History would have you believe that I didn't know; that I discovered everything 'later.' Cue the jealous rage, the descent into madness, death and pain and lust and birth and torture… trite, cinematic… and absolutely false.
I knew.
Oh, I knew. Or at least I suspected. But there was a time that I believed she loved me, which kept me blinded for long enough… Even so, in some sweet-strange way, I think she did. We both loved our work – oh, that was certain. There was a dedication to every detail that showed through in her eyes, in her reports; in everything she did, or said, or experienced. And right from the first, I respected her for that. It's rare, you see, to find someone – much less, a woman in a field such as mine – who is both attentive and responsive to their work. Most are too blind to recognize such a talent, but I was not… My blindness, tragically, did not keep that from my vision. She was like me, you see, but she lived. I've not always been mad, but I've always been cold.
So I, like the proverbial moth to the flame, could do nothing but fall for her.
Mystics will have you believe that love is predestined – that some stars cross up in the heavens, and fireworks flash, and, voila, love is realized; instant, blind, and absolute at first sight. I always wondered about that little paradox: after all, if love is blind… it cancels out the other adage rather neatly, does it not? The scientists, conversely, excuse this unfortunate excess of affection by calling it the result of chemical imbalances and hormonal reactions… little more than a physical drive to propagate. Hardly a pretty picture, if I may say so. Yet I believed it all until she came along; she with the hair of molten copper, and the glasses that would always remain perched on the tip of her nose… she with the pens she chewed when she was nervous, or restless, or lost in thought. She who I loved and she who I lost.
For you see, both the soothsayers and the alchemists are wrong – it is your choice, and yours alone, to fall in love. You can't control every detail of it, but when the crevasse is yawning below your feet, and the last pebbles of the life you knew before are scrabbling at your heels, you make that choice. You step. Without wings, without guidance… without a second thought… you step.
And you do not fly.
You fall, as you are but a man… and the freefall is bliss, pure euphoria. They are not there, but you feel as if gossamer wings have unfurled from your back… and as they extend to prolong your flight, you are not afraid of this change. Even the most confirmed hermit - I tell you this, for I was he - will feel as if these spectral wisps are natural, as if you have always known them. More dangerously, you will believe that the apparitions will last. You will forget, as you tumble willingly, that there was a reason the turn of phrase is 'falling in love.'
But the saying is, perhaps, not so foolish after all. One cannot fall forever; everyone must land eventually. And if falling is rapture… landing is absolute, unforgiving agony.
If you are lucky, you will walk away with a few bruises, a sharp jolt back to reality and a handful of tears the truest scar… but if you are cursed, as I seemed to be, then the rousing will be a slow one. It will sneak up upon you, almost unsuspected. Time will slow, and often you will not realize your descent has ceased until you have no other choice but to realize that you have awakened within the deepest reaches of a personal hell.
Something will change within your dream world, you see, and the color that has danced into your life will seep away. The wings that you had sworn would always buffer you will have left, leaving merely a mockery, a memory of a sweeter dream. Sharp rocks have replaced the billowing wind currents at your back, and you will see, more than feel, your lifeblood mingling with the harsh ground below… Regret and bitterness will become second nature to you, for whether you are serf or President you will have been humbled.
What hurts most, perhaps, is that what changes occur usually seem so little, so insignificant… so small that you will not pay any notice to them until it is too late.
Surely you have some knowledge of the creatures that compose various toxins and biotics? Tiny though they may be, they can create atrophy amidst the strongest and brightest things that this world can offer, and nothing is immune. So it is when one falls out of love…
Perhaps it is an unfortunate comparison, comparing the dark-haired Turk to a microscopic germ. Perhaps it is a little ironic, given the aftermath of events between us. But the allusion is not unfit – both, you see, lived to kill.
And I can't say I ever trusted him. Not even in the early days, before she had made her choice. I'm sure you understand; it's an unspoken rule of human nature that most women trust the beautiful women in their midst about as far as they can throw them. I've never understood why the standard should be any different for men, and perhaps it isn't. We don't tend to discuss such things, in any case.
Make no doubt about it, however… it hurt to see her raise her eyes to him. It was then that I garnered the rather abysmal posture that remains with me today; I am still relatively young, and yet I know my back is hunched and my face is downcast most of the time. It just was easier that way; if I didn't look at her, I couldn't see her eyes looking straight through me; looking for him. I had seen them together that spring; often reading quietly, their silence companionable, and felt my heart constrict painfully as she would look up, and share a line or two with him from the book she cradled in her hands.
Before he darkened the door of this accursed place, I was the one she read with.
But as the days turned into months, the necessity for focus on what was the highly prestigious Jenova Project became crucial. I loved her – but this was the opportunity of a lifetime, and one I would not let slip at any cost - so when she would rap her two staccato knocks on my door, scientific journals and the cheap mystery novels she loved under her arms to pull me out of my self-imposed isolation, I would shake my head and tell her I was busy.
I think I did that at first due to her reaction; her expression would turn cajoling, and she would weave her way into my room, drop her books, and grab my arms, trying playfully to get me to accompany her. And the wiser – better – part of me wanted to join her, and in those early days, sometimes I did, her spark, her warmth too much to resist.
Slowly, however, her visits to my wing of the Mansion became more and more sparing… and when she did come, her eyes were dim, shadowed… we both knew what I would say before she even asked. Even so, she would squeeze my shoulder companionably, or, as time progressed and we grew slowly closer despite my necessary isolation, she'd embrace me gently and tell me 'not to work too hard' – though we both knew I would.
I would treasure her concern; it was often the one thing that kept me awake as I pored over formulas and archaic theorem until the wee hours in the morning. Ambition is an unforgiving, exacting mistress… but, I digress.
Other times, she would pad into my room, clad in a pale green night-robe and carrying two cups of steaming hot coffee. These times were rarer, and I cherished them even more; we would exchange hypotheses about the Project, and she would offer a fresh pair of eyes to the scribblings I'd made that day. And for a few sparing moments, I would be content to rest… to set down my pen, set aside my thoughts, and shyly watch her as she worked.
Torchlight turned her hair into waves of copper, her high bangs framing a face that alternated from confusion to intrigue as she pored over the parchment… to amusement, as she caught my eyes on her. If an angel ever wore a well-loved green bathrobe and had a predilection for centuries-old theorems, then this angel was she…
To think… to think that I destroyed her.
But before everything turned terribly wrong, a wretch of a man soared to Elysia, if briefly… It was one of these treasured nights in mid-summer, the heat sweltering in the isolated mountain town that I first knew those hallowed fields; the first night that was the beginning of the end for we three unfortunates.
It began as a normal evening, but as the night wore on, and the effects of the coffee made it more difficult to focus on my precise – if miniscule – formulas, we retired to what served as the sitting room of my small 'suite.' For the life of me, I cannot recall what we talked about, curled up on opposite ends of the vintage couch beside the window.
I can, however, recall exactly how she leant forward, smiling shyly. And the exact timbre of her voice as she spoke…"I want to be with you," she told me, catching my glance as I looked at her, mildly perplexed at her movement and utterly shell-shocked at her words. Before I could look away, or reply to her rather uncharacteristically bold words, she carefully lifted my chin so that my eyes met hers…
I listened to her… I could imagine no other alternate. My soul delighted that she had seen past Valentine's charms, weighing the hours we had spent together – or apart, but never distant – as more meaningful.
She continued, her arms now wrapped around my neck, and her eyes earnest. "You can't do it alone, you know… I can't either… maybe we can help each other." Looking down, she chuckled wryly, obviously regretting her words due to my lack of reaction. "Look… I'm sorry. I must sound absolutely daft to you."
I can't explain or describe what well of courage found me at that moment. But I will forever feel grateful for it – one of the few impulses that turned out beneficially in my life. Shifting forward, and slipping my hands to rest delicately on her waist, I replied. "Not at all, my dear. Perhaps the wisest words I have heard yet today."
And oh, she beamed. Despite myself, I felt colour rising in my cheeks, and offered a silent thanks to the dark ambience of the room. I'd never had much experience with the romantic side of life, after all; you may draw your own hypotheses, you will most likely be correct. Suffice to say that my academic tendencies and lack of stereotypical attractiveness decimated my potential for success with the opposite sex. But here was this angel-woman, eyes sparkling and honest and warm… and she wished to be mine. And though fool I was, I was not fool enough to refuse her.
So she became mine, and I hers… not in the traditional sense of the word… neither of us had time for the requisite nuptials. Weeks after we had slipped together that summer night, the Project interfered yet again.
New possibilities were discovered… the possibility to advance the human being as a species was at our hands, and yet the fool scientist at the head of the Project, Gast, refused to try it, calling it too risky, and possibly inhumane.
Hypocrite.
He was a scientist like me… his code was to tinker, to change, to alter… to try. It was our responsibility to investigate every angle – and if it was dangerous, to prohibit lesser men from dallying with thoughts that they should not. And perhaps… perhaps that was what he was doing at the time; I simply never saw myself as one of those 'lesser men.'
It didn't matter; he wasn't around for much longer to interfere. Even now, I feel the slightest inkling of guilt for his death… if only because it is what drew her back to the dark Turk. But if one abandons emotion and embraces logic… it could have been myself, just as easily, to have been the one to have tumbled down those rickety old steps, and not turning with them as they curved…
I always knew we should have replaced that railing.
It is a moment I will probably never forget; it is doubtful you ever really forget the first person whose death you are responsible for. If I recall correctly, it was late in the evening, just as the leaves outside were changing their hue and tumbling off the trees… He and I had been working in one of the libraries, arguing over the details of one of the angles of application… and oh, I can remember everything. I was more human back then… if only because of her.
The argument became more heated as we traveled up the hallway, and by the time we reached the top of the stairs, I remember how his eyes faded of anger and clouded with worry. Lowering his voice, the older man clapped his hands on my shoulders, and told me to back off. He was the senior scientist on the Project, a fact that he readily reminded me of in those later days, and warned me not to get in over my head.
Infuriated, I pushed his hands off my shoulders, and him away from me. "I know what I'm doing," I remember shouting, my shout turning into a gasp of horror as I saw him catch his heel on some of the carpet at the top of the stairs and tumble down, down…
It shouldn't have happened the way it did. I pushed him sideways, not downwards. But happen it did, and, after a moment of astounded shock, I tore after him down the steep flight of stairs.
This surprises you, does it not? Doubtless, you expected me to remain at the top of the stairs, watching him fall with a coolly pleased expression, rubbing my hands together and muttering unintelligibly. Perhaps I would have, in later years. As it was, it made no difference – even my shout to him to hold on to something went unheeded; the man must have hit his head on one of the steps and been knocked unconscious. A small blessing – at least he didn't have to feel himself die as he tumbled off the stairs and fell… oh, eight or nine feet headfirst. It doesn't sound like much, but granite flooring is rather unforgiving.
Just as I reached the landing which Gast had fallen over seconds earlier, my eyes wide with horror – he had annoyed the living daylights out of me at times, that man… but he was not unkind, and he had been a mentor of sorts, so some part of me shriveled as I saw his… body… sprawled and broken on the floor below – a willowy form emerged from one of the ground floor doorways.
And quickly proceeded to drop the tray of iced teas that she had been carrying, falling crystal smashing against the floor and breaking the deadly silence that had spread across the room. Her eyes shot first to Gast, a sharp intake of breath and a staggering step her immediate reaction… but as her eyes flew to myself, crouching over the landing… oh, they were astonished, and disgusted, and fearful all at once.
It was then that I realized just how bad the situation looked. On second thought… 'looked?' It was bad. I had just killed him… not deliberately, but the fear did not leave her brilliantly green eyes as I told her how we had struggled… and how it was almost impossible that it had happened.
"But it did," she countered softly. "It did… and he is dead."
"I know!" I shouted at her, grief and pain clear in my eyes. But obviously not clear enough.
"… You would…" she muttered, darkly.
If she could have taken a knife to my heart at that moment, it would have had much the similar effect as those two little words. And as she walked away, saying something about how the authorities needed to be called, and Shinra needed to be notified, and would I please do something about the poor man… the knife just twisted, bitterly.
Looking back, I think it twisted something in me, those final few seconds.
So we took care of Gast, and Shinra's medical inspector ruled it an accidental death – bad for press, but undeniably better than the murder that she saw it as.
She did not return to our room that night, and come morning, I found her, curled up on a couch in one of the Mansion's many atriums. A part of me was hurt by her refusal to see me… to be around me, unless absolutely necessary for the first couple of weeks after his death.
Time, however, has a way of if not healing, then blurring old injuries, and eventually she came to see more of me, and returned to our rooms. Fool that I was to have her once again by my side, I did not notice that she also came to see more of Valentine… hiding beside him when the thought of me frightened her. In reflection… her choice seems ironic; she was afraid of me because my actions had resulted in the death of one man, whereas the Turk made his living by killing people.
I suppose the difference was that she never saw him kill anyone.
For a few months, I believed that things had returned to the way they had before Gast's demise… she was warm, and kind, and I tasted happiness once again. The fear never truly left her eyes when she looked at me, and instead of seeing that as a sign, I thought it would merely fade with time. But by then, she had fallen out of love… and oh, I was falling, my wings broken and charred impossibly black.
As the weather turned colder, so did she. And eventually I came to notice this, as she slipped out of the bed we shared one too many times, tiptoeing feet bare whispers that most men would slumber through as peaceful as the babe that was beginning to stir within her womb. I, however, am not 'most men.'
And so one night, deep in midwinter, I feigned sleep until she slipped away. I walked to the window, looking outside in an attempt to calm the strange ache within my chest. Those few moments were the first and last I knew heartbreak… for the view in the courtyard below drew me to an absolute halt.
She stood there in the embrace of the Turk, his fingers dancing reverently over her slightly pregnant stomach, her head resting on his shoulder like it belonged there…
Almost without even thinking, my eyes blurred with exhaustion and pain and tears, I grabbed my tattered blue bathrobe from where it hung behind our door and wrapped it around myself. So this was how it ended… I had almost left the room when the glint of my shotgun barrel caught my eye… and for better or worse, I picked it up from where it lay inert before I left to confront the two clandestine lovers.
I had already lost my soul by that point. I was not about to lose her, too.
…
…finis…
…
Disclaimer – Hojo, Lucretia, Gast, and Vincent do not belong to me. I'm kind of glad they don't… but, all thoughts aside, they're Square's. Most everything else you recognize are theirs as well. Hojo's reference to "Elysia" is a reference to Dante's Elysian Fields. As well, the quotes at the beginning or in the summary aren't mine either. Leonard Cohen's, the estate of Mr. la Rochefoucauld, and Andrew Lloyd Webber's, respectively.
Sabriel's Scribbles – Oy. Mentally exhausting, this. I'm going to go outside and sit in the sunshine for a very long time now. It all began as a plot concept for Crimson Sun, who asked for a first-person Hojo-fic. And the idea truly would not let go. I hope you enjoyed, Lady Crimson! My thanks also go out to WrexSoul and Silverlocke980 for beta-ing, and encouraging, and reminding me to get my act together. You guys helped more than you'll ever know, and I'm uber-thankful for it.
The obvious question is… why in heaven's name would I try to make Hojo a remotely sympathetic narrator? Part of it is the 'Phantom' quote – 'fear can turn to love, you'll see to learn to find the man behind the monster; repulsive gargoyle who seems a beast but secretly… yearns for heaven, secretly…' Besides… a part of me wants to believe that he really did love Lucretia – and her betrayal was what twisted him. Neither were blameless… love has destroyed greater men and women; this is simply my take on their tale. It is up to you whether you agree with me or not; but that is the beauty of fanfiction. In the meanwhile, it would be lovely to hear your thoughts; comments and constructive criticism are always welcomed. And yes, "Echoes' " events dovetail nicely with "A Science Apart's" - simply a change of narration. Fascinating, the things you see when you look from behind different eyes…
Peace, and Starry Nights…