Xel's notes: This was originally part of an application for a Final Fantasy MUCK, but I liked it a lot, so I converted it into a fic. It's rather open-ended, because I wasn't sure whether to add a more concrete ending or to leave it as is... Tell me what you think! ^_^;; Enjoy!
Spectre
Things, undoubtedly, have looked better. Shinra is dead in every aspect, and he... he is too, is he not? How amusing it is that he could possibly forget this rather important factor in his life... Or lack thereof. And yet, he stands in this dark, desolate land that now houses the ruins of the mighty Midgar, city of opportunity, city of equal poverty, city where no one gave a damn, and feels a cold wind against his cheek. His glasses are gone.
He is alive? And, the term used loosely, normal? It should, within every parameter of logic in his mind, leave him overjoyed or at the very least, dumbfounded. In the midst of the wreckage, adjacent to the warm, green crater from which he came, he thinks he sees one of his old specimens. Part of it, anyway.
He can't stop laughing.
With a sudden lurch of his stomach, he suddenly finds himself falling onto his hands and knees, an abrupt regurgitation of bright green liquid spilling onto the blackened ground below him. Liquid Mako. It had been his final effort to aid his experiment. No. To aid Sephiroth. His son.
...Love is such a strange thing. It defies logic. He had tried to abandon it, and for the most part, he had succeeded. However, looking back, he understands that it may have been love, not the supposed ardent need to prove his theories, that influenced the events that led to his inevitable downfall.
Such deep thoughts for one who is still heaving copious amounts of glowing chemicals upon the broken, wire-laden ground, he muses...
It continues to nag at the back of his mind. Death. He have looked it in the face and yet, here he stands. He remembers it clearly now. The endless emerald abyss of the Lifestream surrounding him, begging to be transformed and used for experiment upon experiment, he was alone, yet in the undeniable presence of others.
He thought he saw her face. Smiling. He was held in her arms for a painfully short-lived moment, and for the first time in over thirty years, he felt like he might be human again. And yet, as he attempts to relive it, her visage fuses with another in his blurry memory, distorted beyond all hope of recovery.
As he stumbles to the nearest source of murky water, he must pause in purging the acrid taste of processed souls from his mouth to reel around, sensing... Her. The images of holy mother and the fragile, contained source of his madness both freed in his imagination, he cannot distinguish which one he beholds. She appears to both walk and hover toward him, extending her gray hand. Then She is gone.
He sits for hours, eyes blank and voidlike, staring at the empty space before him. Finally, as the sun begins to set, he rises and runs with the same need for sanctuary as a criminal pursued toward the exposed Lifestream, desperation and the longing for the peace felt in death overriding the undeniable presence of -something- around him...
...Until he stops, collapsing before the lesion in the ground, Lifestream mysteriously concentrated into a solid mass, barring reentry.
With a choked sound of anguish, his hands clench in the hard earth, a deeper truth than annihilation ringing in his ears.
"...this Planet's vengeance falls upon your head..."
fin
Spectre
Things, undoubtedly, have looked better. Shinra is dead in every aspect, and he... he is too, is he not? How amusing it is that he could possibly forget this rather important factor in his life... Or lack thereof. And yet, he stands in this dark, desolate land that now houses the ruins of the mighty Midgar, city of opportunity, city of equal poverty, city where no one gave a damn, and feels a cold wind against his cheek. His glasses are gone.
He is alive? And, the term used loosely, normal? It should, within every parameter of logic in his mind, leave him overjoyed or at the very least, dumbfounded. In the midst of the wreckage, adjacent to the warm, green crater from which he came, he thinks he sees one of his old specimens. Part of it, anyway.
He can't stop laughing.
With a sudden lurch of his stomach, he suddenly finds himself falling onto his hands and knees, an abrupt regurgitation of bright green liquid spilling onto the blackened ground below him. Liquid Mako. It had been his final effort to aid his experiment. No. To aid Sephiroth. His son.
...Love is such a strange thing. It defies logic. He had tried to abandon it, and for the most part, he had succeeded. However, looking back, he understands that it may have been love, not the supposed ardent need to prove his theories, that influenced the events that led to his inevitable downfall.
Such deep thoughts for one who is still heaving copious amounts of glowing chemicals upon the broken, wire-laden ground, he muses...
It continues to nag at the back of his mind. Death. He have looked it in the face and yet, here he stands. He remembers it clearly now. The endless emerald abyss of the Lifestream surrounding him, begging to be transformed and used for experiment upon experiment, he was alone, yet in the undeniable presence of others.
He thought he saw her face. Smiling. He was held in her arms for a painfully short-lived moment, and for the first time in over thirty years, he felt like he might be human again. And yet, as he attempts to relive it, her visage fuses with another in his blurry memory, distorted beyond all hope of recovery.
As he stumbles to the nearest source of murky water, he must pause in purging the acrid taste of processed souls from his mouth to reel around, sensing... Her. The images of holy mother and the fragile, contained source of his madness both freed in his imagination, he cannot distinguish which one he beholds. She appears to both walk and hover toward him, extending her gray hand. Then She is gone.
He sits for hours, eyes blank and voidlike, staring at the empty space before him. Finally, as the sun begins to set, he rises and runs with the same need for sanctuary as a criminal pursued toward the exposed Lifestream, desperation and the longing for the peace felt in death overriding the undeniable presence of -something- around him...
...Until he stops, collapsing before the lesion in the ground, Lifestream mysteriously concentrated into a solid mass, barring reentry.
With a choked sound of anguish, his hands clench in the hard earth, a deeper truth than annihilation ringing in his ears.
"...this Planet's vengeance falls upon your head..."
fin