Chapter 3.
I'm getting the hang of the chapters… don't think this one is quite as long as the others but what the hell.
Remember to review! If you like it (or not) you have ta tell me, ya know.
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"I hope she's alright... she really been gone that long? Especially with that @#$%in' nutcase Sephiroth around... she ain't safe by herself! Why the @#$%'d she go alone?"
I sighed, looking out of the window. Cid and I were in the inn at Gongaga, getting ready to leave for the Ice continent later that day. Cloud, Tifa and Barret had gone first in search of Aeris, who had been missing for a worrying amount of time. Cloud and the others had said nothing to the rest of us before they left, other than Aeris had gone missing, they were worried, and that we were to follow their tracks in about a day or so. That was yesterday, and Aeris had already been gone for longer than we thought was safe with Sephiroth prowling around.
"They didn't tell us anything before they left. Something's going on that we don't know about." I said back to Cid.
"Yeah, it's always them three, ain't it? The AVALANCHE threesome! Just cos' we joined later we get the junior treatment! @#$%, it pisses me off..." He pulled a cigarette from a packet tucked into the leather strap of the goggles atop his head and lit a match by striking it against the stubble on his cheek.
"Just a load of @#$%in' jackasses." He mumbled as he lit the cigarette, the filter between his lips muffling his voice.
All this swearing and irritability meant Cid was worried. This was how he showed it.
I regarded him through the corner of my eye. "You're worried."
He looked at me like I'd grown three heads. "The @#$%, Valentine?! Of COURSE I'm @#$%ing worried! @#$%! The girl's missin' with that @#$%in' freak lurking around..." He went into a rambling barrage of more swearwords than actual words, railing off all his anxiety at Aeris' disappearance. A healthy, if somewhat offensive, way to unload himself really. I admired the man's passion - he was like a stick of dynamite. A short, fiery fuse, an explosion, and then he was okay.
I wished I was more like him. I didn't seem to have a fuse - I had a door. Just keep pushing things inside and lock the door afterwards.
"Aren't you worried?!" He asked me, finally. I didn't know what to say, because I didn't know what I felt. Of course, I'd rather she was alright and would be glad if they found her and brought her back safely, but I wouldn't say that I felt worried, if you get my meaning.
"I suppose." I shrugged.
"You suppose?!" He yelled. He opened his mouth to say something else. I looked at him quickly and he shut his mouth.
"@#$% it. I'm goin' for a wash, see ya later." He nodded to me briefly before leaving the room. I sighed and leaned my head against the glass of the window against which I was sitting, watching the rain fleck against it on the other side of the pane. I kind of wished Cloud had taken me to go and look for Aeris, because when I was on a mission with other people I could push my thoughts aside for a while. Strange, isn't it - that as soon as you're alone they rush in at you again like shadows that flood into the room eagerly as one blows out a candle.
I didn't want Cid to be angry with me. But... I couldn't just lie and say that I was worried sick for Aeris, like he was... because I just couldn't feel like that. I was dead. All I could feel was sorrow and regret.
'You are the reason Sephiroth is going to call meteor and destroy the world. You are the reason he lived to grow up into this evil creature threatening the lives of every human being on this world.'
Of course...
I realised that I was not only responsible for Lucrecia's plight, but now for the destruction of every single life on this planet. Because of me.
'My weakness... because I had not stopped Lucrecia, because I had not prevented the experiment from taking place, Sephiroth grew up to destroy the entire world.'
I think I moaned. The guilt and anguish was too great to bear. I pressed my cold fingers hard against the cool glass, my weary eyes staring out into the cloudy, rain swept village as if to look away would crumble my composure. But what could break me, a granite statue on the outside, frozen tears on the inside?
'What manner of creature am I,' I thought. 'I don't deserve to exist, and yet I do. Is that my punishment? To exist, knowing all that has befallen the world on my account, unable to die yet shouldering the immense guilt and regret until I go mad from it?
Madness too, would be a blessing. Yes, death or madness, both sweet oblivions to curl into in their own right. No, I can't go mad, either. Ceaselessly, wearyingly lucid and linear, thought falling neatly inline after well-placed thought. So uniform... so endless. I could even begin to see the monotonous uniformity of the very rainfall outside. Drop, drop, drop. Does the rain get tired? Does it find release, relief when the sun comes and evaporates it into the clouds?
What does it matter? Why am I thinking this..? What am I doing in this place..? I should have stayed in my coffin... I wish I'd never learned what I have learned... Why did you find me, Cloud? I wish our paths had never crossed. The guilt and regret I felt then seem to me now like carefree bliss compared to the weight I carry at this moment.'
I looked to the door just as Cid walked in whistling, a towel draped over his neck. I wanted to say "Save me! Save me from it all! Please help me!" but no sound came. I saw him come to a halt and look a little disconcerted under my stare, what my face looked like I do not know.
"Vince..? You okay?"
I struggled to find my voice. ".....No..." I managed.
"What's wrong?" He sat on the window seat next to me, wearing a confused expression.
I almost instinctively said nothing. I almost said everything. I just couldn't bring myself to throw away this opportunity to admit defeat finally... I couldn't hold in the anguish any longer. Not one word had ever passed my lips to even the thin air about what I suffered inside.
Until that moment.
"The... pain..." I whispered, my voice shaking. I felt myself curling up into a ball as I began to shake all over. "Help... me..." I felt so much! The pain, mingled with exhilaration at this confession! I was breaking my vow of punishment, but I couldn't stop. It became too much.
"Vince, talk to me for @#$%'s sake! What pain? What can I do?" Cid was almost shouting, not out of anger but out of bewilderment and perhaps panic. Obviously this sort of problem wasn't going to be the type he dealt with on a daily basis.
I clutched at his forearm with my claw, and I realised that the shaking that was wracking my body was actually silent sobs. I felt a tear run down my face for the first time in thirty years... why now? In this little room, on this rainy little day in Gongaga, with Cid sitting close and just letting me clutch his arm like it was the last earthed handhold in a great tornado.
It was so surreal... yet so fitting. So perfect. It made sense, and my tears fell like the rain outside. Silently, no sound, but they fell from my eyes like much awaited rain onto a desert rose.
"Vince..." Cid said quietly after a while, looking at me with the same concern as when I had wounded my hand. "You gotta tell me what's up buddy, or I can't help ya. You been holdin' it in for a while now, huh?" His voice was quiet and calm and he rubbed my shoulder.
'You have no idea how long.'
"I... I can't tell you, because... you would hate me." I whispered. I was quiet now, so quiet - my voice was barely more than a breath. "And I cannot bear any more punishment than I have already been given."
Cid shook his head. "Nah. I couldn't hate ya Vince, you're too @#$%in' cool! Shit, I mean I wish I was as cool as you. Y'know, you don't break a sweat when somethin' unexpected happens... don't even blink an eyelid... then there's me goin' "@#$%! Shit! Christ in holy buggerin' hell" and all that crap. You get?"
I would have smiled if it had have convinced me. "It's all my fault."
"What is?" He asked, innocently. So innocently.
"Meteor. Sephiroth. Everything..." I closed my eyes.
"How... how do you mean it's 'all your fault' ?"
I told him everything that I have told you, about Lucrecia, Hojo's experiment, Sephiroth, The Jenova Project, and my part in the entire tragedy, that I was weak enough to let it take place.
And do you know what?
He laughed.
Laughed!
How could he laugh!
"Why... are you laughing..?" I asked, wearied by reliving the whole tale again.
"Because it's a guilt trip gone way out of proportions, Vince!" He said. "You think that just because you didn't do something drastic when all that shit was goin' on thirty years ago, the end of the world is all your fault? See Vince, I'm not a complicated guy, and I see it this way: what could you have done anyway, even if you were determined to put a stop to it? Made her have an abortion? Kill her? No, no one would have done that. It ain't your fault at all, Vince - it's those damn scientists faults for messin' with what they shouldn't! I mean, I'm all for science and the machinery and vehicles and shit, but messin' with peoples insides and mixin' in bits of weird dead aliens just for fun? That's just @#$%ed up. And no offence, but more fool that Lucrecia woman for lettin' em mess with her in the first place!"
I stared at him. I really stared at him.
I had never thought of it all from that point before. All my suffering... all my punishment... my guilt, my regret... the years I spent in that coffin, wretched and alone...
Were they all for nothing?!
But what if they were all I had?
If they were wrong, meaningless, futile... what reason had I to exist?
Oh, even the suffering and the pain had reasons to them! What would I have left if even my pain left me? Would I be even less human? Cid, what have you done!?
"How dare you!!" I shouted. I stood up, furious and trembling! "How dare you just step into my past and insinuate that my entire existence for the past thirty years has been for nothing!! A guilt trip gone out of proportion, you say! You don't even know what guilt is! How dare you strip the meaning of my life away, and laugh! Laugh! Laugh at the torment and guilt I have gone through and call it nothing!"
Cid also stood up. "What the @#$%'s wrong with you?!" He shouted back. "I was trying to make you feel better, trying to comfort you when you @#$%ing spaz out on me, and all I get is you screaming in my face!"
I snorted. I was beside myself! "Oh, thank you very much, you've taken all my worries away, Cid! Is that what you want me to say? To be grateful? Grateful that you've taken away my only reason to exist, the one thing I was holding onto that would allow me to accept my immortality without going mad from the eternity that I face! Can't you understand?"
My mind reeled from the implications of it all. Nothing! I was nothing now! I realised it, and Cid was right. I couldn't have done anymore than I did back then. But I had to believe it was my fault, I had to have blame, so that I didn't hate Lucrecia for what she had done. I couldn't hate Lucrecia! I would rather hate myself, I would rather blame myself! So I had blamed and accused myself, all those years in the coffin, gradually believing what had become my false gospel truth.
And now I was furious, furious that this little man had waltzed in and in a moment, a few seconds of idle, indifferent musing, he had judged and laid bare all the reasons for my life!
Nothing!
I was destroyed.
I tore off my headband and my cloak, and started wrenching at the digits of my metal arm in a fury. "Is this nothing, too?! Is my arm just this demonic metal claw?! Is there really no flesh beneath this monstrosity?!" My tears were falling free now, and I was a tornado of unleashed raw emotion.
"Vince, stop! Stop for @#$%'s sake!!" Cid leapt over and tried to stop me mauling my metal hand right off my arm.
"Get away from me!!" I yelled, and shoved him away from me violently before running out into the small rain washed streets of Gongaga.
"Vince! Vince!" I heard him shouting me. I ran on, the rain drenching me through.
I was destroyed.
I ran purposelessly, tears mingling with the rain as they fell from my blood red eyes.
I must have ran at a sprint for five minutes without stopping before I collapsed into a heap, somewhere amid the ruins of the old reactor. The rain mercilessly beat down on me as I sobbed like a child, curled up into a ball. My shirt was torn, my clothes were soaking wet and I was cold and frightened and alone - without purpose. Without anything to keep me going.
***
He found me quickly. He sat beside me as I shook with the sobs, the rain pouring down on us both amidst the twisted metal of the dead reactor. He didn't touch me, didn't move me, just sat silent for a while before he spoke.
"Look, Vince..." He began quietly. "I really didn't mean to... take away your purpose. I really didn't, but you gotta understand, we got a new purpose now... we've gotta find a way to save the planet. Just 'cos you didn't have a hand in causin' this situation don't mean you can't help stop it!"
I raised my weary head from the scrap-scattered ground a little.
He continued. "Vince, I know you've got a better purpose in life than to feel guilt for something that ain't even your fault. I understand that this thing you got goin' on runs way @#$%in' deeper than I'll ever know, but what I do know is that you're a good guy and you don't deserve to be goin' through that shit for some other @#$%er. Like I just said, you got a better purpose now. Your job is to help save millions of lives. To help save the world."
I lifted my head more and stared at him again.
I think he looked at little scared.
"@#$%... that sounded so @#$%in' corny I can't believe it just came out my mouth." He muttered, looking at his hands.
But he was right.
I realised it only very slowly. As someone who has never seen the light of the sun for decades sees the first paling of the sky before dawn for the first time in so many years.
"But what about when the world is saved..." I whispered, presuming such a thing was possible. "What purpose will I have then..?"
Cid sighed. "That one, Vince, is something we all gotta figure out for ourselves. I can't help you with that one. Besides, ain't no good rushin' on ahead into the future like that. You gotta take one day at a time. You've got your purpose right now, that's all that matters!"
Save the world... it certainly was something to concentrate on.
"......." I said nothing, and laid my head back down onto the ground. I was still confused. "That's not a very secure purpose to hold onto... what if we can't save the world..?" I murmured. The rain continued to lash down on us. Droplets ran into my eyes.
I heard him shift a little behind me. "You gotta believe that we can, or there ain't no @#$%in' use in trying! What's a hero without all that "We can do it if we believe!" shit? Come on, Vince!"
I said nothing, but inside it made sense.
"So what now?" I said, still not looking at him.
Only the sound of the rain for a few moments.
"Now?" Said Cid, finally. "Now, we get the @#$% outta this rain."
