(Author's revised opening notes, January 20, 2010:
So. What is this all about.
This is nearly a reiteration of my disclaimer from the opening of Chapter XIV, the first chapter from 2010. I've been writing this story for four years, in a way; the gap between the end of 2006 and 2010 is rather obvious, and for that, and my negligence to the story I apologize. Life got in the way of my writing for a while and I'm going to try and prevent that from happening again. I'm hoping something small like fan fiction keeps me on that track. I am coming back to this from a very different view of life but trying to keep the story cohesive. To aid in this, I am writing this with no influence from Advent Children or Dirge of Cerberus (or indeed Crisis Core or Before Crisis, but those are less influential at any rate). This is a story from only from Final Fantasy VII, AFI, and my own mind. Any overlap between this and AC or DC is purely coincidental, if not inevitable.
So. What is this all about.
This is both a song fic and not a song fic. It is an expansive if unwilling collaboration between FFVII, the lyrics (and if you so choose to listen, the feel of the music) of AFI, and my moderately twisted imagination. If you're familiar with the band, it's easy to see how the stories from the mouth of Davey Havok are if not similar than applicable to the story told by Yoshinori Kitase, Kazushige Nojima, and of course, Hironobu Sakaguchi. They're meant to mesh together as one collaborative work, the lyrics sometimes representing an obvious soundtrack, a character's unvoiced thoughts, or even the context in which a chapter should be taken. If you're completely unfamiliar with the band, never fear, the lyrics are explicit enough to speak for themselves.
That being said, any edits or seeming misrepresentations of the facts are mine and intentional.
With all of that our of the way, we begin.)
Chapter I - Prelude
…kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep…
He had slept so long, so long. Thirty years. He had lived through so much, so many pivotal points in his life's story and he had never even known that they had taken place, events that would have - should have - involved him, had he only been there. But he wasn't there.
For a long time, Vincent Valentine had pondered the why. Why had he gone to sleep for so long? Hojo had drugged him, put him in a crypt, but why had he lingered? Surely there was no drug that would last for three decades. Was it just because of Lucrecia, because of his lost love? But there was no "just Lucrecia". There was so much that only she and he knew…so much between them that was robbed, robbed by science and time and misfortune. That was what he told himself. It wasn't him, it was…everything else. It was the only thing with which he put faith in himself, and he knew why. Because Lucrecia had loved him, despite everything, despite anything, and she had confessed it to Vincent. He just couldn't figure out why she had left him so quickly, and for such a wretched man.
They had been together. Really together. He had loved her, and she, him. And they had been together. And it was perfect. But there was a flaw in that formula, a flaw he himself wasn't quite willing to confess to yet. Though as he though of the way that her skin had smelled in the dark, he was overcome with a shiver, a lustful shiver which he forced himself to oppress - this was neither the time nor the place. It never was. Not anymore.
Vincent didn't sleep much these days. No, he mostly sat up at night, in a dark corner, or a dark inn, or a dark forest, and he would sit with a cigarette on his lips. Some nights he would light it. Some nights, he would just let it sit there. He had never smoked before, not a day in his life. Never even tried it. But when he started to shake, when he started to worry, he found them in his hands, on his lips, in his lungs. He hated it, but they sedated him. They calmed him. And, he thought, it's not like they would kill him, no. He would never die. He would…never die.
I die in my daydreams.
It wasn't so much that his life was painful. He pained himself, and he knew it. At first, he had tried to convince himself that it was some kind of repentance, some punishment, something, anything that meant something. But he didn't want to be forgiven. He wanted to linger in the past forever. He wanted to have his Lucrecia back, and he wanted her to love him again. No, no, she did love him. He knew that much. But she wouldn't let herself have him. She was doing the same thing to herself that he was doing. Living in the past. But whatever past she was living in, it didn't involve Vincent. No.
Sometimes he thought he could see her dreams. Dreams of Lucrecia holding the baby she had never held, a tiny silver-haired creature cooing at her, and her blue eyes smiling down at it as she purred its name: "Sephiroth". Vincent cried when he dreamed these things. This was when he lit the cigarette. This was when he bit his lip to hold it in. Sephiroth. Who are you?
He couldn't admit it to himself.