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.