Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Final Fantasy VII; Second Generation ❯ Chapter 7 ( Chapter 7 )

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vincent lies on his back, the cold metal-table stealing the warmth from his body while leather-straps held him in place; preventing him from moving, as he stares blankly up at the stone-ceiling with a medical-light glaring cruelly into the sensitive-cores of his eyes.

 

`Where am I?', he wondered to himself, trying to move him head to look around, but his mind lacked the ability to even move his body, `What is going on?'

 

“That incompetent woman was able to do what my greatness couldn't?”, an annoyingly high-pitched male voice shouts, to the left of him, but he couldn't turn his head to look, “To bring the dead back to life, that just isn't possible for a stupid assistant to do when the world's greatest genius can't do it!”

 

(A/N: We can tell who the person speaking is from the ego!)

 

His chest hurt with every breath he took in and expelled from his lungs, he tries to force himself to say something, but his throat and lips refused to form words. Then the man to his left leans off him to reach up to turn the light above him off, as his eyes un-noticeably widen as he found himself staring up at the face of the man who had stolen his life from him; Hojo. But as his murderer clicked off the light, a silent scream forms in his throat at the sight that was being reflected on the metal of the lamp, a large Y-mark incision donned his chest, the skin was pulled back and a section of his ribs had been removed; he could see the missing section of ribs resting on a medical-tray beside him, he could see his own lungs inflating and deflating of air, and the beats of his own heart speeding up from terror at what he is seeing.

 

Only then, did a scream tear it's way from his throat.

 

 

 

 

----------------------

 

 

 

 

 

Vincent bolts up right in his bed, cold-sweat drenching every inch of his skin as he pants for breath, “A dream…?”, he gasps, covering his mouth with his hand, “No… a nightmare…”, he whispers, rubbing along the spot where the Y-mark incision had been; long since healed 50 years ago, yet continued to itch whenever he was reminded of it.

 

He glances over to his right to see Zack still asleep, tangled up among his blankets on the bed beside Vincent's, “Just like his father… sleeps through anything unless it's a danger to him and his friends…”, he mutters, then the image from his nightmare flashes in his mind, “I need a drink…”, he sighs, rubbing his brow with the back of his black cotton-gloved left hand, as he slowly climbed off of the bed, pulling his black leather pants onto his body and slips his boots on, before heading out the door; closing it silently behind himself, and exits the inn to walk towards the bar in just his black leather pants, his metal-clad boots, and black tank-top shirt he was sleeping in, leaving his `Cerberus', cloak, head-band, and metal-gantlet in his room.

 

Upon entering the bar, he could see that it was pretty much empty except for a few regulars passed out at the bar, `desolate' was the word he'd prefer and liked it this way, he wouldn't be pulled into a conversation he didn't want to participate in. Taking a seat in a booth being dimly-lit by a dying bulb near the back of the bar, the bartender approached him, partially glad that a traveler had entered so he won't have to deal with the passed out drunks for a few minutes.

 

“What do you want to drink, bub?”, he questions.

 

“Whatever you have that is strong enough to make someone forget their nightmares, if you please…”, Vincent replies, putting his right hand to his scrunched-up brow.

 

“Coming right up”, the bartender says, walking away and returns with a bottle of a blood-red liquid called; `Demon-Shots', and a shot-glass, “My famous `Demon-Shots', said to be able to knock the devil himself unconscious”

 

“Demon-Shots… How appropriate…”, he dryly chuckles, as he pours it into the glass and downs it, the burning-taste of it singeing his throat as it went down and pleasantly-scorches his stomach, before pouring another glass and repeats, until he had managed to drink a quarter of the bottles contents.

 

“Whoa, most people pass out after drinking that much of the stuff!”, the bartender gasps in surprise.

 

“I'm not even buzzed…”, Vincent flatly states.

 

“Care if I join you?”, a woman's voice asks from beside him, causing him to turn his head to look and sees Yoko standing there wearing what appeared to be a black sleeveless-dress underneath a dark-pink jacket; but it was her nightgown, with her hair braided behind her, and a bottle of `Plum-Wine' and glass in her hands.

 

“I don't see why not…”, he mutters, as she sits down on the other side of the table across from him, “It's the middle of the night, what are you doing up so late…?”

 

“It's kind of hard to sleep when someone ends up screaming out in their sleep from a nightmare…”, she replies.

 

“I woke you up…? Sorry…”

 

A tense moment of silence passes between the two as Vincent downs down another two `Demon-Shots'.

 

“I know you don't trust me…”, Yoko says, breaking the silence.

 

“Yeah…? How'd you tell…?”

 

“I can feel it in your aura…”, she replies, “If someone knows how to feel for it, that is…”

 

“You're hiding something, and I don't like it…”, he states, glaring into her reddish-brown eyes with his blood-red ones.

 

“Everybody has secrets that they hide from other people… It's that right, Mr. Former-Turk…?”

 

“Jessie told you, didn't she?”

 

“All she said was that you had been a Turk in the past and that your life is pretty screwed-up…”, she shrugs, “And that you was one of the original nine-heroes; along side her parents, that destroyed Sephiroth 20 years ago…”

 

“Hmm…”, he grumbles.

 

“There is something else that I didn't want to say in front of the teenagers…”, she began.

 

“Huh…?”

 

“My adopted-mother; Saiyuki Kuro, the reason why she didn't return from the Northern Cave is because, she had been killed by Sephanie…”

 

“You don't seem too sad over her death…”

 

“You see, Saiyuki was already on borrowed time when it happened… She had a tumor growing in her brain that would've eventually kill her, I'm kind of glad that her death had been quick and painless, compared to the long and agonizing death that awaited her…”, she answers, a small painful smile gracing her lips.

 

“What about your real mother?”

 

“Dead… she had died before Meteor happened…”

 

“And your father…?”

 

“I don't know… I've never met him…”, she says, looking across the table at Vincent, “He doesn't even know I exist…”

 

“Hmm…”, he mutters incoherently, the booze finally making him feel numb after drinking half of the bottle.

 

“What I can tell just by looking at you, that your left-arm is made of flesh and bone…”, she says.

 

“Huh?”

 

“It was a debate going on between the others, was the metal on your left-arm just a gantlet you wore over a normal flash and blood hand and forearm…”, she replies, “Or if you lost everything from the elbow down and it was a metal-limb attached to your arm…”

 

“Who won the bet…?”

 

“You saw through that, didn't you?”, she laughs, “Me and Ruvie… Nicole didn't even want to guess…”

 

“Zack and Jessie lost, huh?”

 

“Yep!”

 

“How much…?”

 

“100 gil or a free meal at their mom's bar, their choice…”

 

“Sounds like they inherited their father's luck on betting…”, he scoffs, his cheeks becoming flushed from intoxication.

 

“Light-weight…”, she jokes, poking him in the head.

 

“Light-weight…? You're the light-weight for drinking `Plum-Wine'…”, he stammers.

 

“Fine… You drink the rest of my Plum-Wine and I'll drink the rest of your Demon-Shots, then we'll see who's the light-weight!”, she challenges, shoving the half-filled bottle of alcohol to him.

 

“You're on…”, he agrees, pushing the half-full bottle of Demon-Shots to her.

 

 

 

 

----------------------

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Ten Minutes of Drinking Later-

 

 

 

 

 

“You see…I am not…a light-weight…”, Yoko slurs, an empty-bottle of Demon-Shots laying on it's side in front of her as she points at Vincent, her face completely flushed from the booze.

 

“So…”, Vincent slurs back to her, his chin resting on top of the table, “It just proves…that you can…hold your liquor…”

 

“Bar-keep…another bottle…of Demon-Shots…”, she manages to shout before her head falls onto the table, passed out in a drunken stupor.

 

“So, do you want another bottle?”, the bartender asks.

 

“No, we better be going… we have to start traveling in the morning…”, Vincent drunkenly replies, wobbling to his feet and hefting Yoko up to lean her against himself, her arm draped over his shoulders, “Thanks for the drinks…”

 

“No problem…”, he says, “Those two are going to have one hell of a hangover unless they took something for it before hand…”, he mutters to himself.

 

Vincent slowly stumbles his way back to the inn with the drunken dead-weight of Yoko hanging off his shoulder.

 

“Who's a light-weight…?”, he questions the unconscious woman, as he opens the door to her room and flops her onto her bed.

 

She immediately snuggles up against her pillow as Vincent carefully pulls the blankets up to cover her, “Daddy…”, she mutters in her slumber.

 

“Sweet dreams…”, Vincent whispers, patting the top of her head, glad she was peacefully dreaming of the father she never knew, before retiring to his own room and bed. Removing his boots and pants from himself, he lies down onto his bed and closes his eyes, hoping the alcohol was enough to keep his nightmares away.

 

 

 

 

----------------------

 

 

 

 

 

 

-The Next Morning-

 

 

 

 

 

The sunlight streams in through the window, but Vincent didn't appreciate the day-light as he buried his head underneath his pillows, groaning in pain from the brightness even in the darkness under the pillows.

 

“Who's the light-weight, now?”, Yoko's voice taunts, from the doorway.

 

He peeks out from under the pillows as much as he dared to, his blood-shot crimson eyes glaring at the woman laughing at him without so much as a headache, “You had the same amount of alcohol as me… Why don't you have a hangover…?”

 

She chuckles as she holds up a bottle of pills, “Hangover-Away, take one before drinking to prevent a hangover or take one in the morning to get rid of one…”, she replies, shaking the bottle to make the pills rattle around inside the plastic-bottle and making Vincent groan from the noise, “You want one?”, she sees a movement from under the pillows that looked like a nod to her, “Well, get your head out from under there, so you can catch the bottle”, she says.

 

Vincent slowly withdraws his head from underneath his pillows, revealing the worst looking case of bed-head one could have ever seen, despite having long hair half of his hair was sticking up in cow-licks with random strands of hair going ever which way, “Looks like someone also needs to comb his hair too…”, she adds, trying the stifle a laugh.

 

“Just give me the pills…”, he painfully groans.

 

“Fine, fine… here”, she replies, tossing the bottle at him and it bounces off of his forehead, “Oops… Sorry…”, she mutters in apology.

 

“It's alright…”, he grumbles, as he rubs the spot where the bottle hit his head as he reaches over to grab the bottle off the bed, opening it and popping a pill into his mouth, swallowing it without any water.

 

“Get dressed, pack your stuff, and meet us in the front-lobby”, she says, turning to leave, “And don't go so hard on the booze next time, I'd like to talk to you next time over some sake…”, she adds with a smile, closing the door behind herself.

 

Vincent could only blink in response as he tried to make his brain function in the haze left from the alcohol.

 

 

 

 

----------------------

 

 

 

 

 

 

-The Inn Lobby-

 

 

 

 

 

“What is taking Vincent so long?”, Jessie asks, impatiently tapping her foot.

 

“Give him a break; he has a hang-over”, Yoko replies, as she walks into the room with her bag slung over her shoulder.

 

“Vincent got drunk last-night? When did that happen?”, Zack questions.

 

“You didn't notice, because you're such a sound-sleeper”.

 

“So you were up?”, Nicole says.

 

“Yeah…”

 

Vincent groans as he slowly walks into the lobby, holding a hand to his head, the pills got rid of his sensitivity to light and sound, but the headache was still present.

 

“Look who finally decided to join us?”, Jessie mocks.

 

“Just leave me alone…”, he growls, not in the mood to be dealing with her attitude.

 

“Somebody woke up the wrong side of the bed this morning…”, she retorts, “Coming on, we need to head to Junon!”, she adds, walking out of the inn followed by her brother, Nicole, and Pixie.

 

“The pills not working so well?”, Yoko asks.

 

“You can tell…?”

 

“Yeah, you look like crap. I think you should take a second pill”.

 

“I think so too…”

 

“Also, you did a sloppy job on putting your head-band on”, she laughs, reaching up and standing on her tippy-toes; with her being 5'8” and him 6'2”, to reach his head to loosen to piece of cloth and re-wrap it around his head, “There, that looks better”, she says with a smile.

 

Vincent just stares down at her, blinking in surprise.

 

“Oh, sorry… I shouldn't have done that without asking…”, she meekly apologizes, quickly turning around so he couldn't see the blush consuming her face.

 

“Don't worry about it…”, he replies, starting to walk past her only to stop to look at her over his shoulder, “I was never good with putting the thing on in the first-place…”, he adds, allowing a small smile grace his lips.

 

“I think that's the first time you've smiled since we've met…”

 

`More like the first smile in 17 years…', he thinks.

 

 

 

 

 

-------------------------------------------------------------