Disclaimer: Final Fantasy belongs to Squaresoft and various other interested parties, not me. I'm not making any money from this, and no infringement of copyright is intended. This is a work of fandom, intended as appreciation of the original work.

Chapter 21

They had a bad moment, about twenty minutes away from the crater, when they realized that nobody knew where Cloud was. They hadn't explained exactly what was going on to Cid, just that they had to go to the North Crater to fight Sephiroth, but it belatedly occurred to Zack that maybe they ought to have set a watch on Cloud. Not that he didn't trust his lover, but... well. It was Sephiroth they were dealing with, after all.

"I can't find him," Tifa hissed to Zack as they met again in the corridor just behind the cockpit. "I've searched all the cabins, there's no sign of him."

"I checked the engine room, the lounge, the galley, the stables and the bathroom," Zack sighed, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck and trying not to panic. "Well, the men's bathroom, anyway. I suppose he might have gone into the women's for some reason."

"I looked," Tifa replied with a grim smile. "Where else could he be? You don't think...?"

Chewing his lower lip, Zack turned slowly in a circle and stared at the bulkheads, picturing the layout of the ship in his head. "If I was Cloud on an airship, where would I be?"

"Maybe you should be asking where you'd be if you were Sephiroth," Tifa suggested in a low voice, looking nervously over her shoulder to make sure nobody was in hearing range.

"Not yet," Zack insisted. "I'm not giving up on him. He always was the brooding type, and he was good at sneaking away to be by himself so I couldn't tease him out of it. Until I memorized all his hiding spots, anyway. But damned if I can remember where he'd go on the ships... oh. Of course." He smacked his forehead with his palm and felt like an idiot.

"What?" Tifa looked at him, wide-eyed. "What is it?"

"He never hid on the ships," Zack told her, turning and striding for the ladder to the one place he hadn't yet looked; the outside deck. "He was too damn airsick to brood, he stuck to the railings like glue. Poor bastard."

"Yeah, but he got over his motion sickness," Tifa countered, frowning as she followed after him. "He got a little freaked out in the submarine briefly because it was such close confines, but I've never seen him actually get sick."

"Sure, but old habits die hard," Zack said. He climbed the ladder rapidly and shoved the hatch open, poking his head above deck. The wind of their passage hit him immediately; Cid had believed them when they said they were in a hurry, apparently. It made his eyes tear up so that it was difficult to see, but sure enough when he squinted and looked around he spotted a dark blur up near the prow.

Climbing the rest of the way out, he waved to Tifa to indicate that he'd found their wayward friend, and headed over to Cloud. "Hey, kid," he greeted his lover as softly as he could manage and still be heard over the rushing of the wind. "You okay?"

Cloud looked distinctly green around the gills, much as Zack remembered him always looking on the ships. "Yeah, I'm fine," the younger man assured him, though he had to swallow obviously a couple of times as he spoke.

"We got worried when we couldn't find you, but I should've thought to check up here first," Zack said with some amusement as he leaned against the railing next to the blond. "I thought you got over your motion sickness?"

"I did, but..." Cloud grinned wryly. "I do have to deliberately not pay attention to it. And apparently Sephiroth doesn't like the sensation of being airsick much. As soon as I realized that, I started paying attention to it again. It worked, he hasn't so much as poked at me since we took off, but the downside is I actually have to deal with being sick."

"Oh, man," Zack chuckled sympathetically as he rubbed his lover's shoulders. "Well, that's one way to drive the bastard off, I guess. Though not one you could probably keep up indefinitely. Anything that helps, I guess."

"Yeah." Cloud looked back out over the railing, fixing his eyes on a point on the horizon and trying to keep his gaze steady. Letting himself be aware of his airsickness to drive off Sephiroth was one thing, but he didn't want to actually start throwing up. So far he'd been able to maintain the delicate balance, but it wouldn't take much to upset the scales.

"Cloud? We're almost there," Tifa said, coming up behind them. She'd taken a lot longer to climb the ladder, not having Zack's speed and reflexes. She was leaning against the wind, shading her eyes with one hand as she squinted at them. Catching sight of the very obvious scar the crater made across the landscape below them, she added with amusement, "But I guess you already knew that, didn't you?"

"I had a sneaking suspicion," Cloud confirmed with a soft laugh, clutching at the railing as another wave of nausea hit him. It was better than having Sephiroth pushing constantly at his self-control, but not by much. The metal creaked warningly beneath his grip, and he loosened his grasp before he bent it. Cid would tear a strip out of his hide if he so much as scratched anything on the man's airship.

They couldn't land right at the crater, but Cid could and did hover the ship low to the ground so they could drop a rope ladder and climb down. "You sure you don't want me to come with you?" the grizzled older man asked as he watched them check their equipment and weapons one last time. "I can land the ship somewhere nearby..."

"Thanks, Cid," Cloud said, softly but sincerely as he met the man's eyes. "We appreciate it, really. But this is something we need to do on our own." He rolled his eyes at Tifa. "Bad enough I can't talk you out of coming..."

"Don't start that again," Tifa replied impatiently, double-checking the materia in her bracer. They'd all agreed that there was no point going into the fight handicapped, but they also weren't carrying anything offensive. Just cure magic and protective magic, and a couple of mastered All materia. They were all far too aware of exactly what mako really was to be willing to use more magic than was strictly necessary, and anyway Cloud had a sneaking suspicion that none of it would transfer over inside the Lifestream. It would heal them up once they got out again, if they got out again, that was all.

"I've as much right to be there as the two of you," Tifa continued, planting her hands on her hips and giving him a Look. "And you're not going to talk me out of it, so let's go before he realizes what we're up to."

"Right," Zack agreed, slinging his massive sword into its holster at his back and setting his feet on the first rung of the ladder. He climbed down a couple of steps, then wrapped his gloved hands around the side ropes of the ladder and kicked his feet off, sliding down the rope in a controlled fall at breakneck pace.

Tifa gasped, startled, but Cloud had seen his friend and former lieutenant do exactly the same move far too many times in the past not to have expected it. In fact he followed his lover's example as he had never quite dared to do in the past, and quickly discovered why Zack always went down this way; it was fun. If he'd been less distracted by what they were heading into, he'd have been enjoying himself.

It took a little longer for Tifa to climb down the normal way, but then all that was left was to head into the caves themselves. Cloud tried not to let his nerves get the best of him, knowing that allowing himself to panic was just asking for Sephiroth to take over, but it was hard not to think about the probable ramifications of what they were about to do. He and Zack had both nearly been lost to the Lifestream the last time they'd been in contact with it. Now they were willingly giving themselves up to it?

"Nervous?" Zack murmured, clapping a hand on his shoulder as he came up beside Cloud. Tifa was in the lead with the lantern, because she needed more light to be able to see than the two of them did.

"A little," Cloud admitted, wincing when his voice came out hoarse. "For about ten million different reasons. Do you really think this is the right thing to do?" he asked, no longer as certain as he had been back in the church.

"I don't see that we've got a whole lot of other options," Zack shrugged ruefully. "It's this, lock you away and let Sephiroth torture you until Rufus possibly comes up with a solution, or kill you. I know which of the three options is most appealing to me."

"Me, too," Tifa put in, looking back over her shoulder at them. "Cloud, we'll be okay. You've beaten him every time you've ever fought him, even when you were nothing but an ordinary sixteen-year-old boy. With Zack and I to help, how can we do anything but win?"

"Honestly? It's not Sephiroth so much that I'm worried about," Cloud replied. "Unless it's that he might manage to drag out the fight until it's too late." Only Aerith's intervention last time had gotten them out with their minds intact, and they couldn't count on that happening again.

"Hey, c'mon," Zack flashed him a grin and a wink. "Victories with crazy plans and against impossible odds are my specialty, don't you remember? That's why I made 1st Class so fast."

"Yeah, I remember," Cloud assured him, rolling his eyes. "I also remember that you spent more time in hot water than out of it. And that you dragged me into it with you as often as not."

"Sure, but the point is that I always got us back out again, didn't I?" Zack countered, grinning wider. "The more impossible the odds, the more I'm in my element."

"Then you're pretty damn far into your element now," Tifa said dryly. "And I hope your luck is still holding. Over here! I found it." They'd been looking for a particular Lifestream pool she remembered from when she'd gone through the caverns with Vincent and Cid; it was deep but not very big across, just large enough for them all to put their hands in it at the same time.

They crowed up close to her as she slipped through a narrow spot; she got through easily enough by turning sideways, but they had to take off their swords and they still scraped skin off their shoulders squeezing through.

"There are advantages to being built like a girl," Cloud murmured, wincing as he prodded at one particularly deep scrape to make certain it wasn't going to be any kind of problem.

"Yes, especially if you are one," Tifa snorted, setting her pack down near the crack they'd just squeezed through. Several other passages branched off this tiny cave, but they weren't interested in any of them. All they wanted was what lay off to the left, glowing brightly enough that they didn't need the lantern; the small, deep pool of iridescent mako.

"Are you sure this is big enough?" she asked, eyeing it uncertainly. It was even smaller than she remembered it being.

"The only thing I had in contact with it before was my fingers," Cloud assured her again. "And if this one doesn't work, we can always find a bigger one. But I'm sure it will."

"And this way, we won't get bodily sucked into the damn stuff like it tried to do to Cloud last time," Zack agreed with a wince at the memory. "The most it can get is our arms. No way even you could squeeze into that, Tifa."

Tifa had to concede the wisdom of that, as she had when he'd first suggested that they find a small pool to try first. "I guess we're ready, then?" she asked, mustering her courage.

"Guess so," Zack nodded, and looked at his lover. "Cloud?"

Cloud found himself very much wanting to say that he wasn't ready, that he'd forgotten something or that he'd decided this was a bad idea after all. He opened his mouth to say exactly that, in fact, but closed it again without letting a sound escape him. Shaking his head, he pressed the heel of his palm against his eye and used the pain from the pressure to help ground himself. "I'm ready," he said hoarsely after a moment.

"Everything okay?" Zack asked cautiously. Here in the crater, so close to so much of the Lifestream, the telltale warnings for when Sephiroth was exerting his power over Cloud were impossible to distinguish. Both of their eyes had turned green and started glowing brightly by the time they were most of the way down the ladder, and Zack didn't know about Cloud but he certainly had a headache not all that dissimilar to the one he felt when Sephiroth was pushing at them.

"I think he's trying to be subtle and convince me I don't want to do this," Cloud muttered. "Which means we're definitely on the right track, so let's do it." Without further warning he sat down at the edge of the pool, tugged off one glove with his teeth, and made to plunge his hand into the mako.

"Wait!" Faster than a striking snake, Zack lunged for his arm and managed to stop him just before his fingers made contact. "Let's do this intelligently, okay? We all go in at the same time, and arranged in such a way that we're all in contact with each other. That way hopefully we don't waste half our time just searching for each other."

"Oh. Yeah, good idea," Cloud admitted, sheepish. He just wanted to get this over with before he lost his nerve entirely. But maybe, having failed to dissuade him, Sephiroth was now trying to goad him into being reckless so he could separate Cloud from his support.

They arranged themselves carefully, stripping off their gloves and crowding close against each other at the edge of the tiny but deep pool. Zack wrapped his bare hand around Cloud's upper arm, Cloud did the same to Tifa, and Tifa completed the circle by hanging onto Zack. That put them all in contact with each other, and left them each a hand free to touch the Lifestream.

"Okay, ready?" Zack asked, but didn't wait to hear the confirmations that probably wouldn't have come anyway. "Give me your hands." They locked their hands together in the centre, and Zack nodded. "Here goes nothing. On three. One... two... three!"

The moment their joined hands contacted the thick liquid in the pool, Cloud let go of his sense of his body and flung himself into the morass of souls and energy that made up the Lifestream. It was different when he wasn't fighting against it; as if it was somehow brighter, more vibrant, and more immediate. It swept him up and threatened to carry him off, and only Zack and Tifa's strong grip on him held him to them.

Zack had expected something like that to happen; Cloud was the most susceptible of the three of them to mako poisoning, so he'd braced himself to hang on to his lover no matter what. He wasn't entirely startled to feel Tifa clutching at Cloud nearly as strongly on the other side, though he was impressed at the visible demonstration of her strength of will.

After a moment of confusion the whirlwind settled itself as their minds imposed an arbitrary structure on the energy around them, and he could see them as well as sense them. Tifa looked past Cloud at him, and her eyes widened.

"You look like a SOLDIER," she exclaimed. He was about to ask her what she meant when it occurred to him to look down. Sure enough he was dressed in his Shinra uniform, the same one he'd been wearing that day in Nibelheim.

She looked different as well; not the young sixteen-year-old in a pretty hat and vest that she'd been in Nibelheim, but not the outfit he was used to seeing her in either. She looked strong and capable, a warrior ready to go to battle.

Cloud, however... "Aw, damn it," Zack muttered, gritting his teeth as he got a look at his lover. He'd been afraid of that. "Cloud!"

"Wha..." With an effort Cloud tore himself away from the fascination of the Lifestream, the strong grips on both his arms reminding him that he was here for a reason. He looked around to find Tifa in the same clothes she'd worn when they'd all been in AVALANCHE, and Zack in his SOLDIER uniform. No big surprises there, except... wasn't he almost the same height as Zack now? Why did it seem like the older man was so much taller than him?

"Cloud?" Tifa said, sounding a little uncertain. "Why..."

"This is what he looked like last time we were in the Lifestream too," Zack told her. Cloud appeared sixteen again, dressed in his trooper uniform and looking every bit as insecure and uncertain as he had then.

"Why, what's wrong with..." Cloud started, and he blinked when his voice cracked. It hadn't done that in nearly a decade. Glancing down at himself, his eyes widened when he saw what he was wearing and realized why Zack seemed so much taller than he should be. "This is my internal image of myself?" he blurted out, dismayed. After all these years, all this struggling, had he really not come any further than this in his own mind?

"Sephiroth's playing mindgames with you, Cloud," Zack told him urgently. "He's trying to make you doubt yourself, that's all. This is not you!"

"Yeah, well, if you've got any bright suggestions for how to fix it, I'd love to hear them," Cloud snapped back, trying not to let his fear show. He could feel the difference in his body; there was no question that this was him as he had been before all the mako enhancements that had made him the equal of any true SOLDIER. He would be the next thing to helpless against Sephiroth like this, not even as capable of defending himself as Tifa was.

Coming up with and instantly discarding half a dozen theories and suggestions on the spot, Zack finally did the only thing he could think of that might have a chance of working. With a silent apology to Tifa, he leaned down and caught the shocked young blond in a passionate kiss, putting everything into it that had been between them during the time they'd spent together. They hadn't had so many encounters yet that Zack didn't still remember every moment of them, and he conveyed as much of those memories as he could manage in the kiss.

Cloud didn't resist, but for a long moment he didn't participate either. Finally, just when Zack was starting to worry that he'd made a mistake, the blond started kissing him back. It was tentative at first, the way Cloud would have kissed him if they'd ever done this back when they'd been teenagers, but as Zack had hoped that didn't last long. They might not have had many chances to be together, but evidently they were just as deeply ingrained into Cloud's memories as they were into Zack's. Within moments of beginning to participate Cloud was struggling with him for dominance of the kiss, turning it into a battle of sorts.

When Zack pulled away they were both panting, but the Cloud who stood before him now was the fierce, strong, competent equal that Zack had always known he could be, and which he had become since he'd rescued Zack from that lab. The Shinra uniform was gone, replaced by the wolf's-head armour the blond favoured now, and the sword at his hip was First Tsurugi instead of the useless Shinra-issue blade he'd once carried.

"That's better," Zack declared fiercely. "This is who you really are. Now stay that way, don't let him sap your self-confidence again. Remember, your sense of self and strength of will are your most important weapons in here."

Watching the exchange from the outside had been a little painful for Tifa, but the pain was mostly lost in the sheer fascination of watching Cloud transform from the nearly helpless boy he had once been into the experienced warrior he was now. Since her only memory of seeing him at the age when he'd been a trooper had been fuzzy at best, she hadn't truly realized just how much he'd changed, or how far he'd come in what was really a relatively short period of time considering how much of it he'd spent unconscious.

If there had been a single lingering doubt in her mind that she'd lost him to Zack, it would have been destroyed in that moment. On the other hand, any doubts that she'd done the right thing by giving him up were also erased, and that meant it didn't hurt as badly as it could have.

"How touching," a deep, cold voice derided them from out of the mako-coloured nothingness that surrounded them. "And how very maudlin. Typical. I suppose now I shall be required to sit through speeches about how love has the power to overcome all obstacles, and that having faith in oneself is the first step to true triumph?"

Sephiroth appeared before them, a sneer twisting his exquisite features, masamune held loosely before him. His contempt would have been obvious even without his words.

"No, actually," Zack said thoughtfully, exchanging a brief glance with Cloud. The blond nodded minutely, and Zack gave their former general a feral grin. "I was figuring we'd start with something more like this."

With no further warning both men launched themselves abruptly at Sephiroth, swords in hand. Tifa was taken completely by surprise, but unfortunately Sephiroth was not. He vanished and reappeared near her, already reaching for her. Whether to hurt her or use her for a hostage, she didn't care to stick around and find out.

Knowing she was the weak link in the chain, Tifa had expected him to go for her the moment she'd seen him flicker out of sight. She whirled into a spin kick, lashing out with her weighted boots in a blow that would have knocked even someone as solid as Sephiroth back a good five or six feet.

Instead of the impact she'd hope for, however, her foot swished through empty space as he vanished once again. When she found the place where he'd reappeared near Cloud, she glared at him.

"Underestimating us was always your greatest weakness," Cloud growled, swinging his blade in a slashing arc. Instead of vanishing this time Sephiroth parried the blow, laughing. In a lightning fast move Cloud split his sword and grabbed the hilt of the new piece, whipping it around and reversing the momentum of the first blow. He was too fast for Sephiroth to block it again, but the bastard simply vanished once more.

Zack had been waiting, concentrating on the energy patterns he could feel swirling around them. He remembered his last battle with Sephiroth in this place, how he'd been able to anticipate where the man would reappear, and he was hoping to be able to pull the same trick twice. When he felt the tiny ripple that presaged Sephiroth's appearance Zack lunged without waiting to actually see him, yelling in triumph as he felt the buster sword drive deep into his opponent.

The sword hit so hard it actually came out the other side, leaving Sephiroth impaled through the lower abdomen. To his shock, however, the bastard simply started to laugh.

"Did you think you were being clever, coming here?" the former general taunted them, vanishing yet again and reappearing, whole and undamaged, just out of reach. Zack staggered at the sudden shift in weight on his sword, barely managing to right himself in time. Cloud snarled and charged at him, swinging both blades, and this time he simply flickered out of existence just long enough for Cloud to go right past him before reforming.

"Oh, I'll grant you, you've managed to find a way to fight me that does not involve risking immediate bodily harm to Cloud," Sephiroth continued, his tone dripping with sarcastic praise. "But did it never occur to you that you were bringing the fight onto my 'home turf', so to speak?" His eyes glowed bright with satisfaction. "This is my territory, and I have occupied it for nearly a decade. Do you, who have only minutes at best before you fray away into nothing, truly think you will be able to destroy me here, of all places?"

Without a sound, attacking silently as Yuffie had taught her to do, Tifa struck him from behind. For a moment, when he didn't vanish just before impact, she thought she'd actually managed to catch him by surprise. But somehow instead of driving her foot into his vulnerable kidney, she suddenly found that he was facing her, his hands clamped around her ankle.

She had one split second to realize how much trouble she was in before the muscles in his arms bunched and he spun in place, lifting her off the non-existent 'ground' and flinging her away from him, wrenching her ankle and knee and dislocating her hip all with one move. She hit the 'ground' hard, grunting in agony as the impact broke at least a couple of ribs and drove all the air out of her lungs.

"Tifa!" Cloud yelled, furious. He readied himself to charge again, not knowing what to do but continue to try to strike the bastard over and over until one of them finally managed a significant blow. If such a thing was even possible. He was starting to think that Sephiroth was telling the truth, and they had severely miscalculated when formulating this plan.

He blinked as he lunged, and abruptly found himself with not just one target, but many. Sephiroth was everywhere, laughing in condescension at his sudden surprise. Before he could quite realize exactly what was happening, two of them struck him from behind. One drove a heavy fist into the base of his skull, sending pain flaring through his head; the other drove the blade of the masamune straight through his back and out his front, then planted a foot on him and contemptuously shoved him off the blade. Cloud collapsed in a spray of blood, choking as his pierced lung began to fill with the thick fluid.

Desperately Zack tried to trigger a healing spell, but as he'd half expected the materia in his bracer was lifeless and inert. It wasn't really there, after all; it was back on his body, propped up in a cave somewhere else. If this was even that materia at all, and not a reproduction of whatever it was he'd been carrying the last time he'd worn this uniform. The sword worked well enough, but the magic was useless.

Cursing, he abandoned the attempt and parried a blow from one of the Sephiroths. Taking a chance, he charged into the centre of the group and aimed for the one closest to Cloud, the one the blond had been aiming for just before the swarm had appeared.

Sephiroth only laughed again and allowed the blow to land. Zack swept the sword up and around in an arc, cleaving the man nearly in half as he cut him from hip to shoulder. The - copy? clone? what the hell were these things? - fell beneath his blade, only to vanish a moment before it would have hit the 'ground'. There were still at least a dozen more, all wearing variations on the same mocking smile.

With an effort Tifa forced her dislocated hip back into place and staggered to her feet. It hurt, gods, the whole leg felt like it was on fire, with stabbing knives of red-hot metal piercing her at each joint, but she'd long ago learned how to fight on with worse injuries than this. "If you think this is going to be enough to beat us, you need to think again," she snarled, and lashed out at the nearest clone with a combination roundhouse kick and jabbing punch that laid it out flat. It, too, vanished, but in the confusion of multiple identical bodies it was hard to tell if she'd somehow destroyed it or if it had just reappeared elsewhere.

Cloud was on his feet again as well, his enhanced body letting him take more damage than anyone human should have been able to continue fighting with. He slashed and cut at the clones around him, putting his back against Zack's to give them both support and cover. Between the two of them they created a deadly zone of destruction, and after a few moments Cloud realized with a sense of hope that there were definitely fewer clones visible than there had been before.

Until they were suddenly struck from above, then from below an instant later, without warning. Zack went down with a cry, his legs literally cut out from under him, as Cloud staggered under a blow that felt like it shattered his shoulder rather than merely breaking it. Looking around, he realized that the Sephiroth clones were no longer all on a level with him; they were hovering at any height, above or below the plane Zack, Cloud and Tifa 'stood' on, as if gravity affected them not at all.

Another of them caught Tifa from behind and above before Cloud could shout a warning to her, and she screamed as Sephiroth ran her through with the masamune once again and lifted her a good five feet above the 'ground' she'd stood on. It was obvious that the new bending of gravity didn't apply to them; when he flung her off the blade again, she tumbled right back down to the same level she'd been on before, impacting the invisible barrier with a sickening thud. She fought to rise again almost immediately, but she was coughing blood and barely able to get to her hands and knees.

Zack was cursing and struggling behind him, battling an enemy that could strike him from below, but whom he could hit only when they came up above what was 'ground' level for him. As long as the clones stayed below whatever it was Cloud and the others stood on, Zack couldn't get at them. The buster sword was stopped at the same level Zack sat on, as surely as if he were trying to hack it through solid metal. He couldn't even get to his feet, the tendons of his left leg cut at the back of the knee and a deep wound in his right thigh keeping him from putting any weight on it.

Even as Cloud turned to try to help, one of the clones hacked at him from below, cutting deep into Zack's back and slicing right through his spine. Cloud watched in sick horror as Zack shrieked in agony and dropped the buster sword from nerveless fingers, collapsing completely to the ground. Spinal injuries couldn't be fixed, even with magic, everyone knew that. If, as had happened with Cloud's broken arm the last time they'd been here, injuries that occurred here transferred over to the real world, then Zack had just been paralysed for life.

This wasn't right. Somehow, Cloud knew that this wasn't right. This was all going exactly the way Sephiroth wanted it to. They were at a horrible disadvantage; they couldn't hope to win this battle at all, let alone within the unknown amount of time they had left before they started to dissolve into the Lifestream and lost themselves permanently. Yet Sephiroth had been trying to keep him from coming here, he was certain of it. Why? What was Cloud missing, what factor was there that Sephiroth had been afraid of but which they had failed to use, allowing him to get the upper hand?

This was the Lifestream. It was an environment inherently hostile to them, because they had to struggle just to hold themselves together within it. Sephiroth was completely at home here, a total master of his surroundings and able to bend them to his will. What could possibly turn that against him?

Looking desperately back and forth between Zack and Tifa, Cloud was just about ready to scream his frustration. What were they missing?

It came to him all at once, like a blinding flash of insight. Sephiroth wasn't the only one who had spent long enough in the Lifestream to master its oddities. Just as one of the Sephiroth clones reared back with the masamune and prepared to run him through, he threw his head back and screamed, "Help us!"

The sudden bright light pierced through the ubiquitous green like a ray of sun coming through heavy storm clouds. White and gold sparkles settled over Zack, Cloud and Tifa, and suddenly Cloud was able to take a deep breath and move his arm again. In the space of an instant all of his injuries were healed, and a golden glow sprang into being around him. The clone that had been about to run him through got a nasty shock as masamune bounced right off Cloud's body, refusing to penetrate through the shield.

Struggling against his suddenly unresponsive body, lost in the grip of terror and panic, Zack missed hearing what Cloud had said. Unable to turn to see what was going on, he thought the scream was when Sephiroth finally managed to destroy the younger man, and despair nearly consumed him.

It came as a complete and total shock, therefore, when the golden light fell over him and he found himself with full control of his body once again. Even as he instinctively snatched up his sword and bounced to his feet, he couldn't quite make his conscious mind accept what had happened. His spine had been severed, he was sure of it, and no magic he'd ever heard of could heal that.

With a yell of rage and defiance, Tifa pushed herself off the ground into a whirling series of kicks and punches that completely decimated the three clones nearest her. She recognized this, as impossible as it was, though she'd seen Great Gospel performed only a few times before and that had been years ago.

Or was it impossible? Laughing, Tifa realized the same thing Cloud had. The Lifestream might be Sephiroth's territory... but he wasn't alone in it.

"All you had to do was ask," Aerith chided Cloud gently, her blue-green eyes full of love and compassion as she looked around at her three friends. She stood in the middle of them, as real and solid as they were, her staff held ready in her hands. He thought he'd never seen anything as beautiful in his life as she was standing there, wrapped in her own soft glow like an angel sent from heaven.

"Aerith?" Zack gasped, hardly able to believe his eyes. Gods, why hadn't he thought of that? Of course she was here, she'd even helped them last time... but not until he'd called out to her for help.

"Do you think this changes anything?" Sephiroth scoffed. His tone hadn't changed one bit from his earlier sneer, but if Cloud hadn't known better he'd have said there was a hint of fear in the man's cold green eyes. "She cannot touch me."

"No," Aerith agreed sadly. "If I could, I'd have released you from this endless torment you've subjected yourself to. I'm sorry. I wish I could have helped you long ago. But I can help them, now." She looked at Cloud, Zack and Tifa. "Go. Do what you must. I'll keep you all alive and coherent."

Cloud didn't need another invitation. He lunged at the nearest clone, splitting First Tsurugi into halves again and executing a spinning slash that brought both blades into contact with his target at extreme speed. It actually cried out in pain as it vanished, and this time Cloud knew it was gone for good. They could be hurt. That meant they could be killed. Whatever they were, shadows or extensions of Sephiroth's power, they weren't nearly as strong individually as he was.

The invulnerability granted by Great Gospel only lasted for one hit each, but Aerith continued to cast healing magic over them as often as she could draw breath to speak the spells. If there was a limit to her magic it wasn't one that would be reached any time soon; she seemed to be drawing on the very air around them for the power for her spells. Of course, that 'air' was nothing more or less than the Lifestream itself, magic in its purest form. That freed the three of them to attack relentlessly, and without having to worry about blocking or dodging more than was absolutely necessary.

Sephiroth still had one major advantage, of course. He had control over gravity, while they did not. He quickly learned that remaining above them did little to help his cause, as even Tifa was capable of jumping higher than masamune's reach to get at him. But the clones that stayed below the 'ground' were all but invulnerable so long as they remained there.

"Can't you do something?" Tifa cried out as she paused by Aerith, trying to catch her breath. She watched with a sense of awe as Zack and Cloud fought, together and separately, like unstoppable killing machines. They took blows that would have flattened her, and hardly seemed to notice them in the time it took before Aerith could heal them.

"You haven't been here long enough for your minds to escape the restrictions of what you expect the world to behave like," Aerith told her between spells. "If you don't have a 'ground', you'll only float aimlessly."

Apparently realizing that if he could only rid himself of Aerith the battle would return to its former balance in his favour, Sephiroth created half a dozen new clones in the blink of an eye and set them all on Aerith. Cloud and Zack were both too far away to help, but there was no way in hell Tifa was letting him get away with that.

"Oh, no you don't!" she snarled, and whipped her foot around to smash it straight through the chest of one of the clones. "I've got it!" she called, seeing both of the men frantically trying to fight their way back to them. "I'll protect her, you two worry about Sephiroth!" She jammed her elbow back in a strike that crushed the nose and half the face of another clone, taking a vicious sort of pleasure in the sound of agony it made before vanishing.

Grinning, Zack gave her a thumbs-up and Cloud nodded to show that he'd heard and understood. If she said she could handle it, then she could handle it. Tifa wasn't the sort to boast or make promises she couldn't keep, especially not when someone's life was on the line.

"If we have to float, then let us float!" Zack shouted to Aerith, his grin vanishing as he swore in frustration, once again a split second too slow to strike at one of the clones that had come up above 'ground' to hit him. "At this rate he's just going to wear us down!"

Aerith nodded, and released her staff to bring her hands together in front of her in a position of prayer. She bowed her head over them, her lips moving silently. Remembering the moment when Sephiroth had run her through from behind and killed her, Tifa looked around sharply in case he tried the same thing again.

She saw first Cloud and then Zack flail and fall - no, she realized belatedly, not fall. Sink. The 'ground' had vanished for both of them, allowing them to get at the clones beneath them but leaving them with nothing solid to use as leverage.

Cursing, Cloud swung his sword at the nearest clone, just inches out of his reach. Sephiroth laughed at him, using masamune's greater length to inflict half a dozen shallow cuts on him in the space of a breath. Cloud snarled and bashed at the longer sword with one of the blades of First Tsurugi, and inadvertently pushed himself backwards into range of one of the other clones. He took care of that one before it could strike him, but that left him out of reach of anyone but Zack.

"That's it!" Zack had seen what Cloud had just done, and realized the solution to their problem. "Cloud! Treat it like one of our aerial sparring matches. Use him as the walls!"

Cloud immediately saw what his lover was getting at, and grinned fiercely. With a shout he turned and swung at Zack, ignoring the two clones that were closing in on his flanks. The move obviously caught Sephiroth completely by surprise, because the clones hesitated briefly. Just long enough.

Zack had lashed out at him at the same moment, and the force of the parry sent them both spinning away from each other. They'd fought together in the air so many times now that they knew how to calculate exactly the angle they'd go flying off at when they came away from the impact. Each of them had aimed so they would end up heading towards one of Sephiroth's clones.

Reaching his target first, Cloud managed to catch the bastard by surprise and destroyed the clone, pushing himself off of it just before it vanished to send him back towards Zack. His lover had been just a fraction of a second slower in reaching the clone he'd been aiming at, just enough for Sephiroth to evade him. That meant he didn't have anything to push off of; this wasn't going to be quite as easy as bouncing off the walls, Cloud realized.

"Damn it, we need something that's not going to run away from us," Zack shouted as Cloud caught up to him and they grabbed each other by the wrist, using the point of contact as a fulcrum to swing themselves around and change their trajectories before launching off each other again.

Splitting the First Tsurugi once again to strike at two clones as he passed them, Cloud's eyes lit up as he got an idea. With a deft twist of his wrists he broke the blade into all six of its component parts, hanging onto one but sending the others tumbling out into the space around them. The swords wouldn't vanish on impact, and would give them something to boost themselves off of.

"Brilliant!" Zack crowed, now wishing he had gotten a 'cool transforming sword' like Cloud had. He slashed at the nearest clone, using it to change his angle slightly, and hit one of First Tsurugi's blades. Fiercely he concentrated on the idea that the sword piece would be heavy enough to provide him with a change in momentum. Strength of will was what really counted here in the Lifestream, right? To his relief it worked; instead of only slowing him slightly, the impact with the blade let him push off it again.

Though still vigilant in watching for any attempts to get at Aerith, Tifa couldn't help but gape at the two men as they flew through the air as surely as if they had wings. She could keep herself in the air for a couple of seconds by changing her momentum with strikes, but not that long. If it hadn't been so deadly it would have been beautiful to watch.

There were fewer Sephiroth clones left now; only three, but with each 'death' of a clone the remaining ones seemed to absorb the power that had been used to create the defeated ones. Each one was harder to 'kill' than the last, and Cloud had already struck at one of them several times without managing to finish it off.

He glanced over quickly to see where Zack was, and found that the older man had actually latched onto one of the clones, holding himself in place and swinging the buster sword one-handed. That left him equally vulnerable to Sephiroth, of course, since he couldn't dodge, but Aerith's spells were healing him just fast enough for him to be able to keep going. That clone was almost finished, but the still-untouched third one was closing in on his lover from behind.

Shouting a warning, Cloud threw the piece of First Tsurugi that he still held with all his strength. The sudden change in tactics once again caught Sephiroth off guard, and the blade plunged right through the throat of the clone he'd been concentrating on. It vanished, and the force of the toss sent Cloud flying in the opposite direction, towards one of the other pieces of his sword.

Defying the laws of physics as he knew them, Cloud pictured what he wanted to have happen in his mind as he approached the sword. He got a hand around the hilt at the same time that his feet impacted the blade, tucked up into an awkward crouch. Then he pushed off the blade and kept his grip on the hilt, taking the sword with him. It shouldn't have worked, but it did, and now he was heading towards Zack and the last two clones with a sword in his hand.

The warning had been just soon enough for Zack to release his grip on the clone and throw himself to one side. Masamune pierced through the damaged clone instead of him, doing his work for him, and Zack laughed. Sephiroth cursed and pulled back. In the split second before the dying clone vanished, Zack got one foot braced against it and shoved off, sending himself at Sephiroth.

Of course, now they were fighting the real thing again, and it wouldn't be that easy. Worse, if they let him have a chance to create more clones, they'd have to go through the whole process again. Aerith would tire eventually; her supply of magical energy might be inexhaustible, but it was a mental and physical effort to channel and direct that much power. Or worse, one of the clones might get through Tifa to hurt the half-Cetra, and that would be the end of all of them.

"Sephiroth!" he shouted, hoping to keep the former general's attention on him instead of on splitting himself once more. "You miscalculated something, you bastard!"

"Oh? Do tell," Sephiroth replied archly, clearly amused as they closed in on him.

"Those trite cliches exist for a reason!" Zack replied fiercely. "You shouldn't have waited until we were together. Two heads are better than one, the whole is more than the sum of its parts, love conquers all... you take your pick!"

Sephiroth vanished once more as Zack and Cloud reached him, but they'd both been expecting that. Zack had already been straining to sense the ripple of energy that would mark the point where Sephiroth would emerge; the moment he felt it he grabbed Cloud by the arm and literally threw the younger man at him.

Then he struck the nearest piece of First Tsurugi and rebounded off it at an angle, bouncing off a second bit to alter his trajectory, heading for the same point he'd just sent Cloud to.

Sephiroth didn't even have a chance to realize what had happened; he'd only barely taken form when Cloud struck him with all of the blond's considerable strength. An instant later Zack hit him from behind, and both swords drove straight through the man to the hilt.

Pressed up close against Sephiroth from either side in an obscene parody of a lover's embrace, Zack grinned fiercely over his former general's shoulder at his lover. Cloud didn't smile back, but his eyes gleamed with no less satisfaction.

And, Zack realized with a sense of stunned joy, Cloud's eyes were blue. Glowing brighter than ever before, yes, but they were very definitely Cloud's eyes and not Sephiroth's.

"You were right about one thing," Cloud murmured as Sephiroth choked and coughed up blood. "This is the end of everything."

He nodded at Zack, and they both braced themselves. With twin yells of triumph and years-old grief, they ripped their swords sideways through Sephiroth's body and cut the man literally in half.

Not even Sephiroth could survive that, not here where they were actually attacking the core of him instead of a ghost or projection. Masamune slipped from his fingers to vanish into the ether, and a moment later he began to dissolve as well.

Without a second thought Zack let go of the buster sword and caught Cloud around the shoulders, pulling his lover close to him. Cloud gave a laugh that was half hysterical and held him back, his shoulders shaking.

"Is that it?" the blond asked hoarsely as the last faint ghost of Sephiroth disappeared. "I expected some kind of... I don't know, speech about the evils of humanity or a promise to find a way to come back again or something."

"It's over," Zack confirmed, hugging him tight. They were both sore and exhausted; Aerith's spells had kept them going, but they would be paying the price for all that healing for a long time to come.

Speaking of Aerith... looking around, Zack saw the girls heading for them at a run. That made him realize that he and Cloud were standing again, the 'ground' once more in place beneath their feet.

"Cloud!" Tifa shouted, unable to contain her sheer glee. "Cloud, you did it, we did it! He's gone!"

"For good this time, I hope," Cloud agreed, letting go of Zack and scooping her up into a fierce hug.

"Yes, for good," Aerith confirmed, watching them with a smile. "The part of him that was human has been released into the Lifestream at last, and he will finally rest in peace. Jenova is gone. Even the cells you carry are lifeless now, inert."

"All thanks to you," Zack said warmly, picking her up much as Cloud had with Tifa and swinging her in a circle. It felt so strange to have her in his arms again; strange, but definitely good.

Except she felt more delicate than he remembered, and she hardly weighed more than a feather. It was as if she had no substance, only a fragile outer shell. Putting her back down again, he held her at arm's length and studied her with worried eyes. "Aerith?"

Catching the concern in his lover's voice, Cloud turned to look. He couldn't see anything wrong, but Aerith was shaking her head and her smile had turned sad and wistful.

"I've been saving my power until now, knowing this would have to come sooner or later," she told them. "Sending you all back to your bodies will take the last of what I have."

"What? No!" Tifa cried, dismayed. She let go of Cloud to reach for the woman who had been her friend for such a brief time, but who had been a good and true friend despite that. Aerith caught her hands and squeezed them with her fingers, and Tifa felt the same delicate quality Zack had. She was afraid to squeeze back, for fear she would shatter the older woman.

"I don't belong here any more than he did," Aerith said softly. "It's my time to finally rest now, as well. I love you all, but I am so tired."

"Aerith..." Cloud trailed off, not knowing what else to say. He already had her forgiveness, and her love. He didn't want to lose her, didn't want to stand in her garden and not feel a whisper of her presence ghosting over him, but how could he beg her to stay when she so obviously wanted to rest at last?

He swallowed, and reached out to hug her carefully. She let go of Tifa with one hand to hug him back, then went up on tiptoe to kiss him briefly. "Be happy," she ordered him as she pulled away again, her tone back to being as cheerful and sunny as it had always been. "That's all I ever wanted, for any of you. Be happy, and be together, and you will have the strength to face anything that comes against you in your lives."

"You always were too damn selfless for your own good," Zack told her with fond exasperation. He glanced at Cloud with a wordless question. The blond nodded, surprised Zack had felt the need to even ask. As if he could have said 'no'.

That was all Zack needed, and he pulled Aerith into a tight embrace and kissed her hard. As much as he loved and was happy with Cloud, she would always hold a special place in his heart, and he was grateful for this last chance to end things on a good note. "I love you," he told her as he released her. "Rest well, and be at peace. You've earned it."

Sniffling despite her best efforts not to, Tifa wiped her eyes. "Go," she echoed Zack. "We'll be okay. And we'll join you again someday."

She smiled at all of them, and the white light that still surrounded her like a nimbus grew until it consumed their entire vision. Cloud blinked hard a couple of times, and when the glow faded he found himself sitting beside the mako pool once more, holding Tifa's arm as Zack gripped his. He was exhausted but unharmed, and maybe it was his imagination but it seemed like there was a lingering scent of flowers around them.

"So that's it, then," Tifa said softly, disengaging herself from the two men and rising to her feet, stretching. Her back cracked audibly, and she winced. "How long were we down here?"

Shoving back his glove, Cloud checked his watch. "About half a day, looks like. Didn't seem like it was that long."

"I'm just glad it wasn't longer," Zack declared, standing as well and grimacing as his body protested. He might not be injured, but all the places where he had taken blows in the fight were aching and stiff. Remembering the spine injury, he was fiercely grateful that aches and a little stiffness were all he was suffering.

Offering Cloud a hand, he tugged his lover up and pulled him into a quick hug. Saying goodbye to Aerith once and for all had been hard, but it was easier because he knew what he had waiting for him here.

Cloud hugged him back, then impulsively offered his hand to Tifa as well. She took it and squeezed his fingers, and smiled at him. "Lovers or not, don't think you're getting rid of me that easily," she told him.

"I wouldn't dream of it," he assured her. He couldn't imagine his life without her in it in some form. "Come on," he added, looking up at the cave ceiling as if he could somehow see through it if he just stared hard enough. Out there Cid and the airship were waiting, and beyond that... "We've got the rest of our lives to live," he said softly, feeling as if a massive weight had been lifted off his shoulders now that he knew Sephiroth was gone for good.

"And we'd better make them good lives, or you know Aerith'll scold the hell out of us when we see her in the next ones, or whatever happens after you join the Lifestream for real," Zack agreed with a grin, reaching out to clap a hand on Tifa's shoulder and complete the circle for a brief moment. "That means we've got our work cut out for us."

"I don't know," Cloud countered, wondering how his life could possibly get any better than it was right at this moment. "I think we've done a pretty good job already." Then he smiled. "But I'm willing to keep trying."

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