Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Venus ❯ Green With The Scenery ( Chapter 3 )

Reno tried to stop us entering the room, chatting to Vincent, but found his comments being brushed off. Tifa dragged the red head off with a glint in her eye; I hope Zack had enough sense to stay hidden.

 

So this is what I have to resort to in order to get a fix.

 

I was excited and confused with naturally no idea of what I'd gotten myself into.

 

Swallow your pride, it's not that difficult to comprehend.

 

If I were to choose how to end my life, it would be in isolation. I'd go out in style, ala Big Edie. Just me and my innumerable cats - slowly watching my world decompose from the inside out. No way would I choose to be chopped into pieces by a man with no self control.

 

This is what you want? That sweet sting of emptiness…

 

Or maybe I'm just too nihilistic.

 

There only one way to get it.

 

Or maybe that's just me procrastinating.

 

The pills will make everything better.

 

Probably both.

 

Don't frown like that, you've done this before.

 

What I hate about my line of work is that it taints everything that should be sacred. It mass produces intimacy and sells it by the hour.

 

Just do what you've been trained to do.

 

I'd come to hate being kissed - your first kiss embodies so much suppressed sexuality and desire that seems to diminish with each kiss that follows. I had been running dry for a while now.

 

Push the button.

 

Love? Maybe I can feel it, maybe I can't. For too many days, hours, months, years now I've felt like I've been shrunk and wrapped in plastic. The more and more I remember these events, I feel like I'm going crazy, but I'm told that 99.9% of my insanity is just plain, old melodrama. For that I'm ungrateful.

 

Dizzying high.

 

But I doubt you're reading this just to hear my musings- no, you want to know what happened when Vincent pushed me though my curtain, chuckled at the mess of belongings on my couch and floor and then pushed me carelessly on to my bed. No?

 

Freedom.

 

That will just have to wait. Vincent Xavier Valentine (respectfully the first) began making an input in the drug scene in 1960; first he started by single-handedly butchering three drug lords, putting himself at the head of their monarchy. Still with me? That was forty-eight years ago. Seventeen years later, he would have a son, also named Vincent. Respectfully the second, that is. Maybe the son was just uncreative; maybe it was the father's dying wish. Both had the same goal- to restore their empire.

 

“Enough with the play acting, Kitten.” He sounded amused; it caused me to wonder. “I want this to be like your first time all over again, I want you to squirm, I want you to struggle. That's a good boy.”

 

I lay on my mattress, which was now as bare as my body, and he hovered over me, leaning above, a knee between my legs and a hand reaching… What happened next… I don't know. The usual. I hope you don't expect me to graphically describe how I fucked him, for you are going to be disappointed, because yes, we did have sex, but no, I'm not going to get into the gory details. Go rent some seedy porn flick, or go jack off to some internet smut- if you want to know about me in action, you will have to pay. And then maybe I might re-enact the scenario with you.

 

Past the aggression, past the climax, past the heated bodies, he lay next to me on my bed, reclothed and silent. But not for long.

 

Victory is at hand.

 

“Give me your hand,” Valentine ordered. I placed it within his pale grasp; I'd do anything right now, the rustle of plastic baggies in his pockets were enough to drive me insane. I craved for materia.

 

I can almost feel it now.

 

“Do you know what palmistry is?” I shook my head. “Palmistry is the study of hands, the lines, and the signs those lines tell us. Some people believe that your palm is the blue print of your life.”

 

I stared at him; why couldn't he quit the foreplay and just give me what I wanted?

 

Don't play with me.

 

“You write with this hand, don't you?” I nodded. He ran his long pale, pianist fingers up and down my hand; I shivered. “It can tell me everything there is to know about you… Cloud.”

 

My eyes widened- how the hell did he know what my name was?

 

“Lines on your hands will never erase, some deep, some shallow, they will always remain.” The son of my childhood hero was a goddamn-mother-fucking-hippy-creep.

 

I want it.

 

“Jupiter,” he touched under my index finger. “Religion, pride, respect.” The lines were thin. “Saturn, Mercury, Lower Mars… Ahh, you're quite indifferent, aren't you?” He chuckled, not looking at me. “You will only have one love, Cloud- so Venus dictates. Venus is just here…” He touched the bottom left of my left hand. There were no marks on my flesh, and I started to wonder if this guy was just making shit up when he took something from his pocket. My every pore sweated, my heart raced- was he going to fill me with what my body lusted for most?

 

Pleasure denied.

 

No. He pulled from his pocket a buck knife which he unfolded; I knew better than to struggle. This is the stuff legends are made of.

 

Maybe you've heard the stories about him; I'll jog your memory- the Mafia had tattoos that could identify which gang they belonged to, the Yakuza cut off the tip of a finger, and Vincent Valentine scarred to mark his property. All this shit about Palmistry- it's really just about ownership, a threat to all who dared to touch me.

 

Hurt this piece of flesh and you'll have Valentine on your tail.

 

Think of it as the life insurance of the underworld.

 

Sex means nothing to me. This is my last resort.

 

His knife met my flesh and I gasped. I didn't struggle, but the pain was immense, and tears welled in my eyes. Valentine stopped. Smiled and twisted my hand so I could see his mark, a gothic V that had already flooded the Plains of Mars, my life line and fate line. I wept, and the sadistic man next to me chuckled and threw a tiny baggie of drugs onto my lap.

 

Let me feel alive.

 

Valentine got up, and walked to the door.

 

“In the end, we all get what we desire, Cloud… Do you have what it takes?” And then he left. Just like that.

 

Victory.

 

Three, two, one… lift off.

 

A scream ran though my thin lips, my naked body shook. I drowned out all sound around me, Vincent's foot steps echoed in ears. I couldn't stop screaming, nor could I rip my eyes from my ruined hand, weeping a river of blood that swept like rapids down my arm and dripping onto my leg. The torrent didn't stop there; it grew into an ocean that pooled onto the leg tucked under my body, and it too ran down the sharp point of my elbow to my chest. Before long, I was no longer paper white; my golden hair almost invisible, my arms and legs stained.

 

I screamed and screamed until my vision swam and I felt a hand lifting my face from the cascade of crimson, meeting Zack's bright, violet eyes that seemed to be mocking me with their cheery light.

I leapt from the bed and took a wild step back; for a moment it felt as though all the years of human evolution had reversed- I felt like an animal smothered in irrational fear, and soaked in gore, I collapsed onto the floor from blood loss. Still I scuttled across the floor, pushing up against the wall. Somehow I remembered how to speak.

 

“Fuck off! Don't fucking come near me!”

 

The words hissed though my lips and felt as thick and heavy as honey, or more appropriately, my own blood. Zack stood quietly, his hand covered in sticky red, when Reno rushed into the room, his EMI drawn, ready to kick ass.

 

“What the fuck, yo!” He screamed at Zack in confusion, looking at his hand to my dripping naked frame.

 

“Dude! It was Valentine! He cut something into his hand!” Zack yelped in self-defence, blushing and throwing his hands into the air.

 

Reno narrowed his eyes and stared at his closest friend.

 

“Cloud, show me your hand…” Reno said, and to the best of my knowledge, I merely snarled at the Turk.

 

“CLOUD!” He screamed, and I yelped and pushed myself closer into the wall.

 

“He's in shock…” Zack said sullenly. He looked at my mattress and frowned, walking towards it and picking up the tiny baggie, the pills inside rattling together. The SOLDIER sighed and closed his eyes.

I knew I was staring at it, and he knew too.

 

“Hey, er, Cloudy, do you want these?” In my state of shock and lust I nodded, “Then I'll give them to you.” Zack seemed subdued, saddened and weighed down by some alien emotion.

 

“Will you let me come over?” He asked calmly, as Reno watched us with narrowed eyes. I hesitantly nodded again, slowly gaining composure, but all the while trembling.

 

Zack slowly inched towards me until he was only a foot away and passed me the bag. I unceremoniously snatched it and the knife that he offered in his other hand.

 

With the speed and grace of an expert I slashed a narrow gap in my flesh at the base of my wrist, shoving two of the pills into my arm, but leaving one still in the bag. There was a rising sting - then nothing. I became subdued, and after a few moments my shaking stopped, a goofy smile crossing my face. Valentine's drugs were as quick as ever it seemed.

 

“That wasn't fair, yo.” Reno sounded cold. “Hold him, I still don't trust him like that man.”

 

Zack obeyed and drifted over to me with slow elegance, looping his hands once again around my wrists.

I couldn't feel anger nor violation in that state, I just stared at him with large confused eyes.

 

Reno inspected my hand; the blood had coagulated but still needed stitching.

 

“Can you do it?” The tired Turk inquired, and the SOLDIER nodded. “I guess I can…” Reno left with out a word.

 

Zack sighed letting go of me. He opened his mouth to speak, but just shook his head, and curiosity embedded itself into my soul. Just what was this irritating boy hiding?

 

Reno returned sullenly with a First Aid kit; it was Seventh Heaven's policy to look after yourself, since obviously a place like that wouldn't provide health care. The red head held my hand as Zack lifted a blunt looking medical needle threaded with a fine fibre that would soon be holding my flesh together once more.

 

Everything faded to black.

 

---

 

When I awoke, I was tucked neatly into my bed, my hand ached, and all my senses seemed to be on hyper drive. The room was dark, apart from the rim of light that snuck in through the edge of my curtain. Outside I heard voices; it took me more than a few moments to realise who they belonged to.

 

“Will he be ok?” Rude! Rude was actually speaking.

 

“Should be, Zack did a good job on his hand,” Reno sounded strangely quiet.

 

“Was it really Valentine?”

 

“Fuck yes, yo, who else is that much of a fuckin' sadist?”

“True.What about Zack, how is he holding up?” Wait, what, Rude was more worried about that brat instead of me? How, well, rude.

 

“I dunno man, he's pretty fucked up at the moment. Sephiroth-” Reno's words melted into each other and I felt my eyes rolling back in my head. Everything came back to me- the blood, the sex, the pain, the stitches, the drug induced paralysis, and the blacking out.

 

“-they need him for the mission-”

 

“-hoping to find-”

 

“-doesn't want to kill him-”

 

“-didn't you know that Zack was gay? Well he didn't until-”

 

Sleep finally over took me again, and I slipped back into sleep.

 

 

The next time I awoke, it was from a shard of pain across my cheek and to the ugly sight of Tifa standing over my bed.

 

“You've been asleep for three fucking days! What happened to your hand? What's this about Valentine? What are you fucking on boy? Who stitched it?! GET UP!” She bellowed at the highest pitch of her awful, girly voice.

 

“Valentine, he cut… Reno stitched, I think they were… Sleep…” Words trickled from my mouth painfully and slowly. I felt ill, and as I tried, I eventually sat up. To my surprise, I was clean and dressed in a pair of boxer shorts and a baggy grey wife beater. I looked beside my bed, and the wooden floor was clean from blood. I didn't dare look at my hand.

 

I blushed with embarrassment, remembering my behaviour towards my body guard and creepy-SOLDIER-stalker.

 

Looking at my bedside, I saw the tiny bag with a single pill in it. Ignoring Tifa who was bombarding me with more useless questions, I queasily picked up the bag and looked inside it. On one side there was the classic symbol of the Valentine empire, a stylised three headed hound, and then on the other a score line smoothly cut through the back of the pill like a normal pain killer. Also etched into it were three tiny S's. Sleeparga; you didn't get more vile than that.

 

Most materia will be 1.5% MDMA (which is short for methylenedioxymethamphetamine), or in layman's terms, ecstasy; the rest is really up to the producer- cocaine, LSD, ketamine and more. One of the effects of ketamine is hallucinations, though in large enough doses it can also cause paralysis. It's mainly used as a horse tranquilliser. It's made up of ketone and amine; you know what ketone is? It's an organic compound of the carbonyl group, bonded to two alkyl groups by oxidizing secondary alcohols. Whether this makes sense to you or not, it basically means that it's the sister to acetone. Which is used in nail polish remover.

Keep that in mind next time you pop Sleeparga.

 

I felt my body reject the poisons in my blood stream, my head feeling heavy.

 

“… Your next customer is Sir Jacob Veridian, hurry up,” she huffed.

 

Shit!

 

So there I was stuck back into my working rut. I was craving again, worse then before- but I dared not touch the tainted drug that was now hidden under my bed. I was far too embarrassed to even glace at Reno, who fell back into his old habit of singing outside my door. I spent my little free time with Yazoo, who never questioned the grizzly scar on my palm as we discussed weight loss programs, and he never once mentioned Zack, thankfully. But I could see that he wanted to, I could see it in his glinting cat-pupil eyes.

 

I wanted to know how he had gotten out of the brothel that night; I wanted to know if he was coming back to take the stitches out of my hand. I wanted to know if he was really gay, and who he didn't want to kill, after the snatches of conversation I'd heard.

 

I disgusted myself completely.

 

I'd gone soft!

 

Here I was, Cloud Strife- beautiful, young, lusted after, with an income to die for (which I was never to touch, thanks to Tifa), with a fan club of influential men, and the protection of the world's most notorious gangster- thinking about some idiot who had carelessly invaded my life with his stupid redheaded friend.

 

Please for the love of god, someone break this cycle of monotony.

 

I resolved that if I would see him again that I wouldn't be rude, that I would be nice; after all, he did save my life.

 

That was a concept that seemed only to work in theory.

 

I would like to say for the start of argument that memory and fantasy is far better then reality and the moment you are currently imprisoned in.

 

Next time I would see Zack Fair, I would come to my senses and remember just how much I hated him and the universe would re-right it self from the strange tangent that I had created; I would become my spiteful, hateful self again.

 

I hoped I would at any rate.