Foreword & Disclaimer: Squaresoft owns Final Fantasy. All of them. All the characters and places and what have you are not mine. I am merely an avid player of video games, who was struck with the fancy to write. Possible spoilers. I just wanted to be able to play with the characters. Tidus and Squall begged me to make them a couple. Seriously. Later though. Oh yeah, and um, pretend that Aeris never died, in FFVII, okay? I loved her, and well, my fic, she's alive. Enjoy.

Shadows

1. Of Enemies

The explosion was a mass of heat and white light, and pain.

And there was no more.

~`~

When Squall woke, he was lying on his side on a stone floor. His head throbbed as he rolled to his stomach and lifted his head from the ground. Blood matted brown locks together as he reached up to push them from his face. His jacket was missing and his shirt and pants singed and torn, but his body was otherwise unharmed. Except for the trickle of blood that trailed down the side of his face from his scalp.

"I wondered if you would wake up."

Squall looked up sharply at the familiar voice, and into a pair of familiar green eyes. Of all the people… he groaned.

"Look, I don't want to be here with you any more than you want to be here with me, so I suggest you get your ass up off the ground and help me get this rock off my leg so we can get out of here," Seifer snapped.

"Where are we?" Squall asked. He wasn't really sure he could get up. He started checking for cure spells.

"How the hell should I know? I've been pinned against this wall for Hyne knows how long!" Seifer cried.

Squall pushed himself into a sitting position and cast the spell. The cave was lit brightly with green light momentarily and the cut on Squall's scalp healed. He crawled over to Seifer.

"Help me push," he said. Seifer nodded in the dark and braced himself, putting his hands against the rock. He and Squall pushed.

As the rock moved, Seifer let out a scream of agony. Squall realized that a rock that size had to have crushed the blond man's leg when it had fallen. But he didn't have another cure spell.

"Do you have any more?" Seifer moaned. Squall felt horrible when he had to shake his head. He'd definitely been in better shape than Seifer when he'd used the spell. "Fuck," Seifer said. "We're never going to get out of here. I'm surprised you even helped me."

"I'm not going to leave you here to die," Squall said. "No matter how much I hate you."

Squall groped around in the half darkness, looking for their gunblades. His hand came to rest on an unfamiliar hilt, and he knew that he had found the Hyperion. He picked it up and held it. It was heavier than his own blade. He carried it back to Seifer and went back to his search.

The Lionheart was half-buried under a pile of rocks, and Squall sighed thankfully when his fingers closed over the hilt and he lifted it from beneath them. The chain on the end brushed against his wrist and he smiled. Nothing could stop them now. Not even Seifer's injury.

"Come on," Squall said, walking back to a man he'd thought his enemy and pulling him to his feet. Seifer moaned with pain when he tried to put weight on his leg. Squall slid an arm around his shoulders and helped him keep balance on one leg.

"Just leave me here," Seifer said. "You can't get out of here with me limping along like this."

"I'm not leaving you here to die." Squall told him again. Seifer frowned at him and hooked Hyperion to his belt. He wrapped his arm around Squall's waist and grabbed a fistful of the remaining fabric of Squall's shirt. Slowly they made their way in the only direction they could go.

~`~

"Okay, you know what? If you don't get over here and help me I'm going to shove that long ass sword up your ass!"

Cloud was shaking with rage. Sephiroth was possibly the most useless person he'd ever come across in his life. He just sat there on the floor, a dazed look on his pale, pale face, silvery-white hair falling around his shoulders. Cloud wanted to scream, but he knew from experience that it was futile.

"Sephiroth," Cloud said, switching to a wheedling tone. He probably hadn't talked so much in his life as he had to Sephiroth in the last hour. "Would you please get up and help me move this so we can get out of here? I don't know what happened to put us here, but I am very much disliking it and I need your help."

"The explosion," Sephiroth said, lifting his head. It unnerved Cloud to see those aqua eyes burning in the semi-darkness of the cavern. "Someone sent us to this place."

"Words don't move rocks." Cloud said. Sephiroth stood, and Cloud frowned. It seemed unfair that his archenemy was so much taller than he was. It almost made him feel inadequate. If he hadn't had his Buster sword on his back, he would have. Especially with Sephiroth towering over him, the hilt of the Masamune rising above his head. Cloud felt a pang of fear.

"And you think our hands will?" Sephiroth asked.

"Don't know until we try," Cloud said, hoping that the silver-haired man wouldn't just sit back upon the floor.

"Very well," Sephiroth said, and he moved silently to Cloud's side, putting his hands upon the boulder that blocked their only escape route. Cloud had shifted it slightly already, revealing that light shone on the other side.

Working together, Sephiroth and Cloud leaned their respective weights into the massive rock. It only shifted a few inches, but enough to reveal the daylight of the other side, and a field of grass surrounded by high, sheer cliffs.

"Now what?" Cloud asked. Sephiroth almost smiled.

"Do you have your materia?" he asked.

Cloud did smile as he lifted the glowing red orbs. "Do you prefer Bahamut Zero or Knights of the Round?" he asked.

This time, Sephiroth really did smile.