Come for the false advertising, stay for the quality of the writing.

Seriously, there are a couple of things we should get straight right here and now. One, this story will prominently feature an OC in a leading role.

I could offer all kinds of assurances that this story is not a romance and is actually about Vincent and his personal growth, but I don't think I should have to betray the plot arc simply to sell myself to already hostile potential non-readers. If the possibility that a canon character just might have some meaningful interaction with a person I pulled out of my own head inspires your back-button reflex too strongly, then by all means go away. It's your loss. But if you're willing to keep an open mind and see where we all end up together, then strap in and hold on and trust me to take you somewhere worth the effort.

Secondly, but only really interesting to me, is that the OC is a character born into the world of my writing even before FFVII came into being. She has her own story and history, and there are reasons why it was an interesting thought exercise to drop her into Gaia. Maybe one day you'll see her on a bookshelf, if I can ever crack into the world of published authors. For now, I hope you can give her a warm pre-welcome. And maybe keep in the back of your mind that to me, this is not an OC fic but a crossover.

Oh, and thirdly and irrelevantly: you can consider this consistent with "Kalm After the Storm" and indeed all of my currently-published stories.

Edit: In a fit of nostalgia, I was just browsing through this story last night. I noticed, to my frustration, that the site had eaten all of my section breaks, so my chapters are reading like headlong chaos. I'll be uploading corrected versions of every chapter affected by this chicanery, so that's why the story will say it has been recently updated. Not because I'm adding more to a finished story.

Without further ado:

Chapter One

The drive was an ugly one, through terrain that others might find beautiful, perhaps, though it was rank with far too much untamed growth. Reeve's information said there was an old Shinra facility stashed out here by the ruined Gongaga reactor; and there were reasons why Vincent Valentine was the first and only man he considered asking to investigate. Scenery was irrelevant.

With the detailed directions Reeve's agents had provided, it was not difficult to find the facility's location. Seeing it was another challenge entirely. The jungle had all but swallowed it whole. Clearly, the place had not been visited in decades. Vincent threw his black boat of a car into park and sat there a moment, staring through the windshield with mako-enhanced vision until he had an idea where to begin looking for the entrance.

The jungle was out of control here. It made Vincent uneasy, the innumerable sounds and smells assailing his too-receptive senses. He was a man who needed order and control, needed them like he needed air, or else he felt his world on the verge of flying apart. He had been like that even before he died, though as a younger man he had lacked the self-discipline to create his own order. A different sort of chaos to live with, explaining many of his most terrible mistakes.

Pushing his cloak back, Vincent drew a deep breath and waded through the undergrowth along what he suspected had once been a well-maintained path. His gloved right hand never left the handle of his gun, holstered at his hip. It was difficult to sort through all the sensory information bombarding him, and he did not want to be caught unawares.

Aerial surveys reported that the lab was a small one – at least above ground. That didn't actually mean much. Only that if anything truly horrible had happened here, it had occurred deep in the bowels of the planet, closer to the Lifestream. Which was no reassurance. Vincent found the door and wrestled it open with his artificially augmented strength. It was quite dark inside. He freed Cerberus from its holster and stepped inside, shutting the door behind him.

What he saw when his modified eyes had adjusted to the lack of light was a perfectly ordinary-looking lobby, rather like the waiting room of any office anywhere. The wall behind the receptionist's desk sported an enormous framed Shinra logo, and a dead potted plant sat in each corner, but otherwise the place was bare of adornment. There were two doors, one on either side of the desk, which was itself empty but for a pen and an old visitor's log.

Vincent stepped closer and scanned the most recent pages. Three names of significance instantly leapt out at him, offering an unpleasant hint as to the nature of the work carried out in this facility. He carefully tucked the clipboard and its pages into the bag he was carrying for just this purpose. There was nothing else to see here.

Long habit sent him first to the door on the left. It was, as he had expected, an office. File cabinets lined the far wall. Gauging the possible volume of their contents, he believed he would be able to fit all of it into the massive trunk of his car; but if he found much more in the way of hard copy here, it would be a struggle to bring it all back with him. He moved to the computer at the desk and hooked it up to the portable power supply he had brought with him.

As he waited for the hard drive to download to a memory stick, he poked through the desk drawers and a few of the file cabinets. Nothing of immediate interest but for a handheld voice recorder and a set of keys. He palmed the keys while pushing play on the recorder. Batteries dead, of course. Impassively, he slid the device into the bag along with the log book and searched the desk drawers one more time for any additional tapes. No luck. He did, on his second pass, see a faded photograph which made his chest constrict in a way he had thought was long behind him.

The photograph made its way not into the bag, but a pocket of his fitted black leather jacket. He could not afford to think about what the picture meant, not yet. Not while he still had a job to complete.

The hard drive finished downloading. He reclaimed the memory stick, then drew out another. This one unleashed a virus prepared by the technicians at the WRO, designed to wipe the computer clean and fry its data beyond recovery. That done, he disconnected the portable power supply and stowed it away again. A final systematic pass-through of the office yielded nothing new. He would come back for the files on his way out.

Why was there a photograph at this facility of Vincent as an infant? As obvious as the answer was, he shrank from looking it in the eye.

The other door in the waiting room led to a short hallway. Two doors on the left, three on the right. The first, to his left, was a bathroom. There was also a broom closet and two exam rooms. The final portal opened upon a staircase descending into the darkness of the depths of the earth.

The materia embedded in the butt of his gun provided more than adequate light for him to see by, but even so the foot of the staircase was lost in the blackness below. He started down cautiously, Cerberus drawn and at the ready.

Below, he found another door closing off access to the rest of the facility, this one armored metal and quite sturdy. He tried the keys from the office. The third one went home with a click, and he pushed the door open.

To his surprise, there was still power down on the lower level. Probably an emergency backup system. Given the sensitive nature of the experiments being carried out down here, the scientists would not have wanted power cut at a crucial moment. His lip curled in disgust at the thought as it flourished and elaborated upon itself within his mind. He wondered which of his colleagues had been assigned security at this location, and if he had known what monstrous acts he was safeguarding. He wondered if Doctor Grimoire Valentine had offered convincing assurances that their work was all for the good of mankind.

Too much idle speculation. Too much emotion. Even though his Turk days were behind him, he had the training and the experience to know this was counterproductive to his task. Pushing it all back, he advanced further into the underground laboratory which had, apparently, been his father's scientific domain. He wondered if Reeve had known that before sending him here.

It was the work of several hours, methodically investigating each room and its contents, downloading and then wiping the data on every computer, rounding up all surviving hard copies of the researchers' records. As difficult as it was for him to remain detached from what he was seeing down here, he knew it would be harder for anyone else. Anyone with a soul. In its heyday, Shinra had not exactly encouraged morals among its employees. Especially not among its scientists, as Vincent had personal cause to know. Perhaps Lucrecia had been doomed from the beginning, daring to have a conscience – even a murky one – in her line of work.

Vincent had found no living specimens here, escaped from containment in the long absence of supervision. He was mildly surprised. But of course, as soon as he made the observation to himself, he entered the final room and saw the glow of several active stasis tanks.

His gaze was instantly pulled to the one that was still occupied. The tank was horizontal, the figure inside lying prone and unmoving. Even from a distance, he could tell that it was female and that something about her was not quite normal.

He approached with caution. And caught his breath when he stood before the tank and saw clearly the woman lying there. She was… He did not consider himself poetic enough to describe what she was. Perfect. Stunning. Beautiful in a way that was painful to look at, like too much sun reflecting off of new snow.

Slender and fine-boned and shapely, lean with muscle but soft in all the right places. Features sharp and cold and precise. Eye sockets enormous in her too-pale face beneath elegantly thin eyebrows, the eyes themselves tilted at an exotic angle.

Looking down at her sleeping form, he found himself feeling a number of things. Disorienting things. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to touch all of her. Intimately, forcefully, perhaps somewhat deviantly, in ways that had not occurred to him since before his death. Since Lucrecia. No. He was feeling the urge to do things to her he had never done with Lucrecia. His long-repressed libido was screaming itself awake, demanding to be satisfied, demanding the feel of this strange woman lying asleep in an abandoned Shinra lab having suffered God only knew what torment at the hands of the scientists here.

But as much as he wanted her, he was not beyond recognizing that something about her was just not right. He couldn't put his finger on it, quite.

His heart was hammering beneath his breastbone, his breath coming too fast. This was ridiculous. He knew how to act like a professional. And he had seen beautiful women before. Plenty. He forced himself to relax, taking several deep breaths.

When he had himself under control, he considered his options. His cautious nature told him he should check through the computer files, see if he could find anything to tell him what had been done to this "sample." No matter how distracting her beauty might be, it was possible she could be dangerous given what Shinra had liked doing to its specimens. Unfortunately, he had already wiped all the computers. The data would have to be reviewed by Reeve's WRO technicians.

After a moment, he came to a conclusion. Perhaps a foolish one, but he would deal with that later if he had to. He went back upstairs and loaded everything he would be bringing back with him into the trunk of the car. It all fit, just. It was possible he might have to make a hasty escape, but he hoped not. He really hoped not. When it was all in, he went back down to the lab, to the one occupied room. His hands were shaking. He stood there, waiting, until they were steady again. Looking at her didn't help, but he told himself he was going to have to get used to it. To her. To the intoxicating strange perfection of her. He had not felt this boyishly uncertain in a very long time, and it was bringing many unpleasant memories to the surface of his mind.

Eventually, he felt calm enough to deactivate and open the tank. He had, fortunately, enough presence of mind to take a sample of the solution they'd had her in before it drained off. Carefully, he lifted her out. The feel of her in his arms was distracting, surreal. Since the only surface in the room was an examination table, and Vincent knew very well what it felt like to wake up on one of those, he set her down gently on the floor and knelt beside her.

When she showed no sign of waking, he rummaged through his supplies and pulled out a potion. He had to do something logical, to combat the absurd fairy-tale inspired urge he was having to try waking "the fair maiden" with a kiss. He also fought an impulse to remove his glove just so he could feel her skin as he lifted her head and tipped the potion down her throat. The muscles in her white neck flexed as her body told her to swallow. He almost breathed a sigh of relief. A moment later, her eyelids fluttered open.

Green. Her eyes were green. Deep, vibrant, emerald green. Brighter than Sephiroth's, more intense than Aerith's. Piercing and perceptive and intelligent, almost frighteningly so, even from the moment they opened and took in their first view of the lab. And when they settled on Vincent, they filled first with startled sorrow, then with hurt anger, then weary resignation, passing quickly into a complex mix of all three dominated still by the anger.

Never had he been looked at quite like that before.

When she didn't say anything, he realized he would have to. "You don't have to be afraid. I won't hurt you." Only after he had spoken did he realize that despite the confusing combination of emotions stabbing into him from her astonishing eyes, none of those emotions was fear – the one he was accustomed to seeing, when people looked at him.

At the sound of his voice, she flinched and closed her eyes. But she said nothing.

"My name is Vincent Valentine," he tried again. "I'm going to get you out of here."

She opened her eyes at that, though she did not look at him. Quite deliberately, it seemed. She swallowed, as if testing. Then opened her mouth and said, carefully, "No."

He frowned. "No?"

"You should not have woken me," she explained grimly. Her voice was clear and soft. Low for a woman's, pleasantly so, and she spoke with an unfamiliar accent.

But he heard in her voice the same numb despair he had felt more than six years ago, when Cloud and the others had forced him from his long slumber in Nibelheim. He knew. He knew.

"You shouldn't say that," he rumbled quietly. So much wrong would have gone unchecked if he had stayed in his coffin. A few apocalypses-worth. And after everything that had happened, he realized there was life still to be lived. Even by him. Even by her, whatever her personal Hell.

Her eyes were drooping already, dragging her back toward drug- or mako-induced sleep. "It is not your concern," she replied, slurring her words. "Leave me in peace." Her eyelids fell and her body went limp; and just like that, she was asleep again.

The argument effectively over, Vincent gathered her up into his arms once more and carried her back out into the real world.

She ended up sleeping most of the way to Junon, drifting in and out of consciousness at odd intervals. He could only assume she was working a high dosage of tranquilizer out of her system. The first time she woke up to find herself strapped into the passenger seat of his car, the anger she exuded was palpable. She said nothing, though, simply turned her face to the window and watched the landscape roll by until her eyelids fell again.

When the guards admitted his car into the WRO Headquarters garage, she was asleep again. He was secretly glad of the excuse to hold her once more, pressed to his chest. That something about her, that unidentifiable element of not right-ness, had in no way detracted from her allure during their long drive.

He did his best not to dwell on that as he carried her into the building. He managed to make it nearly to the medical center before being flanked by a curious doctor and an irritating cat robot.

"Vincent, welcome back!" Cait Sith called out brightly. "What have you got there?"

"A patient," Vincent said to the doctor, flatly, instead of addressing the silly robot. "I think Reeve should get down here."

Cait forced himself into Vincent's line of sight, nearly catching himself up in the tall man's tattered red cloak. "Reeve is in a meeting right now. C'mon, Vincent. You can talk to me."

Vincent had often wondered with great annoyance why Reeve had chosen to give the animatron that particular accent, but he could do no more than speculate. He silently allowed the WRO doctor to direct him toward a bed in the medical bay, where he placed his sleeping charge with no small amount of reluctance. Cait was still dancing at his heels.

"I found her in a stasis tank at the abandoned facility," Vincent explained, finally acknowledging both parties as he spoke. He gave the doctor the vial he had been carrying all the way from the lab. "This is the solution they were keeping her in."

The man took it and moved immediately to begin examining his unexpected patient. "Thank you, Mr. Valentine. Although, anything else you can tell us would be helpful…"

Vincent gave a brisk nod. "I have the entirety of the facility's computer data, as well as several hundred hard files. Hopefully, something there will be of use."

"You can take that straight to the computer lab," Cait instructed, bouncing and waving his arms frantically as he spoke. "I'll let The Boss know you're back."

Grunting his assent, Vincent gave the woman one last glance before turning to complete his assignment. What had she lost, what had she suffered, in order for the scientists at Shinra to satisfy their curiosity as to how far they could push the human body?