It was dark by the time Vincent made his way back to the small series of rooms that marked the party's current resting place. Which was irritating, when he thought about it, given that it had been getting dark about the time he'd left to begin with. How long had he been out, anyway? And what did they use to -keep- him out?
He hadn't mentioned the other wearing Lyla's face. It had taken a few beers to process before he'd been ready to entertain the sheer size of the particular shitstorm that represented. Discussion of Sephiroth had been kept to a minimum. And if Cid had anything to say about Hojo, he had kept it blessedly to himself.
But all of these things would need discussing. Preferably before the night was out. And with that thought dubiously in mind, the gunman climbed the last of the steps to the third floor.
Where he found Rufus. Brandishing his shotgun.
Vincent arched a brow. "Caraways giving you trouble." He guessed raspily.
A smirk tugged at one corner of the blonde's mouth as he shouldered his gun, straightening up without the use of his cane - he had been leaning against the wall previous to Vincent's arrival, his cane laying across the seat of the chair beside him. "Not much since the initial stubbornness, but I thought it was better to be safe and sorry. There was another bout of insistence to be let out from the fairer of the two a couple of hours ago. It's been pretty quiet since I called room service and had some tacos sent in."
Briefly, Vincent considered commenting on Doc Caraway's odd display of initiative for a man with a head injury. But two jokes at the assistant's expense was more than he cared for in one night. Instead he nodded, making his way towards the door in slow, even steps. "Mn." he mned, hand on the knob. "They're in the bar, now."
"Is that me being dismissed?" the president asked with interest, lowering his shotgun so that it hung loosely at his side, safety on. "Suppose I could use a break from babysitting. Not that it's needed anymore. No reason to run off and try to be heroic any longer. All yours," he went on, gesturing towards the door before stepping away and grabbing his cane from it's rest place, settling in to lean his weight on it.
Vincent considered making a crack about being the one to dismiss President Shinra. But on the other hand, if the boy was anything like his father at all, he had toyed with danger enough for one evening.
With a faint shake of his head, he pushed open the door.
Rufus turned his back and they parted, the man in white making his way towards the elevator with the intent of joining the rest of their party in the bar.
Both of the room's inhabitants looked up as the door opened with a soft creak, drawing their attention. Dr. Caraway had taken the bed at his daughter's insistence, where he currently sat with her computer open on his lap. "Alive and mostly well, I see," he remarked warmly, genuine.
Lyla had drawn her knees up to her chest, curled up in the chair beside the window with an open folder on the table in front of her, its contents spread across the surface, disorganized. "Is everyone okay?"
There was something... oddly familial about the researching pair, that Vincent could not help but feel a faint shiver of the creeped-out-by. Maybe it would have been adorable, to another audience.
In either case, he stepped fully into the room, leaving the door to sway behind him. "Everyone but Ingram."
"Dead?" Lyla dared to ask, a hopeful note rising in her voice, tinged with something else. "... you were gone almost twenty-four hours. He didn't do anything to you, did he?"
Dr. Caraway grimaced as he closed the computer, setting it aside, eyes tired of reading the same recounts of his past mistakes over and over. He had to admit that he was impressed with how much information Ingram had managed to recover, privately angry with himself that some of those studies existed in the first place.
Vincent considered that for a moment. "Khat nailed him with a bazooka." He said at last. "So... maybe."
The other he didn't answer right away, his suspicions unfortunately confirmed that he had been drugged and kept under far too easily to suit himself. If this body couldn't help him when it counted, than what use was it, really?
"That sounds promising," Lyla responded, though she sounded largely unconvinced. "... I mean, a bazooka. ... that would break someone up into a lot of little pieces. Maybe even the unsalvageable kind."
"I've been trying to look up files of what he might have done to himself," Dr. Caraway interjected, "Nothing but dead ends so far. This may have to be wholly practical research. ... beat him with a variety of different weapons until he dies for real, really."
The gunman cracked his knuckles. "Oh, no." He murmured evenly. "What a shame."
"Which should likely be followed by burning his offices to the ground and breaking all of his shit," the doctor went on. "You know. Be thorough."
"We're not a destructive lot." Vincent's voice was a low rasp against his cloak. "But they might be talked around."
"I'll see what I can do on that front. I'm very persuasive," Caraway assured him, causing Lyla to snort softly from across the room. The doctor managed a smirk as he directed his attention to where she sat, inclining his head slightly.
"Speaking of persuading, could I convince you to give me a few minutes alone with Mr. Valentine?" he asked, causing Lyla to drop the report she had been leafing through.
"Oh. Sure," she told him, easing herself out of her chair. "I'll just go and- well- would you like coffee?" she asked, at a loss.
"That would be lovely. Stand in line about fifteen minutes or so, dear?"
She raised a dubious brow, but nodded her consent anyway before heading towards the door, turning sideways to slip past Vincent and into the corridor.
The gunman mimicked the gesture, turning just enough to watch her make her way out the door, then looked back at the doctor serenely.
The doctor waited until he was certain his daughter was out of earshot before nodding towards a nearby chair, indicating Vincent should take a seat. "I don't suppose I could convince you to tell me what really happened. Even the smallest detail could be the key to putting a stop to this business."
There was a small pause before Vincent assented, lowering himself carefully onto the arm of the chair. Idly fingers finding their way over the buckles of his far glove. "He's unstable." He said after a moment. "Mentally. There's... interference. I don't know how long. Hojo has been in his head."
"That has the potential to explain a great deal," Caraway mused aloud, a frown turning his mouth with concern. Thoughtful. "... so we do not have Ingram alone to worry about. The absolute extermination of that monster of a man must also be achieved. ... and there are the loose projects. I saw the other one, while Ingram had me. Haven't mentioned it to anyone else. I assume you saw her. Eve."
He nodded. "Ingram had her under his control." Vincent paused, thinking it over. "She knew the difference. Wouldn't obey Hojo."
"He used a drug to do it, but there must have been something else if she denied Hojo. Conditioning, maybe. I wonder how long he's had her," he thought aloud, and his frown deepened. "She must be a very recent acquisition. I saw him inject her a number of times while in his custody. Needs to be done regularly. If Hojo lets it slip, she'll be running wild."
"With Lyla's face."
The thought came home a moment after it was voiced aloud. The gunman blinked, suddenly afflicted with a crystal vision of what kind of pain in the ass that was going to be.
Caraway set his jaw as the very same thought occurred to him. "That's going to be a problem. I've no interest in sending you all on a wild goose chase, but it is something that deserves attention. I've been going through the files, seeing what was done to the Pandora Project after my resignation at the start. Terrible things were done to her. 'Training,' more accurately conditioning, I should think. Resulted in a number of violent episodes, leading up to her escape, where a number of Shinra employees were killed. A handful only hurt, maybe. She's likely out of her mind, driven to it. ... project never should have been sanctioned. I never thought that if I took the first, they would make another. I had hoped that the project would be labeled a failure and they would lose funding and cancel it. But Hojo was good at pulling strings."
"He wanted to mate her with Prometheus." Vincent put in, lowering his head in thought. It was easier to say than Sephiroth, somehow. Both names, but one with more distance. He frowned. 50 years ago, the world had been at relative peace. What had the pursuit of progress done? And was there ever any hope to stopping it at all.
"Mhm," Caraway confirmed, a disgusted look crossing his lined face. "None of the higher ups ever questioned it. Turned a blind eye to everything he did, all because he supplied them with their star soldier and aided with the SOLDIER program in ways other people 'couldn't.' I should say wouldn't. His plan was to breed an army of super soldiers between the two of them. ... Gast and I wanted to reestablish the Cetra line. We thought it would be good for the planet. Looking back, we weren't much better than Hojo, playing God. Even if our intentions were good. There was a lesson to be learned about human life. I learned it while working on the Pandora Project, but it was too late. It had taken too long, we were in too deep. Gast was already dead."
The gunman watched his hands evenly, quiet as the statement filled the room in Caraway's low voice. "It seems," He said after awhile, "To be our nature. Playing god when we can. ...For good or bad."
The words weren't meant to be a comfort. He wondered if they were as unsettling, though, for the doctor as they had proven for Vincent himself. What else could one call all the things that they had done. In the last four years. Or in the last thirty.
"So it does," Caraway agreed grimly, settling his chin into his hand as he leaned forward, watching the window at the opposite side of the room blankly, thoughtful still. "The guilt would have devoured me long ago if I'd let it. But there was really... nothing to be done. Gast and I knew what Hojo was doing from the start, even if we did not know the full extent. We knew enough to try and appeal to the president to have the projects shut down and have Hojo locked away, but he was golden to the company. Never listened to us. ... he was allowed to do what he wanted, and there was nothing any of us could have done." He paused. "... not even you, you know."
The gunman looked up, but his expression didn't change.
The words wound in the stillness of the room, echoing with some malice their speaker had not intended. Vincent sat back, letting the touch of the chair against his hips be an anchor, of sorts. "Maybe." He said aloud. "It seems we'll never know."
"I know," Caraway corrected him. "He could not have been stopped. Gast and I knew that you tried."
"I made a crucial mistake." his tone wavered emotionlessly, held steady by the bird's eye view of the memory. Warped over endless, pitiless repetition. "If I hadn't... who knows."
"If you hadn't, then everything would have been the same as it is now," Caraway told him firmly. "He would have carried on no matter what. If you'd killed him, the damage was already done. Dr. Crescent would have finished the project herself, she was as devoted to it as he was. Delusional, even though it was killing her. Once it began there was no way to stop it. You know as well as I do, how hard it is for a creature like that to die. Couldn't have been aborted, ugly a word as that is. Couldn't have been stopped by you or me or even Gast, and he was the best of us."
Vincent's eyes were calm and depthless when he focused them on the Doctor's face. But they moved away again before taking anything in. Nothing quick, every twitch. Every blink. Measured and sure.
"Hojo wasn't my mistake."
"Then what is the name of your mistake, Valentine."
Almost imperceptibly, the gunman's jaw tightened. And for a tiny eternity, it seemed he had no intention of answering at all.
"Lucrecia." He said at last, unwillingly. "I thought..."
"You can't name them separately," Caraway told him darkly. "... it's difficult for me to speak ill of Dr. Crescent, but she was as much to blame as he was. It was their project. Not just his. He did not force her. She went willingly. Unless there is something other than the sorrow they birthed and what was done to you that pains you."
"No." He shook his head slowly. "...No. But I thought... I believed. That she would put a child... her child, before… curiosity." Vincent paused, eyes on the far window as they lit with something cold, and sad. "I tried to protect her... Her baby."
"We all wanted that." Caraway's chin dropped, he turned his head just enough to obscure part of his face from Vincent's view. "I spoke to her. After what happened to you. About the safety of her child. Hoping she would put him first, as a mother should. ... she said it was too late. She would not derail the project. ... it wasn't until he was born and taken away from her that she seemed to express regret."
"I had clout you didn't." He said after awhile. "I knew ... enough. I had no vested interests. ...The President's trust." The gunman shook his head. "I never said a thing."
"... mm. It's one thing to regret," Caraway told him after a lengthy pause. "But another to drown yourself in it. I regret the role I played back then. Deeply so. But regret won't change what I did, or did not do. It's the same for you. What's done is done. What matters now is what we do. The pains we take to change things. Fix what's been broken and fight for things to be better. ... clean up our mess."
Vincent glanced at the ceiling, as if maybe the answer he wanted was sitting there, waiting to be read aloud. After a moment he said, "That's all I can do. ...Fix what I can."
"I believe that you will. What's important is not to let your regret chain you to the past so tightly that you cannot turn your head to see the future."
"The future is the same as the past has been, these four years."
"Everything is coming out into the open now. We can put an end to it all."
Red eyes fluttered closed, taking a beat to imagine the thought. An end to it all. Maybe then, peace at last. And yet.
"Truth is a slow step." he said quietly. This was far from over, yet.
"It is," the visibly older man agreed, going still as he heard footsteps approaching from down the corridor. "Should have asked for more than fifteen."
"Don't worry." He said, sliding to his feet more soundlessly than brass shoes should have allowed. "No rest for the wicked."
"Mn," Caraway consented with a nod. "... well then. You'll forgive me if I overstepped my bounds, I hope. I'm glad we had the chance to talk."
Vincent offered the doctor another nod, turning to take his leave. "Get some rest. Morning will be early tomorrow."
"Thank you. ... for the rescue, as well," Caraway added with a note of uncertainly, unsure of whether or not such appreciation should have remained unspoken. He quickly diverted his attention to the computer he had set aside, reaching for it to appear busy as he heard footsteps drawing closer.
If it had, the gunman was polite enough not to say so. He only paused long enough to pull open the door as Lyla reached it, offering her a serene frown. "You, too." He said.
"Hm?" she asked with a raised brow, pausing outside the door with a capped styrofoam cup in each hand, having heard little more than muffled voices beyond the door as she had approached. "Ah... good talk?" she asked hopefully.
Vincent nodded, wondering how many times he could manage it in a night without his head falling off. "Rest up. Tomorrow will be interesting."
"I'm bad at that," she admitted, "But I can try. Something I should know about tomorrow?"
"We're visiting old friends."
"Sounds like fun. From your tone I'm going to guess I should be using the term loosely," she surmised. "Is it safe to grill my father for whatever information you gave him about what happened? I think I should know."
"You should." Vincent agreed, displeased by the thought that everyone else ought to, as well.
"I'll ask him then. Won't make you repeat it," she told him. "Filling everyone else in tonight or in the morning?"
"Depends on how much is left of the bar." Vincent answered, rather more truthfully than he expected most to believe.
"They were hitting it hard when I passed it," Lyla admitted. "Cid and Rude are going strong, though. Good tolerance, those boys."
"Big." Vincent offered helpfully.
"It helps," she agreed, giving the room a sidelong glance. "I should- well- I'll see you tomorrow? ... thank you, again."
The gunman nodded again. "In the morning," he said simply.
She offered him a small, tired smile in return. 'Thank you' didn't seem enough for what the favor had meant, but she wasn't sure there was anything that would. "Alright. You rest, too."
Vincent was six steps down the hallway before he stopped, turning on one foot to look back the way he'd come.
"Lyla?"
She paused with her foot halfway through the door, looking back over her shoulder. "Hm?"
He hesitated, shifting back again. "You're welcome."
She smiled again, nodding gratefully before disappearing into the room.
Intermission