Faded Dreams, Falling Like Rain

A Final Fantasy VII Fan Fiction by Sarah Digna Yudlowitz

Dream . . .

Dream of death . . .

Dream of moonlight . . .

Legal Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII and all of its characters belong to the company of Squaresoft. I do not claim these characters or the concept of the game for my own. This work is not to be distributed, sold, or posted anywhere without the consent of its author. Comments and encouragements are always welcomed, as they are a part of the enjoyment of writing Fan fiction. Please take this into consideration while you read the following fiction.

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Chapter Eight





Vincent awoke early, watching the light of the sun trickle through the small room in broken shards from the small gaps of space in the window boards. All else was completely dark and silent, slumbering as if in hibernation. He would check on Cloud later, but now he sat, catching himself remembering Lucrecia's face and hands, her lips smiling at him, rouged ruby red. He sighed and checked what time it was, and was displeased when he found that it was merely 3:30 in the morning. Cloud would remain asleep until six if his sleep was more or less uneventful.

Every time he tried to pass the time by closing his eyes, he heard laughter in his ears, almost real, and understood that Lucrecia's love would always haunt him. When he was still a Turk, working for Shinra, he had dreams that Lucrecia would be taken from him, dreams that came night after night that were all the same, yet slightly more detailed every night. It started with Sephiroth, who lay upon a morgue slab as it was his very bed, comfortable and ethereal, smiling unnaturally, the light of the moon shining through a ceiling window which doesn't exist, and then he saw Sephiroth dancing with the dead, Lucrecia at the center. She was wearing a long black gown and her face was a ghostly pale white. She was like a princess of the night. Once Seohiroth saw Vincent, however, he'd fly through the ceiling, words muted falling from his lips like clumsy grace, and his face resembled Hojo's, youthful, unwrinkled, pale, and evil. And he flew back with his sword now gripped in his hand. Masamune, it was called. It tore through Lucrecia's body, which fell forward, wide-eyed, vacant, but now instead of Lucrecia's face, he saw Aerith's, blood spilling around her, sounding like a waterfall of exotic water.







Vincent awoke later in the morning to see Cloud stuffing a piece of toast into his mouth, munching loudly and pouring orange juice in front of his face into a tall glass that didn't look as if it was washed hard enough.





"Good morning, Vincent," Cloud greeted, still having a mouth full of food. "You know, there's an extra bed in this place. You should try that out, 'cause I bet your back is killing you, sleeping in closets and stuff."





"I guess I miss my coffin," Vincent replied, a little dazed. He looked at Cloud, and realized he was wearing his Shinra uniform and armor, his buster sword newly polished in the corner of the little kitchen. "And where are you going?"





"I had another dream last night that tried to tell me something," Cloud responded, "So I decided that I should do something about it rather then just stay here and feel sorry for myself.





"See any Makou eyes in that dream?" Vincent asked cautiously.





"Yeah. It was really strange, though. I remembered something Sephiroth told me once . . .and then . . . I saw a woman with Makou green eyes and silver hair. She looked a lot like Sephiroth."





"Like Sephiroth?" Vincent said as he looked down at the toast being laid out before him. He shook his head. "I'm not hungry, Cloud." The boy made a face at this, but didn't persist. "You must be talking about Lilith," Vincent said as Cloud proceeded to scarf down the toast on the plate that was offered to him. Drinking half the semi-clean glass of orange juice, Cloud blinked vacantly at Vincent and then some familiar look was across his face. It was a look that told Vincent that Cloud was trying to remember her.





"I had a dream that she found me, and taught me how to survive after Zack's death," Cloud said. Vincent remembered this from when Cloud had tolfd him of his link to Sephiroth's mind, and how he was able to transmit images and memories. Sephiroth had been trying to explain mnemonically, and in riddles. It was more fun to him that way. Everyone around him was part of his game, and it took respect to make Sephiroth stop those games. No, he didn't respect Cloud, nor did he regard him as his equal. He did, however, find Cloud amusing. He understood the boy so well, but only gave him who he was in riddles and games like everyone else, and Cloud didn't know how to decipher them.

Lilith was different.

Lilith's Lucrecia's second childe . . . his childe, the childe he was condemned for. Lilith was Sephiroth's half-sister, who was snatched up by Hojo and experimented on not long after birth. Vincent would never forget the look on Lucrecia's heart-broken face. She had prayed for miscarriage, knowing that the pregnancy would enrage Hojo, and cast his wrath upon Vincent. Lucrecia ran away after that, never heard of again, and Vincent slept for twenty-three years of unbroken nightmares, unaware of the changes in the world, and unaware of how forgotten he was, lying in a coffin in Shinra Mansion, surrounded by the dead.

When he had awoken from such long slumber, Vincent was surprised to hear that Sephiroth was still alive, but did not know if Lilith had survived the experimentation that Hojo performed on her, and he could never bring himself to admitting to the tortured childe that he was her father, and not Hojo. This was another sin of his, although he supposed that it would have been stupid to tell Lilith so. Hojo certainly kept secrets from both children. It startled Vincent to have seen Sephiroth grown-up, when the last time in his nightmares he had been in his childhood years.

He saw, very distinctly, the delicate features of his mother in him, and knew that his strength was not unlike hers. He still remembered Sephiroth's murder of Aerith Gainsbrough, "the flower girl," he had called her.

"Martyr," he smiled, as he plunged his Masamune to the hilt through the girl's torso, and no one had been able to stop him. Cloud stood, arms at his sides, expression blank, until Sephiroth left, leaving a part of Jenova behind to manifest as a weaker part of her whole, and there had been grief in his eyes as he laid Aerith into the pond of clear water. Vincent knew that Cloud did not love Aerith, but he, like himself, cared deeply for those he got himself involved with, even if he didn't show it at times.





"Vincent," Cloud shook the man gently, and was startled when Vincent's deep red eyes shot open.





"I was remembering Lilith . . . and Sephiroth," he said, and then added, "I'm sorry."





"I thought Sephiroth was an orphaned only childe," Cloud muttered. Vincent laughed.







"He thought he was too. It's a funny thing about Sephiroth and Lilith . . .they only met once . . .and every time Hojo mentioned either Lucrecia or Lilith, he would be brainwashed, so to speak, by Hojo. He, of course, didn't want them to know about each other, or their mother, and even me. He despised me for loving Lucrecia, and he despised even more that Lucrecia loved me back.