Chapter Ten

Devoured, Deserved

Ashes to Ashes

-Funeral service from The Book of Common Prayer

Yuffie shuffled through Nibelheim, intent on finding a bar and staying there until dark. Then she could steal a chocobo from the public stables and trek away from the depressing village. As she moped through, kicking loose stones with her feet, she found her traitor feet had led her to where she least wanted to go; to where she most wanted to go. Walking forward with tentative steps, she looked with awe-filled horror at the ruins of the Shin-Ra Mansion.

Ashes. They covered the place, and as Yuffie took a step through the partially melted gate, her shoes immediately tread on black soot, ashes that formed a small dust-cloud around her foot. Looking up from her feet, her heart throbbed terribly. The front wall on her left had put up a fight, coming up to where – if the door had still been there – half the door was. It sloped upwards until it came to a high point, up to half the second story. The wall it connected with was mostly intact, but covered with char marks and riddled with holes, like an ancient book with pages eaten out. At one spot near the back, the wall was almost black – well, what was left of it. The right side of the front wall only had a meek existence, a pathetic upshot next to the door that quickly vanished to nothing. Yuffie felt her heart pound all the way down to the sole of her shoes as she walked silently inside.

Just as soon as she walked in, she looked up. She looked around, woe and strife trickling into her eyes and spilling onto her face. The previously grand staircase had melted and distorted railings as the staircase itself was black with soot and char. At the top it was mostly whole, but about halfway down the right side of the staircase vanished, and slowly the gap grew wider until at the bottom there was only a sliver of staircase. It was perplexing, because near the back – the Piano Room – there was signs of more intense burning, like on the right of the mansion. The best Yuffie could figure, villagers torched the front right corner while another mob chuckled a torch throw a window in the piano room.

Yuffie took a step forward, looking around mournfully and found her foot happened upon thin air. She darted back, standing on the tips of her toes as she, for the first time, looked down. What she found was nothing. The hardwood floor had been burnt up, and only continued to the sliver of staircase, jutting out over the empty bottom of the staircase. She supposed the fire department had stepped in, otherwise the whole place would be ashes and dust.

Something else about the gap snatched her eye, however. Where the grand staircase ended, or should have, a new staircase began. Concrete, it started out wide, like an extension of the grand staircase, but narrowed to a spindly spiral. Yuffie, glad she had her trusty weapon with her, decided she must know what was down there.

Testing the floorboards, she bounced slightly. Weak. So she cautiously made her way around the very outside of the floor, nearest to the walls. Chances were that it would be weak next to the gap. Peering into the kitchen, it was a depressing sight. Her feet drew her in, body unwilling.

She didn't think Vincent had actually been here the night of the torching. Apparently, she was wrong.

He must have come back for something he needed. In any case, he had appeared to be clearing out the kitchen, a smart thing to do for a traveler, especially in the mountains. Things that wouldn't last were stacked in a pile, and things too heavy to bring. Beans, canned goods and water bottles, however (there were only two – he must have snatched up the rest) were all in a separate pile. Reaching out, she found coffee and tea sitting forlornly between the two piles. She gave a weak smile, and closed her eyes.

She could almost see it.

Vincent Valentine was in full outfit, because she couldn't imagine him in disguise. His cloak was draped over a chair, and he was dragging everything out of the cupboards. True, he hadn't come here for this, but he had run out of water and food two days back. There would be no sense in leaving this behind. He checked labels (getting sick would be a most troublesome hindrance) and sorted them.

Though it was dark, he heard shouts. Wary, he grabbed a couple water bottles and cans and put them in his bag (Vincent didn't 'stuff' things) and his claw snatched up the cloak. The shouts grew louder and nearer, like a distant – angry – marching band. Without explanation, he darted out of the kitchen and made his way not out the door, but up the stairs. Dashing to the basement door, he glanced out a window. A mob, armed not with pitchforks but rifles, handguns, knives and fire. They buzzed angrily, a hive of bees that had been prodded by Vincent's presence. Or, he assumed. He hoped not. As there was an angry shout that was followed by a louder matching one from the mob, he heard glass break. Without another glance he opened and shut the stone basement door, and made his way down the rotten steps.

Above, the mansion burned.

Shaking her head, she picked up a forlorn can of beans. Well, Vincent had done all this nice work. No need for it to be wasted. Taking the large two waters and as many cans as she judged reasonable (too heavy was no good) she stuffed them in her constant companion, her black backpack, and left the kitchen, the hem of her red skirt stained with black.

She left the kitchen and peered into the piano room. All that was left of the piano was a couple foot pedals that had been melted, twisted and charred. Picking up one, she looked at it, hand becoming covered in black. The sun shifted from outside, and something tugged at the corner of her eye. Turning, her brow furrowed as she bent down. Brushing char aside, she picked up a jagged slab of wood. Rubbing the wood on the bottom of her skirt, she worked off the ashes and soot. She flipped over the wood and realization struck her. The number '10' blazed, bold as ever. Rubbing off more soot and ashes with her dress, she found the word 'Left' in front of it. Shaking her head, she found herself gripping the slab of wood tightly. "The varnish," she said to no one in particular, running fingers over it. "Must have been Fire-Proofed." For no reason she could fathom, she found herself putting it into a pocket of her pack. Hands black and dress patched with it, she left the Piano room with the clue that had fallen behind the ivory's short of tea and ray.

Emerging from the room, she stared into the vast pit. The concrete stairwell glared up at her, daring her. So she turned around. Gripping the melted mess of a railing, she began walking up the stairs. The whole place have been covered with Fire-Proof Varnish, she mused, that's why it took so long. That's why it's so oddly burnt. Walking up the stairs, she tested each before stepping up, and made her way to the top. Instead of turning right, she took an inexplicable left, to the master bedroom.

It was all the same. The far side was partially burnt out, and ashes, soot and mildew reigned. She sighed and made to turn around, but found herself glancing around once more. Walking forward, her brow furrowed. A drawer lay on the floor, having either been ransacked or knocked out. Pictures, three of them, burnt on the edges but saved. She picked one up and a pained smile forced its way onto her lips. It was the whole gang. Vincent was in the back, looking at the camera warily, like it was an adversary. Yuffie herself was in front, nearest to it, kneeling and grinning, flashing a peace sign.

She had the exact same picture in her pack.

But something about the burned edges, that he had bothered keeping it on his bedside or wherever meant something. Or not. Maybe she just felt like maybe he was still alive, if she kept a piece of what was his with him. So she tucked it away.

The next one she picked up had writing on the back. She could not read any of it, having been charred beyond recognition - that is, all but at the bottom, where the brown that marked the heat of the fire had halted, edging forward but never making it.

'Love, Vincent V.'

Love.

Knowing what she would find, and heart filled with foreboding, she turned the picture over. She gasped.

She had seen Lucrecia at her worst; wan, sickly, pale, trapped inside a crystal. Here, she was luminous. Hair that had seemed ratty, dull and mousy was here silky and shiny, pulled back but somehow managing to look just as lovely. She was fair skinned, but unblemished, brown eyes shining brightly as her white smile shone. Her eyes looked not at the camera, but at the one next to her.

If Yuffie had been surprised before, that was nothing compared to now.

It was Vincent. Oh yes, she'd expected that. But she hadn't expected this.

His hair was cut short and in a sloppy style, but in an impeccably neat way only Vincent could pull off. It fell over an eye but was flicked out of the way, and his eyes were on her. His eyes. Yuffie's heart knotted. They shone with brightness, and they were a brilliant, gorgeous blue, the kind you could lose yourself. Though the blue was like the blue of a stone, hard, but somehow this woman had gotten to the shine beneath. But Yuffie's gaze traveled down. The knot in her heart tightened, and she knew know she would never get it out.

He was smiling. God damn he was, close lipped but warm and having been battled out of him it was full of loving defeat. Their foreheads touched and their smiles fit.

Yuffie hated it.

Never the less, she tucked it away, a picture she loved with a picture she hated.

Standing, she hiked her backpack up on her shoulders and cautiously made her way across the floor. As she came to the central staircase, she bit her lip but moved onwards. She had to explore territory she knew before she came to territory she didn't. Walking forward, she halted.

You see, most of the hallway was missing.

Frowning, she realized that all of it had been burnt out. It was impossible to get from here to there now. But then how did Vincent get out? Obviously there was another way out. And when there was another way out, there was another way in. And so she wouldn't be seen snooping around outside, she decided the next course of action was obvious. Turning, she made her way down the burnt up staircase, and reaching the bottom, she looked down and took a deep breath. The concrete staircase surrounded by a pool of black was hardly a welcoming image. Never the less, she took a step onto the staircase. Nothing happened, so she continued down through the hole at the bottom of the stairs. Her feet made no sound, and as she padded down, she found herself wishing it would.

As it narrowed to a spiral, she realized the guttural darkness was starting to be penetrated. Flashes of blue-green lit the area with an eerie glow before receding with an odd crackly-hum. Frowning, for the first time it occurred to her that someone might be down here. But as she continued, drawing her Conformer, she soon realized her feelings could be delayed slightly. For the staircase lowered into a wide, medical looking hallway. Nothing like the cavern at the bottom of the basement stairs, it was white if now dirty, and blue and green fluorescent lights flickered on and off, buzzing and humming from old age, fighting to stay alight. The place had an abandoned air about it, and left the place feeling eerie and haunted, even. No fiends seemed to be prowling, so that fear could subside. Still, she held it battle ready as she peered around the hall. Decided she better start with the first door she came to, she peered in the small window. As far as she could tell, no one was there. Carefully, she pushed the door open, and when silence and the electric buzz met her ears, she pushed it open more.

It seemed to be the supply room, like a walk in closet. Ancient bottles mottled the shelves, gauze, syringes and even bottled organs filling the shelves. More unsettling than not was that they hadn't been cleared out. Taking a flashlight off the shelf, she turned and let. Next she came to a set of doors across from each other. Turning to the right, she shined a small light through the window. She pushed the door open.

The room was much deeper than the earlier one, incredibly so. The room was much dimmer in overhead lighting, but that was not to say she couldn't see. The room was lined with three rows of cylindrical tubes, each around seven feet – in short, size for a human with extra room. The ones she could view in front were empty, filled only with brightly glowing green liquid. The green liquid seemed to pulse with an unnatural life, illuminating the dim room green.

Walking up to a tube, she peered in it. Walking along the middle row, she looked into the tubes, remembering that Cloud had been kept in one of these – or one like it. The ones in Hojo's office must have been for the ones needing closest attention, or his current favorites. Grimacing, as she was passing one, she placed her hand against it. About to pass on, she glimpsed out the corner of her eye and turned back. Squinting, she moved her face forward to peer into the tube. Her nose pressed against the thing before she drew back from surprise. Inside the thing, perhaps for years, was a tiny being. A baby, possibly even a fetus, unborn, though close to birth. Curled up in a little ball, she had nearly missed it because of the shocking effect of the mako and whatever else they had been experimenting with. The baby had lost some resemblance to a human. Fingers and toes were webbed, and the nose had gone sharp. But what was more shocking was the baby had formed crystals all over his or her – it was impossible to tell anymore – body, until the entire thing, like Lucrecia, was encased in crystal, with other crystallized parts jutting out sharply. Yet even more shocking than the crystals was the color of the baby. It was why Yuffie had almost missed it. After all the years in the tube, the baby had gone transparent. It was transparent, or nearly so, for it was a clear blue, even while still see-through. Yuffie shook her head, revolted and saddened, but as she turned, something happened.

The baby twitched.

Horrified, Yuffie looked in.

The baby opened its eyes.

They were a horrifying milky blue, crystals jutting out of blind eyes. Revolted, Yuffie made a noise and turned.

From there on, the tubes weren't empty.

Filled with grotesque failures – or so they appeared – they had probably been around for years even before Hojo died. Some were hardly human, and some she doubted had started out as so. She could barely bring herself to look at them, but she did, and she managed to loop around through all three rows. Again and again she looked at the horrible experiments, allowing them to cut her mind.

Across the hall was much of the same. She walked down the hall, feet slapping. The next four rooms were bedroom type things, with doors leading to two other bedrooms beyond it. Twelve bedrooms in all, gentle and feeling, one a nursery for multiple children. A discomforting paradox, such terrible experiments next to such innocent and gentle rooms. The next set of rooms reminded her of the room you were sent in before you were sent to the main doctor's office, between the waiting room and the actual examination room. Cold, stainless steel reigned, the room itself silver walled and floored. Most discomforting was that the patient bed-chair had restraints on it. Leaving these rooms, she found herself with no more rooms on the side. Instead, she found herself facing the set of double doors.

Eyes narrowing, she opened the right door cautiously, the room exposing itself, bit by bit. The door opened fully.

She gasped, the sharp intake seeming almost unholy in the godforsaken place. She took a few sudden steps backwards and closed her eyes fiercely, pressing the heels of her hands into her shut eyes. "Oh no, no, no, no, no," she whimpered, and couldn't will herself to open them again. Dread, however, peeled her hands from her face and pried open her eyes. Chest heaving and her breath hitching, her lower jaw trembled as she opened her eyes.

Stepping forward until the room was visible again, it took her entire will not to run straight out again. She could feel bile rising in the back of her throat. What she was in was obviously an operating room, large and filled with cold stainless steel and unfeeling tools. The main bed in the center was set at an angle, and it also had restraints. Stainless steel without a cover, with a metal tray next to it, full of cloths and syringes. Usually, the place would be medically clean, in the eerie way of hospitals and doctor's offices.

This, however, was a far shot from it. For one thing, they'd forgotten the patient.

The restraints had been taken off, and the man was cut open. Cut open in the most literal sense, using the traditional cut from autopsies. The traditional cut was a Y shape, the arms of the Y extending from each shoulder to the bottom of the breastbone, before a precise line extended to the pelvis. Yuffie could hardly keep from puking, for they hadn't even left the patient closed. His flesh was peeled back from his body like a sick parody of a banana, exposing the gory, tender insides.

To make it worse, the aforementioned wheeled tray was bloody, a couple instruments soaking in what had once been water, but now was as red as blood. A bloody washrag dipped into the bloody water before trailing over the tray and off the side. Bloody, terrifying instruments stained the papery sheet beneath it, and the blood caked on the long forgotten tools. The man on the table, eyes shut, seemed to loom with the potential of awareness, like the baby in the tube. But no, this man was long dead. The monitors and loads and loads of scientific and medical monitors had long ago stopped beeping, long ago stopped keeping him alive. Against her will and against her urge to barf, she looked inside the man.

If you blocked out the man, it was still disgusting, but you could try better to distance yourself when it had no face. She squinted, and couldn't believe what she saw.

The insides were a jumble. From anatomy lessons she could identify various organs, and they were nearly all there. The appendix had been removed, and as she glanced at the cart, she jumped. It was lying there, on the second, lower shelf of the cart, limp and lifeless like a fish lured up to shore. Shivering, she went back to her analysis.

The heart was not anywhere near the left breast. The heart, apparently, had been relocated. Relocated across and down to behind the bars of the ribcage, considerably lower than the high place in the chest. The rest of the organs had been relocated to fit the needs of the heart. It seemed that he had wanted to jumble them as much as possible, for he moved even ones that needed not moving. The stomach and the attaching intestine, which attached to the output of the whole digestive system, but that hadn't stopped him. He'd moved the stomach to where the heart should be, and when it was clear the intestines weren't going to stretch properly, he'd attached tubes that mimicked the actions of the intestines and transported it. She stared, transfixed. A stomach where the heart should be and a heart where the stomach should have been.

It seemed appropriate enough for a man whose love and obsession for science had devoured his wife.

Back on solid ground, he felt safer. A completely unreasonable feeling this safety was, as there was no reason to feel more clearheaded on land. Or perhaps it was the notion, that the sea was changing and whimsical, tossing and turning constantly while land was grounded. Grounded, like his emotions. Of course, sea made him think of her, because of how sick she always got. He found it almost comical that she in herself was the sea almost to a tee, changing, thrashing, whimsical but whenever she was on it she longed for the land. Her connections to the water Summon-god only strengthened the ties.

No matter. Putting her, or any of them, back into his mind would only get him captured. A single track mind was what he'd trained himself to have. Yet this again led back to her. Mostly because where his mind was focused, her mind ran all over the place, snatching ideas and thoughts out of the air and pulling them back in, and yet she could focus.

He shook his head. All of them had become his friends, against his will and against his better judgment. They'd wormed their way into his life, and he hadn't the heart and truthfully he didn't have the ability or, even if he found a way to drive him away, he realized he wouldn't want to.

How the tides had changed.

A uniformed officer strolled up from his patrol car, looking very serious as he lightly hit his nightstick into his hand. Then, he grinned and stuck out his hand. Vincent pulled his false smile and took the other's hand.

"Good to have you back, man," the police officer said and pulled in to pat him on the back a couple times in what Yuffie had often called 'the Manshake.'

"Good to be back." Vincent lied. "Good to be back." Vincent confessed.

"Do you believe in karma, Vin?" Yuffie asked.

He looked up. He had long ago abandoned trying to discourage her from her nicknames, but strangely enough, tolerated. From anyone else he probably wouldn't put up with it. Maybe it was because out of all of AVALANCHE, she'd been the first to look him in the eye. And it wasn't even that she had to bring herself to do it. The first thing everyone did when he jumped out of the coffin and opened his eyes, right after their moment of shock they turned from his eyes. But not her; she stared him straight in the eyes, storm grays not disturbed by dried blood red.

"…I do not know."

"I mean…" Yuffie said. "I don't believe that it happens in another life. We don't believe in reincarnation." Yuffie said. "We like to think-" 'we' being Wutai of course, "that you are you once, unique. But then you join the waters, one with everyone."

Vincent looked up. "You don't believe in the Lifestream?"

Yuffie shrugged. "Of course we do – it's obviously there. But it was never clear whether we think we become a part of the waters of the ocean, or the waters of the Lifestream." She tilted her head in thought. "Maybe both."

"Hm."

"But like, do you believe that for every good thing you do, something good happens to you, and for everything bad you do, something bad happens to you?"

Vincent opened his mouth to say no, but it closed again. After everything, action-reaction. But was falling in love with Lucrecia good or bad? Obviously love was good, but adultery? Good or bad?

"I don't know."

Yuffie was quiet for a second. "I think…I think I might."

"I mean." Yuffie stopped for a moment, and her hand rose to her neck and absentmindedly the tips of her four fingers ran over the middle, where the turtleneck sweater covered. "Some makes sense, because I can think of colossally bad things I did that were completely unrelated to colossally bad things that happened. But then, there's things I can't even explain. So I don't know if karma is the right thing…do you think…" she paused. "Do you think that we're…"

She was thinking really hard, and deeply, and it was unnerving him.

"Do you think we're born bad?"

Nothing unnerved him.

"Because I can think of things that happened before I had done anything bad."

Well. Not for a long time.

"So I don't think its karma exactly."

Or at least, not an actual person.

"I mean…"

Chaos unnerved him, even if he grew accustomed to the demon. But putting Yuffie on the same level of the demon seemed blasphemous. Or perhaps just…

"My dad told me it was morbid…but…"

Unnerving.

"you know, I think…"

It was as if he wasn't even there, she was just speaking out loud. But there was a pure, embarrassingly bare need to have someone to listen to her.

So he did.

She was pensive, arms hugging knees to chest, eyes trained on bare, flexed feet, toenails she'd painted bright orange ("Hey, I'm not a tomboy, Vinners.").

"I think that we get...well what we get.."

He looked at her, waiting.

"We get what we deserve." she finished with a great heaving breath.

And for once, when his mind jumped to Lucrecia and the Nibelheim incident, it couldn't stay there. All he could do is wonder what on the Planet Yuffie had deserved.

Motion made her empty her stomach, but apparently, dissected bodies didn't. But what startled her, what she found more odd than anything, was the body. If this had been around since Hojo was gone, the body should be decomposing, shouldn't it? True, it was decomposing slightly, a foul odor arising, but not to the equivalent of at least a year. And, since the ShinRa mansion had been abandoned by the Science Program for ages, it should be decomposed to bones.

Thirty one years decomposed.

The truth struck her, and made her freeze up. Either something was preventing him from decomposing, which she doubted, since he had recently started to, or the ShinRa mansion had not been out of use. That meant that people had been here. That meant these things were all still going on. And the association of that was even more terrifying. Because these experiments could mean two things. It could mean there was someone as sick, or sicker, and crazier than Hojo around as a scientist, working for Auhncore; or there was the more terrifying alternative.

Hojo wasn't dead.

But that couldn't be. She'd been there. She'd fought him, she'd watched as Vincent took the death shot, loathing filling those crimson orbs to a horrifying degree.

She peered at the body, pinching her nose shut. It'd probably been abandoned when the fire came, which either meant Vincent had been here at the same time as those scientists, or the scientists were the ones in the kitchen. Either way, they hadn't used the front door. There was another way.

Turning, she made to walk through the door that connected to the room, when a hand pressed down on her shoulder. Eyes widening, she couldn't reach her boots in time or even raise her shruiken before a hand slithered over her mouth and drew her in close to him, other arm sliding tightly across her waist and gripping the wrist that held the shruiken firmly.

"Hey there, babe." He said, lips fluttering near her ears.

A/N: Update. I couldn't get up this morning, literally. So I didn't go to school. I am so upset over the Virginia Tech shooting. I didn't even know anyone there, but it's so sad that a human being could fall that far, that someone could do that to another. How could a person do that to another? But anyway.

erm. Karma again. K-K-karma. Said it was going to have a minor role in the story, not like a plot twister but...well.

About the Title: Complex, as it deals with things not even mentioned in the chapter. About how everthing devoured seemed deserved, almost. hard to say. The mansion devoured by fire, and how it was deserved. This is where it gets more complicated: Deserved Vincent would think because of his own sins, deserved Yuffie would think because of the horrible experiments she was discovering, and the villagers would see it as deserved because of the allegations against Vincent in the mad world. Refers to the body, how the place where the heart should be is devoured by the stomach, and how Hojo's love of science devoured Lucrecia. Refers to Yuffie, and how she says people get what they deserve, refering to herself. I would say more about devoured, but...well, guess if you want to. Finally, Vincent, devoured by his desire to see his friends, and devoured by his conflicting desire to get away from them.

About the Quote: So many issues picking out this quote. Chose simplicity, because of the ashes of the mansion, but fits in with the title, and how you 'get what you deserve.' I'll let you explore the depth and meaning.

Not much to say.

Except I just realized that the 'get what you deserve' theme here might seem horrible in light of the Virginia tech shootings, but I just want to make sure everyone knows I don't feel that way, especially especially not about such a tragic event. I don't think anyone would have thought that way, but better to make sure no one is offended or confused.

Just send your prayers, good wishes, anything to Virginia Tech, and don't forget the 30 people who were shot at Norris Hall and the 2 shot in the dormitory. And pray and hope that nothing like this will happen again.

.K.i.t.K.a.t.