Disclaimer: I own not a notion, I escape and fake content, I don't own these characters, I rent.

Author's Note: Thank you for the reviews! It seems like everyone wants me to continue, so I think I will write a sequel once this story is over.

I apologize profusely for the massive delay. I have been drowning in homework, exams, and a huge lack of inspiration. I know this chapter is a little short, but I think the next one will be longer.

Enjoy!

Chapter 18

A History of Violence

If it had been snowing in the mountains, it was nothing to what it was doing farther south. Rain beat the ground like a hundred millions fists, as though it was trying to pound the Planet into something unrecognizable. Rivers overflowed, the ocean surged against the floodgates, and all the creatures of the world withdrew into their holes, thickets, or cottages.

All but two.

Vincent wasn't exactly sure where they were. Most likely, they were still on the Northern Continent, but until the sun rose, he wouldn't be able to tell. He had flown as far as his strength would allow, which hadn't actually been that far, as the driving rain bled his energy out quickly. He and Lucrecia had taken cover in a pine forest, huddling beneath his red coat. The forest was almost as cold as the mountains had been.

Lucrecia hadn't said a word to him. Her back was turned and all Vincent could see was her cascade of silvery hair, a constant reminder of what he had been told back in the facility.

His mind was reeling. There was so much that didn't fit. First of all, Sephiroth was much too old. Even if you ignored that sudden aging of about ten years he had just done over the past few months, he had still been around sixteen when Vincent had met him. Lucrecia didn't look older than twenty-one or twenty-two. And putting that aside, he had always gotten the impression she despised Dr. Hojo. The idea that she had had a child with him was ludicrous at best.

Vincent shivered, trying to ignore the cold. He wanted very much to hold Lucrecia, to comfort her maybe, but he no longer felt like he had the right to. But then again, had he ever?

In the end, it was she who broke the silence.

"They'll be looking for us," she said, without turning around. "Hojo won't give up until we're both dead."

"I know that," Vincent answered.

Lucrecia turned her head. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her expression was close to dead. "I don't know what to do."

"It'll be alright," Vincent muttered, putting an arm around her shoulders. It wouldn't be alright, and they both knew it, but sometimes it's fine to just lie to yourself for awhile.

After a few minutes Lucrecia spoke the words Vincent had been awaiting ever since their flight from the facility.

"I guess you want an explanation."

There were so many things Vincent could have said in response to this, but he didn't want to complicate things anymore; things were already twisted enough.

"If you don't mind," he answered her.

Lucrecia sighed. She stood up, leaving the warm enclosure of the coat, and began to pace. She seemed to want to talk to him, but it was like she couldn't bring herself to do it.

"Come on, Lucrecia. You know I'm listening."

She smiled weakly. She seemed much younger, much more vulnerable than he had ever seen her. She took a deep breath. "I met Hojo when I was seventeen. He was everything a naïve teenage girl could want; smart, handsome, and rich. He was only twenty one and already he had made a huge pile of money working for the Shinra."

"You mean he was already at the facility?"

"No. He was working in Midgar. I was born in the Southern Islands but…" Her eyes unfocused as her mind traveled to days long past. "Midgar was my home. I grew up there. I was a city girl through and through." Vincent smiled to himself. He couldn't see Lucrecia as a city girl in the least. In fact, he couldn't see her as anything but a scientist.

"I started going out with him. Damien Hojo, that was his name. He proposed to me about a year later."

Vincent was aghast. "You married him?"

Lucrecia nodded sadly, letting out a sigh that turned to mist the moment it touched the cold air. "Yes, I did. And I had Sephiroth a year after that."

Vincent held his breath. Here it was, he was about to hear what had been going on.

"Sephiroth. It's a strange name, isn't it?"

"I…guess," Vincent shrugged.

Lucrecia smiled slightly. "It comes from ancient Spiran. Seph means 'angel', and the term i-roth would mean "one wing'."

Vincent thought for a moment, trying to put the words together. "That means Sephiroth is the one-winged angel."

"Precisely."

She said it with a strange assurance, one that made Vincent feel slightly nervous. It looked like the story was costing her a lot to tell. Her face was pale and her eyes were bright. Or it could have just been from the cold.

"What happened next?" Vincent asked.

"Only about a month after Sephiroth was born, Hojo started acting…well, oddly. He had always been far to the left of normal, but he became moody and distant. He seemed to do nothing but work. About a week after I started to notice this, he told me we had to move."

"Move?" Vincent inquired.

"Yes. He told me he had been made the head of some research facility in the northern continent."

"The Facility," Vincent guessed.

"Yes. For a time, it was alright. I worked as a teacher there, training research assistants. I had a degree in genetic science, but Hojo never let me work on any of the projects the facility had running. He wouldn't even tell me what they were. And then I found out why."

She opened her mouth, as though to go on, but nothing came out. Vincent stood up, trying to put a comforting arm around her, but she shrugged him away. "I went back to our room early one day with a headache, and I couldn't find Sephiroth. He was just gone, him and the nurse we hired to take care of him during the day. He was three at the time," she added.

"Where was he?" Vincent asked, though he thought he knew the answer.

"I looked everywhere I could think of, and then I disobeyed Hojo and wandered through the labs." She closed her eyes, as though trying to shut something out. "It was…horrible. There were…things—things that had been done to people there that just…I don't want to remember them."

"You don't have to," Vincent told her.

She smiled. "Yes I do." She swallowed in resignation. "They were awful, but the very worst was…Sephiroth."

Hojo wasn't letting Lucrecia's betrayal get him down. She would come back, there was no doubt about that. As soon as she realized that boy had nothing to offer her, she would show up at his door. All he had to do was wait; it had worked last time.

And besides, he had more important things to think about than an impudent woman who had hit him over the head with a chair.

The remaining Turks, Reno and Tseng (who had been appointed team leader), and a new girl by the name of Elena, had come to him just a few hours ago.

"Sir," Tseng had begun, edging toward the desk.

Hojo hadn't answered, just stared pointedly at Tseng's coat, which was dripping rainwater onto his carpet. The Turk leader had tossed the coat at Elena and ordered her to take it up to the Turk's quarters. And Elena, who seemed to be enthralled with him, had done what she was told. This had left just Tseng and Reno.

"Sir…I think we have found another candidate for the Jenova project." The tone in his voice had been reminiscent of Erika's, whenever she had had information she knew she would be rewarded for. "There's a boy in Nibelhiem."

Hojo had allowed his interest to show at that point. It was exceedingly unprofessional to show emotion around your underlings, but this was something he had been waiting been for since Valentine's body had rejected the Jenova cells. Hojo had been harboring the hope that Vincent might turn out to be another Sephiroth, but, though he had taken well to the transmutation, things hadn't gone as planned.

"How old is the subject?" he asked Tseng.

"At this point, only thirteen," the Turk answered, "But he won't be difficult to lure here."

"Oh?"

Tseng smirked. "He's another deluded country boy, and every deluded country boy dreams of joining Soldier."

Hojo had dismissed them at that point. He had things to think about.

If this boy was indeed another candidate for the Jenova project, there were certain precautions to be taken. He had made a massive mistake with Valentine. Underestimating his strength of mind had lost him a potential Organic Weapon, Lucrecia, and favor with the President of Shinra. When the experiments began, he would have to do everything in his power to keep the subject subdued.

The name of the little boy from Nibelhiem was slowly circulating through his brain.

Cloud Strife, Cloud Strife. The name of salvation?

The forest was getting colder and colder. Vincent was huddling underneath the dripping tree, clutching his coat around his shoulders. He didn't see how Lucrecia could bear standing there, her arms uncovered. But there was a flush in her cheeks and a fire in her eyes. Her anger was keeping her warm.

"It started with simple mind conditioning," she was saying. "Hojo told me it was nothing, just a study of children's brains. I never believed him for a second. I don't have a PhD for nothing.

"What Hojo was really doing was brainwashing him. By the time he was finished, Sephiroth would no longer remember himself. He wouldn't know Hojo was his father or I was…" She swallowed. "His mother. For the next few months, he was almost completely brain dead. And that's when the physical changes began."

"Didn't you do anything?" Vincent blurted out. He couldn't help it. Everything she was telling him was so absurd. How could anyone let that happen to their own child? For a moment Lucrecia looked at him with something very akin to dislike in her eyes.

"I tried," she told him, her throat harsh. "I tried. At that point I knew Shinra was designing a weapon, and using my son to do it. I protested, fought Hojo on it, but he just became…"

"Mean?" Vincent supplied.

"Viscous. Nothing seemed to matter but his work, turning his son into a monster. Sephiroth began to age at an impossible rate. In just a year, his brain and body were at the maturity level of someone eight years old, though he had only been alive for two."

Lucrecia ran her fingers through her shining hair, finally shivering a bit against the cold. "That was when I finally heard the term Jenova."

"Jenova?" Vincent repeated. It tasted foreign on his tongue, like a term that shouldn't be spoken aloud.

"Do you remember that story I told you about old Spira and the Summoners?"

Vincent nodded, surprised by the sudden turn the conversation had taken.

"The monster, Sin, that was holding them in a constant state of fear. Do you remember it?"

"Yes," Vincent answered again.

"Well, the only way to fight something like that was through the power of an Aeon, a heavenly spirit of power so massive not even something like Sin could stand up to it."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Lucrecia looked annoyed by his impatience. "Nowadays, on the Planet, those spirits of old are referred to as Ancients."

Vincent gasped. Now those he had heard of. The stuff of legends, the beings that were supposed to have brought the Planet into existence.

Lucrecia nodded at his shock. "Well, Shinra found one."

If Vincent had been surprised, that was nothing to what he was feeling now. "They found one?"

"Yes. It was horribly deformed and barely alive, but they found it. Hojo was appointed head of the project to attempt to clone it. He named it 'Jenova'."

"You mean…Sephiroth is a clone?" Vincent asked in confusion.

"Sort of. Real clones are taken from the DNA of an organism and implanted into the womb of a mother of the same species. The resulting child would then be identical to the original subject. Jenova and Sephiroth were different.

"Sephiroth was injected by Jenova's cells, which then merged with his own. He is now immortal, incredibly powerful and agile, and damn near invincible."

"Holy shit…" Vincent mused. "But why is he so…"

"Insane?" Lucrecia asked. "That was a side-effect. The genes that fused with his own have meddled with part of his brain, the part that restrains actions. I see this as horrible, but Shinra sees it as a bonus."

"He's ruthless, that's why, right?" Vincent guessed.

"Yes," Lucrecia answered. "And you were meant to be the same."

"What?" Vincent breathed. The air in the wet forest seemed to have gotten suddenly hot.

"I mean you were meant to be a second weapon. You and Sephiroth were meant to be a team. But it didn't work on you in the same way."

"You mean it turned me into a demon."

"It altered you on another level. You only lose your mind when you change. You're better off, Vincent."

Vincent had no doubt. Realizing what Hojo had originally meant for him when he came to the facility…it made him feel sick. And it made him feel something else.

"This has got to stop," he said, climbing to his feet and letting the coat fall to the moss-covered forest floor. "Shinra has to be shut down. Now."

"We can't do it by ourselves," Lucrecia told him. And she was right. There was no way two people could storm a Shinra facility, even if one of them was an ultra-powerful transforming demon.

"I don't really know anyone…" Vincent began. But then something sprang into his memory. He didn't know what made him think of it, or even if it was a good idea, but it was worth a try

"I think I may have to visit an old friend," he muttered.