Sephiroth stood in the wide space at the bottom of the stairs, the wooden spiral to the manor above them receding into darkness towards its hidden entrance. He kept hands carefully folded behind his back and stood straight, easily ignoring the slight pain in his heels from the boots rubbing the still tender skin. He had not managed to find a way to dispose of the bloody socks from the day before, and he'd regretfully removed the new ones that he had put on and re-donned the stained ones instead. He'd taken the fresh ones back to the storage room, folding them neatly and putting them back in their place.
His skin itched all over, and he knew he smelled of stale sweat - he'd not been offered a shower after all, and he would do his best to earn one by the end of the day, if not before it was time for lunch and he was to move on to his studies.
Beside him, Cloud copied him as best as he was able, feet shoulder width apart and looking as professional as possible in his new uniform. He hadn't yet complained about the shoes, although Sephiroth knew he would eventually. He just needed to be certain to do it when they were alone. He hoped that Cloud didn't end up in the same predicament he had been in, with torn heels and blood stains, but he doubted Cloud would be forced to run up and down a mountain in twenty-six hours.
He leaned slightly into Cloud, forearm brushing his shoulder as a warning to stop fidgeting. He had been shifting his weight from foot to foot, and they might only have seconds before the SOLDIER walked through the door and caught him.
It had been just in time, too - Second Class Joel Krono was just as intimidating as he'd been the day before, taller and wider across the chest and shoulders than Ross Vanget had been. His head was shaved on the sides, the top strands wound into a handful of thick braids that were bound back and draped down past his shoulders.
His bulk was accentuated by the uniform, his bare arms scarred and his broad hands clad in brown leather gloves with the fingertips cut off. Ordinarily, from what Sephiroth had learned, it was only permitted for First Class SOLDIERS to modify their uniform, but perhaps it was so small a thing that it didn't count?
Sephiroth's sword training had been put on hold when the mercenary had unexpectedly died, and he'd been assigned instead to continue Cloud's rudimentary hand-to-hand lessons himself until a replacement could be found. He'd dutifully practiced his own katas, the handful he had memorized and tried to remember the one he'd only been shown once - he'd looked forward to mastering it if he could. He hadn't even considered that the new instructor would be an actual SOLDIER, but as nervous as he was, Sephiroth was excited to learn from him as well.
The SOLDIER held a long, thin package beneath one arm, and Sephiroth's eyes locked onto it hopefully. It was just the exact size of the sword he had been given the day before, and the thought that it might be in his hands again so soon made the tempo of his heart pick up.
There had been those who'd died or been 'disappeared' that he had missed, especially the ones who'd been kind when he was younger, but he wouldn't miss Vanget in the least. He was vaguely aware that this should somehow be shameful, at least according to the sociology textbooks. But he simply could not bring himself to feel bad that the man, who was too rough with Cloud and occasionally cruel to them both for no discernible reason, was gone.
He quickly schooled his features to blankness, eyes up and over the SOLDIER's left shoulder when the man saw where he was looking. Krono pressed his full lips together in dissatisfaction, the same expression he'd worn the day before when giving his instructions for the mission to rescue Cloud, and Sephiroth braced himself for a correction before they had even begun. Krono had gone easy on him the night before, and had agreed to let Sephiroth bear the brunt of any punishment that might be coming Cloud's way - but he could change his mind at any moment.
Instead of reprimanding them for not being attentive enough, Krono merely leaned the possible weapon against the wall inside the door, and mirrored their postures with one hand clasping the opposite wrist in front of himself rather than behind as they were.
"I'm Joel Krono," he looked down at Cloud specifically, "We didn't meet properly yesterday," he said in his smooth baritone, and as soft as his voice was, Sephiroth was certain he knew how to raise it. He wondered if he would have to nudge Cloud, but the little boy squared his shoulders beneath the pale blue cadet shirt and looked up.
"I am Subject C," Cloud said, enunciating perfectly, then he hesitated and glanced up at Sephiroth. There was a tiny fraction of a second where his lower lip trembled, but he quickly smoothed his anxiety away and turned his face back up to the man who seemed to be patiently waiting.
"I don't know how to salute yet, sir?" Cloud shouldn't have said that, Sephiroth knew it and so did Cloud. But he always wanted to get everything right on the first try, and not knowing how to do something he was certain he was meant to know always made him speak out of turn. You either knew something, or you didn't - you simply took whatever punishment you'd earned by your ignorance and hoped you were taught better for the next time.
A complex series of expressions flitted over the SOLDIER's face. His eyebrows rose, then came together, his lips flattening into a line that seemed dangerous. Sephiroth could only compare it to a similar look that Doctor Ballard gave Cloud when he didn't obey a new command instantly. Sephiroth watched from the corner of his eye, face resolutely forward, and knew that whatever happened next he would not be able to react.
"We'll work on that then," Krono said with a grave nod, and Sephiroth let himself relax slightly. Beside him, he heard Cloud let out the quick breath he'd sucked in.
"Yes sir." Cloud nodded back, and it seemed as though that was that.
"S, right?" Krono turned to look at Sephiroth, one eyebrow raised.
"Yes sir," Sephiroth answered respectfully, and he saluted properly at being addressed.
"Let's start with a uniform inspection, first of all" Krono, relaxed his hands to his sides, but Sephiroth and Cloud didn't dare copy him, "since I'm aware today is the first day you've worn yours, C, and the second day that S has, correct?"
"Yes sir," both of them answered in tandem, and earned another of those solemn nods. Vanget had always been in a bad mood at the beginning of the day, having spent half the night drinking in the tavern or in his room upstairs when he couldn't be bothered to walk all the way to town. He'd been an… efficient instructor, but Sephiroth didn't think he'd been a very good one.
Krono circled them, reaching out and putting two fingers beneath the straps at Sephiroth's back, up near his pauldrons.
"Good fit," he said, tugging at the leather and shifting the armor on his shoulders a bit more forward, "you do this up yourself or did you need help?"
Sephiroth opened his mouth, then closed it, reminding himself the volunteering information was never a good thing - he'd nearly explained his process, but he hadn't been asked that had he?
"Myself, sir," he said after what he hoped wasn't too long of a pause.
"Good job," Krono's hand came down a little harder on one of his pauldrons in a light slap. Sephiroth tamped down the illogical warmth that blossomed in his chest at the words, he couldn't trust them. Just the same as he couldn't trust praise from Professor Hojo or Doctor Rivers, praise and commendation came with dire expectations to never make the mistake of doing whatever he'd done well poorly the next time. He wished it would stop feeling good, though, to be told he'd done well.
"SOLDIER cadets don't begin to wear armor until the end of their trial period," Krono crouched down, adjusting the fabric over Cloud's shoulders a bit. He looked up at Sephiroth, one eyebrow twitching up. "Did Vanget start you on a beginner weapon harness, before you got this uniform? His handwriting was less than legible, and I have a feeling from the fact you clearly don't know what I mean that he didn't bother."
"I am sorry sir," Sephiroth forced himself not to flinch, keeping his voice smooth and deferent, "I do not know."
"Not your fault," Krono said, standing and rubbing the back of his head as he cast his gaze around the open space. "Show me where all your equipment is, and we'll start making a plan for how to move forward."
The metal cabinets against the wall held practice swords made of wood and rattan, although Sephiroth had graduated to live steel around the time Cloud had been brought in. The mitts used for learning punches and jabs were worn from use, and they might not last much longer. The dummy he'd practiced blows on had been thrown out after he'd bisected it from shoulder to hip after only a few days.
There were quite a few things that Sephiroth had wondered about, packed away and never actually opened to bring out and use. Krono pulled the packages out and slit the tape with a knife pulled from a sheath on his thigh, and began laying out the items Vanget had never decided to use.
"Why does it not surprise me that he didn't ever use this?" Krono muttered, seemingly to himself. "Probably didn't even know how."
After two more boxes, the SOLDIER seemed to find what he was looking for - two packages consisting of an incomprehensible tangle of leather straps with metal fittings and leather pouches of something that clinked together as he set them down.
"Might have to cut one of these down," he said, twitching two fingers at Cloud accompanied by another series of expressions Sephiroth couldn't read. "I wouldn't usually recommend this with you so young, but I'd personally feel more comfortable getting you ready for armor as quickly as possible."
An upwelling of relief made Sephiroth's hands clench behind his back - if Cloud was going to be fast-tracked the same way Sephiroth had, maybe there was hope that he could bring the little boy with him when it was time to go. He'd not dared go out of his way to snoop on the notes for 'Project Squire', but he knew enough that it was entirely focused on Cloud's development as it pertained, in some mysterious way, to Sephiroth's. What he had learned in bits and pieces tacked onto the infant bed he'd slept in, made him hope that the experiment would only be able to progress so long as they were together.
The SOLDIER rose from his crouch, pulling the battered leather mitts from where they hung in his locker and tucked them under one arm. "Let's put you through your paces, and we'll see where we should go from there," Krono said, moving back to where he'd left the tantalizing package by the door and picked it up.
It was heavy in Sephiroth's hands as it was placed in them, and he tried to hide the disappointment as he discovered that it was still too light to be the blade from the day before. It was shaped much the same, made all of polished wood - heavier than wood, but not quite the weight of mythril.
"It has a core of lead," Krono explained with a slight incline of his head towards the practice weapon, "I know you had a steel sword for your mission, but my rules are that live steel will need to be reserved for actual missions outside of training."
Sephiroth locked what he wanted to say inside - that he could handle the steel, that he'd always practiced with blunted metal and not wood, that he wouldn't misuse it, that he felt as though the SOLDIER didn't trust him not to hurt himself like he'd done as a child when he'd just begun. Instead he swallowed them down with a diffident sounding, "Yes sir."
It was a bit maddening not to know precisely what Krono expected of him, but easy enough to run through each kata he'd memorized and listed what weapons he had begun to master - all bladed, most of them swords. He hated throwing daggers, but didn't say so. The idea of throwing what might be your only weapon away from you when it might not even strike true made him feel vulnerable, and it hadn't helped that Vanget had ended each of those lessons with a second one on just how bad it would be to be unarmed in a fight against someone who still had all of their weapons.
"You're miles ahead of where all the other Thirds are," Krono said, reaching up and adjusting the tie that held the twisted braids atop his head back. "Take a few laps around the room to cool off while I work with C, alright?"
"Yes sir," Sephiroth said, forcing himself to take slower breaths - it was harder to make himself walk away when Cloud was doing his best to stay where he was and be polite and obedient when he clearly didn't want to be left alone with the stranger. Vanget hadn't had much to do with Cloud, really. He'd seemed to dislike him on sight, far more than he had Sephiroth at the same age, so had assigned one of the infantryman to begin teaching Cloud how to properly fall only a few weeks ago, and they'd moved on to simple things like spacial awareness and keeping your opponent in view as much as possible. The trooper had, ironically, been a better teacher for that sort of thing - he seemed to know how to explain things in a way that was easier for Cloud to understand, so much so that Sephiroth didn't have to translate it once it was time to return to their room.
Sephiroth stepped off the mats laid out in the middle of the room and took up a light jog around the edges, assuming that without specific orders he should be counting the ten laps that Vanget always assigned. He tried to keep an eye on Cloud as the boy threw himself down in different ways, Krono crouched down to watch and murmur instructions that Sephiroth couldn't quite hear with the pounding of blood in his ears and anxiety singing in his veins.
His foot caught on a raised edge of stone where the floor was cracked, and he went down hard. He caught himself properly, just as Cloud was demonstrating in a much more controlled fashion, but the cold cement stung his hands and jarred his wrists before he turned it into a proper roll up to his feet.
He knew his eyes were wide as Krono approached and he forced himself to stand straight and not flinch when the man put his hands on him and…
"Are you alright?" Krono's deep voice was quiet and just as calm as it had been during their entire session, and the hands that rested on Sephiroth's pauldrons were just a slight weight as the man looked him over.
"I'm sorry sir, I'll do all the laps again," Sephiroth assured him, keeping his eyes locked on the other man's and not looking away at where Cloud hovered behind him.
"You were about done anyway," Krono said, and Sephiroth shook his head.
"No sir, I had four more to do and-"
"You did enough already," one of Krono's eyebrows rose, "your heartrate's down and you're breathing fine, that's what cooling down means - there's not a specific number attached to it you know?"
Sephiroth did not know.
"Let me see your hands," Krono instructed and Sephiroth obeyed, wondering what he wanted to look at. They were red, and his left was swollen only a little - it would be entirely healed within a few hours. Sephiroth was pleased to note that it was his right hand, which wouldn't affect his writing unless Rivers decided to force him to practice his ambidexterity - although he was trained in using both equally his left was still his naturally dominant one.
A flicker of green light washed over his palms, sinking into the minor injury and healing it in an instant. The pain had been so inconsequential that he barely noticed its absence, and he hated the words that blurted out of his mouth - he was better than this, far more well trained at keeping such things hidden within.
"Why did you do that? Mana isn't meant to be wasted upon me…" he asked, then flushed and stood straight again, hands falling to his sides and half curled into anxious fists before he shoved them behind his back, "I would have healed in a matter of hours. My early treatments were the template for the SOLDIER program after all."
A faint grimace was there and gone on Krono's face before he answered, his tone dour and the words huffed out with clear irritation. Sephiroth shouldn't have spoken out of turn, he knew.
"Because I wanted to," the SOLDIER said, after a moment of disgruntled silence.
Uncertain what he was really meant to say, or do, Sephiroth whispered, "Thank you, sir."
Krono nodded, then turned back to Cloud and began asking him the strangest series of questions - turning some to Sephiroth in turn. He had no idea why the man wanted to know what they enjoyed the most in training sessions, unless it was to take away those particular exercises as punishment, and Sephiroth wondered if he could get away with keeping one or two to himself…
Concrete questions were so much more preferable than subjective ones - you never knew what one particular person believed was subjective or objective at all besides.
He didn't attempt to be secretive, answering honestly what he liked and keeping what he disliked as vague as possible while still technically answering. It might backfire, that sort of subterfuge only worked about twenty-five percent of the time, unless the one asking the questions truly didn't care what the answer was.
The shower he'd been ordered to take afterward was short and pleasantly lukewarm to muscles hot with strain. Hunger gnawed at him as he and Cloud sat down at the small table where they and the other denizens of the laboratory took meals when they were either not invited upstairs or couldn't be bothered to climb the twisted staircase.
He and Cloud swapped the different flavored nutrition shakes and crumbly blocks of slightly sweet nutrition bars, amiably agreeing on who preferred what. They washed down the dry blocks of food and chalky taste of the shakes with electrolyte infused water, as always.
Sephiroth went still, nudging Cloud's knee beneath the table with his own, and they both watched from the corners of their eyes as the SOLDIER approached them with a flicker of something that he could only read as rage on his face.
"Absolutely not," Joel muttered under his breath as he saw what the children were eating, and fought the disgust roiling in his stomach. He'd noticed the packages that morning, but had thought they were genuinely emergency supplies the way they should be.
The protein drinks were fine, he supposed, if you had nothing else, but actually eating the tasteless powdery blocks of densely packed calories was only suitable for direst emergencies.
This was one thing he could fix immediately, and probably without too much of a fuss - it would make their lives significantly better but perfectly within the parameters of his assignment. SOLDIERS had ready to eat meals all the time, not always the best tasting food he'd ever had but damned if he didn't figure it would~ be the best the kids had eaten before.
He'd been furious when he'd realized they'd not been fed before being sent to the training room to get evaluated, and he'd run them through the easiest assessment he could manufacture - just questioning what they'd learned already, mostly. Both kids had seemed confused, baffled even, when he asked them what parts of their training they liked the most, and there had been quickly hidden suspicion from the older one.
Joel reminded himself of what he'd thought the night before, that he'd need to treat them like war captives. There really was no other way to relate to them, and he considered the reasons why the kid would be suspicious of him asking what he liked.
Probably, he came to the conclusion, S figured that Joel would take away anything he enjoyed if he didn't perform perfectly. It was a hell of a way for a man to live, always worried about ways and reasons someone could hurt you, and it was unthinkable for a child. Well, Joel had to think about it, he'd have to think very carefully about everything he did like he was walking through a minefield.
He considered how to get what he wanted, for the kids to be eating good solid food. It would need to be phrased right, first of all, so that it was just him doing his job and not trying to be kind. A grimace tried to force itself onto his face, remembering the night before when Doctor Hojo had told him not to coddle his recruits - that they weren't properly children and didn't need it. Being 'nice' seemed like it might be illegal down here.
He stalked to the table, and if he hadn't been watching for it he might not have noticed both boys tense minutely - just the tiniest straightening of shoulders, hands curling a little tighter around their meals.
"What exactly are you feeding them on a regular basis?" Joel kept his tone professionally curious as he questioned the man in the white coat who seemed to be supervising the pathetic excuse for lunch. "Is this selection a penalty or their usual fare?"
"It's perfectly nutritionally adequate," the man said, his lips twisted into a sneer that Joel longed to wipe off of his face. He'd been the one that had brought S to get into his new gear, short and stocky with his scrub shirt stretched taut over his stomach and stained with the coffee he was stirring cream into a little too vigorously.
Joel had never considered himself to be someone who would want to commit extreme violence just because he didn't like someone. He was pretty good at keeping his cool through a lot of bullshit already, but he was going to get a lot more practice at it during his tenure here.
"It's unacceptable," Joel said, in a flat and hopefully authoritative manner. He leaned forward, looking at the ID card pinned to the man's lapel and deliberately looming over the scientist's much shorter stature, "Ballard - Military rations are what they're going to start eating from now on, it's what they'll have in the field and they need to learn how to assemble and care for a meal kit and prepare MREs. We'll save this crap for actual survival training, which is what it's actually formulated for."
The scientist looked at the slop on the table as though he'd never even thought about what they'd been giving them, aside from the whole 'nutritionally adequate' thing. SOLDIER rations were also famously full of protein and nutrients, and it was really the only thing that the infantry could lord over them - at least infantry MREs tasted like what it said on the package. But fuck if even the worst of the SOLDIER meals were probably insanely better than what they'd had up until now.
"Alright, you're the expert," the man said, much to Joel's relief, "I'll show you where they're kept and we can move half of them to this side of the facility." Ballard reached over and took the cartons of emergency supplements out of the boy's hands, and Joel seethed inwardly as they both silently folded their hands in their laps with carefully empty expressions as the rest of their 'meal' was swept into a trash can without a word spoken directly to them.
S flicked a tiny glance up at him, then sharply away when Joel managed to catch his eye. Under the table, he caught sight of S reaching out to touch the little one's hand and C relaxed the tight grip he had on the knees of his pants. Neither of them moved or looked his way again, and he hated turning his back on them as Ballard strolled out of the room.
The laboratory was a maze of narrow hallways, and it was easy to tell what had originally been here and what had been dug out later. The place at the very bottom of the stairs was one large room with doors radiating off of it, with metal lockers lining the curved wall where the kids' weapons and martial equipment was stored. One had held steel practice weapons of all types, and by the wear and tear on them he could tell they'd been used. It was an easy thing to change - that wasn't what actual recruits learned with, not until they were properly Thirds with mentors or older training partners and going on actual missions. There was absolutely no reason to risk injury!
The scientist ambled slowly, at a leisurely pace, and Joel was forced to match his shorter stride as Ballard crossed the training area, motioning to a large door that hadn't been opened during his abbreviated tour the day before.
"Cold storage is through there by the way," Ballard said, making finger quotes with one hand, "monster and animal necropsy rooms, human autopsy occasionally - accidents happen, regardless of safety parameters, as we're frequently working with dangerous chemicals and creatures with developed abilities from said dangerous chemicals."
It was said in such a casual way, as though he were explaining where normal things like paper and staplers were kept in an office, and Joel simply gave vague affirmative noises as he filed that away for later. What that later might entail, he wasn't certain of - he wasn't a strategist like Dorian, or halfway to being a Turk like Ronaldo, but he wasn't the meat-head sword jock he knew he came across half the time.
"General storage is through here," Ballard said, pushing open a door that didn't have a lock, "stay out of the rooms on the left hand side if you need anything down this way. Nothing particularly interesting about them, some of it just needs to remain sterile."
The third door from the entrance was pushed open, revealing a small storage room laid out in familiar fashion - standard infantry resupply writ smaller than ordinary but just inside the door was what he was looking for. Normal trooper rations were stacked on three shelves for the rotation of four men who constituted the two twelve hour guard shifts. Above that were a smaller selection of actual SOLDIER grade rations - differentiated by the black plastic bags covered in bright yellow warnings as compared to the camo green infantry grade packaging.
Joel picked up an empty duffel on a stack of three of them, grabbing a handful of his own and selecting a variety for the boys from the troopers MRE packs stored on the opposite shelf and piling them in. He was careful to leave more or less half of them for the actual grunts, but if he happened to leave the shittiest ones for them, that was their problem. They'd talked shit about the boys while he'd watched the hidden camera attached to the monster the bastards had sent after them. They'd said the kids were creepy, trying to joke with him that they weren't even real kids - just SOLDIER cyborgs grown in vats.
Joel had no idea about that, or where they'd really come from, but they had clearly not given a single shit about what was being done to them. Fucking hell, even if they'd been test tube babies in a literal sense, they were still children.
He pictured C's face when he'd jerked away from his hand the previous night, when all he'd done was try to help him - he'd clearly expected some kind of violence and his big green eyes had gone briefly wide with panic before he'd wiped the expression away and darted off when given leave to go back to wherever he was kept at night.
"Do you have a regular delivery of things I can add to?" Joel asked, as he zipped the duffel shut after shoving three mess kits and a couple of canteens on top of the rations. His drill sergeant had always eaten with them, and taken the same rations they were supplied with - even though they all knew he could eat better food that came with his rank. A little camaraderie couldn't hurt, and it might be another little weight he could slip onto the right side of the scales of trust.
"End of the month," Ballard said, turning and once more taking his sweet damned time at getting back to the kids. Joel just wanted to fucking feed them already. He didn't want them to have to hurry, and he had a feeling the schedule here was strict. He also had a distinct impression that Ballard was a gods-damned sociopath - Hojo, the one in charge of the whole facility, was also clearly a psycho, but a controlled and efficient one.
Everyone here but the kids gave Joel the creeps, but there was just something about this asshole in particular that rubbed him the wrong way. Back in the little break room, the boys still sat in the exact same pose as before with their hands folded on their laps without any expression as they stared at the opposite wall.
As he dropped the duffel into an empty seat and unloaded the mess kits and three ration packs, Joel forced himself to not heave a sigh at the understanding that he had a long and difficult road ahead of him. He listed what he would need to accomplish, each step more daunting than the last - gaining trust from his superiors so that he could make the kids' lives even a tiny bit better was only the beginning. He needed to see what he would have to do in order to make the scientists here complacent with his decisions, and he was rapidly coming to understand that any kindness he might want to convey would be limited by the sadism of those stationed over him.
It wasn't clear yet how he could accomplish the ultimate goal of getting the kids out of this hellhole, especially when he wasn't certain where they'd come from - if they'd really been 'created' here somehow, they could and would just make more if these two went missing. If they had been normal children snatched, or worse, purchased, then that was just as bad since they'd be able to acquire new ones even faster. He couldn't bear the thought of rescuing two only to have more replace them in quick order.
The most difficult thing, out of all of that… would be getting the kids to trust him.
C… Cloud, he tested the name in his mind yet again, the word still so new that it was hard to really believe it was his. The row of mugs sitting on the counter lining the back of the room were all labeled with names, or unique images, and the doctors and guards were picky about who's cup they were using. There wasn't anything else that was really his, and he was happy it was something he could hide that couldn't be taken away so long as he pretended it didn't exist.
He hadn't known what to do when Ballard had snatched the food from him, other than to put his now empty hands in his lap beneath the table. It was hard to get the… the… his nose scrunched up as he mentally sounded out the word for what he was feeling. It wasn't easy to keep the dis-app-oint-ment from getting onto his face.
He gripped the rough fabric covering his knees in his fists, only to have to let go when Sephiroth gently tapped their littlest fingers together to remind him to stop - just because he'd got his face to not show emotion, his body language would give it away just as easy.
The banana taste in his mouth just made him feel the loss of the food more sharply, it was his favorite kind of the drinks and he didn't get it very often. It was usually the milk flavored one that didn't taste like very much at all, and Sephiroth actually liked them better for some reason so they always traded.
He hadn't even had time to take a bite of his bar… Cloud glanced over to the trash can when he couldn't hear Doctor Ballard's or the SOLDIER's footsteps anymore as they'd left, and he bit the inside of his cheek as Sephiroth hissed quietly under his breath.
"Don't think about it," S hissed, shaking his head quickly back and forth. His hair was damp still from the shower he'd finally been allowed to take, and the long strands whipped along with the quick movement.
Cloud knew he was right but still… He might be able to think about it anyway, so long as he didn't do anything bad, right? S, Sephiroth he reminded himself, almost always said thinking about doing something bad was almost as bad as doing the thing he shouldn't be doing - because it increased the chances that you might make a bad decision the next time the temptation came along.
"What did he mean?" Cloud whispered even more quietly than Sephiroth had, "about unacceptable?" He knew what the word meant, because his test results and his performance reviews were often called that, but what could be unacceptable about food? He knew very well that the doctors and scientists ate different things, because he'd seem them do so, but it had never been something he'd thought about in terms of himself and S.
"I am uncertain," Sephiroth admitted, "but if we are to be SOLDIERS then I suppose we should be having the same meals."
They looked at one another skeptically, and Cloud wondered if Sephiroth was as scared about new things as Cloud was most of the time. He'd got really, really good at hiding it though. Even Professor Hojo said he was excelling at keeping up a 'pla-cid fa-cade' and had said Cloud was a good boy for not flinching. Flinching was bad, it meant you had to have everything done twice, and harder, and more painful just to make sure you didn't flinch the next time.
"Even if it is bad, don't say anything," Sephiroth reminded him, "I have heard the infantrymen on occasion complaining about their meals."
"Maybe it'll be-" Cloud cut himself off as footsteps approached once more, and mimicked S as he faced forward and stared straight ahead.
The SOLDIER followed Ballard back into the room, and Cloud breathed a tiny sigh of relief when the doctor walked back out again after filling his cup at the coffee machine. Ballard seemed to always find something Cloud had done wrong… At least for now he was too busy to pay attention to them, but he wasn't sure about the SOLDIER yet - it was probably better to act like he was like Ballard, just in case.
He remembered Sephiroth's warning from the day before, about the doctor who had given him his name. He'd pretended to be nice for so long, and it had been clear that Sephiroth still hurt from it, even though he acted like he didn't. Cloud wondered if he'd ever be as good at hiding his feelings as Sephiroth was. It would make his life so much easier, he thought.
"Here we go," the SOLDIER, Krono, Cloud reminded himself, set two metal trays in front of them. They were the same dull metal as specimen trays, but with little spaces hollowed out - three evenly spaced at the top and a larger one bracketed by littler ones at the bottom.
"Standard mess kit," Krono continued, adding two metal canteens to their side of the table before pulling three plastic bags from inside the duffel bag he'd acquired and setting them just above the trays. "These are infantry rations, not SOLDIER grade, simply because you're not quite at the weight and level of activity that requires them. On a normal day without much exercise, a SOLDIER will need one and a half the amount of calories a normal man of the same height and weight would have to consume, and in the field it can be up to, and occasionally over, twice as much."
He nodded towards the plastic bags, "Tear them open at the notch on top, they're supposed to be resealable but it's about fifty-fifty whether it works or not - these are twenty-four-hour rations actually, so enough food for three meals and a bit in between depending on how hungry you get."
Cloud glanced at Sephiroth from the corner of his eye, and both of them obeyed and followed along as Krono took all of the little packages out of the big one and laid them out on the tray, careful to match where the SOLDIER put the various things. Each package had a series of numbers on the dull brown plastic, as well as a description of what they contained.
"We'll keep the breakfast for tomorrow," Krono split open one of the bags that just said 'accessories' on it, pulling out bits of plastic and paper, as well as more tinier packages.
Cloud was proud that he didn't flinch when Krono got up and moved to stand beside him, pointing at the littler ones and reading off what was in them as though Cloud couldn't do it himself. But then, well, Cloud had been told that people of his app-rox-imate age couldn't read or write or do multiplication the way he could. He opened his mouth to say so, and snapped it shut again when Sephiroth's foot bumped against his.
He just nodded along after that - although he could read the words perfectly, he admitted to himself that he wasn't sure what everything actually was. He knew that salt was a mineral that people needed to survive, and sugar was a natural form of the artificial sweetener that was a part of the flavor profile in their drinks and even in the little bars. He wasn't sure what pepper was, or why you'd put black dust on your food though.
The part that Cloud was worried about, and by Sephiroth's slow and deliberate movements he could tell he was too, was the bigger package that was put in the middle of the tray over the biggest slot. It had a number code, and a date that was about two years away, and the words 'rotini in tomato meat sauce' in large letters.
"This is a flameless ration heater," Krono held up a pale green bag covered in small lettering, with clear warnings along the bottom of it, "you add water to it, and then put that unopened pack in and close it up so that it warms the food."
"How does it work?" Sephiroth asked, almost blurting it out as he leaned forward with interest. He tensed alongside Cloud, waiting for the SOLDIER to tell him to shut up because he wasn't finished talking - it wasn't ever clear if a question was okay to ask, but interrupting was always bad.
The SOLDIER didn't get mad at all, and instead just opened the bag and let them look inside. "This little pouch is full of magnesium, salt, and a bit of iron dust - when you get it wet there's a chemical reaction that creates a lot of heat. Open yours up and do what I do."
Cloud and Sephiroth followed along, and Cloud's eyes widened as steam began billowing out of the bag around the packet of food he'd put in it. It didn't seem to smell like anything, not that he would have really stuck his nose in it - chemicals making steam or smoke was always bad for you and it was bad lab safety besides and that was serious business.
While the rotini stuff heated up, the SOLDIER showed them the rest of the package's contents, setting aside the things that were meant for other meals. Cloud wondered how he knew what was supposed to be eaten when, and why those were 'breakfast' foods and 'dinner foods'. What was the difference?
He didn't know what hardly any of it was, as Krono had them open little flat pouches that said it was bread. He did know about bread from a book about geography and what grew where and how much troopers ate in a given year - and it had a smell that Cloud couldn't describe but thought he liked. He worried the SOLDIER would think he was stupid, for not knowing what pepper was and what garlic meant, and why it was one of the favorite rations Krono had when he was a cadet just like Cloud. He couldn't help but feel slightly better that Sephiroth looked as confused as he felt, dutifully separating the elements of the other different meals into their own piles as Cloud did.
Krono fetched two paper cups, having to search through the various cabinets that had the scientists' selection of food that Cloud had tried to never be curious about before now - he might have once when he was even younger, but he'd stopped wondering when he realized he'd never get to try any.
He folded his hands back into his lap, twisting them together and holding them stiffly just to keep from plucking at the thick fabric of his pants over his knees. He liked the feel of it under his fingers, a little bit rough with an interesting texture. His feet hurt, but they'd hurt yesterday too when he'd just been wearing socks - Sephiroth had picked him up so he wouldn't hurt them more in the caves and the rocky mountainside, and as he twitched his feet back and forth he wondered if carrying him had made Sephiroth's feet hurt even worse. He'd say he was sorry later, just in case.
Cloud bit the inside of his cheek, the one facing away from the SOLDIER so that he couldn't see - but it was still on Sephiroth's side, and he saw, and he nudged him with his knee beneath the table and Cloud couldn't stop his lips from turning down in a frown before he masked it. Krono wasn't looking, at least he didn't seem like he was. Sometimes, Cloud wished that Sephiroth hadn't learned all this stuff before Cloud was there… he'd learned it all by himself through trial and error, and those were experiments, and experiments hurt even worse when you didn't know what you were supposed to do.
"Should be good enough," Krono said, and Cloud didn't object when he reached over to pull Cloud's pouch of food from the warming thing, he was a bit worried about how hot it had gotten. Not a warming thing, a 'flameless ration heater' he reminded himself, because there would be a test later for sure. Magnesium, and salt, and iron powder, and water made it get hot and steam, he would remember that too. He wondered if they'd been supposed to ask how much of each of those things was in it, but it was too late now and they'd just have to be good and not forget the next time after the correction if that was on the test too.
If the piece of bread had smelled good, flecked with little green bits that he wanted to ask about but wasn't sure he was supposed to, what poured out of the pouch into the biggest section of the metal tray smelled better than just good. He wasn't sure what rotini was, but he did know about meat and Sephiroth said he knew every single animal that a human could safely eat and some monsters too. It was probably the crumbly brown bits and the rotini was the little white spirals that looked like screws. It was all mixed up with a red liquid and for some reason when he smelled it he felt a flood of spit in his mouth, and swallowed hard.
Krono peeled open a plastic bag and handed him something that looked like a weird combination of a spoon and fork and offered it to him as Sephiroth opened his own. Both of them waited until Krono opened his, and the SOLDIER stared at them both in turn for a few seconds before he gave them a very slow nod and said 'go ahead.'
Cloud couldn't help but look over at Sephiroth in dismay as he wasn't sure how to hold the thing in his hand. He was really glad that Doctor Ballard wasn't there to grade him on it. He'd probably take the thing from Cloud and make him use his hands until he learned better, which that sort of thing never made sense - if it got taken away how could he learn to do better?
Krono didn't seem like he was going to, but he did very slowly pick up his own spoon-fork thing and hold it right and held still so Cloud and Sephiroth could both copy him.
He speared a piece of the spiral things and slowly brought it to his mouth. It was hot, a little too much, but the moment it touched Cloud's tongue he didn't care at all. He wasn't sure what it was that made it so good - he wondered if the little part of the library they could go in had books about food. The flavor of the red liquid was sweet and something else at the same time and he just… hated that he didn't have words for it. He needed a book!
The spiral was soft on the outside and the middle was kind of chewier, the bits of meat added a whole other taste in his mouth. He locked his eyes on Krono's hands as he watched the man pick up the bread and dip one corner of it in the sauce and take a bite - he copied him.
The smell of the bread filled his nose as he bit down, and it was soft and kind of crumbly like the meal bars were but totally different all the same.
He turned to look at Sephiroth, and his eyes were wide. His slit pupils were a little rounded, the way they got when he was excited while learning a kata or hitting the training mitts with his fists really hard. He wondered if his eyes were like that too.
Did Sephiroth want to smile too, did the corners of his mouth hurt from staying flat?
Before he was halfway through with what he'd been given, Cloud had to slow down. Beside him, Sephiroth had managed to eat almost all of it, but Sephiroth was a lot bigger than Cloud - would he get in trouble if he couldn't finish? He must not have been able to control his face as well as he thought he could, because Krono's chair scraped hard on the ground as he stood up and put his spoon fork thing on his own empty tray and he began to walk around the table.
Cloud couldn't help the way his shoulders rose, or the way he ducked his head down. He felt Sephiroth's hand grasp the fabric of his pants beneath the table and he held Cloud still just in case he couldn't be still by himself.
"Good enough," Krono said, and Cloud didn't know what he meant. He looked up, and Krono had another of those weird looks on his face that he'd had in the training room, and he hadn't yelled at them or shoved Sephiroth when he fell down…
"You're still little, and this is created for adults my size," he added, then pressed his full lips together and darted a glance at Sephiroth's tray, "it'd be bad to finish it all if you're full, because if you tried to eat all of this it might make you sick, do you understand? I don't want you throwing up because you thought this was some kind of rule, okay? There's no rules about this food, other than clean up after yourself and count your tray and canteen as your personal gear - and SOLDIERS take care of what they're given."
"Yes sir, I understand," Cloud said after a moment, trying to find the trap, and Sephiroth slowly unwound his fingers from where they gripped Cloud's pants and gave his own aff-irma-tive.
Cloud ducked his head sharply as Krono's hand came down and touched the top of it, and all three of them went still before Krono moved his hand back and forth. It didn't hurt, just messed his hair up a little. Sephiroth did that sometimes, when Cloud had done a really good job or he was scared or upset. He'd been so mad the day before when the infantryman with the three eyes had done it, 'cause that was something special Sephiroth did… but he wasn't sure about Krono yet.
"Take your tray over to the trash can and put the food you can't eat in there, then the empty packages." Krono picked his own up and demonstrated himself, "we call it 'dumping' your tray, you'll probably hear that from other SOLDIERS or troopers, but don't actually put your whole tray in there - we'll clean it in the sink and put it away until dinner."
Krono hooked a metal stool with the toe of his boot and nudged it over where the sink was, and Cloud felt something weird in his chest when he realized it was so he could reach the tap himself without having to stretch up where he couldn't see and wouldn't miss anything…
The SOLDIER let them go after that, muttering that he was going to have to make up a training program 'from scratch' and promised to meet them in the break room for the next meal to help them do that part - sweeping the rest of the food from the packages into the duffel bag and slinging it over his shoulder. He went the opposite way they did, to the same room that Vanget had lived in, while Cloud and Sephiroth went to study academics for the rest of the day.
The dinner meal was completely different, and it made Cloud's mouth weirdly warm and his lips tingled - it was good, but it took him several mouthfuls to decide whether he liked it or not. The package called it chili with beans, and the bread that came with it was yellow and even crumblier and kind of dry which was a lot more of what he was used to. It was even sweet like the bars, but just better.
There was a little pouch afterward that had fruits printed on it, and Cloud recognized the banana but not the red sort of triangular fruit beside it - a strawberry, when he made himself ask. So far, Krono hadn't got mad about questions, so maybe it was okay.
He twisted the top off the package open like Krono showed him, and squeezed some of the contents into his mouth. A sweetness more than he'd ever tasted made him want to wiggle in place on his chair. He couldn't hold it in, the little smile that snuck out onto his face as he took his time and squeezed every possible drop out of it.
In bed, after they'd taken the tests that Doctor Rivers gave them for what they'd learned from their books, Cloud hid under the blankets and listened to Sephiroth's breath even out in sleep.
He didn't want to get in trouble, so he'd pretended to brush his teeth when Sephiroth did, but he hadn't let the toothpaste touch his tongue. He wanted to keep tasting the banana and strawberry just a little longer.
Sweat crawled down Joel's bare back, slicking down his bare sides as he swung his broadsword in short, choppy arcs - practicing his close quarters katas, the ones particularly useful for fighting in tight hallways and around sharp corners. There was nothing he could do yet, but it was satisfying to picture white coats splitting red beneath his blade.
The weapon rack bolted to the stone wall was scuffed and scratched, the place where the mercenary had put his own sword was cracked, as though Vanget had slammed his sword into it each time he was done with it.
He could have sympathized, if he thought Vanget had cared. The boys clearly expected Joel to hurt them, as though it were the natural result of making even the smallest mistakes. The way they'd gone totally blank, not a single emotion coming through… he bet they got praised for that and punished for showing it.
The bewilderment in S' eyes when he'd healed him, the blatant confusion as he'd asked why Joel would 'waste Mana on him'. It made his fingers itch for the weapon he'd just put away. Instead he dropped down and began to do push-ups, trying to channel his training partner's twisty mind - Ronaldo was halfway a Turk, just without the paycheck, and without him to bounce ideas off of Joel would just have to try and think like him.
The kids weren't likely to trust him anytime soon, and if they'd ever trusted anyone but one another he would be surprised. At least they had that much, or at least as long as the little one had been around. There had been a split second when the mutated Nibel wolf had lunged into the mouth of the cave, where he'd seen S cradling C in his lap, one hand buried in his hair. If he knew more about them, what they'd been through, what they were capable of it would help, but Vanget's notes were mostly illegible and incomplete besides.
It gave him a little bit of hope that he could salvage this, salvage them as children and as people. He didn't care what the troopers said, it didn't matter if they'd been born through some fucked up artificial means - they were still kids. If he wanted any chance of helping them… Right, think like a twisty almost Turk.
He rolled onto his back, scooting down to put his toes under the bottom of the shitty couch that he'd probably see if he could get replaced - he'd not once sat on it, it stank of the cheap liquor that had apparently killed the merc who'd used it last. But it was a stable spot to stick his feet while he did sit-ups, and he'd existed in worse places without complaining too much.
He didn't count his reps, just intended to keep going until he'd finally worn his body out enough to rest - a couple of hours, maybe, as he considered things.
The main problem, which he loathed the idea of but knew it was the first barrier to get what he wanted, was that he needed the people in charge here to trust him. They'd trusted Vanget enough that he got leave to go to town and get drunk, or at least to go out and get food and buy his own bottles to bring back. Clearly, they seemed to be trying to avoid that with him, as he was confined to the basement while the scientists and their minions were allowed into the mansion proper to eat and sleep at night. He wasn't certain Professor Hojo slept, maybe just hung upside down from the ceiling of his lab like the greasy ghoul he was. Joel had carefully lurked around the night before, and the man hadn't gone upstairs until near dawn, and was back at work and seemingly rested if not well groomed within a couple of hours.
That could be a weakness - the man had to be taking some kind of stimulants, caffeine wouldn't get you that alert. Likely something he'd concocted himself. Like a lot of street dealers, it would be easiest to get it from his own supply. He'd seen drugs turn good men into monsters, what the hell did it do to men who were already monstrous? He didn't want to find out.
Doc Ballard was clearly a sadist, and probably even one he needed to watch closer than Hojo - there was a difference between enjoying someone else's misery versus a person who was indifferent to it.
So, getting these bastards to trust him was the first thing he had to do. He had to seem above reproach enough to get at least a foot out the door once in awhile - fuck it would take months, maybe a year or more before he might not get his every move watched and catalogued, but he had that time, he was pretty sure. The kids weren't old enough to throw into the army, yet - he could stretch it out until S was fourteen, maybe sixteen if he was careful.
S was tall for his age, and C about average for his. It wouldn't be hard to put down that S was older, if he kept growing as tall as he estimated. He didn't think they'd let Joel wait til the kid was legally an adult, not with Shinra just happening to lower the enlistment age to fourteen a few months ago. Not a coincidence.
He grimaced at the secondary problem of C, who was just about shy of four apparently. That would make him eight or nine when S might get thrown to the wolves, and the thought of getting one kid out and leaving the even more vulnerable one behind was probably going to give him nightmares. No, he was getting that kid into a training harness tomorrow - the leather straps and weights were ready to go for both of them, even though S hadn't ended up using them at all. He'd get him into armor, impress the fuckers so much with how fast C learned - and he would, Joel knew a natural when he saw one.
Four, maybe five years, it was doable. Especially if he could get word to his friends even halfway through that, to get other minds on the problem. But first it was to gain trust, if he had to get the bastards to think he's just as much of a monster as they are so be it - the kids would learn differently, and that's all that mattered.
His boot scraped the bottom of the couch when he pulled his feet out, bits of wood and stuffing spilling out, and something further back, something heavy, thumped to the floor with a cracking sound. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, and picked the piece of furniture up by the corner to peer underneath.
It was unsurprisingly filthy under there, a couple of dirty socks and the broken remains of a bottle. But also, mingled with the shards of glass and dirt, was a wad of papers that were covered in scratchy writing all held together by the pen clipped onto them. The cap and barrel of the pen were covered in teeth marks, and the pen itself was empty of ink. The papers stank of the liquor bottle they'd been wrapped around.
With a foreboding feeling, Joel left them there for the moment, sticking to the routine of the day before - workout finished, he hit the shower that the four troopers used just off of their miniature barracks. Two were already asleep, one snoring faintly and the other wearing a pair of headphones with some sort of white noise shushing loudly from a tape player. To block out the snoring, Joel supposed. The other two were on the night shift, one patrolling the halls and one outside.
He turned out the overhead light, waiting until the patrol outside walked past before getting back on the floor to fetch the obviously hidden papers that he hoped might be worth something. Whether it was Vanget's or some predecessor's, any information would help.
He was probably being paranoid, but then who the fuck knew? There weren't cameras in his room, he'd checked already before he'd gone out this morning and when he'd returned. They didn't trust him, but he wasn't under constant surveillance either. It took a bit for his night vision to improve once the light was out, but the outside light coming from beneath the door that had irritated him the night before was helpful now.
Vanget's handwriting was only slightly easier to read here than it had been in his official reports, but only barely.
'To the miserable fuck taking my place, congradu-fucking-lations - that's sarcasm if you're an idiot.'
That… wasn't what he was expecting.
'They think I'm stupid, and I let them.' that was underlined so hard the paper was creased, 'You should too! Act dumb as a rock and all you think about is drinking, whoring, and fighting. Way better to be stupid than smart down here - too smart gets you stuck in a cage cause you ask questions they don't like. I sure as hell was stupid taking this job. Money wasn't even that good, I just didn't feel like retiring after I destroyed my ACL and I dunno what they told you they were hiring you for but it obviously ain't what they said. They told me I was training a rich guy's kid who was going to officer school - then they dropped a toddler in my lap and said to make him into a killer. Didn't even sugar coat it. Said they wanted him to be a swordsman, and I was supposed to make him the best. I've never been the best at anything, don't know why they thought I'd get him to do better but he's already better than I ever was.'
Joel sucked in a short breath and let it out very slowly. At least he'd been told he was teaching SOLDIERS, but then…
What had the kid said earlier? 'my early treatments were the template for the SOLDIER program'
Fuck.
He lowered his head and began to read again, forcibly putting aside that horror for later after he'd learned what he could and burned the damned evidence. This was definitely something they wouldn't want him to see.
'That was bad enough - kids are smart, too smart, whatever it is they pump into them makes them older in the head or something I think. Not like we have conversations or anything, but even the little one knows words I never knew at that age, and S talks like the scientists himself, so I don't know what they know as far as that goes.'
'I don't know where they got S or how old he was when they got him - the grunts have a stupid ass conspiracy theory that they made him in a petri-dish and grew him in a Mako tank but that's bullshit because they got the little one from the town and no one ever down there ever checked what happened to him or gave a shit.'
'He looks so much like his damned mama and that's driven me to drink more than I did already. I knew her, Claudia Strife - she worked at the Nidhogg. Barmaid in the evening and well… upstairs at night. Sweet girl, got stuck with her asshole grandad's debts and was just trying to make a living but you can't make that kind of living when you got a baby coming and… I dunno what happened after that - she stopped working the upstairs when she got showing, and then stopped coming in at all. I didn't ever ask, and I feel like shit about it but fuck when they dropped another godsdamned BABY on the mats and told him to hurry up and get this one ready even faster…'
'I can't do it anymore, I can't live like this. I'm a bastard through and through and I can't even say I tried - I'm an asshole and I took it out on them, cause they were what stuck me here and I hate myself. '
'Don't get attached but maybe don't be like me and be mean to them. Be better than me, shouldn't be too hard. But whatever you do, don't get attached. That's the death sentence - I seen it more than once, two nurses when S was real little were too nice to him and they disappeared, and the day they brought C in, two more who'd been wanting out ended up in the cages in the back and they never came out alive.'
The letters got shakier, the ink lighter as it began to run out.
'Don't be like me' was underlined.
'Don't be like the white coats' was underlined twice.
'Do a better job, and survive to get the fuck out one day'
The final words were more imprint than ink: 'Or take the cowards way out like I am'
This is the first fic I've written that has an OC as a character who is so much a part of the story and I'd love to hear your thoughts about him please?