A/N: Well here it is, another chapter. You will notice that this one may be very different from my last ones. I hope you all enjoy it, and please if you have any suggestions review!.

Disclaimer: I don't own it, I will never own it, but I can still write about it so Ha.

Apocalypse Rising
Chapter 14: History of a Shadow ....................................

Death. It is the single truth in our existence. All that lives must die; all that exists must be destroyed. In my life I have seen more death then anyone should ever imagine. I have killed and seen others kill, and I would be a liar if I didn't admit there is a singular elegance to it. The way the body moves as the souls leaves its cage, the way a person's eyes flash as they realize their fate. Many have reveled in this sight, cherishing it like some exquisite piece of art. These moments, as beautiful as they are, lead to nothing more than a grotesque corpse.

I have said before that I am a killer; don't let my story blind you to this fact. I have killed more men then I can count, they haunt me always, these shadows of my past, my darkest sins. I wish I could say that I had reformed, that I had done some heroic act that had redeemed my blackened soul, that I had finally achieved repentance. I can not. I can not say I am a better man. The truth is I am still a killer. That title will leave me, it will ever follow, and even when I die only that label will remain.

I want you to remember who I was, and the horrors that I have committed. I am, and possibly always have been, a beast. I am monster unworthy of rest or joy, leaving a bloody trail of corpses in my wake. Now I realize my place, my true destiny. That is why I leave this message. You should know what happened. If you could understand, then maybe I can finally find peace.

I should probably start at the beginning. Well as close to the beginning as I can get. I know that I was Turk. How and why I joined is still mystery. I remember nothing of my life before then, before my hands were permanently stained with blood. I rose quickly in the ranks, using skills that I didn't understand. I mastered every weapon given to me with unnerving skill. I was relentless, an unstoppable force. In the midst of battle I could shoot down any man, no one was safe from me.

Then my life changed, I saw a girl. She was the prettiest thing, so delicate, yet so strong. The moment I saw her I was in love. We were together for three years. We had started to plan our lives. But nothing ever goes as planned. Right when we were at our happiest, he came. If I am a monster, then he was a devil. A creature filled with self-righteous arrogance. He was cruel beyond measure. His orders sick and twisted. Hojo, or Professor Hojo as he made everyone else call him.

The things he ordered, the pain he caused to so many innocents. There are no words for what he was. I could take it all, as long as we were together. Lucrecia was my anchor. As long as she was by my side I was a better man. I lost my bloodlust. When she left me for him I fell into a darkness unknown by any man who still lives. My pain eternal, she haunts me more than any memory of an old kill.

I have mentioned death frequently, but hers is one of the few worth remembering. I saw her lying on the floor, like discarded lab equipment. Her once beautiful face twisted with pain and desperation. How I wanted to hold her, to comfort her, to make everything all better. Instead all I could do was watch as she pleaded to an invisible figure to let her hold her own son. To gaze upon him only once before her light was put out. I will never forget those sobs, the sound of a soul shattering long before the body has been fully broken.

I had killed before, for money, for honor, but never for pure vengeance. This was a new feeling for me. Such rage and sorrow had never filled my veins. I charged into his lab, and there in his sick glory he stood. The bastard was smiling! He cared not for the life he had ruined. The potential that would never be realized. I should have fired then, killed that creature right where he stood. Then something strange happened. I hesitated. Not for lack of desire, but because of the second form. It lay there covered in blankets, her child her legacy. Would she want this? Her child to witness death so young, to baptized in another man's blood. I couldn't do it. I could not corrupt something so young. That was my fatal error. I may have taken the moral high road, but Hojo was bound by no such principle.

The bullet ripped through me, I could feel it working its way inside my chest. The pain didn't register at first. In fact, I think I laughed. It seemed quite funny at the time. That I, the expert marksman, the dark warrior, one who had inspired such fear from lesser men, would die so easily. That one moment of hesitation would end my life. I fell to my knees, still laughing, my only solace that I would be with her again in the afterlife. The black shade of death fell over me, I greeted it with open arms. I was ready for whatever punishment Gaia would place on me.

Instead I was ripped away from death. Torn from any chance of peace. Instead of Gaia's I saw his face. Staring down at me, that same sick grin plastered on his face. He rambled for hours, talking about how there was justice in this world, and how he would enjoy my suffering. I didn't really listen. I couldn't, my mind was just a haze of pain and sorrow. I pitied myself, I pitied Lucrecia, but most of all I pitied the child. What would happen to it under this creature's guidance? Then the real torture started. I have to hand it to him. He was good at it. Knew just how to get the most pain out of the simplest action.

He must have kept it up for about a week. By the second day I lost all feeling in my left arm. Even through all the screams, and sound of machinery, that bastard could still talk. He never seemed to get tired of hearing his own voice. I knew it couldn't go on forever. I surrendered to the pain, waiting for him to slip up and kill me. That day never came.
I woke up one day and he was gone. He seemed to just disappear, along with all his experiments. So this was his final torment. To leave me to starve to death, strapped on a table. I tried to get off, to break the bindings. A futile gesture to be sure, but it worked. The bindings snapped easily. Instead of being a weak shell of a man, I had grown in strength. My vision was sharper, my senses heightened. I inspected the building. Each room seemed different. My new sight made everything clearer.

I wandered the mansion. For that was what it was, a mansion. The basement hid the lab and library. The rest of the stories filled with beds that had never been used, and halls that had never been walked. I found the spot, the single corner of a bedroom; I could still see her form laying there, her arms outstretched for a bundle that would never be delivered. All this I could see in my mind, but her form was gone in the real world. Where she had once laid, was only a rug, and a slight stain on the wall.

I stood there unmoving for god knows how long. I stood there till I couldn't stand it anymore. I had to leave. I didn't know what Hojo had done to me, and what his angle was, but I couldn't stay here. She was gone to me now. There was nothing was left for me here.

I left the mansion, left the city. I wandered the wild, and every time I slept I had only nightmares. In them I saw faces, they screamed in agony. I saw a world different from my own. These sights were not from my own mind. Rather they were memories of something else. I continued to wander, trying my best not to sleep. The only rest I got was when I collapsed from exhaustion. Then it started. My question finally answered.

Why had Hojo let me live? Why make me stronger? None of it had made any sense. I had been walking for five weeks straight when they attacked me. They were just a bunch of thugs. They wouldn't have even been worth my attention. They threatened me, demanded money. I had none to give, and they were less then happy. They attacked, I didn't even try block their attacks. I saw no point to it. I was tired of wandering, tired of living this half-life. When their blades cut me, I felt something rise inside of me. It filled my numb body with white-hot hatred and fury.

I will always remember that first transformation. The first time I lost control. I felt my mind slipping, and some new consciousness take over. I felt the flesh in my back rip open, felt new members grow there, while my skin began to tingle and change. Soon I looked nothing like myself. I had wings, not the pure white of an angel, but the scaly, thin wings of a demon. A demon, that's what I had become. I even had horns. The demon had total control. I could do nothing as it ripped the thugs limb from limb. While I watched I heard a voice in my head. I didn't know where it came from. It was cold, without any human warmth or feeling. It was a sound that was as horrifying as it was awe-inspiring.

The demon made short work of the men, not stopping at killing them, but mutilating their bodies. It enjoyed carnage, and reveled in pain. It took to the skies on its wings. The voice continued to talk, to tell insult me. I figured that this was demon. I could fight him. His control was absolute, and his constant insults interfering with my concentration.

He flew for hours, never tiring. He could read my mind I think. It is the only explanation for where we landed. The mansion. It seems I can never escape it. The beast left me then. I reverted back to my own form, a sweating, gasping, pile of flesh. When I could stand, I walked inside. If the beast wanted me in here, then there was no escape. I walked to the library, deep in the basement. I looked through all of Hojo's deranged notes. I found nothing on what I was. How this new creature shared my mind. I could feel him. He was inside every cell, corrupting me, waiting to take form yet again. Each second I felt less human, and more chaotic.

Defeated yet again, I walked back to the torture chamber. The table I had rested on was nothing but a board resting on a Coffin. When I saw the coffin something clicked in my warped mind. This was his plan. This was my fate. I could not live in the outside world. If I did the demon would kill. I could only isolate myself.

I remember opening the coffin, lined in black velvet. There were vents, which served some unknown purpose. I slipped in the wooden box, and with all my strength slid the stone cover over my face, leaving me with nothing but darkness and the demon's, the Chaos' voice to keep me company.

I slept for many years, oblivious to the world outside. Only my nightmares were real. Chaos, as I named the demon, would prattle on for hours. Insulting me, trying to drive me to madness. In a way I think he succeeded. Unexpectedly the coffin opened. The light surrounded me. Standing above me was some kid. He seemed surprised to see me. He asked me some pointless questions. Many of which I didn't bother to answer.

That guy, Cloud is his name, began to give me some very heroic speech, about how he and his bunch of groupies were trying to save the world. I only half listened, the rest of me trying to keep Chaos from rising and ripping his guts out. It wasn't till he mentioned whom they were saving the world from, when I started to listen.

Sephiroth. A name I was familiar with. It had been her dying words. She had screamed for him. Begged imaginary doctors to hand her to him. Sephiroth Lucrecia's child, the only thing left of her in this world, was the greatest evil on the planet. Hearing this almost broke my heart. What happened to poison Lucrecia's child. What dark influence was working through him?

He asked me to join them, to kill her child. I would have killed him right there for posing such an idea. But how could I? This kid was just trying to do the right thing. He was a hero. I was going to refuse, to go back to my nightmares, when a single name filled my head. Hojo. Hojo would not stray far from his son. So redundantly I agreed and joined Cloud's little quest.

We traveled for a year. Not all of us survived. I remember one of the girl's deaths. How the hero had cried for his loss. How the other girl watched him, I could see the longing in her eyes. How she wanted to run to him. It was the same feeling I had when Lucrecia had died. The girl, Tifa. She didn't run to him. Instead she stood back and let him grieve. Letting him keep a perfect vision of a dead girl that she could never beat.

I did get one thing out of our journey. I found her, Lucrecia. She was nothing more than an animated corpse, but it was she. Somehow she had survived, the experiments Hojo had used her for had kept her alive. I saw her and I would rather have died then receive the look she gave me. It was like she could see into my soul and found something so utterly disgusting, that she had to refrain from vomiting.

She asked me about him, if I had seen her baby boy, if he was even still alive. How could I tell her what he had become? A murderer, a killer of innocent girls, potential destroyer of the world. I spared her this torment; I told her he was dead. Had died as a boy and was at peace. I think she knew I was lying, but she would rather have the false truth than know the real one.

I left her to her grief. She had no need or want of me. Instead I continued my journey. Watching as each of my companions grew stronger, preparing for the final battle. When it came I was the only one ready.

Sephiroth had reached divinity. He was more powerful than any of us could imagine, yet we stood and fought. We battled for hours, neither side gaining any ground, and that is when I let go. I would not be the one to land the finishing blow, I couldn't, but Chaos on the other hand could. The demon fought alongside Cloud and together they killed him. I watched as the child I had tried to save died.

Things quieted quickly, and I took my leave of the group. Stopping only to see Lucrecia once more. She could finally rest in peace. I resumed my wandering. For 3 years I walked the earth, looking for some meaning. Chaos never missing a chance to gain control.

Then I was called. Cloud had been wounded, and I was the second choice to play the hero. I tried my best, to fight this new dark force that is rising. However, I have never been much of a leader. Cloud healed, and took the reins, but not before exiling me. I traveled with one other companion. Yuffie, she had been with me on Cloud's journey, and now stuck with me. She was a good companion, and I will miss her, but I would rather be destroyed then hurt her. We traveled together to her homeland. When we were but a day away, I had to leave. Don't ask why, the details are far more complex then I have time to write. Just trust that I did the right thing in leaving her.

I left and found one of the sources of this new evil. Hojo. I won't pretend that I wasn't surprised to see him. I could still feel the trigger I pulled to end his life in Midgar. Now he stood before me in a familiar position. I was his prisoner, and he was the torturer. This time it had different outcomes, this time I died.

Death was not that bad. I was fading slowly; soon I would no longer exist at all, and find my peace. Then it was robbed from again. I was not through with my duties. If I stayed dead, and found my piece, then Tifa and Yuffie would die. I cared for both of them, and I allowed myself to be resurrected. The price was my humanity. Chaos was gone, as was I. We were one now. There were no more voices, only my mind in constant turmoil over what was my own thought, and what was the demon's.

I saved Yuffie and Tifa, my reward a useless medal, I watched as men and women celebrated hailing me as a hero. I watched Tifa, saw her full of life, and wanted to rip it from her, wanted to kill her and see what he blood would look like on my hand.

It was that moment that has led me here today. I ran to the shelter I was staying at and slept. When I woke up, I saw death all around me. This was beyond death, it was a calculated slaughter. I looked at the blood pouring through the streets like a small river, and almost smiled, the demon's mind had imprinted a distinct taste for the beauty of overwhelming slaughter.

I ran into the burnt remains of the shelter, looking for anyone who could explain to me what had happened. There hiding amidst the corpses was a boy. No older then seven, yet his eyes carried a haunted look of a soldier who had gone through twelve campaigns. I tried to speak to him, but when he saw me he screamed. He yelled a great many words, only one of which I could understand. "Monster".

I had done this. I had committed this atrocity. I could look around in awe, the death held me under some kind of spell. A spell only broken by the sounds of two familiar voices. Yuffie and Tifa, they ran to me. Looks of pure confusion filled their sweet faces. I felt for the first time in many years the urge to run, the urge to just give up and die. Tifa looked at me, asking me what had happened. The sweet child never understood. I placed my hand on her cheek, and allowed myself to change. My claw grazed her cheek leaving a small trail of blood. Then I grew my wings and flew into the gray sky.

I didn't get far, only out of the kingdom's territory. On the outskirts I heard a sound. A young woman ran from some men, each carried a sword. I dived from the heavens and stabbed them both. And walked to the woman. Rather than thank me, she attacked me, so horrified by what I was. She stabbed at me with a dagger; I had no choice but to defend myself. I swiped at her, killing her in seconds. I want all to know I did mean for that to happen, but words mean nothing in the face of death.

I heard a laugh come from behind me. I turned and saw a figure; he was hooded and deathly thin. His hands made of bone rather than flesh. He called himself death. We he laughed at me. We spoke and then battled.

I am writing what I said to Death, for those will be my last words uttered.

Death spoke in a voice that sounded like gravel being raked across cement. " Very good Vincent, I was hoping you would kill her"

"What are you?" I asked

" I am your companion, we have traveled together all your life, I am death, I am all that you are and more."

" Leave me illusion, I have no time for your games"

" Yet you had time to kill the girl"

" I have no time for you, now leave me be or else" I said with all the strength I could muster.

" Or you will do what? Do you think to fight me? I would like to see you try."

I took no more from that figure, I attacked with my sword, but rather than connecting with him, he became like mist, breaking apart and instantly reforming.

" Mortals, how pathetic." He said as he swung his scythe at me. I tried to block, but his blade cut me anyway, blood flowed from my chest. He continued to strike. Cutting me down till I could no longer hold my own blade.

" Now do you see? You can not fight me Vincent. Wherever you go I will follow, every life you touch I will take." He said, " If you can't accept that then you are worthless to me."

As spoke a vortex of green energy appeared, and a woman came out, she was the same I had seen when I had killed Hojo for the second and last time. She plunged an elegant war staff into the specter's chest; he clutched it in great pain, and exploded into a thousand green motes. The woman looked me for a moment, the floated close enough to land a gentle kiss on my forehead. My eyes fluttered and I passed from the world of the living to the world of dreams.

I awoke and flew away. I am now where my journey started. The mansion is the same, never changing. It is the only constant in my life. I write this now in the room of my first torture. I leave this message behind to warn those who come here. Do wake the beast sleeping here. I know my place in the world finally. That specter, whether it is real or just some illusion out of the minds of my enemies, I do not know. Never the less, it told something valid. I bring death with me wherever I go. I am a plague to the world. I do not belong in the realm of the living, nor do I deserve the peace of death. My sins are too numerous for that. Instead I lock myself back up with my nightmares.

I ask not for pity, just for isolation. If you read this respect my wishes, do not disturb my sleep, for it will be your last action. There is no room in the world for a butcher such as I. So I leave this world now, I am sorry for not conqoring the evil that lives in it, but I can no longer care. So I say goodbye.

Vincent Valentine. Demon and Destroyer of life.

...................................

I smile sadly as I slide into the coffin, I hope never to see the light of day again. I know they will come here, Yuffie and Tifa both. They will see the letter, I am sure of it. I hope they take it seriously. If they open this coffin then I will have to kill them.

I slide the coffin lid shut, and allow the darkness to swarm over me, sighing as the nightmares come again.

....................................

Final Thoughts: Well here is another chapter. I hope you enjoyed this. I know the format was a little weird, but it will be back to normal next chapter. I was just inspired to write this last night, and decided to do it. So thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it even a little. If you liked it, or have any suggestions or comments, then please review it and let me know. Thanks again for reading.