His head was still pounding when he found Reeve. He hadn't been looking for the other man, just happened to find him in the room when he opened the door.

Marlene was tucked into the starched white sheets, sound asleep with the old tattered blanket that she had been swaddled in when he had found her in Corel all those years ago. Most people would think a girl her age would be getting too old for a 'blankie', but he hadn't been able to provide much for her in the way of material goods. That was one of the few things she still had, after their hideout, their home had been destroyed in Sector Seven. He had tried to do his best for her. God, had he tried.

He didn't want her to remember how horrible the world could be. The world that took her parents away, drove her father mad, left her to be raised by a murderer.

He couldn't avoid the truth. He knew what he was; he admitted what he had done. He would face it all, so long as it kept her safe. He only hoped that she could understand.

That she would be able to forgive him when she learned what kind of a monster he really was.

He was no fool. She was young now, but she would find out someday. He had so much blood on his hands. It was his fault things had escalated to this point. He thought he'd been doing the right thing when they'd started. Yes, Shinra was gone now, Sephiroth was dead, but were things really so much better? He didn't want Marlene to have to suffer anymore.

God, what a fool he'd been.

"Nobody bothered you, I hope."

He didn't even look up at the voice, just shaking his head as he stroked his hand over the light brown hair, before smoothing out the sheets a little. Her hair had gotten so long since he had last seen her in Midgar, all that time ago, when he had left her in Elmyra's care. The older woman's angry words still stung him. But she had had a daughter too, an adopted one, that was in danger just because of who she was as well. Surely, Elmyra could understand his plight. He had left Marlene in that house, promising they would get Aerith back from Shinra, and bring her home safe, once everything was over.

They hadn't even been able to do that.

"You didn't go see 'em." He replied, voice a hollow whisper in the dim room. Reeve rubbed at his eyes and stifled a yawn, smacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he tried to shake himself out of his drowsiness.

"No." He offered, unapologetically, stretching his arms out in front of him, bending his spine cat-like and locking his elbows, fingers laced together. Sleeping in positions like that had never been too comfortable to Barret. Still beat bedding down against the ground though. "I really didn't want to have to see them like that."

"Almost gave me some closure." He replied stiffly, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the other man, hand still resting by Marlene's side, fingers twisting in the sheets agitatedly. He made no secret that he didn't care much for the executive. His grudge against all things Shinra was obvious, and despite Reeve's numerous attempts to make good for his previous misdeeds, Barret still couldn't find it in himself to trust him. After all he had experienced, he didn't think he could be comfortable around anybody stigmatized by an association with Shinra.

Reeve seemed to sense the animosity and shook his head, sighing.

"Maybe so, for you. It won't give me any comfort. It's different though. I was always watching you through monitors, listening over a headset and talking through a character. I honestly don't know any of you, really, and none of you know me. When I first started as Cait Sith, I didn't want to get to know you outside of what Shinra wanted me to find out. I figured the job wouldn't be so hard if I kept my distance. I'd never meet you in person, so what would be the problem, if I didn't look at you like real people? It helped that I didn't care for your guerrilla tactics in Midgar."

"Wasn't all of us that bombed Midgar. Jes' a couple. Ya got the rest of us."

"Yes, but it soured me to the character of anyone that would choose to associate with you, knowing of AVALANCHE's ...history."

Barret glared at him, turning, feeling the blood thrumming through the vein on the side of his forehead. It felt like a migraine was coming on, it had been happening on and off since the accident, and the nurses never gave him enough pain killers. He was in no mood to deal with this same old song and dance. Especially not now.

Especially not from him.

"If yer gonna say, then say it." He spat, eyes narrowed as her turned away from Marlene to face the other man. He didn't like arguing about this. He knew he was in the wrong, and didn't like trying to justify his actions, but at the same time...

Nobody else had been willing to step up. Nobody had been willing to oppose Shinra. He knew what the opposition would entail, what weight it would put on his shoulders, but he had still done it. Somebody had to save the Planet.

The free-rider dilemma. George, one of his friends from his days as a miner had often talked politics while they were on lunch breaks. He'd been a professor of Political Science in the university just outside of Corel before Shinra had stopped aiding it and it had closed down. He hadn't been able to find another university job, not that he had really looked. His view of politics had put him at high risk of being labeled a dissenter by the Shinra. He had claimed that tedious, backbreaking labor, keeping your head down, was better than the risk of allowing yourself to be singled out by the government. But if enough people voiced their opposition, then more and more groups would join, fearing less risk of being individually targeted by the government.

Barret had chosen the opposite though. After Corel, he had decided that even if he was all by himself, he'd fight. He'd fight to the death, and damn the world if nobody else would join him.

"Fine. Knowing you were terrorists." Reeve elaborated, laying it right out in front of them.

For as long as they had known Cait Sith was really Reeve, the issue had been a solid wall between them. It was never brought up directly, but it was surely implied, and even a mention toward it could lead to bitter, raging arguments between the two of them, sometimes dragging the others into it as well. Some of the others couldn't understand the animosity that the discussions drudged up, and for the most part stayed out of it, unless they stepped in to break it up, but Tifa had interrupted a few times, screaming with uncharacteristic anger at the cat and nearly breaking into hysterics as she tried to explain why it had to be done, what Shinra had cost all the people, and Cloud had expressed a range of emotions, ranging from indifference, to cool remorse, to almost manic spells, depending on his frame of mind at the time of the argument. After he had figured himself out, his opinion had been much more consistent, a mellow despondency over what had been done, though he felt there were more pressing matters. The death of Aerith, their quest to stop Sephiroth.

It had almost been disgusting sometimes, Cloud's near indifference to incidents that were peripheral to his goal of stopping Sephiroth. His grief had driven him to an almost obsessive state.

"Ya'll were killing the Planet, and smilin' about it the whole way. None of you gave a damn about Sector Seven. Ya'll laughed about getting' to raise taxes after it." He shot back flatly. "We were practically doin' you a favor."

"I cared about Sector Seven!" Reeve protested, shaking his head. "You killed hundreds of people. I infiltrated your group because I thought it would put a stop to all the insanity."

"Insanity? Look, I know what we did might not a' been in the right. I know we killed people, an' the consequences of what we did. But if we wanna talk about insanity, how 'bout we talk about your company. You know about Nibelheim, don't ya? And Corel, and Gongaga. How 'bout keeping an alien lifeform in containment, human experiments, and engineering a biological super soldier? Wasn't us that started it."

Reeve looked away, blinking hard, his whole posture tense and defensive.

"Yes, I know about all of that. It doesn't mean-"

"Does the public?" Barret cut back in, finally turning away from Marlene, leaning on the railing along the side of the bed, folding his left arm across his chest, gripping at the bicep of his right arm.

For a man who admitted to a lack of formal education, and could be considered a zealot with a one-track mind to some, Barret was deceptively crafty. His understanding of Shinra's manipulations, and his resolve to fight it was what made him so dangerous. Some of the other executives had generally brushed him off as a lesser nuisance in the group, just some raging, bullheaded muscle-man that acted before he thought. He may not have been much of a strategist, not the most book smart, but he was fiercely loyal, and he wouldn't waver from his convictions that he was doing the right thing, at the cost of his own safety.

He loomed in the dim room, the light from the hallway giving his skin an almost inky looking sheen to it. He remembered Scarlet sneering that it was too hard to see him over Cait Sith's feed in the dark. Barret was a large, brick wall of a man, the constant scowl and scars and tattoos making him all the more imposing. Never mind that he had a good heart, a good soul. Shinra had painted him as a ruthless monster of a man. And seeing him lose his temper didn't help his image. He would sometimes find himself cowering slightly when the large man would start to shake with suppressed rage, even though Barret couldn't hurt him physically through the comm. link.

"You know that answer as well as I do." He sighed, but Barret shook his head, the scars on his face twisting as he scowled.

"None a' that pussyfooting Cait Sith bull." He ordered, features nearly indistinguishable in the poor lighting. But Reeve could imagine the look on his face, he'd heard the tone and seen the man's actions long enough to know them well. "Y' ain't Cait Sith now. Ya don't have to be. It's you an' me, face to face, so let's be straight with each other."

"They don't." He agreed, shaking his head. "Of course not. Why would Shinra tell them? But I know the truth. I can do something."

Barret just laughed quietly, shaking his head.

"C'mon man, come off it. Ya can't help ev'rybody. Not even if you want to. We did our part to save the Planet, now it's in your hands. You try to let out the truth, people might not trust you. Throw you in with the rest of us. People are going to be gunning for us soon, once they figure out where they are, what you're doing. Somebody's got to keep this ship afloat."

"So what are you saying? I should just keep my mouth shut and let the whole world scream for your heads long after the day you all die?"

"Reeve, I figured it'd end up like this from the start. No matter what anybody says, our name's 'll never be more than shit after all a' Shinra's propaganda. I'm the monster that escaped his own execution while Shinra 'heroically defended Junon'."

"That's still..."

Barret dropped his hand away from the stump of his arm, staring down at the floor, just shaking his head slowly. His silence caused Reeve to trail off, just watching him, waiting for him to speak. When he finally did, his voice was so different from how Reeve had ever heard him sound. Just so... devoid of all feeling.

"I'm gonna turn myself in." He finally admitted, gazing down at Marlene. "Take the blame, jes' be the scapegoat they always wanted me to be. It'll save all the trouble, maybe make things easier for everybody else. Make things easier for the future."

"What?" Reeve asked, nearly strangling on his own words. He couldn't believe it. Barret was the one always willing to fight, to defy. And now his plan was to just... give himself up, after everything was finished? "Barret... you have a daughter..."

"That supposed to absolve me?" He sneered churlishly, like it was the worst excuse the other man could muster. "'M sure we destroyed people's families in Midgar, even after that. Shouldn't be a factor. I don't deserve to have someone innocent as her anyway. Don't deserve to have her love me, after what I did. I-"

Reeve stood up from the chair, straightening up, though he was nowhere close to Barret's height.

"Will you listen to yourself?" He started incredulously, cutting the other man off for a change, not wanting to listen to his brooding nonsense anymore. "Stop with this guilt complex, please. I know you feel guilty about the loss of life, but you can't be taking the blame for everything. Shinra pushed, and you were one of the only people that had the guts to push back. I can understand that you want to ensure that everything goes along swimmingly after all your sacrifices, but do not talk about making some kind of martyr of yourself. Besides, I didn't pull all that double-agent stuff for months on end just to let people think that Shinra was oh-so-great, and that it's a horrible thing you brought them down. You did all that work to ensure a future for Marlene, so the least you can do is be a goddamn part of it."

He expected an argument, a fight, at least for Barret to haul off and knock him through a wall or something. But he just stared at his shoes, mulling over the words a little.

"Heh." He finally chuckled, a self-mocking little sound. "Thought you didn't like us. How come you're so sweet on us now?"

"I said I didn't like you at first. I had a change of heart, once I stopped burying my head in the sand."

Barret nodded, before reaching out the one massive hand, clapping it down on his shoulder, almost making Reeve buckle from the weight.

"Awright. I'll see what you can do. Jes'... do one thing for me?"

"Name it." Reeve nodded immediately, hoping he had talked some sense into the other man.

"People'll still hold a grudge, no matter what. If... if anything happens to me, take care of Marlene for me? She likes you, an' well..." he trailed off tiredly, not comfortable with the subject.

He wanted to say it wouldn't come to that. But he knew, in fact, that it was possible it could. And the others were just as at risk. And if his gamble played off poorly, even he might be a target. He didn't want it to happen though. The girl had already lost her birth father. She shouldn't lose a second one too.

"You have my word." He replied, glancing over at Marlene, who was still asleep, blissfully unaware of the entire conversation. "Besides, remember Junon. I gave my word I'd watch your back 'till the end, yeah?"

"Yeah... I miss 'em, you know?"

"I know."

"I said that after we saved the world, we'd go to Cosmo Canyon. Enjoy the world there, get away from everything so 'Shinra' about the world. Live in peace finally." He stopped for a moment, lost in his own thoughts. "Look what happened. Figures. I'm still not all right in the head after that crash. Worried I'm gonna forget 'em or something. Like I'm gonna forget their faces, or how their voices sounded or... like they'll just be gone from my mind one day."

"Even if you wanted to, I doubt you could forget Cloud. You two got into it all the time."

"Heh." Barret chuckled again, sadly "Yeah, never wanted to admit it, but I liked the punk. He knew how to get under my skin though. Think he had fun with it. I remember when we were still in Midgar, he was actin' like some big-time hotshot SOLDIER, an' he said he'd do the next job fer-"

Barret's reminiscing was cut off by the sound of the doors at the end of the hall banging open, along with the clatter of a phalanx of footsteps coming their way, while varying nurses shouted their dismayed orders for the intruder to stop.

Reeve looked to Barret, their eyes flashing in worry, and Barret felt his stomach curl into a tight little ball.

God, they'd found AVALANCHE. They were coming to lynch them, and they were practically defenseless.

Hell, if that was the case, he'd be ready for them. Better to go down fighting after all. And to Hell with them if any of them tried to lay a hand on Marlene, he'd-

"Where is she?!" A thick, heavily accented voice roared over the commotion, and Reeve exchanged a confused glance with him, making his way hesitantly toward the door.

However, he nearly collided with a bare-foot Elena who skidded around the doorframe full-bore, gripping both sides of it to brace herself, her eyes wide and dismayed, gaze shifting rapidly from the executive to the scene in the hallway. She looked like she had been asleep, eyes bleary and confused, her hair tousled from it's usual near coif. She didn't seem frightened or anything though. More... uncertain.

"Reeve, you gotta get your ass out here, now. We've got a problem."