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jukeboxhound_backup) wrote2010-07-24 10:20 pm
fic: living chemical child (ffvii/fma)
Living Chemical Child
VI. Separation.
Main Pairing: Established Sephiroth/Zack/Cloud
Canon: FFVII (original game only) + Fullmetal Alchemist
Rating/Warnings: Light R - alchemical torture (naturally), some sexuality, meandering thoughts on alchemy and philosophy, general unhappiness.
Summary: It wasn't like Hojo had left clear instructions on how to reverse a sacrifice to the Gate. Unbetaed.
Word Count: 1,572
Note: I don't remember if Chole and Billy had a parent or guardian living with them, but it makes me feel better to think they did. ^^;
VI. Separation.
(n.): Separation is the first step in evolving a
substance. The Three Essentials are isolated and
prepared for the second step, Purification, in turn.
When Cloud woke up, he knew immediately that he wasn't in Amestris.
Well, maybe that was a bit of a stretch, but he definitely wasn't in Central anymore. The air smelled cleaner, for one, not unlike the crispness of his remote mountain hometown, and there was an edge of dry hay. A farm?
He could hear murmurs outside the closed door of the room. He wiggled a bit and realized that he was lying naked between soft linen sheets, and dear God how much did Zack give him to drink? His head was pounding and everything felt sensitized, as though his skin had been scrubbed raw. He didn't recognize the bedroom, all off-white walls and red plaid curtains. It was possible this was just one of the many rooms scattered throughout Sephiroth's mansion that he'd never seen before, except that the previous owners of that place would sooner kill themselves than decorate like a bunch of peasants.
Maybe that headache was making him a little more scrambled than usual.
Cloud gingerly sat up, holding his head with one hand and glancing around. The window opened out onto a landscape of rolling green hills, and the breeze that came in was pleasantly warm from the morning sunlight, even though the light was enough to make him squint. He swung his legs out of the bed and felt rough floorboards under his feet. Gathering the linen modestly around his waist, he padded barefoot towards the door and cautiously cracked it open, shivering in the sudden draft. Why was he feeling so sensitive? It was like his nerves were being over-stimulated somehow, but he was mostly sure that Zack wouldn't have given him some kind of happy pill.
"Hello?" he called tentatively. The murmurs had been coming from downstairs, he realized, and they stopped before someone started coming up. Cloud was about to say Zack, what the hell just happened, but the person was a teenage girl with a soft smile and bobbed brown hair. He blinked.
"You're awake!" she said. Cloud winced, her words sounding loud. "We were worried, the nearest town with a doctor is an hour away, except it just looked like you'd bumped your head. How are you feeling?"
"Um," he replied. "Where am I?"
"This is the Chocobo Farm. I'm Chole. What's your name?"
"Uh, Cloud. How…how did I get here?"
"We were hoping you could tell us that." She looked puzzled and a little worried. "You showed up on our doorstep without any clothes, you know – oh! Here," and she held out a pile of neatly folded clothes. "I'm not sure if they'll fit, but you'll have to make do with some of Billy's clothes. Why don't you get dressed, then come downstairs and have some coffee? We'll see if we can't figure out what happened and how to get you home."
Cloud was left standing at the top of the stairs holding up a sheet with one hand and borrowed clothes in the other.
"…Okay."
Zack must've really done a number on him, and why didn't Sephiroth stop him? The general was usually pretty good at making sure Zack didn't go too far.
Cloud shrugged prosaically and got dressed back in the bedroom, skin crawling a little at the chafing. He was rather miffed to find that the clothes were too loose around the waist and a little long, and was it Cloud's fault that he'd inherited his mother's height? The first person to crack a short blond joke was going to get his balls introduced to Cloud's foot. Chole, thankfully, had included a wide leather belt, and he tightened it around the denim trousers before rolling up the sleeves of the white button-down shirt.
He paused while working the third-to-last button, startled. Over his heart was a blood-red mark, like a hexagram with an extra horizontal line through its center. When he ran a finger over it, it felt as smooth and unremarkable as an old tattoo, not at all like the result of a wild drunken night on the town with his superior officers. Seriously, what the hell had happened?
Hojo, standing over him with a twisted smile.
For a moment he was paralyzed with terror, but then time started again and he took a heaving, shaky breath. Get it together, Strife, plenty of time to panic later.
The stairs opened out in a true farm kitchen with a scrubbed oak table and a large oven for baking bread, and for a moment Cloud felt a sharp pang of homesickness. Chole was busy with a coffee pot on the stove (just like his mum, before she died) and two people, the younger of whom must be Billy, were sitting at the table chatting over steaming mugs.
"Hello, Cloud," said the older man. "I'm Jon, this is Billy. So, what brings you to our little corner of the world?"
"I'm not sure," he said quietly, pulling out a chair and smiling at Chole as she set a mug in front of him. "Last I remember, I was in Central – "
The circles and symbols were traced on the floor in blood, his own blood, and he couldn't move, it felt like every muscle had been paralyzed and only his mind was awake and screaming –
"Cloud, you all right?" asked Billy, and Cloud managed another weak smile. Under the edge of the table he picked uneasily at the shirt cuffs.
"Yeah…yeah, I'm fine. Just, um. Confused. How far is Central from here?"
"I don't know," said Jon. "What's Central?"
…Did he really just ask that? Cloud thought, bemused. "Y'know, the capital? Of Amestris?"
He got three blank looks in return, and dread was starting to grow in his belly.
"Is that a city? The closest big city is Midgar, and that's some hundreds of miles away. There's Junon, too, a couple hours south of there."
Maybe I'm in Drachma? In which case, he was really screwed. But Nibelheim had been on the border of Amestris and Drachma, resulting in an odd mix of cultures, so if these cities were as big as the old man was suggesting then he should've heard of them before. And the question remained: How did he get here from Hojo's lab? (Better not think about that right now, focus on the present, these people wouldn't appreciate it if you started screaming).
And why the hell had he been naked?
It must've been something Hojo was doing, but Cloud wasn't an alchemist. He only understood the basics, and he'd only practiced whenever no one else was around. He'd never heard of alchemical transportation; the energy that would be required to shift the mass of a human from one place to another instantaneously would be insane. Like, supernova insane. Unless…the Philosopher's Stone? He thought of the rumors about the Ishbal Civil War, about Amestrian alchemists wearing small blood-red stones. Imperfect ones, but nevertheless closer to the Great Work than any other time in history.
"Have you heard of alchemy?" Cloud asked slowly, and the dread turned hard and cold when all three shook their heads.
"What's that?"
"…It's the scientific study of natural and spiritual law. Alchemists can manipulate those laws – "
"Sounds like magic to me," Billy declared, and Cloud couldn't help a wry smile. If only Sephiroth had been around to hear that.
"This is all very interesting," said Jon, "but we've got to figure what we're going to do with you."
"He could stay here," Chole chimed in. "We could always use another set of hands around the stables."
"Yeah, the chicobos are getting to be racing age, y'know, and they're always a handful then," added Billy.
Jon frowned. "Now don't you two be getting ahead of yourselves. This is Cloud's decision."
Feeling rather overwhelmed, he asked, "Do you have a world map?"
"Aye, we do, though I don't know what you be wanting with a world map." Jon lumbered up and disappeared into what was presumably a living room, returning shortly with a worn, folded map in hand. He spread it out on the table and jabbed what looked like nothing but green plains covering half a continent. "We're hereabouts. Midgar's over here, and here's Junon. Where did you say you were from?"
"Amestris."
All four peered at the map for several minutes before Billy announced, "I don't see Amestris anywhere. Maybe it's too small to show up on this?"
But…it's Amestris. "Um, what about Drachma?"
"Sounds like a northern name." Jon pointed to the western continent. "Nope, don't see it."
Cloud didn't see it either, but he couldn't miss Nibelheim. His eyes widened. "How do I get there?"
"Nibelheim? I think I've heard of it. It's a reactor town, if I remember right. I guess you'd take a ship from Midgar to Costa del Sol and pray you find someone to take you over all those mountains."
Cloud stared at the map and its unfamiliar landforms – continents where there should have been oceans, empty stretches of land where cities should be flourishing. Where Nibelheim apparently hadn't been burned to the ground by Drachmian terrorists. Where there were no rumors of war because Amestris and Drachma didn't seem exist, where Ishbal hadn't become a genocide, where Xing wasn't struggling with its own internal politics.
…Where am I?
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Like, supernova insane. Unless…the Philosopher's Stone? e thought of the rumors about the Ishbal Civil War, about Amestrian alchemists wearing small blood-red stones.
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♥
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Awesome.
I figure either that or Cloud's hallucinating. Either works, but the former is delicious.
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Serious question: what point in the FFVII timeline is this?
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(Accusations of bullshitting as I go along are totally unfounded and you would be a bad person for believing that.)
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And no, it's not the homunculus tattoo, and it wasn't meant to be the soul-seal either. I smooshed together a couple symbols that I felt fairly represented Cloud's situation.
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I happen to think it'd be awesomely groovy if this were immediately post-Nibelheim, i.e. tomorrow they get the news that General Sephiroth and SOLDIER First Zack Fair are MIA and presumed dead kind of immediately. Mostly because nothin' says lovin' like Cloud-torture.
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Seeing as Tifa has just be carted off to Midgar by Zangan, and the rubble of Nibelheim is still smoldering (unbeknownst to the general populace, but knowst to us), the potential exists for all kinds of things to happen.
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(Anonymous) 2010-07-27 04:37 am (UTC)(link)no subject
That was my first thought when I read the first sentence and it might have stayed that way all the way through. Yes.
OH MY GOD POOR CLOUD. HE WILL BE PLAYING WITH CHOCOBOS WHILE HIS LOVERS TRY TO FIND HIM
(and play around with the Elric brothers)~<3
Can't wait for the next chapter
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Okay. Off to the next chapter now. :D (This comment brought to you by my admiration of a truly expert plot twist.)
~Mara
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