Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As Phoenix burned the mansion into nothing more than ash, Cloud shook the stunned SOLDIER’s hand from his shoulder and backed up a few steps, glaring defiantly. The flamboyant man managed to tear his eyes away from the summon to meet Cloud’s glare. His expression shifted rapidly: shock, confusion, concern, and finally fascination with just a hit of awe. There was not a trace of caution or intimidation, which was...irritating, but understandable. Cloud was, for the moment, not even as tall as the SOLDIER’s stomach guard. It probably didn’t help that he was swimming in his clothing, like a child playing dress-up.

The man sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face, then sheathed his sword. “I believe it would be in my best interest to give the mansion up for lost,” he murmured to himself, though he stared at Cloud while he spoke. Then he sank down into a crouch, bringing them to eye-level with each other, and gentled his voice. “What’s your name?”

Cloud was not in a great mental state. He’d been tossed through time by Gaia and physically altered by Jenova. He’d stepped foot in the Nibelheim lab for the first time in years and his fragmented memories had surfaced with a vengeance, bottled up just behind his sternum because he didn’t have time to deal with them. He’d seen his Ma alive, he’d seen a different version of himself as a kid barely older than Denzel, he wasn’t big enough to wield his own goddamn sword, and now he was staring down a SOLDIER who, despite seeing him demonstrate a capacity for materia use that no child should be capable of, dared to condescend to him.

Cloud was angry and hurting and on the verge of something that Tifa would probably have called a panic attack. In other words, he was just barely holding himself together. He knew he couldn’t give the SOLDIER his name, since Cloud Strife was an innocent kid and wouldn’t be hard to find, but he was too rattled to lie convincingly. As he thought of this, the strangest thing happened: instead of doing something sensible like staying quiet or simply leaving, he snapped like a cornered animal.

“Dr. Hojo called me Subject C,” he spat, breathing hard in his agitation. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he justified his impulsive decision like this: the SOLDIER would be alarmed, would consider the materia proficiency he’d witnessed, and would retreat to find backup, giving Cloud plenty of time to vanish into the hostile terrain of the Nibel mountains and figure out his next course of action.

He was very wrong, and his fatal error was underestimating the SOLDIER’s compassion.

The man’s face drained of all color at Cloud’s declaration. For a moment, the air between them seemed to go dead. Then the SOLDIER’s expression changed: not to caution or anger, but to something Cloud couldn’t immediately puzzle out. His hand moved, bracer flashing with a status spell that Cloud didn’t bother to dodge because—

Fatal error two: he forgot that he’d tied Ribbon to Tsurugi’s handle.

He barely had time to suck in a panicked breath as his vision dimmed and his legs buckled beneath him, sending him crumpling into the freezing cradle of a snowbank. Just before the sleep spell dragged him completely under, he felt an arm slide beneath his shoulders and another beneath his knees.

Too late, he realized that the man’s expression had been one of heartbreak.

Cloud awoke to the smell of apples and cinnamon and the feeling of warm blankets wrapped snugly around him. He rubbed at his eyes and yawned as he sat up. That felt like one of the best sleeps he’d had in months. Almost like someone had—

“I see you slept well,” came a man’s voice from his right. Cloud whirled around in an instant, launching gracefully off the bed in a near-perfect roll, and grabbed the first thing his hand came into contact with to hold against the man’s throat.

It was the red-headed SOLDIER from Nibelhiem, who simply seemed amused by the fact that a small child was holding a book to his neck. “Attempting to assassinate me with papercuts, are we?” he mocked, raising his eyebrows.

Cloud tried not to blush, but judging by the burning in his cheeks he had failed. He switched tactics. “Who are you?” he demanded, lowering the book and backing away a safe distance. A quick glance around confirmed that neither his swords nor his materia were in sight. “What do you want?”

The same look of heartbreak flashed briefly across the man’s face before the smug smirk returned. “I, my dear child, am Genesis Rhapsodos, SOLDIER First Class. It’s a pleasure to officially meet you.”

Cloud froze the moment he said First Class . The SOLDIER noticed, but before he could inquire as to why, Cloud blurt out, “Do you know anyone by the name Zack?” He immediately regretted opening his mouth, alarmed and confused by his impulsive question. What was wrong with him? Even if Zack was a SOLDIER already there was no way he would know the Cloud of this world, never mind him . He’d only created unanswerable questions by saying something so stupid out loud.

Genesis pondered the question for a minute, seemingly unaware of Cloud’s distress. “I know of several people named Zack. Do you have a last name to accompany the first?” he asked with a flourish of a red gloved hand. “Or perhaps you could tell me how you met him?”

Cloud bit the inside of his lip. Of course it had to backfire immediately. Genesis was smart, using it to dig for more information. Cloud had put himself in a precarious situation and the only available option was to lie his way out. What was the saying? The greatest lies are born from truths?

He took a deep breath. “There was a man in the Lab with me. He...wanted to be a SOLDIER. He was my friend, but I don’t know what happened to him.” It was a pathetically vague lie, but considering he hadn’t been in the Lab at all ( not yet ) how exactly would Genesis be able to disprove it? He'd just assume information on Zack had been lost along with the information on Cloud. At least it would cover for any Zack-related slip ups later.

Genesis raised an eyebrow at him, but he didn’t ask for clarification. In fact, he didn’t say anything at all. Before Cloud could get too paranoid about the gentle facade the SOLDIER first was putting on, voices echoed from nearby—through a wall or down a hall, Cloud wasn't sure where from. He tensed warily. Genesis noticed and gave him another reassuring smile before turning toward the door, apparently expecting whoever was coming. 

He was obviously trying to set Cloud at ease, but a serenely smiling face had been the source of many of Cloud's woes in the past. The redhead's careful friendliness did little to soothe him. Even if there were no slitted green eyes accompanying that smile, Cloud has been burned too many times to trust so easily.

Speak of the devil, and he shall arrive.

The click and rattle of the door opening was quickly accompanied by a pair of voices, one of which was terrifyingly, horrifyingly, all too familiar. 

"Hello, Genesis," Sephiroth said.

Instinct took over. Every other concern vanished like smoke in the face of his many-times-resurrected enemy. Cloud scrambled for cover, mind racing a million miles a minute as he tried to take stock of the situation and defend himself before he inevitably ended up skewered on Masamune again.

He was unarmed. He was a child. He was in no condition to take on Sephiroth, no, not at all.

So he ran. 

Cloud leapt over the bed and past the three men in a feat of superhuman dexterity, scrabbling for an escape. He caught a brief glimpse of the SOLDIERs as he bolted. Genesis was shocked, Sephiroth's eyes were flaring in recognition, and another broad-chested man was caught between stunned and stupefied. The moment, and the men, passed in a flash.

Then Cloud was darting around a corner and down a hallway so fast and so desperately that he slammed into a wall in his panic. He bolted through an open door, kicking it shut behind him, and dove underneath a four-poster bed with long blankets draped over the side. It was pitch black in the dusty space beneath the bed frame, but it was also quiet. He hadn’t been followed...he...what was he doing?

Cloud tried to catch his breath, to reorient himself, but the pounding of his heart, the rushing of blood through his veins, was so heavy and loud that it drowned out even his own thoughts. He needed to figure out a plan. He needed to escape and he needed a weapon. He...needed to not be under a goddamn bed, but mindless terror, the kind he hadn't felt in a very long time ( not since he was sixteen ), kept him rooted where he was. In his impulsive attempt to escape the imminent danger that was Sephiroth, he'd quite literally backed himself into a corner.

Cloud was a sitting duck.

As he tried to calm his panicked breathing and force his scrambled thoughts into some kind of order, he heard voices again. It took him little time to hone in on them, and a little longer to understand them. Knowing what was being said could be the difference between life and death.

"—you sure?"

"Yes. It's him. He's almost a carbon copy of the one from those... nightmares. Just smaller."

"And the sword?"

"It... it matches."

"Genesis, was he that scared when he woke up? He looked at Sephiroth and acted like he saw—"

"He was far more wary than frightened before you came in. Not quite hostile, but getting there. In Nibelheim, he said Hojo called him 'subject C'. He... if Hojo was involved..."

"That would explain the blood test results. The genetic match..."

"Dear goddess. If Hojo had free reign, and was forcing Seph's genes into him like that...no wonder the sight of Sephiroth terrified him. And if he's suffering the same psychic attacks and nightmares as Sephiroth—!"

The door to the bedroom slowly creaked open. Cloud squirmed backward until he was beneath the center of the bed, trying to keep as far out of reach as possible. His heart felt like it was pounding fit to burst. It was loud, it was painful, and it was the only reason he knew he was still alive and not consigned to some hellish afterlife by Masamune’s fatal bite.

But for all his overwhelming terror, he was, above everything else, confused. Nightmares? Test results? What the hell was going on?

There was a thump of something hitting the floor. Someone had sat down. Two pairs of boots spread out, flanking either side of the bed. Cloud didn't have the time to figure out who was who before Sephiroth pulled the blankets up and peeked under the bed. Cloud was instantly caught in his gaze. He couldn’t look away, even if he knew, tactically, that the others were likely just as much of a threat.

What he wasn’t expecting was the look of sadness in Sephiroth's eye. With slow, measured movements, the man laid down on his side, tucking his hands close to his chest where Cloud could see them—could see that he was unarmed ( for now ). Cloud breathed harshly, one hand pressed tightly over his mouth in a vain attempt to muffle his ragged inhales as he waited for an attack. For a while, it was the only sound in the room.

Sephiroth sighed deeply. He deflated, making himself smaller. He looked a little scared himself, and a little confused. Perhaps even a little...hopeful, which was so strange that Cloud rejected the thought immediately. The man shifted and tentatively offered a hand, palm-up, slowly drifting it a few inches towards Cloud. "Hello there,” he whispered. “I'm not here to hurt you. It's okay. Shh..."

Cloud shrank away from the offered hand, bunching up into a defensive ball. What the hell was that supposed to mean? He had no idea how to process this. A shuffle of fabric near Sephiroth drew his attention. A black-haired man, the unidentified one from earlier, settled himself down beside Sephiroth in a deliberately non-threatening way and spoke. "You look like someone my friend here saw in a bad dream. Have you been dreaming of him too? Is that why you're scared?"

Cloud tensed and snarled wordlessly, drawn easily from fear to anger. He’d already said too much with Genesis. Genesis, who he could hear slowly laying himself onto the floor on the other side of the bed, an unsubtle reminder that he was surrounded. Cloud couldn’t have turned his head the other way to check even if he wanted to, not when the Demon was in arm’s reach.

Sephiroth smiled at him. He actually smiled, gentle and friendly and nothing at all like Cloud had ever seen him. "I don’t know what you saw, but I'm not the nightmare. It's okay." His hand inched forward again, ever so slightly. "I'm not with Hojo. I'm not the man from your nightmares. It's alright. You can come out. We’re not going to hurt you."

Sephiroth's face was the very picture of compassion. It was calm and gentle and warm and welcoming. It promised love and protection, open and inviting, safety incarnate...an overwhelmingly kind expression, framing those malevolent green eyes that Cloud knew all too well.

I’m not the nightmare, he said, but he was either lying or he had no idea. He had no idea that he had been the nightmare. Maybe he wasn’t now ( doubtful ), but that was all Cloud knew of him, and if there was one thing Cloud had never been accused of it was trusting too easily.

Cloud narrowed his eyes, twitching a little as he tracked the sound of Genesis shifting on the other side of the bed. There was one way he could quickly get a lay of the metaphorical land. Defiance was the surest way to rile Sephiroth up, in his experience.

“No,” he said in a voice like frozen steel. 

Every muscle in his body was tense, ready to move at the slightest provocation. He kept his gaze firmly on Sephiroth, but listened for movement from the other two. He...wasn’t entirely sure what he could do to defend himself, given that they were all as enhanced as he was ( and full-grown, unlike—no, don’t think about it ), but he’d be damned if he didn’t at least put up a fight.

Although— shit, he still didn’t have Ribbon. If Genesis put him to sleep again, there wasn’t much he could do to stop it.

He couldn’t help the terrified shiver that crawled over his skin at the thought.

Sephiroth missed nothing—not the shiver, not the defiance in his eyes, not his quick and shallow breaths, not the way his muscles were tense almost to the point of tremors. He had to know that Cloud meant to dig in and defend his position. He did know, if the way his brows came together was any indication. But he didn’t get angry. His expression didn’t go cold. He just looked sad again.

“Okay,” Sephiroth agreed, settling into a more comfortable position on the floor. “That’s fine. You don’t have to come out if you don’t want to.”

Cloud’s stomach plunged and his heart rate picked back up. His eyes went wide in confusion. He knew how to deal with cold, arrogant Sephiroth, who stamped out defiance with a ruthless single-minded determination. He had no clue what to do with this one, who didn’t seem bothered by it at all. Was it just a trick?

“It’s alright,” Genesis soothed from his other side. His voice was alarmingly close, as if he was lying at the very edge of the shadowed space beneath the bed. Of course, with their First-Class enhancements they could all hear Cloud’s panicked breathing and his heart pounding in his chest. He had no real way to hide his emotions from them. “Don’t be afraid. We’re not going to hurt you. We won’t let anyone else hurt you either, I promise.”

This was...almost worse than being threatened outright. What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t just attack them. What if he was wrong? What if they were telling the truth?

“Who are you people!” he blurt out with not a little hysteria. “You’re SOLDIERs! You’re not supposed to—!” he cut himself off, biting on the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood.

Gaia, he was in hell, wasn’t he? He drew in a deep, shuddering breath. This was his punishment for all the people who’d died because of his weakness.

“Not supposed to what?” asked the dark-haired man that he didn’t know but felt a vague familiarity toward. His voice, too, was incongruously gentle. Cloud was starting to get really sick of everyone being sad in his general direction. They were supposed to be upset with him at best. For Gaia’s sake, he’d summoned Phoenix and torched the mansion in front of one of them!

Cloud narrowed his eyes, watching the dark-haired man in his peripheral vision even as he continued to stare down Sephiroth. Maybe they hadn’t figured it out yet? “I blew up the Nibelheim reactor,” he declared, throwing down the gauntlet. “I burned down the mansion.”

With his eyes, he said, so what are you going to do about it?

“Yes. We are very aware of that.”

That was Genesis, finally moving aside the stray folds of fabric from whatever monstrosity of a blanket covered the bed. He didn’t sound at all angry. If anything, he sounded amused, “Phoenix was a very impressive summon for mere arson. Perhaps a little bit overkill?”

“You thrive on overkill, Genesis,” chuckled the black haired man. His massive frame was laid out on the ground as well, a little closer than before. This was wrong. They were treating his admission like some kind of joke, laughing about overkill. It wasn’t supposed to be funny! They weren’t supposed to be okay with it! 

Cloud's eyes darted around, bewildered incomprehension growing by the second. He was completely surrounded, all his avenues of escape guarded by one of the three First Class SOLDIERs. None of them seemed overly concerned at the moment, which all but sent Cloud into a panic. He started to tremble with the force of his dread. They were calm because they knew they had him surrounded. They had him right where they wanted him, and damn them all for it!

Cloud knew how to deal with Sephiroth. He knew how to predict the man when he was being controlling, when he was aloof and superior. He knew how to deal with the glint of Masamune singing through the air, the flash of emotion that would betray Sephiroth's next move, every wisp of hair and feather fall that would alert him to the silverette’s next move. But this time, there was no Masamune. There was no anger, and Cloud had no familiarity with whatever this current mood entailed. And worst of all... Sephiroth was not alone. 

Far from it, he had allies.

In some bitterly ironic reversal of roles, Sephiroth had gathered a group of friends to take on Cloud, and it was working. He was outnumbered, outmaneuvered. All three SOLDIERs watched Cloud, but also watched each other. It was as if they were communicating silently, but Cloud was in such a state that he couldn't figure out what they were scheming about.

Sephiroth nudged his hand forwards just a little more. “There's nothing to fear,” he said, smiling serenely, “nothing at all. Come to me.”

Cloud, of course, did the exact opposite. He edged farther away from the silverette, baring his teeth like a cornered animal. His heart felt like it was going to tear itself to pieces, the deafening thudding in his chest drowning out everything else. The black-haired man looked at the others with worry, his whispered voice nearly inaudible to Cloud, muffled by the rush of blood in his ears. “His pulse is way too fast. I hate to say it, but maybe we should—”

“Not unless there's no other option, Angeal. Earning his trust is going to be impossible if we put him to sleep at the slightest inconvenience,” Genesis shot back quietly.

The words echoed through Cloud's head, but didn't register. Cloud's eyes darted to the side, then quickly moved back to Sephiroth and locked on as the silverette made yet another move forwards. Sephiroth smiled, tapping his fingers on the ground to alert Cloud to his advance. In response, Cloud backed off even further. His eyes felt dry ( they were open too wide ), and his chest felt like it was being crushed in a vise ( breathe, Cloud, breathe, too shallow, too fast! ). Sephiroth was tall, and his arms were long. Damn him, what was he doing! He closed in yet again, slowly but surely forcing Cloud to keep backing off further and further. Something felt wrong about the situation. Something was wrong—!

A hand fell on his back. Genesis hummed gently, “There we go, good bo—”

Cloud moved. He heard fabric rip as the hand on his back tried to grasp him, but caught no more than flimsy cloth. His knees scraped the ground as he rolled to his feet and bolted for the door, panic lending him an unmatchable speed. Someone cursed as they tried to get up. The dark-haired man jerked towards him, trying to cut him off, but Cloud was too fast. Like Genesis, the man tried to grab Cloud, but he simply yanked himself away. The motion barely impeded him at all, and left the man holding nothing but a sock. Cloud slammed his palms into the doorway for balance, then pushed off and launched down the hall.

He didn't even manage two steps. Fingers closed around his ankle in an iron grip. A scream tore from Cloud as he was yanked back into reach of the monstrous people behind him, back down to the ground. He was held against a solid body and wrapped up in their embrace. The force behind the pull flung his legs to one side, leaving him unable to kick to defend himself. He shot one hand back in a sloppy punch, the other hand scrabbling at the floor for purchase. His blow hit home. He felt it when his target flinched, the restraining hold slipping just enough for him to wrench free. Silver threads and black leather cracked through the air with the movement. Cloud thought he might have done it, done just enough to get away.

No such luck.

Again he was grabbed, but this time a heavy body crushed him into the ground as his assailant used their weight to pin him. Cloud screamed and fought with all his might, yet was immobilized in no time at all. His legs kicked uselessly and his shoulder twinged with pain as it was pushed out of the way. An arm was within reach, and he bit it viciously. Mako-infused blood flooded over his tongue, but the embrace still didn’t break. His neck was forced to the side, head pinned against a bare chest that was heaving with exertion—with triumph. “Got you!”

A terrified shriek wrenched from his throat as he realized exactly who had him pinned. He struggled to no avail as he was rolled up off the floor and into a sitting position. The arms holding him were unyielding, like bands of Damascus steel. A hand started carding through his hair, soothing him like a babe. Like a pet. Cloud whined, panicked and pleading, but it was no use. He'd been captured. He was at the complete and utter mercy of his foe; the monster that haunted his nightmares was so close he could feel his chest rumble as he spoke.

“I’ve got you,” Sephiroth breathed, holding him tight. “I've got you.”

Chapter Text

His words were meant as a reassurance: I’ve got you. Everything is going to be alright.  

They were not taken that way.

Sephiroth really didn’t mean the child any harm, even if the dreams were so potent that he had grown to dread sleep. It wasn’t the child’s fault. He wasn’t the man who struck Sephiroth over and over until he lost count of the gashes marking his body. Even if the child looked like that man—even if someone was setting them up as such—they weren’t enemies. This was a child.  

So his intentions were, truly, good. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It didn’t take long for him to realize they had made a grave miscalculation. 

Sephiroth was well acquainted with fear. He had felt it often as a child—less often when he had grown up and moved from the lab to the battlefield, but there were still bad moments, moments when he knew one wrong step would see him blown up or run through. He’d felt it when the dreams started, not long ago. He’d felt it overwhelmingly when he found that the dreams had at least some truth to them, when he had taken the evidence of what he was ( monster ) to Genesis and Angeal. He’d felt it when Gen had called to tell him about the mako-eyed boy spitting and snarling in front of a burning manor.

Fear was… well. The truth was, you got bored of it. You could only stare into the eyes of death for so long before you stopped freezing like a rabbit and stepped towards it, investigated it without terror, so long as it did you no harm.

The boy in his arms didn’t do that—or, perhaps, he considered merely being held to be harm. Sephiroth sat with him there on the floor for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, soothing all the while. The boy’s heart rate never slowed, far too fast to be healthy even for the enhanced. It reminded Sephiroth vaguely of a hummingbird. His breath, too, was fast and shallow. By minute twenty-one, it sounded like his throat was starting to close off.

At a loss, Sephiroth changed tack. “Hey. Hey. Take a deep breath.” He left one arm pinning the boy to his chest and settled his free hand in the space between those narrow, heaving shoulder blades—a warm and reassuring weight, he hoped. “It’s okay. In...out...listen to my voice—” He had never known saying that to make things worse before, but the child somehow found the energy to resume thrashing before abruptly going limp. He listened for a moment as the child’s pulse and breathing finally evened out into unconsciousness before slowly raising his eyes to Genesis and Angeal. 

He was afraid again, because he didn’t know this boy…and because he did. He remembered him (maybe him) so clearly. He was afraid again, because he was clearly such a monster that a child fainted at his mere touch. He looked to his friends, expecting to see the revulsion he deserved, but Angeal only looked sad and horrified (and not at him, somehow). Genesis was busy tutting over the state of the boy’s outfit, holding his arms out to take the limp little form from Sephiroth. 

“And after all I did to make sure he had clothing that fit,” he grumbled, inspecting the tear on the back of the pajama shirt as he balanced the child on one hip, “he just destroys them. For shame!”

Sephiroth couldn’t help it. He snorted. And that was too much. He ran to the bathroom and threw up, like he had after his first kill. Angeal was right behind him, murmuring something comforting the way he had then too. At least they weren’t hip deep in mud this time.

He didn’t indulge his weakness long, forcing himself to his feet and washing his face off in cold water. He murmured thanks and apology at Angeal, who only offered him that same look he had when Sephiroth had awoken him in the middle of the night with proof he wasn’t fully human. By the time they returned to the room, Genesis had replaced the boy’s destroyed shirt with a new one and settled him back in bed. He didn’t comment besides irritably blowing his hair out of his face and muttering “well, that strategy didn’t work.”

“He was terrified. I don’t think anything short of letting him bolt out the door would have ‘worked,’” Angeal said, gentle and steady. Sephiroth thought it would have surprised Angeal’s opponents to know how careful he was of those around him in day-to-day life. Though, he seemed more subdued lately. They all did.

Sephiroth shook his head. “Nevertheless, we should take care not to repeat the same mistakes. Maybe not leave the hallway door open, or only have one of us in the room at a time for a bit. Maybe both. Cloud didn’t seem to have much of a reaction to either of you.” It took him a moment to look up and realize that the other two had gone silent from surprise rather than thought. 

“Cloud?” Angeal prompted, brows arched.

Sephiroth felt more than directed his hands come up and slowly cover his face. “I’m… sorry. It was what I called him—the man, I mean.” He took a deep breath. “In the nightmare.”

“Cloud,” Genesis repeated thoughtfully, rolling the name around his tongue. “Interesting. We’ll have to remember that for later. It could prove useful.” He reached down and gently smoothed the boy’s bangs away from his face. The little blond was lying under the blanket that Sephiroth knew, from experience, was the most comfortable in the house. Genesis kept it solely for favoured guests. Perhaps that wasn’t so surprising, given that Genesis did always admire a spitfire, especially a spitfire with magical ability.

The redhead straightened back up. “You should know, there’s a lot more to this mystery than just the boy.” He gave Sephiroth a knowing look, no doubt able to read the lingering upset in the pallor of his face. “Why don’t you two do me a favor? There’s a few rare materia and pieces of equipment he came part-and-parcel with. You saw the sword when you came in, but there are other items of interest. I’m sure there’s much insight to be gleaned from them, but I’m quite exhausted from dragging the whole lot over from that little nowhere in the mountains. Besides, we all know I’m better at research anyways.” 

He smirked cheekily and plucked a thick book up from the nightstand. A Psychologist’s Guide to Children was waved in their faces as the redhead sat down in an armchair, dismissing them. Sephiroth looked to Angeal, who shrugged, and they left the room together as Genesis settled in to read with a comfortable sigh.

Angeal was concerned.

Nevermind the child (who was a headache to be dealt with later), Sephiroth was acting incredibly distant, almost disconnected. Angeal understood why—the shock of Hojo’s tampering was still fresh, and… he wasn’t sure how to process it himself yet, so he could barely begin to imagine what Sephiroth must be feeling. And on top of that to find a facsimile of the man from his worsening nightmares in the form of a child, especially a child who was so openly and heartbreakingly terrified of him…

Sephiroth could take a lot. But no matter what anyone thought, maybe especially what Sephiroth himself thought, he wasn’t limitless. And if Sephiroth broke … It would be better to avoid that. 

Together, they made their way to the place Genesis typically stored items for later inspection to check over whatever Genesis had collected from the boy. The stash of high-quality gear that met them was more than a little surprising, even to the two combat veterans. There was a well-worn but adult-sized black outfit, a gleaming blade that was massive in size and presence, and a glittering pile of materia that boasted a truly staggering amount of power. Angeal chuckled a little, thinking of Genesis and how giddy he must have been upon first setting eyes on the small hoard. Sephiroth picked up one of the orbs, a red summon that glowed gently as he probed its nature.

“Phoenix,” he murmured.

“Phoenix,” Angeal agreed, looking at the materia. “Please don’t summon it in the house.”

Finally, a smile, or what counted as such, flitted across Sephiroth’s face. “Yes, mom,” Sephiroth said, deadpan, and turned to set Phoenix aside. The ‘storage room,’ was really more of an overlarge closet lit only by a bare lightbulb, but it suited their purposes. Being in SOLDIER made you want to keep some things on hand. Bandages and potions lined a good portion of the shelf to the left, but it was on the table to the right that he placed the materia, gently. With summon materia, it was better to be respectful. 

Then Sephiroth frowned, rifling through the rest of the materia pile. “In all seriousness though, look at these, Angeal: Scan, Restore, Revive, Enemy Skill…it’s a full complement. High quality. And they’re mastered. Or near as with Enemy Skill, I can never remember what it is that thing is supposed to do.” 

“I will tell no one of this weakness,” Angeal promised him solemnly, earning another amused half-smile. “But yes. If I ever find out who was insane enough to give mastered materia to a child, I’m going to run them through. With the Buster, even.”

“I wonder if they did?” Sephiroth murmured, rolling the Revive between his palms. The tilt of his brows was pensive.

“How else would he have gotten it?”

“To summon Phoenix so easily, he must have the mana reserves of a grown man—a grown SOLDIER, even. Perhaps not so surprising, given that he’s clearly enhanced like us. And he’s been traveling unattended for how long? It’s entirely possible he mastered them himself.”

Angeal frowned and shook his head. “Even with high mana reserves, it takes time to master materia. Months, if not years, and he’s so young. Besides, if he were traveling alone for long enough to master materia like these, wouldn’t he have gear that fit?” He pointedly rapped his knuckles on the steel toe of one of the adult combat boots. “This stuff would have caused severe problems if he was out in the snow too long, or walked too far, or had to run, never mind combat. Blisters, chafing, inability to keep warm or cool, imparied movement…”

“And there is another puzzle.” Sephiroth sighed and turned his back for a moment. Angeal couldn’t see his expression, and his tone was the slightly-too-neutral one he used when speaking of Hojo or his labs. “That uniform is used.”

“Obviously.”

“No, Angeal. Look at it.”

Angeal frowned and obeyed. The uniform looked like a variation on the standard black SOLDIER First uniforms, modified in the way that only First Classes could get away with, though he couldn’t recall seeing anyone with that exact set of modifications. Black was an excellent uniform color for a lot of reasons. It hid bloodstains and dirt well, so you didn’t have to fuss as much when you washed it, it was camouflage in the dark, and it was imposing in the light. With his SOLDIER senses, he could see the slight dullness of color where bloodstains hadn't quite washed clean, the thinning of the fabric under the armpits, and the places where the thread matched well but not perfectly— skilled repairs, either by a hired professional or by someone who cared enough to do it right. To a normal human it would look immaculate. 

There were... a lot of those careful repairs, actually. He hadn’t noticed the sheer extent until he looked closely. And some were in very bad places. 

“Alright,” Angeal said slowly, flipping the shirt back to the front. “I see your point. This makes no sense. Why would a uniform like this be reused? Passed on to a child of all things? It would be easier to just request a new one from Shinra and throw this one out when it arrived. I’m not even sure how it wasn’t cut off the SOLDIER when the medics tended to these injuries.” He traced one meticulously-repaired tear, about the length of his thumb, which marred the abdominal area of the shirt. A small cut, virtually harmless, unless… he flipped it over. A matching mark. 

“He was run through,” Sephiroth said behind him.

“Whoever wore this uniform before the kid?” Sephiroth didn’t reply, and Angeal turned to look at him. His eyes still had that distinctive neutral look, but now with the slight glaze of someone remembering something terrible. “Sephiroth,” he said, steady and quiet. The shirt bunched up in his hands. “I need you here.”

The silver-haired man flinched. “...apologies.”

Angeal hesitated, trying to gauge if he should push a little or leave well enough alone. “More...nightmare memories?”

“Yes. I wonder if...if the child was the one run through and the events...bled over.”

Angeal recoiled. “He’s so small! It would have...Gaia, it would have…” He had seen children impaled before. Not often, but in combat, sometimes things just happened —people you hadn’t meant to strike ran into the path of your blade, paying as little attention to you as you were to them. He’d held one or two casualties like that in Wutai, keeping them near while they died. He didn’t want to imagine the child sleeping just a room over spitting defiance with a sword in his chest.

“That boy seems too stubborn to die,” Sephiroth said, then shook his head. “No, you’re right. The nightmares are making it difficult to think straight. But the question of scars is still an important one, if for other reasons. Did Genesis make a scar map when he changed him?”

Stomach still twisting at the thought of the little blond impaled on a blade, Angeal shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ll ask later.” He moved onto the boots. “Hm. Tear in the right shoe. Something tough, to get through this leather—whoever originally wore this went through hell.”

“Stab,” Sephiroth said quietly.

Of course it was. He looked again. “Stabbed from beneath, yes... it’s broader down here. Better repaired sole though. Odd positioning. You looked at it already? Good catch.”

Sephiroth’s voice was still very quiet. “No. I didn’t look at the boots, Angeal.”

Angeal looked over. Seph was leaning against the wall on one arm, head resting against the drywall. His free hand was shaking. The other still held the Revive materia. “Sephiroth.”

“I can remember—”

“Sephiroth. I need you here . Please.” He placed a slow hand on his shoulder, making sure the other SOLDIER heard him approach. No response. He decided to switch tactics. “If you leave me as the only sane adult dealing with this situation, I will tie your hair in literal knots. Hundreds of them. Really small knots. In individual hairs, or groupings of no more than twenty at a time.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Watch me.”

The soft huff that Sephiroth used as a laugh when he didn’t want to laugh escaped his lips. “Genesis doesn’t count?”

“You know better than that. He’s either sane or he’s an adult, never both at once.” An actual laugh this time. They had to move on from the uniform. “Come on. Please. Help me look at the sword.”

“I remember a lot of things, even if they’re fuzzy. I remember the sword best of all.” Sephiroth said, dully.

“Just try. You’ve held swords that hurt you before.” It was a lesson that SOLDIERs learned quickly— staying alive meant keeping in motion. If he could keep Sephiroth doing things… keep him treading water… maybe he wouldn't drown. 

The sword was beautiful. Angeal lifted it reverently, admiring the gleam and weight of its unknown material. His fingers gently traced over a few miniscule nicks, which his experienced eyes knew would buff out with only a little love and oil.  He swung it through the air slowly, admiring the way it changed even the subtle air patterns in the room. “Beautiful, well balanced… well cared for, the leather in the handle has been conditioned recently. Must be a nightmare to clean, with these grooves, but… a lady deserves to be pampered.”

Sephiroth huffed again, but there was unease on his face as his eyes traced over the sword. He’d been giving that look to the Buster sword lately. It made sparring awkward. He had explained, eventually. The notion of some stranger butchering Sephiroth with his sword was… beyond horrifying, and Angeal had no idea why Sephiroth’s dreams would feature the Buster but not Rapier.

“They… aren’t grooves.” Sephiroth reached out, slowly, and after a moment of hesitation, Angeal handed the weapon over. 

Sephiroth’s hands were not clumsy on any weapon—Angeal had once seen him kill a monster with a cast iron pan, and he had made it look a lot easier than he claimed it was—but he was hesitant on this one, like a man fondling the head of an attack dog that had been sent after him before. After a moment his right hand traced up the side of the blade until he found— “There,” Sephiroth breathed, and with a simple click, the blade pulled apart. Angeal made a horrified noise in the back of his throat before catching himself, seeing suddenly that the blade was not broken. It was… fused. Not one blade but two. Three. 

Six blades. Six blades in total.

“If anyone can wield this blade in actual combat…” Angeal said, (and alright, his tone was probably dreamier than it should have been, but it did get another small smile from Sephiroth and that was what mattered), “they’re a damned artist . I couldn’t. Too many parts.”

“He was,” Sephiroth murmured distantly, right hand tracing idly over the largest blade. “I… the man in the nightmare, I mean. I’d have probably been more appreciative if…” He winced and abruptly dropped the smaller half of the blade. Angeal yelped, barely managing to catch it. “I… I’m sorry.”

“Realistic, then?”

“I felt every cut. How often do you feel injuries, really feel them, in dreams?” Sephiroth said, with a thousand yard stare, then shook his head and shut his eyes for a moment. “His Limit Break used all of them at the same time. It was… brutal, but artistically so. I suspect the weapon was made specifically to fit him. For his power and his style.” His hand, on the hilt, caught on the Ribbon tied there and he frowned. “Interesting.”

“It is good equipment.”

“No, why wasn’t he wearing it? It’s not like the sword—a ribbon can be oversized and work just fine. Unless…”

Angeal cocked his head, but waited. Sometimes it was better to let Sephiroth work out things in his own time. Unlike Genesis, he didn’t usually just cut off and leave you hanging because he wanted you to prompt him. And that was a thinking distance in his eyes, not a remembering one.

After a moment, he spoke. “What if it had sentimental value? He’s not fighting anything that he doesn’t think he can handle, so he takes it off, ties it to the hilt of the weapon he’s not using so it doesn’t get lost or damaged.” Sephiroth untied the ribbon slowly, leaving it trailing limp over his fingers. It was a striking contrast against the black leather of his gloves. 

Angeal turned the thought over in his mind. “Something to ask the kid, maybe?” It was a better direction than dwelling on the dreams, at least. More concrete. Less dangerous.

Either the dreams meant Sephiroth, the most deadly man in the world, was going insane…or they were much, much worse. And all Angeal could hope to do was to offer ballast. 

“Hm, yes, though whether he’d tell us is a different matter.”

“Well, it makes sense at least,” Angeal said. He watched as Sephiroth toyed with the ribbon, growing uneasy as a thought began to take form at the edge of his consciousness. It took a moment to percolate, but once it struck him, he almost wished it hadn’t.

“Sentimental value,” Angeal repeated with horror. “Seph. Sentimental value.” He swiftly turned back to the dark, ragged clothes from earlier. It suddenly clicked. A ribbon on a sword too large to carry, much less wield, materia that a child was unlikely to have mastered himself simply by dint of time, a set of clothes lovingly restored despite how much easier it would have been to replace them….a little boy stubbornly wearing things far too large for him. “Sephiroth. Didn’t the kid mention a ‘Zack?’”

“Yes. I remember overhearing that as we...oh,” he said simply, the puzzle pieces having slid into place for him as well. “He said that he didn’t know what happened to him. Perhaps ‘Zack’ discarded this outfit and he took it?”

“Maybe. Or maybe…. Well. The kid is young. Children don’t always understand that death is permanent.” He brought the garments out for inspection again. “These tears. Some of this damage… they could easily have been from kill shots.” His fingertips lingered over the same repair that had caught his attention earlier, near the center of the chest.

“And you think that the child hasn’t realized that his friend died?”

“Or he thinks it’s just a matter of finding him. That would explain the gear, at least, if he was wearing these out of sentimentality or a drive to return them once he found Zack again. And he might not have known how the ribbon was supposed to be used, or he might have been protecting it…”

“Do you remember what he said, just before he told us he had destroyed the reactor and the mansion?”

It took a bare moment of thought to recall the words; the memory of that interaction was going to be burned into his mind forever. “Who are you people,” he repeated, voice growing soft as he realized what Sephiroth was driving at with the question. “You’re SOLDIERs, you’re not supposed to ...something. You think a SOLDIER killed Zack?”

“Or Zack was a SOLDIER at one point and warned the child off from all others. Perhaps he rescued the boy and deserted. Perhaps he was ‘recruited’ by Hojo.” Angeal recoiled in disgust, but Sephiroth barely blinked at his own words. “Perhaps he was only enhanced but never inducted, and stole this uniform himself. I don’t know. But that child expected us to harm him, if not outright kill him, for the destruction he caused. Because we’re SOLDIERs.”

They both fell silent, the air between them still as they contemplated the implications of what Sephiroth had suggested. None of it was particularly good.

“There’s no use speculating.” Angeal said eventually, closing his eyes and drawing in a steadying breath. That was usually Sephiroth’s line, but for the moment Sephiroth was...compromised. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll ask when he wakes up and see what happens. For now, you hold on to the Ribbon and come help me in the kitchen? If he’s enhanced and also a growing child…”

“He needs a lot of food.” Sephiroth agreed, folding the Ribbon carefully and putting it in a pocket, as gently as he would have a photograph.

They left for the kitchen and let the child’s mysteries lay undisturbed for a little while longer.

Chapter Text

Apples and cinnamon. A very pleasant smell…and one that Cloud was fast getting tired of.

He came to with a sharp jolt, and barely stopped himself from shooting upright. The soft blankets covering him shifted ever so slightly with his aborted movement. He could hear someone’s gentle breaths to his right. He kept his eyes closed and forced himself to relax back down into the mattress, trying to figure out how active his observer was, and if they’d noticed him rousing yet.

The breaths remained slow and measured. His watcher was asleep.

Slowly, and more gingerly than he’d ever managed before. Cloud opened his eyes and turned his head to take stock of his surroundings. The annoying red-coated SOLDIER who had kidnapped him—Genesis, he begrudgingly remembered—was asleep in an armchair a few feet away, his slumber obviously unplanned if the book in his lap and the awkward angle of his neck were any indication.

Cloud elected not to look this gift horse in the mouth. With only the barest movement of his head he took stock of his surroundings, but found very few viable escape routes. There was a door he remembered bolting out of, but opening it might make it creak. Add to that the fact that Genesis was between him and the door, and he didn’t want to try his luck at walking by silently. Vincent and Yuffie were the only ones that could walk quietly enough to fool a SOLDIER’s sensitive hearing; his own clunky gait would rouse the man immediately. Fortunately, there was a window near the bed, away from Genesis.

Gingerly, Cloud eased himself from beneath the covers and rolled over to set his feet on the floor, distributing his weight as evenly as possible to keep the mattress springs from creaking. He kept his eyes locked on Genesis as he stood and crept to the window, watching for twitches or changes in his breathing. The man stayed still, his chest rising and falling in an even tempo. Cloud turned to the window, seeing as Genesis was still unaware, and inspected the thing carefully.

It was high on the wall, the sill just low enough for him to catch his fingers on if he stretched up on his tiptoes. He hauled himself up, cursing his short stature and Jenova’s meddling with every nasty word he’d ever picked up from Cid. There was a clunky metal latch at the bottom of the window’s thick frame. He looked intensely at the thing for signs of rust, or anything else that might make opening it difficult or loud.

“That's a second story window with nothing to break your fall. I don’t advise it, little man."

Cloud hissed and snapped his head toward Genesis, reaching for a sword he no longer had ( or was able to wield) . Genesis was awake in his chair, calmly watching as Cloud went still and tried to find a way to salvage the situation. Genesis, as casual as he appeared, was a First Class SOLDIER. If Cloud so much as twitched to open the window, Genesis would be on him in an instant.

For the moment, Cloud admitted defeat. He clambered down from the windowsill with a scowl and a glare. “Oh please,” he scoffed, tossing his head and staring the SOLDIER down. “I’ve fallen from much greater heights than two stories and lived.”

Genesis twitched a little. “Be that as it may,” he said, getting up and walking toward Cloud, “I wouldn’t recommend trying it. You never know when a fall will be an unlucky one, especially if hastily risked.”

Cloud’s scowl deepened as he slid away from the approaching man, edging back toward the bed. Translation: you have much greater odds of getting hurt if you’re flinging yourself out a window while I’m trying to stop you. “And whose fault would that be,” he muttered under his breath, knowing full well that Genesis could clearly hear him.

Genesis rolled his eyes up to the ceiling for a moment. “Heavens. Are you always like this?”

“Only to people who kidnap me.”

“I did not kidnap you. I rescued you from a very precarious situation and brought you somewhere safe.”

Cloud gaped. Was he serious? He sounded like he was serious, which boggled the mind. “ Motherfucker, you knocked me out, stole my gear, took off my clothes without my consent, stuck me in a room with Sephiroth, and you think you did me a goddamn favor?”  

Weapon or no weapon, he felt like he was about thirty seconds away from lunging and doing his level best to tear the SOLDIER’s eyes out. He could probably do some very nice damage before he was incapacitated, unless Genesis still had Sleep on him. 

Apparently sensing his growing urge to do violence, Genesis raised his hands in surrender and gentled his voice. “Alright, alright, calm down,” he said, which really just made Cloud want to punch him more. “I understand why you...feel that way, but I’m afraid that we cannot in good conscience leave you to fend for yourself.” His eyes turned calculating. “Of course, we can sooner come to an arrangement that is agreeable to you if you tell us more about yourself.”

Fuck finding Tsurugi, Cloud was going to rip a leg off the nightstand and beat the stupid man to death with it. He’d make an entire escape with it if he had to. Masamune vs. good carpentry: a battle for the ages. He’d lose, but at least then they wouldn’t be condescending to him anymore.

“You,” he hissed, so outraged that his voice was nearly strangled into nonexistence, “can go to hell. I don’t owe you a goddamn thing. I don’t need you to make arrangements for me. I was perfectly fine! In fact, I was a good sight safer before than I am now, so you can fuck right off with that shit and start being honest about your intentions!”

Genesis pointed a finger and opened his mouth to offer some no doubt scathing repartee, but their argument was interrupted by the sound of a quiet knock at the door. Cloud went stiff, automatically dropping into a high crouch. Genesis rolled his eyes a little and said, “come in.”

Sephiroth opened the door (because of course Cloud couldn’t get even five minutes away from him) and Cloud reacted like Reno had stuck a mag rod directly into his spine. He blinked and found himself with his back safely to the corner, standing on top of the bed to give himself an advantage if they tried to grab him. With no weapon and no way to get one, he raised his hands into the protective ready stance Tifa had drilled into his head and got ready to fight for his life.

This time, he wasn’t going to go down without making them pay for it.

As soon as Sephiroth opened the door, he knew he had made another mistake. The child leapt, using every ounce of his considerable enhancements, and put himself in the most advantageous defensible position available to him. The speed he managed was both impressive and heartbreaking.

Carefully, Sephiroth handed the tray with the child’s food over to Genesis as Angeal stood in the doorway behind him. The blond flinched even at that minor movement, pressing into the wall like he was trying to phase through it, hands raised defensively. Sephiroth turned to him, not moving any deeper into the room, then raised his hands in a placating manner and ducked his head a little. It didn’t work. For a moment the boy paused and confusion flashed across his face, but the terror and defiant fury quickly returned. If Sephiroth couldn’t find a way to diffuse the situation, they would either end up with the boy trying to escape past them (and possibly hurting himself in his desperation) or panicking himself into unconsciousness again.

He opened his mouth and ignored the way his stomach twisted. “Wait. I’ll stay right here except when I leave the room. Angeal, grab my pauldrons so he knows I would have to shake you off to move.” He felt the weight of his friend’s hands settle on his shoulders, the slight pull of him wrapping his fingers around the edges of his armor. “Okay? See? I’m not coming any closer.”

“Great,” the kid snarled, but he stopped trying to break the drywall by sheer force of will. That was good enough for now. “What the hell do you want? Or are you going to try to drive me towards your redhead lackey again?”

“I have a name. You know it. I told it to you,” Genesis muttered, tossing his hair out of his eyes.

“You’re an appendage. I don’t give a fuck what you want,” the child snapped… possibly to see what Gen would do, based on the way his gaze flickered briefly toward the other SOLDIER.

“I’m kicking your ass later sparring” Genesis muttered to Sephiroth, sounding rather put out. Gaia, was he actually jealous that the kid didn’t see him as the biggest threat in the room? No, that was unfair. He was probably just upset from the argument that Sephiroth had interrupted.

“As always, you are welcome to try,” Sephiroth said mildly, and watched the kid’s eyes narrow. “I just wanted to ask a question and then I’ll go away again for a bit. Alright?”

“I am literally cornered, it's not like I have a choice in the matter, so why are you pretending to ask? Do you get off on it, you sadist?”

Sephiroth took a deep breath while Genesis shot the boy a sharp look. Angeal probably was too—he could almost feel the disapproval radiate off his friend. He himself didn't want to know how the boy even knew what a sadist was. “Alright. Fine. I’ll just ask. We noticed that you didn’t have this equipped when you were...out and about. Does it mean something to you?” He unfolded the Ribbon slowly, carefully, and watched the boy’s eyes lock onto it.

They had been prepared for the boy to flee—had tried to take precautions so he would feel as safe as possible but be unable to bolt. 

They were not prepared for the boy to attack. 

He was fast, easily as fast as they were. As fast as Sephiroth was. Sephiroth felt himself start to pull back in surprise but Angeal was still standing right behind him. He caught the boy’s punch full in the nose with a sharp crack and felt the instinct to drop to his knees, but Sephiroth had been trained to take injuries while making them look like they didn’t hurt. Or at least, that was what growing up in Hojo’s labs amounted to, and he had passed those tests with flying colors. 

So he only swayed on his feet a little as the child snatched the Ribbon and lunged backward before Genesis could grab him ( he tried and ended up sprawled across the floor for his trouble, scrambling back to his feet without grace ) and Angeal’s hands lifted from his shoulders, although one was soon placed under his elbow, turning him and holding him up as Sephiroth stared uncomprehending at the blood in his glove. 

His nose was broken. He had never had a broken nose before. A small, feral child had broken his nose for touching his Ribbon.

“Monster! You have no right to touch this!” the child was snarling, every bit of terror subsumed by a fury that burned white-hot in his eyes. “Don’t you ever touch this Ribbon again, you bastard. Do you hear me? I will kill you. If you ever touch it again I will kill you however many times it takes until you finally stay DEAD! Do you understand me?” By the end, he was screaming his words with such force that his voice cracked.

“Sephiroth. Let’s leave the room for a moment and get that seen to.” Angeal murmured quietly in his ear, his eyes locked on the boy as if he were a true threat—to himself or to them, Sephiroth was too stunned to tell. “Genesis…?”

“I’ll keep an eye on him, don’t worry. He won’t surprise me,” the redhead murmured grimly. The boy ceased his threats for a moment and glanced down at the Ribbon, running a thumb over it, as if it were an injury he wanted to soothe. As if it could bleed. Then he looked back up, and Sephiroth felt speared through by the rage and grief in those mako-blue irises.

“Murderer!” he howled after them as they retreated.

Sephiroth left, and the room hung in perfect stillness for a long moment as Cloud stood in place, trembling and panting. Genesis crossed his arms over his chest and opened his mouth to say something.

Cloud burst into tears.

The wound of Aerith’s death was deep and old and scarred over, but seeing Ribbon in...seeing Ribbon in his hand made it feel as fresh as the moment he’d watched Masamune drive through her body. The sudden grief knocked the wind out of him and he sank down to his knees, then folded over and set his forehead on the floor, cradling Ribbon to his chest. I’m sorry, he apologized, taken aback by the depth of the black despair that rolled over him but unable to fight it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop him. I will this time, I promise.

Genesis sighed, and he was a lot closer than he had been before, but not right over where Cloud was kneeling. Smart man. Cloud was not above breaking any hand that tried to restrain him at the moment.

"Oh, kid," he said quietly, a little hint of the heartbreak that had gotten Cloud into this mess tingeing his voice. "You've had nothing but rotten luck so far, haven't you?"

Cloud giggled hysterically. Rotten luck. Rotten luck indeed, landing him here almost literally in his worst enemy's lap. Rotten luck with SOLDIER and Shinra and Hojo and Zack and everything after. His whole life was a joke and this was the punchline.

“Let me go,” he hiccuped into the floor. “Just give me my gear back and let me go.”

Genesis sighed again and Cloud felt the heat of a hand over his back for a moment before the man apparently (and wisely) thought better of it. “I know you don’t understand right now,” he said gently, “but we really are trying to help you. I’m sorry we’re making such missteps. You are quite the unique individual, Cloud.”

It took a second for him to realize what was wrong with Genesis’s statement, but once he did adrenaline immediately flooded his body. Shit, he thought, every muscle going rigid at once. His pulse skyrocketed—there was no way Genesis didn’t hear it. Shit!  

His mind raced. How did they know? Had they found his counterpart? No, that didn’t make any sense, why would they have assumed he shared the same name if he was a clone? They certainly wouldn’t have jumped right to time travel of all things. And there were no records to find. Effectively, he didn’t exist. So how?

Sephiroth.

Of course. Of course, they’d been asking him about dreams, about seeing Sephiroth in dreams. The dark-haired one—Angeal?—hadn’t he mentioned Cloud looking like someone Sephiroth had seen in his dreams?  A bad dream. And if this Sephiroth had seen someone “like” Cloud in his nightmares, with a sword that matched Tsurugi, Cloud could safely assume he had been seeing their battles.

That was why. They hadn’t figured anything out. It didn’t mean anything. Not yet. He would know when it did, because they would kill him. Try to. He was hard to kill, and even like this he wasn’t going down without a fight. He had time to prepare. There was no need to panic. It wasn’t like Sephiroth, this Sephiroth, was reading his mind, was he? There was no need to panic. No need to panic...

The fear lingered anyway.

Those narrow shoulders froze as the boy’s small heart kicked into overdrive again, and Genesis smiled to himself. Ah, so that’s your name after all then, little one? Well, it’s a start… The child was absolutely still for about fifteen seconds, but just as Genesis opened his mouth to speak, Cloud beat him to it.

“I knew that innocent act was bullshit!” he hissed, low enough that it seemed directed to himself rather than Genesis. Then he raised his head and, with eyes that held a cold fury utterly unsuited to a child’s soft face, he said, “You don’t get to use that name. You can call me Subject C just like everyone else who held me captive—Just. Like. Hojo.” His lips twisted into a snarl. “My name is for people I trust. People I give it to. You don’t get to use it just because Sephiroth thinks he can take whatever he wants .”

Genesis’s stomach twisted with insult at the comparison, and with heartbreak at the suffering Cloud must have endured to be able to spit venom in a voice as hard as any war veteran’s. Deep in the back of his throat, he could taste something else too, something he was loath to acknowledge: fear. For the first time, he wondered what exactly he’d rescued—if he’d rescued anyone at all.  

No. 

He shook himself mentally, though Cloud could likely read the upset in his body language as easily as Genesis did his. He had rescued the boy, because Cloud was a boy, just one who had been put through unfathomable ordeals. An experiment, yes, but not so far removed from humanity that he was fundamentally other. They could help him. They would help him. It would just take time and effort.

He took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, though he didn’t quite dare to close his eyes and gather himself. “No,” he said, keeping his voice gentle even though it wanted to be tight. “I will not do that. You’re welcome to have whatever opinion of me you wish, but I will not dehumanize you like that.”

He watched as Cloud’s expression twisted from angry hardness into confusion, followed quickly by a cornered kind of wariness. He didn’t want to deal with another fit, and he certainly didn’t want to continue the vein the conversation had been going in, so he pasted a smile on his face and clapped his hands.

“More importantly,” he said with false cheer, “we have deviated from our course! I do believe something was left for you earlier.” Pointedly ignoring the boy’s distrustful glare, he got to his feet and retrieved the tray of food from where he’d set it on the dresser. “Would you like to eat it on the bed or in the chair?”

Cloud didn’t budge from his position on the floor.

“Come on, now,” he coaxed, tilting the tray slightly to present its contents—a hearty sandwich, one of Angeal’s favored recovery pasta dishes, and an extensive array of fruit—to the boy. “I know you haven’t eaten in a while. You will feel much steadier once you do.”

Cloud glanced at the tray, then at Genesis. Staring him in the eye, he slowly slid back until he was sitting crouched against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. He said not a word.

Defiant, defended, ready to move at a moment’s notice. Genesis knew what message Cloud was trying to send him.

He deliberately ignored it.

“The floor is a strange place to eat,” he said lightly, not quite taunting, “but if you insist.”

He settled back down on the floor, pointedly restricting his own ease of movement by crossing his legs, and slid the tray over. Cloud glanced at it again, then looked back up and searched his face for a very long moment. Slowly, deliberately, he used one finger to slide the tray as far away from him as physically possible before settling back into place. 

Oh, Goddess. Were they really going to do this? “Eating is non-negotiable,” he said sternly, moving the tray back.

“No,” the blond drawled, not phased in the slightest. He seemed to be regaining his odd, unchildlike collectedness. “Not until you give me a very good reason to trust that you haven’t drugged that.”

Genesis pressed his lips into a line and took another very deep breath. He really shouldn’t have been surprised, but it still made his chest ache. “It is not drugged. I have no reason to drug it. Just eat.”

Cloud looked extremely unimpressed by his argument. "You forcibly put me to sleep, kidnapped me, brought me to an unknown location, stole my gear, and changed my clothes. If I were an adult, you would be unsurprised if I attempted to kill you for such behavior, but since I’m a child you think I’m stupid enough to forget all that and trust you as soon as you put food in front of me? Do you think I’m a dog?” 

Cloud’s expression went from muted anger to deadly focus, a small, cold smile turning the corners of his lips up. Genesis had seen a similar expression on Sephiroth once, right before he disemboweled the Marlboro that had gotten the jump on Angeal. “You’re not fooling me with this act. I know who you serve, appendage. So either come out with it or try something smarter. You want me to eat? Come up with a very, very good reason for me to believe I won’t wake up somewhere else in yet a different outfit.” His head cocked to the side slightly. “Or maybe no clothes at all. It’s not like I’d feel less safe.”

Had he? Genesis’s stomach turned. Had he ever woken somewhere without his clothes? He must have, given how long he’d been in Hojo’s dubious care. Long enough. Too long. 

Genesis gathered himself, taking several moments to do so in a way that the child couldn’t possibly have missed. When he spoke, his voice was far steadier than he felt, “Are you planning to just not eat, period?” Because he had no way to prove that he didn’t intend to drug the child. No one could prove a negative. Genesis liked to debate well enough to know that backing his opponent into such a corner was an instant win. He realized that he didn’t so much like being cornered himself. “You do realize how quickly that will become unbearable, don’t you?”

Cloud snorted. “Don’t patronize me. With a mako metabolism? I have a few days before it becomes an issue.”

A few—he was counting the days of rapid weight loss prior to coma and death as an acceptable tradeoff?

A heavy sigh sounded a few rooms over as Genesis stared in disbelief—Angeal from the sound of it. He stood and… what was he doing? The storeroom door opened and shut, then steps approached the bedroom. 

Genesis looked to the door as it opened, frowning. “I thought we were trying to not outnumber him for a bit?”

Angeal stayed in the doorway, “I can leave again. But I thought I would give you the obvious solution to your problem.” He held up a materia for inspection, then crouched and rolled it across the floor to Cloud, who snatched it up immediately, even if he did look a little miffed at being eavesdropped on. “Heal. Yours. Fully mastered. Keep it with you if you like, I don’t see what harm that could do. Cast it on your food and your drink, just please, eat? You seem like you have most of the enhancements we do—that will be really, really messy if you let yourself starve or get dehydrated.”

The boy stared. “I could cast it on the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.”

“Oh no, I’ll have to deal with my headaches by myself. I’ve never done that before,” Angeal said in a monotone, flicking his eyes to Genesis at the end. 

The boy giggled, startling both men—and himself, based on the way his eyes went wide and he clapped his free hand over his mouth. He recovered quickly, shooting Angeal a hard glare, “Don’t even try. We are not friends. You are my enemy.” It sounded, to Genesis’s ears, more like he was reinforcing the idea in his own head than attempting to remind them.

“Clearly,” Angeal said calmly. “Now, I promised I would leave, so I’m going to go. Just please eat.” He stood and quietly closed the door behind him.

Cloud looked at the materia, rolling it around in his hands. When he was apparently satisfied, he raised his eyes to Genesis and warily searched his face. He had no idea what the boy found there, but eventually there was a surge of magic.

The boy ate.

Chapter Text

“Murderer!”  

Sephiroth flinched one more time as Angeal steered him out of the room, and Angeal growled under his breath, too quiet for even other enhanced people to hear through a door. Seph’s eyes snapped to him, which was an improvement. A small one, but one just the same.

“You aren’t seriously angry at the child?” Sephiroth asked, a little wonderingly, eyes still…far away. Behind them, the kid began to sob like his heart was breaking. Angeal elected to ignore it for the moment in the hopes of distracting Sephiroth. They stepped into the bathroom together and he shut the door firmly behind them, further muffling the crying.

“He’s hurting you,” Angeal said. “I can sympathize with his pain, want to help him get better, and be pissed simultaneously. Just because he’s a child and it’s not his fault someone made him like that doesn’t mean I don’t get to feel angry.” He pulled Sephiroth closer to the window for better light. He’d set Genesis’ nose before—Genesis was usually the one who got people pissed enough to pick a fight—since SOLDIER healing made waiting for the medical staff sometimes impossible and often impractical. “If Hojo really did this to the kid then he’d better sleep with one eye open. Both eyes open. Hold still.”

Sephiroth had a very high pain tolerance, even for a SOLDIER. He didn’t flinch or really react at all when Angeal brought his hands up to push his nose back into alignment. His eyes were… tortured, but Angeal suspected that was unrelated. “He believes what he’s saying. And I remember—I took a whole town and put it to the sword...half of the inhabitants ran to me, thinking it was some terrible monster attacking them and the SOLDIER was the safest person to be around, and I took Masamune in one hand and a fire materia in the other and—”

“Sephiroth. Look at me.” He may have deliberately timed the last push with the words. The cartilage gave a little pop and stayed put. Sephiroth didn’t flinch, but for a moment, his eyes focused on Angeal’s. “These dreams aren’t you. Most likely, someone found some way to attack you through the boy and thought it would be easier than trying to attack you directly. Whoever it is, don’t you dare give them the satisfaction of getting taken out by it. That’s what they want.  Don’t you dare. If one member of a unit falls—”

“—then the others may follow,” Sephiroth whispered, bowing his head for a moment, hands flexing as he took a few deliberate, calming breaths. “You are right. Forgive me—” He flinched, and it took a moment for Angeal to realize why. The sobbing from the room had cut back into angry snarling, too late to focus in on the words. It occurred to him that the boy had SOLDIER senses too. They would have to be careful. 

“Forgive me. It’s… hard to think.”

“I know,” Angeal said, because he did, if only in an intellectual sense. If the child had looked at him like that, called him a murderer and a monster, and if he remembered being that monster even if it hadn’t been in the waking world...

He would be mad. Not furious—insane.

“I know,” he repeated. “But you need to hang on. Because...” He scrambled for a reason. It wasn’t that there weren’t any (because I need you, we need you, because we want you safe and happy, because your existence keeps people safe, because you don’t deserve this), but Sephiroth would laugh at half of them. He settled on the most practical one he could think of. “Because the simplest solution is often the best. Whoever is doing this hurt that boy to try and hurt you. If you don’t hang on, then I doubt the kid will ever get past this. He needs you.”

The slight flare of true rage entered Sephiroth’s eyes, a familiar green glow. It was a relief, compared to the floaty distance from before. “That—”

“The kid may not want it, but he needs help. Whoever picked this fight wants to take you down, and the kid is just a tool to make that happen. He needs you to not let that happen, Sephiroth.”

“If he wants me, he’ll have me. No—he needs me, and he will have me,” Sephiroth growled quietly, then sighed. “He won’t enjoy it though. Or make this easy, I expect.”

“No, but you’re not alone,” Angeal promised, stepping back and crouching to rummage through the cabinet. “And he’s little. Kids are resilient, you’ll see.” They were silent for a moment as he pulled out a washcloth and wet it in the sink. When he handed it to Sephiroth, he spoke hesitantly. “Hojo. Do you think he would really…?”

Sephiroth frowned, his eyes shutting and opening again, focused and cold. “I don’t think he would risk hurting me. Not out of fondness, you understand—I am his crowning achievement, that’s all. I cemented his place in Shinra. He wouldn’t risk that without a very good reason.” He took the cloth and began cleaning the blood from his face.

Angeal nodded. 

“But…” His free hand drifted up and rubbed at his right shoulder. Angeal was one of the few who had actually seen him without the armor. That arm had mako injection scars the size of cotton balls. Far, far too many of them. “He is not above breaking a child like that, Angeal. Nothing I have heard so far, nothing we have guessed at, is outside of his capabilities.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Angeal said.

“And if it is him? A Director of Shinra?”

Angeal frowned. “We’ll figure it out,” he insisted. 

“You lied.”

“ Excuse me ?” He turned back to the man and was surprised by his dry smile. 

“You said you were mad at the kid.”

Angeal huffed. “I guess I did. Sorry. I don’t like seeing my teammates hurt, but…well, I’m not a judge or a jury, but I’ll gladly be an executioner to whoever messed that kid up. I was irritated. Sue me.”

“And here I thought,” Sephiroth drawled with that dry half smile that might as well have been a shit-eating grin, “that irritation was Genesis’s trademark.”

Angeal laughed. “Go take a nap. I’ll make sure those two don’t make a real mess while you’re resting.”

Sephiroth dropped himself onto the couch to sleep without thinking, the exhaustion burning in his limbs and the fuzziness in his head overriding the near-constant dread of what sleep might bring. A mistake, perhaps, because what came to him was one of the worst yet.

(A Ribbon coming undone from auburn hair, and Sephiroth raised his boot, pressed it against the small of the girl’s back, was pleased, distantly, with the stroke—it was relatively bloodless,

“Zack—” He called out to another SOLDIER, not bothering to turn as the footsteps approached. Confident. He felt safe in his presence, and a sad fondness overcame him for a moment—Angeal would have been proud—

Impaling the faceless trooper on Masamune, dismissive and tired—and then the trooper just didn’t die. He had reached out with shaking hands and pulled himself forward, hand over hand, leaving the blade streaked and spotted with blood—pulled himself forward, pulled the blade through himself until his feet were on solid ground and used Masamune as a lever, and then falling to his death over the side of the walkway—)

“Sephiroth! Wake up!”

Sephiroth came awake all at once, gasping in a breath like a drowning man and lashing out with his fist. Angeal was over in the kitchen, safely out of reach—not because he was doing anything, but because he had woken Sephiroth from closer before and paid the price for it. 

Angeal’s voice softened from the commanding shout once Sephiroth was clearly awake. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have recommended the nap if—”

Sephiroth shook his head and pushed himself upright, feeling twice as tired as when he laid down. His temple was throbbing. “I needed sleep. That it was…unpleasant didn’t change that.”

“Another nightmare? The same kind?”

“Yes, one of the ones where I—yes, the same kind.” He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face, then frowned abruptly, tasting an idea and finding it unpleasant. Sleep, even poor sleep, had allowed several of his disjointed thoughts to finally come together. 

“Angeal,” Sephiroth said quietly, “what the boy said earlier...some of it must have been about the nightmares, that part about me “staying dead” in particular, but…” He stared down at his hands, flexing the one that had held the boy’s most cherished possession. “The Ribbon...it is real. It exists in the waking world, I mean. And he was reacting to me holding it. He called me a murderer over it. What if I...what if I'm the one who killed Zack?”

Angeal blanched and opened his mouth, his knee-jerk reaction no doubt to deny it for Sephiroth’s sake. The thought that the boy would be, in some way, legitimately angry and afraid of him was not something he wanted to consider either. But then Angeal closed his mouth and was silent for several long seconds as he sincerely pondered the question.

“No,” he said firmly, and Sephiroth felt a knot in his gut loosen.“That doesn’t make sense. If he knows what death is well enough to call you a murderer, then why did he ask if Genesis had seen him? It must have been something else. And besides that, you know full well how many people blame you for deaths that weren't your doing. He’s little. If anyone has a right to be that illogical, it’s him.”

Sephiroth let out a sigh that was almost a sob and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Many not my doing, not all,” he said, relieved but unable to fully shake the thought when he remembered the sheer pain in the child’s sobs.

Whatever Angeal had intended to say in response was interrupted by the sound of the guest bedroom door opening upstairs. “—on, just downstairs,” Genesis was saying. The boy muttered something they couldn’t quite make out.

“Because it’s good manners,” Genesis responded. “And the upstairs bathroom has no toiletries anyway.”

Sephiroth and Angeal listened curiously as they came down the stairs, the boy leading with a single bowl in his hands and Genesis following with the rest of the tray. Catching sight of Sephiroth on the couch, the boy gave a full-body flinch and quickly put his back to the nearest wall, his grumpy expression shifting into angry wariness. Incredibly, he snatched the dirty fork from his bowl and brandished it like a weapon.

Genesis pursed his lips and glanced to Sephiroth. “The kitchen is just past the living room,” he said lightly, pretending nothing was wrong. When the child stayed stock-still, exactly where he was, he frowned outright. “Come now, the sooner we make these dishes Angeal’s problem, the sooner you can get that ash out of your hair and stop smelling like a bonfire.”

“Hey!” Angeal shouted with exaggerated indignance from the kitchen. “Do your own dishes, Genesis!”

“Ah, but Cloud here—” Sephiroth saw Angeal jolt from the corner of his eye and carefully controlled his own response to Genesis’s subtle confirmation “—is a guest! You wouldn’t make a guest do the dishes, would you, my honorable friend?”

Angeal sighed in a put-upon way, though his eyes were tight. “No, I suppose not.”

“There, see?” Genesis whispered conspiratorially to...Cloud. His name really was Cloud. Just like... “No dishes for us!”

The boy didn’t react. He might not even have been paying attention to their little theater production. His eyes were firmly locked on Sephiroth, utterly still in a way that would have been impressive in a SOLDIER but was extraordinarily unnerving to see in a small child. The fork was still brandished defensively. It might have been funny, if it weren’t so utterly disheartening.

Genesis’s frown deepened into a scowl. “Cloud!” he said sharply.

After a deliberately long pause, the boy responded with a low “what?”

“Sephiroth has done nothing to harm you. Dreams and reality are not the same thing, even if the dreams hurt. You don’t have to like him right now, but behaving like he’s going to strike you at any moment is not acceptable , do you understand me?”

“Oh yeah?” Cloud asked. He was still staring down Sephiroth, which was the only reason why the man was able to see what he did—a slight twitch at the corners of his lips, a flash of satisfaction in his eyes...an almost imperceptible loosening of his shoulders. Relief, at Genesis’s anger. Confidence. Assurance that he knew what was coming next. “Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure he’s done nothing to harm me?”

Sephiroth could understand the relief, to an extent. Clearly, anger was familiar to the child. Hostility, violence, pain...they were all things Cloud was used to, things he expected from them. Kindness, comfort, and forbearance were not. Sephiroth had suspected, and was now almost certain, that the overwhelming panic the child had experienced beneath the bed was a product of suddenly being confronted with enemies acting contrary to their nature—of SOLDIERs who were not attacking him. Sephiroth could understand that. Most people panicked when they were suddenly faced with the unknown.

What he didn’t understand was the barely-there note of humor to the boy’s words. It was...not quite gleeful, but close. The edge of hysterical maybe, as if he knew a terrible secret that they did not and was both tormented and vastly entertained by it.

As if he was absolutely certain that Sephiroth, personally, had harmed him.

Sephiroth’s stomach turned. A chill crawled over his skin. There was something they were missing here. Even a child had to know that vivid nightmares were not reality, and Cloud seemed like a far more canny child than most. Sepiroth was absolutely certain they had never met before. It occurred to him, suddenly, that even if he was certain of that, the boy might not be.

What had Hojo done?

“Yes, you daft little thing!” Genesis exclaimed, slipping into what Sephiroth recognized as his protective-of-my-friends mode. “Are you really so—”’

Thankfully Angeal intervened before Sephiroth had to find some way to diffuse the situation without setting the boy off. “Genesis!” he snapped, emerging from the kitchen. “Enough!” His expression was forbidding. “Give me the tray and go take a break. I’ll take care of getting Cloud into the shower.”

The boy, still relentlessly staring down Sephiroth, narrowed his eyes a little when Angeal spoke about him as if he weren’t standing in the room, but he didn’t say anything.

Genesis huffed. “Fine,” he said shortly, shoving the tray into Angeal’s hands and stalking over to throw himself down on the couch beside Sephiroth, who sighed a little and massaged his aching temple. Today had already been a very long day, and it wasn’t even close to over.

Angeal shook his head and turned his attention to Cloud, who still had yet to move either his body or his eyes. Probably best to go with the direct approach. “I’ll take that,” he said brusquely, plucking the bowl and fork from the boy’s hands before he could object. He didn’t think he’d be able to successfully coax Cloud into the kitchen, but he also didn’t think the boy would move in the time it took to put the dishes in the sink. 

He was right. Cloud didn’t move, and hadn’t even looked away from Sephiroth by the time Angeal came back. He probably would have stood right there and stared Seph down until he keeled over from exhaustion if they’d let him. He seemed to have a force of will equal to, if not greater than, any of the adults present. Angeal tried not to think about why a kid so young would need that kind of willpower.

“Come on,” he said, deliberately blocking the kid’s line of sight to Seph. He dared to reach out and nudge him in the right direction. “The bathroom’s right there.”

Cloud tilted his head slightly as he looked up at him, expression unreadable. Somehow, he managed to project an air of subdued menace, despite being maybe half of Angeal’s height. Gaia, he couldn’t even remember Sephiroth being this intense when they had first met at fourteen. Then the boy moved in the direction of his nudge, slipping into the bathroom without complaint.

Angeal exchanged an uneasy glance with Sephiroth. Genesis was too busy pouting to notice.

Cloud stayed silent as Angeal walked him through the shower controls and showed him where the towels were. It set him on edge in a very familiar way. The boy was not soothed or subdued—he was waiting. Calculating. Staying his tongue and his hand until the moment was right. There wasn’t much Angeal could do about it except hope that the chance to shower and spend some time alone would calm the kid down.

“Call if you need anything, okay?” he said, hovering just outside the door. Cloud rolled his eyes viciously and slammed it shut in his face. Unsurprisingly, the lock clicked a second later—not that it meant much. Even a non-enhanced person would have easily been able to kick the door down. But the meaning was clear enough.

Message received, kiddo, he thought, shaking his head. He waited until the shower had started running before he walked back to the others, who had moved to the kitchen. Even outside the door, their voices were muffled by the rush of water against tile. In the bathroom itself their conversation would be, if not inaudible, then at least indecipherable. Good. 

“—fucking asked me to call him Subject C. Well. That’s a lie too—he pretty much told me off for even using his name while still admitting it was his name. He was…furious. Agitated. Said we were just like Hojo, hissed about how I had kidnapped him, that sort of thing.”

“Gen, why would you use that name? You knew if you were right it would frighten him at best.” Sephiroth sounded…tired. He probably was. Even with uninterrupted sleep, Genesis was exhausting to deal with. 

“We’ll never find out anything if we don’t ask!” Gen snapped back. “We don’t have time to let him come to us, Seph. What would you have had me do, oh wise one?” Angeal sped up his last few steps into the kitchen. Gen always picked fights when he was confused, and right now was very likely the most confused he’d ever been. Sephiroth was tired and pained enough that he might oblige him. He rarely showed the cracks in his metaphorical armor—Angeal considered it a point of privilege that he knew they even existed. But he was tired, and his mind was under strain, and he was…

Angeal tried to imagine learning his whole upbringing had been a lie. That his mother was the focus of a science experiment, and he merely the product. He couldn’t. It was just too unfathomable. But he knew it had to be painful, so he quickly inserted himself into the discussion before it could devolve further.

“Right now we should focus on sharing intel” he said firmly, shooting Genesis a quelling look. “We need to be on the same page. If we don’t report in fairly soon, Shinra is going to start really paying attention. Taking the time to come here so abruptly has no doubt already raised all sorts of red flags. Not to mention that if we don’t have a unified front, then the kid’s going to walk all over us. Gen, you told us about his initial appearance, but what about getting him here? Give us an actual debrief.”

The words helped establish familiar territory and a simple, straightforward course of action—debriefs happened right after missions, so you had to be able to do them brain dead. Sephiroth’s shoulders actually relaxed a little. Angeal was pretty sure he was more accustomed to debriefs than talking. Maybe more comfortable with them too.

“And as long as we are doing that,” said Sephiroth, “did you think to make a scar map, Genesis?” He raised his hands a little when Gen glared—a most un-Sephiroth-like motion, but they were all acting out of character today. Genesis was displaying something like paternal instincts and responsibility, Angeal was breaking rules, and Sephiroth was visibly unsettled. “I’m not asking out of idle curiosity. If we can figure out what was done to him, it might be easier to help him. And…I would prefer to know which of the tears in that uniform happened while someone else was wearing it. Most, I would think, but it would...settle me, to know for certain.”

That seemed to deflate Gen a bit. He silently went over to the sink and filled a glass with water. They were quiet for a moment as he drank, leaning his hip against the counter to look through the window over the sink. It was gorgeous outside as the sun set, filling the sky with radiant warm hues. Most sunsets were in Costa Del Sol. 

When Genesis spoke, his voice was low. “Sephiroth…that poor baby is a scar map.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. He was still wearing gloves—once you got up to First levels of enhancement, touch could be too much, and today was not a day for extra sensory input. “I… debrief. Right. I’ll…start at the beginning.”

He exhaled slowly, still looking out the window. “I found him on the borders of Nibelheim, you know that. I tried to limit my interaction with the village, but managed to ask if there were missing pets or kids when I spoke with the mayor. Told him I was just making sure no other nasty monsters were endangering them before I left. He said there weren’t any missing children. I wasn’t as surprised as I should have been. I didn’t take the child to him. He was too…I was a little irrational at the time, all things considered.” He snorted a laugh and Angeal nearly laughed along with him.  Who would have handled that kind of first meeting rationally?

“He was enhanced enough that I had to work to sleepel him. And if he really was an experiment, and they knew it, and none of them reported him missing anyway…I didn’t want to inflict them on him. Or him on them. So I…put him in my car, and drove. Called you, knew I could use this as a safe house for the time being, and...well. It went like this...”

...

If he was honest with himself, Genesis would have admitted he was freaking out. Sleepel-ing the boy had been an impulsive decision, a cop-out more than a calculated judgment. He’d barely expected it to work, but the child had crumpled to the ground sure as anything. The boy wasn’t going to be terribly pleased when he awoke, based on the way he’d panicked once he’d realized what Genesis had cast. No, not pleased in the slightest. Genesis would have to put his gear far, far out of reach.

It was fortunate that he’d deliberately elected to take on such a low-priority mission, or he would have had an escort to misdirect rather than being able to simply return alone to the car he’d driven up into the mountains. As it was, he’d taken the boy’s oversized harness and strapped the sword to his own back, then wrapped the boy in his coat and carried him over his shoulder back to the jeep. Not terribly subtle, but also not immediately evident as a body to any townsfolk who might have seen him. Now that he was safely in Costa Del Sol, the boy felt tiny in his arms, certainly much smaller than he’d seemed snarling and spitting with a Phoenix summon haloing him in the fiery light of its destruction.

“Ripples form on the water’s surface,” he murmured, shifting the child to one arm as he unlocked the front door of the vacation house he so often shared with Seph and Ange. “What the hell am I going to do with you?”

Simple things first. Put the boy in clothes that actually fit him, inspect the gear, perhaps consider waking the boy and feeding him, if he was in worse condition than he appeared. If not, he’d been in an enchanted sleep for a while now, and could wait a little longer until Sephiroth and Angeal joined them. The blood sample was being processed in a nearby clinic, comparing the kid’s DNA to Sephiroth’s on Sephiroth’s recommendation, so that at least was handled until he got a call back from the (heavily vetted) technician.

Genesis dropped the gear off in the storeroom, eyes lingering hungrily over the truly staggering materia stash before he managed to tear himself away. “Where in Gaia did you get your hands on those, little man?” he asked the child, carrying him to the smallest unused guest room. 

Luckily the housekeeper had done exactly as he asked. There was a bag full of child-sized clothing waiting on the freshly-made bed. He set the boy down and fished through the clothing, pulling out a set of light blue pajamas. He hummed, eyeing the blond’s slim frame. “This should fit you well enough,” he decided, putting the bag away and tossing the pajamas over a nearby chair.

Without the oversized harness that had been jury-rigged to fit across his tiny chest, the boy’s shirt came off with barely any effort on Genesis’s part. As soon as he saw the state of the child’s torso, he almost wished it hadn’t.

“Oh,” he said softly, as if the air had been punched from his lungs. “Oh, kid…”

There were scars everywhere. Deep and shallow, thick and thin, angry red and faded silver, they laced his chest and arms in an array that would have been impressive on a SOLDIER First, but was something else entirely on a child. The longer he looked, the worse it got. Unmistakable surgical scars. Thick, repeatedly reopened scars around his wrists (restraints) right where the surgical scars ended. A deep bullet wound over his heart, Goddess how had he survived that? Minor burns, major burns, cuts and nicks and stab wounds.

His stomach flipped. There were two—small, innocuous—that his eyes nearly skipped over until a terrible suspicion began to form. Hesitantly, he turned the kid over enough to see his back. The horrific patchwork continued, but Genesis hardly noticed, too busy looking directly at two exit wounds from a sword.

Someone had impaled the kid twice, one of those times dangerously close to his heart. The heart was relatively recent, still an angry reddish color, but the other, just below his sternum?

It was old.

It was years old.

Genesis’s stomach turned violently. He swallowed hard several times until he was sure he wasn’t about to throw up. Someone had impaled the kid when he was a baby. What kind of monster— Hojo, of course Hojo, hadn’t Genesis seen firsthand what unholy hell he’d put Sephiroth through?

  It brought new light to the child’s snarled response of Dr. Hojo called me Subject C, at least. Genesis was starting to think it was remarkable of the tiny boy to restrain himself to mere arson and wanton property destruction. Goddess, the boy hadn’t even attacked him, despite clearly viewing him as a threat.

Genesis shook his head to clear it. Until the others got here, he couldn’t afford to lose focus, no matter what he saw. The kid was counting on him, even if he didn’t know it yet. He continued pulling the last of the kid’s oversized clothing off, steadying himself with deep, even breaths as he did so. The scars continued down the boy’s legs and onto his feet. There wasn’t anything quite as traumatizing as the scars on his chest, but the clear stab wound through his foot was bad enough. By the time he finished swapping the clothing and was pulling socks onto those tiny (calloused) feet, he’d decided to go find his favorite down throw.

Poor kid deserved any comfort Genesis could provide.

...

Genesis sighed tiredly and rolled his head to the side as he finished. “So… No. I didn’t make a scar map. I remember a lot of them, but not all of them. And I highly doubt that he’ll just whip off his shirt and let us take another look.” He shut his eyes and leaned on his hands over the sink, resting his forehead against the cool glass of the window. “I can mark down the largest ones and the more disturbing ones… maybe even most of them. But I doubt I’ll remember all of them.”

“Alright,” Sephiroth said, pale and subdued.

Angeal’s own thoughts kept coming back to the words ‘impaled’ and ‘baby.’ The three of them were highly experienced combat veterans, and arguably the most powerful warriors in the world. They had witnessed horrors beyond what most could imagine. They had committed what some people would no doubt term atrocities. Some called them heroes; some called them heartless.

Even for them, the thought of a tiny blond infant speared through with a sword was a little much to handle.

“I’m sorry,” Genesis said. “I do know it’s important, but—”

“It’s alright Gen,” Angeal said, trying to be steady as his friend finally allowed himself to feel what he’d been suppressing. Now that his backup had arrived, it was clearly starting to hit him.

“No, it’s fucking not” Genesis snapped, eyes flashing. Then he paused, cocking his head a little as he was distracted by something. “Does it seem like the water has been running a long time to you?”

Angeal frowned, turning his ear in the direction of the bathroom. It did, but— “A lot of people find hot water soothing. He might just be relaxing.” Even as he said it, uneasiness began to coil through his gut.

“The noise is perfectly constant,” Sephiroth said, sounding like himself for a moment. His head cocked toward the bathroom as well. “Even SOLDIERs cannot stand still enough to produce an even spray like that.” 

Angeal frowned and walked back to the bathroom door, rapping on it with the back of his knuckles. “Cloud?” he called. No response. “Hey kiddo, you okay in there?” Still no response. He narrowed his eyes and tried one more time. “If you don’t say something I’m going to assume you’re passed out on the floor and need help.” Again, silence. His uneasiness blossomed into full-fledged suspicion. “Alright, I’m coming in,” he warned, getting the key down from the top of the doorframe and unlocking the door. 

A cloud of warm steam rolled out as he opened it and looked inside. The showerhead’s spray glanced across the half-open curtain, water puddling just outside the lip of the shower and seeping slowly across the floor.

Cloud was nowhere to be found.

Chapter Text

Cloud pointedly slammed and locked the bathroom door, then leaned against the sink and crossed his arms. When he didn’t hear Angeal move away from the door, he rolled his eyes and flipped the shower on. Sure enough, after a few seconds the man left.

Very, very carefully, Cloud crept to the door and pressed his ear to it. With the shower running, he couldn’t make out what the SOLDIERs were saying, but he could hear their voices. They were further away than the living room—probably in the kitchen. Good.

He leaned back against the sink and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, clearing his head with slow, deep breaths. He had to get out, preferably now and with his gear. They would definitely hear the door opening though. What other ways—

Wait.

He lifted his head, looking toward the frosted-glass window in the shower and then back toward the locked door. No way, he thought incredulously. They can’t be that stupid.

Apparently they could be. Standing carelessly in the edge of the showerhead’s spray, he unlocked and opened the window. It was easily big enough for him to slip through at his current size, though it would have been difficult for an adult. He paused, listening intently, but they were still busy talking. Had it really not occurred to them that he could simply go out through the window?

He bit his lip, hesitating. He didn’t want to leave Tsurugi or his materia, but...he touched the edge of Ribbon, wound safely around his bicep beneath the pajama shirt, and felt the weight of the Heal in his pocket. It was unlikely that they would destroy his sword or materia. He could steal them back later, when he was composed and better equipped to take them on in a fight. It wasn’t like he could even wield Tsurugi at the moment anyways. The most important thing right now was to get away. Everything else could wait until later.

He scrambled out the window and pulled it shut behind him. 

The drop down into the shrubbery was a short one. He paused, yanking the wet socks from his feet and tucking them into the waistband of his pants, and then he was off as fast as his legs could carry him. His bare feet pounded against grass and the stylized, sand-covered brick path that wound its way through the backyard.

It was a relatively isolated beachfront property, but he didn’t dare to round the side of the house directly. There was too much of a risk that one of them would look out and see him. So instead he ran back and hopped the fence, then followed the dirt road behind as long as he dared. Lucky for him, he knew where he was relative to the town proper.

When the risk of coming across a car or pedestrian became too great, he crossed back to the hard-packed sand along the edge of the waves and sprinted flat out, letting the water wash away his tracks. He had to get as much distance as possible, but also enter the more populated areas discreetly. When people became visible in the distance, he yanked his pajama top off, tucked his socks into it, and folded it up into an ambiguous bundle. His pants were rolled up past his knees. They didn’t exactly look like swim shorts, but as long as he walked confidently no one was likely to notice. 

It was no time at all until he made his way to a seaside market, overfilled with travellers, tourists, merchants, and merriment despite the late hour and the heat from the falling sun still baking the air. No one gave him a second glance as he scurried confidently along the road, folded-up shirt held like a towel over one arm. It was only when he got near the docks that he stopped, slipping into an alley and crouching behind a stack of crates.

A plan. He needed a plan.

For a long minute, he just focused on breathing, deep breaths in and out to calm the frantic racing of his heart. It was harder than it should have been—harder than it ever had been before, as if his body wasn’t listening to him any more.

It wasn’t. It wasn’t listening to him any more.

The realization hit him like a fist to the gut, driving the air from his lungs. “Shit,” he hissed, burying his face in the folded-up shirt. Involuntary, panicked tears pricked the corners of his eyes, but he forced them away. “Don’t think about it. Not yet.”

He really, really needed a plan.

He had to get out of Costa del Sol and he had to do it fast. Of course, he had no Gil and he looked like a child, which made his job a bit harder than usual. What to do? He was no Yuffie, so simply stealing Gil was a terrible idea, especially since the SOLDIERs would be on his trail soon, if they weren’t already.

He had the advantage, though. As a shirtless, barefoot kid in a beach town, he was actually extremely forgettable. It was unlikely they would be able to easily track him, so long as he didn’t do anything stupid enough to become memorable (thank you, Vincent, for the advice, even if I really suck at following it).

His heart ached a little.

He could probably just walk right out of the town and survive if he had to, but without supplies that was a bad idea. Hitchhiking was bad too, given his appearance and current lack of materia or pointy weapons. Stealing a car or motorcycle was right out, since he probably wouldn’t be able to drive it in the first place, much less actually get away without attracting attention. He had no money for a boat ticket—

He paused, thinking hard. A boat. Could he successfully stow away? He wasn’t very sneaky, but he did have SOLDIER strength and dexterity. It wouldn’t be hard to climb straight up a mooring line. Hell, he could probably swim to an anchor and get into the hold that way. It didn’t even matter where the ship was headed, he just had to get out of range of the SOLDIERs.

Cloud raised his head. Night was falling rapidly, street lights beginning to flick on. He’d been thinking for a while. If he was going to stow away, now was the time to figure it out. For all he knew, his absence had been noted within five minutes of going out the window.

It would be unwise to go without any supplies at all. He could steal food if he had to, easier on a passenger ship than a cargo ship, but doable either way. Materia, weapons, clothes, and miscellaneous supplies, on the other hand, would be way too noticeable if they went missing somewhere as contained as a ship. He needed a Cure materia, at least. Heal wasn’t enough. He couldn’t afford to be in anything less than top form and he definitely couldn’t afford to ask for help if something happened. As a stowaway, going to a ship's doctor (if they even had one) was equivalent to slapping handcuffs on himself and marching up to the nearest Turk saying “hi, I blew up a Reactor!” 

That is to say, a bad idea.

Cloud clenched his fingers into the fabric of his shirt, frustrated as he realized that he really had no choice but to steal the bare minimum of supplies he needed. With a sigh, he turned the pajama shirt inside out and started tearing the sleeves off.

He was no Yuffie, but he'd have to make do.

Angeal cursed sharply and ran to the bathroom window, throwing it open and shoving his head through. It was unlocked—didn’t take a genius to know what happened. Genesis took off, pounding up the stairs back to the storage room where Cloud’s gear was. If the kid had somehow managed to take it and run, they were in real trouble.

He was back down seconds later, having found the stash untouched. It was a minor relief at best. Angeal looked grim, sword once more slung over his back. Sephiroth had swept the lower floor and found nothing, confirmed by a quick shake of his head. Without a word, they all ran for the door.

“Shit. Fuck. Shit.” Genesis kept up a litany as heartfelt any LOVELESS recitation as they left the house. Angeal frowned at him, less because of the cursing and more because he was trying to listen—for quick footfalls in the fallen leaves in the tropical forest, or the telltale crunch of sand beneath bare feet. For a terrified heartbeat muffled in hiding, and breaths drawn like secrets from behind a trembling hand.

Genesis knew that. He tried to steady himself. Tried to think. To just be quiet. Angeal had always been better at listening than him—he saw Angeal raise his eyes to Sephiroth, and the silver haired man shook his head. He jerked a thumb to himself, then the woods and beaches stretching out in the growing darkness behind him. Two fingers—Genesis and Angeal. A flick to indicate the brighter stretch of beach and woods leading into the city. 

Of course. Sephiroth could see in all but the most pitch darkness, and while Genesis and Angeal were famous, they weren’t so famous as to cause a mob just trying to move through a city. Genesis might cause crowds on a good day—in the twilight, he could blend in enough that his movement wasn’t hampered, but stand out enough that his commands would be obeyed. Right. Logical. Sensible. 

Normally he hated when Sephiroth took charge like this, but now he was just grateful for his friend’s steady confidence. He nodded, and tried to ignore how the man’s eyebrows climbed. Finding Cloud was the only thing that mattered. Their rivalry could take a backseat until the kid was safe.

Goddess. Cloud was somewhere out there, completely alone. He was just a child. A small, quite possibly insane and very dangerous child, yes, but still just a child who had been hurt. Tormented. What if it hadn’t been Hojo who did that to him, and whoever had found him first? Genesis was pretty sure Hojo was back in Midgar, so at least the boy was safe from him directly, right? 

...right?  

What if Hojo had minions ready to pick the kid up and take him back to whatever hell he'd escaped? The thought of more scars, fresh ones, on the kid made his stomach lurch. 

Angeal shot him a look as they ran side-by-side toward the city. “He’ll be fine. We’ll find him.”

“What if—”

“He’ll be fine .” Oh. That tone. He had last heard it from Angeal when—

(They had all huddled together in the bunker and tried to ignore the explosions outside. That was fairly easy. Ignoring the screaming inside was harder. The Third Class was taking everything they had, mana-wise, to hold together—some fresh poison the land of Wutai had sprung upon them. Well… no, not poison. They had already spelled against that. 

They had warned him not to drink from that stream...

It was some sort of infection or disease. The Third thrashed and cried out and shat blood. Vomited it too. Angeal was the one who held him down when they thought he might hurt himself—either to be rid of the torment or because he was too delirious to know what could hurt him. “You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”

He had been fine. But it was a damned near thing. And Angeal would have told the Third he would be fine even if he had known he wouldn’t be.)

How had he never realized Angeal had been just as scared as him?

Too soft to disrupt their listening, Genesis took a deep breath. “He’ll be fine. We’ll find him. He's a scrappy little bastard anyways.”

Angeal shot him a look and then, tentatively, a grin. “Yes.”

And alright, that didn’t really take away the twisting of his gut, but it quieted the panicky, terrified part of him that kept circling back to an old pair of scars and the image of a baby with a sword through his chest. Not silenced, but quieted, and that was good enough. Because he couldn’t afford to panic. Angeal needed him to be calm as much as he needed that of Angeal.

Would anyone else be looking for Cloud? Would anyone else know to look for him? Or… “Angeal. Was I sent out to retrieve the kid for Hojo?" His heart plunged. "...am I the enemy he thinks I am?”

He didn’t look at Angeal after asking. He thought maybe it would be better for both of them if he didn’t. He could say the words, but Angeal needed a capable partner in this hunt. If they didn’t look at each other, they could both pretend that the words didn’t burn.

It took Angeal a long time to answer. They were almost in the city proper. There hadn't been any sign of Cloud, but then again they hadn't truly expected there to be. “Maybe that is why you were sent out," Angeal said, because he wasn't one to withhold the truth even when it hurt. "They’ve lied in briefings before. But Hojo isn’t who you took him to, is it?”

Genesis took a deep breath and nodded. The tension in his shoulders eased just a little. “I’ll go to the police station. Just in case.”

“The market. It’s open all hours. It’s where I would go for supplies.”

Gen nodded again, sharp and confident. “See you soon.”

For a while Cloud’s heists went well. As expected, he was barely noticeable even when he sidled up to adults, especially in the dimness of twilight. A few of them turned to chat at him, but he quickly moved away from those. Everyone else politely ignored him, the majority of adults assuming he was someone else's kid getting too curious and wanting nothing to do with him. Thanks to that, he'd been able to use the many shoppers and tourists as distractions while he swiped what he needed.

So far he'd made off with some sunglasses (to hide the mako glow in his eyes), a mismatched pair of sturdy knives that were actually quite nice, and a hat to hide his hair. He'd just pocketed one materia, a Cure, and was eyeing up another. Fire. Perfect. It would keep him warm at night if nothing else. He slipped that into his pocket too.

Unfortunately, that was when his luck ran out. The merchant spotted him. "Hey! What do you think you're doing!?" He rounded the counter, reaching to scruff Cloud with surprising swiftness.

Wincing at his misstep, Cloud bolted, careful not to run faster than an unenhanced child could. The merchant followed him immediately, yelling about a thief, his wife staying behind to watch the stall.There were enough people in the crowd that Cloud couldn’t easily get away, especially when a few of them started helping. Cloud bumped into a woman, dodged a man who tried to snag his arm, and cursed as the merchant nearly caught the back of his shirt but ripped his hat off instead.

"Get back here you little thief!"

The yelling drew attention once more, but this time it was in Cloud's favour. In front of them was a chocobo hen, saddled up as an attraction for tourists to ride. It looked like the owner had just untied her lead, getting ready to take her back to a stable for the night. She warked as she turned to watch the chase and stared at Cloud for a moment, then gave an outraged squawk and...charged right through the crowd to get between him and his pursuers.

(Cloud chose to believe that she was doing this because he was an excellent chocobo handler and not because he bore an uncanny resemblance to a chocobo chick. He had to hold on to some of his dignity.)

Maybe he wouldn’t get to see Yuffie again, but as people scattered like ninepins and the merchant accidentally plowed into the chocobo—the chocobo roaring in indignation at the men chasing the weird little chick, how dare you!—and the general disaster that always followed an enraged hen (up to and including feather explosions, people flying, and a hilarious cacophony of things getting knocked over), he couldn’t help but think that she would have been proud.

With a breathless, surprised laugh, he took advantage of the path open before him and ran. Maybe he went just a touch too fast for a normal child, but he wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass. At the edge of the commotion, he thought he'd done it and got away.

That was when Angeal showed up.

Cloud cursed and ducked to the side, sliding in behind a large cafe sign advertising some sort of tropical desert as Angeal ran for the center of the commotion. Curse and bless his small size, the man seemed to have not noticed him, and was instead bulling into the crowd to calm things down.

"What's going on here!"

"A SOLDIER! Good timing! Some blonde kid just ran past here—"

Shit . There was no way Angeal wasn’t going to connect the dots on that one. He had to move, and fast. He risked peering around the sign, catching just enough of a glance to make a decision. The enraged hen was thoroughly distracting Angeal as she warked and fussed. Most of the crowd, too, was occupied watching the spectacle. He dared to bolt from behind the sign, ducking between two buildings and weaving through the narrow back alleys.

His lips pressed together in grim resignation as he changed course and headed back to the docks. He had to leave now. What little he had managed to pilfer would have to be enough. 

He was out of time.

Out of time and out of luck, Cloud thought as he changed direction yet again at the sight of silver hair glowing in the light of the moon. Genesis was somewhere to his left, between Cloud and the docks, and now Sephiroth was blocking the route along the shoreline he’d been going for.

Frustrated, he pressed his back against a wall and bit down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. He was currently hemmed in by the three SOLDIERs, though he doubted they actually knew that. If they had guessed his intent, then he had to abandon the docks altogether, maybe risk heading off into the forest for a while. One First Class was bad enough, two was pushing it, but three? There was no way he wouldn’t be—

Wait.

Three.

All three.

That meant there was no one guarding his gear, provided it hadn’t been moved—but then, when would they have had the time to do that? He doubted it was a trap, not when they thought he was just a kid. Definitely not when they’d been dumb enough to forget he could just go right out the bathroom window. But...was it worth the risk?

He thought of his materia and Tsurugi, and the look on Genesis’s face when he’d summoned Phoenix. Yeah. It was worth the risk. 

Cloud glanced around the corner, hardly daring to breathe, but Sephiroth hadn’t spotted him. The SOLDIER, walking slowly away from Cloud, stared at the horizon line as if trying to spot him along the beach. Relief flooded his veins. In two daring strides, he moved to the opposite building and quickly rounded it, putting it between himself and the silver-haired nightmare before he took off running again.

If he'd lingered just a moment longer, he might have noticed the ear tilted in his direction, and the green eyes that turned to him just as he passed through a beam of the same moonlight that had given Sephiroth’s presence away. He might have noticed Sephiroth reaching for his PHS, dialing a number even as he also started to run.

But Cloud didn’t linger, and he didn’t notice.

“I found him,” Sephiroth said through the PHS. Genesis felt a bolt of adrenaline course through him. It was such a strange sensation, to be simultaneously so relieved and so on edge.

“Where?” he asked, resisting the urge to start running. He had to have somewhere to run first.

“By the shore, near the docks,” Sephiroth replied. Static crackled over the speakers from the wind. He was probably sprinting. "I'm tailing him now."

“I’m on my way.” 

Angeal joined the call at that moment, with a hurried, “What did you find?”

Genesis opened his mouth to explain, but Sephiroth spoke. “No wait, Genesis. He changed course...I believe he may be returning to the beach house.”

“Back?” Angeal said as Genesis blinked in surprise. “Is he—ah, his gear.”

“Yes,” Sephiroth agreed. “I suspect he may have seen the three of us here and decided it was worth the risk.”

Genesis sucked his teeth. “If he saw all three of us, and yet only you saw him…”

“We keep underestimating him,” Angeal said grimly.

“No more,” said Sephiroth. “We are doing Cloud a disservice if we continue to underestimate him. Assume he is as capable as any fully-trained SOLDIER. I will continue to shadow him, and move ahead once I am certain of his destination. Both of you get in place before that.”

“Got it,” Genesis said, echoed by Angeal.

“I will call if anything changes,” Sephiroth said, then hung up.

Genesis snapped the PHS shut and put it away, stepping up his speed until he was sprinting flat out. He felt the shift in his own head as he went from the uncertainty of chasing after a child to the familiarity of a mission objective. Setting up an ambush held its own risks, but there could be no more holding back. If they did, then Cloud would slip right through their fingers.

Cloud was much less cautious running back to the house than he had been running away from it, but he was also getting tired. He followed the road right back this time, ducking into the treeline whenever he heard someone coming to both hide and catch his breath. His feet were pretty thoroughly torn up, what with all the running around without shoes. He grimaced, inspecting his soles during one pause. The only reason he wasn’t leaving a trail of bloody footprints was his accelerated healing, and a few timely applications of his newly acquired Cure materia.

When he finally got back and hopped the fence into the backyard, he crouched in the shadows and held absolutely still for a long moment.

It was very quiet. Too quiet, maybe, as the waves hissed and crashed along the nearby shore and the palm fronds rustled in the sea breeze. Cloud's paranoia grew as he inspected the house and the yard. The lights were all off, even the porch lights. Bright moonlight painted everything in stark black and white, leeching away all but the barest hints of color.

The silence echoed, and the night felt endless. Cloud could feel his nerves buzzing in his ear.

Wait. Not his nerves. 

That was Reu—!  

Everything happened all at once. Silver flashed in the moonlight, brilliant as it abandoned the same deep shadows Cloud was concealing himself in. Fingers brushed the ends of Cloud's hair as he jerked away. The sensation was petrifying, every nerve lighting up with familiar static. He barely escaped Sephiroth's grasp, rolling backward and getting his feet under him to bolt away, toward the side of the house, without any thought more coherent than Sephiroth, run!

But Angeal and Genesis emerged from the shadows on either side of the building before he took more than a few steps. Cloud skidded to a halt in the middle of the yard, eyes darting as he looked for a viable escape. He turned his back to the gap between Genesis and Sephiroth, semi-cornering himself in exchange for keeping them both in his peripheral vision.

No one made a move. Cloud's breaths were frantic as he tried to judge which direction might be his best way out. He was surrounded, but he was small and fast. All he needed was the tiniest gap to slip through—a gap that would inevitably be created as they tried to approach.

Except, the SOLDIERs knew that too. They didn’t approach. They just stood there, waiting for him to approach. Waiting for him to try something that would put him neatly in their grasps.

Resignation settled across his shoulders like a tangible weight, followed by a spark of slow-building anger that promised an inferno. They wanted to do this? Fine. Slowly, deliberately, he drew his twinned knives and sank into a ready stance.

If there were no openings, he would happily make some.

"Cloud," Angeal said cautiously, one hand rising as he shattered the fragile silence. The silver hair in the edge of Cloud’s field of view was unsettling, dredging up old memories and older terror as his body prepared to fight, but he didn’t dare look away from Angeal. "Calm down,” the dark-haired man soothed, “alright? We're not going to hurt you. Put down the knives and let's talk a little bit."

And Cloud was afraid. There were three of them, and he was weaker than he had been in a long time. Even at full strength, with all his gear, they probably would have won. But Cloud was also armed, finally, and Ribbon was wound tight across his bicep. This time, they would have to take what they wanted by force. This time they couldn’t hide behind status spells and lying words. 

Cloud wasn't accustomed to helplessness, but he knew fighting—even fighting doomed to failure. It was easy to feed his fear to the growing flames of his anger, so very easy when there were trustworthy blades in his hands and opponents before him.

So he smiled, glaring up from beneath his brows, lips trembling, breath shallow and fast. He slid one bare foot back and settled deeper into his ready stance. The knives—really more like shortswords when he was this small—glinted wickedly before him. "No, I don't think I will," he said, voice shaking and light. "You want them?" His grin widened. His chest felt tight. "Come and take them."

Angeal looked sad and a little confused. His tone remained infuriatingly, deceptively, gentle. “Cloud, we don’t want to fight and we aren’t going to hurt you—”

“Your mistake,” he snapped, interrupting the man. “Stop lying and make your move.” He hefted his blades a little. “Or allow me!”  

It went without saying that fighting an armed opponent was far more dangerous when unarmed yourself. Tifa had a real knack for it, and she’d taught him a lot of her tricks. Cloud knew a SOLDIER’s skillset—they were trained in swordwork, and these three would be no different. Unarmed, there was no way they would be able to fight him like Tifa could (they weren’t flexible enough, for one). It didn’t even matter that he was small, not when he had weapons and they didn’t. So he exploded into motion and went for Angeal, undoubtedly the one most used to slow, powerful blades.

Mistake.

Mistake, mistake, mistake.  

Cloud realized his error within a second, because Angeal did not move like someone unaccustomed to hand-to-hand combat. Maybe Cloud would have been better off if he’d been aiming to kill, but his intent was escape and the angle he’d chosen was glancing, not direct. He’d anticipated a flinch or half-step retreat, but what he got was an extraordinarily precise move to disarm, backed by a First Class SOLDIER’s speed.

Shit! He frantically redirected, throwing himself to the side. It was sloppy, but better than being disarmed. Unfortunately it was also the exact opposite of the direction he’d intended to go and put him back in the middle of the three SOLDIERs.

Genesis, he thought, pivoting and aiming for the gap between the red-haired SOLDIER and Angeal. This SOLDIER did not move like a hand-to-hand expert—but did move like an expert spellcaster. Cloud wasn’t even aiming to cause damage, but it didn’t matter. Genesis stepped away and flared his hand out, casting a barrier with downright unfair speed. Cloud smashed into it as it formed, staggering with a grunt. Hissing a breath out between his teeth, he ducked back to try and find a new opening, but Sephiroth had already moved to close the gap his rush had created.

Surrounded. No way out, not unless they made a serious mistake.

Shit. Shit. Shit!

Cloud compacted down into a smaller target, backed up to give himself extra space. He searched for a miracle—realized, with a sinking stomach, that it wasn’t going to come. But he couldn’t just give up. His escape couldn’t end here, not when so much (the whole world, really) rode on him getting away. It didn’t matter what it took, he wasn’t going to lay down and die, least of all for Sephiroth and his allies.

So he bared his teeth, and prepared his blades, and failed to think of a single way out.

Chapter Text

The SOLDIERs watched as the kid sank into a deeper crouch, eyes wide and muscles rigid with fear. It was like they were back to square one, staring down a child curled up defensively beneath a bed, except this time knives were involved. He was openly terrified, trembling and breathing in short, shallow gasps—but there was a fury in him too, an anger and desperation that kindled the mako embers of his eyes into green flames, blazing in the darkness. Head ducked, teeth bared: afraid, but defiant to the last.

Angeal knew that look. In Wutai, they had occasionally been tasked to bring prisoners in alive for one reason or another. Those enemy soldiers knew their fate if the Turks got their hands on them. It was always written across their faces, straining around their eyes and bursting from their lungs as soon as they realized what the SOLDIERs intended. To a man, they fought until they had nothing left to give. Many chose death before capture.

It broke his heart to see that look on a child’s face. He had to think quickly. If he couldn't diffuse the situation then Cloud, too, would fight until he had nothing left to give. He might even try —no. No, Cloud was too little to understand that final, desperate option.

Wasn’t he?

“Cloud—” Angeal started, then stopped, at a loss. The boy simply didn’t believe them, no matter what they said. Start being honest about your intentions, he’d told Genesis, and you’re not fooling me with this act. He was absolutely convinced that nothing they said was true.

Angeal remembered distrustful eyes glaring at him, materia clenched in one hand, and a voice that firmly asserted, you are my enemy. He remembered those same eyes on Sephiroth —are you sure? Are you absolutely sure he’s done nothing to harm me?— and the terrified pace of his heart beneath the bed as Sephiroth had reached a hand to him. 

Angeal’s own heart sank as he realized that there really was nothing he could say that would convince Cloud that they didn’t intend to hurt him. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, tension bleeding from his shoulders. No matter which way they played this, it was going to be unpleasant. The best they could do was make sure the kid didn’t hurt himself and let time prove that they were telling the truth.

“Cloud,” he started again, voice once more steady and assured. “We are not your enemies. We are not going to fight you, or hurt you, or take you to Hojo.” Sephiroth flinched a little at that, and Angeal saw Genesis blanch as well. “I know you don’t believe me. I’m sorry I don’t have a way to prove it to you.”

Cloud laughed, a short, harsh bark utterly devoid of amusement. “You’re Shinra's prize guard dogs,” he said scornfully. Angeal noted that even as he spoke, he kept his stance and situational awareness with the expertise of a warrior four times his age. The tiniest shifts in Sephiroth’s body language translated to corresponding shifts in his. “You want me to believe you’re not my enemy? Fine. Walk away. Right now.”

Angeal wanted to kneel, to get closer to Cloud’s height and bring them to a more even footing to negotiate, but he didn’t dare. They’d agreed to act as if he was as skilled as a SOLDIER—overkill, Angeal had thought, until he’d seen the way the boy moved. This was no untrained child disguised in the borrowed trappings of a grown man. True, there was clumsiness and uncertainty in the bend of his knees and the grip of his fingers, but mostly he held himself like they did— exactly like they did.

He fought like a SOLDIER, and their precautions had gone from overkill to completely inadequate. How would they have subdued a panicked, armed Second or Third without fighting? With an order, normally, because their SOLDIERs obeyed them. But Cloud didn’t even know them (not outside of horrific nightmares and dire warnings) and he certainly didn’t trust them. Would he ever, if they fought him into submission now?

Angeal exhaled slowly. Minimize the damage, he told himself. A job far more suited to a Turk, but they would have to make do. Just minimize the damage. “We can’t walk away, Cloud. And I think you understand why.”

The boy’s expression hardened further, tears welling up and spilling over from his eyes. He looked disgusted with himself, raising one wrist to dash them away without ever breaking eye contact. “No,” he said, as cold and unyielding as the steel in his hands. “I don’t.”

It felt, to Angeal, like the situation was rapidly coming to a boil, tension building despite his best efforts to diffuse it. But how would it break? Cloud had no way out, a fact which he clearly knew just as well as the SOLDIERs did. Desperation, a feeling that there was nothing left to lose, weapons in his hands…together, it all made an explosive combination. At best, he would hurt them. At worst, he would hurt himself.

“Look, why don’t we all just—”

He never got to finish his suggestion. In the end, the catalyst was innocuous: the breeze picked up suddenly, sending their hair whipping around their faces—Sephiroth’s most of all. His hand moved up, likely intending to sweep his bangs back into place. 

What Cloud must have seen in the corner of his hyperaware eyes: a flash of silver like metal, and a rising hand.

He moved instantly, a neat acrobatic tumble that would have kept his head on his shoulders had Masamune been arcing across the short distance to remove it from him. Then he was on Angeal, pupils blown so wide that only the thinnest, brightest ring of glowing mako was visible around them. Angeal blocked with his body alone, unwilling to bear his sword against the boy. Even if it was in defense, that alone could damn all their efforts; if Cloud took it as evidence of the lies he was convinced they were telling, as proof that they truly meant him harm, then they would never earn his trust.

The blond fought the same as before, though more intensely. Angeal hissed in a pained breath as blocking proved inadequate. He started moving with the boy's attacks before the kid could sever anything important, but the words the kid snarled cut far more deeply than his knives. “I am not—“ he grit out, landing several shallow blows across Angeal’s forearms, “—going to lay down and die!”

There would be no reasoning with him, that much was undeniable. If they had been holding back before, then it was now clear that Cloud had been as well. The others were running to help, but Angeal couldn’t spare the attention to work around their efforts. It was taking every ounce of his skill just to keep this little slip of a boy from burying cold steel in his lungs. Not his heart—still not aiming to kill—but a SOLDIER could survive a lot of damage and Cloud was no longer taking any chances.

Two quick swipes bit into the leather of his harness, on the lower part where it was weakest. Cloud had driven him back quite a distance in just a few seconds. They were close to the side of the house now, parallel with the back door. Genesis and Sephiroth hovered, waiting for a safe intervention point. If Cloud managed to get around Angeal they were in trouble.

A third swipe severed the damaged harness strap altogether, sending the heavy weight of his sword to one side and throwing him entirely off balance. He cursed again, blood flying out in an arcing spray as Cloud's knife nearly bisected his deltoid. His arm shot up, reaching for the sword hilt, twisting as the blade swung hard—if he didn't stop its momentum it could do serious damage even by accident—and it happened that his mistake positioned him just right to catch Cloud’s follow-up on the edge of the Buster.

The two weapons connected with a loud CLANG!

Lucky, Angeal thought, but no more than that. He was already moving again, dodging out of the range of Cloud’s knives.

He was moving.

Cloud was not.

“That sword.”

The words were fragile, frightened. Wholly unexpected. Genesis and Sephiroth were already moving to take advantage of his sudden freeze as he stared at the Buster and cried, “why do you have that sword?!”

Then the boy disengaged in an abrupt, clumsy scramble, blindly retreating from Angeal. He turned, ran—right into the others’ waiting hands. A scream, so very much like the one that had escaped him when Sephiroth had first restrained him less than twelve hours ago, split the night. He lashed out, all instinct and no finesse. Wild eyes darted rapidly, with no logic to where they lingered. Wherever he thought he was, it wasn’t there. He was somewhere else—somewhere bad. 

Sephiroth easily snagged his wrist, smoothly disarming him and throwing the knife far away. Genesis got ahold of the other blade directly, cutting through his own glove in exchange for twisting the weapon safely out of the boy’s hand.

“No!”

Angeal deliberately let his sword fall, disengaging it from the magnetic lock with a quick twist so that his broken harness hung empty over his shoulders, pauldrons askew. The Buster fell with a deafening clatter onto the patio, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Quickly, carefully, he stepped forward and grabbed the child, pinning his arms with the help of the others and gently locking a hand beneath his jaw to press his blond head safely into the cradle of his chest. With the close contact, Angeal remembered something vital.

"Genesis, materia, pocket," he said, lifting Cloud's feet from the floor as he fought to free himself.

Deft hands already had one of the orbs out. "How did he get a Fire?" Genesis balked, his words hard to hear over the boy's howled "no, NO, let me go! Zack! ZACK!"

"Ask later!" Angeal snapped, arms straining as he felt Cloud's full strength for the first time. Shiva, he was as strong as any Second. What the hell had Hojo done to him?

Sephiroth opened the sliding back door as Genesis pulled two more materia from Cloud's pockets, accepting the bruises his kicking feet inflicted for the sake of quickly disarming him. "Inside," Sephiroth commanded tersely. He went first, then Angeal with the screaming boy, then Genesis with the retrieved Buster sword in one hand and bloodied materia in the other.

The battle was only half over.

There were three ways out of the living room, and three SOLDIERs to block them. Genesis took up post by the back door, laying the Buster behind his feet and stashing the materia away in his coat pocket. With his Barrier, he would be able to keep Cloud from doing something as reckless as trying to hurl himself straight through the glass panels.

Sephiroth moved to the widest gap, blocking off most of the first-floor windows as well as access to the second floor, and watched uneasily as Angeal put his back to the final gap, which led to the front door. Cloud was still fighting with everything he had, though he was really only able to move his legs. Tears streamed down his face, dripping across the hand that cradled his narrow jaw. His eyes were wide and unfocused.

"Okay," Angeal said very calmly, his words barely audible over the torrent of noise pouring from Cloud. "It's okay. Listen to me, Cloud. I'm going to put you down, alright? It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you, I'm just going to put you down." He bent, lowering Cloud's feet to the floor, then released all at once and backed out of range.

Sephiroth had only a rough idea of where Cloud's head was at the moment (nowhere good) but the child had well-honed battle instincts even in his disorientation. He tracked the three SOLDIERs’ locations, blurring forward as soon as he was unrestrained to vault the couch and put it between himself and them. He stayed low, making himself a harder target to hit, and spent a moment assessing the terrain and the enemy before choosing the exact position Sephiroth would have identified as the most strategic—centered, back to a wall but not cornered, roughly equidistant from every escape route, and able to see all three of them at once.

Not just enhanced, not merely tormented, but combat trained and (assuming his suspicions were correct) field tested. If Sephiroth had been entertaining any thoughts of finding the child a safe home to grow up in, well out of Shinra’s reach, he wasn't now. What the hell were they going to do with him?

But no—that was a problem for later. There were far more immediate concerns to be dealt with first.

Tears were still streaming down Cloud's face. He convulsively gripped the arm with the Ribbon tied to it, visibly struggling to tamp down his distress and draw his anger (anger was safe, when you were fighting for your life; fear and confusion were not) back to the fore. His trembling legs gave out entirely and he slid to the floor with a wavering growl.

Angeal crouched, motioning for the others to do the same. "Cloud," he said, projecting an aura of calm, "are you hurt?"

Cloud stared at him blankly, the tiniest puzzled furrow slowly forming between his brows. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of his forearm hard enough to bruise—hard enough to bleed if he tilted his fingernails in just a little more.

Angeal repeated himself patiently. "Cloud, are you hurt?"

Slowly, the boy's glowing eyes drifted to the open cuts that littered Angeal's bare arms, following the stark lines of dripping blood down to where puddles were forming on the tile.

"What...what is wrong with you," he rasped, hardly more than an unsteady whisper of sound. Then he gasped in a deep breath and screamed at them, fury roaring back into every line of his body as his eyes refocused into crystal-clarity, "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!"

He tried to struggle back to his feet, bracing his shoulder against the wall, but couldn't quite manage. Frustrated, he grabbed the nearest object—a TV remote—and hurled it at Angeal. It bounced off the back of the couch and clattered to the floor.

"I just tried to turn you into fucking sushi and you're asking if I'm hurt?" he yelled, a hysterical edge to his voice. "What the ever-loving fuck is wrong with your priorities, you moron! What are you doing! Why am I even HERE!" He slammed the side of his fist against the wall once, twice, gritting his teeth against the reedy, wounded noises that escaped him anyways. "I’m so sick of this! Stay dead! All of you just fucking stay dead! "

The boy was clearly at his limit in a way he hadn't been before. In a way that, honestly, Sephiroth didn't understand, though he thought he could guess well enough. Cloud's whole world had flipped on its axis, a fundamental truth—SOLDIERs are enemies; SOLDIERs will hurt and kill you—presented not only as incorrect, but as opposite to reality. He was reeling, unanchored, with no way to regain his bearings except by provoking them into acting how he felt they should. But they wouldn’t. And when they didn’t, his distress had nowhere to go but inward.

As if on cue, Cloud seemed to collapse in on himself, curling up into a defensive ball and pressing the heels of his hands into his temples. His fingers trembled in his hair. “Go away. Go away! This is all your FAULT! ”

Angeal just watched him with calm, sad eyes, waiting silently. When Sephiroth glanced at Genesis, he seemed to be biting hard on his tongue to keep from speaking. It didn’t take much consideration for Sephiroth to decide to bite his own tongue, if perhaps a bit more metaphorically than Genesis.

"Cloud,” Angeal called coaxingly, but was ignored as the child trembled in place. “Cloud,” Angeal repeated, still so very steady and soft, and the boy growled again, squeezing his eyes shut and ducking his head down into his knees. For a long moment he just panted for breath, wrestling with himself, though Sephiroth couldn’t quite puzzle out over what.

Finally, he shook his head hard and sat upright, letting his skull thump back against the wall. His eyes, when he opened them, were an angry kind of resigned. “Fuck you,” he told Angeal, but there was no heat behind it. “No, I’m not fucking hurt. Happy?”

“I am happy that you’re not hurt,” Angeal replied, unruffled by the child’s manners (or lack thereof). “Thank you for telling me.”

Cloud shot him a disgusted look. “Yeah, sure.” The sarcasm was blistering, but the tremors in his hands were dying down, so maybe it was a good sign. “Alright, what now? Congrats, you got me back in the house. What’s your plan, huh? Drag me to Shinra like an obedient little SOLDIER? Stick me in a room with some Turks and hope for the best? I’ll make sure you regret ever looking at mako if you even fucking try.”

“Right now we just want you safe,” Angeal said, ignoring the child’s vicious implications. “How about we all sit down tomorrow morning, after everyone’s slept, and talk about a plan then?”

Cloud’s face said he didn’t believe that for a second—not that Sephiroth could exactly fault him for it. He certainly wouldn’t have. “Uh-huh. All of us, talking about a plan where you have the power, hold all the cards, and are completely in charge. Yeah, right. Go lie to someone dumb enough to believe you.”

“Cloud—”

“Stop calling me that like you have a right to it! My name is for my friends. You are most assuredly not fucking that.” He was snarling, but…but he wasn’t trying to stab them and he wasn’t shaking so much anymore. Admittedly, the ‘not stabbing them’ part was probably because he had no knives, but he really did seem to be steadying himself. Sephiroth thought it was both remarkable and disturbing how quickly he regained his equilibrium.

Then, abruptly, Cloud asked “why do you have that sword?”

The question made Angeal blink, eyebrows drawing together. “The Buster? About that—where on earth did you see my sword before, if not with me? It was made for me by my mother when I got this job. No one else has ever had it.”

The boy flinched as if struck, drawing in on himself again. “The—you—”

“Are you sure you haven’t mistaken it for someone else’s weapon?”

That was the wrong thing to say, if the boy’s expression was any indication. Speaking with him was like walking a minefield—or like watching Angeal walk a minefield, in this case. But…at least he was speaking. The child laughed, low and scornful, the way Genesis would have laughed if someone had suggested that he had mistaken a different sword for Rapier. “I would know the Buster if I was blindfolded and deaf.”

Angeal looked bewildered at that declaration, with an edge of growing unease. Sephiroth thought it would be better to leave that revelation for another day, and Angeal evidently agreed, because he said “...Alright. Well, you have to be hungry after all of that…and dirty, and tired. Why don’t you go get clean, upstairs this time—” the upstairs window was too small and too high up for even Cloud to fit through, thank Gaia “—and I can get you something to eat.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“You don’t get to act like you’re a reasonable adult. Not when you forced me back in here after kidnapping me in the first place. Not when you’re calling me by a name which I did not give you.” His eyes shifted to Sephiroth, two cold blue lanterns shining through the darkness. They still had yet to find a moment to turn on the lights. “You remember, don’t you? Liar. Coward. I wonder why you’re playing dumb—you never did before. Did you think it would make me trust you more? Are you actually that stupid? That arrogant? Did you take a hard knock to the head at some point—”

Sephiroth felt his chest go tight at the reminder, but he was well-practiced in keeping his expression blank after so many years in Hojo’s dubious care. He wondered, briefly, at how Cloud’s unrestrained emotional outbursts could have developed under Hojo’s watch. Different incentives, perhaps? Sephiroth was always meant to be the flawless scion of the SOLDIER program, a public face and shining weapon wrapped up in one. Cloud was...not. A secret, maybe. Or something worse. So where Cloud lashed out, Sephiroth drew in, unwilling to display his true reactions to anyone but the other two SOLDIERs in the room with them. But because they knew him, they could read what he was unwilling to show simply by the depth of his blankness. To them, it was clear.

Cloud’s words hurt him.

They knew. They both knew, and for once it was Genesis and his inclination to the theatrical that came to Sephiroth’s rescue—clapping once, thunderously loud when the boy’s attention was focused on the Demon of Wutai. “How fortunate,” he said brightly, taking in the way Cloud flinched at the noise, “that I have never minded demanding what I want directly. I won’t pretend it’s for an altruistic reason, but I do, genuinely, want you to go bathe. You stink. Badly. It offends my nose and I’m tired of it. I will use the downstairs one for much the same reason.”

Almost instantly, Cloud’s shoulders loosened and his eyes relaxed, just a little. Sephiroth didn’t understand. Why did that abrasive command seem to…calm the boy down? Genesis usually had quite the opposite effect on people. Sephiroth glanced at Angeal, who suddenly had a disturbed clench to his jaw. Ah. Something he lacked context for, then. He would ask later.

“Finally,” the boy said. “Something approaching honesty.” He braced a hand on the wall and stood upright, still trembling minutely but steady enough to stay on his feet. Sephiroth, Genesis and Angeal all followed the child’s lead, standing up. The tension in the room had eased considerably, though he suspected it had more to do with exhaustion than any new understanding between them.

“Light warning,” Angeal said before flicking the switch by the front door. Cloud hissed, squinting and blinking rapidly. Sephiroth also found it very unpleasant, though he had been trained out of any visible responses.

“Sephiroth, would you mind…?” Genesis said, removing a mastered Cure from his bracer and tossing it across the room. He jerked his chin toward Angeal. Sephiroth was a little surprised Genesis wasn’t doing it himself, but he no doubt had a reason. In the light, their friend looked like he’d just crawled off a battlefield in Wutai, though Sephiroth knew none of the wounds were serious.

The boy, too, looked rather horrifying with Angeal’s blood smeared over his neck and arms. Some of it had even ended up in his pale golden hair. The back of his ruined shirt must have been soaked through with blood and sweat, though he didn’t seem particularly bothered by his state. In fact, he didn’t seem to have noticed it at all.

For some reason this bothered Sephiroth, but he set his unease aside and nodded back to Genesis as he moved to join Angeal. Even that made the boy’s eyes flare with distrust, gaze flickering back and forth between the materia and his face—what did he think Sephiroth could do with a Cure?

It occurred to him a moment later, after he healed the injuries, that the boy hadn’t known it was a Cure. They could just as easily have been exchanging Lightning.

Genesis hummed. “Actually, I still want to stab something. You!” He pointed, somehow loudly (Sephiroth was quite unsure how he did that), at Sephiroth himself. “If we’re going to stink we may as well blow off some steam before we stop. Let’s spar.”

Angeal’s eyes widened. “Genesis, are you insane?”

“Actually— ” Sephiroth started quietly, pausing when Angeal jerked his arm free and leveled him with a look. Well, that was fine. He had finished healing the cuts anyway.

“Are you both insane?” he repeated. The boy was looking between them, wild, flickering confusion in his eyes. Angeal broke off his brewing lecture with a growl and waved the boy before him. “You—come with me. You two, we will discuss this bit of idiocy when I come back down.”

Cloud shot Angeal a glare but...obeyed. He didn’t tense up. He didn’t snarl. He didn’t even make a break for it, though all three SOLDIERs still watched carefully for any sudden movements. Angeal quickly ducked into the first-floor bathroom to retrieve an armful of soaps and a towel before herding the boy toward the stairs.

Cloud cast one final look at Sephiroth from the foot of the stairs, expression unreadable, and said: “Don’t kill him. You might need a minion later.”

“I’ll do what I want!” Genesis called back, as if it had been cheeky banter, but they all knew Cloud hadn’t been speaking to him. 

Sephiroth drew in a steadying breath and took note of the unusual degree of tension in the muscles that connected his arms to his chest. Maybe Genesis had the right idea after all. He found that he, too, dearly wanted to stab something.

Angeal set down his armful of haphazardly-gathered soaps and shampoos on the lip of the tub, along with a thick red towel. “Take your time,” he said. Traces of his blood stained the outsides of the bottles he’d set down. “I’ll have something warmed up to eat by the time you get out.”

Cloud stared at the space just beyond the man’s shoulder, jaw clenched and breath carefully even. After about ten seconds with no response, Angeal got the message and left, closing the door gently behind him. Cloud shut his eyes and listened, waiting for the SOLDIER to leave the second floor entirely. He did, after a pause, his footsteps fading down the stairs.

Cloud dropped down onto the edge of the tub with a graceless thump. He started to shiver, wilting down tiredly as the incredibly intense, sustained adrenaline rush finally wore off. Pain throbbed up from his abused feet.

He’d miscalculated. Badly. 

Miscalculated and underestimated them. Sephiroth must have seen him reverse course for the house, then tipped off the others so they could set up an ambush. Cloud didn’t remember Sephiroth ever being particularly subtle, but maybe this one still...was. Or maybe he’d missed one of the unknown SOLDIERs entirely. Either way, he’d failed, and spectacularly at that.

“Pull it together,” he whispered to himself, bracing his elbows on his knees and pressing his knuckles into his eyes. He took deep, slow breaths, focusing on the stretch of his abdominal muscles and the pressure against his eyes until his head finally cleared.  It took...a long time. Long enough that a spike of fear nearly undid his efforts.

His body was so different —wild and uncontrollable, every emotion dialed up to eleven. And it wasn’t going to go away. He couldn’t fix it. No one could, maybe not even the beings who had done this to him in the first place. A shuddering whine escaped him as he remembered—

(Dragged through the lifestream, every piece of his soul burning away and being reconstructed in a cycle that just seemed to go on and on and on. Fighting, around and over and through him as something WRONG tried to capture the churning fragments of his being and make him into something new, SON, possession. Denial, two powers opposed, and the one with fewer but stronger tethers to him won. A pyrrhic victory, as the screaming WRONGNESS reached out in the final seconds of cycling destruction-reconstruction and 

TOOK.)

He had to remind himself to breathe.

If he didn’t turn the bath on soon, the SOLDIERs were going to come upstairs again and bother him. He reached back blindly and twisted the knob, letting water gush into the tub. It covered the sound of their muted conversation below, but that was fine. He couldn’t make out their actual words anyways.

“Pull it together,” he told himself again, firmly. It didn’t matter that controlling his body was like trying to ride a wild Chocobo. He had no choice but to work around it. 

He sat up, scrubbing a hand through his hair, and noticed for the first time how much of Angeal’s blood had smeared over his skin. Gaia, he really did need a bath. And it wouldn’t hurt to focus on the small, practical things for as long as the SOLDIERs were going to play pretend. It might trick his body into thinking he was safe, give him a chance to make a rational, well-thought-out plan.

He dragged himself to his feet, feeling more tired than he had since the end of Advent Day, and shucked off his ruined clothing. He stepped into the tub and sat back down on the rim, stoppering the drain and turning the knob to a reasonable temperature. His feet stung as the water washed over them.

He crossed his ankle over his knee, inspecting the damaged sole of his foot in the light. He pressed his thumb firmly over the fresh red scars, searching for any lumps where debris might have healed under the skin before he’d had time to clean it out.  There was nothing, thank Gaia. He doubted the SOLDIERs would have let him reopen and clean them out himself and he had no desire to get another infection because he wasn’t aware of how dangerous uncleaned wounds were to enhanced people. Once was more than enough, thanks.

The tub was full enough now, so he sank down into the hot water and shut the faucet off with his foot. For a long, long moment, he just leaned his head back against the tile and let the heat soak into his muscles. His eyes slipped shut, exhaustion pulling at him. If he just...didn’t think, he could almost pretend Sephiroth wasn’t one floor below him. That he was home, and Tifa was distracting the kids long enough to give him some peace and quiet.

But he wasn’t, so eventually he took a deep breath, set his jaw, and went about getting himself clean. He felt...calmer, as he scrubbed a vaguely familiar-smelling shampoo through his hair. Calm enough to start thinking strategically.

Alright. So escape attempt one had failed, and the SOLDIERs had a better read on his skills. Not good, but not the end of the world. He looked very young, which meant they would still underestimate his practical knowledge. And they had mentioned, before, ‘earning his trust.’ Until they figured out who he was, or until Sephiroth finally snapped and showed his true colors, they...probably wouldn’t kill him. He had time.

They were going to move him, and soon. He knew SOLDIERs had busy schedules, and there was no way Sephiroth wasn’t kept on a pretty short leash. Oddly enough, they also hadn’t told Shinra about him yet, which he knew because he hadn’t encountered a single Turk so far. That couldn’t last. He hadn’t exactly been subtle about destroying Shinra property. Hojo was no doubt throwing a shitfit over the mansion being reduced to ash.

Cloud smirked a little at that thought, though it faded when he realized that the insane scientist no doubt had enough pieces of Jenova squirreled away to keep her alive. He’d torched the majority of her corpse, but his work was far from over.

He crossed his arms on the edge of the tub and hooked his chin over his forearms, watching the water droplets that fell from his hair onto the tile below. Where next? Jenova would have to take a back seat until he had more intel, resources, and allies. Nibelheim was dealt with. Midgar was a no-go. He still wasn’t entirely sure what the year was (not that his mako-smoothie of a brain would have had much in the way of helpful memories to offer) but maybe...Corel?

Corel… maybe that fucking reactor wouldn’t be built yet and he could at least spare the town—spare Barret —the nightmare that was to come. He tried to picture the man Barret would be without his anger and found it disturbingly easy—he would still have a temper, but it would turn off as easily as a light. He would smile more. Laugh more easily. 

Also wouldn’t blow up so much shit. Wouldn’t get hurt so much. Wouldn’t sleep with his arm pointed at the ceiling for fear of triggering the gun in his sleep. Would still be Barret…just happier. 

Cloud missed Barret. But not nearly enough to deny his old friend that gift. 

Direction determined, he unstoppered the drain and got out of the tub, tossing the red towel over the top of his head and roughly drying himself off. They had chosen well in putting him up here. The window was far too small to fit through. He could go through the drywall…but that would take time, to avoid getting electrocuted by the odd wire, and it would make far too much noise. They’d stop him...and probably not allow him to bathe alone anymore. 

He shuddered at the thought, and stepped up on the toilet lid to look out the window, curious and wanting to have a moment more to really get his bearings. Being moved would present opportunities for escape, but it was foolish to assume anything. From now on he had to make sure he was as aware as possible.

He could see the beach from here, which seemed right. What shocked him to his core was seeing Sephiroth crouching down into a fighting stance, Genesis mirroring him across the beachfront. Dear Gaia, had he goaded Sephiroth into killing his subordinate? He hadn’t meant to—he hadn’t wanted to…Genesis was his enemy but so were the Turks, damn it, and half of them came into the bar for drinks regularly—!

But Sephiroth’s head wasn’t in the game. Something was off. He wasn’t as fast as he should have been…not as fast and not as vicious. He stumbled—he let Genesis dart around him, sword raised, let him bring him to bay—

Let…Genesis win? Was he sick? What did that… why would he allow… Cloud knew he could fight better than that! Sephiroth had fought Cloud harder than that five seconds after coming back from the dead!

Why play at sparring? Why pretend to let Genesis win?

Cloud leaned back from the window, disturbed and confused, hands clenching and unclenching. He shook himself and stepped down onto the tile. It didn’t matter. He had his plan. Soon enough he was going to be well out of range of the SOLDIERs. These insane, nonsensical SOLDIERs. It didn’t matter.

He took one step toward the door and abruptly realized they hadn’t left him any new clothes. Getting back into the same bloodstained, torn pajamas wasn’t the most pleasant idea in the world. He had gotten soft, in the years of peace. He liked being clean. But was it worth the price of calling—which one was left in the house? Angeal?—of calling Angeal to find him some?

His eyes narrowed a little. No. It wasn't.

So Cloud pulled the shirt and pants back on, grimacing at the cold, damp mixture of blood and sweat, and resigned himself to a few more days of unpleasantness: play nice, stay awake, stay aware, and the second he saw an opening— take it. They would slip up, and he would be gone before they could so much as blink.

Chapter Text

“Really Gen?” Angeal asked, groaning and rubbing at his eyes. Now that the boy was safely in the bath—and thank Shiva, the bath was a lot quieter than the shower, they could trace his breathing if they really focused—he turned disapproving eyes to Genesis. “Sparring? Now?”

“Actually…I think that sparring would be very agreeable.” Sephiroth said quietly. 

Angeal looked at Genesis sharply, and he sighed. “‘Geal, you know he likes sparring. If I had to put a name to it, I’d say it’s soothing for him.”

Sephiroth blinked. “You…noticed that?”

Genesis couldn’t quite stop himself from bristling. “This may surprise you, but I do pay attention to you. Particularly when I am on the business end of Masamune.” Evidently that did surprise Sephiroth. And Angeal. Was he really that bad at this? “And…I think better after a fight too. An actual fight. That…that was…”

“Something else.” Angeal agreed, quiet and disturbed. Since no one particularly wanted to recall the kid’s furious onslaught at the moment, he said, “But we’re all tired. Mistakes happen.”

“Nothing too crazy,” Genesis tried to assure him. “No magic, no explosions. No tearing up the scenery. Just sparring down on the beach. First blood or submission is instant victory, both of us keep a mastered Cure materia on hand.”

Reasonable terms. Much, much safer than most of their games, really. He watched Angeal weigh the risk in his mind—saw him look to Sephiroth and make up his mind. Genesis wanted to be irritated, really he did…but Sephiroth looked objectively terrible.

It was his eyes, mainly. He could force his shoulders back, could keep his appearance immaculate, could keep his face impassive. But his eyes… Sephiroth looked like he was a thousand miles away. And it seemed like he couldn’t make himself be here, and present, for long. He managed when the boy was in the room, but that was only barely an improvement. When he was near Cloud, he looked like a man who was burning inside and couldn’t scream.

He looked tormented—but only in his eyes. And only if you knew what to look for. 

Genesis knew Angeal had seen it, because he finally caved. “Fine. But call me if anything goes south—I’ll have something hot and ready to eat by the time you’re done, and… well. Someone should stay in the house to make sure the boy doesn’t tunnel through the drywall.”

“I beg of you, do not give him ideas,” Genesis said, and got a small huff as a reward. He shuffled through his pockets, pulling out the stolen materia and the various ones he had agreed not to use and setting them on the countertop. When he got to the Heal, he paused. “Little as I like giving the demon child this…he really might not eat without it.”

“Probably wouldn’t.” Angeal agreed unhappily. “He sees himself as—nevermind. Not the time. Go fight, you two. We can talk later.” 

Genesis nodded, but Sephiroth was barely paying attention to either of them. Irritating. But he followed Genesis out onto the beach, their boots sinking into the sand until they neared the damp, hard-packed strip by the tideline. “Care to make this interesting?” Genesis asked, more in the hopes of focusing his sparring partner than anything else. 

A dull flicker of interest. “Oh?”

“Winner gets the first shower if the kid is still in the bath, or choice of bath or shower if he isn’t.”

“Sure, why not.” No hesitation. Genesis would have been infuriated by the hubris, except he thought it was absentmindedness. Which was worse. Much worse. Genesis took his stance, Sephiroth his, and they began.

But Sephiroth did. Not. Focus!

It was infuriating! Even when Sephiroth taunted, he was still focused on Genesis when they sparred. It was a compliment, if a unique one. Genesis had seen him kill with less focus than he gave during their spars, and it felt…like trust of a kind. Sephiroth would not have given his full focus to a lesser opponent. 

But Genesis wasn’t even getting half his friend’s focus tonight. 

Sephiroth was slow! He was clumsy, which Genesis had been half convinced was impossible until now. He didn’t turn fast enough—didn’t react quickly enough. Barely pressed an attack of his own at any time. Genesis found a headache building behind his eyes alongside real anger. 

And when he finally raised his sword to Sephiroth’s throat, a victory he had honestly despaired of, if never admitted to himself, it… meant nothing. His mouth tasted like ashes. 

“Oh, fuck you. Fuck you so much.” He hissed at Sephiroth, who blinked with surprise, still glazed and distant. “Fuck you tremendously.” Had it been even one iota less undignified, he would have stamped his boot in fury.

“I… thought you’d be happier.”

“At beating you?” When Sephiroth nodded, hesitant, he growled and sat down in the sand. After a moment, Sephiroth relaxed—Genesis had knocked him onto his ass in the fight. It would have made a funny sight under other circumstances. “I would be if I had actually beaten you. This was closer to beating a sleepwalker. Or a toddler.”

Was that anger in Sephiroth’s eyes? If so, it only lasted a moment and Genesis fervently cursed its departure. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to be sorry, you thrice-damned fool!” Genesis snarled, then brought up a hand to rub at his eyes. He forced his tone to be gentler. “You’ve had a hard time sleeping lately, haven’t you? Worse than I thought, if this is how you’re fighting.”

Sephiroth looked away. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

Genesis opened his mouth to snarl again, but shut his jaw with a click and looked away. “When you start sleeping right, we’ll have to rematch. This doesn’t count for shit. The next time I win, you will have no excuse because you will have lost even in your prime.”

Normally Sephiroth would have responded with gentle, casual goading. But not today. “This certainly at least counts for the first hot shower,” he said, with his ass in the sand and his eyes trailing over the waves coming in, gilded silver in the moonlight. 

Creature comforts. That made Genesis brighten a little. “I think I can accept that.”

Angeal sighed, one hand rubbing his temple as he watched Sephiroth and Genesis leave to go beat the snot out of each other on the beach. It would help. He knew that. It might even have helped him, had he not just been nearly sliced into—how had the kid put it? Sushi?—had he not just been sliced into sushi by a little boy. Gaia.

There were stray knives to be fished out of the backyard and stolen materia to return. Actually, the knives must have been stolen too, so those would need to be returned as well. The tile floor was covered in blood. The wall was smeared with it, where Cloud had huddled defensively. When he looked closer he realized there were also bloody smudges in the shape of little feet leading up to the wall. That made sense—the kid had been running around with no shoes for hours. He would have to (try to) get Cloud to let him look at his feet. Angeal’s own shirt and harness were too ruined to salvage, blood-soaked and in tatters. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Simple things first.

He propped the Buster against a wall in the kitchen and set about making a meal large enough for three SOLDIERs and an enhanced child. Cooking was familiar. Soothing. So low stakes that he could let go of his stress for a few fleeting moments and lose himself in muscle memory. He cleaned up the blood while the water boiled. It would be better for everyone if they didn’t see such a visceral reminder of the... conflict that had just taken place.

He wasn’t sure it actually helped much. The smell of copper and mako lingered.

Of course, then the kid came padding downstairs as Angeal was putting food on the table, dressed in the same bloodstained, sweat-soaked, torn pajamas he’d been wearing. Angeal sighed, bracing a wrist against his forehead for a moment. “I didn’t get you any clothes, did I? I’m sorry. Hold on, let’s go back upstairs real quick.”

The boy was staring at the Buster with narrowed eyes, but he turned a tired, hollow stare on Angeal when he spoke. He didn’t say anything, but Angeal wasn’t stupid enough to think that meant he was cooperating out of deference or agreement. Best to take advantage for as long as the kid was willing to pretend. He flicked the stove off and herded Cloud upstairs for the second time, pulling out their dwindling supply of child-sized clothing and setting it on the bed.

“Take your pick,” he said. Then, with a little smile, “I think we’re going to have to burn what you’re wearing now.” 

The boy stared at him for a long moment before he started rooting through the bag. After all the snarling and snapping and screaming, Angeal was beginning to find his silence...unnerving. 

“I’ll wait outside,” he said, leaving and shutting the door behind him. He leaned against the wall next to the doorframe, listening closely for any sign that Cloud was attempting to climb out the window (again). All he heard was the sound of the bag rustling, a sticky-wet shirt slapping against the floor, and new clothes being pulled on. When the door opened, he came out dressed in a kitschy Costa Del Sol tee and some shorts, feet bare.

That reminded Angeal of the bloody footprints on the tile. "C'mon," he said, gesturing the boy into the bathroom. A bit of puzzlement cut through his carefully blank expression, but he followed. Angeal patted the counter. "Hop up for a sec."

Puzzlement turned to distrust. "Why." He said it flatly, like a refusal instead of a question.

"I need to look at the bottom of your feet. You were bleeding on the tile earlier."

"No," he outright refused, crossing his arms over his chest and jutting his chin out. "They already healed."

"With your enhancements, I'm sure they did," Angeal said patiently. "But I need to make sure nothing was in a cut and then got trapped beneath your skin when it healed. It would hurt a lot if that happened."

Cloud’s eyes narrowed irritably. "Yes, I know what a subdermal infection feels like," he said. "I already checked that everything healed cleanly, but even if it hadn’t I am perfectly capable of debriding a wound myself.”

Angeal stared, lips pressed tightly together, because that...sounded a lot like Cloud knew what he was talking about. It sounded a lot like he had done exactly that before. Angeal was very familiar with what it took to reopen and clean a wound like that. He’d done it, and helped fellow SOLDIERs, many times in Wutai. It was always, always, a two-man job, because cutting into your own skin was hard enough without adding in the need for precision. There was only one person he knew—Sephiroth—who could do it unaided.

Two people, maybe, but he told himself he was jumping to conclusions and carefully focused on getting the kid to let him check anyway. Cloud hadn’t had a normal upbringing. If Angeal used an adult example, maybe he would listen. “I’m glad someone taught you proper medical care,” he said, “but two eyes are always better than one for things like this. I’ve helped other SOLDIERs hundreds of times. Will you let me help you, just for a minute?”

Cloud’s eyes stayed hard. “No.”

“Please.”

“I said no, not that the word seems to mean much to you.” The boy was slowly tensing up again, winding back into battle preparedness, which was the last thing Angeal wanted. “Go on then, SOLDIER. Do what you want, if you’re strong enough.”

He could force the issue, easily. But it wasn’t worth it. Not when Cloud said that —which was, of course, exactly why he’d said it. Angeal swallowed down the bad taste in his mouth and relented. “Alright,” he said, a little softer than he’d intended. “Alright, Cloud. I’m not going to push it. Just...tell one of us if your feet start to hurt, alright?”

Slowly, the tensed line of those narrow shoulders relaxed, like a kitten’s hackles smoothing down. “Sure,” Cloud said, though they both knew he wouldn’t. He turned on his heel and left the bathroom, probably thinking to do so before Angeal could change his mind, and led the way back downstairs.

Angeal quickly checked out the window to see Seph and Gen sitting in the moonlight, speaking to each other. He shook his head but left them to it. That was probably better anyway—Cloud would undoubtedly figure out how to turn pasta into a deadly weapon if he shared a table with Sephiroth for an extended period of time.

The kid was already seated when Angeal caught up to him in the kitchen. Well, not quite sitting—he was actually crouched in the chair like a tiny blond gargoyle, glaring sullenly at the huge bowl of diced fruit on the table directly in front of him.

“Help yourself,” Angeal said, refraining from commenting on his posture. Barely.

“Gimme my Heal,” Cloud said, crossing his arms over his chest. He was blinking heavily. Poor kid was probably going to crash as soon as he ate—maybe even right at the table.

“Hold on,” Angeal said, retrieving a few more serving spoons and putting the final dish of pasta on the table. He got the materia from where Genesis had left it on the counter, handing it over as he sat down in the chair next to Cloud’s. Those little blue eyes narrowed at him for a moment, watching as Angeal started loading up his plate, before he began casting over all the dishes. Several times. Angeal barely refrained from rolling his eyes.

While he ate, Angeal watched out of the corner of his eye as Cloud filled up his plate and proceeded to consume it with the artless efficiency of a SOLDIER in the field. He was done before Angeal had finished even half of his own food. Angeal was...somewhere between impressed and concerned.

“Done?” he asked softly.

Cloud stared at him with silent, heavy eyes. For the first time, he actually looked his age without needing unconsciousness to soften his face. It hurt to see him stubbornly blinking back sleep, and yet remember the terrified fury that filled those same sleepy eyes less than an hour ago.

“Don’t worry about the dishes,” Angeal said, maybe unnecessarily. Had the kid ever done dishes in his life? Ever eaten at a kitchen table? “Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m very tired and would like to sleep. Why don’t you go on upstairs and get ready for bed, huh?”

The kid’s expression said that he wanted to call bullshit, but as he opened his mouth he paused and cocked his head to the side. “Fine,” he bit out, nimbly getting off the chair and scampering upstairs in the blink of an eye.

Angeal realized why a second later as Genesis and Sephiroth came inside, carrying the smell of the ocean with them. Genesis was giving Sephiroth crap, as was anticipated. 

What wasn’t anticipated—Sephiroth wasn’t replying with anything quiet but smug like ‘ah, but who won.’ He took the friendly ribbing with distant, vague hums of acknowledgement.

“How was it?” Angeal asked as they came to the table, tilting his head when Genesis mouthed ‘he’s so fucking out of it’ at him from behind Sephiorth’s back. 

“Fine.” Sephiroth was…quiet and tired, sure, and showing it, just enough that they could see it— which meant he was about to drop over himself. Angeal had seen him fight through whole weeks of pitched battle without looking like that. 

He frowned and looked back at Gen, who called bullshit as soon as their eyes met. “Terrible. Someone can’t even focus.”

Sephiroth let out an understated wince, more apology than distress, and when Angeal pressed food into his hands, he ate as robotically and efficiently as the kid had. 

“So he only beat you in ten minutes instead of five?” Angeal prodded, gently. Genesis scowled, but Sephiroth shook his head.

“Gen won.”

“Winning implies I was facing an opponent. And I was not, to my eternal frustration.” Angeal caught himself gaping, and Genesis looked at him and nodded slowly, still standing at the table’s edge. “My right as victor by default gives me choice of bath or shower.” Then his lips quirked, only a little forced, as he looked down at Angeal’s chest. “Though, it occurs to me that  perhaps you should wash first, Angeal.”

Angeal let out a huff, following Genesis’s gaze to the ruined shirt he’d forgotten he was still wearing. That certainly explained why he had been unable to clear away the smell of blood. “I’ll just shower when it opens up.”

“I’ll take a bath, then. You shower now, we all know how quick you are. I’m sure Seph won’t mind.”

After a worrying delay, Sephiroth looked up from where he was staring into the middle distance and hummed an agreement. “Where is Cloud?”

“He’s upstairs, showered and fed,” Angeal said. “Don’t worry about him coming down. I doubt he’ll so much as step foot out of his room, though you’ll have to keep an ear out while we get clean.”

“I’ll sit at the top of the stairs, then,” Sephiroth said, getting up to do so.

Gen raised an eyebrow at Angeal. He shook his head in response. Later. All of this was for later, when they were clean and focused on a single, common goal. “Be reasonable with your bath time,” he told Genesis, partly teasing and partly serious. “I’d like for us to get on the same page before we set watch and go to sleep, preferably at a reasonable time.”

“I’ll restrain myself to a measly two hours, then,” Genesis replied, breezing up the stairs to go claim the bath.

Maybe there was still hope, because Sephiroth laughed.

They reconvened at the table, as clean and as refreshed as they would get without a full night’s rest. Angeal had made coffee, not that it had much of an effect on them. But still, it was nice just to have something warm to hold and drink while they planned. Besides, the coffee was much higher quality than the swill they had access to in Wutai, and they had fresh cream to boot.

Genesis sat with mug in hand, tilting his ear toward where the boy was sleeping upstairs. There was no sound of movement, and if Genesis really concentrated he could make out the faint, even rasp of breath. He wondered if the kid was asleep yet. If he wasn’t, he would be soon. Sleepels felt refreshing but prevented the cycling of sleep stages, and passing out from stress was certainly not equivalent to proper sleep. Add to that several very intense adrenaline rushes and crashes and...it was incredible that Cloud had even made it through a bath without falling over.

Incredible, but maybe not surprising. Hadn’t the kid already demonstrated a force of will equal to any veteran SOLDIER’s?

Angeal sighed as he settled into a chair across from Genesis, distracting him from his thoughts. “I turned off the AC. If he moves at all, we’ll be able to hear it, but we’ll have to keep our voices down.”

“Right.” Genesis glanced at Sephiroth, who was staring down into the murky depths of his coffee as if it held the secrets of the universe. “Well. This is a fine mess we’re in.”

Sephiroth snorted.

“What did you tell Lazard when you left Nibelheim?” Angeal asked. “I know Shinra dispatched a separate team as soon as you reported in.”

Genesis’s hands tightened around the mug, pressing the warm ceramic against his sensitive palms. “The only thing I could. That I was pursuing a lead on whoever had destroyed the Reactor and mansion.”

“Nothing about the boy?”

“Explicitly? No, of course not! I had no idea what I was dealing with. I still have no idea what I’m dealing with.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “What are we going to do? We have to take him with us, but how could we possibly justify it without word getting back to Hojo?”

“Or without the Turks demanding custody,” Sephiroth murmured.

“They would regret that,” Angeal said dryly, tapping a finger against his mug. “Cloud would rip through them like tissue paper.”

“Cloud would rip through us like tissue paper,” Genesis said. “Don’t think I missed the way he started fighting at the end there. If he was fully armed, and we were still trying not to hurt him, he would kill us. Full stop.”

“Yes,” Sephiroth agreed. “He would.”

Angeal sighed. “We can’t leave him anywhere. We have to take him with us and Genesis has to report in with some detail about how Nibelheim went south like that. Cloud is pretty obviously enhanced and...violent, frankly. Despite this, we need to keep him out of the hands of both Science and the Turks. What else?”

“Sephiroth is having hyperrealistic dreams where he gets at least some information about Cloud that is apparently true and useful, but information about himself that is not. So that’s fun” Genesis sighed and sat back, rolling his shoulders.

“Yet another reason to keep him out of Science’s hands,” Sephiroth murmured distantly.

“Right.” Angeal looked like he’d swallowed a lemon at the reminder. “We—actually, kiddo’s never told us anything about what he’s been seeing in the dreams, has he?”

They exchanged glances. Genesis, as the one who had spent the most time alone with Cloud, said, “he...never confirmed he was having nightmares at all, though he spoke as if...” He trailed off. No, actually Cloud hadn’t spoken as if he’d shared the nightmares—he’d spoken as if he knew Sephiroth in the waking world. As if Sephiroth had participated in harming him, and was lying if he insisted he had not. 

Sephiroth echoed his thoughts. “As if he knows me,” he said, once more looking into the depths of his coffee. “Or thinks he does, well enough to be terrified I will harm him, and to accuse me of lying. He knows your sword, Angeal. But he didn’t know you or Genesis at all.”

Genesis also looked down into his coffee. It...didn’t make much sense, but then again none of this did. “If he is not sharing in the nightmares,” he said slowly, “then how would he have developed such a visceral reaction to you, Sephiroth? Or to Angeal’s sword, for that matter? He recognized it the moment his knife struck its edge.”

“I don’t know,” Angeal said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Conditioning? Sims? He’s obviously combat trained. And he referenced...killing Seph until he ‘stayed dead.’”

“Perhaps both,” Sephiroth said. “Perhaps all three, including the nightmares. It is possible he knows your sword because it was used in simulations against him. He has yet to see Rapier.”

Angeal frowned. “Why would Hojo—or whoever—have bothered putting him in sims against my weapon but not me? Especially given that I don’t often use it.” Genesis shot him an eye-roll at that, which he studiously ignored. 

Sephiroth remained subdued. “He fears and hates SOLDIERs in general, and me specifically. Hojo would not risk damaging me without very good reason, but he is also a man who does not trust, who works for a man who trusts even less.” He glanced up, a hollow look in his eyes. “Now that I have seen him fight...it is entirely possible that Cloud was intended to be a SOLDIER killer.”

Genesis shook his head, though the notion had made him sick to his stomach. “That makes no sense. Why would he start with a child if he wanted a SOLDIER killer?” Surely there were faster ways to go about it.

“He started early with me,” Sephiroth said slowly, looking away and frowning. “Though I’m not sure how early exactly. Possibly infancy. The man has many faults, but impatience is not one of them.” His fingers drummed against the table—more of a nervous tic than he had ever allowed himself to show before. Genesis slowly raised an eyebrow at Angeal, who nodded back once from across the table in acknowledgement.

Angeal frowned. “Do you…I always assumed you were another Shinra orphan.”

“Maybe. They told me my mother’s name, though not my father’s. Jenova. I’ve heard a few of the scientists speak of her in glowing terms, but… nothing specific.” Sephiroth still seemed off, now that Genesis was paying attention—his perfect, precious control was… not shattered, but cracked. The frown was barely a twitch, but still more than he usually showed. “I…in my earliest memories, the lab assistants were already used to me being there.”

“Wait. Your earliest memories were in the lab? How often were you there?”

Sephiroth blinked at Angeal. “I was raised by Shinra. In the lab.” He sounded puzzled by the question.

Genesis was not a man known for his sympathy or for his notions of what was reasonable, but if Sephiroth had been raised by that freak Hojo… well. That explained some things—some terrible things that he didn’t particularly want to consider. Despite himself, he shivered. 

Angeal was staring. Sephiroth frowned at them both. “I thought it was obvious, especially after what I told you. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Sephiroth…” Angeal started, then stopped, then cast his eye to Genesis in a silent plea for help. Genesis opened his mouth, unsure of what to say—and froze when Sephiroth made a noise, a strangled whine, eyes flaring wide and glowing with mako.

Genesis had never seen Sephiroth cry out before. Not from the rare landed blow in Wutai—not even that one time when he had been half eviscerated by a lucky strike. He had held himself shut and finished killing before Genesis had realized what had happened and demanded he stop. He hadn’t made a sound. It had been so very easy to think that Sephiroth wasn’t fully human after that. 

But Sephiroth seemed human now. His hands were shaking, and after a moment one scrambled to grasp the edge of the table, the other slowly coming up to press against his temple. His heart rate, usually ridiculously slow—Sephiroth was enhanced and also as fit as it was possible to be—skyrocketed, as fast as the child’s had gone in his panic. 

“Sephiroth!” Angeal called, sitting straight in alarm—then Sephiroth looked up again, and two things became immediately apparent. The first was that he didn’t see either of them. His eyes did not focus, and… they were no longer his eyes. Cat slit pupils stared off into the middle distance, narrowing and widening as they watched some unseen vision, green as ever, glowing as they would with fury or rage, but somehow foreign. 

His breathing became ragged. “I don’t want to see this,” he pleaded, though with who they didn’t know. “Please, miss, I don’t—I don’t want to see—I don’t want—I don’t know you! Stay out! STAY OUT!” His hand didn’t fully release the table before it came up to cradle the other side of his head—his mug toppled and coffee went everywhere. Tears began to streak down his face. 

Genesis couldn’t move. He had never thought himself to be weak, to be useless in an emergency, but he couldn’t… move. He couldn’t even open his jaws to speak—

“Sephiroth... “ Angeal whispered, and this time his voice got through. Sephiroth’s eyes still didn’t focus on him, but his head jerked, and he let out another strangled, terrified noise, pupils switching back and forth from dilated to constricted.

He was still gasping for breath, clutching at his head as coffee dribbled off the edge of the table to splatter across the floor, when Genesis finally managed to force himself to move. He stood half way, one hand braced on the table and the other reaching for Seph. An unexpected glint of light caught his eye. His heart leapt into his throat and lodged itself there.

Cloud, cleaned and dressed in new clothes, stood at the edge of the kitchen, Buster sword in hand. It might have been a comical sight, this tiny boy with a sword bigger than him, if not for the look in his eye. Steely. Grim. Far too hard for his young face. The expression of a person preparing to be judge, jury, and executioner.

“If you mean it,” Cloud said evenly, startling Angeal and making Sephiroth shudder, “if you really want her to stay out, then listen to me.” There was no hesitation or uncertainty in his words. No wavering in his arms as he held the sword. “It started in the back of your head, didn’t it? Then it spread down through your neck and into your chest. Right now it feels like static behind your eyes, and it burns.”

Sephiroth shuddered again, eyes still staring at nothing, but his head tilted until his ear was toward Cloud, listening.

“Find the starting point. Imagine building a wall up around it. Imagine the static fading. Her voice is getting quiet. The wall is complete, and you’re pressing it in, making the space inside it smaller and smaller.” Those serious little blue eyes watched Sephiroth like a hawk, tracking every minute shudder that rippled through him—still judging, but staying his hand as he waited. 

His voice dropped to a whisper. “Make her be quiet, Sephiroth.”

Sephiroth struggled for breath, bowing over the table as he fought to free his mind from whatever the hell was trying to take it from him. Genesis watched helplessly, thoughts racing. What was going on? How did the kid know? Had Cloud...had he been suffering like this long enough to learn how to control it?

“I—“ Sephiroth grit out eventually, “she’s...she’s quiet. I can’t…”

“You can’t make her go away entirely, can you?” Cloud asked, barely above a whisper. The grim watchfulness in his expression shifted into something tired and maybe a little sad. Sephiroth raised his head and met the child’s eyes, silently begging for answers. 

With aching slowness, Cloud lowered the tip of the Buster and straightened from his ready stance. “You really have no idea what’s happening, do you. Maybe you aren’t even him. Not yet.”

“What is she?” Sephiroth asked, desperate in a way that Genesis had never seen before. “I don’t...understand. What did they do to us?”

To us. Because there was no way that he and Cloud weren’t connected in some significant way. Weren’t modified and twisted to fit some unknown mold dictated by Hojo. They were mirror images of each other, twinned like Cloud’s mismatched stolen knives—differing in appearance, perhaps in the details of their applications, but not in function.

Two living weapons, staring each other down over a kitchen table covered in spilled coffee.

Genesis had never felt so viscerally terrified in his entire life.

Cloud looked to Genesis and Angeal for a moment before his gaze returned to Sephiroth, once more wary and calculating. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “I can’t tell you because of what just happened.” He looked away. For the first time, Genesis noticed how pale his face was from muted, slow-burning terror. 

“I felt it. I should have known it was too easy. She’s getting desperate because of what I did in Nibelheim.” His eyes snapped back to them. “Which is why you all need to let me go do my goddamn job. Do you understand now? How serious this is? Even Nibelheim wasn’t enough to stop her. I don’t give a fuck about your good intentions and neither does she.” He drew himself up. “So let. Me. Go.”

“We can’t,” Angeal said, but his voice sounded hollow, even to Genesis. 

“Yeah, how did I know that would be your answer?” Cloud turned away from them in disgust, then paused and looked back at Sephiroth. “Don’t let her in. No matter how desperate you get. No matter what she promises. She’s a liar, do you hear me? She’ll call herself mother, swear to give you everything you want. If you value anyone on this planet, don’t listen to a single word. You’re the one she wants most of all.”

But why? Why? Genesis felt physically ill with the force of his dread and bewilderment. By the look in Sephiroth’s eyes, he wasn’t the only one.

“What is she?” Sephiroth asked again, even though they all knew the boy wasn’t going to give them the answers they wanted.

Cloud opened his mouth and shut it. Bone-deep exhaustion crossed his face. “Our enemy,” he said as he turned and walked away. “That’s all you need to know.”

Chapter Text

Cloud wasn’t thinking. Didn’t think. Couldn’t think, because terror gnawed at the corners of his mind and he no longer had the capacity to control it by force of will. He stepped out of himself, letting his body go where it wanted. It was as if he blinked, and suddenly he was sitting with the Buster across his knees as he carefully oiled it. Where he’d gotten the kit to oil it, he didn’t know, but the smell soothed his frayed nerves.

He berated himself as his hands worked over the blade. Of course, of course burning the bitch’s body hadn’t been enough. What had he expected? He should have known from the moment he woke up several feet shorter than he was meant to be—he should have known the moment three SOLDIERs cornered him under a bed. Nothing could be easy. Not here. Not like this.

Terror burned at the back of his throat. He had to escape ASAP. He’d felt Sephiroth reaching—had felt Jenova reaching back, echoing through Cloud like a conduit. He knew exactly what memory she’d pulled out of his mind, and why: the lab, Hojo’s sneer, the way Cloud had failed, the way he’d been weakened, the way he’d been forcibly bound to both Jenova and Sephiroth.

Why she owned Cloud, as thoroughly as any parent owned their child—and why Sephiroth owned him too.

Cloud should have killed him, then and there. Why hadn't he? Why hadn't he? Maybe he’d been wrong—maybe Sephiroth had been and still was... human—but Jenova was sinking her claws into him with every passing second. Hypothetical humanity aside, the man was a ticking time bomb. Cloud should have killed him. It might even have been mercy.

Why hadn't he killed him.

Maybe it was because Cloud was starting to realize that this was all his fault in the first place. No—not fault. That implied some kind of moral failing that he could have avoided. He certainly hadn’t been given a choice in this. But it was because of his presence that everything was changing. Somehow it had even been changing before he’d actually woken up in Nibelheim. The nightmares the SOLDIERs had talked about earlier, the way they had known his name...it had to be because of Jenova’s connection to him. Maybe through her cells in Sephiroth, maybe through Sephiroth’s cells in Cloud, maybe both.

He pressed the rag into the Buster until his knuckles ached. It didn’t matter how it was possible, just that it was. He had to put distance between them, fast, or Jenova would just keep tearing him apart to get to Sephiroth and then they would all die. His hand trembled briefly, nicking his finger against the Buster’s edge.

He had to get out.

A shadow fell over him (adult-sized, unlike his own) as he fought to control himself. He wanted to scream. He wanted to stop oiling the sword and take it up in anger instead. Why, why in the hells did they always have to appear when he needed them to stay away?

Genesis found he could move again when the child left. Sephiroth, the strongest of all the SOLDIERs, half collapsed onto the table, shivering convulsively and crying without noise. Something about that bothered Genesis—some acting lesson, perhaps, or some half-remembered class from ages ago where the teacher had talked about human behavior. 

Crying out was instinctive, when you were in distress. Like wolves, humans were social predators who called to their packmates. If you made no noise when you were distressed—not quiet noise, but no noise at all— what did that mean?

Unbidden, he remembered the boy, pinned to Sephiroth’s chest, hyperventilating with mortal terror. His eyes had been wide and glazed as the odd panicked tear had dripped down his face, but...noiselessly. Stressed to the eventual point of collapse, he’d still been so very quiet. He had cried when they had the Ribbon, but... that seemed more like…

Genesis moved suddenly and without thought, as if a stop spell had been broken, a hand gathering Sephiroth’s shoulders and pulling him against his torso, growling as if the enemy that menaced his friend was someone who could be frightened off by his voice alone. He came back to himself with Angeal murmuring comfort to both of them, shaking his head to clear it and offering Angeal a strained, apologetic smile. 

“We cannot leave him alone right now,” he murmured, inclining his head toward Sephiroth. He got a surprised look from Angeal in turn, but then a nod. No response from Sephiroth. Genesis didn’t think he even knew they were there.  “You’re better at…gently getting people out of their heads. Most of my methods involve loud noises and a bit of drama.”

Angeal raised an eyebrow, offered a half smile. He looked pale with his own distress at this…well. ‘Revelation’ implied something had been revealed, and nothing had been. Except, perhaps, that they had an enemy, which they had known, if not viscerally. Not in their stomachs. “You finally realized that drama has some downsides?”

“I’ll get your sword back from the kid,” Genesis said instead of acknowledging that. “Don’t leave him.”

“Kid is armed.” Obviously. But Genesis knew what he meant.

“I don’t think fighting is on his mind right now. If anything, he talked himself down at the end there.”

“Still. Be careful. We can't afford serious injuries right now. I don’t think I trust Shinra’s medical… anything. And you know Hojo always gets involved in injuries Seph is involved with. I think he gets off on it.”

“An appalling and uncouth statement from you, for my sake no less? Angeal, you flatter me.” He clapped a hand over his friend’s shoulder, then nodded. “I’ll be careful. I’ll even retreat if I’m unsure of myself.” Just to be safe he snagged materia from the countertop before he bounded after the kid. 

He didn’t find Cloud where he expected him. He wasn’t sure where he’d expected him—a part of him had thought ‘his bedroom’ but…the kid considered the whole place a prison, or at least he said so—but he certainly hadn’t expected to find Cloud sitting cross-legged in Genesis’s own room of all places, expertly caring for the Buster.

Expertly. Wasn’t that interesting? Most people fumbled the grip, didn’t know how to hold it to get at some of the grooves properly. The boy was…skilled. No—practiced. It had taken Angeal a year to learn to hold the blade that confidently, if partially because he had kept holding it like it was a sacred relic. Genesis knew because he had watched the slow development of Angeal’s expertise firsthand.

The boy tensed as his shadow crossed him, and Genesis paused, evaluating. Cloud’s heartbeat was fast and wild, and he was still all but vibrating with tension. His hands trembled, one finger nicking against the edge of the Buster—

A memory. His first kill, a soldier he’d never learn the name of in Wutai—his hands cold and shaking for hours. Angeal had taken him to his cot, made him sit and put oil, a rag and Rapier in his lap. “Focus on the smell, Gen. Focus on the smell, and on the motion. This is where you are now.”

The boy was…trying to calm down? Or reinforcing his mental shields against this mysterious woman? Tending to equipment was a common sort of meditation…for grown men who were accustomed to using said equipment day in and day out. When you spent your life fighting, it was soothing to know the equipment that kept you from death was well-tended. Genesis didn’t like the implications of Cloud turning to such things for comfort. Maybe he should have sent Angeal up here. 

Maybe he needed to figure it out. Angeal couldn’t be everywhere and Cloud had become just as much Genesis’s responsibility by this point.

He considered the kid for a moment, then took a deep breath, got a rag from the kit (his kit) in front of Cloud, and sat cross-legged opposite him, as if they were just two friends hanging out while they tended their blades. With Rapier across his lap, he pretended to ignore Cloud completely as he worked. After a moment, he let himself glance back up and saw that the kid’s shoulders had relaxed. A moment more and his heartbeat started to calm.

And Father said nothing productive would ever come of those body language classes for Theatre!

“You want me to give it back,” the kid finally said, his hands settling back into a smooth rhythm as they stopped trembling. 

“No need to give it up before you’re done. Free slave labor offered willingly? I for one approve.”

Cloud snorted. Genesis did not allow himself to smile. 

“Though it’s likely Angeal will just redo what you did. Nothing personal, I think tending that blade is a religious experience for him.”

“Oh? There’s very little wear on it for that kind of devotion.”

Genesis both did and did not want to know how the kid could read a sword’s history so easily. That kind of insight couldn’t be taught, not really, and even if it could Hojo would not have seen the utility of forensic classes just to read the wear on equipment. Cloud had learned the slow way, the personal way, then. 

“His mother spent the family’s life savings on the damn thing,” Genesis said aloud, setting aside his speculation for later. “Now he lives like a monk except for some house plants, saves cash to send home, and uses the standard swords like they are disposable. If he pulls that thing out, he generally means business.” He shrugged. “So. Even if we were willing to hand off a sword…not that one.”

Cloud laughed, and there was something twisted in the noise…but it was a real laugh. “I don’t deprive people of the means to protect themselves.” 

Alright, that stung a little. Genesis elected to ignore it. “We can’t help you until we know how to help you. You have to give us more than scraps to go off of.”

Cloud worked the oil carefully around the materia slots. “With that bitch tagging along in his head and probably yours too? No, if I’m screwed over I’d rather not have it be because I fed the enemy information myself.”

The hairs on the back of Genesis’s neck stood on end as a chill swept up his spine. His hands went still on Rapier. “What do you mean, mine too?” he said sharply.

“Relax. I doubt she’d bother trying to take you over—doubt that was what she really wanted from him, even. Though the difference from his perspective might be fuzzy. You, however, are just not special enough for her to bother with. She’s fussy about her chosen sons.” The kid stood fluidly, swung the sword around—the length was awkward, but his grip on it was easy and smooth. Genesis froze before he realized that Cloud was…actually offering him the hilt. 

His eyes were tired but calm, half-lidded as he stared Genesis down. “Come in my room while I’m sleeping and I shiv you with a nightstand leg.”

Genesis smirked a little, amused despite himself as he took the Buster. “Well, I guess if I hear you open the window then we shall both have a very interesting night.” He let the kid go on his way. He was stubborn, but he could recognize a dead end when he saw one, and despite what Angeal said he was perfectly capable of being strategic.

He listened for a moment, waiting to hear the kid settle in bed, then sighed and headed downstairs. One problem dealt with, more or less—on to the other. He hoped Sephiroth was alright.

Angeal. Angeal was here, Sephiroth realized dully, caught somewhere between disgust at himself, terror, and shame. Angeal had him in a grip that would probably be crushing to anyone else—not restraint, because one hand kept coming free to stroke at his hair or rub his shoulders, and his voice was a steady, calming drone. “Come out, Sephiroth. Here—you’re safe, you’re fine. Breathe…” He wasn’t sure what made Angeal notice that he was…present again, but the grip loosened. Bizarrely, he missed it, though it wasn’t even gone, just… looser. “Hey. You know where you are?”

A moment of panic—had he done something else? Had she used him to—

“Hey, hey— I don’t know where you are, but it isn’t here. Focus. I think there’s coffee running down your leg, and the sooner you calm down, the sooner we can clean that up. Honestly Seph—leather pants? Leather pants. Why?”

He laughed, choking, but the laughter was what Angeal wanted. And…Angeal didn’t pull away when he gave up on pretenses and let his head loll against his chest. The warmth was reassuring. And…the bedrock steadiness of him, too. He was so…solid. Real . That helped. 

“That’s it. Easy.” Angeal soothed, and part of Sephiroth wanted to be soothed, wanted to actually accept that comfort. But the other part, the one embedded so deeply in him by Hojo that he was rarely conscious of it, was so much louder.

“You don’t need to—” He started in a rough voice, slowly sitting up. Angeal was right, there was coffee running down his leg. Vile. He kept himself clean—everything had to be clean. “I should…I made a mess. I’m sorry.” His mind felt slow. Loud. Clumsy. It was so hard to think.

It...shouldn't have been so hard to think.

“Sephiroth, does it occur to you that you have nothing to apologize for?”

He’d made a mess. “I’ll clean it up.”

“No, you will not.”

He had to clean it up. What did that…mean? He raised his eyes slowly, trying to understand, and found Angeal’s calm eyes looking back at him. Nothing...made sense. Towels. He knew there were towels, and he started looking for them, tried to rise from his chair, but then his whole world seemed to tilt on its axis.

"Woah! " said Angeal, voice muffled by the sudden ringing. "No, stay down." Hands pressed against his shoulders. He felt too disorganized to try again. Forgot what he had meant to do in the first place.

"I..." Coffee. On his pants. He had to clean it up before someone noticed.

"Alright Seph, alright, I'll get a towel for you. Just...stay there. Give yourself a minute."

No…no, if people had to clean up after you that was bad. He shook his head, blinking at the sudden dizziness—and there was a towel, pressed into his hand. He stared at it. 

“It’s okay, Seph. Breathe.”

He couldn’t breathe. There was a monster who could attack him in his head, the only one who knew anything was an angry enhanced child who hated him for crimes he couldn’t remember committing but probably had, and he couldn’t even stand up to get a towel to clean up the coffee he had spilled everywhere—

“Sephiroth. Breathe. Deep breath. In, out. In…out…”

He was a monster and a weakling and he couldn’t even control it. He remembered putting those scars on the child’s body—on…on the man’s body. With her voice whispering in his ear. With her screaming. The boy screaming in pain. And Hojo laughing, and it was all his fault, all through him, all for her— 

“Sephiroth!” Something struck his face—it stung. He blinked. “SOLDIER! Name and rank!”

“General Sephiroth, SOLDIER First Class,” he answered automatically, sitting up straighter—he shouldn’t be slouching. 

“Condition, SOLDIER?”

Sephiroth opened his mouth and shut it again, confused. He was…he was…he didn’t think he was wounded. Not physically. He was…

He was sitting in the kitchen, his kitchen, with coffee all around him, and Angeal holding him up in his chair, barking commands at him just to get him to respond. “Angeal. I—”

Angeal softened his tone. “Condition, Sephiroth. How are you?”

“Angeal.” He really only had one certainty left, so that was what he offered. “I am so tired, Angeal. And I am terrified to sleep.”

“It’s okay. We’ll figure it out. You’re going to bed after you clean up. Who knows? Maybe…” He took a deep breath. Sephiroth felt it through his grip. “Maybe whatever that thing was won’t be able to do anything once you’re resting. You’re more vulnerable when you haven’t rested, you know that.”

Maybe? She was…she was…

He wanted it to be that simple. Wanted it. But wanting was immaterial. “What if I’m not the one who wakes up? Angeal...what if she wakes up with my face?”

Angeal shook his head a little—his face was pressed close to Sephiroth’s hair, he could feel it even if he couldn’t bear to raise his eyes and see it. “She won’t. It’s safe to sleep, Sephiroth. I’m on watch tonight.”

“I—”

“We’ll talk about it later, Seph. Shhh…”

“I…I need to clean up. It’s not…if I leave a mess it’s not sanitary, I need to keep everything sanitary.”

“Shhhh. I’ll take care of it.” Gentle hands pulled his head down to rest on Angeal’s shoulder. He knew it was his shoulder—he knew the faint smell of his blood, dried now, and the conditioner he worked into his leather harness. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

His eyes felt hot. Was he crying? She had shown him terrible things…Angeal would hate him if he knew. He would hate him. Kill him himself. Maybe…that was better. But…but he couldn’t tell him. Not yet. It felt too safe and too warm, resting against his shoulder. “I need to clean up.”

“I’ll clean up. Shhh. It will be a secret. I won’t tell if you won’t.”

…Angeal did not lie. Angeal did not lie. “But…’s my mess. M’fault.” It was getting harder to speak. Everything felt so very heavy and numb.

“I don’t care,” Angeal assured him. And then, unexpectedly, a few minutes later when he was half asleep—“I want to kill Hojo. I wish we had done it before now.”

He blinked. Tried to. His eyes wouldn’t open all the way. “I… why? You di’n’t know before now. No evidence...boy wasn’t here.”

“We had you.”

What? he thought, but the question was far past his reach. His eyes slid shut, and he was weak, he was useless, because they were too heavy to force open again.

“I want to kill Hojo.” Angeal growled to Genesis the moment he returned to the kitchen with the Buster in hand. Genesis paused, blindsided by the suddenness of his declaration and the intensity of his anger. “I wish we had done it before now.”

Genesis frowned, because that did not sound like the Angeal he knew, and he had known Angeal for a long time—they had joined Shinra together, after all. He stepped closer to the table, taking it all in: coffee still dripping, Sephiroth impossibly crumpled against Angeal, Angeal’s eyes glowing as they never did with Mako rage. 

And Sephiroth, of course, was somehow not quite asleep despite looking halfway to a corpse, so he asked, quiet and slurred: “I...why? You di’n’t know before now. No evidence...boy wasn’t here.”

That was, Genesis suspected, only part of why Angeal wanted Hojo dead. They both turned their eyes to Sephiroth, who had not raised his head at Genesis’s footsteps. “We had you,” was what Angeal finally said.

Sephiroth shifted a few more times, twitched, and finally, slowly, went limp against Angeal. 

“I meant it,” Angeal whispered. “I meant it. I mean it. I want to kill him.”

“I believe you,” Genesis said, because it was impossible not to. 

“He’s a monster. For doing this to them.”

“Yes.”

“He is…evil.”

Genesis paused. They didn’t use that word often—they were well aware that most conflicts were not so simple, at their root. But…he had no better word for this either. “Yes.”

“I want to kill him.”

“Do you need help with Sephiroth?”

Angeal shuddered, and shut his eyes, and when he opened them he was himself again. “No. Yes. I think he’ll fall over if I move. How did it go?”

“I’m…not sure. But no one bled, and I have your sword, so I’ll call that a win.” At least the Buster was safe. He could see a little loosening of Angeal’s shoulders, and that…helped.  

“Help me clean up the coffee without dropping him?”

Gen half laughed. “Yes. That bad?”

“I didn’t even get to ask him what had happened. He was…not very coherent. Upset in a way I’ve never seen before.”

Genesis paused, then murmured “I would be too. I don’t know what happened, really, but… even if it was mere pain, at the behest of someone who can reach out and touch your mind and…be inside your head. Inside your fucking head.” Someone who, according to Cloud, could reach into Genesis’s mind just as easily and only did not because she found him unworthy. Goddess . He was going to be insulted by that in the morning.

Angeal nodded and immediately steered him away from the topic. “There’s a towel that I think is still in his hand, hard to tell from this angle—”

Gen stepped around the table. Sephiroth was clutching the towel far too hard to pull it out of his grasp—another thing he could do that normally aggravated Genesis to no end—and after a moment, Genesis just sighed and scooped up a different towel altogether before coming back to his task. “A war, a ridiculous amount of assasination attempts, more monsters than I can count, and it’s a kid that does this to him? Sounds like something out of a sitcom.”

“I’d agree, if there was anything remotely funny about this.” Angeal sighed and shifted Sephiroth’s weight. “You got it?”

“Yeah, I got it. You sure he’s not going to wake up suddenly and clobber us on reflex with the advantage of surprise?”

“Honestly, no.” Angeal shifted his grip again. “Help me get him to bed.” Genesis, because he was extremely tired and taking a dip into his ‘crowd control after disaster’ abilities, waggled his eyebrows. Angeal rolled his eyes hard enough that his head followed the expression. “Really Gen?”

“Imagine how this would go if it was one of those stories the Silver Elite write.”

“Why are you like this.”

Gen laughed, but grabbed Seph’s legs when Angeal started to stand. Was Angeal strong enough to lift Sephiroth without his help? Yes. Was Sephiroth tall enough to bonk into all manner of things without him noticing if he tried to carry him that way? Also yes. And really, there was no call for bruising the man up. Another day, another situation, Genesis might have been okay with it…but…well. Today called for something else, maybe. 

Sephiroth looked small, as they carried him to the master bedroom. That was…fucked. Small and scared, in his sleep. 

And that...wasn’t Sephiroth.

“You were gone longer than I thought, but you also returned without any loud noises or explosions…” Angeal said leadingly as they set Sephiroth down and he started unbuckling his pauldrons.

Genesis half laughed, eyes on his hands as he worked Seph’s boots off one at a time. Damn things were as finicky as his own. “He was trying to calm himself down, I think. The kid, I mean. He had holed up in my room and was cleaning your sword.”

“As a calming behavior?” Together, they got him out of the coat and draped it over the footboard.

Genesis sighed. “Are you really surprised by that?”

“No. Not really.” He gave the alarm clock a leery moment of consideration. Rather than mess with the mechanism, he tugged the cord to unplug it entirely.

"But, Angeal, there’s...one more thing." Genesis hesitated, searching for the right words. His eyes lingered on Sephiroth's pale, slack face. "Cloud knows your sword. Really knows it. He was cleaning it like you do."

Angeal crossed his arms and turned his head to the side, thinking. "The sword he was carrying is comparable. Maybe Zack taught him to clean it."

It wasn't an unreasonable conclusion. On the run, like the kid and Zack had most likely been, knowing how to clean even the weapons you couldn't wield was valuable. But Angeal's conclusion was also wrong. He hadn't seen the nuance in the boy's grip.

"No," he said with a shake of his head. "I don't mean he was cleaning it like you did when we were Seconds. I mean he was cleaning it like you do now. He knew every groove, Angeal. I don't know how, but he did."

Angeal stared at him for a long, silent moment. He closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. "Tomorrow," he decided. "This is all for tomorrow."

Cloud was miserable. He hadn’t been planning on actually sleeping even before Jenova reached out to Sephiroth—too much of a risk that he would wake up somewhere else, or without Ribbon, or any number of other terrible if well-intentioned things—but he had seriously overestimated this body's capabilities. That or he must have been under the Sleepel longer than he’d thought. Either way, it was taking more effort than he was comfortable admitting to stay awake.

He knew they were keeping tabs on him. He could hear them breathing just as surely as they could hear him breathing, and at one point he heard them change watch. Even if he tried, he wouldn’t be able to get out the window before they caught him. There was no choice but to wait for when they moved to a new location and act then. But he was starting to seriously— dangerously— flag, and he couldn’t risk being vulnerable when Sephiroth was this close.

So when the sky was just beginning to lighten, around 0500, he forced himself up. Whoever was keeping watch in the other room got up as soon as his feet touched the floor. He gritted his teeth against a surge of irritation and opened the door at nearly the same time that Angeal opened the other.

“Morning, Cloud,” the SOLDIER said, leaning against the doorjamb and crossing his arms over his chest.

Unable to restrain himself entirely, Cloud glared as he stomped into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. Gaia, this was going to be...difficult. He washed his face, trying to wake himself up as much as possible, then leaned over the sink with his hands braced on the counter. If he was lucky, they were moving today. If not...he just had to make it work. There was no choice. Sleeping was not an option yet.

He pinched the skin between his fingers, hard, until the pain jolted him awake. Just a little longer, he told himself, hoping that it wasn’t a lie. Just keep going a little longer. One problem at a time.

Angeal knew something was off. He’d known since about 0230, half an hour into his watch, when he’d realized that Cloud wasn’t shifting around in his bed at all. By 0330, he was certain—the kid wasn’t asleep. He was lying in the room, perfectly still, breath carefully controlled into an even, slow rhythm that mimicked sleep.

It was...concerning, to say the least. He wasn’t even sure how the kid was managing it after everything, but he must have been absolutely miserable doing it. As the minutes ticked by and he waited on edge for the kid to finally just go to sleep, his concern grew. Around 0400 Angeal considered knocking on the door and trying to talk to Cloud about why he wasn’t sleeping, but...he knew the reason. And he knew that nothing he said would change it.

So, reluctantly, he sat by and waited.

0500 rolled around as dawn began to creep across the dark sky. Finally, the sheets in the kid’s room rustled as he sat up. Angeal rose from his chair and opened the door, just as Cloud opened his. The little blond looked dead on his feet, miserable and angry and one half step away from collapsing. He glared viciously when Angeal leaned against the doorframe and bid him good morning, stomping into the bathroom and locking the door behind him. 

Unsurprising. Concerning. 

Angeal sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. He wasn’t equipped to deal with this—at least, not with the delicacy it required. Maybe Genesis had been onto something with that child psychology book. Or maybe he wasn’t—the intersection of ‘child’ and ‘sees himself as a prisoner of war’ had to be a pretty damn unique one.

But...Genesis had made progress in the form of not being stabbed with the Buster last night, when he’d spoken with Cloud alone. Maybe if Angeal tried speaking to Cloud alone as he got breakfast ready they could at least come to some kind of understanding about sleep, because this couldn’t go on. And he’d certainly prefer that it didn’t end when Cloud reached his limit and simply collapsed.

So Angeal texted a quick briefing on the situation to Sephiroth and Genesis for when they woke up, then went downstairs and started getting breakfast ready. He paid half an ear to the sink running upstairs as he put the coffee on and started preparing an omelette mixture. Kid hadn’t objected to any of the food so far, not beyond being incredibly suspicious of everything. Whatever he made now would be fine and if Genesis didn’t like it he could make his own food.

Cloud came downstairs just as the coffee finished brewing and he was folding a third omelette in half. Naturally, the boy immediately gave Angeal a minor heart attack when he poured himself a cup of coffee and chugged the whole thing before Angeal could stop him.

“Woah!” he said, quickly putting a hand in front of the carafe before Cloud could pour another. The impulse to scold him for drinking coffee at his age built up on the tip of Angeal’s tongue, but he bit it back at the last second, instead settling on the far more neutral, “I think that’s enough for now.” 

Shiva. He had absolutely no doubt that the kid had been planning on drinking the whole batch if no one stopped him. He must have burned his mouth half to ashes just to chug that first cup.

Cloud glared, then eyed the coffee, then eyed him, and apparently decided the odds weren’t in his favor. He put the emptied mug on the counter with force just shy of ‘slamming’ and skulked over to perch in one of the chairs around the kitchen table.

Patience, Angeal reminded himself, moving the omelette to the growing stack and pouring more mixture into the pan. He decided to test the waters before trying anything important. “So, Cloud,” he said, keeping his eyes on the pan, “how did you sleep?”

The answer was immediate. “Fine.”

The sizzle of the cooking eggs filled the silence. Angeal held back a sigh, though he wasn’t too surprised. Part of him had wondered if this would be another case of Cloud bluntly stating a fact (“I’m not going to fucking sleep around you” or somesuch), but the answer he gave either meant that he thought he’d gotten away with not sleeping, or that he didn’t give a damn if Angeal knew and just wanted the conversation to end as soon as possible.

Angeal remembered Genesis’s approach from the night before. Direct. Self-interested. He remembered how Cloud had relaxed, trusting callousness over kindness. Angeal didn’t think he could quite manage callousness —he wasn’t a great actor in the first place and pretending at a lack of honor would only make it worse—but he could manage bluntness. He glanced out of the corner of his eye. Cloud was hunched, hands clasped strangely in front of him.

“Tell me about this new enemy of ours,” he said.

“Why should I?” Cloud shot back immediately. His knuckles were white.

“Because I can’t protect what I value if I don’t know anything at all.” Blunt. Self-interested. “Genesis told me about her...spying capabilities. I don’t need to know anything that would endanger your plans. Tell me what she knows about herself. Tell me what she wants from Seph.”

Cloud was silent for a while as Angeal added another omelette to the stack and poured the last of the mixture into the pan—silent long enough that he thought the boy wouldn’t answer at all. But just as he opened his mouth to try something else, Cloud spoke.

“I know what you’re doing,” he said in a tone Angeal found impossible to read. “I’m not stupid, I know what you’re doing. But I’m going to tell you anyway.” He was staring at the table, not glaring at it. Calm. Thoughtful.

The strategy was working. It made his stomach twist unpleasantly.

“She wants what every power-hungry psychopath wants. The world. Everything in it. But unlike ShinRa, she wants it all dead.” He turned to look directly at Angeal. “As for Sephiroth...well. I don’t know, exactly. It’s possible she loved— loves him, but I don’t know if she loves him like a son, or a guard dog, or a very. Nice. Suit.” He bit out the last part, precisely enunciating each word. 

Every hair on Angeal’s body stood on end at the implications.

“She already knows this part, so I’ll tell you too. I’m going to kill her. I don’t care what I have to do—to you or anyone else in Shinra. She’s going to die, and Hojo is going to burn, and if you try to stop me, I won’t hesitate to throw you on the pyre next to him.”

He fell silent, returning his gaze to the table as Angeal put the last omelette onto the stack and set the platter a foot or so from the boy’s seat. What...could he even say to that? He took a deep breath. Oh, kid, why are you so determined to do it alone? “Alright,” he said. “I can understand that.” And he could. Hadn’t he been in a murderous rage the night before over Hojo? He’d meant it. And he certainly felt far more concerned that the kid was so determined to go alone than that the kid...was so determined to kill a man.

Well. At this point he wasn’t sure Hojo even counted as a man —more of a monster, really.

“Feel free to start in on the omelettes, by the way,” he said, pulling out what he needed to make hashbrowns and sausages. Upstairs, he heard Genesis start to stir. Sephiroth was still dead to the world, thank Shiva.

“Mmh,” Cloud grunted. A spell flashed, and then cutlery started grating over ceramic.

“What…” he paused, thinking. “What, besides letting you run off on your own, could we do to help? I know you might not believe it, but...well, none of us would be particularly sad to see Hojo dead.”

“Nothing,” Cloud snapped through a mouthful of food. “Literally the only thing you can do to help me—” scornful “—is fuck off and let me do what I need to do.”  

There has to be something, he wanted to say. Coax. But he reminded himself— blunt. Self-interested. “No,” he said. “Kiddo, I’ve been at war longer than...well, maybe not longer than you’ve been alive, but long enough. You are engaging in a one-man war right now. You have no allies. You have no resources. You’re incredibly conspicuous and not particularly subtle.” He turned to Cloud, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against the counter. “Kid. You’re terrifying. But if you try to do this on your own, you’re going to fail. No war is won by a single soldier.”

Cloud’s lips pressed into a thin line. Precisely, deliberately, he set his fork down. “You—” he cut himself off. Shut his eyes for a brief second. “You. Don’t know anything about me. You don’t know anything about my resources or my allies or my intel. And you’re wrong. This isn’t a war.” 

He drew himself up, eyes hard. “It’s an execution.”

Chapter Text

Genesis woke up feeling…balanced. Steady, for the first time since he’d spotted their little blond enigma effortlessly summoning Phoenix. The strain was still there, a mental burden that ached like a sore muscle, but he at least felt like his feet were once more firmly planted. He rolled out from between the warm sheets, yawning and wiping the sleep from his eyes.

First things first. He spared enough attention to note that Angeal and Cloud were having some kind of discussion in the kitchen while food cooked. No sound of Sephiroth, thank the Goddess. He needed to sleep in for once in his damned life. With the knowledge that the state of the house was more or less fine, Genesis flicked open his PHS and started looking through the many, many unread messages and emails. He ignored everything from Lazard for the moment. Far more pressingly, there seemed to be a recent message from Angeal. He opened it and read as he walked to the bathroom.

By the time he reached the end, he had to stop, lean against the bathroom counter, and take a deep breath. He didn’t understand why Cloud would refuse something as vital as sleep. Not quite, at least. Not fully. But he’d read (skimmed, really) far enough into the relevant sections of that child psychology book to know that children in distress could be contrary—would act out deliberately. Would be distrustful. 

But…this refusal to sleep also seemed beyond mere contrariness or acting out. Distrust might explain it, he supposed, setting the PHS aside and starting his morning ablutions. Might. Perhaps he would change his mind when he saw Cloud in person, but it felt like such a refusal in the boy’s state amounted to something dangerously close to self-harm. “Infuriating brat,” he muttered, unable to summon up the heat such words deserved.

Goddess, they were really in over their heads with this, weren’t they?

He shook himself. Well, no matter. There wasn’t anyone else around to deal with it, so they would have to do. He let his confidence settle around his shoulders like the crimson coat he pulled on—Cloud could probably smell fear—and strode out to breakfast.

Cloud was perched in one of the chairs like a little vulture, angrily spearing the last of an omelet with his fork. Angeal looked...frustrated, and perhaps a little grim. Sausage and hashbrowns sizzled away on the stove.

“That smells lovely, my friend,” Genesis said, blithely trampling all over the tense atmosphere. Cloud watched him saunter over to the coffee machine out of the corner of his eye, like a wary cat. 

Angeal just heaved a noiseless sigh. “Glad you approve, Gen,” he said, allowing only wry amusement into his voice. “Because it’s all I’m making.”

“You say that like I’m picky,” Genesis responded, adding a dash of cream to his coffee and taking a sip. He winced and added a little more.

“That’s because you are picky.”

“Oh, you wound me.” He slid his mug across the table to his chair, plucked up a plate, and took three omelets from the stack. Cloud eyed him with disdain. Grouchy little kitten. Exhaustion was plainly written across his pale face; even the gleam of his eye seemed dull. And Genesis’s sharp eyes caught something more interesting still—the boy's hands, clasped in front of him, were positioned so that the sharp nails of one dug into the tender valleys between the fingers of the other.

Genesis wasn’t as surprised as he might have been. Wutai tested each and every soldier and SOLDIER to their limits. Falling asleep on watch wasn’t just risking a reprimand—it was risking death, of you and all your companions. Genesis knew full well what measures men took to keep themselves awake as long as necessary, and pain was chief among them. All things considered, digging nails into flesh was so minor it was laughable. It wouldn’t cause any permanent damage. It was minor.

Minor for a soldier in an active combat zone, ready for enemy action at any moment—not minor for a little boy. Not something they should just allow.

But Genesis wasn’t an idiot. He understood perfectly well that if he said something, Cloud was guaranteed to double down. And anyway, the finger-pinching was a symptom of the deeper issue: refusing to sleep. What to do? Nothing, until they figured out how to get the kid to sleep. Frankly, Genesis was fine just letting him wear himself out to the point of collapse. Maybe Cloud would learn a valuable lesson if it happened the hard way. He seemed to be that kind of person.

“Hash browns,” said Angeal, interrupting Genesis’s frustrated thoughts as he set the serving dish on the table.

“Wonderful, thank you,” he said automatically, serving himself. “Cloud?”

“What,” the boy responded flatly, eyeing him like he expected some kind of ambush. Genesis wondered how much of that was the boy’s natural disposition and how much was exhaustion-induced paranoia.

“Hash browns?” He offered lightly, holding out the serving spoon. Cloud hesitated, glared, and snatched the spoon up, steadfastly ignoring Genesis’s arched brows. And, of course, he cast Poisona with his Heal as soon as he’d finished serving himself. Genesis didn’t bother to disguise his eye-roll.

Angeal turned the stove off and brought the final two dishes—sausages and toast—to the table with him, settling into the chair next to Cloud. For a little while, they were quiet. Angeal had the kitchen window open to let in the ocean breeze, and they could hear the rhythmic hiss and crash of the waves in the distance, punctuated by the grate of metal on ceramic and muffled chewing.

Cloud calmed in increments, eating willingly enough once he’d ensured that the food wasn’t oh-so-nefariously drugged. Genesis watched from behind his bangs as the tight lines around the boy’s eyes relaxed and the angry frown slowly fell away. His eyelids began to droop, pale gold lashes fluttering as his head slowly began to dip down. Angeal caught Genesis’s eye. They exchanged a pointed glance and quieted even more, until the hypnotic white noise of the waves was all that filled the kitchen.

It almost worked. Cloud’s breath eased, forehead dropping nearly to the table, fork half hanging out of his mouth as sleep began to take over. Angeal shifted his hand slowly and subtly, ready to catch the fork when it fell so it wouldn’t wake the boy right back up. Genesis found himself holding his breath.

Then Cloud jolted, snapping back upright with an alarmed noise from deep in his throat. The fork dragged sharply over his lower lip, leaving reddening marks. He shook himself, blinking rapidly, and entirely missed the way Genesis and Angeal had been watching him like hawks. He went back to eating as if nothing had happened, holding his eyes wide open to keep them from sliding closed against his will.

Oh for fuck sake, Genesis thought, biting the last bit of his sausage angrily.

There was no chance to try again. Cloud had apparently frightened himself enough to take slightly more drastic action than simply pinching between his fingers. When he opened his mouth to continue eating, Genesis could suddenly smell a very faint trace of copper, nearly lost to the salt of the ocean outside. The boy had bitten hard enough on the inside of his cheek to draw blood.

That certainly crossed the line into outright harm. It wasn’t something they should allow. It also wasn’t something they could stop without making things worse, though he was sorely tempted to roll the dice on that. How had a baby barely half Genesis’s height backed them into a corner like this?

Dammit.

Genesis stewed in his thoughts for the rest of their shared breakfast time, unable to find any solution that wouldn’t immediately and spectacularly backfire. Cloud stood when he had finished, taking his dishes to the sink on autopilot. Genesis was distracted enough to nearly miss it, but then it occurred to him—was Cloud used to eating at a table like this? How? Who had taught him to take his dishes to the sink?

“Alright, Cloud,” Angeal said, interrupting Genesis’s confusion, “do you want to help us plan now? We weren’t able to decide much last night.”

Cloud shot him a look of pure contempt. “No,” he said shortly. It was painfully obvious that he was too tired to even snap at them the way he had yesterday. “I’m going for a walk.”

Angeal sighed through his nose, though he didn’t seem terribly surprised. “Alright,” he said, standing and putting his own dishes in the sink. “Let’s go for a walk.” Cloud rolled his eyes viciously but didn’t bother arguing.

What was the saying? A good compromise leaves everyone unhappy?

Genesis exchanged a look with Angeal, who silently jerked his chin toward Genesis’s PHS. Genesis nodded back and pointedly flicked his gaze toward Cloud in response. The boy was already halfway out the back door. Angeal grimaced and hurried after, shucking his boots off and quickly rolling up his pants before he closed the sliding door gently behind him. Together, the two disappeared to go walk along the shore.

Genesis sighed, slumping down in the chair a little, then suddenly made an indignant noise and sat up straight. That scheming bastard —he’d left Genesis to do the paperwork and the dishes!

Sephiroth woke up in increments. His eyes opened. The room was dark. Cool. His eyes were heavy. His alarm would wake him. He let his eyes shut again. 

His eyes opened. There was light. Not dawn, because his alarm would have gone off. Maybe Gen was up drinking early. He had done that before, on shore leave after rough stretches in Wutai. But there was a reason he wouldn't do that now, part of his brain told him indignantly. 

...why? They didn’t come here while they were on duty. He let his eyes slide shut.

He opened his eyes. It was too bright. His alarm must not have gone off. How long had he overslept? He couldn’t oversleep and neglect his duty, and getting in that habit was dangerous anyway, he couldn’t do that, he had to do better than that. He had to. He had to.

Sephiroth lunged to the side, scrabbling for the alarm, yanking it from the nightstand and anticipating the minor resistance of the cord in the socket—it came away easily in his hands. Not plugged in. What? Even on leave, he wouldn’t have…why would he have…?

He lurched upright in half-comprehended panic, tangling in the blankets and nearly tearing them as he overbalanced. He barely caught himself on the doorknob before he slammed his head through the door. He scrabbled ungracefully on the floor, and managed to stand, opened the door, stepped out. He was unkempt and breathing hard. It shouldn’t have been so hard to put himself back into order.

“Sephiroth. Easy. Breathe.” Genesis’s voice cut through the disorientation. “I’m in the kitchen.”

He staggered out, fighting to compose himself with every step. Confused. Shirtless and coatless. Blinking heavily.

“Did you sleep well?”

Sephiroth opened his mouth and shut it again. Why did Genesis sound so casual when Sephiroth had shirked his responsibilities so abysmally? Genesis should have been furious. “I… I’m sorry. I meant that to wake earlier. I—”

Genesis frowned and looked up at him from his PHS. “Sephiroth. You needed the sleep. You needed rest. Angeal unplugged your alarm clock, and frankly, I let him. It was the right call. I may do it again.”

Sephiroth stared.

Genesis’s frown deepened. “Sephiroth. Go shower. You look like shit.” 

Sephiroth blinked and left the room, obedient as he had been since he was a child. The shower would help—would restore the General, composed and flawless. Until then he was just shambling, clumsy steps, shaking hands, long tangled silver hair, and late. Late. 

Late.

And for some reason, Genesis was okay with that. The shower he took passed in a confused blur.

Even once the General had returned and his thoughts were coherent and organized again, he still didn’t understand. It didn’t matter though, because he wouldn’t let it happen ever again. Even if the... being who could invade his and Cloud’s minds returned, he wouldn’t be reduced to such a state again. He would not allow it.

Sephiroth finger-combed his bangs out to the side and returned to the kitchen, dressed in shirt and pants because he didn’t want to put his coat back on while they were in the vacation house. Genesis had his bulky laptop out on the kitchen table, grumbling irritably to himself as his fingers flew over the keys. He looked up when Sephiroth entered. His eyes narrowed, then swept up and down assessingly.

“You look much better,” he said after a moment’s consideration, turning his attention back to (Sephiroth assumed) his paperwork. Which he was actually doing. Incredible.

“I feel much better,” he admitted, sitting down at the table. “Where are Cloud and Angeal?”

“Out for a walk, leaving me to do all the work,” Genesis said with clear annoyance. His fingers paused as he said it. He looked back up at Sephiroth, a smirk crawling across his face, and opened his mouth to ask—

“No,” Sephiroth said preemptively.

Genesis frowned at him. “I didn’t even get a chance to say—”

“I am not doing your paperwork for you.”

The redhead tsk’d peevishly. “Oh, fine. The dishes, then.”

Sephiroth glanced at the sink—full with three people’s worth of dishes, but not unmanageable—and decided that he was both willing to humor Genesis and in need of something mindless to do. “You owe me,” he said, rising from the table. 

Willing to humor Genesis, yes. Willing to be mature and not hold it over his head, no.

“Yes, yes,” Genesis said, rolling his eyes. “Though I am certain we will review the tally once we get home and find that you owe me.”

 “Only if you cheated and altered the records while I wasn’t looking,” he jibed as he plugged the sink and turned the faucet on.

“Don’t be absurd, you know Angeal made me burn those last month.”

Sephiroth stifled a laugh. “Oh, of course, how could I have forgotten. I suppose we will just have to call it even, then.”

“If we must.”

A beat of silence passed before Genesis spoke again. “I’m telling Lazard that the information connected to the Nibelheim incident is too sensitive to pass over email.”

Sephiroth sighed, methodically scrubbing down a plate. “You realize that will do little more than stall.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Genesis snapped, though Sephiroth didn’t hold it against him in the slightest. “I know that. But if we can get Cloud somewhere arguably contained, it may be easier to fend off the Turks. That and I would like to believe that Lazard is not enough of an imbecile to suggest handing a little child over to Science when I am armed and standing in Firaga range.”

“It is our best shot,” Sephiroth agreed. What other option did they have?

“And…”

The hesitance in Genesis’s voice made Sephiroth pause, up to his elbows in soapy water, and turn to look at him. He was tapping one finger against the side of the laptop, the other hand over his mouth as he looked sightlessly down.

“I have been...considering other avenues to keep Cloud from being taken the moment we turn away. It seems inevitable that he will become known—he’s just too...he’s too much not to  make himself known. But we may be able to turn that to our advantage by getting the fan clubs involved.”

Sephiroth dropped the dish he was holding straight back into the water out of sheer shock. “Excuse me?” he choked out. “What?”

Genesis groaned and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I know, I know. But...Seph, he has your DNA in him. We could put him just enough in the public eye to make the Turks think twice. As a last resort, you understand. If Hojo or the President starts making too much noise.”

It took a very long minute for Sephiroth to really piece together Genesis’s statement. “You are suggesting we let slip to the Silver Elite that Cloud is my son,” he said flatly. “Genesis. I would have had to father him when I was what… fourteen? Thirteen?”

“I...may be suggesting we let slip that you weren’t exactly involved in the ‘fathering’ process.”

“Genesis. Would that not make the situation with the President worse?”

His friend shot him an irritated look. “Not necessarily. If Hojo did this without the President signing off, then it would be strike one against Science. If he did it with the President’s permission, then...well, who could blame a new father for being somewhat incautious in his shock? And with the information out, it would be too late. The President would be forced to consider public image.”

Unbelievable. He actually meant it. "Are you nuts?"

"A colloquialism! For me? Oh Sephiroth, you shouldn't have"

“I—” he went to scrub a hand over his face, only to stop because he remembered his entire arm was covered in soap. “I cannot think of anything that would make Cloud angrier than being forced to even contemplate me as his biological father.”

“Well,” said Genesis, crossing his arms over his chest, “how do we know you’re not, anyway? Hojo would absolutely do something like that without telling you. Maybe even without telling the President.”

Sephiroth shot him a withering look. “I saw the test results, Genesis. It’s fairly clear if you know how to read these things. Cloud has my cells, not half my DNA. He’s a lab-created chimera, not my child.”

“Semantics,” Genesis said, waving a hand. “The public won’t know the difference, and you’d be perfectly in your rights to claim him as your responsibility even if they did. He has your cells and abilities.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that Cloud will probably try to commit pseudo-patricide if we do it.”

“At least he’d be alive and available to try murdering you with his bare hands.”

Sephiroth resisted the urge to beat his head against the sink. “Genesis.”

Genesis sighed. “I am not suggesting it as a first option, you stubborn man. I’m just...putting it out as a last resort.”

“Fine.” He went back to the dishes, because carefully moderating his strength as he handled breakable ceramic would help him calm down and not march over to strangle Genesis for even mentioning ‘fan clubs.’ “Pitch the idea to Angeal, then.”

“He’ll take it better than you did,” Genesis muttered as the staccato clicking of the keyboard started up again.

Somehow, Sephiroth doubted that.

Cloud and Angeal came back as Sephiroth was setting the last of the dishes in the drying rack. They stopped outside on the patio, rinsing the sand from their feet at the washing station built into the side of the house. Cloud probably didn’t care about tracking sand all over, but Sephiroth knew Angeal did.

The sliding door opened. “Careful,” Angeal said as they stepped onto the tile with wet feet.

Cloud just scoffed at the reflexive patronization, which Sephiroth thought was a strangely mild reaction until he caught sight of the boy’s face. Shiva, he looked awful. How out of it had Sephiroth been the night before not to see the beginnings of this? If one of the men under his command had looked like that, they would have been pulled off duty and sent to sleep immediately. He might even have considered sending them to medical.

“The fuck are you looking at,” Cloud snapped, bristling like an angry cat as he caught Sephiroth’s startled gaze.

“You,” said Sephiroth, because it seemed like the most neutral response he could offer.

Cloud just bristled even harder, completely ignoring the hand Angeal set on his shoulder. “Well stop.”

“Alright,” said Sephiroth and looked to Angeal instead. His friend’s expression was pinched as he watched the exchange, half in concern and half in disapproval.  But he didn’t say anything. Probably wise—Cloud was like a mine waiting to be set off at the slightest misstep.

Angeal gently pushed Cloud in the direction of the living room. “TV’s all yours, just like we discussed.” Cloud shot them a venomous glare, as if he wanted to be absolutely sure they knew how much he hated them before he stalked off and disappeared from their immediate sight.

“His heartbeat kicked right back up when Seph came into view.” Angeal murmured, almost too soft for Sephiroth to hear even when he moved to stand at the kitchen table. “He obviously wanted to walk to keep awake, but now…”

“I smelled blood on him earlier,” Genesis said, and Sephiroth looked at him sharply. “He was biting his cheek for the same reason.”

“I didn’t smell anything fresh,” Sephiroth observed, relaxing. Biting like that was so minor it was barely worth noting. He had the keenest senses out of them, but with Cloud’s enhancements, whatever damage he’d managed to do was undoubtedly long-since healed. Sephiroth had done similar tricks growing up in the lab—to keep quiet, or to keep focused, or simply to focus on pain he was actually in control of.

“He didn’t need to do it again,” Genesis said grimly. “He’s still terrified of you, and that’s more than enough.”

Angeal scrubbed a hand across his face. "Yeah. Yeah…” A problem for later. “I'm going to go return what he stole yesterday. Try not to let him antagonize you too much while I'm gone."

A soundtrack of horrified screams and gruesome sound effects had started up in the living room. Cloud laughed, just enough of an edge to the noise to let Sephiroth know that it was deliberate. Angeal hadn’t even left yet and Cloud was already trying to goad them into conflict. The three SOLDIERs exchanged longsuffering looks.

If Cloud didn’t pass out soon, it was going to be a very, very long day.

It took a while, but Angeal returned the stolen knives, materia, and sunglasses to their alternately irritated and thankful owners and picked up a few supplies while he was at it. He wasn’t deliberately slow, but it would be a lie to say he wasn’t savoring a bit of conflict-free time. Sephiroth and Genesis both were texting him live updates, and he knew it was going to be a difficult slog to deal with Cloud once he got back.

The kid had picked the most awful, gruesome film he could, and then laughed at it. When that failed to sufficiently bother either Genesis or Sephiroth, he switched to a documentary about ancient torture methods, and added his own acerbic commentary. That was a bit more difficult to ignore, though Genesis and Sephiroth were apparently managing it so far.

And Cloud was still doing his damndest to stay awake. He paced, he sat upside-down on the couch, he did breathing exercises, he pulled his hair and dug his nails into his skin and bit the inside of his cheek. Even Sephiroth, who was less concerned by Cloud’s behavior (it must have made perfect sense to him in some way that Angeal and Genesis just didn’t see) was starting to let concern creep into his words.

Every minor slip—and such slips were increasing in frequency—was met with an anxious uptick in harmful behavior, to the point where Sephiroth had deliberately offered himself up as a distraction so that Cloud would stop. It was with Genesis’s account of Cloud reaming into Seph that Angeal decided whatever other supplies he was forgetting could wait. Clearly, he needed to go back to the house.

When he came in the front door, laden with bags, he saw that Genesis had pushed aside his laptop in favor of the child psychology book. Sephiroth had retreated back upstairs to recover from deliberately putting himself in the way of Cloud’s acidic commentary, leaving Genesis to keep the closest eye on Cloud. Clearly, he wasn't finding it easy. Angeal noted the tension around his eyes and the agitated flexing of the foot he had crossed over his knee. As he set the bags on the counter, he was tempted to explain that the book probably wouldn’t help, but decided to check on Cloud first. The living room was eerily silent.

He got there just in time.

Angeal tended to prefer strength to speed. But…sometimes strength wasn’t the tool you needed in the moment. The pulling hair, pinching between the fingers, the biting the inside of his cheeks—he could overlook the boy doing those, even if he hated it. Trying to stop anything less than permanent damage would do more harm than good. 

But when he saw Cloud slowly bend a finger backward, stopping just before the breaking point and taking a deep, bracing breath, he knew he could no longer let the situation alone—he was across the room, with the boy in his arms at his top speed. The boy fought, of course, more successfully than any of his cadets, heaven help them both, getting an elbow in his gut and a fist in his eye, but that was okay. Acceptable. Letting the boy break a finger to stay awake was not. 

“I can’t let you do that,” he said as he wrapped himself around the child. Pinning each arm and leg was harder than it sounded, but he had a definite advantage of size, and he used it. He tried to ignore the kid’s heartbeat kicking into overdrive and the panic that seized his breath. “I’m sorry. I cannot let you do that.”

“Let go!”

“I can’t do that,” he said again, keeping his voice low and level. The boy’s panic wasn’t helped by the sound of Sephiroth tearing into the room top speed, knowing something was wrong but not yet what. Nor by Genesis abandoning his reading in surprised horror, eyes darting around looking for blood or a weapon, hurrying forward until Angeal sharply warned him off. “No, you two stay back.”

Sephiroth cocked his head in that unblinking way that made him seem like he could see everything. Angeal felt Cloud shudder, trapped in his arms, even though Sephiroth didn’t approach. The kid had already redoubled his attempts to writhe out of his arms, but Angeal held him fast. “They aren’t coming over here. Cloud, you have to go to sleep.”

“I won’t sleep! I won’t let you—!”

“I’m not going to do anything while you sleep and neither are my friends. I’m not going to let you hurt yourself either. Here’s what’s going to happen.” He could feel the boy’s heartbeat pound through both of them, feverish and wild as he struggled. “I’m going to hold you, like this, until you fall asleep. When you do, I will tuck you into bed and then I will leave the room, and I will shut the door. We will not come in unless we hear you move or you call us. We will not hurt you, we will not touch you, we will not change you into any other clothes. We will not let anyone else in to do any of those things either. My only goal is to see you sleep without hurting yourself.”

“I’m not stupid enough to take your word for that!”

“I know. And I don’t have anything else to offer. I’m sorry. But when you wake up, you will see that I told you the truth.”

The boy struggled again, a terrified noise breaking from his throat when he didn’t budge an inch. Angeal was pretty sure it wasn’t his imagination that the attempts were growing shorter and weaker. “No! No, she’s going to—”

“No one will hurt you while you sleep.” Angeal promised, though he really couldn’t do more than hope he was telling the truth based on the fact that Sephiroth woke up unscathed. It didn’t matter anyway. Cloud had to sleep at some point, no matter how stubborn he was. “No one will touch you while you sleep. You’re safe. I know you don’t believe me right now, but I promise we’re going to keep you safe.”

He really, really hoped he was telling the truth.

“Can’t risk it,” the boy insisted, quieter this time. Exhausted, frightened tears streamed down his face as his eyes started to close against his will. “Don’t...make me...” His voice failed as his head began to drop.

It was the tensest ten minutes of any of their lives. Cloud fought valiantly against Angeal's confining arms, against the onslaught of sleep, but his previous determination now worked against him. The adults hardly dared to breathe as Cloud’s head dipped and jerked over and over again until the enforced stillness finally lost him the fight. He wilted down, frenetic pulse slowing, until Angeal was supporting most of his weight. 

With one last strangled, terrified noise, his eyes shut all the way and he went limp. For a long, tense moment, they just stared and waited to see if he would miraculously wake up and begin raising holy hell once more. He didn’t.

“Shit,” Angeal swore, quiet and intense. He dipped down to get his arm beneath the boy’s knees and lift him from the floor, carefully tucking his head into the juncture between his neck and shoulder so it wouldn’t loll about. Soft, warm breaths ghosted over his skin.

“...what exactly just happened?” Genesis asked slowly, setting his book face-down on the coffee table as he finally approached.

Angeal sighed heavily. “He was...getting ready to break a finger to keep himself awake.”

Sephiroth was staring at the boy with a muted, grim kind of understanding. Genesis managed to choke out a disbelieving “what?”

He didn’t understand. Maybe none of them did, not yet, but Angeal thought he was at least starting to. His eyes slid to the book on the coffee table. He nodded his chin toward it, arms still occupied cradling the sleeping child. “You know that won’t be of any real help, right?”

Genesis shot him a strange look, apparently seeing his statement as a non sequitur. “A book on children and their psychology, to be used in understanding a child and his psychology? Oh no, definitely nothing useful there.”

Angeal sucked his teeth. “Unfortunately, no.” How to explain? Genesis wasn’t exactly great with kids, but Angeal thought he could get the point across. “Gen. Children. No, more basic. Infants. When a baby is hungry, what does it do?”

Genesis gave him a very flat look, but answered anyway. “Cries.”

“Right. It cries. It’s a natural instinct, throwing themselves on the mercy of any adult around. And we instinctively want to protect them and satisfy that need, if only so they will shut the fuck up.”

“Oh, shit, you’re serious. You said a bad-language word.” 

Well. If he was mocking, then he was paying attention at least. “Genesis, just shut up and listen for a minute.” He glanced to Sephiroth, who was still looking at the kid’s face with a thousand-yard-stare. “You too, Seph. Think about the natural progression of this. When a child wants something—food, comfort, information—they ask, then get frustrated, then cry or sulk. Even babies do that, just without words. It’s the same basic principle with different amounts of responses. Now. Which of these tactics did Subject C employ?” He said the designation as coldly as he could to get the effect across, and watched without pleasure as both his brothers-in-arms flinched. 

Seph’s eyes were in that cold place he went to before he killed people. Angeal could sympathize. “None.”

Genesis was, as usual, contrary. “Well it’s not like those are the only responses, and he did cry—”

“Not like that, Genesis. He wasn’t appealing to us. That wasn’t ‘please help me I’m scared,’ that was ‘I’m losing the fight and I’m scared.’” He paused and made sure he squarely met both their eyes before he said the most important part. “The whole time he’s been here, he’s reacted to us like we’re enemy combatants, no matter what we’ve done to try and reassure him. What I’m saying is that Cloud isn’t a child. He’s a soldier.”

“You’re saying you believe his... delusions? About us, and about Sephiroth?”

“I’m saying he believes it. Not just intellectually. Instinctively. A child… look, children trust adults. It’s part of why we all hate anyone who hurts a kid. Because they were weak, and defenseless, and they trusted you. It’s a betrayal of instinct and nature. But that’s not what Cloud is acting like at all. He’s acting like he isn’t a child—he’s a war prisoner.”

Gen’s eyes hardened. Angeal nodded and went on. 

“Cloud is behaving like a POW captured by his worst enemies. And real or not, it’s very, very real to him. Not in an ‘I made it up in my head’ way. A conditioned way. Someone trained this kid, conditioned him, to think of us as enemies and Sephiroth in particular as the man who will torture him to death. Sorry Seph.” 

Seph had that cold look in his eyes still, but he shook his head slowly back and forth. “It is not your fault that that’s how he sees me.”

“So. Whatever the hell this is, we can’t keep treating him like a child we found lost. We have to treat him like a captured SOLDIER who needs to be convinced that we’re allies—who has seen people tortured and maimed by our ‘side,’ because that’s what he thinks Hojo is .” 

He glanced down at the boy who felt so light and yet so heavy in his arms. Even asleep, his face was tense and uneasy. “We’re never going to get anywhere if we keep treating him like a normal kid,” he finished quietly.

Genesis frowned and glanced at the book he’d been so carefully reading before. “That…does make more sense. What do you propose?”

“Act like he’s a prisoner of war, then introduce behaviors more in line with a cadet? I don’t know, I was never in deprograming, that was a Turk thing.” Angeal sighed. “Have good, clear reasons for everything you ask him to do. I’m the adult won’t work with him. Introduce things that let him have power where possible—the Heal materia, maybe his Cure, he can’t get into trouble with that. Let him keep the Ribbon for now at least. It’s a level of self protection, and if we let him keep it, maybe he’ll start wondering why.”

One more deep breath in, and one more out. “Now, I’m going to go keep my promise and put him to bed, and then we can have a more in-depth discussion about how we’re going to handle this. Or we can take a break for a while. I’ll be right back.”

He went upstairs and set the boy in bed, struck again by the miniscule size of him. He seemed a lot bigger, awake and angry…but he was small like this. He was dwarfed by the bed, looking weirdly incidental to it when Angeal smoothed the covers, rather than looking like he occupied the damn bed. Angeal sighed, brushed a hand over the kid’s hair, and left the room. It was harder than it should have been.

“I think we know the basic plan. We obey orders, go back to the Tower. I told Lazard I couldn’t explain what happened over email for security reasons, but being in his physical presence should give us more leverage.” Genesis told him as he came down the stairs, waving him over to the couch. Sephiroth gave the stairs an odd look, like he didn’t trust them, or like he wanted to go break Angeal’s promise and go to Cloud’s room, but he came and sat with them.

He still didn’t look… great. It was subtle—the public wouldn’t know this Sephiroth from the one who led parades (and hated it) but Angeal did. This was closer to Sephiroth several months into fighting. Angeal exchanged a look with Genesis. Genesis blinked slowly, like a cat, and nodded so Angeal would know he saw.

Angeal sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “That isn’t a damn plan, Genesis. That’s a footnote. And it relies on tacitly threatening a Director. While we are at it, why don’t we try asking nicely. Or begging. Or licking Hojo’s boots.”

Genesis huffed at him. “There’s really no need to be nasty about it. I don’t like it either, but we can make this work out to our advantage.” Sephiroth leaned forward, just a little, anticipating what Genesis would say next. Angeal raised his eyebrows, and Genesis…coughed, glancing away. “While we are on the subject, I’ll volunteer for first watch.”

This plan of his had to be incredibly bad, if Genesis was openly trying to butter him up. Angeal looked over to Sephiroth, who only shrugged and said he would take second.

“No you will not, my idiot friend.” Gen snapped immediately. Angeal contented himself with just saying ‘no’. “Nor will you be taking any watch tonight.”

“What—?”

“Sephiroth. We are facing an enemy that can get in your head and we are facing the Directors. Maybe the President as well. You’re the one of us with the most leverage. You’ve been sleeping like shit and aren’t at your best. We need your best for this. You are damn well going to have at least the opportunity for a full night of sleep, and that won’t happen if you take a watch. So you are not taking a watch. You understand?”

Sephiroth looked vaguely bewildered by the unexpected dressing down from Genesis of all people. “But—”

“I will fight you in this living room and it will be embarrassing for both of us. I will put us on the news for the next month.” Genesis snapped. Sephiroth blinked at him.

Angeal, for his part, kept his threats practical and simple. “If you argue, you’ll wake Cloud. Same if you fight.”

“So give up!” Gen finished. With both his friends glaring, Sephiroth frowned and looked down, which Angeal took for concession. Or the closest thing to it. They’d have to repeat the threats before they left Gen to the first watch. But they would make it work. Sephiroth needed the sleep.

“Good,” Angeal said instead, to let Sephiroth know he considered the matter closed. Sephiroth frowned harder, but said nothing, doubtless retracing their arguments in his mind and trying to come up with a good counter.

Angeal turned to Genesis, unwilling to let his earlier diversion tactic actually work. He knew from experience that if he did, it would inevitably come back to bite him in the ass. “So, what was this terrible idea you cooked up, Gen?”

Genesis told him. 

The ensuing lecture nearly woke Cloud up.

Sephiroth was well accustomed to dreams. Less well accustomed to getting to bed early…but he fell asleep eventually.  He could usually tell when he was dreaming—something he had trained into himself back in the labs when he was small and scared. The dreams that had started plaguing him recently didn’t respond like ordinary dreams though—they responded like flashbacks did. It didn’t matter if he knew what was happening. He was helpless to change anything. 

This was not that. He came to himself standing on a dry and empty plain. Outside Midgar? He looked and yes, he was in the barren plains outside Midgar. The wind whistled over rocky terrain, stirring up dust that stood stark against the sky. No one was around. Nothing was happening.

His dreams weren’t usually this…peaceful? Boring, maybe. But given that he couldn’t remember the last time he had slept without the nightmares, he would take what he could get. 

Looking around more, he found himself staring at a growing black dot on the horizon. His ears picked up, very faintly, what he thought was the roar of an engine. After a few more seconds, he was sure—a motorcycle, travelling speeds suited only to a SOLDIER’s sense.

Sephiroth’s  jaw didn’t drop, but he did stare when he saw the rider. It was the man from his nightmares, fully grown, blond spikes unruly from the ride and mako blue eyes burning when he pulled down his goggles and stopped his bike to look at Sephiroth in return, quite some distance away.

They stared at each other for a long moment, before the blonde man started laughing, hard and unamused. “You have got to be fucking kidding me. Even here?”

Words tumbled from him without thought, tinged with his disorientation. “I don’t understand.” He didn’t know what to feel, but the disbelief in the man’s eyes somehow cut like a knife. “I don’t—please—did we meet? I’ve been seeing you in my nightmares—” Because still, Sephiroth knew deep in his bones that this was different. This was new.

Would it be better?

“ Your nightmares? You think we’re in your—how narcissistic can you be? Since when did you feel anything, let alone fear?”

The contempt in that voice just deepened his feeling of disorientation. But— “Are you saying I show up in your nightmares?”

That was the wrong question.The man’s eyes turned slit-pupiled just for a second and suddenly he was there, inches away, sword swinging with perfect deadly intent. It wasn’t the same, Sephiroth was still certain it wasn’t the same—but the man who hated him so deeply still fought like he did in the nightmares.

He killed like he did in them too.

When Sephiroth woke up in bed, his side and neck and shoulder throbbed with very real pain. He raised a shaky hand and felt along his skin, utterly silent. He was well versed in not making noise. His fingertips found no damage. The pain burned through his nerves like fire anyway.

He made no noise.

Chapter Text

Sephiroth stumbled out of bed that morning like a wounded man. Angeal rose from his seat automatically, eyes skating over him as he searched for damage. Genesis, too, looked at Sephiroth sharply—with mako healing, falling asleep in a weird position and getting stiff wasn’t an issue for any real length of time, yet they had heard him stumble into the shower before he came to the kitchen. He was rubbing his neck hard, like it pained him, and grimacing as only Sephiroth could grimace, with just the skin around his eyes. 

Eyes that had heavy shadows under them. He should have gotten a full night’s sleep. He should have woken up as rested and as relaxed as Sephiroth, Demon of Wutai, ever was. Instead, he looked a hell of a lot worse than he had after a six month campaign and three weeks of sustained shellings on their camp.

“The dreams?” Genesis asked, unwilling to dignify the situation or Sephiroth by taking his feet off the table and walking over to get a closer look at him like Angeal was. Not that Angeal’d had his feet on the table. He never did. 

Sephiroth shook his head, slowly, his damp hair only fanning out a little with the motion. “I… don’t think so.”

“Don’t think so?” Angeal asked as he reached out—slowly, from the front, because Sephiroth was their friend but he had still been on battlefields since he was far, far too young, and unexpected touch often got the reaction that surprising a SOLDIER deserved. Even with Angeal’s consideration, Sephiroth jolted to one side, eyes flaring with mako light for a barren moment. Angeal held very still, tilting his face downward almost submissively and murmuring softly until sense returned to his friend’s face. “What exactly does that mean, Seph? Were you dreaming? Not dreaming? Or do you not remember?”

If Sephiroth was waking up from dreams looking like a damn fresh recruit with his first kill in front of him, then this was getting worse fast. And if this… thing …that could reach into his mind could also cloud his memories of such...

Sephiroth took a shuddering breath and shut his eyes. An apology, of sorts, offering them a moment of vulnerability. “I…dreamed, yes, but it was… different. Not like a memory. I knew I was dreaming when I saw the man…I knew it, and spoke to him. And… he responded… badly.”

“Badly?”

“He was angry. And… surprised, I think. That I was there. Then he called me narcissistic because I told him I’d seen him in my nightmares… and then he snapped and attacked. I felt those sword strokes.” He hesitated, his hand creeping up again and tracing something—an attack pattern, perhaps. Neck, shoulder, side, chest. Pretty thorough if it was an attack pattern, and blazingly fast if even Sephiroth couldn’t dodge it. “I… woke up in pain.”

He was still in pain. And that…that…

“Okay, sit down?” Angeal said, eyes tight, and it may have been a question but it wasn’t a request. “If this… thing can get in your head, it makes sense that she could hurt you, right?”

“I don’t think it’s her,” Seph murmured, allowing himself to be guided to a chair, eyes still shut, this time in thought. “It…she…it felt…different.”

“Different how?” Genesis finally snapped. 

A few muscles in Sephiroth’s jaw tightened. Incrementally. “She felt more…familiar.”

There were birds and frogs singing in the early morning outside, accompanied by the droning rush of the waves. Somehow, that made the silence louder instead of drowning it out. 

“She hurt you.”

“Yes. It was as Cloud said. But…she wasn’t trying to hurt me. She just wanted in.” He took a deep breath. “If a door you want to get through is only half open, you might damage the door by forcing it, but that’s not the intent. But… the things she thought would please me were…horrifying. I pulled away but I didn’t know how to do so effectively until Cloud taught me.” He sighed and gestured with a few fingers on his right hand, the barest wave. “I was helpless.”

Angeal and Genesis exchanged a long, horrified look. Under other circumstances, Genesis would make a crack about that—the mighty Sephiroth, helpless—!

Except, since this hell started he’d already seen pieces of Sephiroth that didn’t match up with anything he thought he knew about the man. Cloud’s mere presence had done so much to put him on his back heel, make him examine what he thought he saw. In himself. In his friends. In the world. "Okay. Fine.” He closed his eyes, just briefly. “We put that aside for now.”

“Genesis—” Angeal started, brow furrowed.

“Angeal, we can’t do anything about this yet. I hate it too. But…maybe what works for keeping one monster out will work for the other too?”

Sephiroth considered, silver lashes veiling his eyes. “I can try. But there’s more than one reason attacks come at night. You have fewer defenses when you are asleep.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Despite all that Shinra has done to try and make me into something without weakness, I am no exception.”

Angeal shuddered, and shook his head. “Go outside—walk for a bit. We’ll finish up in here, with the packing. Maybe the kid will be less tense when you’re outside for a bit anyway.”

The beach was beautiful this time of the morning.

But his neck still ached ferociously.

When Cloud woke, it was the kind of waking he didn’t often get—the kind that comes after sleep so deep and dreamless that every bad memory has been wiped clean in its wake. Like drifting up from the bottom of a deep, dark pool, his eyes fluttered open, focusing slowly on the unfamiliar ceiling above him. The room was dim, cast in a faint bluish hue as afternoon light filtered through thick curtains. The air on his face was cold, though he was warm beneath thick, soft covers.

He felt closer to being his old self than he had at any point since this whole nightmare began.

Cloud inhaled once, deeply, and exhaled. Closed his eyes, just for a minute, and...felt like himself. He’d needed that sleep. Desperately. 

That didn’t mean he had to like the fact that the SOLDIERs pinned him down and forced the issue. They were lucky Jenova either couldn’t or hadn’t done anything while he was vulnerable so close to Sephiroth.

Or...maybe she had. He withdrew his arms from under the covers and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. The dream—Sephiroth showing up to ruin a perfectly good, mindless ride on Fenrir through the Wastes—had felt sort of...off. Staticky, almost, especially when he’d finally removed Sephiroth’s head from his shoulders and watched the body vanish.

He’d just been so angry.

Cloud let his arms drop to thump against the plush duvet and stared up at the ceiling again. Did it matter? Did any of this matter? He had to get away ASAP. Away from the SOLDIERs and their idiotic good intentions, then on to Corel. He had work to do, and it didn’t matter how he felt.

All that mattered was making sure his friends didn’t suffer twice over. What was it he’d decided in the bath? Play nice, stay awake, stay aware, and the second he saw an opening, take it. He didn’t have to worry so much about the staying awake part now—that danger had passed. Which, really, just left the escaping part.

It wouldn’t be hard. Not if he made them think they’d won a significant victory. Especially not when he finally felt like a rational adult. How long that would last, he didn’t know, but they had to move soon. Within the day, probably. He’d have to make some sacrifices—his pride, for one, and Tsurugi, for another—but he could slip away.

He exhaled again, a little sharply this time, and sat up. When he threw the covers off he realized he was...still in the same clothing as before, that stupid kitschy tourist tee and the cargo shorts with little wave patterns all over them. Angeal had kept to his word. Cloud glanced at the door and spared a second to pinpoint where everyone was in the house. There were only two, talking between themselves in the kitchen. Sephiroth was missing—maybe outside, maybe gone entirely.

He scoffed and slid to the floor, hating the fact that he was too small to sit on the edge of the mattress and have his feet on the tile at the same time. Sephiroth, gone? As if Cloud was ever so lucky.

The conversation in the kitchen died off as he stood and headed for the bathroom. “Cloud?” Hewley called when the bedroom door opened, an odd note to his tone that puzzled Cloud. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Cloud said shortly, just loud enough for the enhanced men to hear, then pointedly slammed the bathroom door shut and locked it. He waited, tensely, but after a moment the conversation downstairs resumed. No one came upstairs to bother him. He exhaled a slow breath and went to take a shower.

When he emerged, clean and refreshed, there were three voices below. His lip curled. He went downstairs anyway.

Three heads went up as he came into the kitchen, and three pairs of eyes assessed him. It made his skin itch, but he busied himself inspecting them in return. Hewley and Rhapsodos looked tense and unhappy, but they also relaxed a little when they saw him. Sephiroth, on the other hand, looked like he’d been kicked between the legs a few times, and quickly moved his hand down from where it had been rubbing at the back of his neck.

Cloud wondered what that was about for a moment before dismissing the thought as unimportant. Instead, his eyes went to where two swords (Tsurugi! Even through a canvas wrap, he knew it like the back of his hand) and three bags were lined up against the kitchen wall, and then to the smaller third bag, obviously newly purchased, that Sephiroth was holding.

So, they were moving today. Now, even. He wondered what pretty justification they were going to spin up to try and win him over.

The three SOLDIERs exchanged glances and hesitated, each clearly waiting for the other to speak first. Cloud crossed his arms over his chest and stayed silent, leveling them with a deeply unimpressed look. Really—Shinra’s big three, and they couldn’t even talk to a little kid? 

Surprisingly, it was Sephiroth who spoke up first. “Cloud,” he said, slow and hesitant. “We—here.” He pulled a materia out of the bag and stuttered forward a step before he seemed to think better of it and tossed the materia instead. Reflexively, Cloud caught it. He went still in shock as a familiar tingle traveled up his palm. This was—

“Yours,” Rhapsodos said. “Your mastered Cure.”

“Keep it with you,” Hewley added.

Cloud looked at them with naked incomprehension, fingers curling a little tighter around the materia. He still had the Heal too, heavy in his pocket. And neither of them were offensive materia, much less his sword, but…

Genesis sighed. “You don’t trust us, and—” he glanced at Angeal for some reason. “And realistically we cannot blame you. But please, believe us when we say we don’t want to see you hurt.”

“Why should I?” he snapped immediately, reflexively, pressing the warm curve of the Cure into his chest, where it couldn’t be taken from him easily.

“Well,” said Angeal, soft and patient, inclining his head toward the Cure, “that’s a start, at least?”

It certainly wasn’t going to hurt his escape plan. They didn’t intend it that way, of course, but...it was still true. Even if he didn’t understand it. Even if he didn’t trust it. “Right,” he said shortly, slipping the Cure into his pocket.

The three SOLDIERs exchanged another glance when he didn’t add anything. “Well, now that you’re up,” Angeal said after the silence had grown awkward, “we have to go, or we’ll miss our ship. The backpack’s for you, too.”

This time, Sephiroth did close the distance between them, still a little hesitant, and held the bag out. Cloud took it, for a lack of anything better to do. Sephiroth retreated immediately, joining Genesis and Angeal as they rose and started gathering up their own bags.

The backpack in Cloud’s hand was a nondescript black, and heavier than he’d expected. He unzipped the main compartment to find an equally nondescript pair of black sneakers. Beneath that were socks and what looked like another two sets of clothes.

He forcibly turned his thoughts away from how and why they’d been given to him and instead focused on how lucky it was that everything seemed basic in design, instead of flashy and bright like most children’s clothing.

No one spoke as he sat and pulled shoes and socks on. Maybe they were scared that a single wrong word would turn him back into a snapping, snarling mess. It might have, had he not been focused entirely on how and when he was going to escape. And he certainly wasn’t going to break the silence himself.

Genesis went upstairs and came back down with the plastic bag of child-sized clothing in one hand, and the soft red blanket that Cloud had woken up under three times in the other. “Here, hand me that for a moment,” he said, holding out a hand for Cloud’s backpack. Since he wasn’t about to reject extra resources, even if he didn’t particularly like them, he handed the bag over. Genesis folded up the clothing in a few efficient motions and put them on top of what was already in the backpack, then did the same with the blanket.

Cloud noted that both Angeal and Sephiroth looked surprised, though at what he didn’t know.

“Alright, let’s go,” Angeal said, a bag over one shoulder and the Buster on his back again. Sephiroth had attached Tsurugi to his own back, somehow, and it was such a strange sight that Cloud made himself look away. Genesis took the last bag and slung it over his shoulder.

“Where’s my gear?” Cloud asked, though he knew the most likely answer: split up between their bags and pockets, so that he couldn’t just swipe all of it in one go. That was what he would have done.

“It’s safe,” Genesis assured him. “Don’t worry. It’s all coming with us.”

“Right,” Cloud said flatly, wrestling down the urge to start snarling again. “Fine. Let’s go.”

He didn’t miss the way the three SOLDIERs looked uneasy at his compliance. He didn’t miss the way they surrounded him like a cadre of unwelcome bodyguards, or the way he sat in the back of the car, sandwiched between Genesis and Angeal to make sure he didn’t leap straight out of it. He shut his eyes and leaned his head back, meditating as well as he could under the circumstances.

They weren’t going to let him out of their sight on land, he knew. They weren’t even going to relax much until the ship had pulled out of harbor. But they would relax, marginally at the very least, once they were out to sea. They would relax, conserving their strength for what they thought would be the real battle: getting him into Midgar. He only needed a split second to disappear. Just a blink.

He would be gone before they could even think to stop him.

He’d gotten rusty. 

The years in the coffin, the pain, the tourture, this freakish new body—it didn’t matter which was the deciding factor. He’d gotten rusty. There was no way it would have taken Vincent Valentine, the Turk, days to find a boy whose trail he’d followed every step of the way. He’d waited before grabbing the boy and demanding answers—because frankly, you didn’t have to be trained in reading people to recognize that the kid had a reason to hate the Shinra mansion, and it did deserve to burn—but he’d chosen to be cautious and follow the red-haired man and the walking mental breakdown he brought with him rather than intervening.

Initially, Vincent thought it would be simple to approach and snatch the child, but the man stank of mako and seemed to stop and take notice every time Vincent got too close. He dismissed whatever had summoned his attention easily enough when Vincent let him sit for a few more minutes without any further noise or motion. Mako was Shinra’s province—quite apart from the possible complications of fighting another mako enhanced individual, it might draw him back to Shinra’s attention. To Hojo’s. 

Vincent didn’t want to consider himself a coward, but the idea of facing Hojo, backed up this time by supersoldier bullyboys, made his veins feel like they were filled with ice.

So. He watched, and waited, and followed the man and gathered information as he went—what year it was, who these men were. Baby steps, little things. Vincent was trained, and trained well, but not for reappearing in the world twenty years after he’d been discarded by it.

He’d lucked out today, seeing the man with silver hair out in the morning sunlight, walking the path down the beach with the reluctance of a tourist whose vacation was ending. 

But the boy had answers he needed. They’d move him soon, he knew, and he was rewarded when all the SOLDIERs and the child poured into a car, which drove to the docks. A boat was waiting to take them to Kalm, then presumably Midgar. 

The boat would be a tremendous opportunity: isolated area, limited civilian casualties, and he doubted strongly that the SOLDIERs would follow him off it when he likely took the boy and fled. They didn’t have wings, after all. He did. And, somehow, he thought that the boy knew he did too.

There were strange noises coming from the lab proper. But then, there were often strange noises. Sometimes Hojo even returned to perform experiments before leaving again. Vincent didn’t pay much attention.

Vincent paid slightly more attention when the noises, accompanied by the yelling of an angry child, entered the crypt in which he was entombed.

Vincent had no choice but to pay full attention when the coffin lid was unceremoniously kicked off, struck hard enough that it flew across the room to shatter against the wall.

Vincent barely had time to open his eyes and see a cherubic, furiously angry face framed by wild blond hair before he was being loudly harangued. “Lucrecia Crescent is still alive and her son is going to kill the world,” he was told. By the time he truly felt the impact of the words that fell like sledgehammer blows across his mind, the child had already finished yelling: “GET YOUR ASS UP, VINCENT VALENTINE, BECAUSE I’M BURNING THIS LAB TO THE FUCKING GROUND!”

Vincent blinked, opened his mouth to say something—the child was already gone. He’d vanished at a speed no normal human could achieve, much less a child.

...mako eyes. The child had been glaring at him with eyes that gleamed mako-bright in the dimness of the crypt. Had he, too, been touched by Hojo’s vile machinations?

Sounds of continued destruction carried from the lab. Whatever was going on, the boy-child clearly had the power to carry through on his words. Vincent slowly sat up, feeling as creaky as a rusted gate. Distantly, the child screamed in rage and glass shattered.

It was probably best to let him burn the damnable place to the ground before trying to coax more details from him.

It was a simple thing, to trace them—to figure out which boat it would be, long before they actually boarded. Shipping manifestos, amounts of food kept on board, passenger names… who worked willingly with Shinra, and who was owned by them. The harbormaster’s office was immaculate and, completely on paper, well organized.

First: Mako did things to men. Made them sensitive to sound and touch and everything else. He would know. He would know better than anyone.

Ergo, a boat with secure and clean and private passenger cabins. 

Second: whatever they were doing, it wasn’t entirely within the purview of Shinra, or they would have simply called for a helicopter extract. They were looking for something…possibly information, from the child. 

So. The boat would not be owned by Shinra, at least not directly. That narrowed his options considerably. Good. 

Third: the mako-enhanced ate a lot, and they were all enhanced, even the child. Vincent could estimate, vaguely, how many calories it would take, based on snippets of ugly things he had overhead in the manor as he strove vainly for the comfort of oblivion. Only three ships were left on his list that offered anything close to enough calories per meal for passengers of the enhanced variety.

Fourth: none of these men were trained agents of subterfuge, or they wouldn’t be so damned sloppy. And the untrained would have purchased all four tickets at the same time and not seen the harm in registering them as their appropriate genders and ages. Three adult males, one male child.

His list was down to one. The Great Escape, a cruise/passenger vessel, had just such a set of passengers all registered neatly to one suite, which would offer the privacy, food and security they needed. 

Vincent replaced the papers, leaving no trace of his presence behind. He had himself smuggled into the food storage a full day before the boat departed. Yes, it was cold in the freezer, and no, normal humans would not have welcomed the prospect of being slowly frozen…but it wouldn’t kill him, and he would remain undetected.

He’d already survived worse.

Well. If this counted as surviving.

“Here we are!” Genesis said brightly as they all clambered out of the cab. They’d sat with Genesis on one side of the boy and Angeal on the other, with Sephiroth in the front…which made Sephiroth noticeably twitchy, but made the boy…perhaps a little viciously happy? 

Sometimes he understood this kid too well. And he didn’t think he liked it. 

But, it seemed like his spiteful pleasure at lingering in Sephiroth’s blind spot was keeping him too occupied for more escape attempts. Genesis also didn’t particularly like that dealing with him had given Angeal insight into how to manipulate the boy.

Still. Better than letting him get up to more shenanigans.

Cloud remained eerily silent and blank-faced, hands holding the straps of his backpack like he needed something to occupy them (a weapon. He wanted a weapon). They’d used their privileges as elite First Class SOLDIERs to arrange a quiet, inconspicuous boarding—through a staff entrance, and at a time when the other passengers and cargo had already been brought aboard. It wouldn’t be possible to keep their presences completely unknown, but the boy was the most important part. He was the one who needed to stay unnoticed for as long as possible. 

He rolled his eyes when he saw the ship— “ The Great Escape Luxury Cruiser,” he read, voice dry. The look he cast them was truly remarkable.

“It has what we need,” Angeal said firmly, and nudged the sarcastic little brat along before Genesis could. Sephiroth was leading their group, presenting them with his vulnerable back, and that still seemed to be keeping Cloud viciously occupied. “Including plenty of private space for you to run around in—we arranged to let you roam around during some of the times the general area, the waterpark, and the gym are closed.”

Genesis and Sephiroth had both firmly agreed that the last thing they wanted was for someone as prone to destruction as Cloud to get bored. He’d probably sink the ship right beneath them and spare not a thought for regret.

Cloud snorted derisively, but didn’t comment further, and that...made Genesis frown. He was sure the child hadn’t spontaneously learned to hold his temper. Even before he’d exhausted himself he’d been a snappy, acerbic little thing. The more he’d felt cornered, the more he’d lashed out. Yet here he was, in a situation that should have set him to snarling like a feral cat, and he was...calmly accompanying them.

True, the forced quiescence of a sleepel wasn’t normal sleep. It could be that he’d been exhausted to the limit in all the time they’d known him, and simply needed real, solid sleep to become a well-behaved child…but Genesis strongly doubted it. He’d found the little bastard burning down a building after all.

Most likely, they had anticipated Cloud accurately in their discussion earlier, and he was simply being more extreme in biding his time than they’d thought—the real fight was when they tried to get him off the boat and headed to Midgar. He was saving his strength for (what he saw as) a life-or-death struggle on the horizon.

The calm still set Genesis ill at ease.

Hopefully, they’d be able to handle whatever the crazy child cooked up when the time came. For now, he was just relieved to be casting off. Soon, they’d be at the open sea, and the boy would be forced, for a while at least, to let them relax.

And who knew? Maybe Cloud would even take a moment to relax himself.

Cloud made a show of being restless when they got to “their” quarters. Wonder of wonders, they didn’t pause to tell him to take his backpack off before they left again. Maybe they hoped that the extra weight would make him more tired when they stopped exploring the empty decks. Maybe they noticed that he’d never once let go of the straps, and that having his hands free and restless only promised a trail of destruction.

They let him run around, clearly thinking he couldn’t get into too much trouble in an empty water park, a gym, a general area with chairs and a great view of the land they were leaving behind. Not with all three of them on hand, anyway. Cloud could almost feel the tension draining from the SOLDIERs.

Relief was a powerful remedy, Cloud knew. But it was also a powerful weapon if you used it right. Strong enough relief could make you dizzy and foolish. He needed them dizzy and foolish. And that meant he needed to “behave.” So he let them linger in peaceful stillness for a bit, pretending to be transfixed by the view—letting it soak into them, and getting an idea of where exactly on the boat they were positioned.

When he felt that he’d given them long enough, and that his mental map was as fixed as it was going to get from here, he set off running again. There were full maps of the ship posted. He caught these in the corner of his eye, memorizing what he could without making it obvious what he was looking at. For his purposes, it was enough. There were passenger areas, and there were unmarked crew areas that sat in the blank gaps. And, while he wasn’t a master of stealth like Vincent or Yuffie, he felt confident that he could slip into a crew passageway undetected.

If he had the right distraction, that was.

Compared to the beach house, it was so very, very loud on the boat. Other people chattered, voices echoing, and their heartbeats and breath made a background hum that his own would be hidden against. Waves crashed against the hull; the ship’s powerful engines droned, on and on, deep in the metal bones of the ship. Once they’d lost track of him, even for a split second, it would be impossible to find him again in the midst of this sensory cacophony.

He slowed down just a little, searching for the perfect distraction. He wandered into a common room which was far too fancy but hey, he wasn’t paying for it. His eyes caught on an ornate vase in the middle of the room. Tifa had loved things like that, and he’d gotten pretty good at gauging what was well made and what was poorly constructed at a glance. He’d always wanted to find the ones that would please her. This one was well-made, a real work of art.

He grimaced minutely at it, mentally apologizing for what he was about to do, then shifted his expression to curiosity and just a touch of wonder as he trotted up to it.

It was easy to do, but harder to make look accidental. He released the straps of his backpack for the first time, barely brushed fingertips over the vase’s smooth surface, and— 

Tifa’s face lit up as she saw the vase he offered, his fingertips sliding over the cool, smooth surface as she took it in her own hands like it was something precious, and the warmth in her eyes was everything— 

The porcelain hit the ground and shattered. It was the loudest noise Cloud had ever heard, but he’d frozen in place, hand still outstretched. For a moment, he couldn’t…he hadn’t meant to affect himself like this, it was just supposed to be an act— he hadn’t meant to think about what he’d lost. He hadn’t meant to remember, but he had, and his chest ached like he’d been stabbed.

I'm sorry, Tifa...

The place exploded like a hornet’s nest that had been kicked—ship staff sprang into the room like the crash had summoned them, and Angeal cursed, mentally. Not out loud. Doing that would just encourage Genesis.  Of course the various crew members had been discreetly keeping an eye on things, despite their request for privacy. It wasn’t everyday you got Shinra’s top Firsts on your ship. 

Genesis had already moved to intercept one obviously upset man, who had apparently (and loudly) loved that specific vase for its historical value and utterly perfect preservation. Angeal moved toward Cloud, trusting Sephiroth to speak to the people fussing over how they should collect the… probably still valuable shards, wondering aloud if it could be reconstructed. And Sephiroth did, but first he paused and looked for a long moment into the boy’s face.

Cloud was frozen, shoulders drawn up by his ears, staring into the middle distance, his hands shaking ever so slightly—and hadn’t he been so reverent when he’d reached out to touch the vase with a child’s tactile, unthinking curiosity?

Sephiroth looked to Angeal, and pitched his voice low so that the unenhanced humans would not hear. “Hojo responds very badly to having anything, no matter how insignificant, broken in his lab.”

Angeal sucked in a deep breath, understanding immediately. Sephiroth nodded, seeing that he’d communicated his point, and moved to speak softly with a woman who went from distressed to overawed in under a heartbeat. 

Thinking quickly, Angeal closed the last of the distance between himself and Cloud, kneeling so that he was blocking Cloud’s view of the shattered vase. The boy looked distraught, and if Angeal had been entertaining thoughts of a charade, he wasn’t anymore.

“Cloud,” he said, gentle, and reached out to very, very carefully take hold of Cloud’s shaking hands—child though he was, he was also a warrior, and it was dangerous to treat him with any less caution than he treated Sephiroth. “It’s okay. It was just an accident. You’re not...back there anymore. No one is going to hurt you over an accident, okay?” He squeezed Cloud’s hands, hoping that it might make the boy’s sightless blue eyes focus just a little.

Then another man came out, some sort of supervisor by the look of his uniform, and began to interrogate everyone on what was going on, even as he tried to corral the chaos. Angeal sighed, sparing Cloud the last bit of his attention.  “We’ll handle this, okay? Just...stay right here for a second.”

He released Cloud’s hands and set aside his worry over how distant the boy’s eyes still were—once the ship’s staff had been appeased, he could devote his full attention to making sure Cloud was okay.

Cloud took a deep breath as the various SOLDIERs were occupied, then took another deep breath. He couldn’t afford to feel the hurt of…he couldn’t afford to feel, not right now. So he walked, rather than running, away from the frantic group and the mess he’d made, opened a discreet side door, and pulled it shut behind him.

The overhead lights—bare and unpolished, since no guests were meant to see this—were off, but he didn’t need them to see. He went quickly but quietly, listening for the tell-tale sounds of an open door or footsteps echoing down the hall. With his enhanced senses, he didn’t need to be stealthy, and he managed to get down to the lower decks without being seen.

From there, it was child's play to find where the great rolls of chain attached to the anchor were stored. More importantly, he also found the port the anchor and chain were dropped through. He sat in it for a moment, taking stock of the sea. The land was only just visible on the horizon now, but he was enhanced—he could swim that far, and he could swim hard enough to keep from being drawn under the boat and through the churning propellers.

For a normal human, this would be suicide. For Cloud, it was salvation. The Firsts would assume he had hidden away on the boat—it would be the reasonable thing for a frightened, hostile child to do—and they would turn the whole place upside down looking for him. By the time they realized the truth, they’d be far out to sea, and he’d be firmly on land and on his way.

He took off his shoes and socks and tucked them into the backpack, double-checking the zippers and making sure every single solitary item would be safe through the rough swim. He drew the backpack’s straps tight around his shoulders, knotting the loose ends around his chest for extra security. Then, finally, he took a deep breath, prayed no one was looking in the exact direction he would be entering the sea, and jumped.

Chapter Text

Angeal turned away for quite literally less than thirty seconds—just enough to placate the supervisor with polite honesty while also reminding him (and everyone else) exactly who they were talking to. The furor died down quickly, civilians easily cowed beneath the Firsts’ authority, and he glanced back over his shoulder to check on the kid. What he expected was that Cloud would still be standing in place, perhaps still distressed or perhaps working to pull himself back under control. He expected brewing anger, honestly.

What he got was a missing child.

Angeal’s breath caught, but not in panic. Surprise, first. And the thing was, the ship was loud. Busy—full of conflicting sounds and signals, like white noise. As he quickly swept his eyes around the room, searching for a head of bright blond hair, he couldn’t use the same tricks they had back on the beach. There was no way to hear where Cloud was. 

But he couldn’t see Cloud anywhere, either. Twenty-five seconds was a very long time when you had enhanced speed.

Dawning horror chased on the heels of his surprise. It occurred to him, as it hadn’t thirty seconds earlier, that he’d forgotten the very thing he’d told Gen and Seph: the kid wasn’t a kid, or at least they couldn’t treat him like one. He was a scarred, wary, abused POW in the hands of his worst enemies. Angeal had forgotten. He’d turned away from an unfettered, untrusting, enhanced captive.

‘Captive.’

He indulged in a rare curse. “Fuck,” he breathed, ignoring the civilians completely. They’d ceased to matter in the slightest. “Cloud!”

Both of his friends’ heads snapped up. “What?” Genesis said, and then “Damn!”

“He must have panicked again,” Sephiroth said, and it was perhaps half a lie intended for the civilians. Cloud was scared, but not for the reasons they would assume. “Fan out, quickly.”

But the problem quickly became apparent: searching for one little boy amidst the clamor of the ship was essentially impossible. If he’d been a normal child, their speed and number might have been enough. But he was not a normal child. He was just as fast as they were, and even a thirty second head start was enough to vanish.

Still, they ran, each choosing a direction. By an unspoken understanding, they split the deck up into three parts: Sephiroth port, Genesis middle, and Angeal starboard. Their PHSs wouldn’t work out at sea—whoever found Cloud would have to get him back to the room for a rendezvous, or make enough of a racket to overcome the noisiness of the ship.

If they found him.

Angeal shook the thought off. Of course they would find him. Cloud might be very, very good at running away and hiding, but they were in the middle of the ocean. There was nowhere to go that the SOLDIERs couldn’t find him eventually. He would be hungry and thirsty. Worst case scenario, they would have to ask the ship’s crew to keep an eye out for him in the kitchens and dining areas. As scared, headstrong, and self-destructive as the kid was, he was still in a contained environment. He would be okay.

Angeal was so occupied thinking and trying to listen for any sign of the kid that he very nearly slammed into a tall, dark-haired man who was striding down the narrow walkway along the side of the ship. He cursed, skidding slightly to keep from accidentally injuring a civilian, and grabbed the man’s arm for balance. The man, in turn, reached out to steady him with… an armored hand?

Angeal took everything in with the lightning-fast perception of a SOLDIER in active combat: tre man was tall, dressed strangely with half his face concealed; one armored hand; the arm Angeal was gripping felt like it had the impossibly solid muscle of a SOLDIER; unnaturally cold, like he’d just been pulled from a bank of snow; piercingly bright red eyes, lit up with an unmistakable mako gleam.

He was walking around a restricted deck, right when Cloud had gone missing.

“Sorry!” Angeal said, not letting go of the man’s arm. Then, very deliberately, he asked, “Have you seen a little blond boy come this way?”

Recognition and keen interest sparked in the stranger’s eyes. Angeal’s grip tightened as his suspicions were confirmed. And the man was no mere civilian: he realized immediately what had been given away. 

The resulting clash was as quick as it was inevitable. 

Angeal twisted, trying to use his strength to pin the man up against the wall in an arm lock, but the man immediately proved himself to be experienced with close-quarters combat. He pulled free at an angle where Angeal’s grip was the weakest, simultaneously proving that he had a SOLDIER’s strength. Angeal swung, changing tactics in favor of a quick takedown, but was countered with an efficient block as the man sprang back. A gun appeared from beneath the red cloak, but he only held it in a low ready position.

“If you hurt the kid I will make you regret it,” Angeal growled, eyes narrowed. “Where is he!”

“You lost him,” the man said in a voice rough from disuse. His head tilted slightly. “Or… he lost you.”

Angeal stopped wasting time with interrogation. The man reminded him, oddly, of a Turk. He obviously wouldn’t get a straight answer without applying pressure.

Fine. Pressure it was, then.

The Buster was off his back and swinging in a split second. It would be more than enough to block the man’s gunfire as he charged—gunfire that would, Angeal was sure, catch the attention of Genesis and Sephiroth. He didn’t necessarily need to win the fight to win the battle.

But the man did not act according to his assumptions. Angeal had barely taken a step forward before the man was fleeing the confrontation. He leapt onto the railing and then launched up, ascending to an upper deck in a smooth movement. Angeal cursed again since Genesis wasn’t there to hear him and shouted “IN PURSUIT!” as he gave chase. He hoped that at least one of his friends was still close enough to hear.

It was not an easy pursuit, but it wasn’t hopeless either. The man was fast, flexible, and clearly skilled… but there was also a strange quality to his movements too, as if he was unsettled in his own skin. Angeal would have caught up to him thanks to it, had he not seemed to know the layout of the ship in excruciating detail. 

The civilians posed another problem since the man was willing to use them as human shields, further slowing Angeal down. It was a struggle not to injure any of the people the man tripped or shoved into his path, but Angeal quickly noticed that the man wasn’t intentionally harming any of them either. He hoped that meant Cloud was okay too.

In the end, what brought the chase screeching to a halt at the bow of the ship was Sephiroth’s sudden presence. How he knew exactly where to intercept them, Angeal didn’t know, but that was Sephiroth’s way. He often had strange and uncanny insights that couldn’t be explained. The cloaked man easily dodged a warning strike from Masamune, but as soon as he caught sight of Sephiroth’s face, he froze.

“You…” he breathed.

“Where is Cloud,” Sephiroth demanded in his terrifyingly calm way. Angeal was content to stand ready beside him rather than escalating the chase into a proper brawl. Not yet. From the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Gen’s coat.

Mako-bright crimson eyes searched Sephiroth’s face intently. The man seemed almost stunned by the sight of him. “You look… so much like your mother,” he said, barely a breath of air to give the words life.

Sephiroth looked like he’d been struck, eyes going wide. The two stared at each other for long enough that Genesis caught up.

“Angeal, that is not Cloud,” he said crossly, breaking the inexplicable tension. The cloaked man easily dodged the lightning Genesis cast, leaping back to perch again on the ship’s railing. Angeal was just grateful Genesis had the good sense not to use fire on a ship.

“You, what did you do with—!” Genesis cut off as he got a good look at their mysterious opponent, startled. He glanced between the man and Sephiroth, and the startlement turned to something downright spooked. “Wait—who—?”

A blindingly bright light suddenly flashed, forcing the Firsts to turn away and shield their eyes. When they looked back, each prepared to fight in earnest, the man was simply gone. In his place, a winged demon hovered just above the railing. As they gaped it gave them an unreadable look and took off, diving low and hovering close to the waves as it flew. They had no choice but to run to the railing and watch it go.

“What…?” Genesis said, unable to even finish his thought.

Angeal shook himself. “I—Cloud. We still need to find Cloud. That man couldn’t have taken him in so short a time. He must still be here somewhere.”

Observation and analysis would have to wait for a later time. They exchanged looks, each laden with too many emotions to parse, and took off running again.

Cloud was ready to drop by the time he dragged himself out of the sea. Not only had the current dragged him miles upon miles away from the port, but he’d been forced to scale a near-vertical cliff in order to reach solid ground he could rest on. Wheezing and lightheaded, he rolled over onto his back and let the sun warm his chilled skin.

After a few minutes of laying motionless, he felt okay enough to sit up again and realized he was a lot more roughed-up than he thought. The climb had given him a good deal of cuts and scrapes, though most were healed already. The blood lingered as evidence and he grimaced, wiping his bloody hands off on his shirt.

“Well,” he muttered, climbing to his feet and shading his eyes with a hand. There was no sign of pursuit, unsurprisingly. He also had no idea where he was. “...fuck.”

There was nothing for it but to walk. He pulled his shoes and socks out of his backpack, grimaced at how wet they were, and reluctantly put them back. He chose bare feet and minor cuts over blisters and loud, squelching steps. He turned and faced the treeline, unable to make out any significant landmarks over the dense canopy. No matter where he was he still needed to head inland due west for a while, so he marked the position of the sun and set off.

The sun climbed as he walked, then sank in front of him and vanished. The forest turned from unbearably humid to cold as he continued on in the pitch darkness, listening intently for any sounds of fresh water. Rosy pink dawn was peeking in through the leaves by the time he did. He cursed his miniaturized body. He was fucking tired— a lot more than he should have been, and there was nothing he could do about it.

He wondered how bad it would have been if they hadn’t forced him to sleep.

The water source he found was a modest stream, but it was more than good enough for his purposes. He drank his fill, then set about building a modest and smokeless fire. It was probably a good thing dawn had arrived. The daylight would help disguise his camp.

In the end there wasn’t enough good, dry wood to make a truly smokeless fire, but he at least kept it to a minimum. That was good enough. He sat by it and unpacked his still-damp backpack, taking inventory as he laid things out to fully dry: Ribbon safe around his arm; the mastered Cure; the Heal; two extra sets of clothing; shoes; socks; undergarments; Genesis’s red blanket. When he rifled through the side pockets, he was surprised to find two things he wasn’t expecting.

First was a good-sized bag of sweets that had survived the sea by virtue of being unopened. He stared down at it, unable to decide how to feel. On one hand, it was easy calories for an arduous trek. It was a simple pleasure too, even for him—and he wasn’t known for taking pleasure in much beside his own stupid self-destruction. On the other, had they really thought he could be won over with fucking candy? He scoffed and tossed it back into the bag with more force than was necessary.

The second surprise was… well. A plushie. A black puppy dog with blue bead eyes and paws solidly weighted with pellets. A pink velvet tongue lolled from its grinning mouth. The toy’s resemblance to a certain long-lost friend made his stomach twist painfully. It was surely some mean cosmic joke, because they couldn’t possibly have known—

He suddenly felt cold as realization hit him. No, they could. They might. Sephiroth might. Because their dreams were entangled and the SOLDIER knew things he shouldn’t. He’d anticipated Cloud before he’d even arrived. It was entirely possible Cloud wasn’t the only thing he’d seen thanks to Jenova.

The cold, sick feeling intensified and he gripped the toy hard, staring sightlessly down at it. Would they do something to Zack? Would they think he’d had something to do with Cloud’s decisions? Would he be detained, interrogated, hurt… killed? Because of Cloud?

Again?

Then it dawned on him that he himself had given them the name ‘Zack’—and even if they’d already known the same way they’d known ‘Cloud’, he had surely confirmed it by stupidly asking Genesis if he knew a SOLDIER named Zack.

Cloud abruptly scrambled away from his little campsite and threw up the water he’d just drunk.

He couldn’t fix it. There was nothing he could do to rescue Zack. His hands shook as he dry heaved. There was no way he could beat them to Midgar, and what good was he as a little child without even a sword? He’d get them both gunned down again… or worse. There was nothing he could do.

“I’m sorry,” he said painfully. The stuffed dog was still in his hand, crushed into the root of a tree and he braced himself on hands and knees. He immediately eased up, bringing the toy to his chest in a fundamentally stupid gesture of useless protectiveness. “I’m sorry, Zack. Fuck, I’m sorry!”

It took him longer than he wanted to admit to pull himself together, but eventually he crawled back over to the creek and washed out his mouth. At least he hadn’t eaten anything before now. He couldn’t afford to waste food.

He couldn’t afford to waste time or strength either. Now that he’d been painfully reminded of the dreams, he decided it was safest to sleep during the day and move at night. He couldn’t afford to think about things he couldn’t change—only things he could, or, barring that, nothing at all. Sleep it was.

He left his meager supplies out to dry, banked the fire, and curled up to nap for as long as he could before continuing onward. Once he woke, it would be on to Corel without rest until the dawning of the next day.

He couldn’t quite bring himself to let go of the image of his dead friend, and neither could he let go of the idea of his living equivalent. The stuffed puppy remained in his arms as he slept.

Day turned to evening and there was still no sign of Cloud. They’d scoured the ship from top to bottom, inside and out. Their ears were ringing from listening so intently in such a noisy place, and their heads hurt from the same by the time they conceded for the moment and returned to their cabin. The ship’s staff was left to keep an eye out for the boy while they rested.

Angeal sat on the edge of one of the lower beds and then let himself fall back onto it, throwing an arm over his eyes. The darkness was a blessing. Genesis paced around the narrow space. Sephiroth sat on the other bed and looked out through the sole window at the featureless oceanic landscape.

“He had his backpack,” Sephiroth observed abruptly a little while later. Genesis paused in his pacing and Angeal grunted in acknowledgement. “He planned this.”

“Yes, of course he did,” Genesis agreed, finally throwing himself into the cabin’s only chair. “It seems to be what he does best, even if those plans are… shall we say, less than detailed.”

“I don’t believe he’s on the ship anymore.”

Angeal sat straight up and looked at his friend incredulously. “What?”

Sephiroth seemed tired, but also relatively settled compared to what he had been the past few days. “I don’t believe he’s on the ship anymore. It’s very likely that he deliberately jumped overboard while we were still in sight of land, but not so close that we would think he would do such a thing. In fact, I am also beginning to suspect he broke that vase on purpose.”

Angeal frowned. “That kid isn’t a good enough actor to pretend to be that freaked out.”

“I agree. I think that his choice merely backfired on him in a way that helped his plan. Perhaps it triggered a flashback.”

Genesis scrubbed a hand over his face. “Little fool,” he muttered, looking at the sword and bags arranged along the wall. “I suppose he has enough stamina and spite to make it to shore in calm weather, but he had no provisions.”

“He is resourceful.” Sephiroth sighed and steepled his fingers. “We will continue searching, in case I am wrong, but there is nothing we can do until we reach land in either case.”

Angeal exhaled slowly as an unhappy frown carved across his face. “We can’t go chasing after him right away if he really did… jump,” he said. “We’ll have to go report in first, but how will we spin this in our favor?”

“Lie,” said Genesis.

“Tell the truth,” said Sephiroth at the same time, a little ghost of a smile crossing his face when Genesis shot him a downright scandalized look. “Or enough of it. We can turn Lazard against Hojo with a fair bit of ease, I think. If we manage to get Cloud again, we may even be able to turn the President against Hojo.”

Angeal sat back. “What do you mean? Lazard isn’t usually one to overtly take sides in the boardroom.”

“Cloud is an anti-SOLDIER element turned anti-Shinra.” Seph raised his eyebrows significantly. “An illicit experiment gone rogue. Lazard would be a fool not to use that to his advantage in consolidating power under SOLDIER.”

Genesis scoffed. “Won’t that just make us look like incompetent fools for losing him?” he asked scathingly.

“I did say enough of the truth. He doesn’t need to know all of it.”

“Maybe,” Angeal conceded. “But the pressure will be on to find him, in that case, and we have no idea where he’s going. We may have been able to contain him reasonably well, but if Heideggar manages to get involved that kid will start slaughtering the rank and file too. Then he’ll really be in trouble.”

“Correct,” Sephiroth said. “SOLDIERs only. Firsts or Second, especially, and only in teams. We can manage that. As for where he’s going, I suspect it isn’t quite as opaque as you think.”

“Oh?”

“If you were an angry little Cloud, would you not make a beeline for the nearest volatile and significant target?”

Oh. Angeal sighed, unhappy that he both understood and agreed.

Genesis clicked his tongue too. “A reactor. Of course he would, the little arsonist” he drawled without a trace of self-awareness.

Sephiroth nodded. “And that narrows down the search considerably. We will find him again before he earns himself a kill order from the President.”

It was evening when Cloud woke. He drank his fill from the stream and took the opportunity to wash the salt and sweat from his skin, stripping down and changing into one of the fresh, newly-dried outfits. He kicked dirt over the embers of his fire, extinguishing them, and then packed up his meager supplies. Hiding the evidence that he’d been there was harder—impossible, even, since he didn’t really know what he was doing. He covered up what he could and tried to make the area look untouched, but he doubted it would fool an experienced tracker.

The sky was turning brilliant orange when he scaled a suitably lofty tree and tried to get his bearings. The sunset worked against him, forcing him to squint and shield his eyes as he looked west. Much of the landscape was obscured by the intensity of the light, but he thought he had an idea of where he’d washed ashore. He cursed. It was quite a bit further south than he thought, below even the latitude of Nibelheim, though above where Golden Saucer would one day (or hopefully never) be.

Still, it might work in his favor, especially given he was on foot and trying to encounter as few people as possible. Coming to Corel from the direction of Costa del Sol would have required crossing the mountains, but if he was right about where he was, then he could come up through the less mountainous region to the south instead. He marked his position in his mind and descended back to the ground and set off.

Night fell. Absent of any suitable weapons to defend himself from monsters (fuck you, thieving SOLDIER assholes), he picked up the first reasonably thick piece of wood he came across and hefted it across his shoulder. It made for a harder trek through the underbrush, but a greater peace of mind. At least he had his Cure to make sure he didn’t die to a fucking Grangalan or something equally humiliating.

He was lucky—the only thing he had to smack was a lone, fairly young Cokatolis. It ran off at the first good blow, which saved him the trouble of killing it. He kept walking until dawn arrived, then repeated his search to find a source of water. This time it took a bit longer and the sun was midway to its zenith before he managed it. He drank, cleaned himself up, and climbed into a tree to sleep, wedged into a three-way fork he was confident he wouldn’t fall out of.

The pattern repeated for several days. Wake at night, drink water. Eat if he could find vegetation or suitable wildlife. Pack up, walk until it was daylight. Avoid any and all signs of civilization. Fight the occasional monster and beat it to death with his stick (easier said than done, but still doable). Find water. Drink and wash up. Sleep for a few hours. Wake up and do it again.

Cloud expected, when he finally saw Corel, that he would feel relief, or anticipation for the work ahead. Instead, he felt his breath catch in his throat as he climbed the last of the rough switchback road that led to it and finally saw the town. It was… whole. Untouched. Unravaged. Nestled at the foot of Mt. Corel, it barely resembled the wreck Shinra would make it.

Small, quaint homes stood whole and lovingly maintained. He could see people, happy and reasonably healthy walking around—could hear children laughing somewhere in the distance. It reminded him of Nibelheim: not wealthy, but whole in spirit and determined to thrive. And Barret was in there somewhere, living a life free of terrorism and chronic physical pain. Cloud found a painful lump in his throat at the thought.

He hadn’t expected this to hurt so much, especially when all he was doing was standing there fucking looking at it.

A truck came up along the road behind him, rumbling and creaking across the unpaved ground. He hastily moved away from the road, but there wasn’t much in the way of cover nearby. He crouched half behind a decently sized rock and hoped the tall, dry grass would be enough to camouflage him in the early morning light.

The truck came lumbering up the road, headlights steady and well-maintained despite its beat-up exterior. Half a dozen armed locals were in the cab or the bed, chattering away. He guessed that it was some kind of local patrol. His heart lurched when he spotted the largest of them—a young, dark-skinned, and unmistakably familiar man with a massive gun slung across his chest. Two broad, uninjured hands held that gun in a position pointed safely down. He was laughing with one of the others, a man who bore a striking resemblance to Marlene and barely any at all to the vicious killer Cloud remembered.

Cloud bit the inside of his mouth until he tasted blood as his head spun dizzily. He’d underestimated the impact of this and overestimated his own ability to handle it. His chest throbbed painfully.

Dyne happened to look over mid-laugh and their eyes locked. This time Cloud’s heart lurched for an entirely different reason as the man’s expression turned startled.

“AY!” he hollered, pounding on the top of the truck’s cab with a fist. “STOP THE TRUCK!”

“Fuck,” Cloud muttered, glancing around. The area was too open for him to vanish without someone seeing him move faster than any human had a right to. He grimaced to himself as Dyne hopped down and hustled over. Maybe he could pass for a local?

“Hey, kid,” Dyne said, waving at him as he approached. “What are you doing out here? Where are your parents?”

“Uh.” He still didn’t have a good answer for that. “I’m fine. You can go.” He debated the merits of making a little ‘shoo’ gesture to emphasize the point.

Dyne stopped about three feet away, looking down at where Cloud was determinedly not moving, and gave him a distinctly paternal look. Which was… strange. Surreal, even. Cloud felt the dizziness get worse. “Uh-huh. Sure, pipsqueak. Seriously, where are your parents? Did they come to work on the rail lines or some’m?”

Alright, there went his plan to pass as a local kid. He shouldn’t have stood there for so long feeling emotions about Corel’s distinctly not-exploded appearance. His mistake. Unfortunately, he also didn’t quite know how to get himself out of his predicament.

Dyne just got more openly concerned as the silence stretched. “You hungry?” he asked, abruptly changing tack. He slung his own firearm around to his back and held out a hand. “Come on, let’s get you breakfast.”

Reluctantly, Cloud stood up. If he bolted, he would be memorable—and half the town would probably end up hunting for him. If he stayed crouched and refused to move, part of him suspected that one of the adults would literally just pluck him up like a sack of errant laundry. But if he cooperated, he would be able to slip away later and (hopefully) be forgotten. Plus… well, he was hungry and had no money to actually buy food.

He didn’t take the hand, but Dyne didn’t seem too bothered. He just put a hand on Cloud’s shoulder instead and guided him over to the truck. It was Barret who held out a hand to help him up into the truck’s bed—his right hand. Cloud took it, breath turning shaky, and had to bite down on the inside of his cheek again to keep from doing something embarrassing.

“Hey, you okay?” Barret asked as Dyne followed after. Cloud nodded, determinedly not looking at him to ward off the burning sensation in his eyes. He didn’t think his (lost) friend quite believed him, but it was hard to tell when he was staring at the floor.

The adults made him sit down between them as Dyne pounded on the cab again and the truck’s engine roared back to life. They must have been worried he would be injured on the short but rough drive back to the town, which was amusing given his enhancements. He kept his gaze on his feet the whole time, taking steady breaths. No one tried to talk to him over the noise.

The truck trundled through the town a short way until it pulled up by a central hub of some sort, bustling with morning activity. When Cloud dared to look up, he realized it was an inn. Dyne patted his head before he could dodge and hopped out of the truck. “Alright, come on kiddo.”

Cloud stood to follow and jump down too, only for hands to close under his arms and lift. He went rigid, a breath punching from his lungs in shock. He was gently put down on the ground. The interaction barely lasted a few seconds. His mind caught up with him as he looked over his shoulder to see who had touched him. Barret. His shoulders relaxed back down. That was fine.

But Barret hadn’t missed his reaction. The man looked down at him with open concern, brows drawn together. When Cloud glanced forward again, Dyne was too. Cloud hastily looked down, bracing for some kind of well-meaning interrogation, but neither of them commented on it.

“Myrna’s probably with Elanor waiting for us,” Dyne said, almost casual enough for Cloud to buy it. “You coming with us, Barret?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” said Barret, jumping down to join them. He, too, sounded almost casual enough. “Let’s go kid, you’re gonna love Elanor’s cooking.” He and Dyne exchanged a look. Then, more tentatively than Cloud had ever seen from the bold man, he held out a hand for Cloud to take. His right hand.

Cloud wasn’t a kid. He didn’t need to be guided around like one. But… this was Barret. And it was his right hand. And his eyes were starting to burn again, and there was a lump in his throat, because… it was an impossible opportunity to experience what had been lost—in many, many more ways than one.

He didn’t need to be led around by the hand, but he reached out to hold Barret’s anyway.

Chapter Text

“Welcome back,” said Lazard, regarding the three of them with an unreadable expression. “Your mission must have been quite interesting, Genesis, to suddenly need all three of you and require such strict opsec measures.”

“It was warranted,” said Sephiroth, backing Genesis’s decision even though it had been made without consulting him first. “We have good reason to believe that Research and Development, specifically the Science division, has been secretly working to create anti-SOLDIER weapons. We also have good reason to believe it may have been done without the President’s knowledge.”

Lazard’s attention sharpened. “I wouldn’t have been given that mission to add to the roster if Science had known that anomaly was their own work.”

Genesis chuckled darkly. “Indeed not. I doubt they saw this coming. What I found in Neibelheim was not some mindless mutated monster or unthinking phenomenon, you see, but a person. It would seem he turned rogue very recently. We have very good reason to believe he was created to be anti-SOLDIER and has now turned anti-Shinra. Thanks to the Science Department’s incompetence, Shinra is down a reactor and a mansion both. You already received that portion of my report.”

“One man did all of that?”

“Well, he had a Phoenix summon and mana to spare,” said Genesis, examining his glove. “But you are, unfortunately, mistaken. The situation is quite a bit more humiliating than a mere man.”

Lazard’s brows came together. “What do you mean?”

“One man did not do all of that, Director. Science created and subsequently lost control of a child powerful enough to destroy all those millions and millions of Gil worth of property in one afternoon. He wasn’t even half my height.”

“A child? You can’t be serious.”

“We can,” said Angeal. “All three of us met and fought him directly. He’s maybe seven years old and easily as strong as a Third Class. His skills are closer to a Second Class, maybe even a new First.”

“It should not be too shocking,” said Sephiroth, prepared to deliver the finishing blow. “He did, after all, possess a substantial amount of my own DNA.”

Lazard sat back at that, eyes wide. He put a hand over his chin and thought for a long moment before he spoke. “You lost him.”

“I would hardly put it like that,” Genesis sniffed. “He is smart and skilled in his own right, of course, but he had help. A second agent of some kind intervened at the last moment. This one was far less openly hostile toward SOLDIERs, but he turned into a demon and flew off.”

“We’re not sure if he was allied with the child or hunting him,” said Angeal, ignoring Lazard’s incredulous expression. “He could be attempting to retrieve the child before further damage occurs and return him to the Science Department, or he could be a second anti-ShinRa element.”

Lazard frowned. “This isn’t good. It will look bad for SOLDIER if word gets out that you couldn’t contain the threat.”

“Well,” said Genesis, “word doesn’t necessarily need to get out, now does it?”

“…I’m listening.”

Sephiroth sat forward. “We have no doubt that Hojo will attempt to cover up his mistake with lethal force. If you counter his proposals in the boardroom, we will file our reports to pin the uncertainty of the Nibelheim incident on the second, fully grown agent. The child will be retrieved alive to be presented as proof of Hojo’s incompetence. Potentially, he will also be proof to the President of Hojo directly engaging in treasonous activity.”

Lazard’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “Salvaging all of our reputations and weakening Hojo’s power dramatically.”

“And saving the life of an innocent child,” Angeal added, frowning.

“If we can manage to send Public Security after the second operative while we retrieve the child, we may even improve our reputation,” said Genesis, ignoring him. “I have no doubt Heidegger will fail spectacularly to even track the man, nevermind kill him. We can intervene after and kill two birds with one stone.”

Lazard certainly looked tempted, but also not fooled. “Are you sure you can find and catch him?”

“Finding him won’t be difficult,” said Genesis. “He’s undoubtedly heading for another reactor. With your backing, we can dispatch teams to each. Catching him may not be easy for other SOLDIERs, but a sufficiently prepared team will be able to do what we did. If need be, they can keep him sedated until we take custody.” Angeal and Sephiroth both nodded in agreement. 

Lazard laced his fingers together and considered them for another long moment. “Fine,” he said. “Give me a full mission report and I’ll arrange for dispatch to the reactors.”

Genesis didn’t even bother to hide his victorious smirk.

Cloud was not known for his tact, but there had been one incident a few months ago where he’d been particularly obtuse. That day Tifa had described to him, in excruciating detail, exactly what hormone-induced mood swings felt like. And he’d believed her, because she was someone deserving of that respect… but there had also been a tiny, tiny part of him that wondered if she wasn’t slightly exaggerating, just to drive the point through his thick skull.

He wasn’t wondering that now.

The way his miniaturized body was rebelling against him felt eerily like what Tifa had described. He didn’t want to feel like crying. He hadn’t invited the feeling, or gone on some kind of deep, reflective, internal dive to find it. In fact he was doing his damndest to stuff all the feelings in his body back into a safe little bottle—and it absolutely was not working. It didn’t seem to matter what he wanted or what he was trying to do, his body had decided to turn a tiny molehill of an event into a meltdown mountain.

Cloud, as an adult, would have been able to touch Barret’s hand without feeling the need to break down in tears. He probably would even have been able to keep up a reasonable front of being unbothered by everything. Cloud, as a child not even hip-height to Barret’s enormous frame, was struggling to see straight and keep his breathing steady. He was sure both Barret and Dyne could tell.

Infuriatingly, he was so small, and Barret so large, that his entire hand could only wrap around three of the man’s fingers. It made him even more acutely aware of the strength, the warmth, the life in that hand. When Barret gently squeezed his hand as they walked, he had to bite down on the inside of his cheek. He hoped, desperately, that he would get better at controlling himself, or saving his friends was going to be a very humiliating process.

“So, what’s your name?” said Barret, pretending like he couldn’t hear Cloud choke on every other breath as he stiffly marched along and blinked back tears.

“...Cloud,” he managed to say.

“It suits you,” said Dyne. Seeing him smile gently was… more than a little surreal.

There wasn’t much he could say to that, so he didn’t say anything. The urge to break down in tears slowly lessened as they walked through the dusty town. He tried to focus. At least his earlier thoughts had been right: he couldn’t see any sign of the damned reactor, or construction of it. It wasn’t too late to convince Barret that Shinra had to be turned away.

“That’s a cute puppy dog you’ve got there,” said Barret, trying again for conversation. Of course, he was referring to the Zack-like stuffed animal that was poking out of Cloud’s backpack. Instantly, Cloud flushed crimson. He’d forgotten that he’d left it sticking out for… reasons. Reasons that no one needed to know and had nothing to do with him feeling lonely.

…alright fine, so he’d been talking to it and pretending he had company as he walked. Fucking sue him.

“Does it have a name?” Barret continued.

“Uh,” said Cloud, sufficiently distracted that he was finally not in danger of crying like a pathetic baby. “His name is, uh… Zack.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too, Zack,” said Dyne, pretending to shake the plushie’s paw.

Please kill me now, thought Cloud as he felt his face burn with humiliation.

Thankfully, they didn’t have much farther to walk. Dyne pulled ahead to lead the way up a short set of stairs to a brick house on a raised foundation. “We’re back!” he called as he opened the front door.

“Welcome back! Did patrol go well?”

As Barret ushered Cloud in ahead of him, the woman who’d called back to Dyne emerged from the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel. It was hard for Cloud to contain his reaction, though he shouldn’t have been surprised. The woman was Marlene’s spitting image. This must have been Dyne’s wife, Elanor. She was followed closely by a dark-skinned woman, likely Myrna.

“Oh!” said Myra, spotting Cloud. “Hello there!”

Unfortunately, he couldn’t devote much attention to either of them. Eleanor’s conspicuous resemblance to her future daughter brought grief slamming down on Cloud like a sledgehammer again. He couldn’t help but think about Marlene, Tifa, Denzel… Barret, too. Their futures would be better. He was going to make sure of it.

It was just… at the cost of him never seeing them again.

Every colorful swear Cloud had ever learned came to mind as he stopped in his tracks. He had no choice but to hold himself rigidly as he devoted every fiber of his being to not bursting into tears in front of these four strangers. No. He was stronger than that. He wasn’t going to cry.

“Myrna, Elanor, this is Cloud. He’s—Cloud? Hey, what’s wrong kiddo?”

“N… nothing,” he managed to get out by sheer force of will as Barret crouched. Even kneeling, he was way too big to actually be at eye-level with Cloud.

“Uh. You sure? Because I’m about to lose circulation in my fingers.”

Cloud snatched his hand away, only then realizing how tightly he’d been clinging to Barret’s fingers. “Sorry,” he blurted out.

“It’s okay,” said Barret with a mildly confused smile. He jokingly shook his hand out. “You’ve got a hell of a grip.”

“Barret!” Myra said, scandalized.

“Oops, uh, a heck of a grip.”

Cloud took several deep breaths, forcing himself not to look at Elanor. He kept his face to the side instead. Barret hesitated for a second before he reached out and ruffled his hair. He stood back up and put his hand on Cloud’s upper back.

“Cloud’s going to have breakfast with us,” said Dyne. “I hope you ladies don’t mind.”

“Course not,” said Elanor. “Hello, Cloud. Are you visiting?”

He nodded sharply. “Yes. Just visiting.” He’d keep running as soon as he was sure the reactor would never be approved by Corel’s people. If construction was already in progress, he’d find a way to destroy it all without anyone blaming the townspeople.

“I see. Well, come on now, menfolk. Go wash your hands before you eat.”

Cloud was ushered along to the kitchen sink along with Barret and Dyne, where they all dutifully scrubbed their hands and arms clean. Honestly, Cloud was the dirtiest out of all of them, and he cringed when he realized. Hopefully whichever of the couples owned the house wouldn’t be too irked by him trailing dirt everywhere.

The breakfast that Myrna and Elanor set out was simple but hearty, and Cloud dug into it just as eagerly as Barret and Dyne. He tried not to be too conspicuous about how hungry he was, but they noticed anyway. Food kept ‘happening’ to end up closer to him when he looked down at his plate and back up. He was pretty sure that he ate a lot more than his fair share.

“So, Cloud,” said Elanor when everyone was just about done, “what brings you to a little place like Corel? Family?”

Cloud hesitated, trying to come up with the best answer that would both get them to stop worrying about him and also get him the answers he needed. Unfortunately, he wasn’t really known for his tact. “I…” Maybe it was better to just be straightforward. “It’s… hard to explain.”

He looked at Dyne, still not quite daring to look at Elanor and trigger another surge of grief he couldn’t afford to stifle right now. “Has Shinra said anything about… a project on Mount Corel?”

“Shinra?” Dyne echoed, surprised by the question. He rubbed his chin. “There was a survey team out here last month, but that’s about it.”

The project hadn’t been proposed yet, then. If he could just sow the seeds of doubt, then he might spare the town and all its people. He nodded seriously. “I’m here to warn you.”

The adults exchanged alarmed looks. “Warn us about what, sweetheart?” Myrna asked softly. She was sitting close enough to reach out and take his hand. He blinked at the gesture, caught off guard.

“Don’t trust Shinra,” he said, looking at the woman who would die and leave Barret all alone if he couldn’t convince them. “No matter what they say. No matter what they offer. Make them go away. You can’t trust them.”

No one said anything for a long moment. He looked at the pattern of the wood grain on the table. 

“Cloud,” Barret finally said, just as soft as his wife, “where’re your folks?”

They weren’t stupid. They had to know he had none, and if he stayed quiet they might draw conclusions that were technically incorrect but would help his case. If he stayed quiet, they might live. Barret wouldn’t have to be alone. Marlene would get to meet her mother.

He found himself choking up again at the thought. Was he willing to destroy the ramshackle extended family he’d made, in order to give them the future they should have had in the first place? Yes. Of course he was. He’d do it in a heartbeat.

And if it hurt as badly as anything he’d ever felt, no one would ever need to know.

“Don’t trust Shinra. No matter what they promise,” he whispered.

“Are you in trouble, son?” Dyne asked.

He was in too deep to bullshit at this point. “Don’t tell anyone you saw me, not unless you have to to save your lives. Please.”

“Oh Titan, how could anyone try to hurt you?” said Elanor, hand over her mouth. “You’re just a baby!”

Cloud pushed his chair away from the table and stood. He shook his head, holding back a derisive laugh. He didn’t want her to misunderstand. “There’s no one Shinra wouldn’t hurt. Trust me.”

“Hold on,” said Barret, catching his wrist. “Where’re you going?”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“That’s not an answer, kid.”

Cloud took a deep breath. “I did what I came to do. Now I have to go. If I stay too long, it could be dangerous for you.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Barret asked, finally displaying a little bit of the temper Cloud was so familiar with.

Cloud winced. The anger was deserved, considering how he was probably putting Myrna in danger just by being here. “If someone asks about me specifically, just tell them you fed a blond kid and he disappeared. Don’t talk to them too long, but don’t be more hostile than the rest of Corel. You should be fine.”

“And who’s gonna make sure you’re fine?” Elanor asked sharply. “What kind of people do you think we are, to let you run off without help?”

He made the mistake of looking directly at her again. Would Marlene have looked like that, fully grown? “I think you’re good people,” he said roughly. “And I think you deserve to live.” He yanked his hand away from Barret, breathing unsteadily, and allowed a little bit of his unnatural strength to show. This was starting to get dangerous for him too. He couldn’t afford to be sentimental. It might put them in more danger. “Thanks for breakfast. I have to go.”

“Wait,” said Dyne. “If you have to leave… fine.”

“Dyne!” said Myrna and Elanor together, the former with dismay and the latter with anger.

“We won’t stop you,” he continued, holding up a hand to their protests, “but you don’t have to go now. Stay until tomorrow, then we can give you food and drive you wherever you want to go.”

“No,” Cloud said immediately. “That’s not safe for you. But…” He hesitated. It would be nice, if not outright strategic to stay and rest for a day. One day would be alright. “I’ll stay for the night.”

Tracking the child was simple, but not easy. The current could only have swept him a certain distance before even he grew too fatigued to keep swimming. Unfortunately, the child was enhanced and the current was strong, which left a geographically large range for Vincent to search.

Considering he’d jumped here rather than closer to the other continent, it was likely that he had a target in mind. Returning to Nibelheim was possible (the boy had, after all, been interrupted by the red-clad SOLDIER rather than leaving willingly) but unlikely. All major targets in that little area had been destroyed. Vincent considered it much more likely that the boy—Cloud—had a new destination in mind.

He flew back to shore and wrestled control of his body back. It was no mean feat, and he had to pause in the shade of a tree to recover some of his strength before he continued. He went from there on foot, scouring the shoreline, and many thoughts plagued his mind. Some of them were a familiar variation on self-recrimination: sloppy, Vincent Valentine, getting caught by brute-force SOLDIERs. Most were about Cloud and Lucrecia’s child.

He’d looked like her so much that it made Vincent’s chest ache. The structure of their faces and the fairness of their complexions were the same. Sephiroth’s hair was silver, though it had the same texture as Lucrecia’s. His eyes were perhaps the most different, with their bright color and slit pupils. He’d held himself like a well-appointed soldier, but there had also been something haunted in his face.

All the experiments he must have endured alone to end up looking like that…

Vincent needed answers—was Lucrecia truly still alive? Was her son truly going to destroy the world?—and that meant he needed to find the boy who claimed to have them.

Eventually, luck favored him, and he spotted an area along sheer ocean cliffs that had signs of little feet and hands. He followed the tracks deeper into the cover of the trees. The boy clearly tried to cover his trail as much as possible, but he wasn’t experienced enough to fool anyone with a keen eye, let alone a former Turk.

Vincent didn’t need to rest, so he followed the boy’s trail at a steady pace, only losing it once or twice, until it finally became clear where he was headed. If memory served, this was Corel, a modest town that made its living mining coal. It seemed from a distance that not much had changed since he’d consigned himself to eternal (or not-so-eternal) sleep.

Why would the boy come here?

Vincent considered his options. Cloud clearly wanted to speak with him as much as he wanted to speak with Cloud, so there was no need for subterfuge in terms of approaching him. However, he didn’t know how the locals had received the boy or would receive him. Attempting stealth in such a small, open town would be difficult—not impossible, but difficult. How would the boy have approached?

Hmm. Cloud was bombastic far more than he was subtle, and the town wasn’t on fire yet. Stealth it was.

Vincent picked an approach that would give him the most cover and quickly moved into the town. It was relatively quiet at this hour, with most workers likely to be in the mines for a while yet. Children played in the center of town; Cloud was unsurprisingly not among them. Women chattered amongst each other and old men sat on their porches, whittling or watching the children. There was no sign of concern, or any indication of where Cloud would be.

Finally, a stroke of luck: as Vincent flitted from shadow to shadow, he came across small tracks with the same shoe tread pattern he’d been following all the way to Corel. Cloud was here somewhere, and walking on his own two feet. Vincent followed the trail to a modest home, noting the two pairs of large footprints closely accompanying Cloud’s. There were no signs of dragging or struggle.

“…to help him,” said a man, voice drifting through an open window of the house. Vincent slunk along in the shadows and stopped just adjacent to the window to listen.

“I’ve already told everyone to keep an eye out for strangers,” said another man.

“Poor baby,” a woman fretted. “How could anyone hurt such a sweet boy?”

“Shh,” said the second man. “You’ll wake him.”

Found him.

Someone inside the house took a step, closer to the window Vincent was eavesdropping beneath than he’d realized. He looked up into the barrel of a shotgun. A dark-skinned woman glared at him from the other end. “Fellas,” she said, not even raising her voice, “we’ve got an uninvited guest.”

Sloppy, Vincent, very sloppy, he chided himself. She couldn’t hurt him, of course, but this put a serious wrench in his plans to quietly retrieve Cloud.

Or, perhaps, it would be a stroke of luck. They sounded concerned for the boy, and he wasn’t the one who’d hurt Cloud, after all. They might help him if he could convince them of that fact.

“Who are you?” the woman asked as the other three adults rushed either to the window or the door.

“My name is Vincent,” he said calmly. “I’m looking for a little boy named Cloud. We were separated when he was kidnapped by… certain powerful individuals.”

Two men rounded the corner of the house, both armed. A woman with dark hair and eyes appeared behind her friend’s shoulder. The dark-skinned woman herself narrowed her eyes at him. He kept his expression completely calm and open.

“…get him inside,” she said to the men. “Keep it quiet.”

The men only looked uncertain for a moment before their expressions hardened. “Move, stranger,” said the larger of the two. “If you’re lying, you’ll regret it.”

Vincent allowed them to herd him inside at gunpoint, unnoticed by the rest of the town. The shorter of the men closed the door firmly and took up guard in front of it. The second woman had also taken up a firearm. Vincent paced slowly to a chair and took a seat to reassure them. You see? I am at a disadvantage now. I am no threat to you.

“Do you work for Shinra?” the big man asked in a tone that implied only one correct answer.

“No,” said Vincent. “I don’t.”

“What’d you mean by ‘certain powerful individuals?’” he asked suspiciously.

“I’m sure you can guess, since you asked. They work for Shinra and they’d like to take Cloud back. I’m trying to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Have you seen a little blond boy with blue eyes?”

The dark-skinned woman pressed her lips together. No one said anything for a very long minute. “…Barret,” she said, and Vincent felt the cold muzzle of her shotgun press against his temple. “Go wake him up.”

The big man—Barret—nodded and disappeared into the short hallway that presumably led to the bedrooms. Vincent held absolutely still.

“If you’re lying,” the woman said evenly, “I’ll blow your brains out. Ain’t no one is gonna hurt that baby on my watch.”

“Fortunately, I’m not lying,” he told her, still absolutely calm. It helped that he was confident he could defend himself, even with the gun so close. Cloud had also gone to much trouble to wake him, and was therefore likely to back his story.

“Cloud,” Barret whispered from a room over. Vincent heard a sleepy murmur in response. “Wake up. Someone’s here looking for you.”

The boy inhaled sharply. “Who?”

“Some pale guy in a red cape. He called himself—“

“Vincent?” Little feet hit the floor.

“Yeah—wait, slow down!”

Sure enough, it was the same volatile little boy with mako eyes who came skidding into the room, hair askew from sleep. His eyes went wide. “Vincent! You actually got up!”

“I did,” said Vincent, intrigued. How had he known about Vincent’s resolve to such a degree?

“You know him?” the dark-skinned woman asked, not yet removing the threat of her shotgun.

“Oh—yeah, yeah, you can put the guns away, Myrna. He’s a friend.” Cloud rubbed the grit from his eyes, visibly relieved… almost to the point of tears. Vincent watched curiously as he took a few deep breaths to calm himself.

“Hmm.” ‘Myrna’ finally lowered her shotgun and stepped away.

“Are you his father?” the other woman asked sharply, not appeased in the slightest. “Where have you been all this time!”

“Wh—NO!” said Cloud, waving his hands emphatically. “No, he’s not my father! I said he’s my friend!”

“How does a sweet little boy like you end up friends with a grown man like him?” she asked, though she was glaring at Vincent. “Hmm?”

Cloud looked comically wide-eyed at this turn of events, though Vincent thought it was a reasonable thing to be suspicious of. “He’s… uh…”

Vincent stepped in. “Cloud and I had a similar experience at the hands of Shinra. That’s how we met. I regret that I was unable to prevent Shinra’s employees from kidnapping him before, but my only intention is to protect him.”

“Vincent’s not… suspicious,” Cloud said haltingly, which didn’t really do anything but make him look more suspicious.

Deep skepticism radiated from every other adult in the room. The boy at least seemed to sense that and quickly segued.

“Er, anyway. If you managed to track me here, we’ve got to go now,” he said, running a hand through his hair. He looked at Barret. “Thanks for… listening to me. And giving me a place to rest. I… really appreciate it.”

“Cloud…” Myrna said fretfully.

It would be wiser to wait for the cover of night, but Vincent was willing to assume that Cloud had reasons he didn’t know and couldn’t convey with an audience. The little boy retrieved his shoes and backpack, ignoring all the worried looks aimed at him, and started pulling his socks on.

The man guarding the door sighed and stepped deeper into the house. “You still won’t let us give you a lift, huh?”

“Especially not now,” Cloud said firmly, efficiently tying up his laces. “Vincent is… conspicuous.”

It was interesting how these four strangers seemed to understand that Cloud could not be stopped, despite his age. And yet, Vincent was fairly certain these were not people who had known Cloud for any longer than it had taken to find him.

What a remarkable boy.

“Are you sure, Cloud?” asked the woman whose name Vincent had yet to hear. She walked close enough to put her hands on his little shoulders, still eyeing Vincent distrustfully.

“I’m sure.” He was very carefully not looking at her.

The man guarding the door disappeared into the kitchen and reappeared with a bag. “Here, kid. And don’t be stubborn about it.”

“I—“ Cloud stopped and bit his lip. “Sure. Thanks, Dyne.”

“Stay safe,” said Dyne, ruffling his hair. The playful gesture contrasted with his somber expression.

“Sure.” Cloud hesitated, only half looking at Barret. The big man made an interesting face and then abruptly swooped down to pick the kid up in a hug. Cloud gasped, surprised, and held his arms up like he was scared to touch back.

“Don’t get hurt, kid,” said Barret. “Please. Whatever it is you’re after, it ain’t worth you getting hurt.”

Vincent noted the way Cloud’s eyes became shiny. “…sure,” he said, a little hoarse, and suddenly returned the hug in a jerky movement. His knuckles went white from the force of his grip on Barret’s shirt, but only for a moment. Then he let go.

Hugging Barret turned into hugging the other adults as well, but only the unnamed woman got a similar reaction. Cloud still was very careful not to look at her fully, but again, he hugged like he was terrified to let go.

“Let’s go, Vincent,” he said, breath slightly unsteady. Vincent only nodded and stood, tucking his observations away for later. Cloud was, after all, correct.

Shinra could catch up to them at any moment.