Title: Friends

Summary: When the members of Avalanche began to die, Vincent chalked it up to misfortune rather than foul play; a decision that he would come to regret.

Disclaimer: I own nothing...well, except for this crazy idea. I'm not sure if anyone else has ever thought about this before. I began to wonder if people forget that while Cid plays around with rockets all day, he is still a scientist. (I know I do.) Inspiration came from My Chemical Romance's "Kill All Your Friends."

Warnings: Implied torture, implied experimentation, character deaths, blood, insanity, etc.

Vincent should have known that something was wrong when the police had told the surviving members of Avalanche that faulty wiring had been the cause of the fire; Tifa had such pride in the Seventh Heaven, she would not let some half-rate electrician check on the wiring for her bar and home. The thought never crossed his mind, though. Later in the week, four coffins were lowered into the ground as crimson eyes watched on with morbid fascination and sorrow. Tifa, Cloud, Marlene, and Denzel were unable to get out in time and succumbed to the flames. Barret was devastated and Reeve was truly shaken by the deaths. Yuffie sobbed uncontrollably into his chest while she clung to him and Nanaki sat by the graves. Cid, chewed on the filter of his cigarette while the graves were filled in.

The deaths shook the city; their beloved hero was gone and nothing could bring him back. Avalanche sat together in a bar, trying to figure out what to do now that their group was shaken to the core and deeply fractured. Cid quickly took charge and said that it would not be right for them to split up and live out their lives on separate continents; Tifa would not have wanted that and Cloud would have nodded in agreement with her.

So, the remaining members of their even smaller group had decided that they would look for a place in the morning that would be large enough for them all to live in comfortably.

...It was that morning that another tragedy struck.

Vincent was walking through the desolate portions of the slums, stepping over the rubble of the fallen plate when his phone began to ring. "Vincent!" Reeve sobbed into the receiver, his voice panicked and of the verge of hysterics. "Yu-Yuffie was hit by a bus!" The gunner quickly had gotten directions to their location when the engineer had told him that she was being taken to the nearest hospital. By the time that the rest of Avalanche had all made it into the waiting room, the ninja had fallen from her wounds, leaving the fractured team to bury yet another teammate.

The second day of searching for a house, Barret and Reeve had fallen to wayward bullets from a bar fight just down the street. No one had seen it coming and the string of deaths was beginning to leave Vincent thinking that someone was out to get revenge on Avalanche. ...Someone who wanted them all to die...

That was the last thing that Vincent had thought before his world turned black.

Cid was a simple man; he liked to tinker with mechanics and fly through the air. Unfortunately, he was not born with wings and had to build his own. Then ShinRa tried to take away his wings and some little group of crazies actually managed to beat ShinRa to the punch; stealing his plane before they did. Cloud had explained everything to him afterwards and he decided to join them in their journey to save the planet from Hojo's son. And, while he was certain that there was no real turning point that made him snap, the pilot could remember that during their travels the world began to darken around him. They had gone into Midgar on Tifa's request and were swarmed by Soldiers. That was the first time that the blonde spearman had ever killed a human being.

That day changed Cid.

The world began to change for him; even the good guys in a quest to save the world were evil in their own ways. Avalanche was an amalgamation of people who sought revenge, death, and pain against their enemy with the only thing bringing them together being the fact that they all had the same enemy. The majority of the group even bonded over the fact that they all were fighting to save the planet, kill Sephiroth, and destroy ShinRa, Inc. The only one who did not openly embrace the twisted camaraderie, besides himself, was Vincent.

After Sephiroth's demise, they split ways once more and Cid returned to Rocket Town. ...But the damage was done. There was something satisfying about killing another human being; something primal that called to him. The blonde had known that the vampiric gunner had an odd connection with Hojo and death, and he decided to take a trip to Nibelheim one day to find out what it was. He had made the trek across the Nibel mountains and into the decrepit manor that he was told housed the ex-Turk. Once inside the building, the blonde followed the trails that had cut through the thick layer of dust to the basement, taking in the sight of the coffin room as he passed it and made his way to a hidden laboratory. Once in there, he looked up Hojo's research and quickly became enthralled with what he read. Most of it spoke the truth; the world was filled with people that did not deserve salvation; they needed to be cleansed and judged before they could ever hope to find the Promised Land.

But Sephiroth and Jenova were both killed so all he could do was avenge the death of his son and finish his revenge. ...Hojo's son. The pilot quickly set to figuring out exactly how he could pull off the murders of a group of people considered to be the strongest and purest on the planet. The idiots did not know whose hands into which they were putting their faith.

Taking down Cloud and Tifa had been the easiest. During a reunion, oh how that word was ironic, Cid had messed with the wiring downstairs while the family was asleep. The day before the whole "get together" was scheduled to happen, the wires would short circuit and burn out, causing a spark and setting the old structure up in record time. Two children had died as a result, but that was needed to ensure that no one would walk out of the bar. One they were gone, it was a simple matter of pushing Yuffie in front of a bus, paying off some thugs to shoot Reeve and Barret while making it look like an accident, and dispose of Nanaki by shooting a bubble of air into his veins with a syringe.

Vincent, however, would prove to be the hardest to get rid of. He had managed to sneak up behind him when the gunner was answering his phone to hear about Reeve and Barret's downfall. Swinging as hard as he could, Cid brought the staff end of his spear down across the gunner's skull, sending the other man crumpling to the ground. It took a while to haul to limp body of the gunner out of the city, but once he was carefully loaded onto the Shera, he quickly made it to Nibelheim and carried the brunette back into the dusty building. There were a few times that the gunner had stirred, but a quick murmur of "You're safe, Val" or "I got ya" eased the brunette back into the land of unconsciousness.

Setting him back into the laboratory, the blonde pilot set Vincent down on the metal slab before strapping him down and making sure that the taller man could not easily escape. Once the ex-Turk had woken up, he tried to escape. A deep snarl filled the air as Cid sat back, watching as the lithe man quickly came to realize exactly where he was, red eyes whipping around the room before pausing when they came across the pilot. A look of confusion spread across the visible portions of his face as the brunette rasped in his deep voice, "Cid?"

"Hey, Val; bet yer wonderin' what's goin on, huh?" the pilot drawled as he rose to his feet, walking over as he picked up a scalpel on the side table, a smirk spreading across his face. "I can fill ya in if ya really want to know."

"Let me go," the brunette growled as his crimson narrowed at the blonde pilot.

"No can do, Val. Yer a part of this as much as I am. If I let ya go, there's nothin' stoppin' ya from puttin' a bullet in my head." The dark smirk that Vincent could have sworn that he had seen before grew even wider when the blonde stood next to his side, pulling down his flight goggles over his eyes, Cid whistled softly, the haunting tune filling the air as he undid the brunette's shirt with his dexterous fingers, pulling open the black leather to reveal pasty skin mapped with white and pink scars alike.

Crimson eyes widened as the tune finally was recalled: Hojo.

The thought did him little solace as he felt the cold blade slice through his skin directly over an old scar, blood welling up from the split skin and spilling over the pale epidermis. "Now, let's see what ya got goin' on in here, Valentine..."

Gritting his teeth, Vincent remembered those words from back before he found solace sleeping his years away in a small coffin. Words that always meant that he would never escape...

Words that meant that he was going to die on that metal slab with a crazed scientist standing over him.

Rage filled his veins as he quickly figured out who was behind the deaths of his friends. He would have never pegged Cid as the one behind this; the man was often gruff and crass, but he had a gentle heart and was not above helping out those that needed it. He was the one person in Avalanche that he had truly gotten along with on more than a habitual level. The blonde pilot was the only person that he actually answered his phone for.

Hojo had gotten bored with him with due time; he would just have to wait for the blonde to do the same. Then he could escape and beat some sense into his friend's head. Or swiftly end his life, if he had to...

Review and let me know what you thought.