AN: This is based on the song For No One, by the Beatles. It's amazing, go listen to it. Also, this doesn't completely follow what happened in the games. The italics are the lyrics.
I don't own the FF7 franchise, or the Beatles, or the rights to For No One.
"The day breaks, your mind aches. You find that all her words of kindness linger on, When she no longer needs you"
Vincent didn't immediately get out of bed when he woke up. Instead, he laid still while the events of the previous day ran through his mind. Lucrecia had married Hojo. They hadn't had a ceremony, hadn't announced it to anyone beforehand. They had simply disappeared from the lab, and when they came back Lucrecia was showing off the diamond on her hand.
She had looked happy, on the outside. But how could she be? Vincent knew that she didn't love Hojo. She had frequently told him how she wished she didn't have to work for the man, how disgusting the scientist was. This had always been followed with something about Vincent.
"Hojo could take a lesson from you, Vince, and learn how to wash his hair. But his could never be as nice as yours."
"It's funny, even though you're a Turk, your morals are better than his."
"You're so caring Vincent, I love that. Not like Hojo, he's an asshole."
Trivial things, really. But Vincent had loved it whenever she said something to compliment him. It reaffirmed his knowledge that they were in love with each other.
"She wakes up. She makes up. She doesn't feel she has to hurry, she no longer needs you."
Vincent leaned in the doorway to her room. He had come to wake her up, as he usually did.
The woman couldn't wake up early on her own for anything. Now her she was, already dressed and putting on her make up. She resolutely ignored his reflection in the mirror, slowly apply mascara to her long eyelashes.
When she was finished she turned to him. For single brief moment Vincent thought he saw a flash of pain in her eyes.
"Go away Vincent. I don't need you anymore. The lab doesn't need a Turk to protect it."
Vincent's eyes widened slightly. What could he have done to make her hate him so much? Not only had she betrayed him, but she couldn't now she was trying to remove him from her life entirely. He couldn't leave, of course. What would Veld say when Vincent returned to headquarters and told the Director that he disobeyed orders because a woman told him to. No, no matter what happened Vincent would remain loyal to the Turks.
"And in her eyes you see nothing. No sign of love behind the tears. Cried for no one. A love that should have lasted years."
It had been two months since Lucrecia had married Hojo. By now her eyes were flat, lifeless,
blank. The love they used to hold for Vincent was gone. It hadn't been replaced with love for her husband, there was simply nothing. Behind the emotionless wall Vincent could see tears that threatened to fall every day. But Lucrecia, beautiful strong Lucrecia, refused to cry.
Vincent had thought that he would someday ask Lucrecia to marry him. They would find a nice little house to live in and raise some children. Maybe Vincent would even retire from the Turks eventually. And Lucrecia could have her own lab- she was good enough to have one. And she could help the world with her science and maybe, just maybe, the good his wife was doing would cancel out all the evil he did as a Turk, so no one could judge her for being married to a killer.
"You want her. You need her. And yet you don't believe her when she says her love is dead. You think she needs you."
Three months now. Everyday Vincent missed her. He wanted to hold her, to wake up next to her in the morning. He watched her when she was with Hojo, and couldn't believe that her heart had chosen the greasy scientist over himself.
She was pregnant. And Vincent knew that the child wasn't Hojo's. Lucrecia had only been married to Hojo for three months, and Lucrecia was almost five months along. Vincent knew for a fact that, before their marriage, Lucrecia had nothing to do with the scientist outside of work. The Turk had confronted Lucrecia about it, told her that as the father he was willing to help support the child, that he deserved to play a part in its life. She had dismissed him, had tried to tell him that he wasn't the father. But Vincent was an experienced Turk and Lucrecia wasn't a good liar. Nevertheless, he had let her walk away, not willing to upset her further.
"And in her eyes you see nothing. No sign of love behind the tears. Cried for no one. A love that should have lasted years."
Vincent could accept that he wouldn't get Lucrecia back. But he saw the look in her eye when she stared at her protruding stomach, when she rested her hand on it. It was a dull, defeated look. She didn't care for the child. She had even allowed Hojo to experiment on both her and the child.
Yes, Vincent could accept the loss of Lucrecia, but he couldn't accept the treatment of their child, no his child. Mothers should love their children, should be willing to protect and care for them until they could care for themselves. This was something Vincent was sure of, but Lucrecia obviously wasn't willing to do anything for the baby she was carrying.
"You stay home. She goes out. She says that long ago she knew someone, and now he's gone. She doesn't need him."
They had known each other years ago, before she was a scientist and he a Turk. Back then
they had both been idealistic teenagers. He was determined to protect everyone in the world and she was going to find a cure for mako poisoning.
The years had changed both of them. Vincent would kill anyone in the world if Veld told him to. Lucrecia was helping a scientist who experimented on unwilling humans. She pretended not to notice the changes she had gone through, and instead focused on how Vincent had changed. She said that she couldn't love a Turk, she didn't need a murderer. Privately, Vincent thought she had simply exchanged one murderer for another. The only difference was that Vincent would admit he killed people.
"Your day breaks. Your mind aches. There will be times when all the things she said will fill your head. You won't forget her."
Lucrecia had given birth to the child. She had named him Sephiroth. The name hurt Vincent
more than she could possibly imagine, though he was sure she had meant for it to have the opposite effect. Sephiroth was the name of Vincent's great-grandfather. Vincent had mentioned him once to Lucrecia. The man had been a genius, a pioneer in the field of immunizations. His work had saved countless numbers of lives. The Turk had mentioned that if he ever had a son he would name the son Sephiroth, in hopes that the child would grow up to be as great as the first Sephiroth. Lucrecia had seemed delighted with that.
"I'm sure that someday you'll have a beautiful baby boy," she had said. This had happened before they were serious about their relationship. "And he'll surpass his great-great grandfather. Maybe he'll find the key to eternal life, or maybe he'll be able to cure any disease."
It surprised Vincent that she remembered this. He suspected that she was trying to give him a sign that she hadn't meant for things to turn out this way by naming the child Sephiroth. Or maybe she was hoping that the boy would live up to his name, and become a great man. Of course, Vincent thought, Shinra wouldn't want him to be a scientist. It was much more likely that Hojo was using the baby in his plan to create super-soldiers.
"And in her eyes you see nothing. No sign of love behind the tears. Cried for no one. A love that should have lasted years."
Vincent had tried to force Hojo into giving custody of his child to him. The scientist had no legal right to keep the baby. Instead of hearing him out, Hojo had shot him. As the bullet ripped into his chest, Vincent thought that he really should have seen this coming. Hojo had never been reasonable, and as he filled himself with Jenova Cells the man was becoming more and more insane.
Hojo kept him in a mako tank when he wasn't experimenting on him. The gunman remembered brief bits of his time in the tank and on the operating table. There was one incident he remembered very well. He had been floating in the tank, sure that he was about to die, when Lucrecia stepped in front of him. She was holding a syringe in one hand and an odd, almost clear, materia in the other. She injected whatever the substance in the syringe was into one of the intravenous tubes Hojo had hooked up to the Turk. As the substance entered his veins, Vincent jerked and tried to scream, only to end up choking on the mako which entered his lungs. Quickly, Lucrecia drained and opened the tank.
As she stood over the fallen Turk, he could see tears in her eyes, but he knew she would never let them fall. For all her other shortcomings, Lucrecia would never let herself cry. She knelt down beside him, holding the strange materia over his chest.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, "I'm sorry. It was never supposed to be like this."
With those words, she slammed the materia into his chest. Somehow, instead of breaking his ribs, instead of breaking open all the skin and tissues, the orb entered his chest, and stopped, right next to his heart. Vincent know how that had happened or what she had put in him, wasn't sure he wanted to know.
Only a few moments after Lucrecia had put the materia in his chest she left. She didn't bother to put him back in the tank, or even to close the door to the lab. Vincent lost consciousness right after she walked through the doorway. His lasts thoughts weren't of Lucrecia, or what she had done to him. No, he thought of his son, hoping that someday he would be able to meet his son, to find out what sort of man his only child was.
Vincent didn't find out until he was awoken almost thirty years later.