I was so tired I couldn't sleep. Ever had that happen? All I'd wanted was to collapse and sleep like the dead, but I'd kept putting it off because I always had just one more thing to do. Now I couldn't sleep. Vincent had been unconscious or close to it for almost four days.

Cloud was slumped over next to Vincent, asleep from exhaustion. Vinnie was still delirious; every time Stop wore off Cloud had had to pin him while I recast it. We'd managed to get him into dry clothes and had been keeping the fire stoked as well as we could, but nothing seemed to help.

I caught myself staring blankly at the fire-shadows on he cave wall. Reno hadn't returned. I wondered if he'd run in fear or for some other reason. I was worried about Vinnie.

Bolt2

He wasn't going to die, obviously. But going mad was another matter entirely.

I suppose I'd always thought if any of us went nuts, it would be Cloud first. It wouldn't be the first time.

I wiped my hand across my eyes. It wasn't fair, I thought bitterly, sounding like the bratty child I had been years ago. It felt like centuries ago. For the first time, it struck me that someday it would be 'centuries ago', and yet I'd look like that child still if Vincent's aging was anything to go by. But it wasn't fair, dammit. He'd been healing. So many years later and he'd been healing, he'd been letting us, me and Cloud and Red and even Reno, he'd let us get close to, accepted finally that we did want his companionship, we did want to be friends. That he wasn't a monster, not to us, not ever.

I rummaged around in our packs, grabbed a Turbo Ether, swallowed it. It occurred to me that we didn't have many of them left. It had been a long time since we'd gone out just to train. Against monsters, I mean.

I heard a noise, I was never sure exactly what it was I thought I'd heard, and I looked up thinking it was Cloud. My comment to him died on my lips.

Lucrecia was sitting next to Vincent.

I have absolutely no idea how long I stared at her, sitting next to him looking every bit as real as if she was alive still, her hand running gently through his air. Finally, when I drew in a sharp breath and was about to speak, she looked at me and smiled sadly. And vanished.

"Yuffie...take care of him."

I continued staring blankly for a few minutes. Blinked a couple of times.

...Well, that's two dead people who have told me to stick with these two.

"Yuffie?'

I toppled backwards. "Gah! Dammit Reno!"

Reno smirked at me, but the usual arrogance wasn't behind it. He handed me something. I stared at the orb.

"Underwater materia."

"...Ah."

"Though you might want it."

"...Thanks." Tifa had had it, originally. I'd had no idea what happened to her materia after her death. I'd have to ask Reno sometime where he'd gotten it.

I picked up Vincent's Death Penalty and searched for a materia I could swap out. I swapped Underwater for Manipulate, since I kind of doubted Vincent was using it too often.

Reno sat down next to me. "How long has Cloud been asleep?"

I sighed and leaned against him. The fact that he didn't shove me off let me know that he was worried, too. "A couple of hours. The spell's been holding a surprisingly long time."

"What do we do?"

"I don't know," I replied, staring at Vincent. I was doing a lot of staring tonight.

His eyes had closed at some point, thankfully, but he was unnaturally still from the Stop spells. Vincent doesn't exactly fidget, but he's never perfectly rigid. I let my eyes fall half shut and laid my hand gently on Vincent's forehead, where Lucrecia's hand had rested only minutes before.

Light sparked from my hand.

"Wha!" I pulled back, frowned, and leaned forward again. Light sparked again, familiar green light.

"What materia are you trying?" Reno asked wearily. Wordlessly I pointed behind him, where I had set my weapons and armor on the floor after swapping Vincent's materia. He blinked, then leaned forward intently. "You're...doing that without materia?"

I made my hand spark again. "Yeah!"

Reno went still. "So that's...That means that's real magic."

"I guess..." I leaned over and shook Cloud. "Hey! Wake up!

He came awake in an instant the way all warriors learn to do. "What?"

"Look!" I made the light jump from my hand to Vincent. It lit his still face in an eerie green glow for an instant, then faded. "I think you should be able to do it, too, Cloud. I think it's cuz of the Lifestream."

"It's the mako," Reno said quietly. Cloud and I both turned to stare at him. He shrugged uncomfortably. "After Wutai... I looked for your guys' files. Yuf, you don't have one, but I read Cloud and Vincent's."

I felt slightly violated, like I'd caught Reno reading my diary. From the look on Cloud's face, he felt the same way.

"Look, guys, I'm sorry, but that isn't important right now. What's important is that you can do magic without materia- you can even tweak the spells. Use Esuna, concentrate on the results you want! If it works..." Reno calmed down, trailed off. He turned to Vincent and just looked at him silently for a minute. I could see his eyes tracing over the scars that lined Vincent's chest. Some of them were from the battle for the Planet, one notable one was from training when Cloud and I had missed a parry, but the rest...Well, the rest of them were from Hojo.

And there were a lot of them.

"If it works, it's worth it," Cloud finished for him. He knelt on Vincent's other side, taking his human arm while I grabbed his claw. His eyes met mine. "Ready?"

I nodded. "Much as I'm gonna be."

We both sent a flow into Vincent at the same time, and my light met Cloud's light. They fused, spread, sank into Vincent. Cloud and I fell backwards, suddenly wiped of energy. I still held Vincent's claw, but I nearly dropped it when he moved.

"What...?"

That was all he got out before being hugged and babbled at in relief. I'd have been embarrassed if Cloud hadn't been babbling too. I could even hear Reno's relieved laughter from somewhere behind me before he dropped to his knees beside me, smiling at Vinnie. Then he took my hand with wonder, gazing at it.

"Hojo was wrong," he murmured. "It wasn't the Jenova cells...it's the mako..."

Reno looked up at me with a grin, and my world came screeching to a halt.

His eyes were glowing.