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Chapter Two - Moon Cradle
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Vincent stood at the window and peered through the blinds. The bright moonlight shone down on the streets, its silvery light brighter than the streetlamps and cradling Yuffie form as she walked down the snowy sidewalk, in the direction of her own apartment. Vincent watched her go with mixed emotions, unsure of how or even what to feel. A part of him was relieved that she had gone. Her curiosity was often annoying and now that he was alone he wouldn’t have to try and hide his nightmares from her, at least not for the rest of the evening. In truth, he had become very talented at hiding them from her, as little did she know the nightmares now came every night without fail.
The other part of him hated to see her leave in such a state. After so long, he had finally found someone whom he felt very deeply for. He was thankful for it, thankful that he didn’t always have to feel so very alone, and yet he couldn’t understand how he could so easily hurt her like that. Emotion had always been a foreign object to the ex-Turk. Even before the experiments and drug therapy, he had been trained and conditioned to be a detached, methodical assassin. That was, until…
…Lucrecia…
Lucrecia had changed everything in his life in one swift motion and everything that had happened between then and when they defeated Sephiroth, even after that, was a direct result of his relationship with that woman. He wasn’t sure whether to be thankful or bitter about Lucrecia’s role in his life. Her name no longer had the same hateful red glare in his mind that it used to. The glare had faded in his twelve months with Yuffie.
Yuffie was a different story all together. Though she was only twenty and still a child in many ways, she had a way about her that made Vincent want to be around her all the time. Not just because of the suspicion of materia theft. She could be a spoiled brat, but she put all of herself into everything she did. Relationships, fighting, her classes, even her job at the antique weapons shop (of which she was now manager) received one hundred and ten percent from her. In the year he had been with her after the whole Elizabeth Hojo mess, he’d seen every side of her because she was so open with herself.
And that was part of the problem. While she was constantly sharing herself with him, he was constantly holding back. Granted, he was much more open with her than with anyone he had met in the past thirty years or so, but it was only a fraction of the trust and honesty that she put forth. He had a feeling it frustrated her.
And now with these dreams… he couldn’t bring himself to share in what they were. They were too gruesome, too horrific to even describe to someone. Campaigns that the Turks had carried out long before her time; things that he had done in the name of ShinRa and no one else replayed through his dreams. No, they were more than dreams, they were the memories of sins that no deity could ever forgive.
Never in his life did he wish that he could share those memories more than he did right then. Deep within that cold exterior was a silent yet insistent plea to be able to share what had happened in his past. That plea wouldn’t make it out. Not now, not ever. Not if he had anything to say about it.
Sighing softly to himself, Vincent strode through the darkness and out into the living room. Avoiding the now slightly skewed coffee table, he went to the phone and pressed a series of digits he had memorized a year before. He found himself at the window, once again peering out onto the snowy street in search of the ninja who had just stormed out of his apartment. She was gone, but footprints in the snow marked her annoyed retreat.
“Strife here.”
Vincent snapped back to what he was doing, speaking into the phone in a clipped tone. “Cloud? It’s Vincent.”
“Hey Vincent, long time no see. How’s it going?”
“Are you on patrol tonight?”
There was a beat of silence, then a sigh. Cloud didn’t sound happy that his small talk was dismissed so quickly. “If I wasn’t, my cell phone wouldn’t be on and I would be asleep Vincent,” he replied dryly. His tone rebounded though, and sounding a bit happier he said, “Why? What do you need?”
“Yuffie needs a pick up. She’s probably somewhere near ShinRa square by now.”
Another pause. “Vincent, it’s two-thirty in the frickin’ morning. Why would Yuffie be out walking the streets at this time of night?” His voice held a distinctly accusatory note.
“Just pick her up and drive her wherever.” Vincent hung up as soon as he’d said the words. After one last, brief look at the footprints on the sidewalk below, he closed the blinds and went back to bed, praying that for just a few hours his sleep would be dreamless.
* * * * * * * * * *
“Damn it.” Cloud had to stop himself from throwing the cell phone against the dashboard of the police car. He settled for slamming his hand on the steering wheel and running his free hand through his spiked hair. He turned to his partner, a rookie by the name of Corey Stokes. “We have to make a slight deviation from our patrol route.”
“Why?” asked Corey, giving him sideways glances as they drove through the snowy streets. “Something wrong?”
“Just need to make a pick up.”
Corey studied his newly assigned partner. “I hope you’re not using city funds for personal reasons.”
Cloud just looked at the rookie. “Stop being a dick. We go where I say, whether you like it or not They won’t fire me, I saved the world, but they’ll sure as hell fire a fresh-out-of-the-academy smart ass like you.”
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