A/N: Friends and readers, I'm afraid you can consider this chapter the end of this story. I didn't intend it that way, but it has come time for me to retire from this chapter of my life. I didn't want to go without adding that addition I promised so many of you. As so, this chapter is presented as it has sat for almost a month now, half-edited. I hope you still enjoy it. It's yours now if you want it, this story. Pick it up, play with it, make your own version, write your own ending... Have fun. I know I have.

With my thanks at this final update,
Boom.

Chapter 7: Restart

"Are you done yet?"

Sephiroth's voice broke the strained silence around them. Cloud didn't want to look at him. At that perfect, passive expression Sephiroth wore. It would only make him angry again, and fighting here was worse than useless. It provided no satisfaction. They didn't have blood to spill or bodies to bruise or breath to steal. It didn't even hurt.

"Asshole." Cloud hissed, turning his back on the man behind him in response.

"It's been seven cycles since you bothered attacking me." Sephiroth noted. "Did something rattle loose in that head of yours or were you just frustrated our last fight was shorter than usual?"

Cloud grit his teeth. Clenched his fists. Wished he could feel something in this in-between place. Pain from squeezing his nails into the fleshy palms of his hands. Bruises from where Sephiroth had hit him back. The phantom pain from old wounds. Anything but this powerless anger.

"You killed her." He grated at last.

"So?" Sephiroth said with a flat note in his words that made the hatred coil in Cloud's gut. "I kill her every time."

"She loved you. She wanted to help you."

Sephiroth snorted, derisive and harsh.

"Your flower girl doesn't even know me."

Cloud felt his stomach drop. Felt the rage in him twist with sorrow and form something unspeakable and overwhelming.

"I'm talking about my mom!"

He turned on Sephiroth as he spoke, the words rough in his throat, his hands itching for violence.

Sephiroth should have done something. Yelled back, or laughed, or at the very least scoffed at Cloud's pathetic humanity. Instead Cloud found himself bearing witness to something he hadn't seen before.

Sephiroth, destroyer of lives, flinched.

It should have been satisfying. It should have been good. Instead Cloud almost drew back from the look. Almost apologized.

It was just that Sephiroth had flinched so vulnerably. It was an unguarded moment; A flash in the ice. His hand lifted to curl in front of his chest, his eyes a little wider, his lips parted around the shape of a gasp.

Then it was over, and in its wake Sephiroth's expression hardened in furious resolve. Cloud straightened, rolling his shoulders back and bracing against the threat of that expression.

"Why?" Cloud snapped, refusing to be intimidated. "I tried. I tried, Sephiroth. I did exactly what you asked me to. It only made everything worse. It didn't change what you did."

Those blazing eyes stared at him, dead on and furious. Sephiroth's nostrils flared, his hand tightening at his side. The leather of the glove didn't groan with the strain. It wasn't real.

"Forget it." Sephiroth said. "Let's go back to how it was before."

There was something foreign and crisp in the way he spoke. Something Cloud didn't recognize. Couldn't place.

"Sephiroth— "

"Restart, Cloud."

"Wait, we need to—"

"Now." Sephiroth barked, his lips lifting in a snarl and his eyes flaring green.

Seven year old Cloud Strife woke up screaming. It took his mother all night to calm him down again over a warm cup of tea and her presence at his bedside.

"What did you dream of, little stormcloud?" Lillian asked, stroking a hand through his wild blonde hair.

"A monster." Cloud said , curling up. "The same monster with the green eyes."

It was many many years before Cloud saw those nightmare eyes staring at him out of the flames of his hometown.

And then there were the years of acid and pain, barely remembered once they were over but lasting forever while he was within them.

The world died slowly as he fought to save it. He made connections and lost them and made more again.

And the ground crumbled, and he clashed swords with Sephiroth and—

"What was that about?" Cloud asked , whirling on Sephiroth as soon as they appeared in the inbetween space. "Do you think I'm just going to forget about—"

"Again." Sephiroth said sharply, his eyes not meeting Cloud's.

"You are not in charge of me." Cloud snapped. "I'm not going back!"

Sephrioth whirled on him, caught his wrists in an irresistible grip, all fury and the uncanny coiling of hair.

"Again." He snarled, and Cloud felt part of himself answer, and the white around them shattered and—

"Another dream?" Lillian asked, a small smile on her face as she walked downstairs to find her son already awake.

"I don't know why." Cloud sighed, seven years old, rumpled by nightmares and rubbing his eyes.

"Well… Nothing time won't heal darling."

Cloud wasn't so sure about that. But so many new wounds opened that in time he forgot to worry about the dream of blazing green.

Cloud's whole life felt like a prolonged fall. A helpless, careening tumble towards something no one could prevent. Sometimes he escaped the feeling for a little while. Had a moment, a week, a year where he felt like he was in control.

When the world cracked open beneath his feet and the impossible gravity of a dying planet wrapped him and Sephrioth in its grasp, he recognized the sensation of falling. As if he'd been waiting his whole life to fall here.

"What are you doing?" Cloud gasped, turning to Sephiroth with a furious scowl.

Sephiroth didn't answer. Didn't speak at all. He looked tense, Cloud thought. Tense and stiff and strained. He didn't say anything though. He just held out a hand to Cloud and yanked on something inside him. Cloud didn't have time to even scream.

Cloud wakes up, seven, nightmare, why does he want to hold his mom so tight?

Fire, and acid, and pain, and loss, and friendship and falling, falling, always falling, and—

"Stop it," Cloud gasped, stumbling the moment he opened his eyes. "Sephiroth, stop it, enough!"

When he looked, Sephrioth looked worse than he'd ever seen him. Almost ashen grey, a cold sweat on his brow, a grim expression on his face.

He looks familiar, a part of Cloud realized with a sudden, lurching realization. And for a moment he remembered a grey-faced teenager with a dark cap and a hidden gunshot wound. He remembered the look on his face, like he was plotting a murder, that Cloud later came to know as fear.

"Wait," Cloud started, reaching out.

How is he doing this, he wondered to himself as he felt Sephiroth's will restart the world again.

It doesn't matter, he decided as he fell away in the shattering light. I won't let him again.

"What are you doing?" Lillian asked, coming into Cloud's room to find him glaring into the dark.

"I'm fighting nightmares." Cloud answered, glaring at the shadows. "I won't let them spook me."

"That's my boy," Lillian said, shining with pride. "Stubborn as your ma is."

Cloud barreled headlong through life. Bonded close to Zack in finding a kindred spirit. Zack grinned at his guts, and wrapped him in hugs so tight, and Cloud never knew why those moments made him so nostalgic, so sad.

Nibelheim burned, the acid wiped Cloud's heart and will. But eventually he remembered.

He grabbed Sephiroth's lapel at the end of it all and dragged him into the dying earth without hesitation.

Cloud whirled away from Sephrioth the moment he opened his eyes. Turned ready and firm.

Sephiroth didn't look at him. He was breathing hard, despite the fact that they weren't alive. That same exhausted perspiration beaded his brow, and his hand shook as he lifted it again. His fingers were clawed in the air, as if he was holding something.

"Again." He growled, tensing his hand.

Cloud grit his jaw and grabbed Sephiroth's wrist, his grip tight and uncomprimising.

"No." He snapped.

It might have been his imagination, but he thought he felt the white space shudder around them. Then it stabilized, white and bright and empty. Cloud didn't let go of Sephrioth's wrist. When Sephiroth tried to pull away Cloud clamped down, shaking him just once, sharply.

"You're not running from me again."

"Let go." Sephiroth said.

"Why did you kill mom?" Cloud said instead. "Why didn't Nibelheim change? I know you liked her."

"Let go of me Cloud."

"She gave everything she could for you. You ruined her life, and she still only wanted you to be okay. And she finally saw you again and you murdered her. Tell me why!"

Sephiroth yanked his hand away finally, scowling and rubbing his wrist as if it hurt. Cloud knew it didn't. Nothing here did.

"You did better this last time." Sephiroth said, as empty as the end of the world. "You fought hard. Seemed less afraid of me. Let's try again."

"Absolutely not." Cloud said. "Answer my question."

"You do not control me." Sephiroth warned.

"You're not going to control me anymore either." Cloud crossed his arms, glaring at Sephiroth in challenge. "I'm perfectly willing to sit here and never restart again if you're not even going to try."

'Try, try, try' echoed the whiteness around them, and Cloud didn't even want to understand why. But he recognized that voice, those words, they'd echoed in his head once, lifetimes ago.

"I tried." Sephiroth said, his voice lower, more dangerous than before. "You have no idea."

"Tried what?" Cloud snapped. "To make life as hard as possible for people who were only trying to help you?"

Sephiroth did not reply. He was silent and still, his eyes narrowed in frustration at the white distance. And Cloud felt that same anger coiling in his gut. That exhausted, relentless annoyance. That unspeakable fury based around Sephiroth's impeccable silence and his own agony.

And yet...

Cloud breathed in, trying to find his center, to access the calm he eventually learned in every life. When he spoke, his voice was almost low and powerful.

"So what am I supposed to do?" He said, each word measured and chosen. "I did my best, Sephiroth."

For a moment there was silence.

"I know." Sephiroth said, almost a whisper.

"But you still—"

"I know, Cloud." More forceful this time.

"What can I do?" Cloud was surprised at how he sounded. Less angry, less frustrated, more concerned. His eyes were on Sephiroth's passive, empty expression. "What do you need from me? What happened?"

But Sephiroth was silent. Silent and still with a look on his face that Cloud recognized with a sick twist in his gut. The look of the teenager, legs broken on the canyon floor, looking at Cloud with fear in his eyes.

'Dangerous.' That young Sephiroth had whispered against Cloud's shoulder, all those cycles ago.

So as the silence stretched, Cloud felt resolve coil inside him.

"Come on." Cloud said, holding out a hand with all the force he could, palm up and fingers open. He forced them to stay that way. Forced himself to wait.

"What?" Sephiroth looked at him again, eyes intense, but not angry this time. Only tight with confusion.

Cloud hesitated as he met his eyes, then he held his hand out a little further, a little more insistently.

"When I'm eleven," He said. "I'm going to come for you in a beaten up old pickup truck, and you're going to come home with me. And we're going to try again."

"What would be the point?" Sephiroth muttered. "It only made everything hurt more. Just like you said."

"But it did change things." Cloud shook his head, offering his hand once more. "I don't trust you, and you don't trust me either. There's no way we could fix anything like this."

"So?"

"So… We'll have to leave it up to our younger selves to try again." Cloud said, feeling dread coil in his stomach even as he tried to keep his voice steady. "Even if they fail again, maybe we can still work on changing things here? I won't attack you next time. We can try to talk then."

Sephiroth's eyes flicked towards his feet, his brows shifting a little as he thought. Cloud watched him working through it.

"Come on, Sephiroth" Cloud repeated, his hand still extended. "If I'm going to learn to feel something other than hatred looking at your face... I need more practice."

"Practice." Sephiroth said, staring out at the empty white.

When he moved his hand, Cloud watched it happen as if in slow motion. His movement was so careful that Cloud's shoulder would have gotten tired waiting if he had been alive.

"Tell me to try." Cloud said. "Refresh the next me's memory."

"When you are eleven," Sephiroth said, his eyes turning to Cloud even as their fingers brushed. "You will come for me. Try, Cloud Strife. Try."

"Sephiroth," Cloud said, gripping his hand tightly. "You try too."

This time when the world fractured, Cloud didn't lose his balance. He was ready to go.

Shinra's security was ridiculously easy to get past. Cloud kept his head down and his hands shoved in his pockets and his chin tucked and people looked past him like he didn't exist. It was just like home. He found an elevator down, and he had a weird feeling that he should take it. So he waited for someone to come by who looked like they were supposed to be there.

"Excuse me," He said. "I'm supposed to-"

"Oh." She said flatly, staring at him. "One of Hojo's. Basement level three."

She scanned her keycard and the elevator slid open. Cloud wasn't sure what she meant, and his excuse about his parents working downstairs died on his lips. He only nodded to her and stepped into the elevator. He wasn't sure he wanted to go to basement level three, but it was a start. He pressed the button, listening in as she walked away.

"Really," she was muttering. "He could at least have the decency to collect his specimens himself instead of leaving the rest of us to play chauffeur."

Cloud frowned down at his hands as the elevator started to descend.

He did not like basement level three. But he found the green eyes he was looking for.

"I'm Cloud." He whispered, breathless, through the glass. "I came for you."

"You're just a kid." The green-eyed teenager was naked, pale and beautiful, pacing behind the glass like a wildcat.

"I'm eleven." Cloud objected.

"Ah." The teenager from his dreams blinked, going very still, his hair still rippling from his motion. He turned his head slowly towards Cloud. The disinterest had vanished, replaced by a strange fascination. "I'm Sephiroth."

"Sephiroth," Cloud whispered, finally given a name for the figure in his nightmares. "Let's get you out of here."

Sephiroth shattered the glass with a single hit. Cloud had to duck for cover to avoid getting sliced to pieces.

He needed clothes. They needed a keycard. Cloud should have had a plan, but he didn't. Sephiroth picked up the slack. The guard's locker room was close, might have what they needed.

The man who nearly broke Cloud's wrist and shoved him against the lockers wasn't part of the plan. Neither was his body on the floor. Worse was the gunshot. The blood on Sephiroth's skin.

"Gods," Cloud whispered, extending a hand. "You're hurt."

Sephiroth tensed. Grit his teeth. Shied away from Cloud's touch with his hands half-lifted as if to fight. But when their eyes met he lowered his hands in stiff, uncertain motions.

"It… Will be worse if we're found." He said, stepping back from Cloud's worry. "We need to move. Get his keycard. I'll get dressed."

Cloud was afraid. He turned the corpse and got his keycard anyway, his whole body shaking. He'd never seen a dead body before. Much less watched someone die. Maybe the man had deserved it, but…

He looked up at Sephiroth and wondered if he ought to be afraid. But Sephiroth had saved him by killing the man on the floor. He'd saved himself too, but…

"You're really hurt," Cloud whispered. "We… We should find a doctor or—"

"No." Sephiroth snapped, his hands sure and steady as he pulled clothes from lockers, as if he wasn't bleeding crimson all down his side.

"We… We at least need to bandage you up." Cloud managed to stutter. "You'll bleed all over the place."

Sephiroth didn't even deign to respond, picking out a few pieces and throwing them onto the bench in the center of the room. He lifted his own arm, twisting to inspect his injury.

"Can I help?" Cloud whispered, his body aching, his wrists bruised and the cold, biting metal of the cuffs still looped around one of them.

"I have it." Sephiroth said, blank and firm, as he tore found fabric to pieces and wrapped it around his own torso. Then he glanced over— a strange, cutting look— and nodded to Cloud. Just a brief nod of acknowledgment. It was almost a thanks. Cloud felt unreasonably proud to have earned it.

As Sephiroth lay, pale and unmoving on the couch, being looked to under his mom's careful touches, Cloud felt the dam of necessity that had walled off his fear crumble.

He approached slowly, watching his mom unstick the ill-fitting clothes from Sephrioth's bloody side. His eyes flickered up to Sephiroth's face, and he crouched next to the sofa. He pulled the black cap the rest of the way off his head and shifted his messy silver hair out of his face.

"Careful." His mother cautioned, her eyes flickering over to Cloud.

Cloud didn't tell her that he knew already. That Sephiroth had already threatened to kill him once for bringing up a hospital. She only knew that Sephiroth had killed the man who'd left Cloud with the awful bruises on his wrists and face. That much, Cloud was sure, she'd forgive him for. She didn't need to know the rest. But despite himself he started crying at her warning.

"I wasn't making it up," He whispered through the tears. "Ma, I wasn't making it up."

"I know," she said in return. "I believe you, my raincloud. I'm sorry I didn't before."

They stayed up together, sitting at the table and drinking tea until Cloud fell asleep where he sat, aching and exhausted, with his mother stroking his hair.

Everything seemed to move too fast, seemed to fall into place too quickly when Sephrioth woke up. The pieces of the puzzle filled them in with horrifying precision. The way he jolted awake, tearing the quilt wrapped around him. The way he watched Cloud's mother as if she were a threat. The way he ate, somehow utterly detached and clearly so hungry.

The way he hesitated at being offered seconds.

Cloud didn't know what to say to him, but he wanted to say something. He was afraid, but not as afraid as he should have been. Sephiroth kept looking at him, and Cloud would glance away, full of sudden shame or discomfort that he didn't understand.

But what was important was that his mom said Sephrioth could stay. What was important was that the urgency and necessity of the situation, which Cloud couldn't hadn't been able to convey to her, Sephiroth had convinced her of in minutes. He'd done it almost silently, only through his stilted and uncertain actions.

"You're the best, ma." Cloud said, pretending not to notice as Sephiroth finished his second plate of dinner.

"Don't think you're getting out of this scot free." His mom said, pointing at him sharply. "You are still in a world of trouble Cloud Strife."

Cloud didn't even have time to sigh or complain before Sephiroth was between them. His hand was on Cloud's chest, pressing him back, even as he stared up at his mother. Cloud couldn't see the look on his face, but he could see his mom's eyes. She didn't look afraid. She looked miserably sad.

"He shouldn't be in trouble." Sephiroth said, his voice betraying nothing, steady and low. "Not alone. It was my fault he left. Let me take some of his punishment."

And Cloud still didn't know what to think of Sephiroth. What to feel about him. But he felt Sephiorth's hand against his chest, pressing him back from perceived harm, and fear dropped off the list. In its place rose up a foreign protectiveness. Something he'd only felt before listening to his classmates make barbed comments about his mother, right before getting into one of his many ill-advised fist-fights.

"I'm not going to hurt anyone." His mother said, careful and clear. "You're safe here."

Cloud silently made the same promise, lifting a hand to rest over Sephiroth's knuckles. The cuffs were still dangling around Cloud's bruised wrists, the connecting chain shattered by Sephiroth's own hands. But despite that, Cloud made up his mind as he felt Sephiroth twitch at his gentle touch.

He wasn't going to let anyone hurt him.