Author's Notes: I actually wrote this chapter a good while back but forgot about it. I'm a little bit nervous about it, to be honest. I hope that it turned out alright.

I borrow a certain number of Veld's character traits from my friend Verdot. That bit with the shaking hands is hers. She's brilliant, essentially. (Go read her stories now.)

I think that what I love most about this story is that if you squint you can actually see OGC Vincent pretty clearly in it (at least, how I've always thought of OGC Vincent). It makes it all a lot of fun to write.

Enjoy.

Sans: Infamie

Five months came and passed in a blissful silence. Oh, there was fire and bombs and explosions but for everything else I felt as if I had faded into a muffled quiet. I'd been permitted to fall into a dull grey world where my purpose mattered very little at all. I was allowed to live out my poorly chosen life as I saw fit and I felt that whatever choices I made mattered very little to anyone except a small number of individuals.

Turks don't use such designations but I suppose that by the end of the second month Veld and I could've been legitimately considered partners. In some ways it was only natural. There were only four of us and when you only have four integers and do not allow repetitions - 11, 22 - there are a maximum of six possible combinations. Lynne and Mika worked well together. Veld and I learnt to work together by default.

Still, I can't help but wonder if I am being blind in my justification of it. Had Veld and I learnt to work well together? I think back to our first mission together – the missing girl, the dead man in the Slums … had we learnt that?

Maybe it was instinct. All I know is that when I walked through the halls of that building I didn't have to watch my back or my right side. It's easier to avoid getting shot when you have someone more than yourself trying to protect your life.

Months from now perhaps something will change. My life is only partially my own. Other people – other things – own it more completely than I do. We have a certain amount of autonomy from Shinra. We cannot choose the missions but we choose how we react to them. Mika could have died a month or so ago but we staved that death off, the way we will have to do so again and again and again. If we did not appreciate these lives then we would not try to save them, would we?

Perhaps Moment would laugh at what she would call my human fallibilities but I do not believe that an attachment to life – no matter how poor and flawed a life it may be – is a flaw. We have been given these lives by something exterior to ourselves and so we have to continue on with them until it is no longer possible for us to do so. Had I never left the ill-conceived hermitage that I'd undertaken, I never would've had a chance to glimpse these things. I feel an odd sense of gratitude for that. To him – though he would fight viciously against the idea.

Perhaps… yes, perhaps I can say that they are my moments of normalcy; my moments of calm, blessed sanity. I cannot help but feel grateful to them.

This life that I live is a pale, shallow thing but I cannot help but feel a sense of attachment to it. I know that I would rail at whatever would try to take them from me, these people – these friends of mine.

There is a violence in me that shudders at the thought. It will rip out the throat of anyone who tries.

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

"Yo, kid."

I look up from my paperwork and a small smile touches my mouth when I see Lynne standing in front of me. As strange as it sounds, it seems like all the others have adopted a piece of Veld's speech patterns. Half a year isn't long enough to wash the 'rookie' and 'kid' comments out of Lynne's vocabulary.

I don't speak but she's used to that.

"We're taking the Chief out tonight. You're coming along."

My smile turns into a smirk.

"Yes ma'am."

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

These aren't the kind of people that you can understand at first glance. Mika's never been particularly good at holding his liquor. Lynne can laugh until she's red in the face and it's enough to get even Veld smiling with more than half of his mouth. It's a strange kind of working relationship. Mika does most of the talking and Lynne normally admonishes him for it. I occaisionally throw in a comment and Veld just normally stays back, taking in the scene.

Of course, at some point Mike and Lynne both come up with similar excuses. Judging by the way that he's looking at her, I can't help but wonder if Veld has noticed it too. If he has, he doesn't comment about it. They make an odd couple, Mika with his inhibitions and Lynne with her lack thereof. A part of me is very deeply pleased for them.

Unfortunately, their departure has the result that you'd expect. Veld has a habit from moving from quiet to withdrawn abnormally quickly. Given the man, it's normally couched in a quiet distain for the circumstances. Still, I am nothing if not stubborn and so I sit there drinking my whiskey in silence.

He speaks eventually.

"You know, she's been looking at you since you came in here." Veld nods over towards a woman sitting a few tables away from our spot at the bar. She's wearing red, I see – a red top that's ridiculously low-cut even for this bar scene. Her makeup looks cheap in the harsh light.

"Has she?" I ask, even as she notices me noticing her.

Veld nods and takes a long drink from his glass without looking at me.

"Yup," he says simply. I watch him for a while but he continues to essentially ignore my presence. After a moment I down my drink in one harsh go.

"Excuse me," I say.

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

The woman has a scar all across her stomach that reeks of back alley abortions. She uses her nails against my skin and I grunt as she leaves scratches across me.

When she tries to put the condom on using her mouth, I can't help but pull her off of me to do it myself.

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

"That was fun, hun," she tells me afterwards, her slum accent thick on her tongue. She gets dressed with a lazy efficiency that I don't quite watch. When she's done, she waltzes over to my bedside table and scribbles her name down in red ink.

"Call me if you wanna do it again sometime."

There's a headache starting at the edge of my temples but I nod in any case. She leaves me eventually and I hear the door of my apartment click shut.

I get out of bed and pull on my boxers and dress pants again. After a moment's thought, I light a cigarette, the plume of smoke almost blue in the dark. It isn't good enough though – my mouth is still dry with the taste of ashes.

I head to the en-suite bathroom hoping to wash the smell of her off of me.

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

I don't realize that I've left the apartment until I'm walking on the pavement outside. The streetlights are obtrusive but the streets themselves are oddly empty. I walk with my hands in my pockets not quite sure where I'm going until I end up in the part of the city that I'd left earlier. My feet take me to the place where I apparently want to go.

The bar's lights are jarring and kitsch. I leave on my third drink because there is a dangerous thing inside of me that's threatening to do something I know I'll regret.

I hit the streets again but the cool Midgar air doesn't offer any relief. I feel as though I could walk for hours.

For whatever reason, I'm not entirely surprised when I arrive in the district that I'd least expect, the building in question dark against the blue-black sky.

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

"You're drunk," he says with a dark glint in his eye. It's not quite true; not in the way that he's accusing me. I'm not so drunk that I'm impeded and I still have my sense of clarity.

Though that shuffling thing is growing stronger in me. I'm so angry.

I hide it in my throat.

"May I come in?" I ask, the words only partially distorted through that thing in the back of my mouth. I don't know why I'm bothering to ask. I won't leave if he tells me to.

He doesn't even nod; he just steps back from his door, leaving it wide.

I've been to Veld's apartment before. Before or after missions, sometimes it was necessary to stop here. That was different. This is something else entirely.

Because it is three in the morning and there are no lights on in here. I cannot help but wonder what Veld was doing sitting in the dark when he was so clearly sipping bourbon. As I take off my shoes, he disappears into the kitchen and I hear the unmistakable sound of ice falling into a glass cup and liquor being poured.

Shoes off, I stand a few feet away from the doorway, my mako-tinted eyes taking in the scene. Veld's apartment is much like mine; open-concept, to my left is a living area that leads to a balcony. To my right there is a short hall that leads to the bedroom and the bathroom. Directly ahead is the path to the kitchen. There is a wall partition that hides half of the kitchen but that is the only separation in the otherwise open space.

"You might as well come in," he says, hidden by the wall of the kitchen. I don't hesitate before walking in. In truth, I don't know why I'm bothering with the formalities of an invitation.

He's leaning against his kitchen counter, half of the bourbon in his glass already gone. I pick up the glass he's left for me and take a deep drink.

"Girl wasn't to your liking?" he asks, a hint of veiled amusement in his eyes. He's mocking me but that's not exactly what he's saying.

Is that just a barest hint of … is Veld insulting himself?

It's the tone that wakes up that anger in me again. It sits between us like some kind of second presence and the hand he has against his kitchen counter twitches for the briefest of moments.

I'm starting to understand that Veld can't always keep things hidden under his skin. He's hard to read but he's not impossible to read. His hands sometimes shake because …

I have never told this story to any of the others because I knew the moment it happened that it was not something I was meant to see. Some three months ago, we were on another mission together – there have been close to a hundred by now; Turks certainly earn their keep in the department.

Three months ago, I failed in protecting my left side. I was grazed and Veld flipped me around so that he was facing the opponent to my left.

That was the natural thing to do. We are all trained to fight in unity.

What Veld did though… it defied sense. He was armed but he didn't shoot the man. Instead he flicked his wrist and a knife materialized in his left hand.

Most people will never see a man die from a slit throat. The blood doesn't spurt but instead runs down the neck like a thick, red curtain. The man scrambled at his throat, his eyes wide. With so much blood falling, you find it hard to understand how a small trickle can still escape his mouth – and how you can manage to notice such a thing as you watch him die.

There were three others and they were just as quickly dispensed – hand to hand, nothing so civilized as a shot to the head.

At the end of it, Veld didn't look at me right away. I think that he would've ignored Lynne and Mika entirely. He dug his right hand into his pant pocket and I saw a brief view of something white – a tissue or a handkerchief, maybe - before he raised his hands in front of himself, obscuring my view. I assumed that he wiped off the blade of his knife before making it disappear into his sleeve again.

I only noticed it when he tucked his handkerchief back into his pocket. I was almost too distracted by the red on the white but I saw it. Veld's right hand was shaking uncontrollably. He balled his fist and stuck it into his pant pocket as well. He made the barest glance in my direction and said that we should go and so we did.

Mika and Lynne wouldn't have been able to hear it, that faint tremble that followed us for hours afterwards. They might've assumed that he ignored them out of some kind of shame for his lose of control and perhaps there was a kind of shame following us that night. People like to pretend that we are, at the very least, a different sort of animal. Something civilized.

But that wasn't it entirely. He ignored me because that tremble was still there and I was still alive.

Personification is the only way I can explain these things to people who aren't acquainted with them. There was a violence – a living, breathing, hating violence in him. It hadn't run its course yet and I was still alive.

He ignored me to stave off my death. Physically, we are evenly matched but Veld's rage is older than mine. It alone could probably kill me.

That is why when I see his hand twitch against his countertop when we're alone in his apartment together, something breaks off inside of me. There is something broken inside both of us. I mean that in the most proper sense of the word. Something was shattered in our conception so that we are…

That distant look, that haughty stare – the audacity to think that I don't see it.

He is foolish and a fool, Veld. I can see right through it. He's lying with every ounce of himself and he's likely been lying for years. It's no wonder that he hated me when we first met. If I were him I too would likely hate something that offered a clarity of perception.

It's written all over his blood. I can see it in his face.

For the audacity, for the vanity, for the pride – I hit him. I hit him hard enough that he stumbles back from the counter and catches himself against the refrigerator door. His left hand wipes the side of his mouth and there's a smear of blood just above his thumb.

When he looks up again I see something dark and violent starring out at me from behind his eyes.

I smile.

I will teach him that he cannot break me. When he has learnt that, perhaps we can live in honesty again.

.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

We fall asleep afterwards, curled up around our collective injuries. I lie there half-awake. The others shuffle about speaking quietly amongst themselves. I mostly ignore them, content to focus on the dull ache that consumes me.

I'm half-asleep when I hear her quiet chuckle.

There, that wasn't so difficult, was it? she asks.

I don't open my eyes because I know that I'm not going to be able to see her.

"Does it matter to you?" I ask, my voice barely dusting the air around me.

Your purpose is small, Vincent Valentine. I care very little about what you do with your life.

"I'm glad to hear that," I reply.

When she's gone again, I fall back asleep.