What Makes A Monster?
Chapter Two: All Washed Up
A/N - Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I do appreciate the criticism and I'll do what I can to keep you from being disappointed... Unfortunately, that doesn't look like it's going to happen.
A Vincent Fan - Thanks, and I know what you mean by the pairing thing... I'm thinking of not having one. It was sort of a brief idea, thinking that maybe I should have this fic also dedicated to a pairing, since my other two fics aren't. But, you're right.
Duo Akira - Sorry it was so short, I've gotten really bad with leaving cliffhangers lately. .O; I hate cliffhangers when I read stories but I do it in my own... I'm a hypocrite. XD And thanks for the pairing suggestion, but the way things are looking, I regretfully don't think I'll be using it.
Kd Zeal - I agree, I don't think a pairing is exactly necessary for the fic... It was more of a passing thought. And as for the author's note, I was hoping it would reel more people in to anticipate how things would unravel... I was concerned that they would not be interested if I didn't give a more detailed summary of what would happen. But I've removed it since the summary explains it well enough.
Nameless - Thanks for the pairing suggestion, I like Cid with Vincent too, but Kd Zeal and A Vincent Fan have a point in that it's not necessary for this particular fic and I do understand how it goes somewhat against Vincent's character to have someone.
All around him, there was darkness... Darkness occasionally dappled with crimson memories, bloody visions of days long since passed...
"I'm sorry, Vincent..."
That voice... That sweet voice, like bells chiming in his head...
"Understand this... I am in love with Hojo. Not you."
Only that voice could cause him such agony...
"I could never love a monster..."
Only that voice could break his heart.
And since when have you had a heart, Vincent? A dark, sinister voice chuckled in his mind. Don't kid yourself... What you felt for that woman was simply lust and obsession. Monsters like you and I are unable to love. It's a foreign, alien emotion, a chemical reaction in the brains of human beings that we could never experience.
You say that as if I were never human, Vincent thought wryly.
You say that as if you think you were. Chaos retorted. You may have physically been a human, but your heart has long since been turned to a black, withered thing in your chest. You are a killer, Vincent, a cold-blooded murderer. You always have been. You always will be.
Vincent turned his consciousness away from the demon, only to find himself being plunged into another memory.
The light above his head was blinding... Everything in his body screamed with pain, especially around his chest... He felt a heaviness in his chest, and groaned as another breath of air was forced into his lungs from the mask over his mouth. Beyond the brightness of the light, he could see the darkened outline of Professor Hojo, the silver surgical tools in his bloody hands glinting in the light.
He felt so light, so detatched from his body... The pain seemed muted, as if his brain knew, for the sake of his sanity, to reject the complaints of the screaming nerve endings being torn and severed, but was unable to do so completely. He slowly turned his head away from the blinding light, focusing on another form lying on an adjacent table... Lucrecia... Quietly crying as she stared at him in horror, her hands over her mouth, her body swollen with pregnancy.
You were my first love
The earth moving under me
Bedroom scent, beauty ardent
Distant shiver, heaven sent
Their eyes met, and her eyes grew wider as she saw just how aware he was of what was happening to him. She whispered his name, her face ashen, her shaking fingertips raised to her mouth.
I'm the snow on your lips
The freezing taste, the silvery sip
I'm the breath on your hair
The endless nightmare, devil's lair
There were wires and tubes connected all over her naked body, mostly over the swollen mound of her stomach. Tears continued to fall from her emerald eyes as she closed them and turned her face away, her untidy auburn hair unbound and unkempt. She was seven months pregnant... Just two months before the innocent babe would fall completely into Hojo's hands.
Only so many times
I can say I long for you
The lily among the thorns
The prey among the wolves
A loud whirring noise turned Vincent's attention back to Hojo... He knew he shouldn't look, he wouldn't want to see what he planned to do next... But it was like witnessing a car accident. You hear what has happened, and you turn to see, all the while knowing that what you saw would not be pleasant...
Someday I will feed a snake
Drink her venom, stay awake
With time all pain will fade
Through your memory I will wade
He had a bone saw in his bloody hands, the little circular blade whirling away as it was lowered into his chest cavity. His ice blue eyes widened, until pain exploded through his body. A scream tore from his throat, a high-pitched shriek of agony as his mind crumbled and his sanity fled. Darkness consumed him for a short time, and when his vision cleared again, he was in a different memory. Floating in one of the mako-filled tubes, his long raven hair floating around his scarred body, he witnessed Sephiroth's birth... and as the blood gushed from Lucrecia's birth canal, dripping off of the surgical table, he witnessed the only love of his life die, her hands reaching out, longing to hold her baby as her life fled from her body, only to be shunned as Hojo coldly turned away.
Barely cold in her grave
Barely warm in my bed
Settling for a draw tonight
Puppet girl, your strings are mine
Hojo never batted an eyelash at her death... the death of the woman that looked up to him and loved him... He only had eyes for the wailing babe in his arms, with his little silver thatch of hair and bright emerald green cat eyes. He never heard the harrowing scream of loss and despair that tore from Vincent's throat, drowned in the mako he was imprisoned in.
This one is for you, for you
Only for you
Just give in to it, never think again
I feel for you
All Hojo could see was the beginning of his most monstrous experimentations yet on the poor innocent babe, who already showed an intelligence and awareness of everything around him. The poor child that he glimpsed every so often through the first few years of his life, who had looked upon him with curiosity and grimness as he floated endlessly in that tube of mako... Until the day he was sealed in the coffin to live with his nightmares for thirty years, trying to repent...
Because he could not save her.
Because he could not save them.
Sephiroth, no matter what he had done, was a victim... A victim of Vincent's inability to save Lucrecia and him from Hojo's clutches when he had the chance to do so. The Planet's peril was Vincent's fault because he did not stop the problem when it began. Everyone who had died by Sephiroth's hands was his fault. Everyone who suffered and died by the Weapons being sent out was his fault... Because he did not save Sephiroth and Lucrecia from Hojo's madness.
Would he ever be able to repent enough for these sins...?
Vincent's crimson eyes snapped open against the glowing green of the lifestream at a sudden jolt of pain coursing through his body. The demons within him growled nervously as he looked around, as if expecting there to be something in the lifestream to have caused the unexpected pain. He turned in the thick, viscous liquid, unable to see anything around him, when the jolt of pain hit again - and this time, he wasn't the only one affected. Death Gygas let out a confused, almost comical, ...Ar? noise in his mind before suddenly bellowing with agony.
Vincent's confusion soon faded as the pain returned tenfold, screaming as he felt an intense pressure along his back and shoulders. Writhing in the liquid, tossing and turning in a desperate attempt to somehow escape whatever was causing the pain, his black shirt stretched tight against his extending back, tearing slowly down the middle. The bulging tumor extending from his entire back slowly formed into the back, shoulders, and head of Death Gygas, the demon somehow being forced from Vincent's body, painfully separating from him.
He couldn't stop screaming, it hurt so much... As Death Gygas suddenly became aware of the freedom involved in his parting from Vincent, he started struggling against him, ripping and tearing away from his host like an immensely large baby clawing and kicking its way out of the womb. Finally, the demon's massive feet slipped free, and he barely had time to celebrate before being swept away by the current.
Left feeing exhausted, aching, and bewildered, Vincent stared off after the demon as it cartwheeled down the current... Wondering for a moment why he seemed to be remaining still while the demon was flushed away... But his curiosity took the back seat once again as the pain returned, and this time it was Hellmasker that was chosen to be ejected.
But Hellmasker wasn't so gentle as dear Death Gygas. He had a chainsaw.
Vincent's eyes widened so far that the whites of his eyes could be seen all around his bloody irises, as the scream of the chainsaw sounded behind him.
Hellmasker wasn't the dull-witted imbecile that Death Gygas was... Oh, no. The emotionless demon was quite cunning, and figured out easily that he would probably get out of Vincent faster if he took off a few layers of Vincent's flesh.
The Lifestream was suddenly stained with a burst of blood as the demon began sawing into Vincent's back. The poor ex-Turk was howling with agony, his voice swallowed up by the Planet's luminescent blood, struggling to mentally push Hellmasker out of him, to get him to cease his relentless assault. Kind of like giving birth to a sadistic chainsaw-wielding baby... (Ouch, anyone?)
With one last mental push, Hellmasker was free, and was also swept downstream. Unable to move, Vincent found the current picking up, and suddenly saw the reason for the quickening current... Lifestream was descending on Midgar right along with Meteor.
...I'm going to die... Vincent thought numbly, just before he was swept down and lost all consciousness.
