Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy VII or its characters.

Rated T for mild language and the "occasional" violence.

Sephiroth and Cloud, but no yaoi whatsoever. Hints of CloudxTifa

So Near, yet so Far

Realizations

Sephiroth watched Cloud closely.

They walked side by side underneath a luxurious ceiling of tree branches. They need that the trees would disappear a little ahead, giving place to the arid lands that now surrounded Midgar. Although they walked together for many weeks and started to feel accustomed to each other's presence, the distrust that they felt was still visible. Sephiroth walked with his fingers circling Masamune's hilt, always cautious about the movements of his arch-enemy. Even with that entire story about the Goddess, he knew that a misplaced attack of fury could quickly end one's life. After he was defeated by Cloud, Sephiroth stopped underestimating his true power. It was a spontaneous power, vaguely constant or trained. A power based on the emotions and feelings of the boy; a power molded according to his mood and beliefs.

Above that, Sephiroth saw that Cloud seemed more anxious than never. After he mentioned the possible meeting with that feline creature, Cloud seemed more absent then ever, and, above everything, much more trustful about his enemy's actions.

"Where am I going to find Red?" asked the blond as they walked.

Sephiroth sighed.

"I do not know."

Cloud shrugged and replied: "You say you feel things. In our journey on the upper continent, you know the exact path and the best roads to cross the forest. I didn't know if I should base your knowledge on the memories of your past life or not. Now that it seems obvious that you can control your "feeling" and mold it for your benefice, I think that "I do not know" is an absolutely invalid answer."

"It's obvious that if I wanted to know where we will find the cat, I was able to tell you. A quite detailed report, in fact. The decisive factor here is that I don't want to know."

After finishing his sentence, Sephiroth stopped next to a tree. It was a big oak, centered by an old and large trunk. The tree bended its wide shadow above their heads. Sephiroth sat very calmly on one of the dark rocks that was pilled above the roots and said:

"We will stop here for I while." Then, he unsheathed Masamune and laid it on his knees. He took a round, fancy looking stone from the interior of his coat. It fitted perfectly in a grown man's palm, but its deep color made it look heavier than it was.

"I think I can walk for a little longer" said Cloud with his lips tightened in a determined line. Sephiroth didn't raise his gaze to the boy. He stroked the stone against the foil of his blade; the harsh sound of stone against metal echoed through the forest. He then repeated the gesture, observing the blade of his weapon with expert eyes.

"I think you cannot" he replied and stroked once again the stone against the blade. The movement became swifter and more repetitive, the object sliding from the hilt to the sharp edge of the sword. Understanding that Sephiroth didn't feel like abandoning the sharpening process of Masamune, Cloud circled the tree and sat at the opposite site of his nemesis. He leaned against the trunk of the tree and folded his arms, not knowing if he was waiting for Sephiroth to end what he was doing or if he was waiting for Red to fall on top of him in any minute.

Then an idea crossed his mind: What would Red be doing so close to Midgar if his home was at Cosmo Canyon which was very far away from that place?

He rose and circled the trunk of the tree again. Sephiroth continued his work, looking almost lovingly to his sword.

"You lied to me!" shouted Cloud. The stone stopped his way across the blade. Sephiroth met Cloud's furious gaze with a smile.

"You should have more wits. It seems you are stupid enough to believe the words of the man that most hates you on the universe."

"You are right. Hoping for a little honesty from you is only a fantasy." Said Cloud exasperatedly.

Sephiroth put the stone away, apparently satisfied with his work. He grabbed the sword and balanced it on the top of his hand, right next to the hilt. Then he positioned himself in an attack stance and cut through the air with the blade. After that he sat, laying Masamune on his lap and leaning against the oak. He looked at Cloud with curiosity. Not so long ago he wouldn't dare to sit calmly atop a rock while his enemy pierced him with mortal indignation. However, the situation had changed completely.

"You aren't hoping for us to become partners, are you?"

"That's what the Goddess' expects from us. That was the opportunity she gave us in order to live this second life. That's why she made us dependent of each other. She certainly waits some kind of alliance between us."

Sephiroth looked at the trees, evaluating the boy's words. Cloud was right, in a certain way. Even if it was morally repulsing, the Goddess was probably waiting for some kind of partnership between them. Then she was a fool of a Goddess! Was it possible to wait for a mutual hatred to become something merely and remotely related to friendship? When Sephiroth looked at Cloud, he could only feel deep despise and blind hate. That boy, so untalented in the arts of magic and battle, without any kind of battle intelligence, had stopped him of becoming a God! Within, Sephiroth thanked his telltale inner composure, with which he could control the quivering loathing that assaulted his heart from time to time.

"I am going to take a stroll." He rose and without facing Cloud, buried himself in the depths of the forest.

In the moment, he was walking around randomly. The forest was raised in patterns of green and brown, symmetrical everywhere, like a perfect pattern of life in nature. Sephiroth faced forward, his mind reaching some world or dimension where he was allowed to think more clearly. While he was thinking, his mind dropped in some abyss where he considered wise to kill Cloud, quenching his thirst for revenge and also finish his own life. After all, what they were offering him in that new life was some pathetic excuse to compensate the world of the damage he had caused. Unfortunately, Sephiroth had no intention in undoing what he had done, making that new existence only useful to attend to matters that called more revenge and destruction. Falling in an even more deep abyss of his mind, he could distinguish the clear voice of his mother within his head. Jenova, clearly alluring, filling up his heart of desire of power, Godhood and wisdom. Jenova, that promised him so much in life and was able to show him a way through the darkness in order to achieve his wishes and final goal.

Sephiroth felt a disturbance around him. Stopping on his tracks, he knelt beside a tree and observed the footprints marked on the dirt. The foot was clearly human, but much smaller than his or Cloud's. It had distinct horizontal marks, like the footprint of a mountain boot. He looked around but saw no movement in the bushes or in the trees. The hiding person was good at doing it, considerably talented in remaining quiet and unmoving. But silence and immobility weren't the only main factor of stealth. The trespasser forgot a very strong one: the smell.

Following the trace of the wind, Sephiroth followed a vanilla perfume (For Pride's sake, who would use such a thing?), until he was five foot away from a group of brushes. He detected a little movement in the leaves and in a quick fraction of movement, unsheathed Masamune and touched the man's neck with its blade. He heard a loud gasp

"Please, let me live! Please..." beneath the bushes and an alarmed ruffle of branches and leaves. And then the man was on the ground, covering his face with his arms and begging for dear life.

Surprisingly, Sephiroth found out that he was not threatening a man; in place of the mysterious master thief that he expected was a girl. She was young and skinny and her hair had been cut off right below her ears. She was wearing a pair of shorts and a black tank top trimmed with white flowers. She was wearing the mountain boots that the general indentified on the mud. On the belt that circled her hips hanged various types of knifes. Strapped to her back was a weapon that Sephiroth saw regularly in the war against Wutai. The girl seemed suddenly familiar, although he couldn't remind their meeting. He pushed Masamune's blade harder against her neck, winning back a whining on a hysterical voice.

Before Sephiroth was able to answer back, he heard a ruffle behind him and Cloud rushed into the scene. When the boy's eyes descended in the girl's direction, a mask of surprise covered his face.

"Yuffie!"

Yuffie?, Sephiroth repeated the name in his head, trying to remember where he could have had meet such a creature. He could still feel the unbearable smell of vanilla in the air. It seemed like the young girl had bathed in a tub of perfume.

Cloud knelt and leaned on the girl. With a frown, Sephiroth sheathed the sword, analyzing the scene. After all, the puppet had met that despicable little brat. Their friendship was visible in the blonds' worrying and surprising look, as he helped her getting up. Feeling that he didn't belong in that place, Sephiroth stepped back and patiently waited for the conclusion of the situation, wondering if would be better for him to go back to the oak.

"I am more miserable than I can recall in a long time!" the girl spat. When she faced Sephiroth, however, a scared look crossed her features. She turned back to Cloud and shouted: "You should be dead! Everyone thought you were dead!" she unstrapped her weapon off her back and pointed it towards Sephiroth "And you! You also should be dead! What are you doing here? You bastard!"

Sephiroth's eyebrows rose in surprise. That silly little creature just called him a bastard?

When Yuffie seemed to try to attack Sephiroth, Cloud placed himself in the middle of the two. The girl stopped right in time and looked at Cloud with an astonished face.

"Cloud! What are you doing? I don't understand what's happening! What is this all about? Why is he alive? Why are you alive? Why are you protecting him? And why are you here? We thought you were dead for about two years!"

Sephiroth saw something changing in Cloud's face at the sound of two years.

"Has it been two years already?" Cloud asked, feeling puzzled. Then he faced Sephiroth. "It didn't seem like two years. It seemed like we wake up here right after… you know what."

The silver-haired man didn't answer. For him, two years were a very short and insignificant piece of time. In his life, two years didn't seem to make such a different, not after he was killed by Cloud in the Northern Crater. Suddenly Sephiroth thought if he and Cloud were aging in that moment. Some of the impacts of their pact with the Goddess were still unknown, after all. What if they were now immortal and were conserving their bodies forever? What if the time, for both of them, had stopped?

"What's happening here?" Yuffie's surprised look had been replaced by one of fear. Her eyes shone in a sinister way, as if she thought that their meeting was something unreal. "Oh my God. I'm dead, aren't I? And you are here because you should also be dead. That's it, it makes sense. You aren't even attacking each other. I am dead, that's it! I was killed for stealing the materia from that stupid guy back in Midgar! He followed and stabbed me in my sleep."

Cloud rubbed his face, trying to maintain his posture. He lowered his hand to Yuffie's shoulder to calm her down. His words sounded tender, even if a little disturbed:

"Yuffie, you are not dead. You are alive. Me... and Sephiroth are back from a kind of 'world of the dead'. It's a long story."

Yuffie seemed even scared after hearing those words. She backed away to the bushed where she had been and knelt, covering her face with her hands. After that, she started babbling something, where the words "Wake up… wake up!" were pretty recurrent. Seeing this, Cloud crouched beside her and circled her thin shoulders with his arms. She sobbed underneath his embrace, completely desolated due to the events. She probably thought she had gone mad. Sephiroth watched the scene relatively calm, even if his fingers were tense touching Masamune once in a while. He now remembered that girl and her weapon: a shruiken. She, just like Cloud and the rest of the crew, challenged him in his final battle and stripped him off of his most powerful form, with which he thought he was able to achieve Godhood. The realization of that fact made Sephiroth suddenly alert; the girl, even though she looked fragile, was certainly power or she would be unable to reach the dark depths of the Northern Crater. Nonetheless, he had already been surprised by the incarnation of power in a weak body. That thought made trembling images of the Cetran girl flash though his mind.

"Yuffie..." Cloud seemed truly concerned about his friend's well being. That honestly annoyed Sephiroth. He was finding out that the boy was still a mystery to him, even if he looked really shallow on the outside.

"Why don't you attack him, Cloud? Why is he alive? We fought so hard to defeat him and there you are, sitting on your butt. He's right there, goddamn!"

She has a sharp tongue as well, thought Sephiroth, rather amusingly.

"I cannot kill Sephiroth" the boy said. Then he added, quite loudly "Although I'd like to. Yuffie, you may not believe this, but… do you remember the story about the Promised Land? We were there. Me and him. And do you know the legend about the Goddess? She was there."

Yuffie looked blankly at Cloud.

"Yuffie, you may think this isn't true, but it is. For an unknown reason, the Goddess gave me and Sephiroth another life. She said we aren't still done in this planet. She says we have something else to do."

"Why don't you kill him?" Yuffie's fixation in killing Sephiroth was obvious.

"I cannot. In a way, he's part of me now."

The girl looked at him blankly once more. Sephiroth sighed and stepped forward. Yuffie backed away immediately, falling backwards and supporting herself with her elbows. Cloud looked menacingly at Sephiroth and grabbed the girl's arm in an attempt to protect her. Sephiroth sighed once more and touched her trembling foot with his, trying to figure out the best words. After all, he was never able to handle children.

"If you kill me, Cloud dies." He said simply. Seeing that his sentence made no impact in the girl's knowledge, he added. "The Goddess made a pact with us. If Cloud is ever harmed or killed, I will die in consequence. If Cloud kills me, he dies in consequence. It's as simple as that."

Yuffie's mouth was dramatically ajar.

"That's bullshit." She added and got up, sweeping the dust and dirt out of her shorts. A vision of pride possessed her features and the weak look that she portrayed minutes ago was replaced by a cold cockiness and arrogance. She looked at Sephiroth at the top of her nose, evaluating him. Once again, the ex-general raised one eyebrow at her annoying personality. And the stench of vanilla for pride's sake!

"I have been stealing for a while, actually" she said, walking around Cloud. "I don't want to get back to Wutai. I found out that I prefer the life here on the continent. There's more materia here. And Tifa lodges me on Midgar so I guess there's no problem with that."

"Tifa is in Midgar?" Cloud's hopes rose to an incredible level. His face became brighter and his eyes more vivid. Sephiroth also wondered about that. Was love, what the boy felt about that girl? If so, why did his face change every time he heard her name? Once again, Cloud's whole existence was a mystery to Sephiroth.

"Yes, she's in Midgar. I mean, not in Midgar. In Midgar's Edge. After Midgar was destroyed the citizens had to build provisory homes for them around the debris of the city. Tifa bought a nice cozy house and rebuild 7th Heaven. She's quite happy with her life now."

Cloud looked at the ground and said: "I have something very important to tell Tifa. You have to take me to her."

"Actually, I don't think that's a good idea." The teenager said, folding her arms stubbornly. "I think she's not prepared to see-"

"I don't care if she's prepared or not. I have to talk to her. There are so many things I wanted to tell her but I left unspoken. If she thought I was dead, she has the right to know that I am not. Even if it's shocking for everyone, I am not dead. I came back to do what's right and to stop avoiding my life."

Sephiroth rolled his eyes. He had an immense list of sarcastic and ironic comments to make, but right now, he preferred to watch that amusing show and save the comments for later. After all, if his theory about their bodies being immortal was right, then he would have all the time in the world to make them.

At least if none of them got tired of living.

A/N: Thank you for reading! This one was fun to write. You thought I was going to put Red in this chapter, huh?

As always, review :)