This is horribly rough, but it hella snowed today and I felt compelled to finally finish this. Rest assured that it will be refined sometime.
Disclaimer: Obviously I lay claim only to this plot and all unfamiliar characters.
Waltz of the Snowflakes
The countdown began not with the slowing of a ticking clock, but a gunshot.
Bang.
Now the clock was all he heard, counting down to his imminent death. Sometimes he thought he saw things - a blinding fluorescent light; the silhouette of someone leaning over him; flashes of a past he could never reclaim. At other times he could feel things - the blade of a scalpel and needles violating his flesh; regret and anger over something worth lamenting. But all his senses seemed repressed, deadened as if from a drug.
Only his hearing wasn't affected; the ticking clock was deafening, and he idly wondered how long he would be able to stand it before he finally died. Maybe he was already going insane.
Abruptly, the ticking stopped.
A bell tolled.
Vincent's crimson eyes snapped open at the same time he felt warmth on his arm, and heard a gasp at his side along with an ominous scuttling around him. Immediately his eyes went to the flash of silver he had seen in the corner of his vision, and met the jade orbs of a silver-haired girl whom he realized had been resting on his arm. The child, though she had been distracted by something behind her, kept her eyes locked with his until the scuttling grew louder persistently.
She frowned as she whirled around, glaring fiercely. "Go away!" she growled, but suddenly yelped when her leg was grabbed by an unseen force. Immediately moving into action, Vincent wrapped his right arm around her and leapt up from his prone position. The table he had been laying on was splintered from the sudden assault of the mass of black creatures attacking.
As he landed, he reacted before he could assess the things before him, pushing the child behind him and striking out with his left hand. One of the creatures that had leapt at him ended up impaling itself on the claws that adorned his left hand; he didn't know which was more horrifying, the claw or what he finally saw was a monstrous rat that hung from it.
There was no time to think over this as he was very much aware of the little girl still shielded behind him; his altered state; and the teeming mass of creatures before them. His right hand felt for a gun that wasn't there; narrowing his eyes, he brandished his gauntlet and tore into the fiends.
Blood was pounding in his ears; he felt a growl rising up from within him, and through the new, horrible, powerful and murderous urges coming from seemingly different parts of his sanity he stayed intact. One command rose above all this, one that drove him to slash and rip and tear apart because he could not fail, not again, never again.
And that was the need to protect.
The swarm of monster rats seemed to gather and form a new entity, and as it took shape he almost paid no heed to the bared fangs that pricked his lip.
Logic was leaving him swiftly, screaming that this was just another nightmare; the endless darkness and eternal presence of beasts, hell-spawn and torment, this is what he has become and made himself and there will be no escape. You're still sleeping.
Hojo, having risen from the rats like a king, smiled unnaturally wide as he raised his gun.
"Leave him alone!"
A glimpse of flowing white, and that girl had grabbed the tail of Hojo's horrendous form. The mad scientist glanced her way, and Vincent didn't give him time to attack her. His claw shot for his throat.
Too late.
Bang.
"Mister!"
Ignoring the pain spreading through his abdomen, Vincent tore out Hojo's gullet. His nemesis let out an inhuman roar, and the black mass of rats seemed to pulsate and grow, spreading to consume everything around them. Wide, startled jade eyes filled his vision for a moment before Vincent clutched the girl to him and shielded her with body and cape as the darkness drowned them both.
After the horrible rush and roar, everything was starkly quiet. There were only his ragged breaths, then…
"Hey, mister? Are you all right?"
Realizing his eyes had been shut, Vincent slowly opened them to a bleary, blinding white world. His knees were numb from kneeling in the snow, insignificant to the small warmth coming from the child on his arms.
With a soft groan, he released her and would have fallen forward onto the frozen ground had she not caught him, helping him to sit up into a slouched position.
"You're b…bleeding pretty badly, mister."
What kind of world was this, where a little girl would kneel before him to place a trembling hand on his open wound? A little girl whose hand glowed and healed that wound, unnatural as her pristine white nightgown stained with blood, her mussed silver hair, and – when she raised her eyes to his, smiling – the slit pupils in her fearless, abnormally bright gaze?
A little girl… who was hauntingly familiar…
He opened his mouth to speak, and his voice, hoarse from disuse, wouldn't come at first. "Who… are you?"
The child's smile didn't falter as she stood to gently place her hands on his shoulders. "I think I'm just as confused as you are, mister." She broke his gaze to look around her. "I dunno where we are or why it's snowing…"
Grunting, Vincent pushed himself to his feet, still a little sore even after the girl's strange healing. Unconsciously he placed his hand atop her head as he stood aside, surveying this place that set him at unease after so long a stay in hell. The landscape was an endless white, and what he thought was the sky was a barely noticeable shade of grey, from which came a steady shower of snow.
A light touch brushed his hand, and he looked down to see the girl take it from her head and into her own.
She caught his questioning look and shrugged. "So I don't get lost. Dunno where to go from here."
Vincent nodded and returned his thoughtful gaze to the bleak and serene scene around him. He sighed deeply, taking advantage of the moment of peace, however little he deserved it. The snowy landscape started to bring him unease and a faint recollection of trudging through snow and arriving before a door.
He had to find the professor, impossible as it was. Instead he found this girl, and…
"I think I really like you, mister." She surprised him further by squeezing his hand a little. "I don't really know you, but the professor does, and you're really weird. …I didn't think there was anyone else like me."
"No." Vincent shook his head. "You're not like me."
"What makes you say that?"
Now he looked back down at her, and she met his eyes much too calmly for a child so young, after seeing him face monsters not unlike himself, after holding his bleeding form. And Vincent had the sinking, stunning feeling that were he to lay out his sins she wouldn't even blink.
Even though he didn't answer her, she still smiled at him, swinging his hand a bit. "I like you anyway."
Before he could deny that this young life could accept the shell of a man he was, a sound from beyond distracted him. It started as a laugh or a cry, and it grew until it sounded like it was swirling along them with the crystal flakes. The child pressed against his leg in bewilderment and Vincent held her there with a hand on her back.
"What's going on? That sound… Mister?"
He couldn't answer her; his head was swimming, his vision growing dark and the world disappearing from his view as he found himself falling backwards.
"Hey! What are you doing?" The girl came into his view, leaning over him with a concerned look.
Vincent's lips moved of their own accord, it seemed. "Sleep…"
It's not yet time for this redemption.
The child tried to retort, but already he saw her eyes grow heavy; he felt her tiny fingers lacing with his as the snowflakes danced around their prone forms, and then… nothing.
"And the dreams continue…"
Far, far from where a girl lay tangled in blankets and dreams and a man in a coffin sealed by guilt, a young man continued to watch delicate threads of life as they began to entwine; the thread was fragile, incomplete, but it would hold.
"Now, we wait… my dear."
He turned and went to a timeless figure on an ethereal throne. He went down on a knee and gently held her passive face in his hand.
"Time has been merciful to you, but it won't be forever. …You must watch over all of them. These young ones will depend on you."
He stood and turned to resume his watch over the passing ages, awaiting the next one to arrive.
And the ageless girl sat in silence; on her face the ghost of a smile; in her eyes the shimmer of tears.
