TO DEFINE EVIL
CHAPTER TWO: WHERE AM I?
Disclaimer: Square Soft and lots of other people own Final Fantasy, not me. Disclaimer: Square Soft and lots of other people own Final Fantasy, not me.
I'm just temporarily enjoying the playground they outgrew and left behind. . . no sense in letting it go to waste!
Oh, and by the way, I love C&C on my writing. Short comments make me happy, but
if you want to spend the time telling me what I should change, I'd be delighted! Thanks
for reading.
Inarae
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CHAPTER TWO: WHERE AM I?
Tifa yawned and smiled at the soft orange light trickling through the roof of the tent. It had been a long two days of riding, and she was sore from being out of shape, but tomorrow they would enter Mideel and hopefully clear the stupid mess up. She had to admit she was enjoying adventuring again though, regardless of her complaints to Reeve. Making a few extra dollars one week at the Seventh Heaven restaurant and bar just didn't compare to the pride of knowing she was making a difference in the world. Of course, there wasn't much that could compare to the pride of having saved the planet.
She grinned to herself. Not that she wanted anything like that to happen again, of course.
From the sound of the snores, everyone else was still asleep. She got an idea.
"Psst. Hey, Cloud," she whispered to the pile of blankets next to her, "wanna go take a walk before everyone gets up? Just the two of us?" She leaned over to shake his shoulder. The bed was empty. She frowned, and then laughed at herself. He had had a similar idea apparently. She liked hers better though.
Outside, Red was lying against a tree, the large desert feline enjoying the sun's warmth against his chestnut fur. Traveling to the colder southern climates was always hard on him.
"Good morning, Tifa." He smiled at her with his sharp fangs, at odds with his cultured low voice. She no longer even noticed the incongruity though.
"Good morning. Have you seen Cloud?"
Red blinked in surprise. "He's not in the tent? I've been out here for almost two hours, and he hasn't come by me."
Tifa frowned. "Two hours. . ." They looked at each other. Tifa hurried back to the tent.
"Cloud?!" She flung open the tent flap so the rising sun illuminated the still figures inside.
"What the fuck are you doing, Tifa, it's barely morning!" Barrett grumbled, rolling over to guard his eyes from the sun.
"Yeah, girl, show some consideration to your betters!" Cid growled, the gray haired pilot choosing to hide his head under his pillow instead.
When Tifa didn't reply, Barrett rolled back over to stare at where she stood frozen in the doorway. "Tifa?"
Cloud's bed was empty.
"He would never have left us deliberately, not without telling us. Something must have happened to him!"
"Maybe he just wandered off to take a piss," Cid suggested. "Geez you women get upset over the littlest things. . ." He lit his pipe and took a puff for emphasis.
"He's been gone more than two hours." Tifa replied, still staring at the sword. "Red's been awake that long, and he hasn't seen Cloud."
"Two hours!?"
"All right," the canine put in, twitching tail belying his calm voice, "I think we'd better go searching for him. Everyone, stay in groups of three or more, and meet back here in two hours."
Cloud was dreaming. Like most dreams, he wasn't sure where he was going or why, but it was quite urgent, at odds with the quiet dappled sunlight of the forest that swam in and out of focus around him. Almost absentmindedly he killed a bunch of frogs that attacked him. Strange that something so dangerous had become so commonplace he didn't even fear them in his dreams.
The trickling of a small brook reached his ears, and a thought occurred to him. He wasn't sure what thought, but it involved the stream, so he headed in that direction. Once there he filled his canteen with water and gathered up some of the edible bulbs nearby. A quick spot of luck and inhuman reflexes garnered him three medium sized fish from a school that had been hiding in the reeds near the water's edge.
Good. He dumped his harvest in his pack and set off again on his original course, happy. He wondered idly why he was alone. He hadn't been alone for a long time. Not since Sephiroth. He still dreamed of that time, when he couldn't tell the difference between the real world and the one he had created to hide from the changes the mad scientist Hojo wrought on his body to make him into Sephiroth's 'clone'. When he wasn't sure who he really was, when Sephiroth's commands whispered in his mind, and his body moved to those orders as if long strands of the young general's silver hair were wrapped around his limbs like a puppet's controlling strings. The illusions had been so real. . . Alone, sometimes he forgot that he had broken them, that Hojo and Sephiroth were dead, that he alone controlled his actions now. So his friends usually made sure there was someone with him to remind him who he was.
For no particular reason he could discern, he decided to build a fire near a large oak whose branches threw deep shadows for yards around. Tifa had been carrying the flint and steel, but it didn't matter. A quick thought and the pile of wood he'd gathered burst nicely into flame. That was odd. He had never been able to do magic without mako filled materia jewels before. Sephiroth had been able to, courtesy of the mako Hojo infused him with. Cloud had been forced to go through the same mako treatment, but it didn't seem to catch as well for him.
He put the fish and vegetables into a pot next to the fire. In about fifteen minutes it was done, which was good because he really was incredibly hungry, and almost ready to eat it raw.
He scooped it into a bowl and walked (NO!) towards the shadows at the (NO, Don't!) base of the oak. (Run. RUN, Damn you! Oh, God, No, no, please no. . .) Those thoughts weren't important though. A little voice twittering in the back of his mind, an odd quirk of his messed up mind that he could ignore, that was all.
And then he saw what was in the shadow and knew it had been his own voice warning him. He could only watch helplessly as his own helpful arms gently lifted and tilted back the aristocratic head, supporting it on his lap as silver strands spilled over his forearm. Even with the muscles lax in seeming unconsciousness, the man still looked arrogant and deadly.
Against his will his shaking hands carefully spooned the broth into the unresponsive mouth, stroking the heavily muscled neck to activate the swallow reflex. The glowing green mako eyes that had haunted him for years were closed but he could see them clearly in his mind's eye, laughing merrily as he fought and screamed and his meekly obedient body fed Sephiroth's unmoving form.
When Avalanche and Co., as the smart-mouthed princess of Wutai had once named the group, gathered back at the campsite two hours later, no one had found even a footprint.
"Now what?" Cid asked. "I mean, our mission is kinda important. . . We told Reeve we'd do it. Cloud, well, either he can take care of himself or he's probably dead already."
"You bastard." Tifa snarled, clenching her steel gloved fists.
"Cid has a point." Red commented, looking upset. "There's no sign he was taken. If he had a good reason to go, he is quite capable of taking care of himself, much better than the rest of us in fact."
"But he's been sick, who knows how that might have affected his thinking. . ." Barrett protested.
No one replied. Tifa bowed her head. Then she snapped it up, eyes blazing.
"Well, I'm not leaving until I find him. I thought the rest of you were his friends, not Shinra lapdogs, following Reeve's whims."
"I'm staying with you," Barrett announced. "It's dangerous t' be alone out here. Well, except for someone like Cloud of course," he amended hastily, catching a look at Tifa's face.
"All right." Red drooped his head. "Then we will go look for this man in Mideel, and you will find Cloud."
"But. . ." Tifa protested.
"Cloud was the first one of us to agree to do this for Reeve," Nanaki/Red reminded them. "He thought this might be important. We do dishonor to his judgment if we all put it aside to look for him now. Good luck."
"Damn." Barrett slammed his gun fist into a tree and watched as the red beast trotted off, the others following.
Bang. Bang. Tie the wedged limbs together. Hit them a few more times to make sure the lean to was steady. Get another piece of wood. He was about two thirds done, but now that the sun had risen, he should be able to work faster. Despite the soreness in his arms, he deliberately kept choosing the biggest limbs he could find so exhaustion would keep him from thinking too much. A familiar voice snickered at his stupidity in his head, but he did his best to ignore it. Still, he couldn't help wondering about some things. Like where Sephiroth had been the last two years, and why he was spending his energy forcing Cloud to do simple menial tasks, rather than just doing them himself. Well, the last was at least partially obvious. The man, or was he still human enough to be called a man?- Sephiroth looked half dead, incapable of moving if he tried to. So he needed Cloud to get food and shelter. But why was he so weak now? If he had been like this since their duel, he should have died by now. Ouch. Sephiroth didn't want him thinking too much apparently. No big surprise there, the General had a serious control fixation when it came to the people around him, especially his clones.
*Clones as people? You're not a person. You're one small, insignificant part of me, not even as useful as my little finger. It at least helps me balance Masamune's blade. You're like a damaged limb, with odd fits of weakness and uncontrollable muscle spasms. A liability I need to fix.*
*If I'm just a part of you, who're you talking to right now? Yourself? That's a sign of insanity you know. Not that anyone needed more proof.*
The voice stayed silent, and Cloud briefly enjoyed imagining the General pouting. Strange that he was able to think straight actually. His memories of the other times Sephiroth controlled him lacked a lot, but he seemed to remember that he couldn't think while under Sephiroth's control, it was only afterwards that he realized what he was doing, and even then only sometimes. Was Sephiroth's mind as weak as his bod. . .
. . . Crackle. Snap hiss. An arid smell. The smoke from the fire tickled Cloud's nose, while the flames cast a pleasant halo of light protecting the camp from the dark night surrounding them. Night? When had that happened? He had a vague memory of finishing the lean-to. Oh, he had caught more fish also. And a rabbit, which someone had eaten. Probably Sephiroth, since he still felt vaguely hungry. Or maybe it had been a long time ago, or maybe it was Sephiroth feeling hungry. Sephiroth? Of course, the main part of him, the soul that had been missing and made him feel so empty for so long. . . Wait. No, that wasn't. . . Sephiroth had taken total control of him again, hadn't he? But why had he loosened his grip again? Was he so weak he couldn't keep control of him? No reaction to his traitorous thought. Did that mean Sephiroth wasn't listening? That Sephiroth wasn't controlling him right now? Again, no reaction.
Cloud glanced over at Sephiroth, tempted to try and escape. The man lay quietly in the lean to, sunlight dappling his face where it snuck through the chinks in the roof. His long silver hair, colored so from the day of his birth, fanned out around his tall frame like a sea of frost. Had it been Hojo's will that his son looked so alien? Had he manipulated his son's genes to give him the gray hair along with physical prowess and genius, that men of power would accept orders from the young man under the illusion of age? If so, Sephiroth's growing it into a long ponytail defeated the purpose, for he looked inhuman and deadly, not wise with experience and age. It wasn't an illusion. Even with his muscles atrophied from lack of use, his skin tight against his bones from starvation, the general could probably slaughter half the standing army without breaking a sweat. If he was conscious, which he hadn't seemed to be for as long as Cloud had been with him, despite the mocking voice that occasionally entered Cloud's thoughts.
What was Sephiroth planning? Why was he alive? If Cloud ran now, what would happen? Sephiroth had tried to destroy mankind once by summoning a meteor to crash into the planet, having been driven insane by the voice of the alien Jenova, whose cells Hojo had used to form Sephiroth and Cloud's DNA.
The knife Cloud had used to gut fish beckoned from a stone near the fire. He reached out and grabbed it. But was he sane or dreaming?
*Part of me. Liability. Damaged.* Diseased. He had felt like this once before, lost in the chaos of his own mind. Sephiroth was dead, he had killed him. So the general couldn't be here now. Could he be imagining all this, could the man before him be innocent of Sephiroth's crimes?
Sephiroth was dead, and he had mental problems. The two constants in his life. Well, that and Tifa, these days. And Barrett, and Vincent, and Red, and even Yuffie, Cid, and Reeve. If Sephiroth was back, what would happen to them? He would go after them in revenge for his death, just as he had gone after mankind in general for what Hojo and the other scientists had done to Jenova in the name of science. They weren't strong enough to stand against him- only Cloud had been, injected with Sephiroth's very genes, infused with mako and Jenova just like the general - Hojo's slip shod effort to create a super human again after Sephiroth went AWOL upon learning that he was nothing more than a half monster hybrid experiment. When Sephiroth had returned, if was after he had become Jenova's personal executioner, his target the entire human race. He might become that again. Cloud couldn't take that chance. He brought the knife down.
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