The thing is, Joel had seen feral animals before. He'd seen them in the wild, he'd seen them here in the lab, too broken to remember how to eat and starving to death. He'd been the one to put one of them down two months ago when it gnawed its way out of a cage and escaped into the main lab. Joel knew a feral animal when he saw one, and he knew he only had a few seconds to figure out how to get out of its hold before it managed to break his neck or slit his throat with the metallic claws on the hand currently pinning him against the wall.

Joel's feet were off the floor and he wondered if the stone behind him was cratered in from how hard he'd been slammed into it. The hand around his throat was just shy of cutting off his oxygen – whatever else Hojo had done to this poor bastard, some kind of Mako enhancement had to be involved. Joel was not a small man, and he certainly had much more muscle mass than the rangy body in front of him boasted.

The man's face, if he was truly human now anyway, was deathly pale, a waxy sort of pallor that belonged more on something in a coffin than out of one. The tangled snarl of dirty black hair didn't do anything to make him look less like a corpse, accentuating his bone-white skin and matching the dark circles under his eyes – eyes that had a clear Mako shine to them, blazing red. There was something familiar about his face, the shape of his mouth, but that was about all Joel could really catalogue before the lack of air was going to become a more serious problem.

The man had Joel at arms length, and thank the gods for that. If he'd closed up on him he wouldn't be able to pull his legs up and jam his feet into the man's stomach to heave him off. Pain slashed across the sides of his throat, the metal gauntlet encasing his adversary's left hand had cut him, not deep enough to be dangerous but certainly enough to draw blood.

He sucked in a breath, reaching up automatically to grab the hilt of his sword. His hand caught on air and he grimaced. Whether it had been knocked loose from his magnet when he'd impacted the wall, or it had broken the magnet itself, the sword was out of reach behind him either way. Joel wasn't completely without weapons, but even without them he wasn't helpless.

His enemy stumbled back away from him, and Joel locked his eyes on what seemed to be the only weapon he had – sharp metal plates covering his arm that ended in razor tipped claws. Just looking at it made the cuts on the sides of his neck twinge, but he might have the upper hand if he moved quickly enough.

How long had the guy been in that box? He wished he'd asked a few more questions about the creepy locked room, like how long it had been there and how often Hojo went into it. It had to be longer than Joel had been there. There was no way someone, or something, like this had got in there without him knowing about it.

Joel didn't hesitate, knowing he might only have one chance. He lunged forward, drawing the combat knife from its sheath on his thigh and angled his blow towards the man's unarmored right side. The man was fast, SOLDIER fast, blocking the knife with that metal hand, or at least some of it was metal, because the man grunted and blood splattered from the deep gouge Joel had left in his palm.

Then it was on.

The close quarters did neither of them any favors, and it wasn't before long that the entire room was a wreck. When the ornate coffin slammed to the ground with a loud clatter, he knew the noise would bring someone running if they weren't deep enough in the lab. The other man must have thought the same thing, both of them stopping suddenly and staring at each other.

"Hey man," Joel said, not lowering his bloody knife, favoring his left leg from getting kicked by those ridiculous metal boots. It was gratifying that he wasn't the only one injured, but like many wounded creatures the other was hiding it much better. "Let's talk about this before the whole damned army comes down on our heads." He hoped the guy didn't catch the lie, but was instantly disappointed.

"There are only two unenhanced infantrymen," the man's voice was deep, and even, not giving away that he was in pain and probably stretching and using muscles that should have atrophied if he'd been here more than a few weeks, "and two of those damned scientists left here."

"Okay, alright, you got me," Joel said, talking fast, trying to think fast when he just wasn't any kind of strategist at all. "Don't you wanna get out of here alive though?"

That… might have been the wrong thing to say, although Joel still had no fucking clue what he'd said before that had set the guy off. The man's shoulders hunched, his head dropping down and to the side as a low growl slipped out of his throat. It was not a human sound, not even close. The metal gauntlet flexed, claws spreading wide and then contracting into what had to be a painful fist. Those claws were digging into the laceration on his palm, fresh blood dripping to the floor. There was something unnatural in the way the man's head twisted to the side, and goosebumps rippled across Joel's skin when that lean body shuddered. The groan that burbled in his throat didn't belong to a human being.

It was probably the worst possible idea to launch another attack when that level of terrifying was ramping up, but Joel had noticed a very important bit of information. The man was standing in front of Ballard's corpse. The asshole could at least help Joel survive this, be useful for at least one thing in his life.

Several things happened in blindingly quick succession. His feint towards the man who looked halfway into becoming unhinged backfired, his enemy crouched over Ballard's body – a defensive move, a protective one, as though he cared what happened to the scientist's corpse. The man's foot lashed out, already bloodstained from slicing Joel's shin once already and Joel went down over the broken coffin, dumped inside of it for a brief moment before he rolled out of it only to end up right back in the position he'd been from the beginning.

Pinned against the wall again, with his enemies body caging close this time, Joel wheezed out a confused question. "Why do you care what happens to that fucked up asshole, he your boyfriend or something?"

Probably that was also a bad question, but the man looked confused, brows pinching together and lips thinning. "You know, Doc Ballard? The dead guy?"

Something vaguely resembling sanity flickered to life over the pallid face and Joel prepared to try and twist his way out again when the man looked over his shoulder at the body he'd protected with his own. He barely managed to keep his feet under him as he was dragged along when the man went to examine the lump in a white lab coat.

"Oh come on, that's gonna…" Yeah, of course he pushed the body over with the blood stained sabaton. Another thing he was going to have to try and cover up.

"Not the boy, I thought you had…" the man muttered, dropping Joel and staring out into the training room through the gap in the doors. He turned back to Joel, face ducking down as though to hide in the strange red cowl around his shoulders. His voice, when he spoke again, had a gravelly undertone, "Where is the boy?!"

Joel wasn't a genius but things clicked into place in his head. That must be why the guy's face looked kind of familiar. He'd got down to Nibelheim all of twice in the last two years, getting exactly one message out to his squad with dire warnings not to come and not to write back. He'd noticed that some of the villagers had reddish-brown eyes like that, and Mako in this man would naturally make them brighter and more crimson than a normal human could have.

"You're his dad, aren't you?" Joel asked. It had been clear from Vanget's suicide note that Claudia Strife had done more in the local inn than just wait tables. He'd wondered, for quite a while, if Vanget had actually been C's father. That'd probably push anyone over the edge, and someone as reputedly selfish and mean as the former mercenary would care about that, even if he hadn't been able to muster up any sympathy for S.

But… if Ms Strife had died, it wouldn't surprise Joel in the least if Hojo had tracked down C's biological dad and put him in a box to study. Their coloration didn't matter much, so far as family resemblance went. He doubted that either of S's parents had silver hair and kitty-cat eyes.

"I…" the man suddenly looked lost, shoulders dropping and hands going loose and empty at his sides. "I might be."

"If you want to help the kid, both of the kids , there's two of them," Joel said slowly, "I've kind of got a problem."

"I'm certain there are a plethora of problems," the man's dark, deep voice was pretty well suited to the sardonic way he spoke now that the violent rage was bleeding out of him, "there is almost no-one here, if you aren't hostile towards them why haven't you taken them and fled?"

"They won't let me," Joel said, holding up his hands when the man's crimson gaze flicked to him suspiciously. "I mean, fuck the scientists obviously, first of all. The problem is that the kids won't go for it, believe me I tried… they're scared, this is the only thing they've ever known."

The man, C's father, turned to face him, then bent down and wrenched the coffin back up on the plinth it had been lying on. The hinges were somehow not broken, although a crack ran the length of one side of the box. When the man began to climb back into it Joel reached out to grab his elbow automatically.

"The hell are you doing?" Joel asked, gripping the leather clad arm harder instead of letting go when he tried to jerk away.

"I'm dangerous," the man said, clear pain and exhaustion in his voice. He shook off Joel's hand and lay down inside the coffin, leaving a bloody smear on the side of it from his sliced palm. "I am... a monster. I can't help anyone, I poison everything I touch."

"I need your help," Joel insisted, seeing the flinch and pushing a little harder, "Your kid needs help. They both do."

The smell of fresh blood intensified as the man hurt himself again, his claws curling inward. Joel wasn't sure if he even noticed, or if he'd just trained himself to never show pain the way the boys had. He'd caught S doing just that, digging his fingernails into his hand or his wrist, hiding it behind his back and rubbing the blood away on his pants in the hopes no one would see. Joel was working on that, but it was hard to help when he only ever saw the aftermath, impossible to prevent it when S insisted he had everything under control.

This guy wasn't as good as the kids at hiding his emotions, but if he'd spent most of his tenure here in a box without being constantly observed and judged for it he wouldn't have had to learn it so obsessively.

"I am…" he whispered, trying to tuck his face back under the weird red cowl around his neck, then swatted at Joel's hand when he grabbed the edge of it and yanked it down. "I am not–"

Joel interrupted him again, seeing the hesitation in every line of the guy's body and needing him to get it, "If you say you're not a person or some shit I'm going to fucking scream, or slap you, or both. I know Hojo is a piece of shit, I figure he's told you that cause he told the kids that too. They thought they weren't people when I got here, and after two years I still don't know if they really believe me or not."

"You do not understand–" it was almost a whine, and Joel didn't have time for that shit.

"It doesn't matter what I don't understand," Joel cut him off, grabbing a fist-full of red material and jerking the man up and getting in his face. "What matters is that if you're willing to kill for your kid, how about living for him?"

"That is–"

Joel barreled on before the guy could try and come up with some kind of counter, "Blackmail, yeah, is it working?"

He forced himself not to back away when the man's eyes went strange, feeling the hair rise on the back of his neck as it had a moment ago during the fight. It was almost like, for a moment, something else was looking out at him from those red eyes. They shifted hue, gold ringing the edges for a second at most, before it was gone. Had it not been dark in the mausoleum, Joel certainly would have missed it. It looked like eyeshine on a wolf, but without any light to bring it out.

"I suppose it is."

Joel held out his hand. "Let's get you out of there then."

The sudden quietude of the things lurking within Vincent was as unsettling as their clamor for blood had been. He was grateful for the concealment conferred by the red material draped about his shoulders. It had been over a decade since he'd felt any need or desire to obfuscate his thoughts when, for over a decade, all he had worn was a mask of shame, and guilt, and all the trappings of pain that Hojo saw fit to wring out of him.

Being treated as though he were human was something of a novelty, and he allowed the man to rip strips from the dead scientists lab coat to bind the wound in his hand that would have likely healed regardless, all while the man muttered to himself that he'd chuck the doctor into the incinerator if he had the choice.

"How long you been in there?" the armored man asked, pushing down the hem of his cargo pants to conceal his own bandaged wound incurred from their brief battle. He was oddly blasé about the fact that they had, only moments ago, been intent upon killing one another, and he was seemingly unafraid of the claws that had been around his neck only minutes ago as he reached out to steady Vincent with a casual touch.

This was the voice he'd heard speaking quietly, always so very quietly to the children. His heavily muscled figure shouldn't look so well suited to such gentle tones, but he afforded the same steady reassurance to Vincent as though he too were one of his charges.

"Long enough." Vincent shrugged, masking the pain that shot through his arm and side from where he'd had the metal rolling tray Hojo brought his needles in on flung at him hard enough that it had broken and crumpled on impact. He brought his left hand up and looked at it in the light afforded by the slightly open doors. Blood stained the inside of the claws, his own blood, and along the plates of his forearm from this stranger's.

Thoughts of escape had been unthinkable before, and he wasn't certain yet whether he truly might do so. Now his thoughts kicked into analytical gear as he cast a few quick glances around the room and took stock of the damage.

Blood stains were not a new addition to the decor, although the spray along the wall from his hand might need to be dealt with. The tray could likely be scrapped if he had a place to conceal it. The coffin… the body… Vincent bent and hefted the corpse up and into what had, until now, been his own tomb. He wasn't yet certain if he was committed to abandoning it.

"A long time," Vincent muttered, realizing he'd not answered the stranger's question. When the man asked his name, offering up his own as 'Joel', Vincent wondered how his life had become even stranger than it had been before when he answered.

"Vincent Valentine," he said, his own name feeling strange rolling across his tongue. Hojo had insisted upon calling him Subject V, rather than his given name. Another humiliation, amongst thousands of others, to dehumanize him even further than turning him into a monster.

"You kind of look like you wanna crawl back in there," Joel drawled, the sarcasm with which he'd introduced himself when Vincent had thought him a heartless child-killer back in full force. "Trust me," he said, reaching out and snagging the identification card from the doctor's lapel and pocketing it for unfathomable reasons of his own, "you don't want to cuddle up with the likes of Ballard. Which… is what I'd like help with, if you have any damned clue more than I do how to hide the truth of how he died."

"How long do we have until Hojo returns?" Vincent asked, flicking his eyes over the body before coming to a snap decision that he hoped didn't get anyone he cared about killed. He carefully closed the lid on the dead scientist, clicking shut each of the nine locks and considering them.

"He's not." Joel shook his head, a look of disgust twisting his features for a moment. "He had enough evidence of what he's been trying to do… He called this morning, said he's sending a chopper to pick the kids up and I'm getting on it whether he wants me with or not."

Vincent pressed the locks in harder one at at time to break them in place. It wasn't a permanent solution, but hopefully by the time anyone was sent to check on him they would think he'd escaped after everyone else had left. The ease of it was worrying in and of itself, the strength in his hands, including the one he would have assumed to be weaker… but that was a thought for when he was alone and able to contemplate it at his own leisure. "Why did you decide to kill him? Why now, after however many years you've been in residence?"

"I've wanted to kill all of them from day fucking one, honestly," Joel answered, rubbing the back of his head and adjusting the elastic tie that held his braids back. His luminous amber eyes flitted across every surface of the room, taking up a rather ludicrously large sword before he nodded towards the door. He carefully closed it behind them once they'd exited into what was the children's training area, plastic sheathed mats laid out on the floor to one side and lockers full of gear along the same wall.

Vincent followed Joel down a familiar corridor, past rooms that had once been filled with supplies for the running of the lab and now held half emptied shelves and wooden crates. He made a soft sound of interest that seemed to be all the encouragement the man needed to speak, his voice rising and falling as he explained how he'd done what he could. His hatred for the scientists in general and Hojo and the dead man in particular was almost tangible.

As a Turk, Vincent had always appreciated when someone was eager to give him the information he sought. It was easier by far than having to spend anywhere from hours to weeks cajoling out the knowledge he needed to obtain, and a lot less messy than torturing it out of them. He wasn't certain whether he could still call himself a Turk, that would have to be determined based upon who, if anyone, had known about Hojo's attempted murder of him.

"Problem is, til the last few days, I've been outnumbered. If it was just the scientists, I'd be fine, if it was just the troopers I might be fine, but all of them together and needing to protect the kids at the same time…" Joel stopped in front of the door to the security room. "It'd have been a lot harder. And in the beginning I figured out pretty quickly that the kids might have fought me too, and the idea of hurting them even a little bit made me wanna puke. You have any idea how sick I've been, having to pretend to play along with their bullshit? And the kids… they're noticeable, I can't hide them forever and they deserve something more than living in the woods as hermits the rest of their lives, even if that means they're in the military way too young.

Joel pressed the dead doctor's identification card to a black box affixed to the door, eliciting a blinking green light and the click of a lock disengaging.

"Hm," Vincent's murmur was even more interested as he examined it, holding the door open and glancing at the mechanism from the opposite side - smooth and featureless, more so than similar tech he'd seen once before. He swiftly calculated the pros and cons of revealing his affiliations, determining that his previous life was, after thirteen years, nothing that could harm him if used as a tool to gain trust.

He'd not yet learned why this man in particular had been brought in to educate the children in combat arts, but there was a simple way of learning whether he had already been in Shinra's employ versus someone inveigled into the laboratory as a freelance mercenary.

"Are these sorts of electronic locks common now?" Vincent asked, examining Joel's body language as he continued, "the only areas of Shinra's headquarters that had such things were the executive suites and the Administrative Research Department."

Bingo , Vincent thought as Joel's spine straightened and his ride hand twitched automatically as though he might have reached for the oversized sword on his back. It was interesting that he didn't do so, and that he merely sighed deeply as he turned to face Vincent with eyebrows raised and full lips pursed in something he might read as dissatisfaction, rather than anger, which was… also interesting.

"Well," Joel said, "there goes my first theory."

"Which was?" Vincent asked curiously.

"You said you might be his dad," he elaborated, "and I figured that meant you were C's dad - you look kind of like some of the people in town, and that's where they took him from. He's been here about six years… how fucking long have you actually been here if you're S's father?"

"S…?" Vincent felt a ball of ice form in his chest, or perhaps that was the Materia the demon had ridden into his soul. Hojo had been very deliberate in his cruelty from the start, and taking Vincent's name had almost seemed petty when added to the collection.

"Sephiroth?

The fact that he'd taken the boy's name as well, that he'd stolen the one thing Lucrecia had been able to give him before she'd died… He saw red, imagining Hojo trapped in the coffin in his place, and all the ways he could suffer, as an inhuman sound leaked around that icy knot and hit the air.

"You're going to make yourself bleed again," Joel pointed out, and it seemed so non sequitur to his violent thoughts that Vincent rocked back on his heels as the room swam back into focus from where it had vanished in a wave of vengeant fantasies.

"I told you I am a monster," Vincent said, something walking the fine line between frustration and exasperation making him feel light headed with whiplash. "I am a monster, and a Turk, why is that not your immediate priority?"

Joel merely shrugged. "Some people would say I'm a monster too – SOLDERs can pick up a truck and kick it at someone if they've got the right leverage. I can see in the dark, my eyes glow, I bleed red and green. Shinra is pretty good at making monsters, as I'm sure you've noticed."

"Turk?" Joel turned away to examine the bank of televisions showing camera feeds of every corner of the lab, but Vincent didn't miss the upward twist of one corner of his mouth, "that's just an addition to the everything else about you."

It could have been, should have sounded insulting, Vincent knew. So why didn't it?

"Right, so." Joel tapped the screen that showed the training room and spiral staircase. "You figure a Turk might know a way to fix this so it doesn't show what really happened to Ballard, right?"

"Yes." Vincent pulled out the chair, the sound of its feet scraping across the poured cement floor oddly nostalgic. They hadn't replaced it in the intervening years since the days he had spent quite a lot of time sitting in it.

"I was going to just pull the tape and shred it, I told the kids I'd say he fell down the stairs," Joel admitted, "I don't know anything about stuff like this."

"I was security, once upon a time." Vincent murmured as he began to rewind the tape until he reached the section he wanted. "I may end up doing the same thing if I can't excise the particular moment out, although if Hojo does not intend to return I am doubtful whether he might care what happened to one doctor. He's had enough of them incarcerated in his cages or simply killed for whatever reason he can get away with."

Joel leaned on the table beside him, eyes locked on the screen as though he hadn't lived it himself barely an hour ago. Vincent watched in silence as the children trailed in after their teacher, and he gripped the arms of the old chair as his gaze flickered over their features. The camera feed was in full color, rather than the black and white he was familiar with, but the focus was not close enough to make out the details. Details he suddenly craved more than a man dying of thirst desires water.

Sephiroth, who had been relegated to merely the first letter of his name as Vincent had, was nearly as tall as Joel and wearing identical armor in a dark blue rather than blood red. His hair looked platinum white, not the soft brown he'd always imagined. It hung around his face in the same way Lucrecia's had. The smaller boy that Joel had called 'C' was wearing a much different uniform, something more akin to the infantry in a much paler blue. A huge guard dog followed them, laying down at a hand signal from the smaller boy.

"S, and C," Vincent murmured as he watched them prepare for a lesson that clearly involved swordplay. Did they train with all weapons, or only bladed ones, he wondered. "Sephiroth and… does the other have a name?"

"They only ever used S and C," Joel explained, and gave an audible wincing as the doctor stormed down the staircase and accosted the one called C. "Although, they seem to know their names, or have chosen some to call one another in secret. I've never pushed it, 'cause they just don't have any privacy whatsoever and they deserve to have something just between each other you know?"

"I did give them SOLDIER operative names," Joel continued, "which I won't tell you because those are theirs to keep or give if they want to."

Vincent approved, and might have said so if violence hadn't broken out on the screen and fully caught both of their attention. There was barely a second between the doctor backhanding the little boy and sending him crashing to the ground, and S shoving the man away far harder than someone his size should have been able to. There was a loud sound as the arms of the chair Vincent had been gripping snapped free as his hands tightened.

Both boys stared in stunned silence. This was the moment that Vincent had heard and misunderstood.

Carefully, Joel took both boys by the shoulder and turned them away from the twitching body, before regarding the doctor and extinguishing him by the simple expedient of the heel of his boot to the doctor's throat.

Even grainy and somewhat blurred, he could see the sheer terror on both boy's faces as Joel circled them and knelt. His back was to the camera, but even after less than an hour in his presence, Vincent was certain his words were reassuring rather than taking them to task. The guard hound nudged Sephiroth's hand, then followed them as they were sent out of the room.

"You see why I have to hide this?" Joel asked, slowly, "it isn't even that he died in the first place. I agree with you, and I seriously doubt Hojo would give a fuck if I'd been the one to kill him – especially if I said he hit C. It's not like he… cares about them, but they… Hojo is a very possessive man."

Joel's hands tightened on the edge of the metal desk, dimples forming in its surface beneath his fingers. President Shinra had had high hopes for the Science Department's attempts to create super soldiers, preemptively copyrighting the word in all capital letters to solidify their ownership of the term. It seemed he'd got what he wanted, and Vincent wondered how many SOLDIERs there were now if Shinra intended to start a war with them. More than a few, he was certain.

"If Hojo finds out that S killed Ballard, he'd be happy about it," Joel said firmly, voice low and deliberately even as though if he weren't focusing on it the words might tremble. "Do you get what I mean?"

"Yes," Vincent answered, unable and perhaps unwilling to fight the two or three toned growl that echoed in the words. "I know what Hojo would do if he believes Sephiroth is already a killer - there would be no desire to train him further when he might be deemed prepared for war."

"Yeah," Joel said as Vincent contemplated how he would alter the footage.

He had a feeling it wouldn't matter, that Hojo would never bother to look, but even if Vincent was no longer a Turk he would never be anything but meticulous in his cover up. And, if there was anyone still in the department that he might even possibly be able to trust, there were other considerations.

"Do you know where they've put the rest of the tapes?" Vincent asked, "it's clear they've been packed up."

"They took a few in a box with them," Joel replied, "but I did see a shipping crate full of tapes. Hundreds of them."

"I'll take care of everything here," Vincent said slowly, rewinding the tape and watching the first part again, the moments before things had gone wrong, the images where he could see blurry smiles on small faces. "You should go about your day the way you normally would so that no one suspects.

Joel was silent for a moment, and Vincent looked up into his face to see what was there. Joel's eyes met his, softening around the corners as he shook his head.

He wondered if the SOLDIER was simply tactile by nature, or whether he was making certain that Vincent knew he wasn't afraid of him, when Joel put his hand on Vincent's shoulder. "How about I tell you about the kids, first?"

Vincent paused the screen, the two boys looking at one another with hands clasped as Joel crouched in front of them, telling them the lie they would have to keep up.

"Yes," Vincent said, trying and likely failing to hide the need in his voice. His own trainer would have been disgusted with him, but then he never would have been assigned a mission that he was already emotionally compromised over. He tried to make his request sound curious, rather than desperate.

"Please," he added in the end anyway.