Turbulence

Vincent Valentine crouched silently on the roof of the glass elevator of the ShinRa building, waiting patiently for it to reach the forty-ninth floor. The person inside the elevator was second-class SOLDIER Zackary Fair, protégé to General Angeal Hewley, who was one of the results of Professor Hollander's 'Project G' alongside his colleague General Rhapsodos. Vincent had been shadowing the cheerfully charismatic second-class SOLDIER for a while now and she could see that the boy had promise, though he needed to calm down a bit. The second-classes exuberance actually worked in her favour on this little jaunt: Fair drew the eyes of everyone around him, letting Vincent slip past unnoticed.

Dropping down into the lift and exiting unseen in the wake of the SOLDIER, Vincent looked nothing like her usual self. Careful negotiation with Chaos had persuaded the WEAPON to reabsorb most of her usual garb, so the former Turk was without her black clothing and red cape. Her usually shiny metallic shoes were matte black and round-toed -pretending to be leather rather than metal- and her gold gauntlet was more streamlined so it could be covered by a sleeve. Instead Vincent wore the smart blue suit and crisp white shirt of her former profession, metal-clawed hand tucked out of sight and long black hair hanging loose to obscure her features. Having people notice that there was a brunette body-double of the Silver General wandering around the building would not be in the slightest bit discreet. Walking calmly in Fair's wake, no-one noticed her enter the stairwell.

Quickly reaching the fiftieth floor, the floor the three General's had their private offices on, Vincent walked quietly over to the door with her son's name on it and knocked politely before letting herself inside.


The silver-haired General looked up from his paperwork as she closed the door behind her and frowned. "Valentine?"

Vincent had briefly met Sephiroth in Wutai and told him she was a Turk called Valentine investigating matters internal to ShinRa for the President. She quickly walked up to his desk and deposited the jammer on top of the papers. "The video feed to this floor blew out half an hour ago," she said quietly, "it is unlikely to be noticed until tomorrow, but even if not it will take them at least three hours to locate and fix the fault."

Sephiroth's eyes narrowed ever so slightly at the veiled assurance that their conversation would remain completely private, but he nodded at her to continue.

"When we spoke in Wutai I told you I had information regarding your true parentage and background, proof that Hojo was lying to you and sought to use you for his own ends," Vincent went on, quashing her nerves ruthlessly, "I have all the relevant evidence with me now and more elsewhere. I apologise for not getting in touch with you sooner but I wasn't sure you'd believe me without all the proof to hand." She reached slowly into the inner breast pocket of her Turk jacket with her right hand and pulled out four data disks.

"This one is me," she said flatly, placing the disk labelled 'V' in front of her son, "and this one is you." A disk labelled 'S' joined the 'V' disk. "These two are your colleagues Hewley and Rhapsodos," she tapped the disk labelled 'G', "and this last one is the project that started it all." That final disk was labelled 'J'. "You need to read the first two before considering these two, and I will answer all the questions I am able." She stepped back, putting the two data disks still in her hands back in her jacket and retreated to the far wall, never breaking eye contact.

Sephiroth fingered the disk with the V on it. "You are not really a Turk," he stated coolly.

"Not since Hojo got to me," Vincent admitted quietly, "Which was twenty-two years ago now. His tampering is fairly obvious if you know what to look for."

Sephiroth tensed slightly at the timing she was suggesting and stared hard at her youthful features. Vincent knew she barely looked twenty-five, yet she'd just told him she was over twice his age. The General however did not comment, instead placing the disk in his computer and started reading. Ten minutes in he looked up at Vincent incredulously.

"Your name is Vincent yet you are a woman?"

Vincent's lips twitched. "Most definitely. I can always strip if you wish to check."

Sephiroth's eyebrow rose at the offer but he did not comment, going back to his reading. It took him the better part of an hour to skim through the disk's contents and by the end the General's face was icy with suppressed fury.

"What was done to me was done for reasons beyond simple experimentation," Vincent said softly, "and the reasons are all in the next disk. Hojo did not go to such length to put me out of circulation on a mere whim."

Sephiroth jerkily ejected the V disk and inserted the S disk, then froze with his eyes fixed on the screen. Vincent knew the first file on this disk was labelled 'Parentage and genetic history of Specimen S' and the former Turk made a deliberate effort to breathe evenly.

Three minutes later the Silver General stared up at her from his chair, perfect façade cracked open like an eggshell. "Mother?" he rasped, eyes alight with painful hope.

Vincent didn't even think, she was across the room in an instant, knocking paperwork everywhere as she pulled her son close and hugged her baby boy as tightly as she could. "My beautiful son, my Sephiroth," she murmured into his hair, "did you know I named you? You weren't even born then, but I learnt you were mine and I went to kill Hojo so the experiments would stop. Anger made me careless and he almost killed me, but I named you then. My precious Sephiroth." she clutched him so tightly she heard his ribs creak. Sephiroth hugged her back, gripping her waist and shoulders with the desperation of a drowning man.

As she heard the chocked breathing in her ear Vincent removed her left hand from around his waist to cradle his head, caressing his scalp with metal-clawed fingers and crooning a half-forgotten lullaby she vaguely recalled from her own childhood. Sephiroth leaned his face against hers and she gently kissed what skin she could reach, rocking back and forth in time with her humming. She'd just shaken his world and her wonderful son needed time to put himself back together again.


The door slammed open and Sephiroth cringed. Vincent adjusted her grip on his head so he couldn't pull away and pointed Cerberus at the intruder without turning around.

"General Sephiroth! Angeal-" Zack Fair ground to a halt as he noticed what he'd walked in on and the three-barrelled handgun pointed directly between his eyes. "Er, uh,"

"You can walk out right now and close the door behind you or you can leave in a body bag," Vincent said flatly, voice as cold and biting as a Nibelhein blizzard. "You have two seconds before I decide for you."

The second-class fled, door swinging shut behind him. Vincent reholstered her gun and went back to comforting her son as if nothing had happened. Fair would run and tell Angeal what he had seen and soon the other General would come to see what was going on for himself.

"Why not tell me sooner?" Sephiroth whispered. His icy mask had been completely stripped away, leaving only pain behind. But it was healing pain, not just raw damage. He accepted her. He didn't hate her. The relief almost made her go weak at the knees.

"Could you have believed me without proof? Would you have dared?" she whispered back, right hand rubbing his back in soothing circles. "I needed all the facts, needed to know what had happened to my baby, needed to make sure that if I whisked you away from ShinRa tomorrow that a lack of regular checkups wouldn't kill you. Hojo is a monster; I wouldn't put that kind of thing past him."

Sephiroth's lips twitched into a melancholy attempt at a smile. "So you're the one who broke into the Science Department back in May," he breathed.

Vincent smiled back, shifting to rest her forehead against her son's. "Anything for you," she breathed back, completely in earnest. "I even hacked into the Worldwide Information Network, the ShinRa mainframe and the Turk database. No stone unturned for my boy. You're worth every last risk."

The Silver General made a huffing sound that might have been a chuckle as one lone tear slid down his cheek. "You scared off Angeal's puppy."

"He had no right to see you like this," Vincent replied simply. Sephiroth pulled back a little to really look at her, watching her face searchingly before lunging forward again, pulling her close and holding her tight.

"Thank-you, Valentine," he murmured hoarsely, burying his face in her messy hair, "thank-you Mother, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you-"

"Sephiroth?" said a cautious voice outside the closed door. Mother and son both turned to face it.

"It's Angeal," Sephiroth muttered, then spoke more loudly. "Yes, Angeal?"

The General cautiously pushed the door open. "Zack just told me you were kissing a Turk in your office. A Turk who threatened to shoot him for interrupting the two of you." The dark-haired first-class blinked at the sight of Sephiroth tightly wrapped around someone in a blue suit. "I see he didn't make it up."

Sephiroth's face, hidden from Angeal by Vincent's head, lit up as a truly wicked smile spread across his features. "Shall we play with them a little?" the Silver General breathed ever so softly in her ear, eyes sparkling with usually concealed humour. Vincent inclined her head with a sly smile of her own; the sheer relief of things not going badly was leaving her giddy, adrenaline still rushing around her system.

Sephiroth reluctantly let go of Vincent and stepped around her towards the door. "Come in Angeal, there's someone I'd like to introduce you to."

Angeal stepped warily into the office, eyes darting from the overturned paperwork on the floor to Vincent's ruffled appearance, Sephiroth's jacket and shoulder armour lying discarded across the desk and the Silver General's own unusually untidy hair. The Dark General looked very uncomfortable, which made Vincent notice that the situation was indeed rather suggestive: her suit was rumpled and her hair all over the place; Sephiroth had nothing covering his upper body except the straps crossing his shoulders while his face was pink with emotion and his eyes shone like captive stars.

"Angeal, this is my Valentine, the Turk I mentioned meeting in Wutai," Sephiroth purred, eyes glinting as his fingers slid around Vincent's shoulder to dance across the skin under her ear, "Valentine, this is Angeal Hewely, one of my fellow Generals."

The expression on the other General's face was absolutely priceless.


Mother and son reunite! Then completely discombobulate Zack and Angeal as an encore!