Author's Beginning Note Thingy: As always, just a little itty bit of rewriting went into this song. Lots of Heatherdale's things include specific people-names or place-names, or situations from the genres they were originally written about. The pairing is sort of Vincent/Yuffie, though I don't mention it outright until the end... I think it's pretty obvious the whole way through. And the song was very Vincent. Very very Vincent. Enjoy.

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Confession

Through the waterfall he went once more. For a moment the rushing roar of it consumed him before he was through on the other side, and opened his eyes to the eerie blueness that met him, gleaming off the mako walls and illuminating the small cave area.

He gave a bitter smile as he looked up at the far pillar of crystals where an ethereal human shape could just barely be made out within it.

"I'm back." he said softly, "You were right. You're always right. When you said I'd just end up right back here. And for the same reason to..." he sighed as he drew closer, and at last sat down in the dust at the base of the pillar, looking up, "I've done it again."

So here I am again, I think I've sinned.
I can't exactly place the how or why.

"I only wanted to help..." he murmured, looking down at his lap. "I guess it didn't work. I'm not the one for her, I can't do anything for her.'

I tried to be a brother and a friend,
I never dreamed she'd give this winged reply.

"You remember, don't you?
The one I told you all about,
the pretty one who came to us so devout."

he repeated again to her, as if she hadn't silently heard the story time and time again before.

"She was so excited to join us and help us, even though she was young..." he went on, "...and in a way she was too young, even. Despite her skills. She didn't know what to do, or how to cope...
She told me all the things she felt she'd lost,
and all the things she feared to be without.

I told her all the things that I'd been told,
those comforts that I took when I was young.
But still I think she only saw me old.
I don't know what I said to make her run."

He slid over along the ground, not caring that he was dirtying his pants or cloak, and leaned his head on the icy glasslike rock. "Then again, I am turning sixty next month... if you count the coffin years." a grimace flashed over his thin lips, before he went back to musing and remembering. "There wasn't really much common ground between us. What I had to tell didn't apply to her." he heaved a sigh, "And even so, I just don't have a way with words. Even you ran off when I proposed."

So here I am again, I think I've sinned.
I can't exactly place the how or why.
I tried to be a brother and a friend,
I never dreamed she'd give this winged reply.

"Nobody saw this coming. Nobody could have guessed how quickly she'd give up on something she supported so strongly up until now..." Vincent swallowed, "The whole group. Everyone."

She's given up it all, the vows she'd sworn,

"Then again, given her background of princess-hood, and her personality, she's not exactly one to easily subject herself to confinement and the redundancy of what we do."

abandoned any effort to conform.
Without a word to anyone she's gone her way alone,
a dove escaping back into the storm.

"I fear for her." he admitted softly, with a shudder, as if the very concept of him, that imperturbable member of their party could possibly feel such an awful emotion for somebody, "She's strong, yes, and experienced for her age, mostly in part to us. But I haven't heard from her in so long..." he swallowed, trailing off, before taking another, stuttering start.

"I thought there was... something of you in her. I thought that she and I could connect as you and I did..." he looked up into the mako crystal, to meet Lucrecia's unchanging expression as the slightly bowed head looked back down at him.

I tried to show her I could understand,
but still she chose to leave me for the cold.
"It makes me doubt the person that I am,
and, god forgive me, all that I've been told."

What was this wet heat in his eyes? With his human hand, the gunman quickly reached up and wiped the blurriness away, before leaning forward and resting his head against the hard rock in front of him, his arms spreading out to embrace it, as if it could be felt by the person inside as well.

"I should've never even tried. Yuffie..."

So here I am again, I think I've sinned.
I can't exactly place the how or why.
I tried to be a brother and a friend,
I never dreamed she'd give this winged reply.