Chapter Text
Cloud wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, when he felt the call. It had been years and years since the last, and frankly, he thought the instructions for the ritual had been lost. That would have been no real problem for him, considering these calls tended to be dull as dirt and something he only followed through on out of a vague sense of duty and a larger sense of interest in avoiding being questioned by his superior.
He gathered himself as he felt the call grow stronger—fixed his hair, summoned on the expected lavish jewelry, paused while choosing his clothes. What did they wear nowadays? Hells, but he’d been away for too long. He remembered the flowing togas of the last time he’d answered a call and stayed for an extended period of time and hoped they weren’t back in style. He settled for the tight, dark pants he was already wearing.
“They have no patience,” he grumbled as the call built from a tug to a yank on the core of him. He had enough time to glance in the mirror at his work, decide it would have to be good enough, and give one last put-upon sigh before he was pulled up.
Though this was his least favorite part of his job, he was still good at it. He took pride in his work and it just wasn’t in him to do things half-way.
There was a blinding flash of white and a crackling explosion as he appeared in the center of the carefully drawn circular sigil, his entrance accompanied by a spray of ice that burst out around him, coating the ground and coming up sharp points aimed away from him, as if he was the breeze that had formed them that way. The candles placed around the sigil remained lit, though they flickered for a moment. He had appeared in mid-air and slowly lowered himself to the floor with one, two flaps of his wings. They were covered in bright white feathers that looked carved from ice, filling the silence of the room with a soft tinkling as the feathers bumped and slid over one another. He flared them out once for the sake of dramatics before tucking them up against his back. His tail gave one slow flick behind him, fine, icy scales sliding over each other with the movement. He shifted, clasping his hands together behind his back with a soft jingle from the bangles on his wrists. Hells, but they were cumbersome. And to think some of his kind actually dressed this way all the time.
Cloud had readied his best imposing voice, but faltered when he actually looked at the human who summoned him. It was still a child. What was a boy doing summoning him? How did a child manage to force of will required to summon him at all? He was used to older humans, the youngest who had previously succeeded being in her upper thirties. This one had to be… what, fifteen, sixteen? But the hardened look in his eyes made him look older than his years.
“What have you summoned me for, child?” Cloud said in his iciest tone, covering any surprise with imperiousness. The haughtiness was expected. He’d learned centuries ago that anything less than the utmost gravitas underwhelmed and disappointed humans, who had a very, very strange concept of what demons were like when they weren’t making contracts or collecting their dues.
There was a twitch of irritation on the boy’s face, clearly not liking being addressed as he had been. There was a matching twitch of Cloud’s lips, hinting at an amusement he quickly buried. Gravitas, he had to remember the gravitas.
“I want to make a deal,” he said. His tone was sharp and matched the age in his eyes, but his voice was still high, having yet to shake the last of its childishness.
“I rather expect so,” he said. Hells, it sounded so stiff. He wanted to kill whatever pompous asshole had set this ridiculous standard for demon-to-human interaction that the rest of them were left to follow. He squashed the exasperation. It would do him no good.
“I want to know the stakes before we agree to anything,” the boy said, shifting into a pose that mirrored Cloud’s, and it seemed to ground him.
Cloud had needed force to bury the exasperation deep, but the rising curiosity came with no effort at all.
He approached slowly, ice crunching beneath his bare feet as he went. The child seemed to take it as a challenge, staring him down, refusing to be cowed. Cloud stopped when he reached the edge of the sigil, the limits of the cage that bound him for now. He grinned slowly.
“I think you already know the stakes,” he said softly, grin widening just a hair as he watched the boy try to suppress a shiver.
“My soul, then?” he said. His voice was curt and emotionless, much like the stoic mask on his face. An interesting demeanor in one so young.
“Likely,” Cloud agreed. “Though there’s room for negotiation. What would you ask of me, little one?”
Again, that twitch of irritation. This time, Cloud let his amusement show, and it did nothing to soothe the child’s temper.
“Your help,” he said. “I need a teacher, a second set of eyes and hands, someone to watch my back. Someone to train with who can keep up with me. Your knowledge.”
Cloud blinked in surprise, the façade slipping.
“You want me to… be your servant?” he asked, so sincerely surprised that he forgot to sound predatory.
The human shrugged and said, “If you want to phrase it that way.”
There was a long pause, and then a laugh. A long laugh, one that should have sounded mocking, or at least menacing, but was only amused. Cloud laughed longer than he intended to, still smiling when he sighed after.
Considering that the pretense had already been dropped, Cloud didn’t bother to put it back up. Besides, it sounded like he was in for a long contract, and there was no way he could play “scary demon” for years.
Cloud dropped his weight into one hip and folded his arms over his chest, head tilted to the side as he looked the other up and down.
“You know, there are many other classes of demon that would work better, if you want a pet. Strife demons have their name for a reason.”
It was the boy’s turn to raise an eyebrow.
“I’m well aware. Do you think I picked the first summoning ritual I saw and intended to just hope for the best?”
“You wouldn’t be the first.”
The child blinked in surprise, and then shook his head with a look of distaste.
“I’m not a fool. If my soul is on the line, I intended to get everything from this that I can.”
“And a strife demon can help you best?”
The human shifted, his chin lifting, shoulders back, spine just a little taller. He’d presented himself with more of a level head already than Cloud was accustomed to seeing when summoned, but this confidence was different. Whether he just was that confident in himself or felt he had something to prove was still up for debate.
“I’m being sent off to war.”
He was distinctly underwhelmed.
The boy didn’t seem to like the unimpressed look on his face.
“Kid, if every soldier sold his soul to get through a war, the Hells would be empty.”
The little soldier pressed his lips into a thin line in irritation.
“There are other circumstances, which we can discuss if you accept the deal.”
He did have some sense, then. Giving more details than necessary to an unbound demon was an easy way to get into trouble.
This was a dilemma. Despite what humans told each other, demons weren’t forced to accept a contract just because they were summoned. He had to answer the call, yes, and he couldn’t leave the sigil on this plane while the human who summoned him lived, but it would be a simple matter to return to Hell and wait for the human to die. There were many, many reasons why he should accept—what his superior would have to say about it, the amount of souls in his possession, the amount of souls he needed in his possession, his debts, his own hunger. But he had other affairs in the Hells that required his attention, other work-arounds for his issues, and the sheer fact that this contract would be a pain in the ass.
But the little human was interesting, and maybe it was time for him to stay topside for a while—to see what the hype was about. There were demons scrambling for contracts just to stay here, and Cloud had never understood it.
The deciding moment for Cloud was when he remembered the mountain of paperwork sitting on his desk.
He was in no rush to return home.
“So, to be clear, you want me to assist you in any way you might need in exchange for your soul,” Cloud said.
“Yes.”
“And when would this contract end?” Cloud asked.
“When I no longer have need of you.”
Cloud clicked his tongue and looked away in irritation, dropping his arms from where they had been folded.
“That is absolutely indeterminate, and something you could draw out for—” Cloud paused. He remembered the teetering tower of paperwork. He changed his mind. “You know what? That’s my concern.”
The little soldier watched him with a furrowed line of confusion between his brows as he watched the demon backtrack. The look turned into one of surprise as, with a lazy wave of his hand, Cloud produced a dimly glowing scroll. The sheet hovered in space for a moment before the demon plucked it from the air and handed it out to the boy, each movement accompanied by the faint, musical tinkle and rattle of bracelets and bangles. The child took the contract with a wary look before beginning to read it closely.
Cloud took the opportunity to inspect his summoner. He didn’t remember humans having silver hair or slit pupils, and he didn’t think they had eyes quite so green. He was relatively sure that human eyes didn’t glow. But, now that he knew what to look for, he could faintly see how his outfit might be a uniform. A ridiculous one (why make a sweater just to remove the sleeves?), but one that seemed like it would function. Or at least, the belt with an insignia and those sturdy boots leant the ensemble a vague uniform look; the rest was just poor fashion taste. Perhaps he should have gathered the human was a soldier by the sword he wore, but once that had been a common custom, though Cloud couldn’t quite remember what century that had been. Still, the weapon looked over-large, and while he had seen many similar ones before, he didn’t think humans were capable of wielding them. And there was something in the bracer on his arm and the hilt of his blade that looked almost enchanted, but that couldn’t be right. He remembered seeing a proposal centuries ago to give humans access to magic, but he was sure that had been shot down.
This entire situation was a riddle, and one Cloud would savor; immortality was often painfully boring.
Having been watching closely, Cloud noticed when the human finished reading, and with another flick of his wrist, produced a quill. It appeared like one of his own feathers, like it was carved from ice, but it wasn’t cold in the boy’s grasp.
“Is there ink?” the human asked, looking at the quill as if he didn’t know what to do with it.
“No, the contract has to be signed in your own blood—it will pull from you.”
The soldier looked up sharply.
There was a beat, and then Cloud laughed again.
“Hells, I didn’t think that one would work,” he said, still grinning. “Of course there’s ink, just write.”
There was that sour little twist of the lips again, but the human looked down and signed regardless. When he handed the contract back over, Cloud glanced at it. He did a double take. He held the sheet back out.
“Full name.”
“That is my full name.”
Cloud blinked slowly in a dead-pan.
“I may not be human, but I understand your naming conventions.”
“The only name I was ever given was Sephiroth,” the boy—no, Sephiroth said, and if the sharpness of his tone was anything to go by, that was a sore point. “You wanted my name. You have it.”
Cloud carefully didn’t explain that giving a name was an entirely different conversation and contract, and arguably a more serious one.
Sephiroth held out the quill as Cloud rolled the scroll up, only for it to fall away to ash in his hand. He looked down at it in surprise, and when he looked back up, the demon was watching him expectantly.
“Well?” Cloud said. “You want to let me out?”
Sephiroth paused, and then nodded, and moved off to the side table where he’d left the book he found the instructions for the ritual in. Cloud waved his hand dismissively.
“The ending instructions are a waste of time and irrelevant to the situation—I’m bound to you, you have nothing to fear from me until it’s time for me to collect. Just scratch out one of the lines.” When Sephiroth hesitated, narrowing his eyes warily, Cloud rolled his and said, “The whole point of your contract is for me to help you. Let me help you save us both time and just scratch out a line.”
Though the human was unwilling to concede that he had a point, he found a spot that wasn’t covered by the ice that accompanied Cloud’s (admittedly dramatic) entrance and wiped away the chalk with the toe of his boot.
The candles around the sigil all blew out at once, the ice giving one resounding crack as power shot through it before melting all at once.
Cloud groaned in relief, rolling his shoulders and stretching his arms above his head, his wings out to the side, and his tail down to a point. While he hated being caged like that, nothing felt quite as good as being freed.
He looked up, surprised to find that Sephiroth was still tracking his every movement, even in the sudden darkness. Cloud was sure humans had no real night vision, and it was pitch black in the room. Another question—they were starting to pile up.
“Let’s go, then,” Cloud said, leaving the sigil, purposefully kicking over a candle on his way out. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
Sephiroth fell in step with him, but watched him with confusion.
“It shouldn’t be that much explaining.”
“Kid, I don’t know much about the human world nowadays,” Cloud admitted.
Sephiroth pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “Perhaps I picked the wrong demon.”
“You didn’t,” he assured. “We just have some… cultural differences for me to catch up on.”
Speaking of cultural differences. Cloud was both relieved and very not relieved to shed the last of the pretense, disappearing the jewelry and finery that he always felt uncomfortable in, but also vanishing his wings and tail. Those would start to cramp before long. He fashioned his new clothes after Sephiroth’s, matching his uniform to better fit in.
“Cultural differ—”
Cloud stopped and looked at Sephiroth because the boy had stopped, staring at him oddly.
“What?” he asked, only for the human to shake his head and begin walking again.
“Nothing, I just—wasn’t expecting it,” he admitted, as if it cost him something.
“Expect the unexpected, isn’t that what you humans say?” Cloud said. “Besides, if I couldn’t do a few tricks, you wouldn’t have summoned me.”
That little down-twist of lips again.
When they got to the door to the room, Cloud opened it and stepped aside, gesturing Sephiroth forward.
“After you, master.”
It should have been sinister. It should have been oily, a hiss, something to send a shiver down the spine. It should have been a threat, accompanied by the sort of sneer that was more snarl, more primal, dangerous baring of teeth than anything.
Instead, it came with a mocking lilt and a shit-eating grin.
Sephiroth went through the door and wondered, for the first time, if this might have been a bad idea.