Cid was in a foul mood the next day. It was always easy to tell when he was in a bad day. If he didn’t sleep until noon, he was having a bad day. Today he had been up before nine.

He hadn’t bothered with his jacket or his scarf and he was smoking two ciggeretes at once as he walked down the street. He did, however, remember his spear. He stomped along the road, obviously looking for a target. Considering he was going to the hospital, few people thought anything was out of the ordinary.

Cid had vowed that as the man in charge of Rocket Town he’d soon impose some sort of rule to improve beds and how comfortable they were.

He had gotten very little sleep that night, technically morning since he hadn’t fallen asleep until after midnight.

On top of that, he had a dream about why he didn’t want Vincent on a catheter. He always thought that if he’d found out anyone had put Vincent on a catheter, he’d kill them; if Vincent ever found anyone put a catheter on him, Cid would be rescuing the entire hospital staff… what was left of them when he got there.

Cid had remembered that there actually had been one single time Vincent had been nude in front of him, prepared to make love. Making love was Vincent’s term for it. He had only agreed to something slow and gentle and romantic. At least he had agreed to sex.

The only reason Vincent had agreed to it was to celebrate the destruction of meteor. Everyone else had been out partying since Cloud had treated all of them to a trip to Costa del Sol.

Cid had dimmed the lights; Vincent seemed happier in the dark. Mostly because people could see less of him.

They had both been completely naked. Vincent sat on the edge of the bed and Cid knelt in front of him, staring hungrily at Vincent’s thighs and especially at what was between them.

It was an hour of stroking Vincent’s cheek, occasionally rubbing a finger down Vincent’s chest and shushing him as he made scared sounds before Vincent showed signs of being confident of actually going through with anything.

Cid’s large hand traveled down to Vincent’s crotch. Originally, he had planned give Vincent the happiest time in his life, but Vincent was making things difficult. "Spread your legs more," Cid hand whispered.

Vincent had complied, spreading his legs slightly, and whimpered.

"Shhh," Cid had whispered, and slowly took hold of Vincent’s penis, and began to slowly stroke up and down.

Cid had seen something flash in Vincent’s eyes and knew he’d caused some sort of memory to erupt from where it had been buried in Vincent’s mind.

Vincent screamed, closing his eyes against the nightmare and grabbing Cid’s short hair. He had screamed until he ran out of breath, took another, and screamed again.

His fingers had dug into Cid’s scalp and he refused to let go. Cid couldn’t break Vincent’s hold or calm him down.

Barret had crashed through the door to see what was happening. He explained it woke Marlene and sounded like someone was killing both of them.

Barret hadn’t asked any questions or given them weird looks as Cid had expected. For a man whose daughter had woken up to someone screaming during sex, he wasn’t offended or angry in the least. For a man with only one real hand, he was very helpful in prying Vincent off and helping to get him into bed.

Vincent, when he decided to talk again a few days later, had explained it was far too similar to the first day under Hojo’s ‘care:’ completely nude, unable to move from restraints, Hojo’s hand had wrapped around his penis, moved up slightly and holding it away from his body to properly drive the catheter in.

Both of them had had nightmares for days after that.

Now the tiniest thought of Vincent on one of those gave Cid nightmares and made him uneasy. He was going to pass a law someday banning them. Hell, he was going to pass a law banning the word so he’d never hear it again.

At least Vincent was alive and Sephiroth was behaving himself.

Cid opened the door to the hospital. Other than Vincent, who wouldn’t have moved if he wanted to, who wouldn’t have wanted to move if he wanted to, the only person in the room was Sephiroth. "Hey, where’s the pipsqueak? He back out again or something?"

"He went to Mideel to get medical supplies. I’ve been watching Vincent for him."

"This stuff comes off, right?" Cid asked, looking at the various machines Vincent was hooked up to. Vincent’s entire chest was completely hidden under machinery, whish was wired to even more machinery on the counter near the sink, with was connected to numerous IV’s.

"One way or the other," Sephiroth commented blandly.

Cid hoped that comment meant they either threatened Daren to take them off, or he was smart enough to do it one his own, the alternative being Vincent either survived or he didn’t.

"I’ve been changing IV’s for the past three hours," Sephiroth said. "I am so bored I could kill something."

Cid went white and ran out the door.

"I was joking," Sephiroth commented to himself.

……………………………………………………………………….

"There you are!" Cid yelled, walking up to Daren, who was struggling to push a chocobo away while holding on to a large cooler.

Cid had been waiting for something to happen all day. He had already checked, rechecked, and relocked his house and found nothing useful. He had waited at the edge of town for Daren to arrive, not wanting to stay in a room with a very bored Sephiroth, lest he find something sharp to start playing with.

"You’re such a wuss," Cid chided, and pushed the chocobo back. "Can’t even handle your own chocobo."

"It’s not mine. It attacked me for my lunch and wouldn’t leave."

"Go! GO ON! SHOO!" Cid yelled at the chocobo. It didn’t listen until Cid’s hand went to his spear. Reluctantly it left.

"Thank you," Daren said, adjusting the cooler in his arms. He started off towards the hospital, the weight from the cooler making him go slow.

"Here, gimme that. It’ll be—holy fuck, this thing’s cold."

"Have you run out of ways to say you hate me or were you just getting to that?"

"What’s in here?" Cid asked, ignoring Daren’s comment

"Blood bags. Blood and plasma. I asked, but neither of you knew what type he was, so I had to do a blood test before starting. I didn’t have enough of his type. Usually I could just cut corners with blood types, but for this procedure I needed everything to be exact and I didn’t have enough for him. There’s plasma in there too, mako tends to get there, and since plasma lasts so long that’s why mako poisoning lasts so long. As long as the cells are easily recycled in the body, it’s easy to take get rid of. That’s why people in SOLDIER are given several small doses over time."

"I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about," Cid said. "We’re here already?"

"It’s a small town. Hello," Daren said, waving to Sephiroth.

"This is so boring," Sephiroth said, then paused, looking at Daren’s face. He tapped his face, next to his eye quickly.

"I… oh, if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Highwind," Daren said, walking to the other side of the room."

"Hey! I don’t know where to put this! Where’re you going?"

"The bathroom." The bathroom door slammed closed. "Stupid, lousy chocobo," Daren muttered, searching through the drawers. "Knocking my contact out. Where did I put my spare ones? What is all this? Did Shera rearrange these or something?"

"Hey, Dr. Dolittle! Whadda we do with this crap?" Cid yelled from the other side of the door.

"Yes!" Daren exclaimed in triumph, finding his other pair of contacts.

"What?"

"Put them in the fridge!"

"There any beer in there?" Cid asked.

Daren didn’t bother to answer.

…………………………………………………………………….

"Sorry for the inconvenience… I…" Daren said, coming out of the bathroom.

"Hey, he already pissed everywhere," Cid said, looking at Vincent. "We don’t need you doing it either."

"I… right," Daren said, and turned to Sephiroth. "Um, Mr. Uh… do you have a last name?"

"Just Sephiroth."

"Could we, um, talk outside? If that’s alright with you?"

Sepiroth nodded and Daren followed him outside, closing the door behind him.

"I… I must say… I was… impressed with your… deductive skills last night."

"It wasn’t real."

"It—what? Come again?"

"I lied. I needed to scare you into talking. Or doing something."

"Oh. Well… I… I was hoping you could tell me if you had… speculated anything else… I mean anything about me."

"You’re hiding something and you’re worried I figured it out."

"I—What? No… I just…"

"You know, you have a habit of gesturing, or at least trying to, and a bad stutter when you’re nervous."

"I… oh. It’s… It’s nothing, really… I’m harmless… Still…"

"You’ve had some sort of mako experiment on you, and had this illegal procedure performed on you. That has to be the only way you’d have known about it. Most likely from Hojo. He was in charge of mako experiments on people and gave less of a shit about legalities than anyone else in Shinra. You must have known him. And you’re being framed."

"I… framed? Who would—"

"I have no idea. It is true all signs are pointing to you, but I think if someone gave you canon, you’d manage to shoot yourself in the foot with it before hurting anyone else."

"That’s… That’s all, is it?"

"At the moment. You’re still hiding something."

"Its… its not really… important. Um, could… Could you tell me… about…um…"

"I’ve been dead for three years. What exactly would I know that you wouldn’t?"

"Um… I’m… I’m interested in… in Hojo."

"Why?"

"I’d… I’d rather keep that… to myself, actually. Call…Call it professional, yet morbid curiosity."

"I’d say he lost his mind, but I’m not sure if he had one in the first place. I’m not sure what he needed more, a chiropractor or a padded room and a straight jacket. I have no idea what went on in his head and I’m thankful for it. I’m not sure what he was trying with his experiments and I was one of them. I’m not even sure if he knew himself. I just know he didn’t care about the person he was experimenting on. In fact, I don’t know if he cared about those he didn’t experiment on. God, I hope that man never had children."

"I… yes. I’d doubt he’d even…have the time to conceive one… let alone raise them. If you’ll excuse me, some…one else ate my lunch. I should really go find something to eat. I’m hypoglycemic." Daren dashed off.

"Hmmm."

……………………………………………………………………………………..

"Y'or' ftil ‘ere?" Daren asked through half a sandwich, seeing Cid still in the hospital room.

"Don’t got anywhere else to go. What is all this shit?" Cid asked. After seeing how much machinery was used on Vincent, he was beginning to understand why Daren didn’t want Vincent to think he was anything like Hojo.

"Fa’s…" Daren swallowed and tried again. "That’s a modified artificial kidney machine. It’s draining his blood and replacing it with new stuff. Can’t let the two mix. It’s replacing plasma as well. Two separate jobs, that’s why I needed both kinds of bags. It’s draining the mako from his blood. Trouble is, every time the blood goes straight out again, it gets mako in it from the rest of his body, so it has to be processed out again. Hopefully the mako content in him will be down enough by sometime tomorrow. That one’s an artificial lung machine. Kind of. It passes oxygen into the bloodstream, without anymore mako getting into them. The lungs are the most saturated and they’re a different job entirely" He pointed the numerous IV’s. "That, well, that most everything I’ve got and he needs it. Blood, plasma, glucose, morphine, sodium. Oh, that reminds me. Could you give him one of these?"

Daren handed Cid a bottle of familiar looking pills.

"He had withdrawal symptoms earlier. Sephiroth was curious about him and went through his wallet to see if his ID said anything that would shed some light on the murders."

"Did it help?" Cid asked, opening the bottle.

"Not really, he didn’t have any ID. I found an eskrilith prescription note in there, though, so I took it with me when I went to Mideel."

"Just one?"

"Huh? Oh, yes. Just one. We really shouldn’t be talking near him when he’s like this. Has someone been going through my things?"

"Who’d go through your crap?"

"I can’t find that little book I had. It had all my addresses and stuff in it."

"Come one Vince, swallow," Cid told Vincent, having very little luck.

"Any luck?" Daren asked, takng another bite of his sandwich. "I mean, with the murders?"

Cid just glared at him after finally getting Vincent to swallow the pill.

"Sorry, I’m not very good at small talk."

Cid sighed. "I got two dead TURKS and no leads. He’s going murder me before he finds out who’s been killing everyone else."

"Shinra still hires TURKS?"

"Used to," Cid said. "Whole world was going to hell, so they all decided to leg it. Reeve wouldn’t have taken them back anyway. They all found new jobs."

"Who’s Reeve?"

"All the other CEO’s or whatever they were kicked the bucket and so did their boss. So he got the company by default."

"So who runs Shinra now?"

"Don’t know, don’t much care either," Cid said. "They can go to hell if it keeps me from getting killed."

"I take it Mr. Reeve didn’t have any children."

"Nope. Married to his job and those things can’t bear children. ‘Cept in Hojo’s case and look what happened to him."

Daren just nodded.

…………………………………………………………………………………………..

Cid woke up and the first thing that came to his mind was something was wrong with the bed. Then it hit him that this wasn’t his bed. He hadn’t been staying nights at his own house for the last two nights. That would also explain why the wall had changed colors.

Two more thoughts hit him at the same time. The question of why the hell he’d woken up—he couldn’t remember—and that he had to pee.

The first part was answered when someone banged on the door and Cid realized the banging had been going on for a few seconds.

"I’m up, it’s not my fucking fault, I didn’t do it, and it was goddamn ugly in the first place," Cid yelled, getting up and wandering into the bathroom. "And I’m not wearing any pants!"

"When will you have them on?" A timid voice asked.

"Oh god, not him," Cid muttered to himself. "Tomorrow!" he yelled to the door.

"I don’t think that’s a good—" Cid heard Daren mutter right before the door crashed in.

"Can’t you fucking wait until a guy’s done?" Cid yelled.

"I’m not looking!" Daren yelled. From the sound of it, he was still out in the hallway.

"Oh for fuck’s sake, what are ya, a twelve year-old girl?" Cid exclaimed, coming out of the bathroom.

"I… I just wanted to give you some privacy," Daren said. Cid could see he hand his hand over his eyes and was looking away."

"For fucking out loud, knock that off! Besides, you broke down the door. Now, where’d I put my pants?"

"It was all his idea!" Daren said, pointing to Sephiroth, taking his hand off his eyes taking a good look at the room, and the people in it, in the process. "Uh, sorry."

"I didn’t break it down, I merely unlocked it," Sephiroth said.

"With your foot," Daren said.

"So?"

"Look you two knock it off or I’m tossing both you fuckers out the window and going back to sleep. Now what’s so goddamn fucking important that you had to wake me up at—" Cid grabbed the clock off the nightstand. "Two in the morning?"

"It’s afternoon," Sephiroth corrected him.

"Oh," Cid said. "That’s a lot better, actually."

"I… I was just wondering if I left my address book at your house," Daren said.

"You had him break down the door for that?"

"The door thing was his idea entirely," Daren said. "No. I went to see if your back door was unlocked so I could get in."

"So you bust into my hotel room to bust into my house?"

"No… I… I think both of you should come see something."

"Fine. But if it’s another chocobo you need me to get rid of I’m feeding you to the damn fucker."

"By the way, I took Vincent off the machines. He’s still asleep at my place. Um… where’s the police station in this town?" Daren asked.

"Ain’t one."

"Where’s the police, then?"

"You’re pissin’ them off."

"Oh, well in that case I’d like to report a robbery."

"Fuck off," Cid said, throwing his jacket over his shoulder and shoving his gloves in his pocket. He gave Daren and angry glare as he grabbed his spear and went out the door.

"That’s discrimination!" Daren said, following Cid. "Who’s the mayor here?"

"Me. You wanna report something?"

"Um… nevermind."

"You want to report a stolen address book?" Sephiroth asked.

"No. I just noticed some had gone through all my things. Just after I treated Vincent the first time everything’s out of order and jumbled. I’m missing a few supplies. And someone seems to have taken my toothbrush."

………………………………………………………………………………………

"You’re leading me straight back to my hou—" Cid exclaimed, but stopped immediately when he saw the reason Daren had brought him there.

Daren was silent as well. Even though he’d seen it before, a sword through someone’s front door killed conversation before it started.

For most people, at least.

"My sword!" Sephiroth said. He walked up and grabbed the handle. Bracing with his foot against the door, he yanked it out, pieces of the door flying with it. "Those bloody bastards!" Sephiroth said, looking at the sword. "I’ll kill them for using it like this."

Daren boldly put his hand through the hold in the door and unlocked it.

"Hey, this is my house!" Cid yelled. "What do you think you’re doing?"

"Well, it’s not like whoever took the sword is being nice and giving it back."

"Don’t you dare open that door!" Cid yelled. "Now you start making sense or I’ll break your nose for touching my house."

Sephiroth opened the door and Daren went in. "He’s right. The murderer was using this to intimidate the authorities. And here the authorities is you."

"Yeah? Well, I’m not scared. Now get him outta the house."

"If they’re trying to scare you with my sword, they don’t know I’m here. I think someone put a bit too much confidence in the bomb they threw down the crater. The probably assumed that since it killed Jenova cells, the rest of me would follow."

"So this is what happens when they can’t find a chocobo head to leave on my pillow?"

"You two smell something?" Daren asked from inside.

"Hey, it wasn’t me!" Cid yelled. "Now get outta there or I’ll throw you out! You’re damn book’s not in there, obviously."

Sephiroth followed Daren into the house.

"Oh for—" Cid sighed. "Okay you two, out."

"Something smells funny in here," Daren said again, mostly to himself. "Where is that smell coming from?"

"Uh, yeah… it’s probably that stain Vincent left on the rug. I didn’t do a very good job at cleaning it up," Cid said.

Sephiroth backed away from the stain.

"No. No, that’s not it. Smells like… Like rubbing alcohol. That’s not a good sign."

"Why not?" Sephiroth asked.

"Because a bottle of it seems to have gone missing from my office. Oh, that reminds me," Daren said, checking his watch. "Vincent should be up soon… I still can’t find that book." Daren left, muttering to himself that he must be going senile and that it wasn’t a good sign.

"Hmm."

"What?"

"Shera wear much jewelry?" Sephiroth asked, picking up a ring from the floor.

"What? No. She barely wears clean shoes. Lemme see that…"

Cid froze when he saw the tiny gold ring with a barely visible diamond on it.

Sephiroth waved a hand in front of Cid’s face.

Cid’s eyes narrowed. "I’M GONNA KILL HIM!"

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