InsaneJournal

Tune as old as song...
Who: Vincent and Katara
When: Day 11, Evening
What: Katara checks on Vincent
Where: Vincent's Room
Rating: PG for now
Status: Complete

Surrounded by inky darkness, a single man stood alone. He was dressed in a black suit that had clearly been trimmed to his features, as it hugged the lean muscles of his body nicely. Beneath the folds of the blazer he wore a pale wrinkled suit coat with an impeccably done tie could be seen, along with a pin on his lapel. It was something of a contrast from his hair style, which hung down almost messily in his face, the longest whisps of it lightly falling down to his chin. Through them, a pair of crimson eyes stared out into the abyss, the black sea around him. It seemed to draw the eye in, swallow him, but it wasn't real, he knew that... didn't he?

Vincent Valentine, the Vincent Valentine turned slowly, looking around him. Nothingness. Even beneath him. no hint of ground, and yet the blackness held him up. Slowly he took a step, testingly, then another one. It felt real, this place, and yet a part of him told him that it was not. His arms raised up then, staring at the suit that he wore, his right hand grasping the cuff around his left hand and feeling the smooth silken fabric. It felt real enough. But the blackness around him didn't feel like anything. Not hot nor cold, no sense of forboding, just emptiness.

"Hello?" he finally said, almost timidly. But the sound of it seemed to muffle in the darkness, not echo but simply evaporate into nothingness, for there was nothing for the sound to rebound off of. Vincent looked down for a moment. He felt embarassed doing it, but if he was in this place he needed to find something, some way out, and if there was someone else here, then that would really be the easiest way to go about it. "HELLO??!!" He yelled, a flush coming to his pale cheeks as he did it, thinking that someone might be laughing at him even now. He wasn't used to shouting, he didn't like the sound of his own voice at such decibals, but it was worth it to try to get in touch with someone, anyone, at this point. But only silence answered him. And then...

"Hello." Came his own voice, back at him, disembodied and foreign. Much calmer and darker than his own voice. Vincent spun slowly, but he could not place the voice, there was nothingness everywhere he turned. "Would it really help you to see me?" Asked the voice as Vincent looked back and forth, somewhat eager to see exactly what it was that was talking to him, somewhat afraid as well. Why did whatever it was have his voice? Why did the calm words that the other voice spoke cause his very soul to tremble in a way that he couldn't place?

"Where are you?" Vincent demanded, and he found himself instinctually reaching into his jacket for where he kept his gun. It was a high calibre handgun, the sort that had a kick that nearly had made him break his nose the first time he'd fired it, and had caused him to stumble backward each time he fired it for weeks after getting it until finally he'd begun to master it.

"You really want to know who I am, don't you?" Came the voice from behind him, and Vincent spun then, drawing his gun and pointing it at the source of the voice that was tormenting him. What he saw was a larger gun than the one he dared to carry, almost like a sawed off shotgun, but with three barrels instead of two. Holding it's hilt was a sleek black leather gloved hand, and beyond that, was him... in a way.

The other Vincent's hair was longer, and even though there was a crimson headband around his head, the hair still fell out over it clumsily around his face, but where the first Vincent's hair stopped at his chin, this Vincent's hair fell down over his shoulders and down his back. Around the inky hair that flowed along his shoulders, the other Vincent wore a crimson mantle that stretched down over his chest till it was midway down his arms. In the back, that mantle became something of a cape, long and crimson that was tattered at the ends, as if it had seen too much wear over the years. Beneath it's folds Vincent could see the pale golden gleam of something that looked like a claw, like the Galian beasts hands did...

The beast...

The first Vincent groaned and put a hand to his head, as the second holstered his three barreled gun. "You can shoot me if you want to, it won't really do anything in this place anyway, and you won't do it, because you're afraid to be left alone here..." The second Vincent calmly reasoned as he turned his back on the first. A long silence was heard as the Turk Vincent, adorned in a suit, began to shake his head slowly and stare at the crimson one's back.

"Who are you?" The turk finally asked.

"I'm you." The second Vincent said with some finality. "Who are you?"

"I'm Vincent Valentine..." countered the younger Vincent with a twinge of anger.

"You were Vincent Valentine." Corrected the second, turning to look at his mirror image with crimson eyes, the only truly shared characteristic between the two of them. Even his face seemed different, not older but more timeless, and lifeless at the same time, as if he weren't alive at all but rather something long dead. "Now I am Vincent Valentine."

"That... doesn't make any sense!" The first growled as he took a step forward towards the second.

"You're a part of me. Unfortunately the part in control..." The crimson Vincent sighed quietly, and then gestured for the turk Vincent to sit down, even as he himself knelt down and then sat. On his feet the younger Vincent noted were black boots, with a golden metal over them, to protect his toes. The older Vincent took a soft breath, and placed his golden claw adorned hand on one of his knees. "I am what you are, but you haven't accepted it yet. So you lock away everything that keeps you from coming to terms with the truth... that is what I am."

"The truth about what?" The young one demanded angrily as he reluctantly sat down. But even as he spoke the words he blinked. Behind the older Vincent the darkness that was around both of them began to take solidified form, becoming a pair of black leathery wings, so black that they seemed darker, somehow, than what it was around them, the anathema of light itself. The young Vincent felt his heart start to beat erratically in fear, and as he recoiled the wings disappear.

"Even now, in this place you cannot accept the truth. You come seeking it, and yet when it is revealed to you, you pull away..." The older Vincent commented as he lowered his head to stare at his own knees.

"I just want to be the way I was!" The younger Vincent said, his suit wrinkling slightly as he scrambled to his feet.

"Who is ever the way that they were?" Countered the older Vincent.

"I... I'll find a way out of here on my own!" The younger Vincent shouted as he started to walk away, though given that it was through darkness, he had no idea where he was going. It didn't matter though, all of this seemed stupid... he was himself, not someone else...

"I'll be waiting when you're ready to face the truth..." the older Vincent commented.


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When Katara opened Vincent's door to come and visit him, she would see his body lying with his belly pressed against the ground. He was no longer the beast, but the person that she had seen yesterday when she'd nearly frozen him, and again when his body had calmed down. His lower half was covered in black trousers, which was odd, as they covered down to his ankles, where before half of his legs had been exposed when he was the beast. Perhaps they had just ridden up, or perhaps it was the nature of Vincent that his transformation was more of a spell rather than him becoming something different.

His head rested half on the wild raven strands of hair that flowed around him like spilt ink, some of them lightly draped across his bare back. There were muscles there, lean, firm, but not the sort that showed off, rather they were lithe, the sort that came from lots of aerobic exercise rather than trying to bulk up with weight lifting. Lower still on his back she would see cruel looking scars that still looked almost fresh. They were not pleasant looking, nor did they look like the work of a master surgeon... rather it looked as if someoen had carved him open like a piece of meat and then poorly stiched him back together. Despite the dismal look of them, however, they were not oozing or bleeding in any sort of way...

But they weren't red, either, and didn't look as if they were swelling. That would have shown easily, given how pale he looked, laying there. The whiteness of his form even contrasted the soft grey of the chains that adorned his neck, his wrists, and his ankles, the heavy links falling in places along the back of his legs, and across his back. They didn't move in the slightest, even as she looked at them... and then it would probably occur to her what seemed off from the whole scene...

... he wasn't breathing.

For all intents and purposes, it appeared as if Vincent Valentine was dead.