Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was rare a chase could exhaust Sephiroth, but he was gradually experiencing pressure and a burn in his knees and thighs as his quarry jinked and dodged down the sweaty Mexican streets and alleyways. 

He had already run through the mad Nogales traffic more times than he cared to remember, clipped twice by motorcyclists—one bike skidding through the intersection after hitting Sephiroth, the other smashing them both into a parked car. 

Sephiroth doubted either driver had survived but hadn’t stayed long enough to check—the fever and heat of the run clouded his peripherals; he was so highly attuned to hunting his target.

His target had already fled to the rooftops, scaling smog-covered tiles and architectural outcroppings, then tumbling down fire escapes and open windows, always doubling back, never closer than meters in front of him. 

If he had been anywhere near Shinra’s territory—if this hadn’t been so definitively a Turk mission—he would have known it was another SOLDIER, someone like him and Genesis, someone who had somehow managed to stay off his radar…

But Shinra would never allow a SOLDIER so far from the island, and it was unthinkable, impossible, that a human could evade him.  Not for this long, not over half the city, not at this speed.

As his target kept returning to the western manufacturing district, Sephiroth was more than sure the target meant to make a break for the desert in the west.  It was logical at this point to assume the target was working alone—or would possibly rendezvous somewhere to the west—

An explosion—possibly a grenade, probably homemade based on the lackluster blast and lack of shrapnel—came under his feet as he vaulted a low fence blocking the narrow alley, temporarily blinding him, and forcing him to stumble, losing valuable seconds. 

Not more than five meters away, a narrow figure in dark grey combat gear flinched—civilian, startled by an explosion he had himself planted—before darting further away into the dark.  Judging from the scrabbling Sephiroth could hear over his own breath—it had been years since anything could cause him this sort of physical stress—up another wall, and into the rooftop labyrinths of ventilation systems and drying laundry.

He paused as he marveled, losing whatever advantage he had—what had the Turks found, precisely?—before dropping into a dead run, heading west.

***

Despite what he actually did for a living, Angeal didn’t consider himself a thief. 

It was horribly cliched—and he couldn’t blame people for laughing—but he really did consider himself a modern-day Robin Hood, stealing from rich, faceless corporations who never went hungry and never felt pain.  Sometimes Angeal even gave to the poor, but mostly—he couldn’t really be ashamed, a man had to eat—he gave to himself, and his family.

Normally there wasn’t any cops, private army, or goons he couldn’t outrun or outfight, but whatever the hell he had on his tail now was raising the hair on the back of his neck and flooding his blood with cold ice, the kind that only seemed to burn him as he sprinted and dodged his way through the city map he’d spent the last week memorizing. 

He’d made the mistake of trying to face the monster earlier, in dark warehouse housing what smelt like fertilizer and rusty car parts.  He’d hid and waited, before taking a swing at the long white cape the man wore on his back.  He had barely seen the man turn, but the stout iron bar—heavier than what normal men could lift, never mind catch--crunched audibly in the monster’s grip, before being yanked out of his hand and tossed away.

The monster’s fingers brushed Angeal’s tactical vest as he darted backwards, desperately, the bastard was as fast as he was, and that was impossible, nothing could move like he could—and it was only dumb, stupid luck the bastard pulled the pin on his flashbang strapped to his chest.

The telltale ‘click’ had Angeal closing his eyes, the inside of his eyelids turning a bright orange pink even as the bomb blast brushed his face, burning him slightly.

The monster grunted and—without checking the damage, without knowing if it was useless—Angeal pelted through the dark and out the door as if he had all of Hell on his heels.

His dumb stupid luck seemed to be holding out though, as he left the city and dodged past the ramshackle suburbia, making sure to keep out of the light, to move too fast for the dogs—and everyone here seemed to have dogs--to react.

He had double backed and peered through the dark in stops and starts, straining his ears, before finally getting to the empty fireworks building.  He’d left food and medical supplies in case of problems—it had been years since he had to deal with anything like this, not since his inhuman speed had manifested itself—but mostly he’d been looking forward to a nap after the job, before getting picked up the next day.

The door creaked painfully loud as he opened it, the lock broken months ago by kids.  Angeal flinched at the noise, hating that he was jumping at shadows, that this was all it took to turn him back into a child, afraid of the dark…

But it was 30 miles from the city center, where he’d first run into the monster, and the bastard had kept pace with him, had him running in circles and squares for well over an hour, without ever showing a sign of slowing or weakness—

--and his dumb luck held a little longer, because his body reacted to movement before his mind had time to process what—

He threw himself across the floor, rolling when he finally hit, and then shoving his arm under his tossed pack to yank out his sword, bringing it up into a guard barely in time to catch the monster’s blade.  Angeal hadn’t been quite fast enough, caught the enemy sword with the tip of his own, causing his defense to crumble, and barely had time to jump to the side to avoid the second stab.

The roof—the bastard had been waiting in the roof before dropping on him—

Angeal liked to brag he could see in the dark, like any good cat burglar should, while his friends would groan and tell him to shut up with the dad jokes, he was aging them all prematurely, did he always have to be so lame…

It wasn’t quite true—he couldn’t see in total darkness, not really—but now he strained his eyes for the slightest flash, the dark slide of steel leaping for his throat in the dark, parrying and blocking, throwing a riposte or lunge when he could, barely managing to keep hold his of his family sword as the blows came down like hammers, whole garbage trucks slamming into his blade.  Blood or sweat was falling into his eyes, making him squint.

He couldn’t keep this up.

He was going to lose, and it was going to happen in the next few seconds.

He wasn’t going to be captured—he knew it in his bones, with an absolute certainty—this monster only came for the kill…

He was out of options.

His mom was going to kill him.  But she could only do that if he survived tonight…

Angeal jumped high, high enough to reach the rickety scaffolding on the second floor, getting a momentary glimpse of the monster’s pale face below him.  His eyes glowed in the dark.

The green ball in his bracelet burned bright, just for a second, just long enough to send a thin weak sheet of fire along the walls and touch the floor.

Then the fireworks factory exploded.

Traditionally, fireworks are made in buildings with thick walls, but thin roofs.  Angeal didn’t remember hitting the roof on his way out but could only hope the monster got smashed against the wall.  The rocky ground hit him hard, bloody and breaking, wrenching his knee.

He took a second to breathe—involuntary, his heart was still racing, fear still rampant up and down his spine--before staggering away, into a limping run, into the desert.

***

Angeal was genuinely too tired to run, and he had damaged his right leg from getting blasted through the roof.  Pain flared every time he bent it, as he jogged with a heavy limp and then stumbled to a walk, and he could feel the blood slide down his leg, soaking into his socks and boots. 

He slid down ravines and stumbled into barrel cactus and prickly pear, and other prickly things that may have been plants, could have been rocks, could have been porcupines for all he could tell in the thick heavy dark.

He was bleeding and bruised in a million places.  Angeal could feel his face swelling, his eye trying to close, but wouldn’t have wanted a moon on a night like this, not with a monster on his tail.  He had always healed fast, but now it didn’t seem like it could happen fast enough.  Now he had time to think.

No human could keep up with him.  The fastest human couldn’t break 30 miles per hour, and Angeal had measured himself at 45 MPH, easy, without needing to pull on the reserves he had tonight.  He had never had to, before this.

The fireworks factory had stunk, when he’d been there earlier in the week.  The smell of charcoal and sulfur and whatever eye-watering chemical they used was sunk into the walls, even the concrete floor, and had clung to his clothes when he left it. 

But not tonight.  Tonight, it smelled a little earthy, a bit like fertilizer and ozone, edging out the chemical smell…just like every time the monster had gotten close to him.

As Angeal trudged through the arid Sonoran Desert, exhausted and broken, he tried to pretend it didn’t smell of damp earth, of fertilizer, the feeling of malice and violence standing right over his shoulder and breathing down his neck…

***

Sephiroth, briefly, debated the merits of not pressing Call on his mobile phone, before doing so.  Creatively interpreting orders and absconding from work were two different things.

“Tseng.”

“He escaped,” Sephiroth didn’t bother to identify himself. 

There was a pause, followed by the smallest of sighs.  “How?”

How from you?  The pinnacle of the SOLDIER program—and the thief had escaped from Sephiroth.

“He has enhanced speed, equal to if not greater than a SOLDIER.  Strength and stamina is enhanced.  Your tip was correct.  There are rogues.”

“Where are you?”

Even had he been inclined to be truthful, that would have been a difficult question to answer, since he was somewhere generally in the middle of the Mexican desert, and close to illegally crossing a national border into Arizona. Unless he had already crossed it; there was very little way to tell. 

Endangered saguaro cactus, aloe, and red rock surrounded him to the horizon.  The sun was merciless, a white-hot force in the sky, and there was no wind.  Occasionally, there was a vulture.

“In pursuit.”

“Pursuit was never in your purview, as you were here only to subdue the target if requested and the Turks were not able—”

“Clearly you were unable,” Sephiroth couldn’t help the smirk in his voice.  “I am sure you are normally effective on field missions, and failure occurs irregularly.  However, I do have a record maintain.”  Perfect.  Pristine.  Absolutely worthless.

“You are ordered to return to Shinra immediately,” Tseng was possibly annoyed.  His tone and inflection didn’t change.  “This is nonnegotiable.”

Sephiroth hung up.  He then removed the phone’s battery and sim card, before tossing everything but the sim card into the bushes.  He was annoyed he hadn’t done it sooner, but he at least had to maintain the appearance of a dutiful soldier…

In any case, he had a mystery to unravel, including the one that was slowing burning in his gut, along his spine.  He had lost track of his target’s trail some kilometers ago, but hadn’t once doubted his route, where he needed to go, where he needed to be.  Something—or more likely, someone—was drawing him forward, not so much guiding him as pushing him along.

He wasn’t lost at all, and he had no idea why.

***

Chapter Text

The hotel had security cameras posted on the ground level and went up 5 stories.  His quarry was somewhere in the fourth floor…closer to the south side…and there was an open window. 

Sephiroth was still not certain how he knew that, but had not taken the time to wonder.  He had not taken the time to sleep or eat either, for days—the thief must have caught transportation.  Possibly his accomplices were in the hotel room as well, possibly armed--more combatants to absorb his irritation. 

Walking into the hotel itself was out of the question.  He was filthy, traces of the explosion along his face and hair, turning the silver mane a muddled brown gray.  His black leathers were a dusty gray, dotted slightly with dried blood from when the man’s last bit of trickery had burned through his skin.

Even when in Shinra, at the seat of his power, Sephiroth disliked going out into public.  People always stared.  At least when he looked like a burned-out scarecrow, people stared, then quickly looked away.

Sephiroth discreetly made his way to the rooftops in the afternoon sunshine, and then dropped inside the Las Vegas hotel room.  It was much nicer than the bland one Tseng had stationed them at in Mexico.  The carpet was plush, his boots sinking well in, the bed queen sized with rich blankets, and some sort of art on the walls.  The bathroom door was closed, and he could hear the shower going.

Apparently, his thief liked to live well.

Clothes caked with desert dust and sand—and blood, the man had bled quite a bit, more than Sephiroth expected--littered the floor, along with a rather beautiful and unwieldy great-sword.  Sephiroth picked it up, finding it clumsy and ungainly, too heavy for a normal man to carry, much less fight with. 

The thief was a poor swordsman, compared to Sephiroth, as everyone was—but he had not had problems throwing the slab of metal around with finesse and control, fending off Sephiroth’s gentle taps and lazy strikes.  There was no issue with the thief’s strength, only his training.  Sephiroth had gone easy on him, had not wanted to end the chase too quickly, too gracelessly.  He hadn’t thought the man could surprise him any further…

The shower turned off.

The burning sensation in his stomach intensified, flared along his gut and spine, and reached his throat, making him gasp and fold over, hugging his stomach.  He forced himself to straighten up and inhaled deeply, taking stock of the situation, of himself, what was going on…

The room was swimming, and his vision went red.  He closed his eyes and breathed through it, until the episode passed.

He could hear splashing through the bathroom door.  Right now, his thief was defenseless, alone, and unaware of his presence.  It was contact with the thief that had caused the burning itch inside his brain, whose presence had sparked this compulsion.  He would have answers. 

And.  His skin was filthy, his hair caked with sweat.  A bath would be pleasant.

Sephiroth undressed without thinking too much of it, vaguely aware that he was lying to himself and not understanding why. 

He walked into the bathroom. 

The bathroom seemed as luxurious as the rest of the hotel, with a dual-headed standing shower and indoor hot tub.  His thief was relaxing in the jacuzzi, arms resting on the rim, hands hidden by the water.  Ugly black and green bruises dotted the right side of his body, along with some of Masasume’s gentle cuts.  He wore some sort of clunky bracelet on his left wrist, under the water.

He looked little like the thin, angular sketch Tseng had produced; his face was squarer, jaw was stronger.   Sephiroth had not gotten a look during their long and varied chase.  He had dark bronzed skin, slicked dark hair, the suggestion of a beard, broad shoulders.  The left shoulder was tattooed with a “3”, and his dark eyes were frozen wide in fear.

It was an expression Sephiroth saw often, and he couldn’t help smirking a little—such a common thing, on such an uncommon individual.

“Hello.”  He locked the door behind him.  A simple door lock wouldn’t stop a SOLDIER, but it still took time to break down a door.  There were no other exits to the room.

The man’s eyes didn’t leave his face, even as Sephiroth slowly stalked closer.

“I am impressed,” it was not what Sephiroth had intended to say, but he found it true, nevertheless.  “You don’t appear to have formal training, and you do not fight well.”

The man’s right eyebrow rose at that—possibly unintended.

“But you can run.  It has been some time since anyone has managed to run from me so long.  You should be proud.”

The man had gone pale, and his throat worked visibly as he swallowed.  Sephiroth reached the rim, a thin bit of porcelain sunk into the floor, big enough to accommodate someone the thief’s height.  They would have trouble fitting in together.

“It’s a shame you couldn’t run far enough,” Sephiroth stepped in, the water hot and cloying against his skin, the rising, burning miasma of need roiling through his stomach and lungs, clouding his brain, his eyes, as his prey sat so, so good for him, not moving or squirming or wriggling away anymore, staying exactly where he needed to be—

Sephiroth sat awkwardly, as close as he could get to his thief, straddling his thighs, clumsily kneeling to keep his weight off other man’s legs, not quite prepared for the intimacy of contact just yet, no matter what the heat in his stomach, in his brain demanded.

His thief had gray eyes.  Not quite brown, not quite blue.  A clear, sort of slate gray…

Sephiroth didn’t remember wrapping his hand around the other man’s throat; he made a point to keep the grip light, easy, though the thief was still breathing heavy, scratchy.  His fingers sang, flared from those brief points of contact.  His mania was the thief’s fault.  He was owed some sort of revenge. 

“I am disappointed.  I hoped you would be better—"

This time, the blast of fire was focused and condensed, and hit him point blank in the face.

***

Angeal broke down the bathroom door, his bracelet burning from the magic ball cradled inside of it, trying to burn its way out of the brass.  He stopped long enough to grab his sword, tactical vest, and boots before jumping out the window. 

The fire alarms had come on during the blast.  With any luck there would be cops, and fireman--oh shit he’ll kill them, what if he kills them--and they would slow the monster down long enough for him to escape.

He darted down the street, feeling again that all of Hell was on his heels, feeling that breath down his neck and hand around his throat, controlling and throttling—

He’ll kill them.

I can’t save them.

But he’ll kill them!

Angeal ran.  He wished briefly that the monster was behind him, that he hadn’t bothered with innocents—

What will happen to your mother?  What will happen to Cid?

Angeal ran.

Car honks exploded behind him, followed by the screech in tires, the crunch of metal—had these people never seen a naked man running down the street, this was Las Vegas, it couldn’t be that—

Angeal threw himself into the road, across the hood of an oncoming SUV, bounced off and sped on, heard the explosion of the car crash behind him.  He dropped his boots.  A bisected streetlamp fell slowly towards him, and Angeal batted it away with his sword, trying to lose as little velocity as possible, trying to stay as streamlined as possible. 

There was a bridge ahead, and the maze of the train depot below, he might have a chance—

This wasn’t Mexico and he wasn’t prepared, wasn’t rested, he would not win in a fight—

Pain flared along his thigh, and out of his peripheral he could see a flash of silver as the monster ran along the street, keeping pace easily, while blood spilled down Angeal’s leg, made his feet slippery.  The monster knew to aim for his legs, speed was his only advantage. 

He dove headfirst over the bridge railing, twisting midair to cover himself with his sword—

--that shuddered in his hands as the monster’s blade slammed into it, a thin but uncannily long sword, absolutely petite in diameter compared to the buster sword—

--the monster’s swing threw him into the depot. 

Angeal tried to roll when he hit the ground—assuming he didn’t break his spine, his legs—and managed to make it to his feet when the monster landed and rushed him again.  Angeal managed to block, keep his footing, and caught the next thrust, then trip over the train tracks, then parry the next lunge. 

The fight was a constant onslaught.  He was barely aware of his movements anymore, until he was moving on bare reflex, this was nothing like what Vincent had put him through, he was not ready for—

He was slammed backwards into the carriage of a train, heard the metal groan, felt his skin break.  His knee gave out beneath him, and he couldn’t feel anything from below his right shoulder besides pain.   His fingers were numb.  He couldn’t lift his sword.  His ears were buzzing, and the base of his skull was on fire…

The monster stalked lightly over the gravel and train tracks, long white hair swaying behind him, flicking his lance of a blade up, then to side, an almost salutatory gesture. 

Angeal tried to move his sword to his left hand and dropped it, his right fingers too weak to move.  He thought he saw the monster smirk—

Neither of them noticed the freight hauler that sped through and hit the monster.

For a while Angeal didn’t move, just stared as the freight cars pulled through, and wondered briefly if he’d fallen asleep in the jacuzzi, and this was all some strange dream.  His life wasn’t exactly normal, he knew that, but this was—this was crazy.

His whole body was on fire and pain, brain drunk on adrenaline and fear.  The stink of damp earth and green things was everywhere. 

He’d dropped his vest at some point, so he was completely naked in a Vegas railway yard except for his magic bracelet and his family sword.  He didn’t even have his shoes; the gravel was crunching under his bare ass.  Blood trickled down his face and dripped off his chin. 

The train went past, and Angeal struggled up.  Further down the tracks, in the dying sunset, he thought he could see a splash of white on the ground.

He needed to get out of there.  He needed to get on a bus, or hop on another train, and go as far as he could and hope—

The monster was probably dead. 

“I am impressed.”

Who was he?  Who had sent him?  CIA?  Interpol?  Angeal had stolen—was pretty sure he had stolen—banking trade information, nothing exciting, nothing big, nothing that should have gotten this sort of attention.  At worst Angeal had expected some trouble from the Policia Federal, or private security, not Sexy Rapey Terminator.

He really needed to get out of here.  He should not be approaching the monster’s…corpse?  He had to be dead.  He’d been hit full on…

The monster had been carried several yards and dropped on a network of crisscrossing rail tracks.  He had fallen on his side, blood liberally smeared, with a bit of pale bone peeking out of his arm, his knee.   His head and shoulders were blackened and red from where the fireball had hit. 

His crazy long sword seemed to have disappeared.  Gingerly, Angeal used his sword to push the monster on his back and watched his chest carefully.

The monster was still breathing. 

Well.  At least that was an easy fix.  Angeal lifted his sword. 

And---

He could do this.  Vincent would be so pissed.  Well, no, Vincent would be disappointed, which was worse, but he could do this.  Cid would be pissed.  He could do this.  It was self-defense.  Other people were counting on him to come back alive.  It wasn’t even hard.  Wasn’t even a moving target.

It wasn’t like the monster could fight back, not like this.

He held for a second longer, and then Angeal dropped his sword. 

Then he picked up the man—carefully, he’d feel so stupid if he broke his neck on accident, people weren’t supposed to be moved after a car collision, but if he left him here he was going to get run over by another train and then—and then that would be one less problem for Angeal to carry, one less thing to worry about, leaving would absolutely be the smartest thing to do—

He laid the man under the bridge, in the shadows, on his back.  He had a tattoo on his left hand, a dull “01”.”  Angeal stood and watched for a bit.  The wounds in the man’s arms started to knit and seal, under his very eyes.

Then he got his sword and got the hell out.

***

Chapter Text

A train got Angeal to Reno.  Then a Greyhound bus to Salem, Oregon.  From there he went to Brookings, a heavily forested little town on the Oregon coast, the air thick with rain and salt.  He traveled at night and tried to avoid moving in a straight line.

A week went by. 

He checked the newspapers, and stayed low in the safe house, a tiny little studio, in a faceless little apartment complex.  There was no TV or computer, just a few paperbacks and foodie magazines.  He contacted his partner, Cid, to debrief, using passcodes and double-speak.  He dead-dropped the damn flash drive he had stolen when the monster first found him. 

He ordered too much pizza, and worried.  The kitchen was empty except for some ancient mustard and vodka, but he was too jittery to step outside to shop. 

He had been in this line of work for a while now, and he hadn’t felt anxiety like this in years; he couldn’t quite blame the nerves on just the monster.  He was jumping at every shadow, uneasy and itchy inside of his own skin, unable to settle.  He wasn’t tired, despite barely sleeping, and found it difficult to concentrate. 

It felt like there was a worm moving at the base of his skull, warm and sticky and calling him.  He hadn’t shared that with Cid, more than certain the feeling would leave after some sleep, but he still hadn’t been able to shake the certainty that there was somewhere else he needed to be.  Couldn’t shake the certainty that there was something he was missing, there was someone inside his head…

Angeal tried to sleep it off.

This time, dreams came before the monster did.  They were foggy, hot dreams, steamy and itchy, the kind he used to get as a teenager and wake up to sticky sheets. 

His sheets were soaked, damp and uncomfortable, his cock was painfully hard, like an iron bar.  Later, he was never quite able to remember where the dreams ended, and when the monster was really there.

There were hands on him—those huge monster hands, long fingered and blissfully cold against his heated skin, sweet on his arms, stroking the fine ticklish skin along his ribs—

Wrapping themselves around his neck, and this time he was too addled to fight back, to think, to do anything but grab the monster by his shoulders and yank, and then kiss him like his life depended it, like the fate of the world depended on it.

Angeal was slapped hard and tasted blood, bright and coppery.  He bounced off the wall and fell on his ass. 

That didn’t normally happen in his wet dreams.  That was—that was different—it felt like he was in a fog…

The monster loomed over him, malice and ice and naked skin, before grabbing him and throwing Angeal on the bed.  The monster pounced him, ran his freezing hands all over Angeal, awkwardly trying to thrust against his thigh.  Usually, Angeal’s wet dreams were a lot gentler, sexier.

From there it was a blur.

At one point he thought the monster was genuinely trying to strangle him, then his thumbs were in Angeal’s eye sockets, before Angeal flailed and twisted, and found himself straddling the other man.  Despite everything, Angeal wasn’t afraid. He held him down by one shoulder—the other man had viciously bright green eyes, glowing and burning—while Angeal’s other hand jerked him off, in slow, languid movements. 

His cock felt amazing in Angeal’s hand.  Solid, powerful, and damn it if his dick wasn’t as oversized and overstated as the rest of him.  This was worth taking slow, this was worth enjoying—the monster’s eyes closed, and he tilted his head back with a gritted moan. 

This was worth using his mouth for, his tongue.

Angeal would not be the first to admit he didn’t do this often, but he knew he was awkward and inexperienced.  He had a vague idea of what was supposed to happen, how he was supposed to lick and suckle, and had had his cock sucked enough to have a fair idea of what the end product should be. 

But here, in this place with this man, he felt confident and sure and the only thing that mattered was getting it down his throat, of tasting every last inch of skin, that salty bitter taste only spurring him on.

It was over in seconds.  Angeal wound up with cum in his mouth and face and chin, an absolute mess.  If Angeal had been anywhere near his right mind, he would have felt disgruntled.

He grabbed his own cock and started stroking furiously, while the monster rumbled beneath him like a tiger, like an engine.

He didn’t remember coming, not really—white spattered the monster’s perfect cut torso, and then Angeal collapsed.  His brain switched off. 

***

Angeal woke up slow, aching everywhere, feeling a bit like he had the flu.  There was thick film of sweat on his skin, and his eyelids were gummed together.

The smell woke him up a little more, the stink of sex and mud for some reason.  Had he fallen asleep outside?  It wasn’t cold at all.  The body beneath him was a furnace—

Angeal lifted his head with more grace and coordination than he thought he had under the circumstances, and found the monster was staring at him.  He was gorgeous, finely cut cheekbones and aristocratic features, and pale, clear green eyes.  Eyes that, this close, didn’t look remotely human; weren’t even mammalian.

It reminded Angeal of a horror-art installment his mother had dragged him to, once, mistaking the venue for floral acrylics.  The horror pictures were usually perfectly normal, everyday scenes, with a singular oddity dropped in, made all the creepier for the surrounding mundane.

“Don’t,” the monster commanded, regal and cold. 

Despite himself, Angeal found his body obeying.  He swallowed, hating that his throat clicked with the motion.

“Don’t run away.  Don’t even think about moving,” the monster had one hand loosely wrapped around Angeal’s arm; distantly, Angeal was surprised the man wasn’t choking him. 

His hair was silver.  Somehow that had slipped Angeal’s attention.  Silver eyebrows, thick dark silver eyelashes; not blond or white, but a greyed-out silver.   The afternoon sunlight picked out the metallic highlights, making the man seem even less organic. 

“You have some explaining to do.”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Angeal said, breathy and choked.  “I’m not even sure this is really happening.”

The monster gave him a withering look, without moving his face.  Angeal thought that was unfair; everything could have been a super weird dream, and he would have been ok with that.

“Please don’t lie to me.  You have infected me, somehow, during the chase.  You have done something to my mind.”

Angeal gaped, because there were threats and murder attempts, but this was bull shit.

“It was you,” the monster spat back at him.  “I despise physical contact.”

“You should probably stop trying to jump my bones so much, then,” Angeal snapped without thinking. 

The monster narrowed its eyes, and the temperature dropped.

“Also,” Angeal stammered, because pointing fingers wasn’t going to do him a whole lot of good here,   “Also, if I could make you, you, do anything, it would get you on the other side of the goddamned planet.  This has been one of the worst jobs of my life and it’s all damn down to you.”

The monster stared at him.

“Also, the worst month.  Ever.  Of my life.”

“What have you done to me?” the monster murmured, suddenly quiet.  “I couldn’t stop thinking of you.  I couldn’t stop coming for you.  This isn’t rational, this isn’t remotely something I would do freely, and there are no third parties involved.”

The monster seemed to relax against the pillows, considering the facts, and not Angeal’s immediate death.

“You have set me on fire twice now.  Using no discernable device or other implements.  You have enhancements no human outside Shinra should have.  You are the common denominator in this mystery, and I do not like mysteries.”

“You’re from Shinra?” Angeal couldn’t stop himself.  Then he could have kicked himself.

“So, you are familiar with it,” the monster lifted one silver eyebrow.  “Is that where you received your marking?  Your tattoo.”

Angeal twitched, hard.

“No,” the denial came out fast, instinctive.  The monster stared at him with single-minded intensity, seeming to catalog every breath, every micro expression on Angeal’s face.  “You’ve got one on your hand.”

“Yes.  For much the same reason, I imagine.”

The monster relaxed, enough that Angeal felt comfortable sitting up, noticing that the monster had him trapped between his legs.  Angeal wouldn’t be able to jump out, and from the look on the monster’s face, he was expecting it.  The window was right there, but still not close enough…and running away hadn’t really fixed his problems anyway.

“I’m not.  Seriously.  I’m not.”

“Not what?” the monster asked gently.

Angeal paused.  He didn’t want any more trouble, but—he was already in way more trouble than he realized, and probably had been for a while.  Not point in pretending.

“SOLDIER.  I’m not one.  I didn’t—I don’t have anything to do with Shinra.”

The monster stared at him.

“Please continue,” he finally said. 

Angeal hesitated.  “Can I shower first?  And could you put on clothes?”

The monster tilted his head, a small movement that still reminded Angeal vividly of a jungle cat, or a snake primed to strike.  “We can take a shower if you wish.  I may dress after.”

“Yeah, the shower isn’t actually big enough—"

“I am also satisfied to remain exactly as we are, until you explain yourself to my satisfaction.”

Angeal paused and—thought.  He needed an opportunity.  He wasn’t going to get it like this.  “Sure, let’s do that.”

The man hadn’t killed him yet, and while Angeal wasn’t sure he could talk him out of it—he’d always been better with actions than words—he was willing to take whatever space he could get.

***

The shower was genuinely too small to accommodate both of them at the same time, and Sephiroth kept his thief crowded near the shower head with the curtain open, getting only slightly clean while his thief sluiced down. 

It had been…some weeks since he had been able to wash properly.  At Shinra Sephiroth was fastidious of bathing twice a day, but with the fever and miasma on his brain he had barely noticed the accumulated stink and sweat on his hair and skin.  He couldn’t remember sleeping, resting—he was missing portions of memory, and that did not bode well.  Wutai had taught him not to mind rough living, but this time he simply hadn’t noticed. 

Finding his thief had taken priority beyond rationality, beyond survival.  The thought was unsettling, that his mind was not entirely under his control.  And now that he had found him—he could feel the lack of stress, tension, like a physical burden had been lifted from his back.  Unfortunately, the red miasma was still there, viscous and sticky, lying at the base of his skull.

Water drenched the bathroom floor and crept into the carpet near the door.  Sephiroth slipped on his trousers, still dusty and filthy, but all he had in case he had to chase his thief through the city again; he hadn’t enjoyed chasing the other man naked.  He kept himself between his thief and the door and the window over the bed. 

His thief dressed silently, glancing only once at the exits, and hadn’t looked at Sephiroth once.  There was a red smear near the bottom of the wall from their altercation last night—Sephiroth vaguely remembered hitting the other man.

“No,” Sephiroth spoke quietly when his thief moved to sit on the rumpled bed, “Sit there, at the table.”

That got him a dark look, briefly resentful and afraid before easing into a bland indifference.  His thief straddled the chair, arms crossed over the backrest.  An attempt at bravado?  It didn’t matter.

“Tell me everything you know about Shinra.”

Officially, Shinra was a very young country, a small island in the Pacific that had been bought by a wealthy entrepreneur, who claimed to make an entirely scientific community based on progress and reason.  It had grown in recent years, acquiring other nearby island nations. 

“It’s kind of an Island of Dr. Moreau, isn’t it?  A lot of Nazi scientists fled to it after the war, and then went a little wild with human experimentation.  I didn’t know how much of it was true, but I guess—” he gestured at Sephiroth, “the rumors were more right than wrong.”

“Where are you from, then, if not Shinra?”

His thief glared at him, reminding him briefly of Genesis.  “Oregon.  I don’t know why I’m like this.  You seem to know more than I do, so why don’t you explain, and I’ll jump in if I can.”

Despite the socialization classes he had taken growing up, Sephiroth was not exactly adept at people, whether casual interactions or motivating them.    “Just smile and wave,” Genesis would sneer, “it’s not like the troops need to know about your charming personality.”  However, growing up with Genesis had taught him some measure of de-escalation and diplomacy—they would forever be stabbing each other if he hadn’t.

“This situation does not benefit either of us.  I am experiencing physical changes outside the norm, impulses that—”

That Sephiroth did not want, did not want to even admit to having.  It was degrading, and yet he still wanted to drag the other man back to that filthy bed, crawl under his skin and push their bodies together until they were indistinguishable.  It had been years since he had not had total control over his body’s reactions--not since he was a child in Hojo’s lab.

“Yeah, I noticed that,” his thief grimaced, and rubbed a mottling purple bruise on his arm.  The red swelling on his face was going down.  “I’m going to be bruised for a while.”

“If you had cooperated the last time instead of running like a coward—”

“What last time?” his thief spat.  “You mean last time when you were going to do your own little snuff film?”

“Snuff film?”

“When you were going to rape and kill me jackass, that last time?  You’re really getting mad I didn’t want to stay around for that?”

“I was not going to rape you.”

“Weren’t you?” his voice was a high, angry.  “Does Shinra call it something else when they rape someone in a jacuzzi?  And you’re not denying the murder part.”

Sephiroth opened his mouth—and closed it.  His thief was afraid but doing a better job of hiding it than he’d noticed.  This was getting unproductive.

He had not intended to rape anyone…hadn’t he?  He didn’t—that wasn’t him.  That had never been him.  He wasn’t certain about his intent to commit murder—his memory was fuzzy still.  The thought did have a certain amount of appeal. 

If the thief was dead, Sephiroth’s mind might be returned to him.  He might even be able to return to Shinra with some sort of good standing, if he brought the man’s corpse to them.  It would be convenient to have that option available if he decided against his current plan.

“You didn’t have any problem breaking in and climbing into bed last night,” the thief continued.  Of course, he was probably aware how quickly he would die in a fight, how little incentive Sephiroth had to keep him alive.  He wasn’t a stupid man.  “I didn’t invite you, and I…I didn’t say yes.”

“You didn’t object,” Sephiroth glanced out the window.  If he killed the thief now, here, he would not solve the mystery inside his blood, his brain.   Did he really need an answer?  Would the Science Department find clues inside the thief’s corpse?  “You were rather more enthusiastic than I was.  You are suffering from the same condition I am, without the any of the added benefits.” 

Though—his thief did not seem to be doing as badly as Sephiroth was.  His skin smelled clean, and he’d remembered to feed himself. 

“Benefits?”

“How do you think I tracked you?”

“…Shinra?”

“I have not yet alerted Shinra to your location.  The science department will demand your body, and they will find this,” he gestured vaguely between them, “worth investigating.”

Sephiroth continued, “I don’t have the time or interest to entertain the Science department—” his thief barked a laugh, “—so I would prefer to solve this mystery prior to capturing you in an official capacity.”

His thief blinked.  “What.  Wait, what?  So why should I help you with anything, if I’m going to wind up dissected on some fucking table?”

“The science department won’t kill you intentionally,” Sephiroth favored him with a slow blink.  “It could be months, even years, before they allow you to die.”

Sephiroth continued, “And in any case—sit down--there is nowhere in the world you could run that I could not find, no shelter that could keep you safe, I have tracked since Mexico without stopping and I will find you.”

He inhaled sharply—that last part had come out a snarl.  Emotional.  Beneath him. 

His thief was gripping the hilt of his sword.  Not raised in a guard yet, not attacking—yet.  But the apprehension and defiance were clear on his face.  At least he realized violence would be unproductive.

“I really am trying to negotiate with you,” Sephiroth tried again.  He needed to maintain control of the situation.  This was Turk work; he had observed them enough to mimic their methods.  “Shinra was alerted to the possibility of a rogue SOLDIER, and we were sent to investigate.  Your performance in Mexico cemented the allegations, and Shinra will not stop pursuing you until you are captured or confirmed dead.”

“I’ve got nothing to do with Shinra—”

“They won’t believe you, any more than I do.  As they have considerably more resources than you do,” Sephiroth finished, voice flat and reasonable, “This will be a losing fight for you, and likely a brief one.”

His thief stared at him.  Glanced out the window.  Then he sat down, laying his giant sword against the wall.  “Are there more SOLDIERs?  Like you?”

“Yes,” not really, only Genesis came close to matching him in strength and speed.  “And others.”

His thief didn’t react to that; he was considering his next move, weighing the pros and cons.  A thinker, clever in a tight corner with potential to grow—their circumstances were unfortunate.  Sephiroth would have liked to be better acquainted with him, had conditions been different.

“So,” Sephiroth tried again, “where are you from?”

“I don’t know,” his thief sounded defeated.  It was possibly an act.  “I really don’t—I don’t know.  I was experimented on, as a child, but nothing came of it.  At the time, I mean.  I don’t know who was doing it, and then I guess they lost funding, or something happened, because the lab shut down.  My abilities—my speed, the crazy strength—didn’t start to show itself until the last couple of years.  My friends thought I was taking steroids, but I guess I’m just a late bloomer.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” his thief gritted out, frustrated.  “My earliest good memories are waking up in a shelter in San Francisco.  I don’t know how I got there or when, or why they were calling me Zack—I just got out of there.  In case they found me again.”

He didn’t seem to be lying about everything; the delivery was too smooth.  His thief had a very honest face, if stubborn.

“What do you remember about the lab?”

“Not much.  There were other kids there.  My mother was there.  She helped me escape, the night they started to shoot the other kids.  The lab was shutting down,” the man elaborated, “I guess that was safer than letting any of us wander away.  She was killed, later, but I escaped.”

It was a plausible story, and consistent with the man’s apparent age—there had been a been a global flurry of human experimentation 15 years ago, though Shinra had been quick to snuff out the competition. 

Sephiroth himself had been a part of a few of those raids, dispatching misshapen half-breeds and men-made-monsters, before torching the corpses to ash.  He had killed many scientists and civilians.  He been young, too young for field work, according the Turks, who were afraid he would bolt and escape.  The missions had taken him across the Pacific Rim.  He had performed adequately, and he had enjoyed it.  It had been possible to pretend the scientists were Hojo, and that the monsters were himself.

“How old are you?”

The man hesitated, clearly not used to impulsive lying, “Thirty-two.  Why?  How old are you?”

“I may have believed you if you had chosen a more realistic, younger age, but your delivery requires practice as well,” Sephiroth didn’t bother to answer the man’s question.  He wasn’t certain what his age was—officially, Sephiroth had been twenty-five for the past four years.   “What’s your name?  Your real name?”

“Ang—Andrew.  Andrew?”  Sephiroth stared.  “Ang—Angel.  It’s Angel.”

Probably still a lie, but close enough that the thief would respond.  Sephiroth could investigate further.

“You may call me Gast.”

Angel inclined his head, a quick awkward greeting.  He didn’t recognize the name, but that did not mean he was unaffiliated with Shinra—Professor Gast’s name had been erased from the history, even the SOLDIER program that he had created.  Using Tseng’s name may have been a better bait.

“Were did you get that sword?”

“My grandfather gave it to me. After I escaped.  He said it was our family’s sword, I—I never did get around to asking why our family needed a buster sword like that.  He died a little bit after.”

Convenient.  Implausible.  Angel was very ineffective liar.

“How did you set me on fire?”

Angel hesitated, “Magic.  No, really, its magic, I don’t have another answer.”

“Show me.”

A stubborn look descended on Angel’s face.  “What are you going to do to me?  After—assuming we can figure out what’s going on?  Are you going to turn me in to Shinra?”

Obviously. 

“That would be the appropriate course of action.  However, I am not adverse to paying my debts, assuming that there is a debt to be repaid.”  Sephiroth hoped the subtext was clear enough—he needed cooperation if he was to solve this before Shinra found them.  “Shinra will not stop until you are captured or confirmed dead.  If I were to report that you were killed in pursuit…”

He trailed off.  Lies were more effective when two parties were crafting them, and more believable. 

Angel frowned at him, before standing to rummage in his backpack.  He dropped a gaudy brass bracelet with a green marble in Sephiroth’s hand.  “It’s that.  Don’t ask me how.”

Sephiroth exhaled quietly, partly to get the smell of Angel out of his system, partly out of satisfaction.  He slipped the bracelet on his own wrist and called up a small fireball above his hand.  Angel gasped, and Sephiroth ignored him in favor of pushing, plumbing the depths of the well, how far mastered was it—

Wouldn’t Genesis be jealous?  A mere civilian, untrained and barely cognizant of his abilities, had been able to use materia competently enough to strike Sephiroth. 

“Where did you get this?”

Angel stared at him, wary and uncertain again.  Sephiroth fed a little more power into the material, illuminating the room orange.  He had been forced to leave his own collection at Shinra; he hadn’t imagined he would need it.

He cut off the spell sharply, killing the fireball.  He threw the bracelet back at Angel.  “It’s called materia.  It’s only found in some locations in the southern Pacific Rim and was one of the singular reasons for building Shinra where it is.”  Mako fountains were rare even on Shinra island, and President Shinra wanted to secure every last one in existence.  “So.  Where did you get it?”

“My grandfather,” Angel sounded surprised; he probably hadn’t realized other people would be familiar with materia, which was the ignorance Shinra wanted.  Perhaps he was telling the truth.

“Hm.  That is Shinra property, and like the SOLDIERs, does not have clearance to leave the island.  Your grandfather was a better thief than you are, to trade in such highly controlled and prohibited items.  Where is he?”

Angel’s face went stony, “I told you—"

“A bad lie, poorly thought out.  You have enough rudimentary training to be obvious, and materia is not an easy item to access.  Logically, your grandfather trained you.  Where is he?”

Angeal breathed in.  “Why?  So you can capture and kill him too?”

So, there was another rogue, alive and free, who had far more knowledge of Shinra than Angel.  That was the true target.  “I’m losing patience.”

“Well, I’m way ahead of you there—"

Sephiroth stood away from the wall, stalking closer to loom over Angel.  They were nearly of height—Angel did not have a SOLDIERs solid muscle or bulk, but rather the lanky musculature of a swimmer or long-distance runner.  He was—in his own way—quite handsome.

“Go fuck yourself,” Angel breathed out, quietly.  “I’ll die before I let you anywhere near my family.”

A brave statement, but—his eyes were steady, his stance sure and solid.  He believed the words, in his own conviction.  Whether or not Angel would actually hold true under torture and pain was a different question, but not one Sephiroth felt like exploring just then.

He leaned back against the wall, as if the moment had never happened.  Usually, the threat of his presence was enough to gain compliance, and this was not the time for violence.  Not yet. 

“Shinra keeps excellent records.  We will find him.”

Angel stared at him, angry and helpless.  His thief was a thinker, accustomed to success, and unused to the feeling of resignation and defeat Shinra inspired.  Sephiroth allowed himself a moment of schadenfreude, of satisfaction; he was witnessing the loss of innocence in real time.

Then Angel strode to the door, stopping only when Masamume sprang across the exit, the tip scratching the wall on the other side.

“I did not give you permission to go.”

Angel took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders.  “Well I didn’t ask for permission, so that kind of works out.  If you were going to kill me—if you thought that would fix,” Angel gestured broadly between them, “this, you would have already done it, so that’s not much of a fucking threat.  Second, I’m starving.  I don’t know how people live on Shinra but I need food to get me through the day.  And coffee.  And third—you can follow me anywhere.  Where am I going to run?”

“I don’t know,” Sephiroth replied softly, indifferent.  “You are full of surprises.”

“I’ll leave my sword.  As a gesture as good faith.  All right?”

Sephiroth considered it.  Even for a civilian, Angel seemed to appreciate his weaponry appropriately.  Possibly from sentiment, rather than a more pragmatic reason.  He was rather cavalier with his own safety—his family would be his weak point. 

“And the materia.  It was stolen from my employers, anyway.”

Angel threw it at him--Sephiroth caught the chunk of metal before it could connect with his face.  Masasume vanished in a gentle flash of silver.  Angel jerked back.

“What—how---wait.  Where were you keeping that?”

“Magic.”

Angel slammed the door on his way out.  Sephiroth waited until he could sense him leaving the building, going down the street, before opening the window wide.  The small studio still stank of sex and sweat.  Of madness. 

Weakness. 

He had never slept next to another person like that.  Had never had sex before.  He wasn’t sure he had liked it but doubted he would have chosen a stranger.  He had never done so many things that he had done in the past three weeks, and he still was not entirely sure why he had done it, who or what was controlling his actions, his impulses.  There were gaps in his memory, chunks of time missing, and he didn’t have the resources to address them.

The uncertainty and unease left a sour, stinking taste in his mouth, and a roiling in his gut—his spine was saying he should go after Angel, bring him back here by force and crawl under his skin, under his bones. 

His mind still felt too hot and woozy, now that he no longer had to hold up an dispassionate façade for Angel.  He had been clinging to it so tightly, for so long now, and he was still--

Sephiroth calmly went to throw up in the bathroom.  Only bile came out; his stomach was empty.  Then the thing—

The thing That Did Not Happen.  Happened.  The mirror broke while the Thing flapped and thrashed in the bathroom, while Sephiroth clung to the toilet and tried to center himself.  Tried to ground himself in reality, in sanity.

It seemed to take hours.  It probably had.  Then it was over.

Then he picked himself up, picked up the stray feathers, and flushed them down the toilet.  Then he showered.

Chapter Text

In retrospect, he should not have told Angel he disliked physical contact.  It was true, and therefore in right hands, a weapon against him. 

Genesis had toyed with the experience when he discovered Sephiroth idiosyncrasies regarding physical touch.  The contact had been casual, at times even playful—Genesis simply made a point to brush their shoulders together, a light hand on his arm, until Sephiroth became accustomed to the contact, began to crave it.  Genesis liked to experiment with new things.

It had backfired rather spectacularly on both of them when Sephiroth began to reciprocate the contact, the intimacy.  It had been a clumsy kiss, directly following an attack on a Wutai village filled with civilians, and Genesis—

Sephiroth closed his eyes and took a breath.  The past had little bearing on the present, except to remind him how distasteful he found his current situation.

He also should not have allowed Angel to leave the apartment.  He could…feel him, as if Angel was a fish on a line Sephiroth could only sense, bobbing and moving in the town. 

He should contact Shinra, continue the illusion.  Pretend he meant to return.

He found trash bags under the kitchen sink and bagged the stained bed linens; the smell was too much.  He drank water from the kitchen faucet for a solid 20 minutes and rummaged through the empty kitchen.  His abdomen was as sharply cut as a chess board, and he’d lost noticeable muscle mass in his arms; he had lost too much fat and muscles looking for Angel.  The Thing happened due to damage, starvation, and stress—if he didn’t get more food soon, he risked another episode.

Sephiroth did not want to go out.  He took another shower, this time luxuriating in the feeling of being clean, of soaping and scrubbing the last of the sweat and dirt away.

His black combat leathers—the clothes Sephiroth spent most of his waking moments in, when he wasn’t naked on a surgical gurney or in a glass observation tank under the mako showers—were filthy, caked with dust, blood, and other assorted fluids.  The left shoulder was still cracked and burned from the firework explosion—that had been a clever little attack.

They would need to be laundered, something Shinra staff had always done for him.  He wasn’t sure how one went about getting clean clothes outside Shinra.

Sephiroth stretched out on the bare bed naked, trying to fill his lungs with as much outside smells as he could.  He could just remember last night, but the details were heavily blurred.  He may have intended to kill Angel; he genuinely couldn’t remember.  The smell of Angel’s skin, his hair, shone clear in his memory, and the burning rage in his bones finally beginning to subside, to melt with the other man.  The act itself was a sweaty blur.  He remembered the peace, afterwards, the cold silence. 

It was not normal.  The blame likely resided with Hojo, even if it had been over a month since he had Sephiroth to experiment on.   Sephiroth had lost time before in Shinra’s labs before.  Often it would months later that he found out he had done things, or had things done to him, that he would not have allowed otherwise.   

The shadows were starting to lengthen.  There was no need to act yet; Angel was still in the city.  Still angry.  Still close by.  It would be wise to remain alert, vigilant, until Angel returned, in case he was struck again with the foolishness that he could outrun Sephiroth.

His sword was a plainer version of Montgomery’s.  Perhaps his grandfather had been a contemporary. 

Sephiroth fell asleep.

***

The first time Sephiroth stepped into Wutai was the seventh time he had been out of a building, without a ceiling over him.  Sunlight was a novel experience, dense and superior to the halogen lighting that had been used in the labs, the flimsy florescent lighting that had been present elsewhere in the compound he was raised in. 

Sunlight changed in intensity depending on atmospheric conditions, the time, and felt hot against his skin, his hair.  For the few first days, Sephiroth was captivated by sunlight, sunrises and sunsets, losing focus on his superiors to stare at it.  When the sun was just above the horizon, the rays impacted the planet at a low angle and traveled through more atmosphere before reaching the eye.  This scattering decreased sunlight’s color, so it took on a syrupy golden or reddish hue.  It looked thick enough to touch, grab.

It would be years before he found out that many of his colleagues thought him mentally deficient, unstable, due his fascination with the world.

The humidity got into Sephiroth’s eyes, his hair.  Green plants and fungus grew on any available surface.  The outside world was not remotely sterile, predictable.  He made a million new small observations about the world he had never imagined possible.

The other SOLDIERs were…interesting.  He had seen Genesis in passing in the labs before, at a distance, a small auburn child waiting impatiently while Hollander and Hojo bickered and cajoled over his head.  There were a few other SOLDIERs his age, still growing into their armor and weapons, but Sephiroth was surprised to find older SOLDIERs, nearly a decade and a half his senior. 

Hojo had never mentioned there were others, had always spoken as if Sephiroth was the best and only product of the SOLDIER program, and yet…he had never considered, that he had not been among the first.

Montgomery held command with a gruff competence and was a high functioning alcoholic.  His SOLDIER modifications were weak enough, outdated enough, for him to get drunk on moonshine.  He carried one the largest swords Sephiroth had ever seen and had a vast collection of materia.  Sephiroth had only been given two materia balls. 

Envy was a new emotion, and Sephiroth attempted to keep his distance. 

M’Ling was sickly and jittery.  His muscles seem to waste away in the days Sephiroth knew him.  He did not seem—wholly present.  He reacted to stimulus no one else could perceive, spoke to people visible only to himself.  He made Sephiroth deeply uncomfortable in a way that his oddness alone could not explain.  His very presence seemed to create headaches and a ringing in his ears.  The other SOLDIERs gave him a wide berth, but never said if they experienced the same headaches. 

It was difficult to speak to the other SOLDIERs.  They all knew about him, and the Turks were always watching.

Sometimes, Sephiroth caught M’Ling staring at him.  That was stranger than it should have been; people always stared at him.

To balance out his irregularity, M’Ling’s control and extreme capacity for magic made him unique in among SOLDIERs.  Unenhanced, normal humans usually could not use materia, and M’Ling excelled.  What he could coax materia to do was not scientifically possible.  According to Montgomery, M’Ling had been a favorite of the Science Department before deployment.

M’Ling died before the week was over, during a Shinra night raid on a Wutain base.  Sephiroth had only noticed his screaming in all the cacophony of the attack due to the unique thrum at the back of his skull that accompanied the gouts of flame and bolts of lightning that flew from M’Ling as he attacked.  M’Ling had been heavily damaged by gunfire, grenades, his Wall and Barrier broken through.  Flesh was gouged from his face, and one arm was off at the elbow.

 The sound was closer to machinery than an organic source, then almost a tuning fork sound and—and made it very difficult for Sephiroth to focus on what he was doing, on surviving.  He could barely see through the fire and lightning, incandescent and blistering. 

He was developing a sharp pain at the base of his skull, a burning deep in his gut.  It called to him—and repulsed him, reminded him of things he couldn’t remember, couldn’t focus--

Montgomery fell on M’Ling from above, his giant sword cleaving the other man’s spine.  M’Ling split like broken bamboo, two meaty halves barely held together. The glassy sound continued, appendages burst from M’Ling’s riven back and flapped around, snowy feather’s floating above the heat of the crimson fires—

Montgomery cut off the head.

The fight raged on through the night.

Later, in the milky morning sunlight, Montgomery pulled Sephiroth aside.  Sephiroth wasn’t used to being outside yet, Montgomery explained, and things could get very confusing in a fire fight.  It was very easy to get confused in all that chaos, very common.  He was still a kid, he had plenty to learn.  He would get used to it. 

Sephiroth had the potential to become a great SOLDIER.  The brass kept bitching to Montgomery about how much time had been put into Sephiroth, how many resources, so he should at least be sturdy enough to handle a couple crazy days.  He was supposed to be better than they were—better than Montgomery, and M’Ling. 

These things…happened, with SOLDIERs, sometimes.  Wasn’t great, but the madness wasn’t new either; the ones before Montgomery had been even more unstable.  Best just to get on with it, and let his training take over.

Later, Sephiroth would kill Montgomery.  It was likely how the man wished to die.

It would likely be how Sephiroth died.

***

Angel’s key in the lock woke him, deep in the night.  Sephiroth sat up naked as the other man walked into the tiny apartment and switched on the light, his hands full of bags. 

The bags landed on the floor.

“Wow,” Angel said, staring at him, breathless and genuine. 

“Come here,” Sephiroth ordered, the fever had returned, sweltering in the back of his skull, high in his cheeks, his cock was erect and aching.  The fever was not as overwhelming as before, but Angel kicked the door closed as he stumbled towards the bed.  Sephiroth pulled him down, ripped his clothing off with a tearing of seams, and allowed Angel to kiss him.  Angel’s beard scraped his cheek, his throat. 

He wasn’t sure he enjoyed kissing, or understood the purpose of it, but Angel seemed keen and it was easier to give way on this battle, when there was so little to lose.  He did enjoy this orgasm, now that he could observe it.  Angel’s hand sweet and punishing on his penis, the movements slow and unflinching.  Sephiroth had wondered what the fascination was with sex and had never managed to masturbate to any desired outcome, but this was—divine. 

Angel touched himself and struggled to his own orgasm, while Sephiroth observed.  Angel was confident, sure, accustomed to giving himself pleasure and giving pleasure to others. 

How many others before Sephiroth?  Did Angel have another lover, hidden somewhere safe?  Did he think of the other person, while he touched Sephiroth?

His stomach tightened uncomfortably. 

Angel braced on top of him, breathing heavy, face slack with pleasure, before going to wash off the fluids.  Sephiroth followed, and watched Angel notice the broken mirror and punctured wall.  He didn’t remember damaging the wall, and wondered if he had punched it, or if it was the Thing that Did Not Happen. 

Angel said nothing, only scowled and sighed.  Sephiroth cleaned himself.  He decided against dressing—his clothes were too dirty.  Angel noticed, his cheeks going slightly pink. 

“Are you—not going to get dressed?” Angel asked the empty space to the left of Sephiroth’s shoulder.

“Not until I have clean garments, no,” Sephiroth felt he was stating the obvious.

“I—you went back to the hotel?  To get your clothes?” 

“Yes,” again, Sephiroth thought that was obvious. 

“Did—did you hurt anyone?”

Ah.  His thief had a conscience, or possibly a guilt complex.  Sephiroth had never been clear on the difference was between the two concepts.

“No,” he lied, and watched as Angel’s shoulder’s relaxed.  He unpacked the bags on the table.

“Wasn’t sure what you liked, so I got a round of hamburgers.  Hope that’s ok.”  Angel had bought him five sandwiches, and four for himself. 

Sephiroth had not seen or eaten a hamburger before. Meals at Shinra were injected, pilled, or eaten with utensils.  The act of simply eating with hands was—unappealing.  Uncivilized.  He had not done so since he was a child, when Hojo suspected Sephiroth would kill the technicians with a fork. 

It had been a foolish concern—Sephiroth did not need a weapon to kill.

He dismembered his portion of the meal with knife and fork, separated the meat from vegetables and bread, before eating.  It tasted like it looked.

“So,” Angel coughed awkwardly and took a pull from his soda to cover it.  He seemed uncomfortable.  Sephiroth watched incuriously; he found soda too sweet, too bubbly, to stomach.  Now that the sex was over, Angel was having trouble meeting his eyes again.  “You said Shinra would only accept me either dead or captured.  What if I wanted a job?”

“As a SOLDIER?”  Sephiroth considered it.  The concept was not unheard of, but the practice had fallen out of fashion.  It was cheaper to raise SOLDIERs from infancy, to buy children for experimentation, though girls tended to mutate and die with higher frequency than boys, for some reason.  Buying children also gave the Science Department the control and secrecy that Hojo required; children were easier to control than adults.  “You may not be suited.  Few people are.”

“I know a little bit,” Angel dabbed his face with a napkin.  “I haven’t had as much experience fighting as you have, but I don’t mind working my way up.  And if it hadn’t been for this thing,” Angel made the blurred hand gesture between them again, “between us, I’m not sure you could have found me.  So, I might be rough, but I’m not unskilled.  I mean.  If those are my options.”

It was a reasonable and well thought out solution to Angel’s dilemma.  Angel was forcing a smile, clearly still uncomfortable in his presence, but attempting to make the best of it.

President Shinra would be willing to make allowances, especially if Angel could be persuaded or deceived into revealing the other Shinra traitors.  Other escapees.  Hojo might actually be forced to wait before experimenting on Angel.

No.

“What have you heard of Wutai Conflict?”

“You’re at war with them?” Sephiroth nodded; it wasn’t quite true, but close enough.  “They attacked you and killed one of your president’s sons, and then you bombed them to pieces.”

In truth, Sephiroth doubted Wutai had much to do with Lazard’s murder.  The Turks had always preferred Rufus over Lazard, and President Shinra liked having people he could control.  He wondered how much influence the PR department had had in that operation. 

“Shinra didn’t use bombs.  We opted for a more on-the-ground approach.”

Angel finished his food and wiped his fingers on a napkin.  Such a messy way to eat.  He leaned back in his chair.  “This is about Sephiroth, isn’t it?”

“You know the name?” that was problematic.  And flattering.  Despite what was likely to come, Sephiroth found himself pleased.

“I hear things,” Angel grinned lopsided, wry.  “This is all above the kind of work I normally do, but I hear things.  Some of the Wutai refugees made it to the States, telling stories of a demon,” Angel toyed with a straw.  “He killed the country.  Soldiers and civilians, whether they were unarmed or not.  Children too, as I heard it.  He killed a whole country.  One man.  One…”

Monster?  Creature?

“I didn’t think the rumors were true,” Angeal continued, quiet.  “I didn’t want them to be.”

“They are.”

“You were there?” Angel’s eyes stayed mellow and sharp, unafraid.  This had been a trap, childlike and simple, and Sephiroth had walked into it.

“I was.  Most SOLDIERs were.”  Most SOLDIERs hadn’t survived Wutai; Sephiroth suspected that not all of them had been combat ready, but the Science Department had certainly learned a great deal in the process.  The next consignment of SOLDIERs would have several improvements. 

“You did the same kind of work?” Angel asked lightly, easy.  His fist crushed the straw.  He kept his facial expression relaxed, open.

“Yes,” Sephiroth answered, as Angel glanced away.  “Not for long, though,” Sephiroth vacillated.  “I was recalled.  Too ineffective, compared to other methods.”

That part was not false; President Shinra had complained he was slowing down, hesitating too much, throwing off the schedule.  Hojo had been furious.  Those had been painful months in the labs.

Angel took a breath, steeling himself, “Did you kill kids?  Civilians?”

Not half an hour ago, Sephiroth had been grunting into Angel’s collarbones, thrusting his hips into his hands.  Angel didn’t have any problems meeting his eyes now. 

“I…followed orders.”

Angel’s face shuttered.  His body seemed to withdraw, harden, rebalance.  Sephiroth wondered if he was going to attack and braced himself.

“Shinra’s not a nice place to work, is it?” Angel had a gift for understatement.  He likely hadn’t been serious about getting a job with Shinra, and yet…he did seem disappointed.   He had few palatable options, and—

--and Sephiroth couldn’t help him, not really. 

“No,” Sephiroth agreed. 

“So why are you so keen to go back there?  Do you have a wife?  Or—is it the money?”

Marriage had never occurred to Sephiroth, even as a thought experiment.  He couldn’t imagine it.  As for money, there was no need for it within Shinra; his housing and utilities were provided by the company, his meals doled out by the company, any clothing or provisions he required supplied by the company. 

No SOLDIER was ever meant to leave Shinra without a handler, a guard to protect their biological investment and ensure that it came back to the island.  Hojo fretted about having a SOLDIER corpse stolen and reverse engineered by a competitor as much as he boasted that such a feat was impossible.

No, Sephiroth’s reason to remain was much less complicated.

“Not…precisely.”  He sat back, head held high and shoulders ruler straight, attempting to make clear through body language that the subject was closed.

For whatever reason, Angel glanced at his hair, falling over Sephiroth’s shoulder.  One thick black eyebrow rose in silent thought.  His thief was a thinker, as much as he liked to question the obvious.  Perhaps that was wise.

He searched Sephiroth’s face, trying to read his expression.  Sephiroth could not tell what the other man was thinking, planning.  He got the distinct impression he was being measured, to a standard only Angel was aware of.

“Want to go back to bed?” Angel asked.

Sephiroth did.  It was better than talking.

***

Angeal briefly thought about sleeping on the floor; it was awkward to admit after the multiple rounds of sex, but he didn’t want to get any closer to Gast than necessary.  Even when the man wasn’t actively trying to kill him, Gast was intimidating; Angeal kept wanting to sit up straighter and fix his posture.

Even during sex, he wasn’t completely relaxed.  Sure, he was getting to pet a tiger, a dragon that purred under his hands, but he wouldn’t stand a chance when Gast turned his teeth on him. 

He barely knew the guy—it was a lot of intimacy very quickly, something Angeal didn’t think he could even do, and he wanted some time alone just to think. 

After showering, Gast had shoved him back to bed and climbed in, neatly solving Angeal’s dilemma; he was going to sleep exactly where the dragon wanted.

By degrees, Angeal relaxed into the mattress.  He was tired and Gast was warm, pressed against him.  Silver hair draped over his shoulder, and long fingered pianist hands clinically traced the muscles and tan lines on his chest.  Gast’s skin looked pallid, almost transparent, next to Angeal’s.  Angeal tried to ignore Gast’s tattoo. 

“You didn’t kill me,” Gast broke the silence.  The bed was just big enough for both of them, but Gast seemed to enjoy crowding Angeal.  Unless he was cuddling.  Was he cuddling?  Did tigers cuddle?  “Why?”

“When…?” Angeal muttered, mind still fogged up with endorphins and his own discomfort.  The air was thick with sweat and stale French fries.

“At the train station.  I know you moved me.”

“Oh.  That.  Right.”  Angeal tried to kick his mind into gear.  That seemed so long ago.  “You were unconscious.”

“So?”

“So, I can’t kill someone who’s unconscious,” Angeal growled, tired from tussling the night before and all the verbal wrangling with Gast earlier.  He wasn’t sure he could kill anyone.  He hadn’t had to yet.  Didn’t want to find out. 

He knew Vincent wondered about him, worried Angeal wasn’t ready for the field, but Vincent couldn’t do everything by himself.  If Angeal could be useful, he wanted to be.

“Why not?”

“Because it was my choice to make,” Angel sounded defensive to his own ears, tired.  Of course, while he had been awake and stress walking the city, Gast napped the afternoon away.  “You couldn’t fight back.”

"You have a conscience," Gast spoke with scorn.  Unless it was a sneer; Angeal couldn’t see his face from this angle, but Gast’s face didn’t give much away anyway.

“I have honor,” Angeal was too tired to care about how cheesy that might have sounded.  Not like Gast seemed to have much of a sense of humor anyway.

“A thief's honor.”

Angeal inhaled deep and seriously considered sleeping on the floor.  That would probably be a fight.  “It’s better than nothing.”

That sounded weak, even to Angeal’s ears, but nothing was exactly what Gast had, him and all of Shinra’s blood mercenaries.  Angeal was getting cuddled by someone who maybe killed kids.  The only that set Gast apart from scum was Angeal’s suspicion—based on his inhuman hair and eyes, his careful mannerisms-- that Gast may not have had a choice.

“Hm.  What is the Island of Dr. Moreau?  You mentioned it earlier.”

“The movie?  With Brad Pitt?”

“I don’t know.  I have never heard of it.”

“Oh.  It’s a—a mad scientist on an island.  He tries to crossbreed animals and people by cutting them up and sewing them together and—and it wasn’t a good movie, didn’t get good reviews.  I don’t think you would like it, it was pretty dumb.”

“Why?”

“Oh, it’s just a bad movie.  But…but I think it might have been Val Kilmer?  Maybe?”

“Why was the professor vivisecting animals and humans?” Gast clarified, persistent. 

“Oh.  That.  I’m…not sure?  I think he was,” Angeal dithered, and realized Gast had probably knew he was dithering.  Possibly could even guess why; the man seen a mirror before, he knew what he looked like.  “I think he was trying to create a better human.   A superhuman, using evolution or something.  Um.  I haven’t read the book either, but I think the scientist is the villain.  I don’t know if he’s a professor or not though.”

Gast went quiet.  Angeal tried to fall asleep.

“What is a movie?”

***

Sephiroth lay awake while Angel slept against his shoulder.

The cool, cleansing feel of Angel against his skin seemed enough to keep the panic at bay, the miasma.  He was alone in his mind again.  He could notice small details again—little scars on Angeal’s skin from a life without constant supervision and medical care, how much darker tanned his arms and neck were than his chest or thighs. 

Shinra would be coming for them both, and Sephiroth did not believe any excuse he could come up with now would be believed.  He had been absent for over a month now, chasing Angel through deserts and cities and mountains.  It was a severe dereliction of duty, and he would be punished proportionally—or disproportionally, depending on Tseng’s report, depending on Hojo’s influence over the matter. 

Returning now, empty handed, would be out of the question.  Returning with Angel would be…unthinkable, though Sephiroth could not fully explain why.  There was his biological reliance on the other man’s presence, a not inconsiderable factor, but there was also a general…unwillingness. 

Despite his fervent claims of a new scientific country, President Shinra had never intended to create superhumans; he only made biological weapons he could use for power, and control.  Discovery had no purpose unless it provided him with a financial benefit.  Hojo only seemed to enjoy causing pain, controlling and reducing others, he did not deserve the title of professor—he was a hack, throwing things at the walls and crowing over what he couldn’t kill.

Angel had plenty of raw potential, and Shinra would throw that away, if it could not find a commercial use for it.  It would be a waste, and it would never occur to Shinra that Angel was valuable outside of what the Science department could carve out of him. 

Then his family would be located and hunted down, but Angel would likely be dead at that point.

Did you kill kids?

Sephiroth slipped out of bed without waking Angel, and picked up his coat, neatly folded over a kitchen chair.  He pulled the SIM card and snapped it in half.

He was running out of options, but at least he was making choices. 

***

Chapter Text

Genesis sat next to him on the wide wooden porch.  Wutain construction seemed to take a liberal view on ‘inside’ and ‘outside,’ but this house had been abandoned for years, the palm roof fallen in and sections of walls missing.  Sapling trees grew in the main living room, vines and moss crawled through the roof and walls, verdant and rich.  Humidity clung to the hair at the back of Sephiroth’s neck.  Sweat rolled down his spine.

“Have you heard of Loveless?” Genesis asked, his voice bright and brittle.  “It’s a poetic drama, a made-up text that tells the most sublime story of love and friendship and betrayal.  It’s far too nuanced for the uneducated reader.  The ignorant.”

Sephiroth stared into the thick oppressive green.  He listened to his heartbeat.

“When the war of the beasts brings about the world’s end, The goddess descends from the sky,

Wings of light and ark spread afar, She guides us to bliss, her gift everlasting,” Genesis declaimed.

Sephiroth said nothing.  His skull felt empty, a black void encased in bone.

“Montgomery gave it to me.”  Genesis shifted, his red leathers creaking as he moved.  “He left me his materia too, but the Turks are holding those.”

“Don’t provoke them,” Sephiroth murmured.  Their forces had dwindled too much, they couldn’t mount a resistance with just the two of them.  He didn’t trust the new SOLDIERs. 

“I won’t.  I didn’t.  Well,” Genesis brushed his hair back artistically, “I didn’t do much.  But I don’t appreciate their meddling.”

“No…” Sephiroth agreed, quietly.

Genesis, for the first time Sephiroth could remember, showed impressive tact and patience, and waited a full five minutes.  “Did you know that would happen?”

The previous night, Genesis had been pinned by Wutai fighters.  Sephiroth had moved towards the sound of automatic guns—normally too arbitrary, too loud, to be of use to a SOLDIER—and had seen Montgomery throw himself between Genesis and enemy fire.  Sephiroth had been shot before—they all had, at once point or another.  The rounds pounded on Montgomery’s back, on his hasty Barrier, pushing him backward even as he twisted to hurl materia bolts at them. 

Sephiroth could not say he was surprised by the huge gray wing that burst from Montgomery’s back, or the sudden tuning fork scream that rattled down his spine, but he was surprised by the tentacles.  They were pale, slimy and writhing, and only down Montgomery’s right side—his left leg still flailed at the knee as he dove into the jungle after the enemy.

“I--” Sentiment was likely interfering with his memories.  Combat shock, along with grief and guilt forcing him to remember events in a manner favorable to himself.  It was normal, Montgomery said.  What was important, crucial even, was not to get excited.

Sephiroth was supposed to better than all of them; he couldn’t afford to get excited over trivial things.  Over anything. 

Genesis and Sephiroth had followed Montgomery into the jungle, provided cover fire and fought as a unit.  If Sephiroth ignored the new growths, it could have been like any other firefight, any other attack.  His ears were ringing from the gunshots, the tinnitus and temporary hearing loss all field SOLDIERs experienced.  That was all.

The was nothing wrong with the world, nothing wrong with them.  He ignored the wing beats thrashing the wind, lifting his hair, and the tuning-fork scream at the base of his skull, spreading to his temples.  He clenched his jaw, and let Masasume fly, complimenting Genesis’ short-ranged materia attacks.  Tentacles fondled his arm and back lightly, and tugged gently at his hair. 

“He killed M’Ling.  When he…” Sephiroth trailed off.  “M’Ling’s were white though.”

Genesis stayed quiet. 

M’Ling’s had been small, sparrow-like.  Montgomery’s resembled an albatross.  Endurance over agility.

“But he burned the body,” Sephiroth felt as if he was meters away, watching himself and Genesis talk on the burned-out porch, distant and unaffected by proceedings.  This wasn’t happening to him.  He closed his eyes.  “The Turks took his.”

“Do you think—” Genesis inhaled sharply. 

“I know they will.  I’ve seen storage.  So have you.”

Montgomery would be returned to the Science department that created the SOLIDER in him, to be examined and portioned off and stored in jars for future study.  Unlike Sephiroth and Genesis, he had been born outside Shinra, before volunteering for enhancements in his youth.  His outlook on life was so different from theirs; he had not been born into a glass box.  He had family, friends, people who loved him before Shinra cut him off from the outside world, isolated him with NDAs and censored communications.  Montgomery used to have dreams of fame and glory, dreams of becoming a hero. 

Montgomery’s knowledge of the outside world had drawn them both to him, when the man was not blind drunk or in a black mood.

“I suppose we should…try our best not to grow anything unsightly then, shouldn’t we?” Genesis laughed, a forced, empty sound. 

“It won’t make a difference,” Sephiroth opened his eyes again, but didn’t see the jungle. 

Instead it was Montgomery, Masasume speared through his ribcage.  He had—charged Sephiroth, for some reason Sephiroth still didn’t understand, the tentacles curled around his throat, trying to slip into his eye sockets.  The tentacles sang into his skin, a melancholy bloody elegy.  Montgomery ignored Genesis entirely.

Sephiroth had fought back, allowed his training take over, and Masasume had pushed Montgomery back and caught him effortlessly.  Montgomery had tapped the side of his skull, twice, while Masasume pinned him. 

You’re in charge now.  You’ve got to take responsibility, got to take care of your SOLDIERs.  Don’t leave us hanging.

Sephiroth had taken the head.  Genesis had watched.  And now…

“We’ll mutate.  Or.  We won’t.”  For a few moments, Sephiroth couldn’t speak.   His future stretched before him.  “We’ll get old, weak, if we don’t die.  Once we stop being useful…”

Shinra had a deep storage area, and Sephiroth suspected he had only seen one section of it.  Genesis tossed his hair artfully again, subtly checking their surroundings.  They were alone.

“We could escape,” Genesis murmured, softly, too softly for anyone to overhear.

A short quick sound bubbled out of Sephiroth, painful and jagged.  He was laughing.  He couldn’t remember laughing before.  It was a strange sensation, a strange sound.  Sephiroth was not certain he approved it. 

Everyone worth having always left him, but Sephiroth had never had to kill them himself before.  This grief and despair were unique.

“That’s impossible.”

***

The same old nightmare woke Angeal. 

He jerked awake, muscles frozen, and voice strangled in his dry throat; he didn’t scream, he never screamed, so Gast didn’t wake up.

For several seconds, almost a whole minute, he was paralyzed, unable to breathe, unable to blink.  Gillian had used to slap him out of it before, after they escaped the labs, but before Angeal could remember his own name.  She hadn’t had to do that for years now—Angeal dealt with his own paralysis. 

Gast didn’t wake while Angeal struggled out of his arms.  The man was like a bitchy octopus, who also happened to be unbelievably gorgeous, but still—mean.   Or a leopard strangling an antelope, before dragging it up a tree.  No wonder Angeal had dreamed of the labs, his muscles and brain frozen in time, under glass.

But—if Gast really had spent the last month following Angeal, not eating or sleeping the way he had implied—then it made some sense.  Presumably he would mellow out with some rest and food, and then everything would be fine until Gast lost patience figuring out their weird psychic magical soul bond and dragged Angeal off to Shinra.

Angeal gave one more glance to the smooth, flawless skin in his bed, the sheets just slipping off Gast’s narrow hips, the early morning sunlight shadowing the taut muscles in his biceps. Touching Gast was like getting to touch a marble statue that was usually kept behind velvet ropes.  Then Angeal sighed, because he had no idea what his life was coming to and dressed warm.  He pulled two cans of frozen cinnamon buns from the freezer and started prepping the oven. 

There was something alien, ghoulish, about Gast, from his appearance to his personality.  Angeal wasn’t sure he liked it, or if it made him uncomfortable.  Angeal had never put much thought into getting a lover, since he tried not to get too close to people, but he always figured it would be someone from the animal shelter, someone kind and gentle, someone who worked hard for things that mattered to them, even if the money wasn’t there. 

He was still surprised Gast had let him leave yesterday, but Angeal had been too frustrated, too angry to really think it over.  He’d walked off most of the stress, the cold sea air and red cedar trees helping to distract him.  It was good to walk around people living regular, normal lives, good to remember that the whole world hadn’t gone insane.

When he was sure Gast hadn’t followed him, he called Cid from a payphone to update him—You’ve got what in your apartment??  Are you out of your goddamned mind?!  How the shit did he even find you?  This isn’t a goddamned sci-fi movie!--making a point to leave the more salacious details out. 

He couldn’t reach Vincent at his last phone number, but that wasn’t too surprising.  He almost called his mother, and then decided against it; he wasn’t sure what he would say.

He didn’t want to go to Shinra.  He wasn’t sure what would happen to him there but—

Growing up, his mom had decided against sending Angeal to school, too worried about someone finding him.  However, she wanted him to have some friends, some socialization, and Angeal had worked at a couple fast-food joints, and volunteered with animal shelters in most of the cities they had lived in.  Angeal loved dogs, and usually he had a good time, but every now and again they would get a dog that had clearly been abused or used for dog fighting.   

Besides the obvious signs—missing ears, or eyes, burns—abused dogs tended to be clingy, anxious, but could switch to aggression and biting on a dime.  They would gobble their food and then sick it up over the floor, or would be so goddamned terrified they would growl and lunge any time anyone came to give them food, forever on the defensive, never mind play time or walkies. 

It broke Angeal’s heart, what people could do to animals, but with enough love and patience, plenty of those dogs healed, enough to get them adopted into good homes.

And—it had helped Angeal understand his own traumas, his own nightmares.  He wasn’t perfect, but he was trying. 

Gast didn’t have scars.  Angeal had set his face on fire and seen his arm reduced to bones and bloody mess, but he didn’t have a single scar the length of his perfect, smooth skin, except for the specimen mark on his hand.   That was kind of a horrible clue to Gast’s past, all on its own. 

Officially, Shinra was closed to visitors, a new island nation that seemed determined to invade all the other island nations nearby, founding an empire on the edge of the Pacific.  It was too small for any of the larger governments to really do anything about, but Angeal had heard enough chatter from Cid to know that people were watching. 

There were rumors of human rights violations and human experimentation; if he hadn’t seen Gast in action, Angeal would have called that a fancy word for genocide and torture.  

What had been done to Gast?  Did he have family?  What kind of life did enhanced soldiers have?  How many more SOLDIERs were there, what kind of war was Shinra getting ready for?

What would Shinra do to Angeal, if they got their hands on him?  Would they turn him into something like Gast?  Or would—

Instinctually, Angeal shied away from the thought and started on the bacon. 

Of course, caring for an abused dog was completely different from caring for an abused human.  He’d seen it often enough at the homeless shelters his mom had stayed at, after getting free of the labs.  A man could be given food, shelter, and later he would still hurt the people who had helped him, in case they had more to give—or out of spite.  Or madness.  Or—or whatever made people act like that.

Also.  Dogs couldn’t help being dogs.  People were responsible for their own actions, at least to some extent.  Gast was a murderer at best, and war criminal at worse, at least if the rumors about Wutai were true. 

Dogs were definitely easier.  But Cid knew now, and he would get that info to Vincent somehow, and Angeal could rest easy, knowing the decision didn’t rest on him.

Gast didn’t get up until the bacon and eggs were nearly done.  He was still naked, and Angeal tried to keep his eyes at shoulder height and above; strangely, he still felt like a pervert. 

Gast gave the cinnamon rolls a dubious look—Angeal had only iced half of them, since the man didn’t seem to have much of a sweet tooth.  “What are those?”

Or seemed to have much awareness of Western foods—that would make some sense, since Shinra was supposed to be near Indonesia.  Gast spoke perfect, accent-less English, but maybe he had learned from tutors.

Gast sat naked at the kitchen table, seemingly comfortable, posture elegant.  He didn’t drink coffee either.  His nipples were the same pale pink as his lips, supple and sweet under Angeal’s fingers—

Angeal jerked his attention back on the food and coughed, loudly, as he sat at the table.  “Did you want to get some sushi?  For lunch or something?  Or maybe noodles?”

“What is sushi?”  It was probably a bad habit to get into, but Gast definitely reminded him a child sometimes.

“It’s—its good cuts of fish, we’ve got some good places around here.  I’m not sure what kind of food you’re used to.”

Gast unraveled a cinnamon roll with his normal, single-focus intensity.  “Does it matter?” 

“Well, I would like to make our interactions as peaceable and easy as possible, since my life kind of depends on it,” Angeal was proud of how reasonable he sounded.  Not sassy at all.  “So, if I can get you something you would prefer to eat, rather than watch you dissect everything, I want to.”

Gast tore off a morsel of cinnamon roll, studied it, and then nibbled on it contemplatively.   

“Rice.  Protein.  Nothing that tasted like this,” he selected another roll, without icing, and began to tear it apart into one-inch pieces.  “I would not say that I miss it.”

The thought jumped into Angeal’s mind—he really did look like a kid playing with his food.  But this was a kid who threatened to kill Angeal—nearly had killed him, it was dumb luck that had saved Angeal. 

“So.  What now?”

“You will need to speak in complete sentences, if you wish for a response.” Gast didn’t look up from his dismembered roll. 

Angeal bit his tongue.  “Any ideas on how to get rid of the magical soul bond?  This thing between us?”

“Oh,” Gast stared at the cinnamon dusting on his fingers, bemused.  He rubbed his fingers together, bits of brown specks flaking off on his plate.  “Not particularly.  I could still feel you move around after you left yesterday.  The proximity impulse and the mating drive are no longer excessive, but still present.  It is possible with prolonged exposure the need will burn itself out, but it is impossible to say decisively without more data.”

Angeal almost—almost--made the mistake of making the obvious joke about mating drives and pregnancy and stopped himself just in time.  Hand jobs were one thing, but if Gast was going to try anything more invasive, or do something stupid and impossible like impregnate him, then Angeal was--

Well, realistically, Angeal was going to die, or run forever, but the idea didn't seem to have hit Gast yet.  Maybe he was happy with fondling.  Maybe he wasn’t aware there was more to sex than fondling. 

For a moment, Angeal imagined the reverse, of Gast on his back with his legs spread, and--

“Are you all right?  Your face changed color.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah I’m fine.  How do you like the food?”

Gast selected another cinnamon roll.  “What is the fascination with eating with one’s hands when cutlery is available?  It is not sanitary.”

Angeal sighed, “You can use a fork on them if you want, I don’t mind.”

“But I would have more difficulty unrolling them.  That would complicate the issue,” Gast frowned using the minimal amount of facial muscles, managing to still look regal.

“You.  Don’t have to unroll them to eat them?  I’m honestly not sure why you’re doing that.”  To demonstrate, Angeal chomped on a cinnamon roll, then washed it down with coffee.

Gast blinked, the closest he seemed to get to looking surprised.  But he still finished unrolling the pastry, eating it in small bites, before standing to wash his hands.

Angeal ate some scrambled eggs, eyes glued to his plate so he wasn’t staring at Gast’s ass behind him. 

 So.  Gast didn’t have a plan.  Or didn’t seem to care now that he was getting regular food and Angeal wasn’t running away.  That was a surprise.  He was so concise and commanding, the kind of man who had to be in control of every situation he found himself in. 

Or, he had a plan and wasn’t going to share it with Angeal, which made it harder to report to Cid and work around it.  Damn.  Gast sat back down, and Angeal felt it was safe to tear his eyes off his plate and try—really try—to keep his eyes above Gast’s shoulders.

“Well, I only bought enough food for a bit, and we’re about to run out.”  Gast ate like a machine: small, continuous motions until his plate was spotless.  Angeal wasn’t sure if the other man was hungry or if he was simply used to eating everything in front of him, in case there was nothing later on.  Gast never asked for food.

So long as he didn’t sick it up on the carpet later, Angeal wasn’t going to complain.

“So.  We can go to the store.  Maybe grab some sushi on our way.  Then hole up here and try to stay off Shinra’s radar.”

“That should not be difficult.  This town holds no strategic importance; they do not have agents posted here.”

“Shinra has agents in the US?”

“Shinra has agents everywhere,” Gast cut a piece of crispy bacon, bemused when it shattered on his plate.  He scooped it on to his fork fastidiously.  “I believe Wutai was a trial run.”

Well.  That wasn’t scary at all.

“Did you guys even care about what I stole?”

Gast flicked a quick disinterested glance at him.  “Not particularly.  Shinra had accounts and data lodged with the institution, but nothing critical; the possibility of a rogue SOLDIER is why I was deployed.  But you were sloppy, and we were paying attention after the Mexico City and Durango theft.  It was not difficult to predict your next target.”

Except that Mexico City had been Vincent.  No one ever noticed Vincent, so this was—also not good news.  But they probably didn’t know about Vincent, and Angeal was happy to take the blame in this case. 

He laughed, dry and rueful, “Well, I guess I still have plenty to learn.  But if Shinra isn’t helping you right now, how did you get here from Las Vegas so quickly?  Did you fly?”

Gast’s absurdly long sword sprang out of his hand, barely keeping the edge from leaping for Angeals throat.

Angel shot to his feet in a panic, with nowhere to dodge or hide.  His chair slammed backwards, hitting the floor with a bang.

"No.  No,” Gast’s eyes were clear, objective.  Dispassionate.   “I run quickly.  As you remember.  And I caught transportation, when convenient."

Angel had all his attention on the blade, his hands raised by his head.  The sword tip was probably scratching his kitchen cabinets, or walls, far behind him.  His kitchen was too small a space.  He could feel the edge of the blade grazing the tips of his hair.  Time seemed to slow and crystalize around the sword.

"There was no need to fly," Gast explained.

“Cool, cool,” Angeal found his voice, tried to force a jovial and relaxed tone into it.  A coal of anger started to burn in his gut.  “Wondered where you were keeping a passport in that leather get up.  But if you used a credit card to buy a ticket, Shinra is probably watching your bank accounts.  You know.  Hoping you didn’t use a credit card on your way up.  Be a bit amateurish.”

“Oh,” Gast inhaled, and then blinked.  He blinked so rarely.  Then he retracted his blade, the whole sword disappearing to—somewhere.  “No.  I am a professional.  I…take my work seriously.”

Angeal’s magic fire (materia?) ball was on the other side of the room, by the bed—he hadn’t put it on because he didn’t wear weapons in his own safe house.  His sword was against the bed too.  He had been so goddamned stupid. 

“Do you always stab people who aren’t professional?”

He’d taken the time to bake cinnamon rolls for a psychopath.  That sword could cut through streetlamps and concrete—it would go through Angeal’s sword like cream, through Angeal’s bones like butter, after Angeal baked cinnamon rolls. 

Gast blinked again, seeming to consider long and hard.  “No.  That was--a joke.”

“A joke.” Angeal repeated, and then had to bite his tongue again.  A thousand curse words and epithets sprung to mind—most of them ripped off of Cid—but this was neither the time or place, Gast was a psychopath, and it was stupid—no it was suicidal to let his guard down—

“I did not mean to distress you.  At Shinra--”

“Go fuck yourself,” Angeal slammed his chair back into the table, shaking the cutlery, but he was proud of how level and calm his voice was.  Adult. 

“You are overreacting—”

“Go fuck—no, nooo you don’t get to pull that shit!  I don’t know what’s normal at Shinra, but that shit doesn’t fly here.  If you want my help—and I kind of think you do—this bull shit has got to stop.  Understand?”

Gast tilted his head. 

“Now I am going out, you are staying here, and when I get back the house isn’t going to be burned down, the neighbors aren’t going to be killed, and there’s not going to be any dead kids, got it?  This isn’t Wutai.”

Angeal stormed the short distance to his closet and started yanking out clothes.  He needed some air.  Lots of fresh air.  He wished he had a door to slam, more space in between them.  He needed so much more space between them.  All the hairs on his neck were standing up, and his shoulder blades itched.

He’d been stupid.  He’d been so stupid he wasn’t aware of how very stupid he had been.  Stupid things like that were going to get him killed one day, and that day could have been today.

He could feel Gast staring at his back.

“I…realize this is not Wutai.”  Gast said impassively.

He needed a shower—another one.  He couldn’t even say the sex was amazing, because it was mostly just uncomfortable, and Gast seemed so goddamned puzzled by the whole thing, as if he’d never jerked another man off before—

Who knew?  Maybe he hadn’t.

Angeal didn’t normally go for casual encounters—he wanted some level of emotional attachment, a spark, before kissing, or even holding hands.  What he was doing with Gast was sexy while it was happening, but after the heat of the moment passed, Angeal just felt awkward and a bit dishonorable. 

If Gast hadn’t been so emphatic, so demanding, there probably—definitely—wouldn’t be any sex at all.

“I do not want this to be Wutai.”  Angeal didn’t turn around; it was drizzling and gray outside, he wanted his thick gray pullover.   “I would like to see sushi.  If you are amenable.”

Well, that was a pretty way to say please. 

Angeal pulled some sweats and shirts out of the closet and threw them at Gast.  “Try those on, they’re pretty big on me, so they should fit you.  I’m taking a shower, and you’re not coming in with me.”

For once, Gast didn’t argue or try to force the issue.  Angeal slammed and locked the bathroom door and tried to calm down in the shower.  One of them had to stay in control. 

He buried his head and his hands and—just tried to breathe, warm water streaming through his hair and down his back.  Angeal hated feeling trapped, hated feeling hopeless; it reminded him too much of the labs.  He cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders back, focused on filling up his lungs with warm air.  He had to remember he wasn’t a child anymore--this couldn’t last forever, he just had to stick it out.  He could always leave Gast in the apartment, and just get on the road to see how far he could go, how long he could last.  Worst case scenario he’d go down fighting, but there had to be better way.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea, to get the guy on his side, at least until he had heard from Cid.  They were stuck together, and Angeal had to make the best of it, because Gast didn’t how.  Or give a fuck.  Assuming Angeal could stay on top of his own discipline, and off Gast’s triggers.  Assuming Angeal could control his own nightmares and fears. 

He couldn’t hide in the shower forever.

Gast had dressed and made the bed by the time Angeal got out of the shower, the plates gathered in the sink.  His hair had been bundled under a bulky blue hoodie, the shoulders a little too tight; the man was a giant.  He wore his own black gloves, to hide the specimen mark; Angeal usually wore sleeves to cover his own tattoo or lied about it. 

Gast almost looked normal, as he sat absolutely motionless on Angeal’s bed, eyes tracking his every move and breath.

Gast held a clunky pair of black wraparound glasses.  People might give his hair a second glance, but his eyes would attract more attention than either of them could really afford.  According to Cid, the sunglasses were equipped with a tracker that would follow the wearer around a GPS map accurate to about 15 meters, in case Gast got separated or had second thoughts about returning to Shinra.  Angeal tried to see the best in people, but he wanted some warning before Gast stabbed him in the back.

Gast was a predator out its natural habitat.  He was unsure and tense, used to violence fixing all of his problems.  Used to violence being his only tool to solve his problems.  Angeal’s mom used to say when a man’s only tool was a hammer, then every problem became a nail.  Sometimes a man could learn new tools, Angeal agreed, but sometimes he couldn’t. 

He was still pissed about having a sword drawn on him in his own kitchen though.

“All right.  Let’s mosey.”

***

Chapter Text

Sephiroth felt exposed out in public in Angel’s borrowed clothes—more naked than he had while nude inside Angel’s apartment. 

Now that the fever and urge was absent, he could notice the traffic cameras mounted to intersections, ATMs, banks.  So many surveillance opportunities for Shinra to use.  The streets were relatively quiet, heavy with fir trees and quaint shops, but there were still enough people—not Turks, not military, the gait incorrect and stance sloppy—in front of him and in his peripheral vision that he barely noticed that Angel was sulking.

He had not meant to imply he wished to accompany Angel, or that he wanted to venture outside the apartment, but refusing would likely have annoyed the man further.  Genesis had taught him that much about human interaction.

The silence hung between them like an angry cloud, thorny and sullen.  Prolonged silence might make Angel jittery, or second guess himself.  A distraction was required.

“Where did you learn to cook?”

“Here and there,” Angel crossed the street, keeping a watchful eye on the crowd, on the cars, but obviously comfortable to rub shoulders with civilians.  With Sephiroth he was brusque.  Uninviting. 

Angel fit here, in the outside world; Sephiroth was the interloper.  Angel may have found Sephiroth offensive earlier when he threatened him with the Masasume.  What would Tseng say?

“You are quite good at it.”

“Oh really?” Angel sounded amused, skeptical.  “You cook?”

“No, but I eat.”

Angel barked a laugh, loud and unexpected.  Even Angel seemed startled, grinning.  He was very handsome when he smiled.

Sephiroth almost stumbled, but the twitch would have been unnoticeable to a casual observer.  Generally, laughter was not something he inspired in people.  Fear, awe, and avarice were familiar to him, but Angel was—was very hard to predict. 

One or two people stopped to give Sephiroth a second glance, making his skin itch—he towered over everyone easily.  Of course, he had towered over everyone in Shinra as well, but they knew who he was, and how he fitted into the company.  His role in Wutai and other campaigns had also been clearly defined. 

“In Shin—were your meals catered?  Before?” Angel asked.

Catered was an unusual word to use, and Sephiroth was not certain it applied.  He was still very hungry.  “There was a communal cafeteria.  The meals were not as varied as you have here.”

“You didn’t bother to learning to cook?” Angel sounded mildly contemptuous. 

Sephiroth had his personal sleeping quarters and bathroom, in recognition of his status within the company, his war-time accomplishments.  There was no kitchen, and he had never been in a situation where he could purchase or choose his food.  He had some measure of privacy, although his bedroom was equipped with a few cameras—nothing as elaborate as the labs or briefing rooms, but enough to notice if he did anything unusual, or died in his sleep.

“I have no opinion on it.  The need has never arisen, and I have not had access to a kitchen or raw materials in barracks before.  But I imagine it cannot be difficult.”

“Have you ever had steak?  Or ice cream?”

Sephiroth admitted he had not.

“How many calories do you normally consume?  Do you know?”

“On average forty-five hundred, but the amount can reach seven thousand during combat conditions.” 

One negative aspect of his temporary freedom was the lack of proper maintenance, sustenance.  Hojo had starved him before, after the Wutai campaign, to find his limits before his muscular tissue began to waste away and cannibalize itself.  The experiment had reminded him of M’Ling, boney and pale, another favorite of the Science department. 

At the time, Sephiroth had found himself wondering if he would also mutate inside a glass box, without Genesis or anyone else to perform the necessary procedure.

“Oh…kay.  We’re going to need a lot of food…”

Angel bought them an ice cream en route to the store.  It was another strange experience of eating something too sweet, too flavorful, with his hands.  The air was cold and drizzly, and droplets clung to his bangs.  The vanilla ice cream froze his lips, his tongue. 

Sephiroth refused to walk and eat his vanilla ice cream at the same time—this also seemed to amuse Angel, who was eating a strawberry flavor that he forced Sephiroth to try.

Sharing food was—strange.  Novel.  It left him with an uncomfortable feeling in his chest, the niggling impression he had been given a gift.  Was he expected to reciprocate?  He did not particularly want to.  Perhaps these sorts of interactions were normal for civilians, for people who lived outside Shinra.  Montgomery would have known, but Sephiroth would never had thought to ask him.

This experience was short-lived, fleeting—Angel seemed to have an agenda, but eventually Sephiroth would return to Shinra, willing or not, and he wanted…

…Things.  Things to remember.  Memories, of what the outside world could be, even if he would not be returning. 

Or if he did return, it would be as a military capacity.

***

Sephiroth loomed over Angel’s shoulder while he cooked, inadvertently getting in Angel’s way.   He asked the occasional question about a herb (it’s rosemary, it just makes it smell nice, I’m not sure if it has any nutritional value), reverse searing the steaks, the purpose of garlic in garlic smashed potatoes with cream cheese, and the sheer amount of butter on the green beans (because it tastes good, that’s why). 

He devoured the store-bought sushi while Angel cooked, commenting that it was inappropriate to eat between meals (so stop eating them then, they can go in the fridge for a bit). 

There was a slight fishy taste to the chunks but paired with the green wrapping (that’s seaweed) and sticky rice, the outcome was somehow savory and sweet, rather than revolting.  It was unlike anything Sephiroth had tasted before, and was surprised he had enjoyed it.

He did not offer any help to Angel while the other man bustled about the small kitchen.  Later, he wondered if social protocol required he offer assistance; living duties were spread out among the squad in Wutai, but those were clearly delegated and ordered. 

The steak bled when he cut into it, turning the mashed potatoes pink at the base.  He had eaten badly cooked meat in Wutai before.  He took a bite and was surprised that the meat tasted buttery, fresh and sharp with green herbs, and melted on his tongue.

“Do you like it?  I'm not sure if it's too much flavor or not enough, I'm not too good at fiddly stuff.”

“No, this is satisfactory.”  Angel seemed to be waiting for more.  This was a skill—Sephiroth wondered if Angel was trying to show off.  “I have a…friend, at Shinra, who would appreciate your skill.  He did try to learn to cook.”

“Friend?” Angel grinned.  “Did he set the kitchen on fire?”

Of all the SOLDIERs Sephiroth had met, Genesis was the only one who seemed determined to be something else, something more than just SOLDIER.  It was a strange pursuit, and until meeting Angel, Sephiroth could not have imagined the desired end result.

“No, he was denied permission, and continued to insist anyway.  He overstepped his bounds and was punished accordingly.  I am not certain exactly how the situation unraveled, but he could not ingest food normally for some time after.”

There had been a good two weeks when Genesis could not stand to be around food, when even the sight of it made him green and nauseous.  Sephiroth had hoped Genesis would learn from the experience.  “He enjoys trying new things.”

In Wutai, Genesis had sneaked them spicy noodles, fish soup with palm sugar in wooden bowls, and putu pirin, small desserts of sugary ground coconut steamed in banana leaves.  Genesis could speak Wutain, and had played the part of the liaison more than once , much to the Turks’ annoyance.  Hojo was outraged that his SOLDIERs weren’t following their prescribed diet of rations or MREs.

“And you're not sure what they did to him?  What's normal punishment at Shinra if they don't pay you?”

“I am not certain.  It may have been surgical." That tended to be Sephiroth’s punishment, thought it had been years since he’d been found unsatisfactory or rebellious.

“Oh.  Shit."  Angel had stopped eating.

“He healed quickly.  All SOLDIERs do."

"That's...good,” Angel sounded sick.  “I figured, but... that's still awful."

“Genesis has always been unorthodox.  He is aware of expectations and chooses not to follow them."

“And you guys are friends?” Skepticism drenched Angeal’s tone.  “Doesn't seem like you actually like him much.”

That was a difficult question to answer.  Sephiroth had wondered the same before, but Genesis seemed adamant that they were friends, and Sephiroth had no real reason to dispute his claim.  "We share history and experiences, and I respect his skill.  I like him well enough," Sephiroth was not certain he was telling the truth.  Occasionally he enjoyed Genesis’ company.  "I am not certain if he likes me."

He knew Genesis did not.  Genesis declared they were friends but did not actually like Sephiroth.  Until now, Sephiroth had not thought fondness was a necessary requirement for friendship; he much preferred Angel’s company to Genesis’. 

"Oh.  Sorry, " Angel snapped, not appearing remotely remorseful, "but I'm used to friends trying to help each other."

"We do,” Sephiroth corrected. “On the battlefield.  Genesis has always been... wanting what he cannot have."

Genesis chose to focus on his captivity, the narrowness of his route.  Unsurprisingly, this obsession caused problems.  He broke rules without reason or benefit, from disobeying dress codes to helping Wutains escape Shinra attacks.  Sephiroth had turned a blind eye in Wutai but would not protect Genesis if the Turks caught him. 

Genesis did love to try new things.

Angel frowned.  “So why didn’t you help him with this?  Were you worried about getting revenge surgery too?”

“No,” Pain was a part of life in SOLDIER, the experimentation part and parcel of their existence.  “That is nothing new.”

Angel’s face changed again, to pity, but Sephiroth ignored it. 

“It was for his own good,” Sephiroth stated, annoyed to be pointing out the obvious yet again for Angel’s benefit.  “He is always—trying, pushing, and until he realizes it is futile, he will be punished for it.  If he does not reach this conclusion in time, he will be executed.  Most likely by Sephiroth.”

There was no one else with the strength or power to overtake Genesis.  Whether or not the thought had occurred to Genesis was a mystery.  Sephiroth was not certain the other man would care. 

He was not certain how he would react to that order. 

“Okay.  That’s,” Angeal paused, and took a hurried sip of his drink while he thought.  “Really bad, and I get that—actually no, honestly I can’t understand, I’ve never been in a situation like that.  What you guys have to deal with.  But…I don’t think it’s a bad thing, that your friend wants to be free, wants more than he has.”

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes.

Angel put his hands up conciliatorily, “And I get that you’re trying to help him, in your own way.  You care about him.  But—”

Angel seemed at a loss.

“He must feel very alone.  If he’s the only one doing—if he’s the only he sees fighting.  If everyone else seems to be ok with the way things are.  And I don’t want you to get hurt either, I’m not saying he’s going about things the right way, but—a good friend would try to make sure that his friend didn’t feel alone.  That’s all I’m saying.”

Angel returned to eating, the tips of his ears red.  Sephiroth glared at him.

“You think I am a bad friend,” the words felt clumsy in his mouth.  He was not used to being judged and found wanting.  He had never been accused of being an incompetent friend; most people did not know he had a friend.   Usually they didn’t believe it, like Angel, but they knew better than to lecture him.  “You have no idea what you are talking about.”

“I don’t know Shinra, that’s true.  I do know what it’s like to be alone,” Angel didn’t look up, the coward.  He continued to lecture his plate though, voice hard and strained.  “I know what it’s like to leave people I could have helped and didn’t, because I was worried what would happen to me.  I’ve always wondered how things would have turned out if I had been a bit more reckless, but I’ll never know now.  That’s all.”

Sephiroth snorted, as genteelly as he knew how.  What a pointless speech.  He continued eating, the flavor and texture of the food managing to puncture his funk.  The rosemary and excessive butter truly did enhance subtle flavors, create new notes of savory sweetness.

Genesis would have loved this food, this place, the uncertainty.  He would probably have become friends with Angel instantly, without all of Sephiroth’s awkward misunderstandings or missteps.  Genesis could probably threaten Angeal without annoying him.

If Genesis ever tried to escape Shinra—he would likely not confide in Sephiroth, if he considered Sephiroth such a bad friend, if he truly thought himself alone.

You’re in charge now.  You’ve got to take responsibility, got to take care of your SOLDIERs.  Don’t leave us hanging.

All SOLDIERs were alone.  Whatever Montgomery thought, they were weapons, singular and expendable, and nothing would ever change that.  Genesis was stupid for not accepting the obvious. 

When Genesis died, Sephiroth would truly be alone.

“He is ridiculous, and he likes poetry,” Sephiroth was not certain he liked poetry, but was knew he did not like Genesis’ poetry.  Loveless wasn’t even a completed work.  “We can rarely be left alone for any length of time without property damage.”

Angel huffed and gave him a lopsided smile.  “He sounds like a pain.”

“He is,” Sephiroth agreed. 

They continued to eat in silence—there was nothing else Sephiroth wanted to know or had any interest in sharing.  Angel appeared embarrassed.  It took time to go through two steaks, each 2 kilograms worth.  The meat really was delectable.  Angel had gifted him with a memorable experience.  There was little Sephiroth could offer in return.

“I would advise you to find another line of employment.  Even if this one pays well.  Shinra will be hunting you, now that they know you exist.”

“Eh, I've been good at giving people the slip.  I got---got careless.”

“Extremely careless,” Sephiroth found himself more annoyed than circumstances dictated. 

“Yeah.  You're probably right.”

“You do not normally cook like this normally, to this extent; these are not staples you normally use.”  Angel had to ask the store staff for the location of certain items, because he did not normally buy them for himself.  The thought had been bothering Sephiroth for some time; he could only guess at Angel’s motivation.

“Well, I wanted to show you.  It's nothing fancy, anyone could do it, but I thought you--thought it would be something different, for you.”

“You have been kind to me.  It gained you little,” for there was little Sephiroth could offer in return.  He could not fight against Shinra and win, and he had no other skills aside from warfare.

“Probably because I just wanted to do it, instead of hoping for something in return?” Angel’s thick eyebrows quirked.  “I'm not Shinra, unless this is just a SOLDIER thing.”

Sephiroth’s lips twitched into something like a smile.  It could have been a grimace.  "I did not think you expected a quid pro quo,” It would have been out of character of Angel’s other actions.  “Merely making an observation.”

Angel sighed, uneasy.  Perhaps he thought Shinra could not find him without Sephiroth’s help?  Did he feel the same ever-present dread?  He still had some hope of living free, in the open world.  That was a mistake, likely coming from the same place that Genesis’ many mistakes and small rebellions had come from.

"Shinra will come for you,” Sephiroth murmured.  “It will be Turks at first--specialized field agents, to hound and wear you down, a slow war of attrition until your reserves and stamina fails.  Then it will be a SOLDIER who brings you down.”

“Standard operating procedure?”

Sephiroth hesitated.  "Yes.  Though rogue Soldiers are... incredibly rare.”

“Why?”

Sephiroth didn’t answer and pushed the last of the green beans around his plate. 

Angel shifted uncomfortably, apparently attempting to read his face.  "You don't have to tell me, if you don't want to."

Sephiroth did not want to.  But Angel deserved something.  "We generally don't live long enough.  Things happen."

Montgomery had certainly been right about that.  Inspiration struck.

"Sephiroth is the strongest SOLDIER to date, and currently the oldest,” there would be SOLDIERs, after Sephiroth.  Shinra would continue to try and improve upon Gast’s original work.  It would not stop with Genesis and himself.  “There are rumors he is degenerating, however.  I doubt he will survive the next few years."

"Shit," Angel breathed.  "And Shinra knows about this?  And they're still making soldiers?"

Sephiroth inclined his head in agreement.  He felt relief, from Angel’s reaction.  Also…he'd told someone.  Even if he’d been vague about it.  He had told someone.

"What about you?  Are you ok?"

“Yes.  I have--I have no problems.”

Angel scowled at him, brows heavy and thick.  But Angel wasn't Montgomery, or Genesis, so he would not know to press.  He needed a distraction.

“The meal was delicious, and filling.  Thank you for your effort.  It was a good demonstration of skill.” 

Angel should split up from him, run away—Shinra would have a harder time finding them, and it might buy Angel more time free.  Sephiroth would not enjoy the return of the madness—of the need—but he could withstand suffering.  He had done so before.  He was not certain how to relay that information to Angel. 

“Are you sure you want to go back?”

Angel had very earnest eyes, sincere and stalwart.  His hand covered Sephiroth’s on the table, sturdy and broad boned.  He disliked being touched.  He did not want to move.

“What I want has no bearing on the matter.”  Sephiroth stopped, and then took a breath.  Perhaps there was no need to pretend he was in control of his life at Shinra, that he was content there--at least while he was here.  “They will find me.  Eventually.”

Angel's lips thinned, and he stood, removing his hand.  Sephiroth’s stomach dropped, but Angel came over to kiss him, warm and sweet.  It felt different, this time, less by route and more--deep.  His hands found their way into Angel’s hair, against his jaw, and for once he was not eager to break the connection.  

The contact felt different, better than it had yesterday, even better than it had with Genesis.  Angel hummed, soft against his mouth, and his whole body flushed.  The fever was absent from his skull, his bones--his reactions now were solely his.

Angel led them to the bed, laid Sephiroth on his back and peppered kisses over his neck, his chest.  Sephiroth pulled off the few items of clothing he had bothered with, and tugged Angel’s trousers off.  He tried to remember how Angel had touched himself, pleasured himself.

His time free was short, and he wanted to gift Angel with something.

Angel moaned, deep and guttural, low in his ears.  Sephiroth felt his neck and face heat at the obscene sound—he had not blushed in years; it was an involuntary reaction that Hojo did not approve of.  Sephiroth used both hands, slipped his finger over the head of the other man's cock, his slit--Angel bucked in hand--and smeared the fluid.

What would Angel taste like?  How would he feel, to have the man's cock in his mouth?  A part Sephiroth was revolted by the idea--it could not be sanitary--but rest of him was growling, a low rumble.  Angel had done as much for him, and it would be—a new experience, one he was extremely unlikely to have the opportunity to find again. 

Angel came in a splurting mess, warm sticky splatters on his skin.

The other man panted, loud and warm, against his neck.  "God.  That was amazing.  You're amazing.”  Sephiroth stroked the other man’s back, felt the small scars and topography of his skin.

“Want to do something different?” Angel whispered against his skull, into his hair.  “I think you'll like it.  I'll stop if you don't--”

Sephiroth murmured something unintelligible in his throat, initiating the kisses, the petting.  "I have enjoyed everything you have shown me thus far.”

This new experience started with oil, warm and thick, first massaging his testicles and then clutching his cock, gentle and loose.  Sephiroth managed a warning; this would be over very quickly, and it would be preferable if it lasted. 

He wanted these moments to last.  He wanted as many memories as he could hoard.

Angel rubbed an oiled finger against his seam, before slipping in through the hole.  Sephiroth grabbed his arm, hard; there would be bruises later.

“What are you doing?”

“Does it hurt?  Are you ok?”

“It... does not hurt.”

It didn't hurt, so much as it was strange, having a finger moving in him, flexing.

“It'll feel better--should feel better, if you want to keep going…”

Sephiroth considered it.  He was not entirely comfortable, but he wanted to try new things, and--

And it made a difference, knowing that Angel would follow his wishes, accept his choices.  It was preferable, to have agency in these matters. 

He released Angels arm and considered the sensation.  There two fingers inside him now, mildly uncomfortable but not yet painful, and he could not comprehend how this was meant to be pleasurable--this was ridiculous.  For once Angel had been wrong.  He only felt embarrassed—this was incredibly unsanitary. 

The fingers crooked and rubbed and pressed against something that made him arch his neck, his back.  The rough moan out his own throat surprised him, made him blush, low and sultry.  Wanton.

“There it is,” Angel sounded pleased.

“Fuck," Sephiroth did not swear, had the impulse beaten out of him years ago, but that sensation had been--

Angel did it again.  Then again.  And again, fingers thrusting into him hard, fast, while Sephiroth tried to strangle the little growls.

He compromised with clenching his jaw, physically strangling the moans and little gasps he couldn't control, while Angel drove him mad.  He had his other hand under Sephiroth thigh, pushing him open, exposing him. It was embarrassing and obscene, and only served to drive the arousal higher.  Angel bent his head to lick the sides of his cock, to nibble and sucked the head.

It did not last long enough—not nearly long enough--but when orgasm hit it seemed to go on, well past ejaculation, well past Angel slumping at his side, panting and warm.

Sephiroth laid back and tried to force his body back under control.  His skin was heated, nerves alive and over sensitized, and it felt like his brain was soaking in warm delightful bath. 

Distantly, he could still feel the embarrassment, the exposure, but his nerves and neurotransmitters were too happy to let him focus on it.

That was…So much better than what he had ever hoped for.

He exhaled, Angel snug by his side.

“So,” Angel murmured, low and sweet, “Want to do it in the shower?”

***

Chapter Text

It had started with something no more innocuous than an accountant being fired and her desk emptied.  Sephiroth had been passing through the floor at the end of lunch, had glanced at the odd bits and pieces cluttering the desk while staff emptied the bottom drawers on their knees, twisting to get the brown accordion files and binders from the very back.  They hadn’t seen him. 

An item at the top of the desk, mixed in with highlighters and rubber bands, caught his attention.

Sephiroth was not a practiced thief, but he picked it up without breaking stride.  In all honesty, it was doubtful anyone had paid attention to the item; it was just one more piece of detritus in a pile of junk.  He went about his business of the day, the item quietly burning a hole against his leathers.

He did not take it out until he reached his personal bathroom—possibly the only location within the Shinra compound without cameras.

Professor Gast had been the one to introduce him to fairy tales; had tried to explain the concept of fiction, a lie that told true things.  Though Sephiroth had deliberated on the concept, even after Gast’s murder, he had never quite understood the purpose of fiction besides a method of escapism, distraction. 

This book was smaller than the picture book Gast had introduced him to, and the stories all seemed to end with the death of the protagonist and later the monster, when the protagonist was avenged.   There was a stylized sketch of a werewolf, arched and howling against a full moon.

In Gast’s book, the stories centered on colorful illustrations of half-human, half animal creatures collecting treasures or talking to children; mermaids returning a teacup to an old lady, a fairy leading a lost child through a dark forest to safety.  A werewolf who howled and hassled a shepherd boy, because the wolf had a thorn in his paw.

It was a good example, Professor Gast had said, of different people coming together to help one another.  One’s appearance was outside of one’s control, to an extent, and had little bearing on the quality of their character. 

Sephiroth disagreed: Predators’ bodies were obviously designed to hunt and kill, and prey animals equipped to evade and hide.  A body’s design played a fundamental component in the individual’s behavior. 

He had felt very uncomfortable disagreeing with Professor Gast—he could still remember the clench in his stomach and chest, even though Professor Gast seemed pleased, smiled when Sephiroth contradicted him.  Professor Gast was one of the few people who spoke to him, who listened, who would touch him without gloves.  Professor Gast hardly ever damaged him, or caused pain, and he made a point to talk to Sephiroth after, to entertain him with stories or mental puzzles, or the occasional art book.

Sephiroth could barely remember the art books now; they were just a blur of soft color, impressions of movement and light. 

He hadn’t been present when Professor Gast was murdered.  He did notice Professor Gast stopped appearing at the lab.  The lab technicians forgot—or possibly were unaware—of how good his hearing was and had discussed it.  They were on the far side of the room--several meters, plus the observational glass, separated them from Sephiroth. 

Professor Hojo had finally lost patience, power was shifting in the department—the stupid old man had it coming, all he had was excuses and half-assed bullshit after finding the SOLDIER serum, it was about time—

Sephiroth had been seated in the corner, wires attached to his temples and chest as his heart rate and EKG was monitored.  They never saw him coming; they had been so much bigger than him, his head had barely come up to their waists, but it had made no difference in the end. 

It was not the first time Sephiroth had murdered someone or injured a technician.  It was the first time Professor Gast could not protect him from the consequences; consequences were a hallmark of adulthood.  Sephiroth had to protect himself, now.

According to Professor Gast, there were three ways of looking at the world; what it was, how it should be, and how it could be. 

Sephiroth had an excellent grasp of how it was, good observational and deductive skills.  He studied the interactions of the people around him, how people manipulated and pulled on each other, and had an idea of how things should be, though he occasionally miscalculated.  What he lacked—according to Professor Gast—was imagination, in seeing something raw and useless, and understand that in the right conditions, that same failure could be invaluable.  

Of course, Gast thought Sephiroth had a limited education.    Hojo complained any time Professor Gast tried to take him outside, show him the stars or tropical plants on the Shinra grounds.  The chance for disease or contamination outweighed any possible benefit the specimen could possibly derive from the experience.  Sephiroth’s excursions outside were quickly curtailed.

Imagination grew with experience, and Shinra would always keep him on a very, very, tight leash.

If Genesis met Professor Gast, he would have agreed with his assessment; Sephiroth did not have imagination, could not have foreseen that their dalliance meant nothing to Genesis, less than nothing, it was only a kiss, Sephiroth was too overbearing, too territorial.  As much as he complained Genesis was dramatic, Sephiroth was just as emotional.  Or horny.  Hypocritical. 

People lived, then they died, and nothing they did mattered because it was all going to end anyway—

Sephiroth tore the stolen book in half without meaning too.  The pages crinkled under fingers.  His head hurt. 

Silky black feathers exploded behind him, sinister and magnificent, as The Thing that Did Not Happen happened for the first time.  Sephiroth was too lost in his memories to notice.

He couldn’t remember what Professor Gast sounded like, or picture his face clearly, but he could remember how he smelled—of tea leaves and sweat, worry and ink. 

The most important person in his life, and he couldn’t even remember his face.

Sephiroth had calmed down by the time he noticed the luxurious black plumes on the floor, the long wing stretched over his right shoulder.

He had stared at the feathers, and thought of Gast, pointing out the sunrise on the horizon.  Gast, showing him the world beyond Shinra.

He could glimpse the outside world—in stolen books, in stolen moments—but he would never see the moon, if Shinra did not wish it. 

His face was wet.  He felt very calm.

Professor Gast had died within these halls.  Montgomery was stored here, as was Kunsel, and Wells.  Genesis might be stored here, one day.  A most talented assortment of ghosts, the finest collection in the world. 

His life stretched out before him, a long unvarying systematic road, from birth inside a plastic observation tank, to the bloody violence in the field, to death inside another glass box.  The immaculate specimen, perfect SOLDIER, free from all the deficiencies and failings of other living humans. 

The lengthy black flight feathers on his wing twitched, shivered, as he stared.

He wasn’t ready to die.  He didn’t feel crazy.  But perhaps…

He just needed the opportunity.

***

Generally, people were unaware of the accuracy and range of a SOLDIER’s enhanced hearing; it wasn’t part of the combative violence and strength SOLDIERs were famous for.   Shinra staff were still careful about what they said, as incautious staffers had a short employment and lifespan, whether in janitorial or the Technology Department.

However, most Shinra employees came from other countries, from Switzerland to Argentina to China, lured in by money or moral freedom.  Despite company regulations, most people spoke in their home language, of politics and TV shows that were important to them. 

It wasn’t much, but it was enough for Sephiroth to formulate an idea of the world outside Shinra, which countries would be likely to offer a rogue SOLDIER asylum, what government would return him to Shinra.  Which countries would kill him on sight, and sell his corpse to the highest bidder.

Listening in on the Turks—who learned to ignore him when he wasn’t in the field, who didn’t seem to realize that Sephiroth not only a war dog that could be ordered to kill—taught him which governments might stand against Shinra.  Shinra had enemies, powerful ones, waiting for an excuse to attack.  He learned pieces of other languages, not enough to blend in, but enough to give him an edge if…

But it was impossible.

There was no where he could hide supplies.  He could steal a helicopter—had observed enough to be reasonably certain he could pilot one—but he would run out of fuel long before he outran Shinra.  The Shinra island was too small to store long-distance planes, which were kept on Wutai.  He was not certain he could pilot a plane.

Sephiroth considered conferring with Genesis, mining his creativity; they had both been born at Shinra, but Genesis could be charismatic, even charming with pilots, Turks, whomever they needed to manipulate.  Genesis had avenues open to him that Sephiroth did not; all SOLDIERs had very structured daily schedules, but Sephiroth had his time more regulated than most.  It was one of the few things Genesis did not envy him for. 

Genesis could be useful.

Except Sephiroth did not need help.  Escape was futile, as was considerations of the prospect.   There was no safe place to hide, he would be running all his life, always looking in shadows and over his shoulder, trading one cage for another.  They would find him eventually—all he could change was the location.

He would die at Shinra, or elsewhere, and his corpse would remain in storage for Hojo and his successors to poke. 

If Hojo knew about the Thing that Did Not Happen, he may not even wait for Sephiroth to die in battle. 

Sephiroth was meant to be a new type of SOLDIER, a better one—more time and resources had been poured into making him perfect.  Sephiroth had swallowed that pretty lie, and thought himself safe from Hojo’s baser, more destructive impulses.  Montgomery had believed the lie that the new SOLDIERs would be healthy, safe from reclamation, in a way that he and M’Ling hadn’t been. 

But that was a lie too.  SOLDIERs would always find their way back to the Science Department, at the end of their life.

Nevertheless, temptation had him noting facts, considering strategies.  When the Turks had news of a rogue SOLDIER in Mexico, Sephiroth made certain he was on the team.

It was, nevertheless, impossible. 

***

That morning, Sephiroth awoke before Angel.  He attempted to make breakfast.  The smoke likely awoke Angel, who stopped the process before a fire could be started.

“I want The Island of Dr. Moreau book” Sephiroth interjected while Angel dumped the burnt oil in the trash.  “Can you acquire it for me?”

“You want to go to the bookstore?” Angel had an unfortunate habit of answering questions with more questions. 

“If that is how the book is acquired, then yes.”

Angel did not have a car nearby—or if he did, he was keeping it a secret—so they walked to the shopping district of the city, only a few kilometers away.

Sephiroth followed Angel past the colorful shops and chalked “Sale!!” signs on the sidewalk, memorizing the layout of the streets and observing the faces and gaits of the other people, checking them over for weapons.  Several people appeared to be tourists, taking pictures of historical buildings and consulting maps.  Angel seemed relaxed enough, though Sephiroth noticed he paid attention to their surroundings. 

He followed Angel into the bookstore. 

“It’s an old book, so it’ll probably be with the Classics,” Angel led the way, past stacks of books and displays.  Sephiroth stared as civilians browsed the shelves, picking up books at random and leafing through them, and then returning them without consequences.

Shinra had its own library.  If Sephiroth completed his examinations exceptionally well or surpassed Genesis at combat—and by extension, Hollander—Hojo would sometimes allow Sephiroth time to browse a few books, any books he wished, so long as they weren’t too frivolous. 

It had been a rare treat, but Sephiroth’s desire to please had waned as he had aged.  It had been years since he was surrounded by such knowledge.

And…Civilians could come here at any time.  For any reason.  There were a few talking on bulky cell phones as they browsed, completely unmindful of their surroundings. 

There were books on flowers, and books on food, and books covered in pictures of cats.  Sephiroth bumped into Angel a few times, distracted.  The sheer variety and availability were breathtaking. 

“Here,” Angel shoved a book into his hand.  The cover showed the face of a spotted jungle cat, slowly morphing into a human face.  “I still think it’s a bit morbid though.  Are you sure you’ll like it?”

No, Sephiroth doubted he would like it, if it was anything like he suspected.  Nevertheless.  “I believe I will find it instructional.”

“In what?” Angel had an appealing frown.  A very honest face, handsome and sincere.  Such a strange person.

“In differentiating beasts from humans, and monsters from beasts.  It will be a start.  They have so many books here,” Sephiroth could hear the wonder in his own voice, the wistfulness.  Angel’s open nature was rubbing off on him, possibly.

Angel’s face twisted.  “Do they not have—have you ever been in a bookstore before?  Never mind,” he said, before Sephiroth had to lie again.  “Let’s get something else, while we’re here.  Do you like gardening?”

Sephiroth shrugged.  He was familiar with the idea of gardening—the Shinra compound had landscaped areas with ornamental trees and tropical flowers, for visitors and photoshoots--but it wasn’t something he had considered in relation to himself. 

Angel led the way again. 

“Huh.  It used to be here.”  They were in a little nook of the store close to an employee exit.  The books here all featured balls of string and people modeling knit sweaters and scarves.  Sephiroth picked up a book that had a dog wearing a knitted violet scarf and cheery bobble hat and flipped it open.

For some reason, that made Angel grin.  “I’ll let you browse for a bit, all right?  Let me go ask where they hid the gardening books, they’re always moving things around.” 

Sephiroth nodded, and Angeal left him alone.

Growing more confused, Sephiroth flipped through the pages, not exactly understanding the terminology, but grimly coming to conclusion that this book instructed readers on how to make clothes for animals.  Mainly large dogs, all pictured covered in a great deal of fur, so would not require extra heating, but still modeled ponchos and elaborate knitted collars. 

Hojo would not allow Sephiroth books on geography, because that was Turk work, and he would never have need to learn that.  Shinra had very few books on history, because they were not concerned with the past dead.  But books on how to make a jacket for a large furry dog existed—

Sephiroth fumbled and dropped the books, the breath twisted up in his lungs.  His vision blurred gray even as he watched the books fall, his eyeballs vibrating in their sockets.  He called Masasume, grasped the hilt--and then that fumbled out his slack grip too.  Everything was gray, now.

A sliver of new pain indicated a needle injected in his neck.

He knew Shinra had been experimenting with extremely high-powered sonic weaponry.  Sephiroth had seen the experiments on normal humans, safe behind several panes of sound-proof glass, but there had been no need test on SOLDIERs.  Their loyalty was beyond question, and Hojo would not allow it, his specimens were too special.  Used to be special. 

He stumbled backwards, and Rude caught him.  The Turk was wearing ear plugs, he noticed. Rude pulled him towards the employee door.  Rude alone shouldn’t have the strength to pull him anywhere. 

Sephiroth struggled, feeling again distant from events, as if he was watching someone else move and twitch. 

He grasped for the connection with Angel.  Where was Angel?  They couldn’t be allowed to take Angel, where was—

***

While Angeal had lied about several key facts, he really didn’t remember much about the labs. 

It could have been trauma, or repressed memories, but mainly he just remembered feeling sick, strange smelling showers and light in his eyes.  He barely remembered the night gunshots or muffled screams, the dark hallways.  His mother remembered better but hated to speak of it.

If Vincent hadn’t rescued them, they would have died that night.  If Vincent hadn’t stayed with them, managed Angeal through the withdrawal and disorientation, then Angeal would have died later.

Angeal had nightmares about the labs.  Nothing concrete, nothing solid, just a general cloudy fear, impossible to attack, impossible to even look at straight. 

He should have died in those labs.  He should have turned into something like Gast, or a mindless monster like Sephiroth, if not for Vincent. 

Vincent wasn’t exactly a father figure, but he was the closest thing Angeal had, the best role model of a functional adult who didn’t quite fit with reality, but still moved with it.  In between disappearing and reappearing in their lives, Vincent found time to train Angeal in combat and a small bit of magic—Gast had been right about that.

Effort and perseverance meant Angeal had excellent form, better hand to hand than Vincent, and damn good sword skills.  All he lacked was a killer instinct; given time to think, Angeal was even less blood thirsty, even slower to react aggressively.  Vincent couldn’t train that into him, and even Gast had noticed it, exploited it.

Angeal noticed the two suits out of the corner of his eye as he asked the cashier about the gardening section.  Then he’d kept up the general chitchat going, trying a couple of bad pick-up lines on the guy, ignoring the line of people behind him.  The register sat behind the glass storefront that looked out to the street. 

There were suits out there too, obviously out of place, and obviously watching the bookstore and the street.  They weren’t trying for subtle, weren’t afraid to make a scene.

The dog-whistle blew out his ear drums, made his stomach plummet with the sudden rush of vertigo—but no one else reacted—so Angeal laughed it off, nodding at the cashier without being able to hear or focus on anything he said.  Angeal couldn’t even hear his own voice. 

The counter dented and cracked under his fingertips; he was gripping it so hard.  His vision went gray around the edges, cloudy and soft.

Hadn’t Gast said they didn’t have agents here?  But that didn’t mean they didn’t have connections…

They hadn’t noticed him yet, probably. 

Angeal trickled out of the shop with a group of tourists, pretending to listen how to get to the sand dunes.  He stumbled and swayed as he walked, the fear forcing him to focus, to fight past the gray. 

A man with auburn hair and dressed all in red was leaning against the building across the street, watching the crowd idly.  The hairs on the back of Angeal’s neck rose, and there was an odd ringing in his brain, as if someone was flicking a tuning fork inside his skull.  It felt as cold and alien as Gast had, those first few days. 

He slipped into a coffee shop a down the street and slipped out the back through the employee exit, into a little alleyway.  He didn’t normally live here, in the States, but he was relatively familiar with this town, the best exits to the freeways, which bars could be bribed.

It was into such a bar that Angeal slipped into through the back door, picking a seat in the back corner. 

Angeal ordered a beer, to give his hands something to do, give his cover some weight.  His hands were shaking, cold sweat soaking his back, heart still racing as he sat on the barstool.  His cheeks tingled with chill.

If that was Shinra out there, they already had Gast, or else the bookstore would have been sliced to pieces and set on fire already.  If Gast decided to help Shinra to lessen his punishment, well, Angeal couldn’t blame him.  They weren’t really friends, and the kind of punishment Gast hinted at was—beyond inhumane. 

The--probably smarter option—would have been to start running once he got through the first blockade, abandon his family sword in case Gast led them to the apartment. 

His family sword.  That meant the world to him.  But he couldn’t risk—

Except.  There was no way to know if Gast had betrayed him?  But, looking back on his choices—mostly surface level, reflexes kicking in—Angeal had pretty much abandoned Gast.  Not that he could have helped him, in those circumstances, but still.  He’d definitely abandoned him. 

No reason for Gast not throw him to the wolves, not now.

And, as he sat there sipping his beer, Angeal continued to abandon the man.  They weren’t friends, but—

But the hard truth was Angeal was never sure if his inability to kill anyone was due to a sense of honor or a sense of cowardice.  He was reasonably sure he’d done the sensible thing, the right thing in a pragmatic sense, but he definitely felt like a cowardly piece of shit.  Angeal was hyperventilating, but he could hear his heart thundering in his ears again. 

He liked Gast well enough.  He thought maybe Gast liked him.

What was he supposed to do?  He had his fire materia.  Not much else.

When Vincent sat beside him, he was ready to collapse with relief.  The bartender and afternoon crowd were perched at the front of the bar in front of the TV, arguing over a soccer match. 

He didn’t bother to question Vincent’s timing; the man was the worst and best kind of inexplicable.  Quietly, Angeal debriefed.

“So.  What do we do now?” Angeal was considering half a dozen ways they could escape, but it was difficult without knowing exactly how embedded Shinra was.

They have spies everywhere.

“Do you know what they will do to him?”

Angeal could guess.  His throat felt tight.  “It’s a bit out of our hands now,” and when it had been in his Angeal’s hands, he’d run.  He was good at running.  “What good could we do?”

Vincent was great, definitely more experienced than Angeal, but not faster or stronger than Gast, and there were other SOLDIERs here, each as good as Gast…

Shit, they could have brought Sephiroth.  That was not someone Angeal wanted to go up against. 

“We will not know for certain until we try.”  Vincent enjoyed being cryptic.  “He lied about his name.  Shinra murdered Gast years ago.  He was a good man.”

“I told him we weren’t with Shinra,” Angeal didn’t think he’d lied.  But how else would Vincent recognize the name?  Vincent shrugged; Angeal wasn’t sure if the man meant to keep secrets or just disliked speaking so much he left other people in the dark. 

“I know who he really is.  So do you,” Vincent murmured, gravelly and ghost quiet. 

Angeal frowned—he didn’t know anyone in Shinra, much less a SOLDIER, that was something that would stick in his mind.  He just knew some of the top players, and—

“Oh shiit,” he gaped.  “No.”

“Is it so surprising?  Did you not suspect why he was trying to escape?”

Angeal opened his mouth—then closed it.  Gast hadn’t dragged him back to Shinra and had wasn’t interested in solving their magical soulbond, but that didn’t mean he—

He acted more like a man on vacation than someone on the run; like he always planned to go back to work as normal.  He wasn’t under any pressure.  Gast didn’t believe there was a way to run from Shinra, so he hadn’t even tried. 

“Are you sure?”

Sephiroth was a demon—from what Angeal had heard the monster had killed women and children, slaughtered thousands with a machine-like efficiency.  Battalions vanished underneath him.  Gast had been a aloof bad-mannered demanding asshole, but there had still been something sweetly earnest in him.  He’d been so interested in the world around him, enchanted by it.  He couldn’t be—

Vincent only looked at him with his thousand-year stare.  “Do you still dream of your time in a cage?”

Angeal didn’t answer—he didn’t have to.

“Then you know what a cage can create.”

Angeal didn’t answer.  Distantly, he realized he was coming down from a panic attack.  His hands were still shaking.

“You can always run, but eventually you will run out of places to go.  I think he has already come to that conclusion.  Shinra’s true range of influence is deceptive, but as embedded in the beast as he is, he would recognize how difficult true freedom would be.  He’s managed to survive, but survival is not living—it becomes a burden.”

In his nightmares, Angeal wasn’t running from monsters, he was the monster--something made to hurt people.  Something exactly like Sephiroth, but without sanity, without memory, without a chance of ever becoming human.

“You wanted me to train you so you could help others.  So you could find ways to fight your own monsters.” Vincent could have been talking to himself, staring into the middle distance.  “Not everyone has a capacity for violence.  There is no shame in that; there are other ways to be of use.”

Oddly enough, what popped up in Angeal’s mind was Gast unravelling cinnamon rolls and trying ice cream for the first time.  Gast the monster, hunting him throughout the desert, coming to kill him the train depot.  Gast, cold and arrogant, kissing him shyly, sweet and unsure, trying to cook Angeal breakfast and starting an oil fire on accident. 

Trying to live as himself, for the first time ever.

“Have to start somewhere,” Angeal took a deep breath, and heard the hitch on his own voice.  But two fighters were better than one.  Gast had trusted Angel, as fragile and newborn as that trust was.  He had to try.  “He still had his sunglasses.  You know.  Those special ones Cid gave me?”

***

Sephiroth awoke in a haze. 

His muscles ached—the tranquilizer Rude used had probably been closer to a poison.  Over the years his body had adapted to most tranquilizers, and while poisons would weaken him, Hojo yet had to find one that would be likely to kill him.  The testing had certainly been extensive enough.  The bindings that held him down to the gurney were familiar--SOLDIER tested, and almost impossible to tear out of.

It was so hard to concentrate.  He reached for Angel, tried to find the fishing-line bond, but couldn’t focus on anything.  His mind was a sweaty hot fog, itchy and irritated. 

There was—some sort of rhythmic booming.  Either high winds, indicating they were airborne (unlikely, he couldn’t feel the vibrations of a motor) or on a mountain side.  Possibly freeway traffic.

There was a pale blur moving in front of him; a few blinks clarified it to a Shinra nurse, wearing a surgical mask and spectacles.  He was in some sort of white room, tiny and spare—no, some type of plastic tent, the wind pushing against the walls and roof.  He must have lost some time, because then the nurse was gone, and Genesis was standing over him, a strange smile twisted on his face.

“Well, hello old friend,” Genesis murmured, before pulling back punching Sephiroth solidly against his jaw.  His head bounced against the table.  This was strange—Genesis preferred materia or a sword to his fists.  Then Genesis hit him again.  Then again.  Then—

“Genesis,” Tseng raised his voice, the tone and volume indicating he had had to repeat himself.  Sephiroth hadn’t noticed him enter.  Genesis may have done but had chosen to ignore him.

“Oh, hello Tseng,” Genesis greeted him sunnily.  “I didn’t see you come in; we were having such a good time catching up with one another.  My old friend and I.”

“Wait outside.  That is an order,” Tseng added, clearly expecting a confrontation.  Sephiroth tried to keep his stomach out of his throat, tried to bring his mind back under his control.  His skull hurt, but that was nothing compared to the lack of connection, the roiling urge down his spine, the sudden mental emptiness—

Was Angel dead?  That would be…plausible.  Sensible. 

When he could focus again, it was to find both Genesis and Tseng watching him carefully.  Tseng had his gun drawn from its holster, but Genesis had his arms crossed, apparently bored.  Sephiroth was not certain how much time had passed.  He didn’t know what he had done during that time, but it was enough to unnerve Tseng.

The right leg restraints were torn from the gurney.  He didn’t remember doing that.

“Sephiroth,” Tseng spoke calmly, as if he was not contemplating shooting Sephiroth there and then.  He approached the gurney, gun still drawn.  “I need to debrief you.  It’s possible you have suffered chemical contamination or a biohazard infection and have been experiencing a psychotic breakdown.”

Behind him, Genesis rolled his eyes. 

Then Tseng placed the gun’s muzzle on Sephiroth’s right kneecap and pulled the trigger.

Despite anticipating what was going to happen—he’d disobeyed orders, he’d been caught, how lenient and weak living a few days with Angel had made him—Sephiroth choked, surprised.  He didn’t scream, and after a few seconds could pull in air through his nose and forced his heart rate to slow.

His knee was on fire.  Tseng was still talking.  It was difficult to focus.

He could handle this.  He had handled worse—he could endure this.

“I realize this is a stressful situation,” Tseng continued, “however—”

Tseng’s cell phone rang.  He glanced at the caller ID, face blank and empty for several seconds.  “Please excuse me.  Genesis.”

Genesis watched as Tseng retreated, the white plastic tarp sealing them away from the outside with a heavy swish.  Sephiroth’s leg was numb except where his knee was shot, the smell of cordite greasy and thick in the tent.  Even in Wutai he had disliked firearm discharge.

He was surprised not to be upset, or even surprised that Shinra had found him.  Reality had reasserted itself; the dream was over.

He breathed deep through his nose, and tried to focus on the facts.  Genesis was still standing by the gurney, studying his bloodied mess of a knee contemplatively; the few lightbulbs threw strange shadows across his face, his expression. 

Genesis’ Restore materia gleamed green in his gauntlet over his crossed arms—Genesis was the best healer Shinra had seen.  Even the Science Department would request his help occasionally, to keep patients and specimens alive.

Sephiroth watched Genesis and…waited.  For more violence, more rage, for Genesis to leave him to his own thoughts.  The pain would not dull for a while but was now accompanied by the warm searing sensation of his body healing itself—whether or not his knee would heal in the correct position was another problem.

“Why,” Sephiroth rasped quietly, “are you angry?”

Genesis had no right to be angry.  He had not spent the last month only in partial control of his own mind, had lost nothing of value in that short amount of time.  His world had stayed the same small bubble of pain and darkness, repetitive and routine. 

He hadn’t—he hadn’t had to change. 

“Do I need a reason?” Genesis drawled.  “Is not traipsing all over the planet to nursemaid Shinra’s favorite SOLDIER not good enough?  Or perhaps you weren’t aware other people had other matters more important than cleaning up your mess?”

 “How did you find me?”

“The Turks did, obviously,” Genesis leaned against his table, a disapproving sneer flitting over his face.  There were shadows under his eyes, made deeper by the sparse lighting.  “You have a tracker inserted in your body.  Somewhere.  In case you didn’t already know.”

Sephiroth had not known that.  That meant he had likely led the Turks directly to Angel, that it was his fault the other man had been captured.  If he had been captured.  Was Angel here?  Was it safe to ask Genesis, or would he report this conversation to Tseng later?  Was Angel dead?  Sephiroth couldn’t concentrate, could barely hold on to the nausea dancing in his head.

You’ve got to take responsibility, got to take care of your SOLDIERs.  Don’t leave us hanging.

The new SOLDIERs were supposed to be safe, but he couldn’t even save Angel—

Genesis probably didn’t have clearance to tell him about the tracker.  Genesis probably didn’t have clearance to know--

“Then you do too.” 

Genesis shrugged, indifferent.  His old friend was in a strange mood, even under the circumstances. 

“You don’t know where?”

“Even if I did, and even if I was inclined to find out, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“This is hardly the time to be childish, Genesis.”

Genesis shrugged again, a tight, oddly painful movement.  “Pride is lost, wings stripped away, the end is nigh.”

Sephiroth exhaled heavily, through his nose.  He had not missed the drama.  He had spent the last few days thinking of Genesis but had somehow managed to repress the other man’s penchant for theatrics.  

Instead, he tried to focus on finding out where he was.  On the low murmured conversations in the background, too indistinct to hear over the wind.  On the steady rhythmic boom he could feel as well as hear, the cold salt wind thrashing against the plastic tenting. 

It seemed forever ago he had sat in Angel’s kitchen and puzzled over sushi, tasting of everything but fish.    

“I realize we’re not,” Genesis spoke into the darkness, low and distant.  “We’re not really friends.  Not as friends could be.  I could not care less, either way.  But I was disappointed, that when you finally had an opportunity, you didn’t think of me at all.”

Genesis sounded surprised. 

Well.  Angel had been right; he was a bad friend.  He hadn’t known.

“I didn’t plan this,” Sephiroth rasped, through the poison and pain.  “I didn’t.  There were extenuating circumstances outside of my control—”

“Too busy for you make a simple phone call?  But not so busy that you couldn’t buy new clothes.  Or go shopping with civilians,” Genesis sneered, hurt and looking for something to hurt in return. 

How much did Genesis know about Angel?  How much did Shinra know?  Could Genesis imagine what life was like outside the bubble?  He had always been more creative than Sephiroth, more fanciful—Sephiroth had resented him for that, even as he pitied him for longing what they could never have.

“This rogue must be truly something, if he’s the sole reason behind your defection.  Is that it?  Or perhaps the great Sephiroth really is the pinnacle of the SOLDIER program: why should you ever have to think of anyone else, when your skin is the only one that matters.  You could simply behead me, or anyone else, who you found inconvenient.”

Sephiroth was stunned.  Genesis was gaining steam, “I imagine you were looking forward to it, to finally proving who was stronger—”

“Genesis this is stupid.  I wouldn’t—if anyone was going to—” Sephiroth stopped suddenly.

Genesis waited, then raised an eyebrow—the famously impatient Genesis, letting seconds go on in silence.  But Sephiroth couldn’t explain.  He couldn’t tell Genesis.  He couldn’t tell anyone.

“I can do it myself,” Genesis looked both older and younger than he had in years—vulnerable and guarded.  Tired.  “But…I was willing.  To help you.  But I guess the great Sephiroth is too special to need help from anyone.”

“There is something else,” Sephiroth said, forcing the words past his teeth.  He did not want Genesis to know this, his motivation, and his shame, but clearly some sort of explanation was owed.  He owed him that much.  They were friends—he wanted to keep this relationship.  “Some details.  That I had been keeping from you.” 

“Have you now?” Genesis gave him a considering look, and hope flitted briefly in Sephiroth’s chest.  If he confessed now—that he had ensured he was on the mission, the reason why he needed just a little space between Shinra and himself, even if he could not escape them, then perhaps Genesis would help him.  As they had helped each other, for so many years.

“I hope they keep you alive,” Genesis strode out the tent, head high and proud.

***

Angeal lay flat under the bushes, having crept as close as he dared.   Cid’s tracker had brought them to a little cliffside parking lot overlooking the ocean in the early hours of the morning, the waves roaring far below them.  Was probably a popular scenic stop during the day, but dead empty at night.  There were a few black vans parked defensively in the parking lot and armed guards spread out in the pre-dawn darkness. 

There was a small airstrip a few miles east—they were probably just waiting for their plane to land.  If everything went to plan, Cid would be picking them up in his own little Cessna plane at that same airstrip, hopefully in the last place Shinra would expect them to be.

Angeal had better hearing than most people, enough to know that no one was near him, and no one was at their best so close to dawn, when the sky was starting to turn but the shadows were still heavy everywhere.  His sword was strapped to his back, pushing him into the earth—he couldn’t believe he was genuinely considered leaving it behind before, but panic had him acting stupid.  Gast hadn’t sold him out. 

This would have been so much easier if this had been Gast instead of him, but he didn’t need too much psychic bond magic to guess that Gast was being held in the big pop-up tarp surrounded by guards.  The man dressed in red seemed to be in charge, barking orders and strutting around the place.

Angeal resisted the urge to check his watch, to move, and waited…

At the far end of the tent, a guard fell over, his head quietly exploded by a sniper shot.  Angeal breathed out, but no one had run over, no one seemed to notice Vincent’s handiwork.  A second guard fell over, just as soon as he walked out of sight of the others. 

Angeal tensed, waiting until his watch pinged silently.   Then he darted forward and under the heavy tarp, the parking lot asphalt gritty against his cheek and the little tent empty except for some medical equipment and Gast strapped to a gurney.  Angeal sprang up and started on the buckles restraining Gast’s shoulders; he had four different restraints across his body, plus extra on his wrists and ankles.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Gast had trouble focusing on him, looking to the left of his head.  His voice—usually silken menace—was a hoarse tangle, like someone had taken steel wool to his throat.  Angeal did a double take on his right knee—it looked like a bloody bird’s nest, a tangle of bone and burgundy muscle.  “They’ll kill you, you need to leave.”

Angeal undid the locking mechanism, and then tore through the bit of metal holding the rest of the upper restraint together.  These were really fiddly restraints.  He started on the chest straps—only two more to go, then the wrists and ankles—they really weren’t taking any risks—

 “Angel,” Gast breathed out, his left pupil blown wide by drugs,  “behind you.”

Angeal spun and jabbed up before focusing on the gun pointing at the sky, and then on the suit in front of him.  He swung the man into the gurney, arched over Gast, crushing his wrist and keeping the gun pointed at the sky, away from Gast—

There was a flash of silver over the man’s shoulder, and Angeal got kneed in the balls, once, twice—

Gast’s fingers wrapped around the back of the man’s head and crushed his skull.  Gast had such long fingers, wide hands—he could palm a basketball easily.  Pianist’s hands.

The man’s corpse fell on Angeal’s chest, and Angeal stared into his brown eyes a bit too long.  Was it rude to watch someone die? 

Gast tossed the skull fragments and brain tissue on the ground.  Angeal stared at the gray mess too long, the bits of hair mixed in—his stomach was trying to crawl up his throat.  He turned and dropped the body where he wouldn’t trip on it; he was losing time, Vincent had only given him so long.  Cid would have a narrow window to pick them up in; he had to stick to the schedule.  Gast struggled to sitting, the last three restraints sliced cleanly away, before vanishing his sword.

“You could summon your sword this whole time?” Angeal whisper hissed.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” Gast snapped frostily, wetly, and reached over and ripped out his second wrist restraint from the gurney.  “You’re supposed to be safe.  They have me, they would have left you alone…”

…for a little while.  Angeal could hear the rest, even if Gast didn’t say it; it was written all over his face.

“That’s not good enough; if we don’t help each other, who will?”  Angeal got to work on the ankle restraints—Gast had cut most of the wrap when he summoned his sword, enough that Angeal could rip it off, but it looked like he’d cut through his own thigh and trousers in the process.   Angeal complained, “You could get free this whole damn time—"

Gast shoved him to the floor and fell on top of him, all 600 pounds of bleeding and drugged dragon. 

Lightning exploded over his head, hitting the tent supports and bringing the structure down around them, shorting out the lights.  His ears rang from the noise.  Oh yeah—Gast did say other SOLIDERs had magic.  He shoved Gast off and back pedaled with the man clutched in his arms—Gast was too injured to walk—the tent heavy and claustrophobic around them. 

Gun fire exploded at the far end of the parking lot.  Vincent, trying to create a distraction and cut down on the number of enemies.

The open air was a freezing shock against his skin, and Angeal swung out with his sword without looking, his night vision blown from the bright tent, Gast balanced awkwardly in his other arm.  He was lucky—he felt the metal connect, and started battering away, pushing all of his anxiety and stress on to his new enemy.  It was the man dressed all in red, throwing fireballs and lightning with impressive speed, rapier sword slashing, seemingly more annoyed with Angeal’s attacks than concerned. 

Bullets popped in the darkness, quiet with silencers and the roar of the ocean wind—Angeal covered them both with the broad side of his sword.  He had to trust Vincent would take care of them, he had to worry about the SOLDIER in red.

The enemy SOLDIER summoned a gust of wind, knocking Angeal off balance, knocking him to his knees.  Gast had staggered up, a pale bloodied ghost.  Gast summoned his sword—he really needed to know if that was something Angeal could learn, or if it was something special about Gast, or something special about his sword, there was so much more he still had to learn—

Then Gast’s sword joined the fray, absurdly long and powerful, and the man in red seemed to forget all about Angeal as he attacked Gast with a fervor.   Angeal took the opportunity to heat up the materia on his wrist, to pour himself into the orb, ready it for just the perfect shot.

Whatever drugs they had been mainlining into Gast were clearly taking their toll—he was fending off the other man’s attacks, but he was slower, enough that Angeal could notice it, barely able to stand.  He certainly couldn’t maneuver, limping backwards towards the cliff edge in a slow retreat, his movements economical and pained. 

Angeal tried to provide defense as best as he could, but the man in red was too mobile, had a dynamic fighting style Angeal could barely follow on top of getting shot with lightning and fire in between sword attacks.  He threw the fire ball when the SOLDIER in red was busy twirling his sword, flamboyant and careless—

--and the man caught Angeal’s blast of fire with his free hand and flicked the flame to smoke with a single deft, competent gesture. 

And—and the other man was playing with them, taunting them, milking the moment for all it was worth.  “Well, Sephiroth?  Is this him?  The little detail you weren’t able to tell me about before?”

Angeal risked a glance over his shoulder.  They’d been pushed to the cliff edge, where the other corporate goons could box them in while the man in red kept them pinned. 

Gast coughed, wet and tired.  “No, Genesis.  It happened months ago.”

Then he threw Angeal over his shoulder and jumped off the cliff.  Angeal shouted, because what, no, he had made a lot of bad decisions and improvised on the spot before, but jumping to his death—actually being thrown to his death—was not an improvement and they really weren’t out of options yet, Vincent was still out there—

--Come to think of it, a murder-suicide would be Gast’s style—

The wind caught them, and he jerked hard over Gast’s shoulder, the other man’s fingers digging into his back.  The dark waves thrashed below them, but they weren’t crashing into it.  Gast struggled to fly further out to sea.  Angeal stared at the wing poking out of Gast’s back. 

In the far distance, he could see the shock was written all over the other SOLDIER’s face. 

The cliffside receded quickly in the distance the deeper they went over the dark waters, faster than what Angeal would expect if—if he had expected---if someone had asked him how quickly an angel could fly, Angeal would have gone with something much slower.  Than what he was currently going. 

Also, angels had two wings, not one, so maybe—maybe the weirdness cancelled out.  They should be falling out of the sky.  They could be dead, or captured.  He really couldn’t complain.

Angeal struggled to pull his cell phone out of his pocket so he could call Cid with the news—they were going to need a new rendezvous point.

Gast had trusted him—it was time Angeal return the favor.

***

Chapter Text

Epilogue

***

Sephiroth awoke sometime later in a dim, small room.  He was lying on a low cot with his arms free.  He had been given morphine; Sephiroth recognized the fuzzy, soft edges of his awareness as a powerful painkiller.  He could see an IV hanging over his head, apparently suspended with paperclips.  He appeared to be in some sort of closet space; the lighting was dim, and there were crowded metal shelves all around him.  It smelled of dust and antiseptic. 

It wasn’t the normal Shinra infirmary, or any room in the Science department he was familiar with.  Perhaps he was finally in Hojo’s basement; where all the old experiments went to die.

He would finally rest.

Sephiroth closed his eyes.

***

An interminable time later, he dreamed—or thought he dreamed—of a ghost standing over him, dressed all in black and red.  The lighting was dim, fuzzy, as if seen through several feet of tinted glass.

“I hope you will forgive me, with time,” the ghost whispered, quiet and dusty. 

How strange; his nightmares were rarely so vivid, so ambiguous. 

Sephiroth slept. 

***

Sleep came in fits and starts, with breaks of lucid awareness and delusions.  The next time he was awake, Angel was sitting in a moth-eaten desk chair next to his bed, scowling at something in a manila folder.  Sephiroth said nothing, to give himself more time to observe. 

He had been so certain Angel was dead.  He still didn’t understand his reaction to the certainty.  He didn’t know what he was feeling now.  He vaguely remembered a small Cessna plane drawing level with them, as they had flown over the ocean, and crashing into the plane’s open side door.  He wasn’t certain if his memory was accurate, or fragments of a dream. 

He was so tired.

Eventually, Angel noticed he was awake, saw the glow of his eyes.

“Hey,” Angel spoke gently, “How are you feeling?”

Pain was at the forefront of Sephiroth’s mind—also exhaustion, and whatever poison was still circling in his system.  Morphine wouldn’t affect him as strongly as a normal human, but it was—pleasant, to have some distance between himself and the pain.  But it meant little, next to the fear. 

He wasn’t dreaming now.  This was real.

They were tracking him, even now.  He shot up in bed, despite the morphine, panic overriding the pain and drugs momentarily.  Angel hissed and tried to push him back down—Angel was stronger than he was, in his dilapidated state—and accidentally dug his thumb into a gaping hole along Sephiroth’s collarbone. 

“Relax—relax—you’re safe now.  We got it out—we—you’re safe.”  Sephiroth froze—he couldn’t remember getting stabbed in his chest.  “Vincent knew where it was, we threw it into the ocean while you were passed out.  Please calm down.”

“Vincent.”  His heart was still hammering away, but the drugs and pain were powerful deterrents.  Angel gently pushed him down, his hands solid points of warmth and strength.  “You said your grandfather was dead.  Or is that another stranger I have yet to meet?”

Angel hesitated, “No.  No, it’s the same guy.  But to be fair, you told me your name was Gast.  You only worked with Sephiroth.”

Ah.  So Genesis had been indiscreet enough, and Angel had been paying attention.  Well.  If they had been planning on killing him, they would not have invested such resources into keeping him alive.  “Well.  Yes.  It seemed…prudent.  it was nice.  While it lasted.”

“Being someone else?” Angel’s eyes were too sharp, knowing.  Despite himself, Sephiroth felt annoyed.  His shoulders relaxed, and he pushed Angeal’s hands away.  He forced the scowl off his face, dragged the bland indifferent mask back on—he was revealing too much.  Angel must have noticed and took pity on him.  “I don’t actually know who Gast was,” Angel explained.  “Vincent didn’t say.  I’m not sure if you want to talk about it now, though.”

He had an exit, if he wished to take it.  Angel was rather generous.  “He was a good man.”

He had enjoyed being someone else, himself, but without all the trappings being a SOLDIER and being Sephiroth, required. 

He dragged air into his lungs.  He needed to think rationally, plan his next strategy.  He had never realized how much he hated being Sephiroth, until those few brief days when he’d been Gast, living at Angel’s side.  There would be no going back to that dream now, anymore than there would be going back to Shinra. 

He was a pariah and traitor of Shinra now, in deed as well as thought.  They would not try to take him alive, next time. 

Angel watched him quietly, dark eyes catching the small tremors in his fingers and cracks in his mask, somberly cataloguing all of Sephiroth’s many small imperfections.  To his surprise, Sephiroth wasn’t as annoyed as he should have been.  He barely even felt afraid.

“So,” Angel murmured quietly, “You could have left Shinra any time.”

“There was no where I could go.  Nowhere I would fit.”

“You make yourself fit.  Or you could have gone into the woods, or the middle of the desert, where no one would find you.”

“That would be no different than remaining at Shinra.  You overestimate the amount of habitable unpopulated land on this planet,” Sephiroth had investigated that option extensively, exhaustively, to such an extreme that Tseng had noticed, even if he hadn’t completely understood Sephiroth’s determination.  He had wanted that option to be real, as much as he doubted he would take it if offered.  It would be a temporary reprieve, with the threat of discovery always shadowing him.  “I would always be looking over my shoulder.”

Angeal scowled.  “you’ve really convinced yourself out of leaving Shinra, haven’t you.”

“At least at Shinra, I could watch the younger SOLDIERs.  Offer them some protection.”  Montgomery had done that much for Genesis and himself.  Sephiroth owed something to the next generation, still innocent and unaware how little their lives meant, how short lived they would be.   How trapped they would be, for the rest of their existence.  He had some power, some influence, to make a difference.

This was not an avenue Sephiroth wanted to explore.  He needed to distract Angel.  “I am grateful for your assistance.  I will repay it.”

“How?  Not that I’m turning you down or anything.”

“I can dissuade Shinra from investigating you further and keep them occupied with higher priority items.”

“Like what?” Angel looked worried, though he kept his voice steady.  “I thought you weren’t going back to Shinra?”

Shinra would hunt him down, and everyone within the company knew it—from the President down to the janitor.  There was no question of the company’s next move, so that made it easy for him to calculate a strategy.

“I do not mean to return as an employee, or chattel, but rather for the purpose of blowing up headquarters.  Or at least the records and Turk departments.”

Angel seemed to take that in, somewhat surprised.  Despite fighting competently by his side against Genesis and the Turks—however long ago it was—Angel still seemed to have civilian instincts, unused to violence as a first resort.  “Ok.  That doesn’t seem difficult at all.  Considering you’re bedridden, and they’ve got an army.”

Or perhaps he had not come to the obvious conclusion.  Sephiroth had been thinking on it for some months.  Daydreaming for perhaps years, but military experience persuaded him to realize that Shinra was not, in fact, invulnerable.  The island nation had several notable weaknesses, something Sephiroth had to previously consider as a security threat, rather than boon.

“In any case, I will need to return to Shinra, eventually.  Genesis—the man in red—will require a rescue.  If nothing else, I will go back for him.”

“He tried to kill you.  Also me, but he definitely was trying to kill you.”

“Yes.  He is an idiot and overly theatrical, but he was right to be angry.”  Genesis had watched Tseng shoot him, and done nothing.  Genesis intended to give him to the Science Department, to break down for raw materials and other tests.  Genesis had hoped they would keep him alive.

Even M’Ling had died by a SOLDIER’s hand, a friend. 

But…Sephiroth was making choices, as himself, even as he eliminated options.

“I am still his friend, even if he is not mine,” not even Genesis deserved to be cannibalized for his genetic material.  “That is my choice to make.”

Angel gave him a long, measuring look, before grinning.  “So you do have honor.”

“I do not know that I would say that,” Sephiroth demurred, warm and uncomfortable, and unsure why he felt anything. 

Angel still looked pleased, gently smiling.  “I’m Angeal,” he held his hand out, and after a moment’s consideration, Sephiroth reached out to shake it.  It was a small thing, compared to everything else they had done, and seemed—inappropriate, as a handshake normally opened or closed interactions between people, and they were in the middle of an interaction.  Weren’t they?  Or was this interacting coming to a close?

“What will you do now?” Sephiroth asked, his gut twisting. 

“I—I’m not sure.  I think Vincent wants to talk to you more, when you’re feeling up to it.  He’ll want to know about your plan to hit Shinra.  I didn’t think we had that much to do with Shinra—didn’t think I had that much to do with Shinra—but I think I may have been wrong.”

“I informed you so.”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Angeal waved him off, but he was still smiling, still pleased.  “Vincent also thinks he might know someone to help out with, you know, the thing between us.  The magical soul bond thing.  He wasn’t surprised, and he guessed about the, um, sex stuff.  So.  That’ll be nice.  Not to get your hopes up, but it’s something.”

“Ah,” Sephiroth had somewhat forgotten about that.  “That would be convenient.”  Even if there was someway to control the timing and intensity.  It hadn’t been all unpleasant.  “Would you like to have sex now?”

Angel’s face—Angeal’s, he had to remember that—moved in several different directions, as if unsure of which reaction he wished to emote.  “You’re not in any condition for that.  For one.  For two—not.  No.  No, not really.”

“I’ve offended you.”  Unsurprising, since Sephiroth generally had a knack for offending people, often without meaning to. 

Also, Angeal knew who he was now.  What Sephiroth had done.  Angeal was likely too repelled. 

“Not exactly—I mean, yes, there’s that.  Because—there’s a lot of that.”  Quite a lot of war crimes, and murder; Sephiroth was well aware.  He would have killed Angeal, if Angeal had been slightly less lucky, or skilled.  “But more than that.  And that’s a pretty big that, but, you don’t know me, I don’t know you, and I don’t feel comfortable—doing what we were doing.  Long term.”

“You do not like me,” that was not so surprising, in reflection; most people did not like Sephiroth after prolonged exposure, a fact that Genesis ruthlessly enjoyed reminding him.

“Not—no.  I don’t know?  I’m not sure I really know you, this has all been very sudden, and fast, and lets be honest, we both lied a lot.  And.  I don’t really do casual flings.  Hookups.”

Sephiroth had never heard the term ‘hookup’ before, but he understood the context.  Angeal was trying to be…polite.  Kind.  Which was in character.  Angeal was very kind.  “Of course.”

“You’re mad at me.”

“No.”

“Now who’s the bad liar?” Angeal said softly, smiling slightly.  “I’m not saying—I’d like to get to know you.  Properly.  Instead of—of what’s been going on.  And then we can see where we go from there.”

Angeal would go as far from Sephiroth as circumstances allowed.  Which…Was understandable.  He could not fault Angeal for that.  He would likely never see him again, and then only rarely.  As circumstances required.  “Of course.”

Angeal opened his mouth, then scowled, then closed it again.  He ran a hand over his hair with a deep sigh.  Then he leaned over to kiss Sephiroth gently on the mouth, making a small sound in the back of his throat when Sephiroth leaned up, opened up into it.  Then he pulled away to lean their foreheads together.

“I get the impression you haven’t—you haven’t gotten a lot of experience, before, with people.”

“I learn quickly.” 

Angeal’s face twitched again, this time in something that appeared to be pity.  “That’s not—I mean—I think you should live a little, meet another people.  Instead of just me.  I get the impression—you’ve lived in a box, and I think you should see the world.  Or something.  A bit.”

That sounded like a horrible idea, and what Sephiroth had been avoiding thinking about since he dove off the cliff face.  Shinra had defined every aspect of his life.  It was one thing to consider leaving Shinra, and another to consider destroying Shinra, but living independent of Shinra was unthinkable.  Living outside Shinra would be like.  No set schedule, no set objectives, or goals—Vincent may be able to provide some sort of replacement framework, but from Angeal had described, he seemed very hands-off. 

It would be a change, and one Sephiroth wasn’t sure he was willing to meet…historically, change was painful.

“Hey,” Angeal murmured quietly, “hey, it’ll be ok.”

Sephiroth’s face snarled briefly, because he did not require coddling or soft handling, before he heard his own breathing—rapid, shallow.  Panicked. 

Hojo would have been overjoyed by the lapse in control.  Or vengeful.  Possibly both at the same time.

He straightened his spine and then relaxed into the bed, as best as he could.  Measured breathing would stimulate his parasympathetic nervous system, slow his heart rate.

With a sigh, Angeal climbed into the narrow bed with him, careful not to put his weight on anything.  Then he put his arms around Sephiroth, and while part of him was irritated by the comfort, the weakness, the rest of him relaxed into it.  Angeal was warm and alive, willing, Shinra was—his choice was made, that door was closed, and he longer needed to dwell on it.

***

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.

--Amelia Earhart