A/N: Thanks to the person who reviewed today and reminded me which email I use as a login for this account. This story is FINISHED, but I have been unable to post because I forgot my login info! Sorry about that – here's chapter two at last!

2. Nibelhiem

There is another way I remember you. I remember you with her. The image comes into my mind more often than it should, and my body turns to pure energy when I conjure it up. I am unfiltered rage when I remember you this way. It lets me force the pain of the memory away: the Jenova cells run rampant and I am less than an animal. I am their tool.

The morning before things fell apart, I had no hint that they would. I was scared before you woke, scared that you would feel differently in the morning about what had happened the night before, that you would pull away from me in the daylight. But when you woke you only stretched, saw me watching you shyly and smiled. It was different than the smile you usually offered me, which had been kind but still distant in it's reverence for my status and legend. This smile was simple and not guarded, not respectful. You did not consider it, it just came naturally. My heart filled – it was the confirmation I had needed. I had not made a mistake, I told myself.

We packed up our modest camp and traveled down to the coast, where the four of us got on a boat that would take us to Niebelhiem. The journey took a few hours, and you and I stood on the ship's deck for most of the ride, watching the giant vessel cut through the ocean. You seemed nervous, and I began to worry again that you might change your mind.

"I don't like the ocean," you told me when I finally asked what was wrong. You leaned into me then, as if for comfort, and I wanted to put my arms around you, but the deck was crowded with people who were already staring because they knew who I was. Instead I just left my shoulder pressed against yours as we leaned on the ship's railing.

"You've got nothing to be afraid of," I promised. I counted the minutes as we sailed after that, lusting for the time when we would check into the inn in Niebelhiem, when I would steal into your room, when we would finally be alone. As we stood together on the deck, keeping each other warm against the cool wind that blew against us over the ocean, I let myself imagine what it would be like when that moment finally came, when I dropped my clothes to the floor and slid into bed with you. I imagined the warmth of the blankets we would pull over us as the cold stung my cheeks. I dreamed of the soft, fragrant skin of your neck on my lips as the wind chapped them. I tried to imagine how all of your skin would feel against all of mine, how your hands would feel on my body, and the kinds of sated noises that would escape your lips.

Am I embarrassing you? Forgive me for not caring.

By the time we reached the port near Rocket Town I was flustered with a need for you. You stayed close to me as we boarded a train that would take us to Niebelhiem, and we sat in a private car with Zack and the other soldier. Thankfully there wasn't much talk during the ride to the mountain town – I wasn't sure if I could manage to put a sentence together; I was so hungry for you I could think of nothing else.

"You're from Niebelhiem, right Cloud?" Zack asked you at one point. You nodded, and I felt you bristle against the subject.

Zack wasn't as sensitive, and he pressed on.

"I wonder if you'll have time to visit your family while you're in town?" he said, looking to me as if I had an answer. I shrugged and looked out the window.

"I don't know," you muttered, and again I felt you move almost indiscernibly closer to me – your sleeve brushed mine, and then, discreetly, your weight rested against my arm. I bit my tongue to keep myself from smiling, though I also wondered about your discomfort with the subject. I sensed that you were less than enthusiastic about returning to your hometown.

There was a rainstorm that we drove into as we approached Niebelhiem. Zack was restless, you were carsick from the bumpy ride. You both watched in awe when I slew a mako monster that tried to attack our truck – when I came back inside, soaked from the rain, the two of you stared at me with wonder and I wished your amazement away.

When we reached the town I went immediately to the inn. It was evening and I told the three of you that we would get up early the following morning and travel up the mountain to the reactor. I gave you a meaningful glance before heading up to my room – you looked shaken by the town and still a little queasy from the ride. I didn't blame you for not being excited to be home – the place was small and glum, and it stunk of mako. I told you that you had permission to visit your family, though for some reason I hoped you wouldn't. I wanted you to myself.

I checked into my room and took a long bath. The hot water felt good after the cold boat ride and the brief battle in the rain. I was somewhat nervous about going to your room, and I took my time drying off and getting dressed. Outside a light drizzle was falling, and I lingered at the window, looking out at your hometown. I tried to imagine you there as a boy, frustrated and lonely. As I was lost in my thoughts I saw a girl running through the rain, her hands over her head. She ran into the inn, and after a few minutes I heard her footsteps pounding up the stairs. There was knocking down the hall, a door opened, and then silence. I didn't think anything of it at the time.

How foolish I would have seemed if I had come to your room even a few minutes sooner. I am thankful now for my hesitation. If my heart could not be spared, at least my dignity was.

We both know what happened next. I went down the hall, found the door of your room cracked, and pushed it open. Inside you were kissing that girl. She was sopping wet and looked like she'd been crying. You had your hands on her waist. I was frozen in the doorway, destroyed. When you saw me out of the corner of your eye you pushed her away, but it was too late.

You did not even come to my room to try and console me. I would not have let you in, would never forgive you, but the fact that you made no attempt was a sinister twist of the knife. I lay in bed, feeling dissected, understanding at last why Hojo had turned himself inhuman. There was nothing in being human. I dismissed my longings to be anything other than what I was: a machine that killed for Shinra.

But it wasn't as easy as a mental dismissal. I tried not to shed a tear over you, but I couldn't stop picturing you down the hall, shrugging me off and fucking that little nothing, that tramp, some mountain girl, some moron. You were not what I thought you were. Is there anything more cruel? I have been accused of being cruel. But the things I have done come nowhere close to what you put me through. That night I went into my cocoon. I let the Jenova cells, which I didn't even know existed yet, cradle me. They cooed in my ear. They told me that I was better off in a shell.

I made myself rock hard that night. I tore down anything that wasn't steel, wasn't stone. I burned it in the hollow pit of my heart, and the walls of my soul were black with the ashes.

I did not sleep that night.

I don't think I have slept since that night that I held you. I lost the need for it when you broke me. Losing you made me become a new organism altogether.

Hojo has been blamed. Gast has been credited. Shinra has been cursed for my conception, for producing my wrath.

But you. You were my creator. In this form, in what I have become, in the remains that stand before you – this is yours alone to claim.

But I think you knew that.

I remember that last time we spoke, before you killed me a second time. We had gone to the reactor, and as an added insult the girl you had forsaken me for was our guide up the mountain. I toyed with the idea of killing her as we climbed the ragged peaks, but was too preoccupied by putting forth a veneer of cool resolve. You walked near me and pretended to be disinterested in her. I couldn't imagine why you were even putting on this charade, but at any rate I ignored you and stayed as far away from you as I could without being too obvious. I could feel that you were hurt, and I was satisfied in the moment with the small pain I had caused you.

When we reached the reactor I selected Zack to accompany me, and left you standing guard outside with the girl. What I found inside is neither here nor there, though I can tell you that I would not have had the nerve to investigate it further had I not felt so raw and stony as I did after I saw you with the girl.

When the mission was through the last place I wanted to be was the inn, so I went to a bar. I heard the barkeep there talking about something called the Shinra mansion, and I asked him about it. He told me that Gast had once worked there, that he had been a kind man who came into the bar and treated the staff and patrons with a respect that his apprentice, the now-famous professor Hojo, had not. One thing led to another, as you can imagine, and I ended up in the Shinra mansion's library. Which is where you found me.

Admittedly I was absorbed in my research, and hardly noticed you standing in front of me at first. Zack had already come down once to try and persuade me to leave, but I had ignored him until he gave up. Perhaps he sent you because he thought, based on our previous relationship, you would have better luck.

" Sephiroth?" I still remember the pathetic tone in your voice. I was newly educated, feeling both wretched and holy, and there you were before me, a trivial former fascination, this simple, stupid, pretty boy who had caused me such unnecessary pain. I looked up at you, trying to put on my face the new hatred, the new awareness, the fact that I never wanted to look at you again. The effect was such that you took two steps backward when our eyes met.

" Traitor."

It was the first word I spoke to you after I learned the truth. You frowned, confused and hurt, and again I relished the fact that I could hurt you. I decided in that moment to make a life of hurting you – if I couldn't spend my life loving you, making you happy, comforting and protecting you, then I would accept the inverse. I would hunt your pain, I would cultivate it.

"What are you talking about?" you asked, as if you didn't know. As if I was going to humiliate myself by spelling it out for you. I would never deign to admit that your petty actions had annihilated me – instead I told you what I had learned in the basement of the Shinra mansion that day. Your feeble mind could barely get around the subject, but you kept trying to understand my posturing, trying to decipher my ravings, though there was no chance. I was upset, but it was a cover up. I was only learning things that my body had been telling me since I was a child. The real catalyst for my madness was your betrayal.

After I explained to you how I was created, who I was, where I came from, you stood across from the desk where I sat and stared at me.

" Well, that's good – right?" was your response. "We always knew you were – special."

I almost killed you, then. I walked to you, grabbed you by the throat, and lifted you off the ground, watching your face while you choked and sputtered, barely struggling because of the shock.

" Special?" I hissed. You had the nerve to recognize that I was special, and yet you preferred some hick girl you had grown up with? My hand tightened around your neck.

" Sephiroth, stop!" you had finally managed to choke out. "I'm your friend!"

I dropped you to the floor then. I knew I couldn't hurt you – only a few days before I had loved you. You sat on the floor rubbing your neck and crying, and the last human part of me baulked at the sight of it; I wanted to drop to my knees and comfort you. But I was too strong for that – instead I strode away.

" Forget it," I said, my voice even. "I'm going to see my mother."

" What do you mean?" you had said, struggling to your feet and trying to follow me. "I'm going with you," you said, surprising me. But I did not stop. I did not turn back.

" I don't need friends anymore," I told you. "Stay out of my way unless you want to get hurt."

I slammed the library door shut as I left, locking you inside. As I walked down the stone corridor I heard you beating on the door, calling for me.

" No, Sephiroth!" you screamed. "Don't leave me here!"

I smiled as I walked away. I would come back for you, I decided. I would claim you and carry you with me on the path that was beginning to form in my mind. You would be my slave, and I would be glorious: I would raze Shinra to the ground for the hubris that had created me. I would build my own tower over Midgar and rule the planet that should be mine. I would keep you in a cage and make you watch the world crumble at my feet.

When I reached the top of the stairs that led from the basement the other cadet that had come on the mission with us stepped into my path, and I put my sword through his chest. There was one satisfying groan and his young life was over; I left him lying on the floor and moved on. He was the first one – so insignificant, for the beginning of my wrath. But important because when I killed him he was you. I couldn't bring myself to kill you – even when I hated you, I still wanted you too much. So I killed that boy who wore the same uniform you did, killed him because I wanted to hurt you. It became the reason I did nearly everything: because I wanted to hurt you.

And it wasn't the last time I put my sword through another's heart to get to yours.

I burned your hometown to the ground. Villagers tried to get in my way; I killed them without a thought. I climbed Mt. Nibel in what seemed like two steps. I felt godlike and invincible, and I ripped the door between my mother and I off its hinges, threw it aside. Preparing to go in and face the terror and sad comfort of my only ally, I heard a voice below on the landing.

" You killed my father!"

It was her, that girl I found you with. She was weeping at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me with fury. I laughed with delight at the irony. She had a cheap sword in her hand, and she flew up the stairs in a blind rage, as if she could have hurt me. I laughed uproariously at the human condition: so foolish, and I was so glad that I had ascended above their pathetic emotional fumblings.

As the girl reached me I drew my sword up and slashed her evenly from her stomach to her chin, sending her bouncing lifelessly back down the stairs. When she landed there in a heap I saw you standing in the reactor's doorway, watching me with horror. I was perturbed that you had escaped from the basement of the Shinra mansion, but it was no matter, really. I was pleased with fate's talent for timing: I smiled down at you, introducing you to your cruel new god, who would take everything from you.

You screamed, you wept over her: I ignored you. I went into my mother's chamber and beheld her. She was beautiful and terrifying. Shinra had covered her tank with the bust of a human woman – insulting. I tore it away, and when I looked at Jenova's true form my head buzzed with archaic voices. The mother I never had: she praised me and coddled me, fanned the flames of my hate and built up my dreams of domination. She reclaimed me.

"Sephiroth!" you screamed, watching me with my mother. Your voice was raw: you had changed, too. I was briefly sorry that you would never be an innocent again, that you would be the inverse of innocence in my possession, but mother reminded me that humans were never innocent, always wicked and greedy.

"They've come again, mother," I whispered to her, smiling.

"You killed my mother!" you screamed. "You killed all of them!"

"Forgive me," I said darkly, turning to you. "I have been enlightened."

"I trusted you," you said, crying, drawing your sword. "You were my friend."

I could not respond to that; the idea that I was the one who had betrayed your trust was too infuriating. I drew my sword, walking to you. I would drag you back to my lair now, I decided. You could have been my equal, we could have reclaimed the planet together. But you had left me no choice.

"You're not the Sephiroth I knew," you croaked out, just before the steel of our blades clashed.

"You're right about that," I hissed, and swung at you. You met my blows, not easily but with skill. Trained well and personally by me, you were possibly the only one who could have held you own against me.

And you very nearly defeated me. It was my hesitation – it was the weak parts of me that I thought I had killed; they kept me from fighting with full force. Or perhaps you were just an excellent swordsman. Either way, I ended up hanging off a ledge that ran over one of the mako vats. I ended up looking up at you, he who suddenly had the upper hand. I made my face deceptively soft. I didn't think you had it in you to kill me, either.

"Help," I said, my grip slipping. I might have pulled myself up if I wanted to, but part of me wanted to see what you would do. I still sensed loyalty in you.

I sense it even now.

But that day you did not help me – instead you stamped on my fingers.

"No!" you screamed. "You killed my mother, you killed Tifa. Go to hell."

I fell. I remember watching you as I did, watching you looking down on me, broken, but thinking you had defeated me.

Sometimes I think if you had been certain that you wanted me gone I would have surrendered to the mako.

But I saw something in your face just before its burning energy engulfed me.

I saw regret.

And so I returned, transformed again. I had to give most of myself over to Jenova, and her spidery presence in my body threw its webs wider, paved my insides with black vines. I remembered little of myself when I returned.

But I remembered you.

A/N: Part III will follow soon!