Title: Appointment Television
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Characters: Sephiroth, Zack, traces of Cloud
Prompt: 028. Children
Word Count: 486
Rating: G
Notes: This is actually something I'd been plotting for a bit now, caused, like most of my work, by a bunny attack. More for fanfic100. The title's from a commentary about The Mysterious Cities of Gold over on RetroJunk.


Zack usually kept the contents of his playlist to himself. Even with someone that could be as much of a dark bird as he, there were still some predictable things in his behavior. His songs were kept to himself thanks to the--still thankfully followed--headphone rule, shunted away from those in the office who actually preferred to work.

Apparently, this particular song was of such importance that Zack had to sing it. Loudly. And repeatedly. It was on a pattern of about every twenty minutes, so at least Sephiroth had some idea of when he could be that much more intent on his reading in order to pay as little attention to the sound as possible. It still managed, slowly, to drill itself into his head.

...and coming back from that faraway place,
Grants to them all a bounty and grace.

This half-hour's concert finally finished, Sephiroth was sure that he'd have some sort of peace. Instead, Zack kept on staring at him. He'd look at his monitor for a bit, then back at him, smiling oddly. He'd had enough. "Zackary, if you don't tell me why you're acting even less sane than usual, so help me, I'll do something we'll both regret."

Zack smiled and answered, "Legend of the Two Moons," as if this was supposed to be the great key to solving the mystery. Zack must have sensed that he didn't understand, since the Zack gave him a look of utter disbelief. "Legend of the Two Moons! You've got to know about that! That show went on repeating forever back when I was a kid! Come on, you know... Cecil and Rosa and Kain and they go to the moon and--" here he began singing again. "Child of earth and moon..."

Ah. That explained it. "I wasn't allowed to watch much television," Sephiroth broke in.

Zack deflated. "Oh. The pointy-heads thought it'd melt your brain or something?"

"Or something," Sephiroth repeated.

"All right. Then it's a good thing I snagged the entire series. We're going to watch it. The whole thing. Now." Sephiroth sensed a Zack Plan. One did not get in the way of a Zack Plan. It was usually best just to lie back and think of Junon.

"Can you at least tell me why you kept on staring at me like that?"

"Oh, that's easy," Zack said with a grin. "That was the episode about Mount Ordeals, and Cecil was made a paladin. Thing is, we haven't seen his face for the whole series, and now you can check him out." He looked about ready to break out laughing. "He's got silver hair and green eyes. Get a haircut, and you so could be a dead-ringer."

Sephiroth, lying back and thinking of Junon, simply let Zack be.

"...you'd need a psycho brother and a really old uncle, though. Oh! Oh! And maybe we can get Cloud to be Rosa!"