Disclaimer: I don’t own it. Like every good fanfiction writer I’ve learned my place by now. Sort of. Final Fantasy VII belongs to Square-Enix and no doubt other respectful individuals and companies who are not me. No copyright infringement is intended.

Author’s Notes: Birthday fic for fellow author Hojo, who once requested consensual Hojo/Vincent fic. This is the slightly off-kilter version of that I came up with.

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Becomes You

Lucrecia was dead and one would have thought that was the end of things. And perhaps it was the end of something, but the beginning of another entirely. That her death coincided with the completion of a goal certainly put a damper on the thing itself; the infant Sephiroth one glaring reminder of how success might be tempered with failure. In tearing this perfect child from her womb, Lucrecia had given the last of her own strength so that her ultimate accomplishment might gasp its first breath of air into greedy lungs. Sephiroth’s cries had all but drowned out his mother’s dying moans.

Vincent stood and regarded Sephiroth’s clear aquamarine eyes with their unusual catlike pupils, and tried to find something of Lucrecia in him. Silver hair and white skin told him nothing. Only the stubborn line of the mouth gave away any small hint, and that one was vague.

“Staring at my son won’t bring her back to you, Valentine,” Hojo said dispassionately from behind. Vincent hadn’t even heard his footsteps.

The Turk did not miss the unsubtle reminder: my son, not yours ... her son, my son, our son.

“Because you’ve forgotten her doesn’t mean I have,” Vincent replied. He was being cruel and he knew it, even enjoyed it a bit as Hojo’s demeanor became colder.

The scientist brushed past him and picked Sephiroth up from his crib.

Vincent said, “I still feel her here.”

Hojo turned away in disdain. “She’s gone,” he replied brusquely. “You may as well accept it. Lucrecia is not a ghost, and if she was, then why should she haunt you?”

Vincent was silent for a moment. His hands clenched and unclenched into fists. “Because I failed her ... failed to protect her.”

“Protect her from what?” Hojo demanded scathingly. His voice took on a tone of mocking. “From her husband—from her own free will? Your altruism makes me ill. Go back to Midgar, Valentine,” he said tiredly. “I’ll only tell you once. Your presence here is no longer needed.”

It seemed the definitive turning point in their relationship-of-sorts. Two men who could not have been more different had a common thread: Lucrecia. Vincent’s love bordered on obsession. Reluctantly, Hojo found his logical mind intrigued by such blind, dumb devotion. Vincent did not leave, of course, feeling himself tied somehow to the creaky mansion and cold, hard earth of the mountain Lucrecia was buried in.

Hojo retreated to his studies, to his laboratory, to the mistress who whispered in his ear. There were only three witnesses to the downward spiral: Sephiroth, too young; Ifalna, too frightened; and Gast, strangely sympathetic of both men’s plights. How different things might have been, an outsider could reflect, if only, if only ...

What? If only what, Hojo had demanded of Vincent one evening. The Turk was pacing around the library, steps erratic, as if agitated, with none of the killer’s lean grace. Hojo regarded this lack of control with disdain.

“If only I could have ...” began Vincent.

“Saved her?” Hojo finished. “You couldn’t have—”

His response was stilled as the other man grabbed him suddenly, pushing him up against the wall; his shoulder blades ground painfully against stone, lab coat twisted uncomfortably in the grasp of deceptively slender hands. Hojo was bluntly reminded of who Valentine was: that he was a Turk. Capable of protecting a group of scientists, certainly; equally capable of killing one in cold blood. Gone insane, perhaps, because he thought he already had.

“I could have!” Vincent cried roughly. His eyes blazed with anger and pain. “I could have,” he repeated vainly. Hojo began to wonder who he was truly trying to convince. “I could have saved her from you.”

Hojo snarled with the rise of his anger. “You can’t even save yourself,” he snapped back.

How it happened, he’d later reflect, was as much a mystery to him as to anyone else, Valentine included. He would never be quite sure if Vincent leaned down or he reached up—but the Turk’s mouth was on his, furious with the same kind of passion that fueled his self-righteous anger. The hands fisted in the lab coat were tearing it off—Hojo had the man’s tie wrapped around his own hand and bore their weight down onto the desk nearby.

His silver-plated, faux antique-framed picture of Lucrecia fell onto the floor. The glass cracked and it landed face up on the floor so that she could watch them in still silence, her eyes brighter green in the camera’s lens than they had ever been in life.

Hojo took Vincent there, then—or maybe Vincent took him, he wasn’t sure of that, either, not the first time, only that they came to coherence and better conscience in a tangled mess of sore limbs and ripped clothing and a lot of awkward unrepentant half-sentences and muted words.

It kept happening, for a time, because Vincent still did not leave, though Hojo tried to make him, time and again. The scientist’s focus changed, he became consumed by his latest aspirations. Gast kept clear of the entire mess. Only the Turk kept venturing into the basement from which someday he felt he might never return. Perhaps he’d be all the more grateful for it.

“I must be mad,” said Vincent, once, when it was all over—no, not over; paused, at rest, but never over. “But I wonder when you began to follow.”

“I think, perhaps,” Hojo replied, “that you were the one to follow me,” and said nothing more.

fin