Redeeming Cain
By Kaj-Nrig
Notes/Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII is the sole property of Square Enix Co., Ltd. I claim none of its characters, scenarios, or affiliations as my own.
Chapter 5: The Second Night (Allemande)
As he poured the last of the blessed water around the house, Vincent took a look at the large property. Reflecting some invisible light were the droplets of holy water strewn about the premises in an odd design; ten diagrams of ten interconnected circles each enclosed the main building, with the tenth ring of each diagram meeting around the house. It had taken much spiritual power – And water, Vincent added seriously – to erect such a large barrier, and, combined with the strain the day had taken on him, Vincent was now indubitably exhausted.
The final drop of holy water touched the ground, and he saw the ten designs softly soak into the ground and diffuse their spiritual powers through the entire household. Something suddenly tumbled inside the house and he rushed inside to find Lucrecia shaking her head wearily, resting against the hallway wall.
"Are you alright?" he asked, trying not to be too distracted by the way her nightgown slipped ever so slightly off her shoulder. His business in town had taken all day, and by the time he had returned, she had only managed to clear away the broken window debris from the front lawn and perform a few menial tasks. The cattle, at least, had been freed upon the fields of grass, though Vincent knew that they wouldn't last the night unless they were brought back into their pens before nightfall.
Lucrecia shook her head again, laughing at her own clumsiness. "S-sorry, Vincent. I'm just feeling a bit lightheaded, that's all." She pushed off the wall and onto unsteady feet, making her way to him. "This whole ordeal has ruined my schedule," she lamented softly. "I haven't had time to get to my chores today. I think if I can at least get the cows back into their shelters, I'll feel better."
Something about what she asked made him wary, but the restrained fatigue from the past two sleepless days began to creep into his eyelids. He shook his head wearily, trying to fight off sleep. "No, it's..." He fought back a yawn. "...It's close to dusk. You shouldn't go out-" His eyes closed of their own accord for half a moment, and he could barely fight through his fading senses.
"...ent... kay? ... Vin..." Lucrecia's beautiful face peered down at him through a fog, and he realized with rapidly diluting clarity that he had fallen down and was leaning against the same wall she had been...
But he was so tired...
----____----
"momma! come back momma come back come-"
He awoke with a start, though his body hardly moved. Slowly, ever so slowly, his eyelids fluttered open, and Vincent felt the dream-sweat gradually recede. Something flickered from outside the broken window, casting multiple shades of light on the living room walls, which in their turn cast multiple shades of shadows.
What is... The light originated from sticks of oiled wood – torches. Torches on the road... Vincent surmised dully, the bleariness of half-sleep still clouding his senses. Torches to see... Torches... torches... Instantly, he was up and off the couch, feverishly looking around for any signs of Lucrecia. Was she in the kitchen? No, no. Her room, then? No, he remembered that she was too frightened to sleep by herself. Where, then-
It was then that he registered the clamorous raucity coming from outside, from amidst the torches and pitchforks that had reached all the way to the bottom steps of Lucrecia's front porch. Quickly, he went to the door and opened it, upon which the uproar increased tenfold. Taking a careful step out onto the porch – and firmly closing the door behind him (though what good would it do? he realized, seeing as there was a much larger entrance via the hole in the wall a few feet to his left) – Vincent spoke, in a voice just loud enough to silence those present, "What is going on here?"
The furor died fitfully, but as it did, a new one began, starting with, "Shutcher ass up, Hunter! Yer comin' with us!" As the din grew louder and louder, one of the men in the front of the group – an old, scrawny man wielding a large, rusted saw next to Mayor Foulke – made as if to spring up the stairs at him, but Vincent immediately drew his gun and gave the man reason to pause.
"I ask again: What is the town of Asgard doing here in the middle of the night?"
"Yes, I'd like to know, as well." There was an almost comical sound as every head turned to Lucrecia, who emerged from the darkness of the night in a pair of indecently low-cut jeans and a dirty, sleeveless shirt. His eyes narrowed slightly at her as she made her way to his side... but a part of him knew that he was simply making a face so that he could stare at her shapely figure for a while longer.
"Where were you?" he nearly hissed, placing the gun back in its holster.
"I-I'm sorry, Vincent, I thought- I thought that, since you'd already-"
The stutter in her voice made it that much harder, but still he chided, "You should know that going out when it's dark is unwise! An hour more, and you could have-"
"I know, I know, Vincent," she whispered back, placatingly, and again, the way his name slipped off her tongue seemed to drive him mad with desire, as if she had made love to it before letting it reluctantly slip away from her lips. "I just needed to finish something quickly. I won't do it again, I swear." He nodded grimly, wanting to say more, but somehow unable. It wouldn't have mattered, though, for Mayor Foulke suddenly slammed his heavy foot on the porch step and aimed a well-polished double-barreled shotgun at Vincent.
"Mayor Foulke!" Lucrecia demanded, pulling back in shock. "What is the meaning of this!?"
"Shut up, Lucrecia. This is between the hunter and us."
"As his employer, I am the one to whom you must speak!"
Vincent shook his head, gazing evenly down the barrel sight at Mayor Foulke. "It's alright, Lucrecia," he said, putting his clawed hand up to stop her from making any unseemly movements.
"But-" she protested.
"It's fine. What is the matter, Mayor Foulke?" Slowly, gently, Vincent nudged the barrel away from his face, and Mayor Foulke grudgingly brought it down. The rest of the crowd wasn't quite as ready to talk, however, as a knife whipped out from the mass of people and sliced into the wooden porch. Lucrecia yelped, Vincent reached for his gun, and Mayor Foulke raised his hand to calm the crowd down.
"That's enough, folks! Johnson, stop that shit right now!" Turning to Vincent, the Mayor asked, "Where were you before now?"
Vincent stayed quiet. If they were to know that he hadn't been doing his job, it was possible that the lynch-mob here would completely lose control of themselves. And he was not sure if even he could fend off an entire town of enraged citizens. Just in case, though, his clawed arm gently pried open a vest pocket and palmed an orb. When the Mayor raised an eyebrow, he simply rested his hand there.
"I asked you a damn question, hunter! Where were you just before now!?" When he still didn't answer, the Mayor brought the shotgun back up. "Answer the question, hunter!"
"H-He was performing a blessing inside the house!" Lucrecia suddenly blurted out. Mayor Foulke looked disbelievingly at her, and then at Vincent. "Right, Vincent?" she said, turning to him expectantly.
"...right." The affirmation sounded weak even to his ears, but thankfully, the idiotic Mayor didn't seem to care much.
"So there's no reason for all this, is there, Mayor?" she asked, but the Mayor's gun had not dropped, and her face fell upon seeing the deadly serious countenance he wore. "...what is it, Mayor?"
Mayor Foulke practically snarled at him with his eyes, and it was at that moment that Vincent realized: the gun Mayor Foulke was wielding was none other than Sheriff Weston's. "What happened to the Sheriff?" he demanded.
At that, those within reach of his voice suddenly grew restless, as if they were ready to jump at him at any moment and tear him to pieces. Mayor Foulke, for his part, only grinned lasciviously.
"We found him in the middle of town, Hunter. Strung up on the cross like the Son Jesus Himself." Lucrecia gasped, and tears quickly rose to her eyes. The Mayor noted this with a touch of satisfaction and continued, "We here all figure that it's about damn time you did your job, hunter. You better come with us."
The news was unexpected to Vincent. But why should it have been? It was hardly unexpected for a vampire to-
Yuffie... A cloud of red suddenly filled his vision, and through the distilled mixture of rage and shame that tinted his eyes, Vincent could see the mob taking a step back in fear of the red-eyed demon on the front porch. So, you fooled me, as well, vampire.
He stepped forward, livid, stiff, to follow them, but Lucrecia suddenly stepped in front of him. "No!" she yelled. "No, he did nothing wrong! You can't possibly think that Vincent did-"
"Out of the way, woman! Either he comes, or we throw both of you into the forest!"
----____----
Stupid, stupid, stupid woman. The sentiment repeated and repeated itself in his mind as the mob made their way to the forest, he and Lucrecia at the front of the pack. Stupid, stupid, stupid woman.
But brave.
Oh, he was falling hard, indeed. It was almost a shame that after tonight, either the vampire would be dead and he would be on his way or he would be dead and Lucrecia would be left at the mercy of a mere child-vamp. He laughed at the thought. Lucrecia looked curiously at him, but he made no move to allay her curiosity.
The entrance to the forest gaped at them like the maw of some ancient petrified beast. The moonlight above shone brilliantly on the top of the trees, where silver-tipped nightbirds turned the canopies into hauntingly beautiful displays of reflected and refracted lights. The glittering was almost artful, almost endearing and mesmerizing, but he, along with everyone else here, knew that those same nightbirds would swoop down in the hundreds, all of them at once, to snatch some unlucky and or unwary person and carry them up into their lofts, where their sharp beaks would tear open the person's flesh and expose their innards, in which the birds would roost and lay their eggs, and the person would be slowly pecked away from the inside out.
The crowd stopped at the entrance to the forest, a throng of orange-tinted bodies surrounded on all sides by the oppressive blackness of the night. Two men, sheriffs Vincent had worked with just a few hours earlier, rudely shoved both him and Lucrecia forward and into the cover of the trees.
"Stay close to me," Vincent replied, but there was no need to warn her, for she clung to his arm as if it were her own. Her eyes glittered with tears and the light of the townspeople's torches, and in them he saw an incensed and righteous fury at their injustice. He did nothing wrong, she had insisted, and for that, had been forced into exile for the night – and likely for eternity, for she wouldn't likely come out of there alive. Or at all, they surely hoped.
"Get going, you two. Keep walking, straight into that forest. If I so much as think that I see either of you trying to come back, I'll shoot you myself. Am I clear?" To emphasize this, Mayor Foulke slammed the barrel of his... of John Weston's shotgun into the palm of his hand.
"You're just as bad as the vampire, Larry Foulke," Lucrecia snapped, spitting on the ground by his feet. "I hope you know that."
There was a sudden sharp crack, and Lucrecia shrieked again and hid behind Vincent's cloak, shuddering. Mayor Foulke snickered, opening up the shotgun and reloading a shell into the empty barrel before snapping it closed again. "Don't think that none of this is your fault, Lucrecia. If it hadn't been for you and your pretty sister's good looks, we wouldn't be in this mess right now."
"Y-You-" Lucrecia began, but Vincent quickly grasped her shoulder and pulled her into the forest.
"Let's go," he commanded briskly. Then, once they were out of earshot, he let her go and readied his handgun. "Don't worry," he told her in as calming a voice as he could manage. "I'll protect you. I promise."
With that said, the two of them made their way, side by side, into the forest, into Hell.
----____----
...fathER... hebner...
He flinched in his sleep, as if caught in a bad dream. There were...
...heBner...
...where did youGAHgo...
...yu... yuffie...
He flinched again, turning fitfully in his bed and moaning as his burnt skin pulsed in agony.
heeHEEheeHAH...
m... Mich... michDEADael...
...fath... faTHER...
...i've found youFATHERhowdoesITFEELHOWhowHOWdoesITfeelHOWdoesDOESITFEEL
He shrieked and tumbled off the bed. Th-th-the voices, they were
Hellllll...o, Father...
Father Hebner's eyes traveled everywhere, the room swirled around him, he looked behind him at where the voice came from but nothing
here HEREhereHEREHEheHEhereoverHEREhereHEREhereHEHEHEREOVERHEREFATher
father...
...
He whimpered, seeing the cold darkness of the room, the shadows in the corners, hearing the voices coming from those invisible shadows, and he closed his eyes squeezed them tightly he saw the dark spaces of nonsight more faces faces masks hellish he opened eyes and faces lunged "Helloooo.o.o..o..o...o... Father."
The air itself chilled at that insidious rasp, and the Father felt the frozen whisper crawl along the back of his neck. fatherWhat could possibly have been fath so frigid as to bring a cold chill to even the fatherfather ephemeral air? Father Hebner turned, eyes askance, knowing but hoping it wasn't
"Begone Satan!" The form was undeniable and he flailed wildly and grasped at the cross on the table knocking over a tray in the process The cross, the cross, where was the Ah, there it was! he grabbed at it and out of the corner of his eye he no longer saw the Devil and then his hands closed on the cross
"Aaaaaaah!"
It burned! It burned him! but he held, he held onto it while it burned, while he cried out his penance and his suffering and while tears poured out past his burnt eyelids, because he believed, he always believed in G- in Go
sayitSAYITSAYsaysayITfatherFAtherfaFAFAhereTHERoverhereOVERFATHER
You can't say it ANYmorE.
And the whole room cackled, the room with the entire Underworld in it shrieked in one long, tumultuous wail. He fell to his knees, seeing, unbelieving, the liquid remnants of the crucifix dribbling from his clenched hands. "Oh, oh, oh..." He shivered and wept and spat out the mucus that rolled into his mouth.
"Helloooo.o.o..o..o...o... Father."
The voice a human voice? made him look up and there... stood Doctor Justinian Fisher, an ungodly sneer slashed across his face.
Chapter 5: The Second Night (Allemande) END
A/N: Nuthin' much to say. Hope you liked it. The next chapter will be decidedly longer than this one.
Notes:
"...ten diagrams of ten interconnected circles..." – Each diagram is the Systema Sephiroticum (or the "System of the Sephirot"), a representation of the ten natures or "personalities" of God. The ring that all the diagrams share, which encircles Lucrecia's house, is Keter (Crown). Keter represents, among many things, the penultimate nature of God.