Disclaimer: Blah.
Note: Meh. Sephiroth is a pain in the rear to try to draw, you know that? Thanks to all you people who suported me and said they'd like a sequel. Knowing what I was going to do after this story made it possible for me to set up the end of this one for the sequel. Look for it under the name of Core Temperature! Special thanks to the first three people to tell me to write a sequel: Shade (Power of the Ancients), Chaosdynasty, and BrokenAngel3. You guys rock! And now, the long? awaited? last chapter...
Chapter 23:
Ooowww... My head fell painfully back against the low walls of the pedestal. Finally I realized that what Sephiroth had told me was true. There was something going on behind my back. And, most likely, it wasn't good. Inwardly I cursed myself for being so fool-headed about the whole thing. Again, I couldn't remember why I'd left in the first place. Again, Vincent came to mind. "So," I interrupted my thought string, "What is this plan of yours and why do you need me?" I reluctantly pulled my head up to look each of them in the eye. My gaze came to rest on Kadaj.
"Sephiroth," he stated simply, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Elaborate."
He sighed and went on as if I had interrupted him, "Sephiroth was your father. Was he not?"
"He was, you know that. You probably knew before I did."
"And we did," Yazoo said. "You se—"
"I don't want to know how you knew," I said bluntly. "Just tell me the plan and we can all be on our merry way."
"Actually, we plan on fulfilling our plan whether you're in on it or not. And... we plan to keep you here for at least another nine months—"
"Wait a second!" I ordered, head down. "Nine months... what do nine months have to do with Sephiroth? Much less, what do they have to do with me?" I stood and strode over to stand in front of the still seated Kadaj. "Well?" What went through my head then, I can't remember. But I well remember what Kadaj said.
An evil smile crept onto his face as he looked up intensely at me. "They have everything to do with both of you. Sephiroth is your father, you are his daughter. Sephiroth is perished, the three of us remain alone...without father or mother," he paused as a "don't cry," came from Yazoo and Loz's direction, then went on. "You are the closest thing we have to a mother—"
"Not true!" I hissed, silently thinking of Jenova.
"—And since we have no idea how to find Mother now..."
"I'm more like a sister..." I mused aloud suddenly, then shuddered.
Kadaj glared at me for interrupting him again. "We need another Sephiroth."
I let the silence build for a moment before asking, "How do you think to achieve another Sephiroth? Hojo is dead and Lucrecia is nowhere to be fo—what are you doing?" I asked for the thousandth time.
Loz snickered in the background as he stood. Kadaj looked up at me still with a smile on his face as he repeated, "We need another Sephiroth."
Everything clicked into place. Three men, one woman who was easy to control because of her want to be accepted for who she was. That woman turned out to be a pawn in something much bigger and totally unpredictable. That woman was I.
Then I fainted.
"So, you finally found out what's going on, didn't you?" Sephiroth asked as I once again came to the semi-consciousness crying.
"I wish I would have know from the beginning, I wish there weren't these stupid rules so you could've just told me," I said through sobs. I felt him nod against my head as he hugged me to him. "I thought that they simply wanted to take me in...I didn't care why... I was so afraid..." I told him. He shushed me abruptly.
"Now, you know the plan. Do you think you can't thwart it?" Sephiroth lifted my eyes to him as he asked that. "Hmm?"
"How? Everyone but Vincent is in Midgar and they have no idea...And Vincent doesn't know where I am unless..." That was when I realized that the three men had made a mistake that could cost them their hold over me. Shera. "Shera!" I exclaimed, feeling as happy as a child who had gotten a wanted birthday present.
"Yes... what about Shera?" Sephiroth prompted.
"She knows where we are! Maybe she told Vincent?" A tree of hope sprouted in my heart.
"Maybe..." he said as he brushed tears from my cheek with a thumb. The world of black faded away again.
I woke yet again in a room not my own, but the same room I had woken in earlier. Frankly I was very annoyed that they had moved me at all now that I knew the thinking behind my being there then. I wished they had never touched me, no, spoken to me and Cloud in the store. I hated them now, yet I couldn't find the heart to just leave them. There's something wrong with me. I thought as I got under the bed clothes and got comfortable. The soft noises must have alerted Kadaj, who was in the hall. A knock came to my door. Great, just what I need right now. Can't they see I'm not happy? A fainting reaction to something usually isn't a good thing ya know, is what I thought. "Come in..." is what I said.
"Harper," Kadaj tested as he opened the door.
I sniffed and turned on my side, my back facing him. "What?" I pulled the covers over my exposed shoulder.
"You see why we couldn't tell you anything?" he asked. He sat by my back, depressing the mattress enough so that I tilted toward him.
"Yes."
"And you're against us?"
"What woman wouldn't be?"
He gave me a light smile and laid a hand on my shoulder. I brushed him off before I made up my mind to just bite his hand.
Would serve him right. "What makes you think I'll go along with it all now that I've so clearly showed where my sentiments lie?"
"Nothing."
My brows furrowed intensely in confusion. I had no idea what he was thinking then, and I'm sure I don't want to know. "And what if Vincent comes for me!" I demanded, sitting up and staring him in the eye.
He laughed curtly and looked away from me to the door. "We'll kill him."
Enraged I bolted from the bed and once again stood firmly in front of Kadaj. "What makes you think you'd be able to?"
"The fact that it would be three against one."
"Two," I corrected. "Three against two. I'm on his side in a fight now."
"No," he objected. "Three to one. You would not be involved. You'd be lucky to be awake if he would come for you." He stood, matching my height. "We are going to town. I've been informed that the things we had bought for you were intensely too large and from Yazoo's observations, not your taste in clothing at all. We're going shopping," he tried to inform me while he reached out and got hold of my arm, or tried to anyway.
I struck out at his ungloved hand as fast as a cat, leaving defined scratches down his entire fore-arm. As he retracted his arm in surprise I shot through the door, barely snatching Silence and the other gun from the dresser top on the way. I shouted over my shoulder to Kadaj, "You and Loz take a look at my clothes and go shopping by your selves!" Down the hall I grabbed a chair and started hauling it with me to the bathroom. There I locked the door and stuck the chair under its knob so no body could get in. There I sat for a long time, until Kadaj rapped on the door to tell me that he and Loz were going to do just what I had suggested. After waiting an hour more, I left the bathroom and went to the surface.
The house Cloud said they had used when they came was still there, but in worse condition than when he was there I suspect. It was just a shell of a house then. When I entered, my hair snagged on an edge in the shell, pulling painfully. I untangled it absently and went in.
As I lay on the makeshift bed on the top floor I cried myself to sleep at the fact of having been betrayed. As I slept, a feeling of acute hatred crept into my heart for the three silver haired men. Still, I couldn't let go of the feeling I had about Vincent. I was still sure that he hated me.
I woke around sundown with a start as I, through my sleep, thought I heard a motor stutter out just outside the house. Quick as a flash I was out the window, hanging onto cracks in the wall so I could still see inside and who was there. I ducked my head down as Vincent strode in, gun in hand, doing a sweep of the area. When he thought it was secure enough he holstered his gun and dropped a pack at his feet and left it there as he proceeded up the stairs. That was my cue. I dropped from the wall to the ground as silently as I was able to. It was silent enough I realized when an audible sigh came from the window along with the sound of a body flopping down onto the worn mattress. Like him to disturb my peace. Turning, I sprinted back to the Capitol.
(Vincent)
Waking, I remembered the feeling I'd had as I walked into the house. It was a feeling of profound sadness. A sadness not only of heart, but also of soul and pride. I knew someone had been there not long ago and as I went back downstairs the thought that we would have made good friends, this mystery person and I, crossed my still waking mind. Then, Shera told me that the four should be here, couldn't it have been Harper?
It was hard to think that she was mad at me. It was hard too to think of why. All because of a misunderstanding. This was their end destination, or so I was told. I would find her here, and clear everything up. There would be no replay of broken hearts this time around. If so, Then I'm done with this heart business.
Exiting the shell of a house something silver caught my attention. To my left, on broken corner of shell, hung a strand of silver hair the length of Harper's. So, that's who was here.
(Harper)
It was later than I had known when I got back to my room in the below surface city called the Forgotten Capitol. The clocks said it was almost morning and yet, it was still pretty sunny outside. Backwards days? Or maybe the clocks were wrong. It didn't matter much either way to me. Sleep was sleep, no matter when one slept, and awake was awake, no matter when one was awake. Vincent was living proof of that type of thinking.
Even though I had slept through much of the day, when I saw the bed in my room I was suddenly very tired again. Unable to sleep as I tossed around restlessly I was unable to think of anything but Midgar. All the people I'd left behind, what were they doing at that moment? Was the shop getting good business; did Cloud send Vincent on this insane mission? Was the weather good? Had grass somehow started growing? Was everyone well? Briefly I wondered if Red X111 had gone back to Cosmo Canyon, if he had asked people about me. Lastly I wondered how long it would take for Vincent to find the place we were at, and when he did, when would he make his attempt at whatever he was doing?
Not long. Soon after I had finally fallen asleep, Yazoo came tearing noisily down the hall and burst through my doorway. "Harper, Valentine's here. Top level. Wants you."
Yazoo, I realized, was the one of the three I disliked the least. "What? Already?"
"You knew he was here?" I nodded at that. He sighed and shook his head. "Why don't you come up and help me talk to him?" he held the door open and tossed me extra clips for Silence, which was still belted to my side.
"...OK..." I caught the magazines in the air and stood and followed him.
As he said, Vincent was at the surface standing in a cul-de-sac like area, his gun holstered but his hand at the ready should trouble arise. When Yazoo and I came into view he looked at me with an ice-like stare. He seemed to have fortified himself for whatever it was that was the reason he was there. "And here we are, the three of us..." he said, then stopped and reconsidered. "Do I even exist to you any more, Harper? You still do to me."
The emotion in his voice caught me off-guard. I walked briskly to face him at a large distance, and Yazoo went off to my right, making a triangle. "But it's not that simple!" I objected, no knowing what he was talking about. "Why are you here? You have your gun; do you mean to kill me for who I am?"
"No," he blurted out as he took a few steps in my direction before he noticed the gun leveled at him by Yazoo. He stopped and looked at him, then at me. "I am capable of a great number of things but killing you... that I could never do."
"You've already accomplished hurting her at least!" Yazoo spat.
A look of surprise came into Vincent's face, all emotions now laid bare. "What?"
"Why do you think she agreed to come here? Because she wanted to do something for herself? No. She was broken—by you!" Yazoo had transformed into the least disliked , to the most in that instant as he went on pelting Vincent with truths Vincent was oblivious to. Pain swelled in Vincent as he went on, "She was rent in two at your rejecting her for something she had no control over. She only had Strife, and he alone would never work with all the others around. You abandoned her," he finally accused. That...that was false.
I began to see through Vincent's eyes as he countered Yazoo with truths of his own. "I never, rejected you. I didn't know how to help you, and I was caught in a rage that some poor girl may have fallen prey to..." he blinked and somehow visibly cleared his mind. "I love you more for being nothing like you father, I never meant to hurt you...I—"
"Vincent," I said as I stood, realizing I had sat down sometime. He looked at me with infinite sadness, a sadness that had been there one night in the shop. The first night I had ever seen him when I moved in. I leveled the second gun, now named Final Judgment, on Vincent and barred all emotion. Yazoo, believing that Valentine was finished, began lowering his weapon, and as he did so I changed aim and shot his gun from his hand, burning straight through the barrel.
Letting forth all the emotion I had penned up in that moment I ran to Vincent and collapsed into him, both hands on his chest. He hesitated only a moment before enveloping me in a tight comforting, and most of all, accepting embrace. I sobbed a little and tried to say something related to an apology, but he held me tighter still. The tension in his shoulders and the weakness in his legs told me he was crying, but then it didn't matter, because I was too.
I think we could have stayed that way forever once we both ran out of tears, but slowly he pushed against my shoulders and looked down at me. His face was the mask it always was, but there was a new light in his deep red eyes.
There was a flurry of movement to my right as Yazoo exited around a corner, leaving Vincent and me bathing in the light that was glowing from no visible origin. Yazoo's gun was still lying where it had landed, now of no use until he fixed it.
I could help thinking about what a strange place the Forgotten Capitol was, and I could not for the life of me remember exactly why I was here. I was only sure of what Vincent was asking. "Come back to Midgar with me; come back home?"
I looked back to him ands started nodding, "Yeah, I'm going home now."
"I'll let you get your stuff. I'll be by the lake in case the other two come back," he said, looking up the stairs that lead to the uppermost level of the Capitol.
"I won't be long," I turned and started toward my room.
"Harper..."
I spun to face him, "hmm?"
He didn't answer, but smiled and turned up the stairs. I only laughed a little and continued down the walk. As far as I was then concerned, the Forgotten City could burn as long as Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo were there. As I packed my things, I kept only the clothes I had brought from Midgar and the new replica of my father's coat. Ascending the stairs, I felt all connection with this place (except for the special place I had for the never-met Aeris, of course) slip away. The only thing going through my head then was the question, how would Cloud react when Vincent told him where we were. The stairs seemed than usual, but that was probably because I was eager to leave the Capitol and all I had thought it meant to me.
Vincent was where he said he'd be, leaning against the wall and cleaning his gun, one I didn't recognize. "New gun?" I asked, inspecting the tri-barreled gun from the stair-top.
He looked up quickly, surprised to see me done so soon I suppose the nodded. "Cerberus. You're got new ones too..." he trailed off.
"Yeah," I walked closer to him and pulled out gun in turn. "Silence," I handed her to him then went on. "I named her that because I killed a dragon with her in Cosmo Canyon. This is Final Judgment, named for—"
"Your last measure of character?" Vincent guessed.
"Right," I smiled up at him then holstered Judgment. Re-arranging my backpack on my shoulders I said, "I thought about leaving them here you know, because they gave them to me. I'm just too attached to do that!" Already, not ten minutes out of the silver haired men's presences, I was getting back to my old self. And it felt good.
"Hmm." Deftly he undid a loose buckle on his cape and re-fastened it. "Have you decided to keep anything else?"
We started walking out and I shoved a hand into my pocket. "Actually... I did," I told him and dangled a key in my hand.
"What are those for?"
I looked over at him and gave an evil sounding laugh before more heartfelt laughter bubbled up from nowhere suddenly.
We ended up just outside Icicle and right next to the towering contraption called the Highwind. Vincent and I, Vincent in his usual red cloak and I in the replica, stood watching as a few of the crew members rolled my motorcycle into the cargo hold of the airship. Nothing was said to prove it, but it was a happy time. Even as we just stood there, we were happy. I let go consciously of the feelings of hate for Vincent, now that I knew what had happened and Vincent I suppose was hoping there wasn't another "Hojo" in the world still.
Later on, as we stood at the railing in front of the huge window in the cockpit area and watched the grown whoosh by beneath us, something Vincent said came to mind. 'I was caught in a rage over the fact that some poor girl may have fallen prey... "Vincent?"
"Hmm?" It seemed I had startled him from some deep string of thought.
"Were you with Cloud when he was lost in the glacier fields?"
"Yes."
"And with him when he found the hot spring and the lady in the cave?"
"Yes, what about it?"
I laughed softly to myself and at the irony of something I couldn't put my finger on. "You know what you said about 'some poor girl'?"
"I remember," he nodded and met me at the railing.
"Well," I dragged up the fuzzy memory of Sephiroth telling me who my mother was. "It wasn't like that. You see, if you were with Cloud in the cave, fighting Snow, then you've actually met my mom." I smiled out at the sky. Fuzzier memories surfaced. Images of a fire-lit home in the dead of winter danced around in the clouds. When I tried to bring together fragments of people and furniture, everything wavered and disappeared, leaving a sense of emptiness.
"Oh? Snow was your mother?"
"'Is. She's still alive'," I quoted. "Or so Sephiroth said."
"Sephiroth?" Vincent was astounded as I told him of the world between worlds, of how Sephiroth looked more human there than in the ways Cloud had painted him with words. I told him that it could be the absence of Jenova, and I told him his attitude. How different it was than I thought! I even told him about the stupid rules Sephiroth had to follow. "Well," he said when I was through. "If he really is like that..." I never found out what the rest of that was.
It was late, or was it early, when the ship touched down in the front yard of the shop/house. Cid was the first one to come out. He looked as if he was about to kill Vincent. In fact the first thing out of Cid's mouth was, "WHERE THE ----- IS HE?" Cid hadn't seen me because I was walking down the ramp behind Vincent, but the people in the window did. Marlene and Yuffie came out in a rush and ran into me so hard with hugs that I was knocked to the ground. Barret, Tifa, and Cloud were the next ones out. They asked what was going on with the two youngest girls, but the girls didn't hear them. Red was last, and he was the one to pull the two off me. Cid then saw what was going on behind Vincent and ran to me to give me a hand up. I took his hand thankfully and was surprised when I was pulled off my feet into another hug. Next thing I knew, I was in the air and landing in Barret's arms for yet another hug. Barret set me on my feet and gave me a push in Cloud's direction. Cloud caught me by my shoulders and smiled as he gave me the first gentle hug of the night before he passed me on to Tifa for another one. Red snaked his tail around my ankle and rubbed his head in the palm of my hand. I went to my knees and squeezed him around his shoulders and chest. I had thought there would be a welcoming committee, but not one this size.
As I stood and got my breath back, I was faintly aware of a bike motor in the near distance but was unable to pay more attention to it as I was bombarded with questions. Where were you? Why did you really leave? You're not sick anymore... and much, much more came at me from everyone but Cloud and Vincent. They were a few feet away, simply watching and having their own conversation. Most likely some kind of "I told you so" thing... I was able to think between answering questions.
It turned out that Cid decided he wasn't going to be mad at Vincent for taking his "baby" since Vincent brought me back. If he hadn't... "there wouldn't be enough left of him to keep looking for you."
My sense of time, I found out, was all messed up. It was three in the afternoon when the ship touched down in Midgar, not late at night at all. My room was untouched except for a calendar. Everyday was slashed through for a three months. Had it really been that long? I touched the paper and tried to recall what was done on each day. Here was Cosmo Canyon, and if I went back a bit...there was the Nible Mountains. Rocket Town... and so on. It was late then, and I thought it would be so nice to sleep in my own bed. So, I did.
(Cloud)
Weeks had passed since the two and the ship had returned. Everything was almost back to normal. Harper must have told her story to Marlene one million times, and I must have asked Vincent how he had done it two million times. We all knew Harper to be stubborn, playful as she was most of the time. Having her back made me wish harder for Aeris, even though I knew getting her back was nothing like what Vincent had done. But Harper and Aeris...they were so alike to me.
It was a Wednesday a month and a half after they had returned that anything of note happened. It was late at night (or early in the morning, see it as you will) and Vincent and I were the only ones awake. Harper had gone to her room only a few minutes before. A thud came from the hall, and a clatter of rushing feet. Vincent was down the hall already with his gun in hand and I was not far behind him. But when I did get there, white smoke was clearing and Vincent was holding a note, looking like he'd just been in and out of his deep sleep again. Tifa and Barret joined us in grumpy moods. Even Nanaki appeared in the hallway. "Vincent?" I tested.
He jumped a little bit at my voice, then settled back into himself as he turned around and faced everyone. " 'We have come to dispose of our Sister...' ," he read. His eyes flew open in sudden, even if delayed understanding. "Kadaj." Then...he simply disappeared, and the rest of us stood dumbfounded, the note fluttered to the floor and landed silently where Vincent had stood only a moment ago.
Note: Well. That's the end of The Continuation guys. Thanks everybody for reading. And there will be a sequel. As always, even though this is the last chapter... review please! And, even better, if you haven't reviewed on any other part of the story, this would be the perfect time to critique the entire thing. Don't you think?