It wasn't until Rei had decided to sequester herself below deck that Lyla felt truly comfortably retreating to her own cabin. Even now, she half-expected their newest recruit to pop up beside her, stating that she had changed her mind and asking her what a whore was and going on about locating 'Father' and other various things that made Lyla feel absolutely ill. The peace and quiet she had gone to her cabin to find seemed unattainable. She didn't want to rest or brood or give herself too much time to think. She wanted to scream.
"VINCENT," she accused sharply as she approached him from behind, marching down the length of the corridor.
The tall man turned, blinking at her once as though this were a perfectly normal and reasonable reaction to having one's name shrieked from what really ought to have been nowhere.
"Yes?" He said at length.
"I can't sleep. I can't sit still. I can't shut off all this screaming in my head. I'm about to have a complete and utter nervous breakdown," she listed off one after the other, jaw set and hands clenched at her sides, "I did something back at the Shinra building that I don't even -remember- and I can't trust myself, I'm scared and I want to feel sorry for myself, and I thought that of all people you might be sort of okay with that, so I'm here now, you fixed me before, do it again," she instructed, the calm, organized manner of the Lyla he had met days before having slipped away entirely.
Vincent blinked at her once, for a full beat seeming half way at a loss. Then he gestured ahead of himself, towards the far door that lead to the Shera's outside deck. She stared at him for a moment in disbelief; whether it was at his lack of response or her own utter lack of decorum, she didn't say. Instead, she simply turned around and, clapping a hand over her mouth, walked through the far door as directed.
He followed her in pace, taking the lead as they reached to outside and leading her around the back of the ship. The wind was subdued there, the ground passing under their feet at hundreds of miles an hour.
Vincent sat, extending a hand to invite her to join him.
She paused, hesitant to join him at first despite her seeking him out. Finally she took a seat next to him, letting her own hands rest between her knees as she slumped forward. "I apologize for screeching at you."
"I've had worse." He assured her.
"It's too much at once," she offered by way of an explanation, frowning. "The lab by Midgar, now this business with Rei, and... everything. The more I hear, the harder it is to stay calm and logical. ... things that never made sense before, do, and I wish they didn't."
"So scream." Vincent suggested, watching the assistant from the space between his cloak and hair. "Yell and cry. You deserve that much, don't you think? A chance to be angry. ...A chance to grieve."
She turned her head to look at him from beneath a fall of hair, though the wind caused it to obscure her face even before she turned it downwards again, burying it in her hands and taking in a deep breath, going still for just a moment, until her shoulders began to shake.
"Fuck," she growled through tears, "FUCK. I could have been prepared, he could have SAID something. All these years he let me believe I was fucking crazy. The voices and all of the nightmares, no doctor could ever make them go away, so I fucking smiled and kept pretending I was alright because I didn't know how to fix it. And he let me think I was crazy instead of telling me what was really happening. He KNEW."
The dark man waited quietly, something sad and softer than apathy on his fine features. He didn't tell her that her father had likely hoped the voices could be cured, that no inkling was probably the only way to be even halfway sure in the face of a horror like Jenova. He didn't inject logic into her pain, or try to reach out and comfort her.
He just waited.
And when she fell silent again, he said, softly, "You're right."
"I feel so, and yet… I don't know what else I could expect from him," she said bitterly, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her hand. "I'm angry, and hurt that he let me go on like that for so long. ... but how would you tell someone...?"
"Maybe there is no good way."
She made a faint growling sound into her hands, followed by a heavy sigh. "I don't know why you make me feel better."
"Neither do I," he admitted.
She was frowning when she sat upright again, raking her fingers through hair to push it back from her face, eyes distinctly more red than they had been. "Maybe because you don't sugarcoat things. I can accept that sometimes the situation is just awful. ... it just feels nice, that someone else agrees. Like 'maybe there is no good way,' or just acknowledging that it's alright to be pissed off because it's horrible. You didn't tell me 'it's not so bad.' ... appreciated."
"It is bad." He said reasonably, turning his eyes away. Perhaps out of politeness, or something like it. Vincent was quiet for a moment while he watched the hills disappear behind them. "It's also not the end of you. Maybe, it would be the end of some of us. But not you. And you know that, already."
"I know," she admitted, glancing towards him only to see that he had looked away. "... maybe that's the scariest part. I have to learn how to deal with it. I don't know where to begin."
Vincent looked back after a beat, taking her in before he spoke. "I can't help you." He said at last. "But you aren't alone. We're in this together now." The sun crept higher across the sky, catching the air at a strange angle. Making the world flash as it sped by. "You have all the time you need."
She watched him for a moment, allowing those words to sink in as the sky changed color, grew brighter as they sped north. "Oh," she said finally. "... you're good."
"It's surprising me, too," he said dryly.
"You'd think you'd be out of practice," she told him, lightly touching the back of his gloved hand. "... oh. Again with the things not to say out loud."
He made a noise that moved his shoulders. Something almost like a chuckle. "I've always been bad at it."
"Not so terrible now. Or maybe it's just situational," she thought aloud, offering a weary smirk in reply. "Hey. That was almost a laugh."
Vincent caught her eye from the corner of his own. "Don't tell."
"Our secret," she promised him, discreetly retracting her hand as though she had never offered it in the first place. "If you won't tell that I snapped for a few minutes there."
"Didn't hear a thing."
"Such a gentleman."
He nodded, turning his eyes back on the scenery below. "Well. That's one way to put it." The gunman's gaze was serene and far away. "Or... I could have been deafened by the first scream."
She laughed, averting her own gaze to look in the opposite direction. "Yes. Or that. If anyone asks, that's our story?"
"That sounds like a plan."
"We should probably get back," she told him, if a bit grudgingly. "Or at least inside. It's going to get colder up here soon. ... not really dressed for it."
"Are you ready?"
"I don't think I have any choice," she admitted, frowning. "... it could have been worse. What happened at headquarters could have been so much worse, and I- or did you just mean... to go in out of the cold."
"Both." He told her, leaning back enough to fix her with his even, red gaze.
"Oh," she said flatly. "To be honest, not quite yet."
Vincent thought about that for a moment, reaching up to finger the clasps of his cowl with his human hand.
The cloth was thick as it draped over her shoulders, but far from coarse. The gunman never looked away from the railings and what lie below them, as though the gesture hadn't happened at all.
It wasn't anything near what she had expected. Another minute or two of talking or making half-hearted jokes about uncharacteristic behavior, maybe. She took the cloak in both hands to pull it closed around her front, finding it large enough to do so with ease. "Thank you," she said softly, leaning against the railing to look up at him. It was the first time she had seen him go without his cowl; his frame was painfully thin, something the cloak normally hid. "This is the first time I've actually seen your face."
Vincent blinked before he looked over, something almost like surprise pulling at his features. They were elegant, somehow. Long and slim like the rest of him, though his frame had long since been eaten away by the gaunt.
"Should I have kept it on?" An edge of puzzled sincerity seeped into the short sentence, unbalancing it.
"What? No, you're fine," she assured him, confused by his own befuddlement. "It's just new. ... I thought you might have kept it hidden because you were scarred."
The gunman blinked at her again, raising a hand experimentally to touch the bridge of his nose and lips, as if searching for the tell tale raise of scar tissue.
"Oh!" She reached out to lay a hand against his forearm, an attempt to be reassuring. "No. You don't have any."
"Ah." He let his hand lower, a flicker of something besides steadiness darting over his face. "It's... been some time since I've looked."
"I guessed that... with the mild panic and all." She managed half a smile, pulling the cloak a little tighter to ward off the coming cold. "There's nothing wrong with your face. It's nice."
"I wasn't panicked." He muttered.
"Mildly concerned?" she offered.
Vincent looked down for a moment, as if searching for his dignity. "Mn."
"Another incident to file under the 'don't tell,' category, is it?"
"Mn."
"Your vocabulary is astounding."
"At least I don't communicate primarily through meaningful looks."
"To be fair, Reno at least seems able to translate them," she supplied.
"That could be the worst of it."
"Let's give Rude some credit. He also communicates with his fists."
"Point."
She glanced upwards again. "So why do you wear the cowl, anyway?"
He was quiet for a moment, considering his answer. "At first... because they were... the clothes I had. Anything, to feel less naked."
"And now? ... just felt no need to change?"
"No." He frowned, wind catching his hair across as it changed. "No... Now because... my face doesn't matter. Because I'm not a man, anymore."
"You are," she corrected him. "You told me I was still a human being, so I get to tell you the same."
Vincent paused then, shifting just enough to look at her, square on. "No." he said quietly, and something in the monotony was sad. "It's not quite the same."
"Why can't it be?" she asked, a genuine question, though her voice had also adopted a certain sort of sadness.
"I was created." he said, hesitating a heartbeat. "From the bones and the blood... of a ruined, sinful man. I had my chance, it was never taken away."
"Couldn't it just be," she began evenly, worrying at her lower lip, "that you're just a different sort of man now? Or on your way to becoming one. Just because he tried to make you a monster, doesn't mean you have to be... you don't act like one. ... very much a person."
The gunman opened his mouth, but something caught there. Something that pulled his eyes to something no one else could see. He shifted again, turning them away. "I'm not a monster." He agreed. "Not a man. Not ... anything at all. Hojo didn't take anything from me I had the power to protect."
"Can't you take it back? Maybe not what he took physically, or changed... but the rest. Over time. ... couldn't that be yours again?"
Vincent closed his eyes. "There are lives... I could have saved. Things I could have changed." He admitted hoarsely. "My sins. My failures... my foolishness. I can never take back what I've done. And this..." He raised his clawed hand half heartedly. "This thing I've become. ...It's no less than I deserve."
"No," Lyla corrected him, shifting to avert her eyes, focusing on the scenery moving past, below. "No one deserves to be so sad. I'm not saying you don't have the right to be. ... you do. You have the right to hurt, and be angry, and miserable. But you don't deserve it."
He smiled faintly. "Turning my own advice on me."
"It seemed fitting. Also applicable," she advised.
"I don't know how long this body will last." He said after awhile. "Maybe a week. Maybe an eternity. Until then, I'll do what I can... to atone. Maybe that way, I will be able to rest in peace."
She studied him then, for a series of moments that seemed to last an eternity, adjusting the overlarge cloak to shield herself from the cold that was growing steadily more noticeable. "I think," she said finally, "You might be the saddest thing I've ever seen."
He cocked his head, looking at her again. "That seems like a high bar."
"Would you be more satisfied with 'most heartbreaking'?"
"A waste." He suggested softly.
"Not true," she half-scolded. "If you weren't here, I'd have gone completely out of my mind... as opposed to only half."
He offered her a faint smile. "I don't know about that."
"Actually," she reasoned stubbornly, "I'd probably be dead. You did a good job keeping Ingram off of me back in Edge."
"I wasn't the only one willing to protect you."
"Probably the only one who could without getting killed in the process," she pointed out firmly.
The dark man paused, glancing over at her again. "You have an answer for everything." He observed.
"Proving a point is in my line of work, you realize," she warned him. "Once I present a statement, I have to be prepared to defend it. Viciously, if need be."
Vincent considered that, eyes once again on the speeding landscape below. "Well." He said at last. "If I've helped you, then that's one step closer, to seeing if there's redemption for me."
"You're the only one who can answer that, aren't you," she remarked, following his gaze downwards, watching the snow-capped trees and plains fly past beneath them, an observation more than a question. "Do you think you'll ever let yourself be satisfied? That whatever you've done has been enough?"
"I don't know." He said honestly, a strange look pulling at his features. "But... I'm willing to work. To see."
"You have to forgive yourself someday," she told him, looking decidedly away. "I hope that you do."
Vincent closed his eyes, something uncomfortably like serenity in his angled face. "Yes." He said after awhile. "So do I." And in the edges of his voice was something like surprise.
She looked upward again, tucking her hair behind her ear to keep the wind from whipping it against her face. "I know we're more or less strangers," she admitted, "I've just never seen anyone so... sad. I would hate to think anyone could continue feeling that forever."
"It wasn't my intention to cause you distress."
"Oh... I don't mean it like that. I-" She paused, a slight frown pulling at the corners of her mouth, eyes shifting downward. "I suppose I don't know what I meant. ... sometimes I just talk."
"I don't mind." Vincent rasped without turning to look at her again.
"Even when it all comes out awkward and pitying and slightly offensive?"
"I'm not exactly a gifted conversationalist, myself."
She smiled faintly, turning to look out over the railing once again. "You do alright."
"So do you."
"Mn," she acknowledged, curling her fingers over the rail, leaning against it. "... I'm glad you're here. Please don't call yourself a waste again, Vincent."
He leaned back, his expression unsure of how to take her. But then he nodded, deliberate and slow. If that was what Lyla wanted, that was fine.
"Here." She reached up to carefully unclasp his cowl from around her neck, lifting the cloak from her shoulders and offering it with one hand. "I think I will go back inside now."
He took it in the clawed one, careful not to brush the metal fingers against her own. Pulling it over his shoulders in a single, fluid motion.
She folded her arms to ward off the chill wind that still stood between her and the door, offering him a thin, tired smile before turning her back to start across the deck. "And thank you, again."
He nodded, fixing the clasps in place. "Don't mention it."