Broken Glass

Everyone stared at her, all parties locked in a very uncomfortable silence for what seemed like forever to them. In reality it was a little under a minute, but no one in the room was in any position to appreciate the passing of time realistically.

“Why do you have clothes?” Cloud was the one to finally break the silence, albeit grudgingly so.

Aerith raised one thin shoulder and held out her bundle in his direction. “I’m assuming that we’re eventually going to be leaving the apartment and I figured that if Sephiroth really did think he was a robot then he wouldn’t be dressed anywhere near appropriately for it.” Her eyes ran curiously up and down the six foot tall man who was now couched by the sofa examining its legs, fully intent on appeasing his curiosity about all that he had only observed now that the tense situation had been resolved. “It seems I was right.”

Both men present couldn’t help but stifle the tiniest of laughs as they watched their previously dead friend move on to the lamp. Aerith was right, she was always right after all, Sephiroth was not wearing something considered subtle unless it was Halloween (which it mostly certainly wasn’t), and even then he might have been pushing it a tad.

He had on skin-tight leather pants, which he looked damn good in both men secretly admitted, and a matching black jacket with no shirt underneath, revealing the pale planes of his chest, which was a very good looking chest both men also admitted suddenly beginning to feel a tad on the inadequate side. And that wasn’t taking into account his calf-length flowing silver hair. Even with one glove missing, he looked nothing less that radiant. Not good for blending in when walking down the street, but magnificent in its own way.

“Thanks, Aerith.” Zack muttered, considering placing a kiss on her cheek as well but deciding against it at the last second. This was the first time Cloud and Aerith had been in the same room since the whole ‘Zack Got Guilty and Spilled His Guts to the Girlfriend His Boyfriend Hadn’t Known About and Vice Versa’ incident of two days ago and they weren’t yelling or attempting to hurt him, as of yet. He figured that, for the first time in his life, baby steps were the way to go.

Cloud nodded to show he appreciated the gesture and took the clothes, motioning for them to take seats at the kitchen table. As they both complied he made his way over to where Sephiroth was contenting himself with flicking the lamp on and off, secretly pleased at having control over the lighting.

“Would you like to join us, J003?” He asked, trying his hardest to keep a pleasant smile on his face while his mind was whirling around at the speed of light. After the initial shock and subsequent joy at discovering his friend was actually alive faded he found that all he was left with was a slowly widening hole where he imagined his heart should be. “Please come sit at the table.”

Sephiroth looked up at him, his eyes flickering between the lamp and Cloud, obviously torn between his desire to play around with his fascinating new toy and pleasing the boy he had risked everything to be able to talk to. Cloud won out and he made his way silently to the table, sparing only the slightest glance at Aerith and Zack before fixing his eyes on Cloud and refusing to look away.

“Stop calling him that.” Aerith’s soft voice counteracted her commanding tone and Cloud looked at her in surprise. “He’s not going to get better if you give in to his fantasies, Cloud. What we need to be doing is finding some way to trigger his memory, not humoring him.”

“He doesn’t recognize his name. He won’t respond.” Cloud stated stubbornly. He hadn’t asked for Aerith to come, hadn’t wanted her there. This was his problem, not hers. It wasn’t Zack’s either, but he hadn’t hesitated to call him, though the reason why seemed to escape him every time he tried to think about it.

“So then keep calling him it until he does.” Cloud glared at her and she sighed. “By calling him what he wants you to, all you’re doing is backing up his delusion, making it real. I thought you wanted him to remember who he was.”

Cloud pondered this for a second before reluctantly admitting it, if only to himself.

“Zack.” The dark-haired man looked up from where he had been contemplating the swirls in the oaken tabletop as his fiancée said his name.

“Yes?” He asked after a slight pause.

“Will you please go change your clothes?” Zack looked at her in confusion. She placed a second pile of clothing on the table, pushing it in his direction. “And could you be a dear and retrieve something for Cloud to wear after you’re done? Like I said, we’re going to be wanting to leave here soon and scrubs tend to stand out in a crowd.”

For moment it looked as though he was going to argue, but he thought the best of it in the end. After the strange day he’d had, taking orders without knowing why seemed nothing more than the icing on the cake. He took the clothes and disappeared down the hallway, more than familiar with Cloud’s bedroom and how to get to it.

Aerith waited only long to enough to be sure Zack was out of hearing range before fixing her eerie green gaze on Cloud.

“They are going to be coming for him, and they aren’t going to knock on your door and politely ask for you to give him back.” Cloud shrugged. He knew. In fact, there had been a part of him that had always known, from the moment he had woken up in that pristine hospital bed two years ago, almost to the day. He wasn’t going to be getting his happiness. He never got his happiness. “We have to move and we have to move fast.”

“I don’t want to move anywhere. I want to stay here and I want everything to stop already. Take him and Zack and go. As for me, well, I’m tired of all this. Sephiroth’s alive and that’s more than I could ever hope for. If I’m lucky I’ll be allowed my first peaceful night before they come. If I’m unlucky, then that’s just fine, too. Either way it ends.” Cloud answered in a cold monotone for a speech that, given by anyone else, would have been filled to the brim with frustration and a lingering sadness. As it was, Aerith could only imagine those emotions, emotions she knew he kept well hidden below the surface.

“No, Cloud, either way it does not end.” There wasn’t a flicker of recognition, there was nothing from the blonde. It was as though he had turned to stone, but Aerith knew instinctually she had hit a nerve, a place deep down inside the man that was still open and vulnerable. A place that had yet to put up a wall and would never, ever heal. “Zack may have been right about you. You are selfish. You take and you take and you take, but you never give. Sacrificing yourself isn’t going to save Sephiroth. It isn’t going to save anybody. They won’t stop at killing you, they will hunt him down and they will destroy him in much the same way and then there will be nothing left.”

“And this time it will be your fault.”

Her lips turned upwards smoothly in a calm and generous smile as she watched Cloud fight an internal battle. She shifted to look at Sephiroth who still hadn’t taken his eyes off the blonde. Satisfied that he was caught up in whatever ramblings he had been programmed to fall back on when in an emotional situation, she returned to watching Cloud, wishing more than ever to possess a way to break into his mind and hear what he was thinking, what he was debating.

“It’s not very fair of you to play to guilt card so soon after the selfishness one.” Cloud accused, still allowing no emotion to creep into his voice. It was a skill he had perfected in the past two years; a skill he found now came in handy if Aerith’s slightly frustrated expression was anything to go by. It must be hard for her, he thought, she normally reads people so well. “And don’t say life isn’t fair because duh. It’s not. And it’s cliché as hell.”

“Just go change, Cloud, while I do something about Sephiroth’s hair.” Aerith smiled serenely as Zack reentered the room, his arms full of dark clothing.

“Shit, Spike. Even your God damned closet looks emo. Do you own anything that is not black or a slightly lighter form of black?” Cloud shook his head, taking the proffered clothing and disappearing down the hallway, leaving Sephiroth behind to watch him go.

“Has he looked away even once?” Zack asked, becoming more than a little freaked out at Sephiroth’s blank stare. Aerith shook her head slowly.

“Not since Cloud told him to sit at the table.” Aerith murmured, allowing her kind gaze to sweep over the impressive figure of Cloud’s friend. “He listens to Cloud. He wants to listen to Cloud. It’s like he knows that all he has to do is wait for awhile and Cloud will say or do something that will bring back all the memories he doesn’t know he’s missing. It’s like… Well, it’s like Fate, which as Cloud would say…”

“Is far too cliché for words. I know.” Zack grumbled moodily. None of what had happened made sense to him. He was not having a good day, and that was putting it mildly. “No offense to good old Cloud, but a lot of what he says is complete shit. Being cliché isn’t bad, there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Cloud doesn’t know what he’s saying half the time.” Aerith agreed, getting up and moving around the table to where Sephiroth was still staring off in the direction Cloud had disappeared in. She hesitantly ran a hand through the man’s long locks and when did nothing more than blink, which could have been nothing more than him needing to blink so much as a reaction, she decided to take a chance and pulled out a pair of scissors from her pocket. “He’s in pain. He’s suffered for so long and he’s done things that were out of character for him and, quite frankly, that scared him more than anything. He never wanted to hurt anyone, and he never meant for the stupid things he tried to use to get over his pain to work, which is why I can forgive him so easily I think.”

Zack was silent as he watched his fiancée begin to braid the long silvery strands that made up Sephiroth’s hair. She was right again. She really was always right. She had been right to forgive him, something he had previously found distressing. Now it just made sense. How she could understand so well was beyond him, but he loved her all the more for it.

She was rare, like a jewel or a precious flower. She was perfect, and no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that he didn’t deserve her, not after all he’d done, all he’d put her through, he couldn’t make the lesson stick. She was still there for him and he still loved her and no amount of frantic effort on his part was going to make him feel guilty about it.

Perhaps Fate really was at work.

“How do you understand him so well?” Zack asked as he lowered himself down into a vacant chair. “Even back when we were kids, no one understood him. No one but Sephiroth, mainly because they were both so alike, but you hardly know him, have barely talked to him, and you have every reason to hate him, but you don’t hate him and you say stuff about him as though you’ve known him forever.”

Aerith shrugged. “Sometimes I feel as though I have. He’s remarkably like you, you know. I expect that if he hadn’t been in the accident, he would have ended up almost exactly like you.”

Zack pondered this while he watched Aerith cut off the thick braid she’d fashioned and set about trimming the uneven ends with startling efficiency. He looked on is awe as Sephiroth slowly began looking more and more like the young teen he had once been, with short hair that framed his face and bangs that were just long enough to fall into his eyes. The change was remarkable. He was no longer an untouchable graceful figure. He was a teen again, a lost teen that had one good friend in the world, a sullen blonde that had missed him terribly.

Zack let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding with a loud whoosh. “Damn. He looks… He looks like he’s only been gone for two years, not seven. If I didn’t know better I would say he was nineteen.”

Aerith nodded and seemed to be on the verge of saying something else when they both heard a loud crash from behind them. Twisting as the crash was followed by a rather large gasp, they both turned around just in time to see the last remnants of color fade from Cloud’s cheeks and he slouched against the wall eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

Sephiroth immediately shot to his feet before either Aerith or Zack could think of moving. In a blur of black and silver he was at Cloud’s side, supporting the younger blonde and helping him make it to the sofa where he gently laid Cloud down and knelt by his side, never once allowing his eyes to leave the other boy’s face.

Cloud reached out and gently tucked a strand of wayward hair behind Sephiroth’s ear, and Zack coughed, causing the blonde to jump, effectively pulling him out of whatever memory he’d been locked in and back into the present.

“He looks…. He looks like he did that day…” Cloud whispered but in the silence of the room his voice carried all the way to his companions. Zack shifted uncomfortably. Aerith smiled knowingly.

“Cloud, tell him to go get dressed. We need to be leaving.” Aerith’s voice was calm and Zack relaxed unconsciously beside her.

The blonde nodded, the look of complete wonder never once leaving his features. He stumbled over his words at first, obviously not wanting to say his name, something Aerith allowed against her better judgment. He’d had a big shock, it was understandable this time.

“Um… Could you please go put on the clothes Aerith brought for you?” Cloud voice held the ghosts of his long-suppressed emotions. For a minute, Zack was even worried that the other man was going to begin crying.

Sephiroth nodded. “Affirmative.”

He then stood and made his way to the abandoned piled of clothing, disappearing into the bathroom once more with Cloud standing after him and watching his progress, only turning to the other two once Sephiroth had closed the door firmly behind him.

“I don’t like this.” Zack mumbled.

“You don’t have to like it.” Cloud growled, his eyes suddenly blazing with anger. “I don’t expect you to be jumping for joy, but this is nothing less than a miracle. So either you can accept it and go along for the damn ride, or you can shut the hell up and go home.”

Zack looked like he wanted to say something particularly nasty, which considering the circumstances, wouldn’t have been all that out of place, but was stopped by a strangely potent glare from the normally easy-going brunette beside him.

“Being petty isn’t going to solve anything.” Aerith stated, trying her hardest to stay calm and reassuring while attempting not to kill the two stubborn males standing before her. “Yes, Cloud this is a miracle, in some twisted way. Yes, Zack you have every right to be confused and irritated. However, that does not mean either of you have the right to be assholes about it to each other or anyone else for that matter. You’re not five and this whole fighting thing is getting beyond old.”

“Grow up and get on with your life, I know I have.”

Both men looked properly chastised and Aerith sighed heavily. She hated being mean, it wasn’t who she was, but she had to get her point through to them before they spent all their precious time fighting and getting nowhere. From the guilty looks on both of their faces, she knew she had finally managed to strike a chord, and it was about damn time. The tension in the room was starting to give her a headache.

“He’s taking too long.” Aerith muttered. “Cloud, go check on him.”

~

I wanted nothing more than to return to the cool glass panels that had previously made up my entire life. Here there were people to judge me, and they were judging me, especially the dark-haired man and his little brunette friend. The glass had never judged me; it had only shown me for who and what I was.

I was not a human, I would never be a human and a new hair cut and a change of scenery was never going to change that. If it hadn’t been for the haunting image of the blonde’s-he said his name was Cloud, didn’t he?-face twisted in a grotesque mask of pain and betrayal, then I would have left long ago. As it was, I didn’t want to hurt Cloud, didn’t want to be the cause of his pain and I was damned if I knew why.

But there was something already hurting him, something to do with me, I thought as I purposely avoided looking at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. He wouldn’t say it. He wouldn’t tell me no matter how much I had pestered him in the time before the strangers had shown up. He wouldn’t tell the strangers either, that much I had gathered from their conversation at the kitchen table. He never told anyone anything, a fact I had picked up from my observations of him, past and present.

He said he was selfish, and maybe he was right, because in a way, not allowing those who wanted to help in was a type of selfishness in its worse form. Would he turn away from me if I asked permission to help him? Would he pull away from me and look at me with that same disappointed look he got when he was talking to his dark-haired friend? The look that said he was not receiving what he was looking for but he was too afraid for the consequences that not taking any proffered hand would bring about that he was willing to sell his soul to get his so-called friends off his back.

I never wanted to be on the receiving end of that look. I never wanted to disappoint him.

So why couldn’t I shake the feeling that I already had?

I sighed deeply, wondering vaguely why now of all times I seemed to be able to access some previously unknown form of lungs. There was a lot about me that I didn’t know. There was a lot about me that I found I never wanted to know.

Pulling off my shirt and pants I studied the dark clothing I had been presented with. The only immediate difference I could see was they were made out of a soft cloth, cotton perhaps, instead of sleek and smooth leather. Standing in the bathroom while the fluorescent lights poured down the flood the white tiles with even more overwhelming whiteness, I realized that I had liked the leather. In a strange way, I didn’t feel quite right in the dark cotton that I was pulling up over my slim hips.

Just another chapter coming to a painfully bittersweet close.

As I buttoned the last button on the shirt I finally took a minute to scrutinize my appearance in the mirror, and what I saw made me stop dead.

May hair was shorter than I ever remembered having it, and yet… And yet it seemed so familiar in the way a pleasant dream feels once the dreamer has awakened and is no longer able to recall anything but the fuzziest of details. I reached out with trembling fingers to twist a jagged bang between them, the ghost of a memory slithering across my subconscious before burying itself away deep down in the darkness. The memory of a blonde doing much the same thing…

And a morning, so far away, when the air had been cold and they had run, laughing at something that had been said, all the way to the bus stop, a motorcycle leaning forgotten against the curb, its bright black chrome shining in the weak winter sun.

There was a light rapping on the door and I didn’t bother turning to look, knowing without a doubt who would be the one to push it open. I hadn’t been expecting the gasp, however.

His face was so pale it was bordering on see-through and I chased the vague thought that if he kept allowing the blood to drain out of his face in such a way then he was sure to go into shock around my head before I let it go, my mind now focusing on a much more important thought, a memory.

“Sephiroth…”

And suddenly I was in a different world, in a different time…