A/N: Second of two chapters in Cloud's POV; sorry about it being so long. Not telling whose POV is next yet, only that the next chapter will take place at the Old Chaos Shrine.

Let's do what we can. (intro, Cloud to Terra)

My muscles were sore and stiff when I came awake in the very same position in which I had fallen asleep: sitting at the foot of Cosmos's altar with the young Luneth in my arms. Had he really not stirred himself from the comfort of my embrace the whole—however-many—hours I'd slept? Poor boy. As gently as I could, I managed to extricate myself from him and get up. "I need to get up," I told him, softly; "go back to sleep if you need to, but I really have to get up and stretch." Luneth clung to me at first, but he relinquished his hold on me soon enough and lay with his back pressed to the still-warm foot of the altar, quickly falling back to sleep.

I began stretching the stiffness out of my body, massaging the place where the shoulder-guard I wore had been digging into my upper back and looking about me as I did. Firion lay asleep at the side of the altar below the head of the still-whimpering Terra. Hikari, however, looked as though he had fallen asleep in the midst of prayer: kneeling beside Cosmos's altar, head resting on the edge, clasping Terra's right hand with his own. I hoped that his falling asleep hadn't left the wounded Terra very long without one of us awake to attend to her in case she needed anything.

I prodded Hikari awake with a light slap to his armored back. "Go find a more comfortable position to sleep in, Hikari, preferably a little bit away from the altar," I admonished. "I'm awake now and can watch over Terra." Hikari got up to do just that (even more clumsily than I had, as he had been sleeping in a more awkward position than I), and I set about doing what I could for Terra. Perhaps I could try again to heal her with Cure spells, since I was now significantly less worked-up than I had been on arriving at the Sanctuary.

When I gently clasped Terra's hand, the one that Hikari had been holding, I was relieved when she twitched a bit but did not try to yank her hand out of my grasp. Her palm was unburned and her fingers mostly so, but there was copious redness on the back of her hand and outside of the arm. Touching my Cure materia to an edge of the burned area, I focused my energy into healing Terra of her wounds, and slowly but surely I began to see creamy, healthy skin appearing in place of the reddened burned skin.

The closer I came to Terra's shoulders and upper chest, I observed, the less burned skin there seemed to be. The right side of her face and neck had not been burned, but as I went around the altar and worked on healing the burned places on the left side of the green-haired girl's body, I saw that there was a bruised place on the left side of her neck, underneath the burning. A love-bite, as it may be euphemistically termed—I suspected as much. But was it really so that the areas of Terra's body that were in direct contact with Sephiroth's at the time of Kefka's magic-blast were spared the burning? The fact that the insides of her arms, and most of her upper chest, were unburned would certainly seem to affirm that theory.

I took an ether before renewing my healing effort and had just pulled back Firion's cape, resting it on Terra's upper thighs so that I could begin to heal the burns on her legs, when I heard running footsteps and saw that the monkey-tailed thief Zidane was approaching with a book in his hands. "Cloud," Zidane acknowledged me as he arrived. "I'm really glad somebody's got some kind of curative other than healing potions."

At his end of the altar, Firion was stirring awake and slowly rising to his feet. "Mission accomplished?" he asked when he saw that Zidane was present.

"Mission accomplished," Zidane answered with a brief smile, handing the book to Firion, but it was soon replaced with an uncertain look—"At least, I hope… I hope I stole the right book from the wicked old witch…"

"We'll soon find out, won't we?" said Firion as he opened the back of the book in the hopes of finding what we needed to know via the index. "At least it looks as if Cloud's managing to heal more of Terra's burns with his materia than we've been able to by rubbing healing potions on the affected skin."

Zidane let out a short sigh of relief. "Good that the burning's starting to disappear," he replied, kneeling beside the altar and taking hold of Terra's hand. "Hey, how you doing, Terra?" he asked her half rhetorically. I was relieved to hear Terra moan a little bit and see her squeeze Zidane's hand lightly in reply; she was, once again, some semblance of conscious.

I focused my effort into healing the burns on Terra's legs, not paying any attention to the words that Zidane and Firion exchanged, until I heard Firion give a startled gasp. "Good gods," the liegeman murmured. "It's literally every aphrodisiac in the book—if this potion is what Terra was under when Sephiroth seduced her, it's no wonder that she…"

"You mean she was seduced?" Zidane interrupted, letting go of Terra's hand. "But your cover-story was that Terra was under one of Ultimecia's potions, which is why Hikari sent me to steal a potion-book from the witch—and that Kefka ambushed Terra, which is why she's so badly burned. When Ultimecia tried to waylay me, she said, 'the seed of Chaos will take root, no matter what you do to try and prevent it'—I was under the impression that Terra had been raped—by Chaos himself, no less!" Zidane's voice rose with panic, and I had to shush him because his panic-fit was distressing Terra further and woke up Hikari and Luneth.

"Hikari, you and Luneth do what you can to heal Terra some more," Firion sighed in exasperation. "Cloud and I need to smooth things over with Zidane." Once Firion had led Zidane and me a sufficient distance away from the altar, once again out of Luneth's hearing, he explained: "Zidane, hear me out, I'm telling you exactly the same thing that I told Cloud." The liegeman proceeded to give his account of the events. "So, essentially, Ultimecia was the purveyor of this mind-altering substance through the use of which Sephiroth was able to take advantage of Terra. But because Sephiroth decided to show Terra the mercy of seduction instead of rape, that's why Kefka got angry and blasted them both while they were obviously distracted."

Zidane nodded in understanding. "And you and Hikari left out the part about Sephiroth being involved because you thought it would only matter to me if Kuja had a part to play in this whole mess. But what I'm worried about is what Ultimecia said: 'the seed of Chaos…'"—

"'…will take root.' She meant it in exactly the context you're thinking of, even if the 'seed' in question wasn't necessarily that of Chaos himself," I cut Zidane off, repressing an unpleasant shiver. Hitherto I had been more worried about Terra suffering mako poisoning than about her possibly getting pregnant. "I'm guessing that's the other reason why you were called on to steal that potion-book. Which means we can't waste time, so I'm going back to Terra to heal her. Firion, tell Hikari and me when you find an antidote for whatever Terra was under."

The three of us went back to Cosmos's altar together, and shortly I began to hear indistinct talk among the others as I renewed my efforts to heal the burned places along each of Terra's legs. Once I looked up from my task, I saw that both Zidane and Luneth had departed from the Sanctuary. "I convinced Luneth to go with Zidane—apparently Zidane was traveling with Bartz Klauser when they became separated, and he was scared when he thought the badly-wounded comrade on Cosmos's altar was Bartz," Hikari explained when he caught my puzzled look. "Since Luneth has his crystal already, maybe he can help Bartz and Zidane find theirs."

"Good thing to get Luneth away right now," Firion added, "because as much as he wants to help Terra, we're to the point where he, young as he is, needs to clear off and let the adults do the work." Firion was right; most of Terra's burns were healed except for those on her back from nape to buttocks and the backs of her thighs. She was still obviously in pain and unwilling to move or open her eyes, however, and I couldn't help but wonder how much internal damage the (unwitting) united front of Kefka and Sephiroth had done. Terra would need to be able to actually drink some healing potions (instead of having them rubbed into her skin) in order to heal on the inside, and for that, she needed to be conscious.

"Terra," I murmured, clasping her hand. She gave a slight groan and (as her folded sash no longer covered her face) crinkled her brows as if she wanted to open her eyes but couldn't, lest the ambient light blind her. "Terra, we need to heal the burns on your back," I began by way of explanation. "Do you have the strength in you to sit up or roll over so we can do that?"

"I'll—try," she croaked in answer, pulling her hand loose from mine to keep the cover of Firion's cape over her breasts and steadying herself with the other arm. Slowly, with much wincing and whimpering, she rolled over onto her front. As predicted, Terra's entire back was covered in angry red flesh from nape to thighs, with the exception of two distinct broad diagonal swaths of unburned skin. I knew at once that those areas were the places where Sephiroth's arms had been wrapped around Terra's body when Kefka blasted them both. These burned places took somewhat longer for me to heal with my materia for some reason.

When I finished healing the bulk of the remaining burns and Terra could roll over to lie on her back again (it seemed to be the position that gave her the least pain), Firion uncorked yet another vial of healing potion and, clasping Terra's hand as I had done, prepared to administer it. "You'll feel at least a little better once you've had a healing potion, Terra; do you think you can drink one now?" he asked of her, and when she nodded her head yes, he moved his free hand to her head to tilt it up slightly and began to slowly pour the contents of the vial into her mouth. I watched the muscles in her throat work to swallow the potion (and the grimace that crossed her face at the bitter taste) and continued to watch her face as the medicine did its healing work. Then, at long last, she was able to open her blue eyes.

"Am—am I in—in the Order's—Sanctuary?" she blearily managed to ask, blinking her eyes rapidly against the ambient light. "Gods, I—feel like I've—been blasted to smithereens…"

"No, Terra, you're still in one piece," answered Firion, seizing Terra's hand again and kissing her palm as though he were kissing the hand of Cosmos herself in relief and gratitude. "Thank Cosmos you're still in one piece!"

Terra glanced forlornly at her other hand for a moment before grasping the cape that covered her as she sat up and turned back to Firion—and then she noticed that Hikari and I were present as well. And the moment that her eyes met mine was the moment she was overcome with guilt. "Cloud," she choked out, voice barely above a whisper, "Cloud, I'm so sorry—but I…" Any more words that she might have said were lost; Terra pulled her hand out of Firion's and averted her face as she broke down into tears, at once spilling her shame to the heavens in loud sobbing.

I should have expected that Terra would cry over what had happened in the World of Darkness, what Sephiroth had tricked her into doing, but maybe I hadn't expected her reaction to be so instant, or so visceral. Now I felt her distress as keenly as if it had been my own. Patiently I waited for the sobs to die down before I took a handkerchief that Hikari handed to me and pressed it into Terra's hand.

"Terra," I murmured, placing a hand on her shoulder in the same comforting manner that I had done for Luneth earlier once she had wiped the tears from her face, "Terra, look at me." She met my blue eyes with her blue eyes, and I knew that it was taking all her courage to hold my gaze. "I know what happened, Terra. I know exactly what happened when Sephiroth took you to the World of Darkness, and I'm not blaming you for any of it." And this was true; I knew better than to hold it against her. I knew better than to blame anybody other than Sephiroth for what happened (and perhaps Ultimecia, for aiding him in his ploy). "You did what you had to do in order to prevent worse from happening." And of this I felt certain. Had Terra resisted Sephiroth's advances, the spiteful son-of-a-bitch would have raped her, and that wasn't something that I would wish on anybody.

"I knew it wasn't natural," she replied now, lowering her eyes and shaking her head, "the way his touch threatened to set me on fire—when it should've done the opposite, it should've turned my blood to ice…"

Hikari, who had stood up and been pacing back and forth, knelt down again to be closer to Terra's eye level. "You were under the influence of a potion meant to induce lust," he explained to her, "which Sephiroth managed to introduce into your system when you fell under a sleep spell that was, according to what Luneth told Cloud, cast on you by one of the manikins that you fought. When the sleep spell began to wear off, that was when the lust potion did its work, and I have no doubt that Sephiroth had prepared some manner of verbal manipulations to break down what little resistance you did show."

"That he did," Terra confirmed, looking uncertainly about her as she began to explain further. "At first I accused him of intending to hand me over to Kefka—why else would anyone on Chaos's side want to kidnap me, after all?—but then Sephiroth told me that, in fact, he wanted more than anything to see me destroy Kefka, because Kefka annoyed him so very much." Damn. If the clownish red manikins were any indicator of Kefka's nature, Sephiroth might actually have been telling Terra the truth when he said this. But I said nothing, and Terra continued: "So he went on to say that if only I was willing to let him help me, he could…pour some of his power…into me…and thereby give me just what I needed to overpower Kefka when I finally did face him."

"And do you think there was any truth to that?" I inquired, trying not to sound harsh or sardonic, "I mean, is it part of your nature as a half-Esper that good sex is supposed to bolster your magic?"

"I honestly wouldn't know," she answered sadly. "Supposedly it works that way for full-blooded Espers, especially female ones, but I'm not sure if it would work for me because I'm only half-Esper—not that I've ever even had the nerve to try. But it did feel like the sleep spell I'd been under, or that potion Hikari mentioned—or maybe both—served to suppress my magic…"

I knew it. "And that, in turn, made Sephiroth's so-called gift of a power-boost much more tempting, even if you knew it a sin for you to accept such a proposition," I surmised, trying hard to conceal my frustration.

Terra must have been able to sense my ill-controlled anger, because her distress returned. "I remember praying, 'forgive me, Cosmos,' as I told Sephiroth I accepted his offer," she confessed, "but then he was kissing me, and—I'm so sorry, Cloud—I couldn't even remember why I was trying to resist him in the first place…" But she was unable and unwilling to say any more as she dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief again, struggling to hold back sobs.

"You don't need to defend yourself to me, Terra, or to anyone here," I told her. "The only person here who might have held what happened against you is Firion; he's the one who found you in a compromising position. But Cosmos made it known to us that you had no choice in the matter, and you should know that since she forgives you, so do we."

My words seemed to comfort Terra, if only a little, because she managed, with great effort, not to break down into a sobbing mess again. She did, however, begin to look about her in a confused manner. "But why…why did I wake up hurting so badly?" she asked of nobody in particular. "Surely I'm not supposed to feel run-down like this after…" She broke off, too embarrassed to finish.

"That would be Kefka's doing," Hikari began to explain. "It was perhaps because Sephiroth elected to ensure your pleasure in intimacy with him, by means of a lust potion, that Kefka grew angry and struck the both of you with an extremely powerful magic-blast while you and your seducer were too thoroughly distracted with each other to notice his presence."

"Light of Judgment," Terra clarified. "That's what Kefka called it when he was at the height of his power in my world."

Hikari proceeded to give Terra the same account that he and Firion had given to me, from Firion's battle with Kefka and how it drew his attention to her plight to Cosmos's testament stating the nature of the evil influence under which Terra had fallen, and the information-seeking mission on which he, Hikari, had sent Zidane. "As we speak, Firion is preparing an antidote for you, in order to kill any lingering traces of that lust potion that are still in your system," he added, "and he did gather your personal effects from the scene. Do you think you're well enough to get up and dressed, or do you need another healing potion before you can fit back into that tight dress of yours without it chafing any remaining burned skin?" When Terra answered that she was feeling equal to the task of putting her clothes back on, Hikari handed them to her and led me away from the altar in order to give Terra some much-needed privacy.

"Fortunately, all eight of the lust-inducing potions in this 'grand-sorceress's potion-book' can be countered easily enough with a rather simple antidote," Firion explained as he placed a tea-ball into a mug and poured boiling water over it. "The treatment calls for one cup of strong green tea, with seven drops of peppermint oil and two teaspoons of a light honey added to it. This green-tea-with-peppermint preparation is to be administered once every hour until it can be safely determined that the subject is no longer under the influence." These antidote-ingredients made some sense; green tea was reputed as a brain stimulant, and peppermint reputed for having a cooling effect. But why "a light honey?" I wondered. Were most of the lust potions in the book made with darker varieties of honey?

Terra gingerly approached our gathering, fully dressed except for her ruined stockings, as Firion was adding honey to the tea along with the peppermint oil. "Thank you all so much for healing me as best you could," said she, sitting down at the campfire between Hikari and Firion. "I shudder to think what might've happened if nobody else had been around when Kefka reared his ugly head…"

"Drink this," Firion bade her as he offered the mug of tea. "It's green tea with peppermint oil and wild rose honey, and it should combat any lingering traces of lust potion, but depending on which one of these eight potions you were under and how much of it, it's probably—no, it's definitely—going to take more than one cup to purge the remnants from your body."

Terra obediently took the tea with a grateful smile to Firion and began to drink. "It's certainly strong and minty," she remarked in an embarrassed manner, schooling her expression back into more of a smile than a grimace.

"It has to be strong," I answered wryly. "An antidote needs to be powerful if it's going to counter a powerful poison or other evil influence." Not only was this absolutely true, but it was also fortunate that the menthol in peppermint oil was an effective counter for mako poisoning, in case my fear was justified with regards to mako not playing well with Esper magic.

Firion, Hikari, and I had definitely made considerable progress in nursing Terra back to health, but she was still far from being at full strength. I could only pray that she recovered soon and could bring Kefka to justice…and that it took that much longer for Sephiroth to recover from having been collateral damage.

A/N: Each of the three ingredients in the apparently-universal lust-potion antidote represents one of the three allies chiefly responsible for aiding Terra in recovery. Green tea represents Hikari, aka Warrior of Light (a stimulant to counter a "haze-inducing" aphrodisiac or depressant and facilitate clear thinking); peppermint oil represents Cloud (a very strong ingredient reputed for having a cooling effect, because any antidote needs to be really strong if it must combat some part of Sephiroth's influence); wild rose honey, of course, represents Firion (sweet to balance out the bitterness of green tea and the strength of the peppermint, and it's an appropriate symbol of Firion's empathy for Terra-being that Firion himself once came close to falling for a seduction by a "Lamia Queen" in his adventure).