He Tells All
by: Bishojo Beauty
Chapter 10
Tifa simply watched, her body numbed by shock, as Vincent's form crumpled lifelessly onto the ground. Once the initial shock subdued, she panicked. She heard the screen door behind her fling open, and nearly off it's hinges as Kael came running out of the house. He must have heard the thump of Vincent's falling body and Tifa's muffled cry of alarm.
Before Tifa even realized it, Vincent's body was already hoisted and placed onto the couch in the living room of Chester's home. Kael was busy trying to identify his ailments as soon as Vincent was set in a relatively comfortable position. Slowly, Tifa's mind began to function normally again, and she remembered now that Vincent often fainted after his transformations.
She remembered the first time that the AVALANCHE members had witnessed Vincent faint. Truthfully, though, none of them had really witnessed it. It was only due to luck, and perhaps Yuffie's unhealthy obsession with Vincent that the group noticed. He was always so silent, that sometimes the group would never really know if he was still with them or not. With Vincent always at the back of the group and his mysterious intentions, this made all the members uneasy knowing that they're back was turned on a possible danger. But he never proved to be dangerous. Helpful more than anything. He would notice and defend beasts that were undetectable to their senses. Tifa suspected that Vincent had heightened senses due to the experiments conducted on him by Professor Hojo. But she never questioned him about it. From that day on, the group kept an eye on their unfriendly companion after he transformed, expecting him to faint.
Tifa reentered the house and faltered in her step as she realized that Kael perhaps did not know about Vincent's transformations. Tifa was not about to take the risk of Kael knowing. It would be a complete invasion of privacy if Tifa told Kael.
Tifa tried to offer Kael as much comfort as she could with words. She remembered as well, those many years ago, that she would worry over Vincent just as Kael was over him now. Even though she saw him wake from his blackouts time after time, she feared all the same that he would one day not. This fear made itself known again now. But for Vincent's sake, she did not want to go on telling Kael about his transformations and such.
Tifa offered gently to take over Kael's ministrations to Vincent insisting that she knew what to do. Kael however, was not convinced and refused to budge from his spot, protectively over Vincent. Tifa sighed, and resolved to physically taking Kael by the shoulders and sitting him down on the other couch. Afterwards, she went on preparing the necessities, and nursing Vincent back to consciousness. The whole time, Kael refused to remain seated. He paced around the room, back and forth, around in circles, and in and out the door. He did anything and everything but sitting down and being still. Tifa was about to ask him to politely calm himself and relax but was stopped when she heard a groan escape Vincent's lips. At this, Kael was by Vincent side immediate, nearly knocking over Tifa in his momentum to reach his side. He was calling Vincent's name, clinging onto his hand and thanking the higher powers for Vincent's reawakening. Tifa herself sighed in relief as Vincent awoke.
"Kael?" Vincent's voice was full of confusion. Everything on his body felt like they weighed a tonne. He could barely even open his eyes and focus on what was in front of him. His mind was also hazy of all the past couple of events. But slowly it returned to him. And so did reality. Everything that had happened was real, and he was not dreaming. He smiled a little at this. Tifa having removed Vincent's cloak from him earlier, got a full view of his half smile. It wasn't a full one like the one she say in the pictures, but it was a smile nonetheless coming from a man who had a face seemingly chiseled from stone.
Vincent reached for his brother and grabbed a hold of his shirt sleeve in a grip that spoke of no release and instantly fell into his first restful sleep since his brother had disappeared. His brother was back and that was all that mattered.
Tifa scrounged Chester's home for blankets and pillows once Kael finally agreed later on in the night to take a rest away from Vincent's side. Upon returning, she was greeted by the sight of both Vincent and Kael fast asleep on the two couches. Making her way over to Kael's side as quietly as possible as to not awake him, she gently laid a blanket over his prone form and placed a pillow by his side. She did the same for Vincent before setting up a place next to Vincent on the floor for herself to sleep. She didn't mind sleeping on the floor at all. She grew quite accustomed to it during her AVALANCHE days as they often camped outside when it grew too dark and dangerous to continue their journey by feet.
Tifa glanced over to Vincent as she sat down. This was the second time since she knew him that she had seen him cloak-less. And it was something that she would not mind to see more often. Why he wore the cloak in the first place, Tifa did not know. There wouldn't be anything to hide would there? Tifa took this chance to finally get a good look at Vincent. Though a little paler than normal, he was strikingly beautiful. A rare word to describe a man's features but it was true. Her eyes trailed along his long neck and as far down as his shirt would allow to find nothing but smooth expanses of skin. No markings whatsoever to hide.
Her eyes trailed down to his hand which laid curled next to his face. There, she noticed a scar that ran along his palm. It was a rather big gash near his thumb. She daringly traced it lightly with her fingers. Vincent shifted in his sleep at her touch, and Tifa quickly retracted her hand, and settled down for as restful as a sleep as she could get.
In Vincent's unconscious state the touch stirred memories in Vincent. He began to dream and remember how he got that very scar.
It was one fateful morning. Vincent sat in a chair by the window, staring out and envying the children playing outside. The children were all part of the same orphanage that Vincent and his brother belonged to. However, Vincent and Kael did not get the kinds of luxury the other children got. They were misfits. They were parentless, unlike most of them. A large number of them had parents, but they were either "accidents" or the parents just couldn't afford to care for them anymore and resorted to sending them off to what they considered a better life. Vincent considered it hell.
Despite his ripe age of six, Vincent was quite smart. But his intelligence was something he kept to himself. Vincent refocused his attention to his reflection in the window. His hair was fairly long and unruly, and his clothes were clearly hand-me-downs.
The kids outside were playing baseball. It was the fat kid's turn. Vincent watched as he took a couple of practice swings. And when he finally hit the ball, it went flying high and fast into the air. Closer and closer it came to Vincent, and unexpectedly, right through the window. The glass shattered and showered over Vincent's tiny form. He heard the crunch of grass under his bare feet as he jumped down from where he sat. It stung and he could feel warm blood oozing from the bottom of his feet. The kids outside screamed and ran out of sight in an attempt to escape blame. Vincent unknowingly to his fate, picked up the ball. As he did this, the man of the wife who ran the orphanage spotted him. In blind rage, he ran towards the boy, yelling profanities all the way through. Vincent reacted on his instincts, and his instincts told him to run.
Through the small home he ran as fast as his little legs could carry him, screeching his lungs out at the horror that he knew his future held. Eventually, he was back where he started. As he approached the broken glass, he slipped on his own blood and fell. A sharp pain shot across his hand as glass tore through it and embedded itself in his small chubby hands. And finally, the ugly man reached Vincent. He grabbed Vincent by the hand, incidentally where the glass had imbedded itself, and Vincent cried out in pain as the glass dug deeper into his small hands.
The man sneered at Vincent. The man smelt of alcohol and smoke, made Vincent want to gag. Vincent then felt the sting of a slap across his face and he fell to the ground and onto the tiny glass shards on the ground. The man was yelling at him, but he couldn't hear him. Instead, all he could really do was see, and all he saw he was his brother standing at the entrance of the living room. His hands were clenched into tight fists, and his body trembled in anger. They were now all screaming and Vincent curled himself into a little ball. He hated screaming. He hated anger. Before he knew it, his barrier was pierced by the screech of the ugly man and Vincent could feel himself being picked up and carried away. Looking up, he could see tears streaming down Kael's face. He was saying something.
"Vincent, no more. We aren't going to live that life anymore, Vincent. I'm sorry, I wanted the best for us, but, not like this," Vincent reached for his brother's cheeks to wipe away the tears.
"It's okay, Kael. As long as you're here," Vincent knew they would make it. Somehow.
With a quick inhale of breath, Vincent found himself awake. His eyes and his body shooting up with abnormal speed despite his body's protests, as he woke from his dream. Sighing, he allowed his head to droop down against the couch's back. His hands were shaking and his nerves were frayed. It was rare that he was visited by memories from his childhood. Those years seemed to be smothered in a darkness that he could never reach outside of very rare dreams.
Vincent could still feel the aftereffects of Chaos' overtaking of his body. Every inch of his body ached nonstop, and it hurt considerably more to move than if he was to lie still. Which was what he resolved to doing, until he began to cough. It wasn't just a normal cough, it was hacking. Hacking up blood to be more exact. Vincent never fathomed longer than he needed as to whos blood he was always coughing up after his transformations. Was it Chaos? His? Or, even worse, his prey? Vincent did not want to know.
Vincent looked around the room in the darkness. He noticed two sleeping forms. One on the ground beneath him, and the other on the other couch. He squinted in the darkness to make out the flow of long hair of the figure beneath him. Vincent fought down his urge to cough, as it threatened to burst from within him. He did not want to wake up Tifa and Kael, and especially since they would wake to find him in this condition. A condition that worsened from week to week, perhaps even day by day.
The cough that Vincent struggled to hold down finally escaped his grasp and came out as a wrangled cough. The figure below him shifted.
"Vincent?" Tifa's whisper reached Vincent's ears. He watched as she sat up and attempted to find him in the darkness.
"You okay?" She asked now. Tifa waited, but no response came. Had she just imagined Vincent's cough? She heard another cough, and Tifa confirmed her suspicions.
"Vincent?" She called out again. Tifa reached for him blindly, forgetting in her sleepy state that Vincent was not like others with human contact. Her hand rested gently on Vincent's knee. Vincent could feel the warmth of Tifa's hand seep through the thin blanket that covered him earlier. He knew it was a friendly gesture of comfort and concern, but he found no comfort in it. He would have shifted out of her reach if he could. But right now, his body protested movement so much, he sufficed to remain still. Even breathing hurt. It didn't help that his chest felt like exploding on him. Tifa repeated her question with more concern evident in her voice.
"Yes," Vincent finally replied, his voice barely even a whisper. He was lying and he knew that Tifa knew that. But she did not question him further.
Vincent looked around the room until he finally spotted what he was looking for. A clock, and it read 6:00 in bright red digits. The sun was going to be up soon, and Vincent did not feel like sleeping anymore, so he began to slowly extract himself from the couch and the blanket that covered the lower half of his body.
"You should rest more," Tifa suggested, her hand applying more pressure on his knee as she spoke. With a quiet grunt, he ignored her. Clumsily, he finally got up and rested unsteadily on his feet. He felt as if he would fall over any minute now, but he trusted his body to hold him upright. Slowly and carefully, he made his way to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. If it was anything he needed in the morning, it was coffee. He was not a morning person despite many others beliefs. He may be up early, but not for reasons that a morning person would be up for.
Sighing, Tifa rubbed the sleep from her eyes and followed Vincent into the kitchen where bright light blinded her for a moment. Squinting she sought out Vincent. When she spotted him, she noted that he looked like hell.
Grabbing a mug for herself and waited for the coffee to brew in the machine beside Vincent. Glancing over quickly, she caught him looking at her.
"How are you feeling?" Tifa asked. Vincent nodded in response. It did not exactly answer her question, but at least she got a response. One that was very typical of Vincent, she noted. There was something that had been bugging her all night. And now Tifa remembered what it was.
"I never remembered it to be this bad," Tifa started, "your transformations, I mean," Tifa stopped here, not saying anymore to allow Vincent to either respond or take her words as a mere statement of her thoughts. She was surprised when she heard a quiet 'no' come from him. He was still cloak-less, and it was strange to see him speak with moving lips. Vincent's response wasn't ideal, but it was a response nonetheless. She felt his eyes on her again and she turned her attention to him and met his gaze. She could tell he was contemplating something. Having full view of his face, Tifa noticed, that it made deciphering his current state of mind much more easily. Tearing his eyes away from her, he began to speak. With very little words, he told her how he noticed a change in Chaos' need for release. It was as if Vincent was in some sort of danger. He could constantly feel Chaos' wary presence lingering in him. This was a clear sign of danger for Vincent. He knew something was wrong. But he did not tell this to Tifa. All she knew was that Chaos' was on edge for some reason he could not figure.
This caused Tifa to worry even more. Having Chaos' involved so deeply in this, was a great concern for Tifa. Not only was this a danger to the people around Vincent, but Vincent himself. She remembered one day when she had spotted him on the deck of Highwind in deep thought after a transformation, he had told her something that she would never forget. Every time he transformed, it was one times closer to losing himself completely and becoming nothing more than a blood-hungry beast in monster form or in human form. He had called himself a monster that night and Tifa fought to convince him otherwise, but to her disappointment, he simply ignored her. He was still quite intimidating then. He still was today. But yesterday, she saw something in him that changed her whole perspective on his being.
She saw vulnerability.
When Kael finally awoke, he found himself underneath a warm blanket and no Vincent on the other couch. At this thought he panicked and hastily rose from the couch where he slept only moments earlier. He heard a clink of glasses coming from the kitchen. He moved urgently, but calmly into the kitchen where he was greeted by sight of Vincent and Tifa enjoying a cup of morning coffee together at the kitchen table silently. Tifa called out a cheerful good morning to him as opposed to Vincent's strained one.
Both Tifa and Kael could sense Vincent's uneasiness around Kael's presence. But neither of them blamed him for it. It wasn't every day that your missing brother who had supposedly betrayed you shows up suddenly out of no where forty years later without a single sign of aging on his physical form. Kael had noticed that Vincent did not age a bit either. What he did not know, however, was that Vincent was not only changed on the outside by Hojo but on the inside as well. Kael had not seen Vincent transform the other night, and he did not ponder longer than needed about the sudden disappearance of that monster. All that was important to him was that he had found Vincent and he was well.
Kael pushed his thoughts away and greeted the pair with a good morning of his own. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down with Vincent and Tifa. Together, they chatted about nothing general. The sunny but very chilly weather, the great tasting coffee, and Vincent's long hair were a couple of subjects they touched upon before running out. Silence fell in then, and with silence, came a feeling of awkwardness.
"Oh, look! It's snowing!" Tifa suddenly exclaimed. Both Vincent and Kael turned towards the window and observed as snow came down onto the ground. Already there was a lot of snow on the ground.
"It must of snowed through the night!" Tifa said excitedly while making her way closer to the window. Then without thinking, she turned around and grabbed Vincent by his metallic arm.
"Come on, Vincent! Let's go out and play!" She urged and tugged at Vincent's unmoving form. Vincent looked stared at Tifa reluctant to go. Tifa could have almost sworn there was even a slight pout on his lips. Mesmerized, her grip loosened.
"Don't spoil the fun, Vince. Go," Kael finally said. It was more of an order, and surprisingly and unsurprisingly, Vincent got up. But not without a small frown in his brother's direction. At this, Tifa renewed her passion to get Vincent to go with her. Tifa concluded that Vincent needed some fun time to melt his icy cold demeanor and into the Vincent she saw in the pictures. On their way out, however, Vincent stopped to put his cloak back on which disappointed Tifa quite a bit.
It discouraged Tifa when Vincent merely watched from the porch of Chester's house while she danced and played in the snow. Tifa at first urged Vincent energetically to come and join her, but after a while, his sour mood began to wear on her as well. Then, out of no where, Tifa spied a snowball fly at an amazing speed through the air and right for Vincent. And it surely hit its mark, catching Vincent completely off guard.
The sight was hilarious and Tifa couldn't help but laugh out loud. Vincent's face was covered in patches of snow and so was his hair. Tifa ran up to him as she laughed and helped him pick off some of the snow from his hair and cloak as he stood there with menacing eyes. Tifa turned her eyes to his assailant, and spotted Kael literally rolling in the snow laughing. Tifa bit down on her lower lip to hold back another fit of laughter while she helped Vincent. With one quick sweep, Vincent brushed the snow from his face while unbuckling his cloak with his claw. Excusing himself to Tifa, he made his way into the snow.
Tifa watched as Vincent made his way towards Kael's rolled up form. The crunch of the snow under Vincent's boots stopped as Vincent did and crouched to gather snow. Slowly and meticulously, he packed snow into a large round snowball all the while eyeing his target down. In one quick motion, the snowball flew from Vincent's fingertips to Kael's face. This only caused Kael to laugh harder. Vincent narrowed his eyes further at his brother's antics. Tifa watched in amusement as the Valentine brother's began an all out snow fight. They were two grown men who were supposed to be in their fifties, perhaps sixties, in a childish game of snowball fighting. Before Tifa knew it, she became the target of two snow balls. They were kind enough to not hit the face, but stupid enough to involve her in it.
"You'll regret this!" Tifa shouted before returning fire at the two men attempting to hide behind a small lamppost. It was a pathetic hiding place, but it was better than none, and Kael won out over Vincent on this one leaving Vincent wide open for Tifa. Tifa laughed as her snowball hit its mark: Vincent's face. Tifa saw the ghost of a smile on Vincent's features before she turned and ran for the Nibelheim mountains seeking cover there. She could hear Vincent and Kael gaining on her heels. She twisted her head around quickly to see that Vincent and Kael already had snowballs made in their hands. How they were so fast, Tifa was not sure, but had a good idea that it was from Hojo's experimentation. Before Tifa could whip her head back around, she tripped and felt herself fly a couple of feet forward, but luckily, her fall was cushioned by the snow. She felt hands helping her up and identified them to be Kael's as he asked if she as okay. Laughing it off, she turned herself around to identify the culprit to her fall. Vincent was also doing this as well, and the suspicion in his eyes told her something was deathly wrong.
"Vincent? What's wrong?" Tifa asked. She wasn't expecting an answer. She never expected an answer from him. Only hoped for one. Tifa got the answer to her question as Vincent turned the lump in the snow over. As the large object moved, Tifa identified it to be a body, and once the body landed on its back, its head lolled and faced Tifa, the hollow eyes of the man bore into Tifa's own. Tifa screamed and covered her face. It was not like her to show such weakness, but this was far more than she expected.
It was the body of a man. A man that Tifa, Vincent and Kael knew.
"Chester..." was all that was said by the two brothers simultaneously.
I guess this is an alright chapter... Hehe, i tried! Hope ya liked it! More to come! I know it's been a while...but it's like, two times longer than it was supposed to be. I went back to reread it and see if I liked it or not, and then I just started adding and adding. I was actually going to take the whole dream scene out. But I figured that since I wrote it, then I might as well keep it.
Thanks for reading guys! Please tell me ya liked this chapter? Or suggest some changes I can make. I think the next chapter is gonna be much better! So stay...tuned?
Bishojo Beauty