the lion creature's flame tail tip.

            "He's…dead?" Cloud asked in disbelief. "But how? That's not a sword wound…"

            "Whoever did it broke straight through Rei's ribcage and tore out his heart," Vincent explained, making the description as short as possible. "I checked. His heart is clearly gone."

            "Who's this?" Tifa had made an accidental discovery of another figure that lay sprawled on the floor by tripping over it. She knelt down beside the man and felt his neck. "He's been dead for much longer than any of the other corpses we've passed. It appears as if the sides of his skull were broken."

            "That would kill him quite readily," Cloud mused. "But it's not the same style that killed all of those other workers. Rough treatment like that would be used by someone without a weapon and very desperate or very angry—probably the same person who killed Rei."

            Yuffie slipped by Tifa and the dead guard, staring instead at a cylindrical glass tube that lay on its side and was definitely big enough to hold a human quite comfortably. A huge portion of the middle of the tube was broken into a large, rough hole with jagged spikes surrounding it. She stepped closer and then backed away once more when her boot splashed down into a liquid that was spreading quietly over the lab floor.

            "What the hell?" she demanded out loud, lifting the wet boot into the air and staring at the glowing green liquid covering that area of the lab and the sole of her boot. "Cloud, does this junk look familiar to you, or is it just me?"

            Tifa, who was closer to the ninja, lifted herself effortlessly out of her crouched position and joined the girl in staring down at the scintillating liquid. "That's the same thing that was inside of the Kajiha Sephiroth—when he…was still Zeno—first killed, isn't it?"

            Cloud covered the distance between himself and the liquid with a few long strides and knelt on the hard metal floor, cautiously dipping his gloved fingertips into the glowing liquid that shifted constantly in shades of green. "Mako…or Lifestream…"

            "Mako is Lifestream. I thought you knew that already." The soft, firm voice that still managed to carry itself in projection sounded from behind them. It was a voice none of them had heard for at least a week, and its sudden appearance made them all whirl around from their positions to face the owner.

            Bahamut moved forward from the doorway of the lab, moving with his fluid glide until he reached Cloud. He nodded at the stunned man as he crouched next to him, focusing his sharp red eyes on the liquid splashed on the ground. "There really is no difference between what you humans call 'Mako' and what is commonly known as 'Lifestream'. When you harvest 'Mako', you are actually in reality harvesting 'Lifestream'. Lifestream contains all of the souls that have yet to be reborn and recycled onto the Planet, so when you harvest 'Mako', you are taking away the life of the Planet. That is one of the reasons why the Planet cried so back when Shinra harvested Mako en force."

            "How the hell did you get here?" Cloud asked, shutting his open mouth. "I don't recall ever using the materia."

            "No, you didn't use it directly, but indirectly you did. That Summon materia is linked very closely with me. I felt first your surprise, then Yuffie's panic, and finally your despair, which was enough to call me to you even though you didn't specifically ask for me to come. I'm close enough with it that, if I chose, I could destroy it with a single thought, thus eliminating the chance of it falling into the wrong hands." Bahamut smiled from within the depths of his hood that shadowed a good portion of his face. "Of course, I didn't expect all of you to get into the same predicament from five years ago."

            "It wasn't our choice," Cloud grumbled. "Have you had any luck at all?"

            "Not as much as you. I have picked up on some gossip of Sephiroth returning, but no signs of activity within the North Crater. I was on my way to Nibelheim when I felt you call, so I took a short detour and came."

            "Nibelheim…" Cloud shook his head slowly. "Once we get out of here, that's where we should go next. Oh…I forgot. Bahamut, this is Shar." He indicated the red animal behind him, who nodded her head graciously in Bahamut's direction. "Shar, this is Bahamut."

            Bahamut gifted Shar with a welcoming smile that, despite revealing his pointed teeth, conveyed a sense of calm and warmth. "So it would seem that Nanaki is not the last of his kind after all. That's a good thing; I was quite saddened about the downfall of the Cosmo Canyon inhabitants, but was relieved that Nanaki at least was still alive. Now that there's another, I'm sure that Nanaki would be most happy to meet you."

            Shar nodded. "That is why I am traveling with these people."

            Bahamut abruptly raised his head and glanced around, seemingly tallying up the members of the group. "What happened to Dusk?"

            "That's who we're looking for," Cloud put in. "She was supposed to be held in this lab, but when we came here, the scientist was dead and there was all of this Lifestream on the floor. We don't know where Dusk is."

            "I think I do." Bahamut leaned forward and reached out with a pointed fingertip, lightly brushing against the point of one of the broken glass edges. He brought the finger back to Cloud and showed it to him. There was a faint smear of blood on it that did not come from Bahamut. "This is Dusk's blood; I can smell it quite readily. She was contained in this tank and broke free somehow, slipping out through the break. I'm guessing that it was she who killed the scientist as well, because she left a trail of blood when she went up to him. She also left behind another trail when she left this room." Bahamut pointed to the drops of glinting crimson liquid on the ground that no one had noticed before and faint boot prints that were outlined in Lifestream liquid. The prints were smeared and dragged against each other, indicating that she had stumbled or was fatigued.

            "Then let's go." Vincent started off in the direction the trail of blood led to, pausing when Bahamut let out a quiet breath of air.

            "Well, this explains everything," Bahamut muttered when the others turned to him as well. He inhaled slowly, half-closing his eyes, and then his tongue flicked out of his mouth in a strangely snake-like gesture as if he were tasting the air as well as smelling it. "Yes. Sephiroth was here, too."

            Vincent looked at Bahamut suspiciously before closing his own eyes and breathing in the air with the same delicacy Bahamut had used. His nose was not as quite as sharp as Bahamut's animal-like senses, but could pick up on a very faint but familiar scent that mixed in with the smell of Lifestream and blood. He opened his eyes again, nodding slowly. "It's him."

            "So he was here, too?" Cloud glanced at Bahamut as they both got up from their knees. "What did he come here for?"

            "I don't know." It was the first time that Bahamut had readily admitted his lack of knowledge in any area, and it was something that surprised Cloud. "Let's catch up with Dusk, and then maybe she can tell us." He moved away from the Lifestream on the ground, following Vincent as they both took off like two dogs tracking their prey.

            The others turned away and followed as well, none of them noticing the Lifestream puddle behind them slowly rise and form into twisting strands of visible gas. The green-tinged vapors hovered over their previous resting-place for a bare instant before they rose once more and dissipated into the ceiling of the lab, leaving not a single drop of Lifestream behind.

*                       *                       *

            The droplets of blood they were following soon merged with the thick band of blood they had tracked earlier. Vincent and Bahamut glanced at each other before following the trail once more, both of them occasionally sniffing at the air and checking to see if Dusk's blood still remained with the path. It did, and continued to for the entire duration of the trip before the blood trail was abruptly cut off by a wide metal door that marked the entrance to the office of the President. On either side of the doorway slumped the two guards from before, both with huge slices from a sword on their chests with blood seeping from the twin wounds to join with the blood that continued underneath the door.

            The others caught up with them once more, so used to the blood by this time and the constant moving that they were caught by surprise when the blood was cut off and Vincent and Bahamut both stopped. Cloud exchanged a confused look with Tifa while Vincent glanced sideways at Bahamut, both pairs of crimson eyes meeting simultaneously.

            "Her blood goes beyond the door," Bahamut said, his sharper nose able to pick up the scent even with the metal and confusing mix of different blood in the way. "How far, I can't say. And there's definitely a new blood mixing with the main group, although that could mean little to nothing."

            "Should we go?" Tifa ventured softly. "Who knows what's beyond this door?"

            "We can't go back, though, Tifa," Cloud said quietly. "Whatever's beyond this door is the extension of the path we've chosen to take. Going back would be pointless."

            Tifa nodded in agreement, but held onto Cloud's arm with a hesitant hand as Vincent ripped apart the control panel that would open the door. Cloud reached out and covered her hand with his reassuringly, turning his head and smiling at her with his ocean deep sapphire eyes.

            The large metal double door slid open, sudden light flooding the hallway. The group winced as one from the light, an unexpected occurrence that hadn't been present every other time they had entered a room.

            That was all the more reason to be more cautious.

            Bahamut and Vincent both entered first, their eyes having quickly adjusted to the burst of light. The rest of the group followed slowly, glancing from side to side and shielding their eyes from the bright lights overhead.

            They all approached the metal desk in the center back of the large room, staring at Reeve's unmistakable figure that was slumped over his desk much in the same way Rei had been before. The only difference was that there was a painfully recognizable long sword protruding from Reeve's back. It was covered from hilt to the visible length of the blade with blood—blood that still dripped, bright crimson and fresh, down the edge of the sword.

            Tifa let out a muffled cry of astonishment and grief while Cloud gently pressed her head to his shoulder, letting her let go of the tears her gentle heart had been holding back for so long. Aeris stared silently at the dead body and the trail of blood that ended at the front of the desk, as strangely emotionless and unaffected as her father. She held that pose for a few minutes before her eyes widened and her head jerked around to stare at both Bahamut and Vincent.

            "Zeno," she choked out urgently, bringing everyone's attention off of the dead President and to her. "He's here."

            Cloud felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle an instant after she got her sentence out as if the cold breath had returned again, breathing lightly and teasingly behind him and down his neck. He involuntarily tightened his hold on Tifa's shoulder as she did with his arm, both of them feeling the same tingle that ran from the base of their spine and up to the nape of their necks.

            The sound of leather boot heels clicking almost tauntingly on the ground in front of them brought their eyes swiveling up beyond Reeve and the bloody sword that protruded from his back. From the shadows beyond Reeve's desk stepped a figure whose glowing, dark emerald green eyes preceded the actual person. He emerged from the depths of darkness, his most striking feature his hypnotic eyes that seemed to suck away at the life of every person who met them. Cloud found himself trying to twist his eyes away from the indifferent emerald gaze to search the man's features, and knew that he wasn't the only one who struggled to do so.

              Little remained of Zeno's thoughtful pensiveness, Cloud soon discovered. His eyes' piercing gaze had intensified to the point where not even Bahamut could easily look away, much less stare down this man. The dramatic color change in the eyes were also not the only difference about Zeno. His hair, while still retaining its bangs but let loose from its former tail, was practically a god-like platinum silver that gleamed like a precious metal with each movement of the strands of hair underneath the bright lights overhead. Zeno's face seemed to have hardened almost overnight into a mask of cool impassiveness, but recognizably both face and body still had their slender aristocratic looks. His skin had somehow managed to lighten noticeably, even though it had been fairly pale beforehand. What skin that could be seen from beneath the long black trench coat and above its collar was a deathly pale white—the skin color of someone who had never seen the light of day before, or the color of a long-dead corpse.

            And when Zeno had finished scanning all of them with his cold, light-devouring emerald eyes, he smiled the same mocking smile that echoed a man's face from five years ago—a face that had smiled the smile of someone who knew everything and looked disdainfully upon those before him. The tiniest twitch of the corners of his thin lips and the slight, anticipating widening of his eyes finished the memory, and struck Cloud with the same horrifying, heart-stopping nightmare he had crudely confined in the far recesses of his mind.

            "So we meet again," Zeno hissed, his light voice deceptively lulling as how a snake hypnotizes before striking. He reached sideways and grasped the hilt of the long sword in one hand, pulling it upwards. With it came Reeve's body at first, but it eventually gave way to gravity and slid off of the tip of the blade with a sickening hiss and landed limply back onto the desktop. Blood slid freely off of the naked sword tip at first, then abruptly sizzled and, with another blinding flash of light, disappeared completely from the sword.

            "I've certainly waited long enough for you." Zeno held the blade passively at his side, watching with distinct malice as Cloud's own eyes focused on the sword and widened in surprise.

            "That's…Masamune," Cloud whispered in disbelief.

            Masamune…the same damned sword that hurt so many of my friends…

            "Mother was holding it for me." Zeno gave the slender sword a casual spin with two fingers and smirked once more.

            "Your 'Mother'?" Bahamut inquired in the smoothest voice Cloud had ever heard him use. "And who might your 'Mother' be, boy?"

            Zeno didn't appear to be affected in the slightest by Bahamut's remark, and instead turned his full hypnotic gaze on the old dragon. "She's waiting for you, especially, lizard," he remarked offhandedly, almost carelessly, as he slid Masamune back into its place in a belt loop at his side. "When I last spoke with her, she was envisioning all of the different ways to kill you—I believe being sliced alive into bits of sashimi was her latest invention."

            "She's not your real mother, Sephiroth." Vincent spoke with a firm authority in his voice that rang out as if he were berating a younger brother. Cloud glanced sideways at him in surprise, for out of all of the people present, Vincent was probably the last person he would have expected to speak. "Not now or ever."

            "Oh, but she is," Zeno laughed. "Deny it all you want, dark warrior, but she has supported me throughout ever day of my life, even before I awoke to her powers. She is more of a mother than anyone I've ever known."

            "She's using you, Zeno!" Tifa cried out suddenly, anxiety and pain evident in every line of her voice and body. She took a step forward towards Zeno, half-lifting one hand as if she had an impulse to stroke his hair in the same comforting way she had done so many times when he had physically been still a child. "Can't you see that? You're nothing more than a puppet being pulled by her strings!"

            Zeno stiffened abruptly, fixing Tifa with his icy glare that froze her in mid-step. "You are not one to talk, my beloved Aunt." He stressed the last word out into a cruel mockery of the affection he had used to express in that one syllable. "All of you here are more of the puppets than I. Mother has…many plans for all of you, not just the old lizard there. And once I destroy that parasitic race called humans and take the knowledge of the Cetra for us, then we will rule together as the creators of a new world. Mother is more than enough to hold back the Planet, and I can shape the Planet's physical surface into any form that I desire. Then…" His voice trailed off threateningly as he turned away, beginning to walk back into the shadows from whence he had came. Suddenly, he stopped, and turned his head to one side.

            "And, by the way," he said, his voice ringing out in the empty encasing of shadows beginning to swallow his figure. "Zeno is long dead. What stands before you now is the rebirth of the Chosen one…and my name…is Sephiroth."

            Tifa remained where she was, hand still tentatively raised away from her side and into the air, her wide doe-brown eyes staring speechlessly after the tall figure that quietly slid away from sight. As soon as he was gone, she slumped to the ground, arms barely catching herself in time but managing to plant her hands in support in the dried blood path that remained beneath her. Cloud darted to her side, kneeling beside her and helping her rise shakily to her feet.

            "Zeno…" she murmured in a barely audible whisper that Cloud only caught because of the proximity of his ear to her mouth. "Oh, Zeno…how can we save you from what you've let yourself become…?"

*                       *                       *

            Vincent refrained from the uncharacteristic "I-told-you-so" comment that hung in the back of his mind as he watched Cloud help Tifa up after her shuddering collapse from shock. Zeno—no, Sephiroth—was the same man who was supposed to have died five years ago, but…

            …It appears as if we underestimated Jenova and the damage she could do…

            The sound of booted feet dragging against the floor brought Vincent's sharp ears and his head up, along with Bahamut's. They both made their best efforts to prick their respective ears forward into the direction of the noise, attempting to identify the person heading towards them before they actually met face-to-face.

            Yuffie turned her head and froze as a stumbling, blood-covered figure limped into the room from one of the side doors that led to the air deck. She reached automatically for a shuriken before she recognized the fatigued person for who it was, and forced herself to relax her tight grasp on the throwing star. "Dusk!"

            Vincent had seen Dusk far before Yuffie had and strode forward, catching the woman as she half-fell into his arms. Her right hand was clutched into a fist with a bloody, pulpy mess leaking out of either opening on each side of her white-knuckled grasp. She slowly let go of it and let it drop to the ground, revealing its identity to the rest of the people who converged on her and her rescuer.

            Yuffie felt a corner of her mouth twitch upward in disgust as she examined the short length of muscle that had clearly once been the very thing that Rei had been missing when they had found him. A section of Rei's ribcage lay among the ruins of the heart as well, and its presence had apparently been the only thing keeping Dusk from squeezing the heart into oblivion. As it was, the broken bit of bone had cracks and lines in it from the constant pressure Dusk had been applying, and from the looks of it, even the slightest bit of compression applied at this moment would have succeeded in destroying it once and for all. Yuffie did so impulsively, angrily grinding the bone into red-smeared dust underneath her thick boot heel in a brief moment of revenge that had been lusted after but snatched away once she had discovered her opponent dead.

            "Dusk, what happened?" Bahamut asked, furrowing his brow in concern as he laid a hand on Dusk's forehead. "When they got there, the scientist was dead and a tank was completely broken open. I could also smell Sephiroth in the air, but why he was there I couldn't fathom."

            Dusk coughed briefly before responding. "That…tank…was what held me prisoner," she breathed softly, as if talking hurt her throat. "It was…full of Lifestream…the same thing…that Hojo put me in before. I was sleeping inside…when it broke open…" She shook her head slowly. "I'm not sure what happened…but I fell out through a hole…sort of scratched myself along the way, but…I saw Rei. He was just sitting there, staring…and all I could think of…was to just kill him…"

            "So that must have been Sephiroth who broke the tank open," Bahamut mused to the air. "Strange that he would do it, though."

            "Who the hell cares?!" Cid demanded. "Dusk's fine, right? That's all that matters right now. I mean, at least I still have my prize pilot!" He grinned down at Dusk, who nodded weakly back up at him. Then he stopped and slowly jerked his head in the direction of Reeve's body that remained in its slumped position. "Can't say that for him, though."

            "Sephiroth, I take it…?" Dusk asked.

            "Yup. Stuck the dude right through the back and straight through." Cid nodded as he mimed such a blow in the air, aiming at his own back as he spoke. "Goddamned Masamune again. That weapon just stinks of evil."

            Dusk sighed slightly, more from exhaustion than impatience. "Captain…is a sword…really evil?"

            "What do you mean?"

            "For example…do you think that Cloud's sword…is evil?"

            "Um, no." Cid scratched the side of his head. "What are you getting at, Dusk?"

            "But you think…that Masamune…is evil?"

            "Well, yeah. Isn't it?"

            "But to Sephiroth…Cloud's sword…is the evil one."

            "Run that by me again?"

            Dusk expelled her breath once more as her eyelids began to drop downward, losing control and the battle with gravity and nature. "A weapon…is as evil…as its wielder's intentions…and as evil…as the other person…sees it to be. The weapons themselves…are not evil…it is their masters' and the masters' enemies' who make the weapon evil. There is always…going to be…a double edge to that. Sephiroth…may be evil…but the child inside of him…Zeno…is the weapon…that Jenova holds." She drew in one long, shuddering breath and then sank into the inviting dark hands that beckoned to her from beyond her eyelids, nestling into Vincent's brotherly embrace while Bahamut kept his hand on her forehead, almost as if he were trying to will more strength into her.

            "And, um…what the hell was all that about?" Cid asked.

            "I think she was trying to say that…the danger and evilness of a weapon depends on the viewpoint of the person holding it and the viewpoint of the person on the other end of the weapon," Aeris explained. "Um…she said that…to us, Cloud's sword is good because we're on his side and Masamune is evil because it is the weapon the enemy uses against us. But to Zeno—I mean, Sephiroth—his own Masamune is his friend, while Cloud's weapon…and everyone else's…is his enemy and therefore evil. It's sort of hard to imagine it, but supposing Sephiroth's reasons were thought to be right and everyone except for Cloud were on his side, whose weapon would be more evil? Cloud's, or Sephiroth's?"

            "Mine," Cloud answered cautiously.

            Aeris nodded. "Right. And what Dusk said before she fell asleep was that because there are two perspectives to that little proverb of sorts, it's a double edged blade whose meanings only come clear to those fully on their own side with experience of that 'evil weapon' pointing at their faces. She also…picked up on something, probably from when she was wandering around looking for us. She said that Sephiroth still is Zeno deep inside of him, and that that Zeno hidden inside of Sephiroth is Jenova's weapon. The weapon itself is not at fault."

            "So from our standpoint, it would be all Jenova who's doing this?" Bahamut asked, perking in interest visibly. He lifted his clawed hand from Dusk's forehead and stood, staring down at the unconscious woman thoughtfully. "Intriguing. I've never thought of it that way before. I wonder what made Dusk think of it all of a sudden…?"