Chapter Text
When AVALANCHE sends him to into the belly of the beast to infiltrate ShinRa’s headquarters and assassinate the Silver General, they hand him a small package and tell him to open it before he reaches Midgar.
He puts it off until he reaches Costa Del Sol. In the middle of the night, he sits alone in his dimly lit inn room and with deceptively steady fingers he cracks open the box. Laying inside is a smaller box with nearly a million gill stashed inside - the price for his life, he figures. He’s not stupid. He won’t make it out of Midgar alive, and this is his final payment for years of service and the job he’s about to do.
AVALANCHE is desperate. He’s not their best Raven, and the chances that he could win in a one-on-one fight against the Silver General are slim to none. A surprise attack - an assassination - is their only hope at quelling the main source of ShinRa’s power.
He may not be AVALANCHE’s best Raven in a fight, but he’s never missed a mark.
He takes the case of money out and calmly reseals it before setting it aside on the bed’s nightstand table. The only thing left in the box in his hands is a simple manilla folder that had been nestled under the gill. Inside is a twenty page report on Sephiroth’s habits, fighting styles, everything from the foods he commonly ate to the exact name brands of hair products he used. The pointless information is almost infinite, but things he actually needs to know beyond the basics are nonexistent - routines, haunts, blind spots.
There is a reason that this is an infiltration job, and not just an assassination.
—
Before he boards a ship bound for Midgar the next morning, he stops a caravan headed west to Rocket Town. They will be passing by Nibelheim, and promise to deliver his tiny package to a woman living by herself with hair as bright as the sun. He doesn’t tell them what they’re carrying, but he hasn’t lived this long by blindly trusting people.
(If the gill doesn’t reach her within three months, other Ravens will track them down. They’re loyal to each other like that. He isn’t worried.)
(It’s the least they can do.)
“Who do I say it’s from?” One of the gruff looking men asks him.
He frowns. “Tell her… that it’s from a friend in the sky.”
She might understand, he thinks. She might not. It’s probably better if she doesn’t, but part of him still cries to see her again, to have her think of him, to know that he isn’t dead. Or, at least - at least he hadn’t been dead. Or-
He shakes his head. “Never mind.” He says, as the man is turning to leave. “Never mind. Don’t tell her anything.”
The man nods, and leaves.
Getting her hopes up would only be cruel, at this point.
—
When he enlists into ShinRa’s infantry, he becomes Cloud Strife once again.
He hasn’t used his real name in so long that it feels odd to answer when it’s called at first, but he gets over it quick enough. He has to. For now, his only objective is to observe. He is small, he appears weak, and he blends in. Nobody above disappointed drill sergeants and bunkmates take notice of him, and that’s just the way he likes it. It’s almost too easy. He doesn’t have enough free time yet to properly study the Silver General’s movements and find the best time to finish the job, but eventually things will even out. Stealth is the key - the kind of paranoid stealth that only people with something to hide and something to lose exhibit.
If he’s found out, he’ll be dead before he can finish his mark, and everything he’s done will be for nothing. He just has to finish this job, and then he can rest. If he dies afterwards, then so be it.
—
He’s right about getting more time once bootcamp ends. On Monday through Friday he’s free to do whatever he wants from 6p.m. to 6a.m. and he doesn’t have to work at all on Saturday and Sunday. It’s more than enough time to investigate Sephiroth, and it’s embarrassingly easy. All he has to do is act like a besotted fan, and nobody bats an eye. Sephiroth isn’t exactly hard to follow, either. He has three whole usual spots, from what Cloud can tell. It’s a startlingly low number compared to what Cloud’s used to having to work with, but he will make do.
Sephiroth never goes anywhere that isn’t his rooms, his office, the training rooms, or the science floor.
Cloud crosses the science floor off his list of possible locations to do the hit almost immediately. Too many people, all watching. It’ll never work. He grudgingly writes off the training rooms not long after - there are no windows for him to take the shot from. To fight Sephiroth in the training rooms would mean a frontal attack rather than a sniped shot and Cloud knows he wouldn’t stand a chance.
That left Sephiroth’s office or his rooms.
A week after he narrows this down, a job is offered to his squad to take a stack of paperwork to Sephiroth’s office, and Cloud jumps on it as fast as he can without looking suspicious. Thankfully, his squadmates just assume, like everyone else, that he’s a huge fan. Ten minutes later, and Cloud is standing outside Sephiroth’s door.
This is when, for the first time, something goes wrong.
Or, rather - someone goes wrong.
Cloud has planned for a lot of things, he has to - assassinating ShinRa’s Silver General was never going to be an easy feet - but he certainly has never planned for Zack Fair.
—
Zack Fair is an unknown factor, a wildcard, a practical whirlwind of every possible thing that could ever go wrong in taking this hit. Someone has noticed Cloud, and he’s hanging around all the time making it impossible for Cloud to get good readings on what Sephiroth does when he’s not dealing with fucking Zack Fair.
The worst part?
The worst part is that Cloud actually likes Zack.
Zack is nice, he’s fun, he’s thoughtful, Zack is warmer than the sun and brighter than the stars.Cloud has a nightmare, once, only once, where he has to kill Zack to get to Sephiroth and he wakes drenched in sweat and shaking like a leaf in the wind. He won’t do it. He can’t. He’ll wait for the perfect moment when Zack isn’t anywhere near them to take the shot, no matter how long it takes.
—