It's been a long time since I posted, but I kind of lost the thread a bit. I hope you can forgive me. I had written the first part of the chapter a long time ago, and I was reasonably pleased to stumble across it again. Please review if you want more updates! JJ x
Chapter 6: Back When
Vincent adjusted the neck of his cape, a means to busy himself as he hesitated by the gates of the mansion. He scowled up at the menacing building, wondering what had seized Tifa to think she could make it appear anything other than what it was; a fearful relic of times past.
She was certainly braver than he was, lurking by the entrance and reflecting back upon his unfortunate transgressions, from decades before.
Bricks and mortar. It almost became a mantra, though what little good it did.
Steeling himself, he marched toward the front door, raising his metal arm to thump against the wood in announcement of his arrival. The contact pushed the door open an iota, the hinges creaking dully—had she left the door open? He frowned. It was almost nightfall, and quite cool.
He waited, leaning close to the narrow crack, listening for any sound from within the house that would indicate Tifa had heard his herald at the door, and was coming to answer. Perhaps she was elbow deep in hot soaping water, cursing to herself at that very moment while he fretted on the doorstep.
Surely he knew Tifa enough that he could step inside, even if to wait within the entranceway for her?
He made it his business not to know anyone in Avalanche enough, Chaos snidely remarked in his head. What made him think he was welcome in anyone's home? A good question, he acceded. He had felt some sort of compulsion to call in, during one of his circuitous routes of the continent, travelling from place to place hunting monsters and collecting bounties; Honour-bound to check upon his comrades, even if only in the form of peering in their windows and checking that all was well, never leaving the shadows.
Tifa was certainly no exception to this; he would make a personal enquiry on this occasion, though whether for his sake or hers, he wouldn't admit even to himself.
Time stretched—perhaps she couldn't hear him from wherever she was in the house. Should he come back later perhaps, tomorrow? Well, he should at least close the door…
Leaning forwards ever so slightly, he caught sight of something glinting in the slither of light from the dying sun. Broken glass?
He pushed the door wide, the heavy wood resisting as though it wished to hide the secrets within it from him.
The door stood open, revealing a carnage of shattered metal and green glass fragments glittered innocently in the glare from outside. One stride, two and he was kneeling over the mess, close enough now to spot droplets of blood—a space where a figure had been, had fallen and landed and…
Trained eyes scanned the surroundings, for a missing clue, for some indication that she hadn't simply…
"Vanished…" He muttered, fingertips of his flesh hand plucking one of the larger glass fragments from its resting place and raising it to eye level. Was that… materia? He could smell faint traces of mako on the air. The tiny spattering of blood told him that this incident had taken place at least a couple of days ago.
Something had gone horribly wrong.
He waited in silence by the entranceway, the fragment of materia clutched tight in his palm. The sharp edges cut into the flesh, though he barely noticed, even as blood dripped onto the stone by his boots.
He had called Cloud and the others, for lack of ideas of what to do. At best, the earliest anyone could be there was hours from now, approaching dawn. He knew he should look around some more, though the mansion was harrowing enough without the darkness and the prospect that it had claimed one person already ruined his nerve.
His palm began to sting, and his hissed, raising the cut to his lips and sucking the blood away. The glass fell, tinkling innocently to the ground. His palm and now his tongue tingled, and glancing down where the glass lay, he noted it glowed faintly.
Materia had broken apart. And Tifa had disappeared into thin air.
There was a gaping hole in the chain of events that led to this point, and he felt the pull of the urge to understand. With a resolute breath, he strode into the mansion and down into the dank and dark of the library. If there were answers, he would find them here.
-0-
Vincent's flesh rose in goosebumps and simultaneously started to sweat, his sympathetic nervous system kicked into action, stimulated by the terrible memories and experiences associated with this small segment of hell on Gaia. It seemed to take an age to cross that dank and awful corridor, past the room that had been his prison for decades, and into that accursed laboratory.
The scent of mildew prevailed. Underneath it nestled biting sharpness of acid compounds, and the cloying must of rotting wood: So far from the order and meticulous tidiness that accompanied a collection of scientific, if not maniacal minds.
Yet something seemed amiss to him, even in spite of all of this. The place had always elicited a strange feeling within him. He recalled the first moment he had stepped inside the entrance hall – in good repair and all it's grandeur, there was something about that room that had unsettled him. As though something was there that should not have been. The moment was fleeting and it passed, but he never forgot it. A lifetime's experiences could not compare to the strangeness of that moment.
He felt it here again now, in the lab.
His mind began to work through the evidence, circumstantial and inferred alike.
Textbooks had been stripped from the shelves and stacked haphazardly one on top of the other – the reader, Sephiroth, had paced here for days, pouring over the pages, horrified by what they told him.
He noted the air in here was relatively dry after all this time. The place would burn easily. He resisted the urge, the materia in his gauntlet humming in response to his thoughts.
What knowledge could be gleaned from these tomes? The question, Vincent corrected himself, should be what knowledge should be erased from existence for the protection of all…
-0-
Tifa stirred from her sedative induced slumber somewhere in the twilight—was it dawn or dusk? Her body seemed to struggle with her desire to move, limbs weighted by sleep and disuse, the space in her head fuzzy as if stuffed with cotton wool. She raised a sweaty palm to her feverish forehead.
She was alone, dressed in a long silk robe tied at the waist with a sash, her hair loose and soft, as if it had been combed out.
Bird song – she listened to it carefully. She recognised the call of the Lark. It was dawn then.
She remained still for a time, ears attuning to her environment. She settled on the fact that she was in Wutai, still, sometime shortly after she had been pulled from the tank by Vincent – A Vincent from the future who somehow knew to bring her here so his past self would find her.
She rubbed at her temples. It was all such bullshit! She wanted to laugh, really she did. This had to be a fucked up dream. Gods she was going to love telling Cid and the guys about this over a beer back at the bar… Time travel, Vincent in love with her… It had to be a dream.
Except she had sold the bar. She had bought the ShinRa mansion. And if she was asleep or in a coma for that matter, her corporeal form was in fact lying on the mansion floor.
She wondered if someone had found her, or had noticed she was missing? Her skin erupts in strange goosebumps at the thought, a sensation akin o walking through a sheet of ice. Somehow she knew that someone had noticed her missing.
She exhaled shakily, tears flowing along the curve of her cheekbones. She was trapped from that life now. She would never see her friends again, as she knew them.
She had never felt so alone.
-0-
Give me these moments back.
Give them back to me.
Give me that little kiss.
Give me your hand.
-Kate Bush, This Woman's Work