Shelke waited until she had gone down the hall, around the corner, past the control center, into the women's bathroom, and far out of earshot before she dropped her mask of calm. It took a lot of willpower to do so, but somehow she managed to do it.

When she got to the bathroom, Shelke locked herself into one of the stalls and then allowed herself to make the decision.

Do I squeal with delight or do I scream at myself for acting on a silly impulse?

Eventually, both urges passed and Shelke ended up doing neither.

She did allow herself a smile, though.

Over the course of the rest of the week, Shelke managed to significantly confuse the vast majority of the control room technicians. It wasn't that she wore the slightest of smiles. She'd done that before on occasion, like when a team she was running support for accomplished a particularly dangerous mission, or when she came across a particularly interesting piece of information. It was that she wore it almost ALL of the time. Some reached the conclusion that the young soldier had finally snapped and gone insane. Others decided that she had a sickness of the body, not the mind, and suggested that Commissioner Tuesti give her some sick leave so she could recover. Two or three didn't notice. One of the older veteran technicians, who'd actually been around during the whole Deepground Conflict, including both invasions of the WRO Headquarters, even asked the Commissioner to check the girl's daily mako rations for impurities.

Reeve, however, would just smile at the helpful suggestions of his subordinates and tell them nothing was wrong before sending them back to their duties. Reeve noticed, and knew exactly what the cause of the unusual behavior was. Vincent…you actually pulled it off, didn't you?

Sleeping in a coffin for 30 years taught Vincent a lot of things. One of them was how horribly uncomfortable sleeping in the same position for a long time is. Another was how horribly uncomfortable sleeping in a coffin is. Another was the fact that recurring nightmares really sucked. Most of all though, sleeping in a coffin for 30 years taught Vincent patience. Vincent learned how to wait. And wait. And wait. And wait.

So why was it so hard to sit still on one of the benches in the HQ lobby and just wait for Shelke to show up? He'd managed to lie in a 6' x 3' wooden box doing absolutely nothing except stare at the lid and feel sorry for himself for years on end, and yet he couldn't sit still on a bench and stare at the walls or potted plants for five minutes? Vincent thought it was almost as amusing as it was frustrating.

Perhaps the reason he was fretting so much was out of habit? After all, Vincent hadn't done much BUT fret and anticipate for the past four days. Vincent really didn't have much to do in between the missions that Reeve would give him. File reports on missions, but once that was done (they usually didn't take more than an hour or two), Vincent didn't have a whole lot to do. So he'd fretted about this. Fretted about that. He'd fretted pretty much non-stop in the past week. He wondered if being this excited about something was healthy for him. Vincent sighed and gave in to the urge to check himself over once again.

Let's see…he'd taken a shower…combed his hair…brushed his teeth…cleaned and ironed all his clothes…polished his claw…Vincent was pretty sure that was everything he could do about his appearance. He'd even forgone his trademark crimson cloak, black pants, and shirt in favor of a tuxedo he'd bought for this particular occasion (it wasn't like he was using all that gil Reeve paid him for anything anyways). His one concession to comfort (as opposed to appearance) was the gunbelt and triple-barreled handgun that hung at his right hip. Cerberus never left his side. The one time he'd gone someplace without carrying his gun in the past, he'd ended up getting a bullet forcefully placed into his body, later followed by the DNA of several monsters and a being known as Chaos. Granted, the end result of all that chain of events had led him here (and taught him patience), but he'd rather not go through the experience again (the patience wasn't helping him much right now anyway).

Right. The gun. Vincent pulled a small handkerchief (The man at the clothing store had insisted he buy one along with the tuxedo for reasons Vincent STILL didn't understand…nor did he care to) out of his pocket and began polishing Cerberus. And polishing. And polishing.

Vincent had polished and cleaned all three barrels of the handgun twice by the time Shelke showed up.

Originally, Shelke had planned on just showing up for the date in her Deepground uniform. It was, after all, what she usually wore most places, even after she'd joined the WRO. In fact, until a week after the Deepground Conflict ended, her entire wardrobe had pretty much consisted of several copies of her uniform. This wasn't surprising--it's not like there were a whole lot of clothing stores buried deep below Midgar. Shelke also really didn't see the need to wear anything else. The uniform she was wearing was comfortable, clean, and functional. It was designed to keep her warm in all but the coldest of environments, while not overheating her in warm ones. Indeed, most of the WRO had gotten used to seeing her in it. She really hadn't seen any reason to wear anything else. However, not long after she'd made the decision to wear her uniform, just as she was leaving the control room to join Vincent in the lobby, another one of those annoying nagging feelings hit her. Those annoying little urges that seemed to just pop out the top of her head, almost as if they were her own thoughts. They weren't of course, but even knowing that, it was awfully hard to ignore them. They felt like they were her own thoughts. Besides, Shelke had found that ignoring said urges usually ended up being more trouble than it was worth. They usually were frivolous and slightly inefficient, but were very rarely actually counter to Shelke's own purposes. Ignoring them would result in her feeling miserable and awkward for some time afterward, sometimes to the point of distraction, resulting in a net loss of efficiency that was actually greater than that which would be caused by simply giving in to the impulse. Thus, when Professor Crescent's voice appeared in the back of her head telling her that she should dress up a bit for her date with Vincent, she only resisted the urge for about ten seconds before giving in. Vincent could wait. He HAD spent thirty years in a coffin. That had to teach someone patience. Right?

Shelke's quarters were actually a modified part of the sick bay. It had once been a private examination room, for when patients needed, well, privacy for some reason. However, in a paramilitary organization like the WRO, those situations came up so rarely anyway, that Reeve decided that there was absolutely no reason that both of the said private examination rooms would be needed anyway.

The main reason why Shelke had needed to be assigned a room in the sick bay was simple. Despite no longer being a member of Deepground, she was still the product of their research, and still required a daily dose of mako in order to live. The last time she'd been deprived of mako, she'd not only lost her superhuman speed and reflexes, but she'd also collapsed in the middle of the Deepground HQ. If Vincent hadn't been right by her side when it happened (and also, thankfully, near one of the Deepground medical facilities, which were equipped with mako tanks for that specific reason), she would most likely have perished there. Mako deprivation was much like starving…or perhaps more like suffocation. It was slow, painful, and ultimately a rather pathetic death. Despite having been trained to fight to the death, and to not fear the cessation of one's own life, Shelke still really didn't want to die. And unless she was critically incorrect in her assessment of her new friends' (well, she secretly hoped they were her friends) motives, they didn't want her to die either. And so, Reeve had had one of the sick bay healing tanks, normally filled with a greenish chemical bath charged with Cure magic designed to heal a person immersed in it without drowning them (the exact process had something to do with dissolved oxygen, but Shelke had never really had any interest in learning the exact process anyway), modified to hold quantities of mako instead and moved into private examination room 1, now Shelke's quarters. Where Reeve got the mako for the tank was anyone's guess, perhaps the remnant of the Shin-ra corporation still had a reactor active somewhere? Shelke had never come across records of mako shipments in her work, so she didn't know. It really didn't matter to the girl. As long as she was able to immerse herself in the fluid for an hour each day, she was content.

The tank itself dominated most of the small room. Shelke didn't mind. She didn't need much space. Her other furnishings and possessions consisted of a the examination table turned bed (an examination table with a mattress stacked on top of it), the swiveling stool that came with the room, a computer terminal (which Shelke was currently in the process of rigging a SND helmet attachment to), a trash can, a corner table, and a small wardrobe. It was with the latter that Shelke was concerned with now. She opened the wardrobe's doors and peered inside.

As expected, most of the wardrobe's contents were indeed, Deepground uniforms. There was also a simple pink blouse and a black skirt hanging beside them, but before Shelke even began reaching for them, the voice in her head told her they were far too plain. They were, it reasoned, the closest thing to casual wear she had. She wasn't looking for casual wear. And so, Shelke continued to rummage through her pitifully small collection of clothing, hoping that the bit of Professor Crescent she had absorbed would quickly make a decision and deem one of her outfits worthy of being worn (this, coincidentally, was about the time that Vincent began to clean his gun the first time in order to distract himself).

Eventually, the woman in her head did make a decision, and Shelke, realizing that she was already 18 minutes 34 seconds late, began dressing.

When Shelke finally showed up, Vincent stood up to greet her. He then almost immediately fell back into his seat out of surprise (he caught himself, of course, but he almost did). He had honestly expected the girl to show up in her usual blue and gray Deepground bodysuit. Instead, however, she walked into the lobby wearing a cute sleeveless pink dress that went down just below her knees (almost incongruous seeing the actually 19-year old Shelke, who only looked 10, wearing clothes that were designed for people that were actually 10-years-old). She wore a pair of white dress shoes and socks that wouldn't have looked out of place on a little girl going to church on Sunday, and around her neck was a simple silver necklace (Vincent wasn't sure if it was real or not, nor did he really care). Even with her pair of EM sabers STILL strapped to her waist (they even had a little white bow tied to them), even Vincent had to admit: Shelke looked very cute.

Vincent wasn't even aware that Shelke OWNED this outfit.

There was a long silence while the couple looked each other up and down, each examining the other's outfit. Shelke broke the silence first.

"Vincent Valentine. I realize I was 27 minutes, 38 seconds late. I apologize."

"Understandable."

There wasn't anything else to say, and after a few seconds more of the two staring awkwardly at each other (both pairs of eyes immediately gravitating to the other's hips where a weapon hung), Vincent took a step towards the door and offered Shelke his hand.

Luckily enough for the couple, it turned out (as Shelke discovered from her research over the week into methods of transportation) that every Friday, the Shera would be sent over from WRO HQ to Corel, where Barret hailed from, to pick up a shipment of coal and oil from the one-armed man, trading some of the various foodstuffs in the WRO's possession for the mining town's fossil fuels. Corel also happened to have a gondola train that ran to the nearby city of Golden Saucer. While the official reason for sending the Shera, Cid's personal vessel and the unofficial flagship of the WRO's airship fleet, to Corel was that the Shera had originally been designed with the heroes of the Jenova War, who numbered, in total, nine (even including the late Aeris), and thus had more space devoted to cargo bays and weapons than to passenger space. However, Shelke suspected that the real reason was that Cid really just wanted an excuse to go shoot the breeze and buy drinks with Barret. Either way, it was convenient for the couple, who didn't find it hard at all to convince Cid to let the two of them hitch a ride to Corel and then back the next morning.

Thus, Shelke and Vincent found themselves sitting in the familiar greenish glow of the Shera's sick bay. Shelke had forever staked a claim to the back right corner of that room as "her spot" on the airship when she'd outfitted it with a SND chair and helmet, and no one bothered to dispute that. It was there that she was sitting now. Vincent wasn't so much sitting as leaning on the room's back wall, leaving the chair in front of the clinic's computer terminal vacant in the case that Shelke decided to use it to occupy herself later in the trip. Even with the Shera's state of the art engines, it was still a three-hour flight to Corel from the WRO HQ. Now that he was with Shelke, Vincent's patience kicked back in and he felt that three hours would be nothing. However, he had no real idea how easily bored the ex-Tsviet was, and he didn't want to inconvenience her by depriving her of a possible method of alleviating boredom. However, Shelke simply lay back in the chair, eyes open, leaving both the computer and the SND helmet alone, pointedly avoiding looking at the healing tank in the corner. Vincent couldn't blame her. He still had a hard time looking at the tank where Shelke's late sister Shalua had once lay, completely comatose after her fateful encounter with the Tsviet strongman Azul the Cerulean. The airship took off, creating a soft humming noise that reverberated throughout the ship's interior, and with that white noise in the background, and in the company of the girl he was realizing more and more that he loved, Vincent began to doze.

Shelke managed to sit entirely still for the first hour, carefully processing all the information that had passed through her head that day, something she made a habit of doing after her work each day. However, after that, she soon became bored. To be honest, she felt really awkward wearing a dress which Tifa had insisted would look good on her, and the feeling of wearing a wide skirt was foreign to her. Compounding that, Shelke was starting to experience that peculiar fluttering sensation in her gut that usually manifested when she was around Vincent, accompanied this time by a newer, giddy feeling in her head. She finally had to admit to herself, she was quite honestly already enjoying simply being around Vincent. She also had to admit that despite that, she was really bored. Shelke by this point, had had a credo of maximum efficiency burned into her brain, and lying in a chair, doing nothing, yet not sleeping, rubbed her the wrong way. She had to do something, and the computer terminal across from her really lacked any real interest for her at the moment. So, finally relaxing and allowing herself to act on the emotions she normally suppressed, she allowed her attention to shift to where it wanted to go. Vincent Valentine…she had to agree with Professor Crescent's assessment: he looked really handsome when he was asleep. It seemed to be one of the few times that the troubled soul looked at peace. Perhaps beneath his eyelids, the gunman was engulfed in a nightmare, but on the surface at least, he was at peace. Several of the older woman's memories of Vincent began bubbling to the surface and Shelke began observing them as the Professor's personality data relived them. Immersed in thoughts of the object of her infatuation, Shelke began to think. By the time she caught herself indulging in daydreams, she was enjoying herself enough that she didn't care enough to stop herself.

Vincent woke up just as the airship landed (it was a skill that Turks learned, waking on cue, it helped in rapid deployment), feeling completely rested and actually rather full of energy. He also woke up to find Shelke staring intently at him.

Shelke also roused herself as the airship began landing, reluctantly dragging her mind away from some pleasant (and totally unrealistic, she told herself) daydream about Vincent and a hot air balloon. She also returned to reality to find Vincent staring back at her.

The distant look in Shelke's ice blue eyes faded, and the pair made eye contact. This lasted for a few seconds before they both looked away, embarrassed. If Vincent hadn't been trying very hard to look at and think about the floor tiling, he would have been the very first person to ever catch Shelke blushing. As things ended up, though, she had calmed herself and returned to her normal color by the time Vincent looked back and offered her his hand again.

"Come on. We need to get going or we'll miss the play."

Barret, who had come to the Corel's landing field to meet Cid, watched as a parade of several different sizes and colors of crates came down the Shera's unloading ramp. Then he saw something else (or rather, two something elses) go down the ramp and then pass him by.

"Yo, Cid!"

"Yeah?"

"Isn't that Vincent and that Deepground broad, uh…Shelley or something like that?"

"Yup."

"What are they doing here?"

"They hitched a ride to go see that play 'Loveless'. And it's Shelke, not Shelley."

"…Are they an item now or something?"

"Apparently. Weird ain't it? Guess odd folks like them stick together, huh?"

"I guess so…Heh. Gonna be the world's quietest date with them two."

"Yup."

"Wanna go grab a drink and some cigarettes while we wait for the crates to unload?"

"You know I do!"

Vincent made a mental note to himself to thank Yuffie the next time he saw her. Not only had she given him tickets to a play which was frequently booked out in the world famous Event Square Theatre, but she'd also given him pretty good seats too. They were neither too close, nor too far from the front, gave a good view of the entire stage, and were in a section of the theatre that was rather clean compared to the rest of the area. He and Shelke looked at each other, nodded to each other and sat down. Vincent got a good feeling as he settled into the chair. He got the feeling this would be a good night.

Shelke was also having a good time, at least until right before the play started. Then a couple of people who looked like rich upper-class citizens of some city state showed up and took their seats. "Loveless", being the popular play it was, was often sold out or booked with many many viewers, and as such, it sometimes became difficult to get the seats you wanted. For example, this husband and wife pair had failed to get adjacent seats, and they were very obviously unhappy about it. They made quite a fuss, grumbling and complaining as they walked down the aisle. One, the wife, was a rather large…okay, obese woman, and she had been assigned to the seat two spaces to the right of Vincent. In other words, three spaces to the right of Shelke. Having decided to allow herself to drop her reserve for the duration of the date (that's what it was, and Shelke had decided there was no reason to deceive herself by thinking of it as anything but a date) and enjoy herself, Shelke had purchased a large cup of popcorn for herself (well, Vincent too, if he wanted any), placed it on her lap, and was contentedly munching on the snack while waiting for the play to begin when the woman arrived and took her seat. Of course, in order to do so, she had to get past Shelke and Vincent. Apparently, the soldier and gunman were too far beneath the aristocrat to be deigned to speak to, for the woman unceremoniously began squeezing past Shelke.

For all of Shelke's situational awareness and unnaturally good reflexes, she was still caught by surprise by the large woman's sudden intrusion into her space without so much as an "excuse me." Even in the harsh world of the Deepground soldier, that much courtesy was common. The end result was, of course, 30 gil worth of popcorn covering Shelke's previously clean and for all intents and purposes, brand new dress. The woman did not seem to notice at all. Of course, this was but a minor annoyance, so when Vincent stood up to address the woman, Shelke quickly pulled him aside and told him,

"This woman will not listen to what you have to say. I do not wish for you to start a fight on my account. I will go and clean my clothing now."

Vincent seemed to think for a moment, then sat down.

When Shelke returned from the restroom, the front of her dress now wet but more or less free of popcorn oil, she found that the woman's husband, a tall, lanky man, had been assigned the seat directly in front of her. He had taken his seat while she was in the bathroom. He appeared to be reading the program for the play. Shelke filed this information in the back of her head in case of the remote possibility that it would become useful at some point, and then sat down and resumed waiting for the play to start, minus the popcorn.

Having lost her previous activity (eating the popcorn), Shelke occupied herself for the remaining two minutes before the curtain rose by reading the play's program over Vincent's shoulder (apparently he had obtained one from somewhere while she was in the bathroom). Thus, she failed to notice a very crucial fact about her current position until the play began and she looked up. She was behind a tall man. Heavy exposure to raw mako energy does very odd things to the human body. It could make it grow spines, make it very sick, give it unusual abilities, or it might just kill it. In Shelke's case, one of the side effects of the various Deepground experiments performed on her was, of course, the fact that she had not aged a day beyond ten. Physically, Shelke was no older, or larger than a ten-year old girl. This actually didn't inconvenience Shelke much on a daily basis. However, when placed behind tall objects, small children (or small children-sized people) have trouble seeing. Rather than the opening of "Loveless", Shelke was treated to an excellent view of the back of the nobleman's head. Shelke tapped the man's shoulder.

"Sir? Your head is obstructing my vision."

"Shush, child! I am trying to watch!"

The man then turned back to the show, showing no signs that he had paid any attention to Shelke's comment at all. She tried again.

"Sir, you do not seem to understand. I cannot…"

However, Shelke was interrupted with the even shorter retort of,

"Child! Be quiet!"

Shelke paused for a moment. How badly did she want to see this play? She tried moving her head from side to side. No luck. She tried sitting up as straight as she could. From this, Shelke got a better view of the teaser curtains (the frilly curtains at the top of the stage). Sighing, Shelke tapped the man's shoulder again.

The result this got was an overly irate standing man in the seat in front of her (and several confused comments from the audience immediately surrounding the man).

"You are a truly annoying little brat, do you know that? Sit and be quiet!"

The last of this command was delivered with the man's face placed not more than a few inches from Shelke's face. As the man retracted his torso from Shelke's personal space, she struggled for something to say, but she could not think of anything to say. Much to Shelke and the rest of the audience's dismay, the man had not quite finished his tirade yet. He turned to Vincent next (on the stage, the actors won Shelke's respect by trying their very best to continue acting despite the ruckus occurring before their very eyes). Over the various people telling him to sit down and stop making a scene, the man scolded Vincent.

"You should train your daughter better in manners concerning her elders. You commoners disgust me."

After that, the man finally sat back down and brooded only to himself.

The normally quiet and brooding Vincent looked like he was about to explode. Shelke, again wishing to avoid a confrontation, quickly tugged on his shirt and shook her head. Thankfully, Vincent again thought for a moment and then complied once more. Shelke sighed. This night was not turning out at all like she planned. Despondent, Shelke leaned her head to the right, resting it upon Vincent's golden claw. This elicited a glance from the gunman, but he made no effort to discourage her, soon returning his attention to the story unfolding upon the stage. The claw was cold, hard, and metallic, but to Shelke, it was strangely comfortable. It still wasn't a fluffy pillow or a down mattress, but Shelke still found it better than a good number of the various things Shelke had put her head on top of in her nineteen years of life.

Maybe this night wouldn't be so bad after all.

"Loveless" turned out to be a tragic love story. This became very obvious to Vincent within the first three scenes of the play. Vincent realized he should have probably expected such a thing from the title but… Vincent hated love stories. Despite the fact that at the very moment, he was out on a date with a girl, he still hated love stories. No matter how hard he tried, they always ended up reminding him of his experiences with Lucrecia and Hojo. If they were happy love stories, they made him even more acutely realize how horribly wrong everything had gone in that period of his life. If they were sad love stories, they simply reminded him of…well, how horribly wrong everything had gone in that period of his life. He HAD gone through the effort of going all the way out to Gold Saucer to see this play, so he tried to give it a chance…but by the end of the first act, Vincent had simply given up. He couldn't pay attention no matter how hard he tried. As the actors got ready for the second act, Vincent looked around him, down, up, and then at Shelke.

Shelke was still resting her head on his claw. She was also fast asleep. The thing that Vincent noticed the most, more than the minimal sensation of her head on his claw (he didn't have much feeling in the artificial limb anyway), more than the fact that Shelke was asleep, was the fact that Shelke had fallen asleep on his claw with an angelic smile on her face. Not just a tiny half-smile like she usually used when she smiled at all. A full, normal smile. It wasn't a huge Yuffie grin or anything, but considering whose smile it was it might as well have been.

Vincent had originally planned on seeing if Shelke wanted to leave (seeing as how she was rather obviously not paying any attention to the play), but Shelke looked so incredibly peaceful… Vincent felt an unusual feeling well up in his chest. That Shelke (of all people) had somehow learned to trust someone like him so much that she had fallen asleep atop his claw…

Vincent decided he would let her sleep. It was the least he could do in return for her trust. He'd find a way to bear through the play somehow. After all, the most significant thing sleeping in a coffin taught Vincent was, of course, patience.

For the rest of the evening, Vincent found the love story being told on stage before him slightly less unappealing.