Three months later

- Epilogue -

It began a week after her death.

Between images of metal shards and sprays of red, she would appear in slivers, like a sun peeking through a brief lapse in the clouds. Her eyes would flash, still frozen in that fear, meeting mine without recognition. The scent of the ocean, the chill of that night, would overtake me and for only a moment my arms would fill with the dead weight of someone dear, someone gone.

The unnerving realism steadily became more vivid until I was convinced they were no longer just elusive daydreams. I was reliving that moment. Over and over. The way her soft dark hair curled in the water like snakes, the chill that froze over my skin like suffocation, the burning piece of my chest that wanted to hold onto her forever, to deny everything.

She died again in my dreams, apart from me, screaming for me. The horrific sentiments dominated all others, and I was her captive each time. The images would bore into my waking mind, submerging me into the false urgency of saving her. The adrenaline. The fear. It was artificial and I knew it, and yet…

"Next in line!" A voice jarred me back.

Blinking, I looked around quickly and remembered where I was — waiting on a checkout line inside a local store to buy some groceries.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I forced the scene to melt away, leaving me with a soft chill like cold fingers curling into my palms. The dismal nighttime ocean dissipated rapidly, and the low murmur of tourists in the street eclipsed the surreal lapping of an imagined shoreline. Just before the world came back into focus, a final fleeting vision of her pulsed like a heartbeat through scattered memories of ocean sunsets and faceless victims. Then she was gone, lost to a fog, before I could hold onto her.

It was always like that.

Too often I lapsed out of reality, returning to that scene. Blending into the public masses and maintaining a calm exterior became increasingly difficult when it happened. Routine activities, such as grocery shopping, became torturous.

The further from her death I got, the worse the memories became somehow.

The middle-aged cashier behind the counter stared dully at me. I paid and left as soon as I could.

Outside, the afternoon sun burned bright and clear. It was the first annoyingly hot day in Icicle Town, which had become the newest tourist spot after the ice near the northern cave had melted away. Another odd weather effect from Meteor. The monsters within had all died out and daily tours were being given, along with a detailed skewered history of Jenova spewed from some ShinRa guide's mouth. The town had grown into a city, and more transients from Edge and Junon came through weekly. It was an ideal place to blend away since the general populace was temporary vacationers whom I would most likely never see again and whom assumed I was a vacationer as well.

Avoiding the crowds, I took the side-streets and back-roads towards the city limits. The light scent of her hair periodically tangled my thoughts. The sidewalk under me and the rows of short residential buildings on either side seemed to fade into false painted images without depth, like cardboard props set on a stage.

Nothing in the world felt...real. Not anymore. My waking self was the dream and these tiny fragments of her were the only true reality. I fought with myself, tried to convince myself that it was all part of the grief, or the guilt. Easier said than done.

My apartment building near the edge of town was small and unassuming, and once inside the top floor room, I left the groceries on the kitchen table and went into the office. Trying desperately to distract my mind, I stood at my desk near the window overlooking the street and began perusing through a series of bills that had been stacked there since the prior day. After ShinRa had bought the local businesses, it seemed like costs of everything had increased, and I listlessly checked the dates of payments due for the third then fourth times.

Sudden movement in the corner of my eye grabbed my attention. I swiveled quickly, tensed for the worst, with one arm involuntarily hovering near the empty space on my back. A shadow flickered in the dark space behind the open door and the wall. A glint of a knife. A malicious intent. The dull wallpaper became splattered with vibrant red lines from blood droplets thrown off a blade, and I knew my mind was playing tricks on me.

It happened more frequently than not, nearly three or four times daily, and I always reacted on impulse. Constantly things moved where there was nothing. A person would stand in shadows, in corners of the room or in doorways. Bits and pieces of the scenery would come to life then instantly resettle. I never could get a second glance.

It had begun with a voice. Her voice, of course — the same voice I had heard in Edge that night. My name and nothing more. Uncertain as a promise, intangible as a memory. And sometimes I felt the presence of another person standing directly behind me, but I could never turn fast enough to see her. She was always gone.

I remained completely still and watched the room carefully, my eyes moving to each corner, to the doorway, to the window. Nothing but a chill across my skin. Looking slowly back onto the stack of papers on the desk, I forcibly tried to ignore the idea that always popped into my head when these things happened.

Ghosts.

A series of light footsteps behind me disrupted my thoughts and I had to restrain my muscles from tensing again.

"Cloud...?" It was Denzel.

"Aren't you supposed to be at school?" I asked, immediately relaxing.

"The school's having a guest speaker from ShinRa talk about something. The teacher gave us the time off to attend it, but I didn't want to. So I left."

"Oh." I wasn't sure whether to reprimand or applaud him for ditching school to evade a ShinRa speaker. Instead of saying anything further, I nodded and turned my attention back to the stack of papers, arbitrarily leafing through them once more.

"…I kinda need your help with something," Denzel asked precariously after several moments of silence.

"Sure, what's up?" Unless it involves dismembering people, not sure how I could help.

"I need your help on an essay for school. I'm supposed to write about ShinRa's achievements in recent years, and I was thinking about writing something about Jenova."

I froze. "What...?"

"Didn't you used to work for ShinRa?"

"Yeah..."

"But you got fired or something, right?"

"Or something..." I trailed off not-so-inconspicuously.

"So you know something about Jenova, right?"

Denzel didn't know exactly how intimate my knowledge of Jenova was, but I resolved to entertain his questions as best I could. "Yeah, I've heard of it," I replied, "So what do you want to know?"

"I don't know. Anything that I can write about. Like, is it true that Soldiers injected with Jenova were forty times stronger than normal Soldiers?"

"Who told you that?" I couldn't mask the disgust in my tone.

"It's in our textbook," Denzel said plainly, "And the teacher said Soldiers with both Mako and Jenova were unbeatable by normal means."

I didn't say anything.

He went on, "The teacher also said there aren't any more Soldiers with Jenova after the remaining cells were returned to the Lifestream. Apparently, one side effect of Jenova was that the Soldiers had shorter life spans."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, though it was plain to me at once that ShinRa was running the school and had filled it with their own version of history.

"What else should I say to fill up five pages?" he asked after a short silence.

"Do you want the truth?"

He nodded.

"Jenova didn't make anyone have shorter life spans. It made them go insane. And it didn't all return to the Lifestream," I couldn't help but correct him.

"It's still here?" He gazed at me innocently. "How would you know?"

"Because..." I paused for a second, hesitant to divulge the truth. I was never good at telling this story. "...I'm still here, aren't I?"

It took him a few seconds to realize what I had told him. His eyes narrowed for a second, then widened. "You...?" He tilted his head to one side, adding, "You're serious?"

I didn't say anything more because the look of shock on his face meant he understood. He was looking at me strangely.

"You're one of the Jenova Soldiers? I...I've read about them at school..." He paused, eyes wide, and then seemed to regain his composure though he could hardly conceal the newly minted mistrust in his voice.

Avoiding his stare, I glanced out the window where a lone figure stood below in the street, suspiciously still amidst the usual flow of crowds. It was an older man that I recognized at once as Lars. He stood glancing all around, as if looking for someone.

Denzel followed my gaze, seeming to have forgotten the subject of his school paper. "Who is that?"

"Someone I used to know..." I replied, wondering if Lars was looking for me or if his appearance in town was just a coincidence.

Lars was reading something from a scrap of paper, then he turned and disappeared from sight.

"Old friend?" Denzel asked.

"Not exactly."

"Is he looking for you?"

"I don't know. I hope not." The only reason, I figured, Lars would come looking for me was because I never paid back his generous loan from so long ago. Back when I still needed mako. 8k gil worth.

I stood by the window, motionless, for a while longer. Denzel watched me, as if trying to decipher if he too should be vigilant as I was.

Without warning, there was a brief knock on the apartment door. I leaned slightly to one side and gazed down through the hallway at the door, unsure if I had really heard anything or merely imagined it.

"You don't think...that's him, do you?" Denzel said, immediately heading towards the door, reassuring me that someone had indeed knocked if Denzel had heard it too. "You think he came up here? How did he know where you live?"

I stood and grabbed my sword from the corner, unhinging the lightest piece and making my way towards the door.

"Let me handle it," I instructed him, "Go into your room and close the door."

He opened his mouth to protest, but another knock sounded, louder and more impatient, and I just stared angrily at Denzel until he complied and begrudgingly retreated down the side hall towards his room.

Propping the sword against the wall adjacent to the entrance, completely out of sight to whoever was on the other side, I slowly opened the door a sliver. Lars was standing directly in front of me, his eyes darting all around before settling on mine with a huge grin.

"Cloud! Ah, you have no idea how much trouble it was to track you down! Listen, I need your help..." Lars spoke quickly, glancing down the hall left and right, "Let me in."

"No," I stated simply, "How did you find me?"

He smiled at me, exacerbating the wrinkles around his eyes, making him appear even older. "I'll admit I did not expect this lead to be a good one. Last I heard you were over in Costa del Sol."

"I was," I replied flatly, "I sold my beachfront property and made enough money to disappear, or so I thought. Now would you please leave? I don't want to be bothered. Or did I not make that message clear enough in Junon?"

"Ah," his expression changed, "We all know about what you did to Jude... Come on, let me in. I just wanna talk." He was close to begging. "I don't think you'd want anyone seeing us chatting like this in the hall."

I sighed and opened the door wider. "Fine..."

He eagerly pushed his way through with a mumble of thanks, and then his eyes set on the sword resting in the corner as my hand nonchalantly reached over to its hilt. Once the door shut behind him, he suddenly appeared much more frightened.

"H-hey now," he stammered, watching me closely, his arms raised defensively, "You aren't planning on cutting me up, are you?"

"Denzel, I said stay in your room," I called across the room at Denzel who had been standing in the side hall within convenient listening distance.

Lars turned around and glanced toward Denzel, but said nothing.

Denzel disappeared once more and I turned my attention back to Lars, ignoring his comment. "So what do you want?" I asked, carefully swaying the weight of the sword back and forth between my thumb and index finger, the tip of the blade resting on the floor.

"Listen, Cloud," his eyes stayed on the sword, "After you...got rid of Jude three months ago, the mako supply stagnated in Junon."

"It's already been three months?" I responded quietly.

Time had ceased its importance. As if yesterday, as if years ago, her death was a singularity that my thoughts constantly revolved around. It was a lifetime away and yet had only happened last week. The details of that night replayed involuntarily in my head, and the months that had elapsed since then did not matter. I was living between the two instances of time, both equally serving as my reality.

"Yeah, well," Lars continued, unaffected by my mild surprise, "Jude left a huge hole in the supply chain and now all sorts of people are rushing to fill in the demand, cutting mako with any shit they can to boost profits. All mako on the streets is laced with something. There isn't a pure bit anywhere. Nobody knows who Jude's contact was in Wutai and the people over in Wutai won't say a damn thing since their shit is premium now," Lars told me sadly.

"I don't see how this is my problem..."

"I've got junkies crawling all over my bar, begging for some pure mako and I can't get them any. I'm an old man, just a poor business owner trying to make a living! I don't know the first thing about obtaining mako at its source. Help out an old friend. Just tell me where you're getting your personal supply from nowadays. I swear I won't tell anyone how I found you, but I just need to know a good supplier with pure unlaced mako," Lars pleaded.

"I...quit. I don't use the stuff anymore," I informed him.

Lars let out a little laugh, as if he'd heard a bad joke, "I don't believe that. I don't know any junkie who can get clean in only three months. Plus, your eyes tell me otherwise. Can't fool me with that glow!"

"Alright, get out," I said, my patience wearing thin, not caring to explain a damn thing about my eyes.

"Wait, wait!" He once more raised his arms. "Please, hear me out! You don't know what it's like. Junon has fallen apart! I've got junkies threatening to kill me practically every day! I've already gotten jumped twice, all my money stolen and my bar wrecked once, and it's all of Jude's ex-associates! Those sick fucks are trying to destroy me and my business! I don't know what else to do! I can't trust any of the small time dealers near Junon. Cloud, please, help an old friend out!"

"I can't give you the name of any supplier because I've been clean for a while," I told him sternly, "Why don't you just move out of the city?"

"I've lived there all my life and I don't have any money to move my business anyway. Look, if you can't give me any names, could you at least help me find Jude's supplier from Wutai. You were his closest associate, so you must know who his contact was."

Truthfully, I knew exactly who the Wutain supplier was because I had been the one that initially worked that region and gave Jude a way in, so to speak.

"No. I'm done with that business," I replied.

"Then please, just come to Junon and let some of Jude's old crew see your face in town. That would scare the shit out of them, I assure you, and maybe they will stop acting like they own the place."

"You really think that would make them stop?" I asked skeptically.

"Everyone knows you were Jude's favorite and everyone knows you killed him. You don't think that's enough to scare a few junkies?" he scoffed.

"I don't want to go back."

He went on, "Without Jude, they are just jobless killers with no purpose, no ambitions."

Silently, I mulled the situation over in my head. If what Lars told me was true, then Junon was no doubt tearing itself apart and that was explicitly my fault. A strange sense of obligation rose within me. I broke it so I should be the one to fix it. And if all I had to do was show up in Junon and rough up a few junkies...

"People think you're dead, Cloud," Lars said frankly, "One of Jude's old associates told everyone he found you in a room with four corpses all hacked up and that you almost made him the fifth. Says you flipped out after Jude cut up some girl. Everyone thought you had killed him in order to take control of the mako supply, so when you disappeared, most presumed you were dead."

I tried hard not to look affected.

He went on, "So it's true, then, about the girl? That's why you did him in? Was she the same chick you knew from Edge?"

A slow painful sting marched upwards along the line of my scar, and my fist closed around the hilt of my sword involuntarily. I watched him for several seconds, debating exactly what to say, then, "The reason I killed him is none of your business."

"Ah, yeah, I'm sorry," Lars apologized with a slight shake of his head, "It's just strange not to give a specific reason, but I guess the whole situation is kinda shaky. So that rumor about the girl is just a rumor, huh?"

I sighed. "Get out..."

"Please," Lars spouted at once, "Don't just leave Junon to these fucking junkies, these killers. Please, just come back – even for a few days – and just get rid of some of 'em to give the others a message. Secure the supplier in Wutai for one of the local guys and end this nonsense with all the impure shit going around..." He was literally begging. "Please!"

"I can't bring Denzel into this sort of life by going back there..."

"Denzel? Who's that?"

"The answer is no, Lars."

"Fine," he threw his hands over his head, "Fine, but you're making a mistake. You're condemning Junon! It's in your power to stop everything that's falling apart over there, but you won't! Guess I wasted my time tracking you down the last two and a half months..."

"Guess so..." I replied, "Now leave."

He slowly edged around me, heading towards the door, his eyes still on the sword. Just as his hand touched the doorknob, he glanced over his shoulder at me again.

"I suppose the other rumor about you is true, then," he started with a sly tone of contempt, "That you're nothing but a cold-hearted psychopath. One of Jude's old associates is even saying that you're the one who cut apart that girl from Edge, not Jude."

My jaw tensed. A deafening silence. I knew he said it because he wanted to incite me, to tempt me to return to Junon to set the record straight, to end any rumors containing such an absurd fabrication. But he realized almost at once that he had said the wrong thing.

My brain clicked in a series of automated motions, responding to the immediate anger in my chest, and the sword moved swiftly, my arms and wrists curving on their own. Within seconds, the blade had severed his throat, stopping just at the spine. All that I heard was the quick slash of metal through air then flesh. Blood gushed downward and he fell, his eyes still open in shock.

The body slumped to the floor, red pooling outward in a mess. He hadn't even had the time to scream. I stumbled backwards, watching the blood edge its way across the floor towards me, in a daze. It didn't seem real or even possible that I had killed him without a second thought. It had been completely involuntary.

Yet seeing that shade of liquid, that dark color gleaming on the edge of the sword... My mind tripped around itself, and the horrible elation of watching someone's last moments spread across my face in a smile.

The blood was everywhere and it was fantastic.

"Cloud..."

A voice. Her voice? I couldn't tell, but it seemed so distant.

For the first time in a long time, I felt happy.

"Cloud!"

A strange lightness spread through my body like ice water under the skin. All around me, the room seemed to melt away and the air became difficult to breathe. It was a sensation like drowning.

Something brushed against my arm lightly, a trail of cold fingers. Yet I had not sensed anyone else near me, and my instincts took over. Adrenaline grabbed my muscles in a flash, and I turned quickly, cutting a defensive angle between me and the other. I couldn't control the reaction.

A yelp of pain ripped through the silence. Reality converged with the haze surrounding me all at once, and I breathed.

Denzel jumped back instantaneously. The blade's tip had caught the flesh of his forearm.

"Oh," I shook my head, coming to my senses. "Denzel..."

"What the hell is wrong with you!?" he screamed, backing away, teeth clenched. His hand pressed against the thin slice in his arm, blood leaking through his fingers. But it didn't register properly in my head.

I looked down at Lars' body, and the blood all around him was branching off through the cracks in the floor, extending from him in long lines of red.

"W-What's wrong with you?!" Denzel repeated sharply, holding his arm against his stomach. His face was contorted in pain and confusion, tears sliding down his cheeks. "Why did you do this?!

But words were lost to me. I felt no emotional response to his pain. It was like watching a beetle on its back, struggling to turn over, trying to make sense of how it ended up this way, unable to comprehend the larger world above.

"I saw you...!" Denzel suddenly hissed, accusingly, "You killed him for no reason! Then you didn't even respond when I called for you! You just kept staring at him!"

Still, I said nothing. It was as though something in my head had broken. My empathy was gone. I was detached.

"And why…? Why the hell did you try to kill me just now!?" he demanded frantically, his eyes now darting between me and Lars.

"I didn't," I finally found my voice, but it was a low flat tone, "I would never hurt you. I'm sorry..."

"Tifa was right about you..." Denzel said bitingly, edging backwards, "She told me after you left that you were sick! She said that...that someone messed up your head before!"

"She told you that?" I suddenly recalled that single morning when she asked me to leave so long ago. Had she actually told Denzel the reasons why? Had she told him how I had hurt her? Or had she given him the same reason she later gave me — that being with me had changed her for the worse because she felt dependent on me, and that she felt as though she were becoming someone else?

"You really are sick!" Denzel yelled, his voice strained and cracking, "You killed this guy for no reason, and now you've turned on me!"

"No, I didn't mean to. Denzel, you know I wouldn't hurt you."

"I should have stayed with Elmyra and Marlene," he said suddenly, darkly, "I shouldn't have trusted you. And what was that thing that guy had said about you cutting up a girl from Edge?!"

Everything was falling apart around me.

"He was talking about Tifa, wasn't he!?" Denzel screamed out, his eyes flashing with an anger I had never seen before. "Was that what made you kill him?!"

I stared at him, watching my world disintegrate as he spoke.

And I knew it would never be over.

The need for blood and death ran deeper than just Jude or Junon. It was a piece of me which loved controlling the moment of pain and realization in someone's eyes, which loved hearing the quick sharp slit of a throat being severed, loved seeing the gush of blood in rows synchronized to a dying heartbeat. I shook my head, trying hard to pull myself from the daze and tensed my muscles, the pain in my stomach becoming real. I worried that Jude had been right and that I would never be free of it. This thing inside me.

"So is it true?" Denzel demanded between angry breaths, "Did you kill Tifa?"

The air around me felt like a swarm of bees. Everything that I had tried to shield Denzel from was suddenly spat in my face. With a single mistake, an unwelcome visit, and the involuntary flicker of metal towards someone I had always sworn to protect, my superficial world that I had fought hard to hold onto collapsed into dust. There was nothing but the gritty truth, smeared across the floor in a dash of bright red. I had tried too hard to deny it for so long. It had been foolish to believe I would ever be free of everything I had become in Junon. Jude was right.

And I had to stop denying where I truly belonged - not raising a child, not living a lie in some resort town. This foolish ideal life I had been chasing was now coming to an end. An abrupt end.

"Say something, Cloud!" Denzel demanded, tears in his eyes.

But I couldn't. There was nothing to say.

Denzel stood absolutely still, eyes wide. For a moment I thought he was going to attack me, then his whole body began to tremble violently. Tears flashed down his cheeks in shiny waves. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists, angling his jaw downward. Then he turned away sharply, still clutching his bleeding arm against his stomach, and bolted into his room.

I remained near Lars' corpse, tearing one hand through my hair. It was surreal. I had to be dreaming again. Denzel reappeared moments later with a backpack on his shoulder. Walking swiftly towards the door, he did not face me.

"Where are you going?" I asked plainly. Still holding his bleeding arm against his side, he glared over at me.

"Back to Kalm. I'm getting out of here," he muttered.

A sudden inevitability surfaced in my head, that I was about to lose him forever, and a tiny piece of me sparked to life in response. It was a flicker of desperation, hopelessly grasping onto the very last thread as everything unraveled.

I stepped in front of his path, blocking the door entirely. "Kalm is very far from here," I tried to reason, "How are you going to get there? There's no way I'm letting you walk out of here and travel by yourself."

"Or what?" he shouted angrily, "You're going to kill me? Am I going to end up like that guy?!" He pointed viciously down at Lars.

The front of Denzel's pale shirt was stained deep red from where he had held his arm against it. It was the same shade that pooled around Lars. I shook my head to clear the static hissing in my ears.

"You don't even know who that guy was," I argued weakly, "He...he was involved with...bad things."

"So that makes it okay to kill him?" Denzel yelled back, "I heard what he was talking about. He asked you about mako, about the name of some supplier! I can't believe I never put it together in my head. You were sick for three goddamn weeks, and I never questioned why. I never thought..." His voice broke off into splintered rage and sorrow and he winced again, still holding his arm tightly, "Fuck! I don't even know you!"

"There are reasons that I never told you. There are explanations for all this," I tried to plead, but Denzel was shaking his head firmly, eyes closed.

"No. No, there's no way I'm staying here with you," Denzel said with finality and moved forward, as if expecting me to move out of his way. "Let me leave."

"It was a mistake," I told him firmly, though I knew I'd already lost.

"Get out of my way..." he said with a strange calmness. The fear was unmistakable in his eyes and voice, and his posture was rigid as a cornered animal.

Then I realized I was still clutching the sword, it's edge gleaming wet with blood from both Denzel and Lars. My true self was in focus, standing on the cusp of violence. Right in front of him. And Denzel's trust was gone. Irreparable. Everything had crashed in a matter of minutes. There were no more threads to hold onto.

Denzel suddenly tore past me, wrenching free of my stumbling grasp on his backpack. He ran through the front door at top speed, footsteps racing down the hall towards the stairs. Without another second past, he was gone. I should have ran after him, reasoned with him, tried to at least make sure he got to Kalm safely, but my body and brain felt nothing.

I stood in silence for another moment as his vacancy registered something like relief.

There was only one thing that remained within me. There was only one action that really gave me happiness anymore. And there was a dead guy in my apartment that deserved some retribution. And a city that was tearing itself apart because of me, because of my selfish desire for the best of both worlds. I had wanted to protect Tifa and live as an assassin. It was an impossibility, and Jude proved that. Killing him did nothing to sate the thing within me. It was all clear now, so damn clear.

That same afternoon, I left town and headed south after a half-hearted search for Denzel. He was long gone, of course. No trace. But he was now part of a separate life – one I no longer felt attached to.

Only one place remained for me. I had to help fix what I had helped destroy. It was, perhaps, the only way to find solace.

The smell of metal and salt water brought back a nauseous wave of memories the moment I crossed into Junon's city limits. Nothing had changed and yet the place felt distant and foreign, a shade of something I had once held great. The dilapidated buildings of the outer slums loomed around me, cold and unfriendly, like silent denizens scorning the reappearance of an outcast. It was long past midnight by the time I got there, and the streets were mostly vacant.

Without delay, I sped towards the upper tier's business district, catching glimpses of the ocean in the distance along the way. A thousand white slivers gleamed along the curves of the black waves as they rolled to shore, and the circular streetlamps lighting the upper tiered area were unnecessary under the full moon.

Lars had died because of me, and I had to make some sort of restitution.

I never thought much about my actions before then. Events just occurred for me as a single immutable ribbon. The frayed ends of my initial split with Tifa long ago had braided into a single existence where I was alone and uncaring. I just did things without reason. No justification for the mako or the killings. No logic behind it.

But being back in Junon made me think. It made a lot of things come back in pieces. The thoughts of her death paused and I instead recalled that last moment where I could have changed things, altered what had happened to her, kept her safe - the final time she had been in my old apartment. She stood by the door in the kitchen, preparing to leave, and I did nothing to stop her. Nothing. She argued her points and gave me time to change my mind. But I just let her go even as I cursed myself and listened to her footsteps disappear. I still did nothing. And she's gone. If only I had done something different to stop her from leaving, like argue back with her or convince her to let me into her plans or just to hold her to me. Just hold her once.

I remember her words so clearly. You're trapped here, aren't you?

Still she was with me somehow, and perhaps I could go back to my old apartment and find her standing in that kitchen and we could try again. I could change that silence between us.

I shook my head dismissively. What a fairytale. The culmination of my actions had killed her. And now Lars.

Enough of that. If Lars had been telling the truth, then the supposed thugs would be hanging around his establishment, even at this late hour.

I could never make anything up to Tifa, and I had failed to properly care for Denzel, but at least Lars would not be left entirely without vengeance against the ex-associates that had driven him to seek my help.

Traveling through Junon was uneventful though filled with hard memories. I passed the apartment complex Jude used to live in, the place where I had discovered Tifa's suicide wish. I heard the hissing ocean beyond the tiers and remembered the sick pulling of her body beneath its waves. Even the café where I had made a pact with Jude for her safety made me cringe. She was everywhere.

I reached Lars' business without further determent. The bar at the dead-end of an alley should have had a few patrons stumbling out on their bleary way home, but its owner was dead, and the end of the narrow side-street was dark save for a single dim streetlamp and a few tiny cigarette tips luminous in the shadows just beyond the light. The men who had been threatening Lars, no doubt.

Whatever chatter had been ensuing abruptly stopped the moment I pulled up and cut the bike's engine. Slowly, I stood then retrieved all six pieces of my sword, clicking them together with a minimal amount of effort and motion.

A few grumbles of bemusement commenced and the four shadows moved into the light. They were all indeed ex-associates of Jude's organization.

The one I presumed was the leader stepped forward. The man behind him I recognized as the associate who had been there after I had killed Jude and Tifa, with the green materia rolling in his palm and a totally bewildered look smeared on his face. He nearly jumped when I made eye contact. The one in front glared at me.

"What the hell are you doing back here? We all thought you were dead…" he began, his tone confrontational.

I said nothing to him at first. My eyes were locked with his but I was watching the subtle movements of the others, waiting to see if they would try to attack me, and shifted my footing slightly in case they did.

"You realize how shitty this place has been since you decided to up and go?" the leader continued, and I couldn't tell if he was relieved or angry to see me, "You…you leave and the contacts in Wutai don't wanna do business anymore! They don't wanna deal with any of us! You off Jude and now the rest of us have to suffer? Let me guess, you still get the pure shit right? And you just laugh while the rest of us here suffer, just suffer because people like Lars ain't got nothing useful anymore!"

"Lars is dead," I said indifferently.

The man's face changed from contempt to uncertainty. He blinked. "Then…what do you want? You coming back to help us?"

"Why didn't you leave Lars alone?"

"What fuckin' difference does that make now?" he cried, "And why do you care all of a sudden? You've been gone for months!"

I was sick of talking, and I knew how it was going to end anyways so why not cut to the chase.

In a single movement I tensed my muscles and swung the sword in a beautiful upwards arc, cutting cleanly across his chest, through the ribcage, tearing along the neck and out the jaw. Blood and bone spewed outwards and in seconds he was nothing but a pile of red mess.

Instantly, two others attacked. One jumped forward, slashing with a curved short blade that I easily dodged before cutting sideways through his right clavicle, effectively severing an arm. He screamed and the weapon dropped with a clatter. The other had reached for a gun and was now frantically trying to shove a fire materia into its slot but his hands were shaking too much. I helped him with that problem by dismembering him. Hands and gun fell unceremoniously into the growing pool of blood that had accumulated from his friend. Then I finished off the other who had lost an arm by puncturing his heart through his back with a delightful crunch of bone and squish of organs.

There was a final ex-associate alone in the alley, frozen, eyes on me. It was the one that had seen Jude's dead body that night, had brought me that curing materia, had seen Tifa's corpse. He remained perfectly still.

"You are the witness once again it seems," I stated blandly.

His face instantly contorted into one of pitiful begging.

"D-d-don't kill me!" he pleaded, eyes wide, "I was only following the others. I had no choice but to follow them! You gotta believe me! It's just been crazy tryin' to get mako! Everyone is acting like this! Y-you have to realize how bad it's all gotten!"

I sighed. "I have no intention of killing you." And it wasn't a lie. He was the only other living person who had seen what Jude had done to Tifa and then what I had done to Jude in return. Perhaps he was the only one who really understood why Jude was dead.

"B-but why…why did you kill them?" he ventured timidly.

"I promised Lars that I would deal with whoever had been threatening him."

"But…you said Lars is dead."

"Lars is dead."

He was silent for several seconds, then slowly backed away from the expanding dark puddle oozing from the disjointed pile of gore between us. The three crumpled bodies held hardly any semblance to their former existences moments prior. The tremor in the remaining ex-associate's hands and arms tapered off and he audibly caught his breath with a painful-sounding cough.

I did nothing. The thick scent of blood hung in the air around us like a curse.

"Are you really back then?" he ventured to ask quietly, "To take over where Jude left off?"

Jude never voluntarily left anything. I took it from him.

"I suppose," I said finally. There was truly no where else for me, no other purpose, no other reasons anymore.

Even though I desperately wanted something else, some other existence, it hit me that I would never have it and furthermore that I shouldn't have it. It's better to destroy something beautiful than to let it wither to dust.

I wanted to hold her again. Just once. I could still feel her in my arms. A mirage. A wound I could never suture. A silence I could never fill. It didn't matter anymore. It couldn't matter.

I turned away from the other associate and wiped the edge of my blade clean on the clothed shoulder of one of the recently deceased.

"So… What do we do now?" the other ventured to speak in a muted tone.

"Leave them. As a message to all the other junkies who come here looking for Lars and mako," I responded, unaffected. There was more on my mind.

"And what about us…?"

I shrugged. "Rebuild. Reorganize." New infrastructure. New direction. What more could be done?

"You have no idea what a relief that is to hear," he muttered in a manner between secrecy and joy, "How do we start? Where do we start?"

I couldn't face him. There was something dying in my chest. A cold, painful echo. I shrugged it off and began to walk away from the pile of bodies.

"Everything starts somewhere," I replied.

Time passes as always. Unstoppable, relentless.

Somewhere between the urgent screams of the tortured…

"No! Please! Don't kill me!"

And the frantic promises from breaths cut short by a blade…

"I swear it won't hap-"

And the veiled frightened tones of my associates…

"We've secured an unusual supply of mako. The properties have been slightly altered to produce an even more potent effect."

And the tumultuous accusations spouted moments before death…

"You really are a monster."

And the beautiful silence that I give them…

Somewhere between all those things, I remember being someone else. I think of her, still. But it is a muted numbness. I do not allow myself to remember too deeply. Best to stay on the surface. And embrace whatever I am now. Whatever I've become.

…Tifa…I'm so sorry.

- fin -