Hello all! It's been a while, hasn't it? Six months…*sob* I'm so ashamed of myself! As busy as I've been, there's no excuse for that kind of delay, especially on a fic I love so much. Please accept my humble, but profuse apologies!
On a happier note, many thanks to my wonderful friends SVR and Nate, who periodically kick me into writing more. There are also a number of regular reviewers I feel obliged to offer huge thanks to: you know who you are. And for everyone the above didn't cover, thanks for just reading this! Love ya all!
On with the fic!
Warning: dark stuff starts really getting into gear with this part. Murder, insanity, and grave injury ahead, so if this may offend or unduly upset you, please beware.
*
Cloud stared blankly at the wall in the second story room into which Sephiroth had disappeared. Two hours ago. Cloud had eventually wondered what could possibly be so engaging in the room—he himself had gone over it several times in the past few days out of sheer boredom—so he'd gone in to find out.
But Sephiroth was nowhere around.
Cloud was thoroughly puzzled now. There were no real escapes from the room, nothing to hide behind or under, and absolutely no signs of Sephiroth having slipped out before Cloud came in. Cloud knew the General of SOLDIER was talented, but even he could not simply vanish into thin air. At least, Cloud didn't think he could…? At this point, he was seriously beginning to wonder.
Just then Zack walked in. "'Sup, Spike?"
Cloud shrugged. "I coulda sworn I saw Seph come in here. And I didn't see him come out, so where…?"
Zack blinked, gazed around the room a minute, then approached the brick wall on the other side of the room. Cloud started to ask what he was doing, when Zack gave the thing a shove and the whole wall slid out of sight faster almost than he could blink.
Cloud blinked. There wasn't even a hairline crack there to indicate a door, but there it was. Zack grinned. "Learned about this through the grapevine. No one ever went down here, but a couple guys found this…oh, about five years ago? We all heard about it, but the Shinra stopped using this place…maybe Seph finally got bored enough to check it out? I know I was seriously contemplating it. And heaven knows what's down there."
Cloud blinked, then started after Zack as the dark-haired man started down the stairs beyond the dark opening. Zack, however, waved him off.
"Don't worry 'bout it, Spike. I'll go check it out and bring your little love muffin back for ya."
Cloud glared, but Zack was already out and away. Scowling, Cloud plunked back down in the chair, waiting a few minutes for Zack to get down the stairs, then a few more to allow him time to get away from them, so Cloud could follow unnoticed. Then he crept to the wall, and slipped out onto the stairs. They were rickety looking, but they felt as solid as anything Cloud had ever stood on. That was kind of suspicious, but he didn't care. The point was that they didn't creak under his weight, so he moved quickly but quietly down them.
Cloud came to the end of the cave-tunnel and heard voices—Zack and Sephiroth, and they seemed to be a little upset—so he stopped. There was still a door between him and them, and it sounded like they were still further down. Looking around, he spotted a dark corner he could hide in, so long as no one looked his way to see his hair. He crouched there a moment before realizing it was another doorway. Hesitantly, he reached up and tried the knob.
Locked.
Drat. That woulda been a really great place to hide.
Just then, he heard a skittering sound inside the room accompanied by a low groaning sound. Was someone in there? He went to knock again, but heard a low creak to his right where the other door down here was. He crouched silently in the shadows, grateful for the dark blue of his uniform and helmet. As a precaution, he slit his eyes to prevent their glow from leaking out past the face plate, even as he silently shifted a bit deeper into the shadows.
Zack staggered out of the room, looking a little the worse for wear. He kind of seemed startled and confused, though what about was anyone's guess. He went right past Cloud without seeing him, without even looking for him, and Cloud knew for sure this was serious.
After Zack left, Cloud gave him a few more minutes to be well away, then hesitantly stepped through the other door. It turned out the area beyond was some sort of library or reference room. Cloud also saw a couple of large specimen tanks off to one side, as well as fully stocked, if rather dusty, trays of surgical equipment. How odd—and disturbing, given what was going on up the mountain. Warily, Cloud followed the room around to the short hallway on one side—also lined with books—that led back to another book-filled room.
Sephiroth stood in the hall, reading a book. Cloud scuffed one boot lightly, a habit he'd acquired when coming up behind dangerous SOLDIERs who might be unaware of his presence. Sephiroth straightened with an exasperated sigh.
"Zack, I told you to let me be alone! What part of that didn't you copy?"
Cloud scuffed his boot again. "Not Zack, Seph. But, if you really want me to go, I'll—" He started to leave, only to be stopped by the powerful arms that suddenly wrapped around him. Sephiroth buried his face in his hair, breathing in his scent and shaking.
"No! Don't leave me, Cloud! Please…" He murmured into Cloud's hair. Cloud turned in his lover's grip and pressed himself against Sephiroth's chest.
"I'm not going anywhere, Seph, not now. Don't worry. Don't worry…" It took several minutes of crooning nonsense to him, but Sephiroth finally calmed down. Cloud looked up at him. "Are you okay, Seph?" Sephiroth nodded, but refused to meet his eyes. Cloud reached up to stroke one pale cheek. "Do you want to talk about it?" Sephiroth shook his head emphatically, so Cloud didn't push. Instead, he pressed a small kiss to Sephiroth's mouth, and was heartily surprised when Sephiroth latched onto it like a drowning man.
He didn't struggle when Sephiroth led him further down the hall and set him on the desk in the far room. Sephiroth's eyes were bright with love, but there were dark, dark shadows there, too. Cloud knew his lover needed this, and relaxed. He had had sex in worse places for less reason, before. He leaned back and pulled Sephiroth to himself, sighing at his lover's touch.
*
Cloud jerked awake, knowing something was wrong. He scrambled out of bed, pulling on his uniform and snatching up his gun with the speed of one who's had to do it quickly, often, and recently. Then he crept down the stairs to the main area of the mansion, checking each room as he went, eyes darting around to find the disturbance, his rifle in firing position before him. He found nothing, but he knew something was very off, and he desperately wished he knew what that was. As he reentered the main area, he got a taste of it.
Sephiroth flew down the steps and out the mansion doors, an insane expression touching his features and his eyes burning with mad intensity. Not 'flew,' like 'ran really fast'; 'flew,' like birds fly, only without wings to explain such an ability. Heart hammering in his chest, Cloud pursued his silver-haired lover. Because he was so quick on Sephiroth's heels, he saw the fire spells the other man rained upon the sleeping town, watched him hack up villagers without remorse.
Saw Sephiroth head for his mother's house.
Cloud sprinted to his mother's home, managing to catch up just as Sephiroth coiled for his strike. With a cry, he tried to stop Sephiroth's attack, to talk reason into him, but the other man ignored him.
"Don't worry, Mrs. Strife. I'll make it quick for you, for his sake." Then the fell blade swung across her body, slicing her open from her left shoulder to her right hip—more, slicing her through. She fell soundlessly, collapsing in a spray of blood, surrounded by the burning timbers of the house she'd lived in since before Cloud's birth.
Cloud, however, screamed. He launched himself at Sephiroth, cursing, swearing, and pleading, his body moving swiftly, though his mind was frozen with shock. Otherwise, he'd never have been stupid enough to attack an obviously homicidal super-SOLDIER with only a Mako rifle and a Pre-emptive Materia.
Pre-emptive did its job though, and Cloud got his moment of advantage, before Sephiroth could do anything. Of course, it didn't last long, and as good as Cloud was, Sephiroth was bigger, stronger, faster, more experienced, and frighteningly lucid. He caught Cloud and crushed him against his body, effectively stopping his struggles. Cloud, sobbing, looked up at him, and Sephiroth's eyes were those of a stranger, dark, empty and malicious. There was only the faintest bit of light in them—aside from the manic gleam of his insanity, and cold burn of Mako—only a shred of his Sephiroth remaining.
Sephiroth kissed him hard, and Cloud shuddered. He didn't know the man kissing him at all, but he couldn't fight his overwhelming power. Then Sephiroth set him down, just outside the house of his childhood, and raised his sword.
"Ah, my favorite of the traitors…Cloud. Your mother I killed quickly, but you will be another matter. I want you to suffer, demon, for trying to lure me away from my destiny—from Mother! Then, when you are broken to nothing, perhaps I will let you, little incubus, sit at my feet and serve as first among your whole vile race, fit only to e slaves to the Cetra. In the meantime, know your helplessness, and despair!"
Sephiroth slammed Masamune's hilt into Cloud's temple with enough force to put Cloud out, despite his resilience. Cloud fell bonelessly into the dark.
*
It was some time later when Cloud awoke to the pounding in his head. He had a vague recollection of Zack leaning over him, trying to rouse him, then taking off toward the north side of town. All around him, Cloud could hear the protests of creaking timbers, crackling with flames, but there were no life noises; no screams of the injured or the trapped, no cries of lost children, just the roar of the consuming flames.
Sephiroth did this. Sephiroth.
Cloud felt ill as he sat up. His head spun and his stomach lurched, but he resolutely shook his disorientation away and stood up. He still had his gun, and his uniform—and the armor that went with it—was still intact.
How had they come to this? Days ago, he had been so happy, and Sephiroth had seemed to be, too. The mission had seemed a bit wanky from the start, but they'd been sure they could handle it. He and Sephiroth were going to get married, for Holy's sake! And Zack had even managed to scrape together the courage to ask Sephiroth if they could maybe detour past Gongaga on the way home after the mission. Sephiroth had laughed and asked if he needed a speech-writer. There had been no warning at all, so how had it come to this?
As Cloud stood up, he viciously tore the engagement ring from his finger, then stood in the midst of the roaring flames, at a loss as to what to do. He couldn't toss it away from him, though his hand had initially moved to do so. He fumbled with the chains around his neck, one of mythril bearing his anti-motion sickness Materia, the other of adamant, a gift from a presumably now-dead old soldier. He opened the clasp on the adamant chain and slid his ring onto it, before refastening it around his neck. He let it hang out of his uniform like a medal, a badge displaying his broken heart for all to see.
All that remained was to show his mad lover the cost of his rampage. He could practically hear Sephiroth's soft voice in his ears, telling him to come get him, to come find him, to come up the mountain to him. Cloud didn't know where Sephiroth was, but that seemed as good a place to start as any. Come to think of it, Zack had gone that way, too. Maybe his friend knew something about this he didn't?
The hike up the mountain was long and hard, even on the best days, in the best condition. Now, head ringing, knees weak, heartsick, and frightened, with the bridge still broken and no Sephiroth or Zack to take on the monsters, it was nearly impossible. However, Cloud was now in a state of constant limit ability, a battle trance, as they had been described in the old stories. Shinra's position was that there was no such thing—berserker rage or fury, but not a trance.
Seemed there was an awful lot Shinra didn't know.
The trance didn't seem very trance-like, though, more like a cross between the time in Wutai when time slowed down for him, and when he went nuts on the rellious Wutaian army. But he was stronger, faster, more magically adept, and seemed to be able to simply scare off most of the monsters, so he wasn't about to complain.
Cloud staggered into a run once he reached the reactor. His aching body complained, but he had this awful sense of foreboding. Was Zack okay? What was wrong with Sephiroth? How would they stop him? The voice whispering in his ears that sounded so much like Sephiroth informed him of the only conceivable answer to the last question.
He would kill Sephiroth, or die trying.
At this point, Cloud's mind half shut down. He desperately didn't want to kill Sephiroth—he loved him! And whatever was wrong with him, they could fix it, couldn't they?
Couldn't they?
Cloud stepped over the body of Tifa's father, before entering the Mako pressurization chamber, the room with the pods and their terrible contents. He saw Zack enter the now-open door to 'Jenova,' heard him demanding answers, cursing at his long-time friend, begging him to come back to his senses, to him, to Cloud. Then he saw Zack come flying out of the room to land, bloody and broken, atop one of the pods with a sick crunch.
Cloud went to his friend's side. Zack's silvery eyes were nearly black with pain, but he lifted his head to look Cloud in the eyes.
"Y-you have to stop him, S-Spike. He's not himself, it's not Sephiroth in there, but he can still kill as easily. T-take my sword, Cloud. That way, we t-take him out together."
Cloud reverently picked up Zack's beloved Buster Sword, then inhaled deeply, to calm himself. The weapon was well-balanced and fit nicely in his hands, even if the wear on the hilt was for hands larger than his, hands the size his would one day be. He flipped the weapon to his back, and started up the stairs only to halt in a puddle of blood belonging to a familiar girl.
Cloud hefted Tifa easily in his arms, and carried her down the steps to where Zack could keep an eye on her from his place on the pod. He had fulfilled his promise to her, now, even if she wasn't awake to know. He had no time to bandage her up, though, and no Materia to make it go faster, so he left her there, near the base of the steps like some macabre worshipper in this place of despair—or like a sacrifice.
Cloud attacked Sephiroth without warning, giving his one Materia the opportunity to do its work. Lady Luck smiled on him today, for his near-zero AP Pre-emptive again functioned as it was supposed to, and Cloud got the drop on Sephiroth, opening a great bloody gash in Sephiroth's front and side. Shock splashed across those beloved features, and Cloud's heart twisted in his chest. However, Sephiroth was no longer going to stand around with—eew!—the head of some Mako monster clutched in one hand. Face twisted with hatred, Sephiroth shoved Cloud aside, and limped out of the room, even as Cloud tried to find his feet again.
Cloud spent a moment staring up at the monster in the tube this room contained. Even headless, the monster was revolting, and seemed to be watching him, sizing him up. He swore at it, feeling its malice ripple in the back of his head, not the soft voice of Sephiroth, but—he knew—that of the monster controlling him. He attacked the glass of the tube, and swore again when it merely deflected his blow. Inside, he knew that…thing…was laughing at him, at his futile effort to kill it, rather than have to take out his lover; at his silly, small-minded love; at his very existence.
Cloud grew angry. "Listen, you…Jenova, or whatever you are. I may not be able to get you just now, but I swear, if you make me do this, you'll regret it immensely. Do you understand, you scum-sucking, slime-covered, shit-eating amoeba? Or are you even intelligent enough to formulate a response, rather than act solely in response to stimuli?"
There was silence, but the oily presence in the back of his head told Cloud that the creature was still aware of him, on at least some level. He spun away, Zack's sword clenched in his hands, as he trailed Sephiroth out of the recesses of the reactor. Zack was still alive, and Tifa seemed no worse, but no matter what, there could be no stopping for Cloud now. If he so much as hesitated, he would be unable to go through with it, and he knew Sephiroth would have wanted him to end it, before he did anything worse.
He found Sephiroth clinging tiredly to a railing in one of the main entrance hallways to the reactor. He could only hope Pre-emptive would work one last time, for him.
Unfortunately, Lady Luck had obviously moved on to some soul more likely to survive long enough to make use of her gifts.
Sephiroth whirled as Cloud lunged for him, Masamune leaping in his hands, and sliding through Cloud's pathetic uniform, inadequate armor, and yielding flesh in one lunging stab. Zack's sword skittered out of his grasp. Cloud gasped as the force of the blow rocked him back in the air—for he was no longer on the ground—snapping his head around like a crash dummy. The actual wound hardly hurt at all because of how sharp Sephiroth kept his sword.
Sephiroth, though his face was pale, growled through gritted teeth, "Don't…push…your luck." Then he lifted Cloud still higher, and that hurt. Masamune had slid into his body just below the ribs in front, and at least a foot of it's bright length protruded from between two of the middle ribs in back. The pressure of Cloud's own weight on the blade was cracking the abused ribs, and digging into his guts and his lungs. There was blood on his tongue, and his vision was greying, but Cloud felt strangely calm—at peace. He was going to die here, and he was going to take Sephiroth with him, one way or another.
A surge of last, desperate strength coiled through Cloud's muscles, and he forced shaking hands up to grasp the blade where it bit so deeply. Blood trickling from the wounds that opened on the razor edges of Sephiroth's sword, Cloud levered himself to the ground, calling up all the strength he had left in him. He had the satisfaction of seeing disbelief on the face of Seph-not-Seph's face, knew he said something, but then Cloud's feet hit the ground, and he had that wonderful thing a guy his size knew to look for in a fight against someone so much stronger than he was.
Leverage.
The ability to get leverage could make or break a fight, no matter how big a person was, but as short as he was, Cloud had spent his whole life taking advantage of leverage and agility to pull out his wins. Now, he was as merciless with the monster wearing his lover's face as he would be with any enemy, lifting him off the thin catwalk they stood on—God, he was fighting dumb; why not just let go the blade…?—and swinging him over the edge. Then Cloud simply pulled the blade a little loose from his body, and oh, how that hurt, then allowed gravity to take over—over both Sephiroth and himself.
Masamune slid free of Cloud's torso, grinding against ribs and vertebrae before exiting with a sick, sucking sound. Something must have happened when Masamune ground against his vertebrae, because his lower body went numb, and his legs collapsed beneath him. He was lucky enough to have the catwalk to arrest his fall—Sephiroth was not so lucky.
Still clutching his sword in one hand, and Jenova's head in the other, Sephiroth plummeted into the Mako-filled chasm over which the catwalk bridged. From his angle, Cloud could see his fall, track it. His eyes met Sephiroth's mid-fall, and he saw the darkness leave them.
Sephiroth was back.
Cloud's mouth opened in a hoarse scream that brought up blood and flecks of his tattered lung. He flung out one hand to his lover, but Sephiroth had fallen way too far for any rescue Cloud could conjure. Denial and desperation filled his mind, but Cloud saw acceptance on Sephiroth's face—he knew he'd done something horrible and accepted this as just punishment, especially since there was nothing else he could do about it now.
Sephiroth vanished into the haze of vaporized Mako, and moments later, there came the muffled splash-thud of his body hitting the shallow pool of liquid Mako and then hitting the metal and stone floor of the reservoir. Sephiroth made no sound as he fell, no cry, nothing more than the crunch of his body being broken; but Cloud screamed for him, loud and long, ululating eerily and echoing off the metal walls around him as his cry carried his strength out of him.
Collapsing under the crushing weight of his weakness and agony, Cloud choked on a sob. Sephiroth may have accepted it, but he sure as hell didn't! He cast about for some way to bring Sephiroth back up from the pit, but darkness in the form of unconsciousness descended too rapidly.
Cloud, broken in heart and body, passed out on the cold floor of the Mt. Nibel Mako reactor, expecting to die, and welcoming the opportunity to go see his lover and explain. He could already hear his voice in the back of his head, telling him not to worry, that things would be all right…
*
Zack blinked at the sound of heavy feet clunking on the catwalks and metal floors of the reactor. He had seen Zangan come in some time ago, looking pale. He had left with Tifa, already casting healing spells and pouring potions down her throat, promising to bring back help. He had given Zack a potion, too, but had said nothing of Cloud. Zack thought that was the reason he was so pale; the room outside probably had at least one corpse in it…probably Cloud's, since Zangan had made no mention of Sephiroth.
Zack wondered distantly if the loud feet could possibly be the help Zangan had said he was bringing, but he rather doubted it. That didn't sound like the tread of a bunch of healers and any able-bodied villagers there were left—more like soldiers. He rolled his eyes toward the door to see when they came in, unable to do any more than that, but psychologically incapable of failing to face a potential threat.
They swept in like they owned the place, blatantly over-confident and utterly unwary. They looked pretty good, but over-confidence had been the undoing of far better soldiers than they. He itched to put them in their places, but he couldn't so much as lift a finger against them. Well, actually, he could lift a whole hand, just a couple inches from where it rested limply against his chest, but that was all he had left in his battered body. The soldiers actually laughed at his angry glare, and stepped aside to reveal their 'leader.'
Zack's blood ran cold at the sight of scrawny, bony, half-mad-or-more Hojo standing in the center of that block of soldiers. The bespectacled Shinra scientist smirked up at him.
"Why, hello there, Colonel. So nice to see you again. I don't suppose you could tell me where my Sephiroth is?"
Zack smiled in bitter satisfaction. "…dead," he rasped, and watched the manic insanity flee from Hojo's face.
"What? That's impossible. He's far to powerful to be dead."
Zack laughed painfully. "You're wrong. He's dead, I know it. Cloud killed him, out there. I heard the fight, heard a body hit the Mako, and another hit the metal of the catwalk—heard Cloud scream. Unless Sephiroth's the one lying on the floor out there, he's the one burned alive by all that Mako."
Hojo's face contorted. "You lie, you lie! How dare you lie to me! Sephiroth is not dead; he is perfect, so he can't die!"
"News flash, dipshit: Sephiroth was never perfect, and he wouldn't have wanted to be perfect. Perfection is static, and if there is anything Sephiroth truly reveled in, it was the ability to change."
Hojo smacked him, harder than Zack would have thought the little twig-man could. But then, Zack was also effectively immobilized, so he might just have thought Hojo hit him harder than he really had. Hojo, meanwhile, motioned to the soldiers.
"Pick him up. I don't care how rough you are with him, just bring him alive. If in fact Sephiroth is dead, I think these clowns owe me a super-SOLDIER. Between the two of them, we might just get one."
The soldiers weren't gentle. They grabbed him and jerked him off the pod on which he lay, letting him smack his head a couple times on the way down. Then a couple grabbed him by the arms and dragged him from the room. They came across a small gaggle of soldiers brusquely strapping Cloud to a stretcher. Zack could see the horrible wound on his friend's chest, and cried out in dismay. In response, one of the soldiers cracked him across the face with the butt of his Mako rifle. Dazed, Zack could only lie there, half-conscious as they strapped him to another stretcher to get him up the ladders to wherever Hojo's lab was. And Zack had no doubt they were going to the lab. Hojo would make them suffer for what they'd done, and Zack prayed he and Cloud were up to surviving whatever torment Hojo had in store for them with their minds intact.
*
Well, there you have it! I hope you enjoyed my little fic! Only a couple more parts to go, then that's it for Chi to Ase to Namida! As CAN wraps up, I'll begin posting the next fics I have scheduled for this universe. They'll mostly be post-game. Please watch for them!
Well, this was a depressing part. The next I have planned will be at least as bad, with mostly just spots of Zack-humor to lighten things up enough to be readable. We'll get to watch Cloud—and to lesser degree, Zack—go insane in captivity. We'll get to see some of Hojo's experiments and some of his outright torture. This is the reason for the R rating. There will be some explanation of Cloud's little identity crisis, and some of the experiments will be viewed through the lens of Cloud's expertise in the area. *shudder* I hope I haven't turned you away from my baby, yet. It won't really be that bad.
Once again, huge apologies for my long absence! As a weak little peace offering/apology, I have written a short Vagrant Story piece that can be found right here on ff.net, for anyone who's interested. I know it's an uncommon fandom, but I hope all who read it like it! (Nate, this is so your fault. Enjoy the fruits of your pestering!)
As always, comments, concerns, and questions are appreciated. Reviews are welcome, as are emails, just please try not to flame me. Flames are merely an expression of immaturity on behalf of the flamer. Thank you!
--Akuma no Tsubasa