Guilt’s Cost: Part CXI

Afternoon

The baby had woken up while Cid was out and Tifa sat rocking him gently in the living room of the house as she watched television. When Cid finally arrived home he went in through the back door and went straight to his room. He locked the door and took the cigarettes out of the shopping bag and stashed them into the upper drawer of his dresser. Somehow he felt ashamed that he had gotten them and didn’t want Tifa to know. Once that was done, he went back out into the kitchen and threw the case of beer into the refrigerator and placed the container of formula onto the counter. His package of gum was already opened and shoved into a pocket of his coat, which he tossed onto the table.

Tifa looked up from the television and smiled at Cid when he eventually made his way to the couch and sat next to her. "You’re back."

"Way to state the obvious." Cid grumbled; his anger at himself causing him to be less sociable than normal.

She raised an eyebrow at his tone but decided to allow it to slide. Tifa knew that Cid was under a terrible strain at the moment and she wasn’t about to push him. "Do you want to hold the baby?"

Cid reached out for his son before Tifa had even finished the question. For some reason holding the child was calming to his very frayed nerves. He held the baby close to his chest and watched as he squirmed slightly before falling back off into sleep. The faintest of smiles came to Cid’s lips and he wasn’t aware of it.

Upon seeing Cid relax Tifa rose from the couch. "I’m gonna go see what I can come up with for lunch."

"I’m not hungry." Cid said, half to himself.

Tifa didn’t answer him. She was going to make food whether he liked it or not and come hell or high water Tifa was going to make sure that he didn’t starve himself. After rummaging around for a few minutes she managed to come up with a box of macaroni and some canned corn. Obviously Cid and Shera went out to eat a lot more than they had cooked.

With Tifa safely out of the room, Cid couldn’t help but feel tears again return to his eyes. He continued to stare down at his son at a loss for what he was going to do. How he was going to manage to raise this child on his own he did not know. Cid was aware that Tifa wouldn’t be staying here forever and the thought of her leaving him alone with the baby scared him. Unconsciously he began to rock the baby slightly as his anxiety got the better of him.

Tifa worked in the kitchen, cooking their would be lunch. As the pasta boiled she looked around noticing things she had never seen before. Over toward the refrigerator on the counter there was a small group of pictures. She went over and examined them to see what they were of. The first and largest of the group was a picture of Cid and Shera the day they had gotten married at the courthouse. Cid’s expression was one of clear annoyance but Shera was smiling and bright, holding up their marriage certificate. Somehow this image seemed to sum up the entire relationship between the two perfectly.

The next one caught Tifa a little by surprise. It was a picture of Vincent standing on deck of the Highwind looking over the rail. Why Cid would ever have taken a picture like this and why he would feel the need to have it out confused Tifa. She knew very well that back then those two did not care much for one another. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful picture of her husband. His long black hair was being pushed back slightly from the wind and his red cloak for one of the few instances was unbuckled and resting low on his shoulders. Tifa couldn’t help but pick up this photograph to examine it closer. She was completely mystified and needed to ask Cid about it.

As she walked into the living room she found Cid gazing down at his son with tears streaking his cheeks. She sat next to him and placed an arm around his shoulders. "Are you okay?"

Cid quickly attempted to wipe away his tears but it wasn’t easy with the baby in his arms. "Yeah, I just got a little caught up in my thoughts."

"Oh." Tifa tried to hide the picture she was still holding in her other hand, now slightly ashamed to be bringing it to Cid’s attention at the moment.

The pilot caught the movement of the photo and narrowed his eyes. "What do you have there?"

Tifa blushed a little and brought the picture up. "I just saw this for the first time and I was wondering why you had a picture of Vincent? I didn’t think you liked him enough to have gone around shooting photos of him back then."

Cid rolled his eyes and snatched the picture away from her. No one really got the purpose of this picture and it was starting to annoy him. He held it up right before Tifa’s face. "Look behind him. It wasn’t Vincent I was trying to shoot, I wanted to get a good shot of the engines of the Highwind."

Tifa was stung a bit by his tone, but upon looking she did see what he was talking about. It wasn’t a picture of Vincent at all, he had just happened to be in the way at the time. That seemed to make a little more sense to her but she still couldn’t help but smile to herself because when you got right down to it, this was by far a better picture of Vincent than the engines of the airship.

***

Vincent and Jaras had gotten onboard Tseng’s airship later that afternoon. The flight to Rocket would take until the same time tomorrow and they found themselves with twenty-four hours to talk. They were making this trip alone with only the flight crew on board for company. With all the cabins on the ship open they took separate rooms. Jaras settled in quickly and landed in a corner on the bridge and began to read as usual. Vincent went over and sat next to him feeling the need to discuss things with his son.

"So you’ve never been to Rocket before?" Vincent asked, gazing out the view window.

"No." Jaras replied, pulling his glasses from his nose resigning to the fact that his father wasn’t going to let him read for the time being. "I don’t remember any thing other than Mideel."

"Oh." The tone he was hearing told Vincent that his son was not really in the mood for conversation. "If you want me to go away I will."

Jaras sighed and placed his book onto the floor. He then crossed his arms and looked into his father’s eyes. "What am I supposed to do?"

Vincent was caught a little off guard by this statement. "What?"

Jaras furrowed his brow and flipped a hand. "What am I supposed to do? I feel like my entire life is falling to Hell."

He moved a little closer to Jaras. The pain that he could see in his son was biting. "How so?"

"I was perfectly happy living in Mideel." Jaras tensed the muscles in his jaw. "Blissfully unaware to all that I had been and done in my past. Why did I have to find out? Why couldn’t I have just been left alone there to live out my life?"

"They were worried that Shin Ra would find you." Vincent answered quietly.

"I wonder if it would really be worse to be dead than to be living like this now." He hung his head and fought back the tears. "I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes I can remember things I read about Sephiroth and I can see the old pictures from the books of things he did. Do you know what kind of guilt that’s giving me?"

"But that wasn’t you." Vincent’s tone was low. "That was a result of the Jenova within you."

"But it was me!" Jaras raised his voice slightly. "That was me, like it or not, that was me and there is no way I can ever forget that. Not now, not ever. On top of that, how am I supposed to deal with the fact that I’m in love with my step mother?"

Vincent was speechless. Jaras’s feelings for Tifa had gone on completely without his notice. True he knew about the kiss, but he was convinced up until now that the act had been one carried out in confusion and pain. How he could respond to this news he did not know. Never in a million years did he think that he would be in such a dilemma.

Jaras got up and turned away. "Yeah, that’s right, I’m in love with Tifa. On top of everything else, I fell in love with someone I can never have. I can’t even be attracted to the right people. I am absolutely miserable."

Vincent rose up and placed a hand onto Jaras’s shoulder. "It’s okay…"

"No it’s not!" Jaras spun and knocked Vincent’s arm away. "I can’t live like this! You know the only reason I’m going to Rocket is to be closer to Tifa! How can you not hate me for that?"

"Hate you for being in love with Tifa?" Vincent scoffed. "How can I hate you for that? She’s a wonderful woman, I would think less of you if you said you couldn’t love her."

"She’s your wife!" Jaras’s hands were shaking.

A sudden realization set in to Vincent’s mind. "Do you want me to hate you? Is that it?"

"How can you not? After all that I have done?" Hot tears were burning in Jaras’s glowing eyes.

"Because you are my son!" Vincent took a step closer. "I can’t hate you, not then or now. I know that what happened in your past is a result of Hojo’s experimentation and the Jenova. I hold nothing against you. Nor does anyone else. Why can’t you just accept that?"

Jaras turned away again. "I shouldn’t be here… I should have died seven years ago."

"Jaras, don’t say that." Vincent somehow felt that he was fighting a losing battle.

"But it’s true." He sighed deeply. "All those people I killed, all that suffering I caused… why should I get to live?"

"Because like I said before, it wasn’t your fault. And as far as you being in love with Tifa, there is no way I can hold that against you either." Vincent was getting firmer with his words, wanting Jaras to get the point.

Jaras drew in a sharp breath. "I don’t know what to do anymore."

"Do you want to go back to Mideel?" Vincent dared to ask.

Jaras looked back at him over his shoulder. "What’s the point? I can’t just go back to pretending that everything is fine. I wish I could just forget and go on, but that isn’t going to happen. I can never go back to the life I had and I hate it. I never would have imagined that learning about my past would ruin my life like this."

Vincent closed his eyes and sighed. This was definitely his son, just as unable to let go of anything painful from his past as he had been. Jaras was going to let this destroy him just as Vincent had let his feelings for his own past take him down. "Jaras, look at me."

Slowly he turned to face his father. His eyes burned with his emotion but no words came from him.

"Jaras, you can’t let this run your life." Vincent reached out and grabbed one of Jaras’s hands. "You won’t be doing anyone any favors by holding onto this. I’m sorry to let you down but I’m not going to hate you nor is anyone else."

Jaras stared down to where his hand met his father’s. "Why didn’t you ever tell me that you were my father seven years ago?"

For a second time, Vincent was caught with his guard down. His eyes went wide and his words stammered as he was being called on something that had plagued him for years. "I… I didn’t know what to say. Do you honestly think that it would have made a difference?"

Jaras brought his eyes up to meet Vincent’s. "We will never know that now, will we?"

"Do you hate me for that?" Vincent felt his heart wrenched.

"I don’t know what I feel right now." Jaras looked away again. "Maybe I do hate you, but not for that. Maybe I hate you for creating me in the first place."

"Jaras, the time that I spent with Lucretia has been torturing me for over thirty years. I don’t regret being with your mother, all I regret is not getting her away from Hojo and raising you as my own." Vincent felt dampness in his own eyes. "I failed you as a father, I will give you that, and if you hate me for it then I don’t blame you. But when you get right down to it, all that happened in your life I could have prevented if I had been a man and stepped up to the challenge. Instead I ran away and let Hojo have your mother and you. Don’t blame yourself for anything, blame me."

Jaras was shocked by the way this conversation had just turned. To hear such things from his father he never would have expected and now he felt bad for having exposed the true feelings within the man before him. When he saw the first hot tear run down Vincent’s cheek Jaras couldn’t stand it. He had never wished to hurt his father. He took a step forward and embraced Vincent.

Vincent threw his arms around his son in return. He had been afraid that this was going to be the end of their relationship by the course of the conversation and he was overwhelmed with relief that his son wasn’t going to push him away.