Boring title, I know. Done to death. But it worked for me, so take that.

Fenrir’s engine purred to a stop just outside the wrought iron gates, leaving Cloud to look up at the imposing building before him in a silence broken only by birdsong and the sighing of the wind in the leaves. There were several trees on the property, some of them massive and craggy and ancient, all of them in full flower. More than a year after the Omega Crisis had returned the Lifestream to its natural state, he was not yet re-accustomed to so much verdant life; but it was a pleasant adjustment to have to make.

Pleasant. He was not at all certain the word would apply to what he had to do now. Squaring his shoulders as if preparing for battle, he put out a hand to push at the gate crested with a rather gothic winged cherub. It swung open easily on well-oiled hinges, not locked. That was a good sign. He took hope, however small, as he crunched booted feet up the crushed granite path to the massive double front doors.

This was his first time here, and as he looked up at the majestic looming stone walls of the place, he realized he’d had no idea what to expect. It was a beautiful house – mansion, really – in its own way, if a bit grim, its outdated architecture incorporating spire-topped towers and charming low eaves. The stone was a very dark grey, diamond-paned windows winking like watchful eyes without giving the least glimpse into the home’s interior. It was an old house, but the visible signs of decay in the crumbling grey stone only leant a certain charm. In contrast to the antique feel of the building, the garden was alive and thriving, bursting with vibrant color, and the lawn was impeccably manicured. The home of an old-fashioned country gentleman.

Cloud smiled, feeling more at ease already. Perhaps Tifa had been worried for no reason.

The grand carven front doors were like the portal to an ancient stronghold, a massive brass knocker in the gothic cherub crest looming upon each. The sound they produced was deep and sonorous and loud enough to wake the dead.

He shook that thought off, hoping it would prove unnecessary.

A long moment stretched even longer, and Cloud’s hope began to fade. He was just beginning to calculate how long he ought to wait before he burst in to search the basement. But then the knob clicked and the door swung inward to reveal a certain tall figure.

Vincent blinked slowly. “Cloud.” His voice, always low, was raspy from apparent long disuse. “It’s been a while.” And then he smiled. Vincent Valentine smiled.

“Yeah,” Cloud managed, staring at his friend. Or, at a man who somewhat resembled the friend he remembered.

No leather. No gauntlet. No faded red headband like an old bloodstained wound dressing. No gun holstered to his thigh, nor even a tattered red cloak obscuring most of his face. Vincent was dressed quite conventionally, if still on the sober side, in a loose pair of lightweight black trousers and a very dark blue long-sleeved tee-shirt, fitted enough to the contours of his chest and abdomen to show more lean muscle than the leather suit ever had. The sleeves were pushed up over corded forearms, prominently displaying two perfectly normal, pale hands. No gloves. Rather than armored sabotons, his feet were encased in what had to be only accidentally stylish black shoes. The long, wild black hair was pulled back carelessly into a ponytail at the base of his skull, though it only marginally helped to keep the unruly mass out of his eyes. Which, as ever, seemed not to bother him in the least.

He looked almost like a normal guy. Almost. There was still too much watchful, coiled danger in him to pass as normal. And then, of course, there were the startling crimson eyes with the Mako gleam. But Cloud had to search a moment before finding the familiar angry sadness in the former Turk’s face. The sorrow that had once been one of his most prominently recognizable features was no longer written on him so plainly, nor was it the only emotion visible in him. At the moment, he appeared amused – and pleased to see an old friend.

It was Cloud’s turn to blink.

When his visitor showed no sign of elaborating upon his grunt of a salutation, Vincent sighed. “What are you doing here?”

Better. More like what he had expected, like what he was prepared to deal with. Cloud marshaled his forces enough to pull out the largish envelope he’d tucked away in his clothing, handing the article to the tall man in the doorway. “I, uh, came to give you this.”

Vincent held the envelope, unopened, and peered at it for a moment with his head tilted slightly to the side and down in a reassuringly familiar way as he considered its probable contents. At length he regarded Cloud through the black curtain of his hair and said, warmly, “I suppose congratulations are in order.” It was an observation, not a question, and he punctuated it with another smile. A genuine one, not some sad or sardonic approximation.

Thoroughly weirded out, Cloud responded with another, “Yeah.” He knew he was sounding like a tool, so he forced his brain to add something less moronic. “I finally pulled my head out of my ass long enough to ask her. Lucky for me, I guess I did it in time.”

Vincent chuckled in the dark-sounding way he had, but he seemed sincerely pleased. “Good for you.” He paused, eyeing Cloud with an air of appraisal. “But you didn’t have to come all the way out here to give me this yourself.” He flicked the still-unopened wedding invitation.

So they had come to it. Cloud decided it would be best to just lay it out. “Well, when you didn’t answer your phone, Tifa was worried.”

Another dry chuckle. “Worried that I’d gone back to sleep?”

Cloud nodded, grimacing. “Yeah. She wanted me to check it out, to be safe.”

“Hunh,” the former Turk acknowledged.

“So…” Cloud didn’t like to be nosy, especially not with anyone who valued privacy as much as Vincent did, but he knew Tifa would kill him if he didn’t come back with better information. “Why didn’t you answer the phone?”

Another smile, amused but otherwise unreadable. “I’ve been busy.”

“Hunh,” Cloud found himself answering.

They regarded one another for a moment. Not sure where to go from here, but knowing he still didn’t have enough to report back to the girls, Cloud considered how to break the stalemate.

Unexpectedly, the other man saved him.

“Would you like to come in for a drink, before you head back?”

Astounded by the invitation itself as much as by the animation in Vincent’s voice as he made it, Cloud nodded dumbly before managing to tack on a, “Thanks.”

He thought he heard another low chuckle, but Vincent had already stepped back inside the house, opening the door wider.

In his automatic, routine inspection of his surroundings, Cloud noticed immediately that at least some things about his friend had not changed as much as first appearances might have indicated: Cerberus was lying on an end table just inside the doorway, its triple barrels gleaming in easy reach from where Vincent had been standing to greet his visitor.

The other thing he noticed was the grim elegance of the room he found himself surveying. Much like the exterior of the house, the entry hall was an anachronistic capture of the beauty of a past age, all tasteful carved wood and muted velvet trimmings. The floor beneath his feet was black-and-white checked marble, like a game board. Overhead was a grand crystal chandelier, unlit. The only light in the hall came in from the windows above and to either side of the massive front doors.

“Nice place,” Cloud grunted, impressed.

Vincent was already leading the way to a side door, and did not turn to give his answer. “This was my father’s house.”

The parlor was every bit as impressive as the entry hall, modest wealth displayed in a hundred details from the rich Wutaian rug to the gorgeous pair of antique Gongogan vases upon the mantel. It had never occurred to him before that the enigmatic ex-Turk might have this kind of gil. Cloud sat where Vincent indicated, while his host crossed to the mini-bar and came back with two glasses and a bottle of expensive red wine.

“I found this in the cellar,” Vincent explained, pouring into both glasses. “No coffins, though.”

A joke? Did Vincent really just crack a joke? Cloud was starting to wonder if he had entered some kind of backwards alternate dimension.

“To old friends,” Vincent said.

Cloud raised his glass before drinking. He was no connoisseur, but the wine tasted pretty good as far as he could tell and went down nicely.

“How is everyone?” Vincent asked, while Cloud was still gathering his thoughts.

If you care so damn much, Cloud thought, why have you stayed out of touch for the last year? But he knew he was no one to talk on that front. If not for Tifa forcing him to stay grounded and present, he was sure he’d let himself be every bit as isolated as Vincent.

So instead of delivering the lecture Tifa had charged him with, he simply gave a quick rundown of the group’s doings and whereabouts. The only remotely interesting bit of information, besides the news of his own upcoming nuptials, was the fact that Yuffie and Shelke had recently taken an apartment together. They each had their own reasons for wanting a little more autonomy. There was a betting pool on the issue of how long it would take one of them to kill the other, and which that would be. He asked Vincent if he wanted in on the action, but the raven-haired man declined.

“Your loss,” Cloud observed philosophically. “I’m down for fifty gil on Yuffie taking Shelke out inside three months.”

“Don’t underestimate Shelke,” Vincent purred.

Heh. Rude had said the same thing, before also passing on the wager. Reno, however, had put down a hefty sum on the former Tsviet, “just to piss off Yuffs.” He seemed to have developed kind of a thing for the girl from Wutai, hanging around the bar any time he wasn’t on the clock in the hope of catching her when she stopped by.

Cloud had asked Yuffie once if she minded, if she wanted him to bounce the loudmouthed Turk and his partner. She had informed him indignantly that if it was a problem – which it so wasn’t – she’d take care of it herself thank you very much. So much for chivalry.

“What about you?” Cloud segued. “What’ve you been so busy doing?”

That brought another strangely relaxed smile as Vincent drank his wine. “I’ve been learning to let go of the past,” he murmured, “and getting used to the idea of being comfortable with who I am.” He paused. “But on a less metaphysical level, I’ve been restoring this house.” He gestured vaguely, seeming to include the room and everything outside of it. “My father left it to me when he died, but I never came back. I was working for Shinra at the time, feeling my independence. We weren’t on good terms in those days, my father and I. And then…” He shrugged, not elaborating on what did not need to be mentioned: his death and subsequent torture at Hojo’s hands, followed by all those years in the coffin. “I was away so long, this place fell into considerable disrepair.”

“It looks good now,” Cloud observed. He chose not to remark on that fact that his notoriously silent friend had just said more, almost, than any of them had ever heard him say all put together throughout the years they’d known him. He also did not comment on the subject of Vincent’s progress as a human being. No need to be patronizing. It was enough of a relief to know that there had been progress. Observable, even.

Vincent cocked his head. “Yes, well, it has been a long year. Like I said, I’ve been busy.” He seemed perfectly aware of all Cloud had not said, offering another small smile in gratitude for the other man’s discretion.

“Got it.” Tifa would be beyond relieved at this explanation of Vincent’s absence. They all would. It seemed he fully intended to remain among the living; the years alone had just made him shy and solitary by nature. Cloud would not be the one to argue with that.

They drank their wine in companionable silence.

When his glass was empty and Cloud could think of no good reason to prolong the visit, he stood up and gestured at the envelope lying where Vincent had set it aside. “You know we expect to see you there,” he warned. “If you don’t show, I can’t account for Tifa’s behavior. Or Yuffie’s.”

Chuckling, Vincent unfolded his tall frame from the comfortable position he’d assumed in the chair next to Cloud’s and pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll be there,” he promised. And added, without warning, “I look forward to seeing everyone again.”

There were a lot of things he knew he wasn’t going to say, about how good it was to know that Vincent was alright; how they had all missed him and his silent, reassuring company; how they had all worried – not just Tifa – that the darkness and the demons in their friend would finally prove too much one day when none of them were looking and they would lose him without a whisper of warning. They were a team, and team members take care of each other. It was hard to do that for the one who was never there. So, “Yeah,” Cloud was once more reduced to responding.

When he stood once more outside the wrought-iron gate, one hand on Fenrir’s flank as though for reassurance, Cloud had trouble believing his memory of the hour just past.

But it was a good memory, so he could live with it.