Not Out of Kindness
by the infamous and notorious tocasia
Characters: Sephiroth
Rating: T
Warnings/Tags: Sephiroth, Lifestream, no regrets, ran out of ideas for tags already
OGC only
Sephiroth could learn anything he ever wanted to know, if he could only discover how to ask. Sephiroth in the Lifestream after Nibelheim.
Written on 5/2/2017.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of this stuff except the bits I made up and I make no profit from this work.
So this was the Lifestream. He hadn't believed in it.
Nibelheim had been a mistake. It must have been, since he'd been defeated.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. That was never good reasoning.
Most people, civilians, would only consider violence as a last resort. They needed a good reason for it. The SOLDIER training program changed that in its applicants. They needed to be able to dehumanize the enemy, to kill to survive. Sephiroth supposed it was similar for doctors and scientists. They needed to set their own emotions aside to avoid distraction; they didn't have time to think of patients or specimens as living things that might feel pain. And then, of course, there were those who planned wars and carried them out, those for whom violence was the first resort so that it would be the only one necessary. Sephiroth needed a good reason not to kill.
That was why he tried to keep his distance. People could be so irritating. He remembered being overcome with relief when he'd discovered that they were all his enemies. He wouldn't have to hold back anymore.
Maybe he'd had bad intel from the library. That was certainly one way for a mission to fail. He should have known better than to trust in only one source, that wasn't good science. He'd let his emotions get the better of him, due to stress, lack of sleep, any number of excuses. Had he been manipulated by Jenova? No. He'd always been in charge of his own actions. What was one little town in the grand scheme of things? Who would have missed it?
Apparently, someone did, and they'd killed him. That had been very surprising. Sephiroth hadn't seen his attacker's face. Now he wondered who it was. Who had dared? He would find out.
People died every day of disease, in accidents, in natural disasters, and of course, some from violence. But the sheer magnitude of the ebb and flow of souls around him was something he hadn't considered. The Lifestream was magnificent. It carried the memories of all who had ever lived on the Planet, the knowledge of the Ancients. It was vast. Sephiroth could learn anything he ever wanted to know, if he could only discover how to ask. He watched for what must have been a long time.
Eventually, he found that he could distinguish an individual soul from the millions around it. Most souls moved very quickly, riding the current to their promised afterlife or rebirth. Some lingered, burning more intensely, before they faded and joined the others. Why was that?
Sephiroth noticed one of the brighter souls. He focused on it intently, trying to understand what was different. Here was emotion where he'd felt none before. A sense of self. This was a person still, not just an inert collection of spirit energy. A woman. She was lonely, waiting...
The green of the Lifestream swirled away and he stood on gray, dingy pavement beneath a flickering street lamp. There was a whistle signaling the train's approach, and then the sound of the brakes on the rails as it came to a stop at the station. Everything was slightly transparent, except the woman next to him who was watching as the passengers filed out one or two at a time. She looked hopeful, and then disappointed, and finally, resigned. The person she'd been waiting for never came.
He'd heard this sort of thing happened a lot during the war. He hadn't cared. But it was an opportunity to gather information. Sephiroth decided that threatening the already-dead with violence would probably get him nowhere. This called for a different approach.
She was turning to leave when Sephiroth spoke to her gently. "Wait, don't go."
She turned back to him, startled.
"I didn't mean to frighten you. It's just... you seem so sad. I've been waiting for someone, too. They haven't come home..."
The sadness was still there on her face, but she didn't look quite so alone.
"I've been waiting for a long time. I try not to give up hope. But it's hard."
She nodded in agreement.
"Who do you wait for? I hope they come back, someday."
She didn't speak. He simply received a mental image of the person she was waiting for. A young man of medium height, with dark hair and brown eyes. They were on a balcony, looking out over the sea as the wind carried the sound of the waves to them. They were holding hands. And then another image, the same man but wearing different clothes, apologizing, saying he had to leave on assignment but would come back to her, carrying his camera case and rolling his luggage behind him. He was a reporter, a brave man who had gone to the front to show the world the truth of the war. And he never came back.
"I'm sorry." He said, wondering at his sincerity.
He felt her query more than heard it. Who did he wait for? Sephiroth thought fast.
"I'm waiting... for my friend. He was SOLDIER First Class. He had spiky black hair and was a lot of fun to be around. He told the best stories. We used to train together. I received word that he was finally coming home and I was happy I'd be able to see him again, but..."
Her sympathy hurt him, even though he knew he could probably ask her something else now. What did he want to ask? He didn't know.
"I'm glad I got to talk to you. Thank you." he said instead, and pulled away from the dream.
He granted wishes to ghosts. Sometimes they wanted someone to know how they'd died, or they wanted to talk, or they wanted revenge. Sephiroth grew accustomed to watching their memories and giving them the answers they wanted, even when he had to make those up. It wasn't out of kindness. After a while, he'd seen enough that sometimes he could give them the truth. He learned much more from seeing the memories than he ever could have thought to ask about. But he never found out who had killed him in Nibelheim.
There were lots of ghosts that had been in the army. They'd died from old wounds or been killed by monsters while on duty. Most of them recognized him and looked upon him with adoration. Sephiroth loved that. They'd tell him anything he asked, sometimes he got full debriefings. And so he knew how much time passed in the outside world.
There were also those who recognized him with hatred... from Wutai, or from somewhere else he couldn't place. He'd made many enemies, after all. They usually attacked him. The first time, he'd been so surprised that he'd retaliated without thinking. He found out that ghosts could die. He was more careful after that, and learned how to appear as some other person when he looked into the dreams.
Sephiroth now knew about his real parents. That made some of what he'd said about Hojo pretty funny. Lucrecia had been brilliant, fearless, and ambitious. It was a great injustice that he'd never met her. There were other things, too. His own memories of his childhood did not match the truth. He'd looked up to Professor Gast only to learn that he was not the kind person he'd pretended to be, nor even a great scientist. Gast had simply assumed that Jenova was an Ancient on very little data, and Sephiroth was the product of that mistake. That made his little speech before he'd failed at Nibelheim even more embarrassing.
He searched out older spirits. The past had been very interesting indeed. But he could only go back so far before there was no one left who remembered. Was that because even the most strong-willed souls eventually forgot and returned to the Planet? Or was it something else?
No, he already knew that. He himself had said something once...
...the knowledge and wisdom of the Ancients is held in the materia.
Materia. When you condense Mako energy, materia is produced.
...That's why the Mako Reactor was built here.
And then, what was her name? Tifa...? "If the Mako Reactor continues to suck up the energy, this fountain will dry up too..."
So. Mako energy was pulled from the Lifestream. Shinra had been stupid. This could not be allowed to continue. Sephiroth would put a stop to it, if only out of self-preservation.
There was just one problem. He was stuck in the Lifestream, with no body, no way to affect the outside world that he couldn't even see. He'd thought he had plenty of time, before. Someone with his strength of will wouldn't forget his identity or be swept away in the tide. But would his consciousness survive if his part of the Lifestream was drawn into a reactor? He didn't know.
He started to watch the Lifestream more carefully, looking for a way out. He could see where the main flow swirled back on itself and where parts branched off, diverted up to the surface of the Planet. The reactors siphoned up so much energy that it was easy to spot them. He identified Midgar first, with its eight reactors. From there he could recognize the underwater reactor at Junon, and the one atop Fort Condor. Finally! He knew where he was in relation to the outside world.
He saw places with high Mako density where reactors hadn't been built yet, and places where smaller tendrils would probably produce natural Mako fountains and mysteriously colored caves. Occasionally the Lifestream boiled up to the surface violently with incredible intensity. Sephiroth knew of two locations like that: Mideel, on a southern island, renowned for its healing springs; and the huge crater in the north, surrounded by glaciers, that had probably been created after some kind of impact. Mideel was too populated, and Shinra had been pressuring them to allow construction of a reactor there for years. Mideel wasn't safe. But almost no one lived in the frozen north, which meant there was little profit to be made; Shinra had no real incentive to build there. He'd go to the crater.
Sephiroth knew he was taking a great risk when he allowed the Lifestream to carry him to where it was condensing into natural materia at the bottom of the Northern Cave. He wasn't afraid of death anymore, but nonexistence was something he wanted to avoid. Everything went dark.
...and then...
He opened his actual eyes and the world wasn't entirely green. He'd done it. He was free.
Well, almost. He was still imprisoned in the materia. And he couldn't see into the Lifestream anymore, so he'd have to make do with the knowledge he'd already gathered. But there was... something else that he could sense. Something very familiar, so much so that it was a part of his very being. Jenova.
He called out to it like he had in Nibelheim, even though he knew now it wasn't true.
Mother...
Jenova answered his call. From all over the world. It got better. Not only could he sense those with Jenova's cells, he could see their thoughts and the world through their eyes. He could control them. And there were so many! He'd have to thank Hojo later.
It was good to give orders again.
It was good to kill again.