Cut
Standing in the darkness of the cave, watching the cool green glow of the mako crystals...Vincent felt sad.
Admittedly this was often the emotion he could be labeled with, in this scenario. His typical emo sprawl on the cave floor, the sad-eyed stare...This was pretty much Vincent-autopilot.
But today was different. He sighed heavily as he closed his eyes against the glow, and then he spoke to the dead woman, encased in her crystal tomb.
"I do not love you anymore, Lucretia," he said. "Not as I once did.
"I was young once. Stupid, naïve. Foolish to believe that you loved me. But I've finally found her. She's amazing."
He subsided. Lucretia remained unresponsive as ever, her benign little smile a desperate facade. Water echoed as it dripped, dripped from ceiling to floor. Silence stretched in the blackness.
"Her name is Yuffie." Vincent smiled peacefully to himself, mouth hidden behind his ludicrous collar. "Yuffie Kisaragi. She's the Princess of Wutai, though you'd never know it by watching her. She's about as graceful as a dropped rock when there's no battle to fight. But when she faces a monster, she practically dances."
Again, he falls silent. Lucretia indulges him a period of reflection, maybe happy recollection by the expression on his face.
Then Vincent stood. "I love her," he announced. "Perhaps I don't owe it to you, but I feel I should tell you anyway. I love her, and I'm going to marry her.
"Not that that didn't have its stumbling blocks," he reassures the dead woman. "Her father has a minor sort of campaign out for my head. Yuffie and Reeve found some old document that proves I came from one of the old noble families—the Nara or something. Apparently my mother was never formally disowned, so that made me eligible to marry the heir to the throne." A humorless laugh. "My mother returned to her people after my father died. I never knew that, until now."
He paced. Lucretia waited. Vincent paced some more.
"When we first met I thought she was the most irritating child," he confessed softly. "But I went with them to protect that child. Then she whipped out her knives and defeated three monsters in one go. It took me til then to realize she didn't need protecting, she needed a straight-jacket."
Now there was real humor in Vincent's voice. "Yuffie...is insane. Crazier than anyone else in Avalanche, and that is saying something. She bounces off the walls, and she's loud, and she prides herself on being obnoxious. I hated her, at first. And she seemed so young. She is young, but no one can deny that she has seen things far beyond her years. And here I am, fifty, sixty years old...I'll never know why she loves me, but somehow...she does."
The note in his voice is young, wondering, under the deep bass of his tone. It should break Lucretia's heart to pieces that she harmed his so much that when he finally found the love of his life, he could barely believe that she'd love him.
But Lucretia is dead.
"The wedding is next week," Vincent told her. "I'm here to say goodbye." A pause. "For good."
The tall, dark man walked forward, leant his forehead against the smoothed, polished surface of Lucretia's crystal, and murmured a quiet farewell that was easily covered by the miscellaneous sounds in the cave.
"You ready?" Yuffie asks him, as they exit the valley where Lucretia will spend the rest of her eternity.
"Yes," Vincent sighs. "Let's go home."