Ok, so. Spoilers for all things Final Fantasy VII, including all related games and the film. Don't want, don't watch.
This fic is set sometime after Dirge of Cerberus.
It contains the Yuffie/Vincent pairing, but does NOT, unlike most such fics, completely change Vincent's character the moment he falls in love.
Canon? What's that? Ignoring canon is our specialty, so I'll beat you to the complaints.
1. Yuffie should know about Chaos and Vincent's immortality - yeah, we know, but she somehow missed that, ok? She does -not- know.
2. Chaos returned to the lifestream? Not in this fic he didn't.
3. Character development - we may have taken a few liberties with what happened to the characters after their last actual involvement in the series. Get over it.
Please, please comment - we love comments, and this is our first Final Fantasy fic!
Last but not least, this fanfic is written by both myself and my boyfriend Ryan. I'll forward relevant comments to him and you'll get replies the same way. Don't bother commenting on the two very different writing styles - we know!
Chapter 1: May Wood
The sun was unusually bright in the sky as Vincent Valentine walked past the power plant, squinting into the light. He looked up and regretted it as he saw a figure waving from a catwalk above his head, backlit by a sky too bright for her to be recognised. It was when she began to jump, still waving, that he recognised the exuberance that could only belong to Yuffie Kisaragi, ninja warrior and self-proclaimed white rose of Wutai. Vincent suppressed a groan.
The plant he was passing by was an experimental one, trying to create energy from materia to replace the now lost energy that had come from the Shinra Electric Power Company. Seeing as it involved large quantities of materia, the former thief had naturally applied for a job there as guard, and for some reason she had been accepted.
"Vince!" he heard Yuffie shout, as she foolishly climbed onto the railing, practically begging to fall off and hit her head - again. "Hello! Vince! It's me!" She continued to jump and wave, until, predictably enough, she tumbled from the railing, colliding with the walkway only to slide off it, bouncing off a support strut before landing on the floor in a heap, head-first.
Sighing in something close to despair, Vincent waited for the inevitable flood of whining and the scolding that would undoubtedly follow when he failed to show enough sympathy for her liking. He was vaguely wondering how she could fall like that and not be seriously hurt, when it suddenly occurred to him that she was perfectly silent, except for a faint whimper of pain. He hurried over, crouching beside Yuffie and gently rolling her over to see blood staining her torso, bright red as she lost consciousness.
Movement caught his eye, and at the sight of a fleeing figure in the distance, he began to run. He took a moment to compose himself as he felt Chaos rising within him before settling on a cold determination to exact revenge. Raising his gun, he fired several shots into the back of the fleeing figure, unable to deny himself a moment's happiness as the man slumped to the ground, apparently dead.
A quick check of the corpse revealed it to be not a corpse as the blood-soaked man raised a gun at him. A moment later and the man was dead, for real this time. Vincent turned to run back to Yuffie, hearing Tifa's voice in the distance as he neared his fallen comrade.
"Vincent, what happened?"
Vincent almost failed to reply, but at Tifa's worried look he eventually told her, "Someone shot Yuffie," without slowing down his pace until he reached the now-dead assassin's victim. Still alive - barely - she had faithfully tried to call the plant's security on her radio but only succeeded in coughing blood all over it.
"Oh my god…" Tifa gasped as she saw Yuffie on the ground, shock muting her voice slightly. "Vincent, we need to get her to a hospital or something." She crouched beside the injured girl. None of them had ever been hurt this badly, not even through all their battles… "Do you have a potion or something on you?"
Shaking his head as Tifa picked up Yuffie's radio and reported what had happened, he waited until the radio crackled back an order to take the injured girl to the on-site medical area before picking her up without hesitation, walking quickly towards the hospital. Yuffie's head tilted as she was moved until she was looking at him, but a quick look at the blank look in her eyes told him she was barely aware of anything, if at all.
Tifa arrived in time to see the doctors working frantically to save her injured friend and, shaking slightly, she caught the arm of one who did not look too busy and demanded, "Is she going to be okay?"
"If we can stabilise her," came the reply from the doctor, as behind him others were pouring a potion down Yuffie's throat in an attempt to heal her a little. He pulled his arm from Tifa's soft grip and hurried back to his patient.
Turning on Vincent, Tifa took a slight breath and asked a question she already knew the answer to. "What about the person who did this to her?"
Vincent's face was a picture of calm as he shrugged slightly. "Dead," he replied flatly, confirming Tifa's suspicions.
Tifa nodded slightly; although she would not have killed the man, she could not deny a certain sense of relief in knowing that Vincent had dealt with him. Yuffie was safe… providing she could stop whoever had sent him, that is. "But why?" she mused aloud, not expecting or receiving a reply from the silent man. Clearing her throat, she changed the subject, trying to inject a note of humour into the gloomy situation. "Whose stupid idea was it to have Yuffie guard materia in the first place?"
Vincent shrugged slightly. He had always maintained that putting Yuffie anywhere near materia was a bad idea at the best of times. "She knows how to keep hold of it," he answered eventually.
She sighed and leaned against the wall. Was Yuffie doing any better? Did Vincent care? Her heart told her that he must care, but his blank face, devoid of all emotion… no, no, he must care. Even he could not be as heartless as he seemed. "Hey, why are you here exactly?" she asked eventually, mostly to distract herself from a growing desire to scold him for his calm.
There was a very long pause until finally, when Tifa had begun to think Vincent was ignoring that question as he ignored so many others, he replied, "They're interested in protomateria." He redundantly gestured at his chest, indicating the protomateria buried within, stolen by Rosso but returned by Shelke in time for him to save the world.
"Oh," Tifa replied after a pause of her own, slightly surprised that Vincent would subject himself to the scans and tests the plant would undoubtedly want to perform on him. After another awkward pause, she decided to tell him what she was doing there. He would not ask, but maybe he was curious. "I had a package to deliver here. I heard your gun, it's a bit… distinctive."
Vincent nodded again. "The man who shot Yuffie used a silencer," he told her thoughtfully. It was the only possible reason he had not heard the shot.
She nodded in reply. "He probably wanted be out of the building before anyone noticed something was wrong. It's a good thing you were here."
Before Vincent could reply, not that she was expecting him to, the crowd of doctors around Yuffie's bed thinned significantly, implying they had stabilised her. One of the doctors made his way to the two standing by the door and spoke in a quiet voice. "There's an exit wound. Bullet went clean through her. Nixed a lung on the way past." He waited for a reaction, but received only a nod from the woman, and was completely ignored by the man. "She'll wake up in a couple of hours. Don't let her move too much." He turned and walked out, unable to stand the burning glare of those crimson eyes for another second.
"That's gonna be fun…" Tifa mused to herself as the rest of the doctors left, leaving behind scanners to call them if her friend's condition worsened. She glanced at Vincent as he made a slight noise. Was that amusement, or was it her over-active imagination?
She sighed. "I'm going to go look at the person who did it," she offered after a pause. "See if I can figure out why, and if she's still in danger. You'll be ok with her?"
Vincent nodded, quietly telling her where he'd left the body, watching her as she left the room quickly.
A quarter of an hour passed, agonisingly slowly, as Vincent watched Yuffie in the bed. He was just settling down for a few hours of boredom when he saw her eyelids flicker. A quick glance at the clock confirmed the time. Why was she waking up already?
"Vince…?" Yuffie moaned, sounding pathetic enough to gain even his cold sympathy.
"Try not to move," he told her, pity sounding in his tone despite his best intentions. He rarely pitied the young ninja, but she really was hurt this time, and so clearly frightened.
"Mmm-kay," she murmured. "Sounds easy for once."
After a pause to see if she would keep talking, Vincent settled down in the chair, wondering how much longer Tifa would take. "They said you'd be out for hours," he told Yuffie, mostly because a conversation was more interesting than silence.
"Wasn't I?" Yuffie looked confused; she clearly felt as though she had been.
Vincent shrugged. "Fifteen minutes," he told her after a pause, his mind racing. She had woken up so soon, and after such a dangerous injury… add that to the fact that she could easily fall from a great height and land on her head, only to be completely unharmed. But why? What was special about her?
Yuffie smiled weakly. "Takes more than bullets to stop the white rose of Wutai," she bragged, but her heart clearly wasn't in it as she winced in pain too great for the drugs she had been given.
It was clear what was on her mind; she was worried about the assassin sent to kill her. "I stopped the person who shot you," Vincent told her quietly, his tone leaving no question as to how he had stopped the man, nor as to the fatality of the encounter. He could not deny that he cared for Yuffie, and had been worried for her safety – indeed, he remembered the urge to turn, to chase the man as Chaos. As for Yuffie, maybe, long ago in a different life, he would have pursued her interests, but…
"Thanks…" Yuffie replied softly. "You saved me."
Vincent ignored her thanks, still trying to figure out how she could possibly be alive, all the injuries, all the bumps on the head, and not a scrape until now… His musings were interrupted by a gasp of pain as she tried to move, stretching her chest wound. "Stop moving," he scolded, but none of the worry he was feeling entered his voice, as cold as ever.
Yuffie's face slipped into a worried frown as she saw her chest. "I have a hole in me…" she muttered, in shock.
Of course, he thought. She had been shot in the back – and was hardly expecting to see a hole in her chest. "The bullet went through you," he told her softly. "Hit a lung." He tried not to sound too concerned for her welfare.
He was about to continue when the door opened and Tifa slipped in, holding a gun by her side – the same gun used by the man who had shot Yuffie. "I couldn't find anything, the guy didn't even have a wallet," Tifa told them helplessly, shrugged, and held up the gun before either of them could speak. "I did take this though."
Yuffie frowned at the would-be murder weapon being in the same room as its intended target. "I don't like it…" she complained, her voice high as she whined.
Ignoring her completely, Vincent looked at the gun Tifa was holding. "Shinra," he announced after just a second. Although there were no visible markings on it, it unmistakeably belonged to Shinra – or what was left of them – but why would they want Yuffie dead?
Almost instinctively, Tifa tossed the gun away from her so it skidded into a corner. "No thank you," she retorted. "I'll get my own gun."
"Which one of you brought me here?" Yuffie demanded, her tone sounding urgent as she stared at Vincent.
She had already guessed, he knew, but wanted confirmation. They both knew that Tifa could not have lifted her, let alone carried her to the hospital. "I did," he replied after a long and expectant pause.
Yuffie flashed him with a weak but dazzling smile. "Thank you…" she whispered, then, after a long pause filled with a total lack of acknowledgement, she turned her attention to Tifa, sounding slightly disappointed. "Thank you too, Tifa. I'm sure you helped."
Tifa frowned at her as if only now noticing she was awake. "You shouldn't be awake yet, Yuffie," she told her, sounding motherly in her concern, but not without confusion that mirrored Vincent's.
"That's what Vince said," Yuffie replied quietly, then smiled at them. "You shouldn't have underestimated the great ninja Yuffie!"
"Awake already…" Tifa and Vincent turned to see a doctor standing in the doorway, looking at the patient who, contrary to all logic, was wide awake after just a quarter of an hour. "I wondered if that might be the case."
Vincent frowned. The doctor clearly knew a lot more than he was letting on. "Why?" he asked quietly, when it became clear nobody else would. What was going on?
"Well…" The doctor glanced at Yuffie, whose face turned instantly anxious. "If I could talk to you outside?" He left the room, and waited until the door shut behind the other man before continuing. "We tested some of the blood from the wound. There was... rather a lot of it. We thought she might need a transfusion, and we wanted to see what blood type she was. But the results were... strange. There was something wrong about it, that we couldn't identify at first."
The man had said rather a lot, but at the same time managed to say absolutely nothing of any worth. Vincent sighed, the only outward sign of the impatience and anger he was feeling at the doctor. "What is it?" he asked, his voice deliberate and calm – a calm he simply could not feel.
The doctor took a deep breath before continuing. "Well... there's a lot of Mako in there. Along with some cells that we're not exactly sure how to classify. We're calling them Y Cells."
Finally, he had said something worthwhile, and very significant. "Mako?" he echoed, showing his surprise. How could Yuffie, of all people, have Mako in her blood? Only SOLDIERs had been infused with that, and the Wutai princess would have had nothing to do with Shinra or SOLDIER.
Nodding, the doctor said, "And the Y Cells seem to have properties similar, if not identical, to S Cells. Perhaps G Cells. We're not entirely sure if there's a difference yet, the notes are... hazy." He looked relieved that Vincent understood what he was saying; clearly he had expected to be forced to explain what the findings meant.
Vincent nodded thoughtfully. This still made no sense… he would have to call Cloud and tell him what the doctor had found, maybe he could make sense of it. Mako was one thing, but how could Yuffie have cells reminiscent of Sephiroth's? That made even less sense than her being infused with mako… He vaguely became aware that the doctor was waiting for him to say something and gave an irritated nod. At least most people he saw on at least an occasional basis knew not to wait for a reply from him.
Finally, the doctor stopped waiting for Vincent to speak and continued himself. "We thought she should get the news from someone she knows. Try to remind her, it doesn't mean anything. The only reason Sephiroth went so nuts is because he couldn't handle it. Not because the project damaged his mind." He looked at Vincent again, waiting for an answer.
Yuffie's voice cut through their conversation, high-pitched with worry. "WHAT IS GOING ON OUT THERE?"
Completely ignoring her outburst, Vincent said calmly, "I need to call someone."
To his slight irritation, the doctor did not take this as his cue to leave, but spoke instead. "All right. We're still looking into how this could have happened. We'll let you know when we find out." After a few tense seconds of silence, he turned and finally left.
Taking a moment to calm down, Vincent took out his mobile, glanced at and decided to ignore a large sign warning against its use, and called Cloud.
Wow, this chapter was long…
We wrote the dialogue together before writing up our chapters separately – I wrote only Vincent's dialogue, Ryan took everyone else.
People who know me well will know I have self-confidence issues – if I did well, say so! If I did badly, tips for improving! Either way, please, please comment. I love comments