Sephiroth sat, motionless and quiet, on the examination table beside Cloud. The three year old liked to fidget and tap his fingers together and kick his chubby legs back and forth where they dangled off the table. He routinely earned punishments for it, and Sephiroth was spending a great deal of time lately trying to train it out of the little boy. He edged his hand closer to the much smaller one beside his, tapping his littlest finger against Cloud's. Pink lips turned down in a small frown but he felt relief rush through him as Cloud obediently stopped.

"Sorry," Cloud said in a nearly silent breath of a whisper that Sephiroth didn't think anyone else could hear - but his lips moving could still give it away. Luckily, everyone in the lab seemed incredibly busy, more so than usual for a Tuesday. Nothing happened on Tuesdays, except self study for Sephiroth and polishing his reading comprehension and writing for Cloud.

His letters were always a little too big and they'd started giving him smaller paper with even smaller lines to force him to write more precisely. He was about six months behind where Sephiroth had been at that age - which apparently was still very good compared to ordinary children who wouldn't be able to do the same at all.

Cloud brushed his hair back out of his face, the golden strands gleaming with a metallic sheen in the bright overhead lights, much like the silver of Sephiroth's own. Instead of falling smoothly down Cloud's back, however, it tended to float around his head like the halo he'd once seen in a photo of a church window, glowing around the head of the Goddess Minerva.

Doctor Ballard stepped briskly into the room and glanced towards where the two boys sat. He snapped his fingers twice, pointing at the floor beside himself, which was Cloud's cue to climb down from the table and follow him. Sephiroth could see the little twitch of Cloud's shoulders as he struggled, and succeeded, in not looking back before being led out of the room. Ballard gave Sephiroth a strange, expectant, almost… excited look before he closed the door. Sephiroth could hear the lock click into place and frowned, wondering why he'd been locked in. He stayed where he'd been put through, head lowering to hide his eyes behind his bangs and giving a covert glance at the camera trained on the table. He was to stay here, he understood, and not move. If he tried to open the door, he'd be corrected . He was left there for a reason, even if it wasn't explained.

The clock on the wall was directly ahead of him and Sephiroth stared at it, watching minutes tick by as he sat as still as possible. He tried to pass the time by reciting the periodic table of elements in his head, then his times tables to refresh himself on it since Cloud was going to start working on that soon and Sephiroth hadn't had to think about them himself in a long time.

Cloud…

Sephiroth didn't like Ballard. Sometimes he liked him less than Professor Hojo. He trained Cloud in the exact same way he treated the guard hound he'd brought with him from Midgar. Clicking his fingers and pointing at where he wanted Cloud to go and what he wanted him to do. He'd tried to do the same to Sephiroth when he'd originally come, and he had suffered silently through a great many corrections until Hojo finally got tired of the man's attempts and told him to 'focus on Subject C if he was going to have any success in that sort of conditioning experiment.'

He never said so to Cloud, because it would only cause trouble for them both, but Sephiroth hated it when Cloud jumped immediately to obey when he heard the clicking. One click meant stop whatever he was doing, two was 'come here', a click and a slap against Ballard's thigh was something new he was doing that made Cloud run to wherever he was pointed to go. It made something sick and hot swell up in Sephiroth's chest, and it kept getting stronger and hotter and harder to tamp down every time it happened.

Cloud…

He wondered where Ballard had taken him. Sephiroth glanced at the clock again, surprised that almost two hours had passed and no one had come to get him for his lessons. He was halfway through a program on the geography of Wutai and he was to take an exam on the types of animals and monsters that inhabited the islands and coastline and how best to hunt and kill them.

It was Tuesday , nothing was supposed to happen on Tuesdays. Nothing upset the routine unless things had gone very wrong - like if one of the experiments in another part of the lab had escaped or injured someone. What if something had happened to Cloud ?

There was a strange feeling in his head, suddenly, and his hands balled into fists as he tried to control the sudden increase in his breathing and pulse. It felt like he was running on a treadmill, racing so fast with the incline as high as it would go, like he'd fall and slam his face into the console and break his nose the way he'd done last year.

His thoughts snapped back to Ballard again, to the strange little smile that never quite left his face unless he wasn't being instantly obeyed by whoever he'd ordered around. Sephiroth hadn't ever struck one of the doctors or researchers on purpose , not unless he was hitting the mitts as directed by his hand-to-hand trainer, but he worried that one day he might not be able to hold himself back. What punishment would he earn if he used some of his physical training on Doctor Ballard? At ten years old he was nearly as tall as the man was, and more fit and muscular. What if he punched him in the face? What if he kicked his knee in and snapped it? What if Sephiroth tackled the doctor to the ground and put his hands around the man's neck and they'd have to try to drag him off of him before he could rip out hi-.

Sephiroth wrapped his arms around himself, teeth gritted together, a wave of dizziness passing through him. He felt cold, suddenly, the sweat he'd not realized had broken out all over his body, chilling and congealing beneath his scrubs as he began to shiver. A sound he tried to swallow down growled deep in his chest as his fingernails dug into his arms…

The pen in Professor Hojo's hand scribbled quickly across his notepad, the letters slanting upward out of the confines of the paper's neat lines - unwilling to look away from the screen that showed Subject S in examination room B. Another small television was set up beside the one his eyes were locked on and while he glanced at it from time to time, he was far more interested in his primary Subject's response to the procedure being performed in room A.

"Hnm," Subject S whimpered, head snapping up to stare at the locked door. S almost never gave any physical cues to show pain or distress, let alone verbal. It was unprecedented in the last year, especially, for him to react to painful stimuli inflicted upon himself, in fact. But a shudder ran all through the older boy's body now, blood welling up around the gouges he was tearing into his arms. S slumped to the side, curling his knees up against his chest, his eyes wide and unfocused.

Hojo turned his attention to the other screen where Subject C lay on his own table, his breathing coming quick and an expression of confusion on his pale face as another vial of his blood was set aside in a tray. The volume of blood that had been taken was being replaced at an equal rate. Each injection of red S-Cells was mixed with a small but visibly luminous dose of Mako.

The effects of Reunion had been subtly growing over the last two years, both subjects gravitating to one another for more than mere companionship. When out of Subject S' sight, Subject C could occasionally be found staring off with a dazed expression in the precise direction of S' location. Left to his own devices, C would attempt to go to wherever S was located and if restrained from doing so became mildly agitated. He could focus when directed, and keep his attention upon his lessons and the beginning stages of his physical training, he only drifted when given nothing in particular to accomplish. Well, Subject S would give him plenty to do when the time came.

Doctor Rivers had posited the night before, over dinner, that the S-Cell therapy might take more significantly after a blood draw or after C's weekly Mako injections. It had been a very interesting thought and combining the two ideas was easy enough to accomplish. It seemed that something was definitely happening, as both Subjects reactions to the procedure were entirely out of their usual behavior.

Hojo's original hypothesis was that anyone with enough S-Cells in their body would desire to be near the primary Subject, and hopefully be influenced by the connection to obey any order given to them by Subject S. Ted Michaels, the erstwhile research assistant who'd tried to transfer out of Hojo's program after his acquisition of C had been made part of the experiment himself. He had become so agitated he'd needed to be put down after only a few months. Michaels had begged to be released, not to be let go, but to find Subject S. When questioned as to his motives, the man had no coherent answer other than he 'needed him' and 'couldn't breathe without him.' He'd eventually refused to eat or drink when his demands were rebuffed.

Subject S hadn't seemed to notice at all, however, unlike his reactions to the gradual genetic modifications in the younger boy. Unlike with the adult, the connection, at least as it pertained to Subject C, ran in both directions. Especially promising was that although S seemed disinclined to do as C suggested, C couldn't deny anything S required of him - as shown two hours previously when C had been wordlessly ordered to stop moving.

Without S' command, C would have inevitably become restless in minutes and continued to fidget. As it was, he lay still now even in distress and discomfort. The effect would wear off, usually after another hour or so would pass, but after this new experiment he would be monitored much more closely to see how long it lasted.

Hojo turned his attention again to Subject S, the boy's gaze slowly moving from the door to the precise direction in which C was being held. Fascinating. There were so many implications, so many applications , where this could become useful in the field. SOLDIERs may not be able to disobey a command from S, once the conflict with Wutai flared to life in the next few years. He chuckled softly. President Shinra genuinely believed that the Cetra 'Promised Land' might be found in the island nation. It was only a matter of time before his greed caused him to come into armed conflict with the stubborn Emperor Godo who refused to allow any official Shinra expedition to ransack his country's holy sites.

War captives would make such interesting and useful subjects…

"Professor?" Rivers appeared in the doorway, leaning halfway into the observation room, "You're going to want to see this!"

He snatched up his notepad and tucked his pen into the pocket of his lab coat and hurried after the woman into the examination room. Ballard had a pen light in his hand, flashing it intermittently into Subject C's left eye. The boy's chest was rising and falling more rapidly, hands clenching and unclenching as he weakly struggled to move away from the latex gloved hand holding his chin. He clearly wanted to seek out Subject S' location, biting his lips and whimpering. C's skin was pale from the sheer volume of blood drawn, just barely below the level where it might become dangerous, and Hojo wondered what he might be capable of if let loose. Would he fling himself from the table and drag his body across the floor?

"I didn't actually expect this to occur," Ballard muttered, incredulously, handing the pen light to Hojo and motioning towards C's face, "but it is happening. This should be physiologically impossible , sir."

Hojo leaned over and turned C's face toward himself. He flashed the light over the boy's eyes, glowing even more brightly than usual with the six consecutive injections of Mako he'd been given. A ring of green surrounded the outside edge of his irises, visibly bleeding into the bright blue and subsuming the original color.

As the light moved over the boy's eyes and receded, the dark pupils shifted - dilated round in the normal overhead light and then pinning as the brighter light flashed into them - not just smaller but misshapen. A sharp sound of discomfort whined out of the Subject's throat and tears sprung up in his eyes to spill down his temples as they watched, elation burning in Hojo's chest as C scrunched his face up in pain and closed his eyes tightly.

When they opened, the transformation seemed to be complete, his eyes almost completely the same shade of green as Subject S'. The original blue was present in tiny flecks around the now slit pupils that turned oval when the bright light was taken away rather than returning to the normal human shape he'd been born with.

Those fascinating eyes rolled back, Subject C's body going limp from exhaustion and blood loss. The mutation must have been extremely taxing on his body, which Hojo rapidly recorded on his paper with a slightly trembling hand. Excitement and vindication thrummed in his chest along with his racing heart as he rushed back to the observation room. He leaned his weight on his hands, staring at the camera feed from the room Subject S had been locked into. The examination table was empty, the desperate need to seek out Subject C had driven him from it onto the floor, now rendered equally as unconscious as the younger boy and crumpled against the wall.

Hojo clicked the end of his pen and made another note at the bottom of the page. Ballard's behavioral modification testing on Subject C would need to be changed in light of this development. Things had, perhaps, advanced to an entirely new level and the other doctor's experiment might need to be halted and replaced by having S give the commands instead…

Another question was put to paper, the next stage of his Reunion experiment taking shape in his mind. How far, exactly, could the two sense one another? The laboratory was large, taking up a much wider footprint than the mansion above, but it was still a very limited space. Was the connection strong enough to reach more than the distance available to test inside? Could it stretch dozens, or perhaps hundreds of meters? What would Subject S' reaction be to being separated from his subordinate by a matter of kilometers and could he locate him without a physical trail to follow? Would someone, or something , else with enough S-Cells follow Subject S from the same distance?

A feral grin spread over Hojo's face as he strolled out of the room and towards Exam Room B. He needed to extract more S-Cells for the next phase.

Sephiroth woke, he thought for the third time that day. His head felt somehow heavy and thick, his thoughts dragging as he brought them to order and began cataloging what he remembered. This was a bad way to feel. It was the same feeling he had when he'd woken up from surgeries, like the listless weight of anesthesia. He flexed his toes, then his fingers. Rotated his wrists, pointed his toes.

Left arm pain, near the elbow, a needle had been there then - probably Rivers had done it, she always used a bigger needle when she was in a hurry. It couldn't have been taken out more than half an hour ago or the bruise would have healed itself already.

He turned his head a little, left and right, no pain in his neck or back so no spinal tap. Cold air trickled down the back of his scrubs and he wanted to adjust it, cover it up, but he had to go slowly and figure out what was wrong first.

Deep breath, let it out in a low hiss and clench the muscles of his abdomen - no pain there either. Well, no pain that meant he'd been cut into anyway. He was hungry, and as soon as he thought about it, desperately thirsty.

There was something warm and solid pressed against him, soft golden strands tickled his nose as he blinked his eyes open. He listened carefully to see if anyone else was in the room, and he suddenly realized that he was in his own bed. He slid an arm around the body beside him and cuddled it closer.

He wondered why Cloud was in his room, let alone his bed. Cloud slept in the room next to his, the one that used to be a storage space for linens and scrubs.

"Hey," he whispered, bringing his face down to nearly press his lips against Cloud's ear, "C?"

Cloud's only response was a soft whimper, his little hands coming up to clutch at the front of Sephiroth's top and nudge his head further beneath Sephiroth's chin.

"It's okay," Sephiroth whispered, reaching down and pulling the blanket over both of them, before gently tapping his fingertips against the places on Cloud's body that he'd checked on himself. Cloud didn't flinch or whimper when he took his hands and feet and manipulated them, except for his inner elbows. His stomach and back and hips were pain-free. No spinal tap, no bone marrow extractions, no biopsies or exploratory surgeries.

"See," Sephiroth's voice came out shaky, but that was fine. The cameras couldn't pick up anything so quiet as a whisper muffled by a blanket. He cupped the back of Cloud's head, cuddling him closer, relaxing finally in relief, "we're okay, you're alright."

Eventually, Cloud drew away and began rubbing at his eyes, silent tears running down his cheeks as he grabbed a fistful of his scrub top to swipe at his face. He'd gotten so good at being quiet when he cried, Sephiroth was proud of him. He tried to pull the little boy's hands away from his face, "Do you have something in your eyes?"

In the dim space beneath the blanket, Cloud's eyes glowed as bright as his own… in the same bright green of Sephiroth's. The whites of his eyes were red, the skin around them puffy and swollen, and the dark circles of his pupils were changed to the same thin slits Sephiroth saw in his own reflection…

Cloud wasn't merely placed in Sephiroth's room for that afternoon, he was moved in, permanently it seemed, with no explanation. The small room he'd lived in before was converted back to storage and Sephiroth's room was rearranged with two small beds and his desk crammed between them - he pretended not to be disappointed when the books he'd hidden were confiscated but he was simultaneously grateful not to be scolded for keeping them for himself in the first place. The dresser had disappeared, with no room for it left, and it was now Sephiroth's chore every morning to fetch scrubs for both of them from the storage room.

After that, it was as though nothing had changed. Wednesday's schedule proceeded exactly the same as always, and the week continued on into the next without comment from any of the doctors or researchers.

Sunday was the best day. Both he and Cloud had different types of physical training. Cloud was learning to fall correctly, earning innumerable bruises as he was flung against the mats again and again… but he was no less excited to get up and throw himself back at their trainer who seemed conflicted. Torn between amusement and exasperation.

Sephiroth had finally been given a sword, a dull metal blade that still flashed in a satisfying way beneath the fluorescent lights. If, in his own mind, he pictured certain doctors and assistants when slashing and stabbing at the practice dummy, that was his own business.

Professor Hojo had been distracted by something in another part of the lab ever since the day Cloud's eyes had changed, coming in only to supervise their Mako showers and injections on Mondays and Thursdays, and then vanishing again. Sephiroth wanted to be happy about that, but every day the man walked through the lab with barely a glance in his direction made something wind tighter in his stomach, wondering if what Hojo was working on was going to hurt. And how badly.

Three weeks later, an hour before they usually woke up, a man wearing fatigues walked into their room and took Cloud away. Sephiroth's hands clenched in the sheets, his fingers tearing through them like paper, as Cloud stared at him with wide eyes over the man's shoulder. The door was closed behind them. And locked .