God Says Nothing

FF7 Dark Erotica

Sephiroth X Zack Only Book

By The Queen of Blueberry Toast [TheKWOBT@gundamwing.net]

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

This fic is dedicated to my darling Kim.  Who puts up with me and puts up 
with me and ought to be canonized for putting up with me.  

~*~*~*~*~*~

I don't own these characters.  I just make them do naughty things.

This fic is rated X.  Or NC-17.  Whatever you like.

~*~*~*~*~*~

It had all been before his last madness, though it was a madness in itself; 
the kind perverse and cloying as dreams of sex with oneself; a breathing, 
wet and tender specter in his brain; a thing untouched by six thousand 
years of civilization and the sanctity thereof- though he could not make 
himself believe mere society would outlast it, at least, not the civilization 
which had given rise to such aphros as himself. 

Sephiroth, his presence silver and florid now, did nothing but remember.  
Could it be six years, six thousand years? Chained to the heart of the dying 
world, he could not imagine such interminable reaches ever would banish 
it from him, but such was the joy of egoless ectoplasm as he had become.  
There would be time enough to manifest himself and the other beloved he 
dared call his mother upon the surface.  There would be time enough to 
live as momentary flesh among the cursed and the lovely human beings he 
could no longer join.

For now, his nothingness reclined amid the dissipated, moaning light.   
And he gave the thing the guise of formlessness he had himself known 
such megrims [1] for.  In many hours then, or days where he could not tell, 
he and the small doll twined and melted here and there together as the 
winking presence of the obsession, and the lunar glow of the obsessed.

There in the space where he should have been, he had the matterless 
silhouette of the boy he had craved.    Over and over.

~*~*~*~

"Why do you bother coming back if you despise me so?" The last of the 
test tubes Hojo swirled between his fingers, watching the blood within 
with a sort of sick fondness.

Sephiroth did nearly no such thing himself, but rather was drawing the last 
of the straps for his armor together.  "So you will not forget that I hate 
you."

"What curious notions my one and only son has."

"Be quiet, old man.  I am nothing of yours."  Still without his shoes, he 
drew aside the curtains to the chamber of the infirmary they always met in, 
thinking the ritual of walking away seemed to grow longer every time he 
invoked it.

"You are Shin-ra's and Shin-ra is mine."

The same argument, same game of moral suspension between them, and 
he had never grown out of it, not since the first time, when he was eight.  
The storm outside cracked or one of the generators malfunctioned.  It was 
hard to tell in the perpetual dimness outside.  No alarms sounded, so he 
took it for thunder, and he looked upon the scientist with nothing but 
dispassion.

For he would not play today.  He had made up his mind.

The boots slid on so easily he knew then they were worn and he would 
have to get another pair.

"Well, well, not up to answering?"

With a sigh he would not show, Sephiroth stalked into the main aisle of 
the infirmary.  There he was greeted by a laugh, an unfamiliar one.   
Someone in one of the compartments had overheard.  There were whispers 
asking for quiet and still, rivulets of giggles crossed the sterile space.   So 
did the laughter.

Hojo had been, until that day, the only one allowed to mock him.  

One of the more innocuous orderlies stood over a cot, hands on his hips, 
cotton balls leaking peroxide in one fist.  He caught none of the general's 
interest outside of being a prop.  It was the boy splayed over his table, and 
he called him a boy in his mind for men did not dare laugh that way, and 
because he was young, and still without such decay of spirit as true men, 
true SOLDIERS knew.  The sense of pure youth did drip from his aura, 
flow like honey on his image as it gloamed and winked in the fluorescent 
lights of the ward.  

Yet, the city sense of beauty put aside, he had to him a very earthly 
quality- was the most real being Sephiroth had ever beheld.  So corporeal, 
that looking upon him was like touching him, joining his pulse.  His skin 
had once, perhaps quite long ago been wrapped in sunlight- so unlike the 
people of Midgaard that.  The heavens had never left his eyes which were 
blue and sparkled with the parison [2] of a million sunny days.  So 
unsullied seemed the smile splaying on his lips, the blush about his 
cheeks... he had a ruddy sort of face, or seemed to, when the general 
could find it beneath his shock of hair unkempt, shaggy raven hair that fell 
to his waist.

He chuckled again when the peroxide fell on the motion burns that 
crisscrossed his forearms as if the liquid was rather feathers.

In that moment somewhere, Sephiroth imagined he could see him with 
feathers as the youth lay there in nothing but his blue jeans, crying out for 
joy, over and over and over. His head slid over the edge of the table 
because of his shaking.  Upside down, their eyes met.  

And he waved.

It was like seeing the night stop as it crossed the horizon, being the only 
person to witness such impossibility.  Going home and knowing no one 
else would ever know.  Because no one did.

The orderly sighed, flushed himself now.  "If you're going to act like that, 
you might as well go back to your bunk and put it on yourself."

"Fine, I think I will!" And it was one of those twangy, delinquent voices.  
But it didn't matter.  He drew himself up from the cot, shaking his hair 
out.  The liquid that had touched his wounds wound away down his 
muscles and onto his shirt as he took it up with the bottle to cotton had 
been soaked with.  "Thanks anyway."

So the orderly shook his head, looked like his temples ached but said 
nothing.  The boy said nothing.  Sephiroth said nothing and gravity failed 
him.  They two did not even brush against each other as the smear of 
human sunshine went whistling away into the whiteness of Shin-ra space.   
Nothing irresistible then to the orbital plane of the most feared and 
respected man in the whole creaking building.

"Who was that?" Sephiroth said, not really asked.

"Zack Something-or-other.  SOLDIER first class."

He didn't believe it, nor could he quiet the tremble in his chest.  It made 
him smirk because he couldn't stand it... "I can't see the mako in his 
eyes."

"Then I don't think you were looking close enough... ah, sir."

"Or maybe he's lucky..."

~*~*~*~

"He's a funny boy.  All the other members of SOLDIER step all over each 
other for mail, but that one waits until last and reads his letters in his 
room." Heidegger said.  "But if you want him for your entourage, it's not 
like I'll be sad to see him go.  You DO still want him?"

The words, "You can't know, you philistine bastard, how much" settled in 
his mind, but not his tongue.  No, he only nodded, and chilled the officer 
before him with a smile. 

Heidegger choked on his own tongue and handed the file over without 
much other fuss.  His collar seemed to have become too night for him.  
"Just ask him... I guess.  Or don't."

"I think I will."

They had no pleasantries between them though, and the general faded out 
of the office and into the interminable aisles which slid around the waist of 
the Shin-ra building.   No one was there to cross him, not at first.

Though rustles then, sounds tantamount to voices; the bodies of voices 
with mere hallucinations of meaning.  He paused and his eyes stole down 
one shadowed service entrance.  There were only two of them today, two 
officers- the one had the other pressed up a girder in the wall, and he was 
leaking cum onto his dropped fatigues as if someone had already had him 
before, though no other sign of the apparent first lover remained.  
Sephiroth glowered and clanked his sword on the floor so they would 
know they had been seen. 

He thought he heard one strike the other before their throes melted into the 
chatter of the cafeteria and his mind elsewhere settled.   There was still the 
matter at hand.  There was still him...

As it was, he nearly brushed against him when he strode into the room.  
Zack yelped and spun from his place behind the door, only to fall back 
against the wall once more.  And to laugh.  His shirt was halfway open 
and he was still wearing a buster sword across his back this time- reaching 
back to rub the handle now and then.  

Sephiroth regarded him and he closed his lips; just stared out at him, 
tempting him to speak first, but only for one moment, for the other officer 
bent and gathered up his shield then in the silence, or what seemed to be a 
shield wrapped in a shroud of slate moire,.  

Whoever the boy had been speaking to stepped back closer and fell into 
those blue eyes where the general did not.  

"So you just left him there? You fuckin' serious?"

"Dead serious."

"Wicked, man.  Anyone else woulda told me that I wouldn't believe 'em."

"Oh, and what'd I do to make you think I'm telling the truth?"

The answer hung suspended in some other realm of though.  Some 
shouting started at a table across the room and there were some splattering 
noises.  Otherwise a palmy sort of atmosphere it was, and everyone had 
cards out.

"I think I'm gonna go play some poker," Zack said, raking his fingers 
through his hair as if he would rather have been doing *that* all afternoon 
and nothing more.  

"Where?" Sephiroth asked.  "I think you'll be leaving soon, general."

A grumble and a wave of one of his hands and the streaks of blue 
bandages there.  "Sorry, not a general.  Musta got me mixed up with 
somebody else." 

"Don't be so quick to say such things," he held the paper to his brow so 
the signature line dangled before his eyes, and Zack's bangs dangled over 
his own hands, even into his gloves.

"K'ch, don't talk to me that way," and only then did he look at the paper, 
came up smirking and shaking his head.  "But otherwise, y'know, I kinda 
like how you operate.  What's this promotion for, anyway?"

"Me."  It seemed then they had an understanding, so he told him 
everything, and in less words than the simplest holy book would have 
needed.  "You will leave with me tomorrow and come with me where I 
have been called then, and upon any other time.  You will be my very best 
friend."

~*~*~*~

The sky hovered low, just now filled to her brims with clouds and 
everything unclear that afternoon, leaving the air cool and humid.  Zack 
struck once more at the wyvern, his blade still too slow to catch along its 
cerulean scales.   He did not intend to hurt it, for the creature already had 
snarled itself in a bower of half-dead thornbushes; he could have cut it free 
or cut it down, but rather startled it, for it sang like a frightened girl when 
the buster sword came very close.  It made him laugh.  So he laughed.  
And the rain refused to start.

Sephiroth swirled his sherry and watched this from a distance while the 
papers Krebain had offered him fluttered impatiently, trying to draw the 
attention of his gaze.

Zack danced even though his shoes were lying like a two dead crows 
outside of their tent.  

And had not gotten a new pair of boots, Sephiroth.  Krebain cleared his 
throat.  "As you can see, this is the spread of confirmed attacks by the 
Wutai mercenaries.  There are two more suspected incidents, but as they 
both took place on the Northern Continent, we didn't find it necessary to 
extend the map to cover them..."

"Everything is necessary," he said with a withering glance from the edge 
of his glass.  "I have sent our troops out into the wilds with only part of the 
story in their heads, even if what else there is would only serve to stir their 
tempers."

A choked protest started on the lieutenant's lips, but died with a wave of 
one gloved hand.  For a moment they gazed at one another, and Krebain's 
milky grey eyes vanished now and then as his cheeks twitched, for he 
dared not raise his hand to brush away the cold prickles that had fallen 
there.  

"No, I don't care what happens to them either.  I care that you are my 
assistant and you do not assist me."

"But... Sir? What about Silverwood...?"

Their glances both strayed to the shadow of the other general as he 
gathered the throat of the dragon in his hands and stroked away a few 
dew-drop scales. Some fell into the bushes and he plucked them up again 
as if they were but blueberries, crossing his legs as he stooped. 

The creature cried at him to stop and Sephiroth set his goblet down, the 
liquid stirring with something other than the shock of leaving him.  There 
was no cover at the table to hide it when his fingers crept once again to the 
warmth between his legs, and stroked it solemnly.  For the he sight of 
Zack bounding back to, his new toys gathered up between his palms: that 
was more than enough to worry his sex.  

Zack, who looked between they two and finally seated himself on 
Krebain's side of the table, asking as he began to sort through his scales,  
"What about me?" Getting no answer even after ten chipped bits of blue 
failed to suit him and were sent skittering across the blank spaces of the 
map around the southern swamps, he began to hum a candent little tune.

"What do you think?" Sephiroth asked, the most ghostly of moans 
catching on the end of his words, as he shifted his hand inside his armor 
and squeezed tears from his tip.     

"I think I want to go along on patrol next time."

"I'll go with you."

"But you won't let me stop for... you know..."  His hand gleamed with 
but half the fragments of the bound creature as he held them up.  Krebain 
rolled his eyes and shortly shrieked himself, drowning out the call the 
wyvern gave itself.  It started to pour and they all dashed for the tent.  Ink 
ran off the maps the lieutenant had not managed to gather up in time and 
splattered in the grass.  Once inside, Sephiroth had the cot all to himself 
and nothing of Zack but a view his wild, damp hair after the other 
SOLDIER had been lulled to sleep by the sound of the downpour, and so 
hod no presence of mind to ask if he would no longer stare.

~*~*~*~

The mercenaries were all dead by the time the moon had the next evening 
come forth from her cerements of clouds.  They came home to Midgaard 
where.  No one knew in the end who had been responsible for the two 
attacks on the research station.  No one had thought to ask.  

"You make me wonder if there is anything in the world that still delights 
you." Sephiroth said to him, but Zack didn't seem to hear at first, for he 
was got up instead in a rack of sunglasses, thumbing through them and 
murmuring a to himself about the executive that troubled the upper Shin-
ra offices.

"These delight me," came his answer but moments after the other general 
had started off into the smoke of the crowd.  All he held of course was a 
perfectly ordinary pair of glasses which he pulled on and pushed up his 
nose.  They did not hide his eyes well, for the nearly imperceptible glow 
of them shone through the tint.

"They delight me too, I like the look of them upon you."

"I'm broke."

With a shake of his head, Sephiroth poured some gil onto the counter and 
left without taking his change.  It had started to rain again, but here the 
water fell rather like black oil across the ground, and made the air smell of 
fresh ashes. They had the ground beneath the awnings as, their own while 
children dashed for the open street and the darkness there rather than tread 
before them, or anything so close, for they both still carried their blades, 
and Zack his bundled shield as well.

"Thanks!" And he left them on, even while the streetlights were still 
halfway blotted out by the dark deluge.  

"As you are so fond of saying, 'what are friends for?'"

"Exactly." Out of the blue and the wave of a passing car then, "You know, 
I was just thinking the same thing about you, you gloomy guss."

They stopped, dead in their tracts, but did not face each other and for a 
moment then, he wondered why, why, why, and there was the sound of 
coins behind him, rather than any sound of hope and its feathers falling 
down to earth.

"One flower for one gil?"

"I'll take two, sweetheart."

Sephiroth turned to see the other general wavering in and out between 
those who fled around, snatches of him, and a young girl who had the 
body of a mild and merciful virgin, but not the eyes- no, her breasts, her 
orbits, her smile, all smashed together would have been an image of 
something else entirely than the softness of her face invited.  She did not 
even see him, only Zack had the money in his hand before he left her with 
a wave, and two blooms folded in his fingers.  The glasses slid down into 
his nose as he rose and slid one petaled stalk behind Sephiroth's ear.

"I... thought you said you were broke."  Muttered as the petals first began 
to tickle him in his steps.

"She knows me."

~*~*~*~

No one but Hojo was left in the lab at that hour, but the air still stank of 
rusted steel, and specks of broken glass glinted here and there among the 
cracks in the concrete.  The light above him flickered and the wire on the 
cages shuddered in the white light, seeming to move though nothing alive 
remained inside to move it in truth.  Sephiroth paused by it and peered in, 
finding only the scummy traces of a severed tentacle and a few silver orbs 
doused in blood.   

"You're late.  Again.  Come, come.  Let's start already.  I'm sure you have 
someone important to do."

The sexual frankness of the line was not what caused him to look up from 
clanking the fallen bits of metal with his sword, but rather the way the 
mirror Hojo held sobbed when he picked it up to look over his shoulder 
with it.

/You can't even do that without your toys, can you?/ "I came to tell you 
I'm not coming."

"Why am I not surprised? God told me you would try to seduce someone," 
the quaking bit of metal in his hands rippled as he moved it down and 
looked upon the glassing image there as he might have a young child.  
"Sephiroth has a boyfriend."

"That's not exactly apocryphal [3] knowledge.  Enjoy talking to yourself." 
This said, he tapped the Masamune against one of the silver orbs and it 
darted across the room coming to rest at the doctor's feet.

"Oh, but I think it is! Dubious indeed... Is that a flower in your hair?"

The general reached up then and the butter cream of the blossom came to 
stand between his eyes and the lifeless metal of the floor, shading in and 
out of focus with it as he saw one and then the other- the industrial mire, 
and what had grown forth from it.  It seemed the bloom might turn and 
bite him, or run off to eat of someone's reflection, like the mirror did then 
with teeth as long as his fingers.  "Zack gave it to me."

Slowly Hojo turned and pulled his glasses up as he did so, a long, slim 
grin crossing his face that the mirror had destroyed by bearing its fangs.  
"You should kill it, it's in pain."

But Sephiroth had already left, stood now in the stairwell, pulling off his 
gloves.  The stem did not seem bruised to his palms, the petals, thirsting as 
they had been since resting in his hairs, were soft and supple as skin 
begging to be fondled.  Not even the rain had dashed it.

So he began to wonder if the flower was real.

~*~*~*~

The private sprawled across the room under the force of Heidegger's 
blow.  Sephiroth sighed and turned, squeezing the bridge of his nose and 
sighing; for he could not seem to erase the sense he knew the wretch.  
Zack yawned and straightened his shoulder a bit as if bored by the scene, 
though the shouting that was in fact deafening in the empty cafeteria was 
were the echoes engendered there by space alone. 

("How dare you talk back to general Sephiroth! Don't you know he's 
better than you! Do you think mako is the only difference between you 
too!? He is ALL OF US, all of Shin-ra.  You're just some speck on the 
window when it the sun is out.", "But the sun's never out...") 

"I think it's a year today you got me, but I'm not sure."

The Silver-haired geneal nodded but had nothing to say to this.  Rather, he 
paced about the tables, counting together the times since then he had 
touched Zack, and the times Zack had looked him in they eyes without 
laughing... 23... 24... It appeared random, the way he walked about, 
waiting for the caconophy to leave his table, but as he strode about, his 
eyes, as always, over general stole, for he had not changed, not even 
seemed to have breathed much in all the time they both knew had passed.

"I should gettcha something.  I haven't since that flower from Aeris, have 
I?"

As the private was dragged away in the arms of two men who held him 
just a little too close to be innocent about it, "DUDE! You bought a flower 
from Aeris! Where'd she let you put it?"

Zack laughed and brushed whatever images the line had conjured in his 
mind away with a dismissive wave, "Up her ass, but then again, I'm a 
good customer." As if nothing had been spoken then, he rose to his feet 
and followed Sephiroth over to the soup, idling with his hands behind his 
back.  "At least I should get you another one, since we didn't stop to play 
the first time."  Though now, all flowers were forgotten by his companion, 
for his breath had started to play over Sephiroth's neck then, tickling for a 
reply.

/Why hasn't your voice become grim like all things put to fade in the 
blessed arms of Shin-ra's army?  Why?/

"I don't like girls like that."

Zack drew away, his shoulders shifting abashedly almost though no such 
emotion met his face.  "Oh right! I forgot." He stooped then, playing 
hummingbird now to Sephiroth's hand, which he drank the traces of broth 
from. Heidegger looked on and coughed.  The blue eyes were closed, his 
lips wet, smiling in the rapture of the moment and feeling the pulse of his 
partner begging another act as he drew the wet finger then into his mouth 
and rolled his tongue around the anxious flesh, which he kissed as he 
pulled away.  "Happy kinda birthday."

/Oh.../ (Now that he could look on him so, he found he could see one 
flaw, if he tired hard enough.  The lips looked bruised, hard a touch of 
violet too them, yet the thought that in secret, someday, he could write 
such marks upon the other general, that was penance enough for so sweet 
an imperfection.)    "Is this all after some chance to find me with you and 
you're one care of not caring?" he breathed, the words hot on his own 
mouth.

They only made Zack more of whatever he dared to be as a shadow, and 
he winked just as Krebain came rushing in.  

"General Silverwood! Your request for a tent of your own has been 
accepted.  You'll have it by the next mission."

He turned and thanked him, dragging the back of his hand across his 
mouth as he did so, only to glance at the trace of saliva there as if he had 
not expected to see it.

The soup Sephiroth left, and half his clothes outside the door of the resting 
room, which he bolted, even though not even he was allowed to deny 
temperate naps to any of Shin-ra's workers. Another dolorous hour with 
himself in his own hands he spent; made himself bleed with the handle of 
his blade forced inside him. He kissed his own shoulder and a bruise 
remained there which bedeviled him for many days.  

~*~*~*~

There were people living on the surface of The Planet who still 
worshipped the dead thoughts of the Ancients rather than the newborn, 
lowery body of Shin-ra.  No one knew just what the elder race had once 
held in reverence themselves, but Sephiroth, one more afternoon later, sat 
and considered only that it must have been the sort of murky, lingering 
beauty that the other general possessed.  He himself could think of nothing 
else.  The dolorous hours of fucking himself had grown too long.

Even while they swooped entry points on the map with their fingers until 
the tips were stained with the ink, his mind would not creep elsewhere.  
For this was Zack's tent- a wilted moire bundle still held her back against 
one post, the bed was a desolate mess and the wire wastebasket filled the 
white leaves of a hundred letters never opened.

"General... ah... Sephiroth?" Krebain's hand stole out towards one stray 
lock of silver hair that had fallen from behind his ear and was swatted 
away.  

Zack began to simper and whistled at the next private who passed, "Hey 
there, honey-pie! Bring me a beer or you know what'll happen."

The boy blushed, and ran.

Krebain looked away from them both, making a great show of shuffling 
the papers again so they would never be able to find what they sought.  
"Really, General Silverwood, I would advise against a full frontal assault 
on the compound.  We haven't got any data whatsoever on how well 
they're armed..."

"Not up to me, but I'd advise against your advice." A sigh as Zack's 
attention left for the open flaps of the tent, as if he expected the private to 
have returned already, though Sephiroth took notice at once at what he 
saw.  The boy who wasn't quite a boy and his fascination with beasts there 
again.  In the silence that had fallen, Zack's mind was again stolen, this 
time by a tiny, grey sparrow as it danced about the sunshine that bled upon 
the earth and a little patch of spilled wine- the only wine in all the camp 
that had not been drunk.  Though the knew nothing of it seemingly, the 
morning broke through a slit in the tarp and lit on Zack's neck just where 
it flickered when he breathed. 

In some sudden fit of foolishness, Sephiroth reached out and tried to brush 
the gleam aside, just as Krebain had moments before tried to trouble his 
own hair.  He got a look of sloe blue temper and a smile, Krebain got 
nothing but a sight he would never dare gossip about as long as he lived.

"Your most ancient precursors are whores are they not?"

The sparrow took flight at the clank the eldest SOLDIER made when he 
was pushed away.  "Hey now! Some of my best friends are whores.  Don't 
say it like it's a bad thing!"

But Zack had touched him there, just for an instant, just on his sword arm.  
Just like always, it was never enough, and Silverwood licked the hand he 
had used, pulling some of the ink from his skin as if it had become 
wounds.  

"My life is bitter with love for you."

"You know, Krebain-y ol' pal.  If we come in from the West, we shouldn't 
have too much of a problem.  They won't see us 'till we come over the 
hill, see? And b'sides, the only other way in's through the vents on the 
place, and we'd all get our pants dirty if we did that."

~*~*~*~

They all three stood now in the center of the compound.  The shadows of 
other SOLDIERS and their boys brushed one another in the incense 
stained air.  Someone wept at someone else's feet, then a gunshot, and 
some semblance of quiet once again, but for breathing.  Grey was the 
breast of the  catacombs, its firmament and arms; all of it but for the 
sanguinolent [4] floor and the drops of crimson that still spilled from the 
stairs below the alter.

"You will speak to me!" Sephiroth screamed.  For an instance as he 
dragged the cracking form of the priest up from the ground, he saw not the 
face of a man who could have been there in his winking thoughts.  He 
didn't even look like Hojo, didn't look like anyone anymore really.

Zack sighed and his hands went to his shoulder at once.  He turned rather 
to the angel who still hovered above the dishes of bonemeal and metal 
feathers.  A fragile, glossy-painted thing she was.  Her wings were silk and 
so was the rose driven through the middle of her chest.  

Above her in white letters on a whiter wall- Unmake me mother plague.  
Several officers were wondering over just what it meant between 
cigarettes and what sounded like at least one rape.

"I..." muttered their prisoner, "I will speak... to no...  heathen, no beast, 
and no blasphemer! Leave me or kill me!"

Krebain spun his pistol around and cracked him on the back of the head 
with it.  There was a shower of blood, but nothing close to a cry.  

"Which one of us is which?" Asked Silverwood as he got atop his toes and 
swatted an instant at the rose in the angel, though it was stuck fast.  When 
it would not fall to him, he set the point of the blade into it's heart, and 
that of the statue.  No one saw it well through the mist of myrrh and moss, 
but he smirked when the priest cried aloud at the sight and tore at his hair.  

"You are the beast!" and what was left of his finger flew out towards the 
general who held him.  "You are nothing of flesh! He is the heathen who 
cuts up our angel!"

A bevy of shreds from the bloom that had never been real to begin with.

"He is the heathen who will not do as I say and kill me! And I know 
SHIN-RA! I KNOW!" His voice cracked and so did someone's body in 
the distance.  It seemed eyes came to them now through the fog.  "I was 
one of yours! I was! I was almost taken by your ways! This earth will not 
be yours rather than Nature's!   You are all blasphemers to do with your 
bodies as God commanded not to!"

The butt of the gun again in his skull more or less again.  Krebain now had 
gone livid, and the mako in his eyes begun to writhe.  "God says nothing 
of the sort!"

He had Zack in his arms then, close as he could gather him.  Silverwood 
did not seem alarmed, did not fight to get away as he kissed him.

Sephiroth's sword fell to the ground, and the priest atop it, but before the 
crushed wraith of man could drive his wrists onto it, the general had 
reclaimed the blade as the Ancients and their Lifestream reclaimed 
Krebain; one more body on the floor, looking more exsanguine and 
porcelain than ever before.

Some of his blood had come through his mouth and into Sephiroth's 
companion, who only stared at the other lieutenant an instant with an 
ironic warmth to his eyes.  Then  he spit and kicked Krebain in his white 
hair. 

"Hey! You were right! He is the jealous type.  I guess I owe you a coke, 
huh?"

They left him there with the cultists, of whom only their leader lived any 
longer, surrounded by corpses until he bled to death or managed to crawl 
out on his shattered legs.  They had been in no hurry to grant his wish to 
find hid shuddering and faceted God in the mako that ran beneath all of 
their feet.

~*~*~*~

Night fell.  Stars dandled [5] the smoky cobalt sky as far as eye could ever 
reach.   Zack Silverwood had long ago retired to his tent and was brushing 
his hair when he found one petal from the angel's rose still in it.  This he 
plucked out and studied a moment before blowing it onto the dust below 
the foot of his bed.

He did not see Sephirtoh's gemmy shade as it drew near the lip of his door 
and hung there, pale as ghosts by moonlight, and so ready to be unraveled, 
bit by bit into something less that stardust or enchantment.  Though he was 
enchanted at that moment, and not by the rhythmic scratches of the tiny 
metal brush his obsession still clung to, but by what the tattered moire had 
at last revealed of Zack's: his mirror with the faded silvering.  Yes, the 
boy child bore a mirror rather than a shield.  Better in his mind to be dead 
and lovely than unkempt and alive.  He stood even now, drawing the 
feathers of his bangs away from his eyes by the light of one sputtering 
candle.  

Sephiroth took off his boots and left them limp in the roots of the tree 
outside before slipping inside.  Not even the rings of metal in his hands 
made any sound as he came to stand as close to Zack as he had so longed 
to.  All these months.  More than years, but small eternities just short of 
that mirror before them both.   He was so close, he could feel the heat of 
his skin draw clores and further away as the other SOLDIER breathed.

With no more thought to it, his gloves came off and fell to the floor with a 
clank.

"My, my! Who's there now?"

But Sephorth's fingers were already buried in his hair, stroking him up 
and down just barely touching his neck.  He lifted a tangle of it two his 
nose, smelled blackberries and sweat there.   "You will deny you know me 
and what I want already tonight? But the stars are so young yet."

"Aw! Seph, whatcha think you're doing sneaking up on me like that?"

Zack snatched his hair away from the other man's hands and turned on his 
little, rickety stool to face him, found him standing as a child might, with 
his hands behind his back, though ringing when he swayed from one foot 
to the other... grinning like the sliver of the moon that yet remained.  
"There's no need to be a fool anymore... Silverwood... Zack... my 
beloved."

He laughed at him then, at least for awhile.  The candle flame danced 
wildly and nearly went out.  

"What I have dreamed of since I first laid eyes on you, beloved."

"Oooh! Riddles! I love riddles!"

"I am tired of seeing other men think they can take you away from me."

"Hey now! Always with the..."

Zack could not speak them, for his lips had been smothered by Sephiroth's 
smile as it parted and slithered within him.  He did not struggle as his 
mouth was ravished, but fought back with savage twistings of his own 
tongue.

The silver-haired SOLDIER, who had wanted to drink him while he 
remained still inside, thrilled at this, ached at this, and leaned into it until 
his stiffness had bumped up against the other man's fatigues; drew back 
then to watch the new wounds blooming on those tender lips. 

But his would-be doll, heaved a sigh, shrugged.  "Sorry, not tonight, 
honey-bunny.  I'm tired and so are you.  Go to bed." With a toss of his 
head, he once more began to preen, or would have, had Sephiroth not 
taken his wrist then, and fondled it with his lips until it was red and soar.  
Zack looked bored all the while, at least until he saw what his companion 
held behind his back.

"These are for you, beloved of mine," he said, pointing to the handcuffs.  
"These are all for you.  They represent... everything I feel for you."

"Yeah, like you'd know anything about that.  Cut the dumb shit and get 
out of my tent already!" But the metal had already clasped around one of 
his wrists.  For an instant, Zack stared at the circlet of iron that had 
worked its way around him.  He looked like he was seeing his own hand 
for the first time.  Sephiroth dove for him them, lips naked and wet, and he 
darted away from him.  The stool fell over behind him, and the membrane 
of the tent shuddered as with break when he bumped into it.  But his eyes 
were cold and steady as the frost condemned ever to the Northern Border.  
"You don't know me," he told his companion in a matter-of-fact sort of 
way.

The other general shook his head.  He was right.  The beloved could not 
have spoken truer in his mind.  But he would not have it.  Not any of it.  
Not tonight.  The Masaume buried itself in the ground then, catching 
against a stone.  No rents that evening in the cloth between them and the 
voyeur of the night sky.  No one would behold them but the sylphs in the 
breeze of each other's bodies.  And there was that.  Zack felt still as bones 
under his fingers as he ran them up and down his chest- the boy was 
pressed up against one of the poles, striking at him now and then with the 
still unfastened cuff.

It caught him in the cheek and left a scratch that began to bleed.

"My pretty beloved is thirsty then? And he can not wait to drink anything 
else of me." Dragging him by a handful of his mussed, black hair, 
Sephiroth forced the other general face against his wound and listened to 
him sputter above the thrum of his own heart.  "I love you, I would do 
anything for you."

Teeth in his skin and boots in his knees as Zack struggled to free himself 
of his embrace, even as he kissed his neck, more tender than sunlight or 
rain.  

"Anything at all... but always this."

They parted in the rivulets of each others' clothing.  Buttons flew.  When 
he looked up at Silverwood, Sephiroth saw a few silver threads in his 
hand, then on the floor, one by one.  If they had been flowers he had 
offered thrown to the ground, it could not have brought such rage to him 
then as he knew then.  

He flew across the room.  The mirror tumbled from where it had been 
hanging, but did not break.  Something in Zack creaked as he was tossed 
forward against the armor of the other man, coughing from the blow that 
had landed in his stomach, smiling then as he was dragged across the 
floor, both hands now bound.  

"Well, I tried.  Get sicka bein' tossed around you know."

Sephiroth said nothing, but hauled his body, doll-limp now up into his 
arms.  Held him there, letting his hands wind down, into his shirt where 
the buttons had been, and into his pants, his hair, his navel, whatever he 
could find of him.  As he raised him to his feet, he worked Zack throbbing 
stiffness against him wherever he could find skin, brushing it, trousers and 
all, against his lips, but Zack did not respond to him, was only weight that 
breathed unsteadily.  

A boy who hung now from one of the ribs of his own tent then, the chain 
of the cuffs run over it.  He was on the tips of his boots until those were 
pulled off and cast aside and Sephiroth reached into his torn shirt as he 
laid his lips to his neck, and suckled at him there.  

"I love you so much, you mustn't be able to understand.  I would die for 
you where I know I have no soul."

There was something almost like a laugh then, a little choke in Zack's 
throat as he held something of his breath back.  "Would you say that if 
Hojo was here.  No, don't think so!" And as he dared to meet his eyes.  
"You wouldn't even touch me, but hey, why should you?"

Then only shreds of his uniform hung on him, intermitted were the red 
caresses in between that the cotton had left when it was torn away as 
Sephiroth caressed him, drew breath from his skin and raked his nails 
across his chest, drawing fragments of his flesh, but not any blood.  His 
fatigues rode low on his hips now, sagging about the hints of stiffness at 
his crotch... under the shadow of his unfastened belt, Zack was bare, and 
the other general froze there, feeling nothing but the supple pressure of 
that skin.  He swayed on his chain then, humming to himself as his 
companion took his cock in his hands, and slid one tip of his ring finger 
inside the slit there to find it had just begun to weep.

"You do want me, see, beloved? You can't help but love me because 
that's all you were ever made for."  As such, as if it was communion wine 
between then, he made him drink the precursor to his own cum, even after 
it had been in his own mouth, purred when he did not spit like he had 
when the leavings of Krebain had encroached upon the spaces beyond his 
lips.  

Zack did grin then, and kicked at the air before him, straining with an 
empty moan against his bonds, if only for they had drawn him too thin. 
"Ewe! That's just nasty and HELL! What gave you the idea I loved you?"  
Though the sway of his muscles had left his trousers to slip, inch by inch 
from his hips.  Naked and dry like this, out of the shower and the true light 
of the day, they were so dainty, so thin.  The waist of his trousers failed to 
catch on the start of his stiffness, and so they fell away, all at once with a 
soft hiss like passing smoke.

There he hung then, naked and pale about his thighs where his cheeks 
smarted with new burns, and his arms with scars from the past two years.  
Watching him drift there, the silver-haired general was overcome by his 
catty whistles.  The words and the image of his beloved were dashed 
against one another, and a kind of hatred took him, though the passion that 
had him blushing and stiff himself would not leave, only rose, and 
tumbled this way and that.

Zack was fragile and human and marred, like a bit of cool glass with a 
chip through its mouth.  It only made him burn all the more inside, like 
cold steal burns, or the stars as they break the shrouds of air around the 
earth.

In one swift motion he had jammed two of his fingers into Zack, and 
begun to ply his wet silk insides apart.  He howled under him, and 
Sephiroth shivered to know what it was like- no pummel of a blade, but 
real skin such as he had never known in his own form. He screamed at his 
unhappy lover then, grinding on his muscles with the fury of his finger 
tips.  

"I am prophet, preacher, poet! Crusher of language! Child of all men! And 
still you turn away from me!"

"Fuck me and get it over with," said Zack.  And he would have twirled his 
sword at him then, or shrugged the way he did at existential remarks, had 
his arms been free, but they weren't, and so he could only lace his fingers 
on the metal that kept him just so, and pull himself up against then, 
smiling wistfully as he nudged his ass onto the encroaching hand.  His 
head fell against his shoulder, and he purred and purred as he rode up and 
down on more and more of the fingers there inside him.  "If you INSIST, 
don't be quick to finish."

"When you can neither fear me nor beg for me?" With a shake of his head, 
he passed his hand from him, Sephiroth, and rather swept his hair across 
that wingless back of the man he called his own.

"I don't beg for anyone anymore."

"Oh, is that so?"

Eye closed he left himself fall back so his toes knew the earth, and he 
stated quite simply, "Not since the first time my dad did me when I was 
eight." Zack hung alone then, no hands, no breathing in his hair, no sense 
of proximity or dumb muscle memory of such. "See, I am a little whore.  
You can go now, huh? Nothing to see or do here." 

Sephiroth had not been tricked into fleeing, just smitten all the more, and 
in the shadows he had retreated to, he disrobed with all his armor singing 
on the ground, saw his beloved grown tense at the noise.

"'tis but the bells the divine things here."

He dripped on the floor then, returning to the presence of the beast- that 
boy, the creature and it all.  Flawed and delicious, tempting, revolting.  No 
such thing ever could be born of the world.  Blue eyes, black hair... scars 
and bruises on body of a man and mind caught so far back in time.  So that 
was why... all this, and his body gaping where he had forced him open, 
and so shortly buried his cock.  

Zack screamed like a pierced rabbit but neither wept nor looked to him.

"In your flesh my flesh entombed."

But having him breached now, there in the playground of their sex war, 
there was nothing but heat against him, and it was like that sun from 
Zack's skin slipping into his own, a miracle for it was night still, and night 
as he began to ride him, slowly at first.  

"Oh, I do love you, love you so much if you died I would want to be the 
one to kill you.  I want always to be in you, for that way I live twice, and 
once where you're suppose to be."

Silverwood had already passed orgasm, nervousness, the other general 
guessed, since for two men of Shin-ra, this was the best wedding night he 
could give him.  His juices had splattered on the mirror, and he left him 
long enough to lick the glass clean, then ravage him again.  He did not 
bleed, and Sephiroth was glad of that, and everything of him.

"The world is nothing to me as long as I am loved by you, for you were 
made as my beloved- the chaos in the light of pure order,"

When he had climaxed himself inside him, he left the handle of his blade 
in place of his penis, and stood before him smoking so the sight of Zack 
would stiffen him again, and once again.

Such barren delights he had with him, all the way until morning.  The cries 
of it all were still ringing though at noon.  

~*~*~*~

Weeks passed, and there was not one moon in all of them than found itself 
without the sight of the two SOLDIERS, one locked inside the other.  

They sat in one of the whitewashed rooms of the inn just outside of Kalm.  
In the distance, the ocean fluttered with birds and dragons.

""Well, you understand, we don't see Shin-ra folk out here all that often 
anymore," the innkeeper was saying to they two, explaining the deluge of 
red flowers that lay strewn about the room they had rented.  "I don't know 
who left all of this here."

"No no!" Sephiroth insisted to him.  "It's quite alright, for we have no 
such things in Midgaard."

A handful of them left the archipelago of sunbeams, and rose to the tip of 
his nose, he found he could not smell them very well, as if they were but 
silk, even where they felt so real.  No... they weren't like Aeris's from all 
those months ago, and here, with the corridors of their past no longer 
breathing, he cared not for them, but rather held them out for the other 
general, who bent as well, and smelled them himself, though it was all a 
rouse for kissing his palms.

Zack did like to kiss his palms.  That was benediction when communion 
could not be.

"Hey, these are real."

"But of course!" laughed the innkeeper.  "Please, do make yourselves at 
home here.  A single squeaking floorboard marked what should have been 
his fleeing from their presence, but short his voice again.  "Just one 
question... I'm not up on city fashion... are all the kids wearing choker's 
like General Silverwood's now?"

For a leather circlet now ran all the way about Zack's throat- black and 
silver and the mako-green of his companion's eyes.  "No, this is a present 
from my lover."

"O-ho! I see!" With a wink, he stuck out his tongue, and it was either of 
their guesses just what he meant, but Sephiroth knew well enough a hint 
that someone else belonged to what belonged to him. Giggling, he knelt 
behind  him, feeling Silverwood's gloves at his temples as he loosened his 
belt, and in front of the innkeeper slid his tongue in and out of his battered 
entrance, drinking his own cum from the other man.

Zack said nothing, but he did smile.  The innkeeper left the door wide 
open.  

~*~*~*~

It was seldom anymore he slept at night, for he had no want of it- the 
moments between dawn and duty sufficed, for the peace in his heart now 
that Zack was truly his rested him well enough.  They had no pretenses 
anymore, not even in front of the withered, ascetic [6] morals in towns like 
Niflheim.  The Lockheart fellow who had fathered their guide hadn't even 
tried to them keep their hands from one another in front of his daughter 
though.

Indeed, Silverwood had asked that child of his if she would like to join 
them... this while his hand still rested against Sephiroth's cock.

Sephiroth, who had gone to bed early to ponder the matter- would he take 
some girl to bed with them, just for a laugh, and just since she was a 
bleeding, underage virgin?

Half awake, he watched the stars dance with the crests of the distant 
mountains, for it had risen in the moments he had dreamed of having Zack 
again.  Even in rest, he could not stave him off, and wished no such thing 
would ever happen.

The body beside him in their enormous bed stirred, and at first he reached 
for the raven threads about his shoulders, but thought better of it, and 
dreamed again for a few moments, his fingers just shy of the spilled locks, 
hips just shy of brushing his hips.  

In reverie, he found himself in the snows his mind had made for him to 
tread upon, for by darkness, perhaps it is better to use other senses! Even 
in the glacial dream, there smell of him above that of the white poweder, 
the sound of his occasional gasps of want, heard even in the ice cave 
where Sephiroth's subconscious wandered amid sighing female voices.     

The girl stood before him, naked and bound, and Zack had flowers for her, 
though they were red like the one's from Kalm this time.  A woman with 
blue skin came and kissed him and called him her son, even as she 
watched the debauchery herself.

He was awake, had started, but barely.  Zack whimpered and choked in his 
own, unbroken sleep, and a smile took his lover's lips to know that he too 
dreamed of their trysts, and mimicked their acts.

At first.

For he spied something golden on the pillow, far from him, but bound in 
Zack's arms.  Still as the hearts of the mountains, he waited, and 
Silverwood groaned with his knuckle in his mouth, jerking against 
something the sheets didn't quite cover.

A blond thing scuttled soon enough away after the wet clicks of kissing.  
A blond thing that had been fucked in their bed, by the boy, who dared to 
have a smoke, despite the collar, and the fact they two had not been alone.  

So did time stop for Sephiroth.

~*~*~*~

Everything after that was a shower of words in someone else's hand, and 
the omnipresent nature of the sun, and the private with the head of 
sunshine, and the eyes of sapphire blue.  For he was always there, brought 
their wine, and their blades, and followed them like a dove follows its 
home, all the way into the silvery fangs beyond the town.  The monsters 
there ran from him, save for the ones they found there, in coffins of iron at 
the top of the hill.

He couldn't remember much from that.

Only the books, and the books, and the books his father had left there for 
him to find in the basement.  They fell open before him and he did not 
read them, but he called Hojo his father then.  Somehow he knew what 
they said just the same, but the hole in his mind ripped there by his heart, 
kept nothing in his waking mind, and less within what of him could think 
clearly.

He then was nothing of them, the monsters, and the things of Shin-ra, but 
they had made him, just the same, like genital goo had made Zack once.  
No, he was flesh of things born in the heavens, and risen in the mako.  
Sephiroth, Ancient though he was himself, did not want worshipped, did 
not want to loose Zack for that.  He wanted to be god alone, and go back 
to the fast of fleshly desire that had been lust with no form for the boy 
with the parison eyes.  If his mother could have spoken, she would have 
called him only thenotropic [7], and wanting to hear it, he sought her 
divinity behind the steal; fled back into the reactor, back for the monsters 
even though they weren't his kin.

And he killed Zack.

But Zack didn't die.

It was him instead.  The blond boy threw him into the mako.

And all the way down as a shade descending to the heart of the Planet, he 
laughed and laughed and laughed at the irony of it all.  His last moments 
all a blur, in the present, where he had been waiting so long, with the 
creation if his own.

~*~*~*~

The illusion of Zack, drifted with desolate gaze before his own not quite 
existence.  Their sex had been the flashpoint, and everything after that... 
was gone.  Sex was death! Sex was pain! Sex was wanting and leaving the 
divine.  So he would be divine, and Zack could wait back on earth, 
wondering why anyone would throw themselves before an Ancient rather 
with a rose driven into and angel.  All details aside.  That was all 
Sephiroth wanted.  Right then, right there.  Egoless ectoplasm, cradle and 
all.  

The Lifestream was transtemporal for him, as long as he, unwilling to 
dissipate, crept there, and had his little illusion all to himself, for the 
thousands of whispers around him thought nothing of it.  He could not 
know five years was all that had passed since that day.

By coincidence, he began to feel as if arousal of the body had once more 
become his, and blood his, and when he turned around there was some 
energy as blue as the sky, blue as time passing, broken and alone and so 
familiar, like a slap... like stars like...

...no, and there was no time to do away with the doll of his that wasn't.

And Zack said to him, on their reunion there, his hands in his own hair as 
the man who called him beloved once had recalled it right then, "So I've 
gone from apocryphal to nothing.  But I will never be yours.  What's there 
to have?"

And he laughed too, without his voice.  

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Fin



Notes: I made endnotes for all the terms I got out of my thesaurus of 
inscrutable words

[1] megrims- means a migraine headache or wild fantasies

[2] parison- melted glass

[3] apocryphal- mystical or dubious: loosely used to mean "unknown"

[4] sanguinolent- bloody

[5] dandled- caressed 

[6] ascetic- austere 

[7] thenotropic- both divine and human