Jealousy
by TamLin
It started simply enough. He was only watching because it was a weapon, a tool. A point of interest because his golden nemesis went weak for the dark haired girl. Because those stubborn defenses went down for her. Perhaps they'd known each other in whatever life there was beyond this place, perhaps echoes of that reverberated through them both still. It didn't matter.
What mattered was that it was a weakness and it was yet another thing for him to take advantage of.
From boredom as much as thoughts of future manipulation, he stalked her. Watching, waiting. He had time. He would find out all that she was, all that she meant to his eternal opponent, wait until the moment was at its peak – and then he would take her away. He would end her, not because she was a warrior of Cosmos – but because she was apparently a part of his blond mirror image's previous, forgettable life and striking the other's soul was more satisfying than any blow of a sword against flesh.
She was brave and she was beautiful, strong and sympathetic to her companions. She didn't waiver the way his own gold haired enemy did, didn't question if the fight was worth fighting. She fought and she fell and she got back up and she triumphed. He could respect that – even if he knew, in the end, it was pointless.
Everyone fell and stayed down eventually. No matter how many times she won, one day soon she would be nothing more than a broken body on the stones and she would not rise again.
He only had to watch and wait for the right moment to bring it to pass.
Except in his almost casual watch he began to notice that where she was, his blue-eyed opponent started to appear as well. At first he thought it was just happenstance. Cloud never seemed to be seeking the dark haired girl out. He never approached, never tried to talk to her or be near her. There was no denying though, whenever she paused for long enough, the blond would soon be somewhere nearby. It wasn't for interaction, in fact, to most, it probably appeared as if Cloud seemed unaware of her presence. Except Sephiroth knew his opponent well, perhaps better than the man knew himself, and so he alone noticed that Cloud always faced sideways to the woman, always shifted when she moved.
Always had her in corner of his sight even when he was talking to someone else.
It was so subtle that at first Sephiroth assumed no one else was aware of it. The warriors of Cosmos seemed to detect no connection between the two. He had no time for the warriors that fought on his side of the battlefield and besides, they all knew Cloud was his. They went after the girl no more or less than anyone else. He was pleased with his intimate knowledge of the inner workings of his destined opponent – until the day he noticed the way the girl always sat. Always, always, her body faced the blond warrior, even when her head was turned elsewhere. When she stood, the angle of her body included him, even entirely across a courtyard. And when she slept at night, always, her body turned toward wherever the blond's was in her sleep.
It bothered Sephiroth because he couldn't tell if she did it intentionally or not. Watching, however, there was no mistaking that her body sought the blue-eyed man's and distance seemed to make no impact on it.
He wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but it bothered him. It implied an intimacy and a connection that even he didn't have with his mirror image.
Cloud tended to stumble across him by accident most times. And when he watched him, wary and guarded, it was out of the front of his narrowed eyes. In those times, the shorter man's body matched his sword, not Sephiroth's own form.
That wasn't right. In this world, he knew his purpose and he knew his point. It was to be the dark to the blond's light, the lightning to his thunder. It was everything and the only thing – for both of them. There was nothing else. No room for anything else. Even though the blond didn't seem to realize it, Sephiroth knew - they were each other's worlds.
Two sides of a coin.
There was no room for someone else. No place for a third side to their coin.
He decided he had done enough watching. It was time to end her and remove the nuisance she had become.
Except – she was never alone now.
Sometime, somewhere, despite all his watching, the blond had become a permanent fixture in the dark haired girl's world. And, worse yet, they were both aware of it. The distance, which must have been slowly shrinking between them all this time without his notice, had become almost nonexistent now that he had decided to exploit it. A small part of him wanted to think that Cloud moved close to the girl now because he had sensed Sephiroth's plans for her.
Except – Cloud had always been amazingly obtuse at sensing any of Sephiroth's motivation before.
The point remained that now they were constantly together as the war between the sides grew tighter. That they communicated with touch now and seemed more comfortable with it than words. A hand tap against the other's thigh, a shoulder nudge, the simple turn of a head had become a language all their own and it infuriated him that he couldn't understand it. They even refused to let the other one fight their battles alone anymore, choosing instead the most inconvenient timing in leaping forward into the battle and entirely laying into the unprepared opponent before the other stepped forward and finished the job. Even watching, Sephiroth wasn't sure how it had happened so completely.
Cloud had never been so sure, so aggressive or so completely controlled as he was when the dark haired girl was at his side.
What he felt, Sephiroth wasn't sure, but the emotion the girl invoked in him was twisted and dark and coated in something slick and rotten.
There was no one the blond should have responded to so completely and wholly as he should be responding to his eternal enemy. Cloud, body and soul, belonged to him. No one else had a right to his utter attention, his fixation, the way Sephiroth did. And yet, in every confrontation, the blond still acted almost surprised to see him.
It made Sephiroth seethe.
He knew that Cloud was dense when it came to their interlocked destinies, that the other man didn't seem to realize they were bound together for eternity, that where one went, the other would always follow. In the past, Sephiroth had even enjoyed that blind spot, enjoyed taunting about it, tormenting with it. Now however it simply grated on his nerves.
How could the blond not be aware of their bond? How could he forget, for even a second, that his enemy was his shadow and the most important part – the only part – of his life worth remembering? The blue-eyed warrior was everything to Sephiroth. His past, his future, his destiny. And yet Cloud continued to insist on acting as if Sephiroth was only a part, a small part, of his world.
Continued to act as if the dark haired girl that filled his eyes was his future and his present.
Ridiculous.
She was nothing compared to him! What did a small, fragile female hold in comparison to him? He was the other man's future, his end, his destiny. There was no world outside of the two of them.
No place for a soft eyed girl that murmured his enemy's name so low and intimate in the dark of night.