Cloud awoke from blissfully dreamless sleep to find himself slouched against the smooth mahogany of Hollcomb’s desk, his head pillowed against his arms. He blinked his eyes slowly as they adjusted to the gloom; he couldn’t remember turning the lights off but the office was lit only from the slight sliver of light that filtered through under the door. The blond raised his head painfully and felt his tendons and muscles scream in protest. He pushed himself up off the desk and raked a hand through his hair sluggishly. He probably hadn’t slept for very long, because he still felt exhausted, with the added bonus that his shoulders and back were now raking their own versions of hellish pain across his nerves.

Sighing, he got up and took a few wobbly steps towards the door before freezing completely; as he’d got to his feet he’d felt something brush past him, a dim sense of a presence nearby. Narrowing his eyes, willing himself to see clearly in the dim light, he swiftly surveyed the room. Hollcomb’s empty office, furnished with its narrow desk and overflowing shelves, seemed darkly sinister in the room. Heart beating erratically, he scanned the darkness nervously once more before turning back to the door with another sigh.

“Looking for something, Cloud?”

The blond’s breath caught in his throat, a smooth and tremulous hiss that sounded ridiculously loud in the quiet room. Sephiroth’s voice had come from directly behind him and Cloud forced himself to turn around nonchalantly.

“How the hell d’you get in here?”

The silver-haired man shrugged, and the slightest ghost of a smile teased the corner of his mouth. Cloud’s heart fluttered and he forced himself to scowl at Sephiroth.

“The door wasn’t locked.”

Which was in no way an explanation for the fact that the blond hadn’t seen him when he’d peered through the gloom or why the man had simply been waiting there in the dark. He shot the taller man a tired, dismissive look, forcing every single bit of impatience he could behind his expression. “Right. Have you spoken with Zack?”

Another shrug, and Sephiroth’s smile grew slightly wider, curling and twisting its way treacherously through Cloud’s rampant thoughts and straight to his groin. Definitely not good. What are you, sixteen? Get a grip on yourself!

“Zack is unimportant.”

Cloud froze, cursing the darkness; Sephiroth had moved slightly to his left and into a dim pool of light. The shadows that flowed across his handsome face turned it harsh and threatening, all sharp angles and glowing green. He stared at Cloud now, awaiting a reaction.

“What?”

“Zack doesn’t matter. Your little rebel friends don’t matter. Reeve certainly doesn’t matter and neither does his little neo-company,” Sephiroth intoned, walking outside the light to Cloud’s left. The blond jumped when he felt a hand brush against his shoulder and then the silver-haired man was standing right behind him.

Sephiroth’s hands travelled up both of the blond’s arms to rest lightly on his shoulders and Cloud struggled to maintain his facade of detached anger. He tensed, opened his mouth to protest and prepared to whirl around and push the other man back when Sephiroth leaned in and continued, breath rushing out in a soft caress against Cloud’s ear.

“But you, Cloud, matter very much.”

It was little more than a soft, whispered hiss, and over his own wildly beating heart it was barely audible. He was frozen, unable to think, to concentrate, to move, as the silver-haired man chuckled softly behind him. He felt one of Sephiroth’s hands leave his shoulder to cup his chin, fingers splaying against his throat, and he closed his eyes, unable now even to breathe.

Another breathless chuckle against his neck forced a shiver through him and he struggled to regain control of the situation before everything went to hell. Sephiroth’s presence was devastating; it filled his entire world, forced the air from his lungs and left him reeling and dizzy. He had to get out of here. He twisted his head slightly to jerk it out of the man’s grasp but Sephiroth reacted with lightning speed, squeezing his hand around his throat and dragging his chin firmly back into place.

Cloud’s heart stomach twisted in violent fear. He raised his arms to the hand that was wrapped around his throat and tried to pry the man’s fingers off. No sooner had he moved that another shock sent him reeling and he probably would have stumbled to his knees had Sephiroth not been supporting him.

The silver-haired man pulled Cloud’s head further to the side and ran a hot, moist tongue up the side of the blond’s neck all the way up to his jawline, where he nibbled slightly before withdrawing.

Cloud couldn’t have stopped the moan that wormed its way past his throat if his life had depended on it. The man’s touches were liquid fire against his flesh and he found himself pressed backwards against the other’s taller frame almost involuntarily; he doubted if he could manage to stand on his own without fluttering like a leaf. He couldn’t clear his eyes or focus his gaze. Behind him he heard, and felt, as Sephiroth sighed and shook his head.

“Everything I’ve done, Cloud, has been for you.”

And that pierced through the thick haze of lust that he was floating in. He struggled to clear his head. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“Everything. You wanted to follow me out of Midgar, Cloud, and I took you away. You wanted to be scared of me, you wanted to hate me and so I made myself a great threat to you and everything you loved. I left destroyed creatures and burned memories for you to find and revisit.”

Cloud shook his head slightly, disbelieving. He struggled now against Sephiroth, but the man held tight.

“You wanted to be rid of the girl, Cloud, because she complicated things,” he continued, voice now turning accusatory. “I took care of that for you, Cloud. You wanted to be left alone, so I made them fear you, I made you a puppet and a tool. You wanted Tifa to stop chasing after you, and I made myself hard to forget.”

There was a pause, and Sephiroth’s voice was vicious when he spoke next. “You wanted to be alive again, to fight for something again, so I came back for you, Cloud. I’ve given you everything you’ve ever wanted. Everything!”

Cloud desperately fought to struggle out of the man’s grasp. He was spun furiously around and pushed back roughly until his thighs slammed against the edge of Hollcomb’s desk. Meeting Sephiroth’s gaze was like a slap to the face; the man’s features were angry and sharp, his eyes narrowed and pupils dilated. He held both of Cloud’s struggling hands in his own and leaned closer.

“You will give me this in return, Cloud.”

And his lips came crashing down against Cloud’s with no warning. Panic ignited within the blond in a thunderous wave. No, no, no, no, no, NO! Not like this. Never like this! He pushed against the older man, snarling, and struggled to free his trapped hands. Sephiroth pulled back with a smirk; there was a sort of twisted laughter dancing in his eyes, and as Cloud shoved, hard, against Sephiroth’s weight, he simply released one of the blond’s wrist and back-handed him with the flat of his hand.

Cloud’s head flew to the side and he crumpled against the desk, raising a trembling hand to his cheek. He made the mistake of checking for blood, eyes leaving the silver-haired man for slightly less than a second. When he looked up, the edge of Masamune came to rest against his exposed neck and he froze, his right hand instinctively traveling halfway to his hip. It was a pointless reaction; he’d left his sword by the door when he’d entered Hollcomb’s office.

“I offered to do this the easy way, Cloud.” Sephiroth offered him a small, twisted smile and a shrug. “You’re just so damned difficult to please.”

Pinned in an awkward crouch, the blade pressing against the tender skin of his neck, Cloud could only glare up at the man. “What the hell have you done with Zack? He would never have let you out of that lab. Not like this.”

Sephiroth met his glare coldly. A slight frown creased his forehead and he sneered at the blond. “You’re not concentrating, Cloud. I said before, Zack is unimportant. What I’m here for…” He paused, and a twisted smile was the only warning the blond got before Sephiroth’s sword arm swung sideways and back to drive the blade deep into Cloud’s shoulder.

His scream was cut short as Sephiroth closed the distance between them and slapped his free hand against the blond’s mouth, using his weight as leverage to drive the blade through Cloud’s flesh and between two of his ribs. When the blade had penetrated through to the wood, Sephiroth gave it a last push until its tip was several inches deep into Hollcomb’s desk, effectively pinning the blond in place.

His hand left Cloud’s mouth and the blond looked up in panic at Sephiroth’s face as the other leaned towards him, smirking.

“What I’m here for, Cloud…” Sephiroth repeated before dipping his head into the hollow of Cloud’s neck, trailing a path of feather-light bites down to his collarbone.

Cloud’s eyes were unfocused and staring, and his breath came in large ragged gasps. The blade in his shoulder was agony, and each intake of breath sent a fresh wave of pain and nausea coursing through him. He felt Sephiroth’s teeth on his neck sharply, felt the weight of the man press down on him as he leaned forward, felt a hand travel down to his shirt and push the material out of the way.

Felt the silver-haired man’s breath against his flesh as the words were breathed out just under his earlobe.

“… Is you, of course.”

The man’s touches sent waves of fire raging against his skin and Cloud bit back a sob of despair at how utterly fucked up he was. He could no more fight the man than fight his own heart, his own lust. Every touch, every brush of Sephiroth’s fingers against his skin pierced through the searing pain of the blade and the throbbing in his jaw. A small part of him wanted to fight, wanted to pull the blade out of his flesh and tear this man to shreds, but it was drowned out by the rushing noise of his heart thrumming in his ears.

He forced his mouth open, willing himself to react, to fight back, to scream, to do something to stop this madness.

There was really nothing he could say to prevent what was happening, but there was no chance to speak. Sephiroth’s grinning face was only a few inches away and then those smirking lips were pressed against his own, nibbling and teasing and unstoppable.

When he felt a strong hand reach down and snake its way into his pants to grip him in one long, languid stroke, Cloud threw his head back and moaned.

Amidst the swirling green of Sephiroth’s eyes, he surrendered.

* * *

Author’s notes

Posted this here first because it’s the very first bit of actual slash in this story, aside from the previous few dreams were Cloud was stuck in his own twisted memories; those weren’t quite as detailed and/or obvious. Just wanting to make sure I’m taking this in the right direction before offering it up to the world over at ff.net. Feel free to tear it apart if you like. Second scene in the chapter, unless I decide to switch things around a bit.

Hearing the slight edge of panic in Sephiroth’s usually controlled tenor had shaken him. Here was the man he’d both feared and adulated as a teen, then later despised and chased, obviously human and more than slightly overwhelmed with their current situation.

Even with Zack’s reassuring presence at his side, seeing the man again, very much alive and breathing, was disorienting and confusing. Cloud’s reality was now almost merged with his nightmares and his memories and the labs around them; scientists bustling about busily wasn’t helping. By Gaia, he was exhausted, and the coming conversation was a looming mountain ahead of him, another long trek, alone, through uncertain terrain. Would they find stable ground there, or had Jenova wiped all possible traces of sanity from Sephiroth’s mind? Would the telling of what happened destroy him again?

Would anyone even care if they failed? Even Tifa didn’t want this to happen, and the blond felt sure Reeve was starting to have doubts on his ability to handle this. Hell, even I’m starting to think this was the dumbest idea in the very sad history of really stupid ideas. He shook his head, fighting to clear his mind, to steer his tired brain back to the job at hand.

“Strife?”

A jolt, that voice, sending an uncontrollable shiver all the way down his spine. How the hell did he just remember my name? He felt sure the man hadn’t known him then, couldn’t possibly have both recognized him and pulled a name from memory. Unless he’d memorized the roster, which wasn’t impossible.

The alternative was unthinkable; if Sephiroth possessed memories from after Nibelheim, then Jenova had left more than simple cells behind. Cloud lifted nervous eyes to meet Zack’s gaze, where he also read surprise. Not from his photographic memory, then, otherwise Zack would take it in stride.

Fuck.

He forced his eyes back to the silver-haired man, where he found both nightmare and flesh staring back at him. A slight edge, a barely perceptible tension, betrayed the man’s state of mind although his face was carefully schooled into a neutral expression. Cloud felt panic and bile rise up in his throat and forced himself to close his eyes and breathe. When he felt human enough, he stared up at Sephiroth again, trying to control his erratic heartbeat. If he could just make it through this one conversation without anything blowing up in his face, everything would be fine.

Trying to ignore the man’s eyes, he took three quick steps forward and managed to keep his hand blessedly steady as he held up the file he’d prepared with Reeve earlier. The silver-haired man simply stared at the file. When the other’s man gaze traveled up his extended arm and reached his eyes, the blond felt a slight blush creep up his cheeks and mentally cursed. Several times.

Sephiroth was simply sitting there calmly, a curious and slightly disoriented look now on his face. What should’ve been just a standard pair of military slacks, was, on the tall man, the lowest-cut pair of uniform pants Cloud had ever seen. The man had just been brutally awakened in what must appear to be another Shin-Ra lab, yet he still managed to command and dominate the entire room with his presence. The blond felt ridiculously small and obscenely young and it infuriated him; he’d gone through hell and back, had endured pain and betrayal and loss, all because of this one man. Yet he still felt insecure and inferior, a mere pawn whereas Sephiroth was the major player, the one who would lead him, forward or astray. This close, and without the added pressure of fighting for his life, the blond had time to notice all those little things he had been sure he’d erased from his memories; the fact that the silver-haired Soldier was much taller and broader than him, the way his hair always pooled around his form like silver silk and his eyes, piercing and mesmerizing at once, of that almost obscene shade of green that haunted his dreams and nightmares.

The blond felt his gaze drawn down the man’s hunched torso, draping down his relaxed arms and lingering just slightly too long. Cloud realized he’d been staring and forced his eyes to steer back up to the older man’s face with a start, praying he hadn’t been gaping like a fool.

The distaste at his own weakness must have shown on his slightly reddened face, because Sephiroth eventually extended his own arm to reach up and delicately take the file from him. The man’s face showed a slight edge of what could be confusion, and on the ex-General it was a humbling sight; waking up in the labs must have shaken him more than he was letting on. The blond stood his ground, letting his arm fall gently back to his side as Sephiroth’s eyes lowered to the folder, scanning it briefly. After a few seconds he raked a hand through his hair in a gesture so beguilingly human and confused that Cloud almost caught himself laughing. Again, something new, unexpected. Sephiroth turned his eyes to Zack, who still stood close by his side.

He waved the folder at the younger officer, a slight frown now on his face. “Just what in the hell is going on?”

Cloud flinched, then cursed inwardly, as the man’s striking eyes swept back towards him. “And what in Gaia happened to you, Strife?”, he added, with a casual wave of the folder towards the blond.

There was a tense silence, and for a moment Cloud doubted his own strength. Shit, I can’t do this. I can’t just blurt out all of it, I can’t live through this all over again, I can’t be here, I can’t BE HERE… His heart hammering a wild beat in his chest, he managed a nonchalant shrug that surprised even him and saw, from the corner of his eye, Zack’s face growing a little dark, brows arching just ever so slightly. Worried.

“It’s a long story. The file explains most of it. I…” A pause, then, as he took one long breath, averting his eyes from the silver-haired man’s intense green gaze. He more or less felt irritation radiating from the Soldier now; he was avoiding giving him a direct answer and knew the other didn’t like his dancing around the question. He shrugged again, mimicking Sephiroth’s earlier motion and weaving his left hand through his blond tresses hurriedly.

When he spoke again his voice was clipped and angry but he didn’t care. It sounded, to his own ears, blessedly free of the trembling nervous fear he was drowning in. “Just read the damned file. Zack’ll be there to answer any of your questions. If you really need to talk to me, I’ll be in Hollcomb’s office.”

He managed a small nod in Zack’s direction, then turned about smartly, averting his eyes quickly towards the exit and away from all that silvery green, his chest thrumming violently. He forced his hands into his pockets to keep them from shaking and shouldered his way through the hallway door.

* * *

There was a long silence during which even the nurses contrived to make themselves look busy. Sephiroth stared at the door where the younger man had disappeared, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Did Cloud Strife… Did Cloud Strife actually just brush me off?

It was Zack who finally broke the silence, clapping a hand on Sephiroth’s naked shoulder with a laugh. “Don’t mind him, man. He’s just, you know, been through a lot.”

The silver-haired man cast a sidelong glance at his second-in-command. “Any time you’d care to explain, Lieutenant? I’m all ears.”

With a heavy sigh, Zack dropped his hand from Sephiroth’s shoulder, then turned to the nearest nurse. “Excuse me, Miss, can we do this elsewhere? Labs aren’t really, you know, ideal for conversation.”

“Sure. There’s an empty office right down the hall,” she pointed towards the corridor opposite the one Cloud had exited through and flashed Zack a small smile, then blushed furiously and busied herself with her medical clipboard. Sephiroth shook his head, a small smile curling at the corners of his mouth despite his uncertain situation. Zack, at least, hadn’t changed much.

“Come on, man. We’re blowing this lab.”

Sephiroth sighed and got up as Zack hurried towards the office and held the door open for them both. The silver-haired man glanced up at the group clustered on the second floor railing then followed Zack into the office, grateful for the chance for a little privacy. The room held a small desk and a threadbare chair, which Zack motioned the older man into after closing the door. He sat down less than gracefully and with a sigh; away from prying eyes he could let some of his confusion and distress finally show. Zack was pacing the room nervously and that worried him more than he would care to admit. He opened his mouth to speak but the smaller man interrupted him with a wave of his hand and a frown, then seemed to realize how agitated he was and finally plopped himself down onto the desk.

“How are you feeling? I mean…” Zack smiled then, although it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You must be wondering what the hell’s going on, Seph, but this is important.”

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow at him. “I feel fine, Zack. What’s this about?” There was a pause, and he could see Zack was clearly trying to collect his thoughts.

“A lot’s happened, Seph. You know how I always exaggerate and shit? Well, this isn’t one of those times. A lot has really happened.” The black-haired man sighed, then essayed another smile. “To answer your first question, you’ve been out of it for about eleven years.”

For a few blessed seconds he thought Zack was messing with him, but the younger man’s face remained serious and Sephiroth felt his heart rate spike in a bout of dizzy nervousness. The shock must have shown on his face because his friend smiled again, and this time it looked tired and strained.

Sephiroth looked down at his hands pooled in his lap, trying to grasp the enormity of what Zack had just said. When he looked up again, Zack’s face was a carefully-controlled mask and his eyes were trained on his own, trying to gage his reaction. “You all right, man?”

Sephiroth shook his head slightly. His mind was racing. That explains Strife at least. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen when I saw him last. He felt the world spinning around him again. And when was that exactly? He couldn’t remember; his recent memories were a jumbled mess.

Zack reached over and gently took the manila folder from his unresisting hands. “Let’s just go through this thing one fact at a time, right?”

* * *

“What the hell was that? I thought Cloud said we would see everything from up here!”

Reeve shook his head calmly. “I’m not sure everything went exactly as planned; Cloud was supposed to stay down there and explain things.” He nodded towards Vincent, who nodded back wordlessly. “I’m going down to try and find him; find out why he bolted. You guys stay here. If anything happens, I need to know there’s someone here that can handle this mess.

“I’ll be right back,” he added before turning back towards the stairs.

Tifa turned to stare at Vincent. “You know what happened, don’t you?”

Vincent, standing propped against the railing, shrugged. “It’s not my place to say.”

Tifa frowned. “It’s not your… For fuck’s sake, would you listen to yourself? This isn’t some sort of game!”

“I know.”

Yuffie turned and laid a hand on Tifa’s shoulder. “Tif, we both know this isn’t easy on him either. Maybe he just left to gather his thoughts or something.”

From the corner of the upper deck, Cid puffed out a breath in a noisy wheeze. “Yeah. You’d have to pay me a fortune to drag my sorry ass down there with that folder. Kid’s just regroupin’. Least we can do is give ‘im a chance to do this properly.”

Tifa snuck a glance at Barrett, who was leaning next to Cid and watching her. The big man shrugged. Tifa shuddered, worried. “I don’t know how you guys can all manage to be so damned calm about all this. If something happens in that office we won’t know anything about it until Zack’s really in trouble.”

Yuffie shook her head vehemently, keeping her arm on her friend’s shoulder. “Zack can handle this, Tif, I’m sure of it.”

* * *

Zack’s words washed over him in as he sat and listened. At first he’d tried to voice his protest, interrupt with his own jumbled memories, but as the story unfolded he fell silent. He stared at his hands, still clasped in his hands, as Zack’s voice calmly told of the burning of Nibelheim, the reactor, what they’d found in the ruins of Hojo’s labs and the scientist’s true involvement with the Soldier process.

When his friend stumbled in his telling and his voice trickled to a stop, Sephiroth looked up unsteadily, watching the other’s face as he tried and failed to lighten his expression. The silver-haired man frowned. Nibelheim was only just the start; everyone’s terrified of me, even Zack. Something else happened.

Did he want to hear the rest of it? Zack’s silence as they stared at each other spoke volumes. When his friend opened his mouth to continue Sephiroth raised his hand in protest.

“Just give me the file, Zack.”

“Seph…”

“Now.”

It was torture to watch the pained look that passed across his second in command’s face but, to his credit, he reached over and handed him the file back. Sephiroth snatched it from his hand with rather more force than he’d meant and opened it, scanning its contents. It took quite a while for him to force his way through all of it. Some part of him wanted to shove the folder at Zack’s face and scream; he hadn’t done any of these dreadful things, he had no memory of any of it. He read on. The file was written in the very cold, calculating manner of a report, which made the actual contents easier to assimilate. He read of the Cetra and Hojo’s misguided attempts at recreating what he mistakenly thought was a true Ancient. He read of Avalanche and their role in ShinRa’s fall, of the murder of one of their number at his own hand. He read of Jenova and what she was, of the genetic experiments Hojo had carried out in secret. Of his own death. Of Geostigma.

It should have been too much to take in; he should have stumbled, forgotten, lost his track, but his mind was painfully clear as he absorbed the knowledge of the destruction he’d caused. Parts of what he was reading clicked neatly into place, filling holes in his own memories and experiences. Hojo’s constant meddling in his life had been dismissed as Soldier maintenance, but it had never made any sense to him. His own file in the ShinRa personnel records had always been incomplete and now, finally, he could put names to his own genealogy, could now correctly identify his mother as a scientist on one of Hojo’s teams. Hojo. The scientist’s lies unravelled one after the other as he read.

After a very long while, he finally closed the folder and gently placed it face down on the desk next to Zack. He glared at it as though his gaze could changed its contents, could nullify its existence.

“Seph?”

A hand on his shoulder startled him, and he stared up in surprise into Zack’s worried eyes. “You all right? I know you have questions, and that’s why I’m here. Why we’re all here.”

“How…” His voice was raw, unrecognizable as his own. He raised a trembling hand to his forehead and sighed heavily. Questions. They were piling up in his mind. Why had anyone let him do any of it? How had Strife managed to best him, not once but three times? How could he have been foolish enough to let Hojo manipulate him so clearly? How could he have been so deluded as to let himself be goaded by some— some monstrous thing he hadn’t even ever heard of, save in Hojo’s lies and half-truths? In his mind’s eye he saw Midgar, defeated and destroyed under an onslaught of his own making. He took a deep, calming breath.

“How many dead?”

Zack blinked at him. “I… What?”

“How many people have I killed, Zack?” To his own rising horror, his voice broke as he spoke and he forced his free hand into a fist.

“I don’t really know, Seph. A lot.”

Another deep breath. He felt his own fingernails digging into the palm of his hand and squeezed tighter, gritting his teeth. “Jenova?”

“Dead, as far as we can tell,” Zack answered.

He forced the next question through clenched teeth, voice murderous, and felt blood start to seep through his fist. “And Hojo?”

“Definitely dead. Cloud made sure of that.”

Strife, again. He had destroyed the boy’s hometown, killed whatever family he’d had left, fucked with his mind in the sickest way possible and forced his hand into playing his own twisted game. Jenova had used him and he’d used Cloud in return, as a weapon, as a plaything and, ultimately, as a way out. Well, that explains that, at least. No way the cadet I remembered would’ve grown up into such a tortured man. He’d seen it immediately, in the blond’s eyes; something had been destroyed and crushed utterly. The boy had matured into a fighter but he’d lost something of himself in the process. Sephiroth had recognized the cold stare and hatred that lay dormant there, he simply hadn’t understood why it was there.

It had hurt, to see the blond so changed; the shock alone had been enough to render him nearly breathless and had forced the cadet’s name out of his lips before he could stop himself. Stupid mistake. By all accounts he shouldn’t even have remembered the kid’s name and he’d mentally slapped himself as soon as the word left his mouth; he’d seen both Strife and Zack flinch.

Well, now you know why he’s changed so damn much. Congratulations; not only did you almost destroy half the planet, you also managed to mangle the one damned thing you might have ever wanted.

* * *

You weak-willed git! After all this time, all the preparation you forced yourself through and all the shit you’ve inflicted on everyone else, you bail at the last minute! As soon as he’d closed the door behind him, Cloud had stumbled his way to Hollcomb’s office chair and had gratefully sunk his long body into it before burying his head in shaking hands. What had he expected to find in that lab? Reeve’s short report should have told him all he needed to know; not an empty husk sitting there confused, not one of Hojo’s clones staring blankly at the wall but Sephiroth himself, as he had been during the blond’s own Soldier training, alive, aware and definitely confused.

He had hoped the long walk down to the labs would calm his trembling nerves, had somehow thought that he could will himself to confront the man he would find behind those damned double doors. He knew exactly when things had spun out of his control, when he had felt his legs threaten to give way under him and breathing become erratic, when the world had spun to a stop for him.

He shouldn’t have remembered my name! Even Zack told me he’d never once mentioned me by name. Their friendship had been discussed, he was certain of it, but as Sephiroth had called out his last name in a breathless hiss, Cloud had seen the look of surprise on the black-haired man’s face and had known something was wrong.

This entire plan rested on him; while Zack was a formidable fighter, Cloud knew if it came to it he was the only one truly capable of stopping Sephiroth. But facing him again in theories and plans was one thing and now that he was here, and this was now, it was an altogether different matter.

The blond realized he’d been digging furrows into his own scalp with his nails and dropped his hands into his lap, his blue eyes panicked and wide, breath leaving his chest in short bursts of panic.

“Shit. What have I done?”

A soft knock at the door interrupted him and he jumped, startled. “Cloud? Can I come in?” Reeve’s voice, calm and more than slightly hesitant. The blond sighed; as he got up to open the door for the man he took note of the weariness in his limbs and forced himself to concentrate, to stay awake and aware. He couldn’t let Reeve know he was breaking down now.

“Christ, Cloud, are you all right?”

Well, so much for that plan. The blond shrugged and motioned Reeve inside, walking aside to let the taller man through. “I’m fine. How’s everyone up on the second floor?”

“Worried. Tifa’s a nervous wreck,” he added as he turned to face Cloud. “Not that I can blame her. You don’t… look so good, Cloud. I know you’d planned to stay with Zack all the way through this, but maybe you should simply get a bit of rest.”

The blond opened his mouth to protest but Reeve waved a hand at him, waving his concern away. “They’re going through the file as we speak, and everything’s under control. You’re running yourself ragged with this, Cloud. I don’t care what it takes, I want you to sleep; Zack told me you’ve been up for days.” Reeve dropped a hand on Cloud’s shoulder and smiled at the smaller man. “If I have to post a couple of Turks outside the door to make sure you stay in here and rest, I will.”

The blond exhaled slightly, managing a small smile at the other man. “Fine. Did you speak with Hollcomb about the tests?”

“Later, Cloud. I said rest.” Reeve’s voice was playful as he squeezed his shoulder then walked back out to the corridor and closed the door behind him. Cloud stared at his retreating back, then at the grain of the wooden door and tried to collect his thoughts.

Sleep. He knew restful slumber would be next to impossible now, and had no desire to revisit his old nightmares once again. No way in hell am I going to even try sleeping, not with him so damned close. He could barely tell the difference as it was, between his nightmares and this new, confusing reality; when he was near the man, he felt the ground twist under his feet feverishly, his heart race in irregular beats that definitely did not feel normal.

He had to avoid the nightmares at all costs; he wasn’t sure how many more time he could visit that featureless, barren plain on the outskirts of Midgar before he drove himself completely insane.

Gaia, what had he gotten himself into?

“Get your ass down to the labs, Reeve. Sephiroth’s awake and I could really use some help here.”

“He’s what?!”

“Awake, Reeve. We have a bit of a situation here — nothing serious, but it’s chaotic enough without having aides running around with broken noses. I need someone to handle this guy, because honestly, I can’t.”

“We’ll be right down. Thank you, Diane.”

She put down the cordless phone back in its cradle and frowned. Reeve had obviously downplayed their conversation; she knew he’d promised Cloud not to alert anyone if anything went wrong. Still, considering their current situation, his reaction had been surprisingly calm and collected. She hadn’t just talked with Reeve, she’d talked with President Reeve, and that was disconcerting. Everything’s politics to him.

She understood his desire for control, and his wish not to induce panic, but she couldn’t fathom how he always managed to stay so calm; she herself usually felt more at ease with a very direct, none-too-subtle approach to life. Reeve’s strength, and the reason he was so far doing a great job managing the derelict corporation, was in being her complete and total opposite. If the man felt it necessary to pussyfoot around the subject in order to try and keep some semblance of order, it was fine with her. She simply couldn’t help feeling that it was all an illusion at this point.

She knew they weren’t in control; had known it from the beginning, when the man had fought the drugs and made her job that much harder. No matter what Cloud Strife assured her, no matter how many times he came down here with that hard-set look to his eyes, Diane knew none of them were in any position to pretend that they knew what they were doing anymore. And she certainly wasn’t equipped to deal with what the silver-haired man could throw at her. If things had calmed down now, it was only because he’d agreed to wait until the new president of Neo-ShinRa showed up.

“Fuck. This could go very bad, very fast.” She shook her head and signalled a nearby nurse. “How’s Roland?”

The nurse cringed. “He’ll live. But it’s a nasty wound, and a pretty bad break… He’s going to be alright, but someone will have a fun job trying to reconstruct his nose.”

She sighed, ran a hand through her short hair and puffed in exasperation. “I told that idiot not to stand so damned close… Send Doctor Levine to see to him; I have to get back out there before something else happens.”

* * *

He became aware of his surroundings in stages, and that was the first clue that he wasn’t simply waking up. Sound came to him first, gnarled and distorted, as though he was underwater. It brought back memories of the Wutai war, nighttime ambushes in the marshes and rain-slicked troops advancing in the dark. He knew as his brain fizzled to life that the memory was an old one, but he couldn’t place it. He felt numb and heavy; his head throbbed and he could barely make out a sort of buzz, distant but annoying all the same, like a crowd shouting just out of hearing. He thought he heard his name, and panicked voices shouting jumbled nonsense.

The feeling in his limbs came back next, disorienting for his lack of vision. His arms and legs tingled unpleasantly, and this time he was reminded of countless nights of guard duty as a young Soldier, arms and legs falling asleep as he slumped against his post to try and catch a few hours’ worth of rest. The memory faltered and spun out of his reach, leaving him confused and annoyed.

He twitched an arm and felt immediate resistance. A frown, then, which made him aware of the rest of his body; he was lying down, on a cold, hard surface. And he was restrained.

His chest tightened, panic rose briefly then fell, and was replaced by sharp, hard anger. Hojo. Another bloody test. Where was he, this time? The man had a habit of moving his laboratories when ShinRa reduced his funding. This echoing place was alien to him, and he supposed he must be in yet another new facility. In the mountains, somewhere, out of reach of ShinRa’s lawyers and Midgar’s rebels.

He fought to keep his breathing even and slow as the pleasant thought of his hands around the skinny scientist’s throat rose up in his mind; no point in alerting anyone that he was awake, if they didn’t already know. Light seeped in slowly from under his lashes and he felt himself come awake fully, felt his limbs start to respond and his mind slowly clear. He started discerning the sounds he had heard at first. Definitely voices, definitely scientists.

Directly at his left, close by, he felt a hint of something familiar, a breathless excitement that made the bile rise up in his throat.

“Oh, good, he’s conscious. Finally! Here, hold this, I’ll check his I.V. in case we need to put him under again.”

A sense of movement then, and he almost felt the man’s hand brush against his arm. The anger rose up again, before he could get a firm grip on it, and it slipped his control entirely. Put me under again, Hojo… Well, fuck you! As he felt the other man lower himself to his left arm, he pulled with the other, hard, and broke the leather restraint easily. His right arm had been lying at his side, and that left him almost a full four feet of swing before he reached the other man’s face. He opened his eyes just as he felt the very satisfying crunch of the bastard’s bones under his fist…

Shit. Not Hojo at all.

He had a few second of blessed silence in which to reflect that ShinRa’s scientists really ought to develop their own personality and mannerisms; they were all way too much alike for comfort. And then the world exploded around him, and he blinked in surprise as two dozen armed guards sprung up around him, rifles trained directly at his face, unwavering.

A quick glance around him confirmed that the masamune was nowhere close by, and while his current predicament was unpleasant, he knew ShinRa required him to cooperate with Hojo’s tests. A full blown attack on the company’s leading scientist’s team would be more than frowned upon, so he sat back down and waited. Eventually, a small, rather mousy-looking woman pushed through the ranks and came to squat by the wounded doctor’s side. She checked for a pulse and gingerly felt the broken contours of the man’s face, cringing. Apparently satisfied that the man was still alive, she signalled two other nurses who dragged the unconscious doctor away; he trailed blood the entire way to the exit, and Sephiroth smirked.

He turned to the woman, who was apparently in charge. “Where’s Hojo?”

She flinched, and two of the guards around him took a hesitant step back. A few of the closer ones looked nervous, and one of the younger ones was sweating profusely and seemed to be on the verge of collapse. Sephiroth frowned. He’d never been known for his social graces, but this was bordering on ridiculous.

“Reeve’s coming down here in a few minutes, he’ll explain everything. You’re not in one of Hojo’s labs.”

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow at her, unsure if he’d heard her right. “Reeve? Why the hell would I want to talk to Reeve?” Around him, more flinching, and one guard shot the woman an uncertain look which she ignored.

“Look, what the hell’s going on here?” He pulled against the other restraint and it gave in with a sad tearing sound. He’d been staring at the woman, trying to pull her face from his memory. When the restraint gave and his arm came up, he was shocked to feel a bullet hit him squarely in the shoulder.

The sound of the lone gunshot reverberated through the now silent hall and Sephiroth grimaced. He shifted his gaze to the trooper who had fired and managed, gritting his teeth, not to reach for the man’s throat. The grunt took two wavering steps back as Sephiroth reached for the wound with his good hand; he dug his fingers in and managed to extricate a sad, flattened metal disk which he sent flying across the floor with a flick of his fingers. The trooper’s face blanched.

“Okay, everybody just calm down. Reeve’s already on his way. You three, back off, give the man some air.” The woman pushed past the troopers closest to the steel bed and motioned a nurse forward. “Get me some bandages, we can’t use Materia at this point; I don’t want to risk mako-poisoning.”

She shifted her eyes to him, and Sephiroth was surprised to find a silent plea there, and a hint of annoyance. “Please, just play nice, would you? I swear Reeve will explain everything; nobody here wants a bloodbath.”

After a long silence, he huffed at her and nodded. “Fine.”

She gave a slight nod, and a relieved little smile. The nurse she’d sent for supplies came back and she made quick work of his wound; it was cleaned, staunched and dressed in very little time. As she walked away back to her office, Sephiroth took another look at his surroundings.

He was definitely not in one of Hojo’s labs; the man would never allow a female scientist with a clear head on his team, not without risking some serious bruises to his already expansive ego. The troopers surrounding him were laughably nervous; several of the rifles were now trembling slightly, and the younger one who had shot him was no longer in sight. They were all in uniform, but to Sephiroth’s trained eye they were rag-tag, not a single one of them in proper stance, their defensive position broken and scattered.

He could spot two breaches in the circle of men and one of the troopers kept glancing back at the scientists behind him, his aim wavering off Sephiroth every few seconds. He was outnumbered and outgunned yet he knew he could break out of the hall without breaking much of a sweat and, barring some freak accident, with minimal risk to his life.

It was, in short, a pitiful guard force. Hojo would’ve had trained, very well-paid Soldiers keeping an eye on him; this was ridiculous at best and insulting at worst.

He swung his legs over the side of the steel slab and rested his elbows on his knees, settling in for a long wait; ShinRa officials weren’t known for punctuality. The circle of guards around him grew bigger as he moved, then relaxed again. He sighed.

At his side, the nurse who had been taking away the soiled sponges and bandages the doctor had used to clean his wounds flushed a deep, embarrassed red and fled. Sephiroth realized that the thin cotton sheet which had been covering him had slipped and fallen. A few minutes later, a well-pressed and folded generic ShinRa uniform was hastily deposited on the furthest corner of the steel bed. He ignored it.

ShinRa officials… Of all the people the President could have sent down, Reeve seemed the least likely choice. The man was head of urban development; he’d never had anything to do with any of Hojo’s projects, and Sephiroth even doubted if he knew about Hojo’s involvement in Soldier Division’s genetic enhancements. Even Scarlet, as head of weapon research, could’ve had an excuse to come down here herself and gloat.

The fact that it was Reeve who would be explaining his present situation spoke volumes to him. Something had happened, and there was nothing he could do now but wait.

* * *

As they made their way down to the science wing, chaos and crowded corridors slowly gave way to dead silence and empty halls. Cloud knew everyone who had any right to be in this area had a fairly important job to do somewhere in the room up ahead, and wouldn’t be hanging about in the halls dejectedly.

But the silence got to him all the same. The air was heavy around him, and as they neared the big double doors Cloud felt his chest constrict painfully. It was probably just fear, and a growing sense of dread, that made him feel giddy and a little out of breath; the alternative was unthinkable. Hollcomb had assured him several times that, as far as she could tell, Sephiroth’s Jenova cells were dormant. Whatever physical effect he felt now was simply a reflection of his own fears and nightmares.

He nodded to himself slowly as they approached, then stopped. Tifa nearly collided with his back as he slowed and he turned to look at the group that was now turning as one man to stare at him.

He sent Tifa a small, nervous smile, which she returned. “Guys, I’m going to have to ask you to wait on the second floor railing.” He pointed to the nearest hallway on his left. “It’s right that way, you’ll get to see everything and you’ll be close by if anything happens.”

Tifa had a questioning look on her face. “Why, Cloud? I’m sure it’ll just be easier if we’re all nearby,” she said. She paused, searching his eyes. “With you.”

Zack, at his side, reassuring and warm, came to his aid. “We can’t have too many people down there, Tif. To keep security tight, for one. Also, because we don’t want to seem to be putting on a challenge, you know? Seph’s never been one for crowds.”

Tifa’s face twisted slightly and Cloud winced. They’d talked about this several times, but the nickname seemed to have slipped Zack’s lips. “Seph…?” She looked up at Cloud, unsure. “I’m sorry, are going to nickname every mass murderer that comes our way?”

A sharp, pointed sting in his chest, another guilt he didn’t need. He sighed, raked a hand through his hair tiredly; he was alienating himself from the only people who could possibly care about him.

Too late to back down now. “No Tif, just those mass murderers we’re bringing back from the dead. The stairs to the second floor are right there… Please.”

With a huff the brunette turned away. “Fine!”

Yuffie followed the young fighter with an apologetic look on her face, and Barrett and Cid, who had watched the exchange in silence, went after her. Cid gave him a thumbs up and a grin as he passed. Vincent approached him and gave his shoulder a squeeze before following suit.

And that was that. Nothing left now but to go in; no more excuses, no more stalling, nothing standing between him and whatever lay on that slab of steel.

“C’mon Spike, Red’s up there already, he can deal with whatever mood swing Tifa wants to throw at him.”

“Right.”

The blond didn’t move. Zack frowned, dropped a hand on his friend’s shoulder lightly. “He’s fine, man. Trust me. Diane said he’d already woken up, right? If the shit was going to hit the fan, we’d be knee deep in it by now. I mean, one scientist with a black eye isn’t exactly Jenova’s style, you know?” He paused, gave the shoulder a slight shake, and almost gasped as the blond looked up at him.

Zack hadn’t talked with the others much about everything that had happened after he’d died, but he knew enough about Cloud’s state of mind to expect him to be a little fragile. His newfound confidence as he’d led Avalanche against Jenova had been thoroughly shaken when Aerith had died, and from what he’d understood, the blond had never fully recovered. He’d put up a strong front, out of habit, even after Jenova had fallen, even after the remnants had been defeated.

That front was gone now, and in the blond’s eyes he thought he recognized the young cadet he remembered from his ShinRa days. Zack knew Cloud would never let Tifa see him crumble like this, and he supposed he should feel lucky, despite his own fear that he was less than ill-equipped to help.

He sent the younger man his best, most dazzling smile and hoped he was doing the right thing by pushing him like this. “Hey. We can do this, man.”

A pause, and Zack took the time to search his friend’s face; fear there, naked and raw, overwhelming and absolute; a barely controlled panic he would never let the others see. And, something else, something Zack would never had recognized if he hadn’t already known about it, something pure and absolutely unthinkable; a longing to be accepted, to be acknowledged, by the one man he had never dared meet face to face. A longing to surrender, a twisted and strange desire for the silver-haired man that the blond had only once been able to put words to. Zack inwardly grimaced. Yeah, and you had to get him stinkin’ drunk to get even that much out of him.

Eventually the blond’s face settled into an approximation of his usual look, although now that Zack had seen through the mask it was a little easier to see the edges where Cloud’s facade broke. His friend was more than exhausted, that much was clear, running only on adrenaline and pure guts at this point. Once this meeting was over and done with, Zack was going to drag the blond into his quarters and force him to stay in there and sleep.

“Yeah, I can do this… Thank you, Zack, for being here.”

“Don’t mention it, Spike.” Sending a small grin the other’s way, he shrugged. “Where else would I be, man? My season pass to the Golden Saucer is expired, you know that.”

Cloud’s eyes lit up, a small glimpse of the man he still was, buried under that shell. The blond allowed himself to laugh at his antics, more a nervous expulsion of breath than anything, but to Zack’s ears it was heaven.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

Although he had steeled himself prior to entering the main hall, it was still a shock to see the silver-haired man sitting there amidst the hustle of Neo-ShinRa staff. His very presence dominated the room, and everyone around him seemed to be entirely focused on either observing him or very carefully avoiding him. The man was wearing a pair of nondescript Neo-ShinRa uniform slacks, his chest bare. Cloud could see the dress shirt crumpled and carelessly tossed against the farther railing of the steel bed; it probably hadn’t fit. Something he hadn’t thought of, in his haste to get this over with; he’d suggested Hollcomb keep a spare uniform down here but hadn’t bothered to check the fit.

In a haze of nervous fear he focused on this small detail; it was a comforting thought, a normal thought. In hindsight, perhaps he shouldn’t have provided the man with a military uniform. Civilian clothes might have been more appropriate, more neutral. He was dimly aware that a small, choked chuckle escaped him. Shopping for Sephiroth. What an insanely stupid idea.

Zack turned to him, a worried frown on his usually cheerful face. The blond tried to wave his friend’s concern away but knew the other man didn’t buy it. He felt weak, dizzy even. The sleepless nights were trying to catch up to him at this incredibly inopportune moment. So damn weak… As they walked into the room Cloud looked back and up; the rest of Avalanche were standing on the railing with Reeve and several security guards. Tifa’s face was drawn, nervous. She sent a little wave his way and he managed a smile, hoping it would be enough to reassure her. Yuffie, Cid and Barrett seemed to be waiting, with varying degrees of patience; Yuffie was fidgeting, and as he looked up at them she reached over and drew closer to Tifa, sending the young fighter an encouraging smile.

He’d found an unlikely ally in Yuffie, and Cloud thanked whatever gods were listening that she seemed ready to help Tifa through this. Vincent and Red seemed a little more relaxed, although he knew they’d be ready for a fight if it came to that.

It was Reeve who bothered him the most. The man was sending him a look of such concern and pity he almost panicked for a moment. Had Zack told the man anything? Had Reeve simply put two and two together and come to the only logical conclusion on his own? Had Hollcomb herself guessed? He’d avoided coming down to the labs because he couldn’t stand the woman’s gaze on him; she was perceptive and smart, and he didn’t like her.

“Commander Fair.”

Sephiroth’s smooth voice brought Cloud out of his paranoia so fast he almost walked right into Zack, who had stopped a few feet from the steel bed. The blond took a few steps back and managed to keep himself out of view, out of reach of Sephiroth’s piercing green eyes. A nurse was at the man’s side, jotting down notes in a ledger as she checked the health sensor attached to the silver-haired man’s arm. Cloud frowned.

“It’s good to see you again, Seph.” And the way Zack said those words made the blond’s blood run cold. He knew what his friend meant; it was good to see him as he was, as he always should’ve been, before Jenova poisoned his mind.

“I was told Reeve would explain my current situation. He seems intent on staying up there and staring down at me.” Sephiroth sent a nasty look at the nurse and gently pushed her hand away as she reached towards his face with a pen light. She shrank back, and Zack put a hand on her shoulder.

“Give us a few minutes, miss.”

There was a pause, a few breathless seconds, and Cloud was shocked to hear his own voice, blessedly unwavering.

“No. Not a few minutes. No more tests. Hollcomb promised me there wouldn’t be any of this.”

He almost shrank back as Sephiroth looked at him, surprised to hear him speak. The man hadn’t looked his way, not once. Cloud wasn’t surprised; he was unimportant to the man, the shadow of a young trooper.

But as Sephiroth stared at him his eyes widened, pupils dilating. He hissed a small breath and steadied himself by snapping his arm towards Zack and grabbing the black-haired man’s elbow. Zack looked down at him in surprise.

“Seph? You okay, man?”

In Sephiroth’s eyes Cloud saw recognition, and panic. It was the most emotion he’d ever seen swirling there and the blond’s chest tightened uncomfortably. He’s human. Definitely stronger, and maybe a little strange, but human all the same.

When the silver-haired man spoke it was with a slight edge of nervousness in his voice, a breathless panic that Cloud knew well; a feeling of spinning out of control, of having Hojo’s hands pulling the strings of his life. And the blond knew Sephiroth had recognized him, had known him as the sixteen-year old trooper who had followed Zack around like a lovesick child.

“How long have I been out, Zack? How long?”

Cloud had kept a close eye on Tifa as he’d explained about his own motivation for bringing Sephiroth back and had seen a look of guilt flash on her face as he’d mentioned the labs. He knew she had a hard time trying to forget Hojo had ever had his hands on him, and that she hadn’t been there, hadn’t looked for him. They hadn’t been that far apart, really; Hojo had never moved him from Nibelheim, and the blond knew Tifa blamed herself for never searching through the mansion, where she’d known so much had already happened.

Too late now to spare her the memories.

Strangely, it was Yuffie who spoke up first, as Tifa, lost in thought, kept her eyes down and away from his gaze. The young ninja cleared her throat nervously and also avoided Cloud’s eyes. “So, like, what we saw on that disk Zack gave us… it was… totally awful, Cloud.” She shook her head and grimaced, looking up at him with something Cloud readily identified as pity in her eyes. “Did Hojo… When you… you were in Nibelheim, did Hojo ever…”, she trailed off, unable to finish. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my–”

“No.”

A sigh, then, from both Yuffie and Tifa who sat next to her. The ninja had obviously asked the one question Tifa would never dare ask, the one question she probably wanted an answer to first and foremost.

He looked back at Zack and, seeing nothing but encouragement there, continued. “It wasn’t the same, with me and Zack. We were just… broken toys to him; something to pass the time while Jenova regrouped. It was different with Sephiroth… I think Hojo wanted to break him early, so he would have a way to control him when he got older, and a lot stronger than him.”

“Shit.” Sitting across from the doorway next to Barrett, Cid pulled a dog-end from his ear and lit up, almost unconsciously. Yuffie turned in her seat and shot a dark look at him, which the gruff pilot pointedly ignored.

Tifa kept her eyes on Cloud now, and he shifted, uncomfortable under the warmth and guilt he felt there. Vincent, leaning against the wall on the far side of the room, looked up at Cid, then at Cloud. “Are you saying that the torture we saw eventually stopped?”

Cloud nodded. “Some of it, at least. I know for a fact that Hojo continued his experiments up until the point when Sephiroth was sent to Nibelheim. Zack can attest to that.” He stopped, and knew Zack was nodding behind him. “Most of it Hojo justified as required testing; he was trying to make the best Soldier ShinRa had ever seen, and some of those files actually show him counting the minutes it took for Sephiroth’s broken bones to knit back together.”

“I’m sorry, Cloud,” Tifa interrupted him softly, her eyes still glued to his face. “We didn’t watch all of it.”

Zack shot her a smile and a waved her concern away. “Can’t blame you, Tif.”

She nodded, then waited for the blond to go on.

Cloud had to force himself to breathe again, to ease the tension in his chest.

“I watched all of it, and it’s all pretty awful. If Hojo wasn’t already gone…” He sent a helpless look to Zack, which the older man returned. This is hell. Gods, never mind, this is worse than hell. I think I would’ve preferred a flaming row over this quiet talk. “We don’t know for sure about…” He stopped, took another deep breath, shook his head sadly. “We don’t know for how long Hojo kept him imprisoned and raped him. There are files spanning several years on that disk; they eventually dribble off, but that might just be because Hojo moved or erased his backups.”

A nervous laugh escaped him as he added: “The only way to know for sure will be to ask Sephiroth himself. You’re all welcome to the job if you want it.”

Vincent’s deep voice from the corner forced Cloud’s eyes to the man. “Perhaps it would be best if our knowledge of Hojo’s true research was kept secret. At least for a while.”

“You’re right, of course.” Cloud sent the man a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Doesn’t hurt to ask, though.”

“And that’s what makes you think this is a good idea?”, Tifa asked, voice trembling and an angry, fearful look on her face. “We just hope to hell he doesn’t remember Jenova’s sick voice in his head and that he comes back the way he was before? You’ll have to tell him the truth eventually. What if he just goes insane again?”

This time it was Reeve who spoke up before the blond had a chance to react. “Doctor Hollcomb assures us that his Jenova cells are dormant. Theoretically, the real Sephiroth was killed in Nibelheim when he fell into the reactor core. We assume that the others were all clones, manipulated by Jenova.”

Tifa shot the man a dark look. “That’s it? We assume?”

“It always made no damn sense to me dat the guy never really used his sword much,” Barrett piped in. He sent a smile Tifa’s way. “I mean, yeah, if I had a sword dat damned big, I’d use it, and never mind playin’ around with Materia.”

“Barrett’s right,” Cloud agreed. He walked forward and pulled the chair next to Tifa. This was taking more out of him than he’d thought, and he wanted, needed, her support. He sat, and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze; her eyes were sad, betrayed. “The only time it felt even remotely like Sephiroth was when I fought him after Kadaj brought him through. And I think that was because Jenova was weak, and she let him go on auto-pilot. It was… a hell of a sword fight.” And pretty much touch and go for a moment… If Zack hadn’t pushed me, I think I might’ve given up. Sephiroth remembered Nibelheim; I’m sure of it… And that meant that part of his memories were intertwined with Jenova’s. But he certainly wasn’t about to tell any of his friends that; he felt sure they had enough reasons to oppose this plan without adding to their doubts.

“Yeah, and there isn’t much left of Midgar. It’s all just rubble now. You guys tore it up, man,” Yuffie added, with a wry grin.

Nanaki, who had remained silent at Cloud’s side, took a few steps forward. He sat down and gazed up at the group over the table’s edge. “We’ve also been monitoring the Lifestream closely. There’s been no sense of anything wrong, just a lot of activity. Nothing we’ve seen indicates that the soul that now inhabits Sephiroth’s sleeping body is anything other than the man Zack and Cloud knew.”

And Cloud knew that was a lie, because he’d told Red the same he’d told the others about his past encounters with Sephiroth; that they’d spoken a few times, in the barracks, that he’d known Sephiroth had been a decent, if quite distant, honest man. That he’d been enrolled in the Nibelheim mission because he knew the man, not because Zack had insisted he should go. Most of what he knew of Sephiroth had been gleaned from Zack, in the dark hours after his training and his classes. The cadet dormitories, silent and empty, Cloud sitting cross-legged on his bed, rapt, and Zack telling him stories from the Wutai war; tales of entire Wutaian battalions decimated, of monsters fought and defeated.

He remembered feeling small and insignificant, remembered his desire to become just as strong as the General. He was still a kid when they were sent to Nibelheim, although by that time he’d reached the official ShinRa legal age for troopers. The only person ever to have found out about his little lie on his application was Zack.

Back then, in the barracks, all he’d ever thought of was adventure and war. He would daydream of the glory and grittiness of an imagined battlefield and the rush of adrenaline; would hope to one day fight for what he’d thought he believed in. Getting into Soldier had been all that had mattered, all he could strive for. With the luxury of several years of pain and horror behind his belt now, and too much battle experience for his own taste, he could honestly say he’d been a fool.

And throughout all those years, trying to be something he wasn’t, Sephiroth’s presence overshadowed everything in his memories; glimpses of the man at official functions, the General sending a fleeting glance his way as he surveyed the ranks of new arrivals. Zack’s multitude of stories and little anecdotes had been filled with details of the man’s life and character, at Cloud’s own insistence.

His entire cadet training years were spent under some sort of spell, overshadowed by a uniform, and the deep swirling green and flowing silver of the man he wanted to impress most, the only man whose opinion of him could ever have mattered.

* * *
“You ready, Spike?”

The blond shook his head fervently, soft spikes of hair brushing his cheeks. Petrified wasn’t a strong enough word to describe his current state. He tried to answer his friend, failed to find his voice, took a deep, calming breath.

“How do I look?”

Zack smiled down at the smaller teen. His new trooper uniform fit him like a glove; he looked polished and fit for action, if a little on the small side. Cloud was obviously way beyond nervous, past apprehensive and straight into utter brick-shitting terror, but he was damned proud to finally be wearing ShinRa’s colours, and his eyes positively sparkled with pent-up energy. With the ShinRa helmet under his arm and his rifle slung over his shoulder, he was beaming.

Zack shrugged. “I dunno, you still look a bit like jailbait to me.”

“What?!”

“You know, just maybe a little more troublesome jailbait, but still jailbai– Aaaah!”

A well-aimed punch at the older teen’s shoulder promptly shut him up and forced his grin to get larger, if that was at all possible. “Come on, Zack, what the hell?!”

“You look great, kid. The girls’ll fall all over the place for you.”

A hesitant pause there. “Right.”

“Honest.”

“Yeah, okay… If you say so.” Cloud shrugged and pushed his way past his friend to reach the doorway. “Come on, I can’t be late, Zack.”

“You’ll knock ‘em dead, kid,” Zack answered, a fleeting smile on his face again.

They made their way down to the ShinRa barracks’ main communal hall, passing other newly promoted troopers who were filing in ranks in the room. The air was heavy with tension, and every nervous trooper’s face turned to Zack as he and Cloud made their way down to the front of the lines. An elevated section held a hastily erected podium and Zack gave the blond’s shoulder a gentle tap and sent another beaming grin at him before walking up to the side of the stage, where he stood stiffly at attention, waiting.

Minutes ticked by in the silent room, and Cloud had time to reflect on the fact that Zack had led him directly to the first line of troopers. He hadn’t been paying attention at all, and realized with a start that he was utterly exposed, and that he would have a completely unobstructed view of the lectern and surrounding stage.

He shot Zack a dark look when he understood that the older teen had led him there on purpose, but the dark-haired fighter’s gaze was fixed on a point slightly above and behind the ranks. This wasn’t his Zack, this was military Zack, and Cloud knew he wouldn’t get anything now from his friend.

Shit.

Sneaking a furtive glance to his left, the blond noticed that the troopers around him looked about as apprehensive as he felt and he let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. Feeling a little better, he shifted his weight and raised his head to look back up at Zack, intending to burn a hole in his treacherous friend’s face with a well-deserved glare.

He never made it to Zack’s face; his eyes met smouldering green on the way up and he realized that the entire room had gone deafeningly silent.

The General stood there, not five feet from him, looking over the massed ranks of new troopers. Cloud hadn’t even heard the man enter, let alone walk all the way to the middle of the room to stand in front of him. Lost in his fear and awe, he had time to note that the General was a lot taller than he’d thought; he’d seen the man from a distance once or twice, but now he had to actually look up to meet his eyes. The dark leather uniform and heavy armour he wore only served to enhance his impressive build and he held himself proudly, all coiled power. The General’s hair fell down his back in an incongruous cascade of silver silk that did surprisingly little to soften the man’s fierce image and demeanour. Up close, his eyes almost glowed, even in the harsh lighting of the ShinRa hall.

He was, in short, both nightmarishly alien and almost painfully alluring.

Cloud shuddered, once, and the green gaze shifted quickly straight to him. His stomach lurched, and in a haze of panic he silently prayed whatever gods could hear him to force his lunch to stay exactly where it belonged in his stomach. Following Zack’s lead, he focused his eyes on a point to the left and slightly above the man’s shoulder. He almost felt the General’s eyes on him and he willed his body to behave, forced his feet and legs to stay firmly where they were and not bolt him out of the room.

An eternity passed before Sephiroth turned and climbed up to the podium in easy, graceful movements. He stopped next to the lectern and Cloud saw his eyes drift over them once more before settling on Zack, who promptly relaxed and shot the General one of his usual grins.

The black-haired man waved a hand at them, almost pointing directly at Cloud. “Future of ShinRa, sir. What d’you think?”

A pause.

“Let’s just be thankful the war is over, then.” Sephiroth’s voice was quiet, but in the silent room it seemed to boom and echo around Cloud’s skull. The General shook his head slightly. “They’re a little young, Zack.”

“We were all pretty young once, sir.”

Sephiroth’s eyes came to rest on Cloud again, and the blond could almost feel his heart try to hammer itself out of his chest. Panic, pride and something unrecognizable assailed him. He fought to keep his breathing steady and only just managed not to disgrace himself by fainting.

“I suppose they’ll do.”

* * *
Cid’s voice broke Cloud out of his daydream, and it was with a with a dizzying sense of repeating history that he startled himself into the present; Zack’s comforting presence at his side blurring the line between his cadet years and the man he’d become. It was hard to remember those years now; he could hardly believe he’d ever been quite that young and naive. And, let’s face it, impressionable. That promotion ceremony is pretty much burned in my memory…

The gruff pilot exhaled a cloud of pale blue smoke. “Tifa’s still right though. Let’s say he doesn’t remember squat. Let’s just assume everything goes right and peachy… What happens when we tell him what actually went down with the space bitch?” He shuddered, remembering the mangled monster they’d all fought. “When we tell him that thing’s name? I know the guy’s got to remember his mum’s own name…”

“We all know Hojo lied to him about Lucrecia’s death, and Jenova’s role as his mother has little to do with the actual truth. It was what he found out about himself in Hojo’s research that made him lose it in Nibelheim,” Vincent added. “Some of that research was in error.”

Cloud nodded. “Or planted there on purpose.” The others looked at him as though he’d grown a second head. He shrugged. “I really wouldn’t put anything past Hojo at this point.”

Cid exhaled again, more of a sigh now. “Fuck, Cloud, you expect us to call this one? I don’t want that responsibility, kid.”

“No.” The blond shook his head and looked each of them in turn. “I take full responsibility for whatever comes of this. I just wanted to be straight with all of you, and explain my reasons.”

A long, uncertain pause followed.

“Fair enough,” the pilot answered.

“You’re agreeing with this?”

Cid turned to Yuffie, nodded, then looked back across the table at the blond. “Yeah. I trusted you with my back before, kid. I just hope to hell you’re right.”

Cloud sent a thankful and exhausted smile the old pilot’s way. “Thank you, Cid.”

An answering grumble from Barrett resolved itself into: “Fine, but if he goes bonkers again, I’m tearin’ him a new one.”

Yuffie smiled at him as well. “If everyone’s okay with this, then I’m in, too. Guess I can’t stop you anyway.”

He nodded at her and sent a look towards Vincent, who nodded back. “You know you have my support.”

“And mine,” Nanaki added.

Cloud turned back to Tifa, dreading what he might see in her eyes. “Tif…”

She shook her head, tears glinting in her lashes. But when she looked back up at him, she was smiling, and his heart almost broke that he was putting her through this. She reached over and laid a hand on his arm, then let her gaze shift to the table.

“Not yet. Please don’t ask me to be okay with this today, Cloud.”

“I understand.” Not yet, but perhaps one day. It’ll have to be good enough for your little guilt trip, you selfish bastard. “I’m sorry, Tifa.”

“Don’t apologize. You wouldn’t be asking, wouldn’t be here doing this, if you didn’t truly believe this was right. I trust you, too. It’s just… hard.” She smiled a bitter little smile and the trust and forgiveness in her eyes almost broke his resolve. “It’ll take a while to digest this. You have to give me time.”

“I promise.”

“So, that’s it? What now?”, Yuffie asked.

Cloud nearly jumped out of his skin as the shrill beeping of a PHS rung out through the room. “Shit, Reeve.”

“Sorry, I have to take this,” Reeve said as he slid a hand into his breast pocket and pulled out his PHS. Flipping it open, he answered and sent Cloud an apologetic look.

Which quickly transformed into an almost comical grimace of surprise. Cloud turned to stare questioningly at Zack, who answered with a shrug.

“He’s what?! … We’ll be right down. Thank you, Diane.” Reeve flipped the device closed and slipped it back in his pocket.

“We’re out of time, people. Sephiroth’s awake.”

He knew something had gone wrong before he’d ever even reached the big oak doors that led to the main area of the sectioned-off wing. The smell alone brought back painful memories of his hometown burning, a stench of cooked flesh and ash he knew he could never forget. The area around the doors was singed and the bodies of several troopers lay mangled on the tiled floor. He thought he recognized a few of the men as new recruits he and Zack had helped train, but they were too disfigured by fire and steel to be certain. The doors themselves lay crooked and ajar and he almost turned back, uncertain what he would find within.

He heard a strangled scream and forced himself to approach, pulling his sword free from its scabbard on his back and stepping through. Inside, the smoke made it hard to see much of anything.

He took a few cautious steps, his entire body tense and alert. He knew he should wait for Zack, but there was no time now; he had to act quickly to avoid any more bloodshed. This had been his idea from the very beginning; it was his responsibility. His fault.

In the murk ahead of him, he thought he saw movement and he advanced, dreading the worst. There was another cry, softer, weaker, then a laugh, a voice he recognized with his entire body, a voice that made his heart leap into his throat and dance.

A voice that made his nerves sing and twitch in fear, in hatred, in something so much stronger and worse than both.

He felt himself pulled closer and as he walked the smoke parted, and he saw the tall dark form of Sephiroth, standing over Zack’s kneeling body. As he approached, both men turned towards him and he saw that Zack held his left hand to his midsection, where a gaping wound had turned his shirt a dark black color, seeping blood into the blue fabric slowly. Zack’s eyes were unfocused, exhausted and shocked to see him there.

The gaze the green-eyed man shot his way was altogether different and Cloud had to force himself not to step back. He took a shaky breath and managed to meet those eyes with what he hoped was determination, unwilling to show fear now, at the end of everything.

The black clad man returned his attention to Zack, who looked up just in time to receive a cruel, back-handed blow that sent him skidding across the blood slicked floor. He came to a rest a few feet from Cloud, eyes closing slowly. From up close, the blond could see that Zack’s wound was horrific, gaping and angry. If he survived this night, if any of them did, it would be a long and painful journey to recovery, even with the aid of materia.

Cloud kept that hope firmly in his mind as he took a step over his friend’s prone form and advanced on Sephiroth. The hatred and fear came up, and hid his soul from that other thing that lurked in him, and threatened to break him every time he met the man. He embraced both terror and anger, blanketing himself in his memories, far from that other part of him that he could not – would not – face.

As he approached Sephiroth, the walls of the science wing slowly dissipated around them, smoke and blood melting away into rapidly encroaching green. Fading steel and wood gave way to the now familiar industrial venting of ShinRa’s ancient technology. The floor disappeared entirely, replaced with metal grating and walkways which allowed the sickly green light to seep up from under their booted feet. As he turned, panicked, he saw his friend’s body slowly fade as well and disappear with the rest of the room. Zack… Please be safe.

Yet, as the Mako reactor materialized around him, Cloud knew this was another dream, and part of him was relieved, elated even, that this wasn’t real. There would be nothing worse than this end for his project, no more terrifying prospect than the thought that he would’ve been responsible for a repeat incident.

“Tell me, Cloud, why did you come here?”

A shock, and shiver, as the silver-haired man’s voice rung out in the empty room. Cloud shook his head slowly, the point of his sword now resting against the metal grating of the walkway. “You’ve been killing people. I came to stop you.” Of course, to stop you. Never, ever, anything more than that.

A barely heard laugh from the older man, an expulsion of breath which could’ve been a sigh. Sephiroth’s massive sword hung from his lightly closed fist, still slick with blood and seemingly forgotten. “You’re a fool, Cloud. You know as well as I do that you couldn’t possibly stop me…”

The blond shook his head again, keeping a firm grip on his own sword. He grit his teeth and tore his eyes from Sephiroth’s as the older man walked towards him. The floor, little more than a walkway, clean of Zack’s blood; the silver-haired man’s sword, resting there so casually. The mako glow that shimmered through the grating; anything was a safer sight than those equally glowing green eyes, mocking him.

Cloud jumped as a gloved hand came up against his face, almost gently. Fingers tightened on his jaw, just enough to hurt, and his face was forced back up, meeting the full force of Sephiroth’s eyes just inches from his own. He knows you’re weak; knows you won’t do anything to prevent this. You could have stopped it from going this far, you do have a sword.

As he watched, the green glow surrounding them changed, warmed, and was replaced by the flickering light of flames. The blond could barely discern the fading walls of the reactor chamber around them as, again, reality shifted.

Nibelheim around him, with its light, and its stench, and the unmistakable guilt of knowing that, even then, he could’ve done something to prevent the slaughter.

And Sephiroth’s presence, so close it was awe-inspiring and terrifying, the contours of the man’s face softened by the light of Cloud’s hometown being destroyed. Somehow, the anger faded, choked in the smoke and ash of his memories and Cloud struggled to hold on to it. He felt it slip past his grasp, just as Sephiroth’s smile became cruel.

And Cloud knew he’d just lost. In that second of weakness, Sephiroth stepped in, reaching back with his sword arm to swing the massive blade and slide it firmly into Cloud’s left shoulder. The blade nicked and scraped against his shoulder blade and pierced through the skin and muscle of his back as the man forced it in to the hilt.

The scream choked in Cloud’s throat. His sword clattered to the floor, slipping from his fingers even before he’d felt the blade’s tip pierce his shoulder.

A sharp twist of the man’s wrist sent the blond to his knees, again. As the fires of Nibelheim burned around him, he heard Sephiroth laugh softly, and, with a last desperate hope, he pushed up and tried to force the bigger man back, tried to wrench the blade out of his shoulder as he’d done all those years ago.

Only this time Sephiroth didn’t back away, and there was certainly no surprise in the man’s glowing green eyes as he followed Cloud up. No hint of anger nor curiousity, nothing to mark the man as human; just a dangerous, vicious flame of violence and lust burning there, in the green.

As Nibelheim faded around them both and Cloud’s vision slowly seeped into darkness, Sephiroth leaned down to the blond’s ear.

“Don’t you know by now that nothing you can do will ever surprise me, my little Cloud?”

What was left of his anger dwindled and faded, and the fear was by now so great that he felt like it had swallowed him up. Arising from the depths of him, he felt it surface and cradle him as he fought. Oh gods, no, no, no, NO!…

Despair, guilt, hope, lust. Love.

He drowned.

* * *

He woke up in one smooth step, going from nightmare straight into reality with a start and a choked off scream. He was resting against the side of the board table in the science wing office he and Zack had found earlier, and there was a painful stitch in his shoulder that told him he’d been lying there a while.

He sighed, a huge and relief-filled breath, that it had all been just another nightmare. ‘Just a nightmare’ is not the right way to word this. Face it, you’re exhausted. Any more of these dreams… And he’d be walking on automatic – if he could walk at all – and not much use if anything did happen when they finally got around to waking Sephiroth.

He stood up, feeling the twitch and strain in his shoulder slowly dissipate as he moved. Behind him, the open burgundy curtains let in a reasonable amount of light, and the sky over the science wing was a dull orange glow, slowly fading. He’d been asleep a while, although that wasn’t very surprising now. He hadn’t gotten a real night’s sleep in what felt like weeks.

He stretched and checked his PHS’s digital clock; hopefully he hadn’t missed his scheduled meeting with Reeve.

“We’re not late, Cloud.”

The blond suppressed a nervous shudder as he heard the door to the office click and open. He turned, and saw Reeve stepping in briskly, all business. Behind the older man’s smartly dressed form, Cloud saw Nanaki enter more slowly. The big cat sat on his haunches and gave him a startlingly aware and perceptive look.

He shrugged, grinned a little and walked forward to ruffle Nanaki’s mane playfully. He knew the other hated it, but it had been a while since they’d seen each other, and after his rude awakening, he felt entitled to a bit of fun.

“Don’t.”

“Glad to see you too, Red.”

There was a pause, as Reeve settled himself into a chair and Nanaki’s gaze swept over Cloud thoughtfully.

“You look… tired.”

Behind the fighter, the big cat saw Reeve nod. They both knew Cloud was running along a thin line between the man they knew and a total wreck, although Zack had refused to tell them why he had trouble sleeping. The almost imperceptible, nervous jump as they’d entered had confirmed for Reeve that Cloud was a lot worse off than Zack had let on.

“I’m fine. I’ve just been running around trying to be everywhere at once.”

“Right.”

“Look, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I usually am.” Reeve pushed a folder across the table towards Cloud, who stepped in to intercept. “That’s today’s log so far. Diane tells me she’s fast running out of options. If we don’t wake him up soon, we could end up causing permanent brain damage, or worse, risk losing him entirely.”

The blond opened up the folder and scanned its contents briefly. A long list of medication logs stared back at him; drug names, time they had been administered, dosage, and effect on the subject. Cloud couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and he knew Sephiroth’s physiology was far from normal, but he trusted Dr. Hollcomb’s instinct.

He took a deep breath, closed the folder and dropped it back on the table, then nodded at Reeve. They both saw him steel himself before adding:

“Right. Tell your people to get ready. As soon as I get back down, we can start.”

Reeve nodded. “Of course. The crew is already more than prepared.”

Cloud closed his eyes, raked a shaking hand through his hair. “I just have to talk to the guys, first.”

“We’ll go with you.”

* * *

As it was, they were all stopped by Zack in the hall leading out of the science wing. With a grin and a nod, the black-haired fighter dropped a hand on Cloud’s shoulder and sent Reeve and Nanaki on ahead to round up the usual suspects with a promise to be ‘up there ASAP, Reeve.’

As the two rounded a corner, Zack turned to his friend. Cloud looked like hell, and he was damned if he was going to let him walk into a room full of potential hostiles feeling like the smallest thing in the world. He sighed and tried to grin at his friend hopefully.

“Come on, Cloud, fess up. What happened in there?”

Silence on the other’s end.

“Did Reeve say something off? I know Red’s been on your side from the beginning, so it can’t be anything he did.” He stopped to collect his thoughts, unsure. “Man, I know this is hard but you can’t just–”

“I had another dream… I… think you died.”

“Shit, Spike.”

The younger man shrugged, tried to dismiss his concern. “I don’t know, Zack. I think it’s just nerves. I’m fine.”

“Are you kidding? You’re not fine, Spike, you look totally exhausted!”

Cloud bared his teeth, and an inkling of the fighter the young blond still was showed through. “I can do this, Zack.” Bristling, pride hurt, the blond looked up at his friend. “I promised myself I’d do this.”

Zack smiled, a bit sadly. He’d known nothing would’ve made him back down. “So, we going up there, or what?”

* * *

“For crying out loud, Reeve, where the hell have you been? We’ve been calling you for over an hour!”

“Reeve! Finally!”

They were all there, in the conference room, and with the inclusion of Nanaki and Zack and Cloud on their way, it would be the first time the new president of Neo-ShinRa would see them all together like this.

In any other situation, Reeve might have found this quite moving. As it was, there was no time to appreciate their little reunion. All business and no play, as usual.

Reeve smiled at Tifa and Yuffie and motioned for them to sit back down. “I know you must have a lot of questions, but–”

“Questions? You’re kidding, right?” Yuffie said, her voice shaky. “I damn well threw up, Reeve! In Cid’s trash basket! That damn disk is… is… It’s awful!”

“You’re always throwing up, Yuffie.”

“That’s not the point!”

Reeve managed a smile, and noticed that Vincent, who was skulking in the darkest corner of the room, was also apparently struggling with a wry grin. Barrett and Cid were uncharacteristically silent and Tifa seemed to waiting, probably for Cloud to arrive and give her the answers she sought. Nanaki sat near the table, a silent and calming presence.

“Look, I know it was harsh not to warn you, but Cloud believed this was the best way to get his message across. What Hojo did to… to the boy… was entirely inhumane, and Cloud thinks… Cloud feels that… Damn.” Reeve rubbed the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t the best person to be doing this.

It was the big cat who came to his rescue. “Cloud feels that what Sephiroth has been through entitles him to a second chance.”

All eyes turning to Nanaki, Reeve took the opportunity to silently thank him.

Tifa was the first to bristle slightly, memories of what had been done to her family surfacing. “Second chance at what?”

“Second chance at life, Tif.”

In the doorway now was the familiar sight of Cloud and Zack, standing together, uncertain of their welcome.

* * *

Seeing them all together – as they’d been when they were chasing Jenova back and forth across the world – was a comfort to Cloud, who stepped in slowly around Zack to stand next to Reeve. As he entered, the blond saw Tifa’s face grow cold. It was Zack who had spoken in the doorway, but Cloud she turned her eyes to.

“And the people in Nibelheim, Cloud, did they get that second chance? What about Aerith, and everyone caught in Midgar when meteor fell? All those people who were killed or maimed by the Geostigma?” She paused, waited for her words to sink in, shook her head sadly. “What about my–”

There was no need to for her to finish; Cloud knew they had both lost a parent in the Nibelheim incident, resented himself for putting her through this.

“Don’t… bring them into this.” And yet through it all, he was a little angry that she would dismiss his own memories so easily. While he and his mother hadn’t exactly ever seen eye to eye, finding her body in his own home had been a nightmare. And the thought of the flower girl was still a very lightly healed wound, despite his firm belief that she was alright somewhere, in the Lifestream. This entire project had taken its toll on him.

Still, he had made this choice himself. He was forcing Tifa now to follow along with his own way of atoning.

“I’m sorry, Tifa, I know this has been hard on you,” he turned his gaze to the rest of his old team, sitting around the table. “On all of you. So that’s why I’m here now. I promised I would explain, and I tried to do that as best I could; Zack gave you Hojo’s old research files. I don’t know how to be any clearer than that.

“You all know of the time I spent in Hojo’s hands, after Nibelheim. I’ve hid it from you before.” Cloud sighed, looked down at his hands for a few seconds. When he looked up again, his eyes were harder. “I’ll never deny what I’ve been through again. Because trying to forget almost made me lose myself.

“And that’s why I need to do this. If you have any questions, this is it. When we go back down to the science wing, we’ll be waking him up.”

She’d been so sure she would catch up with Zack, she and Yuffie hadn’t even given any thought as to how they would confront him when they finally reached him. Following the black-haired man hadn’t been easy, either. He knew the Neo-ShinRa building like the back of his hand, and a small, nagging part of her mind was a little angry at how effortlessly the easy-going Zack had managed to fit in with the Neo-ShinRa crew. Already, she could recognize the early signs of hero worship in the eyes of a lot of the younger troopers and officers. Zack had only been here a matter of months, and he was part of the scenery, a surprisingly lively relic of the days of Soldier and ShinRa.

All this meant for her now was that keeping up with the man had been near to impossible. Most of the employees and troopers she’d met on the way had been less than forthcoming with their opinion of the man’s whereabouts. Apparently, everyone around the science wing knew more about what was going on than Reeve had let on.

She shouldn’t have been surprised, then, to find her way barred by a gigantic set of double-doors and a pair of grim-looking troopers who remained stoic and unflinching when she demanded to be let through. Tifa cajoled, then requested, then threatened. Neither of the men acknowledged her request and one of them outright ignored her presence entirely. Eventually Yuffie convinced her that berating the young officers was pointless and they started back towards the elevators.

She glowered at a passing scientist. The man had a Neo-ShinRa ID badge swinging on his neck. Tifa snorted softly, sure that he at least would have no trouble with the security check. Yuffie turned to glance at her as they walked past him.

“What?”

She shrugged. There was no way to explain her current mood; Cloud’s betrayal was a sharp thing in her chest, a pain that had nothing to do with her physical notion of hurt, a hint of Nibelheim burning still near. It was inconceivable that he would suggest this plan, this wild idea, of his own volition, but it seemed impossible to reason with him.

She settled for something she could readily identify and put down in words without huffing and puffing and cursing. “I hate the way this whole thing has got the lab coats running around. Did you notice? I haven’t seen this many scientists in a ShinRa building since we sent Hojo on his merry way.”

“Neo-ShinRa.”

Tifa missed a step and stared at Yuffie. “What?”

“You said ShinRa.”

“Well, damn, sorry.”

Yuffie shook her head slowly. She smiled at her, a little tentatively. “I know how this must feel, Tif, but we can’t stay angry forever.”

“I can sure try.”

There was a pause, and they walked in silence for a while. “So, we heading back to Cid’s office, right?”

Tifa shrugged. There was nothing else they could do now short of pleading with Reeve, and she wasn’t that desperate yet. “Sure. I don’t see what could be so important on that disk, but we might as well check it out.”

“Zack seemed… pretty serious about it.”

And that was an understatement if either of them had ever heard one. She didn’t know the black-haired fighter well, but he had never struck her as the kind of man to be easily shaken.

He’d seemed shaken when he’d given her the tape. If she didn’t know him any better, she might even go as far as call it haunted. There had been something in the man’s eyes then that she had never seen there before. She wasn’t sure, now, that she actually wanted to know. Whatever information Cloud had managed to find, she knew that if the disk had found its way to them, then Reeve probably thought that whatever was on it explained Cloud’s actions to some extent.

That was reason enough to feel apprehensive. But she couldn’t not go. As hard as it was now, she’d promised herself she would never treat Cloud as she had when they’d been kids; never look down on him again, never judge him for his rash decisions, whatever they turned out to be.

She had no choice now but to try and understand.

* * *

Cid sat back in his chair, cigar in hand. The plush leather chair Reeve had given him had some time ago lost most of its luster and shine. Shera kept telling him that the smoke was slowly turning his walls a horrid yellow color but he supposed that was only her way of encouraging him to find another vice.

This one suited him just fine. The conversion from his dog-ends to these imported monsters had been made easier by Reeve’s financial contribution. He supposed this was both better and worse than an actual raise; it didn’t net him any more gil in his pocket, but at least he didn’t have to try and hide his purchases from Shera anymore.

There was already a pall of blueish smoke hovering around him when Tifa and Yuffie came up to his office. Cid saw the ninja girl slowly shift towards green and reached up to put out whatever was left of his cigar with a sigh. He threw a lazy salute at Tifa and grinned at her, throwing a thumb over his shoulder at Vincent, who stood half-hidden in the shadows behind his chair.

“Hey, girl. Vince here has been waitin’ for hours for the both of ya. He says this place smells like an ashtray, but I keep telling him, hell, that basement we found him in smelled like a rotting morgue and we never said anythin’, right?”

He saw Tifa’s faint half smile and mentally cheered. Yuffie gave him a toothy grin.

“Where the hell did you guys go? Vince tells me you went running off into the science wing, and that’s when he stopped following you.” He shook his head. “Can’t say I blame ya, man.”

“Where’s Barrett?”

Cid managed to not even raise an eyebrow. “Fuck, Tif, lay off the coffee, would ya?”

He saw the young fighter sigh, and force herself to take a breath. Cid couldn’t even begin to dare imagine how she felt. Cloud had pulled a hell of a stunt on them; and it was hardest on Tifa, who probably felt more than a little betrayed. He certainly felt a bit left out himself, and Gaia knew Cloud didn’t owe him anything.

“Sorry. I’m just a little on edge.” She paused, managed to smile at him again. “So, where’s Barrett?”

“Right here. We doin’ dis or what?”

Tifa spun around and managed to look both relieved and surprised at once. Barrett squeezed through the doorframe and came to stand by her, laying a huge hand on her shoulder and smiling down at her.

Cid felt her relax from across the room and had to suppress a smile. Yuffie made her way past the two of them and plunked herself on the edge of Cid’s desk, peeking over the side of his computer monitor hopefully.

“So?”

The older pilot stared at Yuffie. Nicotine stained or not, this was still his damned desk. He reached over into his breast pocket and pulled himself another cigar, lighting it in one smooth, practiced movement. Yuffie made a face at him; he crossed his eyes at her, shifting his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other, where it swayed as he talked. “Dunno yet. It’s just a list of files, sorted by date. See?”

Tifa came around his desk and peered at his monitor where, shifting slightly behind the haze of smoke, a long list of dates and unintelligible filenames was displayed. The dates were going as far back as some twenty-odd years, and seemed to be in no other particular order. Filenames were a jumbled mess as far as any of them could tell. All they had to go on was a timeframe.

“Just pick one, then.”

Cid shrugged. Yuffie’s eyes were glued to the screen, Tifa right next to her. He could feel Vincent’s silent gaze behind him and Barrett was hovering behind the girls. “Fine.”

As he clicked a file at random a slightly blurry image came up, with a row of numbers slowly ticking by in the bottom-right corner. A tiny ShinRa logo was imprinted in very low opacity at the top.

“Security tape.”

Vincent nodded behind him. “Looks like it.”

For a while, the screen displayed nothing but an empty hallway. Seconds ticked by in glaring numeric numbers. He heard Tifa sigh next to him and pulled up another file. “Let’s see if this one’s any more interesting, eh?”

This time the unmistakable backdrop of one of Hojo’s labs came into sharp focus. The camera was closely centered on a metal-frame bed on which a young figure lay strapped. A man, his back to the camera, stood by the bed. There was no mistaking that bent shape; it was Hojo.

Cid heard Yuffie gasp before he’d even registered anything more.

“Is that…?”

“Sephiroth.” Vincent shook his head sadly. “He can’t be any more than six or seven years old.”

As they watched, Hojo turned and picked something off a metal tray which stood next to the bed. Two aides came briefly into view and wheeled the tray some distance away, disappearing out of the field of view again.

The camera was too far for them to clearly see, but Hojo bent over the struggling figure for several seconds.

When he came away, hands red, Cid jumped in his chair as the tiny speakers on his computer blared to life with the sound of a child’s shrill scream. Tifa and Yuffie both took a few steps back, startled.

On the screen, Hojo backed away and picked up a notebook, giving the camera an unobstructed view of the child on the bed as he lay twisting, his arm cut open to the bone from shoulder to wrist; the wound was shockingly red against the child’s fair skin. His scream became hoarse, then strong again, as he fought for breath.

There was a brief, barely recorded sigh from Hojo which Cid registered as ‘stop your whining’, then the professor put down his notes, came around the bed and bent over again. This time there was nothing obstructing the camera as he sliced through the fair skin in one very deliberate stroke which split open flesh as though there was no resistance.

Cid reached over then, and shut off the speakers. The scream had been unbearable; the twisted look of pain on such a shockingly young face even worse. Hojo walked away and sat on a chair in the background, picked up something which looked for all the world like a chronometer and waited.

Eventually Cid closed the file. He stared at the long list of security files. “Fuck.”

Yuffie’s face had gone pale. “I’m not watching any more, sorry. I don’t care what Zack said, I’m not… I’m done.”

Tifa reached over and took Cid’s hand away from the keyboard. She punched another file at random. Yuffie stood up and sent an uncertain look at her friend.

“Tif…”, Yuffie’s voice was shaky. “I’m serious.”

“Wait.”

As Yuffie sat back down slowly, the file opened and started playback. On the monitor this time, the image showed an overhead view of a close, barely furnished room; a toilet in one corner, one large bookshelf and a small table. On a cot in the furthest corner a young Sephiroth lay hunched over. His legs were bandaged and tucked in under him and his face stayed hidden behind a short curtain of hair as he slowly rocked on his heels.

Cid puffed out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. “Fuck, this is insane. That’s not a room, it’s a damn cell.”

There was an answering rumble from Barrett. “That Hojo was one twisted mother, that’s for sure.”

“Come on, Tif, we’ve seen enough. Let’s just get this back to Zack and tell him we watched some of it. There’s dozens of files on there, I’m not watching the whole thing.”

This time it was Vincent who kept Cid’s hand away. “Wait. Something’s happening.”

Tifa nodded. On the screen, she saw a burst of light as the door was opened and closed, then a hunched figure she recognized as Hojo approached the cot. He sat next to the trembling boy, who raised his hands to try and push the older man away.

They fought for a while, and evidently Sephiroth must’ve said something which sent the other man into a rage, because Hojo sent the child reeling against the far wall of his room with a vicious back-handed blow.

As the child reeled and collapsed next to the professor, Hojo pulled him up and crushed him face first into the wall as he reached over with his other hand to rip the child’s pants from him. He kept the boy subdued with one hand and managed to work himself free of his own pants.

Tifa stared, shocked and unwilling to comprehend what she was seeing. It wasn’t until she realized Yuffie was being violently sick in Cid’s wastepaper basket that she managed to tear her gaze away from what was happening on the screen and stare at the floor.

Barrett was cursing unintelligibly next to her and Cid was doing his best to help Yuffie, cigar all but forgotten on the edge of his desk. Vincent was staring at her, his expression unreadable.

She realized with a start that her cheeks were wet, and that she’d been crying. She wiped her face and stared back at Vincent. She swallowed a few times, and took a deep breath.

Yuffie came up for air, still looking unsteady. She stood and started walking out, shaking her head. Cid accompanied her out of his office, sending Tifa the most distressed look she’d ever seen on the older fighter’s face.

It took a while before she trusted her own voice enough to speak.

“We have to find Zack.”

A swift rushing current of thought, silver flashes quick as light. He followed her presence, her voice, and felt himself surface, as if from a dream. Around him he could hear the torrent of her will, a maelstrom of emotion, conflicting flashes of the past and present. He realized her voice was slowly getting dimmer, and she was angry.

He felt warmth and flickering flames around him; this was a recurring dream, a nightmare he knew well. He traveled through it, let himself live through the flash of the sword, the slick slice of blade hitting flesh. He remembered guilt, afterwards. But for that moment there was nothing but the warmth of flame on his skin, and the wet stickiness of blood on his armor. He felt the dream pass, as it usually did. The warmth slowly seeped away into the creeping green.

But on the edge of his vision the green was frayed; it was slowly unraveling, like cloth pulled apart from a single loose strand. Through it he felt a breeze of sorts, a cool, new air which brought promises of things forbidden. It was white and silver, cold and metallic.

Out of boredom, more than anything else, he reached for it.

* **

The disk sat on the edge of the broad mahogany table, exactly where Tifa had left it after she had walked out after Zack. Cid walked over and picked it up a thin film of mako-enhanced transducer plastic in an aluminum case. It was Neo-ShinRa’s most recent technological advancement. Yet, for all the money Reeve had siphoned into its development, it had turned as useful an invention as a toast-less toaster. They were, however, a lot more secure than simple over-the-air data transmission.

Cid frowned. Anything you wanted to transfer to someone these days, you only had to send via PMSmail. A disk like this could only be accessed through one of Neo-ShinRa’s proprietary computers. Which meant someone had given Zack the disk, because the man knew next to nothing about technology.

Which meant whatever was on it came from Reeve, and the man wanted it kept secure.

He glanced up at Vincent, who shot him a dark look and raised an eyebrow. Barrett was also staring at him for all he was worth. “Well? What are we all waitin’ for, then?” The dark man’s rumble was surprisingly loud in the quiet board room.

Yuffie shook her head from her spot near the door. “I think we should wait for Tifa, guys.” She shrugged as the rest of them turned to her. “I mean, Zack gave her the disk and everything.” She indicated the door behind her with a casual wave of her hand and shrugged. “I’m going after her, I want to know what’s going on. I want to speak with Zack, too.”

Vincent stood up and walked to the door. “I’ll go with you.”

“Fine.”, Cid stared back at Barrett, who was still sitting in his seat. The man still looked a little dazed, although he was sure he himself wasn’t much better off at this point. He reached over and pocketed the disk. “I’m heading back to my office. I’ll wait for you guys, but if you ain’t there in an hour, I’m popping this thing in, right?”

* **

The actual machine had been built by Hojo, years before, and had never been dismantled; it had sat, forgotten and collecting dust, in one of ShinRa’s old hangars. It was huge, and the massive swinging doors that led to this closed off section of the science wings had to be torn out because the machine couldn’t be taken apart; no one had any idea even how to start putting it back together, so they hadn’t tried.

The room itself had been renamed Area 0, sectioned off, wiped off the maps of the wing and totally closed to any personnel without clearance. Reeve had had a field day trying to pass it off as a mako reactor core experiment leak. Eventually, though, they would have to reopen the doors to the section, and explain to everyone why 17 million gil’s worth of equipment had suddenly appeared in what what supposed to be a mako leak zone. They would also have to explain what the machine was for.

Reeve sighed as he rounded the corner of the corridor that led to the second security check. The guards posted on either side of the doors nodded at him, took his key card and his signature and waved him through with a nod. He adjusted his necktie and stepped through the doors.

To be greeted by utter chaos.

The enormous room was abuzz with activity and people rushing about looking harried. Reeve frowned. He hadn’t taken two steps before he was surrounded by several nervous employees.

“Mr. President, sir!”

“Thank the gods you’re here, Mr. President.”

“Damnit, Reeve, where the hell have you been?”

This last had been uttered by the woman he had put in charge of the whole technical side of Cloud’s project. She had a mean temper on her, and an even scarier habit of bypassing the chain of command and going straight to the top. Reeve felt, against all reason, intimidated by the woman.

She was small and compact, hard as nails and had a habit of exploding at the slightest hint of provocation. She was also, without a doubt, the smartest scientist ShinRa had produced in years. In her capable hands, the project had been going a lot faster than expected. Cloud avoided her like the plague, claiming she made him uncomfortable; Reeve couldn’t bring himself to blame the man.

“Diane. Please don’t tell me.”

She huffed at him, clearly not amused. “Don’t be absurd Reeve, we haven’t got time for kidding around. Something’s happened; something important. My office, now.” She promptly turned and briskly walked down the adjoining corridor into the open door of her office. Reeve could see the entire floor was in a panic. He started turning to Dr. Hollcomb’s office when his PHS rang.

“Don’t bother,” she called out. “Trust me, I can tell you exactly what’s going on. Whoever’s calling you to tell you about the power shortage doesn’t know the half of it.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, quickly pressed the silent button on his PHS and glared. “Power shortage?”

“Yes. Remember when I told you we’d need a good few weeks to figure out how to anchor Sephiroth’s soul properly when we were ready to wake him up? That’s not an option anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s bypassed every single security redundancy protocol we had jerry-rigged on Hojo’s contraption. We have a pulse Reeve, he’s no longer in the Lifestream. He’s here. And he’s managed to blow the entire grid and half of our backups in the process.”

He must’ve blanched, because Diane motioned him inside her office with slightly more tact than was her usual way. She reached her desk and picked up a file folder from the top of a dangerously looming pile.

“Get in, because right now, I need you to tell me what I’m supposed to do about this.”

Reeve caught the folder as it came sailing at him. He was reeling. “I’m supposed to know?” He stared at the files he held. Rows of numbers and chemical names he barely recognized stared back. “What the hell is this, Diane?”

“The surge happened about three and a half hours ago. I’ve been trying to contact you since then.” There was a barely concealed barb there which he ignored. Diane walked around him to close the door to her office; two of her aides were already staring.

“I was busy. Cloud wanted me there when he told Avalanche.”

“They’re medication logs, Reeve. If I hadn’t started him on sedatives almost immediately, he would’ve woken up hours ago.” She ran a hand through her short hair.

Reeve stared at her. He hadn’t realized before, but the woman looked exhausted. “I’ve been throwing the book at this, Reeve. Every time I find a drug that seems to work, his heart-rate starts to climb steadily back up. I’m running out of safe drugs to try. I just can’t keep him under without risking some major organ failure at this point. That log is long enough to have brought down an entire platoon, let alone one man.”

“I…” Reeve sighed, ran a hand over his eyes and sat heavily down in Dr. Hollcomb’s chair. She didn’t seem to care. “I need to call Cloud.”

* **

The blond glanced up as the door opened and managed a small smile. He’d recognized Zack even before the man had opened the door. He heard the guard and secretary outside exchange their greetings, the one respectful, the other just a touch breathless.

His friend sighed as he entered and closed the door behind him.

“Damn, Spike, you look like the walking dead. You okay?”

“Yeah. Just, you know, trouble sleeping.”

He almost felt Zack’s stare burning into the back of his neck as he went back to the documents on the desk. This part of the science wing had once been conference and board rooms. He’d requested the use of one because they felt more informal than all the other rooms, which were all decorated in shades of off-white and medical stainless. This was the only place he felt comfortable in this section; the rest of the rooms reminded him too much of the labs.

He sighed as he heard Zack sit beside him. “I don’t want to talk about it, if it’s all the same.”

“Cloud…”

He pushed the documents over to his friend to change the subject. “Here. Nanaki sent me back his comments and I made a few changes. He was right, it actually was too confrontational.”

Zack raised an eyebrow. “And now it’s not? How do you tell someone they were almost single-handedly responsible for destroying the world and not be confrontational about it?”

Cloud shrugged. “I don’t know, ask Nanaki.” He paused. “Do you really think he won’t remember any of it?”

“I have no idea Cloud. If that’s what Hollcomb believes then I suppose it’s as good a guess as any. I wasn’t actually listening when she gave us that genetics lecture, but it seemed to make sense at the time.” He shrugged, smiling. “You know, as much sense as the rest of it, really.”

Cloud smiled back. “She said that since the sample came from before Nibelheim, he wouldn’t have any genetic memory of anything after that unless we pushed him.” Which was a slim consolation, since Cloud fully intended to jog the man’s memory. “If we force him to remember, then the memories resurface from his mind, which has technically been in the lifestream, where he’s had access to the planet’s memory of the events.”

“I know when I came back from the lifestream, I wasn’t sure which way was up. I suppose it’s possible.”

“Anyway, I’m sick of rewording that stuff. It’s not going to be an easy tale anyway, so I might as well–” His PHS rang, interrupting him. “Sorry. It’s probably Reeve.”

“Hey, don’t mind little old me, Spike.”

Cloud snapped his PHS open. “Reeve. Everything okay?”

* **

When they got to main floor of the sectioned off wing, they found their way barred by an entire Neo-ShinRa trooper division, armed to the teeth and jittery as hell. An unlucky young officer tried to forcefully bar Zack’s way and ended up with a bloody nose and a gushed apology.

Zack pushed his way through the men and reached the main doors, which were standing ajar and bustled with scientists and medical personnel. He rubbed his elbow, grimacing, and gestured to Cloud, who walked to his side.

The blond was paler than he’d ever seen him. The past couple of weeks had taken their toll on him and Zack knew he’d been avoiding this place, putting off coming here until he had no other choice. This wasn’t a good time for his friend to have to face his fears, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He’d been an idiot; all he could do now was help the blonde cope. He tried to swallow his own apprehension and grinned at his friend.

“C’mon Spike, it can’t be that bad.” Before the blond could react, Zack had grabbed his shoulder and pulled him through the double doors into the room beyond.

* **

The room was hell.

Hojo’s device stood in the very middle, reaching almost all the way to the ceiling. Up there, the great tubes and valves parted this way and that and disappeared into the walls and ceilings. Intakes and energy supplies all lead down into the core of the device, which seemed pretty simple; a small mako generator on one side, a discarded oxygen tent which lay in disarray, and a steel slab. Most of the grunt work had been done in a separate part of the building, in silent rooms where people knew how to make cells dance.

Cloud had been here only once, in the very beginning, when there was nothing on that slab of steel but bleached bones, which they’d extracted from the Northern Crater, and a few spots of what had looked to him like rust. A pleasant lady had been there to explain things, and Cloud had felt like a tourist. He’d smiled at her, that much he remembered.

She hadn’t smiled back, not really. She’d told him that the cell samples had been seeded over the bones and that Hojo’s device would use up all the energy stored in the materia he’d donated to direct the growth according to a pattern which he hadn’t understood. He’d probably looked and sounded like the dumbest man alive to her. He’d nodded, thanked her, told her they were doing a great job and fled.

There was no whitened skeleton on that steel bed now. Monitors and wires trailed across his sight and concentrated there, where he couldn’t bring himself to look.

He stared at Zack, who had snagged a passing Reeve as they had entered. They were talking. Cloud couldn’t hear them over the buzz in his ears and mind, over the rushing of his own blood, over his thudding heart.

He was vaguely aware that Zack was calling to him, but he couldn’t turn, couldn’t answer him. His gaze followed a man in an immaculate lab coat who hurried over across the room and out of sight, and fell on the steel guardrails which had been hastily welded to the bed.

There, bound and tied by leather restraints, Sephiroth’s long body lay unmoving, fussed over by an army of nurses and technicians. The blond froze, panicked. His heart thumping furiously, dreading the fire and blade of Jenova, dreading the cold and calm of the General, he felt the world crash in around him.

There, amidst the wires and the hurrying technicians, Sephiroth’s naked chest rose and fell, once.

Cloud stared. Rose and fell, again. A nurse bent over the metal railing, checked the restraints that had been installed to secure the man’s hands, feet and neck to the frame, reached over to stare at what he presumed was an intravenous drip and nodded to herself.

Rose and fell, again.

He hadn’t realized he’d walked closer, but he reached out and steadied himself on the railing. The nurse jumped back, surprised, and stared at him. She sent a panicked look towards Reeve. Cloud ignored her.

Up close, he realized the din he heard wasn’t all in his head; monitors all around him told their tales in beeps and whirrs. He stared down at his hands gripping the railing. Beyond, an expanse of smooth, unblemished pale flesh, undoubtedly alive. He let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding and let his gaze travel upwards.

The man seemed younger than he remembered. Dimly, Cloud knew this made sense; he’d been only twenty-five when Nibelheim had gone up in flames. Without the harsh sneer of Jenova’s hatred twisting his features, he looked even younger. Sephiroth’s eyes were closed, but Cloud could make out a dim green glow seeping through the man’s silver lashes.

A hand clamped on his shoulder and he jumped, startled. Zack came up next to him and gave him a tentative smile.

“It’ll be fine, Spike.”

“I… I can’t do this, Zack.”

Zack ignored him; he’d heard it more than once over the past few months. “Cloud, Reeve says they can’t keep him sedated much longer.”

Cloud’s voice was little than a whisper. “I know.”

“We’re still doing this, right?”

Cloud took a deep breath and stared down at the man who slept, unknowing, before him. He remembered Hojo’s files, and Hojo’s voice, and Hojo’s cold hands on his flesh, and the basement where he and Zack had spent five agonizing years of hell and blood.

Sephiroth sleeping there, whole. Hojo dead and gone, by Cloud’s own hand.

“Yes, we’re still doing this.”

“See, that wasn’t so bad, right?”

Cloud raised his head from the table slightly to groan at his friend. Zack’s easy smile was sarcastic, but honest.

He let his head drop back down with a loud knock. “Right.”

He heard Zack sigh and walk to his fridge. They’d fairly run off here after the meeting. It felt like fleeing. He heard Zack’s muffled voice call out.

“Damn, Cloud. On a day like today you really can’t run have run out of beer. That’s just not fair.”

He felt a small smile tug at his lips despite himself. “There’s some in that cupboard on the left, but it’s warm.”

“Who cares?”

“Right.”

A lukewarm bottle was ungracefully deposited in front of him. Cloud raised his head to discover Zack had already downed half his warm beer and was enthusiastically working on the rest. He couldn’t help himself, he chuckled.

Zack, his long body propped on the kitchen counter, stared down at him, smiling, beer all but forgotten.

“I’m glad you were there.”

“I know.”

Cloud sighed. “And I’m glad Reeve stayed behind to deal with things. I knew they’d be angry, but I…”

“Hmm?”

“I never expected her to faint… You think she’s all right?”

Zack shook his head, staring at the remains of his beer. He dropped the empty bottle into the sink, where it joined several dozen of its peers. “She’s fine. She’s strong as hell, don’t worry.”

Cloud looked up at him, shaking his head slowly. “I though Barret was about to jump up and start beating up on me.”

Zack chuckled softly. “Yeah, I guess he didn’t take it too well. I suppose you can be thankful Tifa managed to create the perfect diversion for you.”

“That is so not funny, Zack.”

“Just trying to cheer you up, Spike.”

Cloud reached over the armchair and set his empty beer down on an overflowing side table. He smiled up at his friend, running a hand through his hair slowly. His eyes were tired, and showed the strain of the previous few days. “I never expected it to be easy, I just wasn’t ready for her to get so upset.” He paused, tasting bitterness at the back of his throat. He didn’t know if it was from the beer or his mood. He felt drained. “I think I would’ve preferred for her to get good and angry and scream at me, you know? This… this just feels like I did something wrong. Like it was a mistake to even bring it up. Like I was betraying her, betraying all of them.”

Zack looked down at him, a slight smile on his face. “You just wait, I’m sure she’ll get to screaming and throwing stuff at you soon enough.”

Cloud chuckled sadly. He shook his head. “Zack, I…”

“I know, Spike, you don’t need to say anything. I’m glad to be here too.”

The blond smiled, managing a nod and a shrug before he felt his eyes mist up and he shook himself, sighed and raked a hand through his hair again; his blond spikes flowing slowly back into place. “I should get some rest. Tomorrow I have to head over to the Science Department and give the go-ahead for the project to actually begin.”

“Geez, Cloud, kick me out much?”, Zack said, eyes lit and laughing.

“I wouldn’t dare. You can sleep on the couch if you want to.”

“What, that couch? Are you insane? It looks like a war zone down there. I’ll head on over home, it’s not like it’s far.” He smiled down at Cloud, reached down and ruffled his hair. “I’m going with you tomorrow, so wait up, OK?”

“Sure. Just as long as we’re not late, Zack.”

“Late? Come on, Spike, you know me better than that.”

***

He’d been exhausted when he’d gone to bed and so sure, so certain that he wouldn’t dream he’d almost forgotten he’d ever had trouble sleeping. But this wasn’t his bed, certainly not his bedroom and he was certainly not asleep anymore. There was something sticky and uncomfortable with his chest, something which pulled with every breath and woke him up fully. He opened his eyes slowly, feeling the first few stabs of pain which always accompanied his dreams of late, a dull throbbing in his head, a painful feeling of his mind being squeezed out of of his ears. He took a few sharp breaths and realized something was wrong with his ribs.

His eyes now adjusted to the near-complete darkness surrounding him, he could dimly make out a silver glow in front of him; there was a long sliver of metal jutting from his ribs, where the ache was the sharpest, where he felt suddenly blood seeping from under his shirt and down his side.

Where, he realized with a start, the piercing tip of Masamune was embedded in his flesh, into his chest, between two of his ribs on his right side and completely out his back, pinning him to the slab of concrete he was lying against.

His breath left him in a moment of panic and he would have screamed if he could. But the second he inhaled a hand pressed against his mouth and muffled his scream into a pained gasp. He bit down hard into black leather in his panic and heard a muffled curse above him.

Cloud flinched as he saw the man’s other hand come down in a slap that wrenched his head sideways and pulled against the sword in his side. He stifled another scream and tried to focus his eyes, to get a clear indication of where he was. His head swam, and blood coursed down his chin in rivulets; he’d bitten into his tongue when the man had struck him.

Deep down, he knew this was just another dream, that the man standing above him was nothing more than an extremely twisted and bad memory.

None of this had ever happened when he’d faced Sephiroth in battle; he had always been able to hold his own, despite his own feelings of inadequacy and weakness whenever he’d beheld the man. His own training under the ShinRa army and Hojo’s meddling had left him a very able fighter, and he doubted if he could actually have beaten the General in single combat; he knew Jenova had little knowledge of battle tactics aside from her usual full frontal assault. She’d never really bothered to use the full potential of the man, this much Cloud knew in his heart, and could deduce the rest from the stories Zack had told him. He suspected the man he’d faced before was little more than a puppet.

If this was truer to reality than what he had faced under Jenova’s control, then they were all in very big trouble.

Sephiroth smiled his twisted smile down at him. Blood and lust flickered in his eyes and Cloud shivered. The man reached down and pulled the sword out of Cloud’s side abruptly, twisting it sharply as he slid the blade out, grating against Cloud’s ribs.

When the echoes of his scream died out, he realized he must have nearly lost consciousness. He was propped up against the concrete and Sephiroth was standing in front of him, holding him up by his collar, grinning, looking for all the world like the sickest, most perverted cat Cloud had ever seen.

His vision swimming in and out of focus, the blond managed to bring his arm up to try and block the blow he’d seen coming. His hand gripped the General’s arm in a block and he struggled to keep his arm strong and fend the man off, to give himself an opening to fight back.

Cloud’s eyes snapped up as he heard the man laugh softly. Wide blue met narrowed green and the General grinned down at him. There was a sort of easy camaraderie there, a sense of the man being perhaps the slightest bit glad that Cloud had resisted him.

“Don’t you know by now that it’s pointless to fight back, Strife?”

Sephiroth leaned down towards Cloud, pushing against the blond’s fighting arm and gripping his side with his left hand, cruelly, fingers digging deep where before Masamune had opened a gaping wound.

Cloud’s legs buckled, and he went down like a rock, knees hitting the pavement with a jolt that traveled up his spine and forced a moan out of his throat.

The General grabbed his hair and forced his head back, forcing another groan through the blond’s tight lips. The taller man licked his lips slowly and smiled knowingly down at him, and Cloud’s heart cracked, and broke and tumbled down into that cold dead space where it could hide safely, and weather the storm that came with Sephiroth’s lips bruising his own, and the man’s hand forcing his head back, closing on his throat.

***

“Fuck.”

“Come on, Cid, that’s all you’ve been saying for an hour. Just shut up, will you?”

The older man shifted his cigarette and sighed. He cast an evil glance at Yuffie, who shrank back and subtly hid behind Vincent. The dark haired man ignored her, and cast his eyes to the blond pilot sitting on the couch. The Neo-ShinRa executive floor was all but deserted on a Saturday and they’d requisitioned the main board room for an emergency reunion. Tifa had declined to come, and Reeve hadn’t shown up yet.

Everyone was tense, and Cid’s monotone wasn’t helping.

“Fuck, Yuffie, I’m sorry. It’s just…” He took a long, tired drag of his dog-end, sighed, shook his head and gave up. “I don’t know what’s gotten into that spiky head of his but it sure as hell sounds like crap from my end.”

There was an answering grumble from Barret, who was all but sulking in a corner of the board room, watching the streets of Edge city from the window. Yuffie turned to raise an eyebrow at his back. “Maybe Cloud has a good reason. I don’t know. Half the time I don’t understand what he’s thinking. I wish we’d had time to talk to him.”

Cid paused and raised his head to stare at her. “What the hell, Yuf, that sounded almost coherent. Fuck’s wrong with you?”

“Har, very funny, Cid. I’m just saying. There was a reason I trusted Cloud with my back when we were running after… after… Well, you know. I still do. Trust him, I mean.” She shrugged, a bit tense. Even Vincent was staring at her now. “I guess I just want to talk to him before I go off mouthing that he’s insane and all. No offence, Barret.”

Barret, turned his head to shoot her a glance. He shrugged, his big frame obscuring her view of the window. “I don’t know, girl, it just don’t seem right to me. How many times have we put the man down now? This seems like asking for trouble.”

“Perhaps Cloud knows something we don’t.”

They all looked up at Vincent. The older man shrugged slightly, sending a small smile Yuffie’s way. “He’s left us in the dark about his motives before.”

“Are you all totally mad?”

She turned to stare at the doorway, where Tifa was standing, red-faced and angry. She took a step back. “Hey, Tif, didn’t know you were there.”

Tifa shot her a look full of poison. She shrank back. “I don’t know what you guys think you’re doing here, but I just saw Cloud going into the science wing and I’m going down there right now to talk him out of this. I don’t need any of your support or approval, but if you want to come, you’d better hurry up.”

She turned around with a parting glance at Yuffie and bumped straight into Zack, who smiled down at her with all his usual cheer. He waved at the rest of Avalanche. Vincent raised an eyebrow at him and Zack’s smile grew a fraction.

He put a restraining hand on Tifa’s shoulder.

“Sorry, Tif, but the science wing is closed to all non-military personnel and anyone without clearance. You don’t have clearance. Cloud has my word that he’ll be allowed to do this on his own and I won’t go back on it.”

Tifa started to protest but Zack shook his head, closed his eyes and held up a ShinRa computer disk in front of her face. She frowned at him. “What the hell’s going on, Zack? I’m sick of this covert shit.”

Zack stared at her, unflinching. His eyes sought out the rest of the group; Barret still had his back turned to him, and Cid was watching him with an intense expression he’d never seen on the old pilot’s face. He sighed.

“Just throw this into a terminal. Wait ‘till I’m gone, please. I’ve had my share of nightmares.”

He shook his head sadly, and walked out. Tifa stared at him.

“Have fun.”

When he opened his eyes, he knew he was in trouble. His knees felt weak, his head ached and he found he could hardly focus. The world swam in and out of darkness and he thought he could hear footsteps, heavy ones, moving towards him. His heart felt like it would hammer out of his chest; he couldn’t control his ragged breathing. He pulled himself up on his hands and knees and tried to crawl away, away from the footsteps and the noise in his head, a buzzing like a thousand angry bees.

Something sharp suddenly jabbed into his shoulder. He had time to inhale and start to scream as the blade slowly sank into his flesh. He felt it slide and slice against his muscles, felt its point scratch at his shoulder-blade. When the scream died off he found he couldn’t take another breath; his chest felt constricted and tight. He knew he was panicking but somehow there was nothing he could do to control the rising tide of fear. He knew that blade; had felt its contours a hundred times over, had studied its shape in the light, noting every nick and scratch on its surface. He’d seen it ring and sing in the artificial light of the practice hall at ShinRa HQ and had wished, so many times, to be allowed a closer look. Now there was nothing he could do to get away from it.

He felt himself being pulled to the side, the blade removed to allow him to fall flat on his back. He felt the dirty water of the destroyed ShinRa building courtyard seep into his shirt, mingling with the blood that was now pooling under him. He closed his eyes. Nothing in the world could’ve persuaded him to open them again. This… was a nightmare; it couldn’t be really happening.

He felt, more than heard, a presence moving above him, towering, powerful and huge. He shivered.

“Pathetic weakling. Open your eyes!”

Thunderous, that voice. It seemed to reach into Cloud’s mind and boom and echo around his skull.

Don’t show weakness, don’t show fear.

He couldn’t, wouldn’t let his body obey that voice. If he opened his eyes, he knew it would only get worse.

There was a sort of mocking exhaled laugh above him and he felt himself being pulled up by his shirt. His shoulder felt like it was on fire, and in danger of ripping open completely. He was losing control, as he felt a single tear escape his grasp and slide down his cheek.

He almost heard the man sneer at him, felt his contempt and disgust at his weakness. Sobs threatened to rack his body. He was falling apart.

The hand that was holding him up tightened its hold on his shirt. He heard, almost too late, the sound of the Masamune as it sliced through the air again and choked back a gurgling scream as the blade slid into his thigh. And then he made a mistake.

He opened his eyes as he screamed.

There was a smile there, cruel and taunting, and green filled his vision, blurred it. He lost the contours of the ShinRa building behind the man. The courtyard dissipated from his sight. He realized he was crying openly now. He knew he should be stronger than this, that he had faced the man before in more dire situations than this and managed to keep his cool. Somehow he couldn’t summon the strength to fight back, couldn’t do much except hang limply in the man’s grip and cry.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so pathetic and helpless. He couldn’t understand why he couldn’t move. He couldn’t… This couldn’t be real.

His eyes shot open when it hit him. This was a dream. This wasn’t real. He could almost feel himself relax.

And then Sephiroth smiled.

And that’s when the nightmare began.

*    *    *

Cloud felt his body spring to life as he woke up screaming, echoes of his hoarse cry dying away in the darkness of his apartment. His heart was hammering in his chest fast enough to scare him, he was raggedly out of breath and his head throbbed.

Looking around the darkened room, he sighed. It would take him the rest of the night to calm himself down to a point where he would feel human enough to head outside among people.

As his heartbeat slowed to a more normal pace, his mind started going around in circles about the project they’d started with Reeve’s help and Hojo’s old files.

After one of the dreams, he always second-guessed their decision. When Zack was around they would talk about it, discuss how slim the chances were of a repeat incident now that Jenova was well and truly dead, the rest of her cells burned and buried under the new ShinRa monument in Old Midgar. Zack would reassure him that they’d made the right choice.

As it was, he did the next best thing. Sneaking a glance at his bedside clock and feeling slightly guilty about it, he called Reeve, the only other person who knew about the project outside of the ShinRa science team.

He needed to be reassured, badly.

If all went according to plan and the technogeeks didn’t mess anything up, he had only a little over two weeks to change his mind.

And two weeks to tell the rest of Avalanche.

*    *    *

“Aren’t you cutting the timing a little close there?”

Cloud sighed. He was already feeling better, but not by much. Hearing Reeve’s familiar voice, even over the phone, was helping.

“I know it looks like I’m putting it off.” And I am, he thought. Not about to admit to it, though. “I’m waiting for the right time. The last thing I want is to have a fight on my hands. I know Vince and Red are probably going to react well… It’s the others I’m worried about.”

It was Reeve’s turn to sigh. He’d promised to keep mum about the whole thing until Cloud was ready. “Look, I’ve already got a team diverting power into emergency batteries for the surge we’re expecting when he… when we wake him up. I can’t explain this away forever. You have to tell them, Cloud.”

“I know. It’s just… hard, okay?” He winced. It sounded weak even to his ears.

“You want me to call Vincent up for you? Maybe if you talk to him first, it’ll be easier.”

“I… Yeah, I think that would help. Thanks Reeve.”

“No problem,” he said, before hanging up.

Ultimately, it didn’t help much.

*    *    *

“Listen, Reeve, I’m not angry at you, I’m just starting to feel weird about this. I mean, what are we all waiting here for? I’ve been here for hours and Vince was sitting there when I got here. I just want to know what’s going on.”

Reeve sighed, looked down at the floor again. Tifa raised an eyebrow at him; he just wouldn’t meet her eyes. Something else weird; Reeve was never the shy type. Behind her, she heard Yuffie popping her gum. Barret was mostly silent, probably wishing he were somewhere else. Cid was… snoring, of all things. She sighed, wished she could be as relaxed. She knew this had something to do with Cloud’s recent mood. Whatever this meeting was about, Cloud had waited for Zack to come back before he’d called all of them up to meet in Reeve’s new offices in Edge. That alone was enough to make her nervous.

Vincent was sitting in the only armchair in the room, apart from the others and away from the central mahogany table where everyone else was seated. She’d asked him why Nanaki hadn’t been called in and hadn’t received an answer. Now, she was starting to get annoyed. She leaned over the table, set her knuckles down on it and stared at Reeve, who swallowed nervously.

“Look, I know you know what this is about. Tell me!”

“It’s not his to tell, Tif.”

She turned around abruptly. Behind her, Zack was a grinning presence in the doorway, nearly obscuring a very apprehensive looking Cloud. The voice had been Zack’s, but Tifa’s gaze went to Cloud’s eyes in search of an explanation. She received none. In fact, she barely got a glance as Cloud went around all of them to take his seat at the front of the table, the place she thought Reeve would take.

It was a while before he spoke. Tifa had time to note that he sat rather stiffly in the high-backed leather office chair which she usually associated with suits and Neo-ShinRa executives. She had time to notice that he wouldn’t meet her eyes, despite the fact that his own brightly-glowing eyes went around the room twice, looking at each of them in turn. She saw Zack, standing next and slightly behind Cloud, looking decidedly protective. In short, she had time to get extremely worried.

When it came, nothing in the world could have prepared her for the shock he gave her.

*    *    *

Cloud sighed. He reached a hand through his hair slowly, his blue eyes going around the room to stare briefly at each person seated at the executive table. Every one of them had a right to know what they were planning; they were all of them entitled to an explanation, and he felt bad for putting it off until the last minute. Ultimately though, the decision had already been made for them. Reason number two for his feelings of guilt.

He felt himself wince slightly. This conversation would suck.

He decided he might as well get the worst of it out there first. Trying his hardest not to even glance at Tifa, he learned forward in his chair, took a deep breath and mentally shook himself, vaguely aware of Zack’s reassuring presence behind him.

It killed his ego to hear himself sigh deeply first before starting.

“I’m not going to beat about the bush here. You were all called in here at short notice and I’m sure you all want to get back to your lives. I just thought I owed you guys some kind of explanation. In case you’re wondering why Nanaki isn’t here, he already knows.”

In her spot at his right, Tifa started fidgeting nervously. He sent a small smile her way, trying to indicate that everything was all right. The smile didn’t reach his eyes. He felt her tense up all the way across the table.

Fuck. Great going there, Mr. Charisma.

He would have to hurry it up, or he would lose his nerve. Backing off was no longer an option now. Even Cid was staring at him intently. He felt the wall rise up inside of him, that cold detachment he’d worn like a mask through the Meteor incident and afterwards, and which had only just recently starting cracking with Zack’s encouragement. It brought it’s own strength with it, although he knew it would leave him weak and exhausted afterwards. He went with it. It would be easier this way.

*    *    *

Tifa snuck a glance at Barrett to see if he’d noticed the change. Cloud’s eyes had just dulled, his whole posture going rigid and stiff. She hadn’t seen him smile like that, in that sad, half-felt way of his, for months.

Barrett sent a worried look her way, then started visibly as Cloud’s voice rang out once more.

It sounded dead now, emotionless and cold. She shuddered, closing her eyes.

“After the Geostigma incident, Reeve put together a team of ex-ShinRa scientists to try and dispose of whatever Jenova cells might still be left out there. They figured they could dig in some of Hojo’s reports to try and find a way of permanently destroying the sentient awareness of her cells in humans, so we could dispose of her remains safely, and keep her out of our way, hopefully forever.

“They found their method amidst all of Hojo’s jumbled notes. They also found all his files on his Soldier research and additional reports concerning his experiments on Cetra specimens.”

He paused shortly, closing his eyes. “That’s Aerith and her mom.”

Tifa blinked at him. So he’d found information about what they’d gone through in Hojo’s lab. Was this what this was all about? She’d discussed it with Yuffie before, but they hadn’t had time to call in the Turks. Reeve had given them the brush off, explaining that Cloud would be the one to answer her questions soon. She snuck a glance at Yuffie, who shared a look of understanding with her. Now she wished she’s pushed Reeve a little more.

There was a muffled exclamation from Cid, who reached to remove the dog-end from the corner of his mouth.

“Afterwards, Cid, you can ask as many questions as you like. Just let me finish, please.”

Cid puffed his breath out, swallowing a curse.  “Damn, Spike. Just hurry it up, would you? You look like hell, man.”

Behind the blond, Zack’s arm snaked out and came to rest on his friend’s shoulder. Tifa saw him squeeze briefly, Cloud’s eyes closing. Something passed between the two of them which seemed to fortify Cloud somewhat. She couldn’t help but stiffle a short burst of envy; Zack obviously knew what was going on. He had been, was, and probably always would be, the one Cloud would turn to first for help and comfort. She frowned.

“The team found references to Hojo’s private lab, as well as precise instructions regarding a device he’d built with Gast years before.”

There was a pause. Tifa saw Zack tense slightly behind Cloud, which prompted him to continue. His voice never wavered once.

“We found the lab. The device can be used to recreate genetic matter from cellular samples.

“We’re bringing Sephiroth back.”

Dimly, he could feel his body resting in dreadful cold water, wisps of hair occasionally tickling his face. He felt he had been floating this way his entire life, his limbs cold and numb, unresponsive. He was blissfully unaware of any feeling but a slight twitch of life in his chest, his heart beating strong and regular despite the numbing temperature of the liquid surrounding him. He knew he had been elsewhere just a few moments ago but could not remember how or where that could have been.

He struggled to gain control of the body he now possessed, shifting his mind back inwards to try and move a limb, twitch a finger. As he did so, something which had lain dormant inside his new body suddenly flared to life. Strange and alien cells, acting as a conscious organism, swarmed his mind and assaulted his senses. Recognition and panic igniting his dormant instincts, he recoiled in disgust; there was a presence there, something unmistakably intelligent and, somehow, familiar. That presence seemed to reach for his mind, for his soul, and he felt something sharp and dangerous encircling him in razor-sharp claws.

In his head he heard her voice whispering sweet promises of vengeance and bloodshed; cajoling him, consoling him, assuring him that things would be set right again. He knew she lied, but her voice was everything peaceful he had ever known and he felt, for the first time in ages, safe… And for the second time in his life, he drowned, and surrendered control.

* * *

Cloud Strife lay awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling, his mako-enhanced eyes casting a dim blue light around his face. For the hundredth time that day he wondered if he and Zack had made the right decision. It had come down to them both, in the end, as they were really the only people still alive who knew enough about the General to truly understand the situation.

He had yet to tell Avalanche about the project. He had yet to tell Tifa.

He had been living, if it could be called that, in the rubble of Old Midgar, for near to two years when it all started. At the foot of the ancient, nearly demolished ShinRa building he had found an old train station which had survived nearly intact through the Weapon’s attack, Meteor falling and the events following the geostigma incident. There he had made his home; a cot, a mini-fridge stolen from the nearby ShinRa lobby, an old gas stove which he had modified to burn coal and wood, and a cleared-out space next to the rails where he trained when he remembered to. But that had all changed, a little over six months ago, when he’d got a call from Reeve asking him to come down to the Edge City council house, and would he hurry please, it was somewhat urgent.

When he’d got there he’d been informed, rather matter-of-factly, that a team of ShinRa scientists nosing about in the Northern Crater had found a body lying in the snow, and damned if it didn’t look a bit familiar to them. When they got him inside and warmed him up, Zack woke up like a shot and took off naked to dance in the snow, laughing his head off, understandably more than happy to have been brought back. The scientists had thought he was dead when they’d pulled him out; one of the more nervous ones was still in therapy, Reeve had told him. And then the door to Reeve’s office had opened behind him and there was no mistaking that presence, that sense of whirlwind energy, and before he could react Zack had swamped him up and he was being hugged and thoroughly shaken by a friend he had thought gone forever.

To this day he was pretty sure he’d cried like a newborn then, when Zack had come back.

At first they couldn’t understand what had happened. Their planet, although undoubtedly quite generous, was not in the habit of regurgitating random people. It was always Cloud who brought up the subject first and Zack who dismissed it as unimportant. Sometimes, thinking back, he thought Zack’s silence should have rung a few alarm bells in his mind. Deep down, he must have known something was happening.

For a while after that, they had spent most of their time trying to catch up, making up for lost time. Cloud had abandoned his shack in Old Midgar and had moved in on the outskirts of Edge City, a few minutes’ walk from the old church which still held most of his good memories and little farther than that from Zack.

With Zack by his side he had felt renewed. And soon they had fallen back in with their old habits, haunting new bars because the old ones had been destroyed many years ago. Every once in a while, they would call in the rest of Avalanche, meet up somewhere, in Kalm maybe, or all the way North in Bone Village, and they would all sit together, and remember.

* * *

“Cloud? Are you even listening?”

The blond raised his head, staring. He became aware of his surroundings in a flash; he always got moody and forgetful when he drank. Around him the sounds of Tifa’s latest Seventh Heaven venture slowly came fizzing back, reality seeping in through memories, dreary thoughts and an alarmingly thick haze of alcohol. He wondered absentmindedly, and for the third time that evening, if he shouldn’t have stayed at home. There was a time for everything and he definitely felt that tonight was not a night to spend listening to the girls’ incessant and idle chatter.

It was raining outside, storming enough to drive the rain nearly horizontally into the windows.

“For a minute there, you really zoned out on us, Spike,” said Yuffie, drowning out the last of her beer in one lazy gulp. She opened herself a new one somewhat unsteadily.

Cloud stared at the dregs at the bottom of his glass. He knew he wouldn’t ask for another. He was tired. “Yeah. Sometimes I do, I guess.”

Tifa stared at him, frowning. He felt her tense up all the way from across the table. They hadn’t talked in weeks. He supposed he should have tried to be more cheerful tonight, but rain almost always brought back bad memories. He knew why he felt like shit most of the time, why he still couldn’t bring himself to move on, although he hadn’t yet told anyone, hadn’t yet dared to hope anyone might understand, least of all Tifa.

Zack had been away visiting his new girlfriend. Cloud knew it wouldn’t last. Sometimes she actually phoned him at home and expected him to return her calls. To Zack, for the moment and for as long as he could get away with it (i.e., until he got old and wrinkly), women were for the taking, enjoying, and moving on of. Anything more committed than “I’ll drop by one of these days, eh?” usually found him running off as fast and as far as his legs could carry him.

And so, Zack had been away, and with him his only confidante, and the only person alive who truly understood what they had gone through, in ShinRa and afterwards, in Hojo’s lab. Cloud’s house felt empty without Zack near, so he hung out with the girls instead, although he was starting to regret his decision.

The bar around them was nearly empty. Cloud sighed, put down his empty glass gently on one of the coasters and stood up. He bent down, gave a quick peck on Yuffie’s cheek and went ‘round to Tifa’s side of the table. He rubbed his head.

“Thanks for tonight. I’m just tired, I think I’ll head home and try to get some rest. It was nice seeing you guys again.” He hugged her briefly but made sure not to hesitate too much. He knew if he gave her the chance she would try to get him to stay and talk and tell her what was wrong. He could not.

He walked to the door, lifted up his sword from where it rested against the hat stand, strapped it quickly to his back and went out into the night and the rain.

Tifa let out the breath she had been holding and plumped herself back down onto her chair.

“What do you figure’s the matter with him? For a moment there, it was like we were back to Angsty-Sad Cloud again. He seemed to be feeling better these past few months,” said Yuffie.

Tifa sighed again. “I don’t know.” She picked up what remained of their snacks and beers and took them back behind the counter at the back of the bar. Yuffie followed her quietly, snatching herself a few crumbs from the last bowl of chips on the way.

“You think he still blames himself for what happened to her?”

Tifa shrugged. The last thing she wanted to think about was the flower girl. She had been a friend, although not a particularly close one; they hadn’t known each other long enough for that. She was now, as far as Tifa knew, an impossible rival. She knew it was selfish to feel this way, but how was she supposed to fight against someone who was already dead? Even from the grave, it seemed she still had a grip on Cloud, held his memories, and whatever happiness he might otherwise have found since her death.

“Maybe he just needs time. What happened six months ago probably brought back some bad memories, that’s all,” she said.

Yuffie stared at her. “Do you really believe that? How do we explain the fact that that friend of his just happened to wash up on the shores of the Northern Continent after being supposedly dead for more than eight years?”

“How the hell should I know?” Tifa shook her head slowly. “Sorry, it’s just… hard. I thought we’d got him back after he fought with Kadaj; I swear I felt him come alive then. I don’t know what happened after that. He fought Sephiroth, or a clone, or whatever he was… he might simply be tired.”

“Hmm. Maybe you’re right. We should ask Vincent to talk to him. They seem to be getting along pretty well, those two. They’re starting to be freakishly alike. And maybe Reeve would know something about Zack and why he just popped back.”

Tifa stopped wiping the bar top; she looked at Yuffie, thoughtful. “You know what? That’s not such a bad idea. About Reeve, I mean. He still has access to some of ShinRa’s old computer networks, and I know they had sensors and things watching the Lifestream at one point. Maybe they saw something and it got recorded?”

“Whoa. You know, I was thinking more something along the lines of, you know, maybe he could ask the Turks if they’d heard something. They’re usually annoyingly well-informed.”

“We could ask him as well. Anyway, it doesn’t hurt to try.”

* * *

Cloud slowly made his way back home from Tifa’s place on foot, having preferred to leave the bike home in case he got a little too drunk to be certain he wouldn’t crash his ass on the way over.

He was fairly winded when he got home. It had been a long walk, and an even longer week, without Zack to keep him in check. He unlocked the door to his apartment and made his way inside in the dark. It had been longer than he could remember since the last time he’d actually needed lights to see well in the dark; Hojo’s experiments had given him more than excellent night vision; his eyes now gave off a very faint light of their own in total obscurity, which didn’t go a long way to help him feel normal.

He dumped his keys and wallet on the kitchen table and unstrapped the sword from his chest. He’d had it made just before the Geostigma incident, on a whim. It was fairly heavier than his other weapons, and could be twisted apart into two blades with a flick of his wrist. It had come in handy before, but he only carried it around now for the sake of habit. Edge and Midgar were now mostly safe and most of the really nasty creatures out there steered well clear of the major cities; he and Zack had spent some time near the Northern Crater, hunting. Word had apparently got around.

Zack wasn’t here now. He’d taken lodgings in the apartment right across the hall from his when he’d moved here. Cloud’s hands itched to pick up his cellphone and ring him, try and get some news, a return date, anything. He sighed and made his way to the fridge. There wasn’t much in it. He reached in and managed to extricate a beer from behind a piece of cheese he couldn’t remember buying.

He searched for a while for a clean glass, gave up and plopped himself down on the sofa with a sigh. He could hear, distantly and slightly muffled, the sound of the Edge City night train as it rattled past behind the building.

There was nothing much to do except watch TV. He knew that, with Zack gone, he couldn’t afford to sleep. When he did, he knew the dreams would come, and from those dreams, without Zack there to pull him out, he knew he couldn’t escape. The dreams were why he had moved away, apart from the others, in the first place. They were why he’d been living in the shack, why he’d thrown away his cell phone. It hadn’t taken long for his friend to find out. They’d always been close and Zack had known immediately upon seeing him that something was very wrong. He’d tried to wriggle the answer out of him and Cloud had done his best to dissipate his fears. It had all been thrown out in the open when Zack had come to stay at his place.

Night had brought the dreams; Zack had found out.

Cloud sighed and reached for the remote under a cushion and a pair of last week’s pants. He zapped to a channel he vaguely recognized and tried his hardest not to think. This was the third day since Zack had left. It felt like weeks. Pretty soon, he was going to have to sleep.