Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is a man, with hair like sunlight and eyes with the acid glow of Mako, leaning casually on the desk. He’s sipping wine out of President ShinRa’s favorite cup like he owns it. And he is covered, toe to tip, in a scarlet smattering of blood.

A sword that looks so much like Angeal’s is lodged into the floor in front of him, a booted foot braced on the hilt. It is covered, tip to hilt, in a scarlet smattering of blood, and the rapidly congealing dripping of viscera.

The man takes a hardy gulp of the wine. He’s dressed in a mockery of a SOLDIER’s uniform; a vest zipped to his neck, pants tucked into tall boots. There’s a decal of a wolf on his one singular sleeve that’s carved— haphazardly— in a mirror image on the sword’s hilt.

The sword is so much like Angeal’s that if it weren’t for that singular modification, he would say it is Angeal’s. It has the same hilt, the same blade, the same lethal thickness and the same violent promises lodged into it. Unlike Angeal’s however, it is clearly used. Scratches and dents marr its surface. A patch of rust is crawling up the flat side, harshly red against the steely gray of the blade.

And the president…

Sephiroth has never actually seen Angeal use his impossibly large sword on an individual person. There has, simply, never been any need to. Stopping altercations between Sephiroth and Genesis merely requires blocking. When dealing with crowds of enemy combatants, Angeal tends to use the blunt side. He only ever uses the sharp side against monsters. The SOLDIER Firsts are cannons. You do not send canons to stop people, small and insignificant as they are.

ShinRa is nearly in half. Quite literally. His corpse is seated in his desk chair, jaw lolling. A gash goes from his side to the center of his torso, just under his ribs, that nearly bisects him. There’s another gash, from his shoulder down his chest, like his assailant had been trying to carve out his heart. It looks like he’s been half-eaten by an animal, the connective tissue of his body so severed that it’s all his corpse can do to lie there haphazardly, limbs drooping, as if they are going to fall off.

This is the carnage one can wreak, with a sword like that. Sephiroth is suddenly very grateful for Angeal’s grace. And now there is this.

This man, whom none of them have ever heard of, clearly enhanced, clearly very enhanced, with a sword twice his size that he clearly knows how to use. He takes another sip of ShinRa’s wine. He is backlit by the afternoon sun, spilling in through ShinRa’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Beyond them, Midgar’s skyline is as it always is. Heedless of the rapidly brewing chaos inside of ShinRa tower.

“Who are you?” Angeal asks.

The man pins Angeal beneath his stare, acid-cerulean. His eyes don’t glow like Angeal’s and Genesis’ do, like the sea. They don’t even glow like Zack’s, slightly dimmer from his second-class enhancements. No, this man’s eyes glow like Sephiroth’s do—

So bright and so acid that they bathe the surrounding skin green.

The man’s gaze swivels to Sephiroth, and Sephiroth feels fear for the first time in his life.

He stares like a hunter watching his game; like a predator sizing up its prey; his eyes are like a pin, and Sephiroth is a butterfly, stuck to the corkish pinboard, wings still desperately fluttering. Fluttering the way his pulse has rapidly begun to flutter in his throat.

“No one of consequence,” the stranger says. His voice has a high timbre, scratchy and hoarse in such a way that it betrays its disuse. He bears a slight accent, one that Sephiroth has difficulty placing; something rural, vowels round and long in the stranger’s mouth. He is answering Angeal’s question, but his gaze is still locked onto Sephiroth’s, searing in its hateful intensity.

“Excuse me?” Angeal hisses, hands tightening on the hilt of his sword. “You just killed the president, and you say that?”

The man continues to not move his gaze. He does, however, tap the tip of his finger against the glass in his hand. Once, twice, thrice. The tinny sound bounces off the high ceilings of the President’s office. The stranger’s hands are ungloved and unblemished. They are small, delicate where they hold the wine glass to his lips. Like a panther, Sephiroth thinks. Graceful and terrifying.

The only good piece of advice Hojo ever gave him was: to understand someone, look at their hands.

Angeal’s hands are calloused from a lifetime of labor, and then of hefting that formidable sword of his. Genesis’ hands and arms are covered in thin, pale hairline scars from his youth, put there by his reckless exploration of the woods around his hometown. Zackary Fair’s hands have knuckle scars. From tussling as a kid, he’d said, smiling sheepishly at Sephiroth’s question. Hojo’s hands are always covered by surgical gloves, always smelling of antiseptic. Always.

Only Sephiroth’s hands bear no markings; he had been born perfect, after all. Perfect specimens do not get scars or calluses. He heals too quickly for them to form. He covers his hands’ smoothness with gloves, masquerading as a practical uniform choice. The stranger’s hands are ungloved and unblemished.

“Does it matter who I am?” He replies. “You’re all going to come to your own conclusions either way.”

“Why do you look like Zackary Fair’s favorite trooper?” Sephiroth finally summons his voice.

Because he does. He has the same slim face and delicate features and hair like pointed, deadly sunlight. Except Zackary Fair’s favorite trooper is a boy of just barely fourteen, cheeks round and eyes bright with youth. He has a pitchy voice that he rarely raises and a stutter whenever he sees Sephiroth.

A muscle twitches in the man’s cheek. Instead of answering, he sips his wine again.

“You’re right,” Angeal murmurs, to Sephiroth. Then, louder, with a harsh authority that Angeal only ever uses in the field, he says, “Why do you look like Trooper Cloud Strife?”

The man barks a laugh. Short, brittle, brisk and viciously unkind. He lets the wine glass in his hand fall, and it collides with the floor in a crash and a scattering of glass. Wine drips across the sleek tile floor of the room, mingling with the blood pooling at their feet.

Flatly, the stranger says, “Distant relation.”

He hops from his perch on the desk with all the lithe grace of the panther Sephiroth had earlier compared him too. But when he sets his stance and grips the hilt of the sword, it is with the deadly, harsh movements of someone who has only ever fought with such a sword. He yanks it from its place lodged in the ground with a loud, metallic screech.

Sephiroth falls into a fighting stance on instinct, his own hand wrapping around the handle of the Masamune. The stranger sets the flat side of his sword over his shoulder, staring at Sephiroth with newfound imperiousness. He says, with a voice full of hot disdain, “You have no idea, do you.”

Sephiroth simply stares, nonplussed by his words.

Heedless, the stranger huffs in irritation. “Of course he doesn’t. Why would he? Gaia help me.”

“What do I not know?” Sephiroth replies.

The stranger tilts his head. He does it with all the humanity of an animal, movement sharp and controlled, and yet clearly instinctual. One of the spikes in his hair falls into his eyes, and his Mako eyes dye it green.

The stranger says, “The things you’re capable of.” And then he launches himself at Sephiroth.

Sephiroth has to dodge back to avoid the swing of the blade. Unlike Angeal, the stranger isn’t even hesitating to use the sharp edge. And even more unlike Angeal, he does not keep the blade close to his chest. The stranger swings the sword in wild, wide arcs. Anyone else would be thrown by the centrifugal force of the sword, but, somehow, the man stays his ground.

Sephiroth blocks, and he attempts to parry, but the stranger anticipates this. He swings his body, raising his left leg to kick Sephiroth in the side. Sephiroth blocks with his hand, but then the stranger, one hand braced on the flat side of his own sword, slams the hilt into Sephiroth’s head.

Sephiroth staggers back, ears ringing. He watches with blurry vision as the stranger is occupied by Angeal, but Sephiroth cannot allow that to continue; Angeal is precious to him, and he is no match for this Mako-eyed panther. So Sephiroth steps in front of the stranger’s next swing, blocking and dodging.

The stranger has no emotion in his eyes as he drops his sword to the ground, grips Sephiroth around the middle, and throws him at the windows. Sephiroth’s back collides with the glass and he goes careening into the open, watching as ShinRa tower gets smaller and smaller in his vision. Silently, he curses ShinRa senior’s love for windows, of all things. Awfully inconvenient in a fight.

The stranger is launching himself at him, sword balanced on one shoulder, its deadly tip pointed right at him. He swings his arms out wide, regaining his balance, and tips himself towards the stranger.

Their swords meet in a deadly clash of metal. The stranger’s eyes spark with sodden, blaring rage, lips pulled back into a snarl.

He pushes against their mutual block. Sephiroth pushes back, but he isn’t strong enough; the stranger overcomes his leverage with sheer, inhuman force. He spins them around and presses a boot to Sephiroth’s chest, sending him rocketing downwards.

His back collides with the roof of an office building. He lets out a scream as pain bites into existence along his skin, only growing worse as he skids across concrete. The stranger slams onto the roof in front of him.

Backlit by the sun, holding a weapon of grotesque, deadly force. He is shadowed by the glittering afternoon light, casting him in the golden glow of something holy. But his eyes betray his monstrousness, just the same as Sephiroth’s do. Acrid green. Slit pupils. The eyes of a beast staring out of the face of a man.

Sephiroth is going to lose this fight. Sephiroth has never lost a fight.

Spars, sure. He made a few tactical retreats during his time in Wutai; and he’s lost more than his fair share of games, card games and board games and video games shared with his fellow SOLDIER Firsts. But Sephiroth has never lost a fight.

Sephiroth scrambles up, palms biting on the concrete. As the stranger walks towards him, he skitters backwards. No time to stand, so he slides his rear against concrete, farther and farther from the stranger as he comes closer and closer, until Sephiroth’s back hits the lip of the roof.

His options are die by sword or fall. While he may survive the fall, it would surely injure him enough to make him nothing more than a sitting duck for this man to slaughter.

Heart hammering in his ears, Sephiroth bites out, “Your disdain is with me, correct?”

The stranger stops. Tilts his head again, in that strangely inhuman way.

“You kept your eyes trained on me even when replying to Angeal. You mentioned me, specifically. Your rage,” he swallows, throat painfully tight, “it is with me. Am I correct?”

In a voice that is far too high to come from such a deadly force, he says, “You are correct.”

Sephiroth nods, swallowing past his dry throat a second time. His breaths are coming fast and short through his nose, heart in his mouth. It reminds him a little of how it feels just before he has an appointment with Hojo.

Not during; those are categorized by a yawning feeling of utter and complete apathy and emptiness. No, but this is very much like right before. As he steps down the metal stairs into the labs, trying and failing to steady his racing heart, staring into the green strip lights of Science.

It is not the first time Sephiroth has had enemies. The stranger does not look Wutaian, but Sephiroth isn’t exactly popular with Midgar’s people, either. He is not any SOLDIER that Sephiroth recognizes, and he knows no one from Science would give any SOLDIER the amount of Mako that is clearly running through this man’s veins. Is it secret experimentation? An accident with a Mako spring? It’s impossible to tell.

“Then keep this between us,” Sephiroth croaks. “I beg you.”

The stranger blinks at him. His expression opens, eyes wide, lips apart. It is that of someone who’s genuinely been thrown for a loop.

“I am your only match in combat. So leave the other SOLDIERs out of whatever grudge you have with me. Do as you will; I will meet you in battle. But…”

Words fail him. Sephiroth has never been good with words, anyway. Experiments didn’t need them and weapons need them even less.

“You… want me to spare the other SOLDIERs,” the stranger says, something edged dawning in his voice. Something harsh, something barbed.

“The other First Class SOLDIERs are my… friends.” Sephiroth says, ignoring the way the words send pangs of wriggling regret into his chest. Is he going to die here? Will he never see them again? “And the lower classes… respect me. I… I do not want to fail them. So, please, settle this with me,” settle this with my death.

“Friends,” the stranger repeats, a manic tinge to his voice. “Friends? You don’t have friends.”

“I am sorry,” Sephiroth says, sensing the impending danger. He pulls himself to his feet. “But I do.”

“You have friends,” he whispers. “It’s your eyes. They’re… different.”

Wary, Sephiroth probes, “Different how?”

“She’s not here,” the stranger says, eyes going wild. Like an animal, he stands there, stock still and yet still thrumming with energy. “She’s not here.”

“Who do you speak of?”

“She’s not here yet. It’s before. Before.”

“I—”

The stranger launches himself before Sephiroth can even form his thought; he attempts to block, but his hand is batted away. And then there is hot, searing pain. Pain unlike anything he’s ever felt before, electric and burning, coursing through his torso with the sheer force of it.

Then, his entire body goes cold. He looks down to see that horrible, deadly sword lodged into his stomach. It’s spilling his blood all over his legs and shoes, stinking the air with iron.

The last thing he sees before everything goes dark is his assailant’s eyes. The last thing he thinks before everything goes dark is, is this what it's like to be felled by me?

Chapter Text

He wakes to the smell of antiseptic. It is one of his least favorite smells, only barely beaten out by the stench of Mako itself. The smells are not entirely dissimilar, which may contribute to his intense dislike of them both; that, and, of course, their associations.

It is those associations that leads him to believe that he’s down in Science, once again embroiled within the bowels of ShinRa. It’s where Sephiroth has always awoken on the rare instances in which he’s been injured. Hojo would not allow his prized creation to be fixed by anyone else, of course.

He braces before waking, inhaling once, twice. Prepares himself for the belittling Hojo is sure to give him for his failure. Prepares himself for the ensuing, incessant testing. Testing until Hojo is satisfied that his beloved weapon is in perfect working condition.

It’s a shock, then, when he sits up in bed to find himself in the regular infirmary. He recognizes the room from the few times he’s come to see Genesis and Angeal here, during their youth. Genesis far more often than Angeal, and usually because of training accidents involving fire materia. It does little to dull the confusion.

“I should be dead,” he says, to no one.

It is another shock, then, that a familiar voice replies, “Yes, it appears you’ve finally met an equal. There’s no need to gloat.”

Sephiroth wheels to face his bedside. He finds Genesis there, a copy of LOVELESS open on his lap, dressed for battle. He’s missing his iconic red coat, which is strange, because he wouldn’t dare be seen in public without it.

“Why am I here?” Sephiroth asks. Then, he turns, more contemplative. “Why did he spare me?”

“I couldn’t say why Strife’s doppelgänger showed you mercy,” Genesis says, shutting his book. “But clearly you need to be here, given you apparently can’t make the connection between the life-threatening injury you got and waking up in a hospital. Honestly.”

“I expected to wake in a hospital,” Sephiroth argues, “just not this one.”

That makes Genesis frown. He sits back in his seat, sighing a little. His shoulders droop, and his somber facial expression belies the dark bags underneath his eyes. His skin is pale, his hair is just this side of unkempt, and he seems… thinner? Yes, upon further inspection, he is thinner. All of this is deeply baffling, because there is no one on Gaia more obsessed with their appearance than Genesis. He takes hours in the bathroom before press events, primping and preening himself with paranoid abandon.

Genesis says, “You’ve been spared from Science’s usual nonsense because Strife’s doppelgänger killed the entire Science department.”

Sephiroth blinks at him. Genesis stares impassively back. When this situation reveals itself to be neither imagined nor a dream, Sephiroth lets out a long stream of air from his nose. “The entire department?”

“Including Hojo.”

Sephiroth feels so very strange, suddenly. So off-kilter. That morning he had awoken, eaten the leftover breakfast that Angeal had given him, and gone to do paperwork. It had taken barely a second— a second for the Tower’s alarms to blare and his communicator to begin going off wildly— for his entire life to fly off the rails. Everything he took for granted… the entire Science department…

He had been raised within the Science department’s walls. He’d drawn on the sleek metal walls in crayon, clutched Hojo’s hand in his own as he was led along its hallways, spent hours tucked into its corners, reading. Listened to the experiments and testing with half an ear as his child hands had struggled to write out equations and words and any number of things.

A split-second. A mad dash up the Tower’s steps; stepping through the ruined door of the President’s office. And now he is here. And now Hojo is dead. Sephiroth doesn’t know what to feel.

Shock? Grief? Everything is very numb. From the tips of his fingers to the crown of his head. He won’t have to climb down the horrible, rickety catwalks into Science anymore. Won’t have to endure Hojo’s incessant testing, won’t have to be drugged beyond human comprehension or forced to muddle through extreme pain. And, yet… and yet…

He would not ever hear Hojo fuss over him ever again. Would not argue with him in that icy, monotone way they did, easy with familiarity. Won’t ever hear his praises, when Sephiroth succeeds. Won’t ever again.

All because of that man with the Mako eyes.

“Rufus took over, as I’m sure you can imagine,” Genesis says, offering distraction. It’s likely intentional, Sephiroth thinks, from the deliberate lilt of his words, and the way he’d so courteously offered Sephiroth a moment to process. “The council is in a tizzy, of course. Research and Development is a mess trying to figure out the doppelgänger’s origins.”

“And the stranger himself?” Sephiroth’s mouth feels like it's full of cotton.

“After the massacre downstairs, he left. Angeal and the puppy and I have been working triple time to try and find the bastard. Angeal’s in Mideel and the puppy’s on his way back from Wutai. I just got back from Icicle Inn. Next on the list is Rocket Town and Cosmo Canyon, but I think Strife’s doppelgänger has fled the mainland. The president, however,” Genesis spits the title, “doesn’t agree.”

“Wait,” Sephiroth says, catching onto Genesis’ implication. “How long have I been asleep?”

“About a month.”

“A month?” He hisses. A month without being able to help, while the others— so much weaker than him, and thus so very much weaker than the stranger— risked their lives looking for the dangerous stranger. If any of the other’s had actually found him…

He suppresses a shiver.

“The Turks are on the same task, though Tseng has stayed behind. He seems to think the doppelgänger is in Midgar. It's ridiculous; anyone who can stand against you is not that stupid.”

Sephiroth cannot help but agree. But what he says is, “Has Research and Development discovered his origins?”

Genesis shakes his head. “No, and honestly, they’re scrambling. There’s no record of a SOLDIER matching his description, let alone the amount of enhancements he has.” Genesis gives an airy sigh. “Their working theory is that someone is selling Mako on the streets of Midgar, and the Turks are going absolutely wild over it. Tseng threatened to pull them from the field to get them to look into it; Rufus had to pull rank to shut him down.” Genesis says, with undisguised glee.

Rufus and Tseng? Disagreeing? Openly? The stranger really did have them all panicking. Sephiroth needs to… he doesn’t know. He needs to do something. The way he’s always solved his problems has been with his sword, but his skills in combat have proved themselves, for the first time, quite useless.

“The stranger has a grudge with me personally,” Sephiroth says. “Or he said he did. I do not know why he took it out on the Science department as a whole.”

“A personal grudge, hm… Well, you are the Science department’s poster-boy. Perhaps his grudge is with them, and his anger with you is simply a side-effect?”

Sephiroth shakes his head. The way the man’s eyes had glittered, the way he’d snarled, his reaction to Sephiroth’s plea… It was personal. “No. His grudge is with me. But his goals…”

He trails off, deep in thought.

After a moment of silence, Genesis snarks, “Care to share with the class, General?”

“I can’t say what they are. But he said something that got my attention: ‘she’s not here’. It makes me think he’s perhaps looking for someone?”

Genesis frowns at his lap. “Scorned widow?”

“Perhaps. It’s hard to say.” Another thought occurs to Sephiroth, then. “Zackary Fair’s trooper—”

“Cloud Strife,” Genesis interrupts.

“—Cloud Strife. Has anyone spoken to him?”

“Tseng’s been on him like a hawk. He’s claiming he doesn’t have any family except for his mother.”

There. Something for Sephiroth to do. “I will speak to him,”

Genesis raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? He starts trembling like a terrified chihuahua everytime you’re even in the vicinity.”

“The stranger’s grudge is with me. A man who can best me in battle is a threat to national security. That child will be grateful it’s me questioning him, and not Rufus.”

Genesis snorts, unkindly. “Perhaps we should let Zackary question the boy?”

Sephiroth tilts his head. “Zackary is too closely involved.” And truly, the two of them are practically inseparable. Everytime Sephiroth has seen Zackary outside of training, the Strife boy can be seen trailing behind him. Like a little duckling, eyes wide and cheeks rosy, fluffy hair amusingly resembling chocobo’s feathers.

It’s strange, he thinks, how a trait that can look so endearing on Cloud Strife can look so strange and dangerous on the stranger.

“Angeal, then. I’m certainly not doing it. And you’ll just scare the poor creature so bad he’s liable to throw up all over you.”

“Give the boy some credit.”

Genesis pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing theatrically. “You almost died and this is what we’re arguing about?”

“What would you rather we argue about?”

Genesis throws his head back, groans loudly, and shoots forward to pull Sephiroth into a hug. Strong arms are wrapped around his neck, unnaturally warm. Sephiroth leans into the embrace, inhaling the unexpected contact like desert soil sucks up the rainfall. Such is the way Genesis is; theatrical and wild, dramatic and imposing, and yet… warm. Like a hearth, bright and gentle and passionate.

Genesis had been the first to challenge Hojo’s notion that Sephiroth was perfect, all those years ago. A baby faced boy from the middle of nowhere, with a sharp accent and an even sharper tongue. Genesis had been all of fourteen to Sephiroth’s twelve when they met. He’d put a hand on his hip, glared imperiously down at Sephiroth and said, “This little thing is a SOLDIER Second?”

Sephiroth had been, famously, incredibly defensive upon this assessment. “I’m going to grow to be quite tall,” he’d replied, parroting what Hojo so often told him. “Will you?”

And Genesis had scowled and spat, “I don’t need to be tall to defeat you.”

“You can’t defeat me,” Sephiroth had said, not gloating, but simply stating what he thought was fact. “Nobody can.”

And Genesis, full of overconfident teenaged swagger, had smirked down at him. “If you really think that, you’re just opening yourself to get blindsided by the first person who can prove you wrong. And that makes you an arrogant fool.”

Sephiroth had thought about those words for days afterwards. He’d even brought his concerns to the only counsel he’d had, at the time— Hojo was drawing blood from his shoulder, the green lights of Science reflecting off of his glasses.

“Other people are going to think of you as a person,” Hojo had told him, offhandedly, distractedly. Scribbling notes down, reading data off the monitors, preparing test after test. “They think you’re on the same level as them. They don’t realize that you’re greater than they could ever even hope to understand.”

And, for the first time in his life, Sephiroth had decided that Hojo was wrong. Because Genesis was right— if Sephiroth truly believed that everyone else was beneath him, then he would be an arrogant fool, waiting around for someone to get wise to his stupidity and kill him.

Which is why, when Angeal had dragged Genesis along to befriend Sephiroth, he didn’t fight it. Allowed himself to become close to them, even as he’d pushed everyone else away.

But perhaps he is an arrogant fool, after all.

Genesis pulls away after another moment, squeezing his shoulders and glaring harshly. “You will not lose next time.”

Hearing Genesis, of all people, campaigning for Sephiroth’s victory is so ridiculous that Sephiroth almost laughs. As it is, he quirks an indulgent smile and shakes his head. “I will try.”

Genesis scoffs. “You’re the most powerful person on Gaia! I refuse to believe some backwater weirdo with too many enhancements has mystically appeared out of the ether just to best you. The Goddess is better than that.”

“You’re a backwater weirdo who appeared out of the ether to attempt to best me.”

“Attempt?”

Sephiroth leans back and laughs. Nothing more than a chuckle, but it wipes the angry expression on Genesis’ face, replacing it with a small smile. Look at them, interacting with minimal bickering. Angeal would be so proud; and all it took was Sephiroth nearly dying.

As if summoned by his thought of Angeal, the door to his room bursts open. And there, in the doorway, stands none other than Zackary Fair himself. Dressed in black, eyes glittering with luminescence that Sephiroth doesn’t remember. His black hair is windswept, grin wide and bright.

“General!” He cries. “Sorry for eavesdropping, but I was in the elevator and I heard your voice, and, well, I just had to—“

“At ease,” Sephiroth holds up a hand at the boy’s exuberance. “Are you wearing a First uniform?”

Genesis sighs. “The puppy was promoted while you were gone. You didn’t miss anything, I assure you.”

Zackary shouts an indignant, “Hey!” To which Genesis merely rolls his eyes.

Sephiroth takes him in, dressed in the First’s blacks like he was made for it. Stance wide and confident, eyes crinkled at the sides with a smile. Yet, his cheeks are round with youth, his chin square from his own baby fat. How old is Zackary, again? He can’t be any older than sixteen. He’s a boy, through-and-through, all innocent and naïveté. Swooping, happy optimism and reckless confidence. Zack doesn’t know what it means to be able to die. And yet they’ve dressed him in black and made him fight for his life anyway.

“Congratulations,” Sephiroth says.

He beams. “Thanks, General!”

“You don’t need to call me General anymore, Zackary.” He tells him. “We are… equals now.”

Genesis snorts unkindly. “As much as anyone can be equals with Sephiroth.”

“Quiet,”

Zackary rocks back on his heels, smiling waning a little. “Well, alright. As long as you call me Zack!”

Sephiroth dislikes the thought almost as much as he’d disliked the news of Zackary’s promotion to First, but Sephiroth often has to do things he dislikes. “Alright.” A pause. “Have you talked to Cloud Strife?”

“I thought he was too close to the situation?”

“For a formal interrogation, he is. Now be quiet.”

Zack rubs the back of his neck, sighs, and pulls another chair over to the bedside. He falls into it, right beside Genesis, who wrinkles his nose. Zack is apparently lost in thought, however.

“I know I’m close to things, but… he really doesn’t have any idea who that guy was. As far as his mom’s ever told him, it’s just them. His dad passed away when he was little, you know? He always assumed his mom’s family were dead, too.”

Sephiroth digests this.

“He’s really freaked out about this whole thing, just as much as we are. I mean, a distant relative you thought was dead just, up and appears? And who looks just like you? Who tried to kill the General? He’s terrified. He’s… he’s just a kid, you know?”

So are you, Sephiroth thinks, but does not say. What he does say is, “The stranger did not try to kill me. If he intended to kill me, he would have.”

Genesis’ face darkens. Zack’s goes white. In a whisper, he says, “He’s really that strong?”

“We need to find him.” Genesis says. “Anyone that’s a threat to you…”

“There’s something about all of this that I’m missing,” Sephiroth says. “Something vital. I need to know who he is. I need to…” he sighs. “I…”

“Who he is doesn’t matter,” Genesis, with all the imperious superiority he can muster. “What we need is to kill him. Even if he can defeat you one-on-one, the three of us should be able to dispatch him easily enough.”

“Are you sure you don’t just want some of the glory of having defeated someone who can kill me?”

Genesis shoves his nose in the air with a scoff.

Nervously, Zack blurts, “The four of us!”

“What?”

“I want to help!” He announces, tone brooking no room for argument.

“You can do whatever you want,” Genesis says. “Since you’re a First and all.”

Genesis’ sarcasm implies things. “Your help would be appreciated, Zack.” Sephiroth supplies, ignoring Genesis’ eye-roll.

“Thanks, Sephiroth. Oh!” He gasps. “I meant to tell you! Tseng is coming to see you?”

“What?” Sephiroth says. “I can get up. He doesn’t need to come h—“

“You had a buster sword lodged in your spleen,” Genesis hisses. “You are going to stay in that bed or so help me—“

Sephiroth makes to stand. “I heal quickly,”

Genesis pushes him back into the bed. “Not that quickly,”

“It’s been a month—“

The door opens.

What walks in is not a person.

She’s wearing the face of a person, of course; she looks to be about sixteen, dressed haphazardly in a baby blue sundress that’s a couple of sizes too big and a blazer a couple of sizes bigger than that, with the Midgar school system’s logo embroidered on the front. She’s swimming in the ensemble, the blazer’s shoulders sticking out strangely, the jacket cuffs coming to kiss her knuckles. The dress is hiked to its own waistband with a complex knot of hair ties, and is liberally patched with nondescript squares of brown and green fabric. Her hair is done into a braid at the back of her head, and she’s smiling.

But she is not a person. What gives her away is the same thing that gives Sephiroth away: her eyes. Green. Fathomless, mako green. Green like the way sunlight reflects off of grass. Green like the jade-cut jewels of Wutai’s riches. Green like trees swaying in a summer breeze. Green like the vivid, dripping of monster’s ichor flowing from the tip of his blade. Green like moss, like lichen, like weeds growing from the skin of a corpse that’s been left on the grass too long. Green like—

Zack gasps, equal parts surprised and excited, “Aerith!”

—A voice booms in his mind. It does not say anything; it merely lets out a long, low sound. Like if a shriek could come from the lower register. Almost a growl, but not quite. The warning sound of an animal. An alert.

As the not-a-person steps inside, the lucid lights of the room glitter against something pinned in her hair. A pearl. Small, white and round, like a—

“Hi there,” she says, with a person’s voice. But it is not a person’s smile she wears; her smile is an inch too wide, showing a hair too many teeth. It is not threatening. Simply… inhuman. The lights in the room have suddenly gotten brighter. Her teeth and eyes almost appear as if they are glowing, in the sudden intense light. Like there is something inside of her. Something bright, pushing itself outward, clawing up her throat and lighting her teeth up with golden light.

Tseng steps beside her and says, “This is—”

“Aerith Gainsborough!” She interrupts, shoving her hand in Sephiroth’s face. “Sorry for the intrusion, mister-General-sir! But I just had to speak with you.”

Chapter Text

She speaks like a child. Sephiroth supposes that she is one. Or, she appears to be one. But there is something far older than sixteen etched into the lines of her skin, dancing in the air like flower petals on the wind. Her eyes seem to swirl, he notices. The green inside the irises is undulating, shifting and twisting around itself like smoke in the open air.

When Sephiroth does not shake her hand, she takes it back, beaming all the while.

“She insisted I take you to her. Has been for the past month,” Tseng says, dispassionately. She turns to stick her tongue out at him, which Tseng deftly ignores. “She’s a high-profile civilian. Under surveillance.”

“Woah, Aerith’s what?” Zack crows, gesturing wildly with his hands. She smiles shyly at him, waving. He waves back, albeit awkwardly.

“You know her?” Genesis asks.

Zack rubs the back of his neck. A gesture Sephiroth recognizes as nervous. “I fell into her church a few weeks ago.”

“What?”

“You still owe me a third date,” she says, cheekily. As if she were a person.

Zack practically hops in place. “Of course! I’ve just been busy with work and—”

She waves him off, giggling. The sound bounces from her lips like the flapping of a bird’s wings, dainty and yet powerful. “I know, silly.”

“This is why you stayed in the city,” Genesis says to Tseng, tapping a finger to his chin. “I knew it wasn’t just because of that drug nonsense.”

“I didn’t ask for your input, Rhapsodos,” Tseng says, with familiar disdain.

Sephiroth brings himself to ignore the growing twisting in his stomach to address the not-a-person: “You convinced Tseng to bring you here?”

She laughs. It’s the sound of bells tolling. It’s the sound of wind dancing around metal chimes, the sound of the air whistling between mountaintops. She twirls a lock of her bangs around a finger, smiling sheepishly. “He’s known me since I was a little kid, in a way. Besides, Mr. Tseng’s nice.”

Sephiroth doesn’t agree, but he doesn’t say so. Instead, he says, “Why are you under surveillance?”

A little girl should not need to be under the watchful eye of the Turks. She is not a danger to ShinRa’s security. But this is not a little girl, and she is not a person, and her eyes are as bottomless as the Goddess that Genesis is always talking about.

Something inside of Sephiroth is getting louder. Some kind of warning sound, some kind of crooning. It’s swooping in his ears, now, whispering to him oh-so-delicately, even as it scrabbles at his eardrums.

Without missing a beat, Tseng says, “That’s classified.”

Genesis scoffs. “This is the General of ShinRa you’re talking to.”

Tseng crosses his arms. “And this is information the General of ShinRa isn’t privy to.”

Genesis puffs up in Sephiroth’s defense like an angry cat, shoulders rising to his ears. “What information could possibly be beyond—”

“More than you’d think,” Tseng shoots back, coolly.

“Tseng,” Gainsborough says, her eyes drooping down as she stares at nothing. Gently, she straightens. “The world has changed. Everything is… different, now. And he deserves to know. That’s why I’m here. I’m going to tell him.”

Tseng jerks forward, as if to grab her. But he aborts the motion, instead freezing in place, gloved hand outstretched. Finally, as if with great difficulty, he summons his voice, “Miss Gainsborough. You know why we can’t—”

“You know why I have to tell him,” she argues. Her tone is soft, soft like clouds and the gentle petals of a flower and the way Sephiroth’s bed feels after a long mission. But it is edged, edged with ice, with steel, with the blinding power of direct sunlight.

“Leave us,” Sephiroth says, and his tone is all the General. And for all that Tseng doesn’t answer to him, Sephiroth does outrank him. “Whatever Miss Gainsborough has to tell me, it will go better without an audience.”

Tseng watches him for a moment, dark eyes hooded. Cautiously, like he’s afraid Sephiroth will hurt him if he doesn’t comply, he nods. And then he ducks out of the room.

Gentler, Sephiroth says, “You too, Genesis. And you, Zack.”

Genesis sighs dramatically, like he expected this. With a flourish, he pats Zack’s shoulder with condescension. “Come along, puppy. I’m sure we’ll get the debrief later.”

As he leaves the room, he sends Sephiroth a flash of a glare that makes it clear his implication is actually an order. Except Genesis cannot order Sephiroth to do anything. Oh, but he will whine if Sephiroth doesn’t indulge him…

“Thanks for that. What I have to tell you…” She trails off, scuffing a dirtied sneaker against the tiled floor. “It’s a lot.”

The sounds in Sephiroth’s mind are growing more frenzied, more desperate. As if there is a chorus of voices screaming at him from a great distance. But, he gets the impression that it’s one voice. One voice that sounds like many. A layered voice, a layered existence. Something beyond his comprehension.

Perhaps he should call Hollander. He has never been prone to auditory hallucinations before. Unless Hollander was also dispatched on the business end of the stranger’s sword.

“Is it…” He swallows past his suddenly dry throat. “The stranger?”

She cocks her head at him, even as she delicately sits in the seat that Genesis had just vacated. She frowns, pressing a hand to her chin before it seems to hit her. She smiles gently and says, “Oh, you mean Cloud?”

“Cloud Strife?” Sephiroth asks, confused. “No, I meant the man who looks like Cloud Strife. The one who—” well, if she was privy to information beyond even Sephiroth, why should he bother to keep ShinRa’s secrets? “—killed the president.”

She chitters a laugh. “Right! Cloud Strife.”

“Excuse me?”

“The man who killed the president is Cloud Strife.”

Sephiroth stares at her. When this situation reveals itself to be neither imagined nor a dream, nor some sort of hallucination (the whispering in his ears is growing rather concerning, he thinks), he takes this in. Tries to accept it as fact.

Cloud Strife is a boy. He is barely an adolescent. He stares at Sephiroth like he hung the moon and stars. He hangs off of Zack’s every word. He watches Angeal and Zack’s training sessions like a sponge ready to soak up everything he can, eyes glittering with excitement. He wants to be a SOLDIER. Zack is trying to help train him to meet this goal.

Sephiroth, very privately, does not think the boy has the aptitude for it. He is too… gentle. Too starry-eyed. Too naive and innocent. Sephiroth does not want to see that stained with the blood of a SOLDIER’s life. But if that’s what the boy wants, it's what he shall have; Sephiroth does not look forward to the day that the boy sees his first combat. He is a trooper, after all. His choice of career will catch up with him soon.

But the stranger. The stranger has seen battle. Not just combat, but war. Sephiroth can tell, from the deadly precise way he uses his weapon. The way his eyes are just as monstrous as Sephiroth’s own; he can tell from the lithe, graceful way he moves, not wasting a single scrap of energy. It’s why Sephiroth’s first thought had been that he hailed from Wutai, despite his appearance.

The idea that the two could ever, in any way, be the same person is simply too ridiculous for him to accept. Not to mention the obvious vast difference in age. But, well, they do look nigh identical…

“Why do you say this?”

Her head lolls a little on her neck, even as she smiles. Her eyes flutter shut, her body slumping just slightly forward. He reaches his arms out, worried she’s going to fall— but then she wheels back, body still a little boneless. Like a doll being swung around by an errant child. Her eyes are snapping back and forth underneath her eyelids, but she is smiling.

Her smile is like the end of an era. Like the sun thawing out a millenia long ice age. Like life rising from the depths of the ocean for the first time. Like countries leveled by war. Like the first lichen and ivy growing on the bloodstained ground thereafter.

She says, “The Planet told me.”

A sharp, piercing ringing sound bursts in his skull. At the back of his head, the base of his neck, right between his ears. It shrieks, shrieks until he can’t see, until the world is technicolor and he is nothing but a slave to this noise. Pain accompanies it, pounding and thrashing its way through his skull, down his neck, behind his eyes. This sound, it… it’s speaking to him. It wants him to know something. No…

It wants him.

A hand on his bicep brings him back to the present. Gainsborough is holding it, smiling sympathetically down at him. “Does it hurt?” She asks.

“Yes,” he croaks. It hurts more than anything else ever has. His mouth tastes like Mako. His throat feels like a desert.

He feels like a child, trembling before a power he cannot best and cannot understand. He doesn’t remember ever feeling like that as a child, but he feels it now. The sound wants him. The piercing has died down, but he is surer than ever. It wants him. “The Planet speaks to you?”

“Yep,” she says, sitting back into her seat with a flounce. “Did you know, mister-General-sir, that humans were not always the only people living on Gaia?”

“The feline-men of Cosmo Canyon—”

She laughs again, shaking her head. “No, silly. There was an older race, one that looked a lot like humans do. We were called the Cetra. Now, we are sometimes called Ancients.”

And recognition blooms in Sephiroth’s breast, because for all that Hojo and Hollander try to be subtle, they are not always so. Hojo, particularly, has a penchant for muttering. And while Sephiroth learned very young that interrupting said muttering was a recipe for disaster— questioning what the muttering was about, even more so— he was never punished for listening. Likely because Hojo never expected that he would.

Hojo had muttered about Ancients before. And Sephiroth that he meant ‘ancients’, things of old. But once, after one of the few times Sephiroth had gotten grievously injured on the battlefield, he’d looked at whatever data he’d pulled from Sephiroth’s bloodwork and said, with a note of creeping despair, “He was supposed to be the new ancient.”

Sephiroth had been confused by the dualistic phrasing. New-ancient. But now, Sephiroth supposes, he meant to say he was meant to be the new Ancient.

The thing in his mind crows. It is pleased. It is happy, excited, joyous. It fills Sephiroth with these feelings, like drugs, slowly creeping from his blood to his heart. Like honey, cloying and sweet. It fogs up his senses and clogs his mind, sticking to every available inch of his inner-self, swathing it in a thick sheen of sugar.

“And these Ancients can hear the Planet speak?”

She nods, smiling. “I’m the last Cetra, sir. That’s why I’m under surveillance from the Turks; the only reason I’m not living here with you is because I’m only half Cetra,” she says, with a chittering laugh, as if what she just said isn’t world-endingly important. “And the Planet told me about mister Strife.”

Oh, right. The stranger. It is only the fear, fear that only the stranger can make him feel, that cuts through the haze of growing, intense mania flowing through his body.

“He’s the Planet’s newest WEAPON.” She says, with the mildest smile.

He gapes at her. She laughs, rubbing the back of her neck.

“Or, oldest, I guess,” she breathes, and her gaze abruptly goes a million miles away. Just over Sephiroth’s shoulder, eyes glazed over until they resemble emeralds; shining, glowing, and yet polished like stone. “He’s from a future. A version of our world that’s far progressed past where we are now,” she pauses, catching her breath, as if winded. “A world that died.”

Sephiroth pauses, confusion eclipsing the foreign emotions writhing within him. Suddenly, the mania seems all the more strange; they did not come from him. They are not his. He tries to push them away, and that’s when the sound in his ears returns.

“A world that died?”

“Mmm,” she hums, wordless. It’s a sound like chanting, like hymns sung in a language he cannot fathom, syllables plucking from lips and warbling from throats of long-dead religions. “A world that collapsed under the weight of rebuilding. He… defeated the threat. But the aftermath was too much for it to bear and it… fell. It died. And as the Lifestream came down to take him away, he,” she gasps, truly winded now, breathing harshly for air it seems she cannot catch. “He asked to do it all over again.”

She opens her eyes. They are like shattered glass. “And so here he is.”

He defeated the threat.

Strife… defeated the threat.

The stranger, in his past life, defeated the threat. The threat to the Planet. He is the Planets chosen WEAPON. The defense mechanisms it uses to beat back threats to it’s safety, Hojo had told him.

The stranger’s grudge is with me, Sephiroth had said, barely an hour ago.

Gainsborough is an Ancient. She’d called herself the last Ancient. Her laugh is like windchimes and her smile is like the brightest of most blinding, painful sunlight, and her eyes glitter like the depths of fathomless, natural Mako. She is powerful. But she is not monstrous.

Sephiroth killed his first enemy combatant at age eleven, immediately after joining the ranks of SOLDIER. It had been a man in Wutai, a meaningless foot soldier dressed in already bloodied fatigues. Sephiroth had felt nothing as he’d pulled Masamune from the man’s stomach.

Angeal had cried the first time he felled a man. Genesis had, infamously, thrown up on Sephiroth’s boots at the sight of the fresh corpse of his first kill.

Whatever this girl is, Sephiroth is not the same thing. Sephiroth has never been anything special; not the angel, descended from on-high that Hojo always made him out to be. He has, simply, always been a monster.

It’s the same as Genesis had said, once, a vicious, jealous adolescent: they talk like we’re on the same level, but we never have been, have we? It’s impossible to be on the same level as a monster. Angeal had smacked him upside the head.

The sound is back to a shriek. A monster with hallucinations, it seems.

“And… the Planet told you this?”

“I know it’s hard to believe,” she says, helplessly. “But it’s true.”

“I believe you,” Sephiroth says. He breathes a sardonic laugh. “Why else would a doppelgänger of Zack’s trooper appear to kill the president? I can’t believe we ever believed him when he called himself a distant relation. It’s ridiculous, in hindsight.”

“More ridiculous than time travel?”

The shrieking continues, like a physical sensation, razor-sharp and biting against his eardrums. “Yes.”

It grows louder, more frenzied, higher-pitched. Like something is trapped inside of him and is clawing for escape. Tearing and thrashing, like it’s sunk its teeth into his soft, pliant flesh, and is ripping as hard as it can. Like a street dog of the undercity tearing at his hamstring, gorging itself on his ribs, ripping open his throat.

“There’s something else I need to tell you,” she says, but she is a million miles away.

The world goes bright, and then dark, and then salt-and-pepper, as if he is dehydrated. Like television static, or the error screen on his PHS, the world explodes into a spray of gray sparkles. They fall through his vision, obscuring all other sight. Pain ricochets through his entire body.

In a moment of utter, divine clarity, everything goes black. The shrieking in his ears ceases. The pain eases. A voice, feminine and smooth and kind, like the mother he’d always known he didn’t deserve but always dreamed of, says, “You belong to me.”

And the voice, it sounds like belonging. It is acceptance. It is love. It is family. It is everything Sephiroth has never had, everything Hojo could never give him. Hojo was distant, obsessive, controlling in his love. She is not. She is warm, she is gentle, she is here, her eyes bleeding love and joy. He cannot see her—cannot see anything except the dark— but he can imagine her eyes, Mako-green like his own. The only person on the Planet with eyes to match his. Maybe he is not a monster, then. If something so gentle can have his eyes.

“My son,” she says, a whispery croon like that of a songbird. He gets the impression of a hand on his cheek, caressing his skin in a warm embrace. “The interloper is trying to kill me.”

The only sensation Sephiroth can feel other than her hand on his skin is a hot tear rolling down his face, dripping from his chin.

“You have to save me,” she says, a desperate plea. “I am your mother. Mother. We will be together. All you need to do is kill—” and then she is cut off by a shriek of pain.

She dissolves into guttural, terrified screams. Screams of an animal in pain, of a wolf in the forests of Wutai with his sword lodged in its stomach. Crying out for release it will never get. His mother is dying. She is being killed. By that man— that man Strife, with the Mako-eyes and the buster sword lodged into Sephiroth’s stomach—

Pain bursts behind Sephiroth’s eyes, so viciously intense that it is blissful relief when he feels his tether to the waking world snap.

Chapter Text

Once, Angeal had taken a call from his mother in Sephiroth’s presence.

His PHS had begun to vibrate obnoxiously, and he’d pulled it from his pocket with irritation. When he saw the caller ID, however, he’d shot Sephiroth a sheepish smile. “I need to take this. Give me a minute?”

The couch of Angeal’s apartment’s living room always feels very large when one is on it by themselves. So there was little to do except eavesdrop.

“Yeah, Ma, I’m fine.” Angeal was saying, muffled through the kitchen doorway. “I’m hanging out with that new friend I told you about?”

A pause.

“Yeah, he’s nice. No, not— not at all like we imagined, but nice.”

Sephiroth had never been described as nice before. Despite himself, he didn’t find the adjective to be particularly accurate. Sephiroth was, at most, merciful. He could perhaps be described as patient. But not nice.

“I’ve been good. Cooking a lot, between shifts. Yeah, Gen still can’t cook anything that isn’t microwavable. Sephiroth’s even worse, so it’s whatever.”

Another pause.

“Oh, yeah, I cook for them a lot. Well, we share meals most nights. When we can. ‘Cause, well, it looks like things in Wutai are… nevermind, it doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, Ma, we get checkups here after every mission. There’s even an in-house dentist. I’m set.... No, I don’t need money. I should be asking you that.”

A chuckle.

“Alright, I love you too. Buh-bye.”

He came back into the room huffing a fond, indulgent sigh. He sat beside Sephiroth, shutting his PHS off and tossing it onto the coffee table. “Sorry about that. She’ll just freak if I don’t answer—”

“That was your mother?”

“Yeah?”

“Were you injured?”

Angeal blinked at him. “…no?”

“Then why would she require a status report from you?”

Angeal frowned, deep and creased on his young face. It was an expression that Angeal and Genesis often wore, when Sephiroth showed himself as too much of a monster and not enough as a man.

Angeal inhaled, considering his words. Finally, he said, “She worries for me.”

“But why would she worry if you were not injured?”

Angeal winced. He tried valiantly to hide it, but he was woefully unpracticed at handling Sephiroth’s idiosyncrasies with grace, this early into their friendship.

“Sometimes… when people are far away from each other, and you don’t hear anything from someone, you start to worry that the worst has happened.” He cleared his throat. “Haven’t you felt that? For me or Gen, in the field?”

Sephiroth tilted his head, trying to recall. He could, perhaps, think of a time or two that the start of such a worry had formed within him. But he had simply squashed it with the cold logic of, if they are dead, I will hear about it, one way or another.

“I’m not sure. Is that why she required a status report?”

It’s funny, because the Sephiroth of the present has felt that emotion. Many times over, again and again, with intensity so emotionally debilitating that it circled around to become irritating. After the three of them had truly bonded, Sephiroth had become… attached.

Everytime a mission he was not on went long, which was most times, Sephiroth would be seized with such emotion that the only way to calm himself was to take too many melatonin supplements and sleep for twelve hours.

Sephiroth, as a rule, does not feel very much. His emotions are inconveniences that he is very adept at ignoring. So he was woefully unprepared to be seventeen or so and completely unable to deal with this level of emotion, even for something as relatively benign as worrying for his friends. He is much better equipped now, but for many months, it had been a difficulty of unprecedented proportions.

Sephiroth was not allowed any sort of sleep aid, because Sephiroth is not allowed any sort of medication. It would interfere with Hojo’s experimentation; truthfully, Sephiroth had known better than to ask. Asking would invite a conversation with Hojo that he didn’t want to have, and likely more experimentation in the process.

So Sephiroth would, regularly, break into Genesis’ apartment when the man was not there to steal his sleeping pills. And fall asleep in his bed. Genesis had screeched like an unholy banshee the first time Sephiroth had been caught like that. But after a while, he would simply collapse in the bed beside Sephiroth.

In this memory, however, the Sephiroth and Angeal are baby-faced and sixteen years old, and Sephiroth had not experienced any of that yet.

Angeal said, “Yeah, that’s exactly why.”

Sephiroth frowned, considering this. “Like how Hojo does examinations on me every few weeks.”

Angeal winced again. “Uh… it’s a little different, I think.”

Sephiroth tilted his head. “Why? Hojo always requires a status report on my activities and mental functions during examinations.”

Angeal wheeled back, looking positively nauseous at the turn of the conversation. “Right, but my mom just wants to make sure I’m alright, and stuff…”

“Is that not the purpose of a status report?”

“Yeah, but Hojo’s not… doing it for, you know…”

“I know?”

Angeal sighed. “I’m not sure Hojo is worried for your well-being, is all.”

And Sephiroth, sixteen and only a few years free from the bowels of ShinRa, had been offended, if he could feel such an emotion. “Hojo worries for my well-being. He requires me to be at peak performance all the time.”

Angeal grimaced. “That’s not a good thing.”

“What?”

“It’s unfair to expect someone to be perfect all the time. It’s… just, an impossible standard.”

“Not for me.”

Angeal rubbed the back of his neck. “A parent is meant to be the person who takes care of you when you’re not perfect.”

And Sephiroth had balked. “What?” Because Hojo had never, ever taken care of Sephiroth in his life. Hojo pushed Sephiroth; challenged him, perfected him. He did not coddle him.

“Do you have a mother?” Angeal asked, abruptly. He searched Sephiroth’s face, gazing into his eyes. What he was looking for, Sephiroth doesn’t know.

“Her name on my file is listed as Jenova.”

Angeal whispered, “I’m sorry,”

And Sephiroth, nonplussed, chest hot with upset, said, “What do you apologize for?”

Angeal hugged him. It was the first time Sephiroth had been hugged in many years.

Sephiroth wakes not in a hospital, and not in his bed. It is, however, not unfamiliar. It smells like familiar shampoo and familiar skin products, and Sephiroth relaxes. Relaxes more than he did in the hospital, and more than he would’ve in his own bed.

Genesis’ bedroom is more comforting than Sephiroth will ever tell him. It would give him too much of an ego; but perhaps he already knows, because he brought Sephiroth here after his fainting spell.

It’s red, cacophonously red. With a crimson bedspread and scarlet curtains. A mahogany rug and a rust colored painting of a sunset in the corner. There is a huge, human-sized poster for a long-passed production of LOVELESS to one side. Clothes are strewn across the floor. There’s a vanity to Sephiroth’s right, absolutely covered. Zero of the wood surface is visible past the lotions, hair products, makeup and jewelry.

The door creaks open, and Angeal appears in the doorway. He blinks as he sees Sephiroth, holding a glass of water in his hand. “Oh,” he says. “You’re awake.”

Angeal is as he was the last time Sephiroth had seen him, of course; he isn’t sure why he expected his oldest friend to look different. Barrel-chested, shoulders broad, stance wide and confident. His hair is a bit of a mess, though, knotted and puffy in a way that betrays that Angeal had not been brushing it. He’s not dressed in uniform, except for the arm-guards full of materia he has strapped to his forearms. It looks strange, clashing with the sweatpants.

“Hello,” Sephiroth croaks.

Angeal bustles in with no more preamble. He sets the glass on the bedside table. He helps Sephiroth sit up, fussing at him all the while. He pulls Sephiroth’s hair from his eyes and adjusts his shirt to sit correctly on his shoulders, tucks the covers in around Sephiroth’s waist. He throws open the curtains, spilling mid-afternoon light into the room. Sephiroth doesn’t like it.

“The doctor said you overexerted yourself after you woke up,” Angeal is saying, “you need to relax this time. They didn’t want to release you, but Genesis convinced them.”

“And what tactic of persuasion did he use this time?” Sephiroth asks, but his voice breaks partway through. Angeal hands him the water. “Thank you.”

“Well, first he threatened to cast Fira on the doctors. But they’re jaded from surviving the massacre in Science, so that did nothing for them. Which is when he started crying.”

Sephiroth gapes, water raised halfway to his face.

Angeal smiles crookedly. “All about how Sephiroth is his best friend and how much Sephirothhates hospitals and how the General deserves to be with his family while he recovers.”

Sephiroth presses a hand to his face and laughs, genuinely floored. It’s making Sephiroth feel warm from his toes all the way to the tip of his head. It’s like, relief, for the first time since this whole ordeal started.

Sephiroth thinks he could get used to this feeling.

Angeal pets Sephiroth’s hair fondly. “I know you braid it when you sleep usually, but I didn’t want to wake you.”

Sephiroth shakes his head. “I’ll braid it myself when I can.”

“Let me?”

Sephiroth ducks his head so he won’t have to look Angeal in the eyes. “If you’d like.”

Angeal leaves and reappears with a brush, a hairband and a spray bottle. Sephiroth scoots forward so Angeal can sit side-saddle behind him. Angeal’s fingers are deft and his palms are warm, and he brushes out snarls with the kind of gentleness that Sephiroth has never deserved.

Angeal is sturdy, in the same way that Genesis is flighty. He’s strong, unmovable, and yet graceful. His hands are large and yet they are so, so kind in the way they softly weave Sephiroth’s hair together.

His eyes are growing heavy, but the warmth and the softness is lulling him farther and farther from reality. Angeal smells like soap and vaguely of coffee, and it is familiar. By the time Angeal is tying off the braid, Sephiroth is fast asleep against his shoulder.

“Son,” she says. “The interloper is trying to kill me.”

She’s talking to him. He’s trying to open his eyes, but they are weighed down, crusted shut. Darkness is all there is. And he is alone, in the darkness. Freezingly, achingly alone.

Like when he was young, and all he knew was metal walls and his father, tall and powerful, dripping in vibrant green light.

Sephiroth. The boy with the eyes of a monster and the strength of the Planet. Child born of nothing more than human hubris.

A child, clutching at his tiny little hospital scrubs with shaking fists. Three feet tall and alone. Alone in the metal hallways. Alone in the sleek laboratories. Alone in the underbelly of a tower.

Except for her. She is enveloping him in warmth, in love. She is here, and she loves him, and he is not alone.

“You and I are stronger than the interloper.” She sings, voice sounding like family and acceptance and bonds. “Together. If we are together, we can defeat him.”

Yes, he thinks. Together. He is stronger with her here. When she is here, he is no longer alone in the metal hallways.

“Son,” she begs, her voice like the feeling of warm sunlight dripping down his cheeks. “Come to me.”

Chapter Text

In the future, when recollecting these events, if Sephiroth were asked to point to a single, solitary moment that saved him, it would be when he awoke from that sweet dream of a mother. Because when he wakes, he is exactly where he fell asleep. That is: leaning on Angeal’s shoulder.

Angeal grabs him by the shoulders, steadying him from when he’d shot up to do— what, exactly? Find the woman in his dreams?

“Seph? Seph, calm down, it’s me. It was a bad dream.”

“Not bad,” he breathes, allowing himself to be pulled flush to Angeal’s chest. “Not bad.”

“Seph, what’s— oh my god,” Angeal gasps. “Your eyes!”

What? What could possibly be happening now? Sephiroth scrambles up, stepping in front of Genesis’ vanity. He stares at his eyes, brighter than he’s ever seen them. Not so much glowing as their own beacons of light, glinting like the eyes of a predator.

“Angeal,” Sephiroth rasps. “Something is happening to me.”

“You’re afraid,” Angeal says. “From your fight with—”

“Cloud Strife.”

“Well, the man who looks like him—”

“No,” Sephiroth says, turning to meet Angeal’s eye. “Cloud Strife.”

And then he breezes from the apartment with singleminded purpose. He is going to find Cloud Strife— not the man with the sword and the deadly countenance, but the boy. The boy who doesn’t have Mako eyes, who can’t wield a buster sword, who’s hair resembles chocobo feathers and not deadly rays of sunlight.

He finds him; as if a moth being drawn to a flame, he finds the boy standing outside the cafeteria, shoulders hunched.

“Strife,” Sephiroth says, and the boy flinches like someone has struck him.

He turns, falling into a loose, shaky salute. “General Sephiroth, sir.”

He is like a prey animal, backed into a corner by a predator baring its fangs. He’s like a child, told not to talk to strangers by an overprotective mother. He hunches his shoulders and twists his fingers together, flicking his eyes up to look at Sephiroth through his bangs. He looks as if someone kicked his puppy. He looks as if he is a kicked puppy.

The ringing in his ears returns. Shrieking, like an animal, rings from one ear drum to the next. Warbling, layered shouting. In the midst of the wordless, nonsense syllables of pain, he thinks he hears her say, my son.

Sephiroth returns his attention to Cloud Strife, and opens his mouth— and says nothing. What did he come here to do? What did he come here to say?

That in another life, this boy would grow up to be the only person capable of taking a sword to Sephiroth and living to tell the tale? To tell him that someday, in another world, he would suffer so intensely as to become a monster?

Sephiroth cannot blame this child for things he has not done yet. He cannot hold against him what he has not and now, will never, commit.

He can see it now. In the shape of the boy’s words, in the cadence of his movements, the ghost of that deadly panther he can become. He can see how war, how bloodshed and loss and suffering would bring this boy to his knees and force him to keep going. How it could beat him and burn him and shape him into something vicious, something deadly.

But still, he is just a boy. And so Sephiroth says, “Do not blame yourself for what has transpired,”

Strife’s eyes widen, glittering ocean blue. Not at all like Mako. “Sir?”

“I know you are afraid, and feel guilty,” Sephiroth says. “Do not be. You have done nothing wrong.”

The boy hangs his head, scuffing the toe of his boot against the tiles. With a hint of wry humor, he says, “Did Zack snitch on me?”

“A little,” Sephiroth nods. “He worries for you.”

“He shouldn’t.” Strife mutters, with irritation. Then, his head snaps up, eyes wide, and he sputters, “I mean, sir, I was just—”

Sephiroth chuckles. “Zack can be excitable. Don’t be too harsh on him. Worrying for one another is what friends are good for.”

Strife tilts a smile. “I guess so. Um… for what it’s worth, General… thanks. For, um, reassuring me.”

“Yes,” Sephiroth says, suddenly out-of-his-depth. “If the stranger— if the enemy with your appearance,” the boy flinches, and Sephiroth kicks himself, “comes back, steer clear. He is dangerous, and you have no reason to seek him out.” A pause. Strife just looks at him, and Sephiroth, for lack of another response, stares back.

“Right,” he clears his throat. “As you were.”

Sephiroth whirls around, and walks back to Genesis’ apartment.

He hears Angeal and Genesis in the living room, having an argument, from the hallway. This is not unusual; enhanced hearing makes walls thin, and they argue often. What is unusual, however, is what they are arguing about. Angeal says, “He’s not fit to go walking around the Tower! What if the unregistered SOLDIER comes back?!”

Genesis waves a hand. “He’s a big boy. He can decide for himself.”

They both hear the door click as Sephiroth walks inside. Genesis gestures to him with the copy of LOVELESS in his hands, sending Angeal a smug look, as if to say, see? Angeal just sighs in relief.

“You’re alright.”

“Yes.”

“Where did you go?”

“I went to speak with Cloud Strife.”

The ringing in his ears continues, and he suppresses the urge to wince at the pain.

Genesis says, “And your boots are lacking in vomit. Interesting. Perhaps his schoolboy crush took precedence?”

“Actually, he was quite upset to see me. But no, he did not expel his stomach contents.”

“What did you talk about?” Angeal asks.

“I told him that the stranger’s appearance is now anything he should be worried about.” He sits on the couch, between them, his movements robotic and forced. “I have been hallucinating.”

Genesis says, “Excuse me?”

Angeal says, “Hallucinating what?”

“Something is happening to me.” Sephiroth says. “There is somewhere I need to go.”

“What’s happening?” Angeal asks.

“Where are we going?” Genesis asks.

Sephiroth cracks a smile at that. We. It falls soon after.

“I think that Hojo was right, in his own way.”

Genesis hisses, what? And Angeal snaps, no!

“I am not human.” Sephiroth continues, heedless. “But what I am… I don’t know. Someone is trying to tell me. I am going to go to her.”

“...her?”

“The stranger is trying to kill her,” Sephiroth says, with all the conviction as if it had been his own words. “I need to save her.”

“The goddess is speaking to you,” Genesis says. He stands with a flourish, flicking his book shut. “We will go, posthaste!”

Angeal sets a hand on Sephiroth’s shoulder. “I don’t want you going alone right now.”

Sephiroth says, “Is that not why I have you?”

In the end, they need to hand him a map, to figure out where she is. He points to her location; he can feel it, the same way he could find Strife from halfway across the tower. Looking at it makes the inside of his skull itch and burn, as if an animal were scrabbling against it.

They book a transport. Rufus puts up a bit of a fight, but Sephiroth merely looks him in his eyes and says, “Everyone I was loyal to is dead. If you want my cooperation, you will let me do this.” Because Sephiroth may have lived for the company, for so many years, but he does not live for Rufus ShinRa.

What does he live for, then? The voice in his head, shrieking? The gargling yells of a creature in pain?

Just as he, Angeal and Genesis are about to board the helicopter, a blur of pink rushes into the room. Tseng says, “No—!” But she is clearly moving with single-minded purpose.

She comes to a stop in front of Sephiroth, just as depthless and unfathomable as the first time he saw her, and takes his hands. He swallows a gasp, feeling lightning ricochet up from his hands, right where her skin touches his. It burns. It burns like a Mako bath, like stitching up bloody wounds, like when you stare at the sun for a hair too long.

“Mister-general-sir,” she says, gripping him tighter when attempts to pull his skin free of this burning, “before you go, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Struck dumb, Sephiroth nods his assent.

“Don’t trust her.” She squeezes his hands, sending shooting pains up his skin. “And when it comes down to it, don’t trust yourself.”

Everything in the world is narrowing to this. To her fathomless, emerald eyes. To the way she is frowning, gently, as if she is a person who can care of what happens to Sephiroth. Because she knows— her, she said. His mother, beneath the ground, screaming in pain. Can she hear it? The suffering? Because Sephiroth can.

“Who am I to trust, then?” He hisses.

She smiles, and then she points. And, abruptly, the world widens once again; and he sees that she is pointing to Genesis, who has a hand on his hip and a sour look on his face, and Angeal, who has his arms crossed and is sighing, presumably at Genesis.

When he turns back around, she’s already removed her hands. Tseng grips her by the bicep, dragging her out of the room. As she goes, she sends Sephiroth one last cheery wave; one that he does not return.

“Are you ready to go now, your highness?” Genesis grumps.

“Gen,” Angeal scolds, but he’s swinging himself into the helicopter.

“I suppose I am,” Sephiroth lies, following them inside.

Don’t trust her.