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	Wings of Love

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	3/4/01
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	A Sephiroth X Aeris Fanfic (though it may not seem so at first sight!)

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	A Ten-year-old Revelation

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	Cloud stared in consternation at the television in Tifa's new bar. 
A year had passed since Meteor... everything was back to normal, except 
of course, the lives of Avalanche members. They were overwhelmed by the 
great welcome they received in Midgar, where Reeve had held a ceremony for
 them proclaiming them heroes. 
	
	Ever since Holy had come, Cloud had felt a sense of pervading peace.
 Aeris was dead, and he had to resign himself to the fact that he was
 never the one meant for her. Tifa was the one he was meant for. Cloud
 wondered why it had taken him to so long to realize that. He was 
simply a dunce, he supposed. It was a wonder Tifa had held on to hope
 for so long. He smiled at that thought. She loved him and he loved her. 
Woe betide whoever crossed between them.

	But what he saw on the television was something he was sure he had 
never thought about before. A competition of martial arts and weaponry 
skills was not uncommon. In fact, Cloud had participated in a few as 
well. But this was something new, something different. As he watched 
the movements of the newcomer, he had a dreadful feeling he was watching 
Sephiroth. 

	[Brought out of obscurity from the labs of Midgar... Angeles, rumoured to 
be the product of experiments conducted in secret, is romping through 
the ranks of veterans at the tender age of eleven... his prodigous skill with the 
sword is considered unparallelled, second only to heroes such as 
Cloud Strife, hero of the Planet, and the great Sephiroth...] the 
announcer said.
	
	{No...} Cloud thought. {Not another one.}

	Then he caught a good look at the face of the boy. Dewy green eyes that
 glowed with the enegy of MAKO sparkled as he bent to help up his 
fallen opponent. He had a smile that was calming, even strangely 
uplifting. At first, Cloud simply thought he was looking at a younger 
version of Sephiroth. But when the boy turned to face the camera, Cloud
 fell off his chair literally.

	"Cloud!" Tifa called. "What's wrong?"

	"Look at that..." 

	Tifa came running out, frowning. "What?"

	"That." Cloud pointed at the television screen. 

	Tifa gaped at the television. Angeles was stepping up to receive a medal. 
He wore a pair of black trousers and boots that fit him snugly up his 
calves. He didn't wear any shirt, just a leather vest and a silver medallion hung down
from his neck. For a boy so young, his muscles were finely toned, giving him a whipcord 
look. His hair was brown, and his dark eyebrows sat low over his green eyes framed 
by familiar brown bangs. He looked older than eleven. He looked like the 
kind of boy that would grow up a womanizer at the very least. His gaze was 
*very* penetrating. Then he smiled in triumph, a lush, childish kind of smile 
that promised heartbreak to girls in the future.

	"I think we ought to go talk to Reeve," Tifa said quietly. 

	"Just what I was thinking." 

===============

	Vincent Valentine walked to the Shin-ra Science Department Building 8, 
built many, many years ago. Life had not been hard to him, but it hadn't 
really been good either. He missed Lucrecia sorely, despite avenging her death. 
Revenge had tasted bittersweet. 

	Briefly, he wondered if the people working in there would recognize the 
Turk that had once served in there as a guard, then he shook his head. 
They would simply pass it off as coincidence. 

	Except for one. 

	He went inside, stopping a secretary. "May I know if a Dr. Dallas is 
still working here?"

	"Dr. Sarah Dallas? Oh yeah. You can find her down below in the labs. 
She's a little wacko, though. Just as bad as Dr. Hojo. Some people say," 
the secretary leant forward confidentially, "that she was the one who 
helped raise General Sephiroth." She straightened. "But we couldn't say
 for sure. Those that work in the labs are really secretive about their
 experiments."

	Vincent Valentine nodded. "I have it on good authority they are." With 
that, he swept past the young woman. 

	The lab was neat and clean, quite unlike what Hojo's dark lab used to 
be. Hojo's authority did not extend here, even when he was made Head of
 Science Research. His cousin worked here, and if anyong could outdo 
Hojo, it was Sarah Dallas. Before Vincent had met Lucrecia, Sarah Dallas 
had been the woman to be seen with. Glossy black hair and deep blue eyes 
with delicate features, she had been every man's dream. But he had met 
Lucrecia, and he had fallen in love with someone other than Sarah. 

	He found here wiping a table, running her finger over the surface several 
times to make sure it was clean. She hadn't changed her habits. Lucrecia 
had looked up to her and Hojo married his cousin's admirer, largely to 
annoy her. Vincent recalled Sarah telling him heatedly, "Will you get 
off your ass already and get her to divorce that thing? What're you 
waiting for?"

	She turned, but seemed unsurprised at seeing him there. "Valentine."

	He nodded gravely. "Sarah. Are we back to formal basis?"

	A smile broke across her features. "Of course not, Vincent. How was 
your tenure in the basement?"

	Vincent was starkly reminded of why she was so dangerous. Sarah could 
be polite, but underneath her words were steel and promised havoc to 
your life if you didn't accede to her wishes. She had left him in the 
basement because of his inaction to the experiments performed on Lucrecia. 
"Fine," he snapped. 

	"Good. I noticed you were part of the merry entourage that killed Hojo. How 
have you been?"

	"Bored," Vincent said blandly, trying not to let any emotions show. 

	"And lonely too," Sarah noted observantly. Her deep blue eyes softened. 

	"Don't mention the obvious."

	"Very well, then. What brings you to my lab?"

	Vincent shrugged. "I thought we could catch up on old times. What have 
you been up to?"

	"Nothing much," she lied. Then grinned when she saw his lips thin in 
annoyance. "My nephew-by-marriage was a handful, for one, but he grew 
up quite an honourable young man, until Hojo sent him on that mission."
 Her eyes became regretful. "Such a shame. Sephiroth was like a son to 
me." She sighed, but frowned. "Vincent," she said.

	"Yes?"

	"I had been following Cloud's journey and I'm quite interested in one
 of your members. A young woman."

	"Oh?" Vincent raised a pitch black eyebrow. 

	"I believe she is a Cetra."

	"Aeris."

	"Gast's daughter." She sighed again. "Another good man. His wife was 
one of the best people I ever met. Hojo had her captured, and I believe
 she had been wounded. I never received an explanation what happened to
 the infant."

	"Ifalna passed her to a woman named Elmyra in Sector Six. She grew up 
and became a flower seller. Cloud met her, rescued her from Hojo's lab 
once and she went along with him."

	"And then?"

	"Sephiroth killed her in the City of Ancients." Vincent winced even as 
he said that.

	" *What* ?!"

	"She was the one who summoned Holy, but even as she did, Sephiroth fell
 from above and stabbed her."

	"Of course I'd realize she was the one to summon Holy, Vincent, don't 
think I'm stupid... but Sephiroth? Jenova's mind control must have been 
more powerful than I first thought. That's... oh, gods..."

	"What is it?" 

	"Come here and I'll show you," Sarah said, beckoning to Vincent and
 heading off to another room. "Certain videos I found would be quite 
interesting to watch."

	================================

	The boy tossed in his sleep, his brows wrinkling in distress. Dreams of being part of a 
family, a sense of belonging passed in his mind. The voices in his mind quietened his sorrow and
 regret. He was a little boy once more, playing with building blocks in a room that had glass
 windows. Finishing his masterpiece of a tower, he looked up to see a silver-haired man at a 
window, watching with glowing emerald green eyes. 

	Gravely, he raised a hand. The man, just as gravely, raised his. They should know 
each other, after all. He didn't know how, but there was some sort of connection between them 
which, faintly, he knew should have been stronger. A pang of regret shot through him, regret
 mirrored in the eyes of a man he should have been able to call Father.  

	If he had come back from Nibelheim.... Everything would've turned out all right. But 
something had gone horribly wrong there... though they tried to cover it up and pretend, 
there was nagging sense of disharmony among the myriad of voices that sang into his head. 
The crystalline melody had become discordant, until recently when it became more calm. 

	But the strange feeling that all was not right with the world was still there. 
Tentatively, a young mind tried to push itself into the collective of the Planet, but gently, 
something pushed him away. A kindly woman smiled at him, with brown hair and green eyes that 
looked achingly like his. She looked like she was in her thirties, but he realized that she had
 been part of the Planet longer than that. 

	{No, child... not yet...} she told him soothingly. {You're not ready...}

	[When will I be, then?] he asked. 

	{Soon, child... be patient...}

	A thought occurred to him. [Are you my grandmother?] All his life, he had been told he 
had not been born.... he had been made, literally. He understood the concept, but everyone
 had parents, right? And if there were parents, there were grandparents.

	The kindly woman smiled again, touching his cheek gently. {Would it matter?}

	[Yes] he replied earnestly, even a little desperately. [Very much.]

	{Then yes. Yes, I am.}

	[By which side?]

	{By your mother's side}

	Tears stung his eyes. He never knew his mother... no one had ever volunteered the least 
bit of information about her, except maybe Dr. Dallas, but she knew very little of the
 woman that had contributed to his genetic make-up.

	{But don't worry, child... soon, you'll know who you are. And then, you'll be ready.}

	Her presence drifted away and the boy opened his eyes, sitting up and pushing back his 
brown hair. If that's the way the adults were going to be, then he'd just have to be 
a little more abitrary.

	=====================

	President Reeve watched the video and appeared calm. Inside, his jaw had fallen clear 
through the desk he sat behind. Cloud Strife and Tifa Lockheart had also been invited 
to watch this. Vincent Valentine, that enigma of a man, turned out to be a close 
acquaintance to Dr. Sarah Dallas. Even Reeve had heard of her. She had not been working 
on the Jenova Project, but she was famous nonetheless. She knew just about everything 
that went on the science labs and gave out information... for a price. 

	Reeve had just paid her a hefty bonus to watch the videos she had brought along. At 
first, the images had been fuzzy, but everyone could make out a little boy walking into 
a lab. There was a cradle in the corner, open and wires attached to monitors close by. 
On an examination table lay a young woman....

	Ifalna Gainsborough. It had been easy to identify her, as much as she resembled Aeris. 
But it was the ongoing drama in the corner by the cradle which interested Reeve. 

	"Do you need help identifying the boy?" Dr. Dallas asked. 

	"Shut up."

	The little boy carried the baby from the crib over to Ifalna. 

	"How about-"

	"I said, shut up."

	"This is..." Tifa whispered. "That was Aeris?"

	"No, it's a puppy," Dr. Dallas replied sarcastically. "Of course it's her. Who else?" 

	The woman on the examination table spoke to the little boy, whose eyes widened in some 
sort of wonder and looked back down at the infant in his arms. Hesitantly, he kissed the 
baby softly, then looked back and forth quickly, as if sensing something. He looked directly 
at the camera, then back at Ifalna. He put the baby back into the cradle and looked around 
this time. The sight of him launching a well-aimed test-tube at the camera was the last 
thing the viewers saw before everything went snowy. 

	"Sephiroth was the one who helped Aeris' mother escape?" Tifa exclaimed. 

	"Patience," Vincent murmured to his old friend, who was taking deep breaths to 
contain her annoyance.

	"Not once, either," the scientist answered at last. "One of my colleagues managed 
to recapture her... he kept her a secret from Hojo. The fool told me about it. Worse 
thing to do, because what I hear, Sephiroth hears too. Someone lost a finger, while 
another person gained freedom."

	"I didn't know he even had feelings," Cloud said scornfully.

	"He doesn't show them often, true. But when you're a soldier, you can't afford human 
emotion. It holds true as a scientist. We have few scruples, mainly because if we had 
more, we wouldn't be able to do our work." 

	"Then how does Angeles come in?" Reeve asked. "I take it his upbringing was similar
 to Sephiroth's? Who were his parents?"

	Dr. Dallas sighed wearily. "All right. What do you kids know about reproduction?"

	Cloud cleared his throat and looked away. Tifa found the ceiling interesting. Reeve 
pretended there was a document nearby more important. Vincent chuckled, a rusty sound, 
since he hadn't done so in years.

	The scientist sighed again. "I'm getting too old for this."

	"Patien-"

	"Shut *up*, Valentine. Okay, I won't give you the details people find more interesting. 
Basically, each cell in our body has forty-six chromosomes, two of which are XX, or XY. 
XX for females, XY for males. Got that so far? All cells have forty-six chrmosomes except
 for the reproductive cells. Do I need to tell you what they are? Good. Now listen. 
Reproductive cells have only twenty-two chromosomes, not counting an X chromosome or 
a Y chromosome."

	"Are you saying your colleague managed to extract reproductive cells from-"

	"I'm getting to that. That fool was rather brilliant, though. All he did was get a 
blood sample from the Ancient. Sounds hard, huh, getting your finger chopped off just 
because of a blood sample? At any rate, listen to this : he managed to define certain
 genes of two different DNA patterns, split them and join the two halves from differing
 DNA patterns together. Now *that*, my dears, let me tell you, is something worth 
applauding. With that procedure, it's altogether possible the result is a human who is...
 perfect."

	"Angeles," Cloud said evenly. 

	"The result was Angeles, yes."

	"So... technically, his mother is Aeris, right?" 

	"I knew it. You've got quite a good mind, Strife. You're blur, but you've got a good 
mind."

	Cloud smiled at the compliment. "Then who's the father?"

	Dr. Dallas looked amused. 

	"No..." Cloud's jaw dropped. 

	"It couldn't!" Tifa gasped. 

	Dr. Dallas nodded smilingly. "Yes, my dears. The other half of the contributing DNA 
belongs to Sephiroth." 
	

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	All characters (except for Dr. Sarah Dallas) are copyright of Squaresoft Inc. This is 
just a fanfic for heaven's sake! 

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