Author's Notes: What, I was TOLD to write an angst! Honest! I'll admit, it made my day, it really did. Especially since I can torture Vinny and Reeve in the process. Sorta DOC spoilerish.

Theme: Life

Protomateria

Things always happened this way. Just as things got good, just as they got comfortable and things were looking up for the long run, fate had put you in your place. That was the way things went now. Try as he might to keep that comfortable peace, there was very little hope for that. Hell, these days where was little hope for things ending with minimal pain. Lately it was even seeming like the mako based pain killers they had recovered from Nibelheim did nothing.

Never before had Reeve felt so powerless. When AVALANCHE blew up the reactors, when he was made a Shin-Ra executive with no real powers, when Meteor had fallen, even through all of the Deepground and Omega business he had never felt so weak. In fact, he'd watched Vincent in a tube after passing out in Edge two years previous and had felt more useful. All he could do now was watch, wait and curse the names of Lucretia and Weiss. Well, that and do his best to keep his lover comfortable.

There was Vincent now, in their bed, sleeping so peacefully. At least, Reeve hopped he was sleeping. He couldn't find it in himself just yet to check. Checking could be final, checking could find Vincent still with him, still suffering. Right now all Reeve wanted was to look at that beautiful smile. The same smile Vincent has when Reeve cuddled against him after sex. The same smile Vincent had when their fingers laced together across the kitchen table or on the couch. The same smiled Vincent had worn when they had pledge themselves to each other.

Reeve wasn't quite ready to give that smile up. For all of the pain at least he smiled when he slept. Really, Reeve wasn't ready to admit that Lucretia, not Hojo, had caused this pain. That she had lengthened his life. And that it was her fault that two years ago the man had looked twenty-seven and now looked his whole fifty-eight years. She was to blame for the man, his love, slowly dying in the bed before him.

"Vincent," Reeve whispered, taking one wrinkled hand into his own, "I'm not ready to say that you died twice because of that woman…"

But with that hand so cold in his, it wouldn't matter if he was ready or not.