April showers bring May flower

Vincent was standing alone in front of the window, watching rain drops sliding down the invisible wall dully. Although it was still rather early in the afternoon, the room they rented was dark and cold, fitting perfectly with the gloomy mood the gun user was in. His team had been training in the fields near Kalm when they were surprised by April’s icy rain. When they realized the rain wouldn’t stop, they decided to go back to town and rent a room for the night. Unfortunately for them, there was some kind of event taking place that weekend: Vincent thought it was a chocobo race or something like that. Which meant all the good inns in town were full. So they had no choice but to go for the smallest and the cheapest one. Not only was the place shabby, but there was only two single rooms left. Yuffie whined loudly when she learn it but, like Cid had wisely told her back then, it was better than “’sleepin’ outside when it’s raining cats and dogs”.
Just then, the said man entered their room noisily (well, like almost everything else he did), mumbling angrily to himself.

“Damn teenagers... Never happy with anything... Tche...”

The blond made his way through the very tiny bedroom to the equally tiny bathroom, throwing furiously layers of clothing everywhere and muttering something about babysitting and being called gramps on his way. The blond man closed loudly the door behing him and soon Vincent could hear the sound of the shower pouring water, although it was a bit lost with the sound of the rain outside. He sighed to himself, going back to his bitter thoughts.

Even though he wasn’t alone anymore now that he had joined Cloud’s party, he felt lonely nontheless. So lonely he wanted to cry at times. But he felt like he deserved it, somehow. He couldn’t explain it properly... Maybe it was because he hadn’t purged his sins yet... Maybe he didn’t deserve to feel alive, to smile and laugh again. Would he ever feel warm inside again? Or was he bound to wander on this dimension like a souless corpse until his legs couldn’t support him anymore? And even if they did kill Sephiroth, would his sins ever be purged? Would he ever be freed of his guilt, of this monstruous body that reminded him night and day of his mistakes? Would he feel... human once again? Oh, Lucrecia...

His darks musing were interrupted by a loud creak coming from the bathroom door as a freshly washed Cid showed up, wearing only his usual worn out pants and drying his short blond hair vigorously with a towel.

“Ahh, there’s nothing better than a good warm shower on weathers like these!” the exuberant man said happily. Vincent remained silent and his gaze went back to the downfall behind the cold window. He heard Cid sigh heavily.

“Getting all angsty over again, eh?” the man told him, lighting up a cigarette as he sat down on their bed.
“Don’t,” Vicent told him very silently.
“Don’t what?”
“Smoke,” Cid blinked at him a couple of times, perplexe. Then he smirked at the raven-haired man.
“Sure. If you wipe that damn morose expression off your face,” Cid said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. Vincent turned around, giving the other man a mildly surprised look. Cid explained himself.
“You always wear that damn expression on your face, like you think you’re all dramatic or something. ‘Make me think of some kind of those old widow who lost her husband years ago and still can’t get over it. That’s annoying” Vincent stared at him silently before adverting his gaze back to the window.
“You see, exactly like that.”
“Leave me alone.” Vincent finally said silently.
“It’s because of that woman, right? Sephiroth’s mother. What was her name again? Lucrena? Lucretia?”

Silence.

“You would have wanted to save her life, right? And stop her before she gave birth to Sephiroth? That’s why you’re always all angsty? ‘Cause you weren’t able to?”

More silence.

“Come on, get over it already. It was her own stupid choice to take part of Hojo’s experiment, not yours. You’ve got nothin’ to blame yourself for.”
“... How can you say that? I left her alone in that evil man’s arms when she needed me...”
“Oh gosh, stop whining it was your fault!” Cid shot back. “She was a scientist for God’s sake, she knew pretty well what she was doing. If she was stupid enough to get involved into that crazy project, it was her fault and nobody else’s! You know what? I think you feel bad about her death ‘cause she prefered being Hojo’s experiment puppet than living with you and you still can’t accept it.”
“You’re wrong!” Vincent replied, his voice louder. “I mourn her death because I know I could have saved her... I could have stopped all of this to happen!”
“Really? And would you have done, uh? Kidnappin’ that freakin’-”
“Do not speak badly of her,” Vincent growled, his teeth clenched tightly.
“ – crazy woman? Or killin’ the psycho scientist Hojo? What would it had given to you? What do you think would have happened? She would have hated you for that, she wouldn’t have been happy at all! Hell, she probably would have been stupid enough to continue the damn experiment by herself and Sephiroth would have been born anyway!”
“Maybe, but she would still be alive!” Vincent hurled back, out of himself. He was glaring darkly at the blond man in front of him, fits and teeth clenched, pure hatred glowing in his frightening bloody eyes, white-hot anger bowling in his veins. Any normal man would have be at least upset, if not down right scared by the sight he was giving, him who used to be alway so calm and collected. But Cid wasn’t a normal man: to Vincent’s utter bewilderment, the pilot burst out laughing! There he was, laughing with mirth at a highly pissed Vincent, who just could believe his eyes and hears.
“...What’s so funny?” the taller man grunted, upset but still angry.
“Haha! I actually got a reaction out of you!” Cid answered proudly as he got up and started to put his spread clothes back on. Vincent stared at him, blinking. He... Did he actually... purposely provoke him...? Understanding what just happened, Vincent slowly calmed down to his normal state, mildly shameful of his previous burst out toward his party member. He truned himself toward the window frame again, back to his distant self.
“... So what does it prove?” he asked quietly to the window.
“’Proves you’re still human,” Cid answered as quietly, a hint of something in his voice that Vincent couldn’t recognize. The said man remained silent, staring at the rain pouring calmy upon the village, thoughtful. He heard his roomate more than he saw him finishing to put on his still rather soaked clothes.
“I’m goin’ out in town for a while. ’Not goin’ to lock myself in this shabby cupboard for the rest of the day, dammit! There’s gotta be a bar or somethin’ somewhere... I’d ask you if you’d wanna come but I know you don’t wanna. So there, see ya later!” Cid told him in his usual exuberant self, heading out. As he was about to leave, he stopped on his tracks and turned his unshaved face toward Vincent’s back again.
“Oh and don’t angst too much while I’m gone. ’Can’t be good for your health.” With that, he closed the door behind him and left, leaving the silent man alone in the cold and darkening room.

Vincent was thinking. Thinking about the past. Thinking about what Cid had said. Thinking about himself... about his body. Could he still be considered human with that body of his? He stared at his metalic left hand, musing darkly about his identity. How he hated that monstruous body of his, how he hated turning into those blood-hungry creatures... How he hated... feeling their fury in veins, their uncontrolable anger turning him wild just before he totally lost control and consciousness of his actions. And how he hated regaining consciousness afterward with the knowleadge - or rather the ignorance - of what he’s done. Just the thought of it made him feel sick...

Time passed and Vincent’s shabby room turned even darker and colder as it passed away. But the gun man was too lost in his thought to even notice. Before he knew it, it was pitch dark outside - and inside as well. He went back to reality only when he heard Cid -as loudly as ever- returning to their room, huming quite loudly some off-key song he vaguely knew.
“Hey angtsy boy, still in there? Dammit, it’s freakin’ dark here! ’Could have lighten up a light or something,” Cid told him as he turned on the light, dazzling Vincent. “Ah, there you are! Here, that’s for you,” he said as he put something on their bed. The red-eyed man couldn’t see what it was, still adjusting his sight to the light, trying to blink his eyeache away. That was another thing he hated about his body: his light sensitivity. When Vincent’s sight came back, he saw that the pilot had brought him something to eat - from a Chinese take-out restaurant, by the look of the box. He nodded at Cid, silently thanking him for his thoughtfulness. He sat on the bed and slowly began to eat his meal. The other man was sitting a few feet away from him, staring at the window. Vincent noticed he smelt like beer: he probabaly found a bar and hung out there during all the evening. Now that he looked at him more closely, he also seemed to be a bit drunk as well. When he finished eating, the cloaked man stared out the window as well from their mutual bed. After a while, Cid couldn’t stand the silence anymore.

“I hasn’t stopped raining, eh? ...But I don’t mind at all. I always found rain beautiful. Soothing, I think that’s the word,” he told his partner randomly, giving away his slight drunk state.
“I don’t find rain beautiful. Rain...  falls from the sky in a vain attempt to wash away the sins of this planet. Like sorrow cries coming from the above, mourning the future we chose to live up to. Praying desperately for our sins to be forgiven... Sometimes, I feel like the world is trying to wash us away with our faults, to drown us in its sorrow,” Vincent said poeticly. Cid stared at him blankly. He had never heard his partner say so many words in a row and he foud it a bit creepy. Mind you, what Vincent said was usually creepy as well.
“... You’re trying to say that rains make you feel sad, right?”
“I guess you could say so,” the red-eyed man answered him softly. Cid snorted.
“Why do you always have to see thing so negatively? Stop being so damn angsty, it’s starting to affect your brain!” The pilot told him. “How can you see rain in such a negative way? Rain is, like, the source of life of every living thing. ’Falls from the sky like a blessing, making vedgebles grow and flowers sprout in your backyard. There’s nothing ‘sorrowful’ in that!” It was now Vincent’s turn to stare, mildly surprised.
“You know, it all depends on how one’s interpret things. If you keep on seeing everything surrounding you darkly, you’ll never be happy,” Cid pointed out very seriously, looking at his partner very seriously in the eyes.  “Your future isn’t determined by your past and you can’t change what happened, no matter how much you want it. So stop weeping on your past already and live your life, dammit. It might relieve your conscience but it doesn’t change anything. What happened happened and you have to live on. And don’t you make the mistake of thinkin’ you’re the only person on Earth who has issues and a dark past he’s not proud of. We all do! But we don’t spend our lives moping over our mistakes, that’d be totally useless. ’Pure waist of time. You know what I like to tell myself when shit falls on me? That one couldn’t feel happiness if he didn’t know sorrow, pain or loneliness,” Cid said, a bit surprised by the deepness of his own words. “It’s all part of the game. We all have our share of pain, but we endure it, knowing that something better is going to happen to us one day or another. It’s bound to get better when it can’t get worse! A bit like rain.” Cid said, glancing dizzily at the dark window. “Most people don’t like rain, but they live with it because they know they need it to be able to make flowers grow and smell their lovely parfume on a sunny day. That’s why you have to kick yourself in the butt and start living again!” Vincent stared at his shoes silently.
“... Living, you say? ... But I don’t have anything on this planet keeping me alive anymore. Anything making me feel humain again... All the ones I used to love and care for have already passed away years ago. And once Sephiroth will be finaly dead, it will lose the only thing justifying my existence...”
“Bullshit,” the blond man replied at once. “Stop angsting over your sorry ass already, it’s blinding you from the most important thing.” Vincent looked at Cid with a mild puzzled look.
“Us.”

For a moment, the raven-haired man stared at his team mate, not understanding what he meant. Cid rubbed the back of his neck with his hand awkwardly.
“Tche, I’m not good at this crap... When this crazy maze against Sephiroth’ll be over, we’ll still be there. Cloud, Tifa and the others. You know. And even if you can’t see it, we care about you, angsty boy,” Cid said awkwardly, getting up from his corner of their bed, looking away. Vincent stared at him, his mouth slightly ajar and an indescribable expression on his features. Silence ensued. A silence that obviously made Cid a bit uneasy. He wasn’t one for cheezy affectionate lines and emotional craps to start with, so he felt a bit out of place saying things like these. But that bloke seriously needed to have some sense knocked into him. When he couldn’t stand the silence anymore, Cid spoke up again - in what he hoped sounded like his casual voice.

“Sorry ‘bout that. Gotta be all the beer I drank... Well I think I’m gonna call it a night,” he said, removing his coat, scarf, piloting goggles, boots and socks. “I’ll be taking this side of the bed, if you don’t mind my snoring. It’s gonna be too cold tonight for any of us to sleep on the ground anyway.” Vincent watched the blond man as he stripped down, turned off the night and slid himself under the moth-eaten blankets just beside him. A few silent minutes passed before Cid rolled over, grunting something sleepily to his partner.
“You’d better tucking in too, we’re gonna have a rough day tomorrow.”
“I don’t sleep much,” Vincent muttered into the darkness.
“’Dun’t care, bring your ass here, gun man.”

Cid stared hard at the other man, trying to see his body outline in the dark. Whaat, wait a minute. Was he... fidgetting?
“I won’t bite you, you know.”
Hesitantly, Vincent removed his crisom cloak and his boots and lied down under the blankets. Their twin bed was so small that their backs – and occasionnaly their feet – touched. Cid could sense Vincent’s muscles tensing against his clothes when they touched, as if he was afraid of human contact. Yep, that bastard really needed to have some sense knocked into him!

Vincent felt awkward. Their backs touched. He was so used to loneliness that even the slightest human touch could make him feel uneasy. The gun man wasn’t used anymore to these sensations. To this warmth. Because Cid’s back felt warm against his, a sensation he hadn’t felt for decades.

Their room was silent and all Vincent could hear was the quiet sound of the raindrops on their window and the soft snoring of the man beside him. Somehow, it felt relaxing. He had grown used to Cid’s warm presence beside him and wasn’t feeling tense anymore, melting a bit in the sudden warmth.

What the pilot had said earlier might be true. Vincent kept on closing his broken heart to people because he felt like he couldn't stand to have to pick up the pieces of it again if he would be hurt. But maybe he wasn’t seeing the problem at the right angle. Like Cid had said earlier, he didn’t have anything left to loose. To break.

He knew he couldn’t forget about the past and move on this easily, but for the very first time in countless years of mourning, he felt like he might want to try living again. Maybe...

As he closed his eyes, to finally seek rest, Vincent’s lips moved to let out words that the snoring and beer-smelling man sleeping next to him would never hear, but those words would plague his dreams and when he would wake up in the morning, he would be under the impression that he had heard those before. Words that Vincent wouldn’t remember but which spoke feelings that had been longing to be set free in his heart for longer than he would believe. Words that meant nothing, but contained a silent promise of better days to come.

"Thank you."


The end.... for now