Lily came back into the kitchen and ran a hand through her hair with a sigh. "Sleeping like a log," she reported, looking faintly relieved. "His breathing doesn't sound all that great, but at least he's taking it easy. I guess he can eat later." She lowered herself into a chair and reached for her cigarettes. Pulled one into her mouth and lit it with her usual thoughtless ease. "God, but you know..." She trailed off for a moment and took a drag, blew the smoke away from the table. "What I want to know is how the hell he kept that from me all this time."

Tifa shuffled the cards in her hands. It probably hadn't been all that difficult, she expected, with a routine of feeding them regularly. But what would he do, she wondered suddenly, when the population of monsters in this area inevitably decreased to the point where hunting was no longer so easy? Move? Take in more territory? Have himself locked away? She wondered if this thought for the future ever bothered him. A scary thing, she recognized, to have to be responsible for the appetites of those creatures. What would he do when there were finally no monsters left, if that day ever came?

He did have reasons, she mused, for wanting to die. If only to keep others from dying. She couldn't help a small wince at the idea. Monsters had it lucky, she found herself thinking. They didn't feel accountable for the lives they took for food.

"Tifa?"

She glanced up. "Hm?"

Lily was smiling faintly. "A million miles away. I asked if you're hungry."

"Oh. Maybe a little. I ate a few pieces of your banana bread."

"Well, there's spaghetti in that pan on the stove, and some grated cheese in the fridge. Got some cucumber cut up into slices, too." She looked toward the window with another sigh and brought a thumb up to her mouth. Stayed that way for a few seconds, restlessly running her nail over her bottom lip. And then took a breath and turned back, meeting Tifa's eyes.

Tifa couldn't say she was surprised. Even Lily had her curiousity.

"I'm never going to ask him," she confessed. "It'd make him uncomfortable, I know. But..." She gave an impatient kind of shrug and stretched out a hand to her tray, knocking the soft gray ash from her cigarette. "I still want to know some things. God, the man..." She paused a moment, shaking her head, and didn't finish her thought. "He had those...things in Avalanche?"

Tifa only hesitated for a second before nodding. Lily knew most of it already, no harm she could see in answering her questions.

"Did he try and keep all of you from knowing?"

She frowned a little, trying to remember. "I don't think so." And she wondered something. "He might've been just as surprised by them as we were. We...we found him in a coffin, where he said he'd been sleeping for something like thirty years."

Tifa noticed Lily stiffen peripherally. "Thirty years? Shit." She brought the cigarette to her mouth and took another pull. "But, how's that work? He doesn't look thirty now."

"Maybe he was in stasis. Or..." She chewed the inside of her lip for a moment before plunging ahead. "Or that man I mentioned before, Hojo, might have done something to him. I don't know. That I suppose you *would* have to ask him about."

Lily looked at her for a moment, as if she thought there might be more to the answer, before giving another shrug. "Well, doesn't matter in the end, I guess. He's still Vince, same as he was before. It doesn't change anything."

But it had changed everything for them, in Avalanche, she thought with a pang of shame. She doubted any of them had quite looked at him the same after that first terrifying transformation. Certainly they had all acted differently.

Though Vincent hadn't seemed to notice. Had gone on as if it hadn't bothered him. Maybe it really hadn't bothered him, she mused. Maybe he hadn't cared what they'd thought. But still...

Inhuman. He must've felt it in their unspoken rejection. Maybe it had been a relief to come to Nibelheim, to finally be accepted into someone's home, to be treated as a normal human being. He'd always been more than a shadow. And, though Lily had not been the first to see him out of that coffin, she had probably been the first to really *see* him.

Lily took a sudden breath, like coming out of a thought, and took one more drag on her cigarette before stubbing it out. And then she stood. "Well, I'm going to bed. Didn't get much sleep last night. If you don't want any of that spaghetti I'm going to put it in the fridge."

"Okay." Maybe she would try to get some sleep, too. Out of the three of them, Vincent had been the only one who'd gotten any decent rest.

"G'night, Tifa." And it surprised her when Lily touched her hand across the table. Looked at her from under her feathery bangs, sincere green eyes and a mouth touched with a wry kind of smile. "Part of me wants to tell you it was stupid and dangerous of you to go out after him. But I'm just going to say thank you. Brought him home when he was too much a fool to do it himself. Thank you, too, from him, whether he ever says it. I already know he's got nowhere else to go." Squeezed her fingers gently. "Sweet dreams."

But, overtired, Tifa slumbered restlessly. Woke every couple of hours until the early morning, and then had a dream about Cloud. And quietly slipped out from under the blanket and went into the kitchen for a drink of water. Sat at the table, idly thumbing the deck of cards, and trying not to think about what she'd dreamed.

An impossible thing to ask herself to do. Cloud. Cloud, in Mr. Fallowfield's store, and she was looking for a particular healing herb. Going over shelf after disordered shelf, getting more and more upset as he shouted at her, followed her around, made it hard for her to concentrate.

The dream had ended strangely, however. Mr. Fallowfield, but it was Vincent, and he was holding her shoes. Not a pill bottle, but in the dream it was what she'd been looking for. And he'd spoken. Two words.

"Walk away."

And she'd woken up.

It was getting harder and harder to think of this place as temporary, she thought as she picked at a rough corner of the ace of spades with a nail. She didn't want to go back to Kalm, the town of nightmares, though she knew she would have to eventually. She had accounts to settle. Though she had a job here, a place to live; here she didn't have to be alone.

Interesting, how they had changed places. Once, she wouldn't have come back to Nibelheim for anything...

Interesting, that Vincent had ended up back in this town, too, despite all that had happened here. What strange homeopathy did this place hold over its victims?

He'd carried her here the night she'd almost drowned, on a chocobo and then in his arms. And then she had brought him back on a chocobo, and she and Lily had carried him up the stairs. Lily, still wiping at tears she hadn't made excuses for. Angry, grieving tears, Tifa had thought.

And then sewing his shirt up again with navy thread. It would never look exactly the same as it had before. But she'd tried to make the buttons secure so that they would not break away so easily next time. Some things were weaker after having been broken once; but this, she'd decided, needle in and needle out, was one thing that would not be.

She came out of her reverie at the creak of a floorboard overhead. And felt her lips twitch in a little amusement despite herself. Lily would skewer him if she knew, out of bed and walking around. But maybe he was bored, looking for something to do. He'd slept all evening; maybe it was all his body had needed. She thumbed the cards again.

And then gathered them into her hand with the keys and some initial collateral. Hesitation be damned. She didn't want to be alone to think again. And Lily could skewer her, too, while she was at it.

        * * *

She went to sit at the table, but Vincent gestured her back into the living room with the hand that was not busy carrying the plate of banana bread.

"On the couch."

She obediently stepped over and sat on one of the cushions. When Vincent began to lower himself carefully to the floor, however, she stood back up, feeling the need to object. "Why aren't you sitting here?"

He glanced up at her as he stretched himself out, propped on the metal joint of his left elbow. "It's more comfortable this way," he stated simply and put out a hand toward her. For the cards, she thought.

But it couldn't really be more comfortable on the floor, could it? "Why don't you lie on the couch instead?"

"It's not long enough." He twitched his fingers, beckoning for the deck.

And she sighed. Stubborn, stubborn. Well, fine, it was easy enough to make a compromise. There was a blanket on the sofa. Quickly, she tucked it around herself and sat down on the floor.

He didn't say anything about her choice. He just shuffled and went to deal.

But Tifa stopped him after a moment, suddenly thinking of a way she might be able to win back some of her cheque, at least so that she wouldn't have to play solely with I.O.U's. "Do you know seven-card-stud?"

He raised an unmistakably skeptical eyebrow. "You want to play with seven cards?"

And she couldn't help but scoff at his tone. Yes, it was a little more complicated, but she wasn't a child, and she was intelligent. It was the first game Barret had taught her, the one she'd gotten very, very good at once upon a time. "He who underestimates his opponent leaves himself open for defeat," she quoted automatically, feeling justifiably offended; one of Zangan's favourite sayings.

For a moment he seemed surprised, as if he hadn't expected her anger. And then he gave a small shrug, maybe his version of a wordless apology (though it hardly seemed remorseful), and began to deal the cards deftly into two piles on the floor.

There. But something was missing. Not a big thing, she thought, but it had always been a part of their games. "Do you have anything to drink, Vincent?" And then, remembering his whiskey, amended, "Anything that's not forty percent alcohol?"

He kept beer in his fridge. Four bottles that might've been sitting unopened for weeks. She brought two over and ignored Vincent's initial move to take the bottles from her. Took an edge of the nightie she was wearing and twisted the caps off. She hadn't been a bartender all those years for nothing.

And as Vincent set the first bet at two gil, she reached into the folds of the blanket and pulled out her collateral: two cigarettes.

One of Vincent's eyebrows twitched upward as she set them in the pot.

And though he didn't say anything, she still felt the need to explain. "I don't have any coins left, so I was going to make this my first bet. If you don't like it, I guess I could just say that I owe you..."

"No, it's fine."

Brusque, and quickly lowering his eyes to his cards. And Tifa had to suppress another smile. Addicted or not, he was definitely still caught by the habit.

She was almost a little surprised when she won the first hand. It had been a few years, after all. And then when she won second. By the third, however, Vincent was getting back into his stride. And they paused the game a moment while he slipped one of the cigarettes between his lips and made a futile search around for something to light it with.

Tifa glanced around, too, as if she might find some matches lying on the floor. "Where's that lighter?" she wondered aloud.

And after a moment, Vincent muttered, "Kitchen," around his cigarette.

She found it on top of his fridge. He nodded as she handed it to him, lifted the flame up. And, just shy of the tobacco-filled paper, his eyes flicked up to meet hers, and she thought he looked uncertain for a moment. "You're going to let me smoke this?" The small oval of fire flickered under his breath.

And she was a caught off-guard by the question. She wasn't his mother, and she wasn't Lily. They were his lungs. Though... "If you start coughing again, I suppose I might try to talk you into saving them for later, but otherwise..." She shrugged and trailed off. "It's a filthy habit, it's bad for you..." (So she'd told Cid a number of times) "...but everyone has their reasons for doing things."

Everyone had their reasons. Even Aeris, she'd sometimes tried to convince Cloud in his darker moments, back when she'd still hoped he would listen. Not his fault; she'd made her own choice, had her own reasons. Maybe she'd even known.

Vincent's lips twitched slightly, like a small thoughtful frown, as he looked back at the lighter. Lit the end and took a drag. And his face seemed to ease for a moment out of its perpetually grim expression. A relieved kind of pleasure, she thought, with the surge of nicotine. And without looking so implacably stern, she realized that he *was* good-looking. Would be more good-looking all the time if he could just relax a little more often.

He exhaled the smoke in a sudden cough that caught him by surprise, only half-muffled with the back of his hand. And he glanced at her quickly as if he thought she might reach out pluck the cigarette out of his mouth. Though, of course, she wasn't going to. And after a moment he turned his attention to the cards she'd dealt him.

"I had my reasons for leaving this morning." He frowned a little, paused in arranging his hand. "Yesterday morning," he corrected himself, and she realized he was right, since it was past midnight. He looked up at her again, met her eyes with a direct kind of gaze that almost seemed a little accusing. "Yet you were able to justify coming after me."

Yes, she had been, she admitted. But sometimes people did selfless things for selfish reasons. And she hadn't wanted him to leave, for Lily's sake. For her own sake. Different circumstances altogether. And it wasn't like she was the first person in the world who had ever done something like it. "Well, you saw fit to rescue me from the water," she observed quietly. "And I had my reasons for jumping from the bridge."

It was a few moments before he spoke again, idly straightening his cards as if he was trying to buy some time to think of a suitable reply. And then he blinked and gave a sigh, like granting his reluctant consent. "Touché." He took another draw on the cigarette, breathed the smoke out to his left. Quirked an eyebrow. "And I suppose it isn't as if they might kill me someday."

True enough, she thought with a grin that turned quickly, almost without her permission, into a soft chuckle. It wasn't exactly something she should be laughing about, though, she thought. Beer on an empty stomach was never a good idea. The nightmares of Nibelheim would never be memories to look back on and laugh about. But when she saw the corners of Vincent's mouth twitching into a wan smile around the cigarette, she stopped trying to suppress her amusement. Oh, the dear irony of it. What price he paid to be above it all.

What price the world had paid, might still pay, for the sake of scientific advancement.

She was really starting to lose half way into her second bottle of beer. As they finished the seventh or eighth hand, she wasn't quite sure where they were at, she gathered up the cards to shuffle since they'd been taking turns. Suddenly remembered a way Barret had taught her.

'Like this, Tif. Hands out in front, thumbs here. No, here. Now just let go.'

But things never seemed to work exactly as you remembered, especially when you'd been drinking. Fifty-two cards, old and folded and faded, flipped out of her fingers, most of them just falling into her lap. And she gave an unauthorized snort of laughter at her own foolishness and glanced automatically at her audience.

Vincent, now down nearly to the stub of his second cigarette, raised a slow eyebrow, his eyes flickering around at the cards on the floor. "Do you want me to shuffle?" he asked, sounding a trifle wan.

The question made her want to laugh again, but she took a breath to calm herself. Yes, a little drunk, and maybe it was time to go back to bed. "That's okay. I think I'm done." And she began to pick up her mess, leaning out of the warm shelter of the blanket for the cards that had actually gotten a bit of range.

One of them there, behind Vincent. "Sorry," she muttered as she kneeled into the designated 'pot' and reached over him. Hadn't given him the time to move, so he rolled onto his back, out of her way she thought. This would only take a second anyway.

But she was overbalanced, and she realized too late that she should have known it. Caught herself at the last second in a bridge over him and managed with a grimace to pinch the card between her fingers. And then drew back into the smell of laundry detergent and shampoo. Glanced up in some surprise at finding herself so close to him, nearly cheek to cheek for a moment. How had this happened? Suddenly looking into his hard, wary eyes and realizing there *were* brown flecks in his irises.

His pupils were tracing the lines of her face with a kind of anxious swiftness, as if he might've been trying to locate the trigger to disarm a bomb. Noticing again and again in the few long seconds it took to swallow the uncomfortable lump in her throat how his gaze swept down to her mouth, only to jump away again.

That uneasy, fearful attraction she had almost managed to forget about. Things had been comfortable; old comrades, some beer, a few rounds of poker. And now she'd made them *un*comfortable again, though she couldn't quite recall how she'd gotten them into this position. An accident, she felt sure. Her mind felt slow and busy at the sudden intimate proximity, with the memory of a kiss in a dream, the memory of the real thing; two polar opposites.

His lips were slightly parted. And she felt hot. Someone had to say something, do something. Or, God help her, she was going to...

She wanted to...

Not Cloud, but there was something in there, jumbled up with the rest, that *wanted* it to be Vincent. Push the hair behind his ear, test the hard-wire muscles with her fingers, slip her hand under his shirt and not pull away from the unfamiliar, inviting warmth of his skin.

Oh God, everything else be damned, all for one moment of fiery curiousity.

And it wasn't like the first kiss in his kitchen, thin-lipped surprise and the cold rush of air between them. His mouth moved to take hers and he went rigid suddenly under her, made a small noise in the back of his throat like a fleeting moan of loss or gain. Cigarettes and beer and the heady taste of someone who was not Cloud. Not sober with the shock of it, but aware enough now to remember how alcohol could make you burn. And it had been such a long time since she'd been in someone's arms...

Darted his mouth away, a glimpse of his face contorting with something like pain. A moment of his gasping, raspy breath against her chin. And then they were kissing again, though she couldn't be sure the second one wasn't accidental, an unintentional brush of lips that just deepened before she could think about it. She knew it was wrong, knew they shouldn't be, knew some part of her would regret it; knew he would regret it. But she didn't want to stop. One touch of his hand on her side, her hip, and she would melt into that hard body she could break against.

And then it was over. He turned his face away, breathing unsteadily in the near-silence, his eyes closed tightly. And she wanted to follow, wanted to track that warmth. Knowing she should pull back, but hesitating. Almost leaning forward.

"Don't." A sharp command out of his mouth and it startled her. She felt torn, mind and body, her flesh awake and churning and craving more. Just once more...

"Don't!"

And she hauled herself away almost involuntarily at the volume of his voice, landing hard on her backside on the floor. But the pain was nothing to the belated wash of guilt and shame, seeing him lying there, his breath almost rattling with his lung injury, brought by her right to the edge of temptation. And, too, for having been so quick to forget. To have almost betrayed Cloud.

She was weak. Maybe Vincent had known. Why he'd wanted her to leave before. More pain, and hadn't they been through enough?

In the wrong, and she knew it. This would blow it wide open. They'd never be able to look each other in the eye again. But, at least she could apologize...

"Vincent, I'm sorry. I don't know... I just..."

Slowly, he turned his head to face her, his eyes open and he looked weary. So weary. It surprised her, but maybe he wouldn't say anything. Maybe he would tell her to get out, go home, never return.

Soft words, rasping in his throat. "Forget it." He closed his eyes and she saw the stuttered sigh as his chest rose and fell. "It's not your fault. Just please, forget it. Don't do it again."

Hot with shame and something else. But she could still nod. And flee from the heat in his apartment into the cool night air and back into the oblivious silence and darkness of Lily's living room.

But not back into the oblivion of sleep.

Back