Beloved, Chapter 19

[sinnatious]

Title: Beloved

Rating: , for violence, language, slash.

Summary: FVII, post DoC. Genesis/Cloud, one-sided Tifa/Cloud. It all starts when Cloud tries to leave during the middle of a Loveless performance.

Author’s Note: t has been a week of extremes!  Awesome things  (Gabriel Iglesias in Australia!  Nights out in swanky Victorian-themed bars on the company credit card!) combined with stressful work things (the build, the build, the build is on fire), overridden save games (nooooooooooooooooo), and not enough sleep in general.  The only relevant part is that last bit, so if you find any weird sentences or mistakes in this chapter it's totally my fault and not Little House's.  Who I would like to thank as usual for the beta.  :)  Hope you like this chapter!


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Beloved Chapter 19

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It took a moment for Cloud to figure out why exactly that name sounded familiar.

The leader of Tsviets.  The man who had channelled Omega.

“I thought Vincent killed him.”

“He survived.  Though not unscathed.”

Realisation mixed with disbelief, and the initial stirrings of betrayal.

“You knew,” Cloud said in a low voice.  “You knew it wasn’t a clone all along.”

“I was not entirely certain,” Genesis corrected.  He folded his wing in close, as though for protection.  “Weiss is not exactly a clone after all.  But everything else matched.”

It shouldn’t have been such a blow.  He’d known there was a connection from the very beginning.  As the weeks dragged on, he’d begun to doubt, but he’d been a fool.  Genesis was an actor.  How could he have trusted any reaction, ever thought he truly knew the SOLDIER standing in front of him?  Ever let himself believe there was anything more to it?  He’d known, he’d been sure Genesis was only interested due to the lack of available partners, that it was nothing but lust and convenience, but after he’d heard about him waiting at the Church… he’d let himself hope.  Wanted to believe.

Yet all he’d really done was close his eyes and fool himself, let himself forget about the clone and his doubts so he could burrow in the physical and emotional comfort Genesis had offered.  The knowledge of how stupid he’d been stung like salt on a still-healing wound.

“You’ve been lying, all this time,” he said.

Genesis shifted in place uncomfortably, though his expression remained smoothly neutral.  “I hardly see how any of it matters.  We were looking for the same thing, in the end.”

It mattered.  Sephiroth was back, running loose in the world, and so was the leader of Tsviets.  It mattered a lot.

And the one sure ally he thought he had left had been lying to him all along.

“I have to go,” Cloud blurted.  The sense of threat was growing suffocating.  He couldn’t stay there for one more moment.

“Cloud-” Genesis reached out to grab his shoulder, but he sidestepped it sharply.

He had to move.  He had to act.  He’d wasted too much time already.  On automatic, he dropped down off the stage’s edge and stalked up the aisle to the exit.

“Cloud Strife!” Genesis called after him, voice as sharp as his sword.  “What do you intend to do?”

He paused briefly at the exit, just long enough to say, “We’re done here.”  Then he was gone, though the theatre doors, into the burning glare of Midgar before Genesis had the chance to respond.

His chest felt tight, and his head still throbbed from the encounter with Sephiroth.  It was hard to think through the swirling revelations, the choking fear and denial that never quite went away no matter how many times he faced his nightmares.  He moved entirely on instinct, pace picking up to a run as he leapt and ducked through the surrounding wreckage.

Running away, a voice that sounded remarkably like Tifa whispered in the back of his head, but he pushed it aside.  He couldn’t trust Tifa either.

……………………..

Tifa turned the sign in the window to ‘closed’.  The glass felt cool under her fingertips.

It was early yet, but the bar was empty, and she wasn’t in any state to be focusing on customers or dealing with rowdy drunks. 

The past few days had been some of the most gruelling of her life, and they hadn’t involved even a single monster.  The constant check-ins and questioning from the WRO and the Turks.  Hearing that Cloud had attacked Tseng.  That ominous black feather.  AVALANCHE seeming to come apart at the seams right before her eyes.

How had they reached this point?  Only a few months had passed since they had welcomed Shelke into the fold and fought down the DeepGround Uprising together. 

Now Nanaki all but growled at the sight of Reeve and Cait.  Vincent and Shelke had disappeared off the map. And Cloud was supposed to be the enemy.

Tifa couldn’t buy that.  Wouldn’t buy that.

Her footsteps sounded too loud in the oppressive silence.  She headed upstairs, pausing outside the empty office, before continuing past to Marlene and Denzel’s bedroom.

Marlene lay on the floor, drawing with crayons. Denzel sat on his bed, reading.

“Have you both done your homework?” Tifa asked.

“Yes,” they chorused – Marlene in a sing-song and Denzel in a sigh.  Tifa hesitated, suddenly recalling responding the very same to her parents when she’d first started going to lessons.  When had she become so old?

She shook off the thought quickly – though the memories of her parents no longer stung with grief, she was not ready to start comparing herself to them.  Thirty was still a few years away. 

Maybe she was simply feeling sentimental after the recent turmoil.  She came in and sat on the edge of Denzel’s bed – he shifted his legs somewhat grumpily to accommodate her.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to nag.  You’ve both been wonderful the past few days.  I know it’s been hard.”

Marlene smiled up at her.  “It’s okay.  I know you’re worried.”

“Cloud can’t come back, can he?” Denzel blurted.

Tifa stiffened.  The question had been percolating, she knew, and had dreaded the moment one of them would ask.  Now that the moment had arrived, though, she didn’t know how to answer.

“…No,” she finally admitted.  “Not here.  Not right now.  It’s not… safe for him.”

“It’s safe for us, but not for him?” Marlene asked.  She sounded confused, but her gaze held a hint of steel.  She was a sweet kid, but quickly growing too old for them to keep pulling the wool over her eyes.

“It’s complicated,” Tifa explained.  “…SOLDIER things.”

There was a moody silence as they digested that.  ‘SOLDIER things’ had at some point become AVALANCHE’s code for matters involving Sephiroth clones or Hojo.  Both children had come to recognise the phrase as a sign that no matter how much they asked, they wouldn’t get anything on that topic.

“…When can he come back?” Denzel finally ventured.

Tifa shrugged, and hoped it didn’t look as helpless as it felt.  Reeve had assured her the whole lockdown was only a temporary measure, but exactly how temporary was it?  A week?  Months?

Even when it ended, would they be able to coax Cloud back home? 

As though reading her thoughts, Denzel grumbled and hunched up in front of his book.

If that was the worst of the sulking she had to deal with, though, she was lucky.  “You’ve been more patient than I thought,” Tifa commented.  She’d been genuinely worried that when he heard his hero was in trouble, Denzel would immediately run off to try and ‘help’.

Denzel shrugged in return now, gaze shifting awkwardly off to the side.  “I have to be.  I promised.”

Tifa blinked.  “You spoke to Cloud?”  When?

He ducked his head.  “Not in person.”

At her blank stare, he reluctantly fished a half-torn piece of paper from his bedside table, scribbled with Cloud’s familiar handwriting.  It looked rushed, and her heart twisted at the thought.  Her fingers traced the words, until she could almost hear his voice in her head.

‘Denzel.  Some things have come up.  I’m sorry I can’t be there right now, but you don’t have to worry about me.  Promise you’ll take care of Tifa and Marlene in my place.’

“I’m not a little kid anymore,” Denzel said.  “Cloud gave me a job to do.  I can’t let him down.”

Tifa cradled the piece of paper in her hands.  Cloud still cared about them after all.  Enough to at least leave this note.

What had he been feeling as he wrote this?

It should have been such a simple thing to understand.  When had it become beyond her?  When had her childhood friend, her comrade, become such an enigma to her?

Carefully, Tifa returned the slip of paper.  Denzel’s cheeks were red as he took it back and tossed it aside, though it didn’t escape her notice that he darted a quick look to make sure it had landed safely on the table.

“Good for you,” she said.  “I certainly feel better knowing you’re looking out for me and Marlene.”

Marlene poked out her tongue.  “We’re almost the same age.  I don’t need a baby-sitter.”

Denzel made a face in return. 

Tifa smiled and left them to it, slipping from the room with a quiet reminder not to stay up too late.

Her footsteps barely disturbed the silence as she returned to her room.  The bar downstairs was quiet, and the guest room empty.  Barret had been called back to Corel the day before, to deal with some sort of industrial accident with the drilling.  Cid had flown him there.  Yuffie had taken off in search of Vincent. And while Nanaki was definitely still in town, he currently seemed to prefer prowling the streets at night and sleeping during the day.  He’d reacted rather poorly to the whole messy affair.

Everything had happened so slowly, so gradually, they hadn’t noticed anything was wrong until it blew up in their faces.  Even when Elena died, nobody seemed to believe it would come to this.

Once safely in the privacy of her room, she picked up her phone and dialled.

“Who the hell is it?  I’m trying to sleep here!”

“Sorry, Barret, I need a favour.  How soon do you think you can make it back here?”

Tifa was tired of sitting back and waiting.

……………………..

The thrum of helicopter blades receded in the distance.  Cloud waited until absolute silence pressed over Midgar once more, broken only by the whistle of breeze through the gaps of broken buildings. 

He shoved the panel of corrugated iron – a piece of warehouse roof, once upon a time – off to the side.  It clattered noisily to the ground, and he tensed, eyes tracking the wide blue sky.  He’d avoided the helicopter, but he thought he’d spotted Genesis’s silhouette in the distance earlier.

No sign of anything suspicious in the sky.  Good.  Hurt and fury still simmered in his chest.  Genesis had been on the clone’s – no, Weiss’s – side from the very beginning.  Even after everything he had told him, even after he’d been forced to flee Edge due to the WRO’s paranoia on what apparently was never a clone in the first place.

He’d trusted Genesis, in a way he’d not even been able to bring himself to trust Tifa.  And to have that thrown back in his face…

The anger burned, and he let it drive his feet forward as he darted through Midgar’s ruined streets.  It was a warm cloak, protecting him from fear and doubt – just as it had done the first two times he’d fought Sephiroth.  He took that fire, and forged it into focus.  This was Sephiroth’s fault, above all else.

He had to take care of it before anyone else could suffer.  Sephiroth was out there again, and nobody knew about it.  He didn’t have any way to warn anyone.  He’d left his phone behind, had cut off all means of contact short of going to Edge in person.  And going to Edge in person was no longer an option – he couldn’t risk being taken into custody, not with Sephiroth on the loose.

That meant it was up to him, and him alone.

He moved deeper into the city ruins, half following the lurking presence of the bond, half to avoid running across any remaining WRO scouting parties.  The same reasons they’d struggled to search for the clone – for Sephiroth, it turned out – would make it hard for them to find him.

Eventually, night began to cast its dark, cool cloak over Midgar.  Cloud’s steps gradually slowed, his sprint turning to a run turning to jog turning to a tired, cautious walk.  The distant, throaty calls of ahrimans and hounds returning to their lairs died off, leaving only the evening breeze shifting through the grit and debris of the ruins.  Tall, bent metal beams lined the street, slabs of torn chipboard and cheap plastic grimly clinging to their edges.  If he looked to the end of the road, he could see the hulking remains of ShinRa headquarters, a looming silhouette against a dusky sky.

There was nothing immediately recognisable about the area, but judging by the position of the ShinRa building, he was somewhere deep in Sector 2.  This particular part wasn’t an area he and Genesis had covered very thoroughly in their searches, largely because of the lack of surviving structures.  Omega’s fault, most likely.  It was just rubble, crumbling remains of buildings and piles of shattered concrete.

The thought of Genesis sent a stab of something very much like pain through his chest, but he ruthlessly shoved the thought aside.  There were more important things to worry about.

Sephiroth – Weiss – whoever it was, had to be close.  He could feel it, like an itch perpetually just out of reach.  It had appeared and disappeared throughout the day, leaving him stubbornly chasing the ghosts, the afterimages of it.  Terrified of losing the tail, only to discover it again on top of another pile of corpses.

He stopped in the remains of an intersection, the traffic lights tilted at awkward angles.  The bond flared briefly, and then stuttered once more into aggravating silence.

“Sephiroth!”  His voice bounced hauntingly across the emptiness.  “This ends here!”

Deep silence smothered the area.  Unnatural.  Cloud exhaled, reached for the bond, and felt it flutter just beyond his grasp like a nervous butterfly.  Taunting.  Teasing.

“Show yourself!”

Only echoes answered him.

Cloud refused to feel stupid for talking to himself.  This was just another game.  Sephiroth had been leading him on a wild chocobo chase all day, always just one step ahead.  For what purpose, he didn’t know.  Maybe something as petty as the fact that he knew it would frustrate him.

He was done dancing to that tune.  His anger had burned itself down to mere embers, and the ruins of Midgar were starting to feel less and less like sanctuary and more like a vast, lonely prison.

“I can do this all night.”  He might tire eventually, but so would Sephiroth.  And Cloud refused to be the first to give in.

Leather swooshed and silver flashed in the corner of his eye.

Cloud spun, but met only darkness and silence. 

His imagination?

He hated this.  It had been too long, and he’d grown used to ignoring the bond.  Had forgotten the way it made it difficult to trust his eyes and ears.  The shadows didn’t feel natural anymore – too dark and deep for the twilight hour.  The sort that hid monsters and nightmares. 

His breath felt like it was scraping against his throat, his heartbeat like a drum in his chest as his senses went hypersensitive, alert to even the faintest of sounds.  His fingers searched for First Tsurugi, for the reassuring weight of something solid.

“Cloud.”

He whirled, sword bared.  Sephiroth stood behind him.  Too close.  When-

The bond – the fragile, fleeting presence he’d followed all day – crashed over him like an icy tsunami, freezing his muscles, a numbing blanket of electricity paralysing him.

Sephiroth smirked, walking forward with condescending casualness.  “You’re all alone now, Cloud.”

He twitched, fingers trembling against the hold, struggling to keep their grip on First Tsurugi’s hilt.  Sephiroth moved closer, his gait unhurried, Masamune not even at the ready.  Unworried.  He stopped, close enough to touch, and raised his hand.

That was when Cloud struck.

The pressure vanished under the swipe of his sword, as Sephiroth had to split his attention to draw and block.  The clash of their swords rang across the ruins.

“That’s not going to work,” Cloud said.  “I’m prepared now.”  Then he twisted, and swung.

Sephiroth barely evaded – a sliver of leather floated free and vanished into shadow.  Masamune danced, striking and jabbing in retaliation, but to Cloud’s eyes it might as well have been moving underwater.  He sidestepped easily, and pushed forward, sweeping into a heavy cross-slash.  His opponent avoided the first two strikes and caught the third, stepping back to bear its weight.

“Did you miss me, Cloud?”  Sephiroth drawled.  “How hard life must be for a puppet without its master.”

Cloud responded by slamming First Tsurugi into the road.  Three razors of blue energy tore through the asphalt.  Sephiroth knocked the centre one aside with a slash of his blade – the others blew past him, sending his leather coat flapping.

Cloud was already moving into his next attack, pushing forward with wide, brutal swings.  Masamune met each strike, swords sparking and singing with each scrape as they blocked and parried.  Their blades tangled, and for a moment they fought with strength alone, muscles straining for advantage.

“I’ve been watching you from the Lifestream,” Sephiroth said, leaning forward into the lock.  “Have you begun to see yet?  How pathetic and scared humans are.”  The mako glow in his eyes flared.  “They fear you as they once feared me.”

A rising tide of static crawled through his bones.  Cloud twisted out of the block and lashed out with his elbow, going for the nose.  It missed, but the static receded.  Sephiroth landed gracefully a short distance away.

“Still so blind.  Still in denial,” Sephiroth taunted, words almost gentle in their mocking. 

“Quit talking,” Cloud snapped.  “I have nothing to say to you.”  He jumped into a half-height Braver.  Sephiroth whirled away, losing another sliver of his coat in the process.

Somewhere inside a grain of hope took hold, a bulwark against the barely-restrained fear. 

This was easy.  The strength and speed and technique were all there, but it was as though Sephiroth’s reflexes had dulled, half a second behind what they used to be.

Half a second was all Cloud needed.

He could win this.

The knowledge fuelled him as he dashed forward, First Tsurugi bared.  Sephiroth danced backwards, barely avoiding each strike and jab, Masamune a gleaming silver snake in the dusky light.  He retaliated in kind, but Cloud knocked each attack aside easily.  Too slow to concern him.

Some part of Sephiroth must have recognised his disadvantage, even if his expression didn’t shift from its usual condescending bemusement.  His taunts died away, replaced only with clashing steel.  His boots left thick trails in the dust instead of barely touching the ground.  His overwhelming offensive stance slowly slid into defence.

And still, Cloud pushed him back.  Each slash a little closer, a little heavier.  Driving his opponent into corners, knocking him off balance.  Turning that half a second into opportunities.

He could do it.  He could end this.

Sephiroth leapt into the sky, seeking distance, black wing spreading forth.  Cloud followed, twisting into a Sky Fang.  His blade raked through feathers.  They crashed into the side of a half-collapsed building.  He swept the billowing dust away with one broad sweep of his sword, and then knocked aside a slash from Masamune that tore through the ground half a breath later.

Then his worst enemy was standing there, off balance from a hasty attack.

Cloud saw his chance.

His thumb hit the sword release.  His blade split in two.

His feet thudded against his ground.  Sephiroth turned as though in slow motion, struggling to get into position in time.

Then three strides away, Cloud pushed off with his foot, rebounded against a slab of concrete, and drove straight for Sephiroth’s exposed flank.

Only instead of silver steel or black leather, his sword struck crimson.

Cloud quickly pushed off the block, twisting midair to land a short distance away.  He dragged in a breath, readjusted his stance, turned to take a proper look at the interloper and-

“Genesis?”

The former SOLDIER stood between them, rapier blocking Cloud, other hand nursing a fireball.  In the dusky twilight he was a beacon of unearthly reds that turned his features harsh.

“What are you doing?”  Cloud hissed.  “Get out of the way.”

In response, Genesis’s rapier began to glow an ethereal crimson, waves of heat pouring from it and tousling his hair.  He raised it to eye level, tip angled towards him, settling into an all-too-familiar stance. 

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Cloud Strife.”

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