A/N: After lurking around and nosing in on other peoples convos the past couple of days (sorry not sorry), its become apparent that there is a need for more darkfic in the Strifehart fandom. And of course I am, as always, more than happy to oblige. So, heed the warnings, and click that back button if this ain't your cuppa tea. Otherwise, enjoy.
Warnings: Torture, violence, rape, mind fuckery, blood, gore, emotional manipulation, angst up the wazoo, and general canon typical battle scenes.
Part 1/2
Chapter One
The shifting, coiling clouds were not a dream. They moved overhead, billowing and thundering silently, flashes of lightning illuminating the rolling waves in muted patches of silver, and the sky boiled like an angry sea; everything silent and grey and dark. Leon gazed at it, disconnected, wondering how he had come to stumble into this nightmare again, and waited for the dream shapes to shift. But then the pain began. Slowly, it seeped into his shoulder and down his side, and the feeling of his body returned to him in gradients of aches and pains as he realised he was not asleep.
He blinked slowly, purposefully, and turned his head to the side. He was lying on a bed, the world tilted on its axes in a sickening sea-saw as his head spun, a tightness griping the back of his throat as he swallowed hard and tried to focus his vision. Surrounding him stood tall pillars of grey stone, and their height seemed to hold up the weight of the imposing, impossibly near sky, and in the silent breeze flapped long gossamer curtains, billowing like the rolling sea above his head in lazy, soundless ululations.
Everything was grey. The landscape beyond the pillars of stone was a barren wasteland of rocks and a far reaching horizon, with no setting sun or rising moon; the light that turned everything bluish/silver was unnatural, and came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
The battle came back to Leon's syrupy mind. A flash of steel and the sound of rain and thunder. The night had been dark and stormy and it had made fighting hard. He hadn't been expecting the attack. Not from him at least.
The fleeting image of silver hair and green eyes quickened Leon's pulse and he pulled in a ragged breath through his bloody nose, chocking on a clot in the back of his throat, and he coughed. The spasms wrenched the hole in his shoulder open wider, and suddenly the flow of blood in his veins caught up with his pounding heart.
It was a trial to move his arms, numb as they were, only for them to rattle against chains that tightened around his wrists and throat as he moved. A subtle warning not to try too hard.
He struggled not to panic. He gripped hard to the swelling, rising fear in his gut and wrestled it down. Tried to breathe slowly and purposefully, and look for a way out of this madness.
In the shadows behind the undulating curtains, a figure coalesced; there one second, gone the next. And in a flicker of soundless lightning, the shape of a man emerged, brushing aside the delicate material with a soft swipe of a long finger.
Leon lost control of the panic and it manifested in a short struggle. A quick flinch of his body that was abruptly cut short by the pain of his wounds and the chocking hold of the chain around his throat. It cut off the gasp of shock, instead the sound coming out like a broken wheeze.
"You are..." Sephiroth began, his one wing hanging languidly over his shoulder, feathers oily black against the greyish light. Shining shades of blue and purple as the silent lightning caught their edges. "...Not what I expected."
Leon remained silent, the return of his senses not quite extended to his voice yet. He only breathed heavily and tried not to choke. Sephiroth continued to stare, his eyes shining brilliantly, bright against the darkness that shadowed his face.
"I was expecting a woman." He confessed, the smallest of twitches in the corner of his mouth, indicating amusement. "It seems Cloud is still capable of surprising me."
Leon tried to shift the weight from off his shoulder, pushing himself up the bed a little with a weak kick of his legs that eased the choke-hold of the chain around his neck. He coughed and released the stranglehold from his voice.
"Where am I?" His voice was coarse like gravel and heavy with pain.
"The World In-between." Sephiroth replied, offering this much, though it made no sense to Leon and brought him even less comfort.
"Am… am I dead?" He rasped, looking up at the silent sky and the dream-like quality of everything.
Sephiroth laughed, deep in his throat, the sound the only clear thing in the silence of the landscape. It did not echo and it did not travel; it pressed like a weighted stone against Leon's mind and he suddenly had the urge to scream.
Leon ground his teeth down and trapped the terror inside.
"Do you wish to be?" Sephiroth asked, one silver eyebrow raised, the gesture so human and so subtle, Leon had to turn his face away. He shook his head, eyes sliding closed, and tried not to give into the terror as Sephiroth laughed again.
"I look forward to changing your mind."
Cloud bolted awake and sat up on his bedroll, panting heavily, the fragments of his dream floating in his mind like echoes through fog. It had not been a dream, he was certain, though the cold fingers of reality were starting to make the iridescent images of the sleep-world seem less real, and he was doubting himself. Still, his panic was real. He could feel it pulsing in his jaw and wrists. Could feel it binding his chest as he fought for breath.
He threw off his blanket and reached for his phone, pulling it out of his pocket as he stood on shaking legs. It was still night time over the canyon, and the temperature was hovering above freezing; his breath condensing in the air as he panted quickly.
The phone rang and rang, eventually cutting to voicemail. Cloud tried again. Nothing. Despite the fact that it was still the middle of the night, Leon would have answered him. He tried again just to be sure. When all that responded to him was the mechanical tones of the answering machine, Cloud snapped the phone shut and turned a sharp circle on his feet. Everything was as he'd left it: his bike propped on it's stand beside his bedroll, a small fire gutted out to cold ashes, and the wide expanse of the canyon lay around him; a maze of ravines and cliff faces of cold, jagged rock. He'd been lost in them for days. Following the pull of malevolent energy. Unmistakable in its signature. A game of cat and mouse between two old enemies.
Had it been a rouse?
Cloud flipped his phone open again and dialled Tifa's number. She picked up after the first three rings.
"Cloud? What a surprise. Are you alright? Its the middle of the night."
"Where's Leon?" Cloud cut straight to the chase. The image of long silver hair and the flash of steel cutting through flesh echoing in his mind's eye.
"Leon? He's… well he should be on patrol, I think." Tifa sounded dazed and confused. "It's his turn tonight. What's all this about?"
"He's not answering his phone. I need you to check on him."
Tifa was silent for a moment.
"Cloud, is this really necessary?" She was tired.
"Yes." Cloud bit back, maybe a little too harshly. He clenched his jaw and tried to breathe. Regulating his pounding heart through force of will. "I just… please Teef." It wasn't often he begged.
"Alright, just… give me a minute. I'll ring you when I've found him. It's probably just on silent." Tifa said, meaning Leon's phone. It didn't ease the anxiety in Cloud's jaw. Cloud was the only one that ignored his phone.
He cut the line and settled in to wait. Pacing backwards and forwards he tried to sift through the dream that had startled him awake. So real. Like he had been there on the edges of their circle as they'd fought, watching them. He tried Leon's phone again. Several times. It only rang on and on, that damned automated message bidding him to leave his name and number.
On the seventh ring it connected, and a spike of hope, sharp and needle pointed lanced through Cloud's chest.
"Leon?" He breathed the man's name in a rushed gasp.
"It's Tifa." Came the reply. "Cloud… something happened here..." The words like ice water crashing over Cloud's head. "A battle. Leon's sword, his phone… there's rubble everywhere."
"Where are you?" Cloud manage to choke out.
"The Bailey. There's traces of magic… Cloud…" A heavy silence filled the static, Tifa's voice a fractured, fluttering thing on the other end of the line.
"What, what is it?" Cloud snapped.
"There's feathers… black feathers, everywhere."
Cloud felt his stomach drop away. In the distance, over the rising rocks and guttering winds, a whispered voice came on the air. It laughed mockingly and called Cloud's name in a breathing, hissing sound of darkened mirth, fading away to nothing as Cloud turned his head to find the source. He stood, staring out towards the east where the sun would rise in less than two hours, and forgot about the phone in his hand. The voice was dissipating now, broken up on the freezing wind and only the tinny voice of Tifa could be heard over the phone.
"Cloud?… Cloud!" She called, her own voice risen to panic.
Cloud raised the phone to his ear again and swallowed past the knot of terror in his throat.
"I'm coming home." He said before he snapped the phone shut and ran back towards his bike.
"How do you like it?" Sephiroth asked, walking slowly and silently around the bed.
Leon followed him carefully, tracking him with silver eyes clouded with pain as he watched him sit beside him, that single wing arched out above him, the edge of it touching his wounded side with a careful reverence that made Leon shiver.
"A fair approximation of your own living hell, is it not?" Sephiroth gestured to the outside and the great grey expanse of nothingness that lay there. "The sorceress would be quite please with it, don't you think?"
This couldn't be Time Compression. He'd killed her. There was no going back to that nightmare. But Leon's eyes were not deceiving him. Everything looked so hauntingly familiar: the bare rock, the endless horizon, and the billowing sky that held no day or night.
"You don't know anything about me." Leon managed to growl, though the words were not as menacing as he'd intended; spattered with tremors and shades of fear.
"I know everything about you." Sephiroth whispered, bending low to Leon's ear as his hair brushed the side of his face, making Leon jerk his head away. "Your light, your hopes, your dreams..." he lifted a hand and brushed his knuckles gently down the side of Leon's face in a tender caress, enjoying the way the warrior fought not to flinch at the contact. "Your darkness."
Leon turned his head, sharpening his gaze to a glare as he stared up at Sephiroth despite the touch of his fingers that sent shivers over his skin. Curling his lip, he steadied his voice.
"You don't know anything." He repeated, slowly and darkly, punctuating each word softly with menace.
The touch of Sephiroth's hand moved lower, gliding over Leon's neck, passing over his shoulder and chest, awakening all the wounds he'd left with Masamune as he passed. Each pain flaring to life with searing agony until he stopped at the centre of his chest and slowly pulled apart the ruined material of his shirt. The dried blood pulled at the curled edges of the sword wound and ripped the scabs that had crusted over there. The through and through wound should have killed him – all of the injuries littering Leon's body should have killed him – had he still been in the real world, he might have died as they had dictated, yet he lingered on here, suspended in the agony as they refused to heal.
"I know what you fear..." Sephiroth whispered, circling his thumb around the injury, teasing the stinging flesh.
Leon sucked in a breath through clenched teeth and went rigid and still. If Sephiroth thought he feared pain and suffering, he was way off the mark. He would not break under that kind of torture.
Sephiroth bent lower, bringing his lips to Leon's ear as the warrior flinched away, closing his eyes against the feel of moist breath on his neck.
"They are not coming for you." Sephiroth whispered, digging his thumb into the wound, twisting it sharply as Leon pulled a jagged breath in and arched up off the bed, the scream ripped from his throat in a hoarse cry of pain, abruptly cut off as the chain tightened and denied him oxygen.
Sephiroth removed his thumb and Leon went still. The chain slackened and his breath came back to him in a haggard wheeze, rattling in and out of his chest in great wet gasps.
"They will abandon you here, you know that, don't you?" Sephiroth cooed in Leon's ear, bringing his thumb up to trace the line of Leon's lips, painting smears of blood on greying skin. "Your so called friends..."
"F...fuck you." Leon stammered. Pain made everything difficult, even talking.
Sephiroth smiled and nuzzled his nose against Leon's sweating temple, pulling in the scent of his fear and agony. "Maybe later." He cooed, running his thumb back down the arch of Leon's throat, over his clavicle and back to the wound at his sternum. "But first, I want you to call to him." Sephiroth pressed a kiss to Leon's damp hairline, his words hovering by his ear as he stretched out beside the quivering body.
"W...who?" Leon bluffed, his voice cut off into a pained groan as Sephiroth resumed his teasing with his thumb.
"Don't play games with me. You know who." Sephiroth dipped the digit inside the gash once again, curling it against the bone and gristle and Leon cried out, his mind coloured red as a flickering image of Cloud ghosted the backs of his eyelids.
"Call to him..."
"No." Leon ground out, managing to keep the sounds of agony behind his clenched teeth as Sephiroth's thumb went deeper. He hit soft tissue and ripped a wider tear in the skin, releasing the scream locked in Leon's throat as it tore away from him. His body shook with pained tremors, skin drenched in sweat and greyish with postponed death. He squeezed his eyes shut and thought of Cloud, the image of the man so clear in his mind, but he refused to say his name. All that left his lips was another anguished scream, and this time, the sound echoed over the landscape.
Cloud dismounted in a shower of dust and debris thrown up from his bike's rear tire. Ripping off his goggles, he strode over the causeway, hopping over the low running walkways and jumped from wall to wall, landing with careful precision down in the Bailey. It was quiet and deathly still, all the rubble and ruined brick work scattered about like crumbs, and blowing in between the fragments were black, oily feathers. The tinge of magic hung in the air, tasting metallic on the back of Cloud's tongue, and he recognised the signature immediately. Leon had been here.
It didn't take him much longer to find the inky spots of dried blood spattered about the cobbles and walls. Leon had been hurt here.
"Cloud!"
He turned sharply to see Tifa running down the gangway towards him, her face stretched into a worried grimace as she caught up.
"I've had everyone out looking since you called, we can't find him anywhere." She reported, a little out of breath.
"You won't find him." Cloud replied, his voice a lot steadier than he felt. He bent to pick up a wayward feather that blew against his leg and turned it in his fingers. It caught the light, and a sheen of purple and blue ran over it like light passing over oil on water. The stench of Darkness on it was almost overpowering.
"What, why? Do you know where he is?" Tifa gave the feather a cautionary glance out of the corner of her eye.
"No." Cloud shook his head, holding back a subtle tremble of his lips as he said it. "But I know who has him. That's a start."
"It's… it's him, isn't it?" Tifa asked, her voice as gentle as she could make it. "He's really back?"
Cloud lowered the feather. "Yeah." He replied quietly, not wanting to believe it was true despite knowing it in his heart. He'd felt him there for weeks. Had known it was time to leave Radiant Garden and draw him out away from the people he loved. Away from Leon. He hadn't planned on this backfiring on him so badly. He'd left everyone unprotected.
A flash of light behind his eyes and a sharp, piercing scream inside his head had him stumbling backwards a fraction. Rocked back onto his heals by the sudden force of it. It hit him like lightning through his temples and he closed his eyes against the pain in his mind, only to see a flashing, fleeting image of Leon, face contorted in pain as he screamed, the sound echoing in his ears as it stole the strength from his legs.
Tifa helped him down to his knees, placing a hand on his shoulder to steady him as he panted heavily through the fading waves of pain.
"What was that?" She asked kneeling beside him, watching his face as he stared wide eyed at the ground.
"I don't… I don't know." Cloud shook his head, part denial, part attempt at clearing the fog that still lingered. "I saw him. I saw Leon." He breathed. "He's in trouble." Cloud looked up at Tifa, his eyes large and round and frightened.
"Did you see where he was?"
"I don't..." Cloud shook his head, closing his eyes to try and recall the vision but there was nothing but an ominous feeling left. "I think I have an idea." He finally said, gritting his teeth as he stood on shaking legs. It was a long shot, but if Sephiroth had him, then he was no longer on this world. There was only one way to get to Sephiroth, and for that, Cloud needed to get to Olympus.
"I gotta go. Call the others back, there's no point in them looking any more. Just keep them safe." He implored her, turning to run back up the gangway. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
The knife was a smaller, shorter replica of Masamune. It was slimmer and more elegant, about the size of a man's forearm, and it stuck out of Leon's palms, pinning him to the headboard in an inelegant half slump, half dangle as he tried to ease the pressure on his ruined hands. He winced and let out a pained groan, squirming uncontrollably on the bed as Sephiroth twisted it, widening the wounds as the blade turned in his flesh, mangling the delicate bones that ran through them.
"This pain can be over." Sephiroth whispered to him, his lips once again close to Leon's ear as he sat above him, one long leg arched over Leon's lap, sat astride him as he held his head up with a strong hand underneath his jaw. "I can end your suffering. All you have to do is call to him."
Leon had been finding it difficult to speak for hours. His hoarse screams had ripped away most of his voice and instead he answered with a low and tattered grunt of pain; small whimpers spluttering from his lips along with flecks of bloody spittle. He shook his head now instead. The motion slow and small, yet undeniably a refusal.
"Why do you protect him when he has failed you like this?" Sephiroth cooed against his temple, running his lips along the skin by his ear as his fingers cupped Leon's jaw. "He's left you." He continued, turning the knife a little more, "Abandoned you to this pain… to me… a coward and a puppet, he can't possibly save you. He doesn't know how. You're his light, are you not?" Sephiroth pulled away a fraction, bringing his eyes level with Leon's watery ones, glazed with pain and fatigue.
"Who fights for you? Who is your light in the darkness?" He taunted, running his thumb over chapped lips, smearing the blood pooled at the corner of Leon's mouth. "You know he doesn't have it in him. He's too full of Darkness. He will leave you here alone."
Leon closed his eyes, his only defence against the poisonous words coming from Sephiroth's mouth as he finally pressed his lips against his own, the taste of metallic blood and dark magic against his tongue as he struggled for breath. He couldn't turn away, the hand around his jaw too tight, and with an exhausted gasp of pain as Sephiroth turned the blade in his hand again, he let the man's tongue inside. He tasted nothing but blood and darkness.
"He will leave you here to die, Squall." Sephiroth whispered against his lips as he pulled away, that glint of menace and mockery in his eyes.
"Then why… bother calling… for him at all?" Leon managed to croak out between laboured breaths, involuntary twitches making him shudder against the headboard as Sephiroth let go of the knife and sat back, arcing his shoulders as he shrugged his way out of his long black coat. His wing arched out behind him, fluttering in the silent breeze as Sephiroth flexed his muscles, grinding his pelvis down on Leon's legs as he shifted his weight.
"Because when I show him to you, I want him to see," Sephiroth smiled, reaching up to pull the knife free from Leon's hands with a horrid wet squelch, making Leon grimace and bite his bloody lip in a silent moan. "See how pathetic his hope has been. His hope that he could fight his way out of the Darkness where he belongs."
Leon shook his head, his sweaty, bloody bangs passing back and forth in front of his eyes as he looked up at Sephiroth under a hooded gaze. "H… he b-belongs... with m-me." he stammered, body beginning to break down into shivers of pain addled shock once again.
"With you?" Sephiroth mocked, his voice turning on the edge of the knife as he flipped the blade over in his hand. "Your place is to be forgotten. You're nothing but a failure: a lonely, cold and insufferable boy who can never be close to anyone. Your place is to die alone and in shame, unable to protect anyone, not even yourself. You're weak, Squall. You're nothing compared to him and you've always known it. Isn't it why you've always feared becoming his light?"
Leon felt his lips trembling, the savagery of Sephiroth's words tearing at his mind as he fought to close his ears to them.
"Because you know you can never be strong enough to keep him away from the Darkness?"
"N-no!" Leon shook his head, a million reasons why Sephiroth was wrong sitting on his tongue but not one of them would come.
"Then. Call. To. Him!" Sephiroth breathed close to his face, each word punctuated with a deadly threat.
Leon shook his head again. "I won't… l-let you do this… t-to him." He caught the moment Sephiroth's anger sprang free from his careful control, the impending swell of rage mirroring the real and irrepressible fear in Leon's eyes as Sephiroth lifted the blade above his head and brought it down into Leon's leg with a terrible roar of anger.
It stabbed through his thigh, glancing straight though bone, slicing the femur in two, and Leon let out a howling screech of agony, arching off the bed as far as his chains would allow, twisting and turning, and trying to kick his way free of the blade.
Sephiroth withdrew the weapon, its removal hardly noticed as Leon continued to whimper and writhe on the bed, his face turned away into the crook of his arm as he bit down on the flesh and tried to stifle the noises of agony. He hardly noticed the distribution of Sephiroth's weight shift, sliding further down the bed as he grabbed Leon's legs and pulled hard, yanking him away from the headboard, the chains stretched to their capacity.
The sudden movement pulled on all of Leon's wounds, and he let out a pitiful yelp, his body quivering with shock and pain; what pitiful strength he had left soon exhausted as he tried to kick out and fight away from Sephiroth's hands as they unbuckled his belts, ripping them free as he slid the sticky, sweaty leather trousers off, leaving Leon exposed to the soundless breeze that offered no refreshment, no coolness, as it breathed over his abused body. He felt the bed dip, and a hand grip his ankle, twisting the leg that wasn't injured, up, bending it at the knee as something was tied around his thigh, strapping it to his calf at an obscene angle. It left him exposed, rolled onto his side, all of his weight through his injured thigh and ribs, and with a pitiful moan of pain he felt Sephiroth settle against his back, a menacing hand coming to rest on his exposed backside.
"I know..." Sephiroth began, his lips close to Leon's ear as he whispered lowly, "It takes more than pain to break a man. To shatter his loyalty. It takes… intimacy." Sephiroth let the word linger in the air as he slid a finger between the cleft of Leon's buttocks. "Pain is just the vehicle. The goal is humiliation. So much so that you can never look at yourself in the same way again; can never look at him the same way again. Knowing what you've done… what you let happen..."
Leon choked on a sob as the first finger breached him, his face pressed into the sheets beneath his cheek, his face wet with fear and agony, lips peeled back over gritted teeth as he struggled not to let out the sounds of sheer panic that threatened to engulf him.
"You won't call for him, yet in your heart you want this to stop." Sephiroth began to move his hand, slowly pulling his finger back in ominous, menacing little movements of intimate mockery. Adding another finger to stretch him wider, feeling Leon jerk underneath his touch, fighting to keep control of a body that wanted to scream and fight its way out of the forced intimacy. "You want this to end, before it goes too far, before I take what you cannot get back."
"Ugh… go f-fuck… yourself." Leon stammered, breathing hard as he silently begged to fall unconscious.
The fingers were removed, and a fleeting emptiness replaced them. Leon breathed in as deeply as he could, readying himself for what he knew must come next, silently promising himself that he wouldn't call out, wouldn't make a sound. He could withstand this. The real shame would be in letting him hear his pain.
Sephiroth entered him slowly. Deliberately. Rolling his hips inch by inch until he was pressed up against Leon's back, all the way inside him and biting down on his shoulder, drawing blood as he felt Leon spasm and shake, his body rigid and tight, before he heard the sound of a choking wheeze, like the sound of someone being winded, and then Leon was drawing a ragged breath in; the desperate gasp of a starving man as he gulped in lungful after lungful of air.
"Does this feel familiar, Squall? This intimacy?" Sephiroth spoke quietly into his ear, gently brushing his hip with a soft swipe of his thumb as he pulled back, rocking into Leon again with small motions. "Is this how you'll have him remember you?"
Please… Leon begged within the chaos of his mind. Please, Cloud… don't come. Stay away...
"Are you thinking of him?" Sephiroth bent closer, his lips brushing the shell of Leon's ear as he grazed the flesh between his teeth. "Are you calling his name in your mind?"
I'm sorry… I couldn't… it won't stop… it won't end until… Leon let out a sob of anguish, hot tears the only thing that warmed his cold and clammy face as he pressed it into the sheets, his whole body shaking with his pent up rage and shame. "N-no," he moaned; nothing more than a quiet whisper into the still air, thick with sorrow as he breathed out. He felt Sephiroth hiss against his neck, the sibilance vibrating against his skin as hips began to work faster, a hand snaking lower to grasp his limp cock and begin to stroke him.
"N-no..." He moaned again, harder, as he tried to turn his hips away, to break the contact.
"Yes," Sephiroth insisted, pulling Leon closer to him, bending his body around him as he gave him humiliating pleasure. "You deserve this much, Squall. You know you do."
His arousal grew despite himself, despite the disconnection he felt between his mind and body; it was responding to the touch of Sephiroth's hand and the feeling a familiar invasion; that slow burn that turned to sweet pleasure.
"Your reward..." Sephiroth continued to croon, stroking faster as he rocked harder, feeling Leon's body trembling violently. "Let it out, say his name." He coaxed, knowing Leon was close to the edge, only the slightest of nudges would have him collapsing to his will as he brought him to the brink of his torture. "Let go..."
Leon bit his lip, blood pooling in his mouth as he gasped, trying not to push back against the hand that dragged him towards completion. Nothing hurt here. The aches and pains of his body had disappeared only to be replaced with the sweet ache of denied release, and he wanted it. He hated himself for it but he wanted it so much. That briefest of moments when nothing hurt, nothing mattered and there was only climax.
I… I'm sorry… I can't… "Cl-oud!" Leon choked out the name in a broken whimper as Sephiroth finally let him fall, his orgasm racking his body in violent spasms, the deep flush of completion enveloping him from head to toe as he felt Sephiroth stiffen behind him and breath out a satisfied groan into his shoulder.
When it was over, when all was still and the fleeting aftershocks had subsided, the pain crashed in around him once again, and Leon was back within the fragile confines of his fickle body. He felt Sephiroth withdraw, the feeling making him wince and hiccup out a lonely mewl of agony, and he let himself be turned over onto his back, his body completely broken and useless against Sephiroth's ministrations as he brushed long fingers up and down the fluttering cage of his ribs.
"He is coming now. There can be no stopping it."
Leon let his eyes flicker open, lashes damp with cold tears, and he stared up into the grey and billowing sky. So impossibly close he felt that he could stretch put a hand and touch it.
"How does it feel?" Sephiroth asked him, dragging a finger through the sticky residue left on Leon's belly. "Knowing you have failed him? Tell me," he raised the finger to Leon's lips and pushed it into his mouth, swiping it across his tongue. "Have you ever wondered what true betrayal tastes like?"
Leon gagged and tried to turn his face aside, Sephiroth's strong grip around his jaw pulling him back to stare into his wounded, glassy eyes. "He was coming for you all along; I want you to know that. He knew where you were from the moment you first cried out." The smile that twisted Sephiroth's lips tore what was left of Leon's dignity away, and he closed his eyes and let the tears come.
"I was just curious to see if you would break. And you did, Squall. You did."
"You f-fucking… b-bastard." Leon stuttered, sobbing quietly as he trembled next to the warm body.
"Are you still so confident now? So sure that he won't abandon you like everyone else you've ever loved?"
Images of his long lost family: Sis, Rinoa, Seifer, his mother and father… all of his friends that he had taken for granted, flashed behind his eyelids. All gone. The ache of losing them never truly diminished. He'd never been able to deny that his life had only ever been a cruel cycle of love and loss. Deep down, he'd always feared that Cloud would be no different.
"Go on, say it. Convince me that Cloud will still want you after this?" Sephiroth's smile could be heard in his words, Leon didn't have to open his eyes to see it.
"Not so certain now, are you, Squall?"
Leon couldn't stand it any more, he wanted Sephiroth's words to stop.
"P-please..." he stuttered a broken reply, voice hoarse and thick with sorrow. "Please just s-stop."
Sephiroth answered him with an amused chuckle, before the weight and the warmth of his body disappeared from Leon's side and just as suddenly as he had appeared, Sephiroth was gone, leaving Leon alone in the great grey expanse underneath the silent sky.
"I told ya already Cloud, Hades ain't got no one in this tournament. You want in to the underworld, ya gonna have to go the same way everyone else does." Phil groused as he chewed on a barley stick, arms folded over his pot belly as he watched the training match. "That is, unless you still got your special pass?" He looked up at Cloud from under a speculative brow.
"I'm not using Darkness. I'm done with all that." Cloud responded tersely, curling his fist a little at the suggestion.
"Well then, might I suggest you find someone who's dead or dying and make a deal with them? I don't know why you wanna go so bad any ways."
Cloud didn't bother filling him in. He turned back into the shadowed corridors of the arena, cursing his luck. He used to find getting in touch with Hades so easy. The God would show up at some of the most inopportune times, and now that Cloud really needed him he was nowhere to be found.
He stepped out into the bright, dusty market square and folded himself into the crowd. He needed a back up plan and quick. By his watch, Leon had been missing 48 hours so far and if Sephiroth had taken him where he thought he'd taken him, then that was already going to feel like an eternity. Time moved differently in the Shadow Worlds.
Cloud felt the subtle shift in atmosphere this time. It still crept up on him with blinding speed but he was able to side step his way into an alcove before the blinding light hit the back of his eyes and he was catapulted onto his knees with a crippling pain and a breathy gasp as a soft, feathery voice, filled with agony floated across his thoughts.
Please, Cloud… don't come. Stay away…
The reedy voice grew to a buzzing crescendo before it popped the bubble in Cloud's mind, and he was thrown back into reality with a winded gasp. The words echoed long after the sickening sensation had passed, and Cloud slowly climbed to his feet. He was still breathing hard, forcing down the bile in his throat, when he finally let the realisation that those had been Leon's words – Leon's voice – into his mind. He had never heard Leon sound like that before.
And the warning had been clear: Stay away… Cloud scoffed, like hell he would.
He grit his teeth and stepped back out into the crowd, following its natural rhythm until he came back round to the east entrance of the Colosseum. He pushed his way inside, preferring the dark and shadowed recesses of the hypogeum. He'd need privacy and darkness for what he was about to do.
He'd promised Leon he'd never use his Darkness again no matter how tempting it was. Hell, he'd even promised himself. But the echoes of Leon's plea in his mind pushed all thoughts of guilt and broken promises to the side. Now secure and hidden in the underground chambers below the arena, he secreted himself away in a small stone room and closed the door.
Ripping the wing from his back had always been painful, but especially after so long. Cloud clenched his teeth as the membrane unfolded; long, hollow talons of cartilage and sinew unfurling like an old sail, and Cloud felt the temperature around him drop a few degrees. In counterpoint, calling forth Darkness had always been easy. He stretched out his mind, and like a rising smoke it come to him, engulfing him in daytime shadow as he disappeared from the Olympus plane and descended straight into the underworld.
Leon didn't know how long he'd been left alone this time. In this strange and soundless world, the passing of time was irrelevant. Yet Sephiroth had marked it with a few more moments of torture and sadistic pleasure. Fleeting moments really, compared with the long hours spent with nothing but Leon's own thoughts for company. He never slept, didn't thirst or hunger, and could never slip into the welcoming arms of oblivion. He was trapped as a prisoner not only in his body, but in his mind, too. Sephiroth had seen to that.
He floated on pain that had never diminished, still as raw and as fresh as the first time Sephiroth had driven his blade into his flesh, never easing or giving him a moments respite, and Leon was beginning to fear that even death would not be on option here. If he couldn't even slip away into the peace of his own unconsciousness, there could be no hope of ever slipping away for good.
It was the waiting for something he wasn't even sure would come that was the torture now. His isolation, his pain and humiliation would stay with him for eternity. That's what Sephiroth wanted him to fear. And it was working.
He'd begged Sephiroth to end it the last time he'd left him. He was past dignity, he wasn't even ashamed to admit he wanted Sephiroth to kill him.
He was beginning to hallucinate now. Or maybe Sephiroth had planned this for him too? He couldn't tell any more, just allowed the strange shapes and shadows to gradually merge and form familiar images. He saw his long lost family. Their faces so clear and precise, until they flickered and shifted, and then they disappeared like winter fog. He saw them smiling at first. A reflection of years ago before Darkness had come to their world and destroyed everything. Leon recalled the pain of not being able to save them; not being able to find them again. The terrible realisation that he would have to let them go only so that he could carry on. It had taken him years to get to that point.
Those long lost faces faded away and were replaced with newer friends and family, no less cherished, no less important. The rebuilding of Radiant Garden had been the only thing that had stopped Leon from slipping into himself. He owed everything to Aerith for finding him and convincing him to stay.
Whispers and voices were kicked up like sand in the back of his mind. Echoes of laughter and quiet gentle murmurs.
They are not coming for you… that insipid, poisonous tongue melted through the dream like quality of the images, spiking Leon's languid heartbeat with pain as the images dancing in front of his eyes began to burn; the faces of his friends, past and present, falling apart like brittle leaves.
They will abandon you… they all do, in the end.
Out of the flickering, hazy smoke, rising to the top like molten silver, an image of Cloud came to Leon's mind. A private image – Cloud's face turned down in a secretive, bashful smile, the dusky blush high on his cheek bones as his bangs obscured the glint in his eye – Leon had stored that moment away, catalogued it for his own personal memories, so rare was the occasion when Cloud smiled like that; smiled like that because of Leon.
Pathetic… Sephiroth had found amusement in it. His soft chuckle of derision floating across Leon's mind as he felt instant shame. I wonder… will he ever look at you like that again?
Leon couldn't even close his eyes to escape the onslaught of the image being contorted. Cloud's face manipulated into a look of disgust and anger, the betrayal so obvious; Leon heard himself quietly sobbing.
He will be so disappointed in you…
"Shut up. J-just... s-shut up!" Leon moaned out into the nothingness around him. "You've already won. I did what you wanted… why are you doing this?"
A few seconds of ominous silence before that silken laughter came floating through to him on the fading images of Cloud's disgusted face.
Foolish boy. Sephiroth chided, This was never about you.
And through his pain and torment, a piece of clarity hit Leon so hard it was like being violated all over again. When had he forgotten that Sephiroth had never really been his enemy?
"Cloud!" He whimpered, suddenly afraid. Incredulous that he could have forgotten the danger so easily.
He's coming for you… he will be here soon. Are you ready to face him?
Cloud was walking into a trap. A trap Leon had helped create.
"Cloud, don't… please, don't." Leon tried struggling, but he was only able to offer a weak kick of his good leg, before exhaustion took him again and he was forced to continue floating on that strange, hazy fog of pain, and Sephiroth spoke again, one last time:
He's almost here…
The underworld was as dark and barren as Cloud remembered it. No light, no warmth, no shadows and no wind stirred. Just an unsettling greyish fog that permeated everything, and Cloud found himself wondering in it aimlessly.
"Hades!" He called, knowing the God would know he was here. Hades would have sensed his arrival the moment he'd stretched out his hand to Darkness and crossed over the threshold. The fact that he had not immediately shown up meant that he was toying with Cloud. "I know you're here, Hades. Show yourself!"
A flickering of blue flame appeared in the corner of Cloud's vision and he turned just as the fog parted and swirled into the shape of a robed man.
His hair was blue flame and his skin was pallid like death, and he smiled darkly at Cloud as he crossed his arms over his chest.
"Well, Cloudy-boy. Long time no see. I was beginning to think it was something I'd said."
"I'm not here to play games. Where's Sephiroth?" Cloud's voice was firm, though in the back of his mind that dark tendril of power began to whisper.
"Always so direct," Hades tutted, rolling his eyes. "You never want to make small talk with me, Cloudy, you know how that hurts my feelings?"
"I don't have time for small talk. Sephiroth took somebody into the Shadow World. I need in."
"He took somebody huh?" That spark of curiosity lit up in Hades eyes as he stroked his chin with a wicked smile. "Anybody I'd know? Or is this more of a personal call?"
"I know you can get me in. Will you help me or not?"
Hades sucked the dead air between his teeth and pinched his brows. "Ooooh now, you and I both know I don't really do helping. Its not my kind of thing, you understand, right? A God's gotta make a living somehow, and you know as well as I do there's a price for something like this. A person doesn't just go walking into the Shadow World without some kind of an invite. Catching my drift here Cloudy-boy?" Hades sidled up to Cloud, slipping his arm around his shoulders. "And after that little stunt you pulled with the Keyblade wielder, I'd say you owe me more than just a favour."
Cloud shrugged the arm off, stepping out of Hades' reach and levelled him with a glare.
"What do you want?"
"Oh so many things." Hades laughed "But… I'd be willing to settle for a little muscle." Eyebrows raised suggestively, Hades gripped Cloud around the wrist, lifting his arm out to the side as if to inspect his bicep. "You know, I always did admire the way you fight. So hack and slash, ya know? Not a lot of finesse there but you got raw power and that's where it counts."
"Just cut to the case, Hades." Cloud pulled his arm away, keeping the God in his line of sight as he seemed to dance around him, making a show of thinking hard about his next words.
"There's a tournament coming up. Big one. Lots of fancy names are gonna be there. You know I've always been a fan of the games, don't you?"
"So you want me to fight for you again, is that it?" Cloud had to be careful here. The last time he'd made a deal like this one with Hades, he'd been bound to his service and infused with Darkness. He'd only ever managed to escape one of those. The other he was still cursed to live with.
"Bingo!" Hades snapped his finger and pointed it at Cloud.
"What are the terms?"
"Simple, you fight for me, make it through to the final, winner takes all, blah blah blah. You've fought in a tournament before Cloudy, you know how this goes."
"No, I mean, what's in it for you?" Cloud crossed his arms over his chest.
"Did I mention there was a certain Demi-God also competing in this little game? It doesn't feel like the kinda thing that would normally slip my mind, but I just can't tell, I'm all over the place these days, really, I'm a mess."
Cloud sighed. "You want me to try and kill Hercules again, right?" That plan hadn't gone over well the first time. Cloud wondered why Hades even bothered trying any more.
"Hercules?" Hades laughed unconvincingly, "That old has been. Who said anything about Hercules? Why, did he say he was taking part?"
"Cut the act, Hades. You want me to do this or not?" Cloud held out his hand, ready to accept the agreement. He was wasting too much time here as it was. Hades had what he needed. He'd agree to anything – do anything – if it meant passage into the Shadow World. He'd deal with Hades' little feud later.
"Only if you're sure now, Cloudy. I don't want any complaining. Not like last time."
"One tournament. I kill Hercules," or try to, Cloud added in the quiet of his own mind. Even he wasn't stupid enough to think he could take on a Demi-God, and certainly not one like Hercules, for a chump like Hades. "Once it's over, regardless of the outcome, I'm free to go."
"And for your troubles, one return pass to the Shadow World, with complimentary plus one." Hades replied, slipping his hand into Cloud's outstretched palm. They shook once, and on parting, a swirling portal opened up behind the God, the grey mist parting to reveal a barren rocky world beyond.
"I'd say have a nice trip, but sheesh, have you seen the weather down there?"
Cloud ignored the quip, stepping up close to the threshold and stopped as that tendril of magic brushed over his skin, followed by a voice as clear as if Leon had been stood next to him. In fact, Cloud had to look behind him to make sure he wasn't.
Cloud, don't… please don't…
The sound echoed away as quickly as it came and it passed over Cloud so smoothly it sent a shiver down his spine.
"Sounds like he's waiting for you." Hades said smugly.
"Yeah," Cloud nodded, swallowing thickly, knowing that Leon wouldn't be the only one. He pulled First Tsurugi from its sheath at his back, and stepped into the void.