Final Fantasy's Seven Endless Movements

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:seven for a secret:
(never to be told)

Death On Valentine's Day

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Vincent Valentine sighs as he tries his best to avoid Kalm's spring festival. A festival will not help him. Almost two years since he was woken from Nibelheim and he still wonders if what he has done is enough.

A tap on his arm pulls him from his thoughts.

A young woman, petite and girlish. She cocks her head at him and smiles with all the welcoming warmth anyone could ever need or want.

A flash of a memory he doesn't care to own: A white coat, a smoking barrel, knees cracking against tile, a blue suit staining black with blood, a comforting hand he almost reached, the painful jerk away from it, back into consciousness, back into life.

She slips one hand around his elbow, where metal connects to flesh, and begins walking. "Come on, Vincent. Since I'm here, I want to get a hotdog."

She drags him to a vendor, asks for two, and receives them free of charge. She hands him one and begins eating hers. As the festival continues around them, he merely regards his food. He has enough unwanted chemicals in him already.

"Why?" he finally asks.

"Because you need to get on with your life," she responds simply. "And because hotdogs taste good in such a terrible way."

"…You didn't come here for me," he states.

She finishes her hotdog and gives him a chiding look, as if she were a mother or an older sister, and motions for him to bend down. She kisses him on the cheek, smiles, and says, "Don't look so mopey. I'll see you around again." Then she is gone, and he is left with a hotdog. He looks at it and comes to a strangely pleasant realization of mortality.

Vincent Valentine will hear the sound of her wings.

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A/N: I'll admit, at first I wanted to stick Vincent with Dream, but they just seemed too similar to me. All I could imagine was Dream saying something like, "It's my responsibility to give you nightmares," and Vincent saying, "It's my responsibility to suffer them." And then, maybe if they felt oddly talkative, they could bond over the fact that both their love lives bite. I figured Vincent would work better with Death, anyway. And the idea of Cid swearing at Dream was just too damn good to pass up. XD

My only real regret about this is that I wasn't able to do one for Red XIII (another character that needs more lovin'). Unfortunately he didn't make the cut like Barret did. Sorry, Red. Maybe another time.

The lines at the beginning of each piece (One for sorrow, two for joy, etc.) are each a line of a common little rhyme. This rhyme happened to be used in The Sandman (volume six, I believe), which was why I chose to use it as a sort of way of numbering the "chapters."

Well, at any rate, it is done! I want to give a very heartfelt thanks to all of you who read and reviewed this crazy little series of mine!