Hey, guys, Soaring here and I want to welcome you to my new Final Fantasy VII FanFic. In this, Cloud Strife and Sephiroth is the main pairing (I may not even have any others, I'm not sure yet) though, there won't be lemons or anything close, I'm just not a smutty writer (sorry). I'm rating the story T for romance moments, though the non-lemon people out there don't have to worry. I'm going to try to upload a new chapter every Thursday at least, with the summer now here that shouldn't be too hard.

Cloud Strife's petite form of five feet and seven inches walked slowly down the deserted street, breathing in the cool night air, shockingly blue eyes shining. His bright blonde spikes seemed to almost defy gravity. The soft thuds his heavy boots made against the cracked concrete echoed off the crumbling walls of buildings. The tall light post's cast an eerie yellow glow across the street, elongating his shadow.

He had to escape, even for only a little while. The house was loud; the kids played games and ran around, while the adults, apart from Wutai heiress, sat upstairs and discussed the last battle. Yuffie Kisaragi was shouting and jumping around like a little child, asking far too many, repetitive questions to him. Her dark brown, short hair was restrained slightly by her long headband, which flowed wildly behind her as she moved.

Cloud could see that her actions were beginning to affect Vincent Valentine as well, but he could drown her antics out better than Cloud could. His deep red eyes would flash with an unknown emotion when ever Yuffie came close or spoke loudly, which was almost all the time. He pulled his chin back and held it closer to his chest, hiding most of his face from view with the large collar of his red coat.

Tifa Lockhart could tell that Cloud was getting annoyed, so she distracted Yuffie long enough for Cloud to slip away into the dark, night air. She looked after him with almost sad, rich brown eyes, pushing her long, black hair out of her face.

Cloud sighed to himself as he tried to remember what had even occurred in the last few moments of their most recent battle, curling in on himself slightly. He could only remember snippets of information. Kadaj falling, grasping a black, rectangular box tightly, Sephiroth suddenly appeared out of a dark cloud. He and Sephiroth fought. He kept taunting Cloud with his intoxicatingly deep voice, wanting a real challenge. Cloud had suddenly found the strength to defeat Sephiroth after remembering his friends, summoning several swords to do so.

From a dark cloud in the sky, fell a mortally wounded Kadaj, who collapsed into Cloud's arms, and eventually returned to the Life Stream. Moments later, a bullet ripped through his body, a mortal wound inflicted by a fatally wounded Yazoo; but before Cloud collapsed, he could have sworn that he saw something fall from the sky off to his right, falling between several half crumbled buildings.

When he regained consciousness, he was in water, healed fully, surrounded by people and children, all of whom were glad to see that he was alright. The only thing he could think about, though, was what had fallen. All he had seen was a quick flash of silver, but it could have been anything, that was what he had to keep telling himself so that he wouldn't return to the location where he saw it fall.

Cloud irritably pushed a gloved hand through his spiky, blonde hair. He froze a moment later, hand still on the back of his head, when he noticed his surroundings.

He was just a dozen yards or so from the buildings where the last battle had taken place. He slowly dropped his hand as he looked up at the building. He had walked much further than he had planned without even noticing.

The final street lamp was several yards behind him, so its faint, yellow cast barely reached him, but managed to throw a large, albeit faint, shadow of his own body on the twisted, metal structures ahead. The glow barely managed to light the first few feet of the structure, let alone its vast interior and the other buildings surrounding it. It was almost pitch black, seeing how the sky was covered in a thick mass of dark clouds; it would start raining soon, Cloud could feel it in the air already.

As he gazed into the darkness, the more curious and worried he became. He didn't really even know what to think about whatever had fallen; it was more than likely a random piece of debris, but he couldn't hold back a feeling that it might have been something else. What else it could have been, he hadn't a clue, but he wanted, needed, to find out.

Cloud walked forward cautiously, boots sending up little puffs of dust with each step. It was much dirtier here than it was near the house because of the half-standing skyscrapers. He carefully stepped around and over large chunks of concrete with steel rebar protruding at odd angles.

The further away from the final light source he got, the more his eyes adjusted to the dark environment. He was able to pick up his pace a little as he became more confident and was able to easily navigate his way back to the building where he was shot.

Cloud rolled his shoulders and neck before he crouched slightly. He took a deep breath and then leapt straight up in the air, easily reaching over ten feet before landing lightly on a horizontal, steel bar. He pushed off that one just as effortlessly, soaring to the next bar. He continued like that, picking up speed as he became more assured that it was a smart thing he was doing, looking into something that he found suspicious, following his gut instinct.

He easily reached the top of the extremely tall building in less than one minute. The wind was stronger up there, tousling his hair and blowing his thin knit shirt more snuggly against his body. Cloud strode forward, skirting around the large dome to get to the other side of the roof.

The moon had just managed to peek through the heavy cloud cover as he arrived at the correct location. He stood over a pool of blood, most likely his own, that was already darkened and was becoming a rusted brown color. Blue eyes slowly turned up to the sky, remembering the dark, foreboding cloud that he had last seen Sephiroth in.

He shook his head in attempt to clear the gloomy thoughts from his mind before he stepped over to the edge of the building and looked down in the general trajectory path that the falling object had taken. He couldn't make out anything in particular from this height and in this amount of darkness; the only way he could make sure was to physically go down there.

Cloud took a half step back, not really wanting to go down there, but drew in a calming breath before he stepped off the building. He caught a beam with his hand, about twenty feet down, which he used to slow his decent; he let go and fell to the next rod, which he landed on with his feet. He continued the action dropping from beam to beam until he was only about forty feet off the ground.

The steel beam that he dropped onto was heavily damaged and was really only still in the position it was in because it was balanced perfectly. His weight slamming into the end of the metal sent it cascading over the edge, taking Cloud with it. He was so stunned that he couldn't even react to the falling, but, as he hit the ground, he managed to stick it and roll with his momentum so he didn't break a leg. The beam struck the ground with its end, causing it to now protrude out of the dirt like some sort of horrible shrapnel wound.

Cloud stood up and brushed dirt off of his clothes before looking around to get his bearings, blue eyes bright. By his rough estimates, whatever had fallen would have hit the ground fifty yards to his ten o'clock. The blonde set off in that direction, picking his way around even more crumbled concrete and twisted metal.

Just as he arrived at the estimated area, the moon was once again obstructed by storm clouds. He paused to allow his eyes to adjust before he began scouting out the area, looking for any signs of what may have fallen. It was rather hard to distinguish anything within the rubble, but he searched none-the-less.

After just a few minutes, he found something interesting. Blood; it was definitely blood. Theoretically, blood could have fallen during the battle from the wounds inflicted, but, this didn't look like a drop or two that would have fallen from that far up, this was a large patch that even looked smeared around the edges.

This definitely didn't drip, something, and something rather large, fell and landed here. Whatever it was had possibly even stayed there a little while based on the pure amount of blood that was pooled up between and on the cement chunks.

Cloud immediately began combing through the surrounding area in hopes of finding more blood. The dark blood blended into the ground in the already dark environment, finding dark blood is almost impossible.

Suddenly, lightning exploded across the sky, easily lighting up the area enough for him to get a flash look at his surroundings. He thought he noticed a dark spot off to his right, so he worked his way over to it as the thunder overhead seemed to split the air with a deafening crack. He had just made it to the dark spot when another lightning bolt unleashed itself, showing him another brief picture. It was indeed blood, but this was a much smaller amount, whatever was bleeding didn't stay here long.

He turned his face, blue eyes half lidded, toward the angry sky as he felt rain begin hitting his bare arms and upturned face; the freezing rain stung his skin. Cloud needed to move quickly or else the rain would wash away the blood trail.

He was able to find another blood spot and continue on using the lighting as his light source. He eventually made his way to a small overhang under the building on which he had been shot but waited to move forward until the next lightning strike. What he saw chilled him to the bone, more so than the freezing rain, causing his stomach to wrench violently.

Sephiroth. He was slumped against a crumbling wall, clutching his side, his extremely tall and broad frame was folded in on itself, almost painfully so. His long, silver hair hid his face from view and his black overcoat hid the extent of his injuries, though it was clear that he had many. He was covered in blood, Cloud could easily see that, but the lighting was a double-edged sword. It lit the world for a second, only to plunge it into complete darkness for a moment. When Cloud's vision returned, Sephiroth was gone, leaving behind a small pool of blood on the ground, and a smear on the wall.

Cloud rushed forward, heart pounding, trying to pursue him, but it was too dark in the bowels of the building to follow any further; he couldn't see anything, it was too dangerous. Cloud let out a breath that he didn't know he had been holding and drew in a stabilizing breath as he stepped back from the inky-blackness, careful not to trip on the rubble. He couldn't do anything about Sephiroth now anyway, Cloud wasn't carrying his sword, nor could he see in the dark, so he turned and ambled back to the first blood patch. Though, when he arrived, the rain had already picked up strength and had washed it away.

The rain that pounded relentlessly onto Cloud's head was so cold that it was beginning to feel like he was getting brain-freeze, let alone the fact that his shirt was sleeveless and a light knit, holding the freezing water to his body, chilling him further.

There was nothing he could do. He was utterly powerless to do anything about Sephiroth at that moment, and the evidence that he is still alive in the first place was already washed away by the downpour.

Cloud hunched his narrow shoulders against the driving sheets of rain as he picked his way back through the rubble, heading back to the street he had been walking on before. It was slow business, but he eventually made it back to the street lamp and with a final glace back, the hunched his shoulders once again and headed home.

If he had looked back for just a moment longer, he would have noticed the dim pair of green eyes watching his retreating silhouette as another bolt of lightning sizzled across the sky.