#sephiroth.

Rumors and hearsay in the past few months. Cloud hasn’t been around to look into it very deeply. With the world still in environmental turmoil after swearing off the convenience of mako energy and surviving the fallout of Meteor Fall, business has been booming. Dark roads make for dangerous traveling, especially with monsters openly roaming the routes between towns. 

He’s several hundred miles out on his current delivery when his phone buzzes in his pocket. A quick glance at the understated and dimly glowing display next to his right hand tells him the caller is Tifa. Not unusual, though the timing is odd considering he had only left town no more than a few hours ago. Engaging handsfree mode on his cellphone, Cloud eases off on Fenrir’s throttle so that the roar of the engine isn’t so obvious over the phone.

“Cloud! I think you need to come back… That rumor we kept hearing around town? It might actually be him…” He hears her, clear as the cloudless sky in his wake. The undertones in her voice are portents of the calamitous adversary they thought dead. As the blood in his veins runs deadly cold with settling thoughts, Cloud knows he has to go back. He has to make sure.

Fenrir’s engine whines loudly as he shifts down to first gear. A quick twitch of the handlebars throws the bike into a pendulum-like movement that slingshots into a sharp u-turn in the middle of the road that kicks up a wild cloud of dust and gravel. 

It couldn’t be. After all, he watched him die…

Too close to 7th Heaven. An apartment on the second floor of a building not far off the north side of the city center. One of the first habitable structures that were completed after they evacuated Midgar and survivors began picking up the pieces of their lives. Priority housing had been granted to the elederly, children, and other vulnerable groups. But that’s where witnesses claim they saw him…The fear and worry knot his stomach as Cloud sits parked underneath the stairs that zigzag up the side of the building. His Fusion Sword stays dormant under the panels at either side of Fenrir’s front wheel.

Taking a sharp breath to steel himself, he grits his teeth and dismounts to climb the stairs to the second floor. The door. It looks like every other door on this floor, though somehow he expected that it shouldn’t. He stares at the number bolted at eye-level in front of him and then the peephole from which the inhabitants could be watching him right now. Eventually, the reel of various excuses and possible scenarios playing out in his head run out of film. He curls his hand into a loose fist and plays out a distinct staccato with the back of his knuckles against the plated metal door. His head comes up quickly when he hears the hinges swing back.

“Hi, my name is...”

❛ they will call your name and you will go running. ❜ 

Miracles are possible. For once, Sephiroth has said something they can both agree upon.

The other man’s presence, whether real or not, always leaves his mind and body aching; a wholly despicable resonance that he’s learned to associate with Sephiroth’s comings and goings. Cloud makes a soft clicking sound with his tongue along the roof of his mouth.

Life seems to continue to pass him by at an alarming rate. Days blur into months. Late nights spent staring up at the stars, plotting routes through monster-infested territory, delivering parts and parcels. They saved the world and now they have to fix what’s left of it. Cloud thought he should have felt some mantle of responsibility laid upon his shoulders, but he didn't. 

The planet somehow feels more desolate without him in it. Cloud has to wonder how much of that frenetic desire comes from the JENOVA cells coursing through him and how much of that is his own depravity. 

For a time, he did feel at peace. Content. Sephiroth’s malice could no longer touch the Lifestream and infect the living, he learned how to live in the present again, how to truly accept that Cloud Strife has the strength to protect those whom he cherished. Shouldn’t that have been enough?  

How he will find the cure to that which ails him, Cloud has no idea. By this point, he’s started revisiting the places of his past. The City of Ancients, Junon, Cosmo Canyon…all the way back to the beginning. To Nibelheim.

The town is the same as he remembers it. Brown tiled roofs, creaky wooden signs, and the water tower rising up from the center of town are all the same from his memory. Only the faces are unfamiliar. Replaced. 

Cloud cuts directly across the town square, up to the winding pass that leads past the Nibelheim Mansion and up to the mountains. 

Only one thing gives him pause during his pilgrimage. He must be halfway up the mountain by now. These caves, which have remained silent and unchanged for hundreds of years…The mako fountain alongside the foot path has somehow grown enormously in the past few years. Against the quarry of dark mountain granite, the crystallized mako looks like an intricately carved ice sculpture that could melt away into the ground at any moment.

He takes a few halting steps toward it. The closer he gets, the louder the ringing in his ears until the sound reaches an unbearable, shrill pitch that blocks out all else. 

If you had the chance to save him, would you do it?

Of course. Of course I would… 

He feels rather than sees his own hand reaching out. His vision bleeds into white until there is nothing. 

A second chance. But only a chance.

Cloud jolts awake. Other recruits roughly shoulder past him and through the open double doors. Too confused to do anything but gawk, the overwhelming current of young men and women filing past carry him inside with them.

"Not all the time," Zack counters, which at the very least confirms that Sephiroth may or may not have been an asshole some other percentage of the time. Alas, even Sephiroth must face his imperfections on occasion.

"You gave me time off once."

On its face, this small piece of evidence sounds like a joke. Might have even been construed as one, if not for the wry smile on Zack's face and the way he scruffs at the back of his neck. A brief moment of leave granted not from a direct ask, but from Sephiroth himself recognizing a moment of unspoken need when tensions were high and everything seemed to be falling apart. Even with everything falling apart. Recognition of the humanness of others, despite Sephiroth not often getting the opportunity to do so for himself. If at all, in those days.

Zack quirks a brow. "How could it have gotten worse?" He taps his chin, then gasps like a proper lady affronted.