Chapter Text
Cloud is having a fucking terrible day.
As soon as he walks into Aerith’s church, he sees a waterfall of silver, bright against black leather and weathered walls. Sephiroth is sitting, one leg folded primly over the other, on a pile of crumbling stone. One of the columns Loz had taken out, Cloud notes absently, before he remembers he can’t afford to ignore Sephiroth for even a moment.
Somehow, horribly, his enemy is waiting for him in one of the only havens he has left.
Sephiroth lifts his eyes to Cloud’s, because of course Cloud wouldn’t even have a moment to process what the hell is happening before Sephiroth heard him. Naturally.
His enemy slides to his feet, all predatory grace, and begins to stalk toward him. “Cloud,” Sephiroth purrs, looking an awful lot like he’s about to start working up to one of his terrible monologues. Cloud grimaces and opens his mouth to say – he’s not sure what, exactly, and doesn’t get a chance to consider it any further. He closes his mouth again as Sephiroth – incredibly, uncharacteristically – pauses mid-step, doubles over, and abruptly begins choking on his own stupid megalomania. Good, Cloud thinks uncharitably. Serves the fucker right for having the audacity to drag his oversized ass back out of the lifestream yet again.
Serves him right for imposing himself on another one of the places Cloud could even think of calling home. Cloud allows himself a moment to roll his eyes up at the ceiling, more annoyed than anything.
When he looks back down at the whisper of leather brushing against skin – wiping his mouth? Cloud thinks – Cloud chokes on air, himself. He’d be more irritated at the immediate karmic retribution if he wasn’t busy trying not to flip the fuck out.
When Sephiroth uncurls from where he’d folded over, all that remains is a boy.
The immediate first thought, crawling up the back of his throat like bile, is Kadaj. But…no?
The part of Cloud’s mind that hasn’t immediately shut down runs its standard risk assessment. Horrifyingly familiar green eyes – though with slightly more blue around the edges – struck through with slit pupils, just a bit too large for his young, fuck, so young, face. He’s at least a couple of years younger than the remnants. In spite of his age, Cloud realizes bitterly, he seems to be around the same height as Cloud.
He’s wearing what looks to be a standard SOLDIER First Class uniform, though it’s mostly covered by a thigh-length, black leather coat that’s cinched neatly at the waist with a wide leather belt. The ensemble is completed by plain knee-high boots, white pauldrons, and vambraces that extend just slightly past his elbows. There’s that goddamn unmistakable silver hair, cropped messily just above the shoulders, but lacking the way Kadaj’s had laid perfectly flat against his forehead. There are multiple threads of silver hanging directly in his eyes, which is different, but those cowlicks are…remarkably familiar. Too familiar.
And he has what looks to be a katana sheathed at his back.
Before the kid has a chance to say or, Gaia forbid, do anything, Cloud has the Fusion Sword out, slipping effortlessly into a ready stance.
The boy has the audacity to look bewildered before slowly reaching over his shoulder to grab the hilt of his own weapon. “I apologize,” he begins in a low, measured voice, and Cloud has to forcibly lock his feet in place before he can do something stupid like kill a child, uncanny resemblance to Sephiroth notwithstanding, before finding out what the fuck is going on.
“I am not sure what I’ve done to offend, but I can assure you I…” he frowns, expressive in a way Sephiroth rarely was, outside of his usual calculating smugness. “I apologize,” the child repeats. “I’m afraid I’m not sure where I am, or even how I came to be here.” Those uncanny eyes dart briefly around the church, touching on ruined stone, the rotting floor, the impossible flowers, and the pool of rainwater. The small furrow in his brow deepens with every new thing he observes. Cloud, against his will, finds himself fascinated.
The child meets his eyes again. “If I may ask, to begin with,” he says haltingly. The hesitation is jarring on anything with Sephiroth's features. “May I have your name?”
Cloud stares.
That incredibly human little frown is joined by the boy’s mouth tilting unhappily, nearly imperceptibly, down to one side. The strangeness jolts Cloud from his stupor.
Cloud tightens his grip on the Fusion Sword. “Not interested in playing into whatever the fuck this is. You another remnant? Thought we killed all of you bastards.” For a moment, Cloud is once again cradling a dying Kadaj, fighting back an improbable tide of pity. Killing kids fucking sucks, even if they’re part of Sephiroth. Even if they're not really human at all.
“A…remnant?” The kid seems to unfocus for a moment, as though rifling through his memories for any clue as to what that might be. “I’m…not sure what that is, but I don’t believe so. My name is Sephiroth,” he says, and dips into a small, polite bow. The hand – his left hand, oh god – that had been resting on the hilt of his katana falls to curl loosely against his chest as he bows.
Cloud distantly hears the roar of thunder in his ears.
The Fusion Sword is at the kid’s – Sephiroth’s, it’s Sephiroth, how the fuck is this happening, Cloud’s horrified mind chants – throat before Cloud can make a conscious decision to do so. The boy (Sephiroth, Sephiroth, Sephiroth) looks stunned by the development, and that more than anything convinces Cloud that he's somehow, impossibly, telling the truth. Cloud has only ever known one man who is so righteously confident that no one could slip past his guard without express permission, and that self-assuredness is always his downfall.
“Neat trick,” Cloud grits through clenched teeth. A thin line of red beads on Sephiroth’s pale throat, skin splitting too easily under the weight of his sword. He clenches his fists tighter on the hilt. “Dunno how you pulled it off, or why the fuck you would want to, but it doesn't make a difference.”
Sephiroth’s eyes go wider than Cloud has ever seen them, pupils contracting in something that looks very much like fear, swallowed in a sea of green and unfamiliar pale blue. They narrow a moment later and his lips tuck into a thin, stubborn line. “I do not know who you are, or why you seem intent on harming me,” the question of how Cloud is capable of such a thing in the first place remains unsaid, “but Professor Hojo of the Shinra Electric Power Company would be incredibly displeased if –”
Sephiroth cuts off abruptly at Cloud’s startled bark of laughter. Is Sephiroth really name-dropping his extremely dead piece of shit father for leverage? What the fuck is happening?
“What the fuck is happening,” Cloud hisses, with feeling.
A muscle ticks in Sephiroth’s unsettlingly rounded jaw. He lifts his chin and draws an air of defiance around himself like a shield, uncaring of the blade cutting deeper into his exposed neck. Cloud’s sure, to anyone else, some luckier bastard who hadn’t had the dubious privilege of sharing a headspace with Sephiroth, he would seem indifferent, but compared to Sephiroth’s usual fare? This kid is so expressive.
“I have never met you before, which can only mean you somehow,” Sephiroth’s eyes dart up to Cloud’s pale spikes of hair, his blue eyes, “have relatives or something of the like in Wutai. I cannot claim that I am not responsible for your loss, but know that this attempt at revenge will do little but bring you harm in the future. Even if you should somehow best me.” He looks doubtful and annoyed by the suggestion of that being a possibility to begin with.
“Wutai?” Cloud repeats, utterly baffled. “Why the fuck would I care about that? War’s been over for nearly a decade.” He sends a small mental apology to Yuffie for that one, but. None of his business.
“Pardon me?” Sephiroth asks, visibly startled. “I was just there this morning.”
“No, the hell you weren’t,” Cloud says flatly. “You were dead. Just like you should be right now. Just like you’re about to be again . I don’t care what weird fucking skinsuit you put on, you should know better than that by now.” The new look could be worse. The thought of having to kill another kid-shaped monster is revolting, but. Could be a frankly alarming number of wings again. Could be tentacles again. Cloud represses a shudder.
“...dead?” Sephiroth whispers; pauses as he processes the rest. “Again?”
“I’m gettin’ real sick of playing twenty questions with you, asshole. You know.”
That seems to distract Sephiroth from whatever little existential crisis he was playing at. Sephiroth looks, of all things, offended. “I can assure you that I certainly do not know anything of the sort. As I said, this morning –”
“Sure,” Cloud says, sarcastic. “Why not this? Let’s hear it, then.”
Sephiroth levels him with a glare that wants to be impressive, but falls short with his too-big eyes and puppy-soft features. “If you would allow me to speak, I would gladly do so.” His expression falters, eyes falling to the Fusion Sword. “Though I would prefer it if you could kindly lower your weapon. I mean you no harm, and it seems increasingly likely that you are not to be underestimated, anyway.”
That alone startles Cloud into taking a step back, sword extended but no longer biting skin.
Sephiroth…the Sephiroth Cloud knows would never admit to that. His pride wouldn’t allow it.
Cloud takes a deep breath, realigns his entire worldview over this man – child? – yet again. “Fine. Let’s hear it.” This time, he makes an effort to bite back his aggression.
Between the blade no longer cutting his throat and Cloud agreeing to…something, Sephiroth doesn’t quite manage to hide the look of relief that washes over his face before he tamps it down. Seeing a version of Sephiroth that isn’t emotionally impenetrable is fascinating, Cloud reluctantly decides.
“Your name?” Sephiroth asks. “It seems only fair, as you know mine.”
Cloud presses his lips together. This Sephiroth may or may not remember him – know him at all? What a novel thought – but that doesn’t mean Cloud wants to give him that kind of power. “...Strife. You can call me Strife.”
That earns him a dubious look, followed quickly by Sephiroth’s lips ticking up in what looks like wry amusement. “That seems…appropriate,” he agrees, as if Cloud’s name is up for debate.
Cloud scowls. He’s agreed to hear the kid out, but he never agreed to be patient about it. “Talk.”
“Very well, Strife.” There’s no recognition in it at all. “As agreed. I was…” This version of Sephiroth, when not being goaded, seems to default to stilted politeness, carefully weighing every word he says. “I was on the frontlines in Wutai. I was deployed a week ago.”
Deployed in a war. Gaia, he’s so young.
Cloud shoves the thought down and waits, but no further information is offered. He blinks. “And?”
“And what?” Sephiroth looks mildly confused.
“Before that?”
It’s Sephiroth’s turn to scowl, pale eyebrows pulling together in a much deeper frown than before. Regardless, he seems to understand that their truce hinges on his own willingness to cooperate. “...the labs. Hojo.”
Not very chatty, for someone who spends every second he isn’t dead running his mouth at Cloud.
“Right,” Cloud agrees, deciding to keep Hojo’s death quiet until he can figure out how the kid’ll react to it. Judging by the slightly haunted look in Sephiroth’s eyes as he says Hojo’s name, though, he thinks the news might be welcome. “The labs. And before that?”
And then –
Impossibly –
Sephiroth’s scowl melts away, replaced by a broken-open sort of look and – Sephiroth’s chest hitches as he inhales. To Cloud’s horror, Sephiroth’s lower lip trembles for a second, blink-and-you-miss-it, before the kid pulls it back under control. His expression goes carefully blank.
Cloud is intimately familiar with that particular mask, having worn it himself plenty in the past.
This isn’t going to change anything, Cloud swears to himself, and it already tastes like a lie.
Whatever he is now – or should be now – here is proof. Cloud has known about Lucrecia, probably knows more about Sephiroth’s past than Sephiroth himself does, but this. This is the proof that, whatever monster he eventually became, Sephiroth was human first.
Sephiroth seems utterly unaware of the crisis Cloud is having inside his head. He maintains that affected blankness, but lowers his gaze to the floor and lifts his left hand to curl in a fist against his chest.
It looks, Cloud thinks, alarmingly close to something like penitence. The effect is absolutely alien, coming from Sephiroth.
“Glenn, Matt, Lucia,” Sephiroth says, voice lowered, nearly whispering. Cloud has never heard of these people in his life. He watches and waits.
Sephiroth takes another deep breath. Cloud stares at the way his chest shudders around it. “Rosen.” The neutral mask wavers for a moment.
“...okay,” Cloud says, when Sephiroth lapses back into silence. In spite of himself, Cloud feels a tiny pulse of sympathy, some part of him recognizing and understanding the weight those four names had carried. He knows grief when he hears it, more familiar with that feeling than any other single thing in his life. It clearly cost Sephiroth something to speak their names aloud.
And to a stranger, no less.
So Cloud’s buying it, he guesses. Shit.
“Okay,” he repeats, more firmly. “You’re coming with me.”
Sephiroth’s mouth falls open the tiniest bit. “No, I’m n–”
“Wasn’t a request.”
“No,” Sephiroth says, more emphatically. “I cannot. I have to get back to –”
“Almost a decade, Sephiroth,” Cloud reminds him. “The war in Wutai is over. Wherever you were this morning, whatever you were doing – you’re not anymore.” The mulish look on Sephiroth’s face, stubborn and childlike for all his apparent intelligence and maturity, tells him he’s going to have to give more than that.
Fine.
“It’s 0010. Shinra and Midgar are gone. The reactors are gone,” he recites flatly. He pauses, measuring Sephiroth’s reaction. “...Hojo is dead,” Cloud adds, as delicately as he can. Given who he is and who he’s talking to, it isn’t much.
For just a second, Sephiroth’s eyes go wide with shock, before he closes them tightly. He shakes his head once, viciously. “You’re lying.”
Cloud forgets his attempts to be gentle and scoffs. “Why the hell would I lie to you?”
“I don’t know you.” Sephiroth’s lips twist into a snarl as he leans forward, heedless of the blade between them. The expected whisper of danger at the proximity never comes.
“...but I know you,” Cloud says tiredly. Or at least what you’ll become. He takes a step back and harnesses the Fusion Sword. The kid isn’t harmless, but he’s no threat to Cloud, not after what feels like a lifetime of being forced to match his older, deranged, and far more experienced counterpart. “Listen. I get that you’ve got some…some fucked up sense of obligation to Shinra, or Hojo in particular, but. They’re not here anymore. And you’re not walking out of here alone, so you’re coming with me.”
Once again, Sephiroth looks mildly outraged. Whether at the clear order or the fact that Cloud has decided he’s not enough of a threat to bother keeping his weapon drawn, Cloud isn’t sure.
But, of all his many and varied sins, no one has ever accused Sephiroth of stupidity.
Sephiroth’s mouth tightens, then lapses back into careful neutrality. “I will comply, then.”
Cloud gives him a short nod and gestures toward the doors of the church. As they leave, Cloud swears he hears a faint laugh, and the smell of Aerith’s flowers carries them out the doors.