Entry tags:

! june 2008, author: ciceqi, crossover: ff7/vagrant story, pairing: cloud/sydney

"Hit the Ground Running," Final Fantasy VII/Vagrant Story, Cloud/Sydney 1/2
Title: Hit the Ground Running
Author/Artist: Sleeps With Coyotes
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII/Vagrant Story
Pairing/characters: Cloud/Sydney (past Zack/Cloud/Aeris, past Sydney/Ashley, and something about Sephiroth)
Rating: Worksafe
Prompt: Cloud and Sydney with the title, "Hit the Ground Running."
Warning: Oh yeah, baby, Ivalice rocks my world, past to future.
Notes: OMG, Cloud in Ivalice = MUST HAVE! *coff* Uh, other than that, this fic ambushed me in strange ways. I was thinking about the prompt, happened across a Portugal. The Man song that just happened to have "hit the ground running" as part of the lyrics, and this thing came veeeery close to being about snake oil and old-time-relijun revival tents, but...well, Sydney hijacked my brain. As he tends to do. So you get this instead.
Summary: It's sort of like a pilgrimage, but with property damage.



"This way," Cloud said softly, and Sydney followed him like a ghost, making the best time they could on the narrow, moonlit ribbon of a game trail they'd struck almost by accident. Though he strained his senses--still SOLDIER-sharp, the way his eyes still glowed, beyond all reason--he heard nothing but the hissing rustle of the leaves, the occasional creak of interlaced branches when the wind picked up, now and then the faint chime of silver at his back. It always surprised him that Sydney could move so quietly with all that metal on his arms; he suspected magic, but he really didn't know. He hadn't had so much as a Sense materia on him when he was brought to this place, and the scarcity of anything he'd call technology wasn't the only thing Ivalice was lacking. As far as he could tell, there wasn't a single materia to be had this side of the Lifestream...which Ivalice was also missing. He wasn't sure whether that was incredibly disturbing or a guilty relief.

It didn't matter what was behind the other man's stealth, really. So long as he got Sydney to his destination in one piece, he'd be keeping his side of the bargain, and Sydney claimed they were making good time. That had been a surprise as well. If he didn't draw on his augmented speed, he'd found the prophet could keep up with him easily, without complaint and unexpectedly tireless. It was true that there was nothing delicate about Losstarot, so whipcord-lean he made Reno look soft. Even so, over the few weeks Cloud had known him, he'd formed the distinct impression that the man hadn't been born to tramp about in the woods like a fugitive. Long days on the march, cold camps and dodging pursuit--Cloud was used to all that, though his memories of the first time were fuzzy at best.

He'd have given anything to have Zack there beside him again, but he tried not to think about it too much, about why he was alone here too.

Though Sydney's footsteps were as quiet as his own, he noticed immediately when the prophet stopped in his tracks, an invisible leash twitching just enough for him to feel it. Slowing without stopping, he glanced back at the other man and found Sydney standing with his head cocked in a listening pose, not even a glint of silver showing under the dark cloak the man had wrapped himself in. Grayed out by moonlight, too canny to stop where it could strike him full, he would have been nothing but an odd patch of shadow to other eyes. Cloud could see the startlement on the prophet's face plain as day.

"They wouldn't dare," Sydney murmured half to himself as Cloud's hackles rose.

"What?"

"Send the dead against me."

Whipping back around and reaching over his shoulder for his sword, Cloud scanned the area again and tightened his jaw as dark figures rose up practically from the undergrowth on all sides, almost as if they'd been waiting to be noticed. It wasn't much comfort to see that they hadn't quite walked straight into the trap; though their attackers came mostly from the trees and hillocks just ahead of them, some few stumbled in from their backs, and Cloud wanted to kick himself. Never mind that the enemy hadn't moved, hadn't made a sound. He should have noticed them, should have expected them, maybe, the way the Cardinal seemed to be able to anticipate them. It'd been too quiet, too easy lately, and he'd known that.

He heard Sydney turn and begin to chant, silver claws chiming as the prophet raised his hands to cast. Cloud left him to it, moving to intercept the first fighters and noting uneasily how well the creatures moved for dead men. The ones coming at him had stumbled over roots and through drifts of old leaves, but once they made the trail, they picked up speed with something very close to the grace of a normal man. They weren't falling to pieces yet, either; their bodies were intact, their faces recognizable but curiously slack-featured, not just expressionless but blank, empty. Newly-killed, maybe, from somewhere close-by, and he wondered that Sydney hadn't mentioned a village when the man knew they could have stood to restock their supplies.

Magic sizzled at his back, but that was expected. Sydney's vicious curse, incredulous and angry, was not. He wanted to glance back and find out what exactly had just gone wrong, but there wasn't time; the first three were already on him, two men and a boy, or maybe a woman. Someone had taken the time to arm the things, at least, and it was hard to tell what lay under the armor.

His blade sheared deep on the first slash, slamming through bulky leather and snapping ribs like sticks, but it surprised him to see it scythe free in a spray of blood. Zombies didn't bleed, not even the fresh-made ones; even he knew that. Once a mage got them up on their feet, anything still fluid inside them would pool low, discoloring their hands and legs with that dark, trademark bruise he'd learned to watch for. The hands he could see on this group were all pale, unmarked.

There was something wrong here, and he would have thought he was fighting living recruits, only he'd never seen a stare so glassy-flat or anything attack so single-mindedly with breath still in its body.

Sydney was chanting again, voice gone urgent as his tongue twisted fluently around syllables that should have sounded tortured, the words of a spell delivered at a breakneck pace. There was another crackle of magic that lit up the forest behind him, illuminating the faces of the not-quite-dead and their wide, blown-out pupils, and then there was the sound of bodies falling, a clatter of silver.

"Sydney?" he called, slashing again and reversing his swing with a decapitating stroke. There was no sound but the determined tramp of driven feet through the undergrowth. "Sydney."

More came, but he cut them down fast, bitterly aware that these things had been villagers, not soldiers. Joining the ranks of the Cold Ones, Sydney had told him, didn't confer any special skills on the dead; it just made them very hard to discourage short of cutting off their heads. Most of their attackers had probably never held a sword in their lives.

It was all over in seconds, not one of his opponents up to tangling with the strength and speed of a SOLDIER. Turning even as he slung his sword, he found the path behind him strewn with broken bodies, the nearest few far closer than he liked, and Sydney collapsed at his feet with a steel bolt through his heart.

"Fuck." He was sure there had to be some magic that could have deflected that bolt; Sydney could have sidestepped it if nothing else, but instead he'd chosen to make sure--make very sure--of the danger at their backs.

Moments later Sydney stirred, hitching a ragged, shuddering breath as he reached up automatically to wrap his hand around the bolt that had skewered him, claws sliding clumsily on the smooth steel shaft. Cloud started at the keening screech of metal on metal and knelt, paralysis broken, to brush Sydney's hand away, careless of the claws.

"I've got it," he said, eyes down, and braced his other hand on Sydney's shoulder. He'd expected the silver to be cold, but it was warmer than his own skin, polished slick as silk. He almost wondered if he'd leave a tarnished handprint behind.

Pulling the bolt straight out as smoothly as he could, he tossed it aside as Sydney curled up helplessly, coughing as lungs decided they wanted to work after all. There wasn't much blood, Sydney's body healing so quickly Cloud could see the wound knitting up, the ragged hole in the man's chest smoothing over in seconds. He thought the tension in the body under his hands was mostly pain, so he didn't move away, remembering how any touch at all helped to anchor him after being wrenched back by a Phoenix Down or a Life spell. A few breaths later, and Sydney had relaxed, going limp as a kitten as he gathered himself to move.

"My thanks," he breathed, and Cloud snorted, angry all over again.

"Your idiocy. I could have handled them."

"Better I take the chance than you," Sydney replied as he sat up and then climbed to his feet, Cloud rising to slide a grudging hand under the man's elbow. "On the other hand, I think I am...disturbed by this tendency to aim for my heart."

"Maybe they think it'll hurt less."

"Because I don't have one?" Sydney offered, amused.

"Because then you should be dead."

"Then they haven't been briefed very well, have they?"

Cloud shook his head over Sydney's light tone, back from the dead for all of three minutes and already as outwardly flippant as ever. He didn't even argue that briefing the creatures that had attacked them would have been like talking to a brick wall; Sydney's idea of a "Them" would have been the mage--or the priest--who created those things.

Reassured that Sydney was still functional--he wasn't sure what to call it when you'd already had your first death and liked it enough to keep coming back for more--he turned on his heel and set off down the trail they'd been following, grimly ignoring the bodies underfoot. He didn't have to hear Sydney to feel the man following him; in the three weeks they'd been traveling, they'd never drawn far enough apart from each other for the bond to pull tight, and maybe it wouldn't. Maybe he'd just always have that awareness of where the prophet was, a sort of heavy feeling in his mind that shifted like a compass towards the duty that held him grounded in this world.

"What were those things?" he asked when they were well away, quietly troubled by the memory of blood, bright red, staining the air as the first man fell. "Some new type of undead?"

"No. I was wrong," Sydney admitted, so frankly it disarmed him as always. "They were quite alive...just soulless."

Cloud's stride hitched as he glanced over his shoulder. "Soulless?"

The faint smile Sydney usually wore had vanished, his distracted frown worrying Cloud more than that partial explanation. "Yes. Tampering with the soul is...it's not done. It disconnects a person from himself, leaves him open to outside influences while removing all hesitation to act...and that's when a soul is merely shut away. Those people...they were little more than orders given flesh. I've never seen a soul-stripping so complete," Sydney added with a grimace of distaste. "I can read souls; there's no binding strong enough that I won't hear at least an echo of the man inside. But those...they were empty. Completely empty."

"That's sick."

"And dangerous," Sydney agreed, frowning pensively. "An empty vessel doesn't stay empty for long, and we're far from any paling."

At first Cloud wondered what that had to do with anything; Sydney himself avoided cities guarded by palings because the palings themselves shut out magic in general and the Dark in particular. Sydney's illusions wouldn't work inside them, and he claimed they gave him a headache anyway. Cloud suspected it was rather more than that, but he'd let it go, interested at the time only in why he always ended up bartering for their supplies alone.

Now he wondered if the palings weren't meant to keep other things out as well, what sort of creatures might be hungry for form and what might have filled the vessels he'd destroyed if they'd been left empty long enough.

"Is there a way to fix them? Reverse the process?"

"No," Sydney said slowly, "not if there's nothing to work with. I...if their souls had only been shut away, then...maybe. If they'd been touched by the Dark. I might have been able to help, but only at the risk of destroying what was left. I think the best we can hope for is that the Church will be too wary to try this again; I can't imagine what gave them the arrogance to do such a thing this time. Anything could have taken those bodies...I almost wonder if they wanted something to."

They'd stopped walking during Sydney's explanation, and watching the prophet shake off what looked like unpleasant memories, Cloud felt cold fingers walk up the back of his neck. Nothing bothered Sydney, no matter how odd or unpleasant, and he wasn't sure he wanted to meet something that would. Even dying barely fazed the man, and Cloud wasn't sure he'd ever get used to that, to seeing death as a calculated strategy rather than any sort of a risk. Though his own final death hadn't turned out to be nearly as final as he'd expected, he knew better than anyone that even the best people's luck ran out eventually.

"You may be right," he said, turning away sharply. "We should hurry."

"Lead on," Sydney replied, and Cloud didn't look back to see whether the man's expression was ironic or understanding. This wasn't his world, and it wasn't his vision they were following. The only place he was leading them was where Sydney directed them, and he didn't even know the name of their destination. Sydney hadn't offered, and he hadn't asked. He'd had too many other things to worry about, and it was all the same to him.

Anyplace was better than the Lifestream when you were stuck in there alone.

***

The first time he'd seen Sydney come back from the dead, it was like a blow to the gut. There'd been no Phoenix Down thrown, no potion, no spell, nothing but some innate trick that required nothing but itself. Cloud would have given anything to learn that knack, except that it was already too late, and he wasn't the one who'd needed it. He wasn't sure he'd have wanted it for himself if it'd been offered.

When he'd learned that it was the Dark that had given Sydney that gift, he'd found himself thinking of Aeris' brightness dimmed, Zack's steadfast cheer twisted out of true, found himself thinking of Sephiroth as he'd been at the end and every time since, mad and hateful and changed. And then Sydney had looked at him, too rigid, too carefully inscrutable, until he'd squirmed with discomfort and embarrassment.

"I can't release you," Sydney had said levelly. "Not until we reach our destination."

"I'm not asking you to," he'd shot back, stung pride taking control of his mouth, though he'd been annoyed with himself for being so quick to jump at superstition. Wouldn't that make him just like the very people he'd shaken his head over for letting the Church rule their fears?

"Hm," Sydney had said, mostly skeptical, but he'd softened a moment later. "Just don't let anything eat me, please. I don't imagine that would be very pleasant to come back from."

A startled huff of laughter had escaped him at that, and then everything had been fine...fine, but different. He hadn't been able to see the man in quite the same light once he'd learned that Sydney, immortal and indestructible, could still be hurt.


***

No dogs barked and nothing stirred as Cloud made his stealthy way up to the stables behind the big house, home of some minor country lord Sydney didn't remember the name of. He would have been more surprised if Sydney had; from the maps he'd stolen glimpses of and from Sydney's occasional mentions of Valendia, he'd gathered they were well south of the prophet's homeland and drawing further away by the day.

Slipping into the darkened stable, he listened closely for the snores of stable boys or the squawk of a wary chocobo, but the stalls remained quiet, only a few sighing whistles greeting him as he cautiously stepped out into the aisle. If they hadn't needed tack, he might have tried his hand at capturing a pair of wild birds, especially considering how much easier it was here than back home. He didn't even need a Lure materia, just some greens and a bit of patience. The admiring noises Sydney made over him were almost embarrassing, as if catching a chocobo was anything special. He couldn't help it if he was used to wilder stock than this.

A pair of yellows peered at him curiously from over their stall doors, and while he might have hesitated once, there really wasn't much to choose from here. Not that they weren't fine birds, because they were...for yellows. He wasn't even surprised when they let him walk right up to them and offer a skritch to quiet them down. They were just riding birds--probably the finest animals on the estate, or he was no judge of legs--but they weren't war-trained and they weren't going to have a quarter of the speed he was used to. That wasn't the birds' fault, though, and he didn't even wince as he left enough gil behind to cover one of his own fleet-footed blacks. Sydney had a better idea than he did what a pair of decent yellows were worth and never begrudged the cost.

Sydney was waiting for him in the trees when he returned, riding the feistier of the two birds and leading the other by the reins. The man's quirked smile made Cloud want to roll his eyes, but he resisted, reminding himself that some things were just different here.

"You had no trouble?"

"Piece of cake." Like he'd have any trouble with a pair of farm-bred palfreys.

He had to give Sydney a leg up--feathers, reins and those claws should never mix--and it surprised him as always how light the man was, nothing but sinew, muscle and bone. Maybe the arms were hollow. Even Vincent had taken his armor off to sleep once in a while, though he'd made damned sure no one ever saw what was beneath, but not Sydney. As far as he could tell, the armor wasn't even meant to come off; the two thin straps that looped from the bulky shoulders around his neck weren't even a decent fiction, and he couldn't imagine what else might be keeping the things on unless they were a part of the man.

"Good," Sydney said, leaving the reins where they lay and letting the bird shrug him into place with the textbook-perfect posture of someone who'd had riding lessons as a child. Formal ones, strict enough to stick. "We should make better time now."

He was tempted to point out that if they were interested in speed, then he'd stolen the wrong color, but he kept his mouth shut. Sydney had tried to explain to him those first few days that the similarities between their worlds were no coincidence, something about the hidden gods and the stones they'd made to rule mankind. How they'd poked and prodded into things no one should and made a special kind of stone, one that had learned to flow, to move, and then how to escape, tearing doorways through to other places in the process. A few other things had wandered through those same doorways before the hidden gods noticed and sealed the holes--things like chocobos and men, and maybe a dragon or two--but that was ages upon ages ago, and things always changed when you took them out of their comfortable homes.

Which maybe made a weird sort of sense, because once Sydney had started talking about a wild magic that had threaded itself through entire worlds, Cloud had found himself lost in memory, not of what it was like to float in the Lifestream itself but one clear moment on that last good day, how he'd stood between Zack and Sephiroth in a wide-open cave under the Nibel mountains and stared mesmerized at a place where the Lifestream had slowed and cooled and turned back into stone. Mako fountains, materia...it fit, almost. Or maybe he just wanted it to, because the idea of doorways made him think that maybe he could get back there somehow if he really needed to.

He wasn't sure it explained the chocobos, but he wasn't sure anything could explain the chocobos, tamable on his world, apparently deadly in this one.


***

He'd thought at first that his eyes were playing tricks on him, that maybe he'd been smacked one too many times by one of those hallucinogenic bunnies Sydney seemed to find so wildly amusing...but no, those were chocobos down there, reds and blacks, grazing on wild greens just off the path. The steepness of the Highwaste's trails meant they'd have had quite the hike getting down to the birds, but if he'd had so much as a saddle pad and a length of rope, he'd have risked it. Well. And one more thing.

"Too bad we don't have a Lure materia," he'd mused to himself, speaking softly so he didn't spook the flock.

Coming up on his right, careless of the drop, Sydney arched his brows and began to smile, wickedly amused. "To lead them to our enemies?"

"Uh...no. So we could catch them."

"And do what with them?" Sydney had asked, so casually Cloud was taken aback. "Wait...don't tell me you eat chocobos."

"No!" Cloud protested, as horrified as if someone had suggested he ate cats, or babies. "We ride them. Just like you."

"Ride? Black chocobos?" Sydney asked, eyes wide. "This 'Lure' spell of yours must be powerful."

"No...not really." He hadn't known how to tell Sydney that he'd bred half a stable full of blacks before he'd mastered the trick of breeding golds, that he'd fed them from his own hands and felt their needle-sharp baby talons prick delicate paths over his skin.

After that Sydney looked at the wild chocobos differently, with a lively speculation Cloud didn't trust at all, bold and fearless as Zack at his worst, or perhaps his best. He'd taken to watching the man to make sure Sydney didn't do anything foolish, like try to tame one of those monsters just to see if he could, and before he knew it, he'd fallen into the habit of running interference again as if he'd never fallen out of the habit in the first place.


***

The further from Valendia they traveled, the more Sydney relaxed, his feline half-smile more pleased by the day. At first Cloud thought it was because they were getting closer to their goal, but some days Sydney didn't push for that extra mile with quite the same urgency, and some nights he found the man staring at the horizon like the master of all he surveyed, not like he was considering the logistics of hurling them closer to it with an ungrounded teleportation spell.

It was a good thing Sydney's chocobo was a gregarious sort, content to follow Cloud's bird without a hand on the reins, because Sydney looked too distracted by some private triumph to guide the bird as it was.

What's got you in such a good mood? he considered asking, watching the man sidelong.

"The Church's power is weaker here," Sydney offered out of the blue, almost as if he'd heard the unasked question. He'd probably just caught Cloud staring, or at least that was what Cloud was going to tell himself. It was less complicated that way. "There should be fewer palings to worry about from here on out, and we'll be able to travel through towns more freely."

"You mean your illusions should hold now?"

"I don't see why not."

"Huh. I feel sort of superfluous." He'd meant it as a joke, but in all honesty, he wasn't sure how he felt about that. If all Sydney needed was a wall of muscle between him and whatever he couldn't fry quickly enough on his own, he didn't need Cloud for that; anyone would have done.

"Oh, no," Sydney said at once, glancing over at him with an odd mixture of secrets and utter earnestness. "You're about to become absolutely indispensable. Ordinarily I wouldn't risk it even this far from the Cardinal, but...there are people I need to talk to."

Cloud didn't have the faintest idea what Sydney meant, but he figured the prophet was probably feeding him a line to make him feel better, worried about him deserting. Not that he could have if he'd wanted to. He'd been brought here, brought back, for Sydney's sake, and the weird thing that had done it hadn't taken any chances with him. Somehow he didn't think Sydney would have bound him this tightly, not by choice.

He hadn't been Sydney's first choice in the first place.


***

He woke to a place of cold and stone, some quality of darkness or scent in the air telling him he was deep underground. And disoriented, and so drained he ached from head to toe, and even the idea of sitting up and getting his bearings left him vaguely nauseous. Part of him wondered if this was what it felt like for a soul caught in the Lifestream to get shoved into a reactor for processing, but if it was, then it was too late to worry about it now.

It was the voices that kept him from panicking, because he didn't think a reactor tech was going to stand around arguing about the quality of Cloud's mako, and that was sort of what it sounded like was going on.

"This isn't the one I was promised."

The voice was male and unexpectedly musical, a liquid tenor that slid into his ears and made itself at home. Maybe it was the contrast that magnified the second voice's faults, made his skin crawl at the way it layered over itself, buzzing, hissing, like Vincent's entire choir of demons trying to speak over him at once.

"That one is lost to us."

"He can't be lost--he was touched by the Dark. You know as well as I that it never lets any of its creatures go."

"Nevertheless, he is lost. You were promised assistance, true; a strong shield and willing hands. If you put a name to those hands without seeing their owner, you cannot quibble that the compact was false."

There was no answer to that, not for a long moment, and Cloud began to think that perhaps he ought to take some interest in the world around him, and soon. It really did sound like they were arguing over him, and...he'd been dead. He had been dead, hadn't he? Only he'd swear he was breathing now, and this didn't feel a bit like the Lifestream.

Cold stone under his back. An altar, maybe, and oh, right, that felt like an actual flicker of worry. He might just be able to work himself up to indignation in another hour or so, stark terror if they gave him the night to sleep on it.

"He smells of other worlds," the tenor said neutrally.

"Yes."

"He'll be useless in this one, then."

"Do you refuse?"

Cloud felt the cold of that creep through his stomach, chilling him from the inside out.

"Name me reasons why I shouldn't."

"You judge too swiftly, Roodbearer."

A sharp creak of leather, a faint chime that sounded angry, like someone with silver bangles on their wrist had slashed a furious hand across the air. "That isn't--"

"And you discard all your names too soon."

"Nor am I accustomed to taking back what I discard," the tenor snapped.

"Which is why your choices are narrow. Do you refuse? We can unmake him if you like."

"No," the human voice said sharply, no thought between threat and reply. "I'm not so profligate as that."

"Then you will do this thing."

"For my Lady's sake. She bade me come, not you. I didn't think there was anything you could give me that She could not; I'm not so surprised to be proven right."

The other voice was silent at that, but Cloud couldn't tell whether it was angry or merely patient. He thought he ought to sit up now, and he gave it his best shot, but the most he could manage was lifting his head from the stone.

He couldn't see the owner of the creepy voice very well; it was a mass of shifting transparencies that made his eyes hurt to look at it, a tall, angular shape that looked both like a high priest in regal vestments and a carapaced monster at the same time. Easier by far to look at the other one, though he was strange enough in his own way: a lean blond man perhaps Cloud's age, sharp-faced and unsmiling, whose cool grey eyes--the same color as his clawed, silver arms--watched Cloud with an impenetrable look. He didn't know quite what to make of the man's half-dressed state, the slink of his walk as he came closer, but that cultured, resonant voice made no attempt at seduction as it laid out the facts like a winning hand, card by card.

"What is your name?"

"Cloud," he managed through a scratchy throat, his voice hoarse with disuse and a fading aftertaste of mako. "Cloud Strife."

"Sydney Losstarot," the man introduced himself, and Cloud wondered which names had gone before this one. "I find myself in need of a fighter. You've been given breath and form; accompany me to my destination, and you may do with them what you like."

It took a moment to parse that, the man's quaint speech rattling uneasily inside his head before he could wrap his mind around it. "You brought me back," he decided at last. "From the Lifestream."

"The Doorkeeper allowed you entry, if that's what you mean. You're alive enough," Sydney said with a shrug, "the same as I. And you'll be bound to me by your oath for the duration of our travels unless you refuse. So which is it to be? Life or sleep?"

He might have chosen the latter, except that he'd been "asleep" too long, long enough to watch the others fade and be reborn while he continued to drift, years stretching into decades. He'd found Aeris and lost her again, found Zack and lost him first, and Sephiroth...wasn't even recognizable anymore, what was left of him. He'd been alone, and he'd begun to think the Planet wouldn't ever let him go.

"I...yes. I'll go with you."

Sydney nodded, appreciative but subdued, and as the Doorkeeper glided forward to seal the bond between them, Cloud found himself wondering whose place he'd taken this time, whose shoes he hadn't quite managed to fill.


***

Miles of rolling plains had begun to give way to trees before they finally struck upon the town Sydney wanted, a sprawling market hub whose streets were filled with vendors and tinkers, peddlers and hawkers, and buyers of every stripe. The well-off strolled from stall to stall with their children or their mistresses clinging to their arms while the common folk haggled with spirited abandon, apprentices and buskers and thieves filling in whatever spaces remained in the crowd.

They'd left their birds outside of town, and though Cloud had thought it plain good sense at the time, now he wished they'd come in mounted. It would have given them a bit of distance from the crush on the ground, and he didn't like the looks Sydney was getting from every side, even with his arms and claws hidden under an illusion. Those looks weren't threatening, true, but they were creepy--creepy like Sephiroth sneaking up behind you to purr a 'hello' into your ear--almost hungry. Maybe he was crazy, but from the way the back of his neck was prickling, he got the feeling that only his scowling, hovering presence at Sydney's side kept those too-interested watchers from accosting the man in the street.

"You're not going to explain this," Cloud grumbled without looking at the prophet, "are you?"

"It's the Dark," Sydney replied blandly, mouth twisting in faint consternation. "It thinks it's keeping me safe...perhaps."

"Perhaps?"

"Or perhaps it misses having worshippers and lives vicariously through me."

Cloud choked on startled laughter, and Sydney smirked. He seemed to be immune to the effect himself, but he'd thought that maybe that was what those looks were all about; he just hadn't wanted to assume. A moment later he sobered, realizing that what seemed bizarrely humorous now could turn deadly serious in a heartbeat. The people who stared at Sydney the hardest didn't look rational, and if Sydney couldn't send them packing with the sharp side of his tongue, then he only had magic and those claws to fall back on. And Cloud, who at least wouldn't brand him a mage and a heretic.

Cloud smirked back, letting Sydney know he got it. Indispensable. Right.

"You're being very good-natured about this," Sydney offered, and Cloud couldn't tell whether that was an invitation to interrogate the man or Sydney's roundabout way of saying 'thanks.'

"About what? Holding off your admirers?" he asked anyway, amused.

"Being taken for my lover."

"It doesn't matter to me," he said with a shrug, long past worrying about what strangers thought of him. It'd been different with Zack and Aeris. They'd had to be so careful for so many reasons--because of Shinra, the military, her mother--to the point where they'd never just walked down a street together or gone to dinner or poked around Wall Market without being constantly on guard. "Unless you're about to tell me we're going to get stoned in the public square."

"Not today, I shouldn't think. There's a chocobo fair; they wouldn't want to spook the birds."

Cloud eyed him sidelong, but Sydney just smiled, head up, playing blind to the avaricious and envious stares that followed them. Which, with Sydney, could have meant just about anything, but he suspected it was Sydney's way of telling him no one was going to care who or what he fucked. Well. The "what" might still be an issue, but apparently the respective plumbing of two consenting adults wasn't.

Sometimes, for all that the entire planet seemed to be sunk into some kind of Dark Ages, he really wished he'd been born in Ivalice instead.

They found the fair without trouble, but once among the stalls and the pickets, Sydney barely gave the birds a second glance. Cloud sighed a little, spotting a few lines he wouldn't have minded improving, only he had to wonder if it was even possible to breed anything but a yellow from this world's domesticated stock. He almost hoped not; he didn't want to think about what they did with the inevitable blues and greens that would have popped up from some of the crossings he would have liked to see.

Even so, he didn't let himself get distracted. Following close on Sydney's heels, he shadowed the man through the crowd, quietly interposing himself between Sydney and anyone who looked like they might need a stronger warning. In the back of his mind, he could practically hear Aeris giggling at him, but he shoved that thought aside blindly. He'd played bodyguard before. He could do it again, and this time he wouldn't fuck it up.

He stopped abruptly when Sydney did, following the line of clear grey eyes to where a particularly colorful band stood guard on some of the finest yellows Cloud had ever seen. Loud and outgoing, the handlers were darker-skinned than most of the locals, bronzed, mostly dark-haired, even the men wearing theirs long and sometimes elaborately curled. Silks and scarves, gold and flashy jewels abounded, and though Cloud would have called them gypsies, Sydney had pointed them out before as Rozarrians, remnants of a once-vast empire.

As if Sydney's interest had drawn his gaze, a tall man in burgundy glanced their way and stilled, so smoothly it almost looked natural. Eyes as dark and lively as a sparrow's fixed on Sydney without the unsettling intensity of the crowd's, but the man didn't call out to them, and Sydney didn't go over to meet him. One brief nod was exchanged, and then Sydney was turning away, heading back into the crowd with Cloud right behind him. If he hadn't risked a fast glance half over his shoulder, he wouldn't have seen one of the youngest men slipping away from the others, starting out at a walk and slowly lengthening his stride to an agile lope, weaving easily through the marketplace.

"What now?" he asked, figuring Sydney had found who he was looking for. He just hoped that runner had been sent to smooth the way, not to arrange an ambush.

"They'll be camped at the edge of town, probably to the south or west. We'll circle around until we find them, but it shouldn't be difficult."

"And what are we doing when we get there?"

"I need to speak to the wagon mother," Sydney replied, already smiling, as if he knew what Cloud was going to say.

"Wagons, huh? I thought you said they weren't gypsies."

"I said they called themselves Rozarrians," Sydney corrected with a soft huff of laughter. "They have a vast web of extended family, devoted admirers, and business connections, the envy of any spymaster. If they chose to call themselves the trueborn heirs of Zodiark instead, it would still hardly be worth arguing."

They found the wagons without much trouble, but they weren't what Cloud expected. He'd pictured the sort that took two strong chocobos to pull, things with walls and roofs and enormous wheels, a traveling home for a traveling people. The Rozarrians' wagons were definitely larger than usual, but they were clustered off to one side, the encampment itself mostly tents.

Tall and colorful, some painted with wild designs and others layered like a lady's fine skirts, the clustered tents were as exotic as the Rozarrians themselves, each with its own personality. Some stood open, flaps pulled back to show off glimpses of woven rugs that would have made a Midgar antique dealer keel over dead from shock, nests of cushions centered around low tables, here and there a few older Rozarrians gathered together over silver carafes and small, elegant cups of something that steamed faintly.

Most of the tents stood empty, he noticed, perhaps because most of the camp appeared to be outside. There were young women chattering brightly amongst themselves over their weaving, their cooking, casting sly, friendly glances at the young men showing off their chocobos, birds much finer than what they were selling in town. A group of wizened old men were watching too, their gnarled, thin hands moving like clockwork over harnesses in need of mending, a few weapons in need of sharpening, and they called out opinions and instructions the younger men took with surprisingly good grace. Only a few here and there didn't seem to be occupied with anything in particular, and they were clearly guards, lounging with purpose and keeping a sharp lookout for trouble from the towns and the wilds alike.

There was a moment when Cloud thought they would be quietly intercepted, when the first guard noticed them and came alert with a sudden jolt, folded arms unlacing as he straightened. Habit coiled tight a knot of tension in the pit of Cloud's stomach, one that turned icy as one by one, all eyes turned towards them, all activity in the camp grinding to a halt. In moments they were at the heart of a perfect circle of silence, even the chocobos wide-eyed and solemn as hands went slack on reins, as clever fingers snarled the threads of their looms and long pipes were lowered with dreamlike slowness from parted lips.

"Silverhands," someone murmured, and when Cloud glanced down to check, he found Sydney had indeed dropped the illusion.

He half expected to have a fight on his hands, but instead there were bows all around, uncowed but deeply respectful. Inclining his head regally in answer, Sydney looked like he was about to rattle off a greeting when an ancient woman hardly bigger than a child came bustling out of the camp's largest tent, beaming like a favorite son had just returned home.

"Silverhands!" she cried delightedly. "You honor us with your company."

"It's you who honor me, Mother," Sydney replied, feline smile firmly in place though his voice was perfectly sincere. "It's not a social call, I'm afraid; I've come to beg of your wisdom."

"Paltry wisdom the present is, to one who knows the past and the future," the old woman said with a matching smile, and Cloud realized that to these two, the game of flattery was just that: a game, played with relish.

"The smallest grain of wisdom is a feast to the man starving for it, and I come to you famished," Sydney assured her with a face so innocent he could have been a Turk, spreading his clawed hands out helplessly wide.

The old woman laughed at him outright, her thin voice holding the worn echo of bells, and Cloud thought suddenly that she must have been magnificent in her youth. "Whatever I have is yours, my lad," she promised, gesturing towards the tent behind her in clear invitation. "Come, come in."

She was already turning, comfortable even with those claws at her back, and Cloud fell into step as Sydney moved to follow her. The guards had moved in closer while Sydney and the old woman had been bantering, but so had the rest of the camp, awed and curious and--

"Off!" the old woman scolded, flicking an imperious hand at the suddenly-shamed watchers around them. "Be off with you! You know better than to sniff around the beloved of the Dark. No better than a pack of hounds," she muttered mostly to herself, sending blushing girls and grown, strong men fleeing under her scornful stare.

"Pay them no mind," Sydney said, unruffled. "One grows accustomed."

"They should have better--and what do you mean here, boy?" she snapped at Cloud, unexpectedly fierce, as if she meant to shoo him off like one of Sydney's too-persistent admirers.

"It's all right, Mother. He's mine."

There were several retorts Cloud wanted to make to that, and he could feel them struggling behind his teeth even as he clenched his jaw and quirked a silent brow. It mollified the old woman, though, who looked him over as carefully as if she might ask to see his feet or inspect his plumage.

"Well enough," she said at last, apparently satisfied with what she saw. "Come in, then, both of you, and tell an old woman what use she can be."

The tent was spacious, colorful without crossing the line into gaudy, the sleeping areas divided by painted silk walls from the public space in front. Leading them to one of the ubiquitous low tables, the old woman gestured for them to sit as a child poked its head around one of the inner flaps and scurried purposefully away. Yuffie had insisted everyone in AVALANCHE learn how to sit through a proper meal while they were in Wutai, but cushions hadn't really figured into it. He had to watch Sydney and the wagon mother to figure out what to do with his legs, and finding himself sitting like a sultan on what amounted to an overstuffed pillow, he sort of felt like a little girl at a slumber party. He blamed Marlene for that.

"What have you heard of the movements of the Cardinal and the Blades?" Sydney asked, glancing briefly at the little girl who came hurrying in with a coffee service unbidden. Rozarrian-dark, she had pretty hazel eyes and a shy, sweet smile for each of them, apparently too young for Sydney's magic to even be a blip on her radar.

Cloud nodded in thanks as the girl poured for him, coffee so thick and dark he was surprised it didn't need to be scooped from the carafe with a spoon. It smelled of cinnamon, nutmeg, other spices he couldn't quite place; though it wasn't tea, he was pretty sure Cid would approve.

"Little I like," the old woman said as she raised her own cup, "and much I fear. The Church's reach is long--too long, if they've been delving where rumors say."

Sydney ignored the delicate porcelain placed before him and folded his claws primly in his lap. "We ran into a pack of thralls a week or so past. They'd had their souls torn out complete--not just shut away but stolen. I hadn't realized the current Batistum had perfected his predecessors' crimes to that point."

"To the sorrow of many, yes." She glanced at Cloud then, noticed his confused frown, and smiled wryly. "Ah. Sydney remembers how it was when the Church first started on that road, but I can see you don't."

Cloud shrugged. He hadn't intended to interrupt, figuring he could ask Sydney later if it sounded like something he ought to worry about. "Not really. I'm still stuck on how someone can lose their soul and still be alive...and those people we ran into were definitely alive."

"Not a student of theology, are you?" the old woman asked with a smile. "Well. Each man is comprised of many parts: body and mind, soul and heart, breath and memory and will. Take away any one, and the whole may yet live on, but it usually requires magic of some sort. They're all interconnected, you see; sealing away the soul locks the memory up as well, though it does interesting things to the will. Some lose theirs entire, while others are set in adamantine. When the first Cardinal Batistum started experimenting with enthrallment, that trick of sealing-away was the worst he could do."

"It was bad enough," Sydney said quietly, claws tapping lightly at the side of his cup, though he didn't lift it to drink.

"Aye, lad, it was...but it wasn't enough for our good Cardinal, any of them. The entire Batistum line," she growled, glancing at Cloud again, "each following in the footsteps of his "spiritual" father, and each delving more deeply than the last. What you saw was what seventy years of wicked experiments has gotten them."

Cloud started. Seventy years? That couldn't be right, not when she'd just been implying that Sydney had been there for the start of all this. Only when he shot Sydney a sidelong glance, he found the man's expression grim, eyes staring inward on old memories.

"They say the Church has found a new source of power, an artifact of some sort. Some say magicite...some say nethicite. Which is ridiculous, of course." Her swift headshake was dismissive, but the set of her mouth and the worried tilt to her brows told Cloud that she wasn't nearly as certain of that as she would have liked. "But what's certain is that it's the artifact that's taken them this far. What used to be a slow, chancy process can now be done in minutes, to as many people as they can risk being discovered."

"So they're building an army of thralls?"

"So I've been told. And Cardinal Batistum III is on the move."

Hours later, pleasantly full of the Rozarrian's strange, spicy cuisine and with the merry sounds of the camp carrying softly through the walls of their borrowed tent, Cloud watched Sydney stare thoughtfully at nothing and sigh. The man had been preoccupied since they'd met the wagon mother--so called, he'd learned, because while the tents were where they lived and remembered that they were Rozarrian, it was the wagons that got those tents from place to place, and that took skill and cunning and wisdom. And connections, it seemed, some in very high places. Too bad that what she knew hadn't been the slightest bit comforting, even to Cloud, who was still in the dark over half of it.

"So," he began when Sydney showed no signs of snapping out of his funk, "what's magicite?"

The frown came first as Sydney focused on him slowly, lashes fluttering as he came back to the present. "It's a stone that holds magic," he replied, clearly the short answer, but Cloud didn't let that deter him.

"Like materia?"

Now Sydney wasn't just looking at him but seeing him, curiosity lighting his eyes. "You've used that word before. What does it mean?"

"Materia? It's...they're orbs found where the Lifestream wells up and hardens, or you can make them artificially if you put mako under enough pressure." And if the Planet didn't blow you up or smite you with a plague for trying. "They're condensed essences of knowledge; it's how we were able to do magic."

"Hm. They say your Lifestream was a kind of stone once, before it grew a soul...and then kept on growing. There were different kinds then: magicite, auracite, nethicite, maybe more. It might be the same thing," Sydney said with an awkward shrug, arms wrapped around his drawn-up knees. "I don't know."

"You've never used this 'magicite' stuff?"

"Magicite, yes; the Cloudstones of Leá Monde still flew, before the city was destroyed. Nethicite...no. No one has. Not for thousands of years. It was all supposed to have been destroyed."

"Then how likely is this Cardinal of yours to have gotten his hands on some?"

"Considering that he's as driven as his predecessors?" Sydney asked, mouth twisted wryly. "Very."

That didn't sound encouraging, and Sydney still looked distant, caught up in the past. Figuring the man could only kill him, Cloud decided to go out on a limb.

"Who was it? The person you knew who had their soul wiped? Er, taken," he corrected himself as Sydney glanced at him sharply, the silence stretching out long and heavy between them.

"It wasn't taken," Sydney said at last, "merely sealed. He might have been the prototype, I think...certainly one of the first to have it done to him. A Riskbreaker sent to capture me, if you can believe it; I wouldn't have thought the Church and Parliament could overcome their differences long enough to collaborate, but I can't imagine how else one of the VKP's own Riskbreakers could have come to have his soul tampered with." Offering a smile that didn't reach his eyes, Sydney hunched one metal shoulder. "No one very important."

Cloud didn't believe that, but he didn't want to push more than he already had. Sydney looked more distant than before, strained expression making him look terribly young, though...seventy years? Maybe. If he wasn't just immortal but ageless.

Sydney really didn't look well at all.

Reaching out after only an instant of hesitation, Cloud touched the man's shoulder, the metal cooler than usual under his fingertips. "Hey."

"I'm well," Sydney said automatically, but he didn't brush away Cloud's hand.

"Uh-huh."

"Truly. I require a shield, not a nursemaid." If that had come out sharper than it did, Cloud would have backed off and left him to his own devices, but Sydney was smiling as he said it. Not the provoking kind that Sephiroth had long ago taught him to ignore but amused, almost wistful.

"It's a two-for-one deal," Cloud said with a shrug of his own, and that surprised a laugh out of the man.

"Your language is so interesting," Sydney said, shaking his head, ignoring the fact that his own sometimes seemed impossibly antiquated to Cloud.

"Not half as interesting as the fact that I can speak yours at all."

"The dead all speak in tongues," Sydney replied matter-of-factly. "Just because we're alive now, that doesn't mean we've lost the knack."

Cloud frowned, confused. "I thought you were immortal."

"I am. I was. Just not so much in between; then I was just dead." Cloud's puzzled look must have gotten to him. He took a deep breath, eyes on the toes of his boots, and said, "I was given to the Dark when I was very young. My father passed the power of the Rood Inverse to me when the negative energy of the palings began to affect his body as well as his magic. He wanted Leá Monde destroyed, to end the legacy passed down through our line, and I saw the Rood passed to a man named Ashley before I died. That should have been the end of it. But Ashley needed a teacher, and I suppose I wasn't quite ready to rest, so...."

"So you were brought back?" Cloud hazarded, wondering if Sydney's mysterious Lady had been behind it.

"By the Dark. What it touches, it keeps; once you let it in, it becomes a part of you, and you of it. Those whose souls are touched by the Dark can only die the incomplete death," Sydney said without resentment or nervousness, and Cloud would have figured both were called for. "Not even the gods of the stones or their Doorkeeper have any control over that power; if it wanted me embodied, embodied I would be. That was fine at first; teaching can be pleasant with a quick-minded student, and there are ways and ways of being dead; they aren't all unpleasant. Or unsightly," he added with a distracted chuckle that faded too fast. "Then Ashley disappeared, and it...well, it all went wrong. The Dark gave me back the Rood mark, made me deathless again, and set me to wandering. As you can see."

He was trying not to draw the obvious comparison between Sydney and the Dark and Sephiroth's odd connection with Jenova, but it was difficult. Or maybe not. For all its overwhelming, capricious power, at least the Dark had never driven Sydney mad or changed who he was at heart. That had to count for something.

"Right. So where exactly are we going?"

Sydney smiled, lifting his eyes and fixing all his attention on Cloud once more. "I wondered when you'd ask. Decided to live after all, have you?"

"Maybe I'm just curious." Just because he hadn't been before--

"That's exactly what I meant."

He didn't dignify that with a response, just eyed the other man until Sydney began to chuckle.

"Mount Bur-Omisace. My Lady has foreseen a chance to bring balance to the world's powers, and she sent me to gain an audience with the Gran Kiltias. He's said to be a Dreamseer; perhaps he can tell us more about this artifact the Church has uncovered and how to steal it away from them."

"Because an army of thralls would be a bad thing."

"Very bad," Sydney agreed, smiling a little at Cloud's deliberate understatement. "They won't stay soulless for long...and once they've been occupied, I doubt very much that the ones who made them will have any control over what their creatures have become."


***

Their borrowed tent had a single bed, thanks to Sydney's casual claiming of him, but protesting now would open the door for embarrassing offers of company. Sydney tended to laugh at the idea of modesty anyway. "As if anyone not charmed," he scoffed, lifting his hands, "would risk their hide on these."

Cloud didn't bother mentioning that he'd had years to get used to another friend's claws, that he sometimes forgot how sharp Sydney's were until he'd catch the man looking rather plaintively at something that just wouldn't survive the meeting should he reach for it. If Sydney wanted to try to put him at ease, he could just keep his mouth shut and leave the man to it.

Even so, he lay awake for a long time, feeling Sydney's warmth radiating across the space of shared blankets and soaking into his turned back. He hadn't realized the man was such a furnace, and it was surprising given how lean he was. He didn't want to wonder too closely about whether the tattoo that spanned Sydney's back had anything to do with it. He tried not to think about that mark at all--the Rood mark, evidence of the sort of materialess magic only monsters could use where he came from--or the fact that the skin it was written on looked like it'd been stripped from Sydney's back in a wide swath that hadn't been healed quite quickly enough. What happened? he'd asked once, and Guildenstern was all Sydney would reply, the name apparently explanation enough. He didn't like to think about what could be done to a person who couldn't die from it.

The hushed rhythms of Sydney's breath must have put him to sleep eventually, because he woke turned the other way, his arm slung over Sydney's middle, spooned so close he could feel the exact shape of the Rood Inverse where it burned against his chest. For a moment he was too startled to move, wondering why he hadn't woke earlier; Sydney was too slight to be Zack, too hard to be Aeris, and the strangeness should have startled him awake at once.

"Nn," Sydney sighed--half a grumble, mostly asleep--as Cloud tensed unthinkingly. "Riskbreaker?"

"Cloud," he corrected, voice level. He wasn't even surprised, not really. "Go back to sleep."

The silence was thoughtful, too still for Sydney to actually have taken his advice. "Ah. The nursemaid."

Cloud snorted and made himself relax. Sydney didn't seem to mind, and...it'd been a long time. The warmth and solidity of someone beside him was a nice change. "Sleep."

Riskbreaker, Sydney had called him, as if it hadn't required thought.

No. He wasn't Sydney's first choice at all.


go to next