Chapter Text
Since she’d presented as an omega at sixteen (more like her entire damn life), Cloud had longed to find her soulmate, but she never wanted it to be like this.
She’d been born with a black feather stamped on the inside of her right forearm, and she’d never realized how much of an omen it was. Little Cloud Strife grew up idolizing her hero, then ran away to Midgar to chase her dreams of being just like Sephiroth, none the wiser.
Their first touch was in the Nibel reactor. And Cloud’s life was changed forever.
The monster who had killed her mother, burned down her home, who had run Cloud through was looking at her with awe in her crazed eyes, and Cloud had had to put her down like a rabid dog (she still wasn’t sure, all these years later, how she’d managed it).
Meeting her soulmate was lifechanging, but not in any of the ways little Cloud had hoped.
For one, Cloud was an alpha now, thanks to whatever Hojo had done to her. Probably trying to make her more like his “perfect creation,” since that was all Cloud was good for.
Though she’d grown stronger and put on more muscle than she could’ve dreamed of back in her cadet days, she’d never gotten rid of the omegan softness of her body. People still made assumptions about her, even now, and it was grating having to correct them.
It was a little embarrassing to admit, but Cloud was lonely. The world was quieter, emptier. People were moving on—from Meteor, Advent Day, Shinra—and even though she wasn’t dwelling on the past the way she used to, it still felt like she was being left behind.
She felt like a stranger in her own body, going through ruts instead of heats.
She would never have the mate she’d dreamed of as a child, because Cloud had already killed her three times, and if Sephiroth somehow managed to come back again, Cloud would have to do it a fourth time.
She’d first started her delivery service as a way to get away from Tifa and the weight of her expectations. It’d quickly become fun for her, getting to see the planet without all of the urgency of chasing after Sephiroth while the world was ending. It felt good to have a purpose, even if it was a lot more mundane than the whole saving the world thing.
Now, after Advent Day, her delivery service wasn’t about escaping anymore. She just… liked to wander. She never stayed in one place for long, despite having a tiny, shitty house in Edge she only sometimes came back to.
Every so often when she felt like it, she’d fuck a pretty girl she came across in her travels. Usually only when she was close to her ruts, and only ever to take the edge off leading up to them. She always went through her ruts alone.
She was too aggressive for someone unenhanced to handle, and there was no one who could sate her the way she needed (no one alive, anyway). Suffering through them alone was the one form of self-punishment she still let herself have, even though she’d forgiven herself for everything after Aerith had all but begged her to after the Advent.
The only person she deserved was long gone in every possible way, and nobody else would ever be enough, so Cloud contented herself with her occasional hookups, because it was all she was going to get.
It worked for her. Until it didn’t.
Until Sephiroth came back, somehow, and then there was no hooking up with random girls, not when she had an arch-nemesis slash soulmate to kill.
Cloud couldn’t just ignore Sephiroth, ignore them.
The worst part about Sephiroth coming back wasn’t the fighting or the destruction. It was how badly Sephiroth wanted her, and how bad Cloud wanted to want her back, despite everything.
“We are mates, Cloud.”
“You are mine, made just for me.”
“The cells in your body are calling out to mine. Can’t you hear them?”
“The bond that ties us together has changed you, shaped you into my perfect mate.”
Scratch that. The worst part was the melodramatic speeches and Sephiroth trying to convince Cloud that she belonged with her.
(That last one was especially ridiculous, because if she was Sephiroth’s perfect mate, wouldn’t she have stayed an omega? Maybe Sephiroth was only into other alphas)
They fought, like they did every time Sephiroth was alive. And unlike all those other times, it didn’t end with Sephiroth dying.
Cloud… couldn’t do it. Not again.
But she couldn’t live with herself if she let Sephiroth carry out her plans.
There was only one thing Sephiroth wanted more than the planet. The one thing Cloud would never give her. Still wouldn’t. But… maybe they could work something out.
So Cloud brought Sephiroth home to her shitty little shack on the outskirts of Edge.
She laid everything out. That if Sephiroth wanted Cloud so badly, then she had to give herself to Cloud, too.
Sephiroth agreed so quickly that Cloud felt like she had whiplash. Had it been that easy, this whole time?
Sephiroth must’ve figured out what she was thinking based on the look on her face (or maybe she was poking into Cloud’s head again, but she didn’t feel her in there), and shockingly, offered her an explanation.
“Before, I never would have agreed to this. I would have simply used this planet as the vessel it is meant to be, and brought you with me. Puppet or not, you would have eventually realized your rightful place by my side.”
“But it is different now. I absorbed Mother completely, and the Black Materia is lost to me. All I have left is you. You are my anchor, what allows me to retain my Self as this wretched Planet tries to eat away at me, what calls me back to the land of the living. You are my mate, Cloud, and all I have wanted since we fought in the Lifestream, is you.”
That was heavy. Yep, Cloud really hated the dramatic speeches.
But Sephiroth was still Sephiroth. Inhuman and unnatural, not caring for life the way that Cloud did. She couldn’t just be turned loose on her own, couldn’t be trusted not to hurt anyone even if she wasn’t trying to destroy the world anymore. She still saw herself as above humanity (with Cloud as her only equal, and the fact that Sephiroth also saw Cloud as something better than human was unsettling), which meant she shouldn't be around people.
No, Cloud had to keep an close eye on her. And that was all this was.
Her delivery service was put on hold until Cloud figured out what to do with Sephiroth, who was now haunting her home like a particularly lively ghost. She didn't know what life was supposed to look like now, what giving herself to Sephiroth really meant. So far, it just meant Sephiroth bothering her all the time.
She was so damn smug and annoying, acting like she was seeing right through Cloud, when there was nothing to see through at all. It didn’t matter that they were soulmates, once (Cloud still wore a long glove to cover her mark, even though Sephiroth flaunted the Nibel dagger between her tits like a banner), because they definitely weren’t anymore, not after everything Sephiroth had done.
Her whole life was on pause, because she didn’t know what to do.
Most of her life, that was.
Her hormones didn’t care about Sephiroth being back. If anything, they’d roared to life with her return.
Cloud couldn’t do anything about it, with Sephiroth skulking around her place. And when she felt the familiar stirrings of pre-rut, when she was angrier and hornier than usual, she knew there wouldn’t be any fucking a random, pretty girl in a random, pretty town she passed through. Not with Sephiroth here.
Finally, quietly, she determined to deal with things herself, to take the edge off before her rut arrived, and then she’d tie Sephiroth to a chair or something and fuck off to the church to suffer through her rut on her own.
“Oh Cloud, you present so beautifully for me.”
“Look how hard you are, how wet.”
“Let me see.”
Of course Sephiroth knew. She figured out what Cloud was doing right away. There was no getting away with it. She’d been caught with her pants down, literally.
Cloud couldn’t be blamed for what she did next. It was her pre-rut, making her aggressive. It was the month she’d spent pent up in here with Sephiroth, trying to figure out what to do now that she was stuck with an insane woman who wanted her more than the world, that she refused to kill again.
It wasn’t the fact that Sephiroth was her soulmate, and Cloud had never stopped wanting her, not even once. It wasn’t that Cloud could finally have her, could finally put her in her place, could take everything she’d ever wanted and needed from a soulmate.
Sephiroth was gorgeous, splayed out in Cloud’s bed, her hair all over the place. Her tits bounced, big and soft, and Cloud tried to ignore the mark that sat between them even though her eyes kept coming back to it.
Cloud was so unbelievably turned on as she touched Sephiroth and Sephiroth touched her back, in a way she’d never been before.
Her clit grew, got hard enough to fuck Sephiroth with, and Cloud didn’t even need the harness she’d made. That… had never happened before.
Cloud took out her pent up rage and lust and wanting on Sephiroth, fucked her into the bed and pinched her nipples and pulled her hair. She even kissed her.
And Sephiroth just grinned like a maniac and laughed and moaned and gasped, whispering sweet, terrible things into Cloud’s ears. Cloud ignored her.
Like in all things, Sephiroth was overdramatic and big in this too, so she was more than capable of fucking Cloud right back.
It wasn’t a surprise that it sent Cloud into an early rut.
She was surprised by how willing and enthusiastic Sephiroth was about Cloud fucking her, as an alpha. But then, Cloud was letting her do the same, even if it involved more fighting and biting than she’d care to admit to get her there.
When it was over, and the rut haze lifted, they finally figured things out. They fell into an uneasy sort-of domestic life. Sephiroth let Cloud collar her, the way one would an omega. It was the only way Cloud could think to make this okay, to reassure herself that Sephiroth wouldn’t just run off to set the world on fire again.
Even though Sephiroth made it clear that she would never let Cloud go, collar or not, though she happily wore it. Weirdo.
Sephiroth was willing to let Cloud take what she wanted from her, which was strange for an alpha. So long as Cloud let Sephiroth have her turn too, of course. She was all about reciprocity in everything when it came to their relationship.
On the rare mornings when Cloud woke up before Sephiroth and saw her sleeping next to her, the rising sun shining on her hair and glinting off of the silver wolf’s head on the collar around her neck, Cloud’s own collar (that she’d somehow allowed Sephiroth to stick on her, like the omega she once was) felt especially heavy around her own throat.
She could try to convince herself all she wanted that she didn’t love this. Maybe this wasn’t exactly what little Cloud had dreamed of, but maybe it was what she needed.
It was nice, not being so lonely anymore. Reunion, their soulmate bond—whatever it was—tingled pleasantly whenever they touched, and Cloud’s body finally felt like it belonged to her again (ironic as that was).
And hey, looking past all the sappy shit that Cloud definitely didn’t feel (and that Sephiroth definitely didn’t know she felt), at least she’d never spend another rut alone.
Maybe this was what they deserved, after all.