In the kitchen, Lucrecia watched in mild amusement as Vincent ushered his two Turks out the front door amid much protestation. They called out their goodbyes to her, which she returned with a wave and a smile. Finally managing to get rid of the dynamic duo, he slammed the door shut and leaned back against it in relief.
"Odin, give me strength…"
She chuckled lightly and walked over to him, holding two cups of fresh coffee. "You look like could use one of these" she said, passing him a mug. "You're beginning to sound like a mother hen."
Vincent took the steaming cup gratefully. "Don't you start on that line as well" he warned as he drank. "It's been a very long day. Ouch, this is hot."
The scientist wandered over to the sofa and sat down, while Vincent followed behind. She took a more cautious sip from her own mug. "That's because it's just been made. But you did seem a little tense on the phone earlier."
Lucrecia watched him as he joined her in front of the TV. Vincent's moods were imperceptible to most observers, but she could tell he was brooding over something. It was always difficult to read what he was thinking, since he seemed so used to concealing his emotions. Dwelling on it made her a little sad; how he walled himself off from the world so easily. But she had learned a few of the minute telltale signs that could be used to gauge his mood. A very slight frown pulling his eyebrows just that tiny bit closer meant that there was definitely something on his mind.
"Sorry" he apologised with a sigh. "It was a bad time. I defy anyone to try and keep all those Turks in order without getting a little tense now and again."
Although still cagey about the nature of his work, Lucrecia had to admit he had become a lot more open about it recently, at least comparatively speaking, as open for the Turk was still tight as a clamshell for just about anyone else. Vincent himself wasn't sure how this particular development had happened - even around a man like Professor Gast whom he had known for years, he was still reluctant to disclose anything remotely connected to his profession. But with Lucrecia he found himself actually talking about things. And the more he thought about this, turning it over and over in his mind, the less he understood it.
Lucrecia nodded. "It must be difficult" she empathised.
"It can be. I know they can handle themselves, but in the end they're my responsibility" Vincent explained. "We're all grown men, but Linden isn't the most sensible of people at the best of times and Preston is thirty-one going on sixteen. Deacon… Deacon is probably the most level headed of the lot, but even he has his moments. Half the time they don't listen, or change their minds in the middle of an assignment. And when you have to keep them all alive in a situation like today…"
It both amused and amazed her how one man could go from practically monosyllabic to full flow speech with no apparent effort. When she had spoken to him on the phone, he had tersely explained that he was in the middle of a mission and not given any of the details. Now, she put two and two together to work out exactly what he was referring to. "The Reactor" she realised. "Gast told us about that earlier, he had some students over there…"
"Yes."
She waited for him to elaborate slightly but he fell stonily silent, eyes downcast staring into his drink. Evidently he wasn't feeling particularly forthcoming about this one, as the walls had slammed up and he was back to the one word answers again.
"What happened?"
Vincent waited a long time before replying. "I killed someone."
She wasn't quite sure what to make of that statement. Rationally she knew that this would not have been the first time he had been called upon to perform this kind of task, but why would it bother the leader of the Turks now? She wasn't party to the specifics of the situation, but she knew that several Shinra employees were held hostage at gunpoint and others killed when the terrorists initially stormed the Reactor. The Turks had managed to get all the staff out to safety, so while she wouldn't go so far as to necessarily call them glorious heroes, she was unable to grasp why Vincent seemed so gloomy.
"Should I be telling you off for this or congratulating you for saving all those people?"
Her attempt at lightening the tone fell on deaf ears. "The man I killed died three years ago."
Now he really had her confused. "So you're telling me that you killed a man who was already dead?" She frowned before looking up. "You do realise this makes no sense, don't you?"
She watched Vincent play with his cup. "He was supposed to have been killed in action, but he was there at the Reactor. He said that it was part of a cover up, that Shinra ordered his death and the Turks covered it up…"
Lucrecia's frown deepened. Evidently this was the something that was troubling him. "Three years ago? You were still a Turk back then?" she asked gently.
"Yes" he acknowledged. "I was the youngest. He was the leader, the one who recruited me. And I had to kill him." He didn't add the rest of his thoughts. 'I had to kill him and I didn't feel a damn thing'. That almost worried him. Despite the fact that it was what he had been trained to do and was exactly what should be expected of him, he thought that he would have felt a scrap of pity, anger, something, for the man who had been like a surrogate father to him since he joined the group. But no. Nothing.
The scientist gritted her teeth to enquire further. "Why did you kill him?" she said firmly, not enjoying pursuing this line of questioning. Although she had reconciled herself to some of the things Turks did, she still wasn't completely comfortable discussing them. "Was it an accident? Or did you mean to? Did he just get in your way or…"
"It was self defence" he interrupted smoothly. "He held me at gunpoint and tried to make me join him. If I refused he would have killed me."
"You're sure?"
"Yes. I know him, he was a Turk." And because it was what I would have done in his place, he added in the privacy of his own mind. "I looked up to him, almost like he was my father. I guess he was for a while."
The scientist couldn't help but seize on that piece of information. Vincent was also notoriously reluctant to talk about his background. "What about your own family?" she asked. "Didn't they…"
Vincent shook his head. "They died when I was eighteen" he explained. "They were on a ship to Wutai when it sank and no-one survived."
Lucrecia looked apologetic. "I'm sorry" she said, "I didn't realise…"
"It's alright. It happened a long time ago now, and there's nothing I can do about it." He took another sip of his coffee. "It's a similar story for all of the Turks really."
"It is?"
He nodded. "Preston's parents died of natural causes but then he is older than the rest of us. Deacon's father is still alive but he doesn't know where, and Linden never even knew his." He pondered the similarities between them. "Shinra prefers it that way" he concluded. "It's something… an old Turk once told me."
That Turk had in fact been none other than Grisham himself; though Vincent was reluctant to mention the name at this particular time.
Lucrecia's face held an expression of puzzlement. "I can't see the point in that" she commented. "It's very bizarre."
Vincent didn't answer. Unlike the scientist, he could see the sense behind the argument. Grisham had put it the best though. "Family is a weakness. A man with a family will play it cautiously and if something goes wrong you can't count on him to put his life on the line to take a risk. But a man with no ties has nothing to lose." So it was that all of the Turks were men with minimal or no emotional attachments. It wasn't exactly a requirement for the job, but more often than not it transpired that the best candidates fit that category.
He shook off that line of thought as it was taking him in a direction he didn't really want to go in right now. Instead, he decided to change the topic of conversation to something he was more comfortable with.
"Anyway" he said, "I'm sure you don't want to hear about us. I was going to ask you how your project is going. I haven't had a chance to speak to Professor Gast for a while about his Mako experiments, and I know you're on that too…"
Her eyes lit up as they always seemed to when discussing her work. "You mean the SOLDIER Project? It's speeding ahead. We never thought we'd achieve so much in such a short space of time, it's incredible!" Vincent couldn't help but smile at her enthusiasm. He derived no real pleasure from his own employment, it was simply what he did and was best at. Idly he wondered what it must be like to have a job that you enjoyed doing. "Preliminary tests indicated that none of the men reacted badly in any way, the Mako just increased their strength and ability. The only side effect was that the infusions made their eyes glow."
Vincent cast his mind back to the day Professor Gast had shown him the little white lab mouse with the same distinguishing feature. "Now that is what I'd class as bizarre" he said with a wry smile. "For all these years we've been paranoid about Mako poisoning, and then you find it's actually good for you."
"Only in very small doses" she chuckled. "Too much Mako will still give you the mother of all hangovers." Vincent smiled along with her. He could never remain distracted for too long around Lucrecia, she had a way of making all the troubles in his world disappear. He knew he ought to be worried about this blurring of focus, but somehow she made that niggle vanish as well. Just looking at her seemed to make him forget most things. She had probably come straight from the lab, since she was wearing her hair up still. He noticed a few wisps of her hair had slipped from her hurried bun, and without thinking, he reached over to push them back for her. He loved the colour, not quite brown, not quite auburn but somewhere in between…
Lucrecia watched him as he played with her hair in apparent fascination, twisting it round his fingers, and wondered if he was even aware of what he was doing. Smiling, she reached up with her own hand to touch his. He had unusual hands for a man. Instead of being thick set, they were slender, with long, tapered fingers. During her internship in hospitals, she had dealt with a few injured gunmen, and the one thing they had in common was that the weapon hand was hard and calloused. Vincent's were unexpectedly soft; she had learned that he tended to wear gloves during his working hours.
Noticing the touch Vincent started to move away apologetically, thinking she disliked having her hair toyed with but she stopped him, keeping hold of his hand. Looking up, he found himself falling into her gaze, her beautiful eyes...
Leaning forward, he kissed her gently. She returned the gesture with a surprising amount of passion. Breaking away, they sat for what seemed like an eternity without speaking, only inches apart, before coming together again. This time, they didn't stop.
They didn't speak again for a long time.
