I once said of the upcoming chapters, "Cloud/Jenova, ewww!" I was mostly kidding about Cloud/Jenova, I really don't pair them up (though I think it could be interesting.) Really it's just a series of suggestive gestures. (Hey, even Jenova doesn't have the right to touch you in the bathing suit area. ;) ) Feh, ignore me. Anyway, I decided to put that one section in this update instead of the next. It does continue from there (DEEEEEP Cloud Angst!) but that section is really long, so I'll leave it for the next time..

And I'm sorry, but I refuse to write the word "Confu."

Sheez, how much does Fangirl Author luuuurve REEVE! ;D


ShinRa

Scarlet was surrounded on all sides by four men. One had a camera, one was asking her questions, and two more were taking notes. They all looked beaten and bloody, as if they had been in the city when the blasts had gone off. One of them was missing some teeth.

"I think one of the questions on everyone's lips right now," said the question-man, "is, 'Where's Reeve Skye?' Do you have any ideas?"

She tossed her grimy, blond hair out of her eyes and shook her head. "I have no idea where he is, but I can confirm that he is alive and..."

"Is it possible that he's been injured?" the reporter asked. He had to raise his voice over the growing sound of an approaching airship.

"It's not likely. I've been in touch with Reeve and he sounded fine, but unfortunately he didn't tell me much." She looked down to the ground. Her eyes were tired, and her hand shook as she tucked another stray lock of hair behind her ear. "I...It's just that, I had so much faith in Reeve Skye." She looked up again, bravely, into the camera. "I would hate to think that my faith in him - Midgar's faith in him - had been in vain."

"You're from ShinRa," the reporter said. "Can you tell us what you know about the ShinRa employees you accused of doing this horrible, terrible thing?"

"First I want to make it clear that the senior President ShinRa was a greedy coward, and that some of us, myself included, were trying to change the company from the inside when he was still alive. When President ShinRa was killed by terrorists, his son Rufus took over, as I'm sure you're aware. Rufus ShinRa was the kind of leader I think we were looking for. It's a terrible shame that he didn't live to carry out his work. That is the ShinRa that I and a few others were striving to maintain. These terrorists who did this..."

"You called them the Turks, Miss Scarlet, what can you tell us about them?"

"They worked for old man ShinRa, Rufus's father. Though it was never proven, they were responsible for the destruction of the original Sector Seven."

"Do you have any idea of what their motives might have been this time? Why would they choose to act now, and does it have to do with the sightings of these many strange... strange people walking around?" The reporter now had to shout over the sound of an airship.

"Ah, those..." She cast her eyes around, as if afraid she would see one lurking around the next corner. "I believe those to be clones. I have some evidence that there was a cloning facility somewhere in the vicinity which had been operating in secret for many, many years, and it's possible that there was some damage...that whatever security they had..."

Her voice had finally been drowned out by the airship, which was finally visible through the low, dirty clouds. The cameraman had turned away from the interview and had aimed his camera to the sky. The reporter who had been asking her questions, as well as the two other men in his crew, followed his line of vision.

"Folks watching at home, in other parts of the world," he shouted, "we are reporting live from NeoMidgar where, three days ago, what seems to have been several bombs went off, causing panic and destruction and fatalities as well. There's an airship approaching now and..."

"Holy shit, that's the Tempest!" the cameraman shouted.

"That's the..." The reporter squinted into the sky. "You're right. Make sure you get this! Folks at home, we believe this to be the Tempest coming into Midgar. For those of you who don't know, the Tempest is Reeve Skye's airship, and it could be that he's on it, ready to offer some kind of leadership in this chaos."

Scarlet sneered off camera. Leave it to Reeve to ruin her moment.

The airship - and Scarlet was dismayed to note that it was, indeed, the Tempest - touched down in an empty lot adjacent to the street she and the small film crew were on. The wind from its landing further disheveled her. Reeve, whether he was on his airship or not, was determined to thwart her in every way.

"We're waiting to see who steps out of this airship," the reporter said, still shouting in excitement although the engines were dying down now. "It's Reeve Skye's airship, but after talking to his ex-associate, we're led to believe it could be anyone in there. No one knows where Reeve Skye is and... The hatch is opening, are you getting this?" he said to the cameraman in a lower voice.

The cameraman answered with a nod and kept his camera turned to the ship.

The steps lowered and, just as surely as Scarlet was standing on the cracked ground, there was Reeve in all his flustered glory. He was having words with someone who was behind him, and she could see him gesturing for the other person to wait on the ship for a moment. She could almost hear him: "Let me handle it, just let me handle it for now, I'll tell you when to come out..." God, he could be so condescending!

"Folks, I think this is...Yes! It is Reeve Skye, finally here in NeoMidgar, and now we can perhaps get the real story on what happened here!" the reporter said.

With that, he and the crew took off jogging in the direction of the airship.

Scarlet couldn't decide if it would be better to stick around to see what he would say, or to move out in case he saw her and asked her anything too leading. Reeve would never accuse her outright on live television. He was too cautious for that.

In the end, she decided that it would look worse if she suddenly disappeared, so she followed the reporter and cameraman, watching Reeve carefully, seeing what viewers all over the world might see.

To add to her chagrin, Reeve was indeed injured, or at least he looked to have been. This would look terrible for her. She'd so wanted everyone to think that he had just been neglectful. But here he was, stepping wearily to the ground, holding a bloody, torn shirt closed, and looking pale, resolute, and, god damn him, heroic. She hated him then more than she'd ever hated Cloud Strife.

Reeve finally took note of the reporter and his small crew; Scarlet saw his expression become stern, panicked.

"Evacuate!" he shouted. "Evacuate, evacuate!" Waving his arms in the air like a monkey hopped up on caffeine.

"Reeve Skye," the reporter said, ignoring Reeve's order to leave the city at once. "A few questions for you, if you have a moment..."

"No! Danger, evacuate! ...Scarlet!" His voice cracked when he saw her coming up behind the crew.

"Reeve," she said.

"Reeve," the reporter said over her voice, as his crew crowded around the man just as they'd crowded Scarlet earlier. "Can you tell us anything about this?"

"Have you declared a state of emergency?" another asked.

"Have you been injured?" the cameraman took it upon himself to ask. "Did it happen here?"

"Ah..."

Clearly, Reeve was now at a loss. Scarlet waited, watching him, hoping that her presence would unnerve him enough to make him screw up. Reeve glanced at her, then back to the reporters. He seemed to have come to a decision about something.

"Yes, I was here when the blasts went off, I was injured in the blasts, but I'm fine now. I went to get help for Midgar. I ordered the evacuation from a hospital and..."

"How severe were your injuries?" the reporter asked.

Off camera, Scarlet groaned.

Reeve lifted his shirt briefly and showed a freshly healed, but still jagged mark just about the size of her fist. It looked fittingly gruesome. The film crew all gasped.

"I'm fine," he said. "I ordered this evacuation for a reason. NeoMidgar is a dangerous place, and there are reports of looting, terrorism and, more importantly, Mako poisoning, so I have to ask you to..."

"There are emergency vehicles waiting to take people out of the city," the reporter went on. "Did you ask for them?"

"My secretary did while I was laid up. My secretary has since gone missing and I have reason to believe that he's injured or perhaps worse. I have a recording of the conversation we were having when he was attacked by someone here." Reeve eyed Scarlet over the cameraman's shoulder. "I also have a great deal of information on the people who set this disaster up. One of the prime suspects is a man named Bradburn; and I also have reason to believe that the people he works for were involved in the attack of my secretary. This is no small conspiracy," he said. "This whole thing is very, very...broad."

He winked at Scarlet. This was probably her one chance to leave, although she hated for him to see her slinking away like that.

The crew all started to ask him questions at the same time. Scarlet looked back over her shoulder and saw him hold his hands up. "I can't answer any more questions right now," he said. "I have to order you to evacuate the city. Shelters are being set up and rescue crews are doing what they can to help those who can't get out on their own. I'll have more for you next time."

The reporters were all leaving, and Scarlet now knew it was best for her to get away while the getting was good. She didn't know who else was on the Tempest, but she was certain that she didn't want to run into them. She would be badly outnumbered, and more than that, they would act so damned righteous. She didn't think she could handle all the sainthood and martyrdom they would be waving around.

She decided to go back to her the little warehouse where she was keeping Fletcher. Scarlet was determined that she would deal with Reeve and only Reeve.


Avalanche

"That was cool," Reno said. He had just come out of the Tempest, and stood behind Reeve. "That was really cool, did you see her face? Damn!"

But Reeve was too concerned with what he had just seen to give Reno much of his attention just then. Scarlet's presence had been surprising and significant, yes, and he suspected that Fletcher was dead, and probably by her hand, at that.

But that cameraman had been missing his front teeth.

"Oh Reeve, that was so...so cool of you," Reno droned quietly in the background.

And the cameraman's gums had still been bleeding. The inside of his mouth had been red, and blood had run out of his mouth when he'd asked Reeve the last question. He seemed to have no idea that his teeth were gone, either. He didn't seem to be in any pain from it.

"Reeve, you... Reeve...you..."

The reporter, the man who had been asking questions... Hadn't he had a bruise on his forehead? Hadn't that been the first thing that Reeve had noticed?

Well, it stood to reason, he supposed. Maybe they had been in NeoMidgar when the bombs had been going off. Hadn't he himself shown up here looking like he'd done the horizontal tango with Death?

But he had acknowledged it.

"Reeve...I'm..."

Something about those men, the way they were about their injuries, seemed so absent. Reeve would have sworn that they didn't know they were injured. The way the blood had come out of that man's mouth when he spoke...it had dribbled down his chin and onto his shirt, and he hadn't wiped it away. That wasn't right.

A sudden, tightly-drawn breath behind him made his stomach clench with apprehension. Before he could turn around, there was a thud, and then Elena's voice: "Oh, shit! Reno!"

Reeve turned around to see Elena jump down from the last of the stairs, and next he saw what she was running to.

Reno was on the ground, curled up on his side. He looked as if something was trying to turn him inside out, was Reeve's first impression of it. Rude was next off the Tempest, and he leapt off the last few stairs, running to Reno and getting there just before Reeve did.

At first, Reeve thought that Reno was trying to tear at his clothes, but on closer inspection, it looked more like he was tearing at his skin. All the while he seemed to be drawing into himself in violent spasms. Under strands of obnoxiously red hair, his skin was shockingly white. Reeve couldn't remember the last time he had seen anything in such obvious pain.

Rude was trying to grab one of Reno's hands, because he seemed to have also guessed that Reno was trying to rip his own skin off. Common knowledge told him not to hold down a seizuring person, but this clearly wasn't a seizure, at least not one that he'd ever heard of. He felt certain that Reno was trying to hurt himself. Rude and Elena seemed to think the same thing, and were fighting years of first aid training, trying to hold him back without holding him down.

Reeve had a brief mental image of the cameraman with his teeth knocked out.

"What the hell!"

Reeve looked up to see Tifa standing in the hatch of the Tempest. She looked confused, but detached; more annoyed than worried.

Confused... Confused! Holy shit!

Reeve tried to form the words to shout to Tifa, but Elena beat him to it.

"Status materia!" Elena said to Tifa.

Tifa made her way down the steps and approached carefully. She peered over Rude's shoulder, keeping her distance, and shied back when Reno suddenly turned on his back. His eyes were open, but only the whites were showing.

"Oh, crap," Tifa said softly. "Well... Esuna!"

As soon as she hit Reno with the spell, he went limp. His eyes closed, and small rivulets of blood ran from his mouth, and somewhere on his scalp, too. He must have fallen hard, Reeve guessed.

Rude busied himself nervously checking Reno's vitals. Elena watched him do this for a moment, then she looked up at Tifa.

"Um...thanks," she muttered.

Tifa shrugged. She seemed to want to look away carelessly, but she couldn't. She was too curious. Clearly, she could get no answers from any of the Turks, and certainly not from Reno, so she turned her eyes to Reeve instead.

Reeve held up his hand to indicate: "Give me a moment, I'm thinking," without having to form the words.

The memory of it hit him in the head like a brick...or rather, the other way around. He suddenly remembered coming here to NeoMidgar on that terrible night, before any of this had happened. He had surprised himself by repeatedly hitting his head against the brick wall.

The reporter had a similar injury on his head. And the cameraman... All in NeoMidgar. Reno had been living here.

"It's in the air," he said under his breath.

"What is?" Tifa asked.

Tifa had no way of knowing anything that had happened in NeoMidgar. She hadn't seen Tseng attacking his allies in the hotel room, so status Confusion wasn't on her mind. And she hadn't seen Reno clawing at himself as if he were trying to rip his skin to shreds. There was no reason for her to know what he meant.

But Elena was looking at Reeve as if she'd just had the same revelation.

"The city is poisoned," she whispered. Then, a more dire revelation: "Tseng."

Immediately after she'd said his name, they heard the sounds of violent struggle from the hatch of the airship, and this time it was indeed Tseng, but he wasn't alone. Sephiroth was behind him. In fact, Sephiroth seemed to be struggling with him...struggling against him? Reeve couldn't tell. Sephiroth had an arm around Tseng's waist and was wrenching a sword out of his hands.

Reeve had to stop thinking, close his eyes, and start over. Tseng had been brandishing the Masamune.

Tifa had screamed. How she must have loathed that blade, Reeve thought. God help her, it had torn up her mind just as easily as it had torn up her body.

Reeve walked over to Tifa and gently put his hands on her shoulders. "Esuna, Tifa," he whispered. "Use it on Tseng."

She looked at him over her shoulder for a moment. Then she quickly nodded, and turned back around to hit Tseng with the spell. Tseng slumped against Sephiroth, who negligently held him up with one arm while taking the Masamune with his free hand. He looked composed and disgusted. Rude came halfway up the stairs to the hatch and took Tseng from Sephiroth, placing him gently on the ground.

For a moment, no one spoke.

Reeve sighed. He gave Tifa an encouraging squeeze on the shoulder before walking away from her. He knew how draining it was to be strong all the time, and this next task, whatever it was, was going to be difficult on everyone. He looked the small group over and wondered if all of them would live through the next phase.

"Look," he finally said. "We can't win like this."

Sephiroth nodded shortly.

"When I was with Avalanche, we had a leader, and a system. The system was organized and very strong. It wasn't based on trust all the time, but there had to be a degree of it or we wouldn't function. The only one of us aside from Aerith who was ever willing to risk a little trust was Cloud. No, he wasn't always right and yes, he got burned for it, but somewhere along the line he managed to pull us all together before the end. Or rather, what could have been the end. We had to give him the same degree of trust, and maybe more, even though his behavior then was, uhh, questionable."

Tifa opened her mouth to speak, but Reeve held up his hand.

"Cloud will tell you the same thing, Tifa," he said. "My point is that we're going to have to manage that again.

"I'm thinking, from what I've seen, that the air in the city is contaminated with some kind of status poison, which is why I've seen people who seem to be attacking their allies or themselves. Reno was living here, he's probably got it all through his system. Tseng...I guess, like Elena thinks, Scarlet was hitting him with status materia for many years. That could be why they're getting the worst of it. But that doesn't mean that the rest of us are totally safe from it, so we're going to need, what, peace rings? Ribbons? Some kind of protection against this kind of status, or at least loads of Heal materia. But ribbons would be best, since they guard against all status effects."

Tifa chewed on her nail for a moment. "Cloud and I have ribbons," she said. "Cloud can't use his because sometimes I have to...you know. They prevent Sleep, too. They're so rare, though. There are a few things on the Highwind, too."

"I have a ribbon," Elena said. "Rude has the peace ring."

"Maybe we should give them to Reno and Tseng," Rude offered.

"No," Elena said, "because then we'd be useless, and it might not work on them anyway if we did. Someone's got to stay alert."

Reeve nodded. Thank god they were all willing to listen to reason.

"We'll do what we can here, lie low, and wait for the Highwind. Meantime, someone should wake Cloud."

"I'll go," Tifa said.

Sephiroth, Reeve noted, stepped away from the hatch before Tifa even took a step towards him. He wondered if anyone else noticed, but to him it seemed like Sephiroth just didn't want to wait to be asked. He was, however, leaning casually on the hilt of the Masamune. It looked so natural to him, no one else seemed to notice. He was sure that Tifa had noticed, though.

When Tifa had gone back into the Tempest to wake Cloud, Reeve took a look around at the wasted crew. He had to admit, the only one who looked capable of accomplishing anything just then was Sephiroth. Reeve had just finished lecturing the others on trust and teamwork, but looking at Sephiroth, he realized that he might not be capable of it himself. Trusting Sephiroth seemed unnatural, like opening your shirt for the firing squad to give them better aim.

Well, that was the way it was, and there didn't seem to be anything Reeve could do about it. From what he understood, Jenova might be showing herself sometime soon, and if that was the case, they were all probably screwed anyway. He had meant to go search for Scarlet and hopefully find out what had become of his secretary, but apparently even that was going to have to wait.

"If anything should happen, we're down two fighters," Reeve said, indicating Reno and Tseng. "Three really, since one of us has to stay and watch them."

"That'll be you," Elena said.

Reeve blinked in surprise. "I didn't come to sit it out again."

"Maybe not, but you're going to have to."

"Elena, I can fight, I'm not going to do this through a robot cat from a comfortable office this time!"

She smiled at him. "Reeve, I know you're strong, but you know I'm stronger. Plus, you're hurt."

"That doesn't mean..."

"It makes sense," she said. "It makes sense for you see to Reno and Tseng and watch our backs. Put your strongest fighters in the front line, if anything happens. Right?"

Reeve gritted his teeth and decided not to answer. He knew Elena was being practical, and part of him knew that she was right. But another, more basic part of him didn't want to let this small lady with the doll's face go out and fight. That feeling was ridiculous and he knew it, so he buried it as far as he could and finally nodded.

Everyone was silent for a moment and then Rude spoke up. "So, we're still down three good fighters..."

"Four," said Tifa from where she now stood on the top step to the Tempest. Reeve looked up to see that she was pale, and clutching the guardrail so tightly that her knuckles were white. After a moment, Reisei stood quietly behind her. Reisei was shaking, and looking older and frailer than ever.

Reeve felt his heart sink. He wouldn't have considered Reisei a fighter, but he had so hoped that she was the one Tifa was talking about. "Shit," he muttered.

Everyone had probably guessed it, and Tifa probably didn't need to say it, but she said it anyway: "Cloud's gone."


Cloud Strife and Jenova

"There's a devil waiting outside your door

It is bucking and braying and pawing at the floor

And he's howling with pain and crawling up the walls

There's a devil waiting outside your door

He's weak with evil and broken by the world

He's shouting your name and he's asking for more

There's a devil waiting outside your door."

Nick Cave - Loverman


Cloud pulled away from the lips that had practically chewed his own off and caught his breath. He eyed the creature warily as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"You're not Aerith," he hissed. "Aerith would know better."

She giggled her high pitched laugh and looked at him with sparkling, hooded eyes. "I always wanted to do that," she said.

Their surroundings changed again. They had just been inside of Reeve's airship, and now they were outdoors in Aerith's garden in Midgar. Cloud found himself sitting at a small table in the sun. There was a cup of tea in front of him, and Aerith was across from him, smiling primly, wearing the red dress she had worn on the rescue mission to Don Corneo's all those many years ago.

Cloud narrowed his eyes in a way that he knew made him look threatening, and sometimes downright frightful. "What do you want, Jenova?"

She giggled again with Aerith's girlish laugh. "What do you want, Cloud Strife?"

"For you to fuck off and die. Though I wouldn't mind hearing you scream like a bitch for a few hours first."

She smiled wider. "Would you kill me yourself? Would it give you pleasure? How would you do it? Think about it before you answer."

Cloud thought about it. He imagined all manner of painful things, but found he somehow couldn't find the images to direct them at her. He felt his blood rushing through his head, making his eyes throb. His entire body felt hot with rage, and his eyes wanted to water, but he refused to let them, because the creature across from him might mistake it for tears.

"I'll help you," she said. "I'll help you figure out how you would most like to kill me. You just can't imagine it because you don't know what I truly look like. You only have images of beasts and tentacles and a metal-plated goddess. My power is to change forms, but let's use our real forms right now, both of us."

The vision of Aerith faded around the edges. The insides twisted and morphed, so that for a moment she looked two dimensional, and Cloud had the confusing feeling that he was looking at a painting with the colors melting through the middle. It hurt his eyes, so he looked away.

"This is me," she said.

Cloud looked up hesitantly.

The garden and the table were gone, and Cloud was found himself in the basement of the ShinRa mansion in Nibelheim, standing opposite a creature that seemed at first to be made of smooth, immovable stone. It looked like an unfinished sculpture, what might be a human shape with more work and chiseling. The lines and proportions were there, but it was devoid of features. There was a head, but no eyes, nose, or mouth. There were shoulders, long arms that were disproportionately thin, and what appeared to be a narrow waist above two sexless legs. Yet he was certain that what he was looking at was female.

A small oval the size of his hand burned slightly brighter and throbbed in her center. He could barely make it out, but he guessed wildly that it was her heart... Her battery, he wanted to say, since he couldn't bring himself to think of it in human terms.

Cloud watched, rapt and still, as she raised one frail looking, white arm. From the stump at the end of it, a long, flexible appendage grew to a point. The surface - what must have been her skin - now seemed more like liquid than rock, although it still had the luster of smooth stone. Her arm seemed to grow longer as she reached for him, and more thin appendages grew from it, so that the end now resembled a long-fingered hand.

She drew her fingers down Cloud's cheek, toyed with his hair, touched his neck. She felt like chilled rubber.

Cloud stumbled back, holding his hand over his mouth and trying desperately not to puke or cry or both. Her touch was repulsive. She felt unnatural, like mutations, cancer, something organic and yet completely wrong. And this, Cloud realized, was the thing that was inside of him. The cells that made up this loathsome white mass were in his blood.

"Oh god," Cloud gasped in horror. "God, you're disgusting. You're...you're..."

"Not natural to your Planet, yes," she offered. "And yes, in your blood is exactly where I am. I've multiplied myself so many times there that I'm what's keeping you alive. You didn't know that, did you? Everyday I pass through your veins, your heart, your brain. You were worried that I knew what your consciousness looked like? Your pathetic dreams, your weak, human thoughts? Oh, my failure, I know what your gray matter looks like. I can touch a synapse in your fragile brain, bridge it, and give you an unending link to what you're feeling right now, and you will feel it until you die. I can play your pain receptors all at once, until you lose your reason and go mad. Oh, but Cloud! Since I can also play your delicate little mind-chemicals, you won't have to go mad; you can be lucid until the end! I can cut your optic nerve and blind you, choke your medulla oblongata and suffocate you just as slowly as I please, or run myself through your anterior frontal lobe and turn you into a madman, a billion times more dangerous than you are now. You only think you know madness and suffering. I've taught you nothing."

Cloud went to his knees, as much as he hadn't wanted to, and searched for something inside of himself to keep him from crying in front of her. He thought of Tifa's strength.

"I can hold a mass of your little blood cells in your coronary artery," she went on, "and drop you dead of a heart attack at thirty two years of age. I can multiply the cells of your skin and make them into whatever form catches my imagination, and believe me when I tell you, human, that my imagination is not bound by this piece of rock you call your Planet. Or I can just shut your brain down and blink you forever out of consciousness."

"So why haven't you?"Cloud shouted, looking up at her hateful form.

The shape of her head tilted in an almost human attitude of amusement. "Because you are my lifeline," she said. "I can operate your body without your consciousness, but how long do you think your Planet friends would let me use it? As long as they know you still exist in this little shell of yours, I have a home, pathetic though it is."

Cloud looked up at her, stunned by her honesty, and by the blinding whiteness of her. It took him a moment to get his mouth to work. "I hate you," he said.

"I know you do." She faded back into the form or Aerith, which was even more awful to Cloud now that he had seen her true form. "And now you know what I am," she said. "Do you still want to kill me?"

More than ever, Cloud thought, but it saying it seemed small and redundant.

"Then free your rage," she said. "Wouldn't it feel good? Wouldn't you love to let go of those feelings you've been keeping inside for all of these years? To just destroy?"

"You know I would," Cloud said. "But that's what you want me to do. You aren't trying to get me to hurt you; you have nothing to gain from that. You're trying to get me to hurt my friends by confusing me." He stood up to face her. It was hard to look into the eyes of Aerith and see Jenova, but he did. "One of those friends told me something before this dream," he said.

"You think this is an ordinary dream?"

"No, I don't; I know it's the landscape of our shared consciousness. Which means that I still have my share of control over it."

The landscape shifted again, and the ShinRa mansion twisted and faded. It was replaced by the cliffs over Junon. The ocean roared below. Cloud knew that the ocean wasn't as deep, nor the waves as big as they seemed to be now, but often when he dreamed of Junon Harbor, this was the massive, violent sea he saw there. It was very easy for him to access this sense memory, and the scene was very real to him.

"What are you doing?" Jenova asked.

Cloud knew that it was no use trying to hide his plans from her. If he lied, she would read his mind anyway. In fact, it was no use telling her at all. Reisei had seen this coming. She had told Cloud that Jenova would try to get him to use his power against his friends; she had told him that Jenova couldn't be killed while he lived. She had told him to surrender. It was time to be a gentleman and let Jenova in. He turned to run towards the sea.

Cloud reached the cliff and leapt off, wondering what it would be like to die in his mind, wondering what would happen to his body still on the Tempest, and if Tifa or anyone would be there to see. He had no way of warning her that when that body awoke, it would belong to Jenova, and Cloud would be somewhere else. He hoped that Reisei would have gotten a chance to explain it and prepare everyone.

For a moment he felt the rush of salt air on his face, and then he was suddenly gripped around the chest and jerked back onto the cliff. He knew immediately that she had grabbed him, and he almost voiced his revulsion at her touch, but something stopped him. Cloud kneeled on the grainy cliff, Jenova's arm curled around him, his mouth open in dull surprise.

There was no revulsion. There was no pain, no chill of slippery rubber. Her arm around him felt like a woman's arm, warm and firm across his back.

"Don't die, Cloud," she whispered in his ear.

He couldn't see her, but her breath stirred his hair. Something triggered in his mind, and suddenly he recognized the smell of rosemary. It was sweeter than it had ever been.

"Ah," she whispered, trailing her fingers down his back, "senses are wonderful to you humans. Aren't they, Cloud? Aren't they wonderful?"

Long, smooth fingers worked through his hair, and every nerve in his scalp tingled. His insides felt watery and weak, and he felt himself start to fall forward, but she held him up and guided him back until his head rested in her lap. Cloud found himself looking up into stunningly bright eyes in the most beautiful face he had ever seen: Tifa's. Her hair was darker, longer and richer than he remembered. Her skin was warm, even and olive, and oh god, the colors of her were overwhelming. A lock of her scented hair draped over her shoulder and fell onto his cheek, and Cloud hissed his breath in through his teeth.

He knew she must be Jenova, because he could remember what had just happened, but every sense was heightened, and all he knew was pleasure.

"I'm in your blood, Cloud," she said, smiling with Tifa's red lips. "Did I not just tell you that I could control every nerve in your body? That I can play you like the instrument you are?"

She trailed a finger down his chest and Cloud involuntarily arched into her touch.

"Did you think I could only cause pain?"

Gasping and struck dumb, Cloud could only blink in response. He had never in his entire life known senses like this. Everything he had ever felt before seemed base and human. This was Jenova, and he knew it, but it was sublime and it transcended life. Hojo had babbled about something like this once.

"Your years of deprivation have already made you sensitized to touch. If you thought you felt pleasure when I left you alone, only think of what you'll feel if I add to it further." To prove herself, she slipped her hand under the waistband of his pants. "Think of what lies beyond."

There was a cry caught in the back of his throat, but it was too big to come out. She had finally managed to wring tears from him, goddamn her, the spacewhore, but the shame was secondary to the sensation. Even the tears felt good.

"You can keep this gift for a while, Cloud," she said. "You can keep it when you wake up, because I'm not entirely without mercy, am I?" She raked her fingernails lightly across his hip. "Am I, Cloud?"

"No," Cloud said, though he wasn't certain what he was answering.

"So wake up, Cloud."