[ficlet] FF7 AC: Secrets: Clonefic
Secrets
FF7: AC
A little Clonecest, Loz-centric
Dealing with Loz’s head before AC starts. On brothers and the perils of solitude on a half-formed mind. Some kissing involved, and messing with the idea of which parts of Sephiroth’s personality the Clones adopted. Vaguely dark, possibly soft in parts.
Focus…concentrate…
He was going to be sick inside his head. But. Wait. Where was the sick going to come out of? He had to stop the bike. He wasn’t good at thinking.
The first time they separated, it lasted three hours.
There was nothing grossly different-the air quality didn’t change, the horizon and road stretched on, the motorbike still roared under him, and he still had purpose, an imperative more important than living, but it was…different. Too quiet. Too empty. His eyes kept on trying to see the back his head, his throat kept closing up. His stomach wanted to come up. His mind wanted to…do something. Painful and messy.
After…he wasn’t sure how long. He wasn’t sure how far. It felt like he’d gone across more than half the planet with something clinging to his spine, hanging off his muffler, and he had to stop the bike completely because his hands were shaking too badly to steer. His eyes leaked and his throat clawed itself open, drowned itself dead. He couldn’t even scream, or wail; he could always do that to release the pain a little before, but he couldn’t do that now.
He didn’t look behind to see if something really was embedded in his spine, digging through his vertebrae. It felt like it, something cold and greasy sliding under his clothes and down his skin…
It was possible Kadaj would get angry and Yazoo would sneer, but he could take that-they wouldn’t stay mad at him too long, right? He couldn’t take what his body was doing to itself, what was happening in his chest, and Loz turned the bike around and jammed the engine through. He knew where his brothers were-he didn’t question how he knew.
After a while, the wind and dust dragging on his shirt, roughing his face, his body began to calm down. There was still something clinging to his spine, to the back of his mind, but it was weaker, cloudy. Yazoo was close by.
When Loz found him, Yazoo wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Got scared already? Did you start crying?”
Loz shrugged, maneuvered the bike closer and got off, shoulder blades itching. “You didn’t find anything either.” The thing had left his spine, his insides were settling, and if Yazoo wanted to be mean Loz really couldn’t bring himself to care.
Loz’s memories of the laboratory were hazy, buried and locked down tight, but everything after Kadaj, after Yazoo, was easier to remember, the part of his existence that was nearly his, more than any other time. And, in all his life, he’d never been alone before.
He was never sure when Yazoo moved closer, off his bike, but Yazoo was subtle, fast, and fascinating. When Yazoo grabbed his hand, squeezed hard enough that it hurt, so that the bones cracked, he didn’t look at Loz’s face, just gestured east, “Kadaj isn’t going to like this.”
Loz chuckled-he felt fine now, pain crackling through his hand. “It’ll be all your fault, anyway. I wouldn’t have come if you hadn’t called me.”
Yazoo bristled predictably while they both ignored their hands still clinging together. A few minutes later-time flowed easier with Yazoo there, didn’t cut by and bleed him on its way to the past-Kadaj showed up, predictably pissed off and shakier than usual, and shoved himself between them, still complaining. His voice was high and creaky, and only a little incoherent.
Yazoo’s eyes met his over Kadaj’s head, over Kadaj’s knuckles banging gently into Loz’s arm as if to remind himself Loz was there, over Kadaj’s right hand digging briefly into Yazoo’s shoulder and arm before letting go abruptly. Yazoo smiled with half his mouth, and they both looked away understanding everything completely.
***
“Hey…how’s it going?”
Yazoo’s voice came through loud and clear in all its awkwardness. They hadn’t been sure the cell phones would work, and while it wasn’t as good as having Yazoo or Kadaj there, it was better than nothing. The phone was a source of frustration, hatred, and longing. They could only talk two at a time, and it wasn’t…enough.
“This place stinks.” Mideel was all growing things, fields and forests and flowers. It made Loz physically ill, and said so. The humidity made him nauseous. Yazoo sounded bored. Long pauses punctuated the conversation-Yazoo went quiet when he didn’t like something, was quiet most of the time, and Loz wanted company, not the sound of his own voice.
“Do you think he’s all right?” Yazoo asked.
“He should be,” Loz strode through the old mako-reactor, the sensation that something was pacing his back still there, but not strong. He had to focus on Yazoo’s voice. “I talked to him earlier. He sounded…ok.”
Another silence blossomed up, filled with edgy thoughts. Kadaj could sound ‘ok’ and covered in blood, his own or someone else’s. He might not be ‘ok’ at all.
Yazoo probably wouldn’t like it, but Loz started to open his mouth anyway. Yazoo read his mind before he could speak, and said, “We should stay where we are. Until morning. We’ll meet tomorrow.”
“I want to be with you,” Loz sounded petulant. “Or with brother.”
“Mother needs us to do this.”
Loz said nothing. He felt slapped. Somehow, using mother like that was cheating. Yazoo was right, but it was still cheating. Playing dirty.
“I want to be with you too,” Yazoo came through unfocused, vague, and probably staring at something on the horizon or far away, completely entranced. He didn’t sound particularly sincere. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow.”
He didn’t exactly tell his arm to smash through the reactor’s console, but it did anyway. Loz felt slightly better, plus Yazoo couldn’t see him and give him a look. It only occurred to him later, much later the next day when he did see Yazoo, that Yazoo would’ve heard the metal breaking and glass shattering in the background.
“But. You’ll talk to me tonight. Right?”
Silence on the other end of the phone. Nearly two hundred miles between. If he let himself think about the empty space, he wouldn’t make it. Silence on the other end of the phone for a long time.
“Yes.” Dryly said of course, empty, as if Yazoo were somewhere else. Then, as an add-on. “But we have to sleep. And off and on, in case Kadaj needs to get in touch.”
Loz sneered as he wandered back through the reactor, “Fussy.”
“Do you want company or not?”
“Yeah, yeah, I do.” Loz trailed his fingers over the wall as he walked back to small residential compound. There’d been people living there when he arrived. They weren’t living now. “So how’re you going to put me to sleep?”
Yazoo never answers his question. Loz hates the phones.
***
Loz is the one that wants them to stay together.
Yazoo did discomfited when alone, he felt the thing on his spine too, but he just went deep inside himself, inside his mind, until he was in too deep to realize he was alone. As for Kadaj…
There were too many people behind Kadaj's eyes for him to be him long enough to be bothered by much of anything, to even realize his brothers weren’t there.
Loz lived on the surface. He had nowhere secret to go, couldn’t go inside or outside himself like his brothers could.
After they separated the second time and came back together, Loz was the first to watch his brother's sleep, to learn his brother's face solely through touch and smell. Yazoo smelled cold and sharp. Kadaj smelled sweaty.
At first, it was only his brothers who kept secrets, who kept things away from Loz and made him feel lonely while they made their own small claims and kept them without sharing. But now, Loz had a secret, a secret that was his and only his, the only thing in the world that really belonged to him, and…he wasn’t sure if he could share it with his brothers. He wasn’t sure they would understand.
He touched Kadaj’s face, tracing the bones of his nose and indents of his skull on the corner of his eye while he slept curled against Loz’s bulk, Yazoo curled around Kadaj’s shorter body on the other side. Kadaj didn’t open his eyes.
Loz lived on the surface. He couldn’t help crying because it hurt, the calling hurt and hurt inside where he couldn’t touch or punch or kick, and Yazoo couldn’t feel it and Kadaj was too busy feeling pain from a million different tiny directions to concentrate on the one. Loz lived on the surface.
The secret Loz wanted to tell them was this: They were going to die. The planet was going to kill them. The planet hated them, and its people and dirt and flowers and ghosts were always trying to kill them. There was nowhere safe on the planet for them, and there never would be.
We’re going to die, Loz wanted them to know, to realize, wanted to bounce Kadaj’s head against the floor until he understood, they were all going to die and no one would help and mother would still be calling. Mother would always be calling, and they would be dead.
Loz slept with his gloves off, and there were no calluses on his fingers to catch on Kadaj’s hair as he pulled it over an ear, pulled it through his fingers. He wasn’t particularly careful-Loz wasn’t good at being careful-and he didn’t notice Kadaj’s breathing wasn’t as shallow or slow as it had been when he was sleeping. Kadaj’s eyes stayed closed.
Every time they separated, the planet hunted them, chased them, and one day it would kill them. They didn’t belong. Once alone, they were very vulnerable, easy to target and find on a planet that wanted them dead and gone, wanted to send them back to the knives in the dark, the metal tables and restraints and white lights, wanted to send them back to the same small dark hole they’d stumbled out of.
Didn’t they get it? Couldn’t they feel it? Why didn’t they know?
He didn’t know how to tell Kadaj any of this. Yazoo wouldn’t care, even if he believed, or didn’t. Yazoo didn’t care about anything. Kadaj might care, if he was sane enough to understand, if he believed.
Yazoo opened his eyes and watched from over the top of Kadaj’s head silently, and Loz stopped moving.
Kadaj’s free arm moved from his waist to wrap around his back, his hand warm and a little damp on Loz’s neck to support the back of his skull. Kadaj blinked and kissed his mouth, moving his lips slowly, the tip of his tongue sliding along Loz’s lower lip and touching his teeth briefly. The kiss was warm and lingering, and Yazoo didn’t do anything.
Loz breathed out slowly through his nose and Kadaj pulled back, thumb moving in a slow circle behind Loz’s ear.
It was hard to predict Kadaj. He never hurt them on purpose, because Kadaj wasn’t quite Kadaj all the time, especially when he was raving, but now he just looked over Loz’s face with calm curiosity and didn’t stop massaging the back of his skull with his fingers. Then he smiled a sharp, cynical half-smile, and murmured, “I know.”
“What’re we going to do?” Loz asked, because Kadaj sometimes could do anything.
“We fight back,” Kadaj replied softly, voice as sane and balanced as ever, fire burning gently in his eyes, and Loz didn’t know enough to question if the fire if Kadaj’s eyes was Kadaj’s fire, or the fire of someone else.
“It’ll be all right,” Kadaj continued with the same sharp half-smile half-sneer, “You’ll see. We’ll get there.”
Yazoo watched him quietly over Kadaj’s shoulder. Loz wondered, briefly, whom Yazoo was watching, him or Kadaj, and what he was watching for.
But Yazoo never shared his secrets, and Loz couldn’t read his mind the way Kadaj could read his. Yazoo closed his eyes again, his arm loosely over Kadaj’s stomach because there was nowhere else to comfortably put it. Yazoo never held on tightly to anyone. Yazoo never needed anything or anyone, and wouldn’t even take comfort when it wanted to be taken.
Kadaj kissed Loz’s arm underneath his head, and squirmed down comfortably again, smiling and sneering contentedly as he slowly went crazy keeping the secrets of five different people.
Secrets could be told. He didn’t feel better.
Right now he had both his brothers with him, one grinning in his arms and the other at his fingertips, something chewing idly on tender things deep inside him, where not even Kadaj could touch, and Loz had what he needed. He didn’t have everything he wanted, but he had what he needed. It should have been enough. It should have.
Loz reached out until he could grip Yazoo’s elbow like a vice would, and tried to bury most of Kadaj underneath him, where his brother couldn’t suddenly disappear when Loz wasn’t looking.
It should have been enough.
***
No one's gonna give you a map. You gotta walk your own path.
-Hilda, Outlaw Star, Takehito Ito
***
A/N: One day, I will master the art of time management. But later.
FF7: AC
A little Clonecest, Loz-centric
Dealing with Loz’s head before AC starts. On brothers and the perils of solitude on a half-formed mind. Some kissing involved, and messing with the idea of which parts of Sephiroth’s personality the Clones adopted. Vaguely dark, possibly soft in parts.
Focus…concentrate…
He was going to be sick inside his head. But. Wait. Where was the sick going to come out of? He had to stop the bike. He wasn’t good at thinking.
The first time they separated, it lasted three hours.
There was nothing grossly different-the air quality didn’t change, the horizon and road stretched on, the motorbike still roared under him, and he still had purpose, an imperative more important than living, but it was…different. Too quiet. Too empty. His eyes kept on trying to see the back his head, his throat kept closing up. His stomach wanted to come up. His mind wanted to…do something. Painful and messy.
After…he wasn’t sure how long. He wasn’t sure how far. It felt like he’d gone across more than half the planet with something clinging to his spine, hanging off his muffler, and he had to stop the bike completely because his hands were shaking too badly to steer. His eyes leaked and his throat clawed itself open, drowned itself dead. He couldn’t even scream, or wail; he could always do that to release the pain a little before, but he couldn’t do that now.
He didn’t look behind to see if something really was embedded in his spine, digging through his vertebrae. It felt like it, something cold and greasy sliding under his clothes and down his skin…
It was possible Kadaj would get angry and Yazoo would sneer, but he could take that-they wouldn’t stay mad at him too long, right? He couldn’t take what his body was doing to itself, what was happening in his chest, and Loz turned the bike around and jammed the engine through. He knew where his brothers were-he didn’t question how he knew.
After a while, the wind and dust dragging on his shirt, roughing his face, his body began to calm down. There was still something clinging to his spine, to the back of his mind, but it was weaker, cloudy. Yazoo was close by.
When Loz found him, Yazoo wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Got scared already? Did you start crying?”
Loz shrugged, maneuvered the bike closer and got off, shoulder blades itching. “You didn’t find anything either.” The thing had left his spine, his insides were settling, and if Yazoo wanted to be mean Loz really couldn’t bring himself to care.
Loz’s memories of the laboratory were hazy, buried and locked down tight, but everything after Kadaj, after Yazoo, was easier to remember, the part of his existence that was nearly his, more than any other time. And, in all his life, he’d never been alone before.
He was never sure when Yazoo moved closer, off his bike, but Yazoo was subtle, fast, and fascinating. When Yazoo grabbed his hand, squeezed hard enough that it hurt, so that the bones cracked, he didn’t look at Loz’s face, just gestured east, “Kadaj isn’t going to like this.”
Loz chuckled-he felt fine now, pain crackling through his hand. “It’ll be all your fault, anyway. I wouldn’t have come if you hadn’t called me.”
Yazoo bristled predictably while they both ignored their hands still clinging together. A few minutes later-time flowed easier with Yazoo there, didn’t cut by and bleed him on its way to the past-Kadaj showed up, predictably pissed off and shakier than usual, and shoved himself between them, still complaining. His voice was high and creaky, and only a little incoherent.
Yazoo’s eyes met his over Kadaj’s head, over Kadaj’s knuckles banging gently into Loz’s arm as if to remind himself Loz was there, over Kadaj’s right hand digging briefly into Yazoo’s shoulder and arm before letting go abruptly. Yazoo smiled with half his mouth, and they both looked away understanding everything completely.
***
“Hey…how’s it going?”
Yazoo’s voice came through loud and clear in all its awkwardness. They hadn’t been sure the cell phones would work, and while it wasn’t as good as having Yazoo or Kadaj there, it was better than nothing. The phone was a source of frustration, hatred, and longing. They could only talk two at a time, and it wasn’t…enough.
“This place stinks.” Mideel was all growing things, fields and forests and flowers. It made Loz physically ill, and said so. The humidity made him nauseous. Yazoo sounded bored. Long pauses punctuated the conversation-Yazoo went quiet when he didn’t like something, was quiet most of the time, and Loz wanted company, not the sound of his own voice.
“Do you think he’s all right?” Yazoo asked.
“He should be,” Loz strode through the old mako-reactor, the sensation that something was pacing his back still there, but not strong. He had to focus on Yazoo’s voice. “I talked to him earlier. He sounded…ok.”
Another silence blossomed up, filled with edgy thoughts. Kadaj could sound ‘ok’ and covered in blood, his own or someone else’s. He might not be ‘ok’ at all.
Yazoo probably wouldn’t like it, but Loz started to open his mouth anyway. Yazoo read his mind before he could speak, and said, “We should stay where we are. Until morning. We’ll meet tomorrow.”
“I want to be with you,” Loz sounded petulant. “Or with brother.”
“Mother needs us to do this.”
Loz said nothing. He felt slapped. Somehow, using mother like that was cheating. Yazoo was right, but it was still cheating. Playing dirty.
“I want to be with you too,” Yazoo came through unfocused, vague, and probably staring at something on the horizon or far away, completely entranced. He didn’t sound particularly sincere. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow.”
He didn’t exactly tell his arm to smash through the reactor’s console, but it did anyway. Loz felt slightly better, plus Yazoo couldn’t see him and give him a look. It only occurred to him later, much later the next day when he did see Yazoo, that Yazoo would’ve heard the metal breaking and glass shattering in the background.
“But. You’ll talk to me tonight. Right?”
Silence on the other end of the phone. Nearly two hundred miles between. If he let himself think about the empty space, he wouldn’t make it. Silence on the other end of the phone for a long time.
“Yes.” Dryly said of course, empty, as if Yazoo were somewhere else. Then, as an add-on. “But we have to sleep. And off and on, in case Kadaj needs to get in touch.”
Loz sneered as he wandered back through the reactor, “Fussy.”
“Do you want company or not?”
“Yeah, yeah, I do.” Loz trailed his fingers over the wall as he walked back to small residential compound. There’d been people living there when he arrived. They weren’t living now. “So how’re you going to put me to sleep?”
Yazoo never answers his question. Loz hates the phones.
***
Loz is the one that wants them to stay together.
Yazoo did discomfited when alone, he felt the thing on his spine too, but he just went deep inside himself, inside his mind, until he was in too deep to realize he was alone. As for Kadaj…
There were too many people behind Kadaj's eyes for him to be him long enough to be bothered by much of anything, to even realize his brothers weren’t there.
Loz lived on the surface. He had nowhere secret to go, couldn’t go inside or outside himself like his brothers could.
After they separated the second time and came back together, Loz was the first to watch his brother's sleep, to learn his brother's face solely through touch and smell. Yazoo smelled cold and sharp. Kadaj smelled sweaty.
At first, it was only his brothers who kept secrets, who kept things away from Loz and made him feel lonely while they made their own small claims and kept them without sharing. But now, Loz had a secret, a secret that was his and only his, the only thing in the world that really belonged to him, and…he wasn’t sure if he could share it with his brothers. He wasn’t sure they would understand.
He touched Kadaj’s face, tracing the bones of his nose and indents of his skull on the corner of his eye while he slept curled against Loz’s bulk, Yazoo curled around Kadaj’s shorter body on the other side. Kadaj didn’t open his eyes.
Loz lived on the surface. He couldn’t help crying because it hurt, the calling hurt and hurt inside where he couldn’t touch or punch or kick, and Yazoo couldn’t feel it and Kadaj was too busy feeling pain from a million different tiny directions to concentrate on the one. Loz lived on the surface.
The secret Loz wanted to tell them was this: They were going to die. The planet was going to kill them. The planet hated them, and its people and dirt and flowers and ghosts were always trying to kill them. There was nowhere safe on the planet for them, and there never would be.
We’re going to die, Loz wanted them to know, to realize, wanted to bounce Kadaj’s head against the floor until he understood, they were all going to die and no one would help and mother would still be calling. Mother would always be calling, and they would be dead.
Loz slept with his gloves off, and there were no calluses on his fingers to catch on Kadaj’s hair as he pulled it over an ear, pulled it through his fingers. He wasn’t particularly careful-Loz wasn’t good at being careful-and he didn’t notice Kadaj’s breathing wasn’t as shallow or slow as it had been when he was sleeping. Kadaj’s eyes stayed closed.
Every time they separated, the planet hunted them, chased them, and one day it would kill them. They didn’t belong. Once alone, they were very vulnerable, easy to target and find on a planet that wanted them dead and gone, wanted to send them back to the knives in the dark, the metal tables and restraints and white lights, wanted to send them back to the same small dark hole they’d stumbled out of.
Didn’t they get it? Couldn’t they feel it? Why didn’t they know?
He didn’t know how to tell Kadaj any of this. Yazoo wouldn’t care, even if he believed, or didn’t. Yazoo didn’t care about anything. Kadaj might care, if he was sane enough to understand, if he believed.
Yazoo opened his eyes and watched from over the top of Kadaj’s head silently, and Loz stopped moving.
Kadaj’s free arm moved from his waist to wrap around his back, his hand warm and a little damp on Loz’s neck to support the back of his skull. Kadaj blinked and kissed his mouth, moving his lips slowly, the tip of his tongue sliding along Loz’s lower lip and touching his teeth briefly. The kiss was warm and lingering, and Yazoo didn’t do anything.
Loz breathed out slowly through his nose and Kadaj pulled back, thumb moving in a slow circle behind Loz’s ear.
It was hard to predict Kadaj. He never hurt them on purpose, because Kadaj wasn’t quite Kadaj all the time, especially when he was raving, but now he just looked over Loz’s face with calm curiosity and didn’t stop massaging the back of his skull with his fingers. Then he smiled a sharp, cynical half-smile, and murmured, “I know.”
“What’re we going to do?” Loz asked, because Kadaj sometimes could do anything.
“We fight back,” Kadaj replied softly, voice as sane and balanced as ever, fire burning gently in his eyes, and Loz didn’t know enough to question if the fire if Kadaj’s eyes was Kadaj’s fire, or the fire of someone else.
“It’ll be all right,” Kadaj continued with the same sharp half-smile half-sneer, “You’ll see. We’ll get there.”
Yazoo watched him quietly over Kadaj’s shoulder. Loz wondered, briefly, whom Yazoo was watching, him or Kadaj, and what he was watching for.
But Yazoo never shared his secrets, and Loz couldn’t read his mind the way Kadaj could read his. Yazoo closed his eyes again, his arm loosely over Kadaj’s stomach because there was nowhere else to comfortably put it. Yazoo never held on tightly to anyone. Yazoo never needed anything or anyone, and wouldn’t even take comfort when it wanted to be taken.
Kadaj kissed Loz’s arm underneath his head, and squirmed down comfortably again, smiling and sneering contentedly as he slowly went crazy keeping the secrets of five different people.
Secrets could be told. He didn’t feel better.
Right now he had both his brothers with him, one grinning in his arms and the other at his fingertips, something chewing idly on tender things deep inside him, where not even Kadaj could touch, and Loz had what he needed. He didn’t have everything he wanted, but he had what he needed. It should have been enough. It should have.
Loz reached out until he could grip Yazoo’s elbow like a vice would, and tried to bury most of Kadaj underneath him, where his brother couldn’t suddenly disappear when Loz wasn’t looking.
It should have been enough.
***
No one's gonna give you a map. You gotta walk your own path.
-Hilda, Outlaw Star, Takehito Ito
***
A/N: One day, I will master the art of time management. But later.