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Sink to the Bottom With You
Chapter Eight
Once Upon a Midnight Dreary
"Vinnie Valentine, this is the voice of
God. Wake your ass up!" Yuffie Kisaragi
Darling so share
with me
Your love if you
have enough
Your tears if
you're holding back
Or pain if that's
what it is
"Eyes On Me"
Faye Wong
The light was all around her, green and
stinking like the bodies of a dozen corpses.
It kept brushing against her skin in wisps, like claws trying to get
inside her thin shield of flesh. Long
nails like pickaxes suddenly emerged from the seething light and dug themselves
into her chest, creating a lacerating pain that was rapidly spiraling down to
her heart, seeking to rip the pulsating organ from its rightful place. Yuffie screamed and slapped them away
frantically, but the tendrils of light suddenly grew hands and snatched her up by
her arms, dragging her along in their midst to some unknown place.
"No!" she screamed. "Let me go!
Vincent, where are you?!"
But no one answered her; she was alone with
the light and the amoebas. Someone in
the darkness laughed, and she tried to whirl to see who it was, who would be in
this godforsaken place, but the light was all around her now, and she could see
nothing.
Therefore, when the pit opened up beneath
her, smelling of salt and dead things, she was falling before she even had the
chance to scream. When reality finally
dawned on her, and she knew she was going to die, and die alone, she let out a
scream that resounded off of the far corners of the Planet.
The green light laughed at her.
Yuffie woke up with a soundless scream,
clawing at the air with her dry, chapped hands. Her heart was pounding so loud that it drowned out the endless
rain slamming against the window and the thunder rumbling overhead. She was freezing, and she was in a dark
place that held no trace of the green light.
It took her a few moments of breathing hard and glancing around in a
panic for her to remember that she was in a hotel room.
Wrapping the blankets around her shivering
body, Yuffie lowered her face into her hands and tried to calm herself
down. It was just a dream, she
told herself. It was just a dream.
You're not in that horrible place with the green light and the endless
pit; you're here in a hotel in Junon with thin blankets and a storm raging
outside the window. And you're not
alone; Vincent is less than five feet away from you.
Raising her face from her hands, she looked
to her left to see the dark figure of Vincent lying in the bed next to
hers. He had gone to sleep without a
shirt (or a shower. Grossness!) and she
could see the curve of his naked back facing in her direction. The blankets covered him from the waist
down, and his midnight black hair was spread out in an inky pool amongst the
white sheets behind him.
Before she knew what she was doing, Yuffie
had thrown back the blankets and was padding over to Vincent's bed. The floor was cold underneath her bare feet,
and the air conditioner had made the room so freaking cold that the temperature
rivaled the substantial lows on the Great Glacier. Yuffie realized belatedly that she had left her shorts and tank
top to dry in the bathroom, and she was standing around in her
undergarments. She immediately
backtracked and grabbed the blankets off her bed, wrapping them around herself
until she felt like one of those super thick burritos that Barret practically
inhaled at that restaurant in Corel.
Walking as quietly as she could over to
Vincent's bed, she stood peering awkwardly down at him, wondering what the hell
she was doing. Vincent's pale skin
practically glowed in the dark, and now that he was showing so much of it, she
had no trouble seeing him in the darkness.
When people first saw Vincent in his dark clothes and large red cloak,
they always tended to receive the impression that he was severely thin. Even Yuffie had always thought Vincent to be
underweight for a man of his prodigious height. Looking at him now, she saw that Vincent was actually quite
muscular with strong-looking broad shoulders and a smooth back whose muscles
rippled slightly as he shifted in his sleep.
She suddenly remembered how she had loved the feel of those muscles when
she had hugged him almost a day ago, when he ridden up to Tifa's bar like a
dark knight on his midnight black chocobo...
Yuffie flushed, a bit of heat on her cold
cheeks, as she scolded herself for thinking of Vincent this way. He was a man, and she was just a skinny
little nobody who everyone knew as "brat" or "pest." Why would he even want to be near someone like her? But she really, really, really didn't
want to sleep in her cold, lumpy bed by herself with that window and the air
conditioner less than two feet away from her...
I can't believe I'm going to do this. I hope he's not going to wake up grumpy.
Clearing her throat, she whispered,
"Vincent, are you awake?"
The man shifted slightly, but didn't reply.
"Vincent," she called again, taking a step
closer to the bed and feeling like a total idiot. "Vincent, wake up."
No answer.
Yuffie frowned and contemplated getting her pillow and hitting him with
it, but when she realized that he would probably wake up and shoot her, she
wisely repressed the urge.
"Vinnie Valentine," she sang, making her
voice deep and manly. "This is the
voice of God. Wake your ass up!"
He stirred, but didn't wake up.
Frustrated, Yuffie reached over and touched
his shoulder with her cold fingers. The
results were instantaneous. Vincent
woke up, his right arm reaching backwards at an almost impossible angle and
grabbing her forearm in a deathgrip, cutting off her circulation almost
immediately. Yuffie yelped in surprise
and pain.
"Vincent!" she snapped, trying to pull away. "Let go!
It's me! Yuffie!"
Vincent rolled over onto his back, his red
eyes open wide and focused. He stared
at her blankly for a few seconds, then released her arm.
"Yuffie?" he asked in a voice thick with
sleep. "What's wrong?"
She scowled, her arm still hurting. "What's wrong?" she echoed. "You were trying to rip my entire arm off,
you idiot!"
He was unfazed. "What are you doing running around like that?"
Blushing, Yuffie readjusted her blanket
covering and squinted at him in the darkness.
"I'm cold," she said awkwardly.
"The window and the air conditioner are right by my ear. My bed is lumpy, too. Can I sleep with you?"
Vincent was silent for a long time as Yuffie
shifted her weight from foot to foot, more uncomfortable than she had ever been
in her entire life. She knew her face
was bright red. God, if only Vincent
wouldn't stare so much! Didn't the
weirdo have any tact at all?
"You want to trade beds?" he asked finally.
Damn!
He isn't going to make this easy.
"I'll still be cold," Yuffie whined. "I can't even feel my fingers and toes right
now!"
Vincent stared at her, his eyes taking in
her covering of blankets. "Are you
decent underneath that?"
Yuffie's blush turned even redder. "I'm as decent as I'm going to get," she
grumped. "Please, Vinnie. I just want to lie down. I won't even get near you."
Another long period of silence fell, and
Yuffie fidgeted as nervously as she could without displacing her covering,
refusing to meet his gaze. Readjusting
her wrapping of blankets and sheets, she thought that she would just die of
embarrassment if Vincent sent her back to her bed, but she refused to beg
him. It had taken enough guts just to
wake him up and ask him about this. She
had to keep some of her dignity.
Finally, Vincent gave his answer, not in
words, but in actions. He scooted over
a little and pulled the sheets back for her before turning to face the wall
again.
"Thank you," Yuffie said softly, slipping
underneath the covers and rearranging her own layers of blankets that were
serving as her pajamas. The bed
underneath her was warm from Vincent's body heat, and the scent of him was
clinging to the sheets. Flipping over
onto her stomach, she pressed her left cheek against the fluffy white pillow,
feeling warm and safe with Vincent less than a foot away from her, even if his
back was turned to her. Oh well, let
him pretend she wasn't there. His dark
hair was still pooled behind him, a few stray tendrils lying close to her in
curiosity of this strange girl who was sharing a bed with them.
Dark and dangerous, Vincent looked, sprawled
out in this bed of whiteness. It was
strangely enchanting, how good the darkness looked on him. How it leapt to cover his figure as if to
hide it from her probing eyes.
Lightening flashed outside the window, briefly throwing the inky shadow
of the curve of his shoulders against the wall in front of him.
Quietly extending her fingers, which seemed
to have suddenly developed a mind of their own, she reached out and gently
lifted a tendril of Vincent's ebony hair, amazed at how soft it was, especially
considering what hell it had been put through tonight. She curled it around her finger, loving the
silken feel of the strands as they slid over her skin. She wished that she had long, straight hair like
this. There were so many things you
could do with long hair, and that was why she had finally agreed to letting her
hair grow out. She had loved Aeris and
Tifa's long falls of hair for as long as she could remember. Aeris' little twisty thingy or whatever she
called it, was the most hilarious thing Yuffie had ever seen. She loved to tug on it and go, "Ding
dong! Anyone home?" especially when
Aeris said something innocent or naïve that had made her sound like a noodle
brain. It usually earned Yuffie an
angry glare and the threat that she was going to get bashed over the head with
the Fairy Tale, but it had been sort of an ongoing joke between her and the
late Ancient. She missed Aeris.
"Yuffie?" Vincent suddenly asked, jolting
her out of her reverie. "Are you going
to yank on my hair for the rest of the night?"
"Oh!" she exclaimed, turning bright red and
retracting her questing fingers like she had received a slap on the wrist. "Sorry," she said quietly.
Vincent didn't reply, but Yuffie hadn't been
expecting one from him. Silence hung in
the air for a few minutes as thunder roared outside the window, and raindrops
pelted the glass like the succubus begging to be inviting in to do their
ghastly deeds. It didn't take long for
Yuffie to realize that she wasn't going to be able to get to sleep.
"I had a nightmare," she said before she
could stop herself. The sound of her
voice in the cold hotel room as she lie next to this cold-hearted man of
darkness and shadows resonated like a lonely echo, chasing after its duplicates
as if in search for a companion.
"It was really scary," Yuffie continued,
talking more to herself than to Vincent and not caring whether or not he
thought she was being a chatterbox. She
had to tell somebody about her nightmare, even it was the silence around her or
the smooth skin of Vincent's back. "I
was all alone in a strange place. I
thought it was the Green Room at first, you know, because of the light and the
smell and all, but now I'm not so sure.
I don't even know if it was a room at all, maybe just a vortex of light
because that's all I could see.
But...this light was alive, it had claws and teeth; I knew it did, even if
I couldn't see them. I felt it gnawing
at me, at my legs, at my arms, clawing at my chest, trying to rip my heart
out."
Vincent rolled over and stared at her, but
Yuffie didn't notice. She was once
again lost in her nightmare.
"It grabbed me," she continued softly,
shuddering underneath her covering of blankets. "And it started dragging me towards...I don't know what. I was really scared. My heart was beating so fast I thought it
was going to bust through my chest.
Maybe that was what they wanted..."
"They?" Vincent suddenly asked, and Yuffie
jumped slightly. She hadn't even known
he was listening.
"Yes, them," she said quietly, studying his
emotionless face. "The voices in the
light; I heard them...laughing at me. I
hated their laughter; I really did. It
was the laughter of those that are completely gone fruit loops, you know? Only these people seemed to have lost their
humanity along with their state of mind."
"What were they doing in the light?" he
asked softly. "And why did they want
your heart?"
Yuffie was silent for a long time as she
tried desperately to recall something, a tale, or a song, or some kind of
bedtime story, from her youth that she had forgotten in her adolescence. The answers were there, in her past, but for
some reason she just couldn't remember.
"I don't know," she said finally.
"I almost remember why, but the answers just aren't coming. Sorry."
Vincent just lay there gazing at her with
his garnet eyes.
Yuffie dark eyebrows suddenly knitted
together in a frown. "Hey Vinnie?"
"Yes Yuffie?"
"Is...it true...that if you die in your dream
that you're going to die in real life, or you'll wake up dead or something like
that?"
Vincent hesitated. "I don't know, Yuffie.
That part about the dream being a premonition of one's upcoming death
sounds too superstitious for my liking.
Death comes when it chooses; it does not defer to the will of dreams. But I suppose it is possible that if one
believes themselves to be dying in a dream, then the body may follow what the
dreaming brain is telling it to do...and just die because the mind thinks that
its cycle has come to an end. Sort of
like when you weep in your dream and you wake up crying."
Yuffie stared at him in the darkness,
mesmerized by the faint luminescence coming from his eyes. When she had first met him, she had thought
that the deep red color of his eyes was the scariest thing in the world, but
eventually she had come to realize that Vincent's garnet-colored eyes were
actually quite beautiful, even if they could periodically turn as cold as the
bitter winter or as empty as an endless void.
"Do you ever weep while you're sleeping,
Vincent?" she asked softly.
He stared at her for a long time, long
lashes dropping down so that only half of his ruby eyes were visible. He slowly turned his face away from her and
gave his attention to the ceiling, his metal arm resting gracefully on the pale
flesh of his naked torso, which was as beautifully sculpted as that of a marble
god's statue fashioned by the dexterous hands of a sculptor from the
heavens. His abdominal muscles rippled
slightly as he breathed, and Yuffie barely suppressed the urge to reach out and
run her hands over his hard belly.
But she did none of this, thinking her
fantasy actions almost blasphemous during this delicate period of
contemplation, of companionable silence and pain unspoken as she awaited his
answer with a lover's patience.
"I might have," he finally answered, his
deep voice so low that it was just a mere rumble coming straight from his
chest. "When I was younger with the
vibrancy and foolishness of a child.
Those times have long since died out, though, just like this frozen
heart in my chest. I no longer have the
proper emotion it takes to shed tears, either consciously or unconsciously."
"That's so sad, Vinnie," she suddenly
whispered, for some reason feeling herself on the verge of tears, maybe tears
that she would shed for him since he was incapable of shedding any himself.
He snapped his head in her direction, garnet
eyes suddenly hard. "What's so sad
about it?" he demanded of her. "There's
no tragic flavor to what has befallen me.
It was just irony. What goes
around comes around. The monster
finally has to look in the mirror and see his true self, what's always been
there but what he would never admit up to."
"You're not a monster, Vincent," she
murmured feverishly.
"Yes, Yuffie, I am," he said in a low, deadly
voice, red eyes flashing. "I've always
been monster, hiding my true nature behind the blue suit of the Turks. The only difference between what I am now
and what I was then is that then I was a monster just pretending to be a
man. I have been deprived of no human
nature at all; the only think Hojo took away from me was my delusions about my
being human."
"That horrible, Vinnie!" she suddenly burst
out, oblivious to the lone tear that fell down her cheek. "You're so morbid! You have people all around you that care about you and the
potential to lead a happy existence, but instead you continue to punish
yourself for something that was never your fault in the first place!"
Vincent stared at her apathetically.
"Go ahead and call yourself a monster!" she
continued ranting, impassioned by some unknown and unfamiliar emotion. "Live out your life wallowing in despair and
die a lonely, miserable old man! I
don't care!"
Yuffie rolled over sharply, turning her back
to him and facing her abandoned bed, which looked meek and defenseless as it
sat there stripped of all its sheets and naked against the ghastly low
temperature of the room. The girl
shrunk in on herself, curling into a little ball with her knees drawn up to her
chest, gritting her teeth to hold back unwanted tears that were threatening to
bubble out of her eyes like the rain from the thunderclouds. Why was she getting all worked up over
this? She had heard Vincent speak of
his "sins" and "punishment" time and time again, and she had just yawned and
moaned, "Booooring!" Why was she so
upset now? And she had to get all
teary-eyed and emotional when she was lying next to him in bed, of all
unforeseen situations! And with only
blankets to hide the fact that all she was wearing was a bra and underwear! Talk about awkward and uncomfortable!
It's that damn dream, she told herself angrily as she pulled the
blankets tighter around herself and tried to ignore Vincent's presence at her
back. All because of that stupid
dream where I was all alone, and the mist was trying to tear my heart out, and
they dropped me into the pit with the amoebas and then they laughed as I
died...oh god!
The sob she didn't even know she had been
holding had burst free of her chest and forced its way out of her throat before
she had time to choke it back down. She
hurriedly clamped a hand over mouth to prevent any of its brothers and sisters
from following in its footsteps, but the tears rolling unbidden down her face
distracted her and a whole plethora of sobs slipped past her weak guard and
into the silence of the room. That was
the final straw. Yuffie buried her face
in her hands and burst into tears for a reason that was unknown to her except
in her heart. Her back heaved with the
force of her weeping, and inside, she kicked herself angrily for being such a
wuss. She wasn't a baby who cried over
every little thing! What the hell was
wrong with her?!
Yuffie didn't know for how long she had been
crying when she suddenly felt the bed springs shift and the warm, hard feel of
a body pressed against her shuddering back.
An arm of tarnished gold suddenly reached over and gently grasped her
around the waist, pulling her back against a chest of sculptured marble.
It took her a moment to realize that Vincent
was holding her.
"Go away, Vinnie," she whispered through her
tears, but her harsh words lacked a kindred emotion for them to fall back
onto. In her heart, Yuffie knew that
she wanted everything but for him to go away.
"No," was all he said, tightening his hold
on her, and pressing his warm cheek against her tearstained one. She felt his knees touch the back of hers as
he curled up against her.
"Leave me alone," she murmured, wiping the
tears viciously away from her face, trying in vain to ignore the warmth that
was spreading across her entire body, originating from every inch of skin in
contact with his.
"No," he replied calmly, his mouth against
her ear, causing the warmth to crescendo to an almost unbearable degree. "Just go to sleep, Yuffie. I'll be right here...to keep you warm."
"O-Okay," she said shakily, her head feeling
a bit woozy for some reason. Maybe it
was the concept and fantastical reality that Vincent Valentine, ex-Turk and
monster by his own admission, was holding her against him so gently. Or maybe all the fear and unfamiliar
emotions had finally slammed into her with the shattering force of an
out-of-control freight train on the road to nowhere. Either way, she was completely worn out.
So, nestled warmly against Vincent's body,
she finally slept.
She had no more nightmares.
Author's Note: Okay, I think you can see where this whole Yuffie/Vincent thing is
going. What can I say? I know they're extremely mismatched, but for
some reason, I always pair them up. Anyways,
for the record, this chapter was supposed to part of the previous one...Awkward
Moments, was it? But, let's face it,
this one took off and developed a significance of its own, so I had to give it its
own spotlight. Comments welcome. E-mail catalina2717@go.com
