Vincent's New Kid Just Dropped - Naughty_Nish*tani (2024)

He’d been furious when his eldest son first began showing up in their home, uninvited, at all hours of the day and night. Then he’d been worried about the man’s motives and their safety, since he was human super-weapon literally unstoppable by any means known to man.Then he'd been wary of letting Ollie get attached to someone who might just up and vanish from her life.

But everything Sephiroth had done so far was consistent with his stated desire to care for his little sister, and gradually, his constant presence became a part of their daily lives. If nothing else, he was huge help with baby duties. Vincent and Cid hadn’t slept this well or had so much free time to actuallybetogether, for months.

They hadn't discussed their biological relationship, apart from that first night, when Sephiroth had dropped it on him, like a bomb, but it didn’t seem there was much to say. Sephiroth called him ‘father’ from that point on, and never addressed it further.

If Vincent was honest, with himself, he liked seeing Lucrecia’s son this way; with his armor off, literally and metaphorically. He looked so much like her, when he was at ease, and that manic, Jenova-tainted light wasn’t in his eyes. He was so gentle and soft-spoken, too, it was like he was another person. In disposition, Sephiroth was actually very much like Vincent, not Lucrecia, though Vincent didn’t realize it.

Right now, his long, silver hair was pulled back in a loose braid (otherwise it would all go directly into Ollie’s mouth, via her chubby little grabbers), and he was wearing black jeans and a thin, white t-shirt, with a v-neck so deep that the cleavage between his absurd pectoral muscles was visible. At least he was owning his aesthetic.

Vincent sighed as he measured rice into the colander. Now that they were just settling into a comfortable routine with Seph and Ollie, there was another bomb to drop on the family beehive.

Vincent had another biological son, created the same way, from his genetic material and without his knowledge or consent. Another deeply traumatized, poorly socialized, possibly criminally insane young man, with highly dangerous abilities and no one who cared if he lived or died.

Vincent’s paternity had already been established in absentia, and he received a subpoena, to give testimony regarding his adult son’s potential for recidivism, and the practical threat he posed to humanity in general, as an augmented individual. That was how he found out about his second son. A subpoena.

The prosecution wanted to execute Nero, out of hand. The defense said he was mentally unstable and driven to extremes by systematic brainwashing and horrific abuse. Vincent couldn’t allow them to just kill the young man, no matter what antagonism had lain between them. In the end, he was remanded to his father’s custody, under house arrest, depending upon his behavior during that period, and providing his father consented to such an arrangement.

When Vincent told him it was a possible outcome of the trial, Cid agreed to it, without batting an eyelash. They had one child intentionally. That was what they’d both wanted. Now they had three, all biologically Vincent’s, two of whom were adults who had tried to kill one or both of them, at some point. Cid seriously deserved some kind of medal for world’s best husband.

Speaking of which, he’d be back with the newly acquired family member any minute, now. Cid had taken Nero to shop for basic necessities like clothing and toiletries, and Vincent wassupposedto be preparing Ollie and Seph for their new brother’s arrival. Instead, he was hiding in the kitchen, cooking rice, because that’s what he did when he was stressed out and avoiding conflict with family members. After all, that’s what his mother had always done.

When she was upset that Grimoire had missed yet another milestone in Vincent’s life, or when she suspected Grimoire of having an inappropriate relationship with his assistant, or when Vincent and his father were arguing yet again, about Vincent joining the Turks, rather than pursue the sciences; she would never confront her husband or join any disagreement, until after she’d gone to the kitchen and cooked rice.

Once, when he was little, Vincent asked her why she cooked so much rice. She told him that no matter what was going on, nothing was ever made worse by having something to eat. Now, many, many years later, as he stood at his own sink, sifting through the smooth, heavy, little grains under the running water, shaking out the strainer, watching the cloudy water turn clear as the starch was rinsed away, he understood the purely meditative value of the exercise, too.

Nothing was ever made worse by having something to eat, nor by taking a beat to calm down and reflect, and if you could also do something productive while you were at it, all the better. Pushing the button on the rice cooker, he went back into the living room, prepared to tell his children about his other child.

Of course, that was the moment Cid burst in the front door, his blue eyes ablaze, his blonde brow deeply furrowed, and a cigarette hanging from his lips, having very clearly had some manner of altercation with that selfsame child.

“Get your ass in here, or I’ll carry ya, myself!” he shouted, out the door, as he remembered he had a cigarette, and paused to grind the butt out in the little bucket of sand. Then he turned to Vincent, shaking his head. “Sorry for showin’ up in a huff like this, babe, but this kid is somethin’ else. He could make a saint swear.”

“It seems this person can make you swear, at least,” Sephiroth observed. “Though, you seem to swear whether or not there is any provocation, at all.”

“Baaa-paaaa!” Ollie squealed joyously, reaching for Cid, who accepted her from her brother and twirled her around.

“There’s my lil’ princess. Papa missed ya so much,” he cooed, his entire manner softening and brightening, as if his baby daughter were a literal sun, casting its rays on him.

There was a noise, and all three looked up, to see that the patience-trying person in question was standing in the doorway, arms crossed tightly on his chest, looking down at the floor, which was such a common posture of Vincent’s, Cid would have laughed aloud, if he hadn’t already been so pissed off at the kid.

Summary:

Sephiroth being a big brother. Whether Nero likes it or not.

In the small hours of the morning, when that blanket of silence that lies upon a sleeping household was thickest, Nero carefully opened his bedroom door. The knob made the faintest metallic click, then it swung open silently. Fortunately for him, the house was new enough that the hinges didn’t creak, which he had observed earlier in the day, or he'd never have tried this.

The dearest wish of his heart had finally come true. He had abandoned this mortal husk and they had become one, at last. Truly united, in body and soul.In that moment of sublime joy, he surrendered his entire self, to be swallowed up and assimilated, once and for all, into the one he loved.

Then that f*cking red-caped bastard tore them apart again. Ripped him violently away from his other half and left a gaping, bleeding hole in his place.

Now, his every breath was a misery to him. He was shattered, ragged, raw and gutted; consumed by aching, gnawing desperation, that made his bones itch and his teeth feel hollow.

He stretched his jaw, but there was no soothing resistance to push against. He crossed his arms tightly, but there was no reassuring pressure to hold them down. He missed his muzzle and straitjacket. He even missed the darkness and the chains. To sleep away the years in nothingness would be preferable to this waking nightmare, where he was alive, without his brother.

And they had the sheer audacity to say Weiss was dead. As if Nero wouldn’t know it, the moment his only beloved’s soul left this plane of existence. They were severed halves of the same whole. He would know it, if the other half of his heart died. He would f*cking know.

Too agitated to sit still any longer, he got up and paced about, from the window to the closet to the bed, arms crossed rigidly, black fingernails digging into the black, tattoo-like patterns that were crawling along his arms, writhing and shifting, in response to his emotional turmoil.

A purple tendril reached out tentatively from his forearm and twined itself around his finger, almost like a pet, nuzzling its master. Then another, and another. When he pulled his hand away, thin purple strands had got themselves webbed between all his fingers, and stretched out between his hand and his arm, like tacky slime.

He scowled and shook them off. They dangled there, for a minute, flopping around and acting pathetic, but when it became clear he wasn’t going to pity them, they sullenly retracted, into the markings on his arm.

Hearing clanging noises outside, he stepped back to the window and peered out, through a crack in the blackout curtains. That obnoxious blonde man, with scruffy stubble and a cigarette permanently dangling from his lip was out there, doing something to one of the rusty old vehicles, that involved wrenches and cursing.

Nero went back and curled up into a ball on the bed, hugging his knees to his chest. There was no way to escape from this place. Not with that absolute monster Sephiroth always around, guarding the place like an overenthusiastic Doberman.

An overenthusiastic Doberman that was also a full-time nanny. What the hell was his obsession with that stupid baby? He had her more than either of her fathers did, and he was always talking to her (half the time in Wutaian), as if she was an adult who could understand him, in any language.

The bandaged wounds in his chest throbbed, suddenly, making him wince and take short, panting breaths. They said the puncture wounds went straight through his back and all the way out the front, collapsing both lungs and just barely missing his heart. They all agreed he should be dead, but no one could figure out what weapon had been used. The prevailing theory was a trident. Doctors were idiots.

When he was considered well enough to present a serious and immediate danger to the stability of society, he was moved from the hospital, to a Shinra owned maximum-security super-prison, where they kept him muzzled and chained up, just like he’d been in the reactor. It wasn’t much different from normal.

But then lawyers started coming to see him. Saying things like ‘not competent to stand trial’ and ‘traumatized victim’ and ‘horrifically abused over a sustained period.’ That wasn’t very nice of them, but he didn’t care what they thought, and never deigned to acknowledge anything they said to him.

Then they started in with the ‘DNA testing has confirmed paternity’ and ‘only living relative’ and ‘father.’ What the hell were they on about? He tuned in for a little while, till he understood that the red-caped bastard who beat him senseless, was also the one who’d dragged him out of there and ‘saved his life.’ And now they were claiming that very same bastard was his father. Which, ironically, madeNerothe bastard.

His entire being revolted against the idea, and at the same time, he wondered at the fact that it hadn’t been obvious to him, the moment he saw the man’s face. Crimson wasn’t exactly a common eye color, not to mention naturally straight, jet-black hair, with almost no respect for gravity. The deathly pale, faintly olive-toned complexion and lithe, slender frame (the height seemed to have skipped a generation, but he was only twenty-three; there was still a chance he’d grow a little more). Even the man’s Wutaian ancestry was visible in Nero’s face.

Not that he acknowledged that bastard as his father. He did not. Given the choice, he’d have remained in prison, rather than go with him. He was not given a choice.

The prison system felt it was inadequate to handle such an individual, long term, and pleaded the potential for immense casualties, as well as tens of millions of gil in property destruction, should they lose control of him. The insurance rates alone would bankrupt them in a matter of weeks. They simply couldn’t bear the liability.

Failing a death sentence, which they could not impose, since he was deemed insane, and not legally culpable, the court decided that the best way to keep an augmented person in check was another, stronger augmented person, who had already proven himself to be on the side of law and order. Even better, the little walking apocalypse’s biological father happened to be just such a person.

Thus, Nero was remanded to the custody of Vincent Valentine, under house arrest, term to be determined, depending upon progress, behavior, mental stability, blah blah blah.

They didn’t know how to remove his darkness power, so he was put in a permanent neckband, with some diabolical Shinra tech in it, that restrained it somewhat. Then they just sent him away, with the red-caped bastard and his foul-mouthed husband.

The prison system breathed a collective sigh of relief to have that mess conveniently off their hands, and everyone moved on with their lives. Everyone except Nero, who’d had no say in the matter.

Nero, who was now in the cold-sweat phase of a full blown panic attack, curled up in a self-soothing ball, in this teeth-grindingly spacious and airy bedroom, in this sickeningly harmonious household, with his fake family and WITHOUT HIS GODDAMNED BROTHER.

That silver-haired lunatic didn’t count, no matter how he insisted on it. Sephiroth was not his real brother, and he never would be. Never. Nero clenched his teeth and bit back the childish tears, that were attempting to force their way out of his eyes.

Stupid. Juvenile. Weak. What would Weiss think, if he saw you behaving this way?

That thought sliced through the panic spiral, and the iron bands that were constricting around his ribcage fell away. He sat up, taking deep, calming breaths and regaining his composure. He had a responsibility to Weiss. He had to get back to him, no matter what.

Escape was his number one priority, but he couldn’t overpower the enemy, so he’d have to outsmart them. In order to do that, he’d have to gain their trust. Get them to let their guard down. Bide his time and await the right moment. The second they gave him enough slack, he’d slip the lead and vanish, before they knew what was happening.

But he couldn’t suddenly become a model family member. They’d see through that immediately, and the game would be lost. He would have to run cold, take one step forward and two back, let them think they were wearing down his resistance. Getting through to him, little by little.

Just when they started patting themselves on the back, for rehabilitating this poor, troubled youth, they’d realize he was nowhere to be found. He smiled to himself, imagining the looks on their stupid faces, when they realized they’d been played for fools.

Then his smile faded and he chewed his thumbnail, anxiously. The problem was Sephiroth. Nero doubted he’d ever let his guard down, and he could very well spoil everything, if he kept the others on alert.

Well, there was nothing for it. No plan was without its hitch. He’d just have to be extra vigilant, around Sephiroth, and never let the mask show a crack. There’d be no escaping with him present, either, so he’d have to wait for circ*mstances to line up. When the Doberman was away, the cat could play.

Summary:

The Vincent-verse keeps growing. This one finally has some well-earned Cid and Vincent time.

NOTE: Wutai is Final Fantasy 7 universe's Japan/China amalgamation culture. I have chosen to mostly use Mandarin for Wutaian, because I have always had an HC that Vincent is half Wutaian (Chinese) anyway.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Every time he looked at this celestial creature who for some ungodly reason had consented to be his own, Cid’s chest tightened up and his throat ached with emotion. He loved this man so much, he felt it physically, as a tender, aching wound, in his heart. Not just love, but worship, devotion, fervent adoration—an almost religious zealotry. The kind that inspires men to lay down their very lives in service of the object of their idolatry.

Vincent stirred and sat up, on the edge of the bed. Cid lay still, watching, as hair like a waterfall of ink, cascaded down an ivory-white back, crisscrossed with deep, ragged scars. Sinewy shoulder muscles flexed under the translucent skin, as a long, slender, white hand and a gnarled, black hand with razor-sharp claws, reached back and drew the heavy, glossy hair into a loose ponytail.

“You’re staring,” Vincent’s deep, honey-smooth voice said, over his shoulder.

“I can’t help myself, baby. You’re as pretty as a goddamn picture,” Cid defended (unfortunately, his spoken vocabulary was not quite the match of the poetic transcendence in his internal ruminations).

“Hmph,” Vincent scoffed, as Cid sat up behind him, with his thighs outside Vincent’s, and slipped his calloused hands onto a waist so narrow, they could almost encompass it.

“I mean it, sugar dumpling, you’re prettier’n the prettiest girl I ever seen,” Cid insisted, coiling his arms around him. “Prettier’n a flower. Or like—one of them birds with the long-ass feathers.”

“Peaco*ck.”

Cid had meant a certain crimson, long-tailed bird he’d seen once, but he didn’t know what it was called, and didn’t feel like dwelling on it. “Mhm, a peaco*ck.”

Vincent’s chest vibrated with a low chuckle, then his head lolled forward and he gave a little gasp, shuddering at the hot breath on the back of his neck, the soft lips and scratchy stubble, as Cid dropped kisses like flower petals, on his pronounced spine and shoulder blades, both of which he was deeply self-conscious, but Cid appeared to enjoy immensely.

Much like his scars. Those knotted, twisted lightning bolts, that shot through every inch of this ruined hide, as if his body had been torn apart and stitched back together, many times over. Which it quite literally had. That he’d been in a state of forced consciousness for most of it, was a secret he told to no one. Least of all his adoring husband.

Feigning reluctance, he gradually allowed himself to be coaxed back into bed, tumbled amongst the sheets, pressed down beneath the weight of a solid, muscular body, taken with a heat and passion that were astonishing to him, even after all this time.

He arched his long spine, lips wet and parted, half-lidded crimson eyes hazy and lust-drunk, his black claws cutting a bloody trail across Cid’s brawny, golden-tanned back, with his shuddering release. Cid covered his mouth with fervent kisses and spilled inside him, saying ‘I love you, I love you,’ over and over, against his lips.

The sun poured liquid gold between the curtains, as they lingered in each other’s arms, basking in these precious moments of tenderness and joy, amid the slings and arrows of life. This was a luxury they could afford, now, since the care of their infant daughter had been almost entirely assumed, by the most dangerous man either of them had ever encountered.

The morning was growing late, when the two of them finally emerged from their bedroom.

“Good morning, father. Stepfather,” Sephiroth greeted them, rising as they entered the living room. “There is fresh coffee in the pot and I’ve kept your breakfast warm in the oven.”

“Mm, thank you Sephiroth,” Vincent yawned, turning toward the kitchen.

“How’s my little princess, this fine mornin’?” Cid inquired of the black-haired infant, who was in her play swing, drooling all over a ring of brightly-colored teething beads.

“Ba-baaaa,” she chirped, kicking her chubby legs, as he lifted her from the swing.

“Stepfather, I’d like permission to take my brother to the grocery store, today,” Sephiroth said to Cid. “I think it would be good for him.”

“Uh…Vinnie’s the one in charge, here. You don’t gotta ask my permission,” Cid said, confusedly. “Speakin’ of your brother, where is that little f*cker?”

“Fuh guh,” Ollie repeated, drooling exuberantly.

“Sh—hey!” Cid whispered to her. “Don’t repeat words papa says, like that, or he’ll get in trouble with daddy!”

“Dadadadaaa,” she conceded.

“Nero hasn’t been feeling well,” Sephiroth said. “Please, excuse his rudeness.”

“Tch. I’m feeling fine. Excuse yourself,” a soft, slightly hoarse voice retorted, from the hallway arch.

“Wee-woo!” Ollie announced, as the black-haired, crimson-eyed young man slunk into the room.

“Good mornin’ to you, too, sunshine,” Cid said irritably. “What brings you to the land of the livin’?”

“Your charming manners, of course,” Nero sneered, till a big hand grabbed him by the back of the neck, giving him a start.

“Apologize to our stepfather, and speak respectfully to him, from now on,” Sephiroth said, with a placid smile.

“He’s not my f*cking—ah!” Nero cried out, grimacing in Sephiroth’s iron grip. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, sir!”

“Wee-woo!” Ollie added, for good measure.

“That’s your second elder brother, mei-mei,” Sephiroth told her. “You can call him er-ge.”

“Ah-guh! Ah-guh guh guh,” she burbled, leaning forward in Cid’s arms toward Nero, who shrunk back at the sight of the slobbering little gremlin, who was grasping at him with its slimy paws.

“What’s going on in here? Is everything alright?” Vincent asked, as he entered with two mugs of coffee.

“I was just instructing my brother regarding how to properly address our stepfather,” Sephiroth, whose arm was now around Nero’s shoulders, explained.

“About that. You don’t gotta do all that ‘stepfather’ and ‘sir’ sh*t,” Cid put in awkwardly, accepting one of the mugs from Vincent, and then holding it away from Ollie, who immediately tried to get her fingers into it. “Specially since…ya know. You and me are the same age.”

“Age has little to do with courtesy. Your position as our father’s husband demands respect, from us, as his children. However, if it makes you uncomfortable, please tell us what you would prefer to be called.”

“Cid’s fine. Just no more of that sir business. A family ain’t a military unit.”

“You married a man the same age as your son?” Nero smirked, at Vincent. “Exemplary.”

“Was that sarcasm, little brother?” Sephiroth asked.

“No, no!” Nero answered hastily. “I was simply congratulating…our father…on his good fortune in marriage.”

His voice betrayed a little tremor of disgust, as he pronounced the words ‘our father’ but Sephiroth let it pass. At that moment, the front door opened, and a young man with inexplicably buoyant golden-blonde hair, and big, bright, mako-blue eyes entered. He stopped short, seeing the entire family gathered in the living room.

“Hey, everyone. I’m here to—what the f*ck!” he exclaimed, doing an actual double-take at what appeared to him to be two Vincents. “Who is that guy?? Why does he look exactly like Vincent?!”

“Maaaamaaaaa! Mamamamamaaa!” Ollie shrieked joyously, writhing and kicking her little legs, in an earnest attempt to propel herself from Cid’s arms to Cloud’s.

“Mama?” Nero said, arching a sharp, black eyebrow. “Now thisisgetting interesting.”

“No—Cloud. I keep telling you, Ollie, it’s not mama, it’s Cloud,” the young man admonished, accepting the wriggling bundle from Cid (which he had to, as there would be no pacifying Ollie, otherwise). “Can you say it for me? Cloud.”

“Mama!” Ollie asserted, with cheerful confidence.

“Cloud, this is Nero,” Vincent explained, stepping forward. “It’s rather a long story, but he’s my son.”

Cloud’s blue eyes widened. “Like, biological? Seph, you have a brother, now?”

“Mn,” Sephiroth nodded. “Nero the Sable, no legal surname. He is twenty-three years old, uses a Chaos-derived darkness ability, and has been declared criminally insane, by the state. He belonged to the Deepground Tsviets, before being remanded to my father's custody, and has likely killed a person or two of your acquaintance, at some point.”

“Wow. Sounds like he reallyisyour brother. Hi, Nero. Nice to meet you. I’m Seph’s boyfriend, Cloud.”

Nero was opening his mouth to say he didn’t give a sh*t who he was, but a subtle shift in Sephiroth’s posture made him shut it again, and make do with a stiff dip of his chin.

Cloud looked back and forth between them. “So…you guys ready to go grocery shopping?”

Notes:

mei-mei (pronounced may-may): little sister, affectionate
gege (pronounced guh-guh): elder brother, affectionate
er-ge (pronounced ahr-guh): second elder brother

Summary:

WARNING: captivity, human experimentation, child abuse/neglect

They thought he was blind, at first, because he never looked around or focused on anything. It turned out he wasnearly blind, but only in bright light. He had perfect dark-vision. This wasn’t a physical defect, they decided, but a successful result of bio-engineering, and congratulated themselves on their ingenuity.

He never cried, as an infant, and as a toddler, he never smiled or laughed. He was marginally responsive, but avoided eye contact, and was entirely nonverbal. They assumed he was mentally deficient, but he wasn’t broken. He just didn’t work the way they expected.

The silent, crimson-eyed little boy was actually hyperaware, always absorbing and digesting information, sucking it up like a dry sponge. He just didn’t want to communicate with the people who put a muzzle on him, whenever they took him out of his room, poked and prodded him all over his body, like it was their property, stuck needles and probes into him, pumped his veins full of stuff that burned his insides, and fed him pills that made him vomit.

Rather than asking questions of his tormentors, he sent superfine threads of darkness into people’s heads and examined their thoughts directly.

When he wanted to know what was going on outside his cell, darkness vapor seeped from his palms and fingertips, slipped into the shadows, and wandered the vast, underground complex, taking his perception with it.

Though he’d hardly ever left his own cell, by the time he was six years old, he knew enough about the Deepground complex's layout, that he could’ve drawn a reasonably accurate map from memory.

One day, his darkness tendrils crept under a door, to find a cell like Nero’s own, only it was bigger and had much nicer furniture. There was a boy there. Snow-white hair and silver eyes, a descended angel in a halo of light, blindingly bright to Nero’s darkness-filtered senses.

He was definitely a child, but he was a lot bigger than Nero, and he looked fierce and strong. Beautiful and dangerous, like a lion in a picture book.

Nero wanted to reach out and touch him so badly it made his chest ache, but the darkness would only hurt the other boy. So he satisfied himself with watching him, from dark corners and beneath furniture.

Over time, he grew bolder, and when the beautiful boy was asleep, the darkness would silently coalesce, inky purple-black, into the little demon’s spectral form, and he’d sit there for hours at a time; a creature of the abyss, lurking in the shadows, watching his angel sleep, and listening to the music of his soft, regular breathing.

Then, one night, the unthinkable happened. Those silver eyes opened, and looked right into his face. Nero’s spectral projection should have collapsed and scattered, but it could only stand petrified and stare back at the boy, captivated by his gaze, trembling with something that was akin to fear, but not quite the same.

“Who are you?” the silver boy’s voice asked, drowsy and thick with sleep.

That broke the spell and Nero’s projection instantly dissipated. As his consciousness returned to his body, he thought he heard the other boy calling out to him.Wait! Come back!

For a long while afterward, he didn’t dare enter that room, or even send his tendrils anywhere too close to it. But eventually, his curiosity and an intense, irresistible compulsion to see that boy again won out, and he went venturing cautiously back.

This time, the silver boy had been waiting for him. He looked asleep and his eyes were closed, but the moment Nero’s specter had fully materialized, he heard a soft voice say, “Please, don’t run away. Please.”

He almost did, but something in the boy’s tone stopped him. His spectral form stood perfectly still, wide-eyed and wary, as the boy sat up in his bed.

“I dreamed about you,” were the next words out of his mouth. “That you were sitting by my bed, watching over me. I mean, I thought I dreamed it. But…you’re real, aren’t you.”

Nero’s specter gave a tiny nod.

“What are you?”

Nero stared.

“Can you talk?”

He shook his spectral head slowly. Hecouldtalk, but he would have to touch the other boy with his darkness, and he was afraid that he’d hurt him. He’d seen the tentacles drag people into the miasma to be consumed within mere seconds, before.

Not that he felt bad about it—they were all big people, and he didn’t care one way or another whether they lived or died—but this boy…he felt instinctively that it would be deeply heartbreaking, if he no longer existed.

“It’s ok, I can ask you yes or no questions,” the silver boy said cheerfully. “Are you alive?”

Nod.

“Do you live here, in Deepground?”

Nod.

“I’ve never seen you before,” the silver boy mused. “But I’ve never seen anyone but adults. They must keep you locked up, too. Are you dangerous, like me?”

Stare.

“Well, you must be, if you can sneak around past security and everything. Hey, have you seen any other kids, here?”

Shake.

“They say my brother is here, too, but I’ve never seen him. They say I can’t, because he’s sick. I don’t even know what he looks like. Probably like me. If you see a kid who looks like me, could you tell me? I just want to know if he’s ok.”

Nero recoiled, at the idea that the silver boy had someone he cared about, already, and would have become morose, only at that moment, booted footsteps came plodding down the hall, outside, accompanied by several adult voices.

“Oh, no!” the silver boy whispered. “They must be doing a surprise inspection! Go, go! Before they catch us! Wait—you’ll come and see me again, won’t you?”

Nero hesitated, then nodded, before his specter vaporized, whirling away into the shadows, leaving no trace of his passing.

Summary:

With beautiful art made for the story by the amazingly talented DevFarvahar (siringadev on tumblr)

Summary:

Nero, Sephiroth, and Cloud go to the grocery store.

With as bad a grace as possible, he went upstairs and came back down again, dressed in some of the clothing the obnoxious blonde man purchased for him. In the face of Nero’s utter indifference and flat refusal to choose anything for himself, Cid had evidently decided the young man’s theme color would be purple, and made his selections accordingly.

Thus, Nero now wore a dark-purple hoodie, black, acid-washed motocross jeans, purple converse high tops, and a black turtleneck, to hide the Shinra-made restrictive collar, which supposedly prevented him spitting out clouds of people-eating darkness miasma, or at least reduced the ability somewhat.

“Ah-guh!” the hyper-alert noise machine announced, over the shoulder of the little blonde (as Nero uncharitably thought of Cloud, despite the fact that they were the exact same height), alerting everyone to Nero’s entrance.

He shot the baby a glare, then his eyes fell on Sephiroth, and his lip curled. “Why do you look like that?”

“Keeping a low profile,” Sephiroth said tranquilly.

His boyfriend smirked. “Meaning, he’s the most famous war-criminal in the world. He can’t be seen in public looking exactly like his wanted posters.”

The hitherto silver-haired giant was dressed in his usual white v-neck t-shirt and black jeans, with the addition of a leather jacket, but his long hair had changed to jet black, and his eyes were now crimson, likethose of the rest of the Valentines. With their coloring coordinated, Sephiroth’s resemblance to Vincent was downright unnerving. He looked even more like him than Nero did.

“Look at your brothers, Ollie. They're almost as pretty as you,” Cloud cooed to the baby, who gurgled and drooled about it.

Nero gave a ‘hmph’ and went to lean on the wall, with his arms crossed, unconscious of the fact that this was among his father’s most characteristic behaviors, and one highly recognizable to his associates.

Cloud and Cid looked at Nero, then at Vincent, then at each other, and had to cover their mouths to stifle laughs. Vincent appeared bewildered and asked what was so funny, which only made them laugh harder.

Before the young men could depart on their errand, there was the ordeal of transferring the baby from Cloud’s arms to Cid’s, which took a measure of sleight-of-hand and trickery, and to which she took great umbrage. She made her displeasure known by turning bright pink from head to toe and howling like a banshee, despite Cloud’s assurances that he’d be back soon.

“Nero,” Vincent said, as the three young men walked out the door.

Nero stopped and turned back sullenly, prepared for the highly unsurprising lecture about behaving himself and not harming civilians and blah blah blah.

Vincent, however, failed to produce the expected admonitions. He only pushed something into Nero’s hand. It was a pair of dark-lensed sunglasses. Nero looked down at them and back up at the man, in blank perplexity.

“It’s bright outside,” Vincent said simply. “The polarized lenses help.”

Then he turned around and went back in the house, without another word. Nero stared after the man, as the door swung shut, muting the baby’s raucous wailing inside.

His vision went red, teeth clenched tightly and hand shaking, around the black sunglasses, as a big, ugly knot of pain and rage and other unidentifiable emotions surged up in his chest, choking him and making his eyes sting with tears.

He wanted to smash the stupid things to fragments, hurl them at the door and scream curses at that man. Rip open his bleeding chest and force his so-called father to look at the mangled insides of the ruined creature he brought into this world, and then tore away from the only person in it that he’d ever loved.

Then the cold reason of his dark side rose up, black flowing into red, and cooled the rage. Calmed the storm. Reminded him of his objective and the tasks before him. He needed to gain these people’s trust, if he was to get back to Weiss. Childish outbursts would only hinder his purpose. Patience. Patience.

“Nero, are you coming?” Sephiroth called out, drawing him from his ruminations.

Nero shoved the sunglasses onto his face, to hide his pink-rimmed eyes, and stalked gloomily to the vehicle.

The little blonde had arrived on a motorcycle, but that was an impractical means of conveyance, for their errand, so the three of them were to drive to town in one of the many vehicles that belonged to the Valentine-Highwind household.

This one was a small work truck, with a pickup style bed and cab that technically seated three. Technicality butted heads with reality, however, when Sephiroth was one of the three involved.

Cloud was driving, since neither of the others had a license, and Sephiroth’s six-foot seven-inch frame was already pushing the limits of the truck's capacity, even in the passenger seat. As a result, Nero wound up packed like a sardine into the middle seat, between his ostensible elder brother, and his brother’s former-nemesis-slash-current-boyfriend.

He very quickly began to suspect this was some method of psychological demolition. Because, if the entirety of the prison system had coordinated its efforts, it could never have contrived a more devilish torture for him, than this exact situation.

Not only did Cloud drive like a lunatic, causing Nero to be constantly bumped and jostled about between the two, but Sephiroth kept reaching over him, to fiddle with the radio dial, simultaneously invading his personal space, and causing all kinds of disjointed snippets of songs to blare briefly from the vehicle’s speakers.

Finally, much to Nero’s relief, Cloud smacked Sephiroth’s hand away. “Cut that out. I’m driving, so I get to pick the station. Besides, you have the absolute worst taste in music.”

“I do not,” Sephiroth contended.

“He does,” Cloud intimated to Nero. “He was raised on nothing but classical music, for optimum cerebral development, and now he’s taking revenge by soaking his super-brain in the most atrocious, top-forty pop garbage imaginable.”

“The music you claim to prefer is full of screaming, and instruments that sound like rusty bandsaws,” Sephiroth put forth. “I simply do not enjoy music with such an aggressive sound and violent themes.”

“Said the most violent man on the planet.”

They went on like this for the remainder of the drive, with Nero seething silently between them, his eyes squeezed shut behind his sunglasses (for which he was very grateful, now), and darkness tendrils stuffed into his ears, against their affectionate banter.

At long last, they arrived at the grocery store. It was a massive, fluorescent-lit, commercial monstrosity, that a corporation had christened Mid-Mart without a hint of irony. They paused, just inside the entrance, and Sephiroth tore the grocery list into three parts, handing a piece each to Nero and Cloud.

“We can get this done more quickly and efficiently if we spread out,” he explained. “Everyone take a basket, gather your items, and we will rendezvous at the Mt. Nibel Dew display, in thirty minutes. Understood?”

Cloud returned a jaunty salute, and before Nero knew what was happening, he was handed a red plastic basket with black handles, and then left on his own, in a grocery store full of innocent, unarmed civilians. Him. The known terrorist, official enemy of society, and former de-facto leader of Deepground. Like his custodians were mentally deficient.

Luckily for them, now was not the time to make a move. He had his own plans, and no intention of playing his hand, just yet. Storing the sunglasses in his hoodie pocket, he studied the list of items, and began the daunting task of searching for them, in the glossy, chaotic fever-dream that was a modern grocery store.

Shopping was not as difficult an undertaking as had it seemed, at first blush. The aisles, though arranged according to no logic decipherable by man, were labeled with their general contents, and items tended to be grouped together with other, similar items.

Following this pattern, he quickly gathered the first several things. Next, his list had ‘maple syrup’ and ‘strawberry jam’ on it, which were in the same aisle as breakfast cereals and granolas, but not the peanut butter or honey.

As Nero turned into the aisle, he encountered the little blonde, choosing canisters of something called ‘rolled oats.’

“Hey,” he hailed, as Nero approached. “Finding everything ok?”

“Yes,” Nero answered, putting a jar of strawberry jam into his basket. “It isn’t a particularly challenging task.”

“So, um. Sephiroth told me a bit about you,” Cloud ventured. “What happened with your brother, and all that.”

Nero’s crimson eyes flickered to his face, then away. “And?”

“And…nothing. I’m just sorry you had to go through that. I know what it’s like to lose your only family member.”

Ugh. Concerned sympathy from a fellow griever. Nero was repulsed by this kind of thing. He knew how to shut it right back down, though. “Weiss is more than just a family member. He is my lover.”

“He’s…what?” Cloud asked, confused.

“Weiss is my biological half-brother. He is also my lover,” Nero said slowly, pronouncing every syllable clearly, as if defying Cloud to take issue with it.

Cloud balked, blindsided by his frank assertion. “Y—you mean…”

“Yes. I mean exactly that.” Nero narrowed his eyes and tilted his head questioningly. “Is me sleeping with my brother—the only person who has loved me and taken care of me, in my entire life—somehow stranger than you sleeping with the man who burned your hometown to the ground, and murdered your mother?”

Cloud’s golden brows lowered angrily, but he swallowed whatever sharp retort was on his tongue and took a deep breath, before he answered. “Look, I didn’t mean to come off like I was judging you. I don’t know about your relationship and it’s none of my business. I was just caught off-guard, is all.”

“I am not offended, I was merely illustrating a point,” Nero said serenely.

“Which is?”

“The heart can be neither ruled by law, nor governed by reason. Thus, reason and law have no place in the dominion of love, which will reign over a man’s heart, one way or another—whether it is as a ruthless tyrant to a captive slave, or as the benevolent sovereign of a willing subject.”

Cloud blinked. “Uh…”

“Pickles.”

“Huh?”

“Pickles are the next item on my list,” Nero clarified. “Do you know where they can be found?”

“Right. The ones Cid likes are pickled cucumbers, in the refrigerated section, with the cheese and cold snack foods. The ones Vincent likes are Wutai-style pickled vegetables, which are in the international foods section, on aisle thirteen.”

For the briefest moment, Nero’s curiosity got the better of him and he paused. “Is he—”

“Half Wutaian. Grew up bilingual. That’s why everyone in the house speaks Wutaian. You didn’t wonder?”

“I don’t bother myself about what others are doing,” Nero replied, with a haughty toss of his head. “If learning languages amuses them, then so be it. It’s nothing to me.”

“Maybe you should try learning a little, too,” Cloud suggested. “It’s part of your family’s heritage.”

“Those people arenotmy family,” Nero said icily.

“Yeah, sure,” Cloud snorted. “Whatever you want to tell yourself.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean you don’t know them as well as I do. Once they’ve decided you’re one of their own, they won’t ever give up on you, no matter how much you kick and scream. Trust me, I speak from experience.”

Nero gave a mirthless laugh. “Yes, well, thank you for the sage advice. If you have nothing further to add, I am going to collect the rest of the items on my list.”

With that, he turned on his heel and strode off, leaving Cloud feeling flustered and annoyed, and rather glad to be rid of the intractable, unpleasant young man, who seemed so much older and wiser than himself, but was actually several years his junior.

In aisle thirteen, where all the Wutaian foods were grouped together in one section, Nero found the pickled vegetables, without much trouble. To his exasperation, however, there were spicy and regular varieties, and no one had specified which was wanted.

On the other side of the aisle, as he was deliberating, there was a woman near a partially filled cart, with a girl of around two years old, sitting in the child seat. The woman was talking on her cell phone, whilst perusing the products on the shelves, with her back to the child.

As such, she failed to notice that the little girl had got loose of the safety restraint, and was reaching for something on the shelf, stretching her little hands out further and further, till all of a sudden, she toppled out of the seat, headfirst.

Quicker than sight, Nero’s darkness tendrils shot out and caught the small girl, just before she cracked her skull on the tile floor. He was setting her gently back in the cart, when the mother turned around and let out a bloodcurdling scream, dropping her cell phone and snatching up the child. The child, startled by the scream and being yanked around so abruptly, immediately burst out sobbing.

“My baby!! Help! Help!!” the woman shrieked. “This monster is trying to take my baby!!!”

Nero sighed and placed the jar of pickled vegetables (spicy variety) in his basket, now deeply regretting that he hadn’t just let the child fall and break its stupid neck.

Meanwhile, footsteps came clattering from every direction, as the store employees, manager, security guard, and curious onlookers stampeded over to see what the commotion was. Fortunately for all of them, Sephiroth and Cloud arrived faster, and got between them and the extremely volatile bio-engineered weapon, in a purple hoodie.

“What’s—what’s going on, here?” the rather portly manager panted. “Ma’am, are you alright?”

“He’s a monster!” the mother intoned, clutching the bawling child to her bosom. “He tried to snatch my Sally, right in front of my face! He grabbed her with these horrible tentacle things, like some kind of demon!!”

The gathering crowd turned on Nero, muttering and glaring at him, with open hostility and disgust. There were cries of ‘damn freak!’ and ‘arrest him!’

“Everyone shut up!” Cloud bellowed, in his rather impressive command voice, giving the manager and security guard (who were already sweating, looking up at the towering Sephiroth) a jolt. “Did anyone here actually see what happened?”

There was general murmuring from the crowd, but it was apparent that no one had.

“I saw!” the mother said furiously. “I already told you what happened! Were you not listening?”

“Ah…ha. Let’s not be hasty, ma’am,” the security guard attempted, in a conciliatory tone. “Is it possible you saw wrong, or—”

“Why are you questioning me instead of arresting this man!” the woman interrupted. “Look at him! Look at his eyes! He’s clearly dangerous!!”

“Nero, what happened?” Cloud asked, while the manager and guard were attempting to soothe the woman.

“Didn’t you hear?” Nero sneered. “I’m a dangerous freak. I tried to snatch a baby with my monster tentacles.”

“That attitude isn’t helping,” Sephiroth told him, in an undertone. “If the police get involved and assault charges are filed, you’ll be in violation of your house arrest, whether you’re guilty or not.”

“Fine,” Nero sighed, as if he was being sorely put upon, and pointed to the mother. “That idiot was on her phone, not paying attention to the child. It fell out of the cart. I caught it, before it landed on its head, and put it back. Then she started screaming nonsense at me and making a scene. In hindsight, if she’s going to raise it to be another fool like herself, it would’ve been better to just let it crack its skull on the ground, and end its misery.”

“How dare you!” the woman scolded. “You’re calling me liarandvictim blaming?! And wishing harm on an innocent baby?!”

“Sir, this store has security cameras, correct?” Cloud asked the manager. “Shouldn’t a review of the feed clear all of this up?”

“Ah…ah, yes! In my office. W—we can look at the footage in my office,” the shiny-faced, balding man stammered, nodding like a chicken pecking rice.

The woman tossed her head. “Hmph. I know what I saw, but fine. It’ll just prove I’m telling the truth.”

“Right this way, right this way,” the manager said, directing the involved individuals toward the back of the store. “Gerome, disperse the, uh…other guests, please? Thank you.”

The security guard waved people along, as the group followed the harried manager back to his office, which as turned out, was a rather tight squeeze, for five adults and a baby. Everyone wound up inelegantly clustered together, over the bank of monitors, while he scrolled back through the international foods aisle footage, to a few minutes ago.

The video showed the incident more or less as Nero described it, save for the fact that his darkness tendrils didn’t show up on cameras, so there was a bizarre moment when it looked as if the child stopped its fall and hovered in midair, then floated back into the cart, of its own accord.

“Ma’am, is that satisfactory?” Sephiroth asked, looking down at the woman, who was packed in between himself and the manager.

The woman’s lip trembled, and tears welled up in her eyes again. “I—I thought…I just saw tentacles grabbing my Sally, and this man with scary, red eyes. I can’t be blamed for thinking the worst, right?”

Sally, meanwhile, seemed to be enjoying all of the excitement, very much, and was busily yanking on Sephiroth’s long, inky-black hair, with both tiny fists.

“Sally, no—we don’t pull hair,” her mother chided, gently prying the baby’s hands open. “Sorry about that, she grabs everything these days.”

“It is quite alright,” Sephiroth replied mildly. “My little sister is about the same age. I have to wear my hair in a braid at home, unless I want it all to wind up in her mouth.”

“Oh, I can imagine, with long hair like yours. That’s why I’ve cut mine short. It’s just easier that way,” she smiled, softening at finding common ground with another (sort of) parent. Then she hesitated, glancing awkwardly at Nero. “Look, I apologize for overreacting. We keep hearing these horror stories about people coming back from the frontlines deranged and with all these horrible mutations, and attacking people right in the streets. I lost my husband to the war, and Sally’s all I’ve got now. If I lost her too, I just—I don’t know what I’d do.”

Nero, however, was looking the other direction, studiously ignoring the conversation.

“All’s well that ends well, so there’s no sense in dwelling on it,” Cloud answered for him. “I’m sure we’d all just like to finish our shopping and get home.”

After the woman and baby had gone away, the manager apologized and sweated profusely, at the three gentlemen, for a few more minutes, and even went so far as to offer them a twenty percent discount on all their purchases today, by way of compensation for the trouble, though it looked like it cost him a pang to do it.

“So. Your first foray out of the house, and you saved a baby from getting seriously injured,” Cloud remarked to Nero, as they drove homeward, a little while later.

“I didn’t mean to,” Nero scowled, behind the dark sunglasses that he’d put back on, the moment they exited the store. “I acted without thinking. Needless to say, I won’t be making such a foolish error again.”

“Our father will be very pleased to hear of your good deed,” Sephiroth put in, looking exceedingly smug. “It seems you’re already making progress toward becoming a productive member of society.”

Nero crossed his arms disconsolately, shrinking down in the cramped middle seat. “I hate this stupid family.”

“It’ll grow on you. You’ll see,” Cloud chuckled, as he swatted Sephiroth’s hand away from the radio, yet again.

The two burly, male handlers and female scientist led him through a maze of corridors and security checkpoints, that would have been dizzying to anyone else, but which Nero quickly recognized as the way to the section where the silver boy lived.

Why would they be going there? Had the silver boy told on him to the scientists, about his roaming around the complex? But…that didn’t make sense. If it was that, they’d just punish him in his own section. So, what reason could they have for bringing him here?

To his further perplexity, they led him directly to the silver boy’s room. Before he had a chance to think any more about it, the scientist scanned her ID to open the door, and the two handlers herded him inside.

Sure enough, the silver boy was standing there, in the center of the room. He was even more dazzling and beautiful, in person, than he’d been through the specter’s vision; shining like a small sun in the relatively bright light, nearly blinding Nero’s sensitive eyes.

“Weiss, this is your maternal half-brother. His name is Nero,” the scientist said, through the door intercom. “As agreed upon, you are granted supervised visitation for one hour, beginning now.”

The handlers unfastened Nero’s muzzle and hastily retreated to join her, outside the thick layer of plexiglass, while he stood frozen, in utter disbelief. What did she mean, brother? It couldn’t be. A vile demon like him couldn’t be this angelic being’s blood relative. It simply wasn’t possible. Was it?

The silver boy approached and smiled down at Nero, with so much warmth and gentleness in his beautiful eyes, that Nero’s heart lurched, and his head began to feel hot and muddled.

“It was you, all along,” he said softly. “I’m Weiss, but you should call me brother. I’m sorry I never got to meet you, before. I asked all the time, but they always said you were too sick. I passed my combat eval with zero faults this time, and I earned the right to have one special request granted. I used it to finally meet you. Wh—what’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

Outside the door, the scientist looked up from her notes, and immediately lost her professional composure. “Holy sh*t, he’s crying! He’s f*cking crying! This has never happened before! I have to inform Dr. Nishida, do not let anyone go in there!”

With that, she ran off, leaving the bemused handlers standing guard in the hall.

“Don’t cry, brother,” Weiss soothed, meanwhile, wrapping his arms around the much smaller, skinnier child. “It’s ok. We’re together, now. Everything will be ok.”

Nero had no idea why water was leaking from his eyes, when no one had sprayed anything into them, nor why his throat felt like it was closing, without having been gassed with some chemical agent. He only knew that he was suddenly being squeezed tightly by his silver angel.

He struggled for a moment, in his confusion and alarm, but Weiss was so strong, and it felt sogoodto be held. Gradually, by cautious degrees, he surrendered, and let himself go slack against the other boy’s warm, solid body.

Then all at once, the dam burst, and a raging torrent of emotion surged up and erupted from some hidden place inside him. His scrawny body shook in Weiss’ big arms, racked by deep, visceral sobs, his black fingernails clawing at the other boy’s white clothes, while he wept like he would die from grief.

Weiss didn’t let go, even when his shirt was soaked through with tears. He sat down on the floor, holding little Nero in his lap, kissing and petting his silky, black hair. Telling him it would be ok. That they were together, now, and he didn’t have to be sad, anymore. After a long while, utterly overwhelmed, Nero passed out in his brother’s arms.

The Shinra scientists observed the entire scene through the closed-circuit feed, so as not to disrupt the subjects. This was the biggest thing that had happened in Deepground in years. They weren’t about to incur Director Hojo’s wrath by interfering.

Why was a six-year-old child having a crying fit such a momentous event? As far as they were concerned, Nero was not a child. He was the extremely important (and wildly expensive) experimental subject they’d been forced to write off as a failure and little better than braindead.

Now, he had suddenly acted in an extraordinary way, and was displaying a behavior of which he’d been previously deemed incapable. It was equivalent to a mouse in a researcher’s maze standing on its hind legs and beginning to recite poetry.

Understandably, they were all abuzz with scientific fervor (and with the prospect of research grants and acknowledgement from the Director). There were multiple, frantic meetings that day, and a lot of heated debate about next steps, but ultimately, it was all just opinion and conjecture. Director Hojo had the final say.

Before long, he sent instructions (via his assistant), stating that since exposure to the elder brother had produced such a marked effect on the younger brother, this interaction should now be prioritized, above all other planned test parameters. So it was decided that arrangements should be made for the two brothers to begin sharing a room, permanently.

Under the hostile gaze of the eight-year-old Weiss, who was still cradling his unconscious little brother in his arms, and glared at them, as if daring them to try and take the boy away, several scientists came to explain the situation.

Once Weiss understood and agreed (which was necessary because he was f*cking terrifying), handlers entered the room to rearrange furniture and add another small bed. Nero had no personal belongings, aside from several grey jumpsuits, some sets of plain, white underclothing, and a toothbrush. With the transfer of those few things, the subjects were now living together.

When everyone had gone away again, Weiss shook Nero gently awake. His eyes were puffy and his long, black eyelashes were stuck together with dried tears. He stirred, rubbing them blearily, and looked up at his silver angel.

Then, to the chagrin of the detractors, and the rather smug delight of the proponents, the cohabitation plan immediately bore fruit. Nero, at six years old, spoke his first word aloud. It was ‘brother’.

“Yes, it’s me, brother. You’re finally awake,” Weiss laughed, hardly able to contain his excitement. “You’ll never guess what happened, while you were sleeping!”

Soon after, the handlers came to deliver their supper. Weiss was confused by Nero’s meal, of a nutritional paste ration and glucose/electrolyte beverage, and Nero was even more confused by Weiss’ meal, of a dense sab of high-efficiency protein loaf, and what appeared to be a pile of wet plants.

He’d never seen cooked vegetables in person, before, and he couldn’t begin to guess what was the opaque, white liquid in the other boy’s drinking cup.

Of course, Weiss was eager to share his food, and made Nero taste everything, laughing delightedly at his disgusted grimace, when he tried the vegetables, and encouraging him to drink the rest of the milk, which he clearly liked.

One of the male handlers returned midway through the meal, and delivered another full glass of milk, for Weiss, whose minimum daily caloric intake was strictly enforced. Before he left, he took something out of his uniform pocket and put it into Weiss’ hand, with a wink.

Nero frowned at the strange interaction, but Weiss laughed at his brother’s suspicious expression (Nero was beginning to wonder if he simply laughed at everything) and opened his palm, showing him what appeared to be two little balls of red glass, wrapped in clear cellophane.

“Candy,” he said. “Have you ever had any? Here. Don’t chew it up, you could hurt your teeth. You’re supposed to suck on it, so it lasts longer.”

Nero did as Weiss did and unwrapped the little ball, then put it into his mouth. There was a beat or two, while Nero rolled the thing dubiously around on his tongue, then his expression changed, and his crimson eyes went wide and starry.

He’d never tasted something so wonderful, in all his six years of life. It was intensely sweet and tart, and the flavor was like nothing he’d ever experienced. It reminded him vaguely of the scent that came from the shiny, pink grease one of the female scientists had on her lips, sometimes, but that was the closest comparison he had.

“It’s cherry,” Weiss informed him. “My favorite is lemon, but this is pretty good too. You like it?”

Nero nodded dazedly, fully absorbed in sucking on his candy, which was dissolving at what he considered to be a tragic speed. When it was gone, he was heartbroken, and was only consoled when Weiss assured him that Zahir brought candy all the time, and certainly would again.

“What are these marks?” Weiss asked curiously, when they undressed to bathe.

Nero’s ash-white, matchstick thin body was covered from wrists to neck to ankles, with strange, inky-black patterns, like tattoos, except for the fact that they shifted and writhed on his skin, as if they were alive.

He looked at his brother, whose skin was all golden-ivory, flawlessly smooth, without a single blemish or mark, anywhere on him, and shrank into himself, suddenly ashamed of the ugliness of his own body. “Th—they’re from the darkness. I was born with them.”

“Wow. I wish I had some, too,” Weiss sighed wistfully, tracing the thorny pattern on Nero’s upper arm, with his fingertips. “They’re beautiful.”

Nero’s neck and cheeks got hot, like he had a fever, and he lowered his eyes shyly. “They are?”

“Mn, I really like them,” Weiss nodded. “They look mysterious and dangerous. Like you’re a snake or a tiger.”

As he said so, thin, purple tendrils snaked out from the black marks, and coiled around his fingers. Nero winced, preparing himself for horror or repulsion, but Weiss only laughed.

“Good to see you guys again, too,” he said, playfully tugging at them. “Come on, little brother. I’ll help you wash your back, then you help wash mine, ok?”

Nero hadn’t been touched so much in all his life, put together, as Weiss touched him during that one day; hugging him repeatedly, taking his hand to play idly with his fingers, while he talked to him, and petting his head. And now scrubbing his back with a washcloth, rubbing shampoo into his hair and then carefully rinsing it, so it wouldn’t get into his eyes.

It triggered all sorts of chemical responses in Nero’s brain, and made him feel drowsy and euphoric, in a way he’d only felt after the darkness had consumed several people at once.

After their shower, Weiss sat behind Nero on the bed and dried his hair with a towel, chatting the entire time, about all the things he had to do every day, how much weight he could lift, how fast the scientists said he was growing, compared to normal children, et cetera.

Nero’s dopamine-drunk mind was completely bewildered by the vast difference in their lives. Unless the big people were dragging him to a lab, to stick diodes all over his body and inject things into him, or dunk him in tanks of tainted mako, he was left entirely alone, with a few picture books and an outdated data pad, for company.

Weiss, it seemed, was being actively trained, every day, in battle strategy and various forms of combat. His time was strictly regimented, and he was cared for by an entire team of dedicated instructors, handlers, and medical specialists.

He was clearly quite proud of his achievements, and seemed to enjoy his training very much. Nero didn’t say it, so as not to hurt the boy’s feelings, but he thought he’d much prefer being left alone, to all that constant activity and unrelenting scrutiny.

By this time, he was yawning and visibly drooping, despite having slept so much today. Weiss declared that it was time for lights out, and cheerfully disregarding the second bed that had been placed in the room, pulled Nero into his own, and wrapped him up in his big, warm arms.

“I’m so glad we’re together now, brother,” he said softly, stroking the smaller boy’s pale cheek with his fingertips. “I’ll never let anyone keep us apart, again. I’ll take care of you, from now on. I’ll always take care of you.”

Thus, these two young children became the sole source of comfort to one another, in their hellish prison full of callous, uncaring adults. When Nero would jolt awake in a cold sweat, clawing his skin, trying to tear phantom tubes out of his malnourished little body, Weiss would would hold him tightly and press kisses to his face, whispering soothing words, till he was calm again.

When Weiss would return from training, exhausted and battered, covered in bruises and bloody gashes, Nero would help him bathe and massage his sore muscles, and carefully apply ointment to his wounds.

When Nero would be wheeled back to their room, after ‘treatment’ sessions, ash-grey and sick to death, and could do nothing but shiver on the bathroom floor, vomiting purple bile into the toilet, Weiss would sit by his side and comfort him, till the nausea passed.

The two boys wouldn’t sleep without one another, so they shared a bed, from the first night onward. As they got bigger, it grew more cramped, and yet even years later, they still slept in each other’s arms, every night, jet black and snow white hair tumbled together on the pillow, and their legs entwined.

“I can feel the darkness, in your mind,” Weiss said one night, while they were lying in bed, facing one another. “Why do you try to hide it from me?”

“Because I’m bad,” Nero blurted out. “I—I’m not good like you. I’m a monster. I’m full of evil and Chaos, and I’m afraid if you know about what’s inside me, you won’t—”

“That I won’t love you, anymore?”

Nero swallowed hard and nodded, casting his eyes down. But Weiss put a finger under his chin and lifted it, making him look into his face.

“There is nothing inside you, that could ever make me love you less,”he said, directly into Nero’s mind.“Nero. You are my whole heart. You are my reason for living. Your darkness is part of who you are. It’s not wrong or bad. It’s beautiful and perfect, just like you. It makes you strong, so embrace it. Let it sharpen your teeth and harden your bones, turn your muscles and sinews to steel.”

“But I killed her,”Nero replied, through their link, as tears trickled from his eyes.“I killed our mother. My darkness swallowed her up, right after I was born.”

Weiss’ silver eyes flashed.“The woman who gave birth to us was one of them. She was never our mother. Do you think she would have loved us, or cared for us, if she lived? We were nothing to her but experiments. Just like we are to the rest of them.”

“You…you don’t hate me for killing her?”

“Never. I could never hate you, brother. Kill everyone in the world, if you want to, I will be there by your side. Even if you killed me, I’d love you, with my last breath. That woman got what she deserved, and so will they all. We will bide our time and grow strong, and one day, we will rise up and destroy the ones who have hurt us. We will kill them all. Gut them, crush them, tear them apart and feed them to the darkness. Together.” He smiled and laid a hand on Nero's cheek. “You know I can’t do anything without you.”

Nero felt a dizzying thrill of adoration, as Weiss spoke in this way he’d never heard him speak before. He’d had no idea all of his brother’s good-natured tractability was put on, for the sake of those constantly watching. He’d had no idea good, pure Weiss was cunning and deceptive, and as full of rage and hatred, as he was.

As gently as he could, he reached out with his darkness, to touch his brother. Weiss opened himself up and let Nero inside, without reservation, without fear, loving and trusting unconditionally. In that moment, their hearts and souls became truly united.

From that day forward, Nero never hid his mind from his brother again. The very thing he had been taught to hate about himself had become a source of satisfaction and pride, for him—and would eventually become a source of immense trepidation, for the Shinra people.

The scientists, meanwhile, were elated with the results of the cohabitation scheme. As it turned out, far from being mentally deficient, the younger child was highly intelligent and articulate, when the muzzle was off, and already spoke in fully constructed sentences—but only to his brother.

He was still generally non-responsive with handlers and scientists. Rather than staring blankly into oblivion like before, however, his eyes were on Weiss. Always on Weiss.

Their chief consolation in this was that, so long as Weiss was with him, Nero was generally stable and cooperative. So much so that in the following months, mortality rates for staff in Deepground dipped to nearly zero.

However, their growing dependency on one another also meant it was becoming increasingly difficult to separate the twins, so for the time being, it was decided that Nero would be sent to combat training, with Weiss. No one expected much to come of it.

That was the second time Nero stunned them all. His speed and reflexes were astounding, despite his looking so anemic and consumptive, and his ability to rapidly master various weapons and combat styles was only second to Weiss. His instinct for brutality, and his calm, calculated ruthlessness were absolutely chilling. Like a natural born predator.

In addition, his darkness, which they had only seen him use reflexively, before, he now began learning to manipulate, consciously. As his control grew by leaps and bounds, it became clearer and clearer just how dangerous this little demon really was.

Weiss was terrifyingly strong, and adept with any weapon you put in his hands, but his brother was a force of nature, akin to a sentient airborne toxin, that could wipe out a platoon of soldiers before they even knew what hit them.

It was commonly said among the staff, in those days, that the twins were equally deadly, but if you could choose, it’d be better to be killed by Weiss, because you’d at least know how you died.

Apart from their rigorous training in skills relevant to combat and tradecraft, the boys were raised almost like animals. No one taught them anything about sin or morality, or social conformity. There were only compliance and disobedience. Otherwise, the Shinra people didn’t care about anything they did.

When they lay in bed at night, clinging to one another for comfort, and kissing each other’s faces and lips, it was the purest, most innocent expression of love. There was no one to tell them it was not.

When their kisses grew deeper, and their tongues slipped past their teeth to find each other, when Nero caressed his brother’s beautiful body, and his own warmed with aching desire, there was no one to tell him to feel guilty. That it was wrong and shameful. That one couldn’t love one’s brother that way.

Not that he’d have cared if they had. He loved his brother, and his brother loved him. That was all that mattered. Weiss was all he had in the world.

“Uh…is that ok?” a newly transferred junior researcher said, frowning at the feed from the cell, where the two adolescent boys were lying in bed together, kissing and entangling their naked bodies.

The senior researcher looked up from his terminal. “Hm? Oh. Yeah, they do that a lot. If it bothers you, just turn off the monitor, till they’re done.”

“But shouldn’t we, like…put a stop to it?”

“Tch. Yeah, go ahead. It’s your funeral,” the senior snorted. “Seriously, though. It will literally be your funeral. Nothing good comes of trying to get between the twins. It’s best to just steer clear and let them do their thing.”

The junior looked unconvinced. “But, I mean. They’re blood-related brothers.”

“They’re both boys, so who cares?” the senior shrugged. “Not like one of ‘em can get knocked up. It won’t be an issue for very much longer, anyway.”

“Why?”

“Well, Nero’s way too dangerous and volatile, but Weiss is going to be used for the Director’s breeding program. Once he gets a taste of the real thing, I doubt he’ll be interested in messing around with his little brother, anymore.”

Summary:

WARNING: EXPLICIT!
OTHER WARNINGS: medical torture, PTSD, phantom limb syndrome

Nero was upstairs in his room, where he lay curled up in a fetal position, soaked with sweat and shaking from head to toe, with nothing on his bed but the fitted sheet, having kicked the bedcovers and pillows onto the floor, at some point. Biting into his wrist to stifle a cry, he curled into himself, as another spasm racked his body.

In medical terms, he was experiencing severe bouts of phantom pain, from the nerve endings that used to connect to his missing wings, in addition to insistent memories, due to post-traumatic stress.What it actuallyfeltlike was white-hot razorblades slicing his muscles and tendons to shreds, while the bone-cracking agony of feeling his wings break beneath him burst upon his fevered mind, over and over, like hellish thunderbolts.

Writhing in torment, he wrapped his arms around himself, clawing at his shoulder blades, as if to dig out the titanium brackets, that were fused directly to his flesh and bone. Helpfully, the darkness tendrils coiled around his wrists and pulled his hands firmly away from his body, preventing him scratching himself bloody, in his delirium.

The episode lasted for minutes that felt like years, before it ebbed and faded, leaving him trembling and gasping for breath, with barely enough strength to drag himself out of the ice cold pool of his own sweat.

Rather rashly, he attempted to sit up. Immediately, a wave of dizzy nausea sent him sprawling off the bed, onto his hands and knees, to dry-heave until he retched up foamy, purplish bile into the displaced bed linens.

Too weak to support himself any longer, he collapsed on his side, away from the acrid mess, and lay on his floor in a stupor, staring blankly at the crack between the bottom of the bedroom door and the wooden threshold.

He could only hope no one would enter his room uninvited, and chance upon him, in this humiliating condition, though that was unlikely. Most of the people in this madhouse tended to respect the privacy of others. Unless they’d heard what sounded like (and very much was) his body hitting the floor, and someone rushed up to check on him. Which was exactly what happened.

Footsteps echoed in the hall, then a shadow appeared under the door, and there was a brisk knock.

“Nero?” a muffled voice asked, from the other side of the door. It was that Vincent man. “Are you alright?”

“F—fine,” Nero stammered out, in a dubiously convincing rasp.

There was a pause.

“I heard a noise, did you fall? Do you need help?”

“I said I’m fine!” he growled back, in a voice made stronger by sheer annoyance. “G—go away!”

He heard a sigh, through the door, and knew exactly what the man’s stupid, beautiful face looked like, when he did it. All disappointed and downcast, with his black brows drawn together and his long eyelashes lowered.

Sourness rose in Nero’s throat and made his eyes sting. He had to fight down an infantile urge to reach out his hands and beg to be lifted in that man’s arms. To be held and kissed and told that everything would be alright. To sink his fangs deep into his father’s flesh, and never let go.

He knew the emotions he was experiencing were only because of darkness in him, crying out to Chaos. A mewling whelp, that had scented its mother. It was always acting like this around Vincent. Pathetic and needy and submissive. If Nero didn’t keep it under strict control, it’d be rolling around at the man’s feet like a dog, belly-up and begging for approval.

Sure enough, some of the tendrils were already crawling across the floor, toward the door. Nero yanked them back savagely and absorbed them into the black marks on his skin.

“Alright,” he heard Vincent say. “Supper will be ready in half an hour. I’d like it if you’d come down and eat with the family.”

He opened his mouth to make some sarcastic reply, but Vincent hadn’t waited for one. His footsteps were already vanishing back down the hall.

“What’s wrong with you,” a voice said behind him, nearly startling him out of his skin.

“What the f*ck!” Nero glared up at the currently black-haired nuisance, who had materialized in his room. “What the hell are you doing in here!”

“What are you doing on the floor, with the linens ripped off the bed?” Sephiroth countered. “Is that urine or sweat, all over the bedsheet?”

“I don’t wet the bed. I’m not a toddler.”

“So, you’ve been sweating excessively. And you look pale, even for you.” Sephiroth crouched down and extended his index finger. “Open your mouth.”

“What the—what are you doing now!”

“I can judge your body temperature more accurately than a digital thermometer. I want to check you for a fever, in case you’re sick and we need to take Ollie out of the house.”

“I don’t get sick,” Nero retorted, swatting his hand away. “I’m as immune to pathogens as you are, you great redwood of a jackass. Stop trying to put your finger in my mouth, or I’ll bite it off.”

Sephiroth withdrew his hand and frowned at the rumpled blanket beside Nero. “Is that vomit?”

“N—well. Yes. It is. But it was from pain, not a stomach virus.”

“What pain? Are you injured?”

“None of your f*cking business,” Nero sneered. “Why are you cosplaying as a Valentine, still? You’re not even out in public.”

Sephiroth ignored the question. “You smell like sweat and bile. You should go take a shower, before supper. I’ll put your bed things in the wash, for you.”

“Oh, I see,” Nero taunted. “Sephi’s feeling left out, since everyone looks like daddy but him. Is that it? You tired of being the white sheep of the family?”

“Yes. I am,” Sephiroth said simply, as he pulled the wet sheet off the bed. “My genes decided how I would look, without my input. I’ve never liked it, so why should I be forced to abide by it?”

Nero faltered, derailed by the man’s frank vulnerability. “You can’t mean that. Everyone says you’re the best looking man in the world. We even heard about it, down in Deepground. They say you’ve been named Midgar Magazine’s sexiest man on the planet, every year since you were seventeen.”

“Well, every year until I died. The past few have gone to Rufus Shinra.” Sephiroth smiled wistfully. “I was always embarrassed by the whole thing, but it drove Genesis crazy, so Angeal and I used to leave copies of the sexiest man issue lying all around the office and training rooms, whenever they came out, just to watch him fume.”

“What a charming vignette,” Nero said frostily. “Is there some reason you’re telling me your life story?”

“Because you’re my brother,” Sephiroth shrugged. “I’ve never had a sibling to exchange amusing anecdotes with, before. I wanted to know what it was like.”

“Was it everything you hoped for?”

“I prefer talking to Ollie. She has no idea what I’m saying, but she always listens and engages. You understand my words, but…you’re an asshole.”

Sephiroth had gathered the soiled bedclothes into a neat wad, and carried them out of the room, without another word.

Nero glared after him. What a self-righteous prick. He was always appearing wherever the hell he wanted, without respect for people’s boundaries or privacy, and he had the audacity to be all pissy about Nero not wanting to gossip with him like gal-pals at a sleepover? What the f*ck ever. Also, not that he’d asked, but in Nero’s opinion, he looked much better with the white hair.

The hot shower helped marginally, with the phantom pain, but a few minutes into supper, he could feel it coming on, again. It started with pins and needles, like when a limb falls asleep, and gradually progressed to intermittent shooting pains.

Rather than explain any of this to anyone, Nero sat silently at the supper table, becoming progressively more withdrawn and sullen, until he was hunched down in his chair, glaring at his full plate, and hadn’t eaten a bite of his supper.

Sephiroth was seated across from him, attending the shrieking drool-dispenser in her high chair. Apparently, she did not enjoy the mashed potatoes she’d been given, and she was making all sorts of voluble and high-pitched sounds about it.

Meanwhile, Nero’s delusional nerve endings were urgently explaining to him that his wings were being twisted into horribly painful contortions, and were in danger of being ripped off or broken. Amidst all of this, the blonde man’s obnoxious voice cut into his skull like a rusty sawblade.

“Hey. Nero. Ya hear me?”

Nero slowly raised his crimson eyes and looked at him. Ironically, his taut brow and inability to focus made it appear as if he was expressing disdain, which he actually wasn’t, for once. “What?”

“I asked if somethin’s the matter with your food,” Cid said irritably, which was the only tone in which he’d ever addressed Nero. “You ain’t had a bite and you been lookin’ at it like it owes ya money.”

Ollie had dropped her spoon on the floor, and Sephiroth was bent over retrieving it, so naturally she chose this moment to fling her sippy cup, which sailed across the table toward Nero’s head.

Nero’s pain-addled mind was still attempting to parse what Cid had said to him, and so he wasn’t able to pay attention. As a result, the darkness treated the thrown cup as a hostile incursion and reflexively batted it back, at a speed that rivalled the throw of a major-league pitcher.

Sephiroth’s hand stopped it right in front of the infant’s face, preventing what would certainly have been a serious injury, judging from the way the lid exploded off and a pink plume of electrolyte drink shot up into the air like a geyser, drenching Ollie and Sephiroth, and the table.

Nero was just as startled as anyone, but the baby was yowling her disapproval of being suddenly doused in her drink, and Cid was already on his feet, roaring and red-faced with rage, as Vincent held him back.

“The f*ck’s wrong with you! That’s a baby, you f*ckin’ psycho! What the hell d’you think you’re doin’ throwin’ sh*t at her like that!!”

Nero opened his mouth, but a spasm of pain made his jaw clamp shut again. Unable to defend himself, or even think an entire coherent thought, amidst the sensory overload, he dragged himself up from the table and retreated from the room as quickly as he could, on his unsteady legs.

He was able to maintain his balance till he was out of sight, at the stairwell, then he stumbled and pitched sideways against the wall, catching himself on the handrail. Using that to stay oriented, he managed to drag himself up the stairs and to his bedroom, were he collapsed facedown on the floor panting and in a cold sweat, sick to his stomach with pain.

The darkness tendrils shut the door for him, then coiled protectively around him, helpless to do anything else for him. For Nero, this phantom wing phenomenon was far more than just miserably painful, it was triggering to his severe post-traumatic stress, related to what had been the most horrific episode, in a life already filled with hideous abuse.

It was so bad that he’d had a psychotic break, and his subsequent actions caused the structure of Deepground to change permanently. It was the reason they brought in the cruel and sad*stic Restrictors, and the reason they put those control chips in them. The reason he and Weiss were separated. The reason Weiss eventually killed the Restrictor, and fell into that deathlike sleep…

The first disruption to the brothers’ domestic tranquility came earlier, though, when they were ten and twelve years old, and the Shinra people suddenly introduced a new variable, into their comfortable little binary system.

This variable’s name was Rosso, and they said she was a female experimental subject, like themselves. She was to train with them, from now on, and was to be the first of what would be a growing team of genetically enhanced soldiers, to be commanded by Weiss.

Rosso had fire-engine-red hair and eyes, and was a year older than Weiss, despite being even smaller and scrawnier than Nero. She claimed to have been born in Deepground, like they had, and to have never been outside. Nero had never detected her presence or any hint of her in the handlers’ minds, though, and he knew nothing of the area she described living in.

He surmised that she was either lying, insane, or there was another section of the complex that he hadn’t discovered yet, and had been intentionally kept totally isolated from this one. That suggested several unsettling things, including that the Shinra people may be aware of his telepathic intrusions, and have taken measures against him.

Rosso was moved into a room in the next hallway from theirs, and the three would have training sessions together each day, testing their skills on the unfortunate prisoners and conscripts that were fed into Deepground like trees into a wood-chipper, these days, to act as (briefly) living training dummies, for Professor Hojo’s second crop of little monsters.

Naturally, Rosso immediately gravitated toward Weiss. Despite his youth, he was a cruel and straightforward sad*st, who enjoyed killing and causing pain. Due to whatever they’d done to her, Rosso had become obsessed with those very things, to the point that she was unable to enjoy anything else.

Weiss was frank in his disdain for her, as too weak to even merit his notice, but Rosso idolized him and longed for his attention and approval. As time passed and she observed more of his strength and personality, her admiration of this young lion grew to worship, until she looked upon him with the eye of a true fanatic.

Nero found the girl’s fixation on his brother mildly annoying, but since she was strong and competent in combat, and her interest in Weiss wasn’t sexual, he didn’t discourage it. The more fanatically devoted the members of their eventual team would be to Weiss, the better it would be for his plans.

In fact, it was his intention to actively spread the doctrine of Weiss among them, as their numbers grew, to this very purpose.

They needed to worship him, believe in him, be willing follow him unquestioningly, into whatever peril, even to the point of becoming martyrs for his sake. Nero would personally see to it that Weiss became their deity.

While Rosso had no interest in sex itself, she was sexually aroused by the sight of blood, and appeared to achieve actual erogenous pleasure from violent combat—the bloodier and more brutal the better.

Nero once saw her slice an unlucky opponent’s throat, during a combat evaluation, moaning with ecstasy, as she tore open her uniform and bathed her body in the gushing torrent of his blood. Nero thought it was a little over-the-top, but artistic enough. He quite liked blood, himself.

When the match was called, she turned to raise her dual blades (which she would later trade for her signature double-bladed gun-saber) in salute to Weiss, but he had been asleep on Nero’s shoulder, throughout the evaluation, and didn’t even see her performance.

She complained bitterly to Nero about this for days, afterward, but didn’t go so far as to blame him, as a less intelligent person might have, and risk incurring his wrath.

Rosso was deeply envious of the attention Weiss paid to Nero, but only insofar as she was obsessed with surpassing others and becoming the best. Her frankly stated goal was to kill Nero in fair combat, one day, and take his place and Weiss’ number two, which Nero respected. She wasn’t so stupid as to make an enemy of him, in the mean time.

Weiss hardly acknowledged Rosso’s existence, let alone ever agreed to spar with her, but Nero indulged her, by letting her try a one-on-one bout with him, every once in a while. Their deal was that, if she could defeat him, she’d be allowed the privilege of a spar with Weiss.

Unfortunately for her, the likelihood of her defeating Nero was absolutely nil. He’d only ever used a fraction of his strength against her, and she could hardly land a blow, let alone do any real damage to him.

Not that she was lacking—she was highly skilled and absolutely deadly, even among enhanced individuals. But Nero and Weiss represented the pinnacle of Deepground’s achievements. None of the others that would come would ever approach their frankly godlike level. In fact, there was only one other in the world, who was their equal (and he was actually vastly their superior).

Those days, when it was only the three of them, even with their brutal training regimens and occasional torturous experimental procedures, to add to or refine their genetic enhancements, would be the last relatively peaceful days of their lives.

It was during one of Director Hojo’s sporadic visits to Deepground, to look in on his little experiments, and generally shake the place up and meddle in things, that everything was to change.

“He brought someone with him, this time,” Nero was saying to Rosso, as the two were busily cutting down armies of simulated mechs, in one of the virtual training rooms. “A bio-cybernetics specialist, from R&D. They say he designed a prototype prosthetic, and wants someone to test it on.”

Rosso spun around, swinging her blade in a deadly arc, and sliced a sweeper cleanly in half, before turning back to Nero. “Why would he come here? Don’t they test those things on prisoners and conscripts, first?”

“They tried.” Nero’s tentacles picked up two MOTH units and slammed them together, tossing away the smoking, sparking heaps of scrap metal. “All the subjects died from stress and shock, during the procedure.”

“So, they want an enhanced body, to try it on. I wonder who it’ll be.”

“You or me. The old man would never let anyone touch his precious Weiss.”

“I hope it’s me,” Rosso declared, readying herself for the next wave of mechs. “I don’t even care if it’s ugly. I’ll take anything, as long as it makes me stronger.”

As it turned out, however, the prototype was intended for a male body, and as Nero mentioned, no one was allowed to lay a finger on Weiss, so it was to be Nero who was offered up, as the sacrifice to science.

He was informed that he’d be taken to the surgery ward, early the next morning. The procedure would be done in steps, and would take several days, since intervals were required between each phase, to test motor function and sensation.

Otherwise, he was told nothing else. Not even the handlers knew what kind of prosthesis it was to be, so it was useless searching their minds.

“I don’t want you to go,” Wiess said, as they lay in bed that night. “What if they hurt you?”

“Since when have you been afraid of me being in pain, brother?” Nero hummed. “You always seem to like it.”

Weiss grinned savagely. “Only when I’m the one hurting you. The thought of someone else hearing your voice moaning, seeing your body twist and struggle…it makes me want to tear them apart and hang them by their entrails.”

“You’re jealous of hypothetical people seeing me in pain?” Nero covered his mouth, in mock trepidation. “But, oh no, what if they strip me naked, while I’m sedated and helpless, too?”

With a snarl, Weiss rolled him roughly onto his back and pinned his wrists above his head, holding him down with his solid weight. His voice dropped to a low rumble, in Nero’s ear. “I’ll gouge out their eyeballs and force them to swallow them, for daring to see you that way.” He bared his white teeth and bit hard into Nero’s neck, making him gasp and shudder. “Your body is mine. Your pain and your pleasure belong tome.”

Nero’s darkness tendrils slithered between their abdomens, coiling around their shafts, to form a snug sleeve they could thrust into, together.

“You belong tome. Only tome,” Weiss growled, as he rocked his hips, harder and faster. “Say it!”

“I b—belong to you!” Nero panted, arching his spine, under the onslaught. “Only to you!”

The tight space between their stomachs became slick and slippery-hot with Weiss’ pulsing release, followed shortly by Nero’s. Long after the waves of ecstasy had ebbed, they still lay together, bodies entwined, kissing and caressing each other, with a mass of purple-black darkness tentacles, wriggling happily about, all around them.

“Brother, you say I belong to you, so make me yours,” Nero said, looking pleadingly up into Weiss’ silver-blue eyes. “I want you, all the way. I’m ready.”

“Not yet, little one,” Weiss murmured, pulling Nero’s slender body tightly against his broad, bare chest. “You’re too young. Your body is still maturing, and I don’t want to injure you.”

“But I’ve grown so much and I’m a lot stronger, now. When will I be mature enough?”

“One more year.” Weiss said, then smiled at Nero’s petulant huff. “It’s just a year. You can wait that long, can’t you? For me?”

“I suppose, if I must,” Nero sighed, which made Weiss laugh and press kisses to his face. “But I think you’re being overprotective. The films didn’t mention anything about waiting till a certain age. Only till both partners have entered puberty.”

[It must here be explained that, of course, the two brothers were closely observed by the researchers, at all times, who were well aware of their bedroom activities. Far from punishing the twins or attempting to discourage it (which methods history had proven again and again to be wildly ineffective at stopping teenagers having sex), they responded like scientists. That is, by observing and taking rigorous notes.

Finally, one of them pointed out to the others, that the twins’ sexual activities would only escalate, voicing concern that, without proper procedural information, they might attempt improvised penetrative sex, which would certainly lead to physical injury.

Their unanimously agreed upon solution, was to sit the two boys down and make them watch a series of Shinra-produced sex education films. Once they received Director Hojo’s approval (what the message actually said was that he didn’t give a damn and to stop pestering him unless something went wrong), they put their plan into motion.

The videos had been made for recruits into the SOLDIER program, when their commanders discovered how woefully undereducated the majority of these young people were, and instituted a multi-part course of life education classes, now mandatory during SOLDIER training.

Since the videos were intended for adults, and since the SOLDIER program attracted a disproportionate number of hom*osexual males (for some unknown reason named Sephiroth), they were a good deal more explicit and instructional, and far less biased toward penis-in-vagin* intercourse, than the ones normally shown to children, in the school system.

Exceedingly proud of their work as youth-educators, the researchers then sent the two boys off with tubes of sterile lubricant, and many strong admonitions not to damage themselves, because they were Shinra property, and it would adversely impact their usefulness. Thus the twins were enlightened about sex.]

“How can you tell you’ve hit puberty?” Weiss teased. “You haven’t grown a single hair on your body, that’s not on your scalp.”

“False. I have eyebrows and eyelashes,” Nero retorted. “Besides, my voice has deepened, my muscles have developed, and I’ve grown taller. Those are also signs of puberty.”

Weiss squinted doubtfully. “Have you grown taller?”

Then he had to restrain his brother and laughingly beg forgiveness, till Nero calmed down and stopped kicking, with his surprisingly strong legs.

Weiss wasn’t just larger than Nero, by a normal margin. His development had been greatly accelerated by his genetic enhancements, so he’d grown much bigger, much faster than an un-augmented child. By the time he was fourteen, Weiss had already hit six-foot two, and had the bone density and muscle mass of a man in his late twenties. He’d even grown a dense patch of snow-white pubic hair.

Nero, on the other hand, stayed slight and slender, like a child, well into his teens. He eventually developed lean but well-defined muscles (particularly in his powerful thighs), but he never grew facial or body hair, and his pale skin remained translucent and dewy, as if the pubescent hormones had no effect on it.

He also never grew above five-foot eight, much to his brother’s satisfaction. The stark difference in their physiques seemed to delight them both, equally. Nero liked to touch his brother’s broad chest and the hard ridges of his abdomen, when they were in the shower together, both from envy and for…other reasons. Weiss liked to hold Nero in his lap, even in the presence of others, and carry him around like a princess, to neither of which behaviors Nero objected in the slightest.

The result of all this, was that Nero appeared to be much younger than Weiss, though they were only eighteen months apart. Until they learned better (often painfully), people tended to assume Nero was weak, and that Weiss kept him around as a toy. Nero, an ambush predator at heart, encouraged this misconception himself, and used being underestimated and disregarded to his full advantage.

But that was to come later. At present, they were still fourteen and sixteen. Nero was being taken to the surgical ward-slash temporary cybernetics lab, and unbeknownst to either, Weiss was to receive a little surprise, from Director Hojo, while his brother was away.

When they showed Nero the things they intended to attach to his body, he was shocked. They looked like the bone structure of a bat’s wings, only made from a steel-like alloy, and at a human scale. Notablyunlike bat wings, they had long, curved blades on the end of each ‘bone’, and at the top joint of both wings, were prosthetic hands, the purpose of which Nero could not begin to imagine.

They were clearly not intended for flight, as evidenced by their immense size and weight, but for use as a weapon. The bio-cybernetics specialist proudly explained that once implanted, they would function as an organic part of the body, as dexterously as one’s own arms and hands.

Because of that, they required a hardwired connection to the spinal cord, itself, as well as an immense number of nerve splices. Had Nero only known exactly what that would mean. But there was a reason they didn’t tell him.

His actual memory of the sequence of events was blurred and disordered by extreme trauma, after that. He was put under, for the surgery to attach hardware to his scapulae, and the spinal column. When he came to, from those, he was facedown, on an operating table with a hole for his face, like a masseuse’s table.

His muzzle was on, but there was now also a rubber bit in his mouth, to stop him biting off his own tongue. His legs were strapped down and cuffed with mako-powered restraints, and his hands were locked inside heavy, metal cylinders, also with mako circulating through them. He’d been given a powerful paralytic, to ensure he couldn’t move, and a stimulant, to clear his mind.

It was then explained to him, that the nerve splicing had to be done without anesthetic, to ensure the connections were made properly. After that…all he remembered was pain. Pain so intense, it was measured in colors. Blue then red then white. And every time the merciful blackness took him, they injected a stimulant to wake him back up, to force him back into a shadowless world, where pain was a searing, white light, that he couldn’t hide from, no matter how he tried.

He screamed. And screamed and screamed. Till his throat was raw and his voice gave out, and he could only make weak, rasping sounds. On the second day, his mind began to break. He saw and heard things that weren’t there, and spent the hours out of surgery adrift in a nonsensical dream about being an egg yolk, separated from its protective albumen.

On the third day, he stopped perceiving the operating room, at all, and began to see through physical reality, into the deep structure of space and time. He cried out to the darkness for help, and from the black abyss before him, came a nameless horror, beyond all imagining. A creature of terror and death, born of Chaos itself. The spider.

Nero entered the abyss, and became the spider. No…he had been the spider, all along, and the abyss was inside him. That human body was a shell, woefully inadequate to house such a monstrous, ravenous will.

It was jerking and convulsing on the operating table, monitors shrieking and alarms blaring, as it went into cardiac arrest, for what must’ve been the tenth time. All the little human creatures were still scurrying about, doing things, unaware of the spider’s heaving, hideous bulk, looming over them, watching, with its eight, blood-red eyes.

The spider wanted to drop down and protect its human body, but it couldn’t feel its legs, for some reason, so it had nothing to do but watch the other creatures cutting it open and torturing it cruelly.

After a while, the monitors stopped beeping so urgently, and the little body on the table had stopped screaming. The others injected it with something, and the spider’s eight eyes became sleepy and heavy.

It awakened some time later, starving and disoriented, half-blinded by the bright light. To make matters worse, it was on a solid surface, so the vibrations of movement were unfocused, seeming to come from everywhere at once. Unable to properly get its bearings, it hunched in a defensive posture, on top of its tiny, vulnerable human body, alert and wary.

Gradually, life seeped back into its eight legs. They were stiff and sore, as if it had never used them. One by one, it began to unfurl them and stretch them out, segment by segment, tapping gingerly with the sharp tips, to feel out the general surroundings.

It was in a different room, with different beeping machines. This solid surface was a bed. The warm-blooded creatures were still scurrying and making noise nearby, but they were on the other side of a wall, now. Pity. The spider was so painfully hungry. But no matter. If it made a web and sat patiently, one would wander by, eventually.

Summary:

A scene in this chapter was inspired by my friend's beautiful art! Linked in the chapter!

Unbeknownst to either of the brothers, Director Hojo had decided that now was the time to initiate his planned breeding program, for Weiss. The other scientists begged him to reconsider (out of fear for their own lives, more than any particular compassion for the twins), but he was adamant.

With Nero safely out of the way, for at least a week, including recovery, what better time to put Weiss to work servicing the various incubators he’d chosen to gestate his precious subject’s progeny (Hojo’s actual words).

That morning, after Nero had been taken away, a handler came to inform Weiss, who was grudgingly teaching some parrying moves to Rosso, that Director Hojo had selected a group of high-performing individuals, as potential entrants to Deepground, and that Weiss was to test them and choose the best candidates, after lunch.

When these ostensible prospective teammates were shown in to the arena, later that day, Rosso rolled her eyes and snorted audibly, at the transparency of Shinra’s intentions. All of them were female, and of a certain phenotype—small waists, round hips, and large breasts, with pouting lips and big, doe-like eyes. Most notably, none were mako-enhanced, which was the clearest indicator of their real purpose here.

As if it were a legitimate ranks inspection by their new commander, the young women lined up and stood at attention, then introduced themselves, giving their names, ages, and qualifications. They were all educated, accomplished, between twenty and twenty-five years of age, and despite their rather delicate appearances, combat-trained officers or elite troopers.

Naturally, they had been informed of their intended breeding partner’s age and inexperience, and had been quite expecting to find a gawky teenager. Thus, they were pleasantly surprised to see that Weiss was tall, hyperbolically fit, almost shockingly handsome, and in all ways looked like a full-grown adult male.

Their flushed cheeks and heated gazes were not lost on Rosso, who was a predator herself, and knew another when she saw it sniffing around her territory. She may not have had any interest in taking Weiss as a mate, herself, but he was her idol and leader. The idea of her leader having a gaggle of silly concubines following him around was an affront to her personal dignity, and got her hackles up.

Weiss, however, far from being enticed by the prospect of healthy, attractive females with which to mate, appeared entirely oblivious to their feminine charms. To Rosso’s endless amusem*nt (and the flat disbelief of the observing scientists), he took the characterization of the situation as ‘vetting prospective teammates’ at face value, and proceeded to do just that.

When the introductions were got through, he ordered Rosso to test the candidates in hand-to-hand combat, then stood by looking bored, while she gleefully thrashed them, one by one.

To add literal insult to actual injury, Weiss ruthlessly rejected each one, as they were defeated, pronouncing them ‘weak’, ‘pathetic’, ‘worthless’, and so forth.

At the end of an hour, the fifteen bewildered and badly beaten young women had all been sent limping away, to complain to Director Hojo about that evil little harpy, who wouldn’t let them anywhere near Weiss, and beat them all black and blue.

“Well, the boy is young, and he’s not exactly versed in the ways of the world,” Hojo reasoned. “Perhaps he requires a more direct approach.”

When Weiss arrived at his quarters, that evening, two young women were waiting, lounging in a provocative pose together, on his bed. He stopped short, tense and wary, as the door shut behind him. Desiring to communicate that this was not an ambush (notthatkind at least), the young ladies smiled and winked, sliding their hands invitingly up and down one another’s bare thighs.

Weiss’ silver-blue eyes flickered over their soft, curvy bodies, then he turned and slowly shrugged off his jacket, his ropy back muscles flexing and rippling with the motion of his arms.

This only encouraged the girls, and they redoubled their seductive efforts, beckoning to him and pressing their ripe, round breasts together, under the transparent lace of the lingerie they’d been dressed in.

Weiss hung his jacket on the hook, then approached the bed, with a beatific smile on his perfect lips.

At that point, anyone who was at all familiar with him would have been making peace with the god of their choice, but the two young ladies had never seen him before today, and took his placid demeanor for approval of their presence.

“I guess Professor Hojo sent you here,” he said mildly, looking down at them. “He really expects me to f*ck this kind of haggard trash.”

At these unexpectedly harsh words, both young women bridled indignantly, jumping to their feet and dropping the femme-fatale theatrics.

“Hey, asshole! We don’t like it any more than you do,” one shot back. “We’re following orders, so just hurry up and f*ck us, so we can leave, ok?”

Weiss summoned a blade to his hand. “You have polluted the bed my brother and I share, with your whor*house perfume. Would you like me wash out the stench, with your blood?”

“Brother?” the first girl asked, confused. “Wait, what do you mean, you share a bed?”

“Please, Weiss!” the second girl begged, actually folding her hands in a supplicating pose. “If we don’t get your seed, Professor Hojo said he’ll use us as test subjects for his horrible experiments!”

“Oh—yeah, he did!” the first concurred, nodding vehemently. “You’ve seen the twisted sh*t he does to people, right? We’d rather die.”

Weiss lowered his blade and hesitated, furrowing his white brow. “It…would be cruel, to allow you to be taken and used for the professor's experiments.”

“Right!” the girls agreed. “So please, help us out, ok? We promise we’ll show you a good time.”

He drew a deep breath and then nodded. “Very well, I’ll help you.”

Neither of them even saw him move. But neither of them ever saw anything, again. Hojo later remarked, (far more admiringly than was strictly proper, given the circ*mstances) that not even a world-class surgeon could have done a cleaner, more elegant job of severing a human being’s brain stem, let alone two, and within a millisecond of one another.

Weiss, pleased with himself for his uncharacteristically charitable deed, dismissed his blade and went to the bathroom to shower, leaving the two young beauties lying on the floor by the door, neatly wrapped up in the bed linens they had lain in, which now stank of their unpleasantly heavy, floral perfume.

While he showered, he reached out to Nero, using their psychic link, only to find himself firmly rebuffed. He was so stunned, that he immediately tried again, from sheer disbelief. Once again, he ran into a solid wall. Weiss was dumbfounded, and immediately worried.

It was a shared ability, but Nero’s was far stronger, so he had the power to shut Weiss out, and Weiss would be helpless to do anything about it. Only, he never had, before. Why would he do it, now?

When he emerged from the shower, the bodies were gone, the linens were freshly changed, his supper was waiting, and there was a video call flashing on the monitor. He touched the screen to answer the call, and continued drying himself with his towel.

The face that popped up was a thin, weathered, middle-aged man, with long black hair, a hawkish nose, and round spectacles, which reflected light in a way that often concealed his eyes.

“I see you didn’t like any of the gifts I sent you,” His nasal voice said, in a tone of exaggerated disappointment. “Well, no matter. I have many more to choose from. Why don’t you tell me what you prefer, and we’ll go from there.”

“I prefer not to find your ‘gifts’ in my room,” Weiss returned, tossing his towel into the laundry bin. He was stark naked, but had absolutely no sense of bodily modesty, having been watched every moment of every day, since he was born.

The old man on the screen pushed up his spectacles, running his eyes over his subject’s flawless body, in undisguised admiration. This truly was the body of the perfect SOLDIER. Of all his experimental results, over the decades, there was only one who’d turned out better, so he had something of a soft spot for Weiss (as much as a eugenics-obsessed psychopath was capable of, at least).

“Fair enough, fair enough. There’s no need to send them to pester you in your down time. I can arrange for you to visit them during training hours, if that’s more convenient.”

“Not interested,” Weiss said flatly, as he sat down at the square, steel table, and began to eat his dinner.

“Don’t be difficult, my boy,” Hojo admonished. “You were always slated to be a sire for this breeding program. I won’t hide from you that the success of the project is depending entirely upon you, now. The other intended sire has turned out to be sterile.” He said the last part with an air of grievance, as if the individual in question had been infertile on purpose, to spite him. “Since the girls don’t appeal to you, tell me what incentives we can offer, to smooth the—”

“Professor, you are wasting your time,” Weiss interrupted, setting down his fork. “I will not be acting as a breeding stud, rutting with females at your command, like a pig in a sty. The prospect is as repulsive as it is insulting.”

Hojo was out of patience, now, and the mask of civility came off. “But it’s perfectly acceptable to you, to f*ck your little brother? Who can’t even make use of the valuable genetic material your are wasting on him? Which, I might add, is proprietary Shinra biotechnology!”

“My brother is still a virgin,” Weiss replied tersely. “He’s not old enough for sex.”

“Semantics,” Hojo snorted. “Does it really require penetration, to count? Or is that just what you tell yourself, to excuse what you’ve been doing to that naïve child, who trusts his elder brother so much.”

If Weiss had the intelligence of a normal sixteen-year-old boy, or a much lower opinion of himself, this attack may have worked. However, he was neither stupid, nor plagued by paralyzing self doubt and ego shattering insecurity, like that certain subject that Hojo had been accustomed to dealing with. As such, the blow glanced off his hide like a wooden spear from the hull of a supertanker.

“I love my brother, professor. I will not betray him.”

Hojo waved hand irritably. “Oh, please. Don’t feed me that trite sentimentalism, it’s just copulation! Biology!! What does love have to do with it? Come, now. I’ve been more than reasonable, but I am growing impatient. Everyone has a price, so name yours.”

“There is none.”

“I see. I did not want it to come to this, Weiss. But if you persist in refusing to cooperate, I’ll be forced to use the stick, rather than the carrot.”

“Is that a threat, professor?” Wiess asked.

“I don’t have to make threats, my boy,” Hojo chuckled. “Don’t forget that I own you.Andyour precious brother. You have twelve hours to name your terms, or there will be consequences.”

With that, the video call disconnected and the screen blanked. Weiss sat perfectly still and calm, finishing his meal, betraying nothing of what was passing in his mind, through his posture or expression. Internally, however, his stomach was twisted into knots of anxiety.

Hojo’s message was clear: do as I say, or I’ll hurt your brother. But doing what Hojo said would hurt his brother anyway, and thus Weiss was chained between two unacceptable choices.

Agonized with indecision, and utterly lost without his other half to guide him, he tried to connect to Nero again, but that solid wall was still up.

What could he be doing, that would make him shut Weiss out like this? They’d always used their connection to comfort one another, especially when they were injured or undergoing some painful procedure or another.

Then a dark thought crossed his mind. What if the prototype prosthetic was an excuse, and they’d separated them for the purpose of making similar overtures to Nero, regarding breeding.

What if he’d agreed, out of concern for Weiss, and was with a woman, right now? What if he’d refused, but they’d drugged or restrained him, and forced him to…

No. That was paranoia talking. Nero himself had verified the information about the cybernetics specialist, from some handlers’ minds. He’d have known if he was being lied to.

That still left Wiess in this precarious position, alone, which was certainly Hojo’s intention, knowing the Nero was the brains of the operation. Now, it was up to Weiss to think of something, quickly. When Hojo contacted him, the next morning, he found the boy in a more cooperative frame of mind.

“Why does it have to be sex?” Weiss asked. “There are other methods of creating a pregnancy. Isn’t that how Nero and I were made?”

“Of course, in vitro fertilization is my preference,” Hojo answered. “Much cleaner and more reliable. Easier to control all the variables. But the costs for extraction and cryo-storage and implantation are prohibitive, on the scale I desire. Deepground’s budget is tight, and the board is already looking for excuses to slash it. They’ll never approve the extra expense.”

“That must be because they haven’t seen any results, yet,” Weiss pointed out.

Hojo pushed up his spectacles. “Ah, I see you’ve been using the enhanced brain I gave you. Well, go ahead. I’m listening.”

“Why don’t you let me show them that Deepground deserves just as much attention as SOLDIER. That it could be better than SOLDIER, like you always said. If we convince them that it’s worthwhile, they’ll increase the budget, which will free up funds for the in vitro procedures, and benefit the whole program, as well.”

“Interesting, interesting. But that’s a tall order. Just how do you plan to convince them?”

“Let me fight Sephiroth.”

Had the old man been sipping a beverage at that moment, he’d have spit it out, all over the monitor. “F—fight Sephiroth! You??” he sputtered, nearly choking with laughter, now that the initial shock had worn off. “You fool, he’d kill you six ways before you hit the ground!”

“I didn’t say I have to win,” Weiss returned, gloomily. “I just have to not lose badly enough that it’s an embarrassment to Deepground. He obeys you, right? Set up a match between us, for the executives. The board will love it, because it’ll be good PR for their poster boy, and it’ll also show them how successful the work you’re doing here has been. All you have to do is tell Sephiroth the plan, and that he has to beat me without making me look too bad. And get him to endorse the Deepground program. Unless…you can’t control him.”

“Tch, that child is putty in my hands. There’s no need to worry about his cooperation.” Hojo sat back, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “The tricky part will be creating a pretext for a sparring match between Shinra’s superstar and a total unknown, like you.”

Weiss shook his head. “That, I can’t help with. I’ve never even been outside. I have no idea how things like that proceed.”

“Never been outside,” Hojo muttered, absently removing his spectacles to wipe them with the sleeve of his lab coat. “Pity, too. You’re such a good boy. The only one who hasn’t disappointed me.”

“Except for Sephiroth, you mean.”

“I mean just as I say. Sephiroth may be well ahead of you, but it’s only because he’s so much older. If you work hard and don’t get lazy, you’ll surpass him, one day.”

This was news to Weiss, and happened to stroke his ego in exactly the right spot. “You…really think so?”

“Indeed. Your genes are purer, since his parents were chosen…impulsively, whereas yours were carefully selected. Most importantly, your mentality is superior to his. You are much less morbid and sensitive, and you have drive that he lacks. You’re ruthless and calculating, and you’re not ashamed of it.”

“Sephiroth seems fairly ruthless and calculating, to me,” Weiss hedged.

“Bosh. He knows how to seem cool and in control, for the public, but it’s all a façade. That boy is moody and temperamental and capricious, like a woman. Not only that, but he doesn’t enjoy success, at all, and spends all his time moping about killing people. And he’s always on about not having mother. You don’t have a mother, and I don’t see you crying about it.”

“What does he need a mother for?” Weiss asked, with a disdainful curl of his lip. “He’s the greatest warrior of all time. He should be proud of how he was raised, without the influence of a woman, to make him soft.”

“Ha! Try telling him that,” Hojo snorted. Then caught himself and cleared his throat. “Ahem. Well. I’ll take your suggestions into consideration. One way or another, we need to arrange a demonstration of your abilities to the board. It’s high time I got a chance to show you off.”

“Professor?” Weiss said, stopping Hojo as he was about to disconnect the call.

“Hm? What is it?”

“My brother. Is he alright?”

“Yes, yes, no need to trouble yourself about that. Dr. Ikari is the best in the world. I’m going to look in on him now, in fact. I’ll make sure everything is proceeding as expected. Is that all?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Weiss spent the next two days going through the motions of training, gazing absently off toward the surgical ward for minutes at a time, and letting Rosso follow him around everywhere, because it made no difference to him, if she was there or not.

He actually grew from grudging tolerance to tentative acceptance of her, during those few days, because she obeyed his orders without question, and didn’t try to talk to him, otherwise.Both excellent traits in a subordinate.

They were in the middle of a particularly intense virtual battle, when the simulated beasts and mountain landscape around them suddenly disintegrated, and the room went pitch dark. Then the flashing, red emergency lights came on, casting the room in bloody crimson. The floor shook, with the heavy clang of the reinforced blast doors coming down, over the top of the doors to the training room, as the alarm klaxons began blaring.

“Lockdown,” Rosso muttered. “But we’re both here, so—”

“Nero,” Weiss said, finishing the thought.

Rosso stood tense and ready, awaiting further orders, but after a minute had passed, and he hadn’t spoken again, she could no longer bear to remain silent. “Commander? What are we going to do?”

“Nothing,” Weiss said tranquilly. “They will come to us, shortly.”

Rosso glanced reflexively toward the doors, then back at Weiss, who was seating himself in a lotus position, with his long sword balanced across his knees.

She knew better than to question him further, so she did the same, swallowing her deep dread of being locked in a training room, in the dark, and forcing herself to take slow (though rather shaky) breaths.

Perhaps five minutes passed, then suddenly a voice came crackling loudly over the intercom, nearly startling her out of her skin.

“Weiss! There you are! Get the hell over here and control your lunatic brother!”

“Good afternoon, professor,” Weiss replied calmly, looking up toward the camera. “I’d like to comply with your order, sir, but we are in lockdown status. The blast doors have closed.”

There was rustling and some garbled cursing from the other side, then Hojo’s voice returned, sounding annoyed and impatient, but not particularly worried. “These imbeciles can’t lift the lockdown for that room, without lifting it for the entire complex. I assume you can get out on your own?”

Weiss’ eyes glinted in the red glare of the emergency strobes. “Not without causing damage to Shinra property.”

“I hereby authorize you to damage whatever you need to, just get to the surgical ward ASAP. He’s already killed three squads of guards and Hades knows how many doctors and scientific staff.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rosso was a bit confused by what she saw next. Weiss seemed to vanish, from his seated position, and almost simultaneously reappear, standing before the doors, amid multiple flashes of white light.

“Go protect Director Hojo. Stay with him, until I am sure my brother is safe,” he said over his shoulder, as the steel doors to the training room, and the three-foot thick reinforced blast doors outside those, collapsed to the ground, cleanly sliced into dozens of geometric fragments.

“Y—yes, sir,” Rosso answered.

Before the words were even all the way out of her mouth, Weiss had vanished again, displacing air behind him like a small explosion.

Rosso stood gaping, for a few seconds, before she dashed off to obey his orders. Her heart pounded and her breath came short as she sped down the hall, but it wasn’t from the running. It was from the adrenaline pumping through her body, at the sudden, staggering revelation of Weiss’ speed and strength, and the swiftly dawning realization of just how little of his power she’d actually everseen.

She wondered if the Shinra people were even aware of his full power. They must not have been, if they thought that lockdown doors like those were enough to contain him.

Though, Professor Hojo hadn’t seemed to harbor any misguided notions. He hadn’t questioned for a moment that Weiss could break through those doors, and only told him to hurry up.

What was their relationship, anyway? The two spoke so familiarly with one another, and the professor seemed to have quite a bit of trust in his imprisoned test subject. Well, whatever it was, her orders from Weiss were clear. Find Director Hojo and keep an eye on him, under the pretext of guarding him, as insurance, in case Nero wasn’t alright.

She almost wished he wouldn’t be. Not that she wished Nero any particular harm (she rather liked the vampiric little psychopath), it was just that, in the case that Nero was killed, or even irreparably harmed, Weiss would certainly revolt against their captors.

Then she would be free to slash and slaughter to her heart’s content, as they fought their way out of this place. And then…and then she would find either her death, or the open sky. What a glorious day that would be.

Weiss reached the surgical ward, within two minutes of departing the training room, moving like a rush of wind, far faster than the human eye could perceive him, and blowing through the many layers of locked down security doors on the way, like they were nothing more than tissue paper.

The last set were the double-doors leading into the ward. He kicked them open with a boom, and surveyed the situation. The lights in the main hallway were out, and with the equipment and papers and things strewn all about the floor, and the place lit only by the red emergency strobes, it looked very much like a hospital from a horror film.

Weiss had never seen a horror film, however, and wouldn’t have been frightened by one if he had, and strode into the scene of pandemonium unconcerned.

The hallway branched left and right, and he didn’t know which way Nero was. The cameras and intercom were out, as well, so Hojo couldn’t tell him. The only way was to try their connection.

When he reached out, this time, he thought he’d hit that wall again, but when he tried to draw back, he found himself unable to do so. It wasn’t like Nero holding onto his strand, but more like he’d collided with a wall of thick, sticky tar and sunk a few inches in, and now it didn’t want to let him pull himself free.

Rather than struggle like a fool, he relaxed and let himself sink deeper and deeper into the cold, clinging slime, till suddenly, he popped through on the other side…into a lightless void, so black it was like swimming in ink.

He was pondering which direction to go, when he heard screams, suddenly, and looked over, to see faintly-glowing bluish shapes, being dragged deeper into the blackness.

Seeing his bright, white light, they reached out and begged him for help, probably mistaking him for an angel, come to save them. He ignored their pleas, only following behind as they wailed and bawled, struggling impotently against the inexorable force that was pulling them along.

This force that was pulling them along was actually thin strands of sticky, black shadow, like nightmare spider’s silk. Weiss knew this, because the strands kept brushing against him, but they never grabbed hold of him or even adhered to his body (or rather, his human-shaped psychic projection).

For what seemed a long time, he followed the doomed souls into the darkness, till at last, eight red suns rose in the black sky, a crown of immense, bloody jewels, emitting no light and yet bathing everything in their crimson glow.

Weiss realized with a thrill that sent shivers up his spine, that these things were neither suns, nor jewels, but titanic eyes, belonging to a spider the size of a planet.

It was a colossal beast of ancient power, impossibly massive in size, wreathed in writhing shadow, blacker than the abyss, as if the essence of its being was the negation of light, rather than simply the absence thereof. Its eight segmented legs reached out from its thorax, spread wide enough to encompass galaxies, had there been any stars in the abyss.

With careless ease, it consumed the microscopic souls, which passed in through its fanged jaws in the blink of an eye, and were no more. Then its eyes fell upon the tiny, silver-white star, that had descended into its domain.

Rearing up suddenly in defense, as high as a nebula rising into the reaches of space, it raised its enormous forelegs and snapped its mandibles, with a sound like the crackling of thunder.

Weiss, who alone had the strength to maintain a human form in this realm of chaos and annihilation, spread his arms in response, and a ray of light reached out from him to pierce the darkness.

The spider shrank back, curled into itself, drew its galaxy spanning legs in tight against its black bulk, and hid its eyes from the blinding light. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of black strands of web shot out and wove themselves into a defensive mesh of shadow and confusion, to disorient and keep the angel away.

To the behemoth’s disbelief, the light passed right through its barrier of webs, and the tiny angel kept coming, unhindered and unafraid.

The closer it came, the more the spider curled and shrank into itself, until it was hardly larger than a human child. A tiny, pathetic thing, trembling and quaking before a towering angel of light.

“Brother,” said a voice, as soft as a baby’s breath and as mighty as the roaring of the sea. “Why are you afraid?”

The spider shook harder, and tried to hide what it knew was its hideous, arachnid face, with fanged mandibles and eight eyes, but the angel reached out and took its head in his strong hands.

“Nero. You are so beautiful,” he said, gently stroking the horned, oil-black exoskeleton. “Never hide your face from me. You may conceal yourself in darkness, and hide away from all the world, but never from me.”

As he said these words, he leaned in, heedless of the huge, venomous fangs, and pressed his perfect lips to the spider’s horrific maw.

Lured by his warmth and softness, the spider reached helplessly toward him, with its black pedipalps, which seemed to suddenly look much more like human hands, where they touched his broad shoulders.

Slowly, very slowly, its eight legs uncoiled and wrapped themselves around the angel’s silky, silver-white body, taking care not to hurt him, with the sharp tips of the arachnid appendages. As the angel deepened the kiss, the spider’s fanged jaws spread wider and wider, and began to recede altogether. At last, they revealed the smooth, white, lower half of human face.

The angel laughed softly and kissed him again, holding onto his bulky thorax and pushing his lips apart, sliding his tongue into his mouth, eager and possessive, and infinitely tender. A kiss filled with a love so profound, it shattered the rest of the spider’s black carapace and fully exposed the tiny, fragile and vulnerable human body, that he had been trying so hard to protect.

But that didn’t matter now. Weiss was taking him in his arms and holding him close, against his big, solid, blazing hot chest, and Nero’s mind was filled with his strong heartbeat, that sounded in his ears like the music of life itself.

Nero buried his face in his brother’s neck and breathed a shuddering sigh. It was alright, now. Weiss had him. The spider could hide away in abyss inside, again. Weiss would protect him. Everything would be alright.

At that time, he had truly believed it.

Summary:

NOTE: It's not a time skip in the Deepground section, it's just to frame Nero's physical trauma more.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

After the Restrictor came, and they implanted those chips in everyone, they sedated Nero and carried him to a dark, cavernous place, in the lowest sub-level of Deepground. Industrial power tools whirred and shrieked. He awoke feeling the vibrations in his skull.

Men were locking heavy shackles onto his wings, at six points. The shackles, they attached to the type of chains that are used for boat anchors; made of iron and as thick as a man’s arm. The chains were hung through huge, steel rings, bolted to a massive support pillar, and hooked up to a construction winch, on the other side.

The Restrictor turned the winch and drew the chains tighter and tighter, laughing while the teenaged boy screamed in agony, pulling Nero’s wings higher and spreading them wider apart, till his shoulder blades felt like they were about to be dislocated, and his feet couldn’t properly rest on the ground.

That was the position he was locked in. Splayed against the gigantic support pillar, like a butterfly pinned to a display board. Muzzled and bound in a straitjacket. Chained by his wings, to the literal foundation of Deepground.

The only way to relieve the pain of bearing his weight on his wings, was to push himself up on tip-toe. He could only do that for so long, before his legs began to tremble with fatigue. Try as he might, his strength would eventually fail, and his legs give out. Then his wings would catch his full weight, and he would scream in agony again.

The Restrictor often lingered nearby, watching him go through this process, drinking in the boy’s tormented groans and cries of distress, with lascivious glee. But he also observed the boy growing stronger and stronger…and more dangerous.

Nero curled up, as the lightning bolts of pain racked his body again, mouth hanging open, a clear stream drool running out onto the floor. Where was his muzzle? Where was his straitjacket? He’d had some kind of cotton jersey shirt on his top half, but he had clawed and torn it to shreds, and it now lay in a purple pile on the floor.

He heard a noise behind him, but he didn’t have time to work out what it was, before he felt the darkness react to something, like a dog jumping in excitement, when its master walks in the door. Weiss! It must be Weiss! he thought, deliriously. Tears of joy leaked from the sides of his eyes, even as they were squeezed shut against the pain.

“W—Weiss…” he rasped, as the darkness reached out toward his beloved. His only one.

He was hauled up to a sitting position, and strong arms wrapped around him from behind, like bands of iron, compressing his crossed arms on his chest, in that familiar position. He was pressed tight against a stone-hard body and lifted to his feet, but…something was wrong. The darkness was curling happily around the person, but making no connection.Not Weiss!his mind screamed.

Enraged, Nero gave his lithe torso a sudden twist, like a snake, trying to wrench himself free, but the arms held him fast. “What the f*ck!”

“Calm down,” a smooth, deep voice said, right in his ear. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“f*ck you! Let me go!” he snarled, thrashing harder, still to no observable effect.

Vincent sighed. “Nero, I know you’re in pain. Let me help—”

“I don’t need your help you bastard!” he roared, kicking his legs, trying to throw this human monolith off balance. He may as well have struggled against the planet itself, for all the man moved. Panting and shaking with fatigue, from even that brief effort, he gave up and hung limply in Vincent’s arms. “I h—I hate you. f*cking die.”

“I can’t.”

As Vincent said this, the room exploded into a whirling, crimson blur, and suddenly, they were atop the roof of the house. Nero’s bare feet stood on the sandy grit of the roof tiles, and blowing wind brought the scent of rain, from the rolling, grey storm clouds, that were obscuring the moon.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, in real bewilderment.

“I think I can help, with your pain,” a rasping, resonant, entirely demonic voice answered. “But I can’t try it inside the house. My wings are too big.”

Chaos. The demon’s familiar aura sent shivers of elation up Nero’s spine and made him sick to his stomach, at the same time. He felt bloodthirsty, resentful, filled with rage and grief and underneath it all, a deep, hollow ache. A longing as fathomless as the abyss.

“How do you know I’m in pain?”

“Sephiroth explained, after you went upstairs.”

“Can he ever mind his own business?” Nero grumbled, under his breath.

Acting entirely without his input, Nero’s darkness tendrils suddenly burst out of the black markings all over his body and plunged directly into Chaos, connecting them, like it was plugging him into a power source.

Horrified, Nero tried to make them come back, but his knees buckled and his vision went blank, just then, his brain shorted out by the sudden exposure to unfiltered Chaos energy.

When his vision returned, the demon was still holding him, the same way—Nero’s arms restrained in straitjacket position, and his bare back pressed to its midsection—steadying him on his feet, so he didn’t fall off the roof.

He was trying work out what the hell Chaos was playing at, when he felt it. A dizzying rush of relief, pouring in through the wing brackets on his shoulder blades and coursing through his body. Lack of pain so potent, it was ten times more intoxicating than the headiest pleasure.

Involuntarily, Nero’s head dropped back onto Chaos’ chest and he gave a shuddering moan, as he began to unfurl the demon’s huge, membranous wings, slowly and stiffly, spreading them as wide as they could go.

Tears poured unchecked down his ashen face, weeping openly, as he stretched and folded the wings on the demon’s back, savoring every movement, feeling the contorted phantom segments straightening out, the excruciating knots loosening, the throbbing tautness unwinding.

Nero’s body now felt relaxed and comfortable, being held tightly in Chaos’ arms. Actually, he hadn’t felt this good since…well, in a long time. Now that they believed everything was back as it was supposed to be, the formerly tormented nerves were humming with vitality. Suddenly, the urge to use the wings he’d missed so sorely, was so strong he could taste it.

Nero’s own wings had nothing to do with his ability to defy gravity, so it was something of a shock to him, when he gave Chaos’ wings an exploratory flap, and the two rocketed into the air.

He jolted and cried out in alarm, as the ground fell away and the rooftop shrank below them at a dizzying speed. Chaos, however, appeared patently unconcerned, only taking control to give his wings a few beats (to stop them plummeting directly back out of the sky, and to gain some height for safety reasons), then returning control to Nero.

Nero wasn’t afraid of heights in the least, but he didn’t particularly want to smack into the earth like a meteor, so he scrambled to flap the massive wings. With an effort, he got them under good enough control to keep aloft, then gingerly began to try changing direction.

He was uncoordinated, and kept going awkwardly off kilter. They tumbled and veered multiple times, before he actually began to get the hang of it. But by the time half an hour had passed, Nero was able to fly in relatively steady circles, above the Valentine-Highwind property.

All this time, not a single word passed between himself and the ancient demon, whose body he was essentially sharing, at the moment, but at times he could feel its wordless intent, guiding him.Spread. Glide. Tuck. Bank left. More thrust on the right.

It occurred to him, with a series of complicated emotions, that his father was teaching him to fly. Just like a real father teaching his real son to ride a bicycle. Patiently and calmly, ready to catch him, if he fell. He felt something deep inside him, begin to crack.

Nero, being Nero, bridled and balked. Furious with himself, for being so soft and stupid, and letting himself be taken in so easily, he sullenly withdrew his control from the wings and let them fall, till Chaos lazily caught them and swooped back upward, with effortless elegance, as if it were no more difficult than breathing.

That drew Nero right back out of his morose ruminations. He had thought he’d been doing well, but he clearly had no idea what flying evenwas. Chaos used far fewer wing beats to achieve the same height and speed, and seemed to be exerting ten times less effort. What the hell? How was it that much different to what he’d been doing?

Spinning like a corkscrew, the demon rapidly ascended, higher and higher, till they emerged from the storm cover in the clear, black sky, where the air became thin and icy-cold, and the the moon shone pure and bright over the sea of clouds.

Nero was staring in undisguised awe at the tens of thousands of glittering stars, when Chaos tucked his wings tightly against his body and dropped abruptly into a freefall. Nero’s stomach flipped and he had to choke down a cry. They fell faster and faster, the wind beating furiously at his face, making his eyes tear up, as they plunged back into the grey clouds, plummeting earthward at terminal velocity.

Just above the treeline, Chaos extended his wings partway and used the downward momentum to shoot forward like a bullet, speeding over the blurred tops of the trees.

As if on cue, thunder rolled and lighting crackled, as the heavy clouds burst, at last. The cold water droplets lashed Nero’s face and his bare torso, as they flew at that logic-defying speed, but he was actually rather thrilled by it. He wasn’t bothered by cold, and he’d never felt rain before.

Apparently sensing that the weather didn’t trouble his passenger, Chaos kept going, soaring nonchalantly through blinding sheets of rain, doing spectacular loops and dizzying barrel rolls, throwing off spirals of water as they went.

Nero had to force down the swell of mirth, that bubbled up in his chest, at the idea of this apocalyptic demon playing around in the rain, to amuse itself. Chaos was having fun, and it showed. If he could have admitted it, without gagging to death, so was Nero.

More than two hours evaporated, and soon they were circling back around toward home—er…toward the Valentine-Highwind house. When they got in close, rather than landing, Chaos did that teleportation thing with the whirling crimson, and they were simply standing in Nero’s room.

Nero hadn’t got his sea legs yet, and turned around unsteadily to blink up at Chaos, who was Vincent again, in his slashed up black jeans and crimson henley, with that stupid headband, as usual. He was also perfectly dry, as opposed to Nero, who was soaking wet, from head to toe, black hair pasted to his white forehead, and quickly creating a puddle, on the wood floor.

Conveniently, Sephiroth (because the world had gone thoroughly insane, and the hero of Wutai was now some kind of super-housewife) had left folded bath towels on the dresser, and put the fresh linens on the bed, while they were out.

Before Nero could say anything, Vincent picked up an oversized bath towel and spread it open, holding it up between them, like a privacy screen. Not quite understanding the prudishness of the gesture, Nero peeled off his soaking wet jeans and underwear, then let Vincent wrap the plushy towel around him.

He still had no idea how to process what happened, tonight. No idea what it meant, or how to react. So he just stood there, dazed, while his father carefully rubbed his long hair, with the other towel.

Fatigue settled on him, with the warmth and the weight of the gentle touch. Now that the pain was alleviated, he was exhausted, down to his bones. Without realizing it, his eyes drooped shut, and his head began to tip forward, by degrees, till it was resting against Vincent’s chest.

Darkness tendrils slithered out of the black markings, all over his naked body, and coiled themselves around Vincent’s arms and waist and neck, like affectionate boa constrictors. If they could purr, they would have, f*cking embarrassing things.

“Nero.”

“Mm?”

“The next time you’re in pain, don’t wait for it to become unbearable. Come to me, and I’ll help you.”

“…”

“Mn.”

Notes:

THE AUTHOR HAS SOMETHING TO SAY:

nero the wet cat: *HISSSS GRRR HISSSSS*

cat dad vincent: *pats dry with towel*

nero the dry cat: … *purr*

Summary:

WARNING: EXPLICIT!!!

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Spine arched, black fingernails digging into white sheets, chest heaving with ragged breaths. The black markings on his torso writhed and twisted like snakes, stirred up by a hot tongue, lazily tracing the ridge of his abdominal muscles, working its way lower, inch by tormenting inch.

Notes:

THE AUTHOR HAS SOMETHING TO SAY:
shameless genesis self indulgence and ALSO canonically possible

Summary:

disgustingly fluffy family stuff, gratuitous reading of Loveless, Genesis being the world's best onii-chan, Vincent being an old man, canon-typical Sephiroth sadness

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

“Self-care is an essential life skill,” Genesis was saying, as he sat at the table, in Weiss and Nero’s room, gently pushing back Rosso’s cuticles, with a tool from the manicure kit he’d produced from a coat pocket. “We don’t groom and dress for others, but for ourselves. Even if you’re not going out, on a given day, you should take a little time to make yourself feel beautiful.”

Vincent very nearly smiled. “Of course. Just in case.”

Notes:

THE AUTHOR HAS SOMETHING TO SAY

yeah i put vincent's stray dog outfit in there WHAT OF IT

(from the ever crisis mobile game for anyone who doesn't know)