Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cloud was in a very familiar position: pinned to the floor by Masamune through his chest, the blade slotted neatly between his ribs in such a way to keep him helpless without fatally injuring him. He would have preferred a fatal wound. If he’d died, he would have simply woken up, pristine, in the next world.

Sephiroth—a version of Sephiroth—straddled his hips, hands clasped around the hilt of his sword. His cat-slit eyes, one blue and one green, gleamed as bright as sunlit jewels from the shadows of his face.

“You belong to me, Cloud,” he said, leaning down until his hair fell around them like a curtain of silver. 

Cloud panted for breath around the metal in his chest, staring calmly up into the eyes of the man who had spent the past few hours chasing him down with fanatical intensity. His mind felt numb—almost pleasantly so, at this point. He was cold from blood loss, yet burning from his toes to the base of his skull.

Burning. Thank the gods.

Sephiroth leaned down further, until their faces were a hairsbreadth apart, head tilted as if he meant to slot their mouths together. “You escaped me once,” he murmured, breath hot against Cloud’s lips. “Once. But now, Cloud, you are mine.”

No, thought Cloud. His eyes slid shut as the world turned to white static. His mouth quirked in a slight smile as Sephiroth tried to claim him, mind, body, and soul. No, not quite.

The steel vanished from his chest. He lay awash in the burning static of the spaces between, consumed by nothing and everything until his atoms knitted back together one at a time. A new reality constructed itself around him like paint dashed onto a canvas.

He sucked in a breath, shallow and wheezing, and collapsed to the floor as his legs immediately gave out. Not quite dead yet, then, but he would be without intervention. What difference did it make? Functionally, none. So he laid, cold and numb, as the blood seeped steadily from his body and into the unknown ground below.

A whisper: “...Cloud?”

Then, a cry: “Cloud!”

Boots pounded across the ground toward him. Asphalt, he observed, detached. A moment later he placed the voice. Commander Rhapsodos. Or Genesis, maybe. The man skidded to a stop, falling to his knees beside Cloud.

“Shit, shit,” he cursed. Worried. Panicked, even, which meant healing would likely be shortly forthcoming. Lucky. Unlucky? Cloud was too numb to decide.

Light touches fluttered over him as Genesis assessed his state, tried to figure out exactly what was wrong. “Okay,” he whispered, a gloved palm pausing on his forehead. “Just hold on, Cloud. I’ve got you.”

Magic flooded him, intensely enough that he sucked in a surprised breath, eyes flying open. The world was painted in green, his body slowly suffused with heat from his core outward. Cloud had never felt such a concentrated healing spell in his whole life. Pure surprise banished the fog of his apathy and he turned his attention to...Genesis.

This was certainly a Genesis.

The man’s eyes were shut, though they glowed with enough intensity to shine through the paltry cover of his eyelids. His lips pinched together with concentration—no, with desperation. This man desperately wanted Cloud to live.

That might be bad. If he thought Cloud was, in some way, his… he hoped the commander wasn’t romantically entangled with his counterpart. Those tended to take the news the worst. Friends, brothers, and fathers were devastated in a different way entirely. Possessive in a different way.

His flesh knit itself back together as smoothly as clay beneath the hands of a master potter. Energy flooded him—a temporary compensation for his blood loss until he could eat and his body could make up the difference. The light faded, lingering in glowing motes around where his injuries had been the deepest. Genesis sagged, then toppled entirely, falling unconscious into the same torso he had just healed.

“Oh you idiot,” Cloud sighed, catching him and sitting upright. He twisted onto his knees for easier movement, just in case. He felt...good. Tired, but good.

Genesis came to as Cloud was taking stock of his physical state. He groaned quietly, dragging his eyelids up. Cloud was impressed. The man had expended mana quickly enough to put his whole body on temporary shutdown, but he’d come back to consciousness almost immediately. This was definitely one of the strongest Genesises (Geneses?) he’d ever seen.

“Welcome back,” Cloud said sardonically, keeping as much distance between them as he could without dropping the man entirely.

Genesis sucked in a breath and shot upright. “Cloud,” he said, hands hovering as if he couldn’t decide where to check first. “Are you alright? What did I miss?” He started prodding at the largest bloodstain over Cloud’s chest, exhaling sharply when his fingers found the neat tear where Masamune had been.

“Nothing, I’m perfectly fine. But before you do anything else, you should know that I’m not your Cloud. I came from a different world entirely and I’ll be gone in a few hours.” He had the whole spiel down to mindless recitation—bored, if Genesis failed to notice the way his whole body was coiled like a spring. 

But Genesis...didn’t even blink. He just continued double-checking Cloud’s wounds. “Yes,” he said dryly, “considering you’re dead I figured it was something along those lines. Hold still.”

Well. That was a novel response. “...then what are you doing?” Cloud asked in bewilderment as he was Scanned. He was getting the strangest flashbacks to his first meeting with Aerith. Maybe it was the way his personal space was being absolutely steamrolled into.

“Making sure you don’t die again, obviously.” The Scan stopped as Genesis was finally satisfied with his physical state.  Before Cloud could say anything, one of his arms was pulled over the man’s shoulders and he was hoisted to his feet.

“...what?” he managed. Most people, nevermind most of the Commanders, were at least a touch wary upon finding out Cloud was from a different dimension.

“There is no hate, only joy, for you are beloved by the Goddess,” Genesis recited, which told Cloud absolutely nothing. Still, it didn’t seem worth it to fight, and the way things were going he was probably going to get food out of the whole situation, so he allowed himself to be dragged away from his arrival point.

If Genesis’s hand around his wrist and arm around his back were gripping him with something between desperation and possession, well...he was keeping an eye on it.

Cloud’s instincts were correct. Genesis dragged him with single-minded determination through the back alleys of Midgar to the Tower, then up to his apartment by the quietest route possible. Barely a word was spoken between them. It was...difficult to get a read on this one. His body language screamed protect when anyone was so much as within sight, and his grip said mine, but Cloud couldn’t tell if it was rooted in romance or something else entirely.

Part of him was vaguely worried that the end goal here was to have him tied to a bed. Vaguely, because it would be very near impossible for that to actually happen and also because something was slightly off about that assessment. Whatever it was, he’d certainly never encountered it before.

Genesis hauled him straight into the master bathroom, which was interesting in itself because Cloud knew for a fact that there was a guest bathroom and that Genesis preferred to keep his inner sanctum private. Yet another strange piece of the puzzle. “Shower,” the man commanded him sternly. “I’ll be right back with a change of clothes.” He left without ceremony, shutting the door behind him.

“...well then,” Cloud muttered, squinting at the door. After a moment of contemplation, he took off his boots and harness, set them within grabbing distance, and stepped into the shower mostly clothed and with Tsurugi. No sense wasting the opportunity to get both himself and his clothing clean. A few minutes into his unexpected shower, Genesis knocked on the door and called, “clothes outside, food when you’re done. Take your time.”

Hm. He hadn’t tried to come in, which was a point in his favor, if unexpected. Cloud decided it was safe enough to strip down and clean properly. Tsurugi was propped up beneath the showerhead. If he had to fight naked, well...it wouldn’t have been the first time. Plus his clothes would get really itchy if he didn’t get the blood out and he hated that.

Efficiency was the name of the game in his odd half-life. He was clean in five minutes, his clothes (marginally) clean in fifteen. Out of curiosity, he held a towel around his waist and retrieved the clothing Genesis had left outside the bathroom door. To his surprise, it was a long-sleeve black shirt and jeans that he suddenly recognized as his own, back from when he was an infantryman in Shinra. 

He burst out laughing when he pulled them on and realized that he really had grown into them. He remembered the shirt being especially loose, but the fit across his chest and shoulders was just shy of snug.

Now, the real question—why did Genesis have these? He’d dropped them off too quickly to have gotten them anywhere but from within the apartment.

Cloud strapped his harness and Tsurugi back on, then partially dried his other clothes with a materia trick he’d learned from...a different Genesis, actually. He was still thoroughly baffled, but there was nothing for it except to go and face the unknown, so he padded out through Genesis’s room on bare feet and headed for the kitchen.

He had been promised food, after all.

Genesis, standing in the kitchen and pulling together a truly impressive SOLDIER-sized mass of various foodstuffs, took one look at him and scowled. “Goddess,” he said, pulling a towel from one of the drawers, “every time!” Cloud was rather unceremoniously pushed into a chair, Tsurugi twisted just enough to allow him to sit, and then the towel was thrown over his head as the man started to...dry his hair?

Cloud was starting to suspect this wasn’t a romantic thing.

Both towel and hands were heated to a very comfortable warmth as Genesis employed a materia trick very similar to the one Cloud had used to partially dry his clothes. Despite his better sense, Cloud all but melted into the sensation. If he’d been a cat, he would have been purring. 

Genesis laughed softly at his sudden pliancy, finger-combing his long blond hair once it had dried into a shiny, gravity-defying mess. He pulled it up into a high ponytail and re-tied it with the worn pink ribbon, much neater than Cloud ever bothered with.

“Now, eat,” he was told in no uncertain terms, a platter of protein-rich sandwiches set in front of him as he shook himself out of his warmth-induced daze. “You lost a lot of blood.”

Far be it from him to refuse free food. He chowed down, asking a question between mouthfuls. “So, uh, not to bring up painful memories, but what was your Cloud...like?”

“You would know better than I.” He paused, turning to look at Cloud out of the corner of his eye. “Unless things were very different for you?”

“I never met you,” he said, a little muffled around a mouthful of sandwich.

“You have the same manners, at least,” Genesis muttered disdainfully. “Well. That is quite different. He was my apprentice from the age of twelve.”

Cloud choked. Genesis was instantly at his side, pounding on his back. “Cloud!”

“He was what?” he asked through coughs, thoroughly blindsided.

“Is that really so shocking?” The hand left his back with great reluctance as he cleared his throat and took a long sip of water. “You cannot be so different that you are not also partial to materia.”

“I—well, no,” he said, floundering a little. “But twelve?”

Genesis shrugged, going back to his task of dicing up a truly excessive amount of fruit. “Happenstance, I will admit. The boy acted in an emergency and saved my life by using my very own materia. I...was impressed enough to pull some strings and claim him for my own.”

“...sure. Okay.” Weirder things had happened. “And he...died on mission?”

Genesis’s mouth twisted, half grief and half anger. “Yes. I was away at the time, and he was a Second. It was meant to be an easy mission. Goddess sake, it was in his hometown!” He exhaled sharply, hands stilling on the cutting board. “I don’t know what happened, exactly. It was ‘above my clearance level,’ and the company covered it up. One of their most promising SOLDIERs was killed in action and they didn’t even have the decency to retrieve his body.” The knife started moving again with a vindictive level of force.

Oh no, thought Cloud, freezing in place. He glanced at Genesis, and glanced at the food, and started shoveling sandwiches into his mouth as fast as he could. Oh here we go. Gaia just let me finish these sandwiches first, please.

Genesis cottoned on to his sudden change in mood almost immediately, despite facing away from him. He twisted around, leaning his hip against the counter. “What?” he asked, eyes narrowing. “What is it?”

Cloud mourned his lost sandwiches as he finished chewing the one in his mouth and swallowed it reluctantly. “Well,” he said, “I have...potentially good news and bad news. Feels shitty to get your hopes up if I’m wrong, but...you deserve the chance and these things tend to…” he searched for the right word, making a circle in the air with his finger. “...rhyme.”

“Hopes?” Genesis repeated, going absolutely still.

“With Shinra, it’s best not to believe anyone is dead until you see the body yourself,” Cloud said seriously. “That’s the good news. The bad news is...well. If he’s alive, he’s in hell, and by hell I mean Hojo’s lab, which is worse than hell by a lot. You’re going to want to look in the basement of the Nibelhim mansion. If not there, then...” he smiled tightly. “Well, I’d advise you to look far enough beneath your nose to find Reactor 0.”

Genesis just stared at him for a long silent moment, blank incomprehension in his eyes. Then, slowly, something akin to a wildfire of murderous rage lit them up with a bright mako glow. “Excuse me, Cloud,” he said calmly, “I need to make a few calls.”

Cloud watched him storm out of the room—then, surprisingly, out of the apartment entirely. He weighed the odds for a moment. Fuck it, he decided, grabbing the half-eaten tray of sandwiches and relocating his back to a defensible corner. Food first, cover later.

He’d demolished the sandwiches and started in on the fruit when Genesis came back, towing along a very confused-looking Commander Hewley.

“Stay here,” Genesis told Cloud, which he would have objected to had it not been for the fully homicidal gleam in his eye. He turned on Angeal. “And you—make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. He needs food and sleep, don’t take no for an answer, and make sure he washes his clothes before he leaves. I’ll be back in an hour.”

He left again, like an unstoppable red whirlwind. Angeal started objecting too late to be heard. Cloud blinked slowly as he realized the entire reason Genesis had left the apartment earlier was to recruit a babysitter. Gaia, he thought, scowling at his bowl of strawberries. He didn’t look that young.

Though...well, he supposed he could understand the impulse, what with the man’s protective instincts drawn to the fore like this.

Angeal pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed deeply. “Genesis,” he muttered like a curse. He turned and looked at Cloud, taking in his appearance with a deepening frown. “You’re...a different version of Cloud?” he asked, testing out the words.

“Yeah,” he agreed around a mouthful of fruit.

“From a different dimension.”

“Mhm.”

“And...our Cloud might still be alive?”

“Could be. We Clouds are stubborn little bastards. Hard to kill us.”

“...Right. Well then, I’m guessing you’re not eighteen.”

“Add a decade and you’ll be in the ballpark.”

Angeal finally cracked a smile. “Too old for babysitting, though you do look like you need a long nap.”

“I’m sure my wife would argue otherwise,” Cloud said with a roll of his eyes, ignoring the nap comment entirely. “Apparently I’m ‘reckless’ and ‘prone to stupid decisions’ and ‘need someone to talk some sense into me.’”

Angeal laughed, the last of the bewildered tension fading from his shoulders. “That sounds like Cloud alright.” He leaned into the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “You wanna put your clothes in the machine or was that just Genesis fussing?”

Cloud pursed his lips, calculating the time left. Only four hours, if he was being paranoid. That was more than enough time and what he was wearing now was a good enough replacement even if the worst happened. “Sure.” He started to get up.

“No, don’t bother, I’ll do it. You keep eating. He mentioned something about finding you stabbed?”

Cloud waved a hand dismissively, then pointed the other man to where he’d left the damp bundle. “Don’t worry about it, I’m fine now. Happens all the time”

“You know, I think I can see why the people closest to you seem to think you need a babysitter,” he said dryly. Cloud didn’t bother to dignify that with a response. Angeal left the kitchen with an amused huff.

Cloud finished the last of his food slowly, eyes narrowing as he listened to Angeal starting up a washing machine deeper in the apartment. A thought occurred to him, and he voiced it when the man came back. “Where’s Zack?”

Angeal blinked, a pained expression crossing his face. “He was KIA when...Cloud…” he trailed off, eyes widening.

Bingo, thought Cloud. “Nibelheim?”

“Yes. He—you think he’s alive too?” His face was pale, sort of pinched like he wanted to hope but didn’t dare to.

Cloud shrugged. “If the other me is, then...yeah, probably.” He sat back against the wall, cocking his head to the side. “You need to make some calls too?”

They say you resemble your six closest friends, and as Cloud watched murderous anger kindle in Angeal’s eyes, he thought it might be true. In rage, he and Genesis looked remarkably alike.

“I—yes. Yes, I think I do,” Angeal said. “I assume you won’t do anything stupid if I leave you here?”

Cloud rolled his eyes a little. “Nap. And Genesis said he’d be back in an hour anyway.”

“Great.” There was no interrogation beyond that as Angeal turned on his heel and stalked out of the apartment. A nasty grin slowly spread across Cloud’s face. I hope you enjoy my gifts, Hojo, he thought, standing and stretching out his sore muscles. And to think he’d been speared through by Masamune less than two hours ago.

He definitely deserved that nap.

Chapter Text

Genesis’s hands shook on Rapier’s hilt as he breathed in heavy, strained pants. Blood roared in his ears like a storm. The world seemed at once distant and more real than anything he’d ever experienced. But his vision—his vision was flawlessly clear. He saw in exquisite, perfect detail as the blood soaked down the front of that button-up shirt and white coat. He saw as it hissed and burned on Rapier’s firey blade.

The eyes of Genesis Rhapsodos, General of SOLDIER, missed nothing as the Goddess’s perfect justice was visited upon Hojo in the form of a sword driven deep into his heart.

For once in his life, he had no words to speak. No poetry to quote. No quips, or repartee, not even a furious tirade. The monster on the end of his sword didn’t deserve it. Not a single word.

Hojo died in choking silence and the smell of his own burning flesh.

One breath.

Two.

Genesis closed his eyes. Tasted mako and ash on the back of his tongue. Exhaled as the world fell back into place around him. He let the rage that had consumed him fall away like a physical weight. His first task was over—now, to find his apprentice.

With careless disdain, he yanked Rapier free and let the corpse fall to the floor. The lab assistants and soldiers were all dead by either his or Angeal’s hands, littering the dirty floor like so many fallen leaves. Angeal had rejoined him and then broken off again shortly after they cornered Hojo, searching for their boys while Genesis killed the rat. Now, Genesis followed his friend’s trail of bloody bootprints through the halls.

Hojo was not an orderly man, but clearly some of his assistants had been. There were labels and signs and neat boxes outside of doorways to collect paper files. His stomach dropped, half in fear and half in relief, as he realized Angeal’s trail was leading him into a section of the basement called “Live Storage.” Better by far than ending their search in the freezers or rooms full of jarred organs.

He found Angeal in a room at the end of a hallway. Found, and then immediately forgot as the air punched out of his lungs because— there. There was Cloud, floating unconscious in a tank full of mako. Alive. They wouldn’t have bothered keeping a breathing mask on a dead body.

Genesis had just enough attention to spare to note that Zack was in the tank next to Cloud’s and that Angeal was working feverishly over a control console nearby, haloed in the sickly green light. In a trance, he stepped forward, each footfall feeling like a mile run until he was finally standing directly in front of Cloud.

Cloud sobbed, weak and exhausted, into Genesis’s shoulder. On his other side, Angeal had also begun weeping—horrible, gut-wrenching cries that finally tore Genesis’s attention away from Cloud long enough to check on his brother-in-arms. Zack, wrapped in a blanket—leave it to Angeal to think farther ahead than simply getting him out—was silent and unmoving in his arms. Genesis’s stomach dropped. He’d...been in a mask too, hadn’t he?

Cloud’s sobs quieted as he seemed to realize that something was off. He twisted his head, blinked the tears out of his cat-slit eyes. “...Zack?” he rasped. Alarm crossed his face. “Zack?” He struggled, trying to get out of Genesis’s arms and over to his friend on limbs that refused to cooperate. “Zack!”

“Alright, alright,” Genesis said quickly, moving one arm to beneath the boy’s legs. “Hold on, little spitfire, we’re going.” He didn’t bother getting up all the way, just lifted Cloud and shuffled on his knees over to Angeal and Zack. 

Cloud reached for Zack immediately, trusting Genesis to hold him upright when his body couldn’t. “Zack?” He tapped his cheek, ignoring Angeal entirely as the man stifled his sobbing and raised his head. “Wasn’t…this bad…before..” he mumbled, thumbing one of Zack’s eyes open to reveal a bright blue iris with a green ring around his cat-slit pupil—nearly identical to Cloud’s new eyes.

Cloud inhaled sharply at the sight, hand jerking back as if burned. “Oh,” he said, voice small. “Oh no…”

Angeal’s brows came together, same as Genesis’s. “Cloud?” he asked, arms tightening around Zack even as he shifted so that the blond could get to him easier.

“‘S only s...supposed to...be me,” Cloud managed, exhaustion catching up to him. He sank back against Genesis, eyes sliding shut even as they teared up again over some grief he didn’t have the strength to communicate. “‘s...only...m…” 

Unconsciousness claimed him again before he could finish his statement.

It was only supposed to be me. Was he talking about the eyes? Genesis looked to Angeal, who was glancing between the boys with a pale, pinched expression. There were too many unknowns, and not enough time to answer them.

“We—” Angeal cut off abruptly, turning his head away from Genesis for a second before he continued. “We need to get them out of here.”

“...right,” Genesis agreed, maneuvering Cloud to one arm so he could shrug out of his coat and wrap it around his boy. Not...boy, anymore. Man. Goddess, he was eighteen now. And Zack was twenty, or at least looked it. Somehow, Genesis doubted they’d had the luxury of truly growing with their bodies here. “Did you get the files?”

“Yes,” Angeal said, standing with Zack in his arms. “The papers are wrapped and I took the hard drives.”

“Then we burn the whole thing,” Genesis said, regaining some equilibrium as a nasty, vindictive smile crossed his face. “And devil take the hindmost. I’d like to see the fucking Turks reconstruct a crime scene from nothing but ashes.”

“Don’t be so flippant, Gen,” Angeal said grimly as they half jogged out, heading for the exit. “They’ll be after us as soon as news of the desertion hits, nevermind this. Even without SOLDIER, Shinra is still a force to be reckoned with.”

Genesis scoffed but didn’t argue. “Anything interesting in the files?”

“Some. A name, mainly. It matched the project files we got in the Tower. Hojo seemed quite obsessed with it. What he did to...well, he did everything because of this one singular...entity.”

“Oh? What was the name?” That “entity” might have to be the next thing they dealt with. Anything Hojo loved deserved to burn. Genesis would see to it personally.

Angeal’s jaw clenched, probably thinking along similar lines. “It’s a very distinctive name. I’d never heard it before, but it was all over the files.”

“Don’t be coy, Angeal, just tell me the damn name.”

“I’m not! It’s just...I don’t know. Something feels off here and it’s making me uneasy.”

Genesis rolled his eyes. “Well, try me. Maybe I’ve heard of it.”

Angeal glanced at Zack, and Cloud, and finally met Genesis’s eyes. 

“Project S,” he said. “Project Sephiroth.”