Disclaimer: Not mine.
Vincent: Something Old
Vincent had not been to Midgar for a very long time.
It was definitely different. There was less light, more dirt, more metal. Idly he wondered how the man who controlled Cait Sith could have allowed it to come to this.
The Midgar Vincent remembered was smaller. Definitely smaller. He had not had to parachute in, either. These days, Midgar was a lot less trusting, it appeared. Reflective of ShinRa and its influence. Such a twisted metallic place was certainly where Hojo belonged. Vincent could easily imagine the scientist ghosting around his laboratory in the high levels of ShinRa headquarters, looking over the city.
Lucrecia had never liked Midgar very much. She had hated Nibelheim's mountains too. Metal and stone was not for her, for all that she was a scientist. Vincent had asked her once. She had said that if she could live anywhere she wanted, without considering her career, she would live in Gongaga. The forest was beautiful, she said. So many trees. You never saw them in Midgar.
Lucrecia was gone now, and Gongaga was a ghost town, from what the others told him. He had left Nibelheim too, the first place he had really been happy. It had been hard enough leaving his penance behind, too. His penance…Cloud and Tifa both understood. Tifa perhaps more than any other. But she had not dwelt on her wrongs, instead making a new life for herself. In Midgar.
Apparently Midgar as it was now could create things. Recreate people. It would not do that for him, he knew. After this was over, he would not come back to Midgar. The city itself was dead, its time gone.
So much from his old life was gone, his dreams slipped away. Just like the dream of Midgar. It was sad to see Cait Sith's eager desperation to save Midgar. The city had fallen, been twisted beyond recognition, and yet the ShinRa employee behind Cait Sith was still determined to save the shattered remnants.
Just like him.
When the time came, they would both have to build something new.