The Crux

or:

The Last Innocent Moment of the Dragon-Slayer


It can be more revealing to hear about an event from one who wasn't a part of it. The one who slew the dragon was the only one who wasn't thinking about how he did the deed.


Tifa was watching three superhuman warriors do battle as her blood, dark as sin, spurted torrents onto the rusty steel grates. As the life faded from her eyes, she kept watching, watching, watching... She saw Zack the hero rise to slay the dragon and no more after that. She would learn the truth of the event later and the grief combined with a dream shattered would tear her apart.


Zack was watching a child challenge an angel. He panted and gasped, the battle for each breath a monumental scaling of a mountain with all of his strength draining away just trying to stay alive. He thought he died when Cloud (sweet, gullible, naïve Cloud) wasimpaled on a blade longer than he was tall by a man whose indifferent eyes proclaimed how little he cared about a friend dead at his hands. Sephiroth would have cared. Zack's whole and wavering heart rose into his throat when Cloud, choking on the blood filling his mouth, took hold of the elegant sword and flung Sephiroth over the rail. He at once loved and hated Cloud, almost as much as he feared and adored Sephiroth. Zack closed his eyes.


The man who was once Sephiroth was watching a miracle. He lay still in the mako as it burned and lapped over him with gentle waves. He stared upwards at the catwalk where Masamune and the dying little blond soldier. SephirothJenovaExperiment hated hated hated that soldier and was pleased that he would be dead soon. Somewhere far away from his conscious mind, what remained of Sephiroth's sanity was chuckling in startled amusement: Cadet Strife, the army trooper who never had a shadow of a chance of joining SOLDIER, had enough grit and fire in his dying minutes to kill Shinra's god. (The General was immensely fond of irony.)


Cloud wasn't watching anything. In the last time for years and years to come, Cloud's mind was whole, focused and clear. He knew who he was, who his friends were and why he did what he did. His shaking hands still gripped the blade of Masamune, and though its sharp edge sliced deeply into his palms and fingers, he didn't feel it. As he wasn't clairvoyant or gifted with prophecy, Cloud didn't know he should be reveling in his last pure victory, something only Cloud did and only because Cloud wanted to. He should have been sinking deep into his own thoughts, basking in his own self-awareness and enjoying an unclouded mind. But he wasn't.