Which was precisely why he'd flooded himself into the basement of the Shinra mansion after Hojo had cleared out. He'd been meaning to get back down into the basement for a few years, but every attempt he'd gone for, he'd been blocked quite effectively by Hojo.
Having already shown his immense displeasure toward Hojo's methodology, Gast found himself, effectively evicted. He'd always openly regarded Hojo as the worse of the two, so pressing his luck was completely out of the question.
But one day, Hojo and his lovely assistant had completely up and left the mansion. No word to the headquarters. One moment, the labs at Shinra were as quiet as a mute chocobo, and the next Gast found himself locked in a cramp-like cringe, listening to the maniacal cackling of Hojo. The bastard was back. So in retaliation, Gast got the hell out of Dodge.
Nibelheim still wasn't as glamorous as Midgar's top plate, but the Shinra Mansion was certain an improvement over the surrounding landscape.
He'd moved in again quite easily, taking up a bedroom and making himself a place in the kitchen. Every few days he'd venture into town and make polite conversation, assuring the people there that he was there to stay and was as well, no Hojo (and proved thusly as he never once woke up the town's children with crazed laughter. Hojo's apparently carried quiet well on cool nights)
For some time, all was well. Gast continuous raided the Mansion's extensive library, hopping along quite nicely with his research, quickly filling in his gaps.
"Note to self, contact headquaters regarding next week... I'd like to get the a proper heater installed before the snow settles in..."
November was a horrible time in Nibelheim, a snowy void without mercy. Luckily, the basement held the last humid remnants of the summer and fall nights quite well. So to save on firewood(as the heater never arrived), Gast found himself sleeping in the basement more than once.
As a man who placed health over science, he usually went to sleep quiet early. You certainly couldn't produce results when run headfirst into the ground and into illness.
But one night, after staying up a bit later than usual, he heard snoring.
Now, hearing snoring at night was a common ordeal. That being if you lived in a house full of others--not in an empty mansion. Slightly upset by the sounds, Gast tried to convince himself it was the wind or chemicals bubbling or something. He assured himself completely while tucked away in his bed upstairs. He wouldn't hear the mysterious noises again until his birthday rolled around.
Februaries were far worse than Novembers--a far bitter cold with snow and sleet, giving little to no reprise until spring finally cracked through th shell of winter. But that...that was far off...
"They think they're so amusing..." Gast frowned, arms crossed as he glared at the two boxes that had appeared on his basement work desk. The card atop his desk gave the names of the perpetrators; H&H. Hojo and Hollander."So help me, if they--"
At least his ex-colleagues were thoughtful, leaving him presents on his birthday.
"...cake and beer. Charming."
And cheap beer at that. So much for thoughtful. As men battling for the position of the Head of the Science department, you'd think they could have afforded some nice wine.
Gast promptly set out to completely ignore the gifts, but later on, halfway through his evening bout of study, Gast found that he could no longer resist the allure of the cake, even if it was vanilla (when he obviously preferred lemon).
Once he'd cut himself a slice, the noises which had prompted his return to sleeping upstairs, began again.
Having taken to the beer quicker than the cake, Gast decided that the mysterious and unsettling noises required investigation, which he set out to do so, a heavy book in hand. (In the case of a fiend, he could at least bash it over the head before taking off into a sprint)
Though however unsettling the noise was, nothing could quite top the fact that Gast had found the source in a dark room, inside a coffin of all things.
The stone lid lay covered in dust, obviously untouched for what could have been months or even years. When the snoring continued on, Gast rapped his knuckles against the side. Whatever laid within sputtered for a moment, then all fell silent.
Gast knocked again, his stomach twisted into the horrible sorts of positions you only see in yoga videos.
The silence continued. It was really all too much for him.
But as a man less a coward and more for science, Gast took it upon himself to open the tomb. With hands firmly set against the edge of the lid, he wondered briefly if this was all just some horrible prank set upon him by two equally horrible men.
It took a good solid shove to shift the lid, but Gast managed. The result was not a pretty one.
"A-aah!"
A man! There was a man in that coffin! And by the way he glared, he was obviously still very much ALIVE!
And it was then, Gast realized he'd been duped. Hojo and Hollander had just gotten the best of him. He'd been pranked and pranked hard. They two men were probably off somewhere, watching Gast on a monitor and laughing their asses off. When the shock wore off, Gast was ready to demand an explanation.
"How much did they pay you?!"
The man in the coffin, however, didn't seem as responsive to answer as Gast had hoped. "I have gained naught but pain."
"What?"
"I am paying for my sins..." the man reached for the edge of the stone coffin lid, ready to pull it back into place. "--atoning for my crimes..."
If not part of a prank from Hollander and Hojo, the coffin man was obviously crazy. "How long have you been in there?"
"The date?" he replied almost flatly.
Gast checked his watch. Fifteen until eleven pm. Still his birthday. "February eighteenth."
A cold, calculating silence feel over the room again, then "A Sunday?"
"It is."
The man sighed, the sound weighted and troubled as his voice. "Seven months. Twelve days."
Rubbish. It had to be. "Sit up. Get out of there and stretch your legs. I'm not buying it. I don't care how much they paid you. I'm not biting."
Oh well, at least the scientist had company for his birthday.
"Leave me be." He pulled at the lid again... "I've done so much by doing so little. Let me be. I don't deserve to--"
Oh, cry more.
"Quit whining. I have cake."
The man in the coffin silenced himself, if only out of confusion.
"--and beer." Gast added. The silence continued and the coffin man's hands fell from sight, back into the tomb, away from the lid.
Well, so long as the melodramatics had ceased for the time being... Gast left the room and returned with the aforementioned food and drink. He set the the cake box and case of beer on the coffin lid and departed again momentarily to bring in a chair. It wasn't how he'd had in mind to celebrate, but again, it was better than nothing.
"What's your name, son?"
"It's not important...I'm a sinner. Niflheim's--"
"Nibelheim's." Gast corrected.
The man continued on undisturbed. "--dark flames have already engulfed my soul. I'm no longer the man I once was."
...charming.
"Seven months, huh?" Gast finally had his slice of cake within reach.
"And twelve days."
Gast rolled his eyes. Had this man really been laying down here for months? Ridiculous. "Of course. But sounds like you've been here a while. Did you know Professor Hojo?"
The man shifted in the coffin and turned on his side to face away from Gast. "The man reaching for Asgard...I've met him."
"Heh--not the nicest guy to you either?"
"Clipping an angel's wings...tainting innocents...Midgard's demon oversteps his boundaries."
Gast rolled his shoulders. The guy's attitude was really beginning to put a cramp in his appetite. "Sounds like Hojo, alright..."
"Mine will not be the only blood spilt here..." the man continued.
Gast gave up and passed his plate of cake into the open coffin.
"Hers has already been let and her child's cannot be far behind... More will fall as well in this Hel of Niflheim--"
"Nibelheim." Gast corrected again as he reached for a bottle of beer.
The man within was not swain. "--not with that man's cruel hands twisting the gnarled branches of Yggdrasil." he continued. Gast rolled his eyes.
--and down went a cold one. "Drink."
All went silent for a moment. And then the cap popped up and over the edge of the coffin.
The man in the coffin, obviously parched, drank like a lost soul from the deserts of Corel. The empty bottle rattled against the inner walls of the man's tomb, the sound silenced near the foot end of things.
Finally, the coffin man stuck out a hand.
Gast, midway into a freshly cut piece of birthday cake, raised an eyebrow. "More?"
"Fork."
"Ah, of course." It wasn't, after all, wise to drink on an empty stomach. At least they were getting somewhere.
So they ate, and when each slice to each man was finished, their drinks downed and new bottles in hand, Gast managed to coax a name from the stranger.
"Vincent." he'd said, feeling a little warm.
With second bottles finished, Gast had gotten the man to finally sit up, now finally able to take in his appearance. He was a messy man, probably young than Gast. Vincent's hair was an unholy mess of tangled black. The poor boy honestly looked like he'd been sleeping in a box (but months? --that was seriously pushing it)
By the end of their thirds (and second pieces of cake), Vincent was downright sociable, almost friendly.
And when their empty bottles sat together and neither quite cared where one man's set stopped and the other's started, they'd both arrived safely at Smashed--a place always better visited with company close at hand.
"I honestly--" Vincent remarked loudly, honestly--his face flushed and vision blurring. "--have to piss."
Gast laughed.
"--very badly."
The two stumbled upstairs, arms slung over shoulders and around waists. They made it to the ground level by miracle alone. Gast shoved Vincent toward the open door of the bathroom and watched the ragged-looking man as he swaggered inside. The door slammed behind him and Gast drug himself into his bedroom.
Gast expected sleep to follow as he lounged back against the pillows and kicked off his shoes. But someone else had a plan far different from his...
He dosed off, drunk and content, only be suddenly awakened by the shift of weight across his mattress and a warm lips against his own.
Vincent...tasted like mint.
"--took your toothpaste--" Vincent murmured as he crawled over Gast. Vincent wrapped his arms around the other and rolled them, with the confused and drowsy scientist on top.
"Aah--Vincent, you--" As a man who been celibate by choice for a little more than two years, there was little room for complaint when you had an attractive (albeit slightly dusty) person kissed you, with a hand down your "Vincent!"
So much for being drowsy.
Gast woke the next morning with a nasty headache, blankets draped over him to cover everything from no one. That was to say, aside from Gast himself, his bed was empty. As well, upon later examination, so was his bottle of aspirin. And for that matter, his bathroom was an utter mess.
He stared his reflection down in the mirror, hair mussed and eyes bloodshot.
Towels strewn about, a bottle of shampoo--no, two--absolutely empty... Even his bar of soap worn down to a mere sliver. There was nothing left worth using. Someone had taken his bathroom for a joyride and returned it in worse condition than the morality and ethics of the Shinra Corporation.
He grimaced through the rest of his hangover with the grace of a baseball through a second-story window. Twice, he grazed his shoulder on the edges of doorways and corners. Once, he'd stubbed his toe in the hall. And the prelude to his coup-de-gras...he'd knocked his head on a low hanging overhead-cabinet in the kitchen--
--only to find that all his cereal was gone.
SON OF A BITCH.
Defeated and still aching, Gast forced down a cup of black coffee (all of the creamer was missing) and a bagel with grape jelly (the strawberry was gone, though that was Gast's fault for not restocking earlier).
Though while his head was pounding, he could honestly say that he felt rather...relaxed. He couldn't explain it, but really felt no reason why he should.
Gast finished off the last dregs of his bitter coffee, seated at the dining room table and pondered on the events of the night previous. At least--what little he could remember of said night.
He remembered a man in the mansion, one with messy dark hair and an intense gaze. Only there was no trace of him. For all Gast knew, he could have created his own messes while drunk--and for that matter, while he was passed out cold in bed, the bringers of cake and cheap beer; Hojo and Hollander could have trashed his bathroom and made off his his food as well.
In fact...that sounded quiet plausible. Hollander was a notorious snack-stealer and Hojo was a caffeine fiend. Yes--it must have been those two, Gast reasoned.
Thus, life went on.
Gast went into town that day to buy more aspirin and strawberry jelly, as well as to put in an order to have some of his soap and shampoo transferred over from his home in Midgar. He returned to the mansion without incident, and indeed, life went on.
There was still much to research and study, and while he was a man of much patience, he always pressed as if a deadline loomed. He woke, worked, slept, and woke again. He never once returned to the room with the coffins, for he had no reason. No more noises came from it, thus, no real reason to investigate.
He eventually left the Shinra Mansion and Hojo returned. Time passed, and eventually, even Hojo was gone for good.
For thirty years, the body of Vincent Valentine remained undisturbed. That was, until...
"HEY! Pretty boy! Get'cher ass outta there!"
"Cid--calm down. He's not going to listen."
"Goddamn you spiky-headed chocobo ass! Shut up! --motherfucking vampire in a box! I SAID WE WERE ON A GODDAMN MISSION AGAINST SHINRA! OUT!"
"Don't kick it!"
The boys squabbled on and Yuffie edged in closer to Aerith. "He sounds like the black guy. Is he taking lessons?" she giggled.
"Yuffie!" she chided.
Some girls never learned tact.
Later, after diplomatic relations had been worn out completely and Cid had given up on kicking the damn coffin and Tifa had stopped pleading, the group turned their backs on the dark and dusty room, given up on recruiting the mysterious man.
"Vincent." He said, standing free from his confines, just as they passed the threshold of the room. "Vincent Valentine."
The grumpy pilot who'd thrown out the most rancor earlier, now smiled, through his vocabulary still desired improvement. "S'about damn time, boy! Hurry up!"
That night, with all fiends cleared from the old mansion, the team slept peacefully. All except for one...
"I wonder if he left anything behind..." the young ninja giggled as she tip-toed her way back down into the mansion basement. Once before the coffin, she pushed the lid open and peered inside. Within, there was very little, spare for that at the foot of the coffin.
"Beer bottles? Geez, what a lush."
But there was more. "Cake?" Yuffie pulled the leftovers out, the plate a tad yellowed, but the icing still rather vibrant. She couldn't make out all of the writing on top, but gathered from the blue lettering left behind, it'd been a birthday cake.
And like any inquisitive materia-hunting, ninja-in-training, with just enough common sense not to get slaughtered on the field of battle, she just had to have a taste.
"Mmm...vanilla!"
Somewhere, Gast rolled over in his grave.