A/N: Remember when I mentioned I was employing S/C undertones and themes to ramp up Sephiroth's special brand of creepy? Yeah. Well. I wasn't trying to get less dark as I went, so if that's not to your taste, you have been warned. Though I hope you'll give it a shot anyway!

Special thanks to tocasia for stopping by and dropping reviews right from the start! Always good to know when people are enjoying, and when they're not, even for a short little piece like this.

Further notes at the end, but for now…

[ν] εγλ – 0772

Panting slightly, out of breath, arms trembling with the effort of holding the Fusion Swords for all these hours on hours, Cloud stands on the broad bough of an old, huge conifer, and waits.

He knows Sephiroth is near. His presence is heavier in the air than the damp of the coming rain. He managed to break away from him and from his relentless mental assault, but he's coming. Cloud knows.

He feels Sephiroth's approach before he hears it, and well before he sees it. Sephiroth's mind is reaching out again, seeking his, grasping, pulling, enveloping. The sensation is utterly daunting, like standing on the edge of the world and looking down to the abyss below. It would be much easier to fall than to turn back.

Much easier…

And isn't he tired of taking the hard way? It gets lonely up on the moral high ground. Who's left to care if he gives in, anyway? Nanaki has his family—hell, Nanaki is at death's door by now; even his kind don't live forever, only freaks like Cloud—and Vincent? He hasn't seen the old sniper in over a century now. Vincent never had gotten over losing the love of his life, his beloved, morally-complex Lucrecia, and helping Cloud kill her son had lost its appeal a long time ago. Even Cloud barely sees the point anymore. Why not lay their long war to rest? Doesn't he crave peace above all? There's no peace in his present existence, but the darkness below is tempting, calling, waiting for him…

Cloud barely even feels it when the Fusion Swords slip from his hand; the hollow blade he'd grasped in his off-hand, it seems, has already fallen. With some surprise, oddly muted, he looks down blankly at his empty hands.

"Good boy," Sephiroth croons in his ear. Masamune's keen edge is right up against Cloud's throat, one of Sephiroth's hands on the hilt and the other pressing on the blunt back edge of the blade just in front of Cloud's right shoulder, trapping him between Sephiroth and a swift death.

"Damn it," Cloud mutters. The horror he knows he should be feeling is as distant as his other emotions. He wonders if it's Sephiroth's doing, or—

"Or if you just don't care anymore," Sephiroth finishes the thought for him. "Does it really matter?"

"'Course it does," Cloud says slowly, forcing himself to mean it, pushing back at Sephiroth's control until he's reclaimed enough of himself to go on. He can still sense Sephiroth's mind hooked tight around his own, though, stiflingly close, waiting patiently for an opportunity to lunge in and take over again. "Not caring is the same as giving up."

"A prospect you were happily considering a moment ago."

Cloud scoffs. "We both know that was you."

"Not entirely. There's a crucial flaw in the act of temptation; it exploits and exacerbates desire," Sephiroth muses, "but it cannot create it from nothing."

Cloud contemplates trying to break free, but soon dismisses the idea. A long-term strategy is useless with his every thought and impulse laid bare, and any sudden movements could be the death of them both, given their position…or not, given Sephiroth's wing.

Definitely not worth it, then.

Only the support of Sephiroth's body keeps him from tumbling into the real-world version of the gaping chasm he still sees in his mind's eye. It is, Cloud realises with grim amusement, an apt metaphor for the endlessly-repeating pattern of their relationship—Sephiroth is all too willing to pull Cloud down into the darkness with him, but if destroying him means letting him go—

"You paint a strange romance into your picture of us," Sephiroth murmurs, still much too close. "But you're still missing the point."

—if it means letting him go, it's impossible, because death isn't destruction in Sephiroth's eyes. How could it be? He wants Cloud—

"Broken," Sephiroth purrs. "Utterly and completely."

And he can't do that by letting go, oh no. Sephiroth means to break him by holding on as tightly as he can.

"Oh, puppet, I love that you never have to ask what I want anymore," Sephiroth sighs, smiling contentedly; Cloud can feel his upturned lips against his skin. "Now obey."

With that single word, Sephiroth brings the entire force of his formidable presence to bear against Cloud's mind, hungry wanting emotions tearing at him, hatred and insanity slithering poisonously through his veins, rage and joy tangling together in a crazed frenzy that makes his blood burn as for an eternal instant, he feels as Sephiroth does. At the core of everything, be it heart, soul, or consciousness, Cloud finds only a knot of twisted darkness; avarice and envy and jealousy seething in this tainted, withered place which must once have held love, devouring everything that comes in reach and never letting go. The instant that darkness brushes against him, a surge of emotion he knows isn't his overwhelms his system—emotion, or perhaps instinct—mine, you're mine, always as he seizes his puppet's strings, already luxuriating in the knowledge of his ultimate victory.

…His…puppet?

All at once, Cloud understands, and the strings go taut, tugged sharply in two directions at once; Sephiroth pulling, Cloud holding them still.

"You're not in my mind at all, are you?" Cloud whispers. "You couldn't get in. Not far enough to matter. So you let me into yours instead. No—you pulled me in."

Sephiroth is very still, very quiet, and as Cloud can now feel, suddenly very uneasy.

"I'm not the defender," Cloud realises, a slow, grim feeling of accomplishment and wild hope rising in him. "I'm the god'sdamn occupying force."

"But I control the field," Sephiroth reminds him.

"Not anymore. Not now that I'm here."

And Sephiroth…chuckles. Cloud's new confidence wavers.

"I wasn't talking about that," Sephiroth murmurs, lips brushing Cloud's ear as he speaks. The sharp pressure on his throat increases and Cloud is abruptly brought back to the reality of the sword braced to kill him. He tries to breathe as shallowly as possible; Masamune is beginning to draw blood. "Whatever advantage you think you've gained, it won't be enough if you aren't alive to leverage it. I don't want you dead, Cloud, not when there's so much worse I can do to you, but if you must die it will be at my hands. Here and now, I might slit your throat with the slightest gesture, and you could do nothing about it."

Cloud's mental grip tightens on the strings, pulling, bracing, clinging.

"Sephiroth," he breathes, warning. A soft laugh is the only sign Sephiroth gives that he's heard.

"Or I might choose to take advantage of my position," Sephiroth drawls suggestively; Cloud can feel him smirk against his skin, "and simply snap your spine in two. I could, you know. It would only make it easier for me if you struggled, and on the off-chance you survived long enough to escape, well." He chuckles again. "It's a very long way down from here, isn't it?"

"Sephiroth," Cloud repeats, louder, sterner.

"Do it," Sephiroth goads. "Go on. You must be dying to try it. Control me, Cloud. Make me let you go. Bend me to your will, force me to submit to you, on my knees before you, begging for mercy."

Masamune lets up slightly, Sephiroth's right hand dropping from the blade and cupping Cloud's chin, turning his head towards him. Their eyes lock. "That's what you want…" Sephiroth's voice is so strangely gentle, fading to almost a whisper as he prompts Cloud:

"Isn't it?"

The words sink in, and suddenly Cloud can barely breathe, and he's the better part of a thousand years in the past, clinging to the side of ShinRa Tower with Sephiroth high above, standing proud and arrogant atop the very building in which he'd lived and worked for a decade and speaking in a low, gloating purr that somehow carried ten stories down as clearly as if he were speaking into Cloud's ear.

On your knees! I want you to beg for forgiveness…

Those words had been the first undeniable indication he'd had that Sephiroth's once-pragmatic focus on Cloud (the unknown quantity, the most useful pawn, and finally the greatest threat) had given way to the crazed obsession which has defined their interactions ever since. Those words had sealed Cloud's fate, marking the moment when Sephiroth had ceased to wage war on the world and drawn the battle lines between them alone instead, naming Cloud as both his enemy and his prize.

"No," Cloud says at last, the trapped air in his chest leaving him so the word is more of a sigh. "No, that's not what I want," he continues slowly, watching Sephiroth carefully. "But you want it to be. You want me to sink to your level, play by your rules. Make a bunch of little sacrifices that add up so I wake up a monster one day and don't even care, just like you."

Sephiroth says nothing, looking down at him with the sharp, arch smirk and cruelly narrowed eyes that Cloud has come to accept as his default expression. And Cloud remembers other times, other words, and realises at last what has been in front of him from the beginning. It doesn't feel like learning something new. It feels as though he's known all along.

Stealing my last moments for yourself.

You don't know what to do with yourself when I'm gone.

You'll never be rid of me.

I'm part of you.

I own you in ways even you don't understand…

Simple projection. That's all it is. That's all it's ever been. Every chilling insight Sephiroth offers him is nothing more than a look in the mirror, puppet, I've told you again and again for centuries!

Were you lonely? (I was.)

You're the only one waiting for me. (You're all I have left.)

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

"I do understand," Cloud says quietly. He doesn't let himself process the implications of what he's about to do. He just takes the fragile strings in his mental grasp and yanks.

It's nothing even close to the power Sephiroth's demonstrated over him, but it's enough. The smile leaves Sephiroth's face; he gasps, shuddering, cringing away from Cloud and his clumsy, battering-ram assault on the rarely-tested defences of Sephiroth's mind. Masamune falls from his grip as his shaking hands fly up to futilely cover his ears, unwittingly releasing his weapon directly into Cloud's waiting hands. The blade cuts shallowly into his right hand, but Cloud ignores it, taking advantage of Sephiroth's unsteady balance and desperate recoil to lash out with the hated sword. One swift, brutal thrust, Sephiroth's own favourite finisher, and Masamune more shrieks than sings in Cloud's hands as he drives its tip straight through its master's heart and further, impaling the Nightmare against the vast trunk of the tree.

The look Sephiroth gives him is terrifying—a nearly indecipherable blend of wonder, hatred, pride, betrayal, pain…and hunger.

"I understand," Cloud repeats, and something pulls at Sephiroth's lips, a grimace, a smile? Conflicting emotions and desires still rage in his eyes and more fiercely yet behind them, making it impossible to be certain.

No drawing it out this time. The shocking, icy agony of the sword in Sephiroth's heart resonates through Cloud as surely as if the wound were his own. He feels Sephiroth's certainty, born of centuries of experience, that he is dying, and dying swiftly. Not swiftly enough for Cloud's taste, and a morbid, awful delight floods him as Sephiroth apprehends his intent seconds before he acts, yanking back hard on Masamune.

The Nightmare makes such a sound as the blade clears his flesh and he falls to his knees on the knotted bark, clutching desperately at any handhold he can find to steady himself as he bleeds out at Cloud's feet. And still, Cloud can feel every beat of his haemorrhaging heart. Sephiroth's body is alive with pain, his mind glassy-clear with the inevitability of his imminent death, his senses honed to pinpoint focus and trained on the only other person left in his world. He loathes this feeling, and he needs it. Still entangled in his own strings, Cloud understands that for Sephiroth, this is ecstasy, some higher state of consciousness that overwhelms all mundane concerns and stretches his fading life on into eternity.

Death is defeat, but dying—dying is release.

"Will you miss me?" Sephiroth demands, voice harsh, forced. Blood is pouring from the wound his own sword has torn through him. He regrets sounding so coarse, wishes he could utter the hated and cherished question in his usual purr that makes Cloud so thrillingly uneasy.

Cloud simply wishes the question had never been asked, because now, he has to answer.

"Yes," Cloud replies, without a second of hesitation, and he means it.

The wild, vicious elation that seizes Sephiroth then is terrible to behold and even worse to feel; Cloud thinks he might be sick as the twisted emotion sweeps through him. Something deep inside him shudders and keens as, heedless of his wounds, the Nightmare throws back his head and laughs, loud and long and mad, and only stops when death forces him into silence.

Slowly, Cloud fills his lungs with damp, copper-tasting air, feeling at last as though he can truly breathe again. His left hand tightens for a moment on Masamune's hilt, but Sephiroth's blood-soaked corpse is beginning to dissolve into light, and the ghost of his sword fades to nothing in Cloud's grasp, leaving his fingers curled around empty air. He wonders idly whatever happened to the original. All rust and rotting wood by now, surely, old as it was before Sephiroth ever laid hands on it. Or maybe the odd intent of the legendary weapon is more than his imagination. Maybe Masamune has a soul of its own, and had Returned to the Planet in sympathy with its master.

He hopes swords don't have souls. The Fusion Swords have served him far too well to deserve to share in…whatever this is, this piecemeal existence of his. But then, his weapons aren't here right now, are they? No one is here except for him and a fading glow of acid-green. He is alone, and he is free.

Closing his eyes, Cloud turns his face towards the storm-grey sky and wills the rain to fall.

A/N: "god'sdamn" = "Goddess-damned", for the record. 'Cause, like. Gaia and all. I didn't just have a sudden urge to insert unnecessary apostrophes or anything like that. If anyone was wondering.

Back in chapter 3, I mentioned there was an overarching theme connecting all five chapters. For anyone who hasn't guessed it yet, that theme is, odd as it sounds, the Kübler-Ross model—aka "the five stages of grief". Originally, the chapters (or rather, their first drafts) were written out of order—4 was first, as it best fit my original idea for a fic, which was roughly "what happens when the only person who's always there for you is your worst enemy". Cloud's flat, worn-down tone wasn't quite what I wanted out of him, though, and Sephiroth was a little too chill for my taste. So I wrote Cloud furious instead—chapter 2. Then I tried desperate—chapter 3.And finally I read all three versions of the story, realised I was looking at depression, anger, and bargaining, and put them in sequence, and thus the focus of the story moved to the gradual shift of Cloud's psychology. This last chapter, acceptance, took quite a while, since I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was I wanted Cloud to be accepting. Much like the original story concept, none of my ideas stood well on their own, so I hinted at all of them and left it open. Really, the darkness factor in this chapter is quite dependant on how you read it—if Cloud's accepting what his life has become, it's sort of bittersweet; ditto if he's accepting the idea that Sephiroth is as lost as he is, assuming Sephiroth isn't just screwing with him (a constant possibility). But if Cloud's accepting, say, that he's as dark inside as Sephiroth—whether he is or not is irrelevant—and that he's only a "hero" because the guy he's fighting has gone down in history and legend as the local equivalent of Satan, things start to look a little more bleak.

So there it is. Hope everyone's enjoyed the ride, even if only in a train-wreck kind of way! The day-to-day keeps getting in the way, but it's good to be writing for this fandom again. If the spirit moves you to leave a review, I'm always glad for feedback. 'Til next time!