Happy Wednesday! I hope you're all having a great week so far :) Here's another example of a chapter I had far too much fun writing - sorry in advance!
As always, huge thank you to silver-doe287 for editing the chapter and her constant reassurances :)
Enjoy!
It was still raining.
Rain pounded against the mud in a mournful song, one Tifa could hardly make out through the roaring in her ears. Her rifle was slack in her hands. Water plastered her dark hair against her. Aerith, standing nearby, watched on with concern as Loz's voice bounced, echoed, ricocheted in her mind:
So no, I ain't a Simmel.
But your husband sure is.
She blinked; rain dripped from her lashes and trailed down her cheeks like tears. "No," she whispered just as lightning cracked across the sky. Thunder quickly followed, a terrible boom that rattled her brittle resolve. "Just… no." Another flash, and shadows cut deep beneath her cheekbones. "Cloud… He ain't a Simmel. It's not possible. I would have known."
He would have told me.
Loz's smile was a slice of white teeth and bloodied gums. "Then you don't know your husband very well."
"I know him well enough."
Aerith's shoes squelched as she took a half-step back. Her green eyes darted between the two of them. "Tifa, maybe..."
"You sure about that?" Loz interrupted.
Tifa's grip tightened on the gun. "I know him," she said again. The world was suddenly saturated in white as lightning once again flashed, and its crooked branches danced in her vision as she continued, "And I trust him far more than I trust you. Cloud is not a Simmel, and nothing – nothing – you say will ever make me change my mind."
Thunder cracked against the land.
At some point between one sentence and the next, she realized in a distant sort of way that her gun had become soaked by the rain, and that guns – or more specifically, gunpowder – didn't fire when wet. But strangely enough, she couldn't bring herself to care. At least she still had her knife. She had also wised up a bit, too. It had been a mistake to aim for Loz's chest last time. Thistime, she'd aim for his eyes. Nothing survived getting a dagger through the eye socket, devil or otherwise.
Rain continued to fall. Tifa stared, unblinking, at the broken man tied against the old oak tree. "But you haven't explained why the hell you came here," she finally said. "What did you want, exactly? We have no money and nothing of value – well, nothin' besides the horse, and she clearly ain't here. So, why?" Lightning whipped against the bruised sky. "Why come?"
Loz's expression brightened; clearly her question delighted him, though she couldn't figure out why. "What? I already told you that. First thing I said, in actuality. Didn't you hear me when I walked in?"
When Tifa didn't immediately reply, Aerith took a step forward. "Well, say it again," she demanded.
Loz's slitted gaze flicked to her. "Or what?" he asked, and Aerith's reply was to level her shotgun at him – never mind the water streaming down its barrel. He laughed after a disbelieving pause. "You gonna shoot me?"
"Wouldn't be the first time," Aerith calmly replied.
Loz chuckled as if she had told him a joke, and not like she had reminded him that she, in fact, was the reason his undead chest was filled with lead. "Fine, fine. I'll tell you." He settled back against the tree before turning back to Tifa. Their gazes met, and she fought against the urge to take another step back. There was a strange luminescence to his eyes, an unnatural glow that lit the slashed pupils with a broken halo, and fear was acid against her tongue. "Darlin'," he continued with a crooked smirk, "I came here looking for you."
And just like that, his earlier statement hit her:
I'm lookin' for someone. You're Tifa Simmel, correct?
Loz's eyes burned hotter as recollection flickered across Tifa's expression. "And here you are," he finished. "Right in front of me."
Thunder rumbled and, buried within its groan, she thought she heard the neigh of a horse. Her lips formed a small o.
"Tifa," Aerith said, her green eyes narrowed against the storm, "I think we should -"
A horse squealed, effectively cutting her off, and time seemed to slow as Tifa glanced over her shoulder. A white stallion was riding towards them. Dripping stalks of wheat were trampled beneath its brisk gallop, and on its back, a rider clad in black became haloed by a flash of lightning. The rider reached for something on their hip – a pistol, Tifa realized with a small gasp – and aimed it towards them. Thunder boomed as color bled from her face.
He wasn't working alone, she realized with twisted dread, and her body started moving too slow, too slow, too slow -
- Aerith -
- and a fist slammed into the base of her skull.
Someone screamed her name; with her next breath, she was on the ground without recalling the fall. Stars danced in her vision like fireflies in the night and, blinking, she slowly rolled her head to the side. Rain dripped into her eyes. Bits of torn rope draped the ground in front of her. Her gaze climbed; then she was looking at a pair of leather-clad legs and, higher still, a smile made of broken glass.
"Good night, sweetheart," Loz said. His shadow draped over her like a cloak as he took a step forward.
Rain pattered mud against her numb lips. "L – Let… Let Aerith..."
The rain stopped as Loz stood above her. A boot was lifted over her head.
"Aer… ith…"
The boot fell.
A shotgun blast echoed in the dark.
And all that remained was the thunder.
Barret Wallace, the mayor and sheriff of Corel, read and reread the note that he had found lying on his office desk, but the words didn't change no matter how many times he read it:
If you want the money back,
come to the old well outside Corel by sunset.
I'll be waiting.
- C. S.
The paper crinkled as Wallace's grip tightened. The money, of course, was the five thousand gil that he had been saving for Marlene's schooling. As for the signature, C. S….
Cloud Strife, he knew.
Barret's gaze darkened and he glanced out the dusty window. There was no one else on the road, with the only exception being the silver-haired bounty hunter that was staying at the inn. He had a funny name that sort of rhymed with badge – Kad…something-or-other – and when the man caught Wallace's gaze, he smiled and tipped his hat before continuing on his way. Wallace returned the gesture, trying to keep his glowering to a minimum. But the moment the bounty hunter had disappeared around the corner, he shoved the note in his pocket and grabbed his shotgun on his way out the door.
He was going to kill that Strife kid.
Cloud squinted into the horizon. Beyond Corel's stained-glass sunset and the surrounding mountain's crooked peaks, he thought that he could see a gray smear lying heavily on the horizon. He hoped the gray didn't mean that a storm had settled over his land. The last thing he needed was all of the fields waterlogged; after all, the wheat was near ready for harvest, and though a few wet days wouldn't impact their roots too much, anything more than that would damage…
… What the hell am I thinking? Cloud tore his gaze away from the west, his lips tugged in a crooked smile, before squinting towards the Corel's cracked desert. Dust devils whipped across the barren landscape and brambles tumbled across parched ground. Wispy clouds were torn apart by a wild wind. Heat rippled off the sand in waves, and in their mirage, he thought he could see a familiar shack in the distance. His mind filled in the details he couldn't quite make out: the missing planks in the walls, the worn steps leading up to the front door, the door itself dangling by a single hinge. He thought he could hear glass shattering somewhere inside. A cry bounced within his skull.
His heart stuttered, and he shifted his gaze to Rain instead. "Ready?" he asked her.
Rain's ears flicked. He didn't know what that meant anymore, but he wanted to think that she was.
"...Okay." He put his boot in the stirrup and swung his leg around until he was seated comfortably in her saddle. He then reached behind him without looking, and he choppily exhaled when his fingertips brushed the very full saddlebag. Hidden beneath his spare shirt and dried goods was all five thousand gil; he had counted it twice back in the stable, just to make sure it was all there. He knew Sephiroth would know the difference. After all, Sephiroth always seemed to know everything. He even knew about Tifa, which Cloud still had trouble wrapping his mind around.
Apparently, moving to a nameless plot of land in the middle of gods-forsaken nowhere hadn't been enough.
Cloud muttered a curse under his breath, something creative and with multiple syllables, and pointedly did not glance down at the dagger hidden in his boot. Of course, the dagger was a decoy. He purposefully hid it in a place that Sephiroth would notice but wouldn't suspect was a ploy, and the weapons that he was actually counting on were the two unassuming razors he had sewn into his shoes, right underneath the soft leather on the soles. The razors weren't very long – maybe an inch wide at best – but an inch was all he needed to reach the neck's carotid artery. Two arteries, two razors.
Efficient.
Resolve hardened his features as he gently guided Rain towards the edge of town. 'Meet at the old well at sunset,' Sephiroth's note had read, and that's where he was heading now. He knew where the old well was, and he followed the familiar path back towards the mountains… towards home. His and Rain's shadows stretched thin and spindly behind them. A dry riverbed snaked alongside the road. The cattle's bellowing rose up from the nearby pastureland and he listened to their song, quiet and aching, as they trotted along the path.
By the time the sun set fully, this would all be over. Sephiroth would be dead, one way or another, and he would be the one to make sure it happened.
Some could argue that you need to die too, a sudden thought murmured, that your brother didn't do all of that thieving and murdering alone.
Doesn't matter. Cloud could taste grave dirt on his tongue. He deserves it. He could feel his nails breaking as they scraped against pinewood. He deserves to die. He could see the sunlight, peeking between the wooden planks, being blotted out with earth. He needs to die. He could hear his own voice desperately begging for a second chance. He will die.
I will kill him.
Cloud grit his teeth and clicked his heels into Rain. She snorted at him before galloping, her strides powerful and effortless, her strong legs kicking up dust behind them. But he didn't care – let the dust rise. Let Sephiroth see him coming. It wouldn't matter anyway.
Eventually Cloud and Rain turned left off the main road, the one that led back to the Corel mountains, and the old well came into view soon after. It was a lonesome thing: large stones formed a circular foundation, and jutting up from the stones were two wooden beams with a single plank laid across them. The rusty tin can that dangled from the plank's center creaked and moaned with every dry breeze. Given how poor the well's condition was, he was surprised that it was still standing.
Cloud slowed Rain to a trot as he swept his gaze across the land, eyes narrowed against the waning sunlight, as he searched for any sign of Sephiroth. He couldn't see his elder brother, but that didn't mean much. There were plenty of places to hide: within half-collapsed shacks, behind granite boulders, within the thorny brambles scattered between them.
And damn if that didn't make Cloud nervous. Jumpy, even. He worked better when the enemy was standing right before him, but one who was hidden in the shadows? It made him want to start shooting and not stop until he hit something soft. But he contained that feeling, that energy, that anxiety festering within him, and he coddled it, nurtured it, honed it until it became something sharp in his hand. This is what he needed to kill Sephiroth. It wasn't about the weapon; it was about the motivation, and he didn't know if he was eager, excited, terrified, or a combustible mixture of all three.
Probably all three...
No – definitely all three.
Cloud slid off Rain, his hands trembling from the weight of it all, and dust clouded his boots the moment he hit the ground. His muscles protested wildly at the harsh movement, but his expression remained blank as he once again surveyed the surrounding land. Sephiroth is here, he knew. He could feel his brother's cold stare digging into him like a knife twisting against an open wound. That feeling was something that he could never forget, not even after all these years.
"Well?" Cloud's voice sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet of the desert. "I'm here."
For a long while, there was no reply. The well's tin can squealed in the breeze. A small lizard scuttled on top of a rock before licking its eye. A tumbleweed bounced along the dusty path before falling into the ditch and becoming trapped, trembling in the wind, unable to escape its sandy prison. Cloud watched it roll up and down the walls, its thin fibers groaning against one another.
But then a twig snapped.
His head jerked up as a new shadow stretched out from behind one of the collapsed shacks, and a figure quickly followed: tall, lanky, with tied-back white hair and a smile created to make stars fall. Sephiroth. His half-unbuttoned shirt exposed the scars criss-crossing his chest; some were a thick coil of angry red, others were silver cuts as thin as a knife's edge, but every single one told a story of how he had survived thus far.
All of a sudden, the blades sewn into Cloud's boots seemed far flimsier than they had this morning.
But he shoved that thought aside, and instead adopted a cocky, half-assed grin. "Took you long enough," he said with a hand on his hip. "Any longer, an' I figured I'd have to leave an' try again tomorrow."
Sephiroth hummed in a low rumble. "Cloud. Well, aren't you early. I'm a little surprised. Given our last encounter, I didn't expect you to be so eager to meet me again." Cloud's expression darkened a fraction as his cheek smarted. "Tell me: Were you able to accomplish what I asked? Or did you come here for… another reason?"
Cloud's heart jolted, but he schooled his expression into tight neutrality. Without a word, he opened his saddlebags and pulled out a single wad of gil. Tossing it to Sephiroth, he said, "You didn't tell me that the mayor of Corel was also the town's sheriff."
Sephiroth seemed amused by this. "Did it matter?
"Not particularly."
"Then why would I tell you?" Cloud had no immediate answer for this. Sephiroth, having found the gil agreeable, lightly continued, "As long as we have worked together, Cloud, have I purposefully withhold information from you?" His eyes flashed; his smile didn't waver. "Have I ever wronged you?"
Cloud felt a tic work in his jaw. "Do I have to answer?"
"Hmm… well, I suppose not. But well done, Cloud." In a smooth motion, he slid the bills into the leather pouch that was strapped to his thigh. "You did some good work. Between you and me, there were some of us who did not think that you were still… capable," he said delicately, "and that your skills had dulled over the years."
Cloud's gaze narrowed. "Us?"
"That's right. Us." Sephiroth's eyes flicked up to meet his own; his green slits were luminous, as if they were lit from somewhere deep within. A shiver coursed down Cloud's spine at the sight of them. "That night, didn't I tell you that I have found a new family? And as I recall," he suddenly added, "you told me that you couldn't live this life again – that you couldn't hurt or steal again. And yet, here we are. Now that wasn't very difficult, was it?"
"This is a one-time thing."
"Is it?" Sephiroth asked. "Is that what you truly believe, or is that what you're deluding yourself into thinking? Tell me, little brother -"
"Don't call me that," Cloud hissed.
"- didn't you think it was odd that you didn't encounter any monsters on your journey?" Sephiroth continued, "Didn't you find it strange that, though you traveled through both the Corel mountains and the desert, you didn't encounter any hostility? That you didn't lose a single one of your cattle? That you didn't see a single monster?""
Cloud's look was venom. "Besides you."
Sephiroth's smile turned brittle. "You'll quickly learn that I am not a monster, Cloud."
"That's not what it looks like from over here."
"Ah… You anger for your wife, I assume?" And when Cloud's expression shifted into something dark and twisted, he smiled before continuing, "She's fine, I assure you. You held up your end of the bargain, and no harm will come to her – I swear it."
"That's not good enough."
"It has to be, for now. But, answer the question. Did it not cross your mind, even once?" Sephiroth asked. "That your little trip east went too smoothly?"
Cloud's hands clenched into tight fists. No, it had crossed his mind – several times, in fact. He had thought that it was near miraculous that they didn't lose a single member of the herd despite traveling so far with only two riders. He thought that maybe luck was on his side. He thought that he was finally catching a break.
How stupid of him.
"You," Cloud hissed. His fingers itched for his gun. "You killed everything between here and home, didn't you?"
Sephiroth hummed, pleased. "I did."
"But… why? Why the hell would you -"
"To help you, of course," Sephiroth interrupted. "What could you possibly do without me?"
Cloud sharply inhaled as memories flashed – her carmine eyes, her smile, her laugh, her white dress in a dusty church, their rings – and something snapped within him, something that sounded like a gunshot and tasted a lot like blood. "I had done everything without you,"he spat out between clenched teeth.
With his next breath, his pistol was in his hand and aimed at Sephiroth's chest. Sephiroth had already pulled his gun – Cloud couldn't figure out when – and two gunshots rang into the air. Rain neighed behind him, a sawblade of shrieking noise. Dirt hailed down from a nearby shack. A lizard crawled out of a hole to lick its eye, then scuttled right back inside.
Sephiroth continued to stand, completely unhurt and infinitely amused. Cloud blinked, his eyebrows knotted together in profound confusion. How? Sephiroth should have been shot, Cloud knew that he hadn't missed; and then, with his next breath, he realized that he hadn't been shot either. That also struck him as strange – Sephiroth had never passed up a chance to put a bullet in him before – but his elder brother's gun wasn't even pointed in his direction. Instead, it was pointed at the nearby ridge. Curses echoed up from somewhere behind it.
"You were followed," Sephiroth said delicately.
Cloud didn't respond, only fired another shot. Again, and again, and again he fired, and this time, he didn't miss once. Red misted the air and warmth splattered his face. The disjointed flashes lit the harsh contours around his eyes. His teeth were bared; he tasted dirt. Every harsh pop sent adrenaline bursting within him like firecrackers.
He's dead he's dead he's dead he's dead he's dead
And yet – when the dust settled, the echoes faded, and Cloud's harsh breathing calmed – nothing had changed. But no, that wasn't quite right. Very little had changed: Sephiroth was still grinning, but his expression had shifted from amusement to a shade of disappointment. He was still standing, but now his pistol was pointed at Cloud instead of the ridge. He was still breathing, but now rivulets of blood trickled into his white shirt, staining it red, before trailing down his pants and into the dirt. Four bloody rivers; four gun shots. Slitted, luminous eyes frowned down at him.
Cloud's mind could only churn out a single word: "Monster."
It was suddenly difficult to breathe.
"I told you before, Cloud." Sephiroth lightly tugged at his shirt, frowning slightly at the ruined fabric, before turning his attention back to Cloud. "I'm not the monster here. In fact..." He smiled again, bloody and crazed, before adding:
"I'm worse."
"You addle-headed… monkey-toed arsehole," Wallace muttered in between pained gasps. "Didn't I say ta keep pressure on it?"
Barret Wallace, after getting shot in the shoulder, had managed to crawl back and prop himself against one of the many granite boulders that dotted the top of the ridge. The wound looked, in a single word, nasty: the bullet hadn't gone all the way through, and now it was stuck somewhere inside his shoulder. But Zack wasn't too concerned; the way Wallace was cussing, he figured that the older man was going to pull through just fine.
Besides, there were other things on his mind right now.
Wallace exhaled a harsh puff of air. "Well, Fair? Ya listenin' ta me? Cripes, you're plumb-awful at this. Is your family tree a shrub, boy? Do you have molasses 'tween your ears instead of brains?"
"Would you shut your mouth?" Zack fired back, though unlike Wallace, he kept his voice to a tight whisper. "You're gonna to be fine. Bullet didn't hit anything vital. Hurts like hell, I'm sure, but you ain't gonna die."
Wallace looked surprised by this revelation. "No?"
"No," Zack snapped, and then forced himself to take deep breaths. He was losing his temper. He never lost his temper – well, no, that was a lie. Back when he had been a Ranger, he had lost his temper when he found some inebriated members of his unit shooting cans of beans they threw in the fire. He had threatened to put them in the fire for wasting precious resources.
But this was different. This wasn't a can of beans or a few bullets – this was Cloud.
Wallace watched him. Having realized that he wasn't going to die, he now seemed far more interested in what Zack was contemplating. "Well?" he finally said when Zack flicked his eyes towards him. "You believe me now?"
Zack resisted the urge to spit in the mud. He hadn't believed Wallace earlier – not when the mayor had shown him Cloud's note, not when they rode out here, not when they hunkered down on the ridge and started their long wait. He still had a hard time believing what he saw, and he wasn't sure what was worse: Cloud talking to Sephiroth Simmel and proving that he had stolen Wallace's gil, or Sephiroth calling Cloud his little brother.
Zack squeezed his eyes shut and thought, Was everything a lie?
No – no, that wasn't it. That couldn't be it. He remembered when Cloud first showed up at the Rangers; back then, he had just been a scrawny kid with a foul mouth who had nothing to lose. But then he had… found something, a meaning, a purpose, and he slowly lost that rough edge. First he stopped hoarding food in his saddle bags. Eventually he started joining everyone around the fire. Then he had laughed for the first time in the presence of others, just a chuckle that surprised him as much as it surprised everyone else, and then he frowned for a solid week afterwards just to prove that he wasn't the laughing type.
None of that had been a lie.
It took years, but he had learned how to make friends, how to open up, and how to smile and laugh without feeling lesser because of it. He had fallen love with a small town's bartender. Zack remembered that time – of looking the other way when Cloud disappeared for the day, of seeing his tab piled with whiskey that he never drank, whiskey he only ordered because then he could talk to her. It had been hilarious and he had been relentlessly teased. Zack distinctly remembering Cloud blackening someone's eye when the teasing went too far.
None of that had been a lie, either. Or had it, Zack wondered, and then he shook his head. No – impossible. He would have known. He would have.
He needed answers.
There must have been something written in his expression, because Wallace suddenly narrowed his gaze and said, between grunts of pain, "No. No, Fair. Don't be dumb."
"Dumb?" Zack almost laughed. "I ain't dumb – I'm fucking stupid." And then, before Wallace could snap a hand out to stop him, he faced the ridge and stood fully upright – hands raised in surrender, his heart lodged firmly in his throat – and shouted, "Cloud!"
Nearby, a startled bird suddenly took flight.
Cloud's name bounced up and down the valley walls. Each echo sent a stone of dread sinking deeper into Cloud's gut; not only because he recognized that voice, but also because he knew that now, nothing would ever be the same. Zack had seen him. There was no going back now.
"Cloud!" Zack shouted again, and Cloud saw him a moment later; he had stepped out from behind the ridge, brown hair black in the twilight, hands lifted as if saying, Don't shoot. From this distance Cloud couldn't make out the details on his face, but could all-too-easily imagine the disappointment there, the disgust, the horror.
It made Cloud want to find that shallow grave and climb right back into it.
"Cloud! The hell you doin', you half-wit gut wagon?" Zack continued. He pointedly ignored Sephiroth, whose front was streaked with red, and continued to watch Cloud. "Well? You gonna answer me, or we gonna just stand here?"
Cloud, eyes wide and lips parted in horror, could only stare, stare, and stare. All he could think of was that everything was over, that nothing would ever be the same. His mind swelled with that realization. It swelled until there wasn't room for anything else but regret and self-pity, and the notion that maybe – just maybe – if he had played his cards differently, if he had been a little more cautious, everything would have been okay in the end.
But okay was off the table now. Zack had caught him red-handed. He had become a witness, and Cloud knew what happened to those.
"Answer him," Sephiroth suddenly said. Cloud's breath hitched; he had, for just a moment, forgotten Sephiroth was standing right beside him. He glanced down and saw that Sephiroth was still holding his pistol. If he had been able to shoot a man behind the ridge…
… then there was no doubt in Cloud's mind that he wouldn't be able to shoot Zack as well. The realization had him going cold, and Sephiroth's order bounced around in his skull: Answer him, answer him, answer him.
Cloud sharply inhaled before glancing up at the ridge. "Zack," he called. He hated how thin his voice sounded. "What are you doing here?"
Zack choked. "What am I – What are you doing here? What are you doing?"
Making mistakes. "Making a deal."
"Why? What sort of deal? Cloud, if you're in trouble..."
"I'm not in trouble." Sephiroth knows about Tifa. "I want to be here." I have to protect her. I have to do this.
"That's not a good enough reason, and you know that."
You don't know anything. But Cloud could say nothing in response; his chest ached, his throat tightened, and the back of his eyes smarted something fierce. Zack didn't know anything because Cloud didn't tell him anything. He hadn't told anyone anything, and now, he was paying for it.
Everything is over, he thought again.
Nothing will ever be the same.
"Wasn't that a nice chat," Sephiroth murmured under his breath, and then he glanced to the right towards something. Cloud followed his gaze on instinct, and then he saw it; there, on top of a different ridge, he saw something glint in the waning twilight. It looked a lot like the scope of a gun.
Oh, Cloud initially, and dumbly, thought, we're not alone.
But his second thought was: Sephiroth is going to have Zack killed.
He slowly turned back to Zack, his mind tumbling on itself, as Zack shouted, "Why are you doing this? The hell am I s'posed to tell Tifa?"
Cloud's heart squeezed painfully. "Tell her," he said slowly, "not to keep the porch light on for me."
Sephiroth nodded approvingly and then turned back to the sniper on the hill. He made a quick gesture with his hands, one that Cloud noticed.
"Tell her – What? I ain't tellin' her that! You tell her -"
But Zack was interrupted by the sound of Cloud firing his sixth and final bullet, and Zack's shout devolved into a pained cry as the bullet tore through his thigh. Zack went down hard – Out of line of the sniper, Cloud thought with tight-throated relief – and quickly disappeared behind the ridge, cursing all the while.
"Cloud!" he screamed, but thankfully he didn't get back up.
There was no return shot.
Sephiroth hummed, pleased, as Cloud lowered his gun with a trembling grip. "Well," Sephiroth began, "not even I expected -"
Cloud saw red. He whirled, teeth bared and half feral, and grabbed the knife hidden in his boot before throwing it at Sephiroth. The blade arched through the air and by the time it sunk into Sephiroth's chest, Cloud had already ripped the two blades out of the soles of his shoes and was moving, a blur across the ground, a nonsensical shout ripping out of his throat.
A gunshot echoed in his ears.
He heard something tear. No, not heard it – felt it. He could feel a burning heat boring a hole through his chest as a bullet tore through. His eyes were wide; the world they saw was hazy. But he didn't stop. Didn't stop until he took another step, heard another gunshot, and then he was falling to his knees against his will.
The hell?
He blinked, slowly. Warmth sputtered from the wound and shock pulsed heavily through his veins, dulling his senses and making his heartbeat – pulsing thick and heavy in his ears – far, far too loud. He pressed a hand against his chest; red bubbled between his fingers and trickled down his hand. He stared down at it in confusion. When had he turned… He lifted his gaze. How did he…
Sephiroth let the used cartridges fall to the sand. "The last time we spoke, I did tell you that I wanted you on your knees," he said and took a step forward, uncaring that there was a knife buried in his chest. Cloud watched the hilt bob, uncomprehending, as Sephiroth stopped in front of him. His shadow draped across the kneeling man. "Now, all that's left is for you to repent. Perhaps if you do so, I'll consider saving your life… though you and I both know that you don't deserve it."
Saving my life? Cloud silently echoed, and then he realized – Oh.
I'm dying.
Cloud coughed and tasted copper. "I'd… rather… die… th – than accept… your help," he managed, and he spit red on the ground for emphasis. "Monster."
Sephiroth sighed, disappointed. "I already told you, Cloud – I'm not the monster here. But you'll see." He took another step closer, and a moment later Cloud felt the warm barrel of his pistol tap against his forehead. Its edges were rough. It smelled like gunpowder and iron. "You'll see soon enough."
Black trickled into the corner's of Cloud's vision. "Don't miss," he hissed between bloody teeth.
"I don't intent to," Sephiroth's serpentine voice replied.
And then there was a bang.
A burst of white light.
A thud.
A distant laugh.
And then there was nothing at all.
Friendly reminder that this story has an eventual happy ending T_T
Also, 99% of this chapter didn't follow my original outline so I'm going to have to redo the next chapter's plot. Whoops.
But anyway - until next time, have a wonderful rest of your day / week / month, and I wish you all nothing but the best :)
