A/N: Well, since TDATK is going nowhere, I felt like starting something new. Also, please note that I have no knowledge of German whatsoever, and simply put some phrases into an online translator, so if they're complete gibberish, please forgive me! Plus, I got a lot of time to write considering I'm trapped in the house by more than twenty inches of snow! This prologue might not make a lot of sense, but hopefully you should understand everything by at least the second chapter.
Summary: The Angels control the world. They exist to guide and protect the Humans, under the ancient rule of Jenova, the Great Mother. But a single mistake can topple an empire. AU YAOI SC, ZA, others
Disclamer: I do not own anything! If I did, this wouldn't be FANfiction would it?
-Prologue-
-000-
Excerpt from The History of the Angels:
'A long time ago, an Angel named Jenova fell to the Planet, having been sent out from Heaven to do Minerva's bidding and lead the humans out of the age of Ragnarök. Minerva's voice could not reach the humans, so Jenova took it upon herself to give the humans guidance. The humans followed Jenova, and she eventually took a husband. She had three sons and a single daughter. All of them were as powerful and gorgeous as their mother. The oldest son had hair as silver and eyes as green as his mother's, and he was named Sephiroth. He is the only Angel to have one black wing and one white wing. He and his siblings continued to lead the humans, even after Jenova disappeared, and the humans made great advancements in technology and the like. The Angels built a great city called Midgar and from there they rule to this day. However, Jenova left behind with her one important rule. An Angel can never, ever have a child with another Angel.
Soon after the humans and Angels settled down, developed a government and laws, a place from the west sea attacked, a place called Wutai. Sephiroth repelled the attacks and single handedly crushed the attacking Wutaians. Sephiroth went down in history as the best General Midgar had ever seen. Since then, only a handful of Angels had been born with silver hair, green eyes, and black-and-white wings, all of them male, and all of them named Sephiroth. They are believed to be reincarnations of the Silver General, as all of them accomplished amazing things in their lifetimes.
In Midgar, the family ShinRa, the ArchAngels, named by Jenova herself as royalty, control the entire world…'
-000-
Lucrecia looked down at the baby sleeping in her arms. Right now, his eyes were closed, but she knew what they looked like when they were open. They weren't her warm brown, or his father's deep red. They were acid green, with slit pupils. And his hair wasn't her burnt sienna or his father's inky black. It was an unnatural silver. The signs were all there. When he had been born, Lucrecia had been resolved to never lose him, but now that his father had left them, she had no reason to keep him.
She looked up. Hojo was already there.
"Have you chosen to do the right thing?" he asked, his slimy voice making her wince.
"He left." She simply said, and handed the slumbering child to the bespectacled man. She turned around sharply and quickly made her departure, before she changed her mind.
When she was out of ear shot, Hojo smiled,
"I know."
-000-
A young, blonde woman was running for her life. The Angels were chasing her and wanted her dead. So she ran to the one place Angels never went. The Nibel mountains.
She was starting to regret her decision to run into the mountains during a blizzard when the Angels showed up at the small camp she had set up near the base of the mountain. She had left everything and ran, straight into the dense woods, at night, during a blizzard… but she couldn't let the Angels get her. She pressed a blue hand to her heavily swollen stomach. The snow whipped around her, making her hair slap into her face and create a gold halo around her head. The bitter winds were slowly robbing her muscles of movement. She knew she was going to die. Nobody lived in these mountains. She collapsed into the snow.
But, then she heard something that made her lift her head. Those crunching sounds were getting closer. They sounded like footsteps, human footsteps. And there was a light. Like a lantern. Scrounging up the last of her strength, she pulled herself out of the snow and began to head towards the light.
"Help!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, hoping it would carry through the heavy winds. It looked like it did. The lantern began to bob up and down as it grew larger by the second, the footsteps in the crunching snow getting louder. Out of the swirling snow, she could see three large figures approach. Then she heard a voice,
"Wer ist diese Frau? Ist sie ein Außenseiter?" it was a male voice.
'What a strange language…' the woman thought. It certainly wasn't her language, and it was much too guttural to be Wutaian.
"Sollten wir sie töten?" another voice asked, in reply to the fist voice.
"Wartezeit!" a third voice cried. One of the men leaned down and put a furry hand on her stomach. This close, the woman could see the man was wrapped heavily in an assortment of furs. "Sie ist mit Kind."
She didn't know what this meant, but the two other men began to whisper with each other. The one who had spoken first spoke up again,
"Gut lässt sie zum Dorf nehmen." This must have been an affirmation of sorts, because the one leaning down quickly picked her up bridal style and began to walk.
"Sein gut, können Sie dich entspannen. Wir versuchen, das Kind zu speichern." He spoke. That was all she heard, because darkness soon consumed her.
-000-
Erza Strife was yanked from a rather peaceful sleep by a red-faced, panting Gerd Lockhart.
"What in Hel's name?" she spat out angrily as he tugged her out of her room.
"We found an Outsider woman in the woods and she's going into labor!" He looked back at her, "Get your furs on!"
Erza was shocked but quickly began to tug a coat and pair of boots on. "A woman in the woods? On a night like this?"
"Aye," Gerd replied, "With Sif's golden locks. Hugin, Ozwal and Franz found her."
Erza finished clothing herself and raced out the door with Gerd following closely behind.
Erza was the only midwife in the entire village and well known for being unable to bear any children herself. She had taken a husband at the customary age of 13; however, all of their attempts had led to no children. Eventually, on a simple hunting trip, he had fallen prey to an angry Claw.
-000-
The hut where the Outsider was being kept was just a small shack on the outskirts of the village. Erza could hear the screams even from a distance.
The dark-haired woman picked up her pace and hurried to the door. Inside, Erza finally got her first look at the Outsider. Her unbelievably golden locks were plastered to her face with sweat and her pale skin was flushed and red.
"Erza! Thank Sköll you're here!" Hugin ran up to her, "The baby just started crowning!"
"Oh my gods, out of the way man!" Erza hitched up her skirts and shoved right past a frazzled Franz. The poor guy looked like he was going to faint. "You have warm water and towels right?"
"Ozwal swallowed and stuttered "J-ja…"
Erza lifted up the blanket to look at the progress of the birth. Franz and Ozwal fainted.
"Men." Erza scoffed and rolled her eyes, rolling up her sleeves.
-000-
A few hours later, with the unconscious bodies of Ozwal and Franz pushed up to the wall and Hugin having left to get the elders, the baby was born without a hitch, and Erza wrapped a blanket around the bloody child. It –he- looked up at her with impossibly blue eyes and a tuft of golden hair topped his head. The new mother reached for him, words that made no sense to Erza passing from her lips.
Erza handed the strangely quiet child to his mother, and looked at them with warm eyes. The mother was cooing one word over and over, "Cloud, cloud, cloud…" Erza could only assume that was to be his name.
The woman finally calmed down and stopped her heavy panting. In fact, she stopped all movement.
"Fräulein? Sind Sie gut? (Miss? Are you alright?)" Erza asked worriedly. Erza took her hand and the cold, stiff feeling could mean only one thing. The cold had gotten to the woman after all.
With a numb feeling in her gut, Erza lifted the child from the recently deceased woman's cold arms. He cooed softly in Erza's arms. She looked down into those big blue eyes and in the darkness that had fallen during the passing hours; she could've sworn the child's eyes were glowing.
-000-
In the village of Nibelheim, many an argument has had to be settled by the Elder, a man pushing 60 or so, the oldest in the village, a man named Baldur Lockhart.
Currently in his home, there was another one of these arguments occurring. The Elder looked down at the angry crowd with his half blind eyes. The majority of them were demanding the Outsider child be killed, while a few were saying the child should be allowed to live.
"The Outsiders bring nothing but trouble; have we forgotten that they banished us?!" an angry man cried out from the larger group.
"But it's a child!" shouted a woman from the smaller group, "We can't blame an innocent child for what his elders did!"
Elder Lockhart looked to the smaller crowd "Where is the child?" he asked, his naturally deep voice echoing as he addressed the crowd. His son, Gerd, stepped forward.
"Erza is readying the child."
"How long?"
"I don't know. Possibly an hour-"
At that exact moment, Erza opened the door, letting in a blast of cold air. She was fully dressed in the thick furs that you had to wear in the cold Nibelheim weather, her braids falling loose, down to her waist. The baby looked like a very large fuzzy caterpillar topped with bright yellow antenna.
"Oooooor, maybe less…" Gerd finished off. Nossa, Gerd's wife, heavily pregnant herself, was busy laughing behind her hand.
Elder Baldur chuckled, "Let me see the babe." He said, getting the conversation back on track. Erza walked up to his large chair, the crowd growing suddenly quiet.
She handed the squirming bundle to the old man. He took it and looked down at the cause of so much turmoil in the village. And it looked up at him with large, almost glowing cerulean eyes. It wriggled and pulled one of its tiny hands free from the fur, and used said hand to tug one of the old man's braids. The crowd held their breath. In Nibelheim, the more hair you and, the warmer you were, so it was rare for somebody to cut their hair, but long hair got in the way of work, so to compromise, you simply tied your hair into long braids. It was simple manners to not touch another person's braids unless you were very close to that person or wanted trouble. When the Elder chuckled at the child's curious face, the collective breath was sighed out.
"Does she have a name?" he asked Erza.
"Uh… it's a he." Erza stated uncomfortably.
"Huh, really?" Elder pulled back the furs to check, and yep, it was a he. "So, his name?"
"O-oh, its Cloud." Erza couldn't help but wonder sometimes if the Elder's mind escaped him sometimes.
He handed the now sleeping bundle back to Erza and stood up to address the crowd.
"I see no reason why he should be killed. He himself has done no harm."
With this declaration, there was a collective sigh of relief from Gerd's side and a few angry mutterings from the majority.
"But," the Elder interjected, "We need someone to take care of him." There were mutterings in the crowd. No one wanted to take care of an Outsider child.
Seeing no one else was going to do it, Gerd stepped forward and began to announce:
"I will take-"
"I will take care of the boy." A voice cut him off. Everyone looked to see who it was. Erza, who everyone had simply forgotten about in the tension, had stood up, a determined look in her eyes.
"Erza, are you sure you can handle it?" Elder Lockhart looked at her quizzically, "You have no husband, and-"
"I don't need a husband to take care of a child!" Erza nearly shouted.
"Fine, you can have the babe." Elder Lockhart held up his hands in a sign of peace.
Still steaming, Erza stormed out of the house, wrapping the sleeping infant more securely in the thick furs.
-000-
When Erza reached her small house, it having never been expanded by her husband to make room for a family, she slumped down on the floor, leaning on the door. Her furs were flung halfway off her body and all over the floor.
Looked down at the little 'bundle of joy' in her arms. His golden hair framed the peachy skin, and his cheeks and nose were rubbed red from the cold wind. He looked like a Vanir (FYI, uh not a lot of you probably know what a Vanir is, but they're pretty much a Norse-version of an elf) straight out of the past.
Smiling softly, she brushed a wayward lock of hair off his face.
-000-
In the fortress-city of Midgar, a strict-looking man in a crisp, black suit with a scar on his cheek marched down the richly decorated hallway to the President's office. The room was a massive display of wealth, sprawling with expensive portraits and plush furniture. The man walked swiftly towards the elaborate desk and approached the man sitting behind it.
President Rupert ShinRa was the current 'President' (they had changed the title from King for political reasons) of Midgar; he controlled the entire economy and trade of the massive city. At age 31, the man well into two-hundred pounds and had a face almost all consumed by a thick blonde mustache and pudgy red cheeks. The massive white wings on his back had long since shrunk as the size of his body increased.
When the President noticed the scarred man had come into the office, his beady eyes sent an unspoken, desperate question. The sharply dressed man sighed.
"Our forces cornered her in the Nibel Area, however she escaped into the Nibel Mountains where our Angel troops could not fly and our Human soldiers could not march."
"She escaped?!" the President roared, his face becoming redder by the second, "If she ever returns she could ruin me! She has the proof!" spittle flew from his fat lips.
"Sir, they're the Nibel Mountains. It was during a blizzard, and her chances of surviving in an unpopulated mountain range are less than three percent."
"I don't care about the statistics! If she survives-"
"Father, you should calm down. Remember your blood pressure." An unfamiliar, young voice cut-in from the far side of the room.
A three-year old child with pale blue eyes and golden-blonde hair stood in the doorway.
"Rufus, what are you still doing awake? You should be in bed." The President said in a more even tone.
Rufus just looked at him with a bored expression on his face. The President sighed.
"Verdot, could you escort Rufus to his room?"
The scarred man, Verdot, bowed, "Yes, President."
He walked up to Rufus and held out his hand. With a sigh, Rufus accepted it, and was led from the room.
"Verdot, what did my father do?" Rufus asked calmly.
"Nothing you need to concern yourself with." Verdot replied sharply.
Rufus sighed again, "My father is an idiot. He is going to ruin himself." He said coldly.
Verdot brought his fingers to massage his temples. He feared the day Rufus would succeed his father. Even at such an innocent age, the child was distant cold. His wings hadn't even grown yet. But maybe, Rufus would be the ArchAngel to end the corruptness of Midgar…
Verdot could only hope.