First. Adj. Being before all others with respect to time, rank, importance etc.
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It came as a shock to them all.
They were all caught unawares in the late twilight, struggling through rain and the terrain to find a suitable place to camp for the night. Exhausted, senses dampened rather literally as well as figuratively by the background static of rain upon the ground, they did not detect their assailants until it was rather too late.
When questioned later, in the open air of their hastily assembled camp, all hushed whispers as they conferred in as much confidence as their close confines could afford them, none could recall the precise moment the transition occurred, nor the precise details. None could, save for the one man they were avoiding.
As it happened, Vincent recalled every moment of his transformation with perfect and rather painful clarity.
They all knew so little about him, their alliance so recently forged. Given the circumstances of their meeting, it really should have come to them as no surprise that demons lurked within Vincent, nor that he assumed their shape. Yet Tifa could not avoid the gnawing reality, conjured by an image she had taken from witnessing the whole torrid experience, which lurked and prodded at her conscience; Vincent had been as horrified, if not more so, than they.
The chatter around the campfire was rather subdued, leaving Tifa to ferment in a perfect storm of concern and guilt, her eyes repeatedly flickering toward the tent within which Vincent lay. She knew better that to assume him asleep. She doubted anyone, of any disposition, would be in the same circumstances.
Casting a glance aside to her comrades and finding them occupied, she rises from her lonely sentry by the fire and crosses to his tent.
She is unsurprised to find it vacant.
Stepping away from the warmth and the light of the fire, the fragments of recollection of his transformation return, haunting the periphery of her mind and rendering even the slightest of shadow a threat or manifestation of a nightmare.
She finds him barely a minute's walk from camp, weapon resting across his lap, seated in the relative shelter of a tree with low, broad branches. He flicks his eyes upward, acknowledging and flinching from her presence.
"I was worried you were gone," She sighs, relieved, inflecting as much positivity and vigor into her tone and manner. She approaches as close as she feels he might be comfortable with, crouching to huddle beneath the shelter of the tree, with her back to the trunk, alongside him.
"In case I were stalking you all, waiting to catch you unawares?" His tone is bitter. No doubt he had heard some of the vocalised concerns at the camp.
She chooses her words carefully. "Can you blame them – us – for our fears? We do not know you. We all saw..."
He sighs, running a hand down his face in a wearied gesture. "I know. Forgive me."
"There is truly nothing to forgive," She feels brave, reaching out a hand to rest at the crease of his elbow. He is thankful she has chosen his right arm to touch, his left a rather poorly understood patchwork of odd sensations and a buckled metal gauntlet. He had had little time and privacy since leaving the mansion to fully explore Hojo's gifts.
His gaze flickered downward, to consider the alien concept of human touch that had been bestowed upon him. Her fingers are warm, considering the inclement conditions, even though the fabric of his shirt. "I want to understand. I want to help."
"Truly?" Hopeful, horrified by the concept.
"We are on the same side, Vincent. You're one of us."
"Its name is Galian." He intones quietly, getting to his feet. It takes her a few seconds, in the wake of his revelation regarding his monstrous alter ego, to note he has outstretched his palm in offer of support.
"Is it as gentlemanly as you are?" She offers a small smile, which she is delighted to note he appears to return; from what parts of his face she can see, anyway. His fingers feel deft, cool against hers.
"Indeed it is not. Yet it does desire to protect its comrades. That much I do know."
"Comrades?" She tilts her head, a small smile still playing on her lips. "Well, that's an encouraging start."
Vincent, in spite of everything, as they walk back to the camp side by side, feels immeasurably grateful for this young woman.
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So many scars. That is all he can see at first. It disgusts him, repulses him enough that from that moment he undresses in the dark, and only then, if necessity demands it.
A 'Y' section, commonly performed during autopsies of the dead. Various scarred puncture wounds – needles, he suspects. One familiar, an appendectomy from decades past. The centre of his left palm bears an ugly burn, an angry scar at its heart- defensive wounds from the shotgun blast that Hojo unleashed. Shrapnel wounds mar his right shoulder, his chest, and the very underside of his jaw, so close to his jugular. A spidery network of incisions across the inside and back of the left hand, careless repairs of the damage showing only a willing to keep him from death for as long as was possible.
The nerves in his fingers do not seem to work as they should, and so the gauntlet is something to grip onto, to hide his deformity, and deter curiosity with horror.
Hidden within the confines of his room at the inn, still he feels exposed, stood stripped to the waist and pallid in the bathroom mirror. Nobody could know. Nobody would ever want to know what horrors his body bore.
Nobody.
Hojo had turned him into a macabre mockery of a man, his flesh into a vile patchwork. From sight alone, he did not know what other malformations might lay beneath the surface of his skin. He and his newfound comrades had together bore witness to what lurked within him, beckoned from a slumber by violence and the promise of blood.
He tries to deter his mind from returning to the waking nightmare of that night, of his first transformation. He had managed to put a week's worth of days and nights between them, yet he knew that distance nor time would separate his mind from reliving the horror with perfect clarity.
Clenching his teeth, grinding his molars together, he tries to override the memory of another sensation; of sharp canines, elongating, splitting his gums, crowding his mouth until he feels like his lips may split, his smile tearing at the edges, unable to contain them. Beneath horrified, trembling fingers, his jaw cracks, dislocates, lengths. His maws widen, chin and teeth and nose stretching and becoming snout-like. His breathing comes in heated bursts, bellows. He fights to remove the gauntlet, so tight that he feels his arm might burst, constricted as it was across his forearm. Just in time, before his knuckles pop, nails hardening, blackening, elongating into claws...
His knees buckle beneath him. He catches himself on the sink, head bowed over the tap as it softly drips. His fingers are so pale, they are barely distinguishable from the off-white of the porcelain sink, knuckles whitening in a desperate grip; irreconcilable with the thinkened, amaranthine hide of Galian.
He relives the sensation of slick heat sliding from his hairline, the points of viscious horns splitting his scalp, blinking blood from his eyes...
The tiles echo his dry sob around him in the dark.
"Vincent?"
A tap at the door of his room brings him back into the now. A quick glance in the shattered mirror (He did not recall punching it, though his bloodied and sore knuckles attest to the truth of such an action having taken place) reveals his wan, clammy face, surrounded by swathes of black hair. No horns. No fangs. No purple hide.
"Vincent, are you alright?"
It's Tifa.
"Y-Yes." He calls back, voice cracking a little from disuse. He reaches for his shirt, buttoning it in haste. Locked door or no, he is conscious of even the remotest possibility of his bodily horrors being seen.
"Dinner is being served downstairs. I thought you may wish to join us," she pauses on the other side of the door, and the silence is palpable. He screws his eyes shut. "Or if you like, I don't mind bringing some up for you later?"
He released a long shaking breath. "I would be most grateful if you would."
"No problem!" She responds brightly. The floorboards creak, receding footsteps indicating she was returning downstairs, satisfied with his answer for now.
"Thank you, Tifa." He sighs, palms braced against the door, shoulders sagging.
Yet again, he was grateful for having met this woman.
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A/N: On the basis that Death Gigas and Hellmasker, Levels 2 and 3 of Vincent's limit breaks respectively, were created to express two very specific horror tropes, I am going to, for the purposes of this story, ignore that they exist. It's Galian, and Chaos. The end.
A new project, centring around Vincent's physche asa result of his transformations. I have most of a chapter 2 written, and a firm idea for chatper 3. I think it might take 4.
I've experimented with this theme before in Purgatory, a four-part project I am super proud of having completed, so if this interests you and you haven't yet read the above, then I encourage you to do so.
This story could take place with my Catalyst universe, or Purgatory for that matter, but I'm happy for it to be new, to be alone.
Reviews, thoughts, ideas, criticisms welcome, as ever.