Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy or Vincent. I just abuse them both.

A/N: Finally, this is the last chapter. There is a rather long epilogue containing all the smut I restrained from writing in this chapter. I thought I would publish it in adultfanfiction because it's getting a little wild for this site, but their editor is so limited I couldn't figure out how to format the demons talking. So it's here, it's called 'The Winding Down'. Just click on the author link to find it.

"We still have the kegs," Seri said softly, interrupting Vincent's sullen indulgence in his disappointment.

He turned to where Erik was still seated on the floor, meaning to offer to help move Nyssa's body back to the ship, so that he may follow whatever tradition his people had concerning the dead. But he never got the chance. A pale glow covered her form and lifted her even as she started to break apart. Glittering, colored specs of light swirled up and away from her until there was no more of her left. The glistening threads spiraled around the beam, coming ever closer until they joined, each with such a small sound they blended into a continuous hum until none were left.

"What happened," Erik asked, looking at each of them in turn, dazed.

Tifa knelt down beside him, though it obviously pained her leg to do so. "Her essence had already gone into the Lifestream. Her body just followed. It happens sometimes, where mako concentrations are high, where the Lifestream dips very close to the living."

Erik stared in new wonder at the great green beam. "It was beautiful. Nyssa would have liked it, don't you think?"

Tifa nodded, responding not so much to the question that she couldn't possibly have the an answer to, but to his need to be reassured.

Vincent inhaled and exhaled twice in the silence, counting the respectful ten seconds typically required for such a time before speaking.

"Seri, you said there were stairs to the roof?"

Seri nodded and led them down a hallway that only appeared blocked by a fallen piece of wall, and up stairs that required only one quadrupedal scramble. Squinting into the sudden sunlight of the roof they were accosted by a small, impatient ninja girl.

"'bout time," Yuffie said, jumping down from a large, rusting air conditioning unit. She looked over their group, still annoyed for having been left on the roof. "Where's the hostage lady?"

Erik's head dipped and he stared at the curved, sloping surface under his feet. The rest of the group gave Yuffie a scornful look, and Vincent shook his head.

"Oh," she said, her face flushing.

Vincent hopped up to the ledge where one keg had been strapped. They had made a guess for where the kegs should be placed to do the most damage based on an aerial photo Cid had taken of the damaged roof. Neither had good footing near them; this one only a ledge, a sloped ledge no less. The whole roof was curved and sloped, consisting mostly of large pipes and domed sections. Seri, thinking of how the maintenance men at school were always "on the roof", wondered what maintenance men for the reactor must have been like. Mountain goats, maybe. Or something like Vincent. She watched him and wondered how even he managed not to slip with those pointy, metal boots.

Special, rubbery bottoms.

Seri grimaced a little that she had let Chaos read her thoughts again, or maybe sent them his way. Vincent gave her a small, sideways scowl and she shrugged her shoulders at him. But at least she was starting to recognize a pattern; she had been wondering about Vincent. When she wondered about Vincent, Chaos answered. It was weird, but maybe now she could work on controlling it.

Just stop thinking about Vincent, she thought to herself, then responded to her own thoughts: Good luck with that.

Seri groaned a little and pressed her fingers to her eyelids, feeling a little crazy with her own self-talk plus demons talking in her head. She started to wonder again what it was like for Vincent and pulled her mind back sharply, groaning a little again.

"You OK?" Cloud asked.

She opened her eyes to see his startling bright blues rather close to her. She took in his face, honest and pure looking despite the grime and blood on him.

"Vincent's making me crazy," she blurted out.

Oddly enough this did not surprise Cloud at all.

"Yeah, he's good at that." Cloud smiled at her, then squinted as wind and noise from the rotors of an airship assaulted their group. Cid had seen the commotion on the roof and aborting his circling pattern to come in for pickup.

"Let's light these!" Vincent hollered over the noise. "The rest of you back on the ship!"

"You go on, we got a method!" Yuffie hollered, giving Vincent a little shove out of her way. She and Seri both took up a position next to their own keg and signaled one another that their lighters, lighters donated from cid's giant collection of lighters, were in fact lit. Then, with a series of hand gestures, each lit their fuse at the same time. Both women ran for the rope ladder and climbed like mad for the lower deck. The others had already climbed up ahead of them, except for Cloud, who had opted for one of the dropped single lines and was using only his arms to ascend. Vincent tsked at Cloud's method, not because he thought Cloud was showing off, but because he knew Cloud had always been a piss-poor rope climber and it appeared he still hadn't learned to use his legs on the single rope. The blonde was just lucky his arms were stout enough to compensate. Vincent had the opposite problem – his clawed hand was poor at gripping a rope. He jumped and grabbed the other single line anyway, so as not to disturb the girls on the rope ladder. He wrapped one leg, fireman fashion, and shimmied up to the rail, where Cloud glared at him briefly for having beaten him to the deck.

The ship had already moved off enough to be clear while they were coming aboard and they all stood near the rail, staring into the mesmerizing green column, paler than it had been in the gloom of the reactor but still shimmering in the broad daylight. They breathed slow, counting. Yuffie and Seri had lit the long fuses, the 30 second fuses, and they waited.

Two bright flashes erupted, almost simultaneously on the middle of the structure, followed quickly by a single booming sound. Seri and Yuffie high-fived one another. The combined explosion engulfed the entire top of the reactor in a giant dust ball, and moments later they could see the whole upper section falling inward onto the beam. The translucent jade column wavered, flickered, then reasserted itself as if nothing had happened. They could feel the dust from the explosion in the air now, taste it grinding between their teeth. As the dust cloud settled their hearts dropped along with it.

"So that's it then," Tifa said. "We lose at last." A small, bitter smile crept to her lips. It was a relief, almost. During all the fighting they had done they had always half-expected to fail. Here the defeat finally was. "I guess we go back repeat the whole damn thing." She was thinking about Denzel and Marlene, how they would never get their chance to succeed or fail in life, and how unfair that was.

"Well, hell," Barret said, looking out over the Midgar ruins. "Maybe it'll turn out better."

The corollary immediately occurred to all of them, but only one would say it.

"Maybe it'll be worse," Yuffie said, then immediately clamped her mouth shut. She slunk back from the rail. The others probably wouldn't have believed it, but she moslty regretted her mouthy outbursts. She just didn't seem to be able to help herself.

"Or maybe the machine won't work at all," Barret offered.

It was a hopeful statement, but a course of action that relied on chance. For the people on the deck of the airship, covered in dirt, wind, and blood, waiting on chance did not sit well with any of them. Vincent's mind was desperately searching for an alternative plan, some way to get through that temple door, maybe. It was hard to believe they needed another plan; they started with three and burned through them all. They, he had blown them all. Maybe they could have blocked the beam with the mechanics available or the explosion if he had brought them in sooner. He had sent the only remaining key into the beam in a fit of emotional abdication, not to mention the whole failing to nullify the machine when he had the chance. The image of Fuhito's box, the isolator, tipping off his finger into the beam replayed in his head. He couldn't even travel back along with the time shift and try to help things out.

I don't think it would help. Chaos was quiet, somber.

Vincent remembered their conversation before they went to the reactor. The Planet? It's endangered by the machine?

It's quaking all around us.

Vincent defocused his physical vision and forced his mind to be quiet. He imagined his body dissolving, like a sugar cube dropped into water, reaching out until his own spirit merged with the Planet's in a synchronous vibration. It thrummed all around him, the over-anxious tremor of something less substantial than air but far more pervasive. He glanced over at Cloud; the mako-loaded warrior was practically rapt with it, staring, paralyzed.

"Blue," Seri said. "Blue may be spent inside the line, starve the machine"

Vincent, alarmed, grabbed Seri's shoulders and turned her toward him. She was already ice-blue, her eyes mirrored and blind-looking.

"...a small sacrifice," she continued, and Vincent gave her a strong shake.

"Don't you even think about it! You are not going into that beam!"

She didn't seem to hear him.

"Seri! We'll find another way-"

But he had no chance to finish before his arms were yanked away from her and pinned to his side. Except nobody had grabbed him; he was being restrained from the inside, he could feel all four of his demons cooperating, holding him in place while he struggled and thrashed without a single movement to his physical body. Seri turned away from him in what looked like slow motion, and while he stood there, rigid and useless, she stepped one foot on the rail and was over. She fell, everyone around him yelped in surprise, and then there was a collective gasp as they saw her, gliding like a bullet towards the beam on two tiny blue wings, not enough to fly with but enough to glide, glide while losing altitude. The whole team watched and held their breath as she fell towards the column, barely sliding into the base of the beam before she hit the ground. She disappeared into the green light with the barest flash of light.

"Vince!" Barret hollered, "Why didn't you go after her? You could have caught her!"

Vincent, who had been immobile and forced to watch the whole thing out of the corner of his eye, was finally loosed, but almost completely overcome by the biggest thing that had ever hit his precog.

"Cid, move this thing!" Cloud roared, running to the cockpit area as if could somehow physically help accelerate the ship.

Vincent looked up to the source of the problem – the temple, visible now and shading them from the sun, was coming down, fast. The ship jerked forward, almost toppling the lot of them over the rear rail. They raced away from the reactor as the huge bottom of the thing, almost a mile on a side, grew steadily closer. Another two seconds and they were just slipping out from under it as it crashed into the ground, blocks of stone exploding out if the collapse and chasing after the airship. The airship turned ubruptly upward to clear the cloud of dust that shot out and up from the immense, new pile of rock.

Higher now, they stared down at the destruction. Vincent tried to piece together what had happened, but he couldn't think for the riot that had exploded inside his head.

What have you done?!? Chaos roared, his voice rising above the others.

Why didn't you tell us she was going to jump into the beam?!? We can't see the outside world that clearly from here!! When you're driving it's your responsibility to keep track!

Vincent dove for the railing, but three sets of hands jerked him back. Barrett had slung one arm around his neck and held him in a suffocating choke hold and both Tifa and Yuffie had latched on to him, sticking their feet to the rail to keep him from going over. He pulled again, but now Cloud had grabbed onto him as well. Unable to command any demon while in a state of complete demon anarchy they succeeded in pulling him away from the rail.

"Vincent, stop!" One of Clouds arms wrapped more tightly around him. "She's gone, she went into the beam!"

Vincent struggled more fiercely, his elbow contacting with Tifa's ribs. Somebody kicked his feet out from under him and he vaguely felt his body hit the deck. But what was happening to his body was barely noticeable next to the turmoil within. Every demon was roaring at the top of its lungs, Galian wailing like a pitiful, wounded animal, Hellmasker throwing unbelievably obscene threats his way, Gigas raging in his idiot language. But Chaos was by far the worst, letting him know in ear-splitting volume who's fault this all was.

We wouldn't have cooperated with her if you had just told us what was going on! Valentine! Why didn't you speak?!?!

Why hadn't he spoken? Vincent supposed it was habit. He never explained or bargained with his demons. He ordered. He controlled. He suppressed and resented them as anyone would who was forced to live in a house fit for one with four uninvited intruders.

"What's wrong with him?" Barrett said, laying his full bulk on Vincent in an attempt to still him.

Tifa and Cloud shook their heads in confusion. Vincent's golden left hand broke free and clipped Yuffe above her right eye.

"OW, dammit!" She yelled, "Don't we have anything to knock him out?"

Tifa managed to reach back into her bag, grabbing for her materia. "Maybe a sleep spell."

But she never had the chance to use it. Vincent wanted above all things to escape the howling din inside his own head, to put himself beyond the pain of loss and failures, both old and new. He knew how to do that; he had done it before, put himself a sleep that Cloud should never have woken him from the first place. He stilled his mind until it felt as if he was sinking into the cold black-blue depths of the ocean. The voices faded. He could go deeper this time; he was sure of it. He could go all the way down. The velvet hand of darkness pressed him deeper and the pain slipped away. Like Odu-in's desire, all things to him were as if undone. His body lost all feeling, his mind all knowing, and the very end of his consciousness, a sweet melody guided him home.

ccccccccccccccccc

Wake up.

I mean it.

Chaos thrashed and bit and raged from the inside. He knew he was causing pain to the host body, but still Vincent Valentine would not stir.

We can wake him together up if you will help

.GO SCЯДTCH, CHДOS.

«mε liқε him αςlεερ»

There was nothing but a snoring noise from Galian's quarter.

Lazy bastards!

Chaos had already tried starting a row with them. He knew that was painful to Vincent but in this case it wasn't enough, and it had left them all tired.

Vincent Valentine, wake up! It's important!

cccccc

Seri leaned her forehead against the window in the small room where the others had laid Vincent's inert form. The window was cool against her forehead, but the rest of her skin felt singed, raw from her time in the beam despite having cures laid on her. The clean sweats and long sleeved tee-shirt Tifa had loaned her chafed at her armpits and along her waist despite the soft fabric. Chafed the way the events of those last few moments rubbed at the edges of her memory. She couldn't come to terms with what she knew she had done. Leapt from the rail an airship. Flew, or rather glided, right into a fiery green pillar. What in Gaia made her think she could, or should, do any of those things?

"No change?"

Seri turned to see Cloud had stepped silently into the room.

"None," she said, looking down at a pair of scissors Cloud had in his hand. They were a pathetic pair; the kind that gets left behind in a kitchen drawer after everyone has 'borrowed' the decent ones.

"Oh," Cloud said, noticing the path of her gaze, "I was trimming houseplants." He gave the scissors a couple of snips in the air for emphasis and smiled sadly.

Seri tried to smile back but instead her lower lip quivered. She pursed her lips to still them, but instead the emotion re-routed itself as liquid that brimmed in her eyes.

"Hey, hey, it's OK," Cloud reached out tentatively and she fell into his arms, her face buried into his shoulder. Once in this posture he carefully wrapped his arms around her back, now that he was sure it was expected. A small strange sob vibrated against his collarbone.

"I'mb srry," Seri mumbled into his shirt. After a few more sniffles she looked up.

"I never meant for this to happen to him. And now I can't even tell him I'm sorry!" She looked over at Vincent; he looked dead. His friends had explained to her that Vincent might lie like this for years, maybe forever, and she should probably leave, go back to her life. They had seen it before. They would take care of him.

"Hey, no, this isn't your fault," Cloud said gently. "He knew the score as well as all of us."

Seri shook her head violently. "You don't understand. I tricked him. I reached out and spoke to his demons. I lied to them and told them Vincent was trying to hurt me. They reared up together and held him long enough for me jump. It was horrible to feel them, how fast they moved, how hard they pinned him. Even if he wakes, how could he forgive something like that?"

Cloud looked at her thoughtfully. "Well, to be honest I don't think Vincent's much given to sharing blame. He likes it too well for himself."

Seri smiled a little at this, pressing one eye with her fingertips to keep it from tearing.

"You can't... talk to any of his demons now?" Cloud asked, softly, tiptoeing around the strange connection she had to Vincent's demons, to Vincent. In the last few hours since their return Seri had explained the last, missing piece of the puzzle- the one regarding herself and why she could communicate with Chaos, and why her own strange elements had been able to shut beam down.

Seri shook her head. "I've tried to talk to them – there's been nothing. Not since this catatonic state." She turned to look at Vincent's prone form, then laid her face again into Cloud's shoulder. "I'm quite in love with him, you know."

"Yeah, I know."

"And his demons,"

Cloud nodded as if this too were the most natural thing in the world even though in reality it was one of the creepier things he'd heard. But who was he to say? He'd had plenty of creepy in his own life.

cccccccccc

I'm not going away, Vincent. Wake up!

In dark, sweet, seclusion Vincent drifted, dreaming. His dreams were not necessarily good ones, but in this state they too were blissfully muted. He saw his mother on the day before she died, young and beautiful and anxious as her hand gripped his small one a little too firmly while they watched the militia parade past in their worn, mismatched uniforms. He re-lived his first kill, the thrill and terror if it, the surprise from the amount of blood. In thin and wavering vision he saw Lucretia's form drop to the floor, him powerless to help from his mako-tube prison. He watched Seri and Erik running up the temple steps, laughing; immediately followed by Erik sobbing over his dead wife.

Chaos could see the dreams too. His species did not dream the way humans did, assuming Vincent was typical for humans, and he always found Vincent's dreams astonishingly colorful and rather addictive. It required a force of will not to be distracted by them and be lulled into sleep himself. But instead he turned his attention outward, struggling to understand the outside world without the help of Vincent's eyes and limited use of ears and nose. He could hear Seri talking, and Cloud was there. He could also feel vaguely what was going on.

You guys want Seri to run off with the Blondie?

Two beings, more or less intelligent, turned their attention to him and a third woke up from his nap.

She's in his arms now, I'm sure of it. She'll run off with him and Vincent will never see her again.

Slowly they coalesced, each also trying to reach out and decide if it was a trick, and ultimately deciding it might be true. With the cooperation he needed, Chaos led and assault of never before seen force on Vincent's form. Each shocked his nervous system in their own way, and all of Vincent's muscles threatened to cramp on him. Vincent was forced to rouse himself in order to reassert conscious relaxation. But he wanted to go back to his dreams. He could hear Cloud... had he been dreaming of Cloud? Cloud certainly wasn't his first choice topic. The wave a pain hit him again and he cracked one eye open, enough to see a hazy image – two people, one was certainly Cloud, either that or a guy with a chocobo toupee, and in his arms was a woman, but not Tifa – not enough hair, not enough boobs. Something about the image was just so wrong, and an inner impulse was pushing him to do something about it.

"What are you doing, Strife?"

Vincent managed to sit up, but the pain in his head was amazing. He was actually seeing stars over his vision. He stood, shaky, pulling his body back under control as he finally focused on Seri.

"Vincent," she said, quietly, as if she could sense the hangover-like throbbing in his skull. She stepped toward him, reached out, then stopped, disturbed by his unfocused state.

"Just a dream," he said flatly, staring past Seri. Then he jerked suddenly.

"Arch!" Vincent looked down sharply to where a pain assaulted the side of his ribcage. There was something offensive in Cloud's hand. "Did you just stab me with a scissor?"

"Not dreaming," Cloud said, and walked out of the room.

Vincent, blinking now and more focused, looked back to Seri. She gently tugged on a lock of his hair.

"Not dreaming," she repeated.

The pain in his head drained away, clearing his mind but leaving an empty confusion in its wake. He heard squeal from the lower level followed by the rapid thumping of small feet racing up the stair.

"Vinnie!" Yuffie bolted into the room and grabbed Vincent tightly around the waist, causing his arms to reflexively lift up and away from her as though she might be covered with something sticky. The rest of the team slipped through the door behind her, and Tifa stepped gently forward and slung and arm around Vincent's neck, ignoring his stiffening and small jerk. Sid and Barrett contented themselves with a friendly nod, not convinced that even in this groggy state Vincent wouldn't try to shoot one of them just for being too close to him.

"OK, enough! Enough! Off!" Vincent said, struggling to peel Yuffie's arms from his ribcage. "And stay away from me with those scissors, Strife."

Cloud smiled happily at Vincent. In fact they were all smiling broadly, six of them at least. Erik, the grief of the newly bereft making him more of an outsider than home address ever could, hung near the back with a bittersweet smile that touched only his lips.

Vincent looked around them in amazement. They had all been here, waiting for him. They had not locked him in a cell (of a coffin) somewhere and left him, though they probably should have. And even he couldn't deny the warm feeling rising up through is chest to catch in his throat. These were his friends. And they were all smiling at him while he stared back at them, dazed.

He looked last at Seri, the one who confused him the most, the one who was always confusing him the most, if even just by her very presence.

"How-" he stopped and struggled to make a complete sentence. Something worthy of the emotional moment at hand.

"Why aren't you dead?"

Seri stared at him for a moment, mouth agape, until slowly a smile spread across her face. "I was wrong. About the interpretation of a Blue needing to be "spent" to close the stream. It should have been more like... "applied".

Vincent frowned at her, looking skeptical.

"It's a simple error," she protested. "Translation can be tricky! The words are actually very close in the Cetra language, like the difference between... "used" and "used up". Anyway, I was locked in this giant bubble like thing when the beam extinguished. And then the temple fell on me."

"How?" He was doing it again. He forced his thick tongue to move, his brain to work. "And how did you get here?" He looked over at the rest of his team. That still would have been a hell of a lot of rock to move and they didn't have any equipment specific for moving rock. They couldn't have done it by hand quick enough to extract and cure up a human squashed under the rubble, even if the beam or the planet or whatever had provided some buffer for her to survive. Nobody answered him, and Seri was looking at him oddly. He was getting the distinct impression he was supposed to know something he didn't.

"Chaos came for me," Seri said.

"Without me?" Vincent's mind reeled, scanning back through memory, bits of nightmares for something that might indicate a memory lapse he could recover.

I tried to tell you

Tell me what?

"Well, he took your body along, but it's unclear where you were. He dug me out. I couldn't hear him, you know, in my head like normal, and I couldn't understand much of what he said. It seems he doesn't speak our language. I think he needs your help for both communication methods."

You don't speak Common? I thought we had been using the same language.

So did I.

"You went completely unconscious when the beam went out," Cloud said, continuing the story. "Well, after some struggling." He gave Yuffie a little touch to the mark over her right eye to make sure the cure had sealed up the gash completely. "You were out for several minutes. Then Chaos exploded off the deck and dove into the fallen temple. You don't remember?"

Vincent shook his head slowly. "I didn't know it was possible for him to take form while I'm unconscious. Maybe he had help; I used to also think it wasn't possible for my demons to work cooperatively. But apparently they can, and will..."

Vincent frowned at Seri and she leaned away from him a bit.

"...for you. And not just to save you from a pile of rocks. You rallied them against me, to let you jump from the ship," Vincent said, his voice cold.

"Uh... sorry?" Seri scrunched up her face, wondering if it was even worth giving and account of her own out-of-control mental state at the time.

Vincent sighed and rolled his eyes. "I guess I have to be grateful someone saved the day. And I deserved it; a right mess I made of things."

"Oh, you can quit that shit right now," Barrett growled. "We all know that plans never go off as planned."

"Maybe Seri was supposed to extinguish the beam," Cloud volunteered. "You brought her here."

And she would never had been strong enough to hear the Planet call if you hadn't brought her to Aasgard and strengthened Freyja's component.

"You were called by the planet? To dive into the beam?" Vincent asked.

"I guess so, I certainly had no idea I could do something like that." Seri made a small flapping with her hands, imitating diminutive wings.

Mmmm, the little wings certainly were a nice surprise Chaos purred,

Down, boy.

"Yeah, well, fuck Vincent, we came through it alright," Cid said, chewing on an unlit cigarette. "Well done."

"Yes, thank-you," Eriks voice, softer and somber came from the back. "For everything."

The room stilled to absorb him, a man with enough grace to be grateful despite his loss. A melancholy air might have settled on them all but for Yuffie's complete opposition to such things.

"Anyway, Vinnie, you're still our hero!" she blurted out, and to Vincent's surprise and horror Yuffie jumped up and kissed him; not a peck on the cheek, but a full smacker right on the lips. He stood, stunned, mouth hanging slightly open as heat crept into his face. Tifa and Seri, standing on either side of him, took advantage of his distress and planted a kiss on each cheek, laughing.

"Hey Vincent," Cloud teased, "I don't think I've ever seen you blush before."

"Yeah Vinnie, you look like your cape!"

The gunman had in fact reddened ever so slightly, he could feel the heat on his cheeks and for some reason it made him feel silly rather than strictly self-conscious. Giddy was actually closer to the truth, and he bowed his head and flicked his collar up to hide his face. But it was a moment too late.

"Well fuck me," said Cid, "I think that is an actually full blown smile from Mr. Valentine!"

"Teeth showing and everything!" Yuffie yelled, suddenly a ball of energy. "I saw them, I saw them! They are pointed!!"

Vincent immediately pursed his lips and ran his tongue over his front teeth, the two pointed canines included. Then he decided the hell with it and grinned predatorily at his friends, looking more fierce than friendly as he fully exposed Chaos' permanent residuals jutting down just a tad longer and sharper than was reasonable.

"Damn," Tifa said, staring at the pointy canines. "I owe Yuffie ten gil."

"Well, I kind of cheated," Yuffie admitted. "I'd seen them before, when he snarled at me once."

Vincent stowed his teeth and thought maybe he would try smiling back, a small one, a little less stoicism than usual but without the pointy teeth. What happened instead was his face contracted in pain because at that same moment his mental landscape exploded into an intense melee.

"Whoa, whoa, what's up?" Cloud neared, hand poised to touch Vincent's shoulder where it hovered uncertainly in the air.

Vincent marveled at the sudden change in the room. How sensitive humans were to the smallest emotional signal; it was one of the reasons he kept his face so controlled. He tried again for that small smile and this time it took, assuaging the tension in the room despite the fact he was faking it.

"Just a ruckus inside my head," he said. "They fight."

"Your demons?" Cloud ventured. They were learning more about Vincent in the last couple days than they had their entire time together fighting Sephiroth and Meteor, and while he didn't want to push his luck he wasn't sure how often opportunities like this would come along, if ever.

"I don't know what gets them started. But I know what makes them stop." Vincent turned toward Seri. "Would you mind?"

She smiled widely, showing all of her not-quite-straight and definitely non-demonic teeth.

"Yeah, I can do that."

She thought for a moment, then started a song, something different, an ancient folk melody in Common rather than Maritean, but still adding that peculiar modulation to it.

Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine
I'll taste your strawberries; I'll drink your sweet wine
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
'ere I forget all the joy that is mine, today

Vincent's face visibly relaxed, his small smile became real and natural as every line melted away from his face, leaving his companions marveling at the image of youth and maybe even the trace of innocence that set up camp there.

"Thank-you," he said overwhelmed with a sudden gratitude and affection for them all. "All of you."

"Hey, I know this song!" Yuffie said, and jumped in with a clear soprano counterpoint to Seri's low, rough tones.

I'll be a dandy, and I'll be a rover
You'll know who I am by the songs that I sing
I'll feast at your table; I'll sleep in your clover
Who cares what the morrow shall bring

"I didn't know Yuffie could sing," Cloud whispered to Tifa.

"Of course she can; she's good!" Tifa kissed Cloud on the cheek, and Cloud, for the moment, forgot entirely to be nervous about it. And so did she. She laughed and grabbed hands, pulling people around in a slow kind of dance until the whole room was moving and others started humming as they caught on to the melody, even if they didn't know the words.

I won't be tormented by yesterday's sorrows
I can't let the pain of the past rule my days
This morning I found you asleep in the meadow
And I'll be your love for today

"I think this is OK," Vincent said softly the next time he passed near Seri, his lips enticingly close to her ear. He felt, maybe for the first time since he had woken in this new world with his new self, accepted. He had been given a chance for the past and ultimately chose the present. People he loved had forgiven him his errors, and still wanted to be with him. They even managed not to shriek and run when passed near him and touched his cloak and it touched back.

"Of course it's OK," Seri said, letting Yuffie carry the song for a few measures. "You're among friends, remember?"

Vincent nodded, remembering how but a few days prior he had hesitated to label them that. "Friends," he repeated.

For long moments they all passed this way, rotating slowly amongst each other, touching hands and shoulders while the ancient melody wove between them, knowing that for today all was well, that they were alive, and most of all, they were together.

Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine
I'll taste your strawberries, I'll drink your sweet wine
A million tomorrows shall all pass away
'ere I forget all the joy that is mine, today

A/N: Thanks to all who read and reviewed.

"Today" is an old, old song. So old that I could find no one to credit for it.