Chapter Text
When Cloud first started bouncing between dimensions, he spent no more than a few minutes in each new world before being sent to the next. Then, slowly, the time between jumps started to stretch. First five minutes, then ten, then thirty, then an hour, then several hours. It was a mixed blessing at best. If he was in a good world, or at least a world that lacked the power to subdue him, then he had a chance to rest. If it was not, then he...endured.
Always, he endured.
This newest world took all of three seconds to go sideways, and his only saving grace was that the previous world had afforded him nearly four uninterrupted hours of sleep. He drew in a breath as the buzzing faded, immediately diving to the side and smoothly drawing Tsurugi as he heard the whistle of air over a sword’s keen blade.
Sephiroth stood across from him, silver hair rippling in the wind. Cloud had narrowly avoided being impaled by Masamune for the...well, he’d long since lost track of the number of times he’d been impaled on that blade, actually.
Cloud wasn’t surprised. In fact, it was such a familiar scenario that he didn’t feel much of anything. He didn’t speak. He didn’t attack. He waited, ready to act once this Sephiroth revealed what kind of man he was. If he had to fight, he would. If it was better to flee, he would. He had neither pride nor preference left in him.
“Strife,” Sephiroth said, voice hard.
Ah. That was a new one. Cloud cocked his head to the side. Sephiroth either called him Cloud, possessive as a hand around his throat, or he didn’t recognize him at all. Cloud had never been addressed with the cold distance of Strife before.
Zack was by Sephiroth’s side, expression equally hard. It wasn’t the first time Zack had been hostile to him, but it still burned like a physical wound. “How are you back, Strife?” he spat, sword in hand. “Haven’t we killed you enough already?”
Ah. Ah. Cloud thought he finally had an idea of what was going on. Well, this would either give him another chance to rest or he would be playing an unpleasant game of high-stakes tag against a mirror-image of the family he once knew. He blinked at them tiredly and spoke, not quite ready to holster Tsurugi yet: “Ah. No. I’m not the ‘Strife’ you know. Knew. The opposite, really. I’ve come from a different dimension entirely and I have no wish to fight you.”
Zack scoffed. “You expect us to believe that? After what you did?”
But Sephiroth held up a hand. “Wait. Zack, does he not look different to you?”
Cloud just stood silent, endlessly patient as the two SOLDIERs examined him closely. Zack’s expression in particular slowly melted from angry, wounded hostility to wary confusion.
“Yeah,” Zack said eventually, tensed muscles relaxing. His eyes lingered on Cloud’s. “Yeah, he does.”
Cloud took a risk, slinging Tsurugi back over his shoulder and locking it to the magnetic holster. They might still try to kill him, but now he would have enough warning to bolt. In response, they slowly lowered their own weapons, though neither fully put them away.
“...Cloud?” Zack asked, soft, cautious...hopeful.
A tiny, tiny smile tugged at the edge of Cloud’s lips. “Most people do call me that, yeah, Zack.”
The dark-haired man’s answering grin was absolutely blinding in its intensity. He took a step forward, only to be stopped by one of Sephiroth’s hands on his chest.
“Wait,” Sephiroth said, a hard light still lingering in his eyes. “Do you have any way to prove your claims...Cloud?”
He snorted. “I’m guaranteed to vanish into the next dimension within a few hours, but other than that, no.” He shook his head. “I doubt I could even offer you confirmable information. Where I came from, and most of the worlds I’ve seen...well, I’m not the one Zack usually greets with hostility.”
They both blinked in surprise. “What?” Zack asked, head cocking to the side.
“This is just a guess, but by your reactions the Strife of this universe went Jenova-crazy and tried to destroy the world, right?”
Immediately, Zack’s expression shuttered and Sephiroth’s returned to coldness. “Something like that,” Sephiroth said.
“Mm,” Cloud hummed. “Well, sorry to spring this on you—” he wasn’t “—but nine times out of ten, Sephiroth is the one who gets...Jenova’d.”
Zack looked at Sephiroth, aghast. “Is that—would that have been better or worse?”
“I don’t want to know,” the silver-haired man said flatly. Cloud nodded in agreement. Apparently his words, or maybe his agreement, was enough proof for the silver-haired man to relax from outright hostility. Sephiroth finally dismissed Masamune and Zack followed suit, holstering the broadsword that...wasn’t the Buster.
Cloud didn’t want to know about that either.
Then Zack bounded forward. Cloud flinched as he was swept up into a hug without any warning. His feet were no longer touching the floor. He fought down the reflexive urge to cast a point-blank Firaga. After a few more seconds he even managed to convince his body to relax into Zack’s arms.
“It’s so good to see you again, Cloud,” the dark-haired man murmured, a world of weight behind his words.
The blond huffed. He didn’t share any history with this Zack, a fact which most Zacks tended to conveniently forget (or ignore), but the lingering wounds of his own Zack’s death made him willing to return the embrace and the words. “It’s good to see you, too.”
Zack finally let go, setting him down only to take his face in his hands in a surprisingly intimate gesture. He brushed his thumbs across the dark (and probably permanent by this point) circles beneath Cloud’s eyes. “Are you okay?” he asked, leaning in close. “You look like shit, babe.”
Oh boy. Cloud suddenly got the impression that he was missing some very critical pieces of information about the Cloud of this world. He’d also never been confronted by this particular issue before—his mind went blank, which was unhelpful at best.
His expression must have been something to behold, because Zack immediately let go of his face and stepped back. “Oh,” he said, eyes wide, “oh, sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed, I’m so sorry!”
“It’s uh—” Was his face on fire? It felt like his face was on fire. “It’s fine. We—I mean, you two were…?”
“Two?” Zack said, glancing at Sephiroth. “There were uh...a bit more than just us two involved?”
He stared. For once, something other than terror was steadily burning away his fog of tired apathy. “Sephiroth?” he squeaked. “We—I mean, you and him and Sephiroth?”
Then, to his shock (shock deep enough that his hand automatically jerked toward Tsurugi’s handle) Sephiroth threw his head back and laughed. In fact, he laughed until he had to lean on his knees and tears streamed down his face. “Oh—” he gasped, “oh it really is you, Cloud.”
Cloud looked to Zack for help, but the dark-haired man just grinned and slung an arm around his shoulders. “Me, and you, and Sephiroth,” he agreed. There was a mischievous gleam in his eye that immediately set Cloud on edge. “And... maybe one or two more.”
Sephiroth was still... giggling. Cloud didn’t think his eyes could get any wider without popping right out of his skull. “More? How many more? What the hell?”
“Oh man, is every version of you unbearably cute?” Zack cooed—or maybe flirted, Cloud wasn’t exactly the best at differentiating. “Dunno how you avoided it, but we five fell into each other like...gravity. It felt inevitable, really. You, me, Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal.”
“I—what? While I was at Shinra?” He and Zack hadn’t even met until the two commanders defected. A thought struck him. “Was I a SOLDIER?”
Both Zack and Sephiroth shot him odd looks. “Uh, ‘course? You were practically Shinra’s golden boy! Had a fanclub and everything!”
That explained it. Part of it. He didn’t understand why he felt like he’d dodged a bullet. “I never made it into SOLDIER. I was Infantry when we met for the first time.”
At his words, Sephiroth sobered back into the nearly emotionless mask Cloud was used to. “But you are enhanced, clearly. Based on the way you spoke, I would guess that you are enhanced to the same levels that Strife was.”
“Enhanced, yes.” Cloud smiled with bitter humor. “SOLDIER, no. This was Hojo’s doing. I caught his attention by killing my Sephiroth as an ‘unworthy little Infantry brat.’”
They both winced. “I’m...sorry,” Zack said, sincere and awkward. He glanced down, arm still heavy on Cloud’s shoulders. No one seemed inclined to continue that line of inquiry, which was fine by him. “Listen, I—this is selfish of me to ask, but...you said you have a few hours before you leave, right?”
“Four, give or take,” Cloud confirmed. He’d been planning on stuffing himself into a nondescript hole somewhere to sleep, but he was willing to do a lot for Zack. “What is it?”
“Would you...would you come home with us? Not like that!” He added the second part when Cloud blanched and flushed crimson. “It’s just...the others, Gen and Ange, they….they deserve to see you too.”
“Zack…” Cloud sighed, “I’m not the Cloud you knew. You understand that, right?”
Zack’s lips pressed together. He stepped away, letting his hand slide over to rest on the top of Cloud’s shoulder even as he put some distance between them. “I do. I do get that. But you’re still... you. And you are...you’re sane. You’re...whole. It’s enough just to see you. Please. I know it’s selfish. You can say no, we’d still help you, but...” He reached out with his free hand and brushed a thumb over the dark circle under his eye for a second time. “You can just go right to sleep on the couch if you want. It’s enough just to see you. Please.”
He understood the impulse. Hadn’t he been thinking earlier about how soothing it felt just to see any version of Zack alive and happy? For some unfathomable reason, Cloud glanced over at Sephiroth. He nodded in agreement, an unfamiliar softness to the set of his eyes. Huh.
“Alright, Zack,” he said, relenting with a sigh. “I’ll sleep on your couch. All the... boyfriend wrangling is on you, though. I’m not much of a conversationalist even at the best of times.”
Zack just laughed, squeezing his shoulder once before letting go entirely. “I promise I’ll wrangle my boyfriends for you,” he said with a suggestive eyebrow wiggle.
Cloud regretted his decision immediately.