Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Innocence ❯ Historia Se Iterat ( Epilogue )

Disclaimers : : I own none of the characters. Just the plot.

A/N : : It's the end. Darn. I enjoyed writing this. Last chapter is obviously much, much shorter than the others. But I like it just the same. Enjoy!

*word* -- happening (i.e. *crack*)

~*~ -- flashback

~#~ -- scene change

//word// -- thoughts

"word" -- speech

~word~ -- memory

Garnet Eyes

Innocence:

Historia Se Iterat

History Repeats Itself

It had been all over five years ago. All destroyed. He hadn't had the will to continue after that. But nothing had worked right. When he had heard… heard that horrible voice tell him… he couldn't move for the longest time. He had cried for the entire night after. The next day had been a blank stretch of space, but it was burned into his memory-a searing moment in the margins of time-along with the moment he had been told. When he had left the mansion, the pain was so strong he didn't know what to do. And the town. ..oh gods… everything about it rained down thoughts of Cloud. It hurt so badly. He couldn't take it. The entire town was a curse-the people in it daemons themselves. He couldn't handle it-the pain in his heart. Flames… all consuming, burning away the pain, the sorrow. The people screaming; he didn't hear it. They didn't matter. Nothing mattered. It didn't stop the pain, merely drowned it in a new sorrow.

He had gone on to the reactor, the last place he had seen his sunshine, and swayed by the entrance to the reactor cells. His knees buckled and he fell to the cold metal floor, pressing his forehead down to the steel, sobs escaping his throat and the recent memories flitted through his mind. His Cloud… his beloved… was dead. Hojo killed him. Somehow… that man destroyed his life. That man… destroyed him. He had to pay. He had to. …He had to die.

Zax had come after him, but he didn't want the pity. And he couldn't feel anything but the pain. The word insane had darted through the air between them, but he didn't care. He couldn't. Zax didn't understand. His life, his soul, had been murdered. Murdered by the only person that had ever been able to hurt him. And he was powerless for revenge. He didn't want to live anymore. So he had struck out. Zax wouldn't hurt him unless given proof of his intentions to kill. He had no more intentions to kill, but he wanted to die. And he wanted to right then and there.

After the fall into the Mako pit, he hadn't recalled much else. The voice… the woman that talked to him… promised him what he had lost… gave him hope for regaining his love… he had succumb to Her. He didn't want to think any longer. He hadn't died, so maybe if he let himself be controlled by Her for a time, he would get what She promised. But She had stolen that hope as well. Locked him away and used him somehow to attack the world in Her own reign of terror. But he was too weak with grief to stop Her. He had lost. Completely.

More than one eternity ago She took him and plotted; he never stopped grieving. She blocked him off from the outside world, brought him deep into the planet. He continued to lament even then. If he didn't have his beloved, then what did the world matter, anyway? The pain still lanced through him like a fresh wound; burning pain of knowing that his heart had been wrenched out of him by that demented scientist and he could never get it back. She would occasionally attempt to blank out his mind-make him forget-but he always remembered his sunshine again.

Now he was standing in his domain; the solitary place She left him to so he wouldn't be out in the world. She had told him to kill the one coming. The one threatening Her plan. He had no reason to say no, and She would probably find a way to kill the one anyway. It would be just like it had always been for him-used and thrown away. Only his sunshine had been different. Only he had loved. And he was gone.

A small shining ball appeared far away, approaching rapidly through the endless dark surrounding his domain, and he watched it dispassionately. It didn't matter, whatever it was. Nothing mattered.

A flash of gold caught his attention and he eyed the white shining ball carefully as it faded into the shape of a human. Golden spikes atop fair skin; bright blue eyes tinged with purple opened and immediately settled on his own.

~"Love, come on or we'll be late!" Sephiroth laughed lightly as his blonde grabbed his arm, dragging him out to the movie theater. The blonde had been wanting to see the showing for a long time, and Sephiroth had finally agreed during the free time of their mission.~

~"I love you, Seph." His sunshine rubbed his cheek against Sephiroth's bare chest and curled down to sleep in the queen bed. Sephiroth smiled and wrapped his arms tightly around his blonde's body, falling asleep soon after.~

~The blonde snuck up behind the General and jumped him, pushing him down onto the couch in his quarters with a laugh before tickling him. They wrestled around for a while before he managed to pin the blonde beneath his weight; by then they were both laughing hard. When they had calmed down, his sunshine removed one hand from Sephiroth's loose hold of his wrists and brushed silver away from his cheek. His slender fingers glided through strands of silver and rested on the back of his head, bringing him down for a soft kiss.~

Sephiroth began to shake, watching the Mako blue eyes above him.

~"I love you." His blonde said right before they kissed after their night of passionate lovemaking. They were cuddled down into the sheets of the bed, curled tight together and resting.~

~"Love you." Sephiroth brought his fingers through golden silk strands as he spoke, his other hand wrapped around the lithe stomach of his beloved. They were lying on the couch, watching the lights of Midgar as if watching the stars. His sunshine looked up at him with a smile and kissed him delicately, pulling back with a small grin. "Always?" Sephiroth smiled at the question. "Always."~

The blonde warrior touched the ground just then, and Sephiroth's shaking became too violent. His sword dropped dully to the ground and his knees buckled. This couldn't be real.

~"Lover, where are you off to?" Sephiroth turned and smiled back at the blonde. "Don't worry, I'll be back soon." "Okay, but hurry back. Promise?" "I'll be back as soon as possible." "Sooner." Sephiroth laughed and nodded. "Sooner." His blonde smiled.~

Sephiroth wrapped his arms around his chest, rocking back and forth as he continued to shake. Jade eyes, which had stared blankly at the feet of the warrior before him, slowly rose up to see into shining blue depths. He choked, and his shaking turned into trembling.

"…Cloud…"

A small sob escaped his throat and he brought a hand up to his mouth, tears making their way down his cheeks. He carefully brought his hand up, seeing how violently he was trembling, and reached out to the blonde. Blue eyes that had disclosed nothing suddenly softened and the warrior came to him, dropping on one knee and letting the silver warrior's pale fingers touch the soft, delicate cheek. Another sob escaped the silver warrior and tremors racked his body, but the blonde brought him tightly into his battle-hardened chest and let him cry. Sephiroth curled himself tightly into the body holding him and sobbed out all his previous pains. His Cloud… his sunshine… was alive. He was alive!

Turning his head up, not even bothering to wipe away the tears making their way down his cheeks and throat, he looked up seeking the warmth of the azure gaze above him. He received a look of undeniable love and reached a hand shakily up to his blonde's cheek again, resting his palm to the soft skin. With closed eyes Cloud rubbed his cheek into the hand before looking compassionately down into jade and dropping his head to press their lips together. Sephiroth wrapped his arms around Cloud's neck, pulling him closer as the kiss continued. Tears streamed unchecked from tightly shut jade eyes and a small sob escaped him as they pulled away.

"I love you."

Cloud smiled down at him and brought one hand up to brush away the tears while the other held the silver warrior close.

"I know."

The blonde hooked his arms around the General and picked him up, slinging both swords on his back, and looked up as thin green swirls of light penetrated the darkness. The streams of light became thicker- swirling closer and closer to them, and Sephiroth wrapped his arms around Cloud's neck to reassure himself that nothing would happen. A face appeared in the light, one he couldn't recognize, and smiled at him. A woman with brown hair and green eyes looked down at them both and reached out, and the green light enclosed them. His vision went white after that and he blacked out.

~#~

A robin flitted outside the open window and a stream of light slid right into the eyes of the sleeping man on the queen bed. He flinched out of the light before jade eyes slowly opened to look around the small bedroom. With a yawn, he sat up and grabbed a pair of sweatpants, pulling them on before walking out into the next room. A few wildflowers were in a vase on the simple wood table in the main room and he continued on over to the kitchen. With a sigh, he wrapped his arms around the figure looking out the window and rested his chin on the soft blonde head.

Spring was just talking its hold on the countryside and their little house in the middle of it was going to be busy soon. They had chosen an area far out of the way to live in peace, but everyone still got together once a year, every year. It had been seven years since everything had ended, and they always met at Sephiroth and Cloud's little log cabin. Of course, it had taken some time for the others to come to trust the silver warrior, but eventually they had all come to forgive him. And he had long since moved on from everything he hadn't known She did. Cloud never told him most of it; he didn't really want to ask anyway.

Idly turning his head, he looked over at the picture above the mantle of the fireplace. Cloud's and his wedding. The figures in the picture were smiling, dressed in lavish kimonos that had been specially embroidered for the occasion, with the field of flowers they had been wed in surrounding them. On the mantle were several pictures of the others during the wedding and after the ceremony, all in similar kimonos upon Cloud's request. The former General still had his, folded carefully in the chest at the foot of their bed right next to Cloud's. It was such a beautiful day when they had gotten married. Absolutely nothing went wrong, which had surprised Sephiroth due to his string of bad luck. But it seemed that, after all of what had happened, his bad luck had ended. He was free and he was with the one person that meant more than the world itself to him.

"Love you."

Snapped back into reality, pale lips curled in a small smile and Sephiroth squeezed his sunshine just a little tighter.

"For always, I love you too, Cloud."

~~Owari~~

A/N : : I'm kind of contemplating doing a sort of side story to this fic about what happened when Meteor fell and how Cloud and Sephiroth finally managed to get a "normal" life together. I'm not sure… I'm leaning toward it right now. It'll probably be shorter than this fic, but I'm rather attached to the little bugger ^_~