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Oct. 28th, 2007 09:27 amTo wake after thirty years was not an easy thing. Sleep is so like death: the mind is suspended, thoughts are suspended. If every dawn is a rebirth of sorts, then every single person starts anew every single day of their life. But to find that so much time has elapsed... and that both nothing and everything changed during the long overnight...
When he awakens now in this strange small room in this strange new place, it takes him a moment to get his bearings. As so often happens when he sleeps in a bed, the cloak has resettled itself over him during the night. The armor he so painstaking peeled away waits at attention: it's as if these pieces of him are sentient in their own right and the first time he removed them he felt strangely incomplete, exposed, naked. Like puppies or small children they won't leave him be; he can't get rid of them if he wants to.
He doesn't choose to... not any more. They're as much a part of him as the skin covering his body and while they grant him respite and privacy for small amounts of time, they inevitably reclaim him. He has no honest idea where they come from or how they came to be a part of him -- and they are very much a part of who and what he is -- but he does know that when Cloud Strife opened the lid to his coffin after thirty years' sleep, they were already there. Whether they manifested over time or whether Hojo or another put them there, he doesn't know. Personally, he's always seen them as an outward reminder of what he knows lurks inside. It's not just one beast, although one certainly predominates. It's a host of monsters or monstrosities: creature after creature after creature, parasites and partners, and the horror over what he's become has never once left him.
How visible a reminder of his sins. How very far away any sort of redemption or forgiveness seems: he's nowhere near close enough to even begin asking for those things.
His clothes are laid out on the chair just where he left them. As he rises from the comfort of bed -- sleep is the one small luxury he consistently allows himself, although it's frequently overrun by the recurring nightmare -- and moves swiftly to the bath and shower, he admonishes the cloak to stay where it is. Cleansing is a personal and private ritual and in some ways, it's the only time he has to remember what it was like when he was only Vincent Valentine. Recapturing those memories comes easiest when he ignores the scars and mutilations covering his body. From the quiet solace of the hot shower, he allows his eyes to close as the water runs over him. If only every shower was its own small sacramental baptism, wiping away sins, cleansing him into salvation.
Well. One can wish all he wants, but reality has a tendency to snap back with a vengeance. The weight of the words I'm sorry, Lucrecia still burns freshly across his thoughts as he steps out and dries off quickly, efficiently, without looking at himself in the mirror. The cloak, he knows, is hasty to rejoin him and so he dresses in the color of mourning, straps the holster holding Cerberus to his thigh, wraps the scarf around his hair, pulls on gloves and boots, and only has to wait a fraction of a moment before the cloak settles onto his shoulders like an expectant lover, waiting for him to caress each buckle closed with gloved fingertips. He does; the mantle rises to cover his lower face in the color of blood, coaxes the head scarf lower to the edge of his brows. It's not by choice that he obscures most of his face.
This ritual complete, armor attaches itself to his feet -- a reminder that every step is a step taken in careful penitence -- and before he knows it the gauntlet is back on his left arm. Dressing is a grim daily reminder of the sins he committed, the lives he failed to save, the horror he allowed to be unleashed on an unsuspecting innocent planet. If he wears his pain for all to see, he'll never be tempted to forget it himself.
When he awakens now in this strange small room in this strange new place, it takes him a moment to get his bearings. As so often happens when he sleeps in a bed, the cloak has resettled itself over him during the night. The armor he so painstaking peeled away waits at attention: it's as if these pieces of him are sentient in their own right and the first time he removed them he felt strangely incomplete, exposed, naked. Like puppies or small children they won't leave him be; he can't get rid of them if he wants to.
He doesn't choose to... not any more. They're as much a part of him as the skin covering his body and while they grant him respite and privacy for small amounts of time, they inevitably reclaim him. He has no honest idea where they come from or how they came to be a part of him -- and they are very much a part of who and what he is -- but he does know that when Cloud Strife opened the lid to his coffin after thirty years' sleep, they were already there. Whether they manifested over time or whether Hojo or another put them there, he doesn't know. Personally, he's always seen them as an outward reminder of what he knows lurks inside. It's not just one beast, although one certainly predominates. It's a host of monsters or monstrosities: creature after creature after creature, parasites and partners, and the horror over what he's become has never once left him.
How visible a reminder of his sins. How very far away any sort of redemption or forgiveness seems: he's nowhere near close enough to even begin asking for those things.
His clothes are laid out on the chair just where he left them. As he rises from the comfort of bed -- sleep is the one small luxury he consistently allows himself, although it's frequently overrun by the recurring nightmare -- and moves swiftly to the bath and shower, he admonishes the cloak to stay where it is. Cleansing is a personal and private ritual and in some ways, it's the only time he has to remember what it was like when he was only Vincent Valentine. Recapturing those memories comes easiest when he ignores the scars and mutilations covering his body. From the quiet solace of the hot shower, he allows his eyes to close as the water runs over him. If only every shower was its own small sacramental baptism, wiping away sins, cleansing him into salvation.
Well. One can wish all he wants, but reality has a tendency to snap back with a vengeance. The weight of the words I'm sorry, Lucrecia still burns freshly across his thoughts as he steps out and dries off quickly, efficiently, without looking at himself in the mirror. The cloak, he knows, is hasty to rejoin him and so he dresses in the color of mourning, straps the holster holding Cerberus to his thigh, wraps the scarf around his hair, pulls on gloves and boots, and only has to wait a fraction of a moment before the cloak settles onto his shoulders like an expectant lover, waiting for him to caress each buckle closed with gloved fingertips. He does; the mantle rises to cover his lower face in the color of blood, coaxes the head scarf lower to the edge of his brows. It's not by choice that he obscures most of his face.
This ritual complete, armor attaches itself to his feet -- a reminder that every step is a step taken in careful penitence -- and before he knows it the gauntlet is back on his left arm. Dressing is a grim daily reminder of the sins he committed, the lives he failed to save, the horror he allowed to be unleashed on an unsuspecting innocent planet. If he wears his pain for all to see, he'll never be tempted to forget it himself.
