forcefreaked

[forcefreaked]

It was a poor piece of land to begin with when it had come into the care of the family 4 generations prior. Fenced in by wilting live oak and the parched grey wood of sun bleached cedar posts, the homestead sat backed uncomfortably into the foot of a butte. Nibel Ranch had been named for the village that Claudia's great great grandmother had left in 1897 upon the passing of her husband. The inauspicious final resting place of the father, brother and sister of that first generation, every fall the pasture ran with swift floodwater and every summer the threat of wildfire hung overhead like a vulture. Their 200 acres stood proud despite the barbed wire of its fences beginning to sag as less and less money came in through the years.

The work of the land had made for several generations of hard women. Claudia Strife was personable enough to get by, but only just. Having taken on the full financial responsibility for the family goings-on at 16, she did not so much embody an iron hand in a velvet glove as she did a switch of mesquite in a wool stocking. She'd never been one to suffer nonsense, and her years of motherhood hadn't softened that sensibility in the least.

Claudia's only-begotten daughter took too much after his absent father for the comfort of anyone in town.

Cloud was extremely scarce with words. Helpful to a fault but so poor a salesman he couldn't talk a starving man into accepting a free meal. He had been born both too late and too soon, a woman out of time waking with the sun each morning to tend to the family’s dwindling herd of quarter horses, more than half-dead to the world in the months between foaling and rodeo season. Claudia often joked that Cloud had been born with horse sense in place of common sense, and in 24 years of opportunity, he had not once proven her wrong.

The most outstanding testament to his failure to think through things came late in the cold fall of 1977.–

The first omen that year had been a thick manila envelope postmarked out of Dallas. The return address included a suite number that evoked a soft-handed pencil pusher holed up in a gaudy skyscraper. Naturally, being a woman of action over discussion, Cloud handily threw it in the dusty floorboard of his pickup and let it slip his mind. Surely if it mattered, he’d thought in the moment, they’d have included his first name. No sense asking after some city business that couldn't bother picking up a phonebook.

The second omen had been far less forgettable. A thin man in round glasses had walked into the middle of the county rodeo, the only grown man in the postal code wearing Chuck Taylors, and had

marched right up to where Claudia had leaned on the arena fence. His hand had been tight on her shoulder when he’d whipped her around, and he’d clapped an identical manila envelope against her chest before she could speak.

“ You’ll want to take a look this time,” he’d sneered, “I’d hate to think what could happen to the old homestead if you keep playing coy, Ms. Strife.”

Cloud and his mother should have both seen it then. There’s no doing fair business with a man who wants to turn shame on you as a bargaining chip. The fact that the stranger had beat a quick path out of town before they could even speak to defend themselves left a lingering heat in Cloud's cheeks even as he'd tipped his hat out of his eyes and straightened his spine.

Claudia had kept the papers hidden beneath the leather of her jacket until they'd made it back to the pickup, but the contents of the envelope as she'd strained her eyes in the dying evening light had made her regret not throwing the entire stack out on the arena dirt to be shredded under the hooves of the pickup riders' horses.

An insulting number. She could hardly think to call it an offer, really, at double digits per acre for the piece of land that represented all she had in the world of her family before her and all she would ever have to leave her daughter.

Claudia hadn't even realized her vision had blurred with hot, angry tears until she felt Cloud carefully pulling the letters from her hands.

The two spent the 30 minute drive home without a single word between them, the envelope burning holes in their peripheral vision on the bench seat between them.–

The third omen that year made a home in town right under the noses of the Strife women. The arrival of the incredibly tall stranger, dressed head to toe in dour black, didn't stir as much curiosity as one might expect in such a small town. It had been obvious to Brian, the man who had run the only motel on their barren stretch of highway, that this was another passer-by. Nobody who meant to stay in their little valley would've rolled through in a low-slung black Buick Riviera, and they certainly wouldn't have asked for the room farthest from the office for a week at a time. He had been so caught off guard by the height and breadth of the lodger that he hadn't even thought to ask what business brought her in, though as he sat in the motel office and remembered the sharpness of her pale eyes, he's not sure the answer would have satisfied him.The stranger herself wouldn't have told him the truth. She could tell when she'd set her duffle on the dingy carpet of the lobby that curiosity had been eating the clerk. He was nice enough, swallowing his curiosity and setting her up with the room she asked for, even offering to carry her bag down the walkway to her room. When she'd slung the sizable bag over her shoulder and arched a pale brow at the man she stood nearly a head above, he had even graciously backed down. His hands were still raised in acquiescence when she'd stepped back out of the swinging glass door into the stark morning light.

Privately Sephiroth thought to herself, as she made her way to her let room, her assignment on this job was probably overkill. She'd read through the property portfolio before the first letter had even been addressed to Ms. Strife.

Only a few generations of the family claim laid on the land and neither her dwindling trade in Quarter horses nor her unremarkable daughter seemed reason enough to Seph for Ms. Strife to welcome legal troubles. Perhaps the first letter had been lost rather than ignored. It wasn't as though Rufus would shell out for certified mail for a mere 200 acres. Why bother when it was just as easy to have Hojo and his well-trained weapon establish the company's presence among the locals.

Rufus Shinra had made no secret of his distaste for Hojo, who had proven himself an incredibly greasy negotiator, and whatever horrors the man had made of Sephiroth's childhood had yielded undeniable results. Rufus himself had swallowed his own revulsion at Sephiroth and set her like a hound on prematurely securing his inheritance before Seph had even been old enough to drive. In the years since, she'd honed the skill like steel, impressing her value as an asset so deeply on Shinra that he had almost come to consider her a person. So seriously did she take to her job, she never once allowed the directors' insistence on referring to her as 'it' sway her from her own internal code of professionalism.

Already in her mind, she had begun weaving her web.

First she needed to be seen having legitimate business in town. Rufus had always made it clear that any close scrutiny on Sephiroth’s work should avoid legal consequences for his business or his family. Hojo was expendable, making Sephiroth even more expendable. Any action taken in service of the job would come down squarely on her shoulders.

So she would ask after horses. It seemed easy enough, very straightforward. She was here on behalf of a wealthy man from the city; an old money magnate who read too many Louis L'Amour novels.

Enough truth that it would hold water, too little detail to give a foothold to any suspicious local constable if they wanted to come digging. She needed a horse, that was all. She had heard good things about Strife's horses around the stockyards in the city and she had come out to see for herself. She need only ask a few people in town the best way to contact the ranch, to make sure she had witnesses to her story before she held the landowners heels to the fire.–

Sephiroth started with Brian. His obvious curiosity had made him an easy mark, and she had already slipped her fake name past him with no further scrutiny.

"Would you happen to have the number for a Nibel Ranch?" she asked, resting her hands on his counter. She purposefully had tucked the gloves she preferred to wear down into the pocket of her jacket, thinking they'd give the wrong impression, and it struck her briefly to see the faint shine of her buffed nails.

"Claudia's old place?" he'd asked gruffly, "She ain't in the market for workers right now." As the innkeeper had said this, his eyes had raked an assessing look over Sephiroth's formidable build.

The ingratiating smile Seph had fixed on her face felt foreign, and she had to focus on not looking stiff.

"I appreciate that information but I'm here about buying horses."

She didn't miss the way he had looked out at the Buick in the lot, and knew immediately she would have to volunteer a little more information.

"My employer would want to come out to see the horses himself before investing that kind of money. I'm just here to be eyes-on for him before he makes the trip. He inherited quite a bit of money from his father and he wants to play at being a cowboy."

“ No offense to you…ma’am, but if your boss thinks it’s too much work to ride out here to see these horses himself, it sounds like he won’t be uh…’playing at cowboy’ as you said for very long at all.”

Sephiroth surprised herself as a laugh had slipped out.

“ No offense taken. You’re right of course, but I’ve learned over the years that no amount of money can buy sense. I just go where I’m sent.”

Brian seemed to roll the thought around in his mind for a moment as his brow furrowed and smoothed again.

“ A job’s a job,” he laughed, “I remember those days! Let me give Claudia a call and see if anyone’s going to be home today. It’ll be easier for me to give you directions out to their place. Save you a little bit of time and keep Claudia and that daughter of hers from tying up my line playing phone tag all day. Give me a little bit and I can call your room to let you know.”

“ Very kind of you. If it’s no trouble I’ll stop back in after I go find lunch,” she answered. She’d honestly expected, and planned, for worse. Less warm a welcome perhaps, especially after the way she had obviously caught the innkeeper off guard, but there was that old cliche about gift horses.–

Sephiroth gave the same placid runaround to the bumpkins at the local diner, running through her internal script like a pull-string doll

Yes, just passing through.

Only in town for work.

No never been through before.

Here to see about horses.

Yes, the Strifes.

She ate her greasy food and spared a handful of nods and smiles for the small-talking waitress who served her at the bar. When she felt she had been seen enough to be remembered, she tipped more than generously on her bill and turned her collar up against the wind as she stepped back out.

As she made her way the few blocks back to her motel, she spared a brief feeling of pity. It seemed no one in town had any idea that the oil crisis that had marred the beginning of the decade would prove a death knell for their way of life. The demand for domestic oil had already pulled the rug on little hamlets like theirs across the southwest, the deep pockets of American energy companies like Shinra greasing the palms of politicians. What did it matter to the average congressman if the cost of cheap gas and a guaranteed supply was the eviction of their small town constituents?

Despite the indignity of the way Rufus treated her, Sephiroth knew that ultimately she was playing for the guaranteed winner of a fight half the nation had no idea they were involved in. When President Carter had started the year asking the uneducated masses to burn through coal and oil just a little less

injudiciously and had been mocked, Rufus had cut a celebratory bonus check for everyone in the company, and this had been a balm on her grated patience for the man.

“ Oh miss!” the motel manager’s voice called, cutting short Seph’s thoughts, “I spoke with Cloud and I’ve got your directions written up here.”

He held out to her a piece of stationery with a rudimentary map and a few lines of words that she made a show of looking over before pushing it into the pocket of her overcoat. This was just another formality to her, she’d already memorized the route on the truckstop map in her glovebox. 30 minutes due north of town, Nibel Ranch was 2 left turns, 2 right turns, and 1 cattleguard away.

“Fantastic. They’ll be in this afternoon?” she’d asked. She needed time to get her papers together and make a call back to Hojo before she hit the road.

Brian advised her to head their way no later than 2pm to keep off the roads in the dark. Too many things out in the night, he had explained.

-

Sephiroth felt a different kind of whole with her dagger strapped to her thigh under the long line of her slicker. A more complete completeness that radiated out from the warmth of the leather sheath along her leg. She wouldn’t need it this time. With other women, she’d found it was almost always enough to just darken their door with her broad frame. She knew she was disarming, had cultivated it with her long silver-bright hair and black on black clothes, less of an immediate threat then some meathead knuckle-dragger, but still, as both her father and Rufus never let her forget, distinctly off-putting. In her expensive car and her expensive boots, she knew that she would cut the figure of a predator armed with the most unassailable weapon in the world: money.

Her call with her father had been productive. There were no bank liens on the ranch, no competing offers, their geologist Hollander had secured plats and state surveys and had assured Rufus and Hojo alike that the investment would be well worth their price. Sephiroth would have no responsibility outside of putting on the pressure. When she'd hung up the call, she'd peered at herself in the dingy, streaked mirror above the bathroom sink and taken her long hair in hand to weave it into a single long plait. She'd slipped her goatskin gloves back over her long fingers and settled her coat over her shoulders before taking another long look, dragging her eyes up from the hem of her trousers to the

racy length of unbuttoned collar at her throat. She wouldn't pass as some rich man's dawdling secretary, but the time had come and gone for that role anyway.

-

At the other end of the 30 mile drive between Nibel and the fast-moving Buick, Cloud had spent the hours since dawn fighting to stay saddled on an upstart colt. There was sweat dripping down his spine, running between his breasts under his shirt, and soaking the band of his hat. He had already shed his jacket and his button-down and the wind licked cool across his shoulders. He stunk strongly of horse, less a consequence of the work and moreso of spending all night in the straw of the barn, sleeping with the head of a new foal across his lap.

Exhausted, Cloud wanted nothing more than to dump himself across the cool wood of the porch and beg his mother's mercy in the form of something to eat, but first the horse underneath him would have to be coerced into the long trip back home from the ward pasture with no one but his thoughts for company.

Trying to keep a cool hand while gunning to break a horse made every task take at least twice the effort and three times the concentration. It reflected poorly on his work as a trainer to rush a young horse right back out onto market, but Cloud hadn't eased up at all since that evening his mama had sat with him at the kitchen table and told him the ranch was barely above water. The underhanded dealing with that slimy bastard at the rodeo had certainly not helped either, and had made him feel from the pit of his stomach, that this time it wouldn't all come out in the wash.

But in any case, those things were secondary when he was in the saddle. As soon as he'd settled the worn leather over the withers of his partner, all that mattered was feeling out the horse. No bills, no strangers, no tears and no future.

He reined around and turned his mount against the headwind and let the thought of a midday nap tighten his hands on the reins.

-

It was a bewildering scene that met Cloud as he came through the last stand of trees that separated the house pasture from the rest of the ranch. Parked just next to his pickup sat a beautiful, dangerous looking black coupe, as out of place as the elegant figure perched atop the boat-tail trunk. The

distance between them and Cloud's tired eyes meant he couldn't quite make out any sort of detail, but he had the impression of a long silver scarf cutting through their otherwise black silhouette. Hopefully, he thought as he gave the colt's flank a tap of his boot heels, it was some rich society wife come to buy a pony. Still, he couldn't help the sour churn of his stomach as he thought of his mother alone with some stranger hovering just outside.

-

Cloud let himself in quietly through the back door after he'd stabled his morning's work, pulling his overshirt back on as he went. He was careful to pull the door closed as quietly as possible and had slipped his boots off out on the porch so as not to make too much noise. His sock feet carefully avoided the boards that had creaked since before he could walk, and he kept close to the wall to keep the groaning of the old wood to a minimum. If he could make it down the hall to the kitchen, he thought, he was sure he'd be able to eavesdrop a little on whatever the stranger and his mother had to talk about. He hated going into any conversation blind, doubly so if it concerned business.

To his surprise though as he stepped on the butter yellow linoleum of the kitchen, his mother turned from where she'd been leaned over the sink. The stranger from the car was nowhere to be seen.

“She's been out there an hour and a half, Cloud. Hasn't come to knock on the door or speak once,” Claudia said in hushed tones. Cloud could tell from the set of her brows that the creeping worry he'd felt on his way back in had settled on her too. This was too soon after that nasty man had confronted them in front of half the county to be a coincidence.

There was also, they both knew, no chance that whoever their visitor was they had come to buy horses. Nibel was too far off any road, paved or otherwise, to make the trip twice. If someone wanted to talk horse trade, they always came with a trailer, regardless of whether or not they ended up needing it. To drag some squat-set, pitch black towncar down their long and dusty drive was unheard of. The only comforting thought was that when the county tax assessor came, it was never in a vehicle so nice.

As Cloud reached to still his mother's wringing hands, a sharp rap at the front door demanded their attention.

He met the soft grey of her eyes and squeezed her hand in his before turning on his heel and moving to answer the door.

-

The impression he'd got on horseback had in no way prepared Cloud for the sight waiting on his porch.

The woman in the doorway had to be the tallest person he'd ever seen and he found it impossible not to double take. She wore a pair of jet black stingray hide boots without so much as a scuff. The tailoring of her trousers also spoke to her undoubtedly deep pockets, not an inch too short for her long legs and tight in just the right places. By the time Cloud's gaze made it above her belt, he had fully lost the plot. Not a single one of the pearl snaps of her shirt had been fastened leaving a V of smooth skin from her throat to her stomach, her breasts barely kept decent by the taut tuck of the placket behind her belt.

His mouth was incredibly dry when his eyes met hers and he could almost feel his braincells trip over their own feet as he extended his hand to the stranger.

His hospitality went ignored.

“I'm here to speak with your mother,” she said. In lieu of shaking the offered hand, she had crossed her arms in front of her chest, further testing the limits of decency as her cleavage pushed together.

Cloud was, as in many things, infinitely grateful for that mother. Particularly for her timing as she stepped through the front door just as his brain started to string together a reply.

“ Ma'am,” Claudia answered tersely,”Is there something I can help you with?”

The flat expression on their visitor's face turned quickly into a predatory smile. Now she extended her own hand to be shaken, tactlessly leaving her glove on.

“ Mrs. Strife, how nice to put a face to a name,” came the answer.

Claudia made no move to shake the offered hand and the muscles of her jaw visibly clenched before she answered.

“ It's miz Strife. And I'm sure I would remember if we had ever spoken before, ma'am.”

“ My apologies, of course. Is there somewhere we could discuss business, Ms. Strife?”

Cloud, having taken in every inch of the interloper, finally found himself capable of speaking up.

“We don't have any business with you,” he interjected.

“ Cloud,” Claudia snapped, “I know I raised you with better manners than that.”

She too knew there was no business they had with this woman, but she wouldn't invite another public airing out so short on the heels of the last. The already tenuous position both she and Cloud held in the social hierarchy of the town just wouldn't be able to weather it.

With the reluctance of a prey animal, Claudia stepped aside and waved the woman through the door. She shot a sharp look at her daughter, making clear that he wasn’t going to be part of whatever horrible discussion the two were going to have.

While Cloud understood the instinct of his mother to scold him, his pride still stung as though he'd been slapped. To not even be asked inside to keep an eye on that snake rankled.

-

He did not eavesdrop. Per se. Cloud did, however, further postpone the 50 things he needed to be doing in favor of sitting in the ancient straight-backed chair on the porch. His elbows dug into the muscle of his thighs as he hung his head and breathed with deliberate lethargy, not eavesdropping but still refusing to let the sound of his lungs drown out any stray word he might incidentally catch.

He learned nothing. 30 minutes had given him only a painful catch in his neck and the nauseous dissatisfaction of ignorance. Just as he’d made up his mind to get up and go make himself useful, the front door swung open again.

“I would consider the offer, were I in your shoes, Claudia,” said the voice behind his mother. As she stepped through the door, his mother turned to hold it open, plainly as a demand and not an invitation

to the woman in her kitchen. On her way out, the movements of their visitor were notably much less hurried, more relaxed. She moved with the languor of a satisfied cat, and with the same smugness on her strange features as well.

Claudia did not meet her daughter's eyes as she gritted out a venomous thanks.

His stomach churned, his anger making it feel even emptier, and he only spared a glance over his shoulder as he followed his mother inside.

Cloud was struck still with a thought as he stepped over the threshold.

He couldn't remember his mother ever keeping something from him.

--

“ Go take a shower if you're going to be in my kitchen, Cloud. I'll have lunch on the table when you get back.”

He swallowed his need to know more and it burned the whole way down his throat, even as he turned his back on Claudia to head for the bathroom. The distaste of not knowing sat like bile in his mouth.

To make things worse, as he stood under the lukewarm spray of the shower, he couldn’t keep his thoughts off their visitor.

She had only looked Cloud over briefly, and had only spared him the absolute bare minimum of words, but everything about her had immediately branded itself in his mind. She had to be at least a head taller than him and broad to match but her features still had a bizarre delicacy to them. As he’d looked at her in the bright afternoon sun, it was almost like looking at double exposed film, her silhouette an unresolved image. The silver hair that ran like a spill of mercury down her back would have been the strangest thing about her had it not been for her eyes, a pale green that seemed almost luminous.

Cloud absolutely refused to think about her breasts.

Instead, he turned the hot water off and stood beneath the cold spray like a scolded dog, rinsing the soap and dirt from his goosebumped arms, straining his ears to hear the sound of his mother moving in the kitchen.

--

“ She said we could stay. Here on the ranch I mean,” Claudia said before Cloud had even pulled out a chair at the kitchen table, “She said that we wouldn’t have to leave.”

There was no relief in her voice to sell the belief that this was a good idea. Instead she sounded resigned as she pushed a bowl of reheated leftover stew toward her daughter. She still made no move to meet his eyes, instead focusing intently on the weave of the threadbare tablecloth.

“ She said,” his mother started again, “this would be the best case.”

Cloud did, as always, try not to let his temper guide his mouth. But it was extremely hard to mete out grace to the second unwelcome buzzard come circling his home in less than a month.

“ I’m sure she did,” he replied, failing to dull the bite of his tone, “I’m sure she would say whatever she thought would grease the right palms to make a buck or two.” He didn’t let Claudia get a word in edgewise, continuing unbroken:

“ She came out here in her expensive car with her expensive useless clothes, never done an honest day's work from the look of her, to tell you what she thought you would need to hear to screw you over!”

“ Cloud! Do not take that tone with me,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose, “I wasn’t born at night, and I sure wasn’t born last night. I’ve been doing this for a long time, you know.”There was a very, very fine edge of hurt in her tone as she spoke to her daughter. The so fine it would have been imperceptible to anyone else, but to Cloud it cut like a snapped cable and filled him with a sense of shame.

“I know ma, I didn’t mean-” he started, hanging his head in shame.

“ I know what you meant, Cloud. I know,” she answered, extending her hand across the table. He took it in his own and squeezed softly. He swore she felt more frail than she had just yesterday.

“ Did she give you another letter?” he asked, “I can ask Mr. Tuesti in town to look it over.”

His mother squeezed his hand again before leaning back in her chair. She rolled her shoulders into a more sure set before speaking:

“ I want to keep this business between you and me,” she said, “Nobody in town needs to know anything until they need to know.”

Cloud didn’t necessarily understand her logic there, but he’d never really mastered the art of caring about the opinions of other people in the way his mother had, for better or worse. He’d respect what she wanted, of course, but it didn’t keep him from wishing that they could ask for help from someone with a little more understanding of the legal side of big business.

Cloud kept his opinion to himself. The papers the woman had left were a thick sheaf, produced from God only knew where on her person. The language was extremely dense. Though Cloud had done decently well in school, he had a feeling not unlike being thrown to wolves as he struggled to parse grammar that was English but syntax that felt alien.

“It’s the same as the last offer, right?” he asked his mother. He could feel the permanent wrinkle forming between his eyebrows that was mirrored perfectly on Claudia’s face.

“ I haven’t read through this one and that woman didn’t say,” came the answer, “She mostly wanted to talk about how little our lives would change if we took the deal and how much they'd change if we didn’t”

Cloud’s hand tightened involuntarily on the document as he looked up at her.

“She threatened you?” he asked. His spine felt like a column of ice, and the chill of it crept into his tone.

“ She threatened the ranch, Cloud. I would imagine she knew better than to try to strongarm someone she knows nothing about.”

They didn’t speak anymore after that. Claudia nursed her cold coffee from her stained mug and Cloud pretended not to steal glances up at her tired face between spoonfuls of his lunch. He thought very hard about anything except his growing nausea and a pair of pale green eyes.

When he'd finished eating and cleared his bowl, Cloud nearly forgot to ask his mother if she’d gotten a name from the woman before he bolted out the backdoor to the safe familiarity of the barn.

Ms. Crescent.

-

In hindsight, he shouldn’t have spent the rest of the day in the barn with only the horses for company. The problem with animals, as with any too-passive listener, is that there’s no one to tell you when you’ve walked right off the deep end.

Cloud had mucked the stalls spotless, cleaned and oiled the tack, picked every hoof, and had even torn out and replaced the rotted boards in the hayloft by the time he stopped ruminating on Ms. Crescent. He scrubbed and thought of her, he brushed and thought of her, he hammered and swept and sweated and layed on the dusty bales of straw and thought of her. It made him feel empty, and he carried the emptiness with him through the blue-green glow of their mercury vapor light, all the way to the sagging couch in the living room where he threw himself down and fell fast asleep.

--

For Sephiroth, sleep was not so forthcoming. After she’d made her way back from Nibel, she’d stopped in her hotel room to fix herself into more forgettable clothes, and the ill-fitting lie that she was a secretary.

Seph needed a pay phone. Ideally one that looked a bit disreputable, where no one would second guess glances over the shoulder, and she felt quite sure she wouldn’t find that here in the Grover’s Corners of the southwest. But then, this was why she’d brought a car rather than pay a taxi to drop her in the middle of nowhere

She recalled, from her drive in, passing a wind-beaten fuel station 40 or so miles east of town. It had looked like a sore festering against the otherwise unbroken countryside, and she’d have sooner pushed her car the rest of the way before stopping there for gas, but she had noticed two payphones tucked around the side of the store, their bright new Southwestern Bell logos horribly out of place next to the rusting hulk of the building. So perfect for her plans, it was as though she’d put them there herself.

–

The drive was beautiful: a long unbroken ribbon of asphalt gray that cut harshly through the sandstone. The setting sun in her mirrors dumped a warm scarlet light over everything, and as it grew darker, the breeze through her open window turned cool. She had still yet to find a way to feel more free than she did at 60 mph, and the emptiness of the evening road only added to this feeling. It made her wish the gas station had been 50 miles out of town, even 100. Some insurmountable distance that let her drive on forever, never reaching the phone and never dialing the number for back home.

But it wasn’t. The gas station still sat hunched in its valley, squatted lewdly off the side of the road, and as she pulled the Riviera into the lot, she hoped internally that no attendant would bother showing their face.

“Pump your gas…uh…ma’am?” asked the avatar of her bad luck. He had a painfully earnest face and jet black hair that brushed the tops of his shoulders. The embroidered patch on his chest identified him as Zack, and the young man made no effort to keep the shock from his face as she unfolded herself from the driver’s seat.

“ No. Thank you,” she responded before realizing it would be better to keep the fool busy while she was on the phone. She inclined her head in a poor imitation of amiability and tucked a strand of her hair behind an ear before correcting, “Actually, yes. Do you still carry ethyl here?”

“ Oh yes ma’am!” came the enthusiastic answer, “Got both now, same price. I take it you want ethyl in a car this nice though, huh?”

Sephiroth felt genuine warmth upturn the corner of her mouth as she answered, “Please. I need to make a phone call but if you’ll fill the tank, you can keep the change.”

She didn’t miss the shine of his eyes as he took the two twenty dollar bills she’d produced from her pocket but he did have the manners to at least look sheepish at pocketing the cash.

-

Satisfied that he’d been both distracted and bribed into giving her space, Sephiroth ducked her head beneath the small metal awning of the payphone kiosk and put the cold plastic receiver to her ear. Very badly she wished she could call Shinra collect, but the paper trail wouldn’t do and she could nearly feel the heat of her father’s slap across her cheek for the audacity. Instead she dropped her coins into the slot and waited for the tone before typing in the number to his office. No doubt he’d be anywhere else, even this late.

“Did she sign or not,” came the demand before she could get out a single word. She pinched the bridge of her nose and missed the creak of her leather gloves.

“ She did not sign, but our conversation was more productive than yours,” Seph answered, not bothering to hide the sneer in her voice, “I think confronting the woman in public made her dig in her heels on the offer.”

“ Obviously. That’s why we sent you.”

She could picture him hunched over his ugly grey tanker desk, propping himself on an elbow on the formica top and scowling out at the city.

“ Yes well, while I am aware of that, a single conversation wasn’t enough. She mentioned wanting something to leave to her daughter several times and I explained that they could keep their little business but she-”

“ Rufus wants them off now,” Hojo interjected, “Displaced. He’s lost patience with them, says the oil crisis isn’t going to wait for…what did he call her? ‘Some pity case’ I think. Not the words I would have used. Maybe hayseed…bitch. Anyway the oil crisis won’t wait for her to hem and haw over it. If it’s not Shinra it’ll be someone else, did you tell her that?”

Instead of folding to the urge to snap back at Hojo, Sephiroth reached the hand not pressing the receiver against her ear into her hair, winding a long hank through the fingers of her hand and yanking just hard enough that she could hear her pulse pickup in her ears.

“Yes. I told her that this was the most generous offer she would receive and that others would come knocking. I told her surface rights. I told her about imminent domain.” She yanked again on her hair, causing her eyelids to flutter with the relief of the sting at her scalp.

“ She wanted time to discuss it with her daughter,” she finished.

“ What was your impression of the daughter,” Hojo asked, “I don’t remember seeing a daughter when I gave the woman the offer.”

The words ‘you wouldn’t’ sat on the tip of Sephiroth’s tongue bitterly. If Claudia’s child had made any attempt to conform to some standard of femininity, no doubt Hojo would have remembered lewdly. The man had been an incorrigible chauvinist at the very least since Sephiroth’s mother left him to return to the loving arms of her career as a Fed.

“ Didn’t speak much. Doesn’t seem to be a good fit for their little Mayberry, so she might be easy to convince. I know that Ms. Strife is leaving for an auction in Colorado the day after tomorrow, so I can show up to discuss the deal with the daughter without the mother butting in”

On the other end of the line, her father grumbled.

“ Fine,” he conceded, “But make sure the little brat knows the longer they wait, the less is on the table.”

Hojo did not wait for his daughter’s concurrence before ending the call, leaving Sephiroth hunched against the phone box with the dial tone echoing in her ear.

Not for the first time, she wished he had been the one to fuck back off to Washington. Surely her mother couldn’t have been such an unbearable hag as to be worse.

In any case, her business was done. She wanted to go back to her room and take an ice cold shower, fall asleep and stay in until noon. Maybe wake up and walk out into the wilderness and never be seen again.

The gas station attendant’s voice cut into her brief fantasy of drowning in a beautiful mountain stream, insistent as he asked, “Ma’am? Is everything alright?”

She forgot herself for just a second, turning the full force of the look both Rufus and her father had told her numerous times was noticeably less than human on the young man’s concerned face. Only when she saw the concern in his brow deepen did she remember that she was here in her idiot secretary clothes as some hapless city woman, and she quickly softened her expression.

“I’m fine. Thank you, Zack,” she answered, making sure to glance again at his nametag. She could see in his eyes that he wanted to rebut, but she continued speaking over whatever he wanted to say to her,

“ Just a call back home. You know how parents can be when they don’t want to let you out in the world.”

Sephiroth did not wait for Zack to agree, instead rushing to dump herself into her car and cold crank it to life, sparing only enough time to say thank you out of her open window before peeling back onto the westbound highway.

-

She wanted to take advantage of the great distance between her and what amounted to home and go out for a drink with no one looking over her shoulder, and Brian the innkeeper had been all too happy to point her in the direction of the only dive in town. Where, he had informed her with an undue amount of pride, his daughter kept the bar.

--

The woman behind the bar was easy on the eyes, but more importantly to Sephiroth, she was efficient. Her glass was kept fresh and as soon as she’d produced her pack of Virginia Slims from her coat pocket, she found a fresh ashtray being bumped against her elbow and a lighter extended from behind the bar.

“ You’re staying in the inn,” the bartender asked as she flicked the lighter to life, “My father’s motel?”

As Seph leaned over the bartop to light her cigarette, she withheld her sigh.

“ Word does travel quickly here, doesn’t it?” she asked before exhaling smoke up her own nostrils.

“ Oh, I’m sorry about him!” the woman answered, “Dad’s not usually like that, he just.. You’re from the city, right?”

Sephiroth didn’t bother keeping the dubious look from her face as she answered, “Dallas. I’m in town for work.”

“Right. My dad thinks I shouldn’t live my whole life here. My name’s Tifa, by the way,” she said, extending her hand for a shake. Sephiroth took it, noting that despite its small size, Tifa had a grip like steel.

“He’s correct. Staying in one place too long means you don’t learn anything,” Sephiroth said. She ashed her cigarette in the tray and leaned back on her stool.

Tifa mistook this answer as an invitation rather than the end of discussion that Seph had hoped to convey, and she rested her chin on her hands with a smile.

“ Well, then! This is going better than Dad could have hoped! He’s always trying to get me to make friends with someone who will get me out of here,” she gushed, “That’s why he told me about you, and I’m sure why he sent you over.”

This was, to put it mildly, a severe derailment of the night Sephiroth wanted to have. She’d hoped for several strong drinks, a run of chain smoking, and furtive glances from patrons that didn’t quite escalate to confrontation and instead she had been set up as some sort of mentor to the local girl-next-door.

“ I’m joking!” Tifa interrupted Seph’s quickly darkening thoughts, “I’m sure you’re busy. Dad said you were in town to buy horses?”

Sephiroth let herself smile, genuinely pleased to know her constructed self had held up to Brian’s scrutiny.

“Yes, I’ve heard good things about the horses that come out of Nibel Ranch, so my employer sent me here to take a look before he invests,” she explained.

“ That’s great,” Tifa said with sincerity, “I grew up with Cloud and he knows horses better than anyone.”

Sephiroth did not let her brow raise, though it desperately wanted to to the point of fighting against her control. The he had caught her off guard but undoubtedly could prove to her benefit if Cloud was too against the grain to stay in a town like this. The gears in her mind were turning at speed.

“ I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Cloud,” Sephiroth said, taking another sip of her gin and tonic, “Only Claudia, but she tells me she’ll be out of town this week. Do you think you could give Cloud a call and tell him I’d like to meet with him about business?”

Tifa looked thrilled at the prospect.

–

It was the second genuinely stomach-turning event of Cloud’s morning and the fifth or sixth of his week when Tifa had sat across from him in the diner and started describing the ‘tall drink of water from the city.’

The first of the day had been when he’d flipped on the television to catch the weather and saw the snow projected to lay in thick sheets across New Mexico and Colorado just as his mother would be on the road. There was no way she could have stayed home and just called off the trip to the auction with the state their finances and stables were in, Cloud knew, but the idea of her being out in the weather alone made him want to sit on the floor and hug her legs to him like a child.

What Tifa said had been much worse.

“She told me all about coming all this way to do business with you,” Tifa continued. There was a horribly conspiratorial tone to her voice that she only ever seemed to use on Cloud and he felt himself flounder. His mother wanted their business to stay between him and her, and there was no way of knowing what Tifa had talked about with Ms. Crescent..

“You talked to her?” Cloud asked, confused.“ Mmhmm. She came into my bar.” There was a horrible moment where Lockheart raised her eyebrows over her cup of coffee before she said, “I put in a good word for you, Cloud.”

“ Why the hell would you do that?” he bit out, “She’s just here for business I don’t need a good wo-”

“ Well she was also very easy on the eyes. You know.”

Cloud knew very well. The woman had been all but indecent on his porch and he’d awoken on the couch from an incredibly vivid dream about pale cleavage and sharp teeth, soaking wet in his boxers.

“Don’t know what that has to do with me,” he deflected as he shoved hashbrown in his mouth. He very gamely did not snatch his hand back from the table when Tifa reached across to take it.

“ You know Cloud, you don’t have to stay here forever,” she soothed.

If he could have willed a heart attack there in the corner booth of Tammy’s, Cloud would have been in rigor before his coffee had gone cold. The notion of leaving the only thing he was good at was a bitter pill under the best circumstances, but being pushed out by some faceless executive and their strange woman shock troop was beyond hard to swallow.

“ I don’t want to have this conversation here, Tifa,” he said with quiet desperation. Cloud tried not to let the confusion on her face upset him, but internally it burned like fire to think his oldest friend expected him to fold under the least bit of pressure and a beautiful stranger. As though the only future he’d ever planned on having was worth their insulting payout as long he liked the face that handed over the check.

Tifa, for her part, had the couth to at least look shamed. She let the silence settle between them until the air felt less charged, and her smile found its way back to her mouth as she leaned over the table to talk under her breath about spending Monday night with a much older woman.

–

In the same way that spending the entire evening following Ms. Crescent’s visit by himself had been a bad idea, so was allowing the notion that a long solo ride would lead to some sort of wisdom.

And yet, despite knowing this, after Cloud had finished his breakfast with Tifa, picked up groceries to survive on for the week Claudia would be gone, and had set the house to rights, he found himself saddling his partner, Skeeter, a dusty grulla mare of 10 years and infinite patience, for a long ride to nowhere.

She could use the exercise, he reasoned. He ‘d hardly taken her out in the last two weeks, too busy trying to turn a handful of discount killpen rescues into actual working horses.

She could use the exercise and he could use the perspective, Cloud assured himself as he seated himself in his saddle and assured himself again over and over and over as they made their way down a well worn trail.

Only after they’d jumped two fences and found themselves in the outer edge of the national forest did Cloud cut off the broken record in his brain. He dismounted in the clearing that had been his favorite since he was first old enough to go riding on his own and pulled his old cutting saddle from Skeeter’s back. When he’d pulled the bridle from her head and the bit from her mouth, he laid on the sun-warm dead grass that thickly carpeted the gaps between the pinyon pines. Cloud didn’t worry at all that she would take off on him. He could trust his horse in a way he wouldn’t trust himself, particularly because had felt the low-level simmer of a horrible notion building at the back of his mind since he’d sat down with Tifa for breakfast.

As Skeeter settled heavily into the grass perpendicular to him and rested her heavy head on his stomach, Cloud wished more than he had since childhood that someone would just tell him what to do.

“I think I’ve got to do something about that Crescent woman,” he said, finally. His horse, most of the way to sleep, huffed softly.

“ She’s already out putting our business all over town,” he continued, “It’s not that I don’t trust Tifa to keep it to herself but if she knows we might have to sell, but who’s to say Crescent didn’t tell other people? Who’s to say she won’t go to Tuesti?”

That thought gave Cloud genuine pause. If the intruding company went to the only lawyer in the county and put him on retainer, Cloud was pretty sure that would leave him and his mother six paces south of completely fucked, to put it politely.

He was going to have to do damage control, he decided, and it would have to be on his terms.

--

He spent the rest of his Sunday helping his mother pack for her trip north to the Colorado auction barn. Claudia was not the kind of woman who needed the help, necessarily, but it made Cloud feel more like a real person when he could do for others, so he stacked alfalfa in the bed of the truck, sprayed out the trailer and made sure there were several turnout blankets in the fore for the snow she was bound to have to drive through.

“ Ma, I can get someone to come out and feed so I can come with you,” he argued for the umpteenth time as he washed dishes, “You don’t need to be out in the bad weather by yourself.”

Although the expression on Claudia’s face as she looked up from folding her laundry was skeptical, there was still a softness in her eyes. She dropped the thick socks she’d been pairing back into her basket and crossed the kitchen to wrap Cloud in a tight hug.

“What good would it do us if we were both stranded in the weather, huh?” she asked, tucking her head beneath her daughter’s chin.

“ If you stay here and I get held up, I can call. Better to not have all our eggs in one basket, yeah?”

Cloud nodded and wiped his wet hands on his jeans before wrapping his arms around her in turn.

“ I wish you didn’t have to go right now,” he said in a too-small voice.

Claudia squeezed him tight again before taking him by the shoulders and looking up into his eyes. For a brief moment, it seemed there was something Cloud wasn’t saying, but they both knew he had always been one to err on the side of saying too little.

“ I wish I didn’t have to go either, Cloudy,” his mother said, “but it’ll be a short trip. Not Texas this time, right? Just Colorado.”“ Just Colorado,” he ceded.

–

Claudia left at 5am sharp, hours before the sun crawled over the horizon. Cloud had been up since 4, triple checking the tow chains, the halters and leads, every light and fluid on the pickup. He stacked wool blankets 4 high in the passenger seat and set his mother’s plaid thermos, full to the brim with hot coffee on top.

He hugged her tight again and then watched as her taillights grew smaller and smaller in the predawn murk.

And then, as soon as the last sight of his mother disappeared over the horizon, Cloud took himself back inside and walked straight for the old glass-front gun cabinet tucked in a corner of her bedroom.

-

Sephiroth did not wake before the sun, instead choosing to lay in bed, tangled in her own loose hair, as the sun cut a sharp line through the dusty curtains of her motel room.

What finally stirred her was the insistent ringing of the phone on the bedside table, continuing its shrill screams for well over a minute. When the ringing was finally beyond the point of tuning out, she reached for the receiver and held it to her ear while stifling a yawn.

“Hello?” she asked, expecting another collect call from her father. To her unpleasant surprise the voice on the other end was instead Brian, pleasant as ever.

“ Oh, good morning ma’am, so sorry to wake you!” he started, “I just wanted to let you know I had a call for you from Cloud over at Nibel and he said hell be at home this evening if you can make the drive out.”

“ How kind of him, and of you to let me know, Mr. Lockhart,” she demurred. There was an uncomfortable cough from the manager before he continued:

“ Now, I don’t know about you going out there in the dark. These roads, you know, they’re dangerous, and I wouldn’t want my daughter out on them.”It took Sephiroth a moment to process what was being said. That a stranger cared enough for her wellbeing to warn her off driving unfamiliar roads in the dark was foreign enough, but to compare her to his daughter whom he very plainly cared for. She felt a bit like she was still asleep.

“ Thank...you,” she said, her brows furrowing, “I appreciate the concern. If I go out this evening I’ll make sure to take care on the way out and the way back.”

She could tell from the tone of the grunt over the line that Brian was hardly satisfied with her answer, but ultimately there was nothing he could do.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll let you get back to your sleep. Apologies again for waking you, ma’am,” he said before the call ended with a click.

There was no way Seph would be going back to sleep. The prospect of getting to play with Claudia’s child, who had obviously been struggling to keep his emotions in check on her first visit, was just too good. It was the sort of thing she loved to do, many times more than she liked staring down some aging mother. To get to tower above the child who obiously thought he was the man of the house? Delicious.

If she hadn’t been so lost in her glee as she got dressed to go out for breakfast, she might have noticed the silhouette of someone hunched over in wait right outside the door to her room.

--

Her hands were numb. The bite of the late November chill whipped across her face, but the dull internal pain at the joints as she tried to flex told Sephiroth it was blood and nerve issue rather than temperature. That and the cutting of the extremely tight bindings that dug into her wrists. There was also the matter of the burning in her shoulders where they were stretched behind her back, and the pressure soreness of the tree trunk she was bound to, digging into the muscle over her shoulder

blades. The rough bark of the tree yanked at odd hanks of her long, silver hair, pulling it untidily from the thick braid down her back, jolting her awake each time her head began to loll.

It was dread coiled tight around her insides that kept her from tipping her head back to bellow from the top of her lungs. To believe you are alone is one thing, but to know is something worse; and more bleak still: Seph could tell from the pounding in the back of her skull that if she was alone out here, that was her best case scenario. She’d never really been hurt like this before. Blindsided and left vulnerable to god only knew what, her stomach churned the unfamiliar feeling of failure.

Sephiroth knew, ultimately, that she would be fine. Her father, though she was still loathe to call him that even in her mind, had taught her through great pain how to survive.

--

Miles away, past the reach of a scream, Cloud sat on the open tailgate of his battered pickup. In his lap, his mother's Winchester 21, handed down to her from her own mother and in his right hand a rag soaked in boiled linseed oil, stained rust with the blood he had meticulously scrubbed out of the parched grain of the oak stock. He could feel the strain still burning across his shoulders from the effort of shoving the huge woman up into the passenger seat hours earlier. She’d been unwieldy in her unconsciousness, too long-limbed and muscled to be thrown over his shoulder like a feed sack, so the he’d had to resort to dragging her, arms under her armpits and hands locked together in front of her chest, the long half mile off the trail to the clearing where she sat tied currently.

--

He couldn't really have said what compelled him to make the ride out that first night. If he were being an optimist, which he never had been, he'd say it was the hope she would see reason. Surely the isolation had softened her up, if not the animals drawn in by the sluggish, trapped prey. No bastard's paycheck could be worth more to her than her life, and she had no way of knowing that Cloud doubted his own ability to stomach leaving her to die, much less killing her himself. He found immediately that he was sorely mistaken.

The instant the breaking of a branch under his horse’s hoof sounded through the wood, her silvery head snapped up. Even in the dim moonlight, it was obvious there was no repentance in her expression. Instead she looked relaxed, almost at home among the scrub brush, despite the chains and the dark stain of dried blood that had trickled from her ear down the line of her neck.

“ Oh, Cloud. How nice to see you again,” she said, in a perfect mockery of warmth, “I was hoping we could have our little chat now.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” Cloud spat in kind as he dismounted. He had given nearly the entire ride from the house over to considering what a bad idea it would be to come eye to eye with Ms. Crescent again, and yet he stood in his stirrups and slipped off his saddle automatically. He pulled the Winchester from the scabbard on the saddle and clicked his tongue, giving Skeeter his permission to wander as she saw fit. If his conversation didn’t go well, he didn’t need her caught in the middle.

“ Quite a long ride to take for someone who doesn't want to talk. I see you brought a gun, Cloud. Are you going to kill me?”

She was so incredibly calm as she said this, as though she'd asked about the weather. If there had been any emotion at all in the question, it had been mild disappointment.

“Stop talking to me,” he answered. He did not point the gun at his captive though every nerve in his body told him to, but dropped the rucksack off his back onto the forest floor instead.

She didn't speak again, though he could see the corner of her mouth turned up under the moonlight. He set his shotgun down, carefully out of her reach as though she could slip her chains, and dropped to his knees to dig through his bag.

Cloud set a foil-wrapped packet and a thermos on the ground and shoved his arm into the bag once again. When his hand came out empty, he swore and threw it aside.

“ Fucking flashlight,” he grumbled as he started clearing a gap in the leaf litter with his gloved hands.

When he'd made a broad patch of bare earth, he dug into the packed dirt, grateful for the distraction. When he was satisfied, he still didn't meet the gaze that was following his every move, instead breaking a fallen limb into kindling under his boot and chucking it into his pit.

When he had his fire going, lit with the Zippo he'd kept tucked in his boots since he was 16, he finally sat down on a log and faced the woman he had come to see, his shotgun across his lap.

“ Who the hell even are you?” Cloud asked, abandoning his resolve to avoid conversation. He regretted this immediately as an uncanny smile spread across the stranger's face.

“ Who am I?” she replied, “I don't think that's the question you really want to ask, is it?”

Already, Cloud could feel a headache forming behind his eyes.

“ Can you just answer the damn question?” he demanded before softening:

“If you answer I'll give you something to eat. Brought water too,” he said.

There was genuine surprise on Ms. Crescent's face in the firelight. It seemed she really had expected Cloud to come all this way to kill her and worse, it seemed she had made her peace with that. Now Cloud had opened up a conversation, and she seemed as stunned as she had when he'd cold-clocked her from behind with the stock of his gun.

“I'm an asset,” she responded flatly, offering nothing more.

“Great. Do you have a name?” Cloud asked. He didn't bother to keep from rolling his eyes.

There was a very long moment where the only sounds were crickets and the crackle of the fire before she finally looked squarely at Cloud and answered.

“ Sephiroth.”

--

"Do you enjoy it? Being some rich man's sin-eater? His toy?"

“You can’t win against the money. You know that, Cloud. You can fight a thousand of these little battles and leave me out here to die and it won’t matter. My boss has more money than god and he’ll just send someone else. That’s what money means, it means there’s always another option. Endless

options, one after another. So many you can’t even fathom it because you’ve never had any choices. So yes, I do enjoy it because I have options.”

“ Don't lie to me,” Cloud answered. There was a resolve in his tone that Seph hadn't expected. “You could have all the damn money in the world and you would still have fewer options than me.”

At that, Sephiroth rattled the chains on her ankles and leaned forward as much as her bound position allowed. She let a measure of silk slip through her voice despite her exhaustion, smoothing the edges as she replied, “I have the option to walk away from all this and ruin you and your idiot mother for the rest of your miserable lives, Cloud.”

It was a bold claim, to be sure, and one Cloud was afraid to give any credence to by asking questions, but internally he burned to know what she meant. It was a threat in any case, but did she mean she could abandon her career and her father or rather was it more straightforward. She could slip from his chains at any time.