Arg! Why is it every time I set out to write something I have a specific plan for the chapter, and then the characters get away with me and nothing happens like I want it to?
So anywho, hope you like this chapter.
I'm inexplicably not so talkative today… might be because I'm dead tired. Heh.
Don't own don't sue
Sephiroth didn't often let himself think about what could have been. He was pragmatic, and nothing more. He had to be. Otherwise, the first fourteen years of his life would have driven him past the brink of insanity. What was the use of wondering over things that could never be? All such thinking could bring was disappointment. But unfortunately, his purely practical outlook had left him easy to box in. Hojo brought him up to be a weapon, and so he became one. He'd never once thought of defecting to Wutai, or simply running away. He could easily have gotten some small job somewhere, worked his way up in the world like a normal person. He just hadn't understood that those opportunities even existed. By the time he realized he had some level of control over his own life, Genesis and Angeal were there alongside him, and suddenly the war didn't seem so bad. Why should he leave the Shinra? Sure Hojo was still a bastard, but he had friends now. He couldn't care less that the shit they were having him do was for a bad cause, he wasn't doing it for them. He was fighting and killing and putting his life on the line for the people who meant something to him—the only people who'd ever meant something. But now…
Angeal and Genesis were gone. Angeal was dead and Genesis as good as. What was keeping him here in this god-forsaken place? He hated the senseless loss of life, the clean-up missions and the paperwork and the mako in his blood. He hated feeling like some kind of creature clothed in human skin, hated watching everyone either run from him or kowtow in admiration. He utterly despised Hojo, and Shinra's ideals meant absolutely nothing to him.
So why was he still here?
He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror and tried to find the answers. The villain from a horror film stared back at him. Dark bags had begun to outline his unnatural eyes, making them look all the more sinister. His skin was paler than should have been possible after numerous long campaigns in Wutai, hair a strange color that he'd never seen naturally duplicated on a single other person. The blood currently splattered on his clothes and face really didn't help matters. He looked every bit the monster Angeal and Genesis feared becoming.
Sephiroth buried his face in his hands and tried to banish the sound of the receptionist screaming not ten minutes before. He understood why she'd been distressed. He looked like a madman, covered in the remnants of the last cleanup mission, trudging into the lobby with Masamune still absentmindedly dragging behind him. Anyone would have screamed when confronted with a sight like that. He knew that. So why did it still hurt? Why did the echo of that shout refuse to leave him still?
He didn't know how long he stayed there, bent over the sink with his head in his hands. It was a miracle that no one else came into the bathroom in that time, but he supposed it was part of the human survival instinct. Perhaps they instinctively knew a threat existed somewhere behind that door? In any case, it was a while before he was capable of thinking coherently again. He pulled himself back up to his full height, turned to leave, caught a glimpse of the mirror again, and nearly gagged. The blood of his last victim was still there; a stark contrast against his moon-pale skin. Sephiroth forced himself to breathe and turned off his emotions, sending them back to the mask he'd crafted during the war. He methodically washed off the blood and forced himself not to think on it.
His mind wondered as he scrubbed, flitting from one subject to the next without words, working a mile a minute and yet thinking of nothing at all. His hands and face were raw by the time the sound of his cell phone threw him back into reality. The General looked dispassionately at his damaged skin and turned off the water before reaching for his phone. It wasn't like it mattered. Fast healing was one of the benefits of monstrosity.
"Sephiroth here." He spoke with coldly and with conviction despite the thoughts warring within. Sometimes he wished he could discard the mask and allow himself to feel for once, but that was a luxury he couldn't afford. Enemies could easily take advantage of it, and then where would he be?
"We have a bit of a problem." Zack's strained voice drifted back to him over the phone and he felt his eyes narrow. It wasn't often that his fellow 1st sounded worried. If SOLDIER's resident ray of sunshine was concerned, then it was probably more than just a "bit" of a problem.
"Continue." He prodded as he pulled his gloves back on. The silence that followed was not comforting. "Zackary?" The General heard a muttered curse.
"What are the odds of a mako patient waking up again?" Sephiroth frowned. Had something happened to that cadet?
"At the moment, they stand at 1.3 million to one, but with more time—" Another curse cut through the line, along with what sounded like something crashing. "Lieutenant Fair, what's going on?"
"Damn it Seph, don't give me that Lieutenant shit again."
"Zackary…" He drug the word out, using his intimidating voice to his advantage. It had never seemed to work on Zack before, but he kept hoping that someday Zack would develop a healthy fear of his wrath.
"Alright, a million to one. So what are the odds that the patient wakes up, and is immediately capable of out running a fully trained SOLDIER 1st operative?" Silence. Sephiroth blinked. The implications of that statement were… what?
"You mean to tell me that Trainee Strife is awake?" Another crash sounded from Zack's end. Sephiroth could hear angry shouts in the background.
"Well, yeah. But we've been over that already. I think the point here is not so much that he's awake—Sorry! I'll clean it up later I promise!—as that he's delusional and loose in the Shinra building." Sephiroth took a moment to think about it. He thought of all the cases of mako-poisoning he'd seen in Hojo's lab, all the Wutai operatives who were still trapped in their own minds after ten years, and felt the strong urge to curse. That a cadet could awaken from mako-poisoning of such insane proportions, and not only wake up, but immediately recover motor function…
"What?"
"Ok, Seph, this is not a time to be thinking about how Spike is defying every law in the known medical world. This is a time for—fuck he's speeding up!" Sephiroth rubbed his eyes and decided to just go with it. After all, Trainee Strife was most likely a product of Hojo's experimentation, and nobody knew what kind of impossibilities that asshole was capable of. And then, he realized. Strife was probably one of Hojo's experiments, and he was running unchecked through the Shinra building. Did he really want one of the madman's projects loose in an area full of civilians?
"What floor are you on?" Sephiroth asked, already walking briskly to the hallway. His office was on the SOLDIER floor, and Zack's apartment was on the 50th. With any luck, they could keep it on these two floors and leave most civilians out of it.
"Aw, damn it!" He heard a loud bang, and now knew Zack had run into something. "Ow." The dark-haired man whined. Sephiroth could hear that he was out of breath and wondered how long this had been going on already. "Well, I just lost him. Currently we're on the fifty-ninth floor." Sephiroth swore. So much for surrounding the cadet. "Gaea that hurt. Remind me to slice whoever came up with the idea for the new half-lockers."
"How the hell did you manage to lose him?" He growled, stalking his way through the hall to his office. By all means, a newly injected cadet should not, in any way have been faster than a fully trained SOLDIER who knew how to effectively use mako's "boosting" abilities. "And if he was so much trouble, why didn't you call me earlier?"
"Well I was gaining on him earlier! He had quite a head start, but there was a bit of a destruction trail, so I tailed him. I actually almost grabbed him on the 55th floor but then he really opened up. Damn. I've never seen someone so fast!" Sephiroth sighed and resisted the urge to punch the nearest object.
"Remain where you are. I'll call up a few seconds to back you up and have them shut down the elevators. He doesn't have a card key so he shouldn't be able to get into the 60th floor. Have some of your backup block the stairwell and make sure you're there when he comes back down." Even though he couldn't see the man, he could imagine the way Zack was saluting right now. Ugh. He'd definitely been spending too much time around Angeal's puppy.
"I'm on it!" Sephiroth closed his phone and fell into his desk chair before opening it again. As he dialed the appropriate commander, he wished he had just left that damn cadet to Hojo when he had the chance.
Run.
The command was the only real conscious thought going though his mind right now, and Cloud didn't contest it. He loved running; it was something he was good at. He'd always been good at it. He ran from his enemies, friends, problems, self, fears, and guilt all the time. Running was wonderful. It was nigh on transcendental. All he had to focus on was forcing one foot in front of the other and the pounding rhythm of his beating heart and his shoes against the floor could drown out everything else. Like this, he could feel every struggling gasp of his lungs, every quiver of every straining muscle as he pushed himself for more again and again. He loved that feeling—the adrenaline rush as he broke physical barrier after physical barrier, faster and faster as the wind combed through his hair and caressed him lovingly. Physical exhaustion tugged at him with every step, but he didn't dare stop. Stopping was death—it was immersion back into the real world, and who could say if he'd ever be able to escape again?
Escape: that was what it boiled down to. Cloud knew it was cowardice but he didn't fucking care anymore. He'd fought enough monsters in his life, faced himself and felt the guilt and rebuilt himself and killed himself so very many times. Didn't he get a turn to be selfish? Goddamn it! He wasn't a hero, and he didn't want to be. He wasn't good at morality, or selflessness, or any of the other things they expected him to be. He wasn't good at dealing with grief, or guilt, or sacrificing the needs of one for many. But he knew how to run, and he knew how to forget, and how to lose himself behind the physical pain.
His surroundings passed by in an incomprehensive blur as he flew through the hallways. What had begun as a desperate search for a way out had become nothing more than the primal need to keep going as though the very hounds of hell were behind him. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was conscious of the people and the desks and the chairs being knocked over as he plowed through everything, but he didn't let himself think about it. He kept his eyes on the horizon, only changing direction every so often to avoid walls. All that mattered was the next stretch of hallway or the next set of stairs. He kept himself going, terrified of stopping for reasons he couldn't bring himself to remember. He pushed himself past what had ever been possible until there was nowhere else to run.
Everything came crashing back as he was forced to stop, mako-enhanced muscles finally giving out. Cloud fell into a quivering heap on the stair landing, choking on his need for air. Everything hurt ten times worse than before, his ears were ringing, body simultaneously on fire and freezing at the same time, but somehow he felt better. Running was cathartic in a way that nothing else was. He was still confused, and the reminder of Zack still stung, and he still hated this goddamn dream. It just wasn't quite so unbearable anymore. He didn't have enough energy left for it to be unbearable.
He lay there, gasping at the top of the stairs until his vision finally stopped swimming with black dots. Cloud used a nearby wall to pull himself into a sitting position, closed his eyes, and leaned back against its cool surface. He lamented the fact that his escape had come to an end. This nightmare would have become a wonderful dream if he had simply been able to run into infinity; to wake up feeling as though, even for a little while, he'd been allowed to leave everything behind. But it hadn't, and there was no use fretting over it. Cloud pushed his emotions to the back of his mind, much easier now that the ghost of Zack wasn't taunting him, and forced himself to focus.
Any of the other times he'd been trapped in dreams it was because there was some part of himself he had to confront—some part of his extremely twisted mind that Gaea or Jenova or whatever other deity screwing with his life wanted him to see. If he was going to get out of this he was going to have to stand up and figure out what they wanted from him. Cloud didn't let himself dwell on his bitterness at being nothing more than a pawn, and forced his eyes open once more. The blond dragged himself up onto his feet, ignoring the way everything swayed as he tried to remain upright. He left one hand on the wall for balance, turned to face the door beside him, and felt the world stop.
From this perspective, the world he was in was suddenly very familiar. Everything around him was white, grey, or metallic. Large neatly painted numbers to his right decried this as the 69th floor and an annoyingly recognizable slot beside the door flashed red at him. He knew exactly where he was. But why in Gaea's name would he dream of this place? Of all things? The only time he'd been on the sixty ninth floor had been when Sephiroth…
"Spike?" The voice echoed up to him from quite a few floors down and Cloud's jaw clenched. His grip on his emotions was already tenuous at best right now. He didn't think he could face that person right now and still have the will to do whatever it was the planet wanted him to do this time.
Cloud had spent a lot of time after the fall of Midgar going though the remains of the Shinra building. Who knew if one of Hojo's monstrosities hadn't been left behind? Of course, he'd somehow managed to miss the existence of Deepground despite his careful combing through every floor still intact, but he'd learned a few things. His warrior's memory had left him with a perfect map of the dratted building, and he'd watched Reno short-circuit enough of these damn locks to know how to do it himself
He acted quickly, smashing one mako-enhanced fist into the hard plastic of the lock and watching with satisfaction as it shattered. Footsteps pounded up the stairwell, still a few floors back, but gaining as he pulled and twisted the right wires. He could feel the panic beginning to set in as nothing happened, worried that the dream would not follow the logic of real life as his pursuer grew closer and closer, but then the door was open and Cloud was trying once more to escape. He couldn't manage his earlier run, could barely keep himself on his feet. He wouldn't be able to outrun the SOLDIER. He would have to hide.
Cloud winced with each shaky step, but pulled himself into the nearest room. His memory served him well and soon he was in the Shinra Executive Break room. Low voices carried from the offices nearby, but he paid them no mind. All that mattered was getting away from the phantom behind him. The blond searched frantically for a place to hide, knowing that he was going to collapse at any second.
"Holy shit!" the curse was no louder than the mumblings of others working here, but somehow it carried to Cloud above everything else. He didn't think. He gathered every last bit of strength he had and pushed off the ground, throwing himself at the nearest drink machine. His hands gripped the edges, arms shaking as he pulled himself to the top. The damn thing wobbled beneath him as he worked and for a moment he thought it would tip over, but it didn't. Cloud didn't allow himself to stop for a break. He crawled along the tops of the machines, dragging himself towards the corner where the tallest machine stood. He'd only just managed to curl up in the shadow where walls and machine met when the man he was trying to avoid burst into the room.
Zack was an amazing SOLDIER. He was observant, level headed, and resourceful despite all appearances. If he were his usual self, he would have spotted Cloud in a second. He would have smelled the mako if nothing else. But the Zack who nearly ran into the sliding door in his effort to get to Cloud was not his usual self. Despite the pain coursing through him and the exhaustion pulling at him, Cloud could see how flustered his best friend was. Zack didn't give the room more than a cursory glance before running to the next. It hurt to see the SOLDIER so worried, but Cloud selfishly couldn't bring himself to face him. What did it matter? It was only a dream anyway.
For a long while after Zack had already left, he sat there, whole body tense and poised to run even if he had no strength to do so. Slowly, the adrenaline that had been keeping him going began to fade. He was just about to slip out of consciousness when the door slid open once more. Cloud pushed all thoughts of sleep from his mind, fought against the lead weights holding his eyes closed. He'd only barely just managed to open them when he heard a shocked gasp. He'd been spotted. Cloud groaned and focused on the situation, willing his vision to cooperate only to see—
"Reeve?"
