By V.Valentine
Chapter 4
Coal Miner's Promise
A/N: Thanks for the reviews so far. Next up we have Barret saying goodbye to our dear friend, Vincent. As always, please read and review. And yeah, the whole I don't make money off of any of this jive. You know the deal.
One more gone. One more gone and not a damn thing we can do about it.
Shit, we're all getting older; I'll be the first to admit to that. But Death seems to be hittin us a lot lately. Aeris, and now Vince. I gotta wonder about one thing, and that bothers the hell outta me.
Who's next?
Here we are, lookin at Vince, in a coffin again. Just like how we fuckin found him in the first place.
I still remember that day like anything else. Now I've seen some shit in my time, but never have I seen a man get up and walk out of a coffin before. It's just not done. Once you're in, I thought you were in. That was that.
And the funny thing about everything was, he looked at us like we were the strange ones. Like this should have been some sort of routine and no surprise should have come from all this.
Everything he did was creepy. The way he fought, creepy, the way he fired his gun, creepy. Hell, walking was right up there on the creepy list too.
I don't believe I ever saw anything but his eyes and his hair on his face. Always had that damn cloak on around him, even when it was hotter than hell.
I don't know though, maybe we shouldn't have been worried about how creepy it was, and instead, treated him like one of us.
What am I sayin? He is one of us; he was just…off in his own damn world. Until we needed him. And then he was there for us.
And now we're here for him.
Shit, Vince, do you know that we're all here for you right now? I wish we coulda been there, wherever it is you was, and we coulda helped. We coulda made a difference.
I look down at Marlene. Jeez, she's getting big these days. Starting to be almost as tall as her old man. Not me, Dyne.
Dyne. One more person in my life that got killed. I hope he's watching after Myrna and looking down at Marlene with a smile.
Marlene just started school, and she knows what happens when you die. But I ain't sure I want her seeing us all like this.
After we got back from destroying Meteor, she couldn't wait to tell me about how the "flower lady spoke to me" and shit. I guess that makes her part of the team now.
So I guess that's why I'm letting her stay.
I'm looking at where my gun-arm used to be. I got it replaced with a mechanical one, kinda like what Vince had.
One more thing the boy and me had in common. We were experiments to science.
Out of all us, I think you had the most reason to have a grudge, Vince. ShinRa fucked with you, and fucked with you bad. I can't even imagine what Hojo must have done to you.
But you took it all in stride, and didn't even have a damn drink when you shot Hojo right through the head.
Always a cool customer, Vince. Always a slick cat.
So what do you want us to do now? I mean, we gotta do something. We're out one more team member, and we don't have you to help us anymore.
I guess no matter what, we do what we always do. We keep on fightin till all of us go to meet you.
That's what Biggs, Wedge, and Jesse did. That's what Aeris did. That's what you did.
I guess that's what we gotta do now.
Alright, Vince. Have it your way. We keep fighting. We probably said it too many times, but it don't mean it ain't any more true.
There ain't no getting off this train we're on. Until the very end.