The Ring
By Charles Xavier
Sleeping alone in the bedroom reminded Vincent of the long years he slept in darkness in the coffin back at the Shinra mansion. The doctor had said that Yuffie would be able to return home fairly soon, along with the baby. Meanwhile, things had been utterly dull around the house, not to mention a little scary. Vincent could still sense 'something' lurking around Wutai, and it didn't feel good. His mind was stuck to it as he tried his best to get some sleep during the late night.
"Why is it that I'm unable to sleep?" Vincent asked himself, even though he knew the answer. He was worrying about Yuffie; it had been exactly a week from this night since she watched that wretched tape. Vincent was very much fearing that his wife COULD be in danger at any moment…
"It is over." A mystical voice suddenly chilled the air around Vincent's bed, who sat up immediately with both eyes wide open. "It is over for her...it is time for her to die."
The hospital had been pretty quiet tonight. Hikari was already fast asleep in her arms, and all the lights in the hospital corridor had been turned out completely an hour ago. Yuffie didn't feel too sleepy herself, though. She didn't know why either, her mind wasn't in any deep thought, and all she wanted to do was shut her eyes and go off into dreamland. But somehow, she could feel that all wasn't quite as well as she thought.
"Sleep now, Hikari." Yuffie said when she heard her daughter moan in her sleep…just by looking at her sweet face, Yuffie wondered whatever she was dreaming about that made her feel so uncomfortable.
Though Yuffie was beginning to feel very uncomfortable herself, when the television set in front of her bed magically switched itself on. Yuffie, most astonished, reached for her remote and tried all she could to switch the television off…it only proved useless. At first white fuzzes appeared on the screen, but moments after that, the screen set itself an image upon a stony well in the middle of a dark forest…the whole picture made Yuffie pale in fear…for the well looked horrifically familiar to her. It was the same one from her dreams.
"No, it can't be."
It was. And Yuffie's heart began to beat quickly when she saw a white hand rise out from the well. A woman with black long hair showed herself, her face being completely concealed by her hair. She glued her dark site onto Yuffie's eyes and slowly left the well, approaching silently towards the television screen. Yuffie immediately sat up and backed away to the opposite end of her bed, holding Hikari tight with her.
As the ghostly woman reached as close as possible to the TV, she reached out her arms through the screen, and slipped her whole body through the glass. She landed right onto Yuffie's bed, and started crawling towards her.
Hikari, awakened by the noises, opened her eyes to catch her fist site upon Lucrecia closing in on her. And all she could do was cry…but Yuffie wasn't going to let anything happen to her.
Just as the woman was about to grip her nail torn fingers onto Yuffie's white gown, Yuffie swiftly dodged her hand and jumped out of the bed with a big leap successfully. The leap, unfortunately, left Yuffie to collapse down onto the floor…Yuffie knew that she was in no state do these kinds of dangerous stunts, but this was a matter between life and death. She looked down at Hikari, still crying in her arms, but she was luckily unharmed. And recovering as quickly as she could, she got onto her feet before her enemy did and fled the room.
"HELP ME!" Yuffie screamed down the deserted corridors. "SOMEBODY HELP ME, PLEASE!"
No one was around to answer her calls. Yuffie tried not to look back to see Lucrecia come lurching slowly towards her like a mindless zombie, in her dirty white gown. As she chased Yuffie, her shoulder bones kept to moving out of their place, Lucrecia simply shifted them back into position as the sound of irresistible bone crunching echoed down the corridor. She would ultimately stop at nothing to kill Yuffie and the baby…nothing…
As Yuffie ran as fast as she could for dear life, she did her best to comfort Hikari at the same time. Her legs weren't as strong or fast as they normally were before, since Yuffie was still quite weak after her childbirth. And with the fact that she didn't have a Conformer or any kind of weapon with her right now, Yuffie only prayed that somebody could answer her cries for help.
But when she reached the end of the corridor, somebody was already there waiting for her.
"Vinnie?!" Yuffie cried out. Vincent slipped out his Death Penalty gun, cocked it, and pointed it towards his wife's forehead. "What…? What are you doing?!" Yuffie gave him a look of extreme fear. For a second she thought Vincent had lost his mind. But…
"Get down." Vincent yelled when he saw Lucrecia raising her arms to grab Yuffie from behind.
Yuffie ducked at once, avoiding Lucrecia altogether. Vincent pulled the trigger of his gun and fired directly into Lucrecia's forehead. The bullet shot past her hair, penetrated into her blue skin, ran though her brain and shot right out from the back of her skull.
"Ugh…"
Lucrecia staggered around for a few seconds, tilting back her bleeding head, and finally collapsed to the ground.
Smoke puffed out from the barrel of Vincent's gun. And after witnessing what he had done, Vincent settled down his weapon and looked at his wife. "Yuffie, are you okay?" He asked.
Yuffie, on her knees, looked back and saw Lucrecia's body resting still on the floor…when all of a sudden, she saw the body slowly convert itself into dust, which blew itself away into the atmosphere and disappeared like the sands of the desert. No trace of Lucrecia could be seen anymore and Vincent too could see it.
She was gone.
"Yuffie…?" Vincent looked down at her, who was trying to hush down Hikari from the shock. "Yuffie are you okay." He saw tears run down her cheeks like before when she first gave birth to her daughter…but this time, he knew that she could be truly happy now.
"I'm fine, dear. Hikari is too." Yuffie softly replied, rocking her baby gently. Hikari stopped crying as the mother calmed her down, as she was soon back to sleep. "Sshh…it's okay, Hikari. Mommy's here. Go back to sleep now… there are no more nightmares…"
"There are no more nightmares." Vincent murmured, as he kneeled down to Yuffie and wrapped his arm around her to give her the comfort she needed. "Rest in peace, Lucrecia…rest in peace."
The End
Author's Note: Quite an abrupt ending, ne? Sorry about that, though. This story was taking too long for me to finish, and I just had to stop it sooner. But otherwise, please review and be nice about it…I seriously don't approve of flames.
Well, I'll still be writing plenty of fanfics, so I dunno…look out for another Yuffentine fic from me sooner or later (maybe at times when you least expect it). ^_^