"Fine. Talk," Zack says through clenched teeth.
He should have trusted his instincts. The moment Cloud spoke Sephiroth's name, he should have packed the camp and taken him as far away from here as possible.
Sephiroth shuts his eyes and breathes, jaw tight.
"The mass above us is a chrysalis. Within it, my body is being regenerated. I do not know when it will be completed, but I suspect it will be soon. If I emerge from it, then the death of the Planet will be imminent."
"The… what?" Zack blinks.
"This is the will of a creature whose genetic legacy lives within all SOLDIERs, and that of the man who developed this technology—Hojo."
The sound of the other man's voice gives him goosebumps. He sounds just like he used to, like an old sage stuffed into a young man's body.
Even if Zack hadn't grown up aspiring to be like him, the power of his presence would have been enough to inspire admiration. Sephiroth just has that effect on people. He wears power and poise like they can't naturally to him.
And yet, at the same time, fear primes his body with the potent impulse to run.
Because Sephiroth was more than just wise and powerful. He was volatile. He was distant and opaque.
As a leader he had given every impression of loyalty while secretly undermining every effort Shinra made to resolve the Crisis.
"Creature?" he asks.
Green alien eyes flick down to him, assessing. "An imperfect word. 'Parasite' would perhaps be more appropriate. Upon draining her last host planet of life, she set off in search of new prey. Mistaking her for a goddess of the Ancient people, Hojo gave her an unfitting name."
"Jenova," Zack whispers, eyes widening with realization.
Sephiroth nods, his lip twitching in a grim, momentary leer. "Ragnarök. End of days. That's what the Ancients call her."
"Don't you mean called?"
"No, I don't." Wind whips long strands of white hair into his face and he flicks them back with impatient fingers. "But that's a matter for another time. First, we must talk about Cloud."
"What about him," Zack asks darkly. Nothing said about this combination of topics could ever be good news. His stomach turns.
"Those of us with Jenova in our cells, we are one with her. She will eventually extend her will over us all, but Cloud is unique. She yearns for his destruction. His natural talent for utilizing her powers makes him dangerous."
He meets Zack's eyes with a shrewd look, and delicately lifts one eyebrow.
"Don't pretend that you haven't noticed. You cannot be blinded by your affection this time. He will be preyed upon at every turn. She will twist his pain and intentions until he is little more than a puppet. If he succumbs to her influence as I did, then there will be no one on this planet who can stop him."
"How do you even know this?" Zack asks, wanting to disregard him, but knowing that he can't. It's what his gut has been telling him the whole time—that something's not right about Cloud. That supernatural visions and uncanny knowledge don't come without a cost.
"There is nothing in the minds of gods or men which has not happened before, or which shall never happen again," Sephiroth says, rubbing his temples with a tense expression. Gradually, his body goes stuff. His breath puffs in hot, white clouds in front of his face.
He pinches his eyes shut and grimaces.
"She comes."
"You can hold her back, don't give up."
"It was only a matter of time. At least—" Sephiroth gasps, hunching over. "At least this time I made an effort to resist. I am… sorry. For the role that I played. It was my job to look after you as my subordinate, as my… friend."
The word hurts even as it heals, stabbing through him like it all happened yesterday. Although the hair on his neck stands up, he closes the last two steps between them and grips Sephiroth's shoulders tight.
"Sephiroth—what can I do? This all so big. I don't—I couldn't save any one of you, not you or Genesis or Angeal, how am I supposed to save all of SOLDIER?"
The taller man laughs, and it's a harsh, terrifying sound. It sounds like a mind breaking and a village going up in flames.
"So much like him, even now." His voice cracks. He looks up slowly through the veil of long white hair.
The blacks of his eyes flicker and morph. Round, then cat-eyed, then spreading through the whites like an oil spill in the ocean.
"On the eve of the Last Day, She will call her Reunion. If you care for me, then you will kill me then. Before I am made into a weapon of planetary destruction."
A burst of energy sends Zack flying backwards, his feet slipping and skidding on the icy rock.
Ripples of power forge a forcefield around Sephiroth, invisible but strong enough to warp the very fabric of reality. Within it, he looks eternal, alien, larger than life. He is magnified and glorified by the sheer otherness of his aura.
In a burst of black mist, Masamune materializes in his hand. Zack lifts his hand in surrender.
"Sephiroth, please, I can't fight you like this—"
"You cannot save him, Zack Fair. You cannot save anyone. I will take all from everything. I will suck the marrow from Life itself."
Zack's breath rattles in his chest, his heart stuttering around the force of the memories flashing behind his eyes.
Chasing tears from his eyes, he lifts his hand to the Buster's grip. The One-Winged Angel rears his arm back and swings.
Faster than blinking, Zack draws and locks his body in a forward guard. Sparks fly from the force of the blades colliding.
A wall of ice looms, unmovable and uncaring behind his back. Masamune withdraws, spins, swings again.
He has no choice but to block and run, but outrunning Sephiroth is no easy feat. The reach of his sword would be difficult enough without the General's uncanny speed. Despite Zack's own enhancements, the blade clips the back of his left ankle as he retreats.
The cut is small and precise, only as long and deep as necessary. He doesn't notice the pain until he's already put weight on it and his right leg has crumpled beneath him.
Sephiroth aims a heavy overhead slash. Zack drags the Buster on top of him just in time.
Unable to stand, he rolls. Metal shrieks against metal. Frigid stone bites painfully into his knees.
Ignoring it, tries to crawl away only to be caught hard in the ribs by the steel toe of Sephiroth's boot. Everything blurs as he's propelled through the air with the force of a car crash.
He collides with the glacier, knocking the air from his lungs. Ice cracks and groans from the impact. He falls face-first, gasping and wheezing through lungs too stunned to breath.
Only his training allows him to keep awareness of what's happening, of the importance of lifting his sword. Even as he chokes his hands scrabble across gritty, wet stone, searching for a grip that he realizes is ten meters away. He lost it in the blow, before the impact, before the whirl.
Pain splits over his palm as he blocks the next swing with his hand, stumbling to his feet even as blood stains the torn fabric of his glove. It slices deeper on the way back, the other man drawing towards him and switching to his infamous, two-handed shoulder stance.
It is a pose of pure dominance, a stance which offers no opportunity for Sephiroth to block. He only uses it when victory is certain, when his opponent is already as good as dead.
Zack tries to jump away with his good leg, but inevitably has to stabilize with the bad one. It fails him again and sends him wobbling back against the glacier. The heat of his wound melts the surface, sending trickles of blood and water down the ice like crimson ink.
Sephiroth gloats silently, elongating the moment with dead eyes and billowing hair.
"Please—" Zack rasps, clutching his hand. "I can't die yet. I never got to—"
Masamune pierces his skin, his ribs, slicing all the way through. He grips the blade, shock tunneling his vision.
Rushing blood thunders in his ears like a warning, like an car running itself off a cliff.
Blonde hair hangs over his eyes, different gloves clutching the same wound. He blinks, gasping as the movement of his chest sucking in air forces the blade to cut even deeper.
"Don't push your luck," Sephiroth whispers. Reverberant, timeless. Reality and memory blur, a muddy mess of failure and despair.
His scream melds across time and space with Cloud's. He reaches for that voice with both hands. The voice that's become the central pillar of his life.
"Cloud—I'm—"
Darkness closes in.
He wakes to stars and crackling sparks.
Black hair whips around his face. He's falling.
Below him, flames. Fire everywhere. Great, gloopy pits of sludge devour the landscape. Is he dying? Is this hell?
The ground approaches faster than it should. Belatedly, more a flicker of recognition than a thought, he spots the ash-covered edifice of a farmhouse.
Crashing into a tar pit full-force, he struggles to identify which way is up. A maelstrom of noise surrounds him on all sides. Small, grabby hands clutch and pull at his clothing.
He hears a muffled shout. Cloud.
Kicking at the entities swimming in the goop, he thrashes around until he thinks he's right-way up. Dim, foggy light filters through the holes, beaming pillars into the black.
Close by, in one of those pillars, Cloud struggles. A thick, monstrous tentacle drags him down. Zack fights the Nothingness to get to him, uncaring of the noise blasting painfully or the vile, gelatinous ooze slowing him down.
He calls out, disregarding the foul taste and the inhuman fingers that try to pry into his mouth. He needs to be heard, to tell Cloud he isn't alone.
A frantic, strangled whine answers back.
His partner disappears into the darkness, but there's another light now—the light of the tether tying them always together.
He's been in the real world so long that he forgot; forgot the heat of it, the way it burns love marks into his palms. He wraps his spectral fingers around it and feels Cloud holding the other side.
"I'm here," he shouts.
"We're okay, we're okay—" Zack thinks.
"We are not fucking okay," Cloud snaps.
He pulls with all his strength and the light gets brighter, the surface draws nearer.
Cloud drags himself out of the darkness one grunting handhold at a time, his skin smeared with ash and his white shirt stained grey. He looks scared and furious, more like his real self than the boy his soul used to resemble.
"We're going to be," Zack yells, shaking his head and kicking his legs to throw off the groping creatures. "Just keep climbing, don't let go."
They come together in a fervor, a flurry of limbs. Cloud presses his face to the hollow of Zack's neck and wraps his arms tight around his shoulders. It's only then that feels like he can breathe.
"What happened, what is that thing?"
"Jenova, or a fragment of her. It's—she's taken over." Cloud's legs lock around his waist, his whole body trembling. "I tried, but the sword bounced off. She got Sephiroth."
"We need your body back, I'm—"
"I know," Cloud says. "I was so scared, I didn't know what to do."
"You keep fighting." Zack pulls hard, hand over hand. "Me and you, that's all we've got. We keep fighting until there's no hope left."
"Right." Cloud looks up. Waving, inhuman limbs warp the circular openings.
On a silent count of three they pull together, climbing their shared lifeline like a rope. The sludge gets thinner as they rise. The bond glows brighter and the grasping hands cower away from the light.
Zack pushes Cloud through first, incorporeal but somehow still tired. The sky above the burning wheat field shows an image of his face. His body is unconscious, still standing because he's pinned in place by the sword. The skyline is unnatural still, like Sephiroth is frozen in place.
At a loss for anything else to say, he shrugs at the troubling sight. "Welp, I'm not dead. Yet. I think."
"Don't joke about that," Cloud growls. He looks around. "It was here. It sprung tentacles and dragged us under."
"Then we draw it back out." Zack pushes his hair out of his face and tries not to look up. His sword lies on the ground not far away, near a ruined fence and a trampled garden that he used to love to train in.
Old rage flares in his chest, an emotion he's tried to leave behind.
This was their sanctuary. Their place outside of the world. How dare Jenova ruin it. How dare she force her way into a place she has no right to be.
He grabs Cloud's hand and walks quickly to the house, wrenching open the door and dragging him in. He looks around at the dining chairs, the fake-dirty dishes, the couch.
"Stay here. Block the door."
"No way." Cloud rips his hand away. Zack gapes.
"She wants you. You, specifically. We can't let that happen."
"This is my mind, I'm strong here. For once I can help, let me help."
"I can't lose you." He grips Cloud's arms, but his partner shoves him off.
"And how the fuck do you think I feel?" he shouts. "Do you think I like watching you run yourself into the ground? You think I want to watch you die? Fuck you."
The ground trembles. They both wobble, staring wide at each other.
"Cloud—"
A Shinra service rifle materializes in his partner's hand and he throws the strap over his shoulder with a brittle scowl. Without looking, he pumps the lever and loads a round.
Plates rattle in the drying rack as another tremor shakes the house.
"Together," he spits, "isn't that what you always say?" He storms out of the house, slamming the door behind him.
Zack works his jaw and takes one last look. His parents smile at him from a picture frame on the mantle. His poor rendition of a yellow flower hangs on the wall by the foot of the stairs.
Everything else is Cloud—the books they cobbled together, the vinyl records they reconstructed from fragmented scraps of memory. A little fire of humanity that they huddled around together when they had nothing else left.
Swallowing down his fear, he runs to catch up. Cloud stands near the largest of the holes with the Buster Sword at his feet.
"She's coming," he says.
"Sorry," Zack says.
They look at each other, and Cloud sighs, breaks away.
"She made it rain poison, and then tentacles came out of the holes. Sephiroth tried to kill those first, but she got him. I guess that's where I fucked up."
Zack grabs the sword. The ground underneath them rumbles, quakes.
"So we have to kill those first?"
"I dunno. Sephiroth seemed to think so."
"Well, he's the expert on Jenova. Apparently."
Cloud's mouth flattens and his eyes harden with determination. "I'll keep her attention and hit her from a distance. You deal with the tentacles. Once they're down, we do as much damage as we can. Try to force her out."
Zack works his fingers along the leather grip of his sword, nerves jumping and jangling. Compulsively, he checks the sky. He can't tell if he's still breathing.
"You got it, chief," he says.
Cloud rolls his eyes. "That's assuming she—"
Their eyes meet as something impacts the surface just under their feet, less of a tremor and more of a battering ram.
There's no time to move. The ground explodes under them less than a seconds later, and a monster straight out of a nightmare throws them both into the air.
Zack swings his sword around, using the weight to reposition himself in the air. The creature reaches a squirming tentacle and he angles a quick hit to the underside. Just like Cloud said, his blade glances off.
He lands neatly, bending low to absorb the shock. Cloud stumbles and falls nearby, cursing.
The monster screeches, stretching its hideous body into an arc, and Zack pulls Cloud up on his way past. Dozens more slimy, slithering appendages creep out from the holes.
"Okay, time to work." Zack spins the Buster Sword, getting momentum behind his swing. One step and then two, just like Angeal taught him. Big, wide, and leaping.
The first slash cuts through the nearest tentacle and he carries the force into another. The pop pop pop of Cloud's rifle sets a beat like a thudding engine. Jenova takes the bait.
Worry clenches his stomach but he can't let himself look. He has a job to do, and the sooner he does it the sooner Cloud will be safe.
He pushes onward, hacking and slicing with as much finesse as he can manage in his exhausted state. The benefit of using such a heavy weapon is that it wants to keep going once it starts. All Zack has to do is guide it, carrying the momentum forward into each successive swing.
When he arrives at the last tentacle, he finally lets the sword fall, crashing with incredible force in a vertical slide over his head. The final tentacle splits in two, rended to the base in one clean cleave.
Dragging his sword from the dent it carved in the ground, Zack finally checks Cloud to see him darting and dashing around Jenova's blows.
Black rain started falling at some point and he'd been too focused to notice. Puddles of it gather on what's left of the charred ground, and he knows it's only soo long before more tentacles rise out of it. They have to strike now, and hope that their best guess was right.
To his relief, the next wave of bullets from Cloud's gun find their mark and penetrate. They sink into the monster's putrid flesh and cause rotten, indigo pus to gush out.
He doesn't relish the idea of getting in the splash zone, but there's no telling how long the window of opportunity will last. With a groan of disgust he charges into the melee.
Since Cloud is firing at Jenova's front, he's happy to use her as a shield and focus his assault on her unguarded back.
Slash after slash, he tears into the creature's flesh with his blade. Whatever he expected inside, it wasn't a tangled, half-digested gullet of broken and mismatched bones. He backs away, covering his mouth to block the stench.
Cloud yells, his face lit by the steady yellow flashes of the rifle fire. The fragment of Jenova slumps forward, dying. She jerks and thrashes, the cut-off stumps of her twin tentacles emitting a sizzling, smoky black discharge.
He fires long after the movement stops, his eyes wild and face locked in a fearful grimace. Zack hesitates to stop him.
He's seen that look before. On missions with operatives that would go on to be decommissioned after a psych review. On the faces of shell-shocked soldiers firing from the trench.
To say that he wasn't aware of Cloud's capacity for violence would be a lie, but doesn't make it any easier to witness. He didn't used to be like that, didn't used to like firing his gun at all. It's disturbing proof of what the lab did to them, how it changed them both in ways they can't control.
In the real world, the moment would end itself. The gun would run out of bullets. The metal would overheat. But Cloud controls everything in this place. Nothing stops him from pumping the lever and squeezing his trembling hand around the trigger over and over and over.
"Cloud…" he murmurs.
His lover's arms are shaking, his mouth hung open under eyes too glassy and too far away.
Zack walks on stiff legs towards him, his sword plowing a ridge in the dirt behind him.
Smoke rises from the barrel but Cloud keeps shooting, keeps blinking fast and to clear the carbon from his eyes. Zack sets his hand on the barrel grip—on Cloud's hand that's clenched tight enough to turn his fingertips white.
"Cloud, stop."
Metal parts rattle as the gun lands on charred grass. Cloud throws himself at him, so hard he almost knocks him to the ground.
Zack swallows, holding him while he shakes apart. "It's okay. We're okay, I've got you," he chokes.
High above, the sky rocks and sways. Cloud's body drops. Zack's ice-crusted boots stand sideways on the horizon and his legs stretch across the sky.
Without Masamune pinning him to the ice, his body slides slowly down. Lurid, ruby red smears the ice.
Cloud's body rolls onto its back, and Zack loses sight of himself.
The night sky glows purple, fuchsia, mako green. Even in such a dire moment, the Northern Lights are beautiful, otherworldly. A rumbling, mechanical thwop thwop thwop shakes the leaves on the interwoven vines.
The underside of a Shinra helicopter floats into view. Steady, descending.