Published on: 09/30/2017

Chapter 20

For the past twenty minutes, Rufus Shinra had been engaging one Reeve Tuesti in amiable small talk while gunshots rang above them.

Of course, it was less amiable than passive-aggressive, and less small talk than verbal sparring. Rufus was alternatively trying to fish out what made Tuesti so special, and making covert overtures for alliances. He wasn't having much success, as Tuesti seemed as dumbfounded as him over their current situation and not versed enough in doublespeak and general political unpleasantness to see the offers for what they were.

Vincent held back a sigh as he ducked behind a desk and reloaded. Other Shinra employees had huddled at the back of the large office room, far away from the door to the stairs from which Deepground units periodically attempted to rush in and overrun their sniper guardian. Rufus had made it a point to not back away from the fight, thus allowing Vincent to eavesdrop on the labyrinthine conversation whether he wanted to or not.

A series of thumps and cut-off screams suddenly reached them from the corridor. It at least made Rufus shut up. In the silence that followed, Vincent strained himself trying to hear anything from his next opponents.

Instead, calm footsteps approached the room. Four pairs of them, near inaudible.

Vincent sneaked a look between furniture. His hunch was confirmed when he saw four dark suits appear in the doorway.

"Veld," he said, standing up.

The leader of the Turks appraised the bodies gathered at the entrance and nodded with something like approval.

"Vincent."

He didn't seem surprised to find him, which was par for the course. The one named Tseng was with him, and two Turks Vincent didn't recognize. Veld and Tseng picked their way through the room while the others guarded the way in.

And the way out, Vincent thought with a spark of suspicion.

"Can I help you?" he asked pointedly.

Nobody ever knew what Turks were really up to, but what were they doing so far ahead of First Class troops?

"We heard you had found someone of interest to us."

There was a shuffle, then, and Rufus stood up. He buttoned his jacket with unhurried motions, but Vincent noticed he had paled a shade.

"Am I to assume that someone would be me?" he questioned with remarkable composure.

"Mr. Shinra. How good of you to show yourself."

Tseng drew his gun and aimed it at the young man.

"Hold on," Vincent butted in. "What's going on?"

"One way or another, the Shinra dynasty will lose its power today," Veld said. "It has done enough damage. The people will no longer trust it. If the company is to survive, it is time to replace the old with the new."

Rufus closed his eyes, snorting.

"To think, in other circumstances our positions would have been reversed. You Turks were well on the path to disgrace. If Deepground hadn't risen, you would be the obsolete ones today."

"Deepground or not, we were cast aside all the same."

"But you made a choice you wouldn't have in any other situation, didn't you? Because my father lost his mind calling Deepground to his help, you went to search for allies outside the company."

His eyelids opened a slit, contemplative.

"If it had happened differently, I would have gladly been the ally you needed. We could have done great things, you and I."

"Perhaps," Veld conceded. "But that time has passed."

He took a step back, a clear signal for Tseng to shoot.

"Wait!"

Reeve Tuesti appeared out of nowhere, butting in in front of Rufus in a way that had the son of the President stagger back. He frowned at the Turks, apparently unimpressed with the gun pointed at his chest.

"You would have the new world be built upon the blood of the old? How would that make us better than Shinra?"

His voice was harsh, much more assured than the meek tones he had been using with Rufus. The cat toy clutched in his hand did nothing to diminish the aura of authority his broad shoulders projected.

Vincent lifted an eyebrow. He had been short-sighted. This was the man whose survival Rain had marked a top priority. A man who had evidently hidden strong ethics and a cunning mind in the very bowels of Shinra, where the association of both of these qualities was as good as a death warrant.

"Out of the way," Tseng said.

There was a single gunshot.

Tseng's weapon flew out of his hand. He clutched at his wrist with a grimace of pain as he and Veld turned to Vincent in surprise. The two Turks at the door had tensed, ready to intervene.

"My orders are clear," he said, not lowering his gun. "No harm is to befall Reeve Tuesti."

"Tuesti?" Veld blinked. "Who gave this order?"

When Vincent only answered with silence, he shook his head.

"It doesn't matter. He is of no concern to us."

"There will be enough bloodshed today. Veld, if Rufus Shinra is to survive the fall of his father, let the people decide his fate. What few allies he still has are as powerless as him."

"In the company, maybe," Veld said, narrowing his eyes. "But I have my suspicions…"

Vincent didn't answer. He didn't move either.

After a long moment of indecision, Veld sighed.

"You won't budge on this. I don't want to fight you, old friend. You may be right… but if you're wrong, I fear the price we will have to pay."

"We cannot predict the future," Tuesti said. "But we can at least make sure we stand up to it with humanity. Too long Shinra has operated on suspicion, crushing innocent lives any time there was even the slightest risk of opposition rising against it. It's time we try something different."

Veld looked at him with new eyes.

"Hmm… Perhaps."

The chase was long and exhausting. Weiss used every trick of the book to lose them for a few minutes.

It should not have been so hard to stop a man from climbing up in a building that had only the one staircase. Of course, the fact that he could create his own gateways to the upper levels with a few sword strokes tended to muddle the trail.

By the time Sephiroth finally tackled Weiss to the ground, forcing him to jump to his feet and face them, even Rain had to take a moment to catch his breath. He glanced around, instinctively searching for obstacles or anything that could help in the battle.

He did a double take. Swore with feeling.

Of course my luck would be this bad. Of course we'd stop here.

They had made it all the way to Floor 67, very nearly to the top of the tower.

But more importantly, they were right at Hojo's doorstep.

This was one of two floors that served as the Science Department headquarters. Rain himself had experience with the prison cells in one corner of the level. Once upon a time, less than a corridor away, had been housed Jenova's headless body.

"Stay focused!" Sephiroth snapped.

He blinked. The air he hadn't realized he was holding in rushed out, leaving him dizzy for a moment. No time to recover: at Sephiroth's signal he dived in the fight, attacking Weiss' flank and forcing him to give up his shockwave move to block Remus' strike.

Sephiroth took the opportunity to disengage. Rain heard him run to one of the rare windows. It wouldn't open, not so high above the ground and in a domain whose master cared little for sunlight and fresh air—not that it was possible to get either in Midgar in the first place. But one hit from Masamune's hilt and it collapsed in a twinkling shower of glass. Immediately, a faint but familiar noise reached Rain's ears over the whistling of the winds surging inside.

Helicopter blades.

"Highwind, this is Sephiroth. An aircraft has just taken off from the top of the tower or will proceed to do so shortly. Don't shoot them down, but do not let them flee Midgar either. The President and the last Restrictor are on board."

The radio sputtered a string of Cid's favourite swearwords.

"And how d'you propose we hold out to one of those Restrainers bastards if we can't gun them out of the sky, huh?"

"This is Reno of the Turks," another voice butted in. "Moving in to assist on your west flank. Come on Grandpa, this'll be fun!"

"I'll give you f &$ing fun!"

Weiss had tensed all over. His eyes shone with a sickly, frenzied rage. He charged forward and Rain grunted under the strength of the assault. He had to take a step back, and Weiss' pistol blade was suddenly pointed right at his face. Masamune intercepted the bullet in a flash of silver.

Weiss roared, infuriated. There was nothing human left in him at that point, no chance to reason with him. But Sephiroth and him, they could take him down. They had this. If they worked together, he truly believed that there was nothing they couldn't do.

It was perhaps this confidence that left him so ill-prepared for what would follow.

"Alright, nice and slow now," Reno drawled.

He nudged the stick, drawing closer to the unmarked black copter, trying to corral it to a patch of ground under the control of the First Class meatheads down below. It was easier said than done, as the slow idiots were still mostly strolling under Plate. They might have to force the President and his guard dog through the hole in the Plate left by the collapsed railway so they could rally with Hewley and Rhapsodos in the slums. Only problem: the Highwind had too much of a potbelly to fit through that. Reno would have to do all the work, as usual.

President Shinra had been hogging the radio for the past five minutes, alternatively trying to buy their loyalty and barking ridiculous threats. Highwind and him were currently engaged in a shouting match about, of all things, space rockets. It proved instructive if only by the ratio of swearwords Highwind could use in a single sentence. Reno was almost impressed.

"Yo, Rude, you doing alright back there?" he yelled over his shoulder.

He barely heard his partner grunt a reply before his machine gun spat a new salvo at a squad of jetpack-wearing Deepground assholes. One would think they'd have received the message by now that they wouldn't be getting any closer, but they kept coming like flies.

He was just about to interrupt Highwind's raving so that they could get some work done when there was a roar. For a moment, it drowned even the whirring of the blades overhead. The radio fell silent.

"That your stomach?" Reno asked Rude, uneasy.

"No. Look."

He twisted in his chair to squint through the open backdoor.

"Holy sh—!"

High on the side of Shinra HQ, nearly at the top, a massive shape smashed through the wall.

Reno banked away, spooked that the thing would be coming right at them. But it appeared solely preoccupied with the two much smaller dots tumbling into free fall alongside it. One of them caught the other's hand and jammed something in the side of the tower, carving a long trench down it and somewhat slowing their descent. Then the creature swiped at them and they had to disengage to evade.

"Yo… Is that Sephiroth and the Deepground reject?"

Rude grunted in agreement.

"Those guys get all the fun."

He sat back, but his eyes found the hole that had been punched in the tower.

There was one more person up there, standing right at the edge. He was too far away to see his face, but his hair was too pale for him to be Valentine.

Reno's stomach seized in foreboding.

A corona of energy formed around the guy. In the blink of an eye, he launched himself from the tower… and straight at Shinra's helicopter.

Flames immediately erupted from the side of the aircraft. It veered, whirling wildly through the air as smoke billowed around it. It dived through the opening in the Plate Reno had been leading it towards, disappearing from sight.

The silence on the radio was deafening.

"Well, um…" Reno stammered. "Restrictors are resilient bastards… Right?"

Zack ducked and rolled, letting Kunsel's sword hit the floor in a shower of sparks.

"Come on man, snap out of it! I don't want to have to hurt you. You still owe me money!"

No answer. Zack had been carrying on a steady stream of comments and pleas in the hope of prompting some familiarity in his friend's brainwashed psyche, but it was like he didn't even hear him. Nothing phased him. He just kept coming at Zack, who was having more and more trouble keeping him at bay.

He grimaced when their weapons met with undue strength. His radio muttered something about a helicopter, but he had no attention to spare. He had to knee Kunsel in the stomach to disengage.

"Sorry! Sor—"

He was cut off when Kunsel flew at him, having barely flinched from the hit. Taken aback, Zack tripped and they crashed to the floor. They rolled around for a while, each grasping for the other's weapon. Zack managed to send Kunsel's spinning away. Kunsel jumped to his feet to run after it.

"Ha! Sloppy, man."

Zack would have taken that split second of peace to catch his breath, but at that moment the door to the stairway opened.

"Zack? We heard your voice. You need help here?"

It was Cloud. Zack watched in horror as his unenhanced friend took stock of the situation, his eyes widening. There were other men behind him, members of his squad, but none of them could move a finger as the rogue SOLDIER snatched his sword from the floor and flew at the easy target.

Zack tackled him mid-air. All oxygen was expelled from his lungs as they met the ground once again, this time with him on top. Kunsel's head struck the tiles and his helmet went rolling. Fear still clutching his gut, Zack sat up.

"Right. Sorry buddy, but I'd rather have a friend with a bump on his head than a dead one."

He was about to bring the hilt of his sword against Kunsel's temple when his friend blinked. His overblown pupils shrank rapidly, giving way to a confused expression.

"… Zack?"

Zack froze. Kunsel squinted up at him.

"Why are you sitting on me?"

"Huh," Zack said, dumbfounded. "Guess you just needed one good hit on the noggin after all."

Just then, his radio sputtered a burst of static. Genesis' voice rose, heavily distorted by the Plate's interference. He sounded livid.

"Which one of you idiots killed our last Restrictor?"

Zack's stomach dropped to his feet.

"Or not."

"Look alive, Genesis. Weiss was last spotted going down under Plate. You and Angeal will have to take care of him before he rallies troops."

Sephiroth climbed to his feet with a bit of difficulty. The sudden fall had disoriented even him. A few feet away, a prostrate Cloud moved, dislodging the debris that had been blanketing his body.

"Wasn't he your target, Sephiroth?" his radio spat at him with venom. "How did you let it go this far?"

"We're facing an unforeseen complication up here."

He lent a hand to Cloud who stumbled upright, squinting through the dust of the building they had shattered on impact. Behind the billowing clouds, the silhouette of their enemy could just be seen, grotesque and looming. It could have been a common monster, if it hadn't been for the unwelcome buzzing in the back of Sephiroth's mind.

He exchanged a somber look with Cloud. They had always known Hojo would be the wildcard in their plans. He couldn't have let his latest hell beast out at a worst time, but they would have to make the most of what remained. They would get rid of it and go provide support to Genesis and Angeal below. Salvaging the situation would be hard, but not impossible. Genesis had already let off chewing him out to start damage control, though he would no doubt have more to stay on the matter later.

Cloud fished his second weapon out of the remains of a crumbling wall and squared off on his feet as the hulking beast moved towards them. It didn't seem to be walking so much as slithering. A moment later, it emerged in full view.

Cloud drew in a startled breath. Sephiroth was forced to reassess the severity of their circumstances.

"Finally, you come!" Hojo crowed, spectacles glinting eerily at them from thirty feet above their heads.

The rags of his white coat still clung to his shoulders, but it flapped uselessly over a grotesquely deformed torso, elongated to connect to the mess of writhing flesh and tentacles that propelled him forwards. His arms were two heavy pincers, so asymmetric the left one seemed more fit to use as a hammer. His skin was mottled shades of angry purple and orange. It bubbled, forming and dissolving stumps of members and monster heads in endless cycles. His face, too, had morphed, and there was nothing human remaining in the way eager delight stretched his lips in a too wide grin.

Against himself, Sephiroth took a step back. Nausea churned in his gut.

For all that he hated and despised this man, he had known him all his life. Hojo had always been there, prodding him to push himself further, convincing the President to promote him despite his young age, humming in cold interest at obscure sheets of numbers while Sephiroth slid on his coat after yet another health test.

According to Cloud, this monster in front of him was his father.

"What have you done?"

Oblivious to his quiet horror, Hojo cackled.

"You thought you could get away from me once more? If you want something done right, do it yourself! Those castoffs weren't worthy of my time, so I injected myself with all the remaining J cells. Not the unstable cloned cells, either. The original ones, everything I managed to salvage! Let's see you try to avoid the Reunion now, Sephiroth!"

The static in his head suddenly amped up a dozen levels, making him waver on his feet.

"Ow!" Cloud exclaimed, buckling under the assault. "That didn't happen last time!"

Multiple tentacles surged towards them. They jumped in opposite directions. The Hojo monster turned to follow Sephiroth, not paying the last bit of attention to Cloud. Sephiroth saw him regain his footing and rush the enemy. The right claw fell to the ground, neatly cut at the shoulder.

"Ow! You little pest!"

Hojo made to swat Cloud with his hammer-like arm. Sephiroth took the opportunity to slash down the tentacles still reaching for him. Hojo's base flailed and squirmed and started sprouting even more of them. Alarmed, he looked up and saw the missing arm begin to regrow.

"You still resist?" Hojo yelled, outraged.

The J cells buzzing climbed yet another notch. Sephiroth grunted and fought a wave of vertigo, barely rolling away from a new attack.

Cloud and him took turns hacking at the creature's numerous limbs, but no matter how many they got rid of, more kept coming. And still the pall on their minds became stronger, slowing their thoughts, turning their arms and legs to lead.

"You said you fought him like this before?" Sephiroth called to Cloud, panting.

"Not like this! I don't know how he got this strong. Something's not right."

"What is right about this situation, Cloud?"

The hammer arm punched the ground between them, forcing them to separate.

Sephiroth focused on pushing back Hojo's assault, losing sight of Cloud for a moment. When he heard him call his name, his eyes slid sideways to see him running on top of a nearby wall. Cloud jumped, heading straight for Hojo. He slashed off three tentacles aiming for him, then let go of his weapons. Sephiroth's heart gave a sickening jerk. But then Cloud reached for him.

It was pure instinct that had him push off the ground with all the considerable strength his legs could still muster. He rose to Cloud's level, free hand extended in offering. Cloud's gripped it, his arms bunched up, and suddenly Sephiroth was flying. He tore straight through the opening in the monster's defenses Cloud had just created.

Hojo's eyes widened behind his lenses, his mouth opened. For one more taunt? Sephiroth grit his teeth and didn't let himself falter. Masamune flashed.

The creature's head described an arc and fell to the ground with a wet thud.

Sephiroth let gravity carry him back down. There was a hollowness in his chest he wasn't ready to examine yet. He frowned when his landing was less than smooth, sending him stumbling two steps forwards. He turned to Cloud, finding him with a strange expression on his face. Surprise and… something too subdued to be joy. Nostalgia?

It disappeared before Sephiroth could dissect it properly, to be replaced by stark horror.

"Sephiroth!"

Tentacles wrapped around his arms and torso before he could move.

He was lifted in the air and brought before the nightmarish vision that was Hojo's head regrowing in pulsing bubbles of forming flesh. If the creature's face had up to that point been recognizable as Hojo's, there was nothing left of it now. When he opened what could only be called a maw, even his voice had morphed.

"You cannot stop me," he said in a mess of high and cavernous notes. "Every time you cut me down, my link to the J cells is stronger! I am almost her, now. I will be the Reunion!"

Sephiroth's stomach took flight. He dropped straight down, the tentacles holding him sliced apart by Remus and Romulus. A fire spell had the writhing limbs relish their lingering grip on him. He took Cloud's offered hand and hauled himself to his feet.

Just then, a new wave of dizziness struck them. It didn't let up. Sephiroth's vision went hazy. Too late, he saw movement in the corner of his eye. He would have been caught again if Cloud hadn't slammed in his flank, with so much strength they cleared a few feet in free fall and rolled behind a nearby wall.

Sephiroth found himself on his back, panting. Through the remains of the building's roof, he could see the Shinra tower looming over them on a background of ominous clouds. The warm body pressed against his own moved. Cloud's blond hair and blue eyes appeared above him, the colours stark against a world of grey. He would have taken solace in them, but Cloud's eyes were wide with something he had rarely seen there.

Fear.

"You have to get out of here."

"Excuse me?" he returned, outraged.

"It's you he wants, Sephiroth," Cloud insisted, urgent. "I get it now, why he's different. The moron injected himself with the last live J cells. Whatever is left of Jenova, it's in him!"

And Cloud didn't want him anywhere near Jenova. He understood, now. Cloud wasn't afraid for his life. He was afraid on behalf of Sephiroth.

But was he afraid for him, or of him? the bitterness in his heart asked.

"I'm not getting anywhere."

"But…!"

"What are you proposing, Cloud? Letting him follow me and find the troops? He would slaughter them."

He saw the way Cloud's eyes flitted to the side.

"If you think I am letting you fight this thing alone, you're delusional," he flatly rebuked. Before Cloud could retort anything, he added without mercy: "You would fail to hold his attention, anyway. You saw him fight. You could cut him in half that he would still be focused on me."

Cloud groaned in dismay. The sound of shifting debris alerted them to Hojo looking for them.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are!" he said in his strange, wavering voice.

They only had seconds before he found them. Cloud moved off him, allowing him to squat by his side. Their eyes met and caught. Cloud's were still wide, inhabited by more emotion than Sephiroth remembered ever seeing in them. An internal battle raged in him, and whatever it was, it had changed fear into terror. Sephiroth set a hand on his shoulder, concerned.

Resolve hardened Cloud's face. He took a deep breath, shoulder rising under Sephiroth's palm.

"Alright," he said. "Then you fight him. I'll cover you."

Before he could ask him what he meant, Cloud dug the tip of Romulus deep into the ground, clenched both hands around its hilt and closed his eyes. His lips became a thin, hard line.

A spark came to life at the back of Sephiroth's mind. In the space of a heartbeat, it burst into a blazing fire. In the space of two, a wall. The static ceased. The alien weight on his bones lifted. He felt light, free, released from a burden he had worn all his life without even realizing it.

Cloud's eyes opened. They were a glowing aquamarine, their iris vertical slits of black. His mind pressed against Sephiroth's, an impenetrable shield to his vulnerable back.

"Go," he said.

Sephiroth had never loved someone more.

The feeling rolled effortlessly through his mindscape, its roaring intensity new but its essence so familiar that he didn't think to curb it until it was already sending ripples of shock into another. The shield heaved and buckled under great waves of emotions, an earthquake that sundered the ground and cracked open the sky. The buzzing came back for a moment, then cut off as the protection returned, held tight by despair and stubbornness alone.

Cloud had gone pale as a sheet. Sweat shone on his brow. If Sephiroth hadn't caught a glimpse of the gaping chasm of terror his unwilling confession had opened in that beloved mind, his face still would have told him everything he needed to know.

He rose.

Hojo had stopped searching the ruins for them, instead shaking his head and hissing in agitation. Saliva frothed at his mouth and dripped from his jaw.

"Problem?" Sephiroth asked coldly, stepping up to him.

He felt frozen inside, hard in a way he hadn't felt since Genesis and Angeal had turned their backs on him.

"What HAve yoU doNe?" Hojo spat. One of his eyes had begun to shine an eerie mauve light. As Sephiroth watched, his skin turned entirely purple.

"No more of your tricks, Hojo. This is the end."

He lifted Masamune to his shoulder in his standard fighting stance. Cloud had given him this, at least. Strength filling his body, the power to never again be submitted to the whims of this madman.

He pushed forward.

In the same instant, Hojo arched up with an earsplitting shriek. A tentacle launched from his foot, quicker than anything should have moved. Sephiroth evaded, but it passed him by and kept going, longer and longer, the skin getting harder with every foot it grew.

He understood in the second before it happened, but was powerless to stop it.

"NO!"

The wicked point buried into Cloud's chest, right into his heart.

For a moment, all was silent. Cloud's slit eyes looked down in incredulity. He was still knelt on the ground, both hands gripping his sword's hilt.

The tentacle retreated. Cloud wavered. Sephiroth dived to catch him as he fell, only distantly aware of the thing that had been Hojo fleeing, smashing through walls in its confusion. Cloud's heavy weight in his arms was his sole reality, everything that kept him tethered to the here and now.

There was a gaping hole where Cloud's heart should have been.

Cloud's mind was still attached to his own, wide open now. There was so much pain in him, although the sheer shock and incredulity pushed it down.

But above it all, drowning everything, even stronger than before…

The fear.

Cloud's eyes were locked with his, tears sliding down his face. And even as he struggled to utter something, anything, even as Sephiroth scrambled to anchor his fading mind to his, to the living world, even as his emotions grew weaker and weaker… the fear remained.

Cloud's eyes dimmed.

His body sagged.

His mind dissolved to nothingness.

And then it was all that was left, a sour taste on the back of his tongue, permeating the air.

Fear.

Aerith was in the middle of checking Kunsel's bump to the head when she froze.

Cloud didn't notice at first. Sergeant Bolt was chewing him up for barging into an unknown situation, Tifa frowning at him in agreement from behind the man's shoulder. Zack, bless his heart, kept claiming, "no harm done, no harm done!" So it was Kunsel who asked:

"Uh. Miss Gainsborough? Are you alright?"

They turned to see her crouching beside her patient, staring into space.

Around them, medics bustled above more heavily wounded soldiers lying on cots or blankets on the ground. Most of Shinra tower was theirs now, with what little remained of Deepground's forces here too confused by the loss of their chain of command to oppose much resistance, so they had taken the opportunity to regroup with part of their rearguard in the huge ground floor foyer. Zack had a few squads cleaning up the upper levels.

Zack called his girlfriend's name, lowering a worried hand on her shoulder. She blinked, coming back to herself. When she turned to him, she looked deeply troubled.

"Zack," she said. "We have to go."

"Yeah, I know. We're about done here, and it sounds like Genesis and Angeal could use our help below Plate…"

"No," she interrupted. "Not below Plate."

She took off without another word, heading straight for the foyer's exit turnstiles. Zack's spluttered, taken aback. He looked frantically between her and the troops awaiting his commands.

"We'll follow her," Cloud told him, ignoring Bolt's disapproving grunt. "You take care of things here and catch up, Zack."

Zack smiled, relieved.

"Thanks, Spike."

Cloud, Tifa and Nanaki sprinted down the stairs after their friend, leaving Zack to give his orders to Kunsel and Bolt. They pushed through the turnstiles, Nanaki hopping on top of the metal contraption, and burst through the doors.

Outside, Midgar was eerily quiet. There were distant gunshots and the sounds of faraway explosions, but all the fighting was happening below Plate. The buildings nearby seemed deserted. If there were any citizen that had not fled for the outer city at the first signs of a struggle in the tower, they were boarded up deep in their homes, far from the shops of the Shinra plaza. Cloud didn't know what Aerith was expecting to find here, but there she was, disappearing in a sidestreet. They called to her, but she showed no sign of hearing them.

They rounded the corner after her and skidded to a stop. Cloud was forced to scratch his previous thought that nothing was going on around here. The buildings in front of them had taken a heavy hit, debris lying in the street from the unknown force that had gutted their roofs.

Warm pink peeked through a hole in the front wall. Bolt's advice already forgotten, Cloud unsheathed his sword and jumped through, Tifa and Nanaki hot on his heels.

Aerith whirled around. Her eyes landed on Cloud, wide with remorse. Sorrow dripped unchecked from her bloodless cheeks.

"Cloud…"

He stared back without understanding. He could see no wound on her.

Then he spotted the two figures huddled at her feet.

His vision flashed a violent red. He stumbled on legs that threatened to buckle under his weight. From very far away, he heard Tifa gasp.

Under Midgar's angry clouds, Rain was washed of all colours. His skin was a uniform grey, his tired but kind blue eyes hidden behind heavy lids. Even his blond hair disappeared beneath a layer of pale dust. He lay in Sephiroth's arms, limp and lifeless. The hole in his chest stared Cloud in the face.

"What did you do?"

His voice came from a place deep inside of him, hoarse and broken in a way he had never heard. Sephiroth didn't move. He knelt in the dirt, head ducked. His hair brushed against Rain's body, curling on his dark clothes like wisps of blood in water.

"What did you do?" Cloud screamed, and now the tears came, burning hot on his frozen skin. "You were supposed to have his back. You were supposed to be the best! How could you let this happen?!"

Tifa's arms closed around him. He sagged against her, muffling a shout in her shoulder. His legs finally gave up, pushing them both to the ground. Tifa didn't let go, clutching him to her as if her hands could hold all the shattered pieces of him together. Her tears mingled with his as he sobbed hard enough to shake her slim frame.

"Guys! I heard shouting, what's going—"

Zack barged in and stopped dead in his tracks. The silence that followed was more than Cloud could bear.

His brother would have had a pithy comment just about now. He would have ruffled his hair, told him not to worry. He would have had a plan to make everything better. For all that Rain doubted himself, in the end, he always came through. For all that he fell, he always got back on his feet.

He would never see him stand tall again.

He would never hear his advice again, never see him smile again. He would never get to introduce Rain to their mother, never badger him into teaching him how to ride a bike. He would never even get to hear his voice in his mind again.

The scrape of gravel shifting had him lift his head. Through bleary eyes, he saw Sephiroth lay Rain down on the ground with infinite care. The SOLDIER stood up.

Sephiroth's eyes were dry. There was no grief that Cloud could read in them, but then again, he had no name for the emotion that darkened them. His face was as if carved from stone. His limbs were lax, his posture neutral. But the hair rose on Cloud's arms and a terrible shiver skittered up his spine.

Zack took a step towards him.

"Sephiroth…"

Sephiroth looked at him, stopping him mid-gesture. The air felt heavy. All outside sounds had hushed, leaving them in the pregnant quiet of a closed world. Cloud only noticed it had become difficult to breathe when he started feeling light-headed.

After a small eternity, Sephiroth turned and walked away. His tall figure parted the swirling clouds of ash and dust. He was soon swallowed by them.

The bubble popped. The invisible weight that had been crushing Cloud's shoulders down fell away. He heaved in a huge gasp of air, relieving his straining lungs. Tifa still clung to him, so close he could feel her quiver.

"What was that?" she whispered.

Cloud turned to Zack, saw him gulp. He was staring at the place Sephiroth had disappeared.

"I have to… I have to go."

Without a word more, he took off after his friend and superior.

Cloud felt frozen inside. All of Rain's deepest fears flooded him and coalesced into his guts.

Gently, he pried himself from Tifa's grip. His legs shook as he got up, but he locked his knees and refused to fall.

"I have to follow them," he said in a sliver of a voice.

All three of his friends clamoured their protests, but he spoke over them.

"Please stay here. I can't…"

He swallowed a sudden sob, roughly brushed the tears from his face.

"I don't want Rain to be alone."

His voice was so weak he was afraid he was the only one who heard it. But when he stepped back, Tifa, Aerith and Nanaki didn't move. He couldn't stand the pain and the empathy in their eyes.

He turned and ran after Zack.

Note: I promise the next chapter is coming in a matter of days. I'll post it as soon as I edit it, and then there'll only be the epilogue left. *clutches your lapels and shakes you with crazy eyes* DON'T LEAVE ME YET! WE'RE NEARLY THERE!

(I understand this is the meanest cliffhanger to date, which is saying something, so if you absolutely need a spoiler to keep breathing, yell for it in the comments and I'll reply to you, provided you have an account.)