Joel would have fought to survive regardless, but knowing he'd just left his boys frozen and alone made him struggle to reach land all the harder. It wasn't his fault, his brain knew that he could never have predicted this circumstance. But his heart said he'd broken the new and delicate line of trust he'd thrown to those kids and they'd been finally ready to take it.

He'd rather like a lifeline himself, as a cacophonous roaring noise and the waterfall that made it came inevitably closer. Fate, or the gods of the mountain, seemed to have provided at the very last moment. His legs were flung over the edge into open air as he grabbed hold of the dead tree that hung half in the water in a tangled snarl of wood. The branches creaked dangerously, but held long enough for him to drag his aching body to shore.

Again, fate, or something like it was on his side as he cast around to find he was on the same side of the river as the boys. The closest ford where he might have been able to cross was half a day's walk, on a good day, with dry clothes and survival gear. At least the sun was out, and his Fire Materia could dry him out a bit before he had to trudge off back to the remains of the bridge and his boys who, he reminded himself, were damned good at survival. They'd be okay, until he could get to them, he was sure. He still didn't want them to have to for long.

As much as he wanted to launch himself after them, he wasn't in particularly good shape - something twinged dangerously around the knee that had buckled as he'd thrown S to dry land, and just about everything ached from the fall and subsequent slamming into said rock he'd braced himself on as long as he could. His head was spinning, but he hoped it was just the vertigo from rolling through the rough water that even the craziest thrill seeker wouldn't have wanted to raft down. If he did have a concussion, well, he'd make sure he angled his healing spells away from his head as much as possible so as to not make it worse.

He cast the highest level cure he could eke out of the unmastered Materia, and felt whatever damage had been done to his leg knitting together. The sensation was weird as hell, and one he almost never noticed - usually he was in the middle of battle or a brief lull in between a series of them. There was always too much else for his attention to be focused on in those situations, and he usually only registered the lack of pain and translated that to uninhibited movement.

Two more cures, carefully aimed at the muscles of his thighs and back, and Joel had to put his head between his knees and breathe slowly. Exertion, plus Mana drop, plus the concussion he might actually have made his stomach roll with nausea. The bright blue sky and rolling white water both spun in opposite directions as he closed his eyes and fished in his belt pouch that hopefully had an unbroken ether. He downed the potion, leaving a numb sensation on his tongue and the back of his throat like novocaine that at least wore off more quickly.

He'd blame it on the vertigo, and the fact that the noise of the water drowned out everything else around him, when the huff of warm air on the back of his neck made him realize too late that something had snuck up on him. His sword was… somewhere underwater, likely under the bridge itself. It was heavier than the one S had, and hadn't been secured in a scabbard the way the boy's had been.

Joel cycled through the possible ways to evade and combat whatever it was that had made it close enough to leave him with very few options. He still had his Lightning and his Fire, but if he didn't kill it in one hit it would probably get him when he dropped from Mana drain. All of that raced through his mind as he took a chance and rolled away, carefully staying away from the edge of the river. He looked up into the face of giant Nibel Wolf with the bluest eyes he'd ever seen, golden fur gleaming in the sunlight.

He didn't move as the creature lowered its head again, sniffing at the side of his face. Its breath was hot on his chilled skin as it seemed intent to scent every inch of him it could reach. The snuffling sounds were loud, but completely non-threatening, and it sneezed directly into his ear once it had finished its strange inspection.

"Gross," he muttered, but the wolf didn't seem offended. A wolfish grin was not at all comforting, but its tail was low and wagging back and forth - all its body language radiating interest instead of threat.

A little bit hesitantly, he reached up and petted down its neck the way he might have with Scramble, and didn't get his hand bit off for the audacity. It just shook its head, turned to sniff at his hands, and sneezed again.

It, she, he realized, backed up, those huge eyes meeting his in a way that was all out of keeping for a wolf of any size let alone a Mako mutated monster, and she took several steps away in the direction of the bridge. She sat again when he didn't move, a jaw cracking yawn showing every one of her very white teeth… teeth that had been as gentle as they could be when she'd pulled C out of the reach of the truly vicious monster that had been sent against them. There couldn't be two creatures that looked exactly like this, and she'd clearly been protective of C in particular.

Slowly, Joel got to his feet, taking one hesitant step towards the wolf. She stood up again, giving him another long look before walking away - satisfied that he would follow. He'd known the thing was smart, and likely trained as a guard dog before she'd gotten into some Mako and tripled in size, but he had to wonder just how smart she was as she began to huff at the air.

The wolf gave him another look over her shoulder and began to move along the edge of the water. The message was clear, 'keep up', and so he did. He felt slightly ridiculous chasing after the massive beast, but he suddenly wondered if it had been trying to smell the boys on him. The water would have washed most of it off, he was pretty sure, but he didn't actually know how keen a Nibel wolf's sense of smell might be. Even if she wasn't able to track them, and he really did think she was trying, and regardless they were still heading in the right direction…

The wolf never ran far enough ahead that she was out of sight, but as the day wore on he could tell she was getting annoyed with him - or perhaps just more and more worried about the boys she was clearly trying to seek out.

Joel couldn't blame her, really, he was just as anxious to find them as she was - maybe more so because she was, no matter how intelligent, an animal. She couldn't know what had passed the night before, and how important it was to track them down and reassure them that, one, he was fine and didn't abandon them, and two, reassure them that they'd done a good job surviving without him. He didn't have to wait and find out if that was true, he was absolutely certain of it.

He hadn't realized how far he'd been swept down the river from where he'd started, and it was well past noon by the time they reached the spot where the bridge had broken. The wolf bounded towards the tree line, tail up and ears flat against her skull as she scented the rocks and trees before sneezing again. She gave a sharp vocalization, the first she'd made since she'd found him, tail wagging frantically back and forth as she ran back to him and then towards the cliff wall.

He broke into a run of his own, searching and finding the footholds the boys must have used. He was desperately glad they hadn't used the skills they'd begun learning in hiding their passage - it was easy enough to follow even without the wolf running up the damned ascent, more akin to a mountain goat than a canine.

She was whining softly each time she got ahead of him, and he sighed, stopping on an outcropping of stone to rest a moment and stretch, "I'm going as fast as I can," he promised, "not all of us are seven feet tall at the shoulder."

The wolf was not in the least mollified, disappearing at the top of the bluff long before he'd made. The sun had slipped behind the mountain by the time he reached the summit and began to search for a trail. The clouds gathering overhead darkened the sky faster than just the sun going down would warrant, and he was grateful when the wolf ran back to him with an exasperated sounding chuff before turning and running with her head to the ground as she followed a trail he couldn't see.

He was going to be incredibly embarrassed if she wasn't leading him to the kids.

It was full dark before the wolf brought him to a low crevice, small silvery discs hanging from string tied to a stripped branch stuck in between two rocks above it. Scales of some kind of monster. The light would flash on them to indicate they were there, a signal to anyone searching for them. So clever, but then he already knew they were. The remains of a fire in front of the cave was stomped out, but he could see the flickering light of another further in. He had to get down onto his knees to crawl into it, the entrance opening up into a passage shallow enough that that he couldn't quite stand all the way straight without scraping his head on the ceiling. The wolf whined again, sticking her head into the hole, and began scratching at the dirt with her huge paws. Soon enough, she was wriggling her way through the gap before his eyes had fully adjusted to the near absence of light.

While he could barely stand, the poor Wolf could only stretch herself across the ground with a disgruntled sound that was half sigh and half growl. He'd wondered, not even a day ago, if myths could be incarnated into people - and now he was half considering that it might even be true.

"It's okay," he murmured, running his hand over the wolf's head, "I'll bring them in here to say hi."

She rolled her eyes up at him as if to communicate, 'you'd better', and he scratched behind one of her fluffy ears before he began to make his way through the narrow tunnel with the flickering firelight ahead to guide his way. He was hearing low voices echoing up the passage long before he saw them, and the words made him pause as they rolled over him with more than a little bit of horror.

"I'm… I am Subject C, and I never had a name," the little boy's voice was little more than a breathy whisper, "and you are Subject S, and you never had a name either." The quiet words were muffled but something about the cadence set the hairs raising on the back of his neck.

"Just forget about it," S was saying, his voice tense and wavering, like his heart was damned near breaking, continuing as Joel made his way into the chamber they were hiding in. He was down on one knee with his arms around C, the littler boy's face shoved into S's shoulder as he shook, "it is safer. You will be safe, and we were never really people, after all."

"That's not true," Joel said, and both boys spun to face him with tear streaked cheeks and eyes wide with shock.

"You're people, you've always been people no matter what the hell anyone else says, fuck them, fuck anyone who tries to make you feel like that," he hoped they'd believe him, gods he needed them to believe him as he dropped down beside them, not giving them a chance to startle away before he pulled both of them close.

S went utterly still, those wide green cat's eyes pinned into even thinner slits than usual - but C twisted to throw his arms around Joel's neck and shouted.

"You didn't die! He didn't die S! He's not dead!" C's voice was equal parts panicked and excited, babbling something about the lab, and helicopters, and devolving into helpless tears that soaked Joel's shirt that had only mostly dried out on the hike.

S struggled against the hug for a moment, and Joel could see the expressions that washed over his features morph from looking like the whole world had shattered around him, to fear, then to relief, and finally he crumbled and went totally limp in Joel's arms. He'd cried the night before, fighting against it the whole time, but the agonizing sound that wrenched out of his throat, mingled with C's desperate sobbing, was close to hysterical.

"I didn't die, I'm sorry I scared you, I'm alright, you're fine, it's going to be okay," Joel said, repeating the words over and over until the last of their tears died down to sniffles on C's part and silence from S who sat up from where he was slumped on Joel's shoulder and looked… embarrassed, ashamed maybe, and Joel didn't know what to do for that other than reach out and ruffle his dirty, sweat soaked hair a little. The embarrassment turned to confusion as it always did when Joel did something he didn't anticipate - particularly anything kind, or affectionate.

"There's someone else who wants to see you," he said, and he hurried to explain when both of them stiffened and their faces flickered to a brief second of blatant fear before shutting down. "Your friend from your last hike up the mountain is how I found you up here, she couldn't fit all the way in, enormous Nibel wolves don't really fit in caves so small."

C lurched to his feet and bolted for the narrow passage that led into the low ceilinged cave at the entrance, with S only a breath later as he flung himself after him. Joel followed a little more slowly, listening as C broke again into tears.

How long had it been since they'd cried? He didn't know much about kids, really, except his nieces and nephews who were loved and cared for. How much abuse did it take to make a four year old never shed a tear, never show anything on his blank face during Mako enhancement procedures that made adults swear and tear up. His friend Marcus always threw up just worrying about it before it had even happened.

He'd read something once, or maybe he'd heard it on tv, that kids who didn't get held enough as babies ended up pretty emotionally damaged. They learned to stop crying just because they figured out that no one was going to help them.

Based on what Vanget had written, C had been taken from someone in the village when he was a baby. Joel realized that even if none of the assholes in charge hadn't held and soothed him, S must have. The fact that S even had the ability to show that kind of care, that kind of love for someone suffering the way he had, made him think someone had once held him too. Someone had cared, at some point.

Vanget had also said to not get attached, which Joel gave that a mental middle finger, but him having to give that warning was all Joel needed to know. It was pretty clear what had happened to whoever had taken care of S.

A scraping, scrabbling sound came from the narrow gap that led into the wider cave, and the giant wolf eeled her way inside. She was covered in dirt from clawing her way through, and her cheerful body language shifted quickly into aggression as Scramble leaped to its feet and growled at her.

There was a tense standoff between the much, much larger animal and the hound bred to hunt and fight things often bigger than itself. Whatever conversation the canines shared, of growls, and whines, and tails tucked between legs, was resolved with Scramble hunching up and creeping close enough to lean up and lick at the wolf's mouth until the skinned back lips settled back down over deadly teeth and she decided to let the guard hound show how good and polite it could be to it's massive cousin.

The boys stumbled back into the room - literally, the total exhaustion they must have already been suffering from leaving them completely wrung out as they collapsed next to the fire in a tangle of pale limbs. Golden fur joined the pile, the wolf curling around S with its tail swept around both of them. She said very clearly that these were her pups, and she grudgingly let Scramble join in to wrap itself around C's back. The warmth, fatigue, and emotional upheaval meant they fell asleep in seconds.

Joel propped himself against the wall on the other side of the fire, stripping off his sodden boots and socks and setting them beside the kids to hopefully dry out. His leather stomach guard and pauldrons clattered as he stripped them off, and only the wolf opened one eye to glance at him before going back to sleep.

He sighed, weary to the bone himself as he picked up some of the wood they'd gathered and built the fire up a bit. They'd done a damned good job, he thought, looking over the little campsite they'd made. They'd managed to put to practice all the things he'd been showing them - experience a far better teacher than mere example.

Listening to them breathing, the sound ridiculously comforting, he thought back to what he'd overheard - and done his best to immediately refute. The fact that the boys didn't think they were people cut him, the words repeated in his head was like a shot through the heart. And the words C had said right before, that he was sure the boys wouldn't have wanted him to hear… they had names. They'd probably given them to themselves, or maybe to each other. And something had made them so scared that they wanted to forget they'd ever had them.

He'd wondered about their 'designations', the letters that dehumanized them, categorized them into something to put in and take out of storage when needed. It wasn't lost on him that the room they slept in was in a hallway with doors that led to storage areas. Clothes and cleaning supplies in one room, two traumatized children in the next, linens and PPE just past that.

The very thought of taking them back there made Joel feel a strong urge to commit unspeakable violence in a way that he'd never known before. He thought that if Hojo, or Ballard, or any of the other technicians and scientists were in front of him right now, they'd drop dead just from the sheer strength of Joel's desire to make them suffer. He'd thought a lot about grabbing the kids and running, especially the last few days where there might actually be an opportunity.

He'd thought about it, and shoved the thought back every time. It wasn't just that they'd be out looking for them in a couple of days, and he had almost no equipment that would let them hide in the mountains through the winter. The kids were very recognizable. They had never left the lab more than a handful of times and that was just to go outside and into the unpopulated wilderness. Protecting them like that would mean shunning civilization entirely, which was pretty damned hard to do.

Aside from the logistics of evasion and survival, there was the question of what S and C would want to do. They'd never had any choices, other than the one to care about each other. The names they'd probably given each other were something they thought they had to give up - he really needed to ask them what they thought was going to happen if he'd actually died. It was clearly terrible, maybe something Joel wouldn't even think of. They always seemed to try and figure out what the worst possible thing could be, and do what they could to mitigate it rather than avoid it entirely.

Even if it was going back to the lab, he needed to prepare himself for what they chose to do for themselves. They didn't know anything else, he reminded himself, the world that existed outside of the strict routine and regulation they were used to was so far out of their experience they might as well have been raised on the moon.

He didn't have to like it, but he wasn't going to argue with them about it either. Hojo wanted them to be SOLDIERs, so he'd make them the best damned SOLDIERs on the Planet - and get them out of the scientist's clutches if it was the last thing he did. And he had to make peace with the fact that it really might be.

Sephiroth's eyes felt glued shut as he tried to open them, his throat raw and scratchy like he'd swallowed Mako. That had happened only once, before they'd concluded that topical and intravenous application was more effective. His head pounded when he finally managed to open his eyes, the dim light slashing across his retinas as much as bright sunlight would.

He tried to sit up, but he was weighed down on all sides. Cloud was half draped over him, one arm slung over his chest and a leg over his hip. His face was shoved into the curve of Sephiroth's neck, breaths soft and even and a little bit wet with drool.

He lay there and let his mind go blank, enjoying being comfortable even with the bare ground beneath him being hard and cold. He turned his head to see what was so warm beside him, expecting to see the embers of the fire, and came face to snout with Wolf instead. It wasn't the first time he'd had this dream, memory really, of the warm safety of knowing Cloud was with him and alright, with sunshine yellow fur all around them both like a living shield.

Footsteps scraped one stone, combat boots crunching pebbles as they trod closer, and reality reasserted itself with icy cold panic. He rolled away from the approaching steps, pulling Cloud with him to put himself in front of him - the flimsy barrier of his own body all that he could offer.

C, not Cloud, he told himself frantically, wondering how he'd missed the sound of a helicopter approaching and the clattering armor of a Shinra infantryman. He couldn't perceive the shuffling footsteps of the professor, but then he wouldn't lower himself to crawling in a cave, would he?

Before he could get to his feet, maybe stand at attention to show he wasn't intending to resist, a huge, furry head shoved at his shoulder hard enough to send him crashing down with panic numbed limbs on top of Cloud. Wolf put her massive bulk over both of them, growling low in her throat as… as Krono held up his hands peacefully, crouching down to put his own head below what he must think was a monster…

"Hey," Krono said, "time to get up, yeah? Somehow the emergency protein bars I had in my pocket survived. Bet you're hungry right?"

The SOLDIER's deep voice was so gentle, too kind, and it shouldn't be so reassuring. Sephiroth thought it was the best thing he'd ever heard in his life.

He felt the color drain from his face as everything he'd done the night before rushed back, and he scrambled out from beneath Wolf and away from Cloud's confused, sleepy call. The entrance of the cave seemed to narrow, or maybe it was the headache pressing darkness into the edges of his vision. He fell to his knees the moment he;d breached the aperture, and vomited.

What he'd done was unforgivable, and the fact that it had been unnecessary and motivated by fear as much as logic made it far worse. He'd taken something that wasn't his to take, even though he'd been convinced at the time that it was a vital weight on the scale of Cloud's survival with a minimum of suffering on his part.

It didn't matter, really, that he'd been doing what he'd thought was best. He had to try and undo it, to give it back to Cloud, to prepare himself for his brother to reject him for it, to tell him he couldn't forgive him.

His spiraling thoughts were no more helpful now than they had been the night before - caught in a trap of his own making, always assuming that the world would morph itself into the worst possibility. Just because he was usually right about that didn't excuse anything he'd done to try and keep it from happening.

The scent of water was under his nose and he hadn't even realized he'd squeezed his eyes shut. Krono's hand, offering water in a battered and dented canteen, reminded him that he would have a chance to make it alright. The worst wouldn't happen, not with Krono by their sides. It was such an unfamiliar feeling, but he was getting used to the idea.

He swished the mineral tasting water around his mouth and fought back a grimace as he swallowed. His throat felt worse than before as he replied, "Thank you, sir."

The man nodded, one of those stoic acknowledgements that Sephiroth had come to crave over the months since Krono had been stationed with them.

"Come on," Krono jerked his head towards the cave's entrance, "let's get some food in you and then we all need to have a talk, okay?"

From anyone else, anywhere else, that sentence would have sent goosebumps spreading over Sephiroth's skin and sent him right back to the overwhelming terror he'd just tried to push away. But there was never even a hint of a threat when Krono said he wanted to talk, it was always just an assessment, a lesson, more casual than anyone else had ever had with them.

Sephiroth regarded the hand held out to help him up, and took it.

The meal replacement bars that Krono gave them were just as tasteless as Sephiroth remembered from his last excursion on the mountain, except that they left his hands uncomfortably sticky. They had been crushed at some point between the bridge and the cave, but all three of them made sure to fish every last crumb from the foil packets.

It was odd. He'd never much thought about the difference between nutrition and satiety, not even realizing that he'd felt hungry more often than not. Their nutritional needs had always been met, but now he knew the way it felt to be both nourished and satisfied by a meal. If everything had gone as wrong as he'd anticipated, he was certain he would have had to become re-accustomed to the previous way of things.

It wasn't until they'd finished, that Krono looked at both of them, leaning forward and folding his hands in his lap. It was such an unfamiliar gesture of anxiety, one that Sephiroth had trained himself and Cloud out of, that it shocked him. No one showed weakness like that, not unless they could be entirely certain they wouldn't be caught out and punished for it.

"I want both of you to know, that what we say here will never be repeated or spoken of in any way when we leave this cave." Krono's voice was low and even. "Also, I will absolutely respect whatever the two of you decide to do. The choice you need to make here will be a hard one, and I know you aren't used to being able to make decisions like this. Whatever you choose, I'll follow your lead and help you whatever way I can."

Cloud glanced at Sephiroth, he could see from the corner of his eye as he stared at the flickering remains of their fire from the night before. Tension was a knot in his throat that wound itself tighter and tighter before he steeled himself.

"What are the choices?" he asked, uncertain what Krono might mean.

"We really only have two main options, and more to discuss depending on which one you decide to do… The first one is going back to the lab tomorrow the way we were meant to. The second is whether or not you think you'd like to try and run."

For the second time that day, Sephiroth felt his cheeks go cold as blood rushed down from his face and made the rest of his body alternately frozen and sweating. Pinpricks shivered down his spine, and Cloud gasped softly and looked up into Sephiroth's face. He tried to smooth out his expression, but the worry was blatant.

"What… what would running away entail, exactly?" Sephiroth asked slowly.

"Well," Krono answered just as slowly and carefully, "it would be hard, I'm not going to lie about that. It means getting to the other side of the mountain and down into the forest and then finding a place to hunker down for the winter. We'd have to avoid civilization, because even if Shinra doesn't really own the whole world, they're powerful enough and probably determined enough to do whatever they needed to find and capture us. But we can survive that, and there might be places Shinra can't reach or wouldn't think to look. Cosmo Canyon for one, because they're planetologists and won't let Shinra build a reactor anywhere near it."

Sephiroth wasn't sure how he felt about the us, but it made the sick feeling in his stomach twist in an entirely different direction.

"What if," Cloud's voice shook, "if we go back to the lab?"

"Then we keep doing what we're doing, and I ramp up your training to try and get you ready to join SOLDIER as soon as possible," Krono leaned further towards them, "that's going to be hard, and I'm going to have to act mean as shit even though I don't want to. I want you to know, I need you to understand, that if I'm harsh and cold, it's because we're being watched."

The man reached over the embers, holding out his hands to them. Uncertainly, Sephiroth took one the way he had moments ago, and Cloud hesitantly did the same.

"No matter what happens," Krono's eyes were intense, the faintly glowing amber warring for brightness with the coals beneath their hands, "you also have to know that I am so damned proud of both of you. I know yesterday was scary, and you thought you had to make even worse choices, and I want you to be able to make better ones - ones that will be good for you, make you feel safer, whatever you decide to do."

He squeezed their hands again, warm even through his gloves.

"Can… we go talk about it?" Cloud asked, leaning against Sephiroth's side.

"Of course," Krono rose from the ground, "I'll go outside, so you know I can't hear you."

That was far more than they could have expected, and once he was out of sight Sephiroth grabbed Cloud's hand and pulled him even deeper into the cave, just in case there were echoes that might give away their conversation. Both Scramble and the giant wolf followed alongside them, as though they too wanted to assist them. They were welcome, they couldn't ever tell their secrets.

"What do you want to do?" Sephiroth asked, wondering if he himself was capable of choosing between such diametrically opposed outcomes. Both would be difficult, in ways that he might not be able to predict. It had seemed so clear yesterday, when he was certain that the worst would happen and the choices he'd made then seemed terribly drastic now in the light of day with the assistance of someone he couldn't help but begin to trust.

"I dunno," Cloud said, then corrected his speech before Sephiroth needed to, "I do not know. Both things are scary," he admitted.

"Yes," Sephiroth turned and looked out into the darkness around them, deeper and more all consuming the further the cave went on. He didn't know anything about the world outside the laboratory, neither of them did. Textbooks and photos did little to show what things were really like, how other people behaved — the psychology books had just confused him more.

"Would it be bad to want to go back?" Cloud asked, and Sephiroth almost felt relieved. It was cowardly, he knew, to go back to the only thing they knew. He wasn't certain which was more rational, trying to escape the things they went through, versus the unknown hazards of trying to live without them.

"I have to admit," Sephiroth took Cloud's hand the way Krono had, "that I don't know if we could survive yet. We are not fully trained, and… you are very small. I believe I would be more… familiar, if we returned for now."

"Is Krono going to act like Vanget?" Cloud asked, and his lip was pulled between his teeth for only a second.

"Perhaps, but we would know it is a facade. The professor and the others, that is what they expect, is it not? They have to trust him, so that he can take us out of the lab legitimately in order to join SOLDIER. They wouldn't supply us with training and uniforms only for the ah," Sephiroth searched his vocabulary for the right word, "aesthetic. It would be a waste of time and money, and that's something they would not do when they could instead focus entirely upon their experiments."

Cloud nodded solemnly, "Then I'm okay with that."

Sephiroth dropped down to his knees the way he'd done the night before, clutching at Cloud's arms as the little boy's expression became alarmed.

"There's something else," he said before he could lose his nerve, "I stole something last night, from you, and I don't know how to give it back."

"What do you mean?" Cloud was still and stiff as he avoided Sephiroth's eyes for a moment before being brave and focusing on them.

"I was afraid for you, for us, and I thought if I took it away then you would be safer — you know how in operational security, the less you know about something the enemy would question you about, the better? That you cannot give away information that you do not have to give in the first place?"

"Yes?" Cloud's voice was high and anxious, and Sephiroth hated that he was the cause of it.

"We have…" He tried to think of how to explain, "Remember the experiment, yesterday, in order to put my theory into practice that I would be able to make you do things without you necessarily desiring to do so?"

Cloud nodded, biting at his lip again and Sephiroth had to reach up and thumb at his mouth to keep him from doing something so obvious and showing the fear he kept trying to hide.

"We have names," Sephiroth said, "and I took that from you, I made you forget, and I know that it is unforgivable, but I do not know how to reverse it. I did not think I could do it at all, but that is not an excuse."

"What…" Cloud shook his head, "can I know them, again? I mean… I'm not… mad, I think?" It was a question more than a statement. "You did want to protect me, to protect us, right?"

"Yes," Sephiroth nodded, "I know it is a terrible thing I did, but I thought it would assist you in the farce that anything that has gone wrong during this mission would be heaped upon me and not you."

He clutched at Cloud's arms again, then stopped himself from hesitating further and pulled him into a hug. Cloud's short clipped hair was scratchy against his cheek as he gave back what he'd unrightfully stolen.

"You are Cloud, your mother named you that. Cloud Strife, it was on a blanket you were wrapped in when the people in the town gave you to the professor. I am Sephiroth, and I think professor Gast must have given it to me, because he was the only one who ever used it."

"Cloud," the little boy shaped the word with trembling lips, having as much trouble as the first time as he carefully enunciated, "and Sephiroth."

"Please," Sephiroth had no right to ask, but he couldn't help himself, "can you forgive me?"

"I think so," Cloud said after a moment, "cause… cause we're brothers right?"

Sephiroth blew out his breath as he hugged Cloud hard enough to make him give a sound of discomfort, "Yes, because we're brothers."

Wolf interposed herself in the embrace, nudging at their arms with her nose as though she too wanted to join in — and they couldn't do anything but allow it. She shoved her whole face between them, and both Sephiroth and Cloud returned the gesture and wrapped their arms around her neck until she sneezed and shoved both of them with her head back towards the way they'd come.

Scramble whipped his tail back and forth as he followed beside them.

"It wants to be our brother too," Cloud said, the statement so whimsical it made Sephiroth almost laugh.

"And our sister, I guess," Sephiroth patted Wolf's shoulder, "or something like that."

Cloud reached up and took Sephiroth's hand, and even though he knew he should not entertain it, he couldn't help but squeeze back instead of letting go.

"You don't have a last name?" Cloud asked suddenly, swinging their hands back and forth as they reached the passage.

"Not that I know of, no," Sephiroth shrugged. It wasn't something he'd considered for a long time. Not everyone had surnames, although he knew that Ballard and Rivers were surnames and not given ones. Professor Hojo was just Hojo , so far as he understood.

"You can be a Strife too then, it fits good anyway right? That's what it means, like that things are hard? So we're both Strife's."

"I'd like that," Sephiroth said, pulling Cloud along behind him with their fingers twisted together.

Joel waited patiently for the boys to return, sitting down on the ground outside the cave and watching the sun creeping up. It sent streaks of light over the valleys and the town he could barely make out far below. He'd meant it when he'd said he would respect what choice they made, he wasn't even certain which he would prefer himself after thinking about it sleeplessly half the night. Safety and security, those were things they could have in a variety of ways, depending on what they chose, but they would both be difficult and painful in the end.

He wasn't entirely surprised when the boys returned and had made the decision to return to the familiarity of the lab. He'd known from the beginning that they didn't know anything else, that they might even fight him to stay if he'd tried to take them the first night the way he'd wanted to.

The guard hound followed at their heels, and the massive wolf a few seconds after as she scratched her way up through the gap with her claws. She shook dirt off of her pelt, sitting down beside the boys as though she too had bearing on the choices they were about to speak of.

"Alright," he nodded, "we can do that. There's just one more thing to do then, and that's finish up this adventure like proper SOLDIERs do when they come out of wilderness training."

As often happened, both of the kids were silent, uncertain how to respond and resorting to saying nothing instead.

"When we've succeeded, our trainers give us operative names, only to be used amongst our own squad. And since we're our own very small squad, I think it would be a good thing to hold to tradition."

He knew they had their own names for one another, based on what he'd heard the night before, but he also knew they wouldn't trust him with them for now. But he wanted to give them something else they could keep, something that couldn't be taken away by the scientists.

"I thought about it a lot last night, and it came to me a couple of days ago, that morning in your lean-to."

Even though they tried to hide it, interest and a little bit of what he could read as excitement, flickered rapidly over their small faces.

He touched both of their shoulders, "You're Hati," he said, to S, "named after the Nibel wolf who chases the moon. And you're Skoll," he nodded to C, "the wolf who chases the sun. We'll keep the secret between the three of us, and one day we'll take missions like a proper squad and use those names all we like."

"What about you?" C asked, eyes wide and brighter than he'd ever seen them.

"Hm," Joel thought about it for a moment. He had a code name from his training squad, but those names didn't exactly have the same gravitas as mythological creatures.

"Let's keep with the theme," he said after another moment, "I'll be Fenrir, then."

Both boys nodded with somber expressions and eyes that were far too old, "Skoll, and Hati, and Fenrir," S repeated.

"I like it," C's serious face split in a grin, and he watched as S's lips struggled not to turn up and he finally failed and let it out.

"And we're brothers?" S said, hesitating more than Joel would have wished.

"And we're brothers," Joel agreed.