Koinu: Ah, this chapter is dedicated to my bestest friend in the world, Broken Heartless. She's been great inspiration for me, considering she helped mold Liz.

I must also say thanks to my friend Lucinda, for sticking with me and being a comedy muse. Everyone must pay homage to my friends! MUWAHAHAH -coughcough- okay, I'm done now...

Eclipse of Memories

Chapter Seven

She dreamt. It really wasn't so much dreaming as a recapitulation of her life. Life, that was a funny way to describe it.

"Hah hah! Catch me if you can, Mister Valentine!" Liz shrieked with pleasure as she ran through the halls. She was maybe five, at best. Of course, Hojo had altered her age many a time. She had been this old for years now, never seeming to age a bit.

Vincent chased after the child. He could still hear Lucrecia's laughs as he followed Liz out of the room that the female professor had been working in.

"How the hell does she do this?" Vincent asked himself. He, of course, was pacing himself so that he didn't catch up to Liz too quickly. "She's wearing that blindfold and everything…"

"Can't catch me!" Liz yelled again as she darted down another hallway. She was getting quick.

Vincent turned the corner to follow Liz, only to come face to face with the girl's creator: Hojo. The silver haired child was hiding behind one of Hojo's legs and giggling madly.

Hojo quirked a brow at Vincent, but smirked slyly. "And what, may I ask, are you two doing?"

Vincent made to respond, but Liz jumped out from behind Hojo's leg, getting between the shy Turk and thought to be insane Hojo. The effect was ruined through, seeing as she just barely came up to their knees.

"We were playin' tag!" Liz offered, smiling widely. Her blindfold had come loose and was now hanging in a lopsided fashion, covering only one eye. She giggled again and looked up at Hojo innocently with her one visible eye.

That had been so long ago, she had forgotten about it, the memory merely fading from her mind with time.

Hojo bent beside Liz to inject her with something, a concoction that he refused to reveal the name of in front of the child. He talked soothingly as the girl's tiny body trembled, her hands gripping the edge of her cot as her shoulders shook from the pain she knew would come. There was always pain... always...

This wasn't her first time being injected with mako, but Liz still had a reaction to it every time. There was always a terrible backlash, making her weak and sick, before it finally began to do some good, making her stronger.

She was the first child to have JENOVA cells infused in her. Hojo thought Liz was remarkable, but just as her name said, she was a failure.

L-I-Z stood for Lethal, Indistinct, Zero.

Liz was nothing, a tool at best if she proved to be controllable. So far she had shown some promise, with her aura seeing ability, which was why the professor made her constantly wear the blindfold.

But what would happen if Jenova's cell's were injected into a fetus, an undeveloped child while it was still in the womb…? Hojo smirked. He would have to try that, possibly with Lucrecia?

Liz shuddered again and gasped for breath, ripping Hojo's attention back to her. He frowned. The child was too weak…

That was something she would have like to forgotten completely. The mako treatments had always made her feel awful and sick, like the flu, only worse.

Lucrecia was screaming, screaming, screaming…

There had been a gunshot, laughter, dark, sinister laughter, and then the screaming that just wouldn't end. The screaming the drowned out even that horrible laughter.

Liz shuddered and crouched in the corner of her room, hiding under the cot that was meant to be her bed. She was crying, but only because she didn't understand. Why was Lucrecia screaming like that? Who had been shot? The little girl cried and cried, more than she ever had before. Not even when one of the injections Hojo had given Liz almost killed her had she cried like this.

Her blindfold was getting wet, but the child paid it no attention. Instead, she ripped it from her eyes and stared down at the thick, white fabric that always kept her sightless. "Why...?" Her words were choked, strangled by her tears and sobs. "Why?"

Nibleheim. She was seven at the time, but Hojo had said that she was to live here for a while, not long. She had a foster family and everything, and didn't have to wear the blindfold anymore. It was nice.

But the people that she loved the most were the ones that weren't even related to her. The SOILDIERS.

She had made it her mission to find out their names, and that had occupied her for all of about three days. By that time she knew all three of the names she had wanted to acquire she also knew which of the three she would try to talk to first.

His name was Zack. He was nice, carefree, easy to be around. Liz adored him from first sight.

She followed him one day as he walked down the street. Every so often he would look back, smile, and then continue walking like he had never seen her. He made a right turn into an ally and Liz followed. She looked both ways, unable to find him. She frowned.

"Hey kid." His easygoing voice was odd for a soldier and certainly unexpected as it came from behind her. Liz yelped and jumped a good foot in the air.

Zack laughed and crouched down to Liz's eye level. "Hey kid, whacha' doin' following me?" He asked, smiling kindly. His black hair shone in the sun, but her silver outshone his black.

"I… ah…" Liz fidgeted with the black arm-warmers that adorned her lower arms, covering the markings on her right wrist well. "I…" Oh, what was that word her foster mother had taught her? "I ad… admi…"

"Admire?" Zack commented helpfully.

Liz nodded emphatically. "Yeah, that's it; admire. I admire you… and I…" She was stuttering badly now. "And I wanted to meet you…"

Zack laughed and ruffled her hair. It was an odd color, but not unfamiliar to him. "That's nice, kid." He smiled. "So… What do you wanna do when you get older?" Let's see what her answer would be. Zack's money was on doctor.

Liz smiled suddenly. "I wanna be like you." She said, sincerity easily recognizable in her young voice. "I wanna be strong, and protect innocent people, just like you!"

Zack whistled. Well, that was unexpected. "You promise?" He asked, extending his hand to her.

Liz nodded again. "I promise!" She replied, taking his hand.

And they shook on it.

Cloud was a little harder to approach. She didn't know why, but Liz was a little scared of him. She knew that he and Tifa hung out sometimes, but that was it. She followed him a lot though, and knew a lot of people, but no one over seemed to know or recognize her.

No one even seemed to see her.

Sephiroth was even scarier than Cloud, but Liz just had to know him, just had to. He had the same strikingly silver hair as she did, and Liz felt as if she was always being pulled to him. But that was ridiculous.

Surprisingly, he tolerated her, was kind to her even. He even let her touch his sword. Liz was so absorbed with him. She made him lunch more often than not, and spent every waking moment as near to him as she could get.

In short, she loved him. But it was the way any child loves someone older than them. There was no sexual attraction (she was still to young to understand anything like this anyway) at all. She merely loved him for who he was.

He was strong, and powerful. He had everything, it seemed. And then it happened.

It had been the day before her eighth birthday, but she had been busy making sandwiches for Sephiroth's lunch. They were all out of any other type of food, but he hadn't objected to the sandwiches. He was in the kitchen with her, watching her movements intently.

"Liz?" His question was sudden, unexpected. His voice, just it's tone even, seemed tense almost.

"M'hm?" Liz replied, still busy with a sandwich, oblivious to the heavy tension that had suddenly settled about the room.

"Liz, the village is going to burn tonight. I want you to leave." Sephiroth stated it so simply, it could have been a request for her to go to the store.

"What?" Liz turned around quickly, her bright green eyes the size of dinner plates. It was her birthday tomorrow, but she didn't care about that. Not now, not after what had just been said. "What about you?" He had asked her to go, so she would go without question. But she had to know what his plans were, what was to become of him.

"I'll be fine." The great general replied sincerely. "But I suggest you leave within the next hour. I don't want you anywhere near here when the fire starts."

Liz nodded, feeling numb. "Okay…"

It had always just been a mountain to her before, but now it was a mountain she needed to get to.

Liz couldn't explain it. There was just this unquenchable need to get there. It felt like something was calling her, but what?

She was only three-quarters of the way there when she collapsed. It was already nightfall by then, and she didn't dare look back. She had fallen once, heard a snap, felt her arm go limp because it was broken. But she didn't stop until it was impossible for her to go on.

And then ShinRa was there. Liz didn't even have any idea how she knew it was ShinRa, but she knew. Black suits, or maybe they were a deep blue, she couldn't tell because of the darkness. Turks, unmistakably.

They were there, suddenly, without any warning in advance, and they took her away…Back to the depths of laboratories and experiments that she had come from. There had been a flash of red hair in the darkness, some words passed between the man before her and his comrade, then a smirk as she was lifted up. The young remnant had been barely coherent the whole time. All that she knew that that she was being condemned to return to the place she now hated most...

Hojo had been so happy to have her back.

Koinu: A bit of a memory flashback thing there. Hope you guys like it. These were all the things that I really wanted to write or that needed to get in so that the whole story made more sense. Liz's promise to Zack, for instance, was mentioned a few times in The Amarimono and in Within the Life Stream so I felt that an explanation was needed. Review, por favor!