Hey, all. I didn't plan to update this soon, especially since the writing is still slow-going, but what the heck. 'Tis the beginning of the holiday season, after all. Hope you're all having a good one.

Thank you so much for all the reviews, guys. I was very hesitant about sequeling 'Madness', if I could do justice to the original, etc., but you've been very encouraging. I hope I don't disappoint.

To those who have asked for clarification about my non-fanfic book, there's a link in my profile that will take you to an FAQ and ordering info. Just click on my name on this page to get to my profile page and scroll down a bit.

Don't own, don't mean to infringe, still don't know if this is a good idea. Onward...

"If we are particles in a sea of distance, exploded from an original
whole, then there is a science to our solitude. We are lonely in
proportion to our years."
- The Rule Of Four, Caldwell and Thompson

THE MEASURE OF MAN
Chapter Two - Loving Alone

White, all pure white and life-colored green is the world that shelters me. Here I can remember the happiest moments of my life with Angeal and with Him, and remember my crimes with no judgment but my own. I condemned myself more harshly than She ever would have alone. When the Dark Ones revived me and offered me a chance to return to life on the planet, a great part of me wanted to. Deep within Jenova's coils somewhere was He, and I thought perhaps I could find Him.

But I was not fooled by the Dark Ones, or by their immaculate leader. When I emerge, it will be to protect Gaia, not destroy her under some vain pretense of purifying. I don't care about Omega, or its squire Chaos that the red-cloaked man carries inside him. I made my apologies, once, to my dearest friends through the ones each loved most, and I believe they were accepted. But I have yet to truly make amends, and that is what matters to me.

You, you strange ones that call to me, I know you, and yet I do not. We never met, but I left plenty of blood and tissue samples behind, and I know what games scientists play when you give them raw materials. I see the failed prototypes of myself float pathetically in their tubes, and I hate them, I hate the laboratory memories they stir. I would hate you too, could I not see into your hearts and find you very unlike Hollander and Hojo.

Intention matters, you see. Angeal would add that it's not the most important thing, but I disagree. Our actions are always only the very best we can muster up in any given moment. We always fall short, in our minds even if in no one else's. Intentions can be perfect, while we - child-things that we are - never can.

I will listen a little longer to your hurried steps and your talk of samples and rejection before I decide what to do. You may be allies in my struggle or enemies to be dealt with, I don't know yet. But ultimately...

Nothing shall prevent my return.

scscscsc

"Are you sensing something?"

"Hmm? No."

"You look far away."

"I just know that one of these days, Zack is gonna show up, and I'm hoping he won't do it here."

Rufus laughed, a slow, lazy sound. He never laughed in public, probably due to early training by his father, but here in their bed, all politician shields could be lowered. He pulled Reno off the adjacent pillow and closer, until their foreheads touched and strands of their hair mingled, blond-red into red.

"Have you seen Zack?"

"No. Cloud does, though."

"Did he tell you that?"

"No." Reno knew he didn't need to explain further.

"Let me know when you do, so I can apologize to him on behalf of ShinRa."

Reno closed his eyes. "They went through such hell, those two. In that lab."

Eyes still shut, Reno let himself be drawn closer, and pressed his face to the warmth of Rufus's bare shoulder. The smell and skin awoke arousal in him, and their legs intertwined and Rufus's hand traveled south, halting to cup and massage flesh that quickened in his fingers. Reno opened his eyes long enough to stare into Rufus's - grayish, melting-blue ice - and let them fall closed again for a long, slow kiss.

"But they survived. Just like you survived."

"It's not always a choice. Not a conscious one, at least."

Rufus wasn't sure what that meant, so he concentrated on letting his mouth drift lower, kissing tension out of Reno's body bit by bit as he went. By the time he reached the flat belly, Reno's legs had opened - an invitation, and the president took it. They were no longer the fumbling teenagers they used to be, Rufus knew exactly how to engulf Reno with his mouth. Patiently, inch by inch, pausing to trace the line of a vein with his tongue or probe the wet slit.

The Turk's breathing sped up, his pale chest heaved, and with both hands he fisted the expensive sheets. Rufus, without stopping, pried his fingers off the fabric and placed the hands on his bobbing head. He always had to remind Reno that it was okay to touch him while doing this. They both had old habits that weren't easy to break. But Reno had learned to enjoy it, that was all that mattered right now.

When it was finished, when he had drunk and licked away every drop, Reno scooted down to meet him. With a wounded expression, he gently cupped Rufus's face in his cool hands, and the president was about to ask if he was okay when Reno spoke.

"It happened today, in the lab."

"It worked?"

"No. The vision came after I stopped trying." Reno stopped short here, then went hesitantly on after Rufus's hands covered his own and squeezed them. "I don't remember it too well...but I know it was Sephiroth."

"Sephiroth." For a moment Rufus remembered Kadaj, and the few moments he had actually pitied the boy.

"He's gonna come back."

It wasn't really such a surprise. Sephiroth had resurrected before, after all, but having Reno say it with such certainty made the president's jaw clench. So many had worked so hard, and were working still, to undo the damage Sephiroth had wrought, but he would only come again and make all their struggles worthless. A sense of helplessness crept up inside Rufus, the feeling he hated most.

"Do you know when, or how?"

"No, I just feel him getting closer. He's drawn to Strife." Reno sighed quietly and made an all too familiar expression, one of pain that belonged to someone else. "They're connected. In death, life, it doesn't matter. He might not be conscious of it, but Cloud keeps pulling him back to this world. And I don't know if Strife can ever really beat him. There might never be an end to this."

"We'll find one. We'll make one."

"Poor Cloud," Reno whispered. "As long as he chooses to live, he'll never be free."

Rufus wrapped his arms around Reno, pulled him as close as two bodies could be. Reno pressed his face against Rufus's neck and shuddered gently against him, and the president ran his lips and fingers over the silk-softness of bright red hair. It was in moments like these that Rufus found the strength to keep trying to make amends for the wrongs ShinRa had committed. Their relationship was not known publicly, so few knew Rufus's true reason for pushing onward, no matter how many nightmares emerged and threatened Gaia. He would protect the planet with all his power, because it was the only way to protect Reno.

scscscsc

Stepping into the cave, Cloud felt like he was passing into another world, one of watery shadows and the muffled sound of underground springs. As the outside light was stripped away, Cloud's eyes went bright to compensate, from the color of sky to that of blue materia, burning from within with the fire of life. It was easy to make his way through the single passage, and not long before he reached the main chamber, which had its own source of illumination.

It was as he remembered from their brief stop here during the Meteorfall crisis. The crystalline structure grew up from the center of the floor, scattering particles of light in every direction, and the female form encased in it was unchanged. Lucrecia Crescent, Sephiroth's mother. Her features were fine and familiar...she looked like him. Damn it, she looked like him. Cloud's eyes burned but stayed dry, and though he'd known Vincent was sitting on the ground nearby he forgot about the man completely until he spoke.

"Did you come to see me, or her?"

Cloud found he couldn't answer that.

"Hmm." Vincent looked back toward the crystal structure, and in the light of it, his face was peaceful. The sight made Cloud remember what Vincent had said to him after the fight with DeepGround.

"I decided to try, Cloud. And I believe now that sins can be forgiven...if we ask."

"Has she forgiven you?"

"She never blamed me. I only needed to realize that."

"I never blamed you, not once. You came for me. That's all that matters."

Cloud shook away the memory of Aerith. "Have you forgiven yourself?"

"Hmm." Vicent smiled ruefully. "I wonder."

Cloud sat down a respectful distance from him, but close enough to feel the change in Vincent, the lesser pain that was in him. He had truly begun to forgive himself, though the process might take him the rest of his prolonged life. Cloud turned from Vincent to Lucrecia again, and a jolt of anger seized him, at himself, at her.

"Does she regret it at all? What was done to Sephiroth?"

Vincent seemed faintly surprised. "That is why she remains here. Why she will not rejoin the Lifestream."

"She should have protected him."

"She did try. Too late, perhaps, but she tried. She wasn't strong enough after he was born." A metal creak; Vincent's claw-hand had clenched. "She was never strong enough to stop Hojo, in any case."

"Is Hojo really gone now?"

"What I fought was the last remnant of his existence, I believe." I hope, was what Vincent clearly meant.

"And Omega?"

"Omega was defeated, not destroyed." Vincent placed his human hand over Death Penalty, absently stroked the cool metal. "It was put back to sleep, but it cannot be killed. It was meant to protect the planet, and to gather up all the life upon it when this world dies. DeepGround manipulated it, but Omega is not an evil thing. Cloud. Is this really what you wanted to talk about?"

"I..."

"I've sensed him too."

I'm so sorry. The spectral voice echoed quickly through the cavern and was gone. Vincent bowed his head.

"I don't think I can fight him again," Cloud whispered.

"We are always ready to aid you, Cloud."

"I can't let anyone fight him. I love him."

Cloud said it softly, but the cavernous room echoed it and made it a louder murmur, defiant or desperate, neither man knew which. Vincent looked at him without any change of expression, and it was exactly the reaction Cloud needed to blurt out what he had said aloud to no one but Zack.

"I remember now, I remember everything. I knew I'd had a stupid crush on him, but until I read Zack's journal, I didn't remember what it really was, or why it was so easy for him to control me and make me do what he wanted." A memory surfaced as he spoke, a greater understanding of why he had handed the Black Materia to Sephiroth. He hadn't realized what was in his hands, only that he wanted to reach out to his - "Obsession. I know you guys thought I was just obsessed with him, but that's not it. I was in love with him that night in Nibelheim when I attacked him with Zack's sword, and I'm in love with him now."

It hurt to say, and the saying of it didn't make the hurt less, the way words are supposed to. The emotion of the admission stayed with Cloud like a cramp in his stomach, and thank Gaia Vincent didn't react, aside from a shift of realization in his red eyes. If it had been Tifa, she would have wept, she would have hugged, and that wasn't what Cloud wanted or needed.

"Everyone is counting on me to protect the planet from him, but I..." Can't hurt him, he's been hurt enough, no matter how much he's tried to hurt me.

After a long silence, Vincent spoke deliberately. "How much of Sephiroth did you sense, when we fought him?"

"What? I don't know. Only a little. My memories were so fractured then." Cloud remembered those events, but what he remembered most about them was being confused. "What are you getting at?"

"Sephiroth was capable of things many men are not, but he was and is a human being. When we fought him, did it seem like we were fighting a human?"

"No, but he was using Jenova."

Vincent shrugged. "Or, he is being manipulated by Jenova, and has been since the burning of Nibelheim."

"That's what Zack thinks."

"And you?"

It's what I want to believe...so how could I trust it? "That's why I can't fight him. But I can't let him hurt anyone either."

"Cloud. What do you want to do?"

"It doesn't matter, it's impossible. I'd have to fight Jenova, and she only appears through him."

"It does matter."

Now Cloud felt a trickle of wetness down his cheek; he rubbed it away, thankful for the dim light. "I want to save him. At the very least, I want to tell Sephiroth, tell him directly, that I love him, and always have."

"Does he love you?"

"Yes." He did, at least.

"Then you know what you must do."

"But how?"

Vincent lay his gloved hand on the rocky ground. "You still hear them, don't you?"

"Them?"

"The cries of the planet. Exposure to mako, enough exposure, gives a creature this ability. You must hear them better than anyone ever has, except perhaps the Cetra. Cloud. Do you know what is the nature of our living, breathing world?"

Cloud said nothing.

"Its nature is to continue," Vincent softly went on. "When Meteor came from the dark of space, the Lifestream surged up against it. When the planet believed we were dying off, Omega awoke and tried to protect all of Gaia's life, even if doing so meant killing it. The planet wants to live. For every threat, it offers a solution, and Jenova is a threat."

"So, there must be a way to destroy her." Cloud understood. "And the way to start would be to take away her shield."

"Sephiroth's soul and consciousness are human things," Vincent said, looking somberly at Lucrecia. "If Sephiroth loves you, then he will remember that. His mind and spirit must be awakened, and perhaps that will be enough to detach him from Jenova."

"To free Sephiroth..." It seemed too good a thought to ever come true.

"Legend says that before Jenova wiped out the Cetra, she infected them with a terrible virus. They fought her, and they exist now in the Lifestream she's poisoned. They may have a way to free a soul from her clutches."

Cloud felt himself rise, without thought, though he didn't know yet where to go or what to do. "I have to talk to the Cetra. But I've only ever heard them, and faintly, I've never spoken back to them."

"Then, Cloud..." Vincent's red eyes shifted to him, and somehow the probing stare was gentle. "Are you going to try?"

As he said it, Cloud was already turning, putting his back to the gunman and the silently weeping woman. He headed for the yellow light of the cave entrance, already reaching out to the low murmur of voices that accompanied him everywhere. They were a soft din, a blur of too many noises all at once, gathering like a wind beneath Cloud's feet and carrying him. He didn't know where they would lead but knew he would follow, trusting them to bring him at last to Sephiroth. Cloud nearly floated on this promise, this hope, remembering the love he had once felt like a broken wave remembers the sea.

scscscsc

The tall, lanky man took down the last of the Bandersnatches with one shot of his long-barreled gun, reloading it with a deliberate swing immediately afterward. He stood still and waited for the creature to dissolve and its glowing particles disperse and fade, though his manner was more like that of a man in prayer than a hunter ensuring the death of his quarry. A hunter was what he was, a monster-killer employed by the isolated village nearby, but those who had seen him kill wondered why it saddened him, what loss in his past had made all death a grief to him.

The wolf was gone, the woods quiet, and since the sun was setting, the man set off for home. Two days travel from Modeoheim, this area was cold and forbidding year-round, every bit of its civilization isolated. A hike from the village into the forest, down the most well-tended of its paths, led to a small, cozy-looking cabin, and the sight of it was always a welcome one. The man entered, hung his gun on a stand near the door and called out a greeting.

"Hiro."

The main room's single occupant looked up from his papers and smiled. He was handsome, his features a pleasing mixture of Wutaian and Continental, and the long hair he wore in a ponytail was black and shining in the firelight. Hiromi was the son of two scholars, and thus had been well prepared for his occupation as a teacher of reading and Wutainese to the local children and adults. The hands that shuffled his papers, though, were rough, and his almond-shaped eyes slightly wary. Like his partner, Hiromi had seen battle and its horrors, though they didn't talk about that with the villagers. They rarely even spoke of it to each other.

"You made it before dark this time. Thank you."

"Like you haven't come home late a time or two."

"It's different. I get caught up in a lesson, you're off fighting fiends."

"Mostly low-level fiends," the taller man reminded, shaking snow out of his shaggy red hair.

"Mostly."

"No match for an ex-SOLDIER."

"Shut up and come eat."

"Oh, frisky tonight."

Hiromi smirked. "I meant the stew."

"I'd rather have you."

They met in front of the fireplace, arms going around each other and lips meeting with the ease and comfort of two men who had lived together for years and learned to anticipate each other. The redhead slid his hands down Hiromi's back to below the waist and squeezed just the way he liked. A willing groan answered him, but after a few moments he was gently pushed away.

"Later. Eat, you'll need your strength."

"I like the sound of that." But he willingly spooned stew into a bowl and began to eat, chewing slowly for a while and looking at the fire before he spoke again. "How did it go today?"

"The children are better behaved than the adults. I must have explained the particle 'o' to the adult group twenty times just this week. Honestly, if they're not going to pay attention, why are they bothering to learn Wutainese?"

"It's a good sign. It shows you how much more accepting people have become. When we were SOLDIERs, how many Continentals that you knew showed any interest in learning about Wutai?"

"Very few," Hiromi conceded. He pulled the cord out of his hair and it fell loose around his shoulders, momentarily causing a sort of trance in the other man. "They were more likely to mock or attack me for being Wutaian."

"I remember."

"You remember because you stood up for me, and for the others like me." Hiromi smiled, his white face warm in the firelight. "I liked you for that...among other things."

"Like my lack of gag reflex?"

"Must you make everything crude?" But Hiromi smiled again.

"I just like getting a reaction out of you. You've gone and grown up on me, you know that?"

"Neither of us are quite the frisky boys we used to be."

The redhead, having finished his stew, pensively turned the empty bowl in his hands. "What do you think happened to the ones who died young? Do they stay the same, while we change?"

It was more serious talk than was usual, but neither, somehow, thought that was odd. The evening itself felt strange, like the air was heavier and thicker, weighted down by more than the softly falling snow. There were ghosts in the space between them and all around, and some of them had names neither man willingly, easily spoke. Hiromi left his papers and came to the couch, leaning into the warmth that slipped an arm around him.

"We lose our individual selves in the Lifestream. We dissolve into a collective whole."

"What if we don't? Or even just some of us don't?"

"I don't know. What brought this on?"

"Dunno. Maybe watching so many fiends dissolve...why do you suppose humans don't do that?"

Hiromi shrugged, as much as he could in his position. "Maybe our souls are just different. Maybe human souls dissolve invisibly."

"Is that what they believe in Wutai?"

"I grew up on the continent, remember, so I don't really know. I think most of us believe the same as your people, that the Lifestream absorbs us and we become part of it, losing our earthly personalities."

"See, I don't think I can accept this," the red-haired man said lowly. "If this is all we get as separate beings, these few years on Gaia..."

"What?"

"Then what's the meaning of our lives here? Why do we have to suffer and love and everything else if it's all meaningless in the end, or if this is just some kind of test? No. I refuse to believe we just lose each other in the ether. That can't be the goal of everything we fight for and go through."

"You remind me of one of the three heroes."

"Huh?"

"When I was little, my dad used to tell me a story about three heroes who competed with each other to serve Gaia. I think he got the story from an old saga called Loveless, which only fragments are left of."

"So tell me your version."

"I don't remember too well," Hiromi said, looking up with eyes that reflected the flames. "One hero defeated the others and became the Goddess's champion. One accepted defeat and vanished. The third chose his love of another person over the Goddess, and he was happy, but he always regretted losing his closest friends."

"I'm guessing that one's me."

"Isn't it?" Hiromi felt a hot sigh of breath against his ear. "I'm not jealous."

"What? You have no reason to be."

"I know. But Zack Fair will always be the one who got away, right, Mal?"

The redhead shifted with surprise. "You heard me say that to him?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"I knew he and I weren't meant to be. It was just - "

"Impossible not to love Zack. I know, we all did, even the ones who were jealous. I miss him too, you don't have to hide it."

"I always wondered what happened to him," Malakh said softly. "If he really died when ShinRa said he did. I knew that ShinRa must have had some part in his death. I knew I couldn't serve them anymore."

"And we've been happy since we left, right?"

"I could be happy anywhere with you."

Hiromi smiled, a hint of tiredness beginning to show on his face. "I dream about him sometimes, you know. Zack. Just every now and then."

"Me too!" Malakh laughed fondly. "Whenever I do, he's always smiling and happy, like the way he was with Commander Hewley. And he lectures me for being sad and tells me not to worry about him. Is he like that in your dreams?"

"He doesn't say anything in mine, just looks happy. But then, you were much closer to him."

"Does it mean something that we have similar dreams? Instruct me with your great wisdom, Sada-sensei."

Hiromi gently poked Malakh's stomach with a slender finger and snuggled closer. "It might be nothing. But in Wutai, at least, a congruent dream between two people is a harbinger of a great change. It means something is going to happen."

"Hmm. I wonder what it will be."

Malakh Highcliff looked pensively through the darkening air, staring at nothing, and was silent for a long time.

To be continued.