"Cloud? What's going on?" Sephiroth got up, and he felt a sort of rushing feeling. "Where am I?" He looked around at his surroundings, confused as hell. "...Exactly how long have I been asleep for?"
Cloud hadn't been listening to Sephiroth rambling and thought for a second. "...Fourteen... years..." he mumbled. "He erased fourteen years..." Cloud then looked up and turned his attention back to Sephiroth. "Tell me, what's the last thing you remember?"
"We were outside of the club... The one Zack dragged us to, and then... someone attacked me... I don't know. It was dark and I was drunk," he said. "What happened? Feels like I've been knocked out cold for a week."
Cloud opened his mouth to speak, but then he realized that if Sephiroth didn't want himself to remember, there had to have been a reason... So he decided to make something up. "Zack was drunk and I was defenseless so... That guy like, stabbed you. Yeah, he stabbed you! And then you died... and Rufus, I mean, The President, got all shirty and set up these labs to... preserve you until we could bring you back."
"Oh? Is that so? Well, that's not so bad. At least I know I still have my job... how long have I been dead for? It must have been awhile... looks like you definitely grew up some. How old are you now? Twenty? Nineteen?"
"...Twenty-eight." For the large mistake in guessing his age, Cloud ignored the look of absolute shock on Sephiroth's face. "And within that time, ShinRa has been destroyed and rebuilt. Old man Shinra bit the bullet, and Zack's been dead for seven years." At least most of what he was saying was the truth.
Lucrecia looked at Cloud and raised an eyebrow, but she decided to go along with his plan. It seemed for the first time that Sephiroth had even noticed her. "And who may you be?" he asked her.
"I would be your mother," Lucrecia said as she smiled. It was unmistakable; he had her eyes. Bright jade hidden under layers and layers of mako, but the pigment was still there.
"...Jenova?" Lucrecia tried to explain to herself the situation and not to get angry that he would mistake her for Jenova. She inhaled deeply to calm herself, but Cloud took over for her anyway.
"No, Professor Hojo lied to you. Your mother was not Jenova, but instead Lucrecia. He never wanted you to know, because that would have involved him admitting that he could have been your father."
Sephiroth looked down. "Oh." Then he realized that he was clothed in nothing but a cloth. "Where are my clothes?" he asked. He tried to scavenge the room with his eyes, but couldn't find them.
"They... they've been detonated. You know, that's why ShinRa went down in the first place. The rebel group AVALANCHE, they blew up some reactors and then they set a bomb in the ShinRa building and by the time we realized it, it was too late to save anything but the people inside."
"And... Masamune?" Cloud look down and shook his head. "Well then, I'm going to find these AVALANCHE bastards, and I'm going to kill them and make them wish they'd never been born!"
"Don't," Cloud said. "They've made peace. ShinRa realized that draining the planet of mako energy was actually destroying it, and that AVALANCHE was right all along. We run on oil now."
"Is that how Zack died?" Sephiroth asked. "Was he in the building while it blew up? It seems like something he'd do... try to save everyone and everything at no concern for his own safety."
"Actually... Hojo took Zack and I to Nibelheim for experimenting on... After five years, Zack decided that we should run away... but I was useless... But you were right; he died a tragic hero. Hojo sent the Turks after us... and they were going to shoot me...but... Zack threw himself in front," he finished. He wasn't going to lie to Sephiroth about his best friend's death.
"I'm sorry that I couldn't have been there to stop the situation... I'll go get Hojo, and I'll kill him... How dare he involve you two in his twisted agenda! I'll... Cloud, why are you laughing?"
"You're seven years too late for that as well," Cloud said. "But you'll be glad to know that I was strong enough to be the one to do it. I never made it into SOLDIER, but I did become the strongest warrior left living."
"I really have missed a lot, haven't I?" Sephiroth laughed to calm his nerves. Cloud couldn't tell if it worked or not, but he thought it would be rude to ask, so he kept it to himself.
"...Sephiroth, I'm going to go make a call, and then we can go home, okay?" He got up and walked out of the room. Immediately, he leaned against the wall and dialed Tifa's number.
"Cloud... is that you? You never call... is something wrong? Did Sephiroth wake up? How is he? Do you need help? Cloud, are you okay?" It was so characteristic of Tifa to not even let Cloud speak for himself.
"He did... but Tifa... He erased his memories. Fourteen years of them... The last thing he remembers is the first night I met him. It was my first day at SOLDIER, and Zack took us out and some guy like, hit him over the head..."
"...He remembers nothing! He doesn't remember Nibelheim, or Meteor, or... nothing? Are you sure?" Tifa was bewildered on the other side of the phone, but luckily Johnny wasn't around to ask her what went wrong.
"The last thing he remembers involves him being twenty-three. But... apparently he consciously erased his memories before he woke up... so he's got a reason for wanting to forget all those things..."
"Yeah, I'd want to forget I was a psychopath murderer, too."
He decided to be a bigger person and ignore that comment. "Anyway, so I... sort of... made up a lot of stuff. I just kind of replayed history, but without him in it... So could you... please tell the others to play along?"
"Yeah, sure," she said. "Anything... Are you sure you're okay with this, Cloud? I mean, don't you want to tell him the life he's living is a lie and he can't escape from what he did?"
"...No, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Thank you for understanding," he said as he hung up. When he walked back in, he was glad to find that Lucrecia and Sephiroth were getting along quite well. "Come on, let's go home," Cloud said. "Would you like me to drop you off at Tifa's, Lucrecia?"
"If it's not too much trouble, thank you. I think that you two should have some time alone to catch up." She smiled warmly. "Then we can catch up after thirty-seven years of lost time."
It was a surprisingly quiet trip back to Tifa's house, and Lucrecia got out and waved goodbye to them. She hoped that Tifa wouldn't be too mad that Cloud just upped and left her place without even saying goodbye.
The drive back to Cloud's house was short, and Cloud felt like he'd never been more relieved to come home. "Hey, I hope you know that you're gonna have to get a new job... Oh, and I'm gonna have to call Rufus, aren't I?" He walked into his kitchen. "Would you like something to eat?"
"Oh, no, thank you," came the reply. Sephiroth seemed to have become enthralled in the patterns on Cloud's coffee table. "So... what have you been up to in the last fourteen years?"
"Nothing much... you know, just the same things. A lot of my friends were involved in bringing you back, you know. And you know what else? They're all in AVALANCHE, too. I was their leader at one point, actually..."
"Oh... Well, I'll have to make sure to thank them later, then. And Cloud? Thank you... I know it sounds kind of forced, but I mean it. I would never have asked you to devote fourteen years of your life to try and resurrect me."
"I know, but... I felt like it was something I had to do," he said. And as he said that, he realized that... even if Yuffie had never kept pushing it, he still would have spent fourteen years trying to revive Sephiroth. "Hey, I'm gonna go out and buy you something to wear aside from that cloth, all right? You just stay here, and help yourself to anything."
Cloud left his house to get on Fenrir and drive to Kalm. He was going to have a lot of trouble finding something that would button up over Sephiroth's shoulders and chest though... It was why he always kept his coat unbuttoned at the top, and he didn't think he would be able to get something custom-made that quickly.
He walked in the store and picked out a big t-shirt, the longest pair of pants they had, a long coat, and a pair of multi-purpose boots. None of it matched, but at least Sephiroth would be able to go out in public and pick out something he actually wouldn't mind wearing.
Cloud paid for them, and then he got a box of chocolate-covered raisins because he had remembered Zack saying once that Sephiroth liked those, and Zack thought they were absolutely disgusting.
On the road home, he wondered if he should ever tell Sephiroth the truth... After all, Cloud had never wanted to live his life as a lie, and even if Sephiroth wanted to... deep inside, he knew it would be the right thing to tell him eventually. But Cloud decided that for the time being, he would keep his mouth shut, because Sephiroth was happy just how he was. He would need time to adjust, and springing something that harsh on him was just... cruel.
Cloud got off Fenrir and he immediately realized something had gone drastically wrong. He walked inside to find that there were papers strewn all over the floor. He picked one up, and to his horror, it was an article about Sephiroth that he had cut out while in SOLDIER.
Even more to his horror, he found that all of the articles that had been thrown on the floor were about Sephiroth. Some of them were from before Cloud joined SOLDIER, but the majority of them... were from after that. He found a report on Nibelheim, and he dropped everything, running into his bedroom.
Sephiroth was sitting on the floor, his head in his hands, and he looked like he was about to break. Cloud knelt down and tried to lift Sephiroth's arms away. "Are you okay?" he asked. Sephiroth wouldn't look up at him.
"I wasn't supposed to remember... I wasn't ever supposed to remember... Cloud, I thought that if I truly forgot, and you went along with it, then everyone would forget... I want for everyone to just forget," he said.
"I can never forget what you did," Cloud said. "But I've forgiven you... We all have, Sephiroth... Please just forgive yourself. If I can forgive myself, why can't you learn to forgive yourself as well?"
"I was supposed to be a hero... I was supposed to be strong, not gullible, weak... dishonorable..." He could've gone on listing insults for himself forever, but Cloud took him by the shoulders in attempt to stop him.
"Sephiroth, get a hold of yourself. You know you've made mistakes, but that's not important. What's important is that you learn to move on from them. You can't fix them... but you can just learn to move on. Please?"
"I don't think I have that option," he replied.
"So you think that living the rest of yourself in a lie... in exile from yourself... is really a better alternative than realizing what you've done and moving on from it?" He hoped and prayed that Sephiroth wasn't going to say: "Actually, I'd rather it be that way," but apparently he didn't know Sephiroth quite as well as he thought he did anyway.
"No... it's... Never mind. I'll try..." He looked at Cloud and tried to smile. "Thank you," he added.
"It's not a problem," Cloud said, getting up. "Now let's go get you dressed."
Sephiroth reached out a hand to stop him. Cloud turned around, prepared to ask Sephiroth what the hell was wrong now, but before a word could escape from his parted lips, he was kissed.
When they broke away, Cloud took a second to realize that they had. "Uh, yeah... I think you should stay naked for a little longer," he said. He couldn't help but smile as Sephiroth grinned at him.
---
The next day, Cloud found himself at Tifa's doorstop. He had a bouquet of flowers in his hand, and Sephiroth had a novel for Marlene and a pair of sunglasses for Denzel. They looked exactly like Cloud's, so they knew he would like them.
Yuffie opened the door and welcomed them both in with open arms. "Holy shit you're taller than I remember you!" she said to Sephiroth. "Or did you just put your hair up more than usual?"
"Last time I saw you, I don't think I remember you being this interrogative," he said. "Or quite as happy to see me," he added. She pouted with a huff and as he walked in, she mouthed "jerk!" after him.
"Thank you for throwing this party, Tifa," Cloud said. "It really means a lot."
"Yes, well, we wanted to see him," Tifa said. "All flesh and blood and everything... Looks like a job well done!" she commented happily. "I'm going to go check on the potatoes, okay?"
"Oh, Sephiroth!" Cloud dragged him over to Vincent. "This is Vincent Valentine, who's sort of like, your father now. So, now you have two parents," Cloud said. "That's something you wanted, right?"
"I suppose so," Sephiroth replied. "It's nice to see you again, Valentine." He wouldn't call Vincent father... he couldn't call Vincent father, because that term was never before used by him. Even mother had sufficed, but father was just too awkward.
The music started playing, and Yuffie grabbed Nanaki and took his paws up to dance with him. "Come on Nanaki, it's fun!" She giggled while dancing with him, as he had a hard time trying to keep up with her pace.
Barrett was busy trying to set up the Dance Dance Revolution set for Marlene and Denzel, and was failing miserably. Marlene giggled as she switched some of his wires for him, and he was completely flabbergasted when he saw that it worked for her but not for him.
Cait Sith was helping Johnny clean up their house. After all, most of the guests had come early and hadn't given Tifa time. She decided to yell at Marlene and Denzel later for not doing their chores, instead of in front of company.
Meanwhile, Lucrecia was in the kitchen helping Tifa to finish putting all the snacks in bowls and such. She walked out and dodged Nanaki, who was trying to get as far away from Yuffie as possible. This only resulted in Lucrecia having to step back to let Yuffie through, as well.
The party was considered to be a rather successful one, and as the guests started leaving, they were all happy and drunk, or on the verge of it. It was much too late into the night as Tifa waved goodbye to Sephiroth and Cloud and turned her back on them, yawning.
It wasn't a particularly long walk for neither Sephiroth nor Cloud back to his house from Seventh Heaven. The cold night air wavered past them. "Cloud... the happiness you were looking for, did you find it in me?"
Cloud stopped looking at the moon ahead and closed his eyes as the breeze brushed past again, but when he opened them again, he felt as if it was warmer than it had felt previously. "...Always."