ヴィンセント・ヴァレンタイン (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cloakandclaw) wrote2007-11-13 04:44 pm
cloakandclaw) wrote2007-11-13 04:44 pm
(no subject)
Lucrecia. Her image settles on him like the mantle of his cloak; memories of her wake him again as they do more than once every night, as they did hour after hour for the duration of his thirty-year enforced sleep. Sometimes his dreams show her as whole and young and vibrant and beautiful. Other times he sees her frozen in crystal and it's only the sound of her voice that makes her real. Every one of her apologies cuts him to the bone: he's the one who should be doing the apologizing. In the dark of night, there is no countering voice, no chance for reason. It's certainly something he's capable of, but by now there's no point in thinking about his life reasonably. The opportunity for that vanished the moment he lost his humanity, and he's under no illusion that he's still human. Yes, he's still Vincent Valentine, but he's not just Vincent Valentine.
He's Vincent with... extras. Friends, perhaps, who are neither friendly nor controllable.
Lucrecia, what's happening to me?
He died at her husband's hand, her distraught face his last memory, and he woke up alive again -- perhaps -- without her there. He awoke on Hojo's operating table transformed: he looked down at his hands but they weren't human hands. They were claws, and his chest burned and a blinding pain wrapped itself around his consciousness: the very fundamentals of reality were gone and the swift and sudden knowledge that he'd become another one of Hojo's experiments was too much. The last thing he remembers is hearing a scream and he thinks it came from him but the sound was so unnatural, he can no longer be certain.
Then there was nothing. Nothing until Hojo closed the coffin lid on him in the Shinra Manor basement, and where was Lucrecia? Was she all right? The next time he saw her she was nothing more than a crystal-encased memory in the cave: slumbering, a fragment. What was it that caused her to fall apart? Was it giving birth to Sephiroth, the child she was never even permitted to hold? Was it something after that? Was it her husband who dispatched her so effectively? After all, she was little more to Hojo -- he thinks -- than another experiment, another life to be discounted and discarded, as useless and meaningless as he himself had become. Beautiful Lucrecia: he should have done more. He should have been able to keep her from endangering herself and yes, she was a grown woman, a scientist who understood the risks, but...
You have your father's eyes.
That statement is no longer true.
In the dark of night he curls into a ball, his knees clutched to his chest beneath the comfort of blankets; the cloak flutters over to settle on top of him. He can feel it enveloping him. It's warm but not with heat: it's warm with energy. Organic, mobile, practically sentient. It's been with him for more than thirty years and some nights he thinks it reads his thoughts, understands his needs better than any human ever did when he considered himself truly alive. And now he walks the line between alive and dead, between human and monster, between worthy and worthless and here, in the dark of night curled into a ball in his bed, he shuts his eyes as tightly as possibly and tries his very best to will the world and his past away.
It never works but still, he tries. He tries every day, every night, but inevitably the twin mantles of responsibility and blame settle on his shoulders. They serve as a reminder that he must stay humble. He must stay penitent. He must atone and atone and atone for the extinguishing of the bright light that was Lucrecia, who now resides only in crystal-clad fragments. For him, every precious memory of her is another small death.
He's Vincent with... extras. Friends, perhaps, who are neither friendly nor controllable.
Lucrecia, what's happening to me?
He died at her husband's hand, her distraught face his last memory, and he woke up alive again -- perhaps -- without her there. He awoke on Hojo's operating table transformed: he looked down at his hands but they weren't human hands. They were claws, and his chest burned and a blinding pain wrapped itself around his consciousness: the very fundamentals of reality were gone and the swift and sudden knowledge that he'd become another one of Hojo's experiments was too much. The last thing he remembers is hearing a scream and he thinks it came from him but the sound was so unnatural, he can no longer be certain.
Then there was nothing. Nothing until Hojo closed the coffin lid on him in the Shinra Manor basement, and where was Lucrecia? Was she all right? The next time he saw her she was nothing more than a crystal-encased memory in the cave: slumbering, a fragment. What was it that caused her to fall apart? Was it giving birth to Sephiroth, the child she was never even permitted to hold? Was it something after that? Was it her husband who dispatched her so effectively? After all, she was little more to Hojo -- he thinks -- than another experiment, another life to be discounted and discarded, as useless and meaningless as he himself had become. Beautiful Lucrecia: he should have done more. He should have been able to keep her from endangering herself and yes, she was a grown woman, a scientist who understood the risks, but...
You have your father's eyes.
That statement is no longer true.
In the dark of night he curls into a ball, his knees clutched to his chest beneath the comfort of blankets; the cloak flutters over to settle on top of him. He can feel it enveloping him. It's warm but not with heat: it's warm with energy. Organic, mobile, practically sentient. It's been with him for more than thirty years and some nights he thinks it reads his thoughts, understands his needs better than any human ever did when he considered himself truly alive. And now he walks the line between alive and dead, between human and monster, between worthy and worthless and here, in the dark of night curled into a ball in his bed, he shuts his eyes as tightly as possibly and tries his very best to will the world and his past away.
It never works but still, he tries. He tries every day, every night, but inevitably the twin mantles of responsibility and blame settle on his shoulders. They serve as a reminder that he must stay humble. He must stay penitent. He must atone and atone and atone for the extinguishing of the bright light that was Lucrecia, who now resides only in crystal-clad fragments. For him, every precious memory of her is another small death.