A Rose By Any Other Name

  *

  Natalie stretched, wiping a bit of wetness from the corner of her mouth before lifting her hands above her head. She had a tendency of drooling when she slept, and it irritated her to no end. She released a deep breath and opened her eyes.

  A slight movement by the window caught her attention. Vincent stood staring across the scenery of Nibelheim, arms crossed.

  Natalie sat up in surprise. "Oh!" He turned his face toward her. His amber eyes were guarded.

  "I . . . " She flushed. "I didn't expect to see you. Not after . . . well, you know."

  "Yes."

  She cleared her throat as she lowered her gaze to her hands.

  "Natalie."

  Her eyes widened. Oh dear god, he said my name. She turned her head. He still stood by the window. His arms still crossed. His eyes still guarded. But there was something different about his expression. "Yes?"

  "What do you remember?"

  "I said that . . ." No lies. "I said that I couldn't keep trying to fix the generator. I said . . . I said it matters to me what happens to you. I . . . I think I remember you got angry with me." She lowered her eyes again. "I remember a lot of things. What exactly did you want me to remember?"

  "What happened here?" he pressed.

  Natalie cleared her throat. "I remember I had an interview. I remember . . . I remember you weren't here to share the laughter." Vincent didn't respond, so she forced herself to raise her eyes. "I don't know what you want me to tell you, Vincent."

  "You don't remember what happened after our conversation outside Shinra Mansion?"

  Natalie paled. "Why?" she asked softly. "What happened?"

  Vincent regarded her a moment. "You relived a dream."

  Her eyes widened in horror. "What?"

  He approached. "'Vincent, we need to talk,'" he quoted. "'About?' I asked. 'About us,' you reply." He paused, gauging her reaction. "You know it?"

  Natalie imperceptibly nodded. Her eyes still captured by his. Not the dream. She could survive anything but that.

  "You admitted to a fear." Vincent knelt in front of her. "I said that it was all right to be afraid. After all, even I am afraid."

  Natalie focused sharply on his face. "What?"

  "Of you. Afraid because . . . because of what I feel."

  Nausea rumbled, and Natalie gripped the bedclothes.

  He watched her still before reaching forward to stroke her cheek with his golden claw. She sucked in a breath and closed her eyes, tears streaking her cheeks. "This claw," he said a bit gruffly. "This monstrosity has caused no amount of horror and disgust in those who look on me. You are the only one I have met who feels pleasure at the touch of its cool exterior."

  Natalie flinched away and hid her face in her hands. "No . . ."

  Vincent pulled them away. "That acceptance made me agree to kiss you. I believed I did so only to help you sleep, it seemed the only key to end the fantasy. I knew it would be different. It was a beginning. An answer. A question. A hundred different things that caused no end of confusion and fear."

  She shook her head. "Please don't say anymore," she pleaded, her voice choked with her tears. "I want to wake up now. I can't stand anymore. Please. Let me wake up. Let me wake up--" Her voice broke on the sobs.

  Vincent recognized the terror at the possibility of being trapped inside another nightmare. Beginning to enjoy it while knowing and fearing that when it came time to wake, the pleasant life would cease to exist. Yes, he recognized the misery.

  "Natalie." He released her hands to cup her face, ignoring her frantic grasp and pull at his wrists. "Natalie, this is reality."

  "No. No, it can't be," she choked out with a slight shake of her head. Tears escaped her closed lids. "Let me go. Please . . . let me wake up. I can't keep doing this. Dreams aren't enough. They aren't. Please," she sobbed frantically. "Please let me wake up."

  "Wake? From a dream you've wanted to become real?" he whispered.

  And Vincent had to fight back the fear of the rush he knew would come as he leaned forward to touch her lips with his. Her grip on his hands tightened along with her choked protest at the warmth and the hesitant softness, and she again attempted to pull his hands from her face. The act one of desperation.

  "No," she whimpered against his lips, her breath beckoning him forward again. "I can't. Please."

  Another whispered plea and another whispered touch of lip.

  And again.

  Then yet again.

  Each time their lips met it lasted a little longer, exploring a little deeper past the fear. That terror continued to pull him away, but the memory of the touch and the warmth and softness would call him back for another taste. Then another. And a little more. Before he realized what happened, the touch of her lips and breath was his only focus.

  His only need.

  Vincent's hands caressed her face as wave after wave of light burst inside his head. Each deep and intense motion of her mouth against his brought another eruption. Each caress of her fingers upon his face deafened him to the outside world. Their submergence into his hair banished the cold and briefly silenced the voices within.

  A sob suddenly broke from Natalie's lips. Vincent raised his head, opening his eyes to focus on her face. Tears cascaded down her cheeks to drip from her lowered lashes as cry after choked cry broke free. Vincent's throat tightened as he watched her, helplessness refusing him any words. Instead, he pulled her to her feet and drew her close. She moaned, and the sobs shook her entire body.

  Vincent pulled her closer still as he caressed her soft curls, desperately trying to protect her from a misery he understood all too well. He closed his eyes when she tightened her arms around him, relishing the intensity of emotion that thrashed within. It was all coming back; how to be human; how to be gentle; how to care for someone who wanted nothing more than to be needed.

  Submission had been a surprisingly easy answer.

  XI

  CONVERSIONS

  Natalie released a slow and deep breath as she adjusted her arms around him. Around Vincent. Real. Alive. Afraid and feeling. She closed her eyes and sighed again. "So what do we do now?" she whispered. "I've never been here before in my dreams, Vincent. I don't know what to do next. I don't know how to act." She finally looked up to meet his amber gaze. She shook her head. "I don't know anything."

  He stared down at her in silence, his expression mirroring her own uncertainty and fear.

  "I don't know about you," she said quietly as she lowered her head against his chest again, "but these past few days have been glorious. Being with you. Being with your friends. Seeing you together . . . I don't want it to end. But." She sighed. "But I need to keep trying, don't I? I need to finish what I started. Because you asked me to. Because I don't want to be tormented by the 'what if's. I want you to have a chance at the happiness you deserve. The chance to be free from that coffin."

  Silence beckoned the pair until Vincent suddenly said, "You've fallen in love with a monster and fear that when he be changed to a man, you will no longer care for him."

  Natalie closed her eyes. "Maybe," she whispered.

  Vincent adjusted his arms around her while releasing a slow and deep breath. She remained within the grasp, trusting in the protection of that simple touch.

  "With that confession, I am tempted to stay as I am simply to spite what Hojo believed to be impossible," he confessed. "But the desire to be what I was overpowers everything else. I want to make my own choices." His grip tightened around her. "Do your best, Natalie," he said in a low voice, "and regret nothing. Strange as it may seem coming from me, I have faith in you."

  Natalie flinched, and the action caused him to push back.

  Vincent's amber eyes searched her face. "What was that?"

  Her gaze refused to meet his. Instead, she took his hands in hers. "A confession, I suppose," she told him.

  "A confession? Of what?"

  Natalie sighed and gave his hands a squeeze. "Of everything. Throughout my enti
re school career I wanted to find someone who would want me for who I was. All my quirks. All my crazy notions of grandeur. All my dreams and fantasies." She peeked up at him. "You see, you need to understand that my life up to that point was lonely because I hadn't ever been interested in anything outside history. When I heard about you . . . you were surrounded by history and tragedy and . . . and you were lonely because you were betrayed by the ones you loved. You were an outcast because someone in power abused his position."

  Natalie swallowed the tears. "My heart broke at that. I mean, I found someone with no hope of finding someone to care for them. So, I decided to learn more. I wanted to . . . I wanted to fix that tragedy. I wanted to reverse your future." Natalie lowered her head as her heart balked at the confession. "What I didn't admit at the time was that I wanted to learn more so that I would have a reason to care. The fantasy of nurse falling for patient taken to a new and twisted level. I suppose I believed it was a safe relationship. I believed it impossible for you to meet me. After all, I knew you would never be involved in anything that interested me. I knew I was safe."

  Natalie's voice choked, and Vincent's hands tightened on hers. Her lips lifted in a slight smile and she raised her head. His amber eyes glowed as they watched her face. "When I became interested in what I studied and not just who, it caught me completely by surprise. When the surprise faded, in came a new fantasy: what if I could cure you and make you feel something akin to the love I fancied I felt? The fantasy filled me with hope, making me do something foolish. I actually began looking for you. Something I had promised I would never do.

  "For the first time in my life I wanted something more," she admitted, voice awed. "I wanted to be happy. I wanted to share my interests with someone. But it was more than that, I wanted to share my life with someone. I wanted the fantasy to become real because I was tired of living in a dream whenever I wanted love or tenderness." She lowered her gaze. "But when I started dreaming of what our life together could be like, it hurt. Seeing it made me want it even more, and when I wanted it more, it hurt to know that it was impossible to have. After all, you were in love with Lucrecia. You always had been. You always would be in my mind.

  "Then I--" Natalie's lips quivered upward in another smile. "Then I realized I didn't care. Somewhere along the fancies and the research and the learning I had come to care about you more than my work," she whispered, finally looking up to watch him. "Somehow, while reading your histories and your miseries, I had fallen in love with you. Every bit of it. The blackness. The light. The anger. The laughter . . . Monster, man, experiment. All of it."

  Vincent remained silent, his eyes glowing with a strange expression.

  "And if curing one means that it might kill all of you, I don't know if I can do that. I don't want to hurt you. You've had that enough in your life."

  Vincent held her gaze in the silence that followed, still standing so close that she could smell everything about him. His musk of mystery. His heady aroma of intensity and depth. His sweet scent of humanness and passion.

  "We've been down this path before," he finally said, voice gruff. "For most of your young life you've wanted to change what Hojo did to me. Now is your chance. For all of my existence as this monster I have wished for my previous life. Now is my chance." His hands gripped her upper arms. "I understand the risks, Natalie, and I accept them as worth the end result. Now you must come to a decision as well. Whom do you care for? For me? Or for the monster shell that has trapped me?"

  Natalie blinked up at him, tears choking off the voice that would have given him the words she wanted to say. Instead, she kissed his mouth and his cheek and held him close as she desperately tried to fight back the sobs.

  Vincent pulled her tighter against him. "There is your answer. You came to love my soul, and my soul will be the same . . . the same?" he whispered. "I lie. The blackness begins to crumble." Vincent touched her neck with his lips, causing a shiver. "No. It will never be the same."

  Natalie silently cried against him.