• continued from part 1b (http://www.gaiaonline.com/arena/writing/fiction/vote/?entry_id=101036393#title)


    * * *

    Dawn came, and Mordea continued to lay in the bed and stare at the wall. Her sense of dread grew with each passing moment. Yet, there was nothing she could do. All she could do was wait.

    Hot sunlight poured through the window. When Mordea looked at it, it seemed to sear her eyes so that everything else in the room was difficult to see. It made her feel dizzy and nauseous.

    Angry fingernails scratched at the back of her neck. Were they real, or was she just crazy? It didn’t matter. The message was real.

    A voice spoke out of the dizzying sunlight. “How can you expect me to use such an imperfect tool? Can you give me a reason why I should not cast you aside?”

    Mordea did not want to acknowledge the voice.

    The voice desired more of a response from her. It dug its fingernails into her back. She flopped over on her back and pressed herself into the mattress, trying to keep the fingers from digging into her. Instead, the claws dug deeper.

    “Why?!” she cried out. “Why should you care?!”

    “He tried to interfere with my will,” the voice answered. “He should be dead for it! And you were the one who helped him escape what he had coming to him. Now you will fix that mistake. You will send him to the grave he deserved.”

    “But I’ve never helped or saved anyone,” Mordea spoke softly. “I was created for death alone.”

    “How little you know of yourself!” the voice cackled. “It is for your insolence that you became undead.”

    Mordea was silent. She couldn’t remember anything before she had been made by the Professor. She had always believed that she was “born” this way – that her heart had never beat before and never would in the future.

    The voice interrupted her thoughts. “You shall complete my will!” Then the voice exhaled and grew quieter, retreating into that dizzyingly hot beam of sunlight. The claws slowly let go and followed the remnants of the voice.

    All sign of the voice was gone, but Mordea did not feel alone. The voice would be watching her. It had been for some time now, but she hadn’t told the Professor about it. Besides, if the voice carried the same will as the Professor, it did not matter. He was probably the one who put the voice there anyway.

    She heard the apartment door open. Vincent had come home. Mordea looked back at the window and saw that the sun was disappearing behind the tall buildings of Midgar. How much time had passed? How long had the voice held her in its grip? It frightened her. The voice had never before exercised such power over her. And really, it hadn’t had a reason to before. Until now, she had been locked in the lab. There was little she could do in that steel-and-cement cage. But now, out in the city, she could be used to do many things . . . It seemed that as her freedom grew, so did the power of the voice.

    A pair of deep red eyes peeked through the bedroom door to check on her. She didn’t move. A few moments later, she heard the tv switch on in the living room. It was the evening news. The reporter was saying something about discovering the remains of what appeared to be an old Shin-Ra research facility hidden beneath the remains of the old burned-down mansion in Nibelheim . . .

    Mordea sat up and rubbed her head, then covered her face with both hands. Why me?

    She closed the curtains and went out to the living room. She arrived just in time to hear the reporter say something about “inconclusive evidence.” Then the sportscaster took over. Vincent shut the tv off and went into the kitchen.

    The water began to boil on the stove. Vincent was making ramen noodles again. He had actually stopped by the store on his way home from work, but when he got to the food aisle, he realized he didn’t really know how to make anything else. He was a gunslinger, not a chef. Rather than embarrass himself by trying to learn something new in the presence of a guest, he ended up just buying a couple of new flavors of ramen noodles. Unfortunately, they only had one flavor of fish sticks . . . not much variety there. He bought more hot dogs though. Perhaps he could alternate between fish sticks and hot dogs. He wasn’t a very good host. Come to think of it, he had never been a host before – at least, not in the sense of entertaining guests at his home. Perhaps she wouldn’t care . . . Vincent thought back to when he had been in that situation. All he’d cared about was food and a warm place to stay. It didn’t really matter if there was a lot of variety and flavor. In fact, he had failed to care about the evil intentions of the people who took him in and cared for him . . .

    In any case, he didn’t plan on keeping the girl at his home for very long. He was determined to help her “get back on her feet.” It just didn’t seem proper to let her – a single woman – stay in his apartment otherwise.

    Dinner began quietly, as it had the night before. But this time, the ramen noodles were beef-flavored, and they were on the plate with a side of hot dogs instead of fish sticks.

    Mordea had lost interest in food. Tasting it for the first time had been an adventure, but she didn’t enjoy it now, knowing that she wouldn’t be allowed to keep it.

    Vincent tried not to let his gaze wander over to her face. He couldn’t take looking at her; she just looked so much like Lucretia. He broke the silence at the table, but refused to look up from his ramen. He would need to focus on the conversation. “So . . . what are you good at?”

    Mordea stopped eating and stared at him. “I . . . I don’t know . . . what do you mean?”

    “Is there something you do a lot – something that you enjoy and are skilled at?”

    She paused for several seconds to think. “Um . . . I guess . . . well, I like swords. And knives.” The moment those words were out of her mouth, she regretted saying them. Nero had told her a few things about how “helpless damsels in distress” should be, and being adept with bladed weapons was not one of those things.

    “Do you know how to make swords – or knives?”

    “No, I just . . . I was only taught how to use them.” If it had been physically possible, she would have been blushing deep red. She had just punched several holes in her own cover.

    “Do you think you could teach Kendo or something?” Vincent asked, trying to come up with job possibilities.

    “What’s Kendo?” she asked, dumbfounded. In the lab, the Professor had captured (and was able to control) an instructor by means of anesthetic gas. The Professor took the man’s family hostage in order to force him to train Mordea. The angry instructor only taught her the bare bones of what she would need for fighting – and he did so hastily. All the rest of what she learned came from fighting the instructor. She learned nothing of the history or even the name of the art. She was given all the physical aspects, but never learned anything about the true heart of the art. Just sparring matches, for months on end, until the time within the shadows of the underground lab stretched into years . . .

    Vincent raised an eyebrow at her response. He looked up to study her, and saw Lucretia’s eyes staring back at him, questioning. He quickly looked back at his ramen and took another bite. “It’s sword fighting.” If the girl really was any good with swords, she should have known what it was – or so he believed.

    “Oh.” She dropped her eyes. “I don’t know . . . I guess I could try.”

    Vincent silently resolved to look up some Kendo schools in the morning. The rest of the dinner was silent.

    Amidst the silence, Mordea studied him as he ate. On a basic human level, he seemed to enjoy the food. It was a small luxury he allowed himself. He had to, in order to have enough energy to continue moving about. It wasn’t just about the taste either – it was fulfilling a need. Filling up the yawning hole in your belly. Delivering nutrients that would be digested and pumped through the blood. It delivered the nutrients in a way that was pleasurable.

    Her nutrient chamber, on the other hand, always made her feel like her skin was on fire. Thousands upon thousands of needles pierced at the same time at different depths, all trying to compensate for 100,000 miles of blood vessels that would normally do the job in a living person. The needles burned and stung, and then the pressure within her body increased until she felt like she was ready to rupture. The needles pumped in all she needed to survive for two weeks. The first time she’d been in the chamber, she passed out from the pain. As years went by, she began to tolerate it – but it was the sort of thing that one could never really get used to.

    Mordea took another bite. It tasted good. She had never eaten anything in her life until Vincent cooked those ramen noodles. The taste was overridden by the act of swallowing. She greatly disliked the idea of putting foreign substances into her stomach, especially since she knew she would have to expel them later. The Professor had once warned her that if she left anything sitting inside her inactive stomach for very long, it would begin to decay and might cause sepsis.

    She watched as Vincent cleaned his plate. Does he even realize how good he has it?

    * * *

    Later that evening, Vincent picked up one of those books again. The book he was viewing at that moment was one of Lucretia’s old lab notebooks from the Jenova project. He ran his fingers slowly over the page. The page had a wrinkled, discolored spot where some unknown chemical had been spilled on it. Her handwriting had faded in the stained spot. There was still enough of the chemical left that it made his fingers burn slightly to touch it . . . it was probably some strong acid or base in dried form, activated by the tiny bits of moisture on his skin. The notes were hastily written. Yet among the abbreviations and shorthand, the letters themselves were still graceful. Gentle beauty even under pressure.

    He didn’t understand all the words. The sciences had never made much sense to him. His own father was a brilliant paleontologist, but the researcher never spent much time with Vincent. Grimoire was always busy with some new project.

    Vincent’s mother left Grimoire because of it, and was killed in a plane crash soon after the divorce. The house was always empty, so Vincent found other things to do with himself. At first he tried archery, but he found bullets to be more practical – and less expensive – than arrows. He burned away many hours at target practice, never returning to the city until it was too dark to practice. He hated going home at night. He practiced his aim until it was perfect, and then practiced some more, always setting up new and interesting challenges to make the hours pass more quickly.

    There was one very important thing he never really learned: how to use a gun. Vincent had taught himself everything there was to know about the physical and technical aspects of the weaponry, but that was all he ever picked up. He was left alone to figure out the ethical and moral implications.

    One day he and his father had a terrible fight. Vincent left, never looking back. He had taken care of himself all those years anyway; he didn’t need his father. However, he was only fourteen. It seemed impossible to get a job when he was homeless, penniless, and didn’t have any experience. After a couple of weeks on the streets, he had acquired such an unclean appearance that no one would even accept a job application from him.

    As a last-ditch effort, he tried to put on a curbside sharpshooting show, hoping that people would drop change in the can he had set down on the sidewalk (like he had seen people doing for curbside musicians). Instead, he was arrested for firing a gun in a business district.

    It was only by chance that a Shin-Ra representative had seen the display and bailed him out of jail. The company didn’t hesitate to pluck the prodigy off the streets and begin using him. Skill like Vincent’s was nothing to sneeze at. The president of the company actually liked the fact that Vincent was so young; he was all too eager to mold the boy into the perfect assassin.

    President Shin-Ra considered Vincent a “successful project.” Vincent became Shin-Ra’s most useful fighter. Years dragged on, and the company grew larger and stronger. More and more responsibility was given to him: more “jobs” that required a perfect shot from a great distance. Shin-Ra’s competitors disappeared one by one. Vincent climbed the ranks and soon became a Turk – the highest level of firepower under President Shin-Ra. Turks were widely feared. Shin-Ra grew from monopoly to empire, and the Turks were the ones who made all threats to Shin-Ra “disappear.” Vincent never really thought about what he was doing . . . until green eyes confronted him.

    On that night so long ago, he had been positioned in the upper level of the train station. The building had a small section with a second story, while the main part of the station was single-story and had a large skylight. From the office he was sitting in, he could see through the skylight into the brightly-lit area where the trains dropped off and picked up passengers.

    Vincent carefully adjusted the rifle until the gunsight was pointed squarely at the door where the passengers were getting off. During the briefing, he’d been given several photos of the target. Now all he had to do was wait for the right one to step off the train. Then there it was – the right face appeared. Vincent started to squeeze the trigger.

    “Daddy!” she yelled as she jumped into his arms. The target leaned forward to embrace her, and his head disappeared behind the tall people standing around the exit door. When the target finally stood up, he was moving around too much. The crowd swarmed around him. Vincent couldn’t get a good shot, and the target was heading out of the train station.

    Vincent spoke into the communicator in his sleeve. “No shot on the target. He is moving toward the exit. Shall I move to execute him once he enters the street?”

    “Negative,” a voice replied. “The police chief just pulled up outside with two officers, and they’re heading for the station entrance. Target must be eliminated inside the station, ASAP.”

    Vincent cursed quietly. “I’ll go in.”

    “Alright; I’m sending in Marshall as backup. ETA 30 seconds.”

    Vincent usually shot from a distance; his specialty was sniping. He was weak in empty-hand combat, so his superiors didn’t really like to send him very close to targets. They usually sent in Marshall – the musclehead – to do that sort of work. Marshall’s shooting abilities were below average, but he had the physical ability to make up for any mistakes with the gun. However, in the few instances where Vincent was sent in close, he never had to use empty-hand combat. Vincent’s abilities rivaled those of any martial arts master – he just used a gun instead of a sword or other weapon. Just as Musashi finished duels with one cut, Vincent only needed one bullet.

    Vincent ran out the office door and down the stairs, heading for the crowded departure area. The target was in possession of knowledge that would expose President Shin-Ra’s dirty deeds, and he needed to be eliminated before he could speak to the police. Normally, Turks didn’t cut it quite so close to deadlines, but this target had been particularly difficult to track down. And now that they had finally located him, it was now or never.

    Reaching the crowded departure room, Vincent looked around. His stature allowed him to see over the heads of many of the people there. Finally, he spotted the target. The guy had almost reached the exit door.

    Vincent ran towards the target, pushing through the crowd as he reached inside his jacket for a handgun. Vincent’s running caught the target’s attention, and the man – as well as his daughter – looked up at Vincent. When the girl saw the gun, she screamed, but Vincent didn’t hear. All of his focus was on the target. He pulled the trigger once, and it was over. The girl clutched at the target as he fell to the ground. Vincent swiftly put the gun away. The gun had a silencer on it, and no one around them had really figured out what had just happened. He started to pull back and disappear into the panicked crowd like he had so many times before. In. Execute. Out. Done. Go home to ramen noodles, a bottle of wine, and an old movie. But the girl wouldn’t let him. She dared to make a scene. She dared to challenge him.

    “Murderer!!!” the girl sobbed, clutching his dark blue suit and shaking him. “Why?!” she shouted. “Why do you hate my daddy?!” She pounded on his chest and struck aimlessly at him, slapping and punching in a fit of rage and pain. His nose began to bleed, and he stumbled backwards a little from the blows. But he did not raise a hand to stop her. He just couldn’t. He was completely stunned. He’d never eliminated a target in front of one of the target’s family members.

    The target’s blood was splattered on the girl, and it had been smeared all over her hands and clothes when she hugged the body. Now that blood was all over Vincent. He just looked at the blood, speechless. He’d seen a great deal of gore, but it wasn’t supposed to soil his suit. How was he supposed to walk casually away with so much red smeared all over his front? He wasn’t supposed to get dirty. The “jobs” had always been clean and distant. Turks were experts – the classiest, most efficient killers around. Turks didn’t stick around long enough for the blood to pool around their shoes. He didn’t like to make a habit of executing targets up close, but even when he’d had to, he’d used quick, clean, silent shots and then hidden away in the crowd, leaving the target out of sight and out of mind. The little bits of blood spatter were too small to draw attention. Furthermore, no one had ever followed him. He’d never seen the family. He’d never seen the effects of shooting someone up close in cold blood – he’d never seen the tears and pain. He hadn’t gotten dirty like this.

    Exhausted, the girl collapsed at his feet, wailing. Vincent just stared. He was paralyzed. He didn’t care that a few people in the scattering crowd were stopping to stare. The girl was about the same age he’d been when Shin-Ra had plucked him from the streets.

    Still dazed, Vincent hadn’t seen Marshall arrive. Marshall spoke into the communicator in his sleeve: “target eliminated.”

    “My daddy is not a target!” the girl screamed. “My daddy is a human being! He’s a person! Daddy’s not just a target! He’s a human being!!!” She shrieked louder and louder, and began slapping and punching Marshall. Like Vincent, Marshall was a man of few words; the difference was that Marshall wasn’t shy – he simply found the act of speaking to others to be beneath him. He was impatient, and far less tolerant than Vincent had been. Marshall grabbed the front of the girl’s shirt and held her at a distance. He told her to shut up and pulled out his gun. The girl grabbed the gun and fought with him. The end of the gun flashed briefly as a silent shot went off, and the screaming stopped. She fell to the ground, and her head rolled over so that she was looking at Vincent. The lower part of her face was destroyed, but her eyes stared out clear as ever. Then her eyes went blank. Those eyes weren’t looking at him anymore; they were looking through him. She didn’t move after that.

    Marshall turned his gun toward the few people who had stopped running and dared to watch the scene. They cowered in fear. “This device has just captured all of your faces,” he said, pointing to his tiny headset. “If any of you breathes a single word about this to anyone, we will hunt you down and execute you and your families, just as we did with these people!”

    After that, Marshall grabbed Vincent’s arm and dragged him roughly toward a side door of the station. “You idiot!” he growled at Vincent. “Do you realize what kind of cleanup this will require?”

    Vincent didn’t answer. He just watched his own feet moving beneath him, without really seeing anything. Her eyes – even in death, they were a lively shade of green. They were so sad to look at. And her daddy was a human being.

    “The sweepers will have to take care of the rest,” Marshall said, trying to pull Vincent along faster. “Let’s go.”

    That night, Vincent didn’t sleep a wink. Every time he closed his eyes, those pretty green ones stared back at him. And each time they stared at him, they looked so shocked. And sad. And angry. And hurt.

    Her daddy was a human being. She told Vincent over and over, mercilessly. Her daddy was a human being . . . and so was she.

    Once certain witnesses were either threatened or paid off and the security videos from the incident destroyed, the Turks were granted a brief reprieve. President Shin-Ra’s opponents and competitors had decreased rapidly as a result of the Turks’ work, and the brutal public murder had frightened away anyone else who was thinking of standing up to Shin-Ra. There was no one who “needed to be silenced” at the moment.

    Meanwhile, Vincent spiraled into a depression. It wasn’t that Vincent had been a very cheerful person to begin with; he had just been able to remain quietly unaware and uncaring until that point. He felt as if he had been walking – and shooting – in his sleep, until those pleading green eyes challenged him. They said what no one else would ever dare say to the face of a Turk. They’re not just targets. They’re human beings.

    It’s interesting how words are used to cover up human beings. In order to complete certain selfish acts, people must first deny the humanity of their victims. They turn human beings into words.

    Jap Monkey Squaw Half-Breed ****** Fetus Tissue Injun Slant Whore Ape Slave s**c b***h c***k Jew Dog Raghead c**t Pig Gook Filthy Subject Thing Target.

    Target.

    They’re human beings.

    What had he been thinking all those years? If they weren’t human beings, then what were they? He wasn’t sure he could answer his own questions. He had just always felt numb. They were . . . targets. Words. Things that the world was overpopulated with. Things that the world didn’t need. Things that didn’t really matter. Things that threatened Shin-Ra and were the best place to start when bringing the world’s population back to equilibrium. Animated things that danced before his eyes like a movie. They were lights and sounds he was ordered to fill with lead. They hadn’t ever seemed real. Even when he looked at ordinary people walking down the street, they hadn’t seemed real. Just illusions. Whenever the hint that they might be more than “things” crossed his mind, he trampled that thought, out of necessity. Perhaps that was why he didn’t have any friends. Even his fellow Turks weren’t quite real. They were skilled machines – weapons he worked with. He had never been forced to consider that they were indeed real, that they were alive, that they were like him. For so many years, he had refused to look. Now, two green eyes wouldn’t let him look away, not even for a second.

    Each hour of each day dragged by slowly, and his head was still spinning with the things he’d come to realize. If they were human beings, then what was he? Murderer!!! the green eyes shouted in reply.

    A week went by, and still he could not sleep. A Shin-Ra company physician gave him sleeping pills. The medication made him dizzy and a bit nauseous, but the green eyes still wouldn’t let him sleep.

    Murder. Murder, as in a premeditated and unnecessary act. Not self-defense, not defense of one’s country or friends and family. Not a public punishment for hideous crimes. It was an act of vengeance or . . . assassination . . . something malevolent, done in secret, often for personal gain . . .

    President Shin-Ra soon assigned Vincent to a new project. This time, it was one of protection, not elimination. He was ordered to be the bodyguard of one of the scientists working on the top-secret Jenova project. Just what I need, he thought, something to get me past all of this. In the past he had found bodyguard jobs to be tedious, but this time, he was looking forward to it. It would feel good to be protecting people instead of “eliminating” them.

    Vincent slowly lifted himself from this reverie. He closed the lab notebook and stared at its cover. He had been so naive back then . . . he had finally awakened, but he wasn’t prepared for what he would face in the Jenova project. Maybe he never could have been prepared for it. That fateful job had been his last. It had changed him forever.

    He put the old notebook back on the shelf and gazed out the window at the stars. What were you thinking, Lucretia? What drove you to commit such madness?

    * * *

    The next day, while Vincent was at work, Mordea sat alone at the apartment. That stagnant feeling was getting to her again. She paced back and forth, shaking her legs and jumping occasionally. Finally she tried standing on her head – that seemed to help some.

    However, none of it could get rid of the voice. The voice was always watching her, following her, breathing down her neck. Occasionally the ominous pressure would get to her and she would whirl around to look behind her, expecting to finally see the voice’s physical form, watching her. But nothing was there.

    Anxious and bored, she finally pulled the little book out of her pocket – the one that girl on the sidewalk had given her. She turned to the first page. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The book went on to list out all the things in the world that were created by God. When God was done making things, He looked around and decided it was good, and He rested. It was a pleasant thought. There were nice things once: beautiful, pure things not created by the Professor. It was a world where death and destruction were forbidden. The land of Eden.

    Then, the book said, an evil being offered humanity a choice. If they went against the rules God had set out for them, the evil being would give them powerful knowledge – “secret” things that God didn’t want them to know. Naive and curious, humanity accepted, and the world was cursed. The “secret” was the knowledge and understanding of true evil. The covenant between God and humanity was shattered. Eden was closed to humanity forever. Sickness and hardship overtook the world. Of the first two children born outside of Eden, one murdered the other. That must be the line the Professor came from, she thought with a smirk.

    The book went on to state that all humans were fallen. All were imperfect and doomed to break God’s laws. The punishment for breaking those laws was eternal death – the sort of death where one constantly continues to die and suffer, but never ceases to exist. Souls could not be destroyed.

    All were imperfect. All who broke God’s laws were sentenced to the same fate. All were equal in God’s sight.

    Mordea didn’t like that idea. She wasn’t perfect; from what she’d read so far, she had broken several of the rules. But the insinuation that such imperfections put her on the same level as the Professor angered her. She didn’t deserve to go to Heaven, but she didn’t think she deserved to go to the same Hell as the Professor either. Mordea shut the book with an audible “slap” and shoved it in her pocket.

    What did any of this matter anyway? She considered her other mistakes to be small and inexcusable, but once her mission was complete, she would be cursed forever. She would murder her hospitable host – fulfill her life’s purpose. The Professor would be proud. Then, with her purpose ended, she would be destroyed.

    But what if it was really true – that part about the eternal death? As one who already experienced a functioning death – one who was trapped inside a dead body – it sounded like the worst torture in existence. She wished to cease to exist, to become nothing. She did not want to be stuck grasping at that nothingness for all eternity.

    Whether it was true or not, it didn’t seem to matter. If everyone was doomed to the same inescapable fate, there was no point in dwelling on it. Don’t fear what you can’t change.

    Even though reading the book had been very depressing, there was an upside. The voice didn’t like the book. It seemed to have retreated for the moment.

    * * *

    “Poison,” he said. “The Professor modified his body, so there’s not really any poison that could kill him, but there are poisons that will knock him unconscious. After he drops, I’ll finish it.”

    Desperate to get things over with, Mordea had been forced to go to Nero for help once more.

    “I’ll grab some from the lab and bring it to the apartment before he gets home from work,” Nero offered. “I can wait outside in the alleyway until the substance has taken effect.”

    Nero brought the poison as promised. Mordea was going to make the ramen tonight.

    * * *

    Vincent came back to the apartment a bit late. He’d been out looking for Kendo schools (and all sword-related businesses) with job openings.

    “Rozu, there’s a few places looking for . . . assistants, of sorts . . . they deal with swords. The day after tomorrow is my day off, so we can start checking these places out, and . . .” Vincent eyed the now-washed Hello Kitty casual dress wearing. The mud stains from that rainy night couldn’t be washed out. “You’ll need a nice suit, or a gi, or something. We can go by the shops in the morning and do the job search in the afternoon.”

    Mordea turned away from the stove – she was boiling the ramen noodles at that moment – to look at him. “A gi?”

    Vincent frowned. “A gi is a uniform people wear in the schools where sword arts are taught.” It seemed that he knew more about martial arts terminology than she did. He was getting a sinking feeling about this job search.

    “Oh” was all she said, before turning back to the stove. She poked at the hard square of ramen noodles in the pot of water. She wondered how long it would take the noodles to get soft.

    Her mind was in a daze. She was only going to poison this nice man – not kill him, but render him defenseless. Then someone else would come and kill him. That was supposed to make it easier, right?

    Vincent left to go get cleaned up. He had come home with gun oil stains all over his clothes – as he had been ever since Rozu had been staying at his apartment. Truth was, Vincent couldn’t focus. He couldn’t keep his mind off of Rozu, or Lucretia. Seeing that face drudged up old memories. The gun shop owner had become worried about Vincent; he had never seen Vincent have so much trouble with the gun oil bottle before.

    Walking into the bathroom to wash his hands, Vincent caught sight of himself in the mirror and did a double-take. His hair looked quite a bit wilder than usual. It had probably come from when he had run his dirty, oily hand through his hair in exasperation so many times today. Rozu didn’t seem to have noticed. Considering the state he had found her in, perhaps she didn’t care about such things. He hoped she hadn’t noticed – but how could anyone not notice? His hair looked terrible!

    He stopped and stared at the sink. Why should he care so much about what she thought of his hair? He hadn’t cared about what his hair looked like in over thirty years. She was just some homeless girl he was trying to help. It was more penance for his past.

    Or was it? She just looked so much like Lucretia. How he had longed to see her face again.

    The last time he’d stopped by the cave to see Lucretia, he found that someone else was already at the cave, tampering with the crystals surrounding Lucretia. It was a strange-looking figure with steel wings and creeping shadows all around him. His arms were bound up in his suit and his face was covered with bands of cloth. He seemed to be eating away at the mako crystals – not with any part of his body, but with his shadows.

    Vincent confronted him, of course. The man said nothing, but turned to fight against him. In the end, the fight caused a cave-in, and the stranger escaped while Vincent tried to dig Lucretia out. After about a week, Vincent finally gave up. The cave-in was so complete that no person by themselves could successfully dig her out. Lucretia was probably dead from the cave-in anyway.

    And now a walking, talking memorial of Lucretia was in his own apartment.

    He mustn’t think of Rozu like that! She was so different. All of the liveliness and hopeful ambition that once defined Lucretia was absent in Rozu. Rozu acted like she was . . . in some sort of shock. Most importantly, Lucretia was gone. Forever. She was dead, or at best sealed away. In either case, she could never come back. His mistakes had sentenced her to death. Vincent should accept that and move on.

    But he couldn’t move on; there was nothing for him to move on to. He was an old man, crawling through life in an immortal body. Grey hairs refused to bless him, and even his coffin had spat him out once more among the living. He had so much difficulty with the modern technology everyone used these days – he couldn’t even figure out how to use his cell phone properly. He always kept a small address book in his pocket and dialed the numbers manually. He didn’t fit into this life. He got rid of his old, strange armored shoes when they wore out and bought simple black combat boots instead, but people didn’t stop staring at him. He even traded his unusual cloak for an expensive trenchcoat. But he still couldn’t fit in with this generation. He couldn’t make new friends here. He didn’t belong.

    Besides, he didn’t really want to move on. He wanted so badly to fix what he’d done wrong. He wanted to go back and change it all. He wanted to escape from his sins. Alas, escape was not possible . . . forgiveness then? No, he wasn’t ready to be forgiven. How could he expect others to forgive him when he could not forgive himself? He didn’t deserve it. This life of darkness was what he deserved. He couldn’t even feel sympathy for himself. Not once had he shed a single tear for his own horrible, painful fate. He knew he deserved every bit of it.

    Frustrated, Vincent changed into some clean clothes, and then tried to fix his wildly greased hair.

    * * *


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    continued in part 1d:
    http://www.gaiaonline.com/arena/writing/fiction/vote/?entry_id=101043565#title