Chapter Text
He wouldn’t remember it later, the way he begged the planet for a second chance. His mind fractured into a thousand disparate memories - the creek and sway of an old bridge over an empty chasm, the sharp, radiating pain of a blade between his ribs, the ache of a body in his arms, fire on the horizon. All these fragments coalescing into a single, all consuming thought: I just need more time. Please, just give me more time. Desperate pleas to the threads of a lifestream that was already burning away.
But Cloud remembered. He held fast to the branching limbs and falling leaves of his memories. The acrid stench of fresh blood, the crisp, ring of materia striking stone. There was power in will, if it was strong enough. Sephiroth had taught him that much. So Cloud willed himself to remember, to reach through his frayed mind and touch that small, white orb. He left everything else behind, focusing only on the feel of materia in his palm, the milky swirl within it, the cool and smooth weight of it against his skin, the hot breath ghosting past his ear and the whispered words, “Seven seconds till the end. Time enough for you, perhaps. But what will you do with it?”
III
Cloud woke with a start. He had sweat through his sleep shirt. Again. What a stupid dream. It didn’t even make sense, so why did it leave him shaking and breathless every time he had it?
He rolled over in his bed, refusing the panicky pull in his chest to run across the hall to his ma’s room. A cool, blue light was beginning to creep above the rooftops of Nibelheim outside his window. It would be morning soon, anyway, and he was far too old to go running to his ma every time he had a nightmare. In less than a month he would be eleven years old - basically an adult. Actually, he should probably start thinking about getting a job.
With a groan, he rolled over again and buried his face in his pillow. Being an adult was going to suck. Being a kid was already bad enough! But maybe if he got a job - something respectable with good pay - he could get him and his ma out of this backwater town. He would talk to her about it at breakfast, he decided, and closed his eyes, drifting back into a dreamless sleep.
Ma wasn’t impressed when he told her about his idea of getting a job. Apparently, she expected him to finish his schooling first. What a joke. He could already read and write and do math - what else was there to learn? He made a point of packing lunch after breakfast (like an adult would do), and Ma watched him with sparkling eyes as he shuffled around the kitchen and made the only thing he really knew how - a jelly sandwich with butter and cheese. He snuck the jar of honey off the counter, too.
“And where might you be going today, Cloud?” Ma asked as he made for the door, lunch in hand.
“To get a job!” Cloud said, stuffing his feet into his too-big boots. Ma had the audacity to laugh at him. He’d show her. He could just imagine how embarrassed she’d be when he came home tonight with a job and a paycheck.
The weather was still warm, though summers were short in Nibelheim. Cloud wouldn’t need to take a coat with him outside for at least another month. Instead, he wore oversized shorts, with the drawstring tied tight around his waist to keep them from falling down, (‘ you’ll grow into them ,’ Ma had said), and an equally oversized shirt with a chocobo emblazoned on the front.
No one paid him any mind as he meandered through town - that was normal. There were a few other kids in Nibelheim around his age, but most of them ignored him, or annoyed him. Once or twice a couple of older kids tried to pick a fight with him - he’d caught hell from his ma when he came home with blood running all down his face and his shirt. He never did figure out why those kids tried to jump him, but they never tried again.
He didn’t mind Tifa, who lived next door, but she was friends with a bunch of idiots who always talked behind her back about how they’d marry her when they grew up, so he mostly kept his distance.
Cloud chewed the inside of his cheek, casting his eyes around the town square. A couple of kids were playing pretend by the dog kennels, completely unsupervised. Babysitting was probably out of the question - Cloud knew he wouldn’t have the patience for it. So maybe he could be an entrepreneur, open up a stall here. There was plenty of space, but he didn’t exactly have anything to sell. Not to mention, the general store kept most things people needed in stock already.
Sighing, Cloud kicked a stray rock down the old stone steps that led out of town and turned around. Mount Nibel loomed high in the distance, its jagged claw-like peaks split around the old bulbous reactor. Cloud always thought it looked ugly and out of place on the mountain’s skyline, but seeing it gave him an idea. He chewed his lip a bit more, then took off at a sprint back through town.
Despite being the first place Shinra ever built a reactor, the company didn’t have a huge presence in Nibelheim. Infantrymen and Shinra Police only came through town if there was an overpopulation of monsters, or something went wrong with the reactor. Instead, the townsfolk had a group of citizen appointed guards to take care of drunks and petty crime. They also had an annoying habit of standing watch at the edge of town and catching ten year old entrepreneurs looking for work before they could escape into the wilds.
“Lemme go!” Cloud yelled, kicking wildly as he was hauled backward by one of two guards standing watch at the Mount Nibel entrance to town.
“No can do, Kid,” The man said.
“Is that you, Earl?” Cloud asked. He hadn’t actually stopped long enough to see the guard’s face, but it sounded like Earl. Ma had him over for dinner once or twice. He was alright, but a stickler for rules, which annoyed Cloud. “Lemme go or I’ll kick your ass!”
The other man on guard duty whistled. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, which he removed and used to fan himself while he leaned down to squint at Cloud. “Your mama know you talk to folks like that, Cloud?”
“Harvey Winthrop,” Cloud growled. “Once I’m through with Earl, you’re next.”
Harvey laughed, and Cloud re-doubled his efforts to escape Earl’s grasp.
“I ain’t forgot what you did to my stash!”
“You can have it back when you’re older,” Harvey said. “I’ll keep it nice and safe for you, right next to the fire materia I took from you last year, and that old landmine from the year before.”
Cloud thrashed, and then spit as far as he could, jamming an elbow into Earl’s stomach. The man doubled over with a grunt, but still kept his arms locked tight around Cloud’s chest.
Unfortunately, Harvey managed to sidestep Cloud’s line of fire and he met Cloud’s wrathful gaze with disappointment. “Aw, let him go, Earl,” Harvey said, buffing his hat and then setting it carefully back on his head.
Cloud burst immediately out of Earl’s hold, probably because Earl had been about to break at any minute, and not because Harvey told him to let go.
“I’m not above tellin’ your ma if you try anything funny,” Earl said.
Cloud stuck his tongue out at them and ran back down the steps. Buncha jerks. Like he was going to give up just because they caught him one time.
He circled around the old folk’s home where everybody did stretches on Sunday mornings and fought his way through the shrubs behind it. There was a metal fence back there that he climbed easy as pie, and then a sheer cliff that he couldn’t climb so easy. But Cloud knew it would take him right up past the old steps out of town and onto the trail that led to Shinra manor. There was an old tree that grew back here right along the cliff slide. Cloud’s track record for climbing trees wasn’t the greatest, but it was definitely better than his track record for climbing cliffs. So he planted both feet on the ground, squinted up at the first big branch, just above him, and lept for it.
The rough bark scratched up his palms but he managed to hang on, and haul himself up using a couple of nubs on the trunk for purchase. The rest of the climb would smart, but the tree limbs were thick and sturdy and the farther up he got the more options he had to choose from. Getting from the tree to the cliff was another problem altogether. A few of its branches stretched out towards the rocky edge of the overhang, but the farther away from the trunk Cloud got, the thinner the branches became.
He had to balance real careful, and the limb he stood on swayed and bounced with every step he took, making his stomach flip-flop until he decided to screw it and just jump.
It was both the right and wrong thing to do - he landed on the overhang in a heap, crawling away from the cliff as quickly as he could in case he was somehow sucked over the edge. Behind him, though, the loud snap and crack of the tree branch splintering from the momentum of his jump echoed loudly. Shortly following it, Cloud heard the alarmed voices of Earl and Harvey somewhere down below.
Scrambling to his feet, Cloud ran towards the manor's outer fence. There was a large gap between two of the bars where some kind of wild monster had bent the metal out of shape and he shimmied through quickly, then made a break for the main gate.
It was as large and imposing as ever. Cloud had seen it only once or twice before, after being dared to touch the sign by a couple of kids from school who thought Cloud was chicken just because he didn’t talk much and kept to himself.
This time, he did more than just touch the big, metal diamond logo. He threw his whole body against it. Pain shot through his shoulder as the gate shook and rattled but didn’t open - locked. Of course. Cloud was an idiot. He could hear Earl and Harvey yelling for him in the distance and was half-way convinced he’d have to climb the gate, too, when a flash of movement drew his eye. Just around the corner of the building, beneath a large pergola with patio furniture spread out around it, stood a boy dressed in all black with silver-white hair. He looked at Cloud with an unreadable expression - almost like a life-sized doll.
“Hey!” Cloud grabbed the bars of the gate and pressed his face right up against them. “Hey, you!”
The boy tilted his head slightly, but made no move to respond.
Cloud stuck his arm through the gate and pointed directly at him. “Lemme in, quick!”
Hesitantly, the boy took a step closer. He looked around, almost warily, and then pointed at himself and mouthed something Cloud couldn’t make out.
“Yeah, yeah, come on, hurry! I need asylum - and a job!”
After one last glance around himself, the boy strode quickly over to Cloud. “You need asylum?” he asked. “Is someone after you?”
The words Cloud had planned to say got stuck in his throat as soon as he saw the boy's eyes - bright green, glowing like unrefined mako, with slitted pupils like a snake’s. The sound of footsteps behind him pounding down the path shook him from the trance this boy’s gaze had put him under, and he finally said, “Yes, someone’s after me! A coupla old rats who-,” before he could finish the gates began to creak open and the boy stepped aside for Cloud to slip through. Then he pressed a series of buttons on a keypad mounted on the stone wall, and the gate slammed shut with a loud clang .
Seconds later Earl and Harvey arrived on the other side, panting and furious. Harvey kicked at the bars. “ Damn you Cloud Strife, you little hellion, get back out here this instant!”
Cloud opened his mouth to throw every cuss he knew at Harvey, but his rescuer stepped between them. “This boy is under the protection of the Shinra Electric Power Company. You are trespassing on private property. Leave now.”
“Who are you calling a boy ?” Cloud said.
Harvey cursed and kicked the metal gate again, then grimaced in pain. Served him right.
“Kid, come on,” Earl said. “Don’t make us drag your ma into this - you know you’re not supposed to be in there.”
“You heard the weird snake-boy!” Cloud said. “This is private property. Get lost!”
Earl and Harvey exchanged a tense look with each other after which Harvey pointed a stern finger at Cloud and said, “This ain’t over, and you won’t like how it ends.”
Cloud made a face at them as they turned to leave, and then threw a rock over the fence just for good measure. When he turned around, the boy who’d saved him was watching him with a strange, analytical sort of expression.
“Hey, thanks for backing me up,” Cloud said, holding out his hand. “I’m Cloud.”
“Sephiroth,” The boy said, shaking his hand with a grip so strong it bordered on painful.
“That’s a mouthful. How about I just call you Seph?”
Sephiroth blinked at him with those strange, animal eyes. “If that’s what you prefer.” Then he looked down at his hand and frowned. “Are you injured?”
“Huh?” Cloud followed his line of sight to a smudge of red on Sephiroth’s gloved palm. He held up his own hand and realized it was bleeding, scraped raw from when he climbed the tree. “Eh, it’s fine. It’ll heal.”
“Come with me,” Sephiroth said, turning back to the pergola he’d been standing under earlier.
On the table was a velvet pouch. When Sephiroth pulled open the draw string, Cloud saw a handful of dazzling materia inside, all different colors.
“Whoa.”
Sephiroth removed a green materia from the bag and reached for Cloud’s hand. “May I?”
“Uh…”
“It’s healing materia,” Sephiroth clarified.
“Oh, yeah. I guess?”
Sephiroth nodded, and held the materia over Cloud’s raw palm. It glowed bright, not unlike the color of Sephiroth’s eyes, and then his palm began to tingle as the skin rapidly scabbed over and then healed completely.
“Holy shit,” Cloud said, flexing his hand and fingers. It even healed the small cut on his pinky from when he’d been trying to help ma with dinner and got his knife privileges revoked (again).
After healing Cloud, Sephiroth put the materia back in its pouch on the table and assumed a rigid, straight-facing posture on his chair.
“So,” Cloud said, drawing out the word. “What’s with your eyes?”
“My eyes?” The eyes in question darted back and forth, as though trying to read Cloud’s expression like a literal book.
“Yeah - why are they like that?” He held his pointer fingers up in front of his own eyes to indicate Sephiroth’s slitted pupils. “Some kinda birth defect?”
“A defect?” Sephiroth’s expression did something strange - Cloud couldn’t tell if he was insulted or confused, but his pale eyebrows knit tightly together.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Cloud said, hastily. “They look super cool! Just - I’ve never seen anything like them before. Gotta be rare, whatever it is.”
“I don’t know,” Sephiroth said. He had a quiet voice, as though he was afraid to speak too loudly. It made Cloud want to shake him like one of those toy lambs that bayed when you turned them upside down. “‘ Cool ’ is a good thing, right?”
In an effort to hold himself back from mercilessly teasing this boy, Cloud’s mouth went a little lopsided. “Yeah, cool’s good. As long as you can see okay, I mean.”
“I see very well,” Sephiroth said.
“ Man! ” Cloud leaned his elbows back against the table, sitting sideways in his chair. “I wish I had some scary mutant eyes - no, horns! So I could ram Earl and Harvey in their dusty old butts for being so stuck up about everything.”
Annoyingly, Sephiroth didn’t respond to this even though it was a very good idea, and anyone else would have agreed. It was hard to tell if the kid was trying to act aloof on purpose, or if he was just that awkward with people.
“So, what are you like, the kid of some big wig Shinra exec or something?” Cloud asked, when it became clear that Sephiroth was not going to volunteer any information on his own.
“I suppose that would be accurate to say,” Sephiroth replied stiffly. Maybe he really was just that awkward. Something close to confusion was radiating off Sephiroth like Mako energy off a reactor.
“You think you could get me a job?”
Sephiroth looked at him, head tilted to the side. “I don’t know your age, but I can’t imagine you’re old enough to work for Shinra.”
“I’ll be eleven in August!”
“The minimum age of employment at Shinra is fourteen.”
“ Fourteen ?” Cloud exclaimed, slumping in his chair and groaning into his palms. He kicked his legs angrily for good measure. “I’ll never get out of this place!”
“You will,” Sephiroth said. “When you’re fourteen.”
Cloud threw him a scathing look. “C’mon,” He said, sitting up. “You can’t pull any strings for me?”
Sephiroth’s mouth pressed into a thin line, his snake eyes skittering away from Cloud. “I don’t believe that would be possible. I apologize.”
“It’s alright,” Cloud sighed. “You already saved my skin once, I guess I can’t ask for more than that. Hey-,” He swung the pack off his shoulders and rummaged around in it. “I owe you, though. You hungry? It’s still early, but I packed lunch. You can have some if you want.” He pulled out the paper bag, now crumpled from his excursions climbing the tree, but mostly intact.
“I-,”
“ Cloud Strife !” Ma’s shrill voice cut straight through whatever Sephiroth was about to say, and Cloud instinctually flinched.
They both turned to the gates where Cloud’s ma stood, flanked by Earl and Harvey, both of them looking smug and insufferable as ever.
“Oh come on, Ma!” Could rose to his feet, ready to plead his case, but Sephiroth was in front of him in a flash, quicker than Cloud had ever seen anyone move in his life.
“This boy is under the protection of the Shinra Electric Power Company.” He nodded toward Earl and Harvey. “I told you to leave once already. I won’t repeat myself a third time.”
A tense silence followed this statement while Cloud’s ma performed a ruthless once-over of Sephiroth. “What’s your name?” She asked finally.
Cloud watched Sephiroth’s shoulders twitch, just slightly. “Sephiroth.”
“And do you live here, Sephiroth?” Ma asked.
Sephiroth nodded, once.
Oh no. Ma’s hands were on her hips. “Are your parents home? I think I’d like to speak with them.”
Every muscle in Sephiroth’s body tensed instantly - he looked like he’d been turned to stone. Cloud wasn’t about to let his Ma turn him into a snitch by proxy, so he stepped forward, slinging an arm around Sephiroth’s shoulders. Sephiroth was more than a little taller than him, so it was a bit of a reach, but Cloud made it work. Sephiroth had some kind of spasm when he did which made the whole thing look a lot more strange and a lot less friendly than Cloud had intended. Whatever.
“Ma, leave him alone! I’m coming, alright?” He patted Sephiroth on the back once more for good measure. The poor kid looked like he was about to fall over - man Cloud’s Ma really did a number on him. “Here,” Cloud handed Sephiroth his paper bag lunch. “Consider it a premature contribution to my future work with the company.”
Sephiroth’s face twisted into something that might have been a smile or a grimace - it was a little hard to tell. “I told you, I can’t secure you employment.” Then he stepped close to Cloud and said quietly, “Are you sure you feel safe leaving with this woman?”
“Oh, yeah,” Cloud waved his hand. “It’s just my ma.” When Sephiroth’s expression didn’t change, Cloud clarified. “You know - my mom?”
Something like awe lit up in Sephiroth’s eyes then, and he looked past Cloud at his Ma with poorly concealed wonder. “Oh. I see. Of course.” Sephiroth reached for the keypad by the gate and it began stiffly opening in jerks and starts. “My apologies, Ma’am,” He said.
Ma looked him over once more with a squint. “Call me Claudia,” She said, and motioned for Cloud. “And I’d ask you kindly not to threaten me while you have my son locked behind a metal gate, in the future.”
Sephiroth dipped his head low. “I apologize, again.”
Before he left, Cloud turned back to Sephiroth with his hand outstretched once more. “Pleasure doing business with you, Seph. Sorry about all the trouble with my Ma.” He ignored her scoffing in the background and focused on Sephiroth’s bright, slitted eyes as he took Cloud’s hand.
“Goodbye, Cloud.”
It was a weirdly final sort of thing to say, but Cloud guessed that was just the kind of person Sephiroth was. He waved once more as the gates shut behind him, then trailed after his Ma and her attack dogs, wondering if he could get away with punching Harvey in the back of the knee without getting grounded. Or if he was already getting grounded, would it compound his sentence? He had a lot to think about.
Just before the gates were out of sight, Cloud turned back to see if Sephiroth was still there, but the manor’s front yard looked as empty and forlorn as always.