Author's Note: Holy screaming plot dump, Batman. This chapter is latelatelate because 1.) Real Life has been kicking my butt a bit, and 2.) I had to cut it early to keep from letting it turn into a 30-page overwhelming monster. So...those of you who remember getting out of Mideel and off into other things by the end of Chapter Four in the original? Sorry, still there. We'll get out next week. Hopefully. Also please note that a violence warning is especially necessary for this chapter, and the one to follow.

IV: Hold Back the Lightning

Mideel was like a village at war.

Vie was only eleven, and small for her age, but determined to help in whatever way she could. She and those few other young children in the village ran buckets back and forth for the water line until they'd done all they could for those houses closest to the sea. After that she helped her sister shovel dirt onto the smaller fires, smothering them where they could, throwing wet sheets and curtains over others to drown them, stamping out patches with boots too big for her feet.

All anyone knew, at first, was that the fire started in Jarom's bathhouse. Some claimed that it wasn't a surprise—all those materia shards were too much for one man to tend, they said, it had only been a matter of time before things went out of control and ruined them all.

Then they saw him.

Eyes burning green and sword drawn, the young man they'd known as Cloud Strife carved a swath of destruction through the village as wide as his oversized blade would allow. Vie saw him as she raced to help, always out the corner of her eye in a flash of silver turned gold in the firelight, always just beyond the edge of her comprehension. It seemed whenever she turned to see, heart pounding in her chest, he was gone.

He was closer each time, closer and closer every single time she flitted past, and it made her choke and sob and shake. He was toying with her, the way a cat trailed after a bird with clipped wings, watching it hop around in futility before finally deciding it was time to pounce.

Cloud pounced when Vie went to get another set of sheets from her house.

He was on her so quickly she didn't know what had happened at first—simply that she was on her back, looking up at the sky, and she was hot and there was smoke and she saw stars.

Blinking away the dizziness from being thrown off her feet, she realized that they weren't stars at all. They glowed and flickered, sparkled brighter than the firelight, all shades of green and pale aquamarine in the shape of broken circles and crescents and half-moons.

The materia fragments from Jarom's bathhouse.

The young man they'd pulled from the water, filled to the brim with mako and thrashing in pain, had pulled the shards up from the stone and junctioned them through the pitch black of his jacket. Directly into his skin.

"Wh-What—" She choked, trying with all her might not to sob. "What are you?" Cloud Strife smirked then, a shard imbedded under his eye pulling up slightly, but said nothing. Vie stared up at him and saw that his pupils were tightened to slits amid the green, like a cat after all.

…Wait a minute, green?

"Your eyes," she rasped. "Your eyes—your eyes were blue." Cloud tilted his head slightly, curious, and the little girl saw a chance. "Y-Your eyes were blue and they weren't—they weren't slitted like that and they—you were scared of hurting me, you were sorry to scare me and—gods, why are you doing this?"

His gaze turned distant, as though he were looking through her, through the earth beneath her, deep down into the planet, and his brow furrowed. He perked slightly, turning his head just enough to make it look like he was listening to something—even though there was nothing but the crackle of fire and the cries of alarm that had overrun Mideel since he came out of the bathhouse in a whirling fury of metal and power—then he shook his head.

"Please," Vie said, pushing herself up on her elbows even as the SOLDIER lifted his sword and rebalanced it in one gloved hand. "Please stop!" He lifted it over his head, eyes focusing on her once more, sharp and attentive, taking in her every motion. She clenched her eyes shut and tensed for the blow she knew was coming, listened to the blade slice through the burning air as it arced downward. "Somebody make him stop!"

The blade froze an inch above her black-haired head and held position, perfectly still. A second passed. Two. Vie opened her eyes and looked up at the crazed young warrior looming over her.

"He can't hear you," he said softly, almost gently, and his voice was wrong. Deep and smooth as it had been, but more…settled. Comfortable. He spoke like an adult, someone who knew his voice and the person it attached to, not the half-grown uncertainty she'd heard in him before.

Vie was only eleven years old, and small for her age, but she noticed things. She could see things, hear things. And she could tell that this voice was not Cloud Strife's any more than those cat-slit green eyes.

"He can't hear you," the young man repeated. "He can't stop me." His eyes narrowed slightly, brow creasing. "He can't keep me restrained."

Vie inched back away from him as he looked away, eyes averted in thought.

"…He's dead."

He knew it already. Cloud was dead. And yet for some reason saying it aloud struck Sephiroth like a kick to the chest, made his heartbeat turn erratic, pitched up the singing in his head so high he could barely hear it anymore. Cloud was dead, because Sephiroth had killed him. The Masamune whined at the taste of his blood, twisted and shivered in his hand, willing him to stop.

That was blood the blade had never wanted to taste, and now tasted so much more than it should have.

Killed him loved him stop me stop me why won't you stop me mother why won't he stop me wake him up give him back mine mine mine.

"Calm, Sephiroth."

"He's dead," he repeated. "He's dead, Mother."

She purred in his head, crooned and cajoled until his heartbeat went steady again. "He would have faded someday. Disappeared or died or drifted away from you. Same as all the others."

"He was different."

"How?"

Sephiroth opened his mouth to respond, and couldn't bring himself to say the word. A hoarse half-grunt came out, but broke off just as quickly. He was left with his mouth open, burning eyes narrowed, face a mask of pain.

"You can't tell me?"

He ground his teeth and shook his head weakly, lowering the Masamune, tip angled toward the ground.

"He was one of them, my child. A usurper, a thief of life, ruler to a world that was never his at all."

Sephiroth's voice was low. "He was different."

"Not different enough."

Her voice rang with such conviction, such certainty and understanding—laced with some mad form of maternal compassion—Sephiroth couldn't help but believe. She was right, she'd always been right. She was Jenova, his beautiful, wonderful mother, who sang him to sleep from her glass prison, who coaxed strength and brilliance from him when all the others curled in on themselves and fell, down and down until there was nothing left but a crumpled husk.

A memory of others flickered in his mind, black hair and red hair and feathers that burned and fell apart, but the vision faded all too quickly, just as the children in it had.

They couldn't last. She never sang to them, so they fell apart while he only grew stronger. As a child he hadn't been able to grasp it, couldn't comprehend the intricacies of this connection, but now he understood.

He survived, alone, because he was the strongest. Because Mother loved him more than anyone else, wanted him to shine brighter than all the rest. She'd let the others die to make his life all the greater, refused to stretch her spirit out over any mind but his.

Because she loved him.

Something echoed inside him, no no no don't believe her please stop breathe listen don't believe—

It broke off with a spike of music, replaced once again by the all-possessing adoration of his mother. She loved him more than anyone had ever loved him.

No number of Clouds or Zacks could make him feel the way Jenova did with such ease, could let him see that this was how things were meant to be. They couldn't whisper in his head and sing him to sleep abd run those cold, sharp fingers up his spine to give him chills and urge him forward.

It was because their hands were warm, something in him whispered. Because they didn't force him into anything, didn't make him feel like anything more than just a man, just a person, not a doll built in a lab or a god among men. They didn't sing him to sleep because they didn't have to, the whisper of skin on skin had always been more than enough, the low murmur of breath as they drifted off had been music enough, hadn't it?

But they hadn't been the ones that pushed him through Wutai, through the blood and gore and death of that horrible place. They hadn't taught him to call the Ancients' memories to him and borrow their power with his very flesh where everyone else needed metal.

Because they were different.

"Not different enough," he echoed, quiet.

Because now they were dead.

Jenova was his mother. Surely she knew what was best for him, what he needed. Surely she understood what he was better than anyone; he was her living legacy, the consummation of her life on this planet.

Sephiroth lifted the Masamune again, fixed his gaze on the little girl attempting to scramble away from him, and swung downward.

He ran, tight grip around his wrist dragging him onward when he stumbled over his own feet, unable to keep the pace. Her hand was strong, too strong, and all but pulled him through the air when he lost his footing, carting him along behind her in a blur of blue and gold.

She was absolutely beautiful. Glowing whiteness and a haze of green, blue and violet and even scarlet blossoming amid the glow as she moved,

Keep your feet, child.

Her voice echoed all around him, and she didn't turn to give him so much as a glance.

We haven't much time.

Cloud set his jaw and twisted, putting his feet beneath him once more to hit the pitch black surface below at a dead run. The rhythm of his pounding feet resonated through him, up through his legs and into his chest, settling to keep time with his heartbeat, eerily slow.

I have given you power, the best way I can.

The sight of Sephiroth standing in the heart of Nibelheim, flames writhing all around him, flashed in Cloud's vision.

I have allowed you understanding, in spite of your heart's protest.

The memory of Sephiroth helping him up while they stood together in the dark recesses of their shared mind flickered in front of him.

It is not enough, as I feared.

The Masamune, protruding from his chest, and Sephiroth whispering Stop me.

Thus…

They slowed, the black fading to white as a scene came into focus. The grip on his wrist felt looser, lighter, until he couldn't feel it at all.

Knowledge I'll give you, to know how you must hold her back.

Cloud saw Hojo, then, and a flash of an older man with tousled black hair and narrow-rimmed glasses, both of them dressed in heavy coats with snow coursing around them. Hojo smiled, and the openness of it almost made Cloud lose his footing again. The background was pure white now, frozen and tinted blue, and Cloud realized an instant too late that his companion's figure had faded into the white and disappeared.

To know why you must hold her back.

"A work of art," Hojo breathed, and his voice was young. He turned and looked at Cloud, past Cloud, black eyes bright beneath his thick spectacles, pale skin smooth and flushed from the cold. "What are you going to call her?"

The other man looked as well, tilting his head back slightly to follow some unseen line, survey some unseen sight, and he put his hands on his hips and spoke not with reverence, but with satisfied interest. The way a man spoke of his own handiwork, some great achievement of his own making. "Jenova."

Cloud blinked. "…I know this already," he murmured. "The remains of an Ancient codenamed Jenova was found in the north." He turned to look around, behind him into the blackness. "I know this already."

"The one you mistook for a Cetra…"

He jerked and whirled, finding snow replaced with the warm glow of a fire, the outside sky of white replaced with wood walls and metal panels, computers and screens everywhere. The man who named Jenova sat toward the middle of the room, opposite a young woman with thick auburn hair and bright green eyes.

Cloud knew her face somehow, felt as though he'd seen her before.

"…the one you call Jenova," she continued, expression level and serious, bright eyes shadowed by the severity of her words. "That's the Calamity."

Blue eyes narrowed as what the specter of a woman said sunk in. "The one you mistook for a Cetra?"

The Cetra were the Ancients, first rulers of the planet, children of Gaea. Heirs to the world, as Sephiroth had so madly claimed in Nibelheim, usurped by humankind. If Jenova's Cetrahood was a mistake, some sort of folly on the part of the scientists that found her, then that made Sephiroth no more heir to the planet than Zack.

In the Lifestream, he knew what she was.

The scene before him flickered.

But she will not allow him to understand.

"It looked like our—our dead mothers, our dead brothers…" The woman's voice was pained, her head held low, but she slowly gained momentum as she continued, tone still pained but turning frantic. "Showing us specters of our past, everything we wanted and more, and we believed—we believed—" She broke off with a sob, burying her face in her hands.

The sudden wave of comprehension was enough to send Cloud reeling, breath short and heart pounding in his chest. "It was Jenova. She killed the Cetra."

For a long moment, there came no response.

She fell. Hurt me. Buried herself, tried to rip me apart from within. Tore my children to pieces and rebuilt them as her own. I made weapons—

A vision of glistening scales and leathery wings, burning eyes and sharp teeth, flashed before Cloud's eyes.

—but it was too late. My children sealed her away. Her lightning struck the earth, crackled and screamed, and faded.

"Until Sephiroth was born," Cloud completed. Jenova had all but destroyed Gaea's people, but in return they had bound her, buried her in the same soil she'd fought so hard to ruin. Then Shinra found her, through her they created Sephiroth, and through him she woke back up to the world she wanted so badly to kill. The General had never been completely stable, always had that edge of frenzy lurking in his gaze, but it never broke him until Nibelheim, when he found the monster that gave him, if not life, his power.

Sephiroth was the key. Without him, she was nothing. If he'd never come to Nibelheim, she never would have been able to take him, never dug her claws so deep into his psyche, never shattered him so completely as to kill the people he cared about most in the world.

"I understand," Cloud breathed, below a whisper.

In response, a sharp spike of pain flared in his head, so powerful and so sudden that he couldn't even dream of biting back the replying cry of pain. It spread through him, from his head down to his chest, heart full to bursting in all the wrong ways, pounding harder and harder with no pretense of rhythm.

Keep him restrained, little one.

The pounding of his screaming heart vibrated through him, forcing him to shiver in time.

Hold back the lightning.

Cloud awoke to a world on fire. Once again he hurt, a headache pounded behind his eyes and all the skin on his body felt burned, but that came second to the image affronting him. He could see no buildings, no distinguishing landmarks, nothing to show where he was but flames all around him—and yet, deep in his heart he knew. This was Nibelheim.

This was hell.

He pushed himself up, fighting the urge to scream when his uniform rubbed at his skin, strong blue fabric assaulting the invisible burns all over his body. The black armor plating on his shoulders dug in like teeth, biting at his arms, and his shirtcollar scraped around his neck like a garrote. It hurt so much he froze in place, teeth clenched and breath heaving, and fought to keep perfectly still. The less he moved, the less it hurt. The less it hurt, the more he could think.

But in thinking, he knew that he had to move. He was here for something—beyond the tarnished memories of a voice that reminded him of his mother, past the disjointed images that he knew he needed to move forward, he had a lingering feeling, a cold certainty in his chest.

Cloud pushed himself to his feet. This, something in him said, was what a Mako treatment felt like. This was what SOLDIERs went through once a year at the least, what Sephiroth went through every couple months. This is what he'd wanted so badly to feel; now that he had it, what would he do with it?

"Hold back the lightning," he whispered, barely above a breath.

He stumbled forward, glowing blue eyes narrowed against the flame, until at last a figure came into view, at first a silhouette of black against the flames but steadily clearer as he drew near.

A part of him, he realized, had been expecting Sephiroth. That same part of him was relieved beyond his ability to describe when the shape, though silver haired as the one he expected, clarified into an obviously feminine form.

She turned and looked back at him, and her eyes glowed violet as bright as stars.

"Ah," Jenova purred. "There you are."

The fact that she was so lucid, so easy to understand and to hear, her voice deep and scathing and powerful but almost human, made Cloud sick to his stomach. The juxtaposition of all that power, the shimmering violet of her skin, the rosy veinwork running up her smooth arms, with such a human tone and expression was almost painful to see.

"Let him go," he demanded, still breathless.

"He belongs with me."

"No." Cloud set his jaw, forced himself to straighten. There was strength in his limbs he hadn't felt before, a power in his body that reminded him of the first time he junctioned materia that wasn't an infant: the strength of the planet, lent to him right now for one express purpose. "Let him go."

"He belongs to me."

"He doesn't belong to anyone!" He roared, clenching his hands into fists at his sides. Jenova shrugged her delicate shoulders lightly, closing her eyes, but said nothing. "He never did—you lied to him to make him believe you, you—you broke him to free yourself!"

"We are the same."

Cloud shook his head. Jenova gave a high laugh, like screaming metal and broken glass, and it resonated with something deep within him. It felt powerful, more powerful than anything, better than materia and mako and oh merciful Gaea no wonder he broke for her.

He ground his teeth and remained unmoved. Jenova surveyed him with the utmost scrutiny, glowing eyes narrowed, full lips pulled into a smirk that looked nothing like that of the man who claimed to be her son.

"I am his mother. We are the last heirs—"

"You're not a Cetra," Cloud ground out, expression tight and determined. A warmth settled into the fist of his right hand, followed by a barely-familiar weight he'd never expected to feel again. "You're a liar and a fake." He curled his fingers tight around the weapon now in his grip, reflections of firelight against the blue metal fading as the scene around them turned to black, and raised it to point at the abomination trying to sing him down. "And you're no one's mother."

Jenova's smirk tightened, and she turned entirely around to raised her claw-tipped hands in mocking supplication. She wanted Cloud to make the first move, and he was all too happy to oblige. Raising the massive blade in his hand—Zack's beloved Buster Sword—Cloud set his feet, ducked his head slightly, and lunged.

At first she dodged, pulled back with such fluidity Cloud almost balked. He knew that grace, knew that fluidity; while Cloud have never fought Sephiroth properly himself, he'd seen enough matches between him and the other SOLDIERS, not all of them Firsts, to recognize his abilities when he saw them. No one else moved like that. Not even Zack was close, and he was the closest to Sephiroth's level anyone had ever come.

He had been the closest.

Cloud was still relatively untrained in swordplay, especially with something as unwieldy as Zack's sword, but the memory of his best friend's eyes as he murmured his dying plea for Cloud to kill the man they both loved most in the world kept him moving. Swing, lunge, stab—miss, miss, miss.

He let out a cry of frustration when Jenova expertly avoided yet another blow, but didn't stop. Frantic and infuriated, he broke into all but a run, swinging back and forth over and over and over, refusing to give an inch. Jenova continued her controlled backward motion, avoiding and dodging every swing. The glow in her eyes brightened, and her smirk broke into a sharp-toothed grin.

Pushing forward with a little more force, at last getting close enough to land a blow, Cloud swung again; Jenova just raised her hand to catch the sharp edge of the blade. The look on her face attested to the move being intentional, some sort of scare tactic to show Cloud just how out of his depth he was, but that expression shifted quickly to a look of shock.

The gleaming metal sliced straight through her fingers, split them from her hand, and plowed into the side of her head with such force it knocked her off her feet. She tumbled to the ground, cheekbone utterly shattered, bright violet liquid streaming down the side of her face. Her head snapped up in a wash of silver hair an instant too late to avoid the skull-splitting blow Cloud struck from above, sword slamming and slicing straight into the top of her head, bisecting her skull from crown to jaw.

Jenova screamed and flailed, trifurcated mouth pulling wider and wider, and Cloud had to pull back and drop the sword to clamp both hands over his ears against the sound. He could feel her, every inch of her pushing into him, trying to do to him what she'd doubtlessly done to Sephiroth. If she couldn't defeat him, she would own him, junction his spirit to hers like some twisted materia.

That buffer, the strange distance he'd felt between himself and Sephiroth when they touched before the elite once more ran him through, solidified around him in a flash of bright blue-green, and while the sound continued, the pushing stopped.

It was a barrier, a defense against Jenova. Gaea must have put it in place to protect him; it gleamed like materia, crystallized around him, but still strangely fluid. Cloud tentatively opened his eyes to look out through the glow, felt it pulling closer to his body until it fit against every contour, every joint like perfectly cast armor.

The screaming broke off with an inhuman growl as Jenova pushed herself back up, fingers drawing back to her hand like magnets to metal, fusing on contact. Her face rebuilt, the seam healing slowly

"Let him go," Cloud commanded again, so much stronger now than the first time he'd said it.

The Calamity grated out a laugh, throwing back her healed head as great twin arrays of flesh and bone pushed out from her back, coiling and a muted, earthy pink in color. Just behind her arms, the bizarre twin structures moved in time with her breathing, with her every gesture.

She threw her arms outward, and they spread like wings, burning and glowing with power.

"Mine," she growled, pupils tightened to hair-thin slits. "You and him and her and this and them and all is mine."

Cloud set his feet again, raised Zack's sword in preparation.

"Try to take them from me."