Disclaimer: I do not own FFVII characters nor make money with it. Characters belonged to Square Enix.

It Never Started, It Never Ends

The scary thing about dreams is that you never guess how it starts or when it ends.

The nights were getting shorter for Cloud, and even Tifa had given up knocking on his door, to check if he was ok, because he never talked about the nightmares or anything else, and never expressed gratitude. Their relationship cooled down at home, and they were getting apart day by day. Cloud knew she was feeling hurt, unintentionally left aside, but he did not want Tifa to witness his shame when he awakened. Some nights, he had tears on his eyes and sobbed in sadness like a boy, others in pure rage. Twice in a row, he came, waking up with his underwear wet, sweaty body, aching, still feeling Sephiroth hard and pulsating inside of him. So real. So wickedly lustful. The longing of that sinful and twisted moments dragged him on a self-destruction appetite for days. A wish for violence that he could not indulge himself and the things were so damned quiet nowadays. Not a fucking, single riot anywhere.

Since the last week, the nightmares changed from physical violence or wet dreams, into exhaustive mental combats inside some cave, with Cloud shouting, retaliating at Sephiroth's harsh words. Like a Judgment Day. Cloud was accused of weak, presumptuous, not letting out, a mere useless puppet. Nothing escaped to the man's rage, from his abilities as a pretender soldier to his emotional wrecked life. Coward's moral harassment was a soft way to put it, Cloud thought that he would lose his sanity for real this time, and went back to Mideel's clinic.

Some magic pills and he had some peaceful nights after this, but deep inside, he knew it wouldn't last forever. The therapy made him dreadfully admit how much he craved for those nightmares. The domination, the strength, the pain, and pleasure that no one could give him, but he found out in the weird territory of his mind. He was sick and heard it before, but now he was starting to believe in it. Every night before going to bed, an imaginary flashlight turned on in his mind, calling him guilty, pervert, and defeated.

After an entire month free, Cloud was back to that dark place, lightened with shades of green, his nemesis was on the top of a hill, watching the rocky landscape, long white hair flowing with the wind, usual clothes, and Masamune in hands. Imponent and beautiful.

"Why am I still so mesmerized by him? Damn, it hurts. I don't want to have this dream. I want to wake up."

Cloud was far from Sephiroth, and an odd sensation that something was off in that scenario came upon him. He had goosebumps on his skin, nape, and his eyes were wet already. He closed them, assuring himself that this was a dream and that he controlled his reality.

"Wake up Cloud! Whatever happens here, I know that I' ll stay all the fucking day wanting to kill myself. Stop punishing yourself and wake up."

Sephiroth climbed down the hills, trailing the patch without seeing Cloud, he reached to a new space looking like an arena and surrounded by black polished rocks. The green lights were intense at the spot, shining its reflex on the stones like huge dark mirrors duplicating his image. A mist, also green, hovered over the man's body, and he stood his walking as if he sensed another presence at the limbo. Sephiroth veered his head and following with eyes the mist's trail, and he found Cloud, who frozen in his spot. Sephiroth gasped and blinked twice to confirm it was not a vision.

"Cloud? How is that possible?"

The same weird mist, hovering around Sephiroth, circled him and began to enter on his nostrils. Cloud felt his mouth dry, and began to cough, feeling his throat constricted as if a strong hand was choking him. Suffocating, he fell onto his knees, hands clinging to his neck, and gasping for air. "Wake up, wake up!"

Sephiroth flew at where he was, hands gripping Masamune, and quickly catching Cloud's neck, stopped the razor an inch before cutting his skin. Cloud veered his bulged red eyes, feeling the coldness of the sharp blade and piercing green eyes, full of hate and disbelief staring at him.

"How did you get in here? Say it!"

Cloud stared at the man, mentally pushing himself to command his body to breathe, or awake while astonished, Sephiroth caught him by his hair, raising his body, yelling, and demanding an answer. Cloud only could manage to cough, though.

Furious without an answer, Sephiroth grunted, throwing Cloud in the huge wall at the opposite side of the arena, raising dust from the ground and some rocks that fell over the young. However, the violent impact stopped Cloud's choking, though, without enough time to catch air and stand properly, flying until where he was, incredibly fast, Sephiroth pinned him on the floor again. The general crisscrossed his hands around Cloud's neck, with desperate eyes.

"How did you get in here, how did you steal my corpse and deliver it to Shinra? Answer me!"

Seeing and touching someone else other than he at that place was something amazingly scaring to Sephiroth. The visions he had about Lucrecia were foggy and seemed what they were, ghosts. Not Cloud, he could feel the warmth of solid flesh under his hands. The shattered memory of Cloud laughing came up his mind along with the nagging sensation that he would be inside Shinra. Sephiroth felt his heart tight, feeling his usual self-confidence shaken to battle something he could not explain. Cloud was there, and it was a fact.

"Are you a rebel puppet that decided to become an implant on my mind?"

"Get your hands off me."

Sephiroth blinked, white spots momentary blurred his vision giving advantage for Cloud, who pushed him back onto the floor, locking him with his own Masamune on his neck. The act, not only absurd to Sephiroth but also unexplained of how Cloud could grab his sword.

"You, Sephiroth, is in my dream, and nothing that I can't control would happen here. This is my reality, not yours! I pull the strings here, not you!"

Sephiroth, taken aback for the first time inside that hell, felt the thuds of his heart on his throat. "Cloud is truly here! A weird sort of dark magic within him. Shinra or worst." Trying his best to hide his fears, Sephiroth sustained his defiant look at the young, but from inside, he was beaten off, already picturing himself inside a mako tank.

"Where is this place? How do you get in?"

Cloud's analyzed Sephiroth in silence, who seemed intrigued, even frightened with his presence, he wondered if they had contacted each other in some oddly link between an alive and a dead one. This was entirely different from his previous dreams. Maybe the pills gave him control. He chuckled feeling himself out of his depressive character, a jolt of excitement running on his veins, and he deep breathed.

"Where are we, Cloud, and why do you can't keep yourself away from me?"

His next words, Cloud savored before speaking with a chuckle.

"We are at my sad, broken, dark mind Sephiroth. Today, I command, but I don't know why in the hell I keep having these nightmares with you."

"Cloud, when I get out of whatever you'd dropped my body, I'd kill you for good. Now, I will ask you politely, where are we?"

Cloud deep breathed, and pushed his nemesis onto the next wall, fast stabbing the man on his chest, Masamune crossing his body, and gripping Sephiroth against a huge mirror stone. The blade shook with the impact, tearing the skin, crossing over his flesh and bones, ending at the other side of the polished rock's surface with a crystalline sound.

Cloud gasped, scared with such power, but relished in the pleasure of his act. "I can do this here, this is not a nightmare, this is a dream that came true."

"But maybe, Sephiroth, for the first time in months I'll be able to kill you, again, and again, at least it'd be better than having you hurting me."

The General cried out in real agony, something he never had felt before in that place. He also never wondered it was possible to bleed at that limbo before he looked down, and saw his blood spouting out of his chest, painting in red his leather crossed armor. Not even the seizures were as painful as what he was feeling now, with his own Masamune pinning his body against the wall. He clenched his gloved hands over the sword's razor to push it out of him, but Cloud just waved a hand, raising both of his arms in the wall as if invisible chains were trapping them. The same thing happened when he tried to use his legs.

"Hush, Sephiroth. You will not get out of me."

Cloud smirked with sadistically eyes at him. Sephiroth gasped for air, not believing in what was happening to him. The possibility he was inside a mako tank hit him more than ever. The hypothesis of Mother testing his faith to save him was falling day by day, leaving him alone, and lost. Now, Cloud's presence inside that limbo was the final blow to break all his hopes in Jenova or anything else. He was abandoned. "Powerful chemistry and technology, Shinra won. Bastards."

"Now, let's inverse the rules and you're my puppet, Sephiroth."

Cloud was different. The figure in front of him was not the same from Nibelheim, neither the Midgar's hero, but a cold-blooded man, reeking to violence and…Sephiroth sniffed the air around them and confirmed, Cloud had enhanced Jenova's cells. More than that, the bond between them Sephiroth could not explain before, poured out from the young man in front of him. It became clear why he could not kill him so easily since the first time in the reactor. He never could, indeed. Cloud turned into the next generation of Shinra's monsters. Staring at him, he concluded that Hojo's team had succeeded in turning Geostigma into something advantageous for them.

"Hojo tested a new version of cells on you. It seems you've got what you wanted, Cloud. No more a pretender soldier, right? Still mediocre for the task, though."

Sephiroth tilted his head sneering at Cloud, his heart racing in rage to the point of overcoming his pain under the sword's grip. Cloud chuckled, approaching the man, sliding his gloved hand over Masamune's razor that not cut him, agonizing Sephiroth that panted in ache at each trembling of the razor on his flesh.

"You don't believe this is a dream. You are dead Sephiroth. The proof is you can't kill me. Not here or in nowhere else. Look what am I doing Sephiroth...I could have intense pleasure here, in ways that only my mind would allow me, but the truth is...I don't want it anymore. I don't want memories of you and if I could, I would rip you out of my mind, but as you insist to come by, every fucking night, I'll hurt you at every fucking dream I'd have from now on."

Cloud poked the man's wound, wetting his hand on the blood, and then slid it over Sephiroth's chest, belly, stopping an inch of the man's waistband. Sephiroth muffled his pain staring at him with disdain, and Cloud approached him, chuckling when he saw the man trying to squirm out from his touch.

"You already defeated me, why this? What have you done to my body, you sick motherfucker?"

"Oh, nothing, yet."

Cloud closed his eyes for a second, summoned the strength to not dive inside his dark necessities, a fiercely desire of blood and pleasure already thrilling his body. It was his dream, he did not need permission from his inner guiltiness to fantasize what he wished. In that mysterious land from his mind, he could admit with no shame that he cherished the endless hurting that seemed impossible to heal. He had been pinning, but he could not deny how he wished to be locked forever inside his mind when Sephiroth fucked him so lustfully painful or when he could do the same. No judgments from no one, he wasn't a hero there, he did not need to be the good guy. Sephiroth was not real, but the enemy and deserved pain. He slid his gloved fingers, tainted with blood over the white, soft skin from Sephiroth's navel, drawing the paths of muscles from the thin fur line to his groin.

"Scare?"

Sephiroth squirmed out of the invasive caress on his waist, causing the blade to deepen on his wound, muffling his groans. Cloud glanced at him, smirking, with a look that Sephiroth identified as the worst behavior in the war battles, the total lack of honor for someone inflict to another. He had done very bad things to his enemies, but never, ever raped them.

"This is low even for you! Stop!"

Cloud opened Sephiroth's pants button, and not breaking contact at his nemesis' daunted eyes, tucked his hand inside his pants, touching him, feeling his cock flaccid. Sephiroth shouted, trying in the way he could move out his pinned body, not caring for the pain it brought.

"Stop! Stop this now!"

Cloud narrowed his eyes and moaned just to torture his victim, chuckling, and finally, untucked his hand out of Sephiroth's pants. However, he kept trailing his fingers over the man's groin, his cold cyan eyes fixed on Sephiroth's ones. Sephiroth wanted so many things at his situation, but the first one would be punch Cloud so hard that it would rip off his head out of his neck.

"In one of those dreams you raped me, twice to be exact, you don't remember this right? By your face surely you don't. I could indulge in revenge against you and this sad role-playing would never end. That's not the point here, and I need you out of my mind, of my life much as I miss you every fucking single day. It's not healthy and as you can see it's getting worse. Reality must overcome dreams."

Cloud raised his hand and Sephiroth flinched on his spot.

"What the hell are you saying? Stop this Cloud! Now!"

Sephiroth's eyes watched in panic when Cloud got even closer and kissed him nibbling his lower lip. The action, causing such a great disgust that Sephiroth twitched averting his face, feeling his Masamune sinking inside his flesh, rather preferring the pain than Cloud kissing him.

"It's not possible! I refuse to believe what is happening here!"

Cloud harshly gripped him by the nape, grabbed his chin, veering his head to look at his eyes.

Sephiroth harshly breathed, the impotence to kill Cloud infuriating him, the certainty that Mother abandoned him hurting more than ever, given his present situation. "You are just a failure and they trapped you. I need to get away from here. Think, Sephiroth, think! "

Cloud sighed, whispering how beautiful he was, exposing the man's neck and licking a patch until his chin, softly scraping his teeth at it. Eyes glued on his prey. He was feeling confident that night, something powerful had clicked inside him. At least until Sephiroth spat on his face, deep breathing in adamantly hate.

"Did you hid my corpse for perversions? You are sicker than I thought. Where am I?"

Cloud chuckled again, facing the man; he cleaned his face and sucked the fluid from his gloved fingers.

"I've gotten worse from you in those dreams."

"Where am I you sick bastard!"

Cloud turned his back at him, slowly pacing towards Masamune's handle, trembling the sword in Sephiroth's flesh, causing a howling of pain in the man.

"Shut the fuck up or I will find another use for your sword, worse than that! You don't have any idea what it is Sephiroth, try to sleep every night, to get away from the void of my fake life, as you say, and see you, touching, smelling, and feeling as if you were alive. You never thought about what you were for me, in all meanings, I guess you didn't understand what was the bond we shared, don't you? Idiot and arrogant, you never pulled the strings alone Sephiroth, though now, I don't want it anymore. I'm tired of this miserable despair you always give to me."

Sephiroth could not believe he would die abused in some lab, alone, and totally at the mercy of perverted enemies. That would be a new level of humiliation to his body, impossible to bear. He wondered if all his past enemies would do the same with him, the list was pretty long, the only hope was to die soon, or figure it out where he was.

"Where is my body?"

Cloud sighed again, letting go of his grip on the sword.

"I do not know where your body is, but as you are dead you don't have one anymore. Now, shut up, and listen to me. As I was saying, through this whole year, I had to deal with those nightmares. I did think that I was accessing you, in some mystical way in the beginning, but the reality is less enticing than that. Once you said that you wanted to take off what I most treasured in the world. I won the fight, and you accomplished your task to make me destroy what I most cherished: you."

Sephiroth tilted his head; he did not want to believe in Cloud, silently assimilating the words, putting it together to solve a puzzle on his mind. Cloud was there, he was not dead, but artificially supported inside somewhere, and he had to manage a way out by himself. None alien plague would save him. Again, the annoying white spots and disconnected images of blue lights, and Cloud laid by his side, laughing.

"That Sephiroth made my soul darker than ever. I irrationally loved you so deeply that I couldn't deal with the fact that I have killed you. It hurts more than any loss that I had. This is why we are here. You aren't locked in some hell or lab, but inside my mind, on my heart, even on my soul. But I promise you, this is the last time we'll see each other. I'm so tired, so fucked up to be bonded to you. I deserve better indeed, I'm the hero on this play, and you are the dead villain that I killed. I don't want you anymore and I will stop loving you, Sephiroth. I guess that I'm beginning to hate you to the point feel great when I hurting you. I'd hold on that to delete forever your presence in my life."

"Stop laughing! What kind of trick is that? Are you implying that we had a bond? I will tell you our bond; both of us are Shinra's monster! Apart from that, we had nothing you damned pervert! At least be honorable, and fight me in reality. Not as an implant inside my mind! Coward!"

Cloud got closer again, and Sephiroth kept his defiant look at him, hoping some hero's code, or whatever stupidity Cloud and his friends had, would lure him to say where they were. Especially, stopping his wish to rape him. Perhaps, he could control Cloud again and use him as a puppet to get free. It must have some damn part of their monstrous cells that allows Sephiroth to do it. He just needed to know how to manipulate him.

"You are right, we are Shinra's monster, we share the same disease, and eventually it would kill me too or drive me crazy as it did with you. For now, I want to live Sephiroth, to embrace mediocrity as far it would break this miserable feeling of love that I know you've never felt for me. You are right again, we had nothing, but somehow it started, and it should ends."

Sephiroth shook his head not understanding Cloud's nonsense of love, bond, and dreams. He was up to retaliate when he felt a pinch in the muscle of his neck as if tiny needles were brushing his skin. In seconds, it spread out over his scalp, and incoherent flashes of memories came upon him, but the worse was what happened with the place. The rocky landscape melted, turning into green light, flooding the limbo as waterfalls. Sephiroth gasped, frightened, his inner fears came true, he would see his misery from inside a mako tank and even felt the tubes connecting him to the machine.

A strong white light blinded him, and magically no signs of Masamune on his chest neither of Cloud's presence. Only the renewed landscape.

Sephiroth fell on the floor, desperate to find an explanation for all that situation. "The lake you have to reach the lake."

The man tried to stand up when the white spots returned to his eyes, and then, into pinches on his head along with a fierce headache. Lost memories ran across his brain and Sephiroth fell onto his knees, eyes wide open.

The last day of his normal life before Jenova's cells had claimed his brain and soul, still a teenager. The first time he noticed, and hide that he was deteriorating as Genesis and Angeal, but in a diverge process, still, it would kill the man he was, letting just the effects of a failed science project. Lucrecia desperately crying, her hands raised in the air, in an attempt to catch him out of Hojo's arms. The first time he saw Vincent Valentine, inside a coffin at Shinra's mansion, still as a child. The man wanted to escape with him because he was his true father, but Hojo found it and vanished him out of his eyes. Sephiroth forgot this memory, never looked after him or remembered that.

"This is all wrong, all wrong, these were illusions and I know it, bastards. Stop it!"

Sephiroth dragged himself to lean in the wall, painting, the flashes of light blinded him, he wondered how and why could he never had remembered this before. He sobbed, head hurting as if it would explode. He shouted again, still not believing all of that was his memories, but implants.

More flashes of Jenova, spreading her alien plague over his veins, corroding his body, her blue tentacles burning him. Black Materia entering on his skin, cutting, pulverizing its dark magic inside him. Kadaj, Yazoo, and Loz shaping their bodies and admiring their beauty. Genesis caressing his hair while reading Loveless, Angeal listening at classic music. Genesis silvered, dying alone in a field. Angeal deformed and wounded. Zachary, battles, monster killings. Aerith with her flowers. How Cloud helped him handling the Black Materia. Cloud again, defeating him and surrendering himself later. Jenova's tentacles nurturing his body, Northern Cave, blue lights. Cloud holding his hand with an unsure and childish face of admiration, Jenova's tentacles holding them both together. Meteor. The serene pleasure of floating in pure Lifestream. All the men he killed, all the ones he saved. Sanity and insanity. Lucrecia cuddling him, her tears, and her sadness for not had carried out her job as a mother.

"Stop it!"

Sephiroth shouted to make it stop, eyes closed, hands covering his ears from the thundering noise of his heartbeats. His attempts to cease the memories; only rushed the scenes, and the emotions along with them, hitting his flesh as if he was reliving them. It hurts him in ways he would never think it would be possible, he never regretted his acts, but at that moment, he was feeling broken.

"Stop, stop, motherfuckers!"

Cloud laughing at something, naked under a clear blue light, his blonde hair spread out over clean white sheets below him. Fire. Cloud raising his hand calling Sephiroth to come, in urge, in debauchery, demanding the man to devour him. His hands holding Sephiroth's face, kissing, nibbling his lip, adjusting himself to welcome his lover, panting in anguish for how long they would keep that very moment.

"Please, yes, harder Sephiroth, burn me."

It was real to the point of smell their scent together. His long hair clinging to his damp skin, Cloud's sweaty fringe bouncing back while he swirled his hips over him. Fast, intense, and passionate. Sephiroth's hand pulling him by the nape, thin blond hair, calloused hands, soft skin, moist lips sucking him. His hands clenching Cloud's hard muscles, feeling the consistency of the flesh. Their fights, all of them. Blood. Pain. Hojo. Experiments on his body. The impact over his hands when Masamune's blade hit Aerith, and when it hit Cloud. The regrets of his acts. The intoxicating feel of lust for Cloud, the taste of his mouth. Cloud's neck with goosebumps. Laughs. The warmth of their bodies together. Cloud whispering between moans that secretly, he always had loved him, and he always would do.

"No! No! It's not real! It can't be…"

The physical pleasure of being inside the Cloud, the emotional closeness attaching them. Their purpose together. The painful certainty that he loved Cloud and broken the boy's heart, and himself, along with their tortured path. Sephiroth closed his eyes feeling the uncontrollably tears coming out. It was intense how the emotions broke his spirit and somehow awakened him. Still appalled for all those memories he had found, he tried to stand up, and give order to his thoughts near to the lake. "Cloud is mad, but he wasn't lying after all…Jenova had erased my mind, but we...We happened because of her. Why?"

As soon he tried to walk, Sephiroth gave a loud cry, not able to manage his body up, and tumbled again onto his knees. The familiar numbness started over his limbs and another seizure, stronger than ever would come. Feeling exhausted Sephiroth did not fight this time, laying down on the floor, enjoying diving in slumber, and maybe with luck, never come back again.

At his room, Cloud woke up in a jump. He looked around to certify himself he was awakened. He could not bet, but he knew the nightmares would end. He did not know if it was a good or a bad thing. Surely, the emptiness circled him but that was the spectacular now of his life, and he would try to satisfy himself in it. He veered his head and looked for his phone, stopping to grab his pills in the desk. The sun would rise in a few hours, and he wished to see it riding, on his bike.