[fic dump] Final Fantasy
Alright. So now that I have a writing journal up, I'm going to back log everything. Save for some multi-chaptered stuff. Here's a fic dump for Final Fantasy. It's gonna be a LOOOOOOONG post.
Title: Colors
Genre: Angst
Rating: PG
Originally Published: 2-16-06
Warnings: Character death and cryptic meanings
Summary: Nanaki does a little bit a ruminating after he realizes he's outliving the rest of AVALANCHE. [oneshot]
Colors
A one-shot thing…
Death… Red seemed quite acquainted with Death, and it followed him doggedly at every turn. Well… that was what it felt like, considering the years that have passed really only feel like a few to him. Sometimes Red cursed his longevity, wishing that he were perhaps a domestic house-cat. But then he would remember his pride, snuffing at the idea of having just insulted himself.
As it was, he was already having to deal with something rather difficult…
Tired, winkled mako-blue eyes glanced at him and a snarled old hand patted him slightly on the head.
Red remembered those eyes. It seemed just like yesterday that they were young and angry and full of undying determination. The white hair that this dying man possessed, he remembered, was supposed to be yellow and spiky. But… well, nothing was like that for him. He thought he’d grown used to the idea that he’d outlive everyone he knew. It was just that he didn’t want to come to terms with it. Not ever.
Fate was mocking him somewhere out there. Red could feel it.
The Firecat snuffled at the hand. Cloud’s hand. And the fact that it’d been at least ninety-one years since Meteor. Cloud was pushing 115, give or take a few years. Red knew this was only due to the massive amounts of mako and Lifestream the warrior had been exposed to--- probably would have lived longer had he not stressed himself over the years. Cloud was the last of AVALANCHE, save for two members, who were standing at the old man’s deathbed and looking down at his old smile.
Ironically, the first to have left this plane of existence was Yuffie, the youngest of this ragtag group of heroes. Died saving the very person she was trying to steal from in some backwater town, where proper medical care and healing materia was at an all time low. It hadn’t been long after Vincent’s whole ordeal with WRO. Reeve was hit by a car. He didn’t survive (and Red found that he hadn’t much cared about him, though…). Old age caught Barret ---as it was now for Cloud--- and Marlene was well into her forties with a family and she’d married Denzel. Cid, of course, ended up with lung cancer, Shera had taken care of him even then.
Red found himself reminiscing over that. Cid’s death hadn’t been long ago to him. Perhaps ten or so years, maybe more. Red had attended his memorial service in Rocket Town and he’d seen how the entire town had felt so… dead after that. Cid never did hook up with Shera, nor did he ever think much about having a family. The last, Red remembered, was that Shera simply packed up and moved back to Mideel, where she had come from. For someone with lung cancer and several years of stress piled on him, Cid did live a full life.
Now Tifa was another story entirely. She had staid (and died) in Midgar, while Cloud had left to Gongaga once Tifa had finally closed Seventh Heaven for good as an old woman, the orphans having grown and left. Why they two never settled down like he’d thought they would ---and Red had hoped, because he did want to see the two happy for once. He knew that, even though they may not have suffered as much as Vincent has, Gaia knows, but Red wanted to see them happy.
For a long, long moment, nothing was said.
Vincent, who was standing not far off, leaned in when Cloud beckoned with a slight hand motion, wheezing something even Red couldn’t pick up.
Nibelheim. Cloud was to die here, in the old house he had once known as a child. Red was not happy to see this place again.
“As you wish…” Vincent murmured in response to whatever the old man in his bed had asked. His red eyes regarded Cloud with something akin to… fondness, Red thought. They weren’t close friends, but there was understanding there.
For the first time since Red had arrived here, Cloud smiled a smile that was neither that of the suffering or that of a smile most dying men usually carried into death or into madness. His eyes, however, were not of the old. They would always be forever burned into Red’s memory.
It reminded him of the last time anyone had called him Nanaki, a name he didn’t totally discard. It was just that he’d come to like the nickname ‘Red’ more than “Nanaki”. Nanaki sounded like such a life time ago, and even those in Cosmo Canyon called him that now a days. He’d told Cloud he didn’t have to keep forcing that strange name out just to make him feel accepted. And the used-to-be-blonde had given him the same look. The same smile.
A long while passed before Cloud finally did let go of life. Vincent had casted a sleep spell to ease the transition, and that had simply been that.
Come to think of it, he and Vincent were the only ones here in Nibelheim…
Cloud was buried not long after at the base of Mount Nibel. His grave was marked by a simply series of rocks placed, and Red had found that he couldn’t watch Vincent place that old and wrinkled body into the hole he’d helped dig earlier.
It felt like burying himself alive at the thought that he had helped dig a grave for his friend.
“If you don’t want to be here… you don’t have to.” Vincent had said, pushing dirt into the hole.
Red had shaken his head, the feathers adorning his fur shivering with the motion. “It wouldn’t seem right to leave.”
It hadn’t. Still didn’t.
Vincent had come to reside here in the Shinra Mansion, renovating it bit by bit as if to just pass time. Red couldn’t leave now, knowing that the man was left here with the grave of one of the closest people to him as a reminder of what Hojo had done to him. After all, he couldn’t exactly drop dead. The chance of him doing that was about the chance of Red dying his fur green.
Now Red was just sitting on a slight hill where it overlooked the old dirt road leading to this backwater town, silently thinking to himself as he watched the spring afternoon sun light the world around him in shades of pewter, strangled green, and browns. Not quite dusk, and night quite morning. Just an ordinary spring day, just having barely melted winter away.
He thought of Rocket Town again.
It had been autumn there, the day Red had been there for that couple of days.
Vincent had lived there with Cid. The gunner had been there the whole time, and Red was not surprised when the people of Rocket Town had come to pay respects to him as well, although he was sure the dark-haired man hadn’t thought himself disserving of that level of respect.
Cid would be missed, still was for a fact.
And what Cid had done for him was something no one outside of Vincent's family had ever done... He'd cleaned out the back room and built a place for Vincent to stay. An art room, actually, having noticed ---without ever saying anything--- one of the dark-haired gunner's hidden talents.
Red had traveled there when Vincent had requested that he come. He'd also seen the way Vincent quietly packed everything he possessed up, but left all his paintings ---which had never been seen by other human eyes other than Cid's or Shera's--- behind to be auctioned off. Except for one, because Red had liked it enough to ask for it. And, without a second thought, Vincent gave consent.
“You are quiet…”
Vincent’s voice caught him slight off guard. But Red lifted his head up to see the gunman walking over to him and he let the man know that his company was appreciated by nodding at him. Vincent didn’t sit, instead, shaking his head.
The Firecat was content with that. The man had come to see if he was alright, which was just as good as a casual conversation to help forget a few things.
The gunner left after a moment of standing there, but without the flare of a heavy red cloak (it’d been removed to make Cloud’s grave). Which was weird, and brought Red’s prone-to-wandering mind to something else…
The painting he’d left in his home in Cosmo.
It was a beautiful watercolor painting. Filled with black and oranges and fiery reds and golds. In it stood a woman dressed in a red/gold kimono, holding her two or three year old son to her and his head tucked under her chin (one of his hands was touching her lips, her kissing the small fingers gently), both of their eyes closed and their hair was such a deep and sad black that it was almost painful to look at. Red saw the innocence in that painting. Not the innocence of the mother and her dear offspring cradled so lovingly in her arms, but the innocence of what it actually represented.
Every time Red had glanced to study it, he saw something new. Like how the boy's small fingers were tangling in the mother's hair and his smiling face, of how the slight age lines in the woman's face spoke volumes of things past, of how their hair, like ink-bottled black, melted into the scenery of red (which was ironically wrapped around the woman's forehead as well). There was a dot in the middle of the child's forehead, but the face of the child was like clam porcelain. Not quite a Wutain mother and child, no, not of those people, much too different in facial structure. This was from Vincent's memory. Surely one of his earliest and one that must have screamed at him to be put on canvas. And so, well, there it was... The astonishing truth that Vincent Valentine had a heart definitely far bigger than anyone else’s.
No one could paint with colors so bold. No one could make colors that symbolized war and hatred and darkness feel and look so loving. No one could put such fine detail on that woman's face, which was far more defined than the boy's, actually.
And the boy's smile... A wise, knowing smile that warmed Red and made him think of his own mother. It was a tangle of too many emotions all in one and he was sure Vincent would never take up painting again. This had been his last creation before Cid passed. His brightest one, too. Nothing like the blues and dark greens that Vincent was fond of in the others.
Perhaps this was the way Vincent remembered her. These were her colors, Red thought. These brilliant colors of pride and love, these emotions of hatred and bliss... These were things no mortal man could capture out of his imagination. Nothing this forceful could ever be tamed by such water paints from the hands of a being without the prior knowledge of what these things meant and felt like after years of pain and torture.
Red shook his head and realized that the sun was going down, feeling his heart hurt with the events of the day and of how thinking of one stupid painting was making him rather angry at himself. All he thought of was how he felt… alone for some reason… And he was angry at this weakness. Angry that he could live for so long and that everyone else could not, angry that he found that he couldn’t wish a longer life on any of them; they had all suffered enough.
Red's tail switched from side to side, the fire licking furniture, but not setting fire to anything. Ironic how that actually worked out.
He was pacing the room back and forth, back and forth, claws digging slightly into the wood of the floor, growling slightly to himself.
Cloud was gone. Tifa was gone. Barret, Yuffie, Cid, Reeve… Only Vincent and himself remained.
He knew one day he would have to come to terms with this… Still, that didn’t make it any more pleasant. Red had grown… attached to those humans he came to realize. Even though he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do such a thing. Red had found himself pacing and thinking, and pacing and thinking--- repeating these things as if he wasn’t aware that he might be running a hole into the ground from pacing so much all at once.
Red had known that everything would come down to this one instant. This one moment when he would have to deal with the fact that he had out-lived his friends almost.
He needn’t worry about Vincent (he was thinking a lot of him, wasn’t he…). The gunman was immortal as well. Er… almost, anyways. If the man was shot in the head, Red was sure he wouldn’t be exactly getting back up any time soon. Although… there had been that one time…
Brushing the thought aside, Red growled a little as he stalked the breadth of what used to be the home Cloud lived in. It was anything but lived in. hadn’t been touched since after the Meteor incident and save for earlier that afternoon. The dust settling over everything was proof of that.
Vincent lives here, Red reminded himself. It’s like this is the last place on the planet left for him. Everything keeps tracing back to here. Maybe this is the last place I belong…
Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t.
Come to think of it… Red, having turned the care of Cosmo Canyon over to more capable hands ---one’s with opposable thumbs, for that matter--- some odd five years ago, had no real place either. Sure, Cosmo Canyon was his home, and he was the hero he wanted to be in their eyes, but…
But the people there were just like everyone else. The generation that could remember the horrors faced during Meteor grew old and senile and the details had all become forgotten, blurred into some thrilling tale rather than the truth it really was. This became unfocused by that time. And Red had no real wish to ruin the world’s view of what had happened.
Part of him even wanted to believe those tales, to believe in the slight smudged details that he either omitted or fudged for the sake of the children asking him for the story. The other half wanted to roar at them the real things, to tell them that nothing ever works out that way, that he never really did have the happy ending he told the children of Cosmo Canyon.
”And what happened after all that? Please tell us!”
”The world was safe, so I came home to share the things I’d learned. Began a new life…”
”Are you living happily ever after? Are you? Like in the old legends!”
”…Yes, I suppose I did get my happy ending.”
Red lashed out at the chair from the dinning table and the thing was in splinters, the pieces of wood littered all over the floor. He often did forget his own strength…
“It’s not exactly nice to destroy someone else’s property.”
The cool voice caught Red off guard. He whirled around and readied himself for unleashing all of his pent up energy on the poor creature that disturbed him---
Vincent regarded him with the same tone as he had spoken in.
---and instantly deflated under those garnet eyes.
“I suppose it isn’t…” Red growled out, resuming his pacing. Damned if he hadn’t picked up that habit from Vincent.
Vincent situated himself so that he was sitting on one of the beds in the one room house, running his human hand along the quilt as if he had seen its making. Red wouldn’t be surprised if he had. But no, the gunner simply studied it with far off curiosity.
“They are all gone, aren’t they?” Vincent finally asked. He sounded emotionless, despite the quiver his voice held. “It is down to just us two.”
Red stopped his pacing and looked at his friend.
Friend… Yes, I suppose I can finally call him such a thing now.
“Yes, the two of us, Vincent.”
It was silent for a stretched amount of time. The two just sat there studying each other. Well… more of Vincent studying everything but Red, and Red unable to really take interest in anything else.
Vincent finally opened his mouth, as if making to say something, but he suddenly looked dejected and withdrew the action, slipping further into himself.
“There is something you want to ask.” It wasn’t a question. Red knew how indirect Vincent tended to be towards things.
The man nodded.
“Go ahead. I’m tired of thinking to myself.”
One good thing about having spent so many years of the same routine was the simple bond of trust they had formed. It was enough that the two were drawn together for the rest of Red’s life.
He wasn’t sure if Vincent would drop dead before him or if he was going to out live Vincent. Unlikely, all things considered.
The question came out as an echo of Red’s thoughts…
“Where do we belong?”
And for once, Red had no comment for his friend’s question. Normally he would have something to say, no matter the subject. Normally Vincent would have just shaken his head, brooding on that answer to see if he wanted it to be true or not.
On any other day, with any other question, Red would have felt a little piece of himself break off.
Instead, there was a sudden wholeness from those words.
Red padded softly over to the bed and jumped onto it, feeling the dust get sucked up his nose. Good thing he had lived in Cosmo for so long--- dust there got everywhere too. But it was less pleasant then the smell of red-earth under his paws. This was dust. Nothing more.
He did the only things he could do to give comfort. Vincent needed it far more than he did. Red rested one of his front paws on Vincent’s thigh, claws carefully retracted, making a sort of rumbling noise in his throat and pushing his wet nose against the man’s shoulder.
Vincent understood, more so than anyone would have, the meaning of those actions. And he smiled slightly as he turned a little to lean into Red.
We belong to no one and nowhere… Red wanted to say. Wanted to bring the truth out in the open--- more for himself than anyone else. But nothing came out. The words were lodged and he was more than glad that Vincent was a mind reader, because he hadn’t bothered to say them.
“You need dinner…” Vincent quietly murmured and moved to stand.
The moment was over. The silence was broken and it was time for a diversion from Sadness.
The kitchen in the Shinra mansion was completely unlike what Red had thought it would be. In fact, the mansion was no longer the old and rotten thing it had been in his memory, but clean and almost… new-looking. Vincent must have completed the renovations while trying to find ways to busy himself after the incident with WOR. WOR and their new Organizer were taking care of Midgar (which was once again the planet’s Center and Light), which was fine with Red. Red had no wishes to see that city ever again if he could help it.
His paws felt the cool tile of the kitchen and he could smell the newly laid cement that sealed the little pieces of white ceramic in place.
Faintly, Vincent rustled through the large pantry, but the Firecat paid no head to him, examining the chairs and the cool grey and forest green colors chosen for the renovated kitchen. The door to the dinning room was old and rotted, the hinges having rusted to the point where removing the door would have resulted in the doorframe and entire kitchen collapsing.
“I did not expect a guest, but you’re more than welcome to stay as long as you see fit…” Vincent muttered as he finally emerged from the pantry with nothing in his hands that sported the notion of dinner. He simply leaned against one of the counters and cocked his head to the side, regarding Red as the Firecat sniffed around the room like some great hunter, bad pun aside. “However, I fear that you will have to hunt your dinner. I have nothing for Firecats here.”
Then there was the fact that Vincent didn’t have to eat anything. Sure, some of the gunner’s body functions were normal. Hair grew, fingernails often needed clipping; general things like that. Those things required some source of energy. But other than that… the man didn’t need anything. Perhaps that is where the whole vampire murmurs from days long ago came from. Because the most Vincent ever really did was drink a glass of red wine and simply watch everyone else.
Did Vincent miss eating? Could he still stomach eating? Or had he simply gotten used to the feeling of starving and never dying from it?
Red stopped his train of thought just as quickly as it had come careening though his head. Vincent was giving him a look that clearly stated he knew exactly what he’d silently been wondering, though not saying it aloud.
Come to think of it, if the man never needed to eat that much, what was the point in redoing the kitchen? Is that why he lived so far away from civilization?
Quickly, as to not anger his friend, Red left the kitchen to go hunting and was rather surprised, after just reaching the path leading to the mountains behind Nibelheim, that there was indeed a small pack of wolves sniffing about.
Animal attraction. Red thought absently. They can smell me…
And just as easily as breathing, Red XIII feel into his instincts, claws extending and his eyes dilating to focus on only his prey.
They had been easy enough to kill off and eat. Red didn’t believe much in having their souls stay upon this plane of existence and left the skulls to place in the tree he had dragged the carcasses under as thanks for sustaining his own life by him taking theirs.
Then he simply returned to the mansion. The front door had been left open some, seeing as Red had no actual way of turning the knob. Not having opposable thumbs in a place built solely for humans was bothersome.
And he stopped for a moment, having picked up a sharp noise.
Not far into the large house was someone yelling. Not in pain or anguish or anything having to do with being hurt in any shape…
Red’s curiosity got the better of him, and he got the distinct feeling that he was going to use one or several of the nine lives most people thought cats of any size had. That would probably bring him down to three lives, considering all of his lucky breaks.
He crept silently to the cracked door leading to the sunroom, and listened carefully. He was able to see Vincent pacing through the limited light in front of the large window in the hallway there. Vincent was talking to someone over his PHS. But Red kept a hold on his thoughts and cleared his mind (an old shaman thing he learned long ago when dealing with frustration or anger). This way Vincent would have less of a chance knowing he was eavesdropping.
“No.” Vincent replied sharply into the phone, which was cradled between his ear and his uncloaked shoulder. The man was pacing again, doing the same thing he always did when doing so; taking the battered ring he normally kept in his pocket and messing with it, glaring at whatever just so happened to be in his path.
There was a long pause.
“I have told you, I am no longer---“ Vincent stopped pacing, suddenly stopping mid-sentence. “Yes, I know… Files or not I will not have anything further to do with the Turks or Shinra. I am no longer duty bound to anyone.”
Red crouched lower to the ground, ears folded back a little further.
“…Her files? Records of… how did you get those?”
Vincent looked angry. Rather… far beyond that: Livid. The door leading to the piano and tearoom seemed about to combust into flames from the glare the gunner sent it.
“I’ll be there in a week. Try anything and you’ll have something far worse than Sephiroth’s wrath to deal with!”
The PHS was folded up and nearly slammed down on the windowsill.
Red pushed open the door and Vincent jumped slightly at the growled question, “I never thought I’d see the day Vincent Valentine caved in under black mail.”
The anger had not been fully locked away when Vincent regarded Red. The man was still glaring. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough.”
“Then it is none of your concern.”
“No, it isn’t. But one can’t help but wonder what Shinra still has on a long since dead Turk to bring him back from the grave.”
The anger faded quickly. Red was prone to watching the man’s eyes. Caught between human shape and inhuman color. If people bothered looking, they’d find that the demonic gunman wasn’t as hard to read or as mysterious was he would appear to be.
Vincent turned to look out the double pained glass window. Something far more human-like when he curled his arms around himself and leaned his forehead on the clear barrier between him and the outside world. He was still missing his cloak, but the headband was still there (Red had never seen him remove it, ever).
He looked… tried for once.
Red came up to him, jumping up a little so that his front paws rested on the edge of the windowsill and his head came up roughly to about Vincent’s shoulder. “I won’t pry if you don’t want me to, but I’m not going to sit here and let you suffer in silence…” he said levelly.
“…Our specimen files,” The man finally said in a soft tone. No emotion was in it. Nothing like the anger from talking to whoever had just talked to him.
“Ou---“ Red immediately clamped his maw shut, hopping down to sit on the floor.
“No. It’s alright. Ask.”
“’Our’?”
“Mine and my mother’s.”
“You’ve been looking for them?”
Vincent nodded, and he too sat on the floor next to Red, his left hand reaching out to stroke behind one of Red’s ears. Red took not in that the gauntlet had also been removed, and hadn’t noticed that Vincent had never put it on today…
Red knew that he probably didn’t mean to treat him like a cat, so he simply took comfort in the attention, rumbling a little in his chest.
“I have been searching for those files. Hojo hid them from me quite well. They want me to protect someone that they are transferring to another location.”
Confidential information. Vincent probably didn’t even realize he was leaving things out. Once a Turk, always a Turk.
Red finally let his mind fill with thoughts and questions and felt Vincent’s hand pause for a brief moment.
None of the questions were answered, of course. Most likely never would be.
“You’re an enigma, you know that, right?” Red finally asked after a long moment of silence.
Vincent shrugged a little, not answering.
The silence finally went from angry and awkward to just plain silence. The kind of quiet that was usually right when you wake up from sleep and there is no motion what so ever around you. Peaceful in a way.
Red’s mind went back to the painting he loved so much, back to the reds and the golds and he felt like he wanted to paint this hallway with those colors.
Suddenly, human arms with monstrous strength encircled him and Vincent’s face was pressed into his shoulder, fingers twining with bright red fur.
Red was confused for a moment. Then he relaxed into the hold.
Black and red. The colors were soon becoming the Firecat’s favorite. And the realization of something far more awkward came to light.
“Do not say it.” Vincent murmured, reading into Red’s thoughts. “Do not say those words. Do not be so accepting of me.”
He didn’t.
The words stayed locked away (not the one's he wanted to say in that old house, but different and far more strange ones), replaced with a different question.
Red shifted so that he was a bit more comfortable, leaning into Vincent in return. “You said I could stay as long as I saw fit, correct?”
Vincent nodded.
Nothing more was said about the matter.
That night, though, when the two settled into bed, Vincent murmured something low.
“To… Mideel… Would you go with me there?”
“Mideel?”
“To live. The land has already been purchased and I… have been meaning to go there…”
When Vincent trailed away, Red got up from his spot on the floor next to the man’s bed, leaping onto it, hearing the springs groan in protest to more weight on the old mattress. Red had heard about Vincent’s childhood home there when his mother fled with him from Wutai. Vincent had told only a little of that tale, but the Firecat was sure that that was what he had meant--- a secluded place in the middle of a dense forest. Plenty of room for Red to hunt and not far from the actual city of Mideel… Well, why the hell not? It wasn’t like staying here, where the last of their friends was buried, was going to be any more pleasant.
Vincent turned so that his back wasn’t facing Red any longer, moving some so that there was room for the Firecat to plop down next to him. Red kneaded at the mattress for a moment, circling, circling, and settling when he was sure that his nightly routine was accomplished. Why he did so before bed was something he didn’t even understand himself.
Red closed his eyes. A new color to add to the list; dark green. He nodded.
Whether Vincent took it as a yes or as an ‘I’ll-think-on-it’ or not, it was completely up to the gunner. Red hoped it was the first and not the latter two.
The night went on as such. With the light of the moon splaying silver through the window draperies, the strangely cool spring wind whispering in through the open window. Red couldn’t sleep at all. So he settled for watching Vincent sleep.
One would think the man had done enough sleeping over the course of thirty-something odd years… but… well, Vincent was sleeping like the dead (I need to work on the bad puns thing…) and Red watched how the dim light cast the room into illumination, creating shadows that reminded him, once again, of Vincent’s paintings. And of the words that he so desperately had wanted to say in the hall.
He was silent.
The colors melted into each other, dancing like the dancers around Cosmo Candle during holidays and celebrations. Tumbling and blurring in the dimness and making sleepy patterns, like a veil was covering his mind or a switch was being flipped, finally turning him into Slumber’s embrace by the time the clock read “11:11” and he was never aware that the thought of moonlight dancing was an absurd way of describing the way it lit the face of the person next to him. The term simply didn’t do justice.
But he let it be as it simply was, closing his eyes after trying to blink the haze off a few times.
Silver was something that reminded him, absently, of the metal on his clip that held the feathers in his fur in place. And of one of his second level Limit Breaks, Lunar High. Why that was would forever be a mystery. Red never even remembered how he’d fallen asleep, only to find himself dreaming again…
There were things you notice, sometimes, during dreams that actually make you realize that something in your subconscious was trying to tell you something.
It’s only because Red was standing out over the canyon he called home, watching over it and prowling along its edges. It was good to feel the earth below his paws, cool and strong and proud. However, he was seeing everything a little differently. Not like one would see the real world. No, he was seeing it all like watercolor paints and every time he stepped somewhere his paws left a black print. Not tainting it. Rather, more like adding to it.
The landscape he was actually seeing turned from Cosmo to something red. And he never realized that the urge to run across this expanse ---red, always crimson as far as his sharp hunter’s eyes could see--- could be so great. It felt wet a little. But solid. Definitely solid. Which was weird. Red had never really had this kind of dream before. Sure he dreamed of something where the ground was crimson and the sky was as gold as it was now, with endless amounts of black flecks for stars in the watery oblivion. However, he didn’t dream that the ground was not of fabric and that it was wet and not cool, rather warm actually, and that he was still running across it with some kind of panic pounding in his veins as his heart pounded blood through his body. Panic. This is what panic felt like. He never liked this feeling, it always lead to something awful at the end of it all.
He was flying, he thought for a moment. Running so fast and stopping, sliding across the wet ground just as the rain came down something golden. It soaked his fur, and somehow he wasn’t changing golden.
Gold… that wasn’t such a happy color. Never was to him.
Not a nightmare, but not exactly a good dream, either.
The back of his mind flared with something like recognition. Have I seen this before? Where? And why?
Red looked up at the rain for a moment, feeling it splash in his eyes. There was the smell of metallic tang in the air, in the rain and in the ground and in the wind, almost painful, feeling like rusty knives stabbing into his nostrils. The smell somewhat reminded him of the smell of Midgar. This was what was causing his panic. The rain turned red, falling that much heavier. Warm, too, very warm. He blinked and the world went back to total normality.
He was awake now. And cold, ironically. Pawing at the bed, growling in his chest and feeling his heart pound.
Red was alone.
It wasn’t like it was all that important. Vincent had probably just gone to prepare to leave for Mideel.
The Firecat pushed himself to his legs tiredly. He didn’t feel like he’d slept at all. So he decided he’d wander around for a bit.
Red found himself in the only room that hadn’t been renovated. The room with all those plants in it. He remembered, vaguely, pondering why he’d come here and just simply decided that it was the smell of the living things amongst all the contrasting emptiness of the mansion.
Mideel…
Well, it wasn’t like he was leaving Cosmo Canyon forever. He couldn’t do that.
Mideel… that is a bit a ways away…
The words from the night before were threatening to tear out of him. Red murmured them to the empty air and let the colors of the green room wash him to another time in another place and back to that painting of the mother and her child.
The colors were washing up in his memory of many things. Most of which were during the Meteor Crisis. Strange how that also worked out, along with everything else.
Red made a grunting noise as he turned to leave this peaceful room for good.
He may be returning to the reds and oranges of Cosmo Canyon from time to time, but Midgar and Nibelheim were the only places he’d never even considering stepping paw again. Not to the dreary grays and sickening mako-greens. Not to those colors.
Those memories were best left six feet under with Cloud. Better yet: left even deeper than the underground lab below the mansion.
Colors meant for a lifetime ago, and on an entirely different planet than the one he knew.
Title: Creme Soda Special
Genre: Romance/Drama
Rating: PG-13
Origially Published: 7-23-07
Warnings: Some cursing.
Summary: [Post DoC, no spoilers] Understanding love has never really been so complicated. Yuffie just has to learn the hard way. [Implied Yuffentine drabble]
Creme Soda Special
For all the Yuffentine lovers out there. :D Prepare to eat your hearts out.
She's always had a crush on him. That much has been blatantly obvious for some of the longest time. It's the teenage romantic in her that has yet to die out completely, even at nineteen. Even as Lady of the Pagoda. BecauseYuffie believes that the brightest lights are never the first one sees at brith. No one ever remembers those. No, the brightest are the people she knows, the greatest friends, ones she'll never let die-- him most of all. Like the fires of the Dao-Cho mountain caves, they even glow brightest in the dark.
At least, that's what she saw at first.
Vincent, although he's begun to smile more, to change... Yuffie knows, no matter what she feels for him, he'll never look at her the way she looks at him. Neither Shelke, nor that dead woman Shelke reminds him of has anything to do with it. Yuffie knows that now.
And it started out so simple, her plan to win that man over. So simple, and she ended up understanding more than feeling bad about it...
"Do you like creme soda?" Yuffie ended up asking Vincent. He looked different in a suit. Reeve seemed to be doing good, coaxing the dead human being under Vincent back up from the depths.
They're sitting with the others. A get-together that they all have once a year-- a celebration to survival. Yuffie's been proud to say it was all her idea to start it.
"Hm?" Vincent mutters around the edge of his glace.
Yuffie points at the drink, smiling. "That. Creme soda. What 'cha think, Vince?"
He half shrugs. "It's different." he replies, almost as if he weren't expecting her to ask him anything. She surprised him. Good. And he's passing it to her with a faint frown. "Did you want it?"
"Why?"
"It was the last one."
He's certainly gotten more talkative.
Yuffie praises Lavaiathin.
"Nope. I'm good." She grins at him sweetly. "Hey, I know a drink Tifa taught me! Wanna try it? Called the Creme Soda Special!"
Vincent merely shakes his head. "No."
And that talkative door is slammed shut the moment Yuffie touches his hand to take the drink. He doesn't flinch even as she leans into his shoulder, her eyes slipping closed.
That's alright, she tells herself. She wasn't expecting too much. Right now, everone else was ignoring them, and that was all that mattered to her.
---
She doesn't know how it ended up this way.
Her hands are snaked into his hair for a moment, while they're alone, and she's pulling his face to hers, and there's a look in his eyes-- a look. Yuffie knows there's a part of Vincent that's noticed her, noticed her feels, noticed something, something. And Yuffie can feel how course his hair is and how his lips are almost against hers, his breath, her own, the closeness... Yuffie's heart is in her chest, hammering at her ribs as if it wants to break out and run laps around the whole of the Wutaiian continent. Vincent's fingertips are brushing agsinst one of her shoulders.
No else is here.
They're all gone.
The world has melted into that one--
"No," he says simply.
Yuffie watches him pull back, eyes going slightly wide, and her fingers clench to bring him right back and he winces. "Hey! Gods dammit, kiss me!"
"No," Vincent repeates as his strong fingers pull Yuffie's away. "No, Yuffie."
"Why not!"
"You're too young."
The way he looks at her, though, doesn't suggest that age really has anything to do with it. Everyone knows-- knows that the guy is old. Older than what most people live to be these days thanks to all the stress the Planet goes through.
Yuffie looks at him.
Vincent shakes his head. "No."
She understands, then, surprisingly, what he's trying to say as he instead presses his thin, chapped lips to the right corner of her lips. Lingering. He's not telling her no. He's silently telling her yes. Yuffie can hear it dammit!
But Yuffie really is young. She knows. She knows she honestly hasn't found what she wants. She wants him more than anything, because she loves all there is to Vincent Valentine. And the way his fingertips still linger before he pulls away and leaves tells Yuffie that he's sorry in more ways than her mind could comprehend right then. She just wish he would stop looking out for her best interest and agree with her. She wants him to stop knowing everything that's best, knowing that this was for the better, that she will eventually age and love and live with someone who will make her feel like she's not the only one moving through time.
Yuffie loves him. Because Vincent was thoughtful enough to break her heart then and not while it was too late.
She ends up drinking the Creme Soda Special by herself.
---
Notes: And that, people, is why Yuffentine's SUCK. I have nothing against them, really. This is just a matter of personal opinion.
Title: Reunion
Genre: General
Rating: PG
Originally Published: 12-7-07
Warnings: none
Summary: In all reality, it'd been Jenova misconstruing Sephiroth's meaning of Reunion... [drabble]
Reunion
Lucrecia has never really known much happiness. She's lost sight of it. And the afterlife,dear gods, the afterlife brought so much of it back that she almost didn't know how to handle it. Everything was so clear, so amazingly clear...
Her son was waiting there.
Sephiroth never said anything when Lucrecia looked at him, at how much he'd grown from the infant she'd given birth to. At the strong, beautiful man standing before her. He didn't say anything. Not even when she took his face into her hands and kissed both cheeks, clasping him to her and sobbing hard enough to wrack her with pain.
Lucredia hadn't known much happiness before. And neither had Sephiroth.
The man's large hands were hesitant before they grasped Lucrecia's arms.
"My boy..." is all she can say. "My precious baby boy! Look how... how you've grown. It doesn't matter what's happened-- I'm proud of you!"
Lucrecia had long ago, long before he was born, known the consiquences, known what might happen. She'd long ago decided what she'd say to her son when she found him. She'd tell him what she knew he'd never hear in life. And Lucrecia was proud of Sephiroth. Her son. Part of her flesh and blood, no matter how much Jenova was a part of him. He'd been born into a role that was probably one of the most horrible to bear. So she smooths back some of Sephiroth's bangs, smiles, even if there's not a returning one.
"Mother." Sephiroth states. Simple. To the point.
He doesn't have to say how long he'd really been waiting when Lucrecia already knows.
Title: The Truth About Living
Genre: Romance/General
Rating: PG-13+
Originally Published: 5-11-07
Warnings: Shounen-Ai/Light!yaoi, slight cursing, somewhat mature content, and slight DoC spoilers
Summary: As the saying goes, life is lived forwards, and remembered backwards. But the truth is still there, in those single moments. [VincentReeve, 1sentence LJ chalenge, postDoC]
The Truth About Living
1 - Speak
Reeve floundered mid-sentence, the lips to his cutting him off and making him half-glare at Vincent when the man pulled away with a faint smirk, saying, "You talk too much, Reeve."
2 - Touch
He didn't mind it, really, when Reeve grabbed his hand and squeezed tight, palm-to-palm and fingers entwined; Reeve wouldn't let go and his fingers would go numb after a while, but he'd never complain about it... the contact reminded him he was alive still.
3 - Memory
It almost made them both wary, really, at the things that they can't tell anyone else, Reeve simply smiling and trying to change the subject and Vincent giving Shelke a blank stare while she opened her mouth and Yuffie elbowed her with a scowl before she could comment, "But I don't ever remember you two saying anything about sharing a room."
4 - Vanilla
"Why do you dislike sweet things?" Reeve asked, tucking a spoonful of ice-cream into his mouth and savoring it, and Vincent just shakes his head with a frown and a grunt for an answer: you'd never understand even if I told you...
5 - Chocolate
February brought about the worst commercialized holiday that could have ever been devised next to Christmas; it was even worse than the stupid eggnog, and the mistletoe, and the trees, and the lights that appeared on Christmas-- Valentine's Day brought chocolate, and between the two of them, neither Reeve nor Vincent could tell who had the the worst soft-spot for the damn stuff.
6 - Ways and Means
Vincent wasn't sure whether it was actually having someone he desired that cause his libido to kick in at odd moments, or if it was just how his animalistic side handled things (he'd long ago learned that he'd never be able to turn that part off, no matter what he did, so he dealt with it's advantages and disadvantages), but Reeve was mumbling --"Vincent, this is a rather small office"-- to which Vincent simply nodded and said, "We'll find a way."
7 - Belief
"Maybe, but I still don't want to think you're faithless; after all, you're still here, aren't you?" the man asks, while staring the other down, and maybe Reeve was right to say that Vincent wasn't faithless, but that wasn't the case, really, and he says so, "Reeve, what faith would I have left in humanity when you're dying of old age?"
8 - Linger
Reeve can't help the fact that he sees them (even if I turned out the lights, he'd still see me), the scars, that trail up and down Vincent's body, and he lets his fingers linger over the bullet-wound-scar to the other man's lung, internally reminding himself the costs of their relationship.
9 - Illuminance
They're both half expecting to be caught, and both of them know damn well that Tifa was throwing a party down stairs but neither of them could bring themselves to care as they watched from the roof, just sitting all alone as they watched the first snow fall over Midgar-Edge in years; the snow flakes caught for a brief moment in the lights and sparkled, making the world seem lighter.
10 - Ornament
Vincent still wore it, the gauntlet, when working for Reeve sent him outside the city-- he still wore them, the cloak and the black clothes, instead of the suits he's managed to coax himself into over the years-- it all still comes in handy, but he knows they're only a symbol.
11 - Coup de foudre
It was never an out-of-the-blue-thunder-bolting-first-sight kind of love, that much was true; after all, Vincent was far too wise and jaded and cynic now, and Reeve was still far too naive and kind and hopeful to ever believe in those sorts of things.
12 - Archway
"You jump off a bridge that hight again, and I'll have a heart attack," Reeve shouted, still clutching the graze to his shoulder, "and I don't care how my life is endangered my life is!"
13 - Fate
"Do you think it was fate that this all happened?" Vincent asked, looking up at the silhouette of what had been Omega --still visible, even during the day-- and Reeve wasn't sure how he could tell him, no, choices did, because if anyone could defy Fate, Vincent could.
14 - Pulse
Shh, it's a secret, you know, but I like how your heart beats, and he can feel it under his lips as he presses a soft kiss to the other's throat and knows, just like his lover does, that this could easily fall apart, but I have no idea what I'd do if that happened, you're all I ha-- he cuts the thought short and decides not to ruin the moment when blunt fingernails dig into his shoulders, spurring him harder...
15 - Envelope
The beginnings had always started off with paperwork on each other's desks, but with an odd twist: hidden notes in phony documents, back when they'd hardly had any time to see each other, though nothing ever romantic.
16 - Cold
It happened sometimes and when neither of them were expecting it, causing Reeve to panic because he doesn't know what to do about it except hold Vincent's arms, hold him tight and close, as the tremors shock the ex-Turk's body and his skin goes icy from trying to fight off the change, Vincent's cold hands tight in his night shirt, eyes so wide that it hurts to look into them (even as they go from red to gold-on-black and back), because Reeve can't help him fight an enemy that's not just under the skin, but in your eyesheadBRAIN, and it hurts knowing that he can't blame it on Chaos when Chaos isn't there anymore.
17 - Need
"Do you really want that for yourself?" he asked, holding out his hand, and the other frowned, shaking his head, no.
18 - Drunk
"It's not that I have natural resistance..." Vincent began, answering Tifa's simple 'how did you not end up drunk off your ass' question, despite the fact that this is the first time he's actually ordered one of her drinks instead of going off and drinking with Cid like he did every Tuesday, and he holds out his thank-you gift: a bottle of well-aged, been-off-the-shelf bottle of Odin, the best vodka there ever was, and then Tifa smiles and says, "No wonder-- this stuff takes a liver of steal to get down."
19 - Mask
Reeve never really was any good at being stone-marble-whatever, so he still visits the memoriam dedicated to all the soldiers of Deepground, alone, secretly, so that he doesn't have to let anyone know he still felt bad when everyone else could put it behind them.
20 - Rose
"They were her fav..." Vincent found himself trailing off with Shelke looking up at him from under her umbrella, still confused as to why she found him at a flower shop, soaking wet, and looking at red roses.
21 - Two
They were really only just two people with barely an idea of what they were even doing in life, but when it came down to it, with the messes and the pain and the good things, it was really all that there needed to be.
22 - Fresh
With a gentle smile, Reeve got up from his home-office desk and pulled some of the fresh sheets from Cait Sith's small arms and thanking the robot for all the help he was when even he couldn't keep on top of the normal things.
23 - Bribe
"It'll never work and you know Reeve'll probably never forgive you," Cloud muttered, much to Yuffie's disappointment, snatching the camera away from her, and she smiled sweetly, asking, "What if I gave you a picture, then would you let me?"
24 - Error
Aim carefully... don't rush... take your time... he thought to himself, easing into position as his target came into view, one clean shot, that's all I need-- Vincent wasn't fond of sniping missions, but when it came to hostage situations that involved a certain WRO Commissioner getting into more trouble than needed, he found that he didn't have room to miss.
25 - Appetite
"You've got plenty of... okay, so I thought you had plenty of those snack things..." Reeve said as he rooted through the pantry with Vincent sitting at the kitchen table and munching on some toast, "I'm surprised your metabolism can actually handle that many carbs every day."
26 - Refrain
Never again has become Cid's motto: he was never going to take Reeve with him when he and Vincent when out for their usual drinks ever again, he was never going to let his guard down ever again, and he was never, ever going to let his wife force the couple to crash at their place again-- he didn't need Cait Sith bashing down the front door and waking up the baby again (especially when Shera kicked him and told him it was his problem, sheesh... women).
27 - Family
By the time Cid's and Shera's first kid was five, and Cloud and Tifa were expecting, they were all starting on their own families... but somehow... well, Vincent didn't follow Reeve's idea of 'children'; roughly eight cats, to which Vincent was rather allergic...
28 - Grieve
"It seems almost unreal..." Reeve murmured and poured his second cup of coffee, trying to pull his black funeral tie on with numb hands, and Vincent bats his hands away and fixes Reeve's tie, the brunette sighing, "You might have liked my mother."
29 - Vapor
Life had a tendency to be very tedious at times, and plans the WRO made to help the public, help the people, seemed to go up in smoke more often than not.
30 - Tea
"At least no one was shot, it happens," Shelke offered tentatively, the waitress setting down their mugs of tea in front of her and Reeve with ceramic clinks, and the man simply shook his head, his expression saying it all: that it happened at all was bad enough.
31 - Medicine
"It's not funny, Vincent-- I hate needles, and you know it, so I'm not getting the flu shot, no, you can't make me!" Reeve muttered, coughed, and rolled
32 - Moth
Metaphorically speaking, they were all bugs, bugs being attracted to the ever-bright flame of mako, until they ended up too close, too close for comfort and burned to cinders; it was just a good thing, in both of their opinions, that at least one of them was more resilient than the other.
33 - Perfect
Nothing was ever, ever perfect: They we're long hours, slept even less, dealt with pain and issues, and things that kept cropping up, and sometimes half-arguments in which Reeve was really the only one yelling at anyone-- things went so wrong all the time, so frustratingly wrong, but that was really the part that at least made the better parts worth it.
34 - Rope
"You know..." Yuffie began with a sly grin, "there are times when I should probably tie you both to a tree out in the middle of the Sleeping forest, if that's what it takes to make you two go on vacation."
35 - Wind
There are things that Vincent didn't expect Reeve to understand, hell, there were things neither of them understood, but the feel of the ground under him, moving, getting it all out of his system... that was where Nanaki came in: Nanaki knew what it was like to run as far and as fast as you could, the air rushing in and out of your lungs, around your body, and finding a small measure of freedom in it.
36 - Crossroads
“Wutai is full of crossroads, Reeve, it's easy to get lost here...” Reeve heard Vincent mutter, and smiled to himself, thought a little saddened that Wutai had changed even enough for the gunman to not even recognize it.
37 - Summer
Wutai was beautiful in the summer and so full of people now, people who were glad to have their culture back, to have room to expand-- it's reds and golds and gardens people... getting lost hadn't mattered then, so maybe this vacation really wasn't such a bad idea...
38 - Candy
There was a range of reasons Vincent disliked sweet things like candy --dark chocolate not included-- and mostly because he wasn't, never had been even 'back then', used to the taste of it and it hurt to eat anything so extreme, but he could help but sigh as reeve put another box of vanilla ice-cream in the freeze... it'd never last a week.
39 - Photograph
And he finally got it, picking the old photo up and out of the box, looking at it (he had to hold it up to Vincent to actually try and grasp it, let it sink in) and the comparison, noticing that other than a few minor details, the 'back then' chapter had finally come to a close, now.
40 - Spoon
“Wow, I didn't know spoon could be used to unlock doors... this coming from someone who keeps either destroying his phone or losing it... hey, that was uncalled for, she's stalking you're phone no-- it's cold and I'm on a damn pay phone in my pajamas, so it's not funny at all!”
41 - Forest
He held a certain... affinity for the Sleeping Forest-- it held his secrets just as well as he held its.
42 - Mirror
The window of the WRO HQ building was like a piece of looking glass, reflecting the Christmas party on the inside, superimposed like dancing phantoms of color, but neither of them were attached to the party, simply watching Edge and the hole that was once Midgar... even now they could still here the screams, if only a mirrored echo in their minds.
43 - Smoke
Vincent let out a faint breath as he set his glass of Odin down on the bar, Cid's grin dropping some and a concerned look crossed his face, and Vincent looked at him before stealing the cigarette between the blonde's lips and taking a drag: “These things are going to kill you, Chief.”
44 - Shine
Shelke has a hard time trying to feel happy for them-- Vincent and Reeve, because she still has her data in her network, burning like fire, and sometimes she really hates the fact that she's happy for them both.
45 - Balloon
After Kalm rebuilt, there was a festival each year, celebrating two things, Meteorfall and then what people were starting to call “the Ending”, celebrating life and all its wondrous forms.
46 - Vine
Edge was suffering a new sort of nemesis that even the Guardhounds couldn't handle, and most of the WRO Soldiers agreed; Assassin Vines were not quite unlike cockroaches, but damn, were they even harder to kill after the mako in the soil cleared.
47 - Butterfly
Vincent didn't like it, not at all, not the way the science department --no matter how much a necessary evil it is from the World Restoration Organization-- would hound him, asking over and over and over again to practically pin him up like a butterfly to a cork board; he disliked science with a passion.
48 - Gloves
Vincent wasn't surprised when Reeve started wearing gloves as the brunette's training went on, not really, and it's alright that his hands are rough now from the use of a gun, it's alright that Reeve still flinches at the sound of gunfire-- even if it's from himself, especially if it's from himself: “Start carrying one with you, Reeve... it's better that you're protecting yourself and others this way.”
49 - Venom
Shinra and it's mako had been like a poison, a horrible sickness with the memories still scarred and burning, and neither of them could say they were surprised, but still rather disgusted when Rufus had come out and said he'd been the one financing WRO all along.
50 - Remain
It was a the little moments, Vincent and Reeve decided; the little moments that cured a little bit of the darkness and drove back some of the nightmares, even though they both know that this small, tentative happiness isn't going to last forever-- but Reeve grinned anyways, and Vincent's lips quirked up somewhat, and they both sat at the kitchen table with their mounds of paperwork knowing that it was going to be okay anyways...
Yeah. A note. Assassin Vines are a Dungeons and Dragons© monster, and thus I don't own.
Well, that was relatively painless... right? *shrug* Whatever.
Title: Colors
Genre: Angst
Rating: PG
Originally Published: 2-16-06
Warnings: Character death and cryptic meanings
Summary: Nanaki does a little bit a ruminating after he realizes he's outliving the rest of AVALANCHE. [oneshot]
Colors
A one-shot thing…
Death… Red seemed quite acquainted with Death, and it followed him doggedly at every turn. Well… that was what it felt like, considering the years that have passed really only feel like a few to him. Sometimes Red cursed his longevity, wishing that he were perhaps a domestic house-cat. But then he would remember his pride, snuffing at the idea of having just insulted himself.
As it was, he was already having to deal with something rather difficult…
Tired, winkled mako-blue eyes glanced at him and a snarled old hand patted him slightly on the head.
Red remembered those eyes. It seemed just like yesterday that they were young and angry and full of undying determination. The white hair that this dying man possessed, he remembered, was supposed to be yellow and spiky. But… well, nothing was like that for him. He thought he’d grown used to the idea that he’d outlive everyone he knew. It was just that he didn’t want to come to terms with it. Not ever.
Fate was mocking him somewhere out there. Red could feel it.
The Firecat snuffled at the hand. Cloud’s hand. And the fact that it’d been at least ninety-one years since Meteor. Cloud was pushing 115, give or take a few years. Red knew this was only due to the massive amounts of mako and Lifestream the warrior had been exposed to--- probably would have lived longer had he not stressed himself over the years. Cloud was the last of AVALANCHE, save for two members, who were standing at the old man’s deathbed and looking down at his old smile.
Ironically, the first to have left this plane of existence was Yuffie, the youngest of this ragtag group of heroes. Died saving the very person she was trying to steal from in some backwater town, where proper medical care and healing materia was at an all time low. It hadn’t been long after Vincent’s whole ordeal with WRO. Reeve was hit by a car. He didn’t survive (and Red found that he hadn’t much cared about him, though…). Old age caught Barret ---as it was now for Cloud--- and Marlene was well into her forties with a family and she’d married Denzel. Cid, of course, ended up with lung cancer, Shera had taken care of him even then.
Red found himself reminiscing over that. Cid’s death hadn’t been long ago to him. Perhaps ten or so years, maybe more. Red had attended his memorial service in Rocket Town and he’d seen how the entire town had felt so… dead after that. Cid never did hook up with Shera, nor did he ever think much about having a family. The last, Red remembered, was that Shera simply packed up and moved back to Mideel, where she had come from. For someone with lung cancer and several years of stress piled on him, Cid did live a full life.
Now Tifa was another story entirely. She had staid (and died) in Midgar, while Cloud had left to Gongaga once Tifa had finally closed Seventh Heaven for good as an old woman, the orphans having grown and left. Why they two never settled down like he’d thought they would ---and Red had hoped, because he did want to see the two happy for once. He knew that, even though they may not have suffered as much as Vincent has, Gaia knows, but Red wanted to see them happy.
For a long, long moment, nothing was said.
Vincent, who was standing not far off, leaned in when Cloud beckoned with a slight hand motion, wheezing something even Red couldn’t pick up.
Nibelheim. Cloud was to die here, in the old house he had once known as a child. Red was not happy to see this place again.
“As you wish…” Vincent murmured in response to whatever the old man in his bed had asked. His red eyes regarded Cloud with something akin to… fondness, Red thought. They weren’t close friends, but there was understanding there.
For the first time since Red had arrived here, Cloud smiled a smile that was neither that of the suffering or that of a smile most dying men usually carried into death or into madness. His eyes, however, were not of the old. They would always be forever burned into Red’s memory.
It reminded him of the last time anyone had called him Nanaki, a name he didn’t totally discard. It was just that he’d come to like the nickname ‘Red’ more than “Nanaki”. Nanaki sounded like such a life time ago, and even those in Cosmo Canyon called him that now a days. He’d told Cloud he didn’t have to keep forcing that strange name out just to make him feel accepted. And the used-to-be-blonde had given him the same look. The same smile.
A long while passed before Cloud finally did let go of life. Vincent had casted a sleep spell to ease the transition, and that had simply been that.
Come to think of it, he and Vincent were the only ones here in Nibelheim…
Cloud was buried not long after at the base of Mount Nibel. His grave was marked by a simply series of rocks placed, and Red had found that he couldn’t watch Vincent place that old and wrinkled body into the hole he’d helped dig earlier.
It felt like burying himself alive at the thought that he had helped dig a grave for his friend.
“If you don’t want to be here… you don’t have to.” Vincent had said, pushing dirt into the hole.
Red had shaken his head, the feathers adorning his fur shivering with the motion. “It wouldn’t seem right to leave.”
It hadn’t. Still didn’t.
Vincent had come to reside here in the Shinra Mansion, renovating it bit by bit as if to just pass time. Red couldn’t leave now, knowing that the man was left here with the grave of one of the closest people to him as a reminder of what Hojo had done to him. After all, he couldn’t exactly drop dead. The chance of him doing that was about the chance of Red dying his fur green.
Now Red was just sitting on a slight hill where it overlooked the old dirt road leading to this backwater town, silently thinking to himself as he watched the spring afternoon sun light the world around him in shades of pewter, strangled green, and browns. Not quite dusk, and night quite morning. Just an ordinary spring day, just having barely melted winter away.
He thought of Rocket Town again.
It had been autumn there, the day Red had been there for that couple of days.
Vincent had lived there with Cid. The gunner had been there the whole time, and Red was not surprised when the people of Rocket Town had come to pay respects to him as well, although he was sure the dark-haired man hadn’t thought himself disserving of that level of respect.
Cid would be missed, still was for a fact.
And what Cid had done for him was something no one outside of Vincent's family had ever done... He'd cleaned out the back room and built a place for Vincent to stay. An art room, actually, having noticed ---without ever saying anything--- one of the dark-haired gunner's hidden talents.
Red had traveled there when Vincent had requested that he come. He'd also seen the way Vincent quietly packed everything he possessed up, but left all his paintings ---which had never been seen by other human eyes other than Cid's or Shera's--- behind to be auctioned off. Except for one, because Red had liked it enough to ask for it. And, without a second thought, Vincent gave consent.
“You are quiet…”
Vincent’s voice caught him slight off guard. But Red lifted his head up to see the gunman walking over to him and he let the man know that his company was appreciated by nodding at him. Vincent didn’t sit, instead, shaking his head.
The Firecat was content with that. The man had come to see if he was alright, which was just as good as a casual conversation to help forget a few things.
The gunner left after a moment of standing there, but without the flare of a heavy red cloak (it’d been removed to make Cloud’s grave). Which was weird, and brought Red’s prone-to-wandering mind to something else…
The painting he’d left in his home in Cosmo.
It was a beautiful watercolor painting. Filled with black and oranges and fiery reds and golds. In it stood a woman dressed in a red/gold kimono, holding her two or three year old son to her and his head tucked under her chin (one of his hands was touching her lips, her kissing the small fingers gently), both of their eyes closed and their hair was such a deep and sad black that it was almost painful to look at. Red saw the innocence in that painting. Not the innocence of the mother and her dear offspring cradled so lovingly in her arms, but the innocence of what it actually represented.
Every time Red had glanced to study it, he saw something new. Like how the boy's small fingers were tangling in the mother's hair and his smiling face, of how the slight age lines in the woman's face spoke volumes of things past, of how their hair, like ink-bottled black, melted into the scenery of red (which was ironically wrapped around the woman's forehead as well). There was a dot in the middle of the child's forehead, but the face of the child was like clam porcelain. Not quite a Wutain mother and child, no, not of those people, much too different in facial structure. This was from Vincent's memory. Surely one of his earliest and one that must have screamed at him to be put on canvas. And so, well, there it was... The astonishing truth that Vincent Valentine had a heart definitely far bigger than anyone else’s.
No one could paint with colors so bold. No one could make colors that symbolized war and hatred and darkness feel and look so loving. No one could put such fine detail on that woman's face, which was far more defined than the boy's, actually.
And the boy's smile... A wise, knowing smile that warmed Red and made him think of his own mother. It was a tangle of too many emotions all in one and he was sure Vincent would never take up painting again. This had been his last creation before Cid passed. His brightest one, too. Nothing like the blues and dark greens that Vincent was fond of in the others.
Perhaps this was the way Vincent remembered her. These were her colors, Red thought. These brilliant colors of pride and love, these emotions of hatred and bliss... These were things no mortal man could capture out of his imagination. Nothing this forceful could ever be tamed by such water paints from the hands of a being without the prior knowledge of what these things meant and felt like after years of pain and torture.
Red shook his head and realized that the sun was going down, feeling his heart hurt with the events of the day and of how thinking of one stupid painting was making him rather angry at himself. All he thought of was how he felt… alone for some reason… And he was angry at this weakness. Angry that he could live for so long and that everyone else could not, angry that he found that he couldn’t wish a longer life on any of them; they had all suffered enough.
Red's tail switched from side to side, the fire licking furniture, but not setting fire to anything. Ironic how that actually worked out.
He was pacing the room back and forth, back and forth, claws digging slightly into the wood of the floor, growling slightly to himself.
Cloud was gone. Tifa was gone. Barret, Yuffie, Cid, Reeve… Only Vincent and himself remained.
He knew one day he would have to come to terms with this… Still, that didn’t make it any more pleasant. Red had grown… attached to those humans he came to realize. Even though he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do such a thing. Red had found himself pacing and thinking, and pacing and thinking--- repeating these things as if he wasn’t aware that he might be running a hole into the ground from pacing so much all at once.
Red had known that everything would come down to this one instant. This one moment when he would have to deal with the fact that he had out-lived his friends almost.
He needn’t worry about Vincent (he was thinking a lot of him, wasn’t he…). The gunman was immortal as well. Er… almost, anyways. If the man was shot in the head, Red was sure he wouldn’t be exactly getting back up any time soon. Although… there had been that one time…
Brushing the thought aside, Red growled a little as he stalked the breadth of what used to be the home Cloud lived in. It was anything but lived in. hadn’t been touched since after the Meteor incident and save for earlier that afternoon. The dust settling over everything was proof of that.
Vincent lives here, Red reminded himself. It’s like this is the last place on the planet left for him. Everything keeps tracing back to here. Maybe this is the last place I belong…
Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t.
Come to think of it… Red, having turned the care of Cosmo Canyon over to more capable hands ---one’s with opposable thumbs, for that matter--- some odd five years ago, had no real place either. Sure, Cosmo Canyon was his home, and he was the hero he wanted to be in their eyes, but…
But the people there were just like everyone else. The generation that could remember the horrors faced during Meteor grew old and senile and the details had all become forgotten, blurred into some thrilling tale rather than the truth it really was. This became unfocused by that time. And Red had no real wish to ruin the world’s view of what had happened.
Part of him even wanted to believe those tales, to believe in the slight smudged details that he either omitted or fudged for the sake of the children asking him for the story. The other half wanted to roar at them the real things, to tell them that nothing ever works out that way, that he never really did have the happy ending he told the children of Cosmo Canyon.
”And what happened after all that? Please tell us!”
”The world was safe, so I came home to share the things I’d learned. Began a new life…”
”Are you living happily ever after? Are you? Like in the old legends!”
”…Yes, I suppose I did get my happy ending.”
Red lashed out at the chair from the dinning table and the thing was in splinters, the pieces of wood littered all over the floor. He often did forget his own strength…
“It’s not exactly nice to destroy someone else’s property.”
The cool voice caught Red off guard. He whirled around and readied himself for unleashing all of his pent up energy on the poor creature that disturbed him---
Vincent regarded him with the same tone as he had spoken in.
---and instantly deflated under those garnet eyes.
“I suppose it isn’t…” Red growled out, resuming his pacing. Damned if he hadn’t picked up that habit from Vincent.
Vincent situated himself so that he was sitting on one of the beds in the one room house, running his human hand along the quilt as if he had seen its making. Red wouldn’t be surprised if he had. But no, the gunner simply studied it with far off curiosity.
“They are all gone, aren’t they?” Vincent finally asked. He sounded emotionless, despite the quiver his voice held. “It is down to just us two.”
Red stopped his pacing and looked at his friend.
Friend… Yes, I suppose I can finally call him such a thing now.
“Yes, the two of us, Vincent.”
It was silent for a stretched amount of time. The two just sat there studying each other. Well… more of Vincent studying everything but Red, and Red unable to really take interest in anything else.
Vincent finally opened his mouth, as if making to say something, but he suddenly looked dejected and withdrew the action, slipping further into himself.
“There is something you want to ask.” It wasn’t a question. Red knew how indirect Vincent tended to be towards things.
The man nodded.
“Go ahead. I’m tired of thinking to myself.”
One good thing about having spent so many years of the same routine was the simple bond of trust they had formed. It was enough that the two were drawn together for the rest of Red’s life.
He wasn’t sure if Vincent would drop dead before him or if he was going to out live Vincent. Unlikely, all things considered.
The question came out as an echo of Red’s thoughts…
“Where do we belong?”
And for once, Red had no comment for his friend’s question. Normally he would have something to say, no matter the subject. Normally Vincent would have just shaken his head, brooding on that answer to see if he wanted it to be true or not.
On any other day, with any other question, Red would have felt a little piece of himself break off.
Instead, there was a sudden wholeness from those words.
Red padded softly over to the bed and jumped onto it, feeling the dust get sucked up his nose. Good thing he had lived in Cosmo for so long--- dust there got everywhere too. But it was less pleasant then the smell of red-earth under his paws. This was dust. Nothing more.
He did the only things he could do to give comfort. Vincent needed it far more than he did. Red rested one of his front paws on Vincent’s thigh, claws carefully retracted, making a sort of rumbling noise in his throat and pushing his wet nose against the man’s shoulder.
Vincent understood, more so than anyone would have, the meaning of those actions. And he smiled slightly as he turned a little to lean into Red.
We belong to no one and nowhere… Red wanted to say. Wanted to bring the truth out in the open--- more for himself than anyone else. But nothing came out. The words were lodged and he was more than glad that Vincent was a mind reader, because he hadn’t bothered to say them.
“You need dinner…” Vincent quietly murmured and moved to stand.
The moment was over. The silence was broken and it was time for a diversion from Sadness.
The kitchen in the Shinra mansion was completely unlike what Red had thought it would be. In fact, the mansion was no longer the old and rotten thing it had been in his memory, but clean and almost… new-looking. Vincent must have completed the renovations while trying to find ways to busy himself after the incident with WOR. WOR and their new Organizer were taking care of Midgar (which was once again the planet’s Center and Light), which was fine with Red. Red had no wishes to see that city ever again if he could help it.
His paws felt the cool tile of the kitchen and he could smell the newly laid cement that sealed the little pieces of white ceramic in place.
Faintly, Vincent rustled through the large pantry, but the Firecat paid no head to him, examining the chairs and the cool grey and forest green colors chosen for the renovated kitchen. The door to the dinning room was old and rotted, the hinges having rusted to the point where removing the door would have resulted in the doorframe and entire kitchen collapsing.
“I did not expect a guest, but you’re more than welcome to stay as long as you see fit…” Vincent muttered as he finally emerged from the pantry with nothing in his hands that sported the notion of dinner. He simply leaned against one of the counters and cocked his head to the side, regarding Red as the Firecat sniffed around the room like some great hunter, bad pun aside. “However, I fear that you will have to hunt your dinner. I have nothing for Firecats here.”
Then there was the fact that Vincent didn’t have to eat anything. Sure, some of the gunner’s body functions were normal. Hair grew, fingernails often needed clipping; general things like that. Those things required some source of energy. But other than that… the man didn’t need anything. Perhaps that is where the whole vampire murmurs from days long ago came from. Because the most Vincent ever really did was drink a glass of red wine and simply watch everyone else.
Did Vincent miss eating? Could he still stomach eating? Or had he simply gotten used to the feeling of starving and never dying from it?
Red stopped his train of thought just as quickly as it had come careening though his head. Vincent was giving him a look that clearly stated he knew exactly what he’d silently been wondering, though not saying it aloud.
Come to think of it, if the man never needed to eat that much, what was the point in redoing the kitchen? Is that why he lived so far away from civilization?
Quickly, as to not anger his friend, Red left the kitchen to go hunting and was rather surprised, after just reaching the path leading to the mountains behind Nibelheim, that there was indeed a small pack of wolves sniffing about.
Animal attraction. Red thought absently. They can smell me…
And just as easily as breathing, Red XIII feel into his instincts, claws extending and his eyes dilating to focus on only his prey.
They had been easy enough to kill off and eat. Red didn’t believe much in having their souls stay upon this plane of existence and left the skulls to place in the tree he had dragged the carcasses under as thanks for sustaining his own life by him taking theirs.
Then he simply returned to the mansion. The front door had been left open some, seeing as Red had no actual way of turning the knob. Not having opposable thumbs in a place built solely for humans was bothersome.
And he stopped for a moment, having picked up a sharp noise.
Not far into the large house was someone yelling. Not in pain or anguish or anything having to do with being hurt in any shape…
Red’s curiosity got the better of him, and he got the distinct feeling that he was going to use one or several of the nine lives most people thought cats of any size had. That would probably bring him down to three lives, considering all of his lucky breaks.
He crept silently to the cracked door leading to the sunroom, and listened carefully. He was able to see Vincent pacing through the limited light in front of the large window in the hallway there. Vincent was talking to someone over his PHS. But Red kept a hold on his thoughts and cleared his mind (an old shaman thing he learned long ago when dealing with frustration or anger). This way Vincent would have less of a chance knowing he was eavesdropping.
“No.” Vincent replied sharply into the phone, which was cradled between his ear and his uncloaked shoulder. The man was pacing again, doing the same thing he always did when doing so; taking the battered ring he normally kept in his pocket and messing with it, glaring at whatever just so happened to be in his path.
There was a long pause.
“I have told you, I am no longer---“ Vincent stopped pacing, suddenly stopping mid-sentence. “Yes, I know… Files or not I will not have anything further to do with the Turks or Shinra. I am no longer duty bound to anyone.”
Red crouched lower to the ground, ears folded back a little further.
“…Her files? Records of… how did you get those?”
Vincent looked angry. Rather… far beyond that: Livid. The door leading to the piano and tearoom seemed about to combust into flames from the glare the gunner sent it.
“I’ll be there in a week. Try anything and you’ll have something far worse than Sephiroth’s wrath to deal with!”
The PHS was folded up and nearly slammed down on the windowsill.
Red pushed open the door and Vincent jumped slightly at the growled question, “I never thought I’d see the day Vincent Valentine caved in under black mail.”
The anger had not been fully locked away when Vincent regarded Red. The man was still glaring. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough.”
“Then it is none of your concern.”
“No, it isn’t. But one can’t help but wonder what Shinra still has on a long since dead Turk to bring him back from the grave.”
The anger faded quickly. Red was prone to watching the man’s eyes. Caught between human shape and inhuman color. If people bothered looking, they’d find that the demonic gunman wasn’t as hard to read or as mysterious was he would appear to be.
Vincent turned to look out the double pained glass window. Something far more human-like when he curled his arms around himself and leaned his forehead on the clear barrier between him and the outside world. He was still missing his cloak, but the headband was still there (Red had never seen him remove it, ever).
He looked… tried for once.
Red came up to him, jumping up a little so that his front paws rested on the edge of the windowsill and his head came up roughly to about Vincent’s shoulder. “I won’t pry if you don’t want me to, but I’m not going to sit here and let you suffer in silence…” he said levelly.
“…Our specimen files,” The man finally said in a soft tone. No emotion was in it. Nothing like the anger from talking to whoever had just talked to him.
“Ou---“ Red immediately clamped his maw shut, hopping down to sit on the floor.
“No. It’s alright. Ask.”
“’Our’?”
“Mine and my mother’s.”
“You’ve been looking for them?”
Vincent nodded, and he too sat on the floor next to Red, his left hand reaching out to stroke behind one of Red’s ears. Red took not in that the gauntlet had also been removed, and hadn’t noticed that Vincent had never put it on today…
Red knew that he probably didn’t mean to treat him like a cat, so he simply took comfort in the attention, rumbling a little in his chest.
“I have been searching for those files. Hojo hid them from me quite well. They want me to protect someone that they are transferring to another location.”
Confidential information. Vincent probably didn’t even realize he was leaving things out. Once a Turk, always a Turk.
Red finally let his mind fill with thoughts and questions and felt Vincent’s hand pause for a brief moment.
None of the questions were answered, of course. Most likely never would be.
“You’re an enigma, you know that, right?” Red finally asked after a long moment of silence.
Vincent shrugged a little, not answering.
The silence finally went from angry and awkward to just plain silence. The kind of quiet that was usually right when you wake up from sleep and there is no motion what so ever around you. Peaceful in a way.
Red’s mind went back to the painting he loved so much, back to the reds and the golds and he felt like he wanted to paint this hallway with those colors.
Suddenly, human arms with monstrous strength encircled him and Vincent’s face was pressed into his shoulder, fingers twining with bright red fur.
Red was confused for a moment. Then he relaxed into the hold.
Black and red. The colors were soon becoming the Firecat’s favorite. And the realization of something far more awkward came to light.
“Do not say it.” Vincent murmured, reading into Red’s thoughts. “Do not say those words. Do not be so accepting of me.”
He didn’t.
The words stayed locked away (not the one's he wanted to say in that old house, but different and far more strange ones), replaced with a different question.
Red shifted so that he was a bit more comfortable, leaning into Vincent in return. “You said I could stay as long as I saw fit, correct?”
Vincent nodded.
Nothing more was said about the matter.
That night, though, when the two settled into bed, Vincent murmured something low.
“To… Mideel… Would you go with me there?”
“Mideel?”
“To live. The land has already been purchased and I… have been meaning to go there…”
When Vincent trailed away, Red got up from his spot on the floor next to the man’s bed, leaping onto it, hearing the springs groan in protest to more weight on the old mattress. Red had heard about Vincent’s childhood home there when his mother fled with him from Wutai. Vincent had told only a little of that tale, but the Firecat was sure that that was what he had meant--- a secluded place in the middle of a dense forest. Plenty of room for Red to hunt and not far from the actual city of Mideel… Well, why the hell not? It wasn’t like staying here, where the last of their friends was buried, was going to be any more pleasant.
Vincent turned so that his back wasn’t facing Red any longer, moving some so that there was room for the Firecat to plop down next to him. Red kneaded at the mattress for a moment, circling, circling, and settling when he was sure that his nightly routine was accomplished. Why he did so before bed was something he didn’t even understand himself.
Red closed his eyes. A new color to add to the list; dark green. He nodded.
Whether Vincent took it as a yes or as an ‘I’ll-think-on-it’ or not, it was completely up to the gunner. Red hoped it was the first and not the latter two.
The night went on as such. With the light of the moon splaying silver through the window draperies, the strangely cool spring wind whispering in through the open window. Red couldn’t sleep at all. So he settled for watching Vincent sleep.
One would think the man had done enough sleeping over the course of thirty-something odd years… but… well, Vincent was sleeping like the dead (I need to work on the bad puns thing…) and Red watched how the dim light cast the room into illumination, creating shadows that reminded him, once again, of Vincent’s paintings. And of the words that he so desperately had wanted to say in the hall.
He was silent.
The colors melted into each other, dancing like the dancers around Cosmo Candle during holidays and celebrations. Tumbling and blurring in the dimness and making sleepy patterns, like a veil was covering his mind or a switch was being flipped, finally turning him into Slumber’s embrace by the time the clock read “11:11” and he was never aware that the thought of moonlight dancing was an absurd way of describing the way it lit the face of the person next to him. The term simply didn’t do justice.
But he let it be as it simply was, closing his eyes after trying to blink the haze off a few times.
Silver was something that reminded him, absently, of the metal on his clip that held the feathers in his fur in place. And of one of his second level Limit Breaks, Lunar High. Why that was would forever be a mystery. Red never even remembered how he’d fallen asleep, only to find himself dreaming again…
There were things you notice, sometimes, during dreams that actually make you realize that something in your subconscious was trying to tell you something.
It’s only because Red was standing out over the canyon he called home, watching over it and prowling along its edges. It was good to feel the earth below his paws, cool and strong and proud. However, he was seeing everything a little differently. Not like one would see the real world. No, he was seeing it all like watercolor paints and every time he stepped somewhere his paws left a black print. Not tainting it. Rather, more like adding to it.
The landscape he was actually seeing turned from Cosmo to something red. And he never realized that the urge to run across this expanse ---red, always crimson as far as his sharp hunter’s eyes could see--- could be so great. It felt wet a little. But solid. Definitely solid. Which was weird. Red had never really had this kind of dream before. Sure he dreamed of something where the ground was crimson and the sky was as gold as it was now, with endless amounts of black flecks for stars in the watery oblivion. However, he didn’t dream that the ground was not of fabric and that it was wet and not cool, rather warm actually, and that he was still running across it with some kind of panic pounding in his veins as his heart pounded blood through his body. Panic. This is what panic felt like. He never liked this feeling, it always lead to something awful at the end of it all.
He was flying, he thought for a moment. Running so fast and stopping, sliding across the wet ground just as the rain came down something golden. It soaked his fur, and somehow he wasn’t changing golden.
Gold… that wasn’t such a happy color. Never was to him.
Not a nightmare, but not exactly a good dream, either.
The back of his mind flared with something like recognition. Have I seen this before? Where? And why?
Red looked up at the rain for a moment, feeling it splash in his eyes. There was the smell of metallic tang in the air, in the rain and in the ground and in the wind, almost painful, feeling like rusty knives stabbing into his nostrils. The smell somewhat reminded him of the smell of Midgar. This was what was causing his panic. The rain turned red, falling that much heavier. Warm, too, very warm. He blinked and the world went back to total normality.
He was awake now. And cold, ironically. Pawing at the bed, growling in his chest and feeling his heart pound.
Red was alone.
It wasn’t like it was all that important. Vincent had probably just gone to prepare to leave for Mideel.
The Firecat pushed himself to his legs tiredly. He didn’t feel like he’d slept at all. So he decided he’d wander around for a bit.
Red found himself in the only room that hadn’t been renovated. The room with all those plants in it. He remembered, vaguely, pondering why he’d come here and just simply decided that it was the smell of the living things amongst all the contrasting emptiness of the mansion.
Mideel…
Well, it wasn’t like he was leaving Cosmo Canyon forever. He couldn’t do that.
Mideel… that is a bit a ways away…
The words from the night before were threatening to tear out of him. Red murmured them to the empty air and let the colors of the green room wash him to another time in another place and back to that painting of the mother and her child.
The colors were washing up in his memory of many things. Most of which were during the Meteor Crisis. Strange how that also worked out, along with everything else.
Red made a grunting noise as he turned to leave this peaceful room for good.
He may be returning to the reds and oranges of Cosmo Canyon from time to time, but Midgar and Nibelheim were the only places he’d never even considering stepping paw again. Not to the dreary grays and sickening mako-greens. Not to those colors.
Those memories were best left six feet under with Cloud. Better yet: left even deeper than the underground lab below the mansion.
Colors meant for a lifetime ago, and on an entirely different planet than the one he knew.
Title: Creme Soda Special
Genre: Romance/Drama
Rating: PG-13
Origially Published: 7-23-07
Warnings: Some cursing.
Summary: [Post DoC, no spoilers] Understanding love has never really been so complicated. Yuffie just has to learn the hard way. [Implied Yuffentine drabble]
Creme Soda Special
For all the Yuffentine lovers out there. :D Prepare to eat your hearts out.
She's always had a crush on him. That much has been blatantly obvious for some of the longest time. It's the teenage romantic in her that has yet to die out completely, even at nineteen. Even as Lady of the Pagoda. BecauseYuffie believes that the brightest lights are never the first one sees at brith. No one ever remembers those. No, the brightest are the people she knows, the greatest friends, ones she'll never let die-- him most of all. Like the fires of the Dao-Cho mountain caves, they even glow brightest in the dark.
At least, that's what she saw at first.
Vincent, although he's begun to smile more, to change... Yuffie knows, no matter what she feels for him, he'll never look at her the way she looks at him. Neither Shelke, nor that dead woman Shelke reminds him of has anything to do with it. Yuffie knows that now.
And it started out so simple, her plan to win that man over. So simple, and she ended up understanding more than feeling bad about it...
"Do you like creme soda?" Yuffie ended up asking Vincent. He looked different in a suit. Reeve seemed to be doing good, coaxing the dead human being under Vincent back up from the depths.
They're sitting with the others. A get-together that they all have once a year-- a celebration to survival. Yuffie's been proud to say it was all her idea to start it.
"Hm?" Vincent mutters around the edge of his glace.
Yuffie points at the drink, smiling. "That. Creme soda. What 'cha think, Vince?"
He half shrugs. "It's different." he replies, almost as if he weren't expecting her to ask him anything. She surprised him. Good. And he's passing it to her with a faint frown. "Did you want it?"
"Why?"
"It was the last one."
He's certainly gotten more talkative.
Yuffie praises Lavaiathin.
"Nope. I'm good." She grins at him sweetly. "Hey, I know a drink Tifa taught me! Wanna try it? Called the Creme Soda Special!"
Vincent merely shakes his head. "No."
And that talkative door is slammed shut the moment Yuffie touches his hand to take the drink. He doesn't flinch even as she leans into his shoulder, her eyes slipping closed.
That's alright, she tells herself. She wasn't expecting too much. Right now, everone else was ignoring them, and that was all that mattered to her.
---
She doesn't know how it ended up this way.
Her hands are snaked into his hair for a moment, while they're alone, and she's pulling his face to hers, and there's a look in his eyes-- a look. Yuffie knows there's a part of Vincent that's noticed her, noticed her feels, noticed something, something. And Yuffie can feel how course his hair is and how his lips are almost against hers, his breath, her own, the closeness... Yuffie's heart is in her chest, hammering at her ribs as if it wants to break out and run laps around the whole of the Wutaiian continent. Vincent's fingertips are brushing agsinst one of her shoulders.
No else is here.
They're all gone.
The world has melted into that one--
"No," he says simply.
Yuffie watches him pull back, eyes going slightly wide, and her fingers clench to bring him right back and he winces. "Hey! Gods dammit, kiss me!"
"No," Vincent repeates as his strong fingers pull Yuffie's away. "No, Yuffie."
"Why not!"
"You're too young."
The way he looks at her, though, doesn't suggest that age really has anything to do with it. Everyone knows-- knows that the guy is old. Older than what most people live to be these days thanks to all the stress the Planet goes through.
Yuffie looks at him.
Vincent shakes his head. "No."
She understands, then, surprisingly, what he's trying to say as he instead presses his thin, chapped lips to the right corner of her lips. Lingering. He's not telling her no. He's silently telling her yes. Yuffie can hear it dammit!
But Yuffie really is young. She knows. She knows she honestly hasn't found what she wants. She wants him more than anything, because she loves all there is to Vincent Valentine. And the way his fingertips still linger before he pulls away and leaves tells Yuffie that he's sorry in more ways than her mind could comprehend right then. She just wish he would stop looking out for her best interest and agree with her. She wants him to stop knowing everything that's best, knowing that this was for the better, that she will eventually age and love and live with someone who will make her feel like she's not the only one moving through time.
Yuffie loves him. Because Vincent was thoughtful enough to break her heart then and not while it was too late.
She ends up drinking the Creme Soda Special by herself.
---
Notes: And that, people, is why Yuffentine's SUCK. I have nothing against them, really. This is just a matter of personal opinion.
Title: Reunion
Genre: General
Rating: PG
Originally Published: 12-7-07
Warnings: none
Summary: In all reality, it'd been Jenova misconstruing Sephiroth's meaning of Reunion... [drabble]
Reunion
Lucrecia has never really known much happiness. She's lost sight of it. And the afterlife,dear gods, the afterlife brought so much of it back that she almost didn't know how to handle it. Everything was so clear, so amazingly clear...
Her son was waiting there.
Sephiroth never said anything when Lucrecia looked at him, at how much he'd grown from the infant she'd given birth to. At the strong, beautiful man standing before her. He didn't say anything. Not even when she took his face into her hands and kissed both cheeks, clasping him to her and sobbing hard enough to wrack her with pain.
Lucredia hadn't known much happiness before. And neither had Sephiroth.
The man's large hands were hesitant before they grasped Lucrecia's arms.
"My boy..." is all she can say. "My precious baby boy! Look how... how you've grown. It doesn't matter what's happened-- I'm proud of you!"
Lucrecia had long ago, long before he was born, known the consiquences, known what might happen. She'd long ago decided what she'd say to her son when she found him. She'd tell him what she knew he'd never hear in life. And Lucrecia was proud of Sephiroth. Her son. Part of her flesh and blood, no matter how much Jenova was a part of him. He'd been born into a role that was probably one of the most horrible to bear. So she smooths back some of Sephiroth's bangs, smiles, even if there's not a returning one.
"Mother." Sephiroth states. Simple. To the point.
He doesn't have to say how long he'd really been waiting when Lucrecia already knows.
Title: The Truth About Living
Genre: Romance/General
Rating: PG-13+
Originally Published: 5-11-07
Warnings: Shounen-Ai/Light!yaoi, slight cursing, somewhat mature content, and slight DoC spoilers
Summary: As the saying goes, life is lived forwards, and remembered backwards. But the truth is still there, in those single moments. [VincentReeve, 1sentence LJ chalenge, postDoC]
The Truth About Living
1 - Speak
Reeve floundered mid-sentence, the lips to his cutting him off and making him half-glare at Vincent when the man pulled away with a faint smirk, saying, "You talk too much, Reeve."
2 - Touch
He didn't mind it, really, when Reeve grabbed his hand and squeezed tight, palm-to-palm and fingers entwined; Reeve wouldn't let go and his fingers would go numb after a while, but he'd never complain about it... the contact reminded him he was alive still.
3 - Memory
It almost made them both wary, really, at the things that they can't tell anyone else, Reeve simply smiling and trying to change the subject and Vincent giving Shelke a blank stare while she opened her mouth and Yuffie elbowed her with a scowl before she could comment, "But I don't ever remember you two saying anything about sharing a room."
4 - Vanilla
"Why do you dislike sweet things?" Reeve asked, tucking a spoonful of ice-cream into his mouth and savoring it, and Vincent just shakes his head with a frown and a grunt for an answer: you'd never understand even if I told you...
5 - Chocolate
February brought about the worst commercialized holiday that could have ever been devised next to Christmas; it was even worse than the stupid eggnog, and the mistletoe, and the trees, and the lights that appeared on Christmas-- Valentine's Day brought chocolate, and between the two of them, neither Reeve nor Vincent could tell who had the the worst soft-spot for the damn stuff.
6 - Ways and Means
Vincent wasn't sure whether it was actually having someone he desired that cause his libido to kick in at odd moments, or if it was just how his animalistic side handled things (he'd long ago learned that he'd never be able to turn that part off, no matter what he did, so he dealt with it's advantages and disadvantages), but Reeve was mumbling --"Vincent, this is a rather small office"-- to which Vincent simply nodded and said, "We'll find a way."
7 - Belief
"Maybe, but I still don't want to think you're faithless; after all, you're still here, aren't you?" the man asks, while staring the other down, and maybe Reeve was right to say that Vincent wasn't faithless, but that wasn't the case, really, and he says so, "Reeve, what faith would I have left in humanity when you're dying of old age?"
8 - Linger
Reeve can't help the fact that he sees them (even if I turned out the lights, he'd still see me), the scars, that trail up and down Vincent's body, and he lets his fingers linger over the bullet-wound-scar to the other man's lung, internally reminding himself the costs of their relationship.
9 - Illuminance
They're both half expecting to be caught, and both of them know damn well that Tifa was throwing a party down stairs but neither of them could bring themselves to care as they watched from the roof, just sitting all alone as they watched the first snow fall over Midgar-Edge in years; the snow flakes caught for a brief moment in the lights and sparkled, making the world seem lighter.
10 - Ornament
Vincent still wore it, the gauntlet, when working for Reeve sent him outside the city-- he still wore them, the cloak and the black clothes, instead of the suits he's managed to coax himself into over the years-- it all still comes in handy, but he knows they're only a symbol.
11 - Coup de foudre
It was never an out-of-the-blue-thunder-bolting-first-sight kind of love, that much was true; after all, Vincent was far too wise and jaded and cynic now, and Reeve was still far too naive and kind and hopeful to ever believe in those sorts of things.
12 - Archway
"You jump off a bridge that hight again, and I'll have a heart attack," Reeve shouted, still clutching the graze to his shoulder, "and I don't care how my life is endangered my life is!"
13 - Fate
"Do you think it was fate that this all happened?" Vincent asked, looking up at the silhouette of what had been Omega --still visible, even during the day-- and Reeve wasn't sure how he could tell him, no, choices did, because if anyone could defy Fate, Vincent could.
14 - Pulse
Shh, it's a secret, you know, but I like how your heart beats, and he can feel it under his lips as he presses a soft kiss to the other's throat and knows, just like his lover does, that this could easily fall apart, but I have no idea what I'd do if that happened, you're all I ha-- he cuts the thought short and decides not to ruin the moment when blunt fingernails dig into his shoulders, spurring him harder...
15 - Envelope
The beginnings had always started off with paperwork on each other's desks, but with an odd twist: hidden notes in phony documents, back when they'd hardly had any time to see each other, though nothing ever romantic.
16 - Cold
It happened sometimes and when neither of them were expecting it, causing Reeve to panic because he doesn't know what to do about it except hold Vincent's arms, hold him tight and close, as the tremors shock the ex-Turk's body and his skin goes icy from trying to fight off the change, Vincent's cold hands tight in his night shirt, eyes so wide that it hurts to look into them (even as they go from red to gold-on-black and back), because Reeve can't help him fight an enemy that's not just under the skin, but in your eyesheadBRAIN, and it hurts knowing that he can't blame it on Chaos when Chaos isn't there anymore.
17 - Need
"Do you really want that for yourself?" he asked, holding out his hand, and the other frowned, shaking his head, no.
18 - Drunk
"It's not that I have natural resistance..." Vincent began, answering Tifa's simple 'how did you not end up drunk off your ass' question, despite the fact that this is the first time he's actually ordered one of her drinks instead of going off and drinking with Cid like he did every Tuesday, and he holds out his thank-you gift: a bottle of well-aged, been-off-the-shelf bottle of Odin, the best vodka there ever was, and then Tifa smiles and says, "No wonder-- this stuff takes a liver of steal to get down."
19 - Mask
Reeve never really was any good at being stone-marble-whatever, so he still visits the memoriam dedicated to all the soldiers of Deepground, alone, secretly, so that he doesn't have to let anyone know he still felt bad when everyone else could put it behind them.
20 - Rose
"They were her fav..." Vincent found himself trailing off with Shelke looking up at him from under her umbrella, still confused as to why she found him at a flower shop, soaking wet, and looking at red roses.
21 - Two
They were really only just two people with barely an idea of what they were even doing in life, but when it came down to it, with the messes and the pain and the good things, it was really all that there needed to be.
22 - Fresh
With a gentle smile, Reeve got up from his home-office desk and pulled some of the fresh sheets from Cait Sith's small arms and thanking the robot for all the help he was when even he couldn't keep on top of the normal things.
23 - Bribe
"It'll never work and you know Reeve'll probably never forgive you," Cloud muttered, much to Yuffie's disappointment, snatching the camera away from her, and she smiled sweetly, asking, "What if I gave you a picture, then would you let me?"
24 - Error
Aim carefully... don't rush... take your time... he thought to himself, easing into position as his target came into view, one clean shot, that's all I need-- Vincent wasn't fond of sniping missions, but when it came to hostage situations that involved a certain WRO Commissioner getting into more trouble than needed, he found that he didn't have room to miss.
25 - Appetite
"You've got plenty of... okay, so I thought you had plenty of those snack things..." Reeve said as he rooted through the pantry with Vincent sitting at the kitchen table and munching on some toast, "I'm surprised your metabolism can actually handle that many carbs every day."
26 - Refrain
Never again has become Cid's motto: he was never going to take Reeve with him when he and Vincent when out for their usual drinks ever again, he was never going to let his guard down ever again, and he was never, ever going to let his wife force the couple to crash at their place again-- he didn't need Cait Sith bashing down the front door and waking up the baby again (especially when Shera kicked him and told him it was his problem, sheesh... women).
27 - Family
By the time Cid's and Shera's first kid was five, and Cloud and Tifa were expecting, they were all starting on their own families... but somehow... well, Vincent didn't follow Reeve's idea of 'children'; roughly eight cats, to which Vincent was rather allergic...
28 - Grieve
"It seems almost unreal..." Reeve murmured and poured his second cup of coffee, trying to pull his black funeral tie on with numb hands, and Vincent bats his hands away and fixes Reeve's tie, the brunette sighing, "You might have liked my mother."
29 - Vapor
Life had a tendency to be very tedious at times, and plans the WRO made to help the public, help the people, seemed to go up in smoke more often than not.
30 - Tea
"At least no one was shot, it happens," Shelke offered tentatively, the waitress setting down their mugs of tea in front of her and Reeve with ceramic clinks, and the man simply shook his head, his expression saying it all: that it happened at all was bad enough.
31 - Medicine
"It's not funny, Vincent-- I hate needles, and you know it, so I'm not getting the flu shot, no, you can't make me!" Reeve muttered, coughed, and rolled
32 - Moth
Metaphorically speaking, they were all bugs, bugs being attracted to the ever-bright flame of mako, until they ended up too close, too close for comfort and burned to cinders; it was just a good thing, in both of their opinions, that at least one of them was more resilient than the other.
33 - Perfect
Nothing was ever, ever perfect: They we're long hours, slept even less, dealt with pain and issues, and things that kept cropping up, and sometimes half-arguments in which Reeve was really the only one yelling at anyone-- things went so wrong all the time, so frustratingly wrong, but that was really the part that at least made the better parts worth it.
34 - Rope
"You know..." Yuffie began with a sly grin, "there are times when I should probably tie you both to a tree out in the middle of the Sleeping forest, if that's what it takes to make you two go on vacation."
35 - Wind
There are things that Vincent didn't expect Reeve to understand, hell, there were things neither of them understood, but the feel of the ground under him, moving, getting it all out of his system... that was where Nanaki came in: Nanaki knew what it was like to run as far and as fast as you could, the air rushing in and out of your lungs, around your body, and finding a small measure of freedom in it.
36 - Crossroads
“Wutai is full of crossroads, Reeve, it's easy to get lost here...” Reeve heard Vincent mutter, and smiled to himself, thought a little saddened that Wutai had changed even enough for the gunman to not even recognize it.
37 - Summer
Wutai was beautiful in the summer and so full of people now, people who were glad to have their culture back, to have room to expand-- it's reds and golds and gardens people... getting lost hadn't mattered then, so maybe this vacation really wasn't such a bad idea...
38 - Candy
There was a range of reasons Vincent disliked sweet things like candy --dark chocolate not included-- and mostly because he wasn't, never had been even 'back then', used to the taste of it and it hurt to eat anything so extreme, but he could help but sigh as reeve put another box of vanilla ice-cream in the freeze... it'd never last a week.
39 - Photograph
And he finally got it, picking the old photo up and out of the box, looking at it (he had to hold it up to Vincent to actually try and grasp it, let it sink in) and the comparison, noticing that other than a few minor details, the 'back then' chapter had finally come to a close, now.
40 - Spoon
“Wow, I didn't know spoon could be used to unlock doors... this coming from someone who keeps either destroying his phone or losing it... hey, that was uncalled for, she's stalking you're phone no-- it's cold and I'm on a damn pay phone in my pajamas, so it's not funny at all!”
41 - Forest
He held a certain... affinity for the Sleeping Forest-- it held his secrets just as well as he held its.
42 - Mirror
The window of the WRO HQ building was like a piece of looking glass, reflecting the Christmas party on the inside, superimposed like dancing phantoms of color, but neither of them were attached to the party, simply watching Edge and the hole that was once Midgar... even now they could still here the screams, if only a mirrored echo in their minds.
43 - Smoke
Vincent let out a faint breath as he set his glass of Odin down on the bar, Cid's grin dropping some and a concerned look crossed his face, and Vincent looked at him before stealing the cigarette between the blonde's lips and taking a drag: “These things are going to kill you, Chief.”
44 - Shine
Shelke has a hard time trying to feel happy for them-- Vincent and Reeve, because she still has her data in her network, burning like fire, and sometimes she really hates the fact that she's happy for them both.
45 - Balloon
After Kalm rebuilt, there was a festival each year, celebrating two things, Meteorfall and then what people were starting to call “the Ending”, celebrating life and all its wondrous forms.
46 - Vine
Edge was suffering a new sort of nemesis that even the Guardhounds couldn't handle, and most of the WRO Soldiers agreed; Assassin Vines were not quite unlike cockroaches, but damn, were they even harder to kill after the mako in the soil cleared.
47 - Butterfly
Vincent didn't like it, not at all, not the way the science department --no matter how much a necessary evil it is from the World Restoration Organization-- would hound him, asking over and over and over again to practically pin him up like a butterfly to a cork board; he disliked science with a passion.
48 - Gloves
Vincent wasn't surprised when Reeve started wearing gloves as the brunette's training went on, not really, and it's alright that his hands are rough now from the use of a gun, it's alright that Reeve still flinches at the sound of gunfire-- even if it's from himself, especially if it's from himself: “Start carrying one with you, Reeve... it's better that you're protecting yourself and others this way.”
49 - Venom
Shinra and it's mako had been like a poison, a horrible sickness with the memories still scarred and burning, and neither of them could say they were surprised, but still rather disgusted when Rufus had come out and said he'd been the one financing WRO all along.
50 - Remain
It was a the little moments, Vincent and Reeve decided; the little moments that cured a little bit of the darkness and drove back some of the nightmares, even though they both know that this small, tentative happiness isn't going to last forever-- but Reeve grinned anyways, and Vincent's lips quirked up somewhat, and they both sat at the kitchen table with their mounds of paperwork knowing that it was going to be okay anyways...
Yeah. A note. Assassin Vines are a Dungeons and Dragons© monster, and thus I don't own.
Well, that was relatively painless... right? *shrug* Whatever.