Nothing this bad in a long, long time. A tree, not far ahead. Vincent clenched his teeth and left the carcass behind him as he got to one knee and forced himself forward. Not since he'd been an amateur gun for Shinra had he allowed anything to get so close, to catch him unawares. Where the hell had all of his concentration gone?

*They* were still broiling beneath the surface, hungry to be loosed again, excited by his pain and the smell of blood, even if some of it was his own. But if he could just buy himself a couple of minutes, force them down until he could get the bleeding under control. Get back to his feet and somehow get mounted again. Get back to Nibelheim before other creatures caught the scent of injured prey...

He hoped he still had some of that surgical thread left.

He hitched himself around until he was leaning his back against the tree. The bone was still intact, but it was a deep tear through the skin and muscle and tendons of his right thigh, angled upward, maybe three inches above the knee. Damn, damn, damn! Even knowing the way his body healed, like a river recovering from a ripple, demon tissue ignoring the constraints of time and of normal human physiology, it might still be at least two weeks before he could use it properly without damaging it further.

Dammit!

Everything felt slick and warm in the dark, and the nighttime world was starting to feel a little unreal. But he managed to find two of the bandages, strips of material from a black shirt that had lost too many buttons. Carefully, he stretched his leg out, loosely wrapped the wound, and then hesitated a moment, the two ends of the bandage in flesh and metal fingers. Clenched his teeth and steadied his breathing.

And tightened.

The first time he'd ever had to do this (years and years ago, dressed in blue and hunched against the wall of a house in Midgar where everyone was dead but him), he'd blacked out. Only for a few seconds, but it had left him feeling disoriented hours afterward. Now, however, he could force himself to remain conscious, though he couldn't help a muffled grunt of pain. And then he repeated the process with the second make-shift bandage.

The chocobo was skittish, nervous at the smell of blood. But, well-trained, it had not run. And though it rolled its eyes and made quick, trilling sounds of agitation, it stood still as he pulled himself up onto its back.

The wound burned as he rode, as severed muscles tried to hold him to his mount. But he would be back home in a matter of hours. An unfortunate turn of events, to have to cut the hunt so short.

But they would pay him in Nibelheim just the same as in Kalm for the evidence of a dead monster, though he rarely hunted around Nibelheim anymore. Not enough monsters to make it worth his while, and he was not Sephiroth to go up against a Zolom. Though he'd certainly considered it more than once. But the threat of debilitating mutilation always made him change his mind, as did the idea of what could possibly be months of recuperation. He hated the very thought of that kind of infirmity, the vulnerability of it.

Hated any vulnerability, really. To anything...

Tifa had sounded more herself over the phone, more the Tifa he vaguely remembered from Avalanche. And though he wanted to deny it, had been trying to deny it, some part of him was uneasy about returning to Nibelheim. About seeing her again, now that she no longer seemed possessed with the desire to end her own life.

Tifa, Lucrecia. But this time she'd lived instead, saved him from his self-inflicted guilt. And he was a fool.

Tifa wasn't Lucrecia. This wasn't atoning. His mind was just substituting, but he didn't have to accept it. She wasn't going to make him vulnerable again.

Tifa...she'd been stronger than Lucrecia, in the end.

        * * *

Tifa frowned and held the shirt up to the early morning light coming in through the window, trying to see it with an objective eye.

Lily was smirking a little from the kitchen table, a cigarette held loosely between her fingers. "Black, dark blue; it doesn't matter. He's not going to notice. I don't think he pays that much attention to his clothing."

Tifa shrugged a little. "Maybe you're right. It doesn't look *that* much different." She twisted one of the buttons gently to see the navy thread underneath. "Where did you get all of these black buttons?"

"Two other shirts he's wrecked over the years. Ones that neither of us could patch up. I just kept the buttons in case he ever lost some. Pays to be prepared, I guess."

"Pays *him* that *you're* prepared, you mean."

Lily chuckled a little. "Yeah, maybe." She took a drag and blew the smoke away from the table. "You going to take it up?"

"I think so, before he comes back."

Lily smirked. "You know," she began in what was almost a drawl, "I've been getting the impression that you and Vincent didn't really know each other in Avalanche."

"Well, there wasn't exactly a lot of time." But she knew it was an excuse, and it looked like Lily knew it, too. With a sigh, she turned back to the window and amended, "He didn't talk very much, and I think we were all a little afraid of him."

"He's not all that scary, is he?"

He was, Tifa thought, if you'd seen him, heard him turn into a monster, not so different sometimes than the blood-thirsty monsters around you. Watched him dispassionately shoot soldiers, some of them no older than you, right between the eyes. Not that the soldiers hadn't been trying to execute them; not that the rest of Avalanche hadn't killed; but Tifa had never seen someone take human life so calmly, as mechanical as breathing.

Still hard to believe that he'd changed enough to feel *responsible* for human lives. Though he had rescued her, had made a friend of Lily...

Had so far behaved in a quiet, but recognizably *human* way...

"When will he get back, do you think?"

"Oh, not for a couple of days. He'll let us know. Do you want me to come with you?"

Tifa smiled a little. It was nice to have the concern, but she could see how it might become suffocating, even from Lily. "No, I'm fine. I'll be back in a few minutes." She turned to the door and then remembered. "Keys?"

Lily found them on the table and tossed them to her. Tifa caught them out of the air, inwardly pleased for a moment that her reflexes had not completely deserted her.

She opened the door at the bottom and thought about jogging up the stairs (the most energy she'd had in a long time), but then changed her mind. Not a good idea to push her ankle *too* fast. The lock and door at the top made little noise as she worked to enter the apartment.

She was just going to duck in and duck out, she told herself. Put his shirt on a hanger in the closet and then leave. He would never know she'd been there.

The bathroom door was open and the light was on. And she could hear...she didn't know. Was someone here? Had Lily left the light on yesterday by accident?

There had been a time she wouldn't have felt nervous about a situation like this, not nervous for her own physical well-being. She'd been stronger than some men. But not now. Her first impulse was to leave as quietly as she had arrived. If it was Vincent, back already, he would want his privacy. If it was a stranger...

Could she really just leave if it was a stranger, someone intent on robbing the place? Could she just pretend she hadn't seen anything? Or should she get Lily? Lily had said she owned a gun...

Though how would Vincent react if it was him and they came busting in, wielding a weapon?

God, this was crazy. Indecisive Tifa, all over again. She was just going to go over there and check. Maybe she'd imagined the noise.

Quietly, she crept to her right until she could see into the bathroom.

It was Vincent. But... She had to fight the urge to gasp. Bleeding. Sitting on the edge of the toilet lid, one foot propped up on the low rim of the tub. Bootless, pantless. Bleeding from a serious looking wound on his thigh. A wound he was stitching up.

He slipped the needle and the glossy thread in and out of his skin with quick, darting movements, holding a red-smudged towel in his claw to catch the blood. His hair had been loosely tied back, and it looked like he'd smeared some blood there, too. His face was set in a permanent grimace as he worked, and sometimes he gave a small noise of discomfort as he breathed.

After a few moments, he lifted the needle to his mouth and held it between his teeth for a moment as he tugged on the thread, clenching his eyes shut as he tightened the stitches. And then he stuck the needle into the towel and reached for a bottle on the sink counter. A bottle of whiskey, Tifa recognized. Strong whiskey. His hand only shook a little as he brought the bottle to his lips and took a couple of good swallows. And then he moved to put it back on the counter.

And then he noticed her.

She wondered idly as they stared at each other, both shocked into a wary stillness that seemed to last for ages, how it was that he hadn't left a trail of blood with a wound that grievous, hadn't left a mark on the doorknob. Perhaps he'd gotten very good at keeping his injuries to himself.

As before, he was the first to recover from the surprise. With a quiet sigh, he looked away from her. "Do you need something?"

Tifa ventured a few steps closer, around the couch. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Please leave if you don't need anything."

She was fidgeting with something in her fingers. She forced herself to stop. "Okay." And then she realized it was the shirt she'd been fiddling with. "Oh, and..." This wasn't the right time. He looked up again, and though he didn't look impatient she was almost sure he was. It wasn't hard to imagine that he wouldn't want an audience. "Your shirt," she finished lamely. "I'll put it on the couch." She turned and draped it over the cushions. And then she went to leave.

"Tifa."

She stopped and glanced back at him, trying not to think about how awkward it was to look at a man, injured and bloody and half-naked in his bathroom.

He hesitated for a couple of seconds, looking, if it was possible, a little sheepish. "Please, don't tell Lily."

For a moment, she couldn't help but smile. Maybe he didn't want to worry Lily. Maybe he was afraid she would coddle him, though Tifa couldn't picture Lily coddling anyone. And then she nodded and crossed her heart, like she'd sometimes done with Marlene when the little girl hadn't wanted her father to know she'd broken a glass. "Our secret."

Vincent looked at her, one eyebrow twitching upward as if she'd surprised him. And then he gave a quick nod.

And suddenly they were partners in this. And a partnership, especially over a secret, required trust. His trust in her.

Not since Avalanche...

A moment later, she was out the door. And then she was half skipping down the stairs, her ankle completely forgotten.

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