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Chapter Text

The trail of blood and bodies led them to President Shinra's office. Barret was more than ready to put a bullet or fifty into that bastard's head— but someone had beat him to it.

Barret stared in disbelief at Shinra's corpse slumped over that ostentatious desk, sword protruding from his back. "He's dead... The leader of Shinra is dead..."

It was Tifa who ran around behind the desk, as if someone needed to confirm it. "Then this sword must be...!?"

"Sephiroth's!" Cloud finished.

Barret didn't care about that. Shinra was dead! Someone had cut the head off the snake, and the whole damn empire would come crashing down now. He knew it wouldn't happen overnight, but this was the start, he was sure of it.

That weaselly bastard Palmer emerged from some hiding place and tried to make a break for it, but they caught him. Cloud, though, was still fixated on Sephiroth.

It took Barret a minute to place the name. Corel had watched Shinra's war from a distance, smart enough to recognize that despite their propaganda, Shinra wasn't the world's hero fighting on their behalf. But maybe not so smart, because they'd thought it had nothing to do with them. Winning the war had just emboldened Shinra and brought them nosing around Corel, looking for their next conquest.

Yeah, 'Sephiroth' had been one of the big names in the papers in those days. The exemplary SOLDIER.

And now he'd gone and killed the President.

"So he's a good guy then?" Barret wondered. He didn't know why the guy would care about the Promised Land, and he had his doubts about any SOLDIER being his ally, but then there was Cloud's scrawny ass.

Cloud was shaking his head vehemently. "A good guy? No way!!"

There wasn't time to get into it then. Rufus made his grand entrance, and then they were fighting robots and racing down the highway out of Midgar. Barely time to breathe, much less talk. Much less think.

It had been like that for days, ever since the No. 1 Reactor. That one mission had set off a chain reaction, and it wasn't the one that Barret had expected or hoped for. On the road to Kalm, things finally slowed down enough for him to think about it.

Had they struck any real blows against Shinra? Was the company in any actual danger of collapse? The news had twisted AVALANCHE's bombings into the latest scapegoat for Shinra's tightening control. He'd watched the suits in that conference room shrug off the destruction of Sector 7 like it meant nothing. Rufus had stepped into his father's shoes before the body was even cold.

Had it all been for nothing? Biggs, Wedge, Jessie... They'd all fought at his side believing that it was a fight worth rallying to. Believing what he told them about putting an end to Shinra and making a better world.

He thought about Sephiroth's sword impaled in President Shinra's body and the horror that it had inspired in Tifa and Cloud. And Barret had been elated. Giddy, almost. He would have done it himself.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, they said. What if that person terrified your friends? What did that say about Barret if he admired the guy?

No, it wasn't the guy, but the act. He didn't know a damn thing about Sephiroth, except that he was an ex-SOLDIER. If he'd killed the man Barret hated most in the world, it didn't mean he'd done it for the same reasons.

When they reached Kalm, and Cloud told his story, the reasons didn't get any clearer. In a lot of ways, it was easier to equate Sephiroth with Shinra. He'd burned Nibelheim to the ground the same way Shinra had burned Corel, and Cloud was right: there was no way he was a good guy. They had to stop him, pure and simple.

Or was it dangerous to think it was simple?

Barret knew Shinra. You could talk about different strategies to take them down, but there were things that were never on the table. You couldn't trust them. You couldn't reason with them. They didn't value anything but the money in their own pockets.

Crazy as he was, Sephiroth's motives were different. If he wanted to take the Planet back from humans, Barret would be the first to agree they'd made a damn mess of it. But Sephiroth was seeing them all in black-and-white. Clear-cut, humans were a plague.

Pure and simple.

Barret kept his thoughts to himself as they journeyed. He'd seen the way Tifa drew in on herself when Cloud talked about Sephiroth. If Barret brought it up with her, she'd shut down. And who else was he supposed to talk to? Cloud had a one-track mind on the subject, Aeris had her own issues to wrestle with, and Red XIII was so tight-lipped he still hadn't told them his own damn name.

They were just thoughts, anyway. Useless as long as they were only following in the man's footsteps.

The next bloody trail they followed led them into the engine room of a cargo ship. A man in the red uniform of a commander turned and collapsed as they entered the room, and the knot of them stopped short. There was no sign of their enemy.

A figure in black slowly phased upwards through the floor.

"Sephiroth!" Cloud exclaimed. "You're alive!"

The apparition looked at him without recognition. "...who are you?"

Shouldn't he have remembered his old comrade? Barret didn't know how well ghosts held onto memories, but a ghost wasn't what he expected.

The body of the Shinra commander lay motionless at Sephiroth's back. Sephiroth hadn't so much as glanced at it. His face was expressionless, cold. What was this?

Sephiroth's ghost flew off while Cloud was mid-sentence. Some monster showed up out of nowhere, and Barret cursed, lifting his gun-arm.

They hadn't faced a fight this intense since the Shinra building, surrounded by metal walls and the smell of blood. But this thing wasn't anything like the big roboguards. Its body moved unnaturally and its mouth spewed poisonous gas. The air grew thick, disorienting. Half his bullets seemed to disappear into the mass of flesh like they weren't even real.

They pulled through in the end, and as he caught his breath, Barret finally recognized the monster.

"Isn't this... that thing?"

"...Jenova," Cloud confirmed.

That headless thing from the Shinra building, only it had a head now, and a lot more limbs in the way of tentacles. And somehow, this thing had the same name as Sephiroth's mother.

This couldn't be anybody's mother. There was no way the Ancients had looked like this. Right?

The ship docked at Costa del Sol. Barret welcomed the daylight after that fucking horror show, but the heat hit him fast. While Cloud put on his best impression of a leader and the girls talked hitting the beach, Barret went on ahead to scope out an inn, because someone had to take care of things.

He hit the shower once he'd checked them in. He wanted to wash off the sweat of battle and the lingering disgust of having to sneak around the Shinra. He knew there'd been no way to get through Junon head-on, but he preferred things head-on.

Nothing about what they were doing was straightforward.

Red XIII had said, whatever killed the guard outside their cell that night hadn't been human. But President Shinra had definitely been killed by a sword. The man they'd seen just now had been like a ghost, but Barret's bruises told him that monster sure as hell wasn't.

What was even real? What the fuck were they chasing?

And where was it leading them?

He stepped out of the shower and reached for his usual clothes. The sailor suit lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, and he still had half a mind to throw it in the trash.

It wasn't a Shinra uniform, technically. He hadn't been able to stomach that. Shinra controlled the harbors and the ships, but Shinra controlled everything. The crew they'd run into hadn't cared that they were stowaways, like they turned a blind eye all the time. Some folks could only rebel in small ways.

Barret collected the sailor suit off the floor. Pajamas, Tifa had suggested.

He wondered what Marlene would think of the outfit. It was a far cry from Midgar slums fashion and the image he'd constructed for himself. Nobody looked intimidating in a sailor suit—not that Marlene ever saw him that way anyway. Still, it was better suited to a kid.

He wondered when he'd get back to her... how he'd explain any of this to her. Fighting the Shinra was something he could put in terms she understood—hell, in terms he understood. This was different. Cloud said that Sephiroth was a greater threat to the Planet than Shinra. Barret didn't disagree; the guy was sure as hell some kind of threat, but he couldn't figure out the shape of it.

Nobody even knew what the Promised Land was. What did it mean for Sephiroth to get to it?

When he returned to his room, he found Aeris lying on her back on the far bed, and he faltered. He'd left the rest of his gear here, but he wasn't about to kick her out.

"Oh, uh. Didn't realize you were claimin' this one," he said. "I just gotta grab my arm an' then I'll be outta your hair."

"No, it's all right," Aeris said without looking at him. "I'm not sleeping. I just... wanted a minute to think."

She sounded off. Barret didn't know Aeris well, but moments like this told him she put on a front of her own, sometimes.

"...you all right?" he ventured.

She was uncharacteristically quiet, eyes fixed on the ceiling fan that spun lazily overhead. "I don't know," she admitted finally. "Sephiroth...... He was strange, wasn't he?"

"Yeah," said Barret. He moved closer and sat down on the opposite bed. "Wasn't exactly what I was expectin.'"

"And Jenova..." She trailed off, frowning.

"Sure as hell didn't seem like no Ancient," he offered. "If you're anything to go by."

It didn't seem to reassure her. "I don't really know," she said. "What are Ancients supposed to be like? What about me is like an Ancient?"

"Well, they ain't supposed to look like that, are they?"

"I guess not. But Jenova was in Professor Hojo's lab for a long time."

Barret rubbed at his beard. "You think he did somethin' to it? I don't know... corrupted it?"

"Maybe. And maybe that explains Sephiroth, too. Why he's so... different."

"You don't wanna be like him."

Aeris shook her head slowly. "I can't decide. If he is an Ancient, then I'm not the only one. But... the things he's done..."

"Nibelheim," Barret agreed. "There ain't no excusin' it."

She nodded.

"...probably no comin' back from it either."

Aeris finally glanced over at him, her brow furrowing curiously. "You don't sound so sure."

"Hell. I oughtta be. It just seems like somebody who hates Shinra that much oughtta be on our side. But he ain't."

"You get it then," said Aeris, looking back at the ceiling. "We have a lot in common. And then we don't."

Having anything in common didn't seem like it was going to make much of a difference. Sephiroth, if that ghost even was Sephiroth, had barely spoken to them. Maybe all that stuff he'd gone through before Nibelheim didn't matter anymore. Maybe he was just a shadow of the man he'd been.

Why kill President Shinra so personally, if there wasn't a person behind it?

Barret had had one look at the Great Sephiroth, and it wasn't enough to suss anything out.

Chapter Text

Sephiroth knew the location of the Temple, but the Keystone eluded him. The leads he had taken from the Lifestream had come up dry. He needed a network of the living to know through which hands the Keystone had passed since. His inquiries led him to Dio, a wealthy collector.

He was as irritating as any Shinra collaborator—men who believed the entire world existed for their own entertainment and that every desire had a price tag within their reach. As the face of Shinra's military success, Sephiroth had on multiple occasions been forced to interact with them. It was a task better left to Heidegger, who could match both their bombast and their utter lack of either talent or self-awareness.

It was a broken world where such men believed they'd earned what they had.

The seeds were planted to encourage Dio to search out the Keystone, but Sephiroth wondered if he might employ one of his puppets to deal with the man in the future. A few of them were lucid enough that they could manage a simple chore.

Shinra soldiers bustled about the amusement park, and to its patrons, this was nothing noteworthy. Shinra protected them and their wealth; its conquests made their world possible. They lived complacent to and complicit in the resulting suffering. To acknowledge the presence of soldiers as discordant was to acknowledge their world as imperfect.

But their movements did suggest a specific mission rather than routine security. So what were they after? Invisible, Sephiroth tailed them. Their search led them to the arena, and a man with a gun on his arm.

His left arm.

Sephiroth had never cared for guns, but there was still something exquisite in the way the gunman tore through the soldiers. They were young, recruits who had never seen real combat and weren't prepared to handle an opponent who did not value even his own life. They anticipated that as symbols of law and order, they would put fear into criminals.

The gunman did not care and did not hesitate. He left the arena strewn with bodies and limped on.

Curious, Sephiroth followed.

« What do you want with him? » Jenova wondered.

This is a place of entertainment, is it not? Let me be entertained.

It was likely a meaningless diversion in the end, but it would take time for Dio's contacts to turn up new leads. Sephiroth could afford to satisfy his curiosity.

Surprisingly, the gunman did not seek freedom. Instead he took an elevator hidden in the staff corridors down to the base of the tower. The fact that he knew where to find it meant that he knew it would lead him nowhere. The desert that surrounded Gold Saucer was impassable to a human on foot.

Why return to the place of his own incarceration? What had been the point of his excursion? Had there been any point at all?

Sephiroth followed the gunman through the wasted land. The burnt-out shells of buildings made him... nostalgic wasn't the word. Nibelheim should have looked something like this, after his rage had swept through it. He'd had no opportunity to see it.

Life clung to this place like a pestilence, offering nothing more than a refusal to die. The prisoners sought nothing, expected nothing.

They gave the gunman a wide berth. He had clout here, whatever that was worth, and they let him pass unassailed. He came to a solitary place at the edge of a ravine and finally stopped before two crude grave markers stabbed into the cracked earth.

Sephiroth had never been to Corel. He knew its location on a map, of course, and the voices of the Lifestream told him something of what had happened here. A tragedy, most would call it.

Was it a tragedy for humans to wipe out other humans?

Sephiroth watched the gunman, wondering if he felt grief or rage. Was it an anniversary of some kind? Had he felt called to do violence on behalf of the dead, to take some vengeance in their name when he could do nothing else?

Sephiroth could understand vengeance. He could understand rage.

« It's short-sighted, as they always are. »

I know. One almost pities them.

He would have left then, but Cloud and his friends bumbled their way into getting themselves arrested. He had to laugh, even if their capture was less than ideal. Could they not recognize the obvious Shinra plant in their midst? But then, how could they, when they were so busy refusing to notice Sephiroth's?

Cloud was a tool like all the rest, and Sephiroth had yet to decide whether his limited agency made him more or less useful. He had yet to learn anything worthwhile, but he could be used to keep tabs on the Cetra with him.

His companions did make him more interesting than the others. Of course his own actions were nothing more than a pantomime, but the way they were returned was genuine. Sephiroth had always been on the outside—indeed no one was even now aware of his presence—but he'd never been able to observe human friendship so closely. It was an aspect of humanity he'd always been denied.

Not that he had any cause for envy now. That was something of the past, before he'd realized there was a higher path open to him. He could ascend to a plane beyond their comprehension, so what did their petty connections matter?

It didn't matter if they refused to let one another face their demons alone.

In time, Cloud and the others found their way past the junkyard to the gunman. Dyne, his name was. A mirror, in some ways, of the man called Barret.

Among Cloud's companions, he had held the least interest for Sephiroth. He was not Cetra nor any other inhuman rarity. He was not an old acquaintance, nor did he hail from the nation Sephiroth had helped to conquer. He was just a man, loud and brash and with an ego bruised from being passed over for leadership. He was nothing special.

But something about his confrontation with his old friend... bothered Sephiroth.

Why ya wanna kill those that ain't even involved?

Are the people killed going to understand 'why'? Are the people of Corel going to understand just hearing Shinra's excuses? I don't care what the reason is! All they give us are artillery and stupid excuses... What's left is a world of despair and emptiness...

Was it familiar in some way? For some things, there was no explanation that mattered. After some things, the only path forward was one of destruction, to raze everything to the ground. But Dyne did not have the power to create anything from it; his ambitions ended there, in emptiness.

Why did Barret, whose mistakes had reaped him the same consequences, feel differently?

Perhaps he was naive, still. He clung to the idea that there was some other resolution, but had none to provide. Whatever he said he wanted, he remained powerless to prevent Dyne from dropping over the edge of the ravine.

For the first time, Sephiroth wondered if anyone had grieved after his fall into the depths of the reactor. Certainly, Shinra had regretted the loss of a useful tool. Its people may have lamented the loss of a symbol. But that was all he was to them. Of those who really knew him...

Zack had chosen to get in his way. He had hesitated, but in the end he hadn't insisted on their affinity. He had looked at Sephiroth as though his actions made him an entirely different person. He hadn't understood that it was the only rational choice when one understood the true state of the world.

No one seemed to understand that except for an impotent gunman who had taken his own life.

Sephiroth had power. Destruction was not where his path ended. It was an end for others, and he supposed he couldn't fault them for struggling against that. They knew nothing else, and so they couldn't imagine what he would create in its place.

And yet, there was something here that Sephiroth didn't understand either. Despite what Dyne sought, Barret had looked at him and seen the same man as before. No one had seen Sephiroth well enough before to look at him now and determine whether he had changed. There was no one to acknowledge... what?

Why did he need anything acknowledged?

« They've found their way out. There's no need for you to linger here. »

Of course.

It didn't matter how humans dealt with this world. Their lives were messy and ultimately tended on a path of ruin. Even without Sephiroth's intervention, they would destroy themselves in the end, and nothing would come of that.

What he had planned for them was not emptiness. It was rebirth. They could leave all of this behind.

Chapter Text

They hadn't had any sign of Sephiroth since Dio's note that he'd been headed towards Gongaga. Running into Shinra suggested they were looking for him in the same area, but there was nothing to say where he'd gone from there.

Barret didn't protest when they headed for Cosmo Canyon. He'd always wanted to go, and it turned out it meant getting Red XIII—Nanaki—home. There was plenty to be learned there, even if it had nothing to do with Sephiroth.

But he didn't get Cloud's certainty when they pressed on north. He acted like he knew exactly where he was going, but he didn't share his reasons with the rest of them. Maybe, Barret reflected, he just wanted to see Nibelheim again. They all knew he had a few gaps in his memory from back then, and maybe seeing the ruins would help bring it back. Barret could see him not wanting to admit that.

He wasn't expecting to find... a town. Not ruins, not even a hint of the fire that Cloud had described, just a sleepy village nestled in the mouth of the valley.

If it weren't for Tifa, he might have called Cloud a liar. But this... He didn't know what the hell was going on.

They split up, looking for any kind of clue. The townspeople acted like they were crazy, all the while refusing to acknowledge the black-robed weirdos in their midst.

Barret noticed some of them shuffling around the gate to the big mansion at the end of the street. He could name it from Cloud's story, and it was about as ominous as he would have expected. The rest of the town had a newness to it, but the mansion had presence. It had spent decades settling deeper into its foundations.

"The Great Sephiroth..." crooned one of the cloaked figures. "Inside... the mansion..."

Barret hesitated.

If Sephiroth was here, the others needed to know that. These robed guys clearly weren't all there, but it was the closest thing they'd had to a lead in a while. It wasn't something to check out on his own.

But he knew what would happen once he told Cloud. He'd charge in sword-first and shouting. Barret couldn't blame him; hell, seeing Cloud get riled up about something was what made him realize they actually had anything in common. But it wouldn't get them any answers. They didn't know what the hell Sephiroth was up to, what he wanted with the Promised Land, what the deal was with Jenova.

Guys with big plans liked to talk about them, when you gave them the chance. Barret pushed open the gate and approached the mansion.

The interior showed its age even more than the outside. A lifetime's worth of grime coated its walls, and the air tasted stale. The stairs creaked under his weight.

In one of the upstairs bedrooms, Cloud had said, there was some kind of secret door down into the basement. That was what had drawn Sephiroth before, so if he'd come here again, that seemed like the place to find him. Barret searched the rooms until he found it: a decaying spiral staircase descending into near pitch darkness.

Should've brought a flashlight.

He made his way down, carefully, feeling his way along with his shoulder brushing the wall. He missed a step and stumbled, but let out a breath of relief when he realized he'd reached the bottom.

There was a faint light coming from the far end of the rough-hewn passageway. It led him to a doorway, and he paused there, looking over the lab. Piles of books littered the floor, pulled off their shelves and abandoned seemingly at random. He could smell Mako, like there was a leak somewhere in the pipes that carried it all the way down here. And he heard movement.

A short, cluttered hallway led to a study crammed with even more shelves. Sephiroth sat perched atop the desk, a book in his hands.

He glanced up and paused, his expression registering a faint surprise as his gaze shifted to the empty space past Barret's shoulder. "I didn't expect you to come on your own," he said.

Already he seemed a lot more lucid than he had on the cargo ship, a lot more of a person. Barret didn't see that sword on him, but he kept a wary distance.

"The others are still checkin' out the town," he said. He glanced around the study, never quite letting Sephiroth out of his sight. "So, this is where it all started, huh?"

"In more ways than one," said Sephiroth, regarding him steadily. His eyes had that same weird glow that Cloud's did, but their intense green made them a lot closer to the Mako that gave them their name.

"It's gotta suck," Barret ventured, "bein' the wet dream of a bunch o' scientists an' only findin' out about it way later from their old books."

Sephiroth's brow furrowed. "Why are you saying this to me?"

"Dunno. I had this crazy thought... that maybe you ain't so crazy. You kinda remind me o' somebody."

"Who could I possibly remind you of?" Sephiroth scoffed.

"Old friend o' mine," he said. Was the trail of bodies Sephiroth left behind all that different from Dyne's? Or the source of his fury? "After what was done to you, you can't see anything good in people. Every last one of us is complicit, and there ain't no savin' the world we built. That it?"

"What was 'done' to me?" Sephiroth repeated. "Gast created a superior being, and now I'm simply carrying out my destiny."

"Uh-huh. You wanna act like you're above feelin' anything, then what're you doin' back in this basement? There some kinda clue you missed five years ago? You gonna find the Promised Land down here?"

Sephiroth didn't answer him. He closed the book in his hands and stood, but he didn't move any closer. Barret didn't plan to take his eyes off him.

"You probably don't think much o' me," he said. "Probably don't think anyone's been payin' attention. Except, the things you been doin' since you showed up again... I've wanted to do 'em, too, if I'm bein' honest. You ain't been killin' just anybody—you been killin' Shinra. The soldiers on the ship, the guys in that lab..."

In following Sephiroth, they'd gotten most of their leads from civilians. The man outside Kalm's inn, the women on the beach of Costa del Sol, the old man on the slopes of Mt. Corel whose only grievance was that Sephiroth had rudely ignored him.

Sephiroth had carved a path through Shinra employees, and one really big snake, and that was all—so far.

"The way you killed President Shinra," he went on, "that was personal. You talk like you're some enlightened being, an' I get that. I've said it plenty o' times myself, and sometimes even I buy it—I'm doin' it for the Planet, to save the Planet...... We both know, that ain't really why."

"Perhaps that's where you and I differ," Sephiroth said at last.

"So what's the master plan, then, if you ain't just killin' people you hate?"

"You expect me to explain it to you?"

Barret spread his arms. "Why not? What's one stupid human like me gonna do about it?"

"Hmph."

"Maybe you don't even got a plan," Barret goaded. "After all, I don't see how Nibelheim fits into it. What's the point o' killin' folks who weren't even involved?"

"You think Nibelheim wasn't involved?"

"In Shinra's crimes against humanity? 'course not."

Sephiroth turned to the shelves behind him, turning his back without a second thought. He didn't consider Barret a threat at all. Locating a folder amidst the files, he drew it out and tossed it across the room. Barret caught it clumsily, and some of the papers nearly spilled out before he adjusted his grip.

The pages within were dated more than 30 years ago. Snatches of the phrasing were familiar, but Sephiroth spoke before he could read very far.

"A contract between Shinra and the people of Nibelheim," he said. "In exchange for power from the reactor, they grant Shinra the land and the right to conduct research."

"Research! You think anybody guessed that'd be human experiments? They probably thought it was gonna be environmental impact surveys."

"Ignorance is no excuse," Sephiroth stated coldly.

"An' what about you then?" Barret countered. "You used to be Shinra's number one SOLDIER. Lotta people say they wouldn't've won the war without ya. An' what've they been doin' since? Reactors everywhere, suckin' up the life o' this Planet."

Sephiroth tilted his head, regarding him like he was some kind of animal in a zoo. "You're angry," he said.

"Damn straight I'm angry!" Barret said. He threw the file folder down on the desk. "You're judgin' people like you got clean hands. The men who signed this, they didn't know they were makin' a deal with the devil. An' no, that don't excuse 'em entirely, but it sure as hell didn't buy 'em what you did. Some naive idiots sign a piece o' paper an' you condemn the whole village, an' their kids right along with 'em."

"The children did not die," Sephiroth stated. "Though given what Hojo did to them, perhaps it would have been a mercy."

"You're an asshole," said Barret.

"Did you come here to insult me?"

"I came here to talk. Not much o' that happenin' with Cloud around. 'Course, you did kill his mother."

"Hmm," Sephiroth hummed disinterestedly. Barret was losing him with that line.

"Been wonderin' about somethin,'" he began instead. "Cloud can't remember how the whole thing ended. You ain't dead, obviously. But you've been missin' for five whole years. What happened then? Where've you been?"

Sephiroth turned away, his hand resting on the desk beside him. He'd definitely come down here to reminisce about something, and Barret thought those memories were at the forefront now. "...I was betrayed," he said at last. "But it doesn't matter now. I learned quite a bit in the interim."

"Like what?" Barret pressed.

Sephiroth looked back at him thoughtfully, but then his gaze shifted. Barret caught the sound of footsteps, and then voices, as his friends made their way warily down the hallway into the lab.

"Sephiroth!" Cloud exclaimed the moment he spotted him.

Tifa froze behind him, her eyes darting from Sephiroth to Barret. He could tell just the sight of him standing as close to the man as he was scared her. He backed off to join his friends, and ignored the more quizzical look Nanaki threw him.

Sephiroth's voice took on that arch tone again as he spouted some cryptic stuff about a Reunion and a Calamity from the Skies. He flew past them out of the library, and Cloud chased after him a short ways, but he was already gone.

In his wake, the others voiced their concern over Barret confronting him alone and asked if Sephiroth had said anything to him. Barret shrugged it off; Sephiroth hadn't shared any plans with him, and in the moment, he wasn't sure if he'd learned anything at all from that conversation.

Later, as they pressed on into the mountains, Barret turned it back over in his mind. If Sephiroth wasn't an Ancient, then he didn't have any 'birthright' to the Planet. Had he known that five years ago, too, or was that one of those things he'd learned since? Was it the thing that had triggered his reappearance after all this time? Was he after something now that he hadn't been before?

The only thing Barret was sure of was that he wasn't crazy. He was angry, the same way Dyne had been... the same way Barret was. Only, he wasn't sure if Sephiroth had acknowledged it to himself. He rationalized his actions as the proper consequences of a just world. He didn't kill out of hate, but because Shinra deserved it, the people of Nibelheim deserved it.

Barret had justified things like that, too. He'd spent months planning those reactor bombings, telling himself all the while that he was doing it for the good of the Planet. The casualties would be mostly Shinra, mostly people on the plate, people complacent and complicit in all of it.

Was it really for the Planet? He'd convinced himself that it would help, and maybe it had—maybe he'd given the Planet some small respite, taking out two reactors. But when the explosions reverberated in his bones, that wasn't what he'd been thinking about.

So, did Sephiroth know what he was saying was just a line? It was more comfortable to believe it. Owning up to all that fury meant acknowledging where it came from, and that was a lot of pain to deal with.

Who knew if he'd have the chance to recognize it, before his plans carried him too far.

Chapter Text

It was bad enough they'd had to come back to Gold Saucer at all, Barret couldn't believe they'd been forced to spend the night in the damn place. He couldn't tell if the design of the hotel was mocking him on purpose or if it was just that tone-deaf. It was built on graves, and they put cheap headstones out front as a gimmick.

Cloud had managed to win the Keystone off that sleazeball Dio. It should have given them a minute to breathe; whatever secrets the Temple of the Ancients held, whether it was about the Promised Land or the Black Materia, neither Sephiroth nor the Shinra would be able to get in without the key.

But how the hell was he supposed to relax here? The fake thunder rumbling outside put him so on edge that his hand kept twitching towards his gun-arm, even though he'd already taken it off to sleep. As if he'd be able to sleep.

They were too much in the dark, it didn't feel like they were one step ahead of anybody. Sephiroth said he was searching for the Promised Land, but if he wasn't really an Ancient, then could he even find it? The way Aeris talked, it didn't even sound like a fixed place. Barret trusted her word over the scholars at Cosmo Canyon who speculated it might not even exist, but he wasn't convinced it could be worth anything to Sephiroth either.

Was it just a smokescreen? The Shinra were still chasing Sephiroth around because they thought he could lead them to the Promised Land, but why would he want them on his tail? Was he luring them somewhere? Were Barret and the others about to fall into the same damn trap?

What was the Black Materia? It didn't sound like anything good.

Cid had yet to come upstairs, and Barret had heard Yuffie's voice loud in the corridor outside, proclaiming how she was going to bilk this place for gil. She probably wasn't the only one who'd decided to have a little fun before turning in. Barret tried not to hold it against them. They were stuck here anyway.

The door to his room opened, and he glanced over, preparing himself to turn down any invitations to join in.

It was Sephiroth.

Barret's eyes darted to his gun-arm, resting atop the corner table, safety on and out of reach. He started to his feet.

"I wouldn't," said Sephiroth. The door fell shut behind him, and Barret froze.

"...the hell're you doin' here?" he asked.

Instead of answering, Sephiroth glanced coolly over the room. "How brazen this place is," he remarked. "A tourist attraction built on the bones of your town."

"...yeah," Barret agreed cautiously. "Shinra likes doin' that, sweepin' things under the rug. Build somethin' shiny enough an' most people forget."

Sephiroth nodded, and his gaze shifted to look directly at Barret. "Our conversation was interrupted, before."

Barret stared at him. "You... came here to talk?"

"You don't want to?"

"Nah. Just didn't expect it. I kinda figured, you'd said everything you meant to."

"Did you?" Sephiroth wondered.

"Huh?"

"Did you say everything you meant to?"

Barret eyed him with a frown. Was Sephiroth saying that he was willing to hear him out? "Don't know that I had it planned out all that well," he admitted. "But I been thinkin' some since. Seems like in a lot o' ways, we ain't all that different."

"In what way do you mean?" Sephiroth asked.

Simulated rain ran down the window, from the supposed storm outside. Gold Saucer didn't actually drench its guests on the way to the hotel, so Barret guessed it was some kind of trick built into the window panes themselves. Just one more deception to keep people from thinking about where they really were. Far below their feet, the desert stretched for miles, land poisoned by the construction.

"I'm guessin' you know what happened to Corel," he said quietly, "since you're mentionin' it."

"I do," Sephiroth confirmed.

"After it all went down, the thing that got me outta my slump was vengeance. Shinra took everything from me, an' I was gonna pay 'em back tenfold. I didn't care who else got hurt. I told myself I was doin' the right thing, 'cause what they did was evil. I still believe that."

Barret dropped his gaze to the stump of his right arm, where the port for his prosthetic was grafted in. He'd even turned his own body into an instrument of that vengeance. It had just felt so useless otherwise.

"But y'know," he went on, "I was one o' those naive idiots who let 'em in. I hated myself most for that. An' it feels damn good when you can turn that on somebody else instead. When you can find somebody to blame not just for what they did to you, but for what you did to yourself."

Sephiroth's gaze was steady, but hard to read. "What could I have to hate myself for?" he asked.

Barret shook his head. "I don't know you real well, but... if it were me, I'd be damn pissed at myself for lettin' 'em use me as long as they did you. You fought their war. You wound up on their fuckin' posters, recruiting dumb kids who thought they were fightin' for somethin' other than corporate greed. They pulled one over on you, same as the rest of us."

"Don't you still want vengeance?" Sephiroth asked him.

"Yeah. Yeah, I do. So if that's what you're after, then just fuckin' say so."

Sephiroth didn't answer him that time. His brow furrowed faintly. Was it because Barret saw through him, or was he still trying to convince himself something else was going on?

"I don't know what your plan is," said Barret. "This stuff about a 'Reunion' and the Black Materia, I can't wrap my head around it. But I ain't exactly sure why we're on different sides."

"You think humanity is redeemable," Sephiroth stated simply. "You see the fault as lying with Shinra, and Shinra alone, when it's simply human nature."

"It isn't. Maybe you don't know that, 'cause a lotta people sure as hell failed you. It doesn't mean everybody fails everybody."

"Your own people cast you out. Your own friend tried to kill you."

At that, Barret felt his bile rising. He took a step closer, his fist clenching. "Don't talk about what you don't know," he growled. "We had a community, before Shinra. You ain't never seen a whole town pull together to dig survivors out of a collapsed shaft, or the way there was always food on the table, even when Dad was laid up in bed an' we were dirt broke. I was a mess when Myrna got sick, and Dyne was there to pick up the slack, just like I'd done for him a dozen times before. That's how we were."

"...but when the village burned," Sephiroth said, "they turned on you."

"I got my share o' the blame," Barret insisted. "You could say I turned on 'em first. I wanted to give over what we had for a shiny new life."

"You're making excuses for them."

"...an' you're takin' my side," Barret realized, squinting at him. "What's that about? Didn't I sign a contract, same as those folks in Nibelheim? Or was it maybe not about that?"

Sephiroth turned away from him and walked across the room to the window. He looked out into the false gloom, his hands still at his sides. "I don't understand why you want to know so badly."

"I'm thinkin' maybe you want me to know," Barret guessed, "or you wouldn't be here. Ain't been too many people reachin' out to you, I expect. You were untouchable."

Sephiroth said nothing. Barret ventured a couple steps closer, until he could make out the glow of those eyes reflected in the window.

"We could just talk," he offered. "When's the last time you did that?"

Sephiroth closed his eyes. "This isn't... me," he said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's an illusion. My real body is elsewhere."

"So... what is it I'm really talkin' to then?" Barret wondered uneasily. "...Jenova?"

"What do you think?" Sephiroth asked, glancing at him.

Barret looked around the room. It was spacious enough for a hotel room, but the monster they'd fought in the cargo ship had been enormous. He tried to imagine where the tentacles would go, spilling across the floor between the beds. Its head would knock into the kitschy chandelier.

"Seems awful cramped for it," he decided, and Sephiroth chuckled softly. Barret hadn't heard the man laugh before.

He wondered if there was anything physical here at all, in his room. Sephiroth had come through the door. Was that just to maintain the illusion? Was there anything under the facade, or was it just the projection of a man?

"...your mind seems real enough," he said, "whatever's goin' on."

Sephiroth quickly sobered, turning back to the window. "I can't go back."

Was that a hint of regret? What was it that he might want to go back to?

"No," Barret agreed. "But you could pick some other way forward."

"And what way is that? The only way I can even interact with the world is through the fragments of other people."

"...are you stuck?" Barret wondered, and Sephiroth's mouth only pressed into a line, as though he hadn't meant to share so much. "Your real body, is it trapped somewhere? Why don'tcha just ask for help an' skip the part where you gotta take over the world?"

"I am where I need to be."

"To do what? The hell's this Black Materia even for?"

"I am going to end this world," said Sephiroth.

"End it!?" Barret repeated. "Hell, I thought you wanted to rule it! You got any idea how many billions of years this Planet's been around before we were even on it? An' you wanna end it 'cause of us?"

Sephiroth blinked at him, taken aback. "You actually care about the life of this Planet?"

"'course I do!" Barret exclaimed. He thumped his hand to his chest for emphasis. "I know I said before, fightin' for the Planet is just a line—but that don't make it fake either. People're complicated. Sometimes I'm fightin' 'cause I'm angry, sometimes I'm fightin' 'cause I believe in somethin.' I'm always fightin' to make a better world for my daughter."

"You think you can achieve that for her?"

"I gotta try. Be a hell of a lot easier with your kinda power."

"My power..." Sephiroth echoed.

"You know Shinra in an' out," Barret pointed out. "You know how to take 'em down."

Sephiroth arched an eyebrow at him. "You're trying to recruit me to your cause? I thought you'd allowed Cloud to take charge."

Barret ran his hand over his hair. "Yeah, that complicates things. Don't exactly think he'll take an apology. Tifa either."

"That's the trouble with humans. You never move past your petty grievances."

"There ain't nothin' petty about losin' someone you love. Don't you know that?"

Sephiroth said nothing, and Barret's anger over his callousness began to deflate in the wake of the realization that... maybe he didn't.

"You never lost anybody?" he wondered. "Men under your command?"

"That was all they were," said Sephiroth.

"That's sad."

Sephiroth shrugged. "Your friend Dyne had people he loved, and he still thought they'd be better off dead."

"That ain't reason," said Barret. "That's pain. He... got mired in it. Wish to hell I could've helped him out of it."

"Is that what you think you're doing now?" Sephiroth wondered.

"You'd have to admit you got pain, first."

Sephiroth returned his gaze to the fake rain. "It doesn't matter. All pain will be irrelevant once I'm done. Yours and mine."

"I don't fuckin' want it to be irrelevant."

His response clearly caught Sephiroth off-guard. "What?"

"You're sayin' that like you're gonna do us all a favor, spare us the heartache o' livin.' But there's so much else. We lose people, but we find 'em first. Like hell do I want you takin' that away from me 'cause you don't get it."

"You want to keep going."

"An' I'll fight you tooth an' nail for it," Barret declared, even as he stood unarmed only a few paces away. "You need that Black Materia to end the world, we won't let you get it. Won't even let you in the damn Temple."

Sephiroth was unimpressed. "Shinra has the Keystone now," he said.

"What do you mean, Shinra's got it?"

"Cloud stepped out of his room, and they stole it."

"What the—" Barret looked sharply at the wall between the two rooms. When the hell had that happened? Was that the only reason Sephiroth had even come to the hotel, to check on the Keystone? "Have you known that this whole time?" he demanded. "Why didn't you say anything!?"

"It makes no difference to me," Sephiroth replied calmly.

"Well, hell, I gotta go get it back." Barret strode back across the room and grabbed his gun-arm.

"You can't," said Sephiroth.

"Like hell I can't."

"They have your daughter."

Barret froze, his gun-arm still inches from the connecting port. Those four words were one of his worst nightmares. He was always scared that the things he did might come down on Marlene, that even as he fought to make her future a brighter one, the very fact that he fought might steal it from her entirely.

"...how do you know that?" he asked. "How can you be sure?"

"You have a spy in your midst," Sephiroth explained. "Cait Sith. His operator arranged for her capture. He let her speak to Cloud, briefly."

"Cait Sith!" Barret exclaimed, whirling around. "That damn cat! He's the one?"

"I thought it was obvious."

"She... Do you know where she is? Is she okay?"

"She sounded unharmed."

"Where're they keepin' her? Back in Midgar?"

"I don't know," said Sephiroth. He had turned his back on the window to face Barret. His mouth opened, a pause before he spoke again. "I could discover it."

Barret looked at him for a long moment, because that one sentence... That was an offer.

"Okay," he said. "Okay, you know what? I ain't supposed to know any o' this yet, so there's time. Fuck, is the ropeway even busted? Cait Sith is the one who said it! He was just buyin' himself time to steal the damn Keystone!?"

"If you mean to go after her," said Sephiroth, "it's still suspect for you to leave your friends without warning."

"Nah—" Barret shook his head, turning back to his gun-arm. "Nah, I'll leave a note sayin' I couldn't stand spendin' the night here. They got the ropeway workin' an' I went ahead back to the Tiny Bronco. Should give us a head start at least."

"'Us'?" Sephiroth repeated.

Barret locked his gun back into its port and hefted the prosthetic. He looked to Sephiroth. "You ain't comin'?"

"Why would I come?"

"You're the one's gonna find out where they're keepin' Marlene. An' I don't know how the hell you're gettin' around, but it sure seems faster than what we've got."

"Your daughter's wellbeing has nothing to do with me," Sephiroth maintained.

"I'm askin' for help," said Barret, as absurd as it was who he was asking. It didn't matter if it was for Marlene. "You don't wanna give it? Fine. How 'bout stickin' it to Shinra?"

Sephiroth gave him a long look of appraisal. "...you're a strange man," he decided.

"That a yes?"

"......all right."

Barret grinned. "Great. You do whatever the fuck you do to find shit out. Where do I meet you?"

Sephiroth shook his head. "There's no need to separate."

"Huh?"

"I told you: this body is only an illusion. We'll go together."

It was a strange notion, going together, but Barret didn't let himself think about it too hard. He left a note on the hotel stationery, grabbed his pack up off the floor, and left. Sephiroth followed.

Chapter Text

Sephiroth disguised himself as a member of the staff as they left the hotel. He could have made a swifter departure, but he accompanied Barret onto the ropeway and shifted his guise again. The car whirred along the cable, leaving behind the lights of Gold Saucer and descending into darkness.

« Why do you want to rescue this man's daughter? » Jenova asked him. « She'll become one with the Planet like all the rest. A month or two makes no difference. »

Why had he agreed to this? Speaking with Barret had instilled a kernel of doubt. He had had very little in the way of human connection, and perhaps that was not only too little to understand it, but too little to accurately assess it. If they fought for it so intensely, then was it worth something?

There is no turning back from what we intend, he told his mother, so it's worth being certain. I want to know which of them is right. Can humanity be salvaged? Or is it better off destroyed?

« Of course there's no salvaging them. »

What if I decide that I disagree?

« The Reunion must proceed. »

Of course it must, he agreed. But the rest is a choice. Once you are whole... will that satisfy you?

She didn't answer, and he had more than a kernel of doubt that it would.

I can't remember, he went on, which one of us proposed this plan. All those worlds you've been to—did you experience them, or did you simply end them?

« Sometimes I forget how young you are, » she said.

Are you suggesting I'm approaching this naively?

« You lack the experience to know, so you still question. I can be patient. »

I appreciate that.

Barret was watching him all the while. It wasn't a gaze without suspicion—that would have been foolish on his part—but he seemed more thoughtful than anything. Sephiroth wondered what Barret made of this temporary alliance.

Had he forgotten what company he kept when he proposed it? Caught up in his fear for his daughter, he had spoken without thinking and simply refused to take it back, out of stubbornness.

Wasn't that all?

Sephiroth shifted his focus. He already had one of his puppets near enough to keep eyes on the Shinra, and they were on the move now that they had the Keystone. It would be easy to slip among them, borrow their equipment, and determine where they were keeping Barret's daughter.

He wondered when she had been captured, how long she had been held. It could be that her father would come for her in a matter of days, and... Sephiroth would be in part responsible for that.

He had never thought much of children. He had never had the chance to be one. What did it mean to restore that chance to someone else?

Silly. It was such a small thing, as his mother said. One life.

And yet, simultaneously, a life significant enough that a man would ask his enemy for help. It didn't make any sense. Sephiroth had never meant that to anyone.

The ropeway car pulled into the north station. A few low fires flickered in the camp beyond it, its inhabitants not benefiting from the reactor that had displaced them. The way Barret carried himself changed, his shoulders slumping as though under a heavy weight.

"Kalm," Sephiroth told him. "That is where they're keeping her."

"Kalm?" Barret repeated. His expression twisted. "But getting back there could take..."

Weeks, certainly, using the means by which Barret had come. Without the others, without access to their pathetic vehicle, he imagined retracing his steps. Sephiroth had no intention of investing so much time in this.

"I do have faster means," he said. "You were correct in that."

"Yeah? So what's that mean, exactly?"

"I fly," Sephiroth said simply.

"...you fly."

"Yes."

"I mean..." Barret gestured vaguely. "I guess we've seen you do it, but you're sayin' that wasn't an illusion? How come you didn't just fly across the ocean?"

"...it's an ocean," Sephiroth stated. "Even I have limits."

"So, we still gotta catch a ship," Barret concluded.

"Yes."

"You're not gonna flip out an' kill a bunch o' people again, are ya?"

Sephiroth regarded him flatly. It was a gaze that many people flinched from, but Barret did not.

"Gonna need an answer on that," said Barret. "Any ship headed for Junon's probably got at least a few Shinra."

"I thought you enjoyed seeing Shinra dead."

Barret grimaced, dropping his gaze. "Don't make it a good thing. A lot o' the low-level mooks, they don't know what's goin' on. Just a bunch o' stupid kids, like Cloud used to be. Nah, with Shinra... you gotta cut it off at the head."

Sephiroth regarded him thoughtfully. Barret wasn't entirely wrong. Shinra's ranks were filled with ignorant young men who thought enlisting meant protecting someone. But the longer they remained, the more willful that ignorance became. The corruption at the top spread quickly.

Still, slaughter on this journey wouldn't serve him.

"I will restrain myself," he said coolly.

"...hope that's true," Barret said, and he turned to walk on.

"It was... not an intended outcome."

Barret glanced back at him. "Last time, you mean?"

Sephiroth hesitated, but there was something strangely enticing about the opportunity to speak to someone about his experiences. They were new to him, but not new to Jenova; why would he relate to her what she already knew?

He could always kill Barret later, if he wanted.

"Learning a new skill is not instantaneous," he said cautiously. "It takes practice to control another body. Keeping Mother's body concealed was... difficult."

"This illusion stuff, you couldn't keep it up?"

"I've learned better now," Sephiroth said.

Barret nodded, eyeing him. "That why you were kinda... off, when we ran into you?"

"Imagine all of your perceptions filtered through someone else's hands, only they don't have hands. Their eyes see differently. They have no vocal chords, so even your voice is pulled together from nothing."

"Sounds like a bad dream, if you ask me."

Sephiroth shook his head. A bad dream? It had been a challenge at first, but now it was a part of him. Jenova's body and each of his puppets were an extension of his awareness. His world grew wider and more tangible. It wasn't the same as touching it for real, with his own hands, but maybe the distance was better. Let his body be numb and insensate in the Northern Crater, if it meant he was untouchable.

"So, uh... the body you're usin' now..." Barret faltered. "Is that... What is it?"

"One of Hojo's failures. That's all."

"You call it a failure, but you're still usin' it, ain't ya?"

Sephiroth scoffed. "That it has a use doesn't mean he achieved his aims. He's poured years of effort into it, and he still can't even manage a pale imitation."

"Imitation o' what?"

"...me."

Barret looked him over, quirking an eyebrow. "Kinda ironic for you to say, considering."

In spite of himself, Sephiroth laughed. Barret wasn't dull, whatever anyone thought. "I suppose it is."

Barret glanced behind them, in the direction of North Corel. "You figure we're far enough away now?"

"Far enough away?"

"So no one's gonna see two guys take off flyin.' Not the kinda thing we want anybody talkin' about to the wrong people."

Sephiroth paused. In truth, he'd only been delaying it. He didn't really care what these people saw, or what they made of it. But as much as this remote body gave him a buffer from sensation... it was still touch.

"You realize I'll have to carry you," he said.

"Yeah," said Barret, looking no more eager. "Think I'd prefer it if I was the one holdin' onto you. Just sayin.'"

"I could hardly expect you to accept my assurances of safety," Sephiroth agreed.

Barret stepped behind him, and he allowed it. He allowed the man to wrap both arms around him, a steady but second-hand pressure against his ribs from a firm hand and cold metal. The sort of embrace that he had experienced only in similar circumstances: when it was necessary.

As long as Barret held tight, then he would not return it.

The added weight was no obstacle, and they rose into the air.

"Shit, you really can fly," came Barret's voice at his ear, the nearest he'd heard any voice but Jenova's in years. As Barret's grip tightened, Sephiroth was glad that the body that felt it wasn't really his.

He picked up speed, following the dark slope of Mt. Corel upwards until they cleared its peak. There was no need to waste time with switchbacks or winding roads. Costa del Sol lay due east, and they sped across the land between.

It was still dark when they arrived. An early ship might leave at dawn.

Barret carefully released him as their feet touched ground again. Sephiroth stepped away, but he made the mistake of glancing back. There was something strange about Barret's expression.

"You can really just... do that," he said, articulately.

"Yes," said Sephiroth, not understanding his point, if he had one.

"Pretty damn incredible," said Barret.

Sephiroth just looked at him, not knowing how to take that. People had always been impressed by what he could do. Hojo had heaped praise on him so that he was sick of it well before he entered SOLDIER. The assessments were accurate, but meaningless. What could it mean to be praised for something so effortless, something that was only a fraction of his real potential?

He hadn't known he could fly, then. And it wasn't difficult now, but it was something more truly him than anything he'd done in service to Shinra.

Barret scratched his head. "Just figured you could stand to enjoy it. Kinda scary on my part, but— pretty exhilarating, too. Don't think I'd be off tryin' to find some Black Materia, in your shoes."

"And AVALANCHE?" Sephiroth asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"I ain't sayin' I wouldn't be fightin.' I'm sayin' I wouldn't be fightin' for that."

Was he suggesting... that Sephiroth ought to find it incredible?

Perhaps it was something to take joy in. Surely joy was something that he sought, and if he could find it before the completion of his plans, then there was nothing wrong in that. He would carry it with him.

« Haven't you always taken joy in what you are, once you understood it? »

Had he? He had found in it relief, and meaning, but he struggled with joy.

The harbor was quiet in the predawn darkness. Sephiroth located the chief of operations' records and determined which of the ships docked would soonest be bound east. From there, they crept on board, with Barret marvelling at how easy it became under the power of illusion.

"Sure don't mind not havin' to wear disguises this time around," he remarked.

Sephiroth glanced at him. "We still need to find some hiding place," he said.

"Yeah? Guess maybe that's easier on you."

"...this body will need to rest soon," Sephiroth admitted. "I can't maintain this while it's unconscious."

"Oh." Barret looked at him for a long moment. He had probably forgotten this was a disguise, and he'd never seen the body's true appearance. A body that would become vulnerable, but pointless to destroy. "Yeah, all right. Let's find a spot."

They settled themselves in the cargo hold, amid crates already loaded and secured. Barret stifled a yawn as they sat. He had, Sephiroth supposed, skipped out on his hotel stay.

"The others will be returning in a few hours to your 'Tiny Bronco,'" he observed. "They won't find you there."

"Yeah..."

"You didn't think that far ahead, did you?"

"Kinda makin' this up on the fly," Barret confessed.

"Might I make a suggestion?"

"...shoot."

"I could arrive in your place, in your guise."

"Disguised as me?" Barret said skeptically. "You really think you could pull that off?"

Sephiroth shifted his appearance, copying that of the man in front of him, and when he spoke, he spoke in Barret's voice. "Think I could put off suspicion a while longer, sure," he said.

Barret drew back, bumping his head on the crate behind him. "Okay, that's creepy as fuck."

Sephiroth shifted back. "Ideally, it need only be for a few days."

"Don't really like the idea o' lyin' to them..."

"You're already lying to them," Sephiroth pointed out.

Barret folded his arms, considering. "Now, wait a second. How do I know this ain't just you wormin' your way into the group? Everybody's headed to the Temple of the Ancients, an' that's exactly where you wanna get to."

"If I had wanted to replace you," Sephiroth said coolly, "I could have simply killed you. None of this is necessary for my efforts."

"...guess you probably got an in with the Shinra anyway, an' they're the ones with the Keystone."

"Precisely."

Barret drew a long, slow breath. "Well, don't do anything weird. Just... Just bring up the rear an' don't talk much."

Sephiroth nodded. "That was the idea."

"Okay. Well, good."

Sephiroth adjusted the position of the body, letting it settle against the crate.

"You gonna get some rest?" Barret asked him.

"Yes."

"Awright. I'll keep watch 'til we get underway."

Sephiroth stared at him. The offer wasn't necessary; certainly there was no danger for him if they were discovered, but... He tried to recall the last time anyone had made him such an offer. It had happened some early in the war, before the difference in kind had become so starkly apparent. He was not someone in need of protection, so protection was rarely offered him.

"Nibelheim," he said softly. "You were right, that it wasn't about anything they did. It was about what they didn't do."

"What do you mean?" Barret asked, his brow furrowing.

"They had a certain... intentional helplessness," said Sephiroth. "The monsters were a problem they couldn't handle. What I learned at the reactor was a problem they couldn't handle. That mansion, and everything that went on inside of it, was something they chose to ignore. They excised it from their community and let it sit untouched for decades, pretending it wasn't right there in front of them."

"So you were angry... they didn't help."

"They never do."

Barret looked skeptical. "What about Cloud? Didn't he try an' talk to you?"

Sephiroth closed his eyes. Everything about Cloud was borrowed, in a way far more grotesque than what Sephiroth did with this body. Sephiroth had heard his version of events, the way he inserted himself into Zack's role. He had claimed Zack's words, Zack's gestures, Zack's confidence. They didn't belong to him.

The lies that Cloud had woven into his own memories were vulnerabilities that Sephiroth could exploit, but the omission dug at him. As if Sephiroth had betrayed a boy of no consequence. No, Sephiroth had been stabbed in the back by the sword of the one man he had trusted most.

"Zack," he corrected.

"Huh?"

"It was Zack who tried. The story that Cloud told you is not his own."

"You sayin' he's been lyin' to us?" Barret asked. His tone suggested he'd noticed enough to believe it.

"Not intentionally," Sephiroth conceded. "His memories are tangled, and he's co-opted a role that never belonged to him. Zack...... was my friend."

He had never admitted as much while the man was alive. To an extent, he wasn't sure how true it was. It hadn't been a deep connection. Zack made friends easily. But when Barret spoke of loss, that was who Sephiroth had thought of. He would have expected the betrayal to negate it, and yet...

"I would have let him live," he said, "if he hadn't challenged me."

"...that when you gave up on people altogether?" Barret asked.

Sephiroth wasn't sure what to make of the question. Barret dropped his gaze, his posture tensing.

"...can't imagine what Dyne must've thought," he said, "down at the bottom o' that cliff. Don't know how long he might've been there, waitin' to see if anybody came back for 'im. I thought he was dead— I left him for dead. But he was down there waitin,' while Shinra burned his town an' his best friend took his daughter, an' maybe that's when it started, him thinkin' the whole world oughtta end."

Sephiroth regarded him silently. Their situations weren't the same, but in a way, they were. Nibelheim had changed his entire world. What little he'd thought he had, gone. Even himself. He'd plunged into the depths of the reactor, and no one had come for him. He'd had to construct something new for himself, something that wouldn't depend on any of them.

In his world, there would be no one to betray him.

He wondered what Zack had thought in those moments. If he had regretted leaving him to that basement alone, leaving the man he'd been then for dead. Would that regret have been worth anything? Could he have accepted it?

Dyne hadn't, and now he lay dead in truth at the bottom of a desert ravine. Sephiroth wouldn't share that fate.

Was he on the correct path to avoid it?

Sephiroth let Barret's words hang between them and closed his eyes. He withdrew his consciousness from the puppet, and in his absence, the illusion would fall, letting Barret see the pathetic form beneath. Just a body. Not him.

He let himself be for a moment in the numbness of his true self in the Northern Crater. There were no sensory distractions here. Nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing to touch. Jenova was always near, just at the edges of his mind, but even that required reaching out, if only slightly.

He didn't have to continue his assistance. He didn't need a second puppet in Cloud's group, and the body he'd left behind on the ship was of little use to him there. He could leave Barret on his own, and he doubted the man would argue it was undeserved. There was no obligation between them. They had done nothing to earn one another's help.

What did it mean to choose to help someone?

What he had had under Shinra were orders. Responsibilities that came with a command he had been pushed into. His life had been lived within the constraints of duty and obligation. Never choice.

Likewise, no one had ever chosen to help him. Lab techs had fed and clothed him and never questioned the lock on his door. His fellow soldiers had understood their chances improved with him alive, and they watched his back on the condition that he carry them through the battle. Even Jenova's guidance came with an understanding that it would benefit them both.

Even now, Shinra prepared for the next leg of their journey. An advance team climbed into the helicopter that would carry them to the Temple's island. They went in blind pursuit, believing Sephiroth's goals were the same as theirs and that he would lead them to a part of the world they hadn't yet ruined.

The rot neither began nor ended with the Shinra, a fact he was sure even Barret knew, loath though he was to admit it. Even the Cetra had been the ones to conceive of a weapon such as the Black Materia. Faced with extinction, they had considered ending the Planet to be rid of a Crisis they didn't understand. For a moment, they had forgotten that the end of their civilization was not the end of everything.

If Sephiroth's world had ended in Nibelheim, did that mean there was nothing else? Were there other worlds worth cultivating?

The Cetra had never used their weapon. They had chosen another path.

Sephiroth tugged one of his puppets south towards where Cloud and the others had left their broken plane. He would watch and wait a while longer.

Chapter Text

It was a weird journey. Not that anything about it could have been normal. With Marlene in danger, Barret had made a snap decision, and now here he was steaming back across the ocean in the company of his supposed enemy.

Or, his enemy's flunky. When Sephiroth dropped the illusion, Barret was left staring at a frail, sickly man shrouded in a black cloak. It made his stomach twist, the first time. Maybe he hadn't given it too much thought, but he'd been imagining some kind of monster. Not a person. How was it okay to let Sephiroth use this guy to help him? Was the imposter he had with Cloud and the others the same deal?

When the man woke again, he didn't immediately assume Sephiroth's appearance. Barret tried to talk to him, but he would only groan unintelligibly. His eyes were vacant. Nobody home.

That didn't make it okay. Just because these guys didn't know what was going on, that didn't make it okay.

But maybe it meant he could put up with it a little while longer, because even more than Marlene, something else was going on here. Barret could feel a question in Sephiroth's gaze. He'd put a crack in Sephiroth's certainty, and if he could just see this through, if they could rescue Marlene together—that crack would get wider.

It wasn't just about saving Marlene, in this moment, from the Shinra who'd kidnapped her. It was about saving her from the desire of one man to end the world.

If Dyne had been able to meet her... Surely it would have changed his mind, too. Barret didn't think anyone could look into her eyes and still wish for the end of the world, least of all her father. If only he'd reached Dyne sooner, faster.

He knew he was projecting a little. The despair and fury at the state of the world, the sense of righteousness turned poison... If he was seeing more of Dyne in Sephiroth than there was, did it mean he didn't need someone reaching out to him?

Barret thought he was doing the right thing. He knew his friends would be rightfully pissed at him down the line, and especially with Tifa, that was going to be rough. Especially with Tifa... But he could take it if they were just angry with him. If the consequences of his decision weren't measured in lives.

Sephiroth kept watch in turn while Barret slept, with Barret relinquishing another fraction of his caution. He was pretty sure Sephiroth could have killed him without waiting for him to sleep; he wasn't really the type to wait for the easiest moment. And maybe it helped that Sephiroth had been the one to sleep first, even if it wasn't really his body. Barret got the sense that he didn't like anyone knowing what was behind the illusion.

Barret wondered where Sephiroth's real body was, and what state he was in. He didn't bring it up.

Instead he'd ask after Cloud and the others. "How close are they gettin'?" he'd ask. "They doin' okay?"

The Temple was a fair distance to the south, especially in that dinky plane, and it wasn't until they'd disembarked in Junon that Sephiroth informed him the others had reached it.

"They're unable to enter without the Keystone," Sephiroth went on, "but the Cetra knows I am not inside."

"'The Cetra'? Her name's Aeris."

"It seems... overly familiar. We haven't spoken."

Barret snorted. "So you're plannin' to kill us all, but you're gonna be polite about it."

The corner of Sephiroth's mouth quirked. "Of course," he said. "I'm not a monster."

It sure didn't seem like he was, Barret reflected. There was still a man in there, underneath everything that Shinra had made him into.

Junon was calmer than when they'd come through with the parade, more like what Barret remembered from his initial journey to Midgar. He was in a different place now than he had been then, angry and desperate and barely able to push himself from one day to the next. Marlene had been all he had, his only source of light, and even then, it was exhausting taking care of a baby. The days had blended together. He remembered the salt stink of the polluted ocean stinging his nostrils when he dozed. The unfamiliarity of it would wake him. He never slept too deep in those days, always scared to take his eyes off Marlene.

"We're almost there now, right?" he said to Sephiroth, as much as to himself. "It won't take any time at all to fly the rest of the way."

Sephiroth glanced at him. "Tomorrow," he said. "We'll rest in the mountains."

They hadn't taken the route directly south from Kalm, before. After that mad chase out of Midgar, they'd been worried about Shinra pursuit on the roads.

Now, Barret wrapped his arms around Sephiroth, and they flew straight up over the cliffs that backed the city, invisible he guessed to anyone around them. He squeezed his eyes shut at first, so he couldn't have said if anyone was staring.

It was terrifying, knowing the ground was so far below him and the only control he had was to hold on tight. He'd never been wild about heights. But it was the fastest way to Marlene, and once he could swallow down his fear enough to crack an eye open, the view was incredible.

They were flying in daylight now. Water sparkling below them where the river fed into the ocean, and the mountains ahead. He could see why Cid was so into this, because having some kind of fucking vehicle to carry you instead of empty air beneath your feet probably cut a lot of the terror.

His fingers curled into Sephiroth's coat—or, into the cloak of the man beneath, he guessed. Everything about the illusion looked and felt real to Barret, but he wondered how it was from Sephiroth's perspective. Did he see his own hands, or someone else's? Did he feel Barret's touch?

They spent the night in the mountains, away from the road, away from anything. Barret had run through the provisions he'd had in his pack, but that was all right. He looked out north and imagined he could see Kalm just at the edge of the horizon.

Sephiroth's presence returned after dawn, his illusion as perfect as always, and they set out north.

Most of the buildings within were newer, but the fortress walls of Kalm were holdovers from a time well before Shinra. It was a history nobody talked about now, like the forgotten names of the towns subsumed by Midgar. Barret had no idea who the walls had been built to defend against, and the people who lived there probably didn't either.

Traffic into town funneled through the main gate, and on his own, Barret might have gone charging straight in, but Sephiroth set them down atop the old ramparts. Barret took a few moments to recover himself with solid ground beneath his feet. Then he turned to peer into the town.

"One of the old watchtowers, you said?"

Sephiroth nodded, and pointed out the building set back slightly from the main square, rising higher than the town walls. It was near enough to the ramparts that someone could jump to it, but Barret didn't see any easy way inside unless you were some sort of ninja. Or space alien. He was just a man with one hand.

There'd be an entrance on the ground level. He figured they could scope it out from here and then move in.

"You know how many guards?"

Sephiroth shook his head. "I haven't had eyes on it before now. But I imagine not many. She's only an ordinary child."

"Ain't nothin' ordinary 'bout my Marlene," Barret protested.

Sephiroth arched an eyebrow at him. "I meant human," he clarified.

"Oh."

"I could easily go in and take care of them myself," Sephiroth offered, returning his attention to the watchtower.

"...what exactly do you mean by 'take care of'?" Barret asked cautiously.

"Kill."

"No. Nuh-uh. We're not doin' that."

"I wouldn't have expected you to be soft on the men holding your daughter," said Sephiroth.

"That ain't the issue," Barret stated. "Marlene don't need to see none o' that."

"Hasn't she already seen death?"

"What? No. Not right in front o' her. Yeah, she's known... a lot more loss than I woulda wanted for her. She understands death, when she shouldn't. That don't make it okay to start killin' people around her."

"...because she's a child?" Sephiroth asked, and it was like he genuinely didn't know. How young had he been when the war started? Barret wondered. There sure as hell hadn't been anyone shielding him from death.

"Yeah," said Barret. "Well... Honestly, ain't anybody really oughtta have to see that. Think it damages a person. But you an' me are old enough to make that choice. She's just a kid. She ain't old enough to look out for herself, so somebody else's gotta do it for her. You get it?"

"...I suppose that's how it's meant to be," Sephiroth said.

Barret nodded. "Can't say I haven't fucked it up sometimes"—he glanced at the watchtower—"but I'm doin' my best."

"I'll take a look," said Sephiroth, "and report back."

"An' you won't do anything else?"

"They won't even know I'm there."

Sephiroth vanished from sight, and Barret watched tensely for any sign of his passing through the watchtower. Quiet was good, but it also meant Barret had no idea what was going on in there. Sephiroth had better be keeping his word... Hell, all he had was Sephiroth's word that Marlene was even here at all, but he didn't see the point of a deception that convoluted.

Sephiroth returned without ceremony, startling him as he appeared back on the ramparts. "There are only two infantrymen, presently eating a meal on the ground floor. Your daughter is in the tower bedroom in the company of a woman."

"A woman? Shit, did they take Elmyra, too?" At Sephiroth's blank look, he added, "Aeris's mom. I left Marlene with her."

"Her mother?" Sephiroth asked, his brow furrowing.

"Adopted. Hence why she didn't get carted off to that damn lab."

Sephiroth said nothing to that. His mouth pressed into a thin line.

"Anyway, that's good. They ain't even on the same floor, so we go in, knock out the guards, an' lock 'em up someplace. Then we can get Marlene an' Elmyra out no problem."

"Only knock them out?"

"I ain't takin' my daughter past any dead bodies," Barret said firmly. "We can figure out if we gotta go back an' deal with 'em later, but the priority's extraction. Understand?"

"Understood."

Sephiroth had quietly unlocked the front door as part of his reconnaissance. The guards weren't expecting anyone to waltz in, they didn't have their weapons close at hand, and it wasn't much of a fight. Sephiroth was right; for the purpose of keeping a four-year-old and one middle-aged woman in line, Shinra hadn't seen the need for anything more.

They hauled the two men into the nearby pantry and bolted it shut. That would hold them for long enough. Barret unloaded their rifles and pocketed the ammo. Just one of these... That was all it would have taken.

"Marlene!?" he called and raced up the spiral staircase without waiting for a response.

As he burst into the tower bedroom, Marlene had just pulled herself free from Elmyra's protective hold.

"Papa!"

She raced into his arms, and he held her close.

"I'm sorry, baby girl," he murmured into her hair. "I should never've let them take you."

"Then," said Elmyra, "what we heard downstairs, that was...?"

"We put 'em in time-out for now," said Barret. He gathered Marlene and lifted her with him as he stood. "But we oughtta get goin.'"

There was a faint thud from behind him, and Barret spun, clutching Marlene close and raising his gun-arm—but all he saw was Sephiroth standing a few steps down from the landing.

"What was that?" he asked.

"...I'm a bit tired, that's all," answered Sephiroth.

Barret wasn't entirely sure what to make of that, but the body under that illusion looked so frail. Had he done something as simple as trip on the steps? Barret nodded, lowering his arm.

His reaction had scared Marlene, and he turned his attention to her, offering a smile. "Hey, it's okay now. This's Sephiroth. He's been helpin' your papa out."

Marlene clung to him, but, half-hidden behind the safety of his beard, she offered shyly, "Thanks, for helping Papa."

Sephiroth stared back at her like he'd never seen a kid before, but at last he nodded.

"You been pushin' your body pretty hard," Barret observed. "We'll get outta here, an' then you can rest a while." Hefting Marlene close, he descended the first few steps until he stood beside Sephiroth, and offered his shoulder. "Lean on me if you need to."

The hand he felt grip his arm didn't match what he saw, as though the man beneath was pulling himself up from the floor.

"...thank you," said Sephiroth.

The four of them exited the watchtower under the cloak of invisibility, so Sephiroth assured them, and made their way through the streets to an inn, where they slipped the key to an unoccupied room and shut themselves inside. Barret promised himself he'd leave money for the stay later, but if anyone came asking, the innkeeper had honestly never seen them.

Sephiroth immediately made his way to one of the beds and began to fold himself inside. Barret set Marlene down and made his way over.

"...you doin' okay?" he asked softly.

"Too much exertion," Sephiroth murmured. "I don't think he slept well."

"Well... you get some rest, but I wanna talk to you later. Okay?"

Sephiroth met his gaze, and Barret wondered if actually, the idea of abandoning this body now that he'd fulfilled his promise had never occurred to him. Somewhere along the line they'd become a team, and it was expected that Sephiroth would return again.

Barret made sure to pull the blanket all the way up over Sephiroth's head, so that when the illusion fell, Marlene and Elmyra would see nothing of the man underneath.

"Where are the others?" Elmyra asked him at last. "Are they all right?"

"They're fine," Barret assured her. "Aeris is fine. Just had to come an' do this without 'em, so nobody would guess we were comin.'"

"Aeris is fine..." Elmyra repeated to herself, letting out a breath.

"You two are both okay, right?" Barret knelt down in front of Marlene, checking her over. Her dress was clean and her hair brushed, and she only giggled when his fingers brushed against a ticklish spot on her arm. He didn't see a mark on her.

"They haven't treated us badly," Elmyra assured him. "We just weren't permitted to leave."

"Good," he said, nodding. "I was worried..."

"Don't cry, Papa. We're okay."

Barret swallowed and picked her up again. Marlene didn't understand the enormity of the danger she'd been in, and he probably owed a lot of that to Elmyra. A captive herself, she'd provided Marlene with a sense of familiarity and safety.

He sat down on the other bed and settled Marlene in his lap. "Yeah. I'm glad... I'm glad you're okay. Sorry I wasn't here."

"You came," said Elmyra, but he wasn't sure that was enough.

"How'd they find you, anyway?" he wondered.

"Like you said, I thought we'd be safer out of Midgar. I have a cousin in town here, but..." She shook her head. "The Turks must have known about her. I'm sure they've done all sorts of digging into my life since I took Aeris in. We'd only been there a few days when soldiers showed up."

"Sorry," he said again.

"No, it isn't your fault. That Shinra would use a child as leverage against you... That's on them."

"Still, I'm the one who asked you to look out for her."

"Haven't you been looking after Aeris?"

Barret scratched his head. He always thought himself in circles when it came to Marlene. He wanted to be with her, to protect her, to be the father she deserved, and at the same time, the world was fucked up, and he wanted to fix it, so it would be the world she deserved.

"Where is the flower lady?" Marlene wondered. "Can we go see her?"

"'fraid it's probably gonna be a while," Barret admitted. "They're all checkin' out some temple down south. I don't think it's too dangerous out there, but it's pretty far away, an' things are a little complicated right now."

"...and him?" Elmyra wondered, nodding to the lump beneath the blankets.

"...that's part o' the complicated," said Barret.

"General Sephiroth," Elmyra noted. "I thought he died, after the war."

"That's what they put in the papers. Turns out he went rogue. I dunno how they put President Shinra in the news, but that was him."

"Then he's with AVALANCHE now?"

Barret shook his head. "It oughtta be that simple, you'd think. But the way Shinra messed with him..." He hesitated, trying to think of a way to explain it without exposing Marlene to all of it. "Guess it'd be like, if Aeris'd never made it out, as a kid."

They had a lot in common, and then they didn't. Out of all of his friends, Barret thought Aeris might be the one to understand what he was doing now.

"They would have used her," Elmyra said quietly. "Then, he's special?"

"In a different way, but yeah. He's been through some stuff, an' he's done some stuff, too, that he can't take back. Tifa an' Cloud, there's no way they could work with 'im. But... I think he can be one o' the good guys."

Elmyra considered that, her gaze going past him. "...well, he helped us," she said.

"Yeah. He sure did."

They kept the curtains drawn, but Barret peeked out now and again onto the street. If there was a search underway, he didn't see any signs of it. No onlookers could have seen them leaving, much less provided the soldiers with the direction they'd gone. The logical thing might be to assume they'd left Kalm altogether. Barret meant to, once they'd settled on where to go.

His stomach started growling, and Elmyra volunteered to venture down to the kitchen, insisting that on her own, she was unremarkable. People would be looking for two tall and very distinct men and a little girl, not a woman whose description matched that of any number of residents. Barret fretted, but he was grateful for it. He didn't want Marlene going without dinner either.

Night fell without anyone so much as checking in with the front desk, as far as Barret could tell. He tucked Marlene in with a story and a kiss, and insisted Elmyra take the bed. He settled himself on the floor beside it where he could easily look up and see his daughter's sleeping face.

Marlene was safe, out of the reach of Shinra to use against him. He could come clean to the others now, and they wouldn't have to go along with whatever that spy Cait Sith had demanded from them. Not that they'd be too happy with Barret either, but he hoped they'd understand his actions, even if most of them would never understand Sephiroth's involvement.

He turned his head in the other direction, gaze settling on the form hidden beneath the blankets. The sleeping body that wasn't really Sephiroth's. Where did he retreat to? Was he still awake there, turning his own thoughts over in his head? Had he come to a decision?

Barret didn't know where they went from here. They'd started something, and even though they'd made it here, he didn't think they'd finished it. They were in-between, where neither one of them had quite acknowledged it.

Whatever the next step, they had to figure it out together.

Barret let his eyes drift shut, letting his guard down. The man who'd been his enemy had helped him rescue his daughter, so he wasn't afraid to.

He still woke before the others, in the morning. The floor was an improvement over the past few nights, but it wasn't exactly cozy. He pushed himself up and took in the room—took in Marlene, still asleep and still safe.

Sephiroth's silver head emerged from the blankets, and he sat up, his back to Barret. It often took him a few minutes to fully settle into the body, but he didn't move. Barret crept across the room as quietly as he could and sat down beside Sephiroth on the bed. The mattress bowed beneath his weight in a way that it didn't for the thin man beneath Sephiroth's illusion.

"Hey," he said softly. "You doin' okay?"

"Yes," said Sephiroth, and Barret didn't believe that for a second. He eyed the man for a moment.

"I talked it out with Elmyra," he said. "I gotta make sure she an' Marlene make it someplace safe. We're thinkin' Fort Condor, thereabouts. Made some friends there, an' they oughtta be better equipped to protect 'em from the Shinra."

"Mm," said Sephiroth.

"What about you? Where do you go from here?"

To that, Sephiroth didn't grace him with any sort of answer. Barret almost considered he wasn't even here, but he could see the way Sephiroth held his hands in his lap, a faint pressure in his knuckles. He was present, and there were things going through his mind that he wasn't sharing. Maybe he didn't know how.

"I'm grateful for you helpin' me," Barret went on instead. "More than I can say. An' I don't want it to turn out that you an' me are enemies. Ain't no reason we gotta be."

"I'm sure you can imagine other scenarios in which I could be of use to you," Sephiroth said coolly.

"What? It ain't like that. That ain't what I meant."

"Then what do you mean?"

"I mean..." Barret ran a hand through his hair. "Hell, at first I just thought, we'd put up with each other until we got to here, an' then that'd be it. But, you're kinda growin' on me. The thought of us goin' our separate ways now kinda bums me out."

Sephiroth glanced at him, cautious. "...is that an invitation?"

"I guess so. Yeah. I wouldn't mind if you stuck around."

Sephiroth fell silent again. Cautiously, Barret reached over and touched his hand. Sephiroth inhaled sharply, but he didn't pull away.

"Hey," said Barret. "C'mon. What's goin' on?"

"Mother has stopped speaking to me," he said at last. "She's shutting me out."

Good riddance, Barret thought, but he bit back the words. Sure, Jenova was nothing but a horrific space monster to him, and he couldn't understand how Sephiroth could call that thing 'Mother,' but he could understand that it meant something to Sephiroth. It was the only sort of connection he'd had over the past five years.

"...she don't like you changin' your mind, huh?" he ventured instead, because that had to be what it meant. Sephiroth hadn't said it in so many words, and maybe there was a part of him that wavered, thinking if he didn't say it, he could still go back.

"No," Sephiroth said. "I didn't want this to separate us. But..." His hesitation stretched for a long moment. "My decisions have to be my own," he finished.

"Yeah," Barret agreed. "You gotta live honest with yourself."

Sephiroth glanced at him again, frowning. "Is that all you have to say?"

"What were you expectin'?"

Sephiroth shook his head. "This is what you wanted, isn't it? For me to change my mind."

"Yeah, but... I ain't gonna crow about it. This ain't some kinda 'I told you so' moment. What you're doin' ain't easy."

"...there are things, even about myself, that I don't understand. It would be folly to end them in ignorance."

Barret nodded. Quietly, he offered, "I'll help you figure 'em out, if I can."

Sephiroth glanced back over his shoulder, and Barret followed his gaze to the still-sleeping Elmyra and Marlene.

"You worried about them seein'... you know. That it ain't really you?"

Sephiroth shook his head slightly. He seemed to consider his words and then said, "I'd like it to be really me."

"Huh?"

"I understand that your daughter is your priority. But if I were to tell you where to find my real body...... Would you come?"

There was a vulnerability in Sephiroth's expression that he'd never seen. He was asking for something he never had before, because someone had made him believe the answer would always be no.

"Yeah," said Barret. "I'll come."

Chapter Text

Barret had Sephiroth leave a slightly more honest note for his friends, saying that he was leaving to find Marlene. Once he realized she'd been rescued before 'Barret' ever left, Cait Sith would know there was a lie in it somewhere, but what was he going to say? The others didn't trust him.

Shinra had gotten into the Temple, but the word was they couldn't decipher it. Unable to secure Aeris's cooperation, they'd sent the Turks out to track down scholars who might have a chance at reading the Ancient's language. For now, both parties were at a stalemate. Barret would trust in his friends to make sure it stayed that way.

Shinra was the greatest threat to the Planet after all, he thought. That hadn't changed, or even subsided, just because their latest quest for new resources to exploit had stalled. Their cities and their reactors still stood, pulling the end slowly but inexorably closer.

Barret hadn't forgotten that. He'd be dealing with them. He'd find a safer place for Elmyra and his daughter, and then, he'd make sure none of them had to worry about the Shinra again.

He wouldn't push Sephiroth into it. Whatever the man chose to do with his freedom would be his choice. But Barret thought that by now they had an understanding. They both had a deep-seated anger they couldn't ignore, and a shared enemy.

They headed south first by chocobo, and under the open sky, Marlene's shyness gave way to rapture. Whenever they stopped to rest, she would excitedly present them with each new discovered beetle or unfamiliar leaf. Her antics mystified Sephiroth—clearly the guy had never spent time around kids—but he never shut her down or brushed her off. For her part, Marlene had no idea the man she gifted pretty rocks to had been planning to end the world, until he'd decided instead to try saving one person.

After they settled Elmyra and Marlene in the village outside of Fort Condor, they began a long trek north. Sephiroth, in his borrowed body, accompanied him as far as Icicle Inn. For all the powers that Sephiroth could channel through these men, they were too weak to survive the final climb, and Barret drew the line at throwing their lives away like that. Whatever Hojo had done to them, they didn't belong to Sephiroth.

He hoped, once Sephiroth had his own body and his own agency back, he wouldn't feel like he needed them.

Barret bundled himself up, swapped his gun for a climbing hook, and pressed on north. Past the mountains, and the glacier, and the cliffs, he came to the crater at the top of the world. It was massive, an expanse wide enough across to hold an entire city, but the slope he climbed down was nothing but lifeless rock.

It was different nearer the bottom, where pure Lifestream gushed up through cracks in the earth. Barret pushed his way through the winds that directed it until he found the calm at the center.

The Lifestream had crystallized all around, just as Sephiroth had described to him. Barret lifted his gaze, spotting one particular crystal nestled overhead amid a tangle of dead branches.

It was going to be a pain in the ass reaching it.

In the end, he managed to hook a rope up through the branches, and he pulled with all of his weight until he felt something shift. Smaller branches snapped as he tugged, and the crystal in their midst slipped loose.

It fell a little too close for comfort, smashing into the rock just feet from where he stood. The crystal split, and it wasn't quite solid inside. Maybe it took more than five years to finish the process.

There was a body inside—sort of. If it were anyone else, Barret would've called it a corpse, because half of it was just missing. He still had his doubts as he approached.

This was the man who'd been his companion these past few weeks? In a way, he could understand why Sephiroth had projected himself constantly through other bodies. Barret had only lost a hand, and that had been hard enough. Almost too much at times for him to cope with, on top of everything else. He would've escaped it if he could.

Uncertainly, he pushed aside the outer shell of the crystal and dipped his fingers into the goop beneath. It had begun to ooze out over the ground like honey, but enough of its container remained that Sephiroth's head had yet to break the surface. Barret got his hand behind the other man's shoulder blades and gently eased him up out of the Mako.

He wasn't sure what to do, exactly. Here he was pulling half a body out of a glowing goo in the middle of a crater. He wiped some of if off of Sephiroth's face, and at the touch of his thumb, Sephiroth's eyelids fluttered.

"Wait, hang on," said Barret. He unslung his pack, hastily pulled loose a blanket, and wiped more from the man's face with one corner.

Sephiroth opened his eyes.

They were the same eyes as they'd always been, speaking to the accuracy of Sephiroth's illusions. It was a piercing gaze, but disoriented.

"Didn't think I'd make it all the way up here, didja?" said Barret.

Sephiroth's mouth quirked, and then opened. "I..." His voice rasped, sending Barret searching for his canteen, but Sephiroth gripped his arm, stopping him. "...I didn't doubt you," he said.

It was a big enough deal for him to say that that Barret wondered if he really meant it. Sephiroth's faith in anything was fragile. Barret was just glad he hadn't broken it.

"Well, good," he said awkwardly. After a beat, Sephiroth released his arm, dropping back, and Barret asked, "So, uh, where's the rest of you?"

Sephiroth shook his head. "It doesn't matter. My body will reform."

"You mean... your legs'll grow back? You can do that?"

"...though I don't know how long it takes," Sephiroth admitted. "I've never done it before."

Barret snorted. "I should hope not. Kinda glad though, 'cause it's weird as hell that we're talking an' you ain't even got all your insides."

Sephiroth's hand brushed the bottom of his torso. On any human person who'd been cut in half like that, there'd be guts spilling out of him, but now that Barret brought himself to look, it was like it had healed over into something resembling—well, something resembling Jenova's body when they'd first seen it in the Shinra building.

"...how's it feel?" Barret asked him.

"Like I'd forgotten," Sephiroth said slowly, "what anything felt like." His hand reached again towards Barret's, and he took it. He wanted Sephiroth to have that contact, so he'd know what was real.

And maybe Barret wanted that, too. After so long talking to an illusion, this was the real thing. He tightened his grip, pushing skin against skin as the Mako sloughed off between their fingers.

"...gotta say, this is about the weirdest situation I've ever put myself in."

"Says the man with a hook for an arm," said Sephiroth.

"To the naked assless wonder!!" Barret countered, and Sephiroth burst out laughing.

If Barret had imagined Sephiroth laughing as he killed President Shinra, it would've been a different sound. He liked this one better.

Even after all the time he'd had to think on his trek up here, he still had only half a clue what he'd gotten himself into. He'd taken the trail of blood at Shinra headquarters for evidence of a deliberate and single-minded vengeance, but that wasn't what he'd found, because nobody was that simple, in the end. He didn't even have himself figured out, with the way he constantly thought himself in circles.

But maybe now they were both circling towards the right way to do things, whatever that might be and however muddy the path. They'd figure it out.