Sat, 06 Sep 2008 22:45:17 GMT

Title: Do You Love Tokyo?
Fandom(s): Final Fantasy VII/Tokyo Babylon
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Sephiroth/Cloud
Rating: R
Spoiler(s)/Warning(s): Crossover, some spoilers for Tokyo Babylon/X (CLAMP), to understand the events at more than face value, some knowledge of TB is needed.
Author Notes: Written for Crossover100 prompt 087) Choice. I love the idea of a Sakurazuka Sephiroth. It's just such crack. I'm sorry XD Please put up with the intentional OOCness for Sephiroth, it's part of the plot.

T.Y.O

Cloud hid his face in his hands. "Please be quiet Zack... He'll hear you..." he said, his large blue eyes pleading with his friend. Zack just laughed.

"You're acting like Seph doesn't know already," he said, ruffling his hair. Cloud's hair maintained the stiff spikes that seemed to spring back together despite the fact that Cloud didn't use anything to get them to go that way.

"What are you two talking about?" Sephiroth asked, a cheerful smile on his face as he walked through the door carrying a tray of tea. A large pair of glasses were sat on his nose, falling slightly towards the tip. Cloud often thought that Sephiroth was handsome, the way his green eyes shone with mirth as though he was laughing at a joke the rest of the world hadn't heard yet. Better than his eyes though, was his long silver hair...

"Nothing!"

"Your undying love for each other!" Zack said over Cloud's undignified squeak. Cloud glared at him.

"Please Sephiroth! Don't listen to him. He's just-" Cloud blushed when Sephiroth was suddenly leaning down in front of him, so close to his face. He could see the way that Sephiroth's irises were framed in a slightly darker green than the rest of his eyes and the way that his hair had coiled around his back to hang off the one shoulder.

"Doesn't Cloud love me?" he asked, suddenly looking crestfallen. He put the tray down on a table next to Cloud, revealing why he had leaned down, before straightening. His hand went to his heart as he did so, as though he had been mortally wounded.

"I thought for certain that Cloud would have been won over by my clear marriageability by now," Sephiroth said and Cloud assumed he was either talking to the Heavens or Zack. Zack was snickering at his friend's behaviour.

"I'm obviously so undesirable-"

Cloud spluttered and began to shake his head and was completely caught off guard when a cat jumped into his lap. Suitably distracted from what Sephiroth was saying by claws slowly sinking into his balls, Cloud leapt up with a small screech. The two men paused, obviously realising that Cloud had a dilemma of his own without Sephiroth's 'joking'.

"I'm sorry. She must have escaped from her cage," Sephiroth said, picking up the frightened looking cat and disappearing from the room. Cloud felt a little guilty about scaring her, and knew that in Sephiroth's eyes he'd just dropped a few respect points... After all, the man was a vet, he couldn't possibly like someone who didn't particularly like animals...

Cloud looked at the clock. It was time to get to his job... He began to get his things together. Zack watched for a moment before he stood up and left the room. Cloud felt his stomach sink as he knew what was coming next. He was about to be double-teamed in the most horrible fashion.

"Let me drive you!" Sephiroth seemed to appear out of nowhere. Cloud immediately drew back to put space between them, blushing. Sephiroth didn't seem to notice his discomfort though.

"I-It's alright! I'm perfectly able to-"

"But it's good alone time for you two," Zack said, his smile downright evil. Cloud turned, his eyes narrowing as he lashed out. He nearly caught Zack around the ear, but the other ducked out of the way at the last minute.

"It's too much trouble," Cloud protested.

Sephiroth shook his head firmly. "The pleasure is all mine."

-

The Strife family had been Japan's spiritual protectors for thousands of years. They were onmyoji, spirit mediums, who gave rest to spirits that lingered on beyond their time in the world of the living. They were balanced by the Sakurazukamori, a single man who used his magic to kill for personal gain, or the gain of those he was working for.

Cloud had performed his first exorcism when he was five years old, and he was pretty sure that he was the most powerful onmyoji in his family. Head to the clan, he was too young to really be in the position he was in, but with his childhood friend, Zack, and the watchful eye of the much older Sephiroth, Cloud began to relax into his job.

That day he gave peace to a woman who's suit had become possessed by ill-feeling causing her to lose her mind. He smiled as she was freed and apologised to him. He explained what had happened to her, how she could prevent it from happening again, and left quietly. He knew that he was fading back into the shadows of that world, that the path that his family walked wasn't one that remained in the forefront of people's minds until they had a problem that needed magic to solve it.

Cloud saw that Sephiroth was still there, waiting for him. He sighed, wondering if Sephiroth realised that Cloud was trying to control himself for the man's own sake. Cloud knew he was a fuck up, that his family would never accept a homosexual relationship from their clan head and that Sephiroth could only be hurt by that. He had to deny the vetenarian's advances. It just wasn't his fault...

"Are you done?" Sephiroth asked. Cloud didn't open the the door. He smiled at Sephiroth and nodded.

"I am but I want to walk home... I want time to clear my head," he said, his voice soft. Beside Sephiroth Zack had fallen asleep. Cloud was glad because he knew that had Zack was awake he would have automatically asked Cloud into the van and not allowed him to walk home alone.

"Are you alright?" Sephiroth asked, his voice weighed with concern. Too much concern, Cloud thought gloomily.

"Yes... I just... need some time..." he said. Sephiroth nodded and started up the engine of the van. Zack stirred a little, but by the time the dark haired man had woken up, Cloud was already half way around the block and Sephiroth had turned in the opposite direction to head home.

Babel
Sometimes words are just that... words... And they mean nothing to you...

"Do you like me? Sometimes... sometimes I think you do..." Sephiroth's arms were either side of his head and Cloud felt trapped, his heart hammering in his chest. They had come to Tokyo Tower for the purpose of performing an exorcism... All that had happened though was that Sephiroth had got bored and turned the conversation to his favourite topic. Cloud.

"I-I..." Cloud began but found the words wouldn't come out.

"Don't fool yourself, Cloud," Sephiroth said and Cloud wondered where that had come from.

"What you first felt for me... that is probably your true emotion towards me..." And for a moment his eyes glinted dangerously and Cloud's heart stopped. Then Sephiroth was pulling a comically downcast face. "Alas! It seems I'll never win my darling's heart!"

"Sephiroth..." he began, but at that moment the spirit showed herself and Cloud had to get to work instead.

It was during that job that he learned that Sephiroth could use onmyojitsu... He used it to burn the poor girl's spirit down to a stub before Cloud sent her on to the afterlife.

Destiny
Ever made a bet you couldn't win just to prove a point? Ever made a bet you would never even try to win because you were afraid that if you did, it would contradict everything you stood for...

Cloud looked up at the cherry blossom tree. He could vaguely make out shapes. One was himself but younger, much younger. Barely eight years old? The other was a teenager in a high school uniform. He could see blood dripping off the tree, blood soaking the stranger too... Was this a dream? But it felt more like a memory...

"Why did you hurt her?" his younger self asked, his voice high pitched and innocent. Cloud watched the scene, trying to decide why the shadowed bloodsoaked figure seemed familiar.

"Her blood makes the cherry blossoms pink... You like pink cherry blossoms, don't you?" the stranger knelt down. Cloud watched as his younger self nodded hesitantly.

"You're a very cute little boy. What's your name...?"

"Cloud."

"Well then... Cloud... I'll make a bet with you..."

The wind picked up and stole the words away. Cloud couldn't make the words out but he saw his younger self collapse and the stranger smile. He couldn't tell how he knew he was smiling, he just sensed it. After that he woke up feeling eerily calm.

"So Cloud wears chocobo pyjamas..."

Cloud sat up with an indignant squawk as he realised that Sephiroth and Zack had snuck into his room and were rooting through his underwear drawers.

Dream
If you believe it's just a dream, does that make your reality cease to exist?

Cloud was being torn to shreds by the girl's spirit. The girl was an old friend and because of that he was trying his best not to hurt her. But he couldn't save her without hurting her. He struggled against the darkness in the girl's mind but he felt it swamping his conscious.

There was the cry of a bird of prey. Cloud cried out almost as though he was struck himself when he saw a falcon swoop down on the girl's spirit. He recognised it immediately as the shiki of an onmyoji, a familiar, but he didn't know who it belonged to.

"Tifa...?" he called the girl. She lay, her spirit broken by the shiki, and he let out a slightly anguished sound.

Outside Sephiroth caught the falcon that landed lightly on his finger, stroking idly down it's neck before making it vanish back into the spirit world.

Crime
An eye for an eye...

Cloud sobbed against Sephiroth's chest, blue eyes filled with anguish. Sephiroth stroked through his hair, making concerned noises as he carefully stripped Subaru of his wet clothes and led him towards the couch.

Cloud's sobs eventually tailed off and he explained what had happened. A woman had been desperate to see her murdered daughter, convinced that the girl's spirit would want revenge on her murderer. So he had called the daughter's spirit honestly believing that the girl would just want peace for her mother and to let the matter rest.

It had been a pipe dream.

The girl had been distraught. Crying. Demanding that her mother hurt the 'bad man' that had hurt her.

And Cloud had done what he had to. He had lied to the girl's mother, who could not hear her daughter, only see her. "She wants you to move on with your life. It hurts her to see you destroy yourself like this."

And Cloud's white lie to protect the living was hurting him. Sephiroth forced him to lie down, placing a hand on his forehead. He found the parts of Cloud's brain that were linked to sleep and gave them a little nudge, letting the boy sink into unconsciousness.

Picking up Cloud's hand, Sephiroth smirked, pressing his lips against the skin that burned to life with a single wing ingrained into the soft flesh.

"Soon, my dear Cloud... Soon one of us will lose..."

Save
It's never possible to save everyone. Most people only ever choose to save themselves...

It had seemed simple, Cloud thought. He thought it was just a cult that he could disperse easily. It was more than that though. The woman was charismatic. She had a lot of spiritual power. She was... difficult to argue against.

But she didn't understand people's emotions. She attempted to psycho-analyze him, tell him how he should live his life, how he should change himself so that he wouldn't have to feel pain anymore... She told him she understood his pain. Now that had pissed him off. How could she understand his pain? She wasn't him after all!

"It's time to take a nap, Cloud."

He turned, but only saw a smirk... something familiar... cherry blossoms... then was asleep.

--

Sephiroth stepped over Cloud's sleeping body and faced the woman before him. "You must be something if the Princess foresaw that you were to be a danger to both of our clans..." he mused, looking down at Cloud on the floor.

"I don't understand what you're talking about," the woman said, her nose in the air. Sephiroth smirked and raised a hand. Cherry blossoms, razor sharp, appeared out of nowhere.

"You've been deemed a threat to the Government. You're going to be exterminated because of that," Sephiroth said. Her cries echoed off the walls as her blood was splashed about by the cherry blossoms. Sephiroth waited until she was dead before picking up his corpse and turning to leave. He glanced back and then sighed, using his other arm to pick up Cloud as well before leaving the office.

He fed one body to the tree. The other was changed into chocobo pyjamas and tucked into a warm bed.

Rebirth
It's time to end our bet...

Cloud could tell the woman was distraught. Her son needed a kidney. He wasn't going to get one. Cloud wanted to tell her that she could gladly have his, but it stuck in his throat. How could be belittle this woman's pain by offering one of his own organs so flippantly when her son was going to die because he didn't have one that worked of his own.

"Yours... I'll have yours..." she said, her eyes wide and deranged. Cloud saw her pick up a piece of glass that had broken during her hysterical breakdown. He knew he had time to move to defend himself, but in some strange way, he didn't want to. He didn't want to defend his own life like it was more important than her son's.

Blood spattered onto his face and clothes and he stared in horror in front of him. Silver hair was still wafting from where Sephiroth had protected him before he'd keeled over the the side. Cloud had stared for a moment before realising that, somehow, the woman had missed Sephiroth's torso completely and caught him across the face instead...

"Seph... iroth..." he managed to get out. He looked up at the woman who was laughing, obviously completely cracked now. His hands became fists and he stood up and was about to launch himself at her when Zack burst into the room. Moments later there were paramedics rushing Sephiroth away and Cloud followed them like a lost puppy.

He only stopped following when they entered the operating theatre. He stood there, staring at the doors. Zack put his hand on his shoulder.

"Cloud..." he said and took a deep breath as though to say something else. Cloud just shook his head firmly, tears tracing tracks down his cheeks.

"No... Bring him back..." Cloud looked at the door, then down at his hands. They were stained with Sephiroth's blood. If he'd moved to defend himself... Sephiroth wouldn't have had to try to do it for him... If he'd not tried to sacrifice himself then Sephiroth... Sephiroth would...

"It's just his eye, Cloud... He'll be fine. We'll be making one-eyed monster jokes as soon as he wakes up and-"

"It's my fault..." Cloud whispered, stepping out of Zack's makeshift embrace and placing a hand against the door. "This is all my fault..."

Pair
Two sides of a coin, never touching...

Zack was getting more than a little bit pissed off. Cloud moped around his apartment, refusing to see Sephiroth because it was 'his fault'. Sephiroth inquired after Cloud cheerfully every day, then looked melancholy when told that Cloud was beating himself up about it.

"You know... I think that Cloud's beginning to realise that he can't hide those feelings of his away for much longer," Zack said, on one of his visits.

"Oh?" Sephiroth asked and Zack saw it then, that 'other' Sephiroth whose eyes mocked him and whose smirk was cruel. It vanished quickly, but it had been there.

"If you hurt him, I'll kill you," Zack promised, though he doubted he could. He had a good idea of who Sephiroth was... what he did... More than Cloud probably did. Still, if they could be happy together... If Sephiroth could make Cloud smile and act like his job wasn't the burden that most people found it then...

"Promise me, Sephiroth, that if he confesses to you, you'll be honest with him," Zack's eyes bored into the green of Sephiroth's and the man dropped all his cheery charm. Zack could see the cold blooded murderer there.

"I promise. Although... you'll regret asking me to do so," he said. Before Zack could question that the door slid open and Cloud stepped through, blue eyes slightly hesitant.

"I... I hope I didn't interupt," he said quietly. Sephiroth shook his head, bright, fake smile back in place. They talked about nonsensical things for a while until Cloud remembered a job he had to go to and Zack offered to walk with him there. Sephiroth watched them leave and Zack glanced over his shoulder at the door.

Prey... he realised. He looks at us like prey...

--

Cloud had begun to come to terms with a number of things. The first was that Sephiroth didn't blame him for the loss of his sight, and that Cloud shouldn't blame himself for it either. Although the guilt still plagued him, he put on a brave face for visiting Sephiroth.

He was rather surprised when he found he just quite simply wasn't there. That was rather strange, because he was sure the doctors had said that he was going to be in for at least another week at least...

"Ah... Are you Cloud?" a nurse asked. Cloud turned slightly.

"Sephiroth asked me to tell you that he's on the roof," she said, smiling a little. "He said that the air might do him some good. The hospital was starting to get to him..."

Cloud nodded and began to climb the stairs up to the roof. In his mind he was planning what he was going to say over and over in his head. In his fantasies he pictured an overjoyed Sephiroth who would start planning the 'wedding' and want to live happily every after with him, but he was fairly certain that the Sephiroth he had known to begin with was different from the one that he'd truly got to know over the last few months.

Cloud was suddenly not so sure of himself. What if Sephiroth just laughed and turned him down? What if it had all been a joke between him and Zack that Cloud had never been meant to take seriously...?

He felt his stomach clench into knots, made only worse when he stepped finally out into the fresh air and saw Sephiroth stood on his own on the roof. His silver hair was blowing in the wind. A storm was headed in. The air was clammy and heavy. Cloud felt a small bead of sweat slide down the back of his neck.

"Seph," he called, using Zack's nickname for him. The man didn't jump but he didn't turn to face him either.

"Do you remember, Cloud?" he asked after a moment of silence. Cloud tilted his head.

"Remember what?" he asked, stepping forward. What was Sephiroth talking about? The accident? Because if it was that then Cloud could assure him that it was burnt into his brain...

"The first time we met," Sephiroth replied simply. Cloud laughed a little, relieved that it was something he did in fact remember.

"Of course. I fell over right in front of you in the middle of Shibuya. I was so embarrassed to be arse up right on top of someone's shoes," he put a hand over his mouth as he snickered. He noticed that Sephiroth's face was completely cold however. No, not cold.

Blank. Indifferent. Impassive.

"That was the second time we had met," Sephiroth replied slowly. "We met earlier than that. Much earlier. You were about eight years old..."

Sakura and blood and a boy and a curse and the marks on his hands.... Oh the marks on his hands...! "Shall we make a bet?" The body in the tree, dripping blood onto the petals... The boy in the high school uniform smirking with his hand through her body... "If we meet again... I will give you a year... Just one year... And if in that year you can make me feel something... If you can make me human, then I will devote myself only to you..." And pain and sobbing... The secret of the Strife family... Their cursed heir...

Cloud stared at Sephiroth for a long moment, his body rigid in shock. Where had... where had that come from...? And that boy... that boy had been him... And the other...

"If you lost, the penalty was death," Sephiroth stated. Cloud felt his body quake as his brain tried to take in what he was being told.

"I couldn't feel anything for you or because of you," Sephiroth's voice... Cloud hated it. He had come here to tell Sephiroth how he felt... and all he'd found was... was this...

"It's not fair," Cloud managed to say. "I didn't know about the bet... I didn't know! If I had I would have done something!" He was trembling, though he wasn't sure if it was in fear or anger.

"Would it have truly made a difference?" Sephiroth asked. He reached up to unwrap the bandages from around his head.

"Yes," Cloud said with conviction. Sephiroth raised an eyebrow and turned to face him finally. The bandages fell away to reveal Sephiroth's eye. It was milky white. Blind.

"Losing this eye made me feel nothing," he said and there was something in the way he said it that made it a challenge. Cloud raised his head and looked Sephiroth in the eye, not flinching away even from the sightless one.

"Then why did you bother to lose it at all?" he questioned. If Sephiroth hadn't been trying to save him... then it wouldn't have happened at all right?

"To try to make myself feel something," he replied. Cloud smiled. Victory.

"And to want to feel... That's human isn't it? That's a basic human trait, to want to be loved and to love in return. That is why you made that bet. I had won it even when you made it," Cloud reasoned. Sephiroth seemed to have trouble understanding that logic but then he shook his head.

"I can't... accept it is that simple. I never had the feelings I expected to, that I read about, towards you," Sephiroth's voice sounded slightly uncertain though.

"The bet defeats itself in that respect. To win it, you had to not allow yourself to feel..." Cloud pointed out. Sephiroth looked like that had never occured to him.

"I want another year," Cloud said firmly. "One more year to prove myself to you."

Sephiroth seemed to consider it but then he shook his head slowly. "No... A failure is a failure."

Annex Start
"Maybe people who do bad things are lonely?" - Tokyo Babylon Volume 7

"He's been like this for months... He seems to have... acquired... the memories of the friend... The Fair boy..."

"Do you know why?"

"Seems that the Sakurazukamori... did something... He murdered the Fair child in front of him to prove a complete lack of emotion it seems... Something in Cloud broke at that point."

"So he believes himself to be... Zack?"

"He... He is a fusion of the two... If Cloud never finds out about Zack's death he can probably live a normal life. He doesn't remember the murder... He barely remembers any of his own time with Sephiroth when he was on his own with him either. It's probably best to protect him for now."

"I see..."

--

Cloud stared at the sky. He was feeling pretty good about himself today, all things considered. His arm twinged and he had no idea why. It had something to do with when he'd broken it, but he couldn't remember much about that. He knew he'd gone to see a person and they'd talked about something... then his vision seemed to shift as though he was watching himself talk to someone who he couldn't quite picture.It was strange but he knew that the conversation hadn't happened this way somehow...

"Cloud...? Do you want to go home?"

He turned to see his grandmother. He smiled and nodded, smiling brightly.

"Ah, just a few more moments," he said, turning back to the sky. He was on the roof of the hospital, staring up at the clouds. Cloud looking at clouds huh? He snickered to himself.

"I'll wait for you downstairs. The wind has a chill to it," she said. Cloud nodded. He didn't really feel the cold too much. He continued to enjoy the light breeze on his face.

He blinked when he heard a sound behind him. He turned to see a man with long silver hair watching him warily. Cloud smiled and leaned back against the rail a little shyly. The man was beautiful.

"Are you a patient?" Cloud asked. The man was blind in one eye so it was possible that he could be... The man nodded, hesitantly.

"I wanted to ask you a question..." the man said. Cloud was surprised and wasn't sure how to respond to that.

"Could you forgive someone for anything if you loved them?"

Cloud thought about it for a long moment. The wind blew between them. He then looked at his shoes and shook his head firmly.

"There are some things that can't be forgiven... even if you love someone. But if you're good to the person you love, and try to stop the loneliness... then the person you love won't ever hurt you enough to be beyond forgiveness," he said, nodding to himself when he had finished. The man shook his head.

"I have given you your life, as was our bet. I've protected you from me. What you choose now... that is your own choice."

Cloud blinked and the man had disappeared. A cherry blossom breezed passed his cheek and he knew there was something familiar about that but he couldn't quite remember.

"What a weird guy," Cloud decided, before walking down the stairs and out of the hospital.

ares_dekatria