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Do you hear my voice?
Can you hear your own soul’s screams?
Let us choose,
My voice that tells the future, or your tortured mind.
It doesn’t take long for Vincent to realize that he and Cloud are the same.
The particulars don’t matter. The proof is in the aftershocks. The wariness of someone cornered, trapped, someone whose very personhood has been systematically stripped away one cut of the knife at a time. A peeled nerve of a person, raw and sensitive and no longer suited for the cruel wide world.
Cloud rarely laughs and barely smiles. He holds himself like a small, fragile thing, and wields his weapon with a ferocity that could move mountains and dethrone the gods themselves. He’s quiet and guarded and when he doesn’t think anyone is looking, he wears a look of such heartbreaking longing that Vincent can’t bear to look at him. Because looking at him is like looking into a mirror, cracked and tarnished, and there’s that old saying, isn’t there, that looking into the abyss is dangerous, because it might look just like you. Vincent knows oh so much better, but he finds himself drawn to Cloud all the same.
Old dogs can’t learn new tricks, after all.
.
It happens like this.
The sky darkens prematurely as they cross the rolling plains north of Nibelheim towards the old ShinRa airbase on the other side of the mountain. Static gathers in the air, the wind bites and chills. By the time they finally reach Rocket Town, the heavens split and the rain comes down aggressive as artillery fire. Cloud’s mouth presses into an unhappy line as they all run for cover under the nearby awning of an abandoned chocobo stable.
“Let’s call it a day,” he announces grimly.
“You sure?” Aerith asks, shivering, her thin summer dress close to soaked through. Cloud can barely look at her, which Vincent finds absurdly charming. Cloud nods stiffly.
“Don’t like it, but we won’t be able to get far in this.” He peers out into the thick curtain of rain. “Looks like an inn over there. Let’s go.”
The town might belong to ShinRa now, but a few of the buildings still carry a leftover native flair; Nibelic angular roofing, quaintly half-timbered, though without the traditional longhouses that were typical of the area. No doubt there was another village here once, long-ago, but just like Nibelheim and Midgar, it had been subsumed by ShinRa and repurposed into another arm of the monstrous corporation. Vincent is no architect, but the inn seems to be one of the original structures, mako pipe-lines burrowing into the sharp angular roof and making the building glow. An antique bell lets out a low chime as Cloud hurriedly pushes the door open, and their sorry group barrels inside.
“Welcome to – oh!” The elderly man behind the wooden check-in desk exclaims. He shakes his head sadly at the sight of their tired and soggy group dripping rainwater onto the floorboards. “I s’pose ya’ll be wantin’ a room, then?”
“Please,” Cloud grits out tersely.
“We’ve just the one,” the innkeeper continues blithely. “Though I do s’pose I could put y’all up in the big room in the attic.”
“Whatever is fine,” Cloud snaps, shivering. His toned arms ripple with goosebumps. Vincent quickly averts his eyes and develops a sudden keen interest in the steadily growing puddle beneath his sabatons instead.
The attic room smells strongly of pine and engine grease. Two large iron-barred windows dominate the front wall, through which the rusted remains of the town’s eponymous rocket can be seen. Four double beds sit in two parallel lines, each one fully dressed with its own faded floral comforter and matching frilly pillows. It reminds Vincent of the inn back in Nibelheim, with its chintzy decor and the beds laden with a ridiculous amount of decorative pillows. On his first night in town, Vincent had gotten carried away in some silly joke in an attempt to make Lucrecia smile, and accidentally tossed a lopsided cross-stitched throw cushion out of the open window. The next morning the butcher’s dog had dragged it into the little breakfast room downstairs, and Vincent had to feign confusion while Lucrecia doubled over with suppressed laughter. He’d once thought that was a sign that everything would be okay, but now the memory chills him just as much as the bad weather. His mood quickly darkens with the gathering storm-clouds outside.
All he wants to do is sleep.
Barret makes an immediate beeline for the bed closest to the door, dropping down onto it with a shit-eating grin. Nanaki immediately ruins it for him by jumping up beside him. The little animatronic cat claims its own spot on the foot of the bed, pulling out a deck of playing cards and setting up a game of solitaire.
Yuffie turns to Aerith and Tifa. “Wanna draw straws for it?”
“Draw for what?” Barret asks suspiciously.
“Which of us ladies gets the bed all to themself, duh!”
“Hey, how come we gotta share?” Barret sputters.
“I believe you already staked your claim,” Nanaki reminds him, hiding his sharp grin behind a front paw as Barret’s foul reply turns the air blue.
The remaining process of arranging who will sleep where goes smoothly enough, with Tifa winning the free bed and immediately agreeing to swap with Yuffie so that she can share with Aerith anyway. That leaves one bed without an occupant, the one tucked into the far corner beneath the low cut of the vaulted ceiling, its angular shape leaving a tight nook for the sleeper on the far side. Something in Vincent’s chest twists at the sight of it. Cloud is still downstairs interrogating the innkeeper about any signs of a man in black. Fatigue starts to tug at Vincent’s frayed edges. It had been a tiresome trip down the mountain and across the plains, and he’d been forced to transform twice as they fought their way towards safety. His lower back throbs mercilessly, his joints scream in protest. While Barret argues with Yuffie that the result is bullshit because he should have been included in the draw, Vincent stares longingly at the last empty bed before resigning himself to the floor. He could literally fall asleep anywhere, a rare talent even before he had been irreversibly changed. With the relentless ache in his back, a night on the floor might fix him. Maybe.
Cloud bursts into the room, looking oddly rattled. He blinks at the sight of Yuffie and Barret’s heated argument, at Aerith serenely combing Tifa’s tangled hair, and Vincent caught mid-stoop on his journey toward the ground. Flustered, Vincent straightens up, ignoring the flare of heat and cramping muscles in his lower spine.
“Last one’s all yours,” Barret tells him gruffly. Cloud nods, picking his way through the carnage to stand beside the empty bed.
“Where’re you sleeping?” he asks Vincent.
“I can take the floor.”
“No!” Cloud blurts out quickly. A fine dusting of pink colours his tan cheeks. He clears his throat, eyes resolutely on the bed. “No I just.” He scratches the back of his head. “D’you think you could —”
He should curl on the floor like an animal. He should slink back out into the rain and sleep outside, or cozy up in the stale straw of the abandoned chocobo stable. He should do literally anything other than inflict himself on an actual person. But he’s tired, his body still feels the wrong shape, and that narrow gap against the wall looks so, so tempting. At the same time as Cloud struggles to find the words to express what he wants to say, Vincent tentatively asks, “Would you mind if I –”
“-- you could take the wall?”
“-- if I slept by the wall?”
Cloud shrugs. “Works for me.”
It’s fully dark now, the rain lashing against the windows and making them rattle in their frames. The occasional grumble of thunder from the dark sky is barely audible over the sound of Barret Wallace snoring as if trying to compete with the storm outside. Vincent has nearly three-decades worth of experience sleeping near monsters that scream and cry in the dark, but he’s completely forgotten what it’s like to exist so close to living things. He lays stiffly on his back, hands folded on his chest, stares blearily at the low ceiling. Beside him, Cloud huffs irritably, rolls over. Punches his pillow to try and find comfort.
“I know I snore,” Vincent whispers, making Cloud’s eyes snap open. “But this is ridiculous.”
“You don’t snore,” Cloud whispers back. His eyes are phospherant in the dark, blue skies and burning mako.
“I do,” Vincent protests sleepily. “Broke my nose on my very first assignment. Car chase. No seatbelt. Slammed face first into the dash.” His nose had swelled like a blood-filled balloon, his entire face one big bruise. He’d had to sleep sitting up for a month, and no one in the department had been able to look at him without laughing until it finally healed. On the rare occasions they shared an actual bed, Veld would grumble and kick his back until he rolled onto his side. Lucrecia used to pinch his nose until he woke up. Groggily, his tired mouth rambles on, “No-one was particularly eager to share a bed with me after.”
“Oh.” Cloud goes quiet for a beat. Barret’s snoring reaches tremendous new heights. Vincent had no idea a human could make that sort of sound. “Wouldn’t say you snore. Snuffle, maybe.”
Vincent cracks a tired grin. “Snuffle?” He’s struck with the image of a sleepy chocobo, tucking its beak into its feathers. It suits his bedfellow far more than someone like him.
“Mm.” Cloud tucks one hand under his pillow, the other loosely fisted beneath his chin. “S’ry, you’re probably tired.”
Vincent shakes his head. The bed is soft, warmed by the heat of his companion’s body, and the dated quilt stinks of laundry detergent. Vincent is used to confined darkness, stale velvet, and solitude. Sleep would elude him even if Barret wasn’t doing his level best to choke on his own adenoids.
“I’ll survive.” He rolls off his back and onto his side, hissing. His tailbone beats like it has its own pulse. When he dares to press a finger where it aches, he swears he feels more bones than normal.
Cloud shifts. The bed sheets rustle. He gnaws on his lower lip. Almost shyly, he whispers, “...Does it hurt?”
Vincent could play dumb, could feign confusion. Instead, he whispers back, “Not for long.”
“So it does hurt,” Cloud says softly. Vincent shakes his head again.
How is he supposed to explain it? The feeling of snapping bones and melting cartilage, stretching skin and that awful terrible wrongness, overwhelming and dysphoric, until suddenly it’s the only thing that feels right anymore. That he’s terrified that one day, he won’t want to turn back. That he’ll cast off the final vestiges of humanity that cling to his body like tattered flesh. That he’ll run for the proverbial hills, and never come back.
“Not for long,” he repeats.
“But you scream,” Cloud whispers. The hand curled near his chin wraps loosely around his throat.
Vincent huffs like a tired dog. “I’m used to it.”
“Hojo,” Cloud spits the name like its poison. “Did this to you.”
“He did.” Vincent searches his face. He thinks back to what Cloud told him, back in the manor. Project S, and what it evolved into. SOLDIER. Warriors made in Sephiroth’s glowing image. It’s not hard to guess by whom, and how. “Does it scare you?”
“Not anymore.”
“But it did.”
“Not anymore,” Cloud repeats firmly. Across the room, Aerith lets out a string of nonsense that’s muffled by her pillow. Tifa hums in vague reply. Barret stops snoring for three entire seconds, before sucking in an enormous breath that stutters in the back of his throat, and starts up again.
“He sounds like five forks fighting to escape a garbage disposal,” Vincent whispers, making Cloud snort inelegantly. He claps a hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking. Both he and Vincent are the only ones who went to bed with their armour on.
“I can’t take this anymore!” Yuffie declares suddenly, sitting up. She grabs one of Tifa’s metal-knuckled gloves off the shared nightstand, and throws it at Barret. It hits him dead between the eyes, draping over his face like a limp fish. Grumbling, the enormous man swipes the glove away, and rolls over.
The room is finally quiet, save for the steady patter of rain outside. It falls against the roof of the inn like a pulse, and Vincent finds his eyes fluttering. The last thing he remembers before he falls asleep is the tentative brush of Cloud’s ankle against his.
His dreams are fragmented, surreal, needles and knives and too many hands touching, always touching. He wakes with a gasp, disoriented, tangled in the garish bedsheets. He looks around the room without actually seeing it.
When he was a child, after his mother died, whenever he had a nightmare he would crawl beneath his bed. It was a harmless habit that had driven his father to despair. More than once Vincent would find himself woken by a large hand clamped around his scrawny ankle and rudely dragging him back into the light. It’s the first thought that comes to his sleep-fogged mind as he takes in the overbright room, until he spots his sleeping companion. Cloud has rolled over onto his other side, his back toward Vincent. The purple knit of his fatigue sweater is stained and frayed.
“Does it hurt?” Cloud’s voice is barely a whisper.
“I’ll be fine,” Vincent murmurs back. The room is silent. The rain has stopped. Even though the room is bright, when he looks outside, there’s only blackness.
“That’s not what I asked.” Cloud is facing him, his eyes blue and green and piercing. “Does it hurt?”
“Not if I let it.”
Cloud hums softly. He’s turned away again, his shoulders rising and falling. Sharply, he warns, “Watch out!”
Vincent hears the break before he feels it. The loud pop of cartilage and the crunching shatter of bone fills his entire skull, louder than the squealing of the car tyres against the asphalt of the outer Kalm highway.
Veld’s laughter roars in his throbbing ears. His mouth and nose fill with blood. His entire face pulses in time with his frenzied heartbeat. Vincent peels his face away from the dashboard, cringing at the glistening wet imprint it leaves behind.
“Told ya, rookie!” Veld chortles, tugging out his pocket square and shaking it out. He pushes it against Vincent’s broken face. “You gotta keep the belt on!”
“T’fuck’yew’slam’d t’breaks’fr?” Vincent groans, every word coming out a syllable. Something hot drips down his chin. He prods his numb tongue around his gums, and finds a weeping socket where his upper left pre-molar used to be.
“Does it hurt?” Veld asks. Vincent blinks sluggishly at him. The streetlights along the highway cast strange shadows inside the car. Veld is eerily still. His eyes… were they always wrinkled at the corners? Has his hair always been peppered grey? Has he always looked so tired? Vincent can’t remember. He shakes his sore head, accidentally swallowing a thick glob of blood and mucus. He doubles over and coughs roughly into his fist, but nothing comes up.
“Easy there, rookie,” Veld says. “Lemme just –”
Veld pushes against his shoulders, and then, he’s lying on his back and staring up at the car’s interior light. It burns his sore eyes, makes him wince. He tries to turn his head away, but the lights are still there even when he shuts his eyes. A finger, slippery with latex, probes his bloodied mouth. He gags as it presses inside, quickly joined by a thumb. The gloved hand clinically inspects his tongue before pulling back and hooking underneath his upper lip and peeling it upwards. Sterile air chills his exposed gums.
“Prosthetic mythril bicuspid,” a disembodied voice notes dispassionately. “Number seven forceps.”
The dental forceps are cold and bulky where they fit inside his mouth. His entire head sways as the forceps are roughly tugged forward and back, the false tooth rocking in its socket. It comes loose with a sickening plop. The forceps disappear. There’s the tinny sound of metal on metal. Murmuring. Everything sounds like it’s being broadcast on a bad channel, warped and static. The fingers leave his mouth.
Then, they return, now pressing against the plate of his breastbone. The streetlights outside the car burn with the harsh phosphorescence of a surgical lamp. A figure looms above him; not Veld. Veld is long gone now, their partnership broken for another sort, the more permanent kind. Something that can be congratulated and proclaimed proudly for all the world to see. The figure above him is an indistinct smudge of a person, their long brown hair hanging limp over their shoulder.
“Entry wound on left pectoral,” the figure notes in the same detached tone. “Forceps.”
More pressure. Something harsh and cold pushes into the tender tissue of his bare chest. He tries to protest, tries to pull away, but he’s paralyzed, trapped in place. The forceps sink inside of him inch by inch, slipping between his ribs. Vincent can feel every scrape as they twist and turn against the bone.
“Handgun bullet, 9mm.” Another tinny metal sound. “Likely cause of death, gunshot wound.” The figure cackles. “Gunshot!” The laughter cuts off abruptly. “Beginning post-mortem. Scalpel.”
Something sharp brushes against the sensitive skin below his ear. Lucrecia used to press her lips there, her breath warm and sweet as she whispered the filthiest things. The scalpel is merciless and cruel as it unzippers his flesh, drawing down his neck and curving along his clavicle. The senseless act is copied on the opposite side, the cuts meeting in the middle of his chest and splitting his torso all the way down to his pelvis.
“Rib shears,” the figure announces. Vincent feels another bulky instrument slide inside of him, the rib shears knocking against bone and sending reverberations along his spine. His toes curl, his fingers scrabble for purchase against the slick leather of the passenger seat of the company car. He wishes Veld was still here, but Veld doesn’t want him. Veld left him twice, because old dogs can’t learn new tricks, and Vincent never learned how to keep his hopeful heart from wanting what it couldn’t have. The echoing snap of bone fills the interior of the car, every cut making him gasp. Another queasy tug rocks his stiff body. Another sickening sensation of something being ripped free.
“Rib shield removed,” the blurry figure says. “Heart and left lung visualised.”
Cloud is on top of him. The pads of his fingers find the knotted divot of scar tissue where the bullet went in, then the knife. Again, and again, and again. “Does it hurt?”
Frantically, a little desperate, Vincent shakes his head. Cloud traces over his scars, which split like a zipper beneath his touch. Gasping, Vincent’s head falls back against the pillow. Slowly, too slowly, Cloud slips his hand into the open wound.
“Does it hurt?” Cloud pets the slick pink of his lungs, thumbs the curve of his ribs. He brushes against something that makes Vincent writhe with pain.
“It does, it does,” Vincent babbles, writhing against the mattress, back arched. Cloud wraps his fist around Vincent’s thumping heart and –
“-- Right ventricle has been penetrated by the bullet,” the clinical voice declares. “Cause of death, being a fool who doesn’t know where he’s wanted.”
Hojo bends down, leering into Vincent’s bloodied face. “Does it hurt?” He twists the hand buried inside his body, making Vincent howl. His crazed laughter stretches and morphs, taking on a higher, tragic pitch.
“I’m sorry!” Lucrecia sobs, her hand buried up to the elbow inside of him as she roughly pushes something into the dead-space where his broken heart used to be. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Vincent’s eyes fly open. He’s not in the basement, or the old company car. He's lying on his side, sleeping in a bed for the first time in almost thirty years. Cloud shifts beside him, makes a noise that’s sleepy and sweet.
“S’alright,” he murmurs softly. He shuffles into the space between them, body warm and solid and real. His eyes, brilliant blue, flicker open briefly before falling shut again. “S’just the storm.”
Sure enough, the room fills with light, and another peal of thunder splits the muggy air. Just the storm. Just a nightmare. Vincent clutches his left hand over his chest, and lets Cloud box him up against the wall. It’s not the same as the soothing familiarity of his coffin, or the tight dusty gap beneath his childhood bed, but the reassuring presence of Cloud’s smaller frame is far more effective than either at unwinding the tightness in his own misshapen body. He always has been a hopeless romantic, quick to fall and quicker to hurt. Despite his better judgment, he closes his eyes and sleeps.
Morning arrives as it often does, far too bright and far too soon. Pale sunlight pierces through the slats of the plastic blinds, creeping across the floor and directly into Vincent’s face. He certainly hasn’t missed this while sequestered in the crypt of the manor. He grunts, slinging an arm across his eyes. The back of his fingers brush against something – someone – warm.
Cloud’s back is still pressed up against him. One of his ankles, boots still on, hooks around Vincent’s shin. Vincent’s already sluggish heart skips several beats before crawling up his throat, lodging there. He gulps. He’s forgotten what it’s like to be near another person. What it’s like to be a person. He doesn’t have the right to either of those things anymore. But he’s a selfish creature, weak willed. He should move, he should definitely move before either Yuffie or Barret or Aerith sees them, but he doesn’t. He lets himself bask in Cloud’s warmth a little longer, lets himself pretend that he’s something that he’s not.
Tifa wakes first, sitting up abruptly and swaying like a newborn chocobo chick, stuck in her eggshell of hotel bedsheets. The moment she moves, Cloud is up, too. He quickly rolls away from Vincent, taking his warmth with him. The borrowed heat in Vincent’s side doesn’t last long before the cold of the grave rolls back in.
Slowly, the group pick themselves up, ready to head back on the trail of the Man in the Black Cape. Vincent still isn’t sure if he’s ready to face his greatest sin, but he has to try. He only hopes he doesn’t commit another sin in the process.
As the others trudge noisily down the wooden staircase, Cloud lingers in the doorway. He turns to Vincent, expression unreadable. They watch one another in stalemate silence. One word, and Vincent will leave. One word, and perhaps he might beg to stay. But he already knows that Cloud will never talk about what happened, because they’re the same. Two damaged people, desperate for even a scrap of salvation.
Cloud jerks his head toward the open door. “You comin’?”
So of course, Vincent follows, the phantom of an ache behind his ribs.
Because old dogs can’t learn new tricks.