A/N: Not really sure where this came from, outside of being bored at work. Takes places a couple of months after the conclusion of DoC. Originally this was going to be about the seeming friendship/understanding between Vincent and Cloud in AC, but it kinda took itself in a different direction.

Apologies if Yuffie seems OOC in this. I wrote this not necessarily sure who I intended to be speaking. Also, even though outwardly she doesn't seem to have matured much in AC and DoC, I think there are hints (specifically her reaction to Shalua's sacrifice) at her being a bit more grown up than she lets on.

Also, if you haven't played DoC, there are probably a good bit of spoilers involved here.

Title and description come from the Bane song "Don't Go." It's got a pretty awesome take on the death of a friend. Check it out.

Don't Go

We all always held his grief against him. We were all grieving, suffering, in some way. Even before Aeris' passing. Cid had lost his dreams. Barret had lost his home town, lost the first incarnation of AVALANCHE under the Sector 7 plate, was forced into leaving his little girl behind to avenge them. Aeris had lost her parents so long ago she couldn't remember them. Tifa had lost her hometown to Sephiroth – her parents as well. Cloud had lost the same in that slash of Sephiroth's sword and a silent cast of Fire. Cloud, even though he hadn't realized it yet, had lost himself – and Tifa, in her knowledge of the truth of Cloud's past, had lost her childhood friend.

We were all suffering, but we knew it – and we know why each other was suffering. Together we commiserated – together we grieved. All except Vincent.

The man held his pain like his closest possession – like a secret no one could know – so close to his chest. And it angered us. He refused to confide in us, so we – albeit subconsciously – refused to accept him because of it.

I think that's why it was so easy to dismiss him as cold, emotionless. It was so easy to assume that his suffering was his own creation – he made a bigger deal of it than it should've been. Where we would understand each other and deal delicately with each other's sorrow, we told him to get over it. To move on.

His pain was too much for him to bear, and we took it to mean that he thought his suffering was greater than ours – something we couldn't understand. And we resented him for it.

I wonder if that's why Cloud and Vincent grew to understand each other towards the end. Aeris' death hurt us all but none could deny that Cloud took it the worst. He loved her. He never said it, will probably never say it – but a blind chocobo could see how hopelessly he was in love with her. And to Cloud, she didn't just die. She died under his guard. He would've killed her himself, under the control of whatever preprogrammed commands came with his genetic tampering, if Vincent and Barret hadn't been there to stop him. And then he just watched her die. He had promised Elmyra that he would protect her, but he failed. And then he was forced to watch – after all his efforts to avenge her death, to save the world had seemingly gone to waste – as she, from beyond the grave, saved him.

That's not to say he held the act with bitterness. That's not to say that his love for her didn't increase exponentially as the Holy that she had cast, as the Lifestream that she was now a part of and we all somehow knew she was controlling, saved them all. But as his love increased, so did his guilt.

After she had died, when we were still running around the Planet playing hero, whenever Cloud found the courage to invoke her memory, it was with a sort of bittersweet happiness – as a rallying war cry for them all to find strength in. After Meteor, though, he never found that courage again to utter her name. The pain was just too much, and too often it didn't seem worth it.

I think that's why Cloud was the first to really understand that part of Vincent. He was the first to really understand a sorrow so deep that you couldn't speak of it. Not that you refused to – not that you were hoarding it – but some things just can't be spoken.

I think that's how Shelke managed, in such a short time, to penetrate the immortal guard he had constructed for himself.

Even that gave rise to bitterness in our hearts. She was just a kid – a kid none of us took too kindly to. How could she succeed in knowing Vincent where some many of us failed? I hated him for it more than I hated her, though. He was only accepting of her because his dead girlfriend's memories had been transplanted into the poor girl's head. His acceptance wasn't him moving on – it was him reverting, sinking further into the ghost of the Turk that had ceased to be 33 years ago. His acceptance of her was just another refusal of us – a reminder that no matter what we did or how we reached out to him, he would still rather have never met us – he would have rather stayed in the past and gone into blissful retirement before any of us were potty-trained.

Vincent always annoyed me. I always resented him. But when Shelke came into our lives, it was then that I hated him.

Maybe this is me getting older. Maybe working with the WRO has lead to Reeve's almost supernatural ability for understanding rubbing off on me. Maybe it's the strange phenomenon of death bringing out the best of those left living, but I think I may understand a small part of what Shelke had meant to him.

She didn't want to heal him. She didn't want to get him to move on. She didn't want him to laugh and play and have a drink or two to unwind in the down time. She didn't even really want to understand him – it was just a side effect of going about things the right way.

She had Lucrecia's memories, and from what Reeve tells me that includes the experiments – those hazy memories before his long sleep that even Vincent himself couldn't clearly recall. She knew more about Vincent than he himself. But she never used those memories to get closer to him, to use as therapy. She knew he was suffering and left it at that. She acknowledged it and knew it was too much for him, so she simply went about her business. Vincent was a grown up – more grown than any of the rest of us, I think – and she trusted that. The rest of us saw him as a petulant child unwilling to deal with his problems. He dealt with them, though, the only way he knew how and when it killed us to admit that he didn't need our help, Shelke left him to it.

The part of me that still thinks of Vincent as a broody, depressed wanna-be Vampire thinks that this might be the thing that finally breaks him. The part of me that's starting to understand what Shelke did knows he'll be alright. Just another tragedy in a life full of them.

The casket has been lowered. The ground has been filled. The event is passed and now the closest any of us will ever be to Shelke is six feet away. She survived a lot longer without her daily Mako injections than anyone thought she would – but the end was inevitable. Most likely the only one of us smart enough to figure out a solution for her had been Shalua. Irony was a bitch.

Vincent has stayed, but I think we all expected him to. He remained rooted in place, hands clasped behind his back, red eyes bone-dry as they always are, face a stoic mask. Standing silent guard over his only friend's final resting place.

Me? I don't think anyone thought I'd stay.

Concerned looks from everyone as they gathered together – on their way to Tifa's to have a few drinks and talk about the good times. Tifa – bless her heart – even put a placating hand on the crook of my elbow, pulling me ever so gently towards the awaiting car. She just smiled that all knowing and understanding half smile at my refusal and left me to my thoughts.

It should surprise them that I stayed. Beyond my rather flippant attitude towards death and tragedy in general, I never made it a secret that I wasn't a fan of the never aging child. I loved Shalua – even in the short time we spent together in the WRO.

In the few short months of our friendship, she had become "one of us" to me. She may have never rode the Highwind, never knocked out a ShinRa guard, never dodged Sephiroth's sword, but she was as much a part of saving the Planet as the rest of us – maybe more so. We were fighters, and we would gladly stand as the sentinels meant to protect the world, but we were the destructive half of things. None of us, except Reeve, knew anything about rebuilding – about nurturing the Planet that we would so readily die for. We did what we were supposed to – now was the time for people like Shalua. And when she died to save her, when she died and could no longer aid Reeve in all the research the proud man was never too proud to admit he couldn't fathom and all the work that she fought for just ended all to save a little ingrate, I was angry. That slap I had become unwittingly famous for – that was me controlling myself for the sake of the mission. A Conformer to the throat would've been much more satisfying.

And, yes, I am learning to accept what Shelke was. I am learning that this little Tsviet that wasn't worth a tear, let alone a life, wasn't the girl Shalua died for. Shalua died for her little sister, a girl who never got to see the light of day. A girl who could've been just as immeasurably valuable as Shalua had Hojo not sought to corrupt everything he laid his eyes on. But there is still bitterness and even though I'm past the point where I'm glad to see her go, I'm still not exactly heartbroken over the whole ordeal.

And yes, I am bitter and jealous of her relationship with Vincent. I had tried to be her a long time ago. I was young and stupid and he was beautiful and mysterious. And hurt. There's something about a man in pain that makes a girl, despite herself, ache for his healing. Sure, the desire fades over time. Maybe you get old enough to do away with fairytales – even the dark and twisted ones. Maybe you get old enough to realize that the reality of helping someone is a lot messier than you'd expect – realize the depth of selflessness necessary. And fairytales aren't supposed to hurt, but dealing with someone else's sorrow most definitely does. Or maybe I was just a 16 year old with raging hormones and he was the first available man I'd ever really met. Cid had Shera, even though it took him years to admit it. Barret only had enough room in his heart for his adoptive daughter. And Cloud was, well, Cloud. Besides being chased by Tifa and in turn chasing Aeris, Cloud is the most relationally retarded person in history.

I wasn't in love with Vincent. I had a silly, 16 year old crush on a cute older man and then I grew up and realized he wasn't some dark prince meant to be saved in the arms of the young princess. He wasn't the man I thought he was (which, for someone as silent as Vincent, means I may have imagined most of what I thought he was anyway). He wasn't becoming the man I wanted to turn him into. I don't pine for him.

But he's the reason I waited.

In the rain, no less. Everyone knows that the Single White Rose of Wutai hates rain. I didn't even realized when it started raining – didn't notice when I automatically opened the black umbrella to protect myself from the intrusion. I didn't really realize any of it until he looked up with that thick ebony hair plastered to the sides of his face from the torrent he stood under.

That moment, that image, is why I waited. Because the man I had assumed Vincent to be wasn't worth the effort, not worth waiting around in the rain for. But the man I assumed Vincent was wouldn't sit around in the rain watching over the grave of someone he had only known for a couple of months. That man would never have let the little girl they had just bid farewell to get close to him. That man would not let something as insignificant as death bring that certain dullness that comes with fresh sorrow to his eyes, the way they were when he looked up at me. That man would never let his emotions be so transparent (if you were to the type of person to pick up on his near nonexistent subtleties) to someone like me.

Maybe it was time to finally forget the man that slept in a coffin - time to forget the man that joined a group of strangers solely for the purpose of revenge. Maybe it was time to forget the unwilling object of that childhood crush. Time to forget the man we had all assumed he was because he never gave us any indication that he was anything different and try for the first time to see the man that Lucrecia and Shelke knew. Knew, and a part of me thinks, in their own, misconstrued ways, loved.

He moved so weightlessly as he walked past me, but I could see past the lie. Yes, bottle it all up, Vincent. Put it back where it belongs, behind those stone walls. Refuse to let us see it, because we'll never understand it. And I'm starting to think you're right – we won't understand. But maybe you don't want us to. Maybe we don't have to understand it, just acknowledge it and leave it alone. That's something we haven't tried yet.

As I jog to keep up with his long strides, I have to bite back so many instinctual comments. I want to tell him it will be alright – and I know it will – but I don't think he cares about that. I think he knows it, too, and doesn't need the frivolous reminder. What will be isn't as important as what is.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

The response is just as I expected, but perhaps it doesn't come as quickly, or as offhandedly, as I would've thought. That alone is enough for right now.

When he tells me "No," it isn't his quick, preprogrammed response. That slight pause, hesitation, is enough to make me believe that he thought about his answer. It's not part of the defense mechanism. It doesn't make me think that he really does want to talk, but just not to me. It doesn't made me feel the need to pry and insist until he snaps and shuts me out. Maybe this time I actually believe him instead of assuming I know him better than he does. Because I don't really know him at all, and for the first time I think that maybe that's my fault instead of his.

"The others are all at the Seventh Heaven." I do my damnedest to keep any pressure out of my words, but I know I can't hide the hopefulness. I hope he doesn't take it the wrong way, and if he does I can't really blame him. Too often would there be the underlying command, the ultimatum. Everyone's waiting and you need to come. If you're our friend, you'll come. Hopefully he hears what's really there. You are our friend and we want you to come, but we won't hold against you if you don't. Not this time.

He doesn't speak for a while, but he stops walking. I hate to admit that I was holding my breath, but I'd be lying if I said otherwise. With a simple, quick nod, he changes direction and starts walking again. He's not heading to his car anymore, but instead meandering deeper into the town of Edge. Closer to Tifa's. He changes direction and the air rushes back into my lungs, refreshing and Godsent like the first breath after being underwater for just a hair longer than is comfortable.

We walk back silently. He doesn't seem to notice when I offer him shelter under my umbrella, but I'm not offended. He doesn't look at me, but I'm glad. I know I can't keep the stupid smile from spreading across my face.