Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII is most definitely not mine, and neither are its characters. I do, however, own Yuffie shorts. Rather bizarre piece of information, but nonetheless true. *shrug*

A/N: *blink* All I have to say for this chapter is that the bits with Godo in just... appeared. OO;; They weren't there to begin with, but they are now, so... I hope they're okay. I never really liked Godo all that much, bar his conversation with Yuffie after the sub-quest in Wutai. *amused* Like father like daughter, I suppose.

Apologies for the crappy layout of the first uploading of Part I… I tried to just upload a Word '.doc' and… well, you saw what happened. Let this be a lesson to all ye who try to upload documents! XD

GREY SKY MORNING

Part II: How I Got This Way

"My Lord?" Chekhov lay a sympathetic hand on Godo's shoulder. She knew what it felt like to lose children. Both of hers had died in the Great War, fighting for Wutai's freedom. All for nothing, Chekhov thought. The anger and bitterness had faded long ago, leaving nothing but vague indifference. She supposed that callousness came in handy in battle, but when she wasn't fighting it made her feel cut out from the world that the rest of Wutai lived in, the world of feeling and vehemence and... Chekhov sighed. It was not for her to decide what she had. That was for Da Chao to know.

Chekhov stepped around in front of Godo, kneeling and bowing her head slightly to show respect for the man. He was the ruler of Wutai after all. "My Lord, are you well?" It was a stupid question, but one that had to be asked, simply because she could think of nothing else to say. She knew that when her son and daughter had died that was the only thing she had heard. That was what she had hated - the apparent disinterest of everyone around her when she had lost what she had been fighting for. But now, trying to offer shreds of comfort to a man who had lost not only his daughter but the future of his line, she discovered that there was very little else that could be said.

"No." Godo replied hollowly. His eyes were dull as he looked up at her. Weariness was plain in his eyes. "No." He repeated. "I am not." Chekhov would have been offended at his tone had she not understood what he was going through. She smiled, bowing her head slightly and remembering her children. Takao... Yukiko...

"It goes away, my Lord." She assured him softly. "It does go away."

Godo looked at her sharply, steel grey eyes hardening. "I don't want it to go away. I want to remember this. I want to remember what an absolute fool I was. I want to remember how weak I am, to let Staniv and Gorky talk me into such a thing." His teeth clenched, veins in his neck sticking out like cords as he sheathed the blade of his anger once more. Chekhov patted his knee comfortingly, and Godo sighed out a pent-up breath. He patted her hand and squeezed it slightly. "My apologies, Chekhov. Thankyou for your concern."

Chekhov withdrew her hand. "You are welcome, my Lord."

"I just..." Godo let out a harsh bark of laughter. "She was my daughter. My only daughter. And I let her go to a demon because I was too afraid to lose my position were we to fight and lose again, as we did during the Great War."

Chekhov opened her mouth to respond, but she was interrupted by a roar. Her head snapped toward the sound in shock. She was on her feet in an instant, running for the doorway. Surely the demon could not have returned!

Godo just looked at the ceiling and smiled bitterly. So he had lost this time, too.

*

When Yuffie awoke, Vincent was nowhere to be seen. She crammed another Mimett Green into her mouth and peered at the opening of the passageway. She couldn't hear Chaos any more. Maybe it was gone. She chewed her Green and swallowed, making a face as part of the so-called food stuck in her throat.

"Vinnie?" She queried loudly. No answer. Nothing that sounded like Chaos was around, either. Picking up her bone club, Yuffie listened at the crawlspace. Nothing. "Vincent Valentine?"

Knowing she was probably going to wind up in trouble, Yuffie started bellying along the tunnel. It was harder coming back this way, especially since her arm seemed to have realised just how sore it really was. The tunnel sloped upward a little more and Yuffie saw light. She paused and waited for her eyes to adjust; she didn't want sunspots clouding her vision if Chaos was lurking in the main cavern. Listening carefully, Yuffie pulled herself along the last few feet of tunnel and examined what she could see of the cave. There was nothing that she could detect, but with her own breath ricocheting off the jagged walls of the crawlspace that wasn't surprising. She pulled back a little way.

"Vinnie? Hey you, Vincent!"

Nothing moved at all. Yuffie was getting tired of waiting. Swiftly, she slithered forward and out of the tunnel, bringing her bone club up as though it were no more than her 'sword' in kendo training. She swung it in a wide circle, just in case, and felt rather stupid when absolutely nothing stepped out to greet her. Vincent wasn't here either.

Yuffie walked further out into the cave, moving toward the silvery light of what she assumed was a full moon. This cave sure winds a lot... it's a wonder the light makes it this far inside. She turned the corner, club held ready to bash Chaos' brains in, and let out a gasp. Even in moonlight, she could see what lay before her, and it shocked her. Vincent lay in the centre of the cavern, his clothes even more tattered in the depth of the shadows. His face was pale, even if she discounted the silvery luminescence lent to it by the moon, the exposed shreds of his muscled chest even paler. "Vinnie!" Yuffie took a cursory glance around for Chaos and scuttled over to the man's side.

Nothing seemed to be wrong with him, but he slept as though he were dead. Seized with a sudden fear, Yuffie dropped her bone with a loud clatter and dropped onto all fours beside him. One hand reached for his neck to feel his pulse, trembling slightly.

His expression did not so much as flicker but Yuffie let out a squeak as his human hand latched onto her wrist faster than her eyes could follow in the darkness. His eyes remained closed. Yuffie made sure that she was as far away from his less human appendage before she grappled with the vice-like grip on her arm. Holy Da Chao! Talk about reflexes... She leaned over him again, this time touching his shoulder. Gawds, is he even breathing? She couldn't tell. If he was, then it was very shallow, or else more gradual than grass' growth. "Vincent?" Yuffie brought her face down to see if she could hear his breath. "Come on, Vincent."

"Vincent."

"Vincent. Hey, come on Vinnie, wake up."

"Vincent, are you awake?"

"Come on, Vinnie. Rise and shine!"

"Vincent, love, wake up. You don't have to stand guard all night. That's what we have the other Turks for, remember?"

"Omigawds, Vinnie, the demon is coming!"

"You had best leave, Vincent. Hojo is coming."

"Graaaaaah, it's coming to get you, Vinnie! Better wake up soon!"

"Hojo will get you if you don't stop pursuing this, Mr Valentine. He has the power."

"Come on, Vinnie. I'm not gonna hang around all night, ya know."

"I don't want this any more. I'm not going to listen to your unproven delusions. Goodbye, Mr Valentine."

Ruby red eyes cracked open. "...Lucrecia, don't... what?" She was there, leaning over him, smiling encouragingly at him sneering at him as though he were no more than a child who had told her one too many times of the monster in his closet and resting a hand on his shoulder. He felt its weight.

"Heya! Welcome back to the land of the living, Vinnie." Yuffie said with a grin, leaping back to her feet. Vincent stared at her in incomprehension.

Lucrecia... she was here... Perhaps not. Perhaps it was nothing more than a dream. Only this girl. Wishful thinking. And now... the nightmare returns. Oh, how Vincent wished that this life was nothing but a nightmare. But the dream was only the beginning of the hell...

"Are you okay, Vincent? You seem a little..." Yuffie wasn't sure how to finish that sentence, so she changed the subject. "Who's Lucrecia?"

Vincent's attention followed the name, latching onto Yuffie. He cursed himself for saying it aloud. "She is none of your concern." He sat up, face expressionless as he masked all the guilt and grief.

"She, huh? Does Vinnie have a girlfriend?" Yuffie teased. Vincent shot her a death glare which caused Inner Yuffie to spontaneously combust and Outer Yuffie to smirk. She folded her hands in her lap. "Seriously, Vincent, I'll just pester you until you tell me. You might as well get one back and spoil my fun by telling me now."
"It is none of your concern." Vincent repeated. His tone was clipped and icy. "In any case, it is too dangerous. The demon-"

"Oh come on, Vinnie." Yuffie snorted impatiently. "You already used that one, remember? You still owe me an explanation of that cool gauntlet thing that grafted onto your arm."

Vincent stared at Yuffie. 'Cool' was the last word he expected when it came to the description of his claw. 'Monstrous' or 'hideous', yes; 'cool', no. He felt a strange rush of something that must have been gratitude - he could attribute her original disgust to nothing more than shock. He squashed the emotion as though it were no more than an irritating bug.

"Well? Are you gonna tell me? Or do I have to beat it out of you?" Yuffie spun her bone expertly. Vincent shook his head minutely, rocking backwards before shooting to his feet. Yuffie, with a variation of the Wutaian get-up Vincent had just used, leapt up and trailed after him.

"Come on Vincent. Tell me!" She pestered. "Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, te--"

"Would you kindly be quiet?" Vincent snapped. He threw his claw out to the side as he turned around and made a mocking bow, though obviously he was angry. "If you'll follow me." The syllables were crisp and cold.

Vincent led her to a crack in the wall of the cave. Tossing a careless glance back at her, he slipped through the narrow opening and sidled along it. His scarlet cape snagged on the rocks as he passed them. Yuffie has little trouble negotiating the crack. With her slim shoulders and narrow hips, she thought that the passage would have been just about wide enough for her to walk through. Almost, she thought as she was forced to bend backward to make it past some inconveniently placed jags of rock.

At the end of the gap, there was a large, open chamber. Water trickled from stalactites to pool around strange stone formations on the floor. Yuffie let out a strangled cry and ran forward to dip her hands into the pool. It was a little warm, but she drank it anyway, thirsty for a long time without water. She turned around. Vincent sat comfortably next to the steaming end of the pool, legs crossed, hands on his knees. His air was so solemn that Yuffie was hesitant as she seated herself opposite him. She placed her bone club on the ground in front of her.

When she looked to Vincent again, his garnet eyes locked onto her own, holding them with a fierce glare. Yuffie hardly dared to breathe. "Lucrecia," he said simply. "Was my lover. That is as good a place as any to begin. She was a scientist, devoted to the Jenova project of the Shinra Science Department." Yuffie nodded. She knew the Shinra. "Jenova was an Ancient, of the remains of one, which Lucrecia and two other scientists, Gast and Hojo were studying. Gast was a scientific genius. Hojo was a scientific flop."

Yuffie almost giggled, but the hatred that branded that name stopped her. Something told her it would not be wise to giggle throughout this tale.

"I was a Turk - an elite soldier of the Shinra." Vincent nodded slightly as Yuffie's eyes went wide. "I was assigned to protect the experiments, which were being carried out in the Shinra Mansion in Nibelheim."
"That's on the continent to the east of Wutai, right?" Yuffie hazarded.

"Yes."
"Hmm... I've heard of that place. There was a rumour it got burned down, but there was nothin' on the news. It was weird." Yuffie mused. She shook her head slightly. "So? What happened?"

Vincent nearly winced at her innocent inquiry. "As more came to be known about Jenova, Lucrecia's infatuation with her work grew, as did that of Hojo." His voice was terse and cold as he suppressed his anger. "Lucrecia did not care for my love. She did not believe in it. She was a true scientist, as Hojo could never be. She married Hojo. She was to have his child, injected with Jenova cells." His jaw clenched as Yuffie listened, appalled. How could anyone do such a thing to someone who clearly loved them as much as Vincent had?

"All for the sake of the experiment, Lucrecia accepted the Jenova injections, the Mako infusion... all for the sake of science. She wanted to be recognised, like the genius Professor Gast. But the Jenova in her ate at her... gnawed at her... I had tried to convince her when I heard, but..."

"She wouldn't listen." Yuffie supplied, listening intently. Vincent nodded, garnet eyes clouding with grief.

"Lucrecia died giving birth to the child. She named it Sephiroth." His laugh was bitter, clipped. "Strange that she, who did not believe in love or religion, would choose such a name. I wasn't there when she died, but afterward... I went to Hojo. I was out of my mind with pain, knowing I could have stopped her. I could have done more to convince her to pull out of it... I argued with Hojo in the main lab, and he shot me in the neck, dragged me to his operating table. He hated what I had had with Lucrecia. He hated me for..." Vincent took a deep, calming breath and went on, speaking in a monotone. "While he worked on me, he spoke in feverish murmurs, rambling to himself. He was insane. He thought Jenova was alive, that it - 'she', he said - spoke to him. He told me of Lucrecia's death in detail, mentioning with loathing how she had called for me in her final hours. It was that which made him take my arm. I was left-handed, it was my gun arm, it was everything that represented my strength and the power I had over the weedy maggot." Bitterness had crept into Vincent's tone. "He destroyed me. He experimented with my body, my mind... he..."

The hesitation was as sudden as though Vincent had crashed into a wall. The flow of his story had hit a sudden curve, a dam. Yuffie could sense the pain in him. She was seized by an irrational urge to shake him until the dam broke and the flood roared free to pool at her feet. Tears stood in her eyes. "A-and...?"

Vincent shook his head. "That is all."

Yuffie nodded reluctantly. He had been about to tell her something more, something important. Something forbidden. "Okay Vincent." She didn't want to make him relive any more of that. She had crossed too many boundaries already, smashing his privacy into pieces, like a mirror. Seven years bad luck. Though she had never thought twice about such things prior to this, the regret and guilt that darkened the man's chi was tangible. Yuffie sat completely still, uncomfortable in the silence. Slowly Vincent's blazing eyes dulled. It was as though he released her from a spell as he looked away.

"Have you heard everything you wished to know?"

Yuffie looked down at the backs of her hands, ashamed. Vincent's voice was totally numb. Yuffie wondered if he had spoken like this before Lucrecia had torn out his heart and left the gaping hole to freeze over with pain and anguish. She ducked her head.

"Thankyou for telling me, Vincent. It makes you much easier to understand." She bowed to him, feeling as though she owed him something. To her great surprise, Vincent shifted so that he, too, sat on his knees, and returned her bow with perfect etiquette. Yuffie grinned sheepishly. He could show me up any day. He has to be Wutaian. I can see it in his face, too. As this occurred to her, Yuffie had a brainwave. "Hey, it's a couple hours past midnight, right?"

Vincent considered and nodded.

"So when do you think the demon is coming back?" Yuffie asked. Vincent's human hand was white as he clenched it.

"An hour. Perhaps two." If I can hold it off for that long. "You should return to where you hid before."

"Okay, I will... but first I'm gonna go grab some things from outside, okay?" At Vincent's look of refusal, she added, "I'll take my club. I'm good with it already. I'll talk to you again tomorrow night, when it's safe." She was already slipping through the crack in the cave wall, leaving Vincent alone.

The raven-haired man sighed. He didn't know why he had poured out the tale to the girl. He was sick of having it bottled up, he supposed. He shrugged it off. His thoughts lingered, as they almost always did nowadays, on his past. He said the name aloud again. "...Lucrecia..." It seeped away into the indifferent stone, without so much as an echo. With Yuffie's sudden departure, Vincent felt more alone than he had ever cared to feel before.

Deep in the frozen wasteland that was his soul, Hell stirred. Hell with wings and claws. It didn't speak, but Vincent knew its meaning. He was never alone. Not any more.

*

Yuffie's mind lingered on Vincent's story as she crept towards the entrance of the cave. If not for the silvery lining the moon lent every inconsistency in the floor, even she with a ninja's training would have fallen a dozen times by now. Eyes and ears straining for signs of Chaos, Yuffie's mind was filled with apprehension. Her only consolation was that the demon's eyes would at least alert her of its presence in the darkness.

She nearly let out a whoop of delight as she saw open starry sky. Checking herself just in time, Yuffie ran outside, struggling to hold in laughter. She couldn't believe she hadn't seen the sky in nearly two whole days. She spent ten completely unguarded seconds staring up at it with infantile wonder before she recalled herself and the potential danger she was in. Taking a quick look around, Yuffie grinned in relief as she found what she wanted - a small plant with distinctive foliage and a signature smell. She crouched to pull a handful of leaves off the plant, shoving them unceremoniously in a pocket of her work khaki shorts. She cast around for smooth rocks. Vinnie had some bowls back there... at least one, anyway...

Something caught her eye in the wan moonlight and she reversed her movements until she saw the telltale glitter again. Cautiously, she bent to pick it up, held it up to the sky and smiled. A hunting knife was silhouetted against the dark sky. Perfect. She found a large rock and a smaller one before she returned to the cave with her new weapon. It took her a while to find the crawlspace, even longer to push all her finds to where she had slept before.

Once back in the item room, Yuffie sat the large rock down beneath the wavering glow of a weird chunk of rock. She brought out the handful of leaves and dropped them onto the relatively smooth surface. With the slightly smaller rock, she began to grind the leaves.

Chaos might be back soon, but that doesn't mean I can't work on this in here. I'm safe in here. Vinnie is Wutaian... he'll understand this... I hope.

With this in mind, Yuffie finished grinding her leaves and went to search for the bowl Vincent had used when she had first arrived. At least stupid, age-old customs are good for something.

*

Godo stared dully at his ceiling, listening to the silence that surrounded Wutai. Two more deaths had resulted from Chaos' latest rampage. He sighed heavily. He had made a fool of himself. Dishonoured his ancestors. Lost his daughter. The list went on with faults like weakness and cowardice. He listed them aimlessly to himself in a half-arsed attempt to break through the silence. "You're a fool and a weakling and a coward and a bad father and..."

And now he was talking to himself. Fantastic. Amaya would have been so proud. Godo snorted. The village expected his help, his protection, but what could he do? After his last attempt, he wasn't sure what would discourage the demon. He wasn't sure he could drive it away, if that could be done at all.

Before the Great War, he might have attacked, defended Wutai against all odds. He would have led his people against the demon, to the honour of his clan. Now that he had tasted bitter defeat and loss, he was no longer willing to try with the same whole-hearted bravery he had shown in the Great War. He was afraid.

A sardonic chuckled escaped Godo's constricting throat. How the mighty had fallen.

*

A/N: Well, that's the second part of this... ^^ Sorry about the short chapter length, guys. I just can't seem to write long chapters. Part I will have to appease you as far as chapter length goes. Please review, because I love to hear from people who wade through this stuff that I come up with at two in the morning... As always, big cuddles to Wyrren Sarrasri for beta reading, even though she's off gallivanting right now. Thank'ee, Packsister. ^^