Vincent Valentine x OC | Final Fantasy VII
[Based on the events of FFVII: Advent Children]
Vincent Valentine is a man struggling to move on from his past. Haunted by memories he refuses to let go of, his history of unatoned sins is like a cage of th...
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Chapter II | Praying for the Wicked
VINCENT VALENTINE WAS A MAN STUCK IN THE PAST. Haunted by memories he couldn't let go of, chasing things he longed to catch but lay just out of reach of his fingertips, his head was a graveyard of lonely ghosts and lost dreams. The sins he had committed as Chaos had formed a cage of thorns around his heart, slowly tearing him to pieces. The punishment he endured for his past.
He walked through life with his head hung low, a man too scared to leave behind footprints, knowing how easily they could be erased and re-written. He was scared of living, of creating new memories, because he knew that they would only give him more weight to carry around, another unnecessary burden on his shoulders.
So instead, he lived self-imprisoned in his loneliness.
He didn't know why he still stuck around in Edge. Even Cloud and the others – more fragments of his past – didn't know he was here. He was a lost soul, searching for peace, for somewhere to rest his haunted mind.
The graveyard on the outskirts of Edge was where he liked to wander. A place of lost dreams and broken promises, just like his own. Only the dead had found their peace. They had been laid bare to the bones, all of their secrets and sins exposed and forgiven.
Vincent wished his sins could be forgiven so easily. But he knew he still had to atone, for the nightmares he had created in his past. No rest for the wicked, as they say. No rest for someone like him.
When the sky was dismal and his loneliness particularly debilitating, he liked to walk and look through the graves, as if searching for something amongst them, some promise of peace, something to ease his suffering. But so far he had come up empty. There was nothing there but crumbling stone and faded names and overgrown weeds.
But today was different. Today, there was someone else amongst the graves, another wandering soul. He was suddenly not alone in this fringe of society, in the shadows.
He was caught off guard when he saw her, hunkered down by one of the tombstones. A young woman crouched to her knees, her shoulders trembling with faint sobs. Vincent stood and quietly observed her for a moment, before deciding to leave. Whatever he was searching for, it was not another person.
The woman must have sensed his presence, however, for she stood suddenly, turning her face so that she could look behind her. Her grey eyes were glazed with a sadness that Vincent knew only too well, as if he was staring at a mirror reflection of his own eyes. Eyes that shone like a sky full of cold, unblinking stars.
Their gazes met, held, then flickered away as she quickly reached up to wipe the tears from her face. Then, after a beat of silence, she spoke. "Hello."
Vincent, against his better judgement, took a step forward, as if her voice had reached out to him and pulled him closer.
"Hello," he returned in a quiet voice, barely a murmur.
