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Hojo sighed as he went about his daily duties. He hated it when Shinra sent him on these mission trips. Granted he enjoyed all the new sights and people he met on these things and it was nice to get out of the lab once in a while, but it kept him away from home for far too long. After a few days, all he really wanted to do was to go home, eat a good home cooked meal, read a book and curl up with his wife for a good nights sleep.

Hojo was just finishing up his rounds, checking up on patients and making sure his assistants weren’t slacking off. It really wouldn’t do if they got behind in paperwork or one of the patients died because of negligence. He’d be damned if he let that happen.

After Meteor Fall almost destroyed the Planet, Shinra disappeared for a while; pretty much everyone who was involved in the company went into hiding. A few years later though, Rufus decided it was time to rebuild his father’s legacy, but instead of the corporate controlling giant his father built himself on, Rufus began work on a company dedicated to the life of the planet and it’s people.

Most of the research now was dedicated to alternate energy resources, medicine and economic refurbishing. This of course led to major department reconfigurations. The Turks had gone from an assassination group to body guards of important figure heads and foreseers of every department. The WRO (world regenesis organization), created by there own Reeve Tuesti, was head of everything economical and urban while the science department was now strictly medicine and energy. Granted military groups like SOLIDER was still a part of it all, but were reduced to a minor figure in the scheme of things.

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A few hours later, Hojo found himself back in his tiny office preparing to finish up his own personal paperwork for the night. Reviewing and filing past patients charts, update assessments of the area and it inhabitants, reviews on new workers and other boring follow-ups for the company. Hojo sighed as he stared at the massive pile of paper strewn about his desk……he could feel a migraine coming on. Hojo knew he needed to get it all done before he went to bed, not to mention he still needed to write a letter to Tifa telling her everything was still copasetic.

Hojo and his group of doctors were stationed in the area around Mideel. Small towns were popping up on the large island and it’s surrounding smaller ones because the burst of Lifestream, during Meteor Fall, caused the soil to became much more plentiful in nutrients than it was previously. Unfortunately it also caused an outbreak of disease from time to time plus, the atmosphere didn’t support radio waves; in effect, phones and other forms of advanced communications were out of the picture.

‘She worries herself to death when I have to go on these things, especially when it’s in an area where she cant call me every waking moment.’ Hojo sighed once again, a sigh of mingled sorrow and regret. ‘She's so like Lucretia, in that respect…always worrying…’

Hojo chuckled as his wife’s ghostly, remonstrating voice rang though his head: “What if you get sick with whatever‘s there!”, “What if the place you’re staying at gets bombed!” or his favorite…”What if you get eaten by a monster!”

After some thought, Hojo decided he better get the letter to Tifa done first. Most of the time, her wrath was far more horrifying than the company’s and it was something he had learned not to trifle with or underestimate; she did, after all, have his best interests at heart, which he was well aware of and he smiled gently as he thought of her once again.

As he was clearing some room on the top of the desk so that he could have the space in which to write, he thought that some music might hit the spot. He dug into his pocket, his mouth curving into a smirk as his fingers closed around the cool, metal surface of the iPod that Yuffie gave him for Christmas, and brought it out, placing it gently beside the pile of writing paper he was preparing to use. He might not have looked like it but he was a real music junkie. He had over a thousand songs on his iPod, but he was only interested in one right now. He flipped through a few until he found his favorite 80’s song:

Move yourself
You always live your life
Never thinking of the future

Prove yourself
You are the move you make
Take your chances win or lose

See yourself
You are the steps you take
You and you and that's the only way

Shake - shake yourself
You're every move you make
So the story goes

Owner of a lonely heart
Owner of a lonely heart
Much better than - a
Owner of a broken heart
Owner of a lonely heart

This song really reminded him of Tifa, in the early stages of their relationship, when he was just starting to get to know her.

It was about two years after everything had settled down and Shinra just started getting back on its feet. He had run into her at a bar on one of his days off and belatedly wondered where her constant companion had gotten to since she was by herself which was, in itself, a very odd occurrence.

He was indeed puzzled but he greeted her cordially and asked her, in friendly conversation, where her friend was. He certainly wasn’t prepared for her answer nor the flash of pain in her eyes that accompanied it. It seemed that Cloud, the love of her life, was so wrapped up loving and obsessing over a dead woman that he was never around anymore. Hojo noted, with the part of his scientific manner that never quite shut down, that she was very upset but she also appeared to be lifeless as well; she might well have just been a ghost inhabiting a shell that walked, talked and moved but never lived. The spunk, liveliness and strength that he remembered from way back when was gone.

Say you don't want to chance it
You've been hurt so before
Watch it now
The eagle in the sky
How he dancin' one and only

You - lose yourself
No not for pity's sake
There's no real reason to be lonely

Be yourself
Give your free will a chance
You've got to want to succeed

He remembered being so determined to bring that spark back into her eyes, although he wasn't really sure why. What was it about her that continued to haunt him and make him want to try and help her?

At the time, it had hurt him to see such a vibrant young woman wasting her life brooding away over some jerk who couldn’t see the beauty he had right in front of his face. He remembered the encompassing anger and rage that had flowed through him at the very thought of what Cloud had put Tifa through. To Hojo's surprise, he found that he couldn't stop thinking about her and went out of his way to run into her as often as he could when his duties permitted. At first, it was nothing but idle chit-chat whenever they happened to see each other but, in a very short period of time, they found themselves actually making time to see each other.

Owner of a lonely heart
Owner of a lonely heart
Much better than - a
Owner of a broken heart
Owner of a lonely heart

Owner of a lonely heart

After my own decision
They confused me so (Owner of a lonely heart)
My love said never question your will at all
In the end you've got to go
Look before you leap (Owner of a lonely heart)
And don't you hesitate at all - no no

It was on the way back from one of their dinner “dates” that it happened. They had grown very close in the past few months and enjoyed talking, going out for dinner, movies and just spending quiet time in each other's company.

He recalled telling Tifa about something he heard his late wife, Lucretia, say once. Something about that “your heart wasn’t something you could just give out like fee samples at a store, but had to be bought and earned. Of course, sometimes you could accidentally sell it to the wrong person but you have to remember that you, and the ones who might hurt you, are only human and that you shouldn’t let it get in the way of just living your life to it's fullest.”

After a few moments of silence Hojo revealed that, through all that had happened - the JENOVA project, Sephiroth, Meteor and Shinra- that one thing had stuck with him through all of it and all he wanted to do was pass it on to her. She responded by kissing him, hard.

Owner of a lonely heart
Owner of a lonely heart
Much better than - a
Owner of a broken heart
Owner of a lonely heart

Owner of a lonely heart

Sooner or later each conclusion
Will decide the lonely heart (Owner of a lonely heart)
It will excite it will delight
It will give a better start (Owner of a lonely heart)

Don't deceive your free will at all
Don't deceive your free will at all (Owner of a lonely heart)
Don't deceive your free will at all
Just receive it

The song ended right when he was finishing up the letter he was planning on sending to Tifa the following morning. He chuckled remembering how shocked he was when she had locked lips with him that night. Fortunately he had gotten his motor skills back in time to respond and show her just how much he had come to love her. It was only six months after that he had proposed and she had said yes. Well…more like murmured yes through a waterfall of tears, but it was magical none the less.

He folded the letter up, sealed it and laid it back on his desk for the morning mail. He looked at the clock: it was 1 A.M. and there were still other piles of paper that demanded his attention. Hojo looked at them for a moment and, with a quick swipe of his arm, knocked them off the desk and watched dispassionately as they slowly floated down to land on the floor, scattering papers all over the room.

Screw the paperwork…he’d do it in the morning.