Author's Notes: Don't kill me for cliffhanging so much... This is very hard for me to write... considering a lot of stuff is going on and I've too many projects and ... well, this will get very interesting if it turns out well, I assure you! Disclaimer, disclaimer...? Oh yes... Read chapter 1 for that one, sillyheads.
----------------
An angel of Death fell upon Hikaru, raining down blows that threatened to once more send his consciousness spiraling into the spectral plane again. He had but little time to counter with spells to guard himself, before he brought forth a longsword. Sephiroth may have recognized it, but Hikaru would not be sure. Somehow Sephiroth had managed to keep Masamune, which he also wielded.
The hall, though quite wide and tall, was a formidable place to fight... but it would spill into innocent people's chambers. Hikaru had a wild notion of trying to save them, fleeting images of their deaths somehow terrifying him. He would not have Sephiroth destroy people's lives just to reach Hikaru. Why it mattered, who knew?
"They weren't mine!" Hikaru shouted, his bones jarred as he spun backwards several steps, Sephiroth charging and feinting like a wolf, following him as Hikaru tried to circle around him and avoid him. "I'm telling you! Those Heartless were not mine!"
"YOU LIE!"
Hikaru dove again, felt the cutting bite of steel deep in his side. He staggered and exhaled sharply, ignoring the pain. It would heal... just not as quickly... Sephiroth darted in again, hesitated and then charged, bowling over Hikaru, knocking him into the wall. He seized his shoulder, throwing his weight into a knee that nearly threatened to throw his nonliving guts right out of his body.
Instead he spat up the burning liquid of spirit vitality, coughing and sputtering. His vision blurred and swam, shades of green spilling into everything.
"You lying sack of shit!" Sephiroth roared, grabbing a decent fistful of Hikaru's hair. He yanked him, causing him to cry out again, toward the door where they were meant to stay to begin with. The door slammed; the demon threw him into it and waited for him to get up. He shook himself, quaking before he started to laugh hysterically.
Hikaru curled into a ball. Holy Source... he couldn't stop Sephiroth from even hurting him... no matter how many times Hikaru came back, this man would knock him into oblivion again and again. He groaned and struggled to stay conscious, though now every part of him wanted sleep. But sleep meant oblivion... and oblivion meant failure.
"Please..." Hikaru croaked, interrupted when Sephiroth yanked him up again. Back-handed him, holding him up.
"NO. You're not sorry enough yet. You just stay there.... STAY!" Sephiroth turned and sheathed Masamune, the wall of his broad shoulders quaking with a great deal of obvious restraint..
"You should be saving Ansem," Hikaru muttered, shivering against the warm almond-brown door. He tipped his chin up and watched him through his wavering vision. "I ...could help you find him. Take you to him. Stop... the pain... once and for all." He clamped his eyes shut tightly again. He felt himself swerving to the right, then to the left, his equilibrium ruined beyond repair unless he left, fed, and returned again.
Sephiroth lifted himself up somewhat. He faced him again, something murderous and anxious in his eyes. Mad crazy, he found himself actually hating himself more for his inability to rescue Ansem.
"I don't need your help to find him," he spat, his throat working with bile. "You make me sick for even thinking I would accept help from you. You're a living, breathing non-truth statistic. Everything you are is a lie."
Hikaru ground his teeth. He coughed blood and weakly began to giggle. "...Oh, alright... big bad Sephiroth... You're an idiot besides... just a big idiot. I can't tell if it's your ego that won't let me help you, or your mildly annoying hissy-fits. Without my knowledge, you're at a very great disadvantage. Ansem has been taken to the Hall of Shadows, far beneath here in the catacombs of the castle. If everything goes as it has been planned, his body will become the vessel for the Source."
"What Source? Tell me, you shit, before I throw you out the window for fun," Sephiroth's interest was piqued, no matter how furious he was.
"You don't have much time. There is a place that is not a world, but it's where everything comes from. Light and dark both, gushing from it and filling the universe. It is what will cause the destruction of the world, the rebirth of everything that is. Through Ansem, it will find a link into this plane where it will begin the last revolution."
"The... Big Bang? Show me!" Sephiroth seized him by the shoulders. Already Hikaru was flickering, and his hands passed through his semi-solid embodiment. "Show me, damn you!"
"It may sting a little..." Hikaru held onto his arms. Slowly he melted away, gradually slipping with Sephiroth through the door and on the other side, found them both on the Spiritual plane.
"Follow me, and don't ask any more questions. It is so imperative that you trust me, Sephiroth. If the rest of the world means nothing to you, then do it to save Ansem. He is the Chosen One... The vessel through which the Source will carry out the predestined end of the universe."
"Impossible... why? Why Ansem?"
"I said we don't have time!" Only Hikaru knew time had no place in the spectral realm. As of this very moment, time was struck motionless. As they passed through the hallway, Sephiroth silent and strangely unperturbed by his state of existence. Several times Hikaru had to hold Sephiroth's arm to bring him through doors with him, until the corridors ended abrubtly.
Hikaru guided Sephiroth into the light of the living world with him. They stood before a wide archway, doorless, but beyond it was an empty yawning cavern of darkness. The sound of empty space echoed back at them with their now louder-than-usual footsteps.
"Beyond here...I-I can go no further."
"Ah, but you will, won't you?" Sephiroth seized him by the back of the neck sharply, digging his thumb and fingers into his muscles. "You're not to leave my side until I see Ansem with my own eyes and touch him with my own two hands, understand?"
"Inexpressibly," he choked, squirming as Sephiroth guided him like a puppet, shoving him forward ahead by the neck into the darkness. A moment later Hikaru had a small globe of fire hovering after them, lighting the black gleaming floor. Nothing else could be visible by this light except the flashing gossamer floor. Suddenly Hikaru stopped, no matter how much Sephiroth pushed him. Finally he let go, and the globe burst into a thousand small pieces, each one with as much light as the single globe, setting everything ablaze.
The light sparkled out, like fireworks along the floor in a perfect circle, moving up along a wall that he hadn't seen before. A sensation tingled along Sephiroth's arms; suddenly he did not feel the energy to be angry anymore. Immensely tired, but strangely energized like one's second wind staying up late at night, he wasn't tired enough to sleep. Yet in this moment of weakness, his hold had loosened on Hikaru.
Hikaru wasn't moving either. He seemed paralyzed, his yellow eyes glazed and dull like a china doll's, dazed and still and lifeless as he stared with eerie intensity toward the still uncovered shadows.
"What is it?" Sephiroth murmured, stepping close to Hikaru out of a infant fear, progressing into a considerable terror.
"Ansem is in here," Hikaru said finally, finding his voice. He raised his arm, leaning back slightly, resting the other hand on his hip as he turned away bodily from the light, as the sparks trickled into nothing. Dim blue light filtered everywhere, making the obsidian floor gleam. "Look." He pointed.
Sephiroth peered into the darkness. Or... was it light? The walls were black, vine-etchings so detailed and bizarre it made him wonder if what he saw, if everything was an illusion. But he discerned Ansem's form standing in front of the wall, still and quiet, head tilted curiously to one side. Seph called his name, and Ansem jerked about as though pulled by a rope or struck by a stone fist.
"Sephiroth!" His eyes were bloodshot and gleamed strangely in the blue light. He rushed toward him. He didn't see Hikaru, who had retreated into the shadows.
Sephiroth crushed him to his chest tightly, possesively pressing his mouth to his and finding it delightful to hear his surprised moan. He gave in to him immediately, sinking down to the hard echoing floor. His eyes burned but he could see perfectly. He saw everything perfectly through his tears, and saw Ansem's heart in his chest beating, whole and powerful. The noise roared in his ears and filled him, smoothing over the jagged knife-sharp edges of his stressful mind.
Hikaru felt inclined to interrupt, but kept his mouth shut. He looked up, watching the wall open as a hole of light ate its way from the center outward, creeping across the wall until it formed the unmistakable shape of a keyhole. The doors spread open wide, the light blinding them, breaking the pair from their kiss but not from each other.
Two forms manifested themselves on the floor, rising up. The forms were black, and it took a moment for him to notice these shapes were made out of the floor. Or they were made out of the light. Maybe both. They solidified, stretching black fingers with inlaid, complex designs of light curving around the fabric. Perfect copies of Ansem and Sephiroth.
"Don't just stand there and stare, you idiots," said the Sephiroth-copy. "You know who I am."
"No, I don't," Sephiroth hissed quietly. "You aren't me. *I* am me."
The dark figure's eyes were pure white. It hurt his own greens to look into them. But the smile that came forth was warm and bizarre, friendly and yet unfriendly. It unnerved him, as the next statement, "Prove it. Prove that you are who you are." fell easily from the dark and fathomless mouth.
You want to know who I am? Maddening light burned behind his closing eyelids. "I'll tell you," he began slowly, his voice grating to his own ears. But the volume of it grew in spite of his madness numbed senses. "I am Sephiroth. I fight, have died, fought and been tortured. Time again has taken me from the only thing that has kept me whole and at peace. It isn't ever, ever going to happen again, do you hear me?
"I love Ansem. And until I get to spend the rest of my life with him, no one - not your little bitch Hikaru, not you, not any force in this DAMNABLE universe or the next - is going to take that from me... I don't want to hurt anyone anymore, but I don't want to be fucked with either. Do you understand? That is who I am."
For a long time, no one in the Hall of Shadows spoke a word. Then the Sephiroth-copy melted with the Ansem-copy and together formed an entirely new entity; it rose from the floor and spun like a globe, kaleidescope figures melting out and in and all around. The voice was not Sephiroth's anymore... it carried an unusual genderless tone to it.
"That is enough. Sephiroth... Ansem. This is what I will do for you; there is no light in the world like the light of love and pain. You have been tested for so long and you are all weary. But the fact remains: the universe has become poisoned... and it must be cleansed by the eternal fire. A vessel for such power must be chosen."
Hikaru stepped out of the darkness. He looked up, his yellow eyes burning like smoking fire. "Choose me."
Sephiroth immediately looked toward him. He watched his face, devoid of emotion, and saw in his eyes a greed and lust that seemed to echo from Sephiroth's own past. A reflection in a mirror... yes... he felt that desire, felt that want. Power... more of it. The ability to change his own life... instead of accepting it for what it was.
Or maybe Hikaru really did give a damn about the universe. Sephiroth didn't want to waste his time with this anymore. Ansem spoke up, however, making Sephiroth's blood freeze.
"I... I'll do it."
A beast's shriek broke the stunned quiet, disturbing the Source as it bled light and dark in all directions. Hikaru spun to look at Ansem as well, Sephiroth's cry dissipating into nothing.
"What!?" he whispered hoarsely, squeezing the man in his arms. "Why? Ansem--!!"
Ansem's face softened. He was the same man he'd met in the mountains... the one he traveled with and loved forever to Sephiroth. Ansem understood him completely. Everything that Sephiroth just told the Source gave him hope. He reached to soothe his fresh tears and brush the messy strands of hair from his shadowed face. "Look... you've got to trust me," he whispered. "This is the ultimate test... I'll be able to protect you from whatever happens. You believe me... right?"
"I don't quite understand," Sephiroth growled with difficulty. He closed his eyes and pressed his face in the crook of Ansem's neck. "I don't want to let go of you... ever, ever again..."
"You won't," Ansem grinned. "You wont have to." And the man raised his eyes, golden and bright as the setting sun, shining with his confidence and his strength. "That's it. You can do it. But you're using BOTH of us. Or you're not getting either one. Understand?"
The Source quivered. It was as though it burned from within with every ounce of atomic death it could restrain. After a long pause, it became still again and broke into a thousand mirror shards. The collective voice stole into their thoughts again, trickling into silence. "It is done... Sleep, sons of the earth and the worlds and of men. The universe will crack a new dawn when you awake..."
