Second chapter is up, we're going to spend some time going into Cloud's backstory now.

Warnings: dark and adult themes, vampirism, non-consensual situations, captivity, violence.

Disclaimer: I do not own FFVII or any of its characters, they belong to the amazing people at Square Enix.

Chapter 2 - Spark

I was sixteen years old when I met the immortal, Sephiroth Jenova.

Back then I lived in a crowded little mountain town called Nibelheim, located just off the edge of the river separating it from what is now known as Cosmo Canyon. My father was never known to me, just a stranger that my mother had spent a summer night with and never saw again afterwards, and my mother herself passed when I was young from a blood fever. My aunt took me in after her death. Ena Lockheart was her name. Her husband, Ned Lockheart, owned a small sundry shop located on the edge of the town, right by the river docks, and it was in a little three-bedroom flat above the shop that I was raised along with their own six children.

Needless to say, it was crowded quarters, but everything about life then was. The town itself was just a compact gathering of crudely constructed buildings that pressed in on the narrow dirt streets with heavy roofs and patchwork fastenings; the very rough beginnings of modernity from the cities getting mixed up with crude obscurity of the rural past. The docks beside our little shop were quiet and neglected in the winter months, but from Spring to Summer's end would always be packed and bustling with activity, vessel boats roped in against the wharf to unload daily catches, fish stalls set up on the walkways where the mongers would bellow their wares from one end of the day to the other.

I remember all the sounds still; the rough voices of the vendors waking me up in the mornings through the thin windows of the flat, the crates scraping and sloshing in the mens' grips, the blades thudding into the wooden planks at each new cut...

I remember as well how at the end of the day, the berth would be soiled and wet with gore, the walkways and piers soaked with blood and slippery innards until men came to wash it away with buckets of river water. On the warmest days we couldn't open a window or door in the shop for the stench of it, and would need to wrap fabric around our noses and mouths when going out to avoid becoming ill from breathing too much in. Yes… I remember the scent of blood in the air, strong and metallic in the heat, drawing the water monsters up from the blackness under the piers to grab for their meals of pink guts and severed tails.

It sounds like misery I know, an awful kind of crude existence by today's standards, and maybe it was. The thing is, though, that we really didn't know any different back then. That was simply how people like us lived; few luxuries, hard work and daily struggles. As an orphan, I was lucky to have roof over my head, and with my uncle's shop failing at the start of this story, teetering us on the brink of disaster, the best I was hoping for was a training position in the region's military squadron, where I might eventually earn a wage and pay back some of what I owed the Lockhearts.

But in the meantime I was content with my situation, I was happy in my quiet way. I loved my cousins more than anything else in the world and felt no burden in helping manage them. My aunt and uncle were kind people and the household, for all its physical failings and my ever-present insecurity about my place within it, was a cheerful one. After the shop was closed every evening we'd spend hours up in the living quarters listening to our aunt, and sometimes uncle, read out the newest novel from the stalls, or make up their own stories during the winter when trade was sparse. Our aunt would sing sometimes, mostly songs she made up herself; mythical fairy hymns that made my dreams come alive for nights afterwards. They taught us our prayers, and to read and write in these evenings, making us take turns reading out chapters or religious passages to the rest and then practise writing the lines before bed. Literacy wasn't common or expected of our class back then, so it was a credit to my aunt that all seven of us were competent in it by the age of eight.

Quiet and small and often the target of the town bullies because of my circumstances, I really only had two close companions in those days. Tifa, the eldest of my cousins and a neighbour boy named Drogus Greenwelshe. When not needed for work or chores, the three of us would spend long days away from the town exploring the mountain valley around us. This was a dangerous pastime, since there was a threat of monsters hiding around the valley, but we were young and seemingly invincible and trusted the wards placed on the land to protect us. I was able to kill the smaller monsters we did come across; I'd been practising since I was a child.

Over the years we'd managed to collect a handful of hidden nooks that we liked to revisit. We'd pass the time in them, swimming in a stream, just lying about in the sun, or reading the new monster encyclopaedias that the land travellers sometimes brought from the cities – and my aunt disapproved of.

It was on one of these days, as the three of us were sitting around on the flat rocks of a small pool clearing that looked down into the valley of the town and wild fields around it, that we spotted an ebony carriage making its way over the winding dirt road from the north. Tifa spotted it first, calling our attention to it when it was still but a dark blot in the distant landscape.

It was the finest thing I'd ever seen in my life up to that point, a rich lacquered coach gilded with gold trimmings around the upper frame and doors, and summon-like figures on each corner. Four black-feathered chocobos pulled it, great muscular beasts of a far different breed than the animals the farmers in the town owned.

To our astonishment, two more carriages of the same kind followed behind it, equally as magnificent though they varied in decoration slightly, the second having painted panels on the doors and frame, the third with bronze rather than gold gilding.

After them, a long procession of smaller coaches and pulled wagons followed, no doubt filled with the belongings of whoever rode in the first,

"Do you think they belong to royals?" Tifa asked, standing up on her bare feet with her skirts pulled up in a puff around her knees. I shook my head to say I didn't know, and Drogus answered the same.

"They're beautiful," she said.

It was only when we returned home that evening that we found out that the Manor in the mountains had been purchased by new owners, though no one yet knew who they were. The manor was a large old style mansion located about five mile up from our town. The estate compromised the house itself constructed in the old-century fashion, large stables grounds and acres of land including that which the town was built on. It had once been owned by a younger brother of the king, centuries before, then a series of families with good lineage. At that time it had been empty for over a decade, since the previous owners had tired of the exclusion of country life, and moved across the continent to more vogue surroundings.

The younger children had been astonished that we'd caught sight of the new owners, even though we hadn't really, and we spent the evening describing over and over again the finery of the curtains draping from the frames of the black carriages, the big ornate wheels and the small-looking men controlling the horses. In the end, I think we added imaginary details, just for their amusement.

I'm sure we seem like simple things, to be so taken with a glimpse of fancy vehicles, but again you have to understand that things were different back then. People of our kind thought of the upper-class as more than just glamorous, rich beings. They were godly, blessed with fortune and breeding and closer to the lifestream than the common population would ever be, the blood in their veins thick and purified with their lineage. They were the cherished; children of the planet, and we the servants at the alters, the sacrifices when need be. Perhaps that's still how the world looks at celebrities and perhaps it isn't so different in many ways, but back then for sure there was renown to be had in having glimpsed anything to do with these all but mythical beings with our own eyes.

All this being said, I wasn't actually that excited about the whole thing, and aside from recounting it to the children, I didn't think much of it afterwards. There were other, more human concerns at the time.

Things were not going well with the shop. It had been doing poorly that year, injured by the increased taxes on much of the perishable stock and suffering from competition from the ever-increasing influx of peddlers and travellers who sold much of the same merchandise at far better prices. My uncle had needed to reduce his inventory by a quarter by mid-Summer, and what that meant was that there wasn't enough money coming in to make a profit.

Tifa and I were the only ones old enough to see the deepening lines of worry on my aunt's face as she continued our education in the evenings, or the way uncle's hair went from grey to white almost in one season, and when we returned home that evening to see that hardly anything had been moved from the shelves again all day, I made up my mind of what I would do.

The following evening, after the shop had closed and we all had our supper, I left the flat to visit the local military representative that my uncle had spoken to before on my behalf, to see if there would be an opportunity for me to begin training as soon as possible. The man was drunk, sitting in the cabin of his little boat where he lived between services, docking at whichever town was near. With a candle lantern between us, he'd been more agreeable than I hoped for and left me with the impression that he would do his best to arrange a position for me. I ignored how his eyes, yellow in the light like a cat's, ran over my face and hair repeatedly as we spoke, taking in my features with an attention to detail he seemed otherwise too drunk to possess. This was not something unusual for me though; I was aware if not concerned that my appearance caught people's attention, my wild bright hair and eyes, but as with Tifa's friends who hung around the shop and made small talk with me during the hours I was working, I didn't pay any heed to the attention and just thanked him earnestly before I left. His hand gripped hard on mine and I wiped the sweat away as I exited the vessel.

The sun had fully set while I was in that little boat and it made walking back along the slippery pier a treacherous undertaking. The water was black beneath the walkway, only moving shadows – fish or monster – visible under the lolling current. The boats were rocking in the light tide, knocking and cracking against each-other while the nocturnal birds cawed out against the sky.

I became distracted by these things and by something else as well, something I wasn't conscious of the time but now know to be the atmospheric reaction to a new darkness that was pure and undiluted and unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. It hung in the air like a noxious gas, smothering me and altering my senses without my ever noticing it.

It affected my mind, something like an inhalation of sleep materia, and after a while all I recall is walking through what seemed like an unending dense mist that blinded me in every way, so that there seemed to be nothing behind me, nothing ahead of me and nothing in my mind – and then something.

Just on the edge of the street where the mooring breached the soft earth of the town roads, he was standing there, half lit up by the street lanterns at his side, and half in the shadows. The mist cleared in a path, leading towards him.

He was looking away as I approached, but when I came off the walkway, he turned and watched me come into the light.

I don't know how long the moment lasted in which I took slow steps towards him as he stood waiting for me. He was something between an angel and a demon standing there. Cast into darkness, his back to the lanterns, I couldn't make out his features aside from the pale hair hanging long around his torso, and the flickering of his sharp eyes reflecting what little moonlight there was.

The fog grew stronger and stronger in my mind, until by the time I reached him it clouded my vision so much that all logic and sense was lost. Everything had become liquid and swirling, the yellow window lights flicking within sharp irises, pupils in the flames, doorways and signposts the same as tanned flesh and dirt roadways.

My arms tingled with goose-flesh and I rubbed at one as I stopped there, staring into the face of the ether. All I could feel was a drunk lack of awareness as my lips parted to form senseless words.

"Did I fall?"

I wanted to know the answer, desperately. I imagined the leeches sucking my wet skin, one of my hands crushed against the rocks, the other reaching for the planks above.

The glimmer of white teeth.

"Where is there to fall to?"

The voice shook through me, and the smile. The awful moon's smile. I shook my head and wanted to move away, but couldn't.

"Why are you…?" The puddles of blood and warmed river water came to my mind again, "did I fall? Am I down there now?" I thought of the black water, the monsters climbing up from it.

"Why would you fall?"

"We all fall, don't we?" I insisted, I think I was pulling at my hair. It was wild and thick with the damp air; I couldn't get my fingers through it.

"Do we not rise again?"

I hurt myself with my fingers. "No..."

"Stop."

My fingers let go of my hair immediately. My hands were shaking as I lowered them to my sides and stared up into his face of blackness.

"Tell me your name."

I gave him my full name without a second's hesitation, I could do nothing else.

"Cloud," he repeated, the name coming out from his mouth like air instead of speech, "it's good to see you, Cloud."

A shiver ran through me, his voice flowing over my flesh like liquid.

"Do you live in this town, Cloud?"

I nodded and pointed out the flat to him, it was visible further across the road, down a ways from us. The upstairs lights were on and the chimney was smoking, I knew the family would be gathered in the living room now, one of the children taking their turn reading out from that week's novel.

"Your family are in there?"

"They are a family, I'm their ward," I answered. If I was lucid enough, I would have been shocked by my words, voicing something that up until then had been an innermost thought.

Fortunately, it would be a long time before I remembered any of the conversation.

In response to my answer, his smile just grew wider.

"I see."

A bird cawed above us and somewhere in the distance a monster screamed high up in the mountains. He turned his head at the distractions but I didn't look away from him, not for a second, until he finally bid me to.

"It's late for you to be out, child," the voice felt like it was inside of me, lulling me into a swoon, warming me even as I shook. "Go to bed now. Don't stop until you are warm under your blankets. Sleep then, for me. No more bad thoughts."

I sighed at the thought. "What about you?"

The eyes gleamed, the white teeth.

"Go on now, dream of rising, not falling."

I nodded, turning on my heel and looking towards the flat burning bright in the distance.

I remember nothing clearly from that point, just waking up the next morning in the bed I shared with two of my cousins. That was the first morning I woke with a headache.

One evening, almost two weeks later I think, I was helping my aunt move some display cabinets and shelves around the shop – she was attempting to make our fewer commodities look more attractive to customers within the dusty, wooden front room – when Tifa and one of the younger boys came running into the shop.

"Mother," she called, holding her brown skirts and apron up from the floor as she rushed over to us.

"What is it, child?" My aunt answered quickly, taking in her daughter's hurried, flustered movements. They were so alike, the most out of all of us with their dark hair and pale skin. Tifa was taller though, stronger built where her mother was more delicate.

"The lords from the Manor are coming in to town. There's a request for all business-holders to gather for a meeting with them. Father needs to go," Tifa informed us.

"A meeting?" Aunt Ena put down the baskets she'd been holding and dusted off her hands as she went around the counter to stand in front of her daughter. Tifa nodded.

"They've ordered it in the church within the hour."

Gossip in town had informed us that the manor had become host to three foreign lords. One owned the estate and the other two were his companions. There wasn't much known about them, only that they were all of great wealth and had arrived without the company of wives or children. Until that day, they had not interacted with the town in any way.

Aunt Ena shook her head, fingers going to her neck to massage the skin there, a nervous habit of hers. "Now what could they want?" She whispered at neither of us, eyes on the small front window as if she could see the future through it.

"Will we lose the business Mother? Will they take over the town?" Tifa asked, reaching forward to clutch her mother's hands. It took Aunt Ena a moment to snap out of her daydream, but when she did she shook her head firmly and shifted their hands so it was she holding her daughter's instead of the other way around.

"You do not need to fret about these things, Tifa," she said firmly, catching and holding her daughter's eyes before switching them over to me, "either of you. It's for your father and me to worry about." After that she stepped back and started to take off her work apron. "I'm going up to Ned. Cloud, leave this for now and we'll come back to it."

I nodded and shoved the cabinet back against the wall as she went around the counter and through the door behind that led up to the flat.

Tifa waited until the sounds of her footsteps were muffled on the second floor before she spoke. "Will they take the shop from us? Buy out the town so we'll have to live in the cities like coal children?" Her voice was hushed and full of dread. Tifa was strong in her dispositions; displaying the highest exuberance when cheerful but falling into deep anxiety at the first sign of any woe. Dramatic, as the say now.

"We can't know what they want," I said back, walking over to the shop counter and taking up the rag resting on it to dust off my hands, "it's best to just wait and see," I winced then, my hand snapping up to my forehead, "and we can't... upset the little ones by looking worried," I finished a bit breathlessly.

"I know," Tifa agreed. She watched me rub me at my head, "is your head still troubling you, Cloud?"

I closed my eyes in frustration. As I said, on the morning following my excursion out to the military representative I had woken up with a headache that grew worse throughout the day. I went to bed the next night hoping to find it gone after some rest, but the problem had only grown worse. I call them headaches, but they more resembled what are now called migraines, with the debilitating nausea and flashing vision that accompanied them. I had no idea what was causing them and my aunt's potions didn't seem to help. The other's thought it might be the warm weather, but I think I knew something else was wrong with me.

It wasn't just the headaches I'd been suffering from. Every morning since that first morning, I'd wake up feeling as if I hadn't been asleep at all, as if all of my energy had been drained, pulled from my body like a wrung dishcloth on the mongers' bloody stalls. My limps felt weak and boneless, my organs heavy and slow. Moving was becoming a chore.

More worrying than all that, though it shouldn't seemed to have been, was how my mind was changing. These thoughts in my head, there from the moment I woke until I slept again, like the residue of the nightly dreams I couldn't remember. Shuttering, confusing things like a candles flickering behind my eyes. Flashes of what felt like memories but couldn't have been… They frightened me more than anything else, made me dread the night-time.

But why? Did I know even then, so young and ignorant of the dark powers of the world, that something was ending?

"Not so bad," I answered Tifa, declining to speak of all that, and of just how much helping my aunt move the shelves had drained me. I didn't want her to have any knowledge of these things; I dreaded not being allowed to pull my weight with the rest of them. I would have hid the headaches too, if it were possible not to react to them in front of the others.

"You're so pale, cousin," she said anyway, running her eyes over me.

"Just the work," I murmured back. Then to distract her I asked if she'd seen the lords. She hadn't, but wanted to.

So the two of us followed Ned out of the shop when he made for the meeting. We met Drogus on the road and as Ned went on straight to the church we headed over to his father's pub. The building was old and haphazard, with stone walls and wooden window shutters, but it was one of the tallest in town and by climbing onto the roof we had a good view of the front streets and the land beyond. We could see the church; an old structure with more modern glass windows and wooden support beams, tooth-like graves at the back.

The business-owners had gathered in a little group in the front. Ned and Drogus' father were among them, murmuring with the others in a silent, nervous thrum, each one of them dressed in their Sunday finery and combed and groomed as best as the time would allow. We waited a while; Drogus and Tifa on one side of the pub's large chimney, me on the other, trying to hide from them just how much I was clinging to the bricks after what felt like an exhausting climb up there.

Would this pass? I wondered as I waited. Was I very ill? I rested my head against the blackened stones, my hair falling in front of my eye, turned orange in the setting sun. An image flashed through my mind; of a young women with bright blond hair loose all around her, her thin arms and legs curled within it. Her skin was grey, the same colour as the blankets beneath her on the old, ragged mattress, and the scarlet blood was vivid against it, dripping over her hands clutched to her mouth. I was standing across the room from her, pushed behind legs that loomed tall around me.

Then I saw the three lords appear on the edge of the town, riding large, beastly chocobos of the same kind that had pulled their carriages on that first day. They were, surely, the very figures of what the words 'foreign lords' conjured in our sheltered minds.

The man on the left, riding a russet bird with gold fastenings around its neck, was tall and lean and had flaming auburn hair that the red evening had set on fire. He looked groomed and well-turned out in a wine-coloured long-tailed coat, with a ruffled shirt fastened high under his chin, and cream riding pants. The man on the right was not as finely accoutred but looked similarly impressive in a black and grey vest-jacket with billowing white shirt arms. His hair was very dark brown and fell to his shoulders, straight and orderly. He was very broad-shouldered and serious in contrast to the relaxed posture of the red-haired man.

These things I noticed in seconds and not in any great detail though. I couldn't, because it was the middle rider that captured all of my attention. That made my fingers dig in to the stones of the chimney until later I would see that they were bloody and worn down to the beds.

He was tall, heads taller than most men even sitting on his bird, and powerful looking, his body seeming to be made of solid muscle that was both lean and broad in perfect harmony. Like nothing I'd ever seen before, he had long silver hair, the very same colour as the blade of a sword, and it fell around him like an angel's veil, blazing in the sunset. His skin was pale and he was dressed in all dark clothes, a long overcoat with an open chest, thick leather boots reaching up to his knees. His eyes were a very sharp green and unsettlingly feline-like, though I'm not sure that was a detail I noticed at that point, from the distance. I just remember my breath catch in my throat, my entire system overwhelmed at the sight of something that looked like it had risen straight from the lifestream.

My heart was stiff in my chest and I don't know why I felt like crying.

"Do you see them Cloud?" Tifa called from the other side of the chimney. I swallowed and nodded.

"Yes," I nodded again, "yes I see them."

"I've never seen men like them, they're magnificent," she answered, and I could hear Drogus snort.

"Easy be magnificent if you have coin for it," he grumbled.

There was no procession of servants after the riders as I thought there would be. It was just the three of them – just! – and they were quick to come into the town and approach the church. The details developed as the distance closed between us, the refined structuring of bones, demonic but undeniably handsome with sharp pointed eyebrows and bowed lips. I watched those eyes move over the crowd in front of him, intelligent and assessing, as if it were not people he was looking at, at all. More like servants, puppets.

Sure enough, the townsmen looked like nothing around the men, pale and diminutive, as greetings were exchanged and proceedings towards the church doors began.

"What do you think they want?" Tifa murmured after they'd all gone inside. I moved back to look at the others from behind the chimney. The sun was almost gone and it was growing colder now, their faces had grown pale and then red around the nose and cheeks. In the background I could see all the small windows of the houses lighting up, little yellow squares dotting the patchwork landscape, families keeping warm and safe but not protected from the future. In the corner of my vision, my hair had turned deep amber but I knew the moonlight would bleach it white soon.

I looked over to the church again.

"We'll have to wait and see."

And oh, would I see. I'd see what the heavens see, what the angels witness. I'd see hell the way only one that falls from grace ever could.

Tifa and I helped my aunt put the children down to bed, which involved a lot of wrangling and repetitive story-telling and throwing little bodies around the mattresses, and then waited up with her for Ned to return.

The hour grew late as we waited, and the last log we'd put in the fire was an ash replica of itself by the time we heard the front door to the shop open below. We'd been sitting around, me on the windowsill looking out at the river and Tifa and aunt Ena on the settee with flat open books on their laps, and all listened together to the man's footsteps on the stairs and then to the noises of him taking off his shoes outside the door.

He came in, his face flushed as it was when he had drink taken, and the expression in his slightly dazed eyes wasn't what we were expecting at all.

"You are all still awake at this hour," he said first, closing the door behind him and walking over to the fire.

"Of course we are," my aunt tutted, getting up from her seat, "are you hungry love? I'll get some bread and tea. Tifa–"

"Can we not hear the news first, Mother?" The girl said quickly, closing her book and setting it by her side. She was still in her day dress, though she'd taken off the apron, and it tightened around her legs as she leaned forward with her elbows between her knees.

Her mother scowled at her but Ned cut in, surprising us all when he issued out a gruff, almost high-pitched laugh.

"News?" He uttered, shaking his head and turning around to face us, "such news! News I can hardly account for..."

"What, love?" My aunt looked away from her daughter to watch him, "you've had whiskey," she decided, looking at him in minor dismay.

"Yes, a celebration glass," he agreed, waving a hand in the air dismissively.

"Celebration?" This again surprised us. I pressed my shoulder into the glass of the window and watched him move his strangely wide eyes over each of us before going on.

"They want to put money into the town," he said, tone and expression almost as incredulous as ours, "they want become part-owners of our establishments and help bring new business out to us."

"Owners?" My aunt gave him a curious look, "they want to buy out our shop?"

"Only a small percent of it, as they would with all other businesses here, they'd be investors but wouldn't have much involvement in the daily running."

"Surely that can't be true," my aunt said, almost dreadfully, as if she feared the notion penetrating one ounce of her soul only to be ripped away as falseness seconds later. I felt similarly wary, watching my uncle for signs that he was jesting with us, or that bad news had possibly turned him mad. He looked mad enough, his eyes wide and not focusing on anything for long, his cheeks red and swollen.

But he wasn't mad. He was happy. A weight that had been years gaining burden had suddenly lifted in the space of an evening, and he hardly knew what to do with the relief.

I felt cold looking at it, afraid for him as I listened to his words.

"This is the way forward for the upper classes now, investment, infrastructure, not relying on old wealth. Founders of cities hold the power in this century, these foreign lords know that," he was going on, perched against the fire place with his elbow on the mantelpiece and his hip jutting out away from the heat.

"This will never be a city," Tifa admonished, giving him a tiresome look.

"You don't know that, my girl," he said back to her, "why not here more than anywhere else? We're not in a bad location and the river gives us a niche advantage. At the very least we could be proper market town. If anyone could make it so, it would be those men. I've never met their kind in my life."

"What are they like, Father? Where do they come from?" Tifa questioned eagerly, pulling her feet up on the settee and leaning against the arm.

"The owner is a lord from the Northern continent. Sephiroth Jenova. Descendant of the Calamity."

An awed silence fell over the room. Of course we all know the story of the extra-terrestrial lifeform that fell from the sky thousands of years ago, creating the northern creator and dooming the Cetra. We also know of the bloodline of the Calamity, the house of Jenova, whose ancient king became infused with the lifeform and developed abilities that, according to legend, would be passed down through his lineage for centuries to follow. The house was no longer prominent by the time of this story, conflict and political upheavals dividing the land, but the heirs to the clan were known to be spread out across the planet, still profiting from the great wealth of their ancestry and rumoured to possess the same abilities as the ancient king.

"One of them here? It can't be true," my aunt said, shaking her head. But I knew it was true, the silver hair, the eyes, they were the traits of the Calamity; no normal men would possess them.

"We saw him coming in," Tifa supplied, looking over at me for agreement, "he doesn't look like a normal man. Is… does he have abilities, father?"

Ned chuckled.

"Not that he showed us, and we didn't make ourselves out to be the ignorant peasants by questioning myths," he clicked his tongue, "I will tell you that he's an intelligent man, I could tell even though he spoke few words and it was his dark-haired companion that did most of the talking. Lord Angeal Hewley was his name, a better speaker than any politician or council man I've heard. He and the third man, Genesis Rhapsodos, are from the Mideel continent, both own colonies over there."

"What brings them here?" My aunt asked him.

"Investment," he said, shrugging, "our land is as of yet untapped after all. They want to claim it first. And they are young men really, in their prime. Men like that are restless, unwilling to just sit on a comfortable fortune. The three served as soldiers for years. They've seen conflict over as far as Wutia and are not long returned."

"Soldiers," Tifa repeated, awed. I thought it sounded right; I could picture Sephiroth Jenova riding into war like a serpentine of death, clashing against men as the surge of a tide.

"You'll see all this yourself of course. The lords want to review our establishments individually to see where improvement and coin is needed. They'll be making visits over the next few days–"

"What do you say?" My aunt jumped back a bit and her wary expression turned to one of panicked incredulity as she stared at her husband with her hands pressed to her chest, "they're coming here? To the shop?"

My uncle nodded.

"Shiva!" She said as she looked around the room and knocked her fist against her collarbone, "when?"

"I don't know the day, but it will be soon. They just want to assess the places and see what improvements are needed and the potential–" he gave the woman a scowl, "don't get into a fluster now. They're– "

"Into a fluster?" She cut him off with her hands in the air, "three lords in our little shop. And it looking so miserable now. They'll not invest if they see no potential in us. Do you have a notion of the work that needs to be done?"

We didn't, but we soon learned.

She had us up at the first monger's call the next morning, the girls scrubbing floors and dusting out the cabinets and shining silverware, us boys grating down the wooden doors and moving shelves and counters back and forth until my aunt settled on a layout she was pleased with. Tifa and I were sent on errands around the town, fetching this and that, even some luxuries like netted window curtains for the front windows, and linen tablecloths to go over the front stands, which we wouldn't have stretched for otherwise. My uncle wasn't pleased with all that but was hesitant to say anything against my aunt's insistence, and I think he was secretly as eager as she to show the little shop, so dearly cherished in his family, at its best.

My aunt did a good job. When she was finished the place looked something like it had years before when I was that sombre but apathetic child led through the door the morning of my mother's passing. The display cabinets and shelves were clean and polished with their contents aligned prettily on the shelves, carefully placed to make the shop look full and show the commodities at their best. Table linens and doilies brightened the room along with native flowers and little porcelain ornaments. There was a thick vase of flowers on the front counter, and another on the window sill; yellow flowers my little cousins had picked from the banks.

Twice they had to get fresh bunches before any lord stepped into the shop.

In the end, he took us by surprise. It was late in the evening, the shop was close to closing and I was standing at the front counter listening to my little twin cousins, who were sitting on top of it with their legs swinging, telling me about the huge monster they'd seen on the pier that day. Big as a sea worm they said, as a castanet. I remember their little hands waving in the air, distracting me from my throbbing temples.

Then the ringing of the front bell as the door to the shop opened.

Like a time-lapse of a withering flower, the room seemed to shrink in on itself, everything becoming small around him as stepped slowly over the creaking floorboards. Sephiroth Jenova, descendent of the Calamity. He was dressed again in dark clothes, another long black overcoat with the chest left open as far as his sternum, buckles along the sides, thick onyx boots. His skin and hair stood out sharply against the fabrics, but it was those green eyes pierced through like blades, the shop's lamp light having no effect in warming them.

I think it was minutes before I moved, though like a lot of things from those early meetings, I can't really remember. A fog settled over my mind again, nothing as intense as it had been that first night, but enough to make me numb to my own actions and words as I ushered the twins down from the counter and then walked around it.

My steps were light and slow, I can remember that, I'm not sure they were on the ground at all. I had to tilt my chin to look up at his face when I reached him, and I felt the bones on my neck freeze in place as he smiled down at me and took a step forward so his shadow completely consumed me.

"You know my name?" He questioned, narrowing his eyes even as he smiled.

"Sephiroth," I murmured back, not finishing the title.

"Do you know why I'm here?" I tried to shake my head, but couldn't.

"No," I said, "yes I…"

"Lord Jenova."

A noise from behind startled me so much I almost fell to my knees, as if I'd been a puppet held up with strings that were suddenly loosened. I snapped my head down and did a sort of clumsy step forward, moving closer to the lord. He wasn't looking at me anymore though. The twins had run up to tell Ned of our visitor and he'd come down fast.

"Lord Sephiroth, it's an honour to have you here," I heard him greet from behind me. Sephiroth looked ahead of me and moved forward as I stepped slowly to the side, trying to calm my heart as he passed. It was pounding as if I'd been running down from the fields. I blinked, staring at the wooden door in front of me, the space that he had occupied now empty, and shuddered when his voice filled the room again.

"The honour is mine. Apologies though, if I'm arriving too late." Coarse, smooth words. Not any particular accent, I noticed; his voice was without inflection.

"Not at all. We keep long hours here in the shop. Cloud had been looking after things–" at this point my uncle seemed to finally notice me, "Cloud?" He called, confusion pitching his voice, "what are you looking at?"

I shook my head and quickly turned around to them. Sephiroth was beside my uncle now and both were staring over at me, one in confusion and the other with no definitive expression that I could decipher.

"Nothing. Sorry," I said, clenching my fingers at my sides. Ned pursed his lips and watched me.

"Are you feeling well?"

"Yes," I answered fast, annoyed that he would ask it in front of the other man. The last thing we needed was for the investors to think of us as a poor, diseased household. Ned obviously didn't feel the same as he turned to the lord to explain that I had been suffering from headaches from the close weather.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Sephiroth answered, "is he your eldest son?"

"No, my nephew," Ned supplied, looking over at me again, "though of course we think of him as a son. My wife's sister's boy. We took him in after her passing when he was still very young."

"Generous of you," Sephiroth commented, and I lowered my eyes when he looked at me again. I always hated when others mentioned my past and the burden I placed on my relatives, and for someone like him to point it out. It burned my soul, as if it were made of scripture paper that someone had put a candle to.

"The planet teaches us the importance of family, above all else," Ned answered. Sephiroth's reply to that was simple, vague. So it does…

"Will the lords Hewley and Rhapsodos be joining us today?" Ned asked next. I only then took notice of the fact that the man had come alone to the shop. The three had visited all of the neighbours together.

"It will be just me," Sephiroth assured, "the others had business to attend elsewhere tonight." I wondered what this meant. Were we not worth the consideration of all three of them? Was Sephiroth merely visiting our little shop as a courtesy, having already deemed it unprofitable?

These things concerned me but I was soon distracted by the sounds of more footsteps on the stairs. My aunt arrived down with Tifa and the smaller children in tow. I could see that a hasty scrub and tidy had been done on each of the children, and that Tifa and my aunt had both taken off their aprons and redone their hair.

"And this must be the family."

Sephiroth addressed their arrival as smoothly as he seemed to be in all things, his attention to my aunt making her blush. She was a pretty woman but the years had weathered her and she had never been as beautiful as her younger sister, my mother, in the first place. My mother, I'm told, was the white rose of the valley in her youth, my aunt got her fairness from her kind nature and soft intelligence. He was not being overly charming or blatantly flattering, that was never his style, but she was not used to any sort of attention from a man like him and I watched it intoxicate her.

Ned introduced the children one by one, Tifa offering an open smile and the younger children giving faint greetings, gone shy now in his presence.

I stood at the door watching it all, the wariness easing out of me as I saw how pleasant Sephiroth was being with them. He wasn't what I expected, I expected arrogance and distance, to be constantly reminded how low we were beneath him and his companions, but he wasn't like that at all. He took time to become acquainted with my uncle and was patient with the children, not seeming to be in any hurry to rush to the business side of things as the children began talking over each other to ask him questions, the timidness quickly slipping away.

"Brice Cliffty says you are touched by the Calamity my lord, and that you have natural magic. Is that true? Are you able to make thundara with your eyes?" One of the twins questioned at some point, making my aunt laugh. Tifa scowled at him and looked at me sheepishly, but Sephiroth only leaned down on one knee towards the small ones.

"Hmm, not only thundara," he said, his voice low and conspiratorial as his hair fell around his face, "ice and flames as well. But it's best I don't show you, we don't want to set the whole town on fire, do we?"

The children's eye's went wide, like a little group of moogles. I watched the movements of his great arms and back from behind and imagined him in battle, clashing against other beasts, magic swirling around him. The images came easy, the play of the muscles beneath his clothes rippling in the shop lights.

"Did you really fight in Wutia? Did they have awful monsters over there?" Another of them asked. Sephiroth answered that he had and began describing the largest monsters he'd fought, how he'd destroyed them.

"Cloud is going to become a soldier soon. He's going to learn how to fight monsters too," the second youngest girl said once he'd finished.

Sephiroth straightened up and slowly turned to look at me, as did all the others in the room. "Is that so?"

Feeling put on the spot, my throat was tight as I answered, "my position won't quiet be the same," I said, reluctantly looking away from my cousin and to the lord, "I'm hoping to get a local position," I explained.

"And I'm hoping he doesn't," aunt Ena put in, giving me a bemused smile, "there are far safer means of employment than by sword, wouldn't you agree my lord?"

Sephiroth raised a sharp brow, looking between us. "I sense I've stepped into the middle of a family dispute," he said slowly, raising his hands, "I'll decline from speaking on either side, if it's all the same."

"A strategic move," Ned said, giving the lord a small grin. Tifa sighed.

Thankfully the conversation moved away from me and my future then as Ned invited the other back to the office to look over the documents he'd readied for the meeting. My aunt and Tifa went upstairs to get some refreshments to bring down to the men, and I was left to herd the small ones up after them.

However, as I was walking across the shop, making to go around the counter, a sudden heat spread across my right shoulder. It was like when one presses a healing potion to their skin, the warmth penetrating the flesh and making it break out in goose bumps. I turned sharply to find Sephiroth now standing right beside me, his hand on my shoulder.

"You should be careful of those headaches," he said, is voice low and his expression odd. I remember standing there and not being able to move or say anything back to him. It felt suddenly like we were alone in the shop, that the others had all gone away. The lights seemed to dim around us, until all I could see was the vivid layers of green in his eyes, a thousand shades swirling around each other with the temperament of storm clouds. They were not like other eyes, even then I sensed that.

Sephiroth lips parted in a soft smile as I stared up at him.

"They might mean more than you think."

The spell over me was released and I nodded quickly, taking a subtle step back from him.

He inclined his head, watching me move away. "Sleep well, child."

Upstairs, I left the children sitting around the fire to chat amongst themselves and went straight on to the bedroom up in the attic, relived to have an empty room to myself and not minding that it was dark and cold, with the only source of light being the moonlight coming down through the roof window.

It made the blond hair around my face shine white as I sat on the edge of our shared bed. I let my head drop into my hands, feeling a surprisingly thick sheen of perspiration on my forehead. Beneath my clothes my skin was hot and damp as well, and the headache that had faded away in my distraction downstairs, returned all at once with a vengeful pulse, unleashing all the pressure that had accumulated in its repression.

I didn't know what was wrong with me. I felt like I was losing control of myself. Or more, I felt like parts of myself were being taken from me. My dreams, my waking hours, they all felt haunted now, my mind a toy in a child's hands.

Was it a fever? Like my mother had suffered before she died. Was I, with her same blood, susceptible to it was well? Is that why my nights had become these churning, chaotic things that I had no recollection of the next morning, why my head was pounding in the daylight as if filled with memories that wanted to burst through my skull, why I imagined threats where there were none?

Child

Tears came, fast and strong, though silent, against my hands. I let them, moving to lie on my side with my face pressed to the pillow. I was so frightened then, overwhelmed by things my young mind couldn't start to comprehend, and I wept because I thought I was going mad and dying from a human illness and it terrified me.

I think though, even then, that I knew those tears were for something else, someone else, and they were pouring like summer rain down to him as he sat there, just two wooden floors and a world below. Like the creatures hiding in the black water, waiting to take their pound of flesh.

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