Notes: I had a blast writing this one and figuring out the KH Sephiroth's backstory. The stuff regarding his parents is old and carries over from my first KH timeline 17 years ago. The other items are brand-new.

Chapter Nine

It was later that day, after Sephiroth had managed to get up and was sitting for a moment on the living room couch, when the doorbell rang. Merlin's broom answered to a woman Sephiroth recognized as the Kala-Ansa person Aerith had mentioned the previous day.

"Good afternoon," she said coolly, addressing the broom. "I am looking for Sephiroth. Is he here?"

The broom stepped aside and gestured at Sephiroth on the couch. Kala-Ansa brushed past it and over to stand in front of him. "Sephiroth," she greeted. "I am Kala-Ansa. I wanted to extend my sympathies to you for what happened to you last night. Are you well?"

"Thank you," Sephiroth said. He could be cordial, even though right now he was highly suspicious of her good intentions. From what little he knew of her, she did not like anything she found unnatural. That would absolutely include enchanted brooms and most likely would include him with his three wings. But he added, "I'm . . . recovering."

"Good," Kala-Ansa said with a curt nod. "I am here because there is a gala being put on by the newly forming town council next week. I do not have an escort. I wish to invite you to accompany me."

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow. This was not at all what he had thought he would hear. "Why me, specifically?" he asked.

"You are a prominent member of this community," Kala-Ansa said, "yet hardly anyone really knows you. I would like to change that."

"I have no desire to be a spectacle," Sephiroth said.

"But surely you realize everyone is curious to know more about you after the unfortunate events of the last couple of days," Kala-Ansa said. "The Evil Queen doesn't target just anyone."

A dark smirk. "She targets anyone she believes is a threat to her vanity, whether that's innocent children or fully grown men."

"Will you accompany me?" Kala-Ansa persisted.

Sephiroth sighed. His first instinct was to say No. He had never liked formal, fancy parties. His unique style had never suited them. But on the other hand, perhaps he could use the opportunity to his advantage somehow.

"I don't know if I'll be healed enough by then," he said. "If I am, then yes, I will go with you."

"Excellent. Shall I call for you here?" she asked.

Sephiroth nodded. He wasn't going to give out his home address to a near-stranger. "Yes."

"Be ready next Wednesday at 8," she said.

"I'll contact your office if I find I can't make it," he said. "And I do have one condition."

"And what is that?" she queried.

"I have a friend who likes parties," he said. "If he wants to go, I would like to bring him."

"Zack Fair, you mean," Kala-Ansa said. "It's all over town that he has come back from the dead."

"He was never dead," Sephiroth retorted.

"Be that as it may, yes, you may bring him," Kala-Ansa said. "I'm sure the entire town is anxious to see him alive and well after the . . . incident at the cliff."

Sephiroth flicked a tense wing at that. "Is there a particular dress code for this gala?"

"Naturally more formal attire is encouraged," Kala-Ansa said. "However, in your case, what you wear usually is just fine. I am organizing this event and I give you permission to dress as you wish."

Her gaze seemed to be lingering longer on his chest than he would like. He casually folded his arms over it. "Thank you."

"I will see you and Zack Fair next week." With that she stepped back and out onto the porch. The broom shut the door after her.

Cloud entered the living room right afterwards. "What was that all about?"

"I'm not even sure," Sephiroth remarked. "That woman, Kala-Ansa, just invited me to take her to some gala next week."

"Are you serious?!" Cloud gawked at him.

"Yes," Sephiroth said flatly. "I was going to refuse, but then I thought Zack might like to go. He was always dragging me to things like that."

"He'd probably like it, at least the food," Cloud said. "He never liked stuffy attitudes."

"I know. He liked to go and 'liven things up.'" Sephiroth smirked. "I didn't volunteer you since I know you strongly dislike parties."

"Probably about as much as you do," Cloud said.

"Heh. Well, the one thing I did like about them was making an entrance," Sephiroth said, still smirking. "How does teleporting into the midst of it sound?"

"Like you," Cloud said.

Merlin entered the room now, looking troubled. "This was Kala-Ansa, you say?"

Sephiroth looked to him. "Yes. I don't know what her angle is. She's never been interested in me before." He frowned. "I don't trust her, but I'd like to keep her close enough to try to find out."

"I don't think she has any good intentions for you, Sephiroth," Merlin said. "She saw you laying hurt last night and I'm afraid she called you a 'winged demon.'" He grimaced to even say it.

"Hm." Sephiroth frowned. "That's about what I thought, honestly."

"Something's just not right," Cloud scowled. "If she feels that way about him, why would she want him at some stupid party of hers?!"

"I think I should find out," Sephiroth said.

"Can anybody get into the thing?" Cloud asked. "Maybe I should be there after all."

Sephiroth looked to him with a touched smile. "As far as I know, it's open to the public," he said. "But I think there's an admission fee."

Cloud rolled his eyes. "Probably more than I could afford too."

"Now, you don't have to worry about that," Merlin said. "I'll be going to that shindig and you're welcome to come as my guest. The more of us there to keep an eye on things, the better!"

"What're we keeping an eye on?" Zack asked as he bounded into the room from where he had been talking with Aerith.

"Some weird lady invited Sephiroth to a gala next week," Cloud said. "We all think something's fishy about it because she doesn't like him."

"I arranged for you to be able to come too, if you want," Sephiroth interjected. "You used to enjoy them for the food and meeting people."

"Sounds fun!" Zack said. He frowned a bit. "Why doesn't the lady like you?"

"She doesn't like anything she feels is unnatural and wrong," Sephiroth said. "She's called me a 'winged demon,' so it seems likely she doesn't like my wings."

Zack scowled. "They're so pretty! I was wondering why you and Cloud have wings, but I never thought there was anything wrong with it!"

"The heart has a great deal of power here, as I'm sure you've discovered in your travels," Sephiroth said. "I've had my wings since childhood. They came from my pride and happiness when I made my first heroic act. The lower two can retract, and that was convenient when I was first getting used to having wings, but I rarely do that with them anymore."

Funny how Cloud had never known any of that, not even why Sephiroth sometimes had only had one wing out instead of three. He hadn't even cared enough to ask. He looked down guiltily. "Mine came from my guilt when I did something really bad," he mumbled, not up to telling the particulars at the moment. "So if anyone's a winged demon, it's me."

Zack considered all of that. "Does that mean they'd go away if you guys stopped having those feelings?" he wondered.

"No," Sephiroth said. "They are part of us now."

". . . So how old were you?" Cloud wondered.

"Five," Sephiroth admitted.

"Then you've spent most of your life with wings," Cloud said in surprise.

Sephiroth nodded. "I always loved them. My parents did too."

"Where are our parents, Seph?" Zack wondered.

Sephiroth sighed. "They were all killed in one of the many Heartless attacks on our world," he said quietly. "Not the first one ten years ago, but a different one about four years ago."

Zack frowned, deflating a bit. "I thought they'd still be around," he said. "I'm sorry about yours. Cloud's too?"

Cloud scowled. "My dad ran off and abandoned my mother. I don't know where he is and I don't care. She died in the attacks too, yeah." And his stomach turned as he wondered—had he blamed Sephiroth for that, even just subconsciously? Sephiroth had been supposed to be their great hero, but he hadn't been able to save her, or Zack's parents. Cloud hated to think he might have been blaming the poor man for something so out of his control. Even a hero couldn't fix everything.

"So many people lost almost everything," Sephiroth said.

". . . The survivors have sure rebuilt the place nice," Zack said after a moment of silence.

Sephiroth smiled a bit. "Yes," he said. "They have."

The most random thought popped into Cloud's head. "Did your parents like how you dress?" he blurted. "I mean . . ."

"Did they like that I don't like shirts?" Sephiroth smirked wickedly. "They didn't mind. They gave me a wide berth when I was figuring out who I am. I used to wear shirts, actually, until my teenage years."

"And then you decided you wanted to show off what you have?" Cloud grunted.

"That wasn't quite my reason," Sephiroth said. "But nevermind that."

So that was still a topic he preferred to keep to himself. Well, whatever.

"So who were they?" Cloud wondered. "Sorry, it's just . . ." He ducked his head. "I never knew you even had parents."

"That makes sense considering you apparently thought you were my parent," Sephiroth said with dripping sarcasm.

"Huh?" Zack blinked.

"I thought I'd created him from my heart," Cloud said in embarrassment. "I thought he was my darkness."

"Why would you think something weird like that?" Zack said with wide eyes.

"I just . . ." Cloud shook his head. "Nevermind. It's complicated."

"As for my parents," Sephiroth said, deciding to take pity on Cloud and rescue him from the awkward topic, "they were very good people. My father was a retired military man. My mother used to write for the newspaper. I was adopted, actually; I didn't even know who my birth parents are. My birth mother brought me to them when I was a small child and begged them to adopt me. She was on the run from my birth father. He was not a decent person. She was afraid for my safety if I stayed with him. Luckily, my adoptive parents were thrilled with the idea and happily took me in. I don't know what happened to my birth mother. She wouldn't even give her name. She didn't want anything to possibly connect me with her in my new life, as she was afraid word would then get back to my birth father."

"So what made her pick them?" Zack wondered. "It sounds like she didn't even know them."

"That's a good question," Sephiroth said. "But she made the perfect choice. I was very happy there. Our house is their house. You and I lived there with them when we weren't traveling and helping people."

"Sounds really nice," Zack said softly.

"I feel well enough to take us there now," Sephiroth said. He looked to Cloud. "You're welcome to come with us, if you like."

Cloud blinked in surprise. "Really? You'd let me see your place?"

Sephiroth smirked a bit. "Now that we're becoming so close and you understand that I have always been a real person, yes, you're welcome to see it. I didn't want you to see it before in case you wouldn't have treated it with respect."

Cloud looked down. "I want to think I would have, but I don't know," he admitted. "I probably would have thought you made up all the pictures or something. If you have pictures."

"There are many pictures," Sephiroth said. "I didn't change much of how they decorated."

Merlin smiled. "It will be good for you to see the house, Cloud. And perhaps when you see it, Zack, some of your memories will come back to you."

"Hope so," Zack said.

Sephiroth started to get off the couch. "Thank you for looking after me," he said to Merlin. "It's been pleasant being here."

"Well, I couldn't let you be in your house all alone!" Merlin said. He smiled. "But you won't be alone now."

"No," Sephiroth smiled too, "I won't be."

In the next moment he had teleported out with both Zack and Cloud.

The new portal opened in a cozy living room. Cloud looked around in curious surprise at their new surroundings. This was Sephiroth's home. . . . Zack's home again now too. It was decorated mostly in bluish-grays and whites. And the first thing he noticed were feathers caught in the couch.

He rolled his eyes. "Really, Sephiroth? Even in your own place?"

"I do remove them," Sephiroth grunted. "Just not after every single time I get up. That would get annoying fast."

"It gets annoying finding them after every single time you get up," Cloud countered.

Zack wandered over to look at the pictures. "Aww, your mom framed the first feather you dropped! That's cute."

Cloud looked over at the frame. ". . . It's small," he said in surprise.

Sephiroth smirked. "Surely you didn't think a five-year-old boy had wings of this size. They grew with me."

Cloud flushed. "Yeah, of course they did."

Eager to change the subject after his silly flub, he looked at the other pictures. "Who are these guys?" he asked, pointing to a picture of a younger Sephiroth with his arms around two people he didn't know—a broad, dark-haired man and a smirking redhead.

Sephiroth sighed as he looked over. "Angeal Hewley and Genesis Rhapsodos," he said. "Two other hero trainees. We met back at Olympus Coliseum. Phil wasn't so cynical then; he was happily training all of us."

Zack came over to look. "Angeal. . . . I remember him, kind of."

Sephiroth nodded. "He was still around sometimes when I was training you. He liked you a lot. He called you . . ."

"The puppy. Yeah, I remember that." Zack scowled a bit.

Sephiroth chuckled good-naturedly. "He said you were like a restless, enthusiastic puppy. I thought of you more as an Eevee myself. That's a very friendly, extroverted animal I saw on my travels."

"So what happened to them?" Cloud asked.

Sephiroth sighed now. "I don't know," he admitted. "Genesis . . . grew to hate me over time. He said I had everything and I was always the perfect hero everyone remembered. He felt that he was always in my shadow. Eventually he left, and he got Angeal to go too."

"That's the pits," Zack frowned. "Why was he such a spoiled brat like that?"

Sephiroth had to laugh a bit at that. "Strangely, I've never heard him called that before. But maybe you're not far off. He was from a wealthy family and had grown up probably being called the best at what he did. Then he couldn't take when he left home and discovered there were others who were his equals . . . or his superiors."

Cloud was silent as he listened. "So did he have a point about anything?" he wondered. "I mean, you come across pretty prideful sometimes."

Sephiroth sighed. "I never meant any harm," he said. "I don't deny I took pride in my abilities, but if I came across as putting him down or seeing him as inferior to me, it was not my intention. He and Angeal were my first close friends."

". . . And you've never seen them again?" Zack frowned.

"We met Genesis one other time, when I was . . . seeking a solution to the Heartless problem," Sephiroth said carefully. "We were going through an old library on another world and Genesis suddenly appeared. He . . . told me some very disturbing things, that his and Angeal's abilities were due to a mad scientist's experiments and that he'd learned that mad scientist had wanted to experiment on a third child as well, a child who was stolen from the laboratory. Genesis claimed it was me."

Zack stared at him. "Man, I wish I remembered," he said. "What did you do?!"

"I demanded to know why he thought that. He produced a picture of a boy with long silver hair who was innocently forming a fireball in his hands. Yes, I'll admit it looked like me, but the lighting didn't give me a good enough look at his face."

"Did you wear your hair long as a kid?" Cloud wondered.

"Not this long, but yes, I did," Sephiroth said. "It was to my hips back then. Anyway, I asked Genesis why he wanted it to be me. He gave me the most sickening smile and said that now we were equals and I couldn't claim to be better than him." His eyes darkened.

"Seriously?! Ugh, that guy is obsessed," Cloud scowled. "He should have got a life."

Sephiroth smiled a bit. "You're feeling defensive on my behalf, Cloud?"

Cloud flushed. "He just sounds pretty pathetic," he said.

Sephiroth shook his head. "Maybe he had some other reason for why he was treating me that way. I don't know."

Cloud blinked in surprise at that. "You're making excuses for him even after he repeatedly hurt you so much?!" His stomach twisted a bit. Something else he never would have thought from Sephiroth. He still loved his old friend.

Sephiroth sighed. "I just know he seemed so different when we first met. I suppose I can't bear to think that he truly came to hate me so much. I want there to be another reason for his behavior."

"So what did you do when he was being such a first-class jerk?!" Zack asked. He definitely looked angry on Sephiroth's behalf. "I know I must have known once, but I . . . don't anymore."

Sephiroth laid a hand on his shoulder. "I looked over the information he'd found. I discovered something he'd held back. The mad scientist listed that third child as his son."

"No way!" Zack said in horror. "Your birth father?!"

"Perhaps, if I am truly that child," Sephiroth said. "When I pointed that out to Genesis, he flew into a rage again. That, of course, would have made me the favorite among the experiments. Genesis set fire to the library and left. You and I struggled to put it out before it could spread to the town below." He looked tired.

Cloud frowned more, mulling over all of this shocking information. ". . . If that was you in that picture, you were already making fire really young," he said. "Do you know if . . . you could always do that?"

"Instead of being experimented on or learning it, you mean?" Sephiroth said. "My birth mother told my adoptive parents that I had been born with that power. It isn't unheard-of; sometimes children are born with powers, for whatever reason. There is a young woman in one world who was born with ice powers. And . . . I did notice on the information Genesis found that the third child was listed as being born with fire powers. That said, I did indeed have to learn to listen to my heart to make anything stronger than fireballs. And the other powers I have I learned later in life."

"Was that tough?" Cloud wondered. "Being born with something like that?"

"Not really." Sephiroth shook his head. "Unlike the girl with ice powers, I had a strong support system throughout my life to help me hone and control my abilities. I was taught from the start that love was the key to controlling it."

"Love, huh?" Cloud looked at Sephiroth for a long moment. He had been learning so much about him over the last couple of days, and the last thirty minutes had been an absolute crash course. There had been so much he hadn't known or had misunderstood. He wasn't sure how to feel about any of it. Except . . . he felt very guilty for always thinking the worst of a man who had dealt with that so much from someone who should have cared about him.

Sephiroth smirked a bit at Cloud's comment. "You find that strange, Cloud? For me to have been taught about the power of love?"

"Yeah, kind of," Cloud admitted.

"Hearts hold tremendous power in our world. You know that."

"Yeah. And . . . they have a lot of power for us personally too," Cloud said.

Zack looked back and forth between them. "So do I get to know about that now?" he asked.

Sephiroth smiled. "Yes. We will tell you what's been happening to us while you haven't been here. It's . . . quite the story."

"How about telling me while I fix food for all of us?" Zack suggested. "I'm starving!"

Sephiroth gave him an amused look. "It has been a long time since breakfast."

Cloud's look was more wary. "You remember how to cook?"

"Sure do!" Zack said. "Come in the kitchen and I'll prove it to you!"

Sephiroth seemed completely at ease and was smiling fondly as he followed Zack to the kitchen. And suddenly Cloud realized why. Not just because he had confidence in Zack's skills, but because Zack was leading them to the kitchen without any directions.

Subconsciously, he was remembering.

Ending Notes: To be honest, I really don't want his adoptive parents to be dead. But I already wrote him saying in My Sanctuary that he doesn't have anyone worrying about him. I'll have it turn out they survived somehow. Maybe they were taken prisoner by Maleficent or someone.