Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Painful Miracles ❯ Crying out in pain ( Chapter 10 )

Crying out in pain

That night, Icarus awoke to loud bangs and clatter coming from downstairs. The bangs sounded like gunshots and were quickly followed by screams of pain and cries of mercy. She threw back the covers and got out of bed. She was in a white T-shirt and panties, her red bandana was gone, leaving her hair tangled mess to fall down her back. Another shot rang out into the house that made Icarus jump. The breaking of furniture and various other sounds of destruction followed. She quickly pulled on a pair of black jeans and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She grabbed her gun and sword, putting the sword on her back she loaded her gun and walked from the room.

Bullet holes lined the walls and blood splashed the walls and there were black jumpsuit clad bodies on the floor. Their blood staining the white carpet a dark red wine color. Signs of struggle were everywhere.

She kept her gun pointed in front of her as another crashing sound came and growls of a beast followed. Icarus took a mad dash down the stairs, praying her father was okay. Her body ached from the fight earlier, but she ran regardless.

When she reached the bottom step she let out a quiet scream of fear. There was a black monster with large crimson wings standing in front of her. It was holding a man by his neck, choking him. The man wasn't her father, but the beast seemed somehow familiar.

The man the monster was holding finally gave into death and died. The monster threw him into a pile of other dead men and turned to Icarus. His deep red eyes bore into her own as it walked toward her. The creature's hot breath blew on her face and she looked up at. The monster's eyes seemed oddly familiar and gentle when it looked at her, almost as if they knew each other. The creatures clawed hand came to rest lightly on her cheek as it turned into a man. The man was her father.

"Sorry if I frightened you, dear." He smiled, lightly caressing her cheek with his now human hand. The cold skin of his hand brushed her own icy skin and warmth seemed to radiate about them.

"I was not frightened, father. Only a bit confused....as I am now." Icarus told him in her quiet voice.

"There's a lot I need to tell you, but time is not on my side." Vincent said as he led her to the living room as he stepped over the broken bodies of the invading men. They both sat on the old worn couch and Vincent told her everything. About him, ShinRa, Tifa and Cloud, Sephiroth and Aeris, their journey, his disease, and most of all, he told Icarus about herself. Every secret he had ever kept from her and about, the story of every scar on her young body, was revealed that night as she sat with her father on the itchy flannel of the old couch.

Icarus sat in silence as Vincent finished, looking at him with disbelief and concern, then she spoke; "Father.... how can this be?"

"Because, Icarus, that is how it all began my dear. I'm sorry. It is all my fault. I have caused you so much pain." Vincent looked down, sorrow in his eyes. Icarus put a hand on his cheek; pulling his face toward her gently and making him look into her crimson eyes with his own.

"Father, it isn't your fault. You have always been good to me and I love you." Icarus gave him the only true smile she had ever had in her life.

Vincent also smiled, pulling Icarus into his arms and hugging her their with his arms and kissed the top of her head. "I love you too..."

Suddenly, a shot rang out from somewhere as a living room window shattered into glittering pieces on the floor. Icarus felt something warm on her chest as she hugged her father. Her fathers breath turned shallow and she pulled back from him, gasping at the blood on her white T-shirt. She looked up at her fathers face as a tear came down his cheek. One of the first and only of his life.

"FATHER!" She screamed.

"Icarus, run! Don't turn back." He told her, his body beginning to mutate into Chaos.

"But father..."

"NO! go!" He yelled and Icarus turned to run from the house as her father turned completely.

Icarus ran into the woods, doing what her father had said and didn't look back. His growls echoed out behind her and she couldn't bear to think what was happening to him at that moment in time. She could here the gunshots from the house even as they got fainter as she ran. Each one that rang out seemed to tear through her heart with a searing agony.

She dogged tree branches, running in the direction of Tseng's home. Her feet bled onto the snow as they were cut by fallen branches and sharp rocks. She could feel a bit of frostbite begin to settle in as her feet went numb. She was going to tell Tseng what was going on and ask him to help her father. She would have, but he had told her to do otherwise.

Finally she made it to Tseng's house only to find the front door wide open. She walked in, her bare feet crunching over broken glass as it cut into her already bleeding skin. She ignored the reawakened pain as the glass pierced her skin and she walked into their once nicely furnished living room only to find the walls bloodied and bodies laying on the floor. A struggle had taken place

.:They've been here too...:. She thought, hearing a noise in the fireplace. She walked over to investigate. When she got close enough something fell from the fire place and onto the floor, clouding the room with soot. After it cleared she looked down to find Tseng's body. One of arms was missing and his beautiful face was cut to pieces. He had a horrid gunshot wound to his heart.

Icarus kneeled down beside him, looking into his open wide blue eyes. She swiped her hand down his face from his forehead to close his eyes, hoping his journey to the earth would be a relief from some of the awful things that had happened to him in his life. She then stood to inspect the rest of the house. She made her way upstairs to Silo's room and pushed the door open.

On Silo's bed were the bloody, lifeless bodies of Silo and Hi-yosha. The boys laid there, locked at the hands, eyes closed and knives sticking from their backs. They died asleep as fate would favor. Icarus prayed that they went peacefully as well.

Icarus clenched her fists tightly, the sadness and pain in her heart was over whelming, but she would not cry. Tears were weakness and she was far from weak. She turned away from the bloodied bodies on Silo's bed and began running from the house and back through the black, frozen woods to her home. Her bare feet freezing on the snow and her toes tingled. Her body shivered from cold, sorrow and a bit of fear. The only thing that had ever frightened her this much was her horrid nightmares, but she would not show it.

When she finally made it home, she flung open the front door to send it crashing back to meet rudely with the wall behind it.

"Father! Father." she yelled into the gray darkness of her home. She found nothing. Only blood, bullet holes and shotgun shells. She walked up to her room to change befor setting out into the village below, hoping her father went their to seek medical help. She pulled off her now red shirt and tended to her wounded feet. She bandaged her feet and massaged a bit of heat back into her frozen toes so she could run if needed. She reached out to her gun, grabbing a small blue orb from on of the slots and holding it between her hands, over her feet. A warm greenish blue glow spread between her fingers as she spoke the soft words "Cure". The swelling instantly went away as her cuts healed up. Her toes also stopped tingling as a comforting warmth mingled beneath her skin. After she finished tending to her wounds, she braided her messy black hair, slipped on a black shirt and her trench coat before putting her gun in its holder and her sword back on her back.

She sat on her bed and slipped on her socks and boots. Before getting up to leave, she looked to her nightstand. On it was a picture of her father. She broke the frame, put the picture in her pocket and walked from her room. She walked back out from her house, stopping on the porch to pick up a red bandana. It was her fathers.

As she held it in her hand, she couldn't hold back the pain any longer. Only a few tears fell down her cheek. It was very unlike her to cry, but she couldn't stop her pain...the ache in her heart. All she had ever known and loved had just been ripped from her in less than an hour. She wanted somebody...something to comfort her in some way, but all she could come up with was a memory.

The memory was of her when she was younger, a little after Vincent had saved her from ShinRa. Something in the night had frightened her and she had gone to her fathers room for comfort. He had stay up with her all night reading to her and talking to her. That had made her feel invincible, unafraid. But what was there now? Only emptiness and loss. He had always told her to be strong, but she was only strong because of her father.

Icarus wiped her tears away and put on a face that would have made her father proud, slipped his bandana onto her head to hold back her bangs and made her decent into the village.