Blood & Sympathy (FFVII: Vincent x OC)

Ch86 - Explanations

Lights. Bright lights penetrated his eyelashes and hit ruthlessly on his half-lidded eyes. He couldn't open them. He couldn't move. His limbs did not answer to the commands of his mind, to move, to react. But he wasn't tied down. He couldn't feel anything. He could hear, though. The only thing he could do, was hear the familiar voices of the two women.

"Sephiroth... my son... our son..." Lucrecia's eyes fell on Vincent. He was still unconscious. He couldn't have heard her...

...or so she thought.

He could hear everything. That was Lucrecia's voice and he recognized it immediately. He felt a cold touch on his cheek. Lucrecia's fingers. They brushed his cold cheek.

"Vincent's... the father?" That was Jocasta's voice "Does Hojo know about this?!"

"Hojo and I were never sexually involved. He offered to marry me and claim the child as his and at the time I thought he was doing me a favour but-"

"A favour?! What is wrong with you?! You left the father of your child to marry another man and you call that a favour?!" Jocasta cried out.

"I never wanted him to be the father of my child! I never wanted any of this! I loved him! But I loved him because I was trying to make up for the guilt that came from killing his father!" Lucrecia finally confessed.

Pain. Vincent remembered that he felt pain. Those words hurt harsher than Hojo's lancets. Jocasta was right all along. Lucrecia never loved him. It was all an act out of guilt and regret. That's why Lucrecia and Hojo never hesitated to experiment on the boy. It wasn't theirs. Lucrecia never wanted him in the first place.

"You did not make up for anything. You're hurting him even more. He has a right to know he has a child!"

Tears slipped down Lucrecia's eyes as she buried her face in her hands and she shook her head "No... it's too late now... Hojo's got my son... our son... he'll never let him go!"

Jocasta's answer took a long moment to come. Vincent had barely heard her leaving out sigh "I save Vincent and it's the last thing I do for you, Lucrecia. I'm going to get my job back in Shinra and work with Hojo only to keep an eye on Sephiroth. But I will not do it for you. I will do it for Vincent."

Memories. Memories he never knew he even had. But so many things had taken place afterwards, that he never even got the time to ponder on them. But he had heard them. He was comatose, and the two of them were working on something on his chest, but he had heard that conversation and it was now coming back to him. Jocasta hadn't known about Sephiroth until then, so it made sense that she wouldn't get the chance to ever tell him.

But Jocasta was right. Lucrecia never actually loved him. She never even said those three words. Those hugs and those kisses, and all those picnics. All that intimacy. All acts out of guilt and regret. She never wanted his child. She never wanted him. That's why she had married Hojo. That's why she had ran away. That's why she kept saying I'm so sorry. She had experimented on him. She had broken his heart because she just never wanted him.

She had hurt him so, so much. And maybe that was the pain that he felt, both physically and mentally.

Vincent's eyes took a minute or two to adjust to the lights. The lights of a truck. He looked up. It did look like one of WRO's trucks. And then he remembered what had happened. He remembered watching Jocasta being stabbed. He remembered Jocasta tearing something out of his chest. Something that she was forced to do. There was no other explanation. He couldn't believe that Jocasta would hurt him intentionally. And maybe that's why, after that, Rosso had stabbed her and they both had passed out in the middle of the Shinra Manor.