Turpium

Years or d e c a d e s ? – I think, in the end, it just boils down to the point of origin when that counting presumably started.

Was it when we first met in Nibelheim? Or sometime later in life when we were reunited beneath the Sister Ray?

Or, when his mental uplink had consumed what dignity there was left from men and women whose life were already ruined by project Deepground?

                Where do we start?  

Under Nibelheim manor, surrounded by various medical equipments, a cigarette was once shared. It had started with a single bullet then. Who would have thought that, saving from the fact that someone did get killed this time round, it should have ended so spectacularly similar?  

Maybe this was why the cigarette was saved, even when the company once producing it no longer exists. And oh, how careless was the carton of rolled-up poison tossed toward him then. One would have believed this man possess naught a care.

But that would have been a presumption too swiftly and wrongly assumed.

After all, we were both here, sharing the same package of Malboro as we once had before; and bless Gaia, no one has yet bled. A shift of both ocular skyward conveyed precisely the thought therein toward the lack of greeting. Nonetheless, a lifeless and dull silver lighter was still caught swiftly enough by gauntlet grip. Decades now since the man had first decided to hide his monstrous self beneath the piece of armoury that using it has became something skin to a second nature.

Following his earlier move, suave chin shifted down. A soft snap saw vermilion bled along the tip of my own nefarious tube, and the fume fully indulged in…

– once.

Slowly, I breath out the putrid smoke. Not yet meeting his gaze, claret irises shifted instead skyward where their owner may quietly observed the dance of those grey tendrils – higher and higher, they languidly moved. It seemed nearly as if time had came to a stop.

“To give yourself in… or some unfinished business?”    

          “…We would need a vehicle.”

Perhaps it had been year since he had physically laid eyes on the man before him-- or had it been months? Time was a blur at this point-- his time was normally spent between his garden or medical journals trying to keep a decaying mind sharp. For this body had not seen Vincent Valentine in close to seven years, but remnants of his fractured mind that had been scattered across the planet had been with him all of these years-- there was the confrontation at Deepground  ( which he now admitted freely was a very foolish mistake ploy for immortality ).   

They are a dichotomy. 

Stark contrast between the two, for one is a sinner with repentance and the other is a man who believes sin to be an illusion, one is drenched in a crimson mantle and the other used to sport the vermillion between calloused digits with such pride, yet regardless of their differences, they are wound into the same cloth-- now they are stones cast into the river of time and their years will have to be carried out working in accordance or simply learning to deal with one another.  

They were an unlikely pair, facing off again as smoke billowed from the end of the lit cigarette-- swirling into the expanse of the high vaulted ceilings, the vice should have been given up years ago when he was still mortal ( alas it could not kill him now ). But-- here these men are indulging in old pleasures from their old life, almost holding civil conversation. However, the former Professor moves, cigarette still clutched between forefinger and thumb, he almost dares to roll the cigarette between the pads of those aforementioned fingers. 

He does not make a move for his companion, but instead for the cluttered end table, cigarette is placed between lips for a moment as hands search for a box of forgotten mementos. The cherry box is located under papers in desperate need of grading-- but they are cast aside for a chain of thin silver with a cross on the end. The object is held out for the other. It’s been well cared for, it’s a way to silently amend, or perhaps make nice-- for they are stuck with each other. 

Until time runs out.  

Free hand removes the cigarette from ashen lips-- and with a small curve, smoke is blown, hooking up again in spirals.

“I have to retrieve some files that I do not trust the WRO to keep.” 

The chain is swung.

Watches as his perennials are trampled with such lack of grace. 

Bound leather is familiar in the far off sense, for he knows that it is his ( the handwriting proves that alone, for it is the same small scrawl that he still uses ), but his memories of the book are disjointed in a way that he cannot bring to explain. 

Roughed fingers run over the binding for a moment, stopping at the gold laced letting that spell out his surname, only then does a flash of something flicker in the back of his mind. It’s an overwhelming sick that begins to boil for a moment-- and then it turns into a deep burn. And while nostalgia rushes over him, there is a darkness urges him to open the book...

But darkness lurks within those pages. 

Apparently the deck would have to be cleaned again. 

For, he could not eat this, nor did he have the tools for anything other than using the remnants of this creature as fertiliser for his roses-- however the slab of meat would have to be processed and that would require time ( alas, that was something he had in excess ). 

Materia-- was plucked from the chest cavity ( squeamishness and fear of disease was something that had left him long ago-- for there was no fear of death with something like illness ) blood smears across his knuckles and he dares to flip the materia between his fingers, looking them over before handkerchief is pulled from his coat pocket and the small glowing orbs are wrapped away, to be used later.

Then he picks up the mug, it’s comical in nature-- down to the handprint which he doesn’t dare wipe away ( he considers sealing it and baking the mug in the oven to set the bloodstain ). 

Of his past, I do know know. I was allowed as much as what have been written on various reports, his resume, and the investigations accompanied one. Of course, some of those are not really public documents. Still, Turks do have their means whenever their minds are set upon a goal.

To survive, in particular, is the highest objective possessing in all the livings, and certainly one being clung to with teeth and nails among Turks. Gaining an Intel is simply one of the golden rules of ensuring that the ‘alive and kicking’ condition persists to remain so.

   He was not the only one among them I have investigated upon.    Probably, he would not even be the last.                 What of …her?    More is to be found. It is much the same about him.

        “You were surprised.”

               There, a minute tipping of cranium.

   “To the questions…? I wonder which. I had imagined those were always asked.” Judging from his reaction, at least one of them was not. A meeting of oynx and cinnabar irises was soon broken as twin scintillating blood red irises averted once more toward the preserved remnant of the specie once considered as lost.

“The crater. A collision of a great force could have created a havoc in seasons and land.” Thoughtful, oculus would narrow minutely down. “…Nothing ever thrived there. The land is dead… wound.” A necrosis of flesh. Quiet notions soon were dismissed with a roll of shoulder as both hands slipped inside navy pants’ pockets.

“A disease that came rendering in molten flame, perhaps.”, lightly interjected kavalierbariton. Deep tonality left a ringing echo of my own bemusement, if not reflected in the two rufescent oculus that shifted back.

Not much of his past is readily available for public consumption. There are few things he plays close to his coffer, conceivably, his past in one of them. A son of a drunken doctor who lost his title and name to an oubliette, a son to a mother who had to work for scrap that wouldn’t even buy her perspiration. Yet, those trials and tribulations—shaped the man that stands before cascading towers incandescent and massive. Dark eyes focus only on the cavernous mass that floats behind shielded class, and perhaps he feels some slight of kinship with the creature—a man cast aside with two counties of origin, yet no home.  

Perchance the Turk knows of what muddled past he bears, yet knowing and understanding are two vastly different ideas. “I’ve never been asked in regards to my faith. I suppose, I don’t believe in anything—my mother was of Wutai and Del Solian decent. She believed that Leviathan skipped rocks across the earth and created the ponds, he then used his mighty talons to pull the water into wells, creating the sky and the ocean—and the land. Of course as I grew…that became no more than a story.” A memory stirs, of a raven woman with kind features and a gentle voice, a soft song a melody. It’s cast aside, it’s all of a child’s fairy-tale. Gaze lowers behind bifocals, fingers drum over clipboard; subject turns back to the matter of his degree.

There is no philosophical nature wound into the facts of the crater. It is cold and clear cut, the suggestion that his Turk raises brings a hint of a smile to cross features. A hint of a chuckle pulled from the back of his throat. “There is a prevailing theory, that a meteor grazed the atmosphere, kissing the land and leaving a trail of its contents, strangle holding the populace, sending them into an ice age that wiped out all but few.” It was once a thriving tundra, bones and carbon dating show nomadic peoples hunting—even fishing, and then as if a switch was flipped a great wound was inflicted on the world, and perhaps that wound is in the towering casket that glows, pads of fingers reach out and touch the glass—a hint of mystery clouding normally so sure eyes.