Guilt’ Cost: Part XCII

Insight

After Porter left everyone in the room fell into silence, lost in their own thoughts. The only sound to be heard was Tifa’s quiet crying as she remained in Jaras’s arms. He held her tightly, wishing to defend her from anymore pain, and he stroked her hair gently as he rocked her. Tifa could feel his heart pounding within his chest at his anxiety of having her so close. She knew that she should step away, but felt so weak that if she tried she would have collapsed. Right now she needed the comfort, even if it was from a man that loved her when he should not.

Reno stood staring at Angel who was repacking her medical bag. He was proud at how easily she had managed to pluck the implant from the Turk’s girlfriend. She never ceased to amaze him and he wondered why such an intelligent woman would have married him in the first place. On some level he was surprised that she hadn’t started to criticize him for bringing a member of the opposing team into their room. He figured that she would have at least something to say on the subject.

What Reno didn’t know was that Angel had seen the whole spectacle unfold on the street from the window, and even without the audio, it had been clear to her that Tifa was the one who’d insisted upon helping the Turk. Trusting Tifa to be a far better judge of character than Reno, Angel didn’t mind. Besides, they at the very least had saved Rayna’s life and that was a start. Angel was also relieved at Tifa’s unexpected release from the lab. Now she also knew that Vincent was still alive, and she had someone to stay with her tonight when the men went in to retrieve her father.

Tifa finally managed to get herself back under some level of control and she brought her gaze up to find Jaras staring back down at her. He smiled at her, his green eyes shining behind his reading glasses. "Are you okay?"

She nodded slightly, stepping back. "Yeah, I think so. I’m just scared to think what Hojo’s done to Vincent."

"I know." Jaras replied, slipping his glasses off and placing them into his coat pocket. "We will get him out of there, though. I promise."

Tifa couldn’t help but smile back at him. She wondered to herself how she never noticed seven years ago the similarities between Vincent and this man. Even the way they spoke with their quiet monotone voices was almost close enough to be interchangeable. Seven years ago she never would have imagined herself married to Vincent and being comforted by her former enemy. But now she knew that Sephiroth had never really been the bad guy. It all came down to Hojo’s actions back then just as it did now. They may have saved the world, but they had failed to snuff out the source of the problem. Tifa knew that no one would ever be safe as long as Hojo was allowed to go on living and ‘working’.

She turned to Reno. "You have to stop Hojo from carrying on the Project."

He nodded. "Yeah, I know. I just don’t know how. We can go in there and blow the lab into a million pieces and it won’t stop him. That ass wipe has labs all over the place and you can be sure that he isn’t going to start the Neo-Jenova Project anywhere we know of. After we sprung Angel out of there he’s moved all his Jenova related work somewhere else and we’ve never pinned down the location."

"But if we kill him it will stop!" Tifa begged.

"Tifa," Angel stood up from the bed, "Hojo has infused himself with a massive amount of Jenova. We can tear him to shreds and he would just regenerate. We don’t know how to kill him."

Tifa recalled how he had gone unaffected by the kick she had rendered to his head, and how he hadn’t been killed by their direct assault on him seven years ago. She hung her head in defeat. "If we can’t kill him no one will ever be safe. We might as well have left that implant inside Rayna if he’s invincible."

"That implant was more likely a device simply to assure that Turk’s loyalty." Angel sighed, setting her bag back over on the dresser. "But thanks to it, we have him as an ally now and it will help us get Vincent out, and that is our first priority."

"But Angel!" Tifa went closer to him. "He’s going to create a child that he’s going to try and turn into another Sephiroth! We can’t let him do that! I can’t stand the thought of my baby being fathered by that man! We have to stop it!"

Angel placed a hand on Tifa’s shoulder. "I know you’re upset, Tifa but this isn’t just something we can go in and stop that easily. If Hojo could be killed I assure you Tseng would have had him taken out a long time ago."

Over in the corner, Jaras turned to face the window. He needed to hide his current expression from the others. The talk of another Sephiroth stung his heart, but moreover he knew how to kill Hojo; he just didn’t know the way to get him to where he would need to be.

Although Jaras had tried to be casual in his movement, it caught Reno’s eye. He turned to face Jaras’s back. "What’s up? Do you know something?"

"No." Jaras shook his head slightly. He was a terrible liar.

Reno grabbed Jaras by the arm and forced him to turn around. "What the fuck do you know?"

"I just was thinking," Jaras dropped his gaze to the floor, "if it was being immersed in the life-stream that made me normal by killing the Jenova within me, then maybe it would make Hojo mortal too."

"Hot shit, that’s brilliant!" Reno said, eyes growing wide. He never would have suspected that the mild mannered bookworm would have come up with a plan to kill someone.

Angle nodded in agreement. "The only problem is getting a hold of him to throw him into some Mako."

"Exactly." Jaras wrenched his arm free of Reno’s hold and turned back to the window to stare out at the Shin Ra building. "But we still would have to find out where he plans on conducting the Project, because if we just kill him without destroying the research then Shin Ra might just have some other man take his place and carry on the work."

"Yeah, you’re probably right, but where they would find such a twisted son of a bitch to do that I don’t know. But if any one can I guess it would be Shin Ra." Reno said, knitting him brows in thought.

"Yes." Jaras longed to get the chance to see Hojo face to face, to finally be reunited with the man who had caused him to do so much destruction before being stopped by Cloud.

"Maybe that Turk will know something." Reno speculated as he made his way back over to the bed and sat. "For now I think we need to rest and get ready for tonight."

Everyone agreed, all quite exhausted from the night of travel and stress of the day. They needed to be bright eyed and bushy tailed come nightfall.