Pretty in Red

by Darknightdestiny

[Oneshot] Gift fic for Reno Spiegel. One of Vincent's past sins comes to haunt him as he lies on the floor of the lab one night. Scifi and Horror, a bit of angst as well. All right, a lot of angst. I warned you.

Pretty in Red

Rachel "D" Winslow

For
Reno Spiegel

Blood. It was everywhere.

The moonlight filtered clearly through the window panes, betraying the scene to every eye watching. Sheer white tapestries, blue in the night, fluttered in the false breeze created by the fan mounted in the wall just below them. The ceiling fan- made of a deeply colored wood, mahogany to be exact- continued its revolutions, turning three times to each second. The pale light fell over the fair, beige carpeting, illuminating easily recognizable red stains that seeped through the wool threading. The dark red blots on the floor were positioned in pairs more often than not, like dancers in a twisted sort of ballet. They culminated in one spot, the stray flecks pointing towards tiny gatherings of crimson, the entire scene offsetting the centerpiece, staring down the cause of the scattering, encircling the star of the show.

Disrupting the light from the doorway were three figures. They stood tall and dark, and the yellow stream was split into several beams which shone in around them and settled, converging at a heap on the floor in the center of the room. The beams met where the moonlight ended and the pairs criss-crossed in the dark, overlaying the crumpled figure like searchlights in the night.

The silence of those in the house was disrupted by the soft yet rough humming of the fan beneath the grating in the wall. All was steady until a small, black form leapt from the shadows near the ceiling and landed gracefully on the floor, slinking past the old wooden rocking chair set just underneath the tall bookcase. Golden eyes glowed in the dark as the slender figure crept across the carpet soundlessly and came to rest at the foot of the heap.

The thin feline crouched down near the heap and set its chin near the floor, picking up the scent as it moved slowly forward on its haunches. A soft paw flew out towards the heap, tapping at it, to see what had come about, testing for a reaction. The animal straightened up and swerved about the front of the figure, before dipping its nose down near it again. Its head jerked back suddenly at the smell, and the cat ran away when the heap started to move, stopping and turning several feet away to watch from a distance.

A small, pale hand reached out from underneath the dark and heavy blue fabric, weighty velvet threatening to pull it down and force it into surrender. The tiny arm grasped at the floor before it, short and chubby fingers reaching out and stretching across the width of the palm, bracing the hand against the floor, pushing up against it.

A muted gasping for air could be heard amidst the quiet struggle before a mess of soft, blonde locks presented itself. Another small arm followed the other and pushed up against the floor, the hair falling back to reveal an angel's face, smooth and tender, staring up at the three blackened figures in the doorway with bright blue eyes that glinted in the light.

The child crawled out from underneath the heavy fabric to find three strangers staring at her, their heads pointed downward, but their faces hidden by the dark shadows of the room. The moonlight fell onto the arm of one of them, and the dull shining of a dark metal plating presented itself. The cold object both entranced and frightened the small girl. Her ears began to ring, and the humming of the fan was muted, drowned out by the thumping of her heart as it rose in her chest and pounded in her head.

The girl moved back, the room beginning to spin around her. She turned to the heap on the floor behind her, her vision catching specks of red that became streaks as her head moved quickly, and she almost fell into the soft pile of dark blue velvet and touseled brown hair. She stumbled a little, her knee catching in the crevice between the side of the figure and the floor. Her hand reached out, and she caught herself, her palm against the plush carpeting on the other side of the bundle.

The child froze and the pounding in her head stopped, though the sounds of the fan and the soft rippling of the drapes were also absent as she hovered over the crumpled figure of her mother. One of the figures stepped forward, handgun glinting in the pale moonlight. The tall man stepped around the scene and waited patiently as the girl's sobs rose in her throat and spilled over her lips, breaking the calm in the room that had not even been spoiled by the muted gunshot. She pushed her mother's lifeless body around on the floor, trying to reveal her face. She tugged at the shoulder, and the matted hair fell from her visage to reveal cold and lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. They were eyes- blue like her own, but the life had gone out of them- that would never again light up with excitement when she gazed upon her little girl.

The dark figure that stood next to her, watching her, came and knelt down beside her. She stared up at him, searching for an answer. He'd come to kneel beside her, so he couldn't have done this, could he have? Half of his face was hidden by a thick curtain of black that stretched down to his mouth, and the other half was obscured by the shadows. He held out his hand to her, but she only cried harder, tears running in rivulets down her face. Her face was hot, and her vision was blurry. She turned back to the stiffened figure of her mother and fell onto it, sobbing into her gown and soaking the soft velvet until she was covered in blood and gagging on her own saliva.

The man reached forward and pried the girl off of her mother's dead body, but she didn't want to let go. She began to kick and scream, and he only held her tighter around her waist, until she ran out of air, and by then, it was difficult to muster another breath. Her fingers refused to break contact with the gown, and the man stood up. As he did, the velvet was ripped away from the girl by the weight of the body, and her mother fell to the floor. A final, thick, and surprisingly short bang sounded off throughout the house as her head hit the floor, and the echo was absorbed by the blood-stained carpet.

The girl was turned around in the man's arms immediately, and she felt her chest being pressed tightly into his shoulder as his arm wrapped around her legs. Her knees were uncomfortably crushed together as his vice-like grip held her up against him, and they exited the room. She watched over his shoulder as the crumpled form of her mother faded into the darkness and the other two men followed them out. Though she couldn't turn in the man's grasp, the light from the hallway spilled onto the faces of the other two, and she saw them for the first time.

One of the men was blonde, the other had dark brown hair. The man with the blonde hair had brown eyes, and the man with the brown had bright green eyes. Both of them wore blue suits and red ties. The blonde had a sort of a faraway expression on his face, while the man with the brown hair seemed quite aware but uncaring. The girl felt herself bobbing up and down on the first man's shoulder as his light steps echoed softly throughout the wooden hall. She had given up struggling as her small reserves were exhausted, and she listened to the other two as they began to talk.

"What's going to happen with the mother?" the blonde asked of the man walking next to him.

The brunette just shrugged. "Clean up'll get her. Don't worry about it. You're so uptight today."

"I guess you're right." The blonde caught the eye of the girl as she watched him, and he grew uncomfortable under her stare. "Hey, Ken..."

"What is it?" the other replied.

"I was just thinking. Do you think they already got to him?"

"Who, Eirich?" the man named Ken asked. "I doubt it. They won't be here for another coupla' minutes, most likely."

"Do you think this is safe?"

"Pffft. Of course it's safe! Who do you think we are, the hackjobs you find in the alleyways behind the apartments?"

It was then that they passed the doorway that led to her father's office. Every time she would go in there, he would hold her on his lap and give her a piece of candy. Then she would tell him about her day, and he would tell her about his. Even though she sometimes didn't understand everything that he would say, she liked spending time with him. She opened her mouth to call to him. Maybe he would save her?

They quickly passed by the open door, but it was enough to silence her. She could see from the way he was slumped over the desk that he wasn't going to get up and save her. No one was.

"Maybe we should have shut that door on our way up," the blonde wondered aloud as he caught the expression that fell over the girl's face when she passed the scene of her father's murder.

The brunette turned his head to eye the blonde as they kept walking. "Johnny boy?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't be an ass."

The blonde just turned in on himself at that point and returned to his thoughts, wherever they had been.

There was a shift in the shirt material next to the young girl's arm as the man who carried her looked back at the other two over his other shoulder. "Are you quite finished?" he asked in a soft but demanding tone. The small child in his arms felt his muscles stretch thin in his shoulder and neck and felt the light vibrations against her arm when he spoke. With that feeling escaped a scent that reminded her of holidays at her uncle's house. That was what he smelled like. She missed him; he would always play with her, and so would the girl he liked.

She watched over his shoulder and saw the brunette smirk at him. "Quite," he mocked.

"Well..." his tone was darker as he replied. "It is nice to know that you can be professional when it comes to your job."

"Oh ho ho! Is that sarcasm I hear? Watch out, Johnny! It's sarcastic Vincent!"

"...That...is Captain sarcastic Vincent," the man who held her replied. "You are at work. Do not forget that."

"...Touchy, touchy." The man with the brown hair eyed the paintings on the walls as they exited through the front door and walked to the sedan that was parked around the side of the house, dead leaves crunching under their shining black shoes. The car was shiny and black, just like their shoes, and the man with the brown hair opened one door and she was lowered into the car. She tried to squirm her way around the man's arms, tried to escape and run away, the cool night air having rejuvinated her. However, his hold was tight and the leaves that littered the ground would have made running difficult for someone so small. Even if she had managed not to fall, the would have caught up to her easily.

She was strapped into the seat, and the man backed away from her quickly and shut the door next to her, blocking her in. She tried to unfasten the seatbelt and open the door, but it would not open. There was a lock on it that she couldn't undo from the inside. Thinking quickly, she threw the offending strip of material over her head and made for the other side of the car, but the door opened on its own to reveal the man with the brown hair. He sat down in the seat next to her and closed the door behind him.

"Well aren't you eager?" He smiled at her, attempting to create the illusion that everything was as it should be, but she did not forget so easily. She began to cry again, and she curled up on the other side of the car, not wanting to get near him. "Hey, kid...don't cry." She hid her face in the back cushions of the seat and smothered her tears. "Oh man...Vincent, the kid is cryin'!" Ken whined.

"...And?"

"Can't you do something?"

"We are doing something. We are taking her to Headquarters," he intoned calmly.

"Wait," Johnny interrupted. "What'll they do with her there?"

"I would imagine," Vincent stated, as if Johnny should already know, "that they will put her in a home like they do with all of the others."

Johnny sighed, and Ken buckled himself in for the long trip. The little girl realized that she wasn't going to get away from these men, and that she was going to go somewhere else, somewhere that she didn't belong. They were going to put her with people that she didn't know, and she was never going to see her mother or her father again. What if the people they put her with were mean to her? What if they hurt her?

The little girl began to cry, and Ken winced as her pitches grew higher. "Vincent, do we really have to do this?"

"...Yes."

"Couldn't we just...dump her off at a house on the way and say that we found her?"

"...No."

"Why not?" Ken's voice was strained and unsatisfied.

"Because," Vincent's simple reply came as he started the engine, "orders are orders. She is company property now."

X-X-X-X

A sharp pain spread through his ribs and his spine as he hit the ground, pushed back against the wall. He'd hit his head, and all he could see was blurry shadows mixed with orange lights, and splotches of purple and green. Blood rose in the back of his mouth, and his chest burned violently with the need to expel it.

A cruel and taunting voice laced with smugness thrust itself into his head, relentless and spitting. The entire place smelt of it, the air dripped with the scent of it. Sanitizer and gauze, drugs and glue, cold metal and blood.

"You're mine, Turk. And you're mine for as long as I want you."

There was a loud clanging sound, and the pain rang in his head and made his entire body tremble until he thought his bones were going to crumble into dust. The sneering voice was turned away and carried down the cold tile hallway by the click-clack of a man's shoes. He could hear the jangling of keys fading with the sound of the steps, and he knew that he would remain there for the night.

Again.

Vincent started to push himself up off of the ground, but his head grew lighter when he rose up, and so he let himself fall back to the ground. He backed up against the wall and curled up, hanging his head and letting the dizziness leave him by way of sitting down. His breathing was laboured, and his body shook with each gasp for air.

He didn't want to spend another night in that place. He had never wanted to be in the situation in the first place, but he had grown accustomed to spending his nights in his own cell in the basement, in solitude. He hadn't wanted to be moved to another lab, no matter for how long or short a time. He knew that there were other things in that lab. Even though he had been kept unconscious for most of the time, and even though it made him physically ill to be on so many drugs, he preffered it to knowing what else was in there.

Vincent's vision started to settle, and he looked up from his spot on the floor cautiously. The lights were off, save for one surgical lamp, which shone brightly from the center of the room. The walls were lined with cells, but he dared not look at any of them directly. The single light was so bright that the haze blocked out any of the images on the other side of the room, and his sensitive eyes hurt because of it.

He could hear heavy breathing like his own, but deeper, and inhuman. Being alone in a cold metal cell with only his imagination to occupy him, his previous night in the new lab had been complete and utter torture. He still would not look to his right or his left. He feared waking up in the middle of the night, staring into the eyes of some horrible creation. He laid down on the floor of his cell and closed his eyes tightly, blocking out the harsh light that shone in around him and made his eyes burn. He curled up on the ground, shielding himself from the cold air of the lab and the harsh breathing that accompanied it, both sending chills down his spine.

Like a small child, afraid of the dark.

There was a sudden clinking of chains next to him, and he sat up quickly, realizing that the sound had come from only a few feet away. He looked over in the direction of the sound and prepared himself for a fight that he was sure he could not win in his current state. But what he saw was a small figure, swathed in the shadows, just beyond the reach of the surgical lamp.

Vincent stared into the darkness. "...Who is it?"

"...My name is Linda." There was a shudder in the figure and it backed away. "Please...don't hurt me."

Vincent squinted at the shadows, but couldn't make out any detail in the form that stood within them. From what he could make of the shape, it was small, but the outline didn't resemble anything human. The figure didn't seem threatening, and didn't sound it at all either. Vincent continued to peer at the dark form and hesitantly called out to it. "I am not going to hurt you." The form stood still, then hunched over in the dark and shuddered on the floor. Vincent watched it as it quivered for a minute. "I will not harm you...would you be so kind as to come closer?"

The figure did not move, and so Vincent watched it for a bit more as it shuddered on the cold tile, and then he curled back up as he was before, but was careful to face in the direction of the thing. He knew that when it came to Hojo's creations, nothing was ever as it seemed. He jerked up suddenly from his spot on the floor when he heard the sound again, barely inches from his ear.

Vincent stared up at a most horrifying sight, and cried out in shock. He cast his eyes downwards, and couldn't bring himself to look at it. A small tower of white stood over him, the smooth fabric of a child's gown falling over cherub's feet. He shut his eyes tightly and opened them again, but when he did, the feet were still there. He had been half asleep, woken by the sharp panging in his ears that resulted from the chains, and when he'd raised his head, he'd thought he was trapped in a nightmare.

But the nightmare was real.

The figure gasped. "You're not a monster at all. You're a man!"

Vincent blinked for a moment, his eyes coming to focus in on the fingers of his right hand as he sat propped up on the floor. His gaze was averted, twisted to the side, and he didn't want to offend her, but he couldn't bring himself to look at her.

"You're missing an arm though," her voice dropped, as if she was feeling sorry for him. "Did the man in the white coat take it away?"

Vincent didn't look up at her. "...He did," he responded, concentrating his energy on not becoming sick. He felt her reach out and touch the fleshy stump where his arm had been severed, and a shudder ran over his body, making his skin seem to crawl over his weary muscles.

"...Did you make him upset?" she asked, in a most innocent way.

Vincent was silent for a moment, contemplating how he would word his answer. "The man...in the coat...and I," he paused. "We do not get along."

"That's so sad," she mused. "Is that why you don't hurt me?"

Vincent would have jerked his head up at this, but he didn't want to look into her face. "I do not understand. Why would I hurt you?"

"He said that he would put a monster in here with me, and that he would hurt me. I thought you were a monster before. But you're not. You're a man," she finished.

Vincent had only one reply to this, that he was a monster, but he couldn't start his long speech in front of a child. She wouldn't understand, and it seemed to him that she'd suffered enough.

"You know," she said, breaking his silent thoughts, "he said he would make me pretty. I'm an angel now." The image of the white wings on her back flashed through his mind, but he still refused to look up at them. He knew that they were not the wings of an angel, but wings given to her by a madman, the result of a poisonous transfer. Most likely, it was an awful and painful procedure, and wouldn't even remember it, unless Hojo had been so cruel as to keep her awake as he did Vincent. "I know I'm not pretty anymore, though..." she trailed off. Vincent didn't answer. "It's because I made him angry."

He knew the reasons behind her hideousness. He knew why half of her face was missing, why her skin was stretched over metal platings, and why she was missing her lips and the sides of her face were sewn together, just so that they didn't rip apart. None of it was necessary. None of it was practical. None of it had anything to do with the experiment itself, and none of it was humane in the least.

Hojo had obviously become bored once again.

"It's because I touched the baby."

At this, Vincent's head did jerk up, and he was immediately sorry that it did, because he found himself staring at the way her skin moved over her jaws as she spoke, sliding over the bones, fearing that at any moment he might witness the stitching tear away. She continued on with her story, but Vincent found himself unable to tear his eyes away from her, contrary to his previous actions. It was just so horrible, so grotesque, that he couldn't help but stare at her.

"He told me not to, but I did. He was crying, and I wanted to cheer him up. He'd left the room for a second, but the baby just wouldn't stop crying. So I let him hold my finger like this." She reached out and knelt down, grasping one of Vincent's fingers in her hand. "That's when I couldn't leave my cage anymore."

Vincent couldn't take it anymore, and he had to close his eyes. He heard the girl shift around in front of him and sit down on the floor. He felt her grip on his hand soften, and he felt as she moved his hand around in front of him, and she held it with both of hers.

"Tell me how bad it is," she asked of him.

Vincent opened his eyes slowly and forced himself to look at her, forced himself to get used to seeing her. He knew he would have nightmares about this for years, but he felt that if he got used to the image, it wouldn't bother him as much.

He was wrong.

"I'm not allowed to have a mirror, so I don't know," she continued, but he didn't hear her. He was too busy looking past the damage, trying to piece together what wasn't there, what had been stolen. He mentally stitched her face together, creating expressions in his mind of joy, of sadness, and of surprise. He imagined what she could have looked like before, imagined what her smile would have been like when she was happy.

Then he came to the emotion of fear. He knew it all too well, knew what his face must have looked like during the countless times he'd lain on the table and witnessed the tip of the professor's scalpel dip into his own flesh, and what it must have looked like when he felt the tearing pain when he'd been sliced open, butchered like an animal. But he knew exactly what her face would have looked like, because he'd seen it before.

It was then that he knew. He realized he wasn't there to hurt her, no. He'd already done that. He was in there so that she could hurt him. It was all another part of his torture, and Hojo had known all along exactly what it would take to break him. Frightening the young girl to death, staying in a cell with her the entire night while she cowered in a corner, seeing the cause of his actions, would have done it. But Hojo hadn't known...that she had never even seen his face.

I did this...

The child stared back at him, her eyes searching his for an answer. She saw the horror in his expression, and decided that she would rather not know. "It's alright," she said. "You don't have to tell me."

Vincent's expression grew into one of pain, and she ran her hands through his hair. "It's okay. I won't hurt you." He drew in on himself and laid down on the floor, blank, wet eyes staring out into oblivion. The little girl curled up next to him on the floor and buried her face in his chest. Vincent lay awake, his eyes not focusing on any of the shadows in the room, his ears not focusing on any of the sounds. He could feel the torn flesh on the child's face against his skin, but it was a numb feeling, something that was only there for the time being, but something he could never shake from his memory.

She fell asleep in no time to the rhythmic sound of a broken man's breathing, the soft warm air coming from his mouth, and the heat emanating from his chest and his face. The scent of the cold, night air in the lab reminded her of holidays at her uncle's and a hot sea breeze.

End

Final Fantasy VII and its characters © 1997 Square-Enix Co., Ltd.