InsaneJournal

The woman was a delusional liar.

It was in her body language. Lucrecia had attempted last time to convince Balthier that her innocence was one hundred percent grounded in her feminine ineptitude, while Balthier could not help but think that the scientist's very position, ranked and titled, made her a liar. This time Balthier came unannounced, and when Lucrecia answered the door, there was a moment of unmasked annoyance. Not shock or fear, annoyance. She gifted him with a slightly vapid pause before she laughed (inappropriately), the laugh itself coming before she welcomed him in and settled him in that fragile wooden chair opposite her desk.

On the other side of that barrier, Lucrecia's restlessness betrayed her irritation, pens and nails tapping, twining one leg around the other, rubbing the point of her shoe along a nylon stocking. She professed her enthusiasm to answer Balthier's questions, many, many times over, a clear attempt to deflect him from the actual content she gave.

Balthier was accustomed to the lies of scientists: for all they insisted on proof, the definition of such a thing hardly aligned with truth.

Just as he opened his mouth to begin, Lucrecia leapt up with the timing of a professional pool shark's partner, and gasped.

'I've forgotten to offer you a glass of wine! Oh, I'm such a scatterbrain.' So Lucrecia offered, as though to bridge the gap. 'It's quite warming, always valuable in this cold! And red wine's good for the heart, you know, and that's science telling you the truth.' She winked. Winked! Lookers and hookers, one and the same.

'Thank you, ma'am, but I will have to decline. On duty, you know.'

'It must be terrible. All these frozen excuses for villages, and no luck yet.' Lucrecia's eyes were bright, her sympathy vacuous; she bent to her industry regardless, and poured two glasses of wine.

'Oh, I really shouldn't...ma'am – '

Lucrecia held her head tilted to one side and tried out a wooing tone. 'Can't I tempt you, Mr B? Not even slightly?'

'Oh, go on then.' Balthier grinned conspiratorially, and resisted the urge to spit. He would've glanced at her wedding ring, but subtlety was obviously beyond Lucrecia. Nights out on the town told Balthier that Vincent had preferred a direct style of woman, the fast and flashy ones, but as much as Balthier enjoyed the chase he could never understand being chased; somewhere deep where Shinra couldn't reach, Balthier still carried a dream shaped like normality, with a pitched roof and a picket fence and the pitter-patter of little feet. Vincent had been a different kind of lover, though; a Turk. Vincent had been V & Z's pride possession. Which made that AWOL marked on his dossier all the weirder.

There was dust on the wineglass's base, and a chip in the lip. Balthier turned it so that nick faced away from him. The wine was darker than he was used to, left a residue on the glass. Balthier's fingernail struck the glass as he drew back his hand; high quality crystal for Shinra's best-funded department, even if Science didn’t take such good care of Shinra's benevolences.

'Now, Mr B, you wanted to ask me some more questions? I'm still convinced it must all be due to AVALANCE.'

'We are pursuing that lead, that's the truth, ma'am. But I had a couple of other questions – I understand you worked with Mr Valentine's father?'

Lucrecia dipped her tongue into her wine, catlike, and considered. 'Oh! Old Grim! But that was years ago – do you truly think that could have anything to do with Vinny's disappearance?'

Old Grim, Balthier wrote mentally, and Vinny, with an underscore, when after fourteen years of service with Vincent, even Balthier wouldn't have dared. Nor had V & Z, he recalled. Vincent Valentine was Vincent Valentine, Balthier's best friend in a world where such a thing was rare, but he was still, always, Vincent.

'I, uh, don't know,' Balthier said, and met Lucrecia's vapid gaze with a mirror of embarrassment, and allowed a blush to bronze his cheeks. Baby-faced Balthier, V & Z called him, PR man extraordinaire, and so when Vincent got sent to the shadows, Balthier got sent to front up the most hellish of Shinra's provocations; it had taken him days to scrub Corel's coal from out from under his fingernails, but even that city loved him now near as much as they loved Shinra. 'I admit, I haven't been doing this job for so long, and I got lumbered with this quick little follow-up here…we're so short of staff back at DQ, you know what Shinra's like re: recruitment. Gosh, ma'am, do you think it matters?'

'Why,' Lucrecia's eyes sparkled, 'you are the one who's interrogating me, Mr B.'

A couple of days ago, after his first interview with Lucrecia, Balthier had written across the top of his notepad: Scientists are not stupid.

Damn it, she was sucking him in. He changed his tactics, grinned, let his voice slide, and tilted his head to match her own subversive arrogance. They just didn't deal with women like this as a part of the job; the only games Balthier knew girls played were the ones he played with wallflowers and whores.

'Actually, ma'am – may I call you Lucrecia? Thank you, it's a beautiful name, it suits you – I'm asking just because, well…did you also happen to work with my father?'

'Oh, Mr B, that sounds like a personal question! Surely you're still on duty?' A painted eyebrow quirked. 'You're not drinking.'

'Finding Mr Valentine's a duty, that's a sure thing, Lucy, but finding a girl like you out here, now that's unexpected, and we Turks have learned to take opportunities when they come. I haven't seen my dad for nigh on six years now, and Vinny's – I mean, Mr Valentine's disappearance and finding you, well, I can't help but think of my old man, you know what I mean?'

'Oh, I do, I do, Mr B, I do know what you mean.' Lucrecia tongued her wine again, obscene and atrocious, and Balthier couldn’t look away. 'Shinra's certainly a hard man to work under, all his grand dreams, but people like you and I still have our humble little dreams, and we're always thinking about our families first.'

When Lucrecia smiled like this, without that vulpine sharpness, just something broad and bright and broken hinging her lips, Balthier could maybe admit Vincent had a point about her, all those letters Vincent sent that Balthier had laughed over: love, and Vincent Valentine, what the hell. Lucrecia would've been beautiful without the worry lines around her eyes, not Balthier's type, but still, still. Women just weren't made to work, no wonder Lucrecia had to fight with whatever weapon she had to keep her place—

Balthier tightened his hand around the wineglass's stem. She was sucking him in.

'Bunanza…' Lucrecia mused, 'Bunanza…the name's familiar, Mr B, and your face as well, I thought that the first day I saw you…so your father was a scientist too?'

'Dr Cidolphus Bunanza, ma'am – I mean, Lucy. He would've been Old Grim's contemporary.'

'Kinda funny you and Vincent had never met before, then, you're about the same age as Vinny too…I'm sure I'll think of something soon.' Lucrecia beamed helpfulness. 'My memory's been an absolute ruin since I fell pregnant.'

'I never would've guessed,' Balthier admitted. 'Congratulations, ma'am. Lucy.'

Lucrecia made a face, scrunched and childish. 'Dr Hojo – my husband, you've met him? – keeps suggesting I take some leave, but I couldn't abandon the project, it's at such a critical state, you know what I mean?'

'I do, I do, Shinra's grand dreams do that to us sometimes, Lucy, we want to put family first, but sometimes the world cries louder.'

'A toast,' Lucrecia declared, her glass suddenly held high, 'to personal questions and family first.'

Balthier lifted his glass, touched it to hers with that pure, crystalline sound ringing loud. 'Should you be drinking while pregnant, Lucy?'

'C'mon, Mr B,' she grinned, impish, and winked again. 'You're on duty and you're drinking too, it's no different to that. Just a tiny sip'll do it for me, to personal questions, and family first, you can take a sip just as small.'

The tiniest sip, for solidarity's sake; Balthier drank.

He knew he was dead as soon chill fluid touched his tongue.

Lucrecia's enthusiasm, obvious expressions, the lift and fall of her voice, even the size of her hair, bright and bottle-blonde – overwhelming, a mask of obviousness that hid – this, what Balthier could read only now that Lucrecia didn't care any more. She was unbearably calm, cool, collected, her eyes narrowed with an intelligence that embarrassed Balthier – how could he have misread her so badly? Vincent's name rose to his lips like an accusation unfounded, Balthier should have just asked what he wanted to ask, what he suspected from the first: what have you done with my blood brother, you Babylon whore! Balthier leapt to his feet, that old wooden chair falling onto cheap carpet; the glass bounced, toppled, wine splashed across the back of Lucrecia's desk and onto Balthier's shirt, not that fluid bounced that high but Balthier was already on his knees, already falling further than the floor itself, through and beyond the depths of failure—

'For what it's worth, BeeBee, your daddy went and lost his mind up in Icicle Town, chasing voices, last I heard.' Lucrecia came around the desk, pushed her pump against Balthier's shoulder; Balthier rolled without resistance. 'Can you believe it, I think he suffered a broken heart. Over me! World's greatest irony, that, but Cid should've seen it coming. Your old man never had Old Grim's ambitions; and as for you, BeeBee, with your pretty little gun and your fancy silk tie, don't think I don't know VeeVee wears the same fucking tie, your damned initials on the back, BeeBee, oh look, look – I flip your tie over, and what do I find, VeeVee's calling card! Tweedledumb come looking for Tweedle fucking Dee.  What'd'you do, BeeBee, swap nooses instead of rings, or did you just mistake VeeVee tie for yours in the dark? Check this out, world: here comes Shinra's damned gunslinging shirtlifting gay parade knocking at my door, oh, the irony; you'd write women out of history all together if you could! Scarlet can eat her damned shrivelled heart out, weapons? Weapons? Science! I told her Science: only knowledge opens doors!'

Lucrecia was thoroughly mad, Balthier realised, but he had no pity left to spare, that commodity being directed entirely at himself. He was starting to hurt. Lucrecia knelt next to him and drew a handkerchief from her sleeve. She mopped at the spilled wine, the handkerchief spotted with flowering red.

'What're you staring at, BeeBee? Who else do you think is going to clean up your mess? It's not like I'm a doctor. It's not like I've got anything else better to do. It's not like Hojo's funding allows for his own cleaning staff, Gaia forbid Dr Hojo have to do manual labour with the rest of us.'

Lucrecia was calm through it all, industrious. From what Balthier remembered of his father, mad scientists were permitted only one outburst a day.

She flung the stained handkerchief over Balthier's eyes, a stinking shroud, and laughed.

.

Balthier woke up in hell.

He'd been told hell was fire and burning, but this hell was a freezer instead, a literal freezer. His fingers were red with frost, but he could tuck them into his groin where his last warmth flickered; he curled, spasmed, constrained by physiological reaction into a ball that could not straighten. His breath formed a bridge of ice from nose to floor; the floor itself concrete much-scratched. There would be a door, if he could force himself to look for it, but he was so cold.

Balthier fought to uncurl, his spine refusing to let him do so; his breath was warm and alive ghosting over his body yet cold by the time it reached his knees, but it meant he still breathed. One quick glance was all his dying would allow him; a literal freezer indeed, empty but for a trolley—

Not a trolley, a gurney. Balthier crawled over to it. Sickness wracked him from the inside out; two gurneys, he realised once in motion. Balthier raised himself by increments. Two gurneys, but only one body, not counting his own, and that one long dead, white as marble, frost patterning along limbs as rigid as rigor and a freezer could make them. Balthier retched when he saw the face, swallowed to hold it in, lest that bile surrender the last of his warmth to the freezer.

'Vincent,' Balthier said, the name mangled by teeth that could not still. His eyelashes were sticking together, why was he crying? His fingers plucked as skin that had no give, at limbs that no longer looked like a man's flesh whatever their nudity; the realisation of his own nudity came belated, the fact of his impending death so much more pertinent right now.

Vincent opened his eyes, closed them again. Balthier wondered if he was hallucinating already.

'She'll be here,' Vincent said, deep and low and familiar, and so dull he might as well have been dead. 'Hold on.'

'Wh-why—'

Vincent was dead, Vincent had no way to answer. The cold remained a mystery to Balthier. His shoulders, his neck, were tight; he trembled uncontrollably. The bare gurney looked lonely, and Vincent was closer, so Balthier curled next to him and clung; he'd found him, at least, freezing to death in Nibelheim's heights. Maybe V & Z would care enough to send someone after him.

Apathy. Stupor. Balthier recognized terror when he stopped shivering, and could do nothing about it; he wanted to pee.  By the time someone came, he had lost all ability to recognize a familiar face. The woman (he could recognize a woman, still), looked remarkably sad.

'Not long now,' Vincent said.

The woman was wearing things that reminded Balthier of warmth, but when her gloved hand brushed his spine, it felt like burning. He was on fire. He would have ripped his clothes off, if he were wearing any; he burned, hellfire, he burned.

The woman smiled down at him, crookedly. A woman.

Dying instinct had Balthier smile right back at her.

.

The laboratory was warmer than the freezer, if only by contrast; Lucrecia stripped her skiing gear and shook the cold out of her hair. She warmed cold fingers in her armpit before attempting her bra hooks. The pretty corpse would take much longer to warm enough to be uncurled, so Lucrecia fetched herself a coffee and finished the day's data entry.

On return to the laboratory, she amused herself for some time by stroking an abdomen that could have been carved out of marble.

'Did you know,' Lucrecia said, 'men are more prone to death by hypothermia than women?'

'Of course not, how would I know anything? I'm just one of Shinra's gun-toting grunts. You're the clever scientist, Lucy.'

'Dr Crescent,' Lucrecia corrected him, sharply; but this one had been a smart-arse even when alive, she knew it.

'Lucy,' Balthier replied. He'd died with a smirk on his lips. His eyelids looked bruised.

Lucrecia ignored him, fingers tracing the lines of his ribs where they pressed against white skin. 'And cold is lethal to the thin and well muscled.'

'But the thin and well muscled leave such beautiful corpses.'

She said sharply, 'Cold is least forgiving to the arrogant, and the unaware.'

'Shucks,' Balthier laughed, 'you've caught me out there, Lucy.'

She tsked. 'Why won't you call me Dr Crescent? You damned scientists' sons are all the same, disrespectful!'

'I'm calling you Lucy because I don't like you, Lucy, not one bit, and forgive me if I want to rile you up, but you just murdered me.'

For a moment Lucrecia felt her smirk match that frozen lilt on Balthier's lips. She locked the gurnsey's wheels, and clambered up to straddle his unwilling thighs. It was always better, cold, and Balthier was already too close to this side of warmth. Lucrecia could imagine the body of a murder victim lying like this, beneath her, all vulnerabilities exposed, a dead weight that she could, and would, manipulate. She threaded Balthier's cock into herself too easily; she was so worked up already by the inadmissible circumstance here, a sensuality she would not ever demonstrate with a living man. Oh, Balthier'd disliked her and masked it poorly; no matter now. He could put up no resistance whatsoever, and she found her own pace, slow and rolling, and rocked herself to an easy orgasm. She waited with his cock still inside her, sleek, heavy thing; a minute or two, and she would do this again. He was right, he had left a beautiful corpse, Lucrecia could admit, a classical sculpture, when alive he'd just been another punk.

Lucrecia smoothed the hair out of his eyes, and sighed for the possibilities lost. Her hips wrote a familiar pattern against Balthier's skin. Of course she would have liked an equal partner, but what else was left for her, in a world where women were left such a narrow line that could be walked between frigid and whore; all she wanted to be called was Doctor; what had she been thinking, to marry Hojo, for at best they laughed at her for ambition and at worst they laughed at her for Hojo; what had she been thinking, to first succumb to Vincent's charms, he wanted to use her but God! She used him instead! Proof of her thesis, and proof of her womanhood, Vincent had shown her the way! What point was morality when all it could do was make her feel guilty?

Lucrecia shook through that second orgasm, feeling for an instant a kind of clarity to her thought that had been lacking for such a long time – this was insane, what was she doing, as though her living flesh could swallow entire each representative of masculinity that had ever scorned her for her self-belief; Balthier's corpse, the ship that carried him through life, and she would drown him and smash him on her shores, drag him to depths and bring him to the sun again, see, see what her oceanic drive could do to a man, a claiming entire; yet this was insane, what had she done?

'The question you're actually wanting to ask is this: what wouldn't you do to yourself, Dr Crescent, all in the name of ambition?'

And clarity was suddenly as lost as Balthier's life, the briefest of sensations come and gone in the murky mist-plagued roil of this Nibelheim valley. Lucrecia disengaged; she had left a fine layer of moisture across the Turk's groin and lower belly. Her fingers were still plaited in his hair. Lucrecia shook herself free, shook her hair straight, and reached for her bra.

Women of her temperament had a craving for variety, Lucrecia had decided, having no other model for her behaviour but herself – yet Balthier was already losing his appeal. She felt nothing stir inside her but a cold, consummated lust. A smirking corpse, it was a laugh.