Tifa didn't see Vincent again before she left the next morning for her first shift at Mr. Fallowfield's store. And for this she was both grateful and a little grieved. It was like going to bed angry, she thought, and then waking up, not knowing what to say; and so, not saying anything. It didn't solve anything, it didn't make anyone feel any better. But it felt safer than risking the emotional shame and discomfort of a confrontation.

And right now, she wasn't sure she was up to dealing with more emotional complications. She'd thought he'd had a handle on it (he'd seemed easier in her presence since returning from Kalm), but Vincent was still physically uncomfortable with her, still attracted to her, and still obviously against his will. *Something* had happened that second night in his living room to bring it back for him, and she felt inclined now to let him retreat if he wanted to. She had her own life to worry about, to start over again, and it didn't exactly require Vincent's friendship. Maybe she was curious about him, how three years had changed him; maybe indebted to him; maybe she'd even begun to sort of enjoy his company. But she had nothing to give him. She didn't have the strength to try and chase someone else out of their shell.

Mr. Fallowfield greeted her warmly when she arrived at his door and set to work enthusiastically introducing her to the inner workings of his little business. It was hard not to become interested in this stuff, she quickly realized, with him as her guide. He'd obviously devoted a lot of his life to learning about natural cures for injuries and diseases, and he genuinely believed in the things he sold. He had a number of stories, which he narrated like glowing testimonials, that were all the more convincing because he was on a first-name basis with most of his customers. She thought with some confidence that she would enjoy working here.

It was very different than running a bar, and not only in atmosphere and goods provided she quickly realized. The people who came into a health store were a very different type of people, most of the time, than those who came into a pub. They had questions, and ailments or sick family members; they had skepticism, hope, optimism; they had products they'd used for years, or a willingness to learn about things they'd never heard of before. They had lives behind them, lives ahead of them without answers provided by the progress of Shinra; quiet words to say about the time they'd spent 'since Meteor', as if it had been a sort of judgment day they'd only just avoided. They were looking for a better way to do things.

Not like the downcast patrons of her former bar, who weren't looking for hope but an escape. No wonder she'd gotten so depressed...

This was a town recovering from the decimation of advancement -- naive pawns, infantry on the front lines, moved first by Shinra to cover up the fire and then brought, like the rest of the world, to the brink of disaster. All for money, power, on the pretext of glorious enrichment for everyone. But what enrichment had been frighteningly revealed: North Corel, razed by Shinra; the Gongoga reactor, the presumed-virtuous killer of children and the elderly; Nibelheim, burned by Shinra's greatest experiment gone wrong; Midgar, the crushed slums, the doom of Meteor as its massive gravity brought to life an army of deadly swirling tornadoes, reducing to debris in seconds what had taken years to build.

It all came back to Nibelheim, where she'd lost everything for the first time. It had happened again in Midgar, then in Kalm; the details of her life ripped away every time she'd tried to make a new start. But it always came back to Nibelheim, if only because that's where it had all began.

It was just time, maybe, to finally heal that old wound, to find a remedy for this reoccurring malady. Vincent had brought her here, not because he thought the location would do anything for her, she presumed, but just to postpone her deathwish until it had fizzled. But now she was beginning to believe that nothing less than Nibelheim, than seeing her old home town pulling itself up by the bootlaces, would have helped her quite as much. The hard way always seemed to involve facing the past somewhere along the line.

Homeopathy, Mr. Fallowfield explained to her, was the science of using like to cure like. A little bit of the cause to heal the hurt.

If Nibelheim could do it... If Lily could do it...

If Vincent, who she'd always sort of expected to go back inside that coffin, also left scorched inside by love, also put through hell (perhaps a darker hell than she wanted to think about) and left to die, could do it...

She'd always been the strong one. A broken-heart had been the thing to knock her to the ground for the third time in her life, but Zangan had taught this girl how to get back on her feet.

And Vincent, too, had thought her capable enough to plunge himself under...

        * * *

He'd waited by the window, glancing out until she'd crossed the square, oblivious to her observer as she'd peered around herself, breathing in her surroundings. He'd felt slightly ridiculous, watching her leave Lily's house for her first day on a job Lily had introduced her to; slightly uncomfortable to realize that he'd been staring at the way her hair ruffled in the breeze that always seemed to be floating down from the mountains.

And his mind had gone on, inevitably, with the comparison. The memory of a woman crossing the streets of Nibelheim alone when he usually would've been with her, her fingers gently placed in the crook of his elbow. Watching her bitterly, miserably, chafing at the window in what Gast had jokingly labeled 'Turk territory'. Her territory, too, once; the one place they'd been assured of their privacy. So many nights, so many quiet conversations with her head on his chest as he'd skimmed his fingers down the familiar curve of her back. So much comfort and the wonderful knowledge that he wasn't alone in his universe any more.

Such a bad idea, in the end. He couldn't have left her in the water, but to bring her home... He should've guessed. He should've known what his subconscious mind was up to. A fool to have refused to analyze his own actions for fear of discovering what he hadn't wanted to know.

And now it had all been blown wide open again. All of the pain, memories, feelings he'd managed to wad into a ball and push far down inside of him so that he could move on with this semblance of a life. To live alone on a planet that even Lily only orbited, but at least he was sort of living.

To think he wouldn't have become vulnerable again. Such a fool. Had he believed himself invincible? Even Turks had been known to bleed now and again, he should've remembered. Somewhere between human and something else; but still with those frailties that made humans human...

This was what he would've died to escape. The guilt, the memory of soured love and caustic hate, the recognition of how terrible it was to be alone in his pain. This was what he'd taught himself to forget. This was what he needed to forget again.

Tifa was strong, a fighter. Tifa knew about healing, about recuperating from a loss, physical or emotional. Maybe she'd wanted to kill herself, but she would heal again. There was no doubt in his mind about that.

The Turks had known about healing, too. But it had not been a job where anyone really cared about your health. You healed enough to ensure your survival, and then you put yourself at risk again. Until the bullet with your name on it finally found you. Not a high life-expectancy, so what did your health matter? You killed people, had nightmares, but it came with the job. You didn't see a therapist. You didn't talk about it with anyone. You just continued to survive to the best of your abilities.

So maybe he'd never learned to heal. He'd learned to survive instead. The bare minimum, but he could be content with it, if only he could forget again.

The wound was still sore, but the comfrey creme was working miracles with the skin around his stitches so that even the wearing of his pants against his thigh wasn't irritating. Hitching himself across the living room, he made his way to the stairs and took the steps one at a time. A slow way to have to do it, but he'd resigned himself to patience in this; if he wanted it to heal so that he could get out on the hunt once more, he would have to be careful.

He went around to Lily's door, squinting in the sunshine. It wasn't often that he made his way outside during the day. Not exactly adverse to the sun (he always traveled to Kalm during the day in order to take the most advantage of the night hours), but he rarely had cause to leave his apartment, or any inn he was staying at, until the stars were coming out. And though the air of Nibelheim was cool in the evenings (cool even at the best of times), he found that he preferred it to the busy sunlight of day. Less people out, less discomfort. Almost invisible.

He knocked.

"Out here, Vince. In the garden."

He made his way around the side of the house. Lily was sitting on her heels with her dirt-stained hands on dirt-stained knees, a grin on her face as she peered at him from under her hat. "Well, if it isn't the man who wouldn't be, limp and all. Why don't you sit down?" She gestured vaguely behind her at the two chairs.

Vincent took the invitation and lowered himself into a chair. Half expecting the question, he wasn't surprised when Lily, already turned back to her garden as if the answer wasn't that important, asked, "So, you taking it easy up there?"

He sighed audibly. "Yes."

He heard her chuckle a little. "Good. And I promise that's all I'm going to say about it. I just wondered since Tifa isn't around to help you today." She sat up again and gave a grunt as she got to her feet. And then she spent an extra moment looking down at her array of flowers. "Pretty, aren't they?"

Vincent eyed them obediently. "I don't know much about flowers," he admitted, and not for the first time. But he knew that Lily didn't care about that. He'd always gotten the impression that it wasn't so much his opinion she was after, but his notice; after all, very few besides Lily ever saw her garden.

"Doesn't matter. You don't have know about them to have an appreciation." She wiped her hands on her pants and came to sit in the chair beside him. "So, you come down here for a reason, or just to chat?" She pulled out her package of cigarettes and a lighter from her pockets.

He took a breath, still staring off towards the flowers though he wasn't particularly looking at them. With Lily there was never any need for skirting the issue, and he'd never been the type to mince words. "Tifa should head back to Kalm."

Lily paused in the act of lighting the end of her cigarette and turned to him. "What?" she demanded, looking confused and even a little angry. "What the hell are you talking about?"

And with Lily, it was always better to keep eye contact or she tended to interrupt. "She can't stay here forever, Lily."

Lily scoffed and then gave herself a moment to light up. And then she puffed out a mouthful of smoke. "Why not? She's already said she's got nothing back in Kalm. And I've told her she can stay as long as she wants. Got a job now, she could get a place in town." She took another drag and breathed the smoke away from herself. "She could start again here. Don't be an ass. She doesn't have to go to Kalm." She scowled and scratched at a cheek with dirty nails.

"She has responsibilities waiting for her in Kalm."

"Well, she can take care of them from here, can't she? Go up with you on your damn chocobo sometime, pay her debts and whatever. She doesn't have to move back there to do it." She turned away with a short sigh, but after a few seconds the anger seemed to seep out of her. Lily never stayed angry about anything for very long. She turned back and rubbed her face with the palm of one hand, leaving a brown streak across the bridge of her nose. "God. She isn't ready, Vincent. Even you have to be able to see that. She's still recovering. The last thing she needs is to be left alone somewhere."

"She doesn't have to be alone. There were others in Avalanche who would take her in, or who would stay with her."

"What's wrong with staying here, then, if she's just going to go stay with someone else? Other people have their own lives; all we've got is lots of free time." She took another draw from her cigarette and sighed again. "I don't understand you. I really don't. You jump in the water after this girl, save her life, call the damn house to make sure I'm taking care of her, and then..." She paused and eyed him a little caustically. "And then you want to get rid of her. Just like that, put her back into the life that made her want to kill herself in the first place. Without another thought for her. Why the hell did you save her in the first place if you weren't going to give a damn in the end?"

Vincent didn't reply. Lily didn't know about Lucrecia, and he wasn't about to say her dead name aloud, even in the daylight.

"I even thought you two were starting to get along. And seeing the way you..." And then she stopped in the middle of her sentence, her eyes widening as she looked at him. "God, that's it, isn't it? You want her gone 'cause you're attracted to her."

Vincent glanced at her quickly, too surprised to keep his reaction under guard.

Lily's expression hardened into a smirk. "That's no secret, Vince. I'd be amazed if she hasn't noticed." She stretched a little in her chair until an elbow popped. "Nothing to be ashamed of, you know. She's a pretty girl. Sweet." She knocked some ash into the grass. "Asked a lot of questions about you. Not to mention the fact that she keeps wanting to help you. And keeps sneaking up to your apartment in the night. Can't imagine you flirting, but maybe if she didn't think you were such a cold fish she might... Wait, Vince, where're you going?"

He didn't want to hear about how she might be interested in him. He didn't want to hear that she was pretty and it wasn't wrong to be attracted to her. Lily didn't know about thirty-three years ago (only three for him, really); didn't know anything. It was a trap. It had always been a trap. And he wasn't about to fall blindly into it again. He began to make his way back around the house.

"I'm not sending her back to Kalm, Vince," Lily called after him. "If you don't want to see her, then she can stay downstairs with me. And she's going to stay as long as she wants to."

Vincent didn't answer. There was no arguing with Lily when she'd made up her mind. So Lily could do what she wanted. Tied her apron strings a little too tight, it seemed.

But it didn't matter. As long as he didn't see her, maybe it would be enough. And he would have to leave again soon anyway; a couple of days, at the most. Shortened hunt, and *they* were getting restless. For safety's sake, he would have to let them feed.

And it wasn't as if he hadn't gotten used to the nightmares.

        * * *

Tifa arrived in Lily's kitchen late that afternoon, fairly full to the brim with news. Half way through her account of the day, however, she noticed that Lily seemed distracted. A little confused, considering that so far Lily had not seemed the type to brood, she pulled out a chair and sat down. "What's wrong?"

Lily glanced up from where she'd been staring into her tea. "Oh, nothing." She gave a quick smile. "Vince and I have disagreements every so often, that's all; we're both stubborn jackasses in case you haven't noticed. And the man talks about as much as he smiles, so it's not like it ever really gets resolved, but it blows over." She took a sip from the mug and then sighed. "Anyway, what were you saying?"

Tifa didn't start into her story again right away. She had to ask, feeling a kind of urgency to know though she wasn't sure what she hoped the answer would be. "Does this mean no poker night?"

Lily gave another quirk of her lips. "Guess not. Though you and I could play, if you wanted."

But Tifa knew, looking at Lily across the table, that both of them were realizing it wouldn't be anywhere near the same.

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