Archive of Our Own

Malakai hadn’t meant to drop him, his hand hovering above Cloud’s spine, faltered for just a second too long. The bastard hesitated, as though concerned. “I’m not used to going through the anchor points with another person,” the creation said, voice too steady to be human. “I did not mean to drop you.”

Water dripped from above, fat and slow, each droplet echoing with a hollow splash against the uneven stone floor. Cloud pushed himself to his hands and knees, every part of him tensed, calculating escape, but there was no exit. Only a tunnel that curved just out of sight, mouth yawning like the throat of something ancient and waiting.

They were underground. Deep. Far enough that the air felt pressurised and thin, the walls coated in slime and disuse. On a map, this place might as well not exist. Hollander’s base could be anywhere beneath the crust of the world. That was the whole point. The perfect hiding place for monsters and the man who made them.

Cloud hissed as fingers closed around his waist again, firm, and he hated that they weren’t cruel. Malakai lifted him with ease, muscles moving like coiled machinery beneath deceptively soft fabric, and cradled him in a bridal carry. One of Malakai’s hands skimmed, brushing across the swell of his ass as if committing the shape to memory. The other ran the length of his spine, pressing just hard enough to mould Cloud tighter to his chest. “It feels so good to have you in my arms,” Malakai murmured. “You were meant to be here.”

Cloud’s stomach churned. He prayed to Gaia that he vomited on the bastard. Projectile. “Don’t take my placidity for permission,” he snapped, glaring up at him. “You so much as squeeze me wrong, and I’ll break every fucking rib in your body with my elbow.”

Malakai head tilted slightly, more curious than affronted. “You’re angry. That’s good. It means you haven’t given up yet.”

Cloud’s jaw clenched. He wasn’t done being angry. Not by a long shot.

Malakai strolled, though not because the tunnel demanded it. No, the tunnel was unnervingly clean for something so old. Smooth stone underfoot. Dripping water overhead. A glow along the walls from old mako veins that pulsed faintly, as if irritated by their presence. Malakai walked as a man already savouring a victory he’d been engineered to crave.

The path they took wasn’t the one Cloud remembered. Not from Kalm, not from the records, not even from Vincent’s stolen maps of the defunct tunnel system under Junon. This wasn’t a main corridor. It didn’t slope downward toward reactor shafts or hum with the sound of labs. There were no signs of security checkpoints, no overhead cameras, no heavy steel doors marked with retinal scans.

And Malakai wasn’t in any rush. Cloud shifted in his arms, testing the strength of the grip again, deliberately dragging his elbow across the bastard’s chest, just enough to be a nuisance. “Why aren’t you taking me to Hollander?” he asked, voice low, sharp.

Malakai adjusted his hold, rebalancing Cloud’s weight higher against his chest with something disturbingly close to tenderness. His fingertips skimmed the edge of a pressure point behind Cloud’s knee. Not pressing. Just mapping. “He’ll see you eventually,” he said, as if they were discussing a schedule. “But not yet.”

Cloud stilled. That was the first real warning bell. He didn’t care about comfort. He didn’t care about the dark or the way mako bled through the walls. What mattered was that line because it told him this wasn’t delivery. This wasn’t protocol. This was possession.

“I’m not yours,” Cloud said coldly.

“You will be.” Malakai turned down another side corridor, lower ceilings here, older stonework, carved through raw earth by hands long since buried and approached a sealed door with no electronic panel. Just a recessed handle and a locking plate that shimmered faintly with a personal materia seal.

He shifted Cloud to one arm and pressed his palm flat against it. The door hissed and retracted. The room beyond was sparse but unmistakably lived in. One bed. One trunk. A table lined with syringes and instruments, laid out in perfect symmetry. A wall screen blinking idle text. A garment rack holding neatly folded clothing and hanging among them like a ghost, a cadet harness identical to the ones from Cloud’s academy years.

Cloud’s stomach dropped. “What the fuck is this?” he asked.

Malakai stepped inside with him still in his arms. The door shut behind them with a slow mechanical sigh, sealing the room like a vault. “Sanctuary,” the monster said softly. “For us.”

Cloud struck. It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t tactical. It was pure instinct. He twisted his body, drove his elbow hard into the space beneath Malakai’s jaw and felt the solid, unflinching resistance of someone who didn’t break the same way humans did.

Malakai didn’t drop him. He staggered back one step, not out of pain but surprise. “You always fight,” he murmured, eyes wide like he was seeing something beautiful. “Even when it’s pointless.”

Cloud drove his heel into the bastard’s thigh, tried to wrench free, but Malakai caught him again mid-fall, arms locking like steel cables. He didn’t slam him down. Didn’t retaliate. He only pressed Cloud against his chest again and inhaled as though the scent alone justified all of it.

“Do you know,” Malakai whispered, “how many hours I spent memorising the shape of your bones?”

“Let me go,” Cloud growled.

“I already let you go once. I won’t do it again.”

Malakai’s stride angled toward the single bed against the far wall. It wasn’t large, just military‑issue steel and dark sheets, but Cloud recognised the intent the instant the bastard turned in that direction.

“Put me down,” Cloud snapped.

“You can stand when you stop shaking,” came the even reply.

He wasn’t shaking. His body was still catching up to the jump, that was all, but Malakai’s arm was a vice around his ribs, and the thought of being laid out on that bed sent a cold pulse of fury through him. He waited until the next step, when the creature’s balance shifted, then went for the gunblade. It was clipped to Malakai’s right hip, matte black with faint mako seams running through the hilt, one of Hollander’s custom hybrids. Cloud’s fingers brushed metal, closed over it, and twisted. The reaction was instant.

Malakai’s hand clamped around his wrist before the weapon cleared the holster. The strength behind the grip was monstrous; Cloud felt the tendons in his arm protest, heard the grind of leather against his glove. He didn’t stop. He drove his knee upward, aiming for the joint in Malakai’s side plating. The hit landed solidly enough to jar them both, and for the first time, the bastard flinched.

That was all Cloud needed. He used the moment to wrench harder at the blade, trying to drag it free.

Malakai’s voice came rougher now, a low growl vibrating against Cloud’s spine. “You’re still trying to kill me.”

“Old habits,” Cloud hissed.

The weapon almost came loose, but Malakai twisted his wrist, the motion fluid, mechanical, and suddenly Cloud’s arm was folded behind his back, the gunblade spinning harmlessly out of reach and clattering to the floor.

Before Cloud could strike again, Malakai hauled him back upright, one hand still trapping his wrist, the other braced against his chest to hold him still. They stood locked together, breathing hard in the stale air. “You never stop fighting,” Malakai said, almost to himself. “Even now. You thought I’d be passive and let you?” His unnatural eyes flicked downward, to the bed only a pace away. The faintest twitch of a smile touched his mouth, too human on something that wasn’t. “No,” he said quietly. “I hoped you’d make me earn it.”

Cloud jerked against the hold again, testing every angle. The bedframe creaked as they hit its edge. “Enjoy the hope while it lasts,” he said, teeth bared.

Malakai’s fingers tightened fractionally, and the air between them filled with the hum of mako veins under stone, the sound of the monster’s pulse too steady to be human.

Cloud’s temper broke like a fuse catching flame. He twisted hard, driving his shoulder against Malakai’s chest and bringing his knee up in a blur, aiming for soft tissue, for anything. His elbow followed, then his head, all motion and fury. He moved like a feral thing, quick and vicious, the kind of fight born in labs and alleys and battlefields. Pure survival.

Malakai adjusted his stance, absorbing the blows as if Cloud were a child striking at stone. One arm pinned him effortlessly against his body, the other free.

Cloud realised with a sick lurch that the bastard wasn’t even using both hands.

“You burn so bright when you panic,” Malakai murmured, voice low against his ear. “It’s…exquisite.”

“Let me go, you—” Cloud’s curse choked out as Malakai’s hand left his waist, reaching down.

When the sound came, the faint clink of metal against metal, it hit him harder than a blow. Chains. He froze for half a breath, then renewed the struggle with renewed, wild strength. But he knew, oh, Gaia, he knew what those chains were. He’d seen them used in containment wings during the war: forged from refined mako and alloy, designed to dampen an enhanced’s internal current. They didn’t just hold; they muted. Once they were on, reflexes dulled, strength bled away. They left even a First shaking and human‑weak.

“Don’t,” he hissed, thrashing harder. “Don’t you dare—”

Malakai drew the chain out from beneath the bed, links catching the greenish light that leaked through the seams in the walls. The glow crawled across the floor, across Cloud’s boots, across his skin. It made the air feel heavy, electric, like the breath before a thunderstorm.

Cloud lunged again, every muscle screaming protest, trying to break free before the bastard could loop it. But Malakai’s arm didn’t shift. It might as well have been a wall of iron. Cloud’s thoughts fractured between options; bite, kick, feint, anything but the logic of SOLDIER training kept intruding: once those links closed, his enhancements would go dark. He wouldn’t get a second chance. “You think that will stop me?” he spat.

Malakai’s reply was almost gentle. “No. It will let you rest.”

Cloud snapped, driving his heel down against Malakai’s shin, twisting so violently in his grip that it tore one of the clips off his shoulder guard. He managed to land a strike to the side of the bastard’s throat, solid, fast, surgical, but it was like hitting steel wrapped in skin. “Let me go,” he snarled, voice raw. “You put those on me, I swear to Gaia I’ll rip your fucking throat out with my teeth.”

Malakai’s grip tightened, not enough to bruise, but enough to remind him who was stronger with just one arm. The other lowered, setting the chain down with a quiet clang on the mattress. Cloud saw the design now: not a single length of chain, but linked cuffs. Shinra-issue, retooled. Wrist and ankle restraints, rigged with embedded mako filtration nodes. Dampening cuffs.

Cloud surged. He thrashed, using his core, his weight, momentum, striking with elbows, knees, head, anything he could twist into range. He slammed his shoulder into Malakai’s jaw, forced the bastard back into the wall with a grunt, and managed to get one leg free until Malakai’s hand caught it mid-kick. Turned it. Slammed it against the bedframe with controlled force. Metal groaned. The mattress shifted beneath them.

“You’re not being reasonable,” Malakai said calmly.

“Fuck you.” Cloud's voice cracked on the word. Panic slithered in around the edges now, real panic, the kind that curled in his chest and made his skin crawl. He couldn't let those restraints close. If they closed, he wouldn’t get another opening. He twisted again, using the slick of sweat and motion to shift out of the monster’s grip and nearly made it. His left wrist slipped free. For half a breath, he saw the room from above, saw the cuff in Malakai’s hand miss by inches.

The creation moved like lightning. Not fast, inhuman. No wasted motion. Just a pivot, a brace of his knee, and then Cloud’s wrist was wrenched back and snapped into place with a hiss of mako. The restraint was activated.

Cloud roared his denial. His skin went cold. His nerves dulled. He felt the drain begin as the mako inhibitors sank their hooks into his bloodstream, bleeding off his enhancements like water slipping through a sieve. “No—NO—” He bucked harder. “Take it off!”

The second cuff closed around his other wrist even as he writhed and protested Malakai’s grip. Strength fled him in waves. Not gone but muted, blunted, as if someone had shoved pillows between his thoughts and his limbs. His body still moved, but slower. Weaker. The timing was off. The weight was wrong.

Malakai didn’t even struggle now. He calmly lifted Cloud’s legs, pinned one knee with his own, and secured the ankle cuffs as if dressing a doll. By the time the last restraint sealed and pulsed once, deep green light flickering beneath the skin, Cloud was panting, muscles trembling from effort, throat raw. But still furious. He jerked once more against the cuffs, feeling the pressure give and hold. They didn’t bite. They didn’t bruise. But the more he fought, the more his energy bled out into the mako core laced inside them.

He’d been restrained before in field hospitals, containment cells, Hojo’s lab once, a lifetime ago, but those had always come with noise, with shouting, with something to fight against. This was worse. It was quiet. Controlled. The silence had weight. Malakai moved within it. He didn’t hurry. Every motion was measured, calculated, as if the air itself were a set of equations he meant to balance. Cloud watched him through the fringe of his hair, refusing to look away. If he looked away, it would feel too much like surrender.

“You shouldn’t waste strength,” Malakai said at last, voice even, thoughtful. “The cuffs will take what you give them.”

Cloud went cold when Malakai’s fingers started at his boots, his heart kicking into overdrive as the laces were methodically undone. The chains clanked around his wrists and ankles as he shifted as if to fight again, but the surge of mako through his bloodstream was effortlessly sucked away by the restraints before it could even hit his nervous system. He couldn’t Limit Break. The very foundation of what he is was dampened.

Though his mouth opened to fight, to curse, to scream, even that drained him to the point that he collapsed back against the uncomfortable mattress, helpless as Malakai removed his boots and socks with care, setting them on the concrete at the end of the bed. It was worse than violence, than sheer force. Each pause was long enough for Cloud to understand what was happening before the next followed.

He couldn’t move fast enough to stop it as Malakai went about removing his shirt, gloves, vambraces, the mako drain having dulled his reflexes to something painfully human. The most he could do was jerk uselessly against the restraints, muscles shaking from the effort.

Inside, panic built in layers: rational first, tactical next, then something older, animal. Every strap that loosened felt like a line of defence stripped away, every second like another inch of his own skin being mapped and catalogued.

“You were meant to be extraordinary,” Malakai continued, voice maddeningly calm as he meticulously folded Cloud’s shirt, nudging a box out from beneath the bed, which he placed the material into, others following. “I studied you, Cloud Strife. Every scar has a reason. Every tremor tells a story. The records didn’t say how you survived degradation. I needed to see it myself.”

The bastard’s tone wasn’t cruel; it was almost reverent, and that was what made it unbearable.
Cloud wanted rage, not awe. Rage was something he could fight. “You think you know me because you read a file?” he rasped, a chill zipping down his spine as long, precise fingers started on his belt buckle.

“I know you far better than those self-proclaimed husbands of yours,” Malakai said softly as he pulled the belt free, looped it and set it inside the box. He paused for a moment, hungry eyes running over the bared length of Cloud’s scarred torso, though his hands did not touch.

“There’s nothing self-proclaimed about them,” Cloud snapped at him, teeth bared. “They’re mine and I’m theirs.”

“They’ve brainwashed you,” the creation said sadly, eyes rising from to meet blue eyes solemnly before landing on the chain around the blond’s neck, the rings on his right hand. “Branded you with jewellery.”

Cloud jerked feebly, fear and horror coiling in his gut as warm fingers settled on his right hand and removed Sephiroth and Genesis’s rings, and Vincent’s chain followed shortly after. He shivered as those fingers swept over his neck, over the sharp line of his jaw, to the point that he turned his head sharply and tried to bite him. “You are trying to brainwash me. I won’t fall for it, asshole!”

Malakai avoided the teeth and set his palm against Cloud’s sternum, easing him back against the mattress. “My Cloud, I am so very sorry for what you had to endure with them. Years of abuse—”

“Shut up!”

“—while they kept making promises to do better,” the tall man continued softly, brushing his knuckles across a scar on Cloud’s pectoral. “Have they ever done better? Have you ever been happy with those pretenders, Cloud?”

Cloud wanted to spit a retort, but the words stuck somewhere behind his teeth. Every breath scraped his throat raw. He could feel the shape of the room closing in around him, the cuffs pulsing faintly at the edge of each heartbeat. For the first time since the jump, he understood that this wasn’t just capture; it was a rewriting.

Malakai’s voice filled the silence again, too steady, too soft. “You see? You don’t have to fight every second. That’s what they made you believe: that peace is weakness. But it isn’t. It’s what you were built for.”

Peace. The word made Cloud’s stomach turn. He focused on the far wall instead, the cracked plaster, the faint hum of mako behind it, anything that wasn’t the low, persuasive tone trying to crawl under his skin. He wanted to laugh, to scream, to remind the monster that he’d clawed his way through gods and ghosts and never once asked for peace. But the mako drain kept bleeding him dry, leaving only the pounding in his ears and the sickening awareness that his body might give out before his will did.

Malakai leaned closer, the movement careful, observational rather than predatory. “You don’t believe me now,” he said quietly, “but you will. They can’t reach you here.”

Cloud closed his eyes for half a breath, forcing the image of silver hair, of crimson, of a dark cloak wrapped in warmth, his anchors, his sanity. He clung to them until the panic edged into fury again. “You’re wrong,” he rasped. “They always find me.”

Malakai’s reply came almost tenderly. “Then I’ll just have to make you forget.”

Cloud refuted that statement with every cell he possessed without speaking a damn word. Every muscle in his body screamed for movement, for action, for control, but all he could do was think. And thinking was dangerous. Thinking meant quiet. Thinking meant reckoning. So, he forced the direction.

He pictured Sephiroth first, not the war god, not the WRO legend, but the man who sat beside him in the bath when his scars flared, who laid his head on Cloud’s lap like he wasn’t built for killing. Genesis followed, dramatic, ridiculous, terrifyingly brilliant, who read him Loveless backwards in bed, who could spot the exact moment Cloud reached overstimulation and whispered him back down.
And Vincent, who never rushed. Who never lied. Who had stood between him and the abyss more than once and had never let go.

They would find him. They had to. They always did. He held to that belief like a lifeline as Malakai returned the box to its place under the bed, his box now, apparently, his rings sealed away like evidence, Vincent’s chain folded like a rag.

Cloud felt it physically. The absence of metal at his throat, at his hand, was a kind of amputation. No weight. No warmth. Just bare skin and silence. It made him want to scream. Instead, he shivered. The room was temperature-controlled. He knew it. He could feel the hum in the walls, the artificial equilibrium. But still, he shivered. In nothing but his pants, bare and pinned like a specimen under glass, he felt undone. Not exposed. Unarmed.

The bastard wanted him like this. Not broken, empty. As if the only way to possess him was to scrape everything else out first. He thought of Elara. Her laugh. Her tiny fists pounding against the side of the bath when she didn’t want to get out. He thought of Lurien chasing bugs in the pasture. He thought of Angeal’s lectures, Zack’s grin, and Reno’s uncontrollable bullshit. Jace’s steady weight beside him during long silences. They were real. All of them. They made him real.

Cloud clenched his teeth and swallowed the panic before it could reach his eyes. “You can take my clothes,” he said hoarsely. “You can take my rings. My chain. But you don’t get to rewrite who I am.”

“Rewrite you?” Malakai’s voice was soft. Too soft. It echoed faintly in the quiet like the pulse of something waiting beneath the floor. He tilted his head, watching Cloud the way a sculptor might observe unfinished marble, aware of the beauty, yes, but still convinced it needed reshaping. “My Cloud,” he said gently, almost mournfully, “I’m trying to make you forget their blatant manipulation.”

Cloud’s lip curled.

“You’ve been with them for what—twenty years?” Malakai went on, voice never rising. “That’s a long time to separate fantasy from reality.” He stepped closer, enough for Cloud to feel his body heat radiating through leather. “Do you even know who you were before them? Before Sephiroth’s guilt? Before Genesis wrapped you in theatrics and called it love? Before Valentine carved his rules into your skin and told you it was submission?”

Cloud stiffened.

“You’re not theirs,” Malakai said, and there was steel behind the calm now, low and rising. “You never were. You were strong before they touched you. I’ve seen the records. Read your original psych profiles. Your mission data. You were better alone.”

Cloud’s hands trembled in the cuffs, not from belief but from fury. His heartbeat felt uneven in his chest, like it didn’t know whether to race or hold. “Is that what this is?” he ground out. “Some twisted rescue fantasy?”

Malakai blinked at him, almost startled. Then smiled. “No,” he said. “It’s a correction.”

Cloud strained against the cuffs again, instinct flaring as the creation moved to the table layered with varying syringes, but it was no good. His body dragged like it was underwater, everything slow and sticky and heavy with borrowed breath. He could barely lift his head.

Malakai returned to the bed with a small, sleek syringe, clear casing, silver plunger, fluid the colour of soft mist inside, and there was nothing but gentleness in his gold eyes.

“What the fuck is that?” Cloud rasped.

Long black and red hair swished to the side as Malakai observed the syringe before he perched on the bed, close enough that Cloud could smell the sterile scent of the injector. “This isn’t to harm you. Or to control you. You need rest, Cloud. Your body’s showing signs of depletion. High cortisol, low glucose. Elevated adrenal response. You’ve been running too long.”

“I wonder why,” Cloud snarled.

“Sleep,” Malakai continued, as though he hadn’t spoken, “will provide clarity. Let your mind breathe for once, without their voices in it.”

Cloud stared at him. “You think sleep is going to erase them?”

“No,” Malakai said. “But it will dilute them.” He drew the cap off the needle with a quiet click. Didn’t brandish it. Didn’t threaten. He treated it the way Vincent might handle a cleaning cloth for his weapon, necessary, precise, inevitable. “You can’t fight properly until you’ve rested. You know that. I’m giving you the chance to do it safely.”

“Safely?” Cloud barked a bitter laugh. “You chained me.”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t accept help willingly.” He reached for Cloud’s arm, slow and measured. No snatch. No grip. He didn’t force the limb to extend, just laid his fingers along the inside of Cloud’s forearm, feeling for the vein, like this was a clinic, like this was mercy.

“Stop—” Cloud tried, but the cuff dampened everything. He felt the resistance in his vocal cords like static, the words dragging against exhaustion. The needle kissed skin.

“Sleep,” Malakai murmured again, “and let yourself remember what’s yours.”

The plunger depressed with a soft hiss.

Cloud barely felt the sting, just the cold. It moved fast, rushing his bloodstream like frost through glass. His heartbeat slowed. His thoughts thickened. The walls of the room bled out of focus, replaced by fragments of faces, silver, red, black. A ring. A chain. Don’t forget. Don’t forget. But the pull was too strong. He slipped under.

Cloud’s breathing evened as the sedative took hold, eyelids fluttering but never fully closing.
Malakai leaned over him, voice dropping to something nearer to prayer than speech.

“You were always meant for me, my Cloud,” he whispered. “Not the three science experiments gone wrong. Me.” His gaze moved over Cloud’s face, the stillness, the slack jaw of forced sleep. “I'm going to remind you what it is to be free, to be happy, to live a life without a veil of control.” He brushed a knuckle along the air above Cloud’s cheek, stopping just short of contact. “And eventually, you'll forget you ever referred to those disasters as your husbands.” The lights dimmed as he stood, disposing of the syringe into a wastebasket by the wall. “You’ll understand soon enough,” he murmured, almost to himself, as he collected his gunblade from the floor. “And if you don’t, I’ll be right here to guide you.”

It started with warmth. Not comfort. Need. Heat coiled low in his gut like a second heartbeat, slow but insistent, pulsing in time with the residual hum of mako circuitry looped around his limbs. Cloud tried to breathe through it, but even the rise and fall of his chest felt exaggerated, too sensitive, too real. He wasn’t awake yet, not properly. His thoughts came staggered, fogged at the edges, the kind of awareness that dragged like gravity in reverse. The weight of the bed. The quiet in the room. The cuff burns around his wrists and ankles, faint and cold, the mako chains still active.

His pants were still on. Thank Gaia. But the confusion set in because even through the remaining layers, his body was vibrating with something primal. Raw. Familiar in the way blood memory was familiar, like the worst moments of hypersensitivity post‑mission, post‑injury, post‑them. But there were no mouths on him. No hands. No slow, reverent voice at his ear calling him sweetheart. Just silence.

And still, the heat coiled tighter. His cock stirred beneath the fabric, unwanted, undeniable. Cloud hissed and turned his head, jaw clenching against the noise it pulled from him, not arousal, but response. The kind that didn’t care about consent. The kind that hadn’t needed it for months.

Fuck. No. No. No—

The sedative dulled the receptors responsible for panic. That was the worst part. His mind wanted to spike, wanted to scream and lash and sob, but the drug’s lingering effect held it underwater. What remained was clarity without urgency. He knew what was happening. He just couldn’t feel the terror properly. So instead, he felt everything else. The fabric against his skin was too much. The seam down the side of his leg, the faint cling of sweat between his thighs, the brush of his own breath against the crook of his elbow. Every nerve lit up like a warning flare, and there was nothing to do with it.

He was alone. Still restrained. Still too weak to break the cuffs. And his body was demanding stimulus like a schedule had been missed. Cloud swallowed hard, throat dry, and closed his eyes again, not to rest, but to shut the world out before he said something aloud that the walls would remember.

The door hissed open. Not loudly. Not suddenly. Just that slow hydraulic exhale that marked inevitability.

The cuffs around Cloud’s wrists clinked as he curled into himself, knees coming up in a miserable attempt to hide the state his body was in. He did not want Malakai to see him this way, or the conclusions he would draw from it.

Footsteps followed, barely audible, but unmistakable. The floor hummed under their weight as though it recognised the one who walked. Heavy boots, precise gait. Unhurried. Ritualistic. No orders barked. No taunts thrown. Just motion. Forward. The air thickened, warped with presence, as if the room itself flinched.

Cloud’s eyes stayed on the ceiling, jaw locked, muscles trembling beneath the mako restraints. He could feel his erection still pressing obscenely against the fabric of his pants, the hypersensitivity climbing his spine like fire up a fuse. His body betrayed him with every breath, every twitch. He didn’t dare look.

And yet, Malakai stopped. There was no sound at first. Not even breath. Then the silence cracked, not with movement, not with force, but with a voice so low it barely rose above the hum of the cuffs. “...Oh.” The inflection became heated, curious and surprised all at once. “Oh, Cloud.” The footsteps resumed, heavy, uncertain until they paused just a foot from the bedframe. “You feel me,” he said, not with certainty, but awe. “Even when I’ve yet to touch you.”

Cloud’s pulse thundered behind his ribs. His throat felt dry enough to crack. He forced his head to turn, just enough to glare. The audacity. The assumption that Malakai was the one to cause his bodily state. The naïve arrogance was nearly enough for Cloud to consider the ramifications of attempting to bodily tackle the creation and hit him repeatedly. In the head. Until he stopped fucking moving.

Malakai’s gaze dropped with hunger, intrigue and blatant innocent fascination that had Cloud’s gut turning upside down. Oh, Gaia. Of course. A creation of Hollander’s wouldn’t have been able to get out and take the proverbial walk around the block. Malakai would be as much a physical virgin as he was in every sense of the word. The only difference is that Cloud had memory of intimacy from his first body and what little he had experienced in this one. Malakai had neither.

He took in the way Cloud strained beneath the restraints. The way the fabric clung to heat and sweat. The way the body remembered pleasure, even when the mind begged for a weapon. “I’ve…never seen an erection before, other than my own,” he murmured, more to himself than Cloud. “Did I truly cause that?”

“You didn’t cause shit,” Cloud snapped, voice scraping like gravel through his throat. “This is hypersensitivity, you idiot. A side effect of rapid neural reactivation. You pull a body out of stasis after twenty-nine years and introduce intimacy? Guess what happens?” The cuffs hummed as he jerked against them, raw restraint, sweat burning in the crease of his elbows. “It short-circuits. It responds to anything. Friction. Heat. Fucking air.” He paused long enough to spit on the floor. “You didn’t awaken some sleeping desire, Malakai. You walked in at the wrong time and got a free anatomy lesson.”

Malakai mouth parted slightly, eyes darting between the erection tenting Cloud’s pants and the blond’s furious blue eyes.

“Don’t mistake biology for worship,” Cloud growled. “You want me to want you? You should’ve tried not drugging me and restraining me.”

“I see,” Malakai said quietly. Not defensive. Not smug. Just soft. Processing. “You’re…uncomfortable.”

Cloud stared at him. Uncomfortable? That’s your takeaway, you fucking womb-forged embarrassment of science and sin?

Malakai glanced down again at the bulge in Cloud’s pants, still trying to make sense of cause and effect, of stimulus and response. “Would you…” he paused, almost fidgeted, one gloved hand twitching at his side. “Would you like me to help?” The words came genuinely. No seduction. No smirk. No threat. Just offered, like a blanket or a painkiller.

Cloud stared at him in stunned silence for half a second. Then exploded. “You drugged me, restrained me, stripped me, kidnapped me, and you think what I need right now is your fucking help?!” The words scorched the air. Spit flew from his mouth. He shook against the chains, muscles straining, eyes burning. “You, absolute failure of a science experiment. What part of this looks like I want your hands anywhere near me?!”

Malakai tilted his head, processing the outrage, the indignity and was rapidly coming to the incorrect conclusion.

Cloud wasn’t finished. “You think this is about comfort? About intimacy?” He laughed, bitter and breathless. “This is a daily occurrence. You didn’t cause this. You didn’t unlock anything. My husbands did that. You just happened to walk in while my nervous system short-circuited like a sparking outlet in a flooded lab.” He spat at the floor again, closer this time. Directed. “Don’t ever ask me that again.”

A thoughtful gleam sparked in the unnatural eyes, and Malakai folded his hands before him, contrite and solemn. “I apologise, my Cloud. I misunderstood. I thought the reaction was from me,” he said softly. “That something in you was reaching out, trying to connect with me.” And now disgust and anger entered his voice. “But this…this is something they’ve done to you.”

Surprised and baffled, Cloud blinked slowly, cuffs clinking. “What—”

“They used you,” Malakai hissed, passionate in his irritation. “Taught your body to respond in such a way that they could control. I didn’t realise they’d conditioned you so thoroughly that your own arousal would trigger memories of suffering.”

Cloud gaped, disbelief overtaking fury for a moment.

“You need grounding. Not sedation. You need to be touched by someone who understands your body was made for more than pain.”

Cloud jerked against the cuffs hard enough to rattle the bedframe. “Stay the fuck away from me—”

Malakai ignored the protest, his glowing eyes never once leaving Cloud as he slowly slipped off his gloves, one finger at a time and set them down on the table by the syringes. “You were never supposed to suffer like this,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “You’ve been reacting because they trained you to need torment to feel anything at all. I won’t let that continue.”

“You’re delusional!” Cloud barked, wriggling futilely against the mattress, baring his teeth as the mako chains gleefully sucked away at the strength he attempted to summon. He managed a few inches closer to the wall, but the creation was unperturbed, pity and banked desire sparking in his eyes as he kneeled on the bed, leather creaking as he reached for the one piece of clothing protecting Cloud’s dignity.

As soon as those dexterous fingers made contact with the zipper, Cloud bucked, thrashed and howled his denial while Malakai shushed him softly. “It’s all right, my Cloud. I’m going to make you feel better.”

The teeth of the zipper lowering, even as Cloud struggled, were piercingly loud within the room, the pants and underwear slowly lowered to mid-thigh, the angry, leaking, red-tipped erection bobbing free, and Malakai froze and exhaled sharply. Despite how fiercely Cloud tried to grasp some semblance of fear, of horror, of being violated, it kept slipping away with the lingering sedative still pulsing through him. “Don’t! Don’t touch me—”

Warm, calloused fingers softly drifted against the soft skin of Cloud’s sac before Malakai weighed it in his palm, curious, ardent and adoring, rolling it between his fingers while the blond let out a reluctant whine. “You’re so soft,” Malakai croaked, “So responsive.” His fingers shook ever so slightly as the saddle of his thumb caught the base of the cock, and one by one, his fingers wrapped around him. “So warm and hard,” he said on a breath that almost strained.

Cloud tried to protest, to writhe, to shift his hips away, but his hypersensitivity did not give two shits that it wasn’t his husbands touching him or that Malakai clearly had no idea how to give someone a handjob. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the erection away, willing Sephiroth, Genesis or Vincent to come barging in and break down the door. But it didn’t happen. Malakai’s cautious, enthusiastic hand remained, but blue eyes shot open when wet warmth consumed the head of his cock, and he cried out, bucking up into heat.

Malakai’s tongue flicked over the slit, awkward, unpractised, but eager, letting Cloud move as much as he wished. Which turned out to be to his detriment when he bucked particularly hard and the creation copped a throatful of seven and a half inches of angry short king and promptly choked, his other hand palming Cloud’s hip to keep him down as Malakai withdrew, eyes watering, saliva dripping down his chin as he looked up at the panting, blushing blond.

Chest heaving, blushing all the way down to his sternum, Cloud glared furiously. “That’s what you get, asshole. Get your fucking mouth off—ah!”

Whatever sassy remark had been about to emerge from Cloud Strife was abruptly silenced when Malakai, holding those enraged blue eyes, relaxed his throat and took him into the heat of his mouth until his nose brushed pubic bone, determined and reflexively swallowed around him, groaning at the taste of cinnamon and the aroma that was simply Cloud. Though he tried to buck, Malakai’s hand at his hip prevented him this time, working his tongue around the shaft and sucking obscenely. Saliva pooled between twitching butt cheeks as the creation refused to let him go.

Back arching, Cloud came with a choked cry; the suffocating heat and tightness of Malakai’s throat undid him, spilling with incremental twitches of his hips. Malakai hummed around him, soothingly stroking his hips, and it was only when overstimulated tears started to flood blue eyes that he finally released him, slowly, ever so slowly, giving him a final, adoring kiss across the slit.

“You tasted like cinnamon,” Malakai said hoarsely, nosing across Cloud's pubic bone while he licked his lips, chasing the taste of Cloud’s release.

Cloud lay there, unable to summon a damn word, panting, flushed, vision blurry at the edges, but not from tears. Not from the horror that should’ve split him open like glass under pressure. It was the afterglow, sickening and sticky, coiling like shame under his ribs. That just happened. The thought came without punctuation. Without scream or fury. White noise pressing in. His thighs trembled; his sac throbbed dully in the cool air. Malakai had licked him clean, no, worshipped him, with the reverence of a creature who didn’t know better. Who thought that this cruel manipulation was affection. Who didn’t understand what he’d just done.

Cloud’s mouth tasted like metal. Blood, maybe. Or grief. Or that phantom burn he always got when he fought back bile.  You came, something whispered. Into the throat of the monster who killed your chocobos. Not a scream. Not even an accusation. Just a quiet, skin-crawling truth. His cock had twitched, spasmed, and emptied in someone else’s throat. Not one of them. Not Genesis. Not Vincent. Not Sephiroth. And yet he’d still cried out. He’d still bucked. Responded. Obeyed some cruel biological imperative like his body had never learned what it meant to be safe.

And worse still, was the mention of cinnamon. The word hit like a punch. It struck his sternum harder than any blow could have. He flinched. Genesis had said that. Whispered it against his thigh, his belly, the head of his cock. Said it with affection, with familiarity. Now Malakai, Hollander’s fucking Frankenstein, had said it too. And meant it. Not only that, but the creation had also clearly enjoyed deep throating him, in being choked.

Cloud’s fingers curled into his palms, the mako chains clinking with the movement. Weakly. Uselessly. He couldn’t even turn away. He didn’t cry. Not properly. The tears were there, hot and unspent, stuck somewhere behind his eyes. But he was too high to sob, too hollow to scream. There was only silence and the sickening knowledge that he felt less violated than he should. As though some part of him, the broken, abandoned part, had catalogued this as just another loss. Another surrender. Another betrayal he didn’t get to choose.

Malakai nuzzled lower, nosing across the sharp plane of Cloud’s abdomen like a worshipper resting against an altar, reverent and awed. He sighed against the tremble in Cloud’s belly, unaware or uncaring, that it was born not of pleasure but disbelief.

“You needed this,” Malakai murmured, lips brushing skin as he spoke. “They teased you, didn’t they? They played with your need. Withheld, tormented. But I won’t. I won’t ever make you beg.”

Cloud’s body remained limp in the aftermath, unresponsive save for the flutter of overstimulated nerves still pulsing faintly through his limbs. His cock was soft now, tucked between cooling thighs, still flushed, still damp with someone else’s saliva.

Warm hands moved gently, reverently. Malakai drew Cloud’s underwear back up with meticulous care, covering him, then slid the zipper closed, each metallic tooth locking into place with quiet betrayal.

You came for him. You came down his fucking throat.

“You shouldn’t be ashamed,” Malakai added, smoothing the waistband as if to comfort him. “You were beautiful. So responsive. I had no idea semen could taste pleasant.”

Cloud’s jaw was clenched, his shoulders tight, but his limbs still wouldn’t obey. The mako in his veins thrummed faintly as the sedative lingered, enough to mute his panic, enough to steal his strength, but not enough to block the voice screaming inside his head. This is not real. This is not safe. This is not okay. Vincent would be so disappointed with him. Genesis would be enraged. Sephiroth would be disgusted.

Malakai smiled as though everything was perfectly normal, as if Cloud hadn’t just inadvertently cheated on his soulmates, his anchors, his Dominants, his Sovereign, his very sense of self. And gently, lovingly, slid his arms beneath Cloud’s shoulders and knees. “Come, my Cloud,” he whispered, hoisting him up with terrifying ease. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

The world tilted. Cloud didn’t fight. He was set gently on the edge of the bed, his feet still bare, drawing attention to the mako chains still cuffed to his ankles. Malakai crouched and unbuckled each restraint. They clinked faintly as they fell away, leaving angry pressure marks ringed in red. He traced one with his thumb, then pressed a soft kiss to the bone just above it. Their absence didn’t return Cloud’s strength, not while the ones on his wrists remained.

“You won’t need these anymore,” he said softly. “I trust you now.”

Cloud’s throat moved. Nothing came out. He stared past the windowless wall, past the bed, past the echo of sensation still screaming in his skin. There was no room to scream. Not that it would matter.

Malakai stood and offered his hand. “Bathroom first. Then breakfast.”

Cloud blinked slowly. The hand was still there. Waiting. Expectant. Patient. He took it because he had no strength, no clarity past the numbness consuming him, to refuse.

The world came back in pieces. He remembered movement first, an arm around his waist, a voice murmuring directions he didn’t register. Then water, faintly metallic, running over his hands. A towel pressed to his skin. The smell of rust and disinfectant. Everything else blurred.

The bathroom was old Shinra issue: narrow tiles, steel fixtures, a single cracked mirror. Someone had tried to civilise it. Fresh towels folded on a crate, a tin of soap that smelled clean, but the air still carried that ghost of barracks mildew. Cloud sat on the edge of a dilapidated bathtub while Malakai worked in silence, wiping down surfaces as though cleanliness could erase what had happened.

Later, there was food. A ration bar, dense and grainy, the kind that turned to paste if you chewed too long. He ate because his body obeyed the command to maintain itself. Taste barely registered. Sweet, maybe. Synthetic. His jaw moved automatically, his thoughts looping in slow, broken intervals.

He thinks this is care. He thinks this is love.

Across the dim room, Malakai moved restlessly, checking the door, listening. His unease vibrated through the air like static. Hollander’s absence was a living thing, coiled in the corners. Cloud watched him without turning his head, the way you watch a fuse burn toward powder. He took another bite. The chains on his wrists scraped against the edge of the table, dull clink, reminder. He flexed his fingers. Then his feet. Bare. Free.

He looked down, toes curling against cracked concrete. The rings of red around his ankles had already begun to fade. The cuffs were gone. The thought didn’t hit all at once. It unfurled slowly, crawling up his spine until his heart gave a single, solid kick. The cuffs on his wrists still drained him, yes. But his legs had the capacity to move. He could at least try. He kept chewing, slow and steady, eyes fixed on the ration bar while his pulse started to climb under the numbness, beating an old rhythm he thought he’d forgotten: calculate, time, strike.

Cloud swallowed the last dry mouthful of the ration bar, tongue thick with synthetic protein and bitterness. He licked his lips slowly and raised his eyes. “Where’s Hollander?”

Clearly, that wasn’t a question Malakai had expected, for he stiffened, not the rigid, alert tension of a soldier under threat, but a personal freeze that suggested he was not ready for this conversation. The cleaning cloth in his hand slipped from loose fingers and hit the bench with a dull whisper.

“You haven’t taken me to him,” Cloud said, forcing a casual inflection that belied what he was truly feeling. “That was the entire point, wasn’t it? That’s why I’m here.”

Malakai turned so fast that the black leather of his coat cracked at the joints, gunblade clanking faintly against his thigh. His eyes shone in the half-light, burning gold, brighter than they should’ve been. “I will present you,” he said quietly. “Eventually.”

Cloud held still. His wrists ached. His skin remembered too much. But he forced himself to tilt his head slightly, just enough to feign curiosity over defiance. “Eventually?”

“I don’t trust him.” Malakai’s mouth was a line. “He wants to hurt you. To open you. To dissect you. He doesn’t understand how beautiful you are alive.”

Cloud blinked slowly, the mask stitching itself across his face one trembling muscle at a time. “I see.”

“He made me. But I won’t let him unmake you.”

The smile that crept across Cloud’s mouth was careful, not too wide or sharp, but soft enough to pass for gratitude. Hollow enough to seem worn but sincere. “Thank you,” he said. “For protecting me.”

Malakai stared at him, baffled, before warmth suffused his eyes. The tension in his shoulders didn’t fall, but something in his expression flickered, uncertainty, awe, maybe even hope. He nodded stiffly, clearly overwhelmed by the unexpected trust. And Cloud watched him, eyes hooded, calculating, marking every tick of his face, every flaw in the armour. Now it was a manipulation game, and Cloud was feeling more confident that he could win.

“There’s a washroom through that door,” Malakai murmured, almost shyly, as he gestured to the door Cloud hadn’t noticed. “You can brush your teeth.”

Cloud nodded, mild, obedient, and walked where he was told. The door creaked shut behind him. The room was tight, an old military washroom, long since stripped of personality. A rusting sink, half a mirror, a toilet with no lid. The tile was cracked and damp underfoot, but the toothbrush on the counter was still in its wrapper. Toothpaste beside it. Small mercies. He picked up the brush, ran water, and kept his motions normal. Mind racing.

He needed time. Needed a moment. His reflection flickered in the shattered pane. Overhead, the vent grille hung low in the ceiling, one of the old biohazard shafts, no doubt. Wider than average. Crusted with rust. He stared at it. Then the walls. The height. The sound the grate would make. The odds. Not good. But not impossible. He dropped the toothbrush into the sink. The clang was soft.

Then he was climbing, silent, breath shallow, bare feet scrambling up the counter and onto the lip of the sink. One hand braced on the wall. The other reached up, fingers wrapping the edge of the grate. It groaned. He flinched.

Outside the door, footsteps thudded. “Cloud?” Malakai’s asked uncertainly through the wood. “Do you require assistance?”

Cloud ignored him and pulled harder, the mako chains around his wrists angrily reminding him that he was pushing the limits of what he could do without his SOLDIER strength. The grate gave with a dry shriek of metal on metal, and he shoved it up and hauled his body into the shaft with nothing but core strength and stubborn willpower, fast and wriggling, limbs braced to muffle sound.

“Cloud—?”

The door swung open, Malakai furiously searching the room before his eyes flicked up and caught sight of a foot disappearing into the vent too small for him to access.

Cloud was already crawling, elbows tight to ribs, feet pushing off the walls like a rat in a maze. The chains smacked against every piece of metal, but that didn’t concern him. He was in a space where Malakai didn’t have a hope in hell of reaching him.

“I had truly hoped that we had established trust, my Cloud,” Malakai called into the vent, tone heavy with disappointment. “I wanted to see if you would run, and you did. Those pretenders of yours have taught you that running is the answer to everything. I’m so, so sorry, little one. If this helps you, I will accommodate and hunt you.”

Cloud’s stomach nose-dived to his toes, and he paused mid-crawl, glancing bewildered at the empty vent behind him, mouth parted. The actual fuck? The creation was even more deluded than he had first thought. He was twisting every single facet of Cloud’s behaviour and blaming his husbands. For fuck’s sake. He jumped as the vent vibrated, a reverberating tremble of strength striking metal, rattling his bones. Malakai had just hit something. Hard.

The vent shuddered again, and Cloud flinched, shoulder scraping raw against a jagged screw-head as he lunged forward on instinct. The metal groaned beneath his weight, too thin in places, slick with condensation and dust. He gritted his teeth and kept going, breathing shallowly through his nose. One wrong turn and he’d double back into a dead end. Or worse, a drop.

The building was old. Ancient, by Shinra standards. There were still floor schematics burned into his memory from older missions, forgotten facilities. This place had likely been converted a dozen times. If he was lucky, the shaft would lead toward the southern hallways, where server stacks and emergency panels tended to cluster. Power junctions. Maybe a comms line. If he wasn’t lucky…

Another slam below made him jump. A crunch of something structural. Plasterboard? A panel? Cloud didn’t wait to find out. He scrambled faster, the mako-dampened cuffs clinking with every movement, his skin prickling with the knowledge that he was being tracked. Not by scent, not by heat, but by false devotion. The most terrifying kind.

“I will not break the vent,” Malakai called from somewhere below. “I could. But I won’t. Because you need to feel safe before you realise you don’t want to run.” The words echoed like a lullaby warped in pitch, all warmth and rot.

Cloud’s jaw clenched. He took a sharp left turn, nearly jarring his elbow out of place in the narrow twist, and shoved past a line of ancient cabling. Wires cracked under his forearm. His skin tore on jagged metal. Blood smeared onto the rusted edge. He kept moving. A noise ahead made him slow temporarily, a quiet tick. An old vent fan. Probably still wired to emergency power.

He braced, exhaled, and shot forward before his courage failed him. The blades loomed in the darkness, slow and wheezing, grinding every few seconds on old bearings. He hit them feet-first, letting the sole of one heel jam between the blades, the other drive forward. A crack, a howl of bending steel, and he broke through. Only, he didn’t expect the abrupt descent on the other side and was sent careening down, landing hard on the floor of a janitor’s closet, shoulder crunching against shelves of rotted paper towels. The dust was thick enough to choke on, but he was out. Bruised. Alive. Alone. And the fucking irony of where he was would have made him laugh if this had been any other situation.

Cloud lay there a moment, eyes wide in the dark, lungs heaving. He had to get out of this building. And the moment he finally clambered awkwardly to his feet, muscles screaming without the added endurance suppressed by the chains at his wrists, he knew Malakai would already be trying to predict which door he’d pick. This wasn’t just a chase. It was a game. And Cloud had just agreed to play. He crept over to the door and cracked it open enough to peer out. A dilapidated hallway, no sign of Malakai. Yet.

Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, half-dead, casting the corridor in a flickering yellow pallor that made it feel less like a hallway and more like the gullet of some diseased beast. The air was thick with mildew. Paint peeled in long strips from the walls. The scent of old bleach and rot clung to the vents. Cloud slipped out, silent, barefoot, the tile slick and cold under his feet. Every step was a gamble. He didn’t trust the floor not to scream at the pressure. He paused at the first corner and leaned in, listening. No breathing. No footsteps. But he didn’t trust silence anymore.

He needed an exit. A stairwell. A fire door. A window. Anything that led out. The corridor branched left and right. No signage. Just more broken lights and a warped floor that slanted toward a dark, open room. Electrical room? Storage? Deathtrap? He didn’t risk it. He turned right and moved. Every hallway was the same. Repetition meant disorientation. Meant design. The architecture had been made to confuse. Force turnarounds. Cloud’s hand slid across the wall, searching for a pattern; airflow, warmth, anything to suggest direction. His fingers found a break in the drywall. A ventilation panel, pried open and left ajar.

His breath hitched. Was it Malakai’s doing? Or had it been opened from the other side? A slow tremor ran through the floor. Below. He stepped back. Listened. A voice rose from somewhere deep in the belly of the building. “You are quick,” Malakai mused aloud, tone gentle. “I would expect no less from the man meant for me. But this facility has many paths, my Cloud. Not all of them lead out.”

Cloud’s skin went cold. There was no way he should be able to hear that. Unless the walls were wired. Unless the vents were all connected. Unless Malakai had patched into the PA system, using the old Shinra infrastructure as though it was built for him.

“You used to enjoy the dark,” the voice crooned. “I remember. We studied you so carefully. Silence. Shadows. Precision. Your profile was elegant. Tactical. But you’re out of practice, aren’t you? You move like you’re still enhanced but you forget what it is to be reduced to a simple human. To bruise. To fatigue.”

Cloud resisted the urge to smash the nearest speaker and continued moving as a fast walk. He turned down a maintenance corridor, lower ceiling, emergency lights casting everything in red. A rat scurried past his foot. Ahead, a door. Push bar. Fire code compliant. He surged for it and slammed the bar down, but it was locked. It didn’t budge. Magnetically sealed. Malakai had expected that door to be tried.

Cloud pressed his forehead to the metal, exhaled once, and stepped back. Another way. Find another way. He turned, looking for vents, wiring, piping. Maybe an access crawlspace.

“Would you like a hint?” the voice offered, closer now. It sounded as if it were coming from every single direction. It made Cloud’s unease a physical thing in his gut. Malakai sounded as though he were enjoying this, a ravenous edge to his tone. “I’ll give you one anyway. Left turn. Laundry chute. Drop to sublevel two. I’ll give you a head start.”

Cloud’s lip curled. “Fuck you,” he whispered and bolted in the opposite direction. His footfalls were too loud. He knew it the moment he hit speed, bare soles slapping tile, the sharp rhythm echoing like a beacon through the hallways. But silence meant hesitation, and hesitation meant caught. So, he ran.

Passed another fork. Left. Wrong turn. Right. Maybe. No windows. No signs. Just the smell of metal and mould and long-dead fluorescent light. Cloud’s lungs were starting to ache. Not from exertion, from mako absence. From limits. From being human again. He dove through another corridor and found himself in a long row of rust-stained lockers, the kind cadets used to sleep against when they were too tired to make it to their bunks. The scent of sweat and age clung to them. Nothing useful. No back door. No vent. Just a mirror. Shattered. He caught his reflection in a jagged shard near the floor. Wide eyes. Pale skin. Blood staining his skin. Sweat-damp hair clinging to his neck.

He looked like prey. A low hum bloomed in the walls. Not the voice this time. Something else. Electric. Pulse-like. The hairs on the back of his neck lifted. Malakai activated something. Cloud ducked into the next room, an old infirmary, from the look of it. Cabinets stripped. Tables overturned. Curtains hanging like torn gauze. A gurney rested sideways against a far wall, and just beside it, a narrow crawlspace. No door. No vent. Just a hatch half-ripped from the drywall.

He dropped to his knees and crawled. Dust stung his throat. The crawlspace wasn’t long, but it bent down, not straight, leading deeper, probably another maintenance loop. He didn’t care. He didn’t stop. The tunnel spat him out into a subterranean level that looked like a disused locker room. Flooded in one corner. Fungal growth in the tile. Every footstep now a wet squelch. The walls were tiled half-up in a colour that used to be white. There was a long, grimy bench and rows of broken cubbies.

The click of a boot startled him and Cloud spun to find Malakai standing at the far end of the corridor, backlit by the red emergency light that poured from the hallway behind him. His expression wasn’t angry. It was intrigued, hungry and pleased. He tilted his head. “Even bound by mako chains, you’re fast.”

Cloud’s breath shuddered. His entire body was coiled, ready to bolt again, eyes flicking around the room before settling back on his captor.

“You didn’t take the chute,” Malakai murmured, almost disappointed. “That would have been the quicker route. I cleared it for you. Disabled the blades. But I suppose you wanted to feel the hunt. I understand.”

Cloud’s spine went ice, the bare skin of his torso and feet prickling, but not because of the wording, though they were bad enough, it was an irregularity that caught his eye. Subtle against dark leather, but the moment he noticed, a heavy weight settled in his gut. Tenting the leather of Malakai’s pants was a very, very prominent erection that he made no attempt to hide or be ashamed by.

He turned to run again and nearly slipped on the flooded tile, sliding to find his footing as he dove back into the crawlspace with a desperate grunt, wriggling furiously as he heard the heavy footfalls pick up behind him.

“You’re mine already, Cloud. I just want to make sure you understand what that means. The running’s part of it. So is the breaking.”

The words chased him down the tunnel like a pulse of static, echoing off metal and bone alike. Cloud was too busy crawling, too busy trying to breathe without sobbing, too busy fighting the urge to look back and see how close that shadow had come. The air here was colder, thinner, tasting of rust and coolant. His arms ached from the angle, his knees from the tile. Every scrape of skin left blood. He didn’t stop.

The sound of pursuit didn’t fade. It didn’t grow louder either. It remained, a steady, relentless rhythm in perfect sync with his heartbeat. He knew what that meant. Malakai wasn’t chasing blindly. He was following the pattern of the crawlspace, tracking Cloud’s route by instinct or by design. The tunnel forked. Left dropped into darkness. Right glowed faintly green. Cloud didn’t trust light, but he trusted open space even less. He went right.

The crawlspace spat him into a small chamber, old power room, maybe. Broken panels lined the wall, wires spilling like entrails. The hum of energy was faint but alive. Emergency grid. His gaze snapped to a dead terminal, cracked but intact. A port still blinked faintly at its base. Cloud’s chest tightened. If he could jury-rig a signal, he might have a hope in hell of hailing a rescue.

He was on his knees before he’d finished the thought, fingers flying over the panel, tearing cables free. The mako cuffs hissed in protest, draining the surge of focus that should’ve sharpened his reflexes, but he worked anyway, forcing the connectors together until the screen stuttered to life in dim blue haze. “Come on,” he hissed under his breath. “Come on.”

It flickered. Static. Then words: POWER ROUTE UNSTABLE. ACCESS LOCKED. He almost smiled. Classic Shinra bullshit.

“Cloud…”

The voice came from behind him. Not through the walls. Not through the vents. Behind him. He turned slowly, dread pooling behind his ribs. Malakai crouched at the mouth of the crawlspace, red light haloing the shape of him. He must’ve torn through the metal, the edges still warped and twisted around his frame. The bastard didn’t even look winded.

“I warned you about the dead ends,” Malakai said softly, almost kindly. “You shouldn’t have to suffer to learn that.”

Cloud’s hand inched toward the exposed cable, fingers closing around a live wire. “Maybe,” he rasped, “but I learn fast.”

The cable lashed through the air with a shriek, sparking as it struck the edge of a shattered console and rebounded toward Malakai’s face. He moved like lightning, one arm sweeping up, not to block, but to catch the live wire barehanded. The moment it made contact, the light in the room stuttered violently, casting flickering shadows up the walls. Power arced along his forearm, illuminating every vein in his skin like a goddamn lightning map. He didn’t scream or flinch, but he smiled.

Cloud didn’t wait to see what that meant. He shoved off the floor and launched himself forward, aiming low. His shoulder slammed into Malakai’s abdomen, hard enough to stagger a lesser man, but Malakai wasn’t lesser. He barely budged. Instead, the monster snarled low, dropped the sparking wire, and caught Cloud by the throat in one fluid motion.

“Keep fighting me,” Malakai said, voice reverent, ragged, almost delighted. “Keep making me feel.”

Cloud’s hands scrambled, one gripping the wrist at his throat, the other driving his elbow into the creation’s ribs again, again, again. Something crunched. Malakai laughed. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. He didn’t care. Then they hit the floor. Cloud twisted as they fell, using Malakai’s momentum against him. His feet found the man’s hips, pushed, and kicked to launch himself clear. He hit the ground in a graceless sprawl, rolled, came up crouched beside the ruined console. One arm bled. His lip was split. A welt darkened across his cheek from some part of Malakai’s armour, but he was upright. Free.

Malakai rose slowly, the sparks from the shattered cable painting arcs around his silhouette. His hair clung damp to his temples, pupils blown wide with adrenaline and arousal. “More,” he whispered. “You were made for this.”

Cloud lunged again. He didn’t go for the throat. He went for the joints. A heel to the inside of the knee. A palm to the base of the jaw. A vicious upward jab under the ribs. Though limited by the mako chains, Cloud fought like a vicious SOLDIER, channelling every scrap of training he had. He was smaller, slower, drained. But he fought anyway. Malakai’s head snapped back from the jaw strike, and Cloud pounced, climbing the man’s frame as if it were scaffolding and hammering an elbow into his temple. They staggered back into the dead terminal, sparks flying as the impact shorted something critical. A burst of light flooded the room, blinding, bright green. Mako surge. Cloud recoiled.

Malakai let the energy flow into him like water into cracked earth. His body drank it. Absorbed it. He healed, blood seeping back into his skin akin to a perverse vacuum as the creation grinned at the blond clinging to him.

“No,” Cloud breathed, straining and bucking to free himself, turning to find another vantage point. “No, no, no—”

An arm of steel seized him around the waist and pitched him through the air, not with the intention to be violent, but of placement. Cloud sailed, trying to right himself, reverse his momentum, but without his strength to aid him, he tumbled like a ragdoll and landed with a grunt on an old, battered couch along the far wall. Dust exploded with his impact, and he sneezed, coughing and spluttering as his eyes watered.

The sound that tore from Malakai’s throat was an exhale of satisfaction. He crossed the room before Cloud could hope to scramble upright, boots crunching over glass, and the couch jolted under the impact as Malakai’s weight bore down on him.

Cloud managed half a kick before his legs were trapped, one knee pinned against the torn leather cushions, the other forced aside by the unrelenting press of a thigh. Malakai’s hand found his wrists and wrenched them above his head, notching one of the chain links against a serrated support beam sticking from the wall, conveniently freeing his hands.

The leather groaned beneath them. Dust rose around his head in a faint, choking halo. Cloud jerked, twisted, fought but all Malakai did in response was shift closer so that Cloud’s thighs were draped around his hips, his leather clad erection pressing pointedly against the blond’s abdomen who struggled more in reflex.

“Do you know,” Malakai said quietly, head lowering so that the length of his hair brushed like silk across Cloud’s bare torso. “How beautiful you are to me? I’ve never had sex before, but chasing you, having you fight me, has caused this strange burn in my gut.”

Cloud’s pulse thundered, panic trying to rise but it was foiled by the sedative. He tried to bridge up, to throw him off, to flick the chain free from the beam, but he might as well have been fighting steel cables. He bared his teeth, spat breathlessly, “Get off me.”

Malakai leaned closer, eyes wild with a blend of hunger and wonder. “I want to fuck you, my Cloud,” he admitted, studying the minute vibrations that rolled through Cloud’s muscles as though they were data points to catalogue. His hands traced, maddeningly slow, over the lines of Cloud’s collarbone, the flat of his sternum, brushing over his nipples and cupping his ribs. “I know we should have our first time in bed, but I don’t think I can wait that long.”

The words struck like gravity, slow, crushing, certain. Cloud knew what they meant, even through the drug-thick haze dulling every nerve, every survival impulse. There was no mistaking the intent. His body heard it before his mind did. Muscles locked. Breath stalled. The air turned heavy enough to drown in.

It wasn’t fear exactly. Not the kind that burned. This was colder. A slow, paralysing comprehension that he was out of options, out of strength, out of escape routes. He could see the angles, the physics, the distance to the door, the torque required to throw a knee hard enough to make space, but none of it mattered. Malakai was stronger in every sense of the word.

The sedative made sure of that. It had replaced adrenaline with static, instinct with fog. Even his heartbeat sounded wrong, slow, muffled, as though happening in another room. He thought of fighting. Of biting. Of clawing his way free. The thoughts came like sparks, useless and fleeting, vanishing before they could ignite.

What lingered instead was shame. It bled through the numbness, sharp and immediate, more real than pain. Not because of Malakai’s weight or the pressure pinning his wrists, but because some part of him, some traitorous, chemical, conditioned fragment, recognized the pattern of touch and confused it for intimacy.

He wanted to call for his husbands as he had done before, to beg for them, to plead. Tears burned behind eyes, the cuffs bit into his wrists and distantly, he was aware that he was about to become a statistic of those who fought and failed, through no fault of their own. It wasn’t fair. None of it ever had been. He inhaled once, shallow, tasting dust and metal and the faint ozone crackle of spent mako. The thought came distant and detached, almost clinical: This is happening.

“You’re going to hurt me,” Cloud told him bluntly, the waver in his voice pushed aside in favour of making a last-ditch effort to force Malakai to think beyond his dick.

Malakai shifted back, easing Cloud’s legs against the couch, and for a moment, the blond thought he had reached him. Reached whatever passed for rationale in that created brain, but bile crept up his throat when the larger man went for the zip of Cloud’s pants, parting the teeth with far less patience than he had earlier.

“Never,” Malakai whispered to him. “I’ll never hurt you.”

Tenacity kicked in the moment his trousers and underwear were pulled down to his ankles, exposing him to the cold, mildew air of the ruined room. A pipe dripped and metal creaked, but all Cloud could hear was the rustle of fabric, the clink of the mako chains above his head and the fact that his cock was soft and utterly uninterested. He bucked, writhed, and twisted, trying to throw Malakai off, the thought rebounding around his head. He was a virgin. This body had never been penetrated by a cock, only the devoted fingers and tongues of his husbands.

Add insult to injury that Malakai was a virgin, too. In a normal situation, this would be a learned disaster experienced together. Now? This was a horror film in the making as the monster set a palm on Cloud’s inner thigh to keep him still while the other curled around his cock. The stimulation provoked the hypersensitivity and Cloud started to harden, even as he shouted in despair.

“That’s it,” the creation soothed, stroking him awkwardly and unpractised, too soft, too slow, nothing but aggravation of too sensitive flesh. “Look how your body lights up for me.”

Cloud didn’t correct him, back arched. His teeth sank into his lip, blood coating his tongue as he bore through the stimulation. He would not cry out, whimper or give this deluded piece of science the satisfaction of a lesson in intimacy. Those inexperienced fingers fisted his length until precome leaked from the slit, dribbling down the blond’s shaft and coating Malakai’s hand which the man deemed as satisfactory as he withdrew and fumbled eagerly with his belt, shoving his leathers down to midthigh, underwear bunched within as his cock bobbed free, hard, red, and leaking. He was endowed, larger than Genesis but slightly smaller than Vincent.

Back stiffening, Cloud spat blood at him, hoping to dissuade him from what was about to be a very agonising introduction back into sex. The fear was trying to crawl above the sedative, but it flailed as though clawing at wet tile. Useless. Malakai leaned down and crushed his mouth to Cloud’s, teeth clacking together as he moaned blissfully into the smaller man’s mouth. Cloud bit him savagely, as hard as he was capable of, canines slicing through a lip, piercing the tip of tongue but the creation was undaunted, pressing harder against him with a soft laugh.

“Beautiful. Fighting me, even now,” he murmured approvingly, nearly choking the smaller man as blood ran in rivulets down Cloud’s throat.

Twisting his head away, Cloud coughed and spat out the blood, the substance splattering the edge of the couch while Malakai was undeterred and pressed clumsy kisses to his jaw and neck while his fingers slid over the soft skin of sac and let the excess precome dribble over Cloud’s rim. He froze beneath the larger man, struggles renewed as he elbowed and tried to kick his legs up but to no avail.

The blisteringly hot, leaking head of Malakai’s cock nudged against his untouched hole, beginning to press, to force the muscle to part. Cloud shrieked in rage, fear and denial, thrashing harder, bearing down and clenching every muscle he had to try and keep the invasion out. Malakai pressed gentle, soothing kisses against his throat. “It’s all right, my Cloud. Let me in. It’ll be good. I promise.”

“It won’t, it won’t, it won’t!” Cloud screeched, panicked and terrified in equal measure, though muted, he could still feel those natural reactions struggling under the weight of the sedative. “You didn’t even prep me, you rapist!”

Prep was clearly the furthest thing from Malakai’s mind, if it had even occurred at all. It was obvious he had no notion of how intimacy was supposed to work, of what he perceived to be affection but was, in fact, abuse, because his entire focus appeared to be penetration. Cloud’s body fought him, resisting in every way possible as the creation made a noise of frustration and rocked his hips forward against the resistance, the tip managing to notch against the rim.

Cloud drove his knee into Malakai’s ribs with a desperate cry, forcing the larger man to keep him still, palm to the blond’s hip, while the other hand circled his own cock and guided it to the pink pucker again, this time forcing and persisting until the muscle parted and the tip slid inside. The agony for Cloud was immediate, and a howl tore from his throat as Malakai gasped and thrust hard, forcing the head through the tight ring of muscle that had no choice but to give under the pressure applied.

Skin tore, lacerations emerged, and blood welled immediately as Cloud’s virgin body was forced to take a cock without any prep or consideration. It burned, ached, and stung, and the blond’s back bowed, his erection rapidly flagging as a sob caught in his throat from the pain. It was the equivalent to a knife through his sphincter and surrounding tissue, throbbing in time with his heartbeat as Malakai moaned raggedly above him, hips jerking forward the barest of an inch before he came, filling Cloud with his spend that leaked back out around him.

Even in his first body, when Sephiroth had taken him those many years ago in the locker room, not knowing he was a virgin, was a far cry from what he was experiencing in this moment. Piercing agony that did not relent. There was no solace to be found, no ease of movement to find something that wasn’t pain. Malakai panted against his throat, glancing down at where his cock was buried a meagre two inches into the man beneath him; his breath stuttered on seeing the blood coating Cloud’s inner thighs and just behind the head of his cock.

One would think that would be enough to hammer home what Malakai had just inflicted, what offence he had just committed. But his eyes shone reverently instead, cock beginning to harden again as he rocked his hips experimentally, and the obscene schlick of blood and semen easing his passage was shockingly loud in the room. “You feel so good, my Cloud,” he breathed, rocking his hips harder as Cloud screamed, back bowing as the friction further tore his ruined rim, blood dribbling down his ass to pool on the couch. “So tight. I’m sorry for coming so quickly. I won’t this time. This is how you are meant to be. Broken and beautiful under me.”

Words failed, screams persisted, as Cloud wrenched at the mako chains, tried to shift his legs, but Malakai had him spread and utterly at his mercy, burying his cock repeatedly into the bleeding orifice, gaining ground inch by inch until the entire length of nine inches was saturated in a mix of fluids. There was nothing gentle or patient in the way the creation moved, just desire and the drive of having his cock squeezed like a vice. Rocking had fallen into thrusting, which soon turned into inhuman pistoning, flesh slapping wetly as Malakai took his pleasure from Cloud’s body; his balls smacked into the blond’s ass in every drive forward.

He was being sawed open, peeled apart by nine inches of unrelenting lust and sick affection. Cloud’s cock lay flaccid and forgotten, jolted and slapping against his thigh with every thrust that rocked his body. He could barely breathe. Thought was a foregone conclusion. His mind was subdued by persistent, unrelenting pain. Malakai brushed up against his prostate once or twice as he shifted angles, but it was so fleeting that Cloud’s hypersensitivity couldn’t even focus on it. He was adrift in a sea of agony, withdrawing so far into disassociation that all he could comprehend was his body being rapidly moved back and forth as Malakai seized his hips and pulled him down onto his cock.

Something had to give. Whether it was Cloud’s body or Malakai’s stamina was a question with no answer. But given the nature of the mako chains and the intensity of the creation’s thrusts, friction and fragile human anatomy one out. There was a perverse, sickening squelch, a wet pop, and Malakai’s unnatural eyes widened fractionally as he drove an inch deeper than before. Cloud tightened around him in a visceral spasm, and his orgasm exploded from him with a long, strung-out groan while a blood-curdling scream tore from Cloud.

Blue eyes were glazed over, no longer present, his mouth parted in a long string of whimpers and whines. Something was wrong, terribly, dreadfully wrong. His gut felt as though it had been run through with something jagged. Malakai’s chest heaved, hips still twitching in the aftermath, before he pulled free from Cloud’s abused hole, not slow, not gentle, but sharp, as though ripping a bandaid off. The torrent that followed was nothing short of horrific; a stream of blood streaked with the stark white of semen followed by something darker, thicker and unmistakably foul.

Malakai mechanically cleaned his cock on Cloud’s trousers, eyes locked on the blend of fluids pooled beneath the pale blond whose eyelids fluttered, fingers twitched as if to move toward a hurt he didn’t have the capacity to fix. The creation’s breathing hitched. That wasn’t beauty. That wasn’t broken in the right way. That was wrong. That was damage. His Cloud. The vessel he was designed to protect, cherish, revere, and he had torn him open from the inside.

A sound escaped his throat, small and unfamiliar, almost like a whimper. He shifted forward on his knees, unsteady fingers hovering above a trembling, sweat-slick abdomen as his eyes narrowed at a wound he could not see but knew was there. Instinct was the only thing that drove him to act, his hands that had damaged now burst with green light as he cast Curaga or Curaja, perhaps both, to mend what he had broken. The power of materia worked but too slowly; a steady trickle of blood and something foul still dribbled from the abused orifice.

Panic ricocheted down Malakai’s spine, a sensation he had never experienced before, but recognised it as the same dread he felt when Hollander was angry, and he was smaller, waiting for punishment that would leave him infirm for days. “No, no, no, no—” he muttered, voice cracking as he reached for the blond’s trousers again. Folding the material over, he wiped at the blood, semen and the substance he knew the name of but did not dare utter. That would make it real. “You’re supposed to be mine,” he whispered hoarsely. “You’re designed to accept me. To be beautiful. Broken, but not…not like this.”

In his hysteria, Malakai made quick work of using the remainder of Cloud’s clothing to get him clean, removing the worst of it, and utterly ignorant to the minute shake of the walls around them. A cloud of dust drifted down from a gap in the ceiling, but he didn’t notice as he tossed the soiled clothes away and unbuckled the mako chains from Cloud’s wrists. A faint surge rippled through the blond’s body, and he released a soft whimper, eyes fluttering open just as Malakai cradled him in his arms.

“You…h-hurt…me,” Cloud croaked hoarsely, blue eyes shining with resurfacing mako, but weakened. “R-raped me. L-liar…you…are…a…l-liar.”

The relief of seeing Cloud awake, talking, made Malakai skip over the implication of those words. An animalistic purr of contentment rumbled from his throat as he pressed soft kisses over the blonde’s face, even as Cloud flinched and recoiled but had no strength to resist the unwanted affection. “You frightened me, my Cloud. I thought I was going to lose you. I did not mean to perforate your bowel, though it’s fixed now,” he said gently as he stood, holding Cloud close to his chest and nuzzling over his face. “Soon, you’ll forget all about those pretenders and it’ll be just us. You and I, as we were meant to be.”

The metal around them groaned as an explosion rocked through the underground barracks. At first, Malakai paid it no mind. He was too enraptured, arms tight around the limp body in his grasp, one hand cradling the back of Cloud’s skull with reverence that might have once passed for tenderness, if not for the red smearing his palm, the slack weight of a body half-conscious, and the broken murmur still echoing in his ears. Raped me. Liar. He’d dismissed it like a stray breeze. Like something that couldn’t possibly be true. Because it wasn’t. Couldn’t be.

“You’ll see,” he whispered into damp golden strands, rocking Cloud gently like a child with a doll that wouldn't smile. “You’ll see, once you’ve forgotten. Once I fix all the parts they fouled. Once you’re beautiful again.”

Then the klaxons wailed. A banshee scream of steel and reverb tore down the walls of silence, jarring and abrupt. The red emergency strobes flared to life overhead, painting the subterranean chamber in flickering shades of alarm, blood, and warning. Malakai jerked as the sound struck his eardrums, high-pitched, relentless, and Cloud whimpered in his arms, a sluggish twitch rolling through his abdomen as instinct tried to curl his body away from the noise.

“No,” Malakai said sharply, more to himself than to the world. “No. No, no, no—”

This wasn’t right. There weren’t meant to be intrusions. He’d locked every sequence, sealed every bulkhead. The corridors were mines, the hallways set with traps only he could navigate. Hollander hadn’t summoned reinforcements, he was dead, Malakai had made sure of it, and the world had long stopped caring about what happened in this part of the earth. Then he felt it. The building shifted. Not from tremor. Not from power loss. From weight. From something dangerous in the way a predator shifted air pressure in the moment before it struck. Something fast, and silent, and divine.

Three of them. Moving through the complex like knives. Cutting corridors open. Slicing through reinforced steel as if peeling foil from a gift they’d been promised.

“No, no—mine—he’s mine—” Malakai hissed, backing toward the far wall of the chamber, Cloud clutched tight against his chest, trembling and half-lucid as the alarms kept screaming. A fine dust fell from the rafters. One of the lights flickered violently above, then burst. Glass rained down in glittering splinters. And for the first time since Hollander taught him the word, Malakai felt something close to fear.

Black smoke and red warning lights weren’t enough. Neither was the building-wide vibration that shook dust from the ceiling vents and scattered cracked glass across the blood-streaked floor. It was the sound that followed, the tortured scream of reinforced metal shearing like brittle glass, that made Malakai freeze mid-nuzzle, his cheek still pressed to Cloud’s slack, flushed face.

The far wall didn’t give way. It exploded. Steel ruptured under the force of something godlike. One moment it existed. The next, it was airborne, shrapnel and synthetics and fragments of bolted infrastructure hurtling through the room like knives. The pressure wave hit first, rippling through the air like a shock bomb. Then came the wreckage, and through it, a hellish silhouette.

Three sets of preternatural, predatory, glowing eyes shone through the waterfall of dust and debris before their forms became visible, real, terrifying and emanating mass murder. Through the billowing cloud of dust and ruin stepped the monsters he’d mocked, the pretenders he’d promised Cloud would forget. Not men. Protective, enraged, possessive monsters. They emerged as though summoned by Cloud’s blood, by his broken, limp form still cradled against the chest of a creature who had dared call him mine.

First came Vincent, dark strands whipping around his face despite no wind current, cloak ripped, claws soaked and dripping with dark viscera. His eyes were molten red, glowing through the haze, locking immediately on Cloud’s naked form, clocking the streaks of blood and something else on his thighs and backside. Valentine went rigid, claws tightening around Cerberus to the point that the metal groaned a protest. Fangs became visible as his mouth parted and the growl that emerged was just shy of Chaos.

Genesis flanked him on the left. Coat immaculate but covered in gore, Rapier slick and dripping blood, his chest heaved as if he’d been running, but not from fear. His expression was carved from vengeance, teeth bared in a slow, horrifying smile that did not reach his eyes. His gloves were black with blood, his boots dragging flecks of Syn matter behind him. He stepped with the precision of a man ready to dance only to halt when, just as Vincent had, his eyes found Cloud. No words found the poet, save for fire beginning to arc down his arms as he trembled with suppressed rage.

And then there was Sephiroth. At the heart of the storm. The tallest of the three, towering and dangerous, silver hair coated with gore, face streaked with warpaint that wasn’t his. He moved with a languid, unholy grace, Masamune humming faintly as it passed through the dust cloud, held with the blade pointed behind him. His gaze found Cloud in an instant and locked there. The disbelief was the first prominent emotion in those cat-like eyes followed closely by unstable fury that vibrated through his six-foot-five frame as he took a single step forward, boot thudding ominously against the debris coated flooring.

No one moved. Even the alarms fell silent for a beat, drowned by the force of three divine killers pausing to process what their eyes were screaming at them.

Malakai held Cloud tighter, possessively, claiming and despite the fear pulsing through his body, nearly pungent in the air, he had the gall to smile. “You’re too late. He’s bled for me. He is mine now.”

Sephiroth blinked, an automatic, mechanical tick of focus realigning. The air around him changed and in Malakai’s arms, Cloud twitched, lashes fluttering at the atmospheric pressure he had not experienced in over twenty years. It thickened, subtly at first, then rapidly, like the pressure drop before a storm cell detonated. Dust twisted in a slow spiral at his feet. Shards of metal shifted on the floor without touch. The wreckage surrounding him began to hum, vibrating faintly in response to something not of this world.

He lifted his head. The glow in his eyes didn’t burn. It pierced. A glacial, radiant thing that locked onto Malakai with such unerring stillness, the air between them seemed to fracture as slitted pupils became mere pinpricks. Masamune tilted slightly behind his back, the blade so long it seemed to echo in its arc, held not with tension but with the perfect balance of one who did not need force to kill, only intent. And that intent hit like the arrival of death. No announcement. No warning. Just surety.

Sephiroth flitted and reality followed. A blur of silver and black launched forward, so fast the world lagged. The floor buckled beneath his step, the steel warped where his boot struck down, and in less than a breath, he was a breath away from Malakai. Masamune swung, not toward flesh. Not a warning. It screamed through the air like a divine guillotine, aimed with absolute precision at the point where Cloud ended and Malakai began, a cut so fine it might have split the soul.

Malakai recoiled. The blade grazed him, skin parted, fabric split. Blood misted, clean and red, before atomizing on contact with the unnatural heat rolling off Sephiroth’s skin. The next strike was already coming. A calculated storm of offense designed not to kill, but to dissect, to peel back muscle, sinew, identity. Not rage. Not passion. This wasn’t madness. This was execution. A ritual. A reclamation.

“You will die for touching him,” Sephiroth said softly, so softly it was almost tender. The kind of tenderness that preceded genocide. “I don’t need to undo you. I only need to erase.”

Masamune swept low, aiming not for limbs, but for foundation. Tendon. Bone. Mobility. Malakai staggered, off balance now, forced to twist to keep Cloud from being cut down in the onslaught, and even that motion, that defence, that act of holding Cloud was seen, and punished.

Sephiroth’s boot collided with Malakai’s abdomen, full-force, bone-cracking, blood forced from the creation’s mouth as internal damage bloomed. Cloud’s body was wrenched from his arms mid-impact, caught by Genesis, who materialized behind in a gust of wind and flame, coat snapping as he spun Cloud protectively from the strike zone, already layering Cure with one hand and raising Rapier with the other.

Vincent was a shadow, gone from view, reappearing behind Malakai, gun raised, muzzle glowing and pressed to the back of the inferior monster’s skull.

Just metres away, Cloud was struggling with the concept of reality. Without the mako chains supressing him, his body was steadily coming back into its own, albeit weakened from blood loss and consumed with agony, but his eyes peered upward into the face of the one who held him now. Though he was naked, he felt warm, no longer cradled by something cold and deluded. The arm beneath his knees was different. Firmer. Tense with fury but not directed at him. It was a curl of strength beneath the tremor in his muscles, a cradle of unrelenting protection.

The arm behind his back adjusted, just slightly. And the coat shifted with it. Not clinical or synthetic or riddled with stitching. This fabric moved like memory. Red. Deep red. Not fresh, not gaudy. Worn-in. Embroidered at the cuff. Cloud’s breath stuttered. He knew this coat. The scent followed, cinders, ink, heat-warped leather, and the distinct note of old poetry trapped in paper bindings. He’d buried his face in that scent and curled into it. Come home to it.

And then teal eyes dropped to him, sensing his observation and the murderous rage that had been there became veiled with abject relief, sorrow and sheer love. Genesis.

This wasn’t a dream, was it? He’d dreamed of rescue before, hallucinated arms that never came. But this didn’t fade. The warmth stayed. The hand at his side adjusted, grounding him with a thumb smoothing once across his ribs, careful not to press too hard against the ruined stretch of his abdomen. He was being held as though he mattered. The hum of a Cure still tingled faintly at his skin, layered expertly where the worst damage had pooled. His body knew that touch. That magic. It remembered who used it like a promise, who layered it in anger and desperation and love.

“G-Gen…” Cloud croaked wetly, throat tight as it constricted with the knowledge that this was real. He was in his husband’s arm, cradled against a familiar chest that would sooner burn every copy of Loveless that existed if it meant protecting him from harm.

“I’m here, baby,” Genesis whispered, holding him as tight as he dared while he adjusted his grip on Rapier to keep his smaller husband close. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.” He pressed his mouth gently to Cloud’s temple and the blond curled into him with a broken sob. “Seph and Vincent have got him. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

Cloud sobbed once, then again, his voice catching in a ruined gasp as the pain of movement surged through his body, met only by the warmth of arms that refused to let him go. Genesis didn’t shush him. He didn’t offer hollow comforts or say it was over. He just held him. One hand remained tight around Rapier’s hilt, angled to strike if needed, while the other secured the trembling form of his husband against him with infinite care.

But the moment he felt Cloud’s breath hitch a third time, wet, strangled, sharp with pain, he crouched. Slowly. No sudden movements. He lowered them both until one knee pressed into the filthy floor, shifting Cloud into his lap. The red coat spread beneath them like a bloodstained shroud, his own body a shield as he gently leaned Cloud back, just enough to look. And what he saw hollowed him out.

Finger-shaped bruises bloomed along Cloud’s hips and upper thighs. Deep, ugly purples where pressure had been applied with brutal, possessive force. Cuff marks ringed his wrists, raw, angry welts that told of hours spent restrained. His stomach was sweat streaked though tight with the presence of internal injury. Bloody streaks ran down his inner thighs, and beneath the haze of Cure, newer blood still welled.

Genesis’s breath shook. Not with fear. Not with grief. With hatred. His palm pulsed and glowed green as he sent Curaga directly into Cloud’s abdomen. He glanced up, and that’s when he saw the couch. Half-fallen, one leg broken. The cushions soaked through, dark and wet with blood, with things he didn’t want to name. And nearby, discarded like refuse, lay a pair of trousers and underwear. Torn, stained, abandoned beside the glowing, half-drained mako chains that still hissed faintly on the ground as if the memory of pain refusing to dissipate. The rage coiled low in his belly. Cold. Controlled. Cataclysmic.

“Genesis,” Vincent asked, deadly soft, finger curled alongside Cerberus’s trigger as he dug the barrel harder into the back of Malakai’s head. “How is he?” There was no edge to it. No demand. Only the restraint of something barely contained. The kind of quiet that came right before a bullet was fired.

Genesis pulled his coat tighter around Cloud, shielding what he could, arms folding with care but steel precision. When he finally answered, his voice was raw. “Stable,” he said. “But…injured.” He touched Cloud’s hair again, tucking a clumped lock away from his face. “Internal damage…rectal lacerations. There’s blood loss. Bruising. He’s—” His throat locked, and when he spoke again, it was an enraged whisper. “That twisted fuck raped our husband, Vincent.”

The twisted fuck in question, bleeding from the pinpoint accuracy of Masamune’s blade, and sandwiched between Vincent and Sephiroth, flinched.

A sound like a storm on the cusp of breaking filled the space behind him. A ripple went through Vincent’s frame and wings erupted from his back, adornments of Chaos fitting over his form as he let the entity within him surge free, a savage snarl piercing the air.

Sephiroth, directly in front of Malakai, hair swaying like a curtain of silver ice, Masamune lowered slightly at his side, tilted his chin down to stare into the frightened, unnatural eyes of the creation. The air around him was warping. The dust hadn’t resettled from his last strike. His coat barely moved. But his power was rising in a silent, gravitational swell that pulled everything inward, sound, breath, light. His pupils were pinpricks. His lips parted just enough to draw breath through teeth no longer human. His left hand flexed once, a tremor of restraint, and the floor cracked beneath him.

Genesis curled tighter around Cloud, lowering his voice to soothe again, even as the room began to vibrate. “He’s safe now. We’ve got him. No one will ever hurt him again.”

But Sephiroth wasn’t listening. Not to Genesis. Not to logic. He stared at the filth on the floor, the bruises on Cloud’s body, the way Genesis had to hunch forward to protect what Malakai had marked, and his voice, when it finally came, was unhinged, predatory as he spoke directly to the being before him. “I will erase every atom of you.”

Black boots crushed the remnants of what might have been a plea. Silver and crimson stood flanking the monster, divinity coiled in restraint that wouldn't last. Vincent, never once lowering Cerberus, retrieved the chains from the floor, and they hissed like angry serpents when they were locked around Malakai’s wrists. He convulsed once, violently as power surged inward, not outward, and turned against its bearer.

“You don’t have to do this,” Malakai pleaded with them as he experienced the chains sucking away at his strength. “I never – I didn’t mean to hurt him. I couldn’t resist–“

The sound of leather striking flesh was loud within the quiet of the room. Malakai’s head whipped violently to the side from the strength of Vincent’s backhand; his cheek gouged open beneath the gauntlet. “You are going to die, Malakai. Nothing you say or do is going to change that,” Vincent rumbled, the duality of his voice heavy with Chaos’s cadence. “You raped my husband. Attempted to manipulate him. Chained him. The sound of your voice does nothing but further stoke my rage.”

Sephiroth’s lip curled, and with a flick of Masamune, Malakai lost all five fingers of his right hand. Blood fountained from the stumps. Malakai screamed, but the sound barely reached the walls before he lost the other five. Cat-slit eyes, glowing with malice and rage, peered down at the simpering creation. “What’s wrong, Malakai? Do you not enjoy pain? Despair? Fear?”

“He’s alive, isn’t he?” Malakai entreated, struggling against the mako chains, against the rampant blood loss that dripped steadily from his mutilated hands. “Let me go. You won’t see me again. I swear it!”

“Yes,” Sephiroth agreed silkily, almost a purr, “He is, but you hurt him. Violated him. So, no, we won’t see you again, because you’ll be dead.”

Malakai didn’t have the opportunity for more words, not when Vincent seized his jaw and forced his mouth open, even as he struggled futilely with the mako chains subduing his power. There was nothing clean about it. Sephiroth precisely and efficiently removed the lesser creature of his tongue while he shrieked in agony. Blood poured down his chin as the appendage hit the floor with a wet thud.

What came next was necessary. Cleansing. And still, terribly vindictive. Sephiroth turned his blade to the creature’s pristine leather armour, cutting it apart piece by piece. Seams split. Straps snapped. The once-perfect ensemble fell like dead leaves to the ground until Malakai was bare before the room, just as Cloud had been.

Genesis watched the proceedings with narrowed eyes, soothing his husband as he shook and sobbed in his arms, keeping him turned away from the carnage. “He’s suffering, sweetheart,” he assured Cloud softly. “It can’t suffice for what he did to you, but they’re making it hurt.”

All three of the powerful men could see the remnants of what Malakai had taken from their husband. The suffocating proof that rape had been committed. Though clothing had wiped away the worst of it, blood, semen and dark matter streaked his cock. Genesis growled against Cloud’s hair. Vincent’s fangs pierced his lip. Sephiroth’s eyes rose to Malakai’s face, studying the pain-etched features, the wide, fear-filled eyes, and as he held that gaze, he slid Masamune beneath the base of his scrotum as he asked, “Was it worth it?”

No one expected a response any more than Malakai could provide one, choking on blood, writhing in pain, forced to stand by Vincent, keeping him upright. Sephiroth leaned in close with a heated whisper, “It wasn’t.” And with a fluid flex of his wrist, the blade sliced upward behind the scrotum, shearing through the spermatic cords and severing both testicles and penis in one clean, mercilessly slow stroke. The gurgled scream that followed was barely human. Wet thuds marked the fall of mutilated flesh to the floor. Blood jetted from the open groin in thick arterial pulses. Sephiroth sidestepped the spray with casual detachment, expression unmoved, but his eyes sparked with visceral satisfaction.

Genesis stood with Cloud cradled protectively in one arm, coat wrapped tight around his trembling body, Rapier still held loosely in the other. He moved with quiet deliberation, shifting just enough for Cloud to see the ruin left behind. Those blue eyes, glazed with pain, processed what they were seeing. Malakai was bleeding out, mutilated, castrated, incapable of harming another soul in this life or the next.

Vincent released him, and the body dropped like dead weight, crumpling to its knees on the stone floor. Blood poured freely from his shredded groin, his gashed palms, the broken meat of his mouth. The stench of iron hit the air.

Genesis cocked his head, teal eyes narrowed as he adjusted to Cloud tucking his face against his throat. “You signed your death warrant the moment you touched him,” he said, clear enough to be heard over the sound of Malakai’s ragged breathing. “Hollander would have joined you if we hadn’t already found his body.” His tone turned colder, a flick of loathing under the velvet of his voice. “Clever, weren’t you? Killing your master so you could keep what you stole. As if that made him yours.”

The silence that followed Genesis’s condemnation was absolute, broken only by Malakai’s ragged, bubbling breaths as he collapsed fully onto his belly, smearing blood across the stone like a slug trying to escape salt. One hand twitched. A leg scraped. A final, pitiful instinct to crawl toward safety, or worse, toward Cloud. That was the final insult.

Something ancient broke loose beneath Vincent’s skin. His pupils vanished in a flood of glowing red, molten hatred spilling through every thread of restraint, and the monster lurking in his marrow surfaced. Bone cracked. Muscle tore. Metal screamed. Fur erupted. His spine arched as his frame expanded, twisting into something not meant for mortal planes. The Galian Beast took his place, horns gouging the ceiling, claws like swords, maw steaming as it split open around a snarl torn from hell itself.

Sephiroth took a conscientious step back while Genesis openly stared, neither of them having seen Vincent in that form before.

Malakai’s mouth opened to emit some form of terror to see the monstrous entity, but it was too late. With one lunge, the Beast seized him, one clawed hand clamping around his torso, the other anchoring his legs, and pulled. There was resistance for a heartbeat. Then a wet, tearing sound like meat being split from the bone. Blood geysered, soaking the walls, the floor, Vincent’s chest. The scream never came. Malakai’s spine snapped before he had the chance. Two halves hit the floor with a meaty thud. Steaming entrails followed.

The Galian Beast rose slowly, chest heaving, gore dripping from claws and maw, but his eyes, Vincent’s eyes, were fixed on Cloud. Not to frighten. To confirm. The threat was gone.

Through the jagged crack in the metal that the trio had originally emerged from, new footsteps pounded, frantic, skidding, and then three more figures burst into the chamber in rapid succession.

Reno came in first, carrying a familiar box previously located under Malakai’s bed, and immediately screamed, as if he had walked in on an autopsy. Not far from the truth. “What the actual fuck—!”

Halvyr stopped dead behind him, face slack with horror. His eyes swept the room, blood on every surface, intestines still steaming, Vincent towering in full Galian Beast form with gore dripping off him, and Halvyr, medical bag in hand, looked a single breath away from pivoting and walking directly back out without a word.

Nanaki padded in behind them both, nose twitching. He took one long look at the carnage, tail lifting slightly. “Hm,” he said, contemplative. “About time.” His tail swayed. Just once.

Reno pointed at the two halves on the floor, voice high and incredulous. “That cunt deserved it! I think? That is Malakai, right? Kinda hard to tell!” Then he pointed at Vincent. “And what the fuck is that?!”

Vincent shook, splattering viscera and gore every which way before his massive frame slowly shrank, fur retracting, claws becoming hands again as the Beast relinquished its hold. Blood smeared across his torso as he staggered upright, steam rising off his skin from the transformation. His eyes were still glowing when they met Reno’s. “Calm down, Red,” he muttered hoarsely, tone still seething with rage.

Reno blinked slowly. “Didn’t know your final form was a steroid-bulked wolf, Vincent.”

“Now you do,” Vincent rasped.

Genesis barely had time to shift his grip before Sephiroth and Vincent converged on him, wordless, breathless, trembling. Sephiroth’s hand curled around Cloud’s calf first, then swept up behind his knee as he dropped to his knees with a graceless thud and buried his face against the outside of Cloud’s thigh.

“Dirty,” Cloud protested weakly, already reaching for his silver-haired husband with shaking fingers.

Sephiroth caught his hands and pressed a kiss to his blood-streaked thigh. “I don’t fucking care. He hurt you, love. I’m sorry we didn’t get here faster.” His breath hitched on contact, and when he inhaled again, it shook like a blade dragged over stone. The first sob didn’t leave his throat. It just lived there.

Cloud made a pitiful, helpless noise, but didn’t bother trying to refute. He knew any disagreement with his husbands would be tragically lost at this point. Besides, he was in too much agony to argue about hygiene and sanitary bullshit.

Vincent collapsed against the other side, hands skimming over Cloud’s ribs with barely restrained tremors, head bowed, forehead pressed low to Cloud’s stomach like a man praying to a god he didn’t think would ever look back. The blood didn’t matter. The scent of fear, of pain, of what had been done, none of it kept them away. It only drove them harder, hands smoothing over every inch they could reach, wordless in their grief.

Cloud trembled under them. “I want to go home.”

“We’re going home, baby,” Genesis murmured near his ear, arms still wrapped tight around his waist as he held Cloud upright.

“I need to examine him,” Halvyr interjected and received three growls in return. “Oh, for the love of Gaia, do you want him to get peritonitis?”

“Peri-what now?” Reno queried, adjusting the box of Cloud’s belongings under one arm, eyeing the blood and dark smears streaking his skin and his expression crumpled. “Aw, kid. That motherfucking cunt of a scumbag.” He turned and shouted at the upper half of Malakai’s cooling corpse. “You got everything you fucking deserved!”

If he weren’t in so much pain, Cloud would have chuckled. He was compartmentalising the reality of the situation as it was. The longer they lingered in this terrible place, the worse it was going to get. But at the same time, he wanted Sephiroth’s arms around him. Vincent’s. He wanted to curl into them, bury his face against their skin and forget that this series of events had ever happened.

“You can examine him, but we’re not letting him go,” Vincent warned, pressing his mouth to Cloud’s cheek and to his husband, he murmured, “I’m sorry, baby. I failed you.”

Halvyr muttered something along the lines of ‘inconvenient pains in my ass’ but managed to shuffle between three very overprotective, distressed monsters to use a hand-held scanner to assess Cloud’s internal injuries.

“I agreed…to go with him,” Cloud croaked. “You didn’t fail. I-I invited it. This is my fault-”

Genesis seized his chin before he could finish, incensed. “No. I don’t want to hear it, Cloud. Don’t you fucking dare blame yourself.”

Cloud, being Cloud, looked as though he wanted to argue, even doused in throbbing agony, but gave up and let his husbands cuddle him as Halvyr did his assessment, the doctor’s often unamused expression glowering as he read the readout of his scan.

“You’ve got sphincter tears, moderate pelvic bruising, and half a dozen abdominal contusions, including a perforated bowel,” Halvyr said flatly, not bothering to sugar-coat. “Internal inflammation is already setting in. If we wait too long, you will succumb to peritonitis.” He looked pointedly at Genesis, who was the only one with enough leverage to move Cloud properly. “I need you to shift him so I can run a secondary probe. He’s not going to like it.”

Genesis’s arms only tightened. “He’s had enough,” he warned, almost a snarl.

“Which is precisely why I’m being gentle,” Halvyr snapped, already activating the device. “But I’m not about to let your husband die of infection because you’re all having a group trauma cuddle.”

“Rude,” Reno muttered from the corner. “Necessary. But rude.”

Nanaki flicked his tail in agreement.

Genesis exhaled through his nose like a bull, then loosened his hold just enough for Halvyr to slip the wand beneath the angle of Cloud’s hip and make contact. Cloud yelped immediately, the tremor running through his limbs from searing discomfort.

“Stop,” Vincent ordered, fangs bared, appearing ready to hulk out a second time in the space of fifteen minutes.

Sephiroth was judging the merits of turning Halvyr into a kebab on Masamune.

“Not until I’m done,” Halvyr replied grimly, his gaze never lifting from the scan. “You want to stabilise him for transport or not?”

Vincent bared his teeth but fell silent, gripping Cloud’s wrist as a silent anchor while Sephiroth stroked back sweaty strands of hair from Cloud’s forehead, his touch uncharacteristically tender.

Cloud whimpered softly but didn’t pull away.

“There,” Halvyr finally grunted, switching off the device. “He’ll need antibiotics, pain inhibitors, and a deep-tissue cleanse as soon as we’re back topside. And don’t let him fall asleep until I run a cognitive test.”

“We’ll carry him,” Sephiroth said at once.

“No shit,” Halvyr muttered.

“Got the murder box,” Reno added, adjusting the crate under his arm. “Which—uh, I feel bad calling it that now, ‘cause it has Cloud’s stuff in it, but, y’know.” He hesitated, then stepped forward and knelt. For once, his voice dropped. “Hey. Spikey. Got your stuff. What’s left of your clothes, both rings and your chain.” A beat. “Didn’t clean the blood off your boots. Thought you might want it as evidence. Or, like, a trophy.”

Cloud gave a ragged wheeze of something that might have been a laugh. “You’re a moron.”

“Yeah,” Reno said quietly. “But I’m your moron, kid.”

That got a wet, choked noise out of Genesis, who buried his face in Cloud’s shoulder.

Vincent closed his eyes. Sephiroth let out a breath like he’d been holding it for days.

Cloud, limp and exhausted, let them hold him. And as they carried him topside, with Reno and Nanaki setting explosive devices to blow the old barracks sky high, the blond knew with absolute certainty that no one, save his husbands, had a hope in hell of taming Cloud Strife.