Chapter Seven: The Never-Ending Why
The thing was, Cloud had come to expect certain things when it came to facing his arch-nemesis.
Sephiroth would show up, greet him in a vaguely infuriating and yet oddly polite fashion, give some sort of insane monologue full of dramatic turns-of phrase and gestures, and then shift elegantly into a fighting stance, raising the masamune over his shoulder and fixing Cloud with those cold, reptilian eyes of his.
Cloud, for his part, would stand there staring at Sephiroth during said monologue, thinking fuck, this again? Really? and trying to calm his racing heart, to make himself stop thinking about how badly that fucking sword hurt when it sliced through his skin and impaled him. Instead, he'd think about Zack and Aeris and what it meant to be brave, about his friends who took up arms and threw themselves headlong into battle beside him, and how he would rather die than let this man take anything else away from him.
Sephiroth would smirk, Cloud would scowl, and things would fall to pieces while they tried to kill each other. Cloud would win (or whatever it was called when neither of you died but one of you disappeared), but not without a toll on his mind and his body; and after Sephiroth vanished back to wherever it was he slept, Cloud would try and put the pieces of himself back together again, would try and pretend he wasn't a man made up of a thousand different cracks and bits and pieces of other people.
After the incident on the ShinRa Tower, on Advent Day, Cloud had been half-convinced that it hadn't really been Sephiroth he was fighting, but some dark, inner part of himself. The part that was still so angry at what had happened, the part that felt he was never going to live up to his promise to Zack, that all he was good for was fighting the same battle, over and over again….
But whether or not that was true, the battle - metaphorical or not - had followed the usual script. It was brutal and terrifying, yes, but at least Cloud knew what to expect. There was no fucking script in the world for Sephiroth showing up in pajamas and eating a plate of cheese and crackers.
The disconnect between the nightmarish figure who'd so long haunted him, and the tall, quiet man who was a vegetarian concerned with proper nutrition was making Cloud feel like he was going insane.
Sephiroth was always awake when Cloud left his room in the morning, and apparently went to bed earlier than Cloud, which seemed the exact opposite of what one's evil nemesis should do. Shouldn't Sephiroth stay up all night, dreaming up evil schemes against the Planet? Instead, he rose early, exercised, ate meals and went to bed at around the same time each day. It finally occurred to Cloud that he was following a military schedule.
But he's not. He's not a SOLDIER anymore. There isno SOLDIER, anymore.
For the most part, they ignored each other as much as possible; exchanging only the minimum amount of words necessary to communicate, and only when hand gestures or vague grunts weren't enough.
Just when Cloud stopped having a near heart-attack every time he saw Sephiroth in his peripheral vision, just when he'd started to accustom himself to seeing the man in the kitchen fixing himself a meal, the script changed again.
It happened when Cloud woke up in the middle of the night, thanks to hearing a strange noise (he slept at odd intervals, and always lightly; enough that a breeze against the window could rouse him), and an investigation revealed Sephiroth in the kitchen, rummaging through the fridge.
It was dark in the kitchen, the only light emanating from the appliance. Sephiroth turned and saw him there, and held up a bottle of water without comment.
He went through a lot of water, Cloud noticed. In the morning, he drank something from a mug that Cloud thought must be tea.
Tea. Jenova's Calamity, Gaia's Scorned Son, Destroyer of Worlds...drinks hot tea.
"You're up late," Cloud said, unsure why he wasn't simply turning on his heel and going to another room, which was what he usually did when he found himself in the same place as Sephiroth.
"I couldn't sleep," Sephiroth answered. "I feel like I'm waiting for a mission that's never going to come."
Cloud leaned against the wall and watched him. "And I feel like l'm waiting for a battle that's going to come when I least expect it."
They stared at each other. Whenever their paths happened to cross in the house, Sephiroth appeared completely indifferent to Cloud's presence. But at the moment he was regarding Cloud almost warily, and Cloud wondered if the indifference was simply an act that Sephiroth did not have the energy to uphold at the moment.
He seemed tired, in a way that Cloud understood; the kind of tired that ran in your veins, that went bone-deep and didn't ever let go.
He's never looked tired, before. He's never sighed, or rubbed his temples, or rolled his neck like he's doing right now. He never even blinked, before. Not once.
Sephiroth had never looked quite as human as he did in that moment, and Cloud had no idea what to do about it. He also looked so much younger out of that uniform, which had Cloud wondering just how old Sephiroth even was.
Before he could stop himself, he asked. "How old are you?"
Sephiroth paused in the midst of raising the bottle of water to his mouth. "Twenty-five."
That he'd answered the question at all stole Cloud's breath for a moment Twenty-five? Twenty-five? Somehow, Sephiroth had always been ageless, caught in that moment when Cloud first met him, first killed him. To have an age meant he was once younger, was once a child.
Was once innocent.
Was once human.
"I-" Cloud shook his head, taking a step back towards the shadows in the hallway.
"Wait," Sephiroth said, slowly. "Cloud, I want to know what happened -"
"You do know," Cloud interrupted, harshly. "You know exactly what happened. If you need the details, you can read the files again."
Sephiroth closed the refrigerator door, plunging the kitchen into darkness. Cloud's eyes adjusted quickly, but the first thing he saw was Sephiroth's eyes - those strange eyes with their soft mako glow, their slitted pupils. They always looked vaguely reptilian to Cloud, what with Sephiroth's tendency not to blink, but they reminded Cloud in that moment of a cat.
"I would like to read them again, yes, but I - you were there, Cloud. I want you to tell me, I want to hear it from you. You hate me, and I know that. But I - I want to know why."
Hearing Sephiroth's voice, seeing his eyes in the dark and just a hint of that cold, beautiful face - it reminded Cloud too much of the man he'd killed in Nibelheim, the man who'd laughed as Aeris died, the man who smiled at him while impaling him on the end of his sword, just to watch him writhe in agony.
"You, what, want me to fucking relive it? Want to hear it from me? No. Fuck you, no, you don't - you don't get my suffering, not anymore." Cloud was so angry he was trembling. "I already gave it to you once, that's enough, why isn't it even enough for you!"
"Cloud-"
If he'd had his weapon at the moment, Cloud was certain he would have drawn it. He didn't want to think about why he didn't have it, why he'd left his room unarmed for the first time since they'd brought Sephiroth here.
Why he'd thought Sephiroth's face was beautiful.
This man might have been human, once. Now he was just a monster, fucking with Cloud's head.
"Stay. Away. From. Me," Cloud hissed, and turned towards the darkness of the hallway. All he wanted to do was go back to his room, go outside on the balcony and look up at the stars, the stars that were still there, because of Aeris's bravery and his friends, and him, goddamn it, all of them, they were the ones who saved the world from this man who'd wanted to end it all.
"You never ran away from me before, Cloud," Sephiroth called after him, making Cloud nearly stumble in his anger. "Not when I wanted to kill you, not when I was trying to kill you. So why are you doing it now?"
Because I don't want you to be telling the truth. I don't want to tell you what you did and hear you apologize and mean it. I've never been fucking afraid of you when I knew what and who you were, but I don't know any of that now, and it's fucking terrifying.
"I'm tired of playing games, Sephiroth. Killing you doesn't work, so maybe ignoring you will."
"It doesn't appear to, so far."
Cloud stopped, turning around slowly and half-expecting to see Sephiroth right there, grinning maniacally down at him and…
What? Getting ready to beat you to death with a plastic water bottle?
Cloud sighed, and reached out to flip on the light in the hallway. He blinked as the sudden brightness hurt his eyes. Sephiroth was standing at the end of the hallway, his legs apart, arms clasped behind his back in a military at-ease stance.
Cloud let out a breath, slowly. "Fine. You want to know? I'll tell you."
Sephiroth didn't move from his at-ease stance. "Would you prefer to do this in the morning?"
"It is morning," said Cloud. "And now's as good as ever." Might as well get it over with.
Sephiroth nodded, then turned to go back in the kitchen. Cloud followed, then stopped and glared at him. "What are you doing?"
Sephiroth was rummaging in the cabinet. "I wanted some tea. Would you like some?"
Cloud shook his head, momentarily struck speechless as Sephiroth, Destroyer of Worlds, put a tea kettle on the stove.
* * *
It took, all in all, less time than Cloud thought it would.
About four hours, allowing for brief moments where he had to get up and walk away, or where he just couldn't talk anymore and had to sit quietly and gather his thoughts.
Sephiroth sat across from him in the living room. At first he asked the occasional question or made a comment, but at Cloud's increasingly hostile glares, he gradually stopped and listened in silence.
The sun rising when Cloud finally finished. He got up and left Sephiroth sitting in the chair, and went to the kitchen to get himself a bottle of water. When he came back, Sephiroth was out on the deck, watching the sunrise.
Cloud, drained but feeling oddly bereft of anger, went outside to join him. They both stood there in silence as dawn splashed color onto a grey sky.
Sephiroth turned to him, his eyes searching Cloud's. "I remembered why I knew your name."
Cloud tensed, fingers twitching. He didn't know what to think. "Why's that?"
"Because I asked the guardsman at the door on my way out, after that mission briefing where we first...met."
"Why?" The words tasted brittle, like dust in his mouth.
"I was going to give you a demerit."
Of all the things Cloud expected Sephiroth to say, that was definitely not one of them. "Huh?"
Sephiroth's jaw was tight as he looked out towards the sky. "You weren't wearing a helmet, and I thought it was disrespectful. I asked your name so that when we re-assembled for the mission, I could dismiss you in front of the others and make a point about proper protocol. I wanted to teach you a lesson."
"Oh," Cloud said, also staring straight ahead. "You wanted to. Teach me a...lesson."
Unbelievably, his lips twitched. The laugh felt like someone reaching down into his soul and pulling, yanking it out of him, but there was no way he could stop it. The sound was loud enough to scatter the birds in the trees, a cacophony of angry twittering mixed with Cloud's hysterical laughter.
"Lesson learned, sir," Cloud gasped, tears leaking from his eyes. His sides hurt, and when he couldn't breathe at all, he knew he wasn't laughing anymore.
Sephiroth was staring at him like Cloud had lost his mind. It wasn't helping the situation at all, but when Sephiroth asked him, "Strife, should I get you a paper bag?", Cloud was able to wave his hand and concentrate on drawing a few deep breaths in and out.
"Why didn't you?" he asked, when he could speak again. "For the love of Odin, Sephiroth, why didn't you?"
Sephiroth crossed his arms. He looked incredibly reluctant to answer. "Zack, of course. When I told him that's what I was going to do, he talked me out of it. He said it was his fault you weren't in proper uniform, because you were in the hallway when he recruited you for the mission. That Nibelheim was your hometown, and that you hadn't been home for years so I should -" He stopped, abruptly.
"You might as well just tell me," Cloud managed, wiping at his eyes. His hand was shaking. Tiredness dragged like weights at his eyes, which felt swollen and dry.
"That I should have a heart." Sephiroth looked down, hiding behind his hair. Cloud took an instinctive step away from him, anticipating a creepy smile. But Sephiroth just stood there, hair in his face, before raising his chin again. He looked exhausted, circles under his eyes. Cloud wondered if he'd been sleeping.
His eyes met Cloud's, and that voice, always so calm and faintly mocking, just sounded confused when he finally spoke. "Why was it you? Of all the people in the world I would have ever wanted to hurt...why you?"
"I don't know," Cloud answered, leaning against the rail of the wooden deck. "I don't know."
If Sephiroth had apologized for any of it, Cloud was certain he would have lost what remained of his composure. But he didn't, he simply stood there and watched the sky lighten to blue.
Sephiroth left a few moments later, stopping briefly at the door. "Thank you for telling me," he said, very quietly. "I'll leave you alone."
Cloud heard the door close as Sephiroth went inside. He didn't turn around.
* * *
Tseng called later that afternoon. After Cloud gave the updated supply order, he asked the same question he did every time they spoke.
"Do you think he's lying?"
"Yes," Cloud said, like always.
Only this time, it felt like a lie.
