【SC】Endless Journey

Something changed, my mind did change, but my personality never changed.Personality depends on people's cognition of themselves, and my cognition is based on objective truth from beginning to end—I am a descendant of Jenova, I know what happened on Gaia, and I also know what will happen in the future.As long as the truth remains the same, no matter what experience will make me who I am, you know this better than anyone. "

When he got to the bottom of the matter, he saw the blood start to fade from Claude's face as expected.

"You hate me, you love me, and the parts you hate about me are also in the parts you love, so you can't simply divide me according to your likes and dislikes, you can only accept or reject them all. You have been trying I look for your familiar shadow in me, because what you are really afraid of is not losing me, but the change of your meaning to me."

The youth's pupils constricted sharply, and his chest began to heave unknowingly.

Sephiroth knew he was right, so he walked up to the other party again, slowly brushed aside the blond hair on the side of the young man's cheek, and read into Claude's ear the deepest fear in his heart: "—what you are afraid of is I don't love you anymore."

As these words flowed from his lips, Claude's complexion turned pale to the extreme.

Sephiroth stepped back, silently looking down at his puppet.Claude first gasped violently for a while, then quickly closed his eyes again.

--I know.

Claude took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down.

He knew about it from the beginning. Whether it was Sephiroth 200 years ago or C-07, the essence of their pursuit of self and desire for domination is the same.

He also knew that his affection for Sephiroth was a mistake.He was entrusted with the mission of protecting the planet by Gaia, and he should not have selfish desires due to circumstances or reason.From the moment he admitted this feeling, he was ready to use his life to correct this mistake, but he has been knowingly committing it with some fluke in the past six years.

But those are his emotions and desires as a human being, the truest self he has to face in his life.It was these desires that kept him connected to the world when he felt that he couldn't hold on countless times during the past 200 years.

"……you're right."

Sephiroth didn't expect Claude to admit it directly, and frowned subconsciously.

"So what I did was not entirely for you, but for myself."

Claude suppressed the turbulent emotions in his heart, and made eye contact with Sephiroth again.

"...Alice said that you think there are similarities in our nature, so I can always help you find yourself. I never thought about what is similar to you in myself, but I may indeed be attracted to you because of it .”

"You brought me pain and failure that I will never forget in my life, so I pinned my hatred on you, and every time we fought, I felt like I was punishing myself, so at the end of every battle, I gained Forgiveness for a short time...but just six years ago, I suddenly realized that you had forgotten all this, so I realized that our lives can start over, you can have a normal childhood, and I don't have to continue living here In a kind of self-torture. I want you to be loved as I want myself to be loved, so I chose you over the planet."

Sephiroth has been influencing him, whether it is when the other party is completely unaware of him, or when he is consciously guiding him.But those loves and hates are not the results of the other party's deliberate creation, but his spontaneous emotions.

Alice once said that he is the mirror of Sephiroth, allowing him to reflect the truest self in his heart.However, Sephiroth is not his mirror, reflecting his weakness, contradiction and anger.In the battle with Sephiroth, he challenged his weakness time and time again, and defeated himself in the challenge after challenge.He made Sephiroth a witness of his own life, so he also hopes that Sephiroth can make himself a witness of the other party on an equal footing.

"I don't like the past life, just like I never like the contradictions and weak self... But I respect the efforts I have made in order to live, so I also cherish all the happiness encountered in this process And pain. The memories between us may be meaningless to you now, but that is my life, so I can't let you destroy it, and I can't let you destroy Gaia that carries this memory."

When Claude finished speaking in one breath, his mood changed from unpredictable fear to calm and calm.

Sephiroth looked at him silently, and the picture in front of him gradually began to overlap with another picture in his memory.

"...As long as human beings are alive, they will be connected with the world around them, and they will pin some of their emotions on other people and things, and they are all meaningful to me."

"My hometown, my friends, the people I have loved and hated—"

Claude didn't come to kill himself with pure hatred, but hoped to find the self he loved in him.

Hate only makes people angry, love makes people sad for another person.

When Sephiroth figured this out, his mood became very complicated.

"...that makes sense to me too," he said suddenly.

Claude seemed shocked by this sentence, and looked at him suddenly.

"If you want to know what exactly I see in you, it's something I have as a human being."

— pride, anger, frustration, hatred.

"...and things you never had."

--Love.

"It's also a part of me, an emotional core that cannot be replaced by power. Your presence will remind me of them all the time, so I don't lose myself in the flow of life. And as time grows, it Even more things have been added, so I hope you live—”

—I need you to live.

"Because only you can complete me, Cloud."

The whole world stands still at this moment.

Claude stared at him, his eyes gradually changed from doubt to a little unsure, and finally there was an almost desperate surprise from the bottom of his pupils, as if a drowning man grabbed a piece of driftwood at the last moment.

"...Sephiroth."

The blond-haired young man suddenly seemed to have been drained of all the strength in his body, and slowly lowered himself to the six poses, and then tremblingly called out his name.

It was the first time Cloud had called him by that name since they last met.

"it's me."

Sephiroth knew that Cloud had recognized him, so he responded softly.

He took a few steps forward and brought the two of them back to the distance where they could touch each other.Claude pressed his forehead against his chest, and then stood there motionless.

Sephiroth slowly raised his arms around Claude's back, gently stroking the blond hair on the back of the young man's head like combing a feather.Then he rested his chin lightly on top of the other's head and hugged his lover tightly.

"……I am back."

He's back, and this time he won't leave easily.

He'd take Cloud, take the rest of Gaia's life, and then they'd never have to part again.

Claude gradually calmed down the trembling in his arms, and hugged his waist with his backhand.After a long time, the other party's voice came against the skin of his chest.

"When did you remember?"

Sephiroth glanced down, and decided to tell the truth: "After Masamune inserted it."

The other party's breathing seemed to stop for a moment, and he quickly asked: "Do you know that I will go to you?"

Sephiroth didn't deny it.So Claude fell into a long silence.

They are the people who know each other best in the world. In fact, they already know the answer to some questions without asking.Claude had already figured it out a lot during the last parting, and now he was just asking him to prove his guess.

Still, they wanted to give each other a chance.

The two hugged quietly for a long time before Claude spoke again: "You planned all this?"

Sephiroth hesitated for a moment, but still defended himself a bit: "I didn't leave it on purpose, but I know it exists."

In fact, he didn't expect that after the original S-type reconstruction, he would almost kill Claude. If Claude resented him because of this incident, he didn't mind letting the other party do it.

Claude did not respond immediately, but continued to dock in his arms.Just when Sephiroth thought he was ready to accept the reality, the other party suddenly let go of the hand around his waist.

"...What are your future plans?"

Claude's voice had returned to its original calm, and Sephiroth knew that this was not a good sign.Because the next topic might lead them into a fight to the death, but he didn't want to deceive each other.

"I will take all the stream of life here, and then leave with Meteor, to another planet similar to Gaia, forty light-years away. You also have to go with me."

After hearing this sentence, Claude was silent for a while, and finally pushed him away from him.

"It's too late, Sephiroth."

Just as Sephiroth was about to ask, he suddenly felt a chill in his chest.He raised his head, only to see that the young man's eye sockets were moist red, and he was staring at him with a strange expression that seemed to be crying and smiling.

"It's too late, I can't go with you."

Claude took a few steps back and suddenly tore off the sleeve of his left arm.

It was only then that Sephiroth noticed the physical condition of the opponent.Claude's left arm had a large piece of porcelain-like cracks at some point, and some of the cracks had begun to peel off in small pieces.The source of the crack was bound by a red ribbon, and a dazzling white light faintly shone from below.

Sephiroth carefully observed the wound under the ribbon, and finally realized what it was—it was a whole giant magic spar, the crystallization of all the wisdom of the ancient species, which was forcibly compressed into the body of Claude alone. .

"When did you..."

The moment he opened his mouth, he already thought of the answer.

Claude once showed amazing healing ability in the battle of the Forgotten City. At that time, he only guessed that the opponent used some unconventional means, but he never thought that the opponent would use a giant magic spar.This is almost a suicide behavior, even Claude can't bear such a huge amount of energy, so the other party's soul and body have suffered damage as early as that time-this also explains the feeling he felt when he first met the other party. To the reason why Claude is strong and fragile.

Sephiroth's heart skipped a beat.He tried to rush up to stop Claude, but was blocked out of reach by the burst of energy.

"...This is the price I have to pay."

Claude said lightly, but tears poured out of his eyes uncontrollably.

The opponent's body had already begun to shatter, and it was only by Alice's strength that he managed to maintain his form.Sephiroth tore the surrounding space hard, but he still couldn't get close to Claude in the energy center.

"After you were swallowed by the original S-type, I once thought I lost you, so I wanted to kill 'him' no matter what...but when I was about to throw everything away to destroy 'him', I suddenly found that You might still be alive."

Claude's voice trembled slightly, but Sephiroth was not in the mood to listen to him at all.

"Stop it! If this continues, your soul will be shattered together!" He growled at the other party.

"It's broken," Claude smiled with difficulty, "after I went to you the first time."

Sephiroth's movements froze suddenly.

He looked up at Claude, and the expression on the other side said "that's what you think".

——Claude did not "use" the giant magic spar, but extracted the energy of the giant magic spar to strengthen himself.

This is similar to his operation of absorbing the flow of life from the planet 200 years ago to strengthen himself into another form. The effect it produces is irreversible. Once the energy is absorbed in this way, it cannot be returned unless it is completely dead.

But back then he didn't intend to return those energies to Gaia, so he didn't care about the consequences of doing so; and Claude just wanted to fight the original S-type, in order to get him back from Xenovia's sea of ​​consciousness, so from From the moment I chose this option, I had already made the determination to die.

Sephiroth realized this, and suddenly there was a suffocating pain in his chest.

Their fight was over before it began.

Whether he wins or not, Cloud is doomed to die, not even his soul.So the last person on the planet who can remember completely will no longer exist.

Claude looked at him with such sad eyes, as if he was saying a silent farewell.Sephiroth forced himself to meet his gaze, trying to imprint every second of this moment on his soul.

The unbound energy gradually became violent, forming a wind pressure capable of crushing everything.The platform under their feet was cracked and shattered in the storm, and even the entire Peking University Cavern shook violently.The planet seems to have sensed the abnormality above the abyss, and the stream of life rushed to the ground restlessly.

In the world that was about to collapse, Claude finally picked up the Six Styles again, pointing at his destined enemy and lover.

"Actually, you won't really die, will you?" Claude suddenly asked in a very low voice.

Sephiroth nodded silently.

This matter was already expected by Claude, so the other party sighed and continued to ask: "If I kill you here, will you still be in Gaia's stream of life?"

Sephiroth thought for a moment, and finally answered him honestly: "...No. The rest of me has been stored in the meteorite."

"So that's how it is..." Claude laughed self-deprecatingly, "So you have got rid of the shackles of the Jenova cells on the body. If you die here, you will create a new body from the meteor, and you can already Straight away from Gaia."

Sephiroth didn't deny it, but he was deeply hurt by that look.

"...Even so, I must kill you."

Claude tried his best to maintain his calm, but tears fell silently from the corners of his eyes.

"I know that what you and Jenova are after is a higher existence than a short-lived species like humans...but your body and spirit are strong enough to support eternal life. Humans are fragile and small creatures , are very sensitive to everything encountered in the process of survival. Therefore, human beings will be happy, sad, want to connect with other individuals, and feel pain for every loss... I am also such a creature, so I must protect The right to live like this."

He and Sephiroth cannot recognize each other's way of life, so they cannot accept the sacrifice of other lives to achieve eternal life.

...However, he was still a little unwilling.

Claude looked at the man who made him unforgettable, and the wound deep in his soul began to ache like tearing.

After they have been entangled like this for 200 years, after Sephiroth has caused his deepest pain and gained his most devoted emotions, he may not appear in the memory of the other party's rebirth.

... He is not reconciled.

"...my last wish."

When he said this, Sephiroth immediately gave him complicated looks.

That person's influence on him lasted his whole life, but he may only be a short-lived existence in the long life of the other party.Even though he knew that it was pointless to dwell on these things, he was still afraid of such a future.

He is not a saint, he also has selfishness.At the last moment of his life, he wanted to keep himself in Sephiroth's memory forever.

"……do not forget me."

In the vision blurred by tears, Claude saw the pair of bright green vertical pupils shrinking in shock because of him as he wished.

"...Remember this initial hatred, and don't forget me."

The moment Cloud spoke his wish, another voice appeared in Sephiroth's mind.

He had repeatedly invaded Claude's dreams, just to let the other party remember him forever, but he never thought that Claude would make the same request to himself at the end of his life.

This is the last love Claude can express to him.

Sephiroth felt a sudden, real pain of loss.It was not as sharp as he had imagined, and even had a hint of warmth, but it made his heart gripped by this endless dull pain from the depths of his soul.

After 200 years of their confrontation in various formats, only this time he could actually lose Cloud.

His old enemy, his puppet, his half body and his beloved will all disappear completely with everything in front of him.

The unprecedented sourness and pain surged in Sephiroth's heart, but he knew that he had no time to grieve, because Cloud might only have a few minutes after the energy of the giant magic spar was fully released.Even though the opponent was doomed to die before the battle started, Claude hoped to be treated with the dignity of a warrior, so he would still fight this battle to the end.

"Come on, Claude."

Sephiroth forcibly suppressed that painful emotion, and summoned Masamune into his hand.

"If you win, then you can kill me and save your planet. But if you lose, I will grant my wish, take away the flow of life here, and restart it with Jenova's fire sail."

Claude looked at him, knowing that his wish had been fully conveyed to the other party.So he wiped away the tears from his face, and smiled at Sephiroth with all his strength.

"……as you wish."

In the evening, a few flashes of white light flickered in the void of Peking University, and then two huge beams of light rose up.

The beams of light began to spread outward the moment they appeared, each covering tens of thousands of square kilometers of land.The satellite flying over the North Continent captured the two beams of light and sent back infrared images to the station. The images showed that the temperature at the center of the beams of light had exceeded the temperature at the center of the sun.

The energy of these two beams of light was so strong that it almost flattened the entire Northern Continent.The flow of life soon began to flow out from all over Gaia, converging in the direction of the North Great Hole.

In the meeting room of the station, everyone was nervously gathering around the screen watching the images sent back by the satellite.

"Is that Claude?" White asked dumbfounded while quickly analyzing the image.

"I'm afraid only half of them are." Vincent nodded slightly.

"The other half?" Angel asked subconsciously.

"That should be Sephiroth." Genesis quickly answered for him.

The center of the beam is too hot for satellites to detect any detail, so no one knows what's going on inside the Void.But what is certain is that Claude has liberated the power of the giant magic spar. This power can last for up to 3 minutes, and then Claude will be completely vaporized.

——There is not much time left for the planet.

The 3 minutes were coming to an end, the beam of light showed no signs of weakening, and Zacks began to show a worried expression.

"If Cloud fails, do we have a plan B?" He couldn't help asking.

"Of course." Nanaki held a small box in the center, and touched the switch of the box lightly with his nose.Genesis only took a look, then gasped.

"Black magic stone and white magic stone... where did you get them at the same time?"

"One was kept by us after Alice left, and the other..." Nanaki licked his wet nose and whispered, "Claude found it back 200 years ago."

Plan B, which used the black magic stone to deal with the meteorite, was supposed to start at the same time as Claude's operation, but it was postponed by Claude's request.

If the moon's fragments fall, it will have a devastating impact on the planet anyway, so Cloud thinks that this solution cannot be used unless it is a last resort.But they all knew the real reason, but no one had the heart to refuse his last wish.

Now his wish may finally be coming true.

The crater of the Beida Hollow has completely collapsed under the impact, and the core of the planet has been exposed to an area that can be touched by foreign objects like never before.But Sephiroth no longer had the extra strength to extract the life flow in it. Most of his and Claude's bodies were almost destroyed the first time the two sides erupted, and they had completely lost their ability to move in the second second.

His remaining limbs were being burned by white flames, and his soul began to be stripped from his body little by little.Sephiroth struggled to maintain his soul in the beam of light, waiting for the new moon above his head to descend again.

If the meteorite can pass the Beida Cavity for the fourth time before he is completely dead, he still has a chance to repair himself.But Claude's situation is already quite bad. The soul began to slowly shatter in the first minute of their confrontation, and now there is less than half of it left.

When Sephiroth watched Claude become fragmented in front of his own eyes, the long dull pain once again invaded his soul.

"……do not forget me."

As Claude's fragments continued to peel off, those important memories also became blurred.

The room in the Institute, the inn at the Chocobo Farm, the screen at the Golden Disc Playground, the goodbye kiss in the midgar rainstorm—

"...I loved you."

The cloudy sky, the abandoned steel city, the sharp blade piercing through the chest, and the lingering body——

"Love is...an emotion that, contrary to biological nature, puts another person above oneself."

The fire in Nibelheim, the corpse of the ancient female in the secret room, the desperate and crying face of the blond youth, the decisive battle in the void of Peking University——

"...so you haven't really loved anyone but yourself."

……Do not.

not like this.

Sephiroth realizes that with Cloud's death, a part of himself is dying too.Even if the arrival of the new moon can restore his physical body, the lost part will never come back.

He wants to live, but he doesn't live just to live.That is the lowest instinct of all life, and as a high-level creature with complex thinking, he should pursue a better life.

Claude is right, when his emotions are connected with people and things around him, he will start to linger on those stimulating feelings - strong hate, strong love, joy when he has it, pain when he loses it - and Claude is the source of those emotions.

He had already tasted the life Claude wished he had, and he could no longer bear the loneliness of being alone forever.

"I love him as I love myself."

The world without Claude is no longer attractive to him, and everything he manages has lost its meaning.

So before they were completely engulfed by the white light, Sephiroth suddenly gathered all his strength and grabbed Claude who was shattering.The other party's soul collapsed to the point where only a few pieces of the chest and head remained. Regardless of the burning pain, he tightly embraced the fragments of Claude in his arms, and then kissed him fiercely under the shocked eyes of the other party.

"What are you doing...?" Claude asked with difficulty between the kisses.

"I will not be destroyed, and I will not let you be destroyed." Sephiroth pressed against the other's lips and gasped.

He began to dismantle his soul, repairing each other faster than Claude collapsed.The flow of their life was like two springs intertwined and began to seep into each other little by little.

"You're crazy Sephiroth! In this way you also--" Claude tried to stop him, but there was no room for struggle.

Sephiroth knew what he wanted to say.Once he did this, he would be bound to Gaia with Claude's soul, but he didn't regret it.Claude paid an incalculable price to get him back, and now he has returned it to the other party in full.

All the mixed memories began to return to the mind, and all the information gathered in the same soul.They began to use each other's memories to mend their own fragmented memories, and eventually they could no longer distinguish each other.

"—we'll live together."

From now on they will exist forever as one being until the day of their destruction.