Faded Dreams, Falling Like Rain

A Final Fantasy VII Fan Fiction by Sarah Digna Yudlowitz, Jenova's Puppet Strings

E-mail Address: Lildeharou@aol.com (Send all questions, comments, praises flames, etc. here)

AIM screenname:TwiggickenFever (If you wish to talk to the author, she will be happy to respond)



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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Rating: R (Status: ongoing)

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Author's Note: This is pretty short, but it took me a long time to write it in pieces because of the amount of school work I have. I'm completely obsessed this year . . . I need to stop over-working myself.



Chapter Twenty-four







The sun rose and Vincent Valentine made his way from the Inn's bar to Shinra Mansion. Drowning his sorrows in liquor only made him feel so much worse, and now he was staggering, infinitely tired, but having a resolve that made him more stubborn than he's ever been. Why am I here? So many memories, Vincent thought. So many bad memories. The dark-haired man's piercing red eyes, altered from their cobalt color many years ago, looked over the place of his second origin, where he was reborn as a monster. His claw clenched unconciously, and he snorted, forcing back a torrent of rage. Rage. Was that all that made him feel alive? He could hardly call what kind of state he was in "alive."

He was a man haunted by his past, who couldn't let the brief love he once had go. He had never experienced anything like Lucrecia. He had no love until her. It was only fitting that something so blissful should be taken from him. I got her killed, Vincent thought as he opened the passage into the basement of the Mansion, after having walked through the hall to get to the bedroom where the hidden door lay. I was the death of her, and I can never forget that. She didn't deserve to die. She didn't deserve to have her children taken away from her. And she didn't deserve to get involved with me. He practically flew down the stairs and back into his crypt, falling back against the door with a heavy sigh The stain of heat from liquor drained from his cheeks, and he became sobered as he stared around. He looked at the coffin that lay in the middle of the room and shakily made his way to it. The air around him was dense and smelled of years of accumulating dust. He closed his eyes and tried to force back the tears that threatened to shed themselves. He hadn't cried in so long, and it stung his eyes in the most painful of ways, his heart in his throat.

Then, the air changed. The faint smell of Jasmine permeated it, and a ghostly trail of light softened the dank and dark room, floating around and encircling Vincent with its encroaching comfort. Vincent's eyes relaxed, the tears he held suddenly trickling down his cheeks, and that was the end of it. He smelled Lucrecia's perfume, and he thought that if he was going insane, it would be a welcome embrace if he could allow himself to think that Lucrecia was here.





"Vincent." His eyes drifted open and felt her ghostly touch. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed the side of his mouth. Vincent's arms instinctively went to cradle her arms on his chest, but he only felt warmth as his hands (one flesh and one claw) passed through them, holding on to his own cloak. "Don't try to touch me. I can only touch you."





"I want to hold you, Lucrecia. More than anything . . ." His voice wavered, and tears did fall down his cheeks, falling to soak the material of his cloak. Lucrecia turned him around and hugged him again, kissing his face tenderly.





"Vincent, I've been watching over you . . . I want you to move on. I can't stand seeing you this unhappy."





"How can I, Lucrecia, when everything reminds me of you? Your son is dead. He died, manipulated by a past he was kept from, and I allowed him to be tested on and uncared for, and then I killed him!"





"Listen to me, my love. It could not be helped. Sephiroth brought the world into the picture, and there was no way you could not kill him to make him realize everything. Sephiroth has already explained this to Cloud." Vincent looked at Lucrecia's face with an undefinable look in his eyes. Somehow, the idea of Sephiroth visiting Cloud this way worried him. "He's with me in Lifestream. We've been reunited, as all other souls are. Don't worry yourself with me, Vincent . . . I'm dead, and you're alive. You make it seem like it's the other way around."





"But I am dead, Lucrecia. Look at me . . . I'm a monster.I want to join you."





"You're drifting from me, Vincent. I can't make you see what you really are, but you are not a monster! I still love you . . . and I want you to see that. I will support everything you do, but I won't allow you to kill yourself. You're stronger than that, Valentine." Her ghostly lips pulled up into a grin. Vincent laughed softly at the use of his last name, his throat hurting with the effort, afraid that it sounded horrible, but he didn't care.She had called him by his last name on several occasions when he was feeling down, because she knew it would amuse him. Everyone chose to call him by his last name in Shinra, but somehow, when she said it, it was different. And now Lucrecia was here with him again.

He didn't care if the alcohol was making him delusional . . . it was so real, yet not. He stared hard at her, trying to memorize the way she looked. Sometimes, he was afraid that he would forget, and he would have no trace of her. He reached out to touch her, not caring that his hand would pass through her. And it did. But this time he relished in the warmth that passed over his skin. It was like the tingle of a touch, on some level, and he smiled, passing through her entirely. Infinite pleasure and warmth spread through him as he did, and there was a sense of calm, the kind that Lucrecia had always given off with her love. He turned toward her and smiled sadly when she embraced him. It felt like the whisper of a touch, just like before . . . as if she really wasn't there at all. Perhaps she wasn't. Vincent's nightmares had been more solid than this before.





"I wish you would be near me again," Vincent whispered, and Lucrecia's embrace changed. It became more solid, and a hand throttled Vincent backwards into the nearest wall. The sharp crack of his head hitting the wall made him struggle to remain concious as he slid toward the floor and looked up in stark surprise. Above him stood the form of Hojo, laughing.





"Did you really think it was her? That she would still love you after what you did to her? You were a pathetic excuse for a specimen, let alone a human," Hojo laughed, his sinister grin reminding Vincent of where he was. The effect of the alcohol returned to him, suddenly burning through his blood like a bad dosage of drugs. He shrunk back into the corner away from Hojo, but the man followed, chunks of his face, ripe with decay, falling off and onto te ground. His skin was a rare shade of blue-green, dried veins showing through rot. The smell of it penetrated to Vincent's nose, and stung his eyes with its thickness. Formaldehyde assaulted his senses, and he reeled back, choking in his incapability to breathe in clean air. It was then that Hojo's eyes, burnt from their sockets, fell away in ashes.







Vincent snapped forward, clutching at his cloak, and tried to tear it away from his throat. His eyes welled with tears as he fell to the ground hopelessly, floundering and sputtering for air to get into his lungs until it assaulted his lungs, stabbing like icicles. The bandages that kept his hair in place fell unwrapped and he felt his bones popping with a familiar metamorphosis. A scream caught in his throat and he fought with all of his strength to keep the transformation at bay, but he he felt his fingers growing longer, his mechanical arm becoming flesh, and the claws of a daemon replaced his trim nails that hadn't grown since experimentation, unless of course he became his beast counterpart. He felt rather than heard the screams around him, and slowly, he was no longer Vincent in form. He was Vincent in mind, but the beast's will overpowered his own, and it was out for blood to smear its fangs and claws. The thought of it terrified Vincent, but the darker half of him was aroused by the notion of death at his counterpart's hands. Vincent was disgusted with himself, and terrified once more, for he had no idea where he was exactly.