Yuffie had tried valiantly to put the two-year-old back to bed, but in the end they'd had to let him stay with them until he fell asleep in his mother's arms.
Finally, after nearly an hour of small talk, then silence, Vincent finally asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"
She swallowed loudly, nervously, as she smoothed her son's hair back from his forehead. "I didn't know where you were."
He didn't know whether to scream in anger or sorrow. Surely she wouldn't have let that stop her. "Did you try to find me?"
"Of course I did!" she snapped. "What kind of cold-hearted bitch do you think I am?"
She looked down at Val, making sure he was really asleep before continuing. "We've had Reno and the Turks on retainer looking for you for two years. I wanted you to know you had a son. You were just being too hard to find."
He had no reply for that. He had been hiding in out of the way places for the last three years. He simply stared at the boy sleeping in Yuffie's arms.
The silence they sat in after that could have only become more uncomfortable if her husband chose that moment to enter the room.
Nearly twenty minutes later, he asked, "You husband knows Val isn't his, doesn't he?"
"Yeah." Yuffie nodded. "But he was so glad that I was pregnant, that it didn't matter. Atnum is sterile, so I saved him the dishonor of having no children. I was the only one who knew about that."
"I see." So her husband wouldn't be hunting him down for defiling his wife.
Vincent almost wished he would, just so that he wouldn't have to live with the knowledge that she'd chosen someone else. That he'd been rejected by the woman he loved a second time.
"He'll want to meet you, since you're here. He's always wanted to meet the man who gave him his son."
"I don't think I can do that." It would be too much like having dinner with Hojo because Lucrecia asked him to.
"Please, Vincent."
"I cannot. I cannot meet the man who replaced me." He'd already lived that nightmare. He would never willingly do it again.
"He isn't your replacement," she told him. "It was an arranged marriage."
"Do you love him?" He knew he had no right to ask, but he wanted to know.
He needed to know if this was Lucrecia all over again.
He looked at her with a hard stare until she said, "No. I love you."
"At least you gave me that much more than Lucrecia." With that, he rose from his chair and slunk into the darkened house.
I hope your gods have damned you for what you did to us, Godo. And I hope they damn me as well, for letting you do it.
all right, kiddos, there it is. all finished. don't beg for more chapters becaue i left it hanging. that was deliberate. i wanted a very unhappy ending. there are too damn many happy endings out there--we needed somthing new-ish. this thing is finished. all done. chapter six is the end. same with All She Couldn't Have.
hope you liked it. i ejoyed writing them!
eerian