Lamentations

*A little more into Vincent’s darkness here, forgive the lack of voluntary smut again, I’m really sorry for all u addicts out there. But for your credit, there are going to be two extra chapters (one of which was the one with cloud) with smut that weren’t in the original. Enjoy ^_^*

Lamentations
Chapter Five
Bloody Secret

It’s been a long time…

No. No, you don’t exist…

I’m real. Real as that girl you killed last week in Nibel…

I killed no one but myself.

You would be that selfish… Shall I show you?

Get out!

Blood splatters were all over—down my chest, neck and mouth…all over my face and throat… tearing the fragile little thing into several pieces with one crunch! of her spine… a gurgled scream…

Dead, blank eyes, covered in blood.

Her face was … Lucrecia?

“NO!”

I sat strait up in a cold sweat, not remembering where I was for a moment. This wasn’t the ShinRa mansion… no, no this was the Highwind, that’s right. I shuddered in cold and wrapped a sheet around my bony shoulders. So cold… the edges were torn… that meant Chaos had been out in my sleep. The thought chilled me sometimes. It spoke for me… did things I didn’t want it to do…How long had I been asleep for? I wiped the hair out of my face. Burning hot; a fever. I was sick. Sick from what? I never got sick. Had Hojo destroyed my immune system to get one last laugh out of my tormented existence?

That girl…there was a vague memory of tearing something to shreds with gnashing teeth, but it was so unclear. God, what was I doing here? Once Hojo was dead I should have crawled strait back into that coffin, where I belonged. No innocence would be dismembered on my account then.

A knock on the door sent me into an undue state of panic. Had there been knocks before? Had Chaos said anything? I couldn’t remember. I hoped not. “Vince? Come on, you’ve been in there for days!” Days? Had it been days? Did it matter? Goddammit, I was so cold…

“Go away…” I managed to whoever it was. Cloud. Or maybe Cid, I was sure, but which it was I was not. Everything had a sickening fog about it. I felt like I was going to vomit, but I didn’t dare. Chaos was so close I could feel the change inching up my spine. This curse… this lycanthrope was getting too far out of hand.

“I’ll break down this door man, I’m fucking serious!”

Cid. He couldn’t see me like this—I most certainly wouldn’t let even Cloud see me in this advanced state of patheticness I happened to be in. Though I was rather surprised he even bothered to seek me out…

I pulled myself to my feet, staggered to the door and locked it (unlocked? Not good…). I heard a thump—Cid’s head hitting the door. A sigh, then he walked away. It was cold, but for the best. I had gone from wanting him dead to desperately trying to keep him alive. Maybe it was that shred of hope in me that someday when things weren’t so complicated… I shivered again… so cold… my skin was crawling with its wanting to shift into Chaos. I mustn’t give in…no more innocent lives could sully these hands….

I leaned on the desk for support, cursing my dizziness. Turks weren’t supposed to be weak… what was wrong with me?? The laptop came to life when I bumped it, screensaver vanquished. The Specimen 9 videos… it would be grueling to watch and relive, but there might be answers hidden in Hojo’s sick attempt at playing God.

### ########## ###### ### # ### # # #

“Subject Specimen 9, October 2nd, test two-hundred and ninety-two. Subject has been restrained due to violent spasms and unpredictable transformations.”

A heavy door opened, spilling light into a tiny room with a slumped bundle of black hair and straitjacket in a corner. It twitched, awoken from its fitful slumber. Myself.

Hojo rolled in a tray of various tools, not all of which were medical. “How are you feeling today, Vincent?”

The thing in the corner let out a low growl. It didn’t even sound human anymore given the way it held the sound in the back of its throat.

“Uh-hmn,” Hojo agreed with a smirk, filling a syringe with cc’s of… something… “Same as yesterday, I see. Well… no matter.” He turned and reached down for the wild thing in the corner. As soon as he took a step towards it, it hissed, then bore its fangs in threat. When Hojo showed no signs of backing away it thrashed in its corner, then let out a blood-chilling howl, ripping out of its restraints and crawling up the wall with arms that were gaining muscle and changing color by the second.

It pounced onto Hojo, but he only stabbed the needle into the animal’s chest. It sort of stumbled awkwardly, groaned and shrank back into a bony and abused man that fell to his knees. Hojo caught him, ripped the syringe out and threw him face first over the tray, sending all manner of things clattering. The man was now twitching with the drug, shamefully naked and exposed. “That’s NOT how we say hello Vincent!” Hojo scolded wildly, retrieving something phallic looking from the mess scattered on the floor. He spread the poor creature’s pale trembling buttocks and forced the object in, prying a helpless little moan from him.

I flinched. My photographic memory—curse it being so accurate on my account and not Chaos’!—wouldn’t allow me to forget such a trauma, drugged or not. Seeing it from the camera in the corner’s point of view made it that much more despicable. I shivered again. It had taken years—how many I wasn’t sure because they all seemed to meld together—for Hojo to make me cry an ounce. And he had been the only man who had.

“Hold still!” he was barking at the pitiable thing, spasming limply and silently letting tears escape. Weak… so goddamned weak. Hojo kicked it in the ribs and unzipped his pants.

I rewound and zoomed in on the syringe. What was that in particular? Whatever it was, Hojo had used it to control me. Some kind of tranquilizer, perhaps? I couldn’t tell due to the poor quality of the picture.

You liked it…

“Get out!” I snarled, stumbling into the door. “You are not welcome here!”

You LOVED the way he fucked you! Every cut, every bruise—

“Shut UP!”

Every scream, every kick!

I staggered for my equipment. Something—anything! —to quell the vile beast within my reach! Ethers, hypers… tranquilizers. A temporary fix I was sure, but it might foil Chaos’ attempt to take over and go on another killing spree.

They were pretty green pills. I barely had time for a small flash of Lucrecia into my thoughts; of all the drugs she forced herself through for Hojo’s sake. Sick, haggard and frail when I saw her last… I swallowed six and tried to keep them down, clenching the desk chair as my shoulders heaved in restraint.

It won’t save you! She couldn’t, and he won’t either! Don’t kid yourself!

“You are only real when I allow you to be!” I coughed, gritting my teeth. No, Cid wouldn’t save me. Not even in the deepest recesses of my darkest fantasies of him did I dare fool myself into thinking that. I stumbled, knocking my scattered equipment to the floor and barely finding the bedpost to stop my fall in time. This is just a phase I kept telling myself. This cannot last…

I fell face first into the pillow and kept falling and falling into a cold black oblivion that seemed to cycle forever. And into the arms of a small pregnant woman, dressed in her blue and white parka for the winter, all covered with blood…

“I’ve got you,” she whispered, holding me close to the squirming infant inside.

“No… no, no, no…” I told her, tensing. I remembered. She was the first innocent I had allowed Chaos to sunder; I was so blatantly responsible for her death. She was different. I had taken dozens—maybe hundreds—of lives in the name of ShinRa, but I wanted none of the Turks anymore. This was of my own actions, controlled or not, and I hadn’t even known her name. Her face was engrained into my memory though, just like everything else I came across. Just give me peace! I didn’t intend for you and your unborn son to be dead! You were just at the wrong place at the wrong time… my first escape from the forgotten basement going horribly, horribly wrong…

“Feel my belly,” she said softly and warmly into my ear. “He’s kicking.”

I pushed her away with as much force as I could manage to see half her face torn off, skin still dangling in bloody tatters in her tangled blond hair and draped across the fur of her nice warm parka, soiled and absolutely ruined. Something hideous and vengeful burst from her full abdomen and leapt at me, with a paralyzing shriek.

“STOP!” I shouted, squeezing my eyes shut as if I were a child. I had no control here—everything was beyond my reach and determined to uproot every horrifying experience I had just to play it back ten times worse! It made me so furious—why so weak?! Why so pathetic?! Nothing made sense here, it was all a jumble of blood, screams and glorified rape.

Lucrecia was crying. I heard her down an endless hall in a door I just couldn’t seem to reach no matter how fast I ran or which corner I took. Weeping, sobbing and wailing in pain… good lord woman, if only I could have spared you that! When I at last reached the door and burst in to scoop her up in my arms she started to crumble into dust. The more I tried to sooth her, the more she cried, and thus the more she withered away, until I was grasping ash and dirt.

This is a nightmare… a drug induced nightmare, you idiot! Get up! GET UP!

“Lucrecia!” I called, sitting up suddenly. A nightmare indeed. Just a nightmare, but this wasn’t the coffin Hojo had damned me to, and so I saw fit to adhere. This was the Highwind, just as it had been for the past month. I wasn’t Chaos, I was Vincent Valentine, like I had been for the same amount of time, a little longer. Don’t be so pathetic, get yourself together you fuck-off…

And then I saw him.

I thought I was dreaming still at first, but the cramp in my shoulder told me otherwise. Cid. Cid was standing at the foot of my bed, disc in hand, frozen in surprise at my waking. How he got in or why he would even bother escaped me. Cid! Fucking Cid!

Traitor!


End Chapter Four
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I think that Vincent would be angry, not sappy, about what happened to him, and I love reading fics when he doesn’t get all teary-eyed. Out of respect for his character, I write that way as well. Thank you very much for sticking with me so far! I think those of you that red Beneath the Red know what’s coming next! XD