Nightmare of Fire

The world burned.

"Mother!"

Sephiroth knew she was in trouble. He knew that something was threatening her. Threatening to end her for good. Sephiroth races into the fire, blurred and burning, smoke in his lungs, to seek out his beloved matriarch. But as he runs, he realizes. Someone threatens Mother.

That person, he realizes, is himself.

He sees himself. He sees a powerful figure untouched by the fires, sees them disappear into the flame, sees his eyes alight with madness. He sees himself as he once was, powerful, commanding, untouchable. He sees himself, better than he is now.

"Mother? Is this because I abandoned you? I'm still looking for you! I swear!"

Is he seeing this because she wants him to? Because she's trying to remind him of what he should be, and not who he's become?

He runs to his house. He runs to find Mother. (A warmth on cold winter night, now only cold in his heart, no, no, not her, please not her-!)

Sephiroth finds her.

He doesn't remember what she looked like in death. His mind has blocked it out. Sephiroth wails, only knowing that her fate was horrid. Horrid, horrid HORRID! That it's HIS fault, that he could have stopped it! His mother, murdered, oh gods, oh Mother oh gods-!

He sees himself in the fire. Turning his back on himself.

He feels Masamune pierce his torso, burning pain lifting him as cat-slit eyes mock him for his weakness, watch him writhe like a bug on a spit, a butterfly with its wings torn off and its body thrust out over the depths of a reactor full of monsters. There's the pain of mako, of fire, of pain of burning Mother gods no not his mother!

Sephiroth awakens with a shrieking keen. A wail of horror and desperation, a cry for Mother his mother mom ma no please not ma not his mother, even though he knows it's his fault that she's gone, that he couldn't save her!

Only...

He breathes heavily in the smothering silence of his home in Shinra. He gasps in air, shuddering as he feels the ice-cold trickle of sweat drip off his limbs entangled in his sheets. Sephiroth takes a moment to try and recover, try and make sense of the nightmare. But much like the memory of a burnt mother's corpse, the imagery is blocked from recollection. Hidden away in the recesses of his mind, as if remembering even a glimpse of it will drive him mad.

He gets up instead, stalking out into the living area of his apartment. Cloud is there, as worse for the wear as he is. They nod at each other. Together, they head straight for the training rooms.

Nightmare of Pestilence

There was an itch in his shoulderblade. Sephiroth frowned. Rather than reach for it and scratch, Sephiroth twitched, rolling his shoulder to get the stiff leather of his jacket to do the work for him. The itch remained. He didn't realize he'd been fussing until Cloud turned back to look at him, glaring. The curmudgeoned frown he wore looked more pouty than anything, though, as he opened his mouth to admonish the silver haired man marching behind him, "What's got your goat?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Sephiroth frowned. Really, what was his wolf on about this time? He didn't even own a ruminant animal.

"Expression. Goats are used to calm racing chocobos, as stall-mates." Cloud sighed, gesturing for Sephiroth to come closer, "Stealing an opponent's goat was a good way to worry their bird and sabotage their ability to race. But enough of that. You hurt your wing again?"

"It's just an itch," Sephiroth huffed. But now that Cloud mentioned it, it was bothering him in a similar manner to when he'd broken the wing... if perhaps less severe. And more annoying.

Cloud snorted. "Told you using supernova on were rats was overkill. You probably got some guts in your feathers. Let your wing out, I'll see if I can clean it off. Unless you think it's a good idea to keep the wing hidden away when its dirty...?"

Cloud let the sentence hang, rising an eyebrow. Sephiroth shuddered a little, instantly disgusted at the thought of having wererat innards inside wherever it was his wing went when not in use. Fortunately, as the pair stopped in the middle of a slums alley, there were no prying eyes to bear witness to the event. Sephiroth released his hidden appendage even as Cloud started pointing down and twirling his finger in the universal sign for 'turn-the-fuck-around'.

Fingers delicately flicked through his feathers. Sephiroth tried very hard to ignore how relaxing it felt.

"Well. Good news. No rat guts. You can put the wing away." Sephiroth huffed, but as he returned the limb to its hiding place, Cloud continued, "bad news, though. It's still going to itch for a bit. You'll have to tolerate it 'til I can get a chocobo wing-comb... and some of that whatchamacallit oil..."

"Pardon?" Sephiroth blinked, baffled, "Why would you need-?"

"You've got mites."

Sephiroth stopped dead. Stared. And then finally, in an incredibly dignified display of abject horror, tried not to yelp.

"WHAT."

Cloud just raised his eyebrow again, grinned, and moved on.

Nightmare of Rain

There's rain. There's a body.

Blood, everywhere. Blood and cold and grief. It weighs heavy on their mind, their chest, suffocating and rushing like boulders on his chest. Because that's what it is. Boulders. A cliffside.

There's nothing there but rain and emptiness here. Sephiroth, no, Cloud, no, who-are-they-I'm-so-Empty...?

Why. Why do I have to remember this, they think. I don't want to. Please, please, merciful gods, don't make me remember this. He doesn't want to remember this emptiness, this loneliness, this not knowing (who where they, who would even find them out here, who would even care I'm going to die alone I'll die forgotten I'm alone alone alone alone-!) He doesn't want to remember this. He doesn't want to remember the corpse. The one who meant everything, the one who was filled with nothing, empty, riddled with bullet holes. Riddled with emptiness, no air in their lungs as blood stains the dirt. Riddled with breaks and cracks and holes and red and stone, crushed beneath a cliffside.

He doesn't want to remember death. He doesn't want to remember how it snuffs out everything so impartially. A hero, a villain, a monster, a child. A mentor. A soldier. Death doesn't care if the light of your life, the light of the world, is taken away. Nor does it care if a demon, mutated and monstrous, has finally been felled. It only cares to leave behind an empty, lifeless shell, staring blankly at the sky. It only cares to take vibrant eyes, so full of the power of existence, and replace them with glass replicas, dead orbs that mock the memory of their owners with their emptiness.

He doesn't want to remember a body, lying there unmoving. He doesn't want to remember the cliff.

He doesn't want to remember the rain.

Cloud and Sephiroth both wake up, their memories entwined, and do all they can to forget.

Nightmare of Burdens

"Zack. Seph has a wing. It's heavy. Help."

Zack didn't know what to think when he got the text from Cloud. Visions of black and white feathers, of traitors and mentors and things-he-didn't-want-to-think-about running through his mind as he tried not to panic. Instead he nervously made his way to Sephiroth's home, stopping outside the door and squatting a few times in nervousness. He coughed. Squatted another twenty times. Texted Cloud.

"I'm here."

He chewed his lip, gods, please let this not go the way it did with Genesis, or worse-! Zack jogged in place. Double-triple-checked that he got the address right. Hummed ever so slightly too loud, too high pitched, a little off key with his throat too tight with fear. His phone vibrated. He read the text, "Birdbrain leaves the door unlocked. Get in here." Zack crept into the the apartment, the lights low, the smell of sword oil and apples in the air. And then he tried not to burst out laughing.

There was Sephiroth all right, and there was his wing, spread out luxuriously like black velvet. Sephiroth was asleep, leaning on the back of the couch with his hair spilling like sleek ice down the side. There was a very disgruntled muttering under the crook of the wing, as well as a few pale blonde wisps of hair. Zack snorted, his fist in his face to stifle the noise. Then he tried not to snort even more when he realized he sounded like a teakettle had a kid with a whoopie cushion.

"Very funny, Zack. Now help me Get. It. OFF."

"You have GOT to give me the story behind this," Zack whispered giddily. Cloud just glared from his position under the fluffy appendage.

"I was helping him preen, okay? Feather-face doesn't even know how to take care of his own goddamn wing. I swear to Gaia...!" Together, him and Zack began to gently reposition the wing so as not to wake Sephiroth. As they did, the silverette's head lolled... and he began to snore, ever so softly. Zack, miraculously, managed to avoid making any noise, save where he fell over as he nearly suffocated himself trying not to laugh.

Cloud didn't know what was worse. That he was still trapped under the goddamn wing, that Sephiroth was snoring right next to him, that Zack was Not Helping Him You Absolute Bastard, or that fact that it STILL wasn't as bad as the one time a transformed Vincent had fallen asleep near him and done the exact same thing, but worse. At least Sephiroth only had one damn wing (and a softer one at that)!

But if Zack was anything like Yuffie, he still wasn't going to ever live this down.