Hello, everyone! At the moment, I'm uncertain if I'll continue this story. I struggle with OCD, which affects my writing drastically. I've only recently decided to get back to it, so my story is likely very rough (an understatement). Still, I don't want to allow the mental illness to rule me. If I can better, I'd like to try. So here is the prologue. Let me know if it's good. Be honest, as I'm not sure I'll continue writing if it's not. I did edit before publishing, but if I missed something just let me know in the reviews. I accept constructive criticism but since I've just started writing again, it may be a while before I can correctly implement new advice. I tend to be a slow learner, unfortunately. I hope you enjoy!

She could feel the water dripping from her crystal form, creating a puddle at her feet. The cave was cold. Icicles had formed along the cracks in the rock surrounding her. She didn't even want to think about how much worse it was outside. No sound came from the waterfall, probably frozen over now with the raging of the winter wind, howling as if in pain, or perhaps in murderous fury against the very planet itself. A blizzard, she believed it was. They were rare in the western continent, but maybe the storm had moved in from the north, like it had so many decades ago. She remembered the winter of 1957 as if it were yesterday, eight-years-old and cuddled in bed with her mother as a tempest railed from the sea. The coal stove barely provided them any warmth, and hail was beating against the metal roof of the house. For days afterward, their feet were covered in frostbite, and pneumonia had racked their lungs until they were coughing up blood. She's hated winter since then. She could still hear her mother's anguished cries over her father, who'd only left them a few months before…

Not that it mattered now. She deserved the cold.

Twitching nervously inside her crystal, she withdrew deeper inside herself. The rocks above her were groaning, threatening to collapse. She could technically survive without the cave (she could survive without anything), but it would leave her vulnerable to any tourists who came hiking. All it'd take was for one to see her, and then everyone would know she was here. Someone would come to take her. A scientist would lock her in their lab, study and maybe even experiment on her. Of course, she could leave the crystal anytime, but where would she go? There was nowhere to hide in the world. Perhaps the North Crater, but how would she ever make that trip? She was nowhere near strong enough. Nor did she have the gil to pay anyone to take her up there. A single tear fell down her cheek.

Maybe she should be in a lab. It would suit her, after all, after everything she's done. What kind of punishment was self-imposed isolation anyway? She ought to be tortured; chained to a chair, beaten senseless. Or sold to those human traffickers who prowled the Corel Desert, if there were any of them left. It'd been more than twenty years; the law might've finally found and apprehended them by now. The younger ones would be older, somewhere in their fifties or sixties. Just like she should be, if she'd made better choices. Not a day passed she didn't think about what her life would be like had she chosen the right path. She pictured living in a miniscule cottage on the beach, just as she'd always dreamed. Taking long walks down at the shore with her husband every sunset, hunting for shells, waking early to eat breakfast on the porch together. Making love until they were too exhausted to sleep, preparing the house for their grandchildren to spend the weekend.

Vincent…

Her lips parted in a soundless cry. Just the thought of his name had her clutching her chest, or trying to as the memories flooded her. Oh, how could she ever think living without him in her life was possible? She missed him. She missed him so much, she didn't know how her heart had the strength to continue beating. If she could rip it out, she would. She'd even tear it to pieces. Anything if it would kill her. If only she could just see him again. Just one more time. If only to taste him. Just a moment would be enough. Just enough to bury her face in the crook of his neck and inhale his fresh scent while she rode him at her leisure. She whimpered as she imagined his moans.

What if…what if she forgot him? Not him, essentially, but the way he cried her name when she made him come? What if she forgot the smell of his skin when he finished showering and how the golden flecks in his eyes absorbed light? A sudden terror gripped her, and she lashed out against her crystal. She could leave now, head straight for Nibelheim to retrieve his pictures and…the breath left her.

Except they wouldn't be there anymore. The company would've thrown them away if no one claimed them. Or worse, given them to Hojo, and he would never give them back.

"No," she whispered. Images of that evil scientist flooded her mind. "No, no, no, no, no, no, NO!"

Several icicles shattered above her, a plethora of ice shattering over the rocky floor. The cords in her throat protested against her scream. Crimson gushed forth and hit the crystal shrouding her face, but the pain was nothing. Nothing compared to the thought of never seeing him again, with no photograph holding him to this world anymore. To her. No lingering scent from the shower; no memorizing his cries as he came undone beneath her.

No…she could never allow herself to forget him.

She wailed as she let the memories consume her.