So on a scale of one to ten, it can safely be assumed that the pain of my healing wounds was somewhere in the region of 725.4 (roughly, of course, nyuk nyuk nyuk). And I know I said one to ten, but let's get real here - life would be boring if everything revolved around the truth (lies are more interesting most of the time).

That being said, I shit you not, every time I moved it felt like my stitches were tearing open, my skin parting anew and I hissed and sighed and cursed just like Cid taught me.

And I see him out of the corner of my eye, Aerith, he watches me sleep sometimes -

The room is still, dark, and I lie on my side, thick potion smeared upon my crusting wounds, bandages wrapped tightly around my trunk. It has only been three days since I sustained the injury - Restore materia cannot solve serious bodily injuries, but it augments the healing process if you steer it in the right direction. Tifa thinks I might even get away with minimal scarring, and I should only have to stay put for another day at most. The room has to be at least a zillion degrees (these freaking inn's think they're housing the undead or something) and all I want is the window to open with the will of my ninja mind powers alone.

Fuck.

I try to shuffle closer to the window, stretching my arm as far as possible, before I feel sharp pain in my right shoulder where the uppermost point of my wound begins. I slump back, attempting to blow my sticky bangs out of my eyes to no avail. I roll onto my back, the gauze and potion protecting it from any pain, and sigh.

Why me?

I fling my arm across my eyes dramatically, when the window snaps open causing me to (almost) jump out of my own skin. I squeak in shock and my chest begins to rise and fall rapidly as I gaze up and into the eyes of none other than - Vincent Valentine, you guessed it (he's like a little night time prowler, bless him).

"Vince!" Again, a squeak, my breathing returning to normal (well as normal as it can be around you, O Vincent Valentine) and a coy smile sneaks its way onto my face. "Were you trying to catch me in the nude?!"

He hits me up with a characteristic dot-dot-dot, so I grin sheepishly at him, and pull myself up and into a seated position, wincing only slightly as I do so. His crimson eyes flicker to my back for a moment, glowing all the brighter in the darkness of my room, the stars the only form of light trickling into the tiny space.

"Your back... it is troubling you?"

I look at him, really look at him, and his words seem to stand out in front of my eyes, soft and... was that a hint of... concern muffled in those tones? Surely not...

"Not so much today," I reply, wincing again as I reach up to scratch the back of my head. His eyebrow quirks, and he sits down on the bed, slowly and deliberately. His hand stretches out, just as carefully, asking permission without words, something he has mastered. I shuffle toward him on the bed, before turning and presenting my back to him. I feel the point of a claw trace the wounds, and I shiver. His finger stops.

"I thought you were too hot?"

"Well yeah Vince, for nearly 100% of my teenage years," I joke, internally face-palming at my utter, indescribable LAMENESS. I laugh pathetically and shake my head. "Eh, no sorry. I am too hot, but your finger tickles." I hear the shift of his hair as he nods in understanding, as he continues examining.

"You are healing well. I believe the scars will be quite unnoticeable - you are lucky."

I don't know why I ask the next question, but it slips out before I can put a stop to it, and Leviathan save me, Aerith why do I do these things to myself - ?

"Are a lot of your scars... dark?"

His hand drops from my back then, and I continue to face the wall, not daring to turn and look at him. I don't know why I am frightened to look into his eyes - what will I see? Anger? Betrayal? I am not brave enough to face it, so I continue to stare, in the opposite direction, waiting for him to speak, or scold or leave without a noise.

It seems like a lifetime, but I hear his voice again, and it still rumbles with the gravely tones of Vincent but is softer, and lost.

"Dark. Brutal. Deep."

My breath is short and quick, like a little animal before it is mauled by a much larger predator. My hands rest on my knees, my knuckles white and bared to the moonlight. Hundreds of questions are swirling round my head, making me almost dizzy and I have to bite my lip to stop it all from pouring out. I don't want to drop the subject, so I try desperately to say something, anything intelligible.

"Do you have... many of them? Like many scars?"

I fear a dot-dot-dot, but again after a moment's pause, his words are there.

"Yes. I have many augmentations..." he pauses, and I bite my lip waiting for him to continue. "I suppose... you are going to ask where?"

I turn then, quick and smooth, ignore the twinge in my back, my eyes wide and mouth slightly agape.

"Not if... not if you don't want to tell me?"

dot...dot...dot...

"My heart has been genetically altered to require fewer pumps per minute, along with my lung capacity being greatly increased, to allow me to remain undetected by enemies sensitive to pulse and respiratory movements. Most of the scars are from skeletal enhancements, fusing mako with bone and muscle for increased strength. Eye enhancements; night vision. Olfactory enhancements; I can smell blood a mile away. Amongst other organ enhancements..."

I have LITERALLY, never in ALL my ninja, ass-kicking time with AVALANCHE, heard THE Vincent Valentine speak so much, never mind all in one go, but even AT ALL.

I gape at him, simple as that, trying to process the information he has just provided me with, counting off the things on my fingers that he claims Hojo tampered with, and think of the many more complex experiments and 'adjustments' Hojo made to Vincent's body, while he suffered and rotted and had his life swept up from beneath his very feet. The room suddenly seems smaller, quieter, and I absently notice Vincent seems to be waiting for me to comment. I wrinkle my nose in distaste, and gaze up into his eyes with my own storm grey ones, blowing out a little puff of air.

"Gods... that's rough, Vince."

It is not a grand statement, nor probably the wisest statement he has ever heard with regards to the brutal experiments Hojo conducted on him, however I refuse to pretend to be something that I'm not.

And Aerith, I will never understand his pain, and honestly, it would be stupid for me to even try.

He doesn't seem offended by my meagre comment, and I feel for a moment as though he understands that I appreciate the magnitude of the horrors that were forced upon him by some raving lunatic - but that I will never really understand what he went through, trapped in that basement (if there is a hell beyond the Lifestream, Hojo, that is the only place you will ever go), and thinking about it just makes me want to go and commit bloody murder.

He has seen enough murder, in his lifetime, I suppose.

"I guess, I never knew you before you were like this. So I can't imagine a Vincent without a... I don't know, without a urinary tract that lets you hold in pee for 30-something years," I muse, and his eyes flash (with anger, or amusement?) as his tongue darts out and licks his lips.

"No, you did not."

"... Do you wish that we had? I mean, I guess you wish all that... stuff..." I tread carefully around the boundaries of the Turks and Gast and Shinra and Lucrecia and Sephiroth and Project Chaos, watching him with all the care I would take picking up a single grain of rice with my best chopsticks. "... hadn't happened. But, forget about that, and forget about those 30 years and the fact you could be my dad. Would you still be a force to be reckoned with in this fight?"

I see the corners of his mouth twitch.

"You list plenty of factors to be omitted."

"Just try?" I pry, leaning forth again, the sweeping scent of gunpowder filling my nostrils and making the hairs on my arms stand up in delight.

"Well, if that were the case... I would still be a Turk, Yuffie."

His answer is blunt and predictable and I raise my eyebrows, surveying his carefully expressionless face, clenching the bedclothes with one fist as excitement gets the better of me.

"What a boring answer, Vinnie. No grand betrayal of Shinra? No frantic quest to reach us in time to tell us Rufus has ordered our assassinations? No secret love affair with one princess of a far away foreign land?" I fantasize, my eyes glowing and my cheeks getting redder as I pop in that little surprise romance at the end of the tale, feeling my heart thud in my chest (please, Leviathan, let Vincent's ears have been unaffected by Hojo's enhancements!). Vincent's brows raise at my last comment also, and I hear a small sigh escape his lips.

"But then, Yuffie, I would be lying," he states plainly, and I feel the chill coming from the window all too strongly now as I see him retreat back into his little shell, all this talking having thoroughly worn him out. I pout. My words are quiet, soft, and my face is as close to his as it has ever been, as I greedily soak up his mere presence.

"Lies are more interesting... most of the time," I all but breathe, and I don't understand what this feeling is, this surge of emotion in my veins, as he moves his hand from his lap, upwards, and I swear he is going to press the palm against my cheek, but he stops, voice solemn and eyes filled with that awful emotion that we had managed to avoid for so long throughout this conversation.

Regret.

"But still lies. Nothing more."

There are so many words falling from that statement, as he rises from my bed and moves with that confident grace that only he possesses from my room and out into the hallway, closing the door tightly with a soft click.

I feel my legs sink back down so I am merely resting, my legs folded, not anxiously on my knees, pressing myself closer and closer into his little area of space. I allow myself to flop back down onto the bed, wincing only minimally as my back rests upon the mattress. It's healing fast, and as soon as it's fixed, I'm putting myself as far away from Vincent Valentine as I can. I'll split off with Barrett and Red, scout the opposite way, run like I always do.

My heart still flutters in my chest, and all at once I loathe him and adore him, and I swear to GAWD my little ninja ticker does a back-flip as my mind catches up with it.

And Aerith all I want to do it kiss him, kiss him, kiss -