The Conscience of the King
			Chapter 21: High And Dry

"You'd kill yourself for recognition, 
kill yourself to never, ever stop.
You broke another mirror, 
you're turning into something you are not."
	-- Radiohead




The room was silent and dark, the only source of light a video screen
that flickered and twisted with low-fidelity, low-bandwidth feed. It
played out across Reeve's face, which was tipped sideways and stretched
out, pillowed on one arm. He slept, exhausted, stretched thin with the
need to be two places at once, and did not see Cloud stand in front of
the assembled group with determination on his face.

"I'm Cloud Strife," Cloud said, voice tinny through the distance and the
cheap speakers of his headphones, the image on the monitor hissing and
spitting and jerking along. "Ex-SOLDIER. Born in Nibelheim. I've been
following Sephiroth to figure out what the hell is going on here."

"Cloud?" Tifa asked. Her voice sounded uncertain. 

Cloud ignored her. "I came here of my own free will. Or so I thought. To
tell you the truth --" A pause, and if Reeve had been awake, he would
have squinted at the screen, trying to make out the expression on
Cloud's face. "To tell you the truth, I'm afraid of myself. There's
something -- inside me. Something that I don't understand. It comes over
me, like it's not even me. It's the part that made me give the Black
Materia to Sephiroth. It's the part of me that almost made me -- Aerith
--"

He broke off again. "I should quit this. Quit all of this, let you guys
figure it out on your own. Stay far away, where I can't mess anything up
again. Where I can't do anything so awful, so crazy, ever again."

A pause, while the feed fuzzed out and then shifted back in. "--not
giving up. Sephiroth -- He destroyed my hometown five years ago. He
killed Aerith. And now he's planning to destroy the planet. I can't let
him do it. I can't stand back and watch it happen, and know that I might
have been able to do something to save it. I have to do something. I
have to try. And I have a favor to ask you all."

"Whatever you need," Tifa said, softly. 

"Will you -- I need you to all come with me. To make sure that I don't
do something terrible." The tone was matter-of-fact. "To stop me. By any
means necessary. If it happens again."

"You've got our word," Cid said. "We've got you covered."

Cloud looked over the group. Something of the tension eased from his
shoulders, visible even over the long distances. "We've still got a
chance. I don't know what Aerith was trying to do to save us, and I -- I
guess we'll never know." He paused for another deep breath, then
rallied. "But we have a chance. We have to get the Black Materia back
from Sephiroth before he uses it." 

"We're with you," Barrett said. "Come on, scrawny. Less talk. More
walking."

Reeve slept. When he woke, he would find that his secretary had tiptoed
in and left him a cup of coffee, and turned the monitor off. When he
turned it on again, there would be nothing but the unrelenting white of
the snow plains, as far as the eye could see.


-- * --


A hand fell on Tifa's shoulder. She jumped and whirled around, furious
at herself for letting herself drift off even enough to fail to notice
the footsteps behind her, but it was only Cid, holding a steaming mug in
one hand and frowning at her.

"Sorry," she said, pressing a hand to her chest, right along the scar,
where her heart was thumping. "Nerves."

"Gets to all of us," Cid said without a smile, and handed over the mug.
Tifa sniffed at it experimentally; it was coffee, thick and black, but
it was warm and she was frozen nearly through. 

"Thanks," she said, and sipped at it. Cid nodded. "What're you doing
still up?"

He stepped a little closer to her, leaned against the side of the cave
mouth, and lit the ever-present cigarette. Tifa wondered where he was
finding them out here, wondered if he'd simply brought a few cartons
smuggled along in his bags. "Couldn't sleep. Figured I'd get up and keep
you company on watch." He looked out over the drifts of white outside
the cave. "Good thing I did, too. You distracted enough to let something
through while you're busy staring into your belly button?"

Tifa sighed. "I'm not that bad, am I?"

Cid shrugged. "Not bad, not good. Just sayin'. There's a lot locked up
behind those eyes of yours, pretty lady. If you ever need someone to
share some of those secrets with, well, you know where to find me."

The coffee was warm, but it didn't quite touch the knot of cold fear in
her belly. She leaned back against the rock of the cave and closed her
eyes for a minute. "I keep thinking," she said, slowly. "About those
videos we found. They still don't make total sense."

Cid exhaled smoke, and came over to sit down next to her. She sneezed as
the smoke got in her face, and he made a face and leaned a little out of
the wind. "Seem pretty straightforward to me. Hojo used to have a
partner; the lady got Hojo's partner out of there, even if she couldn't
stop whatever experiment they were doing. And that's who Aerith's
parents were."

"Right," Tifa said. "But I still don't understand -- What were Hojo and
Gast trying to /do/? The lady, Ifalna, she was talking about the crisis
from the sky, and about a virus -- Is that what Sephiroth has, that
virus?" ~Is that what Cloud has?~

Cid was silent for a minute, and then flicked ashes off the end of his
cigarette. "Might be," he said. "We know enough to know that Sephiroth
is up to something dangerous, and that we have to stop him. I don't know
if we need to understand all of it in order to be able to do anything
about it."

"I think we do," Tifa said. The words slipped from her mouth before she
could stop them. "Because if we don't, we're not going to be able to
undo what's been done to -- to all the people Hojo tampered with."

"To Cloud." Cid was no idiot. He stubbed out the cigarette and put his
hand, with its yellowed fingers and stubby nails, on her arm. "He's the
one you're really worried about."

It was late, and Tifa was more tired than she should have been. That was
what kept her from being able to stop herself. "Yeah. I -- Cid, I'm
terrified of him. Of what he's going to do next. Of what Sephiroth is
going to make him do next."

Cid raised one eyebrow, and nodded. "Not the smartest thing in the world
to be going chasing after someone with a cuckoo in your nest. Two, if
you count the toy thing."

Tifa rubbed her eyes. "I know. I don't know how many times I've
considered just ... leaving, and finding someone else to deal with this.
Instead of us. I mean, it's not like we're the most equipped people in
the world to know what to do, much less do it."

"Eh." Cid sounded supremely unconcerned. "We're not doing too badly. And
if my suspicions about who's on the other end of that robot are correct,
we might have a little bit of backup in unexpected places."

"Who is it?" Tifa asked. "Is it someone I know?"

Cid shrugged. "I don't know. Don't know if you know all the Shinra.
Don't know if I'm even right. But it's possible --" He stopped, and
pulled out another cigarette. "The thing is," he said, abruptly, "I
started with Shinra because they were the ones who were going to let me
fly. If you know pilots, if you know sky people, you know it's like a
drug. Easy at first, just to say you didn't know what they were doing
and why they were doing it, until it got to be too hard to keep my mouth
shut. I've always been shit at keeping my mouth shut, and so they shoved
me out to pasture with an underfunded program that'd never get off the
ground --" Tifa smiled at the pun, but it didn't seem to be intentional,
and Cid didn't even notice. "And we did it. Are doing it. And it's so
fucking easy to forget where your money is coming from, and -- I don't
even fucking know what I'm saying." 

"You're saying that once you pay Danegeld, it is difficult to get rid of
the Dane." The soft voice came from the mouth of the cave; Tifa whirled
around, but it was only Vincent, standing in the shadows. 

Cid scowled. "If I had any idea what you were talking about, I might
agree. Don't you ever sleep?"

The tiny curve of Vincent's lips behind his high turtleneck might have
been a smile. He glided out to the edge of the cliff, looking out over
the moon reflecting over the snow. "Sometimes. When I get tired enough.
You're trying to understand Shinra; people have been trying for years,
and have never succeeded. Understanding Shinra isn't the key to this
mystery."

Something about the way Vincent was standing, about the cryptic comment
still echoing against the side of the cave, made Tifa bold enough to
ask. "You know what Hojo and Gast were doing in Nibelheim, don't you."

One of Vincent's shoulders twitched, ever so slightly. "Yes."

Tifa waited a minute to see if he would elaborate, and then reined in
her patience. She still wasn't used to dealing with Vincent. "What was
--"

Vincent turned around. The look in his eye made Tifa stop in
mid-sentence. "I won't tell you. There are two people living who know
the whole story of what happened, and that's two too many. When I kill
Hojo, I will kill him not because of what he did, but because of what he
knows." 

From anyone else, the statement would have been over-the-top melodrama.
From Vincent, Tifa thought, it was simple intent. "Vincent," she said,
softly. "I need to know what happened to Cloud."

Vincent looked back out over the snow. "That, I cannot tell you. I was
-- asleep."

Tifa tugged on the end of her braid, the hair slipping through her
fingers. "I -- Vincent, please. I need to know. Am I right to be this
worried?"

A long minute, when Tifa feared that Vincent would not answer, and then
a sigh. Next to Tifa, Cid stubbed out his cigarette; it was the first
time he'd moved in long minutes, and Tifa started at the motion in the
corner of her eye. She was just jumpy tonight, she told herself. Stress.
Nerves. She had to calm down.

"If Cloud was with Hojo," Vincent finally said -- and Tifa might have
been imagining it, but she thought she heard reluctance in his voice --
"then you are more right to be worried than you know." 

Cid put a hand on Tifa's wrist. "Come on, Tif'," he said, softly. "I'm
up. Spooky's up. We'll take watch. You go sleep."

Tifa pulled her wrist away, automatically, and then sighed and dropped
her hands back in her lap. "Cid, will you -- will you promise me
something?"

Cid quirked an eyebrow. "If I can."

"I just -- I have this feeling." Tifa twisted her fingers around her
hair again, twined them together, forced herself to be still. "This
really awful feeling. And it's been getting worse and worse. If anything
-- if anything happens, to me, to Cloud -- will you promise that you'll
see the rest of it through?"

Cid laughed, a sharp humorless bark. "Me? Shouldn't you be asking
someone who isn't a fuckup?"

"You aren't a fuckup," Vincent said: faintest of stresses on the "you",
his voice a bare breath on the wind, his back still to them. 

Tifa spared a glance, then looked back at Cid. "I need to know that
someone's going to finish this. If I can't. If we can't. And you -- you
know what Shinra can do, you know some of what's happening. More than I
do, maybe."

Cid looked away. He pulled out another cigarette, put it between his
lips, took it away again without lighting it. "I don't really know
shit," he said. "Enough to be scared."

"Cid, /please/." The words burst from her lips: loud, too loud, in the
silence of the night. She took a deep breath and caught herself. "I'm
really fucking scared, okay? I've been doing this for years and I've
never been scared of any of it, and I'm fucking terrified of this. I
need to -- I have --" She stopped again, caught herself again, took
another deep breath. Another. They caught in her lungs, burned like
whiskey, but she was almost getting used to it. She would not cry; she'd
done enough crying. "Everyone I would have relied on to finish this is
dead. If I am too, I need to know that the world's not going to follow
me."

Silence for a few minutes. The sunrise came early in the mountains, Tifa
thought, looking up and blinking rapidly to try to regain control. The
faintest hints of pink were spreading along the horizon. It was going to
be a clear, cold day.

"I promise," Cid said, finally, shifting his weight and reaching for his
lighter. He didn't look at her, but she could hear the truth in his
voice. "Go get some sleep before we move out."

It didn't help. Well, it did, but it didn't do anything to ease the
elephant sitting on her chest, the weight of all the things she knew.
"Thank you," she whispered, and then stumbled her way back to her
bedroll without waiting for an answer.

-- * --

"Sir. /Sir/."

It took a few minutes for Beatrice's voice to penetrate Rufus's haze.
Too many minutes. He wondered how long she'd been standing there, trying
to get his attention. 

She was holding a sheaf of papers in a manila folder, tapping it lightly
against her thighs, when he finally looked up. He lifted his hands from
the keyboard and turned to her. "Yeah."

Whatever she'd come to say, it started with, "When was the last time you
slept?"

Rufus shook his head, rapped one hand on his desk. "Tuesday. Monday?
It's not important."

Beatrice's eyes were dark and concerned. "Sir, it's Friday. The board
meeting is in half an hour."

Board meeting. Fuck. It couldn't be Friday; surely it was only
Wednesday. Thursday? Fridays were for preparing for the board meetings,
bringing together facts and figures, writing an agenda and planning the
next week's goals. He'd spent the day in front of his computer, trying
to break Hojo's encryption, skimming through the video files Reeve's
robot was uploading to the server and looking for hints. For clues. For
something.

He looked down at the taskbar of his laptop, where the clock was ticking
off the wasted minutes. Friday. It was Friday.

"Cancel it," he said, abruptly. "There are more important things."

Beatrice started to say something, then stopped. She turned on her heel,
preparing to leave, and then turned back. "Sir, I don't say this
lightly, and it's not my place to interfere --"

"Then don't," Rufus said, and then winced. He could say that to just
about anyone, but not to Beatrice.

Her jaw firmed. "With all due respect, sir, shut up. I've watched you
destroying yourself and the people around you for the past few months,
and I've had enough of it. If you're canceling the board meeting, you're
doing so to go upstairs and sleep."

Rufus closed his eyes. His head was swimming; he felt like he was
unraveling around the edges. "I can't --"

"Bullshit, you can't." If Rufus hadn't been so tired, he would have been
more amazed; it was the first time he'd ever heard anything stronger
than a "damn" or "hell" escape Beatrice's lips. "Whatever you're working
on, it can wait eight more hours --"

"I mean I /can't/." Rufus curled his fingers against the edge of his
desk. "Every time I close my eyes, there's something in the room with
me. Something waiting for me. I can hear it whispering in my ear." He
let out a breath, hissing between his teeth; he'd imagined that it would
feel like a release to be able to say it, to be able to admit it, but it
really only left him feeling more naked and raw. "I'm going insane,
Beatrice."

She paused for a minute. Rufus could hear her breathing, but he didn't
open his eyes. When she finally spoke, it was gentle. "Well, if you're
going insane, staying up for an entire week isn't going to make it any
better. If you won't go upstairs and sleep, at least lock the door and
take a nap on the couch. I'll be right outside."

There was nothing in her voice to make him think he was being
patronized, but it irritated Rufus nonetheless. If he was honest enough
with himself, the irritation was there to cover up the fear that even
having someone sitting outside, in front of the door and standing guard,
wouldn't be enough. The fear that he knew what it was that was haunting
him.

"I don't need to be mothered," he said. It came out much sharper than he
was intending for it to.

"Sir --" Beatrice started, and then stopped. "/Rufus/. I will not stand
here and watch you fall apart in front of my eyes." Her voice grew
quieter. "Tseng would never forgive me."

It was a low blow: low, low, far below the belt. Rufus felt as though
he'd been punched in the stomach, as though he were seventeen years old
and in a dojo again, struggling to breathe against it. "You can't --"

"No. /You/ can't." Beatrice reached across the desk, took one of his
hands in hers. "You've pushed yourself beyond your limits. You do have
them, you know."

Rufus sighed, and finally opened his eyes. Beatrice was watching him as
though he were a rare specimen, as though she had to walk gently around
him and avoid making any sudden movements. He wondered, with a sudden
sharp clarity, when he'd become the type of person that everyone feared,
and tried not to think that it had probably happened a long time ago.
"I'll try," he said. "If you wake me before you leave."

They both knew that she wouldn't move from her desk outside his office
all night, if necessary, but all she did was nod. "I will." She paused
again. "Sir, do you think -- Perhaps you should go see Hojo. He could
give you something to make you sleep --"

"No!" Rufus was on his feet before he even realized he was moving; his
chair racketed backwards, crashed against the ground. "No," he repeated,
quieter this time. "Not Hojo."

Beatrice had taken a step backwards, completely against her will; Rufus
wondered what was showing on his face, to make her so skittish. "All
right," she said. "I was only thinking --"

"No," he said, a third time. "I'll sleep. I'll try. Cancel the board
meeting. Tell everyone -- I don't care what you tell everyone. Tell them
there's an epidemic. Something. Just --"

"I'll take care of it," Beatrice said. 

He opened his mouth to say something, anything, to come up with some
response to whatever she was going to add, but she just turned and left
the office. The door snicked shut quietly behind her; a second later,
Rufus could hear the turning of the lock.

He'd had Building Services drag up the couch from his old office; it
didn't fit the rest of the decor, but it was old and familiar. Too
familiar, really. Rufus looked at it, and then sighed. If he didn't at
least lie down, Beatrice would know, somehow, and she would give him
that look. He would go to a great deal of trouble to avoid that look. 

The drapes were open; the doors to the roof were locked, but Rufus
couldn't bring himself to close off the view of the city. His city. He
stopped in front of the door, rested a hand on the chill of the glass.
Rested his forehead on the back of his hand. Part of him felt too open,
too vulnerable, in a room with more than one entrance; the rest of him
quailed at the thought of drawing the curtains. Blocking off the light,
the buzz, the city.

"I'm sorry," he said, finally. Quietly, so quietly it barely fogged the
glass. He didn't know whom he was speaking to. The city, maybe. She'd
been his first lover. Sixty-nine floors up, and all he could see was the
way down.

As he turned, clumsily, nearly tripping over his feet -- so far from
grace, so far from the smooth swift motions that had been his for so
long that they'd grown bone-deep -- he knocked against his desk, sending
a pile of papers flying. He cursed; the papers had been building up
again, threatening a flood, but if he left them on the floor, Building
Services would move them and he'd never find them again. He knelt,
ignoring the haze, ignoring the blood singing in his ears, and
re-stacked them haphazardly.

When he was done, the top paper on the pile was Hojo's resignation
letter. ~How much easier would it have been if he'd stayed gone?~ Rufus
thought, and flipped it over so it wouldn't be the first thing he saw in
the morning. Evening. Whenever he woke. 

Then he froze, looking down. At the lines of poetry on the back of the
paper. The poetry from a man whom he'd have sworn had no poetry in him.
So tremendously out of place. So random --

It clicked.

~What if,~ Rufus thought, ~what if whatever is wrong with him is
something he has just a little bit of control over. Just enough. And
what if he knew I was trying to crack his files, and could take it over
for just long enough to give me ...~

It was crazy.

/He/ was crazy.

Ten minutes later, all thoughts of sleep discarded, Rufus was reading
the files of the Jenova Project.


-- * --

Once upon a time, Reeve would have gone storming up into Rufus's office,
demanding to know why the board meeting was cancelled. Once upon a time,
he would have been the person to talk Rufus into cancelling the meeting.
Or at least ducking out of the meeting, sitting upstairs in Rufus's
apartments and eating takeout, watching a movie idly in the background
while getting some work done, and --

He stopped himself. No use crying over spilt milk, his momma had always
told him. 

He checked the video feed to find nothing but endless white static.
Avalanche was still climbing the glacier, then. They'd never seen the
need to put relaying towers out there, so reception was spotty as hell,
and basically dependent on whether or not there was a satellite anywhere
overhead. Reeve checked the charts -- ~at least this whole shebang is
teaching me the communications network like the back of my hand~, he
thought -- and set himself an alarm for an hour and twenty-one minutes,
when he'd get a compressed squirt of all the audio feed Cait Sith had
recorded in the downtime. He'd shut off the video feed for the time
being; the robot's hard drive storage space wasn't designed for hours of
video recording at a time.

With that done, and with another hour and a half before anything
interesting could happen, he studied the piles of paperwork on his desk.
The final damage reports were coming in from the Sector 7 destruction,
and they were even grimmer than he'd expected. He'd been diverting
resources right and left for the past month, and things were still
barely under control. At least the weather was cold enough to freeze, he
thought, with a kind of macabre humor; it gave them a little more time
to find the bodies.

He was reading the reports of his director of emergency management -- he
was a few weeks behind, but Jeff was a good guy, competent enough to
work unsupervised if he had to -- when the knock sounded. He looked up
to find Reno standing in the doorway, uncharacteristically somber. It
was like a knife in the pit of his stomach; Reeve could remember Tseng
doing the same thing. "You got a few minutes?" Reno asked, somehow
managing to sound utterly casual while at the same time letting Reeve
know that whatever it was, it was important.

"I --" The look on Reno's face made Reeve stop whatever he was going to
say. He put down the papers he was holding, sat back in his chair.
"Yeah. Board meeting got cancelled, so I've got that time free. What's
up?"

"There's something down in Upper 7 that I want you to take a look at,
tell me if it's a problem or not. You mind heading out of the building?
Hate t'drag you out into the cold, but if you've got the time..." Reno
trailed off. 

Reeve had crawled over every inch of Upper 7 -- the former Upper 7 --
right after the incident, and he couldn't think of anything that would
require his presence now. Jeff would have been the guy to go to if it
was something involving safety, anyway. Once upon a time, Reeve would
have been so gauche as to point that out. "Sure," he said. "Let me just
get my jacket and my scarf."

Reno didn't bother with cover chatter as they went down the elevator and
out the doors; Reeve pulled on his gloves as they went down the front
steps and tucked his chin into his collar. It wasn't until they were in
the Turks' car -- which Reno had illegally double-parked in front of the
building as usual -- that Reno spoke. "Your office's bugged."

Reeve raised an eyebrow. "My office has been bugged since I started.
Rufus makes sure that the IntSec reports go to his desk, not anywhere
incriminating."

The fraction of a second of pause told Reeve that he wasn't going to
like what Reno was about to say. "Rufus has your office bugged."

Reeve blinked. "Excuse me?"

Reno sighed and put the car into drive, peeling out with his usual
casual disregard for the laws of traffic. If it weren't for the fact
that he had the corresponding reflexes, Reeve thought, nobody would ever
drive with him --

He stopped and shook himself. He was doing that too often, lately.
Thinking about the inanities to avoid thinking about the shit he really
didn't want to think about.

He wasn't just imagining the reluctance in Reno's voice; it was written
all over his face, in profile, as he gripped the steering wheel and
watched the road. "I've had Elena on a security runthrough of the
building. Trying to figure out who's doing what, keeping an eye on
what's going on. And remind me to tell you about what Scarlet and
Heidegger are up to, but that's another story. Elena's been running
midnights all week since she got back from Icicle Inn, trying to find
all the taps we /don't/ know about to add them to the list of the ones
that we do know about. And there's one in your office, and it deadends
to Rufus's console."

Reeve's fingers were cold, and he didn't think it was entirely due to
the weather. "He /what/?"

Reno sighed. "He's got you tapped, Reeve. He's been listening in on your
video feed."

Reeve closed his eyes. "Son of a bitch. Son of a fucking /bitch/."

"I needed to tell you," Reno said, quiet as a breath. Too quiet.

"Yeah," Reeve said. "Stop the car."

"What are you going to do?" 

Reno snuck a glance over at Reeve; Reeve's fingers clenched as Reno took
his eyes off the road, but all he said, soft and deadly, was, "Stop the
fucking car."

Reno sighed again and yanked the wheel; horns blared behind them, and
Reno brought the car up onto the curb. The minute they stopped moving,
Reeve was unbuckling his seat belt and opening the door. Reno called
after him, "You wanna stop before you do something stupid?"

"Nothing in the world," Reeve said, the edges of his vision starting to
go fuzzy with rage, "could be stupider than /bugging my fucking
office/." 

The two men stared at each other for a second, and then Reno shook his
head. "Get in the car," he said. "I'll drive you back to the office."

"It's three blocks," Reeve said. "I'll walk."

Behind him, as he slammed the door, he could hear Reno calling for Rude
to pick up the radio.

-- * --

Beatrice tried to stop him, but by that point, Reeve was so furious he
figured the top of his head was about to blow off, and he blew right by
her. He'd left his keys downstairs on his desk, and the door to Rufus's
office was locked, but they'd joked enough times about a boot to the
door being enough to kick off the lock, and he was almost pleasantly
surprised to find that it was the truth.

Rufus, with text scrolling by on both of his monitors and each hand on
one keyboard, didn't even look up, despite the noise. Reeve came to a
halt just on the other side of his desk and demanded, "Turn that fucking
thing off and look at me."

"I found it," Rufus said, flicking his eyes back and forth from one
monitor to the other. "Hojo's passcode. I broke it. I'm in."

At any other time, Reeve would have pulled up a chair behind Rufus's
desk and started skimming files along with him, but he had other things
to deal with first. He slammed his palms down on Rufus's desk. "Look at
me, damn you. I want you to have the good manners to look me in the
fucking eye if you're going to lie to my face."

"Sir," Beatrice said, from where she was inspecting the ruined
doorframe. "Would you like me to call Security?"

"No," Rufus said, absently, and typed something one-handed on the left
keyboard. When he finally looked up to meet Reeve's eyes, Reeve almost
recoiled; Rufus's eyes were red-rimmed, his hair in disarray, his
clothes (Reeve noticed for the first time) wrinkled and lumpy as though
he'd been wearing them for several days. Reeve stopped and wondered when
he'd last seen Rufus. The weekend? Last week? At the funeral? "No,
Beatrice, it's all right. I'll call you if I need you."

Beatrice tsked audibly, but left the room, settling back down in her
desk chair with an ostentatious show of keeping an eye on the still-open
door. Reeve took a deep breath. He'd made it this far on blind rage
alone, but this was still Rufus, and he knew better than to push his
luck. 

"There are numbers here," Rufus said, still in that same distracted,
abstract voice. "Facts. Figures. Charts and photographs. I know what
happened in Nibelheim, and I know what Hojo's trying to do."

Seven years of trying, and Reeve found that he didn't give a good
goddamn. He reined in his temper like it was a half-broken horse; when
he spoke, it was cold. "Would you like to tell me why you've bugged my
office?"

Reeve's anger didn't seem to so much as penetrate Rufus's shell. "I
needed to know what was happening with Avalanche," he said. "Needed to
know what they found."

"You could have asked me." The corner of Reeve's eyelid was twitching.
"Come down. Discussed things with me. Talked over a fucking meal like a
civilized human being, instead of violating my trust."

Something Reeve said seemed to finally make it through to Rufus; he
looked back at the monitors, shook his head, and tapped out another
sequence of keys. Both monitors went to screensaver, and Rufus turned
around to fully face Reeve. In that instant he went from distracted to
sharp, suddenly present in a way Reeve had not seen in far too long.
"Too inaccurate. You know as well as I do that human beings filter
information differently. I needed to see the source, not hear what you
were thinking about it."

Reeve clenched his fists. "You've never seemed to mind my
interpretations in the past. In fact, at one point, you actually
/wanted/ to hear them."

Something ugly skittered over Rufus's face for a second, before Rufus
shook his head again. "That was before your ultimate loyalties were in
question."

For a minute, Reeve wondered if he'd heard correctly. "Excuse me?" he
said. He heard the words as they left his mouth and winced, because he
couldn't think of anything more inane he could have possibly said, but
his mouth didn't seem to want to accept input from his brain. "Are you
seriously suggesting that I'm a security risk?"

If Reeve didn't know better, he'd say that the look on Rufus's face was
irritation. Annoyance that Reeve could possibly be upset. "Give me a
break. People who are involved in covert ops are /always/ a security
risk. A calculated risk, but a risk nonetheless. You didn't honestly
expect I wouldn't be keeping an eye on you?"

"You have got to be fucking shitting me," Reeve said. Further words
failed him.

Rufus didn't seem to notice. "Anyway, c'mere. I finally broke Hojo's
files, and you'll never guess what I found. Turns out the old man wasn't
on crack when he was talking about the Promised Land after all. It
exists, and Sephiroth's on his way to find it. We're going to have to
get there first."

There really was no other possible answer for it. "When did it happen?"
Reeve asked.

Rufus glanced up. "What?"

"You." Reeve took a step back from the desk, waved a hand around. "This.
This whole thing. When did you go insane? Is it something about the
office? The job? Because you're making about as much sense as a chocobo
farm on the thirty-third floor would." He took a deep breath, forced
himself to stop shouting. "You are not sitting there and seriously
telling me that you think the old man was right about something you used
to call a child's fairy tale."

Rufus shook his head. "It's not a fairy tale. It's all in here. The
Jenova Project, the Ancients, the Promised Land, everything. Sephiroth
was an Ancient. Hojo found a way. The revised process is what produces
the SOLDIER. If he gets enough people, they'll manage to --"

Reeve took another step backwards, and everything crystallized. It felt
like there were iron bands around his heart, in his chest, squeezing
everything until he could barely breathe. "I thought it was a phase," he
said. "I thought you'd get over it. When you came back from Junon, I
thought, oh, give him some time. And then it was: oh, his father just
died. And then it was: oh, he has a company to run. But that wasn't it,
was it?" He swallowed, and it felt like he was gargling broken glass.
"It's this place. This city. It drives you mad."

Rufus sighed. "Reeve, please be reasonable. I know I said it was a fairy
tale. I'm not above admitting when I'm wrong --"

"That'd be a first." Reeve laughed, a brisk, hollow sound. "I don't
think I've ever heard you flat-out admit that you fucked up."

Anger flared in Rufus's eyes. "If the stress is getting to you, you
know, you could take a vacation."

"You know, it's funny. That's what your father said to me. Right before
he dropped a billion tons of metal on Sector 7." Reeve took another step
backwards. "Try saying you were wrong, Rufus. Go on. Say 'I was wrong to
spy on you, Reeve.'"

Rufus slammed a fist down on his desk. "I wasn't wrong to keep an eye on
you, and if this is how you're reacting, I /certainly/ wasn't wrong to
double-check your reports. If you think that sleeping with me means
you're above reproach, you should know that I don't play those games."

"Right." Reeve laughed again. His eyes were starting to go blurry, but
they were tears of anger and frustration. "You just play every other one
under the sun. And it's not like we're sleeping together, now is it?
That actually requires two people to be in the same room for more than
ten minutes. Which we haven't been." He laughed again, out of sheer
disbelief. "I was starting to wonder if you were cheating on me, and
then I realized that I've been wondering if you were cheating on me
since day one. Not to mention the fact that it's impossible to cheat on
a relationship you've never admitted to, right? I can't believe I've
been putting up with your shit for this long."

"That's enough." Rufus's voice, sharp and commanding, cut through the
room. He stood, resting his weight on his hands on the desk, and leaned
forward. "Go take a walk, calm down, and we'll talk about this later
when you can think clearly."

But Reeve was on a roll. Louder and louder, until he was shouting, until
he knew there was no chance that everyone on the floor wasn't listening,
and he didn't give a flying fuck. "And you know, if your father hadn't
shoved you off to Junon so often, maybe I would've seen it a hell of a
lot sooner. It's funny, right? He wanted to come between us, so he sent
you off, and instead it meant that I never got a chance to realize what
a complete and utter miserable failure of a human being you really are.
I suppose it's yet another thing I have to thank him for. The past seven
years of my life living in the shadow of someone who doesn't give a
flying fuck whether I live or die. Seven fucking /years/ on you, Rufus,
and if you're not a better man by now, it's fucking hopeless."

His words seemed to echo in the sudden silence. For a second, he
wondered if he'd gone too far, when Rufus just /looked/ at him, meeting
his eyes fearlessly and without shame. There was a second when Reeve
thought that he might see Rufus's temper flaring again, that temper he'd
seen a thousand times, the temper that had once terrified him. Somewhere
along the line, he realized, he had become so accustomed to it that it
seemed like nothing more than background noise: slowly, surely, like a
frog being boiled by turning up the heat inch by inch, until it faded
into nothing more than background static. 

When Rufus spoke, it was with the deathly, deadly calm Reeve knew so
well, the voice of someone who has learned that quiet is more terrifying
than noise. "You knew," he said. "Don't give me that. You knew."

Reeve opened his mouth, not knowing what he was going to say, not
knowing what he /could/ say, but Rufus cut him off, pointing a finger at
him over the desk. "You watched me from the moment you got here. You
knew who I was. You knew what made me. You walked into this place as
stupid as a baby reaching for a hot stove, and you saw me. Us. You
knew." 

Rufus's voice was getting louder, but it was still even, modulated. For
a second, Reeve thought he saw it, that old glamor surrounding Rufus
like a mantle, the fascination that had drawn him in from that first
conversation over dinner in the cafeteria. "If you came into this with
anything other than your eyes wide open, you're stupider than I give you
credit for. /This is who I am./" Each word fell between them, neat and
precise, clipped off with a simmering rage roiling beneath them. Reeve
thought he might have been able to smell the ozone crackling in the room
from the emotional weather, the storm clouds gathering. And then Rufus
turned around, looking out over the damn city, and added, so quietly
Reeve had to strain to hear it, "Not whoever you thought I was."

Standing there, watching the rise and fall of Rufus's shoulders tense
underneath his shirt, watching the splay of Rufus's beautiful muscles as
Rufus leaned his hands on the glass of the doors and bowed his head,
Reeve wondered what he had ever been thinking. It stretched out behind
him, a long trail of seven years of stupid mistakes and stupid
justifications and the stupid belief that it would be better, it would
get better, it /had/ to get better. Standing there, watching the city
lights against Rufus's profile, Reeve almost felt free. 

"I'll have my things out of your apartment in an hour," Reeve said. He'd
always imagined that when it finally blew, if it finally blew, he'd be a
wreck. He'd changed more than he could have imagined. For one crazy
second, he wished Tseng could be here to see this, for him to say "I
told you so", for Tseng to see how far he'd come. "Good luck with your
fairy tale."

He stopped in the doorway, where Beatrice wasn't even pretending that
she wasn't listening, and turned around. "I loved you, you know," he
said. "Despite all of it. I loved you. I never thought you'd be willing
to hear me say it."

And then, his head held high, feeling numb and vindicated all at once,
he turned and went to call Reno to help him with his things.

-- * --

Tifa shivered, not just with the cold. The line of seemingly-endless
figures, stooped and shuffling, making their relentless way toward
something that was calling them, sent chills down her spine. They were
like insects, mindless in their determination. It teased something
uncomfortable in the back of her mind.

"We shouldn't take the Black Materia any further," she said. The wind
caught her words and whisked them away; Cloud turned his head and
gestured, indicating that he couldn't hear her. She cupped her hands
around her mouth and repeated herself, adding, "Just in case. We
shouldn't give it to him." Again, she almost said.

Cloud's face was blank. If Tifa were honest with herself, she'd have to
admit that Cloud's face had been blank for quite some time. "Yes," he
said, and turned to Vincent. "Hold this. Don't give it to anyone."

Vincent would have been Tifa's choice as well; he, out of everyone,
truly knew what Sephiroth was capable of. Vincent slid his hand back
into his pocket and nodded. Cloud turned back to Tifa. "I'm going on."

"Not without me, you're not," Tifa said, grimly, and wrapped a strap of
Cloud's backpack around her hand. She was cold and terrified, but she'd
gotten this far, and she wasn't going to give up now. Cloud didn't
respond, just turned and slipped smoothly into the line of black-cloaked
bodies as though he belonged there. Tifa met Cid's eyes, briefly --
~remember your promise~, she thought, and was only slightly reassured to
see his answering tilt of the head -- and then had to hip-check one of
the figures to get in behind Cloud; neither it -- he -- nor Cloud
noticed. 

~Almost there,~ she told herself, making a chant of it against the
rhythm of her footsteps. ~Almost done. Almost done. Almost there.~ Cloud
had said that he could sense Sephiroth there, the /real/ Sephiroth, not
the phantasms they'd been fighting. There comes a point, she had
realized, where one has been living with terror for so long that it
ceases to incapacitate, and instead instills one with a weary desire to
just get it the hell over with. If Sephiroth had appeared in front of
them, she would have either flown at him with fists flying, or bared her
chest and invited him to strike again. 

Keeping her head down, putting one foot in front of the other, she
barely noticed anything until the bridge they were crossing disappeared,
and she and Cloud were standing in a sea of endless white.

She jumped back, only vaguely conscious of the fact that the bodies
around them had disappeared. "What the fucking --"

"Sephiroth," Cloud said, his voice calm and dispassionate. Tifa almost
didn't recognize him. "It's only Sephiroth trying to confuse us."

The white haze wavered; Tifa closed her eyes, fighting back the nausea
that it induced where the bridge over a thousand-foot drop had not. When
she opened her eyes again, they were standing in front of the gates to
Nibelheim.

"Sephiroth," she repeated, trying to convince herself. The illusion was
complete; she took a deep breath, felt the now-familiar tugging at the
base of her lungs, and fought back a cough. 

"Come on," Cloud said. The gates opened at his touch. "We probably have
to go through it to get to the other side."

Tifa looked around her as they walked through the gates. It was an
excellent illusion, complete where the version of Nibelheim they'd
walked through had not been. She could see the front door of her house,
with the dried and faded wreath her mother had hung on one of the last
days she'd been able to leave the house, before her illness had taken
her. It was crisp and cold, the kind of perfect mountain day she
remembered from her childhood.

Remembered.

Sitting on the edge of the well, kicking her heels against the stones of
the well-wall, was the girl she'd never be again. Sitting and waiting.
The way she craned her neck, scrutinizing the gates, watching for
visitors, told Tifa what scene they were going to be playing out.

Cloud looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "It's just an
illusion," he said. Tifa got the sense that he was trying to convince
himself, trying to fight the nameless sense of dread that was beginning
to gather around them both. "A lie."

Behind them, Sephiroth walked through the gates, followed by two men in
Shinra guard uniforms and a young man, bearing a sword, with spiky black
hair. Tifa closed her eyes and fought the exhalation that threatened to
choke her. When she opened them again, her girl-self had leapt off the
well-wall, staring at them, and then rushed off. 

Tifa knew what she was thinking. Could remember it, clear as crystal in
the midst of her muddled memory: ~he didn't come.~

"Just a lie," Cloud said again. It sounded more desperate.

Tifa shook her head. "No," she said. "Stop this." She didn't know who
she was talking to, what she was saying. So many months trying to ignore
this memory, trying to explain it away, trying to believe that she was
mistaken or confused or that she'd gotten it wrong somehow. 

There was a hiss, and a sound like sword striking sword, and the world
flashed white. When it cleared again, Tifa could feel the flames against
the side of her face, smell the stink of burning flesh. Her breath
caught on a sob. She hadn't seen more than a moment of it, before: a
glimpse of flame from the mountains, where she'd been exploring, before
rushing up to the reactor. Being here like this, even in memory or
illusion or whatever this was, made it real in a way that it hadn't ever
been.

"This is what happened five years ago," Cloud said. She tore her eyes
off the sight of her house burning to see him standing next to her, his
fists clenched so hard she could see the whites of his knuckles. "But
he's going to lie. It's not going to be me who runs out of the mansion.
Watch."

Tifa was trying not to watch, trying not to believe the scene playing
out in front of her, but Cloud was right; the black-haired boy came
rushing out, spoke to Zangan, went dashing off. Cloud's shoulders
tensed, and he threw back his head. "Sephiroth!" he yelled. "I know what
you're trying to do! You're trying to tell me that I wasn't here, and
I'm not going to fall for it!"

But it's the truth, Tifa almost said. If Sephiroth were creating this,
how could he have known the boy I remember?

Hollow laughter echoed from next to them. They both turned, to see
Sephiroth standing there, his arms folded across his chest. "I'm only
trying to help you," he said. As they watched, a house collapsed behind
him, showering him with sparks. They utterly failed to catch him on
fire. "To show you the truth, in exchange for all the help you've given
me. Whoever would have thought that a failed experiment would prove so
useful?"

Cloud drew his sword. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Sephiroth laughed. It was a beautiful sound, Tifa thought. Soft and
clear like bells chiming. "Five years ago, you were created.
Constructed. Piece by piece, part by part, out of the cells of Jenova
and the memories of others, born by the power of Mako. But you came out
wrong. Failed. Twisted. Useless. This is who you are."

Cloud shook his head. "No," he said, but his conviction was starting to
waver.

Tifa grabbed Cloud's free wrist, urgently. "Don't listen to him," she
said. "You said it yourself. He's lying. We have all our memories,
right? Growing up together. Sitting on that well. We /remember/."

She didn't know who she was trying to convince. Sephiroth laughed again.
"If that's the truth, Tifa," he said, his voice silken, "why are you
looking at this scene and knowing that it's what you remember too?"

Tifa hissed. She knew that she should say something, quickly, something
to dispel the seed of doubt planted in Cloud's head, but her thoughts
were whirling and she couldn't find a place to start, couldn't find the
one thing to say to Cloud to prove that Sephiroth was lying. Beside her,
Cloud stirred. "Tifa?" he asked.

When she looked up again, Sephiroth was gone, and Nibelheim was still
burning. Cloud was watching her, his eyes wide and vulnerable, all of
his cold composure gone. "Tifa?" he asked again. "Is he right?"

She inhaled on a choked sob. It was too much to ask, really, she
thought. Not now. Please, Ramuh and Ifrit, not /now/. 

"It's all right," Cloud said. "Why are you so scared? I'm not going to
believe him. He's been lying to us since the first time we ran into him,
and I'm not going to fall for it now." He tried a smile; it sat oddly on
his lips. "I mean, yeah, sometimes I can't remember things, but you
remembered me, right? When you found me by the train station. You
remembered me. I've been holding onto that ever since. I can't be what
he says if you remember me being here, right?"

"Cloud," Tifa said, and her voice broke again. She'd been lying to him
since that inn in Kalm, and the weight of the lies were threatening to
choke her. "Not now, all right? When -- when this is over, I'll tell you
everything. I swear."

Cloud shook his head again. "I don't understand. What are you trying to
tell me?"

The world flashed white again, the bell-chime of steel on steel, and
Sephiroth was laughing. "Don't blame her," he said. "She's been looking
for a way to tell you for months now. Created from the cells of Jenova
and the memories of others. Piece by piece. A boy named Cloud might have
been in Tifa's memories. But you aren't."

Tifa found her voice. "Cloud," she said, soft and urgent. "Cloud, we
need to leave."

"No," he said, staring at Sephiroth. "Not yet. I know the truth. I was
here. I was. I -- Five years ago, I came back to Nibelheim. To here. It
was my first mission as a SOLDIER. We were ... inspecting the reactor
--"

He shook his head, as though he were trying to clear it. "Cloud," Tifa
said again. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach was getting
worse and worse, like there were numbers counting down over her head to
their doom. 

"Shut up!" Cloud yelled. "I was here! I came back -- I spent the night,
I went to Tifa's house, I played the piano, it was my first mission as a
SOLDIER first class --"

He stopped and clutched his head. The sound he made was like someone had
punched him in the stomach; he dropped his sword, and it clattered
against the road. "First class. SOLDIER. I --"

Sephiroth was gone again, and Tifa didn't know where or when he'd
disappeared. She grabbed Cloud's shoulders, resisting the urge to shake
him. "Cloud!" she yelled. "Cloud, dammit!"

"I was a SOLDIER," he shouted. It made her ears hurt, but she held on,
grimly. He brought his other hand up to the side of his head, fists
clenched against his temples, and shook his head sharply. "I -- When did
I -- How did I -- I can't, I can't remember, I was --"

Tifa did the only thing she could think of. She slapped him. Her palm
cracked against the side of his face, and in the instant it connected,
the world around them disappeared, leaving them back in the haze of
white. Cloud froze, then brought one hand up to his cheek, leaving it
resting there as he straightened.

"It's all right," he said. Tifa shivered at the sound of it, like an
automaton was speaking through Cloud's lips. It scared her how easily
she would believe Sephiroth's story. "It's all right. Let go of me. I
know what we're doing now."

Tifa didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Are you all right?" she
asked. It was the dumbest question she'd ever spoken.

Cloud barely seemed to notice the inanity of it. "Come on. This way.
We're almost there. Wait for me here for a minute."

"Where are you going?" she demanded, but he was already gone. As the
world of white faded into the rock-greys of the mountain path, Tifa
closed her eyes and promised herself that when this was all over, if she
was still alive, she was going to finally let herself scream.

-- * --

Scarlet tossed a look over her shoulder. "So nice to see that you've
finally pulled your head out from your ass, big brother," she cooed.

"Stuff it, Scarlet," Rufus invited. He wasn't in the mood, for her or
for anything; she had wormed her way onto the expedition, but that
didn't mean he had to actually speak to her. Or listen to her speaking.
He rubbed a hand over his face. He'd slept for four days straight when
Beatrice had drugged his coffee Friday night after the scene with Reeve,
and it hadn't helped. The dreams had been fragmented and broken, and he
forgot them instantly upon waking, left with nothing more than a sense
that everything in the world had shattered and a numbness that seemed to
penetrate bone-deep.

Scarlet snorted, indelicately, and turned forward again as they picked
their way down the cavern's tunnel. Hojo was somewhere behind them, but
Rufus didn't care. The charts said that it was just ahead. Waiting for
him. It wouldn't be vindication, but it would be something.

When the passageway opened up into the grand cathedral, Rufus could only
stop and stare. They were deep beneath the earth's surface, and it
should have been dark, but the walls of the cave glowed with a turquoise
luminosity, the long-familiar shade of Mako blue. It took his breath
away. He automatically turned around to say something -- to Tseng, to
Reeve, to anyone who should have been standing as his second -- and then
stopped himself, just as Hojo entered.

"It's beautiful," Rufus said, and then fumbled at his belt for the
sensor. "Swimming in Mako energy. And this entire cave is made of
materia. The Promised Land. I didn't think it could exist."

His awe lasted for a few seconds more, until Hojo sniffed and pulled a
pen out of his ponytail, making a note on the clipboard he was carrying.
"It doesn't. The Promised Land is nothing but a legend."

Rufus shook his head. "How can you say it's a legend when you're
standing in it?" He strode through the cave, craning his neck, trying to
take in everything. The glow seemed to touch something inside of him,
soothing an ache he was only barely conscious of. 

Just as he had almost reached the far wall, there was a deep,
subterranean rumbling, and the ground tumbled beneath them. He kept his
feet by nothing more than luck and innate grace; Scarlet wasn't so
lucky. She went down with a choked scream; as she pushed herself up on
skinned knees, the room quaked again. Hojo barely seemed to notice.

Rufus whipped his head around, looking for the source of the
disturbance. Scarlet shrieked again. "The wall," she yelled, shrill and
piercing. "Something's in there. It's moving."

Behind them, in the wall-face of crystallized Mako, something that
looked like nothing else than a giant emerald eye opened and closed
again.

Hojo made a satisfied noise. "Weapon," he said, and scribbled another
note on his clipboard. "Excellent. Everything is according to plan."

The earth shook again; Rufus made his way over to where Scarlet was
kneeling, bending over to give her a hand up. "What are you talking
about?" he demanded, turning back to Hojo. "Weapon? What's that?"

"Weapon. Monsters, created by the planet, when the planet is in danger.
Gast's report spoke of them, but I must admit, I found it quite
difficult to place faith in the ravings of a madman." Hojo flipped a few
papers over, noted something else, and then looked up again, studying
the wall. "They should be breaking free shortly."

"I never saw that report," Rufus said. 

Hojo quirked one eyebrow and flipped a few more papers on the clipboard,
then held it up, facing Rufus. Rufus squinted; he could barely make out
the header. "Weapon: A Planetary Defense". "Surely you didn't think I'd
allow you to see everything," Hojo said, and then strode across the
room. "Come. We're nearly ready."

Scarlet wrapped her fingers around Rufus's elbow, under the guise of
needing the support to bend over and pick pebbles of materia out of her
stockings. "I have an exceedingly bad feeling about this," she
murmurred, her face tipped away from Hojo.

"You and me both," Rufus muttered. "Let's go back to the ship. I want to
get some more readings from outside."

He got the impression that even if they'd been shouting, Hojo wouldn't
have paid a single lick of attention to them. Scarlet's fingers bit into
his arm. His skin was beginning to crawl, like he was standing too close
to a generator, and he could hear his heartbeat in his ears.

~This is a spectacularly bad idea,~ he thought, suddenly, as clearly as
if he'd said it out loud. ~What the hell is wrong with me?~

Before he could move, before he could get out of there and try to figure
out what in the nine billion names of Ramuh and Ifrit was going on, the
world flashed white, and when his vision cleared, there was a man
standing in the middle of the cave.

It took Rufus a minute before he could place him. The SOLDIER, the one
who headed Avalanche. He was pale and shaking, clutching something small
and dark in one of his hands; he looked around himself with wild eyes.

"Hey!" Scarlet shouted. "Where did you come from?"

The SOLDIER's head whipped around as he tried to track the sound; he
couldn't seem to focus. "I don't know," he whispered, and then his eyes
fixed on Hojo. "I'm here, Professor. I got it. I got it for you."

Hojo pulled the pen back out from where he'd stashed it in his ponytail
and made a check-mark on his clipboard. "And that's the last of them,"
he said, with a sort of abstract satisfaction. "How are you feeling?"

The SOLDIER swayed on his feet. "I'm here," he repeated. "I know what
I'm doing now."

"Who the hell is he?" Rufus demanded. Something stirred in the back of
his head, and he moved so he was standing in between Scarlet and the
SOLDIER.

"An experiment," Hojo said. His voice was that of a man who had
accomplished something difficult and slightly messy, and yet had it all
turn out right in the end. "A Sephiroth-clone I created, after the real
Sephiroth died, five years ago. Jenova cells and Mako energy, mixed
together. I didn't think it would succeed, but apparently Jenova has a
mind of her own." His lips curved in a thin, distant smile. "Which means
that the Jenova Reunion Theory has finally been proven."

"Cloud!" A woman's voice broke through Hojo's musings, and Rufus turned
to see the slum-girl he'd fought on top of the Shinra building -- had it
been so long ago -- running full-tilt into the cave. She stopped a few
feet away from the SOLDIER -- Cloud -- and brought one hand up to press
between her breasts, her chest heaving with the effort to breathe.
"Cloud, you have to stop. Give me the Black Materia. I don't know how
you got it back from Vincent, but you have to give it to me."

Cloud shook his head. "I'm sorry, Tifa," he said. His face was a study
in regret. "Maybe someday you'll meet the real Cloud. I'm so sorry.
Thank you for being so good to me, even if it wasn't me you were being
good to."

"/Cloud/!" She took a step forward; he took a step back. "Cloud, it's
all a lie. You said it yourself. Give me the Black Materia, Cloud."

Cloud shook his head again. "If it's a lie," he said ruefully, "then why
do you remember the real truth? It's all right. I'm all right.
Everything's going to be fine now." He turned to Hojo. "Isn't it,
Professor?"

"You see," Hojo said, still to Rufus, scribbling notes even as he
continued talking, "even if Jenova's body is dismembered, it will seek
to become whole again. Complete. Those individuals who have been imbued
with Jenova's cells have been making their way to this place for weeks
now. Surely you noticed that your ranks of SOLDIERs were diminishing? It
took five years, but it's nearly complete now. I thought they would
gather at the Shinra building, as that's where the largest Jenova sample
was to be found, but I was incorrect. I failed to take into account the
fact that Sephiroth's will was so strong that even death could not
destroy it."

"Sephiroth," Cloud said. He stood, entranced, as Hojo spoke, then shook
himself and tucked the small black orb into his belt. Slowly, as though
being pulled against his will, he backed across the room, to the
outcropping of crystallized Mako against the far wall.

Hojo glanced up, then back down again. "I wondered where they were
going, but I finally realized that Sephiroth was at their final
destination. His will had combined with the will of Jenova, to form a
new, unstoppable force."

"I wasn't pursuing Sephiroth," Cloud whispered. Rufus flinched; the
man's voice sounded like that of a little boy, realizing an unpleasant
truth. As Rufus watched, he stepped backwards again, then again, and his
foot fell on the Mako wall. Rufus blinked. Another footstep, and the man
was standing in mid-air, balanced perfectly on the Mako slide. "I was
being summoned by him."

"/Cloud/," the woman shouted again. Everything seemed to happen in slow
motion, the way the world turns to quiet clicking of seconds that take
minutes to pass when something monumental is taking place. She lunged
across the room, her legs coiling and releasing her body in a flying
tackle, intending to knock the man down. He took another step upwards,
and then everything happened all at once. As Rufus watched, gravity
seemed to reverse itself for him, and the SOLDIER took another step up
and then fell upwards to rest against the vein of Mako in the ceiling.

The woman hit the ground chest-first and skidded. She was crying, Rufus
could see, but she didn't let it stop her; as he stood there, trying to
make sense of what was happening, she dragged herself up on bloodied
knees and scrubbed a hand quickly over her face, then looked up and
tried for a running leap to find hand-holds on the Mako outcropping. She
missed, skidded again, but didn't let it stop her.

The SOLDIER, pinned to the ceiling, pushed himself to his knees. Rufus
refused to believe his eyes as the man struggled to his feet, standing
upside-down on the ceiling. "Sephiroth!" he shouted. Then, so quietly,
so brokenly, that Rufus had to hold his breath to hear, he repeated,
"Sephiroth. I'm here. And I brought you the Black Materia."

The flickering light of the Mako-glow shifted, and as Rufus squinted, he
could see -- preserved in the vein of Mako in the ceiling, like a bug in
amber, pale and numinous and tinted by the turquoise light -- a body.
Sleeping. Waiting.

"You have to stop him!" the woman shrieked. Her hysteria washed over
Rufus like the warmth of sunlight. "He has the Black Materia! If he
gives it to Sephiroth, we're all going to die!"

"They won't be destroyed," Hojo said, with ultimate, dispassionate
satisfaction. "They won't be diffused into the Lifestream. They'll
gather here, and it will all be over."

Above them all, Cloud walked across the ceiling. Step by step, inch by
inch; he stopped just as he was about to reach Sephiroth's body,
bringing his hands to his head. The sound he made was the sound of a
heart breaking, and it made Rufus's blood run cold.

"Cloud," the woman whispered, and collapsed on the ground.

No one else moved. Cloud shook himself again, and then took the last
step forward, kneeling upside-down. He held out his hand, the Black
Materia in it, and the Mako crystal parted like water before him. The
materia slid through the Mako like a hot knife through butter, and Cloud
pushed it into Sephiroth's waiting hand. As they watched, the entire
world holding its breath, veins of light began spreading from the
materia to criss-cross Sephiroth's body.

And Sephiroth's eyes opened.

It was as if it broke a spell. The cavern began shaking again, stronger
than before. Cloud's face remained still, peaceful, even as the ceiling
began to crack and splinter away. Rufus caught his breath, and suddenly
it felt as though the last six months had been a nightmare and this was
the waking from it. "Move!" he shouted, and shoved Scarlet towards the
door. The girl from Avalanche had her head tipped backwards, watching
the entire scene in despair. He bent and scooped her up, throwing her
over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. There was a second before she
realized what was happening, and then she began to struggle. "Out!"
Rufus roared. "The place is about to blow!" 

Behind them, as they ran, retracing their steps as fast as they could,
the walls began to splinter. The last thing Rufus saw before he turned
away was the sweep of wings.