14.
In Which Squall Is Getting Real Tired of Everyone's Shit
The world was blinding to eyes that hadn't seen anything for centuries, and Sephiroth blinked slowly, waiting for his vision to remember that there were more colors than searingly-bright green.
Eventually he figured out he was naked. Hmm. The mako spring in which he sat freezer-burned his flesh. When he lifted a hand above the surface of the pool, he had trouble distinguishing between the crystalline mako and the paleness of his skin that would do a corpse proud. Perhaps that was appropriate, all things considered.
A little while later and his body worked out which bits were legs and which ones were arms, and the parts that turned out to be feet found purchase on the pool's rocky bottom so Sephiroth could stand, slowly, wavering until he rediscovered balance. Mako sluiced down his body, dripped down his hair, brought out goosebumps on oversensitive flesh. He waded carefully out of the pool towards a rock on dry floor and seated himself on it, pulling his hair over a shoulder and twisting it to wring out the mako. Some silver strands tangled around his fingers and his first facial expression in ages was a faint frown.
Still blinking slowly, Sephiroth looked around. There wasn't anything really exciting, but then his frown deepened in thought.
("What about my sadness?")
The cave felt vaguely familiar, though whether it was the cave itself or something that might have happened in the cave was frustratingly unclear. There was a weight missing from his left hand. A pointy thing. A sword? That sounded correct. There was a weight on his right side that was not meant to be there, large and black and feathered and which suggested an oversized crow would be walking around with a wing hacked off.
(There was a fire that burned away the edges of night, and smoke curled beneath his coat like dragon's breath, and the ends of his long hair were streaked with ash as he walked through the village. Righteousness made him strong, knowing as he did that cruelty must come before kindness, that cleansing must precede enlightenment.)
Sephiroth let out several harsh breaths through his nose to get rid of an imagined stench.
(The villagers ran, but they were weak and his materia caught them easily. He saw a blonde woman standing silently at her front door, small and middle-aged with a motherly apron tied around her waist, and there was something in her fair coloring and the defiance in her features that was too familiar.)
"Oh, gods."
(It was the boy's mother and he took particular pleasure in watching her burn.)
"Cloud..."
("My puppet. Mine to use as I see fit.")
"Planet," Sephiroth whispered hoarsely, vision tunneling towards darkness, "what have I done?"
...
A loud crash made all the SeeDs' hands fly to their weapons. "The fuck's eating him?" Seifer snarked when they realized the sound came from Cloud's fist half-buried in a wall. Quistis considered the strength it would take to cause that kind of damage and thought, Shit.
"He fought Sephiroth a long time ago," she explained.
Raijin fidgeted. "Vincent won't even talk about Sephiroth, yanno? I don't think I ever wanna meet this guy."
"Great," said Seifer, "now that you've said that, it's practically guaranteed to happen."
Raijin turned to Fujin for help, but she shrugged. "PROBABLY."
He groaned. Quistis had to try very hard not to find it all charmingly juvenile and got up, brushing her hands over her skirt. "Zell, I'm going back to Ragnarok, someone should be there in case Xu or Selphie try to get in contact."
Zell shifted to take her spot beside Squall. "Say 'hi' for me."
She considered saying something Seifer and his two shadows, but even Fujin's typically expressionless face was drawn and tired. So she just said, "I'll be back soon," and threaded between the wounded and the volunteers helping them, wondering if there was any possible hope of (re)building their broken little family.
...
Under the stench of funeral fires, Dollet smelled like hot asphalt and impending rain. Walking down the street was a deadly hazard, making Cloud pick his way carefully over shattered concrete and splintered wood. The evening sky was lit by the eerie orange glow of the fires where able-bodied citizens dutifully dragged monster carcasses to the city's outskirts for mass cremation; the last thing they needed was a plague. The first thing Cloud needed, on the other hand, was something to do so he wouldn't think about other towns on fire and too much death. Unless it was the death of monsters, which sounded appealing, but unfortunately for his bloodthirsty needs the smoke from the fires would keep anything still alive away from the city. Woe.
The click of Quistis' heels coming up behind him made Cloud reluctantly slow his strides. How people managed to fight in skirts and heels would always be the true superhuman power, and judging by the way his own lavender silk dress had had a tendency to get in the way of his sword, it wasn't one of his.
"What happened?" she asked when she caught up, peering at him over the top of her spectacles.
"Nothing."
She hummed disbelievingly. "People generally don't punch holes in walls for no reason."
Normal people, maybe. He'd earned a fit of existential angst, damn it.
"I'm going to the ship to check in with Garden." She touched his arm lightly, but she withdrew her hand when he flinched. "I can only imagine how difficult this must be for you. If Ultimecia ever came back..." She shook her head. "Can we trust you, Cloud?"
His lips quirked. "I can't even trust myself half the time. Trust Vincent."
The sharpness of her gaze reminded him vaguely of Scarlet, sans malice. She nodded, paused, then headed away towards the ship, leaving Cloud free to continue on towards the cremation fires. If he couldn't kill things, he could at least help burn them.
...
"Selphie, love, you sure that's a good idea?"
"Of course," she replied confidently, belying the death-grip she had on Irvine's forearm. "Lying around won't make things shiny. And I haven't lost any more blood."
Disturbing, but true: still no sign of scabbing but still no sign of bloody gushing, either. It was like the muscle had been flash-frozen without the actual freezing part. After a while, the pain in both their bodies had faded to a dull ache.
Irvine steadied her when her legs trembled, and Selphie grinned. "It's all right, Mom, I'm a big girl."
"Yeah you are," he quipped, but the attempted flirting just died an embarrassing death.
"All bark, no bite." She let go of his arm. "All right, partner, let's case this joint and see where the hell we are."
They scrutinized the cavern. It hadn't changed since the first time Irvine looked around. "Looks like something out of Zell's novels. The ones with aliens."
"How would you know that?" Selphie asked shrewdly. She smirked when he pointedly ignored her in favor of the walls, which...huh.
"Selphie, come look at this," he said distractedly, gesturing towards one of the slick-smooth walls. It was made of the same obsidian-like stuff as everything else, but behind its semi-translucent surface there were weirdly straight veins of copper or gold that didn't seem natural. "Is it just me or do those look like the girders you use in construction?"
She limped over. "You know, it kinda looks familiar."
They began pacing the length of the wall mostly for lack of anything else to do. "Well, we know it was Jenova, not Rinoa. Where do aliens make their HQ?" he mused aloud.
"The space bar?"
"Oh my gods."
"Bwahaha. But seriously, Cloud didn't mention her favorite vacation spot, just the Lifestream, so... "
"You think it might be where we are now?" Didn't seem like the kind of place the Planet would manifest, but who knew what a millions-year-old entity was thinking.
Selphie thought for a moment before shaking her head. "Nah, from what he said, there'd be a lot more green, and the only reason Squall's been there is because of the whole Knight thing."
They moved slowly, uncomfortable but not in any real pain, until an acidic smell reminiscent of magic springs stung Irvine's nose. "Are you hungry?" he asked abruptly.
"Uh, no, not really, although I could go for a cheeseburger. Why?"
"We've been awake for what's probably hours and unconscious for longer than that. We should be be starving."
She opened her mouth, closed it with a puzzled face, tried again. "You're right."
They faced each other for a long moment. "Guess it's a good thing, right?" he said weakly.
...
They don't care for you, Squall. They're going to leave you behind the way the rest of your family did.
It was snowy and cold but nothing like the world Shiva had made inside of him. She wasn't there, something wasn't right, but Squall had forgotten why it mattered - because he wasn't Squall, he was Mother's son and he was a god in his own right -
I'm a SeeD, a little thought whispered. I never wanted to be anything else.
They'll all leave you the way your first lover did.
That picked at old wounds like few other things could, but whatever, Seifer left because he wanted to. There was nothing more to say and the matter was closed.
Only I can give you everything you want, my son, my love.
So Squall
woke up. The pallet was hard beneath his back where his tailbone and shoulderblades dug into it. Without opening his eyes he could sense that he was in a large space full of people making a lot of echoing noise. Zell's aftershave was a nearly solid cloud hovering at his side.
"Hey, you're awake," Zell declared cheerfully, even though Squall hadn't moved. "Welcome back. You've been out of it for, what, eight or nine hours. It's about twenty-hundred hours right now. We had to carry you into City Hall and Quistis is at Ragnarok waiting to hear from, uh, just about anyone. Questions?"
"What happened?" Squall croaked. The cobwebs of his dream - hallucination? - clung stubbornly to his thoughts and made the world move too slowly.
"You fainted in Shiva's arms, all the monsters dropped dead for unknown reasons, and Sephiroth is alive, according to this one guy named Vincent that you've never met but who knew Cloud when they fought Jenova the first time hundreds of years ago. Cloud disappeared somewhere, probably to have an existential meltdown."
Seriously, he ends up unconscious just once... He tried to lever himself up, batted away Zell's hand when Zell tried to push him back down, and managed to sit up properly.
"Look at that, the princess is awake."
Every muscle in Squall's body locked up. Seifer stood several feet away, well out of arm's reach, as haughty as ever and bringing back the jagged memory of lightning crackling over and through vulnerable flesh. The lack of a trench coat, worn for so long as an armor of its own kind, made Seifer...smaller, somehow. "Seifer," he murmured without thinking, wished fervently for Shiva's chilling cold to take away the nauseating tangle of anger and hurt and animal fear and Hyne knew what else that was making him lightheaded.
Squall got to his feet, slowly, because if he moved too quickly then the tension in his muscles would finally snap. "When Cloud comes back, we're going back to Garden to regroup," Squall said, tilting his head in Zell's direction to address him without taking his eyes off Seifer. "Jenova herself obviously isn't here. Seifer, Fujin, and Raijin will be returning with us."
Seifer arched an eyebrow, still imperious, still an asshole, still able to make Squall question if he wanted to kill him or kiss him. "You do remember we're not SeeDs, right? We're not going anywhere we don't want to."
"You three were never actually removed from Balamb Garden's roster. Technically, you're still AWOL and therefore still accountable to said Garden. You specifically, Seifer, are an international fugitive, and Galbadia's been pressuring me to hunt you down and hand you over to a tribunal. I won't let that happen."
"Gee, I didn't know you cared," Seifer sneered, and Squall neutrally replied, "You don't deserve to die a political prisoner."
"Really? Because last time I checked, world domination is generally frowned upon in polite society."
"You failed." That slight flinch was more viciously satisfying than Squall wanted to admit. "Besides, as a mercenary, you were acting within the bounds of a contract with a client."
Seifer stared at him incredulously. "You're using Garden rhetoric to justify the world nearly being destroyed? Hyne's balls, does Cid realize who he's put in charge?"
Why were people always shocked when Squall played politics? He may be socially inept, but he wasn't stupid.
Zell had started fidgeting halfway through this little byplay and finally broke in. "What the hell is - Vincent?"
A man straight out of a Gothic romance materialized in a blur of red and black beside Zell. Cloud's old friend, then. "How are you feeling?" Vincent asked. Damn, a voice like that, he must've learned to speak with velvet and whiskey.
"I'm fine."
Seifer snorted.
"Jenova will redouble her efforts to bring you to heel," said Vincent. "She will not fail again. She will promise you your greatest dreams and bring nothing but death."
"Cheerful."
Vincent slanted a look at Seifer before abruptly turning towards the city hall's doors where Cloud was walking in, covered in ash and gore and noticeably calmer.
"You're awake," Cloud observed, looking Squall up and down.
"Without a kiss from Prince Charming, no less."
Squall pretended momentary deafness in Seifer's direction. "Sephiroth's alive?"
"...Yes."
"How?"
"The last thing you remember, was it Jenova? Er, Rinoa?"
Squall nodded, little more than a short jerk of his head.
"I think she was trying to summon all the...clones. Knights. People with some part of her, anyway." Cloud crossed his arms and shifted his weight from foot to foot. "Seifer and I felt her, Rinoa probably focused on you in particular, and Sephiroth...he hasn't been very human in a long time."
"Most likely," Vincent agreed, and with a complete break in character Cloud stepped back with a noise of frustration and made a sharp, cutting motion with a gory hand, snarling, "Fuck Jenova, fuck the Cetra, they should've gotten some other pathetic bastard to do their dirty work - "
"I suggest," Vincent murmured, "that you if you wish to see this all come to an end, you accept what has happened and not allow the past to prevent you from acting now."
"Wow," said Cloud, "you win the award for the most hypocritical one-liner ever made."
For a moment Squall thought they would come to blows and reached for Lion Heart; Cloud's eyes glowed and Vincent was as unreadable as a marble statue, but then Vincent said softly, "Astute as ever, Zack."
Cloud recoiled, and for a moment Squall could see a scared teenage boy so much like the reflection Squall had seen after the D-District Prison that he reflexively deflected, interrupted, said, "We'll return to Garden immediately. We're only wasting time here."
The quick pace back to the Ragnarok was the most awkward fucking thing Squall had ever experienced. He kept his eyes forward so he wouldn't have to deal with whatever drama was probably happening behind him and pretend that Seifer, so close at his shoulder, wasn't actually there. It wasn't working very well. At least Seifer disappeared somewhere in the bowels of the ship like a groundhog into its hole once they got there.
Quistis, thankfully, was in the copilot's seat, exactly where she should be, and decidedly not dripping angst all over the floor.
"Have you spoken to Xu?" Squall asked, bracing an arm against the low jamb of the cockpit and leaning in.
"Squall! I'm glad you're awake. And yes, I have - she got a transmission from Selphie and Irvine at around sixteen-hundred hours, Galbadia time. They found Rinoa's apartment trashed but no Rinoa. They reported in about an hour before their train was scheduled to leave and she hasn't heard from them since.
"Around sixteen-thirty, there was some kind of attack at the Timber station." Her voice lowered. "Twenty-two people were killed, over a hundred more wounded. Four trains were reduced to scrap. No one saw what actually happened, but theories range from a rogue Guardian Force to a freak gas explosion. Selphie and Irvine haven't been found among the casualties, but right now they're listed MIA."
Fuck. "Take Ragnarok back to Garden and alert Xu."
When Quistis started the engines, they made a horrific grinding noise that made everyone in the ship cringe.
"Something with wings must've hit something," she called back. "I need someone to go down to the engine room and run diagnostics."
"I will," Squall volunteered, heading towards a lower deck.
"You want any help?" Zell volunteered, but Squall just shook his head. As he descended down the ladder, he heard Cloud ask, "Zell, Balamb Garden has vehicles of its own, right?" and when Zell said yes, Cloud added, "Does it have bikes?"
Irritated crazy people and modified bikes; that was the sound of a future headache, and Squall was momentarily deaf again.
Convenient, that.
...
Getting run over by a herd of chocobos was the only explanation for the migraine cracking his skull apart as self-awareness trickled in. The stone was cold and unforgiving under his bare skin, but he didn't much feel it. Sephiroth wasn't feeling much of anything, really, except a vague sort of curiosity for why everything was so horrible and not just physically.
A few feet away from where Sephiroth lay, the mako spring glittered and shone a myriad colors that didn't all have names. There had been someone, someone he knew well, who had blue eyes - not the same vibrant shade as the mako, of course, but still bright, and sometimes they'd been in a face that radiated happiness, and sadness, and anxiety, but also fear, pain, desperation, despair.
Sephiroth's body seized but there wasn't anything left to vomit up. He just sprawled uselessly on his side, staring at the way his fingers naturally curved when his hand lay palm-up and relaxed. They were strong enough that he knew it took hardly any effort to leave dark bruises on tender skin.
Time passed as slow and thick as honey. It took a while for the lack of my son, my beloved to make him sit up, the world tilting a little dizzily, and while she was still there in the back of his mind like the cold undercurrent of a river, there was also the quieter note of a steady, familiar heartbeat. His...well, 'lover' was probably being too optimistic and 'puppet' wasn't exactly a term of endearment. His Cloud, maybe. Just Cloud. Might be good to start referring to him as an individual person nowadays if Sephiroth planned on tracking him down. Gods knew what Sephiroth was going to do once he found the person he'd unintentionally used and later intentionally tortured, but that heartbeat pounded in his ears and what else was there to do but try anyway?
Bracing a hand against the rough rock wall of the cave, Sephiroth traced around the cave's circumference until he felt a draft of cold air. He followed it to the mouth of a small tunnel, then followed the tunnel, pitch-black wherever thin veins of mako didn't glimmer like moonlight from the stone walls, until the draft became a harsh wind and the gloom brightened. He saw the steep slopes of the Northern Crater covered in snow beneath a grey sky. It was cold, made freezing by still-damp hair tangling around his thighs in the wind, pulling at the pinions of his wing.
He had no idea what day it was - hell, no idea what year it was - but better late than never, right?