Forbidden Love
The Story of Vincent Valentine Chapter 10

The Last of the Pieces

By Leok

    Vincent's "life" was madness.  He was a beast.  He stormed from the mansion in a rage.  Without realizing it, he killed, in cold blood, human life.  He ate warm flesh, and drank spilled blood.  Confused, disoriented, and heartbroken, he returned to the mansion.  It was in shambles.  It looked as though a bomb had been set off.  (Many bombs, actually.)  "Did you have fun, my pet?"

    Vincent whirled around.  Hojo!

    "Did you enjoy your killing spree?"

    Vincent opened his mouth- no, his maw, and moved his serpentine tongue around his fanged teeth.  "HRRRRROOOJJOOO!!"  He screamed.

    The scientist's mouth opened.  "H-he remembers!"

    Vincent swept a clawed hand out at the real monster, and lost his balance, falling to the ground.

    "Pathetic!  We'll lock you up, where you can't hurt me."
    As it had happened years ago, when he was first captured by the Shinra, the tranquilizer dart blacked Vincent out, and he remembered no more.

***


    Reality, Fate, Coincidence, Time.  They mean, to different people, different things.  To Vincent, they were tools of his torture.  A sickness overtook him, a darkness, for he was all but blind.  He was weak, locked in this room, this catacomb.  He believed lies.

    He "knew" that all three of the scientists had been experimenting on humans.  He "knew" that there had always been a rift between himself and Lucrecia, because she was, in science, as cold as Hojo.  Evil, horrendous nightmares were his only life, asleep in a casket, robed in clothes reminiscent of his old life, before Shinra.  The truth, and "the truth" became mangled even more so.

    All he knew, was that his love for Lucrecia, his forbidden love, was all he had left for good.  And that Hojo's acts of cruelty were his only fuel for evil.  All the rest, was himself...  And the truth.

    And so Vincent was left, in his own madness, for many a year.

***


    Vincent was not the only one who suffered.  Gast returned to Ifalna, and they had a child.  He had run from Hojo for years, as a result of their arguments over the fate of Lucrecia's child.  He'd hid from the world, before deciding to settle back at home, the last place Hojo would expect him to be.  Hojo finally found him, years later.  Gast died, and Ifalna was captured, along with her child, a little spark of light in a dark world...  Her name was Aeris.

***


    Hojo was happy.  He had Jenova.  Lucrecia, was not.  Jenova had given her eternity, and Hojo had given her no one left to spend it with.  Hojo had told her all about the fire Vincent had set in the mansion, upon coming to consciousness.  She had helped Hojo prepare the body, and they buried it in the Mansion's basement.  Then she'd left, and found a small cave, a place where she could mourn her lost love, and her lost child, taken by the scientists.  Her Sephiroth.

    And so the world turned, as more failures and successes filled it.  But never, ever, was there a sadness such as the Forbidden Love of Vincent Valentine.

The End

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