Author's notes: I confess that I've never played Kingdom Hearts in part because I find it so damn depressing. If you really think about why Tifa and Cloud are there, it's just too sad.

This is me trying to remember what Vincent and Tifa sound like together. You can interpret it however you want.

Enjoy.

Heartless

I knew a man once and he was all colour and crimson, cloaked in dark, light, and heat. He had monsters that hid behind his eyes and his hands were cold when you touched them, if you ever touched them. Never unpleasant, no, but smooth like marble that you could glide your fingers across.

So much of it is like a dream. They tell me that our star fell out of the sky, that people watched them twinkle out one by one. They tell me that there used to be constellations but that now there are only little lost specks, fading flecks of light. They tell me all of this but I can't believe them, do you understand me? Because we'd saved it once, we'd saved it twice, thrice, and we'd watched it grow and live. To believe that I couldn't watch it die, do you know what that does to me?

The third time we were hardly there at all, Vincent. I watched you above Midgar when that little star lived inside of you. What did that light mean to you? It was bright, so bright. I'd hoped that it would be over then. I wanted you to have something approaching normality. Would you like this town? It reminds me a little bit of Nibleheim but there are no mountains here. Did you have any good memories of that place Vincent?

I knew a man once that could hide in corners for days and moved without making a sound. It was breathless, watching him, because always in an instant you felt like he'd just disappear again. We were always waiting for him to disappear, to become the smoke that he had to be because he couldn't really be human, could he? With hands so cold and eyes so red; eyes that could swallow you whole if they wanted to.

Aeris used to talk to him softly, in small corners. I never knew what they said to each other. I used to wonder what she could see that I couldn't. I used to –

Was I afraid of him? He was too foreign to me. He was too far from what I was in the beginning when I was still lying to myself. I remember when she died how something changed in him. We spent the night in those empty houses on beds that were not our own and he circled like a wraith outside, walking with nowhere to go. I went out and watched him move and for a moment I almost understood something. The cape that swirled as he walked with no destination in mind; all colour and crimson, all bright lights with dark undertones, all marble and glass but that wasn't it at all and I don't know why I hadn't seen it before.

He was terrifying when he was angry because it was the one time that he wasn't himself. He could change, ripple. He was a metaphor living inside of another man's clothing. She was there the first time it happened. I've never believed in archetypes but I could see it when she stood there, looking at him, wings, oh, wings stretched wide and high. What could she see? What did he see when he looked at her?

I knew a man once and when I forget everything else, I know that I'll still remember him. Even as I dive deep, searching for something else, trying to find someone else, he stays behind, lurking, watching, waiting. Because I can't imagine him not being here. I'm waiting for him to detach from the wall, walk out of the shadow, step off the trellis and not say anything at all. I want that constant back. You didn't have to see him to know that he was there. I ---

Vincent, I don't know what happened. If I wanted to paint myself a picture I can see you standing in the night, reloading, reloading, the sound fluid and the smell acrid and the tension in the air, vibrating. I can see it because I've see you fight. I doubt that you ever saw the poetry there – I doubt that you ever enjoyed fighting, Vincent, not the way that I could – but there was beauty in that.

But I don't like what I see. I don't like imagining that last, fragile, terrible scene. I don't like the darkness that swirled around you and the sound of that click when you didn't have anything left to shoot. I don't like the feel of the roar that I hear when Chaos woke up and you flew up up up but it wasn't high enough, Vincent. They still caught you. I can hear the sounds of the screams of them dying but they swarmed, they divided, they multiplied – they grew, they expanded, they blocked out all of the stars, even the ones in your eyes. And in that last red glow, I can hear what it sounds like because I've heard it before. A roar, defiant, dying, falling, until you fell to the ground and your wings broke on the impact and there was nothing left. Nothing left at all.

I tell myself that they couldn't have swallowed your soul because you would have been Chaos in the end and you'd always told us that Chaos was Something Else – something older and soulless and demonic and Lost, oh you knew that word, Lost. I tell myself that if they destroyed anything it was him, not you. I tell myself that if Chaos could die then you could die and I don't want to see you instead of him, falling, falling, but I do. I do. Where did those broken wings land? What was left except pools and pools and pools of crimson in the dark? I want to believe that you were dead before you hit the ground, that they couldn't hurt you anymore. I want to but I don't know what I can believe.

I knew a man once that was all crimson and colour, all brief glances and hurried touches, all shadow and darkness, all flurry and light. I knew this man, I knew this man, I knew him and he was mine, for a little while. He's not the one I'm looking for because I know that I won't find him here. He's nowhere, not here, not anywhere. I tell myself that I'm looking for someone else, that I'm looking for a man I love while all the while, maybe, I'm running from a dead man who never chased me, who never looked at me, who never saw me beyond a few, frightening, beautiful times when I caught his eye. All hurried glances, all shuffling feet, all diversion and soft, gravely voices that have no place in humanity.

I hope that you died, Vincent Valentine, because nothing could've held you, especially not the dark. I hope that she took you home before you died. I hope that you found her and that you were both together one last instant before our star went out completely. I'm sorry that I can't search for you Vincent. I'm sorry that I'll never see you again.

But I'm still waiting for you to come back. One day, maybe I'll see you again. One day.

… because they couldn't really have swallowed you whole.