Warnings: WAFFness
Chapter 40 : Nightless Night
The white was still warmth and safety. It was still nice here but it was no longer completely white. It had changed. And that meant it wasn't completely comfortable anymore.
"Seph!" Zack called out, stunned but happy that his CO had come out of the basement while it was still the middle of the day, mostly. Maybe this was a good sign… then again, maybe not. "General, is everything alright?" He jogged up to stand in front of his friend.
"Zackary, good. This is Yazoo," he waved a long hand at the silver-haired clone. "He'll be joining us. I assume Valentine gave you a briefing on him?" He marched forward, uncaring of the two-metres of solid muscle standing in his way.
Zack hopped to the side, "Uh, yeah. He said a couple things." He gave the clone a searching look. The youth swayed and smirked and tried to look confident and maybe enticing, but the First noticed how he kept the General between them. "So what's up? What ya doing up so early?"
"It's nearly time," the General answered cryptically, "Come." Zack barely refrained from rolling his eyes. He'd had enough cryptic shit thrown at him in the last few days for him to be able to fertilize Aerith's garden for a month. Despite that, he dutifully followed his CO out the door and over the bridge just to stand on the far bank of the shell-house's surrounding lake.
Tifa and Tseng were drawn away from their card game by the activity. They trailed the others outside, which made the young clone skitter around Sephiroth like a moon in unstable orbit. The boy's nervousness wasn't helped when the Turk asked the air why the clone wasn't dead yet. Since Vincent had explained both Yazoo and Sephiroth's decision to bring him along, Zack ignored the comment as Tseng being a paranoid asshole. It was Tifa who turned and glared at the Turk. Tseng's return look was calm and non-committal: the standard look of the ShinRa Turks. Zack was more interested by the fact that Tseng's limp was nearly gone. Maybe now the SOLDIER could believe him when he said he'd be good to go tomorrow. That meant they'd be ready to leave this place now that things were happening again.
He was busy planning their departure, organizing their packs, when he got hit in the face by a heavy bundle of black leather.
"My apologies," Sephiroth said, "I was aiming for Yazoo." The clone came up quietly and took the General's trademark coat. "You'll need to remove your boots, Commander, unless you like walking around in wet shoes."
Zack looked at the weird lake that surrounded the house. He didn't like it; didn't the look of it, the feel of it, not anything about it. The others all used it to bathe in, he didn't. He went down into the ruins and hauled water out of one of the wells. And now, because Sephiroth was out of that godsdamned basement and was asking, he was going to wade in the creepy stuff.
Sometimes, friendship fucking sucked...
"You know, anyone who didn't know you might construe this as you being completely fucking loopy," Zack griped even as he bent to untie his boots.
Sephiroth didn't even look at him as he waded into the water. "As we are a small strike force, half of whose members don't completely trust the other half, and we are going to the coldest place on Gaia with limited supplies, where we have to traverse a maze that's the home base of the largest armed force in the world, so that an immortal demon can kill a creature out of legend–" The General reached a spot in the middle of the lake. He looked up and took a couple sliding steps to the right. "–I'd say we're all a bit unhinged. Ms. Lockhart, would you care to join us?"
Tifa, who'd smiled at the General's matter-of-fact cataloguing of their mutual insanity, agreed instantly. Looking at where the water came to on the tall swordsman, she didn't bother rolling up her pant legs, as Zack had done, but just stepped out into the water. "Oh," she paused, as always, in appreciation. "It's sooo nice. Not cold but not warm."
"It's not fucking right. Water this temperature should have all sorts of shit living in it," Zack complained. He kept expecting to feel slime and muck on the bottom but it was clean rock. "Where's the algae and the bugs? Where are the fucking frogs?"
Only Vincent saw the clone's instinctive recoil at the mention of the small amphibians. He resisted the impulse to join in Chaos' mocking chuckle.
"This water has a different kind of life to it," Sephiroth said, pointing Zack and Tifa to where he wanted them to stand. "I would ask you two," he called out to Vincent and Tseng, "but he has no real ties to you." Vincent crossed his arms in surprise but said nothing. Tseng didn't even do that.
"This is about Cloud?" Tifa asked. Unlike Zack, who'd lifted his arms out of the water, she was running her fingers through it, swirling them and making figure-eights.
"Yes," Sephiroth answered shortly. "He should be returning soon." Then he closed his eyes, as if to sense his lover's presence more clearly. Zack looked at the small fighter standing across from him. He tried to silently apologize for the General having dragged her into the water. Her ties with Cloud were tenuous at best and they could be here a while.
Tifa smiled and shrugged, and combed her fingers through the lake's odd water. Maybe, Zack rationalized, she thought it was better than playing another round of cards.
The white had changed. It had substance and he could almost feel his body. And it wasn't empty anymore. There was black moving through it. Someone else was here.
A large hand touched his forehead. "Well, you sure got yourself beat up," It was a deep voice, gruff but kind.
"Dad?"
A deep chuckle, "Not even close." The hand moved to his chin and turned it to the side. This new person ran a calloused finger through the blood that coated his skin, "At least most of this isn't yours. The puppy would be very upset if you couldn't go back."
Cloud frowned lightly. Who was this guy? He was almost familiar. Tall, taller than Zack, and very broad. Dark; dark hair, dark clothes, dark eyes, sad eyes...
"It looks like your place isn't here. Tough luck." The hand moved to his chest, "Tell them that I miss them, and that I'm sorry. Can you do that for me?"
'Who misses them? Why are you sorry?' He didn't say it aloud but the man, the SOLDIER, heard anyway.
"They'll know. Now, time to go back." A gentle push and he floated away from the white, through the grey and the black into the light. This was like those dreams he'd had of visiting Aeris' field of flowers but not. For one thing, there was a string, or something, that was pulling him through it. For another, it was wet. He was floating in something wet. He frowned. He could hear things now, feel things, want things...
"Sephiroth," he whispered.
"I'm here, Cloud, I'm here," the normally strong voice was shaky. "I've been waiting for you."
"Holy shit," another familiar voice murmured in awe, followed by a lighter, sweeter, "Ramuh's blessed light," whispered in prayer.
There were hands on him, supporting him but not. He opened his eyes and looked up into the worried cat-green of General Sephiroth. That's not what he'd been expecting but, since he didn't know what exactly he had been expecting, it was very nice. He smiled, just a small one, before a leather-covered hand on his arm drew his attention away. The eyes that met his weren't cat-green but they were just as compelling. "Zack." His smile got a little bigger.
"Tifa's here too," the SOLDIER said.
"Is she? Cool" Cloud's eyes closed as long, trembling fingers brushed hair off his forehead. "Why am I wet?"
"Because you're lying in a lake," Zack said matter-of-factly.
"Oh, okay," Cloud responded calmly. Suddenly his eyes popped open. He blinked a couple times, frowned a little bit, and then shifted until his feet were under him and he was standing on his own. The water, which had saturated his clothes and hair, evaporated in thin, misty-green streamers. He looked around with dazed eyes: this wasn't where he had been, and shouldn't be where he was. "What happened?"
"Um," Zack looked at Sephiroth but it didn't look like the General was going to explain it.
"You died, I think," Tifa said baldly.
"Oh," Cloud's voice was soft and misty like the weird water evaporating from his clothes, "Okay." He looked at Tifa and smiled a little, "It's good to be back then." She smiled in return.
*You'd think,* Chaos growled in disgust, *that returning from death would involve fewer clothes.* Vincent ignored that remark, just as he'd ignored the demon's remark about the logic of skinny-dipping as a way to keep clothing dry.
"Did it work?" the young SOLDIER looked over his shoulder at Sephiroth, "That thing you were trying to do?"
The General nodded, "The Lifestream will fight against Meteor, and the rest."
"Okay, good," Cloud nodded sleepily, "I wasn't sure Jenova's death would work as the sacrifice but it was better than yours."
The General gave him a little shake even as Zack burst out, "You sacrificed yourself, you little twit."
Cloud blinked huge eyes at him before shaking his head, "No, no. Aeris said anybody would do as long as they were willing to die for their cause. Jenova was willing; she just blew up too fast. I didn't have time to jump off." He leaned forward to state, very sternly, "Poison is a stupid status. It takes friggin' forever to kick in." He was extremely serious even as he blinked huge, befuddled eyes. He reminded Zack of some addicts he'd seen, flying on their drug of choice.
Zack's grin came out, rivalling the sun for intensity, "That's what I've always said." Cloud nodded solemnly in agreement.
"We'll see if we can find you something more effective," Sephiroth promised, even as he reached out a hand to keep the young man steady.
"I'd appreciate that, Sir," Cloud nodded—he hadn't actually stopped—then he blinked and said in confession, "My sword blew up too. Now, I don't even have a gun." He shook his head slowly, "I won't be able to fight."
Sephiroth made another promise, "We'll find you a weapon, don't worry." Although the chances of them finding an intact blade here in the Forgotten City were very slim. The only blades they'd found had been attached to gardening tools.
"Maybe Vincent has a spare you can use," Tifa offered after a moment, "He carries a lot of weapons on him."
"Okay," Cloud said agreeably. He swayed like a reed pushed by invisible winds.
At least he was a happy reed, the SOLDIER thought with a smile. Zack jerked his head toward the bank in question and received a small nod in return. Sephiroth scooped up the smaller man and carried him to the shore. "I can walk, Sir," but the protest was empty as, with a few long strides, the General was already climbing out of the water and toward the bridge. Everyone was left behind except for the slim clone who scurried after his brother, still holding the long leather coat.
Zack and Tifa barely had a chance to step through the water before the trio disappeared into the house. The First, despite his cocky attitude, felt rather pole-axed. Judging by the way Tifa was covering her mouth while she looked at him; he probably looked like it too.
"Well," he said jauntily, "That was faster than I thought."
He put his hands on his hips, except that dipped them in the weird water which, he realized, reminded him of one of Hojo's mako tubes except more diluted. No wonder he didn't like it. He actually jumped back in an involuntary rejection of being immersed in the stuff, which was stupid, because it didn't get him out of the lake it just made him lose his balance and fall over. Into the tainted water.
As it covered his head, he lashed out in a panic and cut his hand on something sharp. The short pain was so surprising that it shook sense back into him. He opened his eyes under the water—a fact that made him kind of proud of himself—to look for the dangerous anomaly in the pristine lake. It was shiny and looked sharp. And it had a handle. 'What the fuck?' he thought. He put out his hand and pulled the blade out of the lake bed. He got his feet back under him and stood up. He twisted the blade in the dim light. It was definitely some kind of sword but, instead of a hilt, the handle ran along the back of the blade. It looked somehow... unfinished.
"What is that?" Tifa asked, stepping closer.
"I found it sticking out of the floor of the lake." He gave Tifa a look filled with irony. "He did say his sword exploded." It took a moment, but eventually her eyebrows went up in understanding.
"But it doesn't look like a sword," she commented.
Zack took a closer look at it. It had notches and grooves along on the outside edge and, inside the groove, a locking mechanism. "There's more to it," he said and began looking around him, into the water. Tifa did the same.
"What is it?" Tseng asked, moving a step closer in curiosity. Turks, Zack snorted to himself, were allowed to feel curiosity.
"Part of a sword, I think," he answered. Then he tossed it to shore, "Hey Vinny, catch!"
The gunman reached out a hand. "It's Vincent," and plucked the blade out of the air. Zack just smiled to himself and kept looking in the water. He and Tifa moved through the water, circling around their starting point.
"Found one," Tifa called and dipped down to grab it. She brought up a short, perforated blade with a fancy wheel lock mechanism and a folded up handle. She held it very carefully since she wasn't wearing her gloves and started to walk it over the ex-Turk. He held his brass-covered hand in an obvious 'toss it' gesture. She did, and he caught it with a soft 'clink' of metal-hitting-metal.
"Here's another," Zack said, and pulled it out. They kept at this until they'd found six interconnecting blades. By the end, the weird feeling water didn't bother the SOLDIER anymore.
While they searched, Vincent and Tseng worked on how the pieces fit together but they didn't get very far. All they agreed on was that the smaller blades mounted onto the largest one, and that the largest one separated into a wider blade in a manner they couldn't really explain but was dangerous nonetheless.
"Bet you ten gil Cloud will take a look at it and put it together without even having to think about it," Tifa said.
Zack snorted. Vincent just growled; it was his hand that had been sliced when the large blade popped open. "No bet," Tseng answered for them all.
"Why do you curl around him so?" Yazoo asked, looking at Sephiroth hold Cloud while the blond slept.
"Because he's important to me and I thought he was lost." Yazoo still looked puzzled. "If Kadaj or Loz returned from the dead, wouldn't you want to hold them close for as long as you possibly could?"
The slim clone looked stricken and sad. He swayed a little as he nodded, long hair falling forward to hide his expression. It was quiet except for a soft snoring coming from the blond.
Sephiroth saw the pain of loneliness, and understood what the young man was feeling. He patted the mattress on his other side. "Come, it is wide enough."
Hesitantly, Yazoo knelt on the floor and then stretched out behind his protector. The General could feel the Jenova cells in his body reaching out to the ones in the clone; parts wanting to reunite into a whole, but he could also sense that, aside from this odd affinity, the cells were dormant, without the power to reproduce or spread to a new host. The Lifestream was fighting Jenova. Perhaps one day, he mused, it would figure out a way to dissolve all the alien's cells, wherever they were, and he would cease to exist because he didn't have enough human cells to form a complete person. A disturbing thought best left alone at this point, he decided. Even so, he was thankful when the clone interrupted his musing.
"They aren't coming back though, are they," It wasn't a question. "Not like he did."
"I wouldn't think so." No point in lying to the boy.
Again quiet descended. The only sounds were of the rest of the party playing out in the lake, splashing around and laughing. Cloud shifted and shuffled in his sleep, nestling himself even closer to his lover.
"I won't go with you to the Northern Caves, I can't," the clone burst out, "If I get caught–" he ended in a sob.
"I am not going to force you to come with us," the General reassured him.
The young man sniffed and hiccupped into Sephiroth's broad back. Oddly, Cloud seemed to sense the teen's distress for he reached around his lover to drop a hand on Yazoo. He patted the boy a couple times, all without opening his eyes or giving any indication of being awake at all. Perhaps, the General theorized, Cloud's Jenova cells were responding to Yazoo's even from within unconsciousness. With a connection of that strength, no wonder the virus had survived uncounted millennia and caused untold thousands of deaths. If Jenova could control the virus in each body she'd infected...
What was surprising is that Cloud, his little Cloud, had finally stopped her. With a small, but very proud, smile, Sephiroth pulled his lover even more tightly into his arms.
Except for the sounds from outside, it was quiet in the house. It was warm and comfortable on the bed. The stress of the last three days finally caught up with both Sephiroth and his clone and they fell into a light doze. This lasted until the rest of the party entered. They weren't quiet. In fact they were quite loud and obviously excited about something. Seph heard Zack say "I can't wait to tell Cloud," and, like a switch, the blond was awake.
"Um," he started. He looked up at the General only to see amused green eyes looking down at him. "If Zack's downstairs, then who's sharing our bed?"
"His name is Yazoo. He's my clone grown by Hojo," Sephiroth answered.
Cloud's eyebrows went up in surprise, then down in disapproval. "Why is he in our bed?"
Sephiroth explained what Zack and the others had been fighting while Cloud had battled Jenova. During his report, Yazoo moved in closer and closer, wrapped his arms tighter and tighter around the General. Cloud, feeling much less mush-brained since his nap, noticed the death-grip Yazoo had on his 'brother', the fine trembling, and the goose-bumps. He raised his eyebrows but said nothing; he knew all about needing comfort.
Once he'd heard the sequence of events, the presence of the last clone worried the blond less than the creature Vincent had turned into.
"So Vincent's safe?" he asked.
"He says he can limit its appearance, we'll see if that's true," Sephiroth confirmed. "Yazoo, I can barely breathe." Slim limbs relaxed infinitesimally.
"Not much we can do if he can't," Cloud said in resignation, "We need him." Sephiroth grunted in agreement.
"Yo, Cloud! Seph! You awake up there?" Zack called up the circular hallway. "And don't bother saying 'no' 'cause I can hear you talking."
"Why did even bother asking then," Sephiroth whispered in a tone of long-suffering.
"How else will you appreciate his restraint, Sir." Cloud responded in his best NCO-dry before lifting his voice, "Hang on, we're coming down."
"Hmm," Sephiroth was unimpressed but obediently followed the Corporal's lead in getting up and straightening his appearance. He turned to Yazoo. "You can stay here if you wish, but it would likely be better if you came down with us."
"Talk to Tifa," Cloud suggested, "She's pretty kind-hearted. If she adopts you, Vincent will back off some."
Sephiroth looked at the blond in surprise, "Why would he do that?"
"Because he's nuts about her," Cloud explained. Sephiroth still looked surprised. "You mean you didn't see it?" To Cloud's amazement, a faint hint of colour appeared in the General's face.
"But she rejected him on the flight over." The Corporal gave a small head shake. "Didn't she?"
"No, Sir. She asked for time to think about it, meaning that Vincent had a chance. It may have been slim but it was there. Now I think he has a better than even chance."
"Ah," the colour was still high on the General's cheeks, "I still have some difficultly interpreting the body language of most people, especially if it is subtle." Cloud thought, but didn't say, that Vincent's purple beast running off with Tifa at the crash site then standing guard over her like a pit bull, wasn't exactly a subtle signal. But he hadn't been raised in a lab with a bunch of twisted, geek scientists either.
"Understood, Sir. Take it from me, Vincent is very interested in Tifa and she's returning his interest."
"Surely she won't stay with him after seeing him turn into-to that?" Yazoo broke in, clutching himself in comfort.
"Why wouldn't she?" Cloud returned flatly. "You loved Jenova despite everything she did." Yazoo flinched then tossed his head to cover it.
"Shall we get this over with?" Sephiroth broke into whatever argument might be brewing between the two. "Are you coming, Yazoo?" The clone straightened, letting his arms drop confidently to his sides, and nodded.
"Cloud," Zack yelled up impatiently, "C'mon, man. We found something you might be able to use as a weapon. Maybe. We need you to try it out." Sephiroth had his brows up in astonishment; he thought they'd been playing in the lake. Cloud's face, however, lit with excitement and hope. Having fought with a blade, he hadn't been looking forward to going back to using a gun. There'd been something liberating about using a sword, the movement involved. When the trio finally left the sleeping area, Cloud was in the lead.
The group was waiting in what they'd dubbed the kitchen. There wasn't a stove or a sink, but there were chairs and a table and a separate door to the outside where Zack had set up his fire pit. Both Zack and Tifa, who was bouncing on her toes, hands clasped behind her, looked excited. Vincent and Tseng looked like... Turks, Sephiroth decided, watchful and waiting to make a judgement.
On the table, laid out like a sacred offering, were six shiny blades, although only one looked like a traditional sword with a blade, cross-guard and hilt.
Cloud stopped, "Wait... what?"
"We found these in the lake," Zack announced, he too was rocking on his heels in pride and excitement.
"In the lake?" Sephiroth asked, frowning.
"Yeah," Zack confirmed with an ironic smile, "They were just sticking out of the bottom, waiting for someone to trip over them."
"Which he did," Tifa pointed out.
Cloud either hadn't heard them or didn't care. He was staring at the assorted blades. "They fit together, don't they?" he asked but, again, he didn't listen to the answer. Instead, he stood in front of the table, running fingers over the blades, picking them up and examining them.
"Got it figured out yet, Spike?" Zack crossed his arms and tucked his thumbs into his armpits.
"Um," blue eyes flicked his way, "well, this is obviously the first tsurugi," he touched the largest piece, "and I think this one is second." Fingers ran over the blade Zack found first. "I need to play around with them a bit, before I know the exact sequence." His voice trailed off. He pulled out a chair, sat down and put his head nearly on the table in order to look at the edges more closely. If he had looked up, he would have seen both Tifa and Zack working hard to contain their amusement.
"You found it in the lake?" Sephiroth repeated, strong fingers squeezing the bridge of his nose as if to forcibly block any incipient headaches.
"Yeah, Tifa and I figured, since his old one blew up maybe this was supposed to be his replacement." Zack said teasingly. "The planet sure must want us to continue."
"You think?" Sephiroth returned sarcastically. "I don't suppose it provided some way for him to carry all those blades?"
'Uh," Zack rubbed the back of his head, "not that we saw."
Sephiroth didn't allow himself to sigh. He looked at all the blades on the table and pictured, very clearly, the fancy rig Cloud had been wearing in his 'house', just after all his aspects had fused back into himself. "That's alright. I have an idea of what we should do." The General was fairly confident that the intricate sword harness the Corporal had worn then would work perfectly now. He just hoped his technical skill was up to the challenge. "This is what we'll need..."
While the others scoured through the ruins for useable pieces of leather and leather-working tools, Cloud worked on assembling his new weapon. It took him a while to notice that Yazoo hadn't left with the rest but was standing near the table, watching him. A brief, but encompassing glance took in the young clone from boots to hair. "You can sit down it you like," Cloud offered before going back to the blades... his new weapon.
He didn't watch, but he was aware that the teen shifted unhappily before pulling out a chair. Vague memories came to him. They were faint, and accompanied by the smell of chemicals and antiseptics. The lab. Voices talking, him talking, berating some underling...
...
Just his voice was enough to cause fear and he wasn't even talking about him.
"The S-clones should be far more advanced than they are." Chair creaking, fingers tapping. Hojo was on the phone?
His beating heart caused him pain as it moved the blood around in his body.
"No more excuses. You're obviously incapable of completing the task."
Pain, everything was pain. Breathing was pain. Shallow breaths. Take only shallow breaths. Cold, so cold. Shivering hurt, try not to shiver.
"Don't bother. I'll be coming up there to get the project on track." He was leaving. It would be better while he was gone.
Tears. Crying in relief. Trying not to move. It would be better. It would be.
It still hurt to be alive.
...
He pulled in a sharp breath, a reminder that breathing didn't hurt anymore. He was healed. He was free.
And, unlike the young man in front of him, he wasn't alone.
"I'm sorry about your brothers, or rather that we met on opposite sides," he corrected, unwilling and almost unable to lie. He squirmed a little, "I wish it hadn't come down to use versus them." That wasn't a lie. The clone was silent. Cloud stole a peek at him. He was sitting, head tipped, arms wrapped around himself. His eyes were half closed, shuttered. The Corporal couldn't read what he was thinking; it was the alien cells in his body that let him know Yazoo was holding in grief.
"It was inevitable," he finally said.
Cloud looked up, catching the young man's gaze. It was odd seeing those cat-slit pupils in blue eyes and not green. He looked away. "Why was it inevitable?"
"Because Hojo hates you. Hates all of you. You ruined his best experiment, he said." Yazoo's voice was dispassionate, clinical, "He told us to bring you back if we could, or kill you. If we killed you, we were to bring back your bodies. You and Sephiroth, at least. Your dark-haired friend we could just kill."
Cloud wasn't really interested in what Hojo wanted. "Then what?"
"I imagine, he would've continued his experiments," the clone's tone said he was talking to an idiot.
The blond had to repress a shudder at the thought at being back in that man's control. He found a trigger on the small blade that made the wheel-lock mechanism turn. He played with it until he was sure his voice would be steady. "I meant, what would've happened to you?" Yazoo opened his mouth but nothing came out. He frowned and drew back. He turned his head to the side. Cloud recognized the defensive move for what it was—he'd certainly used it enough when he was younger.
"I don't suppose they encouraged questions," he said softly.
Yazoo snorted, but said nothing.
Like most times when he tried to talk to new people outside his role as a corporal, Cloud couldn't think of anything to say, not for comfort or even conversation. He sighed silently and went back to the array of blades.
By the time the rest returned, he had figured out how to put the sword together, and take it apart, and put it together again. He'd discovered that a couple of the blades would form a smaller weapon than when all six were used. And he'd given it a name: Tsurugi—broadsword. It was frigging massive when fully assembled, wider even than Zack's Buster, which was the biggest sword Cloud had ever seen before this one. He'd even gone outside to swing it around a bit.
It was a good weapon.
When Sephiroth saw him outside doing some katas, he gave the items he'd found to Zack and went over to the blond. To hone the Corporal's technique, he said. To have an excuse to hold the blond close, everybody else thought.
Zack smirked. "I should be the one training him," he called after the silver-haired swordsman, "I've got the broadsword. You've got that pencil-thin thing that disappears if you turn it sideways!" But he was talking to empty air.
Tifa walked past him, "I guess you're stuck making supper again."
Zack grunted, "Not even a question of that or would you rather I let Vincent do it? The guy doesn't even eat!" and the SOLDIER followed her over the bridge.
After supper, Cloud showed them how Tsurugi worked and Sephiroth and Tifa took measurements of the blades. Then, and Zack wasn't sure how it had happened, everyone was ushered outside for training in hand-to-hand fighting techniques led by Tifa and, of all people, Yazoo. Vincent didn't join the training but found himself a perch from which he could watch the action.
Watching the two of them punch, kick, duck and bounce back, Zack saw a form of movement he'd never excel in. He wasn't graceless, far from it, but his training was in the sword and it was a completely different set of movements. He was okay with that, happy in fact. His contentment with his chosen fighting style didn't get him out of the training.
"Why am I doing this again?" he asked the air.
"Because I said so," was Sephiroth's flat, unarguable, reply.
"Oh yeah, that's why," he mocked, but he still formed a line in front of the little Nibelheimer with Cloud and Tseng beside him. When Sephiroth didn't step up to the line, Zack pointed out the unfairness of it.
Green eyes flashed. "Yazoo," the General called, unhooking his sword harness. The clone turned toward him, eyebrow raised. "You are fully augmented, yes?" The boy nodded. The General handed Masamune to his SiC. "Very good. Fight me." And they did. Around the house, through the trees and over the lake in an unceasing blur of motion. It ended when Sephiroth hit the clone solidly in the chest with the heels of both hands and sent him flying back, nearly through the house. Tifa put up her hand in the universal signal to stop and, surprisingly, both the silver-haired men obeyed.
Neither one of them was even breathing hard although Yazoo had a hand pressed soothingly over his ribs. Beside him, he heard Cloud swallow. He bent over and whispered, "No sneaking off tonight, Spike. I can't cover for you two anymore."
Cloud looked up at him, a cute little flush of embarrassment on his cheeks. Despite that, his eyes narrowed and he whispered back, "What if we take you with us?" Then he licked his lips... slowly.
It was Zack's turn to swallow. Cloud smirked.
"You have something amusing to share, Corporal?"
Sephiroth's voice wiped the blond's face clean. "No, Sir!" he barked in his best innocent trooper voice.
"Excellent. Then we can continue." And continue they did, until the light under the already dim canopy was nearly gone.
While the others were working on their stances under Tifa's strict guidance, Vincent appeared next to Sephiroth. "A very interesting demonstration, General," he said.
"It served its purpose," the General agreed calmly.
"And was its purpose to show the Commander how well you can fight... or the clone?"
A small smile tipped Sephiroth's lip up. "Right now, Yazoo is off-balance and uncertain. This has made him somewhat meek and deferential. Soon he will regain his confidence. He will become arrogant and will desire to dominate and control his environment."
Vincent's eyebrow went up in surprise. "You know this for certain?"
Again that small smile flitted across the General's face. "He is my clone and Jenova's descendent. There is no way he will not be arrogant and controlling." A sideways look at the gunman. "And you're not a very relaxed person either. If you believe in genetics, we were doomed from the start."
The implications of the General's statement stunned the gunman into momentary stillness. Was he… was Sephiroth acknowledging the possibility that Vincent was his father? Should he ask, he wondered. He looked at the silver-haired warrior who was looking back at him, lightly mocking. Perhaps another time.
"You were establishing a pecking order," the ex-Turk stated instead.
Sephiroth nodded, letting the topic drop. "If I establish my authority now, then maybe I can avoid having to kill him later." The statement was calm, without feeling and Vincent knew that the General would kill his clone if he threatened their party. "Besides, I wanted to know if Hojo had improved on the original," Sephiroth added. It was an incredibly bitter thing to say, yet it was said in a very light-hearted tone. Again, Vincent was stunned into speechlessness: such a short sentence to contain so much painful history. He decided to stay there, in speechlessness. He seemed to be better at it than conversation.
In silence, he, and his son, watched Tifa and Yazoo work the others into a semblance of competence. Tseng had the advantage, of course. As a Turk, he'd been trained in unarmed combat. Surprisingly, Cloud was better at it than the Commander. At least it was surprising until the blond reminded the others that regular troops were trained in hand-to-hand.
The kept at it until the light began to fade and Tseng started to limp again. They took turns cleaning up, washing their bodies in the mako-enriched lake. They used untainted water Vincent had hauled up from the village for the rest. Then they went up the spiral hallway to where the mattresses were laid out. By unspoken consent, the party placed Sephiroth and Cloud to one side; the only bit of privacy the open structure could give them. Zack stood, bouncing, farther down the line, waiting to act as a living heat pad for the two non-augmented members of their party. At least he stood there until Tifa pushed him in next to Cloud.
"We'll be warm enough, Zack," she said, "no need to be noble." Tseng, she placed next to Zack. Then she grabbed Yazoo, who looked even more uncertain than Zack, and placed him at the end behind her. "Don't worry," she told him, "I'll make sure Tseng doesn't hurt you."
Yazoo drew himself up, head tipping gracefully to the side in a move that was somehow both arrogant and threatening. Before he could say anything, Sephiroth cut in, "It's called 'teasing', Yazoo. You'll have to get used to it as Tifa has obviously been spending too much time with the Commander."
"Hey," Zack protested without heat.
With a casual flip of his hair and a shrug, the young clone gracefully folded himself onto the mattress in front of the dark-eyed fighter. His pose was ruined when he squeaked. She'd pulled him in to spoon with her. "Better heat retention this way," she said but Zack knew she'd done it because his brothers weren't here to hold him... or maybe so she'd know if he tried to kill them all in their sleep. Either option was possible with her.
"Or maybe it really is because it's warmest this way?" she said.
"Fuck!"
Yazoo whispered, "Does he always do that?"
"You get used to it," Tifa whispered back.
The SOLDIER fell asleep to the feel of Cloud's silent giggling.