Chapter 1: Prologue
Notes:
There's a link to the waltz that's mentioned in the first scene, composed by me. All Rights Reserved (C) 14/04/2024.
Enjoy!
Chapter Text
[μ] – εγλ 1977
15 / 09
It was her favourite piece. He always caught her listening to it. A particularly old, big, black, vinyl with 33 RPM in particular, always lingered nearby the gramophone in the living room ever since they moved in the gigantic mansion. The soft summer breeze entered through the half open window and the gramophone played. The moonlight entered through the windows and the dim light of no more than two lamps were all that illuminated the room. Heavy wooden furniture, large sofas and armchairs and bookcases - an old mahogany piano with the longest tail - it really did seem like the president’s family residence. The man never spared any expenses.
The Shinra Manor was the headquarters for anything related to the newly announced JENOVA Project. Gast had gone to great lengths to convince the president to invest on it.
She was right there. The bright moonlight shined through her brown eyes. She was sitting by the couch nearby the forsaken fireplace. There would be no flame dancing in it for a couple more months at best. The winters were heavy in Nibelheim, but the summers were warm.
She sat there with the heaviest book he’d ever seen on her lap. She was still wearing her lab coat. She’d always forget to take it off. It always felt odd not to wear it. Circular glasses rested at the bridge of her nose and long, messy brown hair was wrapped back in a loose braid.
She smiled upon the very familiar sound of his footsteps, and she pulled her attention from the book and looked up. She met his eyes with a smile. He knew he’d find her there. It’s where she’d hang around after a full day of exhausting work in the lab.
Without saying a word – and without even giving her the chance, he pulled the book from her lap, placing it on the couch beside her, and he caught her hand, pulling her up on her feet. He wrapped an arm around her waist and the other caught her own. He swirled her around and they started dancing and she laughed.
She laughed heartily and he laughed with her. She should have seen this coming. It wasn’t the first time they’d dance through the empty living room. So many scientists resided in that building, yet none lingered around the largest room of the manor.
Neither of them spoke. The laughter ceased but the piece continued. It wasn’t too complicated of a composition - or at least it didn’t sound complicated to an untrained ear. A slow, melancholic waltz for solo piano first published many years after the composer’s death, posthumously.
She was beautiful in the moonlight, but so was he. He was about a head taller than her - she had to bend her head back to look at him. He had the brightest blue eyes, nerdy glasses, messy brown hair. He was wearing his own lab coat. Only just a little older than her.
Tedric. Her fiancé. Her mentor. Her best friend. They were planning to get married by winter. It wouldn’t be anything too grand. Just a few friends and even fewer family. They didn’t have too much time for anything bigger. They were both scientists. They both had research to focus on, but there was always time to spend with each other.
She moved with him, following his lead like she always did. She followed him at the same university. She followed him in Shinra. She followed him in her career. It wasn’t too bad so far. She had just about made up her mind about following him for the rest of her life. She gave him a dreamy smile and melted into him when he kissed her. He kissed her slow and sweet and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, shutting her eyes. It felt like a dream.
He was perfect, and she loved him.
“Ahem,”
It came unapologetic and... irritable. They both recognised the sound and pulled away from each other to turn at the intruder. The piece had just come to an end.
“Professor Earnchester,” came the cranky voice of the man she’d attended the same classes with at university. Hojo. “Your timer almost beeped my ears off. I suppose it’s time to remove whatever chemical you’ve been treating your cells with?”
Jocasta sighed heavily and forcefully withdrew from Tedric’s hold.
“Right... apologies for the disturbance,” she said, walking past him and heading for the lab downstairs. The president had built five labs beneath the ground, nearby the library. The upper floors were reserved to accommodate the scientists and staff.
It certainly didn’t sound like she meant it. She was mostly convinced that Hojo had deliberately destroyed their moment.
On the other hand, Tedric was as dense as ever. He sighed dreamily and shook his head staring at her direction. He was almost convinced that she had no more work for today. Stupid of him to even think that she would go to sleep tonight any sooner than she usually did — always past midnight.
“She always works, doesn’t she?” Tedric wondered out loud with that lovestruck smile on his face that disgusted Hojo to the core.
Actually, everything about Tedric disgusted Hojo in general. He always had that kind, pretentious little smile on his face. Always so, unbelievably nice with everyone, even sympathetic of the specimens. All they were allowed to play with under Gast’s command were rats and other wild monsters that had been established as lab model organisms and no one cared about.
Tedric was the second in command. He was even in charge of R&D when Gast had to run errands and attend board meetings in the slowly developing Midgar. Despite of how dense he was with people, he was a damn good geneticist and that was the specialisation they most needed for the unknown lifeform they’d just dug up and knew nothing about.
Hojo was just below him in rank. Beneath this damn moron.
“We have work to do,” Hojo reminded him, tucking his circular glasses up the bridge of his nose. “We simply cannot allow worthless sentimentality to slow down our research. I hope you can understand that, doctor,” Hojo emphasised the last part.
Tedric chuckled, and it pissed Hojo off even more.
“Of course,” Tedric said with the softest, most genuine smile, but Hojo’s paranoia couldn’t tell whether the man was mocking him or not. It would make more sense if he did.
Contrary to Hojo’s dislike of him – which was greatly apparent to everyone, even Tedric himself – Tedric thought of him to be a very bright young man. Hojo was a biochemist, and Jocasta had started as one, but then specialised in cardiology when she picked an interest. He did have some questionable morals when it came to experiments – like feeding liquid mercury to a cripshay to see what happens, when it was more than painfully obvious that the creature would die – Tedric preferred to reward a young scientist’s curiosity rather than undermine it. He understood thirst for knowledge – curiosity was the very reason they all chose to become scientists in the first place.
“Considering you’re second in command, I suggest you focus,” Hojo added with no fear of talking to a senior like that. He didn’t fear Tedric. Tedric was probably the man feared the least.
But Tedric chuckled and approached Hojo, placing a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. Hojo almost flinched away, and the slightest glint of panic flashed in his eyes, but only for a second. Tedric chose to pretend he hadn’t noticed. Another obvious fact about Hojo – he didn’t like people touching him.
“Don’t you worry about R&D, it’s in good hands,” Tedric patted his shoulder. It almost made him feel like a child. “Besides, you are a bright young man with ambition,” Tedric said. He almost sounded like he believed it. “I bet you’ll be leading R&D before you know it,” he withdrew his hand and started walking upstairs. “Goodnight, Hojo! Try to get some rest, won’t you?”
Hojo glared daggers at his back. If a look could kill. Hojo would be killing this man fifty times a day. The man was obviously mocking him. He obviously didn’t believe that Hojo would ever lead R&D. Nobody believed in him, but he was going to prove them all wrong.
He had been standing in Tedric’s shadow since their university years. Him and Gast were always so undeniably brilliant, but naïve. They were failing to see the potential in everything they did. Hojo had countless ideas, but he was keeping them all to himself. He wouldn’t let any of them outshine him.
Not anymore.
Hojo watched him walk upstairs. He was probably going to sleep. He had a shared room with Jocasta after all. She would soon join him, he guessed.
Let them sleep. Let them sleep while I win the race. There was always a race when it came to science. It was all about who brought the best results – who got to prove their hypotheses correct. Gast hypothesised that Jenova was a Cetra – what a stupid idea.
She was far more than that.
Chapter 2: Ambush
Chapter Text
“I’m telling you, she’s not a Cetra!” Jocasta slammed a hand on the table between them.
Gast had just finished writing a report to the president. He had just returned from Midgar, and the president had requested a full report on what they had found so far about Jenova. Gast was convinced she was a Cetra even though they had no evidence whatsoever suggesting that.
Even though he was a dear friend, Gast ignored her entirely.
“What else could she possibly be?” Gast used the same argument for the umpteenth time.
“I don’t fucking know! She could be a fucking alien for all we know!”
“Language, doctor,” Gast shot her a glare – or the closest thing to a glare that this man could muster.
“Maybe you should listen to Dr Earnchester, for once, Gast,” Hojo frowned, sitting at the far end of the long table in the dining hall, reading another book he’d fished out from the old library of the manor. All five lead scientists had taken it upon themselves to read the entire library. It was some kind of competition between the five – Gast, Lucrecia, Hojo, Tedric, and Jocasta.
Jocasta had already finished a full bookcase, but Hojo had finished two. There were a lot more to go through. There was a huge room full of books in the basement and most were about old Cetra legends. Lucrecia had been overjoyed. It was the last pieces of information that she needed to finish her thesis that she had been working on for the past five years.
Gast sighed and eyed them both for a moment. Hojo was minding his own business – or at least pretending to be, turning another page from the old book on the desk in front of him, and Jocasta was glaring at Gast with that fire in her eyes.
Fortunately, Tedric walked in and interrupted their heated conversation.
“Lucrecia’s supervisor will be taking her on a field trip today for her thesis, so she will be unavailable for the next couple of hours at least,” Tedric informed them heading straight for the table.
There was a coffee machine and everybody’s designated mugs rested all around it. He had already emptied his fourth cup of coffee for today and it was barely afternoon. Tedric refilled his mug, not noticing Jocasta and Gast glaring at each other.
“Oh, and I just acquired the Western blot results. Luckily, the alien cells did not infect your cell line,” Tedric said, and he didn’t even realise his choice of words until Gast turned and glared at him instead. “E- Er, I mean, the Cetra’s cells… o- or something-”
Gast sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.
“Does everybody here believe she’s an alien?” Gast asked, glancing at both Jocasta, Tedric, and Hojo who finally lifted his eyes from the contents of his book and nodded. Tedric shrugged as if it was the most obvious thing and Jocasta kept glaring at him. Gast sighed once more and pulled up the report he’d been working on all night and tore it in half. “Fine. ‘Her origins remain uncertain.’ That’s what I’ll write.”
“Good!” Jocasta’s shoulders came loose, and she relaxed right away.
“Sorry, man, I know you were excited to tell the president we’re one step closer to bringing the Cetra back-” Tedric tried to say but Gast cut him.
“We might be!”
“I know, I know, but until we’re absolutely certain-” Tedric was cut again.
“We can’t be,” Jocasta said. “We have no documented sightings of the Cetra for the past… two thousand years. If we don’t have Cetra genetic material, we cannot cross Jenova’s with anything.”
“W- Well, that’s true-” Tedric was cut once more. It was getting annoying.
“Maybe they’re hiding,” Gast said. “Maybe there are too few of them left and in order to stay safe, they’re staying in the dark for now.”
“That could be. There’s no way to know,” Jocasta shrugged. Tedric drew in a deep breath to speak, but Gast beat him to it.
“I hear the Department of Administrative Research was established for the very reason of finding one,” Gast brought a hand to his chin.
“Well, they’ve obviously been useless,” Hojo commented.
“It is the oldest department of the Shinra Corporation,” Gast felt inclined to agree with the man for once.
“Speaking of the Department of Administrative Research,” Tedric finally got everybody’s attention. “Two Turks will be dropping by to get you any moment now,” Tedric turned at Jocasta who arched an eyebrow, and before she could ask, he added “Palmer had another heart-attack.”
She should have seen this coming. Apart from being one of the lead researchers of the JENOVA Project, she was also the Shinra family’s personal cardiologist. Jocasta rolled her eyes and groaned. Gast rubbed his forehead, realising that would only leave Tedric and Hojo to do the rest of today’s work because he still had to write that report – another fruitless day, so it seemed.
“I swear to Shiva, this man’s arteries will be completely ruined by the time he reaches his fifties,” Jocasta took off her lab coat, and handed it to her fiancé while he took out a bag that he’d rested nearby when he walked in the room.
“I packed a few necessities in case you’ll have to stay and monitor him for the night,” Tedric said, and she tried to take it from his hand, but he didn’t let her. “Come, I’ll take you to the backyard.”
She smiled at him lovingly. She should have known he wouldn’t let her carry it. Tedric rested her lab coat by the back of a chair and took her hand in his own while he carried the bag with the other. The two of them walked towards the door. The helipad was in the backyard.
Hojo felt like retching at the very sight of them holding hands.
“Easy there, lover boy. Me and my partner can escort the doctor just fine,” a voice came from the door.
Before the couple could exit the building, two men walked in, dressed in the familiar black Turk suit. A man with brown hair and facial hair around his cheekbones followed by his subordinate, a man with pitch black hair and brown-reddish eyes. Tedric seemed to recognise the first man as the two of them shook hands and smiled at each other.
“Veld! Haven’t seen you in… well…” Tedric hesitated.
“Your graduation, if I remember correctly-”
“Let’s not reminisce about that.”
“He did some pretty embarrassing things that day,” Veld turned at Jocasta and Tedric visibly tensed up. “He got so drunk, it was easy to convince him to do just about anything.”
“Oh no,” the other man beside him was trying not to start cackling like a maniac. He was way too familiar with Veld’s antics “did you make him put on the dress?” He turned at his partner.
“I made him put on the dress and I even drew pictures,” Veld was enjoying this more than he should be.
“VELD! Stop embarrassing me in front of my fiancé!” Tedric was redder than the carpet. “Do you really expect her to marry me now?!”
Jocasta wheezed and burst into laughter. “Of course, I will! I bet you were so cute in a dress! You gotta show me those pictures,” she teased, and Tedric felt like jumping into a hole on the ground and never coming out of it.
Veld laughed and so did the man beside him.
“Now, will you not introduce me to this fine gentleman, honey?” Jocasta glanced at her fiancé, extremely amused by the entire conversation.
“Nah, he’s too busy feeling sorry for himself,” Veld brought a hand forward for a shake. “Verdot Dragoon, newly appointed head of the Department of Administrative Research.”
“Oh! Congratulations,” Jocasta shook his hand and gave him a smile.
“Thank you, and this is my partner – my brother on the field, Vincent Valentine,” Veld introduced them, and Jocasta shook Vincent’s hand as well.
“Ma’am,” he nodded at her.
“Valentine…?” Jocasta was certain she knew someone else with the same last name. ‘Valentine’ wasn’t as common as most last names. “…I’m fairly certain I’ve heard that surname before…” she turned at Tedric “…a professor back in Mideel University, perhaps?”
“Isn’t it Lucrecia’s supervisor?” Tedric tried remembering. “Wasn’t it something with Grim- G- Grim-”
“Grimoire Valentine?” Vincent asked.
“Oh, yes! Precisely.”
“That’s my father,” Vincent nodded.
“You don’t say!”
“I thought you remind me of someone! You’re his spitting image!” Jocasta said.
Everybody and their mother had been telling him that since the very day he was born.
“Translational Xenobiology,” Tedric was once again reminded of all the heart attacks that module had given him that Professor Valentine taught. Still, “he was the best lecturer we had,” he added. “How come you didn’t follow his footsteps?”
People with parents deep into a career of biosciences – especially one with a position at such a prestigious university – would follow their parents’ lead.
Vincent chuckled. “He wasn’t very happy about me becoming a Turk, but he was still fairly supportive.”
“As every father should be,” Veld nodded. “Now, we better get going. They’re keeping the fat bastard on life support.”
Jocasta laughed. “Right.”
Veld took the bag from Tedric’s hand.
“W- Wait, I’ll escort you out-” Tedric tried to say but Jocasta cut him.
“It’s alright, darling. I know you have lots of work to do,” Jocasta turned and looked at him, taking a step closer, closing the gap between them. She brought her hands to his chest, fixing his loose, messily tied blue tie. She felt his arms slipping around her. Veld let an awkward cough signalling for his partner to stare elsewhere. “I’ll be back in about a day. I’m sorry you’ll have to take care of our babies-”
“Already?!” Veld couldn’t hold it back.
“She means our patented cell line,” Tedric clarified quickly, and Veld calmed down and turned his back on them once more. They had agreed he’d let Veld be the godfather should the moment ever come, and he almost felt utterly betrayed for a second. Tedric focused on her beautiful brown eyes.
“Don’t miss me too much,” Jocasta smirked.
“No promises,” Tedric caught her lips in a brief kiss and now the one to cough awkwardly was Vincent, only to receive Veld’s elbow on his stomach. He coughed even more.
“V- Vinnie and I will be waiting at the back…” Veld caught Vincent arm in arm and dragged him out, giving the two their much-needed privacy. He doubted they even heard him or even noticed them walk out.
The pair of Turks walked around the building towards the backyard.
“Damn, never could’ve guessed that nerd would get engaged before me,” Veld almost sounded jealous. He’d been seeing a cute girl lately but being a Turk and having a life were two entirely different things.
“He proposed. He probably got more balls than most of us,” Vincent commented.
“Certainly, more balls than you,” Veld teased, earning glare. “At least, I am seeing someone,” he sighed dreamily “prettiest girl in the whole wide world,” he stared at the distance behind the helicopter. Endless green fields that spread far beyond.
“Then where’s the ring?” Vincent asked sarcastically.
“Soon. Real soon, I’ll need help though,” Veld snapped out of his daydream and turned at his partner. “How do I tell her that I’m a Turk?”
“You haven’t even told her that?”
It made sense actually. It was a dangerous job. There had been countless times they’d both found themselves in the brink of death. It was the very reason why the Turks were paired up in two for every single mission they were assigned. Veld had saved his life as many times as he had saved his own.
“How can I-?!”
“Sorry to interrupt, boys, but I’m ready for take-off,” Jocasta’s voice came from behind and Veld tensed up right away.
He only hoped she hadn’t heard the entire thing, but something about the mischievous look on her face told him that she had.
“Right,”
Veld climbed the helicopter first, then Vincent, offering his hand for Jocasta to climb in and she gave him a smile in a silent thanks. Jocasta sat on one of the seats and Vincent strapped the belt around her for her.
“Thanks, b- but, I’ve done it before,” Jocasta kept her hands back, letting him do it for her since he’d offered. He was so damn close like this – if she hadn’t spoken to stop him and feel her warm breath fanning down his cheekbone, he wouldn’t have noticed how close to her he’d dared lean.
His entire face went red, and he lost his words. Of course, she knew how to strap herself on the seat of a helicopter. She had probably had to rush to Midgar for emergency operations like these a hundred times before.
“Uh- Uhm, a- apologies, I-”
“Thank you, though,” she gave him the sweetest smile and Veld didn’t fail to notice his partner embarrassing himself. Oh, he was so going to tease the hell out of him about it when they’d reach HQ.
Vincent tried to forget anything had happened – it was kind of impossible – and he sat back on his seat beside her own. Veld was on the opposite seat grinning at him, and he knew he’d fucked up.
They put on the headphones before the soldiers on the cockpit turned the engines on and lifted it up.
It didn’t take too long before Veld asked. She heard his voice through the headphones.
“Hey, Professor,” he started “what would you do if you were dating the love of your life, but he hasn’t told you he’s a Turk who can possibly die on every next mission?”
She snorted. “I’d smack the shit out of him.”
Vincent chuckled from beside her.
“You’re off to a good start,” he commented, and Veld winced.
“But I’m no good example,” Jocasta added. “If you’re certain she truly loves you, you should be honest with her. You should try your best to come back to her after every single mission – no matter how life-threatening or difficult it might be,” she grinned “the thing is, you simply don’t get to die. That’s a luxury you can no longer afford. Not after you’ve married someone and their life’s hanging on yours.”
She couldn’t imagine how it’d be if she married Tedric and the next thing she’d know he’d be gone. She couldn’t even imagine it. She didn’t want to. She looked up to see the smile Veld was giving her. She glanced at Vincent who was sitting beside her. He too had a soft smile on his face.
“Well said, doctor,” Vincent said.
“Please, call me Jo.”
༻◊۞◊༺
She operated on the man for seven hours – still shorter than most other operations that she had run in the past. Being the personal doctor of the Shinra family was the only way she could get to find herself and Lucrecia a spot in Shinra’s R&D. They were the only women in the entire department, but thankfully, the president didn’t seem to discriminate talent from gender – rather, whatever managers and directors he had assigned in each separate division seemed to follow that closed-mindedness.
Jocasta was exhausted by the time she walked out of the operation room. She took off the blue uniform. She discarded the bloody gloves and mask and the cloth that covered her hair. She washed her hands and gathered her stuff. Vincent was waiting for her outside. Veld had some extra work to do as the head of the Turks, and Vincent was assigned her protection for now. They were in the upper-level plate of sector two. Only three plates had been built so far, but the president was planning to make a total of eight by the start of the next decade.
It was terribly ambitious, but there was nothing that money couldn’t buy.
Jocasta met Vincent outside, sitting on one of the lounges meant for people that were waiting on other family members of their own. This was the newest and most advanced hospital of sector two.
She let out a relatively loud-for-a-lady yawn – but she barely cared. Her heels were literally murdering her feet, and all she wanted to do was sleep on the nearest available surface. It must have been night by now.
Vincent let down the newspaper he’d been trying to pay attention to. He – the second in command of the Turks – had just wasted seven hours, just sitting on his ass, doing nothing, while other Turks were dealing with Odin-knows-what. If it weren’t for Veld asking him to do this and the entire department being terribly understaffed, there was no way he’d be there. They had more than enough untrained rookies fit for the job.
Crimson eyes met her tiny form as she approached him with clumsy, careless footsteps. He folded the newspaper, placing it on the nearby tea table before standing up and approaching her.
“I trust it went well?” He already knew the answer. She had made quite a name for herself.
Dr Jocasta H. Earnchester. He had skimmed whatever files they had on her before heading for Nibelheim the same morning. She was the best cardiac surgeon in the region. The president trusted no one but her, and having a brother who couldn’t zip his mouth, was an extra reason to cling onto that woman. She had had the highest grades that Mideel University’s students had ever achieved. It was the best school on anything related to life sciences or medicine. High grades were never easily-earned – particularly from that school.
“Of course, it did, who do you think I am?” Typical response from an overly proud and condescending and arrogant scientist – he thought. She reached for that bottle of water that he was offering her. That man was unusually considerate for a Turk. “Thanks.”
“Come, I’ll take you to the Shinra Tower. President Shinra has offered to host you for the night.”
“After seven hours of standing on top of his brother’s open chest, that’s the least that he can do for me right now.”
Vincent chuckled and escorted her outside. The streets weren’t busy at this hour, late in the night. A car was waiting for them outside, parked by the sidewalk. Vincent let her in before something caught his attention. The tyres were… flattened. And then, a sudden shift in the air – he knew to recognise when he was being watched or when a bullet was coming for them. It must have been the trained instincts of a Turk who had already been in countless missions ever since he was no more than a seventeen-year-old boy. It would have been much easier for him to become a scientist like his father. It would have been much safer.
But where was the fun in that?
“Get down!” Vincent growled, wrapping an arm around her, and urging her to duck behind the car.
She let out a shout, and he looked all around, running his eyes around the area searching for the person who had shot them. The bullet missed them, crushing against the car’s front window. It was a company car. It was bullet proof. It could keep them covered unless they came from all fronts.
Vincent spotted a man in an elaborate spot by the window of a building. He took out his gun from the holster beneath his suit and shot the man perfectly in the head before he could shoot them again. Another gunshot came from elsewhere. She let out another shout. Vincent grabbed her, shielded her body with his own, and dragged her towards the narrow alley between the hospital and another building, using the wall as shield. He spotted another man just down the road, dressed plainly. No one would notice that he had two guns beneath his jacket. Vincent shot him in the shoulder. Another gunshot came from above.
“What the fuck is going on?!” Jocasta cried out. Hands shaking.
“We’re being ambushed.”
“No shit!”
They were surrounded. He could already tell.
Vincent wrapped an arm around her and forced her to stand behind him when five men and two women came dropping from the rooftops of the two buildings, surrounding them, pointing guns and blades at them.
They were all plainly dressed. Easily mistaken as citizens but something told him they weren’t going to be particularly easy to beat. There were seven of them.
Good ratio for one Turk.
Chapter 3: Run for Your Life
Chapter Text
“You might want to shut your eyes,” Vincent cocked his gun. “This is gonna be ugly.”
“Vincent, my work is opening up people’s chests and putting stuff in them. I can very well assure you, that whatever you do, it’s not gonna be terrifying enough to-”
A gunshot and Vincent catching her and dragging her out of the way were enough to make her shut up before he engaged all seven of them at the same time. Two dropped dead before she could blink. Vincent aimed for another, but the man moved, and his bullet only struck the man’s forearm. He still cried out in pain. Another was coming from behind him and a woman with a dagger would have sliced his throat if he hadn’t moved out of the way fast enough. He kicked her hand, making her drop the knife and shot her on the knee. She screamed and dropped down.
He decided she’d be the one he’d keep alive for questioning.
Vincent shot another man on the head before he even had the chance to attack him. He ran out of bullets and had no time to refill. He struck a man on the face with the back of his gun, hard enough to make him lose consciousness. Vincent kicked the woman’s knife up of the ground. He caught it midair, sending it flying straight between the eyes of another man who was approaching Jocasta. The man dropped down dead, and the blood splashed from his skull to her shirt.
Jocasta was terrified, confused, disgusted, oddly impressed and… it wasn’t supposed to be so warm this late at night, was it? Especially in Midgar’s heightened altitude.
Vincent made quick work of them. Two were left. Their hands were shaking, hesitating to attack him. Their friends’ blood lingered on his suit, his shirt, his sleeves, his hands.
He shot the one in the head, and the other turned his gun to Jocasta. Vincent shot him before he had the chance to pull the trigger, before he noticed the woman that he’d shot on the knee just a second ago. She’d pulled up a gun from a dead body, aiming it straight for Jocasta.
Vincent’s eyes widened. He cried out her name and fell between her and the bullet. He grunted when it struck his shoulder, but that was nothing that he hadn’t dealt with before. He heard footsteps. People were approaching.
“Vincent…?”
“There’s more,” Vincent kicked the woman in the head hard enough to knock her unconscious. Veld would know what to do with her. He’d kicked her hard enough to give the Turks enough time to find her.
“Your shoulder-” Jocasta didn’t fail to notice the bleeding hole on his suit even in the darkness of the alley.
Vincent wrapped an arm around her and urged her to hurry.
“No time for that right now, we gotta move.”
There was a door to the far end of the alley, seemingly locked and abandoned – probably some emergency exit door with a mechanical lock requiring some sort of passcode. Vincent didn’t so much as wince when he put on the PIN that he had memorised – amongst the countless of them – before dragging the heavy door open and letting her in.
She rushed inside and he joined her, shutting the door behind. The men chasing them lost them.
Jocasta was about to suggest they go back to the hospital, until she realised it’d be stupid to even suggest that. Of course, they wouldn’t be safe in the hospital. All she could think about and focus on was that bleeding wound on his shoulder. Surely, that man had just killed seven more armed members of a gang – if she had to guess – but they did try to kill them, so she wasn’t entirely mad at him for slaughtering them like animals.
That didn’t mean that she wasn’t shocked.
“We should be safe here for a while,” Vincent brought her in a room of an apartment building that seemed abandoned. He went straight for the window to check if they’d been followed. Luckily, they hadn’t.
The apartment was absolutely empty. No furniture or anything indicative of somebody living there. It didn’t even have power. The only source of light being whatever streetlights came from the window from beneath.
“Vincent, let me have a look on that shoulder,” Jocasta said.
“I’ll deal with it myself. I’m fi-ne,” he almost lost his step. The blood loss was already making his vision go blurry.
“Shit!” Jocasta rushed to him and wrapped his unharmed arm around her shoulders, easing him down on the floor with his back against the wall. “You’re not fine, you dumbass. You’re stuck with a doctor, at least let the doctor deal with the bullet you got in her stead.”
Vincent didn’t have the energy to argue. She pushed the jacket down his shoulders and unbuttoned his shirt. If everything wasn’t turning in his vision, he would have probably stopped her from undoing his tie and unbuttoning his shirt and pushing it down his shoulder. It wasn’t the first time he’d deal with a bullet on his own body while barely standing.
“How long till help arrives?” Jocasta asked. Vincent had already closed his eyes.
“Should be here any… moment now,” Vincent had already sent a distress signal with his phone. The Turks were using an encrypted wavelength that was almost impossible to detect.
“Good. I’ll stop the bleeding.”
Jocasta fumbled through her bag pulling out a full pack of sterile gauze. She started stuffing pieces of gauze in the hole on his shoulder. Vincent grunted and she winced. It really must have hurt like a motherfucker. Anybody else would’ve been screaming. Vincent merely grunted as if a bullet on the shoulder happened to him every Tuesday. He must have been holding back.
“I know, I’m sorry, but there’s no way I’m taking the bullet out in nonsterile conditions and without the right scissors,”
“I’m… familiar with… emergency… medical procedures,” Vincent said with quite the effort. Half-lidded eyes now almost entirely closed.
“Of course you are,” Jocasta should have expected nothing less. She tied a very tight bandage around his shoulder and torso. It was dark, but she still traced what felt like scars on his body. Still, another thing that shouldn’t surprise her.
Maybe he did get a bullet or a nasty cut or burn every once in a while. Being a Turk really was dangerous. She wouldn’t want to be the poor girl that Veld was dating.
She had buttoned his shirt back up. The bleeding had stopped but his head leaned to the side. Her eyes widened. He was passing out.
“No, no, no, no!” Jocasta had to make some noise. She had to keep him awake! His head landed on her shoulder, along with his entire weight. “Stay awake, dammit! You lost blood! If you pass out, not even my genius will be able to wake you back up!”
He snorted against her shoulder and she let out a sigh of relief.
“What? You don’t think I’m a genius? Do you even know how many women were in my class in the university back in ‘68?”
“Four… amongst fifty-eight men,” Vincent was even surprising himself with how well he’d memorised her file. Usually, the one to memorise everything they had to know about a mission was Veld.
“Huh, I bet you got a full disclosure,” Jocasta arched an eyebrow and awkwardly wrapped an arm around his shoulders, unsure of what to do with the man leaning against her. She knew he couldn’t help it. He had gotten that bullet for her. She’d sure as hell let him rest against her shoulder all he wanted. “Seriously, though, you really need to stay awake. I’d try telling you something interesting, but I’m pretty sure you and I both have a very different definition of interesting.”
If she started talking to him about science stuff, he’d sure as hell fall asleep.
“Your interesting is probably… somewhere between the lines of… cells and… tissues and… weird, immortal cell lines, that I… never understood how they’re immortal.”
“Oh! Well, then, let me explain how immortal cell lines work. First you extract tissue from a consenting patient with the desired genetic characteristics, and then you put it in a medium designed on its specific metabolic needs, for example, certain cancer cell lines require a protein called glutamine because it-”
Vincent cut her with an obviously fake and ridiculously loud snore.
“Oh, you little shit,” it was impossible to resist smacking his shoulder, forgetting entirely that he had a bullet in there. Vincent flinched and let out another deep grunt that reverberated from his chest to her own. “For Bahamut’s sake, I’m so sorry! I totally forgot that you have a bullet in there with how much of an annoying smartass you’re being,”
Vincent laughed weakly against her shoulder. The very sound of it was enough to forget why she had tried smacking him in the first place.
“Reminded me of… dad’s long… boring… boring…” he emphasised “…monologues.”
“Boring, huh?” Jocasta grinned. Absentmindedly, her hand reached for his face, brushing his soft, black hair away from his sweaty forehead. “You tell me something interesting then.”
He frowned trying to think of something. It took him long enough to respond. He made her think he’d passed out, but he spoke before she could attempt to wake him again.
“Isn’t it… absolutely… moronic for a… Turk to… date?”
Was he asking for his friend or for himself? He couldn’t tell. He had avoided anything that could be regarded as a meaningful relationship. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been with a woman before. He had, but none of it was of any sentimental value.
It was stupid. There wasn’t any point. For all he knew he could die tomorrow or even right now. What was even the point of contemplating something he already knew the answer for?
Regrettably, that was the first thing that came to mind right now.
“Well, I got you one better,” Jocasta grinned. “Isn’t it absolutely moronic for anyone to date?”
At that, he pulled his head up to look at her in utter confusion. Maybe he was hallucinating, but why would a betrothed woman even pose that question? She and her husband-to-be were scientists. There wasn’t anything threatening either of their lives. They could have the happy ending that Turks and soldiers couldn’t even dream of.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love Tedric, but let’s be honest, who in their right mind would ever bring a child into this world?”
He blinked as if he’d never questioned that. As if he’d never pondered that.
“Food for thought, huh?” Jocasta smirked. “I got you another: do we live to eat, or do we eat to live?”
He blinked at her once more. He really wished Veld would come get him. Soon.
That woman was so fucking weird.
The door opened and Veld barged in with two more soldiers.
“There they are!” Veld rushed for Vincent, dropping down on one knee beside him. Vincent had that sheepish look he’d get every time he’d experience a mild blood loss. “For Shiva’s sake, Vincent! I send you on the easiest mission available so that you don’t get the slightest injury, and you still ended up with a bullet?!” Veld growled wrapping Vincent’s arm around his shoulders. Jocasta wrapped the other around her own and together they pulled him up. Vincent let out a deep groan. Head dangling to the side.
“Please just take me back to HQ,” Vincent protested.
Veld let out a deep sigh of relief. If he had enough energy to whine, he was fine.
“I trust you made his life a living hell?” Veld said with a grin, and she grinned back whilst the two of them dragged poor Vincent out of the room while the soldiers were opening a secure way for them out of the building.
“You bet I did.”
༻◊۞◊༺
Veld said they had their own medic in the clinic of their HQ who could take care of Vincent’s wound so there was no need for her to do much. Jocasta still sat outside the clinic. It was probably stupid to worry about him. He was even making fun of her despite almost bleeding to death. He was alright. She was sure he’d endured countless bullets as a Turk already and this certainly wouldn’t be the last.
But she still felt terrible. She was so petrified when they all ganged up on them with their weapons pointed at them. Why would anybody even come after her? She was just a doctor. It wasn’t like she was rich, neither was she the daughter or illegitimate child of some rich family. Not to her knowledge – at least.
She didn’t know much beyond science. She couldn’t think of a reason that someone would come after her. Veld said they’d captured the woman with the shattered knee – the one that Vincent had left alive for them to question, but she hadn’t yet opened her mouth. They’d asked her to provide them with any reasons that anybody might have to come after her, but she didn’t have much to give them to work with.
“We have a helicopter available to take you home, if you so wish,” Veld’s voice came from her right.
Jocasta lifted her head from her hands, and she looked up to see him approaching. It was way past midnight and Veld had contacted the president. The Turks would keep an eye on her in their HQ where she was safest.
“Even though, today’s events warrant a Turk to join you for extra security at all times,” he settled on a chair beside her, right outside the clinic where Vincent was. “I bet all my money that the president will be assigning someone your security soon.”
Jocasta groaned.
“I have absolutely nothing that anybody might want! I’m just a doctor, for crying out loud!”
“I believe you,” Veld knew everything there was to know about her. Her record was clear. “But the president holds you in high regard, and Shinra’s got a lot of enemies.”
Jocasta groaned in frustration before realising that she hadn’t even washed Vincent’s blood off her hands. It didn’t take long to notice Veld staring at her hands as well.
“Do you have somewhere where I can-”
“Of course,” Veld stood up, urging her to follow him. She joined him down the hall towards the offices upstairs.
“I don’t think I can fly back to Nibelheim without making sure Vincent’s alright,” Jocasta admitted.
Veld chuckled. “He’s tough. You don’t need to worry. This isn’t the first bullet he’s taken.”
“No shit,” Jocasta laughed. “He took down seven guys on his own and the only reason that bullet got him is me,” she still felt terrible about that. It must have hurt so much. “I’ll sleep on a couch if I have to, it’s fine. It’s better than sleeping on a lab counter. Don’t get me started on the absurd back pains that’s given me.”
Veld laughed. “They can’t be as bad as the ones I get from passing out on my desk. We have enough couches. I’m sure we can accommodate you in one.”
He truly appreciated her concern for his partner, so much that she was willing to sleep on an uncomfortable couch after an undoubtedly exhausting day.
The offices were empty. There were only two secretaries around the communications desks answering calls and coordinating missions. Jocasta was willing to bet they kept people on those desks 24/7. Veld’s office was the only one closed off at the far end of the large room. Veld approached the kitchenette which had all the necessities from snacks, to coffee, to tea, a small fridge, a microwave, and three shelves filled with mugs and whatnot.
“There’s a restroom just down the hall to your left, but in the meantime,” Veld poured himself a cup of coffee. “Coffee, tea? Are you hungry? I could order you something, it’s on me,” he pulled out his phone.
He wouldn’t be going home tonight either, so it seemed. He was the only Turk available to keep an eye on her, but even if she wasn’t there, there was no way in hell he’d leave Vincent alone in the clinic.
“Sure,” she did see seven people get slaughtered – and she was certain she still had some random people’s blood on her shirt – but she was famished. “Do you know any good place around here?”
It was surprising how calm she was. Any other woman her age would sitting on that couch, shaking all over, cocooned into a blanket with a mug of her most comforting tea.
He had to remind himself that scientists were a different breed. Having blood on her hands must have been as common to her as it was to a Turk. She wasn’t only a scientist. She was a surgeon as well.
Veld hid his surprise quite well.
“There’s this place that makes the sickest pasta.”
“Perfect,” she snapped her fingers “get me a carbonara,” she gave him a smile before turning around to head for the restroom and get cleaned up.
By the time she returned, food had arrived. She had washed Vincent’s blood off her hands, splashed some water on her face, mentally noting to herself to ask Veld if she could call back to the manor, let Tedric know that she wouldn’t be coming back soon. Knowing him, he’d stay awake and wait for her.
“Is it alright if I call back to the manor?” Jocasta’s hand fished out her phone that laid abandoned somewhere in her bag. “I’d like to let Tedric know I won’t be coming back for the night.”
Veld pulled out his own phone from a back pocket and handed it to her. “Use mine. It’s safer.”
She gave him a smile and nodded.
Veld watched her as she fended a bit further away and called back to her fiancé. A smile spread on his lips as well and looked down at the food that he had laid out on one of the tea tables on the lounge. He was starting to wish he had what they had. He wished he could give Varris those late-night calls, knowing that she’d pick it up, knowing that she’d stay awake waiting for him to call and let her know that he was alright, and make sure that she was alright.
It'd be selfish of him to expect her to even want to marry a Turk. It was selfish of him to take her out on all those dates in the first place.
“Thanks, Veld,” Jocasta snapped him out of it, handing him back his phone and he returned the smile, tucking it back in the same back-pocket. She settled on the couch beside him. “Tedric’s relieved you’re with me. How did you two even meet? He’d mentioned he was acquainted with a Turk, but I never caught the name.”
“It’s a rather cliché story. We both grew up together in Kalm. Same school, same class, you know how it goes,” Veld shrugged. He didn’t mind the small talk over some food. “How did you two meet?’
“Mine’s even more cliché than yours,” Jocasta chuckled. “We met at Mideel. He was on his fourth year when I first started. The university gave the opportunity for whoever was on the last year of their degree to boost their grades by mentoring the newest students.”
“Ah, so it’s a student-teacher type of cliché,” Veld grinned, and her cheeks got a bright red.
“H- He wasn’t my teacher!”
“I bet you gave him the highest rating to boost his grades,” Veld laughed, and she smacked his shoulder and he only laughed even more.
“I should have known you’d be as much of a smartass as your partner!” Jocasta’s face was redder than the marinara sauce of Veld’s pasta.
“Nobody beats Vincent’s capability to get on people’s nerves,” Veld said.
“I’ll say! He was bleeding to death and somehow still had the nerve to make fun of me!”
“There was this one time he’d taken five bullets, multiple burn marks and shrapnel all over his stomach, and you know what he said when he came crawling out of it?” Veld said and she was actually concerned but amused at the same time. Veld put on the cold, distant, dramatic, broody look that Vincent usually had on his face and cleared his throat “I’m fine,” he even made his voice thicker, and Jocasta burst out laughing.
“I can’t with this man!” Jocasta wanted to smack the shit out of him next time she’d see him. She didn’t know the man for more than a day, but she already felt like she’d known him for years. “He said the same shit! I’m fine. I’ll take care of this myself,” Jocasta impersonated him too and Veld almost choked on the final pinch of pasta. “Next thing I knew he was dropping down on the floor.”
“Sounds like my dear Vinnie,”
“Are you two making fun of me?”
Veld and Jocasta snapped out of it right away, only to look up and see Vincent in his entirely bloody and ruined white shirt and suit. He had a frown and a borderline annoyed look on his face, but other than that, he looked fine and utterly exhausted.
“V- Vincent!”
“What the hell are you doing here?! You should be in bed recovering!” Veld scolded him right away. “For fuck’s sakes, Vincent, if you don’t go lie down right now, I’ll-”
“Gun and Powder returned from their seven-month long mission and they… well, they brought enough people to occupy all available beds in the clinic,” Vincent explained calmly.
“Shit!” Veld drew it out. He abandoned his almost finished pasta on the table and he jumped up on his feet. He stormed out of the room in a rush and Jocasta was left watching him in question.
“Uh… is… everything alright?” Jocasta asked, unsure whether he could even answer that question. It must have been classified information and she was still considered a civilian.
“Should be fine. They did complete their mission,” Vincent slouched down on the couch beside her letting out a long sigh of tiredness. His eyelids already felt heavy.
“Right,” Jocasta reached for the third box of food – Veld hadn’t told her, but she was willing to bet he’d ordered that for Vincent. “Here, you should eat before passing out at least,” she handed it to him, along with a plastic fork. “How’s your shoulder?”
“Nothing I haven’t handled before.”
Predictable response.
Thankfully, his injury was reduced to a scar, more irritating than it was painful after the Turk medic pulled the bullet out and cast cura on it. He should be able to eat on his own just fine. Jocasta was relieved to see him getting this over with so quickly – yet once again reminding her that this was just another Tuesday for a Turk.
“Also, Gun and… Powder? Gunpowder?!” She tried not to laugh. She had a feeling Vincent wouldn’t appreciate her making fun of his subordinates.
“It’s their nicknames. Some people prefer being called by their nicknames after joining the Turks,” Vincent clarified.
“Oh,” she realised she didn’t know anything about the Turks.
There were multiple rumours that they were doing all kinds of dirty work for Shinra – from murdering whoever the president pointed his finger on, to actually protecting people by bringing down gangs, and ruining crime lords from the inside. Jocasta didn’t know what to believe, but after meeting those two, she felt inclined to think that there was some truth in all the rumours either way. Somebody had to do the dirty work for better or for worse.
Vincent did kill seven people in a matter of minutes and now he was eating with their blood on his clothes as if it was the most normal thing to happen. She didn’t think of him any less – he had saved her life. He had taken a bullet for her. That was the most that anybody had ever done for her. But there was enough reason to think that her normal was far more different than his own.
“Do you have a nickname?” She asked and he paused eating for a second. He didn’t want to contemplate what she’d think of him when she’d find out what that was. Vincent continued eating, focusing his attention anywhere else but her. He obviously didn’t want to respond to that. “Right,” she picked it up fast. “Let me guess then,” she brought a hand to her chin. “You did manage to kill seven people in less than two minutes…” he did tense up when she brought that up “…and you did so fast!” She snapped her fingers when an idea struck her. “The Gunslinger!”
The look that he was giving her was enough to tell that she wasn’t even close.
“T- The… the Quick Pistol!”
He snorted. “Your name-picking skills need some work.”
“Hey!” She tried bumping his shoulder but stopped herself just in time. She wouldn’t repeat the same mistake again, no matter how frustrating he could be. The one laughing this time was him. “Y- You can’t blame me! The coolest names I know are the names of genes and most of them make absolutely no sense.”
“Got an example?” Vincent arched an eyebrow.
Oh, he was really asking for it.
“Sonic,”
He blinked.
“The hedgehog,”
He laughed.
“I know, right?! No way there’s a gene named after a character, but there you have it. I don’t blame the man either. Imagine spending your entire life trying to identify a gene and once you do, you sit there, at 4 AM, barely keeping yourself awake after sixty-seven hours in the lab. At that point, you’ve earned every right to name your gene whatever the fuck you want.”
He chuckled. “Makes sense.”
She realised she’d been talking his ear off about nonsense, so she made up her mind to stop for now. He’d finished his dinner before long. Jocasta gathered the empty boxes. He offered to help her, but she glared at him and barked at him to remain seated. He obliged her.
When she returned to the couch, he’d fallen asleep. His head had rolled back on the cushions. So exhausted, he’d fallen asleep whilst on a seating position. It must have been so uncomfortable.
It wasn’t difficult to decide what to do.
Gently and careful not to wake him, Jocasta led his body to lie down making sure his unharmed shoulder stayed on top. He didn’t resist at all. She settled a couple of pillows beneath his head and threw over him the blanket that Veld had brought for her a moment ago. Messy black bangs of hair fell on his face. He had already drifted off to a deep, much needed sleep. She did not regret letting him sleep on the couch. It was the least that she could do for the man who had kept her safe at the expense of himself.
Jocasta smiled down at him, brushing his hair away from his face as gently as she could. She knew he was exhausted – he wouldn’t be waking up soon – but he was still a Turk and by default, he probably slept lightly. He looked so peaceful like this. She could have never guessed this man was capable of killing if she only had the picture of him sleeping so peacefully as he did now.
“Thank you, for today, Vincent,” Jocasta settled down on a nearby armchair. She took off her heels and gathered her legs beneath her, leaning back, making herself comfortable on the armchair. “For saving my life.”
Sleep took her before she knew it.
Chapter 4: Crash
Chapter Text
She felt strangely comfortable by the time she began to stir. There was the buzz of multiple people talking and walking all around. She guessed morning had arrived and the building must have been full of all the people that were supposed to be working there.
But that meant that she was there, sleeping for all to see.
Jocasta snapped out of her sleep, and urged herself to sit up right away, only to be blinded by the morning sun that rained in from every window. She groaned and brought her hands to her face, rubbing her eyes tiredly.
But why the hell was she lying down on the couch? She was certain that she had fallen asleep on the armchair and let the couch for Vincent. Unless he woke up sometime later in the night or early in the morning – and like the selfless little bastard that he was – he picked her up and settled her on the couch – ignoring completely his injured shoulder.
She wanted to smack him once again.
“Selfless motherfuck-”
“Are you referring to the same selfless motherfucker that I think you do?” A female voice came, and Jocasta pulled her face from her hands, and she looked up, blinking a few times to adjust to the morning light.
It was a woman dressed in the standard Turk suit. She had long, platinum-white hair wrapped in two ponytails on each side of her head. She certainly looked younger than her.
“How would I know which selfless motherfucker you’re referring too?” Jocasta arched an eyebrow.
“Does his first and last name start with a ‘V’?” She leaned uncomfortably close, and Jocasta leaned back to keep some space between them.
“Uh… y- yes…?”
“Fuck yeah! We’re talking about the same bastard!” The girl exclaimed. “He was so embarrassed when I caught him sleeping on that couch like a pig while our poor gal here was sleeping so uncomfortably on this armchair,” she fell back on said armchair and crossed her legs.
“Is Vincent alright? Where is he?” Jocasta asked before even questioning why those were the only two questions that mattered. “I- I mean… well,” there were a million more relevant things to ask about like when am I going back to Nibelheim? Or any information on the people who tried to kill me? But no, like a total idiot, she asked if Vincent was alright.
Of course, he was alright! He’s a goddamn Turk!
The girl – younger though she was – seemed to pick up on it because she grinned and leaned close again, to get a better look at her as if she was assessing her. As if she was trying to figure out all there was about her with a single, close, threatening look. She almost looked like a little sister, checking out her older brother’s girlfriend.
Wait, what?!
“Interesting,” she said, squinting her eyes, leaning closer, propping her chin on top of her hand – elbow planted on top of her knee.
“Uhh-’
“Powder! Coffee’s arrived!”
A male voice came from behind and the girl jumped up off her seat and rushed over at the man standing behind with two coffees. Powder attacked the man, snatching the coffee from his hand, and slurping it up with the straw like it was her lifeline.
“Apologies. Powder can be a heinous bitch if she doesn’t have her morning latte,” the man said. Dark hair, brown eyes, messily tied black tie and the usual Turk outfit, only his was messy. It was unlike Veld and Vincent who kept their ties, their shirts, their jackets, their hair to perfection. This one had messy hair and half his white shirt wasn’t even tucked beneath his pants.
The girl paused slurping up her coffee to bark at the man who took a seat on the same armchair.
“Hey! You’re a heinous bitch!” before resuming whatever she was doing with her coffee.
“See?” He chuckled, handing the other coffee to Jocasta. She noticed his thumb, index, and middle fingers of the left hand were prosthetics, covered in a black leather case and a single small, yellow materia lingered on top. She was certain there must have been an epic story behind that. “Didn’t know what to get ya, but you look like a sweet frappe type,”
That was unsettlingly accurate.
“I- I am! Wow, how did you-”
“He’s good at reading people,” Powder cut in again.
“The coffee preference tells a whole lot about people,” the man nodded, and Jocasta chuckled.
She took a sip from her coffee and sat straight, putting on her heels that lingered on the floor nearby.
“You’re… Gun, I assume?” Jocasta asked.
“You’ve already heard of the Gunpowder duo?” Gun smirked.
“Vincent mentioned you guys last night.”
“Of course, he did,” Powder smirked. “Daddy Vinnie is our mentor.”
Jocasta did a double-take trying to register the nickname – Shiva, she hoped it was a nickname. Powder definitely looked younger than she was. She couldn’t possibly be…
“Powder, what have I told you about calling him that in front of other people?” Gun turned at his partner.
“That he adores it?”
He’s had that conversation with Powder millions of times and adding one more wouldn’t make a difference. Gun sighed heavily, tiredly, turning at Jocasta. “You’ve no idea how many of his relationships she’s ruined just by calling him that.”
Jocasta laughed, slightly relieved – wait, why am I relieved?
“Right, time to escort the doctor back,” Gun stood up after checking the watch around his wrist. He pointed a finger at Powder. “You stay here and try not to burn down the HQ while I’m gone, alright P?”
“No promises,” she grinned, and he groaned.
“Brat.”
Jocasta followed the man, picking her bag and waving at Powder.
“Give Vincent and Veld my thanks, will you?”
“I’ll definitely let Daddy Vinnie know that you got the hots for him!”
“WHAT?!” Jocasta almost rushed back to the girl, only for Gun to grab her forearm and continue dragging her away.
“She’s just messing with you,” Gun said.
“I- I don’t have the h- hots for Vincent! I’m engaged!”
“I know, I know, don’t let her get to your head. She does that to everyone. Now, c’mon.”
༻◊۞◊༺
“I don’t usually have a knack for hurting women but… trying to kill a doctor who’s just finished a seven-hour surgery goes a bit far, doesn’t it?”
Veld had already wasted too much time on this. Of all the five other bastards that had attacked them last night, Vincent had for some reason decided to keep alive one of the only women in the group, making Veld’s job as an interrogator substantially more difficult.
The woman, with bloody, sweaty dark hair that fell all over her face, a bloody lip, a bruised eye, twice its original size, some nails missing from her tied hands on the arms of her chair. Tied and beaten, and exhausted. Her blood lingered on his black leather gloves.
“I’ll ask one more time,” Veld picked the pincers from the nearby table. A bright light shone on top of her. “Why did you try to kill Dr Earnchester?”
“I- I don’t… I don’t know…”
Veld rolled his eyes and sighed heavily, starting to pluck the remaining nails off her fingers.
“No! Please! I’m saying the truth, I don’t know!”
He stopped to hear the rest.
“I seriously don’t know! I just… I just knew… me and the others… we knew that we had to kill her. We had to!”
She looked terrified and panicking and she couldn’t be fooling him. He knew how people looked like when they were lying. This one wasn’t lying. The terror in her eyes was genuine.
“Why?”
The terror was replaced with… confusion. She shook her head.
“I… I… I- I don’t know, I…”
Veld sighed heavily and shook his head. This was pointless. He tossed away the pincers. He took off the gloves and tossed them as well on the table and walked of the room. Vincent was standing outside with his back against the wall, arms crossed against his chest, an unphased look on his face. He stood straight when Veld walked out and followed him down the hall.
“Any leads?” Vincent asked and Veld shook his head.
“She doesn’t know jackshit.”
Vincent expected as much. He handed Veld a folder. He opened it up right away and started checking the pictures inside.
“The forensics team found something interesting on the bodies.”
Veld arched an eyebrow. They were pictures drawn from certain spots on the bodies of the people that had attacked them last night. A tattoo of a behemoth on one’s shoulder, a tattoo of Bahamut on another. Those were familiar marks of gangs, but those two in particular, were opposing gangs. There was no way they worked together – and if taking out a harmless doctor was such an important task – even then, they wouldn’t join hands.
“Are you suggesting two gangs that butcher each other on the regular joined hands for a single night just to kill a random cardiologist?” Veld frowned and turned at his partner. Vincent turned the page revealing the other bodies.
“Four of them were gang members. The rest… well… they were just civilians leading seemingly normal lives. None of them were related to each other in any way. They hadn’t so much as exchanged a word.”
“That doesn’t make any fucking sense, Vincent,” Veld snapped the folder closed. He stopped walking halfway down the hall and he turned and faced him. “You’re telling me, that a bunch of strangers just collectively decided one night to kill Jocasta? Why? We don’t have anything on her.”
It did strike him as odd how plainly everybody was dressed that night. They really did look like civilians.
Vincent shook his head. “I’m as confused as you are,”
༻◊۞◊༺
The helicopter had just taken off. Jocasta was glad to see Midgar grow smaller by the distance, but she was hoping she’d see Veld and Vincent again one day. Gun had settled on the seat beside her and there were two soldiers on the cockpit.
They hadn’t reached too far from Midgar when the chopper started losing altitude. A sudden shudder would have sent her whole body to the cockpit if she wasn’t strapped to the seat.
“What the hell?!” Gun pressed the intercom in his headphones to open the channel to the pilots. “The hell’s going on over there?!”
The controls were beeping loudly, and it looked as if the co-pilot was trying to snap the pilot out of whatever trance he’d been caught in.
“What are you doing?!” The man cried out, gripping the pilot’s shoulder, shaking him, trying to grab the lever himself but the pilot’s grip was tight and firm, and he wouldn’t let go.
Another shudder, the controls beeped louder. Gun unstrapped himself from the seat, barely managing to make it to the cockpit. The Turk pulled out his gun, planning to shoot the pilot. The man wasn’t snapping out of it whatever he tried. He hated it, but he had no choice. The soldier cried out for him to stop.
It was a mess, and Jocasta thought that this must have been the worst day of her life.
Just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, their helicopter crushed with another.
Jocasta shut her eyes when the helicopter came crashing down. Tedric’s was the only face that she could see.
༻◊۞◊༺
She didn’t know how many hours later it was. Maybe it was only minutes. It smelled of smoke, but there was a loud buzz in her ears, and she couldn’t hear anything beyond that. Half lidded eyes started at people rushing towards her. She couldn’t make out what they were saying. Her vision was blurry. Her head radiated with pain. Something hot and wet slipped down her forehead and then she felt it – an unbelievably excruciating pain coming from her stomach. She wanted to wince, maybe even scream, but she was so tired. So, very tired.
She must have lost blood. That would explain the exhaustion and the wound on her stomach. She didn’t want to know how big that was. She didn’t want to know whether she’d die or survive this. She was too tired to think.
The men approached in haste. She was starting to recognise them – or at least, one of them, the one closest to her. Red eyes met her own. A concerned look on his face. She read his lips. He was calling out her name.
Vincent got no response. The ambulance was there. Veld was there. The two soldiers from the cockpit were dead, along with all the passengers of the other chopper that had collided with this one. Gun was in grave condition and an ambulance was already rushing him towards Midgar.
“Jocasta! Can you hear me?!”
No response. He expected as much. Metallic debris had pierced her stomach. Blood slipped down the corners of her lips. More blood came rolling down her temple. If Gun had sent that emergency signal any minute later, she’d be done for.
“You’re gonna be okay… you’re gonna be alright, you’re gonna make it…”
Why was he even getting so worked up over this? He had joined the Turks to save people. He was wearing that damn suit to butcher all the bad guys and protect the ignorant and innocent. He had been a Turk for more than a decade, but why the hell was he so bad at it?
They had failed. Their job was to keep her safe and they had failed miserably. He had failed. She was assigned to him. Vincent looked back at the ambulance. The nurses were taking too long, and she was bleeding dangerously so.
Vincent picked her up. She winced at the movement, but he had no time for the nurses to arrive with the stretcher. He pulled her out of whatever remained of the helicopter and carried her towards the ambulance. Veld was moving back and forth, barking orders at the soldiers, searching for survivors. Searching for whatever the hell caused this, losing his mind over it because they were coming up with nothing. No clues. No leads. As if by chance and possible lack-of-coordination, two helicopters that happened to be in the air at the same time collided for no apparent reason.
“I found her!” Vincent called out. Her blood stained his hands, his new shirt. She wasn’t going to be the first woman he’d failed to save. She wasn’t going to be the first person to die in his arms. He had lost many. He had failed many and he never wanted a repeat of it but no matter what he’d do, he’d just keep failing.
“Shit,” Veld rushed to them both. He took a better look at her wound. “Shit!” He cried out, glaring at the nurses. “Hurry, the fuck up!”
“Sir!”
How the fuck was he going to face Tedric now? How the fuck was he ever going to face his friend if his very fiancé died in his watch?!
Vincent climbed the ambulance and placed her on the stretcher. The nurses started doing everything they could right away. He tried getting off to help Veld with this mess, but Veld cut him.
“No. Go with her. I’ll wrap things up around here.”
༻◊۞◊༺
“So, in order to turn the irradiator on, you simply put the key in the hole and turn it to the ‘ON’ option…”
“Obviously,” Hojo sounded irritated. How much of an idiot did Tedric cut him out to be?!
A truck had just delivered a couple more lab equipment and Gast, Tedric, Hojo and Lucrecia were testing them out. They had seeded another batch of JENOVA cells that were ready to go through all kinds of treatments and radiation would be one of them. Tedric and Gast hypothesised that the cells would die and Hojo – as always – hypothesised the exact opposite.
“…and once the screen switches, you can program it how many seconds you want your treatment to last, so assuming the machine produces naught point naught four Gray per second and say for example you want to treat your cells with two Gray, the treatment should last about-”
“Forty-eight seconds, yeah, yeah, I get it,” Hojo was getting impatient, tapping his foot on the stone floor incessantly.
“Hold on, let me think it over…” Tedric looked at a random spot in the wall and Hojo groaned. “Ah yes! Exactly forty-eight seconds. Well done!” Tedric patted him in the back hard enough to force him to take a step forward and Hojo growled and glared at him, but Tedric didn’t even notice as he turned his attention back on the machine. “Now, let’s see-”
The familiar buzz came from his phone that lingered in the pocket of his lab coat. Tedric thought that maybe it was Jocasta. Maybe she was now departing from Midgar and probably thought to let him know. He was almost convinced when he saw Veld’s number. It must have definitely been her. She was on her way.
He knew she’d be thrilled to try out the new equipment. Lucrecia and Gast were in the other room, testing out the new hoods and mako containers.
“Give me a second to take this,” Tedric said, and Hojo sighed heavily and waved at him to do whatever the hell he wanted. He had wasted his time massively today anyway.
Tedric picked up the call, interrupted almost immediately by whatever the man on the other line told him. Tedric’s eyes widened and for once, he shut his mouth – much to Hojo’s delight.
But there was more to it. The flask of cells that he was holding dropped from his hands and crashed on the floor – thankfully it was plastic, and it didn’t break – but Hojo still made a dive for it.
“Careful, you imbecile!” Before Hojo could continue cursing at him, Tedric was already rushing out the door. He hadn’t even heard him. He probably hadn’t even noticed dropping the flask. Just what the hell was so important that he’d forgotten all about their precious cells?!
Whatever it was, it didn’t pique Hojo’s interest at all.
Tedric rushed to the other room to find Lucrecia. He couldn’t breathe. Was he having a panic attack? Possibly. He hadn’t had one of those since university. His fingers clenched around his phone trying to stop his hand from shaking as he barged in the lab where Lucrecia and Gast were.
How the hell was he supposed to tell her that her sister – his fiancé – his love, his woman – she could very well not make it through the next few hours?! How does one break such news?!
He was already sweating and breathing hard and shaking all over.
Lucrecia and Gast both turned to look at him in question. He didn’t look well.
“Tedric? Are you alright?” Gast asked.
“Is everything okay?” Lucrecia asked worriedly.
Tedric shook his head shakily.
“Lucrecia… Jocasta… she’s… the helicopter on her way here, it… it crashed…”
Lucrecia gasped. She brought her hands to her mouth. Tears filled her eyes. Her hands started shaking. Gast’s eyes widened.
“What do you mean?!” Gast cried out. “Is she… is she…”
“Veld said…” a tear slipped down Tedric’s cheek. He covered his face in shame, taking off his glasses, trying not to sob “…we should be… prepared for the worst- I- I gotta go! I’m leaving right now, sorry, Gast. The lab’s yours, I-”
“I’m coming with you!” Lucrecia wept, wiping her cheeks, rushing out of the room and upstairs hastily.
“Gast, I-”
“It’s fine, Tedric, dammit, why are you even still here?! Go!” Gast scolded him and Tedric was running out before he knew it.
Hojo was curiously entering the lab, staring at Lucrecia and Tedric running away with an arched eyebrow.
“What are they so worked up about?” Hojo doubted there was anything more important than the JENOVA Project.
Gast sighed heavily. He sat down on a nearby stool and took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
“Can you – for once – even pretend to be sympathetic?” Gast sounded like he’d reached his limits with this man. He could have sworn, he’d never met a more apathetic man in the entire three decades of his life.
Hojo frowned. “What is even the point of that?”
Chapter 5: Rush
Chapter Text
It was one of the quickest jobs that he ever remembered taking over. He had finished it in just nine hours. Other jobs took days – or even months, but he didn’t have months to waste. He didn’t even have a day. Frankly, he thought he had wasted too much time either way.
There were so many bodies covering the floor, the couches, the tables, the podium. It was an underground bar. A bunch of outlaws running a ‘business’ of Mako trafficking. All rich junkies of sector two would gather there, gamble their whole lifesavings for a shot of Mako and a possible ticket to insanity. No one really knew quite yet what the long-term effects of Mako poisoning could be. It was a new type of fun. A new kind of addiction that all emerging crime lords were taking advantage of.
The second they realised a Turk had entered the vicinity, the high-as-fuck civilians were escorted back to their homes and Vincent was left there with thirty men, pulling out guns and rifles and blades of all kinds with their boss ordering them around. Vincent guessed it was the entire gang.
He had wasted a whole lot of time trying to find this place. He had enough frustration to take out.
The night was still young when he was done slaughtering them one by one like animals.
There was blood everywhere. The familiar sticky, crimson liquid lingered on his fingers, his face, his white shirt that was now ruined – three ruined shirts in two days – at this rate, he’d be spending his entire salary on white shirts. He would have switched to utter black if that was compliant to the Turk dress-code.
Vincent leaned down to a dead body – one of the many men that he had killed tonight. He scavenged the body for bullets – he clearly remembered that man using a gun and having multiple spares of bullets. He didn’t need many. He only needed one to kill the boss who had been hiding behind the bar counter like a coward.
He loaded his gun and approached the counter. The man hadn’t moved from there since the moment Vincent watched him retreat. Vincent approached him with heavy, tired, but firm footsteps. The man had been shaking. It was a middle-aged, fat bastard dressed in gold and finely processed chocobo leather.
“W- Wait, let’s talk about this! I can give you everything you want! Just name your price, you don’t have to do this, what will you even gain by killing me? I know the Turks are underpaid. Please, let’s just talk…” he flinched when Vincent walked around the counter and pointed his gun at him. There was that cold, deadly look in Vincent’s crimson eyes. He hadn’t heard a word that the man was saying. He probably kept talking and begging. It was marvellous what people were willing to do to keep themselves alive.
Vincent shot him in the head. It was cold and clean, and fast. Faster than this bastard deserved. He was lucky Vincent had somewhere to be, and he didn’t even think about changing. He was covered in blood. He looked like an assassin. He was. He was everything a job demanded him to be. He could be a bodyguard. A cold-blooded killer, who was willing to kill everyone without the slightest spec of remorse. He could be a hero. He could be a villain. He could be a monster.
He was so very angry. He was so, so frustrated, it was driving him out of his mind. Those thirty men weren’t enough. He needed more. Wanted more.
Why?!
Why try so hard and get into all that trouble to kill someone who was so obviously innocent? He never understood the evil in people. What did anybody ever gain by harming someone else? Pleasure? Sick pleasure that only lasted for a second and no more.
It was even more frustrating because he couldn’t understand why. He couldn’t understand why they were trying so hard to kill her.
Vincent had watched a bunch of nurses rolling her away behind closed doors in the hospital, before he got a call from HQ, saying he was needed elsewhere. He had concluded this unwanted task with a bullet in someone’s head. He didn’t even remember the man’s name.
It was when he looked all around him in the empty underground party hall that he realised he was no longer wearing his jacket. He realised he’d elaborately used it to choke someone. He did get quite creative when he was running out of bullets or when he was surrounded by way too many opponents.
Vincent chuckled and loosened his tie slightly. He dropped the gun that he had also scavenged from someone else. He didn’t know where his own gun was. It didn’t matter. He had plenty back in HQ. Messy black hair stuck on his sweaty forehead. The lights were still flashing as if the party was still going on. It was quite cinematic to fight all those people in flashing lights and rock playing in the background, but he still hadn’t heard a thing.
He had to hurry back to the hospital. He had to know she was alive.
He phoned HQ, requesting for the cleanup crew to have a run at this place. He was certain they wouldn’t appreciate him giving them so much work overnight. He reported he’d finished the mission, added it to his record, and he was now on his way to the hospital.
He prayed she was alive.
Vincent didn’t even bother to change his bloody shirt or wipe the blood off his hands. He scavenged his jacket from a dead body and wrapped it around him once more, buttoning it up to hide most of the blood stains.
He met Veld outside the hospital, smoking. It wasn’t a good sign.
“Vincent? Done already?” Veld asked, noticing his partner approaching him.
“How is she?” It was the first thing Vincent asked. Veld sighed.
“The operation was successful but…” Veld tossed the cigarette and stepped on it “…she won’t be waking up anytime soon. Come.”
The two walked back inside, only to stand in front of the glass window that showed the inside of her single room. She was lying down, eyes closed, pale skin, steady vitals shown on the machinery around her. Messy brown hair trapped between her head and the light blue pillow, a white blanket thrown on top of her.
Vincent sighed heavily. Head bent forward, he shut his eyes as well.
“What about Gun?”
“He woke up. He’ll fully recover in a couple of weeks,” Veld answered, and Vincent let out a sigh of relief.
Footsteps arrived in a hurry. The journey from Nibelheim to Midgar was not particularly small without a helicopter. Both Tedric and Lucrecia were terrified. They had run all the way from the train station – both breathless and not even knowing whether she was alive or not.
Lucrecia rushed for the window, pressing her palms against it, staring inside. A sob escaped her. Tedric’s attention fell on the two Turks. Blue eyes were burning with terror and anger as he eyed Veld. He was supposed to keep her safe. He was supposed to trust this man – his friend. Tedric was aware that he didn’t know the details. He shouldn’t blame everything on Veld, but he didn’t care. He could lose the woman that he loved over this. He didn’t understand anything beyond that right now. He wasn’t in the right state of mind, and he was well aware of that.
“Is she…?”
“The operation was successful but… she… needs time…” Veld couldn’t even look him in the eye. He felt ashamed.
A punch was the next thing that he received, and he wasn’t even mad. It was predictable and welcome even.
“Tedric!” Lucrecia grabbed his one arm and held him back before punching Veld again. “What the hell are you doing?! We’re not here to pick a fight, please, Ted-”
“You were supposed to protect her!” Tedric growled. “You were supposed to make sure she’d come back… safe and… and alive and…” the anger dissipated in a single moment. He was breaking down all over again. Tears rushed down his cheeks and he jerked his hand free from Lucrecia’s restrictive grasp.
“If you want to blame someone, blame me,” Vincent took a step forward. It was almost unsettling how calm and composed he looked. “If want to punch someone, punch me. I was assigned her protection,” he placed a hand on Veld’s shoulder and handed him his handkerchief for him to wipe the blood that slipped down his nostril from Tedric’s punch.
“No…” Tedric wiped the tears off his cheeks “…I- I’m sorry, I…” he couldn’t believe he had just punched a man. He trusted Veld. There must have been a reason this had happened. There must have been a perfectly viable reason.
“Come on,” Lucrecia caught his hand and slowly pulled him in the other room, closing the door behind.
Veld and Vincent were left outside, staring in at the two who surrounded her bed. Veld was trying his best not to start crying himself, and Vincent was reminded that she had a foster sister and a husband-to-be. Why did he even rush so much to finish that final job just to make sure to be there when she’d wake up? What was even the point? She had everything she needed, right there, on that moment, in that room. Tedric held her hand between both his own, and Lucrecia held the other.
“This job fucking sucks, doesn’t it?” Veld asked after a while.
He didn’t mind the killing. He didn’t mind putting his life on the line. Somebody had to be insane to even sign up to become a Turk. They all were insane. He didn’t mind gambling his life, but he hated when unavoidable collateral damage was almost always innocent people.
“It really does.”
༻◊۞◊༺
It felt like she had been stepped on by a truck. How could she be so exhausted after sleeping for Odin knows how long? If she were to diagnose herself, it’d be more than a little unpleasant and she preferred not to do that right now. She was willing to bet since she felt like regaining consciousness and opening her eyes, she had probably escaped death quite cheaply.
Pain shot through her stomach, and she winced. Somebody had been holding her hand. The sound was more than enough to snap him out of it. Tedric always slept lightly, especially now, that he had been waiting beside her for two whole days. He sat straight right away. His fingers clenched around her own, and he looked up at her. Her face twisted in pain, and he felt like panicking.
“J- Jocasta…?”
Half-lidded eyes blinked a couple more times before adjusting to the bright morning light that entered through the window. Lucrecia was sleeping on the couch just across the room, and Tedric was beside her. Her fingers clenched around his own and he looked like he was about to start crying from relief.
Jocasta gave him a soft, weak smile.
“Jocasta… you’re awake,” Tedric suppressed a sob that eventually came out anyway. She cupped his cheek, and wiped away his tears that came rolling down, fogging his glasses. He took them off, placing them aside, supporting her cold hand on his face.
“It’s okay… I’m okay,” she said. He was supposed to be the one to reassure her right now. Not the other way around. He felt ashamed but she smiled at him. He sat on the edge of the bed beside her and buried his face in her chest, leaning close to her as she buried her fingers in his hair.
Jocasta’s eyes fell on the door as a man walked in. It was Vincent. His crimson eyes widened momentarily upon seeing her awake, but he concealed his surprise fast enough. Her eyes met his own. She looked exhausted.
While Veld was trying to figure out who was after her and why, Vincent thought it best to hang around the hospital. He didn’t trust anyone. Not the nurses, neither the doctors. People with absolutely no motives or connections to each other had tried to kill her. It was best to stay close and make sure she was safe.
“I was so… terrified… I thought I’d… lost you…”
“It’s okay…” Jocasta said, not quite ready yet to pull her eyes away from Vincent’s. Dressed in his black suit, pitch black hair covering half his face. Wine-red eyes pinned on her own, hands clenched into fists on his sides as if he was holding himself back from taking the tiniest step closer to her. How could she take her eyes off? “Everything’s gonna be okay…” she urged herself to focus on the man that she was supposed to marry “…don’t you know it takes more than that to get rid of me?” She looked down at Tedric and mustered a playful smile. A silent, warm tear slipped down her cheek as well. She didn’t know whether it was the pain or listening to him cry.
He chuckled, pulling back to look at her. He cupped her face and wiped her cheeks. “I won’t ever let you go anywhere on your own from now on.”
She tried laughing but she only ended up wincing.
“D- Don’t laugh!” Tedric’s cheeks got red right away.
“I had… a Turk with me. What more could you have done?”
“I would have possibly done a better job than a Turk, obviously!” Tedric switched from pathetic and relieved to angry pretty damn fast. He knew a million ways he could use a lancet and he had excelled in human anatomy modules back in the university.
She made the frustration dissipate with a single touch on his cheek.
“Obviously, you would have gotten yourself killed-”
“Jocasta-”
“Thank you…” she cut him, confusing him entirely “…for being here,”
What was she even thanking him for? That was the least that he would do for her. That’s the least that a man would do for his woman. She was supposed to know that they had the kind of relationship that was unbreakable. She knew that… didn’t she? Or maybe, it was her insecurities speaking. He knew better than anyone about them.
“I love you, Jocasta,” Tedric supported her hand on his cheek, and laced their fingers together. “I’d sleep on that damn chair for months if I’d have to, and I know you would have done the same for me.”
“Of course,” she nodded. It was impossible to think she had that even now. Even when they had been together for more than five years already. She truly loved this man.
She had to.
She kissed him and he was as responsive as ever, leaning close to her, kissing her back, shutting his eyes, cupping her face. Vincent shifted uncomfortably, turning his attention elsewhere. Anywhere but the couple. He glanced at Lucrecia who was still sleeping on the couch, not having heard a thing.
He left as silently as he came. If he was inside the hospital for the next two weeks, he didn’t make it known.
༻◊۞◊༺
Voices. Every time he was alone in the lab he would hear voices. He didn’t know what they were saying or what kind of language that even was. Something otherworldly if he had to guess, but they were always there when everyone else was gone.
It was quite annoying because he couldn’t even understand what they were saying.
No… not they – her. He was certain it sounded like the voice of a woman. Hojo tried to ignore them, and he turned his attention back on the cells beneath his microscope. JENOVA cells looked like stars beneath the microscope. They looked like astrocytes – a type of brain cells that he’d grown familiar with in his bachelor’s thesis. The more he ignored them, the more aggressive the voices became.
“Do you mind?!” Hojo snapped in irritation, turning at the strange lifeform trapped within the Mako container that stood in the middle of the lab.
Was it really Jenova? Was she really trying to contact him? What was she even trying to say? It sounded like she was speaking in some kind of ancient language, but he couldn’t hear clearly. He spoke five languages. It did sound like ancient tongue of the Cetra, but it was muffled.
He sighed heavily and turned back at his microscope.
“I’m trying to work here, and I can’t do it with your… whispers in my head,” he sounded quite annoyed. “At least, try to speak more clearly,” he pulled up the plates that he had just finished seeding with cells, and he headed for the incubator nearby. “Whatever you’re trying to convey, I won’t be able to understand if it’s in an alien language, for Gaia’s sake-” he turned to look at her, opening the incubator with one hand, but what he saw in her place was terrifying enough to make him drop the plates.
They came crashing on the floor, spilling cells and media, wasting the two hours of work that he had put into them. His eyes widened. His body went stiff, and he drew in a shaky breath. He took a step back as if to escape but too petrified to do so.
Hojo’s mind was the easiest to break among all the other preys that roamed around these halls. He was the easiest target. He had the typical sob story that Jenova had read in millions of Cetra back when her invasion began. He had the kind of humiliating past that he was pretending it never happened. He had fooled himself so well, letting it all unfold right in front of him again was messing splendidly with his sanity. Better than she could have ever expected.
Ruining this puppet was going to be the easiest yet.
She was a calamity indeed.
Chapter 6: Strange Behaviour
Chapter Text
Two Weeks Later
“Watch your step.”
“Ugh! I’m fine! I’ve walked up these stairs a million times before, Tedric!”
“I know, I know, but you still need to be careful.”
“I am! Stop babying me!”
It fell on deaf ears. Tedric’s arm remained around her as she walked up the stairs towards their quarters in the mansion. After two weeks in the hospital, she was more than glad to be back to the mansion. Gast was downstairs, holed up in the labs with Hojo and whatever junior scientists worked under their orders, and Lucrecia soon joined them. Jocasta couldn’t wait to resume her research.
She had endured two weeks of being talked her ears off by Lucrecia about her supervisor and how much of a flawless scientist he was and how incredible his drive for science was and his thirst for knowledge and whatnot.
“And his eyes… oh, Jo, I’ve never seen anything quite like it!” Lucrecia had the brightest, most excited smile she’d ever seen on her face.
“Right…”
“What? You don’t agree?!”
“Oh no, I do, but it just… sounds to me like you’re developing a tinsy tiny little crush for a man old enough to be your father,”
Lucrecia gasped.
“How dare you?! I- It’s not like that! I- I’m just… i- impressed by his… genius is all!”
“That blush on your face is telling me otherwise,” Jocasta didn’t know whether she was teasing her or whether she actually thought that infatuation of hers was downright weird. She understood falling for somebody older – Tedric was five years older than her, but Professor Valentine was a little over thirty years older than Lucrecia.
Lucrecia blushed even more. “You’re unbelievable!”
“Fun fact about Professor Valentine, he does have a son our age, way hotter than the old man,” Jocasta grinned until she realised what she had just said. Thank Bahamut that her fiancé had gone out to get something to eat a few minutes ago. “Please, don’t tell Tedric I said that.”
“If you keep being like that, I might,” Lucrecia threatened with a mischievous smirk. “Seriously though, do you really think I’m having a crush?”
“Lucy, it’s more obvious than Hojo’s multiple mental illnesses,” Jocasta shrugged, fitting the pillows behind her on the bed trying to sit up with a wince. Lucrecia cursed beneath her breath. It was so frustrating how Jocasta never asked for help no matter how much she needed it. She could barely move.
Lucrecia rushed to her and fixed the pillows for her, giving her a hand and helping her sit up. Jocasta let out a small wince at the movement but finally got into a more comfortable position.
“Thanks, sis.”
“Whatever do you mean by ‘multiple mental illnesses’? Professor Hojo is a brilliant scientist,” Lucrecia arched an eyebrow.
“Being a brilliant scientist doesn’t mean he’s sane. In fact, it’s closer to the opposite,” Jocasta said, confusing Lucrecia even more. She waved her confusion away. “You’ll understand in time. I’ve known that weirdo longer than you.”
Lucrecia shrugged and settled on the chair beside the bed.
“Now, tell me more about how hot you think Professor Valentine is, I’m thrilled to hear all about it.”
“You really suck at lying.”
As her older foster sister, she somehow had to talk Lucrecia out of yet another self-destructive crush, but today is not that day. Tedric was being enough distracting and exhausting already. He wasn’t letting her do anything on her own.
It went on like that for a couple more weeks. It seemed like their love for each other was stronger than ever – or at least, that’s what it should feel like, right? Right?
She had no room to complain. He loved her. He respected her. He was smart and sweet, and a good man in every way. She’d be entirely ungrateful if she didn’t want him. She had way more than any woman could ever ask for.
What was it that was so different now? She had been with him for so long, she had been convinced she loved him. He was the one for her. There was no other.
What was it that changed her safe normality so drastically?
Vincent… she hoped he was alright. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, she hoped he was unharmed. Being a Turk was dangerous. Veld had his back. She knew he did, but she hadn’t seen him ever since that day in the hospital. That was the last time she saw him. After that, he disappeared.
It didn’t matter. She only hoped he was alright.
She drowned in the thought of him and then felt guilty about it.
Today was another day to feel guilty about.
“…assays showed no sensitivity to irradiation ranging from two to eighteen Gray,” Gast said, changing the picture beneath the projector that showed the results on the green board. All five of them were gathered in the seminar room upstairs to discuss what they had found out so far and to outline their next move.
Gast showed a picture of human and JENOVA cells. The human cells were absolutely obliterated by X-rays, and the JENOVA cells were stronger than ever in every clonogenic assay.
“What the hell is she made off,” Tedric sounded awed, confused and… scared. What kind of tissue survived eighteen Gray?!
“Hard to say,” Gast sighed. “Not only did the cells survive, but their surviving efficiency improved with the rising intensity of radiation.”
Lucrecia laughed. “Are you saying radiation improves the colony-forming efficiency of JENOVA cells?!”
It was impossible. This couldn’t be true. Maybe he had done a mistake. Some kind of error. Jocasta’s eyes widened. This simply couldn’t be.
“Are you sure you know how to use the new irradiator?” Jocasta knew they had just acquired a new one. It must have been a mistake. It was alright to have errors. Gast was no newbie by any means, but he was never too good at technology either.
“I’m not an idiot, Jocasta,” Gast frowned.
“His results are plausible,” Hojo finally spoke. “I got the same on mine.”
“Let’s not forget that carcinogenic dyes we use for staining don’t kill those cells either,” Gast reminded them. The only way to get rid of them was scoop them off the wells and burn them with no promise that all cellular material had been removed from the plates.
“Pharmacologic inhibition of known vital cellular processes didn’t kill them either,” Lucrecia stood up, gathering the printed pictures of her own assays slipping them beneath the projector on top of Gast’s.
“Alkylating agents produced the same results as well,” Tedric sighed. He was hoping he’d be the only one to present fruitless results today.
“Dammit,” Jocasta cursed. She was the only one without results. “We’re running out of stuff to kill this thing.”
“It seems another of Hojo’s hypotheses have been accepted,” Gast eyed Hojo, but the man seemed deep in thought.
Hojo had been acting strange lately. He was still the same grumpy bastard that everybody knew, but there were no sassy remarks, no attempts to get on anybody’s nerves, and certainly no bragging about himself and how brilliant he was – the absence of that last part was quite concerning. It was becoming apparent to everyone right now. If nothing was wrong, Hojo would be talking their ears off about how dumb they all were to expect mere radiation and genotoxic substances to induce apoptotic pathways on JENOVA cells.
But, no, Hojo was quiet. Still grumpy, but quiet, and everybody noticed, eyeing each other and himself. He noticed them a bit later than he usually would have. He glared at everyone.
“What?! Why’s everybody staring at me?! Don’t we got nothing better to do?!”
Gast sighed and changed the subject – ever the leader of their small team and the entire department. Every single one of them had scientists working on something, but the four of them answered to Gast.
After deciding on their next step, the first to leave was Hojo – ever the eager sociopath to get away from everyone and everything.
“Jocasta. A word,” Gast motioned for her to stay. Tedric and Lucrecia left with a nod before closing the door of the seminar room and leaving the two alone.
“Want me to investigate anything specific?” Jocasta asked, approaching him.
“Yes, but not what you think,” Gast tapped the papers that he had gathered on the desk, straightening them. “You’ve known Hojo longer than any of us, correct?”
She sighed. She had a feeling she knew what he wanted from her. “Unfortunately.”
“He’s been acting strange. I want you to look into it.”
“Strange? He’s Hojo! He’s the definition of ‘strange’. It shouldn’t surprise you, Gast.”
“We’re all strange, Jocasta, that’s why we’re here,” Gast reasoned, and she shrugged. “Look, you’re the only one who can crawl under his skin.”
Jocasta still didn’t seem to want to do it. Gast sighed.
“You get free pass on my Mako container for a week.”
“Two weeks!”
“Ten days.”
“Deal!”
༻◊۞◊༺
He was merely trying to focus when he heard a chair rolling beside his own.
“Hoooojoo…”
He grumbled. Unfortunately, now that Jocasta was back, he had to share this lab with her – which had been so delightfully all his own while she was gone.
“What do you want, Earnchester?” He didn’t even look at her. Eyes focused on the 15-ml tube that he was holding in one hand, drawing a greenish liquid with a pipette in the other.
“I want… your biochemical genius to have a look at my Mako dilution calculations,” she slipped her notebook on his counter, and he frowned, still not turning to look at her.
“You’re a lead scientist, you don’t need me to help you make a serial dilution, for Bahamut’s sake,” Hojo turned and glared at her at last. He didn’t look pissed. He looked annoyed.
“That look reminds me our immunohistochemistry group project back on our second year in Mideel,” she propped her chin down on her palm, elbow planted on his counter. “Remember?”
How could he possibly forget how she had almost ridiculed him in front of the entire amphitheatre?
“You DID bring the antibodies… didn’t you?!”
“O- Of course, I did! T- They’re right…” she searched the bag on the desk. The eyes of probably a hundred students were pinned on them both – including ten professors. Her hand dived shoulder-deep in the bag, searching maniacally for something that would feel like a plastic tube.
Her eyes widened. Nothing. She couldn’t find it. She fumbled through all the other pockets, searching over, and over, and she could literally feel the daggers that Hojo’s glare was throwing at her. She chuckled nervously looking up at him – he would have murdered her if there was a way of making it legal.
“…here… I could’ve sworn! They were here just a second ago!”
Hojo was fuming, the professors sighed, shook their heads, some rivals among the fellow students were snickering, and some friends were hiding behind their hands in absolute shame for them. Nobody wanted to be either of the two at this moment.
“I swear to Leviathan, I AM going to kill you, at least then, you’d be somewhat useful!” Hojo growled behind gritted teeth, and she had the guts to chuckle nervously at him again. He caught her by the shirt and shook her around “What the hell did I ever do to get paired up with you?!”
“Excuse me, Ms Earnchester,” Professor Valentine’s voice came from behind and both Hojo and Jocasta turned at the man sitting on what was usually Jocasta’s seat when they’d attend lectures. He pulled up a vial with a pinkish liquid inside. “Isn’t that what you were looking for?”
“I really need to thank Professor Valentine for saving my ass that day,” Jocasta sighed with a smile on her face. It wasn’t one of her favourite memories from university, but she had always been like that.
Clumsy, and stupid, and innocent, and annoying to death when she couldn’t get what she wanted, but Hojo never understood how she could be so stupid and brilliant all the same. He never understood why he wanted to kill her and marry her at the same time. She was so annoying, he hated her. He hated her so damn much. He hated that she knew him better than anyone. He hated that he had let her closer than most.
“Seriously, though,” Jocasta’s eyes met his own at last and he immediately averted them “what’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“We just proved another hypothesis of yours and you’re not going around bragging about it to everyone. That’s not Hojo behaviour. What’s going on?”
What was he supposed to do? Should he tell her? No. Jenova was dangerous. She was far more dangerous than they’d realised. He had to give in. He had to let her do whatever she wanted. It was the only way. She was terrifying. So terrifying but beautiful. She was beautiful and perfect and for a split second, he saw her standing in Jocasta’s place. In a single blink of an eye, she was right there, in her otherworldly glory, sitting on that damn chair, with glowing purple eyes, pale green skin – terrifying but glorious. In a blink of an eye, she was gone, replaced by something else. Something terrifying. Far more terrifying than she.
He let out a gasp, jumped up off his chair, dropped whatever he was holding and took a few steps back as if he was being chased. As if he was trying to fend away from her the farthest he could.
Jocasta’s eyes widened. She had never seen – and she never thought she’d see – terror in that man’s eyes. It didn’t suit him at all.
“Hojo,” Jocasta stood up and tried to approach him, but he took another step back. “It’s okay. It’s just me-”
“Just shut up! SHUT UP!” He shouted but the voices in his head were louder than his.
He brought his hands to his temples. Fingers clutched in his hair, eyes shut tight, face twisted in pain. He took off his glasses, tossed them on the floor like they meant nothing. She was genuinely worried, but she didn’t try to approach him. He was scared of something. He was seeing something that she couldn’t see.
“Why… why can’t these people just… keep quiet?!”
Before she could ask or even do anything, he rushed inside another room and snapped the doors shut. Jocasta was left there, utterly confused and… worried. Surely, Hojo wasn’t her most favourite colleague around here, but they still shared this lab, and he was one of the very few students that hadn’t bullied her for simply being a woman and daring to study science back in the university.
She didn’t know how long he stayed there. Jocasta cleaned the mess of cells and media that he had dropped off on his counter, and she approached the closed off room he was still inside of. Jocasta picked his glasses off the floor. She quietly sat down on the floor outside, resting back against the door. He sensed her weight against it. She knew that’s how he dealt with stress. It wasn’t the first time he was locking himself away.
“What do you think you’re doing?” It came from the other side of the door. It sounded like he was forcing annoyance in his voice.
“Helping out a friend?”
“We’re not friends. I don’t have friends. Friends are useless.”
“Really? You really seem to need one right now.”
“All I need is for you to leave me alone!”
She sighed. Hojo was lucky she respected Gast enough to try a little harder.
“What’s with you and wanting to be so desperately alone? Doesn’t loneliness eat you inside out? Or is it just me?” She didn’t really have to make it personal, but she couldn’t help it. She brought a hand to her hair, smoothing them away from her face. “I suppose I’m the only weakling around here. So very obsessed with evading loneliness that I signed up to marry a man I’m not even sure I…” no, this had gotten way too far.
She shut her mouth and groaned, throwing her head back against the door. Stupid. What was she even doing there, getting so worked up over this? Hojo would kill her and experiment on her on her dead body if there weren’t soldiers around to get him arrested.
She chuckled bitterly and tried to stand up.
“Sorry, for wasting your time-”
The door cracked open revealing Hojo sitting on the floor less than a step away from her. He looked exhausted. Jocasta sat back down, handed him his glasses. He took them with hesitation. He sighed and looked away from her.
“I have a proposition,”
Jocasta shrugged. “Shoot.”
“Don’t marry that moron-”
She laughed. “Tedric’s not a moron, he’s just-”
“-marry me instead.”
Her eyes widened and she tensed up. She did not see that coming.
“You and I will lead R&D. We’ll burn this fucking place to the ground, with the alien inside of it. We’ll only keep enough samples to satisfy Shinra’s greed.”
What… what the hell? Did he want to… destroy Jenova – the possibly biggest scientific finding of the century? She didn’t blame him. According to all the results that they had produced so far, that thing was virtually indestructible. It was too dangerous to fall in a manufacturer’s hands. It would be weaponised. There were a million ways to weaponise it. She could only imagine what Shinra would do with it once they’d uncover its true potential.
“We’ll conduct our own research. You and I. No one will be able to stand in our way.”
What could she possibly say to that? It was more of a proposition – a business deal, rather than anything remotely close to romance. Hojo was not capable of romance. Actually, marrying him was completely unseen and served absolutely no purpose in his whole plan.
“Never thought you’d actually want to destroy the biggest scientific finding of the century,”
“Let’s just say she’s… been torturing me for the past couple of weeks.”
She couldn’t even begin to guess what that meant. They had no insights of what exactly she was. She was pretty much humanoid, resembling a woman, but there was nothing that was suggesting that this was her true form. There was nothing suggesting that she was a woman at all. She was a whole new species. She could be a Cetra, but she could also be an alien. She could be goddess, or a xenoform of the planet of some sort.
Nothing indicated that she was a Cetra. Nothing at all.
Was there a possibility that the alien shapeshifted in his eyes? Was she messing with his brain somehow, shapeshifting into something that… scared him?
He wouldn’t talk about it even if she asked. Hojo wasn’t one to open up about things – personal things.
“I know you’re… unfamiliar with the very concept of friendship and you think friends are a… distraction and a waste of time… and you’re probably right about it all but… still though…” her hand reached for his shoulder, but he flinched away as if on instinct. He still hated being touched. Everybody wondered about the story behind that, but that man would never open up. She didn’t think he ever would. She merely placed her hand on the floor between them, close to his own “…know that you have one… at the very least,” she gave him a smile, but he looked away from her immediately as if he was ashamed. As if he wanted to tell her things that he never really did.
Somebody walked in the lab, and Jocasta looked up. Tedric didn’t look particularly pleased about her sitting on the floor beside a fellow scientist – talking to him and even smiling at him. He frowned deeply and she could tell he was biting his tongue. Jocasta cringed.
“Hojo? Would you like to explain why you’re having a picnic with my wife-to-be on the floor of a lab?”
Hojo’s hands clenched into fists, gritting his teeth, visibly annoyed and pissed. He didn’t even turn to look at the man – kept his back on him, remaining seated.
“Anything edible is strictly prohibited within the lab, doctor,” it came out so unbelievably audacious, and this time – this time even Tedric noticed it.
“Why, you little-” Tedric almost leaned down to punch him, but Jocasta caught his fist, and used it to pull herself back up.
“C’mon, honey, didn’t you come here to tell me something?” Jocasta wrapped her arms around his neck, cupping his face and turning his attention entirely down to her. “What is it? Is my electrophoresis ready yet?”
“I…” Tedric sighed. Shoulders went loose once again “…yeah, I just… loaded it on the odyssey,”
“Perfect!” She gave him the sweetest smile and caught his hand, dragging him out of the lab. “Let’s go have a look, shall we?”
Chapter 7: Professor Valentine
Notes:
Sorry for disappearing, but here it is! I've no idea where this is going
Chapter Text
Jocasta and Tedric walked down the hall outside the labs. Lucrecia came walking down the other way with what looked like… Professor Valentine by her side. The two were locked in a conversation about what Jocasta guessed was Lucrecia’s thesis.
“Jo!” Lucrecia called out when she noticed the other two approaching. She rushed towards them with a bright smile, grabbing Grimoire’s hand, and dragging him along. He laughed but followed without objection.
“Wow! Professor Valentine!” Jocasta smiled brightly at the middle-aged man – trying to ignore that lovestruck smile on Lucrecia’s face.
“We haven’t seen you in so long, sir!” Tedric shook his hand.
“Williams and… Earnchester?! I can’t believe how much the two of you have grown!” Grimoire looked at the two fully realised scientists that he’d known ever since they were kids. He shook Tedric’s hand and then brought a hand on Jocasta’s shoulder. “I’m so proud of you two. Is Hojo here too?”
“Of course!” Lucrecia nodded.
“Unfortunately,” Tedric added. His smile disappeared almost immediately.
“Oh, come on, Teddie, still don’t like him? He’s a brilliant kid like the rest of you,” Grimoire patted Tedric’s shoulder leaning closer to him saying in a hushed tone. “He never stood a chance with Jocasta anyway.”
Jocasta gasped. “I heard that!”
Not to mention, Tedric’s entirely red face was pretty much giving out what Grimoire had just sneakily whispered to him. Lucrecia laughed and Tedric groaned, burying his face in his hands, unbearably ashamed.
“Oops, gotta run! Dr Crescent and I got an experiment to get to,” the old man tried to escape Jocasta’s wrath, rushing down the hall, only to be followed by a furious scientist.
Lucrecia laughed a little more, bringing her hand to her face and tried to keep the volume down, clutching her notebook in her hug. She and her soon-to-be brother-in-law turned to watch Jocasta chase down an older and well-respected professor who seemed to be livelier than all of the young scientists in the building combined.
“He’s amazing, isn’t he?” Lucrecia sounded way too excited, but Tedric barely even noticed.
He sighed, sinking his hands in the pockets of his white lab coat. “Same ol’ Professor Valentine,” he shook his head reminiscing about the times he’d play matchmaker in his classes. “Some things never change.”
༻◊۞◊༺
After another exhausting day in the lab, with Grimoire still being there, Jocasta and Lucrecia offered for once not to order from outside and cook something. The kitchen of the mansion was huge but barely ever visited by any of them. None of them had time to be cooking something when there were a million things to do, and the president demanded reports almost twice a week.
For once without the weight of her lab coat, Jocasta moved around the kitchen with Lucrecia helping out. Tedric and Gast were sitting around the large wooden table that otherwise served as an aisle. Grimoire walked in after a while – he had been editing the draft of Lucrecia’s thesis for the past couple of hours.
“Oh,” Grimoire towered behind Jocasta to peek at the meat she’d been roasting in a pan. She was making noodle soup. “That looks splendid,”
“Thank you, Professor Valentine,” Jocasta gave him a smile.
“Why don’t you call me Grimoire when we’re out of office hours?”
“That… will be impossible,” Jocasta chuckled. “It’s simply bad manners to refer to an older person in singular.”
“I’m not that old!”
“Of course, not!” Lucrecia chipped in, cutting vegetables on the aisle. Grimoire approached her, lifting up his sleeves and washing his hands in the sink.
“How about you let me handle that?” Grimoire suggested.
“What?!” Lucrecia’s eyes widened. “N- No! No way, am I letting you chop… vegetables, Professor!”
“You think I can’t handle it?” Grimoire arched an eyebrow, drying his hands on a kitchen cloth.
“Of course, you can, it’s just-”
Grimoire laughed and she calmed down right away. “Relax, I’ve done this a million times before,” he picked the kitchen knife from her hand, and she walked aside to let him do it. Grimoire chopped those carrots like a professional and Lucrecia felt like she was falling all over again. He squashed the garlic cloves beneath the knife and then chopped them in record time.
“That’s quite impressive, Grimoire,” Gast chuckled. He was the only one old enough to feel comfortable calling him by his name.
“Well, being a single father, you pick up skills, I’ll tell you that,” Grimoire pulled another carrot in front of him.
“Oh right! That reminds me,” Jocasta had just finished with the meat and put some water to boil in a pot. She approached Grimoire. “I think I met your son when I was in Midgar. Vincent. He’s a Turk, right?”
“You met my boy?!” Grimoire looked up at Jocasta. His eyes brightened. “How was he? Was he alright?”
“He was…” how could she possibly tell him that his son had taken a bullet for her? “…feisty.”
Grimoire sighed. “Haven’t heard from him in months. I try to avoid contacting him since any signal would put us both at risk. But… I sure hope he comes visit me soon.”
“Reminded me one of dad’s long… boring… boring monologues…”
Jocasta smiled at the old man and placed a hand on his shoulder. She didn’t know how he ended up being a single father, but she had a feeling it’d been like that since Vincent was a baby. He must’ve meant the world to him. Having lost his wife and giving his everything to their son who then decided to do the most dangerous profession on the planet – he must’ve been worried so much. Worry like that could be draining.
“He misses you… a lot,” Jocasta said, and he smiled.
“Did he… say anything?”
“I tried explaining him how immortal cell lines work but he started making fun of me… said it reminded him a lot of your long boring, boring monologues,” Jocasta grinned, and he laughed. He laughed heartily.
“Yeah… that does sound like my boy.”
The five of them gathered around to eat once the food was ready. They talked some more, laughed some more, but the only one missing was Hojo and it was troubling but not surprising. Tedric and Gast offered to wash the dishes – since that was the only thing that they knew how to do in the kitchen, and Lucrecia showed Grimoire to his room – the mansion would be hosting him for the night. There were countless rooms anyway.
Jocasta took a bowl of soup – there was still plenty left, and she walked downstairs. She found Hojo in his office, passed out by his desk, glasses smashed between his temple and his notebook beneath his head.
Jocasta sighed and placed the soup beside him. It wouldn’t be hot or even warm by the time he’d wake up, but she had a feeling he wouldn’t appreciate her waking him up. He was scared of the slightest touch – jumpy at the slightest thought that there was someone else in the room. Of course, he wanted his privacy more than anything.
She had a feeling he had been deprived of it – of anything human – during his childhood.
She left as silently as she came.
He saw her.
༻◊۞◊༺
The band played the jazziest blues.
Vincent took another sip of the water disguised as a drink. It wasn’t helping him focus at all. Some liquor would be ideal right now. Killing the target was fine – it was normal, it was part of the job. Identifying the target, was also a standard procedure with plain steps. Protecting the target – also pretty standard – nothing to it, just fight whoever comes their way – easy peasy.
Now, charming the target – that was the hardest part – but not because he couldn’t do it. This wasn’t going to be the first time he had to seduce an easy target to get what he wanted. He was amongst the very few Turks left that didn’t have some kind of disability. Most Turks had disabilities – the most common type – mental, PTSD, irreparable trauma, panic attacks, the usual. Vincent had neither physical nor mental. He didn’t have a missing eye, he had all of his fingers – miraculously so – and he didn’t look like he would murder everybody in the room – even though he could. Veld was always too scary to even approach a lady and there was no one left to shoulder that terrible task but poor ol’ Vinnie.
His father would kill him if he found out about this.
Vincent gulped down the water disguised as a martini – it even had a cute little umbrella and an olive floating around – and smashed the glass onto somebody’s head.
“How dare you try and harm Ms Ravencroft, you bastard!” Vincent played the part so well it was almost embarrassing. The woman – the target – turned and glared at one of her bodyguards that Vincent had smashed a glass on his face with no hesitation.
“B- But, I didn’t do any-” the poor man tried to say only to be interrupted by Vincent’s fist landing on his face and knocking him a couple of steps back.
“Liar!” Vincent was making a scene. The music stopped and everybody turned to look. He wanted to crawl back into some hole and die. He shouldn’t be doing this sober. “I saw you taking out this gun…” Vincent took out his gun, but everybody still gasped in surprise “…and pointing it to Ms Ravencroft’s back, you backstabbing asshole!”
Ms Ravencroft gasped. She must have been about twenty years older than him, but she still looked quite hot for her age – she still wasn’t his type, but he could make it work. She was one of the major crime lords of Midgar. She became the businesswoman she was after her husband was arrested and locked in a Wutaian prison and she escaped overnight. She had come far, but she had been growing unbearably paranoid of everyone and everything around her.
Sadly, she was the only lead they had on the attempts on Jocasta’s life.
What would she think of him if she saw him now being the most majestic liar this world had ever seen?
“How could you?! After everything I’ve done for you?!” She cried out at the man on the floor who now had a black eye. “Take him! I never want to see his face again!” She barked in Wutaian and the other three bodyguards picked the man up, dragging him out of the building. She motioned for the band to continue playing and they did so right away. The people around went back to whatever they had been doing, with something nice to gossip about. She groaned in irritation.
“That’s the third one this week,” she lamented in Wutaian.
Vincent dusted his suit back in place. “Ma’am,” he bowed his head slightly, before turning to walk away.
“Wait,” she stopped him – exactly as he expected. “You saved my life. Let me buy you a drink.”
Meanwhile, Veld was among the waiters, carrying around drinks and whatnot. He smirked when he caught glimpse of Vincent and one of the most notorious donnas having a drink on a table for two. He made her blush and giggle every ten seconds.
Veld smirked. His partner could be quite the player himself. He had so much to snitch to Grimoire about his golden son. About how he’d ruined a man’s whole career in less than a minute.
“Hey, busboy! Get it moving!” Somebody cried out and he snapped out of it right away, continuing to serve drinks.
“Yes, sir, right away!”
Veld returned with a couple of special drinks and approached Vincent and Gisele Ravencroft. He eyed Vincent for a split second. Veld had that small, mischievous, invisible little smile that only Vincent could recognise.
“Enjoy,” Veld left as fast as he came. The lady eyed him for a moment, realising that she didn’t recognise him. She knew everybody that worked in her businesses down to the waiters and janitors, but he had left so fast, she hadn’t even gotten a glimpse of his face. He could be anyone.
“May your businesses…” Vincent lifted his glass up in a toast “…know nothing but wealth,” he gave her the most charming smile. It worked on everyone. How could it not?
Rare, crimson eyes – blood red, like her dress. A wonderful black tuxedo wrapped around his neck in a near perfect bow – white shirt, black suit, black hair falling on his face, clean shaven, a glass of champagne, and a smile to die for. He was perfect.
Perfectly distracting – that is, but she wasn’t born yesterday. She hadn’t become what she was for nothing.
She didn’t even touch her drink.
“I know men like you,” she rested back against her chair and crossed her arms across her chest. “You know just what to give to a woman… give her everything she wants and has ever wished for, and then…” she made the motion with her hand “…take it.” She laughed. He didn’t seem the least bit phased.
He was too good at keeping it calm. He wasn’t just anybody. She’d bet all her money he was a Turk.
“Are you finally here to arrest me?” Gisele asked, waving her pale brown hair behind her shoulder, and resting her chin on top of the palm of her hand. She knew when she was beaten. She was willing to bet he wasn’t there alone. That waiter over there – at the corner of her eye – a delicious man as well – but she did not remember hiring him. He must have been a Turk too. She had men that could ruin many people’s lives, but two Turks in one place could only mean defeat.
She did not wish for her people to get massacred overnight.
Vincent chuckled. He guessed the theatrics were over.
He placed his drink down. “Those are not my orders.”
“Kill me? Are those your orders?”
He shook his head. “No. Intel.”
She laughed. “Have the Turks stooped low enough to come in the underground and ask the first person they stumble upon?”
“You’re not just anyone, Ms Ravencroft,” he knew for a fact that wasn’t even her real name – but it didn’t matter much right now. “Multiple gangs under yours and… other notable people’s commands have been after a certain… doctor, particularly important to the Shinra Family. We’re just trying to figure out why.”
At that, her smile disappeared entirely, and she sat straight, visibly distressed. She bit her lip and looked away from him immediately.
“So… it’s a doctor…” she muttered to herself quietly, but he heard it.
“If there’s anything that you know-”
“I’m sorry. I have things to do. Excuse me,” she stood up right away and began walking away.
“What the hell’s going on? Where is she going?!” Veld’s voice came from the device around his ear. Veld was downstairs, closer to the stage where the band continued playing jazz, serving some tables there. Vincent shook his head, making sure not to lose sight of her.
“I don’t know. Our cover has been blown, but I thought I had it under control,” Vincent responded.
“Don’t think. You’re not good at it,” A familiar voice came from the other channel, along with the incessant typing of her fingers on her computer. “I got eyes on her. She’s heading for the backdoor.”
“Shit!” Veld growled abandoning the tray on a table and rushing for out back. Vincent followed. Powder was waiting outside the building in the alleyway where the backdoor led.
After her partner almost died in a helicopter crash presumably caused by people working for that woman – Gisele was as good as dead. Veld had ordered her to stay in HQ and do nothing – but of course, she disobeyed orders – why was he even surprised? The second she found out they’d be reaching out to the possible killer of her partner tonight – that was the end of the whole argument.
He wouldn’t punish her for insubordination. He of all people would have done much worse to anyone who would try to come after Vincent – and he knew Vincent would do the same for him.
“Keep an eye on her, dammit! That idiot can’t understand we mustn’t kill the only lead we have!” Veld growled at the other woman in the intercom.
“Copy, chief,”
Both Vincent and Veld rushed through the crowd as fast as they could, but Powder was already there. Bloody daggers held tightly in her bloody hands. A sick smile on her lips that was anything but sane, and the usual, blonde ponytails on each side of her head. Short, small, but a menace all the same. Dead bodies led to her. She had made such a mess of whoever worked for Gisele as her worthless security.
Gisele came in sight in the dark alley at the back of the building, rushing towards one of the cars parked nearby the trashcans, fumbling through multiple keys that she pulled out. Her hands were shaking. She looked distressed and terrified.
Good. She should be. She was about to die an excruciating death.
“There you are!” Powder cried out, startling the woman entirely. She dropped the keys and fell back on the pavement. “Oh no! Did I scare you? Too bad, little birdie. I didn’t mean to!”
“Who the hell are you?!” Gisele demanded, pulling herself back up. She gasped when Powder walked out of the shadows, with daggers and blood sprayed all over her hands and face. She looked so small and young and innocent.
She was anything but.
“Who? Me? It doesn’t matter who I am. All that matters is who I’m about to be…” Powder rolled her daggers swiftly “…your worst nightmare!”
Before she could make her move, Vincent crashed her daggers with the long tube of his gun and Veld jumped between them and the terrified woman.
“P! Fall back!” Veld cried out.
“It’s not her we should be killing,” Vincent tried to reason. He still sounded so unsettlingly calm. The wild, feral look in Powder’s grey eyes only grew angrier.
“Let me… let me kill that bitch!” Powder growled, pushing against Vincent’s gun, but he didn’t even flinch.
“Listen to me,” Vincent’s eyes caught her own. The calmness in his voice was unbelievably grounding. “It’s someone else behind her. If you kill her, we’ll never find out who that is, and you’ll never get a proper chance to butcher them. Is that clear?”
Powder’s eyes remained wide, but she was starting to snap out of it. She didn’t retrieve the blades though. She was… terrified. Vincent recognised that look on his student’s face. He’d known her long enough. He knew what she was thinking. What if that new threat escaped, and what if she lost more friends? What if Gun really died next time? What if Vincent – her mentor – the closest thing that she had to an older brother – was next? What if it was going to be her fault?
“What have I told you?” Vincent gave her a reassuring smile. “Do not let fear conquer you. Do not let anything conquer you. The past is in the past. Focus on right now. Okay?”
The contemplation and the tension disappeared. What was she even so terrified about? Vincent had everything under control. So long as Vincent was there, everything was going to be alright. She slowly pulled her daggers away. Relief and realisation shined on her face once more. She had almost lost control again.
“Am I clear, P?” Vincent insisted. He had to make sure she was there, and not still lingering on some past, traumatising memory. She had plenty of those.
She looked down ashamed. “Crystal, sir.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder and placed his gun back in the holster beneath his jacket. He squeezed her shoulder gently.
“You did good,” he said – an attempt to stop her from feeling ashamed for killing all those people and even trying to kill the only lead they had.
“Are you okay, Ms Ravencroft?” Veld turned at the terrified woman.
“No! I- I need to get out of here before he… before he finds out we’ve failed to-” blood dripped down her lips and she dropped on her knees.
“What the-?!”
“Who did-?!”
“There’s no one out here! I killed everyone there was!” Powder cried out.
Veld caught her right away, examining the wound. It looked like a stab wound from the back. Vincent pulled out his gun to aim for whoever was standing behind her, but it was no one. No one was there. There was no one behind her, neither above, nor on the front – no one. Powder set off right away – using her signature acrobatics to climb to the top of the building and then the surrounding ones, searching for someone – anyone. She came back down in record time.
“There’s… there’s really no one out here!” Her eyes were wide, she was breathing fast. Vincent had called an ambulance, but he doubted they’d be there on time.
“Ms Ravencroft!” Veld cried out, pressing down hard on the wound on her stomach. More blood dripped down her lips and gathered on the pavement beneath her. “I need you to listen to me very carefully, ma’am. An ambulance is on its way, you’re gonna be okay, just stay-”
Gisele gripped Veld’s sleeve. She looked up at him with wide eyes. “He’s coming… he wants… her dead. He says… she’s not… supposed to… be here…” her eyes drifted to the sky, her head rolled back “…he’s coming.”
A black feather came swirling down, landing gently on the pavement at the far end of the narrow street. It diminished to ash once it touched the ground.
But no one really noticed.
Chapter 8: A Taste of Home
Notes:
A little bit of background on what I headcanon happened to Vinnie's momma, and Grim imo was a very wholesome dad, best father award fr fr
Of course, that's not the whole story 😈
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Vincent spent the following week fixing the mess they had left after a major crime lord died overnight. Multiple people tried to take over her businesses, killing each other in the process. Vincent and Powder – with Veld’s occasional help, managed to calm things down – kill whoever was causing most of the trouble, and the conflict ended with Shinra planting a member of their own to run the illegal businesses for the company’s own benefit. Vincent and everyone else weren’t particularly happy about that – but there was no stopping crime. He understood that no matter what they did, people would find ways to commit evil, and maybe even like this it could be somewhat regulated.
He returned to HQ exhausted, blood-stained – as usual – mildly wounded, but nothing that he couldn’t handle himself. He had to write a report about everything. He went straight to his office to work on that. He wrote it fast, still having blood on his sleeves and probably his face too – but he didn’t care. He just needed to get this over with. He just needed to go to his apartment, take a shower, and sleep for at least the next eighteen hours.
Vincent entered Veld’s office without even knocking – he must have been the only person in the entire HQ daring to enter that office without knocking. He walked in, finding a mountain of paperwork that Veld had been working on – or at least trying to. Vincent was once again grateful that he’d chosen to stay on the field and leaving the leadership in Veld’s hands.
When he approached his partner, he realised that he wasn’t scribbling down signatures and whatnot on some official paper. Veld was drawing… dicks on a blank piece of paper. Vincent tried not to laugh. Why was he even surprised?
“Looks like a piece of art, truly,” Vincent said sarcastically, and Veld snapped out of it with a yelp of surprise, flipping the paper the other way in record time only to reveal even more suspicious shapes on the other side. Veld threw his arms all over it, trying to hide it, but he calmed down when he realised that it was Vincent. He hadn’t even noticed he’d walked in.
“Oh, Vincent, it’s you,” Veld sat back on his chair and let out a sigh of relief, tossing the paper on the desk. “You know it helps me focus,” he shrugged. Vincent placed the report on top of that pile of papers and Veld turned and stared at it with dread.
“Should I ask?”
“I just can’t get it out of my mind,” Veld stood up and poured himself a cup of coffee from the coffee machine that he had on a nearby kitchenette. “She’s not supposed to be here, her last words about Jocasta,” he took a sip of the bitter, hot liquid and he sat back down on his chair. “What does that even mean? Here, as in, this world? This planet? A location in particular? I’m betting all my money she meant Jocasta’s not supposed to be in this world, but that would mean that there are multiple worlds. Multiple planets like ours.”
Vincent had tried to make sense of it, but he had given up when he was busy enough dealing with this mess. He could feel Veld was onto something. He had heard something similar before.
“One of my father’s colleagues back in Mideel… a physics lecturer, I think… he had a theory that sounds familiar,” Vincent looked up at Veld. “Parallel universes, he called them. Multiple realities, existing all at once. It’s just a theory, though, and I’m not even sure how plausible it might be.”
“Supposing that… Jocasta’s from another… reality… her presence here changes something. Something that’s supposed to happen but won’t happen if she’s here to… prevent it,” Veld felt like a physics professor spouting absolute nonsense, but he could have sworn he couldn’t be wrong about this. It was a gut feeling that through the years working as a Turk he’d learned to trust.
“Veld, are you even hearing yourself?” Vincent was as pessimistic as ever. None of this made sense.
“Humour me,” Veld insisted. Vincent sighed.
“Then the person we’re looking for is… from the future? Is that what you’re… implying?” Vincent couldn’t believe they were actually considering this.
“Is that too farfetched?” Veld took another sip from his coffee.
“It’s not just farfetched, it’s impossible,” Vincent frowned.
“Hey, there’s nothing proving that your dad’s friend’s theory is not true,” Veld shrugged. Vincent sighed tiredly and turned walk out the room. “Vinnie, take the next week off and go visit your old man, won’t you?”
That was Veld’s way of telling him to look further into this.
“Got it. See you in a week.”
Vincent couldn’t wait to go to sleep.
༻◊۞◊༺
“Are you saying that ninety-five percent ethanol is in fact not sufficient to kill that thing’s cells?!” Jocasta asked for the fifth time and Hojo tried to not to groan in frustration. He had explained this five times already.
“Yes,” he repeated for the umpteenth time.
This made absolutely no sense. Ethanol killed everything. Everything! It was bactericidal, fungicidal, viricidal, archaeacidal, everything-cidal. This didn’t make any sense. Half her degree was biochemistry, and it didn’t make her panic about this any less.
“Virkon!” Jocasta snapped her fingers. “Have we tried Virkon yet?”
“I don’t think it’ll make a difference.”
Jocasta grabbed him by the collar. “Hojo! You were so right! We need to kill this thing!”
“Yes,” Hojo said pulling her hands away from his lab coat. He tucked his glasses up his nose. “I’m always right.”
Tedric snapped the door open “More electrophoresis results just came out…” he looked distressed “…you have to see this.”
Both Jocasta and Hojo followed the man out of the lab and into the other where Lucrecia and Gast were already fumbling through the three repeated experiments. They all had the same results. The band containing genetic material extracted from JENOVA cells seemed twice as heavy as the human. This could only mean that there was a massive genetic difference between them.
Silence fell between all five of them, as they stared at the results and passed the papers to each other. Gast left without uttering a word and she knew what that meant. Jocasta handed the papers to Hojo and Lucrecia and went after him.
“Wait! Gast!”
Jocasta rushed behind the man who was now heading for his office, to write a report. She caught up to him.
“Do you realise what this means?!” Jocasta said and he stopped walking abruptly. Tedric was following from behind.
“The size of her genome is enormous,” Gast spoke, keeping his back turned on her. “Not only is she not human, but it’s impossible for her to be a Cetra as well.” He finally came to the realisation that Jocasta had been right all along. She didn’t consider that thing to be a Cetra not even once. He turned and looked at her, terrified. “And if the president finds out, he’s going bury the JENOVA Project for good.”
He didn’t want that. Of course, he didn’t. He’d given his whole life for the JENOVA Project. He genuinely hoped that he was going to offer something to humanity. He really hoped that all the work that he had put into this – all the sleepless nights and all those calculations – he really thought his whole life’s work would give something to the world – something useful. Something grand.
It was all a farce. A childish dream.
“Gast… maybe it’s… for the best,” Tedric took a step forward, placing a hand on his shoulder. “The past months have been enough to realise that… whatever she or- it is… it’s dangerous. Not Shinra… not anyone should be in possession of whatever power that thing holds.”
“We haven’t run enough tests yet,” Lucrecia cut in. “Besides, you said it yourself, Jo,” she turned at Jocasta “we don’t have Cetra genetic material to cross it with. We don’t know for certain that the molecular size of Cetra genetic material is not equally enormous.”
“Yes, we do. The Cetra are our ancestors. We’re not the same, but the band size should be close to human, if not identical,” Jocasta said, and Tedric nodded.
“Listen, we have this equation in genetics. It’s only been around for five years, but it makes sense,” Tedric walked towards the seminar room and the others followed. He picked a piece of white chalk and started scribbling down on the green board. “The sum of adenine bases equals thymine, correct? The same stands for guanine bases being equal to cytosine, but the ratio of those two produces a number that’s different and unique to every species. If that number for humans is, let’s say, one point five, the Cetra ratio shouldn’t stray no further than two point eight, and I can tell you for a fact that Jenova’s is way beyond four.”
Jocasta sighed with a lovestruck look on her face. That’s my future husband.
“So, if we were to talk phylogenetics,” Tedric placed down the chalk and turned at the others. “Jenova isn’t even from this planet. Not even Weapons have genetic material this size, and we’re talking about massive beings of higher intelligence and ability.”
“So, what do you suggest that she is?” Gast asked. “We dug her up from the crater. She was twelve kilometres deep in a pool of rotten lifestream.”
“Rotten?” Lucrecia asked.
“Wait, was that… not mentioned in the reports?” Gast asked confusedly.
“First time I’m hearing it,” Jocasta said.
“So am I,” Tedric added.
“What does rotten lifestream even look like?” Hojo asked.
“Purplish and… lifeless and dark and… I think I have pictures, follow me,” Gast walked out of the room. Lucrecia and Hojo followed. Tedric erased the board in haste, but once he turned to walk out of the seminar room, Jocasta caught his face between both her hands and pulled him down to her in a sudden kiss. His eyes widened and before he could even respond, she pulled back with a lovestruck little smile that he recognised.
“You are so hot when you talk science,”
Tedric’s entire face went red, and he started stuttering like an idiot. Hojo wasn’t even fully out the door yet, but the slightest glance back at them was enough. She hadn’t quite yet responded to his proposition, but she didn’t have to. That was enough of a response.
Hojo walked out quietly, and soon the other two followed.
༻◊۞◊༺
Two Days Later
Mideel was… the same as he remembered it. Full of students roaming all around the place. It was loud and busy and full of life.
Not exactly Vincent’s favourite kind of place to be. Today was a bit more special and he was glad that despite everything, he was there. He parked the car around campus, right outside the life sciences building, where he knew he’d see his father walking out any minute now. The sun was high up in the sky and there was a cool breeze brushing his hair out of his face.
Vincent stood outside the car, pressing some of his weight against it. He held a coffee in one hand, taking a sip, enjoying the warmth of the sun touching his face. Cold, black, and bitter. He swallowed and looked up at the clear, blue sky. The reflection turned his red eyes into a brilliant purple. Two students walking across the sidewalk eyed him and giggled to each other before rushing away. He rolled his eyes and shook his head.
Kids.
“Vincent?!”
His old man’s familiar voice came from the entrance of the building. He looked up to see his dad. The old man was barely touched by age. Not even a single strand of hair was white or even grey. Vincent placed the coffee on the car’s roof and he rushed for his dad, letting him pull him into the tightest hug. Grimoire laughed loudly and squeezed him impossibly.
“My boy! I knew you’d come today! I was so worried that something might have happened.”
A small smile spread on Vincent’s face and he patted Grimoire’s back.
“I’m sorry it took so long to visit you,” Vincent squeezed him back slightly. “Things were… a mess back in Midgar.”
“Aren’t they always?” Grimoire pulled back, looking down at him. He could have sworn, the more the time passed, his boy kept growing into the handsome man that he once was himself. He was certain his mother would brag about him day and night. Grimoire almost teared up on the thought. “Right, you got uh…” Grimoire tried to say something to distract him, but Vincent was already eyeing suspiciously. The older he grew, the more sensitive he became.
Vincent noticed the old man was about to start crying, but he chose to pretend that he didn’t.
“…you got flowers! Gerberas,” Grimoire pointed through the half open window of the car. A bouquet rested on the seat beside the driver’s.
“You always mentioned they were her favourites,” Vincent nodded.
Grimoire chuckled. He’d raised him to be observant. “Of course. Ready to meet her?”
“Are you?” Vincent arched an eyebrow. Grimoire walked around the car, to settle on the seat, placing the bouquet in his lap. Vincent picked his coffee, placing it at the cupholder and turning the key, switching on the engine.
“You know… it’s been almost thirty years,” Grimoire sighed as Vincent drove them to the cemetery. “But there’s no amount of time that can heal that kind of loss…” Grimoire tried to cheer things up turning at his son with a grin. “I hope you get to find that kind of bond soon too, son!”
Vincent groaned.
“C’mon! I want to see grandkids before I die!”
“Dad! What have I told you about this?! I’m a Turk. I can’t have kids.”
“That’s why you should have become a scientist like me!”
Vincent groaned even louder. He wanted to bang his head against the wheel, but Grimoire kept talking.
“It’s a safe, consistent job, with benefits, alright? It pays well, you are well respected, you get a three-month vacation per year, guaranteed. What other job offers all of that? Why don’t you listen to your father for once?”
“I already have twelve years work experience as a Turk. I’m high-ranked, it pays well, it’s fine.”
“It’s dangerous, it’s what it is!”
“It got its own benefits.”
“Getting a new near-death experience seven days a week is not a benefit!”
Vincent sighed, making a turn, parking the car at the parking area of the cemetery. They would have that same conversation every time he’d visit. He’d be actually surprised if they didn’t.
Vincent walked out of the car. Grimoire sighed and followed him, holding the bouquet with one hand.
The cemetery was a bit further away than the city. They had built it in a valley surrounded by trees and greenery, away from the loud buzz of honking cars and countless people. They walked around the graves in silence. All kinds of marble from white to black, to cheap cement. Unruly gravestones from the oldest graves stuck out from invading greenery and ivy. They were almost alone. There was a widow – he guessed – standing on top of a grave at the far end of the path he and his father walked on.
Grimoire made a turn – he had memorised his wife’s resting place by heart. He could navigate the huge graveyard without much effort. He stood in front of a familiar grave. It was white marble, carved beautifully in the shapes of her favourite flowers. A withered bouquet rested there already – left by Grimoire the previous week. There was her picture at the centre, surrounded by two lanterns that would light up when the sun would go down at dusk.
Nathalie H. Valentine
Beloved wife and mother
22/09/1929 – 13/08/1950
Her picture was black and white, but Vincent knew her hair was light brown, short and messy, and her eyes were the brightest blue. She had the prettiest smile. She wore circular glasses resting at the tip of her nose. She wore a white shirt, stuffed into what he could only guess was a brown, ankle-length skirt. Grimoire never stopped talking about her. He would never shut up about how brilliant she was. She was a scientist as well. She had made it into the university from her sheer talent and determination alone. She had gone against all odds, and she had done what she loved most.
Or at least, tried to.
Today, twenty-seven years ago, she gave him life, whilst he took her own. At first, he hated himself for depriving himself of his own mother. He hated himself for being the reason that he never got to meet her. But that was only at the beginning when he was still a young boy, missing his mom. Grimoire would pull him in his lap and explain him over and over that it wasn’t his fault. He would explain again and again – he would even put science into it – to make sure that Vincent understood that he wasn’t the reason that she was gone.
Grimoire had tried. He had tried his absolute hardest – he had given everything he could – he learned cooking, cleaning, teaching, he had learned patience like no other, he had learned how to hide the loss – never let it get to the child. They would celebrate Vincent’s birthday every year despite it being the very anniversary of his wife’s death. He had been a mother and a father at the same time. Vincent always came first to him. He would raise him right. He had promised it to her the night she died.
He did not regret it. He did not regret it one bit.
“My beloved,” Grimoire dropped down on one knee and wiped the dirt and withered leaves off the stone with his hands. “You’re as beautiful… as ever,” he smiled at the picture ignoring his eyes that began to water and his nose starting to sting. She almost looked like an actress from a classic old republic film.
It had certainly taken Vincent long enough to realise just how important he was to Grimoire. If he’d known, he probably wouldn’t have become a Turk. He was all he had.
Despite everything, Vincent was lucky Grimoire was his father. He was a good father.
Vincent knelt down beside him, pulling out his handkerchief and handing it to him. Grimoire chuckled and hoped his hair would cover his face from him.
“I- I’m not-” he sniffled. Still trying to hide it after all those years.
“Come on,” Vincent didn’t put his hand down until Grimoire finally accepted the handkerchief. “I’m no longer a little kid.”
Grimoire chuckled. “Sometimes I forget how much time has passed.” He looked back up at her picture. “Do you want to hear the story of how I met her?”
Vincent rolled his eyes. He’d already heard that story a million times. “I know the story. She was already-”
“She was already betrothed to someone else when we first met,” Grimoire laughed. “She was the daughter of the richest family in Junon and all I was good at was shining shoes and street-fighting. I was such a good streetfighter, the best in Junon. Not even the local thugs stood a chance against me…”
Vincent sighed deeply, rubbing his forehead, tiredly.
He couldn’t wait to return to Midgar.
“…and when word went out about my skill, her snobbish grandparents hired me of all people to protect her! Can you believe it?!”
“Yes… yes I can-” Vincent massaged his temple.
“And she fell right away for those Valentine charms,” Grimoire laughed elbowing Vincent playfully and winking.
He probably kept talking, but Vincent realised there was something about that story that sounded similar. His mom was already engaged to someone else when she met his father.
Jocasta is already engaged…
His mom was a scientist…
Jocasta IS a scientist…
Grimoire was her bodyguard…
I was Jocasta’s bodyguard…
And there were pretty high chances that he’d be assigned her protection once again. They were only waiting for orders from the president- wait, what the hell are you even thinking?!
Why was he thinking about Jocasta all of a sudden?
Was it because she had let him sleep on the couch? Was it because she had even thrown a blanket on top of him? Even when she was so obviously shivering, sleeping on the armchair, cold and uncomfortable but still exhausted enough to sleep. He had picked her up. She was so light to carry. He picked her up, laid her on the couch, threw the blanket on top of her. She was beautiful while she slept.
And when the phone rang, the soldier on the other line, telling him that her helicopter had crashed – he didn’t remember himself acting so fast about anything before. He’d jumped off his desk, abandoned reports and paperwork and whatnot – he’d rushed out of the HQ, taken the nearest car available – he had raced to the scene.
And then, that mission that he had finished so fast. He had killed so many people that night. He had finished it in such a hurry to go back to her – to check up on her in the hospital.
He hadn’t realised this all until now.
Why all that haste for a woman already meant for someone else?
Maybe that’s why he’d stayed away from her for the remainder of her stay in the hospital. He was still there, protecting her, but out of sight. Why all that effort? Did he…?
No.
His parents’ romance didn’t have a good ending.
He wanted no repeat of that.
“…are you still listening to me, son?” Grimoire turned at Vincent, finally realising that he had spaced out. He had a confused, blank, distant look on his face, staring at a random spot ahead. The delay in Vincent’s response earned him a grin. “You gotta tell me all about the lady you’re thinking of,”
Vincent’s face went entirely red, and he hid it behind both his hands, groaning in irritation. Grimoire laughed and patted his back. He wouldn’t let that down for the remainder of his stay.
༻◊۞◊༺
Jocasta was pacing all around the basement labs trying to think. She always paced around when she was trying to figure something out. She found herself in the largest lab – Gast’s lab. It was full of all the people that worked under him – lower grade scientists, dressed in their lab coats, performing tasks under Gast’s orders.
“A little bit on the left…” Gast’s voice snapped her out of it, and she finally looked up at the man not too further away. A couple of scientists were rolling a glass container that held something that looked like at least a few centuries’ old spear. That thing was practically ancient and probably fit for a museum. “…perfect! Thanks, Jill, Graham,” Gast patted both younger interns’ shoulders and they gave him a small bow before walking away to continue whatever he had interrupted them from.
“What’s that?” Jocasta approached him, staring at the spear inside the container, probably meant to protect and examine it without touching it.
“Oh! Jo! This is one of the things we found in the crater. I bet everything I have that this is a Cetran weapon,” Gast looked excited.
“And what are you planning to do with it?” Jocasta crossed her arms against her chest. “That thing’s fit for a museum, Gast.”
“Well of course, but first, I want to see if there’s any remaining Cetra cellular material that we might use to compare it with Jenova’s,”
That made sense.
“If you need any help, let me know,” Jocasta said to Gast, placing a hand on his shoulder and giving him a smile, before walking back to the seminar room where she spent an embarrassing amount of time into.
She just couldn’t get it out of her mind.
Rotten lifestream… shiny, dark purple swirling around the foreign cadaver.
Jocasta had been staring at the photograph that Gast had showed the team about an hour ago. He had pinned it on the green board of the seminar room along with every other result they had so far. The natural colour of lifestream was green. Purple didn’t necessarily make it rotten. Maybe that purple liquid was… repurposed? Tainted? Infected?
Her eyes widened.
“Infected!”
Jocasta turned excitedly to walk out of the room and head back to the lab, but she noticed Hojo staring at her in confusion.
“Are you talking to yourself, Earnchester?”
“Hojo!” Jocasta rushed to him and caught his hand by the sleeve of his white lab coat, dragging him out of the room with her. “I have an idea!”
“S- Slow down, you maniac!” His glasses almost came out of place at the speed with which she pushed him into their lab. She almost knocked him on the floor.
“We’ve been focusing so much on genetics, we forgot all about microbiology!” Jocasta had that excited gleam in his eyes. “That lifestream wasn’t rotten, it was infected! We need to clone JENOVA cells into bacteria o- or actually plasmids, or other vectors l- like viruses…” she snapped her fingers “…bacteriophages! We put JENOVA genome in bacteriophages, we infect bacteria with them-”
“-the JENOVA genes will be incorporated into bacteria…” Hojo was starting to catch up with it “…and the bacteria will start producing… proteins.”
“Exactly!” Jocasta said excitedly “Whatever those may be, the result should give us enough insight on what Jenova is made of!”
Brilliant. That was brilliant. He couldn’t believe none of them had thought about that. Gast was too busy running the department and trying to convince everyone that the specimen was a Cetra without actually doing anything to prove it. Tedric was a useless moron. Lucrecia was entirely useless too, but then there was she. Jocasta. And she was brilliant.
She could have sworn – he was almost smiling a genuine smile.
“I’ll go check the freezer. We must have phages somewhere-” before she could walk out of their lab, he caught her hand by the forearm and kept her in place. He didn’t know what he was trying to do. It was so unlike him to even touch someone. She looked up at him in utter confusion.
“My offer still stands.”
Her eyes widened. She was never good at concealing her surprise. She never thought he’d bring that up again. She thought she had evaded answering the first time. She wouldn’t be so lucky this time.
It would be cruel to keep leading him on to something that would never come. She didn’t want her marriage to be a business deal.
Actually, she didn’t want to get married at all, but right now, it was safer for a woman to be married. She loved Tedric, but she loved her career more. She didn’t think she’d find a man she’d love more than science. Hojo seemed to understand that. He would put science above anything.
Maybe that was one thing that they had in common.
Jocasta brought her other hand on top of his own, still clutching on her forearm. She looked up at him – apologetically even.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her eyes drifted away. She looked down, ashamed. “I’m a hypocrite. Forgive me.”
“You love him.”
She shook her head. “No. That’s not it,” she finally looked up again “I just know that… he’d prioritise me over his career. Over anything actually… even when I… wouldn’t do the same. And I know that you wouldn’t either. That makes him a good man… and that makes you and I two… terrible… evil people.”
Once again, she was correct. He was terrible. And he was capable of inexplicable evil. His father was. So was he. He didn’t know anything beyond evil. She was just using Tedric. Tedric was her little dog that would come running to tend to her mildest inconvenience. She was manipulating that man just because she was so good at it. She felt terrible for it, but she didn’t do anything to stop it. He was giving her a chance to stop but she didn’t want to.
Hojo laughed. He laughed because it was amusing. It was amusing to know that she thought her evil was anything remotely close to his.
She was truly perfect but still naïve.
He pulled her closer with a sudden tug and she let out a gasp. He had a look in his eyes and a smile that was anything but sane.
“Let it be a race then, my dear. Let us see which one between the two of us is the most manipulative, terrible, and evil.”
Notes:
this feels like total canon diversion tbh, just another precanon AU, that might wholly prevent canon events tbh, I JUST NEEDED MORE of whatever the hell those scientists were doing in the Shinra Manor, and decided to take matters into my own hands
and NO, this is NOT a Hojo x OC, I'M NOT INSANE (or am I? I think next chapter says otherwise tbh)
BUT endgame is Vincent in this, that's what you're here for, that's what I'm here for, Jo's absolutely smitten with him (who wouldn't be?)
Oceanwaves101 on Chapter 7 Tue 25 Mar 2025 06:07PM UTC
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Oceanwaves101 on Chapter 7 Tue 25 Mar 2025 07:23PM UTC
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koulakoukoula on Chapter 7 Sat 19 Jul 2025 02:46PM UTC
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