Author's Note: The fanfiction you're about to read is highly melodramatic and emotional and the author isn't really content with the story, but she's a huge fan of Vincent&Ada pairing (which is her favorite in PH and probably in most of her fandoms) and got tired of waiting for someone to write about them, so tried to do it herself. The time-line is some undetermined moment in the future, where Vincent is finally driven to the corner and shows his true colours... or thinks he does. Most of this fiction is quite old (about half a year), so the emotional/dramatic part might be a bit exaggerated, since Vincent changed quite a bit towards Ada in the recent chapters. And about in character and OOC, especially on Ada's part... Let's just say that the author believes strongly in the fact that the ability to advance towards the gun pointed at them with a smile is Vessalius's family trait.
Also, english isn't the author's native language, so she wants to apologize in advance for any inconsistencies on that part. And of course, all the comments and constrictive criticism are more than welcomed. Just keep in mind that the main reason for existence of this fiction is to spread the love for Vincent&Ada pairing... Because they're worth it)
The Colour of Sunshine.
It shouldn't have been that way, he thought frantically. It just shouldn't have been.
It was his last hope, he had kept repeating to himself. Understanding fully well that he had been just deceiving himself. He haven't had any hope left. He had already made his most vital mistake and had already lost his value as a piece on the chess board, no longer needed by any side. No longer able to protect his brother, having only a mostly useless Chain as a weapon. No longer able to use that excuse...
It was his last hope to save Gil, to return his place of importance by taking into his possession the Key of the Vessalius family.
He had just plainly raised his gun and had pointed it at the silly girl, no minding the obvious surprise he was going to get from her by doing it. He had been just tired. Tired of always pretending, tired of always restraining himself from doing what he wanted to do, like tearing toys and people apart with his scissors. Tired of all the pressure he had been getting more and more of since the things had started to go wrong long ago. Maybe they had started going wrong even before the time of any memory he could recall, started going wrong when he was born with the cursed red eye in the era when having that eye alone was enough to ruin one's life – and the life of his important people. Maybe it had been he who was cursed all along and he had just continued to bring misfortune like he had been predicted to... Maybe – but he didn't care. He had been way too tired to care...
But it shouldn't have been that way, he thought again and again, as the girl in front of him, instead of panicking or asking him what was he doing or doing something equally expected, just smiled and advanced, step after step, closer to him and toward the gun pointed at her. Looking him straight into the eyes with her own pair of emerald ones, with the look he had never seen in them. The dazzling mixture of calmness, so hateful pity and equally obnoxious admiration, together with the resolution he wouldn't have expected to ever see in those eyes.
The reaction that made him take a step back.
He knew that look and at the same time didn't know it. He had seen something painfully similar before, the look he tried to forget. The look in Jack's eyes, that Jack Vessalius he tried so hard to curse and hate – and couldn't really bring himself to, somewhere deep inside... The one that told without words – it's all right, you can just shoot whenever you like, I'm all right with that decision of yours if that is what you wish. But at the same time there was something there he had never seen before in the gaze directed at him. He had seen it in his brother's eyes when he looked at Oz, in that Sharon Reisworth's eyes when she looked at the Hatter, but it had never been directed at him before. The look that told that the one in the person's eyes is the most important one for them in the whole world.
Why was that happening? Why did she have that look? She couldn't have been as stupid as not to understand what was going on, he was pointing a gun at her, she couldn't be as absurd as actually liking him blindly so much that she was willing to do anything he wished for – she didn't anyway as he never wished for her to advance like that. It was something else.
And he had very little time to figure that out. Only those few steps between them. Because as good the threat might have been, it would only work if it actually made the person afraid so that one would do anything ordered to avoid the danger becoming reality. If it actually stopped the person. And if it didn't, just like right that moment, he couldn't really gain anything. For him to gain the Key the girl had to stay alive, so much was obvious. So the only thing he could get was the personal satisfaction of getting rid of the person who's image was haunting him from the time of their first encounter.
The image with sunshine-blond hair and emerald eyes.
He tried to suppress the shiver, but to no avail. He was close to nervous breakdown every time he remembered Jack and at the moment he didn't have the strength to hold himself together. Why couldn't they just leave him alone? He should have died long ago, he shouldn't have even been born at all, but for some cruel reason he had gotten through all those nightmares that caused death to others and had to continue striving forward – because now he couldn't leave Gil. Not after he didn't leave him on the streets when there wasn't a single reason not to...
So why? Why he couldn't just forget all those things? Why couldn't those things just forget about him and go bother someone else? Why couldn't he just escape from his past? Why did it continue to surface in his mind every time it had the slightest reason to do so?
Why, he asked himself – and then he knew the answer.
"It's okay," said the girl, continuing forward another step. "You don't really want this, do you?"
"What do you mean?" he started to completely loose his temper. "I know what I want! Shouldn't you worry about yourself, the way the situation is right now?" he tried his usual mockery. It didn't sound very convincing with his current tone of voice.
"You're sure you know? You really do?" she said, making another step forward – and looking at him with those same piercing eyes. Round emerald eyes he could swear were mocking him – although he knew he was just making it up. But they were maddening him with the look that was sure it knew the truth – and because those eyes were making him face the fact they really were right.
He really didn't want it.
He was just tired. But not only by all those troubles and misfortunes he was facing. But also by the fact he couldn't be himself – like everybody wants to – and by the fact there wasn't a single soul in the whole world who could take him fully as the person he was, after everything he had committed. Not even Gil. He was sure of that – or he would have told him about the past.
The only person he had once believed being one was Jack. But he had failed him, failed him and robbed him of courage to ever seek another chance with another person. He was hurt way too much.
And yet he couldn't let go of the hope of that one person existing in the world somewhere – and because of exactly that his memories and nightmares didn't let go of him. It was the price.
But he was just too tired.
"I've already killed thousands of people, a hundred years ago, I made them die horrible and terrifying deaths by throwing them into the Abyss, and I might have killed Alice before that, the one Alice you know, when she was still human girl. You still think I might have second thoughts about killing you here and now?" he suddenly had an urge to demand that annoying girl.
"I'm sure you do," she just said, making another step. "And Jack thinks so too," she added, as if contemplating about the fact for a moment.
Jack? Now he was furious. What did she know about Jack and the things that bastard thought?
And yet he knew. Maybe not how or why she knew it, but that she had to be right, the way he knew Jack, the way he knew him he was, no matter how much he denied that, and that knowledge being the reason he couldn't bring himself to hate him – and the reason he couldn't even forget him properly. Because no matter how much he tried he knew he was wrong, and he couldn't fight that feeling of unrighteousness. He wasn't giving Jack justice, he knew Jack had never intended to betray him and had probably suffered more than he did, if that was even possible, because of what happened with Gil, since he was feeling responsible for that accident. He had to see one of his precious friends hurting the other – the way he was it was the worst thing that could have happened to him, rivaled only by the need to end his friend's life by him own hand, the task he took upon himself. He didn't deserve to be hated by yet another person he had considered his friend.
It was just selfishness on his, Vincent's, part. And the worst part was that he understood that and that was the reason the memory of Jack was hunting him.
But even so. Even the fact he didn't really hate Jack didn't mean he had the right to be forgiven.
"And what if he does?" he continued in the same offensive tone. "And what if he's even right? I don't have any other choice but to do it, do I? I have long crossed the line where I could just back down and stop. I have committed uncountable number of unforgivable things. They cannot just be forgotten, don't you think?"
"They cannot," the girl agreed sadly. "But they can be forgiven," she continued calmly.
"Not all crimes can be forgiven! I said, things I've gone are unforgivable!" he cried. How could she not understand such a simple fact, making it sound disgustingly easy. It wasn't.
"There is no crime that couldn't be forgiven" she just said. She just said again, the same sure way that was making him crazy. How could she say the most complicated and doubtful things the way that made them sound sure and easy? Was she crazy, herself? Or just plain stupid? Or...
She was now directly in front of his gun, her forehead touching the cold metal.
"If you really think you'll feel easier this way, then shoot" she suggested simply, like it wasn't her life on the line there.
It was something he couldn't comprehend. It was probably the lack of comprehension that caused his hand to shake, the one holding the gun.
Would he feel easier that way? Of course he would. At least he would get rid of the person bothering him so much. But would he really?
He was running away since long ago, simply escaping from things he didn't want to face, but they continued to pursue him. Right now he could just run away again. But he suddenly felt the premonition that even so, he wouldn't escape. Somewhere somehow he would have yet another encounter with the things he didn't finish business with.
"But I" she continued at the meantime, "will believe. Believe until the end. I now finally understand what Jack has meant."
"Jack? What do you even know about him?" he finally snapped, as things were going further and further out of his control.
"Oh, we talked once" she answered, he voice sounding the same as usual, cheerful and chatty, as if the gun wasn't still pointed at her, "in my dream. It was when I was worried and lost," even she could be worried and lost, Vincent noted for himself, surprised yet again, "I didn't know anything, I still don't, but I had to make a decision. I asked him for advice. And he said that the only sort of advice he could give me from his experience was to stay believing in things you feel like believing, against all logic and reason. He said that even if the world began to crumble down it shouldn't mean that the things that you knew as truths had to became lies all of the sudden. He said I shouldn't make the same mistake he once made.
And now I understand what he meant," she was again looking him straight into the eyes. " I know what is true. You're a good person. You don't want to hurt anybody and you don't want to hurt yourself. You've just become lost and tired since you've always had to do everything by yourself. But you don't have to, anymore." She said that last phrase so gently, with a shy smile, that somebody less attentive might have missed all the nervousness she was hiding and the courage she had to gather to say it. Somebody else, but not Vincent.
But the words she said were so absurd he just wanted to laugh. And so he did, loudly, with madness coloring the sound..
"So you're saying I'm a good person, even though I'm pointing a gun at you? And you're saying you'll stay with me even after knowing what kind of person I am? You're crazy if you do," he said through the laugh.
"Then maybe I am," she agreed simply, "but I just can't leave you alone."
He stopped laughing, as abruptly as he started.
"You can't leave me alone? I don't need pity, not from someone like you, not from anybody else!" he shouted.
"But it is not pity," she said quietly.
"Then what is it?" he demanded sharply.
She braced herself, like answering that question would require more courage than everything she had committed. But the answer, though quiet, came out simple and clear. "It's love," she just said. "I love you, I really do. Though I know you've never really cared for me and didn't mean it when you assured me that you loved me, I still fell in love with you. I will happily accept everything about you as long as it's the real you. And I won't leave you as long as I live, even if it means that I am to die right here and now by your hand."
She made it sound so easy but it did not sound like she didn't know exactly what she was talking about. Not even that illusion could be created anymore.
How could she mean it? How on earth could someone say something like that to someone like him? How could she not care about her own life just for him?
She moved slightly sidewards, evading his pointed gun and advancing the last few steps that separated them. He was still too confused even to move, let alone to stop her. Thus she embraced him, gently and tightly, the way nobody had ever embraced him before. She buried her face in his chest and he guessed she was listening to the sound of his heartbeat. He wasn't even sure he still had a heart to beat, but it seemed like she found it, rediscovered its existence for him.
And then, almost magically, it all started to fit in. The reason it had to be Jack Vessalius who found them that time long long ago, when they were about to die, the reason he couldn't forget about Jack, the reason why Gil had to meet the person who so dazzlingly reminded of Jack, the reason he had to get involved with the sister of that person as much as he didn't want to... all of it had led him to this very moment, to the special person who was willing to accept him the way he was and who genuinely cared for him.
The person who, like a sun, came into his world of eternal darkness and filled it with shining colours.
He let the gun fall from his hand and put his arms gently around her, returning the embrace, burying his face in her silky blond hair, hair of the colour of sunshine. The colour that truly represented her.
Who could he have missed the most important thing for so long while it was this close to him?
They stayed like that, embracing each other, as Vincent slowly continued to rearrange the value of things his life consisted of. She waited for him, staying close as she promised she would.
Finally he broke the embrace and took her hands in his. She was smiling as she looked at him, awaiting his next decision. And he... he knelt before her and looked into her eyes.
"I want to apologize to you. I lied to you, I deceived you, I tried to use you and I still haven't apologized for doing all that... Would you forgive me?"
"But I..." Ada started, surprised.
"I just want you to be the first person I'm going to apologize to, so... please."
"All right, then – I forgive you", she stated, the tone of her voice having some sort of dramatic effect. "So you can rise up", she continued with a same shining smile and pulled him back up.
And as he stood back up the only thing that filled his thoughts was the revelation of how beautiful, the person in from of him was. Infinitely beautiful, infinitely precious, infinitely wonderful, infinitely...
He just couldn't help bending over a bit and slightly pressing his lips on hers. She answered that kiss and made it prolong, time after time, till there wasn't enough air to breath. When they couldn't continue anymore, he embraced her again, as if he was still afraid to let go of her, as if he still couldn't believe his fortune of having this miraculous person by his side. As if he couldn't now picture the world without her in it, while he had a lot of things to take care of...
"I... I don't know where to start," he confessed to her, whispering those words softly into her ear.
"Well, then..." Ada started, something yet more unusual in her tone that made him break the embrace and look at her inquiringly.
She touched her hairdo slightly, and her long golden hair streamed down on her shoulders as she showed Vincent an emerald hairpin in her hand.
"It's my uncle Oscar's present," she explained, "he gave it to me on my tenth birthday, the year after Oz was thrown into the Abyss. It used to belong to my mother, and then the Lady Vessalius before her..."
Could this be...?
"So how about starting up by finding a way to use this?"
Ada Vessalius had a mischievous smile playing on her lips.
Vincent Nightray was, once again, left speechless.