Title: The Monster Within
Rated: M (language and dark adult themes)
Disclaimer: Do you really need me to say I own nothing? All right, everything is Sqaure Enixes, I'm just here to ruin everybody's perceptions of how straight certain characters are. ;D
Genre: Adventure/Romance
Pairing: ValenWindAlso special thanks to 'leaf the invisible' for many awesome PM chats about ValenWind and other technicals about Geostigma, it really helped. Thanks! :p

I'm such a bad fangirl for these two. They just...-sigh-
I have all the feels, okay? ;D
This fic takes places shortly after the events of Final Fantasy VII, so Advent Children's story should occur right after this one ends.
I'm re-writing as fast as I can so I can get these chapters up. If you have any nitpicks you spied in this first chapter, alert me to them all right? I'm here to get actual judgement on my writing.
Hope you enjoy it!

PS: "The Children Shall Lead" is a reference to an old Star Trek episode

"...Someday, I will be strong enough to lift not one, but both of us."

-
Chapter 1
The Children Shall Lead

When Vincent Valentine found the child, she was crying and clutching a moogle toy to her small chest. Her coughs were rough and almost withered sounding, like the afflictions of an old woman had somehow found its way into her throat. She stared at Vincent with large mako-laced eyes and her arms reached out for him, her little arms going neatly around his neck as he picked her up. Her hot forehead rested on his shoulder, her warm breath in his ear as she said, "Mister, where's my mommy?"

He stared through the rain at the dank alley-way with its cobblestones and shadows, and he spotted a body; cold, unmoving, obviously not breathing. A woman with a black smudge like weird mold silently coursing from her closed eye to her white, exposed throat. A young woman... Was this her child? He couldn't let the girl see.

He sheltered her with his cloak, walking swiftly over the slippery stones as the rain tried to wash away the damp smell of disease. In his arms the child cried into her wet moogle toy and whispered for her mama in increasingly silent tears. Eventually the motion of Vincent's walking soothed her and she fell into a fevered sleep in his arms, her trusting limbs around his neck now limp.

There was obviously a story, here. The child might have been a SOLDIER brat, raised directly within sight of the Shinra building. Maybe that young woman had been the wife of some unlucky man before Meteorfall. After his death, perhaps she was homeless, had succumbed to the Geostigma, had tried desperately to take her child to some shelter before she died, but hadn't succeeded. For the angel over the church in the upper Midgar was not far from the alley. One could see it if they looked up, and it wasn't hard to spot, being made of white marble.

When he walked through the doors of the building he was assaulted by the utter hopelessness inside. For every ten Geostigma victims, there were maybe two nurses available for care. Where were all the doctors?
Vincent finally managed to find a harried looking woman who saw the child in his arms and said sharply, "Geostigma?"
He nodded and the child was abruptly taken from him, making her lose the moogle toy, causing her to cry out in her sleep.

Vincent didn't know what made him do it - perhaps it was pity - perhaps it was because of his sorrow that an innocent child would be in such a situation - he picked up the moogle toy and followed the woman until she had plopped the child down into a dirty-looking cot. The girl moaned and her eyelids flickered and shot open. He was struck by her eyes, bright and blue, and struck again by her pale face and the smudge of black disease which had grown intrusively on her right cheek.

"Mister, where's my mommy?" she asked again, and every syllable wrenched his soul like nothing ever had.
He handed her the moogle and the child began to cry again, reaching out for the only other human who had shown her kindness - for Vincent. He stayed there as she clutched her toy and his arm. He stayed there until she fell asleep again, her fingers curled around the cloth of his cloak.
"She's returned to the planet," he whispered, slowly disengaging his arm from her innocent clutch.

It was weeks after that when he himself began experiencing strange symptoms of the disease, but he wouldn't allow himself to believe that it could be Geostigma. Maybe he was tired, maybe his body was finally degenerating...maybe the planet itself had decided that he was a threat.

He remembered the white shocks of hot and cold which coursed through him, crippling his ability to think; he remembered stumbling through the street, feeling half-mad with a fever, knowing deep in his mind that he should take shelter somewhere, sleep in a safe place. That was when Marlene found him. Her sweet face impressed on his memory like a sunbeam, and he thought once or twice that she was that doomed child he had tried to save.

She took his arm and led him to Tifa's bar in the upper streets of Midgar, stopping patiently for him when he stumbled, and talking to him to keep him from going unconscious.
"I can't carry you if you fall!" she scolded him. "You're too tall."
Vincent saw everything through a red blur, an indication of an oncoming transformation; oh how desperately he didn't want that to happen! Not around Marlene. Not while this magnificent girl was trying so hard to help him. So he heeded her and listened hard to her voice, picking apart her words as they came to his ear.

She told him funny stories about Cloud, and how Nanaki had a habit of sleeping in the doorway so that Cloud sometimes accidentally stepped on his tail. Poor Nanaki. She told him about how Tifa taught her to string flowers together in a wreath, and how pretty that was hanging on doorways and on walls in the hallway. She told him about the 'Strife delivery service' and all the weird things people had them deliver.

Each word was like a small orb of light as it passed through him. The words were solace, almost a healing medicine for him as she spoke. Because they gave him the feeling of home, of family. Things he had not felt for decades. Her arm was tight around his, and he thought vaguely, the little children shall lead.Where had he heard that before? Somewhere in a book, perhaps...

By the time they got to the bar, Vincent was stumbling so horribly that Marlene could barely get him to move, and he heard the door open like a gunshot, heard Tifa's voice as if through a long dark tunnel scolding Marlene for running off, heard her surprised gasp as she saw his state. The rest of that week was a blur of voices and suppressed, fevered dreams where the vivid, sweet scent of flowers enveloped him, fingers prodded him, worried voices washed over him.

He awoke once or twice to caring hands encouraging him to drink. The TV blared newscasts almost daily and he listened without caring to the voices, not daring to understand until he heard a word that shocked his senses. He clambered to consciousness like a drowning man, trying to hear more, needing to get away from the red blaze that threatened his mind. He didn't want to transform...he musn't. He fought it with every inch of his being until finally it seemed he heard glass shattering. Was that his mind, or an actual glass? Something broke. Maybe it was himself and he was dead after all.

To his surprise he found himself laying on a cot in a corner, and the newscast he heard was coming from somewhere over his head. He listened to the harsh noise of it, digging his hands into the covers somebody had placed over him sometime during the week, feeling as if he might teeter off the edge again. But he didn't. Reality was here to stay. His eyes shot open, staring at the brown rafters in in the ceiling.

..."Scientists say Geostigma is a defense mechanism of the planet itself, designed to target only those with Jenova cells," the female news reporter was quipping, "But a renowned former Shinra scientist believes something quite different."

A few seconds of silence as news footage switched, and Vincent strained to hear:
"My studies seem to show Geostigma is an adaptable virus, capable of forming defenses according to its surroundings. It's not an intelligent life, but it does seem to have some mechanism for minimal environmental changes."
..."Dr. Omagi also says she is working on a cure..."

Vincent stopped listening and turned his head to the side, letting it wash over him again. What was that about environmental changes? So the Geostigma is adaptable. I could have it, he thought. So the planet has decided that I am a threat after all. It's trying to...get rid of me. Have I nothing else to offer life?

He wanted to scream.

Life coalesced once again into another weird blur as Vincent struggled with his mind. Sleeping, never eating, always being forced to drink a glass of water. Why wouldn't they leave him alone to die?

What seemed like an eternity later, he opened his eyes to see a vase of flowers, yellow and sweet in their simplicity. He looked at them awhile and wondered where they had come from when Marlene entered the room. She was sensible and so straight-backed as she sat near Vincent's bed in a wooden chair. Too mature for a girl her age, so oddly grown-up.
"...Don't go anywhere," she said.

Vincent looked at her, closed his eyes, smelled the flowers.
..."Why?" he asked softly. Did she know all he wanted to do...was fade away?
"Because," she said, and he looked at her again as she fiddled with the flowers in the vase, arranging them, "If you leave, you won't be able to give me a flower back. You owe me a flower, Mr. Valentine. So you can't go anywhere."

-

Cid was having a bad day. He was determined to hate everything this afternoon.
He muttered darkly, pouring another shot of whiskey into a glass. He looked around for something to distract himself, eyeing a paperback laying face-down on the counter.
"Looks like one of those romance deals. Good enough."
He sipped the shot and decided a bit of light reading wouldn't be so bad, if only to get certain things off his mind.

He was reeling from a fight with Shera. Though the two of them had been off and on ever since the thing with Sephiroth had finished, Cid had found himself becoming distant from her more and more lately. Perhaps it was the place, or maybe he just didn't like seeing that empty spot in the sky where his rocket used to lean. They'd had their worst bout of fighting the week before, when Cid came home plastered and Shera finally cornered him about it.

Well...Shera didn't exactly corner him. Technically she was too much of a mouse for that, and he supposed that's what aggravated him. She never fought back, and he hated that about her; sometimes he just wanted to run off and leave her before he did something dangerous. He hated that about himself, too.
Honey, he thought, skimming over the words on the page, Cid Highwind ain't the nicest guy on the planet...

He was doing pretty well with the whiskey until Tifa showed up, eyed the half-empty bottle, and demanded it back so she could lock it up.
"What, that's my own whiskey sweet cheeks! Screw you."
"Cid, you should talk to him."
She eased the bottle away from him and plopped it in a cabinet, snapping the door shut before he could protest.
"You're changin' the damn subject, I wasn't finished with that..."

Tifa grinned, leaning over the table.
"I know you like him."
Oh. She was on that thread again.

The pilot hunched his shoulders and pretended he didn't hear her. He didn't want to talk. In fact, he didn't want to be doing anything at all.
Cid pretended to read, but he was now so drunk that the lines blurred in front of his face. Random words leaped from the page to assault his brain. Words like Kiss, Touch, Feel.
"Who do I like? Goddammit Tifa, I'm at the good part."
"Stop swearing, and you know who I mean."

"The moon was large and full above the lover's heads as they made passionate love to the sound of the tree frogs," Cid read aloud, focusing hard on the letters. Tifa rolled her eyes.
"….Slowly, in perfect unison, they came together amidst the leaves…damn, whose book is this, anyway? Is this Cloud's book? I bet it is. Who the hell in this place has a tree frog fetish?"
Tifa took the novel gently away, snapping it shut.
"Will you just talk to Vincent?"

Cid put his face in his hands, running his fingers through his blond hair.
"Why, so you can play matchmaker for me? No way, sister."
The brunette girl moved around the counter to sit beside him. Chewing her bottom lip, contemplating.
"You're unhappy, aren't you?"
"You're darn right. I'm also with Shera."
"You told me a week ago that you guys were seperating."
"Maybe I was wrong. Maybe we'll spend the rest of our lives in wedded bliss. Who the fuck knows?"
"..All I'm saying is, if you like Vincent, you should do something about it. That's all."

That was a simple logical conclusion which felt like ice as it fell through his brain, coming to rest somewhere in his stomach. It made him feel uneasy to hear it spoken casually aloud, as if Tifa was actually saying, "The weather is nice today."

Cid felt his face becoming unusually heated, and he looked off to the side. Of all the people, Tifa, just like your average female, had been the one to pick up on the signs.
He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms.
"What do you take me for, anyway, one o' them dandies? Well I'm not."
Tifa shrugged. "So you're not a stereotype. Isn't that a good thing?"
"I guess so."

Cid just never thought something this silly would ever crop up. While he had to admit that he was as easily distracted by a big pair of titties as the next man, (Tifa's distracted him on a regular basis) there was just something special about Vincent.

It had been incredibly hard for Cid these past few weeks. Between the fight with Shera and Vincent's illness, plus scouting out survivors in Midgar wreckage, it'd been tough. Cid had spent most of it ambling around Tifa's bar, helping take care of a very fevered Vincent - and that was a challenge in itself, considering. Vincent had been pretty damn sick, and Cid found it hard to leave his side. Apparently during that time he had let something vital slip, and Tifa, having a sharp eye, had picked up on it.

Cid scratched his head again, knowing he couldn't hide from his feelings forever behind a bottle or a book.
"Damn...you know, I ain't good at those heart-to-heart things."
Tifa nodded. "I understand. But Cid...I also thought, he could use a friend right now..."
"Yeah...he seemed real down. Well, I mean, downer than usual."

Earlier that week Vincent's illness had seemed to suddenly drop off. Ever since then he had been with Tifa and Cid on the Highwind, helping every day to scout out survivors and carry Geostigma patients to clinics and other facilities. But he was cold, silent, and generally stayed away from them. At the same time, he and Cid's friendship had seemed to change, and that made the pilot worried. No longer did they have that sort of cameraderie that they had enjoyed in each other only a year ago. Vincent seemed tense, almost strung-out.

Cid supposed it could have been a side affect of his previous illness, but this stuff seemed mental as well, and he just couldn't shake the feeling off that Vincent might be struggling mightily with some inner morale.

"I mean," Cid continued, "It was weird...you remember when you had me, Barret, and Cloud dispatch to go get survivors?"
Tifa nodded. "Yeah."
"We had to fight some old Shinra mechs. Tiny things, we killed 'em in a heartbeat. Well there was this one that shot missiles, and it shot one of those straight at Vincent. Nearly brought the guy down. I thought he was a goner. Well Tifa...he..changed."
"He what?"
"Changed, y'know..." Cid scratched his head again, trying to find the words to describe it.

First of all, Cid had watched Vincent change before, and it was nothing like this time had been. Vincent had bent over, shaking, and Cid had thought at first that he was going to hurl or something. His skin flashed purple, changing textures. He was obviously struggling, and Cid was at a loss. All those other battles he had transformed, and Vincent had seemed nothing but strong.

"But that wasn't the weirdest part. The worst bit was that once he did go, it's like he didn't wanna come back. You know what I mean?"

Cid half-expected it to turn on them, for Vincent did eventually transform - it made him cringe, the pain he was witnessing. This was awful. This was unnatural.
One by one, they tried to get him to change back with no success. Finally Cid approached it (Him, Cid reminded himself), and steadied his reserve.
"…..Vince, man, don't do this," Cid tried, scratching his head nervously.

At first glance, he looked like something you would want to kill with a stick. Cid fought that instinct, and looked up, right into the monster's eyes.
Cid was startled and unnerved. The monster held no physical qualities of Vincent's. Except his eyes. They were red, they were full of soul and a lifetime of pain.

Dear God, Cid thought, Shinra did this man wrong. Real wrong. Is this all they've left behind? Their goddamn scientific legacy?

Then, before he could say anything else, the monster thing shuddered. Its skin bubbled and tightened, turning pale. Vincent, back in his human form, held Cid's gaze for one more split second before he collapsed on the ground, sweaty-faced and weak.

Cid, remembering all this, shrugged and leaned over the counter, head in his hands, feeling the effects of the alcahol.
"A'right, if it'll make you happy, I'll talk to him. On one condition."
Tifa stopped celebrating long enough to say, "What?"
"If I talk to Vincent, you gotta talk to Cloud. And gimme that book."