The Cold, Hard Truth
By: Phoenix Dayze
R
Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII. This is just for entertainment only.
Cloud flinched as the Masamune pierced smoothly his flesh, pinning him to a chunk of cement with cold, furious intent. He peered up at Sephiroth with angry eyes, his forehead creased with pain and confusion. A cold chill rippled through him as Sephiroth laughed, a dark chuckle of promise.
"Three years I've waited for this moment, for the day I would return and I could finally seal the fate you chose for yourself that day so long ago." Sephiroth's voice was laced with an unnatural calmness, touched with a fervent, untouched ire, and swimming with barely restrained grief. "So much time has passed since then..." His hand trembled slightly against the hilt of his sword.
Cloud winced as the sword bit deeper into his shoulder, pain radiating out from the angry wound in waves of rippling fire. He struggled lightly, testing, but Sephiroth was a perfect warrior, and Cloud knew that he wouldn't be escaping this encounter unless Sephiroth wanted him to. He growled with frustration and bottled rage. How could Sephiroth stand there and talk down to him? He'd done nothing but good for this world? He'd risked his life countless times, while Sephiroth was drifting peacefully through the Lifestream. "You talk like you've been here the last few years." He ground out. "Like you've suffered. But you weren't here, and you don't know what I've done, what I've been through, so don't act like you're still my superior!"
Sephiroth chuckled again, tighter and full of malice. "I may have been dead, but that doesn't make me gone." He shook his head, the mass of silver hair glinting in the fading light. "Still so naive." He extended his right arm as if to display himself. "Am I not here before you? Have I not returned from the dead in the past? Why then would you ever assume that I was gone?"
Cloud swallowed thickly against the bile that suddenly rose in his throat. Sephiroth was right. He had been naive. Sephiroth had always returned, and Cloud had been a fool to ignore that very real threat to his future. He had denied the possibility and gone on his way in self-appointed ignorance, and now Sephiroth was back. And he was saying that he had been with them all along... Cloud's mind flashed white, and he turned an apprehensive gaze up to Sephiroth's face.
"You didn't think anyone knew, did you, Cloud?" Sephiroth near whispered, icy intensity spilling from his very core. "You thought that you were alone on that hilltop, that you were safe in your crimes. But I was there, Cloud, watching...and waiting..." There was a flash of fiery green in the reptilian eyes. "All these years, you've been living on borrowed time, and reveling in your wretched existence. But I would never let you get away with such a terrible injustice."
"What injustice?" Cloud tried to sound strong, to emphasize the indignance he felt at being accused, but a slivered tremor slipped in between his words regardless. Sephiroth only sounded like he knew things. And Cloud didn't have to take the bait that his once General was dangling so temptingly beneath his nose. "I don't know what you're talking about." Cloud insisted. "I haven't done anything."
"Don't be foolish, Cloud." Sephiroth spat, losing a bit of his carefully restrained calm. "I saw you." His green eyes narrowed with vicious, very real hate. "I saw everything, Cloud."
Cloud's eyes widened noticably as true worry finally took hold, and his breath hitched in his throat. His mind reeled and he shook off the nagging insistence that Sephiroth somehow knew. But how could he? No one knew! Sephiroth had to be lying! Cloud swallowed down the irrational fear that tried to worm its way through his toughened SOLDIER exterior he had painstakingly formed over the last few years. "Sephiroth," he started carefully, "I'm not sure what it is that you think you know, but..."
Cloud screamed as the Masamune wrenched free, then plunged back into his flesh, fresh blood making itself known with feverish intensity. Cloud grit his teeth against the deep. agonizing ache that was spreading through him with a much higher force than before. His resolve faltered. If he didn't confess, Sephiroth would shred him to pieces. But perhaps, if he apologized... "Sephiroth," he began slowly, "let me explain..."
"Don't!" There was a dangerous edge to Sephiroth's voice. "I know what you did to him." He twisted the blade slowly, methodically, in the deliciously red wound. "I know how he saved you. How he put his life in your hands. And I know your betrayal...intimately."
Cloud bit back his pain, the sudden terror running through his mind a much more pressing evil. How could anyone know these things? He forced himself to take a breath with lungs that refused to work. "Sephiroth," he begged, "please...it was a mistake."
A smile curved across the dark angel's lips, wicked and foretelling. "Yes...it was." He pressed on the sword, relishing the half choked back cries as the blade severed flesh from bone. "You're going to pay for the heart you captured. The time you lost. The life you stole!"
Pain was all that Cloud knew as Sephiroth's words tore him apart as effectively as his infamous blade. He had always known, somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, that this day would find him. It was inevitable. And in his heart, he had known, even then, that he would deserve it. After all, it was his hand that had held the blade. His selfish reasons that had thrust it into unsuspecting flesh. His uncaring eyes that had stared down into fading violet... But the looming, inescapable future hadn't mattered at the time. Only his irrational, undefined purpose, and his own petty need to be something more.
A slicing, wrenching pain cut through him, and Cloud could just barely crawl through the hurt and the numbness and the deep, soul-claiming cold, and comprehend what was happening. The Masamune was serving him his retribution on the end of its unforgiving silver blade. His chest bloomed open like a morbid, sacrificial flower, and Cloud could feel his life watering down like a torrent of crimson tears. And all the regret, all the guilt, all the sorrow he'd never allowed himself to feel suddenly came crashing down, forced onto him by his ruined General and his damning sword. Gasping against the blackness that was too quickly eating away his time, Cloud moved his lips in a silent whisper, "I'm sorry..."
"So am I." Sephiroth's voice was ripe with sorrow, all pretense of strength and calm stripped away. It would be irrelevant soon enough. He stared down at the carnage he had made of the young man's body, and, on a whim, he pulled his sword free, laid it aside, and knelt down next to Cloud's quivering form. He brought a misleadingly gentle hand up to caress Cloud's rapidly cooling cheek. "You never should have killed him, Cloud. You shouldn't have taken him away." Positioning his fingers under the tapered chin, he tipped Cloud's head up, forcing the death-tinged eyes to focus on him. "Why?" The General growled, his eyes gleaming. "Why the games, Cloud? If you were going to kill him, why not just do it? Why the charade of friendship? Why such a bitter betrayal?" Tears glittered in the green, tiny jewels that only one other had ever been permitted to see. "What did Zack ever do to deserve such unfeeling vindictiveness?"
Cloud's reply was nearly lost as he fell to the darkness. "It was...because...because...you loved him..."