Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

History books often make it seem as if the course of events always turns on a significant deliberative action of some kind, whether it be that of a single individual or of a collective. They may choose poorly, but they still consciously and knowingly set out on a given path. In fact, this is frequently not true. For example, the turning point may be as thoughtless as a man checking his phone one last time before going into a reception-blocking underground tunnel, and so seeing an unexpected message from his father when otherwise he wouldn’t have read it till hours later, when it was far too late to book a flight out.

You may object that the act of checking the phone was thoughtless, but that the real pivot here was Vincent’s decision to, despite a years-long estrangement from his father, act on his worry and visit the man just in time to intervene during an experiment gone wrong, thus saving the lives of both his father and his father’s assistant. In that case, we can jump ahead a few months to said assistant’s sudden and violent bout of nausea near the backdoor of a local Nibelheim tavern, just when two local women happened to be taking out the trash. Lucrecia was trying to make it to a private area before she threw up, but when she stumbled through that dark hall, her head was down and she was navigating mainly by crashing into this or that wall. She had equal chances to fall to the left, through the door to the toilet, or to the right, into a dogleg that led to the kitchen area, and it was purely by chance that she swung right.

Once Lucrecia went right, it was impossible that Mrs. Lockhart and Mrs. Strife wouldn’t see her, given the noise she was making, and both women were far too knowledgeable to miss the signs of pregnancy she was showing. But then you might say that their subsequent convincing Lucrecia of this, when the woman had absolutely no memory of any kind of interaction that could have led to such a condition, was too much of a deliberative action. If they hadn’t insisted she was pregnant, then perhaps Lucrecia wouldn’t have bothered to seek medical attention to verify the truth, and so would never have realized what had been done to her by the so-called medical team treating her after her and Grimoire’s accident. And then she never would have called Grimoire, who wouldn’t have begged Vincent to come help him get her to safety, and so things would have happened very differently on the night of Sephiroth’s birth.

Then consider the events of several years later, when in an otherwise utterly unnoteworthy courtyard in Banora, a young boy skinned his knee while playing at swordfighting with sticks and a friend. Such an injury is not uncommon among children, but the boy’s parents quite reasonably wished to seek out medical care for their son. They were wealthy and anxious about it, and so instead of going to the local doctor, they took their child to the far more prestigious Shinra “surgeon” at the nearby R&D satellite facility. However, Dr. Hollander happened to be working from home that day, and his usual assistant Ms. Hewley also wasn’t there to greet the family and ensure that they had no need to speak to anyone else before Hollander. They both apparently had been called away on an urgent, top-secret matter that had absolutely nothing to do with the visiting scientist who ends up seeing the insistent parents, a man who arrived only yesterday and who was at first completely baffled that “Dr.” Hollander would be calling himself any kind of medical professional, given his woeful deficiencies as a bench technician.

But Professor Gast was a kindly enough man and didn’t want to turn away someone in need, so he did his best to put the family at ease while he called around for someone with actual relevant expertise. In the end, his call was put through all the way to his friend Dr. Valentine in Midgar. The family never did see Hollander that day, although years and years later that boy and his friend—both quite old enough to understand at that point what really happened in that cold, unkind room in the back of the Banoran lab—eventually had their time with him.

Isn’t it an improbable confluence of events that a young Genesis Rhapsodos would suffer exactly the kind of injury that certain deleterious side-effects of Hollander’s unauthorized experiments would reveal themselves? Not every injury would do such a thing, and though he was an active child, his unusual strength and nimbleness also often saved him from run-of-the-mill mishaps. If not for that skinned knee, he might very well have grown into adulthood without knowing his true origins, and then things could have turned out very differently.

Yes, but you say we’re looking at entirely the wrong person here. Hollander certainly regretted his absenteeism that day, but at the time he made a calculated decision in response to Professor Gast’s unannounced visit and if he or Ms. Hewley had been present, things could have gone differently too. Both turning point and subsequent results have to be completely unexpected, you say.

So then let’s look at a point in time later on, when one Zack Fair, newly-enrolled in SOLDIER and eager to make a name for himself, volunteered for a mission to the Nibelheim area, which in all honesty had absolutely nothing to recommend itself except that one of the three First-Class officers always led the mission. Nibelheim was out in the middle of nowhere, with an unpleasant—at best—climate nine months out of the year, an eternally-unruly population of vicious local monsters, and few attractions other than the whispered rumors about it being where the old disgraced head of R&D, Hojo, eventually disappeared.

Even the Firsts never seemed to regard going there as a welcome duty, but once a quarter without fail, one of them took a team there to personally scour the countryside. It was guaranteed face-time with the absolute best and Zack may have been a country boy but he wasn’t a fool, and so he was in Nibelheim when General Sephiroth (!!) had a local woman rush up to him like she knew him and tearfully plead for him to go save her son from the madman in the decommissioned reactor just up the mountainside. To be faithful to the events, Zack did very much choose to go with the General to investigate Mrs. Strife’s story, and did choose to go into the reactor when the General was late in reappearing when promised, and when he stumbled across evidence of a fight and then drag-marks along a rusting, rickety catwalk, he did go forward with eyes wide open.

He did also make a lot of other decisions, many of them arguably less than fully-informed (due to the situational constraints of fighting a crazed scientist with an army of mutated monsters) but nevertheless made while he was aware of other options at hand. But even you have to admit it wasn’t a conscious decision when he eventually fell through a rotted platform (not the same one) and ended up landing on top of an inexplicably combative General Sephiroth, knocking them both out cold for several hours. Which was fortuitously long enough that the General’s natural healing ability managed to expel some of the hallucinogenic substance he'd been subjected to during his absence, and so he was able to regain control of his mind, but was also unfortunately long enough for mad Hojo to retreat and take the kidnapped boy, Cloud, with him.

Of course, they did see Cloud again, and so it might be suggested that this too is insufficiently random since all three were already linked by relationships that would have inevitably resulted in their meeting sooner or later. In fact, Zack and Cloud ended up spending quite a bit of time together, not by either man’s choice (Hojo again) but ultimately seeding the roots of a critically-important connection when it comes to thwarting insane scientist-enhanced alien mind-control, and also if Cloud hadn’t been experimented on and thus gained First-Class enhancements, the entire world would have been short one extremely necessary world-saving supersoldier later on. “Not that I’m saying we owe our lives to Hojo, because nope all the way down the line,” Zack immediately course-corrects. “But my point is—”

“Goddess, please let him find it this time,” Genesis mutters as he irritably taps his sword against a cabinet. “As if we have nothing better to do in the middle of another mad scientist’s lab than listen to pop-philosophical nonsense about our traumatic pasts.”

“—I really, honestly, wasn’t trying to fall on Seph. I mean, I wanted to save him and Cloud and beat Hojo and all that, but not with a swan dive on his head,” Zack goes on. He’d heard Genesis but his attention is clearly aimed more in the direction of the clinking sounds in the next room over. “I was going for Spike and the idea was first punch the hell-dog whatever dragging him off and then go back to talk Seph down—”

“He barely even knew you at that point,” Genesis has to say under his breath. “You were going to just stab him through that chatty mouth of his and then zombie off after Hojo till Angeal and I got up there.”

Sephiroth had been trying—all right, hoping—to ignore the argument and instead examine the labels on the racked test-tubes before him, but then Genesis joggles his elbow. He yanks his arm away, then surrenders to the inevitable and reaches into his pocket. “Fine, we’ll change the teams,” he grunts as he slips his phone out to start a text. “You can switch with Angeal, Zack can do this room and Cloud and I will sweep the remaining backrooms.”

“That’s not an answer, Sephiroth.” Though Genesis briefly angles his body away as if he’s going out, or at least is looking for Angeal’s arrival. But then he snorts and twists back, hiking himself against the counter as he watches Zack. “Who exactly is this elusive point even intended for? They’re in a relationship, it’s not as if Strife isn’t the first person to arrive whenever our resident nitwit falls through the floor yet again and uncovers another vast underground conspiracy, he’s clearly forgiven the man for accidentally choosing you the very first time Fair did that—”

“I don’t know and I don’t want to know. They are in a relationship, and unless it affects combat readiness it’s entirely their business and not mine,” Sephiroth hisses. He sends off the message to Angeal and shoves his phone back into his pocket, then grimaces at how Genesis is eyeing him. “Clearly, they’re having some personal issues. It has nothing to do with you, Genesis, you simply happen to be the unfortunate recipient of Zack’s—”

“Need to verbally regurgitate every single possible detail except whatever it was that actually set poor Strife off?” Genesis snorts. He tucks his arms across his chest and tilts his chin at Zack, who is now blatantly contorting himself to peer into the other room while still rattling on as some kind of demented alibi to mask his desperate interest in Cloud’s silence. “Nothing to do with us, yet we suffer the brunt of ignorance, as always. But then you would be looking for an excuse to heroically overcome, wouldn’t you? No wonder you’re teaming up with Angeal to stage-manage the rest of us into glorified scenery.”

For that matter, it’s quite obvious that Zack and Cloud are not the only couple currently working through something. Sephiroth knows damn well not to engage with Genesis either when the man is both setting out the bait and biting at it, but it’s been a very trying day and they still have a lot of work to do. And yes, it is another damned psychopath playing around with alien DNA and dreams of world domination via apocalypse, and why Sephiroth can’t simply be left alone to kill all of them is—he flattens his hand against the counter. “Meaning?”

Genesis blinks, momentarily surprised. But then he seizes upon Sephiroth’s slip and turns an infuriating smirk on Sephiroth. “Why, Vincent’s in town. At least he’s in the metropolitan area, and thus there is a nonzero chance that whatever ridiculously single-minded effort you come up with might actually be seen by the man and finally make him swoon at your feet—”

“Oh, hey, Vincent’s here?” Of all times, Zack has to pick this one to tune back into their side of the room. He wheels around, his slumped shoulders rising as he grins at Sephiroth. “Did you already try getting your mom to ask him to dinner for you? If not, I’m totally willing to take one for…ah…”

There’s a sigh in the other room as Zack falters, Sephiroth’s expression finally registering with him, and then Cloud comes through the doorway. Strife generally is far more in tune to social undercurrents than his reputation or his demeanor ever reveals—Sephiroth sometimes envies that about him, among other things—and he merely gives them all a brief nod before twisting back to point at the door. Just before he normally would have glanced at Zack, Sephiroth can’t help noting.

“I think this looks like somebody was soaking materia in Jenova gunk again,” Cloud says. When Sephiroth pushes away from the counter, Cloud backs up and then goes into the doorway again, not alarmed but clearly expecting the interest. “But it’s a weird color.”

“Zack, go update the—catch Angeal and send him back up for containment supplies,” Sephiroth says as he makes his way across the room. “I already called him down, he should be on the way.”

“On it, sir,” Zack says, head bobbing. Though he does give Genesis a quick look as he heads out, which of course puts a particular shade of resentment in the man’s eyes.

“We should start setting up barrier spells here too,” Sephiroth says in an effort to forestall the inevitable.

“Oh, yes, now you’re the expert in this sort of magic, when you and the Valentines were off trying to wrangle the damned Wutaians while we were digging up half of Costa del Sol,” Genesis snipes as he does not follow the suggestion, and instead follows Sephiroth into the other room. “Don’t touch anything, you can’t set up a barrier around these things blind, that itself could destabilize one and I at least am not so starry-eyed that I can’t remember—”

After going in, Cloud steps to the right side of the door to let them through. He sighs silently as Genesis storms around Sephiroth, pulling ahead of them both. Sephiroth catches Cloud’s eye and though they aren’t natural confidants, for a moment it does feel as if they perfectly understand each other. That’s all it is, just a short pause to collect themselves and acknowledge the increasingly strong hint of the ridiculous to all of this—Sephiroth has every intention of reasserting leadership and ensuring that one way or the other, they deal with this new incident no matter what Genesis wants to rant about. It’s one moment.

Then Sephiroth turns his head, and as Genesis pulls up just short of the table where the suspect materia are scattered—because the man does know the danger, no matter how snide he is about it—Sephiroth sees a glowing swirl pass across one sphere. He goes for his own materia but it’s too late and the spell is loose—

And then he’s a cat.

Chapter Text

“I did think it was Small at first, but I was running back in and only got the tail end before—the back end, sorry,” Zack says as, clearly still rattled, he explains to Grimoire and Sephiroth’s mother what he thinks happened. “And then I…well, saw them, and didn’t want anything anybody was gonna regret to go down before we could reverse it so—”

“So that’s why, when you got here, Zack and me were chasing Gen around with a coat,” Angeal sighs.

Sephiroth’s mother and Grimoire have superb composure at this point, both of them, but at this Sephiroth’s mother does blink twice. “I’m sorry, I don’t quite—”

“If you put chickens in the dark, they calm down,” Angeal says. Then winces as Genesis, currently stalking angrily back and forth on the bank of file cabinets to the left, screeches at him. “We were just trying to get you separated before anyone tried to eat anyone. I get it, I get it, we’re not going to now, okay?”

Sephiroth’s mother blinks once, then nods slowly. She keeps any hint of accusation out of her expression, but her gaze does drift down to where Sephiroth and Cloud—who is now a small rodent of some kind—are sitting next to each other on the counter. Where they’ve been sitting, very patiently since they managed to get Sephiroth’s phone out of his coat and carry it up out of the way of the fracas to message her. “Yes, they do seem to have all retained their core personalities. Sephiroth, I think it would be wise to run some wellness tests to determine dietary needs in this—this form, things like that—”

Genesis screeches again. Yes, testing isn’t something any of them are fond of but Sephiroth’s mother is damn well trustworthy and if that—

“Whoa,” Angeal says, stepping forward with his palms facing out. Then he backs up to the cabinets and in one swift motion swipes Genesis off the top and under his arm as that literal birdbrain stretches his neck out for another unnecessary protest. “Okay, look, let’s just calm down.”

Which is when Sephiroth realizes he’s lunged up and is now standing at the very end of the counter, his skin feeling oddly prickly all over as he…hisses. He’s hissing. And that batting at his back is his mother futilely trying to grab his lashing tail.

“Shit, Cloud,” Zack is saying from somewhere behind Sephiroth. There are some scrambling noises and when Sephiroth manages to turn—it takes a surprising degree of concentration to calm himself—he finds Zack and Grimoire scuffling over something. Or at least it appears like that, before Grimoire manages to disentangle himself and push Zack back by the chest, while keeping his other hand cupped over a small, faintly-moving object on his shoulder. “Cloud, are you okay?”

“Zack, my son knows who he is. He’s not going to eat his friends,” Sephiroth’s mother snaps, as just then she comes around the corner and then grabs Sephiroth to herself with an uncharacteristic sharpness. “Calm down.”

“I know, I’m sorry, I just—” Zack’s head swivels frantically back and forth, from Sephiroth’s mother to whatever Grimoire has on his shoulder. He inches towards Grimoire, whose expression has slipped enough to look frustrated, but then swings back towards Sephiroth’s mother. Then he takes a deep breath, visibly trying to settle himself.

Sephiroth attempts to do the same. This is bizarre even for them, but it’s not going to help if they all lose their minds and he’s going to be the first to ensure that doesn’t happen. So he relaxes in his mother’s arms, watching Zack rub his hands against his hips…and then Angeal yelps and throws Genesis at the counter for some reason.

“Fucking—” Angeal says, shaking a bleeding hand.

Genesis flaps twice, makes the landing, and then whirls around to squawk at all of them, sharp, newly-wet back-claws stabbed into the counter as he slaps out with a wing at Zack and then Angeal. And no, Sephiroth is not going to eat him, Sephiroth is human and that is well-established and he’s not going to forget it again because of some rogue scientist but Gaia, Sephiroth wants to spring on that clicking beak, and no amount of frantic murmuring from his mother is going to make that go away.

Grimoire shakes out his cloak, then whips it across the counter from behind Genesis. He bundles the damned rooster under one arm, deftly avoiding Angeal as the other man misses his grab and instead bangs into the counter. Then he steps back, looking weary but relatively satisfied, with a small golden-furred ball on his shoulder.

“I think we should continue this discussion somewhere else,” he says as Sephiroth belatedly realizes he’s hissing again. By his head, Cloud somehow develops enough of a neck to nod along. “Somewhere—more—conducive to science.”

* * *

Yes, Sephiroth is a cat, but he hasn’t forgotten how that happened in the first place. There is an unhinged and completely amoral scientist running around with Jenova samples and they haven’t yet confirmed that they’ve found all of the man’s known hideouts, let alone his test subjects, and now they have at least one site that is demonstrably filled with unstable magical hazards. Locations need to be secured, teams need to be dispatched, warnings need to be sent out, and even as a cat he could handle all of that via the wonder of technology. If the technology was better.

“I’m sorry,” his mother says as she ducks into her office, where he’s temporarily waiting; Genesis and Cloud have been relocated to other offices off his mother’s lab for now. She looks at Sephiroth, then over to the side of her desk. Then she frowns. “You still have water…oh, are you hungry again? Oh, Gaia, where is that metabolic testing curve…”

Sephiroth sighs. His mother is trying her best, but frankly, he shouldn’t be bothering her. She has her hands full simultaneously working through the little documentation they’ve recovered so far on their opponent’s research, turning herself into a small-animal veterinarian, and still running Shinra R&D. But he needs a functional tablet in order to find other resources, because every time this one goes to sleep, his paws aren’t dexterous enough to enter in a passcode.

He miaows at her. His mother tenses nervously while her gaze paradoxically softens at the same time; she’s rather fond of animals, but would be the first to tell you she’s not particularly good with them outside of a lab context. Then she blinks and shakes herself. It takes a moment and some exaggerated poking by Sephiroth, but she grasps the problem and goes over to unlock the tablet for him.

“Maybe I can reset this to unlock with a swipe pattern instead of a code,” she mutters, frowning through the settings menu. Then she hits an internal security page and sighs. “Oh…damn it. I might have to call Reeve, Sephiroth, I’m sorry but I think there was an IT circular about this and I can’t remember—”

“What’s the problem?” Vincent says from the doorway.

Sephiroth and his mother both startle. Embarrassingly, Sephiroth still hasn’t found a way to keep his fur from bushing out all over during such moments, and he’s beginning to believe that his tail is independently—and possibly maliciously—intelligent. Which is absurd and he is a cat and he is still capable of self-control, damn it.

“I just explained to Father that while Kusakabe senior is entirely trustworthy, he’s not fully aware that his children are shinobi and I can’t make sure communications aren’t intercepted from here if we consult with him,” Vincent adds as he comes into the room, which is his way of telling them he’s already up to speed and there’s no reason to try and penetrate his resting blankface, as Zack has somehow insinuated that phrase into Sephiroth’s mind. He’s been in the city for a while judging by his clothing, a suit not quite as sleek as current Turk standards demand but that still blends in better in an office environment than his standard field outfit. “He’s going to see if Ifalna can fly down instead. Are you still working through nutritional needs?”

“No, I’ve nearly finished.” Sephiroth’s mother absentmindedly jumps out of the current window on the tablet and into the email app, then frowns down at it. Then she shakes her head at herself and pulls out her phone from her pocket so she can actually read her emails rather than Sephiroth’s. “So far it seems the digestive system is fully animalistic but there are some indicators of accelerated metabolism. Scaled down but I’m working on how much—oh, toxins are completely different now, that’s important. Cats can’t actually have milk.”

“Well, I wouldn’t try what’s by the coffee machines here anyway,” Vincent mutters. He pulls off the glove from his left hand and makes it disappear up his sleeve, studying them both. Then he sighs. “Fair?”

“He means well,” Sephiroth’s mother says with a strained smile. “He’s—very concerned, and just wants to make sure they have what they need—”

Yes, but at this rate Genesis is going to peck his eyes out and Sephiroth has to admit to feeling a slight hesitation about intervening. That’s why they all had to be separated in the first place…and he smells something. He cocks his head as Vincent comes up to the table, helpfully taking the tablet from his mother while she looks at her phone.

“There are a few other things too. Garlic is a problem too, I had to keep Angeal from trying to pull out some pastrami cuts from his sandwich, and I think Sephiroth had about ten minutes of caffeine withdrawal because coffee’s off-limits…” she mutters, her eyes scanning back and forth. Then she tuts a little as Sephiroth can’t help a pitiful miaow. “No, Sephiroth, I don’t want to test whether your healing factor would compensate. You can do without coffee for a week, we do know that won’t kill you.”

Vincent actually smiles a little, which is sufficiently unusual to temporarily distract Sephiroth from the delicious scent wafting from the other man. Then he sets down the tablet in front of Sephiroth and Sephiroth tracks that—movement is a much stronger attraction than it used to be—to find to his pleasant surprise that the screen is not only unlocked, but appears to be displaying a modified virtual keyboard. He tentatively prods at it a few times and discovers the new key size and configuration, while unable to show all letters at the same time, does seem much more responsive to paws.

“Is that the current estimate?” Vincent asks. His hand touches Sephiroth’s back and Sephiroth arches into it without thinking, already in the middle of replying to an idiotic note from Procurement. Then his fingers run up Sephiroth’s spine and curl under Sephiroth’s chin, rubbing gently as Sephiroth’s irritation dissipates. “Father seems more pessimistic.”

“Well, it’s very early right now, I probably shouldn’t be talking out of turn,” Sephiroth’s mother says. She’s already starting to adopt her usual hunched-shoulder posture over her phone. “Obviously this is the top priority, but I think Grimoire’s reacting to how many potential avenues we’ll have to explore. This does look like it’s an offshoot of Hojo’s work but it’s so muddled…and we’re going to be sure before anyone starts throwing more spells at my son. I think the research will take at least a few days, but there’ll need to be a testing plan with a separate timeline…”

“And it’s three of them at once. We definitely shouldn’t be having insecure comms with Wutai right now,” Vincent mutters. He keeps rubbing under Sephiroth’s chin, but his other hand moves and it’s enough to attract Sephiroth’s attention. He pauses when he notices, but then continues till he’s taken out a small bag from his pocket, which also garners Sephiroth’s mother’s attention. “Sardine fillets. Canned, but water-packed and boned, and I picked through them to make sure. Tseng keeps emergency lunch rations.”

Sephiroth is suddenly ravenous. He just manages to stop himself, but not before his back paw has sent the tablet skittering away and his front paws have ended up on Vincent’s side as he stares longingly at the bag. His teeth at least don’t sink into the bag, but Vincent usually seems deeply averse to casual touches…and the man is not shaking him off. In fact, Vincent merely crooks out his arm so Sephiroth can duck under it, and then opens up the bag to scoop out flakes with a fingertip.

“Any luck with recovering something readable?” Vincent asks.

“Not on paper but they’re still working on the servers,” Sephiroth’s mother says. She looks faintly guilty as Sephiroth laps Vincent’s finger clean, but then shakes herself. Then she looks up at Vincent with both surprise and bemused speculation. “Agreed, I don’t want to let on to Wutai at least till I have a better idea of how much of this is genetic or not. I don’t know whether Angeal or Zack is going to take temporary command of SOLDIER—”

Sephiroth is enough of a general that even blurred instincts can’t distract him from that. He jerks his head back and yowls in unthinking protest at her.

“Oh, I know they’re emotionally compromised, the entire lab knows now,” his mother says in an exasperated tone. “But you’re affected as well, Sephiroth, you can’t hope to be effective if you don’t realize that, and even if you can write emails, you still can’t hold a press—Vincent?”

Who actually seems genuinely puzzled by why she’s suddenly switching to him, as he scoops Sephiroth up. The bag of fish moves closer to Sephiroth, posing a priorities dilemma, and before he can resolve it, Vincent has rearranged him so that he’s cradled where he can nose into the bag without stretching and is also picking up the tablet to…hold it where he can see it. “I had cats when I was growing up,” Vincent says, as if this is entirely enough of an explanation, and then he grimaces. “I saw Angeal and Zack on the way in. I haven’t seen Rufus yet but—”

Sephiroth’s mother still is eyeing Vincent, as she should, but her hand comes up to press at her temple. “I don’t even want to think about that,” she mutters. “Damn. I—”

“I’m dealing with that,” Grimoire says as he puts his head into the room. Then he stops upon taking in the arrangements. He’s not so shocked that Sephiroth thinks Vincent was lying about his childhood, but this certainly doesn’t seem normal to him either. “But Sephiroth, reasonably, I think he’ll ask that we keep you out of public view till we have a concrete plan, and I can’t really disagree with that.”

Neither can Sephiroth and—and damn it. He’s one of the greatest strategic minds ever, a seasoned leader and fighter who’s faced down threats both domestic and extraterrestrial, and…he’s a damned cat. This is ridiculous, and yet, this is his life.

“If you want more fish, I took both cans from Tseng’s desk,” Vincent says. Vincent’s father stares at him, face slowly segueing from confused to…confused with liberal helpings of wistfulness, as upon Sephiroth’s instinctive miaow, Vincent juggles things to extract a fresh bag of fish and open it up. “How accelerated is your metabolism now? Mine plateaus at certain thresholds regardless of my form’s size.”

Sephiroth is already munching, but his new susceptibility to distractions isn’t quite enough for him to ignore how Vincent is being strangely casual about all of this. Of course the man has probably the most experience out of all of them with bodily transformations, involuntary and otherwise, but Vincent is intensely private about that, even with his own father; Grimoire has admitted on more than one occasion that Vincent usually has to be near-comatose before he’ll reveal anything about what Hojo did to him. And he certainly isn’t anywhere near this—this relaxed about touching Sephiroth.

“Oh, Gaia, I meant to—I put out some food for him earlier but then was caught up in working out this last analysis,” Sephiroth’s mother says, looking stricken. She puts her hand towards Sephiroth, who peels himself away from the food, sensing her guilt rising—and then twitches when a flake of fish dangles off his whisker. He honestly does not have to rub that off with a paw first but for some reason that is what he opts to do, and so she goes on unhindered. “I need to figure this out, but we need to take care of him. We need to figure out something—”

“He doesn’t have to see anyone immediately, does he?” Vincent says. Then jiggles the tablet just as Sephiroth is twisting around to look at him. “You can write emails, I know that. I meant did Rufus want to see for himself—”

Grimoire shakes his head firmly. “No. That’s not happening.”

“Then if you’re open to it, Sephiroth, I can take you with me so you all can work without worrying about anything else,” Vincent says. He looks briefly at his father, who still seems more than a little baffled but who doesn’t object, and as much as Grimoire loves Vincent, he has no problem disagreeing with him either. “But I don’t know what to do with a chicken or a mouse.”

“I’ll deal with that, and with Angeal and Zack,” Grimoire sighs, speaking as much to Sephiroth as to Vincent. Then he pauses. “Vincent…”

“We had cats, Father. To the extent that he behaves like one, because I’m clear he’s not one any more than I’m different when I’m Chaos,” Vincent says. His tone doesn’t change, but when Grimoire purses his lips, Vincent isn’t visibly surprised. And then he looks down at Sephiroth. “I can get you food, a better keyboard and a secure signal, and if we go to my place, we have a much lower chance of someone seeing you before we’ve planned for it,” he says. “Agreed?”

Admittedly, it is hard to turn that down.

Chapter Text

Vincent doesn’t take Sephiroth straight to wherever he stays when he’s in Midgar, although he explains why before Sephiroth starts to be suspicious about it. “Tseng doesn’t keep an entire closet of canned fish in the office,” Vincent says as they go through the grocery store, Sephiroth sitting in the child’s seat of their cart. “Besides, at volume that’s not likely to stay under budget.”

Sephiroth wrinkles his muzzle at his tablet, which is propped up on the seat before him. He’s already put in emergency authorizations with Procurement and so far they’re not arguing. Granted, that’s probably because he set it up to run on a reimbursement basis so they don’t actually have to procure anything, and it’ll only be war come audit time but he can…he can wait on that, because Vincent is walking them past the pet-food aisle.

“I have your mother’s data,” Vincent says as Sephiroth sits up and cranes his head back to look at said aisle. “But there’s no dietary reason why you need mass-manufactured food and trust me, there’s a taste difference between feed-grade and human-grade.”

That makes sense, and Sephiroth certainly isn’t going to demand to be fed lower-quality meals if there’s another option. But on the other hand, Vincent appears to be suggesting that they create cat-appropriate meals for him from scratch, which would require cooking. Sephiroth has never seen Vincent cook. For that matter, he rarely ever sees the man eat, and the passing glimpses he has had all were rushed moments in between critical fights where Vincent displayed absolutely no interest in the food save for its potential to satisfy his caloric demands. Much more common is Vincent constantly turning down invitations, even from people with superb culinary skills. He’s certainly turned down more than one from Sephiroth, who knows exactly what Vincent means about taste differences and who, even if he doesn’t count cooking among his usual repertoire, is more than willing to tap resources to produce a meal no enhanced senses would reject. Sephiroth had previously concluded Vincent simply doesn’t care about food.

But here they are, strolling through the store with the occasional stop to examine and select items, and Vincent is repeatedly demonstrating not only deep familiarity with all kinds of fresh products, but also pointed opinions as he holds up Sephiroth to inspect this or that. “The pumpkins are in-season but they’ll take the longest to cook. Personally I think they help go longer between meals, but we’re not talking about caching entire beef sides for you. I can just pick up a whole chicken when we get there. I think that’ll last at least a couple days.”

Sephiroth’s metabolism is starting to become an issue. He doesn’t think it’s actually running any faster, but in cat form he’s generally having a harder time maintaining focus and hunger pangs don’t help. He miaows plaintively, pushing away the pumpkin with a paw.

Vincent smiles—he keeps smiling—and tucks Sephiroth back into the cart before pushing it over to select some meats. He does have ample reason to not treat Sephiroth like a dumb animal, but on the other hand, his behavior has been so…friendly. Accommodating. Perceptive.

The tablet buzzes and Sephiroth jumps, then irritably sheathes his claws and grooms down the fur behind his ears, which always seems to take the longest to stop bristling. So much less problematic for him, he can’t help thinking as he reads an infuriating email from Tseng who is completely aware of the situation and who should have plenty of reasons why now is not a good time to be suggesting the Turks encroach on SOLDIER duties. Yes, of course with his background, Sephiroth can’t simply take Vincent’s new behavior at face value, but he has to admit that he doesn’t particularly want to challenge it, at least not right now.

“Oh, is that a cat?” comes a gasp from the side. “He’s so cute!”

Vincent’s hand comes down Sephiroth’s side and scoops under his belly before Sephiroth can fully look up, fingers splaying up against Sephiroth’s chest in a subtle restraint. But also a very warm, nice cradle, very reassuring on an absurdly primal level as two women excitedly converge on them. It’s not that Sephiroth hasn’t had to deal with similar interactions before, but—this time they’re so much taller than him, with their grabbing hands and wide, almost vacantly-adoring eyes, and he can’t help feeling a distinct lack of natural defenses. It’s not a feeling he has much experience with.

He has claws and teeth, obviously, but he retains enough common sense to know he can’t wantonly attack civilians. And anyway there’s Vincent’s coat handily flapping over the push-bar of the cart as Vincent casually leans over him, still fuzzing his belly while talking to the women. Yes, he’s a cat, yes, he’s well-behaved, no, they may not take photos.

“He has an eye condition. They’re very sensitive to light changes, it’d hurt him,” Vincent says. Not smiling now but deploying a bland expression and precisely-calibrated toneless voice Sephiroth is painfully familiar with, as well as body language that encourages the two women to wrap up their gushing and edge away. Sephiroth doesn’t detect any actual form-shift in Vincent, who remains human throughout, but the man is pulling something from Chaos with how quickly the women’s moods change. “Thank you very much. Have a good day.”

As the women creep contritely away, Sephiroth pushes his head out from under Vincent’s coat. Vincent is watching the women go but a second later he looks down. He lifts his hand from Sephiroth and crooks it so that it’s holding the coat off Sephiroth’s back.

“Better?” Vincent says.

Sephiroth…is actually glad to be denied human vocabulary, to be honest, because he’s genuinely torn. On the one hand, no, he did not want the women to touch him. On the other hand, he did want Vincent to touch him, and he’s…he sighs and just says that they should move on. Or at least, he thinks he’s doing that, but as a cat this somehow comes out as him miaowing and inadvertently bumping his head up into Vincent’s palm as he does. Vincent moves his hand a little and Sephiroth thinks he should be pulling back before he puts them both in a socially-irretrievable position. But instead he rubs his face into Vincent’s palm, and he…purrs. He can purr.

“Let’s get the chicken and then we can go,” Vincent says. Smiling again, his fingers angling down behind Sephiroth’s ears and his coat draping back over Sephiroth, as he pushes the cart towards the appropriate counter.

* * *

Angeal knows how to take care of a chicken. Sure, Shinra paid enough that he and his Ma didn’t have to farm like the rest of the village…but the rest of the village farmed. And it might have pissed off Hollander all the time, not that Angeal cared what the man thought then or afterward when he found out what relationship Hollander actually had with his Ma, but Ma didn’t bring Angeal up to turn up his nose at other people. So he helped out with their neighbors’ crops and animals, and from time to time he’d even have his own flock of chickens or ducks or what-have-you when someone gave him a couple babies as a thank-you. Of course, they never lasted that long—Hollander again, dosing their water without telling them—but Angeal took pretty good care of them while he had them.

“And I know you’re not a damned chicken, Gen,” he snaps in frustration. “But you’ve got the body of one and you’re gonna have to fucking eat like one unless you want to starve to death before they figure out how to change you back. So you want to do that or you want to fucking tell me if you’re gonna eat these crickets or not?”

Eventually, they’d gotten Genesis into a dog carrier someone in R&D dug up from the animal experimentation section. It’s way too big and Genesis only takes up about an eighth of the crate, all scrunched in the back with baleful glowing eyes. He has to be hungry, Angeal figures. It’s been more than a couple hours since the whole thing went down, and this morning he’d left behind half his breakfast when he’d stormed out…Angeal sighs.

“Look, I could try shaking you out of there, but I think we both know how that’s going to go,” he mutters. Then flinches when Genesis’ head moves, even though that fucking beak stays all the way back there and Genesis is apparently just glaring at him from a different angle. “This sucks. I get it. But you have to eat, and I need to figure out what your protein’s going to be, all right?”

Genesis cracks open his beak a little and Angeal braces himself again—the human version has nothing on the rooster at top volume—but surprisingly, no bleeding follows, from eardrums or hands or elsewhere. They just stare at each other a bit, and then Genesis levers himself up with an air of furious dignity, skinny little legs appearing like magic underneath.

He pauses and cocks his head, his feathers ruffling up around his throat even as they’re smoothing down along his belly, and Angeal belatedly straightens out his mouth. Honestly, it’s not funny. Shit keeps happening to them that’s not only out of their control, it’s completely out of the blue and then always ends up dragging along a tail of freshly-hellish past they all would’ve been happier not knowing about, but now have to get used to with everything else. It’s not funny, and Angeal knows it’s not funny, and he’s really trying. He is.

“You need protein,” he says, because it’s true but also because if he doesn’t start talking again, he’s not going to be able to keep his expression to something that won’t piss Genesis off. “You feed chickens shit, then they’re going to be shit, that’s what they always said and the science backs that up. But, uh, look, there are a couple choices I was looking up when Grimoire had you…”

Genesis’ beak clicks sharply and Angeal stops to instinctively pull his hands back from the crate, which he’s got set on their kitchen counter. He got some work gloves but they’re a couple yards away and he’d have to turn around to grab them, and he’s leery of doing that given Genesis’ reaction time doesn’t seem to have suffered any. And anyway, he’s barely glanced at them when Genesis irritably stalks out of the crate, wings clamped tightly to his sides but tail feathers quivering every time he bobs his head. Because he can’t stop bobbing his head, with its jaunty little comb and wattles and shit. No smiling.

“I’m not gonna give you the commercial feed stuff, if that’s what you were thinking,” Angeal says to distract himself. He blinks hard as Genesis abruptly straightens up, then shakes his head in genuine disbelief. “Gen, come on—it wasn’t like people had a lot but we didn’t do that to our animals in Banora. You remember that, don’t you?”

Then Angeal winces; trying to reference their childhood, even the parts that actually had nothing to do with Hollander, is always a hit-or-miss with the other man, with the hits usually being a night or two of the silent treatment. The gloves, he thinks, and starts to back up to them since with Genesis out of the crate, he doesn’t have to be right up against the counter to keep eyes on him.

But Genesis doesn’t go flying at him, surprisingly enough. Instead Genesis stretches out his neck a little and squawks, and then jerks back. Then angrily scratches with his feet, but it’s at the counter, and he’s moving his wings weirdly too, not as if he’s launching himself but as if he’s trying to smack his own…

“You trying to say something?” Angeal guesses.

Genesis looks at him again. All of the rooster’s feathers flatten down except for those tail feathers, which hike up and then quiver in palpable frustration.

“Okay, right, Vincent said download this…” Angeal reaches into his pocket, then swears and turns. Then whips back around, sighing in relief when he sees that Genesis is only looking disparagingly at him. “Phone’s gonna be too small. Just—stay there, and I’ll get a tablet and set it up and then you can peck at it and I’m just trying to make this work for now, all right? You can be mad as hell—you deserve that—but don’t kill me doing it.”

He waits a moment. Clearly, this is not Angeal at his best, and Genesis communicates that just as well with a beak on his face as he does when he’s covered in gore and throwing LOVELESS quotes around. But Genesis just stands there, so…Angeal gets the tablet.

Vincent’s keyboard hack does work, but it takes some experimenting for them to figure out how hard to poke the screen, and by the time Genesis gets the hang of it, Angeal is already rush-ordering a replacement tablet from IT. “I’m pretty sure you can break this thing in half if you really tried, but then we’re back to you just screaming at me,” Angeal tells him, rubbing at one crack that damn near spans the screen.

Genesis makes an irritable clucking noise and flaps off to the other end of the counter. Angeal starts to grab for him and he whips around, puffed out for a fight with one leg raised to emphasize the spur and Angeal grimaces.

“Okay, okay, I’m just…never mind, it still works. Just come back and—here, this is what I mean,” Angeal says, swiping at the tablet since he’s got it. He pulls up some of the chicken-keeping manuals that one of Lucrecia’s assistants rounded up for him, then goes to one that he remembers has a nice graphic. “You still need a balanced diet, and since you’re—you’re smaller, Gen. You run through stuff quicker so you’re gonna feel lack of nutrients faster. So we’re talking hard-scrambled eggs or chopped steak—”

One second Genesis is on that end, the next he’s landed with a fancy swoop just behind the tablet. His head juts over the tablet’s top edge nearly into Angeal’s face, and then, while Angeal is flinching, he hooks up one foot over the tablet and pushes it down flat. He gives it a jab with his beak, waits, and then squawks in exasperation.

“Wait, I need to get it up—” Angeal makes the keyboard come up for him.

If chickens could roll their eyes, Genesis would…but their eyes don’t seem to be able to move like that so instead he ends up doing a looping thing with his head. And then he bends down and types out eggs? followed by some garbled stuff because the keyboard keeps switching out groups of letters when Genesis doesn’t want it to and then he pecks at it in annoyance so it switches again and Angeal just pulls it back before the screen gets another crack. He's got some idea of what Genesis means anyway.

“Yeah, eggs. I have those in the fridge, I’d have to go run out for steak and then chop it up. We fed that kind of stuff to the chickens when it was the dry season and they weren’t getting enough bugs from the yard,” Angeal says. He returns the tablet to the chicken manual. “Bugs would be better, but I’d have to find out where we’re gonna get a pet store carrying mealworms or something like that, and also…would you eat those? They’re still going to look like bugs and you—”

Genesis vigorously bobs his head. Then stops and visibly thinks about what he’s doing; he does seem to be in control of himself and fully aware, but it’s pretty obvious that something between what he wants to do and what his current body actually does isn’t totally synced up. Then, slowly, he moves his head from side to side.

“Yeah, I had a feeling,” Angeal says. “But you eat eggs all the time. You make us go all the way across Sector Two for eggs at that one place because they’re from Banora, even though honestly, Gen, an egg is an egg.”

For that he gets an ear-splitting screech. But no spurs or beak to the face, and once he looks up from rubbing at his ear, Genesis is still just looking at him. Sure, the man is a rooster right now, but he’s still not actually a bird and anyway, real chickens will happily eat scrambled eggs. Angeal used to crumble up any breakfast leftovers for a couple chicks he raised, which Genesis definitely saw when the other boy came over…Angeal just stops himself from mentioning that time, because Genesis is starting to bob his head again and that seems to mean he wants to get something out.

Angeal brings up the keyboard again. Genesis looks down at it, then looks up at Angeal. For some reason he seems surprised…but then his head goes back down and he laboriously taps out fine.

A wave of relief goes over Angeal. Those manuals had also had some advice on restraining chickens and forcefeeding, and it’s not that he needed them to tell him about that but they’d made him remember that was an option too and…he’s just glad they aren’t going there yet. “Okay, good. I think once you’ve eaten you’ll feel better,” he says.

Genesis clucks dismissively and then falls off the counter—no, he jumped down to the floor, and now he’s backing up, neck arched aggressively and wings raised, as Angeal stops in the middle of a lunge for him.

“Look, you can’t go out—you can’t go out like this. You were there, we all talked about it, Seph already started letting everyone know, and how the hell he’s getting this many emails out…” Angeal shakes his head “…I’m gonna make the eggs and I can’t do that if you’re making me chase—”

He’s cut off by another ear-splitting cry. As he curses and slaps his hands over his ears, Genesis pointedly walks by him from near the doorway to the living room to the other hall. Then Genesis stops at the threshold. He looks back at Angeal, scratches at their tile, and then goes across the hall into the bathroom, which is completely interior and doesn’t have any windows or exit except for its door. And the ceiling vent, but even with a beak like a stiletto Genesis probably can’t manage that on his own.

“Oh, okay, yeah, just…I’ll call you when they’re done,” Angeal says. Then pauses. This is just weird, and nobody saw this coming and they never trained for anything remotely like this, he wants to say. “Guess it is kind of weird to watch now.”

A small but distinctly grumpy cluck comes back as Genesis’ tail feathers disappear around the doorway. Then there’s a loud thunk and the door slowly starts to swing shut. That spot Genesis had scratched at is shining a nice long mark at Angeal too, so he’s going to have to add home repair to everything.

“Fuck,” he says. He shakes his head, presses the heel of his hand against his still-ringing ear, and then sighs and turns to get the eggs out of the fridge.

* * *

“It’s not that bad,” Zack says, and he’s not intentionally lying. It’s an opinion, he’s allowed to be subjective, and anyway it’s not the first time that half of SOLDIER leadership has been knocked out by unforeseen mutations. It’s not even the first time that it’s because they’re non-human, although admittedly non-human issues due to mind-controlling alien DNA and Hojo attempting to erase Lucrecia from existence are a little different from non-human because none of them are bipedal.

But it’s not that bad. They did finish up the active fighting part before the materia whatsit got triggered and no one’s currently overdosing on Cure Potions. The mad scientist is still at large, but now they know what his best offensive weapon is and they’ve got him on the run so it’s mostly keeping an eye out. That and protecting the vulnerable until R&D can work up a way to reverse things, but that’s just normal SOLDIER mission objectives.

“Seph’s already sent out a cover story, a nastygram to Scarlet, and three meeting reschedule invites before I could even get to them, so I think regular ops is fine till tomorrow morning at least,” Zack adds as he reads through another label. He frowns as he gets to yet another word he’s got to look up on the no-go list of ingredients, then grimaces as he realizes that actually, he needs to go check this brand’s last food inspector certification first before he even gets to the ingredients. “I just gotta take care of this, no big deal.”

Tifa, bless her, dropped everything the moment he messaged and literally marathoned over the roofs of half a Sector to meet him at the store, but for some reason she now seems distracted. She keeps checking her phone instead of checking labels with him. “Zack, are you sure that this is what we should be doing?”

“Getting food?” Zack says. “He’s a mouse, Tifa. He can’t just eat your leftovers—no offense, they’re delicious and I’m definitely still volunteering for human trashcan duty, but Cloud’s got a whole bunch of different—”

“No, I know, but we’ve already got five bags waiting by checkout,” Tifa says, and that’s when Zack notices that her stance is not as relaxed as someone who’s just going shopping with a friend should be. Also, she’s got her fighting gloves on now, and she doesn’t wear those day-to-day because she says the leather splits from the soap at her bar. “He is a mouse, and even if he’s still got the same appetite, don’t you think it’ll take him more than a week to just work through what you already have?”

Zack sighs. He did try to brief her when she’d first showed up, but he probably was running over his words and wouldn’t be surprised if he’d forgotten to show her some of the key nutritional charts he’s downloaded. “I’m not going to make him stick with just one, Tifa. The guy’s been through the wringer and again, nobody got him the consent waiver first so the last thing I want to do is just make him put up with something without giving him some choices. You know?”

Tifa nods slowly, but her eyes are flicking off to the side. She starts to say something, then pauses as her phone buzzes. While she checks that, Zack quickly looks up the box he’s got in his hand so he can just figure out if this is a candidate for further consideration or not. He decides it’s not and is putting it back on the shelf when Tifa looks up again.

“I get that, Zack,” she says. She’s using that tone of hers that unruly but not yet violent drunks get at Seventh Heaven. “But Cloud says he ate already.”

“What?” Zack snaps, yanking his hand away from the shelf and spinning around. “What do you mean, he ate a—wait, did those fucking Turks come down and start fucking—”

“I mean he’s messaging with me, and I know it’s him because he sent me a photo.” Tifa backs up a step but then braces on her feet as she turns her phone to show Zack the screen and the slightly out-of-focus golden ball of fuzz on it. “He says he ate so you don’t need to get him anything. He also says stop you before you buy up the whole store. We’re supposed to be keeping this all on the down-low and I agree with him, I think that’s going to attract a lot of attention.”

“Yeah, I know, I co-signed that plan,” Zack says. Not thinking about it, because that is definitely a Turk suit in the background behind Cloud. He shoves his hands down against his legs but shimmies up as close as he can to the phone before Tifa startles and hops back. “Damn it, I knew I should’ve just done online and stayed put, but it’s hard to get accurate pellet size from photos and he’s such a—what’s the timestamp on that?”

Tifa pauses in the middle of pulling her phone protectively to her chest. “Zack,” she says. “Zack, he just texted me.”

“But that’s a—”

“Oh, for—” Tifa starts to lower the phone as if she’s going to look at the timestamp, but then dodges sideways while swinging herself around. When Zack pivots to keep on her, she catches him by the shoulder and shoves him out of the aisle. “Look, I’ll tell him we’re coming back, you go pay for those bags before they just get mad and throw us out, and then we’ll go see how he is.”

Zack jerks away from her, then presses his lips together. Normally he likes Tifa, but she just doesn’t seem to be getting the situation—and she’s Cloud’s best friend. He’s seen her take down a literal army of mutants to cover the guy’s back, so why she’s behaving like this…well, he doesn’t need to pick a fight with her. He needs to get back to Cloud before those thugs in suits decide now’s a good time to stage a coup.

So they pay and take the five bags of rodent food back to HQ with them, where they discover that despite Tifa assuring Zack every couple minutes that Cloud’s fine, Cloud isn’t in the lab anymore. Cloud is gone.

“He’s not gone, Zack,” Grimoire says sharply as he steps out of another room. He always looks a little ragged around the edges, but usually he’s unfailingly polite no matter what fresh hell has broken out around them. “He just wanted to move out of my office, so can you please not yell at people?”

“Oh. Sorry,” Zack says. He lets go of the labcoat on the man he’d been trying to ask what was going on and steps back as the man dives into the room behind Grimoire. “Didn’t know.”

“I literally told you he told me that,” Tifa says from behind him. Her tone has gone from velvet-gloving the drunks to deeply-disappointed maternal figure, which on the scale of things capable of instantly withering Zack’s self-esteem is only a couple rungs below Aerith being sad and that one expression of Sephiroth’s. “Can you just look at your phone? He said he tried to text you that he got an escort from the Turks.”

“Really?” Zack says, pulling that out. And thumbing it. And thumbing it. And then blinking as Tifa leans over, pokes the endless line of messages piled up on the lock-screen a few times and then takes it from him. “Shit, the Turks—”

“—are not here to carry your shit around but Tseng says we gotta be team players so here I am, walking your boy safely through the halls because you literally cannot pay attention to him,” Reno says as he strolls through the door. Then his eyes widen and he does a nifty little (if Zack wasn’t busy plotting his murder) backwards tapdance as Zack straightens and takes one step towards him. “He’s fine! He’s fine! Stop fucking Hojo-eyeing me and take your—”

“Cloud,” Zack says, every muscle in his body going slack with relief as he spots the small dot of fluff climbing up onto Reno’s shoulder. Then his brain catches up with him and he immediately goes forward to scoop Cloud off the trash and start checking for injuries. “Listen, I’m so sorry, I know I said it was just a food run and we did actually get food, we got a lot of food—well, not as much as I wanted but we’ve still got a nice selection and I just wanted to make sure I covered all the bases and the first store—”

“The first store?” Tifa says incredulously. Then she sighs. “Okay, I’ll…stay with them. You can go back to work, Dr. Valentine.”

Cloud pushes his head out of Zack’s cupped hands and squeaks. At first Zack thinks he’s found a sore spot and starts to turn Cloud over for a better look, but somehow Cloud goes from roughly tennis-ball shaped to a noodle skinny enough to slip out of his grip. Then he squeaks again, looking deeply and meaningfully into Zack’s eyes…before he jumps into the air back towards Reno.

Who had been slouching around, one hand in his pocket and his eyes leering at Tifa’s neckline, but who does have good enough reflexes that he reacts to the movement. He turns, and then when he realizes what’s happening, his eyes widen and his arm shoots out. He grabs Cloud, but instead of bringing his arm in to make a secure cradle, he just keeps it stiffly out as Cloud hauls himself onto the man’s wrist. “Oh, fuck n—listen, I brought you over, that’s it, I’m not doing this all day—you have a boyfriend and like two girlfriends or whatever and that’s deeply unfair already, Strife,” Reno goes on, like somehow this is all ruining his day. “Get off.”

“Cloud, don’t touch him, for all we know he’s gonna mutate wings on you on top of everything else,” Zack says with a glower at Reno.

“I think he wants his phone,” Tifa says. When they both look at her, she sighs. “Or was he using yours?”

Reno actually seems gobsmacked that she’s speaking to him, and it takes a moment for him to get his jaw to work. “What? No, he’s got his own, he was just bitching to Tseng that he needed a quieter office and you all left him and Tseng’s like, just let him work on your desk, Reno, it’s not like you use it and that way we don’t have to worry about the janitors accidentally assassinating a First—”

“Oh, fuck, I didn’t think of that,” Zack says. He digs out his phone and starts frantically messaging Sephiroth, Angeal, everyone he can think of to make sure that all rodent-unfriendly traps are removed from the premises.

“…give him to me,” Tifa says, and when something squeaks right afterward, Zack looks up to find her holding Cloud in one hand while pointedly waving her empty other hand in front of Reno. “And his phone, Reno.”

“It’s not like I want it,” Reno says as he coughs that up. But then he stands there, looking, and for once Zack might give him the benefit of the doubt that it’s Tifa’s bust preoccupying him. “Gotta say, it is kind of cute watching those tiny little paws. You know, if he gets bored, I got some bugs to rewire. You might have another career for you if you’re too small for SOLDIER now, Strife.”

Cloud hops from Tifa’s hand onto his phone, then curls up on top of it as he and Tifa both look at Reno with the same unimpressed face. “Thanks,” Tifa says flatly. “Nice to see you. Tell Elena and Cissnei I said hi.”

Reno makes a moping face at her, and when she doesn’t crack, snorts and slopes off back into the hall like the sleazy conman he is behind his teammates. “Asshole,” Zack says, and then looks at his phone when it beeps. “What…Seph, we totally can’t have rat poison now. What the hell? Why are you saying no?”

“Zack,” Tifa says, and now she’s giving him the same look she gave Reno for some reason. She starts to say more, but then stops and glances down at…Cloud’s typing something out on the phone. Her brows twitch as she reads it and then she sighs. “Okay, okay…Zack, listen, Cloud wants to go home so you don’t have to get rid of anything here. He’ll try the food we got.”

“Oh…oh, okay! On it!” Zack says. “Anything you want, Cloud, don’t worry about it. I’m on it.”

Cloud squeaks again, and then, weirdly, scooches down the phone in the opposite direction from Zack. But that’s into Tifa’s palm so maybe he’s just worried about falling, and even if she’s being a little snippy, Zack does trust her with Cloud way more than any of the Turks. So he shrugs it off and just gets on to what’s important right now.

Chapter Text

With food supplies secured, Vincent takes Sephiroth to his apartment.

As simple as that sounds, Sephiroth finds it almost as unbelievable as the fact that he’s now a cat. He’s known Vincent his entire life and the man hasn’t let him or anyone in his immediate circle anywhere remotely near a location Vincent uses for non-work purposes since before Sephiroth entered puberty. Even when Vincent and his father had mostly resolved their familial issues, and Vincent had finally admitted to Sephiroth’s mother that he’d stopped blaming them for Hojo capturing him, Vincent had made it abundantly clear he preferred to continue keeping large chunks of his life out of their view.

Given that Sephiroth knows Vincent so well because his hated biological father and various Shinra factions invasively manipulated their lives, he can’t hold that against the man. That is simply how Vincent operates, no different from his Chaos transformations, and even when Sephiroth realized the direction his feelings towards the other man was taking, it’d never occurred to him to press on this point. He’d always done his best to create settings that he hoped Vincent would feel comfortable going into without the excuse of some threat, and had never thought he’d ever be the one going to Vincent’s place.

But here he is, being carried across the threshold and then put down as Vincent turns to re-arm the door locks, and the first thing Sephiroth does is…duck into a closet.

In his defense, the door was barely open and investigating that sliver of darkness was far more compelling a priority than all the well-lit, clear space in the rest of the room. It was mysterious and smelled interesting and both his feline and SOLDIER instincts agree that one should check and secure anywhere a potential enemy could mount an ambush from. But it’s a closet, and while it is filled with what looks like neat stacks of ammunition cases and several identical shinobi outer robes, its possibilities are quickly exhausted.

Sephiroth slides his head outside, then starts as a shadow crosses over him. When he looks up, Vincent is standing just by the closet, coat off and hanging over one arm while his other hand rests against the side of the door.

“Open?” Vincent says, a faint smile playing around his lips. When Sephiroth miaows, Vincent makes an amused noise but obligingly swings the door wider. He puts in his coat while Sephiroth pads out into the room, then leaves the door that way as he casually follows behind. “I need to get the chicken started, but first this is the layout.”

They do a quick walk-through, with Vincent pointing out not only the room functions but also additional escape routes and access points for utilities. At the bathroom Sephiroth pauses, then silently curses as he realizes he’ll have to go back into the other room to get his tablet and explain what he wants.

“I think it’s workable with paws,” Vincent says, and when Sephiroth looks at him, surprised at the man’s accurate guess at his thoughts, Vincent stretches out and gives the toilet handle a testing wiggle. “I can get you a litter box if you want, but didn’t see that we needed it otherwise.”

That is absolutely not necessary. Sephiroth jumps up onto the toilet rim and miaows, to which Vincent smiles again and rubs Sephiroth’s head between the ears at a spot Sephiroth is rapidly understanding will disconnect most major brain functions aside from pleasure. But it feels good and if nothing else, he isn’t going to seek out torture for himself while he’s like this.

He thinks, as he purrs and butts his head into Vincent’s fingers. Vincent gives him another rub, but then backs out of the room and heads for the kitchen. And with the man’s departure, Sephiroth’s other bodily needs re-assert himself, so…yes, he uses the toilet. It’s only minimally more involved than when he’s a human, and if he can still grasp the intricacies of Shinra bureaucratic paperwork, he can grasp simple lever principles.

The question of sanitation, on the other hand…his cat body thinks it knows what to do, but Sephiroth overrules that and hops to the sink. This has a twisting handle, which is slightly more of a challenge without thumbs, but still manageable. The water flow is a little more than he needs, but he doesn’t want to keep fussing with the knob so he bats his forepaw through it and then reaches down to his backside. All very simple, except that there’s a sudden movement in his peripheral vision that must be dealt with.

Five seconds later, Sephiroth is sitting uninjured but deeply disgruntled on the floor of the bathroom, thankful that the old adage of cats always landing on their feet is accurate but still utterly baffled by this antagonistic relationship he has with his own tail. He irritably smacks the twitching thing, then looks up as Vincent appears in the doorway.

“Oh,” Vincent says when he sees Sephiroth, like he only needed confirmation of nothing untoward. He steps around Sephiroth, turns off the sink, and then goes back into the kitchen.

Sephiroth stands up, which also has the happy effect of removing that offensive tail from his forward vision. He shakes himself, then wrinkles his nose and paws at a damp spot with his backleg—apparently, his backflip off the sink had swept some water with it—and then reminds himself he is a highly-intelligent, highly-trained soldier with better things to do.

It does make him feel a little better, once he’s returned to the couch and gotten his tablet pushed up against a cushion, to work through a few more emails. So far no one seems to be concerned about their cover story, although he has a few complaints about Zack…but there’s a private message on the side from Cloud saying it’s being taken care of. Granted, with those two Sephiroth usually wants a third pair of eyes before someone ends up dragged back to medical after extracurricular heroics, so he puts Angeal on alert.

This takes all of ten minutes, even with the extra time he needs to type now, and then…he looks around. It’s new and it’s Vincent’s place, and even if Vincent’s idea of interior decoration goes to minimally functional and Sephiroth can basically count every piece of furniture in every room from his spot on the couch, things still must be investigated.

All right, he does understand that he doesn’t need to actually sniff and then poke everything, but he does learn a few additional facts that way. Namely: Vincent appears to not have had anyone else, human or animal, over in a good while, Vincent does not have plants—so where the ones Angeal and Aerith keep giving him go is an interesting question—and Vincent’s physical library consists of a couple well-worn Wutaian cookbooks, one slightly less battered Midgarian one, and the same edition of Northern Continent folklore, notable historical crime, and other unsolved mysteries that Sephiroth has.

Also there’s a box of yarn. It’s right next to boxes of gun-maintenance supplies and once Sephiroth has pried off the lid, appears to be stored in the same meticulously-organized fashion, so it’s not a gag gift from someone. It…smells like Vincent uses those hooks and needles, and runs his fingers through those skeins, and…

“Damn it,” Sephiroth says when Vincent comes to check on the noises a minute later and finds him tangled up in bright scarlet strands.

That is, he means to say that, but the noise that actually emerges from his throat is a absurdly pathetic little whine, whose only redeeming feature is that it makes Vincent smile and pick him up in both arms. “Hold still. This is the imported one, I don’t want to shred it off you,” Vincent says as he starts working off the loops.

Sephiroth blinks and cocks his head. He does do his best to cooperate with the other man, but can’t help hooking his paw at the yarn when it passes in front of his face. And again, Vincent has yarn.

“It’s a little hard to find tailors who are willing to take measurements off my other forms, and most of them are in Wutai,” Vincent eventually offers, halfway through untangling Sephiroth. He has Sephiroth held by one arm only now and is frowning at a particularly tricky knot around Sephiroth’s dangling hind leg. “Good to keep up skills for emergency repairs, and for downtime—my mother taught me. She had a traditional upbringing, knits and embroidery for everyday and poison needles for missions.”

That explains it. That also doubles Sephiroth’s knowledge of Vincent’s mother, at least from Vincent’s own mouth; Grimoire talks a little more about her but mostly about her familial connections to high-ranking Wutaian clans and the secret knowledge of the Ancients her shinobi sect had hoarded, since he’s still quite obviously grieving her early death.

“There,” Vincent says, removing the last loop. He leans over to scoop up the loose yarn in one hand and Sephiroth expects to be dropped back on the floor, but instead Vincent takes him and the yarn into the kitchen. “Here, eat something. I think you start losing focus whenever you’re hungry.”

Sephiroth can see—and very distractingly, smell—the chicken through the stove’s window, but Vincent produces a small plate of minced giblets mixed in with some steamed vegetables. None of it is seasoned aside from what might be a splash of unsalted chicken broth, but it’s delicious and Sephiroth inhales it, licking all over the plate for every last drop.

He does feel a little less scatterbrained afterward, he thinks as he sits back and absently scrubs his face with a paw. Though now he’s rather drowsy, and Vincent’s gone back into the workroom, probably to tidy up Sephiroth’s mess…he didn’t mean to do that but he was so interested in learning about the man, and Vincent actually seems to be letting him, and he likes Vincent. He grew up always being able to trust the man, knowing that no matter what happened, Vincent would try to find him and his mother, and when he was old enough to return the favor, he…

He likes this place, he thinks as he folds his legs under his belly. It doesn’t smell of too much, except for the guns, but he could grow used to those. And he likes being able to see through all the open doorways, and that he’s fed and feels safe and now this smooth open counter has all this space for him to let his tail dangle over and tuck in his head and…he’ll take a quick little nap. A quick one.

* * *

Genesis looks at the dish of eggs scrambled with powdered supplements and mixed grains from the organic grocery a few blocks away. He tilts his head to one side, then to the other. Then he lifts one foot and puts it on the rim of the dish. His head goes back up as Angeal inhales a little too loudly, but when Angeal grimaces, Genesis clucks dismissively and then gives the food an experimental peck. Then many more pecks, as it passes muster and then some.

“See, I knew you were getting cranky. You always do when you’re hungry,” Angeal sighs. Then puts his hands up as Genesis gives him a sharp look. “Okay, fine, I’ll—I’ll shut up now. Just eat, okay, and after I make sure nothing’s blowing up somewhere else, we can figure out the bathroom and the coop.”

As soon as Angeal says it, he knows he shouldn’t have. He’s just tired and doing his best not to get grumpy himself, because there’s still a lot that he needs to do and he’s already spent the entire day running around and now he’s got yet another weird dramatic change to their lives to try and deal with. And yeah, he’s still luckier than Genesis this time around but he is really done with getting his ears blown out at point-blank range. Genesis’ beak snaps open and Angeal’s hands go out and before either of them know it, he’s got Genesis off the counter.

He's not going to hurt the man. Genesis is still himself, even in a rooster body, and Angeal doesn’t need any scientist or even tricks like messaging with a phone to tell him that. He can see that just by looking into Genesis’ eyes—he knows the person looking back at him, he always has, even through the worst of it and even when neither of them was sure themselves who they were. He knows, and so he takes a deep, deep breath, moving his hands a little further down so he’s not pressing on Genesis’ wings and also isn’t going to accidentally do something to Genesis’ neck.

“Gen, we can’t do it like this,” he says as calmly as he can. “Not when you’re a chicken. I know, all right, I know this is incredibly stupid and you want to kill all of us and I honestly kind of want to too, but…not like this. So just—just listen to me a second, okay?”

Amazingly, Genesis is silent. He didn’t even cry out when Angeal grabbed him and though he feels tense under his feathers, he’s still looking at Angeal.

Whether that’s a good sign or a bad sign, Angeal has no idea, but it’s at least a chance and so he keeps forging on while he can. “I know you can still think like you in there, but you’re a chicken so you need chicken food and chicken beds and chicken exercise and chicken—chicken stuff, so you’re still healthy when we do get that fucker who set up that trap. It’s stupid but I don’t want you to fucking die like this, so can I just show you what that means?”

Genesis…nods. When Angeal blinks at him in astonishment, he finally displays some restlessness and starts flapping his wings and pedaling the air with his feet. Angeal lowers him to the counter without thinking, then curses as Genesis promptly ducks out of his hands. But before he has to grab for him again, Genesis hops around to the right side and then comes back up to the edge of the counter. That pissy look is starting to come back onto Genesis’ face, but instead of battering Angeal’s eardrums, Genesis just clicks his beak twice. Bobs his head, then impatiently turns around and looks at the…

“Right, okay, what I meant,” Angeal mutters, trying to collect his thoughts while he scoops up the tablet. He puts in the wrong keycode—his—before he realizes which one he has, then unlocks it and starts tapping. “So food, I think we’ve covered. You’re gonna need to shit at some point—”

An annoyed cluck makes Angeal wince. When he looks up, Genesis has jumped across to the kitchen sink. He walks around to the faucet, makes eye-contact with Angeal as he puts out one foot and kicks on the water, and then he pivots around and angles his bottom half down into the sink. A couple seconds later, he straightens up and promptly starts ruffling his tail feathers this way and that, craning his head around to inspect himself.

“Okay, great, I’ll just tell Reeve so they don’t freak out at our sewage testing next week,” Angeal says, tapping that out while he talks so he doesn’t forget about it. He sighs at the clucking he gets in response. “Because after two times we all agreed we’re really shitty at self-diagnosing when we’re hallucinating because of drugged food and water and he actually keeps his promises to not fucking tell anyone besides Lucrecia and Grim, okay? Anyway, coops. We’ve still got a couple hours but there was a reason we made the chickens all go inside at night, Gen.”

Who kicks the tap back off and then wings his way back to Angeal’s side of the counter. He’s still dripping a little bit of water from his tail and Angeal moves his arm out of the way as Genesis muscles up to one side of the tablet, then starts to peer at the shopping list Angeal has on its screen. Genesis squawks, louder and more annoyed than his baseline grumbling but well below a scream, and then pecks up the keyboard. Then he starts tutting to himself as he keeps misspelling words.

“Look, better keyboard, I have that on the list too but I need to get down to IT for that and I can’t do that till the morning,” Angeal finally says. He tugs the tablet away from Genesis before a hole gets pecked through the glass, but lays it down so Genesis can still see the screen. “It’s not because I think you’re gonna get eaten by things that don’t even live here, Gen. It’s because you’re gonna fall asleep, and when you do, your feet are gonna clamp down and you’re gonna stab whatever you’re on with those spurs and you’re going to rip up all those Mideel cotton sheets we have. So you need a perch and you need a coop for the night. Also, it’ll keep you cleaner.”

Genesis twists his head around to look at Angeal, then bobs it skeptically.

“You’re a chicken, you get parasites and stuff in here—” Angeal pushes a finger against Genesis’ belly, then catches one fluffy feather as it floats loose “—that people don’t get. They crawl in at night if you just sleep on the ground and I’m not peeling up all our carpet just to make sure that doesn’t happen here. I mean, it’s probably less than if we had a yard but it’s not like I’ve been checking before this.”

Angeal can see Genesis working through everything and even working through some initial impulses to rage at it all. None of it looks like fun, but he’s actually surprised Genesis is even trying, considering how much they’ve been arguing lately. The other man had been taking offense at pretty much everything, from Angeal finding them a bigger place—after he’d complained about Angeal not committing to their relationship—to just Angeal getting him fucking coffee in the morning without asking how he wanted it. It’d almost been like without external threats, Genesis needed to make life difficult for them.

Then again, this isn’t really how Angeal would have solved that problem, and he has to admit he’s not sure how he’d be taking it if he was in Genesis’ place. “I can put it wherever,” he offers up. “And I think maybe you might just need a bar to sit on, it’s not like we have to put up a whole coop—”

Genesis’ head swivels sharply around. He squawks irritably at Angeal, then stomps on the tablet. When it slides towards him, he hops onto its lower end with both feet, somehow maximizes the window with the chicken houses, and starts walking around on it; turns out it’s a lot easier for him to scroll through search results than it for him to peck a message. He goes through them, stopping every so often for a closer look, for long enough that Angeal starts to realize Genesis isn’t just doing this to be aggravating but is actually, genuinely shopping.

“You want a little house?” Angeal says, blinking. “But—you don’t really need it, and I thought—it’s not gonna make you feel trapped?”

The chicken who is his life-partner makes an absentminded clucking noise, but otherwise ignores him. Angeal rubs at the side of his face, then gives the area under his eyes a harder rub. He needs to get Genesis settled in, and then he needs to check in on work—Sephiroth seems to be holding things down with sarcastic little emails everywhere but it’s not fair to let the man take on all of that. He probably should see if Sephiroth and Cloud are doing all right too, although both of them texted earlier that they’d just left the lab and were going to finish the day remotely. And Zack, shit, Angeal hasn’t even wanted to think about the poor guy, and guiltily recognizes that that’s especially because of the manic look Zack had had the last Angeal had seen of him.

“Bawwk,” Genesis says emphatically.

Angeal looks down. Then reaches cautiously for the tablet, and when Genesis gets off it, turns that so he can have a better look. Predictably, it’s one of the most expensive models, offering not just a perch but a whole “luxury nesting experience” as well as three different ways to access eggs with minimal disruption to the brooder, which isn’t really something Angeal thought he had to think about. For a second, he wonders if he should be moving up a panicked call to Grimoire and taking Genesis back in for a more thorough check-up.

Then Genesis clucks again, and when Angeal looks, Genesis has managed to get up another window. “These aren’t for chickens,” Angeal says, looking at the pet beds. “You don’t put chickens on cushions, you usually put in some straw or—”

Genesis stomps his foot, then flaps briefly as he destabilizes himself. He huffily sleeks down his feathers, then stares at Angeal before pointedly looking all over himself.

“Yeah, honestly, who cares. This sucks, let’s just make it a little better,” Angeal says, because fuck it, it’s just going on the emergency expense report anyway and at the end of the day, if Genesis likes it, then Angeal’s fine with it.

And yeah, he just wants to move on and get in the order so he can get an estimate of when the delivery’s going to get here and then get on with other things. He pulls up a chair and starts moving things to check-out while Genesis looks over his shoulder.

* * *

Cloud likes the food.

Once they get inside, Zack gets out five dishes and spoons a decent helping into each of them from the bags, then spreads them out along the floor in the entryway, because that’s closest to the bags. Then it occurs to him that the floor is gross and Cloud’s not a fucking animal even if someone out there apparently subscribes to the Hojo school of thought that SOLDIERs are just as good as lab rats, so he picks up the dishes and moves them to the coffeetable in the living room. But then he thinks that one, the light there isn’t good and two, it’s kind of chilly and Cloud’s fur looks about as warm as dandelion fluff, so he totes everything into the kitchen counter where he can spread a towel over a heating pad, and then goes to adjust the wall thermometer.

When he gets back from that, Tifa is sitting at the kitchen island and leaning over a phone with Cloud at the other end. They both look up as Zack does a fist-pump upon seeing the dish bottoms, and Tifa starts to say something.

Wait, Cloud ate some food from all of the dishes. Zack goes over for a closer look and then spends the next minutes seriously regretting that he didn’t think to weigh portions or take photos so he’d have a good measuring stick. Instead he’s got to guess about which one looks like a bigger portion was removed from it.

“Did you turn the heat up?” Tifa finally asks, just as Zack has his cheek to the counter to squint at whether one dish looks like it’s got nibble-marks on a pellet or whether the pellet just broke that way. “I thought you liked to keep it on the cool side, because you all run hot.”

That is a little sweat breaking out on Zack’s forehead. He wipes it off before it can drip into the dish and ruin his analysis, then runs his fingers along the back of his neck too. “Sure, but I can just strip down and take a cold shower, it’s not like I didn’t grow up frying eggs on the front steps in the afternoon. As long as it’s good for Cloud, it’s good for me. So…okay, I think I’m gonna scoop number three and number five into the feeders but we can always switch it up later if those don’t test out on seconds.”

“Feeders?” Tifa says as if she’s not quite sure what language she’s speaking. There’s a squeaking noise and she starts to answer Cloud, but then frowns and leans over the phone again.

They seem comfortable, so Zack goes back out into the hall, just in time to see the tracking dot on his phone signal it’s gotten into the lobby and he should go meet the delivery. A couple minutes later, he’s got his boxes from the pet store and is back inside the apartment.

“Zack, what…when did you buy those?” Tifa stammers as she wanders out into the living room. She steps back as Zack maybe too-enthusiastically rips open one box, but then shakes herself. “I thought we just got pet food. What is all this—wait, did you actually buy a hamster ball?”

“Look, I checked it out online while I was waiting for you,” Zack says as he holds it up and taps at it. “This isn’t the cheap plastic, it’ll hold up to a three-foot fall on concrete. So okay, that’s not bulletproof but I think that’s gonna work just for now until I can get Tuesti to repurpose some of our truck windows and make a SOLDIER-standard one, but it’s pretty neat, isn’t it?”

Tifa doesn’t respond. When Zack looks over, she’s gone back into the kitchen and is talking to someone on the—oh, she’s talking to Cloud. Well, she was pretty worried about him when he first told her and the drive over didn’t really give them time to catch up, since motorcycles are not built to carry that many bags of mouse food and she basically was hugging a bag with her thighs the entire way. So he lets them be and finishes unpacking everything.

He's just gotten things laid out in order of priority for assembly when Tifa comes back into the room. “Zack,” she says in the kind of tone that makes him automatically check for his sword. “Zack, listen. I know you’re worried, but I don’t think—I think we should stop and see what’s really got to happen here. Cloud’s not actually a hamster.”

“I know,” Zack says sharply, and then he goes back on his heels and rubs his hands through his hair. Realistically, he knows Tifa’s coming from a good place, but since Meteor was averted she also doesn’t spend nearly as much time out on patrols with SOLDIER. Which is a good thing, people need places like Seventh Heaven to relax and she’s doing just as much as they are to rebuild, but she also just doesn’t see as much crazy stuff as them now. “I know, I know, I know. But he’s in one right now, and he’s really tiny. And I know he’s still the most awesome possible mouse ever and can probably figure out how to kick my ass but he can’t do that if some dumbass steps on him.”

Tifa frowns at him. She still doesn’t look like she gets it, but she at least has adjusted her may-be-crazy meter in the opposite direction of suspected Hojo-clone. “Okay, but I thought all three of them aren’t going in to work till we figure out how to change them back.”

“Yeah, that’s the plan. So I’m just trying to figure out a good way to give him the places he needs to feel safe and secure so he doesn’t have to go—hide in Reno’s desk or whatever,” Zack says. He picks up the hamster ball again, then sighs as he looks at it. “I was thinking he could move around in this and it’s colored like we bought it at the Gold Saucer, so it’s not like I’m gonna stumble around in the middle of the night and miss it like—”

“Like some dumbass?” Tifa says, but gently, with her arms relaxing from their tightly-folded position across her chest. She comes into the room as Zack nods and then puts the ball aside, going up to one of the mouse habitat sets Zack ordered. “Well, I guess I can kind of see how you got there, but maybe we should talk to Cloud and see if he even thinks he needs to roll around in a ball? He was showing me his inbox, it looks like he’s got a lot to read through.”

Zack blinks. “Shit, you’re right. I mean, he needs to keep up the cardio but he can always do that later. Here, hand me that one over there, that’s the one with the wall I think I can make a tablet stand in.”

For some reason, Tifa needs a couple seconds to think about what he’s asking, again like he’s switched languages on her. Then she finally bends down and gets the opened box of parts for him, but once she’s pushed that over, she about-faces back into the kitchen. He hears her voice now and again but she’s pitching it pretty low, so he figures she’s not scolding anyone, and anyway these kits are…they take some thought. Which is kind of ridiculous, and if Zack can and has successfully assembled one of Scarlet’s prototypes while being divebombed by fire-spewing harpies, he thinks he should be able to figure out which end of a plastic tube plugs into a cage, but no.

But he perseveres, and eventually, even manages to implement a couple of the custom hacks he was planning on because no, Cloud isn’t a regular mouse and Cloud does need special attention to make sure nobody forgets that. He’s just about done with the core unit and is standing up to carry that into its planned spot when Tifa comes back in.

“Listen, Zack, I have to go. I got Barret in to cover for a couple hours but he’s got to pick up Marlene from the babysitter and I don’t have anyone to shut down the bar tonight,” Tifa says. She looks uncomfortable and keeps glancing back into the kitchen, then almost-making faces at the boxes on the floor before making herself look at Zack. “I have to do that and then I can come back, and I’m going to keep checking my phone…” she turns back to the kitchen and her voice rises anxiously before she catches herself “…if either of you need anything. Just call, okay? Cloud says he’s fine right now, but I’m free once the bar’s closed. So call me if anything comes up.”

Zack assures her that he will and that he gets it, she’s got a business to look after and it’s not like he and Cloud are planning to go out on the town tonight. Her face starts to scrunch up again, but then she takes a deep breath. She starts to turn, but twists back and suddenly steps up to give him a quick, tight hug.

Tifa puts on a tough face up there with the rest of them, but if this didn’t get to her in some way, he’d be afraid she was infected with Jenova cells. He hugs her back and tells her it’s going to be fine, he’s going to make sure Cloud doesn’t get into any trouble, and then walks her to the door.

Then he goes back to the kits. After about an hour of paper cuts, chipped nails, crumpled-up useless instruction booklets and an annoying amount of watching online videos of smiling teenagers putting together way more complicated-looking set-ups, Zack has something he would be comfortable letting Cloud call home for the time being. He stands back and catches his breath for a moment, and then…goes over it one last time to make sure there aren’t any loose parts or sharp edges.

That done, Zack bundles up all the trash and puts it by the door for later, then goes into the kitchen, where Cloud is no longer sitting on the towel, or at the food dishes. Actually, Cloud isn’t anywhere.

Zack’s skin nearly jumps ahead of him as dread fills him. But then he remembers how small the guy is and gets hold of himself, because the last thing he’s gonna do right now is run wildly around his apartment not looking where he’s going and accidentally send Cloud to the damn surgeon for reconstruction again. So no, he’s going to—he’s going to be a fucking SOLDIER about this and find his downed comrade like this is enemy territory.

“You want me to send a team to your apartment with heat-vision probes,” Tseng says two minutes later, completely not understanding the emergency level here. “Zack, with all due respect, your neighbors are going to notice that in the ventilation ducts. Why don’t you—”

“Why don’t you think about how Cloud fucking saved your ungrateful ass and gave you a Curaga before those ice-cold fish guts of yours got used to living outside, and just help him out?” Zack snaps.

There’s a little flat inhale, and then Tseng resumes speaking in that Turk-issue bland voice of no concern, not even when you’re bleeding out at his feet. “Eighth floor, go to the maintenance closet on the west side, wait for Rude to open the false back. Cloud’s there.”

“…what?” Zack says, and then spins around in his kitchen again. “What—what the fuck, you kidnapped him—”

“No, he came down to our monitoring post, and yes, we’re monitoring because we do see a problem with the entire SOLDIER leadership being compromised, and it’s not because I want someone else in your boots, Zack.” Although then Tseng mutters something to himself in Wutaian, and while Zack’s not completely fluent in it, he’s spent enough time with Yuffie by now to pick up the cadences of a ‘which is so fucking annoying.’ “He also messaged you that he was going.”

“Okay, one, he didn’t, why would Cloud tell me that the Turks are inviting him down for an interrogation party, and two—” Zack takes out his phone, purely so that he can shake it in Tseng’s face once he finds the man, and…sees a message on the lockscreen. From Cloud. He thumbs to it and reads it. “Two…so wait, you have a spy post one floor down and you’re reading my DMs?”

Tseng now sounds as if he might be suppressing some actual emotion with his entire lower jaw. “Zack, if Cloud Strife pops out of a vent, my team does not just sit there. They ask him what he’s doing there, and he told Rude he told you he left to get some work done.”

Zack stares at Cloud’s message, which says: dont want to bother you but i need to do something. going to turk on 8 to use their system. im okay.

“Actually, Rude’s just going to take Cloud up to you,” Tseng sighs. “Just answer the door and let my people go back to finding that damned scientist, all right?”

More Wutaian muttering after that, but Zack tunes that out because he’s walking to the front door. Tseng hangs up on him right as Rude messages that he’s here.

Zack opens the door. Rude, sunglasses firmly reinforcing the stony lower half of his face, holds out Cloud. Who seems happy enough to climb onto Zack’s hand, and Zack isn’t about to quiz him in front of Rude or any remote listening devices Rude may have brought along, so Zack waits till the door is locked and they’re back in the kitchen.

But before he can ask anything, Cloud wiggles out of his grip and leaps to the counter. Then waits for Zack to stop yelping and straighten out of a belated lunge before he nudges at his phone, which is still lying there. He has a little trouble unlocking it because he has to stretch his whole body over the passcode grid to enter it and the phone keeps picking up his belly fur, so Zack does that for him, and then he types out: did you eat yet?

“I…no, but I’m okay,” Zack says. Of course his stomach doesn’t get the message and growls right on cue, and as he tries to smile over it, Cloud taps at the phone again.

lets eat. Then he gets off the phone and walks over to the food dishes. He noses at number three, but then pushes back like he’s going to go for number two instead. Then he pauses. He pushes up on one paw and looks at Zack, and his little blue eyes slowly close and then re-open, like maybe he’s tired and is just trying to stay up now for Zack. Then he goes back into the number three dish and bunches himself up into a fuzzy yellow ball, just with tiny ears sticking out as munching noises start coming from him.

Zack exhales. Then inhales, and then turns and gets a meal tray out of the freezer. Okay, he probably should eat something. He’s starting to feel it now that he thinks about it, and he can’t be off his game with Cloud like this, and Sephiroth and Genesis also out of commission.

He puts the tray in the microwave to heat up, then shakes his head as he remembers something. “One sec,” he says to Cloud as he goes back into the living room.

A minute later, he’s returned and has his tablet while the microwave beeps softly in the background, looking up night-vision camera he can clip around the mouse house. If Cloud needs a nap, then Zack is going to make sure nothing gets to the guy.

Chapter Text

Sephiroth yawns and stretches till he completely flops over his back and is facing in the opposite direction. His limbs seem a little sluggish but he’s warm and comfortable and wondering if it might perhaps have been a poor decision to wake up when—yes, he’s still a cat.

He’s a cat, on Vincent’s kitchen counter, and wrapped up in some kind of soft red cloth. It has been tucked in around him, but not so tightly that a few kicks and then some twisting doesn’t free him. Then he spends a few minutes putting his fur back in order, but even as he’s methodically licking along his spine and tail, he is registering details about the cloth: it’s saturated in Vincent’s scent mixed with laundry detergent, with fainter notes of gun oil, blood, and the Midgar under-plate area; it’s hemmed differently on two sides and has an oddly-placed seam running up the middle; it’s covered in long silver-white strands.

The last one makes Sephiroth rotate his hind leg out of the way and get up to nose at it, then poke with a paw. Obviously, the strands are all from him, and they stand out as if he’s striped the cloth with fluorescent dye. Someone who goes out of his way to be invisible as much as Vincent does is going to hate that.

Hair issues aren’t new to Sephiroth, but his human hair usually comes off his clothes with a quick brush of the hand. His cat hair, on the other hand, appears to be made out of Velcro and he’s only managed to scrape a few strands up into a clingy tuft on part of the cloth when Vincent suddenly picks him up.

“No, you need lint rollers for that, really nothing else works,” Vincent says, as he deftly bundles Sephiroth into one arm while opening up a drawer. “Believe me, I’ve studied the subject. I don’t wear a lot of black because I still feel like a Turk or a shinobi.”

Which has half a dozen sizes of lint rollers organized into precise lines, and also Vincent is revealing more about himself but mostly, Sephiroth notices that the man is damp. And has only half-buttoned up his untucked shirt, and before he’s able to help himself, he’s wiggled around and swiped a paw over very bare skin.

“Oh. Right.” Vincent apparently thinks the dampness is the problem because he pulls all of his wet hair down one shoulder, then hikes Sephiroth up onto the other while he buttons up the rest of his shirt. Then he tears off a paper towel from the roll in the corner and pats at Sephiroth’s forepaws, lowering Sephiroth as he does so that they can look into each other’s eyes. “Did you want to use the shower? Or…well, the workroom set-up might be easier for you to manipulate, but I do actually use it for work, if that’s not off-putting.”

Sephiroth is staring at him. Vincent, unguarded and off-hand, with his hair for once not blowing all over his face but slicked out of the way so it’s completely impossible to ignore the sheer physical attractiveness of his features. Holding Sephiroth so close that he wouldn’t even have to uncrook his leg all the way to touch Vincent and he has spent an enormous amount of time looking past the surface to the man whose life has repeatedly shaped his own for the better, to someone who has earned not only his gratitude but his respect and his painfully-unexpressed affection, and…staring when one is a cat appears to be acceptable, because after a second Vincent simply smiles and squeezes his paw and then puts him down on the counter.

“Food?” Vincent says as he retrieves a lint roller.

“Miaow,” Sephiroth says without thinking, because this body’s base instincts are far more aggressive about co-opting him when he’s not watching out for it.

Vincent nods and after giving the cloth several quick strokes with the roller, he folds it in half and pushes it to the edge of the counter. Then he goes to the fridge and makes up a meal for Sephiroth, who’s apparently been asleep for long enough that Vincent finished cooking the chicken and portioned it up into a row of containers. He’s supposed to be…Sephiroth shakes his head, then looks around for his tablet. He’s the head of SOLDIER, he thinks, he and his officers have been targeted by a very dangerous opponent who is still at large and who if left alone will do far worse and he keeps wanting to nap and purr. Never mind how Vincent is behaving, Sephiroth needs to get control of himself.

A few minutes later, Vincent appears in the living room with a towel, a warmed-up portion of the chicken on a dish, and his own tablet. He puts the towel down by Sephiroth and then puts the dish on top without comment, then takes up a spot on the other end of the couch to do some of his own work. He doesn’t appear to be offended that Sephiroth left him and doesn’t even seem that anxious that Sephiroth eat what he brought, although a few minutes after Sephiroth eats it—it is tasty and Sephiroth was getting a little fatigued trying to follow the latest R&D report—he does reach over for the plate and take it back into the kitchen.

Then he returns and takes up his spot on the couch again. Sephiroth manages to focus through another report and a half, but then feels his attention drifting. He grooms himself in an attempt to refresh his mind, then switches over to Tuesti’s first attempt at culling the city’s electrical grid usage map for any clues to their opponent’s new base of operations. Having a new subject seems to work for a little while, but soon Sephiroth finds himself trying very hard to ignore the unruly tail-tip that keeps sweeping into his peripheral vision.

Finally it’s too much and he whirls around to pin the damned thing. Just once, just to prove whose will is supreme—and of course he seizes his prey but at the cost of a dizzying somersault across the couch, ending with him knocking into Vincent’s leg.

“Bored?” Vincent says, tablet hastily lifted out of the way.

The cat equivalent of a burning face of shame apparently is a sudden and irresistible need to wash one’s face. Sephiroth needs a second to master his instincts again (and admittedly, another second to convince himself ignoring the problem is unhelpful) before he can look up at Vincent. Who, far from mocking, seems thoughtful.

“For what it’s worth, Chaos had different takes on sleeping cycles and a few other things than I did before the…merger. I tried fighting it on everything at first, but realized that was just a waste of effort.” Vincent’s lips twist a little. He’d done the majority of that away from the rest of them, despite his father’s and Sephiroth’s mother’s efforts to assist him, but they all saw enough to know how herculean an effort that was. “A lot of them don’t have anything to do with who’s running things in my head, it’s just how that form works. I started having more energy to actually control myself when I figured that out and just…slept every third day, invested in lint rollers, things like that.”

Sephiroth puts his paw down and considers this. He still hates the idea of anything being able to override his intentions, but on the other hand, he does think he has some expertise in malicious deliberate mind-alteration and his current state is not that. It’s a nuisance, yes, and he also hates to give in to what should be merely a temporary inconvenience. But he needs to be pragmatic as well, and his overall goal should be to do what he needs to in order to protect the rest of them.

Which, it appears, requires him to take a play break every four emails or one report. As personally humiliating as it is, Vincent’s unconcerned attitude towards him goes a long way towards dampening down his reactions. The third time, Vincent even produces his own tail and actually waves it in front of Sephiroth. Who does try—a little—not to maul it too enthusiastically, but Vincent seems unharmed by it and even strokes his back and head when he eventually collapses by the man to catch his breath.

At any rate, Sephiroth manages to stay logged in long enough to feel that he’s both ensured SOLDIER operations will see out the night without issue and that he’s materially advanced their investigation. He still has a few messages in his inbox that he hasn’t gotten to, and there are a ridiculous number of DMs queued up on his private channels but he stopped trying to untangle those when he saw the matching messages from Tseng and Tifa telling him to just stay out of it for now. But now he genuinely is tired; maintaining this level of concentration as a cat, even with play breaks, seems to take a much greater toll on him.

Sephiroth paws off his tablet properly, but then his mind momentarily fuzzes out as he turns around and he can’t quite remember what he’d intended to do next. A draft waves over him from the ceiling vent and he shifts away from it, then tucks in his tail around his feet to keep them from growing cold as he tries to think. Then a warm, pleasingly-firm hand runs over his back and he instinctively twists towards it, his body drooping sideways when it comes up against a supportive leg. It’s even a good height for him to turn his chin onto, and then the hand is ruffling his belly so he purrs and closes his eyes and tucks his forepaws over the hand and thinks this is fine.

* * *

Angeal will give Shinra this, when he tells them he needs something delivered in a hurry, they figure out how to get that over to him. So by the time he finally sits down to a late dinner, he’s got a six-bird coop assembled and set up in the corner of the living room near the bathroom—there’s no way to fit it and the bed in the bedroom except by putting it in the closet and Genesis vocally nixed that—plus a couple additional perches nailed to the walls here and there, two extra water feeders, and some turf squares he’s squashed into windowboxes because every chicken he’s ever met likes a little grass under their feet. The only thing he doesn’t have is the pet bed because that’s backordered and Genesis has grudgingly consented to making do with a wadded-up raggedly sweater Ifalna made him.

He also thinks Genesis and him are starting to get some kind of rhythm going. There are still occasional squawks, but Angeal hasn’t burst an eardrum in a couple hours, and sometimes he doesn’t have to unlock the tablet for Genesis to type it out before he gets what the other man wants. It helps that food and new furniture to inspect seems to be keeping Genesis busy.

So Angeal squeezes in a shower and eating leftovers while he checks in with everyone else. As far as he can tell, things are going okay except that Zack is driving Tifa crazy over something, but when he side-messages Tifa, she says to not worry about it. And then asks how they’re doing, and Angeal takes so long staring at the text box and not coming up with a decent reply that by the time Genesis hops up onto the table, his food is cold.

“Something wrong? You want the perch over by the TV instead?” Angeal says automatically.

Genesis closes his beak and looks at Angeal. Then bobs his head up an inch and looks at Angeal again. Maybe this is Angeal’s mind slowly transforming into an animal as some kind of delayed-exposure thing, but the longer this goes on, the more he’s starting to read expressions into Genesis’ face and not just the body language. And as far as he can tell, Genesis looks just as puzzled as he is annoyed, which is…weird. Weird even for human him, who always knows exactly what he thinks and what he wants to say about it, a quality Angeal honestly admires even if it usually makes him tear out his hair.

“Okay, I’ll come take a look,” Angeal says, for lack of a better idea.

But when he moves away from the counter, Genesis shakes his head and walks over to Angeal’s plate. Then bends down and starts examining the leftovers. He doesn’t seem interested in eating any, but he does seem interested in something about them and uses his foot to pick up Angeal’s fork and start moving around pieces, so Angeal goes to the fridge where he’s got a container of homemade chicken feed now.

Genesis caws sharply and flies over to the top of the fridge, then does a nosedive down its front while hanging onto its top edge so he almost spears Angeal’s hand. Angeal yanks that to safety, then shoves his fingers into his hair and starts to pull at that, trying not to say the first thing that comes to mind. Or the second thing. “Damn it, Gen, I thought we were working this out.”

That gets him that odd puzzled look again, but then Genesis tightens down all his feathers and there’s nothing going on with that beak except pure exasperation. So he’s not hungry, so Angeal steps back and tries to think of what else they’ve had to do lately, only to just…it’s been a lot. And he remembers all of it, all at once, and while he’s trying to make sense of his scatterbrained memories, Genesis flies back to the counter and climbs on top of Angeal’s phone. One foot firmly planted on it, he leans over, stares Angeal directly in the eye, and then swings down to bite at the edge of Angeal’s tablet. Then he drags the tablet over by the phone, sits down on both, and fluffs out his breast feathers like he’s trying to hatch the damn things.

“Hey,” Angeal says lamely.

Genesis glowers at him, silently daring him to do something about it and…yeah, okay, so he was running around earlier trying to net a rooster in an unauthorized mutation zone but that was then and he’s a different man now. Namely, a very tired one who is just not up to this, even if he dearly loves the soul currently stuck in the little feathered shit in front of him.

“We still have a fucking mad scientist to find, you know. Oh, and we’re generals or something?” Angeal says, and then he actually does think of something. “What, did you break your tablet? Let me just look at it, where did you—”

Genesis closes his eyes. His wings rub a little along his body and his tail hitches up, then slowly sinks down. When chickens go to sleep, their feet clamp down and then stay that way till they wake up. Which isn’t really that hard to make happen but until it does, Angeal knows well from childhood, that chicken is staying put, and only city idiots would believe that you can just spread a net out under a roosting tree and catch them when a breeze blows them off their perches. And anyway, this is Genesis and his swordhand grip probably does carry over.

“Okay, fine,” Angeal mutters. He looks at Genesis for another moment, pulling at his hair.

The first couple seconds Genesis was definitely faking, but as time goes on, Angeal can spot the signs of genuine relaxation. It has been pretty exhausting, and if Angeal’s feeling it, he knows Genesis is at least as bad. People think the man has endless energy but he knows better about that, at least; Genesis is human, but he’s been kind of obsessive about not showing weakness ever since they found out what Hollander was really doing to them during their ‘check-ups.’

He can let Genesis sleep. But he really should get back online and see if he can help out Sephiroth—he’s still human, he doesn’t have that excuse for not holding down the fort. So he goes looking for Genesis’ tablet.

Twenty minutes later, he finds it on the bedroom floor, leaning up against the bedpost—Genesis can fly but his perspective is usually about a foot off the ground now and Angeal needs to remember that—but by then, he’s yawning. He rubs his eyes and tries to blink himself back to focused and professional, but has to admit defeat after he’s read the same message from Zack three times and still can only get out of it that Cloud needs a literal ton of pet food, which can’t be right even with their metabolisms. He’s going to make shitty decisions in this state and one of them has to not do that, so he just checks for priority flags—nothing that Sephiroth hasn’t already answered—and then crawls up onto the mattress.

The thing is, his head feels like it’s full of lead but the second he’s horizontal, his eyes open. He rolls over and squeezes them shut, and it’s not actually that hard to stop thinking about work for once, but…still not working. He rolls onto his back again and stares at the ceiling, his outflung arm encountering nothing but empty space by him in the too-quiet room.

“Fuck,” he mutters. He gives it another minute, then levers himself up.

Genesis is blinking muzzily awake when Angeal comes into the hall between the kitchen and the living room, carrying a sleeping bag and a pillow. He starts to get up, but the moment he realizes it’s Angeal, he hops right back onto the tablet and phone with a stubborn tilt to his head.

“Yeah, fine, you can have ‘em,” Angeal grunts as he goes into the living room. He drops the sleeping bag on the floor there, in front of the coop, then sits down on it. When Genesis flutters down beside him, he’s punching up the pillow to make it fluffy. “It’s weird without you.”

Genesis blinks once. Then hops a little closer, twisting his head this way and that as he looks at Angeal, who’s too tired to feel sheepish or guilty or like he needs to add an explanation for why this is different from when one of them’s out of town on a mission. He watches Angeal put the pillow down and then lie down, then comes close enough that his breast brushes up against Angeal’s arm.

“I just need a nap, all right? Don’t stab me in the chest just for that,” Angeal adds.

The feathers withdraw. He figures Genesis is either going to head back to the kitchen or go for the coop, but instead a soft weight settles onto one side of his pillow. Then feathers tickle his nose; he jerks his head to the other side and sneezes into his hand, and then snorts drowsily as he hears Genesis’ offended cluck.

“Not on you, didn’t get you. Never get you.” Angeal stays turned over, the pull of sleep too strong now to bother looking. Besides, he feels the feathers again, settling just up against the back of his head. Fuck it, it’s an old pillow, if it gets shredded that’s not the worst thing, is the last thing he thinks.

* * *

Tifa comes back and says she’ll stay overnight to help Cloud adjust to things, but she actually spends a lot of time following Zack around, asking about what he’s doing. Which he honestly doesn’t mind since there’s a lot and it always helps to have a team behind you, but then she starts asking about whether he has to do it tonight, as if it’s really not a big deal that the world is suddenly a zillion times bigger than Cloud and even more dangerous to a guy who already is the first item on any ambitious megalomaniac’s wishlist.

“So yeah, I think I need to recalibrate all of the security systems. I mean, there’s a Turk literally one floor below us! And if they can get a direct channel from there to here that’s perfectly-sized for a mouse, what else could they have in these walls?” Zack has to point out.

For a second, Tifa looks like she might be annoyed at Zack. But then she yawns and the hand she puts up moves out of offensive positioning to cover her mouth. Then it stays up as she rubs at the side of her nose. “That’s not really what I think Cloud meant…Zack, I think we all knew about the Turks downstairs. I mean, Reno showed up that one time you were trying to make Nibelheim meat skewers for Cloud, and melted the oven hood? He got here even before the fire marshal and already had the override codes for the alarm.”

“And you don’t find that even a little bit suspicious?” Zack says incredulously. “I thought you were only holding off punching him in the face that time because Tseng got on his knees and begged.”

He doesn’t really mean that Tseng did that; Tseng makes being a frenemy into a lifestyle and a cause, but one thing Zack will give him is that solid stoneface of his, which if Zack didn’t know Vincent and Cloud, would easily be number one. But apparently Tseng’s unbending or Tifa’s really expanded her idea of acceptable people to socialize with, because she blushes a little. Then she gets that focused look on her face, the one Reno not-so-secretly wishes he’d be on the other end of whenever he picks a fight with them, and puts her hand on hip.

“I just think you should take a break,” she says. “Look, you’re both exhausted, you need some rest, and if anyone breaks in tonight, I’ll be around. Nobody’s getting you except through me. Okay?”

Zack starts to reply to her, but then catches himself blinking a couple times and then he feels that sandpapery twitch starting along his eyelids that comes on whenever he’s been pushing the SOLDIER stamina a little too hard. She does have a point, he is starting to miss important details. “Cloud needs to sleep? He said that?”

Tifa frowns at him, but before she can say anything, her phone buzzes. She pulls it out, reads the message, and then purses her lips before looking up and saying, “Yeah. He’s tired. And you built him a couple options so—”

Yep, more important details. Zack about-faces into the kitchen where Cloud is huddling between the food dishes, almost melting over his phone, the poor little guy. So of course Zack postpones his re-examination of the entire building’s security philosophy and spends some time walking (well, metaphorically speaking, since Zack can stand in one place and just move Cloud around in his hand to all of them) Cloud through the various mouse house possibilities. All of them are carefully vetted to consider Cloud’s new needs, and Zack is happy to see that after thorough consideration, one of them meets with Cloud’s approval.

“Great, you just rest up, nothing to worry about that Zack Fair can’t also put to bed before breakfast,” Zack says, leaning on his elbows and peering down into the tiny scrap of fluff just visible inside the sleeping box.

Cloud sticks his head out and looks at Zack, and even without the phone, Zack gets it loud and clear that Cloud is glad Zack’s there with him through this. Which makes it sort of embarrassing that Zack’s body just then wants to yawn, and then downright pathetic when he accidentally swings his elbow into the mouse habitat when covering his mouth. It’s not a hard knock and Zack definitely made sure the habitat has a topple-proof foundation, but it still clenches something hard inside when Cloud’s tiny little eyes suddenly widen.

“Shit.” Zack puts his hand against the side of the mouse house, then takes it away when he realizes it’s already steady. And then he has to yawn again—he at least manages to back up a foot this time so he’s got a buffer space between him and the house.

“Here,” Tifa says, and then drops a pillow on him. When Zack pulls it off and stuffs it under his arm, she nods. “You’re going to strain your neck like that. Use it as a chinrest while you see if he goes to sleep in there.”

Which makes sense, since Cloud’s jumpiness in new quarters is well-known even without added mouse instincts, and then Zack feels a little guilty about the initial suspicious look he’d given her. He nods and moves the pillow under his head, and then scoots carefully back up to the habitat. “Right here, Spike.”

Cloud still looks a little shocky as he backs into the box, so Zack stays put till he sees those eyes close. Or…that’s the idea, except then somehow it’s six hours later and he’s rolling up into a sitting position and grabbing his phone to curse at the time.

“…huh?” Tifa mutters from the folded-out couch. Because she was sleeping too.

“Shit,” Zack says as he sees all the alerts piling up on his lockscreen. He pushes up onto his elbow as he starts reading them, then staggers to his feet and automatically moves in the direction of the coffeemaker in the kitchen.

By the time he gets there, he’s put in five rush orders for mouse-related stuff, redone his availability alerts on another five, fended off three emails from cranky low-level bureaucrats who seriously need a reality-check about being important enough to demand face-time with a First, and is thinking through transportation options to get Cloud over to R&D in time for the morning check-in that Grimoire and Lucrecia want. Not Sephiroth-level multi-tasking by a long shot, but he's thinking that he’s not doing too bad for being six hours behind when he sees the note that a SOLDIER team has stumbled across a suspicious site only a few blocks away.

Somebody’s already replied to it. Zack assumes that it’s Sephiroth so he stops at that point and waits for the coffeemaker to finish brewing a cup, since he wants the caffeine boost before he sees what the orders are. This turns out to be a bad idea, because he’s mid-sip and Tifa is just walking into the kitchen when he finally looks down at his phone and sees that Cloud replied.

Zack’s coffee takes an emergency and very painful reroute up through his sinuses and out his nose. Thankfully, enhanced healing covers that, and also thankfully, Tifa’s reflexes are sharp enough to not only get her mostly out of the way of the blast, but send her immediately to the paper towels like the seasoned bar owner she is. “Wait, no, thanks, but that can wait,” Zack splutters as she tries to mop off his face. “Cloud wants to go investigate something mad scientist-y and damn it, I knew I needed to finish the security overhaul.”

Tifa stops wiping his face, which is helpful because then Zack can frantically write a reply to the on-site team telling them that he’ll be arriving shortly and he’ll be the lead First for the site review. But just as he’s about to send it, she grabs his elbow. “Zack, did you see what time Cloud said that?”

“Listen, I need to—” Zack mutters, trying to shake her off.

She hangs on and her voice rises, though it’s lifted mostly by irritation rather than hysteria. “Zack, he’s already on his way back.”

“He—wait—what—” For a second, the world just…doesn’t compute.

Then math starts working again for Zack, and Cloud’s inability to not do the right thing plus Tifa’s inability to not try and make sure they all connect adds up to Zack running into the living room and scanning every single mouse habitat and coming up with zero golden fluffy ball of his heart. Which is when Tifa tackles him face-down into the floor, takes his phone hostage, and then sits on him.

“When I say he’s coming back, I mean he’s literally in the building, with Elena, and he sent photo proof,” Tifa says with both knees to Zack’s kidneys. “Would one of you just listen, I just can’t even—”

“Elena?” Zack grunts. “What the hell, he went with the Turks? Again?”

In theory, he could throw Tifa off if he tried hard enough. Any of the Firsts would take her into their battalion in a heartbeat if she ever wanted to sign up for SOLDIER, no further enhancements needed, but there’s only so much that skills can do to bridge a height-weight differential and that’s what’s going to count. Now, whether he can keep her off is different, but to be totally honest, Zack is so blindsided at the moment that he’s not even really thinking about getting off the floor. He just wants to know what the hell is going on.

From the way Tifa sighs, she’s not entirely sure about that either, but she is sure that she doesn’t like it. “Zack, have you checked your messages from Cloud lately?”

Zack starts to say of course he has, but then has to stop and check. And to be fair to Tifa, Cloud’s messages are way, way down in there because he didn’t put priority flags on any of them and also apparently sent them about fifteen minutes after Zack last remembers being conscious…and they do say that he’s fine and the Turks are sending someone and he thinks Sephiroth is also sleeping so he’s going to go and he’ll let Tifa know too.

“He says he told you,” Zack says.

Tifa makes a deeply annoyed growling sound in her throat. “Yeah, he sent a note because I was sleeping, and I swear, I’m trying really hard for both of you but you’re making it imp—”

The doorbell rings. Zack yelps and shoves himself up off the floor, then remembers Tifa’s on top of him. She does make a startled noise, but manages to get her feet under herself and then roll up into a walk before Zack’s fully recalled which way the door is. By the time he gets there, she’s already answered it and is holding Cloud while Elena smiles nervously at both of them.

She also looks like she really wants to say something to him, but just makes it into a long exhale as Zack jogs up. Now on the one hand, Zack really does not enjoy Turks on his doorstep first thing in the morning, but on the other hand, Elena did bring Cloud back and from the bits Zack can see around Tifa’s fingers, Cloud looks okay. Zack has to swallow hard enough to maybe feel some residual burn from that coffee he snorted earlier, but he has to give credit where credit is due.

“Morning, Elena,” he says stiffly. “Thanks for giving Cloud a ride. You don’t need anything for Tseng before you go, do you?”

Cloud squeaks and Tifa looks down at him, brows pinching in concern, but when he wriggles out of her hand, he looks pretty healthy. Which doesn’t mean Zack still isn’t worried, but he just concentrates on Elena while Tifa helps Cloud up onto her shoulder and then gets her phone out for him.

“Oh, no, I’m fine!” Elena chirps. “Just doing my best to carry out Tseng’s orders! Let us know if you need anything else, General Strife, I’ll be happy to pass on the word!”

“Wait, what…” Zack stops to look at Cloud, who has his eyes tightly shut and his teeny little paws clenched up against his belly like it’s taking all of his willpower to not dive into the nearest dark hole. Which Zack totally gets, but which means that Zack then misses Elena’s happy wave and skip away down the hall, and at this point, with how many crossfire encounters they’ve had, she is totally trolling them. “Wait a second, what were—how’d you get him out in the—”

Zack’s phone beeps loudly, with the urgent tone that only another First is allowed to set, and out of sheer habit Zack about-faces from where he’s going after Elena and pulls it out to take a look. The message is from Cloud and says: im fine im hungry.

When Zack looks up, Tifa is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him and is obviously reading the message off his phone too, but for some reason it doesn’t seem to spark an immediate surge of urgency in her. She just sighs. “Yeah, let’s just get breakfast and then go in and see if they can fix this yet.”

Zack…is not going to pick a fight with her in front of Cloud when Cloud is suffering, but between the Turks and Tifa, he’s really starting to wonder if that mad scientist they’re chasing has managed to cast a couple more mutation spells to turn everyone into callous weirdos. He just doesn’t get it.

But…Cloud’s still a mouse, so he’s just got to take care of things till that’s no longer the case. It’s not about him after all, and he just needs to keep that in mind.

Chapter Text

When Sephiroth wakes up, he’s still on the couch, and is bundled comfortably back into what he is almost certain is a repurposed piece from one of Vincent’s capes. His tablet is nearby and there is a dish of freshly-warmed food and another of water on the closest end-table, while he can hear the faint sounds of Vincent in the bathroom.

The responsible general in him (possibly better characterized as the person most familiar with how far off SOLDIER can veer if not scrupulously monitored) beckons towards the tablet. General bodily needs twitch his nose in the direction of the food. And yes, he is a cat but he knows he’s not supposed to be this way and so any attempt to use his animal form as an excuse for lowering his standards for his own behavior would be amoral gamesmanship, plain and simple. Besides, Vincent has repeatedly demonstrated that no matter how strangely welcoming he is of Sephiroth in cat form, he still knows it’s Sephiroth in that body.

So sneaking across the room towards that temptingly-cracked door in hopes of catching Vincent in his natural morning state would be inexcusable. Sephiroth should sit back down on the couch, eat his breakfast, and check his email.

“You can come in,” Vincent says just as Sephiroth lets his whiskers twitch along the edge of the door. “I was about to show you something.”

Sephiroth hadn’t quite eased up far enough to the crack to actually see anything, though he can smell plenty and he suspects that being in feline form has enhanced that sense even further, because as a human he doesn’t think he was able to distinguish between soap-smell and soap-relaxed-skin-cotton smell. Though he’ll reluctantly admit it’s the human side whose fantasizing he has to firmly suppress as he gingerly hooks a paw around the door and then squeezes into the room.

Vincent is fully dressed, though his shirt isn’t fully done up and he’s barefoot (and if Sephiroth happens to walk all over those elegant, surprisingly long-toed appendages, that’s simply accidental). He was holding up something to the mirror and now turns around to show it to Sephiroth, with a quick, pleasant tousling of Sephiroth’s ears as he shakes out a strip of dark-grey cloth.

“They found a potential back-up site. Cloud and the Turks already looked it over, I think they’re going to debrief you when we meet for the check-in,” Vincent says. He pauses, then nods as if one, he’s not surprised Sephiroth hasn’t caught up on his emails and two, doesn’t think any less of Sephiroth for it. He merely continues the explanation. “I looked at the prelim report and I think they missed something, but I don’t think you want to call them back out—”

Sephiroth had felt his tail bristling at ‘Cloud and the Turks’ and he has to force it down to where he can pull it in against his body with one paw. There had been something going on with Cloud and Zack, he remembers now; he’d thought it was just a personal issue but clearly it’s metastasized.

“Cloud’s back home with Zack, and Tifa’s there. She’s been texting around, and Tseng actually sent me a note too.” Vincent’s lips briefly twist in a very odd combination of amusement and resignation. His hand is still on Sephiroth, but he’s moved it down to just rest it on the back of Sephiroth’s neck. It doesn’t feel like a restraint at all, and seems only a gesture of support. “The Turks aren’t trying to get Cloud to tackle someone for them again, he’s been asking them to basically ferry him around while Zack…shops online, I wasn’t entirely clear on that.”

Sephiroth feels his ears flatten, then irritably butts his head against Vincent’s knee. Vincent is obviously guessing at much more than he’s saying, likely accurately, and he’s only being polite because Sephiroth’s officers are idiots…oh, that feels very nice, he thinks as Vincent’s fingertips start to nudge in just at the base of his ears.

“Also Ifalna can’t get away, there’s a very sick child she’s been helping, but Aerith is supposed to land later today. I think Tifa’s going to try and hold down things till then,” Vincent adds. He sighs a little, then works his fingers down either side of Sephiroth’s head till he’s persuaded Sephiroth to tip up his head for a better angle. And, apparently, so he can slowly bring them back to the matter at hand. “You can work through it at your officer meeting. Tseng wants to talk to me around then too for some reason—” Vincent’s lips twitch again, much more amused than resigned now “—but after that I was going to take a second pass at the site. Do you want me to bring you back here first, or take you with me?”

He does Sephiroth the courtesy of stopping his petting when he asks that question, although Sephiroth’s initial reaction is admittedly one of irritation that it’s stopped. A little protesting noise even escapes him before he can straighten up and make his tail sleek back out behind him, looking intently into Vincent’s eyes.

“No, I don’t mind. I had…” Vincent glances at the piece of cloth in his hand, then lifts that and puts his other hand under it to spread its shape out for Sephiroth to see “…I had a feeling you might want to do that, provided Cloud and Zack don’t require follow-up…”

Sephiroth’s ears flick back again. With an effort, he raises a paw and licks it till they relax. Then he nods firmly.

Vincent smiles at him and it is pure knowing amusement. “Anyway, this is the only thing I can find that’s slightly less of a contrast with your fur, but I think it’s still better than a pet carrier, and the site is going to be easier to access anyway if I fly in.”

‘Pet carrier’ makes Sephiroth’s spine arch even before he fully thinks through Vincent’s suggestion. He has to spend another few seconds grooming himself calm again, with the assistance of Vincent’s hand stroking his back, before he can seriously consider the problem.

They are supposed to be keeping his current condition under wraps as much as is practically possible, and he participated in that decision and doesn’t regret it. His pride isn’t what’s kept him alive and sane and with a circle of living friends and family, and that would be the only satisfied party if he didn’t recognize his diminished capabilities make him a very appealing target to their enemies right now.

On the other hand, Sephiroth isn’t completely out of commission, and as long as he can breathe, he’s going to contribute. There are some tactical advantages to letting the site’s second investigation be a very secret one: for example, it may lure their opponent into thinking that certain things are going undiscovered. And if it’s going to be secret anyway, then he might as well go.

If he goes, then they’ll have to adapt. Sephiroth’s personal feelings aside, Vincent can’t simply walk around with a pet cat, and Sephiroth can’t be a hindrance to the man if they run into obstacles. Vincent’s solution to this is a kind of cloth sling that he can tuck up against his chest under his outer layers, and it seems worth a try.

“You need to be able to get out on your own. I can’t promise constant visibility, but I don’t want you trapped,” Vincent says as he adjusts the sling around himself. “Here, try it.”

He pulls out part of the sling to form the pocket. Sephiroth noses at it, then hikes back on his hindquarters so he can paw into the hollow. The material feels appropriately stretchy without showing visible signs of weakened fibers, and as he slides the front half of his body into it, he can see where Vincent has put in some subtle tailoring to enable multiple lines of exit without having to put compromising holes into the sling. Which is all well and good but for some damned reason he can’t shake the feeling that he’s missed something until after he has first sniffed—after the first whiff, he learns nothing new—and then scrubbed his head over every single inch, inside and out. He even finds himself climbing up Vincent’s back and then hanging from the man’s shoulder so he can properly deal with the part that goes under Vincent’s arm.

Vincent, of course, squats there and patiently bears with him. It’s not till he’s squirmed back out of the sling and turned around to nod that the man speaks again. “Good,” he says, with a surprisingly relieved smile on his face. “I know it’s confining. I wasn’t sure if you’d approve.”

Sephiroth blinks hard. Then, entirely running on instinct, he rams his head back into Vincent’s shin. Not so hard that he injures himself, though he does hear a half-suppressed grunt from above, but this sudden surge of urgency he feels to ensure Vincent knows he not only approves but encourages this—if he had his phone, he’s unclear whether he’d be able to type something sufficiently expressive. It seems far more in line with the intensity of his feelings to press on his forehead while Vincent’s scent slowly suffuses through the trouser-leg and purr till some of the edge recedes.

A hand touches his back. He looks up but doesn’t take his head off Vincent’s leg, and sliding it around takes just long enough that Vincent can pick him up before he has a chance to react. When he does, Vincent settles his belated startle with a brief, satisfyingly direct scruff to his neck and then—

“Let me just get my guns and then we can leave,” Vincent says, petting the back of Sephiroth’s head as the warm impress of what had to be his mouth is still fading from it.

He still has the sling over one arm, but seems to prefer carrying Sephiroth outside of that as he deftly finishes dressing and finishes other preparations for going out. Which likely would be easier to do if he hadn’t limited himself to one arm, but Sephiroth…honestly can’t bring himself to protest. Or to think very much about how Vincent is acting like a completely different person, or the possibility that despite all outward signs to the contrary, Vincent might be letting Sephiroth’s outward appearance sway his judgment, or why Sephiroth as a responsible individual with ethical and moral standards should think that matters. This is too perfect to ruin, and Sephiroth has had far too few such moments in his life to devalue it.

Life tends to provide timely correctives to Sephiroth’s perspective anyway, and today proves no different. It is a welcome shock for them to walk into his mother’s office and find Genesis quietly sitting on a chair, but then Sephiroth hears both Angeal and Grimoire raise their voices.

“Zack,” they say, and then Grimoire adds a near-despairing “please sit.”

A very low, probably inaudible to human ears, grumble comes out of Vincent’s chest, though when Sephiroth tilts his head up, Vincent is as blank-faced as he…as he usually presents himself outside of his apartment. Vincent carries Sephiroth the rest of the way into the room, deposits Sephiroth on the table to the right of Genesis’ chair, and then leaves with just a brief word to Grimoire and Sephiroth’s mother. Again, that’s all in keeping with his normal manners, but Sephiroth can’t help twisting around to look at his retreating back with a very sharp sense of wistfulness.

“Look, Seph’s here, we can just ask him,” Zack says, with a set to his jaw that Sephiroth only rarely sees on him, and generally only in situations of extreme likelihood the fate of the world is riding on it. “Either we get rid of all the mouseholes or we put cameras in them. I just don’t see any other alternative.”

Angeal stares at Zack as if not only does he not understand, but that his sympathy for whatever is driving Zack is utterly exhausted, while Genesis, usually the first to object, simply clucks contemptuously and then looks at Sephiroth. Who can’t help a blindsided “what” and who then has to pointedly reach over and slap both Zack’s and Angeal’s hands because of course he actually said “miaow” and they obviously are about to ignore that and continue arguing. Where is his—he finds his tablet on the table behind him, where Vincent of course left it without his noticing, and shoves it up to start typing furiously.

In a few minutes they unpack that Zack is very concerned that Cloud’s whereabouts are hard to detect in his current form and that Shinra facilities are apparently riddled with mouse-sized passages filled with traps and if Cloud were to use one and they didn’t know about it, it would take far too long to locate him. Also, apparently neither the janitorial staff’s desires to deal with every other pest rodent on the premises nor Cloud’s own judgment nor any inadvertent collateral recording of other employees should be taken into consideration, at least as far as Zack seems to be envisioning the world.

Sephiroth’s mother also is privately messaging that she and Grimoire can stay if Sephiroth wants, or they can do the visual part of the daily check-in now and then step outside till the officers’ meeting is over, and do the rest of their check-in after that. Sephiroth tells her that’s an excellent idea and then messages Cloud to ask where he is. here, comes the reply, just as Genesis makes an irritated noise and then dramatically fluffs himself in Sephiroth’s direction. im with genesis.

It takes a moment, largely because now Sephiroth has to duck his head to avoid Zack’s jabbing fingers as he resumes his argument with Angeal and go to a spot on the table rim where he can make out Cloud, who was previously hidden by Genesis’ tail feathers and who is now just barely visible by Genesis with his phone on the chair.

Fair is losing his mind, Genesis messages. If he infects Angeal with this nonsense, I’m holding you both personally responsible.

Sephiroth hisses in exasperation at Genesis, who arches his neck and starts to rise up onto his feet with a threatening squawk. That attracts Angeal’s and Zack’s attention, but before they can completely abandon their own bickering and intervene, all of their tablets buzz simultaneously.

Cloud’s sent a message: im fine. we dont need to bug the walls just to find me zack. thats spying

Who falters as if he honestly had no idea that that was the core of his recommendation. That’s very odd for him; he had the most normal upbringing of all of them, and generally can be relied upon to provide necessary outsider perspectives whenever one of the rest of them lets Shinra’s institutional paranoia get the better of them. “I—that’s not—I just—” Zack stammers as he rubs at the side of his head “—but what if we lose you?”

Angeal had snorted at Cloud’s message, but at that his expression softens a little. He puts his hand on Zack’s shoulder. “Listen, nobody here is getting left behind, because we’re SOLDIERs and it’s going to take more than some weird magic to overcome that. It’s not like you’re alone on this, you know.”

Since his pep talk seems to be holding Zack’s attention, Sephiroth takes the opportunity to slip down onto the chair where he and Cloud can…type on the same phone with Genesis inevitably rubbernecking, because unfortunately this is how they can have a sidebar right now. Do you need to be reassigned? Or Zack? Sephiroth writes.

Cloud scrunches into Genesis’ side hard enough that Genesis startles and puffs out his feathers. Then he creeps back out and frantically types, heartbeat going so quickly that Sephiroth has to remind himself a mouse’s resting rate is far higher than a person’s. no im fine he just missed my messages.

Sephiroth looks at Cloud. He very much respects the other man, but having also fought alongside him for years now, he’s well aware that Cloud’s ability to detrimentally omit key details is nearly as impressive as the man’s swordsmanship.

Genesis clicks his beak pointedly, too. Which was not necessary, and Sephiroth silently bares his teeth at Genesis as Cloud jumps in place, nervously grooms himself and then leans over the phone again. i might have heard the lifestream last night right before they reported the new site. wasnt sure and zack needed to sleep so just went to look and didnt hear it there.

The Lifestream—then Sephiroth snarls and twists defensively off the chair and into a dive under the table as Genesis lets out a gratingly loud cry. Fine, that is classic Strife lead-burying and Sephiroth is exasperated with him too but that was loud.

A minute later, with Angeal holding Genesis in his arms and still shushing him, Zack barely persuaded to sit down with Cloud moved to the table in front of him, Sephiroth slinks out and hops back up. His fur is still bristling over at least half his body, but he makes himself concentrate on the matter at hand.

At least Cloud didn’t try to delete the message and actually sent it to all of them, so they’re all finally working with the same amount of information. look i dont know for sure and even if it was that i dont know what it was saying this time, he adds. but i think we should ask aerith. it doesnt mean we have to bug the walls. dont want to stop the whole search because of me.

“That wasn’t what I was—” Zack starts, but Sephiroth has had enough of this.

He hisses at Zack. As humiliating as it feels to be reduced to such gestures, it is also more than a little satisfying to see how they trigger instinctive responses in people. Zack shuts up, blinking hard, and Sephiroth hastily types into his tablet. Agreed. We also need to maintain some day-to-day order in SOLDIER. Angeal and Genesis, you’ll lead on that and I trust you’ll be judicious about your appearances in the office, but I do foresee that being necessary. Cloud, I understand Aerith is already on her way.

Cloud relaxes, which in turn reassures Sephiroth. He needs his officers to come into line, but he’d rather not force Cloud that way if the man can instead be persuaded to go on his own, and he is sensitive to the tension between Cloud and Zack. Still, he can’t put that above everything else. yeah she already messaged me.

Zack, assist Cloud with that, Sephiroth writes. He looks up at Zack, who nods vigorously…a little too vigorously, and even with his head moving that fast, Sephiroth doesn’t miss how his gaze is already going distant. Zack is normally so dependable that when he stops being that, the shock of it almost can make one miss how incredibly far in the other direction the man goes in those times. You two are liaising with Aerith to take notes on her findings. Take notes only. Do not implement anything before running it by us. If it’s time-sensitive, message me directly. You’re relieved of any other duties.

“You reading that?” Angeal says with a smack to Zack’s arm, and when Zack blinks and frowns down at his phone, Angeal gives Sephiroth a look of pained determination.

He’ll keep an eye on things. And since Genesis isn’t crowing again, he at least isn’t going to actively negate that, even if Sephiroth knows better than to hope Genesis will ever sign up to a plan without any objections. Neither of you are to do field investigations either, even if Aerith suggests it, Sephiroth adds while Genesis is keeping his beak shut. Let me know and I’ll coordinate any needs there with R&D or the Turks.

“The T—” Zack starts, scowling.

But before he can finish, Cloud lets out a shrill squeak. Sephiroth flinches again—he’s pleased to see Genesis also jerks in Angeal’s arms—but manages to keep from running under the furniture again. It takes a few seconds, so he’s surprised to find that, when he’s recovered, Cloud is still on the table and is just finishing up a message.

can we just go home and wait for aerith it says. It went to all of them but it’s clearly directed at Zack.

“Oh…yeah!” Zack says, brightening up from his confused stare. He beams as he holds his hand out for Cloud to crawl onto. “Sure, let’s blow this—uh, sorry, Seph. I mean, if we’re done with the agenda?”

Sephiroth finds that entirely unconvincing, and it also doesn’t escape him that Cloud seems a little reluctant to go to the other man. But he does end up on Zack’s hand, and he knows full well that if he didn’t want to go, he need only say so to any one of the rest of them. There’s something to sort out there, but Sephiroth is aware his mother and Grimoire are waiting just outside and they need to move on.

Yes, for now, but this is not a time for solo work. Keep everyone updated via the First channels. He’ll add a couple more instructions for Angeal and Genesis later, but for now that will have to do. These are his officers, not only trained but battle-tested, and he’s entrusted the lives of himself and his mother more than once to them. He should be able to trust that they’ll act with a little sense.

He should, but his tail remains bushy and periodically lashing about the table as Angeal invites his mother and Grimoire back inside. Then Angeal and Zack, each with their respective partners, go off to separate rooms for their examinations and Sephiroth’s mother goes with them to show them the way, leaving Sephiroth with Grimoire.

Who is blissfully efficient about concluding the check-up, with absolutely no commentary about the officers’ meeting and merely a few thoughts on feline health that Sephiroth will want to incorporate. He sits at the table afterward to enter in the data and Sephiroth takes the opportunity to send his note off to Angeal, then read some emails. But then Grimoire shifts and something about it makes Sephiroth lift his head.

“Vincent mentioned he’d be coming back to pick you up,” Grimoire says.

Sephiroth nods slowly. He’ll be staying with Vincent for the duration of this, so that shouldn’t seem odd…and if Grimoire ever has objections, he generally raises them immediately. It’s very out of character for him to wait, given he’s repeatedly said his greatest career regret is not opposing Hojo more openly and earlier on.

“I think he’ll take very good care of you,” Grimoire adds with a wry smile, guessing at Sephiroth’s train of thought. But he still seems hesitant about something, and has to visibly collect his thoughts. “Sephiroth, I try not to opine on your personal interests or on my son’s, because I think you’ve both more than earned the right to pursue anything that might make you happy, and I certainly have proven a poor judge of that in the past—”

He certainly has done better than the man who was responsible for Sephiroth’s existence, so Sephiroth has to miaow a protest at that.

Grimoire smiles, surprised but appreciative, and his hand goes up to nearly touch Sephiroth’s head before he catches himself. He starts to pull it back, but when Sephiroth stands up and deliberately nudges his forehead against Grimoire’s knuckles, the man chuckles and gives him a few pets. Not nearly as good as Vincent’s, but the affection comes through nonetheless.

So does the strain of melancholy, faint but undeniable, when Grimoire speaks again. “He’ll take care of you. He always took care of his pets—he really did have cats. His mother liked them, and I was in the lab so often it’d be petty of me to…he had one in particular, he adored it. He once had a terrible fight with us and tried to run away, and he packed the shinobi tools his mother gave him and the cat.”

Sephiroth pulls away from Grimoire’s hand as he takes that in. He can picture that rather easily…but only because of the last few hours with Vincent. Before all of this, he’d gotten the impression that outside of immediate family, Vincent at best tolerated people—Yuffie claims otherwise but irrational toleration is still toleration and not friendship—and had never seen any signs of the man being any fonder of other living things.

From the way Grimoire draws his breath, the rest of his story is not going to be pleasant. “Then the cat disappeared. We never…had conclusive evidence, but he found—he was certain R&D had taken the poor thing. I tried to find out but never got anywhere, but I was fighting with a few of the other teams and…it was plausible, I couldn’t tell him otherwise. He wouldn’t let my wife get another cat and for a while he absolutely hated me for not quitting immediately. He was doing well in school, especially in science, but he stopped trying and eventually dropped out entirely to go to the Turks.”

Given the R&D leadership at the time and what Sephiroth’s mother has said about the work environment among the rank-and-file, it’s entirely believable that someone on a rival team deliberately took Vincent’s cat as a jab to Grimoire. Sephiroth finds himself hissing before he can help it, and when Grimoire looks over, he puts a paw on the man’s hand to signal that Grimoire isn’t his target but still can’t force all of his fur to smooth down.

Grimoire sighs. Then glances briefly at Sephiroth’s paw before, smiling sadly, he slides out his hand and reaches for his tablet. “I’m telling you this for context only, Sephiroth. You had nothing to do with it and have nothing to make up for, and I think I know Vincent well enough to say he’d feel the same. He…does care about you, and I know you care very much about his well-being—”

Sephiroth’s tail flicks violently back and forth, catching the edge of his tablet and sending it sliding towards the edge of the table. He stabs out a paw to stop that, but then the accumulated frustration he feels at this form’s complete inability to maintain any sort of composure results in him furiously grooming his face.

“—so I’ll leave it at that. We both know I’m famously terrible at predicting his actions,” Grimoire says, diplomatically pretending as if Sephiroth has simply been listening all along. He rises from his chair and then moves back to push it under the table. Then he pauses again. “Though as his father, if you can just spare him a little patience…I imagine that’s in short supply right now, but I have to ask.”

By then Sephiroth is at least able to drag his paw down from his face and stand up. He nods at Grimoire, who gives him a brief, thankful smile before leaving the room.

As the man does, Sephiroth hears Vincent’s voice speaking with Sephiroth’s mother. He barely has time for another quick grooming session before they walk in, although Sephiroth’s mother unknowingly buys him a few more minutes as she gives him and Vincent a few additional care notes, based on the latest blood test results. Nothing dramatically different from yesterday’s, but Vincent asks careful questions and then spends a few seconds digesting her responses.

“Aerith wants to come in and talk as soon as she lands, but I might be face-down at my desk,” Sephiroth’s mother finally says with a little laugh. When Sephiroth gives her a narrow-eyed look—making a mental note to also check in with her assistants—she tries to smile it off and awkwardly pets his head. “I promise I’ll sleep a little tonight. I want to start with fresh eyes with her, especially if there’s any kind of Lifestream interference going on.”

Sephiroth miaows in firm agreement, then gives her hand one last head-bump. She smiles at him again and then backs out of the room before turning and hurrying off; her eagerness to return to her work is directly proportional to how much she loves him, Sephiroth knows that, so he doesn’t take offense.

And then…Vincent is there, pulling out the cat sling and looping it around himself. “Shall we?” he says, his fingers spreading the cloth so Sephiroth has an easy entry.

What Grimoire said hasn’t been forgotten, but Sephiroth…can’t simply cede to history. His entire life has been a refutation of the idea that the past can control the future, but even putting that aside, he doesn’t see merely the old feuds and wrongs when he looks at the people who surround him. He sees them for who and what they are to him now, and that includes Vincent, who has been farther out on the periphery of Sephiroth’s circle than Sephiroth personally would like but who is suddenly much more receptive to closer relations. Sephiroth simply can’t bring himself to refuse that opportunity, but also, he doesn’t honestly see why he should, merely because of the potential for touching on old wounds.

He only has to ensure that this doesn’t end in the same kind of tragedy that Vincent’s old cat suffered, and that should be easy enough, Sephiroth thinks as he hops into the sling and then wiggles around till he’s comfortable. He is still Sephiroth.

“Good?” Vincent asks, and when Sephiroth nuzzles at his chest, he smiles and tucks the sling under his coat, careful to leave Sephiroth’s sightlines clear. “Good. Let’s go look at this site.”

Chapter Text

Sephiroth hadn’t made it an order that Angeal had to go back into the office, but the man had made it pretty clear he wants people to know SOLDIER is still operating as usual, and it’s hard to do that with literally every First out of view. And there are some things that are better done in person, no matter what kind of remote-working technology Tuesti wants to champion this quarter.

On the other hand…as soon as they’re done with the check-in and Genesis gets passed out with a clean bill of health, Angeal closes the door to the office they’re borrowing. “I don’t really want to leave you back at home by yourself,” he says.

Lucrecia had smartly accompanied the vet they’d found and buttoned up with NDAs, so Genesis hadn’t been able to get up to any hijinks during his examination, and Angeal fully expects him to still be resenting that. So when he looks up from the dish of feed in front of him, Angeal is bracing himself.

“I’m not calling you a weakling, all right?” he tells Genesis, with tissues ready in one hand for whenever his ears start bleeding again. “But you don’t have hands and even if the new keyboard hack is working for you, I don’t really want to just—look, I’m just going to be getting twitchy waiting for you to message you’re okay every fifteen minutes, and you know I’m shit at getting anything done when I’m like that. I’m the problem here.”

Genesis bobs his head briefly, but it’s more in surprise than anger. Then he pushes himself up, pauses to tuck a stray breast feather back into place, and walks to the edge of the table so he can…not scream at Angeal. He just peers up into Angeal’s face for a second before turning around and hooking his new rooster-proofed phone over.

We need an appropriate story for the office, Genesis types. People never expect Sephiroth or me or even Strife to explain themselves, but you make such a habit of volunteering statements that an absence would be noticed immediately.

“…yeah,” Angeal says, and when Genesis crooks his head around to give Angeal a questioning look, Angeal has to ask. “You’re not gonna ask about the amenities?”

For a moment Angeal thinks Genesis wants to peck him. The beak goes forward, the beak pulls back, and then the beak irritably dances over the screen. If I thought we needed extravagant props, I’d be speaking to Fair. Basics first, Angeal, isn’t that what you teach the recruits?

Sure it is, but Genesis insists on artisan spring bottled water for his espresso machine, which is so complicated that they have to borrow someone from Tuesti whenever it breaks down, and once had a quarter-long fight with Procurement about the exact degree of ‘ergonomic comfort’ expected in their office chairs. Which he won, and while Angeal’s spine alignment is grateful for that (better healing doesn’t actually make up for daily lower back sprains), Angeal still has to sit there in disbelief for a moment.

“Okay,” he finally says when it looks like Genesis is going to stomp over if he doesn’t. “So what kind of story, exactly, were you thinking of?”

Now Genesis looks incredulous. Well, he doesn’t really look since his face can’t move that much around the beak, but the way he fluffs around his feathers and snaps his beak communicates the same thing. You’re the chicken expert, he types. Why would you have a chicken in the office? I still have no idea why you even let chickens in your house. Aren’t they meant to be outside?

“Are you ser—look, I know Hollander was there fucking it up in the background and terrorizing Ma, but you literally grew up with me watching me raise those things and you don’t remem—” Angeal cuts himself off before he gets too irritated. He doesn’t like being irritated with Genesis, and before this it’d started to seem like that was all they were with each other, but…it’d actually been kind of okay for part of last night, and then this morning when they were getting ready. He’d really missed that, he realizes now. “You know what, let’s not make this that complicated. Yeah, I raised chickens. We were rural. Banora’s still rural, I still have family down there, they sent me a fucking prize stud rooster as a pet and if anybody thinks they have a better idea what to do with it than me, then I’d like to see them say so to my face. That’s our story.”

Genesis blinks once, then again. His head makes a slight up-and-down motion but then tilts to the side and holds that way. He thinks about it, then sleeks down his feathers as he settles down in front of the phone. Normally I would object to playing into people’s preconceptions of Banora as a village of hicks, but extenuating circumstances. There are enough ignorant idiots around to swallow that.

From him, that’s a ringing endorsement. Angeal grins as he pulls over his tablet and unlocks the screen. “I’ll make sure to say you’re pissed off at me about it and threatened to murder me if I let my new pet anywhere near your closet,” he teases. “Okay, so about the amenities—I’ve got enough food to get us through lunch, and I don’t think we’re gonna be taking any after-dinner meetings, and we’ve got the attached toilet but you should get something to nap on if you get tired. Which perch do you want them to grab from our place?”

He's got the form for a courier up when Genesis hops over and looks not at it, but at Angeal. Who moves back in case Genesis wants more room, but Genesis just shifts forward so he can keep peering at Angeal; Lucrecia said something about chickens needing to constantly twist their heads like that because they have to see around the beak, but Genesis’ stare feels like it’d zero in through solid concrete, even as a chicken.

After another moment, Genesis backs up to his phone. Let’s get the initial shock and awe over with first, he write, with a quick heads-up to check in Angeal, which is a little uncharacteristic for him but maybe that’s also down to the chicken viewpoint. I agree we’re not putting in the full day, so there’s no need to prepare as if we are.

“True, that’s kind of asking for Rufus or someone else to swan in at the last minute,” Angeal says, but he doesn’t dismiss the form yet. “You sure you don’t want anything else?”

Genesis doesn’t type this time and just shakes his head. Then he puts one foot to his phone and pointedly pushes it at Angeal, who picks it up along with his own tablet.

“All right, then,” Angeal says as he gets to his feet.

He’d brought Genesis in the same carrier he’d used to bring him home last night. Earlier this morning, Genesis had made it abundantly clear that he thought the carrier was utterly beneath him, even with a nice soft fleece blanket padding the bottom, but he’d still gotten into it without making Angeal catch him. They did have to drive over and Midgar traffic is not something to venture into without the full set of safety protections, even for an enhanced SOLDIER. But…Angeal looks at the carrier, then back at Genesis, who already has a stiff posture and a twitchy tail.

Then he feels at his shoulderguard. “You think you can keep off the flesh?” he says as he snags the carrier and then turns the door-end away from Genesis. “I can’t walk in bleeding, that’s all I’m saying. Not a good look for the staff.”

Genesis bobs his head, but then promptly flaps his way up onto Angeal’s shoulder. Of course then he needs a good minute to inspect the shoulderguard that he’s already on intimate terms with (when things are good, anyway, because when Genesis wants something off, it’s coming off), scuff his feet around on it, and then, slowly, lower himself down on top.

When Angeal snaps the photo of them, Genesis squawks sharply but doesn’t screech. And then he just resettles himself, though the ruffled feathers keep tickling Angeal’s ear. “It’s to make the story work,” Angeal says as he works up a group email to go with the photo, with his phone angled so Genesis can read along. “If I’m gonna bring in a real authentic Banora Red, I’m gonna let everybody know ahead of time. Just so that they can recognize quality when they see it.”

Genesis squawks again, and while it’s lower in volume, it definitely isn’t lower in disdain. Still, they walk out of that office and Angeal is still blood-free, so Angeal figures he’s doing all right so far.

* * *

Zack will be the first to put his hand up and say it hasn’t been an easy first day, but he’s hoping that things will improve, especially now that he has some idea why Cloud was acting a little off last night. All they have to do is keep Cloud away from the Lifestream.

Don’t get him wrong, Zack fully respects the will of the Planet and all that, given that he lives here and that much as he loves the guy and totally will sign up for any bar-crawl Cid is ever leading, he’s going to wait till a couple more people sign off on those rockets before he tries interstellar travel. But also the Lifestream sort of repeatedly invaded the minds of several of his friends without permission and while he gets the difficulty of communicating when you’re a non-human noncorporeal entity, he still thinks that’s problematic. For one, it made it pretty hard to distinguish between Lifestream-induced psychosis and Jenova-induced psychosis. Two, any kind of psychotic break is not a look Zack really ever wants to see on Cloud again, or on anyone else for that matter.

Anyway, full-time communing with the Lifestream on a completely consensual, voluntary, mutually-respectful basis is Aerith and Ifalna’s thing and everybody is more than happy to leave that to them, so Zack just needs to wait on Aerith’s flight.

“So…we aren’t going to the airport because…” Tifa asks, her tone not so much tentative as enriched with the kind of reluctance you get when you’re staring at a torrential downpour between you and where you need to be without an umbrella, any other kind of cover, or any excuse for delaying the plunge.

She didn’t go with them to the lab because she needed to open Seventh Heaven for the day shift, but showed up again right as Zack was trying to coax Cloud into his carrier. Since she brought lunch and Zack did sort of forget to grab that—for himself, of course he remembered to pack go bags of Cloud’s top three feed choices, plus a fourth in case Cloud changed his mind—he’d been happy to see her, but now she’s gone back to standing around questioning things. It is starting to get on his nerves.

“Because that’s literally across five Lifestream-accessible points and it’d distract Lucrecia if I broke back in and stole her experimental telepathic-shielding stuff?” Zack says. He pushes up onto his elbows, then twists onto just one so that he can wipe at his forehead, which is surprisingly sweaty. “Also, Cloud’s motion-sickness? Still a thing.”

Tifa winces. Then she puts her bags down on the table and comes over to kneel beside Zack in front of the couch. “Is that what’s going on? Do you want me to go get the vet and see if they’ve got anti-nausea stuff that’ll…you know, if there is any that works on mice? I just saw them in Grimoire’s office.”

“No, we asked about that, there’s not really anything but since he’s way smaller I was thinking I could put his carrier in a bigger box with shock absorbers—oh, and maybe some gyroscope action,” Zack says as the gyroscope part just occurs to him. Why only now, that’s on him, because it’s not like he doesn’t spend a good chunk of field time under the hood of various vehicles with the engineers. He twists around a little more, absently wincing as his spine unkinks, and takes another look at the carrier. “Yeah, could do a little platform and have it auto-reorient, and…”

“He says he’s fine,” Tifa reports, now with her head partly-under the couch and her phone in hand. “But he doesn’t want to go hide in a—oh. Wait…okay, look, I’m trying really hard here but I just can’t be constantly going back and forth. You two need to actually tell each other what’s going on.”

Zack hears her but is only half-paying attention at first, because his vision for a new and improved portable mouse box is rapidly sketching in the details and he’s trying to simultaneously build a materials list for it. It’s more the sharp change in her tone that finally hooks him, and he looks up from the half-written list on his phone to her. “Tifa?”

Who starts to answer him, but Zack is admittedly a rude jerk and yelps over her because she’s actually gotten Cloud to come out and sit in her hand. He whirls around and reaches for Cloud, then catches himself and puts his phone out instead.

“Okay, so it’ll take probably an hour to get Reeve to get someone to unlock everything for us anyway, so I’m thinking a quickie pitstop in the shop so we can at least kickstart a new box for the bike for you to ride in,” Zack says as he shows Cloud his idea.

Tifa tries to say something again, but this time she cuts herself off before Zack even looks over at her. And when he does, she has her eyes closed and is rubbing between them like she has a headache coming on.

Cloud squeaks. Zack looks back down and Cloud is staring straight up, even standing on his hindlegs so his body is thin and straining and little quivers are running through it from the effort. He just…always works so damned hard, Zack can’t help thinking, no matter how the odds are stacked against him, or how he feels about it. So long as he thinks it’s going to matter, he won’t stop.

He squeaks again, then drops down onto the phone and types out a message very slowly, with frequent looks back up at Zack. When he’s done, he scoots off the phone and back into Tifa’s hand and then gives the top edge of the phone a push. Zack gets it and reads: seph said no implementation without approval.

“Oh, I mean…I don’t think this is implementing anything, it’s already a place that exists and we know it blocks Lifestream vibes. We’re just bypassing some stuff to get to it,” Zack says, blinking.

“…are you talking about the old Deepground lab?” Tifa says. Her voice starts out low but quickly rises with indignation; she also pulls Cloud in towards her as she stares incredulously at Zack. “Are you kidding me, Zack, that place—they were supposed to bury that place in concrete!”

“Well, they did. Mostly. But there’s a bunch of utility mains that run through it, that’s why those R&D rejects went there, and we can’t cut off half a Sector, so there’s still a couple accessible rooms,” Zack says defensively. Honestly, he made the same comments when he was sitting in on the executive discussion, but was overruled and Tifa probably doesn’t know about that but she should still know him and why she’s being so harsh now is…why is this his fault? He’s just trying to get them what Cloud needs. “Anyway, it’s secure, there aren’t any crazy scientists in it now, it’s still got that weird Planet blind spot ability going for it and I’m just trying to keep the fucking voices out of Cloud’s head before they try and talk him into fighting Seph again, okay? Because how the fuck is that going to go right now?”

Tifa opens her mouth, then visibly makes herself just take a deep breath. Then she frowns as if someone poked her. She looks down, grimaces, and hastily takes her phone out for Cloud. Who scurries onto it, ignoring the phone Zack holds out, and messages Zack: dont want to go.

“But it’d help—”

Cloud looks up at him, then down at the phone. One paw moves forward as if he’s going to type a follow-up…and then Cloud is just this little golden blur zipping around a squirming Tifa and then he’s gone.

Tifa is twisted halfway around and groping at the floor under the couch. She moves over when Zack shoulders in, then turns fully to face that way as they both anxiously scan the empty floor. “Oh, wait,” she says, tapping Zack’s shoulder and then pointing to the hole in the couch cushion. “Cloud?”

“Spike?” Zack says, squinting into the hole. He puts in a finger and tries to move the stuffing aside, and thinks he can just barely glimpse some movement deeper inside the cushion. “Buddy? Are you—are you okay?”

“Can he get out of the room from there?” Tifa mutters as she pushes back from the couch.

Then she winces and grabs at Zack’s arm as he swears and twists to go for the end so he can yank the couch from the wall. He starts to pull free, but before he can, there’s a muffled noise from inside of the couch. They both crowd up to the hole but then Tifa backs off before Zack has to get rude again.

“Cloud?” Zack says. “Is it the Lifestream?”

Silence. Zack starts to swear and go for his phone, which he dropped in the scramble, but then Cloud makes another noise. And then another one, and another one, each a couple seconds apart. “I think he’s trying to show you he’s not going to leave the couch,” Tifa says.

But she doesn’t sound that sure, so Zack puts his eye to the hole again. Which is a bad idea because that shuts out all of the light, so he leans back. “You staying in there? Once for yes, two for no,” Zack says.

“I really think—” Tifa starts, but goes quiet when there’s a single loud squeak.

“Okay. Okay…well, we can do that, we can wait for Aerith from here,” Zack says. Not a great situation, but he’s not sure what’s going on with Cloud except that Cloud really doesn’t want to come out, and he’s not about to make the guy till he’s got more info. He’s not even sure how he could, short of ripping open the couch, and Cloud is so small he’d be terrified of accidentally nicking him. “Um, Tifa, can you…get me that bag? It’s got the food and water and blankets.”

Tifa goes and gets the bag. She also gets the packed lunch and brings both to Zack’s side. “Do you want me to tell Lucrecia or Grimoire?” she says.

“They’re kind of busy and they already know about the Lifestr—” Zack starts.

Cloud squeaks. Once.

“Okay.” Tifa glances at Zack like she thinks he might want to get something out of this, but never actually says what she thinks that is. When he shrugs at her, she sighs and rubs at her nose again, then gets up. “I’ll put a sign up or something so people know this office is being used, so you don’t have to rush.”

“Oh—yeah, thanks. Can you add a ‘quiet please’ to that?” Zack says as he fiddles with his phone. “I think I’m gonna try seeing if I can get Reeve on a videocall—”

Two shrill squeaks. Zack frowns at the couch, then leans forward when he thinks he detects the top of it rippling. But when he touches the spot, the movement stops.

“I’m going to make Tseng get Aerith a priority ride from the airport too,” Tifa says. When Zack looks over, she’s on her way out, shaking her head at something. “At least he should listen.”

“Okay…well, anyway, Aerith is going to be here soon,” Zack says as he turns back to the couch. No response, although after a second he does make out a little movement inside the stuffing. “No calls. Just whenever you feel like coming out, Cloud.”

The stuffing moves again. Zack waits…and then winces when no little head appears. He runs his fingers through his hair, then puts his phone down and goes to get Cloud’s food and water dishes from the table. Refilling them and putting them near the hole in the cushion takes up a couple minutes, and then, okay, he doesn’t want to seem insensitive but his stomach doesn’t care about manners and he needs it to shut up. So he opens up the packed lunch and starts to eat it while he’s waiting.

A few bites in, his phone buzzes and he picks it up. Angeal messaging to see where he is—he replies that he’s still at the lab eating and when Angeal doesn’t immediately fire back, figures the man isn’t looking for him and Cloud for anything. He starts to swipe the phone off to put it away, but then a window strays across the screen and it has his list of mouse box stuff and he thinks of a new piece of gear. So he adds that, and then props up the phone on his knee as he starts looking up Reeve’s schedule. No calls, he’s sticking to that, but there are a couple other things he’s just thought of for Cloud.

* * *

Sephiroth and Vincent arrive at the site in a very different manner than the last time Sephiroth was at this building, and he isn’t referring to his current form but to Vincent’s. Which hasn’t completely shifted demonic, but it’s sufficiently changed that once Vincent lands on the rooftop, he needs to spend a minute adjusting his clothing and checking weapons placement.

The sling functioned perfectly, and after the first disorienting few seconds, Sephiroth learned how to shield his head so the wind wouldn’t overstimulate his whiskers and could actually enjoy the flight. He miaows without thinking when Vincent asks how he is, then lifts himself a little further out of the sling so that he can look around as Vincent heads for a stairwell.

They’ve had the entire building closed down, but the on-site watch team is posted a few levels down and on the topmost floor there should only be sensors due to the number of potentially unstable and immovable (short of knocking down the whole place) hazards identified on it. Sephiroth also sent an order ahead of time to ensure that the SOLDIERs wouldn’t come up, but he keeps hearing things. It begins as very faint scratching noises just on the edge of his hearing and at first he can’t rule out that he’s hearing something from the neighboring buildings. But as Vincent descends the stairs, the walls around them don’t block out the sounds. If anything, they’re growing stronger.

Sephiroth wiggles around to put his hindlegs beneath himself and then pushes his forepaws over the edge of the sling so he can crane around better. Then he pauses and looks up, sensing a change in Vincent, but Vincent only shakes his head as he also looks cautiously around. “Bearing?” Vincent murmurs.

As if the man not only has gauged what might be attracting Sephiroth’s attention but also is taking it entirely seriously, without even a hint that he might be wondering whether it’s only cockroaches or rats. Sephiroth sniffs the air and decides rats aren’t a possibility, so Vincent might also be able to tell that. Then he realizes Vincent is still looking at him—waiting for his input—and he slowly shakes his head too. He can hear it but he’s still uncertain of where the sounds are originating from.

Vincent purses his lips. Then he reaches up and tweaks the sling slightly so that…oh, his gun holster on that side. Sephiroth obligingly shifts his weight and catches a small smile on Vincent’s face before Vincent ducks his head and soundlessly swings over the stairwell rail and onto the floor below.

There is a slight tremor as he lands; even with great skill, one can’t defeat gravity. But the noises continue without interruption and that is very odd, Sephiroth thinks. Any animal, even a mutated one, should react to that; he was expecting it and even he tensed a little before feeling Vincent stabilize.

He worms out of the sling and drops onto the ground. Then hesitates, but no hand comes down to snatch him back up and no muttered curse is fired at his back. There was just that brief sucked breath and he does think he should have tried to signal to Vincent, but Vincent…simply adjusts. He stays back as Sephiroth prowls forward, cocking his head this way and that till he thinks he has a bearing on the noises.

Sephiroth does remember the working map of all the hazards on this floor, and from this…height he also spots a few additional ones he doesn’t think they marked down. That skittering noise doesn’t appear to be diminishing or accelerating as he moves around, so when he comes near one, he pauses and waits for Vincent to come up. Usually the other man sees the issue by then and can enter it into his phone, but at one spot he doesn’t and he’s frowning in inquiry at Sephiroth. But that’s rectified with a quick batting of a pebble to make the puddle flare, and then Vincent rewards Sephiroth with a head-rub before he adds that one.

It's very, very hard not to purr for the man, but Sephiroth is still keeping an ear on the noise they’re tracking, and as soon as Vincent is done, he’s back on the hunt. He eventually manages to narrow it down to a patch of wall in the next room where the noises seem to periodically converge, and when he paws at the crumbling concrete, he thinks he can smell air coming through the holes.

Vincent crouches down and passes his hand over the area. He motions for Sephiroth to back up and then pulls out a little leather pouch containing a number of tools, including drill bits. But instead of attaching them to a drill, Vincent selects one, screws it into a long, thin handle and then uses a combination of lightning and wind materia to send it whirling through the wall, much more quietly than any kind of power tool would have.

As soon as it’s through, Vincent pulls it back out and then quickly inserts an expandable metal probe through the hole. They both hear a muted click as the end of the probe stops somewhere on the other side of the wall, denoting a hollow space. Vincent takes the probe out and starts to lay it aside, but then pauses as Sephiroth puts up a paw. He seems reluctant to let Sephiroth touch it, but does let Sephiroth sniff just above the probe.

Nothing that immediately makes Sephiroth recoil. Sephiroth wrinkles his nose, then resists the urge to pounce at the probe when its tip moves away from him. He watches Vincent drill and test three more holes, then scratch out a rough rectangle on the wall connecting all of them.

The cavity behind the wall isn’t large enough to allow for any kind of humanoid, and would rule out most known dangerous monsters as well. But Sephiroth has run into enough unknowns that he is happy to jump up onto a nearby shelf as Vincent kneels down and works out the best way to cut an opening. He monitors sounds and smells while Vincent busies himself with materia and what might be that missing laser prototype Tuesti had been fretting over last quarter.

Just before Vincent cuts through the last part, he raises his hand and holds up three fingers. He doesn’t actually look at Sephiroth but Sephiroth understands immediately and miaows, then crouches down to brace himself for the last three seconds. This cat form is highly sensitive to sudden changes, and as skilled as Vincent is, he still can’t keep the concrete from grating loudly when he pushes at it.

Clouds of dust also billow up around the cracked edges. Vincent yanks up part of his cloak over the lower part of his face but continues shoving at the concrete, trying to make it pivot out of the wall rather than fall inwards, so the stuff doesn’t seem to be poisonous. It certainly smells terrible, all stale and moldy, and Sephiroth can’t help hunching back on the shelf…but because he does, he also spots the blurred movement just at the far edge of the widening hole.

In an instant he’s off the shelf and down on top of it, slamming one paw into its back while he brings his other one around to pin the head, if that’s needed. But it’s metal under his paw, not fur, and it has an edge that bites viciously into him—he snarls and yanks his paw away, but then whirls and slaps it towards Vincent before it escapes.

Vincent grabs whatever it is with his left hand, its claws closely caging it around as he produces a clear container. He pops it in there, seals the lid, and then immediately reaches for Sephiroth. “Let me see, let me clean it.”

Sephiroth is still exasperated with himself for being so unprofessional as to flinch and he side-steps Vincent’s hand. Vincent makes a low, soothing chest-deep burr and keeps his hand out without moving any closer, and after a moment Sephiroth’s reason overcomes his emotions and he limps over.

The cut isn’t that bad but it’s jagged enough that Vincent takes him up onto one knee to examine it. Some judicious scraping with one of those little tools later, Sephiroth is pressing his paw into a wad of medical gauze to soak up the last of the blood while Vincent peers around in the hole with a small flashlight.

“This goes all the way to the other end and I think it might go down to another floor,” Vincent says when he pulls his head out. He picks up the container and then bends over to rest one elbow on the floor so that his and Sephiroth’s heads are level with each other and they can both look at its contents. “Hmmm. I don’t remember robotics in the other reports.”

Because there hadn’t been any, Sephiroth thinks with a sourness that’s entirely directed away from Vincent and at his own failures. That is very clearly a tiny robot drone in the container, approximately the size of a rat but shaped like a four-legged beetle, with sensor mounts and an oddly-placed hook sticking out of its backend.

Vincent also notes the hook and after putting down the container in front of Sephiroth, he goes back to look in the hole. A few seconds later, he pulls out a tiny sled that pairs perfectly with the hook. “There’s more than one drag-mark,” he remarks as he starts picking at the sled, trying to detach its load. “No camera. I don’t think these are for surveillance.”

Sephiroth lifts his paw and checks its pads. When he sees that they’ve healed over, he hops over Vincent’s leg and takes his own look in the hole. He spots the wire, miaows, and when Vincent makes an inquiring noise, he manages to snag it with his claw and pull it out far enough for the man to see.

The wire is obviously a guide-track of some kind, and as Vincent points out, the lack of cameras seems to suggest these robots aren’t for looking around but are intended to be very directional transportation vehicles of some kind. Vincent thinks a little bit, then suggests he try redirecting the track so they can catch the next one that comes along, since the one they have is too mangled to be put back into service.

Sephiroth agrees, and while Vincent works with the wire, Sephiroth writes up their findings and sends a report to R&D. He also calls up a SOLDIER from the on-site team to come collect the squashed robot from Vincent, but after some thinking of his own, doesn’t have them stay to help with the trap. Aside from maintaining secrecy around Sephiroth’s condition, they’re better off working with Tuesti and the others to try and track down the wire’s origin and destination, since it doesn’t take an entire team to simply watch a glorified mouse hole.

Arguably, it doesn’t take both Sephiroth and Vincent, but Vincent clearly isn’t leaving. And…well, yes, when Vincent sets up his watchpost in the corner, it includes his folded-up cloak in a nice sunny spot and Sephiroth can’t resist that.

Vincent puts out a little snack for Sephiroth as well, then produces a couple rice balls that he eats while Sephiroth is cleaning off his mouth and whiskers. “You can lie down and take a nap if you want,” he says.

Sephiroth pauses and looks over. Then rubs at his face, but much to his annoyance, the yawn still comes. He folds his feet underneath himself and sits on the cloak so that the light is shining directly on his face, assuming that that will help keep him awake…but instead he finds himself yawning again. He swats his tail against the wall, then starts to get up.

“You’re going to wake up if you need to,” Vincent says and Sephiroth stops again. The other man is studying something on his phone, but then glances over as if sensing Sephiroth’s disbelief. “You know it’s important, Sephiroth. There might be some additional instincts now, but you still have all the ones you had before and you’ll wake yourself in time. I’ve seen you operate, I know you do that. If you’d rest up as a human, you should be able to do the same as a cat.”

That is absolutely true, but somehow hearing that in Vincent’s calm, unhurried tones makes it seem—makes Sephiroth remember it. He sits back down.

Vincent smiles again. He returns to his phone, but a second later, a dark line curls out from behind him: his tail, looping softly through the air and briefly teasing at Sephiroth’s head before dropping obediently to Sephiroth’s batting paw. He lets Sephiroth curl up with it, part tucked between Sephiroth’s paws while more rests comfortably over Sephiroth’s haunches and then along Sephiroth’s own tail. It’s…wonderful, and the most wondrous part of it, Sephiroth thinks later, is how utterly natural it feels. He doesn’t have to worry because of how well they both understand.

And he does wake in time, and they do catch another one of the robots. Vincent attaches a microchip to it that can serve as a crude tracker or, once they return and consult with the others, possibly as a method of hacking the robot, then releases it back into the tunnel. Then he scoops up Sephiroth, cleans up the space, and they go up to the roof so he can put out his wings. They report to Grimoire to discuss developments, come up with a follow-up plan that goes out to the other Firsts, and then Vincent takes Sephiroth back to his place.

Sephiroth is still Sephiroth despite the cat body, and that’s what Vincent keeps demonstrating. So while Sephiroth isn’t ignoring the concerns Grimoire raised, he doesn’t think that that’s where the danger here lies. It’s not with Vincent, who’s behaved not merely impeccably, but with so much effortless grace and consideration and—and affection, that anything less than meeting the man on the same level would be a terrible crime. And even before this, Sephiroth had been determined to never add to the wrongs that Shinra and Hojo had already piled onto Vincent.

Now he’s even more determined to do that, and to simply not fail Vincent. He has to rise to the man’s level, he could never forgive himself otherwise. So when Vincent and he settle down on the couch with their tablets and Vincent’s hand ends up stroking his back, he doesn’t move away to type out a question about it. He rolls into it, and lets himself purr till a slow, resonant rumble comes out of Vincent, and makes certain that the man knows how much he appreciates it all.

Chapter Text

To be honest, Angeal was expecting a little more drama about him walking around the office with Genesis on his shoulder. Even if people don’t know exactly what happened, they do know that there was a major mission involving all of the Firsts and that it had enough fallout to keep them in the field afterward. Sephiroth being so active on email has probably kept some of the gossip down, but Angeal has gotten enough backchannel questions to know that rumors are still going around.

But if people are wondering about why they still haven’t seen any of the other Firsts besides Angeal and Zack, they’re not wondering about Angeal’s new pet. They all look, but it’s usually with a grin they’re quick to hide as they try and be professional about whatever they came in about. “Nobody’s asking to touch you or hold you either,” Angeal marvels when he and Genesis get a private moment about forty minutes in.

Genesis has taken over Angeal’s file tray. Initially he was beadily eyeballing everyone who came in, but when he realized he wouldn’t have to fend off any hands, he roosted over there with his tablet tucked up in front of him. He had been answering messages for a while, but when Angeal speaks, he ruffles a little like…

“Are you sleeping on me?” Angeal asks.

The feathers ruffle up further as Genesis shifts around till he can stick out a foot and wake up his tablet. Is it a crime to enjoy some peace and quiet? he pecks out, before looking up suspiciously at Angeal. Were you hoping they’d manhandle me?

Angeal snorts and pushes back from his desk. He adjusts the shade on the window behind them so it’s not throwing a hot streak across his back, then looks at Genesis again. “I’m just a little surprised that nobody thinks it’s weird for me to have a pet chicken. Or that I named it after you.”

Someone had asked that and Angeal had started to answer without thinking about it, only to curse when Genesis had bitten his ear. His hand drifts up to the spot and then he catches Genesis looking at him, so he has to quickly make it into running fingers through his hair. He hadn’t bled or anything, but it’d just made everyone…kind of sigh and nod like this was a daily thing.

Don’t even try to convince me it’s flattery, Genesis types. When he’s done, his head comes up for another glare and then the rest of him hikes off the tray. He stalks over to the food-and-water station Angeal set up, nibbles a little, and then comes around to lean over the top of Angeal’s laptop.

Angeal has his inbox up on the left side, with several windows open on the right. Most of them do have to do with work but okay, one is of the internal pet channel. “I wasn’t in it,” Angeal mutters as Genesis pecks at that one. “Just had it open from a couple days ago and…okay, look, you’re gonna ruin my screen, let’s get some actual work done.”

Genesis clucks disdainfully, but he comes around the side of the laptop and takes up a spot by Angeal’s arm. It takes a couple tries and one burst of annoyed wing-flapping from Genesis, but they figure out a system where Genesis doesn’t have to go back to his tablet to object to something or viciously hit the Delete key right after Angeal’s highlighted the entire thing. Of course Genesis still needs his tablet to type out an explanation for why he wants to nix something, but this way they can get it down to a shortlist and then clear out the non-debate items first.

It's actually a lot more efficient than normal, and then when they get to the stuff they need to talk about, Angeal’s not pressed for time or already swallowing down half an hour of Genesis’ dramatics. He loves the man for who he is, and Genesis isn’t Genesis without the vocals, but…this is just a lot easier on him.

Of course, then he feels guilty for thinking that, since it’s not exactly easier on Genesis to be like this. Genesis happens to be in the adjoining bathroom so Angeal tries to distract himself by checking in with Zack and Cloud. Who…don’t reply, either of them, and that’s worrying so he’s on the phone with someone in Lucrecia’s lab when Genesis flies back at the same time that there’s a knock at the door.

“…yeah, hang on,” Angeal says as he starts to get up. Then he stops as Genesis banks and arrows straight for the door.

From the way Genesis abruptly pulls up, squawking and swinging his feet up to scrabble at the door, he hadn’t really been thinking about what he was doing at first. He does seem to be getting used to the chicken body but whether that’s a good thing—Angeal puts the phone down on his desk and then jumps over it. He snags Genesis out of the air and moves him to a shoulder, then opens the door for…Reeve.

Whose eyes widen when he sees Genesis and who momentarily seems to be considering a quick retreat, but then, he actually knows what’s going on. Which is why Angeal grabs him and pulls him in, although maybe that was a little rough from the way Reeve’s eyes bug out even more.

“Sorry,” Angeal says as he shuts the door. He tries to make up for it by helping Reeve towards the nearest chair. “I’m telling everybody this is—”

“Oh, no, I got the email. I just…he’s…I mean, you’re rather large for a chicken, er, rooster, General Rhapsodos?” Reeve stammers. He brushes at his shirt-front a couple times more than he needs to, then fidgets with his tie. “Never mind, not that I’d know, growing up in Sector…”

Angeal likes Reeve, but he can feel Genesis’ feathers sticking into his ear and can tell they’re a bit stiffly puffed-out. He sneaks up a hand and strokes a finger along Genesis’ belly as Genesis snaps his beak impatiently. “You looking for him or me?”

“Either, I suppose,” Reeve says. He’s starting to calm down, though his eyes keep drifting to Genesis whenever Genesis moves. He takes out his tablet to show them something. “Some anomalies came back in the power grid analysis that I thought we should look at. I did try Sephiroth first, but he has an out of office message up.”

“Yeah, you’d have to send it priority flagged to bypass that. But I can take a look—” Angeal grimaces, remembering the phone “—just sit down for a sec, I need to finish this call.”

Reeve takes a seat as Angeal turns and goes back to finish up with the R&D tech. He looks fine, but just as Angeal’s passed him, he makes a startled noise; Angeal also feels Genesis’ weight come off his shoulder. Angeal whips around and Genesis, definitely peeved now, stares up at him from the arm of Reeve’s chair while Reeve blinks rapidly behind him.

Then Genesis pointedly turns around to face Reeve. Angeal starts to go forward again, but then stops himself and takes a deep breath. “One for yes, two for no, right foot for slow down and left for scroll,” Angeal says.

Genesis twists around and looks at him, head twisting a little in surprise. Reeve frowns, but then his face clears up. “Clucks for the first two, I take it?” he says, nodding. “Very intuitive code, General. Right, well, so this is what I was looking at…”

Reeve’s an animal guy and despite his workload manages to comment on nearly every post in the internal pets channel, and he’s also the guy with robotic cats so Angeal figured he’d get it pretty quick. He seems to be over his initial awkwardness around Genesis too and starts walking Genesis through whatever diagram he brought as Angeal picks up the phone.

Apparently, Zack and Cloud still haven’t left the lab, and Tifa made it really clear to everyone that they weren’t to be disturbed till she got back. Which by itself makes Angeal worry, though at least he knows where those two are. And from what the R&D tech says, it sounds like Lucrecia and Grimoire both know what’s going on and don’t think they need to interfere, so it’s pretty much guaranteed to be personal and…Angeal really would like to go down there and see for himself what’s going on. And maybe take Zack out for a coffee and make sure the guy’s head hasn’t gone somewhere a little nutty, since for all that Zack is the only one of them who wasn’t mind-controlled by Jenova at some point, he can get to some pretty weird places on his own.

He does usually mean well, and Angeal knows both of them well enough to not put everything on Zack when Cloud communicates—kind of differently, a lot of the time, and being a mouse probably has fucked with that. Genesis was having some issues at the beginning and Angeal’s had to really think about how to work around that, and that’s with a man who at least has no problem flagging when he’s infuriated. But…

“Ah, Angeal,” Reeve clears his throat, and then looks apologetic as Angeal looks at him. “Sorry, but you might want to check your email.”

Angeal frowns and goes around to his laptop. Then sighs and thanks the R&D tech and tells them to just message him in a priority channel if either Zack or Cloud leave, even if it’s just to use the bathroom, because that’s an urgent message from Sephiroth blinking at him.

Fifteen minutes later, he and Genesis and Reeve have all read up on the tiny roach robots and Reeve has had some epiphany about how these things might be siphoning off power from the grid, which links back to the unexplained spikes he’s found. Also, Reeve thinks that there’s possibly an illegal hook-up literally in the basement of the next building over so while Sephiroth said just keep daily ops running, Angeal needs to check that out.

Genesis nods approvingly. Then arches his neck and raises all the feathers on it when Reeve blinks hard and says, “You’re bringing h—both of you?”

“Yeah,” Angeal says firmly. Though once Reeve has excused himself to go shut down that floor and prep his team to reroute all the electricity, Angeal does turn to Genesis. “We’re still gonna have to keep to the story, you know. You’re a rooster, Gen, you’re not a general.”

Genesis straightens up on the chair arm and for a second Angeal thinks he’s going to launch forward. But when Angeal gets his arm up just in case, Genesis startles and shifts back on the arm. He cranes his head a few times, giving off an air of both surprise and…maybe dismay? And then he turns and hops to Angeal’s desk and starts pecking at his tablet.

I know that, I have no intention of making a fool out of myself. Then Genesis pauses and looks at Angeal again, and somehow Angeal doubts that it’s because he’s in the middle of taking a seat and Genesis is just being polite. His head bobs and then turns almost completely upside-down before flipping straight and going to the tablet again. Any other concerns about my carrying out my duties? Would you like to discuss weapons?

Angeal can layer in the biting sarcasm for himself and he sighs. “Gen, seriously, do I ever yell at you about how you use a sword?” he says, and then raises his hand. “Yeah, we fight about when and why, but not how. Besides, I’m hoping based on what Tuesti said that this is all remote-control bullshit and there’s not actually gonna be an evil mastermind we have to take down right next to the garage Rufus uses. Man, Tseng’s going to be hitting the roof over missing that.”

Digging at the Turks usually is a guaranteed pleaser among the Firsts, no matter their mood, but Genesis passes on that this time and types: Don’t be an idiot. Tuesti usually does know what he’s talking about but the last time you underestimated—

“Hey, I’m still going armed,” Angeal says. He frowns at how hard Genesis is pecking at the tablet—they reinforced the glass but it’s still glass—and then at how Genesis twists sharply around and even hops a couple inches forward to peer at him. “What, did you think I wasn’t? When I’m taking you?”

Genesis raises his head a little as Angeal talks, but then just stands there and looks at Angeal afterward. He’s been…not exactly quiet, but he’s definitely been letting there be pauses in the conversation where he doesn’t quite seem to have a retort ready, and Genesis is the last person Angeal ever worries about being speechless. This doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that dealing with chicken instincts should affect either.

But before Angeal can think any more about that, Genesis goes back to his tablet. Much as it pains me, he writes and then pauses to ruffle his feathers. Sephiroth has a point. We still don’t have adequate defenses and we can’t afford for another one of us to be transformed. Is Tuesti clear on that?

“I’m pretty sure, yeah, considering he wasn’t trying to talk me into going with one of his robots instead of himself,” Angeal says. Still weird for Genesis, worrying about someone else without being ordered to.

Are you? Genesis adds quickly, and then he raises his head and clucks pointedly at Angeal before he types some more. I am continuing this farce about being a pet chicken solely under the condition that I’m not subjected to circumstances forcing me to act otherwise, Angeal. If you choose to turn a deaf ear to common sense, then I can’t be held responsible for my actions.

“Oh, trust me, I’m gonna hear you even if you’re speaking chicken,” Angeal says, and he can’t help but reach up and push the heel of his hand against his ear. But then he shakes his head and puts that hand out towards Genesis. “Look, we’re gonna check out this closet, see if there are any little roach robots and then come right back to tell Seph so he can figure out what to do about it while I see what the hell is up with Zack and Cloud. Not doing anything else, Gen. I know if I end up a chicken too, the first thing you’ll do is stab Zack in the face because now he’s got to take care of both of us.”

Genesis squawks and maybe Angeal’s getting a little messed up in the head himself, but he almost hears the must you remind me in its indignation. Though that doesn’t stop Genesis from hopping onto Angeal’s hand, and then, once he’s brought it up high enough, stepping from there to Angeal’s shoulder.

“You do think we should go, right?” Angeal asks as he starts to stand. Because he figures that Genesis is mostly just irritated he’ll have to play stupid bird in front of more people, but for a moment there, Genesis had seemed almost anxious. “Somebody has to, but if you…I said I wasn’t going to leave you with anyone, I didn’t forget. If you think I should stay back, I guess I can call up a Second to go with them.”

He'd fucking hate it and be kicking the walls till they and Tuesti got back and reported in, but he honestly means the offer. But he is expecting Genesis to crow in disgust or smack him with a wing or some other way to express how ridiculous it is, because Genesis would and has caused scenes in front of the full board of directors rather than admit to nerves. So he’s pretty surprised when Genesis just grips onto his shoulder-guard and then cranes down to stare him in the face.

Angeal does twitch a little at Genesis’ beak getting right there by his eye, but then sighs and waits for it. Genesis tilts his head back and forth, then…pulls it back. And fluffs himself a little, but after that he just points his head at the door and clucks. Definitely a ‘go ahead’ but not at all strident.

Well, Angeal will take it. He gets their phones and some gear, then meets Tuesti by the elevator. They pick up a couple SOLDIERs and some of Tuesti’s people by the time they hit the lobby floor, and then, inevitably, a couple Turks as they enter the underground passage that links the two buildings.

“We’re just here to help close off the perimeter,” Cissnei says.

“Yeah, wouldn’t want your cock flying off or anything, you’re gonna want that later,” Reno says.

Cissnei’s eyelids twitch as if she’s fighting back a migraine and then she clamps a hand onto Reno’s shoulder, right as Angeal reaches up to push Genesis back by the breast as he hisses and flaps his wings. “Is your pet coming with us?” Cissnei asks.

Pretty monotone, like she just wants clarification and isn’t judging or anything, and Angeal will give her the benefit of the doubt since whatever nerve-pinch she does to Reno’s shoulder makes him cringe and shuffle behind her. “Yeah, Gen knows what to do, he’s not going to get in your sightlines,” Angeal says, and then reluctantly adds a little more to help with the cover story. “He’s still getting his footing here and if I leave him in the office, there’s nobody to watch him. Well, nobody he’ll want to watch him.”

“Wasn’t like I was sticking up a hand. You do whatever you all do down on the farm but that’s not my kind of after-hours video—ow!” Reno says, bobbing briefly back up before dropping behind Cissnei again.

Reeve seems to have gotten over his twitchy spell and has moved on to fraying toleration, which to be honest usually makes him a much better operations partner. “We’re still not getting any organic life signs in there, and we’ve got all the circuits rerouted,” he says. “I just can’t fully cut off all the power without getting in the room, but hopefully that’s not going to involve any violence.”

“Well, just in case it does, we’ll sweep first before you go in,” Angeal tells him.

They head down the passage and into the basement of the next building over. A couple minutes to brief the team and work out the entry protocol and then two SOLDIERs shield Reeve with riot shields while Angeal steps up to the door. He stops to pull his sword out and have that ready, and as he does, Genesis drops from his shoulder down onto his back, using his sword harness as a perch so he’s largely covered himself by Angeal’s body.

Maybe that’s a little smarter than you’d expect a chicken to be, even a trained one—and generally they’d rather peck the food out of you but occasionally Angeal got one on board for hoop-jumping—and Angeal thinks he might have to adjust the story later. But he’s glad Genesis does that, because the second he swings the door open, there’s a shudder-inducing ripple that goes all around the room, like a million small fingers just pulled out of sight.

Or like somebody has a rat infestation and they just all fled the light. Angeal immediately stops in the doorway and puts up his free hand in a ‘wait’ signal as he scans the room. His eyes have already adjusted to the dark and the…he assumes those were the same kind of roach robots Sephiroth found…aren’t anywhere in sight. Just stacks of crates and…he frowns at the curtain of wires hanging down from the ceiling further inside the room, just behind a half-wall of what looks like packs of toilet paper.

“Think we have live,” he says over his shoulder.

“Everything’s cut to local,” comes Reeve’s reply. Then he sighs as someone tells him to please stay put, hasn’t been cleared yet. “Do you see the power box to the right?”

“Yeah, but I’m gonna go first. Don’t come in till I say,” Angeal says.

He makes his way into the room, and while he catches a couple skittering dots along the edges, he doesn’t get that surrounded feeling he did when he first opened the door. They’re tiny and even if there are a bunch of them, they can’t add up to enough to be much of a problem between him and the ten feet to the box. He still keeps his sword out but it’s more because he’s keeping an eye on the door too in case anything runs out.

Which he’ll admit is a raw-recruit-level mistake, because just as he gets to the box, he looks up to see where the cable to it runs and that’s when he realizes that the ceiling is covered in little bits of metal. Angeal swears and drops down to his knees, sword going up over his head, but they’re already peeling off the ceiling in some kind of monstrous sentient wave—

“Block the door!” he shouts. “Mass atta—”

He cuts off as something whisks by his ear, and then his heart tries to smash through his ribs as he sees a silhouette soar directly towards the tip of the oncoming wave. Angeal roars in wordless, terrified, furious protest as the square of light from the door illuminates Genesis, beak wide-open in defiance as he does an insane mid-air flip to show the materia clutched in one foot—

Then the lightning spell goes off. Angeal has to abort his charge because he can’t see a fucking thing, but it’s only because he’s afraid he might cut up Genesis by mistake. He doesn’t really give a shit about himself and he does keep stumbling forward, just with his sword down and his free hand up as tiny little matchbox things patter down all around him. He smacks at them, then senses somebody casting a localized wind-spell to blow them clear.

A couple still get into Angeal’s hair and hook onto his clothes. He rakes them away, slapping his fingers against his hip; his sight is starting to come back and he glimpses the blurry outline of something flipping away from him. Then a figure in the glowing-green doorway, asking if he’s all right.

“Gen—Gen,” he manages as he whips his head back around. “Where the fuck—Gen!”

He can tell he’s made it over to where Genesis was just before the lightning spell released, but he doesn’t see any bit of him. He can just make out scorch marks on the ceiling in the eerie green light—the power’s all out and the others are using glow-sticks, he realizes—and when he looks down, he sees piles and piles of disgusting little robots. But—wait, he thinks, he doesn’t smell burnt flesh…

And then he does, right as Reno steps in after the SOLDIER who’s trying to ask Angeal how he is, carrying what looks like a janitor’s bucket. Cissnei’s right behind him. “Anybody order up a side of fried chicken?” Reno says.

“Really?” Cissnei hisses at him, and then she twists sharply back around, her gun coming up as Angeal lurches towards them.

Which is when Genesis, a little singed but still very much alive and whole and able to screech at all of them, hops out of the bucket. And Angeal…Angeal has never been so fucking happy to have his eardrums burst.

He grabs that fucking rooster, not caring who sees them, and for the next couple minutes he just holds Genesis. They’ve gone through so much fucking shit with Hollander and Hojo and Jenova and then resurrected clones with inserted memories and all that, and in the darkest times Angeal had wondered if he’d survive it all, but he’d never really worried about that with Genesis. Like he’d told Genesis earlier, he knew the man could handle himself, and it was just whether Genesis was going to do it for the right reasons, or at least reasons Angeal could agree with. But for a second he’d really fucking thought—

“…Angeal?” someone says gently, and when Angeal grunts, they resolve to Reeve patting him on the arm. “Feel free to sit down there, I’m just going to redo the circuits and get them cataloging the robots. Oh, ah, I think—you need to just delegate to Lieutenant Jackson here—”

“Yeah, take point. Coordinate with Tuesti, and stuff that fucking asshole somewhere I don’t have to look at him,” Angeal mutters without pulling his face out of Genesis’ feathers.

Genesis is definitely alive but oddly quiet, and he lets Angeal hold onto him as the lieutenant acknowledges the order and Cissnei calls that Reno is going to shut up right now and leave them alone.

“Very inappropriate,” Tuesti says under his breath. He gives Angeal one last pat, then edges off. “You might need to reboot your phone too if you need to call anyone, by the way. Surge protection and all that…anyway, let me know if either of you need anything.”

“Sure. Thanks.” Angeal takes a seat on the floor just around the corner from the room where people are going in and out. His breathing’s a little closer to normal now, but his heart still feels like it’s reconstituting as he finally lowers his arms to take a look at Genesis. Who immediately squirms around and jerks his head a little like he kind of really needed the air, but who still stays put as he looks back at Angeal. He pushes something into Angeal’s hand—the lightning materia—and then just tilts his head back and forth as Angeal pushes it back into its slot on his shoulderguard.

Angeal breathes some more. Then thinks to take out his phone and like Tuesti warned, it looks dead. He hits the power button to restart it, then remembers this one doesn’t have the reinforced glass and keyboard hack so he gets Genesis’ tablet out and reboots that one too, moving Genesis to his other arm so he can have the tablet leaning on his thigh. Genesis clucks softly but doesn’t seem that in a hurry for once to get messaging capability.

Though when he finally has it, he does use it: You idiot.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know,” Angeal says, stroking at Genesis’ back. “I’m sorry. I…really thought you were gone there, Gen.”

If you didn’t just walk into a nest of and then Genesis stops typing and just lets out a frustrated squawk. He peers up at Angeal, then bends down to the phone. Then pulls his head up and takes another look before he finally types more. This is why I come with you, you idiot.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m glad.” Angeal pets Genesis some more, till his heart feels a little less like a squashed bug, and then he takes a deep breath. “Right. So this blew up a lot…Seph’s going to kill us. I mean, he might appreciate knowing he can still use materia, but…”

Genesis squawks again, but this time it’s much less strained. I will do the explaining, Angeal. You need to go home and rest.

That’s…Angeal starts to argue, because that’s just the first thing he thinks to do. Because they usually do that these days, with him trying to make sure they’re still doing what the need to and Genesis always trying to tell him why that’s not actually the case, but this time—maybe it’s him still being shocky but this time he looks at it a little differently. “Yeah, probably. But I can’t leave you at the office—”

I am emailing this, Angeal. Genesis then kicks him in the chest. I am going with you, idiot. Just shut up and let me work for once. You need to let me.

Angeal exhales. Touches the warm, breathing bird in his arms, and then looks around the corner to where Reeve is apparently trying to talk into two phones in either of his hands plus a third one that someone is holding up for him. There’s a lot of work to get done, he thinks, but then he looks down at Genesis. Who does know that, and who does want what they all do, health and safety and happiness, and who…maybe isn’t really arguing here. Maybe it’s just Angeal.

“Yeah,” Angeal says. “Okay, yeah. Let’s go home.”

Chapter Text

Cloud stays in the cushion for pretty much the rest of the day. Zack tries to be there as much as possible, but SOLDIER enhancements don’t include a bottomless bladder so he has to step out a couple times. When he comes back, he can tell that Cloud’s come out and eaten and drunk water but Cloud stops answering even in the yes-no squeak code after the first hour, so he can’t get anything on what else Cloud might need.

He's still not going to leave, of course. He made that mistake once already so he’s going to be there for the guy no matter what, even if it’s starting to feel like emotional support is just an excuse for sitting on his ass in the middle of a workday. So yeah, he does go on his phone now and then, trying to see if there’s anything he can take care of while they’re in here.

For some reason, this gets him blocked by a bunch of people. He’s a First-Class SOLDIER, they can’t not talk to him, especially when it’s a matter of critical operations, so he’s trying to get Reeve to undo all of it when the door opens and Tseng comes in. “Really not a good—” Zack starts.

Tseng, stonefaced and unblinking, does that smooth little side-slide and then Aerith is bouncing into the room, concerned face dissolving into a beaming smile as she immediately hugs Zack. “I was so worried!” she says.

“It’s okay, I mean, it’s not normal but Cloud’s doing his best,” Zack says as he hugs her back. You can’t not hug Aerith when you see her, not unless you’re a mad scientist or someone brainwashed by a mad scientist or a literal apocalypse-dealing alien. Then he makes sure that he tilts her away from the couch so he can point at the cushion. “He’s in there. Making a little nest inside, but you can see we’ve got the food and water station up top, and I’m trying to figure out if maybe a tube installation or two might be a nice little private backdoor down to the floor…”

Aerith glances down at the cushion but then immediately looks back at him, and keeps doing that till he looks at her. Behind them, Tseng has gone out of the room but is still just in Zack’s peripheral vision, talking to…Tifa. “Zack,” Aerith starts, her hands going up to either side of his face. “Zack, did you eat the lunch Tifa said she gave you?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Zack says, and then it occurs to him that Aerith is somehow here about two hours earlier than expected, which means she was probably in transit during lunch hour. “Oh, did you get anything yet? I think I’ve got some left.”

Tifa finishes up with Tseng and comes in. She snags up the bag just as Aerith seems about to talk to her, looks inside of it and then lifts her head to give Zack a disappointed expression. Then she pauses. “Have you been in here the entire time?”

“I’m not leaving Cloud!” Zack snaps.

Then he feels bad about it because Tifa flinches and puts her hands up, and even if they haven’t always been on the same page through all of this, she’s asking just because she wants them to all be okay. Also Aerith takes a step back from him too, and if Aerith thinks you’ve gone a little too far, you probably need a psychosis check at least.

“Um, do you mind if I…say hi?” Aerith says, gesturing towards the couch.

Zack isn’t crazy, he’s just…maybe a little stressed out. He nods and then moves out of the way as Aerith gets down on her knees and starts trying to look into the hole in the cushion. Then he moves a little closer to Tifa, who puts her hands down but who still looks wary. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s not like—it was good, you know I love your pierogies. I just was…trying to…”

Tifa presses her lips together and looks him over. She starts to say something, but then her expression changes a little and instead she gives the leftovers another look. “Well, they’re cold, looks like they’re all stuck together,” she says, and then gives him a tired smile when he doesn’t really hide his twitch. “There’s a microwave just outside, I’m going to go warm them up.”

“Good idea!” Aerith calls over her shoulder. “Oh, Zack, can you grab me a coffee while you two are up? I couldn’t nap on the plane at all, there was all this turbulence and I could really use one.”

“Sure,” Zack says without thinking, and then just like that Tifa has him out of the room and at the kitchenette around the corner.

He half-steps back towards the office when he realizes, but right then the coffeemaker beeps and he catches himself. Then grimaces and puts his hands on the counter, fidgeting while it drips into the mug; he knows they’re just a few feet away but he’s still annoyed at himself for slipping up like that.

“I think Aerith should get him to come out,” Tifa says as she pulls open the microwave door. She assesses the pierogies, then reaches past Zack for a wooden stirrer stick that she uses to flip them over before sticking them back in the microwave. “He usually talks to her.”

“Yeah, I know, I just—”

“He’s not going to think you left him just because you went to get food, Zack,” Tifa says. When he turns around, she’s watching the microwave like she doesn’t know how tense he is, except that she’s got her arms ever-so-slightly bent out from her sides and ready to go on defense. “He didn’t even think you did way back when—you literally almost died, you know. Even Sephiroth gets a little quiet whenever someone brings up that time, so it’s not like you didn’t try to keep Hojo from getting him.”

“I know,” Zack says sharply. He glances back at the door, then at her, and then he pushes back from the counter and turns around so when he kicks out, it’s just at the air and not breaking in the cabinets under the counter. “Okay, why are you bringing that up—”

“Look, Zack, I’m just—I’m worried about you, not just Cloud,” Tifa says. The microwave beeps again and she takes out the tray she’d dumped the pierogies into, then gives it a little shake as she closes the door. Delicious smells of potato and onion waft into the air, but none of that makes her look any less serious when she looks at him. “I get you want to protect him, but you’re not alone with that.”

Zack opens his mouth, then stops himself before he’ll say something he really regrets. He still can’t help feeling antsy, his feet wanting to walk him back to where he should be, but he has to give Tifa her due. “Yeah. I know I’ve been kind of—bitchy about it to you, sorry. It’s just…I don’t know what’s going on with him. I mean, I know, he’s a mouse and I’m factoring that in but even with that, it…does it feel like I’m missing something? I mean, why was he catching rides with the Turks? I wouldn’t exactly trust them with a goldfish.”

Tifa hands him the pierogies and a fork. She still looks sympathetic but something has changed in her expression, like she’s waiting on him again and very tired of doing it. “Did you try asking him?”

Zack exhales. Then forks up a pierogi, because his damned stomach is making noises again and he’s already feeling awkward enough here. “No, he’s not talking to—I mean, I didn’t want to push him and I’ve been keeping busy. Have you? Did he say anything?”

“I tried, but he’s…” Tifa looks frustrated and then disappointed and then resigned. And then she just sighs and grabs the now-full mug out of the coffeemaker. “Zack, all I’m saying is, as far as I can tell he is definitely still Cloud in there, so I don’t think you need to try so hard to be you.”

That is…confusing and sounds like she’s talking about something completely different, but before Zack can ask what she means, they’ve walked back to the room. And when they open the door, Aerith is sitting on the couch and Zack starts to have a heart attack when he spots the little golden dot perched on Aerith’s shoulder as Aerith types something on Cloud’s phone.

“Oh, you’re back!” Aerith says, looking up. “Sorry, Cloud says we have to answer this—Zack, you’re on copy.”

Zack straightens out of his half-lunge, which Aerith doesn’t even comment on, and then has to stare for a second as Cloud looks at them and then shifts over so that he’s hiding under Aerith’s hair. Something in Zack’s chest hurts, and for a moment the pierogi in Zack’s stomach feels like a big piece of concrete.

“What’s going on?” Tifa asks.

“Well, Sephiroth found some tiny robots and Angeal found that they were building a giant radio transmitter in the basement and now this makes a lot of sense of why the Lifestream has been asking me if we really want everyone to be killed off again, because that doesn’t sound like me at all,” Aerith says in a matter-of-fact tone. She keeps typing while she speaks, with just the occasional drift of her hand up towards the half-hidden Cloud. “I think it was trying to double-check with Cloud too but it was doing that in a weird way so I told it to stop that and no, we don’t want to die and it can just sit tight while we take care of things. Um, also, officer’s meeting at eighteen hundred? Sephiroth wants to know if that works for people?”

Zack translates that as Sephiroth just sent out a meeting invite. “Yeah, we’ll be here,” he says, watching Aerith’s hair quiver here and there over the tiny lump.

“And done!” Aerith says. She puts the phone in her lap and then looks up at them as Cloud drops from her shoulder down onto her skirt and scurries to the phone. “Sorry about that. Anyway, Zack, I think Cloud’s filled me in on everything for now and if you want to sit down, we can have a bite to eat and take a breath! It sounds like there’s been a lot and you must be exhausted.”

“I’m not that bad,” Zack says, half-turning in the middle of that as something bumps up against his legs. He blinks as Tifa nods at the chair she’s brought up, then slowly lowers himself into it while she pulls up another chair next to it. “Haven’t been out checking stuff like Ang and Seph, I’ve just been trying to look after Cloud.”

Aerith’s expression sort of scrunches a little at the edges, like she’s trying not to show something, and then it smooths out into one of her gently-concerned faces. “That’s still probably a lot,” she says, and then smiles encouragingly as Tifa hands her the coffee. “You’ve got to eat up and keep up your strength for all of that. I’m here to help too.”

“I—yeah,” Zack says, and starts eating the dumplings, because what else can you say to Aerith? Even putting aside her having a direct line to the Planet and its hopefully-dormant natural-disaster-generating monsters, she’s always just so transparently caring about everyone else that it’d be a massive asshole who looked at her and got pissed off that she just doesn’t have to work at that.

An asshole, Zack thinks, and stuffs himself with the damn pierogis while Aerith and Tifa chat with each other about the latest Northern Continent dig discoveries, and how Tseng somehow got Aerith’s flight to skip over three other ones trying to land. Once in a while they stop and Aerith reads out a comment from Cloud, and he seems like he’s getting more comfortable since he gradually edges up to perch on Aerith’s knee where he can see both of them. And Zack, but every time Zack looks over, Cloud is either huddled over the phone typing or is reaching out to take a seed from Tifa, who commandeered his food dish at some point.

Cloud really does seem okay. Zack can’t help but think that, as he watches and remembers the last day and a half, and it’d be an asshole who wanted anything else for the guy.

“…Turks, based on what Tseng said?” Tifa is saying. “Zack?”

“Huh?” Zack says, and then grimaces. “Sorry, what?”

“We were just wondering if they’re going to need you to cover anything tomorrow since it sounds like Angeal and Genesis had a little bit of a hard time today?” Aerith prompts. When Zack still doesn’t know what she means and obviously looks it, she nods awkwardly at her phone. “There was a, um, an email? I mean, I know I probably shouldn’t be reading them but Cloud’s right here…”

“Oh. I…haven’t caught up in a while. On the work emails anyway,” Zack says, wincing.

He reaches for his phone, but then pauses when he notices Tifa looking oddly at him. But she doesn’t say anything, just takes a deep breath as he unlocks it and starts going through the…shit, he has missed a lot.

A couple minutes later, he does pull back and look up again. Aerith and Tifa aren’t on Cloud’s phone any more, they’re on Aerith’s phone exclaiming over something and when they notice Zack, Tifa blushes for some reason and averts her eyes. “Sorry, if you have to do something, I think we can find somewhere else,” Tifa says. “This isn’t work-related or anything like that.”

“Yeah, we can shop date looks from anywhere,” Aerith chirps, which doesn’t do much for Tifa’s blush. Then she looks down. “Cloud, are you still working or did you want to catch up on your sleep?”

“I mean Aerith and I can go,” Tifa says hastily, putting her hand out towards Zack as if expecting an argument.

Which he can’t blame her for, he guesses. He looks at the emails piling up on his phone, then over at Cloud, who’s squeaking softly at Aerith who seems to understand fine without needing a typed translation. Those pierogis aren’t settling any better in his stomach, but honestly, it’s not on the level of fucking with his life and he can’t pretend he’s not seeing this. “I think Cloud’s better with you two around,” Zack has to say.

The squeaking stops. Probably because Aerith is now looking up at Zack and frowning, but then Cloud turns around and finally looks at Zack too. “Squeak,” he says, loudly and pointedly.

“I think Ang and Gen are fine, they just sent some post-op directions but I—yeah, I should—do something. Like an officer,” Zack mutters. He glances at his phone again, then thumbs up one email from Procurement he was handling anyway before all of this went down. “It’s fine, this is all…Cloud can go with you two, he doesn’t need to stay here for this. I can handle it.”

Zack writes a response to that email. Then a couple more, but then he has to look up again, since Aerith and Tifa haven’t moved. “If we’re not bothering you, I think this is fine too,” Aerith says, with a smile but also with worried eyes. “I don’t mind resting my feet for a little bit.”

“We need a different way to get back anyway, we’re not all fitting on your bike and I got a ride from Seventh Heaven here,” Tifa says.

“Oh, maybe he can come back early and get all of us?” Aerith suggests. “He did say to just tell him so we don’t have to deal with R—”

“Right,” Tifa cuts her off, doing that blush again.

“Whatever seems like the best thing for Cloud,” Zack says, and then makes himself tune them out so he can read his emails. Because he really means it, that’s honestly all he wants and if they are going to do a better job, then he’d be even worse than an asshole to stand in their way…but also because his stomach still hurts and if he’s taking that out on anyone else, he needs to focus.

Tifa and Aerith eventually make arrangements for a ride, but apparently it can’t come for a while so they stay in the office with Zack. He moves to the other side of the room where there’s a small table and they stay by the couch, feeding Cloud and playing with him and talking about whatever he’s squeaking back to them on. Occasionally Tifa or Aerith will ask Zack if he wants anything, and he does let them get him a couple coffees and waters, but mostly he tries not to interrupt them.

“You’ve been working nonstop. I know there’s a lot, but I can see your eyes getting bloodshot from the couch,” Tifa eventually points out. “It doesn’t look good, Zack.”

“Gonna take a break after this,” Zack says, and then sighs when her shadow doesn’t move away. “Seriously. It’s the officers’ call, it’s not like I can skip it.”

“Okay, but Cloud wants you to know he’s getting on it too,” Tifa says.

Zack nods. She stands over him for another second, then sighs and moves off. When she does, he takes a quick moment to flip to camera and check his reflection and…okay, yeah, the eyes are gross. So he goes camera-off for the call.

Any updates? Sephiroth side-messages him while Angeal is doing a rundown of Reeve’s preliminary thoughts on the robots.

Aerith says she told the Lifestream to shut up and not kill us please, should be a nonfactor for the investigation, Zack replies. It’s a little weird since he opened with that just a few minutes ago, but Sephiroth is camera-on and Zack did notice that every time his tail twitches into view, his head tracks it for a second or two before he pulls back and shakes himself, so maybe he hadn’t heard Zack.

I heard, Sephiroth writes, so Zack’s wrong there too. What about Cloud and you?

Still a mouse and still Zack Fair, First to the party, Zack types after a moment. He shouldn’t be annoyed, Sephiroth’s just being a good leader and checking status. And he isn’t annoyed, he thinks, but it’s just that he probably shouldn’t be the one answering Sephiroth here and he isn’t sure how to say so. We’re working through it.

Sephiroth is asking Angeal something so doesn’t message back. Then he and Genesis get into a discussion about someone in R&D’s thoughts that they should try and reverse-engineer the signal from this unauthorized transmitter to figure out what their mad scientist was trying to talk the Lifestream into doing. Which even to Zack seems inherently dangerous and also unnecessary with Aerith in town, but he stays out of it and lets those two work past the mutual sarcasm (takes a little longer when they’re both typing instead of looking at each other and seeing what a cat and a chicken’s Intense Focus faces are like) to realize they all think that.

You doing all right over there? comes in from Angeal. Been offline so catching up now and not seeing a ton from either of you.

Zack sighs. Then winces as Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith all look at him; Aerith put Cloud on the table for the meeting but he’s across from Zack, and Tifa and Aerith are still over on the couch waiting in case Cloud needs something. They both have earbuds in but apparently Zack was just that loud.

“Uh, no, I’m gonna defer to my superiors on this one,” Zack says to Sephiroth, who’s just asked if he has input. Then he consciously keeps his mouth shut as he answers Angeal. Yeah, we’re okay. Aerith’s here, she makes everything better.

Angeal sends over a thumbs-up icon and then jumps into the discussion because Genesis is starting to cluck angrily while he types. They settle the whole transmitter discussion—no reverse-engineering before Aerith has a full sit-down with Grimoire and Lucrecia in the morning—and work out standing orders for overnight, and then they all log out of the meeting.

Except two more messages come in just as Zack’s about to swipe closed the window. Angeal’s says okay, just let me know if it gets weird, Gen and I are working it out too, while Sephiroth’s says remember to report before any escalation, I’m still on email and priority flags work. Typical of both of them, so Zack rolls back his stiff shoulders and sends them both salute emojis.

Their ride arrives a couple minutes after that, before he can really get back into his emails, and it’s Tseng for some reason. But he’s less coolly-superior than usual and actually doesn’t really talk to Zack much, just chats with Tifa about an upcoming Sector block party as they all decamp in a Turk-issue SUV and go back to Zack’s place. Cloud goes with Aerith, but not in a carrier; she just holds him in her hands against her chest as she tries to make small talk with Zack about how he’s sleeping and whether he needs a new pillow to avoid neck cramps. He seems okay, and doesn’t try to add anything to the conversation, and when they get in, he and Aerith go to check out the habitats in the living room while Zack sets up in the kitchen to get some more work done.

“You sure you don’t need anything?” Tifa asks from the doorway.

Zack looks past her into the other room, where Aerith is looking at Cloud and nodding along to whatever he’s telling her, sober-faced and intent. He just wants them to be fine, he thinks, and takes a deep breath. “Yep. Yep, I’m good.”

Chapter Text

The next week is one of the best weeks of Sephiroth’s life. He wakes up in a comfortable, secure place with a lovely warm blanket wrapped around him, eats a freshly-prepared, balanced and delicious breakfast, and then heads out with an intelligent, intuitive and highly-competent partner to spend the day tracking his targets throughout Midgar. Of course his targets include a rogue scientist who has a frustrating number of boltholes littered throughout the so-called ‘deepground’ area and he has to do this all as a cat, but that is genuinely his opinion.

He will admit to feeling some qualms about his judgment at times. His own situation might be pleasant to the point of absurdity, but he knows Genesis and Angeal have had the occasional touch-and-go moment, and the only reason he hasn’t personally intervened in whatever is going on with Zack and Cloud is that Cloud keeps asking him to leave Zack alone. And he personally would like to resume human form: despite everything Vincent has done, he can’t give Sephiroth back Masamune, or let him pull his mother back when she’s wringing her hair out over test tubes, or…well, let him fully express his feelings about the other man.

Yes, he does climb into bed with Vincent at night. Vincent doesn’t sleep most nights, but he does put his feet up and when Sephiroth curls up on the couch, Vincent stays with him. But it quickly became apparent that this isn’t the most comfortable way for Vincent to spend the night and the bed offers more space for both of them. Sephiroth still respects human standards of morality regarding which body parts of Vincent’s he drapes over, or nuzzles, or wraps his paws and tail around when Vincent pets him, and he also draws the line at following the man into the bathroom (though Vincent leaves the water on for him afterward) even if he has to resort to disciplining his own tail to keep from miaowing plaintively at the doorway. But that doesn’t mean that Sephiroth doesn’t look, or think, or wake up the one night that week that Vincent does go to sleep and find himself gazing down at the man and wishing to the point of near-physical pain that the context was different.

He still has no idea what made Vincent’s behavior towards him change, except that it can’t solely be down to his different form. Vincent treats him like himself, only with a few adaptations, and they’ve even had some thoughtful discussions (with the assistance of Sephiroth’s tablet) about the nuanced effect of bodily transformations on mind and identity. He can’t see how that can simply drop out in favor of a long-dead—however beloved—pet no more than a few seconds later, when Vincent is carrying him somewhere and absently drops a kiss on his head. But Sephiroth badly wishes he did have the time to understand it, because then he might be prepared once he’s human again to ensure that their relationship doesn’t revert.

If there’s anything that makes the week less than perfect, it’s that thought lurking in the back of Sephiroth’s mind. And it’s certainly the realization that he’ll inevitably lose this that makes him thoughtlessly miaow and jump back up into Vincent’s arms when they arrive early to the daily R&D check-in and Sephiroth’s mother announces that she might have figured out how to reverse-activate the materia that’d caused all of this.

“I’ve been analyzing the radio transmitter signals and the waves the materia throws off, and I think we’ve found at least one match,” she says, blinking hard. She falters for a moment, but then smiles as Sephiroth guiltily drops down to the table and comes over to the printouts she’s arranging on the table. Thankfully, she seems to be taking his initial reaction as mere wariness of experimentation and is happy to do her usual breakdown of the science. “We can’t do a dry run, obviously, but since Aerith swears the Lifestream is staying out of it now, I’ve been running models all night and I feel confident about this one.”

Sephiroth pulls up his tail around his feet and listens as she walks him through the data. When she’s done, he has to agree with her that the deductions seem solid, and while it would always be nicer to not be the first test subject, he’s long since resigned himself to rarely having that option, given how unique his combination of enhancements are. And he does want to be human again. He does.

He only wishes it didn’t mean the end of the week. But he can’t be selfish with something like this, and so he doesn’t waste any time messaging the others to have them come in as soon as they can. And if after that, he spends a good twenty minutes sitting on Vincent’s lap on the couch of his mother’s office instead of writing emails, he thinks he’s earned that time.

Vincent doesn’t say anything except to congratulate Sephiroth’s mother on the break-through. He doesn’t hesitate either when Sephiroth steps onto his legs, immediately lifting his arm out of the way as he would when they’re at home and then putting his hand back down to stroke Sephiroth’s back. He might…briefly sigh, but whether that’s at the situation is debatable, since when Sephiroth looks up, Vincent is reading a DM from Yuffie begging for photos (as someone has foolishly let her in on the current state of affairs). And when it’s time and he watches as Sephiroth walks into the shielded chamber where they’re keeping the materia, his expression doesn’t betray a single emotion.

Then there’s another flash and Sephiroth feels a sharp, almost burning tingle all over his body—

And he’s still a cat. Genesis and Cloud haven’t reverted either, and after Genesis stops the outraged screeching, they reconvene with Sephiroth’s mother.

“I don’t know…see, we’re definitely detecting a shift,” she says as she frantically pulls up this and that readout on her tablet. “I’ll do a DNA test and run it overnight just to confirm, but I don’t see—I don’t know why you’re not matching the data. It did something to you all, I can see that.”

“I’ll talk to the Lifestream too,” Aerith says as she frowns alongside Sephiroth’s mother. “I thought it understood this isn’t a good thing.”

“Is it just a delayed reaction?” Vincent suddenly asks. When they look at him, he gestures with his left hand. “It is a major transformation, and those are easier on you if they aren’t abrupt. If you talked to—”

“Oh,” Aerith says, nodding as comprehension dawns on her face. “Oh, right, that would make sense. It would want to make up for the first time now that it knows how rough it was.”

A little more discussion and some blood draws, and they all agree to retire for the night and then report to the lab in the morning to see if there’s any progression. Genesis seems less than thrilled, but goes with Angeal of his own free will and without the aid of any sedatives or restraints, while Aerith collects Zack and Cloud. And Sephiroth goes home with Vincent.

He has mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, he now has the opportunity to knowingly enjoy their rapport together one last time, but on the other…he knows that this is the final night. It colors their dinner, and then the couple hours of quiet work beside each other on the couch, and even the moment when Vincent turns to Sephiroth and wordlessly nods towards the bedroom. This has been inexpressibly lovely, and when it ends Sephiroth will have no idea what to do about it.

Vincent goes past him, then stops and turns and Sephiroth realizes he’s sat down in the middle of the hall and is simply staring into the bedroom. He rises and comes over to where Vincent is sitting on the edge of the bed, then…miaows. He puts his paws up on Vincent’s knee and miaows again, somehow feeling that that conveys the tangle of emotions inside of him best, and Vincent sighs and bends down to pick him up.

The moment Sephiroth can, he bumps his head repeatedly into the underside of Vincent’s chin. Vincent sighs again, roughly petting his side as the man swings up his legs and then lies down on the bed. “You’ll be back to normal in the morning,” Vincent murmurs as he tucks Sephiroth against his chest. “I don’t think Lucrecia failed, I think this is just…it’s always harder going back. But you’ll go back, don’t worry.”

Sephiroth presses himself against Vincent till he can feel the man’s heart thumping just under his cheek. He’s not so worried about that, he wants to say, but he can’t. But…he can’t forget this, he thinks as the smooth, rhythmic drag of Vincent’s fingers through his fur starts to lull the tension out of him. He won’t. He won’t.

* * *

“Well,” Angeal says as he sits down on his sleeping bag in the living room, with Genesis grouchily taking up a spot in front of him. “Could’ve been worse. Could’ve turned you into something smaller.”

Genesis snaps his beak at Angeal but then just ruffles his feathers till Angeal gets the unlocked tablet in front of him. Then he bends over it as if he’s just going to ignore Angeal and message other people, but when Angeal’s tablet pings, Genesis’ head comes up.

Angeal looks down and Genesis has written: As long as it lived in a farmyard, you still probably would have some ridiculous story about taking care of it.

A chuckle rolls out of Angeal before he thinks about it. Then he shrugs and turns around so that he can pull over an ottoman to get his back up against; he honestly hasn’t minded sleeping in the living room all week, but his spine might be a little resentful of the lack of support. “It’s not that ridiculous, it’s just how we grew up. You lived on a farm, Gen, it was just nicer than mine and had a bunch of people working it for you.”

Genesis’ feathers puff out again, but Angeal’s gotten the hang of reading this form and Genesis isn’t actually that offended. Quality time in the chicken coop was not part of my daily schedule, he types. What exactly would that have done to prepare me for my goals?

“Yeah, I know. But look, it’s not a bad thing that I actually remember some of that, is it?” Angeal says. He pulls up one knee, then absently kneads at a sore spot in the calf. Since that whole debacle in the basement, Angeal and Genesis have stuck strictly to the office, but his legs aren’t used to so much downtime and are getting strains in weird places. “I know it was kind of rough in the beginning, but I didn’t do a bad job, did I? You’re not going to start screaming at me the first thing when you change back?”

He's not really thinking when he asks that, to be honest. He has thought about it at times during the week, whether he’s helping or hurting Genesis, but usually something’s happened before he could get too into it and that’s probably for the best. People tend to point at Sephiroth or Genesis as obsessive types, but Angeal thinks that’s unfair considering both of them pretty much do it only because they’re trying to be better. When he does it, he knows that’s not really what’s going on in his head—he’s just running his thoughts into mush, making it worse and worse till he honestly doesn’t know what he’s doing or why.

Which is why he normally tries to just talk to other people, and see what they think. It’s not so that he has to have someone to tell him what to do—he uses his brain, he doesn’t just blindly take what he hears—but because it’s easier for him to avoid getting stuck in place that way when he has someone to bounce off of. He’d always thought a big part of why he and Genesis came together was because Genesis complements that part of him.

Though before this, they hadn’t really been talking that much—at least, not to each other. It’s weird but Genesis being a chicken has changed that, Angeal thinks, and then he looks up as Genesis lands on top of his knee to peer down at him.

“I…tried,” Angeal says after a moment, because now all his half-formed thoughts are coming up at once and he can’t hide from them because the reason for them is staring at him squarely in the face. “Look, I know—you aren’t actually one of my old chickens. I swear I didn’t forget that. I might’ve gotten kind of…I did have a lot but it’s been a while and I needed to refresh, and I…I just really didn’t want to fuck up, Gen. You’ve gotten fucked with enough, I know that. So I’ve been trying to see what you really need from me.”

Genesis clucks at him, but it’s a different sound, softer and if this had been one of Angeal’s old birds, Angeal would’ve called it a little broody. He starts to lower himself onto Angeal’s knee, belly feathers fluffing out over his feet, but then he stops. His head twists back and forth, and then he slips off Angeal’s knee and goes to type at the tablet again.

Are you going to stop trying when I’m a man again? Genesis asks.

“That—what?” Angeal says, confused. But then he gets it, and while part of him wants to be exasperated and point out what he’d just said…the rest of him knows exactly what he was thinking, just like Genesis does. Because whatever the hell Genesis looks like, whatever they’re saying or not saying to each other, the man knows him. “I—fuck, Gen, I don’t want to. I don’t know why the hell we keep ending up screaming at each other instead of talking but when you’re a chicken it's just easier—and if you’re pissed off at me about it, I can’t blame you.”

Head up, tail plume cocked, Genesis sits back and for a second Angeal wonders if there might be a victory crow. But then Genesis tilts his head to the side and while it’s not that he seems to lose his confidence, he does seem more curious than angry.

“I want to listen to you. You know, you’re the only…you’re the only one who ever gets me to listen, no matter what it is. Maybe I don’t do what you want, but I hear you when you say it,” Angeal says, but then he has to laugh sourly at himself. “Well, I used to be like that—I don’t know, I guess I got too busy saving shit to just ask you why you’re fucking yelling. But I’m trying to be like that again, and I can promise you this, it’s not just because you’re a chicken right now. I really—I really don’t want to lose you, in any way, ever. I’m not gonna take you for granted.”

Genesis makes that soft clucking sound again, but then he kind of snaps his wings against himself, making a sharp enough noise that Angeal twitches. He looks at Angeal, then bobs down to type out: I never wanted a brainless follower. I still don’t want that. If I did, I would be chasing after Fair—

“Okay, hey,” Angeal has to say. “He doesn’t always think, but Zack doesn’t just follow whatever I do.”

That earns him a scoffing cluck as Genesis continues typing. I do see what you’ve done. I may have let my temper blind me before but you are always trying and I do see that.

It takes Angeal a moment to really read that, and then another to really feel it, but then he grins. “Well, if you’re telling me that you overdid it…”

Genesis stretches his beak out and glowers at Angeal. Then suddenly feints at Angeal’s big toe, and when Angeal yelps and yanks that out of range, he smugly pumps his head before going back to the phone. I want my old body back and I want my time with you. We fought for the time to have together. I’m not about to let it go, even for your foolishness.

And suddenly it’s not funny, nor is it just ridiculously and purely Genesis how the man decides to grind out an apology. It’s just…them, sitting together, saying the same thing but different ways and if one of them doesn’t look how he should, so what? They have done enough for the world, Angeal thinks. It’s not like either of them care how they look outside.

He opens his mouth, then shakes his head and just puts out his hand. Genesis blinks at it, tips his head one way and then the other, and then steps onto the phone and over it on the way to Angeal’s hand. When he’s on that, Angeal brings him in and settles Genesis against his chest.

“I’m gonna get you back, Gen. If it doesn’t work out in the morning, I’ll get something else to make that happen,” Angeal says, and when Genesis clucks sharply at him, he smiles. He doesn’t need the phone to know Genesis is telling him he’s an idiot since Genesis hasn’t even gone anywhere in the first place. “Yeah. And you’re gonna be with me every step of the way, I know.”

* * *

Zack doesn’t really know what to do with himself for most of the rest of the week.

He sticks with Aerith and Cloud, but they don’t really need him. Aerith can talk to Cloud without needing him to type stuff out on a phone or a tablet, and showing her where the bags of mouse food are doesn’t take more than a couple minutes. She and Cloud are busy trying to figure out why the Lifestream got involved with the mad scientist hijinks this time, so they spend most of their time either in the living room communing with the three plants Aerith gave them that they’ve managed to not kill or on video calls to R&D.

He did ask if they wanted to try a park or something like that, since that initiative is coming along pretty well and there’s a nice one about a half-mile away, but Aerith tells him they’re okay here if he wants to go. She does keep asking him if he wants to go out for a little while, and Tifa when she drops by with groceries or leftovers asks too, but Zack doesn’t know what the point of that would be. He’d just be thinking about Cloud the entire time.

“Not my orders,” he tells them just for ease of wrapping up the conversation. And tries to sound lighthearted about it, since it’s not either Tifa’s or Aerith’s fault that he’s just flailing at his primary objectives at this point.

Zack does try to keep up with work. He reads the emails and the mission reports, and when Sephiroth is offline doing whatever it is he’s doing with Vincent, Zack collates the incoming messages from elsewhere in Shinra and tees up summaries. But Angeal and Genesis seem to have the day-to-day stuff handled and they’re both online a lot more than usual, so outside of the summaries Zack doesn’t really have action items. The Lifestream isn’t giving Aerith and Cloud very much, and when it does, Cloud usually sends out a short note so that’s covered too. So Zack is basically just sitting on his ass being useless.

When Lucrecia finally says she thinks there’s a way to reverse the transformations, Aerith breaks out into a spontaneous dance with Cloud in the middle of the living room, and then she comes over to give Zack a kiss on the cheek, with Cloud scurrying up to the top of her head. “You must be so relieved,” she says.

Zack smiles. Yeah, he is—she has no idea how relieved he is, since even if things weren’t one hundred percent perfect before, at least with field missions he could run around clocking up stats that made it look like he’d done something. And he had reasons to talk to Cloud even when Cloud wasn’t happy with him, since you still have to report your coordinates and things like that.

But the thing about sitting around on your ass is that also, Zack has had a lot of time to do a lot of thinking, and to be honest, he’s looking back at all of that and wondering if—well, no, at this point he’s sure he missed a lot of signs. And growing surer that that cold, hard feeling in his gut means that he might have zipped on by the point of no return, even though he still isn’t sure that he’s figured out everything he missed. So he’s glad it’s going to be over soon, but it’s also the relief of someone who’s been sitting under a hanging sword for a long time and who’d just like to get it over with. Since once Cloud is himself again, he doesn’t even need to pretend that he needs Zack, and can just do whatever he thinks he needs to.

And Zack knows he’s really not thinking enough about what that’s going to mean, and how he’s going to deal with it, and if it’s going to royally fuck up SOLDIER or if he’s going to have to make some choices of his own because this really should all just be on him and not his friends. But first he just…he really, truly, honestly just wants Cloud to be back to normal. Because whatever else he feels, he knows that will make Cloud feel better, and if Zack can at least contribute towards fixing that, he thinks he can survive figuring out the rest.

So then they go to the lab, and it doesn’t work. Zack hears all the babble about delayed reactions and whatever but the point is, Cloud is still a mouse and they have to go home like that one more night, and it’s just—what the hell, Planet, what else do they have to go through?

Zack tries to keep it off his face and he thinks he manages it on the drive back, since Tifa spends most of that talking to Aerith and Tseng—who apparently thinks designated-driver duty is a great cover for popcorning all of this, because Zack doesn’t know why else he shows up—and not prodding at him. But she does get around to pulling him aside after dinner and saying she needs to make a quick run to Seventh Heaven for something, so does he mind giving her a ride and also Barret and Marlene and everybody have really been wondering how he and Cloud are since neither of them have been by lately.

Basically, she’s gonna bring him down there and they’re going to try and cheer him up with beer and snacks and bar games. Which is nice of them, it really is, and Zack doesn’t have to heart to turn Tifa down outright, especially after he catches Aerith peeping around the doorway while they talk with a little golden fluffball in her hands. But it’s not really going to work on the real problem here, and he knows that as he and Tifa head down to the garage.

“I promise this will be really fast,” Tifa says as she pulls on her helmet. “I know you don’t like being away from Cloud for very long—”

“Well, we know the Turks are all over this,” Zack mutters. “Any closer and I’m gonna think they’re falling in love with one of us.”

Also Tuesti redid the building security after they found the robots and a couple other classified things Tifa doesn’t know about, so while Zack isn’t enthusiastic about it, he doesn’t feel like he’s leaving Cloud and Aerith completely unprotected. And anyway, it’s pretty clear by now that Zack is not the preferred option in Cloud’s eyes and he should respect that. So he’s just responding to Tifa, he’s not trying to stir up anything, and he blinks hard when she flushes and takes a step back like he caught her at something.

“Oh, sorry, I…” Tifa quickly turns around and then goes back up to where there’s a bench by the wall “…need to fix my boot. Just give me a second.”

That was…and then Zack shrugs it off as she plops onto the bench and raises her foot, because his phone is buzzing with a priority signal. He takes it out, feels his stomach do about a zillion contradictory contortions as he sees the message isn’t from R&D and almost stuffs his phone back in his pocket out of sheer running out of energy for this. But he’s a First, and he has duties and sometimes that shit doesn’t wait for your personal crisis to finish unfolding, so he sighs and reads the whole message.

It's not that long, just a flag from a nearby patrol who spotted an uncovered sewer opening and who then, when they went to look in there, saw enough suspicious traces that they think it should get investigated. They’re already putting the area in lockdown and there’s a whole protocol for this and also Zack should forward it on to Sephiroth with a higher-priority flag if he thinks it’s related…but he doesn’t know that yet. It’s hard to tell just from the note.

It's also literally just a few blocks over. “Be right back, just remembered something,” Zack calls back over his shoulder to Tifa.

She still has her boot half-undone and is messaging with someone, but looks up. He glimpses her frowning at him, but she doesn’t get up and chase him as he jogs out of the garage. And look, Zack knows this is him being just a little creative with the scope of Sephiroth’s standing order for him, and he knows it’s because he’s feeling depressed and doesn’t know what to do with it and he really does know he’s being kind of stupid about it.

He still doesn’t think that this deserves him arriving at that sewer to find two unconscious SOLDIERs lying near it, calling in for back-up while going down just the first couple steps to look for the third because this patrol should have three, and then getting electrocuted and dragged off and waking up strapped to a table. “What the fuck, why is it always a fucking table,” he mutters as he tests his bonds. “Like a bed, or even just something with a pillow, do you need the neck cramp right from the get-go…”

Right on cue, the asshole mad scientist they’ve been chasing around pops in with all the details of his plans and motivations and all the things Zack really doesn’t care about. Zack nods when the guy looks over just to keep the speech going, but otherwise works on trying to work free a hand or a foot.

Unfortunately, their latest megalomaniac is smart enough to have scavenged surplus SOLDIER gear for his restraints (and Zack is going to have words with Procurement next time they bitch about unclear reqs because keeping track of trash disposal is very clear and very simple and very not handled here). Zack does think he’s making some progress with forcing some of the anchor screws, but it’s not fast enough. The scientist wraps up his speech, picks up a menacingly-glowing materia, and then advances on the table.

Giving yourself a degloving injury sucks even if you’re gonna heal immediately, and not for the first time, Zack wonders why they didn’t think to enhance endorphin production while they were mucking about in SOLDIER DNA. He twists his hand around and gets his thumb braced for dislocation right as the scientist puts his own hand down on the table by Zack’s head—

Not on the table. On a thing that moves and squeaks and as the scientist yelps and jumps back, Zack realizes exactly what’s going to happen and starts shaking violently because no—

The scientist grabs at the pile of tools next to him and comes up with a screwdriver. He stabs down at Cloud, who squeaks again and…does not end up impaled by Zack’s head. Cloud jumps up to meet the screwdriver, what looks like a broken-off scalpel clutched between his forepaws, and there’s some flashing and some screaming and actually a lot of blood considering that when the scientist falls back against some crates, it’s only his hand that’s bleeding.

Okay, his hand now looks like someone shoved it through a meat grinder, and if Zack saw right before blood got in his eyes, the world’s smallest Omnislash attack probably still isn’t something you want to be on the business end of. Anyway, the scientist drops the materia and lets it roll away while he’s screaming and writhing around on the floor, and a little golden ball comes back up the table leg and over to the straps holding Zack down.

“I am so fucking glad—” Zack gets out before Cloud Omnislashes the straps too.

The moment they loosen, Zack is wriggling like crazy. He gets up into a sitting position, swings his legs over Cloud as Cloud runs to the opposite side of the table to free his other hand, and stretches over to grab at the scientist’s remaining stash of materia. One Sleep plus Cure later, the scientist is out cold on the floor and not going to bleed out till someone can get to him, and Zack can breathe a little easier.

“Okay,” he says. Something twitches by his hip and he absentmindedly picks it up, and then jerks as he feels moving fur.

Cloud stops moving. Zack hasn’t fully closed his hand, but Cloud isn’t jumping out and…Zack takes a deep breath, and brings Cloud around to where they can look at each other. And the guy just saved his life, as a mouse, and Zack should be nothing but grateful for that. But the first thing he ends up saying is, “Just how much do I piss you off, exactly?”

The mouse in his hand sits up sharply but just looks at him.

Zack groans and drags his free hand over his…wet face, right, blood. He wipes some of it away, then gives up on that and just stares at Cloud. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m such a fucking idiot, I’m sorry I can’t even keep a mouse, I can’t even—I don’t know, all the things I fucked up. I just—I wanted to just keep you safe, Cloud. But I fucked that up pretty much when we first met and I just never really figured out how to make it better.”

Cloud squeaks loudly. Angrily, that’s pretty clear from how puffy he gets, but then he—grabs onto Zack’s thumb when Zack tries to put him down so he can go. Zack curses and almost drops him, then manages to just juggle Cloud back into the middle of his palm when Cloud jumps up onto his face. Tiny little paws scrabble at his nose and mouth and Zack barely catches him, only for Cloud to keep hopping around on his palm and making furious mouse noises. “I—look, let me get my phone,” Zack finally tries as he does his best to keep both hands cupped around Cloud. “I don’t—Cloud, I don’t know what you’re saying—I don’t know what you want, okay? I need you to be able to tell me—”

And then Zack has naked Cloud on top of him. Naked, human, very upset Cloud, though he briefly stops and looks worried as the weight shift knocks Zack backwards onto the table and Zack’s head clunks pretty audibly against that. But when Zack shakes himself and props up on his elbows, Cloud goes back to being mad.

“That is literally all I want, Zack,” Cloud snaps. Then he goes wordless for a few seconds, just gesturing with clear frustration and equally clear helplessness, before he finally grabs at his head with both hands and heaves out a breath. “For you to listen. You don’t listen. You—you do take care of me, you do that and you do that and I’m fine and I tell you that and you keep doing it and you’re going to do it till you mess yourself up over me and I do not want that. Okay?”

“Yeah?” Zack says, blinking hard. He puts a hand to the back of his head, then puts it back on the table when he’s confirmed that nothing back there is coming out. All that blood’s just from the scientist. “I mean, yeah, no, I—hear you. I—you think I do actually help?”

“Yes and then I have to run away because you won’t stop even when you look like a zombie,” Cloud says in an exasperated tone. His motormouth is already slowing down and Zack can tell that it’s worn Cloud out (considering the man only does something like this every Meteor doomsday, not surprising), but he still has a little more to say. “I don’t like the Turks but if I ask them nicely to do something, they do that and just that. If I tell them to fuck off, they do that too.”

There’s a noise somewhere in this underground evil-villain lair they’re in, but when Zack glances down the side of the table, the scientist is still out. He looks back at Cloud.

Who’s suddenly switched from furious to tired, in a way a guy his age really shouldn’t have to look, but that Zack has seen all of his friends who went through Hojo and Jenova look at some point or the other. “You didn’t fuck me up,” Cloud tells him. “Other people did. Aliens did, even the Lifestream kind of did, but you didn’t. I don’t know why you won’t listen to me about that, because I keep saying so, and I…I just want you to be there when I need you, Zack. That and to not kill yourself being there when—”

“When you don’t need me, right. I get it—I hear you this time, I promise,” Zack says. “If you’re fine, you’re fine. Okay.”

For a moment, he finally thinks he’s said the right thing, with how Cloud exhales and sags. But then Cloud frowns. His hands go onto Zack’s shoulders as Zack tries to push up, but he doesn’t get any closer. “I’m…bad at saying that sometimes,” Cloud admits, his eyes dropping…but then coming back up. “I know that. I know I need to work on that. Some of it is me, it’s not what happened to me, and I don’t—I don’t need a big theory of how the universe does weird things to my life to know that, Zack. But I can’t—I can’t work on that and keep you from running into the ground too. I just…”

And Zack gets it. He gets it, he really does, and when he raises his hand to Cloud’s face, he isn’t worrying for the first time in much longer than a week how the man is going to take it. Because he gets how he can’t just worry about that, he’s got to do more if he’s really going to do something about it. “Can’t do it alone, yeah. So you’re not going to,” Zack says, putting everything into it, and when Cloud finally looks at him and shows those big blue relieved eyes…that really is enough. “So can I…help here, or…do you want me to…I don’t know, call the, well, fuck, fine, the Turks for—”

“Oh, we’re here, we’ve got everything secured and have R&D on the way and we were just waiting for you two to finish up with the heart-to-heart because the boss said he’d personally shoot me if I was the reason you stayed bonkers around each other for another week,” Reno says. When they turn, he waves from his perch on a steel I-beam while Cissnei and Elena melt out from their positions on the ground. “So, you done or what? Because I’ve still got a late-night date I was hoping to make and between you and me, I think the boss might be jonesing for a little barmaid—”

Cloud drops his head against Zack’s shoulder. “Can he shut up?”

“Aww, Strife, and I thought we were bonding—ack!” Reno says as someone yanks him off the beam and behind a wall.

Since Cissnei and Elena just sigh, Zack assumes they’re friendly. “Guess it’s easier to tune him out as a mouse? Also—wait, what—barmaid—”

“Don’t make Tifa punch you, she’s been asking for the last two days if that’d help,” Cloud mutters. He starts to get off Zack, then looks down at himself and grimaces. “She’s fine. Been pretty good about putting up with me, she should get a night off. She got a new dress for it too.”

Zack still has his shirt, though it’s got mad-scientist blood splatter on it. He takes it off and tries to rub away some of the blood on his knee, then hands it to Cloud. “Yeah, well, if you say so…did you want the night too? I can stay and meet R&D and oh, we should probably see if Seph and Genesis turned back, right?”

Cloud pulls the shirt on, then gives his hair a finger-combing as he looks at Zack, expression serious enough that Zack starts to say he’ll just handle it all. But then Zack stops himself and waits, and Cloud’s mouth twitches up at the corner, which for him is pretty much party time. “I’ll stay here,” he says. “I’ll ask Sephiroth and Angeal. You can talk to R&D and the Turks.”

Zack nods. Cloud is still sitting on him, so he starts looking around to see if the asshole on the floor brought his phone while he waits for Cloud to get off, and so gets surprised by the kiss. It’s short but just hot enough that he’s annoyed with himself for wasting the first second twitching. And when Cloud leans back, he looks right at Zack and asks, “You good?”

“Fantastic,” Zack says, beaming. “You?”

“Fine,” Cloud says. He lets go of Zack and gets off, then looks down the side of the table. Then he looks back up and over at Elena, who’s coming over and holding out a phone. “I’m okay. Let’s just deal with this.”

“Absolutely, Spike. You and me, we’re gonna change the world,” Zack says with a laugh. And then the asshole on the floor just has to groan and he rolls his eyes. “After processing and reports and all that. You jerks are such a fucking pain even after we catch you.”

Chapter Text

Sephiroth turns human just as he’s started to doze off against Vincent’s chest. For a second he’s far too shocked to do anything, simply staring at his own hand and feeling his legs stretch all the way down to the end of the bed.

Then Vincent lets out a wheezing noise and Sephiroth comes to himself. He immediately removes his other arm from Vincent’s solar plexus and repositions his legs so they’re not being wildly suggestive, and then—he looks down at the other man, who aside from that pained grunt hasn’t moved. He can still detect a little initial surprise fading out of Vincent’s eyes, but Vincent has already composed himself and is looking up at Sephiroth with the same blandly polite expression as before. And Sephiroth simply cannot let that stand. He’d told himself that, he’d meant to think seriously about it and come up with a considered, thoughtful way to approach the subject after he’d regained his human form, but when presented with a desperately-unwanted fait accompli he blurts out: “Must I leave?”

Vincent’s face unexpectedly shifts, losing all of its blankness as he stares in confusion at Sephiroth. “You’re human now.”

“Yes, I know that, and I—” even if this isn’t planned, Sephiroth is too skilled a tactician to not be capable of improvision under pressure “—I like this. I like—I would like to continue spending time with you, like this—damn it—”

And now Sephiroth doesn’t even have the excuse of a rebellious appendage for his ineptitude. He shakes his head furiously, then gets his arms and knees under himself as he and Vincent both sit up. “As in eating at home with me and sitting on the couch till it’s time to sleep?” Vincent asks.

The man does it in a very off-hand, muted sort of way, and Sephiroth is still so busy wrestling with his own incompetence that he answers without thinking. “Yes.”

Then he winces. He has to will himself to look over at Vincent…but to his surprise, he isn’t greeted with scorn, or even with more blank incomprehension. Instead Vincent seems to be studying him now, as if he’s caught the man off-guard and possibly not in a negative way.

“I was under the impression you wanted to recruit me,” Vincent says, reading Sephiroth’s surprise. He pushes himself a little further against the pillows. “As a military asset. You’ve been very…dedicated to demonstrating how SOLDIER leadership has changed and I appreciate that, but it’s still not a role I’m that interested in. I’ll come when there’s an emergency but I’m not going to sign up to Shinra again.”

“I completely understand that,” Sephiroth says, with sincerity. But then he has to go on. “But that wasn’t—actually what I was trying to convey.”

Vincent’s brows rise a little. “Every single time we see each other, you don’t seem interested in anything but combat-related matters. Either it’s whatever threat you’re dealing with or if it’s not that, it’s training matches, reviewing old battles, looking at Shinra’s latest prototypes or research…”

Sephiroth opens his mouth, then closes it as he rapidly reconsiders their past interactions. He had genuinely thought he’d been inviting Vincent to opportunities for privately getting to know each other better, in forums involving familiar topics where the other man would be comfortable or at least not bored. But having gotten to see some other interests of the man over the last week, he can see how those may not have come across the way he personally perceives them.

“There was also a strain of wanting to prove that you’ve rooted out the bad elements and I have nothing to fear from Shinra these days. I see that, Sephiroth. You owe nothing to Hojo or to Jenova, and you’ve risen far beyond what either of them tried to make you,” Vincent adds.

“Thank you,” Sephiroth says, and he means those words too. He knows the truth himself, but it’s been difficult at times to make it apparent to others, and for someone as perceptive as Vincent to validate it does mean a great deal to him. But again, he has to admit that that in itself isn’t satisfactory. Not now. “But I wasn’t…I was trying to impress you, but not only for that reason. I—can we keep seeing each other? Not for combat—not because I want to recruit you, because of entirely personal reasons. And it’s not because you’ve taken such care over me, although I’m very grateful for that too. This predates—”

Vincent makes a thoughtful noise. Sephiroth pauses, then realizes that the man was only encouraging him to finish explaining, given Vincent doesn’t actually say anything. He tries to pick up the threads again but they were rather flimsy and he’s still searching for some coherent way to continue when the other man takes him by the jaw and kisses him.

Sephiroth makes a startled, pleased sound and that rumbling—Vincent’s making the same noise in his chest that he would when they were settled in for the night and Sephiroth was purring on his lap. Whenever he would, Sephiroth would always feel his body melt just a little more, and apparently that is still carrying over because when Vincent pulls him closer, he sags into it.

His legs slide over the blankets, then sprawl conveniently wide as Vincent hikes up between them. One of his hands finds its way to Vincent’s shoulder, then inside the unbuttoned shirt Vincent wore to bed and as he feels down Vincent’s chest, Vincent’s rumbling deepens till an answering shiver runs up Sephiroth from where their bellies are now pressing together, dancing about his spine till it seats itself firmly in his head as a pleasant daze.

The kisses rapidly deepen, and in a few seconds Sephiroth is breaking them to gasp for much-needed air—but Vincent isn’t so encumbered and takes the opportunity to slip his tongue into Sephiroth’s mouth, resulting in more gasping. Sephiroth starts pulling blindly at Vincent’s shirt, then at the blankets, and then he’s shuddering again as Vincent twists them over onto the bed and firmly pins his shoulders down.

“Yes, you can come see me,” Vincent says. For some reason he’s removed his mouth to about two and a half inches away, maddeningly close, and every time Sephiroth tips up towards it, his knee nudges distractingly between Sephiroth’s legs. And then the man smiles and it’s not the same smile Sephiroth has been graced with all week, it’s not remotely innocent in how knowing it is and it makes Sephiroth groan and press his half-erect cock into the man’s thigh. “Though honestly, I’d prefer we just stay in the same place to begin with. That misunderstanding aside, I think I know you well enough already, Sephiroth. But if you need us to date first—"

“No,” Sephiroth says, as his damned strategic sense finally kicks in, and manages to get his arm up to yank Vincent’s head back down.

This time Vincent’s gasping just as much as he is. They get Vincent’s clothes off and enough of the sheets out of the way that Sephiroth can guiltlessly enjoy what he’s spent a week pacing outside of Vincent’s bathroom pretending he wasn’t thinking about, and…their phones go off.

Vincent yanks back his head with a growl, his eyes flashing like fire materia before they resume their normal dark-red color. He looks in the direction of the phones, which are in the other room, and then down at Sephiroth. Who had been having a similar reaction but who can’t help a small, breathy, deeply wanting noise at how Vincent looks at him just then, his hand dropping from where it’d half-risen to lie limply by his head.

A little surprise enters Vincent’s expression, rapidly followed by very interested comprehension. “We should talk about what you liked about me caring for you. I honestly never read that in you,” Vincent murmurs, before reluctantly climbing off Sephiroth. “But I think that might be the others. I’d like to have that discussion without any interruptions.”

“Agreed,” Sephiroth grunts. He lies there for another moment, soaking in the residual warmth, and then sighs as he starts to drag himself to the edge of the bed. “After we come back here.”

“I’ll stay to bring you home,” Vincent says. Then he kisses Sephiroth as they draw level with each other at the end of the bed. He pulls back, pauses, and then lets his hand draw softly from Sephiroth’s chin across the shoulder and down the back, his fingertips feathering out as Sephiroth inhales slowly. It’s almost the same way he’d pet Sephiroth in cat form, and yet worlds apart in intent and effect—and just as welcome. “Shall we?”

As he did every morning this past week. And despite the interruption, Sephiroth has never been happier to be able to actually say, “Yes.”

* * *

Genesis does use the coop, but for daytime napping. At night he might perch in there while Angeal’s showering or brushing his teeth, but once Angeal lies down, he always comes to bed down on Angeal’s pillow. So when he changes back, he ends up sitting on Angeal’s head.

Some cursing later, they disentangle themselves and sit up. Angeal feels at his nose, snorts through it, and when no blood comes out, he ignores the throbbing and looks at Genesis. It’s only been a week, but it feels like it’s been a lot longer, and yeah, he takes some time with it because no matter how long it is, Genesis is still fucking beautiful.

“Hi,” Angeal says, grinning, when Genesis finally makes an impatient noise. “Back?”

“Oh, you hopeless—” And then Genesis is in Angeal’s lap, mouth firmly planted on Angeal’s own and that gorgeous ass filling out Angeal’s palms, and everything is perfect for maybe a minute. “I never want to hear about your damned childhood chickens again, Hewley.”

“What, it’s not like we didn’t end up eating most of them,” Angeal says. He dips in again, but notices Genesis’ expression change and moves back. “Gen?”

Who for a moment looks as if he’s fighting with himself, which is a rare one for him, and then he sighs. He also hikes himself a little closer against Angeal’s crotch and that’s on purpose from the way he snorts at Angeal’s stifled groan. “I do remember you had them. You would spend hours with them sometimes, and you’d even put me off to take care of them. And I know why, I know it’s the kind of man you are and I’ve always known that but I’m not a chicken, Angeal.”

“I know.” Angeal moves his hands up to Genesis’ waist, then can’t help tracing a few circles on the fine, soft skin with his thumbs as he pushes his head under Genesis’ chin. He hears the other man sigh again, then make a lower, needier noise as he noses at Genesis’ throat. “I know. I liked them a lot, but you’re the only fucking person I’ve ever loved enough to die for. I’d still do it—”

“Which is why I’m always screaming at you and everyone else before it comes to that,” Genesis mutters. As his head comes to rest against Angeal’s, and his hands curl over Angeal’s shoulders. “You utter fool. If I have to spend a lifetime at that, then believe it or not, I’d rather not be limited to wings and crowing.”

“What, that’s the only reason you wanted your hands back?” Angeal says, and this time he thinks the joke lands. Even if Genesis is still making a face at him as he tips them over onto the sleeping bag. “I kind of missed the mouth myself.”

“You ridiculous—” Genesis starts.

Then ends in a moan, as Angeal shows the man exactly what he missed. Genesis’ hands climb off Angeal’s shoulders into Angeal’s hair, and then one leg comes around to hook over Angeal’s back…and then Cloud calls them to tell them they’ve changed back and the mad scientist is in custody.

Genesis is pissed off. He spends the whole rest of the night bitching that his being a rooster made it so much simpler to eliminate unnecessary face-to-face meetings, and it makes Sephiroth look as if he wishes he was still a cat so he could jump at Genesis while Cloud hides behind Zack and Angeal just cannot stop grinning. He did miss this, all of this, and wouldn’t swap it for the best chickens in the world.

* * *

Now doesn’t it beggar any sense of rational belief that not one but three very different men with very different histories and personalities would all be struck simultaneously with the same drastic transformation? And not only that, but that each one was afflicted in a very specific and unique way that instigated changes to their lives quite personal to their individual circumstances? “I mean, the only other option here is that this was all fated to happen and the Planet not only wants shape-shifting supersoldiers but really, really likes certain animals. Do you really want to believe that?” Zack says.

Sephiroth opens his mouth, then reminds himself that he does not actually have to answer every single idea that comes out of Zack’s head and instead takes a last look at the vent opening over their heads. “Can you fit?” he mutters to Vincent, as he starts taking off his clothes.

Who, not being burdened by the twin obligations of duty and friendship, has already rearranged his own weapons and is shaking out a familiar piece of cloth. “I’m going to have to carry your sword in my hand,” he says. “I can, but it’s a very tight clearance. It’ll have less chance of catching on something that way.”

“Fair, there are literally hundreds of alternative theories I could come up with. Stop trying to philosophize, it’s clearly not your forte,” Genesis is saying. “Or better yet, stop trying to think period and just use your sword. It actually goes in a straight line most of the time, unlike your brain.”

“Okay, okay,” Angeal says in a calming tone. “We’ve still got a lot of fighting, can we not do this? Besides, I thought Aerith talked to the Lifestream and it said it didn’t know what that asshole was going to do with that materia.”

“Well, not right then, but c’mon, you honestly never had this thought? Even after we found out this is actually a permanent thing but you can do it on command? None of you thought that was a little suspicious?” Zack insists.

“We’re trying not to fight the Planet, Zack,” Cloud mutters. He puts his hand on Zack’s shoulder and for a second it looks as if he might be stepping up to manage the tiff…and then he uses it to slip himself by Zack to frown at the vent. “If you’re taking that way, we should go down a level and come around.”

Sephiroth thinks that over against the mental map he has of—inevitably—this part of the sewer system, then nods. “All right, but stay in radio contact with Angeal and Genesis. Vincent and I might not be able to get back on comms till afterward so you’ll have to rely on visuals for us, and they’re going to have the only unobstructed sightline.”

As irritating as his officers can be, when it matters, they show up. They all assent and so Sephiroth hands his clothes to Angeal, his sword to Vincent, and changes into a cat. He takes a second to let his senses fully adjust, then looks up to see Vincent holding open the sling for him. A second later, he’s securely ensconced in it and bumping his head against Vincent’s chest to let the man know they can take off.

“…anyway, what, are you honestly going to tell Sephiroth he should stop doing that?” he hears Angeal saying as Vincent climbs into the vent. “It’s useful.”

“Yep. Useful. With the happy cat bounce and happy cat face and happy cat noise he makes every single time, that’s what we’re gonna call it,” Zack snorts. “Look, don’t get me wrong, I want Seph to get the most out of life just like we all do, but I’m just saying—”

“Zack, I really don’t want to ask the Lifestream why I can still turn into a mouse,” Cloud suddenly says. He pauses. “It got weird the last time Aerith and I talked to it about that. And I kind of want to just finish this so we can still get to Seventh Heaven on time. If we make Tifa late for another date, she’s going to stop giving you free snacks and then Tseng will shoot you.”

“Yeah, no, we don’t have to talk to the Lifestream,” Zack says, suddenly sounding contrite. “Okay, let’s go. You’re right, no more snacks would be a fate worse than death. Especially those wasabi peas.”

Vincent is now fully inside the vent. He pushes up Masamune under him, then moves his arm so Sephiroth can wiggle a little and redistribute his weight in the sling to drag less on Vincent’s shoulder. “Satisfied?” he asks, and from the wryness of his tone, he’s not simply referring to physical positions.

Sephiroth miaows. A brief pat through the sling, a faint smile, and then Vincent resumes crawling down the vent. And yes, it is utterly nonsensical that saving the world now depends on this, but then it’s equally nonsensical that many other important aspects of Sephiroth’s life also do. Once Sephiroth might have been unable to help questioning such things, but these days he’s come around to the wisdom of simple acceptance. He’s happy, and so are all the people he cares about, and that after all is unquestioned.

* * *

It wasn’t the Lifestream’s idea, but once it saw how things were going, it did think that this way made a lot more sense. It doesn’t enjoy having WEAPONs rampage all over the place ruining ecosystems and collapsing cities down onto it. Stable protectors are better. And if it has trouble understanding human ideas, as it keeps being told it does, then it’s not going to ask why the things that made them happy do that. Is that wrong? Was it wrong? Are they not happy?

Aerith sighs. “You know, Momma never told me this was going to be part of being a Cetra.”

Chapter Text

Sephiroth never makes the same mistake twice. Once he and Vincent are clear on each other’s intentions, he assesses their respective housing situations against Vincent’s stated preferences, generates options and blocks off time with Vincent to discuss each, then ensures all the administrative requirements are handled while Vincent is out-of-town on other business. Within three weeks, they’ve both moved out of their respective apartments and have just finished testing their custom-made bed for comfort, durability, and optimal positioning within the room.

“This works for me,” Vincent grunts. Still buried balls-deep in Sephiroth, he digs his elbow into the pillow by Sephiroth’s head as if he’s going to stretch out for the bedside table where the light has, annoyingly, flicked on. The way he shifts inside Sephiroth seems to pull out Sephiroth’s panting like taffy; Sephiroth twitches sluggishly and Vincent makes an amused sound, patting Sephiroth’s shoulder and not moving his arm. “Except for the motion sensors.”

“…can reprogram that,” Sephiroth mutters. He watches Vincent’s tail curl out to poke inside the lampshade, then sighs as the light goes off. Then sighs again, lower and shakier, as Vincent slowly moves inside of him. “Later.”

Vincent pets his shoulder again, fingers lingering in a lazy caress as the man props his other arm against Sephiroth. “If it’s programmable via app, I should add in a manual cut you can work with a paw.”

When they’d each drawn up their reqs for the new apartment, Vincent’s list had had a few surprising items. A few were clearly related to Chaos—and anyone with more than passing knowledge of that entity would find those items eminently reasonable—but several others had puzzled Sephiroth until Vincent had explained they were to accommodate Sephiroth’s newfound transformative ability. Which, frankly, Sephiroth doesn’t use that much, but he does appreciate the thoughtfulness. One or two of the issues Vincent had thought to address he hadn’t even worked out for himself yet (although it’d completely made sense once he had), but Vincent…seems to have spent quite a bit of time thinking over what a joint habitation should look like. And while it’s only been a week, he’s adjusted quite seamlessly from his previous solitary lifestyle. They’re neither of them like certain other people of Sephiroth’s acquaintance, but he still had expected more rough edges.

That there don’t appear to be any is a wonder. And Sephiroth, unfortunately, has long since learned there is no such thing as an unquestioned wonder. “Vincent,” he starts, and then takes a breath to keep his words from running ahead of his thoughts because he has also learned not to be ungrateful. “I don’t ask this to pass judgment—I’ve seen yours bear out far too often in my favor, and with too many sacrifices on your side, to claim that kind of authority over you, but when you…heard about my being a cat…”

The fingers drifting along his skin slow, then change direction but don’t lift away. They don’t tense either, but Vincent’s tone when he speaks is slightly less casual. “I appeared very quickly for a disinterested party who had no idea you’d been trying to proposition me before that?”

Sephiroth nods. Then makes himself crane his head so he can at least see some of Vincent’s face. He’s not quite certain what he’s expecting to find, but he does feel a wash of relief at seeing one, an actual emotion in the other man’s face, and two, that said emotion is thoughtfulness.

“Well, obviously I wasn’t disinterested,” Vincent goes on. The thoughtfulness…doesn’t precisely crack, because it was never a mask for something else, but it does sidestep to allow a wry twitch of the mouth. “I honestly did think you were only interested in me professionally—”

“I believe that,” Sephiroth says. A touch hastily, entirely due to his own nerves, and he grimaces at himself as he hauls up an arm and props it so he can look over his shoulder at Vincent. “I’m not questioning that.”

Who merely nods, discounting Sephiroth’s own issues to the degree necessary. He is very good at reading Sephiroth, not only at maintaining his own composure, and now Sephiroth can see the difference between the two. Is being permitted to see it, going by the faint arch of Vincent’s brows.

“You don’t need to be that tactful these days, given things,” Vincent says, and then shifts inside Sephiroth with a smile as damning as the groan Sephiroth then lets out. He playfully sweeps some hair off Sephiroth’s shoulder, then lets out a surprisingly wistful sigh, his smile fading, as his hand drops back onto the bared skin. “Besides, I was actually ignoring you. I…ignored you when you were far too young, because a child genius weighted down with far too many sins of other people is still a child as far as I’m concerned. And then I ignored you because if a work relationship really was all you wanted, it wasn’t my place to force you into an unwanted role—not to mention I’ve seen how well that’s worked out for the other people who’ve tried it.”

None of them were anywhere near Vincent’s caliber, or have done what he’s done to give Sephiroth this life—none of them even deserve to be referenced in the same breath. Though Sephiroth just stops himself from saying so, since that would be unnecessarily lashing out at Vincent. “So then you did—”

Vincent sighs again. He doesn’t seem afraid at all, but he does look directly at Sephiroth without any attempt at a distraction. “Yes, I did think it was a chance to see you when you weren’t completely taken up with—when you actually had to spend some time away from work. Also you were going to be vulnerable and I damn well wasn’t going to let someone take you down now, but there was a selfish element. I don’t think I’ve ever pretended to be a complete altruist.”

“If you have, it’s never convinced me,” Sephiroth says, with what he hopes is sufficient warmth mixed into his dry tone. “I’ve always tried to take you as you present yourself. I was making my propositions on that basis, however misdirected they were at the time.”

From the way Vincent suddenly smiles, he found his target. “I’ll admit this too, Sephiroth,” he says, with his hand once again caressing Sephiroth’s shoulder but his eyes still fixed on Sephiroth’s face, and not solely out of caution. “I do genuinely like cats, and as a cat you are irresistibly fluffy. It would’ve taken a far better man than me to not touch you.”

Sephiroth blinks. Then snorts and twists his head forward, just as Vincent lets out a low, guiltless laugh. He moves it back and forth a little as a strained muscle briefly complains, but then relaxes with his chin deep into the pillow as he cants his hips up into Vincent. “Well, then provided you aren’t discriminating between my forms on that ground now, I think I can overlook any moral lapses…”

“Oh, I don’t see that being a problem,” Vincent says. His voice dropping, roughening, taking on that rumble that even now, even in human form, has Sephiroth arching his back and rubbing his face into the pillows, begging with silent wantonness for more. “This works for me. You?”

Absolutely, Sephiroth thinks, and wordlessly gives himself over. No, he’s not making the same mistake twice.

Chapter Text

“…discuss it with him, but I will be here for the rest of the week and absent any objections, can make the time,” Vincent says. His tone never wavers but his attention plainly has, even before he frowns and turns in his chair.

Tseng is also turning, though for the moment he leaves his weapons alone. They’re in his office in the heart of Shinra HQ, and while that wouldn’t necessarily guarantee safety, he has noted Vincent is making no defensive moves. But the man does look faintly puzzled as he tracks something outside, and with him that alone is cause for caution. So as the office door is nudged open, Tseng rises to his feet but stays near the table where he’s off-center from anyone coming in and thus would have a slight advantage in response time.

If the visitor happens to even care—Sephiroth doesn’t completely ignore Tseng as he slips in, but his focus is clearly elsewhere and he beelines straight to Vincent without so much as a word.

That said, he’s in cat form. He does slow a little once he’s reached Vincent’s feet, but if he miaows at all, the noise is completely muffled by the way Vincent flips up the side of his coat. Sephiroth immediately leaps up onto Vincent’s lap and dives into the newly-formed pocket as Vincent lets the coat fall back down, and in a matter of seconds Vincent has resumed his former position, expression once again undisturbed.

“Do you have close-ups of this one?” Vincent says a moment later, picking up the tablet they’ve been poring over.

If nothing else, Tseng’s time with Shinra has taught him to always look for the stinger. He goes to the door, pauses when he sees the baffled and irritated face of Rhapsodos at the far end of the hall, and thinks. Then he sighs and goes back to the table. “Very bad quality, but yes. I honestly couldn’t make any heads or tails of it, but if you want to try…”

They’re still reviewing the photos when Rhapsodos inevitably bangs on the door. Tseng gets up again to open it and is mildly interested to see that Vincent—who doesn’t bother to rise—makes no effort to avoid the confrontation and instead answers Rhapsodos’ demands in a monotone perfectly calibrated to soak up the other man’s venom without betraying any perturbation of his own. By the time Hewley arrives—alerted by Tseng’s text since Rhapsodos nevertheless seems unable to stop trying for a rise out of Vincent—Rhapsodos has been reduced to muttered threats and a petty kick at the file cabinets.

Vincent politely returns Hewley’s greeting, then watches along with Tseng as the two Firsts leave. “You’re right, these are useless,” he says, looking at the door for an extra moment before he indicates the tablet. “And I take it there was something wrong with the indoor cameras, since there’s nothing from them in this folder?”

“They weren’t angled to protocol—we’re looking into that—so there was a sufficient blind spot at the time,” Tseng admits with a grimace. Out of an abundance of caution, he stays by the door, continuing the discussion with Vincent from there while listening to Rhapsodos and Hewley as they wander around the floor bickering. Several more minutes go by before the pair finally head towards the elevators and Tseng thinks it’s safe to return to his actual work. “Would you like a break before we go into the next batch?”

Vincent blinks blankly at Tseng, which, while he’ll never admit to being outright jealous of the man’s composure, is an achievement. Then his face clears. He shakes his head, then inclines it ever-so-slightly at his side. “No, this isn’t a good time. We can finish this, but…will you need your office directly after?”

Tseng suppresses another sigh. He’s far too experienced to not know the right answer here, but sometimes it is a little tiring to always be the one having to make accommodations. A small ego generally lends itself to longevity as a Turk, and Vincent is the kind of person who will treat this as a favor to be returned—which is arguably more valuable in some ways than Sephiroth owing one—but Tseng does wonder at times if heading up a team does yield more benefits versus being a mere member.

“I can take my next meeting somewhere else,” he says as he sits back down. “I do need to be back in by four to close out before I leave for the day—”

“That’s fine. I’m due at Seventh Heaven later for trivia night—” Vincent’s mouth twitches in what could be either amusement or resignation “—incidentally, Zack and Cloud are required attendees, as last month’s defending champions. I’m bracing for a long session.”

And thus those two should be guaranteed to be not only at the bar for the entire time, but stuck in the front part interacting with the other teams, Tseng infers. Tifa does like to be in for trivia night but she doesn’t emcee it, and with most of the patrons participating, she often can catch some quiet time in the backroom. Tseng nods a silent thanks to Vincent and then accordingly makes a few mental adjustments to his evening plans, which as the head of the Turks he can do unilaterally. Which is a leadership benefit, he acknowledges before he leans over the tablet again.

* * *

For the first half-hour after Tseng leaves, Vincent quietly goes over the files. He gave the other man all the insights he has, but there are a few possible ideas rattling around in his head that he will want to research before suggesting, so he makes certain he has all relevant details committed to memory. It’s only after he’s finished with that chore that, checking the time, he reluctantly pulls away his coat and looks in on the furry white form peacefully sleeping by his thigh.

Sephiroth shifts a little as soon as the light comes in, but his sides continue their slow, comfortable up-and-down movements for several more seconds after that. He wakes very gradually, rubbing his head against Vincent’s knee and then retucking his legs under himself as he turns over. His tail whisks against the inside of Vincent’s coat, then slides down out of sight as his head finally lifts. A few whisker-twitches, and then he launches into a tremendous yawn, eyes still unfocused as they slit open, one slim foreleg stretching across Vincent’s leg, toes spreading out before closing up again to rest lightly on Vincent. Sephiroth cocks his head to look up as Vincent moves, paw pressing a little more firmly on Vincent’s thigh…and then his ears prick stiffly upward and his eyes widen.

A second later, Vincent has the naked man straddling him and cursing softly as Sephiroth twists for the tablet on the table. Sephiroth’s finetuned his control so that when he shifts, he usually can avoid applying the wrong limb to the wrong spot, but Vincent still needs a moment to adjust to the man’s weight. “Zack texted me ten minutes ago,” he says once he’s caught his breath, and then waits for Sephiroth to drop the tablet and look at him. “Nothing that needs your immediate attention, and my father is talking to Rhapsodos in the morning.”

Sephiroth exhales in relief before he can help himself. Then he grimaces and his eyes slide from Vincent to the tablet, less because of his dedication to his duties and more because of the faintly embarrassed air he has. “I’m not about to make a habit of hiding in your coat. But the board meeting today was excruciating, and then I hadn’t even finished showering from patrol when he came in and I need him for Mideel later this month, I can’t just murder him…”

Vincent hears the chair groan in an alarming way and puts his hands on Sephiroth’s waist to tilt the man so their weight is better-centered. “Father said the same when I asked. About the board meeting, not Rhapsodos, although he did tell me if I saw you, to try and talk you into saving your strength for the press conference at the end of the week.”

Professional workaholic that he is, Sephiroth is tapping at the tablet as he snorts. He logs into his email—they have that set up on all of Vincent’s devices now—and gives it a brief scan before he looks up to answer. But then he frowns and looks back down at the tablet. It’s not much longer before he looks up again, but his expression has shifted from irritated chagrin to vague suspicion. “Vincent…considering I was offline for an unscheduled thirty minutes, there’s a surprising lack of panic in my message backlog. For that matter, there’s not much of a backlog, period.”

“Given that I don’t have any official position whatsoever in Shinra, I can’t have said anything to anyone that could have constituted an order,” Vincent says, and then smiles as Sephiroth snorts again. Still suspicious, but when Sephiroth puts the tablet back on the table and then puts that hand on Vincent’s chest, he makes it clear it’s not the type of suspicion that denotes any sort of breach between them. “I may have told one or two people you didn’t look like you wanted to be disturbed. Which was true at the time.”

“I see,” Sephiroth says, the corners of his mouth going up even as he attempts to look disapproving. His knee is sliding further onto the chair seat, and when Vincent’s hand drifts from his waist down to his buttock, he swivels himself into the touch. “That’s the only reason you insisted. Only because I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

“If you could fall asleep with Rhapsodos in here, I think you earned the rest,” Vincent points out.

“True, but…” Sephiroth briefly looks as if his sense of professionalism is overriding his other inclinations…and then shrugs as he works his hand under Vincent’s shirt “…and I suppose you’ve earned my gratitude for recognizing that.”

For the second half-hour in Tseng’s office, well, trivia night isn’t Vincent’s idea of a nice night out, but he knows he can give Zack and Cloud a good challenge when he feels like it. And if it keeps them from offloading their issues onto Tifa for the night, then in the morning Tseng can forgive Vincent for having his office closed for deep-cleaning.

Chapter Text

Angeal doesn’t take down the perches or the nesting box at first because they’re not actually home that much in the first few days. It’s not often that they actually manage to run down a mad scientist alive and have the chance to at least try and ask him what the hell else he was doing and whether it’s on a timer and going to affect populated areas—not that it’s actually that easy or they don’t have to suffer through hours and hours of his manifesto first, but they try. Then there’s the clean-up work, including seeing to the three SOLDIERs the asshole took out before grabbing Zack, and since they’re all from Angeal’s battalion, he spends a lot of time with Lucrecia and Grimoire and medical making sure there’s one, a treatment plan and two, a support plan, because nobody’s gonna succumb to PTSD-induced megalomania this time around. And inevitably there’s a lot of standard Shinra bureaucratic bullshit too, because this is what they work so hard to save.

Yeah, it’s annoying, but it’s also familiar, and with Genesis not only back in human form but somehow talking to him about stuff that doesn’t involve killing, Angeal is actually pretty happy to get back to what he knows. So they get to work, and when they’re not working, they…are kind of making up for lost time a little bit.

Okay, a lot. And anyway, Genesis doesn’t bring up the chicken gear either. He doesn’t just ignore it, and Angeal doesn’t ignore him on that, because Angeal is genuinely trying to get at the problems they were having before. But when they are home and Genesis is walking around, Angeal catches him giving the things a look or two but the man doesn’t say anything about them. More importantly, he doesn’t then turn around and say something about something else that ends in them fighting. He just eyes the things a little and moves on.

So the stuff stays up for a couple weeks. None of it is really in the way and Angeal wants Genesis as he is, no questions there, but…he does like chickens. He really enjoyed having them as kids and look, yeah, he could’ve gotten a pet at any point but one, being a First means he keeps weird hours and occasionally comes home covered in mutagenic crap, and two, he lives with Genesis, who is not an animal person. So…no, he wasn’t planning on it. But he had a chicken again for a week, and it was Genesis but Genesis also was a chicken and the stuff just…reminds him, in a good way, and that’s not something he can say often about things from growing up in Banora.

Anyway, they end up needing all the stuff for about thirty-six hours after Cloud abruptly vanishes during a patrol in Sector Five and then surfaces a couple monsters and one previously-unknown Mako spill later to reveal that he can turn back into a mouse whenever he wants now. Which of course means they all end up in the lab for tests and then Sephiroth and Genesis figure out how to do it too and Genesis…Genesis takes it a lot better than Angeal was expecting, but he still has a lot to say. And also really wants to make sure he gets on top of this right away, away from everyone else even if Angeal privately thinks that Sephiroth has no idea he and Genesis are now in a skills race, and so that weekend Genesis is a chicken virtually every couple of minutes as he works on it.

Angeal stays with him and makes up some more chicken food and films Genesis so the man can do transition analysis and keeps his mouth shut when Genesis repeatedly wears himself out and falls asleep as a chicken multiple times. If it’d gone on any longer, he would’ve gone for help, but Genesis decides he’s attained mastery late Sunday afternoon and that’s just enough time for them to have sex on the living room floor before they both crawl to the bedroom to sleep it off. So Angeal figures it’s a good thing he didn’t tear down anything.

And then…the stuff stays up. They go to work on Monday like usual, and Genesis has a very energetic argument with Lazard about the pros and cons of publicly disclosing their new abilities. Genesis doesn’t want to, even though the idea isn’t to promote it or anything but is just to get ahead of potential misunderstandings or accidents—to be honest, Angeal isn’t really for it either but he can see where Lazard is coming from and it’s not a bad place. But anyway, Angeal gets the impression—because Genesis says so, in front of other people—that Genesis actually doesn’t intend to use this new skill unless he’s made to. Which is fine by him; he doesn’t mind Genesis in chicken form but this is Genesis’ life and Angeal will stand by whatever the man decides.

It's just…Genesis doesn’t ask him to put the stuff away. The man stops even eyeing it, and then Angeal starts finding little bits of feathers here and there. Not all the time, but enough for him to know it’s not because he didn’t clean up before. And then Angeal comes home one day when he was actually supposed to be stuck in a helicopter with Rude and Cissnei—long story, ends with Cloud saving Zack and Angeal wanting a shower before he tackles the paperwork—and walks into an explosion of feathers as a red streak zips from the living room into the kitchen.

Angeal stops and opens his mouth. His first instinct is to call out to Genesis, but then he decides against it, knowing the man and his pride and his unneeded but still very painful fear of being too weak to defend himself. So he’s just going to back up into the hall, but just then a feather fragment gets up his nose and he sneezes instead.

“Shit,” he mutters, wiping off his nose and then batting the last of the floating feathers down. He looks at the empty room, then at the kitchen doorway. It’s completely silent.

He inhales, but then shakes his head just before he would’ve started apologizing. That makes his gaze cross over to the nesting box, where he sees a tail feather dangling from the entrance. He still honestly isn’t sure what he should do here, but something makes him go over and work the feather loose. Then he goes to the couch and starts to sit down, only then he remembers how fucked-up his clothes are. He curses a little, looks around, and when he doesn’t see anything else, sighs and backtracks to the entryway where the floor’s tile and easy to scrub off later if he sits down on it.

He's just finished taking off his boots when a shadow appears over him. “Angeal,” Genesis starts tightly.

Angeal breathes out to loosen up his shoulders, then looks up. “Yeah?”

Genesis looks…less than happy, but not exactly enraged. He stares at Angeal for a second—he’s got a shirt on but no pants—and his eyes start at Angeal’s face, drop to the stained trousers as Angeal reflexively wipes at one knee, and then go back up. Then he sighs, pivots, and walks back into the kitchen.

Angeal grimaces. He puts his boots to the side, pauses when he sees that tail feather stuck to the side of one, then shakes his head and gets up onto his feet…and that’s when Genesis comes back with a handful of dishtowels, one of which he’s already wetted. He pushes them at Angeal and then goes away as Angeal, less worried but still having no idea where this is going, starts mopping at himself.

When Genesis comes back the second time, he has a full-size towel from the bathroom and a hazmat bag. He gives the towel to Angeal and then holds the bag open so Angeal can drop the dishtowels and his clothes into it, and then follows Angeal to the bathroom. At that point, he starts asking what happened, and unpacking it for him gets them through Angeal’s shower, a meal, and into the bedroom where the day really starts to catch up with Angeal and he honestly just thinks he wants to put his head down and figure the rest out in the morning.

That’s when Genesis says: “It’s easier to recenter that way.”

Angeal stops with his head a couple inches from the pillow. Then he levers himself up and onto his side, only for Genesis to roll his eyes and grab Angeal’s shoulder. The man pushes Angeal back down, not onto the pillow but onto Genesis’ thigh.

“This isn’t an identity crisis by any means,” Genesis adds. His hand grips Angeal for a second, and when Angeal grunts tentatively, it holds on even as Genesis scowls at him. It doesn’t relax when the other man leans back to rest against the headboard. “When I wish to speak to a therapist, I am perfectly capable of arranging the appointment myself. And I damn well don’t want to be a bird, Angeal.”

“Well, I don’t think Seph or Cloud want to be animals either. It’s just the form kind of works for them for certain things,” Angeal ventures. He feels Genesis’ fingers relax a moment before the snort bursts out of the other man, and then relaxes himself. “It really is Seph in there even when he’s curled up with Vincent and purring.”

“Oh, absolutely. No one else could look as if shame ceases to exist on his plane of existence, while wearing a little cape,” Genesis mutters.

“Vincent says it’s a blanket. The strings are just for when he’s got it rolled up,” Angeal says, and then grins when Genesis tilts forward to look at him. “Yeah, I don’t believe him either.”

Genesis rolls his eyes again, then leans back. His hand moves off Angeal’s shoulder to Angeal’s upper arm. “Our glorious and supreme commander…I’m not a bird. But it—I—find it easier. The thoughts don’t go, but they…just seem easier to move away from, for some reason. I suppose you have some farmyard anecdote explaining how chickens manage that.”

“Not really. I mean, I wasn’t exactly having philosophical discussions with them. I liked having them, but at the end of the day, they were gonna lay eggs or end up in the pot,” Angeal says. Then shrugs at the expression Genesis shows him. “Look, that was life back then. We just had to do what we had to do in order to get through it, and…you know I don’t give a shit, Gen. And you know I’m gonna find you, whatever you look like.”

A shadow flickers over Genesis’ face, not aligned with the sarcastic curl of his lip—but closer to the hint of weight in his voice. He’s never going to say he regrets Angeal coming along when they confronted Hollander, but all the deaths that followed—a lot of them going to people who didn’t have any idea and who didn’t deserve it—have left more of a mark on him than he’ll ever admit even to Angeal. “And I know you won’t ask why.”

“Not unless you want me to,” Angeal says.

Genesis looks at him for another moment, then nods sharply. The other man pushes back against the headboard, frowning off at the wall. His shoulders twitch and then jerk once against the wood before he takes a long, deep breath. Then he seems to settle down, since he puts his other hand up and absently combs through his hair.

“So…should just leave everything as-is?” Angeal asks.

He knows he’s read Genesis right when the man flicks him an irritated look before reaching for their phones on the bedside table. “You might as well take off the perches in the bathroom, it’s not like I’m finding my sources of wisdom in the toilet, unlike some of our fellow executives…the box, yes. That is useful.”

“Sure,” Angeal says. He watches Genesis unlock the phone and start reading it, then shifts his head a little. Genesis’ hand rides his arm, then slips down to his chest as he closes his eyes, and that’s that.

Well. Okay. There’s when they put up the solstice tree a few months on, and Genesis nips off leaves and breaks off the tips of branches till he’s got a hollow for himself near the top so Angeal spends that entire damn month with one very specific line from one very specific carol constantly in his head. And he can’t even complain about it to Genesis, since neither the bird type nor the tree is right. But he’s gone through worse things for the man. He’ll get through this.

Chapter Text

Zack’s materia keep going missing.

It’s not exactly an emergency, because they keep turning up too and while Zack didn’t get to be a First by being sloppy, he…has been known to misplace a thing or two, at home, after the workday when he and Cloud are both bone-tired and trying not to think too hard about what mutagenic slime they swam through today and he figures if he still needs it in the morning, then he’ll fight through Procurement for a replacement. Anyway, they’re always the materia that are almost used-up but not so used that he pops them into a disposal chute before clocking out. He does take them out of his gear so he doesn’t accidentally charge off into the field with one Cure cast on him (see, he can think ahead) but then just sticks them aside to deal with later and then they disappear.

And then come back, fully-charged like the Materia Fairy was nice enough to drop in. He doesn’t think he’s finding them in the same place as where he put them, but they’re still in his and Cloud’s place and they all seem to work fine. So it’s not like anything bad happened to them in the meantime.

“Zack,” Sephiroth starts, with that look on his face like he really does think of Zack as a buddy but also he’s wondering if a meteor smashing down would be less of a headache. “Must I remind you about the other time we had mysteriously-migrating materia—”

“Okay, okay, I’ll follow up on it,” Zack says, putting his hands up. He kind of knew anyway that it was a bad idea to mention it to Sephiroth without having a full-blown sitrep ready to go on it. And yeah, he does remember that time, and all the other times weird little things actually led to near-death experiences for all of them because around here, science seems to come in two flavors, Crazy Town and Sephiroth’s mom, and does not want a repeat.

So Zack pops by the lab to pick up some handy sensors and talk with Grimoire, and then goes home to try and figure this out. He does not launch into that right away like he once would have, because he and Cloud have made a commitment to each other and to communication, and so while he still wants to get this all done and dusted before Cloud comes home, he sends Cloud a message first so his partner will know what’s going on.

Cloud is supposed to be out on patrol in the spotty-reception parts of Sector Two, which is fine because Zack is communicating but absolutely not with the intent that Cloud’s actually got to do anything like rush home and prevent an apocalypse. So when Zack gets an immediate ping back, Zack does wince. That, and check his initial message to make double sure it didn’t sound off or something, because seriously, the materia is weird but not yet a confirmed threat (if it had been, Seph never would’ve let Zack out of the office and Grimoire would be already coring samples out of their walls).

His message looks fine to him. Cloud’s says no stop. i’ll be home soon.

Zack sighs and texts back that Cloud doesn’t need to cut his mission short and it’s not a big deal. Cloud types…and types…and types for long enough that Zack actually is growing concerned at the three little blinking dots and is on the verge of backchanneling another First to see if Sector Two suddenly spit out monsters, when finally the message comes through.

it’s because i know where they are. sorry.

So now Zack is veryworried, because there are two big red flags for impending Cloud-spiral right there, and a third one follows when Cloud doesn’t answer any of his four follow-up messages. He drops the borrowed sensors on the couch and starts gearing up, except then there’s a knock at the door.

It can’t be Cloud already, Zack knows, his stomach clenching hard as he goes over.

It’s not Cloud. It’s Rude. “He’s coming here,” Rude says. “ETA fifteen minutes, I don’t want to have to knock you out but I do have authorization to do it—” his sunglasses twitch pointedly as Zack opens his mouth “—Strife said to tell you to stay put.”

Then Rude closes the door on Zack. Who gapes for a second, then gets himself together and yanks it open again to tell off the Turk for spying and taking messages that aren’t his and all the other creepy things and…of course Rude’s gone. He’s just back in that little listening post on the next floor down that seriously, Zack really doesn’t know why they just let the Turks hide there and watch them all and he would do something about that right now except Cloud’s coming.

“Hey,” Cloud says thirteen minutes later (Turks aren’t even accurate!), walking in the door. “Sorry about Rude, I just wanted to make sure you didn’t go.”

“It’s fine,” Zack says, holding out the guacamole he’s just finished whipping up, because Cloud always comes back calorie-depleted from patrol and it kept him from thinking too hard about why the Turks always seem to be taking Cloud’s messages. “He was a jerk, but he’s always a jerk. So look, you didn’t need to run home, Seph did say I needed to figure this out but I don’t think he meant escalate it to Tier 1 priority and honestly, I probably picked the wrong time, Vincent was waiting outside for him and dropped that it’s roast chicken night and you know Seph is all about the chicken since—”

“I took the materia.” Cloud grimaces and avoids Zack’s eyes for a second as he tugs awkwardly at his shoulderguard. Then his eyes do come up, but they’re still clearly wishing they didn’t have to do that. “I put them back too.”

Zack blinks hard. Then shrugs as he carefully sidles up to where he can dangle the bowl just below Cloud’s other hand, which is fidgeting in the air and which might be redirected to the calories with a little finesse. “Well, I mean, they’re our materia. I just didn’t know where they were going, it’s not like it’s stealing if it’s—”

“I just feel better that way and look, I’ll show you.” Cloud does see the guacamole and for a second his face loosens up. But then he pushes the bowl away.

He does grab Zack by the wrist, so Zack shuts his mouth and lets the other man lead him into their bedroom, and then down onto the floor where they can both crouch and look under the mattress to where…there is a nest. It is barely bigger than Zack’s first, but it is neat and compact and sturdy enough that when Zack bangs his head into the bedframe trying for a better look, the nest sides don’t even wobble. He can see a couple materia tucked into its center, just across from a hollow that looks cozy enough for the small furry version of Cloud.

“I know we’re supposed to give them back to inventory to recharge but they’ll recharge on their own if you just leave them long enough, and I just…I don’t know, it feels better if I keep them,” Cloud says. He stares at the floor between his elbows for a second. “I don’t think this is Lifestream stuff or anything like that. I think it’s the mouse side.”

“Okay,” Zack says. Then he scrunches his nose in his hand and reminds himself to be better, and takes a breath. “I mean, okay as is in that doesn’t sound like mind control and I’m not going to haul you off to the lab, Cloud.”

Who snorts, though he’s still looking at the floor. When Zack nudges the bowl at him, he sighs but he does finally take one of the chips Zack stuck all along the rim. “But it’s weird.”

“We’re all weird now,” Zack points out, and when Cloud takes another chip, he unfolds his arm and slings it over the other man’s back. “It’s not dangerous weird. I don’t think Seph is going to make a big deal out of it either, he’s just gonna want to know I figured it out. I mean, I saw Vincent showing him these tiny little boots with Teflon inserts the other day and at this rate he’s gonna have a full uniform for both versions.”

Cloud flicks a sideways look at him, but in the middle of it, the man also eats a chip. “Because the last time Sephiroth had to change and go through a pipe, he burned off his paw pads.”

“Okay, yes, that was terrible, and I was totally doing the cover fire for Vincent as he mauled his way through the culprits, remember?” Zack says. “But also, why do they think he’s gonna be doing more patrols that way? Shouldn’t we just try to avoid putting him in that situation instead of inventing tactical kitty gear?”

“I think he’s just trying to help Sephiroth do it the way Sephiroth wants to do it,” Cloud says. As he does, he turns and fully faces Zack, scanning for something. Then, as Zack belatedly does his best to will some seriousness into his expression, Cloud shrugs and eats another chip. “I don’t need a whole hamster maze.”

Zack winces. “Yeah, I—I remember.”

“I just like sitting down here sometimes when you’re out. It’s better than staring at my phone on the couch,” Cloud adds. He pokes the bowl at Zack, who takes a chip because he knows Cloud’s not going to eat more till he does. “I can tell Sephiroth what was happening.”

“If you want. I mean, it was my slip, he’s gonna be expecting me to report resolution,” Zack says around his chip. He swallows that, then swallows again. “If you want to go in there when I am here, that’s fine too, you know. Just message me or whatever, I’ll leave you alone.”

Cloud smiles at him. It’s small and fleeting, but real while it’s there. “Okay, but usually I don’t feel like it then.”

Zack smiles back, and then tugs Cloud a little closer to him as the other man starts grazing on the guacamole and chips again. They lie there by the bed for a couple minutes, and it is honestly not weird at all.

“You know, Yuffie’s coming next week,” Zack says.

“Yeah, I was gonna dismantle it before—”

“No, you should totally keep it. It’s our place, our rules, your mouse thing is my mouse thing and she can take it or leave it. I told you, Spike, no matter what you get up to, I’m gonna cover your back,” Zack says firmly. “Also, she owes us about fifty so I’m all for evening things up.”

Cloud’s expression slowly shifts from surprised to tentatively pleased to suspicious. “Zack. I’m not stealing materia.”

“But it’s not stealing! She owes us them! You can completely fit that many down there with a couple extensions and I can come up with a good cover story—”

“Zack, no,” Cloud sighs. He interrupts Zack’s first stab at trying to persuade him otherwise with a brief kiss, then gets up in the middle of Zack adopting the same tactic. “I’m not stealing.”

“But Cloud…”

“No.”

Chapter Text

Sephiroth prides himself on being a consummate professional and a dedicated leader even in the most extenuating circumstances, but even he has his limits, and today he reaches them when the water runs out just as he steps under the temporary showers.

He’s covered in layers of gore, mud, paint, oil, and mutagenic slime from fighting near-continuously through a decommissioned auto factory in Sector Three against snake-human hybrids for the entire day, and was up the entire night before that with his officers and Tuesti as they frantically figured out a way to lure the damn things into the factory to begin with, so SOLDIER could deal with them without also taking out Midgar’s water system. They also had had to carefully choreograph every planning conversation because the cultists who’d created the hybrids had had a mole in Urban Planning and while the Turks had detected them early on, it wasn’t until just before the fighting had started that Tuesti and Sephiroth had finally managed to trick them into revealing themselves. And then having to keep every damned executive with need-to-know status updated on the situation regardless of whether they were actually helpful, because one of the hybrids’ first attacks had put Lazard in the hospital and while Rufus did keep the board at bay, he didn’t step in with the lower levels…and in the end, the hybrids are routed, the cultists are all under arrest or dead, and Sephiroth’s mother has just told Sephiroth that she and Grimoire have successfully synthesized antivenom for the SOLDIER casualties.

It’s a result Sephiroth is more than happy to take home, except that he can’t leave before he’s gone through decontam, and he can’t do that without washing off. But they’ve run out of water because they cut off the factory from the rest of the water system and trucked in what they needed, and he’s the very last one to walk up to the showers because of all the damned phone calls he’d had to make first, and yes. He does think about taking Masamune back out of its sheath.

Sephiroth fights down that urge, then unstraps his sword as a precaution since he’s well aware of how emotionally compromised he is at the moment. He leans it carefully against the wall, grimacing as gelled lumps of filth plop off his fingers, and then takes off his body armor for good measure. By then someone’s run up to him with an ETA for the next water truck and it’s twenty minutes out because—he doesn’t want to hear it. He has had enough.

* * *

“…stand down, the General’s fine, he didn’t just go poof he just—” and then Zack exhales sharply as the pile of clothing in the middle of the platform suddenly shifts.

He absently pushes aside the panicking SOLDIER, briefly considers just telling everyone it’s another sewer mirage, and then has to discard that idea when a small head works its way out from under the coat. Sephiroth humps the rest of his body free, shakes himself and then looks down at his slime-covered fur—his poor little paws are so caked they’re double their usual size—with a tiny hiss. His back arches up again and then he lets out a yowl of the purest, most heartfelt disgust Zack has ever heard in his life. No matter what species you are, if you’re in this mess too, you understand that yowl.

That said, there are a lot of suddenly nervous faces around. All the experienced SOLDIERs know about Sephiroth’s cat form at this point, but only a couple of the elite squads have actually had field experience with it. So when the other SOLDIERs falter, Zack sighs and moves in. “Hey, okay, Seph, so you want to go with the closing sweeps while we wait for the water—”

Sephiroth looks at Zack. Even as a cat and even with half the sewage in Midgar stuck to his fur, he’s undeniably majestic. Majestic, and flattening his ears when Zack reaches for him and oh, right, dirty hands.

“No,” comes from behind Zack right as he starts to peel off his gloves. Then Vincent, somehow fucking spotless aside from a token crust on his bootsoles, angles around Zack and smoothly down into a crouch in front of Sephiroth. “I’ll take it from here, Zack. We’ll be in the showers, feel free to report in whenever you need to. I’ll leave the door open.”

Zack starts to tell Vincent that the water isn’t on, but then sees that Vincent has what appears to be a five-gallon tank in one hand, probably from their potable supply. Which they don’t have to ration now since the fighting’s done. “Oh, right, now he’s the perfect size. All right, everyone, give the General his space here, he’s done as much to earn his shower as you assholes and is winning the water conservation prize on top of it. Greer, update me on those robots. We clear on the west yet?”

“Sir, yes, checking now!” said SOLDIER says, and then they all pivot out of the way as Vincent scoops up Sephiroth and carries him into the empty shower tent.

“Let’s call this the S&S protocol,” Zack tells a passing SOLDIER, and then waves them on when they look curiously at him. “Later, later, not priority. But we should get this down somewhere, we’ll probably need it again.”

* * *

The water, Sephiroth knows where that came from, and the basin Vincent could have scrounged from SOLDIER supplies too. But he has no idea where the soaps and conditioners come from and he honestly doesn’t care. They smell wonderful and pull away the dirt from his fur without irritating his skin and that’s all that matters.

As soon as the water—thoughtfully heated via judicious application of a Fire materia—touches him, he goes limp, and then he stays that way as Vincent puts him in the tub, one hand cradled under his head at all times. Strong fingers run warm, clean water into his fur and then massage in the soap, working from his ears all the way to the tip of his tail. Then down each leg and back up, finishing with a thorough kneading of his belly that leaves him purring sleepily. Conditioner follows, then more warm water until he’s little more than a cat-shaped bag of jelly in Vincent’s hands.

It's no small effort on Vincent’s side, even with preternatural abilities, but the man works tirelessly and never so much as coughs at the smell. He patiently goes over Sephiroth till every strand is clean and Sephiroth is absolutely and shamelessly pretending he’s unable to so much as support his own weight, so Vincent has to move his limbs and keep his head out of the water. Occasionally, Zack clears a throat outside and then calls in an update, and Sephiroth only grunts in reply; in his defense, if it truly needed his input, Zack wouldn’t bother being polite and Vincent also would do something about it.

Something besides what Vincent actually does, which is curl Sephiroth up in one arm and carefully wring the excess water out of his fur. Then, seemingly oblivious of how soaked his clothes are now, he produces a lovely fluffy towel from his magical hidden supply and dries Sephiroth. A little manipulation of an Air materia—annoyingly chilly air, but even Sephiroth will admit long fur and Fire materia are a risky combination—finishes things off…no, Vincent has a comb. The cat one, with its delightfully knobby ends that dig into Sephiroth’s skin just so and make all his nerves tingle pleasantly.

At some point, Sephiroth falls asleep. It’s embarrassing, or it will be embarrassing once Sephiroth goes into the office. But at the moment, having just woken from a deeply restorative rest and found himself in his own bed, Vincent comfortably draped around him with his nose pressed into the crook of the man’s neck, Sephiroth doesn’t want to consider such things.

“Lazard checked himself out, initial reports are in your inbox, Father made sure your mother went home to sleep, they didn’t find any more hybrids,” Vincent mutters. He only sounds half-awake, and stirs minimally as Sephiroth extricates himself. “You did eat something when we came home but there’s a full bento box in the fridge.”

Then he pushes his head down into the hollow Sephiroth has left in the sheets, apparently going back to sleep. Sephiroth pauses with unspoken thanks on his tongue, then turns away. He goes into the bathroom, attends to his relevant needs, and then comes back out to consider what else he should do. He can see his phone on the bedside table, briefly contemplates the state of his gut…and then he goes back to the side of the bed.

Vincent wakes up again as Sephiroth presses his lips against the man’s jaw, but doesn’t actually move until Sephiroth has worked his way down under the chin. Then Vincent rolls half-over, lifting his head and arm to accommodate Sephiroth sliding under the sheets and up against him. His hand comes back down on Sephiroth’s shoulder, then starts to caress at Sephiroth’s back as Sephiroth kisses from his throat to his chest.

“Was I still a cat?” Sephiroth asks. He laps at Vincent’s breastbone as it rises a little quicker, then rests his lips there to feel the heartbeat behind it. “When we came home?”

Vincent laughs lowly. He turns over a little more, making it easy for Sephiroth to trail kisses to his belly and then further down. “You know I don’t mind.”

“Hmmm, no, but you’re owed thanks in this form too,” Sephiroth murmurs.

“Well, I’ll take them either way,” Vincent says. Then inhales a little, both his hands running into Sephiroth’s hair as he steers Sephiroth’s head onwards.

The next time Sephiroth cries out, he’s also had enough, but this time, he’s quite happy that way.