Vincent's Last Birthday Escapade:

Part Four

By Darknightdestiny

Tifa's eyes shut at the sound of her name. Vincent had sounded like he was expecting her to follow him down there. She had watched him send Yuffie out of his room, and she had caught the quick glance he had sent her own way while she stood there feeling sorry for both Vincent and Yuffie. His voice was of a melencholy tone, and she decided that she felt more sorry for him than she had for the girl. One the one hand, Yuffie had gotten herself into trouble by forcing her way into Vincent's private matters, but he hadn't had a choice. He hadn't even been asked if he wanted anyone to know... well...anything.

She didn't want to hurt him in the same way. So, she would ask him. "Vincent..." There was silence on the other side of the door. "...Can I come in?" There was no answer. Tifa's fingers curled up into her hand as it lay against the surface of the door. "Vincent-"

"You may."

It was simple and subtle, but it was all she needed. Tifa let her hand slide down to the doorknob, and she opened the layer of wood that separated her from her purpose for being there. She almost jumped backwards when she was met with the glinting of two red irises as soon as she had stepped inside of the dim chamber.

Vincent lay upside down on the top of his coffin, the lid closed, and the hard burgundy wood the only thing cushioning his back. His head was at the foot of the coffin, and his feet were at the top. His knees were slightly raised, and so his neck just reached the edge of the deathbed. The nape of his neck rested on the edge of the wood, and his head hung upside down from it, his hair falling down onto the floor, splayed out on the hard surface. He looked back at Tifa with tired eyes, half-closed from exhaustion. He had been through a great deal in the last couple of days, and she understood that he had wanted to be alone with his thoughts. But they had a planet to save, and nothing was going to pull him up from this unless he had some help.

Tifa stepped closer and knelt down at the foot of the coffin until she was at eye level with Vincent. One of her knees was on the floor, and the other was elevated slightly, supported by her steadfast foot. The second knee felt some of the soft strands brush against it as Vincent shifted around on his coffin and brought one of his hands to drape over his hip, and his claw arm up behind his neck, so that the hard wood wouldn't dig into his skin. It was hard to concentrate with Vincent's hair tickling her shin, but this was a serious matter, and she willed herself to do so. "...Are you alright?"

Vincent paused before answering. He kept his face as straight as ever, even though it displayed a weary passiveness. "In your terms, or in mine?" Tifa knew that she would never be able to understand his terms, at least not in the next day or two, and so for now, she would have to do with what she did know.

"Maybe I should have just asked if you were going to be okay." Tifa lowered herself to the ground, signifying her wish to stay and talk. She sighed and folded her hands in her lap, her legs folded neatly underneath of her. She watched her fingers play with one another before she finally lifted her gaze to Vincent's, which had not left her face, and she asked, "Do you think you will?"

Vincent continued to watch her for a few moments before his eyes faltered and went down to his feet, lost in plates of gold. Then, slowly, but still out of the blue, he flipped over on his coffin and propped himself up on his forearms. His human hand tinkered idly with his metallic claw as he thought about Tifa's question, and after a while, he answered it with one of his own. "...Tifa, what made you want to see that?"

Tifa tilted her head in question. "The tape?" Vincent nodded. "Well, to be perfectly honest...I didn't think it was a good idea to take it..."

"What made you want to see it?" He pressed further, his voice soft, but set in its way. It was true, she had been in the room when he'd found them, and she couldn't deny that.

"I guess it was curiosity." Vincent raised one eyebrow in question.

"...Is that so?" Tifa nodded. Vincent waited before speaking again, taking time out to play with his cybernetic appendage some more, still uncomfortable with its presence while he was awake. "...Why should you want to know about me?"

Tifa smiled sadly. "You're always so quiet, and so secretive. You've been with us all this time, and I still don't think I know much at all about who you really are. You keep to yourself, and you stay in the corner of every room..." She trailed off, unsure of what else to say. She sighed, and ended with, "I wish it wasn't so hard trying to talk to you."

"...Perhaps it is best."

Tifa looked down at her knees and then back up. "I'm not so sure." As she contemplated talking about life in general with Vincent, and anything else that might come up in a normal conversation with an old friend, which she had hoped that he would one day become, another thought struck her. "Vincent, what are you going to do when this is all over?"

Vincent kept his eyes cast downward and answered quietly, "I have not yet decided." There was a long silence, and the situation became awkward. Tifa tried her best to think of something else to say.

"...You know why she does it." It was more of a question than a statement, especially since she was running out of things to talk about, and she hoped that Vincent would make some sort of comment about it. He raised his head and looked her in the eyes.

"...Yuffie?" She nodded. "Yes, I know why." He lowered his head again, and left it at that, plain and simple. Tifa was satisfied with that, but she was curious as to what his exact thoughts on the matter were. She had a pretty good idea from what she had seen in the hallway, but she didn't know exactly why what had transpired had happened in the way it did.

"You know then, how she feels?"

Vincent raised his head again and spoke his mind on the matter, and he put things as nicely as he could. "I know what it is that she wants. But Yuffie is a young girl, and she will be for a very long time."

Tifa nodded in reply. Had Yuffie been there, the ninja would have been offended, thinking that Vincent was turning her down because of a petty difference in age. But Tifa understood what it was that had he meant by what he said. She also noticed that he had used the word 'wants,' instead of 'feels.' Tifa couldn't help but wonder why she had been allowed to enter the chamber, after what had happened between Vincent and Yuffie, but she had a hint of an answer, and that was good enough for her. As the silence grew, her fingers became busy once again.

In an odd attempt to lighten the mood, something that he rarely did, because not many people could appreciate his sense of humor, Vincent offered up the small phrase, "It is a bit ironic."

Grateful to have something new to move on to, Tifa watched him for an explanation, before she figured out that he wanted her to ask him herself. "What is?"

Vincent sighed in mock sadness, an air that gave off an immediate feeling of, 'Oh well, what can you do?' before he continued. "...It is ironic that, had I not had that image inked into my arm, I might still have it today."

Tifa hesitated. "I don't understand."

Vincent shook his head, and Tifa detected the hint of a smirk, even though it looked like a sad one. "It is not important." Tifa nodded and busied herself again. "Tifa..." She raised her head again to look at him, but found his gaze to be directed at her lap. Her face contorted in question, and his gaze came up to meet hers again, directing her own back to her lap when his eyes moved again. Tifa looked down at her hands and saw that she'd been fiddling with a lock of her hair, and a couple of his own strands had gotten caught in her fingers. For how long this had gone on, she was not sure, but she immediately dropped it. A small smile of amusement played on Vincent's face, but it disappeared as soon as Tifa looked back up at him, a bit of pink in her cheeks. "Are you nervous?" Vincent asked, with an expression completely void of all emotion.

"...Do you want the truth?" Tifa asked, sighing again purposefully, to try and ward off the tremor that caught in her throat.

"That will not be necessary," Vincent replied. "I can already tell that you are. However, I fail to see why." Tifa's brow was knit together in confusion, her head already tilted to the side in question. "It would seem that you have a genuine concern for my well-being." Vincent lowered his head again as she froze, her brow relaxed, but her eyes wide. He spoke up again, almost inaudibly. "...Thank you."

Tifa replied in the only way she knew how, with the only word that would come to her. "...Sure," she forced out, in her frozen voice. She clasped her hands tightly together and inched forward, coming underneath the shadow of Vincent's hair, which surrounded his downcast face. Finally, her voice came back to her. "We won't stop until we get him, you know."

"...I only want-"

"Closure?" Tifa interrupted. She'd no idea where that came from. Vincent nodded back to her, and she forgot for a moment why she even cared where it came from. She felt that she understood him for once, and she was happy to have done so, even if it was her only chance. "You'll get it...even if we have to wait until we've saved the entire world." Tifa smiled at the thought that they might accomplish the impossible.

Vincent worried that they might fail, and their chances looked bleak. But Tifa's presence there in the chamber was comforting to him, and even if they had a long, hard road in front of them, he still had a few moments of peace before they would head down that path. He decided that after all he had gone through to keep the others far away from him, he really didn't mind having her there, asking him questions. He didn't mind at all.

He nodded to her. "...Before we head out..." he offered softly, "here." Vincent sat up and slid from the coffin, around to the side, and lifted the lid up. He reached inside and pulled out the little black object that had caused all of that morning's trouble. Tifa blinked, still sitting in her position on the floor, unsure of what he was doing. He walked over and knelt beside her, handing her the tape.

"...What are you doing?" she asked. He looked up at her and then back to the tape, and when she didn't make a move, he took her hand and closed it around the tape. Tifa's eyes went wide with realization. "Why give it to me?" He sat down beside her.

"...You wanted to understand." She nodded. "You may finish it...once this is all over. After I leave."

"But isn't that something you wanted to keep?" she questioned.

He hesitated. "...It was a gift. To her. I did not care for it much, but she seemed to think it was thoughtful."

Tifa smiled. "I think so."

"...I was drinking."

Tifa laughed at the simplicity of his reply. "So what you are saying is that, had you been sober, you would never have gotten one of those when you were...young?"

Vincent started, and then stopped in thought for a minute. Tifa eyed him suspiciously and then asked a question that had been eating at her for some time, given Hojo's apparent age. "Vincent, how old are you?"

He turned to her and stared her down in all seriousness. "...Fifty-seven." Tifa laughed softly, but Vincent didn't change his expression one bit, not even with a smirk. Tifa stopped laughing after a while when she realized this.

"...You're serious?" He nodded. She stared straight ahead of her, thinking to herself. "Wow..." Vincent watched her with a slightly detached look, as if he had volenteered that information a hundred times. In truth, that was the first time he had ever been close to needing to explain himself since he woke up, and it was strange for him to think of himself as being that old, but he'd had only himself and his nightmares for the past thirty years, so not much would faze him. "You know, we have a lot to talk about one of these days," she said, turning back to him.

He nodded hesitantly. "...Perhaps later."

"...Perhaps," she said, mimicking him. "...Are you ready to go downstairs?" she asked warily.

"...Ladies first." He stood, motioning to the door, and helped her up.

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"Oh...wow."

"What is it?" a voice called from the other room.

"Oh, nothing!" Tifa called back. She turned her attention back to the box that sat before her. "I can't believe I almost forgot about you," she said to no one in particular, but thinking of the small object that lay inside, 'you' meaning the object, and not the person in connection to the object. She sat still for a moment, almost afraid to touch it for some reason unknown. Finally, she just grabbed it and stood up quickly from the floor, before rushing out of the back room and past the bar. Karlie shot her a look of hurried confusion.

"Tifa, wait! Where are you going?"

"I'm going to run home. There's something I have to do," she breathed to the redheaded girl behind the counter.

"Why the rush?"

Tifa hurried out the door almost laughing, and she called back, "I don't even know!"

Tifa ran all the way from Tifa's Seventh Heaven to her apartment by the Junon Pier. The elevator was in use, and so she rushed up the stairs to get to her residence. It wasn't that big of a deal. After all, she'd climbed the 'never-ending' staircase at the ShinRa Headquarters, so she could take on a few stories easily.

When she reached her apartment, she set the tape down on the couch and bent over, breathing heavily. She walked over to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water, and then strode back out to her living room and sat down on the couch. She stared at the tape for a minute or two before sitting her glass on the coffee table and taking it over to her machine. She examined the tape, which was still in the same place they had left it, so when she inserted it into the machine, it should start up exactly where they had left off. She pushed the tape into the machine...

...and was rewarded with tracking signals and fuzzy lines running across the screen. Tifa's heart dropped all the way down the stairs she had climbed and hit the water below. She'd waited six months to see what Vincent had been so protective about, something he had deemed worthy of Lucrecia's eyes, but not of the rest of his 'teammates,' and now she would never know what was on the tape. It wasn't like she could ask Vincent, because he'd disappeared as soon as they'd landed the Highwind after Sephiroth's defeat. No one had heard anything from him, and she was the only one who had any evidence of his existence, and it was completely shot. As busy as she was in her thoughts, she didn't seem to notice that the tracking was getting better and better until the sound of an electric needle hit her ears and jolted her out of her saddened state.

Turning all of her attention back to the screen and slinking back into her seat, Tifa watched the artist do his work on Vincent's arm, whil Ken and Johnny laughed in the background. Vincent settled down quickly, but the other two continued as loudly as ever. Tifa got up from her couch and walked over to the screen, her remote in hand. She could have sworn she saw a snippet of something inbetween the artist's bowed head and busy hand, but she couldn't be sure, and so she wanted to wait until it was finished. She was sure that Ken and Johnny would have wanted to tape the final product.

When the art was done, however, she heard Ken's voice commenting, "And now to see Vinny's new arm!" and watched as the camera changed angles, but then the image ended, replaced with only static. She fast-forwarded the tape, hoping to catch something at the end of the static, but that was all there was. She rewound the tape again, to the point at which she had seen something beforehand, and used her slow-motion button on her remote so that she could watch the film in frames. When she got a semi-clear picture, she paused it, and brought her face inches from the screen.

What she saw was the figure of an angel, tattooed neatly on Vincent's left forearm, with the face of a beautiful woman. She'd remembered him saying that the one he wanted 'looked like her,' and she could only assume that he had meant Lucrecia. But why was the end of the tape missing? He had said it had been given to her, so why would the end be gone? The rest of the film up to that point had been fine. She'd realized that the tracking distortion had been her own machine, and it had adjusted on its own. But there was an abrupt stop at the end.

Had she gotten rid of it herself? Maybe that was why he hadn't wanted the others to see it. Or maybe it was simply the fact that he didn't want to give the them any reason to expect him to act like they did. Nevertheless, it seemed odd to Tifa that the end was missing.

Maybe one day she would ask him. Maybe one day, she would get that chance. In that moment, she was just glad that he had trusted her enough to let her see it. She didn't know what it was, but knowing Vincent, he had seen something that he liked in her character. He had a strange way with everything, and people were no exception. She'd come to read some of his expressions and actions during the rest of their trip, and she'd come to interpret them in her own way, but they always seemed to match up. She was sad that she could not see him to thank him for trusting her, and for thinking that she could understand him even a little. But she had her thanks from him already there, in the form of one short scene from his past.

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A/N: And it's finished! Like I said, I'm going to be launching this as a prequel for the fic I want to do afterwards. It will be called, "To Know You," and it will take place about a month after this fic does. It will be about 10 chapters, as far as I can see, and I will try to start it as soon as possible. I love vacations, don't you?

So there it is, complete with my obligatory refutation of the Yuffentine pairing. It just wouldn't be complete without it. But I'm feeling badly for those who read it with the expectation of something along those lines. So I'm thinking of maybe writing a short for that...even though it goes against my self-imposed writing code, as stated in the beginning of Flirting with Death. Did you know that due to the new anti-author notes rule, I have to get rid of that introduction to that story? [sigh]

Thanks to everyone who reviewed! I'd thank specifics, but some people don't like to send reviews until the very end of the story, and that would just leave out everyone who only reviews chapter 4. I do want to thank gothicDJ, kissa-chan, seasonofthepumpkin and JessAngel, as well as Sephiroth1Ripley8, JackofSpades and Dark Angel. You guys really, really kept me going, and I really appreciated the correspondence I got from you!

Kissa: Rachel...Update!
Me: Soon!
Kissa: It's about that time!
Me: Soon...
Kissa: Did you DIE?
Me: ...Yes ma'am!
[snickers]

Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed! I appreciate all the feedback I get, and it makes me feel all fuzzy inside. XP

~Nighty Night~