A/N: Hey, you miss me? Or figure this fic was never actually getting updated or finished? Lol, nope!

—Part the Third —

"We need to talk," Vincent said, his voice low.

"Yeah, so, anyone ever tell you you're a creepy motherfucker?" Reno said, looking jolted for a second. "When the fuck did you learn that teleport thing? And ya couldn't wait for a normal 'Sure, c'mon in' thing like normal people?! I open the door, you teleport in before I can shut the door in your face, that's fuckin' creepy! An' how'd you not, y'know, teleport halfway in a frickin' table or wall or nothin'?!"

Vincent ignored Reno's babble, focusing instead completely on Rufus Shinra — while he had known that Rufus was alive, this...this was not what he was expecting. The sins of the fathers, he thought, his eyes stilling on the mottled darkness of the Geostigma of Rufus' hand. Old lore; everything about this old, two thousand years old, Jenova and the Cetra, and so it was no wonder the old lore seemed to apply, that the sins of the fathers would be visited down upon the sons. There was nothing in all of this that was anything but — the sins of the past, circling forever and being revisited on the generations who continued the same follies and mistakes and madness of their progenitors. "What is it that you know, Rufus?" Vincent said, his voice toneless and no expression on his face. "About those three larvae of Sephiroth."

There was a slight pause before Rufus spoke, the words coming a hair slower in coming than normal; that pause shorter than a breath indicating that Rufus was choosing his words carefully, his far too quick mind evaluating everything in that span of an instant, deciding how much truth to give. In some ways, it was a good sign — a sign the truth was at least being considered, because it was the fluid speed of the lies and half-truths you had to be careful of. "Likely not much more than you," he said, but Vincent doubted that highly. "We have encountered them several times. The last time was not to our advantage," he finished, and Vincent knew exactly what was behind those mild words.

"Torture rarely is," he said flatly. "What is it that Elena and Tseng had that those three were after to that extent?"

That got a reaction, but not from Rufus. Reno let out a hiss, and a muscle in Rude's jaw tightened.

"'To that extent,' you say. Those three are not sane, so you can not ascribe sane reasons for their actions," Rufus said, but there was an edge to his voice.

"I know what their 'actions' are; I am the one who got Tseng and Elena away from them."

"They're still alive?" Reno blurted out, and Vincent looked over at him from the corners of his eyes and nodded once, sharply, owing him that much, before turning his attention back to Rufus, who also seemed to relax slightly at the news.

"What is it that they were after, Rufus?" Vincent asked again, more forcefully. "They were willing to torture your people, they abducted children, and seem to have some tie with the Geostigma. It seems that they want to continue where Sephiroth left off, and if that is the case, we need to know what we are dealing with. Or we are all doomed."

He did not mention everything that had happened with Cloud — he wasn't sure enough of it, neither in knowing what they had tried to do to Cloud or what Cloud had done in reaction, and nor did he want to simply hand Rufus more information. It was a trump card; a sign of the larvae having a weakness, and he was not ready to play it yet, not when he didn't know what cards Rufus held, or how far Rufus would go to protect whatever it was he was hiding.

The ShinRa Company may have been broken, but Rufus Shinra was very far from powerless and very far from moral.

"Tie to Geostigma?" Rufus asked, frowning and leaning forward slightly as his hand tightening against his armrest. "I had assumed as much, but what proof do you have?"

There was something about his voice; Rufus knew something. "What are they after, Rufus?" Vincent said, crossing his arms. He had been a Turk; he understood the value of information, and how it was too valuable to simply give away. There would be a price for him saying more; there would have to be a trade.

There was a long, long silence before Rufus slumped back slightly into his wheelchair. "Jenova's head," he said softly, and Vincent realized that things were only beginning.

—

"Zack? When did you get back? Where's Cloud? Is he OK?"

Zack jerked his head at the voice behind him, and turned around quickly. "He...uh...yeah, we got back an hour or so ago. We thought you and Marlene were asleep, so we didn't want to bother you. Cloud's OK," he said, giving Denzel a smile to reassure him. "But he did his Cloud thing and left a little while ago," Zack ended sheepishly, and Denzel gave him a disbelieving look. "Hey, it's not like I'm happy with it, either," Zack said, feeling more than just the slightest bit frayed at yet another person coming down on him right now, and why did Denzel have to have picked up Cloud's disapproving glare so perfectly? It was like a little mini-Cloud was there to make him feel like shit. "I'd much rather he be here than out there," Zack said, gesturing vaguely. "And when did you wake up?"

"Cloud's motorcycle woke me up," Denzel said. "So Cloud's really OK now?" His voice was tight; all the tiredness he had been showing gone, replaced with a horrible kind of tension.

Zack nodded. "He woke up when we were on our way back here. He's OK," Zack said firmly, half to reassure Denzel and half himself. "Maybe a little...he just needed some space." Zack figured on some level that had to be the true. He frowned suddenly. "What happened out there?" he said, crossing his arms. Cloud had pretty much been a bust for information, no matter what Tifa seemed to think, but Denzel had been there nearly the whole time. He was going to have to ask the kid anyway, so better to do it when it was still fresh.

Denzel frowned. "They had Cloud on the other side, and they wouldn't let me go over. They said we'd all be together soon anyway. He said there was gonna be a reunion."

Zack frowned at that. "I have no idea what that means, but it doesn't sound good," he said, making a face. There was that 'Reunion' thing, Vincent talking about them wanting Jenova's head so they could use it to resurrect Sephiroth, the way Cloud's eyes had turned green...

None of this was good. None of it.

"What did they do to Cloud?"

Denzel frowned again, and hunched in his shoulders. "He - the leader guy - was talking about how we were brothers, and we were sick because the planet hated us and was trying to stop us. And then he said he'd heal us, and this weird black smoke came out of him and my 'Stigma started being weird."

"Black smoke?" Zack repeated, thrown off guard. Things were taking even more of a turn for the surreal now — just what were those three? Even if they were Sephilarvae, like Vincent had said, none of that made any sense — Sephiroth had been able to do a lot of things, and had turned into a lot of forms, all of which seemed to have too many damned wings, but never once had black smoke been a part of it.

"Yeah. Black smoke. And he walked into the water, and the water turned black. He drank it, and then everyone started to. I...I drank it, too," he said softly, biting his lip. "I...I don't remember after that," he said, frowning. He looked up at Zack. "Next thing I remember is kind of hearing the leader-guy screaming, and then this weird, jolting feeling like someone hit me, and the water wasn't black anymore, it was white, and he and Cloud and everybody were floating in it and everything was crazy."

"The water was white?!" Zack said, shaking his head. "Hel's realm, I wondered what Cloud did..." he said, sighing. He looked over at Denzel sharply. "And why did you even go with them in the first place?"

"They said they could fix it," Denzel said just as sharp as the look Zack gave him and his voice defensive. "Fix the 'Stigma. And everyone was saying they could fix it." Denzel looked at his feet. "And I thought, maybe if they could fix it, or at least make it better, maybe Cloud wouldn't try so hard to make me better anymore. It keeps making him sicker, but he won't stop. And if it worked, I could tell you and Cloud, and..." he trailed off, still looking at his feet.

Zack sighed. Denzel was just a kid, and a kid with a lot of weight on him, same as was on all of them. He rested his hand on the kid's head, then ruffled his hair and grinned as he realized something. "You're starting to get pretty big, you know that? You're gonna be bigger than me one day!" he said, hoping for a topic change and something to distract Denzel.

Denzel looked up and gave Zack a solemn look, his eyes shadowed and serious. "No," he said softly. "I won't."

It was like a punch to the stomach.

It was one thing to have his own mortality staring him in the face; it was another to realize a little kid was staring down the same thing.

It was suddenly a lot harder to hold onto his smile.

"You can't think like that," Zack said, trying to not make the words sound like the lie they felt like.

"But it's true," Denzel said, frowning. "Even Cloud can't fix it. He gets worse when he tries." His shoulders hunched in. "It's not like I don't know everyone who gets it dies," he muttered.

"Denzel," Zack started, but had no idea how to even finish the sentence, or even what he wanted to say. He looked down at his feet, up at the walls; anywhere but at Denzel. "I know," he finally said, his words soft, and put his hand on Denzel's head. "I know."

They were silent, the weight of everything, the weight of mortality, hanging heavy between and over them.

"You need to get some sleep, kid," Zack finally said, ruffling Denzel's hair again, then dropping his hand. "Ifrit's flame, I need to get some sleep. It's been a day, and those three are probably going to come back. I don't want to be caught in my pj's when they come."

"Zack, you don't wear pj's. You sleep in a pair of boxers," Denzel said, giving Zack a look. "Cloud wouldn't yell at you so much to put on some pants if you did."

"Hey, he only yells at me to put on pants when I'm watching Ira-ira Man with Marlene! What's the problem with a man watching TV in his boxers?"

"Probably because you're doing the stupid poses and pretending to fight monsters in your boxer shorts," Denzel said in his deadpan way that was so much like Cloud that Zack couldn't help but grin.

"Hey, I once fought off a horde of monsters and made stupid poses in beach trunks! Same thing!"

"If you say so, Zack," Denzel said, and the look of "you are strange" was also pure Cloud. "I'm going to bed now," he said, suddenly looking tired.

"Night, kid," Zack said, ruffling Denzel's hair one more time, even as Denzel tried to fend off his hand and get away. Denzel gave him a baleful look, then walked out and headed down the hall.

When he heard the door to Denzel's room open then close again, and he was sure Denzel had gone inside, Zack let the smile slowly slide off his face and his shoulders slump.

Denzel's voice floated back in his memory. It's not like I don't know everyone who gets it dies.

You and me both, kid, he thought, putting his hand out on the sink for balance as a wave of exhaustion and spasm of pain hit him. Without thinking, his other hand had gone up to cradle his ribs, against the stained bandages, when he finally let himself react to the pain he had been swallowing back until now.

He looked in the mirror, and saw both how pale he had gotten and the barest trace of stigmata mottling beginning on his right shoulder.

You and me both.

—

She wasn't expecting it.

Zack had his shirt off, and the bandages wrapped tightly around his chest and ribs were stained through a dark ashen black and grey. He was trying to unwind them, and wincing silently as he did so, flinching when a wrong move made pain shoot through him.

She knew how much damage Zack could take; she didn't even want to think about how bad it had to be if it was causing Zack to flinch that badly.

She watched him, not sure how to react or what to make of that realization, and it took Tifa awhile before she finally spoke. "You need help with that?" she asked softly.

Zack looked up, startled. "Ah! Tifa! How did I not hear you?" he said, looking chagrined. "I didn't even notice the door was still open."

"Probably because it's been a long day and you're tired," she said. Not long after Cloud had left and she and Zack had come to an uneasy kind of truce, Zack had finally said he needed to change his bandages. Part of it had felt like he was just trying to make an escape and avoid much everything, but...well, she'd intended to walk past when she was going up to her room, but the door to bathroom was open and Zack...

He was dying.

She knew it, but seeing the Geostigma — a lot darker and further spread than she remembered it being — hit her, hard.

Zack was dying. Cloud was dying. Denzel was dying. All of them, they were dying...and she wasn't making anything any easier on anybody.

There is no 'happily ever after,' she'd realized, watching Zack wince as he was unwrapped the bandages. There's no magical prince and castles in the sky. Just bandages and death.

"Do you need help?" Tifa asked again.

"It's kind of gross," he said, an embarrassed lopsided smile on his face.

"Stop acting like Denzel," Tifa said, wondering why all the males in the house seemed to act the same way half the time — Denzel would hide his dirty bandages from Cloud, Cloud never seemed to change his bandages in the house, and now Zack was starting in. "I've changed Geostigma bandages before," she said softly. "Even yours, remember?" she added pointedly - with where Zack's Geostigma stigmata were, it had been hard for him to bandage it for a while, and in the beginning, there had been many a plaintive, "OK, someone wanna give me a hand with the bandages before I mummify myself by accident?" coming from the bathroom.

"Yeah, but that was before it..." Zack started, and his voice trailed off, and the unspoken 'got worse' hung in the air. "You don't mind?" he finally said, still looking slightly embarrassed. "I can do it, but...yeah, it's easier with help. It had to be right around my rib cage, eh?" he said, making a gesture with his hand, then going, "Ack!" and trying to catch the bandage that slipped out of his hands and started to unwrap.

"You're hopeless, Zack," Tifa said, a faint smile touching her lips.

"Not hopeless, just clueless," he said with a grin, and she shook her head with a faint laugh and walked in.

"I won't argue with that one," she said, and took the bandages. "Sit down and raise your arms."

"Yes, ma'am." Zack sat down on the edge of the bathtub, then dutifully raised his arms.

Tifa knelt down and started unwrapping. "You need a shower," she said mildly as she unwrapped the dirty bandages, keeping her voice calm to belay the panicked Oh, gods, when did his Geostigma get this bad? in her head at the sight of Zack's Geostigma.

"Hey, you're the one who told me to raise my arms!" Zack said, grinning like a fool, and she thumped him on the leg.

"Stop being an idiot."

"I haven't quite figured out how to do that yet," he said, and she shook her head. Zack was good at disarming her, that much was true. With as angry as she was at him, and had been for a long time, it was hard to stay angry when she was around him. And it was even harder to stay angry looking at the darkened bandages.

She didn't know what made her do it, only before she knew it she was reaching towards where the Geostigma was, to touch it with her hands and make it something real.

She forgot, sometimes, how fast Zack's reflexes were. He caught her hands, a hairsbreadth away from his chest and the Geostigma.

"Don't," he said sharply, frowning up suddenly, then covering it up quickly with a faint grin and averting his eyes. "It's...it's kinda gross, y'know."

He didn't let go of her hands, and she didn't try to pull away.

She pushed her hands forward, and he didn't stop her this time, but nor did he let go, not completely. His hands went limp, slipping more to her wrists, and he just stared off to the side, at the floor, not looking at her.

He was dying, and proof of it was under her fingers, against her hands, and she swallowed thickly.

He finally looked at her. "Tifa — " he began, and then fell into a silence that was oddly tense, strained.

She looked up when he said her name, away from the Geostigma, away from his hands wrapped weakly against hers, and his eyes were so very blue, as blue as Cloud's — as blue as Cloud's had been.

...She didn't understand anything, not even herself. Everything, including her own feelings, were a confused, jumbled mess.

She swallowed and pulled her hands away, not sure why she was shaking or when she'd started. "You...shower, take a shower," she said, taking a deep breath and going back to things she did understand.

Bandages and death.

"C-call me when you're done, and I'll fix your bandages," she said, balling her hands into fists and feeling the traces of the ashen and slippery Geostigma lacrimae on them, and needing some time to figure out her own confused thoughts far more than Zack needed a shower.

He nodded, not looking at her again. "Thanks," he said, his voice strangely low and rough, and she fled.

—

Cloud stared at his arm, not quite able to believe his own eyes.

The Geostigma was gone.

He knew, logically, that he should have headed home; let every one what had happened and tried to figure it out, but all he could do was stare dumbly at his arm.

What happened? he wondered, touching where the Geostigma had been, and where now there was only smooth, unblemished skin — no pain, no stigmata, no lacrimae, no nothing.

He was exhausted, but he realized then that all he felt was exhaustion. The underlying feeling of something being bone-deeply wrong, of what he could only describe as the feeling of slowly dying was gone. He wondered for a moment why he hadn't noticed that until now, then made a face. Maybe because too much other stuff has been going on inside me for that, he thought wryly.

What in Hel's realm happened back there, he wondered, digging a hand through hs hair. There was the smoke from Kadaj, and the...whatever he did to the water, and then, when he pulled me in...

His frown deepened, and he let out a rough sigh. He hit the water, and then what? Think, Strife, he thought in irritation, and dug at the memory.

Something in him recoiled sharply, and there was a painful flash of white in his mind, so bright it left him staggered for breath. He breathed heavily through his nose until it passed, jaw clinched tight. That hadn't been Geostigma, he knew that, but it had been something that...something that echoed it, in some thing - some part of him - that didn't want him to find the answer.

Tifa's words - you're not remembering because you're not trying - echoed in his mind. Tifa had always been more observant than any of them gave her credit for, he realized. And she knew him better than he, and maybe she, thought she did.

He needed to remember exactly what happened. He needed to figure out what Kadaj had done, and what he had done to counter.

I need, he thought grimly, to go back.

As soon as he realized it, he was on his feet, heading towards the bike. He didn't take the time to think, just refueled it quickly before he could change his mind.

This is probably going to be the dumbest thing I've ever done in my entire life, he thought flatly to himself as he got on and turned the key to start it up.

Which is why you better do it before you think better of it, a cheerfully conversational voice in his head thought back in response, and he decided it had a point.

—

They had gotten far enough away that Yazoo thought they were safe, and he busied Loz making camp while he stayed with Kadaj, who had started pacing frantically as soon as they got off their bikes, and hadn't stopped even once camp had been made.

There was an edge of frantic panic to Kadaj's movements that Yazoo had never seen.

He has seen Kadaj manic and crackling, but this was something new, something wholy different, and there was a touch of icy fear in his belly at it.

An icy touch that he didn't let show on his face. Loz was already wide-eyed and shaking, and Yazoo didn't want to think about how badly Loz would take it if Yazoo showed how unnerved he was.

He had no idea what had happened at the abandoned Cetra city. Whatever it had been...to say it had been an unforeseen and unplanned event was an understatement, and it had very effectively thrown all of their plans into chaos.

He wondered if their plans were still even salvagable.

A small part of him wondered if Kadaj was.

Loz's small voice jolted Yazoo.

"...Kadaj? What are you doing, Kadaj?" Loz asked, his voice shaky. Kadaj had stilled, but now had his arms wrapped around himself and was diging his fingers into his forearms. His eyes were unfocused.

This wasn't like the times he heard...whoever's voice it was he listened to, when he went still and his eyes contracted into fine slits and he'd seemed to crackle with energy. He'd always said it was Mother whispering through Sephiroth, but Yazoo had always secretly wondered if Mother was really there at all.

Traitorous thoughts, he knew, but he'd had his small doubts. He would have followed Kadaj into the Lifestream itself if Kadaj had instructed it...but he wasn't blind, nor was he a fool.

—

"Where is the head?" Vincent asked softly. "And why has it not been destroyed?"

"Because we need it," Rufus said sharply. "There is very little of Jenova left — "

"Thank all the gods," Vincent interrupted drily.

"And we need what little we have to try and find a way to undo whatever it is from her cells that is causing the Geostigma," Rufus finished, a slight edge to his voice at being interrupted that Vincent cared not at all about.

Instead, Vincent gave him a long stare. "You do not need her head for that. All you need is a sample. Destroy it."

Rufus gave him a look as sharp as Vincent's words had been. "And if we discover later we need it? If we discover later the sample we extract isn't enough? Then what?"

Vincent felt a muscle tighten in his cheek, against the words he wanted to say. Against the Then you die. Then everyone with Jenova in them dies, and this abomination your company nurtured and unleashed finally ends.

He knew what it entailed. He knew how many would die. It would be easy to let it end like this, but...

The sins of the fathers were a debt that had to be settled.

"They know you have it."

Rufus closed his eyes, for a moment. "They'll be coming for it soon, then."

"Sooner than you think," Vincent said, thinking back to the City of the Ancients, and everything he had seen. The larvae of Sephiroth had seen their plans go awry in a specular way; they would be more desperate than before to find Jenova's head, especially if whatever it was that Cloud had done had also hit Kadaj as strongly as it had seemed.

That head would be their last hope. And it would also be the best chance at capturing them. This was their bait, but a bait of the most dangerous kind.

It could not be allowed to stay here. Not with Rufus weakened and his Turks only a shadow of what they had been.

And as much as it pained him, now truly was not the time to destroy it. Not until the larvae had been captured and crushed. He did not want to think about what they would do, if their last avenue of hope was taken from them, what other desperate route they would take for their 'Reunion.' They would lose all sense of balance and preservation if Jenova was gone, and he had no doubt that they would try to make the world burn in revenge if Jenova was gone. The head was insurance; a way to keep the three in check. They had to take care of the larvae first.

"When they come," Vincent said quietly, "it will not be like they have before."

Rude gave him a sharp look then.

"They are desperate now. Their careful plans have been torn asunder in a way they did not foresee. They will be desperate, and they will be willing to do whatever they must to obtain their vile mother's head. And you will not be enough to stop them. Not in the state they're in now."

"So who will?" Rude said softly, his words as slow and careful as they always were when he marshalled himself to speak, and clearly not asking what he wanted to ask.

Vincent said nothing.

"Zack," Rufus finally said with a sigh.

"No," Vincent said, shaking his head once. "Not Zack. Cloud."

Now they all stared at him, but Reno was the one who broke the silence. "Yeah, uh, wait, what?"

—

She went back downstairs, to the bar, and washed her hands there. Her thoughts were far away as she went through the motions. How long had it been, now, since Zack and Cloud had realized?

Zack had been diagnosed first, which made sense - he'd been exposed to the Jenova cells and DNA long before Cloud had. Tifa hadn't wanted to believe the doctors at first. She'd refused to, when he'd said that while they didn't know for sure, since it was a new disease, and it seemed worse in children than the few adults - few because most of them had been turned into Sephiroth puppets and had died fighting them, or had been in Midgar when Meteor fell - but so far, the prognosis wasn't good.

She had been so sure it was just a matter of time before the doctors figured something out, so sure...

It was easier to be that way when it had just been Zack.

Then it was Cloud.

And then Denzel came, already with full-blown weeping stigmata, and her determined positivity had begun to feel like desperation and something accusing had started to show in the depths of Denzel's eyes when she insisted they would be fine.

We'll fight it together, she'd said to him once, when Cloud had a bad spell after trying to figure a way to cure it, and the look on Denzel's face had made the determined smile she'd had fall off her face.

It wasn't her fight, that look said. She wasn't the one going to die. She and Marlene, they'd be the ones to live.

She never said it again.

She'd tried to ignore the reality, the pain of the realization one day they'd be gone, and it had been so easy to just...keep going like nothing was wrong. To ignore the bandages so carefully kept out of sight, to just...not see what was right in front of her eyes.

But now, all that there was in front of her eyes was the image that felt like it was burned into her retinas, of Zack's weeping stigmata under her fingers, and the way he hadn't been able to meet her eyes.

She felt dull and hollowed out, like everything inside had been scooped out and all she was was a shell.

There was so much she hadn't seen because she hadn't wanted to. But now it was time to look. To finally, finally look.

She trudged back upstairs, once her hands were dry, and sat down on the top stair to wait.

—

"Now, look, Vincent, Cloud ain't no slouch or nothin', but...yeah, they wiped the floor with him when they carted him off with 'em," Reno said, shaking his head. "An' that was just ONE of 'em. If all three of 'em go after him 'cause he's got the head..." Reno said, waving his hands, and Vincent simply stared at him.

"They put their plan into motion tonight," he said, his voice so low it was almost a whisper. "And Cloud is the one who put a stop to it. But it came at a terrible cost, to both sides, and that is why they will be so desperate. And why he is the only one with whom that loathsome thing is safe."

Reno boggled at him. "How?!"

Vincent said nothing; silence was the best answer he could give, since he himself was not completely certain. But what he had seen, and what little Denzel had told him, had been enough.

He didn't know yet if Cloud was awake, or what state Cloud would be in when he woke, but Vincent knew, beyond a shadow of all doubt, that he was their only chance.

And if he did not awaken, or if he had been...changed...too drastically, Vincent would destroy Jenova's head himself.

"Vincent," Rude said, and then nothing else, only lapsed back into an expectant silence, and Vincent knew he had to say something; that an answer of silence would not be accepted.

He wasn't the only one who knew the value of information; who knew it had to be a quid quo pro or else certain avenues of gathering it would be lost. Rufus and his current Turks would not accept giving him such valuable information and getting nothing back.

His voice was quiet. "Cloud, indirect though it may be, is all that is left of the ones who stopped Jenova herself all those millennia ago. And I believe part of it came through tonight, and was what was able to stop the larvae's plans. But he is indirect, and he has as much taint of Jenova and Sephiroth, perhaps moreso, than he does of the Cetra, and that may be why he suffered as badly as Kadaj when it struck."

Rufus' hand tightened on the grip of his chair, but he didn't press - not yet.

"Remember," Vincent said, his voice still quiet, although now with a pointed edge, "That it was Cloud, not Zack, who was able to cast Holy. Someone no one but he could do now that the Cetra Aerith is gone. He was the one who ultimately stopped Jenova."

Rufus took a deep breath, closing his eyes as his thoughts and schemes ran through his head. When he finally opened them again, he looked at Rude, then Reno, and nodded once. He raised one hand, and gestured, and Reno moved silently, with a jittery kind of catlike grace.

When he came back, he held a small box, and Vincent knew what it contained.

Reno paused and looked at Rufus again for confirmation.

Rufus nodded. "Deliver it to him, then," Rufus said, and the rest was left unsaid.

—

When Zack finally opened the door and came out, he took a surprised step back when he saw her. "You didn't have to wait out here!" he said, blinking a couple times and tucking the towel a little bit more securely at his waist.

Tifa looked up, and took a long look at him. "It's spreading," was all she finally said softly. She hadn't seen that new Geostigma mark before — of course she hadn't, not with where it was, on his outer left thigh and only just barely peeking past the edge of the towel.

That's probably why Cloud hasn't had to yell at him to put on some pants in the mornings lately, she thought, almost hysterically. Oh gods, when did it get that bad?

"Yeah," Zack said, staring out at nothing. "Yeah, I know."

She stood up and walked past him into the bathroom, beckoning with her hand for him to follow. He did without a word, and in the better light there, and now that she was looking, she could see another faintly darker patch of skin, only just slightly mottled, on his left shoulder — not enough yet to start really showing or start the weeping that was a tale-tell sign of worsening Geostigma, but it was definitely the beginning of another spot. That made the initial place sweeping up his torso to his chest, a second place that was reaching the weeping stage on his leg, and now a third, new place.

"Do you want me to wrap your shoulder while I'm doing your chest?" she said softly when he handed her the bandages.

"So it's not my imagination, huh?" he said, something sad in his voice.

She just shook her head.

"Go ahead and get there too. It may be early, but I don't need the surprise later," he said, sighing and getting that old look again as he raised his arms up so she could wrap the bandages around him.

They both knew what it meant — once Geostigma started showing up beyond the initial place, when it started appearing on other parts of the body...

Once the Geostigma spreads from beyond the first location, attacks tend to occur with increasing frequency, and death usually within three to six months, the doctors had all said.

Three to six months.

And all of a sudden, Zack's words from earlier came back, almost like a slap, exploding into the dull hollowness she felt..

I've had so many Geostigma attacks today that I honestly don't even know if I could lift my sword up, much less try to hoist Cloud over my shoulder.

And now, seeing it, seeing how bad it really was, her own angrily-spat out words came back to stab at her. She had jumped to conclusions and just... He was dying. He was dying, and she was acting like an immature, jealous child.

And the worst thing, she realized with a jolt, was that honestly didn't know who it was she was jealous of.

"Tifa?" Zack began uncertainly, and she realized she had stopped partway through wrapping the bandage.

"It's nothing." She shook her head, as if to clear it, and went back to wrapping, then secured it in place.

Zack looked down at her. "'Nothing' nothing, or 'come back and slap Zack in the face' nothing?" he asked warily as she put the last butterfly clip in place..

Somehow, that just made the guilt and everything else hitting her at once worse, and the next thing she knew, her face crumpled up and she started crying.

Zack's eyes went round, and he got a look of sheer panic on his face. "Oh, shit, no, what did I say, oh gods, I'm sorry!"

Tifa put her face in her hands, trying to stop her stupid tears, hating them and herself. She hated crying; it never did anything or solved any problems, and she had thought she had put tears behind her long ago. But here she was, suddenly not able to hold it together any more.

She had tried to be strong through the whole thing, tried to convince everyone — herself more than anyone — that they were all going to pull through it and no one was going to die. She'd had to, to keep her image of what her world was going. Everything was going to be fine, the Geostigma would one day just go away, and life would continue on just as it had been.

But it wouldn't. There were only bandages, and dying, and death, and fighting. The lies she had been telling herself to keep going had suddenly crumbled into dust, the same as they always did.

"You're both dying," she said. "You're all really dying."

"Hey, hey, none of us are dead yet!" he said, his voice oddly cheerful, him trying to comfort her about his own death, and the "yet" felt like a stab in the heart.

Three to six months echoed in her head, and she put her head on his chest and just cried out all the shame, and lies she had been telling herself for so long, and all the truths now spinning around in her brain.

Three to six months.

Bandages and dying and death.

And fighting.

And she wished, she wished so hard it made her chest hurt as if her heart was bound in too-tight metals bands, when he put his arms around her and let her cry, that they could have all had something, anything, else.

—

Adrenaline thrummed though Cloud as he rode, and he knew that was what kept him awake. That, and his mind spinning wildly.

The Geostigma was gone. He had no idea what had happened, how it had happened, but...the Geostigma was gone.

And his eyes now were bright green. He remembered the shock of seeing them in the mirror, how wrong it had felt...but also how familiar and right, and how that made him feel as if every last bit of whatever had been him was being taken away.

His face, at least; the eyes that always looked back at him in the mirror, had been his own, but now it seemed like not even that was safe from whatever had ripped away everything he had been and had known.

Cloud didn't know who he was; the problem was now he didn't even know what he was anymore.

The only things he did know were that the Geostigma was gone; somehow it had been burned out of his body, but that his mind felt like a burned-out shell in the aftermath...and that he was closer to an answer to curing Denzel, curing Zack, curing everyone.

And that he might lose himself — what little there was left of him — in the process.

It was no longer a question of if he would have to make a sacrifice of some sort - now it was a question of how much would he have to lose.

He went still for a moment, his breath catching in his throat before he bore down harder on the gas and leaned forward to cut the wind resistance and to speed his way, his jaw tight.

He'd kept on trying to heal Denzel even though he knew it was making his own Geostigma worse and killing him by degrees. He'd have died sooner to save him, to save Zack, to save whoever he could. The idea of risking his life had never made him pause for a moment, but this, this idea of not losing life but his very self, that he'd lose everything he'd fought so hard to piece and pull together...that was...

Well. He'd lost everything he was before, and for a lot less reason than this, and he was pretty damned sure it was worth whatever he'd lost for what he'd gained. So if this was how this was going to end up going, he wasn't going to back down from it.

He'd lost everything he was before and built himself anew. He could do it again.

...Didn't make the idea terrify him any less, though.

—

"I feel stupid," Tifa finally said, her voice cloggy.

Zack laughed, but before she could get mad, he started talking. "Yeah, well, it's just been a tear-jerker day. I was bawling my eyes out like a kid today, too," he said, and the smile on his face was self-depreciating. "When it hit me that maybe Cloud wouldn't wake up, or he'd 'wake up' but there wouldn't be anything there any more, or worse, he'd be Sephiroth and maybe this time I'd have to...I'm tired of killing my friends," he finally said, and the smile slid off his face, and he suddenly looked older than his years.

Zack had always kept up a strong front — had always covered whatever was going on in his head with a smile or a self-depreciating comment — but it was as if now he was letting the happy-go-lucky facade slip; letting her have a glimpse into everything he hid behind a smile. "I'm tired of killing people and watching the people I care about die. So yeah, I'm not gonna say anything, 'cause I'm in the same boat and was doing the same thing a couple hours ago.

"It's funny, y'know? I'm almost glad my Geostigma is getting worse faster than Cloud and Denzel. I'm used to seeing everyone else die fast around me. But seeing 'em die slow..." He trailed off, then let out a little laugh. "Guess I'm pretty selfish, not wanting to watch it," he said, with a faint smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Kinda figure I'll be gone first. Won't have to bury anyone again if I'm the one buried first this time," he finished, still with that smile and looking at her.

It was almost like a slap, and out of nowhere, bright, burning hot anger started rushing through her, at Zack just giving up like that. She wasn't ready to just accept it, as much as the cold truth was staring her in the face, and she'd be damned by the gods if she let him just accept it so easily, either.

"Don't talk like that! Don't you...don't you dare!" she yelled, balling her hands into fists. "Don't you dare just give up, Zack!"

"Is it giving up when it's being realistic?" he said faintly. "Two places, Tifa. And...and a third one starting. And at least three attacks today. I...I don't have long, and I know it."

The smile he tried to use to cover whatever he was really feeling couldn't do the trick anymore.

She wondered how much he had been hiding behind a smile, and for how long...and how long she'd let herself be lulled into believing what she wanted to because of it.

"I figure I've got a couple more months. Maybe half a year, if I'm lucky," he went on, still with that stupid little smile on his face that didn't reach his eyes. "Don't think I will be, though."

"Stop it," Tifa said sharply. "Just...stop," she said, shaking her head.

"Maybe you can ignore the Zolom in the sand about this, but right now, hey, the Zolom's about to make me into lunch," he said, as if he were still trying to lighten things somehow; still trying to hold on to the smile that didn't work.

She balled her hands into fists and hit his chest with the sides. He caught her hands again after once, wincing, then said, "Hey, watch it! I'm delicate!" with a grin.

Her face crumpled again and that time she hit him harder, punctuating her words with blows to his chest even has he tried to stop her. He was stronger than her, but she was still strong enough for him to be taking steps back when her blows landed, taking them out of the bathroom and into the hallway. "Stop it! Stop it! Stop making a joke out of everything, Zack! Just stop it!" she yelled. Her eyes were prickling up again, and she hated it, and it made her try even harder to hit the stupid idiot.

"OK, fine, quit it 'cause that hurts!" Zack yelled sharply, his back against the wall in the hallway.

"Thank you!" Tifa yelled back, then yanked her hands out of his and wiped her eyes and tear-stained cheeks quickly as she stepped backwards so she didn't have him cornered anymore. "Stop trying to make a, a, a stupid joke out of everything!"

Zack ran a hand through his hair and sat down on the top stair. He scrubbed at his face before he looked up at Tifa. "Tifa...what's going on? I mean...what's wrong with you today?"

"Today?!" she let out, and felt the urge to kick him, especially with him trying to pull out the puppy eyes when she wasn't in the mood for all the ways Zack had for avoiding things. "It's not just today, Zack! It's just that I've finally had it! I'm tired from hiding from all of this!"

Zack scrubbed at his face again, and sighed. "I'm not up for this," he muttered under his breath, and Tifa was about to actually kick him when he looked back at her, for once looking serious. "But OK. I get it. We do it now," he said, and he suddenly looked so tired. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he seemed paler than normal. "But can I at least put on some pants first?" he said, and something about the plaintive way he pleaded made an unexpected laugh catch her. "I'm flapping in the breeze here, Tifa!" he said, gesturing wildly at the towel wrapped around his hips.

"Put on some pants, Zack," she said, shaking her head.

He gave her a grateful look. "Thank you."

—

Zack came out of his room a few minutes later, dressed now in a loose shirt and baggy jogging pants, with the towel from before around his shoulders to catch the water dripping from his still-damp hair.

"All right. Let's get this over with," Zack said, and something about his voice made Tifa stop short — it wasn't the words, or even the march to the gallows way he said it. It was something else, the note of tiredness that went beyond just a hard day or even the exhaustion they'd often had when they were chasing after Sephiroth. There was something so far beyond all of that that she wasn't sure how to classify it. So she stopped and looked at him — really looked at him.

Zack had always seemed so tough — like he could laugh off anything and everything. She'd seen him take on things with a war-whoop and a grin that most people with even the tiniest shred of sanity would have run screaming from, and seen him shake off attacks that would have killed other people. She'd seen him keep on going when doing so was ripping him to pieces, seen him breaking down when Aerith died but pushing on past it with an almost unflinching determination that only seemed to turn more and more rock solid as things went on, and as he'd had to fight more and more people he had once been friends with. She'd seen him, through it all, being so strong it was almost like nothing could ever really touch him, and seen him pushing past his own limits as if they were nothing more than a temporary irritation. She'd seen him bruised and bleeding and yelling for Curaga already, seen him at the emotional breaking point after Cissnei and Aerith and Kunzel, but she'd never seen him like this.

So seeing him here and now, in the half-darkness of the hallway of the apartment over the bar that they had all turned into a home of sorts, with shadowed, tired eyes and an air of something beyond exhaustion or even fragility, a word that she would have thought could never have been applied to Zack even fleetingly, into mortality; seeing the fight was almost gone from his eyes and seeing that look about his eyes was when he was home, the place that was supposed to be a refuge from whatever was attacking in the world, was startling, horribly wrong, and she thought to herself, once again, that it was time to grow up.

Her shoulders slumped.

"Go to bed, Zack," she said softly.

Zack blinked and his mouth dropped open.

"I know. I know. I was the one screaming we needed to talk and do it now, but...go to bed," she said softly, dropping her head. I'm supposed to be the one making things easier on all of them, she thought to herself. I'm acting like everything's fine and dandy...and it's not, it's just not. And I can't do this. "You were right. We can't do this right now. We all need some rest," she said, and kept her eyes on the ground in front of her, where it was safe. "We keep saying the wrong thing and keep hurting each other and...this is...this is too important for all that. We can't be at each other's throats right now."

"So later," he said, sounding grateful, and Tifa nodded.

"Later. When this is all over. We're going to talk. About you, about me, about Cloud, about Nibelheim, about Aerith, about the Geostigma, all of it. We have to figure out what we're doing, because this can't...this can't go on. When this mess now is over," she said, and when she looked up, she didn't understand the look on Zack's face, the long, piercing look he gave her with those eyes that were so intensely blue, or how all she could feel was a strange, disappointed kind of relief when he finally looked away and shrugged.

"All right." He didn't meet her eyes now. "Night," he muttered, and walked back towards his room, shoulders hunched in.

He stopped in the doorframe and looked back at her.

She looked away first, and he walked into his room and closed the door quietly behind him.

She went down to the bar and sat there, holding a bottle she never got around to opening, for a long, long time, and did her best not to think of anything at all, until exhaustion finally got the better of her, and she put her head down and slept.

—

Kadaj stayed..unfocused...for far too long. He simply stayed where he was, staring into nothingness as the night gave way to dawn and the dawn gave way to pale tinges of blue, and all the while Loz fussed with ever-growing nervousness.

"Kadaj? Brother?" Yazoo finally asked, when Loz finally tugged at his sleeve with lost, scared eyes, pleading with him to do something.

Kadaj didn't respond, just stared at nothing, still clutching at his arms, his eyes more focused inwards than out.

This had gone on long enough.

"Kadaj!" Yazoo yelled, crouching down next to Kadaj and grasping his shoulders and shaking him firmly. "Kadaj!"

Kadaj slowly turned his unfocused eyes to him, but said nothing for a long time.

Then: "What's that noise?"

Loz and Yazoo exchanged looks. "Kadaj...I don't hear anything..." Loz said tentatively.

Kadaj ignored him, his eyes still unfocused, then pointed.

Yazoo stood up. "Stay with him," he told Loz, and once Loz nodded, he headed in the direction Kadaj had pointed, not sure what was there. He was beginning to think it was a fool's errand and Kadaj had been imagining things when he heard a faint sound.

A motorcycle.

He went rigid. It could mean nothing, could be anyone, but...

He went closer to the road, keeping himself hidden until he could make out better who it was.

Cloud.

Yazoo let out a fleeting curse and retreated as quickly as he could. They couldn't stay here.

"We have to move. Cloud is coming," he said with no preamble. Loz's eyes went wide and he scurried to his feet.

"Kadaj, let's — " he began, then stopped short when Kadaj shook his head viciously.

"Find Mother," he said, and his eyes had sharpened. "Go. Now. Our brother is mine."

"Kadaj, I don't think — "

"Find Mother!" Kadaj roared, cutting Yazoo off, and there was something Yazoo thought close to madness tinging his voice. "I am going after our brother. I will make him give Her back," he snarled, and Yazoo felt another touch of unease.

He schooled his face into expressionlessness, and nodded once, then went over to Loz, wide-eyed and trembling, and put his hand on the crook of his arm. "Let's go. We have work to do."

Loz looked at him, then Kadaj, uncertainly, then nodded when Yazoo's slim fingers tightened slightly against his arm. "Oh-Okay," he said, and when Yazoo let his hand slip away as he walked to their bikes, Loz followed without another word.

Kadaj seemed to pay them no mind as they left, and the icy feeling in Yazoo's stomach only grew colder.

—

Cloud refused to think about anything at all but the road in front of him and the sounds of his motorcycle as he rode, and blue had begun to streak the sky by the time Cloud arrived back at the City of the Ancients, and the lake where everything had gone...strange.

He wasn't altogether sure how, exactly, he found this place. He had just...ridden. And somehow found himself here, and he wasn't going to question it. He had a lot more, and bigger questions than that one, and he suspected answering them might also answer the question of how he'd known how to get there.

He had enough weird shit happening to him right now to bother questioning the useful weird shit.

So he instead turned the bike off and set the kickstand, and got off of it with a sigh.

The lake was clear in the pale light of the early morning, and only the frantic footprints on the ground gave any indication of what had happened only a hours earlier. Cloud walked over to the water, but his steps grew slower the closer he came, until he stopped at the water's edge.

It had been night, and dark, so he couldn't be sure, but he was certain the water hadn't been this...white...the night before. He could remember the water turning a pitch black, even in the moonlight, when Kadaj had done...whatever under the heavens he had done to it. But now...it wasn't clear, not like he would have expected if it had been purified of whatever Kadaj had done. Instead, it was a shimmering greenish white, much like...much like the Holy he had used.

What did I do? And how?

Part of him was drawn to it, and it was familiar and comforting, like a necklace long worn and memories of a mother's smile.

But another part was disgusted, wanted to fling dirt into it until its clean surface was foul and dirtied, and wanted to back far, far away from it.

The smell of lilies made him, for a moment, want to gag.

He instead sat down, cross-legged, and shut his eyes. He had to cast his mind back, he had to figure out...

Nothing.

It was all a blank.

Just...nothing. Just the dark of his own eyelids against his eyes, and a growing feeling of irritation and of failure. The harder he tried to think back, to remember, the more it just slipped away from him, like water between his fingers.

Like water between...

His eyes flew open.

"I'm making the biggest fucking mistake," he muttered, but that didn't stop him from leaning forward, just enough to dip his cupped hands into the lily-scented water that both beckoned and repulsed.

He lifted his hands, and before he could think better of it, drank.

The world went white.

—

The world was water and water was the world; there was nothing but him and nothing but the sound of the blood pounding in his ears and the taste of water in his mouth and —

— there had been a Limit Break; healing magic overflowing out of him, into the water, healing magic that was his but wasn't, that he had been gifted, somehow, that was his birthright, the birthright of the Cetra, from his mother, her last gift to him —

— when he left home, when he left to find his place in the city, his mother had cried, but she had understood, and she had given him —

— Holy, the materia that would save the world, that he had had all this time with no idea, the materia that had destroyed his plans, the plans that Mother had made, made a ruin of the gift he would give to her —

Water in his mouth, blood pounding in his ears.

A shrill voice, a woman, screams, " — behind you!"

His eyes meet wide green eyes.

— Sephiroth's sword in his hands, Angeal's sword is in his hands, Zack's sword is in his hands, his sword in his hands —

— Pain, there is pain, a memory of a sword, of Masamune, of his own sword, of Zack's sword, as it pierced his stomach —

— as he ran it through Sephi —

— ith, as he had to, as commanded to, to end this nightmare of flames destroying his home, this nightmare of water that would destroy his plans —

Green eyes, staring at him in shock.

Her voice, gentle even then, whispering.

It's not your fault —

His voice, in stunned disbelief, whispering.

How?

And a hand, trembling and soft as the whisper, on his cheek.

This shouldn't be your burden, but it is. You have to wake up and finish this for me.

Wake up, Cloud.

Wake up.

Cloud's eyes snapped open, and he flung himself onto his hands and knees and threw up, vomited until there was nothing left but bitter bile in his mouth.

—

When he recovered, Cloud rolled over onto his back, away from the water, and shut his eyes.

His mouth felt and tasted disgusting, but he knew better than to risk rinsing it out, and whatever memories might flood him if he touched the water again.

None of whatever he had just seen made sense. It was too jumbled, too patchwork, too —

It hadn't helped him one bit. He still had no idea what he had done, what had caused him to cure himself of the Geostigma. He even had no idea if it even had been something he did that had banished it directly, or if it had been some weird side effect of his unintended Limit Break.

He could, barely, just barely, remember Kadaj screaming.

Whatever he had done, it had hurt him. It had hurt Kadaj, even as it had somehow healed Cloud of the Geostigma.

What if...what it somehow, they can control the Geostigma, he wondered. He had no idea how it could possibly be, since all of the theories were that it was a result of the Planet trying to purify itself of the taint of Jenova by destroying her cells and DNA wherever they were...which meant in the bodies of everyone who had undergone SOLDIER enhancement or their children, who would carry that taint in the very DNA they had been born with.

They had promised the children they could cure it. That they could use it to strike back, somehow at the planet, Cloud thought. So that means they must, somehow, have a tie to it. So that means maybe when I hurt Kadaj, I broke his tie to it? Maybe? Or removed the parts of Jenova from me?

He felt the frustration growing in him again. He had no idea what he had done, but he had to figure it out. He was cured, but there was still Zack, still Denzel, still all of those children who had desperately followed Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo, and the longer Cloud sat here, like a idiotic lump who couldn't figure out what he himself had done, then the more likely people were to die.

You'll get there, a voice said, soothingly, but he had no patience.

"Stop telling me I'll get there and tell me how to get there!" he snarled in irritation, and the words didn't feel...like him, for all that they did.

You'll get there when you're ready, that same voice said, and never had he more wanted to —

The scent of lilies, more memory than real, seemed to fill the air, and there was a blinding white flash.

"Kill her."

— blood on his hands, and she looked at him in shock —

"You have to wake up, and finish this for me."

He dug the balls of his hands into his eyes, feeling sick and guilty, and more and more frustrated, because the more he tried to remember how he'd cured his Geostigma, all that came were more and more flashes to something he couldn't make heads or tails of, and that had nothing at all to do with why he'd even come here.

All he could remember were someone else's memories. Someone...someone else's...

Were those someone else's?! They had felt...different, somehow, to all the other fractured memories, but...but...

He could feel his breath speeding up, but before the growing unease could fully coalesce into panic, he heard a voice. A real voice, not a voice in his head or the whispers of a memory, and it screamed at him in rage.

"What did you do?!" Kadaj screamed as he ran toward him with his sword raised.

Cloud reacted on instinct, rolling onto his feet and reaching for his staff.

...the staff he didn't fucking have equipped, because it was still back in the church from that fight with Loz. He'd been in such a hurry to leave that he hadn't picked it up.

Fuck.

Foolish, a sharp voice snapped in his head.

No shit, he thought back, angry at both himself and the rebuking voice in his head, and he dodged left, just like the voice snapped next, when Kadaj attacked.

—

Kadaj's attacks were wild and unfocused, and Cloud knew that was saving him more than anything else. It made his attacks easy to dodge, which enraged Kadaj all the more, and made him more unfocused.

"What did you do!? What did you do? WHAT DID YOU DO!?" Kadaj kept screaming, and Cloud grabbed a fallen piece of crystallized tree branch. It wasn't a staff, but it was good enough - good enough for blocking and parrying, which was all he could do now.

Having something in his hands as a weapon, inadequate as it was, made something in him settle, and he focused his attention on Kadaj.

Kadaj's eyes were wide, so wide the whites were showing around his green irises. "How?! How did you take Mother's voice away? WHAT DID YOU DO?!"

"I don't know!" Cloud finally yelled back. Whatever he had done, had done more than he had thought it had. He knew it had healed his Geostigma, but it sounded like...it sounded like it had cut off Kadaj's connection to Jenova?

How had he done that? What under the heavens had happened?

"GIVE HER BACK!" Kadaj screamed, and his attacks turned more into furious hacking, and it took everything Cloud had to just block them. Kadaj was open, but attacking too furiously for Cloud to have a chance to counter.

Wear him down, the calculating voice said. Let him wear himself out. Stay silent and conserve your strength. Focus on blocking, and when he tires himself, there will be an opening to exploit.

It seemed like damned good advice, so he focused on just keeping himself from getting hurt, using as little of his energy as he could, trying to hold something back.

Good.

An opening finally came. Kadaj made a wide swing, and Cloud immediately swung the crystal branch hard against Kadaj's exposed left side, with every bit of energy he had. Then he immediately shifted his stance and thrust the branch into Kadaj's stomach, hitting his diaphragm.

Green eyes, shocked, met his, as the air was forced out of his lungs.

Green eyes, shocked, met his, as Zack's sword pierced her belly.

Green eyes, shocked, met his, as he used Sephiroth's own sword against him.

"How?"

"Why?"

"What did you do?" Kadaj choked out, his words barely more than half-shaped air, as he clutched his midsection.

"I don't know!" Cloud yelled, his own frustration breaking through. "I don't know what I did, or how. That's why I came back, to..."

Fool! Stop talking! Don't reveal your —

"Liar!" Kadaj spat out as he threw his arm out, away from his stomach, and shot a furious blast of magic at Cloud.

Cloud had just enough time to think, Aww, fuck, that's a Sle — , before the blast hit him.

—

Kadaj felt no small satisfaction watching Cloud drop when the Sleep hit him. He wished he'd used something stronger than that, something that would have killed him instead of knocking him out, but...

But he was their brother. He had taken Mother away, somehow, snatched her right out of his head, and he had to know how.

He made his way over to Cloud, and had to stop himself from kicking him in sheer anger. The only thing stopping him was knowing if he did, it might pull Cloud out of the Sleep, and he was still gasping for air after Cloud's lucky shot.

So instead, he glared at him, his hands balled into fists, trying to puzzle out how everything had gone so fucking wrong.

...something was different. Cloud was different, he...

It hit Kadaj almost as strongly as the crystallized branch had, and knocked his breath out just as surely.

The Geostigma was gone. The...feeling of it, of the tie of it to Mother battling the Planet, was gone.

What under the Heavens had Cloud done?! What is he?! Is he even my brother any more?!

He didn't dare do anything that might injure Cloud and so wake him, so he instead sat straddling Cloud's stomach, looking closely at his brother, trying to decide if he should kill him in his Sleep while he could; trying to determine how much of a threat he was and if he needed him or not.

He is nothing like us, Kadaj thought as he peered at Cloud's face. Even his hair was different — not silver but yellow, like a sun to the moon.

But —

He leaned over and pried open one of Cloud's eyes. His pupils - round, black, human pupils - were unfocused with sleep, but his iris...his iris was as green as Kadaj's were. They hadn't been before. His eyes had been blue.

The frantic, lost feeling he'd had up until now finally began to still. Whatever Cloud had done when he took away Kadaj's voice and connection to Mother had done more than just strip the Planet's anger out of his body. It had changed Cloud, too - made him closer to them even as it tried to wrench him away.

Cloud was one of them — or could be. Would be. Cloud had kept saying he didn't know what he did, but Kadaj had been sure he was lying. But now...

If Kadaj could figure it out, could figure out what Cloud had done and how to undo it, if he could bring back Mother and bring Cloud back to Mother's side...

It may have been a different color, but Cloud's hair felt the same as his, heavy and smooth, between two of Kadaj's fingers. And his eyes...

He traced a finger down Cloud's cheek, nearly as pale as his own, as a grin lit his face, as he felt surety settle into place. He would find Mother. Not just her voice, but her. They would raze what was left of Midgar, Edge, to the ground until they found where the ShinRa dogs were hiding Mother. Kadaj, the imperfect vessel, may have been weaker than whatever Cloud had done, but Mother herself would surely subsume that and bring Cloud to her, and then she would give them all Reunion.

Reunion would make them all whole again.

"Soon, brother," he whispered in Cloud's ear. "Soon. I'll bring you back to Mother. She'll chase out all of that vile Cetra in you and all of us will be together. We will."

—

Cloud woke up and cursed.

This is becoming a bad habit, he thought in irritation. I haven't been knocked unconscious this many times in one day since I was in Hojo's fucking labs. Are they on his payroll or something?

A voice in his head snickered at that one.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been out, but judging by how the sun wasn't too high in the sky yet, it hadn't been that long — but it had been long enough for Kadaj to take off.

He frowned suddenly — Kadaj had left, but more importantly, Kadaj had left and left him alive.

The big question to that was why.

...One question amongst many.

He sat up and dug his fingers into his hair, trying to both chase off the last of the Sleep and get his bearings. There was no possible way for him to figure out Kadaj's motives, so he focused on what he could - trying to figure out how all those memories fit together. When he had hit Kadaj in the chest, he'd had flashbacks that were so similar, as if the hitting Kadaj had triggered them.

They had been scattered and uncertain, but...but those swirling memories, those two set off by the motion of hitting Kadaj in the chest with the branch...they felt different from all the other fractured memories in his mind. All those fractured bits in his head, those were all someone else's but...but these last ones, of stabbing Sephiroth and of stabbing that woman, they felt different. They felt...they had felt...

He remembered being stabbed, vaguely. But it wasn't his memory, and it hadn't felt like these. These...They felt like they had been his. They felt the same as his memories now, when he looked back on things from the last year, from things he knew were all him.

That woman...that had to have been Aerith. There was no one else it could have been. But...but they - Zack and Tifa - had told him that Sephiroth had killed Aerith. But...but...those memories, of stabbing her, those had been — they hadn't been like the other fragments of memory he had.

He knew he was the one who had stabbed Sephiroth, in Nibelheim. He'd had no memory of it, not until now, but Zack had told him. He knew that must've been what he'd remembered now, that one set of green eyes had been Sephiroth's.

But...but the other, those other green eyes, he was...he was even more certain that was Aerith. There was no other person it could have been, and she had been stabbed in the stomach, the same as Sephiroth had been, but Sephiroth had done that, they'd said, but that memory...that memory felt the same as the one of him stabbing Sephiroth, and the same as thrusting that branch into Kadaj's diaphragm. There was something about it, something that...but...

It didn't make sense. It couldn't have been his memory. He hadn't killed Aerith. He...hadn't...he...had he?

"No," he whispered. Either Zack and Tifa had lied, or his mind was even more fractured and piecemeal than he thought, that he truly had no grasp on any of the thoughts and memories in his head and where they came from, and neither was an answer he liked.

But either way, it was an answer he needed. Now more than ever, when there had to be a reason why the water he had...purified? Was that what he had done? Was that how he had cured himself?...had jarred them. He long ago had ceased believing in chance when it came to things like this.

Once again, he had to go back.

This time, to Midgar.

—

To be continued