Three Leaves Left
Volume III of the Sun series.
"The Shin-Ra Eddie Bower," lord of the fashion retail industry, once played a Vincent Valentine re-mix in their store outlets.
The clothing store chain that decides what's hip, and what's not, sparked a musical chord with it's young customers.
Thousands of their customers and employees heard the late Vincent Valentine for the first time, generating a boost in "Nightmares Under the Stairs" record
sales.
The same re-mixed song was played frequently in a Volkswagen commercial.
Yuffie was pleased to read in the paper, under the Entertainment section, that there was a strong boost in Vincent Valentine records being sold. Although, it was a mystery to her on why this was happening out of the blue. She was glad that his memory was living on.
After Vincent's death, Yuffie noticed a huge shift in her personality.
She thought, finally, she was growing up. Perhaps Vincent would have been pleased with her. She was no longer the little brat who used to steal materia.
No.
She got her first real job.
Yuffie lives in Wutai, now, not at all far from her father.
She works as a server in the bar of Wutai. Whenever a customer gives her attitude, however, she has no issue resorting to her childish ways, and spits in their drinks.
She speaks to her father and younger brother at least once a week. They were still getting over their differences.
There was a regular who came to her bar.
He always requested her as his server.
His bald head, and dark sunglasses seemed somehow familiar to her.
He wore a flannel jacket, and hardly ever spoke.
Yuffie swore that she knew him form somewhere, but never made a deal of it.
~
"Oh! Look! He has your eyes, Cloud!"
Cloud proudly placed his hand upon Tifa's shoulder.
"He has my eyes, but, he looks more like your brother."
"Yes. Poor Vincent. Too bad he can't see him." Tifa gazed into the child's slimy face.
The doctor reluctantly took the child from Tifa.
Tifa, relived and exhausted, laid back into the pillow.
She watched with half-closed eyes as the doctor placed the child onto a steel table, and took out a butchers cleaver.
"N... no! What is he- what is he doing to my baby..." Tifa felt herself half falling asleep.
Cloud simply stood beside her bed, and watched.
The doctor lifted the knife, and down came the huge, steel blade.
"This child is a freak of nature!" Cried one, round, greasy and olive faced nurse.
Tifa's baby, a small, purplish creature with a huge, green fish head, flopped around like an inverted mermaid on the table.
It's button, beady-fish-eyes went still as the doctor sliced it's head off.
Tifa began to cry.
Then, she woke up.
Her pillow was a cold, wet puddle, soaked all the way into the sheets.
Horrible, horrible nightmares, abut the baby being a monster.
She touched her belly. It was a child, part Cloud, part her, nothing more.
A baby boy.
No fish heads.
As she sat up, she suddenly felt incredibly nauseated.
She hated being sick in the morning.
Then, it came to her. The worry. The stress. The sadness.
Vincent.
Poor, poor Vincent. It never left her. When she slept, she would forget.
But she always woke up again.
It came to her as a blow in the head. Yuffie told Cid, last they spoke. Cid told Tifa. It went around like wildfire.
She never knew him well. She never had the chance.
Red said that he was sad, but, not at all shocked. Red said that he seemed depressed since the day they met. Red was sure that he was not sad anymore.
Still, Tifa thought.
How horrible. Yuffie was there. Why didn't Yuffie try to stop him?! Tifa didn't understand. Oh, well, Tifa thought. No use in blaming anyone. It's too late now.
Vincent committed suicide.
He would have done it weather she was there or not. Once someone makes that decision, there really isn't any stopping them.
Red was right, perhaps. Vincent is in the Lifestream with Aeris and their mother, now.
Vincent and Tifa... shared the same mother.
Tifa sniffed, and pushed her palm across her eyes. She was due any day now. The baby was a boy, Tifa's woman intuition was right. A life leaves, only to be replaced.
Cloud and Tifa couldn't agree on a name.
Tifa sat on their bed, feeling the baby kick her ribs, and lean in on her bladder. She struggled to stand, and head for the bathroom.
Cloud wanted to name him, Paul.
Tifa said that she wanted to call him, Keter, a name that she made up, but rather liked. Now, she reconsidered. She wanted to name him after her late half-brother.
Tifa slipped off her maternity panties, and went.
She could feel the stretch marks and varicose veins under her swollen belly. Her ankles hurt. Her feet hurt. Her heart ached.
Why did he have to do it? There were so many things that she wanted to tell him.
Tifa finished, stood and washed her hands.
A light breeze drifted in through the small, bathroom window. Autumn was coming, back in Niblehiem. They didn't ever have a proper autumn here is Costa del Sol. They only had a rainy season, and a sunny season.
No autumn, Tifa's favorite.
It was beautiful in Niblehiem, when the leaves began to change.
She was sure that Vincent would know about that- he spent so much time in the mansion, there, watching her grow up, perhaps.
She didn't know, honestly, she would like to think that he saw her there.
Tifa dried her hands, and touched her belly. Keter wasn't kicking anymore.
Tifa looked into the mirror, in the bathroom that the afternoon sunlight slid through.
Tifa barely recognized herself. She didn't look bad, just, older. She didn't look like the young Tifa in a sports bra who could take on the world, and run a dilapidated bar in the underbelly of Midgar and be a member of AVALANCHE.
Her shine was still there, though, but it was somehow softer.
Her chestnut eyes, and shiny long brown locks. They weren't sexy, now, but, maternal. She looked like a mother.
She liked it.
It made her feel like an adult, finally.
She looked down at her belly.
~
Reno couldn't get her out of his head.
Sephris.
The result of Aeris and Jenova/Sephiroth cells.
The most powerful force in the universe.
Far stronger than the Lifestream.
She speaks to the Earth.
She is part Cetra.
Her kiss was like jasmine flowers. She smelt like a pine forest on a summers night.
Did... he love...
No.
And even if he did, he thought to himself, she wouldn't love him back. It was stupid. The whole thing was so STUPID. She was taught to hate humans by that monster father of hers.
Reno kicked a sticky, brown beer bottle across his filthy apartment rug.
It cracked, but didn't shatter, against the gray, dusty wall.
Reno lit a cigarette.
He didn't want to be in love. He was getting too old for that. He hadn't had a proper girlfriend since Bunny. And before that, that bitch, Elena.
Was he just infatuated with her? Did he need sex?
No... not really. A man could do without if he knew what he was doing.
Reno sighed, and went over to pick up the beer bottle.
Maybe Rude was right. Maybe he was finally coming to terms with being... just... plain 'ol lonely.
Being a bachelor was harder than it looked.
Maybe he isn't in denial anymore. Everybody needs somebody, eh, Reno?-He thought to himself.
Reno tossed the bottle into the overfilling trash in his kitchen.
After doing so, he took a good, long, look around.
"You need to get it together, Reno." He spoke out loud to himself as a long snake of gray ash dripped off the end of his cigarette. It splattered onto his sticky kitchen floor.
Reno opened a near-black-wooden cupboard door.
"Fuck. I don't even have a bottle of cleaning shit to BEGIN. Eh.. well. I gotta go to the drugstore anyway."
Reno snubbed his cigarette out in the steel kitchen sink. The dirty dishes were piled AROUND it on the counter, as if they were creatures painfully avoiding anything remotely clean.
Reno sighed, stretched, itched his ass, put on his holy green bathrobe that didn't even know what a washing machine looked like, and slipped on a pair of beat up sandals.
He was going out, today.
"I become more and more of a slob every day." He thought out loud to himself as he caught a glimpse of his messy appearance on the dusty television screen.
As he lazily walked with his shoulders slouched, and his hands limply hanging inside of his bathrobe pockets, he headed for the drugstore.
A lot of people in Midgar went out looking somewhat like he did.
Some of them were worse.
Some of them were homeless, however.
He didn't care. He was lazy, and he knew it.
A bit of him was satisfied with it, though.
It most certainly is a guy thing.
Reno headed into the drug store, and took a few bottles of cleaning supplies off of the shelf. Then, he meandered into the cool, dry, dairy department, and picked up a carton of milk.
He stuck his nose into it, first, making sure that it was fresh.
"Hey, man."
Reno lifted his nose from the red and white carton of milk. He ran his rough hand over his concave countenance- whose chin was smothered in rough, sand like hair.
The grimacing cartoon cow on the milk carton stared blankly at the man near Reno.
"Do I know you?" Reno asked the man.
"We've met before." Replied the clean cut man with jet black hair.
"Yeah, well, fuck, you know. I've met a lot of people in my time, you know, I forget faces." Reno replied as he lowered his milk carton.
"Yeah? Me too. We worked in Shin-Ra together." The man said.
"Shin-Ra, huh? Well, you weren't a Turk flunky, were you? We've had a few come in and die out real quick. Folks who couldn't cut it." Reno's cat-green eyes cut through the thin, tall man with dark hair and fine, navy blue suit. He LOOKED like he could have been a Turk at some point.
"Turk? Me? No. Fact, I still work for them."
"Yeah? What department?"
"Toy department." Smirked the man. His smile was as clean and as sharp as the rest of him.
"Oh. Yeah. Well, you know," Reno stopped, feeling a bubble come up. He closed his mouth for a small belch that partially slipped past his lips. "'Scuse me. But, I kinda got shit to do. What was your name?" Reno asked.
The man didn't reply, only turned around, and walked swiftly past the dairy aisle, as if their conversation was already over before Reno had said anything.
Reno shrugged, and thought nothing more of it.
Reno thought the clean-cut man with jet black hair was a prick, anyway. Maybe the man judged him for his slob appearance.
Reno paid for his things with a nearly maxed out credit card, and headed home.
He was going to clean for the first time since he moved in, and not do a half-assed job on it, either.
Then, it occurred to Reno.
"Hey, HEY, man, WAIT!"
But the tall, thin man with jet-black hair and a nice suit-was gone.
~
Volume III of the Sun series.
"The Shin-Ra Eddie Bower," lord of the fashion retail industry, once played a Vincent Valentine re-mix in their store outlets.
The clothing store chain that decides what's hip, and what's not, sparked a musical chord with it's young customers.
Thousands of their customers and employees heard the late Vincent Valentine for the first time, generating a boost in "Nightmares Under the Stairs" record
sales.
The same re-mixed song was played frequently in a Volkswagen commercial.
Yuffie was pleased to read in the paper, under the Entertainment section, that there was a strong boost in Vincent Valentine records being sold. Although, it was a mystery to her on why this was happening out of the blue. She was glad that his memory was living on.
After Vincent's death, Yuffie noticed a huge shift in her personality.
She thought, finally, she was growing up. Perhaps Vincent would have been pleased with her. She was no longer the little brat who used to steal materia.
No.
She got her first real job.
Yuffie lives in Wutai, now, not at all far from her father.
She works as a server in the bar of Wutai. Whenever a customer gives her attitude, however, she has no issue resorting to her childish ways, and spits in their drinks.
She speaks to her father and younger brother at least once a week. They were still getting over their differences.
There was a regular who came to her bar.
He always requested her as his server.
His bald head, and dark sunglasses seemed somehow familiar to her.
He wore a flannel jacket, and hardly ever spoke.
Yuffie swore that she knew him form somewhere, but never made a deal of it.
~
"Oh! Look! He has your eyes, Cloud!"
Cloud proudly placed his hand upon Tifa's shoulder.
"He has my eyes, but, he looks more like your brother."
"Yes. Poor Vincent. Too bad he can't see him." Tifa gazed into the child's slimy face.
The doctor reluctantly took the child from Tifa.
Tifa, relived and exhausted, laid back into the pillow.
She watched with half-closed eyes as the doctor placed the child onto a steel table, and took out a butchers cleaver.
"N... no! What is he- what is he doing to my baby..." Tifa felt herself half falling asleep.
Cloud simply stood beside her bed, and watched.
The doctor lifted the knife, and down came the huge, steel blade.
"This child is a freak of nature!" Cried one, round, greasy and olive faced nurse.
Tifa's baby, a small, purplish creature with a huge, green fish head, flopped around like an inverted mermaid on the table.
It's button, beady-fish-eyes went still as the doctor sliced it's head off.
Tifa began to cry.
Then, she woke up.
Her pillow was a cold, wet puddle, soaked all the way into the sheets.
Horrible, horrible nightmares, abut the baby being a monster.
She touched her belly. It was a child, part Cloud, part her, nothing more.
A baby boy.
No fish heads.
As she sat up, she suddenly felt incredibly nauseated.
She hated being sick in the morning.
Then, it came to her. The worry. The stress. The sadness.
Vincent.
Poor, poor Vincent. It never left her. When she slept, she would forget.
But she always woke up again.
It came to her as a blow in the head. Yuffie told Cid, last they spoke. Cid told Tifa. It went around like wildfire.
She never knew him well. She never had the chance.
Red said that he was sad, but, not at all shocked. Red said that he seemed depressed since the day they met. Red was sure that he was not sad anymore.
Still, Tifa thought.
How horrible. Yuffie was there. Why didn't Yuffie try to stop him?! Tifa didn't understand. Oh, well, Tifa thought. No use in blaming anyone. It's too late now.
Vincent committed suicide.
He would have done it weather she was there or not. Once someone makes that decision, there really isn't any stopping them.
Red was right, perhaps. Vincent is in the Lifestream with Aeris and their mother, now.
Vincent and Tifa... shared the same mother.
Tifa sniffed, and pushed her palm across her eyes. She was due any day now. The baby was a boy, Tifa's woman intuition was right. A life leaves, only to be replaced.
Cloud and Tifa couldn't agree on a name.
Tifa sat on their bed, feeling the baby kick her ribs, and lean in on her bladder. She struggled to stand, and head for the bathroom.
Cloud wanted to name him, Paul.
Tifa said that she wanted to call him, Keter, a name that she made up, but rather liked. Now, she reconsidered. She wanted to name him after her late half-brother.
Tifa slipped off her maternity panties, and went.
She could feel the stretch marks and varicose veins under her swollen belly. Her ankles hurt. Her feet hurt. Her heart ached.
Why did he have to do it? There were so many things that she wanted to tell him.
Tifa finished, stood and washed her hands.
A light breeze drifted in through the small, bathroom window. Autumn was coming, back in Niblehiem. They didn't ever have a proper autumn here is Costa del Sol. They only had a rainy season, and a sunny season.
No autumn, Tifa's favorite.
It was beautiful in Niblehiem, when the leaves began to change.
She was sure that Vincent would know about that- he spent so much time in the mansion, there, watching her grow up, perhaps.
She didn't know, honestly, she would like to think that he saw her there.
Tifa dried her hands, and touched her belly. Keter wasn't kicking anymore.
Tifa looked into the mirror, in the bathroom that the afternoon sunlight slid through.
Tifa barely recognized herself. She didn't look bad, just, older. She didn't look like the young Tifa in a sports bra who could take on the world, and run a dilapidated bar in the underbelly of Midgar and be a member of AVALANCHE.
Her shine was still there, though, but it was somehow softer.
Her chestnut eyes, and shiny long brown locks. They weren't sexy, now, but, maternal. She looked like a mother.
She liked it.
It made her feel like an adult, finally.
She looked down at her belly.
~
Reno couldn't get her out of his head.
Sephris.
The result of Aeris and Jenova/Sephiroth cells.
The most powerful force in the universe.
Far stronger than the Lifestream.
She speaks to the Earth.
She is part Cetra.
Her kiss was like jasmine flowers. She smelt like a pine forest on a summers night.
Did... he love...
No.
And even if he did, he thought to himself, she wouldn't love him back. It was stupid. The whole thing was so STUPID. She was taught to hate humans by that monster father of hers.
Reno kicked a sticky, brown beer bottle across his filthy apartment rug.
It cracked, but didn't shatter, against the gray, dusty wall.
Reno lit a cigarette.
He didn't want to be in love. He was getting too old for that. He hadn't had a proper girlfriend since Bunny. And before that, that bitch, Elena.
Was he just infatuated with her? Did he need sex?
No... not really. A man could do without if he knew what he was doing.
Reno sighed, and went over to pick up the beer bottle.
Maybe Rude was right. Maybe he was finally coming to terms with being... just... plain 'ol lonely.
Being a bachelor was harder than it looked.
Maybe he isn't in denial anymore. Everybody needs somebody, eh, Reno?-He thought to himself.
Reno tossed the bottle into the overfilling trash in his kitchen.
After doing so, he took a good, long, look around.
"You need to get it together, Reno." He spoke out loud to himself as a long snake of gray ash dripped off the end of his cigarette. It splattered onto his sticky kitchen floor.
Reno opened a near-black-wooden cupboard door.
"Fuck. I don't even have a bottle of cleaning shit to BEGIN. Eh.. well. I gotta go to the drugstore anyway."
Reno snubbed his cigarette out in the steel kitchen sink. The dirty dishes were piled AROUND it on the counter, as if they were creatures painfully avoiding anything remotely clean.
Reno sighed, stretched, itched his ass, put on his holy green bathrobe that didn't even know what a washing machine looked like, and slipped on a pair of beat up sandals.
He was going out, today.
"I become more and more of a slob every day." He thought out loud to himself as he caught a glimpse of his messy appearance on the dusty television screen.
As he lazily walked with his shoulders slouched, and his hands limply hanging inside of his bathrobe pockets, he headed for the drugstore.
A lot of people in Midgar went out looking somewhat like he did.
Some of them were worse.
Some of them were homeless, however.
He didn't care. He was lazy, and he knew it.
A bit of him was satisfied with it, though.
It most certainly is a guy thing.
Reno headed into the drug store, and took a few bottles of cleaning supplies off of the shelf. Then, he meandered into the cool, dry, dairy department, and picked up a carton of milk.
He stuck his nose into it, first, making sure that it was fresh.
"Hey, man."
Reno lifted his nose from the red and white carton of milk. He ran his rough hand over his concave countenance- whose chin was smothered in rough, sand like hair.
The grimacing cartoon cow on the milk carton stared blankly at the man near Reno.
"Do I know you?" Reno asked the man.
"We've met before." Replied the clean cut man with jet black hair.
"Yeah, well, fuck, you know. I've met a lot of people in my time, you know, I forget faces." Reno replied as he lowered his milk carton.
"Yeah? Me too. We worked in Shin-Ra together." The man said.
"Shin-Ra, huh? Well, you weren't a Turk flunky, were you? We've had a few come in and die out real quick. Folks who couldn't cut it." Reno's cat-green eyes cut through the thin, tall man with dark hair and fine, navy blue suit. He LOOKED like he could have been a Turk at some point.
"Turk? Me? No. Fact, I still work for them."
"Yeah? What department?"
"Toy department." Smirked the man. His smile was as clean and as sharp as the rest of him.
"Oh. Yeah. Well, you know," Reno stopped, feeling a bubble come up. He closed his mouth for a small belch that partially slipped past his lips. "'Scuse me. But, I kinda got shit to do. What was your name?" Reno asked.
The man didn't reply, only turned around, and walked swiftly past the dairy aisle, as if their conversation was already over before Reno had said anything.
Reno shrugged, and thought nothing more of it.
Reno thought the clean-cut man with jet black hair was a prick, anyway. Maybe the man judged him for his slob appearance.
Reno paid for his things with a nearly maxed out credit card, and headed home.
He was going to clean for the first time since he moved in, and not do a half-assed job on it, either.
Then, it occurred to Reno.
"Hey, HEY, man, WAIT!"
But the tall, thin man with jet-black hair and a nice suit-was gone.
~
