Tattered Wings

by La Cidiana

Eyes are windows into the soul, they say. But if one has no soul, then what is there to see? (More twisted VincentxCid. The not-much-awaited sequel to “Up in Blood-Red Hands.)

1. Somewhat Blind

Tattered Wings

by La Cidiana

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Summary: Eyes are windows into the soul, they say. But if one has no soul, then what is there to see? (More twisted VincentxCid. The not-much-awaited sequel to "Up in Blood-Red Hands.")

*~*~*

Rated: R for language and dark themes/violence. And no hard yaoi. Just like the first one. Mwah.

A/N: Wow. Didn't think people would like the first one so much. o_o I thought I'd get, like, a buncha bizarre Vincent fangrrrrrlll flames or something. XD Hm. Well, in any case, here's the even-bizarrer sequel I've been toying with. It's Cid-centered, so pwah. :P Did you REALLY expect anything different from moi? And yet another mandatory warning for rabid Vincent fans--he's, like, not nice. XD

Oh. If you haven't read the first one already, (which I doubt), you can still read this... and stuff... but it will be extremely confuzzling. Mmmmyessss. o_o More coming after this one, BTW. XD

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Eyes are windows into the soul, they say.
But if one has no soul, then what is there to see?

For even those whose soulless masks haunt your dreams can smile as if alive.
And even those whose smiles have disappeared with their lives can still have hearts that burn.

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1: Somewhat Blind

*~*~*

The whole myth about vampires melting in daylight was a lie. A filthy lie. Or at least Hojo had thought so. Vincent proved this as he stood by the small magazine cart that sat in the back of an old truck parked in front of Shin-Ra Mansion late one Thursday afternoon, running his crimson eyes over the headlines of newspapers, tabloids, and half-covered porno mags alike. Reggie, the owner of the cart, leaned back against the right-hand door of the truck leisurely, glancing sideways at the red-caped man now and then to make sure he was making good progress through all the titles.

Vincent only ceased his browsing once, lightly pulling a Chara Weekly out of its place with an arched eyebrow. " 'Most Influential Men and Women of the Century,' " he read the eye-catcher. He paused, looking up towards Reggie and holding up the magazine enough so that the cover was visible to the cart-owner; it sported the visage of a grey-haired man who looked to be in his early fifties, all plastic surgery aside.

"Look," Vincent said rather amusedly, a smile tugging at his half-hidden lips. "They're featuring Cloud."

Reggie chuckled, shaking his head as he grounded one of the heels of his boots into the dusty, barely-used road. "Was there really any doubt...? Eh, the rest of your old buddies make up the other first seven."

"Hm." Vincent grasped the the spine of the magazine, flipping through the pages lightly with his golden claw. "You are correct... Let us see... We have Aerith, Tifa, Barret, Cid, Nanaki, Yuffie, and Reeve." He snapped the mag shut. "I wonder... Any idea where my place in the lineup went off to...?"

"Rumor has it they couldn't find find a decent photo," Reggie shrugged. "Not even old ones like they used for Miss Gainsborough and Captain Highwind. 'Sides," he laughed, a good-natured twinkle in his eye. "What the hell would they fill your page with? No one knows jack shit about where you came from or where you went, kinda like Highwind's disappearing act, except they don't have a buncha neighbors and a wife to keep track of the grief for years after years."

"Indeed..." Vincent slung the magazine under his arm along with a couple of his other usuals--Gun Fancy and Old Houses of Gaia. He drew a few large bills from some unseen pocket. "Due in some part to the secrecy kept by my loyal paper man... heh."

He gracefully swept by Reggie on his way to the gates of the Shin-Ra mansion, dumping the small treasure into the man's hands. "Keep the change..." was the last thing he uttered before Reggie grinned and swung back into his truck, sparking the ignition and driving off down the road and away from the deserted town known as Nibelheim.

Vincent made his way through the rusted iron gate and suddenly sighed, staring out at the jungle of brambles and weeds that greeted him. Perhaps it would have been wise to use that extra gil to hire a gardener... Ah, well...

He walked down the overgrown path through his front yard, using his golden claw as a machete now and then before he finally reached the front door of his decrepit, cobwebbed home. It was already ajar from when he had walked outside in the first place, allowing a single beam of sunlight to penetrate the layers of darkness that had hidden him for so much time.

"....'How to keep your firearm in tip-top shape'...." Vincent read out loud slowly from the cover of Gun Fancy, preoccupied as he walked inside and turned towards the interior of the door. He began to gently push it closed. " 'New Technology: Lasers Become Mass Wea--' "

Suddenly, something very large and very sharp was pressed up against his spine.

He froze.

For the first time in a long, long while, Vincent's eyes widened.

A voice, a whisper, almost toneless save for a small, almost inaudible hint of fury burned through Vincent's ears.

"...Bastard."

He tried to turn his head to see his attacker, but his move was countered with a sharp pang from his throat; the man behind him had thrown his arm over Vincent's head, cutting off his airflow and causing him to become as still as a statue. The object at his back dug in further.

"...You fucking bastard."

The arm's grip intensified with inhuman strength that would have ruptured the ribcage of a normal man. A normal man. Vincent struggled, scratching wildly at the arm with his claw and trying desperately to pry it from his neck... It was cold as ice, just like his own, and as he felt down the length of it, he also felt long, overgrown nails...

Realization suddenly dawned on him and he froze once again, this time in pure shock.

"Yeah..." The man chuckled softly, moving his head next to Vincent's ear. Long, pale blonde hair met Vincent's shoulder as he heard shallow breathing, escalating in anger. "Doesn't this all seem... kinda... just... just kinda familiar....?"

The arm began to feel harder, stronger, faintly metallic.... Nails solidifying... sharpening...

"HUH?!?!"

Vincent could faintly feel the object puncture his skin...

"Change..." he gasped as the man's grip tightened. "......Anger.... brings......... IT.....ACH!"

"YOU THINK I GIVE A SHIT?!" The man suddenly yelled in an inhuman wail that seemed more like a roar. "The only thing I care about now is that you fucking die."

The jagged object began to draw borrowed blood from Vincent's freshest meal and he could feel the layers of black and red cloth that formed his clothing begin to dampen with the thick liquid. The arm around his throat was feeling larger now, with sinewy muscles taut with anger. He looked down at it briefly to see the form of his destruction, and he wasn't surprised when he found himself to be in the headlock of an arm with silver-blue scales of a reptilian nature and dark claws of a strictly predatory one.

Vincent couldn't help but smile, even as the breathing next to his ear became harder, wilder, more difficult to regulate.

"So then... this is how it ends? You're going to let your demons do your dirty work?"

He paused, the silence lasting long enough for him to savor the familiar sounds of melding flesh and growing bones, of ripping clothes and and burning agony as the being who was enduring it realized it was losing control... and struggling to gain it back.

"Heh..." Vincent grinned as the monster behind him tried to calm its fury, tried to become the emotionless husk it was forced to be for every moment that it wished to wear a sheepskin of humanity. "You'd have to do more than that to get rid of me... I'm indestructible, you know------Hojo didn't mean for me to die at the hands of something I myself created---"

"You didn't make me..." The voice was torn between the two warring entities, both vying for control over the same body, the same mind. "Yes... NO... No, God....GOD dammit.... You didn't...."

"I didn't...?" Vincent began to chuckle coldly as he sensed he was regaining the upper hand. "I believe you lost any right to that vessel you use now the moment you chose to cheat death..."

"No, you bastard... you gave me no other CHOICE!" Sensing the same thing as Vincent had, the monster tightened its grip on the red-caped man's neck and made another jap with its makeshift weapon. "You know where this thing is from?!"

Vincent paused and then shook his head slowly, cautiously.

"It came from that coffin you threw me in, that GOD DAMNED COFFIN--" the monster's voice was changing again "--that I had the nightmares in, Vincent, the FUCKING NIGHTMARES."

Vincent was absolutely still, not even daring to shake in the fear that he suddenly felt crawling up his spine.

"You know what I had dreams about, Vincent...? Do you know what I had to GO THROUGH...?!" Air was harder to get, now... "No one knew, Vincent, no one KNEW why I had left... This was after I remembered all the TIMES I'd yelled at Shera, all the TIMES I'd made her cry... Oh, yeah, Vincent," the half-growl of a voice was back again, along with the claws, raking softly at Vincent's neck, softly... "she sometimes cried herself to sleep so loud I'd hear it from the other room, and then she was crying now too, because I'd left her when she'd thought I'd changed, thought my apology had been WORTH a shit..." Blood dripping down his neck... from that woman that had wandered into town last week.... She'd lasted a while, now, hadn't she?

"But I guess it counted for nothing... Ain't that right...?"

Vincent was wary of speaking, afraid that any movement within his throat would cause it to protude too much, to be cut even further by the claws sharpened by years of torment. He wondered if the monster even realized what it was doing in its fury, if it even realized that it wasn't even in full control over its actions anymore...

"Then do you know what I would dream about, Vincent? No, no, of course you don't... We were married--did you know that?--we'd been married a couple of months before and she wanted a kid, not just any old kid, my kid------do you understand, Vincent? Even after everything I'd ever done to her, she still wanted to carry my god damned CHILD. And I didn't want it either, because I'm such a god-fucking insensitive asshole, just like I've always been---but I said yes, I said yes for her."

Vincent could almost hear a sob escape between harsh, guttural breaths.

".......Vincent."

Sensing that he had better answer or be skewered, he managed to give a short, one-syllable response.

"Yes?"

There was a long silence, punctuated by the far-off cry of some hawk flying wild through the Nibel mountains. Then a whisper over Vincent's shoulder whose breath froze the tip of his ear and chilled the back of his neck.

".........I was gonna be a dad."

More silence. When the hawk didn't cry again, the creaking of the old floorboards from under him and the monster became the loudest thing next to the monster's breaths, which were changing from a steady rhythm to that same, erratic beat.

"Some little punk with a pop-cork gun was gonna be chasin' me around while I tried to work, and then I'd yell at him and he'd yell back at me and since Shera doesn't have any balls to speak of, she'd probably send us both off to a cheap counselor instead of riskin' a family feud and then I'd yell at her and tell her that she was the one who needed therapy; she wanted to die for a goddamn rocket."

The breathing was getting worse. The grip was getting tighter. Vincent could almost imagine how fast his own heart would be beating if he'd had his own blood to pump.

"But I'd love them both.... You--y'know? And maybe..... if I cussed a little less..... a-and worked a little harder... maybe.... maybe they'd end up liking me too for the asshole jerk I was."

The blood running down Vincent's neck was really becoming a problem. More like a river than a trickle, now. He wasn't sure if he would be able to speak for a while after this, the way a couple of the claws had punctured his throat.

"That's why I let you do that to me."

Amazing. This was almost becoming.... painful.

"I didn't want to miss out on the fun, even if it meant being like you. I think that counts for something."

More than painful. Agonizing. Suddenly, Vincent remembered the sharp object that had been put to his back, and instinctively, his eyes darted downwards towards his abdomen. His expression was vacant when he saw the tip of a jagged wooden splinter as thick as his arm going through his ribcage.

"Just.... just tell me one thing, Vincent...."

The vampire looked back up, towards the front door of the mansion--his mansion--outside towards the front yard that still needed trimming. He vaguely wondered who would take care of it if he wasn't around as he answered.

"What....?"

There was a pause, short enough for Vincent to not figure out what was coming, but long enough for him to guess.

He guessed wrong.

".......What..... how far did I need.... to go....?"

Vincent didn't need any clarification on the question. He gazed off at the sun that seemed to be setting so far away. Funny. He could have sworn it had just been morning.

"You.... needed to accept your fate...." He murmured distantly. ".....And.... taste your own tainted blood. You needed to drink it of your own accord, take it as it was offered to you from the hand of the one who wished to Gift you....."

He was, however, able to predict the inquiry that came next.

".....After that.....?"

Vincent chuckled, but not maliciously. His work here was finished, and he had no regrets. If he was to finally leave this place, then so be it. He wouldn't resist the fate the Gods had willed him.

He closed his eyes.

"After that..." He echoed, lost in a dream of the rightfully mad Hojo, the flower Lucrecia, the child Sephiroth, and him.... His plan had worked, hadn't it? He had known it would work.... If anyone could prove Hojo's unflattering hypotheses of human will wrong... Vincent hadn't been able to, but him..... ".....There was no need for anything after that."

He could sense the rage that was building, the anger that was about to erupt. In his last act of his own soul's redemption, he jerked backwards, holding his face close to the monster's chin, managing with his last ounce of strength to throw his closest arm upwards, around the back of the monster's neck as he breathed softly into its ear.

"I can still love you...." He pulled himself closer. "You may not realize it now.... if I can still love you, it means you can still survive." He closed his eyes. "If you survive.... if you break the cycle.... if you kill me as your own self.... I..... I've succeeded."

There was a pause. He felt a slight relaxation in the other, a slight change in demeanor. The monster's skin felt softer--colder, but softer, as seconds passed. Vincent's grip loosened and he felt his head fall backwards, away from the monster, away from reality. As he opened his eyes a final time he found he was looking upwards, into twin suns of twin universes of the souls he had saved.

He smiled.

"I see the sky in your eyes..." He whispered.

And then, in all ways of this world, he perished.

The monster wasn't sad. Nor was he angry. He felt a strange emptiness, a confusion at the root of his will to go on. He thought of laying down beside the lost soul, but it wouldn't do any good----wishful thinking about true death would only put him further in the death he was already desperately fighting. He closed his eyes, dropped the bloodied splinter from the palm of his hand, shakily brought a stark-white palm to his forehead. His hair was probably soaked in the liquid, he knew, as were the tattered remants of pants that still harbored a bare trace of a pale shade of green.

The sun hurt, he suddenly realized as he felt a burning sensation upon the bare flesh of his chest as a faint, dry wind blew the front door a bit more open. The sun hurt because he knew he couldn't be in it, he couldn't bring himself to even look straight at it like he had done so many times in days long past, daring it to leave black and blue spots in his vision. But he did look up---he looked up and saw the blue surrounding the evil white orb, saw in the heavens what Vincent had seen in his soul.

For the first time in thirty years, Cid remembered the sky.