Prompt No. 30: "Now where did that come from?" (Wound reveal, ignoring an injury)

It was all he could do to tell himself to breathe.

In. Out. Steady, one breath at a time.

The reactor around them was rigged to blow. Cloud knew damn well how dire the situation was, he'd set the timer on the bomb himself. Twenty minutes to evacuate the reactor it had taken them over an hour to infiltrate, and Cloud was struggling just to put one foot in front of the other.

He walked, stiff-spined and forcedly tall, and packed the leather belt tighter down. He heard, faintly, the indignant burble of wet blood under it. He didn't know how bad it was. Hadn't checked, in the pandemonium following the scorpion sentinel's attack.

The fight had gone badly from the beginning. Barrett didn't like him and trusted him even less. From start to finish the fight had been a battle on two fronts, as Cloud tried to fight that goddamned scorpion and reason with Barrett at the same time. Now he was out of potions and phoenix down to boot.

He glanced up at Barrett, who was scaling a ladder and triumphantly waving that stupid gun-arm around. Of course he had to be the only bastard around equipped with healing materia. The longer Cloud watched him strut around like a big burly peacock, the less appealing the idea of even hinting at needing help became.

It hurt, though. Why wasn't the mako taking care of healing? Had something embedded itself in the wound, maybe? It was a tearing, grating pain, a feeling that something was burrowing itself deeper into the injury with every careful step. He was already being as cautious as he possibly could. Every false movement brought fresh blood oozing stickily out. It was becoming too much for the belt to contain, and it was with a horrible sinking feeling that Cloud realized.

It was starting to drip.

Slowly at first, down the back of his thigh, along his calf, over the boots, and onto the floor.

It was at this moment that Cloud was forced to accept that he didn't know what to do. He looked behind him, saw the drips of blood leaking onto the floor in his tread, and felt his stomach give an unpleasant clench.

Whatever shrapnel had lodged itself into his side burned.

He looked down at the bloodstained floor, up at Barrett, and down at the floor again. Maybe he should ask for help? The bleeding was intensifying, and now Cloud was entirely certain that something with that wound wasn't right.

He was a SOLDIER, for fuck's sake, the mako-

Why wasn't the mako doing what it was supposed to?

He remembered the moment after the scorpion sentinel had collapsed. He had been doubled over, feeling the bile burn its way into his mouth as his vision began to black out. He'd given himself a few seconds to run his hand under the rim of his belt. He'd been hopeful then, that if he gave his body a moment to adjust to the injury that it would start to heal the way it always did. But instead of finding the skin reluctantly knitted back together as it usually was, the wound was angry and open and burning with a ferocity that made him want to collapse all over again.

"Hey, merc!"

Cloud's head snapped up.

Barrett was waiting for him on the top platform of the reactor. How a man that big scaled the ladders so fast was a mystery.

"Quit dawdling! We're paying you to fight the way out of here, not stand around wasting time!"

Cloud's stomach gave a nervous jolt.

Shit.

He'd been so absorbed in the pain that he'd forgotten. The work wasn't even over yet. He still had to fight whatever ShinRa guards blocked the way out. He gave the thought some consideration and immediately deduced that attempting to fight so much as a dormouse was a terrible idea.

He reached the ladder, slowly, and put his hands on the rungs to begin the climb up. Every time he raised his hands to pull himself up, his lats stretched and the wound along with it. The skin, stretching apart. Gaia, it hurt.

It took him a full minute to scale the ladder, and Barrett was already impatient by the time he'd made it to the top.

"The hell's wrong with ya, merc?", he snapped. "You wanna become pavement plaster, because that's what we'll be if you don't pick up the pace!"

"Go ahead then, asshole", Cloud bit back. "Leave me here."

"No way in hell, SOLDIER-boy. I don't leave comrades behind."

"As if, you need me to clear the way out."

Then, without pausing to look at the expression on Barrett's face, Cloud hoisted himself to his feet and kept walking. He held the wall as he did, carefully, letting it take the brunt of his weight. It was too late when he realized he was still bleeding, leaving a smeared trail of red behind him.

There was a punched-out sort of noise behind him as though Barrett had noticed and was trying to decide if he should comment on it or not.

"I'm fine", Cloud snapped, while simultaneously letting go of the wall to prove his point.

Behind him, Barrett snorted in disbelief. "Oi merc, you know you're no good to anybody dead, right?"

"I'm", he paused here, inhaling sharply; the pain was flaring with new intensity, "-fine."

It was as if Gaia, or God, or whatever supernatural deity that was pulling the strings suddenly made it their mission to spite him, because it was at that moment that a bullet barely missed his ear and pinged off the sword.

A squadron of ShinRa troopers was tearing across the platform and Cloud felt his heart do a sad loop-de-loop down to the floor. This was his job. His duty to take care of. His problem.

Barrett was saying something, somewhere to his right. Cloud could see his lips move, see his non-prosthetic arm waving expressively in the air, but his ears were buzzing, pounding, ringing-

Cloud reached for his sword. He missed the handle once, twice, and finally grasped it the third time. He hauled it over his shoulder with an effort he'd never needed before, it was like trying to move a car, or a small elephant maybe-

The Buster Sword's edge hit the ground with a hard thump. Cloud felt the heavy sword tear him off balance, felt his body teeter dangerously. Had the sword always been so heavy? He might as well be trying to carry a panzer tank.

The world seemed to be slipping away.

His pulse, too fast. He could feel every heartbeat, roaring through his ears and pounding in his head. He was losing blood, too much blood, and he knew it. He was hyper-aware of it. Would he bleed out here? What a miserable place to die, surrounded by the stink of mako, ShinRa filth, and the deafening blasts of gunfire. But the troopers would finish him off soon. Not even they would fail to shoot someone who was too far gone to fight back.

Then something in his head seemed to slowly, faintly click.

He wasn't dead yet. How…?

He pushed himself slowly, gingerly to his knees (when had he wound up on the floor?), and realized that the troopers were gone. Dead. There was blood on the floor, he noticed suddenly, and it wasn't even his-

"You're a special brand of stupid, merc."

Quite suddenly, Cloud found himself in the shadow of a truly massive man. Barrett. Standing over him, having evidently finished off the last of the troopers, popping fresh ammo cartridges into his gun arm.

Then Barrett knelt down and picked Cloud up, tossing him over his huge shoulders in a bruising fireman's carry. Cloud made a pained, somewhat embarrassing noise.

"Next time you say something, you dumb son of a bitch," Barrett snapped gruffly. "Nobody wants you bleeding out in some ShinRa shithole."

Didn't Barret hate him, Cloud wanted to ask.

It was with the rough jolting of Barrett's shoulder below him that Cloud let the world fade away.

This fic was inspired by Azra getting her ass whooped in the Very First Boss Fight and having Cloud wobble off with a whole 50 HP, the poor guy :'(