Chapter Text
A very different boy walked through the gates of Nibelheim, a dark green bandana concealing his closely cropped hair with better clothing and proper boots for long treks. It hadn’t taken him long to realize how he might make his way, the Healing Materia in his bangle maturing and budding as he’d made his way across the Eastern Continent. It had been a simple thing to sell the mastered orb, keeping the new one for himself after he’d purchased the appropriate supplies, and keeping some back to pay for passage on a fishing vessel in Junon. He’d kept the Fire, of course, as artificially produced orbs never advanced past the single spell it could cast.
Sephiroth adjusted the strap he’d bought to carry his sword across his back, a bit uneasy as eyes turned on him from every passerby in the small village, wondering if he should ask where the mansion was located or whether it would be better to simply search for it himself. He decided on the latter, vaguely recalling that it had been some ways uphill from the village square, and began to walk.
He hadn’t gone far out of the town before concerning noises reached his ears and he hesitated only a few seconds before going to find the source: scuffles, a yelp, the sound of fists on flesh that meant a fight.
“Stop it!” he found himself yelling as he came upon the startling tableaux — three older children, one nearly a teenager, had a very small boy between him that they were shoving back and forth. The boy’s blond hair was dirty, a cut on his lower lip bleeding down his chin and his clothing covered in dirt. He looked younger than Biggs, perhaps seven or eight at a guess, and he looked far more angry than afraid, even so outnumbered.
As the three boys spun to gape at Sephiroth, the smaller boy took the opportunity to leap up and punch his oldest assailant in the back of his head — the blond grunted and Sephiroth was well used to the sound of a finger breaking from how hard he’d struck.
Caught between Sephiroth, one hand reaching back as though he might draw the weapon sticking up over his shoulder, and the little boy who seemed fully intent to keep fighting even with his injuries, the older boys fled.
“Come here,” Sephiroth twitched his fingers towards the boy, “allow me to heal that.”
The boy bit at his lip and winced as the cut there bled fresh, “I’m okay, for real, you don’t have to.”
“If you let me heal it,” Sephiroth said slowly, “I could…”
He wasn’t sure why he offered, perhaps it was only that he remembered how frustrating it had been to be so much smaller and being trained by full adults who didn’t care if they broke his wrists when he couldn’t block their blows, but he added, “I could show you how to throw a punch without breaking your fingers.”
“Okay, thanks!” the boy said as he held his hand out, barely flinching as Sephiroth pulled the broken digit straight before casting a Cura that took care of the split in his lips as well as his finger, “I’m Cloud, do you wanna come home for dinner?”
“I’m Nova,” Sephiroth answered, giving the name he had used for his entire journey. He should go find the mansion, he reminded himself, but it was nearly evening, and he was still uncertain where to begin looking… He nodded, and the boy's face lit up. “I would like that, Cloud.”
Veld stretched his legs out in front of him, the warm weight of his daughter curled asleep on his chest and his wife dozing off beside him. The movie Felicia had been begging to watch was still playing on the television, and he couldn’t reach for the remote control without waking her. He resigned himself to his fate and turned his attention back to the poorly acted children’s movie, the uninspired script and cheap special effects at least a distraction from his messy thoughts.
He rested a hand on Felicia’s back, feeling her heart beating against his palm and relaxing by degrees. She was drooling on his shirt, fingers curled into the t-shirt he’d changed into, face completely peaceful.
Every day since Sephiroth’s disappearance, he’d called his family and listened to his child’s innocent babble about anything that crossed her mind. The past few days had been the first he’d been able to make it to their shared home in Kalm, and every night he’d found himself standing over Felicia’s bed and watching her breathe, sleeping safely beneath his protection.
In the months since the incident, there had been no sign of Sephiroth, no ransom demand, and no body turning up. They’d found his bloody uniform and armor shoved into a trash bag, the clothing too battered and armor too distinctive to keep or sell. The Materia and bangle were both missing, along with the sword, both far too valuable to leave behind no matter who was responsible.
There had only been a small amount of blood at the scene, which fit what was likely a sucker punch to the face or head that he had heard the boy receive on the aborted call for help. Hojo had explained the broken remnants of a locket on the scene, one half of it dredged from the sewer water along with a broken PHS, and that had stopped the man’s ramblings of Sephiroth having absconded on his own. Veld had already discarded that theory before they’d even found Sephiroth’s gear. Like Cissnei had been, Veld was certain he was too well conditioned to attempt anything of the sort.
Veld had several theories, but the one he found most likely was that the boy had been taken in order to reverse engineer the SOLDIER process. If such a thing was possible, it would take years for his abductors to come up with a prototype of their own, and there was no way of knowing whether Sephiroth would have survived whatever they’d done to him.
After Hojo had been terminated for incompetence, literally so, at Veld’s hand as he couldn’t be allowed to leave with the knowledge to create SOLDIERs for their enemies out of spite, whatever Sephiroth’s abductors might do with him might be kinder than what Shinra had. He’d been wrong about the boy’s supposed welfare, the paper and video records of his upbringing enough to make the agent responsible for going through them beg Veld to take her off the case. Veld had assigned himself to the job afterwards, and understood quickly why she’d been unable to continue.
Lost in thought, Veld was only half paying attention to the plot unfolding on the TV, and it was only the fact that the scene looked incredibly familiar that he was drawn back into the story. The children on the screen skulked through a large sewer pipe, plotting quietly as they evaded the villains and left metaphorical breadcrumbs in their wake.
One of them used the contrived plot device of a wrist PHS with a video screen to make an impassioned report of pursuit, smashing it against the wall halfway through a plea for assistance before hurling it into the water and breaking into muffled giggles alongside her friends.
He felt his face go pale, hand stilling from where he’d been rubbing between Felicia’s shoulders.
“Fuck,” he hissed under his breath, but all the tension melted out of him as he watched the kids shove their little suits into a drain pipe and slip away. He was still shaking his head and occasionally swearing quietly as the film came to its conclusion and the credits began to roll.
“Keep running,” he muttered, understanding just how much he’d been played and breaking into an almost hysterical fit of coughing laughter that nearly woke both of his girls.
“I don’t even care you got me,” he whispered under his breath, carefully getting up to put Felicia to bed and more than ready to get the best sleep he’d had since this fiasco started. “You fucking earned it kid.”