FicWad

((Disclaimer: I took down the old chapter because it sucked. It was so bad that I couldn't even continue. Thus the long wait. This is the new chapter, which hopefully does not suck. I do not own Final Fantasy VII, or any characters, plots, locations, insignia, or anything else. I'm just a college student. Please don't sue me.))


"I'm not sure he's going to wake up." Tifa spoke above the steady beeping of the monitors, trying to ignore the tubes in Vincent's arm. Somehow it seemed cruel, to hook Vincent up to something so tirelessly demanding. Reeve stood awkwardly behind her-the poor man had just been swept along in the chaos. "He looks so peaceful..."
"Peaceful like the damn dead!" Cid spat angrily. He was pissed off-if Vincent thought he could get out of apologising by falling into a goddamn wall and going to the hospital, he was fucking mistaken.
"Cid..." Tifa began, her voice strained. The pilot glared at her, and she sighed. "It's probably something minor and he needs rest."
"Rest? Fuckin; rest?! Look at him, he's a damned vegetable!"
"Uhm..." Reeve spoke up just behind Tifa's left ear-she jumped.
Cid turned on him. "What do you want?"
"I... er..." Suddenly Reeve felt very nervous, with both of them watching him. He wished he had Cait Sith.
"Is something wrong?" Tifa tilted her head slightly, something she did only when she was genuinely concerned. Reeve suspected he was the only one who had noticed it so far. He hesitated another second before speaking.
"...shouldn't we tell the others?"
"HELL NO!" Cid leapt to his feet and Reeve practically dove for cover. Tifa stepped quickly between the two men, though she privately agreed.
"Ssh! CID! No, I... we don't need to," she said, trying to pacify them both simultaneously. "It'd just make things worse-Vincent wouldn't want them to know." She was improvising, but it was the truth. Or she realised it was once she'd said it. Vincent was so closed and stoic... he'd be mortified.
"Like hell! People coming in at all goddamn hours... fuckin' /Yuffie/--!" Cid stamped back to his chair, muttering dangerously. Tifa kept a nervous eye on him. Tense enough to cut with a knife would be a relief.
"Ms. Lockhart?" Tifa spun around, but it was only the doctor. 'Only.' Everything was hanging on what he said, but somehow he seemed the most harmless one here. "We have the bloodwork back, at least..."
"Oh thank gods," she muttered under her breath.
"...but if you don't keep it down, we're going to have to ask you to leave."
"...oh." She gave Cid a glare to match his own from earlier. "Sorry." He nodded and shuffled his papers.
"Well, then... I... have some peculiar results to give you." His brow furrowed in puzzlement-so did hers.
"What kind of peculiar?" Suddenly she felt very unprepared. Cid had swivelled in his chair to stare at the doctor, and even Reeve was attentively listening from the wall he'd attached himself to.
"Well... first of all, his Mako levels are extraordinarily high." He hesitated. "It's a miracle he didn't drop... dead a long time a-are you all right?" Her expression had changed abruptly, and she sighed with impatience.
"That's normal for him... I think." She hedged at the end, since it occurred to her that it might not be.
"I-I see." The doctor scribbled hastily on the report. She felt a bit bad for him, he really looked nervous-and any blood sample Vincent provided couldn't be easy to work with.
"What was the rest?" she asked in a more patient tone as Cid snorted and turned back around.
"Well, I... I need to ask you some questions first." He raised his eyes to meet hers. Dear gods, it was like dealing with Reeve, but somehow worse. She expected this guy to at least know what he was /doing/.
"Okay."
"Was your... friend... in SOLDIER?"
"No, he was a Turk."
"...was that sarcasm?" Tifa tried not to slap him.
"Nope."
"Uh. Okay. Hang on. All right. Well, er, do you know how he got such high Mako levels?" Tifa opened her mouth to respond, but then came a violent crashing and a startled curse. She whirled around just in time to see Cid, Vincent and machinery go slamming into the floor.



Vincent was woken by the tug of the IV in his skin. It was a tender feeling, but one wholly wrong-and horrifyingly familiar. He left his eyes closed and moved his arm slightly-less than a millimetre was all it took for the chills of revulsion to take hold of him. He wasn't wrong. Something sick crawled in his stomach and the Turk closed his eyes more firmly against the reality of it. His first impulse was to go still and stiff, like a corpse. Just get it over with. But this wasn't what it felt like... it couldn't be, because the voices he was hearing were very familiar. There was a rush of pressure in his head and nausea hit him like a curse. He'd lose consciousness at this rate. He took a breath. Breathe. Breathe. He could hear the persistent beeping... he could hear cursing, he could hear conversation and life and movement. He wasn't bound to the table. He /wasn't bound to the table/. Suddenly struck with-not elation, but something akin to it, Vincent forced himself to move. And he did. All at once. As though to prove he wasn't helpless, Vincent surged up and overbalanced, pulling the monitor and IV first onto himself, then, as he toppled forward onto Cid, down to the floor as pilot, Turk, and machinery came crashing down.
Tifa's reaction was instantaneous-Vincent would need help. She was halfway across the room when she heard the low snarl rising from Vincent's throat, though, and her concern suddenly switched to Cid. Vincent was a dangerous man as it was-now he was struggling and that golden claw was way too close to Cid's face for anyone's comfort. She reached them and grabbed the Turk by the arm. She had to separate them quickly. It wasn't a few seconds later that she had to pull back quickly-Vincent had come very close to removing her own face. He fell back, hitting the back of his head against the metal base of the hospital bed, flailing still as Cid staggered back onto his feet. Blood rolled from a long gash on his right arm, and he looked a bit shaken, but he was otherwise okay. It didn't stop him from complaining loudly. Two nurses poured in through the door as Reeve sidled away, and Tifa planted herself in front of Vincent, blocking him from their view and vice versa. Everything happened so quickly there really wasn't time to think things through.
"W-wait! STOP!" The doctor was left standing in the middle of the room, and he did the only thing he could apparently think of. The nurses obeyed, both skidding to a halt in front of Tifa, who froze reflexively. Cid, however, paid him absolutely no mind at all and continued to swear at astonishing volume. Vincent had retreated under the bed, having somehow managed to fold his tall but thin frame up underneath it. The real trouble started when one of the nurses saw blood. Grabbing Cid by the wrist, the young man attempted to force the pilot to be still so he could inspect the wound. It didn't go well. He quickly found himself cornered, trapped against the wall while an angry man with breath like a pack of cigarettes swore and shouted at him.
Tifa took control first. She hadn't followed Cloud across the Planet and back without learning how to take charge. "EVERYBODY OUT!" The doctor and remaining nurse glanced at each other uncertainly, but she was already in action, grabbing Cid by the back of his jacket and yanking him in the direction of the door. He took the hint and stormed out, dragging his unfortunate victim by the front of the shirt and dripping blood on the floor as he went. There was some initial hesitation on the part of the staff. They couldn't just leave... Vincent was still under the bed. The nurse left first, retreating from the chaotic scene as quickly as she could. Tifa shouted back over the din. "Reeve, take care of Vincent!" That settled it. With a great deal of nervous pausing and glancing back, the overwhelmed doctor took his leave, shutting the door behind him.