On Silver Wings

CHAPTER 2

“See, that wasn’t so bad, right?”

Cloud raised his head from the table slightly to groan at his friend. Zack’s easy smile was sarcastic, but honest.

He let his head drop back down with a loud knock. “Right.”

He heard Zack sigh and walk to his fridge. They’d fairly run off here after the meeting. It felt like fleeing. He heard Zack’s muffled voice call out.

“Damn, Cloud. On a day like today you really can’t run have run out of beer. That’s just not fair.”

He felt a small smile tug at his lips despite himself. “There’s some in that cupboard on the left, but it’s warm.”

“Who cares?”

“Right.”

A lukewarm bottle was ungracefully deposited in front of him. Cloud raised his head to discover Zack had already downed half his warm beer and was enthusiastically working on the rest. He couldn’t help himself, he chuckled.

Zack, his long body propped on the kitchen counter, stared down at him, smiling, beer all but forgotten.

“I’m glad you were there.”

“I know.”

Cloud sighed. “And I’m glad Reeve stayed behind to deal with things. I knew they’d be angry, but I…”

“Hmm?”

“I never expected her to faint… You think she’s all right?”

Zack shook his head, staring at the remains of his beer. He dropped the empty bottle into the sink, where it joined several dozen of its peers. “She’s fine. She’s strong as hell, don’t worry.”

Cloud looked up at him, shaking his head slowly. “I though Barret was about to jump up and start beating up on me.”

Zack chuckled softly. “Yeah, I guess he didn’t take it too well. I suppose you can be thankful Tifa managed to create the perfect diversion for you.”

“That is so not funny, Zack.”

“Just trying to cheer you up, Spike.”

Cloud reached over the armchair and set his empty beer down on an overflowing side table. He smiled up at his friend, running a hand through his hair slowly. His eyes were tired, and showed the strain of the previous few days. “I never expected it to be easy, I just wasn’t ready for her to get so upset.” He paused, tasting bitterness at the back of his throat. He didn’t know if it was from the beer or his mood. He felt drained. “I think I would’ve preferred for her to get good and angry and scream at me, you know? This… this just feels like I did something wrong. Like it was a mistake to even bring it up. Like I was betraying her, betraying all of them.”

Zack looked down at him, a slight smile on his face. “You just wait, I’m sure she’ll get to screaming and throwing stuff at you soon enough.”

Cloud chuckled sadly. He shook his head. “Zack, I…”

“I know, Spike, you don’t need to say anything. I’m glad to be here too.”

The blond smiled, managing a nod and a shrug before he felt his eyes mist up and he shook himself, sighed and raked a hand through his hair again; his blond spikes flowing slowly back into place. “I should get some rest. Tomorrow I have to head over to the Science Department and give the go-ahead for the project to actually begin.”

“Geez, Cloud, kick me out much?”, Zack said, eyes lit and laughing.

“I wouldn’t dare. You can sleep on the couch if you want to.”

“What, that couch? Are you insane? It looks like a war zone down there. I’ll head on over home, it’s not like it’s far.” He smiled down at Cloud, reached down and ruffled his hair. “I’m going with you tomorrow, so wait up, OK?”

“Sure. Just as long as we’re not late, Zack.”

“Late? Come on, Spike, you know me better than that.”

***

He’d been exhausted when he’d gone to bed and so sure, so certain that he wouldn’t dream he’d almost forgotten he’d ever had trouble sleeping. But this wasn’t his bed, certainly not his bedroom and he was certainly not asleep anymore. There was something sticky and uncomfortable with his chest, something which pulled with every breath and woke him up fully. He opened his eyes slowly, feeling the first few stabs of pain which always accompanied his dreams of late, a dull throbbing in his head, a painful feeling of his mind being squeezed out of of his ears. He took a few sharp breaths and realized something was wrong with his ribs.

His eyes now adjusted to the near-complete darkness surrounding him, he could dimly make out a silver glow in front of him; there was a long sliver of metal jutting from his ribs, where the ache was the sharpest, where he felt suddenly blood seeping from under his shirt and down his side.

Where, he realized with a start, the piercing tip of Masamune was embedded in his flesh, into his chest, between two of his ribs on his right side and completely out his back, pinning him to the slab of concrete he was lying against.

His breath left him in a moment of panic and he would have screamed if he could. But the second he inhaled a hand pressed against his mouth and muffled his scream into a pained gasp. He bit down hard into black leather in his panic and heard a muffled curse above him.

Cloud flinched as he saw the man’s other hand come down in a slap that wrenched his head sideways and pulled against the sword in his side. He stifled another scream and tried to focus his eyes, to get a clear indication of where he was. His head swam, and blood coursed down his chin in rivulets; he’d bitten into his tongue when the man had struck him.

Deep down, he knew this was just another dream, that the man standing above him was nothing more than an extremely twisted and bad memory.

None of this had ever happened when he’d faced Sephiroth in battle; he had always been able to hold his own, despite his own feelings of inadequacy and weakness whenever he’d beheld the man. His own training under the ShinRa army and Hojo’s meddling had left him a very able fighter, and he doubted if he could actually have beaten the General in single combat; he knew Jenova had little knowledge of battle tactics aside from her usual full frontal assault. She’d never really bothered to use the full potential of the man, this much Cloud knew in his heart, and could deduce the rest from the stories Zack had told him. He suspected the man he’d faced before was little more than a puppet.

If this was truer to reality than what he had faced under Jenova’s control, then they were all in very big trouble.

Sephiroth smiled his twisted smile down at him. Blood and lust flickered in his eyes and Cloud shivered. The man reached down and pulled the sword out of Cloud’s side abruptly, twisting it sharply as he slid the blade out, grating against Cloud’s ribs.

When the echoes of his scream died out, he realized he must have nearly lost consciousness. He was propped up against the concrete and Sephiroth was standing in front of him, holding him up by his collar, grinning, looking for all the world like the sickest, most perverted cat Cloud had ever seen.

His vision swimming in and out of focus, the blond managed to bring his arm up to try and block the blow he’d seen coming. His hand gripped the General’s arm in a block and he struggled to keep his arm strong and fend the man off, to give himself an opening to fight back.

Cloud’s eyes snapped up as he heard the man laugh softly. Wide blue met narrowed green and the General grinned down at him. There was a sort of easy camaraderie there, a sense of the man being perhaps the slightest bit glad that Cloud had resisted him.

“Don’t you know by now that it’s pointless to fight back, Strife?”

Sephiroth leaned down towards Cloud, pushing against the blond’s fighting arm and gripping his side with his left hand, cruelly, fingers digging deep where before Masamune had opened a gaping wound.

Cloud’s legs buckled, and he went down like a rock, knees hitting the pavement with a jolt that traveled up his spine and forced a moan out of his throat.

The General grabbed his hair and forced his head back, forcing another groan through the blond’s tight lips. The taller man licked his lips slowly and smiled knowingly down at him, and Cloud’s heart cracked, and broke and tumbled down into that cold dead space where it could hide safely, and weather the storm that came with Sephiroth’s lips bruising his own, and the man’s hand forcing his head back, closing on his throat.

***

“Fuck.”

“Come on, Cid, that’s all you’ve been saying for an hour. Just shut up, will you?”

The older man shifted his cigarette and sighed. He cast an evil glance at Yuffie, who shrank back and subtly hid behind Vincent. The dark haired man ignored her, and cast his eyes to the blond pilot sitting on the couch. The Neo-ShinRa executive floor was all but deserted on a Saturday and they’d requisitioned the main board room for an emergency reunion. Tifa had declined to come, and Reeve hadn’t shown up yet.

Everyone was tense, and Cid’s monotone wasn’t helping.

“Fuck, Yuffie, I’m sorry. It’s just…” He took a long, tired drag of his dog-end, sighed, shook his head and gave up. “I don’t know what’s gotten into that spiky head of his but it sure as hell sounds like crap from my end.”

There was an answering grumble from Barret, who was all but sulking in a corner of the board room, watching the streets of Edge city from the window. Yuffie turned to raise an eyebrow at his back. “Maybe Cloud has a good reason. I don’t know. Half the time I don’t understand what he’s thinking. I wish we’d had time to talk to him.”

Cid paused and raised his head to stare at her. “What the hell, Yuf, that sounded almost coherent. Fuck’s wrong with you?”

“Har, very funny, Cid. I’m just saying. There was a reason I trusted Cloud with my back when we were running after… after… Well, you know. I still do. Trust him, I mean.” She shrugged, a bit tense. Even Vincent was staring at her now. “I guess I just want to talk to him before I go off mouthing that he’s insane and all. No offence, Barret.”

Barret, turned his head to shoot her a glance. He shrugged, his big frame obscuring her view of the window. “I don’t know, girl, it just don’t seem right to me. How many times have we put the man down now? This seems like asking for trouble.”

“Perhaps Cloud knows something we don’t.”

They all looked up at Vincent. The older man shrugged slightly, sending a small smile Yuffie’s way. “He’s left us in the dark about his motives before.”

“Are you all totally mad?”

She turned to stare at the doorway, where Tifa was standing, red-faced and angry. She took a step back. “Hey, Tif, didn’t know you were there.”

Tifa shot her a look full of poison. She shrank back. “I don’t know what you guys think you’re doing here, but I just saw Cloud going into the science wing and I’m going down there right now to talk him out of this. I don’t need any of your support or approval, but if you want to come, you’d better hurry up.”

She turned around with a parting glance at Yuffie and bumped straight into Zack, who smiled down at her with all his usual cheer. He waved at the rest of Avalanche. Vincent raised an eyebrow at him and Zack’s smile grew a fraction.

He put a restraining hand on Tifa’s shoulder.

“Sorry, Tif, but the science wing is closed to all non-military personnel and anyone without clearance. You don’t have clearance. Cloud has my word that he’ll be allowed to do this on his own and I won’t go back on it.”

Tifa started to protest but Zack shook his head, closed his eyes and held up a ShinRa computer disk in front of her face. She frowned at him. “What the hell’s going on, Zack? I’m sick of this covert shit.”

Zack stared at her, unflinching. His eyes sought out the rest of the group; Barret still had his back turned to him, and Cid was watching him with an intense expression he’d never seen on the old pilot’s face. He sighed.

“Just throw this into a terminal. Wait ‘till I’m gone, please. I’ve had my share of nightmares.”

He shook his head sadly, and walked out. Tifa stared at him.

“Have fun.”