Once past Rufus and his goons, Cloud made certain to stay right along side the rolling gurney as the medics made their way quickly into a clean operating room. It was an uncomfortable atmosphere, too sterile, all brushed steel and what Cloud was certain was bullet-proof glass surrounding everything. Shin-Ra's characteristic habit of heightened security. It was all too reminiscent Shin-Ra Tower's now surely ruined laboratories, and any moment he expected to see the frightful figure of Professor Hojo come stalking around the pressure locked sliding doors.

Foolish thoughts. That man was dead. Cloud himself, along with Tifa, and of course Vincent, had dispatched the vile crack-pot of a genetic scientist long ago. He'd watched Vincent personally use the final level of his grizzly talent for inhuman transformations to lay waste to the monster who'd caused so much pain for all of them… He admitted to himself, he'd have relished being able to boast the death blow, given the torturous time he'd spent in Hojo's clutches, revenge for what the bastard did to him and to Zack… but he had a feeling, whatever Vincent had endured, it had lasted far, far longer and been unspeakably worse. Whatever the outcome, Cloud had gotten his own licks in. It was enough.

No, all the doctors assembling in the operating room seemed honest enough of character to Cloud, though he couldn't get a perfect sense through their sterile scrubs and operating masks. He looked to Kadaj, to gauge how the boy was doing now that aid was certain, seeing him disoriented, uncomfortable, but not as nearly as panicked as before. Cloud tried to decide if the lack of fear indicated a downturn in his condition, but though the doctors and nurses moved with urgency, their behavior didn't seem to indicate things were going badly, or that the boy was by any means a lost cause.

Moved to a proper operating bed, the gurney Kadaj had been brought in on was wheeled out, and the emergency paramedics slipped quietly away. Cloud stationed himself out of the way, against one of the thick glass and steel walls within Kadaj's line of sight, though it looked as though they'd soon have him under sedation. They'd slipped an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, which he'd only weakly tried to avoid, and were unwrapping his wounds with careful rapidity, so they could begin to really treat him.

"Amazing…" Cloud tilted his head slightly as one of the nurses made the quiet, awed exclamation. "You can already see the scar tissue forming at the edges… My god, who did this to him…?"

No reason for doctors to know the finer details, Cloud was sure they'd only been told they'd be receiving a patient severely wounded in a grueling duel of bladed weapons. Cloud wasn't about to avail himself as the attacker, though he noticed Kadaj's gaze fix with a slightly stronger purpose on him. There wasn't really blame in that look though, not that Cloud could see. More so, it was just that the question happened to accurately indicate Cloud, and that had brought Kadaj's attention focused back in on him.

"Cut the chit-chat, we need to make sure he'll be able to recover from this properly. No room for mistakes. If he ends up handicapped because we screw up, the President will personally be handing our asses back to each and every one of us."

Interesting… Then they'd also been informed this was a high-profile patient they were working on. … But why would Rufus be so concerned with Kadaj's well being…? Cloud severely doubted that the president of Shin-Ra Corp. had really come to the same understanding of their enemy that Cloud had. Too many unanswered questions. And now that they weren't in the midst of battle, Cloud was beginning to have time to consider them. Shin-Ra's attitude had seemed to change since the break-down of their Planet-wide empire… but how much, if actually at all, and what were their real intentions?

Kadaj had called himself the Avatar of Jenova. The manifestation of her will. But Jenova had never done anything by her own strength, since her defeat by the Cetra over two thousand years ago, not so far as Cloud knew. She'd always worked through the mistakes and weaknesses of others, and Shin-Ra had been one of her most potent tools.

"Wait a minute… he's actually bleeding!"

"Huh?" Cloud was ripped from his train of thought by the voice of a youthful nurse, standing not all that far away from him. The surgeons surrounding Kadaj were well into their procedures by now, and didn't pay the stray nurse any real mind, but an intern handing off medical equipment took notice and squinted at Cloud through his rimless oval glasses. "You're right. I thought it was just blood from the patient, but that spot's soaking all the way through…"

The nurse reached up and touched the ribbed knit shirt, pulling aside the torn bit to take a look at the wound. "You were starting to get pale… but you were standing there so tough, I didn't think it could possibly be from watching the doctors work. Here, sit down." She pulled a round stool out from under the counter close by, giving him a gentle push into it. He thought to protest at first, but since she was going to look at it here, he didn't fight. "Uah… It goes all the way through, look at the wall…"

Glancing up there was indeed a blotch of darkish red against the glass he'd leaned against. He grimaced slightly, remembering the cold, familiar feeling of Masamune spearing his flesh… In the shoulder, that bastard… It hadn't been a miss.

"If you could take off your jacket and armor. What's your blood-type?" The nurse moved away to an intercom set close to the door in the wall, paging some other doctor by an unmemorable name to come to their operating room and help with a patient. Cloud watched her for a moment, until she turned back to look at him expectantly, replying to her question as he complied with her instructions at last. "AB."

"Right, then. We'll get you fixed up. You two must have been through something fierce!" He didn't answer, only waited for the doctor and watched as she brought in another IV kit with blood and saline. Kadaj was already hooked up to one, his colour looking a little better, but the nurse's assessment, "something fierce," was more than a bit of an understatement, and Cloud imagined it would be at least some time before Kadaj really recovered. It sounded as though his body was, perhaps, healing rapidly – and while that was good for the boy's chances, it unsettled Cloud with its possible implications… – but after what he'd gone through? Cloud could not imagine one so young bouncing back easily from that.

Local anesthetic didn't make it much less irritating to have Shin-Ra doctors poking around inside his skin, but Cloud sat and bore it silently, the nurse still chattering pointlessly to him now and then. She had to be new, if she was this compassionate, but her well-meaning conversation might have had him miss something crucial, if Cloud had actually been paying any attention to it.

Crouched over Kadaj, stitching up long gashes, closing ruptured veins and arteries, two of the doctors took up their own quiet conversation, despite the head-surgeons original admonishment against it. Well, it looked like he'd found a reason to step outside for a moment or two, anyway.

"What about the other two?"

"No good. Though they'll be right in here if we manage to find them. Apparently the TURKs didn't handle things too very gently…"

"You've got you're cell-phone going under your scrubs again, don't you? The Doc'll have your head if he sees the cord to the ear-bud."

"No cord, new model. Cost a fortune, but you know how things with the wife are."

"It's not good for the equipment, but do as you like. Anyway. Looks like this one will make it after all. If the other two are in any similar shape though, they won't be coming here if they find them. They'll be taking them straight to the morgue… Look at this… There's barely any reason for stitches. Have you seen anything like this before?"

"Not outside of a Petri dish… Could they do this before…?"

"I don't think so… but then, they never let them get this banged up, as far as I know…"

"Severe stress reaction then?"

"Mmm… Maybe."

That was the end of it though, they both shut there mouths as soon as "the Doc" came back in. Kadaj was almost certainly oblivious to everything said over him though, his unbelievable jade eyes only sickle slits beneath his silver lashes. Between the pain and the anesthesia, he was obviously conscious, but far, far away from here. Not even an occasional flutter indicated he was aware of sound or movement, only the rise and fall of his chest and the accompanying bleeps of the monitors surrounding them attested he was alive.

When his own wound had been taken care of and dressed properly, Cloud ignored the nurse's well-meaning admonishments and stood to get a better view. When the surgeons had finally finished with Kadaj's treatment, Cloud took hold of the shaft of his own IV stand, moving forward to stand beside the boy. His cerulean gaze flicked over Kadaj, taking in the whiteness of his skin, the extent of the damage the doctors had to repair, all revealed now as his leather armor had been stripped and even cut away.

The nurse was trying to get him to move back over to the stool again, touchingly concerned for both patients' health, but then the head surgeon was there, brushing her away offhandedly. "You're the one who brought him to us."

"Mm." Cloud nodded, not turning his gaze to the man, now dressed in a characteristic white lab-coat, rather than the pale bluish and blood spattered scrubs. He could see him well enough out of his peripheral vision though, a young man, for such an important position, with dark auburn hair and a goatee, probably grown in an attempt to look older.

"We'll be taking him to recovery, shortly. You're welcome to accompany him of course. We know of his volatile nature and his general hostility toward our company, so we would appreciate your help greatly, in keeping him calm during his recovery. You'll have a guard posted near, of course, should you require it, but the President seems to believe the two of you have some sort of rapport which you'll be able to use, so we will not have to resort to subduing him physically. That would be better for everyone involved, I believe. Can we count on you? It may be asking too much, but…"

"No. No, I'm more than willing to stay with him. I only want to be able to see some of my companions waiting in the lobby," he knew Tifa would not be pleased with this… He knew she had questions which deserved his answering, but this was neither the time, nor the place. He did not trust the Shin-Ra. And frankly he still did not trust Kadaj.

"We can arrange for them to see you, in a limited capacity. I don't want this man's health to be affected by a great deal of activity, but I will trust to your judgment on who will maintain a peaceful atmosphere for him."

"Thank you…"

The recovery room, thankfully, lacked the same antiseptic feeling of the operating sector and the hallways leading to it. There was still a fair amount of dull, brushed steel in the frame of the rolling bed and the room's various fittings, but the colour scheme was more along the lines of the lobby in which most of Cloud's compatriots were still waiting, save one: Vincent.

The stoic, former TURK now stood next to the chair in which Cloud sat, both looking over the vulnerable, now sleeping form of Sephiroth's spent chrysalis. Monitors beeped softly, and the IVs still dripped vital fluid back into Cloud and Kadaj's respective systems, but despite the invasive medical connotations those sounds held for all three men, none of them were paying it any mind now, least of all Kadaj.

"Not even restrained… They're putting a great deal of faith in you." The metallic claws of Vincent's deadly left arm were wrapped loosely around the bed's raised railing.

"Not too much faith though… The two guards outside the door aren't just for show, and they've stationed more, strategically out of sight, I'm sure. It's only a matter of waiting."

Vincent nodded once, a slow movement, and kept his voice low, even though he was certain they'd be overheard by some one loyal to Shin-Ra, no matter. It wasn't of consequence though, his own distrust of the corporation was well founded and well known. It wouldn't raise their suspicions much further if he spoke to Cloud against them.

"Shin-Ra knows more about Kadaj and his brothers than they initially admitted to us… Reno might have told us just how familiar they are, if Tseng hadn't relieved him of the responsibility of explaining himself at the last moment. … They will not readily release him."

"Mm…" Cloud had already come to the same conclusion himself, after the conversation he had overheard, but that was a piece of intelligence he preferred not to reveal he had, at the present. After a brief stretch of silence between them, Vincent moved to take his leave, nodding assent as Cloud requested he let everyone know he would be staying on at the Healin Lodge, duration, undetermined as of yet. He knew Tifa would not be pleased to hear it, that she'd be angry he hadn't asked to have her come back and talk with him… But there was nothing he could say to her here, not freely, and he didn't want her starting in on him, worried that he was slipping away from her again.

This had nothing to do with his uncertainties and self-consciousness from before, at least not in the capacity Tifa would believe it to. He wouldn't be able to make her see that with out creating a scene, however, and the Doc had asked he keep things calm here, for Kadaj's sake.

"Kadaj…"

Cloud had not expected the name would actually rouse the silver-haired boy from his half-drugged slumbering, had spoke it only in personal reflection, but the delicate brows above his still closed eyes knit suddenly, and after a moment's effort, swimming back to the surface from the depths of dreams, Kadaj woke and looked to Cloud again.

There was a moment of silence between the two wounded fighters as they regarded one another, assessing the state of things in the battles' aftermath. Cloud thought for a moment that the quiet would stretch on into eternity, until Kadaj broke it with his voice, as soft and grey as kitten-fur. "You didn't tell them… did you?"

Knitting his own pale and golden brows in slight confusion, Cloud watched the other as he lifted his slender hands from the bed and inspected his bondless wrists. Obviously he'd been expecting restraints, looked quietly amazed they weren't present. After a moment, when he was sure Kadaj wasn't going to volunteer to make that statement any more clear, Cloud asked him uncertainly. "What would I have told them…?"

Kadaj's Makou eyes flicked up to Cloud, a wane sort of smile touching the edges of his lips, the delicate pink only found inside the rarest shells. He didn't answer though, just lifted one finger half-way to those lips, too tired to make it the full distance, rounding his mouth out slightly in a soundless sign for silence. Still not sure what he would have told "them," Cloud nodded in his understanding of this: he should not talk of what he knew about Kadaj to anyone. Damn, but the aid of Shin-Ra was an irritatingly necessary evil.

"Ne, Niisan," Kadaj was inspecting the IV taped to the back of his hand now, not looking entirely pleased with it, more like he was considering ripping it out. Cloud put his own hand out over Kadaj's slim wrist to deter that course of action, but rather than looking up at him this time, kept his eyes on the slightly darker-skinned hand of his 'older brother.' "You're going to stay here with me, right? That's what you said…" He didn't seem entirely certain of the last statement, which Cloud imagined he'd overheard through half-sleep, not sure it wasn't a dream.

"Ah. I'm staying."

"Heh…n. Please. Don't let me out of your sight, okay?" There was an unsteadiness in the voice, not born of physical impairment. He was scared. Of Shin-Ra…? "Ne. Onegai?"

He did meet Cloud's eyes this time, needing the confirmation, and Cloud was reminded again, this fierce warrior was barely more than a child.

"I swear it."

Author's remarks: I purchased my copy of Advent Children from Japan, sat down and did the translations for myself, which is mostly what I'm working from with my story. For those of you familiar with the fan-translated version going around the internet from hiro-subs, for "Shinentai," which they translate at length as "body of thoughts" I have chosen to use the term "Avatar." It's a stylistic preference I hope you'll all understand. Keep R&R-ing, please! You're comments really help me out!

Translations:

Onegai – Basically here, "please." Better explanation a little later.