VINCENT – ICE

"I've become so numb I can't feel you there. I've become so tough, so much more aware. I'm becoming this all I want to do, is be more like me and be less like you." Numb – Linkin Park


There were times the ice burnt like fire. And the ice in those mako blue eyes burnt with flames of anger and hate and pain and he was wary of the soldier.

Inside Chaos stirred, revelling in the emotion that practically swept in waves off the blonde haired man, whose eyes burnt and promised revenge.

He didn't want to be Fair when the monster caught up with him.

His fingers were cold as his hands ran along Death Penalty, cold as ice in the fresh Midgar morning. Red eyes flickered along the slums, cold and calculating. Behind the mask, the ice cold mask the demons stirred, faint calls squashed down and buried in the cold frozen cold.

He wondered idly if Lucrecia would have been happy, seeing him like this. Ice cold solitary broken, sinning man but then he reminded himself how it was his fault his fault she was dead his fault he had let the experiments take place his fault his fault…

Thirty odd years in that coffin weren't long enough. Thirty years of sleeping and being tortured by the shards of memory, so sharp that he had as good as cut himself on them. As good as atoning as any, facing your own memories in your self-harming mind but even the years could numb couldn't freeze the pain.

Crimson eyes flared, dancing like the red scarlet blood coloured cloak that hung swept tattered in the wind air earth sky fire. His deep black pupils focussed on the blonde swordsman, the blonde experiment who had, when they first met, bared away the black cloth from his shoulder revealing the harsh dark black midnight ebony lines of ink, forever imprinted under the pale, contrastingly pale skin.

And it had been proof, that the dancing flickering burning firelight had cast light upon. And if the harsh tattooed lines hadn't been what he needed to see, then it was the hate and anger and fire emotion churning in the young man's eyes, that screamed out to him, like knows like.

Monster knows monster.

He would never admit it to himself, instead carefully and calmly in his rational Turk mind, pointing out the obvious differences between them, the blonde spiteful and full of anger and hate and betrayal and fire and revenge, all burning in those ice cold eyes. And he had hidden from the chances, locking himself away.

Like knows like.

Failed experiments both left to rot.

Cloud did certainly raise some points. He'd decided to humour the man, while clutching vainly at the straws trying to find the solace and the light. It was a chance, no matter how slim and not matter how narrow and fragile, like brittle ice, frosted over the water and he would try.

He could always sleep off his sins afterwards he supposed. An immortal man would never run out of time.

"So I figured," the blonde's voice was tainted with his sick, twisted amusement at some private joke that he had linked up. And his eyes burnt hungrily with the need and want to be human. "That if we join up with the terrorist group… Shin-Ra'd decide to send people after us. The Turks. The SOLDIERS. Fair. They come to us." His lips curled. "And if they don't…well…" Eyes danced and burned "We can always go to them."

The black haired gunman sighed. "AVALANCHE? Isn't it a bit crude?" Even for you.

A shrug. "Crude. But effective. I want them to know their death is coming."

Yes, the blonde was sick. Definitely, not just of mind but of body, and he sometimes wondered how the young man saw himself. Was he the monster he had admitted so openly to the gunman, or was he just one poor lost soul among the others. A good person that bad things had happened to and so in turn struck back.

"So what would you do if you ever got out of here?"

He had a well prioritised list of things to take care of too, and the gunman wasn't sure what to make of that. A vendetta against Fair. Understandable. The man had ordered him to kill the psycho maniac and then left him to rot in the labs. Shin-Ra. Obviously. Their crimes were too many to count and it was time somebody acted. That was why he was tagging along.

The Planet?

(When he found out the truth of his origins he began to hate Shin-Ra. Then, after time, he began to hate everything.)

He was glad he had managed to tone the man down at least on that topic. Even then the views swung from day to day, sometimes hateful and burning other times impassionate ice cold and other times rare times that had grown less and less and less in the time he had known Cloud sad and questioning of why him?

Vincent Valentine found the man a complex web and maze of mysteries within mysteries. Fascinating, certainly, but not what was the main point here. But then what was the point?

There were times when he still saw the lost, young teenager, forever sixteen, who had been forced to grow up too fast, too quickly, and in circumstances he would wish on no living creature.

Except perhaps Hojo.

Yes, he and the swordsman had both agreed on that moot point. Hojo was considered a sort of free game between them for whoever got there first. If the circumstances arose that there was some sort of tie, then he had claimed dibs. After all, surely Cloud already had his revenge in the form of Fair.

His crimson eyes had regarded the article curiously as the burning ice blue eyed man had read it, tracing the emotion the pain and sorrow and hate in those ice cold eyes that numbed his very core. Then the fine paper had been discarded to burn, carelessly tossed aside. Left to burn. Doubtless VII would do much more than that to the raven haired proclaimed hero of Shin-Ra. And he had spotted the delicious irony that Chaos had teased him with, ice cold in his grasp, of the town burning the man nothing more than a boy fated as an experiment and finally Zack Fair, First Class SOLDIER, burning dying at the hand of him who he had unwittingly betrayed.

VII's eyes had been almost hungry as he had described what would happen, and he vaguely had questioned the obsession, but then settled on the fact there could be worse obsessions.

Hojo's obsession with Jenova and Project S and V and G and J's and Specimen I and II and IV and all the way up to the current XIII he was working on (even if it was part of a different project). The records of the red lion like creature had been sent to the scientists still working on site. Cloud had asked him to intercept them, and their unspoken aim was to free the beast of the mad, obsessive scientist's control.

Half of Hojo's experiments were fated to die under his hands, in the mako and pain and ice and the rest were either subjected to be puppets, under Shin-Ra's command, or disposed of and forgotten. When he first met the blonde swordsman, the blue eyed burning eyed man pushing open his coffin and standing back, arms crossed, announcing himself the hate was already visible to the red clad gunman.

"You know Vincent Valentine, we are very much alike, don't you think? Both specimens, locked away and fated to die. Dying would be too easy, don't you think?"

Then with a sinister look on his face, mouth curled in some cruel, bitter ice cold smirk of resentment, Cloud had bared the pale flesh to the dim candlelight, the dark letters clear enough to the eye.

VII

Seven.

"Once I begged for a number. To be someone and not just something. It must have been in the first year because I stopped noticing stuff like that after the first twelve months."

Cloud had admitted he wasn't even a success. He was a failure, albeit a failure that Hojo had poured his research and mad scientist brain into for several years before finally leaving the cripple man to die in a vat of mako, never expecting him to awaken from his poison induced slumber.

He had woken though, and he had been numbered, marked, whether Hojo liked it or not, his failures being named.

His red cloak, burnt and torn, rippled in the cold Midgar breeze. In the sky, remnant of the late snow of the day before fell to the ground, and with slow movements, his left handed gold claw let a flake slowly drift onto his hands.

Ash, he noted, and not the snow everybody thought it was. He chuckled, letting it slide to the ground of the city far below. The green earth sky was already fading, and the electricity in the air was still crackling.

The gunslinger sighed, pulling his red cloak around him tighter, closing his wine coloured eyes as he followed the blonde through the slum streets, his feet silent despite the golden metallic boots.

Someone ran around the corner ahead of them, with long dark hair and deep velvet brown eyes. She let out a startled squeal as she ran into the blonde, eyes widening and instant, quick reflexes allowing her to skid to a halt before they collided.

The swordsman only blinked his ice blue eyes at the girl, sidestepping around her. "My apologies," he muttered, but his voice was its usual deep, emotionless fathomless tone.

"Cloud?"

The demon's host noted the step the spiky haired man took before the name registered and he froze, muscles stiffening. It didn't take much to picture the burning ice blue eyes, blonde brows furrowing slightly before morphing back into a mask.

He stayed where he way, observing the scene. That had been his sin, he mused, simply observing, and doing nothing to stop it.

"Yes? Who are-" Cloud looked almost awkward, unused to being social after all these years. The raven haired gunman had gotten the impression he hadn't been very talkative before the mako tanks and even after they certainly did nothing for your social skills.

The woman had stepped back in shock, blinking those rusty eyes again at the man, as if she had seen a joke. "Cloud Strife? It's me, Tifa… Tifa Lockhart. We were neighbours back in Nibel-" The name caught in her throat.

Again, there was a lull several hesitations longer than normal before the name registered in the poor man's mind. Then something cleared and those burning ice eyes seemed to almost thaw for a second or two before freezing again. A slow nod, "I remember…it's been too long…five years…" he chuckled softly, a dark smirk playing on his lips, "Then it all burnt to the ground."

Tifa frowned, "Are…you all right? You seem sort of…distant…Hey, tell you what, why don't we got to the bar where I work and we can catch up."

Cloud considered this, blue eyes blazing away softly, "We're here on business."

"We…?" Tifa turned, just as the red cloaked man stepped forwards.

"We're looking for work." The crimson eyed man stated. The girl, despite well trained reflexes which he admired, flinched slightly at him as the light that crept through the sky plate illuminated him.

"Is that a vampire?" The girl asked, glancing at Cloud, and the ex-Turk growled softly under his breath.

Jokes about vampires from the blonde in his lighter moods weren't appreciated either. Even when the first sentence out of that barmaid's mouth confirmed his gothic appearance.

Cloud's ice blue eyes mocked him silently. "No, Vincent isn't a vampire." He seemed to want to say more and the ex-Turk intervened.

He regarded the girl…woman before him for a moment before stating, "We're looking for a group of people who need to hire a mercenary."

"AVALANCHE?" she asked, then bit her lip. Neither man had reacted to the word but Cloud had taken a step back, emotions churning behind his ice cold burning gaze. "You know where they are." It was a statement.

The girl – Tifa – nodded, staring at Cloud, a slight frown on her brows.

One side of his mouth twitched, and for a moment there was earth green of mako in those bright blue eyes, before they faded back to the usual icy sky colour. The gunslinger drew his coat closer around himself, shivering slightly, even though he couldn't feel the cold, couldn't feel the icy frost that hung in the air, burned in his bones. But in the shadows of that cold, ice numb smile that played across the blonde eyes, he saw a hint of the monster stirring.

"Chaos? Is that the demon then…?"

"How did you…"

"I see a shadow of him… flickering behind your eyes."

"We ain' takin' on two mercenary's! We barely' hav the money ennuff for one!" The dark skinned man slammed his gun arm down on the table, and the ex-Turk found himself unconsciously checking the type of weapon branded onto his arm, his own gilded gauntlet creeping towards Death Penalty.

These AVALANCHE were a bunch of fools. He could see that even the blonde agreed if the light smirk playing over his features was anything to go by. And fools like these would attract the attention of the Shin-Ra all too easily.

The blonde swordsman was leaning against the wall, arms cross and his sword leaning next to him in clear view, made to intimidate the group. He gave a nonchalant shrug. "Vincent's going back to Kalm."

Kalm. It was a quiet town and it on the outskirts of Midgar across the wastes. It was more of a village really; the sort of place people came to who couldn't be bothered to actually live in the city or for people who just wanted to get out.

Unfortunately, being a small village, it made sneaking around and keeping the attention off him that much harder.

Although when the black cloaked man passed through rumours flying in his wake it was all too easy to note down his direction to pass onto AVALANCHE when they came through.

The gunslinger was surprised to see that the group had both shrunk and grown. The three rowdy members, the fat man who never stopped eating, the copper haired woman and the short friendly guy were gone, and he couldn't say he was surprised. The large gun man was still there, along with the martial artist - Tifa.

There was a red cat, one he recognised even if the XIII branded on his shoulder didn't give it away. The cat, Red as he was called in Hojo's files, stalked near the back of the group, the spiky profile of the blonde swordsman hovering nearby.

Cloud's burning gaze was fixed on the pair walking just behind Tifa, a girl wearing pink, her eyes a brilliant green and walking next to a face that the demon's host had last seen printed in a newspaper, said paper going up in flames.

Zack Fair. That was a surprise. The ex-Turk mildly wondered why he wasn't dead yet.

He glanced at those burning sky eyes, considering the emotions turning within them, the inner battle being waged.

He hadn't done anything yet. He hadn't yet lost himself, hadn't yet immersed himself, drowned himself in the anger, the fire, the ice cold hate.

The red caped man had to consider this fact. Because if the blonde could refrain from retribution, if the monster could walk the fine line between humanity and insanity then… well…

Maybe he could too.

And maybe…some of that ice had thawed a little bit.


The whole style of writing is meant to be a bit muddled up, hence why there are sudden scene changes and abrupt time jumps and random quotes and who knows what else thrown together. And just a warning, this story isn't a romance, but does contain a mix of Zerith, Cloti and Clerith generally applied.

~ Eclipse