This was why he hadn't come back. This was why he'd stayed away so long without contact or explanation. This was why Vincent had abandoned himself from all of Avalanche. It was too dangerous, risking getting attached.

He'd been spoiled previously, allowed himself to get used to the sociable lifestyle: sharing meals, sharing rooms, conversations with people he called friends. He left all that when he felt Chaos rising. It was too important to him to risk destroying, and so he regressed. For a time, that paid off, the plan worked...

...but nothing ever went as he wanted it to. He'd been forced out of his seclusion for close to a year now, gone flitting back and forth between too many people to count. All had the same end result: waking up in an alley somewhere, blood-covered, the veins and arteries still hanging limply out from under his fingernails, and a report on the news about another body found lying in the street without a heart.

He never did figure out what happened to them... the hearts. He never really wanted to, but he couldn't help the nagging, morbid curiosity. There was nothing more terrifying for him than those moments of madness. He hated admitting it, but there wasn't, just as there wasn't any way to stop them. They were products of sheer desperation, when power was running low. He would just... black out, and wake up slightly revitalized, with just enough juice left to tide him over to the next person he found to feed from. The worst part of it all: He never ever strayed from his goal to quell Chaos' recent rumblings. He did horrible, violent, bloody things as himself. Vincent Valentine did horrible, violent, bloody things in the name of preventing some demon from doing the same, so how was that any better?

Every single time dawn came, Chaos was quiet, and Vincent was starkly awake when he least wanted to be. Never had another thirty year sleep seemed so inviting, along with the plausibility of waking to a new world where perhaps he could finally find his peace. But no... there was no rest for the wicked these days.

The worst part yet was the anticipation... hypersensitive, Vincent could always feel the end coming for his latest companion (victim). They would begin to pale slightly, and grow weak... the very minor, outward physical consequences of being unknowingly leeched off of by him. He would see that, and then it wouldn't ever be long... 'batteries' the demon sometimes called them. The mere thought of which made him want to retch, but a more accurate description was nowhere to be found.

This was why he'd stayed away. The brutal killing of innocents was enough of a mark on his soul, and enough of a crack in his frail sanity, but if he became responsible for the death of one of his friends?

Lucrecia had left him irreparably damaged, Avalanche had painstakingly glued his pieces back together again, but he would never be the same. The gentlest wrong touch could make him shatter, and a friend's blood on his hands would be more reminiscent of a rough push.

So he kept out of their affairs, made deliberate moves to avoid them at any costs... so as not to leave them withered shells on accident, so that they would not see what he had become, would not realize this twisted vampirism which had become his regular way of life. He knew that after the warmth he'd once felt, he would not be able to resist the temptation.

And he was right. He hadn't. He'd stumbled into Tifa's that night half out-of-his-mind from visions and depleting willpower. Chaos wanted out again, and sooner than he'd expected. The last poor, seduced girl had hardly divulged any power upon her death, and ended up more a waste of his time than anything else. He hadn't had his senses about him, went to the only place he found familiar, the singular focus of his mind: The Seventh Heaven.

And this morning he did not wake to hard pavement under his back, and a blazing sun staring down through cold reflective buildings, but rather the soft ambience of a comfy livingspace, and Tifa's gentle smile, the citrus scent of her tea wafting under his nostrils instead of car exhaust. And then Yuffie was there, and he'd heard ringing laughter, true ringing laughter without having tried to provoke it... and unconditional kindness in the form of breakfast. He wanted to leave, tried to, but wasn't allowed. The two seemed insistent on letting him stay... and so he humored them, against his better judgment. 'One night.' he told himself, 'Just one night.'

Well, one had turned to twenty-one before he even knew it. He'd settled into a routine: morning, roused by Yuffie and the smell of cooking eggs, a day of lazing around, idle conversation, a light dinner, and then bed. He learned a few things he'd lost track on. Cloud's disappearance was a hot topic in general. He'd just left one day, and arrived in Cosmo Canyon a few months later without even having told Nanaki he was coming. All his possessions were left behind with Tifa, but he never showed any intention of returning for them. Perhaps he'd started a new life for himself over on the other continent, she didn't know. Though she mentioned many times how she meant to one day pay him a visit, and bring along all his old things in case he still wanted them.

Tifa kept things light... almost to the point of getting awkward because she tried so hard to make sure they weren't. It was very in-character for her, Vincent thought, though he wished she wouldn't exhaust herself so. He could already see the wear of the years on her, made even more evident by her tendency to throw her entire being at the things she wanted, thereby making her desires plainly obvious. Right now, for instance, she wanted company. Company that he and Yuffie were both obliged to give, though she didn't seem to notice, just kept on pouring all her energy and all her love into them to make sure they'd stay. It was that tight grip she held that exhausted her, that weakened her, and that so often lost her the things she'd been trying to hold, and Vincent pitied her for it.

Yuffie was another story. Despite the distinct look she had about her, Vincent barely even recognized the girl. For one, it had been the last thing on Gaea he'd expected, for her to join the Turks. Marrying Reno he could see, but the girl taking up a position as a comrade to the man? No... never! But apparently it had happened. She even had the standard-issue ShinRa suit to prove it. She didn't speak about what had happened, and kept her lips sealed tight above her current confidential mission. It was Tifa, again, that had told him late one night while they were up talking, Yuffie having turned in early from several days before gone without sleep, of the deaths of her husband and friend, though she kept the circumstances vague. Vincent didn't press it.

She'd matured beyond measure in all this time... faced things so horrible, and come out the other side... changed, but still living. He wasn't so sure he could call it that, though. Eyes trained for assessment, he knew the way she moved all too well... the assassin's stance, the poise of a Turk. He knew the meaning of each slight look in her stormy eyes. She reminded him far too much of himself.

And despite her discomfort in some situations, she'd been entirely hospitable toward him. Tifa mentioned the change he'd provoked in her, which he wouldn't have even noticed, of course. It made him think... how could he hold that power? How could he change another human being's actions? Had he made Yuffie... happier?

No, that was a happening he certainly couldn't put a claim on. But still... she did seem to enjoy his company, and he hers, much moreso than when she was still just a naive child. In their silent way, they got along well, and understood eachother deeply.

Strangely enough, one of the last oddities he noticed about the situation was the distinct absense of Chaos. No, absense wasn't the right word... pacifism. The demon was still there, he was always there, but he was quiet and asleep, and for so long! But why? It took him a while longer to realize the answer to that, which by all rights it shouldn't have. He was so used to the repetitious situation, he should've caught on fast... but the ignorance was no doubt somewhat self-induced. He wanted so much to believe he'd found a true solution in the company of his friends, that he turned a blind eye to the evidence that he hadn't, until it was all too late.

"I love you, Vincent." she had said in the middle of the fourth week, and with a tingling kiss, left him dumbfounded in the gold sunset-filled bedroom he'd been staying in all this time. She was perched at the very foot of the bed, currently looking away, while he lay back on the pillows, a book lying forgotten in his hands.

"I don't know what it is..." she continued in her machinelike voice, where everything was monotone and even, "...but there's something. I think, now I know what it's really like..." she turned a teary-eyed face up to his questioning stare, "...to be you."

Tifa didn't mean to be eavesdropping, had only been passing by with a laundry basket in hand when she chanced to peek into the room and saw the two embrace. It had taken all of her strength and speedy reflexes to keep the whole load from dropping to the floor.

She watched in surprise as the two kindred spirits held one another... Vincent's head resting on the bridge of Yuffie's shoulder, his chin poking over the side onto her back. She was lucky, for the normally alert gunman would have surely noticed her if his eyes had not been closed. Despite the shock of the unlikely situation, her lips turned upward in a very, very soft smile.

They were good for one another, she thought, and had been about to go on, when something stopped her.

It was peculiar, and hard enough to look away from even before the image changed... she swore that there was now a static flickering... it went from the dimly lit, muted color of a natural twilight to a stark greyscale. Bodies warped, changed... Yuffie grew suddenly small, while Vincent appeared very big.

An awkwardly bent, almost skeletal feminine form lay motionless and grey in the girl's place. While a hungry looking white figure bent over where the man had been, holding her in his immaterial hands.

It flashed again, Yuffie and Vincent back where they'd been before, no change. Pain throbbed in her temples, and she struggled to look away, but once again couldn't. Her vision reverted back to the unfamiliar couple.

She saw their hands reach up and entwine, fingers thin, dark and broken, light, clumsy, and incomplete knitted together and held firm. A pure, translucent shine pulsed forth, bursting out of each one's core, the only color at all in the scene. Yuffie's was a dim shade of salmon, and Vincent's a sickly blue like polluted lakewater. Their hands moved again, clasping around the little colored orbs in their chests, and offering them to one another, pressing the light together. She saw them mould, two halves of a heart becoming one.

No... she thought swimmingly, delirious from the surreality of it. They couldn't actually be doing this. It was impossible! What had come over her? What was she seeing? Perhaps she'd fallen asleep hours ago and this was all some strange dream.

In the blatant illumination something was twined around the pale ghost's middle. A thick, gloppy, snakelike darkness so black the only word all-encompassing enough to describe it was 'void': complete absense of anything. It bound him tightly, squeezing, suffocating, crushing out the ethereal beauty, and at last spiraling away, arcing into the thick shadows of the ceiling overhead.

A figure was looming there... dark and demonic, ominous. The camouflaging black up there blurred its outline so that she couldn't make out the shape, but it was that mystery, that leniency given to her imagination which allowed it to take the form of her fears, choosing any one from a long list to portray. The mere sight of it struck such terror into her heart that she froze there in that spot, breath pressed back down where she couldn't get at it.

The image flickered again: surreal ghosts, Vincent and Yuffie, the haunting shapes, mere shells, hollows of what they were before, and then her friends... faster than she could comprehend, to an intensity where the flashing was so bright it burned her eyes and hammered into her brain. She wanted to yell out from the agony of it, but the air was being bottled inside her to the point where she was about to burst.

And then it held, stopped entirely, on pause for a moment... When Tifa dared to look again, the black demon was silently spreading its wings, raising a claw into the air. There was a period of rest, a breath before the plunge. In fact, it all seemed so at peace, that the woman almost had time to convince herself not to be afraid of the dark, that the grotesque shape before her really was just a fluke of the shadows... and then from the fanged, acrid mouth of the beast came an earth-shaking roar, and it lunged at her, red eyes wide in the abyss of its face.

No... if only that. This was certainly real, at least on some plain of existence. She whined pathetically, the only remnants of an attempted scream, the noise bubbling up bit by bit. She could still feel the grip at the top of her lungs, that clutch around her heart.

The spirit's mouth opened, trying to speak to her, or consume her whole. Only a shuddering hiss came out, and at last the broken girl in its arms looked up, the gleam dying in her eyes.

The heart shattered... a million and one tiny fragments both searing hot and icy cold went shooting in all directions, some digging into Tifa's skin, piercing her. It was more than the woman could take. She squeezed her eyes shut, and...

"Tifa?" a deep voice.

Something tumbled to the floor, a dull thud, a gasp, the movement of fabric on fabric.

"Tifa?" the words of a higher-pitched girl.

The woman looked up fearfully... she didn't want to see that... that horrible... whatever it was again. Hallucination? Daydream? She hadn't been drinking recently, so why...? If there was nothing of that, what could it be? Occasionally the planet would offer its insight to a person, visions, prophecies... but they were always benevolent, always meant something. Tifa hadn't the faintest what to make of this, because as far as she could tell it was only meant to scare her.

She knew that Jenova played tricks on people, she shuddered to think of the things Cloud used to see, that sent him into fits of tears and convulsions. What could turn a man as strong as him into such a horror-stricken, shivering child, she didn't want to know, but it couldn't have been too far-off from this. And even yet, Jenova was long gone... she'd had the good fortune never to be exposed to the alien, to never have to suffer her torments.

All these thoughts twisted painfully in and out of her head during the split-seconds before her eyelids cracked open... Luckily, this time she was met with the perfectly unremarkable faces of her old companions, and no dark-masked demon to be found. Both were perfectly themselves, both perfectly allright: a slightly flushed looking Vincent and Yuffie peering back at her from inside the room.

Besides her sudden, unannounced entry, she couldn't help but wonder what they were staring at... there was no accusation or blame in their eyes from barging in... and so the shaken woman mentally checked herself for what could be wrong. Finally managing to gather back some semblance of coherent thought, and push the disturbing images of earlier aside. Tifa at last realized that the laundry basket had tumbled to the floor, and clothes were piled at her feet.

Her mouth hung open a moment, eyes wide... and Yuffie cleared her throat, about to ask why her friend appeared so startled, but the older woman stooped and already began picking up the things she'd dropped, hurriedly piling them back in the hamper. Despite the current normality of the situation, she wanted to be out of there as fast as she could.

"Do you need help with that?" Vincent meekly offered.

"No!" answered Tifa much too quickly, "No, I'm fine!" and with the last thing dropped into the case, she stood, hooking it under her arm, and dashing away. All Vincent and Yuffie saw of her for the rest of the night were the trailing strands of her long dark brown hair vanishing around the edge of the doorway.

xxx

Author's Ending Note Thingy: I hope that scene at the end confused you without turning you all away from the story. To be honest, I hadn't even thought to put it in before I actually sat down, started to write it, and then realized it was there. Right here and now I'm gonna say that the whole thing is a blatant ripoff of the artwork of 'Rone', in her online manga. I'll link it, because it's just too awesome not to follow: 'http: -/ - /- shadesofgrey. rydia. net' Just take out the spaces and hyphens and whatnot. I've based work off of hers before, my fanfiction 'When Demons Rise and Angels Fall' has a long disclaimer crediting the entire plotline to her stories (borrowed with her permission, of course). I do hope you check it out.