fic: eir's tomorrow, ch.18 (ff7)
LJ is being a dick and won't let me update previous chapter posts with their edited versions, so for the moment it's only on AO3 and FF.Net. I'm also sick with anxiety over posting this so, y'know, concrit is still welcome and awesome but please be gentle.
Eir's Tomorrow
Chapter 18
Author:
jukeboxhound
FF7 || R || Sephiroth/Cloud || chapter: 7,850 words
The Planet isn't willing to let death take away its greatest weapon. If Cloud can't save the past, then he'll be damned to watch history repeat itself.
18.
Cloud woke up, or thought he did. He was lying on a soft surface, and there was some kind of weight resting across his chest. Something hummed beneath him and around him so quietly it was more sensation than sound.
"Cloud," rumbled a low voice, and he realized the weight was Sephiroth's arm on his chest. It pressed down on him and he wasn't sure how much longer he'd be able to keep breathing. "You can breathe," said Sephiroth, and Cloud's ribs expanded, didn't collapse under their own weight or snap into pieces. He kept his eyes closed. For a moment he thought he didn't have them - maybe they'd been carved out, or maybe he just hadn't been made with any, like those weird cave animals that lived in complete darkness all their lives.
"Cloud," Sephiroth repeated, and for a moment Cloud wanted to punch him. But the spike of fury passed as quickly as it'd come, and he found himself holding on to that one syllable. That was his name, his name, human and clumsy as it was. Cloud wasn't stupid; he knew there'd been a time (or maybe a few times, he wasn't really sure) when he'd been able to think in straight lines and the world made some sort of sense, but it was hard to remember what that felt like when there this was heavy fog slowly suffocating him.
"Where," he managed, and Sephiroth said, "We're on the Highwind. We left Wutai. Do you remember?"
The humming must be the ship, then. Opening his eyes a little, Cloud found that he was on his side in a narrow bunk, facing the wall of Sephiroth's chest, and a surge of blinding terror, of don't touch me, made his body freeze so suddenly a muscle in his back spasmed. "I," he tried, but his tongue twisted all wrong for words, and…and. What was he going to say? He couldn't remember. His shoulder blades itched. He could sense something dark and powerful in the east, directly where the Highwind was heading.
Without really thinking about it Cloud mentally reached out for Sephiroth, the utter familiarity of his presence (idol, officer, enemy, child, friend, more) oddly grounding. Sephiroth shifted but didn't tighten his hold or pull Cloud closer, so Cloud's muscles loosened a few degrees.
"What do you want?" Sephiroth whispered.
everyone's asking that lately
"We're concerned."
Another rush of fear. take care of myself not helpless not useless
Sephiroth couldn't help curling his arm tighter around Cloud and refused to let go even though Cloud shuddered. (Sephiroth had to bite down on his own anger, a little bit because of Cloud but mostly at the rest of the world.)
The solidness of Sephiroth's body was…was restraints, holding him down. A cold voice sliced through the flesh of his brain, specimen c is responding - and Cloud pulled back forcefully, unaware that his teeth were wolfishly bared or that there was a flurry of sound and feathers as wings arched threateningly wide. Sephiroth braced himself, ruthlessly pushing down his own instinct to fight back and holding himself completely still to wait for Cloud to make the first move.
Fortunately Cloud was on the open side of the bunk. He slid off, ending up on his ass with the wings slumped limply to either side and a weird mix of bemusement and anxiety on his face. Sephiroth leaned over with an arched brow.
"Sephiroth," Cloud managed in a gravelly voice, "where are we?"
"The Highwind," replied Sephiroth, and Cloud suddenly remembered that he'd already asked that, hadn't he. They'd been in Wutai, but now they'd left, and it was because there was still something wrong with the Planet that Cloud couldn't fix on his own. "We're going to Junon."
"Zack? Aeris?"
"They're here. They're on the main deck right now with everyone else, I assume."
Cloud's wings twitched as some of the tension in his shoulders bled out. That was good, no one was dead and Sephiroth was here and, in the grand scheme of things, the Planet still in the process of dying just didn't seem so terrible. Or maybe he was just too emotionally traumatized to think otherwise -
Cloud paused. That thought hadn't been his own.
"Sorry," said Sephiroth stiffly.
Cloud just shrugged and muttered, "Used to it. S'okay," though for some reason Sephiroth didn't seem to find that reassuring. Cloud pulled himself to his feet long enough to sit on the edge of the bed, not really noticing the way his wings were getting dragged awkwardly around until he felt the shock of Sephiroth's hands along their edges. For a long horrifying instant Cloud expected to hear a sharp snap, feel a sudden burst of agony bloom through the wings to twist around his spine, but instead they were settled gently behind him on the mattress. Cloud couldn't remember how to make them go away.
"I'm sorry," Sephiroth said again from behind him. Cloud frowned and tried to figure out what there was for Sephiroth to be sorry about. The hands on his wings slid to his shoulders, softly enough to avoid tweaking feathers, and the mattress dipped as Sephiroth shifted closer until Cloud could feel his body heat along his back, so diametrically different from the icy burn of mako that Cloud wasn't really sure what to do with himself. "I'm sorry, Cloud."
The clean lines of Sephiroth's mind was getting blurred with guilt and hate and, gods, so much anger, mostly at himself, a lot of it towards one or two other people whom Cloud was decidedly Not Thinking About. He made a quiet sound in the back of his throat when Sephiroth's forehead pressed against the back of his neck.
"I'm sorry I didn't figure it out sooner," he whispered. "I said I would help you and then Hojo - he - I'm sorry."
Cloud paused to gather what wits he had and said, "I'm sorry, I know you're not - not bad." 'Bad' wasn't really the word he was looking for and made him feel stupid, but he could sense Sephiroth's understanding. He looked down at himself and found loose pants and a bare chest, Sephiroth's long pale fingers curled over his shoulders and digging a little into his collarbone. His wings probably would've ripped through a shirt anyway. His physical body felt confining and heavy, somewhat grimy like he'd been sleeping in cold sweat, and he took a moment to straighten out his thoughts. If he was borrowing some of Sephiroth to put them all in order, Sephiroth either didn't notice or didn't mind.
"I think I would like to…" Bathe; wash; shower; rinse; clean. So many words for generally the same idea but with too many little nuances between them. Sephiroth got to his feet, moving slowly, and put a gentle hand at the small of Cloud's back to lead him to a door set in one wall of the room. The water ran warm in the ship's tiny shower and Cloud was momentarily distracted by the feel of soft linen sliding down his legs to puddle at his feet. It made him think of his mum's worn flannel quilts.
He distantly knew that Sephiroth was also naked, but it didn't seem so important. He ran a
hand down his chest, touching the lines of nearly healed cuts and immediately jerking back so he didn't have to think about how they'd gotten there, focusing instead on Sephiroth's hold on his shoulders as the man guided him into the shower. He slid his arms around Sephiroth's waist and leaned against him again, keeping himself together with warm skin, a steadily beating heart, and the cool presence of a mind that made him think of solitary moments on mountain peaks. I'm gonna be a SOLDIER, he'd once promised himself at the top of the mountains, and Cloud almost laughed at the ridiculousness of that thought.
…
Cloud was sleeping again when there was a series of gentle thumps at the door (must be paws) and Nanaki entered. Sephiroth had only been peripherally aware of him while in Wutai and all he knew was that Vincent and Zack had found Nanaki alongside Cloud in the lab.
"Hello," said Nanaki quietly, sitting on his haunches a few safe feet away. Cloud stirred a little but didn't wake. Sephiroth was sitting on the edge of the bed, head bowed, hand resting on Cloud's thigh as though he might disappear without warning. "How is he?"
There were so many ways to respond to that question. Sephiroth finally said, "Alive."
"How are you?"
"Not dead," Sephiroth deadpanned.
The silence stretched, Nanaki's tail waving back and forth as he apparently mulled something over. "I was there sometimes with him. He told me things he couldn't have known and Hojo never seemed to surprise him, but how?"
This creature was certainly straightforward, which at any other time would've been refreshing. Sephiroth's hand twitched and he wished for one violent, insane moment that he'd killed Hojo himself, and he wasn't sure if he was profoundly grateful or horribly, hatefully furious that he hadn't been the one to find Cloud. "I wish I knew why he's the one that has to carry all of this."
"He has you, doesn't he? And the others?"
Semantics, he didn't snarl. He was an adult, he could control his temper, damnit, this wasn't like him at all. (But it was, he'd just been very, very good at keeping it all locked away behind steel towers and hopelessness and military orders.)
"You care for him."
"He doesn't make it easy," Sephiroth murmured without intending to and immediately felt like he'd exposed a soft underbelly. Nanaki's flaming tail still waved lazily back and forth, the rest of him still and thoughtful.
"You think he's selfish?" Nanaki asked carefully, and Sephiroth had no idea why he'd chosen that particular adjective when Sephiroth hadn't even hinted at it, how he'd even gotten into this almost-conversation.
"I don't know." The words were so soft they were nearly inaudible.
"My grandfather used to say that everyone is driven by selfishness but that it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. We protect our loved ones to protect ourselves."
"Even if we die for them?" Sephiroth asked shrewdly.
"Especially then. We're not the ones that have to keep living without them." When Sephiroth just stared at him, Nanaki admitted, "I came down to tell you that the others would like to speak with you, but you two seemed…busy, so I waited outside the door."
"And what did you grandfather used to say about eavesdropping?"
"If you get caught, pretend you had intended to get caught all along."
Of course he had.
…
Zack, Aeris, Angeal, and Cid all looked at Fenrir. The wolf stared back, panting happily with perked ears and a wagging tail.
"When we decided to go save the world," said Zack, "I have to admit that I didn't imagine a wolf coming with us."
"Mm," Angeal agreed.
"What do we do with him?" Zack asked, and Aeris answered, "Well, if we crash in some snowy area, we could cuddle with him for warmth."
"If I find toothmarks on so much as a boot, I'm turning him into grease rags," Cid growled. "Give him to the lovebirds below deck and keep him the fuck away from the chocobos."
Fenrir's tail thumped happily.
Later, they gathered on the main deck by the navigation controls where Cid had a large map of the world pinned to the wall. Aeris stood beside Zack, Nanaki sitting between them and Cid, while Fenrir was crouched near the doorway, unwilling to approach Nanaki but just as unwilling to let him out of his sight. Cloud and Sephiroth stood a few paces back, the former pressed against Sephiroth with half-closed eyes as though he were nearly asleep on his feet. Zack felt a spike of protectiveness for both of them, for all of these people, really, and then wondered when he'd started turning into his parents.
"Okay," said Zack smartly, popping the cap off a marker, "we've had one WEAPON here, and one here." He put great big 'X's on the map over Mideel and the plains just outside of Midgar, paused, and then added a couple frowny-faces. He would've added little penises with angry eyebrows to more effectively demonstrate his feelings on the matter if Angeal hadn't interrupted with a quiet, "Zack."
Zack coughed. "Anyway, Cloud says we've got three more on the way."
"Do we know where?" asked Nanaki. Fenrir's ears twitched.
Zack looked at Cloud and Sephiroth. Sephiroth didn't seem to have anything to say, but Cloud stepped forward, sliding very carefully between Nanaki and Aeris, to peer at the map, with Fenrir following close on his heel. After a moment he reached for the pen in Zack's hands and took it with just as much care not to touch any skin. He trailed his free fingers over the map, whispering to himself under his breath.
When his touch passed over the desert around the Gold Saucer, he made a circle, then repeated it over the shore off Junon. His forehead creased in a frown as he drew a thick, wandering line from one continent to the other.
"Junon and the Gold Saucer?" interpreted Zack, and he startled when Cloud murmured a rough, "Yes."
"The third one moves often, and quickly," Sephiroth added, understanding the wavering line bridging the ocean.
"Right now we're not far from the Saucer. Do we know anything about it? Sephiroth, Aeris?"
"All I hear is the Planet. I'm not sure if it's responding to what Cloud went through, what happened in Nibelheim, or if it's something else entirely," said Aeris. "It's almost like…it's desperate. Like something's gone really wrong."
"You needed the Planet to tell you that?" Cid snarked.
"Is that why it isn't stopping these WEAPONs?"
"Maybe."
"An entity as old and large as the Planet is unlikely to be capable of reacting very quickly once it builds up momentum," Sephiroth broke in.
Trust Sephiroth to see it all in terms of physics and natural laws. "Okay, so what's the goal here?" Zack asked. "Self-preservation, obviously, but from what?"
"Jenova," Cloud said quietly, which drew odd looks and Aeris saying, "Cloud, whatever cells are left from her are useless, remember?"
Cloud scruffled Fenrir's ears and didn't answer. Zack was mildly disturbed by the…possessive? Jealous?...look on Sephiroth's face as he watched Cloud's hands. "Jenova may be gone, but the reactors aren't," said Sephiroth neutrally. "The Planet is still being drained. Cloud had always intended to take down the ShinRa Company, but if what Vincent told Zack is true then part of the problem has already been resolved."
"What, most of the Plate getting taken out? That's not something to be celebrated, Sephiroth," Zack said sternly. "Lots of good people are dead."
"Celebrated, no. Used to our advantage, yes."
Nanaki broke off his staring contest with the wolf to interrupt what could have easily turned into an argument on tactics, ethics, and possibly insults on each other's ancestry. "My people's work in Cosmo Canyon suggested that destroying the mako reactors would be the most effective way to slow the Planet's decline."
"One down, several more to go," Angeal said quietly.
"How are we going to convince people to just turn off their primary source of power?" Zack groaned. Cloud furrowed his brow.
"North Corel, they - the people there, they mine. Alternative fuel. Barret."
"It seems North Corel has begun mining coal for power," Sephiroth explained, too concerned with looking closely at Cloud to notice the way Zack and the others were looking at him. "We may be able to convince them to shut down the reactor of their own volition. Barret Wallace is one of the leading miners there, I believe."
Do you realize how creepy it is when you two do that, Zack wondered, not because this was Cloud and Sephiroth - which was still bizarre to think about, a few months ago Zack would've laughed hysterically if someone had told him a SOLDIER general and a cadet would end up like this - but because all of this had started happening so damn fast, going from mere acquaintances to, to a hivemind in a matter of weeks, and oh god he wasn't going to be able to keep reading the science fiction novels he sometimes stole off Reno. But Zack knew, beyond any doubt, that if something happened to just one of them then it was only a matter of time until the other died, and that little piece of knowledge was enough to make him start weighing the pros and cons of finding a safehouse in which he could securely lock the two down until the world stopped ending.
"Angeal, I'd like you to make that call, please," Sephiroth was still saying, and Angeal nodded once.
"Looks like we've got a couple more stops before we save the world - with a wolf, thanks - and have everyone call us heroes. I suggest we take the time to prepare," Zack added, going for cheerful and knowing he fell flat.
…
Zack was on the phone with Reeve when the Highwind began passing over the Gold Saucer. "The map," he said loudly, a hand clamped over the mouthpiece of the PHS, people already beginning to check over their weapons, but Cloud replied, "It's still asleep. Don't stop," and the ship went on without incident.
Sephiroth looked at the map, troubled.
But he said there were three more.
…
Even with his front-row seat to the drama that was the inside of Cloud's head, Sephiroth didn't actually know what Aeris was doing. She was sitting cross-legged on the bunk in front of Cloud, who mirrored her, and carefully held one of his hands as Sephiroth hovered in the corner of their room. He knew she'd been talking with some of the Wutaian doctors before they left, but their practice of medicine was different enough from the eastern one with which he was most familiar that he could only guess what was going on.
His body's already mostly healed, she'd said, gods know how the Planet changed him. It's his mind, Sephiroth, and there's no potion or quick fix for that.
But with his connection to the Lifestream, shouldn't he essentially be connected to the purest source of healing? he'd demanded.
The Lifestream is made of as much death as it is life, Sephiroth. If every living thing is born from the Lifestream, where did you think it all goes when they die?
Sometimes Aeris talked gently, and sometimes they just sat in silence. Cloud never said a word.
What's wrong with him?
Besides the consequences of being tortured by Hojo, you mean? she asked dryly. Cloud was born as a single, mortal human, but now he has access to millions of years of a billion other lives. It's like trying to hear your own voice in a room full of screaming people. He was never meant to be…this.
'This'?
When Aeris would leave after several hours of this process, Cloud would be able to hold most of a short verbal conversation. It lasted a little longer each time for the couple days they were on the ship, although once or twice he fell into a shaking, senseless heap of cold sweat pressed tightly against Sephiroth's chest as though he were the only thing keeping Cloud grounded in reality.
…
The last time Elena had felt anywhere near so shitty, she'd woken in a spare bed upstairs in Seventh Heaven with beer soaked into her nice shirt and the dim hallway light threatening to crack her skull in half. She'd promptly vomited onto the floor and hoped that Cloud felt just as horrible, unaware that he'd somehow ended up in a Sector Two church with Aeris and Reno laughing over him, and had had to clean herself up under Elfé's flat glare.
This time, though, she had third-degree burns to go along with the migraine and the exhaustion, and nothing could hurt quite like burns did. A whimper managed to drag itself out of her throat before a wonderfully, beautifully cool hand settled over her forehead.
"Welcome back," said Aeris gently. "Here's a potion, it'll help."
A curved glass rim pressed against her lips. Potions always tasted bizarre, a little like fresh grass but more like the jolt that came from licking a nine-volt battery, not that Elena would ever do something like that, not at all, and also like the dim, aching memories she had of her mother. The pain lessened, and she felt like she was just recovering from drills on the parade ground rather than a blackout bender.
"You're on the Highwind," Aeris told her, giving Elena the distinct impression that this had become something of a speech lately, "and we're on the way to Junon."
"How long have you been sitting there?" she rasped.
"Ten minutes or so."
"How did you know I was waking up?" she demanded suspiciously, coughing.
"I have good timing. What's the last thing you remember?"
Cloud getting himself kidnapped like an idiot, she thought, irritated with the world in general and pretending that said kidnappers hadn't also gotten past her and a SOLDIER. Oh yeah, she was a Turk now, that was pretty cool, she should go to a bar and celebrate. Probably not a bar in which Elfé worked. Nibelheim - the ShinRa mansion, which had both Hojo and Cloud, and their intrepid rescue party had split up to do their respective thing. She may or may not have kissed Tifa, that would depend on whether Tifa had liked it or not.
"We were in the labs, I think Cissnei and I went to…the library? Gods, Hojo doesn't know shit about organizing papers, I thought I was bad. There was a fire?"
"There was," Aeris confirmed. "Vincent managed to get you out, but you were still burned pretty badly."
Elena's first reaction was to mentally thank the gods that she'd left the explosives with Tifa and not in her pockets, the second was to swear vengeance on something if her trigger finger was fucked up, and the third was a mental note to throw a royal shitfit if her hair had gotten burned off.
"We got Cloud out and Hojo's dead, but, Elena…"
After Aeris left, Elena stopped trying to blink back the tears. At least Tifa had only been separated from the group, had still survived (she had, Elena wasn't going to believe anyone else was dead unless she saw the fucking body; she was tired of secondhand bad news, sorry, but your sister died in the line of duty a thousand miles from home, at least it was an honorable death and she'll probably get posthumous honors, or Cissnei, just in the wrong place at the wrong time with all the right intentions). Easy to hate Cloud, who seemed to attract people like stars orbiting closer to a black hole, who won their loyalty without even trying or sometimes even realizing it. What was it about Cloud that made the Planet sit up and take notice or made people willing to walk through Hell for him?
But then…he'd never asked for it, more often than not went out of his way to avoid people and never once demanded anything, and, well, this wasn't black-and-white shit, was it. All came down to people's choices, for better or worse, and if this was what it meant to be an adult, Elena wondered if she could take her teenager-ness back, please.
Elena struggled to sit up, biting her lip at the pain of her burns being stretched under their bandages. She was wearing loose cotton pants and just enough bandages wrapped around her chest to preserve her modesty, but nothing else, probably to keep from irritating her cracked skin as much as possible. How thoughtful.
A new suit was folded neatly on the small chair beside her bunk, not a proper Turk one but still cleanly cut and dark blue. Her pistol was underneath it, thank the gods that the heat of the fire hadn't set it off or anything, and there was a small washbasin that let her slowly, painfully wash her face. It helped her feel a little more alive and capable of facing everyone else and what was, at some point in the near future, likely going to be a horribly violent death.
…
Cid muttered darkly to himself when an operator told him that Midgar was closed to transports and that he'd have to land in Junon.
"Of course we do," said Zack.
"Think of it as saving a trip from Midgar to Junon," Aeris volunteered. "Cloud, do you know where the WEAPON is?"
"Underwater," he replied softly. At least Junon had remained unscathed thus far.
"Well, crap. So, what, we wait for it to come rampaging towards the city then?"
"We get a submarine."
"What? Where?"
"The harbor."
No one in Cloud's state of mind should've been able to pull off such a perfect note of sarcasm, Zack mused in admiration as Sephiroth hid a small smile.
As they approached, Zack noticed a drastic increase in the number of military stationed around the city's borders and an obvious lack of civilian activity, as though everyone had decided to stay home despite the pleasant sunny day. The uniforms of ShinRa personnel stood out against the city's drabness in long, thick lines of blue and red far below.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"I imagine the city's on high-alert after the last WEAPON that came through this way," Aeris reminded him, and he winced, reflecting on their latest haphazard plan and wondering how the hell they were supposed to steal a submarine under tripled guard. Elena, standing beside them with white bandages wrapped around half the surface area of her body because she refused to stay in bed, frowned but didn't say anything.
When they finally landed the guards refused to let them disembark without a lengthy search, and Cid hissed and spat as ShinRa guards crawled all over his ship before bellowing that he wasn't carrying anything other than the usual trade cargo and a collection of idiots determined to martyr themselves for the world, get the fuck off before their regulations got shoved so far up their collective asses that President ShinRa would've choked on them if he hadn't already been dead. The guards slunk back to their posts like scolded dogs, and Zack nearly bit his lip bloody trying not to laugh as Cid stayed behind with his beleaguered crew. Zack's own party headed into the village below the city.
Or they would have, if they hadn't been almost immediately ambushed by a little girl with too many pointy things on her tiny person.
"You," Zack said fervently. Yuffie huffed and ignored him with great dignity in favor of Cloud, who was trailing along behind Sephiroth like a shadow.
"I have something for you, although between you and me I think I should keep it, I mean it's pretty awesome and I'm a real warrior and also it's kind of shiny. I'm just saying, don't feel bad if you decide to let me keep it, I'll totally take care of it."
Cloud stopped in his tracks and stared at her, looking torn between interest and wariness. Sephiroth somehow managed to loom without actually moving as she reached for the enormous wrapped bundle strapped to her back, looking suspiciously similar to the approximate size and weight of the Buster, and held it out. Cloud accepted it with both hands, let the linen slide off to reveal a blade made of…well, there was metal, and what looked like bone ivory for the handle, of all things, which really wasn't the best idea for a large combat weapon, with something pearly white and blue and hard as stone forming the hilt, edging up along the blunt side of the blade. It was somewhere between five and six feet long, about the same as the Buster, but slightly narrower. Despite the ridiculousness of its size, Cloud didn't seem to have any trouble lifting the thing.
"What," said Zack flatly, and Yuffie tossed him a filthy look for cheapening the drama.
"Yoshida-san made it, well, sort of, some of the men helped her with the forging bits, I think you've met her?"
"Yes," Cloud said carefully, probably having to actually think hard on it while simultaneously being distracted with running a free hand over the weapon.
"She said a hero needs a hero's sword." Yuffie sounded rather incredulous.
"Not a hero," Cloud spat with sudden weird intensity, then turned back to the sword. "The materials, they aren't - they're not normal."
"Yoshida-san got people to get her pieces of the WEAPONs that've been taken down so far, I guess, I dunno. She made me hitch a ride with some people hightailing it out of Midgar, like, two days ago." She clearly wasn't impressed with these nameless people's unwillingness to stick out the hard part of rebuilding a fallen city.
"She used pieces of WEAPONs?" Zack cried. "How?"
"I don't know. If it was that easy then everyone would be doing it, wouldn't they?"
Aeris giggling behind her hand didn't make Zack feel any more endeared towards Yuffie.
…
It wasn't the Buster and it wasn't Tsurugi, but the weight of a sword, any sword, in his hand was reassuringin a way that only the occasional wash of calm from Sephiroth could be. He didn't have a scabbard or harness, so he rewrapped it and let the blade rest against a shoulder with a tight grip on the handle.
"Cloud, should you really be the one to carry that?" Elena asked bluntly. She'd been unusually quiet since she'd woken up, but when she did talk she'd done it to Cloud's face, straightforward and entirely uncaring of Sephiroth and Zack's narrow-eyed looks. You're traumatized, not stupid, she'd declared just before leaving the Highwind, and until you prove that you don't understand me then I'm going to talk to you.
So Cloud did her the favor of reflecting honestly on her question. It wasn't the Buster and it wasn't Tsurugi, but the new sword felt right, and it was his, and this was something he knew how to do even when he forgot his name.
"Yes," he said after a minute. She stared at him expectantly, but when he didn't elaborate she sighed and muttered, "Fine, just make sure you swing it in the right direction."
Cloud twined his fingers through Sephiroth's belt loops and closed his eyes as they headed towards the elevator in the village that would take them up to the city proper, tried to ignore the vague disorientation that wanted him to go find a dolphin that would take them up the power grid instead. (He didn't think he was making that up, either). Nanaki walked close enough that every few steps Cloud could feel glass beads and feathers bump gently against his elbow. The beads made a rhythmic tinkling sound that reminded him of the small streams that crisscrossed the Nibel Mountains, and a little bit of the sound Holy made as it fell from Aeris' hands and bounced down white stairs, but then the tinkling stopped and Cloud opened his eyes to the interior of the elevator.
"Cozy," Elena observed. "Just so we're clear, I like you guys, but not like that."
One of Sephiroth's hands snuck back and wrapped itself somewhat too tightly around Cloud's wrist.
Things didn't go so smoothly when they got to the top.
"Strip," commanded the leader of a military squad.
"What?" Yuffie squawked, but Cloud was more concerned with the guards' weapons, mostly rifles but with the odd pistol and blade, pointing in their direction, more specifically at Sephiroth and Zack and Aeris, which just - he felt the itch in his shoulderblades, the weight of the sword in his hand, the burst of adrenaline in his body.
Elena snapped, "The hell do you think you're doing, soldier?"
"We're on high alert, protocol states - "
"You're looking at three SOLDIERs, two of which are generals, a SOLDIER candidate, and a gods-damned Turk. By the way, did I mention the generals? You really want to go there right now?"
"But, uh, ma'am - "
"We're here to monitor the progress of all currently known WEAPONs," Angeal broke in calmly. "You weren't forewarned because communication from Midgar is still unstable."
In the end, they didn't have to sneak around or steal anything; they ended in the harbor looking up at a submarine being prepared for their use by harried dockworkers with the blessing of the local military command.
"This was much more interesting the first time we did this," Cloud said mildly.
They got onto the submarine with only two minor incidents. Zack had managed to convince Yuffie to stay behind, and if it had involved a number of threats and possibly a rope and a lamppost, sometimes the ends did indeed justify the means. When it was pointed out to Elena that her extensive injuries already made walking difficult, how did she expect to handle a full-out battle, Cloud was bracing himself for a tirade. Instead she opened her mouth, paused, then closed it and turned away on her heel.
Cloud exchanged looks with Zack, but the thought to be concerned about Elena unraveled and drifted away as the submarine descended under the water, portholes turning blue-black and the sense of pressure surrounding the fragile metal shell that was the only thing keeping them from being crushed. Oh Hel. He could feel it choking him, clogging thick in his lungs.
"Breathe," Sephiroth whispered to him, and Cloud found himself automatically reaching out with mental hands to pull the essence of someone else around him like a thick, muffling blanket. The sword hummed under his hands, the pieces of the two fallen WEAPONs sounding like someone running their finger around the rim of a crystal glass and the bone ivory pleased with being surrounded by water.
"This isn't from a monster," Cloud muttered aloud to himself, tapping at the ivory.
Up ahead through the cockpit a light began rising through the blackness, running in a long line before arching up and over like a large, square hill - the reactor, Cloud remembered, and its glass-covered corridor, hulking and inelegant as a mechanical spider squatting on the ocean floor. It might have been intimidating if there wasn't an even larger shape lurking over it.
"I believe the WEAPONs are getting progressively larger," Sephiroth observed. It was dark green and as deeply scarred as volcanic rock, its mountain-solid legs in danger of crushing the Junon reactor. As they watched it started to shudder, rocking the submarine with increasingly powerful currents.
emerald
This was the first time Cloud had encountered a WEAPON for - for years, anyway, not since he'd killed Sephiroth in the Northern Crater (his mind immediately skittered away from the memory, looped back around, thought of CHAOS in Vincent's head but knew it wasn't the same thing) and it sang, not as loudly as the Planet or the stars but enough to make his head ring.
Enemy, it said.
we don't want to destroy you we want to save the planet humanity too
Family. Littermate. Confusion.
go back to sleep
Incomprehension. The sense of betrayal.
go back to sleep
The submarine tilted sharply as the WEAPON rose, cracking apart into an identifiable head and long, insect-like wing carapaces that dwarfed the submarine. It was vaguely humanoid but utterly inhuman, eyes like deep holes scraped into solid stone and then filled up with the darkness of a very old, very skilled predator.
"Remind me why using a submarine was a good idea," Zack muttered.
Angeal was pulling up what looked like every available weapons system on the ship. Cloud sensed Sephiroth beginning to draw on the materia equipped to the Masamune and the slim adamantium bangle on his wrist, a Command and a Mime to counter what would obviously be a devastating attack. It didn't take a genius to look at the WEAPON and know that, but the part of Cloud that had held in his arms a little kid with too much smarts and not much else glowed with pride.
The WEAPON's roar echoed inside Cloud's head.
…
Sephiroth killed one of these, albeit with a small squad of SOLDIERs behind him, and Elfé killed one. Zack wasn't entirely sure but he thought he recognized the name as one associated with rather dubious superhuman experimentation some time ago, and she still hadn't survived.
Torpedoes from the submarine exploded in a brief rush of flames, quickly drowned by the ocean, and enormous bursts of superheated water. It didn't even faze the WEAPON, didn't stop it from advancing slowly like it was the creation of some dramatic supervillain.
"Plan B?" asked Aeris, and Zack growled, "Fuck it, fire everything."
Torpedoes, missiles, gods knew what; mud was churned up in a thick tornado that swallowed both the WEAPON and the submarine, made the interior lights flicker wildly and Angeal curse softly as he nearly lost control. There was suddenly another blast, a roar so deep that it reverberated through the submarine and up through their feet, and Nanaki yelled, "The reactor!"
Zack was feeling distinctly mortal as Angeal fought with the shuddering submarine to get it back to the surface. The mud was clearing, but ignorance was definitely bliss when he realized that the WEAPON had stumbled onto the reactor, crushing its entire western side and overloading its core, mako spilling out like blood from a gut wound, barely slowed by the sheer strength of deep-ocean pressure. It was a haze of adrenaline and helplessness, trapped as they were by the confines of the submarine, their meek human biology, and their inability to use more powerful materia for fear of shattering the submarine itself.
The force of the exploding reactor propelled them upwards. The ship's hull creaked ominously as Zack's ears popped and nausea made bile rise in his throat, and only Aeris' repeated and frantic casting of a Cura kept him from vomiting his internal organs all over the floor.
"We're being followed," Angeal announced grimly, but then they broke the ocean's surface, sunlight flooding the cabin with blinding light. The submarine slammed to a hard stop, tossing everyone to the floor.
"You missed the harbor," Zack groaned into Aeris' elbow, but Angeal was more concerned with the blood streaking his forehead from where it had collided with the console. Likely concussion, Zack noted, looked around. Aeris was bruised but had been mostly cushioned by Zack's body, Sephiroth dazed but generally unharmed, blood on Cloud's chin where he'd bitten through his lip. Nanaki was limping.
Another roar, not unlike a thunderstorm.
"Everyone out!" Zack barked, slipping on the tilted angle of the floor, then slipping on the sand of the beach that looked to be a mile outside Junon. The brilliant sunshine would've made him wince through his already pounding skull if it wasn't being blocked by the shadow of the WEAPON rising from the ocean. It was a hundred feet high, maybe more, Zack didn't know except that it was fucking huge, and armored, because his life wasn't already difficult enough. The sunlight picked out the scars in its craggy hide with stark lines.
Oh shit.
…
Because the destruction at Nibelheim had been so absolute, no one in the outside world knew of it until Tifa and Zangan stumbled into Rocket Town, worn and exhausted. Meltdown, they said, everything was destroyed. We don't know if anyone else survived.
Nice and vague without actually naming any names. They'd been caught in the Nibel Mountains for the last several days, slowly making their way down to the next town, and so by the time they got there people were already panicking over ShinRa's assassinated president, Midgar's fallen Plate, the Diamond WEAPON, and what one or two of the more religiously inclined claimed to be signs of the apocalypse. News of Nibelheim being wiped off the map in less than an hour added fresh kindling to the fire.
"This is why one group ruling the world was always a ridiculous idea," growled an older man in the town's inn, "cut off the head and all the rest flails itself into extinction."
"Always were an anarchist, Miller," scoffed another. "Doesn't matter who's in charge, no one can take care of so many disasters all at once anyway. Can't blame ShinRa for that."
"Don't suppose one of you might have an extra bed you'd be willing to rent out for a couple nights," Tifa interrupted tiredly, bruised and sore and hungry, the skin on the right side of her torso blistered from heat four days ago. Zangan, in only slightly better shape, had her arm around his shoulders and was carrying most of her weight.
The innkeeper and her husband immediately hustled the two off into one of the ground-floor rooms with double beds and a little attached bathroom, the latter calling for a doctor. Tifa was just getting out of a short, painful bath and being wrapped in sensible clothes by the innkeeper when the doctor arrived, and he started poking around while the innkeeper's husband bullied Zangan into a bath of his own.
"Shouldn't have left these wounds so long. What happened?" the doctor asked, and Tifa briefly described a fire that had suddenly broken out in a basement, the bruising grip of her very small savior dragging her out and shoving her towards higher ground. She'd stumbled across her mentor and spent the next few days sleeping on cold forest floor and eating whatever she and Zangan could scare up. She felt like she should be crying right now, or feeling guilty, or…or raging, something, but the best she could muster was a distant ache in her heart and the overwhelming desire to sleep for a month. She now had the rest of her life to feel all those things, thanks to Cait Sith's death.
Tifa waited for the doctor to ask how the reactor had managed to have a meltdown, what happened to all the failsafes that ShinRa had always assured the public were safe from ever failing, but thankfully he seemed more concerned with ordering up a medicated salve and bandages, a couple potions, and a bowl of stew thick enough for the spoon to stand upright. She didn't realize how hungry she was until her stomach tried to claw its way out to the stew.
After the poking and prodding and fussing and overfeeding, Tifa curled on her left side like a comma under the bed's heavy quilt and slept for the next fifteen hours.
…
Elena was in the command center of the Junon military, pretending that the reason she was sitting still for such long stretches at a time was to intimidate the soldiers and not because of her burns, when her PHS rang. Her watch told her that the others had only been gone in the submarine for less than two hours, so who -
Unknown number, said her phone display. "Um. Hello?" she answered.
"Elena? It's Tifa. Are you okay? What happened to everyone else? Zack and Cloud aren't picking up their phones - "
Elena nearly dropped hers and ended up pulling painfully on her burns when she had to scramble to keep it from falling. "They're fine, everyone's fine, they're just, uh, underwater. Doing a thing."
"'A thing'?"
"Yes?"
"Don't do this to me, Elena," said Tifa sharply, sounding so, so tired, "don't start treating me like...just don't."
The frustrated helplessness in her voice struck Elena hard in the chest, reminding her that it wasn't so long ago she'd heard that exact same one in her own. "It's a WEAPON," she admitted quietly, automatically glancing around at the soldiers in the room. "Zack, Cloud, Aeris, Sephiroth, Angeal, and Nanaki went - oh, you don't know Nanaki, do you, he was another one of Hojo's prisoners."
"Cissnei?"
"Dead," Elena whispered. "So is Genesis."
"Vincent?"
"In Midgar, last I heard. Guy gets around. Tifa, how…how are you doing?"
"I feel like I went a round with a Summons, but at least I'm alive. I wouldn't be if Cait Sith…" Her voice trembled, but didn't break. "Zangan and I are in Rocket Town. I'm borrowing the innkeeper's phone."
"You memorized our numbers?" Elena asked, surprised.
"Just a couple. Can't be too careful when you're going into highly probably death, right?"
Maybe it made Elena somewhat sick, but the unexpectedly dry, dark humor was almost as sexy as Tifa's legs. "Yeah, about that," Elena started awkwardly.
"Elena, I'm not…I don't…" Tifa made a frustrated sound into the phone. "I don't know. I've never - um. There are so many things going on, I need time to think - "
"Yeah, totally, time to think, I can work with that. Unless you don't want me to work with that, I can do that too - "
"No, no, Elena, gods, just stop, that isn't an answer one way or the other, okay? Give me some time, we'll talk when we see each other again and the world isn't ending."
"What if it ends before then?" Elena definitely didn't sound a little plaintive right there, nope, she was cool as a cucumber and all that.
"It won't," Tifa replied firmly, and the weird thing was that she sounded like she truly believed that. Elena wasn't always the most practical person but she tried to be realistic about shit, and realism said that Tifa was being hopelessly optimistic. Thing was, Elena really wanted to believe her.
"Yeah, okay," she said softly, and hung up.
chapter 17 || main post || ...
Eir's Tomorrow
Chapter 18
Author:
jukeboxhound
FF7 || R || Sephiroth/Cloud || chapter: 7,850 words
The Planet isn't willing to let death take away its greatest weapon. If Cloud can't save the past, then he'll be damned to watch history repeat itself.
18.
Cloud woke up, or thought he did. He was lying on a soft surface, and there was some kind of weight resting across his chest. Something hummed beneath him and around him so quietly it was more sensation than sound.
"Cloud," rumbled a low voice, and he realized the weight was Sephiroth's arm on his chest. It pressed down on him and he wasn't sure how much longer he'd be able to keep breathing. "You can breathe," said Sephiroth, and Cloud's ribs expanded, didn't collapse under their own weight or snap into pieces. He kept his eyes closed. For a moment he thought he didn't have them - maybe they'd been carved out, or maybe he just hadn't been made with any, like those weird cave animals that lived in complete darkness all their lives.
"Cloud," Sephiroth repeated, and for a moment Cloud wanted to punch him. But the spike of fury passed as quickly as it'd come, and he found himself holding on to that one syllable. That was his name, his name, human and clumsy as it was. Cloud wasn't stupid; he knew there'd been a time (or maybe a few times, he wasn't really sure) when he'd been able to think in straight lines and the world made some sort of sense, but it was hard to remember what that felt like when there this was heavy fog slowly suffocating him.
"Where," he managed, and Sephiroth said, "We're on the Highwind. We left Wutai. Do you remember?"
The humming must be the ship, then. Opening his eyes a little, Cloud found that he was on his side in a narrow bunk, facing the wall of Sephiroth's chest, and a surge of blinding terror, of don't touch me, made his body freeze so suddenly a muscle in his back spasmed. "I," he tried, but his tongue twisted all wrong for words, and…and. What was he going to say? He couldn't remember. His shoulder blades itched. He could sense something dark and powerful in the east, directly where the Highwind was heading.
Without really thinking about it Cloud mentally reached out for Sephiroth, the utter familiarity of his presence (idol, officer, enemy, child, friend, more) oddly grounding. Sephiroth shifted but didn't tighten his hold or pull Cloud closer, so Cloud's muscles loosened a few degrees.
"What do you want?" Sephiroth whispered.
everyone's asking that lately
"We're concerned."
Another rush of fear. take care of myself not helpless not useless
Sephiroth couldn't help curling his arm tighter around Cloud and refused to let go even though Cloud shuddered. (Sephiroth had to bite down on his own anger, a little bit because of Cloud but mostly at the rest of the world.)
The solidness of Sephiroth's body was…was restraints, holding him down. A cold voice sliced through the flesh of his brain, specimen c is responding - and Cloud pulled back forcefully, unaware that his teeth were wolfishly bared or that there was a flurry of sound and feathers as wings arched threateningly wide. Sephiroth braced himself, ruthlessly pushing down his own instinct to fight back and holding himself completely still to wait for Cloud to make the first move.
Fortunately Cloud was on the open side of the bunk. He slid off, ending up on his ass with the wings slumped limply to either side and a weird mix of bemusement and anxiety on his face. Sephiroth leaned over with an arched brow.
"Sephiroth," Cloud managed in a gravelly voice, "where are we?"
"The Highwind," replied Sephiroth, and Cloud suddenly remembered that he'd already asked that, hadn't he. They'd been in Wutai, but now they'd left, and it was because there was still something wrong with the Planet that Cloud couldn't fix on his own. "We're going to Junon."
"Zack? Aeris?"
"They're here. They're on the main deck right now with everyone else, I assume."
Cloud's wings twitched as some of the tension in his shoulders bled out. That was good, no one was dead and Sephiroth was here and, in the grand scheme of things, the Planet still in the process of dying just didn't seem so terrible. Or maybe he was just too emotionally traumatized to think otherwise -
Cloud paused. That thought hadn't been his own.
"Sorry," said Sephiroth stiffly.
Cloud just shrugged and muttered, "Used to it. S'okay," though for some reason Sephiroth didn't seem to find that reassuring. Cloud pulled himself to his feet long enough to sit on the edge of the bed, not really noticing the way his wings were getting dragged awkwardly around until he felt the shock of Sephiroth's hands along their edges. For a long horrifying instant Cloud expected to hear a sharp snap, feel a sudden burst of agony bloom through the wings to twist around his spine, but instead they were settled gently behind him on the mattress. Cloud couldn't remember how to make them go away.
"I'm sorry," Sephiroth said again from behind him. Cloud frowned and tried to figure out what there was for Sephiroth to be sorry about. The hands on his wings slid to his shoulders, softly enough to avoid tweaking feathers, and the mattress dipped as Sephiroth shifted closer until Cloud could feel his body heat along his back, so diametrically different from the icy burn of mako that Cloud wasn't really sure what to do with himself. "I'm sorry, Cloud."
The clean lines of Sephiroth's mind was getting blurred with guilt and hate and, gods, so much anger, mostly at himself, a lot of it towards one or two other people whom Cloud was decidedly Not Thinking About. He made a quiet sound in the back of his throat when Sephiroth's forehead pressed against the back of his neck.
"I'm sorry I didn't figure it out sooner," he whispered. "I said I would help you and then Hojo - he - I'm sorry."
Cloud paused to gather what wits he had and said, "I'm sorry, I know you're not - not bad." 'Bad' wasn't really the word he was looking for and made him feel stupid, but he could sense Sephiroth's understanding. He looked down at himself and found loose pants and a bare chest, Sephiroth's long pale fingers curled over his shoulders and digging a little into his collarbone. His wings probably would've ripped through a shirt anyway. His physical body felt confining and heavy, somewhat grimy like he'd been sleeping in cold sweat, and he took a moment to straighten out his thoughts. If he was borrowing some of Sephiroth to put them all in order, Sephiroth either didn't notice or didn't mind.
"I think I would like to…" Bathe; wash; shower; rinse; clean. So many words for generally the same idea but with too many little nuances between them. Sephiroth got to his feet, moving slowly, and put a gentle hand at the small of Cloud's back to lead him to a door set in one wall of the room. The water ran warm in the ship's tiny shower and Cloud was momentarily distracted by the feel of soft linen sliding down his legs to puddle at his feet. It made him think of his mum's worn flannel quilts.
He distantly knew that Sephiroth was also naked, but it didn't seem so important. He ran a
hand down his chest, touching the lines of nearly healed cuts and immediately jerking back so he didn't have to think about how they'd gotten there, focusing instead on Sephiroth's hold on his shoulders as the man guided him into the shower. He slid his arms around Sephiroth's waist and leaned against him again, keeping himself together with warm skin, a steadily beating heart, and the cool presence of a mind that made him think of solitary moments on mountain peaks. I'm gonna be a SOLDIER, he'd once promised himself at the top of the mountains, and Cloud almost laughed at the ridiculousness of that thought.
…
Cloud was sleeping again when there was a series of gentle thumps at the door (must be paws) and Nanaki entered. Sephiroth had only been peripherally aware of him while in Wutai and all he knew was that Vincent and Zack had found Nanaki alongside Cloud in the lab.
"Hello," said Nanaki quietly, sitting on his haunches a few safe feet away. Cloud stirred a little but didn't wake. Sephiroth was sitting on the edge of the bed, head bowed, hand resting on Cloud's thigh as though he might disappear without warning. "How is he?"
There were so many ways to respond to that question. Sephiroth finally said, "Alive."
"How are you?"
"Not dead," Sephiroth deadpanned.
The silence stretched, Nanaki's tail waving back and forth as he apparently mulled something over. "I was there sometimes with him. He told me things he couldn't have known and Hojo never seemed to surprise him, but how?"
This creature was certainly straightforward, which at any other time would've been refreshing. Sephiroth's hand twitched and he wished for one violent, insane moment that he'd killed Hojo himself, and he wasn't sure if he was profoundly grateful or horribly, hatefully furious that he hadn't been the one to find Cloud. "I wish I knew why he's the one that has to carry all of this."
"He has you, doesn't he? And the others?"
Semantics, he didn't snarl. He was an adult, he could control his temper, damnit, this wasn't like him at all. (But it was, he'd just been very, very good at keeping it all locked away behind steel towers and hopelessness and military orders.)
"You care for him."
"He doesn't make it easy," Sephiroth murmured without intending to and immediately felt like he'd exposed a soft underbelly. Nanaki's flaming tail still waved lazily back and forth, the rest of him still and thoughtful.
"You think he's selfish?" Nanaki asked carefully, and Sephiroth had no idea why he'd chosen that particular adjective when Sephiroth hadn't even hinted at it, how he'd even gotten into this almost-conversation.
"I don't know." The words were so soft they were nearly inaudible.
"My grandfather used to say that everyone is driven by selfishness but that it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. We protect our loved ones to protect ourselves."
"Even if we die for them?" Sephiroth asked shrewdly.
"Especially then. We're not the ones that have to keep living without them." When Sephiroth just stared at him, Nanaki admitted, "I came down to tell you that the others would like to speak with you, but you two seemed…busy, so I waited outside the door."
"And what did you grandfather used to say about eavesdropping?"
"If you get caught, pretend you had intended to get caught all along."
Of course he had.
…
Zack, Aeris, Angeal, and Cid all looked at Fenrir. The wolf stared back, panting happily with perked ears and a wagging tail.
"When we decided to go save the world," said Zack, "I have to admit that I didn't imagine a wolf coming with us."
"Mm," Angeal agreed.
"What do we do with him?" Zack asked, and Aeris answered, "Well, if we crash in some snowy area, we could cuddle with him for warmth."
"If I find toothmarks on so much as a boot, I'm turning him into grease rags," Cid growled. "Give him to the lovebirds below deck and keep him the fuck away from the chocobos."
Fenrir's tail thumped happily.
Later, they gathered on the main deck by the navigation controls where Cid had a large map of the world pinned to the wall. Aeris stood beside Zack, Nanaki sitting between them and Cid, while Fenrir was crouched near the doorway, unwilling to approach Nanaki but just as unwilling to let him out of his sight. Cloud and Sephiroth stood a few paces back, the former pressed against Sephiroth with half-closed eyes as though he were nearly asleep on his feet. Zack felt a spike of protectiveness for both of them, for all of these people, really, and then wondered when he'd started turning into his parents.
"Okay," said Zack smartly, popping the cap off a marker, "we've had one WEAPON here, and one here." He put great big 'X's on the map over Mideel and the plains just outside of Midgar, paused, and then added a couple frowny-faces. He would've added little penises with angry eyebrows to more effectively demonstrate his feelings on the matter if Angeal hadn't interrupted with a quiet, "Zack."
Zack coughed. "Anyway, Cloud says we've got three more on the way."
"Do we know where?" asked Nanaki. Fenrir's ears twitched.
Zack looked at Cloud and Sephiroth. Sephiroth didn't seem to have anything to say, but Cloud stepped forward, sliding very carefully between Nanaki and Aeris, to peer at the map, with Fenrir following close on his heel. After a moment he reached for the pen in Zack's hands and took it with just as much care not to touch any skin. He trailed his free fingers over the map, whispering to himself under his breath.
When his touch passed over the desert around the Gold Saucer, he made a circle, then repeated it over the shore off Junon. His forehead creased in a frown as he drew a thick, wandering line from one continent to the other.
"Junon and the Gold Saucer?" interpreted Zack, and he startled when Cloud murmured a rough, "Yes."
"The third one moves often, and quickly," Sephiroth added, understanding the wavering line bridging the ocean.
"Right now we're not far from the Saucer. Do we know anything about it? Sephiroth, Aeris?"
"All I hear is the Planet. I'm not sure if it's responding to what Cloud went through, what happened in Nibelheim, or if it's something else entirely," said Aeris. "It's almost like…it's desperate. Like something's gone really wrong."
"You needed the Planet to tell you that?" Cid snarked.
"Is that why it isn't stopping these WEAPONs?"
"Maybe."
"An entity as old and large as the Planet is unlikely to be capable of reacting very quickly once it builds up momentum," Sephiroth broke in.
Trust Sephiroth to see it all in terms of physics and natural laws. "Okay, so what's the goal here?" Zack asked. "Self-preservation, obviously, but from what?"
"Jenova," Cloud said quietly, which drew odd looks and Aeris saying, "Cloud, whatever cells are left from her are useless, remember?"
Cloud scruffled Fenrir's ears and didn't answer. Zack was mildly disturbed by the…possessive? Jealous?...look on Sephiroth's face as he watched Cloud's hands. "Jenova may be gone, but the reactors aren't," said Sephiroth neutrally. "The Planet is still being drained. Cloud had always intended to take down the ShinRa Company, but if what Vincent told Zack is true then part of the problem has already been resolved."
"What, most of the Plate getting taken out? That's not something to be celebrated, Sephiroth," Zack said sternly. "Lots of good people are dead."
"Celebrated, no. Used to our advantage, yes."
Nanaki broke off his staring contest with the wolf to interrupt what could have easily turned into an argument on tactics, ethics, and possibly insults on each other's ancestry. "My people's work in Cosmo Canyon suggested that destroying the mako reactors would be the most effective way to slow the Planet's decline."
"One down, several more to go," Angeal said quietly.
"How are we going to convince people to just turn off their primary source of power?" Zack groaned. Cloud furrowed his brow.
"North Corel, they - the people there, they mine. Alternative fuel. Barret."
"It seems North Corel has begun mining coal for power," Sephiroth explained, too concerned with looking closely at Cloud to notice the way Zack and the others were looking at him. "We may be able to convince them to shut down the reactor of their own volition. Barret Wallace is one of the leading miners there, I believe."
Do you realize how creepy it is when you two do that, Zack wondered, not because this was Cloud and Sephiroth - which was still bizarre to think about, a few months ago Zack would've laughed hysterically if someone had told him a SOLDIER general and a cadet would end up like this - but because all of this had started happening so damn fast, going from mere acquaintances to, to a hivemind in a matter of weeks, and oh god he wasn't going to be able to keep reading the science fiction novels he sometimes stole off Reno. But Zack knew, beyond any doubt, that if something happened to just one of them then it was only a matter of time until the other died, and that little piece of knowledge was enough to make him start weighing the pros and cons of finding a safehouse in which he could securely lock the two down until the world stopped ending.
"Angeal, I'd like you to make that call, please," Sephiroth was still saying, and Angeal nodded once.
"Looks like we've got a couple more stops before we save the world - with a wolf, thanks - and have everyone call us heroes. I suggest we take the time to prepare," Zack added, going for cheerful and knowing he fell flat.
…
Zack was on the phone with Reeve when the Highwind began passing over the Gold Saucer. "The map," he said loudly, a hand clamped over the mouthpiece of the PHS, people already beginning to check over their weapons, but Cloud replied, "It's still asleep. Don't stop," and the ship went on without incident.
Sephiroth looked at the map, troubled.
But he said there were three more.
…
Even with his front-row seat to the drama that was the inside of Cloud's head, Sephiroth didn't actually know what Aeris was doing. She was sitting cross-legged on the bunk in front of Cloud, who mirrored her, and carefully held one of his hands as Sephiroth hovered in the corner of their room. He knew she'd been talking with some of the Wutaian doctors before they left, but their practice of medicine was different enough from the eastern one with which he was most familiar that he could only guess what was going on.
His body's already mostly healed, she'd said, gods know how the Planet changed him. It's his mind, Sephiroth, and there's no potion or quick fix for that.
But with his connection to the Lifestream, shouldn't he essentially be connected to the purest source of healing? he'd demanded.
The Lifestream is made of as much death as it is life, Sephiroth. If every living thing is born from the Lifestream, where did you think it all goes when they die?
Sometimes Aeris talked gently, and sometimes they just sat in silence. Cloud never said a word.
What's wrong with him?
Besides the consequences of being tortured by Hojo, you mean? she asked dryly. Cloud was born as a single, mortal human, but now he has access to millions of years of a billion other lives. It's like trying to hear your own voice in a room full of screaming people. He was never meant to be…this.
'This'?
When Aeris would leave after several hours of this process, Cloud would be able to hold most of a short verbal conversation. It lasted a little longer each time for the couple days they were on the ship, although once or twice he fell into a shaking, senseless heap of cold sweat pressed tightly against Sephiroth's chest as though he were the only thing keeping Cloud grounded in reality.
…
The last time Elena had felt anywhere near so shitty, she'd woken in a spare bed upstairs in Seventh Heaven with beer soaked into her nice shirt and the dim hallway light threatening to crack her skull in half. She'd promptly vomited onto the floor and hoped that Cloud felt just as horrible, unaware that he'd somehow ended up in a Sector Two church with Aeris and Reno laughing over him, and had had to clean herself up under Elfé's flat glare.
This time, though, she had third-degree burns to go along with the migraine and the exhaustion, and nothing could hurt quite like burns did. A whimper managed to drag itself out of her throat before a wonderfully, beautifully cool hand settled over her forehead.
"Welcome back," said Aeris gently. "Here's a potion, it'll help."
A curved glass rim pressed against her lips. Potions always tasted bizarre, a little like fresh grass but more like the jolt that came from licking a nine-volt battery, not that Elena would ever do something like that, not at all, and also like the dim, aching memories she had of her mother. The pain lessened, and she felt like she was just recovering from drills on the parade ground rather than a blackout bender.
"You're on the Highwind," Aeris told her, giving Elena the distinct impression that this had become something of a speech lately, "and we're on the way to Junon."
"How long have you been sitting there?" she rasped.
"Ten minutes or so."
"How did you know I was waking up?" she demanded suspiciously, coughing.
"I have good timing. What's the last thing you remember?"
Cloud getting himself kidnapped like an idiot, she thought, irritated with the world in general and pretending that said kidnappers hadn't also gotten past her and a SOLDIER. Oh yeah, she was a Turk now, that was pretty cool, she should go to a bar and celebrate. Probably not a bar in which Elfé worked. Nibelheim - the ShinRa mansion, which had both Hojo and Cloud, and their intrepid rescue party had split up to do their respective thing. She may or may not have kissed Tifa, that would depend on whether Tifa had liked it or not.
"We were in the labs, I think Cissnei and I went to…the library? Gods, Hojo doesn't know shit about organizing papers, I thought I was bad. There was a fire?"
"There was," Aeris confirmed. "Vincent managed to get you out, but you were still burned pretty badly."
Elena's first reaction was to mentally thank the gods that she'd left the explosives with Tifa and not in her pockets, the second was to swear vengeance on something if her trigger finger was fucked up, and the third was a mental note to throw a royal shitfit if her hair had gotten burned off.
"We got Cloud out and Hojo's dead, but, Elena…"
After Aeris left, Elena stopped trying to blink back the tears. At least Tifa had only been separated from the group, had still survived (she had, Elena wasn't going to believe anyone else was dead unless she saw the fucking body; she was tired of secondhand bad news, sorry, but your sister died in the line of duty a thousand miles from home, at least it was an honorable death and she'll probably get posthumous honors, or Cissnei, just in the wrong place at the wrong time with all the right intentions). Easy to hate Cloud, who seemed to attract people like stars orbiting closer to a black hole, who won their loyalty without even trying or sometimes even realizing it. What was it about Cloud that made the Planet sit up and take notice or made people willing to walk through Hell for him?
But then…he'd never asked for it, more often than not went out of his way to avoid people and never once demanded anything, and, well, this wasn't black-and-white shit, was it. All came down to people's choices, for better or worse, and if this was what it meant to be an adult, Elena wondered if she could take her teenager-ness back, please.
Elena struggled to sit up, biting her lip at the pain of her burns being stretched under their bandages. She was wearing loose cotton pants and just enough bandages wrapped around her chest to preserve her modesty, but nothing else, probably to keep from irritating her cracked skin as much as possible. How thoughtful.
A new suit was folded neatly on the small chair beside her bunk, not a proper Turk one but still cleanly cut and dark blue. Her pistol was underneath it, thank the gods that the heat of the fire hadn't set it off or anything, and there was a small washbasin that let her slowly, painfully wash her face. It helped her feel a little more alive and capable of facing everyone else and what was, at some point in the near future, likely going to be a horribly violent death.
…
Cid muttered darkly to himself when an operator told him that Midgar was closed to transports and that he'd have to land in Junon.
"Of course we do," said Zack.
"Think of it as saving a trip from Midgar to Junon," Aeris volunteered. "Cloud, do you know where the WEAPON is?"
"Underwater," he replied softly. At least Junon had remained unscathed thus far.
"Well, crap. So, what, we wait for it to come rampaging towards the city then?"
"We get a submarine."
"What? Where?"
"The harbor."
No one in Cloud's state of mind should've been able to pull off such a perfect note of sarcasm, Zack mused in admiration as Sephiroth hid a small smile.
As they approached, Zack noticed a drastic increase in the number of military stationed around the city's borders and an obvious lack of civilian activity, as though everyone had decided to stay home despite the pleasant sunny day. The uniforms of ShinRa personnel stood out against the city's drabness in long, thick lines of blue and red far below.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"I imagine the city's on high-alert after the last WEAPON that came through this way," Aeris reminded him, and he winced, reflecting on their latest haphazard plan and wondering how the hell they were supposed to steal a submarine under tripled guard. Elena, standing beside them with white bandages wrapped around half the surface area of her body because she refused to stay in bed, frowned but didn't say anything.
When they finally landed the guards refused to let them disembark without a lengthy search, and Cid hissed and spat as ShinRa guards crawled all over his ship before bellowing that he wasn't carrying anything other than the usual trade cargo and a collection of idiots determined to martyr themselves for the world, get the fuck off before their regulations got shoved so far up their collective asses that President ShinRa would've choked on them if he hadn't already been dead. The guards slunk back to their posts like scolded dogs, and Zack nearly bit his lip bloody trying not to laugh as Cid stayed behind with his beleaguered crew. Zack's own party headed into the village below the city.
Or they would have, if they hadn't been almost immediately ambushed by a little girl with too many pointy things on her tiny person.
"You," Zack said fervently. Yuffie huffed and ignored him with great dignity in favor of Cloud, who was trailing along behind Sephiroth like a shadow.
"I have something for you, although between you and me I think I should keep it, I mean it's pretty awesome and I'm a real warrior and also it's kind of shiny. I'm just saying, don't feel bad if you decide to let me keep it, I'll totally take care of it."
Cloud stopped in his tracks and stared at her, looking torn between interest and wariness. Sephiroth somehow managed to loom without actually moving as she reached for the enormous wrapped bundle strapped to her back, looking suspiciously similar to the approximate size and weight of the Buster, and held it out. Cloud accepted it with both hands, let the linen slide off to reveal a blade made of…well, there was metal, and what looked like bone ivory for the handle, of all things, which really wasn't the best idea for a large combat weapon, with something pearly white and blue and hard as stone forming the hilt, edging up along the blunt side of the blade. It was somewhere between five and six feet long, about the same as the Buster, but slightly narrower. Despite the ridiculousness of its size, Cloud didn't seem to have any trouble lifting the thing.
"What," said Zack flatly, and Yuffie tossed him a filthy look for cheapening the drama.
"Yoshida-san made it, well, sort of, some of the men helped her with the forging bits, I think you've met her?"
"Yes," Cloud said carefully, probably having to actually think hard on it while simultaneously being distracted with running a free hand over the weapon.
"She said a hero needs a hero's sword." Yuffie sounded rather incredulous.
"Not a hero," Cloud spat with sudden weird intensity, then turned back to the sword. "The materials, they aren't - they're not normal."
"Yoshida-san got people to get her pieces of the WEAPONs that've been taken down so far, I guess, I dunno. She made me hitch a ride with some people hightailing it out of Midgar, like, two days ago." She clearly wasn't impressed with these nameless people's unwillingness to stick out the hard part of rebuilding a fallen city.
"She used pieces of WEAPONs?" Zack cried. "How?"
"I don't know. If it was that easy then everyone would be doing it, wouldn't they?"
Aeris giggling behind her hand didn't make Zack feel any more endeared towards Yuffie.
…
It wasn't the Buster and it wasn't Tsurugi, but the weight of a sword, any sword, in his hand was reassuringin a way that only the occasional wash of calm from Sephiroth could be. He didn't have a scabbard or harness, so he rewrapped it and let the blade rest against a shoulder with a tight grip on the handle.
"Cloud, should you really be the one to carry that?" Elena asked bluntly. She'd been unusually quiet since she'd woken up, but when she did talk she'd done it to Cloud's face, straightforward and entirely uncaring of Sephiroth and Zack's narrow-eyed looks. You're traumatized, not stupid, she'd declared just before leaving the Highwind, and until you prove that you don't understand me then I'm going to talk to you.
So Cloud did her the favor of reflecting honestly on her question. It wasn't the Buster and it wasn't Tsurugi, but the new sword felt right, and it was his, and this was something he knew how to do even when he forgot his name.
"Yes," he said after a minute. She stared at him expectantly, but when he didn't elaborate she sighed and muttered, "Fine, just make sure you swing it in the right direction."
Cloud twined his fingers through Sephiroth's belt loops and closed his eyes as they headed towards the elevator in the village that would take them up to the city proper, tried to ignore the vague disorientation that wanted him to go find a dolphin that would take them up the power grid instead. (He didn't think he was making that up, either). Nanaki walked close enough that every few steps Cloud could feel glass beads and feathers bump gently against his elbow. The beads made a rhythmic tinkling sound that reminded him of the small streams that crisscrossed the Nibel Mountains, and a little bit of the sound Holy made as it fell from Aeris' hands and bounced down white stairs, but then the tinkling stopped and Cloud opened his eyes to the interior of the elevator.
"Cozy," Elena observed. "Just so we're clear, I like you guys, but not like that."
One of Sephiroth's hands snuck back and wrapped itself somewhat too tightly around Cloud's wrist.
Things didn't go so smoothly when they got to the top.
"Strip," commanded the leader of a military squad.
"What?" Yuffie squawked, but Cloud was more concerned with the guards' weapons, mostly rifles but with the odd pistol and blade, pointing in their direction, more specifically at Sephiroth and Zack and Aeris, which just - he felt the itch in his shoulderblades, the weight of the sword in his hand, the burst of adrenaline in his body.
Elena snapped, "The hell do you think you're doing, soldier?"
"We're on high alert, protocol states - "
"You're looking at three SOLDIERs, two of which are generals, a SOLDIER candidate, and a gods-damned Turk. By the way, did I mention the generals? You really want to go there right now?"
"But, uh, ma'am - "
"We're here to monitor the progress of all currently known WEAPONs," Angeal broke in calmly. "You weren't forewarned because communication from Midgar is still unstable."
In the end, they didn't have to sneak around or steal anything; they ended in the harbor looking up at a submarine being prepared for their use by harried dockworkers with the blessing of the local military command.
"This was much more interesting the first time we did this," Cloud said mildly.
They got onto the submarine with only two minor incidents. Zack had managed to convince Yuffie to stay behind, and if it had involved a number of threats and possibly a rope and a lamppost, sometimes the ends did indeed justify the means. When it was pointed out to Elena that her extensive injuries already made walking difficult, how did she expect to handle a full-out battle, Cloud was bracing himself for a tirade. Instead she opened her mouth, paused, then closed it and turned away on her heel.
Cloud exchanged looks with Zack, but the thought to be concerned about Elena unraveled and drifted away as the submarine descended under the water, portholes turning blue-black and the sense of pressure surrounding the fragile metal shell that was the only thing keeping them from being crushed. Oh Hel. He could feel it choking him, clogging thick in his lungs.
"Breathe," Sephiroth whispered to him, and Cloud found himself automatically reaching out with mental hands to pull the essence of someone else around him like a thick, muffling blanket. The sword hummed under his hands, the pieces of the two fallen WEAPONs sounding like someone running their finger around the rim of a crystal glass and the bone ivory pleased with being surrounded by water.
"This isn't from a monster," Cloud muttered aloud to himself, tapping at the ivory.
Up ahead through the cockpit a light began rising through the blackness, running in a long line before arching up and over like a large, square hill - the reactor, Cloud remembered, and its glass-covered corridor, hulking and inelegant as a mechanical spider squatting on the ocean floor. It might have been intimidating if there wasn't an even larger shape lurking over it.
"I believe the WEAPONs are getting progressively larger," Sephiroth observed. It was dark green and as deeply scarred as volcanic rock, its mountain-solid legs in danger of crushing the Junon reactor. As they watched it started to shudder, rocking the submarine with increasingly powerful currents.
emerald
This was the first time Cloud had encountered a WEAPON for - for years, anyway, not since he'd killed Sephiroth in the Northern Crater (his mind immediately skittered away from the memory, looped back around, thought of CHAOS in Vincent's head but knew it wasn't the same thing) and it sang, not as loudly as the Planet or the stars but enough to make his head ring.
Enemy, it said.
we don't want to destroy you we want to save the planet humanity too
Family. Littermate. Confusion.
go back to sleep
Incomprehension. The sense of betrayal.
go back to sleep
The submarine tilted sharply as the WEAPON rose, cracking apart into an identifiable head and long, insect-like wing carapaces that dwarfed the submarine. It was vaguely humanoid but utterly inhuman, eyes like deep holes scraped into solid stone and then filled up with the darkness of a very old, very skilled predator.
"Remind me why using a submarine was a good idea," Zack muttered.
Angeal was pulling up what looked like every available weapons system on the ship. Cloud sensed Sephiroth beginning to draw on the materia equipped to the Masamune and the slim adamantium bangle on his wrist, a Command and a Mime to counter what would obviously be a devastating attack. It didn't take a genius to look at the WEAPON and know that, but the part of Cloud that had held in his arms a little kid with too much smarts and not much else glowed with pride.
The WEAPON's roar echoed inside Cloud's head.
…
Sephiroth killed one of these, albeit with a small squad of SOLDIERs behind him, and Elfé killed one. Zack wasn't entirely sure but he thought he recognized the name as one associated with rather dubious superhuman experimentation some time ago, and she still hadn't survived.
Torpedoes from the submarine exploded in a brief rush of flames, quickly drowned by the ocean, and enormous bursts of superheated water. It didn't even faze the WEAPON, didn't stop it from advancing slowly like it was the creation of some dramatic supervillain.
"Plan B?" asked Aeris, and Zack growled, "Fuck it, fire everything."
Torpedoes, missiles, gods knew what; mud was churned up in a thick tornado that swallowed both the WEAPON and the submarine, made the interior lights flicker wildly and Angeal curse softly as he nearly lost control. There was suddenly another blast, a roar so deep that it reverberated through the submarine and up through their feet, and Nanaki yelled, "The reactor!"
Zack was feeling distinctly mortal as Angeal fought with the shuddering submarine to get it back to the surface. The mud was clearing, but ignorance was definitely bliss when he realized that the WEAPON had stumbled onto the reactor, crushing its entire western side and overloading its core, mako spilling out like blood from a gut wound, barely slowed by the sheer strength of deep-ocean pressure. It was a haze of adrenaline and helplessness, trapped as they were by the confines of the submarine, their meek human biology, and their inability to use more powerful materia for fear of shattering the submarine itself.
The force of the exploding reactor propelled them upwards. The ship's hull creaked ominously as Zack's ears popped and nausea made bile rise in his throat, and only Aeris' repeated and frantic casting of a Cura kept him from vomiting his internal organs all over the floor.
"We're being followed," Angeal announced grimly, but then they broke the ocean's surface, sunlight flooding the cabin with blinding light. The submarine slammed to a hard stop, tossing everyone to the floor.
"You missed the harbor," Zack groaned into Aeris' elbow, but Angeal was more concerned with the blood streaking his forehead from where it had collided with the console. Likely concussion, Zack noted, looked around. Aeris was bruised but had been mostly cushioned by Zack's body, Sephiroth dazed but generally unharmed, blood on Cloud's chin where he'd bitten through his lip. Nanaki was limping.
Another roar, not unlike a thunderstorm.
"Everyone out!" Zack barked, slipping on the tilted angle of the floor, then slipping on the sand of the beach that looked to be a mile outside Junon. The brilliant sunshine would've made him wince through his already pounding skull if it wasn't being blocked by the shadow of the WEAPON rising from the ocean. It was a hundred feet high, maybe more, Zack didn't know except that it was fucking huge, and armored, because his life wasn't already difficult enough. The sunlight picked out the scars in its craggy hide with stark lines.
Oh shit.
…
Because the destruction at Nibelheim had been so absolute, no one in the outside world knew of it until Tifa and Zangan stumbled into Rocket Town, worn and exhausted. Meltdown, they said, everything was destroyed. We don't know if anyone else survived.
Nice and vague without actually naming any names. They'd been caught in the Nibel Mountains for the last several days, slowly making their way down to the next town, and so by the time they got there people were already panicking over ShinRa's assassinated president, Midgar's fallen Plate, the Diamond WEAPON, and what one or two of the more religiously inclined claimed to be signs of the apocalypse. News of Nibelheim being wiped off the map in less than an hour added fresh kindling to the fire.
"This is why one group ruling the world was always a ridiculous idea," growled an older man in the town's inn, "cut off the head and all the rest flails itself into extinction."
"Always were an anarchist, Miller," scoffed another. "Doesn't matter who's in charge, no one can take care of so many disasters all at once anyway. Can't blame ShinRa for that."
"Don't suppose one of you might have an extra bed you'd be willing to rent out for a couple nights," Tifa interrupted tiredly, bruised and sore and hungry, the skin on the right side of her torso blistered from heat four days ago. Zangan, in only slightly better shape, had her arm around his shoulders and was carrying most of her weight.
The innkeeper and her husband immediately hustled the two off into one of the ground-floor rooms with double beds and a little attached bathroom, the latter calling for a doctor. Tifa was just getting out of a short, painful bath and being wrapped in sensible clothes by the innkeeper when the doctor arrived, and he started poking around while the innkeeper's husband bullied Zangan into a bath of his own.
"Shouldn't have left these wounds so long. What happened?" the doctor asked, and Tifa briefly described a fire that had suddenly broken out in a basement, the bruising grip of her very small savior dragging her out and shoving her towards higher ground. She'd stumbled across her mentor and spent the next few days sleeping on cold forest floor and eating whatever she and Zangan could scare up. She felt like she should be crying right now, or feeling guilty, or…or raging, something, but the best she could muster was a distant ache in her heart and the overwhelming desire to sleep for a month. She now had the rest of her life to feel all those things, thanks to Cait Sith's death.
Tifa waited for the doctor to ask how the reactor had managed to have a meltdown, what happened to all the failsafes that ShinRa had always assured the public were safe from ever failing, but thankfully he seemed more concerned with ordering up a medicated salve and bandages, a couple potions, and a bowl of stew thick enough for the spoon to stand upright. She didn't realize how hungry she was until her stomach tried to claw its way out to the stew.
After the poking and prodding and fussing and overfeeding, Tifa curled on her left side like a comma under the bed's heavy quilt and slept for the next fifteen hours.
…
Elena was in the command center of the Junon military, pretending that the reason she was sitting still for such long stretches at a time was to intimidate the soldiers and not because of her burns, when her PHS rang. Her watch told her that the others had only been gone in the submarine for less than two hours, so who -
Unknown number, said her phone display. "Um. Hello?" she answered.
"Elena? It's Tifa. Are you okay? What happened to everyone else? Zack and Cloud aren't picking up their phones - "
Elena nearly dropped hers and ended up pulling painfully on her burns when she had to scramble to keep it from falling. "They're fine, everyone's fine, they're just, uh, underwater. Doing a thing."
"'A thing'?"
"Yes?"
"Don't do this to me, Elena," said Tifa sharply, sounding so, so tired, "don't start treating me like...just don't."
The frustrated helplessness in her voice struck Elena hard in the chest, reminding her that it wasn't so long ago she'd heard that exact same one in her own. "It's a WEAPON," she admitted quietly, automatically glancing around at the soldiers in the room. "Zack, Cloud, Aeris, Sephiroth, Angeal, and Nanaki went - oh, you don't know Nanaki, do you, he was another one of Hojo's prisoners."
"Cissnei?"
"Dead," Elena whispered. "So is Genesis."
"Vincent?"
"In Midgar, last I heard. Guy gets around. Tifa, how…how are you doing?"
"I feel like I went a round with a Summons, but at least I'm alive. I wouldn't be if Cait Sith…" Her voice trembled, but didn't break. "Zangan and I are in Rocket Town. I'm borrowing the innkeeper's phone."
"You memorized our numbers?" Elena asked, surprised.
"Just a couple. Can't be too careful when you're going into highly probably death, right?"
Maybe it made Elena somewhat sick, but the unexpectedly dry, dark humor was almost as sexy as Tifa's legs. "Yeah, about that," Elena started awkwardly.
"Elena, I'm not…I don't…" Tifa made a frustrated sound into the phone. "I don't know. I've never - um. There are so many things going on, I need time to think - "
"Yeah, totally, time to think, I can work with that. Unless you don't want me to work with that, I can do that too - "
"No, no, Elena, gods, just stop, that isn't an answer one way or the other, okay? Give me some time, we'll talk when we see each other again and the world isn't ending."
"What if it ends before then?" Elena definitely didn't sound a little plaintive right there, nope, she was cool as a cucumber and all that.
"It won't," Tifa replied firmly, and the weird thing was that she sounded like she truly believed that. Elena wasn't always the most practical person but she tried to be realistic about shit, and realism said that Tifa was being hopelessly optimistic. Thing was, Elena really wanted to believe her.
"Yeah, okay," she said softly, and hung up.
chapter 17 || main post || ...