Bonds Through Time

It was afternoon in Nibelheim as a very light snow flurry fell. Vincent was sitting on the windowsill in Cloud's room, leaning on the cold window (not that he could particularly feel the cold) as he watched the boy work on parts of the two guns while making notes or drawing things on the papers in front of him. Cloud, at his desk to work on things, was ignoring him, his attention on his calculations and schematics as he played around with a small screwdriver, small wrench, and several of the levers, gears, springs, and other smaller internal gun parts. All Vincent could see was that he kept flipping it back and forth, but Cloud knew he was testing the functionality of having multiple safeties attached to one anchor while each controlling a different region of said anchor.

There was the sound of small feet running up the stairs, then Cloud's bedroom door opened and Tifa ran in, panting and still wearing a coat, scarf, hat, and mitts, even as she clutched a book close to her. "Cloud!" she began excitedly as she stepped inside—then stopped to stare at Vincent for a moment. After that moment, she looked over at Cloud and asked, "Who's that man?"

"Is that what you came here for, Tifa?" Cloud asked her in an absently amused tone as he kept working.

"No, but who is he?" she asked again with a puzzled frown.

"Vincent Valentine," the man at the window replied that time, making her look at him with that same puzzled frown. "I'm here to keep Cloud safe until the others come looking. Previously, I was a Turk, but Hojo—the current head of Shinra's Science Department—put an unfortunate end to my employment. Well, it may not be 'an end', just an extended, enforced—vacation—" He paused as Cloud snorted at the word Vincent had chosen to use. "—but the verdict is still out on that. I assume you're Tifa, then? Cloud's friend?"

"Yeah," she agreed. "But why would a Turk protect Cloud? They usually protect the President, right?"

"Because apparently your townspeople are fools," Vincent replied blandly.

"...Uh..." she blinked, then snickered and said, "I guess I can't argue that."

She then turned to face Cloud as he held up the device he'd been working on and used his thumb to flip each switch, then reset them. He then looked at Vincent and said, "I think this will work. Try it." He tossed the device to Vincent, who examined it closely before fiddling with it.

"What are you doing?" Tifa asked curiously.

"Trying to make Vincent a three-barreled gun that can shoot different bullets in different combinations, depending on what he wants at any given time. It's not as simple as I'd thought it should be. The safeties kept getting stuck on one another," Cloud explained. "So, what are you doing here, Tifa?"

"Yeah! Here!" she suddenly grinned as she shoved the book she'd been carrying at him, excited all over again. "You said you did engineering, and the general store gets some magazines like these, so when I saw this, I thought I'd use my allowance to get it. I had to use four months of my saved gil to buy it, so you'd better like it!" She paused to give him a glare at the last bit, then went back to grinning as Cloud almost gingerly took the book from her.

He soon realized it was a good-quality engineering magazine, and a quick flip through some of the articles, sample schematics, and 'fact data' in it told him there would probably be some useful data in it he could use. It was highly-detailed in everything it showed and discussed, often even showing the calculations used to reach the end results. It didn't take him long to realize the issue Tifa had gotten had an article on gunsmithing, and one on weapons in general. He hadn't worked with guns in such a detailed way before, so he thought it would be useful to read.

"Thanks," he said as he looked back up at her. "You picked just the right issue to get, since there's an article on gunsmithing in it."

"Good!" she answered in mixed joy and relief.

"So...are you actually planning to stay for awhile, or were you just dropping this off?" Cloud asked her curiously.

"Staying. Why?" Tifa blinked in surprise.

He motioned vaguely in her direction and asked, "Then, shouldn't you go back to the front door to take off your coat and stuff and put it on hooks there?"

The girl stared at him, then looked down at herself, blushed, and ran back out of the room.

After a moment of silence, Vincent commented, "It's hard to imagine a scatter-brained Tifa, you know."

Snickering, the blond boy replied, "She was like that as a kid, though, usually when she was excited about something. But, she should have stopped being like that after the—after her mother died, but I guess my falling into the new Mako Spring opened all that up to her again? How are the safeties working, by the way?"

"They're not moving smoothly, but they aren't getting stuck on each other. It's more like—they're reacting to friction from too many other parts pressed too closely against them," the older man offered, tossing the device back to Cloud.

"So you're saying I'm on the right track, but now I need to smooth it out, right?" the blond asked. The black haired man nodded.

"Okay!" Tifa announced as she came back in—without all her outdoor winter clothes on—followed by Rayne as she carried a tray with two drinks on it. "So, why are you trying to make gun safeties?" The girl picked up the cups off the tray and gave one to Cloud before she plopped down on the edge of his bed with the other.

"Vincent asked me to," Cloud replied, taking a sip before grinning at his mother. "It always tastes better when you make it, Mom."

She gave him a wry smile and said, "Supper will be ready soon. Apparently Tifa is staying over tonight."

"Really?" the blond asked in surprise, looking at the brown haired girl, who nodded with a grin.

Rayne's gaze went questioningly to Vincent, but he just gave his head a small shake, so she turned back to the kids. "I'll call you two when supper's ready."

"Okay," both of the 'kids' answered, and the woman took the tray with her as she left again.

"Cloud, why does a grown man who can probably do it himself want you to make something like that for him?" Tifa frowned in worry and confusion, keeping her voice low.

"You realize both Vincent and I can hear you from a lot further away now than I could before I fell in the Spring, right?" Cloud asked her dryly. She blinked. "I'm not sure why Vincent can because he wasn't exposed to Mako, but I know he can. And enhanced senses, like sight and hearing, are natural side-effects of Mako exposure."

Tifa turned her head to look at Vincent again, and he gave her a small smile before saying, "I'm getting Cloud to do it because I actually have no smithing or engineering skills. I can use a gun and keep it well-maintained, but I can't make one."

She blinked at the man twice, then looked at Cloud questioningly. He was sipping his hot chocolate with his eyes closed, and without opening them, he lowered the cup enough to say, "He can't do it, and I like doing this, remember?" He then started sipping his drink again.

The dark haired girl huffed and pouted, "Fine. So, did you still have that book I let you borrow last year?"

Cloud's eyes opened in surprise as he lowered the cup right down to his lap, trying to puzzle out which book she meant—that had been fifteen years ago for him, and the memory was fuzzy. Suddenly, it came to him and he said, "Yeah, I think it's actually on the shelf in the main room, near the photo."

"What's it doing there?" she stared in surprise.

"It was a cookbook, Tifa. Did you ever think I was going to use it?" Cloud asked her in wry amusement, and she glared. "Mom's copied or memorized everything she wanted from it now, too, I think, so you should be able to take it home with you if you want. Anyway, when Mom said you were 'staying over', does she mean overnight or just until after supper?"

"Overnight!" the girl replied with a smile which was more like a smirk.

"...Your dad's letting you stay overnight at a boy's house?" the blond asked in shock.

"No. I just said I was staying over at a friend's while he'd be at the Reactor with the other engineers, so he probably thinks I'll be at Mima's. I had left my bag by the door, so your mom moved it to her room, where I'll sleep tonight."

Cloud saw Vincent's slight smirk out of the corner of his eye, so he glared at the man and asked, "What's so funny, Vincent?" Tifa also turned to look at him and saw his smirk.

"Just—her," the older man replied, still looking amused. "Good luck."

"Hey, Vincent, you're forgetting that you're staying here, too, now," the boy replied with a faint smirk of his own. "That means you have to deal with her all night, too. And unlike me, you always had trouble dealing with her, even in that other future, when she was an adult and not nearly this energetic."

The smirk dropped off the man's face and his eyes widened marginally as Tifa's dark eyes narrowed at him until they became deadly, glaring slits. She was promising retribution with that look, and he quickly rose and left the room.

Tifa turned to stare in shocked amazement at Cloud as she asked, "Is he scared of me? A Turk—is scared of me?"

Chuckling, Cloud replied, "You were plenty strong, Tifa—you could pretty much beat up everyone except Sephiroth. And even though you couldn't really 'beat' Vincent, you could sure hurt him pretty badly if he did something you didn't like. He doesn't know you haven't been trained in martial arts yet."

She stared at him in silence for a minute before asking slowly, "Martial arts?"

"Yeah, fighting with your fists and feet," the boy answered.

"...The name Zangan just came into my head," she blinked.

Cloud's jaw dropped and he said, "Last time, he was the one who taught you martial arts. He only came to Nibelheim when you were thirteen, after I'd left home to go to Midgar, but even in just that short time, that two years, you got really good. He saved your life."

"So why do I know his name if I don't have Leviathan's Blessing?"

"...I don't know. I really just don't know."

Silence fell as the two stared at one another, trying to figure out what had just happened.

MB

Weiss had been right about how hard his day's training would be. Rather, he'd underestimated it, even knowing 'how bad' it would be. He hadn't even managed to make it to his room before collapsing on the couch in the main room, and he was a little surprised he'd made it so far on his own power. The Restrictors were definitely still angry with him, very angry—so angry they'd had his instructors push him so hard he may as well have been beaten within an inch of his life for the second time in as many days.

He was strong, but he wasn't omnipotent, and like Genesis had forced him to realize, he had the same weakness as everyone else—exhaustion. No matter how strong or skilled a person was, there were still two things which were keys to one's ability, and the root of both was one's stamina. Though, exhaustion through prolonged battle was a different sort than exhaustion through overwhelming numbers.

That time, he'd been made to face both.

He'd never really realized just how many Deepground soldiers there were, or how bloody strong the Restrictors were. They had put a restrainer collar on his neck and forced him to fight unarmed with no access to magic or his Limit Breaks for over sixteen hours.

Vaguely, he heard the door open, but didn't have the strength to react.

"One day, I'm going to kill the Restrictors," Azul's voice came to him.

"One day, you'd kill everyone on the Planet if you thought you could," Argento's voice returned from the direction of the bathroom, then the sound of the tap being turned on reached him.

A gentle hand in his hair and a small voice asking, "Brother?" gave him just a little bit of strength to turn his head to the side and crack open an eye. Sure enough, a very worried-looking Nero was right beside him, and Rosso was a little further away, her gaze worried as well. Azul, near the door and with his large arms crossed, was glaring bloody murder at one wall and making like a very intimidating guard. Absently, Weiss noted the tap turn off, but didn't think much of it—he was just too tired, and the only thing giving him any grounding was the younger boy's hand gently patting his head.

"Move over, Nero," Argento said, and Nero looked up, then shuffled over.

The woman knelt in Nero's former place, setting a dish of steaming water down beside her, then carefully peeling his blood-soaked shirt off his back so she could gently wipe his injuries with a wet cloth she pulled from the dish. She worked meticulously, and Weiss worried that he felt no pain—that was a bad sign. He was starting to lose feeling in his nerves. Maybe his infusions would be able to fix that—he really hoped the adjustments Minerva had made to his genes would be able to do it if his original structure couldn't have.

"Why did they do this?" Rosso asked, looking lost.

Azul snorted. "He showed them up, and this is their way of 'reminding him of his place.' Even though he didn't do anything wrong—he's our fucking General, he's supposed to point out flaws in how they're training us."

"I think 'fucked over General' is a more appropriate term to use at this point," Argento put in, her voice oddly cold. "But they're coming dangerously close to ruining one of their top people over something as petty as having their egos bruised. At this rate..."

"At this rate, all our lives will be forfeit," Azul gritted. "Because that's not 'strong leadership', that's not 'leading with strength', it's pure cowardice, and that, I can't stand for. I'd thought—this was a place for the strong. There's a fine line between being strong and being a coward, and they crossed it, because that scene could only be called deliberate bullying. They should never have needed to do that if they had true strength—any one of them should have been able to take on Weiss and defeat him if they really were strong. Instead—fucking bullies!"

Rosso and Nero traded looks, then Nero said quietly, "Then, it's always been a place of bullies."

Silence fell for a moment, then Rosso disappeared to the bathroom—and came back a moment later to kneel beside Argento as she offered, "I would like to help."

With a small sigh, the older woman answered, "Then wet your cloth and start wiping down his arm, the one you can reach there." A sound of agreement came from the girl as she did as requested.

It took nearly half an hour for the two women—with some help from Nero and Azul—to clean up the mess they had made of the eleven-year-old boy. By then, Weiss had roused a little, but he was mostly just staring off into space as he mentally begged for Genesis to help him. For that two years, the two years he'd spent with the older man, Genesis had been there for him, gotten him through the mental nightmare Hojo had put him through, and made him sane and strong again. Now, more than ever, he needed his 'older brother's' support, but he feared he would never get it.

Suddenly, into his mind, a painfully familiar voice asked in alarm, :Weiss? Weiss, what happened for you to—to pull on my mind this strongly?:

:Genesis...: he mentally whispered in reply, struggling not to cry. :They—they—I don't know if I can wait—for you to come, not after being—broken twice in as many days. Please...:

:Oh, Weiss...: the older man sighed sadly into his mind. :I wish there was something I could do right now, but until we get Cloud and Vincent, it's just not possible. I'd get you out of there in a heartbeat if I had some way to do that, but Vincent is the only one who knows how to get in there. Weiss, why did they do that to you?:

:There was a training battle, and they just told my team to hold the location. They had left bombs on one floor, so because that was a danger, I sent someone to destroy them to also create obstacles for the other team. They hadn't wanted me to use the explosives or destroy so much of the town, but they didn't leave me instruction not to, either. It's my job to tell them so—but then they did this to me...:

:That's terrible! Now I really wish I could get in there...Hmm...:

The tone to Genesis' voice made Weiss send him a hopeful feeling, a request to please find a way to get him out of there. Regret answered that sensation, but before Weiss had a chance to feel broken, he felt two things happen in quick succession. First, Genesis pulled all his hurt, pain, fear, betrayal, and everything else he'd been feeling while he'd been there, and pulled it so strongly that it was like it all left him. As he felt his body relaxing and his senses calming, Genesis' energy imprinted a marking in red-hot lines in the Mako energy in his body. Those lines looked a lot like the judgment array Genesis' Limit Break called on.

:There. I hope that works, that it will help you,: the older man's voice came to him, even as the link broke—but he felt for a brief moment a sensation like Genesis had been in sudden agony.

His eyes opened in shock and alarm—only for him to meet the stunned gazes of his four roommates. Slowly, he looked down at himself, only to realize there was a tattoo of a Phoenix spreading across his chest and his injuries were healing even more rapidly than they usually would. Gently, he touched the mark, a touch he could feel this time—and silently thanked the man with as much feeling as he could muster, hoping it would reach him.

"...What just happened?" Azul asked after a moment.

Weiss slowly looked up at him and said, "Someone very powerful wanted to help me. I don't know what it will do besides help my healing, though."

"As glad as I am to see that someone has your best interests at heart," Argento began in faint amusement. "You were still badly damaged and need your rest tonight. Can you make it to your room yourself, or do you need help?"

Azul snorted, then moved forward to scoop Weiss up and move him into his room long before the boy could answer the question, let alone protest. When the other three Tsviets stared at him, he said, "It looks like we'll have to start relying on one another, because we obviously can't rely on them."

"Azul, thank you," Weiss said before the others could reply. The man turned back to him with a slight frown. "If we have to rely on one another, we have to remember not to take one another for granted—to appreciate what help the others are willing to give. Because I don't think the Restrictors care all that much if they kill us, so we may not have another chance to show any kind of appreciation. We need to do it while we're still alive to do so. I want to think our staying power is better than most, but...with what they just did, I don't think we can count on that anymore."

With a small sigh, Azul admitted, "You have a point. Don't get too weak and sappy, though."

The response was so familiar that Weiss managed a small smile of faint amusement. "I don't plan to."

"Good," the man agreed, then fell silent as Weiss also thanked the others for helping him. They weren't gushing thanks, just plain and simple offers of gratitude for their help, so Azul actually gave a faint smile before returning to the main room to sit.

They all knew it would be a long night.

MB

Kunzel jolted awake to some sort of strangled cry and quickly drew his sword as he moved to his door and pulled it open quietly. The sound came again, but with an undertone like soft sobbing, making him cautiously slip down the hall to Genesis' bedroom, nudging the door open so he could look around carefully—

But then, a shape curled on the floor beside the bed caused him to gasp and drop his sword as he ran forward. Genesis was curled in a tight ball and covered in bloody marks as he wept and rocked and sobbed. There were bruises, burns, tears, cuts—even damage types he couldn't name—scattered across his body, lots of them. When Kunzel tried to touch his shoulder, Genesis yanked away and some sort of energy shoved the younger man back.

The older man needed help, and Kunzel had no idea what to do.

A sudden thought came to him and he quickly jumped up to run for the older man's coat, checking it for his PHS. It was in one pocket there, so he fumbled it open and searched through the address book, quickly finding Angeal's number, and Sephiroth's right below it. Angeal's was first, though, so he let the other Commander's number dial.

It only took a few rings for a sleepy Angeal to ask, "Whazzit, Gen?"

"Something happened to Genesis, and he's all covered in blood and injuries, but he won't let me close to him, and I don't know what to do!" Kunzel burst out, still trying to keep from panicking.

"Where are you?" Angeal asked a moment later, sounding much more awake.

"His room—I really have no idea what happened, but it was recent, or I'd have been woken by it a lot sooner," he managed to get out, forcing himself to a calmer state.

"Was anything in the room damaged?" the older man questioned.

The question made Kunzel pause, then close his eyes and breathe deeply for a moment before he opened his eyes again to scan the room. "No."

Angeal gave a sound which mainly seemed to be a grunt indicating he'd heard the reply. "Stay calm and start gathering some things like clean cloths, bandages, and warm water. We'll need them, even if we first have to get him out of whatever state he got himself into. Don't try to touch him again, stay about three feet away from him and you'll be fine. I'll let you know when it's safe to come closer once I can get there to calm him down. Did you get all that, Cadet?"

"Uh—wait for you to get here before trying to get close to him again, and while I'm waiting, gather some first aid stuff?" the sixteen-year-old repeated, drawing in a few more deep breaths.

"Good. Remember, stay calm—more than anything, he needs that from you right now. I'll see you shortly," the older man replied, then hung up before Kunzel could answer.

Genesis...needed him to stay calm? After a moment, he realized there was a certain amount of logic to the thought, as his own panic would have just enhanced whatever was wrong with Genesis.

Sticking the PHS back in Genesis' coat pocket, he rose and began gathering the requested items near Genesis, doing his best to stay calm as he made his trips with the things he needed. Oddly, he realized Genesis was starting to calm as he did—it was marginal and the man was still sobbing and rocking where he was, but the raw agony of it had gone down. By the time Angeal and Sephiroth got there, he'd gathered everything and was just placing a pail of hot water near the cloths. Both older men had to stare for a moment at what they saw.

It was Angeal who approached Genesis, carefully kneeling at his head and slowly saying in soft tones like one would use on a frightened animal, "It's okay, Gen. No one here right now is going to hurt you. It's just me and Seph and your new kid brother, Kunzel." A faint smile came to the older man's face as he saw Kunzel stare in shock at the words. The older man then spoke more along that line for some time (Kunzel was in no frame of mind to count it, though), in that soft and gentle voice, gaze intent on Genesis, like he was looking for some sort of sign. Finally, Angeal slowly reached forward as he said, "Easy now—we need to get you cleaned up, and that means you need to let us close, Gen."

As Angeal's fingers brushed through the red haired man's disarrayed strands, Kunzel was sure he'd be shoved away, but while the energy flow started, it broke again a few moments later—and the older man was able to touch him.

"You're really a mess right now. Poor Gen. Just rest while we take care of this for you," Angeal said softly, motioning at Sephiroth, who cast Cure 3 on the red haired man, then moved forward to help Angeal clean Genesis up.

The three of them then worked in silence to take care of the man and put him back in bed. Kunzel was horrified to realize even as much magical healing as they could give him before his body couldn't take any more still wasn't enough to fix it all. They all then settled in for a long night.