Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ God Says Nothing ❯ One-Shot

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

God Says Nothing

FF7 Dark Erotica

Sephiroth X Zack Only Book

By The Queen of Blueberry Toast [TheKWOBT@gundamwing.net]

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

This fic is dedicated to my darling Kim. Who puts up with me and puts up
with me and ought to be canonized for putting up with me.

~*~*~*~*~*~

I don't own these characters. I just make them do naughty things.

This fic is rated X. Or NC-17. Whatever you like.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It had all been before his last madness, though it was a madness in itself;
the kind perverse and cloying as dreams of sex with oneself; a breathing,
wet and tender specter in his brain; a thing untouched by six thousand
years of civilization and the sanctity thereof- though he could not make
himself believe mere society would outlast it, at least, not the civilization
which had given rise to such aphros as himself.

Sephiroth, his presence silver and florid now, did nothing but remember.
Could it be six years, six thousand years? Chained to the heart of the dying
world, he could not imagine such interminable reaches ever would banish
it from him, but such was the joy of egoless ectoplasm as he had become.
There would be time enough to manifest himself and the other beloved he
dared call his mother upon the surface. There would be time enough to
live as momentary flesh among the cursed and the lovely human beings he
could no longer join.

For now, his nothingness reclined amid the dissipated, moaning light.
And he gave the thing the guise of formlessness he had himself known
such megrims [1] for. In many hours then, or days where he could not tell,
he and the small doll twined and melted here and there together as the
winking presence of the obsession, and the lunar glow of the obsessed.

There in the space where he should have been, he had the matterless
silhouette of the boy he had craved. Over and over.

~*~*~*~

"Why do you bother coming back if you despise me so?" The last of the
test tubes Hojo swirled between his fingers, watching the blood within
with a sort of sick fondness.

Sephiroth did nearly no such thing himself, but rather was drawing the last
of the straps for his armor together. "So you will not forget that I hate
you."

"What curious notions my one and only son has."

"Be quiet, old man. I am nothing of yours." Still without his shoes, he
drew aside the curtains to the chamber of the infirmary they always met in,
thinking the ritual of walking away seemed to grow longer every time he
invoked it.

"You are Shin-ra's and Shin-ra is mine."

The same argument, same game of moral suspension between them, and
he had never grown out of it, not since the first time, when he was eight.
The storm outside cracked or one of the generators malfunctioned. It was
hard to tell in the perpetual dimness outside. No alarms sounded, so he
took it for thunder, and he looked upon the scientist with nothing but
dispassion.

For he would not play today. He had made up his mind.

The boots slid on so easily he knew then they were worn and he would
have to get another pair.

"Well, well, not up to answering?"

With a sigh he would not show, Sephiroth stalked into the main aisle of
the infirmary. There he was greeted by a laugh, an unfamiliar one.
Someone in one of the compartments had overheard. There were whispers
asking for quiet and still, rivulets of giggles crossed the sterile space. So
did the laughter.

Hojo had been, until that day, the only one allowed to mock him.

One of the more innocuous orderlies stood over a cot, hands on his hips,
cotton balls leaking peroxide in one fist. He caught none of the general's
interest outside of being a prop. It was the boy splayed over his table, and
he called him a boy in his mind for men did not dare laugh that way, and
because he was young, and still without such decay of spirit as true men,
true SOLDIERS knew. The sense of pure youth did drip from his aura,
flow like honey on his image as it gloamed and winked in the fluorescent
lights of the ward.

Yet, the city sense of beauty put aside, he had to him a very earthly
quality- was the most real being Sephiroth had ever beheld. So corporeal,
that looking upon him was like touching him, joining his pulse. His skin
had once, perhaps quite long ago been wrapped in sunlight- so unlike the
people of Midgaard that. The heavens had never left his eyes which were
blue and sparkled with the parison [2] of a million sunny days. So
unsullied seemed the smile splaying on his lips, the blush about his
cheeks... he had a ruddy sort of face, or seemed to, when the general
could find it beneath his shock of hair unkempt, shaggy raven hair that fell
to his waist.

He chuckled again when the peroxide fell on the motion burns that
crisscrossed his forearms as if the liquid was rather feathers.

In that moment somewhere, Sephiroth imagined he could see him with
feathers as the youth lay there in nothing but his blue jeans, crying out for
joy, over and over and over. His head slid over the edge of the table
because of his shaking. Upside down, their eyes met.

And he waved.

It was like seeing the night stop as it crossed the horizon, being the only
person to witness such impossibility. Going home and knowing no one
else would ever know. Because no one did.

The orderly sighed, flushed himself now. "If you're going to act like that,
you might as well go back to your bunk and put it on yourself."

"Fine, I think I will!" And it was one of those twangy, delinquent voices.
But it didn't matter. He drew himself up from the cot, shaking his hair
out. The liquid that had touched his wounds wound away down his
muscles and onto his shirt as he took it up with the bottle to cotton had
been soaked with. "Thanks anyway."

So the orderly shook his head, looked like his temples ached but said
nothing. The boy said nothing. Sephiroth said nothing and gravity failed
him. They two did not even brush against each other as the smear of
human sunshine went whistling away into the whiteness of Shin-ra space.
Nothing irresistible then to the orbital plane of the most feared and
respected man in the whole creaking building.

"Who was that?" Sephiroth said, not really asked.

"Zack Something-or-other. SOLDIER first class."

He didn't believe it, nor could he quiet the tremble in his chest. It made
him smirk because he couldn't stand it... "I can't see the mako in his
eyes."

"Then I don't think you were looking close enough... ah, sir."

"Or maybe he's lucky..."

~*~*~*~

"He's a funny boy. All the other members of SOLDIER step all over each
other for mail, but that one waits until last and reads his letters in his
room." Heidegger said. "But if you want him for your entourage, it's not
like I'll be sad to see him go. You DO still want him?"

The words, "You can't know, you philistine bastard, how much" settled in
his mind, but not his tongue. No, he only nodded, and chilled the officer
before him with a smile.

Heidegger choked on his own tongue and handed the file over without
much other fuss. His collar seemed to have become too night for him.
"Just ask him... I guess. Or don't."

"I think I will."

They had no pleasantries between them though, and the general faded out
of the office and into the interminable aisles which slid around the waist of
the Shin-ra building. No one was there to cross him, not at first.

Though rustles then, sounds tantamount to voices; the bodies of voices
with mere hallucinations of meaning. He paused and his eyes stole down
one shadowed service entrance. There were only two of them today, two
officers- the one had the other pressed up a girder in the wall, and he was
leaking cum onto his dropped fatigues as if someone had already had him
before, though no other sign of the apparent first lover remained.
Sephiroth glowered and clanked his sword on the floor so they would
know they had been seen.

He thought he heard one strike the other before their throes melted into the
chatter of the cafeteria and his mind elsewhere settled. There was still the
matter at hand. There was still him...

As it was, he nearly brushed against him when he strode into the room.
Zack yelped and spun from his place behind the door, only to fall back
against the wall once more. And to laugh. His shirt was halfway open
and he was still wearing a buster sword across his back this time- reaching
back to rub the handle now and then.

Sephiroth regarded him and he closed his lips; just stared out at him,
tempting him to speak first, but only for one moment, for the other officer
bent and gathered up his shield then in the silence, or what seemed to be a
shield wrapped in a shroud of slate moire,.

Whoever the boy had been speaking to stepped back closer and fell into
those blue eyes where the general did not.

"So you just left him there? You fuckin' serious?"

"Dead serious."

"Wicked, man. Anyone else woulda told me that I wouldn't believe 'em."

"Oh, and what'd I do to make you think I'm telling the truth?"

The answer hung suspended in some other realm of though. Some
shouting started at a table across the room and there were some splattering
noises. Otherwise a palmy sort of atmosphere it was, and everyone had
cards out.

"I think I'm gonna go play some poker," Zack said, raking his fingers
through his hair as if he would rather have been doing *that* all afternoon
and nothing more.

"Where?" Sephiroth asked. "I think you'll be leaving soon, general."

A grumble and a wave of one of his hands and the streaks of blue
bandages there. "Sorry, not a general. Musta got me mixed up with
somebody else."

"Don't be so quick to say such things," he held the paper to his brow so
the signature line dangled before his eyes, and Zack's bangs dangled over
his own hands, even into his gloves.

"K'ch, don't talk to me that way," and only then did he look at the paper,
came up smirking and shaking his head. "But otherwise, y'know, I kinda
like how you operate. What's this promotion for, anyway?"

"Me." It seemed then they had an understanding, so he told him
everything, and in less words than the simplest holy book would have
needed. "You will leave with me tomorrow and come with me where I
have been called then, and upon any other time. You will be my very best
friend."

~*~*~*~

The sky hovered low, just now filled to her brims with clouds and
everything unclear that afternoon, leaving the air cool and humid. Zack
struck once more at the wyvern, his blade still too slow to catch along its
cerulean scales. He did not intend to hurt it, for the creature already had
snarled itself in a bower of half-dead thornbushes; he could have cut it free
or cut it down, but rather startled it, for it sang like a frightened girl when
the buster sword came very close. It made him laugh. So he laughed.
And the rain refused to start.

Sephiroth swirled his sherry and watched this from a distance while the
papers Krebain had offered him fluttered impatiently, trying to draw the
attention of his gaze.

Zack danced even though his shoes were lying like a two dead crows
outside of their tent.

And had not gotten a new pair of boots, Sephiroth. Krebain cleared his
throat. "As you can see, this is the spread of confirmed attacks by the
Wutai mercenaries. There are two more suspected incidents, but as they
both took place on the Northern Continent, we didn't find it necessary to
extend the map to cover them..."

"Everything is necessary," he said with a withering glance from the edge
of his glass. "I have sent our troops out into the wilds with only part of the
story in their heads, even if what else there is would only serve to stir their
tempers."

A choked protest started on the lieutenant's lips, but died with a wave of
one gloved hand. For a moment they gazed at one another, and Krebain's
milky grey eyes vanished now and then as his cheeks twitched, for he
dared not raise his hand to brush away the cold prickles that had fallen
there.

"No, I don't care what happens to them either. I care that you are my
assistant and you do not assist me."

"But... Sir? What about Silverwood...?"

Their glances both strayed to the shadow of the other general as he
gathered the throat of the dragon in his hands and stroked away a few
dew-drop scales. Some fell into the bushes and he plucked them up again
as if they were but blueberries, crossing his legs as he stooped.

The creature cried at him to stop and Sephiroth set his goblet down, the
liquid stirring with something other than the shock of leaving him. There
was no cover at the table to hide it when his fingers crept once again to the
warmth between his legs, and stroked it solemnly. For the he sight of
Zack bounding back to, his new toys gathered up between his palms: that
was more than enough to worry his sex.

Zack, who looked between they two and finally seated himself on
Krebain's side of the table, asking as he began to sort through his scales,
"What about me?" Getting no answer even after ten chipped bits of blue
failed to suit him and were sent skittering across the blank spaces of the
map around the southern swamps, he began to hum a candent little tune.

"What do you think?" Sephiroth asked, the most ghostly of moans
catching on the end of his words, as he shifted his hand inside his armor
and squeezed tears from his tip.

"I think I want to go along on patrol next time."

"I'll go with you."

"But you won't let me stop for... you know..." His hand gleamed with
but half the fragments of the bound creature as he held them up. Krebain
rolled his eyes and shortly shrieked himself, drowning out the call the
wyvern gave itself. It started to pour and they all dashed for the tent. Ink
ran off the maps the lieutenant had not managed to gather up in time and
splattered in the grass. Once inside, Sephiroth had the cot all to himself
and nothing of Zack but a view his wild, damp hair after the other
SOLDIER had been lulled to sleep by the sound of the downpour, and so
hod no presence of mind to ask if he would no longer stare.

~*~*~*~

The mercenaries were all dead by the time the moon had the next evening
come forth from her cerements of clouds. They came home to Midgaard
where. No one knew in the end who had been responsible for the two
attacks on the research station. No one had thought to ask.

"You make me wonder if there is anything in the world that still delights
you." Sephiroth said to him, but Zack didn't seem to hear at first, for he
was got up instead in a rack of sunglasses, thumbing through them and
murmuring a to himself about the executive that troubled the upper Shin-
ra offices.

"These delight me," came his answer but moments after the other general
had started off into the smoke of the crowd. All he held of course was a
perfectly ordinary pair of glasses which he pulled on and pushed up his
nose. They did not hide his eyes well, for the nearly imperceptible glow
of them shone through the tint.

"They delight me too, I like the look of them upon you."

"I'm broke."

With a shake of his head, Sephiroth poured some gil onto the counter and
left without taking his change. It had started to rain again, but here the
water fell rather like black oil across the ground, and made the air smell of
fresh ashes. They had the ground beneath the awnings as, their own while
children dashed for the open street and the darkness there rather than tread
before them, or anything so close, for they both still carried their blades,
and Zack his bundled shield as well.

"Thanks!" And he left them on, even while the streetlights were still
halfway blotted out by the dark deluge.

"As you are so fond of saying, 'what are friends for?'"

"Exactly." Out of the blue and the wave of a passing car then, "You know,
I was just thinking the same thing about you, you gloomy guss."

They stopped, dead in their tracts, but did not face each other and for a
moment then, he wondered why, why, why, and there was the sound of
coins behind him, rather than any sound of hope and its feathers falling
down to earth.

"One flower for one gil?"

"I'll take two, sweetheart."

Sephiroth turned to see the other general wavering in and out between
those who fled around, snatches of him, and a young girl who had the
body of a mild and merciful virgin, but not the eyes- no, her breasts, her
orbits, her smile, all smashed together would have been an image of
something else entirely than the softness of her face invited. She did not
even see him, only Zack had the money in his hand before he left her with
a wave, and two blooms folded in his fingers. The glasses slid down into
his nose as he rose and slid one petaled stalk behind Sephiroth's ear.

"I... thought you said you were broke." Muttered as the petals first began
to tickle him in his steps.

"She knows me."

~*~*~*~

No one but Hojo was left in the lab at that hour, but the air still stank of
rusted steel, and specks of broken glass glinted here and there among the
cracks in the concrete. The light above him flickered and the wire on the
cages shuddered in the white light, seeming to move though nothing alive
remained inside to move it in truth. Sephiroth paused by it and peered in,
finding only the scummy traces of a severed tentacle and a few silver orbs
doused in blood.

"You're late. Again. Come, come. Let's start already. I'm sure you have
someone important to do."

The sexual frankness of the line was not what caused him to look up from
clanking the fallen bits of metal with his sword, but rather the way the
mirror Hojo held sobbed when he picked it up to look over his shoulder
with it.

/You can't even do that without your toys, can you?/ "I came to tell you
I'm not coming."

"Why am I not surprised? God told me you would try to seduce someone,"
the quaking bit of metal in his hands rippled as he moved it down and
looked upon the glassing image there as he might have a young child.
"Sephiroth has a boyfriend."

"That's not exactly apocryphal [3] knowledge. Enjoy talking to yourself."
This said, he tapped the Masamune against one of the silver orbs and it
darted across the room coming to rest at the doctor's feet.

"Oh, but I think it is! Dubious indeed... Is that a flower in your hair?"

The general reached up then and the butter cream of the blossom came to
stand between his eyes and the lifeless metal of the floor, shading in and
out of focus with it as he saw one and then the other- the industrial mire,
and what had grown forth from it. It seemed the bloom might turn and
bite him, or run off to eat of someone's reflection, like the mirror did then
with teeth as long as his fingers. "Zack gave it to me."

Slowly Hojo turned and pulled his glasses up as he did so, a long, slim
grin crossing his face that the mirror had destroyed by bearing its fangs.
"You should kill it, it's in pain."

But Sephiroth had already left, stood now in the stairwell, pulling off his
gloves. The stem did not seem bruised to his palms, the petals, thirsting as
they had been since resting in his hairs, were soft and supple as skin
begging to be fondled. Not even the rain had dashed it.

So he began to wonder if the flower was real.

~*~*~*~

The private sprawled across the room under the force of Heidegger's
blow. Sephiroth sighed and turned, squeezing the bridge of his nose and
sighing; for he could not seem to erase the sense he knew the wretch.
Zack yawned and straightened his shoulder a bit as if bored by the scene,
though the shouting that was in fact deafening in the empty cafeteria was
were the echoes engendered there by space alone.

("How dare you talk back to general Sephiroth! Don't you know he's
better than you! Do you think mako is the only difference between you
too!? He is ALL OF US, all of Shin-ra. You're just some speck on the
window when it the sun is out.", "But the sun's never out...")

"I think it's a year today you got me, but I'm not sure."

The Silver-haired geneal nodded but had nothing to say to this. Rather, he
paced about the tables, counting together the times since then he had
touched Zack, and the times Zack had looked him in they eyes without
laughing... 23... 24... It appeared random, the way he walked about,
waiting for the caconophy to leave his table, but as he strode about, his
eyes, as always, over general stole, for he had not changed, not even
seemed to have breathed much in all the time they both knew had passed.

"I should gettcha something. I haven't since that flower from Aeris, have
I?"

As the private was dragged away in the arms of two men who held him
just a little too close to be innocent about it, "DUDE! You bought a flower
from Aeris! Where'd she let you put it?"

Zack laughed and brushed whatever images the line had conjured in his
mind away with a dismissive wave, "Up her ass, but then again, I'm a
good customer." As if nothing had been spoken then, he rose to his feet
and followed Sephiroth over to the soup, idling with his hands behind his
back. "At least I should get you another one, since we didn't stop to play
the first time." Though now, all flowers were forgotten by his companion,
for his breath had started to play over Sephiroth's neck then, tickling for a
reply.

/Why hasn't your voice become grim like all things put to fade in the
blessed arms of Shin-ra's army? Why?/

"I don't like girls like that."

Zack drew away, his shoulders shifting abashedly almost though no such
emotion met his face. "Oh right! I forgot." He stooped then, playing
hummingbird now to Sephiroth's hand, which he drank the traces of broth
from. Heidegger looked on and coughed. The blue eyes were closed, his
lips wet, smiling in the rapture of the moment and feeling the pulse of his
partner begging another act as he drew the wet finger then into his mouth
and rolled his tongue around the anxious flesh, which he kissed as he
pulled away. "Happy kinda birthday."

/Oh.../ (Now that he could look on him so, he found he could see one
flaw, if he tired hard enough. The lips looked bruised, hard a touch of
violet too them, yet the thought that in secret, someday, he could write
such marks upon the other general, that was penance enough for so sweet
an imperfection.) "Is this all after some chance to find me with you and
you're one care of not caring?" he breathed, the words hot on his own
mouth.

They only made Zack more of whatever he dared to be as a shadow, and
he winked just as Krebain came rushing in.

"General Silverwood! Your request for a tent of your own has been
accepted. You'll have it by the next mission."

He turned and thanked him, dragging the back of his hand across his
mouth as he did so, only to glance at the trace of saliva there as if he had
not expected to see it.

The soup Sephiroth left, and half his clothes outside the door of the resting
room, which he bolted, even though not even he was allowed to deny
temperate naps to any of Shin-ra's workers. Another dolorous hour with
himself in his own hands he spent; made himself bleed with the handle of
his blade forced inside him. He kissed his own shoulder and a bruise
remained there which bedeviled him for many days.

~*~*~*~

There were people living on the surface of The Planet who still
worshipped the dead thoughts of the Ancients rather than the newborn,
lowery body of Shin-ra. No one knew just what the elder race had once
held in reverence themselves, but Sephiroth, one more afternoon later, sat
and considered only that it must have been the sort of murky, lingering
beauty that the other general possessed. He himself could think of nothing
else. The dolorous hours of fucking himself had grown too long.

Even while they swooped entry points on the map with their fingers until
the tips were stained with the ink, his mind would not creep elsewhere.
For this was Zack's tent- a wilted moire bundle still held her back against
one post, the bed was a desolate mess and the wire wastebasket filled the
white leaves of a hundred letters never opened.

"General... ah... Sephiroth?" Krebain's hand stole out towards one stray
lock of silver hair that had fallen from behind his ear and was swatted
away.

Zack began to simper and whistled at the next private who passed, "Hey
there, honey-pie! Bring me a beer or you know what'll happen."

The boy blushed, and ran.

Krebain looked away from them both, making a great show of shuffling
the papers again so they would never be able to find what they sought.
"Really, General Silverwood, I would advise against a full frontal assault
on the compound. We haven't got any data whatsoever on how well
they're armed..."

"Not up to me, but I'd advise against your advice." A sigh as Zack's
attention left for the open flaps of the tent, as if he expected the private to
have returned already, though Sephiroth took notice at once at what he
saw. The boy who wasn't quite a boy and his fascination with beasts there
again. In the silence that had fallen, Zack's mind was again stolen, this
time by a tiny, grey sparrow as it danced about the sunshine that bled upon
the earth and a little patch of spilled wine- the only wine in all the camp
that had not been drunk. Though the knew nothing of it seemingly, the
morning broke through a slit in the tarp and lit on Zack's neck just where
it flickered when he breathed.

In some sudden fit of foolishness, Sephiroth reached out and tried to brush
the gleam aside, just as Krebain had moments before tried to trouble his
own hair. He got a look of sloe blue temper and a smile, Krebain got
nothing but a sight he would never dare gossip about as long as he lived.

"Your most ancient precursors are whores are they not?"

The sparrow took flight at the clank the eldest SOLDIER made when he
was pushed away. "Hey now! Some of my best friends are whores. Don't
say it like it's a bad thing!"

But Zack had touched him there, just for an instant, just on his sword arm.
Just like always, it was never enough, and Silverwood licked the hand he
had used, pulling some of the ink from his skin as if it had become
wounds.

"My life is bitter with love for you."

"You know, Krebain-y ol' pal. If we come in from the West, we shouldn't
have too much of a problem. They won't see us 'till we come over the
hill, see? And b'sides, the only other way in's through the vents on the
place, and we'd all get our pants dirty if we did that."

~*~*~*~

They all three stood now in the center of the compound. The shadows of
other SOLDIERS and their boys brushed one another in the incense
stained air. Someone wept at someone else's feet, then a gunshot, and
some semblance of quiet once again, but for breathing. Grey was the
breast of the catacombs, its firmament and arms; all of it but for the
sanguinolent [4] floor and the drops of crimson that still spilled from the
stairs below the alter.

"You will speak to me!" Sephiroth screamed. For an instance as he
dragged the cracking form of the priest up from the ground, he saw not the
face of a man who could have been there in his winking thoughts. He
didn't even look like Hojo, didn't look like anyone anymore really.

Zack sighed and his hands went to his shoulder at once. He turned rather
to the angel who still hovered above the dishes of bonemeal and metal
feathers. A fragile, glossy-painted thing she was. Her wings were silk and
so was the rose driven through the middle of her chest.

Above her in white letters on a whiter wall- Unmake me mother plague.
Several officers were wondering over just what it meant between
cigarettes and what sounded like at least one rape.

"I..." muttered their prisoner, "I will speak... to no... heathen, no beast,
and no blasphemer! Leave me or kill me!"

Krebain spun his pistol around and cracked him on the back of the head
with it. There was a shower of blood, but nothing close to a cry.

"Which one of us is which?" Asked Silverwood as he got atop his toes and
swatted an instant at the rose in the angel, though it was stuck fast. When
it would not fall to him, he set the point of the blade into it's heart, and
that of the statue. No one saw it well through the mist of myrrh and moss,
but he smirked when the priest cried aloud at the sight and tore at his hair.

"You are the beast!" and what was left of his finger flew out towards the
general who held him. "You are nothing of flesh! He is the heathen who
cuts up our angel!"

A bevy of shreds from the bloom that had never been real to begin with.

"He is the heathen who will not do as I say and kill me! And I know
SHIN-RA! I KNOW!" His voice cracked and so did someone's body in
the distance. It seemed eyes came to them now through the fog. "I was
one of yours! I was! I was almost taken by your ways! This earth will not
be yours rather than Nature's! You are all blasphemers to do with your
bodies as God commanded not to!"

The butt of the gun again in his skull more or less again. Krebain now had
gone livid, and the mako in his eyes begun to writhe. "God says nothing
of the sort!"

He had Zack in his arms then, close as he could gather him. Silverwood
did not seem alarmed, did not fight to get away as he kissed him.

Sephiroth's sword fell to the ground, and the priest atop it, but before the
crushed wraith of man could drive his wrists onto it, the general had
reclaimed the blade as the Ancients and their Lifestream reclaimed
Krebain; one more body on the floor, looking more exsanguine and
porcelain than ever before.

Some of his blood had come through his mouth and into Sephiroth's
companion, who only stared at the other lieutenant an instant with an
ironic warmth to his eyes. Then he spit and kicked Krebain in his white
hair.

"Hey! You were right! He is the jealous type. I guess I owe you a coke,
huh?"

They left him there with the cultists, of whom only their leader lived any
longer, surrounded by corpses until he bled to death or managed to crawl
out on his shattered legs. They had been in no hurry to grant his wish to
find hid shuddering and faceted God in the mako that ran beneath all of
their feet.

~*~*~*~

Night fell. Stars dandled [5] the smoky cobalt sky as far as eye could ever
reach. Zack Silverwood had long ago retired to his tent and was brushing
his hair when he found one petal from the angel's rose still in it. This he
plucked out and studied a moment before blowing it onto the dust below
the foot of his bed.

He did not see Sephirtoh's gemmy shade as it drew near the lip of his door
and hung there, pale as ghosts by moonlight, and so ready to be unraveled,
bit by bit into something less that stardust or enchantment. Though he was
enchanted at that moment, and not by the rhythmic scratches of the tiny
metal brush his obsession still clung to, but by what the tattered moire had
at last revealed of Zack's: his mirror with the faded silvering. Yes, the
boy child bore a mirror rather than a shield. Better in his mind to be dead
and lovely than unkempt and alive. He stood even now, drawing the
feathers of his bangs away from his eyes by the light of one sputtering
candle.

Sephiroth took off his boots and left them limp in the roots of the tree
outside before slipping inside. Not even the rings of metal in his hands
made any sound as he came to stand as close to Zack as he had so longed
to. All these months. More than years, but small eternities just short of
that mirror before them both. He was so close, he could feel the heat of
his skin draw clores and further away as the other SOLDIER breathed.

With no more thought to it, his gloves came off and fell to the floor with a
clank.

"My, my! Who's there now?"

But Sephorth's fingers were already buried in his hair, stroking him up
and down just barely touching his neck. He lifted a tangle of it two his
nose, smelled blackberries and sweat there. "You will deny you know me
and what I want already tonight? But the stars are so young yet."

"Aw! Seph, whatcha think you're doing sneaking up on me like that?"

Zack snatched his hair away from the other man's hands and turned on his
little, rickety stool to face him, found him standing as a child might, with
his hands behind his back, though ringing when he swayed from one foot
to the other... grinning like the sliver of the moon that yet remained.
"There's no need to be a fool anymore... Silverwood... Zack... my
beloved."

He laughed at him then, at least for awhile. The candle flame danced
wildly and nearly went out.

"What I have dreamed of since I first laid eyes on you, beloved."

"Oooh! Riddles! I love riddles!"

"I am tired of seeing other men think they can take you away from me."

"Hey now! Always with the..."

Zack could not speak them, for his lips had been smothered by Sephiroth's
smile as it parted and slithered within him. He did not struggle as his
mouth was ravished, but fought back with savage twistings of his own
tongue.

The silver-haired SOLDIER, who had wanted to drink him while he
remained still inside, thrilled at this, ached at this, and leaned into it until
his stiffness had bumped up against the other man's fatigues; drew back
then to watch the new wounds blooming on those tender lips.

But his would-be doll, heaved a sigh, shrugged. "Sorry, not tonight,
honey-bunny. I'm tired and so are you. Go to bed." With a toss of his
head, he once more began to preen, or would have, had Sephiroth not
taken his wrist then, and fondled it with his lips until it was red and soar.
Zack looked bored all the while, at least until he saw what his companion
held behind his back.

"These are for you, beloved of mine," he said, pointing to the handcuffs.
"These are all for you. They represent... everything I feel for you."

"Yeah, like you'd know anything about that. Cut the dumb shit and get
out of my tent already!" But the metal had already clasped around one of
his wrists. For an instant, Zack stared at the circlet of iron that had
worked its way around him. He looked like he was seeing his own hand
for the first time. Sephiroth dove for him them, lips naked and wet, and he
darted away from him. The stool fell over behind him, and the membrane
of the tent shuddered as with break when he bumped into it. But his eyes
were cold and steady as the frost condemned ever to the Northern Border.
"You don't know me," he told his companion in a matter-of-fact sort of
way.

The other general shook his head. He was right. The beloved could not
have spoken truer in his mind. But he would not have it. Not any of it.
Not tonight. The Masaume buried itself in the ground then, catching
against a stone. No rents that evening in the cloth between them and the
voyeur of the night sky. No one would behold them but the sylphs in the
breeze of each other's bodies. And there was that. Zack felt still as bones
under his fingers as he ran them up and down his chest- the boy was
pressed up against one of the poles, striking at him now and then with the
still unfastened cuff.

It caught him in the cheek and left a scratch that began to bleed.

"My pretty beloved is thirsty then? And he can not wait to drink anything
else of me." Dragging him by a handful of his mussed, black hair,
Sephiroth forced the other general face against his wound and listened to
him sputter above the thrum of his own heart. "I love you, I would do
anything for you."

Teeth in his skin and boots in his knees as Zack struggled to free himself
of his embrace, even as he kissed his neck, more tender than sunlight or
rain.

"Anything at all... but always this."

They parted in the rivulets of each others' clothing. Buttons flew. When
he looked up at Silverwood, Sephiroth saw a few silver threads in his
hand, then on the floor, one by one. If they had been flowers he had
offered thrown to the ground, it could not have brought such rage to him
then as he knew then.

He flew across the room. The mirror tumbled from where it had been
hanging, but did not break. Something in Zack creaked as he was tossed
forward against the armor of the other man, coughing from the blow that
had landed in his stomach, smiling then as he was dragged across the
floor, both hands now bound.

"Well, I tried. Get sicka bein' tossed around you know."

Sephiroth said nothing, but hauled his body, doll-limp now up into his
arms. Held him there, letting his hands wind down, into his shirt where
the buttons had been, and into his pants, his hair, his navel, whatever he
could find of him. As he raised him to his feet, he worked Zack throbbing
stiffness against him wherever he could find skin, brushing it, trousers and
all, against his lips, but Zack did not respond to him, was only weight that
breathed unsteadily.

A boy who hung now from one of the ribs of his own tent then, the chain
of the cuffs run over it. He was on the tips of his boots until those were
pulled off and cast aside and Sephiroth reached into his torn shirt as he
laid his lips to his neck, and suckled at him there.

"I love you so much, you mustn't be able to understand. I would die for
you where I know I have no soul."

There was something almost like a laugh then, a little choke in Zack's
throat as he held something of his breath back. "Would you say that if
Hojo was here. No, don't think so!" And as he dared to meet his eyes.
"You wouldn't even touch me, but hey, why should you?"

Then only shreds of his uniform hung on him, intermitted were the red
caresses in between that the cotton had left when it was torn away as
Sephiroth caressed him, drew breath from his skin and raked his nails
across his chest, drawing fragments of his flesh, but not any blood. His
fatigues rode low on his hips now, sagging about the hints of stiffness at
his crotch... under the shadow of his unfastened belt, Zack was bare, and
the other general froze there, feeling nothing but the supple pressure of
that skin. He swayed on his chain then, humming to himself as his
companion took his cock in his hands, and slid one tip of his ring finger
inside the slit there to find it had just begun to weep.

"You do want me, see, beloved? You can't help but love me because
that's all you were ever made for." As such, as if it was communion wine
between then, he made him drink the precursor to his own cum, even after
it had been in his own mouth, purred when he did not spit like he had
when the leavings of Krebain had encroached upon the spaces beyond his
lips.

Zack did grin then, and kicked at the air before him, straining with an
empty moan against his bonds, if only for they had drawn him too thin.
"Ewe! That's just nasty and HELL! What gave you the idea I loved you?"
Though the sway of his muscles had left his trousers to slip, inch by inch
from his hips. Naked and dry like this, out of the shower and the true light
of the day, they were so dainty, so thin. The waist of his trousers failed to
catch on the start of his stiffness, and so they fell away, all at once with a
soft hiss like passing smoke.

There he hung then, naked and pale about his thighs where his cheeks
smarted with new burns, and his arms with scars from the past two years.
Watching him drift there, the silver-haired general was overcome by his
catty whistles. The words and the image of his beloved were dashed
against one another, and a kind of hatred took him, though the passion that
had him blushing and stiff himself would not leave, only rose, and
tumbled this way and that.

Zack was fragile and human and marred, like a bit of cool glass with a
chip through its mouth. It only made him burn all the more inside, like
cold steal burns, or the stars as they break the shrouds of air around the
earth.

In one swift motion he had jammed two of his fingers into Zack, and
begun to ply his wet silk insides apart. He howled under him, and
Sephiroth shivered to know what it was like- no pummel of a blade, but
real skin such as he had never known in his own form. He screamed at his
unhappy lover then, grinding on his muscles with the fury of his finger
tips.

"I am prophet, preacher, poet! Crusher of language! Child of all men! And
still you turn away from me!"

"Fuck me and get it over with," said Zack. And he would have twirled his
sword at him then, or shrugged the way he did at existential remarks, had
his arms been free, but they weren't, and so he could only lace his fingers
on the metal that kept him just so, and pull himself up against then,
smiling wistfully as he nudged his ass onto the encroaching hand. His
head fell against his shoulder, and he purred and purred as he rode up and
down on more and more of the fingers there inside him. "If you INSIST,
don't be quick to finish."

"When you can neither fear me nor beg for me?" With a shake of his head,
he passed his hand from him, Sephiroth, and rather swept his hair across
that wingless back of the man he called his own.

"I don't beg for anyone anymore."

"Oh, is that so?"

Eye closed he left himself fall back so his toes knew the earth, and he
stated quite simply, "Not since the first time my dad did me when I was
eight." Zack hung alone then, no hands, no breathing in his hair, no sense
of proximity or dumb muscle memory of such. "See, I am a little whore.
You can go now, huh? Nothing to see or do here."

Sephiroth had not been tricked into fleeing, just smitten all the more, and
in the shadows he had retreated to, he disrobed with all his armor singing
on the ground, saw his beloved grown tense at the noise.

"'tis but the bells the divine things here."

He dripped on the floor then, returning to the presence of the beast- that
boy, the creature and it all. Flawed and delicious, tempting, revolting. No
such thing ever could be born of the world. Blue eyes, black hair... scars
and bruises on body of a man and mind caught so far back in time. So that
was why... all this, and his body gaping where he had forced him open,
and so shortly buried his cock.

Zack screamed like a pierced rabbit but neither wept nor looked to him.

"In your flesh my flesh entombed."

But having him breached now, there in the playground of their sex war,
there was nothing but heat against him, and it was like that sun from
Zack's skin slipping into his own, a miracle for it was night still, and night
as he began to ride him, slowly at first.

"Oh, I do love you, love you so much if you died I would want to be the
one to kill you. I want always to be in you, for that way I live twice, and
once where you're suppose to be."

Silverwood had already passed orgasm, nervousness, the other general
guessed, since for two men of Shin-ra, this was the best wedding night he
could give him. His juices had splattered on the mirror, and he left him
long enough to lick the glass clean, then ravage him again. He did not
bleed, and Sephiroth was glad of that, and everything of him.

"The world is nothing to me as long as I am loved by you, for you were
made as my beloved- the chaos in the light of pure order,"

When he had climaxed himself inside him, he left the handle of his blade
in place of his penis, and stood before him smoking so the sight of Zack
would stiffen him again, and once again.

Such barren delights he had with him, all the way until morning. The cries
of it all were still ringing though at noon.

~*~*~*~

Weeks passed, and there was not one moon in all of them than found itself
without the sight of the two SOLDIERS, one locked inside the other.

They sat in one of the whitewashed rooms of the inn just outside of Kalm.
In the distance, the ocean fluttered with birds and dragons.

""Well, you understand, we don't see Shin-ra folk out here all that often
anymore," the innkeeper was saying to they two, explaining the deluge of
red flowers that lay strewn about the room they had rented. "I don't know
who left all of this here."

"No no!" Sephiroth insisted to him. "It's quite alright, for we have no
such things in Midgaard."

A handful of them left the archipelago of sunbeams, and rose to the tip of
his nose, he found he could not smell them very well, as if they were but
silk, even where they felt so real. No... they weren't like Aeris's from all
those months ago, and here, with the corridors of their past no longer
breathing, he cared not for them, but rather held them out for the other
general, who bent as well, and smelled them himself, though it was all a
rouse for kissing his palms.

Zack did like to kiss his palms. That was benediction when communion
could not be.

"Hey, these are real."

"But of course!" laughed the innkeeper. "Please, do make yourselves at
home here. A single squeaking floorboard marked what should have been
his fleeing from their presence, but short his voice again. "Just one
question... I'm not up on city fashion... are all the kids wearing choker's
like General Silverwood's now?"

For a leather circlet now ran all the way about Zack's throat- black and
silver and the mako-green of his companion's eyes. "No, this is a present
from my lover."

"O-ho! I see!" With a wink, he stuck out his tongue, and it was either of
their guesses just what he meant, but Sephiroth knew well enough a hint
that someone else belonged to what belonged to him. Giggling, he knelt
behind him, feeling Silverwood's gloves at his temples as he loosened his
belt, and in front of the innkeeper slid his tongue in and out of his battered
entrance, drinking his own cum from the other man.

Zack said nothing, but he did smile. The innkeeper left the door wide
open.

~*~*~*~

It was seldom anymore he slept at night, for he had no want of it- the
moments between dawn and duty sufficed, for the peace in his heart now
that Zack was truly his rested him well enough. They had no pretenses
anymore, not even in front of the withered, ascetic [6] morals in towns like
Niflheim. The Lockheart fellow who had fathered their guide hadn't even
tried to them keep their hands from one another in front of his daughter
though.

Indeed, Silverwood had asked that child of his if she would like to join
them... this while his hand still rested against Sephiroth's cock.

Sephiroth, who had gone to bed early to ponder the matter- would he take
some girl to bed with them, just for a laugh, and just since she was a
bleeding, underage virgin?

Half awake, he watched the stars dance with the crests of the distant
mountains, for it had risen in the moments he had dreamed of having Zack
again. Even in rest, he could not stave him off, and wished no such thing
would ever happen.

The body beside him in their enormous bed stirred, and at first he reached
for the raven threads about his shoulders, but thought better of it, and
dreamed again for a few moments, his fingers just shy of the spilled locks,
hips just shy of brushing his hips.

In reverie, he found himself in the snows his mind had made for him to
tread upon, for by darkness, perhaps it is better to use other senses! Even
in the glacial dream, there smell of him above that of the white poweder,
the sound of his occasional gasps of want, heard even in the ice cave
where Sephiroth's subconscious wandered amid sighing female voices.

The girl stood before him, naked and bound, and Zack had flowers for her,
though they were red like the one's from Kalm this time. A woman with
blue skin came and kissed him and called him her son, even as she
watched the debauchery herself.

He was awake, had started, but barely. Zack whimpered and choked in his
own, unbroken sleep, and a smile took his lover's lips to know that he too
dreamed of their trysts, and mimicked their acts.

At first.

For he spied something golden on the pillow, far from him, but bound in
Zack's arms. Still as the hearts of the mountains, he waited, and
Silverwood groaned with his knuckle in his mouth, jerking against
something the sheets didn't quite cover.

A blond thing scuttled soon enough away after the wet clicks of kissing.
A blond thing that had been fucked in their bed, by the boy, who dared to
have a smoke, despite the collar, and the fact they two had not been alone.

So did time stop for Sephiroth.

~*~*~*~

Everything after that was a shower of words in someone else's hand, and
the omnipresent nature of the sun, and the private with the head of
sunshine, and the eyes of sapphire blue. For he was always there, brought
their wine, and their blades, and followed them like a dove follows its
home, all the way into the silvery fangs beyond the town. The monsters
there ran from him, save for the ones they found there, in coffins of iron at
the top of the hill.

He couldn't remember much from that.

Only the books, and the books, and the books his father had left there for
him to find in the basement. They fell open before him and he did not
read them, but he called Hojo his father then. Somehow he knew what
they said just the same, but the hole in his mind ripped there by his heart,
kept nothing in his waking mind, and less within what of him could think
clearly.

He then was nothing of them, the monsters, and the things of Shin-ra, but
they had made him, just the same, like genital goo had made Zack once.
No, he was flesh of things born in the heavens, and risen in the mako.
Sephiroth, Ancient though he was himself, did not want worshipped, did
not want to loose Zack for that. He wanted to be god alone, and go back
to the fast of fleshly desire that had been lust with no form for the boy
with the parison eyes. If his mother could have spoken, she would have
called him only thenotropic [7], and wanting to hear it, he sought her
divinity behind the steal; fled back into the reactor, back for the monsters
even though they weren't his kin.

And he killed Zack.

But Zack didn't die.

It was him instead. The blond boy threw him into the mako.

And all the way down as a shade descending to the heart of the Planet, he
laughed and laughed and laughed at the irony of it all. His last moments
all a blur, in the present, where he had been waiting so long, with the
creation if his own.

~*~*~*~

The illusion of Zack, drifted with desolate gaze before his own not quite
existence. Their sex had been the flashpoint, and everything after that...
was gone. Sex was death! Sex was pain! Sex was wanting and leaving the
divine. So he would be divine, and Zack could wait back on earth,
wondering why anyone would throw themselves before an Ancient rather
with a rose driven into and angel. All details aside. That was all
Sephiroth wanted. Right then, right there. Egoless ectoplasm, cradle and
all.

The Lifestream was transtemporal for him, as long as he, unwilling to
dissipate, crept there, and had his little illusion all to himself, for the
thousands of whispers around him thought nothing of it. He could not
know five years was all that had passed since that day.

By coincidence, he began to feel as if arousal of the body had once more
become his, and blood his, and when he turned around there was some
energy as blue as the sky, blue as time passing, broken and alone and so
familiar, like a slap... like stars like...

...no, and there was no time to do away with the doll of his that wasn't.

And Zack said to him, on their reunion there, his hands in his own hair as
the man who called him beloved once had recalled it right then, "So I've
gone from apocryphal to nothing. But I will never be yours. What's there
to have?"

And he laughed too, without his voice.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Fin



Notes: I made endnotes for all the terms I got out of my thesaurus of
inscrutable words

[1] megrims- means a migraine headache or wild fantasies

[2] parison- melted glass

[3] apocryphal- mystical or dubious: loosely used to mean "unknown"

[4] sanguinolent- bloody

[5] dandled- caressed

[6] ascetic- austere

[7] thenotropic- both divine and human