Kingdom Hearts

Whatever Lies Beyond This Morning

By Lucky_Ladybug

Notes: The characters aren't mine and the story is! I wrote many KH fics about Sephiroth, Cloud, and Zack back in the day, but long before Birth By Sleep came out with its official canon KH Zack. After years, I finally looked into Birth By Sleep and discovered that while I need to adjust a few things about my old Kingdom Hearts story ideas to use Birth By Sleep, in other ways it actually supports some very vital elements I came up with. That excited me greatly. So here is a short, experimental piece showcasing what remains and what was changed to make a second Kingdom Hearts timeline. My very first Kingdom Hearts story, The Darkness Will Rise From the Deep, still fits without anything needing changing. I am unsure, however, if this piece takes place before or after it.

The winged man was sitting on a hill overlooking the town, lost deep in thought. His deep blue wings were spread out around him, almost the color of the rocks in one way and yet a brighter blue that stood out more in another.

This particular spot was not likely to have any significance to anyone else, but it certainly did for him. He returned at times, remembering the dark events that had taken place on this spot.

Zack. . . .

He had first seen the boy at the Olympus Coliseum, desperately pleading to be trained as a hero. And he had watched from the shadows, seeing Zack's potential and wanting him to obtain his wish. Phil had never been interested. Once that fact had been clearly not about to change, he had taken matters into his own hands. He had swooped down, taken Zack with him, and left that world to train Zack himself.

Zack had been absolutely shocked. Sephiroth had been his idol, the one Zack had aspired to be like, and now Sephiroth himself would train him?! It had been a far more amazing dream than he ever could have reached with Phil.

For so long they had worked together, protecting their homeworld and others from threats such as the Heartless. But there were always more Heartless. Sephiroth had grown weary of the neverending swarms, finally determining that there must be a type of magic out there somewhere that would allow them to get rid of the Heartless once and for all.

Zack had been all for it at first. But as time had gone on, Sephiroth had become more and more obsessed with finding such a power and Zack had grown worried for his mentor and friend. Zack's desire had been to somehow restore the Heartless to what they had once been. Sephiroth had felt that was impossible on a widespread level and they needed to simply be eliminated before they infected everyone.

In the present, Sephiroth gave a weary sigh and looked up at the sky's deep sunset.

Zack, I am so sorry. If I had only listened to you. . . .

In the end, once he had found the fabled item, Zack's fears had been proved only too right. Once he had accepted it, it had completely taken him over and corrupted him and he had begun wildly cutting down both Heartless and human enemies without mercy. Zack had been horrified. No matter how he had pleaded, he had not been able to get through the dark magic to his friend. And that had distracted him from the Heartless beginning to completely surround them. Even Sephiroth's new power had not been enough to plow through all of them in time, no matter how he had tried, and Zack had fought with them until falling over a cliff.

The shock of seeing Zack fall had at last shattered the control of the object. Sephiroth had renounced it, but too late. Zack had no longer been there. All that had been left had been the Heartless swarming over everything.

He still searched for Zack, clinging to the thought that perhaps he was alive somewhere but hurt. But deep in his heart, he feared Zack was dead and likely a Heartless himself. How could anything else really be the explanation?

This was where it had happened. He came there frequently to think, to remember, to try to figure out something else he could try to do to find Zack that he hadn't thought of. But his mind was always blank. What else could he do?

"Sephiroth."

He looked up. Cloud had come, brandishing his heavy buster sword in front of him. His eyes were dark and cold.

"I've found you again. This time you won't get away."

Tiredly Sephiroth got to his feet, drawing the Masamune. "So, it's another fight you want, Cloud? You're falling into the darkness again and you think beating me will make it better?"

"You're my darkness," Cloud replied.

"I am you, Cloud," Sephiroth said, "and that means you're me as well. But you always miss the point on exactly what that really means. You blame me for your downfall even though you walked that path yourself, every step of the way. I didn't tell you to take out a contract on Hercules. You did that all on your own."

"I was looking for you," Cloud said bitterly. "Hades said he'd help me."

"Completely aside from the fact that you can't trust someone like that to keep his word, don't you find it ironic that you would commit dark acts in order to find and defeat the one who is supposedly your darkness?" Sephiroth remarked. "How could you possibly hope to accomplish such a feat if in the process you're only making your darkness stronger?"

"Shut up!" Cloud snapped.

"You'll only listen to swords now, won't you." Sephiroth spread his wings. "Then let's go."

Cloud charged him, their swords clashing loudly on the mountaintop. Both were excellent swordsmen and the fight continued for some time, with each gaining the upper hand for a time before the other used a fresh move and took the lead.

It was so strange too, how this mess with Cloud had started. Despite the age gap between Zack and Cloud, they were dear friends and Zack had told Sephiroth many times about the cute kid who adored him. When Zack had been lost, Sephiroth had wandered in grief and despair, finally deciding to resume battling at the Olympus Coliseum as he had done years earlier. And then he had first encountered Cloud, an angry kid who was only sinking deeper and deeper into his darkness and believing it held all the answers.

So young, and yet so much like Sephiroth himself when he had obsessively sought dark power to defeat the Heartless.

It had cut Sephiroth deeply to see Zack's other dear friend in such a state. And he had resolved then and there that he would not allow Cloud to fall to the darkness as Sephiroth had done.

Cloud had never been in any state to really listen to Sephiroth, unfortunately. Conventional methods had been tried by others and had not worked. And so Sephiroth had devised something different, something twisted and dangerous, an extreme way of trying to push Cloud into the light.

He would present himself as a threat, fighting Cloud, goading him to accept the darkness in an attempt to get Cloud to realize that wasn't what he wanted at all. Every time they fought, what he wanted was for Cloud to declare that he didn't need the darkness, that he wouldn't fall to it, that he was better than that and better than Sephiroth. And for him to mean it and not keep backsliding.

But the backsliding kept happening and Sephiroth had to return again and again, trying to drill the lessons into a brain that was still not really willing to accept or understand it.

Yes, he was Cloud. Yes, Cloud was him. He had traveled the same path Cloud had been on, hungering for the darkness, refusing to listen to all reason. And Zack had suffered for it.

He would save Cloud from the dark. Somehow, someway.

Cloud's lone bat wing unfurled as they fought, sharp and dark against the sky.

It was strange how magic worked in their realm. Wings could be born from strong emotions. Sephiroth's had been acquired years earlier, and strangely enough, from his desire to protect. Cloud's . . . his had come at the Olympus Coliseum, when he had agreed to work for Hades. He had hid it under his cloak, but it had come out later, when he had fought Sephiroth. It was a sign of the darkness consuming him.

Sephiroth had pondered many times on the strangeness that his own wings had not turned to bat wings, generally a symbol of darkness. Instead, his had remained feathery, a symbol of light. He had fallen from grace; he deserved them no longer. But he still had them.

Their swords clashed again, both of them staring into the other's eyes. Cloud was filled with rage, Sephiroth with determination.

"I hate you," Cloud snarled.

"And that is why you can never truly win," Sephiroth said. "As long as you hate, as long as you refuse to take responsibility for your own actions and keep blaming me for them instead, your darkness will keep calling me to you."

Cloud threw his weight into the buster sword, shoving him back towards the cliff's edge. "It was your fault about Zack," he hissed. "And I will never forgive you for that."

Sephiroth wavered. Cloud knew? How much else did he know? How did he know this at all?

He planted his feet, keeping himself from going over the cliff just as Zack had done. "I won't forgive me either," he said. "So go on, Cloud. Try again if you want to. See if you can send me to Hell."

Something in his eyes or his tone got through to Cloud and he stopped, fully taking in the situation. Was he really trying to push Sephiroth over the edge? Had he really fallen that far? Sephiroth was actually encouraging him to try it, but . . . he couldn't really want death, could he?

If he was part of Cloud, he couldn't die anyway. That was probably why he was goading Cloud.

But . . .

That look in his eyes. . . . He actually looked haunted. Did Zack's death really mean something to him?

"Well?" Sephiroth spoke again. "What are you going to do, Cloud?"

Cloud pulled the buster sword back. "I don't know." He stepped away. "Call this a draw, I guess."

"You could have won," Sephiroth remarked.

A shrug. "You could have just flown back up if you fell off the cliff. I wasn't falling for that."

"All it would have taken was breaking one or more of my wings," Sephiroth said.

Cloud paused. Yes, he could have done that and then pushed Sephiroth off the cliff . . . if he had been fast enough to do it without Sephiroth defending himself. He doubted he would have been.

But was that his only reason?

He just kept walking.

Sephiroth gave a weary sigh. "I'm still trying to save him, Zack," he said quietly. "You lost your life saving me. You never gave up. I won't give up on Cloud."

And deep down, he still hoped for the impossible—that Zack was still out there to find and save as well.

Ending Notes:

What is the same as the old fics: Sephiroth is good. He is not literally Cloud's darkness. He's trying to use reverse psychology on Cloud to make him reject the darkness. He is dear friends with Zack. Cloud acquired his wing when he agreed to work for Hades.

What's different: How Sephiroth and Zack met and in what manner they associated. The new timeline doesn't seem to have them in the military, but operating on their own.

How Sephiroth fell to the darkness. In this version, he does not die and return to life with the wings. As per Birth By Sleep's information, he had the wings already as a hero. This Sephiroth loves his wings, while the old timeline Sephiroth hated his.

Zack's fate. This timeline opens with him seemingly dead, but Sephiroth hasn't given up on finding him.