Ack, I know, I'm late with this one. Sorry! No more delays - don't own, rated M, am not responsible for anything that might make you want to kill me. Here goes...

THE MADNESS OF ANGELS
Chapter 37 - Puppet Behavior

Tifa apologized tearfully all the way back to Nibelheim. She was so upset that I began to feel bad for her, and repeatedly told her it was okay. When I asked, she also said that Sephiroth had gone ahead back to the village, and that he hadn't answered her when she spoke to him. I was worried about Seph. But most of my focus was on Cloud, who was still out of it, only awake enough to cling to me and whimper.

When we arrived, Tifa seemed reluctant to leave us when I dismissed her, so I told her that if she wanted to help, she could ask around to find out where Sephiroth had gone and leave any information she got with the innkeeper for me. She seemed glad to be of assistance and hurried off, and I got Cloud upstairs and into the bedroom the cadets had been using.

Cloud still clung to my arm when I put him down on the bed, so I had to remove his helmet and boots one-handed before laying down beside him and holding him close. It worried me that his eyes were shut and he was shaking, like he was trapped in a nightmare. I jostled him a little, told him to wake up and that everything was all right, as Angeal had done for me. Slowly, his big blue eyes blinked open, timid and fearful, but he continued to tremble.

"Spiky? It's okay, I got ya. You're safe." I expected relief, but he was still squirming and made a sad little sound. "Cloud, it's me. It's all over. What's wrong?"

He looked down at himself, and groaned miserably as his face turned pink and contorted with anguish. Cloud tried to roll away, to shrink back though I held on to him, and I saw with concern (but not surprise) what the problem was. A growing bulge was stretching the crotch of his blue uniform pants, and the muscles of his thighs were quaking around it. For all I knew, he had little or no experience with this kind of thing, and he seemed too frozen and afraid to deal with it.

"Hey, Spiky, it's okay. It's not your fault."

"I'm sorry," he whimpered, and it went into my heart like an arrow. "I'm so sorry."

Cloud squeezed his eyes shut as tears streamed out of them, and that made up my mind. He was too upset to take care of this, so I would do it, make it as good for him as I could, and hope he didn't hate me afterward. I rolled him onto his back and nudged his legs apart to sit between them. I was acting without thought, like what I was doing was the only obvious thing, but all the while, a little muted voice in the back of my head said this was probably wrong. Whatever my intentions, no matter how good they were, Cloud was in no condition to consent. He was just barely sixteen, I was twenty, not a big difference, but he was so young, so small. But...after all, it had been okay with Angeal, more than okay. It would be okay.

"I love ya, Spiky," I said softly. "I just want to help."

Cloud calmed a little as I pushed his uniform shirt up and pressed my lips to his stomach, his trembling slowly fading in favor of shivering. I stroked his sides with my hands, trying to relax the muscles beneath. His skin was so soft and warm, his body so small, like something made to be held and cuddled. Experimentally, I let my hands move higher, and he arched up and moaned as I thumbed his nipples.

"It's okay," I whispered, confused then as I am now, torn between my need to protect him and my desire to see him satisfied and spent. Cloud's eyes were shut, tears streaked his sweet face, but he responded to every touch with needy gasps, like he'd always known I would do this and was relieved it would be over soon. Is this what Angeal felt? Is this what he'd looked at me and seen?

Cloud whimpered and thrust upward, and I understood. When I carefully unzipped his pants and parted the blue cloth, it protruded toward me, swelling beneath the white fabric of his underwear. He wasn't very big, but still bigger than I had expected, because I had never expected to see him like this. Still, my breath caught in my throat as I gently eased the underwear down and he moaned as his erection was freed. Cloud was, is, so beautiful, and I had to appreciate the way his usual innocence was now layered over with arousal.

"It's okay, I'm gonna make it better."

A pearly-white drop of fluid glistened on the head. I kissed it away and licked the clean taste of it from my lips, thinking painfully that it tasted nothing like the chemical musk of Angeal's. I had loved going down on Angeal, maybe more so because he didn't let me do it as often as I wanted, and had done it with the same hungry frenzy as he displayed each time he took me. I couldn't pretend this was Angeal, even if doing so wouldn't have been unfair to Cloud. This body was just too different, too small; the hands were fisting the blankets, not petting my hair, as I began to lick. I wanted to draw it out just a little, to make the pleasure last longer for Cloud, so I went slowly, fingering the tight balls.

But Cloud whimpered, then made a sobbing sound, so without further delay I took as much of him into my mouth as I could and began to suck. The noises he made changed, full of unmistakable pleasure now, and he thrust upward again, into my throat. This was new for me, Angeal had been careful not to do this, but I could take it, so I let Cloud do it, and hummed in a way that Angeal had liked. Cloud jerked suddenly, would have choked me if I hadn't pulled back a little, and my mouth was full of wet heat. I closed my eyes as I swallowed, allowed myself just a second of pretending that Angeal was about to pull me into his arms and kiss me to sample his taste on my tongue.

When I looked down, though, it was Cloud, my little Spiky who I had to protect, and after a minute of recovery, he blinked at me with both sleepiness and horror, somehow. I smiled reassuringly, quickly fixing his uniform like this was all normal.

"It's okay," I said. "It's Genesis's fault, not yours. I know, believe me, the same thing happened to me, and...shit, Spiky, I'm sorry. Don't hate me, please?"

He was blushing and embarrassed, but looked at me with surprise. "I could never hate you," he whispered unsteadily. "You were helping me, I just...Zack, I'm sorry. I couldn't make it go away, I'm sorry you had - "

"Nuh-uh, no you don't. Didn't you hear me? I love you. We're friends, right, best friends? I always want to help you and I never mind. You didn't do anything wrong, you never do."

Cloud sat up and I helped him, easing him back against the headboard and pillows. He gave me a tiny but genuine smile, and I grinned weakly. There was some awkwardness between us, but he was still looking at me the way he always did - fondly with just a touch of amazement - so I let out a deep breath and told myself we would be okay. He didn't jump or pull away when I tugged his collar down a little to check the marks Genesis's teeth had left. They were gone.

"Are you okay?"

He nodded, looking down at his lap. "Thank you. I thought he was gonna kill me. He said he wouldn't...but I was so afraid."

I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. "Hey, nobody hurts my Spiky if I can help it. I'm sorry, kiddo. He went after you 'cause of me." Because of Sephiroth too, but no need to say that.

"What does he want?"

"I'm not sure. I've never really been sure."

"I wish I was a SOLDIER," Cloud said softly. "Then maybe I'd be able to help you and the general."

"Believe me, you already help us both, more than you know," I said quietly. "Besides, I don't think now is a good time to be a SOLDIER. Maybe never again. Hell, maybe it never was."

"What happened? I know he...bit me, and I saw things," Cloud murmured, looking away. "But I don't remember anything after that."

"I don't know."

I stood up, paced around a little, slow shuffling across the floorboards and rag rug giving way to hurried, frustrated strides from wall to wall and back again. This felt like an irritation that had been building in me for years, since I was a cadet, a child without realizing it, being protected more than I wanted, if not more than I needed. I had loved Angeal while he lived too much to be angry at him for trying to keep me innocent and oblivious. As long as I'd known Sephiroth, especially while I had been his adopted puppy, I was so honored to be his friend that I didn't question the million things he must have known and kept from me. But now, with one gone and the other pushing me away, I could be angry at last.

"I always listened," I muttered, "always obeyed, always backed off when they told me I didn't need to know, or thought I was too young or I couldn't handle it. They should've known they wouldn't always be here! That I would have to face some things on my own! I don't know what to do, how to save anyone, and I can't even hate them!"

I pulled the Buster off the nearby desk and held it up, ready to take this frustration out on the furniture. But even if I wasn't as bouncy as I used to be, I still couldn't hold on to negative emotions for long. I saw Cloud's anxiety, his worry for me. I lowered my sword and smiled tiredly at him.

"Sorry, Spiky."

"It's okay." Cloud shrugged, and for a moment looked older than I think he ever will again. "I don't think SOLDIERs always know what to do and are never afraid. Not anymore."

We can't be monsters, I thought. I can't be, not if someone like you cares for me. "Still want to be one?" I teased.

"Maybe it's better not to be, like you said." Cloud looked forlornly at the mattress beneath him. "I don't know how I'd deal with having to kill people up close. I would hate it. That would keep me from being in SOLDIER, wouldn't it?"

He was still looking down, didn't see the wonder on my face as I remembered Angeal's voice from our first day together, from the clearing he had filled with flowers in defiance of bloodshed and lost innocence. I'm not sure my feet touched the floor as I returned to the bed and sat down, staring at Cloud with a tightening in my chest, comforted by his purity as Angeal had once seemed to prize mine. I couldn't want him the way I did, not while longing for Angeal, Angeal who had warned me this might happen.

"Spiky." I cupped his chin to tilt his face up, allowed myself only that touch. "No, that wouldn't stop you. You would always hate to kill, like me. But there are ways of dealing with it."

"Like what?"

You could shut down the human in you, like Sephiroth, I thought. Which works, until something worth caring for draws it out of hiding, and it breaks. Damn Genesis for revealing the Jenova Project to him, and twisting what Angeal had done to me, and...shit, he'd mentioned Seph's father, and Seph had staggered back, choking out one name like a rope of vomit. Then Genesis had said...fuck. Hojo. Hojo was Seph's father. I felt so sick I couldn't even summon up rage.

"Zack?" Cloud sounded far away at first, then he was hugging me and I was gently clinging to him, holding him like I wanted to hide him from everything. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Just spaced, I'm good." I brushed my lips over his cheek. "You...you don't have to...maybe we shouldn't - "

"We're friends, right? Best friends." Cloud smiled as I mussed his hair, I felt it. "How do you deal with it?"

"Balance," I said, pulling myself back from him and taking his hand. "Creating something, not just destroying."

I expected confusion and the cute expression of thought, but Cloud regarded me with a sad smile and blue, old-soul eyes, and nodded. "Like the way you care so much about the general? And the way you help me?"

"Yep. And the way I'm gonna be a hero!"

"But you are a hero," Cloud said, so simply and insistently that I found myself hugging him again.

Cloud pulled me to lay next to him on the bed and squeezed me while I quietly wept for Angeal, and everything else I'd ever lost. Everything I was going to lose during the five years I had left. Neither of us said anything, even when Cloud remembered Cadet Tully and cried against my shoulder for him. We comforted one another with chaste hands until I had calmed and Cloud drifted into sleep. I remember we kept a few inches of space between our bodies, as though we were both wanting to embrace Sephiroth too.

zfzfz

True to her word, Tifa had left information for me with the innkeeper, that Sephiroth had been seen going into the building they called the ShinRa Mansion. I felt cold as I stepped into that place, even more so than outside in the crisp mountain air. It was ornately but darkly furnished, and though the layout was simple, I lost my way a few times. So many hallways, and they all looked the same. I tried sensing Sephiroth's mako with mine, and found myself heading down a long spiral stairway to the basement.

I reached an ancient-looking stone hallway, with a door on the left and one ahead. I almost turned left, but then I swore I heard something straight ahead. That door led to a study adjoining a library, where Sephiroth was pacing up and down, his eyes glued to a file he held and his lips moving soundlessly.

"Uh, Seph?" I called weakly. He made no sign he knew I was there. "Are you okay?"

He stopped and stood still, facing away from me and continuing to read. I could always tell when he was upset, and he was now.

"Look, sir, I wanted you to know...Angeal..." My throat felt dry. "If he had hurt me, I wouldn't have loved him. Well, maybe I would have. But the bad stuff he did, that wasn't him." No response, so I switched to another subject. "I know you're hurting. You don't have to go through that alone. Let me help you, like you always help me when I'm sad."

"Sad?" Sephiroth echoed the word in a chilly tone, the kind of voice he used on people he didn't know and didn't want to. "What do I have to be sad about? After twenty years of being lied to, I know the truth at last. Jenova was a Cetra, one of the people deposed and destroyed by your ancestors. Jenova. My mother."

"Seph..."

"She's been trying to speak to me for so long, to tell me how I may reclaim the planet for her, her people. My people."

Sephiroth, a Cetra? It would help explain how different he was, but I didn't see in him the same kind of quiet power Aerith had. In fact, Sephiroth's usual air of dignified confidence and alertness was different now, thrumming with a sort of animal intensity.

"Seph, look at me? Please?"

He turned, not hurriedly, and I couldn't hold back a choked sob. His eyes were glowing green, not with mako but with the thing I'd seen in Angeal, and Sephiroth seemed momentarily jolted by my fear. His stare flashed silver, and a very human confusion shone through the beautiful mask.

"Zack," he said, making my name almost a question. "Leave. Take Cloud and go back to Midgar. I can't keep my promise to Angeal, but I don't want to hurt you."

"I'm not leaving you," I insisted, stepping closer. "You're my friend, and besides, I promised Angeal too."

He shoved me back, pushing me roughly against a wall of bookshelves as green overtook the silver again. "Angeal was a traitor, just like your ancestors," he hissed. "Like you. Like all of you."

"Seph, you don't have to do this! You can love Cloud, you won't hurt him!"

Sephiroth turned away. He shook his head slowly and continued to do so as he picked up another open file. His shoulders slumped as he looked at it, and when his voice came it was his own, or maybe it belonged to the child who had been different and never known why.

"Dr. Gast, why didn't you tell me? Why...did you leave?"

"Seph," I said desperately, painfully. "You're not like that thing. And you're not like Hojo."

He whirled back too quickly for me to react or realize. I remember the silver hair whipping with the turn of his head, Masamune approaching at an odd angle, like Sephiroth was attacking me with the hilt, not the blade...and everything went dark.

zfzfz

I knew something was wrong when I came to, and not just that Sephiroth had attacked me. As the haze of unconsciousness lifted and my senses awoke, I sensed some kind of disorder outside, and a faint smell in the air that made me remember Banora. The destruction, the burning. The absence of Angeal.

I propped myself up with the wide blade of the Buster Sword, then once steady, I drew strength from it and hurried to the front door as fast as I could. I hadn't imagined or remembered the burning. Nibelheim was in flames, and soot and ash were wafting around on the mountain breeze. I thought of Cloud immediately and headed for the inn, checking the two or three bodies I passed and finding them dead. As I got up from the last, I spotted spiky blond hair in front of a mostly-unburnt house and ran to it.

Cloud was kneeling beside the motionless body of a woman, weeping but otherwise frozen. I had to shake him before he began to sob and acknowledge my presence.

"Z-Zack, my mother..."

"I'm so sorry, Spiky. What happened?"

"The villagers said...S-Sephiroth...he went crazy. He started the fires and headed to the reactor. And Zangan said Tifa - " Cloud's eyes went wide, a glimpse of blue beneath a night sky lit by flame. "Tifa followed him! I-I have to..."

"Ssh, Spiky, listen to me," I said firmly. "You're gonna head out the front village entrance and wait for reinforcements. Someone will need to report to them. Take along any survivors you find. But get out of here, that's an order. I'll handle this."

The little blue skies flooded with rain, and I absently touched Colin's pendant that hung from my belt. "But what if he - you can't go alone - I want to help," he whimpered.

"Spiky, I'm not gonna die anytime soon. Don't ask me how I know that, just trust that I do. We'll see each other again soon. Now go. Please."

To show Cloud I trusted him, I stood and ran toward the rear village entrance without making sure he obeyed me. In retrospect, not one of my better decisions. Unless Fate really is as powerful as some people believe, in which case we're really nothing more than pieces on a game-board or characters in a planet's story. I'm not sure which idea I like better. Believing that my choices are truly mine, or that my losses and mistakes are all part of a bigger plan.

zfzfz

Sephiroth had opened the Jenova door and was standing at it when I crashed into the pod room. He faced a statue-like figurehead of metal in the shape of a humanoid female, and tore it away to reveal a mako tank behind. I couldn't see much of the creature in it, just long whitish hair that was exactly like Sephiroth's. It looked dead, but I knew it wasn't. This was the thing that had used Genesis, had destroyed Angeal, and was now poisoning Sephiroth.

"Mother," he said, in an awful parody of his gentlest voice, "let's take the planet back together. I've come up with a plan."

"Sephiroth!" I yelled, unable to keep my voice from breaking. My mind kept flashing to Tifa, injured, maybe dying, a kid only Cloud's age who had moments before drawn away from me with contempt. We were supposed to be heroes... "Why did you hurt Tifa and the villagers?! What the hell are you doing?! Answer me!"

Sephiroth laughed, a cold sound that was itself an intimidating weapon. "Mother, the traitors are coming again. Mother was supposed to be the ruler of this planet with her power and wisdom. But the ones like you...took it away."

I drew the Buster, not to start a fight but in hopes it would trigger his memories of Angeal. "Seph, this is not you. Genesis was using you before, just like ShinRa, and now like that thing. Someone always has been, and you're right to be angry. But this won't help anything. Angeal - "

"Traitor. A traitor to Mother, like all the others."

Sephiroth was directly in front of me and letting Masamune fly before I could begin to formulate an answer. There seemed to be nothing of my friend in the face and cold, calculating smile, nothing in the poison-green eyes that indicated he recognized me at all. But I had to try once more.

"Seph, you know this sword, you know me! You don't want to fight either of us! Remember Angeal!"

He only hissed at me, and began his attack in earnest. All those spars with him over the years and the level of skill he'd pushed me to attain served me well. I wasn't at all sure I could win, but I was holding my own on defense, and I hoped that if I could just hold him off long enough, he'd snap out of it. But this wasn't the Sephiroth I knew and loved, the one I'd been left to and the one Angeal left to me. He wasn't going to exhaust me to the floor and give me a hand up, he would not stop until one of us was dead.

If not for my responsiblity to Cloud, I might have kneeled down and bared my throat rather than kill Sephiroth, the other half of Angeal's heart.

I felt myself weakening, while his strength never diminished or wavered. In fighting, in battle, Sephiroth had always been inhuman, even to me. He was relentless, battering at me with that famous blade flashing like lightning. In the back of my mind, Reno's voice repeated his prophecy, and the certainty that I could not die here continually rejuvenated my limbs and weighed on my heart.

But, as a stunning blow to my injured body sent me flying to the bottom of the steps and into the cool shadows, I knew with perfect, numbly calm clarity that the fight was over. I had lost. I had lost him. Even as he looked down at me before turning around and a flash of pained awareness passed through his eyes, I knew Sephiroth was beyond my reach. I had barely acknowledged the pain of my many injuries, but now I began to weep, tears that burned paths down my cold face.

Seventeen years earlier, in a village that no longer existed, a silver-haired child turned away from his friends. "I never had a mother," he said flatly, and ascended a grassy hill into the afternoon sunlight. A lifetime later, Sephiroth looked down the slant of stairs at me, eyes burning green, and for just that moment I saw a desperately hurt confusion in them, the Seph I had known making one last struggle. But in this life, we are bound to go where our paths take us. The completion of Sephiroth's circle lay in the ascent he made now, the rise of metal he climbed to the mother he had always lacked.

I closed my eyes, only intending to blink, but I must have been out for at least a minute. I opened them in alarm when I heard Cloud shouting, and watched in horror as he raced up the stairs holding the Buster that I had lost. There was no time to tell him no, though Gaia knows he had every right to try. I couldn't see him once he reached the top, and my heart pounded to hear glass cracking and Sephiroth grunt with pain. I think it then stopped for a second when Cloud made a similar noise. I tried to drag myself up the stairs, tried to ignore the stabbing and throbbing sensations every shift caused me. But I could only wait, and I'd swear I lived a hundred lifetimes in that minute or two.

I heard the footsteps first, light and unsteady, and then Cloud appeared, staggering as he pressed one hand to his abdomen. He was injured, and paler than usual, but Gaia, he was alive. I hadn't lost them both. I couldn't yet process the idea of life without Sephiroth, I only knew that I had to get to Cloud, had to keep him alive until help arrived.

"Spiky," I croaked. "It's okay, we're gonna be..."

He lurched forward and slid bumpily down the steps, close enough for me to pat his hair and hear him still breathing as his eyes shut. I put the last bit of strength I had into my extended hand, like petting Cloud would keep him alive, protect him as Angeal had protected me.

"Cloud, you did so..." I whispered, and the blackness swallowed everything, like a night sky from which the stars had been stolen.

To be continued...ugh, here comes the lab...