ididwhatwithwho | (no subject)

Oh.

From his spot against the wall, arms folded over his chest, he watches as the woman leans her cane just so nearby and reaches out like... well, like a blind woman.

This is none of his business. Yet every bit of business for every person, downtrodden or lofty, should be his concern. When one is in the personal business of repentance, any help he can provide might be a step toward redemption. But... still, how presumptuous of him, assuming anyone might need his assistance.

(He told himself Lucrecia didn't, and now she's... nothing but an echo, trapped in crystal, and he will never forgive himself for his lapse in attention.)

As the woman seemingly fumbles for the table, he takes one step forward, then another. Once a bodyguard always a bodyguard, he supposes. The sabatons on his feet give off their own soft jingle, belying the heaviness of his mood with each footfall. If help is needed, he's there and if not... well, he'll simply disappear back into the shadows.

This is wrong.

Her fingers slide along the table's edge. Someone's approaching; she can hear metal on metal as they get closer.

She turns her head slightly. "Fiona?"

Whose name does she say? Not Delphine, not Spaulding, not any of the girls. Not Hank, who still has a key and could drop by uninvited. It's Fiona.

It's Fiona she expects to blame.

His answer, as always is soft but simple.

"No."

One step closer: not close enough to... touch or be touched, certainly, but close enough to make himself heard over the background noise.

"I'm called Vincent."

He's unfamiliar with this Fiona she speaks of.

Invading the table, her hands search for something familiar and nearly flip over a--

A bowl of-- what is this? She picks one out as delicately as a surgeon: it's a mini-pretzel. It seems so ridiculous she almost laughs, but the breath that comes out of her is just a slow exhale.

"Who are you, Vincent?"

This is wrong, but standing here with pretzel between her fingers and grains of salt stuck to her palm she's starting to feel more as if she's the thing that's out of place here.

"And where am I?"

That's the most important question, isn't it?

"I'm..."

How does one answer that question? Who is he? How does he explain who and what he is to a perfect stranger without giving himself away? Is that concern even necessary?

"...Vincent Valentine, formerly of the Turks. We are... well, as you can see from the surroundings, we're at a gathering. A party." Not his usual venue. "Whose, I can't say. I thought I'd stopped into an inn, but found myself here."

That's more than enough talking. He's never been good with strangers, never been good with women, never been good at explaining himself.

"Wno are you?" At least he can ask for a name. She seems dismayed, but... well, he could be misreading the situation. It would be far from the first time.

She takes a moment to let the words sink in, mind racing to make sense of it. She tries to think back on spells learned and curses read about, years of studying that very suddenly seem to offer little help.

"Actually, I can't see."

Again, she thinks of Fiona, but the truth is Fiona isn't the only problem facing her. Marie Laveau is a threat, but this hardly seems her style. Regardless of how, a party seems like a strange way to thwart someone and Vincent Valentine introduces himself so quietly that no immediate threat stands out.

"But I'll take your word for it." The clues, so far, are there. She pops the pretzel into her mouth, crunching, and the salt on her tongue is as real as anything. Turning to face him, she takes half a step away from the table. "I'm Cordelia. You say you didn't mean to come here? Me either."

A low sick feeling drops into the pit of his stomach and settles, uncomfortable but familiar. Yet again he has miscalculated, said the wrong thing, just as he did so long ago. One would think after thirty years of introspection he would have learned, but no, some sins are not so easily absolved or overcome.

"I'm sorry." As if her lack of sight is his doing. It isn't, but it might as well be, for all the use he is. Apology is the cornerstone of his very existence. "Cordelia." He says her name as if he's tasting it, trying it out to see if he can make sense of it. He's never sure he succeeds.

"This is... not the first time I've found myself somewhere I didn't intend to be." At least this time he's not strapped to Hojo's laboratory table. At least this time he's not waking up in a coffin.

Life's circumstances have numbed him, to say the least.

"There's no need to apologize unless you're personally responsible." She may not be able to see him, but she's certainly looking right in his direction. "And if you're personally responsible you'll have to apologize better than that."

Brushing her hands together once, she lets her arms fall to her sides.

"So what did you do the last time you found yourself somewhere you didn't intend to be?"

If it did him any good then there's a chance it's worth revisiting. Party or not, this isn't where she's supposed to be.

"Atoned." The word is so small it's a hush, a suggestion, little more, although the weight behind it is nearly unbearable. He chooses not to elaborate. Oh, he could have chosen a different circumstance, a different place to have found himself. There have been many, but he... travels, and that often brings him to strange and unexpected new places.

In his mind, though, he's still in the basement, locked away. It will take more than the kindness of a few friends to wrestle him away from that memory.

"Where did you expect to be? This evening, that is?" Beneath the gauntlet on his left arm, he stretches his fingers, relaxes them again. The metal covering each finger clicks as the pieces meet, but he's well aware the sound is loud only to his ears.

Perhaps he'll recognize the place name and be able to help her get there. He was headed to Kalm, but... well, his journey can always wait.

Her eyebrows furrow. It's a strange answer... unless he found himself in a church.

It's more than a little strange even if he did find himself in a church.

"My greenhouse." She almost smiles. "But here I am. I don't suppose I'll find my way back if I atone for something."

It'd be easier to atone for her mistakes at home.

"Would you mind handing me my cane?"

"No," he says quietly and without humor. "I doubt atonement will return you to the greenhouse." In his experience, it doesn't bring back much of anything but still, he tries.

Getting the cane, though, that... is one thing he can do and do well. He reaches for it, wishing he had the remedy for blindness. He doesn't, although he makes note to be better prepared and equipped from now on just in case. It hasn't even been a week since he sat at Lucrecia's feet in her cave listening to her talk about Sephiroth.

She breaks his heart, but that will never stop him from going back to see her. It might no longer be his sworn duty to look after her, but it will always be his personal responsibility, regardless of how often she says he can leave or that he doesn't need to come back to her. That was last week, though, and this is now, and he holds the cane forward in his left hand and touches Cordelia's wrist lightly with his gloved right hand -- leather is softer and less startling to the touch than metal -- so she might know he's there with it.

"Here."

He was in the darkness for thirty years, but he was never blind.

Or perhaps he has been blind all along.

She waits for the moment, her heart in her throat. She's seen her husband in bed with another woman, her mother slitting a student's throat. Is there anything left that could shock her? This man is a complete stranger. All she's hoping for is finding out who she's dealing with.

He taps her wrist, touch light, and there's nothing, but when she raises her hands for the cane she makes a point of aiming for the hand that touched her.

In a heartbeat she can see a figure sitting in the darkness, so obscured by the scarlet cloak he wears that at first she thinks it's a blanket wrapped around him. It's not. His eyes are dark and barely visible over its buckles, and a strange armor covers his feet and one of his hands. His attention rests on the opposite wall, one of the strangest sights she's ever seen. It's a crystal--

No, it's a woman, white-clad, encased in crystal. Her eyes are closed and her hands folded over her chest as though this cavern, of all places, is her final resting place.

The vision is over as quickly as it began, leaving the world a blank screen in front of her again. She knows she must've gone still for a second, but she recovers as well as she possibly can, hands closing on the cane. "Where--" She clears her throat. "Where did you say you came from?"

There is a moment, just a brief one, where she grabs for his hand as if he's her personal lifeline. It startles him, and he's anything but easily startled. Contact is uncomfortable for him: he's been... well, dead, felt the tug of the Lifestream, fell into its comfort and caress, only to wake up again -- did he really wake up again or is this simply one long extended sleep, like Lucrecia's? -- to find himself a travesty, an experiment, a shred of who he was trapped in what he had become. What he had been made into and since that moment he... hasn't had the luxury of normalcy. Cordelia's hand pulls back, thankfully, quickly, and the discomfort of being held goes with it. Just as her fingers wrap around the cane, he takes a small step back.

Her question gives him pause. Not for concern -- he has no fear of anyone but his own personal demons. Years of training, however long ago they were, have left an indelible mark on him and he views all such questions with a moderate degree of suspicion. He no longer has any affiliation with Shinra, but old habits are difficult to break.

"I didn't." All he said was that he'd expected to be somewhere other than here. "I believed this to be an inn. A night's shelter, little more."

He could be more generous. That he isn't is simply another one of his failings.

"Where is this greenhouse of yours located?"

What was it he said, then? She was so overwhelmed to realize she was the thing out of place that she must've misunderstood.

Vincent Valentine... of the Turks? She's been making a lot of assumptions, and so far she has no reason to believe any of them are correct. She should take a deep breath, reevaluate the situation, and push forward.

"Behind my home." Her lips press together in the smallest of smiles. "You see why this comes as such a surprise. Have you heard of Miss Robichaux's Academy?"

He shakes his head, but realizes she can't possibly see the motion. Yes, he could be a great deal less remote, far more generous. It isn't as if generosity costs him, and it isn't that he had a finite amount and used it all up. He's as cool as the skin on his body: not here, not there, not all monster, not all human. Not fully alive, but not dead. Not any more.

He used to know how to do the simple things with grace and a stumbling sort of efficiency. Social settings are not his forté now any more than they were in the past, but... he can manage.

"Miss Robichaux's. No, I haven't." Where could it possibly be? "Perhaps it's one of the newer schools in Edge." That's a city he only knows marginally, and it changes every time he's there. Midgar is uninhabitable, and this academy couldn't be in Junon -- he was born there, he knows it well, and that's too far from here anyway.

Be generous, Vincent, he tells himself. This lady is sightless, and you don't even have the decency to carry Eye Drop with you.

Having made the decision, he clears his throat. "You asked where I came from. I assume you mean now, tonight. I was on my way to the village of Kalm. There's an inn there, one I've stayed at before. Perhaps you're familiar with it?"

"No, I'm not."

He's saying names of places she's not familiar with at all, and after what she's seen it's possible that shouldn't be as much of a surprise.

Ultimately she's not sure how much it matters. She can't ask him about what she's seen because she can't risk telling him what she is. Not even after seeing him spending time with a dead woman embedded in crystal.

"I don't know any of the places you've mentioned."

Plenty of people in New Orleans aren't familiar with Miss Robichaux's, so his answer doesn't come as a surprise. But being in an unexpected place is strange enough and being here with someone she doesn't know and can't find a connection to makes it even stranger.

"But I have a proposition for you, Vincent. Assuming you'd like to leave and find that inn of yours."

A proposition?

Knowing full well that he has the advantage -- the use of all his senses, for one, the advantage in height, in speed, in reflex -- most likely -- he takes a moment to study Cordelia. She looks unassuming but doesn't exude any aura of helplessness. There's a sense of purpose to her, or... well, maybe he's reading more into the situation than is warranted. That is another lesson from days gone by that he would do well to take to heart.

The concept of a proposition intrigues him, but also leaves him wary. He'll never know what it is unless he asks, and he'll only ask when he's sure he wants to know. That's... one of the other stories of his life.

His arms fold over his chest and if she could see him, she might see what looks to be defiance. It's merely self-protection at work: he's been used enough by others. It's a shame she's unfamiliar with the places around them, but that won't stop him from gathering the data necessary to make a sound decision.

His father would be so proud.

"Perhaps," he says at last. "Depending on the nature of the proposition."

"It's simple enough," she promises. "I'm very new to the business of being blind. I'd like your help in finding my way out of here."

She's sure she could find her own way if he's unwilling to help, but she's also sure it would be a much slower process.

Oh.

"I can do that." Old habit, he offers his arm, shakes his head at his own inability to let go of habits that no longer serve, and guides her hand to his arm. He could warn her about the gauntlet, but she'll find out about it herself and if she asks, he'll explain. If she doesn't, that's one less story he'll have to tell.

"The door isn't far." Unless the way has been blocked, but no, this isn't the mansion and they're not trapped in the basement. There's not a single monster to be seen... present company excepted, of course.

He's nice enough make sure she has his arm, and sure enough her fingers touch metal beneath his elbow.

Her left hand holds her cane up at her side. There's nothing wrong with her legs, and if she can't rely on Vincent to steer them both down clear paths she'll find out soon enough.

"I appreciate the help."

As he steers them in the direction of the door, he realizes that it's been a long time indeed since he was at any sort of party at a place like this, and then... well, he'd been working.

A very long time. The weight of Cordelia's hand on his arm is nothing, just a feather, and he takes advantage of her sightlessness by studying her as they walk. With her eyes hidden behind the huge sunglasses, he can't see if there's some damage or not, but she said she was recently blinded and... well... he may not be fully human but he is curious.

"You said you're very new to blindness. How new, if I might ask?"

Expertly, he steers her around the corner and into the hallway, the armor covering his feet jangling softly as they go. There's music coming in from some unknown source, and he hears the sounds of laughter, of conversation, of glasses clinking together. It would see to be a situation for which he is particularly ill-suited, but he moves through it with an odd fluid grace.

So far so good. Not too fast, not too slow, able to keep her from wandering into walls: to her relief, Vincent proves to be an excellent walking partner for the newly blind.

"Extremely." Despite not being able to see him, she can't keep her head from turning in his direction. "I'm going on day four."

Four days.

One end result of his 30 years'... rest is that he has little patience for the relativity of time. His own experience taught him that a moment can last an eternity and a year can pass in the blink of an eye.

"What was the cause?" His head tilts, almost birdlike, toward her: curiosity has got the better of his manners, but he makes no apology for it. Not yet, at least.

Keeping up easily, she turns straight ahead again. "I was attacked."

There's no point in being anything other than matter-of-fact about it.

"Someone threw acid in my face."

What kind of harmless girls' school headmistress has enemies who want to throw acid in her eyes? She supposes she'll cross that bridge if she comes to it. The good news is she won't even have to lie if it comes up.

Horror fills the pit of his stomach. Acid? But...

"Why?"

Earlier she said there was no need for him to apologize unless he was personally responsible, but still... he stops, turns to her, rests his hands lightly on her shoulders.

"I'm sorry. It's not my business." He can be horrified on her behalf whether she wants him to or not; being the end result of someone else's foul play is not something new to him.

"But still, I'm sorry on your behalf." His hands lower, images of waking up on Professor Hojo's lab table to find himself transformed very much in the forefront of his thoughts. It's one nightmare he can never wake up from, no matter how hard he tries.