A/N: I've always known that insanity is basically a process. It doesn't just happen, but is something that is progressive. Sephiroth always struck me as someone barely tethered to control, someone with secrets. His lovely arrogance and self-confidence always made me believe that his craziness started long before he learned about 'mother'. Anyone who is that sure of themself...they usually have something to hide.

This will be a few chapters, if I ever get around to writing it...haha. We'll see.

The lights were off in the upper part of the building, for once. The absence of light was calming on the man who was laying on the cold, black marble of the kitchenette of his apartment.

His eyes were closed, silver hair was splayed out like a silken blanket over the stone, and the leather coat lay forgotten a few feet away, an ebony lump on the too-white carpet.

Caught in a black hole of absolute nothingness, a world where beliefs and feelings had no hold—that was what it was. Just his mind, placid, disgusting calm as it grasped onto thoughts that poisoned and promised permanent release in distant, dark whispers.

To say that he was stable...it would not be the truth. He had long ceased to worry over whether or not it was sanity or insanity. Whichever it was, it did not matter, as either was simply a matter of opinion.

Death. It was always the lifeblood of someone else, never his own. Perhaps that was why his lips were curled into a harsh, upturned line.

The puddle near the right side of his head was growing steadily larger, tarnishing polished stone and staining errant, soft strands of shimmering silver hair.

There was a constant burning from the wounds slashed haphazardly across white wrists. Twenty or so to each arm, all stinging in warning as they seeped onto the floor.

The formerly porcelain chest was covered in scratches, and the occasional deeper mark, which had come from deft white fingers pulling the smaller wounds into larger ones, tearing flesh until it gaped apart like grotesque smiling mouths.

The coolness of the marble gave aid to the sword slashes across his back, and the pressure of his weight and the mako in his system had long stanched their profuse bleeding. It was his forearms that were the mess, but the mako would eventually put an end to that as well.

It wouldn't work, it never worked. That was probably why the grin had turned bitter and silver brows knitted, while white teeth clenched in hatred.

This was what he had become? This was the great General Sephiroth?

He felt at peace only when he killed. It had taken years for him to accept it, to embrace the monstrous urges that plagued him.

But that was not the reason he was lying in his own blood with only thoughts of death.

Green eyes stared at the sloped ceiling, dry, without tears.

This world, this place...it was nothing. It meant nothing. Even worse, he was nothing. He defended a place he did not care about, he fought for causes he did not himself believe in... Each time he was sent on a mission there was always a silent question in his mind as to whether or not he would ever return. But he would not run, he refused to run.

What was suicide? The dark part whispered, taunting, evil.

Running. But what did it matter? He knew it would not work. He would have to stab himself for it to work.

It was being on the edge that brought clarity. It was always after self-mutilation that he was able to clear his mind and begin again, becoming the so-called hero he was expected to be. He always went to the floor a child in mourning and rose from it as a reborn, brooding General Sephiroth.

It was an image, the hero, nothing more. He cared for nothing, for no one.

For years he had not believed himself so cold, so...inhuman. He was different, but inhuman?

He had thought that he could care, that he could have at least some of the aspects of existence that others had. Friendship for one.

His eyes squinched shut at the thought.

Zack Fair was out looking for Angeal and Genesis, likely at that very moment.

And here he was, coated in red in his apartment, with all of the lights off.

He hated himself, at first. The feelings, they seemed foreign—not his own. He had ignored them, kept them buried under arrogance and surety. He built up around the broken child from the labs, but he could not destroy that child, could not murder the mind that had decayed under the treatment...

He was never normal. But it was not until Angeal and Genesis (and Zack Fair, he thought grimly) that a part of him understood that the monster in him, that decayed child, had taken over every feeling he would ever feel. It would always be there.

Sephiroth used to care. Used to feel. Not much after years of slaughter, but enough that friendship was possible. He had concerned himself over Angeal and Genesis, even Fair, from time to time. But it was passed... The child in him had only tolerated it for so long.

It was when he realized his own stupidity that everything had fallen away. The few shards of sanity had been chipped away and lost, leaving the broken mirror.

He was a pawn of Shinra, nothing but a weapon. He served them, their needs, their wishes, their beliefs. He had always known that was the way of things, but he had never stopped to consider if it was what he wanted. It was as though a part of himself had tried to quell all such thoughts, but they had finally risen to the surface, revealed.

He had not accepted the mission to retrieve Angeal and Genesis. The truth was, he did not trust himself to do it. Whatever attachment he had felt for them...it was fading away more quickly than he was able to repair it. At times he felt as if he could bring his blade down upon anyone...indiscriminately.

The thought was terrible, at first. But the nothingness had permeated every part of his being, rendering him hollow, cold. He could not bring himself to care that he had lost his humanity, in fact he wasn't even sure if he believed in the idea of humanity. What did such things matter to him? He knew that it did not. Instinct told him so.

But the fact that part of him remembered, that was what was killing him. He did care, once. His best friends were likely going to die, yet he couldn't coax any feeling out of himself. It should have been wrong, sick, even, but for some reason it wasn't, even when he knew it should be.

Trying to give blood for Genesis, for some reason, that had been a turning point. Unaccepted. Incompatible. Their friendship had long been formed in competition, but over the past months it had become like enemy against enemy, rather than the fun of sport between two friends. Sephiroth knew Genesis hated him, was infuriated over his fame, the treatment and infatuation of the public over this image that Shinra had created to inspire youths to join SOLDIER. Sephiroth had understood Genesis's jealousy over time, but it had become too bitter recently. Genesis was disappearing, day by day. And it was not just the degradation.

If only Genesis knew what being a hero entailed... If only he knew what came along with being a weapon without reason... A lie.

Secretly, Sephiroth believed that the mental change in him was similar to the one Genesis was going through. They were both becoming cold, tainted by the outside world. They both seemed unconcerned about whether or not they harmed each other, or if the friendship remained intact. Genesis was lost to him.

And Angeal...so damned heroic. Sephiroth knew the man would end honorably, no matter what the circumstance, yet the feelings of comradery had faded on his own part. It would be Angeal that was wronged by his own numbness, if anyone.

There was nothing that could be done. He would try to bring the feelings back, but he knew that it was a lost cause; there was nearly nothing left.

The pale form sighed, green eyes unblinking.

The bleeding had finally stopped.