Even If the Planet Shatters Around Me Now
“Do not get cocky,” Sephiroth glared down the length of Masamune’s blade at the young man dangling there, impaled through the torso bare millimetres from anything vital. Blood poured from a dozen more wounds earned from his relentless attempts to take on the Elite SOLDIER by himself and cover the retreat of his miscreant friends. Fellow members of the slum-based rebel group, AVALANCHE, they had been reluctant to leave their comrade behind in the slowly destructing reactor, and were not nearly far enough out of the labyrinthine structure that Sephiroth could not catch up to them.
The valiant rebel seemed to realise this, fear and anger sparking in his bright blue eyes through the haze of exsanguination and certain pain, teeth grit and features twisted. He let his own weapon fall and gripped the blade run through him instead, as though he could keep his nigh inhuman opponent there, if only he could prevent Sephiroth from reclaiming his weapon. The SOLDIER’s marble smooth and generally unaffected expression curled into the faintest smirk, and rather than rip Masamune free, he swung the whole blade. His unreal strength sent the slighter swordsman hurtling down the walkway to crash into the very exit he had attempted to guard. There he lay broken, like a marionette with cut strings. Sephiroth gazed down at the young man as he strode forward, a feeling like disappointment flitting through his mind now that their battle was over. The results had been decided before the fight had even begun, as far as Sephiroth was concerned, but somehow the spirited rebel had actually presented a challenge, and in an opponent who was no mere gargantuan monster with teeth and claws and very little intelligence, that had become rare. It wasn’t until he had to stop and blink the rivulet of blood from his eye that Sephiroth realised this low born slum rebel had even managed to land a cut. He thumbed the thin line of red from his brown and moved to pursue the rest of the AVALANCHE rebels when he found himself stopped again, this time by a tug on the hem of his long, black coat. At his feet the beaten and bloodied fighter gripped the leather with a tenacity that sent one pale brow arching higher on Sephiroth’s mask-like features. “Ohh? Still alive…?”
“Don’t…” The blond’s voice rasped wetly in his chest, desperation mingling now with the agony and the fury that still burned lowly. “Please…”
It seemed to gall the young man to say it, leaving a taste worse than the metallic tang that must be coating his tongue now. Sephiroth glanced away in the direction of the rest of his targets and felt the tug again. “They’re not… I set the bomb, I....”
As though to underscore his claim, another small explosion rocked the massive building, one in a chain that had been gradually tearing the plant apart. Sephiroth considered that he ought to just kick the slum mongrel’s hand away and leave him to bleed out or burn up, whichever of the fates he’d brought on himself claimed him first, but hesitated, actually responding instead.
“You would not have gotten this far to set that bomb alone. You are all equally culpable in the eyes of ShinRa.” They were cold, dispassionately spoken facts. Sephiroth himself did not particularly care. The loss of the reactor’s functionality would only be a temporary blow to the lives of those privileged castes who resided above the Plate. Even so, to maintain the status quo, the retaliation of ShinRa would be swift and merciless to anyone identified as part of the plot. But surveillance had gone down just prior to the incursion. As far as Sephiroth was aware, only he knew the names and faces of the young man’s co-conspirators.
“Please,” he was glaring up at Sephiroth like he still wanted to kill the sliver-blond warrior, something strange and unreadable mingled in the expression. It intrigued the Elite in his inability to identify it. Tears had sprung up in the bloodshot blue wells of those eyes, clumping the lashes and cutting trails through the red sheeted down that deceptively and beautifully sculpted face.
Sephiroth had always been given to understand that the denizens of the slums were all common and homely, if not ugly and malformed. Clearly that had been misleading.
“I’m the one-...” he tried again and stopped, seeming to realise that track wouldn’t work any better on Sephiroth a second time. His fingers slipped on the SOLDIER’s coat just briefly and caught again. When he spoke next his voice came out exhausted, almost crushed. “...I’ll do anything, Sephiroth...” Almost.
When Sephiroth stepped again, he turned, away from the exit and faced his fallen opponent. The edge of Masamune’s blade came to rest beneath that sharp, elfin chin.
“‘Anything’?” The inflection of Sephiroth’s intrigue coloured the dark velvet of his baritone, and he watched a more powerful shudder pass through the young man’s near constant, full body tremor. Neck on the line along with his friends, he nodded. A green orb of materia, set in the hilt of the same weapon that had laid waste to the blond fighter, now flared into potency. Warm, verdant light swirled around and settled over the wounded man, a low level healing that would only stave off the worst effects of the damage Sephiroth had done, without giving back his enemy’s full virility. Sephiroth would not give him any opportunity to rescind the statement in the scant moments between the crumbling trap of the reactor and ShinRa Tower’s impenetrable security.
He needn’t have concerned himself overly much. As though Sephiroth’s acceptance had been all he’d been waiting on, the battle-wearied young fighter slumped into unconsciousness as soon as the Elite SOLDIER lifted him from the overheating steel floor. He remained almost comatose for hours after the grueling encounter, well long enough for his wounds to be tended, all the necessary paperwork to be processed, and for Sephiroth to dispense with his own duties, post mission.
The glacial swordmaster returned from his duplicitous, but utterly uneventful debriefing well after dark had fallen to find his strange prize awaiting him, sedated, restrained, cleaned, and mended. The only remaining evidence of their furious battle against one another was a thin, pink scar on the slum rebel’s torso.
All the lighter gashes had been effectively erased by Midgar’s more than state-of-the-art medicine. Even the old scars of his hard life beneath the Plate were gone, but this, where Sephiroth had first run his adversary through, he had wanted the young man to carry always, and remember.
Sephiroth seated himself upon the edge of the elegant divan and ran the tip of his finger over the mark, watching the shape of the young man’s eyes move beneath the lids as he swam lethargically toward consciousness. What had his comrades (the ones that Sephiroth had absolutely, definitely not personally seen) called him again…? Crying out for him to hurry, to stay strong, to run… Ah, yes.
Sephiroth leaned in to purr the name against his ear, “Cloud…”
