Disclaimer: Square Enix owns every right, good for them.
This is the first chapter of my first ever fanfiction! It is completed, just need to translate the whole.
UPDATED: the wonderful Bjanik corrected the mistakes. Now that I have a beta (and a really good one, too!), I can upload better quality texts. There are some major changes in the first three chapters in the wording, but not in the storyline.
Enjoy!
1. Closed
It happened about half a year after the end of the Wutai War. Sephiroth was going towards the main laboratory of the Shin-Ra central building for his weekly regular examinations. There was no sign of emotion on his face but somebody who knew him well enough might have noticed the way the rhythm of his movement differed from normal- slightly tight, slightly stiff, a contrast to his usual smooth and fluid paces. Like someone who was forcing his limbs to move with great strain.
Not that he feared; he had refused that emotion years and years ago. Moreover as the youngest, most successful and by far the strongest General of the Shin-Ra army no one was allowed to experiment on him anymore, at least not to the degree that might make him unfit for combat in the event of an emergency. So there was nothing to fear, but even the passing of years wasn't enough to get over the repulsion the sight and smell of the laboratory evoked. To not count the minutes until he could finally leave. To not breathe deeply when he finally exited through the door.
He walked past a door closed off with bars where a new subject sat on the bed, remembering that last week that cell had been empty. He merely detected that there was somebody inside, some color before the white walls, but he didn't care who it might be as the lab was a revolving door of subjects who vanished almost as quickly as they arrived. If he wanted to retain the hard-won, relative peace he had now, he couldn't allow himself to care for the misfortune of the other test subjects.
A few hours later he was on his way out, and although he was restraining the urge to run, he still slowed for a second to look at the occupant of the cell. A young girl sat there. The mature, tranquil way she looked back at the man passing before her door seemed somewhat strange in her gleaming green eyes and open, kind face. Maybe she was even smiling, but Sephiroth didn't stop to confirm. He wanted to be out so he could put the laboratory out of his mind until the next visit.
Much to his surprise, the new girl was still there in the cell the next time, moreover without any visible change in her appearance or expression. Either they treated her with extraordinary care or she had unprecedented resistance to the conditions of the laboratory. Over time he found it increasingly singular that she remained unscathed both physically and mentally. She never failed to smile at him, though she couldn't have seen anything of him but a blur of black coat. He found himself always sparing a glance checking that she was still alright, and pondering what she did to keep herself sane, an experiment shut up closed in an empty room. He developed a kind of interest even though it evoked memories that unpleasantly started with 'when I was here...' There were things that, if possible, he would rather not remember.
This pattern was broken though one day, around a month after she had first appeared. Sephiroth heard a quiet singing voice on his way out. The corridor was uninhabited except that one cell and was rarely used save by him. It had to be the girl singing- some simple melody, words about the flight of birds and bloom of flowers and Sephiroth, although he had seen both bird and flower, had never heard a lullaby before. He stood, a little further off the door, and listened in silence. The female voice reminded him of something he couldn't exactly remember, a warm and sweet feeling that must have been a dream, or imagined from books as a child.
From that day forward he didn't hurry as much out of the laboratory and often caught the girl singing or telling stories to herself, tales in verse of how the Ancients had spun the threads of life into magic. Although he didn't understand every part of the tales, he stood week after week beside the cell, leaning against the wall and listening to the girl's melodic voice and imagining the luminous woods. He indulged in those unknown worlds the same as when he hadn't had any other way not to go mad with the waiting.
He stood just the same the day the girl told herself how the Ancients had stopped the disaster from the skies with the power of Holy. Her thoughts must have strayed as she stopped halfway through a line and didn't continue after long minutes.
"How was it after that?" Sephiroth surprised them both when he spoke, his deep voice nearly shaking the air of the silent corridor. The girl took a deep breath and finished the verse. From then on she told the stories somewhat directly to him, at times even talked to him in a strange, one-sided dialogue as Sephiroth never answered, just listened.
They continued this way until one day instead of singing he heard crying from the cell. He halted at his usual spot, where he could not be seen from inside the cell other than maybe only as a black shadow. His fists clenched at the thought of what they might have done to her. Sympathy for someone else's pain wasn't something he experienced frequently and never since Genesis and Angeal, but he could easily sympathize with how it was to be a test subject in Hojo's laboratory. Not that he could do anything about it.
He waited in silence until the loud sobs stilled to sniffling, then took out a handkerchief and offered it through the bars, still with his back turned to the cell. The girl noticed the movement, and took the handkerchief. She also turned, leaned against the bars on the other side and quietly cried for a while. Sephiroth waited patiently; he had always been good at waiting. He tried to remember how to comfort somebody crying, somebody whose crying also made him feel sad.
"Thank you," whispered the girl softly. Sephiroth didn't answer. They stood there for a long time, in silence, back to back, away from each other on either side of the wall.
"Did they experiment... hurt you?" He spoke finally, his voice unusually hesitating.
"No" she answered. "Not me. But I saw what they did." Her voice broke from the memory. Sephiroth found it strange that something that hadn't actually happened to her could agitate her so. Surely she hadn't seen much cruelty in her life if she reacted this strongly.
"Thank you for staying with me. It's so much easier."
The honest gratitude and warmth in the girl's voice caught Sephiroth off guard. Who was ever grateful to him? Suddenly he noticed a hand searching for him through the bars, a slender and soft hand. It reached him, and grasped his hand. The touch was warm even through his gloves, curiously tingling and soothing at the same time. Sephiroth let the girl hold his hand and a distant memory emerged in him slowly, about the time when everything was worse but he somehow believed that someday it could still be good.
