Chapter Text
The following day, the weather cleared up. It had been snowing steadily for days, the wind howling around the house relentlessly, shaking the tall fir trees and blowing white swirls of snow until a snowdrift accumulated on the side of the house, burying the window at the end of the corridor and blocking all light in that direction.
But at some point during the afternoon, the wind quieted down, and they both looked up from what they were reading, surprised at the sudden silence. Sephiroth closed his book, and stood to look outside.
“The sun is coming out,” he remarked.
Cloud went to join him at the window, so close his hand brushed a few of the silver strands that fell down Sephiroth’s back. He hadn’t tied it back, today. Cloud had noticed. Cloud tried not to stare, but he found himself irresistibly drawn to every gesture, every silent step, every sigh emitted by this being that had no business being so human, so undoubtedly flesh and blood.
It was true, the sun had come out. The heavy clouds of the previous days were slowly rolling away.
“I wonder…” said Sephiroth, almost tentatively. “Could I take a walk outside?”
“Outside?”
“Not far. I miss the fresh air.”
Cloud hadn’t thought of that. Cloud hadn’t thought a lot about much, if he was honest with himself. He’d known he had to take care of Sephiroth away from civilization, so he came to this place. Everything else he’d done had been unplanned, reacting to events as they happened, solving one problem after the other. Never had he given himself time to think about what he was actually doing, where this was going to lead, how they were both supposed to live now.
In fact, he’d never thought of this as any kind of life. More as a suicide, long and painfully drawn out. Burying himself alive to keep the world safe. He’d never imagined anything beyond that.
And now this place had become a prison of sorts, even it wasn’t entirely clear to him which one of them was being kept prisoner here.
“We can go for a walk, if you like,” he heard himself say.
Sephiroth nodded. “That would be nice.”
The cold outside was still biting, despite the bleak light of the sun, and Sephiroth shivered as soon as he stepped outside. Cloud had given his warmest coat, and Sephiroth wore it wrapped around his shoulders, like a short cape, since it was much too small. It wasn’t a very warm coat. Ever since the mako injections, Cloud was mostly impervious to cold.
It must have been the same for Sephiroth, because he looked puzzled, looking at his hands with something like wonder.
“If it’s too cold, we can go back,” offered Cloud.
“No. I can walk.”
Cloud said nothing, just started down the partially buried path, his boots crunching in the snow. He could remember how it felt, to not be enhanced. To be weak. Despite all his training, he’d never really managed to build up that much strength, before Hojo stuck him inside a mako tube and changed him forever. He imagined Sephiroth had never felt that way, vulnerable to ordinary dangers like cold or fatigue, small and weak and easily breakable.
“We’ll go this way,” he said. “There’s a clearing. Sometimes I build a fire there.”
He walked slower than he needed to, mindful of Sephiroth following him with short, measured steps, his breathing rapid and shallow, as though he were already out of breath. They walked in silence through trees half-buried in snow, the light shining through the icy branches in shafts of gold. It was beautiful. It felt like home, like winter in Nibelheim, his favourite season.
They reached his clearing. The snow wasn’t high there, the trees prevented it from building up, and you could still dimly make out the shape of the ring of stones Cloud had built there.
He heard Sephiroth sit down heavily next to him while he dug, pushing the snow away to reveal the soil and the old cinders of his previous fires. There was a trick to building a fire in the snow, if you didn’t want it to risk the embers being quenched by water. Cloud had done this so many times it was second nature to him.
“I’ll gather some wood,” he said, and Sephiroth nodded. He had wrapped himself tight inside Cloud’s coat, keeping his hands inside, but apart from that, he didn’t seem to be too uncomfortable. He was looking up at the sky.
Cloud walked round the clearing, gathering firewood with practiced hands. He arranged it carefully, making sure it would have enough air, enough kindling, and lit it. He hadn’t wanted to use a materia, so he’d brought good, sturdy matches, and it only took him a few tries to get the fire going.
They didn’t talk, at first. The only sounds were the warm crackling of the fire, and the soft pillowy crunch of packets of snow sliding off branches. The fire felt warm against Cloud’s skin as he tended it carefully.
Sephiroth was still looking at the sky darkening over the forest slowly. He had a small, wistful smile on his face.
“Are you thinking about the past?” asked Cloud
suddenly, his voice sounding loud to his own ears.
Sephiroth started slightly, as though jostled out of a daydream.
“Yes,” he said, and shook his head ruefully. “I was thinking of my old comrades. My friends. I seem to spend a lot of time thinking about them, these days.”
“SOLDIERs?” asked Cloud.
“Yes, of course. You knew them, didn’t you? Genesis Rhapsodos. Angeal Hewley.”
“I knew of them,” said Cloud. “Zack would talk a lot about them. And I have… some images of them in my mind, but those were Zack’s memories, I think. I never really had a chance to get to know them.” He had faced them both with Zack at Modeoheim, too, but the memory of that horror was better left unsaid.
“I liked Zack,” said Sephiroth with a fond smile. “He was younger, though, and I didn’t feel like I could trust him the way I did Angeal and Genesis.”
“Yes. Zack said the three of you were close. I…” Cloud hesitated for a second, then thought he might as well be honest, given all that had happened between them. “I used to ask Zack what you were like, back when I was a trooper. He never said much. He said he didn’t think he knew you that well, that only Angeal and Genesis ever got close enough.”
“That’s probably true. And even then... it took a lot of effort on their part, I believe. I didn’t know what they wanted from me, at first. I’d never had friends.”
Sephiroth picked up a branch from the ground and poked it into the fire, making it spark. “This is a good fire,” he remarked. “Genesis would have liked it. He loved fire. It was his favourite element to use. And whenever we were on a mission somewhere and there was a campfire to be built, Genesis would insist on building it himself. He said no one else understood fire the way he did. It was easier to let him have his way than to argue.”
He smiled to himself. “Genesis would have hated the snow, though. He always complained whenever it snowed. I think it simply wasn’t dramatic enough for him. Too quiet. Angeal was the one who liked snow. Forests. Mountains. I think he would have liked this place.” He looked up at the sky again. The first stars were starting to appear. “Genesis was like fire, quick and passionate. Angeal was like water, deep and powerful. There was a balance between them that was truly beautiful.”
“Is it true?” asked Cloud, a little bashfully. “That they were a couple?”
Sephiroth nodded. “Yes. Although… at first, I didn’t realise. The very concept was foreign to me.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I had only a very theoretical knowledge of such things, and it had never occurred to me it could apply to beings such as us. And I was young. Much younger that I realised. But the love between them was beautiful. Even I could see that. And they taught me a lot. They shared with me some of what they had, and… it changed a lot of things, for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well… perhaps this is a story I’d rather keep to myself, if you don’t mind. You won’t find it in the files. We managed to keep it a secret from Hojo. Small victories.”
He poked the fire again. The sparks made the world look red, for an instant.
“But…” He smiled, almost teasing. “If you were wondering whether what happened between us had been my first encounter of that nature, rest assured it wasn’t.”
Cloud blushed. He had wondered, actually, when he’d read in Hojo’s files how barren Sephiroth’s life actually had been, and it had been worrying him. He still found it hard to forgive himself for what he’d done that morning, and the possibility that Sephiroth might not even have known it should have gone differently had been eating at him.
Seph laughed. The sound was not unfriendly.
Cloud looked at the fire, hoping its light helped conceal that he was blushing. “Is it true that you knew… you know, back then. That I was… attracted to you.”
Sephiroth shook his head. “No. I’ve never been good at telling this sort of thing. I knew who you were, because Zack kept talking about you. Genesis said it sounded like you were infatuated with me. But then again, Genesis always liked to tease. I never took anything he said at face value. But…” He paused. “Later on, when you faced me, with my blood within you… It was as though I could see right into you. I could feel what you felt for me. The fear. The hatred. And how, despite everything, you wanted me. There was something intoxicating about the mix of it.”
They both fell silent for a few moments.
“But…” started Cloud. “You can’t tell what I’m thinking now, can you?”
“What if I could?” said Sephiroth, turning to him with a small, slightly wicked smile.
Cloud’s eyes went wide for a second, as he considered the idea. Sephiroth laughed again.
“I’m not about to admit I can’t. This is much more amusing.”
Cloud snorted. “You said Genesis liked to tease? He can’t possibly have been worse than you.”
“Oh, he was much worse. You have no idea. Particularly when he was looking for a fight. He could be vicious, in fact, if he thought it could get him what he wanted. But he wasn’t always like that.”
Sephiroth’s voice turned soft. Cloud didn’t think Sephiroth was even talking to him anymore. He was reminiscing to himself, in slow, quiet tones. “When it was just the three of us, he was very considerate. Kind, even. At least, that's how he was with me.”
He paused. “It’s true that at first I wasn’t very experienced with such things. It made me feel uncomfortable. Clumsy. They took such care with me that sometimes it felt like it was almost too much. I didn’t understand, at first. They treated me as though they thought I was fragile. It seemed absurd. I thought nothing in this world could break me, not after what I’d been through.”
His voice was low, almost a whisper. “I think I was just very young. And I’d never really encountered friendship before. Or tenderness.”
Sephiroth’s voice trailed off. He raised one hand to his eyes, and Cloud looked away. He felt like he’d intruded on something he was never meant to see.
He would have liked to be able to do something. To put his arm around Sephiroth and pull him close as he wept, silently, for his lost friends. Maybe Cloud could have wept too, then. He’d lost so much, and he had never truly been able to mourn.
Instead, he sat in silence, looking at the fire slowly die out. Night had fallen. The air was starting to turn bitterly cold.
“We should go back,” he said after a while.
“Yes, you’re right,” said Sephiroth, sounding more like himself again.
He stood up, unsteady on his feet. Silently, Cloud offered his hand, and felt the familiar pull of mako as Sephiroth took it. It wasn’t unpleasant. And Sephiroth’s hand in his felt reassuringly warm and solid, and suddenly he didn’t want to let go. His eyes were stinging in a way that had nothing to do with the smoke from the fire.
He wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. It had always been like that. He’d never known how to put words on what he was feeling, not even in his own head.
He realised his grip on Sephiroth’s hand had changed, without him meaning to. Now their hands were interlaced, intertwined, and he was holding on tight, as though he didn’t want to let Sephiroth go.
He could feel Sephiroth looking down at him, surprised, probably, at this sudden gesture. But he didn’t look up. He didn’t know what he would have said if he’d looked into Sephiroth’s eyes at that moment.
“Let’s go back,” he said, as though everything was normal, as though he wasn’t holding the hand of a man he’d killed twice, as though he didn’t still bear the scar the Masamune left when impaling him in the center of his chest. But the hand in his was the hand of a man, not the hand of a demon or a monster. It felt like flesh, warm, soft without the calluses left by holding a sword every day.
He didn’t let go, and Sephiroth didn’t pull away, as they walked back to the house in silence, hand in hand.