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Cloud woke the instant a hand hit his shoulder, stilling as he cracked open one eye - and then the other. "Cloud!" Zack exclaimed, his face just inches above Cloud's in the limited space between bunks, "Look! I have hands again! I can touch things - "
Cloud put a hand over Zack's mouth, and the rest was muffled into his palm as Zack, undeterred, kept talking. The entire room of Cloud's fellow infantrymen, most SOLDIER dropouts like Cloud himself, were watching them in varying stages of confusion, and Cloud could practically hear the rumours starting already. He sighed. "Don't you have your own quarters?"
Zack's eyes widened, his expression turning mischievous, and Cloud snatched his hand back just in time as Zack's tongue came out. "Yeah," Zack said, a little deflated, "you wanna see them? Come on!"
He took Cloud by the arm and started dragging; Cloud was quick enough to grab a jacket to throw over his shirt on the way out the door. "I'll be taking Cloud for today!" he called into the room from the hallway, "just tell them it was SOLDIER First-Class Zack Fair!"
A few steps down the hallway, Cloud said, "You know, the kids always did that. The hand-licking thing."
Zack pouted. "Are you trying to say something?"
Cloud raised his eyebrows pointedly, and Zack made a face and elbowed him sharply. "You know you love me," he proclaimed. "Hey, I've got an idea - I'll race you there!"
Cloud watched him race off and then realised: "Zack! I don't know the way!"
Zack's quarters looked newly furnished, a suitcase with clothes still spilling out and pots and pans still in boxes. Zack himself flopped face-first onto the couch, groaning in delight, as Cloud perched on the armrest. "Ahh, life," Zack said into the cushions, "it's been so long."
"Remember why," Cloud said, and Zack rolled half-over to squint at him, mouth pursed.
"You're ruining my buzz, Cloud-y," Zack said, and sighed. "Yeah, yeah, Jenova, Seph, I've got the gist. Didn't we talk about this before?"
"Then," said Cloud, "you're fine getting approval for a trip to Nibelheim? Great."
Zack gave him a despairing look over the edge of the couch as Cloud stood to leave. "Cloud, Spikey, come back! I need someone to hug!"
"Find someone else," Cloud retorted, heading for the door. As he reached for the doorknob, there was a tingle to his senses that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end, and he stopped, braced himself, and opened the door.
Sephiroth was standing there, hand raised to knock, and Cloud had to forcibly restrain himself from reaching for any weapon at all and going for Sephiroth's vulnerable throat. Cloud stared at him, emotions on a knife's-edge, and Sephiroth stared back.
Their silent standoff was broken by Zack doing his best impression of an undead as he moaned, "Kiss me, Cloud," and only afterward spotted Sephiroth at the door. He visibly straightened as Cloud gave him a sideways glance but shambled to Cloud's side and threw a comforting arm around his shoulders. "Seph! I... wasn't expecting you."
"I can see that," Sephiroth said dryly. Cloud, annoyed enough already, gave into the urge to lean into Zack's warm embrace, Zack's arm tightening around him. "Your friend?"
"I was hoping I could introduce you!" Zack said, recovering admirably. "Cloud, this is Seph - General Sephiroth to the general plebeian population. Seph, this is Cloud - he's really, seriously awesome, I mean, I'm pretty sure in a fight - "
Cloud elbowed him and said, "It's good to meet you, sir."
Sephiroth's eyebrows ticked up. "Zack," he said, "I came to remind you of tomorrow's mission."
"Tomorrow's..." Zack prevaricated, "Uh, what was that again?"
Sephiroth said, "The mission to Nibelheim, remember?" and Cloud's hands tightened into fists as Zack visibly winced.
"Thanks for telling me, Zack," Cloud said, sugar-sweet, and pecked him on the cheek - retribution, or something like it. "I'll see you tomorrow." He disentangled himself from Zack's arm and pushed past Sephiroth without a backward glance, already running through a mental list of all he had to do; Zack could deal with the fallout.
Zack called his PHS when Cloud was already in the slums. "Thanks, Zack," he mimicked, "really, Cloud? Seph thinks I'm crazy, I know it."
"It would've been good to know earlier," Cloud said, frowning over a mechanism as he checked it. "Yeah, that's good, thanks," he said to the swordsmaker, who had looked at him dubiously until Cloud had pulled out hastily modified plans for a multi-part sword. Back to the PHS, Cloud said, "I took some of your gil."
"Highway robbery," Zack said, "first my memories, then my sword, now my money? What do I even have left? Oh, it's not like I need it or anything - "
"I have a sword now," Cloud said.
"Ooh, really? Is it as cool as the last one? Not that anything beats Angeal's awesome sword."
"Had to make some cuts," Cloud said, and nodded at the shopkeeper as he handed over the gil, nearly half of Zack's whole stash, and hoisted the sword onto his back. He paused outside the doorway, the tingle to his senses newly familiar, and said, voice strained, "Is there any reason Sephiroth would be following me?"
Zack laughed, a little awkwardly. "No? Maybe? I mean, I said you were coming along and Nibelheim was your hometown - "
"Zack," Cloud said, and pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. "Anything else?"
"I'm pretty sure he thinks we're sleeping together?" Zack said. Cloud sighed into the receiver and Zack said quickly, "Cloud, no, come back, you love me - " as Cloud hung up the PHS, just in time for Sephiroth's eyebrows to rise a little further.
"Sir," Cloud said shortly. His blood was pounding already, adrenaline insisting on a fight-or-flight response, and his hand itched to try out his new sword against Sephiroth's Masamune. Instead he reminded himself of their actual goals, none of which involved killing Sephiroth until he went crazy.
"Strife," Sephiroth said. His gaze was caught, curious, on the sword on Cloud's back, and Cloud squared his shoulders and ducked his head. "That sword is not regulation."
"Zack signed a special dispensation," Cloud lied. He'd have to get Zack to do it later. "It's allowed."
Sephiroth's eyes narrowed further. "Zack," he repeated. "You understand fraternization is also against regulations."
"Sir," Cloud said, feeling increasingly annoyed, "While Zack is my superior, I don't work directly under him - or you, for that matter. Which means what we do in our spare time is none of your business. Unless there was another reason...?"
Cloud hadn't expected anything from his jab, but to his distant surprise Sephiroth looked somewhat taken aback, the tips of his ears turning red. "No, nothing," he said, a little too quickly to be steady, and Cloud watched him walk away, utterly bemused.
After Sephiroth had left his sight and senses, Cloud shook his head at himself. He had a mission to plan.
Cloud stayed at Zack's overnight more for convenience than anything, reassured again that Zack could be counted on to be serious if it was required, or at least stand aside and look pretty while Cloud did all the work. "Do I get to meet your mom?" Zack asked as they walked down to the transport together, and Cloud rolled his eyes.
"After everything's done - sure."
It was a long trip in a cramped space to Nibelheim, and Cloud was eminently glad the Mako had stayed with him - travel-sickness was nothing to laugh about. Zack sat squished up next to him from hip to thigh as Cloud dozed lightly, unable to relax with Sephiroth so close. Zack himself tried to keep the atmosphere light, making conversation and jokes, all that ended up dying into silence.
It finally broke when they'd arrived in town, settled into the inn. "We'll be visiting the reactor tomorrow," Sephiroth told them all, and everyone shuffled off to their own rooms, except Cloud, Zack towing him away into his own with a hand on Cloud's elbow.
"We'll get Jenova tomorrow," Zack said, "right?"
Cloud leant his sword on the wall next to Zack's own, and flopped on the luxurious double bed beside him. "What about tonight?"
Zack made a thoughtful noise, half-muffled into a pillow. "Might work," he said, "as long as we get her before Seph locks himself into the basement again..."
"The earlier the better," Cloud said, feeling the antsiness of being here where everything crashed and burned so long ago itch at his skin. "Just in case."
"I suppose it's for the better," Zack said. "Hey, you know, Seph was giving us the weirdest looks all day."
"It wasn't me," Cloud said, "what did you say?"
"Nothing!" Zack insisted. "But he probably thinks we're fucking in here. Right now."
Cloud heaved a heavy sigh. "Zack..."
Zack grinned, cheekily. "Oh, Cloud," he said, in a high, breathy voice, "come and ravish me right now - "
Cloud rolled over until he was hovering over Zack, his hands bracketing Zack lying underneath him. Zack's eyes had gone wide and serious and Cloud said, "Yeah?"
"Yeah," Zack said, genuinely breathless, and Cloud kissed him.
They snuck out after dark. Cloud felt the same itch he'd been feeling all day, the restlessness of being watched, the instinct that told him something was going to go wrong. He and Zack glanced around the reactor as they crossed the bridge where they'd both fallen, in various ways, to Sephiroth's sword, to the strange compartment that housed the entirely alien Jenova. It opened with a hiss of dead air, and Cloud looked into her face.
Cloud could feel her influence on him like a migraine; his head ached and ached. Zack was wincing, too, frowning and shaking his head, and he said, "Do you hear that - noise? Cloud, let's get this over with," as Cloud raised his sword - and turned.
Sephiroth was standing there, at the far end of the bridge. "Sephiroth," Cloud said, and he couldn't hear anything over the pounding rush of blood in his ears, the sudden complete certainty that Sephiroth needed to die. He rushed him; Sephiroth met his sword with Masamune, a clash of steel against steel. His mouth was moving, but Cloud had to - needed to - he swung and parried and attacked relentlessly, unceasingly, because Sephiroth was -
Sephiroth was tiring. Cloud felt a vicious wonderful satisfaction at the thought, relished in the tremble of Sephiroth's arm under the weight of his new sword, the way he was slower and slower to respond; Cloud's blade sliced through the tail of his coat, which fluttered down into the pit of roiling Mako below. Cloud had him, he knew, and he pressed the lever on his sword which let him detach it in two - it couldn't go any further, but two would be enough for this.
"No!"
Cloud's sword hit metal too early; Sephiroth's Masamune was still by his side. He instinctively swung at the new attacker but fell short, because Zack was standing there, Angeal's sword held defensively. "Cloud! Don't listen to her!"
"Listen to who?" Cloud said, and shook his head. It hurt. "Zack, get away from there - don't protect him!"
"Wait," Zack said, "Why don't we talk this out? Why are you even here, Seph?"
"There's nothing to talk about," Cloud said, and firmed his resolve - but something in Sephiroth's expression made him pause. He winced and rubbed at his temples; his head was pounding. "Why are you here?"
Sephiroth looked startled, caught-out. "I had thought," he started, "that you were both - " He stopped, his expression turning cool. "It hardly matters now. Why are you here?"
"Wait," said Zack, "that's the subject-changing you do when there's something you don't want to say - is it me? Is it Cloud?" Sephiroth's expression barely changed but Zack exclaimed, "It is! Wait, were you worried about us?"
"That's completely irrelevant - " Sephiroth started, as Cloud said, "What?"
"Get that, Spikey?" Zack said, gleefully. "The great General himself, worried about a few of his subordinates - friends - "
"Acquaintances," Sephiroth corrected, and added, "I wasn't worried."
Zack's disbelieving eyebrows said it all. "You totally were! Does that mean you like us?"
"Like is - a strong word," Sephiroth started, but Cloud squinted disbelievingly at the flush rising up his neck, his swords falling loosely to his sides. "I wouldn't - "
"Oh, Planet," Cloud said, and put his head in his hands, feeling overwhelmed. "Did you really come out here because you had a crush?"
"A crush!" Zack crowed, "Really, Seph?" He waggled his eyebrows at Cloud, who gave him a dubious look. "You were basically in love with him before, right, Cloud? What d'you think?"
"That was ages ago!" Cloud protested; he could feel his face growing warm. "Don't we have more important things to do?"
"Right," said Zack, but he was smiling. "Hey, let's fry this bitch."
He held out a mastered Fire materia, and Cloud put his hand over it, still feeling the weight of embarrassment crawling up his spine. As Sephiroth shrugged and placed his hand over Cloud's, Cloud realised Zack had somehow diffused the situation and put Jenova completely out of his mind; his earlier antagonism was barely a trickle now, and he hesitantly met Sephiroth's gaze to see the same bemused look directed back at him. Trust Zack, Cloud thought wryly, and with three of them pouring magic into the spell, Jenova was barely a pile of ash on the reactor floor.
Sephiroth wasn't crazy, Cloud wasn't stuck in a tube of Mako, and Zack was still grinning as he ducked under Sephiroth's warning arm and smacked a kiss on his cheek. "Great! Problem solved," Zack said, and threaded his elbow through Cloud's. "Come on, the future awaits!"
"Let's mosey," Cloud said, with a twitch of a smile, and was surprised at Sephiroth's muffled cough, the twitch of his lips into a hesitant smile. Maybe this would work out after all; at least, compared to what happened the first time, this would be a piece of cake.