Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, its characters or storyline. This collection is mine. Was overdue for some Cloud whumping, so this chapter happened. The prompt was too good to pass up on it. My apologies if it is slightly ridiculous. Enjoy!

..:-X-:..

19 – Thorn in the Side

(For Taquiner; Prompt: 'Survival/Hunted with Cloud')

As consciousness slowly returned, Cloud became immediately aware of several things. One, everything hurt. Two, the Heartless were gone. Three, the ground was thirty feet below him. Four, he was hanging. Five, thorns. Five and a half, maybe he was dead.

He let his eyes adjust to the dim light around him. Dusk. That meant he had been out for a few hours at least. That wasn't encouraging. Drawing a careful breath, he gingerly lifted his head from its slack, downward position. Dull pain thrummed down his spine at the action, and a large thorn stroked down his cheek as he lifted his head, not deep enough to draw blood, but enough to be very uncomfortable.

One of Maleficent's parting gifts to Radiant Garden had been this massive thorn bush. 'Bush' didn't even begin to cover it. It was an entire field of the spiked vines, twisting and knotting and curling into and around themselves. It was resistant against magic, so the Restoration Committee had been manually chipping away at it for weeks. The problem was that it was a living plant, so it was continuing to grow even while they hacked at it. Some of the thorns were like those found on roses, enough to result in a smarting thumb. Others, like the ones that Cloud had landed in, were anywhere from the size of a fountain pen to the size of a shovel.

Cloud was reluctant to move, namely because even thinking about moving made his body ache, and secondly because he wasn't exactly sure what his position was regarding the thorns. There was no way that he had escaped being impaled at least once. The question was where and how deeply? At least his head and neck seemed to have been spared, and he could feel all of his limbs, so his spine was intact. Small miracles.

Considering that the Heartless that he had been battling had thrown him off the edge of one of the castle ruins' battlements, he was lucky that the thorns had caught him. The fall alone would have killed him on contact. He grimaced, relatively lucky. For all he knew, he was just hanging here waiting to bleed to death. He hadn't told anyone where he was going, what he was doing. He never told them. He had only recently joined the Restoration Committee; it wasn't like he was buddy-buddy with any of them.

He was unable to take not knowing any longer, so he looked down again, straining against the angle to get a look at the rest of his body. He had landed head first, which had caused his head and shoulders to be lower than the rest of his body. From the scratches and deep lacerations on his forearms and chest, not to mention his legs, he had cleanly snapped through a few layers of the thorny beast before coming to a halt. Great, that meant he was deep enough inside the thorns that he might not be spotted.

Further inspection revealed that, as suspected, a few thorns had stabbed into him and stayed there. Only three that qualified as more than dramatic splinters: one in his left calf, a second into his right shoulder, and a third just under his ribs on the right side. The one on his leg looked the deepest; there would be no removing it without bleeding out quickly. The one in his shoulder was shallow; he could pull that it one out if he was able. The one in his side was also just a flesh wound, but it shifted every time he breathed, making it the most painful.

Well, damn.

This was really, really going to suck. But he had to accept that there was nobody around, so he was going to have to get out of this himself. And whose fault is that? He inwardly cringed at the thought, but there was no helping that now. Drawing two measured breaths, he moved his right arm up to the main branch of the thorn that was lodged in his shoulder. Forcing the muscles to grip the branch caused enough pain to make his eyes water involuntarily.

Then, with a sharp exhale, he shoved the branch away. The thorn was ripped less than cleanly from his shoulder, and the recoil flung a few drops of blood against his face from the open wound. Pain filled his entire arm like salty water, and he cried out as he started to tumble. That branch pushing against his shoulder had been the main thing keeping him there, and as he started to fall, he immediately reached up with his left arm and grabbed a thorn-free branch, pulling himself up to avoid free falling.

The upward pull motion jogged the thorn in his side free, and Cloud's arms trembled as he held on to keep from falling. Warm blood dribbled down his shoulder and snaked out from the gash in his side. Okay. Okay, that…that probably might not have been his greatest idea…But—okay, he was okay.

"Cloud!"

He nearly let go of the branch in surprise. Wheezing slightly, he looked down through the thorns to the ground out and below. There, pale as a sheet, was Aerith. Cloud felt a rampage of feelings crash through him when he made eye contact with her, primarily spouting from: you found me, what are you doing here in the first place, and I don't want you see me die like this. The Heartless had vanished, but they might still be prowling around the area. It wasn't safe for her here.

But even as he tried to form words to tell her so, Aerith had pulled out her phone and was dialing for help. More relief flooded in to quench the fires of worry and horror that had been burning at his insides, and Cloud sagged slightly on the branch. He was still bleeding, he could see. That probably wasn't a good…thing…

Put-put-put-vrang!

Cloud snapped his eyes back open at the loud, horrendous noise. Had he passed out? He wasn't holding onto the branch above him anymore. Maybe he had passed out and fallen, jugular-first onto a thorn, and now he was dead. But if he was dead, he had to be in Hell, because why else would Leon be there with a chainsaw?

Blinking, Cloud dragged his mind out of the haze and realized that the chainsaw had been making that noise as Leon revved it, slicing at the thorns below. Aerith was standing several feet back, hands up around her face, staring up at Cloud with wide, worried eyes.

"Be careful!" She suddenly shouted.

Well, no shit—

"No shit!" Yuffie's voice screamed somewhere close to him.

Cloud jerked slightly and started to turn to see where the girl was, but Yuffie's hand reached out and smacked the top of his head.

"Ah, stay put. It took me ten minutes to get all that crap off you without you twitching and making a whole 'nother mess!" She reprimanded.

He must have passed out for longer than he thought…but he had accurately guessed that he had let go of the branch when he passed out, since the ground was MUCH closer through the thorn field now. He could also feel a few new abrasions on his arms and legs, and one that stung across his jawline, but otherwise, not much different.

"Now, hold still, I'm halfway through." Yuffie said, softer this time.

Cloud realized that he had pretty much leveled out at this point, and it sounded like Yuffie was almost right beside him. His leg was burning where the large thorn had cut into his calf, and he ached to tear it free and damn the consequences, but he could feel Yuffie doing something to the thorn or to his leg, so he tried to remain still.

Instead, he cast his eyes down below to where Leon was hacking through the thorns almost too expertly for his comfort. The drop between where Cloud was hanging suspended and the ground was almost clear of thorns at that point, like some kind of safe tunnel. He was still roughly ten feet above the ground, however, and less than ten feet above a freaking chainsaw.

Sure, he trusted Leon with his life in matters like this, but he doubted the man would lose any sleep if he accidentally cut off one of Cloud's fingers. What a bastard. If you cut off my finger, I will telepathically make it haunt you, he inwardly thought.

Then he blinked. He must have lost a lot of blood too.

"There." Yuffie announced, "Try not to move." She touched his back briefly before shifting and yelling down. "He's free!"

Leon finished clearing away the last of the thorns and shut off the saw, setting it aside and looking up, removing his safety glasses. "And?"

"I had to leave it in. It was too deep." Yuffie announced.

Aerith fidgeted, moving up behind Leon. "Cloud, can you hear me?"

Cloud grimaced. "Yeah. Sorry."

Leon snorted at the piss-poor apology and stepped into the cleared funnel inside the thorns. "Are there two branches in there strong enough to hold the harness to lower him down?"

Lower…No. NO. Cloud was fairly certain he could get down by himself. There was no harness necessary. Kingdom Hearts, that would be even more humiliating than it already was.

"Harness-smarness." Yuffie said, "I got this."

What? NO!

Unable to argue or fight her off, however, Cloud felt Yuffie shift his legs away from the big nasty thorns until he was almost hanging like off a common ledge. The jarring movement sent a few ramrods of pain from his leg, through his hips, and up into his chest. A groan escaped and he felt like he might vomit.

"Sorry." Yuffie said, though she continued to wriggle his limbs free.

His vision was starting to tunnel again by the time she was done, and when he next snapped out of it, Yuffie was behind him, and he was heavily leaning against her. Aerith and Leon were below, close enough that Cloud could have kicked Leon in the face if he was so inclined…Blood loss again, why would he think that?

"Coming down." Yuffie announced, getting a surprisingly strong hold on Cloud.

The world tilted crazily as they started to move, and he wasn't sure how much of it was dizziness and how much was actual movement. Either way, he didn't like it. He also didn't like the way both Leon and Aerith stared at his leg for a moment. Well, Aerith continued to stare, but Leon looked back up to him and Yuffie, ready to lend assistance if necessary.

Feeling utterly useless at this point, Cloud adjusted to the restored bloodflow in his limbs to reach out and grasp anything thorn-free that he could find, trying to carry as much of his own weight as he dared. Together, he and Yuffie managed to maneuver through the mess until their boots were almost on the ground. Just before they touched down, however, Leon slid in and under Cloud's left arm, keeping his injured leg from taking any weight. Cloud awkwardly looked at him, and Leon just shot him a look that said 'trust me, you DON'T want to stand on that.'

Yuffie dropped less than gracefully to her feet behind him and wriggled away from the thorns. "Geez, talk about too close for comfort!" She looked up and gawked at the mess.

Then Aerith was on him.

"Are you okay? Are you sure? Can you see me? Say something!"

"Ugh." Was all Cloud managed before it all became too much.

Too much pain, blood, and close calls. He could have died easily three times over the past afternoon. The idea of Aerith being there to see two of those instances pushed him over the edge. He felt useless, helpless, and like the dead weight burden that he had always figured that he was to these people. Cloud: nemesis of Sephiroth, felled by a few well placed thorns.

"Oookay." Leon must have seen what was coming, because he abruptly turned Cloud away from Aerith and Yuffie.

Cloud dropped his head and threw up. The effort of it nearly sent his knees out from under him, had Leon not been there. Aerith touched his arm as he finished and he wiped his mouth with his other sleeve.

"Feel better?" Leon asked flatly.

Cloud glared with as much energy as he could muster. "Eat me."

Leon snorted and looked to Aerith, "He'll be fine."

Aerith didn't look convinced, "Let's get him back to Merlin's. I've only got a Potion on me here and my ether levels are still low from where the Heartless showed up."

"Heartless?" Cloud came back to attention as they made their way over to the green jeep that Leon and Tifa had renovated.

"A group of them turned up after you went unconscious, before Leon and Yuffie arrived." Aerith explained as Yuffie called shotgun and Leon helped Cloud get into the car.

This day just kept getting worse.

"Are you okay?" Cloud asked her.

Aerith got into the back seat with him while Leon wrestled the keys away from Yuffie. "I'm fine. Here you are, bleeding all over the back seat, after spending hours hanging in the thorns that Maleficent left behind, and you're asking me if I'M okay." She snorted and opened the bottle of Potion in her hands.

The jeep's engine came to life and started to roll away from the castle ruins and toward the Great Maw. The jolt made Cloud look down at his leg, where Yuffie had cut the thorn from the branch, leaving it in his leg, rather than remove it and deal with the bleeding. The sight of it made him nauseas again, but he didn't have anything left in him to throw up.

"This day sucks." He wheezed.

Aerith looked sympathetic, "Sorry."

"For wha—"

Aerith abruptly reached down, grasped the thorn in his calf, and pulled it out. Before Cloud could properly react to that, she upturned the Potion bottle over the wound, causing to heal completely and almost instantaneously. That done, she sat up and looked at him warily.

Cloud, frozen in the tensed and cringing position, just whimpered, "Ow…"

"So." Yuffie spun around from her spot in the front seat while Leon drove. "Getting beat up by Heartless and thrown into a mess of thorns: how painful was THAT?"

"Not as much as this conversation." Cloud grimaced and closed his eyes, staying like that for the rest of the trip back to Merlin's house.

..:-X-:..

A/N: I think I subtextually tried to include subtext in this one…and probably failed miserably. Ah well. I will say it's fun playing with this weird sort-of friendship between Cloud and Leon. They're only really friends in that 'I hate you' kind of way.

The green jeep was a little throwback to an ongoing plot in my earlier Lefa stories, where Tifa buys a rust bucket of a jeep and renovates it…Well, Leon ends up doing most of the work. That's just love, I guess.

XD