Copyright Notice: Yeah, many apologies to all those wonderful guys at Squaresoft, whose story and characters I have shamelessly appropriated for my own ends. It's not been done with malice or from any desire to male ill-earned money, however: my motives were pure and spring only from love for your work. If you hadn't left such massive holes in Vincent's back story I probably wouldn't have written this, though…

Author's notes: Yup, it's another weird, angsty one, but this one's about FFVII's Vincent Valentine rather than Rociel (and that, I'm afraid, is something that is no less inevitable than my writing about Rociel was; I want to write another Rociel fic soon). I've been working on this for months, on and off and I'm not sure if it's any good or not. I just bet this whole plot has been done to death already but the idea assaulted me and refused to let me go until I'd done something with it. I guess I'm just a sucker for the beautiful but tragic and massively traumatized ones. Warning: this fic is pretty dark, and deals with some pretty dark themes, even if it doesn't do so explicitly. You probably all know what I mean by that.

"I know you're there."

I can't see anything except myself, with my hands flat against the glass like this it looks as if I'm talking to my reflection. Or it does from this side. I'm not a fool, I'm not so disoriented and confused that I've forgotten why there would be this panel in the wall. Yet. I can feel my grasp slipping but I won't let them know I can. But it's not here so that I can see myself and make sure the face I present to the world is the one I'd like the world to see. It's here so that the world outside this window can look in on me, stare at me like they would at a pet or a laboratory rat. Which is what I am, after all. It's what I'm here for. Experiments.

"I know you're there. Don't stare at me."

I concentrate on trying to imagine the face of the man I know is watching me. An unpleasant face (was he ever attractive? What could a woman see in a man like that? And who am I to say what makes a man beautiful, either in body or soul?), but familiar, the one familiar person here, the one person who links what I was with what I've become. To be more precise, with what I'm becoming. He's remaking me. He's molding me in his own image, changing me, turning me into the object of his own twisted fantasies. He knows what he wants from me and it isn't me. Isn't the person I thought was me. He saw something in me that wasn't really there and he's trying to put it there, trying to change me from who I really am into who he thinks I am. The discrepancy between the two is frightening.

One day, perhaps, he hopes that I might even start to like him, the only constant thing in my life now. But if it weren't for him, none of this would have happened in the first place. I resent him, I think. No, I hate him. I rest my hands on the glass and imagine his face, his body and try very hard not to let the distaste I feel for the very thought of him - never mind the sight of him, the smell of him, all nauseatingly familiar to me now - show in my own expression. One good thing about this two way glass; it helps me keep composed when I have to. He sickens me, he repulses me, the things he has done and will do to me make me feel ill. But what can I do? He's got me where he wants me. I'm a prisoner, worse, I'm a specimen; at least most prisoners know they'll get out someday and have something to look forward to, at least in prison you can apply for parole or a pardon. All I have to look forward is all a laboratory animal has; more of the same followed inevitably by premature death and dissection, then once he's got everything he can from me he'll throw what's left of me out with the rest of the trash. But at least an animal doesn't know that will be its ultimate fate. Here lies an unidentified victim of violence. I've seen it happen, seen him do it even! Why did he think that would interest me? and it's going to happen to me. The things he does to me will be what kills me, there's no doubt about it. I'm like something pinned down on a cover slip and thrust beneath a microscope. There's nothing about me he doesn't know, he knows my whole body inside and out and now he's got that he wants my mind.

"Say something."

And I know he's watching me now. I can feel him. My entire body's weirdly sensitized to him and I know he's out there now. I know he's in the laboratory watching me. I know I'm standing right in front of him, that I'm probably staring straight at him. He might even have placed his hands where mine are; if it weren't for the glass we'd be touching. The thought is almost enough to make me pull back with a gasp. It makes me wonder what he's thinking. He sickens me. Does he know that? I want him to know it, I want to let him know exactly what I'm thinking from A to Z. I want him to know just how much I despise the sight of him, how the sound of his name is enough to revolt me. Why not? He knows everything else. He knows my body, why shouldn't he know my mind? It's my mind he's after now, for what little that counts for (compared to him and the people he's used to working with, I must seem quite incredibly dull. I never felt stupid before. Or did I? I can't even remember who I was, just what I was, and that doesn't help me now), why not just make it easy for him?

Because. I don't want to make it easy for him. Let him work for it. Let him suffer like I do.

I can't remember who I was and I don't have any idea who I currently am. I've not been told what I'm becoming. I suppose I'm just going to have to learn patience. But why should anyone have to wait to discover what's happening to them, when what's happening to my body is like this? Was I asked about this? No, I don't think so. Surely this isn't right? Isn't it illegal? Shouldn't it be illegal even if it isn't? Has anyone noticed I'm missing yet?

That's going to bother me now. Hasn't anyone noticed I'm missing yet? Has nobody I used to know asked themselves 'I wonder what happened to him?' If they have, then why in the hell haven't they done something about it? Oh I know what's going on here. I was always disposable and it's so much easier to replace me than wonder what happened to me, look for me. I wasn't that great at the job anyway and the Professor's far too good to leave any traces. He may be a second-rate scientist but he's a first-rate criminal. He's probably reported me missing at the very least.

If your dog dies, get another.

He never made her happy. I don't think I'm just saying that because… no. No, I'm not just saying it, it's not just my warped view of things. He never made her happy, never really cared for her. I wish… but it's too late for that now. It doesn't matter to her and there's nothing I could do about it even if everything was the same. Except for this of course.

Here I go again. Round and round in circles.

I've heard of this kind of thing before. Women never seem to want to have anything to do with men who actually have some kind of finer feeling for them. How many problems in life would be avoided if women realized what they had in someone who was always there instead of seeing that person as nothing more than a shoulder to cry on when their supposed lover hurts them… I don't know why I was even surprised though. I don't know why I thought I could even try.

She knew what she was doing… or she thought she did. What did I know? No wonder they didn't listen to me. I'm not even a scientist. Even if I was right. What kind of satisfaction is that meant to give me now? What's the good in being proved right when your theories were as bleak as mine were, way back when? I hoped I wasn't right. I didn't want to be right. Knowing that I was is no comfort.

Too many questions.

I'm tired of thinking of her. I don't know if she's still alive (I think she's dead, maybe because it's easier to think of her as dead) and even if she was she wouldn't have really cared whether I was thinking about her, worrying about her, or not. But then, I'm tired of everything now.

____

I think the solitude is getting to me. Yesterday I had a conversation with myself, or at least I think it was yesterday. The time before the last time I slept. I don't know how long I slept for. I sleep a lot these days; I'm tired all the time. I think it's got something to do with what's happening to my body. I used to think he drugged my food, but why would he need to do that when the very air in this place makes me feel as if I've been drugged? You lose all track of time in here. My watch stopped, or did he take it away? I can't remember. There's nothing round here that actually belongs to me, that's really mine; the only thing I've got now is my body and the clothes I stand up in and they're both rather the worse for wear, none of it's quite like I remember it. The things that I counted as mine are probably still in my apartment, gathering dust… Funny how much people rely on familiar things around them… and in knowing what time it is. What time is it, early, late? Isn't it about time something happened? I used to be able to guess at the time by the people I saw round me, by when I was disturbed, but the patterns have changed too much for that.

I feel like I'm in a goldfish bowl. All fish are neurotic being looked at twenty-four hours a day, there's no privacy in here, it's driving me mad. They must be, if they feel anything like I do, if I even know how I'm feeling. Like I said, the solitude is getting to me. I feel like a fish in here, that or some kind of lizard in a terrarium, every so often someone lifts a flap and shoves some food at me, when they remember to do it. Occasionally someone comes along and stares. Normally I can't see them but I know they're there. Hello, whoever you are. Have we met? Why are you staring at me, am I really that fascinating? I suppose I must be, if I wasn't I wouldn't need to be in this fishbowl. And as the fish swim round and round I find myself pacing, when I have the energy to. I don't normally, there's nothing to see I haven't seen a hundred times already. A thousand. I don't want to move. I don't want them to know this is getting to me.

Who's 'them'? That's simple. Everyone. Everyone who isn't stuck in this bowl with me.

"Hello."

I'm not talking to anyone, there's nobody here but me. I'm just reminding myself that I'm still capable of speech. I wish I had something to do here but wait and think when my mind and my memories are at war with my sanity. I'm bored. The boredom's getting to me too. It's not possible to take someone used to living the way I was and put them in a bare room with nothing to do or think about without the strain starting to show somehow. Give me something to do, anything, or I think I'm going to scream. I really think I'm going to start to scream.

Yesterday I had a conversation with myself and at the same time it was not myself. One part of me spoke to another part as if they were old friends, it surprised me, I never knew I'd met myself and I didn't think we'd have got on. But stuck here in my goldfish bowl who else is there but me? If I didn't talk to myself I wouldn't get to talk to anyone at all. I'm not even that talkative. I don't know what's happening to me any more, if I ever did. All I know is that I hate it.

He says he's perfecting me. What's perfect about this? What has he done to my body? It doesn't even look like my body any more. I need a haircut. It's to my shoulders now, but he won't cut it. Maybe he thinks it suits me. I don't agree. My arm still hurts, sometimes; knowing it's a phantom pain doesn't make it any easier to bear. My clothes don't fit properly, I've lost weight, I'm ghostly pale from being indoors all the time; I used to look healthy and capable, I used to look like the man I'm supposed to be, but not any more. I feel strangely insubstantial, some days. I feel like a ghost, but I'm still alive. The other changes go a lot deeper, they're not visible, but that doesn't mean I can ignore them… I'm not how I remember being. I'm starting to frighten myself. I don't know what he's doing to me. Sometimes I suspect he doesn't either. It's all an experiment.

If I had something heavy enough in here to throw, I could probably break the glass in front of me and run for it, but I don't. If it mattered that I got out of here anyway.

Maybe I'm getting morbid. Part of me thinks I deserve this. Another part of me thinks that part of me is a masochistic, self-pitying fool. Lately, I've stopped recognizing even the patterns of my own thoughts. This happens, when you isolate someone with nothing to do and nothing to stop them thinking. Humans are social animals. For one person to spend so much time alone just isn't natural. I always heard that solitary confinement can drive people mad, I never really believed it before but now there's no doubt about it. I don't need to believe it because it's true; truth negates faith. Maybe I do deserve it; I suppose isolating me like this is one way of making sure I don't hurt anyone else like that again…

What would happen if someone gave me a knife? Or a pen, which could be broken down into its component parts? Or a metal shank, or a razor blade… I've been wondering what I'd use it on, who I'd use it on, and how. Would I even try to effect an escape, or would I find another kind of exit? Who do I despise most, the professor or myself? If someone gave me the chance to kill myself, would I take it? I'm almost glad there's nothing in here I could use to achieve that aim or I might well have decided to conduct that experiment. If I could kill him, then maybe I'd be able to die happy… but really, what would that solve? He's not the only scientist in the world. If it wasn't him, very likely it would be someone else. If he abandoned this now, someone else would just pick it up again. Scientists come and go but the experiments wouldn't change. The theory has to be proved somehow, the test is running. If he went all that would happen is someone else would do it instead.

Lately, I've stopped recognizing the patterns of my own thoughts. I never used to think like this. At least I don't think I did. I'm not sure of anything any more. Some mornings it's a struggle to remember how I got here. Once upon a time there was a brilliant scientist who traveled to the mountains with his lover and the man who loved her…

Maybe I'm losing my mind. For what that's worth.

She won't leave me alone.

I don't know what she wants from me but she will not leave me alone.

What do you want? I asked her, but she didn't say anything, just smiled. She was still beautiful. I sometimes suspect that she always will be to me (so it's like that). She always had a charming smile. She never smiled enough. She almost never smiled at me like that. Was I that hopeless a case? Once I thought she liked me but I'm not sure about that now. I think she's blaming me for something but I don't know what it is. There are too many things she could want to blame me for.

I'm beginning to forget some of the things that made her who she was - funny really, I still remember her far more clearly than I remember myself, maybe because I seldom thought of me and often of her - but she won't leave me alone. She wants me to atone for my sins. What sins?

First, my apathy. I followed orders where the Professor was giving them. Some women, maybe even all women love men who seem to master their destiny (who told me that, and why?). I never did that. I never really fought for the things I believed in. When the going got tough I decided to pretend I didn't really mind, saying I never meant anything by it in the first place. Maybe she always worried me, she and the Professor both. Maybe I was always intimidated by their minds… that doesn't seem like me, that kind of insecurity, but maybe I never noticed it was there before now. Stand on the inside looking out and it's hard to see as clearly.

Second, and it relates to number one, I just let things happen. I had the chance to say something about what they were doing long before they went too far and I let it pass. At first I spoke up, but they didn't listen. Did I ever really expect them to, or was it just registering a protest? I don't recognize the way I think now and I can't begin to understand the man I used to be. If I can't understand him, what hope for anyone else? What chance of changing their minds did I ever realistically have, I wonder? Why? Because I think it's a bad idea was never going to be a terribly persuasive argument. All the same, I could have tried harder. I know I should have. I shouldn't have let myself be intimidated by the fact that they were both…

… both what? Both a lot cleverer than me? That's it, isn't it? I didn't try and fight because I knew if I had tried to mount a protest they could both come up with a dozen arguments for whereas all I had against was a matter of ethics. Ethics. That must have sounded funny coming from a man who killed for a living when she at least thought they were trying to create not destroy. But all I had was the vague feeling it was immoral, that and it was all much more dangerous than they thought…

I was right. It doesn't make me feel any happier.

Finally, there is the undeniable fact that I just stepped back when she and the Professor… I don't like to think about this, but I have to. I mustn't let myself forget. I imagine that I honestly thought I was doing the right thing. She wouldn't have thanked me for interfering. I was never as important to her as I would have liked to be; my feelings were incidental as far as she was concerned. What could I have had to offer her in comparison with a man like that? A different face, a couple of inches difference in heights, a different mind, and that was the mind of an inferior specimen (I'm even starting to think of myself in his terms now). She needed someone who was intellectually her equal and that I definitely was not. I work with my hands, the Professor with his head. He gives orders, I take them. She'd never have been able to move past the fact I could never have begun to understand her work… worse, that what little I did know of I disapproved of… Why experiment on humans at all? I thought that even before it became personal, I remember. I'm sure of that.

Those were my sins; memory is my penance.

If she was happy, then that was okay with me. But… he never made her happy. He never really cared for her. Would I have done better? Could I have made her happy? I don't know. I honestly don't know.

I'd have tried, though. And that's where the differences start, Lucrecia.

The professor paces, backward and forward, backward and forward, paces the floor like a tiger in a cage. Almost as if he was the one imprisoned and I was the one watching him. The sound of his footsteps is a constant accompaniment to my thoughts. I lie where I fell… no, I didn't fall. He pushed me to the floor. I do not move; I lie still and stare at my hand, my fingernails, at the tangle of hair that has fallen over my face. I feign unconsciousness, I play dead. He can probably tell that I am awake. He can probably tell whatever he wants about me just by looking. He knows me better than I know myself; he remembers where my memory is failing. He is speaking, expounding some theory or another which he must know I wouldn't understand even if I was concentrating on his words. It all means nothing to me, less than nothing. I don't understand him but then I never could.

He has an advantage. I may be trapped but he can leave here whenever he likes; he can leave and go back out into the world. He can remind himself that there is a world out there, a whole planet full of people and places. My world has shrunk; my world contains nothing but a few small rooms, a skeleton staff with closed-off faces (I cannot reach them, I am dead to them, to them I long ago lost my humanity and am no more worthy of a second glance than any of the professor's other specimens. They will not help me; why waste breath on a dead man walking?), faces glimpsed only barely below helmets, above surgical masks - so she must have appeared, at one time - and him. He is always there now. He is with me, always… like a God, I think crazily, and try to suppress my own wild giggle. I used to hope that this was a lucid nightmare and that I'd wake to find myself safe, back home - wherever that was, whatever that was, 'home' is a concept now, nothing more - and that none of this was real. Now I wonder if any of the things I thought I knew were real. Maybe I just imagined the rest; maybe everything I took for real was nothing more than a fever-dream, the hallucinations of a trapped and desperate animal. Maybe all my so-called truths were lies; maybe all my world ever was is contained in these four walls.

Did I dream it all? Could I have dreamt it all? I don't think I dreamt her but maybe, maybe I did. All that I know for sure is true is that I am trapped with this man and he will kill me before he willingly sets me free.

The professor.

The one familiar face now and I still despise the sight of it. I think he really does hope that, given time, I will at least learn to tolerate his presence. I am the only one who knows you still live, he said, I'm the only person who still remembers you. Does he think that the world forgetting makes any difference? He's telling the truth and I know it to be true. Why lie when the truth is infinitely more painful, why should anyone else remember what even I am beginning to forget? He smiles; he is even more ugly when he smiles, he has a cut-throat's face. As a scientist he looks absurd, he is absurd. He is a ridiculous man, and I suspect he is well aware of it. Even I can tell, and I know little enough, that what he is doing to me is bad scientifically. He's doing it because he can, but what's the point of such an experiment? What good will it do to him? To anyone?

There's no point to any of it, is there, professor? You're doing this to me just because you can, not because it will prove anything of even negligible value. You're just playing with me. I'm your toy and you don't much care if you break me.

It is a small victory; my victory is to know that whatever he's doing is useless and is inevitably going to fail, though why I should feel pleased that I am just a game to him is a mystery; I take what little pleasure I can out of my life where I can find it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but these hopes he has tied to me will fail. I'm failing myself, I can feel myself weaken, feel what little hold I have left on reality weakening all the time. The only question remaining is what will give out first; my body, or my mind.

I have begin to think of myself as he thinks of me; a specimen, something to be studied. A test subject, one of many. A dry run for whatever he is planning for the child, for surely the child is too young to be studied. I would not put it past him to be trying, though. Good God, what kind of life could anyone have after such an infancy? But at least the child will know no different. I know different, and the knowledge of what I have lost is killing me. The knowledge of what I will never have is a constant torment. And I am losing my mind. I can tell I am. She haunts me. I do not know what has happened to her and she haunts me. Is she dead? Recently he told me she was and he almost seemed pleased. Maybe I imagined his satisfaction; it pleases me to think ill of him and I have little enough amusement.

And why lie when the truth is infinitely more painful?

He is stood over me, he looks down at me; I can feel his eyes. I do not move. Why give him the satisfaction of knowing how much his presence appalls me?

Last time I saw my own face I fancied my eyes looked dead.

He bends down and touches my hair, pushes it from my face and looks straight into my eyes then he says my name, or rather the name that belongs to the man I once was. I won't move. My eyes are dead, he's slowly killing me. Why then pretend to have any grasp on life? He prefers it when I show what he calls spirit; he likes to make me react. I used to react, but why bother when there's no hope of escape; no point in shows of bravado. I know just as well as he does that there's nothing I can do. Pretending that there's any hope left for a creature like myself is a joke, it's a bad joke. Yesterday, in my personal yesterday, I finally understood the joke and I laughed even though I'm the victim, I'm the joke. I laughed because it was either that or break down in tears and I refuse to be an object of pity, pitiful though I undoubtedly am trapped here in this room, this place, helpless and diminished and failing. He has his hands on me and still I don't move. I almost think I've forgotten how. My changed body fascinates him; he won't leave me alone, neither of them will.

I don't want him to know how much he appalls me. Even in moments like this I have stopped struggling, stopped looking away. I keep my eyes open now, my lifeless eyes, last time I saw my face I fancied my eyes looked dead and staring at my face the person I thought I saw there scared me in his sheer indifference, his coldness. That face never scares him. I stare at him, through him, and pretend he isn't here. Pretend he isn't here and he can't hurt me any more because even now it hurts, even now I'm not used to him, to having him so close to me. Pretend he doesn't disgust me and that I don't feel anything. Pretend I don't want… he is making me want to scream (what did you see in him, Lucrecia? How could you have wanted him like this?). Better that than admit I feel too much. It pleases me to think ill of him and I cannot see why anybody else would have wanted to see him otherwise.

My only victory is to know that whatever he is doing is going to fail.

He's going to fail because he is going to kill me first.

He is finished. He touches my hair again, stands and says something, but the words make no sense to me. He is finished so he stands and says whatever he feels like and leaves me alone again. Such is the pattern of my life, such are the only things that break my solitude. Alone unless he wants to use me in whatever way he sees fit. Why not? I hate him but I belong to him. I'm his specimen, his test subject; whatever he wants to do he can do. Why bother asking my permission? What is consent but an optional extra when all I am is someone else's property?

Such are the only things that disturb my isolation, this is the only company I have. This is what he expects my gratitude for, this is what is meant to keep me sane. This is the focus of my days. The silence is shattered only when he wants to torment me. I sit up, brush my hair from my face again (it's too long and I hate it but he will not cut it), try to control my breathing. Am I trembling? Now why would I be doing that? Am I afraid? An animal knows nothing of it's future and does not fear it, an animal does not realize that it's very existence is finite, but I am not an animal. No matter how diminished I may have become, no matter what he's done to me and what he is going to do, I am still - fundamentally at least - human. I am still a man. I know what it is I have lost and what it is I am losing. I am not an animal. Why then do I let him treat me like one? Why do I just accept my fate, accept that my death is inevitable rather than fight it, struggle against it?

Because this way is easier.

Because if I die then I don't have to live with the consequences of this, with this body that is no more familiar to me than that of a near-stranger and with my own guilt. I would willingly embrace death, but not my own life lived under these conditions. Because merely the fact of my continued existence does not mean that I am alive. Something inside me has died, perhaps for good, and now that it no longer exists I see no need to continue living. I can't continue to live like this, I'm not capable of it. I doubt that anyone would be. If my body is destroyed, then the existence of my mind would be a torment; if I lose my mind, what point in the continuation of my body as little more than an empty shell? Even now, with both body and mind still fundamentally sound, existence is nothing but a curse.

If I cannot die, at least let me sleep. Let me cease to be. I failed to make myself heard before things went too far to save her. There is little more the professor can tear from me before he destroys me completely either in body or in soul. I couldn't protect her from him or from herself - how, when I know myself to be helpless, when I can't protect myself? Whatever result I was hoping for I have failed. What is there left but extinction, now I've failed myself and the woman I love? She is dead. The professor and I destroyed her, and nobody cared except myself. Now he will destroy me too and there will be nobody left to care at all. But I will welcome extinction.

I embrace my own destruction, for it's all that I deserve.

~fin~