We all knew it was coming, and here it is at last, the most heartbreaking mission ever. I've done my best to make it even more angsty, so fair warning - if you are prone to tears, if you have wept during any other chapter of this story, if you have grown as attached to Sephiroth as Zack has, you want to grab some tissues and a teddy bear now.

With this installment, we have less than ten chapters left. To all who have stuck with me so long and those who joined me recently, thank you. In particular I'd like to acknowledge Shelli, who does not log-in to review and therefore, I have not been able to thank her personally for all her lovely words. And J Plash, who has been making me all weepy with some of the loveliest comments I've ever gotten, a lot of them. All of you, I'm so grateful.

And in advance...I am sorry.

THE MADNESS OF ANGELS
Chapter 36 - The Birthright He Stole

The next morning dawned bright and clear, a blue sky and a sun that did little to warm the chilly mountain air. As we filed out of the inn with our equipment packed up, Sephiroth's gaze frequently wandered to the old mansion, but otherwise he was his serious, all-business self. Tully was yawning and complaining good-naturedly about the climate, and Cloud looked much better after hours of natural sleep and smiled confidently at me, at least at first.

Sephiroth opened the mission file and spoke to us, ignoring a man who had been lurking nearby with a camera and a hopeful expression. "The reactor is approximately four miles northeast, located in those mountains. We have hired a local to guide us there."

"Ha," I said lightly, "bet it'll be some old geezer who gets lost going to his own bathroom."

"Not this time, Lieutenant. It's a young lady, Tifa Lockhart."

I heard a soft but sudden intake of breath beside me. I looked at Cloud to see that he had gotten tense again, though he shook his head when I was about to ask if he was okay. A young woman approached us just then, with a frowning man behind her, and introduced herself as Tifa. Cloud looked at both of them and actually took a tiny step back. I knew he wouldn't want me to say anything, so I settled for subtly moving in front of him and giving him a reassuring thumbs-up behind my back. Could this be the girl he had liked, the one who had barely looked at him? She was pretty (though I don't know how she was comfortable in so little clothing) but she didn't look like the type to appreciate Cloud's sensitivity and depth.

"Daddy, I'll be fine," she was insisting to the frowning man. "I know the way there and back with my eyes closed!"

"I still don't like this."

"Daddy, I'll be with Sephiroth, the Sephiroth. What could possibly be more safe than that?"

Mr. Lockhart looked warily at me. "And who are you?"

"Uh, the assistant to the Sephiroth." I saw Seph smirking out of the corner of my eye. "You've got nothing to worry about."

"If that is settled," Sephiroth said calmly, "we should head out."

"Just one more second!" Tifa said, not showing nearly as much intimidation as people usually did. "Mr. Bartlett! Mr. Bartlett would like to take a picture, if you don't mind."

Sephiroth frowned - I knew he hated being photographed - but said nothing as the lurking man nervously came closer and his face brightened as he readied his camera. Tifa cheerfully gestured that I should come stand with Sephiroth, then she got in between and struck a pose as I grinned and Seph looked away. Click!

"Thank you so much," Mr. Bartlett babbled, handling his camera now like it was a holy relic. "I'll make copies for everyone once it's developed!"

Finally - after reassuring Mr. Lockhart once more - we were allowed to set off. The journey wasn't difficult, and however ditzy Tifa seemed, she was at least confident that she knew where she was going. Strangely, we hardly ran into any fiends, and the ones we did encounter were pretty low-level, so much so that I let Cloud take one down himself. Even with the helmet obscuring his face, I could tell he was proud when I squeezed his shoulder and the general himself said "Very good".

On our way up the mountain, we passed many cave openings in the rock. Sephiroth ordered us to stay alert, as these were excellent hiding places for monsters, but Tifa said she'd never seen anything bigger than a bat in them, even in the larger chambers we had to pass through to reach the outside again. Maybe to prove her point, Tifa announced that she had to go to the bathroom and excused herself a good way down one of the side passageways, out of our (or rather, the cadets') sight and hearing. As soon as she was gone, I yanked Cloud's helmet off and spun it lazily on my finger.

"Zack!" he hissed in a whisper. "Give me that!"

"Aw, c'mon! I missed your face."

"I can't let her see me!"

"Spiky, why?" I asked gently, concerned even though I wasn't going about this well.

"Zaaaaack..." he whined urgently.

I was just about to give it back to him, honestly. If I had known how anxious Cloud would be, I would never have taken it at all. But before I could do anything, Sephiroth had grabbed the helmet off my hand and stepped past me. With a gentle smile directed at Cloud's shy one, he carefully put the helmet back over the spiky blond head himself, even patted it once it was in place.

"Better, Cadet?"

"Thank you, sir," Cloud whispered.

Tifa returned with an I-told-you-so look on her face, and we continued. The next challenge was a rope-and-plank bridge that swung precipitously over a gaping, rocky chasm. It didn't look terribly safe, but Tifa insisted that it was, only suggesting that we cross when the wind was at its calmest. We went single-file, a few paces apart, with Sephiroth in the lead followed by Tifa, and the cadets bringing up the rear.

I wish, for the sake of Tully's family, that I know more about what happened next. It all just went by so fast. The bridge snapped down the middle and fell in two long pieces against the opposing cliff faces, requiring us to hold tight and climb. When I found myself safe on the snowy ground, I began to realize a few things. The first was that I was clutching Cloud to myself like a life preserver, and he was trembling like a leaf. Next, that Tifa was okay, staring wide-eyed at the mess of rope and wood that had nearly killed us, and Sephiroth was already up and looking around, not a hair out of place. Lastly I registered what Seph had noticed already - Tully was nowhere to be found.

"Where is he?" Tifa whispered. "The other one?"

"He must have fallen," Sephiroth said quietly, turning away from us to hide the pain in his eyes that might have melted the ice in his voice. "It may sound cold, but we do not have the time or equipment to search for him. He cannot possibly have survived a plunge from that height."

"So...that's it?" Tifa said incredulously, standing with her hands on her hips. "You just want to give up and keep going? You don't care at all, do you?"

"Don't you dare," I spat at her, apparently with enough venom that she looked chastened and backed off.

Tifa wordlessly indicated our direction and began to walk, and said nothing over the next hour except that there was an alternate route back that bypassed the bridge. Sephiroth went just after her, and I followed with Cloud, holding him close to me and not caring at the moment about proper behavior or what anyone thought. He still wouldn't budge about the helmet, having grown even more stubborn because it muffled the sound of his soft crying. I couldn't really give him a decent hug as we were moving, but I kept my arm tight around his middle and pressed a kiss to his wet, gloved fingers.

"I'm sorry," Cloud whispered to me, "I shouldn't be - "

"Of course you should. I lost two good friends when I was a cadet and I cried like crazy. Even Sephiroth saw me do it and didn't think there was anything wrong about it."

"Is he dead for sure? If not then we're just leaving him..."

"I doubt even a 1st could survive that fall, Spiky," I said gently. "Tully's gone. It would have been quick, he probably didn't feel a thing."

"I would want to feel it," Cloud said dully. "When I die, I want to know."

"That won't be for a long time," I said firmly. "I'm not letting anything happen to you, okay?"

Cloud got quiet then, but continued to lean against me, and he squeezed my hand tightly. Sephiroth didn't look back once, but I got the feeling he was reaching out toward us with his other senses, and giving us this privacy so Cloud could grieve without feeling self-conscious. He really was learning, and more importantly, he was trying.

Tifa stopped when we reached the wide, flat space that the old reactor occupied. It was one of the oldest still in operation, I had heard, and though its personnel (the few who had not disappeared) had only been cleared out days before, the silence surrounding the ominous structure reminded me of a tomb. Of the Midgar reactor which had become Angeal's tomb...unless by some miracle he was alive, but I couldn't risk believing that and breaking again.

Sephiroth walked right to the ramp that led inside and stared at the entrance for so long that I started to get worried. I gently stepped away from Cloud (he nodded and whispered "I'm fine") and went to stand by Seph. He had a curious, analytical expression that was complicated by an emotion I couldn't identify. But then, I doubt if he could have told me what it was.

"Sir?"

"Do you hear something, Zack?" he asked me hesitantly.

"Um, like what?"

"Never mind. We will go inside and do a preliminary check. Cadet, remain here and guard Miss Lockhart." Sephiroth tossed what looked like a small communications device to Cloud, who caught it with barely a fumble. "If you encounter trouble, press the red button and we will be alerted at once."

"Yes, sir."

"Hey, I want to see what's in there too!"

"Only ShinRa personnel are allowed," Sephiroth said flatly, and began to ascend the ramp. I followed, exchanging one last encouraging smile with Cloud, and we were inside.

The place was bigger than it seemed, with so much of it taken up by machinery and little space where people could actually walk around. We had no trouble getting to the main room, where there were rows of the pods Sephiroth had told me about, arranged on a few levels accessible by a set of stairs. Seph went directly to one of the lower pods and examined it, while I felt drawn to the highest level, a point where the steps reached a metal door that was crowned by a familiar word that filled me with foreboding. 'JENOVA'. I had a hunch, again, that this had something to do with the thing that Sephiroth could not be allowed to know.

I hurried back down to the lowest level, where Sephiroth was murmuring about a locking mechanism on one of the pods being broken. He asked me to turn a nearby valve, and I did, though I was baffled by all this complicated machinery and had no clue what any of it did. When I came back to Sephiroth, he stepped back from the pod's small front window and indicated that I should look.

What I saw was horrifying. Monstrous, not like a fiend but like something that had a trace of humanity in it and yet was twisted beyond recognition. It seemed to be dead or asleep in its cocoon of mako, but I lurched back from the hideous face in terror. This was worse than the Genesis clones. They had at least still been people, but this...

"What is that?" I whispered.

"SOLDIERs are human beings stabilized at a moderate level of mako," Seph answered quietly. "You are different from civilians, but you are still human. But these...their mako levels are much higher than yours."

"These are...monsters?" Tseng, I thought, sometimes things are exactly what we label them, they have to be for labels to make any practical sense.

Sephiroth walked several paces away from me, looking at the floor, then back to the pods. "Yes. These were the failures of Dr. Hojo, the abominations that came out of his mako experiments. It all makes sense now. He would not have known what doses are safe for humans without destroying lives first. Not him."

"But, what about you? You told me your mako level is so high it can't even be measured, and there's nothing wrong with you."

Looking back, I don't know what else I could have said. Sephiroth was drawing his own conclusions, stepping toward the edge of a cliff on his own, no matter what I did. But I'll never stop regretting those words. A horrible, pained confusion filled up Sephiroth's luminous eyes, a prelude to a terrible knowing. He turned his head from me to the pods, then slowly down to his own hands.

"N-No..."

"Seph? Seph, what's wrong?"

"High mako level," he whispered to himself. "Experimental. I am different. That's all they've ever told me, all he's ever told me. Hojo was always there, always watching me, like..."

I heard the words he couldn't say - like an experiment. It was an absurd notion, that Sephiroth, whose beauty awed everyone, could have any connection to these hideous things. But then why couldn't I come up with an explanation? What, then, had Angeal been determined to keep from Sephiroth no matter what it cost him?

He was facing away from me now, hunched over, shaking his head so the long hair, like threads of moonlight, whipped through the air. "The same. I am the same as them, created as they were. No, no..."

He must have sensed me coming, but I was quick enough to touch his shoulder. "Seph, no, those are monsters, you're nothing like - "

"Don't," he ordered, jerking away from me unsteadily to stare at the floor or his hands or nothing. "Don't touch me."

Angeal, I wanted to scream, he's breaking. I promised I'd look after him and I'm losing him, tell me what to do! I could only watch helplessly as Sephiroth's shoulders moved with the sobs he would never let out.

"I always knew I wasn't like the others, even when I was a child. I was alone, different, meant for something else. But...it can't be like this. Am I...am I even human?"

"Seph - "

"Go back to the others," he said in a strained voice. "I need to be alone for a few minutes."

I didn't want to leave him and was about to argue, but Sephiroth quickly slipped through a side door and was gone. Even if I had gotten a lot better at navigating, no one can find Sephiroth if he doesn't want to be found. Genesis had, once, but that was a game, and those children were gone - one dead, one mad, one about to break. I didn't think much of Loveless's Goddess if this was how she treated her heroes.

With my thoughts scattered and racing, I made my way back toward the entrance, not going too quickly in hope that Sephiroth might catch up with me. My old problems with paying proper attention had returned with a vengeance. I was so lost in my own fears and worries that I didn't hear or sense the figure nearby until it ran smack into me.

"Zack! Thank Gaia I found you!"

"Tifa, what the hell are you doing in here? We told you...wait, where's C-the cadet who was guarding you?"

"I'm so sorry!" she sobbed. "It's all my fault!"

I grabbed her shoulders and shook them as lightly as I could. "What happened?! Where is he?!"

"I insisted on coming inside, and he wouldn't let me go alone! This man came out of nowhere, he was flying, I know that sounds crazy but he had a black wing, and he knocked me down and grabbed the cadet and disappeared! I'm so sorry, I tried to stop him but - "

I spoke calmly somehow, when all I could hear inside my head was my own screaming. "Go back outside, hide yourself. I'll find him."

I unsheathed the Buster Sword and ran with it back toward the room with the pods, hoping to find Sephiroth and get his help but determined to put an end to Genesis either way. Angeal had nearly done it, with this blade, to protect me. I had to finish the job, for Cloud and Sephiroth both, and the belief I had that they could heal one another.

zfzfz

There was another door into the pod room, one that opened into the wide shadows of tall machinery and hid me from view. I heard the voices as soon as I entered and had to order myself to be stealthy, to take the advantage of surprise, because I wanted so badly to just leap at Genesis and tear him apart. I carefully crept closer, soundlessly, nearly deafened by the pounding of my heart.

"Don't be afraid, pretty," Genesis was cooing. "You'll like my game. You've never known pleasure like the kind I'll give you. You've never known much pleasure at all, have you? Oh, you've come close, though, haven't you? So many times, so many almosts. Your virginity clings to you like a thread."

"Please don't," Cloud cried softly. "Please, sir, just let me - "

"I can smell the desires of so many men on you. How does it feel, little one, to know that without your puppy protector you'd be violated every day, without end? Do you sense the loss of control you cause in your observers, hmm? Do you know why you do that? I'll tell you. Because you want this, pretty doll. You were made for this."

I could feel mako and rage burning in my eyes and veins. Slowly, slowly, but every second I didn't scream and pounce tormented me. I couldn't let Cloud be subjected to this, not my Spiky, who deserved love and respect, not this. They came into sight at last, and I saw that Genesis had Cloud trapped against a wall and was sniffing and kissing the skin of his face and jaw. Cloud was whimpering and struggling, but Genesis only laughed softly and gently squeezed between his legs.

"You can't escape, pretty, and you cannot hide from me. I'll see your secrets, and I'll show you some of mine. Unburden yourself to me, and I'll show you what you were destined for."

Cloud's eyes widened, with relief or fear for me, as he saw me begin to approach. Only for a moment, though, because they shut as Genesis's teeth sank into Cloud's neck, and with a soft groan all that blue was gone and he was dangling from Genesis's hold like a doll. I froze for a second (failure, I thought, not a hero, I can't save anyone), then I snapped out of it and charged. Genesis knew I was coming, of course, and he turned around just in time, dropping Cloud and drawing his sword. I noted how disheveled and deteriorated Genesis looked as our blades crashed together.

"Full circle again, little puppy," he smirked at me. "Your pretty pet is very sweet. No wonder even Sephiroth deigns to look at him."

"I'll kill you," I growled, and he laughed.

"Like you killed Angeal?"

It was stupid of me, so stupid, but I let that get to me. My wrist jerked as I recoiled from that horrible truth, just a little but enough, and my sword was knocked away from me. Desperate, I head-butted him, but the impact dazed us both and Genesis recovered before I did. He pulled my hair painfully with one hand to tilt my head, and I was drawn closer to him, near enough to see his canine teeth elongate into fangs.

Then there was a flash of silver like lightning, and the thunder that followed was the sound I made when I was ripped away from him and thrust to the floor. Hard landings were nothing new to me, and I sprang to my feet (just a little unsteadily) as Sephiroth pointed Masamune at Genesis and glared at him with a fury that chilled me. It only softened a bit when he glanced at me.

"Take care of Strife."

He need not have asked, I was already hurrying to Cloud. The wounds were still visible on his neck, and he seemed mostly unconscious and trembled when I put my arms around him. But Genesis hadn't had him long, that little blood loss wasn't dangerous. I could only assume that this reaction was some sort of shock from the fear or whatever memories he had been shown. (I was strangely calm about the revelation that the blood exchange caused both victim and drinker to see each other's memories.) I held Spiky close to me as we rested against the wall, and whispered that everything would be all right.

Genesis glanced at Cloud, then looked bitterly back to his former friend. "You care about something at last, Seph? I thought you were a better monster than Angeal, but here you are showing the same weakness. The same devotion to something small."

I took note of Sephiroth's hurt expression, that of an animal caught in a trap. "Shut up!" I snapped.

"Don't worry, Seph, it's you I really wanted to see. The Goddess has brought us here. She wills that you should know the truth at last."

"What do you want?" Sephiroth hissed coldly.

"Oh, do you care about what I want?" Genesis asked with mock surprise. "That's new also. If you had given me what I wanted years ago, I would not have had to seek anything else. Maybe I should thank you. In not caring for me, you freed me to serve Her."

"I do care about you," Sephiroth said quietly.

"Yes, as a friend. Such friends we were. Loveless foretold it. Angeal gave his heart to something else. I will be the Goddess's champion. The remaining friend will live without love, never able to give or receive it. That's your fate, Sephiroth. The Goddess wills it," Genesis said, waving a hand toward the metal door I had looked at earlier. "And She's guided us here so you can learn the truth of what you are. What we are, what Jenova's cells made us."

"Mother's...cells?"

Sephiroth turned toward the stairs that led up to the door, analyzing the word above it and struggling to draw meaning out of this. He seemed smaller, somehow, like even a breath could knock him down if it tried, and Genesis was trying. He approached Sephiroth with a weakened version of his old feline walk, eyes locked and shining with bitterness and want.

"Poor Sephiroth. You only ever knew her name. Did you think she was human? Did you think you were?"

"Genesis, shut up!" I snapped again, but they both ignored me.

"Jenova was discovered in a geological stratum, two thousand years old. Her cells were used for the Jenova Project."

"What does the Jenova Project have to do with me?" Sephiroth asked, with a stronger voice now and a face fighting to stay blank.

"That's the name for the overall experiment. Project G gave birth to Angeal and me, Hollander's monsters. Then there's Project S. Hojo made a better monster, one whose genes don't spread, who will never deteriorate. He made you."

"Seph, he's lying!" I called desperately. "You're human, the same as me!" but he wouldn't look at me. His shoulders were slumped and moving with each breath he forced in and out, his hands curled uselessly toward the floor. Genesis floated nearer until he could waft a hand through the silver hair, as I had seen him do in Angeal's memory. Genesis maneuvered himself to face Sephiroth, slowly brushing the hair back behind his shoulder.

"Don't believe me?" he murmured, gentle now, as he must have been when they were young and he believed he had a chance. "Help me to survive. Let me drink, and I'll show you proof, the documents I've seen and the confessions I heard. I'll let you see everything I have, including the father that Gast and Hollander never told you about."

Sephiroth didn't struggle or react as Genesis pushed one side of his jacket away to bare the white curve of neck. Genesis's voice remained mesmerizing, seductive, but his eyes were pleading as one arm encircled the body to draw it closer and the other hand disappeared behind the hair to stroke the nape. Sephiroth's head was tilted downward, his arms limp. He made no protest as he was drawn forward except a soft noise, like a sob from someone who had never made the sound before and didn't know how to stop it.

"Be my friend, Sephiroth." Genesis put his mouth and nose against the marble face, the moonlight hair, and sighed in rapture. "Just once, let me hold you the way I wanted to."

I couldn't speak, only hold Cloud close to me and watch with numb horror. Sephiroth let his face fall against the tattered scarlet of Genesis's coat, shuddered just once as arms embraced him and something was whispered in his ear. He was perfectly still then, as Genesis's smiling mouth went to the base of his neck and the satisfied groan that followed echoed against the metal of the room. A few seconds passed, like raindrops clinging to a leaf before they fall, and -

Sephiroth let out a strangled cry and broke free, staggering back, and he could never be a statue again, not as he trembled under the weight of something unseen and stared with an expression that flashed me back to Angeal, the day he'd almost raped me and given me up instead. Even the child I'd seen in memories had worn a mask of calm, a shell of controlled hurt that was my friend as much as his silver eyes or occasional smirk. Now Sephiroth was exposed in the shock and pain twisting his face, drawn out of hiding by Genesis again, and, just as awful, he was still so beautiful. Even if he shattered, the pieces would never be free of the beauty that had always set him apart.

"N-No," he said. "No, no..."

Genesis hadn't moved since he was shoved away. There was no triumph in his cowering half-crouch, no lust in the graceful features that were staring in horror. His mouth was open in shock, and two tears tinged red with blood streaked his face.

"Seph," he gasped, "I..."

"Hojo," Sephiroth whispered, shrinking into himself and taking one jolting step back for each Genesis took forward. "No, no..."

"You didn't..." Genesis's mouth pushed the words out only with effort. "He told me you liked it, you wanted it, you got it for being good and special. Seph, I'm so..."

Sephiroth looked at Genesis with cold detachment, a forced calm dampening the pain, but it was obvious. It wasn't with anger but a kind of futile denial that he drew Masamune as Genesis ambled closer and pierced him with it, watching with confusion more than anything else as his old friend fell to his knees. Their eyes remained locked for a long moment in which no one breathed, then Sephiroth's head turned to the top-most metal door again, like he was listening for something. His arm relaxed, Masamune's tip grazed the floor, and his lips mouthed something. Looking back, I'm almost sure it was "Mother".

Genesis, holding his fist against the wound in his abdomen, looked back and forth between Sephiroth and the word 'Jenova', and his sadness shifted into a growing anger. "She's speaking to you, isn't She? No! NO! Everyone's hero, first in everything, you can't take Her from me too!"

Sephiroth didn't seem to hear, so Genesis awkwardly turned himself toward the stairs, on his knees and pleading like a man in desperate prayer. "You only wanted him?" he said with quiet disbelief, and I caught myself pitying this man I hated. "All this time I obeyed, and You only wanted him?"

"Moth...er?" Sephiroth whispered uncertainly. "The...voice."

"Yes." Genesis slumped on the floor. His voice was too weary for anger. "Your mother was a monster and your father the man you hate, and now, you've killed your last childhood friend. You are a perfect monster. Exactly what they wanted you to be."

"Seph, no, you are human! You played, don't you remember? You and Angeal conquered hills and meadows in Banora. That's who you are, not this!"

He hesitated, slowly tore his gaze from the direction of the voice and looked at me. No...not at me.

"Seph, think about Cloud. Remember what I told you."

As Genesis scowled darkly, Sephiroth came closer to us, shuffling his feet like he was fighting a force that tried to hold him back. He knelt down, and I saw his eyes flash green to silver, silver to green, back and forth so fast that he seemed lost, unsure of where or who he was. I shifted Cloud to hold him up, and he began to whimper at the loss of contact. Sephiroth touched his cheek, cradled it with an uncertain hand. Cloud leaned into it and went quiet instantly, and the silver overpowered the green.

I smiled and was about to hand Cloud to him, but before I could say anything, Genesis did. He spoke sullenly, a spoiled child denied all his toys again, and cruelly, willing to break them rather than give them away.

"You know, you'll only do to that one what Hojo did to you, Seph. That's how it works. Do you think the puppy would be holding him like that if not for Angeal's busy hands?"

Sephiroth's fingers had been tentatively exploring Cloud's face; now they froze. "Angeal...?"

"You don't actually think he waited for the puppy to grow up, do you? Let me tell you about perfect Angeal - "

"Shut the fuck up!" I roared at Genesis. "Seph, don't listen to him. I was the one who had to convince Angeal. He wasn't himself toward the end, but before that, we were happy."

His eyes were maybe a foot from mine, silver with green at their borders trying to push its way in. Like with Angeal, watching him struggle between darkness and light before he succumbed and left me. I had been his light, he told me that once, and Colin Moray had said something similar, staring at me with an over-bright gaze. Don't think of the dead, Zack, I told myself, Sephiroth is here and alive and needing me to say Genesis is lying.

"Seph, I had to beg him."

"For meaning, puppy. For the words that made the touching okay. Not for his hands. They put you on your knees the first day he had you. Angeal hushed you and said it's all right, but you trembled, little puppy, you were afraid. I saw, in your memory. I felt it."

"Angeal..." Sephiroth's expression was a bleak horror that war heroes don't wear, expressing a trauma that they can't feel and still be who they are. "Angeal."

"I loved him," was all I could say. "Seph, I swear. He loved us. Please...don't..."

My eyes were too full to see if the green had overtaken the silver. Sephiroth's hand fell away from Cloud, slowly, as though he were saying goodbye. He touched my hand, squeezed it, and put it over Cloud's.

"Take care of him," he said, and he was upright and walking away.

"Sephiroth! SEPH!"

He walked past Genesis, head up, posture straight, without looking at him. Genesis started to reach out a hand to him, then stretched it toward the 'Jenova' door instead. He weakly shifted to lay on the lowest stairs but left his arm raised, bloody fingers groping for the goddess who had stopped speaking. I saw tears spill from his closed eyes as I lifted Cloud up, drew the Buster and headed for the door.

"'One will rise above the others and...'" he was whispering.

"It'll be okay," I promised Cloud, wishing Angeal was there to tell me the same lie.

I'll try to get some cheery Decorum up ASAP, promise. In the meantime...to be continued.