Lucrecia fluffed out her pillow one last time

III: Invisible Worm

"Woof, woof."

"Oh, Hojo. Please."

"Yes, my dear Lucrecia?"

"Stop it."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Stop teasing him."

Lucrecia craned her neck back over her shoulder. Still, always. a dark Turk shadow hovered in the doorway.

Hojo grinned at her. "Oh, but it's so easy. He's such a puppy dog, following you around like that."

"Hojo..."

"I'd like to kick him in ribs."

"Hojo!"

The shadow did not stir.

"In all seriousness, Lucrecia, he's interfering with the experiment, and consequently, both our jobs." He raised a wily eyebrow, eyes on the solution he was preparing.

Lucrecia wrung her hands, a strange habit she had picked up since her placement in the mansion. Funny, the vibes that resonated through this place... "If it will make your work more precise," she said, indignant nose in the air, shoulders stiff, fingers tucking an invisible strand of hair that, to her mind, had wormed its way out of the sleek net of her tightly wound bun. "If it will make our research more accurate, I will ask him to leave. For professional reasons."

"Why thank you Lab Major."

Lucrecia rolled her eyes. That undertone in the scientist's voice both annoyed and amused her. "You're very welcome, Professor." Clackety, clack, clack, her footsteps like a death toll, she walked to the door and stopped neatly before Vincent, a perfect foot and a half away from him as she spoke. "Vincent, what're you doing here," she said in a low, soft tone.

"Watching over you. My job."

"Watching everything I do?" she probed gently, a psychiatrist analyzing tone, clinical, medical; sweetly, falsely caring. The gentle floating touch of her fingers on his arm shoved him onto the shrink's couch.

He didn't speak.

She smiled softly at him, in lieu of anything better to do. Vincent saw past the lab coat, the polished badge, the frigid posture, the stiff demeanor. He saw only the smile, and the soothing silk that lay over her voice. He saw perfect lips moving, the blur of voice in his ears, humming, but, hypnotized, he heard no words, he saw no signs.

"Could you please allow me some time alone to focus on the experiment?" she asked, giving him an awkward pat on the shoulder.

With a dark glance in the general direction of Hojo, who turned his nose up snootily at the Turk, Vincent nodded slowly. He cast one last clinging look at Lucrecia, as if fearing the truth behind "out of sight out of mind", then disappeared down the dark hallway.

Lucrecia sighed. In the pit of her stomach, she felt a prophecy of cacaphony, of Chaos and suffering and doom. Something very bad was to come out of this...it rung in the iron bars of the elegant spiral staircase. It whistled through the dusty forgotten eaves and gables, it jangled with dead child's whispers in the reflections of the chandeliers, it howled in the catacombs of the basement, crying. Lucrecia pretended she did not notice, fingers working deftly, scribbling short mathematic notes on her folders, but she could, she could hear it. She could hear every word of the coarse cursing epithet; She could feel it vibrating in her calcium-enriched bones.

"I do believe," said Hojo without looking up when Lucrecia had returned, "That that boy believes himself to be in love with you."

"That's too bad for him," said Lucrecia stonily. "Because I don't believe in love."

"Oh don't you?" asked her colleague, eyeing her with an amused smile from behind his spectacles. "I wouldn't expect it to be so. You are, after all, a scientist. And a good one at that."

She hid a blush behind a stack of data sheets. "Gast believes in God..." Lucrecia commented, not knowing why she said those words out loud.

Hojo laughed, continued mixing his chemicals. "That's not too surprising. The old fogey is more fantastical than one'd think. He's more a storyteller than a scientist." He siphoned a blue-green liquid from a freezer box. "Besides, I believe in a God too."

Lucrecia narrowed her eyes. Even...Hojo...?

The professor held up the blue specimen test tube to the light, shook it gently. "This," he said, in a reverent, hushed tone. Inside, acids clashed against bases, reactions happened at the speed of light, bubbles formed, salts disintegrated, and little invasive cerulean cells grew claws and teeth, multiplying, breeding, a chemist's witching orgy. "This...This is my God." The light gleamed through the azure liquid and reflected off his glasses, off his eyes. "Science."

And Lucrecia fancied she saw a bit of genius in those eyes.

Flash.

Tseng sat on the leather seat of the helicopter, looking into Elena's eyes as she sat across from him. The other Turk was concentrated on b*tching out the driver of the helicopter, and didn't notice that she was under scrutiny. But it wasn't really scrutiny. It was more....silent approval. Tseng held a certain degree of affection for all his Turks, and Elena was no exception. But there was something more...Eh. There could be no harm, the leader decided, in going out with her on a simple date or something. After all, he needed to get over....after all, Aeris... he swallowed. Unlike Reno, he couldn't even remember the last time he had felt human touch, contact. He frowned, the weary brow furrowing. Burrowed deep in his memory, he somehow remembered the last time he was hugged, decades ago.

He had been a mere teenager at the time, a junior Turk, in charge of watching an infant Sephiroth.

"What's love Tseng?"

"No idea, kid."

Tseng remembered the irritated look on his young charge's face. "What do you mean you have no idea? You must have some idea."

Tseng had shrugged. "I'm a Turk. Don't know these things..Try hugging yourself."

He had received only a blank stare, and so the Turk had demonstrated, folding his arms around his shoulders. "Like that, except more intense. So I've been told.."

Sephiroth had cautiously mimicked the movements of the older boy. "Oh."

Tseng had given the surveillance camera a long stare, then had switched his gaze to the child. He had sighed. "Alright, c'mere." Then, when the silver-headed boy had curiously obeyed, he had brought him into his lap with a hug. Sephiroth had stayed completely stiff, even when Tseng deposited him on the floor.

"I didn't feel anything," Sephiroth had said quietly.

"What?" Tseng had asked absent-mindedly, eyeing the camera still cautiously.

"I said I don't feel anything, dammit!" had come the cross reply from Sephiroth.

Tseng had shrugged. "You don't feel anything, you don't feel anything. It's not my problem."

Sephiroth had glared, daggers blazing in that intense, stabbing gaze, as if to say that it were, in fact, Tseng's fault, Tseng's problem.

"I don't believe it exists. I don't believe you know. I don't believe you know anything. I believe you're a liar and a dunce."

But the child had walked around with his arms folded around himself for a month.

Unflash.

Arms folded about her shoulders, soul tucked away in a carefully sealed lockbox, Lucrecia realized that he had taken her by surprise, and that she hated being taken by surprise.

"Come out with me tonight?"

Lucrecia almost started. She hated. The way he managed to break her composure, no matter how much she tried to maintain it. "Go out with you?" she said in a hopelessly shaky voice. She hated the way the world spun, so blindly and disregarding of its rightful orbit, making her world hurtle into space at random. "You mean on a date? " It thrilled her. It made her palms sweat and her heart beat too fast and images from tacky movies she'd seen in her adolescence flash through her head. "You must be joking, Mr. Valentine." She hated that the most.

She looked at him. She looked at his eyes. And he looked at her.

He wasn't joking. No, he was never joking. How could he, with those eyes so full of the most serious stuff of dreams the world could hold. As if were born somber, grew up somber, and lived somber, day by day.

She opened her mouth, and nothing came out. She closed her mouth Processing....Her eyes darted about desperately. Data retrieving...please hold.... Vincent waited patiently, still and quiet and expectant before her. Uploading....

"Alright," she said, her voice too quite and squeaking.

For a long time she stood in silence, feeling and hearing and smelling Vincent, Vincent, Vincent before her, and she thought she was going to go mad. Why wasn't he talking? It was a while before she understood that he hadn't heard her the first time. "Alright," she repeated, resignedly. "Ok," she said, in a somnambulist daze.

"I'll go out with you."

Alert! Alert! System Error!

Joy spread across his face, not in expression, but in aura, as if his entire bleak pallor had become alight. He smiled very slowly. "Thank you," he replied, a deep caressing mumble."8 o clock tomorrow night?" His voice akin to a masculine tremble.

System is critical! Dangerous Error! System at risk to crash!

Suddenly, her lockbox failed, her soul flew free, and she smiled, grinned at him wholeheartedly, the heartfelt smile spreading from cheek to cheek, and she almost laughed.

For a millisecond she forgot to care.

"Just don't be late," she said shortly, and turned on her heel.

Illegal Operation Closed....System Stablizing...

"Vincent, this isn't damn funny, not in the damn least," she said, her whole filled with terror.

She could feel him smiling, even if she couldn't see him through the blindfold. "I've got you," he said sedately. And it was true, his arms were a stable, immoveable force about her, a safe haven. Because, with him guiding her up this mountain path, no idea in her knowing mind as to where they were heading, she felt she was already falling, hurtling towards a stony death. To a certain degree, he helped. But only because she forgot about falling when he was around. In truth, it was still falling, except that he was tumbling down the cliff with her. She doubted he could break her fall. Strong, tall, stolid, there was something in his movements that indicated to her an extreme fragility. But then, the same could be said about her, she thought. Psych 101, be damned. Her? Fragile? She gritted her teeth at the idea.

"Stop clenching your jaw," he instructed calmly. "Relax."

"I have to ask again, Vincent. Where are we going?"

"You'll see when we get there."

"You already said that."

"You already asked that."

There he went again, making her feel stupid.

Her foot slid against a rock, and she stumbled, falling against him.

"Oopsee daisy," he said in a monotone.

She couldn't help herself. She burst out laughing. "A Turk that says Oopsee daisy?" She laughed and laughed. "Vincent, you're beyond me." But suddenly that warm musty presence behind her was gone. "Vincent?" Panic crept, no, clawed its way into her throat, the smell of blind disability and helplessness smothering her. "Vincent? Vincent where are you? Vincent!" She was paralyzed, incapable of movement, soaking in the premonition of cold sweat.

"Right here," he said, right next to her. "I've been here the whole time, watching over you, making sure you didn't get hurt. You just didn't notice."

She...didn't...notice....?

"I'm sorry, "she said, hushed.

"That's alright." His voice was so sad. "Anyways, we're here."

Here---

He took off her blindfold and she saw a massive granite dome, simplistic, primal, beautiful. "- Oh..." The words flew out of her mouth, unbidden. "It's...." Utopian. Zen. Nirvana. A Dream, a childhood wish almost forgotten. Piper, piper..... "It's....different."

He took her hand in his, she stiffened. He was the piper come to trick her, take her away, wasn't he? Every logical cell in Lucrecia's body told her to go home and get her proper sleep. "Let's go inside," he said, and she followed.

Past the sparse monk's cells, past the side chapels, the closed gift store, they weaved, with only the nighttime to observe and lightly comment to the moon on the two wanderers. See the girl, she seems so scared of the fact that she still can't see what I hide, said the night. He loves us, said the moon. He loves us both, we're his family, only family. She liked us once, too, said the night in reply. She still does, said the moon. She just forgot.

"I forgot what monasteries looked like," Lucrecia said, baring her soul. Freer now that she was gone from the spotlight of laboratory halogen, cloaked by inky midnight. "I haven't been in one since I was a-"

"Shhh," said Vincent abruptly. "They're starting."

Lucrecia looked at him questioningly. Then, "Oh. Oh God, Vincent. Oh God, it smells so beautiful. It's such a beautiful...is it roses? Roses, but more condensed, sweeter, it....what is this, Vincent," she cried, her eyes alight, her delight a girl's.

Vincent pointed to the courtyard. Dozens and dozens of monks in partridge gray cloaks, swinging urns of burning roses, chanting as the overwhelming, mesmerizing aroma rose up into the air in mystic spirals. Goddess, we implore thee, give unto us a savior. Goddess we implore thee, do not forget us. Give us a guardian, Goddess ,give us a watcher. Goddess, let us not forsake thee. We will not forget thee, in time of need or fear. We will not forget thee... "11 o clock rites," said Vincent, the monks chanting and chanting, and chanting away. "They do this every night, without fail."

"Quaint, isn't it," said Lucrecia, hand automatically flying to the rosary around her neck Hojo had given her.

Vincent fixed her with a look. "I mean....I only meant..." said Lucrecia, quickly tucking Hojo's gift back into her shirt.

The magic broke. Quick as they appeared, in rose colored smoke, they disappeared. The monks only remnants were a few stray members left to clean up the residue of ecstatic worship.

She looked back at him, and found that in those dark swallowing pupils, he had swallowed up her faults and already forgiven, forgotten. For her, Vincent would forgive anything.

"Who's this Goddess?" she asked. Vincent turned her around to face a huge icon hung on the exterior wall.

She was one woman and many woman at once, with the open arms of a mother, the demure face of a virgin, the harsh eyes of a cruel judgment. She was old, she was young, she was eternal. She was cold, yet ultimately loving. She was fickle, and fair. Gilden all over, the icon was nonetheless given an image of simplicity.

A monk quietly passed by in his gray robes, hunched over, ignoring them in his complete entrancing devotion.

"Who is she?" asked Lucrecia in a hushed tone, studying the woman's powerful presence, so loving and motherly, so distant and foreign, so biting and forboding.

Vincent stood close next to her, looked up at the statue. "She has many names," he answered in his deep, earnest voice. "Shiva, Mary, Diana, Gaia, Tara. Some call her Isis, Rhea, Li, Kwilin, or simply the Goddess, the Mother. The Moon, Nature, the Virgin, it doesn't really matter. She's a symbol for something...beyond."

"Beyond what?"

"Beyond what we know." He took her hands in his. "Beyond the bounds of possible beauty." She turned to face him, the moonlight beaming softly on her as she tilted her head upwards towards him. "Beyond the bounds of earthly perfection." She looked in his eyes and saw deep, deep, dark, and something beyond... "...beyond what words can describe...something...deep, inside, unbidden, incomprehensible, and intangible."

"Vincent...why do you believe in God?"

"Because I believe in love."

And looking at her that night, kissing her smooth lips for the first time under the moon and the stars and the dark endless night, he believed himself.

To Lucrecia, Vincent's response never answered her question. Instead, it restated it. Why did Vincent believe in that something beyond? How could he believe in what he couldn't touch, feel, see, examine, prove? God is Love? She didn't believe in either. Not until she could put God on an operating table and run an MRI, dissect him, do a blood test. Not until she could stick Love under a microscope and study the cellular composition. Not until...until...

She felt herself faltering.

And she kissed him, she did, when he kissed her she kissed him back, her hands warm under the protection of his dark coat, but she felt dirty. She felt...unsanitary, common. This was something you read about in supermarket aisle novels. This was something you watched on made for TV specials. There was nothing beyond, there was nothing that could take over her mind or actions or fate that easily. Nothing could control her.... She...She was...more than that. She was...she felt....

The eyes on the icon of the Goddess had been staring down at her all night. Lucrecia couldn't keep her own eyes off of that thing. It seemed like the eyes were gazing specifically at her, following her every move, judging her. It seemed like they were telling her something, disapproving silently as she walked and conversed with Vincent. Vincent, eyes shut to the world, open only for her, did not notice. And now, as his lips first touched hers, she looked upwards at the holy, pale face. She looked at the demure features and gleaming halo, and she swore she saw the eyes of the Goddess cry tears of blood.

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