A/N: The first of a collection of short fics based on song (or movie) titles. Although most will tend toward darkness or introspection, I plan to include some humorous fics (dare I say crack?) as well. This one, though, is dark.
DISCLAIMER: All characters and the world they inhabit belong to S/E. Chapter title belongs to Neil Jordan. Words belong to me.
No light. No dark. No sound. No sense of place or time.
Nothingness. Then, slowly... awareness.
It's dark where he is right now.
It's always dark at first. Dark and silent. Not cold, though. No temperature at all, really. Not hot, not cold. But not nothingness anymore either. Something is there. He starts to see it, after a while. As if his eyes have accustomed to the dark, there is an infinitesimally gradual brightening. No, that's the wrong word. Not brightening. Brightening implies a lifting of darkness, of spirit. This is not that. It is a dull orangey glow coming from no particular place, a glow that gives no warmth or welcoming feeling. If anything, it is more oppressive than the darkness.
Later there is a flickering to it, but at first he only catches it out of the corners of his eyes. A slight wavering of intensity, a shifting of shadows. Right about when the flickering starts, he can hear a faint whispery hiss as well. Sounds like...the wind? The trembling intake of a breath? Just like the light, it's more of an implied shift in the air than anything he can pin down.
But that's just at first.
Slowly, the flickering shadows turn into the outlines of buildings, houses that line narrow cobbled streets. The windows, or what shattered, fang-like shards are left of them, reflect back the molten glow into deserted streets. The light does not originate here, though; rather the street is backlit by it. The fires, for that is what they must be, are further away. The same distance away that the sound comes from. It, too, is more distinct now. The distant rush and crackle of flames combines with faint voices, shouting, crying, (begging?), to produce a muffled whickering sound that rises and falls along with the flickers of light.
These streets, the buildings, are familiar even in their destruction. He has been in this place before. It's nowhere in the city, not in Midgar, it's far too simple and rustic for that. And towering over the streets of the town, peaks.
The mountains.
This place, or what is left of it, is, was...
Neibelheim?
The instant the word forms in his mind, a rocketing sense of horror and loss, of disbelief, arcs through his unconsciousness and without warning there is nothing solid beneath his feet and he is falling, he is plunging endlessly downward into a black, pitiless void that is swallowing up everything that he is. He is falling, even while he is walking. Walking unharmed through streets of fire that he cannot feel, with only the dead to note his passing.
Emerald green eyes fly open to dappled sunlight. Sounds of a wakening Midgar whisper in through the bedroom window, open to the outside air. Morning. He stirs, looks around. Everything is as it should be. It's only at the very edges of his vision that there is still a faint flickering quality to the light, which he ignores. It will fade. It always does.
The general rises from his bed, pushes silver hair from his eyes with trembling fingers, and calls for his breakfast.
A/N: Did Sephiroth have any clue at all of what the future held for him? In this little screen-capture, the perfect Soldier receives a small gift from one of his mothers...a vision.