Chapter 3
"Be good." Lillian Strife straightened Cloud's coat with a military precision, her face firm. "Stay safe. If anything strange happens, run to my work or the Mayor's house for help. Understand? I don't want to come home to find you hurt."
"It's fine, Ma," Cloud sighed. "He's still passed out on the sofa. You said yourself he was in rough shape last night. I bet he'll sleep the day away."
"Hn." Lillian glanced back into the house, her expression grim. "I also said that normal folk don't fix up as quickly after an injury as he did. Whatever's happening with that boy, he's not normal. You be careful around him."
"It'll be fine. He's not dangerous." The lie tasted sharp and sour on his tongue, but he forced aside the feeling. "See you tonight."
"Don't forget to do your chores." She straightened to her full height rather than fiddling with his clothes more, rolling her shoulders back proudly. "I expect a spotless house when I come home."
"Got it, Ma. I won't shirk."
She nodded her approval and headed out to work, side-stepping the truck still sitting outside their house, still out of gas from where Cloud had coasted it to a stop. He watched her leave, sighing to himself and running a hand through his hair. His fingers were cold from standing outside in the 6am chill, and before long he went back inside to the empty house.
Empty, that was, except for the still and strangely unearthly form lying still on the couch.
Cloud stared at the silver hair spilling over the sofa, and the pale hand half-curled on the floor where it had landed when it slipped off Sephiroth's chest sometime in the night. His face was passive and blank, his breathing slow. Cloud crept a little closer, wanting to watch him breathe for a moment. His face looked like it was a better color, but it was hard to tell. Even before the entire debacle he'd been bewilderingly pale—just like the man in his dreams.
Cloud shook his head at his own thoughts and turned away, walking back upstairs to work on cleaning his room—part one of his punishment. As far as punishments went, this one was relatively mild. Extra chores and a strict grounding were hardly the worst she could do. One time she'd forbidden him from leaving his room except for meals, and he'd nearly gone insane from boredom.
He cleaned his room as quietly as he could. He didn't want to be responsible for waking the strange person on their sofa. Even though he'd been the one to bring him home, he didn't trust him. He was supremely uneasy about the entire arrangement. It was made even worse by the fact that he was the one who'd made it happen in the first place.
Eventually, his room was officially cleaner than it had been in years, and he had no excuse not to get to work on the downstairs area. He moved quietly and sneakily, trying not to make too much noise as he started dusting the kitchen's less-used areas, starting as far away from Sephiroth as he could.
The moment he entered the main living area, he felt watched. The back of his neck tingled with the feeling of being observed, but every time he turned around, Sephiroth was just as limp and asleep as ever. He glanced around the rest of the room, wondering if, perhaps, the neighbor's cat had come to visit again, sneaking past his feet when he was bidding his mother goodbye.
The house was empty and quiet. If there were any mice or cats around, they were being particularly stealthy. Cloud turned back to dusting after a long while, careful to pick up the kitchen chair rather than dragging it over to the fridge. He didn't want to make that much noise, after all. The moment his eyes were back on his task, the creeping feeling of being observed returned. He turned more quickly, hoping to catch some sort of motion or indication of who was watching him. It occurred to him only after he looked to find an empty room and Sephiroth asleep on the couch once more that he might really just be paranoid.
But then, he'd considered the possibility that the dreams weren't real too. He tightened his lips, stepping off the chair and heading upstairs. He slipped quietly into his mother's room, poking around just a little bit, careful not to move anything too far out of place. He gave a soft 'aha' of victory, pulling out her small hand mirror and half-jogging downstairs again. He pretended to go back to cleaning, quietly angling the mirror over his shoulder to watch behind himself. As he wiped the dirty top of the fridge, the form on the couch in the living room stirred. Cloud caught a flicker of green as Sephiroth blinked an eye open.
"I knew it," Cloud declared in triumph, turning abruptly to face him. "You are awake! Why were you faking? Are you going to lie there all day?"
"No one's told me to get up." Sephiroth said blandly, not bothering to close his eye again, but otherwise unmoving.
"Who do you think is going to?" Cloud fiddled with the hand mirror. "Ma's at work, and I'm not your boss."
"Who woke you?" Sephiroth asked after a moment, an expression somewhere between suspicion and bewilderment on his face.
"My… Mother?" Cloud hopped carefully off the chair, pushing it back over to the table and setting down the mirror. "She always gets me up and started on my chores before she goes to work."
"Chores." Sephiroth muttered, as though he were tasting a foreign language. He sat up slowly and something in Cloud urged him to step back, as though the preteen and his stark shoulder scar posed some threat, just by sitting upright.
"Show me." The young man demanded as he rose slowly out from under the quilt.
Cloud felt inexplicably confused by how short Sephiroth was. Despite the fact that he was still significantly taller than Cloud himself. It was as if he'd expected to keep watch him rising for a few feet more than he actually had…
"You want me to show you my chores?" Cloud asked, trying to quiet the confusion within himself.
"Yes."
"Okay?" Cloud shrugged, turning into the open room behind himself and heading into the kitchen area. "You should eat breakfast first, though."
Sephiroth gave an empty shrug in return. Cloud elected to take the disinterested response as consent, and pulled his stache of sugary cereals out of the cabinet. He wasn't allowed to indulge—it was part of his punishment— but his mother had agreed that Sephiroth could have some.
"Do you like Lucky Charm," he held up the box with its hypnotic, cartoony snake mascot. "Or Cocoa Cactuars?"
"I recognize that you are speaking common, but I do not understand a word you are saying." Sephiroth replied dryly, raising an eyebrow.
By the time they got breakfast sorted out, the sun had reached its apex in the sky, burning away a little of Nibelheim's characteristic chill. Sephiroth had two empty bowls in front of him, still studying them with a bewildered look. He appeared to have liked both cereals, because he'd eaten every bite, but there was still a strange confusion about him, as though he weren't sure what to think of it. Cloud didn't get it. Most kids he knew would kill for two bowls of sugary cereal in the morning.
He shrugged it off. Sephiroth had to still be low on blood after the day before. Surely that was enough to make anyone brain-addled enough to not enjoy a sugary breakfast properly. He tried to take the bowls from the table, but Sephiroth lifted a hand to stall him, his uncanny, inhuman eyes lifting to study Cloud.
The moment they made eye contact, Cloud's stomach twisted in bewildering, incomprehensible fear. His heart stuttered into overtime, pounding inside him with a sick, twisting dread that coiled through his blood. He averted his eyes quickly, shifting away a little too quickly. He swallowed, trying to tamp down on the reaction, scolding himself silently for being silly. Only he wasn't so sure he wasn't being silly. The sharp, wet sound as Sephiroth broke the guard's neck was still fresh in his mind, a clear, ringing memory that he did not know how to avoid.
"Show me where to take them." Sephiroth insisted, seeming unaware of Cloud's intense adverse reaction.
Cloud shrugged in agreement, eagerly taking the opportunity to move away as he gestured vaguely to the sink, wandering over towards it. He heard Sephiroth's chair scrape over the floor behind him, and the clink of his spoon in the ceramic bowl as he followed. It was confusingly domestic in comparison to the memories clamboring inside Cloud's head.
"I have to do the dishes before I take you out to look around, but I wanted to wait for you to eat first."
Technically he wasn't that concerned with the work, but the moment he'd remembered the day before—or was it two days before?—he became suddenly less willing to take Sephiroth anywhere near the unsuspecting populace of Nibelheim. At least not without his mother to back him up. And she wasn't going to be home for a long time. She'd told Cloud she would be staying late to talk to her boss about picking up extra hours in order to compensate for the extra mouth to feed in her household.
The silver-haired young man gestured at Cloud to continue without bothering to say anything. Cloud sighed, casting him a sidelong glance, before demonstrating. He wondered if this was some sort of weird joke, but from the way Sephiroth was watching his every move, he got the feeling that the weirdo really did want to learn how to wash dishes. Cloud pouted to himself, wishing he could have been part of a family that could afford not to wash their own dishes. He thought with quiet longing of Tifa and her entourage.
"I understand." Sephiroth said once Cloud had cleaned two bowls.
He held out his hands expectantly, and Cloud raised an eyebrow at him. Or he tried to—He'd been practicing in the mirror, but he was pretty sure both his eyebrows still lifted together.
"You want to wash the dishes." He asked incredulously.
"This is your punishment, is it not?" Sephiroth's voice was distant—almost scathing. It grated on Cloud's nerves. "I will assist with your 'chores,' since it was assisting me that brought them upon you."
"You talk like a bad fantasy movie." Cloud replied, tilting his head in confusion, even as he moved out of the way. "But hey, if you want to wash the dishes, go for it."
"Fantasy movie…" Sephiroth muttered under his breath in what could have been derision or confusion. It was disturbingly hard to tell.
Cloud settled for ignoring him, moving on to the next item on his list and started scrubbing down their wooden table, making sure that the surface was sparkling clean. His mother had been talking for a while about re-coating it with varnish, and though he wasn't allowed to do it himself, he was responsible for getting it ready.
"Why are you afraid of me?" Sephiroth asked after a moment.
Cloud froze over the table, staring down at his surface. "I'm…" He trailed off.
"Don't say you're not." Sephiroth said blankly. Dishes clanked lightly as he set them aside to dry. "I can tell."
"You killed that man." Cloud whispered, gazing down at his dull reflection in the shining wood surface. "You threatened to kill me."
"You're the one who was going to hand me right back over to doctors." Sephiroth said, as though that were an equivalent infraction.
"You'd been shot."
"I noticed."
Cloud turned to face him, scowling in disapproval. His scowl only deepened when he found Sephiroth still washing dishes, not even bothering to look at him as they bantered. He dropped his rag on the table, crossing his arms in annoyance as Sephiroth carefully inspected the dish he was washing before deciding it wasn't good enough and wetting it to give it another scrub.
"How did you heal it?" Cloud asked sharply after a moment. "Did you have a cure on you? Or a potion?"
"No." Sephiroth cast him a bewildered look over his shoulder. "It just healed."
"Gunshots don't 'just heal.' They send people to the hospital, and sometimes they die anyhow. You read about it all the time."
"Do you?" Sephiroth asked, lifting a single eyebrow. He did it like it was the most natural thing in the world, and Cloud probably would have been envious if it could have edged past his anxiety.
"Well I do." Cloud said, deciding not to mention that it was in the detective novel series he'd been collecting over the past few years and not in the newspaper or nonfiction books. "Why didn't you need medical attention? Are you, like, undead?"
"Well I'm not dead, if that's what you mean." Sephiroth turned back to washing dishes. "And I heal that fast all the time. I'm different from the others."
"Who are the others?" Cloud asked in confusion.
"I don't know." Sephiroth responded with a shrug, setting aside the spotless dish to dry. "Everyone I suppose. I never really asked."
Cloud wanted to ask a thousand more questions, but he held them back, simply watching as Sephiroth washed every dish, most of them twice, until they were spotless and gleaming on the drying rack. Only then did he turn back to cleaning the table, refusing when Sephiroth offered to help. He was relieved when his refusal was accepted without argument, but that relief vanished as Sephiroth stepped back, standing against the wall and watching. Cloud didn't think he'd ever seen someone hold so still. It was as though someone had flicked the 'off' switch and left Sephiroth to wait until he had a task again.
"You can look around the house, you know." He said after a moment.
"I already have." Sephiroth replied.
"There's an upstairs."
"I looked while you were both sleeping."
Cloud's lip curled in mild horror, staring at Sephiroth's blank expression, looking for the joke.
"That's creepy." He commented when the young man remained stoic and unamused.
"It was expedient." Sephiroth shrugged. "And your sofa is too soft."
"The sofa? It's like a rock. I was going to offer to switch and let you have my bed for tonight so you could sleep somewhere soft."
"I think I'll stick with the sofa." Sephiroth said dryly. "If your bed is softer than that, I fear I would sink."
It could have been Cloud's imagination, but he was fairly certain that he saw Sephiroth crack a smile after saying that. He couldn't help but smile in return, despite his unease.
'I did this.' Cloud thought to himself with quiet pride as he watched Sephiroth's gaze slide around the room slowly, as though inspecting it for change.
"Are you to clean everything?" Sephiroth asked after a moment, his face returned to that empty, passive look.
"Well, yeah, I guess." Cloud said with a shrug. "Ma said 'spotless,' so…"
"Spotless?" Sephiroth repeated, his sharp eyes turning back to Cloud with skepticism. "How long is she away?"
"Until," Cloud paused, confused by the intensity of Sephiroth's look. "This evening? She usually comes home around five or so. Probably closer to six or seven tonight."
"Then we should be working rather than chatting." Sephiroth said briskly. "There is much to be done to have the house spotless."
Cloud glanced around, frowning to himself. "It looks fine." He gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Just a little dusting and ma'll be happy."
"A little dusting?" Sephiroth looked affronted at the very suggestion. "The floor is grimy, the photos on the mantlepiece need a good cleaning, the carpet is filthy, the legs of your chairs are covered in scuff marks, the inside of this sink is dingy, and that is only in the main room."
Cloud stared at him and shook his head slowly. "You're not normal in the head, are you?"
Sephiroth considered, then nodded slowly. "No." He agreed, "I'm probably not. Where do you keep your cleaning supplies?"
Cloud was helplessly swept up in the torrent of activity that followed. Sephiroth had not been joking. He seemed to take Cloud's mother's edict with the utmost seriousness, and Cloud did not dare tell him to calm down. There was something in the way Sephiroth spoke and acted and carried himself that demanded attention and respect. And Cloud was just grateful enough for his help not to argue over it.
Which was why before he knew it he was on his knees scrubbing the floor and Sephiroth was meticulously cleaning every horizontal surface in the house. They'd started out with their roles reversed, but Sephiroth had kept pausing in his scrubbing and putting a hand to his shoulder, pressing against where he'd been shot as though trying to force it back to working as it ought to.
Cloud had volunteered to switch after the third time Sephiroth repeated the motion. The flickers of pain on the other boy's face had driven him to empathy, and he'd realized after he shook it off a third time that he would never mention it aloud, and would probably end up hurting himself. And he was absolutely certain that his mother would never forgive him.
By the time Sephiroth was satisfied, the sun was already low in the sky, and Cloud was too tired and sore to even remember his reservations about taking him outside. But one thing was for certain—Their little house was spotless.
In retrospect, Cloud suspected he should have been less worried about whether Nibelheim was ready for Sephiroth, and more worried about the reverse. As strange as everything had seemed to be to the silver-haired teenager inside their house, once they stepped outside he appeared even more uncertain. If he'd touched the quilt with confused tenderness, he stepped on the grass as though he thought it would pierce through his borrowed shoes and stab into his feet.
Cloud watched him from the drive with a raised eyebrow, glad their grass was as short and measly as it was. It would have been a pity for Sephiroth to refuse to walk over it at all.
"It's just grass." Cloud said, wrinkling his nose. "I know there's not a lot of it in Midgar, but geeze."
"I know." Sephiroth snapped in a frustrated tone.
Cloud lifted his eyebrows as the other boy stalked past him, scowling at his back. There was something strange about the way Sephiroth had said it. It sounded like the belligerent tone of voice Cloud himself had used when the other kids cruelly corrected his knowledge of the stickball game they'd been playing—the tone of voice he used when he hadn't known something, and he hated that he hadn't.
He shrugged to himself, following Sephiroth into the town streets. For a moment, he thought he would lose track of Sephiroth, even with his imposing height and the readily identifiable black hat on his head, hiding his distinctive and unnatural hair. The teen walked very fast. Cloud started jogging to keep up, but soon found that there was no real need. Sephiroth had stopped dead not far away, glancing around the town square uncertainly.
"Don't look so weird about it." Cloud muttered. "I know it's small, but it's not that bad."
Inwardly, he was cringing. It really was that bad, now that he'd seen other places to compare it to. Midgar was such a thriving metropolis, and this place was such a… Cloud struggled mentally for a word backwater enough to describe his hometown.
"There are people everywhere." Sephiroth said blankly, as though the observation was something shocking.
"Not really." Cloud glanced around at the three or four townsfolk still chatting on the streets. "Almost all the young people move away from town as soon as they can. So it's all just old people and kids. I know I'm going to leave town as soon as I can."
Sephiroth looked at him in confusion before turning back to flicking his gaze around the city. He shied back when the stray yellow dog who hung around the square wandered over to say hello. Cloud shot Sephiroth a confused glance, bending down to pet the young dog on the head.
"You don't get out much, do you." He said dryly.
The dog barked happily, as though trying to reply for Sephiroth. The young man studied it from under the low brim of his stolen hat, eyes narrowed at the dog, before he turned away, walking towards the forest.
"Wow, he's a real charmer, huh." Cloud muttered to the mutt, ruffling its ears before following Sephiroth.
The dog barked mildly at his back, but didn't seem inclined to follow.
"Where are you going?"
Sephiroth didn't respond. He walked swiftly and with purpose, but Cloud knew the woods around town better than anyone. Sephiroth was headed straight for a sheer cliff face that marked the beginning of one of the many mountains that surrounded them. He let the silver-haired boy pull ahead, taking his time and meandering through the woods rather than trying to keep pace with him. It was pretty nice, actually, to have a second to breathe out from under that sharp green gaze.
He caught up to find Sephiroth staring up at the slab of stone rising up out of the ground with a fixated expression on his face.
"You don't like dogs?" Cloud guessed after a moment, sauntering up beside him and looking up the mountain as well.
"I don't like people." Sephiroth replied blankly.
"Oh," Cloud stopped in his tracks, dropping his hands to his side from where they'd been hooked relaxedly in his jeans. "Sorry. Let's go home then. I'll stop pestering you."
Sephiroth turned to look at him, giving a slow blink. "You misunderstand. I like you. I do not like people."
"I'm a person too, you know." Cloud muttered, crossing his arms.
"You are different." Sephiroth said, turning back to studying the sky. "I know you."
"Yeah, about that," Cloud said after a moment. "Any idea how that is even remotely possible?"
"None at all." Sephiroth whispered, tilting his chin down and looking at his hands. "But I know you. I have been waiting for you all along."
"Is that why you just melted the wall like it was normal?" Cloud asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I had postulated it would work for some time." Sephiroth said with a small shrug. "It was somewhat exciting to finally test my theory."
"How'd you do it?" Cloud asked in a whisper. "Materia?"
"I don't need it for that." Sephiroth scoffed.
"Can I see?" Cloud asked, glancing behind them at the empty woods before returning his gaze to his...He hesitated to think of him as a friend, and abandoned the line of thought entirely.
Sephiroth looked over at him once more, his gaze assessing and his brows lowered. He slid his eyes from Cloud's face to his feet and back, then turned towards the cliff face.
"Will you run away?" He asked, his voice low.
"No." Cloud replied, his voice firm. "I'll stay."
"Then yes," Sephiroth replied, lifting his hand slowly palm-out towards the rocks. "You may see."
Nothing prepared Cloud for the backlash of heat that followed the words. He lifted his arms to shield his face, but not before he saw the gout of flame burst forth from Sephiroth's hand. There was a concussive blast of sound, then the cracking, crumbling noise of stone crumbing to the ground.
When he finally lowered his elbow from covering his eyes, the stone was glowing molten red. Some of it appeared to have melted at the base, as though Sephiroth had turned the stone to lava. Cloud only remembered to breathe when Sephiroth turned to him with expectant eyes, awaiting a reply.
"That's amazing." Cloud whispered. "Did the people at that place know you could do that?"
"Yes." He said blankly.
"It was pretty dumb of them to keep you in a glass cage, then."
Sephiroth considered, tilting his head. "I always thought it was a show of trust that I would not try to leave."
"What were they doing there?" Cloud asked after a moment. "Why... Why did that guard attack like that? He wasn't trying to protect you."
Sephiroth's face had gone blank at the line of inquiry. He stared at Cloud a long moment, his green eyes piercing, his white hair glinting gold as the late-day sunlight broke through the trees. Then he turned, looking up towards the mountains.
"What's up there?" He asked blankly rather than replying.
Cloud recognized danger in his tone and cleared his throat awkwardly, letting the subject pass as he stepped up beside the teen. "Just the old reactor. No one goes up there anymore."
"Do you know the way?"
"I guess." Cloud shrugged. "It's pretty dangerous, though. Shinra abandoned the place. The old mansion too. That's why the town's so run down. Everyone left with the Shinra."
"Take me there." Sephiroth insisted.
"I don't think so. Did you miss the 'dangerous' part? Plus, my mom will be home soon. And if we're not within eyesight when she gets there, I'll be scrubbing floors and doing dishes till I'm 18."
"Tomorrow then. When it's light."
"Again, seriously, it's dangerous."
"Then I'll protect you."
Cloud stared at the serious look on Sephiroth's face, then shook his head at him with a sigh.
"I'll take you to the mansion to look around." He said after a moment. "You'll like it. No people. But the reactor's hard to get to, and I know you're all healed up, but I'm still exhausted and sore. Rain check."
Sephiroth glanced upwards, then looked back to Cloud with a frown.
"It is not raining." He said firmly.
"Let's just go home. Ma'll be worried if she gets there and we're nowhere to be found."
Sephiroth cast another long look up towards the reactor, then slowly turned back to Cloud and nodded. Cloud looked at him a long moment, watching the play of shadow and light over the impassive face before him.
"Thanks." He said eventually. "For helping with the house. It looks really good."
"You said she wished it to be spotless." Sephiroth replied after a long moment. "I did not want…"
He trailed off, his eyes flickering over Cloud, until they wound up fixed on the dangling ends of cuffs still attached to his wrists. Cloud slid his hands into his pockets in response to the scrutiny.
"I did not want you to be harmed because of me once more." Sephiroth said after a long moment.
"You're the one who got really hurt." Cloud muttered.
"You shouldn't have come so young."
"I couldn't wait any longer."
They locked eyes again, Cloud gazing up at Sephiroth almost shyly this time, thinking of his nightmares, and of the urgency. Sephiroth's eyes looked almost peaceful compared to their usual biting intensity. Then his lips turned slowly upwards into a cautious shadow of a smile. Cloud smiled back, and gave a slow nod.
"Cloud!" Called his mother's voice, distant but clear.
"Ah shit." Cloud muttered to himself, turning away from the shared moment to sprint for home.
Behind him, a pair of footsteps followed in what sounded like a lazy jog. This time Cloud's skin didn't crawl with the other boy at his back.
That night, when his mother was struggling with the bolt cutters she'd pulled out of his father's largely unused shed, he didn't flinch at all when Sephiroth offered a hand. The cutters sheared neatly through the cuffs on his wrists with his mother's fingers guiding their positioning and Sephiroth's strength ensuring that they were nothing but precise.
Cloud put the broken handcuffs on his bedside table, and never threw them out.
