Disclaimer: You can't steal anybody appearing in this fic because they aren't mine. They're all copyrights of Squaresoft, the lucky bastards…

Sin Harvester:

Sow the Seeds of Sin Under the Fall of Blood

By: CursedAngelofSephiroth

This is my second fic while I work on my next projects. So, here's another FF7 fanfic for your reading pleasure.

Dreams with Claws

A hundred years had passed on the Planet. The oceans continued to rage. The mountains continued to tower to the sky. The clouds continued to wander the heavens. The forests continued to breathe life in every cardinal direction. And man continued to live on, to strive for survival over eternity.

But another wished for an end, at least for himself. An end to his own personal eternity. The pain of immortality. The pain of suffering alone deep within the dark recesses of the earth, body festering with sin and sadness. Weeds and wildflowers dared to thrive on his dark, tainted blood, fashioning a web to further shackle him to this earth, where his pain and agony was eternal. Although he had atoned for one sin, he had yet to repent for others. But he didn't want to move, for he would feel that he was still alive. But he felt his life trapped inside him, regardless. Dreams. They had tiny claws that would pinch and poke at his brain almost like hungry insects. And they would leave behind waste, thoughts bereft of wings, doomed to trudge through his mind without end.

…Lucrecia…

…Sephiroth…

…Jenova…

…We were all damned by him, by it. By me. Because I couldn't save you… I could only watch you suffer and die before my very eyes, while your son would soon inherit the same legacy, to become the prodigal progeny of the devil, Jenova, and die, at last, by her hand. And my hand…

Lucrecia, my love, I am so sorry. No matter what I may do to right every wrong, someone may end up getting hurt every time. And I will only fall deeper and deeper into darkness, with no hand of light to help me and spirit me away to the peace I so seek in slumber.

Perhaps my only savior is…Death, but…

There was a knock on the lid of his coffin. After years of silence and stillness, his limbs of hard dried clay struggled to the tiniest life they could muster, chipping piecemeal at the stillness, his lips cleaving the silence in twain as he labored for breath beyond thick dust that tasted of ancient mold. Beetles skittered over his eyelids.

"…cent…"

He breathed in long and slow. The net of dry brittle weeds over his body crackled, threatening to crumble while his lungs, his chest, inflate with cold stagnant air.

"…V…cent…"

He opened his eyes bit by bit. His ears were ringing. For decades he had listened to nothing more than the miserable sluggish thumping of his half dead heart and the whistle of a sly wind in the depths of the mansion. But basically, he slept in the sweet embrace of quietude. He longed to return to his oblivious slumber. Sleep…

"…Vincent…"

There was a raspy scraping of wood on wood. Someone had begun to move the lid of his coffin from its place. As much as he wanted to turn over, his muscles could not yet allow it.

His eyes opened onto the blue-gray stone ceiling of his chosen tomb. He groaned quietly, squinting against the virtually nonexistent light of this underground chamber.

"Vincent, wake up," said a deep, almost purring voice.

"…" A crimson blur arose in his sight, as bold as a still flame. A wisp of orange fire swished to and fro beyond the blur. He closed his eyes and slightly turned his head to the side.

"Wake up, Vincent," the voice insisted. He demurred to comply and tried to fall asleep again. He was then forcefully nudged by something soft yet heavy. One eye crept open for a second look at this intruder that invaded his tomb and disturbed his long, long siesta. A sharp eye of burnt umber peered back. The crimson blur spoke with a touch of apology in its low, rumbling voice, "Sorry to wake you but there's something I wanted to talk to you about. Mind getting out of your coffin and lending an ear?"

Vincent groaned.

"Take your time."

He toiled to get his arms working correctly. Disuse had made them stiff as boards and his muscles were just as disobedient. He curled and uncurled his fingers, shredding the cobwebs that adorned them. His claw was still there, cumbersome, cold and hard. Symbol of his sins. The clawed dreams lingered on the edge of his subconscious. Grounded waste, his thoughts.

"…ungh," he grunted softly. Vincent steadily lifted his hands to the rim of his coffin and raised himself up. The weeds clung to his jet hair now grown past his knees, clung to his red cape crusted with moss and mold.

"Welcome back to the world of the living," said the one who raised him. Vincent focused his murky red weary eyes onto the crimson blur.

"…Red XIII," he managed with dry lips and throat. He glanced about tardily. Nothing had changed in his dark and dreary tomb. The discarded skeletons of times past stacked along the walls. But there were little differences here and there. Stray weeds from the surface had overwhelmed the place. They adhered to the walls, found shelter among the bones and even within his very coffin. He looked back to Red XIII.

"It almost looks to me like if I came any later, you would BE earth," the creature remarked a bit jocosely.

"…how long has it…been? How long since I went back to sleep?" Vincent asked as he picked at the debris stuck to his body.

"Practically a whole century."

"A century… Does that mean that everyone is…?" The other nodded solemnly.

"Yes. Cloud, Tifa, Cid, Barret, all of them… It's kinda weird, but Cloud was the first to go," Red divulged. He shook his head, his fiery mane swaying in that subtle movement. "Maybe that Mako poisoning had finally caught up with him…"

"…so they're gone. And only you and I remain from that time," Vincent muttered in his usual monotone. Immortality was a hideous thing to possess. To outlive the friends whom he had never called friends but, nevertheless considered them such, at least in some miniscule manner.

"I know what you're thinking. It's hard to accept the reality of such a thing. I didn't want to watch time pick them off one by one but I had no control over any of that. So I made do with the time I still had left with them, just lived it up. So I have no real regrets," he nodded confidently. Vincent allowed his eyes to drift down onto the golden claw of his left arm. If not for this claw…If not for this claw…

"…Red…"

"Hey, it's just Nanaki now. I got rid of that name a long time ago," the creature told him. "Anyway, I'd feel more comfortable at the inn than here in the basement of Shinra mansion. And, well…"

"…"

"You…look like you could use a good cleaning up, too. Tidiness is next to godliness or something rather like that. Ahem…"