Running Blind
Disclaimer: This is an exercise of fiction set in the Final Fantasy VII world created by Square-Enix, using character also created by them with no intention for selling or creating a profit. I am just a fan with an idea in mind that I just so happen want to share it with other people.
What if Sephiroth was warned before events made Genesis leave? What if he was given a chance to avoid his purpose and choose a different path? What if it happened differently? --An exercise of what ifs stuck inside a blender and mixed up with time travel, Crisis Core and going beyond what you thought you were made for...
"Well?"
"Why should I believe you?"
"Do you really want to know?"
"Yes."
"Maybe. . . I don't feel like telling you."
"Then we're at an impass."
"But you'll die if you don't go back."
"Would that be so terrible? After all, you've just got done explaining to me what will happen."
"Oh, don't you start! You need to stop it from happening at all!"
"Oh?"
"YES!"
"I suppose you will keep hounding me about it until I do so."
"That's right."
"Hm, I cannot understand your logic. If I die, this future would never happen, correct?"
"If you die now, the future would become worse."
"I find that hard to believe."
"Do you really think he would stop if his prize dies?"
". . ."
"Do you?"
"You're not as sweet as you pretend to be."
Only if you don't behave for me!"
". . . Fine."
"That's great! Now, just look down. . ."
"And what am I suppose to look down at?"
"Oh nothing~"
"Wha-?"
"Have a nice trip!"
The sharp jolt woke him up. Thin artificial light snaked under his eyelids, the scent of disinfectants, old blood, and fear reached his nose, and for some reason the left side of his head felt as if he had lost that part of his skull. Fingers and toes still jerking, he cracked open an eye and saw the not-so-reassuring glimpse of an IV bag hanging over his head. The air in his lungs whooshed out and he coughed, trying to still the aftershocks in his limbs. He didn't have time to think about what had just happen, not as alarms blared and the room sprouted several people in white coats. Someone jabbed a needle into the IV bag and the lights and noise faded into the background, though he thought he heard a laugh a happy, flirty girl laugh next to his ear right before he passed out.
Waking up for a second time was like clawing through layers of candy floss. He cracked his eyes open, felt the lids drag down and cracked them open again hours later. It went on for a few days or maybe a few years until he was conscious again. The ceiling looked the same, though half the lights were out, and the IV bag was replaced with another machine, readings flickering across the screen in a manner that left him feeling sea-sick. He blinked, eyelids like sand paper, and heard something beep. The air stirred and another scent filled the room, this one oily and spiced and rotten. He turned his head.
"Well, boy?"
His eyes narrowed as a name drifted into his memory and slipped past his lips. "Hojo."
The name also stirred the mess of his mind together as well, images lining up in their proper order, gleaming like they were ready for inspection. Ignoring his throbbing head and the sudden appearance of a penlight shining in one eye, Sephiroth scowled at the taste in his mouth and the barely there rasp his voice had become. After minutes of torment with the penlight, Hojo tsked lightly and pulled out a throat-coating lollipop and handed it over to him.
"Can you tell me why you decided on catching three feet of metal with your skull?" the scientist asked as he took out a notepad and pen from his lab coat.
Sephiroth scowled, accepted the lollipop and shoved it in his mouth. That memory came to him as the candy clicked against sharp teeth, and he decided to shrug instead of actually answer. Not that he could answer with his throat feeling like he just tried eating metal shavings and drink battery acid. He wondered if he had a tube shoved down his throat. It wouldn't have been the first time, but he really disliked the after effects.
Out came a scope and Hojo fitted an ear piece to it, grabbed one ear and looked into the scope. He repeated the process on the other side and scribbled a few notes in his notepad. Sephiroth amused himself in trying to decipher what Hojo was trying to write, the candy crunching between his teeth. The scientist looked up at the sound, frowned and took out another lollipop.
"You are supposed to suck them," he said, shoving the green lollipop at Sephiroth.
"'M hungry," Sephiroth replied, already switching the used stick with the fresh treat. Hojo sighed and wrote a few more things into his notepad before shutting it closed.
"I'll have them bring you something to eat " he held up a finger before Sephiroth could list what he wanted "- liquid until your stomach can handle it. And don't charm the staff for anything else."
"Spoilsport," he muttered around the lollipop.
Hojo sighed, leaning close to Sephiroth. "You were unconscious for three weeks, boy. A normal man would have been dead, so try a little bit of patience this time, hm?"
Frowning, Sephiroth muttered around his lollipop, the words lost, but having studied the General for so long, Hojo obviously got the gist of it. He sighed, straightened and shook his head. "I can still revoke your clearance, so don't be a fool."
Sephiroth grimaced. Nodding, the doctor turned around and went out the door, Sephiroth glaring at the stooped shoulders and tail of dark hair until the doctor was out of sight. Then flopping back against the hard hospital mattress, he gnawed at the lollipop while trying to figure out what had happen. His memories presented themselves in the landscape behind his eyelids, but nowhere in that collection did he see himself getting hit with a bunch of metal. Genesis had been the injured one and wait, did Hojo say three weeks?
Opening his eyes, Sephiroth struggled to his elbows, the candy crunching under his teeth. Three weeks. Genesis would have been gone by now, and Angeal would have sent his puppy to take care of things with that Turk, and that girl with the ancient green eyes was wrong completely wrong that he could stop this, stop everything and he was attached to the machine via a tube screwed into his skull and he needed to stop this. . .
"Are you that much in a hurry to drink this?"
Sephiroth turned his head. Genesis stood in the doorway holding a tray, his eyebrows raised in what Sephiroth felt was in a condescending manner. Gnawing on the dogend of his lollipop stick, Sephiroth looked for any sign of decay on the redhead. His piercing, narrow-eyed glare stopped the First in his tracks.
"Are you sore, Sephiroth? Did you expect the blade to bow to your glory?"
He looked away, snorting in contempt. He heard the squeak of the bedside table as it was put in position next to him and heard the clack of steel against steel as the tray was set down. The thin smell of a chicken boiled to the point of resembling water assaulted his nose. A plastic spork smacked him in the arm and fell down to poke him in his thigh.
"So you are. The Hero, brought down by a simple piece of metal."
He turned, grabbed Genesis by the collar and yanked him over the table, spilling soup and crackers everywhere. Sephiroth saw Mako-bright eyes widen, cruel lips parting, the smug features turning white. He pulled him closer still, close enough to see the pulse throbbing in the smaller man's neck and hear his strangled gasp. Then leaning as close as the tubing allowed, Sephiroth pressed his nose against Genesis' neck and inhaled.
Later, as Hojo reattached tubes and wires while muttering under his breath about the childishness of Hollander's creations, Sephiroth pressed an ice pack against his face and wondered if he was going insane. It would certainly explain why he felt like some girl was shaking her finger at him telling him to stop being such a ninny. It would also explain why Genesis smelt only of leather and apples instead of the rotting death he remembered.
And in the very edge of hearing, he thought he heard a woman calling him silly.
In his opinion, dreams should not involve flowers or blinding white light. They certainly should not involve a pretty girl wearing pink with eyes as green as a pool of natural Mako and just as deep. For a moment, he was certain that those eyes were not eyes at all, but the whole of the Lifestream, but then the eyes were just that, and he shook his head to will away that disturbing image.
"I really don't like doing this," she said, looking frail, tiny and as about as threatening as a wet noodle. "But you really need to start paying attention."
"I don't know what you're talking about." Sephiroth tried sounding like his militant self, but the effect was ruined by standing in a field of flowers wearing only a pair of boxers. They were black, but certainly not as intimidating as his usual black leather uniform. He wasn't sure why he was standing in just his boxers, but he had a feeling that whatever Hojo dosed him with this time was at the bottom of it.
She looked at him, raising an eyebrow, and despite never having a mother Sephiroth felt like he was three years old waiting for a scolding. "The events that you remember haven't happened yet," she said, one dainty foot tapping at the ground. "Remember? I told you that you were being sent back during the moment the two of you fought?"
". . .Maybe?"
"Well, you were. And in that time and place, you took the blow that would have injured him."
"How generous of me."
She smacked him in the arm and Sephiroth held back a wince. He actually felt that, surprisingly enough. He jerked his head back to prevent getting a finger up his nose.
"Now see here, this is for your benefit as well as his so you better start treating this as. . . as. . . "
"A serious thing?"
"Yes! Well, more than that, got it?"
Sephiroth relaxed slightly enough to pat her on the shoulder. "I'll try. This is not easy for me."
"If it was, you wouldn't have been chosen."
Blinking at that odd statement, Sephiroth opened his mouth and. . . He woke up. For a moment, he expected needles, or Hojo trying to get a bone marrow sample, or even an attack. Instead he was laying on that uncomfortable bed, listening to the distant squeak of a wheel that needed oil. He gave the ceiling a glare and then moved his arms cautiously, searching over his scalp and bare skin any signs of tubing or wires. Instead he found his skin feeling far too tight and his senses far too sensitive.
Mako transfusion, a part of his mind informed him. Sephiroth sighed and sat up, swinging his legs off the bed and looking down at what he could see with all that hair in his way. Idly he wondered why Hojo hadn't chopped his hair short even as he caught the odor of the scientist's cologne.
"How do you feel?"
"Bored."
The dreaded penlight was whipped out and Sephiroth sat through another round of getting blinded by the thing. The penlight was followed by a tonsil examination, his ears getting poked at, and nearly a pint of blood being drawn from various parts of his body. But when Hojo started talking about getting a bone sample, Sephiroth tossed the scratchy blanket over the doctor's head and headed for the way out. He didn't care that he was wearing only his boxers and that one of the aides was most likely in the Silver Elite fan club and was currently making notes. He wasn't going to stay there for another minute.
"Boy!"
He ignored Hojo's voice and rapped his knuckles against the reinforced doors leading out. He didn't have the code, but Sephiroth was quite sure he could rip the door down. It felt like it was only reinforced against military-grade C4 and tank artillery. He made a fist and drew his arm back.
"Sephiroth!"
Looking over his shoulder, he raised an eyebrow. Hojo hadn't used his full name since he was four and had just learnt that no matter how scared he was of the dark, he would never ever wet the bed. "What?"
"Knock down that door and you will be taken completely off-duty," the scientist said, adjusting his glasses.
Sephiroth frowned. "You wouldn't dare."
"I would," Hojo replied, clasping his hands behind his back. "As it is, you are expected to relax for the next week." He shook his head slowly. "I have no doubt you are at your normal capabilities, but the Director said it is standard. . . as if you are like any other SOLDIER. . . a perfect specimen and they. . ."
"They are putting me on light duty?" Sephiroth said scowling as Hojo started his usual ramblings.
"Only a technicality," Hojo said, waving a hand in the air. He peered at Sephiroth over the edge of his glasses and poked a bony finger at his back. "Why aren't you dressed, boy? Get some clothes on before you leave."
Sephiroth blinked. He looked down at himself. He thought for a moment about how outside the lab there were cameras everywhere. He heaved a sigh and turned on his heel, and followed Hojo into a locker room. His clothes were missing presumably washed and sent to his residence so he was forced to wear one of the flimsy scrubs usually left in the locker room for those days when specimens were examined. Thus clad, he went to chew out the Director.