Put Your Lights On

10.24.05

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This is a FFVII fic by kleptomaniac0. I own no characters except those you haven't heard of, meaning the ones I've made. Normally I'm averse to posting something new while I have multiple works in progress, but this OC, the first OC I ever created, has been banging against the walls of my head ever since Advent Children came in out Japan. So I'm letting her out before she drives me crazy.

This will be a lot more unguarded than my other works, meaning it'll be sloppier. I'm writing this to get it out of my head and though I always appreciate reviews and constructive criticism, I probably won't be looking at them until the story's done.

Who am I kidding? I need feedback like sunlight. Drop me a line, you know you want to.

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Chapter Thirty-Six

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"Huff...huff..."

Sephiroth gazed out at the sea as Toriko caught her breath, leaning forward on her knees. He had deliberately gone up the mountain as fast as he'd been able to, running, climbing, and occasionally jumping straight up to set a blinding pace. Toriko had done her game best to keep up and she'd been pretty close for the first third of the journey: after that, she'd slowed down considerably and had only managed to scrabble up a few seconds ago.

"We'll take a rest," he said, sitting down, and behind him he heard Toriko collapse gladly onto her hands and knees. "You did well today."

"Tha...thank you," she gasped, pulling herself into a sitting position. "Oh," she said as she noticed where they were.

"Never seen the ocean?" He asked, looking over his shoulder.

"Not from a height," she said a little breathlessly. Getting to her feet, she walked a little unsteadily to sit by him, folding her legs underneath her. "The water's colored differently here. It's more blue."

Sephiroth nodded. Wutaiese water was blue-green, warmer and teeming with life. The Eastern Continent's ocean was dark and cold, bearing stark whitecaps even on calm days.

"Mother took me to see the ocean once," Toriko mused. "She sat on the beach and I dug for clams."

"Clams?" Sephiroth looked at her curiously.

"Mother wanted clam soup," Toriko explained. "And it was a nice day, so we went for a walk. Digging for clams was nice."

Sephiroth brushed her mind and found that Seishi hadn't forced her to dig or even told her to: Toriko had simply started looking for clams on her own, prodded by her mother's unspoken desire. The wan smile of gratitude on Seishi's face was one of Toriko's treasured memories.

"You really loved your mother, didn't you?" Sephiroth asked, looking at her.

Toriko didn't say anything for a while. "Yes," she said finally. "I do. It didn't feel like it sometimes, when she thought hurtful things about me or how life could be easier without me, but... I don't really remember hating her, not even once."

Sephiroth looked out over the ocean, not sure what to say. Toriko looked at him.

"What about...your parents?" She asked quietly.

Sephiroth shrugged. "I don't know anything about them."

"Nothing at all?"

Sephiroth shook his head. "Hojo never let me see my files."

"Why didn't you...?" Toriko tapped her head, looking at him through her short, thick eyelashes.

Sephiroth blinked. "It never occurred to me," he admitted. "And, well... I admit I'm a little afraid of what I'll find."

"It's not that bad," Toriko said. Sephiroth looked at her, startled, and laughed softly.

"No, I suppose not," he said. "Even so, I..." "I don't want to find out the reason they didn't want me."

"I understand that," Toriko thought back. Looking out at the sea, she said aloud, "The past is important, but only so one can move onto the future. Mother said that quite often."

"Did she really believe that?" Sephiroth asked, looking at her.

Toriko nodded. "I know it seems strange, considering how she dwelt so heavily on the past, but it really was so she could move on—so those things wouldn't traumatize her too much later. She made herself strong that way."

Sephiroth looked at Toriko and wondered if she would try to make herself strong that way as well. Brushing her mind, though, he found an appalling lack of firmness. Neither having her mother's quietly savage iron will nor his calculating survival drive, Toriko seemed perfectly content to sit back and let stronger people—let him—take care of her.

"After four years in Hojo's lab, it's what she wants. But she needs to be able to take care of herself in case she doesn't have a protector around. Not that I plan to die, but contingencies must be made...

"I seem to recall a way to make a child a legal adult before they turn sixteen... What is that called? Emancipation? I'll talk to Reeve about that when he comes back from Costa del Sol."

"Time's up," he said, getting to his feet. "I'll go down before you to catch you if you fall. Don't drop rocks on my head."

"Yes, Father," Toriko said, pushing herself to her feet with a small groan.

"Don't make me wait," he said before going down the cliff.

What most people didn't know was that going down a sheer face was more difficult that going up. Going up, all you had to concentrate on was the next handhold, the next place to climb from. Jumping down, Sephiroth had to be especially careful about where he landed, all too aware that his weight thudding down in the wrong place could shear off a goodly portion of cliff. He was a third of the way down when he decided to check on Toriko's progress. He frowned when he noticed that she was coming down very, very slowly.

"She's freeclimbing—it'll take her forever to come down that way."

"Just jump!" He thought impatiently at her. "And stop facing the cliff, you won't be able to see where you're going that way."

"You're not supposed to look down from heights!" She thought back at him; her words were tinged with panic. Sephiroth suppressed the urge to shout at her, frustrated with her perpetual fear. "I'll fall!"

"If it's a calculated fall, that's fine," he snapped irritably. "And I even said I'd catch you."

"Are you sure you won't let me drop for training purposes?"

"If you keep sassing me, I will."

He felt her irritation and resentment growling sullenly at him. "Why don't you remember what it's like to be afraid?"

"Because it's a waste of time and energy. Now come down or I'm leaving you up there."

Her whimper was a physical thing as Toriko slowly eased herself from the cliff face and turned around, flinching away from the sight of the drop below her. Sephiroth remembered her similar fear in the elevator shaft.

"Don't tell me she's afraid of heights! Heights can't hurt you. Not like snakes..."

"You're afraid of snakes?" Toriko thought at him in surprise. Sephiroth swore; he hadn't meant to send that thought to her.

"Snakes and spiders," he said. "They're unnatural creatures and I hate them with a passion."

"Why?"

"One has eight legs and the other has none. The way they move is...ughh."

"I like snakes," Toriko thought at him, letting go of the cliff and dropping onto a ledge about five feet below her. She stumbled and Sephiroth took a step forward, ready to leap up and catch her if she fell. Toriko, however, recovered her balance and looked down for another place to jump to. "In Wutai, I had a little green one that lived under the whorehouse and I fed it crickets."

"Uggghhh…"

"Can I have a snake for a pet?" She thought at him, picking up on and enjoying his discomfort. Sephiroth would have snapped at her, but creeping him out gave her something to think about other than heights, and it was making her come down faster, so...

"Wouldn't you rather have a cat?" Sephiroth thought back. "Or a dog?"

"But I can hide a snake in my pocket," Toriko thought with relish. "And I can throw it at people who are mean to me."

Despite his abhorrence, Sephiroth laughed. "Is that what you did in Wutai?"

"Yes. They thought it was a fake until Snake bit them. Then they ran away screaming."

"Was Snake poisonous, by any chance?"

"No. Its head wasn't triangle-shaped. It still had teeth, though."

"If you want a pet that will make people scream when you throw it at them, maybe you should have a mouse," Sephiroth thought.

"But a snake is more imposing," Toriko thought back. "Especially ones with hoods."

"You want a cobra?" Sephiroth shuddered. "The hood is its ribs, you know."

"Really?"

"Yes. There are also snakes that can totally spread all their ribs out, and they glide from tree to tree in the rainforest."

"That sounds fun," Toriko thought with a giggle as she leapt down a few more cliffs. Sephiroth watched with mixed alarm and pride as she stepped off a narrow ledge and dropped thirty feet to the next, steadying herself by touching her fingers to the grassy ground. She was about twenty feet above him now. Without thinking, he reached out and caught her as she jumped toward him, her hands grabbing his shoulders. He flinched a little as her fingers dug into the muscle, clawlike through his leather jacket.

"So she was feigning bravery this whole time... That's a start."

"Hehe," she said, giggling a little nervously.

Sephiroth put her down and she let go of his shoulders, turning to look down the rest of the cliff. "Well..." she said slowly. "It's not so far to fall now."

"That's right," he said, also looking over the side. "So it won't hurt as much. Let's continue."

Stepping fearlessly off the edge, Sephiroth dropped fifty feet, swinging in midair to slide off an incline that was just wide enough to skid down, skateboard style. Above him, he heard Toriko do the same.

"So she's going to imitate me the whole way down, is she? Not a bad idea..."

From then on it was choosing a path that Toriko, with her limited abilities, would easily and safely be able to follow. Sephiroth had decided that immersive combat was not the best way to teach Toriko: she would freeze up because of her fear, and be made even more reluctant to fight in the future. She had to be led into combat; tricked into it, even.

"It's going to be a very tedious process..."

A few minutes they were back on the ground, and again Sephiroth caught Toriko as she made the last leap. For good or ill, he was starting to become more comfortable touching her, as if he was trying to reassure himself that she was still there, that her existence wasn't a Mako dream.

"Now why would I do that? Surely her presence isn't all that important to me..."

"It's still early in the day," he said, putting her down on the ground. "We'll hike for a bit."

"Then what?" Toriko asked, looking up at him.

"We'll eat dinner and then we'll pitch the tent."

"Then we'll go to sleep?"

"No, I'll teach you some useful things," Sephiroth said. Toriko sighed a little but didn't say anything. "Let's go," Sephiroth said. "I'll show you how to track."

"Yes, Father," she said, and followed obediently after him as they set off into the grasslands.

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Author's note:

I need to change the freakin' POV! I'm seriously tempted to do Reeve and his family...

And there is an obvious tense change when Sephiroth and Toriko are talking about Seishi ("You really loved your mother, didn't you?" "Yes, I do.") but that's deliberate. Subconsciously, Sephiroth wants Toriko to forget Seishi: greedy, isn't he? But Toriko holds some affection for her mother, so that's not going to be possible...

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