Title: If You Had Waited...

By: Karasu Kizu

Rating: You decide

Contents: Dark, Vincent's POV, shonen-ai/yaoi implications, suicide, death

Disclaimers apply

Notes: Dark, it's my mood. More notes at the end. ((aren't I articulate?))

August 17, 2001

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

I wanted to tell you something... something very important. I could never speak those words, however, once I saw the two of you leaning against one another while you slept. Obviously you already had someone you loved, and I would not butt in; your face held too much sadness most of the time as it was.

Now I see I was wrong - so very, very wrong. You hid it so well... could you tell no one about this...? Did you have to keep it inside yourself...?

...I was - and am - the same, I suppose. No one was ever to know I loved you, and no one was to know who you loved either, were they? We are fools, the both of us, to keep things so very hidden...

"Vincent!"

"Why the puzzled Expression?"

"You were always so cold, I didn't think you'd come back."

"Cool? I guess that's how I am, I'm sorry."

My mask was perfectly in place, all the time, wasn't it? No one could see through it... God I was an idiot... But I had thought hiding would save me the pain from before - of losing the person I loved and...

I was wrong. You were wrong. The whole damn world just is wrong. What is ever right? The beautifully smiling face of a young woman even as she was murdered; the man finding himself inhuman and his strong wish for everyone's destruction; my time in ageless sleep; the young warrior of Wutai ending up on a mission to save the world; a girl who could never express her feelings for you; and you... you killing him... How could you bear it? How could you bear to push yourself to the limit and go through with it?

The evidence is here laying in front of me... this... this letter... Everything went so wrong... Your ice-cold hand should answer all my questions. Your ice-cold hand stiffened loosely around a shard of reflective glass - stained with dried crimson-brown. It's too familiar, that color, far too familiar...

I still stare, occasionally looking away from your frozen face to the stained letter by your hand. You were crying... even as you "set yourself free" you were crying... I wish you'd spoken to me, said anything. But no, I hid myself too well... far too well... You knew I was going to visit her cave for a while, you knew me enough to tell that I needed that parting with her. But just because I'm leaving her, does it mean I lose you too? Did it have to be like this?

Just a few hours... just a few hours longer and I could have gotten here and you could have told me... told me anything at all. Oh God why didn't I open up to you more? I'm so, so sorry...

I finally stand and realize I must have been kneeling here for hours that never registered in my mind. I look down at your letter again, eyes glued to one line and then the next. I know what I will do now... there's no question about it...

I find new paper and the pen you must have used... without thinking my hand moves and sketches out the letters to form words, words that I can't even recognize in my light-headed state. My letter stays on the desk but yours I fold into my pocket.

When I lift your stiff, cold body the shard eases from your hand and dead blood rises to the surface and remains there within the tiny cuts. For a long while I can only stare at you - at your face. Did you know you are more beautiful than my former love? Did you know that when I found you, the expression on your face would be the same as that girl's who saved all of us...?

I'm walking now, leaving the old room and crossing creaking floorboards. All monsters have left this place except ourselves... Well, I will take care of that for us.

I pass through the doors, and then through the gates, and as I leave town and head into the mountains I can feel the eyes following me with curiosity and nervousness. After those experiments, no one could be close to me. Only you and a few others who shared our ventures dared to come close... I never let you in too far, however, now did I?

We wind around the mountain trail, walking, walking, walking. Breathe in, breathe out, breath in, out, in, out... Steadily. One, two, three, one, two, three. It's almost like a dance - a waltz - this life we have lived. I'm going back to the first position - where everything started, where life went so wrong for the world - for you... and for him...

I stop before the old reactor, staring at the wide open doors and the limbs of a few bushes crawling around the metal at the bottom of the stairs. There were so many who supposedly died here, weren't there? You thought you'd die just inside those doors... but, like myself, you were taken in to play guinea pig... Heh. We had a lot in common; I wish you knew that.

The wind whistles by, calling softly. I turn and begin walking away from the reactor, moving past other walls of rocks before I come to an overhang where I can stand and look over the world. Distantly I see the old tower of Rocket Town, and in the other direction your hometown is quite small...

I hold you close, resting my cheek against your cold skin. I wish you'd waited...

Carefully I kiss your forehead - the first and final kiss all in one - and clasp your hands together as I near the edge. Looking down there is nothing to see but fog - but perhaps it is clouds? Perhaps we have ascended so high that we look down upon the Planet? No, of course not... but it is better to think of it that way... to think that you won't be falling... only...

Only gliding back to where you belong.

Farewell. I loved you, I loved you for so very long... I should have told you.

You're disappearing over the edge - dropping down, down, down... a spiral of wind and fog cloak your descent...

I turn my back to the edge and stare through the clusters of rock to see the reactor - old and dead. This is a fitting way to end things... I only hope you agree...

The edge is just beneath my heels... automatically my heart thrums a bit harder, echoing in my head. My arms cross, my eyes close...

I step back...

...falling into oblivion...

Good bye, Cloud.

~ Owari ~

Notes: Dark and fits my mood. One of the dream sequences from Twig's fic - "A Long Hard Road" - kept nagging at me the past few days. The line of "maybe I'll fly" - Cloud's reply to Zack's worry about Cloud being at the edge of the cliff. The thought's been stuck in my mind, I'm not even sure what triggered it, and so I decided that since I was doing a suicide fic I might as well include that sort of idea... Hmm... What do you suppose it's like... to fly like that...?

Oh yeah, the earlier quotes are from the end of disc 2 of the game when everyone shows up on the Highwind. I found some interesting observations about Vincent while I played today.....