Hallelujah

Here you go. Short opening chapter.

Vincent is slowly disappearing. Set after the DoC.

Edited for lengthening. Wrote a chapter less than 200 words- can't have that.
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A bottle in my hand and it’s the only thing keeping my head and hands separate. A memory dazzling, shattering across the dim light of visions playing across my lap is all that keeps the bottle from falling from the floor.

How hard could it be to just… live? After all that I’ve been through, after every inch of it? There is no need for “me” any longer; I have ended the unnatural curse of my own creation. I am no longer haunted by my own ghost. I am no longer the memory of myself- I have been reinvented, if not redeemed. No longer a wail in a basement, no longer the silence in the crypt. I am a man once again. Unnaturally young, unnaturally… It is almost as though my body is not the only part of me that is stuck in that time. It is…

This bottle in my hand, how long has it been there? How long has it been since I’ve last drunk from it? Did it taste like fire, did it taste like light? Did it taste like a memory of a time when I would drink from something exactly like this, in the sunshine in front of a manor, a beautiful woman beside me? Who was she, really? Who was I?

A stupid man, a stupid boy, naive. I could almost empathize with Rufus, for his naiveté, for his fear. Oh yes, fear. He invested so much in what he did not know. It was all magic for us, for each of us, in the beginning. That’s how it must always begin. Isn’t it said that time is our greatest teacher? Well, only fitting that the most ignorant amongst us should have more time in the classroom…

Ah, but she was so pretty. Did she know, even then? Did even she know that it was true, that she was truly dabbling in the very life of Planets? Of *my* own soul? Did she know what she took from me, when I’d been shot; did she know what he would do to her? That it was not all for the greater good? No. She knew that if she had lived she could guide him to the right path. And that was *her* naiveté, then, wasn’t it? It was all magic for us, then. For each of us, though we didn’t know it. We all started on our own paths, each at a different time, each with the same notion of doing good, of helping.

But this bottle in my hand, when did I pick it up? When did I first sit? How long since my mind began on this wandering path, since I drowned myself in this waking nightmare? It’s a struggle, then, isn’t it, to think with my own mind, to think in a straight line. To keep from finding myself in that same ever-descending spiral of thought that once held me so firmly. Now that I have served my purpose, now that we have all done what we were made to do in this time, in this place, does that mean I am to dissolve into the dream again? To become, perhaps, one with the voices that always seem to guide me? The nightmares, and the dreams. Oh, just to be part of that dream, just for a moment, with the green light all around. Light.

He had been right, when he said that there was neither good nor bad. He did not know it in his ignorance, but he had been right. It would be so simple to do what I had really been intended to do, to herald the destruction of this world, but it is not about that. It has always been about that difference, there, that theory, that thought, that…

Where had my thought gone? Where have I been? Did I trail off from some greater thought? Is it the nightmare, back? The bottle is no longer in my hand, and I am no longer seated, but laying, face down, on the cold ground of this place. The voices of green light are louder, even now- I am closer to the dream than the nightmare. It must be some trick of this materia inside of me; I hear it sometimes, breathing. Cloud hears it, too, now that it is awake. He pretends he does not, but when he is near, and the voices are at their loudest, he will stop talking. He will listen.

If I asked him to come… This may very well be the last days of my life. A frightening thought. But I fade now, around the edges, now. Any given moment could be spent in any number of ways. Where did I go between the moments when I had been sitting, between the moments now that I lay on the cold ground? Where had I been? Was I here, did I fall forward? Did my eyes ever close? Or was it some greater thing, some drifting out of the world, some sliding out of focus like bad imagery?

Is this what happens to us? We characters in the great stories of the world? What becomes of us when the world is finished, when it moves inexorably onward with no heralds of death, no darkness to challenge it? What happened to Barrett, Yuffie, Tifa, Rufus, any of them? Do they all go on, somewhere, unseen, and try to live their lives as though they had never been pawns in the scheme of things, as though they had never been more than cheap pieces, buying time or sacrificed for other strategies? And who would know more about being a pawn than Cloud, than I? We do not really… even… exist.

“Cloud,” I said softly, dialing the cell phone I had purchased before everything had begun. When the ringing began, I held the little plastic thing to my ear, listening. I could hear my own breathing and for some reason the sound sickens me.

“Cloud,” he announced himself, picking up the phone. It was such a relief to hear his voice- I’d almost forgotten that he was real. “Vincent?”

“Yes,” I answered, my voice normal. Hearing it surprised me. I hadn’t thought I had a voice until now. In my surprise, however, I stopped speaking, almost listening to see if my voice returned. It did not feel a part of me.

“Where are you?” He asked after a few moments’ silence.

“I’m… not sure,” I answered truthfully. I’d been laying on the floor for two days now, breath coming and going, thoughts coming and going. I could not even be completely certain I had lain here the entire time.

“…”Quiet from Cloud, then- “You are in the City of the Ancients… What are you doing there?” I shook my head once, sharply, but he could not see. I should have known that without thinking it. I begin to think I make such moments to be certain my body is still intact, still real.

“I am not sure, Cloud.” Suspended hush between us again- do many people speak through silence? Or is it just he and I?

“I am coming to you, Vincent. I want you to stay where you are.” Sounds of Cloud preparing to leave- the jingle of keys, the sound of his clothes creaking softly.

“I can’t guarantee that,” I answered honestly. “I haven’t been here… for days…”

“I know what you are experiencing, Vincent, and I want you to focus on staying where you are. If you find yourself suddenly elsewhere, then you call me and tell me where. But don’t slip out, or I won’t be able to find you.”

“…”

“Do it Vincent. I won’t accept failure.” My eyes had slid shut, but I could hear him. I could hear my own heart beating- or is it the heartbeat of the protomateria?

“I will, Cloud.”

“Good.” And he hung up. I let the phone fall to the floor- a short fall. I tried for force my eyes open and could not. Do I still have eyes? Will he find me here, or will it be another of those gaps in my consciousness? Will I have slipped out of being?

He will find me here. I told him he would. I have not failed him yet.


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