Blood and Water, Life Requires Both

"You told me it was an illness."

Jordan was hunched on the edge of his bed. Still in his coat and boots with his hands clasped tightly between his knees, his face a shadowed study in the fathoms of thought that could hide behind a vacant expression. Tall at eighteen, almost as tall as his father, practically grown into once-gangly limbs and broadening shoulders, with dark eyebrows and clever, attractive features. Part Tifa, part stranger, all Jordan.

Lost in memories. Lost in the present that was making the memories into lies. Lost in the idea that it might have all been lies.

And, as critical as it was, Vincent had never planned for this moment. Truth be known, he had never expected to have to reveal, or explain, or even be the least bit worried about the truth coming out. And he saw it now for the mistake it had been. Of course there had been necessity. He had simply gotten careless, comfortable with the routine. And routine, as good as it was for his sanity some days, tended to breed blind denial.

Eighteen, almost his own man now, modeled after a man he had respected, trusted all his life. How suddenly the pedestal had been ripped away, how abruptly he had been flung into a brutal fight against self-doubt and identity crisis. How cruel reality was at an age when the future was still an unmapped expedition.

Vincent had never wanted that for his son.

"It is an illness, Jordan." He opened the door slowly, wanting to bring a little bit of light with him into the room. "An illness someone gave me a long time ago."

Jordan's eyes and cheeks were red with the telltale stains of tears roughly discarded. Eyes hard with anger and blame made fiercer by the amount of love and pride that had previously been there. "Why did you let me believe a lie for so long?"

"Because you didn't need to know."

"Dammit!" His expression contorted suddenly and he twisted to face the wall. "I'm not a fucking child!"

He was shaking his head, his mouth quivering as he wept without a sound. And Vincent watched silently, wretchedly, forced to observe what he had no idea how to fix.

"I know you're not a child."

Jordan's knuckles whitened, perhaps wrestling back an impulse for violence. "Just leave me alone. You're not … " A small sob escaped, baritone voice cracking. "You're not even my father."

It was the truth, too. Though Jordan shouldn't have known that, either.

And, halfway to who-knew-where, with no particular destination besides away, Vincent thought he had never really known before what it was to have a broken heart.

That morning had been like other mornings. Caught at the door.

"Dad?"

Vincent hadn't turned as he had stepped into his boots. There was only one answer, there would always be only one answer, and he had already given it. There was nothing more to say.

"Are you leaving now?"

"I'll be back in a few hours. If your mother comes home before then, tell her to leave the laundry where it is."

Jordan had shifted his weight from one foot to the other like he had been looking for an opening, and Vincent had nearly been able to feel his son's offense at being shrugged off yet again. "Last week you said you'd think about it."

"I've thought about it. The answer is still no."

Jordan had scoffed. Softly, finally understanding. "It's always going to be no, isn't it?"

It was a fight without a solution, a case without a firm verdict, a fact without a loophole. Jordan wanted to hunt.

His reasons he had stated confidently at the dinner table weeks ago: it was good pay, he had been practicing day and night at a firing range, Vincent could get him in and train him in the things he didn't know. In most cases, Vincent had guessed, a father would be proud to have his son follow in his footsteps.

But not in this case. And Vincent hadn't even been able to explain why. So many times, just walking out the door without another word, because another word would never, ever be the last word. Jordan was almost as stubborn as his mother.

And, oh, Vincent was tired of lying and avoiding and of the animosity that was growing between them until it practically blocked out the sight of one another.

"Jordan, I've told you before. I need solitude."

But Jordan had only shaken his head, unsatisfied at last with anything less than absolute candor, when a younger Jordan might have simply sulked and kicked the wall trim and gone to throw rocks into the Nibelheim well with his friends.

"C'mon Dad, why don't you just say it? You don't think I can do it." He had sighed then, as if the accusation had suddenly drained him. "You know what? Never mind." He had waved a hand, as if to push his father out the door. "You just don't want to face the fact that I'm not a kid anymore, and that's your problem. I'll find a job hunting somewhere else."

And Vincent had frowned as he had done up his coat, refusing to watch his son walk away. Yet again.

Hojo, he had thought bitterly, had better be burning in hell.

Later, when the world had already been compromised, he had tried to tell himself that he had been distracted. Too distracted by the argument to realize he had had an audience until it was too late. He should have expected it, really – but he hadn't. It had just been one more fight, like a dozen others, and Jordan had given no clue about what he might have had in mind even then.

How could he have known? How could he have prevented? Still, he had blamed himself. He had become lax over the years, confident that the spots he had chosen to hunt in were far enough from the well-used routes to keep his secrets hidden. And perhaps he had expected too much from Jordan, thinking he would simply accept the lies, the evasion, just because he was his father. In the end, it might have been better to have been honest with Jordan from the beginning. His father was an experiment, a semi-dynamic institution for housing demons, an abomination his mother had fallen in love with.

But it had come too late. Staring down at the second track of chocobo prints in the snow, the stamp of boots he had recognized from weeks of mud treads in the hallway, and hoping against the evidence that Jordan hadn't seen anything.

It was getting dark, but Vincent barely let the fact filter in. What meaning did the approach of evening have for him anymore? He couldn't help believing there would be a time again, someday, when he could go back home, but it wouldn't be tonight. And even when he did go home, things would be different.

He had lost Jordan's trust over a curse Lily and Tifa had loved him in spite of and a lie he wouldn't have known how to begin unraveling. He was so good at keeping secrets, they had hardly seemed like secrets sometimes. Just another part of the life he had somehow been invited into. One of the few things that didn't change as the people around him did.

He had found her gravestone first, before finding the bench. Compared to Tifa and Jordan she had been a part of his life only briefly, but she had affected so much in that time. Given him company like a warm blanket and somewhere to go when he had had nowhere else to go.

Exactly what he needed today.

Lily would have warned him about keeping secrets.

He felt a presence nearby before he heard a footfall in the snow. And he could feel the flicker, like the bare heat from a candle, before Jordan even spoke.

"Dad?"

He turned his head in silent acknowledgment. Despite the part of him that wanted to disappear into the night.

"How long have you been here?"

Did it matter?

Jordan was walking faster now. "Mom said I might find you here." A few steps more brought him into view. Dressed in his bulky winter coat, with hair ruffled playfully in the wind and face taut with the shadow of a previous anxiety, he looked so much younger than eighteen for a moment. Just a boy, a vulnerable boy. Waking up, and finding out the nightmare didn't always go away with the daylight. And looking for his father, the man who wasn't his father, the man who had lied to him, the man who had always protected him and loved him as fiercely as any man who had been given everything his starved heart desired.

Jordan stood looking at him for a moment before he sat down.

Vincent took a breath. He felt a brief flash of anger, and then it was gone. There was no way to change or deny what was fact. "I'm not your father."

"I know. I … I found the insemination documents in Mom's closet this summer."

Vincent turned, surprised enough to move out of the heavy weave hours of thought had twisted around him. Jordan, it seemed, had been keeping secrets for him that hadn't been secrets for almost six months.

Jordan let out a laugh in a tiny puff of air and began picking at the old green paint beneath them. "It just didn't seem to matter at the time." He shrugged, like an overture to apology. "I shouldn't have brought it up. I was just … " He was shaking his head as he glanced up, and there was anger and pain in his expression. Distrusted, betrayed, the only one not in his father's confidence about the gruesome truth – especially considering that Vincent was the last man on earth who should have been comforting him after bad dreams. "You were never going to tell me about that … that transformation."

"I wouldn't ever have harmed you, Jordan." It seemed important to make sure he knew.

"I know. I know that." He stood suddenly and stared out at the rows of tombstones, hands stuffed into his pockets.

"I didn't keep the truth from you because I didn't trust you."

Jordan didn't reply for a moment, as if he was trying to decide whether or not he believed that. And then he sighed. "I can't say it didn't freak me out, to see you change … like that. Other things made sense after I knew, though. Why you can't take a week off, why I can't find any information on illnesses that don't make people age … "

He pivoted abruptly to face a tree to his left. Not looking at Vincent, but wanting to make sure it was understood that he meant what he was saying. "But now I want to know why you are … the way you are. Because, I guess … "

He was kicking at the snow a little, and Vincent couldn't help a small twitch of his mouth. Eighteen, and almost a man. But Vincent would always be able to see the boy.

"I guess I'd sort of been telling myself that it was okay that you weren't my father, because we've been a lot closer than a lot of my friends are to their fathers."

Years of experience didn't take away the doubt; it had been a long time since he and Jordan had talked so candidly about his place in his son's life. Now he understood that his place was beyond fear, beyond prejudice, beyond hatred. He was Jordan's father, and he would continue to be even when Jordan was a man much older than himself.

"I'm sorry, Jordan." And he was. He had never meant to shut Jordan out of anything. There was simply the part of himself he shut away as often as he could, the part he could almost forget about when he was at home. The part he was sure most people would reject him for, if they knew. "I should've trusted you to be able to handle the truth. But I was afraid you might … "

"Dad."

He looked up, surprised at the interruption. "Yes?"

Jordan smirked and, stepping up, gently smacked his father in the forehead with his palm. "You shouldn't let old age affect your brain capacity." And then he turned and began to walk out of the cemetery.

Vincent chuckled quietly to himself for a few moments before standing and following.

No, his son was not a child anymore.