Chapter One
Zack fell back with a sigh, landing on the hotel bed with a soft rustle, like the mattress and quilts were stuffed with tissue paper. On any other mission, he might have grimaced and complained to his superiors again as he threw the flat, lumpy, synthetic-polyester pillow at his roommate, but now he was in no mood to care. He put his hands behind his head and looked up at the ceiling for a long time, chewing the inside of his lip in thought.
"Huh, you too, Zack?"
Zack didn't give his roommate the luxury of eye contact, and replied mechanically. "Me too, what?"
From the other side of the room, he saw his friend unpacking his small suitcase on his bed. A shock of blonde, spiked hair lowered as his fellow cadet bowed his head, fearing he had trespassed. "Well, since we've arrived, everyone's been so…dismal. I mean, even Sephiroth…."
Zack did not hear the rest. He mused over the conversation himself.
"So, how does it feel?" Sephiroth said, turning to face the men who followed faithfully behind them as they entered the quaint little town. "To be home after all this time?"
The men were unnerved. This was unnatural. Cold, stoic, General, First-Class Soldier Sephiroth never spoke anything but commands and punctual briefings when needed be. Sentimentality? It was unfathomable.
"I have no hometown. I wouldn't know," the silver-haired man concluded. It sounded wistful, sad, longing behind that formal, unfeeling, factual tone.
"Uh…what about family?" Zack said, hoping to prompt something. Surely that was something he could admit to. He couldn't deny Aralyn, especially not now.
Sephiroth did not move for a moment, but when he did, he turned straight to face Zack head on.
"My mother's name is Jenova. She died shortly after I was born. My father…" He stopped, hesitated, before he covered his words with a false, hollow laugh. The general shook his head, a humorless smile on his face. He wiped his hand in the air, as if to erase his words. "Why am I even talking about this?"
He whirred, suddenly back to a SOLDIER. "Come on, let's go."
Dismal? Cloud would never know the half of it.
"What's up with you?" Cloud asked, sitting on the edge of his bed. "You're not yourself."
Zack bit his lip to keep from frowning, to hold back the truth. "Yeah," he thought bitterly to himself. "I'm a little bummed. My best pal just had twins…the most beautiful kids you ever did see! They lived…oh, twenty-eight hours or so. They died," he stopped his dialogue to briefly glance at the clock, "Seven hours ago. His wife is near mad with grief, and he's not only torn himself, but hurt further by seeing his love suffer. To top it all off, old lard-butt Shinra sent him on this stupid mission when what he needs to do is be with his wife and heal…but no. Gotta check this reactor. No one else in Soldier can do it, not all the fifty-six seconds in the reserves. Nope. He's here, trying to do his job when he's about to fall apart. He won't talk, won't eat, won't even look away from the window. He's downstairs now, rooming alone, probably suffering unfathomably…"
No, Cloud would never know the half of it. He wouldn't believe that his General, the great Sephiroth, had just suffered the hardest blow a man could take. He would never know that was what had prompted his thoughts, why he had said what he did about his parents. His family, his wife and deceased children and now, the parents he had never known, were probably all he could think of.
"Just a little road-sick, that's all," Zack replied, blatantly lying through his teeth.
Cloud wasn't stupid, and didn't fall for the lie. "That's never happened before. Are you sure you're all right, Zack?"
Zack sat up on the bed. "I'll walk it off."
"Don't party too hard," Cloud suggested. "We have an investigation in the morning."
He waved his hand behind him as he exited the room. "Got it."
"Sephiroth, I know you're there. Pick up the phone!"
Zack had roared again and again into his cell phone, scaring away some of the nocturnal fowl that hid in the barren trees. This was his thirty-second message, but he wasn't going to be the one to quit.
"Look man, you've got to stop doing this, you'll kill yourself! Come on, it's a small town, but there might be some fun things to do. I'll buy dinner, anything you want, I swear!"
Silence.
"Seph, look, I know you're hurting more than I'll ever understand and I know you are probably literally sick with worry for Aralyn…but you've got to stop! She's strong, you know that!"
Sephiroth still wasn't responding, and Zack was running low on ideas. "You're going to kill yourself in there, man! It's not fair to Aralyn!
"…Or maybe a hunt! Let's go maim some monsters! Come on, it'll be great!
"…Or we can still get some food. I'm half starved!
"…Or not. Your call, man.
"What about a game? I won't mention Aidan and Na---Yeah! That's the last time I'll ever say that if you don't want!
"…Chess? Checkers? Spoons? Horseshoes? Stack the freaking chocobos?
"Something??"
Zack took the phone away from his ear and rubbed his temples. He had one last thing to try.
"You're wrong, Seph. You do have a family. You have Aralyn…and if you want to think of me as a brother, well, that's just peachy too! You have a home too. Faramir…"
A high beep indicated that he had run out of time to record his message. Dismayed and discouraged, Zack reluctantly ended the call.
But he wasn't done yet.
The phone rang and this time, he was rewarded with success. A hollow, weak woman's voice answered. "…Hello?"
"Aralyn!" Zack tried to sound upbeat and chipper, she'd had enough sadness in the last few days. "How are you doing?"
"Zack I…I'm really sick. I…" He lost the sound coming from her end of the phone for a moment, and listened to silence.
"Hey, don't give up hope now. Things will get better, you'll see." It was a lame thing to say to a woman who had just lost her children, but it was sincere enough.
She brushed the comfort aside, too hurt to accept it just yet. "Have you talked to Sephiroth?" she asked weakly.
Zack shook his head even though she wouldn't see the gesture. "He won't talk to me. He shuts himself in his room and won't come out. He won't pick up the phone either."
"…He won't answer me, either. I'm so worried, Zack. I…I couldn't bear it if he…if he…"
"Hey, you stop that right there," Zack said strongly. "No reason to be worried. A few days and he'll be back."
"But Zack…I dream such terrible things. I fear he's hurt so much deeper than we could ever see. He's suffering so badly…I can feel it from here."
"Aralyn, you've been through some heavy trauma. It's no surprise you're having nightmares. They don't mean anything."
"…Zack…I don't want to talk anymore. Please, leave me be." He could hear her voice shake and quiver, whispering through tears.
"Okay, I'll go, if that's what you want. Hang in there, Aralyn."
She didn't reply before she hung up.
He closed the cell phone and held it in his palm, staring at it for a long time. To his surprise, it vibrated, and Zack fumbled to get it open. Across his screen flashed in blue letters read "You have 1 new message(s)!"
Zack pressed the phone to his ear to hear the dead voice of his commander.
"The only thing that matters is the job, Zack. Do what you will. If you hunger, eat. Go out for entertainment if it so pleases you. But leave me be. Do not call me again. I will not answer."
Sephiroth would never know how much his parents thought of him, especially that night. Even consumed in crystal, Lucrecia Crescent could feel her son as if he stood beside her. Though she could not move, she felt her spirit shake. She could not know why she was wracked with terror as she was. She could not explain why flames danced behind her eternally closed eyes and screams of pain and death rang in her ears.
She couldn't know that the murderer emerging from the shadows, with blood on his hands and sword, was the son that she had never held.
She couldn't know that her nightmare was real.
All she knew was that when the spectral dawn of her vision came, revealing the carnage left in the wake of the massacre, her heart shattered.
Hojo was brought back to ancient files that night for an inexplicable reason. With no apparent prompting, his mind was brought back to tests run and completed years before. Before him lay sprawled countless documents, some spilling from their respective folders to fall forgotten to the floor. The overlying topic was the same.
Sephiroth.
He thought long and hard on the Jenova Project that night. By all accounts, it was a success. Sephiroth had far surpassed even the most elite of Soldiers. His strength and valor were legend. By all accounts, he was what Hojo had set out to create: a human infused with the powers of the Ancients.
Then why was he dissatisfied?
Yes, his thesis had been proven, but something was still missing. He flipped through the papers and sighed. He knew what it was. Sephiroth was a legend of a man, but he still wasn't all he could be. His research suggested that Sephiroth had not so much as brushed his incomprehensible potential, that he could be more than a General, more than a hero…
Perhaps, Hojo mused, he could be a god, and only then would the Jenova Project be complete.
He never would have guessed that before the next week dawned his wish would be fulfilled, that his son would make his heart swell with pride.
Yes, Sephiroth would become a god.
The thought was enough to make Hojo mad with ecstasy.
A/N: I am blocking very badly for both "Motherland" and "The Marked" and I felt useless not writing. I've had this started for a while but I never expected to work on it.
The fanfiction is arranged to mirror the song "Flodden Field" by Steve McDonald. The song is about the Battle of Flodden Field in Scotland (1513), where so many Scots were killed that the ground was said to be flooded with the blood of the fallen. I will not post the lyrics here but I do want to point out this song as my inspiration.
I will probably be continuing this until my block for my other stories ends.