Chapter 2: Lamentations
"Bitterly she weeps at night, tears are upon her cheeks. Among all her lovers there is none to comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her; they have become her enemies." Lamentations 1:2
She was burning up.
Her eyes felt like swollen, burning materia orbs, rolling restlessly behind her lids as if seeking to escape her head. Slowly, as if they were weighted down with rocks, she dragged her eyelids open, wincing at the harsh, fuzzy brightness of the ice-bound walls arching around her. Her neck creaked painfully as she turned her head to avoid the lights that shot spears of pain through her head, but the light was everywhere...a hazy, indistinct mosaic of white. Flailing one arm clumsily and crying out at the muscle spasms that followed, she rolled over onto her side, pressing her face into the hard ice beneath her. Her flushed, fevered face melted the surface of the ice somewhat, turning the floor into a glassy mirror, and when she was finally able to focus her eyes onto the reflection of her face, she screamed with all the strength and breath left in her body.
The pale form was hunched over slightly in the clear liquid, but the impression that the specimen gave was that of a figure standing tall and terrible over the entire Planet. Or at least, that was how Lucrecia saw it. Glittering, alive brown eyes moved carefully over what they'd all thought was a dead creature, noting every minute detail with all the jealous precision of a woman searching her husband's collar for lipstick stains. And that wasn't too far off of the mark, really. There was a husband involved, and of course a wife...but the other woman wasn't a woman, not really. It. Pale pink lips curled slightly in disdain as Lucrecia's eyes continued their careful catalogue of the form suspended in the glass tank before her. The figure had a woman's shape, a woman's name, and a woman's fascinating hold on at least one man in the mansion...but it was only a creature, a specimen, a thing. And this was what Lucrecia kept repeating to herself as she stared down the millennia-old alien that was stealing her husband from out of her arms, her heart, her life.
Almost as an afterthought, instead of with the care and precision she usually lavished on her work, she visually confirmed the items on her checklist with all the glazed boredom of familiar routine. Small black tick marks appeared under the jabbing, stabbing tip of her pen as she went down the list attached to the clipboard in the crook of her left arm. Rows of dials, valves and coils of tubing that snaked in and out of the circular tank, filters humming quietly nearby - not too far away that the length of pipes would decrease efficiency and flow, but not too close that random sparks might endanger their precious specimen - heaters, coolers, every single technology available to ensure that this find of a lifetime, a century, of a millennia would not come to harm. Cool and casual in her shirt, slacks, and lab coat, the scientist on the current rotation dutifully went over her clipboard, jotting down numbers and writing observations down in her neat, slanted handwriting.
He loved my writing. Said it was a reflection of my orderly mind. My orderly mind. What goes through this thing's orderly mind? Nothing but chemicals, with maybe bits and pieces of whatever passes for an alien's brain floating free in between where the ears should be. He used to laugh at me for organizing my grocery lists by the appropriate aisle, he used to tease me by hiding one of the colored pens I used to separate my different notes, he used to NOTICE these things. And now, now it's facts and theories and experiments and procedures and all of his hundred thousand thoughts on this...this...specimen. The planets revolve around this tank, not the sun.
Finished with her mandatory maintenance, she tucked her pen back into her shirt pocket and crossed her arms over her clipboard, never taking her eyes off of the biological statue before her. Statue...more like an idol or god...the Goddess in the Glass that her husband worshipped. But he hadn't always. At first, it had been curiosity fueled on rumors. Nothing more than speculative talk over dinner or a pensive, thoughtful mood when the lab was slow. And then on the heels of discovery came an excitement that they had both shared in equal measure. He had seen his career written in diamonds in the sky, and she had been top full of loving support and pride. And oh how they'd come together then, spending every waking moment with their heads knocking together over charts and readouts and notes, flying high on adrenaline and ambition. Days and weeks and months spent always on the brink of discovery, looking out over the edge at the endless horizon without ever seeing the yawning chasm that waited beneath them.
But now...now it was adoration. From excitement over the possibilities to an actual worship of what he saw as the source of his future successes, from scientific observations to reverent gazes, from gratitude to obsession. At least from him. Lucrecia did not worship this goddess. But she wouldn't admit to jealousy or hatred either, at least not yet. That would be an acknowledgement that this specimen was worthy of such fierce emotions, that it was a true adversary, that it was a threat. She was no superstitious ninny, carrying good luck charms and muttering incantations when afraid, but she still held to the subconscious idea that an evil named was an evil empowered. And just as she stubbornly, perhaps childishly refused to refer to the specimen by name or feminine pronoun, so she refused to admit that her husband no longer loved her nor wanted her. But he needed her...he needed her still. He needed her sharp mind, her long experience working by his side on his team for his dreams...he needed the tiny collection of cells doubling and dividing within her womb.
For his experiments...for his dreams...and ultimately, as a sacrifice to the Goddess.
The blurry, wavering face that looked up at her from the icy floor was the one she'd learned to hate, to be jealous of, to want to smash with her fists...how long ago? How long had she been lying here, fading in and out of dreams as her body was taken over? She sobbed and trembled at the face leering up at her, and tangled locks of hair fell down and marred the reflection, breaking the illusion of an alien trapped within the ice. Not an alien...just a reflection of a pale woman's face...with alien eyes. The very same eyes that had sneered down at her through the glass wall of the specimen tank now gazed up at her from the mirrored surface of the ice. The cave was bright, so bright, because the cells waging war with her body had set up camp in her eyes, the windows to her lost soul. Under Lucrecia's corpse-white eyelids lay deep blue orbs, dark shadows swirling in their depths like monsters waiting at the bottom of the ocean. And it was bright, so blindingly bright in the cave because she could no longer control how much light struck her retinas. So she clenched shut her lids, gritting her teeth as tightly as she could against the never ending fevers and chills, the lucid portion of her mind begging whatever higher power might be listening for sleep, for rest, for death...again. She knew somehow that she'd been sleeping and waking and sleeping again and again, over and over...
But for how long? How long had she been lying there, changing and dreaming and never remembering anything when she awoke except for memories from before this icy prison? Midgar, Junon, Costa del Sol, Nibelheim...her parents, her schoolmates, her husband and...it. It, the alien, the specimen...the thing which was taking over her body, which had sprouted tendrils of alien flesh over her belly out of the wounds left from the hideous birthing process of its scion. Not her son anymore...now the scion of that alien creature. And her husband, too...no longer her husband...now the High Priest of the Goddess in the Glass. And her lover...where was he? Lying, dying in some cave like she was, his body slowly giving ground to the army of murderous cells invading his body? Or was it using him for some furtherance of its plan, like it was using her son?
The thought of her child given up to whatever horrors had hatched in her husband's mind caused a wrenching pain far greater than that caused by her fever spasms, and Lucrecia curled her body into a fetal position in mute protest. Ah, bitter irony. What was she doing? Trying to take his place in the crucible of his father's madness? Lucrecia moaned, all of her muscles clenching tight as she held her empty arms to her chest and wept bitter tears onto the ground.
Sephiroth, Sephiroth...I never even got to hold you, my son, my child, my baby.
She lay on the gurney, cold steel leeching the warmth from her body instead of warming to her touch. How much blood had she lost that she couldn't even maintain her body heat any longer? Pain-glazed eyes rolled in their sockets, roving around and hardly seeing the dark, dank room she lay bleeding in. Several lamps hung over her, dull and hazy suns watching impassively over her labor. There had been an IV stand as well, replacing the fluids that were rushing from her in a crimson torrent, but the needle had been slipped from her arm just now...why had they done that? She needed that IV, she needed the plasma...she might be half out of her mind but some part of her mind still logically noted that it would be a pity to die of simple hypotension and exsanguination after surviving nine months of more radiation and experimental drugs than anyone had ever seen before. Nine months. Nine months of daily injections that burned her veins and caused her jaw to cramp shut. Nine months of increasing doses of mako radiation that had her bowed over the sink, praying that she wouldn't throw up because then she'd have to eat more anyway to feed the baby.
My baby! Where's my baby?!
Her body jerked upwards of its own accord before she'd even finished her frantic thought, but thick straps held her forearms down on the gurney, their mates at the far end of the steel surface binding her ankles, one to a corner. The sudden movement sent lightning bolts of fresh pain jolting up and down her spine, splintering her control and reducing her to a trembling, whimpering ghost. She slammed shut her eyes and clenched her teeth until her jaw ached as much as the rest of her exhausted body, willing the pain to recede, to subside, to leave her alone please God. Gradually the waves of nausea and bone-deep hurt retreated, and she became aware of her surroundings once more, having risen out of the fogs that drugs and pain had driven her into. Straining weakly against the straps that bound her to the cold table, she writhed and wormed her way into a semi-sitting position, propping herself up on her elbows as best she could without dislocating her limbs. Blurry eyes swept over the handful of figures floating around the room in identical surgical gowns stained all over with myriad gory colors...wine dark blood, ichor green, nameless variations of yellow and orange and dead-flesh purple. Turning her face away from the gruesome shades that ignored her - was she the ghost or were they? - Lucrecia glanced down at her own body, half-hidden in a thin surgical gown, and would have screamed if she'd been able to find the air to do so.
The pale stomach that had gone from soft, smooth curve to a swollen pearl in the months past was now nearly unrecognizable as human flesh. Breeding hosts to be immediately discarded had been given caesarian sections with more precision than this. There had been autopsied bodies stitched together with more care than this. The ragged tears and cuts that were haphazardly held together with irregularly placed knots of thick, black surgical thread were as much of a shock as if she'd looked up to find another person's head resting on her husband's shoulders...this wasn't his work. Obsessed, insane, delusional, cruel...however he had changed, his need for order, precision, and exactitude were still with him.
Except when you disturbed him, when you dared to interrupt him, when you called his name while he was just standing there like a zombie staring at that specimen tank. Except when he sinks into those trances, when he loses himself, when he's just plain old thinking. Orderly, precise, and exact except when he's busy, when he's distracted, when he's communing with his Goddess...
The messy surgery, the sloppy clean up...this wasn't her husband's work, her husband's mind, her husband's skills and experience and methodology. It was as startling as if she'd looked up from the gurney to find the Goddess holding the scalpel instead of her husband. Her peripheral vision - blurred and fogged by pain and drugs - noted a bloodstained figure approach, and she dragged her eyes from her bloody, broken body, half-expecting to see that hateful, pale blue and purple figure looming over her, dripping with her own blood. But instead it was her husband, nodding to himself over something with his back turned to her, and Lucrecia cried out to him in a voice as ragged and torn as her flesh.
"What did you do to me?!" she sobbed, and only received a mildly curious, detached look over one shoulder in reply.
Still with his back to her, he glanced down to her exposed wounds, and then shrugged and said, "It doesn't need to be pretty. You're going to die anyway." She gazed blankly at him, mind reeling at the chilling reply. He turned then, and she finally saw what he was holding in his arms...her child. The sight of the small, squirming bundle seemed to act as a catalyst upon her senses. Suddenly her entire being was focused on the baby in her husband's arms. The pain was forgotten, the cruel words pushed aside, and she filled her eyes with the delicate curve of the infant's head, straining her ears to hear every whimpering cry he made, hands straining at her bonds as she longed to cradle her son to her breast.
Her fingers opening and closing convulsively as they remained strapped to the gurney, Lucrecia cried out softly for her child. Her husband ignored her entirely, simply standing by her side and studying the infant with a blank expression on his face. Frustration warring with the utter longing in her heart, Lucrecia spat out, "Let me go! I want to hold him! He's my son; let me hold him!"
Her ferocious begging was met with a completely emotionless look and the cool response, "I think not." She gaped at him incredulously? He thought not? He thought not what?!
"What are you talking about?" she gasped out. "You can't keep him from me; he's mine!" she reiterated, and then continued to stare up at her husband in disbelief, which deepened into a shocked realization at his next words.
"This isn't your child," Hojo explained evenly, as if trying to teach a rather slow child a simple mathematical equation. "Sephiroth was and is ours, never yours. Now that this specimen has been safely delivered, we no longer need you."
Her mind reeled with all of the implications, but as he turned and walked away - with my child my baby bring him back to me he's MINE! - all thoughts ceased and she went quite simply and wonderfully insane. Hojo continued to walk steadily away with the infant held securely in his arms, face blank and cool as if he wasn't even registering his wife's mad screams chasing him down the hallway.
"GIVE HIM TO ME HE'S MINE YOU BASTARD YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME GIVE ME MY BABY HE'S MINE HE'S MINE HE'S MINE HE'S MINE..."
Clenching shut her alien eyes, Lucrecia sobbed with the remembered pain and anger and sheer lightning-bright madness that overcame her after the hours of pain and suffering...no, not hours...months. Months of anguish only to finally know at the eleventh hour that the man you thought was your husband was actually your enemy in human guise. To have your firstborn raped from your body and laid on the sacrificial altar without ever holding him. To find that you'd been used by your husband and his deity as an incubator to create a specimen to be used in their own plots and plans...your child, your baby, your only son...their specimen.
He hadn't even called the baby his son, rather referring to the infant as "this specimen." He'd named the child Sephiroth - where had he thought that up?! - but it was with the same tone and inflection he used when asking her to bring this or that file or specimen or book to him. XJ-7 didn't survive the transformation. The most recent batches of aero-dragons are ready for radiation treatments. The specimen has been safely delivered. The specimen, the specimen...how long had he been referring to their child as if he were some mutated monster floating in amber-hued preservative? The child, the boy, their son, HIM...Hojo had said, "it" much like she herself refused to assign gender to the Jenova specimen. But he hadn't always...had he?
She ground her teeth together, focusing on the dry, slip-sliding feeling of her molars rubbing against each other, concentrating on the way the armrest of the chair felt underneath the death-grip of her fingers, listening intently to the strained quality of the barely-controlled breaths she was drawing in and out. Lifting her head as if it weighed fifty pounds, dragging her eyes up over the bulge of her five months gone womb, she counted all of the books lined up like SOLDIERS in the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves across the room from where she sat. She mentally rattled off the entire periodic table of elements, listing symbols and atomic weights by rote. She tried to focus. She tried to concentrate. She tried not to feel the serum oozing through the IV in her arm and burning holes through her circulatory system. And with increasing weariness, she kept wondering how she'd allowed the experiment to go so far and for so long. She also tried to figure out where her husband had gone to, leaving her at the mercy of this strange man who wore her husband's face but stared at her with strange eyes, who spoke to her with her husband's voice but said strange things.
She was tired. She was sick to death of the weekly radiation treatments, the IV drips every Tuesday and Friday, and the thrice-daily injections. She was exhausted from the lack of sleep that resulted from a combination of nausea, anxiety, and nightmares. And she was desperately afraid that her life was now entirely out of control. Or rather, out of her control and into the control of someone she no longer knew nor trusted.
Who, what, when, where, and why? As the IV continued to empty the thick, burning serum into her veins, Lucrecia leaned her head back against the hard wooden back of the chair and wondered wearily at her life. Who had her husband become? What was going to happen to her child? When would this nightmare end? Where was her life leading? And why oh why in the world had she ever agreed to this experiment?
When she'd first discovered her pregnancy, her immediate reaction had been one of dismay, followed by a quickly stamped-down pang of guilt. Surely he would see this as an interruption, an obstacle, a hindrance to their glorious plans for the newly discovered alien specimen. Nervously chafing her hands, she'd approached him with the news, expecting disappointment or blame, perhaps even for him to ask her how she'd let this happen when they were so very busy. But he hadn't, not at all. Instead, there had been a surprised look, a heavy pause, and then a careful smile and laughing congratulations to themselves. And she'd been so relieved and happy that she hadn't really noticed the speculative look on his face as he rested his eyes on her still-flat stomach. She had been so engrossed in the joy she hadn't allowed herself that she hadn't recognized the thin-lipped smile as the same one he used when speaking to the President, or to his direct supervisor...his politician's smile, his crocodile smile, his I'm-thinking-of-something-you-won't-like smile.
And oh, she had not liked it at all. But every protest that she'd made against the experiment had been met with persuasive reasons and glorious possibilities, and his reproachful tone...well, she was just being a nervous, un-supportive little woman. How could she ignore all of the potential, the scope, the sheer vastness of the future that lay in her hands? How could she deny their child this wonderful opportunity? How could she turn against her husband, her partner, the love of her life just when destiny seemed within his grasp? He had appealed to her scientist's intellect and curiosity, he had soothed her mother's instinct, and finally, he had laid a heavy burden of guilt on her eager-to-please nature.
And so here she was, bound to this uncomfortable chair by her convictions and promises as firmly as if they'd been ropes and shackles. But under the weight of the changes occurring in her husband...changes happening as smoothly and insidiously as the ones turning her body into a ripening fruit...those convictions were crumbling. Who was he now? How had this happened? And why? As the IV continued its slow bleeding into her veins, she turned her mind into the recent past as was her new habit whenever she found herself alone and unattended...as if afraid to even wonder, to dare to think thoughts against him when he was there. But now he was so rarely there...
All day, every day, every evening and sometimes at night...in the lab. If he had been hard at work she would have not worried so much. Simply encouraged him to sleep more, not really expecting him to do so of course, and taking meals down to him at regular intervals. But whenever she did glance up from her own desk, or creep downstairs in the dark of night, she would usually find him standing in front of the glass cylinder in which his pride and joy loomed all pale and ghostly. And as the time he spent thus contemplating the specimen increased...so of course his time spent with his wife dwindled. And so it was perhaps not surprising that Lucrecia didn't notice the signs, the changes, the difference...just as you don't notice the slowly gathering clouds until the ominous dark mass above you crackles suddenly with lightning and thunder. Just before the hair on your neck rises and the acrid blood-metal-electricity smell hits your nose and you know you're about to be hit by a firebolt from the sky.
She didn't notice the gradual transition in his attitude from expectant father to expectant scientist until the pregnancy and experiment were so far along that there was really nowhere else to go except for forward. She didn't begin keeping track of his hours until the third morning in a row that she'd awoken alone. And she hadn't realized how long it had been that she'd received any affection from her husband until she found herself seeking that precious gift from another man. Changes...so many changes in her life all at once. Her first child had been slowly becoming her husband's special project. Her husband had been slowly transferring his adoration from her to the ancient specimen in the basement. And her heart...alone, confused, and starving, had slowly turned from her husband to her guardian.
Vincent. Vincent Valentine. Turk, assassin, and one of three hired guns sent to guard the scientists and their work in far-off Nibelheim. His team had watched over the members of the Jenova Project with seeming indifference; a coolness, a distance that had kept them from being obtrusive...indeed, sometimes she'd forgotten that they were there at all. But one of the blue-suited epitomes of deadly efficiency had gradually drawn near, become her shadow, become her guardian...and it was him who she'd unconsciously - at first - charged with her safety, her heart, and later on, her son.
The child growing in her womb was hers, it was theirs, it was their child! Had been, at least. She sat at the low table occupying one side of the inn's upper suite, slowly running her hand over the swollen curve of her stomach over and over again...up, down, up, down, stroking her belly as if trying to soothe the child that slept so restlessly within, as if he knew that it was almost time to be born, and was impatient. Every passing month, every passing week, every single unendurably long day that she lived through seemed to bring with it another element of...difference. Of some strange sensation of being detached from the child in her womb, of being separate, apart. Which was ridiculous, of course...what closer bond could there be than mother and child, especially in the precious months when the two were literally contained in one body? Yet there it was...the feeling. The feeling of being nothing more than a container, an incubator, a specimen tank. The feeling that she was merely housing another's child. But whose?
Ah, well...his, and his Goddess' of course.
But no, this was her child and she would not give it up. Not just hers...theirs. Created with what might have been the last of their love, a last memento of what had been a wonderful marriage. She had lost her husband - she admitted it now - and she had given up a great deal of her life, but she would not give up her child to the Purpose of that disgusting, decaying organism over in the mansion. And what could a weakened, nine-months pregnant woman accomplish against the will of her mad genius husband? Plenty, if said pregnant woman had a trained assassin willing to risk his life for hers.
I love you, I'll do anything for you, I swear it.
She leaned her head back against the back of her wooden seat, closing her eyes as she replayed those words spoken in a voice that was warm and harsh, soft and deadly all at once. Oh, Vincent...Vincent, her lover, her savior, her last hope. Her silent shadow, her watchful guard, her oh so willing haven from the bitter loneliness and jealousy that had threatened to completely undo her. Such a paradox, this dark man with the dark eyes and the dark past and even darker future...he was an angel. She'd met him with all the subconscious superiority of a scientist for someone who was not, and had been ashamed of her preconceived notions within a minute. A killer, a hired thug...she'd expected cold, flat eyes and an unintelligent demeanor...someone only and always suited for taking orders and mindless destruction. What she'd discovered was instead a gentle, assessing gaze and a quick mind. A firm handshake, simple nod and murmured "pleased to meet you" later, she'd found herself thinking that this was the sort of man she'd feel comfortable having stand guard just outside her bedroom door. Someone trustworthy, despite the gun peeping from his jacket. Someone comforting, despite his deadly occupation. Someone whose simple presence calmed her somehow, in some way, for some strange reason.
Had she loved him? Yes. Had she ever loved him in the way that he deserved? No. Lucrecia stilled the hand on her stomach for a moment to turn her mind more fully to the man now occupying the better half of her heart. The man into whose hands she had entrusted her future. Vincent...Vincent Valentine...he who, despite the cruelties that life committed against him, could still forgive her and love her so wholly and purely despite her desperate, confused betrayal.
I have to go back to him, Vincent...I can't explain why because I honestly don't know. It's just...he needs me now and I need to be there for him. The move, the experiments...just everything that's going on...it's changed him somehow and sometimes it's like he's...so lost, somehow. I'm sorry, Vincent...I'm so sorry. Please understand...
He hadn't understood - truth be told, neither had she - but he'd nodded all the same, dark eyes sharp with pain and ever-gentle hands trembling slightly against hers. One last handclasp before he let her go...not that he'd ever really had a strong grasp on her. He'd held her to his body and his heart with an almost tentative gentleness, as if she were a butterfly or delicate ornament. He had never been demanding of her time, had never argued the secrecy she'd wrapped their relationship in...and hadn't murmured one word of protest when she'd told him that it was over. Only...his hands had shot out to grasp her fingers in his, in a wordless plea. And after her simple, cruel explanation, he'd leaned forward as if to kiss her - goodbye, perhaps - and had stopped mere millimeters away from her lips. She could still remember his soft breaths whispering over her face, the warmth of his body like a comforting blanket around her. And she could still remember simply standing there like a statue, watching him watch her...so worked up over her husband that she'd been unable to react to her lover. Something like...recognition or remembrance flickered in the eyes locked onto hers - remembering that she'd just tossed him aside? - and with a barely audible sigh, he simply raised one hand to brush lightly against her cheek and walked away. The best shot in the Turks Force, and his hands had been trembling. She'd done that to him. She hadn't told him she loved him still, she hadn't begged his forgiveness, and she hadn't thanked him for rescuing her, for saving her, for being there when she needed to be needed. Oh, Lucrecia...ever the high and mighty scientist. You never knew what an angel you held in your arms and then threw him away when your wonderful, genius, scientist husband seemed to need you again. She and Hojo deserved each other more than they knew.
Deserved each other...but didn't want each other. Out of duty and a dusty love she'd returned to the husband she'd abandoned, only to find that the man she remembered no longer existed. There was just the empty shell...he talked, he walked, and he worked. But rather than an animated, passionate scientist...it was like watching a puppet on strings, dancing to a tune she couldn't hear. She could hate him, she could pity him, and she could despise him...but she couldn't love him anymore, and she certainly wasn't about to surrender her child to him and his obsession. Besides...here was the ages-old complaint. He didn't love her anymore.
But Vincent still wanted her. God only knew why, but he wanted her, loved her, said that he needed her. And God have mercy on her soul...she was going to use him. She did love him...but she couldn't use that as her excuse. This was no fairy-tale romance that she was living in. It was out of selfishness that she'd returned to him...nothing nobler than that. She'd found that there really had been no husband to return to...that he'd become entirely the possession of the specimen standing so silent and still in the basement. And so after a month or two, she'd turned her back on him as well, to find that Vincent was still there, waiting for her. She'd fallen back into Vincent's arms out of loneliness and hurt, and he'd accepted the backlash of her anger as readily as her hungry kisses.
And now...just as she couldn't use love as an excuse for her adultery, she wouldn't allow herself to think that it was out of maternal instinct that she was planning to desert her husband entirely and steal her unborn child away. She just wanted to keep the child, plain and simple. It was possessiveness more than love, for she couldn't quite lavish love on a child that was still more of an extension of her body than a separate being. And it was the last shred of her denial, her attempts to recapture a happier past. This child, their child, their first born son...this was the souvenir she would take away from Nibelheim, this was the memento she would keep of her marriage, this was the new life she would build her new life around.
With Vincent.
You saved me once, and I turned my back on you. If I asked you to save me again, would you?
A year in which time was suspended, Lucrecia's desperate, challenging request hanging in the air between them, and then those words in that husky whisper that she replayed over and over in her mind when she needed strength...
I love you, I'll do anything for you, I swear it.
Lucrecia snapped her eyes open and glanced around the room, slightly disoriented. Had she dozed off while visiting days past? The window announced that dusk had just recently begun its nightly creeping across the sky, and Lucrecia sighed in relief. She still had an hour, at least, until true dark. Her oversized purse lay in the bottom of the closet, filled with tiny treasures with which to start her new life. Identification to get her past the guards, money to get her past the boundaries of the continent, and materia that could be exchanged for yet more money. One change of clothes folded carefully at the bottom, and the promise of Vincent waiting for her at the edge of town...with a much larger bag of his own. He had told her to pack lightly to avoid suspicion, for he himself could steal away with much larger luggage...so she had left blankets and a tent and more clothing in his capable hands. What else would he bring with him? Guns, bullets, more materia...that knife he kept strapped to his wrist. The knowledge and experiences he'd gained as a Turk...his skills, his abilities, his trade. Lucrecia would leave Nibelheim with her child and her lover, and within those two were contained her reason for leaving and living, and the means to protect that new life.
Wincing at the stiffness in her shoulders, Lucrecia slowly heaved herself out of the chair, obeying a sudden impulse to check on the contents of her purse just one last time. But as she turned towards the closet, a hand the size of a truck suddenly clenched down on her mind and squeezed. At least, that's what it most felt like to her startled psyche. Her pupils contracted as a blinding white light that only she could see flashed in front of her eyes, and then her vision was entirely blacked out as if that flash of light had been lighting striking her pupils. Her spinal column seemed to have disconnected from her brain, for as she fell to the floor, all impulses and sensations fled from her body. She could no longer feel the floor beneath her feet, and although she felt an impact vibration shudder up her back, she didn't feel her knees hit the floor...and then she couldn't feel her back, either...nor her shoulders or face or anything at all.
There was nothing...nothing save the blackness and even that was somehow inexplicably fading to an even more complete nothingness, leaving her with the presence, the wordless idea, the not-voice echoing in her head...
YOU WILL NOT LEAVE HERE...
