He meant only to get the cigarettes for his mother. He had just enough loose gil in his jacket to get them, and none to spare, even though he had wondered if there would be enough to get a some kind of candy for his little brother, something small.
"You're just a girl, how to do you expect-"
"Please, I'm at work-"
Sephiroth turned at the voices, there was a man in a dark suit, a girl at the grocery flower counter. In the dissonance between them, he wondered how they even knew each other. The man snorted softly, Sephiroth barely heard it.
"Work." the man in the suit said, smiling. "Work." he said seriously now.
"Please leave." the girl said, hands resting in a bed of tissue paper, unwrapped flowers.
"Who will protect you?" the main said, turning slightly into the light to glance once at Sephiroth, as if he knew he was being watched. "Who will tolerate your trouble?" he said quietly, and Sephiroth looked away then, from the flowergirl who only stared but did not answer.
He went to checkout, dug around in his leather jacket for the gil. The woman at the register was Wutain and old, and for a moment he couldn't move his legs or his arm in order to point to what he wanted.
She looked at him, like so many did. Apparently he had been on the news. A solid run of eight weeks, even after the war had ended. He took his receipt and headed out of the doors.
He had planned on walking back into Midgar, just for air. He had bought a brand new car some weeks ago, but he didn't like to sit in there long. Neither did he like to languish in his new apartment or his mother's house. Everywhere he went, it seemed there were more enclosed spaces.
He had made it nearly three miles before he came upon a rusted pink car parked the on the shoulder. He had seen it pass him a while ago, and he stopped when he saw a young girl circling around the car, a hand to her mouth.
With a sputtering groan, the pink car started to smoke. The girl looked up at him and he noticed that it was girl from the grocery market, the flowergirl. He could tell by the way she looked at him, that she knew who he was.
He frowned. No doubt she was expecting him to help. He was a hero after all. He entertained a brief fantasy of walking right by her. And he had started to, almost made it passed. But she touched him. On his arm. He felt a question in him as to why she would, and an anger because she had no right.
"My phone is dead." she said, and he stopped, turned around. He said nothing, thought perhaps the man in the suit had been right. She was just a girl, she looked like one. Her small breasts, still forming hips, child eyes. She looked so young. But he had killed younger children. He put a hand over his face.
"Are you okay? Sir?" she asked, and in the way she said it, he suddenly knew that she did not know who he was.
"Fine." he said, fishing his phone from his pocket. He flipped it open and gave it to her.
"Thankyou." she said, and he turned to look at the traffic. And when she made the call, he went on his way, and left her there, at the side of the road.
When he arrived at his mother's house, it was eight o clock and his younger brother Yazoo opened the door, lifted his eyebrows.
"You're late." Loz said from across the room, and Yazoo moved slowly towards where Loz was setting the table. Sephiroth was glad to have gotten the boy nothing, he didn't actually deserve it.
There were times he felt sorry the children had to live in the house. He after all had lived in it years before they had, knew the terror of their mother better than anyone, the cruelty of their obsessive and oft absent father, but somehow it had taken him years to leave.
Even after he had been drafted, even after the war, he found himself still returning. And he could never understand why. His mother had sent him a slew of letters, had left even more voicemails on his domestic phone, asking for assistance, for money, that he come home, that he was an ungrateful child for not answering any of the calls, letters, that she may be dead when he got home, and how would he like that?
Jenova entered just as Loz was putting the last plate down. She smiled, and Sephiroth knew that at one time, she must've been beautiful. Even in his first memory of her, she had been teetering between her youth and what she was now.
She held out her hand and Sephiroth gave her the cigarettes. He'd given up trying to tell her how bad they were for her.
"Loz, you big oaf. Be careful with my precious china." she said around a cigarette, pulling her silver hair up into a loose bun. It was more grey now. "Yazoo, is dinner ready?"
Yazoo only nodded, headed back into the kitchen.
"Sephiroth, go get your father." Sephiroth stood where he was and looked into her bright green eyes. Those were the only things that had never changed. She smiled, and narrowed her eyes. "Well?" she said, and Sephiroth turned and headed for the basement. He thought one day. One day he'd just say no.
His father was where he always was, working in the basement with something that would probably never work. He was technically brilliant, talented with initial ideas, but had neither the money or the drive to carry through with his inventions or experiments. Continuous failure had made him bitter, and as if he'd known that he would always fail, early on he had tried to instill the same ambition into his first son.
But Sephiroth had never cared for it, despite the brilliance he too possessed, and in greater quantities than his father. He knew Hojo would always hate him for it.
"What do you want, boy."
"Dinner." Sephiroth said, looking at the walls. They were lined with failed experiments, old, broken trinkets, boxes, triggers, lone buttons hanging by wires. Sephiroth hated the basement, where he had spent years of his youth studying, building the dreams of his father that had eventually gone to rot.
"Dinner, is it?" he said, wiping his glasses with his thumb. He sat silently on the floor, with his new creation, looked around the room at the walls. He picked up a screwdriver, stilled, and then put it back on the ground. He was silent.
"I'll tell mother you haven't finished." Sephiroth said finally, turning the leave the room. Sephiroth wondered if he could ever be finished.
After dinner when he went to leave, his mother caught him out on the porch.
"Wait." She said, grabbing his hand. He stopped. He could smell her smoking before he even turned to see the stick in her mouth.
"I have to go." he said, lacking conviction.
"Go where?" she asked, standing close to him. "Where is it that you think you're going that I can't reach you?" she patted his chest. "My lovely boy, I know that at times I seem as if I require too much, but how much is too much for a mother?"
She flattened her lips out into a frown, and let the smoke come from her nose. With the smoke there, he could barely make out her eyebrows on her pale skin.
"I have to go." he said.
"It's only that I love you so much. You are..." he fought the urge to slap her hand away when she stuck the cigarette between her teeth and reached up to hold his face in both cold hands. It was odd, he had wanted her tender touch when he was younger, her attention, but now he wished to never see her. And yet he could never stay away long. She was the only women he knew he would ever love.
"...you are the best thing I have ever done. I remember when I carried you, and you used to kick, you always had that urgency about you, always trying to leave, get to the next place." She tightened her grip on his face."But there is no next place, son. Not for you. You'll always be right here," she patted her belly, "right here."
She smiled and turned away.
"Though you may have to share." she said and Sephiroth blinked.
"What?" she smiled with her teeth.
"You have another sibling coming, and you know...there's something about this one that...reminds me especially of you." She said, blowing out another stream of smoke, and holding the other hand to her belly.
Sephiroth thought to snatch the cigarette from his mother's mouth, but thought better of it. Did there need to be another child like him, like his brothers? Even Loz, who was uncharacteristically optimistic for what their family was, was growing more silent. Yazoo had never had much to say.
Sephiroth turned and left, took a long drag of air as he descended the steps. He could never seem to get enough air. But on the way home, he couldn't help but think of the flowergirl he'd left at the side of the road. He thought he might get his car, but he couldn't bring himself to sit inside it, to be confined for the time it would take to get there.
But on the unlikely chance she was still there, what was he to do? Call her a cab and walk home in the dark? Ridiculous. Seated in his car some minutes later, he considered it. Drove out onto the curvy interstate.
When he finally drove onto the shoulder, he took a long breath. He hadn't realized he'd been holding it. She was still there, and if he were a better man, he knew he might have felt more sorry for it. He got out of the car, put a trembling hand on the sleek roof.
"I guess they just forgot." she said softly, traffic throwing her hair into her face, yellow lights into her eyes. She was holding a bouquet of flowers. Sephiroth couldn't think anything but how dumb she must be, waiting outside her car for help nearing ten o clock at night. Or trusting that people were good and decent.
"Get in the car." he said, and he was a little shocked to find that she did, almost immediately. He could be a serial murderer. Or worse, a soldier who'd killed countless women and children without a thought. He shut his eyes. She would be so easy too. She was frail, young.
The space in the car was even less when she was in it, and unfairly, he resented her. He rolled down all the windows.
"I'll have to call for help in the morning." she paused. "My mother gave me that car." she said finally, and then, he didn't know why, she seemed older.
"You think she would have thought to give you something sturdier." he said, and she frowned.
"We didn't have a lot of money." she said, and Sephiroth knew she was also implying that he couldn't understand, driving a car like he did.
They went on for a while in silence.
"My name is Aeris." she said suddenly.
"I didn't ask." he said, and she seemed to deflate a bit.
"Well, I...wanted to tell you anyway. You seem different." she said out of her open window.
"How would you know?" He said, instead of telling her that it was obvious he was different, at least on the outside. His mother's family line had never been the subject of conversation. Had never been a welcome subject of conversation. Because when he was young, he'd asked. But this girl sitting in his car, Aeris, he somehow knew she didn't mean his looks.
"Because I'm different too." she smiled, "I've been different all my life."
"Wonderful." he said, a bit unsettled.
"No," she said, turning to look at him, "it's...kind of lonely."
Sephiroth blinked, looked at her, but she was looking out of the window.
"I saw you in the grocery earlier." he said to extinguish the last thought. She nodded.
"I saw you too." she said, and then they did catch each other's eye. "That was my boyfriend, or... he used to be. But I never see him, he works all the time."
"He was Wutain." Sephiroth said, and Aeris stared at him.
"Does that matter?" she asked, and he knew he must've sounded judgmental, perhaps racist. He thought about Da Chao, all the sweat, blood. Wutain summers were the worst he had ever endured.
"No, it doesn't."
"I'm moving out." she said, voice thick. "And you know, I thought about it for a long time, but now that I'm actually-" she stopped, bit her lip. "I'll miss him." she said, gathering herself back together.
"Is there someone special at home waiting for you?" she asked, and he barely heard her. He thought, Masamune. He hadn't touched it all day, and now his fingers were itching. He had never made love, but imagined his sword in his hand must be what it felt like. The tearing of tendon, of skin, the slickness of sliding all the way through...he missed all those things. Wished he didn't. What kind of man must he be?
When he didn't answer, she looked back out of the window. He heard her stomach growl. From the corner of his eye he saw her cast him a self conscious look.
"Where do you live?" he asked, and after she told him, he drove on. It was only when he settled in the drive thru line that he realized he had been heading there.
"What do you want." he said quietly, not looking at her. But he felt her looking at him.
"I...you don't have to..."
"Obviously. Yet I am." He said, uncomfortable. He watched her look at the menu as if she had never seen one before. Surely there were places like these in the slums.
"Can I...I'd like a sandwich, and a milkshake, strawberry." she said, still as if he would take the offer back.
"And a water please." Sephiroth said, feeling as if he were choking now. He needed fresh air, he should never have taken the car, should never have stopped it, he needed to get out of the car.
After she got her food, he parked the car and went inside the place to vomit. He rinsed his mouth out with his water. Outside of his stall, someone turned on the hand drier, and the noise was so sudden it froze him, and for a few moments he couldn't move his legs.
When he went out to his car, she had already finished her sandwich, and was nearly finished with the milkshake. She smiled at him as he settled back into the driver's seat.
When they were back on their way, she started to nod, head bent forward into the shadow of his car. She muttered something, and he turned.
"What?" he asked, and she seemed to awake immediately. She opened her bag and took out a bottle of vitamins, took one.
"I'm sorry," she said. "If I said something, I didn't mean to." He thought it was odd, but didn't question.
When he stopped at her building, she didn't immediately get out. He killed the engine.
"I just wanted to say..." her eyelids fluttered as if she might seize, but she regained herself, curiously moved her hands to her ears. With her hands on her ears, she asked him if he would come to church with her. "Tomorrow?" she asked, and Sephiroth's first reaction was to laugh.
He did. She blinked.
"Have you even given it a chance?" He looked away.
"I don't believe in God." he dismissed. "Those who need him only need hope, power where they are powerless, a convenient framework to control, find rationalization. I need none of those." He didn't need anything.
"But have you given it a chance?" she asked, and he was surprised to find her question totally lacking judgment.
"I don't want to talk about this anymore." he said roughly, and she put her hands in her lap, bowed her head. She raised her head, as if to implore again. But he had effectively shut her out, and she clearly didn't know how, knew now that his anger was never that far away.
They all eventually found it out.
She took her flowers and her rumpled fast food bag. He watched her step up onto the sidewalk, thought he might stay until she went inside, though whether she made it inside safely or not didn't particularly matter. She started to walk away, but stopped, turned and leaned down to his open window, hair falling forward over her shoulders.
Her hair smelled like the fumes of her broken down car, like the milkshake, like the inside of his expensive black car he hated being in. He waited for her to say something, was a bit uncomfortable with her face so close.
"But if you change your mind..." she started, looking into his eyes, "it's in sector five, the church. Bring someone if you want." she said, looking back to reach into her bouquet. She brought out a black carnation and gave it to him. "And I want you to take this." He took it and then she stepped back, turned to go to her apartment.
He drove off after she was inside. He thought she was a little presumptuous, but she seemed harmless, and for some reason terribly alone. He went home and stood in the middle of his blissfully wide, and empty apartment. He stood there for a while before he went through a few forms halfheartedly, mindlessly.
He found his sword and held it in his hand for while, felt curiously as if nothing had transpired in the whole 24 hours, that after war there was nothing. Nothing for him.
He listened to his messages, and there were some from his mother, and one from Loz. He listened that one a few times, realized that the second oldest had grown up so much in the time he'd been away, begun to realize the world beyond their home.
"Brother, I have to get out. Please." Sephiroth was shocked to find it spoken evenly, no tears. He was always the most emotional out of all of them. Sephiroth sometimes wondered where he'd gotten it from, since it certainly wasn't hereditary. He didn't understand him, had been a little jealous once.
And Yazoo, the youngest. He probably didn't care either way. Sephiroth couldn't remember five words he'd ever spoken. He was just as quiet when he was born, and they had thought him dead.
There was also a voicemail from Genesis, and he thought about deleting it before listening. The man had become a bit odd and frivolous after the war, and Sephiroth didn't look forward to spending time with him as much as he used to. But he listened to the message anyway, and deleted it after.
Before he went to bed, he took the carnation into his hand. He wondered why she would give him such a beaten, dismal funeral flower. He took no satisfaction in crushing it in his fist, but he did it anyway. Went to bed with the lights on and his sword at his side, like he did every night.
Author's Note: So, I'm really nervous to put this out, because this is AU (kind of), which is not something I've tried or been really open to before. And I know a lot of our love for these characters lies within the normal FF Universe. Or maybe I'll just speak for myself. However, I do feel as if places I might want to stretch out a bit I should hurry over, because this universe is unfamiliar, with the exceptions of the characters, who I hope to keep basically themselves. Anywho, this struck me some months ago, and I've been battling with just sitting down, and getting it out. Also, this was gonna be a loooong oneshot, but for all the plans I had for it, I thought it better to break it up. Still, chapterwise, I expect it to be short. Oh, and it's named four o clock after the 'four o clock' flower that typically opens at night. I hope you enjoyed it!