A Matter of Control
Chapter 1
In the dark, silent room, time was stagnant. Sephiroth stared at the unchanging view without seeing, unsure how many hours or days or weeks had passed since his captor had left, or even if he was awake.
At one point he had dreamed. He was still sealed in the Mako cocoon and Mother caressed his mind fondly, speaking to him of godhood. Her "voice" changed at some point, surrounding him with warm totality, an almost-real sound that some dissociated part of his mind instinctively recognized as a lullaby.
Suddenly finding himself once more in the darkness of the crypt, the absence of Mother's touch in his mind had been an intense, almost physical pain. He had screamed then, long and hard, but his voice did not reach even his own ears.
When Cloud returned, an immeasurable time later, Sephiroth glared at him with magnified hatred; this was the one who was responsible for Mother's death.
Cloud Strife was the one who had taken away the only being who had ever loved him.
Sephiroth tried to attack Cloud's mind through the link the Jenova cells had allowed him to forge with the younger man long ago; he hit a wall of resistance and set about to batter it down, as he had every other time. Cloud continued walking across the room as if he hadn't even noticed the assault. He stopped in front of Sephiroth and, lightning-fast, the blond's right hand grabbed and smashed the former general's head back against the wall, leaving his captive dazed with pain as he turned away. Even as he'd attacked Sephiroth, Cloud's expression had never changed.
Cloud sat on one of the closed coffins, laying the plate he was carrying in his lap; he picked up one of the two sandwiches on it and ate slowly, not sparing a glance at his captive as he did so. He finished the first sandwich and picked the second up, set the plate aside, walked over to Sephiroth, and held the sandwich close enough that the man could easily take a bite of it. Sephiroth just glared murderously at his captor. After about a full minute Cloud turned away, retrieved the plate, and walked back out of the crypt.
Time crawled by and slowly the pain in Sephiroth's head abated.
Cloud returned twice more, each after a long absence that could well have been an entire day, before Sephiroth gave in and grudgingly ate from his captor's hand, though he tried to bite Cloud's fingers any time they came close enough to his mouth in an act of stubborn spite so petty that it would have made him cringe to even consider it under any other circumstances.
It was humiliating, and made even more galling by Strife's complete lack of emotion. At the very least the man should have displayed some kind of satisfaction at having utterly defeated his nemesis, some indication that his actions were motivated by the simple desire for revenge or superiority; that, Sephiroth could have understood and ultimately defeated.
Sephiroth awoke at the sound of the door opening and closing, and glared as Cloud strode across the room. The glare turned to ill-concealed surprise when the blond knelt and started to unlock the rings that kept Sephiroth's feet flat to the floor.
The instant Cloud released the second ring Sephiroth aimed a crushing kick at the blond head, but his captor caught the ankle easily, without even flinching, and smashed it back against the wall. Sephiroth's heel connected with the stone with force that would have shattered bone had he been human.
Cloud stood smoothly and unlocked the cuff around Sephiroth's right wrist, grabbing it and repeating what he had done with the white-haired man's foot when Sephiroth made a grab for the younger man's throat. When Cloud unfastened the left wrist, Sephiroth just let it drop.
The blonde hooked two fingers of his left hand, which Sephiroth now noticed was covered in a silver glove, around Sephiroth's collar and pulled him away from the wall. Sephiroth's body felt weighted, slow and clumsy, and he realized that spells had been cast on him at some point; ones he would have been immune to if Mother had still been alive.
Cloud continued to drag Sephiroth out of the room by his collar.
Sephiroth realized where they were the moment they stepped out of the crypt: the basement of the Shin-Ra mansion in Nibelheim. Cloud tugged him toward the stairs and Sephiroth took the opportunity to try to attack the smaller man from behind, but the spells had slowed and weakened him greatly and in the blink of an eye Cloud had him up against the wall by the throat with one hand while the other delivered a sharp blow to the white-haired man's solar plexus. Not giving the former general time to recover his breath, the blond dragged him up the stairs.
Cloud led Sephiroth into a bathroom and then let go of the collar, shut the door behind them, and leaned against it nonchalantly, crossing his arms over his chest. The expectation was obvious, and Sephiroth was even more irritated by the accuracy with which Strife had anticipated his needs. Sephiroth's eyes widened as the implication sank in and then he glared at Cloud, who met his eyes evenly, without even a hint of smugness. The bastard had somehow managed to take control of their psychic link!
Sephiroth once again tried to attack Cloud's mind and he barely registered the counter attack before he was on his knees on the bathroom floor, clutching his head in agony. The taste of blood was in his mouth and the white-haired man pressed the fingers of one hand under his nose; they came away crimson.
Cloud had not moved from the door, his posture had not changed; even his expression was the same. The attack that had sent Sephiroth to his knees had been entirely psychic.
Glowering, Sephiroth wiped the blood away and got back to his feet. Cloud continued to regard him inscrutably; his face may as well have been carved from marble for all that it changed expression. Sephiroth imagined Cloud's face shattering from a blow of the general's fist as though it were in fact a mask of stone, blood pouring out between the cracks. The image pleased him and he momentarily considered sharing it with his captor, but decided that would be even pettier than trying to bite the little bastard's fingers had been.
Sephiroth looked away from his jailer as he relieved himself. After he'd finished he cast a look at the bathtub, he was grimy and that state stung his pride, but Cloud immediately seized his collar and dragged him back out of the bathroom.
As they reached the stairs to the basement Sephiroth once again tried to attack Cloud from behind; this time he succeeded in landing a blow that pushed the blond down the hole in the center of the spiral staircase. Before Cloud had even hit the ground below, Sephiroth was out of the room at a full run, but he didn't even reach the intersecting hallway before he was tackled to the ground. His face connected with the floor and hands grabbed his wrists as a knee pressed down firmly on his spine between his shoulder blades. After a moment one hand released the wrist it was holding, but before Sephiroth could take advantage of the fact he felt light pressure on the back his collar and the world went dark.
When he awoke, Sephiroth found himself chained to the wall once more; Cloud was nowhere in sight.
Sephiroth's nose ached from his forehead and around his eyes and inside ears all the way down to his top front teeth, as if every bone had shifted just slightly out of position. He couldn't breathe through it because of the combination of swelling and crusted blood, but he was fairly sure it wasn't broken; he'd broken his nose once before in training many years ago and this wasn't quite as bad. He certainly had a concussion by now though.
If Mother were still alive these injuries would be nothing; she would direct her cells to repair him in no time; she would make him immune to the spells that held him and give him all the strength he needed to tear out of these restraints and this room and then he'd find that fucking puppet and snap his neck like kindling.
That silver glove was the main problem, Sephiroth now understood. Somehow it was what Strife was using to activate spells without needing time to charge the Materia; though where the Materia were located was still unknown since there didn't appear to be any attached to the glove itself. The collar perhaps? Yes, probably. They were certainly located on him; and thinking of it, he could feel a subtle but steady drain on his MP; not enough to ever deplete it under the current circumstances, but enough that he noticed now that he was paying attention. He would have to verify it as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
Another issue was Strife's newfound psychic capability. Sephiroth had been able to control the youth through the Jenova cells that Hojo had injected into him, and the link was still there, even though Mother's consciousness was dead and her remaining cells were inactive. Strife had learned to use that link to read Sephiroth, and could attack him through it.
A fragment surfaced from the fracture in Sephiroth's memory: an endless black field where only he and his nemesis existed; unable to react in the face of resolute sapphire eyes as the blows rained down, shattering his astral self and the hold he held over the younger man.
So, Cloud's dominance of the link was not quite as new as he'd originally thought.
The next time Cloud came to take Sephiroth to the bathroom, the former general was grudgingly obedient. Once he had relieved himself, Sephiroth turned to his captor, expecting to be led away. The blond didn't move.
After a minute, Sephiroth slowly turned to the bathtub and reached for the handle; he started to glance back at his jailer, then cursed himself for his own uncertainty and gave the knob a sharp twist. The silver-haired man adjusted the water so that it was somewhat hotter than he normally liked it, to scald away the dirty feeling that went far beneath his skin, and pulled the tab to redirect the water to the showerhead.
Now he looked back. Cloud still hadn't moved from his position or changed expression.
Sephiroth shucked off the cloth pants and stepped under the spray, refusing to sigh or in any other way show his relief and pleasure. There was no curtain; the showerhead had been angled toward the tile wall to prevent more than a very fine mist from hitting the floor, so Sephiroth adjusted the head, both so that he'd get a better spray himself and so that the floor would most undoubtedly be soaked before he was done. He paused for a moment as the thought came to him that maybe Strife would cancel his showering privileges for that. But Cloud didn't react and Sephiroth felt relief wash over him, followed immediately by disgust at his own relief.
The fact that something as basic as washing himself had been made into a reward for good behavior revolted the former general, even more because he couldn't deny that finally being allowed to shower after Mother-knows-how-long felt like nothing short of absolute heaven. If he wanted to be clean, he would have to obey...
He added this indignity to his mental list of reasons to make his captor's inevitable messy and painful execution last as long as possible.
As he washed himself he made a point of running his fingers over the collar, confirming the presence of Materia-sized bulges; he was not able to so much as touch their power, however, not that he had really expected to.
He would bide his time. Eventually, Strife would slip up and present him with an opportunity.
A/N: Chapter 2 may be a while coming; I've only written one page of it so far.