Fours
By Faronon Star Wolf
Disclaimer: In no way do I own Final Fantasy 7, or the characters therein.
Notes: Written for the livejournal community 31days prompt for February 14.
-o-
When Vincent Valentine was a child, he had always been told that four was an unlucky number. Throughout his life, he had never found anything that disproved that—it had been in the fourth month that he had been protecting the members of the Jenova Project that Lucrecia had rejected him.
It had taken four hours after her death to find and confront Hojo.
Four was unlucky.
He'd always known that.
The four demons in his mind would never let him forget.
-i-
The first time he'd met them, she was trembling and hiding it with sheer bravado, brashness and cheer and showing far more confidence than she had. She declared his past to be "boring story number one", and gulped when he met her eyes.
Even though she was terrified, she met his eyes defiantly.
Just as defiantly the fourth as the first, though at that point she shivered and looked away.
And the fifth, when he followed them, driven by some urge he couldn't define, she looked cheerful.
"Goodie," she said, smirking. "Now the watches won't be so long! I can get more sleep!"
-ii-
On the second trip to Wutai, she proved herself to be a warrior in his eyes.
The tradition of climbing the Padoga had always been just that, a tradition, as firm as the stones of Da Chao, and though it hadn't happened in the years Vincent had lived in Wutai, he had heard of it, heard the tales the elders told.
The floor the challengers were most likely to fall on was the fourth. It was fitting, given the similarity between the words "four" and "death" in the Wutaian language, though the fights were never to the death.
The fall of the challenger was symbolic for the death of their bid for the throne.
And she almost joined those proven unworthy, but somehow she had found the strength to continue on, to fight and win and defeat the fourth, then the fifth.
-iii-
It was on the third trip to the Gold Saucer when he noticed she was watching him. Cloud had insisted on taking the Chocobo to the races, and very few of their group had gone with him, though barely any had stayed at the hotel.
And so it was when he was contemplating getting something more than tea that he glanced up and noticed she was staring. She looked away as soon as she met his eyes, and he didn't think anything more of it.
Until the next time he caught her eyes on him. This time he stared at her, knowing that she tended to stop doing something if he looked at her long enough. She flushed, looking away, and he turned back to his tea and his contemplation. The third time, her eyes seemed to be unfocused as she looked at him, and he did his best to ignore the prickly feeling of being watched.
She offered to get him another cup of tea the fourth time. He declined, and as he left he could feel her eyes on his back again.
-iv-
The fourth time he saw her almost overwhelmed by emotions was in the Northern Crater, during the last break that Cloud insisted they take.
She had huddled with her back to a large rock, and perhaps he was the only one who had come enough to terms with his problems to see that she was on the edge of a breakdown.
He resisted the first urge to go comfort her. Surely someone else would notice her distress—he couldn't be the only one who was able to observe at the moment.
The second one was harder to deny, and the third more so. By the fourth, he was wondering how the others in their group could be so unobservant.
He didn't bother denying the fifth, going over to kneel next to her, and putting one hand on her shoulder. She looked at him, tears welling up in her eyes—
—and the next thing he knew, she was clinging to him, shoulders shaking. Awkwardly, he patted her back with his good hand—feeling it hesitate after the fourth—four is bad luck—but then, it continued, smoothly, to the fifth.
-v-
After the end he didn't expect to see her again.
It was his fourth day back in his coffin, and the four muted voices of the demons were not helping him fall back into the liquid half-dream that he had drifted through thirty years in.
It's nothing, he tried to tell himself, resisting the urge to get up, to get out, to leave the mansion and never return. It's the effect of all that traveling. You've done this before.
And so he pressed down the restlessness, fighting the need to get up and do something, staring up at the top of his coffin, not seeing anything in the darkness, hearing the building groan and shift above his head.
He counted the fours in his life--four months, four hours—
—five glances, five floors—
—four demons—
The door slammed open.
"Vincent, Leviathan help me, I will kill you if you're back in that damn box."
He blinked, and then squinted as the lid was lifted off, hearing her grunt as she levered it up. It was bright—brighter than he expected, because she had brought a lamp with her, cranked up to give off the highest possible amount of light to aggravate his eyes. Spots danced as he tried to focus up at her, and suddenly he found himself being dragged up by his collar.
"You are an idiot, Valentine," she hissed. As his eyes began to adjust, he could see that she wore a deep frown and there were dark bags under her eyes.
"What—" His voice cracked, and he was dimly aware of the fact that his throat was dry. She shoved a bottle of water at him, followed by a sandwich, and leveled a dark glare at him.
"You are going to eat and drink and you are not going to talk," she ordered. "You're going to listen to me, damn it." He opened his mouth to protest, but she pulled the bottle out of his hand, opened it, and shoved it into his mouth. "Drink."
He did. Something about the way she spoke let him know that if he didn't, she would "help" him. And he wouldn't like the method she chose to do so.
Alternating between eating and drinking, he listened as she ranted at him, hitting all possible points between "how could you just leave like that?" and "you didn't even give me your Materia!"
Finally she ran out, leaving only a plaintive "why?" hanging in the air between them.
"...I would have only brought bad luck," he finally replied, sighing. The sudden taste of blood in his mouth and the abrupt view of the ceiling startled him for a second, but only until the pain in his chin caught up.
"I ought to punch you again," she growled when he sat up, rubbing her knuckles and glaring at him. "How could you be bad luck?"
Wincing as he moved his bitten tongue, he answered, backing away from her. "Four is—"
She snorted. "That old shtick? Leviathan help me. What does that have to do with you?"
"The demons—" He stopped when he saw her roll her eyes.
"You really are an idiot, aren't you?" When he inhaled to reply, she shook her head. "You've only looked on it from the inside. Four doesn't apply to you."
"What—" he started, but she cut him off.
"You're in there, too. That makes five."
-o-
Four was a bad luck number: Vincent had always known that.
But now four wasn't the only number he counted to—there were others, now, that he paid more attention to.
He had the four demons, yes, but there was also a fifth voice: one that was small, yes, and weak, but it wasgrowing stronger day by day.