...tendencies. (a story about obsession).
Chapter 2: Fibonacci Sequence.
Viiiiiincent...
Hello, Vincent.
Swimming in a sea of green.
Floating in a watery waiting room.
Dead. Asleep. Dreaming.
"Vincent!"
As he had, every day for 30 some years, Vincent woke up with the name 'Lucrecia' whispered upon his lips.
He didn't open his eyes, as he lay in the sparse bed at the back of the cave, the waterfall thundering around him.
He didn't open his eyes because he didn't want to, because there was nothing in this world that existed that he wanted to see...nothing except her face, and that was gone, gone forever.
"Yes, Cloud," he answered quietly, sitting up and pulling his shirt over his head, over his claw. "What do you want?" His tone added the implied word "now" to the end of his question.
Cloud winced as Vincent's now sightless eyes turned to him, the entirety of the eye a fluid, painful crimson. Cloud had no idea what the other man had done to extend the blood red to his whole eye rather than just the pupil. He had no idea how, or why he had blinded himself. Cloud didn't know. And he really didn't want to know. But he studied Vincent's deadly claw suspiciously.
"Sorry to bother you again, man. I know I'm always hassling you. But um...you don't happen to have another Cure materia, do you? I used up my last one when I disintegrated it into the potion when I was trying to, well, you know..." He laughed nervously. When he was trying to what he was always doing. Always trying to bring her back.
Vincent silently went to the trunk under his bed with movements so fluid and graceful it seemed as if he had never been blind at all. He opened it and tossed Cloud a glowing green materia, then pushed the trunk back under the bed. Cloud caught the materia. He wondered if Vincent functioned with sonar.
"Th-thanks, Vincent. Really."
But Vincent had walked back to his bed, had lay down again, back facing Cloud- the universal gesture for "leave." And Cloud got left.
And Vincent went on dreaming of her face.
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Mr. Worker in Bone Village raised his eyebrows as the man with blonde spiky hair emerged from the general area of the coastline. He passed through the excavations, the eerie shadows of skeletons casting ominous bars of dark across him as he walked forwards as if trying to hold him back from imminent doom. Everyone in the village knew him. He was the guy who came here a couple of times a week, walked in whistling, and walked out tearstained and violent. If you were to ask for the time while he was on his way into the sleeping forest, he would give it to you gladly, with a smile and a pat on the back. If you were to ask for the time when he emerged, in a flash, you'd have your back to a tree, a sword to your neck, and a snarling man in your face, growling "Leave me the f*ck alone." And then you could watch him walking dejectedly away, and hear his sobs. The whole village heard his sobs, resonating through the night, or the morning, or whenever he decided to show this time around.
Today, it was late afternoon, and the sun was shining at its most cruel and striking intensity. Beaming orange and red and hot, Cloud could feel it boring into his back as he wiped the sweat from his brow. His large boots plodded through the dusty earth determinedly, green materia clutched white-knuckled in one hand, a bottle of sparkling red in the other. He was well aware of the many eyes around the digging site watching him, judging him, and he was distinctly aware that something else...something different was watching him as well. Something...larger than all of this, in a bizarre, cosmic sense.
Absently, he strummed the harp, fingers strung up by puppet strings of impossible hope, and he stalked through the forest, breaking into a sprint as he saw the Forgotten City, just as he always did. He wove his way to the entrance with the expertise of experience, of bored remembrance of a thousand times passing, until finally, he entered the City of Ancients once more.
Every single time, without fail, when he first stepped through that entranceway again, he choked on his own lungs. He stared at the lake, the platform, the shadows of faraway memories, stalacites jagged like masamune, shadows haunting like him. The little red blood cells swimming frantically in his system screamed out for oxygen, sweet air, and finally, he took a breath. With shaking hands, he lowered his hands into the water, the soft ripples from who knows where lapping up against his wrists, gently, caressingly, and he could almost hear her voice...
Cloud...
Clouds.
And Fog.
And murky, murky water.
When are you coming, Cloud?
When are you waking me up?
When are you going to take me home?
Cloud?
Clouds. A soft blue haze over the man's eyes, as he gently lay the Cure materia on the ledge. Fog, rolling o'erhead as the dusk gently set in. Trembling so that the whole bottle shook, he poured the phoenix down over the materia, enveloping green in red. And then, he took the Cure into his hands, closed his eyes, and cast. Green spread across the shimmering water, touching lightly against the centrifugal waves, only to dissolve faintly away.
Cloud opened his eyes, eyes full of desperate, mournful hope.
The murky water did not stir.
He sat there for a long time, holding his breath, lungs in his throat, heart in his hands, red blood cells so strained they could not even scream for depression. And then when it finally got dark, he put his head in his hands, and wept, and rocked himself, back and forth, back and forth in an unspeakable, yet so repeatable anguish.
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Leaves crackled and branches snapped and owls hooted and midnight creatures yowled. Cloud stumbled through the Sleeping Forest , tearstained and painstaken, and bleary. Half-awake and blinded by an acute, yet dull, blunt, sensation of hopelessness. He gripped his head tightly in his hands, weaving about senselessly, with no direction, with no awareness of morning or night or time or place. He tripped over a log, and fell, elbows and torso enveloped in the smell of rotting leaves and mud and insects and animal piss. Wretched, wretched man, he curled up and shook with sobs, until a certain sort of prickling rose up and down his spine, hypnotizing each and every hair on his back. And Cloud was taken by a cold chill. A mysterious shadow cast by the moonlight hovered in the puddle before him. And Cloud turned around.
Someone was watching him.
"Who....are you....?"
The figure smirked.
The murky water waited.
TBC....it gets even weirder. lots weirder.