Author's Note:

Thanks for the reviews! Numinious Alqua, those answers are coming, and I hope to fill your mind with many more questions!
Please review, everyone! I let this slip my mind for a long time! Keep me paying attention!

Chapter 5: Stoke the Fires

The rest of the day had been filled with a particularly awkward silence and though he made it a point to feed the two of them, the interaction between Sephiroth and Tifa was limited to dark looks and palpable discomfort. Neither of them slept that night, as he was not going to let her run off again and she was... well, he was Sephiroth and her guard wasn't going to drop so long as it was within her power to keep it up. Some time into the following day, he rose abruptly, grabbed his things and marched towards her, grasping her arm as if it were the strap of a bag and hoisting her to her feet.

"It's time for us to move."

"Us?" Tifa frowned sharply. "Why bring me along? You got your answers-"

"No, I didn't." He interrupted. "Not to my satisfaction, anyway." He had another reason, but neither his tone nor his expression gave even a hint of it. He had the strange feeling he was keeping her out of necessity, but he wasn't sure what his goal actually was. He began to walk to the mouth of the cave, pulling her along.

"Can you at least tell me where you're taking me?" Her tone was scarcely hiding her displeasure.

"Icicle Inn is nearby, and I have little desire to chase you if I have to go get food."

"Umm..." Tifa arched a brow at him, her pause in both voice and step caused him to also pause, turning to look at her as she continued. "I hate to break it to you, but you strike a pretty distinctive figure. I don't think you can walk into a town without... well, you're kinda the bogeyman now across Gaia. I'm pretty sure service is not gonna be excellent."

Instead of a dark look or a threat, or some dismissive comment, his brows furrowed as he considered what she said. Immediately, she regretting saying it. If he had taken her to Icicle Inn, people would have panicked and she could have made use of the distraction. People might have even jumped to save her. On the other hand, innocent people probably would have died. He took a deep breath that showed mild frustration.

"What do you suggest then?"

Her eyes widened. "Me? Umm... well, the..." She stopped, reconsidering what she was about to say. She decided to ask for more information. "What do you actually want to accomplish?" He didn't have an answer, so he deflected.

"Right now, I want a warm bed and shower." It wasn't dishonest, at least. He pondered for a moment. "I will grant you some boon if you assist me to this end."

"What sort of boon?" Her suspicion could not have been more obvious.

"Other than the same thing? I will release you unharmed once I learn what I wish to know." The gravity of the statement was not lost on her. It was the first time he had actually indicated that he might not kill her. He gave her time to make her decision, though he was sure it would come to be in his favor. After almost thirty seconds, she answered.

"Fine. One more thing though."

"What?" He was a bit surprised at her audacity. Her eyes tilted towards his hand squeezing her upper arm, before making eye contact with him.

"If you keep bruising me, people are going to ask questions and I'm a terrible liar." She high-fived herself internally at her flawless delivery of a demand. She had at least a little bit of ground, and she was going to investigate as carefully as possible just how much ground it was. Another internal celebration occurred when he relinquished his grip on her.

"If you run or betray me in any fashion, I will find another solution. I will be dissatisfied without the answers I seek, but I'll get over it." She offered a single nod, hiding the fear expertly and mentally marking the line that told her how far she could push.

"I'll have to go into town without you to get you a room..."

"I'll be watching. If we leave now, we'll reach the town shortly after dark."

She took the hint and resumed walking, broadening her step to make sure that he didn't have to slow down for her. He offered a flash of a smirk before moving along himself.

Vincent stared incredulously at the broken man on the hospital bed. Mako blue eyes tilted up towards gunman, and after a moment, flashed with recognition.

"Vincent? Is... Is that you?"

"It is... Cloud, what... what happened to you?"

"I've done something awful, I think."

Vincent gave a severe look but resisted the temptation to lay into the boy, silently urging him to elaborate.

"I can't talk about it here. Can you get me out of here? I think I need to speak to everybody." After a pause, Vincent sighed, grimacing a little at the smell of injury and sickness that emanated from the blonde, and offered a single nod.

"I'll see what I can do."

It was a few hours before Vincent got the call that the Shera had touched down just outside of town. It was only Cid, Reeve, and Yuffie, but more so, it was a place to take Cloud. Vincent checked him out of the hospital, disregarding the protests of the nurse, and placing him on a wheel chair, wheeled him out of the hospital to the ship just outside of the mining town. Wheeling past the stares of their companions, Vincent brought Cloud straight into the conference room on the ship. The others followed them in and Vincent urged them to sit.

"The hell happened to you?" Cid began, a little slack jawed. Yuffie interjected loudly

"Yeah Cloud, what-" But she was interrupted by Vincent.

"Let him explain." Reeve felt no need to repeat the inquiry, Cid and Yuffie had done so loudly enough. Reeve leaned in the listen closer. Cloud swallowed hard, bringing his remaining hand to his face.

"I found a way... a way to bring Aerith back... or so I thought. I went to the Forgotten Capital to speak to the Lifestream. I was sure I did everything right, but when I called for her, something happened. It was like a roar... a thousand voices all talking at once. I heard her voice, but I couldn't make out what she was saying. Everything flashed white, and I felt..." He paused, putting his hand to his chest, and steeling himself. "It was horrible. I don't know what came out... I didn't see it, but it touched me... and it was just... the fear I felt was unreal, and it came with white hot pain. I can't even describe it." He swallowed convulsively. "And then it was gone, and the light faded, and I was torn to bits. Whatever came out... Nothing had ever scared me like that. It was almost like an unnatural fear. It makes me a little sick just thinking about it."

"Wait..." Yuffie scratched her head. "So you tried to bring Aerith back from the dead, went blind for a bit, got scared, and got tore up? Am I the only one really confused here?"

"I don't know what to make of this." Reeve finally spoke.

"I don't either, but I don't like it." Cid leaned back in his chair, frowning deeply at this new information.

"This unsettles me further..." Vincent began, taking a deep breath to steel himself for the hail of questions and anger from the others. At least Barrett wasn't present... that would be disastrous. "A few days ago, I was in Edge, and I ran into Tifa. She couldn't sleep, said she missed Cloud, and had too much energy, so I suggested we go look for him." Every face in the room turned towards Vincent, and his stomach did a little back flip.

"We went to the Forgotten Capital. We weren't there long before we were overrun by monsters."

"Monsters?" Reeve interjected. "I thought the Forgotten Capital was cleared."

"So did I." Vincent started again. "We got separated. She was doing well, but I lost sight of her, and was attacked by Hojo."

"How many times do we gotta kill that guy?" Yuffie wrinkled her nose.

"I thought the same thing. I also thought he was a frail old man, but he was faster and stronger than ever, and I was defeated. Only with the aid of Chaos did I escape, and I would not have fled the city if I had say in the matter..." The gravity of the statement started to dawn on the parties present, save Reeve who had heard it already.

"So..." Cloud looked half confused and half angry. "So you left her there alone?"

"I... yes, and I am sorry. I was gravely wounded, and unconscious here for six days. I fear the worst, and beg your help."
He was greeted with a long silence, finally broken by the chipper voice of Yuffie, offering in good spirits, a grim warning.

"Barret is probably gonna beat you up."

Sephiroth was impressed by Tifa's acting. She was purchasing all kinds of clothing, claiming to be a tourist who underestimated how cold it actually was. She used a pseudonym- calling herself Caia Amargan in order to get the room. She was warm and polite but not memorable-like a million other girls, but entirely unlike herself. When she was told there was only one vacancy, she didn't even flinch. She indicated that she was meeting her boyfriend, and one room was all she needed anyway. She paid for the room and took the key with a smile, and moved up the stairs with her bags. She entered the room, stopped at the little closet near the door, and set the bags down. She was startled when she stood up again and Sephiroth was standing there, half smirking at her. She huffed, a charming little display of discomfort, before leaning down, grabbing something out of one of the shopping bags and throwing it at him.

He was irritated for an instant, until he realized that the gray and blue patterned fabric was a cloak, not unlike the ones popular here, warm and fur lined and with a big hood that was good for maintaining anonymity. He arched both eyebrows, glancing at her as she walked past and eyed the bathroom. He pondered a minute. If she did well and he rewarded her, she would be more cooperative in the future. His mind made up, he spoke.

"You are free to use the shower first, if you like. You've done well."

She mumbled a "thank you" before grabbing a towel and a change of clothes and fleeing into the washroom. She turned on the water and began to undress while she waited for it to warm up. Detangling her hair with her fingers and looking in the mirror, she came to the sudden realization that she was naked, and the thing she feared more than anything else in the whole world was on the other side of the door. She steeled herself from panic and stepped into the shower, relishing a moment in the water beating down her as she wet her hair. Moving like clockwork, she shampooed and rinsed her hair, but as she began soaping her skin, the dam burst. Stoicism gave way to a font of tears. She dissolved a moment, a single audible sob escaping before she gathered herself again, stepping into the stream to rinse her face and body.

Sephiroth stared at the door. The logical thing to do would be to shower with her. It would let him get cleaned up and allow him to keep an eye on her, but his thoughts had been wandering. Could he keep his composure in such an intimate position? It didn't matter. It would sabotage his efforts. If he violated her, even if only in her mind, what little ground he had made would be lost.

Wait.

What ground?

What was he even doing?

He sat down on the bed and stared at the door, trying to solidify his goal. He rose from the dead in his natural state. He had been captured by Hojo and Jenova, but they didn't (or wouldn't) touch him. It wasn't their way. He had pondered in that time in captivity that he would be right back where he started- having close to no control over his own thoughts, having such rage and disdain amplified a thousand fold. He didn't even know how he really felt about what he learned in Nibelheim... if he could even really remember what it was. He knew that Jenova took advantage of him when he was upset. She had him convinced that he was angry at everything; that his revenge needed no single target, but that all deserved his wrath.

He was confident that he never would have leapt to such an extreme on his own. His anger would have had direction. He wasn't a saint by any stretch of the imagination, but above all, he was pragmatic. Everything he had ever known of his charge had involved things he had done in the grip of madness. He carefully considered the slaughter in Nibelheim. Though it was an exhilarating release of long pent up stress, he pondered whether or not he would have lashed out the same if Jenova hadn't been whispering to him from his blood.

"I've always felt since I was small that I was different from the others... special, in some way.

but this... not like this!"

He said it, but he couldn't remember what made him say it. Thinking hard, he had been shocked- disturbed even, but he couldn't imagine anything making him so angry as to burn down an entire town that he kind of liked. What did he like about it? What could he remember about it?

The guide. A girl who lead him up the mountain to the reactor. She'd barely said anything to him. She did the job she was hired to do, but didn't fawn over him like others did. He remembered her face stained with tears, contorted with her rage and despair as she charged up the stairs at him, brandishing his own sword against him. At the time, it was inconsequential... something beneath his notice. He took it from her and cut her down. He moved on. It wasn't until she attacked him with it again that he realized it was strange. No one ever wielded his sword. Not even the people he trained with. She didn't wield it very well, but she wielded it nonetheless.

He remembered thinking about it even if only briefly. He believed, or Jenova believed that the puppet was manufactured as a clone of Sephiroth after the burning of Nibelheim, and that all of the puppet's memories were made up, something manifested by Jenova out of Tifa's memory. He remembered trying to convince Tifa of the same thing. She was enough of a presence in his mind that either he or Jenova used her existence to fill Jenova's adversary with doubt. Not so much later, she did something Jenova had been very proud of him for doing; she traversed the Lifestream. She swam through it and restored the puppet's mind. She navigated through the Lifestream and maintained herself in a way that only he ever had. When she and the puppet fell in, even her own companions thought she had perished, but she had made the puppet whole and then carried him out as if the Lifestream was just as harmless as dawn fog.

As the puppet and all his companions bore down him, he could recall her among them, but only her. He considered what this meant, and was a little taken aback by the gravity of it. He couldn't let her go even if she did answer his questions. She was the only thing that was real that he knew. She proved that he was a real person who had lived. Perhaps only she was the reason he hadn't broken into a million pieces yet; some kind of rock to keep him grounded. He realized that he was clinging to her in his own way while he was scrambling to find a sense of self. He did his best to squelch the thoughts of what might become of him if he killed her. This was unfortunate.