Chapter 14
A/N: I hope you all have enjoyed my stories, for this is probably the final one. However, if enough of my dear readers ask for an explanation, I may pull something out of the left field of my mind… Finally, if any of you should feel as strongly as one of my friends did when she read the end of this story…please! Don't hurt me! cowers
His steps echoed loudly through the abandoned halls of the research centre as he thought absently of the years spent there under there careful eyes and instruments of Shinra's finest. His footsteps were the only sounds in the building but for the electric hum which drove him to spending weeks searching for its origin. The building had been abandoned for four years and the scientists had taken everything, why then leave power on in one place?
Just as his flashlight began to dim, loosing its charge, the overhead lights flickered and blinked on, illuminating the hospital-white corridor. Maybe it was the light that made him realize he stood next to the room he was looking for: the one with the hum.
Tube lights flickering in their casings bathed the room's contents in harsh artificial light. Nearest him were metal-constructed desks with their chairs overturned on top of them—their occupants never to return. The computers once resting upon them were also gone. A bulletin board still hung, alone, on the left wall, bare of all notes. Beds were headed against the back wall, still occupied. Their residents were dead.
Only the bed to the far right was still set up, as if an experiment was still being conducted. An intravenous drip had dripped its last drop a moment ago, and the computer screen held a message. "Complete." The computer flicked off, and the hum with it.
Vincent looked to the bed. A girl, about the age of twenty-five, with silver hair slept soundly. That color only meant one thing—"Shinra never stopped, did they?" he asked no one. Not knowing why he felt he had to, Vincent removed the medical tubing; made sure her hospital-robed form was concealed by using the bed sheets as a kind of shroud, and took her back with him to Nibelheim.
As he approached the mansion, he hoped against hope that no one had come to see him while he was away and had decided to stay. The weeks at the Shinra facility had left him more exhausted than he realized or wanted.
Of course, it would have to be her, He thought on seeing the parachute by the front door. He had barely walked in when Yuffie came vaulting over the banister.
"Vincent!" She landed with ninja-like ease. "You're…Who's that?"
"I don't know." He turned and lay the still sleeping woman on the couch.
"The Shinra Estate's homier since Tifa and I fixed it up!" Yuffie commented for the thousandth time.
"You say that every—"
"Where have you been?" she injected. "I've been waiting for three days!"
…Three days… "Is there any food left?"
She clasped her hands behind her back and rocked back and forth on her feet while making an innocent face. "No," she said simply.
Vincent jumped at the excuse to get rid of her. "Here," he gave her one thousand gil. Yuffie stared at the money in her hand. "For food," Vincent explained. "You eat it, you replace it." He hoped she wouldn't draw some connotative meaning from "replace it."
He didn't even realize he was asleep until he woke in the recliner, five hours later. Yuffie wasn't back. Briefly Vincent wondered how the woman he found would wake—mature or a child? Looking at her brought memories, and thoughts…
If she was indeed another remnant of Sephiroth, he expected her to be obsessed with one thing: finding Mother and bringing about the Reunion. Then she (as Sephiroth) would destroy the planet, use it as a vessel, find a new planet and "on its soil create a shining new future. Just as my mother did long ago." He expected her to be, in a word, insane.
If not a remnant, a child. He could deal with that, couldn't he?
The angle at which her neck was bent looked painful and Vincent suddenly felt dumb for forgetting he owned a rather comfortable bed.
When Vincent had moved in he had chosen the bed-room in the east wing, the one with the secret staircase that led to the basement…and the coffin he'd spent thirty years in, asleep all the time. Truth be told, he'd rather sleep in that coffin than in his own bed. Only he knew of this habit: he forced himself to sleep upstairs when someone decided it was a good night to stay at Vincent's place.
He found the bedclothes unkempt. "Yuffie." A pillow had be thrown to the other side of the room in her tossing and turning.
Unfortunately for Vincent, "OH. MY. GAWD." Yuffie walked in right when he was laying the girl down. He didn't really see what the problem was—making a sleeping person, perhaps sleeping girl especially, seemed sensible enough. "I thought that, of all men, YOU would be different."
"What?" He hadn't moved; he was still leaning over the girl. It clicked. "Oh, Yuffie, no. You're too quick to draw conclusions," he stated, pulling the sheets up. For normal people, the mansion was cold. Two sets of sheets wouldn't hurt. Vincent, being different, didn't feel the cold. Yuffie…Yuffie had enough energy to keep her warm and toasty in a snow storm.
Vincent stepped back, hoping he'd made her comfortable enough, before looking to Yuffie. "See?"
"I got your food!" she blurted.
Vincent hoped that was her way of covering embarrassment, yet he doubted it. "Where is it?"
"In the fridge already, geez!" Thankfully she turned and left, but not before "rescuing" the pillow on the floor. She tossed it haphazardly on the bed.
It landed on the girl's stomach. "Yuffie…" Vincent groaned and moved the pillow, then sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the floor.
"Vincent?" a small voice called. He looked around before looking to the woman. Mako-blue eyes sparkled up at him, full of love. She smiled. "When I saw you I knew I'd be ok." She sat up then and kissed him; her fingers sliding into his hair.
Vincent didn't return the kiss, but didn't move either: he was very confused.
She took his hand as she drew away, looking a little bit perplexed herself. "Is Cid here?"
"…No, he's in Rocket Town…"
"Oh." Her brows knit together. "Where are we? This isn't the Forgotten Forest."
"Nibelheim."
"The mansion?" she was excited now, looking around quickly. "You live here?" He nodded. "Since when?"
"For almost a year…"
"What? But we've spent the last two years together, I've never been here…"
"I'm sorry, you must be mistaken. I don't know who you are."
She had been so happy to wake and see Vincent, at first, but now she was very, very confused. He was acting as if he didn't even know her… but that just wasn't possible after all they had been through…together. But Vincent didn't play mean tricks…period.
"Vincent," she pleaded silently for some recognition. "You don't remember Kadaj taking me to Costa del Sol…? Or our trip to Spira? What about my kidnapping? And the time we spent alone in the Forgotten Forest…?"
He shook his head at each question. "I did spend time in the Forest, but nothing else, and I was alone." He tried to be delicate—something was obviously happening—but delicacy wasn't his strong suit.
"…But how can…? You know me…" She raised her hand to cup his cheek.
Vincent looked away and stood, then went to the window. He looked back to her. "What is your name?"
A tear rolled down her cheek, the first of many. "Harper."
Vincent looked back to the window and shook his head. "I'm sorry."
"But how can…?" Harper choked back a sob.
An idea sparked in Vincent. "Seven years ago, a man named Cloud Strife woke me from thirty years of nightmarish sleep given me by Shinra, an alleged power comp—"
"I know what Shinra is. What does that have to do with anything?" She wasn't looking at him, but at the ceiling instead.
Vincent thought about what he was about to say. "I found you today, asleep in much the same way I was…" He thought of how Hojo projected himself electronically …living even though he died, and returning as Wiese. "It's possible that you dreamt all of what you're telling me happened." He was pretty sure that's what had happened. "To you, it would be as real as what you're experiencing now."
If she had a true representation of Vincent, then she knew he was telling the only truth he knew. "So my whole life was a lie."
"Beads of truth may have been interwoven," He would do his best for this Harper. She was lost now in the word, alone…a common thread…He sat again on the edge of the bed. "The waking world may not be so bad."
It would be bad enough. To forget everything she thought she knew…To know and not know the people she thought she knew…If there were such a thing as second chances, this was one Harper did not want.
A/N: If you haven't reviewed yet, now would be a wonderful time. Thanks all for reading!