Notes:

Another one already?! This is a result of getting so many comments and Kudos on AO3 You have no idea how much those comments have been absolutely fueling me, words are going so well and I have to thank them all so much for their encouragement!

Also the power went out while I wrote this and I used the last of my laptop battery to finish it and then posted it using my phones wifi

The air was oddly cold on the back of Sephiroth's neck, his hair recently shorn to only a few inches long so that it wouldn't get in the way. He'd kept getting it caught on the straps of his uniform, the strands sticking to his sweaty face and distracting him. Cloud's had been cut to match, having reached his shoulders and tending to fluff up in little waves when it wasn't tied back. It had become more unruly and unprofessional looking after it was cut than it had been before, much to the Professor's annoyance, and so his had been clipped close to his head the same as the infantrymen.

He sat on the edge of the examination table, his feet dangling several inches from the floor. He looked down and wondered if he would ever be so tall that his toes would touch the floor from where he perched, although that seemed he would need to grow a great deal. His whole body already ached in a distant way, joints strained as he had grown nearly three inches taller in the last six months. Specifically, the six months since SOLDIER Krono had insisted he and Cloud begin to eat the infantry's rations.

The professor was pleased by their progress - Cloud had grown as well, although not as quickly as Sephiroth. He had heard Hojo and Ballard speaking of it, that it was 'excellent progress' that was slightly above average for a four year old. Or, as far as they understood, Cloud's presumed age of approximately four. Only Sephiroth knew the day that the little boy had been born, from the stitching on the blanket he had hidden away.

He stared hard at the bank of cabinets, the sink's faucet dripping slowly and making a soft plinking sound with every drop as it hit the metal surface and slid down the drain. The bottom right drawer was the one where he had hidden the little blanket, and he wasn't certain whether anyone had found and disposed of it. The paper gowns piled in front of it had never been used - case in point that he was sitting on the table wearing nothing but his shorts as he waited for his latest physical to begin.

The door was wide open, and he glanced at it speculatively before deciding it wasn't worth the possibility of punishment just to be disappointed when he saw that it had been thrown out. It was more likely that one of the techs or assistants would have been reprimanded for it - if they had known Sephiroth to be the culprit, he would have been certain to be corrected the moment it had been discovered.

Sephiroth had no intention of misbehaving in the least little way, steeling himself for the painful procedures that always ended his monthly physical - the neuro-pinwheel covered in small spikes wasn't his least least favorite of all the tools that Professor Hojo and Doctor Rivers had in their repertoire, but it was one he dreaded in particular.

He would be still, he would be good and not flinch, and they would have no reason to forbid the survival training that Krono had slotted into their schedule two weeks ago. It wasn't just that it was something novel and therefore interesting - it was because they were going to leave the laboratory for the duration of several days to test themselves against the elements and the mountain's dangerous flora and fauna. He and Cloud had not been permitted to leave the complex since the previous mission that had granted Sephiroth the title of SOLDIER Third Class and Cloud officially a SOLDIER Cadet.

A strange feeling in the back of his head made him whip his gaze up from where it had drifted to the tile floor, wishing he could see directly through the wall ahead of him and into the other examination room. A sick feeling sank deep into his stomach, and he could feel his skin flush and pale in turns.

Cloud's physical always took place before his now, whereas it had been the opposite for the first three years or so. Cloud's progress was consistently measured against Sephiroth's own, particularly so since they had tested their techniques upon him in the first place and thus could refine them upon the smaller boy.

It was often a very bad thing when the order of things changed, when schedules were upset it either meant something had gone wrong and disrupted the scientists research in one way or another - although neither of them had been punished for whatever had changed and thus it might have nothing to do with them.

They weren't the only subjects of the scientists' research, although they were the primary focus of Professor Hojo in particular. There was also something, or someone, called Subject J, but its 'body mass' as Hojo called it resided in the larger laboratory in Midgar. He regularly had samples brought in and tested them on animals and monsters. The research on those samples took place more and more often as Sephiroth and Cloud had slowly been given over more to physical training.

Sephiroth wasn't certain if he should be relieved or not, when it had happened so often that the doctors decided to meld two experiments together with painful results. He had seen the remains of mutated creatures when they were being transported from specimen cages to be taken for necropsy… He'd had more than one restless night of nightmares of what would happen if Hojo had decided to try it on him, or worse, Cloud.

But nothing drastic had happened when they'd rotated the physical exams to put Cloud's first, only a very strange series of questions that became easier and easier to answer to the Professor's satisfaction. They didn't make sense, in any logical way, and yet somehow he did know what he was being asked.

He knew at what time Cloud's examination had begun, he knew at what moments blood had been taken, when his reflexes were tested, and last month he had known down to each second what type of pain Cloud had been in when they did the tolerance tests.

Whatever it was that gave him this information had intensified the day he had been sent to find Cloud on Mt Nibel, and he had thought a great deal more upon what Professor Hojo had said that day. He had told Sephiroth to reach out to Cloud, to think about how frightened and alone he was, and Sephiroth had somehow known where Cloud was and how he'd felt. He'd lost time, which was always terrifying. He hated losing consciousness when he wasn't expecting it. He always preferred to know when he was going to be sedated beforehand, if only so he wouldn't struggle and waste the doctors' time and chemicals.

Sephiroth knew without a shadow of a doubt that Cloud was afraid now, and in pain, and Sephiroth suddenly had the worry that Cloud would accidentally behave badly and be left behind for the exercise. Sephiroth could readily remember being so much smaller, so much less expert at hiding such things from the scientists, but he had hopes that Cloud would learn faster with his example to lead him by.

He wished it was like when Cloud was even smaller, even just a year ago he would be sitting beside him and their hands might touch so he could remind Cloud he was there and that he would be alright. The feeling in the back of his head spread to his neck, trickling down his spine and through his nerves and into his fingertips. His eyes fell half closed as he felt that odd sensation twitch in his hands in a way it had only plucked at his brain before.

Professor Hojo had said to reach out, to find Cloud through his fear, could he do that now? What if he could do more than find him? That was part of the questions he would be asked later, so maybe it would be alright if he tried to focus upon them before they came to ask them?

He pictured Cloud sitting on the edge of his own table, feet pressed together to keep from kicking out instinctively as the little metal roller ran along the inside of his arm and into the crook of his elbow. Sephiroth flinched suddenly, as though the metal had bitten into his own skin, and his eyes flew open as he glanced at the camera trained on the table and then darted a look around the room to see if he had been noticed doing something so foolish.

What was that? It was… he frowned and closed his eyes again. If he could feel something Cloud was feeling, if this were not some flight of fancy or imagination - which Sephiroth was not well versed in attempting such whimsical things that Cloud hadn't yet grown out of… What else could it be?

If he could feel Cloud, could Cloud feel him?

If he were beside Cloud now, he would reach down with his hand on the table between them as he'd done so many times - touch their little fingers together just a tiny bit so that Cloud knew he was right there, giving him something to focus on. When Cloud had been even smaller he'd been able to hold his hand more openly, and the Professor and Doctor Rivers had encouraged it so that Cloud could learn faster.

Maybe it was just a visualization exercise, maybe it was only to make himself feel better, but Sephiroth imagined how Cloud's little hand would feel in his. Fingers curled around one another's, with Sephiroth giving him a reassuring squeeze. He would be calm and at ease for both of them, if he could.

He felt the fingers of his left hand shift, imagining it so hard that his hand felt warm as he wished it held Cloud's and his whole arm felt odd and tingly. It was a bit like when he'd woken with it trapped beneath him awkwardly and it had been numb with pins and needles. It didn't hurt, necessarily, but it was an odd and foreign sensation.

The numbness flowed back up his arm and seemed to ooze through his whole body, and for a very brief moment the darkness behind his eyelids swam into lights and shapes of the examination room - but different, just slightly. The tray of needles and tools was on his left rather than his right, and the hand that Rivers grasped and held in her own was oddly too small. He watched, with a detached sort of fascination, as she manipulated the wrist a bit and then turned the little hand palm up.

He felt sweat slick his palms felt himself curl his fingers in reaction, but the hand Rivers held was still and didn't tremble as much as it might have. Cloud was afraid, and even Sephiroth felt fear every time this part of the examination happened, even though he knew what was coming. He'd always hid it so well, especially hidden from Cloud so that he wouldn't be even more scared by the fact that it would happen to him next. He pressed his lips together, swallowed, and tried to 'reach out' even more. He wasn't certain what he was doing, but if it worked.

The fear Cloud felt drifted away, and he felt it as if he were the one sitting in Cloud's body when the muscles of his tense shoulders relaxed, when even the tiny tremble in Cloud's hand ceased… He watched as Rivers pressed the needle into Cloud's… their fingers and palm, and she frowned slightly and did it again, a little bit harder.

Her lips moved but he, they, couldn't read the words shaped or hear her voice. They did hear crisp footsteps outside in the hallway, and heard the door open. Hojo walked in front of them, a pen light coming up and shining directly into their eyes.

Sephiroth gasped in a deep breath, head coming up and eyes opening wide to find Professor Hojo's face inches from his own. His own fear that he had suppressed rose sharply in him, and he felt warmth drain from his cheeks as a wave of weak dizziness made him sway backwards before he managed to catch himself. The exercise was certain to be canceled now, or perhaps only Cloud would be going - clearly Sephiroth had done something terribly wrong. He had entirely missed the presence of the professor, somehow, and failing to pay attention to his surroundings was-

"Excellent," Hojo's lips twisted upward at the corners, interrupting Sephiroth's racing thoughts, "absolutely fascinating. Let's try that again, shall we, Subject S?"

The tape recorder in the Professor's hand hummed as he spoke into it, dictating the date and time quickly, "Project Squire, experiment concurrent with Project S-01, progresses once more in leaps and bounds."

It was Ballard, ironically, that ended up being the one to allow Joel to leave the mansion after only a couple of weeks - although he didn't dare attempt to try and elope down to the village for even a few minutes. The man's guard hound had begun to get a little neurotic trapped inside for so long and he'd ordered Joel to do something about it. The troopers were afraid of the thing, for obvious reasons. They weren't normal dogs anymore than SOLDIERS were normal humans. The enhanced animals required special handling, and neither of the men were qualified. Not that Joel was, technically, but he could also control the creature and keep it from bolting if it decided to.

There wasn't enough space for it to run down there, and the short trip up and down the staircase a couple of times a day wasn't anywhere near enough. Like the children when he needed to adjust their equipment, the poor animal had gone motionless the first time he'd clipped the lead onto its collar. It hadn't quite cringed into the corner of the freight elevator as he took it up to get some exercise the first time, but it had been clearly afraid of him.

He hated that the kids were better at hiding that. Hated that they were still so wary of him. Hated that they had good reasons to do so, based on everything they'd been through.

The hound didn't quite seem to know what to do when he'd taken it outside and taken it off the lead. Working animals didn't belong kept in close quarters without doing the job they were bred and trained to do. It was the same thing as trying to confine a chocobo herder to a Midgar apartment, and it always annoyed the hell out of him.

Joel himself was also not designed to sit inside and get the minimum amount of exercise he could manage using the bare bones equipment and his own body weight exercises. So, he'd begun to volunteer to take the animal out, letting it run alongside him as he jogged and climbed up various trails and animal tracks between the mansion and the reactor on the mountain. Never the same route every day, but making certain the guard on rotation could see him for most of it if he bothered to look.

He had a fairly good mental map of the entire area, which animal trails were old and which were in use by normal fauna and monsters alike. He used the latter for combat practice, and set the hound to hunting them alongside him - the poor beast was far more calm and content when it was brought back inside, the way Ballard acted you'd think the whole thing was his idea when he'd just got annoyed with the hound twitching at every sound and whining a great deal.

After his run, Joel was pleasantly winded, thigh muscles aching from a headlong jog down the mountain just for the hell of it. The hound, who'd had a number imprinted on its collar in place of a name, had been quietly dubbed Scramble, and it answered to its new name as easily as the hand signals all guard hounds were taught for infiltration work. It bounded excitedly around him as he slowed to a stop, taking a long drink from his canteen and pouring some into his palm for it to lap up. It looked up at him longingly, wanting to show affection as it was never allowed in anyone else's sight, but he petted its head, scratching around the base of the heat sensing tentacle atop it and making it whine and shudder with pleasure - it was too sensitive to scratch at itself, the result of selectively breeding blood-tastes with the most intelligent tracking dogs.

"Alright pup, time to put your manners back on," he muttered, and Scramble obediently complied as he reattached its lead and it once more became a working dog rather than his jogging buddy.

The trail he'd taken up and down this time was more about reconnaissance than just enjoyment, plotting the course he planned to take the boys on in the morning. The path was crossed by a narrow game trail as well as passing near a stream that was slower and deeper than the others in the area. Swift moving water needed special equipment, and he intended to pack as little equipment as possible.

He gave Scramble one more pat, telling it what a good hound it was as they passed through the back gate. He nodded at the trooper making his regular trek around the outside of the mansion as he slipped inside and made his way to the freight elevator and punched in the pass-code.

The troopers' rounds were entirely, abysmally, predictable, and in an ordinary situation Joel would have corrected it. As it was, knowing where every guard would be at every moment of the day and night was useful, so he let them keep their incompetence in place in the event he might need to use it.

As much as he wanted to check on the boys, as much as he wanted to protect them from every horror down here, he had to keep his head up and eyes forward as he had to pass by the open doors that led into the lab and skirted around it to clean himself up - and the hound, whose fur was covered in bits of dried grass and bits of fallen leaves that it had picked up on their run. There were a great deal of things Joel was forced to 'get used to' if that was even the right term for it. He felt helpless, knowing that there were things done to S and C that he couldn't even fathom being done to an adult let alone two small children. He'd been correct in his assessment of their status as somewhat akin to prisoners of war.

Everything about their lives was controlled and regimented, every moment from the time they awoke until they were allowed to sleep was filled with grueling tests both scientific as well as psychological. They'd never had any power over their lives, and it was clear that they had been forced to lear to cope with the things done to them in their own ways. They were used to punishment for the slightest infraction, including showing any emotion or discomfort during and after said punishment. Collective punishment was against company policy for the military, and yet the children took it as a matter of course that both would be taken to task for something one or the other did.

Joel wasn't even privy to what must be the worst of it, the things they went through 'in the name of science'. Hojo had sneered that it 'wasn't a spectator sport' when Joel had tentatively inquired, and kicked him out before he could try to learn anything that might help.

Getting information directly from them was like pulling teeth, both boys were wary of him from the very start - and who could blame them? From what he'd learned from Vanget's notes and observation, they'd had literally no-one to trust but one another. They rarely spoke in general, and almost never to him unless he'd asked them a question. He encouraged them to speak and ask him anything they wanted, but he'd had very little luck. He had at least a small amount of home that getting them outside and away from the incessant surveillance of the laboratory's cameras would do them some good in that direction.

Over the last few months, Joel had quickly come to determine that the more grueling and arduous he made an exercise sound - the more likely he was to get permission to have the kids perform it. He was cold and clinical in his weekly assessments, overly critical in front of Hojo, sarcastic and biting in front of Ballard. Rivers didn't give a fuck how he worded things, far more interested in watching silently and then taking notes whenever she decided to walk into the training room with measuring tape and calipers to record muscle definition and body fat.

Even Ballard had grudgingly agreed that the change in their diet had done the boys incredibly well, both of them putting on a great deal of lean muscle and with more energy than they'd previously had. Nutritionally adequate my ass, he'd thought more than once but hadn't said so. Competent and deferential had become Joel's watchwords, pretending that the out of shape scientists had any opinion that mattered on fitness and training regimens beyond the medical aspect of the results themselves.

They'd agreed almost immediately when Joel had explained his intentions and shown them the very small amount of gear the boys would be allowed. C wasn't quite ready to actually wear the heavy shoulder armor, but he could wear the rest of it well enough. He was doing well, much better than Joel had as a cadet at sixteen, and he wondered again what the boys had been through that made them just as, if not more enhanced than any of the other Thirds. S was certainly pushing into Second Class territory with his skills and strength, and Joel thought that his speed was only hampered by the situation he found himself in.

Like Scramble, the boys just needed more room to grow into instead of being stifled in tiny rooms with painfully contained lives. Joel still had hope he could help them.

That hope burned inside of him as he laid out what he would need for their little training mission, the absolute minimum of survival gear. One knife, one multi-tool, three fish hooks and a few yards worth of fishing wire, and a hank of paracord. More than enough for them to get comfortable for about a week. He had fond memories of his own wilderness training, and his Cadet squad had grown closer in those few days than they had in all the weeks of boot camp that came before it. It was where their bonds had been forged, where they'd really become SOLDIERS in a way that mattered more than anything that had come before, or even after, really. He wanted to grow closer to the boys, who were quickly in his own mind becoming 'his boys'. He needed them to know he cared, that he wanted to help, even if he couldn't yet explicitly say so.

He'd thought when he'd begun that he'd want to keep them out of battle and away from the increasingly inevitable conflict with Rhadore and Wutai as long as possible. Now he realized that a battlefield was, in its own fucked up and bloody way, less harrowing than the world of Mako and needles they lived in now.

Sephiroth lay quietly in bed, counting his breaths silently as he tried to relax all of his muscles a bit at a time. Krono had instructed them to try it, explaining that this was how both SOLDIERS and infantrymen were trained to sleep when they the next day was uncertain, or even needing to sleep in shifts while the ones on watch had to move about and make some amount of noise.

He did his best to relax his body and still his mind, but his thoughts kept shifting back to the exact way that Krono had spoken, not of their 'fellow SOLDIERS' as he might have - but he had said 'your brothers'.

He kept turning the word over and over in his mind, something he'd never thought of. When he had said that, Krono had looked from Sephiroth, to Cloud with one of those slow and serious nods that made him pay close attention. It was stupid, both those little nods had become everything to him - more so than any praise he'd been offered by Professor Hojo or any of the doctors and researchers who had said he'd done well.

As much as he admitted he craved that validation, he was just as terrified of the want.

He leaned up on one elbow and peered across the room. The red numbers on their alarm clock had seemed to get brighter and brighter over the years, which he'd realized was due to the enhancement process rather than the electronics. His eyes were more sensitive, and he could see so much more clearly in the dark than he had before.

Cloud's chest rose and fell more evenly than his own had, blond eyelashes fluttering on pale cheeks as he slept. At least he would be rested for the morning, which would come much sooner than usual, and sooner than Sephiroth preferred.

The glaring digital numbers refused to turn backward, showing he had less than five hours until Krono would come to fetch them at 0400 instead of the usual 0500 he was used to.

He laid back down and began the exercise of relaxing and breathing all over again. Pushing aside thoughts of brothers, of whether Cloud could be called anything less than that, and worse - did Krono count as a brother as well as a SOLDIER?

And if Krono was something like a brother, if the SOLDIERS were a kind of family, what did that mean for Cloud and himself? Would the other SOLDIERS accept them? Professor Hojo insisted that they would have to obey him, and that Sephiroth was going to one day be in command of all of Shinra's armed forces, but that was certainly at least a decade away, wasn't it? He would only be twelve in December, after all. You couldn't even technically enlist until you were fourteen years old, but Hojo had waved that off and said that Sephiroth would always be an exception, and that Cloud would need to be ready before then - which had given him a wave of relief that he had almost shamed himself by showing. Whenever Krono decided that Sephiroth was ready to join SOLDIER, so would Cloud.

Krono was different though, he was in command over them, at least for now, and Sephiroth was more and more grateful for his presence. It hadn't taken long for him, and Cloud as well, to begin looking forward to each session of their training, where it had been something of a mixed feeling when they'd been learning under the mercenary who had been teaching Sephiroth since he was younger than Cloud was now.

Their training had also begun to take up more and more of their time. Their progress was being recorded and measured, the scientists or their assistants taking notes and measurements. Doctor Rivers had even requisitioned a video camera that balanced on her shoulder, the cassette tape recording their practice bouts and katas both.

He had almost never been so excited to move from lab to training room before Krono had taken over. Even when he'd been anticipating learning, there had always been an edge of anxiety that he would disappoint Vanget, or that the mercenary would come up with some reason his performance was less than optimal. Cloud had seemed to distract him when he was first brought in to begin his training, and even though he'd fetched one of the infantrymen to begin his lessons in falling and rolling and avoiding being hit the man had been strange afterward.

Sephiroth could only assume that was a result of the addiction that had killed him, and Professor Hojo had sat him down with Cloud and explained all the dangers of such substances and forbade them from ever even considering attempting it. Not that Sephiroth would have ever wanted to in the first place - it made you slow, and unfocused, it also seemed to affect your mood for the worst which seemed to him the opposite of something you would do for enjoyment in the first place. In the second place, liquor smelled terrible and he could only imagine how it tasted.

He huffed out a breath and shoved all of that aside again. Sephiroth was better than this, he reminded himself. He was in control of his body and his reactions. Why was sleeping so difficult when he was having to think about it rather than just being tired in a normal way? It felt as though his frustration was what sucked him under, leaving him wandering in dreams of being alone outside the mansion's huge iron gates, and desperately wanting to get back in for some reason he couldn't understand.

Morning came just as quickly as he feared as he woke not to an alarm but to a large hand patting his shoulder. His confusion as to where Krono stood in his regard did not abate when he somehow couldn't manage not to mirror Cloud's tiny smile as they scrambled into their clothing and armor. When Krono noticed, there was no chastisement, just another of those wordless acknowledgments, and Sephiroth tried to push his trepidation aside as they stepped out into the hallway.

He didn't know why he kept having to remind himself that trusting anyone other than Cloud had never gone well.

Notes:

Let me know how you like this one! I love you all thank you so much for reading!