Guilt’s Cost: Part 203
Epilogue
By Kristen Gupton-Williams
Tifa woke up as the morning light came streaming in through the hospital window. She looked around the room, her eyes eventually landing upon Vincent. He was already awake and gazing back at her. He got up from the chair that he’d spent the night in and approached her bedside.
She
smiled at him. “Good morning.”
“How
are you feeling?” he asked, taking a seat upon the edge of her bed.
“Really
sore, but I’ll live,” Tifa replied. As
her mind cleared from its sleepy haze, she felt a spike of anxiety. “Where is he?”
Vincent
motioned toward the door. “The nurse
took him a little while ago. They were
just going to run some tests, nothing big.
He’s okay.”
Immediately,
Tifa felt relief. Although her baby was
only about twelve hours old, she had already become insanely attached to
him. They had managed to get to the
hospital in Kalm only about an hour before she gave birth. The drive into town had taken nearly an hour
and a half, as the country home they had purchased was very isolated.
The
nurse returned at that moment with the baby.
She came right over and handed it to Tifa. “He’s a big one.”
Tifa
smiled as she stroked the small wisp of black hair that graced the top of her
baby’s head. “Don’t I know it.”
“I’ll
be back in a little bit so we can get the birth certificate filled out,” the
nurse said as she left the room.
Vincent
bent over to get a look at his son. “You
know, it’s exactly nine months today.”
Tifa
smiled, thinking about the first day that Vincent had walked; the same day this
child had been conceived. “Yeah, I
thought about that last night. You work
fast.”
He
laughed to himself, “It would seem so.”
In
those nine months, Vincent had recovered almost completely. He still had a little trouble with his fine
motor skills, but he still continued to improve although at a slower rate than
before. Nonetheless, he had never
regretted going through the misery of recovery.
Seeing Tifa now with the baby she had long awaited in her arms made it
all worth while.
Tifa
looked up from the infant for a moment. “Weird that you’ve got a granddaughter that’s seven months older
than than your youngest kid, huh?”
“Like
I said before, you didn’t actually expect anything in your life to be normal
did you?” Vincent reached out and gently
touched the sleeping newborn’s cheek.
“So, are we settled on his name then?”
Tifa
nodded. “Yes,
definitely. Looks
like your family name gets to continue too, since legally you’re still a
Vatatsi.”
Vincent
raised his eyebrows. The last name
Valentine hadn’t meant anything to him, since it was just an assigned handle
from Shin Ra. “Well, it was up to me to
pass it on, I guess.”
“So, Aaron Tseng Vatatsi it is,” Tifa sighed, glad that Vincent had
agreed to this name without any argument. “Tseng would have been proud of you.”
Vincent
smiled faintly. “I hope so. Not that I’m trying to change the subject,
but Cid should have Jaras and Jeanine here in a few hours. I’ll leave in a while to go pick them up from
the airport and then bring them here.
They’re all going to stay at the hotel across the street until we head
back to the house tomorrow, assuming of course that you feel up to leaving the
hospital.”
Tifa
was eager to see her guests and couldn’t wait to get home with the baby. “I’ll be ready. When are Angel and
“Their
little girl has an appointment on Monday to get some vaccines I guess, so they
said they’d probably come visit on Wednesday.”
Vincent thought of his granddaughter for a moment. She had been born with bright red hair and it
hadn’t changed at all as she had started to grow. “I wonder what Little Cid is going to think
of Dana?”
“I’m
sure the two of them will be into everything.
Good thing we baby proofed the house, huh?” Tifa held the baby out to Vincent.
He
took the infant, feeling much more comfortable with babies after holding Angel
and
She
looked into Vincent’s coffee colored eyes.
“Yeah?”
“I’m
really proud of you,” he reached out and placed a hand against his wife’s
cheek, “for everything.”
Well, that’s that I guess. I’ll be going back through this monster to fix a few little things so any more updates on this story will just be editing changes.
I’m reworking the bulk of this into an original piece. If you are interested in knowing if I write anything else or put something in print (I’m still editing my novel), you can send me your email address. I will only use it to give alerts to my writing.
I thank
everyone who stuck with it and read this beast.
It was a lot of fun.
Guilt’s
Cost, started 6/1998 finished 4/29/2005