FalconIce 
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Title:
Nothing But A Puppet
Game: Final Fantasy 7
Pairing: Cloud x
Sephiroth
Warnings: angst and death Nothing but a
Puppet
Behind me, the wind is stirring ever
so slowly as my breath is softly leaving the warm confines of my
mouth. My chest heaves up and down as sweat gently trickles down
my face. The fight had been intense and it left me without
strength. Giving me only a tenuous hold on life.
My eyes
slowly regain their focus and I look at the face of my rival.
The face of one I was created to be like. One whose image I am
unlikely to forget. He is my nemesis and my savior. He is
Sephiroth.
"Cloud?" Came the deep baritone voice, seeming to
caress my sweat slicked skin." Are you alright...?"
I
blinked and for the moment my mind was blank. Words refused to come
out and I was left speechless. My hands trembled and my knees
shook with fatigue. I could no longer think and my vision was
once again blurring in and out of reality. For a moment, I was
in a world of silence before everything was turned upside down
as I slowly lost my tenuous hold on reality.
He rushed to
my side, faster than lightning and caught me within the
sanctuary of his arms. His soft breath flew over my face as he
looked down upon me with concern. I still had yet to trust my
voice so I merely stayed silent as we both gazed at each other
wordlessly.
It was a slight movement behind his eyes that
alerted me to his thoughts. He was, for once, afraid. I did not
how to react to such an emotion coming from a person such as
Sephiroth. People all over the world regarded him as a God and
I, seeing this, was struck dumb.
"Why?" I asked him, my voice
seeming like a fragile leaf on a breeze." We are enemies…" I
paused, searching his eyes for an answer to the fear that so
clouded his thoughts." How can you hold me in your arms and look
concerned when I am but a failed clone come to take your
life?"
My hesitancy and confusion was clearly embedded
deep within my words and I could see from within that he knew
not what was the answer to my question. I felt at that moment,
seeing the naked look in his eyes, that hehimself was asking
the selfsame question in his mind.
He gently laid me down on
the ground and kneeled softly on the earth beside me. His eyes
roamed throughout the entirety of my body and I could do nothing
to stop him. My strength was gone and I lay helpless on the
earth, which created me.
His eyes closed once and he sighed."
Cloud...I know not what spurns me to do such..." He paused,
seeming to mull over his next words." But in my heart...I know
that the world was not meant to end now and that is why you are
here..." He then held my hands in his own and stared at me, his
eyes haunted. "My mother calls me...and I haven't the will to
resist...yet..."He halted and closed his mouth only to gaze
searchingly at me." Yet I cannot bring myself to end your
life...as with Zack...You and I...we are but one of the endless
mistakes of creation..."He closed his emerald eyes and
surprisingly, sliver streaks of liquid began to fall from his
closed lids.
I brought my hand up to caress his face, which
was so deep in it's sadness. He looked back at me then and I
looked at him back. He was Sephiroth. What are the words that
are worthy enough to utter to a living God? At that time and
place, I was asking myself the same thing. What were the words
that I could possibly utter to lift the burden of sadness from
his weary shoulders. What could be his and my salvation? Was
there even a chance of us ever being rested from our life long
enmity?
"It was not meant to end..."He whispered and brushed
a wayward lock of golden hair from my forehead." Not like
this..." He held the hand that I had once traced across his
beautiful countenance and softly brushed his lips against the
calluses on my palm." To end so lowly on the ground like some
animal...like some monster..."He then looked deep into my eyes
and then bent closer to me. His face, a mere inches from mine."
And you are not a monster..."He whispered, his warm breath
enveloping me like a blanket." Not a monster at all..." Slowly
and hesitantly, he began to trace his lips across my own. At
first I was shocked that the great Sephiroth would bring himself
to kiss me, a failed clone who was even unworthy of a number. "
But fair and innocent..."He spoke before delving once more in a
kiss more heated than before. I, in the crux of the moment was
held enthralled in his hold. For here before me was a God, a God
who showed his weakness to a lowly mortal laid helpless on the
Earth.
Something within me stirred, a feeling that I have yet
to know fully and at that instant, I knew I could no longer slay
this evil, which had so shaken the world. He was not a villain
in the story of life. He was merely a puppet just as I was. The
two of us possessed no real lives but on those instances...we
were for once, deciding our own fates but as all stories come to
an end ours was not a happy ending for I had still to slay him
and he was still meant to be slain. So I gathered the last
vestiges of my failing strength and stood up before him. He
looked at me then and I could feel my will waver but I had to
hold on for I was only a puppet and as a puppet I was to do what
I was made for and that was to kill Sephiroth.
One blow
was all it took and he bathed in his own blood. I didn't know
where I could have gotten the strength to end his life but I
knew deep within that it was not mine. Whoever owned the will,
possessed me entirely in the crucial moments when I sheathed my
blade into the body of someone who may have been the only person
to truly understand me.
And in those selfsame moments, the last
of my sanity crumbled and my puppeteer won the final victory. I
was nothing but a husk, and an empty shell for Cloud was no more
and there was only the puppet. The puppet that held death in his
right hand and life in the other. The puppet that was called a
hero and a destroyer. He was the puppet who went down into the
annals of history to be known as the one who saved the world
from certain doom. There was no more Cloud, as there had never
been a Cloud...for the real Cloud was nothing but an old memory.
A puppet he was, a puppet he is and he puppet he will be forever
more.
Owari
FalconIce: * Scratch head* When I
wrote this story my mind was blank and my hands just went " whee
" over the keyboard so if it isn't that nice it's to be
expected. This after all was an unplanned story. But I do hope
you comment on it…bad or Not, I want to know what you think.
Nothing stops a fan fiction author from writing a fic as much as
the lack of comments and criticism. So, Ja for now.
FalconIce
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