Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Property Tag ❯ Property Tag ( Chapter 1 )

Title: Property Tag
Author/Artist: GuiltyRed
Rating: PG13
Warnings: lab scene
Word count: 299
Summary: Hojo gives Vincent a little something to remember him by.
Prompt: Hojo/Vincent: Body piercing - "let me give you a reminder of what you have lost"




All I am is gone.

No, that's not quite right, is it?

All I was, all I have ever known, has been taken from me.

That dry, dirty laugh - the sound of a madman who thinks he is a god - it falls flat on the walls of my prison, falls harsh against my ears.

I am still too human to get the joke.

“She certainly did pick a superb specimen,” Hojo drawls, lingering over each word in his appreciation as his long, thin fingers prod the flesh that had once been mine.

He raises my left hand. Muscles no longer controlled by my mind follow in slack obedience, allowing him to lift and turn and examine. “The regeneration of tissue is proceeding quite a lot faster than I had dared hoped,” he murmurs, pressing hard into the tendons and bones that once firmed a gunslinger's hand. That hand had been shattered as part of the experiment, to see whether or not accelerated healing would be feasible in the field.

Ah, so he hasn't taken everything.

He has kindly left me pain.

Hojo selects a chrome-shiny device from a tray and sets my hand between its jaws.

I cannot flinch, I cannot look away.

I cannot scream as metal pierces my flesh, clamping through to meet in the middle with a solid click.

When he moves the device away, a weight remains, pinned through the once-thick muscle between forefinger and thumb.

“There. `Project: V' is official now.” Hojo leans closer and smiles. “Even if she were able to free you, all the world would know you as Shinra property and nothing more.”

A bitter, unvoiced laugh catches in my chest. I'm still wrong; I realize I have much more than pain left to me as the tears begin to flow.