Chapter 6

The sun was fairly high in the sky as Vincent paced silently down the many streets and side streets that led his way home. With the boy still held carefully in his arms, having shown no signs of consciousness, Vincent's thoughts were entirely elsewhere. He rounded a corner, not needing to think about the path he traced, and the shadows played across his face. The air was cool and fresh, and coming back out into the warm, pale golden light he paused for a moment.

Vincent's dark cape swirled about his ankles, as crimson as his eyes. It added another element of mystery to the man who many already believed a creature conjured from dreams – or nightmares. He stood quietly on the street and followed the way with his eyes. He was still a block from the place he considered home, but something about the way light and shadows played on the rooftops here, it caught at him, recalled him to his daydreams.

His leg stung, but that he ignored with practiced ease. In truth, once he had decided not to feel it, he barely did. He had resolved not to look at it until he had reached the safety of his house, and he would not let it bother him until then. Almost idly, it occurred to him that the Turk had done well to get a shot in past his trained defences. Perhaps it had been a lucky shot, but it was something to think about regardless.

Yes, the short but necessitated alliance with the Turk would cost dear. Much more so than he had let on. Working with a Turk again… even if just for a week, a day, an hour, it would certainly be hard; he had hoped never to have to don a blue suit again. But then again no one was forcing him. Still, even the thought of being in close proximity to one for more than a few moments gave Vincent chills.

A long time ago, just over thirty years now, he supposed, Vincent had been a Turk too. It was not a secret he kept from the world, and once upon a time, he had even been happy. Though that was a story that was not for sunny days such as this. It was a story that he did not choose to reflect on on any day at all. It was a story of things lost and remembered in which Vincent lived still; he knew he could never lose it completely. And yet, he had always hoped that maybe one day, some day, he could get on with his life once more. The sudden, erratic quest to save the world from Meteor had been that chance, he imagined.

Under the darkness of many fathoms of water, he'd somehow found his way to the hidden waterfall, guided by heaven and hell knew what. He'd been given a chance he'd only dreamed of, to see Lucrecia once more, to bid her farewell. But still… he knew the memories, the ghosts still followed him.

Lucrecia had been his world… and she was his sin. Long ago he had abandoned her when she needed him the most, though neither had realized it at the time, and now he had to live with that knowledge every day of his seemingly endless life. In a way, she had been the one between him and perdition. When Vincent had turned his back on her, life as he knew it had ended.

She had had to choose between Vincent and science once, long ago, and she had made that choice decisively. When he'd reached out his hand to her, she'd turned her back and had gone down into the shadows of the Shinra mansion to where it all began. Lucrecia… the woman who had produced Sephiroth willingly, given her all to make that dream a reality, and then had never gotten to hold him once. And throughout it all, Vincent had just stood by as an onlooker, convincing himself that it was better if he didn't interfere, that he had no right.

But then, like a sudden respite after the storm, Lucrecia had realized the true significance of what she'd done. She had, in all willingness, brought a child into the world with no purpose except to be experimented upon. He had no life ahead of him that was not determined by Shinra, no future. And she would never have the chance to watch him grow up, or to comfort him when he cried out in pain or fear. To know what she had done was the punishment for her crime, and she, like the man she'd spurned, would always be haunted by it.

She had fled into the eternal night, leaving Vincent alone in the dark house with his own guilt and pain. In a rage, he had confronted Hojo, but unlike the stories about the heroic knight, things had not turned out well. When he'd awakened from his drugged stupor with only a memory of a gunshot and Hojo's face appearing out of the shadows, he'd found himself terribly alone in a dark coffin, the same but horribly different. He'd known after drawing his first lucid breath that everything was lost. In short, he had become what he had always been: a monster.

Physically, Vincent was now ten times stronger than he'd ever been, and the metal claw in the place of his left arm could produce inhuman feats. Not only that, Vincent had found something lurking deep within, something he had been unable to understand then, in the coffin. Driven by his rage and grief, a real monster lay in wait, always just on the edge of sight, just waiting for a moment of weakness to escape its prison. That monster had many names, but to Vincent it would always be Chaos.

Sick and afraid, he'd ventured haphazardly out into the abandoned Shinra mansion. How much time had passed, he could not have known, but it was almost as if time had stopped around him. The hallways were dank and dark, their lights permanently extinguished, and cobwebs filled every corner. With a growing feeling of horror he'd explored the lab, seen the books still all laid out as if no time had passed, but hidden under a thick layer of grey dust.

Had anyone been there to see him, they would have seen a strange, dark man wandering the long forgotten tunnels with a haunted, lost expression. Memories always lived on, even when nothing else did. The plump maid who had kept house for them gossiped around the corner, the gardeners sipped drinks in the small kitchenette during their breaks. Each one seemed tangibly real despite the passage of time.

As he had crossed into the basement laboratory, the figures had taken on even more life, more color. Professor Gast scribbled busily at one table, completely absorbed in his work. Hojo's clear, cold laugh rang in Vincent's ears, setting his mind on fire. And there, reading a book… was Lucrecia. She had looked up and smiled at him across the years, and unable to go further he'd collapsed on the table.

With tears he had thought a Turk could never cry, he'd wept with inescapable grief and regret for that ghost of a woman who would never leave him. But in that moment where his defences crumbled, the beast inside had taken hold. And thus did Vincent meet Chaos for the first time.

Black wings had ripped from Vincent's back, tearing clothing and skin at the same time, and his long fingers extended into terrible claws. As darkness swallowed him whole he'd tried to scream in horror, tried to fight back, but he had lost the battle before he'd begun. That scream echoed through the house and his own mind long after he lost control of his voice.

So why did the man named Vincent Valentine hide his thoughts and emotions behind that bleak, unscalable wall? Because the alternative was unthinkable. When he had finally found that he was himself again, he'd been left a scarred shell of a man curled up in the wreckage surrounding him. It had been several hours before he'd dared to move again.

He had carefully cleaned up the laboratory and those books that could be saved, trusting in his picture perfect memories to set everything back where it had been before. And after… he had gone back to his small room, alone and hidden. He found a small key to the room in the laboratory and then had hidden it away. Words played through his head, and although they were his own they called him monster, and much worse. So he had closed the door and shut out everything, believing he was that monster and unfit to live among other people. He locked himself in that room, in his coffin, where he could sleep undisturbed until the end of days.

And he almost had, until Cloud Strife came along. Now, thirty years later, he had avenged Lucrecia and Hojo was dead. Under the blue sky of the present, he wondered what was left for him now. Of course, friends would always be there, and after everything he allowed himself to believe that was true. Although he was often aloof and did not show his thoughts, Vincent was thankful. There were people he could depend upon and trust, and that wasn't something he took lightly.

All in all, Vincent was happy enough living on his own, in peace. He'd thought about maybe leaving here, going out into the world to just be a normal human being again. He knew that the others would all approve, particularly Cloud and Tifa, but he was not certain he was quite ready for that yet. This in between existence in Midgar was the life he had chosen, and he liked it for what it was. This sudden interruption would change things; he could feel it already, almost like a change in the winds.

A few stray clouds drifted overhead, but the day remained resolutely bright and beautiful. Slowly, Vincent closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He supposed that once, in a place and time long forgotten, he must have been a romantic. Before he stained his hands with the reality of the blue suit and the black gun of the Turks, that is. Every once in a while he would find himself looking for days like this, where everything would seem alright and where it looked like even happy endings were possible. Life was never like that; he knew from experience it waited for no one. And yet… Vincent waited for these days of sunshine.

He began to walk again, giving the boy he carried a quick glance, and his steps were quick and light. He did not smile, but for now, for here, he was happy.

Yes, even after everything, he still believed.

Reno sat in his apartment, slouched on his couch with his feet on the coffee table. There was a bottle of tequila open on the table, easily within reach. Not to mention the beer cans in the fridge.

All the lights were turned off, and the curtains pulled tightly closed to block out the bright sunlight that seemed determined to infiltrate the room. Reno ran a hand through his red hair distractedly and sighed. A fresh white bandage was wrapped around his arm, and the tired look on Reno's face hinted at the fact that he'd already seen to the removal of the bullet. With no material on hand to expedite the process there was nothing for it but to take the hands-on approach. You learned to do things yourself when you became a Turk.

Reno's blue jacket lay in a heap near the door where he'd dropped it after coming in. His black shirt was stained and ripped, and his blue jeans had split at the knee after their close encounter with high-speed pavement. Overall, Reno looked more than a little like he'd just fallen off of a motorcycle that was blazing full speed down an abandoned highway. Funny that. He reached over and took a drink from the bottle. Yeah, life, or fate, or whatever had thrown a lot of things his way last night.

Vincent for one thing. Whether he wanted to or not, he was going to have to deal with the gunman if he wanted to find out what had really happened to Merdan. Not to mention the weird message he'd spent his last breath delivering. What about Rude and Elena? It didn't sound like puppies and rainbows, whatever had happened.

He took another long drink from the bottle and stared half angrily at the darkened TV set. He hated it when things took a turn that he couldn't foresee. Hated it more when it was something he couldn't threaten his way out of with his gun or EMR. Hated it the most when he couldn't shut it all out because it followed him inside his own head.

Objectively, he told himself that when he was by himself he didn't need to think of anything, it could all go to hell. Unfortunately, he'd always been a quick thinker and it didn't work that way. Despite his best efforts to pretend otherwise, things went round and round in his mind, like some kind of carousel on fast-forward, and even unconsciously he couldn't help but turn them over and over.

Well, Reno had always considered himself a doer. When he was presented with a problem, he came up with a solution. The problem here was clear, and thus the solution was too: get wasted. When there was nothing left to think about, unconsciousness usually served him well. He reached for the tequila again

As another mouthful went down, Reno wondered. He had a lot of questions when –if– the kid woke up. Where he'd come from and why he'd been pushed off the top of the highway were on the top of the list, without a doubt. There had to be a connection somewhere, something he was missing. There were a lot of clues he wasn't holding, and tomorrow would be the day to get them, whatever it cost.

Another shot. And just to top it off, an end to the bottle. Ah yes, the world was beginning to look less clear already.

What if Valentine took off? No, although he had no basis for the hunch Reno doubted severely that Valentine was going anywhere. And even if he was, Reno would track him to the ends of the Planet and back before he let him get away with the only clue he had in a mystery that was quickly deepening. But Valentine did have AVALANCHE on his side… Fuck. He hadn't thought of that. Not the disappearing part, but regardless of how well things went with Valentine he was eventually going to have to deal with Strife and cronies, wasn't he? No, definitely not something he was going to look forward to.

Pushing against the back of the couch, he wandered towards the fridge before opening it and pulling out six cans of the nearest beverage. It was all alcoholic, after all, so it didn't really matter what it was. He popped the first one open and started drinking before heading back to the couch. He preferred the dark front room to the kitchen: it was bright with daylight in here and made his head ache.

So, tomorrow, then. If Valentine hadn't killed Merdan, then who the hell had? This was a pressing question. Was one person acting alone with a grudge against the Turks? It's not like they didn't have enough enemies lurking around the underworld. But something about that didn't ring true. Why Valentine? Yes, he'd been a Turk, but he'd helped to destroy Shinra, right? Or was just knowing something about Shinra enough? There was something to that, maybe…

One can down, the second snapped open.

What about Rude and Elena? If something had happened to them, he wouldn't let anyone forget about it ever. Yeah, if anything happened to them, the world would find out just how much damage an ex-Turk can still do before he's taken down. Gods, he missed them. No, he didn't, he didn't miss them. They were his friends, and he wanted the good old days back. No, he didn't. He was fine. Perfectly fine.

Snap.

Why did things have to happen like this? They were all supposed to stick together, weren't they? Turks' honour, or something. What honour? The thought made him laugh. But yeah, together. Rude and Elena left him here, and it was all their fault. No, it wasn't, it was his fault. No, that wasn't right either. They weren't the first ones to leave. What was his name now…? Tseng, right. It was Tseng's fault. He'd left them alone in the darkness and he abandoned them and he was never, ever coming back, and it was his fault, Reno's fault, all alone.

Snap.

Finally, the thoughts began to fade, and Reno's mind slipped away from consciousness and towards somewhere darker than the shadows in the room. It all spun around him until nothing made sense anymore and as Reno disappeared into black, he was glad.