Rebirth - Did it occur within Lucrecia's Cave?

[Phantom Valentine]

I'm particularly curious with how the scenes at Lucrecia's cave are structured. Something that always struck me as odd was that Vincent would constantly be addressing Lucrecia like he was just waking up to see her after some time. And it happens in pretty much every scene where he is in Lucrecia's cave. Every scene starts with Vincent lifting his head up as if awakening in that moment. And each time, he addresses Lucrecia in the following manner:

• First Scene
  • Vincent: “So. We meet again, Lucrecia.” (Scene occurs while he is in Junon)
• Second scene
  • Lucrecia says some words and Vincent says “Awake?” (After Vincent turns into Chaos the first time and collapses)
• Third Scene
  • “I saw you again… it was the place were we first…” (Scene happens after Vincent gets the Protomateria ripped from his chest and convulses with Chaos)
• Final Scene
  • “Lucrecia, everything is alright now. Omega and Chaos have returned to the planet...” (After Vincent/Chaos collides with Omega and disappears for 7 days)
    

Curiously, each time Vincent either passes out or 'dies', he awakens in Lucrecia's cave and makes a comment about meeting her again, with the exception of the first scene. Based on what I've analyzed, I can only speculate what these scenes are implying... But first I will address the ending scene.

When Vincent 'dies', three purple spirits float back to the planet. One of those purple spirits ends up landing on the Cerberus pendant while the other two seem to continue drifting downward. My assumption is that those three spirits are Omega, Chaos, and Vincent. We learn that Omega and Chaos have returned to the planet, but Vincent theoretically was 'rejected' in a sense that he didn't return to the planet. Either Hojo's experiments rendered Vincent super immortal, or due to his inherently corrupt nature, he cannot exist within the Lifestream itself. I'm just going to assume the former at this point. That being said, I'm believe Vincent is just flat out incapable of dying.

Due to the fact that Vincent is immortal, and because the planet contains memories of events that have happened however many times now, then that would imply that Vincent would also be reliving those cycles; thus existing outside of time. This seems to be illustrated each time Vincent awakens in Lucrecia's cave-- after all, that pool of water Vincent awakens beside is the very same body of water that Chaos is suppose to born from. Chaos reborn, if you will. Therefore, my assumption is that each time Vincent blacks out, he is reborn within Lucrecia's cave, reliving past memories from the Lifestream, and possibly another cycle of time.

I am curious to know what everyone's thoughts are. And of course let me know if I've overlooked anything that would have otherwise refuted this whole thing.

 

[BioTeach]

Interesting topic. I honestly never gave it a lot of thought. The first time this kind of scene happens is the one at Kalm, and, as you pointed out, is not linked with him having died in any way. To me he seemed to just be day dreaming in this one. Since that's what was happening the first time, I assumed the other times also followed this precedent. So in the second one, after he turns into chaos and passes out, he just dreams about Lucrecia (because the poor man never thinks about anything else). This reasoning could apply to the remaining occurences too I think.

 

[Phantom Valentine]

Interesting topic. I honestly never gave it a lot of thought. The first time this kind of scene happens is the one at Kalm, and, as you pointed out, is not linked with him having died in any way. To me he seemed to just be day dreaming in this one. Since that's what was happening the first time, I assumed the other times also followed this precedent. So in the second one, after he turns into chaos and passes out, he just dreams about Lucrecia (because the poor man never thinks about anything else). This reasoning could apply to the remaining occurences too I think.

Yes, I meant Kalm but my tired brain registered Junon lol.

I don't think he is just daydreaming. He has visions of his Turk days, so I'm sure he is daydreaming part of the time in those scenes, but it's too coincidental with the way each scene is laid out. Plus, he emerges from the cave physically at the last scene which certainly isn't a dream. We know it to be a physical place, and Square has a knack for inserting a lot of symbolism in the ff7 games. It just seems too lazy to be just day dreaming. The one scene I did not mention was when Shelke gives Vincent the Protomateria, he has another vision of Lucrecia in the cave but it's much different. She comes out to him and communicates with him about her feelings. I feel this incident is different from the ones mentioned above, and might very well be more of a mental state, but again I don't think he would conjure up an image of her speaking from her remaining fragmented data.