Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Science With a Side of Gunsmoke ❯ Science With a Side of Gunsmoke ( Chapter 1 )

"You know, Vinny, you really need to loosen up."

The young brunette looked up from his status report and frowned. He wondered briefly at the nickname she had used, and then spoke softly, his baritone creating a pleasant contrast to her feminine soprano. "This, from a scientist?"

She sniffed daintily and crossed her arms at him before crossing the room. Her thin fingers grasped at the paper he had been scrawling upon and plucked it from his grasp, but no sound of protest escaped him. He simply scowled lightly in disapproval and waited patiently for its return, taking in her appearance for the duration of the abrupt evaluation. She was short, a great deal more so than he, but carried herself as if she were a hundred feet tall. Her long, russet hair was tied back into a messy ponytail, winking at him with its goldenrod highlights. Lost in his admiration, he was somewhat startled when his report was thrust under his nose. "Don't you `scientist' me, Vincent Valentine. You're becoming irritatingly drab."

A fire sparked and sizzled in her beautiful blue eyes. For a moment, he was a screaming mass of utter longing for the woman, but it passed just as quickly. His eyelashes brushed each other as he blinked at her apathetically. "'Passion is thine enemy,'" he recited mechanically.

Frustrated, she clasped her hands behind her back. The action pulled her pristine laboratory coat taut around her athletic build, and Vincent was both baffled and impressed at the scientist's ability to retain her striking beauty despite the unflattering outfit. His awe was short-lived, however, as he suddenly found his gun-calloused hands cradled within hers. Hypodermic needles filled with new, fantastic materials clinked in her left pocket, and the soft, musical tones seemed deafening in the awkward silence. "Vincent, please," she pleaded with him, putting forth a valiant effort to keep her composure, "just one night. Leave your job behind and be human again."

Raising his cinnamon eyes to her, he frowned deeply and shook his head. Although her proposal mildly offended him, he let nothing show past the disdain in his eyes. Her hands were cool against his palms, and he caressed them gently with his fingertips. "Lucrecia," he murmured, "my job isn't merely a career. It's become my lifestyle. It's who I am."

She pulled her hands from his stubbornly and turned her back, nearly quivering with the tension wracking her frame. "It's consuming you, Vince. You're becoming a machine. A killing machine!"

He sighed deeply, then, and stood, brushing the soft wrinkles out of his uniform. Though the temperature of the laboratory they were currently occupying was warm enough to sit comfortably in light clothing, he had always felt a bit naked when his uniform was incomplete. His starched, white shirt and crimson tie were immaculate, as was the navy suit that concealed his body. Stepping up behind her silently, he grazed her shoulders with his hands before pulling her into a gentle embrace. Their temples pressed together, and he could smell the light fragrance of her shampoo, kissing his senses with a potpourri of warm vanilla and passionflower. Her words had stung him but he was left floundering for a way to console her nonetheless. "My beautiful Lucrecia," he purred, and her shoulders drooped much like a wilting lily, "though I may have transformed into the heartless monster awakened within me, I shall never become so cold and callous as to abandon my devotion to you."

The stale, recycled air washed over them from the ducts above, and Vincent could feel the butt of the gun tucked comfortingly under his arm dig into his armpit. Lucrecia shuddered and leaned forward, bowing her head submissively. Concerned, the assassin cocked his head and narrowed his eyes at the single, warm tear that marred the soft skin of the scientist. Her eyelids slid shut and her body expelled a tired sigh, and for the first time in many years, Vincent was afraid. "Why are you so confusing?"

He opened his mouth to answer, but failed to reply with an appropriate justification. Momentarily puzzled at the sudden prompt, he stuttered. "...Pardon me?"

She turned to him. "You're confusing. Why? Why do you say one thing and perform differently?"

"I don't know what you're-"

"Oh, Vincent," she was just short of yelling at him, now, and he frantically sought to calm her, "you stand there and spout this nonsense of your devotion to me, and yet you can't even take me on a proper date! You speak of passion being the enemy, and yet you've fallen in love with me! I don't understand!"

He bowed his head, ashamed of the accusations. Indeed, it was true that he had gone and done the unthinkable, and the defiance burned within him at the recollection of his lectures. Passion is thine enemy, emotion your damnation. The tips of his midnight hair brushed against his cheekbones, hiding his disgrace, as he reluctantly narrated to himself his endless lessons. Thou shall never, under any circumstance, become emotionally involved. His love for the trembling woman in front of him and his devotion to the career he had been forced upon battled viciously within his heart, and he found himself at a frightening loss as to what to do. "I'm sorry, Lucy," he whispered to her, hoping that if he dropped his voice level, she may as well, "I suppose I'm simply a lost cause."

"I'm offering myself to the Jenova project."

At this, his head snapped up and his eyes blazed with confusion and anger. "What?"

"You're not changing my mind."

"Lucrecia-"

"No, Vincent! Stop it!" She backed away from him with unsteady but deliberate steps and stopped abruptly as she bumped into the lab table, upsetting a few instruments that had been quietly observing their argument. "Stay away from me!"

He froze immediately with his feet spread inches apart and one hand suspended in the air before him. His mind raced and his heart felt as if it would shatter should it beat any harder, and his relaxation exercises seemed to fail him utterly. "Lucrecia," he began, but he was at a loss for words. He knew the horrors of the Jenova project. Once the project itself was begun, she would be required to produce a son, unto whom hundreds of horrific scientific experimentations would be performed. Furthermore, and perhaps worse yet (he mentally kicked his selfish desires), the boy would certainly not be his own. His body relaxed in defeat. "Lu, why," he licked his lips, and tried once more to force the words from himself, "did I do this to you?"

She paused in her hasty reply, obviously not having expected his guilty query. "What?"

He stepped forward, minutely pleased that she did not shy from his touch when he reached out to cup her chin. "Is this my fault? Have I become such a terrible thing, such an anomaly as to push you into the arms of that-that jerk?"

"You're jealous."

He glared at her, insulted. "I'm concerned."

"'Passion is thine enemy'," she mocked.

"Lucrecia-"

"What if you did?"

He flinched. "I-"

"What if, Vincent Valentine, I was to tell you that I think Professor Hojo happens to be twice the man you are, regardless of your profession, hmm?"

The assassin paled, and he began to see why he had been taught such lessons so thoroughly. "You're not saying-"

"Yes, Vincent. I've found someone else. Hojo."

"That's ridiculous!"

"Is it? I'm ridiculous now?"

He bit his bottom lip and paused to compose himself. When he spoke once more, his voice was the cool, calculated murmur he had begun with. "Lucrecia, really. The man is insane."

"He is not."

"What does he have that I don't?"

"A decent smile. Personality. Friends."

"He doesn't have friends." He couldn't help the envious hurt that had crept into his tone.

"You're jealous. It shows."

Finally losing his temper, Vincent clenched his fists at his sides and stood rigid, looking much like a wounded tiger. His eyes were nearly black with vehemence, his pupils wide, and he ignored the bangs that had fallen haphazardly into his eyes. "So what if I am? Can you really blame me, Lu? I love you! I want to spend the rest of my life with you; I want to lay with you on cold nights and hold you, protect you, and you're leaving me for a lunatic that's going to end up killing you! Of course I'm jealous!"

"I'm doing it in the name of science, Vincent! It's going to help society!"

"You're blind and stupid if you believe the lies he's feeding you."

"What do you have against him?"

"He's taking you away from me!"

"There you go again! You say that you can't become involved but you're not willing to give me up! News flash, Mr. Valentine, I was never yours to begin with." Her words were acid upon his heart, and he seemed to shrink under her attack. "A fling, Vince, that's all we had. And I'm sorry if you were in love with me, but I only adored your pretty face!" At this admittance, she recoiled slightly, as if she realized that she had said just a bit too much. When she caught the betrayal in the assassin's eyes, she regretted her words immediately. "...I'm sorry, Vincent. I didn't mean it."

He shook his head in disbelief, or perhaps denial. He couldn't particularly deduce as to which it was. His lectures clanged a mocking chorus in his mind, and he instantly regretted ever having taken the application for a bodyguard. Her beautiful, wavy hair tempted him, and her eyes beckoned with their sweet hesitation, and he knew then that she was lying. She had meant it. "You..." His vocabulary failed him terribly.

"Vincent," she cooed, and reached out to stroke his arm, but he scrambled out of her reach.

"No. Lucrecia, my heart will be yours from now until the day that I die, be it by age or by hostile fire. But I can't continue like this with you with the knowledge as to what you're doing to yourself, and what he's doing to you. You're going to have to choose, Lucy. You can either stay with me and live, if not happily then at least able to continue your experiments and create wonderful things for the world, or you can go to him and become pregnant not only with a demon child, but also with the guilt that you have broken another's heart. Which will you choose, my beautiful scientist? A life of contentment, or that of a pathetic laboratory specimen?"

His eyes were fixated upon the pearly teeth that had caught a petal soft lip in between them. Though he already knew the answer, which she would choose, he had to hear it.

"I..." He could see the obvious regret shining in her eyes, and despite her terrible rejection, he itched to hold her in his arms. "Vincent, I'm so sorry. I've already begun the preparatory injections."

The venomous words poured from her mouth like a liquid curse, washing over him and freezing his blood to crystals of...what? Terror? Disgust? He began to back away from her, lips slightly parted and all words catching at the lump in his throat. "So," he finally rasped as he hit the far table across from her, "this is how it's going to be, then."

"Please don't say it like that."

"What shall I say it like, then, so that the silver lining may soften the blow? You're making the biggest mistake of your life, Lu."

She stepped toward him slowly, fearful that he may bolt once more, and wondered at the ironic role flip they had undergone. He was staring at her with his beautiful doe eyes, and she raised a hand to delicately trace his high cheekbones and youthful flesh. His hair, blacker than midnight, had fallen around his head in a shaggy sprawl, and the forlorn appearance it created nearly made her change her mind on the spot. However, as he closed his eyes and turned his face from her, allowing her a final admiration of his aesthetic profile, she knew they would never be together again. The man was beautiful, devastatingly so, and she was throwing him away like used (and perhaps broken, she added to herself) equipment. However, though the regret at the loss of his perfect body and exciting career ate at her continuously, no matter the effort she put forth, she couldn't quite come to believe that she had ever properly loved him. "That may be so, Vinny," she smiled softly at him, but it brought only more pain to his eyes, "but perhaps my mistakes will bring about another's success."

There was a weighty silence that fell upon them, and, after a few minutes, Vincent spoke. His voice was soft, and his eyes were averted; his body spoke of defeat. "You always were devoted to your work, Lucrecia. It would be a terrible thing for me to do should I come between you and your lust for science. However," he rose his eyes to hers and pleaded with her silently, hoping that he could at least charm her into agreement one final time, "promise me this. Promise me that if things go wrong, you'll let me save you."

She chuckled lightly and kissed him, keeping the exchange chaste and somehow nostalgic, despite their relationship having ended mere minutes beforehand. "Alright." Having said so, she turned, then, and walked out the silent, white door, leaving the assassin standing in the middle of the alien environment.

Vincent stared after her for a long while after she had left. He hadn't been aware of the time since he had begun arguing with her, but he didn't care to look. Long, slender fingers picked a pack of expensive clove cigarettes from his jacket pocket, the smell as comforting to him as...well, he wouldn't think of her anymore. There were strict rules in the science center about smoking, specifically in laboratories such as the one he was in, but he completely disregarded them and lit the cancer stick. The end illuminated to a fiery orange-red before settling to a quiet glow, and only then did he realize that she had never said the words, "I promise."