Note: Waiting for news on my chaptered fic? Better luck on my profile.

Warning: Unbetaed, like all my work. So warning for dumb mistakes caused by English not being the writer's native language (like in all my work).

The boy stood nervously in the courtyard. His hand clutched at his mother's like a lifeline. As they waited, a dark-haired man came down the temple front steps. He was wearing the priests' white toga and a friendly grin.

"Hello, ma'am," he said to the boy's mother. "I'm Priest Zack. Can I help you with something?"

"My son exhibits signs of being destined to serve the god," she told him with reluctance.

Intrigued, Priest Zack turned to the child. He attempted to shrink behind his mother's legs. The man squatted down so they could be at eye level.

"Hello," he said gently. "So you like the god, uh?"

He nodded without a word.

"Do you want to come with me and see if the god likes you too?"

He perked up at this. He stepped forward, and the priest laughed at his wide-eyed interest. All three of them walked up the steps and entered the temple. Priest Zack led them to a bare stone room with a big, round window pane in the ceiling. He had the boy sit right underneath it and began lighting incense. His mother waited in a corner, but the boy had already forgotten her. He peered all around, at the frescos on the walls and the holy symbols engraved in the ground he was kneeling on. He liked this place. He could feel the presence of the god all around, many times stronger than he was used to.

Priest Zack came to sit before him. He took his hands and guided him through a ritual. The smell of the incense was heavy in the air, lulling the child to a deep and comfortable lethargy. Before long, he wasn't aware of the room anymore. His consciousness was floating up, up, up, into the sky.

And suddenly, the god was here.

Power, as ancient as the world and so overwhelming he was instantly lost in its massive, endless, roiling waves. He felt his soul unravelling under the assault and couldn't even bring himself to care, enraptured. Then, just as he was about to cease existing, he was carefully plucked out and scrutinized, like one would fish a lost kitten from the folds of one's robes and stare in surprise. The kitten was gently set aside.

The boy came to with a great gasp. Priest Zack was clutching his shoulders. He was gaping, shock written all over his blue eyes.

"You touched the god's essence," he said as if he couldn't believe it. "No one, not a single priest before you… Well. You're definitely one of ours, kid."

The priest's face distorted. The dream faded and turned into nothingness. In the darkness, grey clouds of fog drifted around. He couldn't see anyone, but he knew he wasn't alone; something told him there was another here. As he thought of it, he felt them stir.

Cloud woke up with a start.

"Again with your weird dreams?" Tifa asked later at breakfast, commiserating with his bleary look.

Cloud shrugged.

"Just the usual one."

Really, he had had the dream for months now. The priest, the temple, then the fog… He was no closer to finding out what it meant, if it did mean anything. Neither the people nor the places were familiar to him. Maybe it was just his mind's enigmatic way of coping with the loss of Nibelheim. It had started just after his hometown burned, after all.

Nibelheim had been home to the main temple of the Moon God, the Nameless One. For centuries, the Nameless One and his rival Sephiroth, the Sun God, had been locked in a bitter and unending battle. Each day, they would fight. Every two fortnights the moon would win and grow a little larger, a little brighter, until it reigned round and white upon the night sky; then the sun would triumph and get back the power that was stolen from it, casting the world in the darkness of a new moon night.

But this age-old balance had been broken when Sephiroth had suddenly sent no less than three of his avatars on earth. On the next new moon night, when Sephiroth should have yielded before his opponent, the avatars had attacked Nibelheim and razed it to the ground. Heartbroken and weakened by the slaughter of his worshippers, the Nameless One had lost the fated battle.

That was when the moon fell from the sky. It hadn't been seen since.

Cloud found his appetite was lost. He got up and crossed to the door of the inn his ragtag companions and him had invested for the night. It was only early morning, yet the sun already beat down on the dusty streets and the small, yellow and white buildings of the village. A few people shuffled their ways through the heat, tan, grim and exhausted.

There was a sudden scream. Cloud tensed. When he saw villagers beginning to flee with the unmistakable look of men and women running for their lives, he turned to shout "Trouble!" over his shoulder. Instantly, all members of his team abandoned their breakfast and rushed outside after him.

Cloud unsheathed his sword and led them to the main street. What scared the people so much soon became obvious: a squad of sun priests was marching down the road, blades in hand, cutting down anyone who didn't get away in time. Sephiroth was a warrior god, and his priests were correspondingly trained in the ways of the sword. At the front, a tall, muscular man with short silver hair led them all, laughing boisterously.

"An avatar," Tifa growled.

Cloud heard the leather of her gloves creak as she closed her hands into fists and assumed a fighting position. He understood her anger. This was one of the men, or rather the godly incarnations, who had destroyed their home and slaughtered their families.

"We gotta get these people out!" Barret shouted, because Barret never did things quietly.

"Everyone, take care of the priests and help the villagers escape. Tifa, Nanaki and I will keep the avatar busy until you can come back," Cloud said.

"With pleasure," his childhood friend ground out.

Just then, the avatar spotted them. His cocky grin widened and he strode toward them.

"There you are!" he roared in triumph, nearly as loud as Barret. "You're the guys that've been causing all kind of trouble around, ain't you? Killing our priests and all that. We've been looking for ya. Heard you were around. Big brother Sephiroth will be so pleased I found you! Plus, I, Loz, get to be the one to play with you!..."

He trailed off in confusion as his eyes landed on Cloud.

"Huh? Do I know you?"

Cloud was taken aback. Did he? He had no memory of ever meeting this guy before. Did they cross paths in Nibelheim? Cloud had very hazy recollections of that night, impressions of devouring flames and shapeless black shadows. Most of what he knew had happened, he had learned from Tifa. She had found him, she said, unconscious in the ruins of the temple. He had no idea how he had gotten there.

"You want to play?" Tifa seethed before he could answer. "Okay. Let's play."

She dived headlong at the avatar. Cloud and Nanaki rushed to support her while their friends scattered behind them.

The battle quickly became gruelling. Like Tifa, Loz used no other weapon than his body. He also turned out to not be very bright. However he balanced this with sickening strength and speed—he was, after all, not human, but a divine creation of flesh and blood. One misplaced punch from him levelled a ten-foot-wide crater in the middle of the street. Cloud did his best to steer clear from his punches after that, but it was easier said than done.

Tifa managed to land an impressing combo on him, but as she was jumping away, he seized her by the ankle. She gasped. He flung her through a house's wall with insulting ease.

"Tifa!" Cloud yelled.

Through the rubble, he saw his friend collapse to the ground. She didn't get up. Filled with rage, he turned back to the enemy. Loz smirked. Standing tall and proud, hardly a scratch on him, the avatar beckoned him mockingly.

"Your turn. Wanna play?"

Cloud wordlessly motioned Nanaki back. The lion-like creature obeyed with reluctance.

Without further ado, Cloud rushed at the avatar. Loz blocked the swing of his weapon with his armoured forearm. He hadn't counted on Cloud unlocking the catch on his sword's hilt and separating it into twin blades. Loz barely escaped the second strike that tore a neat line into his side. He frowned.

"Hey! Not fair," he growled petulantly.

Cloud didn't answer. He had slipped into a strange mindset, both familiar and unknown, a place where he existed for each stroke of his blades, each quick sidestep, each gracious vault through the air. He parried lightning-quick blows, let them glance off the flat of his swords at the perfect angle to lessen their strength, delivered just as fast counterattacks. He leapt to evade a plummeting punch, flipped mid-jump, kicked against a nearby house and came crashing down on his opponent. Before long, the enemy began to cave, overrun.

When the others came running back from their battle against the priests, anxious for the friends they had left behind, they found him standing over Loz. The avatar lay motionless on the ground, one of Cloud's swords spearing him through the chest. His face was frozen in a wide-eyed display of surprise.

Nanaki approached him with caution. Cloud twitched when his muzzle brushed against his thigh. He was panting, one hand clenching sporadically around the hilt of his remaining weapon.

"Cloud," Nanaki said in the incredulous silence. "You just killed the incarnation of a god. Alone."

"The heck, Spike?" Barret thundered.

Cloud had no answer.

"Now go ahead. Show me you've learnt your lessons!"

The apprentice parried a strike of his practice instructor and sighed, but consented to list all the major deities of the pantheon.

"… and Gaia is the Mother Earth, the All-Mother. Her main temple is in the Ancient City, far up north from here. Her worshippers are called the Cetra and they rarely leave the City. And finally, the Sun God Sephiroth is the son of Jenova, Goddess of the Air. His temple is in Midgar," he concluded.

"Bravo!" Priest Zack enthused.

"It's not hard to remember. Why, did you have trouble with it?"

"Is this insubordination I hear?"

Zack tackled him, letting their wooden swords clang to the ground. He proceeded to tickle him into submission. The young priest in training rolled around on the courtyard's dusty floor in peals of laughter. When his teacher at last let him catch his breath, he lay there and stared at the sky.

"Say, Priest…"

Zack hummed in question.

"Doesn't Jenova have a temple?"

All good cheer slipped from the man's face. The apprentice sat up, alarmed. Rarely did he see his teacher so grave.

"Jenova… Jenova is a special divinity. Legends have it she comes from another world, you know?"

The boy's eyes widened. This was news to him.

"There are other worlds?"

"Yes, very far from ours. Far enough that only gods can cross between them, and even then at a high price. Since she isn't from here, Jenova doesn't care who among us worship her. She doesn't need our faith to exist.

"But anyway, yeah, unlike other gods she wasn't born from Gaia and… well, Jenova and Gaia don't get along very well. Jenova wants our world for herself and Gaia won't let her take it. So they fight. Actually, Jenova gave birth to Sephiroth so he could serve as an ally to her. But Sephiroth refused to take anyone's side. He retreated high into the sky, where he could spread his warmth on both air and earth equally. To this day, Jenova still tries to persuade him to fight for her. That's why we've got seasons. When it's winter and everything dies on earth, it's because she's up there guilt-tripping him into helping. Then he'll feel remorse and we'll have summer."

"That's so sad," the apprentice breathed. "Doesn't his mother love him? All mothers should love their child."

Zack smiled sadly and ruffled his hair.

"I don't know if she loves him. I'm pretty sure he loves her, though."

The courtyard disappeared like so much mist in the wind. A black, empty void replaced it. Dense fog spiralled lazily around, tracing patterns in the dark. He knew he wasn't alone here.

In the void, he felt malignant eyes open.

Cloud surged to wakefulness like a drowning man bursting through the water surface. In the silent, too warm night, he stared at the ceiling.

For the first time, the dream had been different.

Their group had taken to the road again. It made none of them happy, but if the priests were to start attacking settlements because of their presence, they had decided it was best for them to avoid civilization to the best of their ability, at least for the time being.

Ever since his triumph over his rival, Sephiroth had taken to ruling over the world with an iron fist. The heat grew each day more intolerable. Cloud's already unusual name had become a mark of supreme irony in a time where not a drop of rain had been spotted in months. The sun priests had once been honourable men and women who dedicated their life to serving and protecting the citizens. Now they seemed to have been seized by the same madness as their god, roaming the land to harass the people they were meant to defend. Most had already given up all hope… but not everyone had resigned themselves to the worst.

Cloud had some degree of affection for his rowdy group of companions. All of them believed that something could still be done, that Sephiroth had to be stopped. Tifa, the childhood friend that had been with him from day one; Barret, who had joined them so that Marlene, his adopted daughter, could grow up in a world with flowers; Nanaki, last survivor of a race of gods-blessed creatures and wise beyond his years; Vincent, priest of the very secretive god Chaos; Cid, the man who worshipped the sky for what it was and not for any deity inhabiting it; Yuffie, fighting for Wutai, her country, whose lush greenery and beautiful waterfalls were dying under the sun's tyranny; and Cait Sith, a… strange magic-propelled cat doll (?), its motives as mysterious as its making.

They had all bonded through the hardships they had gone through. When Cloud had single-handedly defeated Loz, they had stood dumbfounded for a while then had moved on. They were good people.

Then came Yazoo. Much smarter than his brother, cool-headed, nimble and resourceful. Less resistant, though. Defending against swords was obviously not his forte.

Killing a half-god could be put down to a mad stroke of luck. Killing two? It was time to start asking questions.

The apprentice rushed through the corridors, breathless. Everywhere he turned, he was met with grim faces. All the priests in the city seemed to have flocked back to the temple and were converging to the praying room, but none would take the time to explain what had happened.

The young man had felt it, though, the ripple that had shaken the gods' plane of existence. None of the other novices had, but he knew he had always been special, more attuned to the spiritual plane than they were. It often made them jealous.

Finally, just as he was despairing, he caught sight of the man he was looking for.

"Priest Zack!"

His teacher stopped and waited for him to come to his side. He was no more joyful than his comrades, but the sombre look in his eyes was mixed with sadness.

"It touched you too, uh?" he needlessly asked.

The apprentice nodded all the same, staring at him in alarm. Zack sighed and put a hand on his shoulder. It was in a whisper that he parted with the news, as if to do otherwise would vex the powers above.

"Jenova is gone, kid. Gaia finally triumphed of her."

It struck him like a blow to the chest. The Goddess… gone? What he had felt, that had been the shock of a deity disappearing? Such an event was nearly unheard of. Even the apprentice, ignorant as he still was, knew that it would mean deep, unprecedented changes to the weaving of the world. After all, Jenova had been the counterpoint to Gaia; without her, the cosmic balance was in jeopardy.

"What will happen?..."

"I don't know yet, kid," Priest Zack said, and his pupil had never seen him so troubled.

The scene faded away into a familiar limbo. The darkness seemed deeper, somehow, the grey fog nearly sentient as it rolled around. Somewhere unseen, he could feel it; the eyes were searching for him.

Cloud pressed the pads of his fingers against his eyelids. He had a lot to figure out today, and those damn dreams weren't helping. What was going on with him?

"What's going on with you?" Cid asked, blunt as per usual.

"Well, whatever it is, I'm all for it," Yuffie claimed. "I mean, bringing down avatars like overripe fruits? Hell yeah! Kzing, boum, paaaf!"

"Yes, thank you Yuffie," Cloud said drily.

"Something you forgot to tell us, Spike?" Barret grumbled, eyeing him with a hint of wariness.

He glared at him, but before he could answer, Tifa cleared her throat. Come to think of it, she had been very silent since Cloud had bested Yazoo the day before. She looked pale and nervous.

"Please, don't blame Cloud. I'm the one who has been holding out on you guys… especially you, Cloud. I'm sorry."

He sat forward, dread beginning to settle in his stomach.

"What do you mean?"

Tifa closed her eyes, as if it could somehow lessen the impact of what she was about to say.

"Cloud… You know, all these memories you have of growing up in Nibelheim, of you and I being childhood friends, of… of your mother? They are all lies. I'm sorry. There… there never was a child named Cloud Strife in Nibelheim."

Nausea rose in his gut.

"What?" he heard himself say in a faint voice.

"I… I found you in the ruins of the temple the night of the attack, like I said. But that was the first time I ever saw you. Yet when you woke up, you seemed to know me. You would say all of these things about me and the town and… I didn't understand, but it seemed—it seemed like the best thing to do would be to play along. I felt that I had to help you, because…"

"… because he appeared in the temple," Vincent's deep bass completed for her. "So you thought he had been sent by the god."

"You're saying Cloud is an avatar of the Nameless One," Nanaki concluded, like it was a perfectly reasonable suggestion, like Cloud's world hadn't just turned itself inside out, like the ground hadn't just dropped from beneath his feet.

Tifa's pleading eyes were on him, begging him to understand why she had lied.

"But I remember you," he said hoarsely. "I remember having a childhood, a family, the mountain in the summer… How can all of this be illusions?"

"I don't know, Cloud. I was the head priest's daughter, so maybe that's why you knew me? Maybe… Maybe the god thought you needed these memories to blend in? To fool Sephiroth's lackeys, at least until you were strong enough to accomplish your mission?"

"What mission?" he asked, gripping his knees like lifelines, needing to reassure himself of his physical existence. "I don't have anything like that!"

"What are avatars, anyway?" Cid inquired.

"Puppets of a god in the physical plane," Cait Sith told them, dancing on its hind legs. "An avatar is a chunk of a deity's power tied together with an anchor. The anchor is usually part of the god's personality or a single strand of will, that is to say an objective or mission the god wants fulfilled. They are rare, because it takes a lot out of the powers above to create one, let alone three like Sephiroth did. I'll betcha their existence is part of the reason he's so barmy right now. When you send bits of your mind away, it's bound to leave you a little screwed up in the head."

"So I'm the puppet of a dead god," Cloud said numbly. "Great."

Tifa rushed around the campfire to take his hands.

"You're not a puppet," she said with conviction, glaring at Cait Sith. "And we don't know for sure if the Nameless One is dead! You're here, aren't you? He found the strength to create you. Maybe he didn't have the time to tell you what he wanted done, but he… he must have had some kind of plan, right?"

And so, what? He should just do his bidding like a good little boy, and then he would be allowed to fade into nothing? No, no. He couldn't allow himself to think so selfishly. Later, he would search solitude, he would think about this, he would let himself mourn and wallow in self-pity and bitterness. For now they needed a plan.

"Then we should find him," he whispered, unable to make his voice stronger.

Still, his words had Tifa smiling in gratitude.

"How do we do that?" Barret frowned. "Find a god who doesn't want to be found? Talk about impossible."

"Not necessarily," Nanaki argued, and it was his turn to receive their stares. "Do you know why he's called the Nameless One?"

"My father told me the story," Tifa said. "When Gaia first made the Nameless One into a god and gave him half the sky to rule over, just before she went to sleep for her Great Slumber, Sephiroth threw a terrible tantrum. He fought him, the first of their many battles, and stole his name from the skies so it could never be used in prayers."

"That's it," Nanaki nodded. "Prayers addressed to a god by his name are always stronger. If we could pray to the moon god using his name, maybe he would hear us."

"But no one remembers it! Even the priests in Nibelheim didn't know it."

"I heard of one person, actually. A person so old she remembers the Nameless One's name. I can lead you to her."

Cloud gripped the hilt of his sword until his knuckles turned white in his gloves. He heaved himself to his feet. His shoulders seemed heavier than ever before, as if he was struggling under a great weight.

"Let's go, then."

"There you are."

Priest Zack's hand landed on his head where it messed up his hair. The apprentice made a sound of protest. He propped the broom he had been using to sweep the courtyard against the temple wall.

"You were searching for me?" he asked, disgruntled, while finger-combing his poor hair.

"Yeah, there is someone I want to introduce you to. Come on."

Curious, he followed him out of the temple grounds. They walked (here the dream blurred, condensing the journey) until they reached a small grove nestled by a clear spring. The trees there were very tall, very old and very green. As soon as the apprentice entered their shade, he felt the ancient power of the place. This was holy land, blessed by the rich and wise life that grew in its soil.

They found the girl kneeling in a field of flowers next to the spring. She was young and bore no insignia, but the novice at once knew what she was. The priestess of Gaia looked up as they came nearer. A braid of lush chestnut hair swung over her back and forest green eyes filled with warmth when they found Zack. She rose to greet them.

"This is Aerith," Priest Zack said. "She came here to liaise with our temple. This way when Gaia goes forward with her plans to restore the cosmic balance, we'll be ready."

She smiled at him and it filled him with joy and peace.

"Hello. Zack has told me a lot about you. I hope we'll be good friends."

The darkness melted her with almost vindictive eagerness. The fog wrapped around him, familiar after all this time. It circled around his limbs and danced between his legs. He didn't dare move. The presence was still here.

Unexpectedly, it spoke.

"I know you're here."

The voice, masculine and strong, shook him to his very core. He stayed silent, frozen.

"You couldn't disappear when it was time, could you? You had to cling to every last dreg of this power you stole from another. How very sad."

He could hear the malice, the taunting, the razor-sharp irony.

"Don't you understand? There is nothing left for you in this world. No place, no identity, no purpose. You are not meant to exist. Wouldn't it be easier to end this silly game and let me destroy you?"

He clamped his lips together. His heart was hammering in his chest like that of a frightened rabbit. He didn't remember ever being so terrified before. Even as it spoke, the presence searched for him. He could feel the rolling waves of its essence lapping against his skin, twisted and overwhelming. The silence stretched.

"Fine. Have it your way, puppet. It is of no consequence anyway, you realize? You are too weak to sustain this mortal vessel much longer. I don't have to do anything. Soon, you'll fade away on your own…"

Mocking laughter rang in Cloud's ears even as he clawed his way back to consciousness. He was drenched in cold sweat and his starving lungs couldn't seem to absorb oxygen fast enough. Shivering, he tried to persuade himself that this had only been a dream.

Only a dream.

Mother Gaia had very few worshippers these days as she was considered a sleeping deity. The Cetra, her original people, were said to be extinct. Farmers, woodcutters and the like still sometimes maintained earth shrines in their homes and prayed to her on the solstices and the equinoxes, but that was about it.

Yet the place Nanaki led them to had the hair rising on Cloud's arms with the sense of a strong holy presence. None of his companions seemed to notice anything was amiss, save perhaps Nanaki himself and Vincent.

It wasn't even much to look at, this spot: just a grove of dead trees like so many others they had met during their journey across the scorched land. A bit of greenery clung stubbornly to the shade of the agonizing giants. Yet the sight of the dry, gnarled trunks filled him with an unexplainable sadness.

"Is something wrong, Cloud?" Tifa asked.

"I… I don't know. I feel like… I've been here before."

But how could that be? He had apparently been born in Nibelheim a scant few months ago.

Filled with a sudden urgency he didn't understand, he dived through the trees, leaving his startled friends behind. Some part of him wasn't surprised to find a flower field at the very centre of the grove, next to the trickle of a fading spring. The flowers still stood proudly, filling the grey of a barren world with bright colours.

But even as he looked, they wilted one after the other. In their midst, laid on them as if on her dying shroud, the woman they had come searching for awaited her end. A mortal wound had pierced her chest and died her white dress a lurid shade of red.

"Aerith!"

The cry tore from Cloud's throat without his consent. He carelessly trampled the flowers and found himself kneeling by her side in seconds. A sorrow the likes of which he had never felt invaded him for this woman, this beloved stranger. Deep green eyes, ancient and tired, looked up at him from a smooth, ageless face. She smiled and he was filled with images of a summer day in a lush forest.

"Cloud," she breathed. "You came."

She lifted a hand. Cloud took it and clutched it between his own.

"Who did this to you?" he said, grief clogging his voice.

"You know who."

The last avatar. Of course. Aerith sighed.

"It's not so bad, you know. I waited so long here… Forbidden to leave, or time would have caught up with me. I stayed hundreds of years in this place. I took care of the flowers. Sometimes travellers came. It was lonely, though. Flowers are good company, but their conversational skills are limited."

She tried to laugh and choked on blood. Cloud could only wait, powerless, until she caught her breath.

"I still did my best," she said when she could speak again. "I didn't want to leave you alone to bear the burden of our mistake."

She turned her head. He was vaguely conscious of his friends waiting by the tree line in reverent silence. She smiled at them.

"I don't think you're alone now, though. So maybe it'll be alright…"

Her voice was fading. Tears threatened to blind him.

"Goodbye, Cloud. Take care of yourself. And don't worry: you'll make him listen. I know you will."

Aerith closed her eyes. As her last breath left her, the remaining flowers tucked around her body blackened and shrivelled.

A sudden vertigo struck Cloud like they had taken all of his energy with them. He felt himself fall into a dark void, barely heard the cries of his friends. His body landed heavily on the dried husks of the flowers, crushing them to ashes.

"So the Goddess will really go to sleep?" the apprentice asked.

"Once she is done arranging for everything to run smoothly while she rests, yes, she will," Aerith told him.

Today she had come to visit them at the temple. As she sat there on the front steps, there was a quiet acceptance in her eyes that spoke of things the young man wasn't sure he wanted to learn.

"… What will happen to the Cetra?" he still felt compelled to ask.

She answered with a sad little smile, but didn't say anything. Zack was watching her like he would have loved nothing more than to erase all her sufferings, but knew he was powerless to do so. He distracted himself by watching his pupil as he paced in front of them.

"What's up with you? You're getting more and more restless during the prayers. The other priests blame me, you know. If you keep this up, they'll call me a bad teacher."

His attempt at humour fell flat. The apprentice was too wound up to listen.

"Don't you feel it? Every time I pray…"

He cut himself off, but Zack's face had lit with interest.

"You know you perceive a lot more of the god's essence than we do. What do you feel? Is something wrong with him?"

"He's lonely!" the apprentice suddenly blurted out, unable to contain it anymore. "Ever since Jenova… ever since his mother has been gone… Sephiroth's been so lonely, Zack!"

He ran down the stairs to stand in the middle of the sun-bathed courtyard, basking in the heat of the golden rays raining on his body from above.

He loved the sun. On the cold mountain where he came from, every time the clouds would break, he'd rush outside to feel its warmth while it lasted. It was this trait that had convinced his poor mother that she had to bring him here so he could answer his calling as a priest of Sephiroth. His ceremony of acceptance was just around the corner, now. Soon, he would be a full-fledged priest. But what good would that be if it didn't bring him any closer to helping his god? He wanted to be of use to him. He didn't want to be stuck on the ground while he was all alone up there!

Zack and Aerith exchanged a glance. While Zack's face was stricken, Aerith looked contemplative. She rose to her feet.

"You love the god very much, don't you?"

He nodded at her, miserable.

"How can I help him?" he whispered.

She smiled.

"There might be a way."

"Do you still insist on fighting me?" the voice said almost before he could appear in the darkness. "I can feel it. Your weakness. Like I warned you, you've already started fading away. Won't you make this easier on both of us?"

He thought about it. He really did. He felt heavy, lost. Nothing made sense anymore. Everywhere he turned, he found more mystery, more pain, more sadness. If he wasn't human, what was he even fighting for? His friends? But weren't his friendships only illusions, destined to vanish like mirages in the desert when his ephemeral existence would come to an end?

The voice was darkly alluring in this dream. Perhaps sensing his wavering will, it turned into silky honey, beckoning him closer.

"You could rest. Leave all of this folly behind. Don't you want peace? This is the way. The only way."

Peace sounded nice. But still… Something tugged at his memories, something important.

There was something he was fighting for. Something… or maybe someone.

Cloud awoke with difficulty, this time. He would have thought the culprit to be the presence tugging insistently at him to stay, to come, to let it find him, but he knew it was not so. His body felt just as heavy as in the dream. He was lying in a soft bed, maybe in an inn. Hadn't they decided to avoid those? No sooner had he opened his eyes than his friends surrounded him, frantic.

"You fainted," Yuffie shrieked.

"Forget fainting, dude, you started going transparent!"

"Everyone shut up," Tifa shouted. "Let him breath!"

She sounded near tears, and so everyone shut up and let her help Cloud to sit up and drink a glass of water. She sniffed and dabbed discretely at her eyes.

"I'm sorry. You really scared us…"

"It's okay. I'm sorry I worried you."

"You don't look very surprised," Cid said, suspicious. "Hello? Fainting, lighting up like a ghost? Is any of this getting through your thick skull?"

"Well… I was… warned. I didn't want to believe it, but I guess he wasn't just saying that to scare me."

"Wow wow wow," Yuffie laughed. "Warned of what? And who is 'he'?"

Cloud calmly set his empty glass down on the bedside table.

"Sephiroth."

When the hysteria and the shrill demands for explanations calmed down, he told them about his dreams. Not everything, because some parts of them felt intimate somehow, too private for prying ears. But he told them about Sephiroth searching for him, and about the faceless apprentice he kept seeing.

"When Tifa told us about me being an avatar," he said, "I started thinking maybe the dreams were some kind of clues. That the god was sending them to me to show me something. I didn't say anything then because I had yet to understand the point of them. But now, after this last one… I don't know, I'm even more confused. I thought I was seeing moon priests. That would have made sense. Why would the Nameless One send me dreams about one of Sephiroth's priests?"

"Intelligence about the enemy?" Vincent hazarded.

"Maybe… I don't think any of what I've got so far would help us fight him, though."

He cautiously got to his feet. The weakness had faded, but he had no doubt it would come back and only get worse. He didn't have much time left. He hadn't been meant to be permanent, after all.

"I want to go to the sun temple in Midgar," he announced.

The others exchanged worried glances.

"You sure? This'll be our toughest fight yet," Barret said, grave. "And you're not in good shape, either."

"I won't be getting better. We need to go while I can still fight."

Under his veneer of calm, he was still struggling to accept his own mortality. The sadness or outright grief in their eyes did nothing to help him.

"Besides, I know now that that temple is the place I keep seeing in my dreams," he added, more to change the subject than anything. "Going there might get me more information. It's my best shot. I need to understand what's happening."

"Okay," Barret sighed, scratching the back of his head. "I guess that's decided then."

Aerith's grove hadn't been far from Midgar. Reaching the temple took them less than a day. As they had expected, the resistance of the fanatic priests was particularly heavy on their own holy ground. Before he realized it, Cloud found himself knocking his enemies out rather than killing them. He couldn't help but search for the kind Priest Zack's face among them, even though he logically knew that he must have died hundreds of years before he was even created, when Gaia had yet to lay down to sleep. For some reason, this filled him with sadness. The corridors were achingly familiar. The scent of incense lingered in the air, age-old and comforting. The entirety of this place resonated with him, to the point where he kept expecting to see ghosts. What was wrong with him?

The third and last avatar—Aerith's killer—was waiting for them in the vast praying room. A man in priest garb was kneeling next to him; the tip of Kadaj's sword kissed his throat.

"You know, Reeve Tuesti," the avatar was conversationally telling him as they entered, "I don't really like traitors. I don't think Brother Sephiroth does either. And running around helping your god's enemies? I believe that qualifies as treason."

He tilted his weapon. A bead of blood bloomed on the throat of the man, who swallowed in fear. Cait Sith collapsed in a heap of false fur and limp limbs. Uh. So the magical cat's master was a sane sun priest. Possibly the last one.

As Kadaj was lifting his sword, Cloud rushed forward in a flash of movement too quick for the eye to follow. He intercepted the killing blow and locked blades with the avatar. Tuesti scrambled away. Kadaj glared at the interloper.

"And here comes the murderer of my brothers."

"As if you have any right to speak of murder."

They disengaged and circled each other like angry wolves. Cloud was aware of his friends defending the exits to the room against the remaining priests.

"I don't understand what he sees in you," Kadaj seethed. "You are nothing. You may have tricked Loz and Yazoo to their deaths, but your ruses won't work against me. I am stronger than you!"

He launched the first assault. Kadaj indeed turned out to be a more formidable opponent than either of his brothers, though perhaps it was simply the rage that seemed to be the very core of his being that served to strengthen his attacks and quicken his counterstrikes. Cloud still triumphed of him. He fell with a furious scream of anguish.

"You did it!" Tifa grinned in relief, running to him from where she had only been able to wring her hands in white-knuckled worry. She stopped when he swayed on his feet. "Cloud?"

He felt dizzy. He went to lift a hand to his head, but froze and stared. His fingers were see-through. His knees buckled under him. He lost consciousness to the ring of his sword meeting the pavement.

The grove was rustling and thriving around him. Its power was stronger than ever now that the Mother Goddess herself was here, channelling her essence to the mortal world through Aerith. The priestess' eyes were a blinding shade of green, filled with unfathomable wisdom and the weight of millennia. When Gaia spoke, her words echoed within the part of him that touched the realm of the gods. Her presence was warm and motherly; he found he liked it, though not nearly as much as that of his god.

"Are you ready?" she asked kindly.

The novice swallowed. His heart couldn't seem to decide between pounding in his chest and soaring in delight. He had never been more ready for anything in his life.

"Yes."

The goddess smiled. It should have taken his breath away, but his head was already full of thoughts of another.

"I will give you all the remains of Jenova's power I have been able to gather. This will be my last deed; as soon as this is done, I will go to sleep. The longest I remain, the more danger I put this world in. You will have to go to Sephiroth to learn everything you will need. I regret not being able to warm him of this. But I cannot spare more time. I must go."

"I understand," he said eagerly. "I'll explain to him."

She laid a hand on his cheek. She looked fond as she gazed at him.

"You will be perfect."

He smiled back. Zack was watching from one end of the flower field, struck silent by both awe and loss. His pupil waved at him. He returned the gesture with a melancholic tilt of the lips.

The goddess closed her eyes. All sounds ceased in the clearing. Nature held her breath.

Power suddenly rushed around the apprentice, a barrage of pure light and energy the likes of which he had only ever experienced once before. It submerged him, wrapped around him, grasped at him. As it reached a crescendo, he felt it begin to seep in his skin, burning hot. It spread in his flesh, hummed in his bones, until he thought he might burst with it. And still it came; until his body unravelled and dropped away, discarded like an empty butterfly's cocoon. He came out new, raw, beautiful.

A shout of alarm reached his untried senses. Disorientated, it took him a moment to focus once more on the physical plane, to search for the holy grove. By then, Aerith lay unconscious, Gaia having already left her body to begin her slumber.

By then, Zack lay dead.

Standing over the prone body of his teacher was the most extraordinary, the most striking, the most lethal sight he had ever contemplated. For the first time, he beheld the full extent of his god's essence.

For the first time, he also bore the full weight of his fury. Silver hair spreading across the blue sky, green eyes—so different from Aerith's—burning with the heat of the sun, Sephiroth was seething, his anger rolling off him in overwhelming waves.

"And what are you called, newborn?" he asked.

Poison coated this tongue, but still he couldn't help but answer the voice he had always dreamed of hearing speak to him.

"Cloud," he whispered.

"Cloud?" he repeated in cruel amusement. "Even your name is an insult against me? I think not. For all that you stole from me, I will steal this. And I will take everything else back."

Everything around the cat-like iris melted in foggy darkness, but they remained. And they were trained on him. Power wrapped around him like strong arms entrapping him in their grasp.

"I found you."

Someone was shaking him. He awoke with a start, dread in his throat. Above him, Tifa looked endlessly relieved.

"Are you alright…?"

At the end of her question, her mouth moved around an inaudible word. He saw her blink, dumbfounded.

"What? I said…"

Once more, no sound left her lips. She tried to mouth his name over and over again, uncomprehending.

But Cloud knew. After all, he was no longer an empty, anonymous husk. His memories had returned, restoring him to what he truly was: a dying god. The rules of the divine realm once again applied to him.

Power was flooding the room, gathering around Kadaj's fallen body. It was so intense that even non-sensitive individuals like Tifa, Barret, Cid and Yuffie reacted to it, drawing their weapons and preparing for a fight.

Now, the only one who could use his name was the one who had stolen it.

"Cloud."

Even squeezed in a mortal body, a meagre shadow of his true appearance, Sephiroth was magnificent. An arrogant smirk lifted the corners of pale lips. His glorious hair was cut to his knees instead of reaching for the heavens, but retained the silver luminescence of his aura. His legendary blade, Masamune, lay unsheathed in his left hand. Sunlight cascaded from the glass roof over him. His eyes remained on Cloud, oblivious to everything else in the room.

"How bold of you, to come and defy me in the heart of my earthly power. But then again, that's always been you. Bold. Even as you cheat and steal from me."

"Sephiroth," he found the strength to say, bone-weary and so very tired.

He kneeled, but couldn't muster the will to get up. His body wavered, right shoulder and arm disappearing before returning. This of course didn't escape the god's notice.

"How pitiful. Should I grant you a merciful kill, Cloud?"

He made to step forward, but Cloud's friends were immediately there.

"Don't you touch him!" Tifa screamed, bone-white from the fear but standing strong despite it.

They attacked him, but in a few blindingly fast moves he swept them aside like so much dust. They landed heavily and struggled to lift themselves from the floor. Sephiroth had already dismissed them in utter disdain. Mortals were no threat to him. Even in this form, he was much stronger than an avatar. Of course, gods were usually forbidden from walking the earth; Sephiroth could only manifest physically because they were standing on his temple grounds. Cloud wished he had remembered this sooner.

As the god was turning back to him, his cat-like eyes fell on Reeve Tuesti. The priest was frozen in a corner of the room in both awe and terror. Quicker than one could blink, Sephiroth appeared next to him. He jerked, but didn't dare move. Sephiroth coldly examined him.

"A traitor in my ranks?"

He set a long-fingered, black-gloved hand on Tuesti's head. The priest's eyes rolled in their sockets, although he remained standing. When his god released him, he stumbled back, shaking like a leaf in the wind.

"Hmm," Sephiroth said. "Your heart is full of words like 'right' and 'wrong'. You believed in me, but cannot caution my new commandments. Your faith is fading, Reeve Tuesti."

Recognizing the minute change in his grip on Masamune's hilt, Cloud drove his sword in the ground and used it to haul himself to his feet.

"It's me you're here for, Sephiroth," he panted.

Sephiroth turned to him and smirked cruelly at finding him standing.

"Are you trying to regain a shred of honour by dying in battle, Cloud? You should know by now that thieves will never be warriors."

He attacked nearly too fast for Cloud to parry. He grit his teeth and held on as Sephiroth drove him back with such strength his braced feet traced grooves in the stone floor.

"I never stole from you," he ground out.

The words tasted like dust in his mouth, so often repeated during hundreds of years of unending strife that they had just about lost all meaning.

"Still clinging to this old lie," Sephiroth whispered with poisonous sweetness. "You stole from me every month during centuries, Cloud. But now I'm done with it—"

"I only took back the power I was given, the power you keep trying to rip away from me!"

His outburst had Sephiroth disengaging from their deadlock and striking at him furiously, once, twice… Cloud parried as he could, dread gripping his chest. Never before had a fight between them been so unbalanced. His friends, bless them, saw his difficulty and rushed to his help. He loved them for this, for trying to jump in the middle of a clash between gods, but his heart bled for them too. Luckily, Sephiroth was too focused on him to do more than send them flying back. He pointed Masamune at Cloud, rage seething in his eyes.

"This power should never have been yours to begin with," he thundered. "I should have known it wouldn't be enough for Gaia to wipe my mother from this world. Of course she couldn't risk that the son of her enemy might one day defy her too. She had to gather every last piece of Jenova's essence and try to replace me with one of her puppets, to erase me and give my kingdom away to an upstart human."

Cloud gaped. Never before had Sephiroth bared his heart in such a way, never before had he exposed to the light the roots of the toxic hate he had been nurturing for half an eternity. His shock was such that he only dived away from the next strike by a hairbreadth. Masamune left a fifteen-foot-long slash on the praying room floor.

"That's not it at all!" he tried to say, aghast.

Sephiroth didn't listen, instead continuing both his merciless attacks and his rant.

"I remember you, you know. Oh, it took me a while, maybe a few decades, but I remembered why you were so familiar. You were one of my own, weren't you? And on the very first day you came to my temple, you reached for me. Quite commendable for a mere human child to stumble so far into the realm of the gods, I suppose. It gave you a taste for more, didn't it? When Gaia came to you, you probably thanked her on your knees for giving you what you had dreamed of stealing from me. How long did it take you to choose to betray me? One heartbeat, maybe two?"

His words were like blades, each one piercing his flesh with more eerie accuracy than Masamune's blows which he barely managed to keep dodging. They tore at his soul and ripped his heart to shreds.

"I never stopped serving you, Sephiroth!"

The god very calmly struck one of his twin swords from his hand.

"Lies, again with the lies. Poor puppet of a sleeping goddess, nothing will save you now. If you truly served me, you would have accepted your demise long ago."

"I can't," he breathed in a heartbroken whisper. "Don't you see? This is exactly what I was tasked with preventing!"

He swung his free hand around. In an uncontrolled burst of his fading power, his arm traced a shimmering illusion in the air: dry lands, cracked soils, dying springs, the empty corpses of vegetations and animals alike, hollow-cheeked strangers with nothing but bleak despair in their sunken eyes.

Sephiroth stopped. Cloud first thought he was wary of his sudden energy flare, but even as dizziness seized him and he fell to his knees, the god didn't move. He was staring at the illusion. Behind his luminous green eyes, a war was raging. Old rage battled bewilderment as he watched what his unchecked reign had reduced the world to. Frantic hope burst in Cloud's chest.

"You were never meant to govern over the sky alone," he gasped. "Your power is too great, Sephiroth. Gaia knew that once she was gone, someone had to be left behind to balance you. She chose me, not to usurp you, but to assist you!"

Sephiroth's eyelids were fluttering, doubt beginning to seep into him. Had he even glanced down at the physical world these past few months? Or had all the essence he had had left to spare while the avatars lived been focused entirely on his search for his enemy? How far had his obsession turned him away from his duty?

Still, in the flick of a wrist, the tip of Masamune came to brush against Cloud's throat. The blade was steady. All sensations left Cloud's sword arm as it became see-through; it didn't come back. Yet he forced the words out, appealing with all his heart to what remained of the kind hands that had plucked him from the folds of his soul in amused surprise so long ago.

"You are destroying everything you swore to protect. Please… don't do this, Sephiroth. I don't care if you hate me, but this is all you have left living for. You give this land gentle springs, cheery summers, wise autumns and peaceful winters. I know you love it in your own way. If you kill me, you sentence it to death."

Sephiroth's face could have been set in stone as he gazed down at him. There was no longer any anger in it, but no mercy either. He had drawn back, shrouding himself in the unfathomable aloofness of a deity.

"I will not condone the survival of a traitor to me."

"I am not a traitor!" he yelled desperately, surging forward. Masamune cut through his skin. Ichor, the precious golden blood of the gods, splashed down on the flagstones. Sephiroth remained unimpressed.

As he was beginning to believe that all was lost, a thought came to Cloud like a bolt of lightning. His eyes flew to Reeve, squatted next to his prone and barely conscious friends. His corporeal hand closed around Masamune's naked blade. More ichor coated it.

"Read in me."

Sephiroth blinked, taken aback.

"What are you talking about?"

"This is your temple," Cloud proclaimed in a voice that rang with the last echoes of his divine essence, "and I'm one of yours. Read in my heart if you won't believe me. You have a right to it! It has never stopped belonging to you."

For a breathless, eternal moment, no one moved. Cloud could hear the blood rushing in his ears. He didn't even know if what he was saying was possible. There were so many things about being a god he had never learnt, so many things he had had to ad lib through since his ill-fated deification.

But Sephiroth's palm met his forehead.

It was like an explosion in his soul, like drowning in heat, like once again being that insignificant little boy falling where no human had been meant to go and staring into infinity. He was held in the cusp of gigantic hands and scrutinized in blinding light. Wrapped in this raw essence, he shivered; not out of fear, but because after all those centuries it was as familiar to him as his own, as much home as anything he had ever felt.

The physical world returned, cold and drab. His exhausted soul failed to bear the jarring change. He collapsed.

When he next opened his eyes—seconds later, or perhaps millennia—Sephiroth was bent over him. Taking stock of his body informed him that it was already half-gone, the rest paling as he watched. But he was also cradled in Sephiroth's arms as the god kneeled on the ground, and this was… this was kind of okay.

Someone was shouting, he eventually realized. Tifa, who had come closer and was yelling at Sephiroth through her tears.

"… Do something!" he faintly heard. "Can't you see he's dying?"

To maybe everyone's surprise, he deigned to grace her with a cold look. His eyes then returned to Cloud's tired ones.

"Unlike what you seem to believe, Nibelheim child, it's easier said than done. Gods don't typically exchange life energy. The cyclic transfers between Cloud and me were always done by brute force. We tore from each other, we didn't give."

His tone was clipped, but neutral. This wasn't the god the Nameless One had battled so long he had nearly forgotten what he was fighting for; this was the god a boy from the cold mountain had fallen in love with when he had yet to know what the words meant. A grateful smile came to nest on Cloud's lips as his eyes closed of their own accord.

He felt a contemplative hum vibrate in the chest he rested against. Tifa was still talking, but Sephiroth seemed to have gone back to ignoring her.

"Maybe this would work…" he said, presumably to himself.

Cloud barely heard him. He knew he should have struggled to stay conscious, but his limbs were so heavy, he had laboured for so long…

Abruptly, warmth filled his body. Awareness returned to him. His eyes fluttered open. Sephiroth was kissing him. He squeaked against his lips, felt an explosive blush invade his cheeks. Sephiroth retreated and examined him with a measure of curiosity. He was mostly back to corporeality, although his skin remained faded in spots.

"… What?" Cloud could only croak.

"So this is an effective alternative. Who knew?" Sephiroth said.

Their audience had mostly been struck dumb. Cloud might have found Cid's wide-open gape funny if he hadn't felt the same way. To add to his bewilderment, the look Sephiroth next turned on him had gone half-lidded with obvious heat.

"I'd say this is an interesting option. Wouldn't you, Cloud?"

He tried to answer, but ended up silenced as Sephiroth once more stole his mouth. Instinct kicking in, Cloud eagerly pressed back. His returned arms looped around his neck to deepen the kiss. When they separated for air, most of his dizziness was gone. He sat up, though he didn't go very far as Sephiroth held on to him.

"I… I feel better," he told him so he'd know it was okay to let him go.

"Well, good. But given how much power you're still missing, I rather think kisses won't suffice."

He said it with a completely straight face, though the glint in his eyes belied his matter-of-fact tone. Cloud goggled at him.

"Let's return to the divine realm and work on this."

That got him to react.

"Wa—wait a minute, Sephiroth," he stalled, exchanging a baffled look with his friends.

In a rush of warm air and feathers, Sephiroth gained wings: one black, one white. His aura thickened, haloing his silhouette in silver. Cloud forgot what he was trying to say. He was busy staring and trying to refrain an inappropriate burst of lust.

"You'll take care of your goodbyes later, Cloud. We've got a world to save, remember?"

The slow smirk that came to his face was familiar enough that Cloud was at least able to summon anger as the wings closed around them.

"Damn it, Sephiroth!" he yelled, exasperated.

They disappeared in a flash of sunlight.

If Cloud wished it so, he could see the sky of the mortal world.

Night was ending, stars winking out one after the other on its dark blue velvet. However the moon remained, nowhere near ready to setting. It waited, perfectly round, its silver rays soothing the still healing land and breathing new strength into it.

Soon, in a cortege of glorious colours, the sun rose.

"Are you satisfied?"

Sephiroth's voice was rough from lingering sleep. Cloud opened his eyes and smiled at finding him lazily sprawled in bed. He himself was bursting with energy. It had been such a long time since his last full moon. He felt like he had been living in a perpetual haze since then, which wasn't far from the truth.

"Very much so."

Sephiroth turned on his back, the sheets tangling around his naked legs.

"Good. Then you can come back here and start giving me some of this back."

Although Cloud would have gladly stretched the peak of his cycle a little, he knew better than to inflict more disturbances to the cosmic order. Besides, he had heard the hint of wariness Sephiroth had let slip. That Cloud approached the bed readily seemed to appease what was left of his lover's doubts. He slid into the waiting arms. As he was leaning down, he stopped.

"What now?" Sephiroth asked, raising an eyebrow.

"How do you do the transfer?" Cloud wondered, confused.

Sephiroth rolled his eyes in mock despair.

"Cloud…"

"Don't 'Cloud' me," he retorted, because once again being able to pronounce his own name was wonderful. "It's your fault if I'm a poor excuse of a god, you know. You were supposed to teach me, not try to kill me."

Sephiroth sighed and kissed him. Cloud thought of giving him some of his power. Just like that, energy flowed from him into the warm body pressed against his own.

"Oh," he said when they drew back.

Sephiroth was smirking. He had mixed feelings about this smirk. He couldn't tell if he loved or hated it.

"Being a god isn't that difficult, Cloud."

"I'm sure it isn't. At least when you aren't doing your very best to make it difficult."

"Better get used to it. You earned yourself an eternity of dealing with me being difficult."

Cloud's smile burned slow and radiant.

"I know."