the fight goes on in this the babylon

by Jukebox Hound

Sephiroth doesn't know why he's been given this second chance. He doesn't know the rules anymore, doesn't understand Strife's particular brand of madness, but maybe he can still build something new out of it. [Post-AC.]

Notes:

1. Some minor adjustments to OG!canon in that most of the world knows it was Sephiroth who went batshit and tried to kill everyone and that it was Cloud & Co. who stopped him.
2. I have no idea how long real-time travel would be on this map, so just roll with it.
3. Pretentious title from Archive's "Darkroom"; I pretty much just marathoned their album Londinium every time I worked on this.
4. This is basically almost 30k words of domestic angst/fluff/mild porn. Pure self-indulgence. Don't judge me.

Warnings: sex, trauma recovery, mild D/s elements.

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the fight goes on in this the babylon

jukeboxhound

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When Sephiroth is discovered in the heart of Aeris' church, floating naked on his back in the shallow pool of rainwater, time stands still. It stands still like every cliché in which Cloud's heart stops, fear and hatred and his heart clawing at his throat like rats. It stands still and for a moment Cloud exists as a hollow shell, a rain of bullets on a lonely cliff, a sword through the back and the slow fall of a little marble into a still lake. He breathes.

There's panic around him, he can smell the ozone of charged materia and hear the cries, there's too much chaos and it blurs into slow-motion white noise while a body lies unmoving in the water. Cloud takes a step forward even though it feels like his legs have been rooted in the earth and he has to drag feet made of stone. His sword is heavy against his back. His hands are empty as he takes another step, walks forward into the water until it rises to his waist and he can see every one of Sephiroth's pale eyelashes, slides his arms under Sephiroth's knees and shoulders.

Cloud almost expects to be lifting nothing but air, but it's the normal mass of an unconscious human body. He feels the slow rise and fall of breathing, a steady pulse where his arms bear the brunt of Sephiroth's weight and their skin is pressed together. The heaviness of long, wet hair pulls Sephiroth's head back, exposing the lean white line of his throat, and his hair threatens to tangle around Cloud's legs as he steps out of the water towards the door of the church. The others part to each side to let him pass, sunlight glittering eloquently off a variety of weapons.

"Why, Cloud?" Tifa asks, and Cloud says, "I won't kill him when he can't look me in the eye."

…

The flat above Seventh Heaven is just large enough for Tifa, Cloud, and the kids collectively to have their own bedrooms alongside a small office and bathroom, the kitchen itself downstairs behind the bar. Cloud lays Sephiroth out on his own bed, which hasn't been used in weeks, and covers him with a worn but clean blanket. He's moving on autopilot: straighten the body as naturally as possible, keep it warm, clear the room of weapons even though the person inhabiting the body doesn't need them to be dangerous anyway. It's the thought that counts. Practicality, even when he's watching himself do these things from the outside as weak afternoon sunlight cuts in through the window and slices the room into long shadows.

Downstairs, Tifa's waiting with Cid, Vincent, and Nanaki. Cloud tries to remember when they'd gotten into town as he pours himself a glass of water behind the bar.

"What are you doing?" Tifa finally asks. Cloud watches the bubbles left from the faucet rise to the surface of the glass and doesn't answer.

"You do realize who the fuck you brought home, don't you?" says Cid.

"Yes." He'd know better than anyone, really.

"What about the kids?" Tifa asks softly, and, well. Cloud hadn't thought that far, and he's momentarily overwhelmed with shame at his thoughtlessness of bringing Sephiroth to the refuge of children orphaned by the man's actions in the first place.

"I don't know," he replies honestly. The rats in his throat have made his voice hoarse.

"It doesn't make sense," says Nanaki. "The rain should have destroyed the remaining traces of Jenova."

"Sephiroth was not always her avatar," Vincent reminds them quietly, and it's that, the suggestion that maybe it hadn't all been Sephiroth's choice, that in some ways he's as much a victim as the poor clone bastards, that strikes Cloud hard in the chest like an arrow.

"Then what the hell do we do?" Cid demands. There's a long silence before Cloud murmurs, "I don't know."

…

Calls requesting package delivery continue to ring in the empty office. There's a dead man sleeping in Cloud's bed but the world goes on like it never balanced on the edge of a cliff, so close to tipping over that one more misstep would've sent it tumbling into nonexistence, and some days Cloud wants to grab someone by the shoulders and shake them. How can you just keep going like none of this ever happened? How could you even dare?

So the calls ring themselves into silence. Once or twice they go on for several stubborn minutes at a time, but no one really wants to think about the Turks right now and they, too, eventually give up. Instead Cloud sits in a chair at the bedside, eyes half-lidded, his mind wandering aimlessly all over the world while his body sits nearly motionless and the shadows move with the shifting of the sun. At night he dozes on a pallet by the door, First Tsurugi never more than half an arm's length away.

It's a warm but overcast day when Sephiroth wakes up.

Cloud almost misses it. He's sitting in his chair with an engineering book – Denzel's been making noise about learning how to repair Fenrir and Cloud's contemplating the best ways to teach him without fucking up the bike – and the sensation of being watched from inside himself is familiar enough that it takes Cloud a moment to actually recognize it. Cloud doesn't move, just lifts his eyes and meets Sephiroth's.

After a long silence, Sephiroth whispers hoarsely, "Where am I?"

"Edge," Cloud replies neutrally. "Outside Midgar."

He watches Sephiroth's eyes move around the room: a desk cluttered with the diagrams Cloud had needed to repair Tsurugi's various parts after the Remnants, white walls that have a couple crayon drawings tacked on crookedly at a child's height. A window. The chair in which Cloud sits and the bed in which Sephiroth lies. A tiny bedside table. Tsurugi itself, propped within Cloud's easy reach. Sephiroth looks lost even though he's trying to pretend otherwise, obviously has questions but isn't ready to admit it. But the weirdest thing, the most terrifying but validatingthing, is how all the bewilderment is utterly human.

Marking his place with a shop receipt, Cloud sets the book on his desk and stands up, casually slinging Tsurugi into its harness across his back. "Are you hungry?"

"I…don't know. Yes."

Tifa is downstairs behind the bar, wiping down the already spotless counter with a rag. Cloud stands in the doorway until she tosses the rag into a bin and starts washing her hands before he asks, "Is there enough rice left for another bowl?"

The elegant curve of her back stiffens. "Yes, there should be," she says eventually. Cloud wants to put a hand on her shoulder, but he's too afraid that she'd shrug him off, so he silently turns away into the kitchen.

Sephiroth is sitting on the edge of the bed when Cloud returns, blanket tucked modestly around his hips so that only his calves and everything above his waist are bare. His hands are folded neatly on his lap, head slightly bowed, and he doesn't meet Cloud's eyes as he hesitantly accepts the bowl of rice.

Cloud sits down again, adjusting a bit for Tsurugi on his back. For a while the only sound in the room is the quiet clink of the spoon against ceramic as Sephiroth pokes at the food listlessly. Eventually he asks lowly, "Why haven't you killed me?" There's no arrogance in Sephiroth's voice, no cruelty. He's obviously attempting the same neutrality but just ends up sounding exhausted.

"Should I?"

Sephiroth finally looks at him. "After everything I've done, you still ask that?"

"How much do you remember?"

"Enough," he says softly.

Cloud can't help tilting his head as he stares hard at Sephiroth, wondering how he's supposed to figure out what Sephiroth's thinking when Cloud doesn't even understand the gibbering emotions in his own head. Three days of a bedside vigil and it still hasn't sunk in that he's sitting quietly in the same room as the man who had tried to take everything from him more than once, who nearly succeeded a third time, who would have succeeded if Tifa were a little less unforgiving and the kids hadn't needed him. "Do you want me to kill you?"

The answering silence winds up the knots and uncertainty in his shoulders, and it isn't until he hears Sephiroth's tentative, "Cl – Strife?" that Cloud realizes he's on the verge of hyperventilating. He consciously makes himself count backwards from twenty.

"There's a bathroom just down the hall," Cloud finally tells him. "You can take a shower, if you like. Clean clothes are in the cabinet."

Sephiroth pauses, looking at the bowl of rice he hasn't touched, then sets it on the bedside table and stands up. The blanket falls away and Cloud carefully keeps his eyes averted as Sephiroth, moving warily as though expecting an attack, leaves for the bathroom. When he's alone in the bedroom, Cloud put a hand over his face and wonders what the hell he's doing.

…

Sephiroth clears a circle on the fogged mirror with a damp towel and finds an unfamiliar reflection staring back. He wonders if the mirror is cracked somehow or if the paint on its back is flaking, but no, it's in good condition.

The clothes he finds are a pair of casual black slacks and boxer-briefs, a white button-down shirt, and socks. The slacks still have a sticker on them saying TALL, the shirt still folded along crisp lines, all newly purchased. The shirt's a little tight across the shoulders but otherwise everything fits as though he'd picked it all out himself, and that –

He has to sit down on the toilet lid with his hands on his knees, fingertips digging hard into points of bone. There's no voice telling him what to do anymore, no one saying that he's in the right and that all this time he's been so much more than an experiment, no one even telling him to conquer a nation and then smile handsome for the cameras. The time in front of him now is a yawning stretch of uncertainty and he doesn't know what to do.

By the time he's able to stand up again, the mirror is completely clear. His reflection is still off and he cuts his eyes away uncomfortably so he can think, decide to do…what? Chop his hair short, dye it dark, go find a flat and a job out in the city? ShinRa is all but gone, he remembers that much, at least. The last seven, eight years are a surreal haze of violence and pain and hubris smeared bloody across his memory and he has nothing left. Not even the clothes are his.

Sephiroth finds a comb in the medicine cabinet and brushes out the worst of the tangles in his hair. His reflection watches him the whole time. He wishes irrationally it would go away.

Cloud – Strife – is still in the bedroom by the time Sephiroth pads back in. Sephiroth has been waiting for something, maybe a hand around his throat or a sword through his chest (again) and he honestly can't say if he'd fight back, but Strife has been unexpectedly calm. Cautious, of course, the sword constantly in Strife's reach is proof enough of that, but Sephiroth hasn't seen any signs of anger, hate, fear, the things he deserves. Just this calm watchfulness.

"You were found in Aeris' church," Strife tells him. "The Lifestream must have brought you back."

Possibly. Sephiroth can't imagine what else could have happened. He wonders if the body he's currently inhabiting is the same body that was tossed into the Nibelheim mako reactor (and better not to think too deeply on that, not when he could almost smell the stench of burning flesh and hear the screams of villagers) or something else, maybe a clone, maybe an entirely new model courtesy of the Planet.

"Sephiroth?"

Strife's tensed, eyes narrowing, and Sephiroth realizes that his own hands have curled into such tight fists his nails have nearly broken skin. He sucks in a breath, and when he lets it go he forces his hands to relax, allows the direction his thoughts had started to take to dissipate into the air.

"I'm sorry," he says. He'd meant it as an apology for startling Strife, but the words come out with the weight of insanity and dead bodies instead and Sephiroth immediately wants to take them back. I'm sorry doesn't do anything but cheapen what actually happened, like he'd just accidentally broken a coffee mug or forgotten a birthday. How can you even stand to look at me after what I've done to you? It hits him that even though this calm is all Strife, the way his head tilts in thought is all Zack. Jaw tightening, sudden anger straightening his spine, Sephiroth demands, "What do you plan to do with me?"

"I don't know," says Strife warily.

"Don't lie to me," he says, the words coming out in a wintry snap. Don't lie to me. Don't try to make me trust you. Just tell me what to expect.

"I'm not," Strife replies with the first stirring of anger Sephiroth's seen in him, and some small part of him wants to feel satisfied at having finally broken through that infuriating calm. He isn't. "I'm not lying, Sephiroth. You want me to kill you? I won't. I should, everyone else thinks I should, but I won't. You want me to forgive you? I don't think I can. The things that you…" Strife stops and takes a long breath, but he holds Sephiroth's gaze resolutely. Sephiroth is the one that looks away first.

The only sound in the room is the quiet ticking of a small clock on the bedside table. The dampness in Sephiroth's hair has seeped into the back of his shirt, making it stick uncomfortably to his skin, and the bare floorboards are leeching warmth from his soles. His palms are stinging. It hasn't even been an hour since he woke up.

"Zack used to tell me about the kind of person he thought you were," Strife says unexpectedly, and even if his tone is dispassionate, the words themselves slice deep. "He said that in Wutai you never left a man behind if you could help it and that you were one of the most honorable people in ShinRa."

Sephiroth wonders what he ever did to earn such praise, especially when he'd thought Zack had been too distracted worshiping the ground on which Angeal walked to notice anyone else.

"Maybe it was true, maybe not, but I – I'm not going to be anyone's conscience. It's up to you to decide if you're going to take advantage of what the Planet's given you and live up to what Zack thought of you, or if I'm going to have to kill you. Again." His grip eases off the handle of his sword and it's a sign of Sephiroth's imbalance that he hadn't even noticed that particular danger in the first place. He's in a place he doesn't know, a time he doesn't remember, with the man he'd tormented far beyond the limits of human madness. Maybe this is Strife's revenge.

"I'm going out to get some newspapers," Strife says. "Tifa's downstairs. Don't leave this room."

The last sentence is unmistakably an order. Sephiroth jerks his head in a single nod and holds himself very still as Strife looks him over with close scrutiny, then nods back and leaves without another word.

Sephiroth sits on the edge of the bed again and realizes that his hands are shaking. He fists them again, nails fitting neatly back into the marks they'd already made.

…

Cloud stops at the nearest stall on his way back from an errand and grabs the two most recent copies of The Edge Sentinel. He pays with an awkward handful of coins, earning a scowl from the shopkeeper, and breaks the speed limit getting back to Seventh Heaven. Tifa's still behind the bar keeping an eye on a single patron hunched over the end of the counter and a closer eye on the stairs leading up to their shared flat. Her lips tighten into a thin line when Cloud returns, but she doesn't say anything, and Cloud is able to take the stairs two at a time. He's mentally thanking the gods that Marlene and Denzel are both staying with Elmyra for a while.

Sephiroth is standing at Cloud's desk, barefoot and shirt untucked as he flips through the engineering book without really seeing it. Cloud holds out one of the Sentinels with a quiet, "Here," and Sephiroth gives him an inscrutable look as he sets down the book and accepts the paper. Their hands very carefully don't touch. "I thought you might want to get a better idea of what's going on now. How…how much do you remember?"

"I don't know," says Sephiroth, and Cloud suddenly feels a burst of frustration that isn't his own. The sensation dissipates as suddenly as it'd appeared, leaving behind the distinct thought of oh, shit, not again. Sephiroth doesn't seem to notice, his face still mostly expressionless save for the slight furrow on his brow as he stares down at the paper. "Brief remnants, not unlike a nightmare."

That's one way to describe it.

Cloud lets Sephiroth have the desk chair and sits on the bed instead with the book, back against the wall, watching from the corner of his eye as Sephiroth spreads the paper across the desktop. He's moving cautiously as though he isn't quite sure what's allowed. Time passes quietly, occasionally broken up by the crackle of paper or Cloud shifting around to find a pencil so he can make notes in the book margins as he pretends not to think about the implications of feeling Sephiroth inside of him, however faint. He's crossing out a paragraph in a chapter on fuel alternatives because, no, there is no way mako can be refined to produce endless energy like a materia on infinite batteries, what is this writer even thinking, when he realizes that there's been no sound from Sephiroth's corner for a while. Cloud looks up and finds Sephiroth staring at Cloud's pencil, lips pressed into a thin line.

"What?"

Sephiroth blinks, visibly startled for a moment before he gets himself back under control. "Nothing, just an errant thought. My apologies."

"I promise I won't kill you with a pencil," Cloud says solemnly. "Or a pen."

"And here I believed the pen to be mightier than the sword," Sephiroth replies. The words come out so deadpan that it takes Cloud a moment to realize it was an honest-to-gods joke, but by then Sephiroth's already turned back to his newspaper with unconvincing single-mindedness.

"Maybe that's why Tifa never lets me write my own letters to WRO," he says lightly, thinking everything feels somewhat surreal when that is definitely the beginning of a smile on Sephiroth's face, however quickly it disappears.

…

A few days pass. Sephiroth stays in Strife's room, reading every article, advertisement, opinion, and obituary in the newspapers that Strife brings back. Strife has nearly eight years' worth of material to try collecting, which Sephiroth assumes isn't exactly easy when there's been a minor apocalypse and several additional disasters to put a damper on both literary and digital archives. The picture he's reconstructing still has gaping holes but he doesn't want to ask. Strife always looks so somber and Sephiroth isn't stupid enough to venture downstairs into Tifa Lockhart's domain, both of which sound like much better excuses than the simple fact that he isn't sure he wants to know. It's one thing to know he's a monster, another to see more irrefutable evidence of it, and he comes back to the question of a priori and post hoc knowledge. He's good at the a priori, he can run logic circles around anyone, including Hojo – not that he was ever actually stupid enough to do so aloud more than once – but he knows that a seemingly concrete conclusion can be rendered obsolete with the introduction of a single new variable and he…doesn't exactly have a good record with that sort of thing. He's tried it before and look what happened.

So, Sephiroth forces himself to be satisfied with his mostly-self-imposed restriction to Strife's room plus the intellectual challenges of reconstructing a coherent chronology using partial sources, simultaneously attempting to understand Strife's current role in everything because Strife appears to be exactly the kind of variable that throws everything off.

Occasionally they talk, although they're less 'conversations' than the exchange of a few bare sentences. Strife refuses to let Sephiroth sleep anywhere other than the bed and takes the pallet of blankets on the floor himself, against which Sephiroth would argue heatedly if he didn't already know how precarious his own position is, and doesn't seem to sleep more than a few hours at a time. Whether it's because Sephiroth is in the same room or not, Sephiroth doesn't know, and he adds it to the growing pile of unanswered questions.

What he can see and hear of the city outside Strife's bedroom window is somewhere between the strange and familiar, like he's in the middle of a second Midgar built to a smaller scale with a few tweaks – which is, it seems, a fair assessment. The back of the building opposite the bedroom window is the same grey sheet-metal, but for almost an hour everyday it's lit up by actual sunshine; there's still electricity and running trains and vehicles, but the underlying scent of ozone that always lingered around mako has been replaced by what seems to be burning wood and coal; people still crowd the streets, but the bustling activity is noticeably quieter with the smaller population. In the evenings he can hear the patrons downstairs in the bar, the clink of glasses, the susurrus of conversation and, occasionally, some yelling before Lockhart soundly kicks out some troublemakers.

He's sitting by the window in the desk chair late one afternoon, watching the shadows cast over the alley and not thinking about much at all, when he hears footsteps stop in front of the open door. It's Lockhart, and of course Strife is off on some errand or other, so Sephiroth remains seated and says nothing, waiting for some cue, some indication of how he's supposed to act. She has a warrior's muscled leanness under her practical clothes and there's tension in her shoulders, pulling her spine straight as a soldier's, her gloved hands fisted but not overtly threatening. Wary, then, obviously unhappy with his presence and ready to get straight to the point the way Strife isn't, but not yet looking for an actual fight. He estimates a relatively low chance of physical combat.

"What are you planning to do?" she asks in a tone like steel.

"I don't know," he answers honestly. He seems to be saying that a lot, frustratingly enough.

"Why are you here?"

"I assume because Ms. Gainsborough chose it to happen." Her eyes narrow and Sephiroth immediately makes a mental note to avoid any mention of Aeris Gainsborough.

"Why would she do that?"

And that's the big question, isn't it? Why Sephiroth, when he'd been an integral part in all the events resulting in an astronomical number of deaths and loss? Why Sephiroth, when better men and women had died trying to stop him in the first place, including Ms. Gainsborough herself?

"I don't know," he repeats. "I know nothing more than any of you."

"How can I believe that?"

"I can't offer you anything more than my word, however dubious, that I don't know why I am here nor even how I got here. All I can tell you is that I have no desire to cause harm to anyone."

"Was it Jenova, or was it all you?"

The question surprises Sephiroth since it gives him an out, could grant him some measure of forgiveness if he blames it all on Jenova. "I'm…not certain. It was, however, my own weakness that allowed Jenova to take control in the first place."

Tifa crosses her arms, attempting to look stern but falling closer to defensive, and she stares at him like she's picking him apart piece by piece. "What're you going to do with Cloud?"

"I don't understand."

"Are you going to treat him like some kind of, of toy again?"

It's like someone flipping a switch and Sephiroth remembers bright blue eyes wide with horror, skin bruising dark under his hands, screams echoing weirdly in the Lifestream or maybe the Forgotten City. He can almost taste that morbid fascination for something he could not break no matter how viciously he pushed on all the cracks.

Bile is clogging his throat and Sephiroth chokes, claps a hand over his mouth until the urge to vomit fades. "No," he manages roughly, "no. I won't."

Lockhart's expression tells him he didn't hide his reaction very well, but she just says, "If you do anything to hurt him or anyone else, I'll find a way to kill you. We've done it before and we'll do it again."

Lockhart's giving him something concrete to fall back to in the midst of all the not-knowing, something he can understand and rely on, and the relief is so unexpected that Sephiroth doesn't know how to react at first. "Thank you," he says quietly as he hears boots thumping up the stairs.

Strife appears behind Lockhart's shoulder. He looks between her and Sephiroth. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," replies Lockhart. Sephiroth sits still and lets Strife scrutinize them both for any sign of broken bones, shattered teeth, or terminal bleeding. "How did the delivery go?"

"Fine. Rude sends his regards."

Lockhart actually rolls her eyes.

"Sephiroth, I picked something up for you, why don't you go take a shower," Strife tells him absently, obviously too distracted by Lockhart's presence to pay attention to what he's saying, but Sephiroth is already standing and holding out a hand without thinking. He and Strife both pause, but as soon as Strife hands him a small shopping bag he escapes to the bathroom as quickly as possible, not wanting to hear whatever they're going to say about him.

There are a few new shirts in the bag that fit and don't stretch across his shoulders, plus a pair of basic work boots. Strife must have noticed, and Sephiroth doesn't know what to think. More questions for the pile.

…

It's been two weeks since Cloud brought home a dead man and he's been learning to watch closely. Sephiroth never leaves the upstairs flat, just roams between Cloud's bedroom and the bathroom like a ghost. He devours whatever reading Cloud brings to him, newspapers and official reports Cloud nags out of Reeve, the occasional book on mechanics and mechanical engineering that are lying around, although Cloud figures out pretty quickly to avoid the pop science magazines unless he wants to see Sephiroth grit his teeth and quietly scribble angry corrections in the margins of articles that he then tries to hide. But Sephiroth never actually asks for anything and otherwise seems content to just passively accept whatever Cloud gives him. It's not what Cloud expected, although to be fair he never expected any of this, and he doesn't know what to think.

Marlene and Denzel come back from their stay with Elmyra. He and Tifa sit them down at the bar in the middle of the afternoon when it's closed for business.

"But isn't he the bad man that killed Sister?" Marlene asks.

"Yes," Tifa says tightly. She's unconsciously rubbing her arm where they all used to wear thin red ribbons.

"But then why is he here?" she demands, eyes wide, fists clenched in her lap.

Cloud pretends not to see Tifa's glance. "He has nowhere else to go right now. He's…done things, yes, but not all of it was his fault. He was, uh…possessed."

"That makes it okay?" says Denzel.

"No. Yes. No, not really, but I…I know what that's like, and it wasn't all his fault. For now, we're just watching and waiting."

"I want you two to stay away from him," Tifa breaks in firmly. "He won't be here much longer."

Cloud doesn't think that's true, but he stays silent, and later slips back upstairs to his bedroom. It doesn't escape him that this is the longest stretch of time he's spent at Seventh Heaven in months, and he leans against the doorway, arms crossed, watching and waiting.

It takes a few minutes for Sephiroth for put down the book he's reading in the chair by the window. He holds Cloud's gaze and also waits, watches for Cloud to make the first move. It's bizarre, like he doesn't quite understand how to interact with people without studying them first, but it's only something Cloud's recently noticed. He wonders whether or not Sephiroth was always that way.

"I have a package to run to the Chocobo Ranch," Cloud tells him. "Do you want to come with me?"

The only sign of Sephiroth's surprise is the subtle twitch of muscle in his jaw. "You think that's a good idea?"

"You're not my prisoner," he says, thinking of the way Sephiroth has been keeping himself so tightly contained, "and the area is rural enough that the few people around are unlikely to recognize you."

He has no idea what Sephiroth is thinking. Well, that's not entirely true: he's probably questioning Cloud's intentions, trying to find the catch and coming up short, but beyond that is anyone's guess.

"All right," Sephiroth says after a long pause, standing up in a single graceful movement that makes Cloud inhale sharply. He's already dressed in the clothes Cloud has given him and he pulls on the long, black woolen coat and boots that Cloud, unused to having to actually think about these things except when stuff got too many holes to be useful, had finally remembered to grab the other day.

Cloud takes a bangle from his pocket equipped with basic materia and hands it over. "I don't know where the Masamune is or how it works," and knowing if Sephiroth is able to summon the damn thing would probably be a good idea, come to think of it, oops, "but you should at least have these."

Sephiroth accepts it with an unsettling amount of solemnity that Cloud pretends not to see. Tifa watches them leave but doesn't stop washing last night's pint glasses, so Cloud takes it as a win.

It's another matter when it comes to Fenrir. The bike is enormous and more than capable of carrying two full-grown men, but it means Sephiroth will be sitting behind Cloud's back, close enough to touch, even wrap his arms around Cloud's waist if he chooses. The last time they were so close they were trying to kill each other. Cloud admits to himself that he didn't exactly think this part through, but the damage is done and he isn't quite so naïve as to allow Sephiroth his own vehicle, just in case, so he straps the package to the rear of the bike like this isn't any different from any other errand and swings his leg over the front seat.

"Come on," he tells Sephiroth, who's staring at him like he's lost his mind, which, well, fair enough.

The bike dips as Sephiroth's weight settles behind him. It takes a superhuman effort not to tense or jerk his elbows back when broad hands settle hesitantly on his hips, but Cloud breathes carefully through the moment, reminds himself that if Sephiroth had wanted to kill him then he's had plenty of time to do so already, and revs the bike. It peals out of the alley with a satisfying roar, and when Sephiroth's grip tightens with surprise Cloud can't help a surge of pride – this is his freedom, this is something that's all his own and not borrowed from Zack or Sephiroth or anyone else at all, doesn't matter if it's feathers or steel between his legs carrying him wherever he wants to go.

…

Cloud Strife is quite possibly insane but Sephiroth thinks he might, might, be getting used to it. Or maybe that's just the thrill of being outside, away from the oppressiveness of four square walls and the looming of cold steel skyscrapers. The rules are simpler outside, the easy physics of movement, the order that underlies the natural world, the relative predictability of weather and animal behavior versus the manic, almost desperate interaction of human society. His hair is going to be a nightmare to brush out later but it's worth it to feel the wind and dust tangling through it.

Strife maneuvers the bike like it's an extension of his body, not unlike his sword, leaning smoothly into turns and automatically compensating for changes in angles and speed. Body heat leeches through the black knit shirt under Sephiroth's hands. Sephiroth can't remember the last time he touched another person without the intention to hurt; it's another one of those inexplicable things with which Strife surprises him.

They stop for lunch in the afternoon, not speaking much as they pass a military canteen back and forth and eat their respective sandwiches. Sephiroth, unused to long bike rides, takes the chance to stretch out his sore legs and lower back, and then they start moving again. The plains of the eastern continent are warm with summer and the few monsters they encounter are just a reason to work up a light sweat and test out Sephiroth's materia.

They pick a place to camp an hour after darkness falls. "Will you start the fire?" asks Strife, and Sephiroth, who always had an entire army under his command to do the menial tasks, is just glad to have something to do. He lights it with a low-level spell as Strife lays out two thin bedrolls, one on either side of the fire, and two MREs. Sephiroth could've happily lived out the rest of this bizarre second life without ever seeing another MRE, but he isn't about to complain.

Except Sephiroth is his own sort of scientist, second only to his being a soldier, can't help it, and he hasn't been able to reconcile himself to – to all of this, doesn't understand. Logic and experience dictates that the safest thing for Strife to do is to kill him, but instead he's letting Sephiroth live in his flat, is sitting opposite the campfire and scrolling through something on his phone as though his only concern in the world is missing someone's call.

"You shouldn't be doing this," he says. Strife glances at him through his bangs.

"What should I be doing?"

"Enacting justice." That came out a little more dramatically than he'd intended.

"Revenge, you mean."

"No, I don't."

"So, what? You want to be punished for everything?"

Sephiroth can't decipher Strife's tone. It's edged, but not harsh, not even really judgmental. "It's only right."

"Well, at least Zack was right about your overdeveloped sense of honor," Strife mutters, which is…weirdly hurtful, and Sephiroth says stiffly, "This isn't a joking matter."

Strife actually snorts. "Of course it isn't, but you're not listening to me. I'm not going to kill you, or punish you, or whatever it is you think you deserve. You should've known better than to believe that the mission to Nibelheim was anything but a set-up, but that's exactly what it was and Hojo had everyone except the sociopaths in ShinRa's boardroom completely fooled. I…I killed you in the reactor, but the Sephiroth that came after was a clone. Or some part of Jenova, I'm still not sure. Yes, I still have trouble looking at you sometimes, but there's no point punishing you for crimes that you arguably didn't do and don't even fucking remember. "

Strife's voice rises slightly near the end, and he takes a moment to calm down again. "So just stop. I told you that you're going to have to decide for yourself what's going to happen now. I'll kill you if I have to, but only if I have to. If it makes you feel better," he goes on, a little cruelly, "pretend that this is my revenge."

But Sephiroth has never really been able to make those choices. Either it was Hojo, shaping him to be his perfect creation, or ShinRa, sending him to lead a war in which he didn't believe, or Jenova, breaking him to her will. By now he isn't sure there's a part of himself that hasn't been defined by someone or something else. "How?" Sephiroth asks quietly, simultaneously shamed, furious, and grateful at the understanding he can see in Strife's face.

"I'm still figuring that out myself. You just…keep going."

"That's hardly helpful," Sephiroth replies, tart, and when Strife grins he adds sourly, "You're a practical man, aren't you."

Strife shrugs. "I guess. Someone has to be," which only proves Sephiroth's point.

He does notice that Strife seems to sleep easier out here than he does in Seventh Heaven.

…

The package turns out to be a regular shipment of greens for the birds at the Ranch. Billy takes the large box with a heartfelt, "Thank you," while Priscilla hands over the gil. They don't know that Cloud cut his fee in half.

Things had gotten rather interesting when Priscilla and Billy realized who exactly was walking two steps behind Cloud's shoulder. Billy stammered and half-ran, half-walked to the stable with the box of greens while Priscilla scowled and crossed her arms and generally acted fiercer than Cloud would've ever expected from her. "I don't know what you're thinking, Cloud, but I hope it isn't crazy."

Sephiroth doesn't say anything, thank the gods. They should probably be getting back to Edge, no reason to keep hanging around, but the familiar snuffles and chirps of chocobos in the stable has him casting longing glances without even realizing it.

"Do you have any other pressing matters?" Sephiroth murmurs, close enough that Priscilla can't hear, his breath warm near Cloud's ear. Cloud shakes his head and Sephiroth points out, "Extra transportation can't hurt in a business that relies on it."

"Where on earth would I keep a chocobo in Edge?" Cloud asks, exasperated, because seriously.

"There is no Plate to block the sunlight and the outskirts of the city are sparsely populated. There's more than enough room to build a stable and plenty of plains for the bird to run. If nothing else, consider it an investment."

Damn the man's reasonableness. Damn it. Naturally, Cloud ends up ambling down the aisle in the stable, Billy hovering nervously near the door while Sephiroth watches. The air is musty with the smell of bird and greens, warm and earthy, enormous claws tapping randomly over worn flooring and hay. The chocobos stretch out their necks to bump their huge beaks against Cloud's shoulders and nibble at his clothes, nearly taking off chunks of skin in the process, and he ends up with a nose full of feathers and a grin he can't quite keep off his face.

In the end, he chooses a male golden – probably the offspring of one of his own goldens, sent to the Ranch between the events at the Northern Crater and Tifa's settling in Edge – and names him Forseti. "Just a Nibelheim thing," he says when Sephiroth asks, and pays for basic equipment and a handful of the greens he'd just delivered.

"Take care of him," Priscilla says as Cloud guides the chocobo out of the stable, and he honestly isn't sure if she's talking about the bird or the man at his side.

…

It's a little strange that Strife won't let him touch the bike unless they're riding it but he's allowed to run his hands all over the chocobo's feathers anytime he likes. Not that Sephiroth actually does, he's not entirely convinced he won't accidentally snap the thing's neck, but nevertheless he pretends that the implied bit of trust doesn't give him what Zack would've called a warm, fuzzy feeling.

After crossing wide-open land to visit the Chocobo Ranch, Strife's bedroom begins to feel stifling. Strife still brings him newspapers, but Sephiroth doesn't read them with quite the same thoroughness. He spends more and more time sitting in the desk chair and staring out the window at the faceless back of the next building, listening to the echoes of the city and idly calculating the angle of sunlight as the sun crawls across the sky.

Strife's been keeping the chocobo somewhere outside the limits of Edge, Sephiroth doesn't know where exactly, but when it's been twenty-one days since he woke up and the morning sunlight is roughly at a forty-degree angle Strife appears at the bedroom doorway and asks, "Do you want to help me?"

Strife's arms are crossed but he doesn't look defensive. His sword is still strapped to his back, but his body is mostly relaxed and he isn't looking through the long strands of his hair like he does when he's withdrawn. There isn't even any stiffness in his voice that Sephiroth can hear, just curiosity. Completely nonthreatening.

"With what?" he finally replies.

"A stable. Found a place not too far from here, no construction going on, looks like it used to be one of ShinRa's. I've got the plans drawn up already, but it's always faster with another set of hands."

Sephiroth's saying, "All right," before Strife even finishes talking, and Strife's mouth lifts in half a smile.

"Oh," he says suddenly, "I almost forgot, figured you might need something else to wear."

He tosses yet another bag at Sephiroth, who opens it to find a pair of jeans, a thick scarf, and a plain black t-shirt to take the place of his slacks and button-downs. Without preamble he starts to change, used to the lack of privacy in the military, and when he finishes pulling on the work boots he finds Cloud looking at him with a pensive expression. Odd, considering the man's years as a specimen in Hojo's laboratory, one would think he'd have been cured of any embarrassment, but Strife just beckons him on. Lockhart purses her lips when they leave the bar together and clangs the cash register a little more loudly.

They walk instead of drive, in no apparent hurry. Forty-five degree angle of sunlight, approximately ten-hundred in the morning, no outstanding orders to carry out or station to which he needs to report. The new boots rub a little painfully against his heels, but a couple days of proper use will break them in. A few people greet Strife as they pass on the street and Sephiroth warrants a few sidelong glances, but the rather ridiculous scarf wrapped around his head and neck hides the bright silver of his ponytail and part of his face.

Strife takes him beyond the line of the city to an area that looks like it was intended to be turned into storage warehouses before being abandoned. One of the smaller, half-finished warehouses has visible signs of tinkering: new sheets of metal in the walls, bright against the oxidized aging of the originals, and a circuit breaker tucked on the leeside of the building under the roof overhang with a few wires trailing out. The interior is bare and cool, the floor made of poured concrete.

"I'll keep the cement floor, since Forseti's claws would just fuck up wood, and throw down some straw," Strife's saying as he paces the perimeter inside. "I want to insulate the walls, though. I got some fiberglass stuff to start with that."

Sephiroth has never built anything in his life outside a campfire and some experimental mechanics in Hojo's lab, so he listens carefully, trying to picture how everything Strife is saying will fit together as a whole.

"Had to cut pieces out of the walls, there was some weather damage that perforated the siding and left rusting edges."

Strife keeps going, points out the structural flaws in the roof and the lack of electricity, and whoever built this place must've never heard of construction codes, Reeve would be absolutely horrified. Apparently he wants to put in electric lighting as well, which explains the circuit breaker outside, and he theorizes about running water sometime in the future, although he's willing to wait on that. Sephiroth listens and wonders where Strife picked all this up, where he learned to build a bike from the ground up and how to insulate walls and what kind of ventilation is best to keep the little metal warehouse from heating up too much inside. "We get a lot of sun out here, I don't want to come and find Forseti dead from heat exhaustion."

"A reasonable concern," Sephiroth says inanely, dry as a desert since he doesn't have anything else to add, but it still makes Strife huff a laugh.

"So, still want to help?" Strife asks too casually, still pacing around, nudging at corners with the toe of his boot.

"I said I would, didn't I?"

Sephiroth didn't mean anything deep or philosophical by it, but his answer makes Strife halt mid-stride and blink at him bemusedly. Finally, he says slowly, "Yeah, I guess you did," and the moment's over, he's pointing at the materials stacked outside. "I'll show you how to start laying the insulation, and then while you're doing that I'll work on the wiring."

The fiberglass insulation comes in long rolls like bolts of half-inch-thick cloth. Starting is as easy as laying it out in long strips and cutting everything to fit the walls' dimensions, so it isn't long before Strife heads outside and leaves him to it. It should be boring, just constant repetition of stretch/measure/cut/tack in place, then repeat, and in a way it is, for a brain more accustomed to things like military tactics and biology and physics. But at the same time he's doingsomething, making something, giving his mind just enough material to hum along quietly as his body falls into a comfortable routine. This is something he can do.

Sephiroth's about three walls in, nearly ready to start on the wall with the door, when he stops, thinks for a moment, then calls out, "Strife!"

A second later Strife pokes his head around the doorway, confused and a little wary. "Yeah?"

"There's insufficient insulation," Sephiroth tells him, gesturing vaguely at the remaining roll and the bare fourth wall.

Strife curses under his breath. "I'll get some more tomorrow."

"You don't need to." Sephiroth points out the leftover scraps of insulation, explains how adding them to the remaining roll in such a way that maximizes available surface area would be enough to finish if Strife doesn't mind the somewhat haphazard nature of the job, and he doesn't notice Strife looking at him strangely again until he winds down. "What?"

"Nothing, that sounds like a great idea." Strife adds quietly, "Thank you."

This is one of those times Sephiroth senses that he's catching the words but missing their meanings. Hopeless, Genesis used to sigh.

"You're welcome," Sephiroth replies, and Strife ducks back outside.

…

There isn't anything so dramatic as moaning or sobbing, just a faint tightness in his chest that gets worse and worse until Cloud wakes up feeling like he's going to either choke or vomit. He slides onto his knees from his nest of blankets on the floor, shifting slowly, hand hovering near Tsurugi as his eyes adjust to the dim light of the bedroom. Sephiroth is a long angular line of geometry under the bedcovers, unmoving except for the occasional harsh twitch. He makes a small noise in his throat.

"Sephiroth," Cloud murmurs. "Sephiroth, wake up."

He doesn't. Cloud inches toward the bed, keeping well out of arms' reach, and raising his voice a little. "Sephiroth. Sephiroth."

Sephiroth suddenly jerks awake and his gaze flies to all the corners of the room, calculating exits and distances and Cloud's position. Cloud keeps his palms turned outward and his body relaxed while determinedly ignoring the ball of tension that isn't his own sitting in his ribcage. "Want to talk about it?" he asks.

"There was a fire, and I couldn't…" Sephiroth stops himself. "I apologize for waking you."

Cloud shrugs a shoulder. He'd only been dozing, but he knows that now he won't be able to manage even that for the rest of the night. "Come with me."

"…Where?"

"Does it matter?"

Cloud fully expects Sephiroth to refuse, but instead he just sits up and swings his legs out of bed, apparently unconcerned that he's only wearing sleeping pants that are slightly too short for him, and looks at Cloud. Waiting for directions.

"The kitchen," Cloud says, and Sephiroth follows him down the stairs without a word. The kitchen is large with an industrial-grade refrigerator and dishwasher half-full of dirty pint glasses, and the bar, closed down just an hour or two ago in the small morning hours, feels unnaturally empty. Cloud starts pulling down a pan and a mixing bowl, pointing at the cupboards with a wooden spoon. "Hand me the flour and baking soda, please."

Sephiroth sits on a bar stool as Cloud starts tossing stuff into the bowl, working on autopilot, and Sephiroth doesn't ask, just watches with the unblinking focus of a statue. Cloud feels something under his skin and asks suddenly, "Do you trust me?"

Sephiroth doesn't answer immediately. Cloud consciously doesn't look at him as he starts pouring batter onto the hot pan. Finally, Sephiroth says, "I don't know."

The pancakes sizzle a little as they brown.

"Why are you making pancakes?"

Because he half-remembers his mum doing the same thing when he was little and had his own nightmares. Because Zack had had a weird palate and didn't believe that breakfast foods should be eaten as breakfast. "The alternative is to drive aimlessly through the desert for several hours. I figure this is easier on my fuel bill."

Sephiroth doesn't smile, but his shoulders lose some of their strain. They don't talk about it as Cloud slides pancakes onto battered plastic plates and sits on the stool beside Sephiroth, their shoulders nearly touching. It isn't awkward, exactly, but not quite comfortable either – somewhere in-between, sharp edges worn smooth to an imperfect fit, two strangers home from a distant war to end up in the same run-down bar.

It's a little fascinating, the way Sephiroth cuts his pancakes into precise one-eighth wedges like he's going to be tested on his accuracy. "I'm making a delivery up near Kalm. Want to come?"

"Is that a good idea?"

"You came with me to the Ranch and didn't try to destroy the world," Cloud replies, and, no, it really isn't funny, and it makes Sephiroth flinch slightly, but it's true, and it's getting to the point that Cloud is starting to feel like Sephiroth's jailer. He knows what it's like to be a prisoner trapped in one place for too long. "Besides, I'm going to need someone to come with me if I want to give Forseti a good run."

Sephiroth takes a bite of pancake, takes his time chewing and swallowing before saying softly, "Yes."

"I'm leaving at nine, we'll work it out."

"All right."

Sephiroth finishes his plate while Cloud is still poking pieces of syrup-drowned pancake around. He gets to his feet, puts the dirty dishes in the sink and pulls out the soap.

"Do you still have the Masamune?"

Sephiroth's movements slow. "I…don't know."

Personally, the first thing Cloud would've done when waking up in a world that wanted him dead – again – would be figuring out whether or not he still had access to his primary weapon. "Since the reactors went down there've been fewer monsters out there, but they still happen. We were lucky getting to the Ranch. Do I need to find another sword?"

"No. No, you don't, I'll be able to get it."

Cloud's head tilts. "You are talking about that damned ability of yours to pull it from thin air, aren't you?"

Sephiroth's surprised into a small laugh.

…

It's been twenty-three days, most of them blurring into one another in a long streak of grey paint over a blank canvas, and this is the first time Sephiroth's ventured out of the bar alone. He's covered his hair again with the ridiculous scarf, and his coat is a black, modest wool one, knee-length and vaguely military-style and a far cry from his old sweeping leather. It's unfamiliar, makes him think about how much a person's identity can be tied up in the image they project to the world, makes him wonder if he feels more or less like himself. Not General Sephiroth, SOLDIER First Class, but like Sephiroth, no last name, in borrowed clothes and sleeping in a bed that isn't his. You think too much, Genesis had once accused him, I can't imagine Hojo likes that, and Sephiroth had answered, But my mind is the only thing that's mine. (Except it wasn't, was it?)

The light is tentatively getting brighter as he weaves his way through the crowds towards the old Sector Five, early morning sun glaring off the half-salvaged scrap metal still lining the roads. The church stands proud and mostly whole in the hills of wreckage, the sounds of the city a distant murmur, cicadas humming in the warm air that smells like sun-heated metal and green plants. It's cooler in the church, slants of sunlight filtering in through the ruined roof onto broken pews and the still water of the pool dominating the floor. He resists the urge to pull his coat tighter around himself under the weight of the atmosphere. Instead he straightens his spine and lifts his chin, refusing to feel embarrassed as he says into the empty space, "Ms. Gainsborough?"

There's no response, of course, and he firmly tells himself that he shouldn't have expected any less, except the very fact that he's even able to stand there and speak pretty much throws all conventionally-reasonable expectations straight out the window. "Why did you do it?"

A cicada chirps somewhere near the entrance. Sephiroth paces a slow circle around the pool, seeing nothing more than interesting than the reflections of the roof, some columns, and himself. "You wouldn't have brought me back without a reason, not after everything. Why?"

He lets the silence stretch out, listening for something, anything, which might give him some kind of understanding of how and what now and that fucking why, nothing good ever came from asking why but he's never been able to keep from beating his head against that particular brick wall. He's almost hoping for some kind of divine revelation, but there's nothing. Just distant cicadas.

"Why?" he demands again more loudly. "What are you trying to achieve with this charade?"

Silence.

"Why?" he finally yells, grabbing what was once part of a pew and throwing it so hard it clears the water and shatters one of the far windows. "Why are you doing this?"

The anger isn't new, but it's never poured so hotly molten down his veins. All those years of carefully perfecting the appearance of composure and occasional dry humor are gone, ripped off like a scab and leaving enough raw nerve to turn the smallest touch into a bloodied wound. He doesn't even know how much of that anger is his and how much is almost eight years of cruel, vicious habits, doesn't know how much of 'him' is left except maybe just this wet, exposed rawness.

But the anger cools. He's just exhausted and looking at a broken window. "What am I supposed to do?" he pleads softly, and can't even bring himself to feel disappointed anymore when no one answers.

...

"You look like hell," Cloud observes when Sephiroth walks into the back alley where he's loading up Fenrir. "Run into any trouble?"

"Not the kind you're thinking of."

There's brittle ice in Sephiroth's voice. About an hour ago Cloud had suddenly felt like he was helplessly watching Nibelheim burn to the ground all over again, breathless with a fury and despair that wasn't his own. Cloud straightens and gives Sephiroth his full attention; Tsurugi's in easy reach across his back, there are a number of exits, and Tifa's inside with the kids. "You sure? I can imagine many different kinds."

"The only casualty was a small window, which I intend to have replaced on that far-off date when I have the means to do so."

Bitter sarcasm doesn't bode well. Cloud makes a noncommittal noise and lets it go, since there's no sign of a mob with pitchforks. This time, when Sephiroth settles behind him on the bike and holds him around the waist, Cloud doesn't tense up. He pretends that there's nothing out of the ordinary at all in the world and takes off with a roar out of Edge to the outskirts of a broken-down Midgar.

Forseti is busily cooing at a lizard hanging on to the jamb of the half-door of his stall when Cloud stops the bike with an unnecessarily showy burst of dust. The chocobo blinks at them with enormous brown eyes before deciding they're uninteresting and goes back to his one-sided conversation, his crest fluffing up a bit. Sephiroth suddenly laughs, sounding as surprised by it as Cloud is.

"What's so funny?"

"Ah," says Sephiroth evasively, "I just remembered something Zack once told me."

Oh, damn, Cloud's heart hadn't been prepared for that, and he nearly stumbles when he gets off the bike and starts unlocking the stall. The friendly nudge that Forseti's beak gives his shoulder rocks Cloud on his feet. "What was it?"

"He often spoke of a new recruit that he'd met on a mission. Another country boy, apparently, with the kind of hair that would make any chocobo immediately adopt him."

"Oi." As if Zack would've been talking about anyone else. Then he pauses in the middle of running his fingers through the chocobo's feathers, making sure they're lying flat. "Wait, Zack told you about me?"

"He did, on occasion, although near…the end…there was less time for casual conversation."

Cloud thought he might recall that. Maybe not. He's never admitted to Tifa just how much he still doesn't remember, or what he does remember but from someone else's perspective. As he pulls out the riding gear he'd stashed in a small locker beside the stall, he asks casually, "What else did he say?"

"Zack had a lot to say about a lot of things. Usually Angeal." Cloud snorts. Forseti holds his breath and Cloud nudges him sharply with a knee so he can tighten the saddle properly. "But also you. He said you were terrible with a rifle but showed a lot of promise with the sword after he found you'd stolen one of the officer's."

"I borrowed it," Cloud mutters.

Sephiroth smiles faintly. "Either way, he was impressed with your determination."

"Either you're making that up or you have an absolutely ridiculous memory."

"An eidetic one." Sephiroth's quiet for a while, but Cloud waits him out, double-checking Forseti's tack. Forseti is in the middle of preening Cloud's hair as Cloud leans down to inspect his talons when Sephiroth says, "It was one of the skills Hojo felt essential to an enhanced soldier. Everything before Genesis' defection is still clear. It isn't until the start of his degradation and the events that followed that things begin getting…fuzzy."

Cloud absently smacks Forseti's beak away so he can glance discretely over his shoulder. Sephiroth is standing straight in front of Fenrir, practically at parade rest, thin lips tightened into a flat line. There's an instinctive flicker of fight-or-flight in Cloud's limbs, a half-expectation to hear the familiar ring of the Masamune's blade, before he swallows it back down. He thinks for a minute. "Well, guess it's time to make some new memories, right?"

"…Am I supposed to make a pithy comment of my own in reply?"

"Gods, no, one is enough for anyone's sanity. Now then," he says briskly, "I'm going to extend the most sacred of trusts."

Sephiroth looks mildly alarmed.

"I'm going to let you ride Fenrir if you swear on the Masamune that you won't so much as chip the paint."

Sephiroth arches an eyebrow eloquently. Cloud is deeply unimpressed; this is a lethally serious matter.

"Cloud – "

"Sephiroth."

"I – "

"Sephiroth."

"…All right. I swear, on the Masamune, that I will not so much as chip Fenrir's paint."

Cloud holds out the keys and, after a brief hesitation, Sephiroth takes them. "This is insane, you realize."

"Then at least we're in familiar territory. Besides, you're not Denzel trying to sneak out for a ride, it's not like you don't know perfectly well how to drive a bike. We're going to leave through the old Sector One gate, not many people live up that way, but just stay behind me until we're clear."

"I understand. Is this going to be a cold run?"

"No, I've taken Forseti out a couple times already to make sure he knows the bit and everything. He's a bit headstrong, but Priscilla trained him well."

Sephiroth's eyeing the chocobo like he could threaten him into perfect behavior, but he gets back on Fenrir without a word. Cloud swings himself up into the saddle and feels as tall and untouchable as the first time he sat on one of these birds and found that even tamed creatures with award-winning pedigrees could never keep up with the half-wild ones who gave Cloud the honor of riding them. "You ready?"

Fenrir growls in response.

Some lingering bit of Zack (or maybe it's all him, maybe Cloud has been underestimating himself all this time) has him firmly nudging Forseti into a forward leap and yelling, "Last one to Kalm has to finish the leftovers in Tifa's fridge!"

"Kalm is two days away!"

"Better ride fast, then!"

…

From the way Zack used to carry on, Sephiroth had had the impression that the elusive Private Strife was somewhere between Zack's little brother and a pet, someone who probably still hadn't quite recovered from the impact with the natural disaster that was Zack Fair. He's beginning to realize, as the chocobo leaves a trail of dust hanging in its wake and he manages to catch glimpses of his rider's face, that he may have misjudged something.

The bike's roar echoes off the buildings and alleys as they fly past. They pass very few people, as Cloud had promised, with the price of having to take sharp turns or small jumps off the rusted remains of half-crushed buildings and broken pipes. If riding behind Cloud to the Chocobo Ranch had been liberating, then this is something else; adrenaline is making his heart beat faster, but maybe it's just the sensation of escaping the security of old chains for the brilliant uncertainty of freedom. When they don't pass anyone for a solid five minutes, Sephiroth takes the chance to pull off the scarf and let his long hair fend for itself in the whipping wind.

They break through the gates into the endless breadth of the plains. It's hot and barren, beaten by sun and weather and time into a green-gold-brown stretch of horizon, but it's all theirs, Cloud and Sephiroth's, theirs to travel on, or fight on, or do nothing at all on, because there's no one to tell them they can't. They approach and then pass a zolom just outside Midgar before it ever has a chance to react, and he hears Cloud make a single reckless whoop. Several hours go on this way: Sephiroth on Fenrir, its powerful rumble between his thighs, and Cloud a little in front and to the right, body rolling easily with Forseti's and his head as yellow as the tops of distant hills in the sun.

Eventually, however, the bike's monotonous drone and the chocobo's rhythmic pace are interrupted by distant howls getting closer. Cloud twists around to yell, "Megadons! Brace yourself!"

There's a disorienting moment when Sephiroth instinctively tries to reach inside himself and pull on strings that aren't there anymore, strings that had once made monsters as much his puppets as the clones, and when he realizes what he's doing he gets so suddenly nauseated that he nearly doesn't swerve in time to avoid the megadons leaping in front of him. Fenrir tips to the side so sharply that his knee narrowly avoids scraping the ground, and a second later he's reaching out to wrap his hand around a familiar hilt.

"I said don't chip the goddamn paint!"

Forseti is screeching in a monster's face, startling it just long enough for Cloud, standing up in the stirrups, to behead it with an easy swing of Tsurugi. The talons on one of the chocobo's feet are already bloodstained, a second monster lying dead some twenty feet away beyond its six other pack members. Fenrir's wheels scream against gravel when Sephiroth straightens out and impales a third monster straight through its bulky chest on the Masamune's long, slim blade.

It's over too quickly. When the dust has settled and they've cleaned off their blades with a couple of weak Fire spells, Sephiroth has gotten back on the bike before he notices his hands are shaking a little. He doesn't even remember the last time that happened. Unfortunately Cloud sees it too, somehow, and asks, "Are you all right?"

Sephiroth considers lying, but his mouth says without permission, "I tried to do it again."

Cloud waits, seated comfortably on Forseti, but when Sephiroth doesn't add anything, he gently pushes, "You'll have to be more specific, Sephiroth."

"I may not remember very much, but I do remember you, a little, and I remember…pulling on you. Forcing you to do things, see things, without you knowing or being able to fight back."

He manages to make himself look at Cloud and finds a pale but composed face staring back. It probably feels to Cloud like this subject came entirely out of left field and he hadn't been prepared for it. "And you tried to do it again."

"Yes. Not – not to you, only the monsters. But the intent remains the same."

"Did it work?" Cloud asks. He sounds normal, but his hands are white-knuckling the reins and the chocobo is dancing underneath him restlessly.

"…No."

"Then there's no point worrying about it anymore, is there?"

And that's the end of that. Cloud nudges Forseti into a slow run until Sephiroth is able to catch up on Fenrir, and then they're moving as fast as before, but now it's with the feeling of running away rather than towards.

Much later, after setting up camp half a day's ride out of Kalm, Cloud says out of nowhere, "You're not a monster."

Sephiroth eventually replies, "Physically, perhaps. I no longer believe that my genetics alone is enough to make me one. Under that logic, Angeal and Genesis would've been abominations. Zack. You. But I was created for a very specific purpose, Strife, and I did an admirable job nearly bringing it to fruition." Without that purpose, what is left?

"Cloud," says Cloud.

"…What?"

"If you don't want me to know when you're upset, you really shouldn't call me 'Strife.' It's a dead giveaway. Not a very monstrous kind of giveaway, is it?"

Sephiroth doesn't know what to say to that. When Cloud tells him to go get more firewood, he doesn't argue.

…

Cloud will wonder, later, when he should've started expecting things to take the turn they did.

…

In stark contrast to Midgar, Kalm doesn't look much different from how Sephiroth remembers it. The inn that Cloud chooses is one of the smaller ones on the edges of town, out of the way from the main tourist streets and one of the few that also stables chocobos. The lobby is full of young people in stylishly torn clothes and every color of hair found both in and out of nature, making Sephiroth's long coat and scarf look unremarkable in comparison. He stares hard at the spot between Cloud's shoulderblades as Cloud pays for their room and wonders if Cloud chose this place for that exact purpose.

(Whether they're disaffected by choice or by circumstance, Cloud later explains, they're less likely to pry in our business and more likely to get in the way of anyone who comes around looking for trouble.)

He's silent as they get their third-storey room, and he's silent as Cloud's small backpack thumps to the floor beside one of the large beds. He's silent as Cloud opens the window to let in the warm evening air, and he's silent as Cloud lays his jacket over a chair and gives him an odd look.

"You all right?"

"Yes," Sephiroth lies.

Cloud's eyes narrow briefly before he says, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Is this because you couldn't help pay?"

"No," although that's still a significant sting to his pride, yet another reminder that he's technically penniless and homeless in this new world, unable to do anything but continue to rack up his debt with people who don't deserve that responsibility. "Strife – Cloud – I'm fine."

Cloud has a SOLDIER's eyes, Sephiroth belatedly notices as Cloud moves closer, glowing with mako and dead Jenova cells and weariness. He has a SOLDIER's bearing, upright, unwavering. He has a good man's heart.

"Try again," Cloud barely manages to say before Sephiroth suddenly closes the space between them, takes Cloud's face in his hands, and kisses him desperately. Cloud reflexively tries to jerk back but Sephiroth refuses to let him go, keeps his hold gentle but firm with his thumbs braced along Cloud's cheekbones and his fingers following the curve of Cloud's skull. Cloud's hands fly up to grip Sephiroth's wrists, but Sephiroth pushes his advantage before his wrists get snapped, licking his way into the space left by Cloud's sharp inhale of surprise, crowding forward until their bodies are pressed together chest to hip. When Cloud opens his mouth farther (to protest, maybe – is he even attracted to men? There were some things Zack let slip once in a while that made Sephiroth wonder), Sephiroth deepens the kiss until their teeth click, a hunger that feels familiar but wrong beginning to gnaw at his belly.

Cloud forcefully pulls Sephiroth's hands away but doesn't immediately step back, slows the kiss to something less violent, less invasive, before finally turning his head aside. Sephiroth feels like he's been punched in the ribs and they've already bruised.

"What was that?" Cloud asks softly. They're still in each other's space, Sephiroth's nose against Cloud's temple.

"I don't know," Sephiroth admits, toneless. I don't know, it's practically become his mantra these days, hasn't it, now that there's no one left in the world to tell him what to do that isn't you should have stayed dead.

Cloud's jaw works for a moment as he visibly struggles to think of something to say. Sephiroth abruptly steps back and says, "Unless you have need of the bathroom, I should shower. I had quite enough of sleeping in filthy clothes in Wutai."

"Yeah, sure." Cloud is staring at him intently now, as though he could read Sephiroth's mind by sheer force of will.

Sephiroth turns away and tells himself he is not hiding behind a closed and locked bathroom door. He tells himself his hands are not shaking as he turns on the shower, tells himself that he's imagining the knot of frustration, suspicion, and curiosity in his chest that doesn't quite feel like his own. He's in the middle of shucking his jeans when he hears Cloud's footsteps cross the room and the door leading out to the lobby stairs close quietly behind him.

Sephiroth spends the rest of the evening sitting by the window at a little table where someone had left behind some dog-eared magazines, watching the rest of the town go about its business. A father and his little girl are carrying groceries in reusable sacks. A few kids are kicking around a ball that nearly hits a bicyclist and causes a ruckus. A haggard woman in greasy overalls stumbles home from work. Tourists. A few professionals that make his hand go for the Masamune before he realizes that their suits aren't a very specific shade of blue. Schoolkids. Normal people.

It's hours after sunset, after Sephiroth's been laying awake in bed staring at the ceiling for an indeterminable amount of time, when he senses Cloud returning. First there's an awareness, a prickling along his neck, then soft footsteps and the click of the lock. He keeps his eyes half-closed as Cloud pauses at the foot of the second bed before slinging off Tsurugi and propping it up with a quiet thump against the wall. The dim light of a streetlamp filters in through the window, casting yellowed light and deeper shadows over the planes of Cloud's face. Tsurugi's harness slips off, followed by belts, followed by the ribbed turtleneck. The muscles in Cloud's arms and shoulders flex and relax as he moves. Scars from wounds too severe for even the SOLDIER serum to mend completely are picked out in pale highlights from the backdrop of streetlamp-yellow tinted skin, and Sephiroth wonders if any of those scars came from him, from the Masamune sliding in one side and out the other, maybe searing burns from raw mako. He wonders about the scars he left that can't be seen.

Cloud sprawls over the top of the blankets on his bed without bothering to take off his pants, boots kicked carelessly to the floor. He huffs softly, breath eventually slowing, and Sephiroth thinks, How can you sleep not six feet away from me?

Sephiroth's only managed a light doze when he hears a small sound break the silence. Cloud's limbs twitch, go still, twitch again, and suddenly he's jerking awake with a short, harsh inhale. After a pause, Cloud gets up and pads silently to the bathroom to splash water on his face, and the door is open just wide enough for Sephiroth to see Cloud stare at himself in the mirror with an unreadable expression before returning to bed, as sleepless now as Sephiroth.

"Do you trust me?" Sephiroth murmurs, echoing an early-morning breakfast that seems so long ago now. The gloom makes it easier to split himself open and show the vulnerable underbelly, to ask the fragile questions that would collapse under the light of day, but Cloud doesn't answer. Sephiroth gets to his feet and puts a knee on the edge of Cloud's bed, leaning over, and Cloud holds his gaze as Sephiroth swings his other leg up and around to settle with his knees on either side of Cloud's hips, hands braced by Cloud's shoulders.

"Sometimes," Cloud finally says. He looks like a bird waiting, completely still, to see what the other animal will do.

"You shouldn't."

"Someone has to, since you don't trust yourself."

"With good reason."

"Unless you're hiding another Jenova head, I'm inclined to take the risk."

The name is a sharp slap. Sephiroth ignores it and leans down until his nose brushes Cloud's, moves to a cheekbone with Cloud's breath puffing warm against his own cheek and his hair sliding silkily over his bare shoulder. It's the only point of contact between them and he's waiting for a knee to the groin or a hand around his throat that never comes. He has no idea what he's doing.

"Stop," says Cloud, and Sephiroth's body freezes before he actually registers the word. He sits up on his heels when Cloud pushes against his shoulders, lets himself tilt and roll onto his back with Cloud's ungloved hands guiding him until their positions are reversed. He wants to fit his palms around the bones of Cloud's hips, but Cloud said no and so he waits.

Cloud's just looking down at him, from his eyes to the hollow of his throat to the lines of his chest and belly that sweep down to the top of his fitted boxers. Sephiroth doesn't know what he's thinking, just gets a vague sense of trepidation and, most of all, determination, which apparently translates to Cloud shifting farther down the bed and hooking a finger under the hem of his underwear to unceremoniously tug it down. There's something too stiff in his actions to be completely natural.

"Cloud – "

His voice breaks over the wet heat of Cloud's mouth, over the tongue licking firmly from the underside of his half-hard cock to the head, and his hips jerk up so sharply he narrowly misses Cloud's teeth. This is not what he was expecting, even after he'd kissed Cloud, all aggression and need, but he isn't about to pull away, not with the lips sliding smoothly down his length and the darkness that's always been in the back of his mind snarling mine. His hands twist themselves into Cloud's thick hair and pause, torn between holding Cloud's head still and fucking or tossing Cloud onto his belly – but Cloud pulls away and grabs Sephiroth's wrists, forcing them down onto the bedspread and looking Sephiroth straight in the eye.

"Don't move."

His grip is as inhumanly strong as Sephiroth's – it would take serious effort to break it – and Sephiroth's body is already relaxing with the realization, I can't break him. The trepidation that isn't his own is gone, leaving the stubbornness of a mountain and other things he can't quite name.

Cloud's a little clumsy but not entirely unpracticed, keeping his teeth well away from hot skin and sucking with just enough pressure to be on the right side of almost-too-much. A hand covers what his mouth can't and the other runs lightly down the inside of Sephiroth's thigh, oddly intimate, pulling a long shiver down Sephiroth's spine and making his fingers curl hard in the bedcovers. When Sephiroth comes with a wordless sound, his hips stutter and he curls forward like he can contain a world's worth of history between them within the curve of his body.

While Sephiroth pants for breath, Cloud sits up and absently wipes the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes electric blue in the faint light. But when Sephiroth reaches for him, Cloud stops him with a palm pressed against Sephiroth's chest.

"Don't you," Sephiroth starts, brow furrowed, and Cloud says, "I'm fine, don't worry about it."

Sephiroth pushes himself upright and looks down, afraid that – but no, while Cloud isn't exactly desperately hard he's not entirely unaffected, so why –

"I found what I was looking for," Cloud says softly, and Sephiroth tilts his head, thinking –

…Oh.

Cloud gives a little yelp when Sephiroth tries to get up and nearly unbalances him, but then he settles his weight more firmly over Sephiroth's thighs and puts his hands on Sephiroth's shoulders. "What are you doing?"

Sephiroth goes to knock Cloud's hands off him but pauses halfway through the motion, hazily remembering the times he'd been violent to Cloud, so much more violent, and those are only the times he can actually remember, and now the thought of something as simple as smacking Cloud's hands away makes him sick. Sicker. "Your discomfort is quite clear," Sephiroth says stiffly, "and I've no wish to continue forcing myself on an unwilling partner – "

"Dear gods, Sephiroth, no, stop that, you really think if I was unwilling that I wouldn't make it really clear?"

"The fact that you needed to test yourself to see if being intimate with me would trigger – "

" – is completely reasonable, I'm trying to be proactive nowadays and not deny myself something I think I might want, but nor am I going to commit myself to something unless I think I can follow through."

"Clearly there is still a, a connection between us – "

"Finally noticed that, have you."

" – and so I cannot be trusted not to – "

"Are we going to argue about everything?" Cloud asks rhetorically. "You are not controlling me, trust me, at this point, I would know."

Somehow I suspect you've said that before. "If you think anything could ever be normal between us, you're wrong," Sephiroth points out, thinking of the way Cloud seems determined to go about life as though the Lifestream hadn't coughed General Sephiroth, Son of the Calamity and all that bullshit, back up.

"Hey, who kissed who first?"

"A momentary lapse of reason."

Cloud opens his mouth to continue arguing before he abruptly sighs and falls over onto his side, turning his back to Sephiroth. "We have a long ride tomorrow. You should get some sleep while you can."

Sephiroth stares at the naked wall of his back and wishes he could shake Cloud Strife until sense, common or otherwise, falls out. He eventually gets back into his own bed, but neither of them actually sleeps all that much.

…

By the time Cloud drags himself out of bed the next morning, Sephiroth is already fully dressed, hair braided back and concealed by a loose black scarf, sitting at the small table by the window and reading one of the old magazines with a frown that suggests he's mentally composing a scathing lecture for a particularly stupid person. It's actually kind of endearing.

The awkwardness isn't as bad as Cloud expected as he dresses and slings Tsurugi across his back. He waits until Sephiroth finally meets his gaze to give Sephiroth a small smile and lead the way out the door, and for the first time he isn't half-listening for the telltale singing of the Masamune as it slices towards his body, isn't feeling like he's going to crumble under the weight of Sephiroth's eyes on his shoulders. He's had Sephiroth pinned beneath him and the man's cock in his mouth, and there was never a voice in his head purring, Such a good puppet, and while he's feeling a little jittery he's also…okay. Good, even.

The hotel owner at the front desk waves as they pass through the lobby towards the stables, as do a couple of the younger adults with whom he'd been drinking last night after that kiss, their piercings glittering under the neon beer signs. Even at eight in the morning it's getting to be as hot outside as it was yesterday, the sunlight breaking in thick waves over the buildings and people. Cloud takes a deep breath of city smells with an undercurrent of chocobo and lets some tension drain out with it.

Sephiroth makes a considering noise behind him and Cloud glances back over his shoulder.

"What?"

"It's nothing." But through the alley between the hotel and the stables, Sephiroth's looking across the street to where a man is stumbling all over himself to apologize to a woman, who has a couple empty folders in her hands and a number of papers scattered across the sidewalk at her feet. Cloud frowns.

"Trouble?"

"Not of the intentionally malicious kind, no. He just chose a poor way to get her attention."

Cloud halts mid-step and turns to Sephiroth incredulously. "He's flirting? How on earth do you know that?"

"He's keeping his body turned open towards her and is looking at her face more than the papers he's pretending to help collect, probably to maintain interaction as long as possible. The way she's holding herself suggests that she doesn't know him personally and is uncomfortable, which is at odds with his attempt at familiarity. Given the way she's dressed and her apparent hurry, the papers are important."

Cloud looks back across the street and, on second thought, sees the desperately hopeful expression on the man's face and the frustration on the woman's. "Huh," he says finally. "This something you do often?"

Sephiroth brushes past Cloud as the man finally gets the hint and respects the woman's 'no.' "The body tells fewer lies than words."

ShinRa really shouldn't be the place that teaches life lessons to anyone.

The stables butt right up against the garage, which Cloud could tell anyone is a bad idea when dealing with twitchy animals, and Forseti gives him a baleful glare. "I'm sorry," Cloud tells him sincerely, "we'll be out of here in a few minutes, soon as I get you tacked up."

He's doing the final adjustments to the reins when Sephiroth appears at the entrance with his hands on Fenrir, the drive set in neutral so he can push it along until they reach an open road. He should look ridiculous in his somber coat and dark jeans with the dark scarf wrapped around his head and pulled low towards his eyes, as stubborn as he'd been about not dyeing his hair to a more muted color, but somehow he still manages to pull off dignified with unfair ease.

"The ladies at the Honeybee would love you," Cloud observes as he leads Forseti out of the stables towards the main road heading out of town. It's probably a good thing that Sephiroth doesn't ask.

Forseti's still grumbling low in his throat, clicking his beak irritably. And it was only a matter of time, wasn't it, nothing can stay a secret forever, not even things buried deep in forgotten laboratories under barren mountains: they're only a block away from the inn when Sephiroth takes one step too close and Forseti snaps at the few strands of bright hair that have escaped the scarf. The scarf gets snatched off and Sephiroth's feline, mako-glowing eyes blink in the sudden light, his hair gets yanked and the long silver braid tumbles over his collar, and silence spills over from his surprise and spreads to the people closest to them and up around the street. He may not be in uniform or carrying a sword at his side but this is the man that's graced every ShinRa poster across the world, whose calm and steady voice has been broadcast over the radio in every home, who stood tall and heroic as President ShinRa and Heidegger and countless other officials sang his praises for his service to the people.

Shit, Cloud doesn't waste time saying aloud. "Move it," he hisses, grabbing the scarf from Forseti and pulling hard on the reins to make the chocobo stand still. Sephiroth manages to straddle the bike but not start its engine before the first cries begin. It's him, they yell, it's Sephiroth, the monster, tried to kill us all, he's back –

"I'm sorry," Sephiroth tries to say into the wall of fear and anger threatening to crash down around them, but Cloud's voice rings out, "General Sephiroth is dead, don't be stupid!"

Other voices from behind are chiming in, but they're not cursing Sephiroth at all, they're shouting, "This is Cloud fucking Strife, even if Sephiroth were still alive you really think Strife would be caught dead hanging around with him?"

Bad choice of words, but an ally is an ally and thank the gods for punk kids willing to fight a losing battle. Cloud gets in the face of a man five inches taller than he and says coldly, "Move it."

The man moves. Cloud swings himself into the saddle and kicks Forseti into a run, hearing Fenrir's engine rev up and its wheels burn rubber. Angry and confused faces dissolve into a blur as they ride out of Kalm, the bike roaring and the wind howling and the chocobo breathing harshly through the bit. Thankfully he'd delivered the fucking package last night; hopefully the recipient appreciates all this effort.

They ride until Kalm is a distant smear, until the sun is high overhead and the nearest populated roads are miles away, and then Cloud pulls Forseti up short. Sephiroth immediately brakes and comes to a sudden stop some distance ahead of him, where he waits while Forseti trots over.

"What is it?" he asks, looking around, obviously expecting to see some sudden danger, but he's looking in the wrong direction because Cloud is pissed and he's starting to figure out why.

"What the hell was that?"

Sephiroth goes very still and alert, eyes narrowing a little as Cloud slides off Forseti and stalks closer. "What was what?"

"Did you really think an apology would satisfy those people?"

A pause. "Of course not. An apology alone won't fix the damage I've caused."

"Then why – " Cloud stops and takes a deep breath. "If those kids hadn't interfered, the crowd would've ripped you apart. Or tried to."

Sephiroth, if possible, looks even colder. "You lied to those kids."

"You didn't lie when telling the truth was the worst thing you could've done."

"They know who I am, Cloud, they know what I've done – "

"What, and you think saying 'sorry' and letting a crowd rip you to pieces is going to make it all better? Make you feel better?" Cloud fists a hand in his own hair and pulls, frustrated at Sephiroth and people in general and the nagging question of what the hell he's doing and how he thinks this whole thing is going to end. "I'm sick and tired of your self-pitying – "

"If you didn't try to pretend so hard," Sephiroth starts to snap, getting off the bike so he can stand tall and imposing, probably not even aware he's doing so. Cloud got over that posturing a few mindfucks and several battles ago and snaps right back, "I'm not pretending, you asshole, I'm trying to make this work for both of us and there aren't exactly many options here!"

"Because lies work out so well, don't they."

Cloud barks out a harsh laugh. "And the truth is so much better, isn't it, General?"

The shot hits home and Cloud almost doesn't see Sephiroth's fist before it's too late. He ducks to one side, pivots, comes back with an elbow and grazes Sephiroth's ribs. Sephiroth turns with him, barely blocking, would have tripped up Cloud with one of his long legs if Cloud hadn't gracefully sidestepped him. Sephiroth strikes out and Cloud ducks under his fist and Sephiroth blocks the blow aimed for a kidney and Cloud twists away from the knee that would've driven the air from his body. There's only the sound of harsh breathing, the smell of hot dirt, the sting of sweat in their eyes, the taste of blood in Cloud's mouth when he catches a glancing blow against his cheek. Cloud wants to grab Sephiroth and shake him until sense, common or otherwise, falls out.

When Cloud manages to get a hold of him, however, Sephiroth tries to break away and they both end up tumbling to the ground. Cloud grunts when his back hits hard, most of Sephiroth's weight coming down on him. One of Sephiroth's hands has caught his forearm and pinned it above his head, their eyes meeting and holding, and the sudden vulnerability – arms held out, torso stretched long under another's, a thigh between his own – has Cloud trying to artlessly jackknife upright with a snarl bordering on panic. Sephiroth's surprise (this feels familiar, and not in a good way) loosens his grip just enough that Cloud can twist and knee Sephiroth off-balance enough to smoothly switch their positions.

They stop like that: Sephiroth on his back, gripping one of Cloud's wrists so hard that Cloud would have to break the bones to free himself, and Cloud straddling him, grinding Sephiroth's shoulder into the ground. Sephiroth opens his mouth to speak, probably to say something intended to be insightful but which would actually be really fucking stupid and tempt Cloud to kill him all over again, so Cloud kisses him and licks the words right out. He's not entirely sure this could be called a kiss, with the way his tongue has left pink traces of blood on Sephiroth's teeth, how there's still an edge of terror under the anger and want, even if it's not nearly as bad as it was last night when Cloud dared to shove Sephiroth's cock down his throat just to see if he could.

At first it seems like Sephiroth is going to throw him off, but then all that aggression suddenly simmers down to a humming tension. It's heady to feel all that strength in hard muscle holding so still under his hands, tangible through the boring jeans and plain shirt that are nothing at all what General Sephiroth would wear. Cloud pushes closer, makes a noise deep in his throat when Sephiroth threads a hand into his hair and pulls to just the right side of pain. When Sephiroth tries to reverse their positions again Cloud resists just long enough to show that he's allowing it before rolling once more to his back.

Sephiroth holds himself up with a hand on either side of Cloud's head and his knees on the outside of Cloud's thighs, hair sliding over one shoulder and casting a shadow between their faces. After a long silence, Cloud says softly, "There's no point in playing a martyr here, Sephiroth. It won't make people feel better. As far as anyone knows it's been over two years since you died and the world's moved on. It's rebuilding."

"Then what would you have me do?" Sephiroth asks, just as soft, and though they've had this discussion before Cloud hadn't realized how lost Sephiroth was. There's something in Sephiroth's expression that makes Cloud think way back to the thunderous silence that had fallen seconds after the Plate did, the thick dust in the air turning the sudden sunlight into an ashen sheet draped over ruins and corpses.

"What do you want to do?"

If Cloud hadn't known Sephiroth's face better than his own, he wouldn't have seen the very human bewilderment in that flat stare. But he does, and before he can reconsider he's reaching up, cupping a hand over the curve of Sephiroth's neck, pulling him down until their foreheads touch, and closing his eyes. They stay like that until his ass and shoulderblades, the parts of him being pushed into the ground, have gone numb, and then he finally opens his eyes and pushes Sephiroth to one side. Sephiroth goes easily, if silently. Cloud wonders if he should be worried but then figures, whatever, and hauls himself to his feet with a groan. Riding a chocobo for the rest of the day is going to be a bitch.

…

They camp overnight again. Sephiroth finds and kills a rabbit that they cook over the fire and eat with the bread and cheese they'd packed before leaving Edge. He watches Cloud closely for cues on what to do, but except for a few long looks Cloud acts like he always has. They talk about things like sword technique and Wutaian blades and, once, Cloud shares a brief anecdote on one of the very-much-against-regulations escapades on which Zack had dragged him. Eventually Cloud lies down in his own bedroll on the other side of the fire, but Sephiroth stays awake for a while longer, staring through the flickering fire at Cloud's relaxed body.

The next morning, not long after dawn has left a thin layer of dew on everything and made Sephiroth's hair look like very long, very wet spiderweb, they head back to Edge. They don't share more than a handful of words, not because their tongues have been tied with doubt but because they don't need to, not when the rocking of Cloud's body in the saddle mirrors the rhythmic purr of the bike and their wakes stretch as long as the plains.

The shadow of the angel with its arms spread wide above Seventh Heaven is reaching clear across the street when they arrive. Forseti was left in his stable with a healthy heaping of greens, so Cloud and Sephiroth are both sliding off the bike when the sound of conversation drifts out of the bar. What're we gonna do about this, Highwind is saying, and when Sephiroth glances questioningly to the side he finds Cloud already looking back. "We owe it to them," Cloud says, and Sephiroth follows him silently through the front door.

The whole party is gathered around the largest of the tables near the back of the bar with a variety of drinks in hand. Some of them are holding nearly-full glasses, just spinning them around and around in their hands, while others already have several empty pints. All of them turn when they hear footsteps and go quiet.

"Welcome back," greets Red XIII (Nanaki, Sephiroth corrects himself, because Sephiroth is not Hojo and never will be). Cloud dips his head, neutrally replies, "Hello," and stops a few feet away. Sephiroth stands at his shoulder and isn't sure if it's out of support for Cloud or protection for himself.

"Bloody fucking twilight zone," Highwind grunts into a pint.

"Are you planning to kill us?" Kisaragi asks Sephiroth baldly. "Because that didn't go so good for you last time."

"What the fuck, Cloud? You do know my little girl's right fucking upstairs, yeah?" Barret Wallace demands.

Valentine, Reeve Tuesti, and Lockhart don't say anything until Valentine offers, "Let him speak."

"We dropped off a package in Kalm," Cloud tells them, as though that means anything.

Tuesti slouches forward, resting an elbow on the table and rubbing a temple tiredly. There's an unlabeled file folder lying in front of him. "How bad is the mess?"

Sephiroth can't tell if it's an honest question or a veiled insult. "Someone stumbled off a curb when we drove by," Cloud shrugs, and Sephiroth can't tell if that's an honest answer or a sarcastic one. "Kalm's still standing, if that's what you're asking. So is the Ranch."

"Are you trying to turn Sephiroth into a delivery guy?" demands Kisaragi. "Wow. I'm not even sure how to handle that."

"Fortunately, it isn't your responsibility," says Cloud, his quiet tone gentling what could've been a snap. "All of you were there in the church. The only thing we can do right now is try to make it work."

"I can think of other things," Wallace growls.

"With all due respect," Sephiroth breaks in, surprising himself, "I intend to make amends in whatever way I can, however small or pointless."

"You think you can just say you're sorry?" Highwind snorts.

"By all rights," Valentine argues, "if anyone should make the final decision, it's Cloud."

"I'm not another Hojo or Jenova," Cloud says flatly. "It's Sephiroth's decision."

"And the kids? You're gonna let them keep sleeping with a murderer under the same roof?" Wallace counters. Even though Wallace is looking at Cloud, it feels like an arrow has suddenly lodged itself in Sephiroth's chest.

"No," Cloud replies. "We'll find another place to live. Probably near the outskirts. We won't be far, but it's…" He glances at Lockhart, who hasn't said a word, whose face is carefully blank. "It's only fair."

"So you'll be going with him?" she asks quietly, and there's an odd note there, one that makes Sephiroth suspect there's another conversation going on between her and Cloud. Cloud simply says, "Yeah," but it's heavy and cracks something in the space between them. The others are varying degrees of uncomfortable; Valentine is somber. Sephiroth thinks, Overall one-in-three chance of violence; thinks, You don't always need a weapon to break people; thinks, Psychological warfare is the most bloodless and the most devastating. He's standing in front of a seated jury that has witnessed all his crimes and yet they wait on the word of one man saying, Mercy.

"Nothing I do can erase what I've done," says Sephiroth, spreading his bare hands, "but now I may use my skills to help with the things for which I am uniquely suited."

No one seems to know what to say to that. Highwind knocks back the rest of his pint with a grumble.

When they're back in Cloud's bedroom, Sephiroth sitting on the edge of the bed as Cloud paces slowly around like he's not sure what to do with himself, Sephiroth asks, "I don't remember talking about the decision to relocate."

Cloud huffs a wry laugh. "Zack wasn't always the impulsive one." He raises an eyebrow. "You think pretty highly of yourself, Snowflake."

Sephiroth raises a haughty eyebrow right back. "Is there a reason I shouldn't?"

Cloud laughs a bit again and it feels like a gift. Sephiroth made his case to the people he's most wronged, but instead of the shame and helplessness that have made each breath leave another small scar in his lungs there's just cool air and the faint scent of motor oil that always seems to follow Cloud around. His hands are folded and resting in his lap on the jeans he didn't buy, the sleeves of the shirt he was given rolled up casually.

"What I said to them – I wasn't lying," Sephiroth murmurs, and Cloud shoots him an unreadable look.

"Neither was I."

"I don't want to be the cause of any more trouble between all of you."

Cloud casually kicks the desk chair around and sits in it backwards facing Sephiroth, crossing his arms over the back. "The only way to keep that from happening is if you'd never come back in the first place. It's rather late for that now."

"Perhaps if I left…"

"The fact that you're alive at all is half the problem for a few of them. Leaving wouldn't help that. And where would you go? What would you do?"

Sephiroth can't answer any of that. He's going to spend the rest of his life, however long or brief that may be, as a fugitive; changing his name, dyeing his hair, even wearing contacts every day to hide his inhuman eyes, these things are stopgaps, not solutions. He knows this, and maybe this is his ultimate sentence.

"You don't have to do this alone," Cloud says softly, and when Sephiroth glances back at him, their eyes catch and hold for several heartbeats.

…

Of their party, only Cid, Vincent, and Nanaki remain; the others, like Yuffie and Reeve, either have somewhere else to be or, like Barrett, refuse to stay under the same roof as Sephiroth. Cloud doesn't argue and spends an hour or two sitting at the table with them, long enough for night to fall completely, before retreating back to his bedroom where Sephiroth chose to stay flipping through the file folder Reeve had brought. It's filled with enough of the most recently collected statistics on death and disease for Sephiroth to continue punishing himself silently, and Cloud bites his lip hard to resist the urge to grab the folder and toss it out the window. He undresses quietly and lies down on his pallet of blankets, turning his back to Sephiroth and the small pool of light from the desk lamp.

Cloud wakes up to midmorning light and an empty room. He stares at the wall for a little while, watching the angle of reflected sunlight change by a few degrees, then gets dressed in clothes that don't reek of traveling chocobo before heading downstairs.

Halfway down the stairwell, he stops and listens to the noises coming from the kitchen. The hum of Tifa's lighter tone is as familiar as the lower rumble of Sephiroth's, but the two of them put together is making Cloud's heart beat a little faster. The only thing keeping him from bursting into the kitchen with Tsurugi in hand is the fact that the only other sounds he can hear is the clinking of dishes and the rush of tap water.

"I admire and respect what you all have," Sephiroth is carefully saying in response to a question that Cloud missed.

"And what's that?" Tifa asks, just as carefully neutral. There's a long pause filled with the clatter of a plate dropping into a sink full of water.

"During the war," Sephiroth finally starts, making Cloud's eyes widen because he's never heard anyone – not Sephiroth, not Zack – talk about the Wutai War outside the desperation that filled the caves beneath the ShinRa mansion, "there was…very little a man could hold on to. Many times, the knowledge that one wasn't alone was the only way to keep going."

"Zack?" Tifa asks quietly, and the sharp pain that tears through Cloud's chest isn't just his own.

"Yes. He was…invaluable. To me."

Cloud turns until his back is pressed against the wall of the stairwell and slides slowly down to sit on his heels, head leaned back against the wood paneling. It's thin enough that he can still hear the quiet, stilted conversation.

"So you have some idea why none of us are happy about seeing you with Cloud."

"Yes," Sephiroth repeats solemnly. More dishes clatter and the tap runs briefly.

"Do you remember anything else?" asks Tifa.

"Nothing of value. There are moments, sometimes a smell or a sound." Sephiroth stops to clear his throat. "But there's no context, no rhyme or reason."

From her tone, Cloud can imagine Tifa unflinchingly looking Sephiroth straight in the eye. "Have you decided yet what you're going to do with Cloud?"

Sephiroth's laugh would taste bittersweet if Cloud were to kiss him. "I've no idea what I am going to do with myself. For the first time in my life I am not accountable to another's agenda."

Cloud takes the risk of leaning over just enough to see around the corner into the kitchen. Tifa is indeed looking Sephiroth straight in the eye, but her face is no longer carved from stone, has softened just enough for the cold to begin thawing. "So is General Sephiroth okay with being a delivery guy?"

"I think 'General Sephiroth' has changed the world enough. A normal life sounds like a worthy challenge."

Cloud rolls his eyes at himself when a bit of giddiness makes him grin at the empty hallway.

…

Cloud drops a small pouch into Sephiroth's hand. "Here."

"What's this?"

"Half the payment from the Kalm delivery."

"Cloud, I hardly think that's fair – "

"Why not? You were right there with me during the whole job."

"I don't think – "

"Oh, just take it before I throw it at you."

...

Bread is scrawled across the top of the paper. Eggs. Milk. Peanut butter. And also, Whatever fruit you can legally wrangle from someone. Sephiroth takes a few seconds to memorize the list, folds it neatly and puts it in his back pocket, and readjusts the hang of the empty grocery sack on his arm.

Wall Market has begun selling more than alcohol and human vice and is now lined with stalls left open to the air, turning from temptation of the flesh to the temptation of sight and smell: fresh loaves of bread baked small and heavy, slightly off-color vegetables polished to a neat shine, fried foods and burnt-sugar candy. Sephiroth keeps the scarf wrapped securely around the thick braid of his hair and pulls on civilian and human and unimposing like a second coat. He avoids the stalls selling Wutaian food because those smells remind him of blood spattering over home kitchens and corpses already going cold.

He buys eggs from a young woman who spits salt and ashes and has nothing good to say about WRO's reconstruction efforts. You're a soldier, aren't you, she had growled the first time he showed up, kudos protecting the people, flawless job there. Sephiroth had replied, in a completely serious voice, Thank you, and she had eyed his perfectly composed face suspiciously as she handed over a small box of eggs. Now she just glowers and mutters while she slips an extra egg into the box.

He buys fresh bread from a Wutaian man who doesn't speak much that isn't in Wutaian, but it gives Sephiroth a chance to practice his rusty vocabulary. There were a few foibles in the beginning when Sephiroth would accidentally ask for panties or a fork when he actually wanted rolls, but sacrificing a little dignity to make someone laugh isn't much of a price at all.

He always drops a few gil into the hands of scruffy kids that come begging, even though he knows that half of them are spending it on candy rather taking it home to their parents. He figures they need all the little joys they can find, and anyway, he's not the one who has to deal with small children consuming processed sugar.

My gods, he can imagine Genesis sneering, you've turned into a marshmallow. He mentally replies, There are worse things to be, and I've been them all, and if there are times when he dreams of battlefields and they aren't nightmares, these people don't need to know.

…

It had sounded spur-of-the-moment but it wasn't, really, and once Cloud had said it out loud, it seems like the next logical step to take in this brave new world. The warehouses on the edge of the city near Forseti's stall still stand empty, left to rust, most of their contents long since ransacked. He chooses a smaller storehouse, one-storey and with less of the echoing vastness of the larger ones. The stagnation from several years of delivering the same packages along the same routes begins to splinter the first time that Cloud stands on the storehouse's threshold and all its possibilities wait patiently in front of him.

Sephiroth walks its outside perimeter, eyeing the height of the walls, the slope of the roof, its distance from the other buildings. He finally declares it acceptably defensible. Cloud can't blame his priorities as he hauls insulation, flooring, and sealant and dumps it in a haphazard pile nearby. He also drops off several toolboxes.

"We didn't use all those tools when we renovated Forseti's stall," Sephiroth comments.

"That's because I didn't have the opportunity to build a proper garage." He narrows his eyes. "Say one word against Fenrir and you're sleeping with the chocobo."

Sephiroth smirks with more than a ghost of his old self-assurance. Huh. "At least the chocobo doesn't leave damp towels hanging off the furniture."

Gods, it's so weirdly domestic. (He's had the man's cock in his throat.) Cloud coughs and reaches for a sledgehammer. "Oh, shut up."

Sephiroth's shoulders shake with silent laughter as Cloud throws a measuring tape at his face.

It's hot and the sun beats down on the backs of their necks, because this is still Midgar and Midgar was always like that except where the Plate swallowed up the trash in its shadow. Every so often Cloud treks over to Forseti's stall and douses himself in lukewarm water from the external faucet.

"You look like a drowned chocobo," Sephiroth helpfully informs him when Cloud returns, dripping all over the floor they're finishing up.

"You look like a melting ice cube." In dusty jeans and boots and a mint-green T-shirt Cloud had managed to scrounge up somewhere. The shirt makes his eyes look a little darker than usual and Cloud pretends not to notice, just like he's pretending not to notice the sweat that's making it stick to the shape of muscle underneath as Sephiroth crawls around on his knees with a nailgun. "You're as pale as a sheet of paper, how are you not burning to death?"

"Sheer force of will."

Cloud sits back on his heels and peers at him suspiciously. "It wasn't just Zack who liked screwing with the ShinRa brass, was he?"

Sephiroth blinks in mild surprise. "I was a general and a SOLDIER First, Strife, you're implying some very dangerous things."

"You did," Cloud all but crows gleefully. "Tell me."

"You would accuse me of such unseemly behavior – "

"Hell yes I would, I'm doing it right now, now tell me a story about how General Sephiroth was a hooligan."

"It was nothing large, Cloud, not like some of Zack's schemes. It was always little things, like shifting random objects in Heidegger's office when he wasn't looking until he started believing that he was being haunted."

"Holy crap."

Sephiroth pins down the end of a floorboard with another few nails, the sound of the nailgun echoing like Wutaian firecrackers in the warehouse's open space. "I had to be very careful. If I was caught flouting certain rules, the consequences could be…unpleasant. As a recruit yourself, you understand how ShinRa would regulate your life very thoroughly."

"Yeah," Cloud says, a little more subdued. He remembers how lost he'd felt in the beginning when he didn't have a mission to fall back on, when his carefully-constructed identity had been torn away.

The conversation naturally dies after that, leaving a comfortable silence between them as they pass materials between them and work around one another. When it comes time to knock out an already-unstable wall, Cloud hands Sephiroth the sledgehammer.

"Wouldn't you like to do the honors?" Sephiroth asks as he takes it.

"Everyone likes swinging heavy objects at inanimate ones. It's your turn. Think of it as therapy."

Sephiroth raises an eyebrow. "You think I need therapy?"

"Who doesn't? Now smash."

Cloud stands back as Sephiroth goes to town, obviously getting into it after the first few swings, and when he finishes, when the cement wall has been reduced to rubble and Sephiroth is covered in a fine layer of white dust, Cloud has to bite his own cheek to resist the urge to kiss Sephiroth senseless.

"You look like the ghost that was haunting Heidegger."

"Imagine that." Sephiroth wipes at his brow with the back of a wrist, which doesn't do anything but smear the dust around.

"Tell me something I can use to blackmail you."

"Why would I do that?"

"Why not?"

"Because you'll blackmail me."

"Not for anything bad."

"I see now what Zack saw in you."

Not too long ago that would've sliced at Cloud's heart. Now, it still leaves a smear of sorrow and grief, but it doesn't bleed, and Cloud takes the sledgehammer back with a grin.

"How did it go?" Tifa asks when they return to Seventh Heaven and Sephiroth disappears upstairs to shower off all the dirt. Cloud leans against the doorway and crosses his arms, watching Tifa prepare the bar for another night of business. She's done it so many times that it's basically muscle memory.

"It's a shithole right now, but it'll look pretty good once we've finished."

"You do realize, Cloud, that you've essentially gone house-hunting with Sephiroth?"

"If you think that's surreal, you have no idea just how much."

She's lining up bottles on one of the shelves, and he gets the feeling that she's avoiding his eyes. "You think this is a good idea?"

"No," Cloud says ruefully. "It's entirely possible and probably likely that this will blow up in our faces. I just hope that we won't take the rest of the world down with us."

"That isn't funny."

"It kind of is."

"That's because you're a morbid son of a bitch when no one's looking."

Cloud laughs. Tifa finally glances over at him and says softly, "You haven't done that in a long time. Laugh, I mean."

He shrugs, not having any response to that. "But in all seriousness, Tifa, can you imagine Sephiroth going out in the big, wide world on his own? After everything that's happened? He's going to spend the rest of his life as the fugitive that no one's expecting to find but won't hesitate to kill if and when they do. Well, they'll try, at least."

"So this is you being…what, protective? His bodyguard?"

"No."

When he doesn't add anything to that, Tifa walks over and scrutinizes his face. Cloud can't hold her gaze for long, staring absently over her shoulder, and she whispers, "You're in…you have feelings for him, don't you?"

Cloud winces, but admits, "Yes," because she deserves his honesty.

"When we were still chasing him and he was…possessed, did you…?"

"Maybe," he says, still honest. "I don't know. I don't know how much was hero worship, Zack, or the, uh, Jenova factor. Or me."

"But you know now?"

"Yeah," he says softly.

Tifa presses a hand flat against his chest, lightly, thinking, then confesses, "You know, I once promised myself that I would do everything I could to make sure you were happy. I just thought it would be under different circumstances. But it's been more than two years and I guess I just – didn't want to admit to myself that those circumstances weren't going to happen."

"Tifa…"

"Say anything pitying and I'll punch you in the face."

Cloud smiles again, a little sadly. "I may be about to make the worst decision in my life and possibly the Planet's, but I'm not that stupid, thanks. I was just going to say that I – I do love you, just not…"

"Just not 'that way'?"

Cloud groans and lets his head tip forward so that his chin is resting on top of her head. "Thank you for making me feel like a kid again."

"Your ponytail was very fashionable."

"Yes, it was, damn it."

He feels her small laugh more than he hears it before she pulls away, and he goes on, "I still want to be a part of your life. If you want. I know I'm not the most reliable, but – "

"You run your business out of my office, my office, thank you, I don't know how you expect to keep that business without my phone and my desk and, oh yeah, my bookkeeping."

"I know you've got a lot going on, so if you wanted, like, a break, Sephiroth could take over some of that?" he suggests tentatively, not sure if he's taking a misstep, if it seems like he's trying to replace her when he couldn't even imagine trying in the first place. "I mean, he's got a head for numbers, I don't know half the shit he says when he gets his hands on one of those science magazines and finds an article he doesn't like." Cloud trails off when he realizes Tifa is just watching him, smiling faintly. "Tifa?"

"Nothing. That sounds good. Of course, having Sephiroth take over part of the business is one of the things I never even considered because, seriously, why would I, but it'll be nice to get a break."

"I can't leave him alone, Tifa," Cloud says, a little desperate, and her mouth twists, but she just says, "I know," and steps back. When her eyes slide to a point behind him, Cloud turns in the doorway and finds Sephiroth at the bottom of the stairs, obviously paused mid-motion.

"Am I interrupting anything?" he asks smoothly, and Tifa says with no trace of tension in her voice, "No, not at all, you can come down."

Sephiroth looks questioningly to Cloud, who just nods, and he relaxes. "Thank you, Ms. Lockhart."

"Call me Tifa."

Cloud whips back around. Tifa appears just as surprised, but then she lifts her chin determinedly.

"All right. Tifa."

The world is weird, Cloud thinks wholeheartedly. He decides now is a good time to take his leave and go shower, and as he passes Sephiroth on the stairs, he says, "You better not have used all the hot water."

"I would never," Sephiroth replies, and Cloud squints at him, not sure if he's serious or joking and wondering why Zack, during one of his fanboy soliloquies, had left out the fact that Sephiroth was such a deadpan bastard.

…

Sephiroth asks Cloud to show him how to wire the interior lights. After Sephiroth manages to start a small fire, proving that there is indeed something he cannot do, Cloud forbids him from touching the electrical wires and sets him to tiling the bathroom.

…

It's been nearly three months when they take a delivery trip to Junon. They kill some monsters along the way, Sephiroth hears the story about a dolphin and the power grid, and when their client turns out to be a rich, entitled asshole Cloud gets so superbly passive-aggressive that the client doesn't realize he's been thoroughly insulted until they're halfway back to Forseti and the bike. I'll see you in court, the client shouts at their backs, and when Cloud and Sephiroth look at each other they both smirk, get on their respective rides, and take off for the distant horizon.

For the first time, Sephiroth reflects back on a church and a woman's cheerful, far-off voice and thinks, Thank you.

…

It's on a day just as hot and sunny as any other day when Cloud straightens up from hammering in the flooring nails and sits back on his heels. "Sephiroth."

Sephiroth pauses, his hand hovering with a protractor over some of the last floorboards he's trimming. "Yes?"

"You…you know I appreciate all your help, right?" Gods, the words are just stumbling awkwardly out of his mouth.

"Yes," Sephiroth replies carefully.

"And you know that I know how to do this on my own, right?"

That is an extremely impressive look of suspicion. "Yes."

"You don't need to stay. If you don't want to. You're not under any obligation."

Sephiroth sets down the protractor with exaggerated grace – which, shit, he only gets that compulsively precise when he's off-balance – and faces Cloud head-on. "I may have felt that way in the beginning, but I haven't for a while now. Why?"

Cloud can't meet his eyes and fiddles with the hammer. "I told you before that I'm not your jailer, and you – you're capable of so much, but you're here turning a piece of crap into a piece that's slightly less crappy."

"You want me to leave?"

His voice is the smoothness of a blank slate. Cloud can't help a tiny wince. "This is my life, y'know, driving to the same places all the time and playing with the kids sometimes and, like, mucking out chocobo stalls. I can't imagine it's anything you would've wanted for yourself, I mean, you're…"

"I'm what? ShinRa's greatest general? Hojo's most successful test subject? A god?" he adds, already bitter as bile, as grief, and Cloud is wishing he hadn't said anything because Sephiroth's…not entirely wrong. It's just, the man is still larger than life even if it's a little more subdued these days, yet he's been picking up Cloud's towels and making the occasional grocery run. He's on the equivalent of a first-name basis with the shopkeepers without the actual name part and Cloud's suddenly doubting himself, again, because what does he think he's doing here?

"No, you're…you're your own person, and I can't keep – "

"You think you've made me into some kind of pet," Sephiroth says silkily, making Cloud's head jerk back up. Sephiroth's takes a few steps towards him and Cloud gets to his feet, bracing himself, no weapons, no materia. "You think I'm only here because of guilt and regret."

To be fair, that's partially correct, though Cloud only knows that because he can still feel that tangled knot of emotion that isn't his own when it's the middle of the night and the world is quiet. "Aren't you?"

"You know that isn't true," Sephiroth snaps, and Cloud knows that under the guilt and regret that's growing a little less each day there's also heat, and trust, and something that isn't quite love but could be a close reflection of it. "And if you insist on attributing my presence here to a sense of debt, then you may as well call me a whore."

"Whoa, what, no, what, that's not even – "

"Isn't that the logical conclusion of what you're saying, even if our currency isn't monetary?" Sephiroth's striding forward right into Cloud's personal space, forcing Cloud to take a step back, and then another one, until his back hits an incomplete wall and narrowly misses a stud. "Would you think less of me for it?"

"No," Cloud growls, wondering how this got away from him so quickly, "you fucking know me better than that now."

"I certainly thought so, Cloud Strife, but it appears you don't know me nearly so well after all."

"I'm trying to make you realize that you don't need to settle for all this – "

"Settle for a home I'm building with my own hands? For honest employment in which genocide isn't part of the job description?" Sephiroth presses close enough against him that the small of Cloud's back meets the wall and the rhythmic rise and fall of Sephiroth's chest forces Cloud's to match it. "And here I though you wanted me to make my own choices. You certainly talked about it often enough. Or was that just lip service?"

Ha, lip service, cracks a very Zack-like part of Cloud's mind, but they haven't kissed again in the weeks following the delivery to Kalm and Cloud hasn't pushed it, hasn't said anything, because he's not going to be one of those assholes like that guy on the street who'd knocked the papers out of a woman's hands to get her attention, and he's not going to take advantage of the fact that Sephiroth has pretty much been forced to completely rely on him all this time. "Of course not, but I can't be a, a crutch, either, you deserve more than – "

The rest of the sentence gets swallowed up in Sephiroth's mouth, the words pouring out and away over Cloud's lips until there's space in his own mouth for Sephiroth's tongue and determination. Sephiroth's fingers, curled over Cloud's shoulders and pinning him in place, tighten.

"What I deserve," Sephiroth rasps when he pulls back, sending a shiver down Cloud's spine, "if indeed someone with my history is morally allowed to say such a thing, is to be treated like a competent adult. As you've said yourself, if I were truly unwilling, do you not think I'd make that very clear?"

"Um," answers Cloud.

"I will make my own choices, Cloud, and if you're sincere then you will respect that. Until the time you do in fact wish me to leave, I choose to stay here. Do you understand me?"

"Um," repeats Cloud, and then Sephiroth is kissing him again, relentless and forceful as though the dam holding back weeks' worth of waiting has suddenly broken. Maybe it has, maybe Sephiroth really has been waiting, and a small bit of Cloud gets an absolute thrill out of the likelihood that General Sephiroth has been wanting this with Cloud, but it's a small bit that's leftover from the fragments of Before Hojo and he finally, finally lets the last of it go when Sephiroth bites his lower lip.

"Tell me this is okay," Cloud breathes, but when Sephiroth starts, "I said that if I didn't want this," Cloud interrupts, resolutely, "No, tell me that this is okay."

Sephiroth pulls back just enough that he can stare searchingly into Cloud's eyes, probably picking up the micromovements in his face or something equally bizarre, the nerd, and then says with precise enunciation, "Cloud, I want this."

It's the key that unlocks any more hesitation and Cloud finds himself lifted a little higher, Sephiroth's hands sliding quickly down to grasp his hips and a hard thigh muscling its way between Cloud's to put pressure against the base of his cock, to let him ride it while he learns the shape and taste of Sephiroth's lips, tongue, teeth. Cloud has to tilt his head back because the bastard is literally half a foot taller, and he might be irritated about that one day but right now it's too new and too weird and also too good. He winds his hands – ungloved, a bit rough from cutting and sanding the wood for their house – in Sephiroth's hair and doesn't feel the least bit guilty for getting dirt in it.

Sephiroth kisses alternately like a half-starved man and one who half-expects to be shoved off. Cloud makes it slow but deep, tongues running unhurried along teeth, teeth pressing not-very-carefully against lips, and he slowly increases the pull in Sephiroth's hair until Sephiroth groans deep and hitches his thigh that much harder against Cloud's cock. Cloud hisses and pushes back and wonders if Sephiroth would mind if Cloud came before they got anywhere near removing clothes.

It takes him a moment to realize that Sephiroth is not only pulling away but also sliding smoothly to his knees, the image of which promptly fuzzes out Cloud's brain, and all he can do is stare somewhat incredulously. Sephiroth is looking up, holding his gaze, while long, graceful fingers (does he play the piano, Cloud wonders nonsensically, I should find him something) undo his leather belt, and the clinking of the buckle and then the gravelly hush of the zipper seem to echo loudly in Cloud's ears. When Sephiroth carefully draws out his cock and leans forward, Cloud's brain fuzzes out again completely.

Sephiroth's mouth is hot, his metabolism running faster than a normal human's and making all of him that much warmer, gods, Sephiroth's tongue pressed along the underside and the back of his throat against the head, lips a tight o made custom to Cloud's size, breath puffing warm and steady against sensitive skin. It really doesn't take much before Cloud comes, hard, for several long seconds with a bitten-off murmur of, "Sephir – "

Only Sephiroth's grip on his hips keep Cloud from just falling on his ass, instead helping Cloud slide painlessly down to sit with his legs sprawled, careless. Sephiroth moves to straddle his thighs and Cloud's hands automatically come to rest on Sephiroth's waist, and this time their kiss is thick with the taste of come. The thought that Sephiroth tastes like Cloud makes him shiver, makes him wish he could get back some of those teenaged hormones – and that's a great idea, actually, if he could just get Sephiroth to move back a bit then Cloud could return the favor, show him at least a little of the same heat, not just in his mouth but also in that nameless of tangle of feeling behind his sternum.

Sephiroth refuses to be budged, however, and his voice is a deep purr when he says Cloud like the name is something to be savored (savored, not sneered, not mocked). He catches Cloud's lips in another kiss as Cloud fumbles open the damn jeans and, when he finally gets his hands on Sephiroth, the kiss breaks apart on Sephiroth's sharp exhale of a moan. Sephiroth bows his back to put his arms around Cloud and set his teeth against the meat of Cloud's shoulder, hips rocking with each pull and stroke of Cloud's hand until he comes with a deep moan like a roll of thunder.

There's a moment of silence. Sephiroth's face feels hot where it's pressed against Cloud's throat, his breath puffing out humidly against the hollow, but Cloud really, really doesn't give a shit. Instead he lets his head tip forward so his cheek is resting against Sephiroth's head and the somewhat sweaty mess of his hair, tightens the arm he has looped around Sephiroth's waist, lets go of Sephiroth's soft cock with the other and shamelessly wipes it off on Sephiroth's shirt.

"I noticed that," Sephiroth mutters.

Cloud can't help it. Sephiroth sounds so grumpy while his jeans gape open and he's still sprawled unselfconsciously over Cloud's lap, too high on endorphins to think about things like propriety and perfect self-control, and the remains of come on Cloud's hand are already drying and starting to itch, and it feels like a giant splinter got rammed into one asscheek when he slid to the floor, and he just…he just starts laughing. He laughs because he can't not laugh with how much he lo—

Sephiroth twitches, hard, in his arms, and pulls away. Cloud's laugh breaks in half and he watches carefully as Sephiroth stares down at him.

"We need more nails," Sephiroth finally says, neutral, and Cloud suddenly wants to hit something, but he doesn't because he doesn't want that 'something' to be the man still sitting on his thighs. "I will go…clean up and get them."

Stay, Cloud wants to say. I can feel you freaking out on the inside but I don't know why you are. If this had happened just a few weeks ago – hell, yesterday – Cloud would've let him go without arguing because who is he to try telling anyone else what to do? But there's something raw in the way Sephiroth's gaze, usually so steady and piercing, isn't quite so steady after all, so Cloud reaches up and puts a hand on each side of Sephiroth's face, tugging him forward until their foreheads meet and their breaths punctuate the space between them. Cloud holds him there until the pulse in Sephiroth's throat isn't visible anymore and his muscles aren't tensed hard as rock.

"Make sure you get the stainless steel ones," Cloud reminds him when he eventually lets go. There's a moment in which Sephiroth is apparently trying to break Cloud down into his composite parts for study by sheer will, and then he says, "Of course," gets to his feet without any creaking of bones or tendons at all, the bastard, and disappears out the door.

Cloud closes his eyes and lets his head thunk back against the wall.

…

Sephiroth ends up back in the church. The glass from the window he'd broken weeks and weeks ago is scattered on the warped floorboards, the pew toppled at a crazy angle. He sits down on the pew closest to the pond that somehow hasn't drained away and stares at the way the afternoon sun slants through the empty panes and falls on the still pond for a while.

"Did you know this would happen?" he murmurs. "From the little I know of you I can't imagine that you would ever purposefully harm Cloud, but I also can't imagine how this is any better."

He isn't expecting a reply and he doesn't get one, per se, except that the smell of flowers wafts strong past his nose and the sunlight seems to shine just that little bit brighter. If a smile has a sound, Sephiroth could swear he hears it in the wind that wanders quietly through the high rafters, and he remembers a late morning ground into dust and dirt, Cloud's weight pressed against him and Cloud's voice challenging him, What do you want to do? He thinks about the point at which guilt turns into selfishness, about pragmatism and how the war had taught him to take advantage of opportunities and strategize around what couldn't be changed.

Later that evening, long after the sun had set, Sephiroth returns to Seventh Heaven and tracks down Cloud. "We should go somewhere," he announces.

Cloud stares at him and Sephiroth realizes that Cloud is behind the bar, actually working, just finishing up a couple cocktails for patrons. "My apologies. I'll wait until you're finished."

"Uh, yeah, okay," Cloud says bemusedly as Sephiroth slips upstairs.

Sometime later, Sephiroth is sitting on Cloud's bed flipping through one of the advanced engineering manuals again and wishing he'd studied a broader range of subjects when Cloud appears in the doorway smelling of beer and sawdust. Sephiroth puts down the book and sits up while Cloud takes the desk chair.

"Something came up with some of the kids and Tifa went to go take care of it," Cloud explains. "I told her I'd watch the bar until she got back."

"Ah."

There's an awkward pause. Sephiroth wonders if Cloud is thinking about what happened earlier that day as well. Cloud prompts, "You wanted to go somewhere?"

"Yes."

"Anywhere in particular?"

Sephiroth tilts his head, thoughtful. "Before the Crisis, I had no memory of ever being anywhere but Midgar until the war with Wutai began. Genesis and Angeal had Banora, but I had only ever known ShinRa. The Chocobo Ranch is as far as I've ever been outside of Midgar when I wasn't fighting a war. I would like to see more of it." He pauses, then continues, "I would like to see it with you."

Sephiroth watches Cloud and finds that he isn't nervous at all; he feels calm.

"I've got a package for Fort Condor that came in today. It's several days' ride from here."

Sephiroth smiles. "It sounds like a good place to visit."

"Well, we'll see if you're still saying that when we get there," says Cloud, but he's smiling back.

…

The charcoal-grey of the bike shines bright against the matte black of the hard-cased leather saddlebags that Cloud's hooked onto either side of its frame. One of the bags is full of supplies, the other has the package tucked in alongside additional odds-and-ends. When Sephiroth locks the no-longer-quite-a-warehouse's front door, Cloud sees the odd expression on his face.

"What is it?"

"Nothing," is the reply, but Sephiroth is looking at the key in his hand like it's a rare Ribbon, and Cloud gets it.

It's become a familiar routine: Cloud runs a check on the bike, and then a check on the chocobo, while Sephiroth makes sure the overnight supplies and the package are in order. Cloud gives him shit yet again for not doing anything about his very long, very silver, very obvious hair except tucking it under scarves and collars ("Leave me to my singular vanity, Strife" – "Yeah, well, your singular vanity could get us mobbed in the streets"). Cloud drops by Seventh Heaven to say goodbye to Tifa and the kids while Sephiroth waits outside in the back alley, and then they're gone, racing the wind and the zoloms out to the middle of nowhere in particular.

That night, Cloud is sitting cross-legged on the grassy ground and poking lazily at the small campfire with a stick when he sees Sephiroth spreading his bedroll adjacent to Cloud's. Cloud's eyebrows rise. "What are you doing?"

Sephiroth straightens, dusts off his hands, and grabs something floppy and lumpy from his pack. "If you have to ask, then maybe you're not old enough to do it."

"I'm not going to assume anything, especially after what happened last time."

Sephiroth looks inordinately pleased, as though Cloud had spoken gospel instead of a simple fact. He crouches down in front of Cloud, presses the fingers of his free hand under Cloud's chin to tilt his head back, and kisses him without hesitation. It's firm but gentle, a heart on the sleeve, and it makes Cloud want to roll Sephiroth over and get him filthy with salty sweat and grassy stains, but the bastard starts pulling back way too soon and holds up the lumpy thing. It unrolls into one of the scarves Sephiroth often uses to cover his hair. He holds it up to Cloud with an oddly solemn air and it takes Cloud several confused seconds to understand what's being asked. It worries him at the same time it makes a lazy ocean wave of heat roll through Cloud's body.

"You want me to blindfold you," Cloud asks, just to make sure, he can't fuck this up, and because if people can't talk about it even if they know what something is then they still have no business doing it.

"Yes," says Sephiroth calmly. There's no shame, no embarrassment, just steady patience as he returns Cloud's searching gaze and waits for Cloud's response.

"Have you ever…?"

"No."

"But you would with me."

"Yes."

Cloud doesn't notice how hard he's gripping the stick until it suddenly cracks in two, startling him. He tosses both ends into the fire with a grimace and gets to his feet, holding out a hand to tug Sephiroth up as well, not letting go when they're standing close enough that Cloud can feel Sephiroth's breath against his cheek. "There are more comfortable places in Fort Condor than hard ground in the middle of nowhere. There may be grass stains."

"I know," Sephiroth says simply. The firelight casts warm, living light over his features, a mild breeze still smelling of hot summer afternoons stirring Sephiroth's hair, and there's no sight or sound of human civilization anywhere on the horizon all around them. Cloud finally understands, and he accepts the scarf with a light drag of his fingers against Sephiroth's palm.

"Go stand by the bedrolls," he says softly, and something like relief crosses Sephiroth's face as he steps back. Cloud kicks some dirt a little higher along the edge of the fire to have a moment to pull himself together.

Sephiroth is standing with his arms at his sides and fully clothed, boots and jeans and a fitted black t-shirt that makes him look ghostly when he isn't beside the fire. The calm ripples when Cloud loops the scarf around his own neck and kneels down at Sephiroth's feet. He doesn't know much about this sort of thing, only remembers hearing bits and pieces of sordid locker-room stories as a cadet and a few mako-tinted flashes from whatever happened at the Honeybee that he tries not to think about, but as he starts unlacing Sephiroth's boots, he says, "We need a way for you to tell me if and when we need to stop."

"I'm sure I'll be able to make it quite clear," Sephiroth replies dryly, but Cloud pauses with his fingers in the laces to look up and say seriously, "We can't rely on me being able to notice anything right away. Can you honestly say that you would tell me if you needed to stop when you're not in life-threatening danger? That you wouldn't just, I don't know, grit your teeth and shut down until you got it over with?" When Sephiroth starts to speak, Cloud interrupts, "Don't lie."

Sephiroth doesn't say anything. Cloud refuses to move. "Pick a word you wouldn't normally say. And if you say 'Zack,' I'll have to point out that it's entirely possible he would find a way to make himself relevant to sex from the other side of the Lifestream."

There's victory in the way Sephiroth laughs. When it fades away naturally, Sephiroth says quietly, "Nibelheim."

At least it isn't Mother. The laces of one boot fall away and Cloud takes one of Sephiroth's hands and puts it on his shoulder, not because Sephiroth really needs help to balance but for the principle of the thing, and pulls off the boot. He works on the second one and listens to Sephiroth's steady breathing, the pulse of warmth in his own chest. When he's able to set the boots aside and stand up again, he starts pulling on Sephiroth's shirt.

"This isn't necessary," Sephiroth tries, "I'm perfectly capable of undressing myself."

"I know. I want to. Please."

Cloud waits for Sephiroth to wrestle back that calm. Control born of exploitation is not control born of love, has left scars around Sephiroth's throat and wrists and ankles, and Cloud waits for a nod before pulling Sephiroth's shirt up and off. It musses up his hair and Sephiroth has to shake his head to get it flat again. There are no visible scars interrupting lines of muscle and bone, and Cloud wonders if it had always been like that or if the Cetra, Aeris, had smoothed them out of brand-new flesh like clay.

The backs of Cloud's fingers brush against warm skin as he works on the button and then the zipper of the jeans, which sit low on Sephiroth's hips. He hears Sephiroth let out a long breath and feels it echoed in his own when the rest of Sephiroth's clothes crumple carelessly on the ground, and Cloud, kneeling once again, prompts him to step out of them with a light touch against his knee. Cloud looks up, ignoring Sephiroth's half-hard cock, and finds Sephiroth looking down at him with something raw in his expression.

"Lie down on your back," Cloud tells him, and Sephiroth only hesitates for a second or two before he does so, lying back with an unfair level of grace on the bedrolls. Because the bedrolls are set lengthways to the fire, the fire casts long flickers of warm, living light along the right side of Sephiroth's body and deepens the shifting shadows on his left. Cloud strips efficiently and unselfconsciously, feeling the weight of Sephiroth's focus sliding along the dips and valleys of his body, and then straddles Sephiroth's waist with his knees on either side of Sephiroth's ribs. He raises the scarf and asks, "Tell me if you need me to stop. I don't care what the reason is."

"All right."

"Promise."

Sephiroth smiles a little. "I promise."

"And the magic word?"

Sephiroth's smile deepens. "'Nibelheim.'"

Cloud folds the scarf over lengthwise two or three times, but before he does anything with it he presses a hand against Sephiroth's cheek, fingertips just under his eye. They stay like that while Cloud studies him for a long moment. When Cloud eventually picks up both ends of the scarf and Sephiroth starts to lean up to give Cloud room to tie them, Cloud says, "No, just stay there."

He waits for Sephiroth, obviously bemused, to put his head back down before he lays the scarf over his eyes, letting the ends trail off to the sides instead of tying it and noting the thin tremor of tension that runs through the body beneath him. He takes hold of Sephiroth's wrists and pulls his arms up so that Sephiroth's hands lay on either side of his head, then places the ends of the scarf in each hand.

"Hold it there."

The scarf covers Sephiroth's eyes, but it's held there by Sephiroth's own hands and his own choice. Cloud can see the moment Sephiroth realizes it: that subtle tension releases, his body loosens just that little bit more, and the feel of Sephiroth going a little more pliant, more trusting, washes away the last wisp of pain in his chest first put there by a sword so long ago.

It's the first time Cloud has had a chance to really look at Sephiroth. He rests a fingertip on the bridge of Sephiroth's nose and moves it down, sliding from silky fabric to soft skin that's unfairly smooth, the bastard, and traces the curve of thin lips. He strokes over a sharp chin, down the vulnerable underside of a jaw, earns a slight shiver when he crosses the stretch of a throat. He shifts down until he's straddling Sephiroth's thighs and able to see the long lines of Sephiroth's body that lead down to his half-hard cock.

"Tell me what you're thinking," Cloud says quietly.

Sephiroth doesn't respond at first, but then he says, "I'm wondering what you're going to do. Judging from past encounters with you and others, there is a high likelihood that you will engage in foreplay for a short time, perform fellatio," and holy shit, Cloud thinks in a Zack-like tone, Sephiroth is such a nerd sometimes, "and then fuck me."

"You can't help it, can you," Cloud mutters, half to himself, then a little more loudly, "As best as you can, focus only on your body. Memorize the way it feels."

Cloud wishes that had come out more clearly, maybe more sensual than blunt, but whatever, Sephiroth knows perfectly well by now what he signed up for with Cloud.

"All right," Sephiroth murmurs.

At first Cloud is at something at a loss of what to do. He wants to do this right but he doesn't know what that actually means, doesn't have any experience in this – except Sephiroth is leaving it entirely up to him, isn't he, giving Cloud the opportunity to do whatever he wants. So Cloud starts with just running his palms slowly up Sephiroth's ribs, fingertips dipping over the rise and fall of muscle, just because he wants to and he has permission. There may not be any scars but Cloud knows exactly where he'd shoved steel into flesh, and he strokes over those places lightly as though he could erase the fact that they'd ever happened. Goosebumps follow the light touches and Sephiroth lets out a breath with the color of a groan.

The night air is warm, but Sephiroth's skin is hot. When Cloud curls his fingers and drags blunt nails down Sephiroth's chest, the raised red lines left behind are even warmer to the touch. Sephiroth hisses between his teeth as Cloud runs his hands back over the already-disappearing scratches, soothing the slight sting and waking up sensitive nerves even further. Cloud considers scratching harder, wonders how long bruises would last, but he dismisses the thought almost immediately; they've inflicted enough of it on one another.

He walks his fingers unhurriedly down Sephiroth's flat belly. He can't see most of Sephiroth's expression, so he watches Sephiroth's lips, which part silently, and he watches the way his body leans up just a little into the touch, and he watches the way Sephiroth's cock hardens just that little bit more. Softly, then, softly, there's sweat slicking their skin where Cloud's thighs are spread over Sephiroth's, skin even hotter with their shared heat, and Cloud draws his fingers over the length of Sephiroth's cock just to see Sephiroth's hands curl tightly into the blindfold.

"Tell me how it feels," Cloud says quietly.

"Good," Sephiroth says, vague, which Cloud takes as another minor victory. "I can feel my heart beating fast." A wry half-laugh. "It feels like you're pulling me apart very, very slowly."

Cloud has to take a few seconds to bite his cheek to hold in a moan of his own. "Good," and impulsively he leans forward, planting his hands beside Sephiroth's, and whispering into his ear, "Thank you."

"I don't," Sephiroth starts, but Cloud shifts so he can put a finger over Sephiroth's mouth and keep the words in, reminding him, "Focus on how it feels, not how it should feel."

He waits for Sephiroth to relax again before sitting back, this time directly over Sephiroth's cock so that it settles against his ass. Sephiroth's hips make an aborted twitch before his self-control kicks in again, which sends a bloom of warmth through Cloud's groin all on its own. Cloud can feel that tangle of trust and, fuck, love under his heart that isn't his own but honestly might as well be.

"Ah," Cloud says suddenly, "we don't have any, uh, lube."

"Front pocket of my jeans," Sephiroth says distantly, and Cloud wonders why he didn't say that beforehand so he doesn't have to lean precariously to the side and reach for the pile of clothes. He tightens his thighs around Sephiroth's waist to keep his balance and accidentally pulls a long, low sound from deep in Sephiroth's throat. When he rights himself again, however, he just drops the small plastic tube to the side on the grass. "Not yet," he says when Sephiroth's head tilts questioningly at the sound.

It's humbling to see Sephiroth gradually unravel beneath his hands, his thighs, and, later, his tongue; at one point Sephiroth says, "I want to touch you," and Cloud tells him, "Next time. All you're going to do right now is take it. Let me take care of you," and the earth cracks open inside of him, gods. And later, much later, when the partial moon is halfway up the horizon and Cloud lets gravity pull him all the way down Sephiroth's cock until he's fully cradled between Sephiroth's hips, the sounds that Sephiroth is making rolls out beyond the dying light of the campfire until they're swallowed up the darkness. Cloud himself is quiet beyond the faint moans riding the edge of his breath because he wants to gather up all of Sephiroth's abandon, the unselfconscious pleasure, and tuck it close so that whatever happens in the future, he'll always have this to remember.

…

One of the bedrolls ends up getting used as an awkward blanket to protect them from the night air, cooling as dawn approaches, as the sweat dries on their bare skin. They've ended up on their sides, facing one another, Cloud whispering, "Are you all right?"

Sephiroth feels…raw, an exposed nerve in a way completely different from how he'd felt when he first woke up in the future, but at the same time all these things are cradled in Cloud's hands and it's a good thing. The right thing. He smiles until his eyes crinkle at the corners, and he reaches up to tap Cloud's nose gently. "Yes," he says, just as softly, and seeing the way Cloud smiles back, Sephiroth thinks that maybe he truly isn't alone in this.

"I'm still not letting you do any wiring," Cloud informs him, and Sephiroth just laughs and laughs.

…

The package ends up late for its own delivery.

…

Cloud should've known it was only a matter of time before the kids figured out where Cloud kept disappearing to.

"Did you hear that?" Sephiroth calls out from the bathroom over the sound of the drill, which Cloud is using to tighten some of the joists in the new living room wall. Cloud thumbs it off, listening, and then hears the hissed whispering coming from somewhere near the half-finished kitchen. He sighs.

Denzel and Marlene both try to look innocent when Cloud finds them huddled under the kitchen table. Denzel isn't very good at it. Marlene is too good at it. "What're you two doing?"

"Nothing," Denzel says at the same time Marlene says, "Spying," and he shoots her a glare.

"Why?" Cloud asks. "This is about Sephiroth, isn't it?"

"No," Denzel says at the same time Marlene says, "Maybe," and he nudges her in the side with his elbow.

"Does Tifa know you're here?"

"Yes."

"Maybe."

Cloud presses his fingers against the bridge of his nose and tries not to sigh again. "Do you want to meet him?"

"Daddy says he's a murderer and I should stay away from him."

Denzel groans as Cloud grimaces.

"Is everything all right?" Sephiroth's standing in the wide doorway, a towel in his hands to wipe off the grout clinging to his fingers. Marlene and then Denzel, a little hesitantly, crawl out from under the table to stand up and very blatantly look Sephiroth over.

"You don't look like a murderer," Marlene declares, and Denzel mutters, "Murderers are supposed to look like normal people, that's what makes them so scary."

When Sephiroth glances at him for help, Cloud just shrugs. "He's not wrong."

Marlene smooths out the front of her dress and walks right up to Sephiroth, holding out a hand and tilting her head way, way back to see his face. "My name is Marlene," she says formally. "It's very nice to meet you."

Sephiroth moves the towel to his left hand and solemnly takes her hand with his right. He doesn't kneel down to her height, acting as though she's as much an adult as he is. "My name is Sephiroth. It's my pleasure."

Denzel hangs back, scooting a little closer to Cloud and probably not even realizing it, and there's an awkward silence. Marlene runs her hands down the front of her dress again, visibly plucking up her courage before squaring her tiny shoulders. "Did you mean to kill Sister?"

Oh, gods, the question just flays something in Sephiroth. "No," he says roughly, "no, I did not. If I could take back what I did, I would do anything to give her back to you."

"Yeah? Why should we believe you?" Denzel demands, and before Sephiroth can say anything, Cloud interrupts with, "I said I'd take care of you guys, didn't I? Do you think I'd let Sephiroth anywhere near you if he was going to hurt you?"

Denzel scowls mulishly, crossing his arms and unconsciously leaning a little more closely to Cloud. When Cloud puts a hand on his shoulder, Denzel loses some of his tension. "I need some help with a few studs. They keep tilting on me when I try to nail them down. Will you help me?"

It's not exactly subtle, but Denzel nods anyway. Marlene promptly asks Sephiroth, "Can I help you?"

Sephiroth does an admirable job imitating a deer in headlights. "Yes, you may," he manages calmly enough. Cloud bites his cheek to hide a grin as Marlene trots out after Sephiroth, a little quieter than usual but still bright and shining, while Denzel watches them leave with deep suspicion.

"C'mon." Cloud nudges him into the space that will separate a living room from a short hallway leading down to the bedroom. It's a mostly-open floor plan, only a few walls for a bit more privacy they probably won't need anyway. Denzel holds the long planks of wood upright while Cloud screws them into place.

"Are you gonna start living here, then?" Denzel finally asks in a small voice.

"Most of the time, yes." Cloud reaches out with his free hand to ruffle Denzel's hair. "But I'll still come visit. You won't get rid of me that easily."

"How can you forgive him?"

Denzel's parents had been killed when the Plate came down, Cloud remembers, leaving him to huddle in broken piles of concrete and rebar alone, cold, filthy, hungry – and not all predators look like monsters but sometimes wear very human faces. Denzel had never said anything specific, but only he knows what actually happened to a little boy between the world falling apart and Cloud picking him up.

"It isn't easy, sometimes," Cloud admits, "but Sephiroth is as much a victim as anyone else. He was set up to fail from the very beginning. He didn't have any control or awareness over his actions. I know a little bit about what that's like."

Cloud gives Denzel time to chew his lip and think about that by lifting up another plank with one hand and setting it into place. The thunk it makes when it settles against the bottom plate echoes a bit throughout the warehouse.

"Okay," Denzel finally says. "If you're sure."

"Mostly sure." Cloud grins wryly, and Denzel smiles back. They work a while longer in companionable silence until they hear Marlene shriek with laughter. Exchanging a look, Denzel takes off towards the bathroom while Cloud follows only a little less slowly.

"What happened?" Denzel gasps, probably ready to throw down if something's wrong with Marlene, but Sephiroth's just sitting on the toilet lid with what looks like grout hardening in half his hair and long-suffering weariness on his face. Cloud puts a hand over his mouth to hold in a bark of surprised laughter.

"Nothing," he and Marlene say at the same time. Marlene's voice is muffled by the two hands she has clapped over her face to stifle the giggling. Cloud peers over her and Denzel's heads and sees a space where a number of tiles, rather than being lined up in perfect rows, are tilted at small odd angles and the grout is dotted with tiny fingerprints. He's a little surprised that Sephiroth allowed them to stay that way.

"She was enjoying herself," Sephiroth explains to him later that night, long after Cloud had walked the kids back to the bar and Tifa's disapproving lecture. "I wasn't going to take that from her."

That section of tiling remains, peeking out from behind the claw-foot tub that eventually gets installed, and every time Cloud sees it he has the sudden urge to track Sephiroth down and kiss him breathless.

…

Sephiroth's anger burns as cold as the Northern Crater. He holds himself very still because any movement would leave bruises. The man he sees in the mirror isn't a stranger at all – he's too familiar, too sharp around the edges, a man who falls back on the straight lines running through the world to avoid the irrational tangle of anger and fear and I won't blame you if you never came back but please don't leave me alone.

(Cloud's anger burns at the quiet depths of a volcano on the ocean floor. He paces because it reminds him that he isn't trapped in glass and mako anymore; he often wonders if there will ever be a time when those years will be just another memory to be forgotten. He knows the pacing grates against Sephiroth's nerves, but even that is reassuring because Sephiroth isn't the only one who needs to know his mind is still his own.)

Whatever it was that started it, Sephiroth doesn't even remember as he watches Cloud walk out of their warehouse (their home, let's be honest even when it's the wrong time), letting in a chilled draft before the door slams shut behind him. It's stiflingly silent and it's like the last few months never happened; he's faded back to a ghost that can't leave and the nightmares smile toothily from the shadows.

He divides his hair into three perfectly-equal sections, braids it back neatly, tucks it under a charcoal-grey scarf and the long length of his coat, and slips into the city. People's eyes catch on his height, on the way he's dressed, and then slide away just as easily. He exists in brief moments before they look away and he disappears again, the sky as grey and charcoal and dark as he is.

The church is as silent as the warehouse, but it's soft rather than oppressive. The pool of water is still there, the smell of far-away rain drifting through broken windows and lazy dust motes. Sephiroth stands at the edge of the pool for a short while, hands in his coat pockets. He leaves without ever having broken the silence.

Most of the shopkeepers in the market are in the process of closing up when Sephiroth meanders past them, going nowhere, and he sees the merchant who usually sells him fresh bread struggling to lift larger bags of flour into his cart. Why he would have raw flour with him, Sephiroth has no idea. "Would you like any help?" Sephiroth asks quietly, and the man shrugs, nods, gestures at the remaining sacks beside the stall. Sephiroth picks up a stack of three easily and drops them into the cart, then nearly drops his next armful when the man who has never spoken to him in anything but Wutaian says with perfect fluency, "You look like you're having a shitty day. It can always get better, Sephiroth, but it can also always, always get worse."

"I'm afraid you have the wrong person," Sephiroth says, outwardly calm but inwardly calculating how quickly he could get to the nearest alley, the proximity of other civilians relative to the length of the Masamune.

"A few of us know who you are. It helps that you're usually with Cloud Strife, everyone knows who he is, and that you still treated me respectfully when I spoke my native language. I convinced them to wait and see what kind of man you are now." The shopkeeper adds thoughtfully, "That was an interesting conversation."

"And what kind of man am I?"

"One who's trying to figure that out himself, I guess, otherwise you wouldn't be wandering around when it's supposed to start raining soon."

After the cart is loaded up with flour and unsold bread loaves, after the merchant hands him a loaf and won't take 'no' for an answer, Sephiroth gives him a polite nod and watches him pull the cart through the crowds and eventually get swallowed up. He starts back towards the outskirts of Edge, can't help glancing at the people around him wondering who else knows who he is, who's been convinced to give him the benefit of the doubt when he's hardly done anything to deserve it.

(But he isn't invisible after all, is he?)

The warehouse is mostly done on the inside: the cement floor has been covered with insulation and then wooden flooring; a low wall makes a long kitchen counter along the side of an open space, a scavenged and battered bar stool tucked underneath; the bedroom is an actual room, the bathroom an even smaller one with clean, bright tiles. Some of the wiring is still trailing out, a few pipes still exposed, but it's more than Sephiroth ever had in his expensive quarters with a view of the entire city from the height of ShinRa Tower. Those quarters had never had a child's fingerprints pressed in a silly pattern nor the memory of pushing Cloud up against a wall and kissing him breathless.

When Fenrir pulls up purring loudly outside, Sephiroth is critically eyeing the simple noodles and garlic bread he'd made from the fresh loaf. The front door opens, closes, and Cloud appears on the other side of the kitchen counter – there are tiny pearls of water in his hair and on his shoulders, the rain must have finally started – and he slides silently onto the bar stool. The sword and harness are gone, presumably left near the door. Sephiroth can feel his hesitation, his contrition.

"I didn't know you could cook," Cloud eventually says.

Sephiroth snorts. "I can't."

"Still smells good."

"I've seen you eat rabbit off a stick and actually enjoy it."

"Fewer preservatives."

"And fleas."

"Extra protein."

Sephiroth cracks a smile. He doesn't have to look to see Cloud's cautious copy.

"I guess I'm still waiting for you to leave," Cloud suddenly admits, cutting straight to the heart of whatever they'd been arguing about, "and that isn't fair to you. I'm sorry."

"Why?"

"Because you're…you're capable. Talented. One of the smartest people I know."

Sephiroth sets down the knife he's been using to slice the garlic bread and turns, leaning against the opposite counter with his fingers curled loosely over its edge. "And you…feel inferior."

Cloud winces, and Sephiroth sighs, crosses the kitchen, and puts a hand on either side of Cloud's face. "Cloud," he says very seriously, "you are an incredibly skilled man. You know how to create things, not only visualize how they go together but to also make them happen. You're kind as a default and sarcastic when you're frustrated. You're the only other person who has been able to best me in combat so many times, and after everything that's happened between us you still gave me a second chance. These aren't small things, Cloud."

Cloud stares at him, attention focused to an intense point that searches Sephiroth's face. Sephiroth doesn't know what he's looking for, but he must find it, because his second smile is more open than the first.

"You make it sound so reasonable."

"I am eminently reasonable man."

Sephiroth can feel it when Cloud laughs through the palms he has pressed against Cloud's cheeks. "Guess I could do with a bit of therapy, too."

Sephiroth rolls his eyes, pulls Cloud closer, and kisses him. It starts out chaste enough, but then Sephiroth is pressing Cloud's mouth open so he can lick and taste and generally try to share everything inside of him by making the kiss as elemental as he can. It only takes a few seconds before Cloud responds in kind, leaning up from the bar stool and sliding a hand into Sephiroth's hair to pull him even closer.

"Why don't you go take a shower," Cloud suggests, eyes half-lidded. "I'll check the locks and windows."

When Sephiroth comes out of the bathroom, naked and still toweling off his hair, Cloud is standing by the bedroom window watching the reflections of city lights on wet asphalt outside. He immediately moves to tug the towel out of Sephiroth's hand, puts his hands on Sephiroth's broad chest, and walks him backwards towards the bed until the edge bumps against the back of Sephiroth's knees and he has to sit down so he doesn't fall down.

"I'll have you know that long, wet hair," Sephiroth starts to say before Cloud unceremoniously begins stripping off his long-sleeved shirt, his belts and trousers and underwear, and slides forward to straddle Sephiroth's thighs. Sephiroth automatically puts his hands on Cloud's hips to steady him.

"Is cold and drippy and annoying, I know. Let me distract you."

It's hard to say 'no' when Cloud is a pleasantly solid weight in his lap, rain-cooled skin quickly warming wherever it presses against Sephiroth. He kisses like someone coming home.

"Lie down with your head on the pillows and grab onto the headboard," Cloud mumbles against Sephiroth's lips.

Sephiroth thinks about asking why but doesn't. He nudges Cloud to lift up a bit so he can scoot back up the bed and stretch out over the dark blue comforter, stretching up his arms to wrap his hands around the headboard's iron slats. "This is the third time you've had me on my back," Sephiroth says dryly.

Cloud moves onto his hands and knees and crawls up, slow, like the wolf after which he'd named his bike, until Sephiroth's legs have spread enough that Cloud can sit back on his heels between them. "I like you like this," Cloud confesses, voice a low burr, and gently slides his hands down Sephiroth's thighs to carefully push them farther apart. "You look like a dream."

"That was cheesy, even for you," Sephiroth says.

Cloud smirks and drags his nails down the inside of a thigh, making Sephiroth's hips jump and his breath catch in his throat, but then the smirk softens. "I like seeing you feel good."

Sephiroth doesn't know what to do with that, so he just watches down the landscape of his own body as Cloud shifts forward on his knees, cock gradually growing harder, until Sephiroth's legs are draped over Cloud's. Sephiroth has never been self-conscious of his body, but in this position, in this context, he's been laid out and made vulnerable. His hands tighten around the slats of the headboard as Cloud pushes his fingers firmly into strong muscle and strokes up in a massage, stopping where thigh meets groin.

The brief pressure makes Sephiroth's abdomen tighten. His knees and calves are bent around Cloud's torso, and he flexes a little so that Cloud starts to topple forward and has to catch himself on Sephiroth's hips. "Do I need to tie you down?" Cloud asks dryly. A shiver whispers down Sephiroth's spine, but whether it's a good one or a bad one he doesn't know, and Sephiroth isn't sure if he's relieved or disappointed when Cloud lets it go. Then there are better things to think about, like the constellations Cloud is drawing over hills of muscle and bone while rain patters on the warehouse's steel roof. Cloud's fingers are connected to leylines of heat that run under Sephiroth's flesh to his cock, partially hard and getting harder, Cloud's fingers following the paths down until they brush lightly over thin, blood-hot skin.

A soft sound slips out of Sephiroth's mouth and he shivers again, goosebumps rising on his skin in the cool air. "We should put, ah, put insulation – "

"Under the roof, yes, later," Cloud finishes for him, crooking a smile as the hand that isn't moving teasingly back down Sephiroth's cock and his balls reaches somewhere off to the side. It comes back with a tube of slick ("Been planning this?" – "What, and you weren't?") and Cloud pops the cap one-handed, lets some of it drizzle out onto his other hand close to where he's lazily stroking the smooth place behind Sephiroth's balls. By the time it flows down and touches skin it's been warmed a little, but Sephiroth's breath still catches at the mild cold of the slick where it's being painted against his body. He can't feel the calluses on Cloud's fingertips, of course, but he can imagine them, rubbing softly against delicate skin, pressing inside just a little, then again, then again, as his body starts to loosen.

He expects Cloud to move faster, graduate from the tips of two fingers to three and then his own cock, isn't that usually the routine? But Cloud remains unhurried, apparently content to look between where his fingers are moving so slow in Sephiroth's body and the growing flush on Sephiroth's face. The weight and focus of Cloud's blue eyes (mako-rich, so like his own) is the weight of the stormfront stretched over the world outside their own little corner of it.

Sephiroth doesn't know what Cloud is truly getting out of this when it feels so one-sided, when it's neither a ploy nor a self-imposed test, but then…maybe it isn't, really. Maybe it really is what it appears to be and all Sephiroth has to do for him is just feel Cloud's fingers and the odd wetness of the slick and the smooth ache of worked muscle, let go and let it happen and trust that it'll be all right even though he doesn't have control of anything except the simple fact of choosing to be here at all.

The sense of emptiness in his body deepens the longer that Cloud remains using only part of two fingers, never quite enough to fill until they reach some part of him that makes him choke on an inhale and his vision go bright. Without his permission his body twists down on Cloud's fingers, trying to get them deeper, but Cloud immediately puts a firm hand on his abdomen and holds him down – and oh, gods, Cloud can hold Sephiroth down, and if the reminder had arrived just a little bit later then he would've come regardless of whatever Cloud has planned. "Relax," Cloud orders.

When Sephiroth lets the tension leave on a long breath, Cloud pours a little more lube onto his hand and finally, finally, three fingers are gently but relentlessly stretching him open, sometimes but not always touching the part of him that makes his spine arch and his cock ache. A quiet, "Fuck," trembles its way out to join the sounds of the rain above their heads and Cloud stroking wetly into Sephiroth's body. The gasp that it pulls out of Cloud – lips parted, eyes squeezing shut – makes Sephiroth suddenly feel powerful in a clean, brilliant way far from madness. He may be the one on his back, laid out and spread open, but it's because of him that Cloud has to bite his lip to keep back a groan.

Cloud must sense something from Sephiroth because he murmurs, "You feel…tight, and hot. I – I want to know what you'll feel like when I'm inside you."

"Then why don't you," Sephiroth breathes, and Cloud, who's now gritted his teeth, who's slowed his hand on his cock while the other pushes harder into Sephiroth, says, "Because that's not what this is about."

Then what is this about, Sephiroth wants to ask, but there's that fire flickering hot through his veins again, his body tightening reflexively around Cloud's fingers, the iron of the headboard squealing a protest as he grips it so hard the metal starts to dent. "Cloud," he tries, not actually knowing what he's going to say, but it doesn't matter when a rough push and a twist of Cloud's fingers steals the words. Another rough push, a long twist, and another, while Cloud's other hand circles Sephiroth's cock and carefully tightens, and Sephiroth's body jerks, hips rising up and come spilling across his abdomen and belly. His body reflexively tightens so hard around Cloud's fingers that it hurts. He's dimly aware of Cloud's other hand letting go so it can take Cloud's length, audibly moving with increasing desperation. Cloud makes a strangled noise in his throat and Sephiroth feels the warmth of Cloud's come against his skin and thighs.

"Fuck," Cloud echoes. Sephiroth laughs breathlessly and Cloud slips his fingers out and slumps forward so his cheek is pressed into Sephiroth's chest, his hair tickling the underside of Sephiroth's chin. Sephiroth wraps his arms around Cloud's sweaty shoulders and doesn't let go.

…

The church is quiet, soft around the edges like an old photograph. Cloud hasn't been here since the day he carried Sephiroth's body out of the water, its heavy weight the only thing keeping him from crumbling into pieces. Now he's just sitting on a pew, shoulder and thigh pressed against Sephiroth's as they look at the water and the flowers.

"You missed a spot on the window."

Only about half the panels of colored glass has been replaced. Sephiroth huffs a laugh. "I'm waiting for the glassmaker to finish her new set of cobalt blue. I want to make sure it's the right shade." It's the least I can do, he doesn't say, but Cloud hears it anyway. Cloud takes hold of Sephiroth's wrist, feeling the steady heartbeat under its skin.

…

"You wanna go riding?"

"Where?"

"Does it matter? There'll probably be monsters to kill. Materia to find. Rabbits to cook on campfires."

"…Yes. Yes, it sounds perfect."