Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Painful Miracles ❯ Meeting Marcus Silver ( Chapter 5 )

Meeting Marcus Silver

Dante sighed putting her chin in her hand, and tapping her fingers against her cheek in boredom. She hated watching the bar. The old drunks had all the charm of a dead whore, and would drink and pass out, leaving her with nothing to do but watch Soap-Opera re-runs on the only channel that came in on the old bar T.V.

When the overly dramatic whining of some chick on the Soap-Opera ended, Dante began to doze off. During a commercial for some new kind of materia, Dante's heavy eyelids slipped closed over her Mako green orbs. Her head fell to the wooden counter top with a loud THUD, and she was out like light.

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Cold hands, always cold hands from nowhere began grabbing at her wrists and neck. The cold hands on her neck would strangle her breathless, until she was weak putty in the arms of the hands' owner. There were more than just one hand owners, and they would help the man holding her tie her down to a metal table, and begin to do horrible, ungodly, unholy, things to her. The man holding her in the beginning of the dream had become the figure of evil, manifested in to a grotesque shape of a man.

Dante had come to fear this man in all aspects of the word. Fear didn't even begin to describe how she felt about him. He would laugh evilly whenever she cried out in pain, and he would grin the devils grin, and his minions would laugh, as if pledging their undying loyalty to the twisted demon of a man. Her animosity for these amoral people would most likely wake with her, making her a bear to society, that is IF she ever woke up, and sometimes she thought she wouldn't.

In the dream Dante would beg for any release of the horrible agony these sick, demonic men were bestowing upon her. A man with sharp, demonic, red eyes and a sadistic grin would walk into the draped darkness, and the twisted man-creatures would go silent.

He was pale, almost dead looking. His eyes, which were a deep red, were sunk into his bony, black-ringed eye sockets. His hair was a matted mess of blood and puss, wildly sticking up at odd angles, but his body was the worst. He was the perfect nightmarish mad man. The kind of mad man that no horror movie could ever begin to manifest. His body was ridged, and he walked with a limp. His arms were deep purple, and rotting with puss oozing from the old wounds. His left leg was bent at an odd, backward angle, which in turn gave way to his limp. The man looked like a long since dead, but freshly resurrected corpse. He looked like death itself. If the devil had a form and figure, this would be him.

Dante cringed as the rotted face leaned toward her own, showing the grotesque features of the corpse like man. Worms and maggots had definitely had a feast on his face, some even remained there for another go at the buffet of flesh. The nose had long since rotted, leaving only two slits. Dante squirmed in disgust as the rotted, green lips began to move across the yellowish, rotting teeth, emitting a horrid odor from the mutated crevice that was the mouth.

"Death will be a horrid one for you, my dear, and by my hand, I promise." He would always say, rubbing his rotted tongue, which was filled with holes, and crawling with maggots, over his nasty teeth.

But suddenly, one of his rotted, purple, corpse like hand shot out and grab her arm, and began to shake her.

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A few drunks stirred at the scream, but then passed out again, drooling with drunkenness out the side of their open mouths, ignoring the man that was trying to shake the 17 year old bar tender into awareness, and join the rest of them in conventional society.

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"Miss! Miss! Wake up!" The corpse mouthed to Dante, maggots falling from its mouth, making Dante's stomach flop, and make her want to puke. She thrashed wildly at the corpse, not knowing that the corpse was actually a very hansom man that stood outside of her haunting dream world. One of her flaying fists right-hooked the hansom man in the face. The man grabbed Dante's wrists and shook her harshly, jogging her brain to begin to bring her to reality.

Dante stared up at him for a moment, not fully out of the dream. The darkness and the corpse faded into the light of the bar, and the hansom man. She tried hard to get a grip on reality, hoping the corpse in her dream was not just hiding, waiting for her to get alone again, or fall asleep, whichever came first. A drop of blood splashed on her hands that were now resting in the hands of the hansom man, slamming her back into reality. She looked up to see that the mans nose was bleeding quite badly.

"Are you alright?" The strange, but gorgeous man asked.

"Y-yeah" She answered, not quite sure herself. The stranger wiped his nose with a red bandanna, smiling at Dante. She was quite lovely after all. "I'm sorry" Dante said only half-heartedly. She didn't care if his nose was bleeding. She only like boys as training partners, but she didn't know that a certain someone would soon render that.

"It's alright. You did not know I was standing here. You seemed to be having a nightmare. Poor dear" He answered sweetly. His grammar was perfect, and his speech was perfect as well. All he needed to say in his sentences would be comma here and period there, and he would be a walking, talking English text book. He definitely wasn't from the slums.

"I was" Dante stated simply, her eyes looking out one of the dirty bar windows. "What do you want?" She added, not even turning to grace him with her attention.

"I was told that someone I'm looking for lives here in this bar." The man smiled wide, expecting Dante to answer the right answer.

"Really?" Dante said uninterested, and began scratching at the chipping wood of the bar counter.

"Yes, really" The man tapped his foot, a sound of annoyance in his voice .

"Who is it that you're looking for, and maybe I can help you." Dante asked in a pissed, annoyed tone, turning away to fix herself a glass of ice water.

"Tifa Lockheart, and Cloud Strife." He answered, leaning on the counter.

Dante froze as the names of her parents left his rosy red lips, dropping the glass of ice water, which shattered on the stone floor, splashing cold water and glass onto her legs. She turned to him, regardless of the blood trickling down her leg from the glass, which had penetrated her worn jeans, and stared at him with great uncertainty and distrust.

Regardless of the question he just asked, she had to marvel at him. He was tall, about 6'3, and had long, silverish -white hair which was pulled back into a neat ponytail, with only a few stray strands hanging in his beautiful, deep, sapphire eyes.

"Forgive me for not introducing myself. How rude of me! Where have my manners run off to? I am Marcus Silver, nice to meet you." He held out his hand in a polite, friendly fashion. Dante just stood there, looking at his hand as if it was the purple, maggot hand of the corpse.

"There's no one her with that name." Dante answered, turning to clean up the broken glass and water off the floor.

"Sorry to hear that, but perhaps you've seen them around Midgar?" He reached into his trench coat pocket and took out an old, worn, and faded picture, then handed it to Dante as she stood up, a dustpan of glass and ice cubes in her hand. She stared at the picture.

There were 7 people standing in the old photograph, two of the people were her parents, except they looked 17 years younger. Tifa's hair was a beautiful chestnut color, but now it was flecked with gray, and her big, perky breasts were slightly droopy, and gave her back pain. Her beautiful face, which was still beautiful was now wrinkled with worry and time.

Her eyes turned to her father, who was standing proudly, his Buster Sword over one shoulder, and his other arm around Tifa's shoulder. His blond hair was spiky and young, but was now limp and gray, and only stood up when Tifa hadn't made him brush it. His proud muscles had also wilted with time, and the arrogance of teenage-hood, and free spirited bounce of fight had left his face, as it was now slightly wrinkled. His ambitious spirit welled in the young Clouds green eyes, but now his eyes were a faded gray and the fight was gone from them now. She wasn't surprised that both her parents had worry lines and gray hair. She made them worry a lot with her arrogant ways.

Everyone looked happy, well except the tall black haired man in the back, he seemed as if he was happy, but wasn't sure how to smile about it. There was also a young brunet holding a giant star, a tall, muscular black man with a gun melded onto his arm and a red dog with the Roman numeral 13 tattooed on his arm. And the last person was standing by her father. She wore a beautiful pink dress, long twisted brown hair and had an arm slung over Dante's mother, as if they were the best of friends. She had never seen any of these people before, well, except in old news papers from 17 years ago. But her parents had never talked about them before, at least notv to her knowledge.

"No, I haven't seen any of them around here. But why are you looking for these heroes anyway?" Dante asked, handing him back the picture. "But didn't they save the world or something?"

"These are not heroes. They betrayed ShinRa. They should be punished." Marcus answered solemnly.

"They risked everything to save us from JENOVA, and you act as if they are mad men!1" Dante yelled, slamming her fist on the counter top. Dante knew a bit about her parents' past, but not that much. Whatever she knew, she had found out herself. Her parents never told her anything.

"There is usually no difference between heroes and mad men." Marcus stated simply, putting on a black cowboy hat that accented his beautiful silver hair. He tucked the picture back into his pocket, tipped his hat to Dante and turned to leave. "It was nice meeting you." He turned to look at her over his shoulder. "We will meet again, young miss Strife." And with that he walked out, the bell above the door tinkling as the door hit it.

Dante just stood behind the counter, staring after Marcus, to stunned to yell after him. .:How did he know my name? Who the hell was that guy?!:. were the only coherent thoughts in her mind.