Disclaimer: Square Enix owns all that Square Enix came up with.

Evil Author's Note: You didn't really think it was going to be that easy, did you? Sorry folks, but you know a childhood of prolonged, intense psychological abuse does not disappear in a night, no matter how magical . . . You may have forgotten the crazy, but the crazy has not forgotten you.


He woke up panting, suffocating on a scream. Cold metal clamps gripped his limbs.

Shadows on the whitewashed walls . . .

He shook violently, pain slashing through his veins with every heartbeat.

But it wasn't the mako that burned.

He saw her, dressed in white lab coat, making notes on a clipboard. She glanced at him without recognition.

You've participated very nicely in our little experiment. Her green eyes were hard and flat. The professor will be so pleased. You were beginning to get difficult to control.

He blinked.

Experiment . . . It was all . . . N-No . . .

She injected him again, and he could not keep back the guttural gasp.

He wanted to cry out to her, to throw himself at her feet and beg, but the restraints bit into his arms, and whatever she had given him made his lungs burn so badly he could scarcely draw breath.

No, please . . . You can't . . .

She turned to leave.

He did not care who saw him, did not care if Shinra broadcast his humiliation across every station in the world.

Not you, please, not you. I'll do anything . . . just don't let this be another lie!

Something was tearing inside him. She was the only one who had stirred his soul, and the only one who could murder it.

She snapped off the rubber gloves she used to touch him with, and washed her hands with alcohol.

Filthy specimen . . . viral research sample . . . disease . . .

Please . . . please, even if you can't love me-- don't go!

Laughter.

You stupid little shit. You honestly thought all that was real? Women want power. Everyone wants power.

The words echoed, rattling sharply in his mind. Blood pounded in his ears.

Light reflected off Hojo's glasses, but Sephiroth felt the gloating contempt pouring down from the observation room.

Allow me to show you just how powerless you are.

Pain lanced through his skull, his chest, his limbs.

And then he watched as she walked into his arms-- and kissed him, watched her arch her lovely neck into thin, hard lips.

He watched and felt-- nothing, as if all his emotions lay on the other side of that pane of glass.

Now you know the truth, my son.

The voice was a deep, syrup-sweet crooning, a lullaby sung through viscous liquid.

Calming.

It's alright, dearest boy. Can you honestly say you didn't partly expect this?

He remembered the voice from years ago, in a cold, quiet town that should have been filled with flame. Beautiful, like an incantation. It spoke of belonging somewhere in a world that wanted only to betray him.

She had always been with him.

Mother.

Even when he was nothing but a tiny sliver of life, floating just as she was floating, he had heard her. A man's voice raised in anger. A woman pleading and crying. And that voice-- mocking the creatures outside, whispering of fire.

There, there, my sweet child. That's it. Give in to your despair. Mother's here. Mother . . . has you.

"Sephiroth! Wake up! Seph, snap out of it!"

Someone was grabbing at him, shaking him.

He forced the hands away roughly, snarling, "Never touch me!" Injections and surgeries and beatings-- those he understood, but he despised the hands that touched him. Nothing left him feeling more used.

"Wake up!"

This command was accompanied by a smart slap across his face.

It didn't hurt much, but little, pricking pains were often followed by agony.

He whirled on his attacker-- a woman. Naked. Dimly, he knew he should recognize her.

He answered her slap with his fist.

Something crunched, her head snapped to the side, and she crashed into a wall. She stared up at him, one of her hands cupping her jaw, eyes wide. She whispered something that sounded like: "So soon?"

Her eyes-- a sparkling, glossy green like dew-covered ivy.

The woman in his dream.

Aeris.

He had just struck Aeris.

Yes, son, this is what you were made for. Hit her again.

Some part of his mind shrieked in protest.

Her forehead was bleeding where it cut on the wall. Darkness had changed the glittering gemstones into so many sharp, dark rocks.

She flung herself away from him and ran, still clutching her cheek.

She's running from you, my boy, because she knows you've found the truth.

He sprang after, knocking her forward and landing with his knee pressed to the small of her back. She lay sprawled on the rocky ground, winded and gasping, and he wrenched her arms behind her back, pinning her flat with his weight.

"Where do you think you're going?" he snarled.

Dream or not, he knewit was real. His subconscious had informed him of what his mind refused to grasp. What was more likely? That she had come to him, open-handed and beaming, loving him after knowing him for a few short, frenzied hours, wanting nothing more than his smile? Ridiculous. She had a reason for stripping his defenses, if not a reason of her own, then someone she worked for. Perhaps Rufus Shinra had survived somehow, or the president himself. This would be so very like the games they played: the endless whitewashed labyrinths of false hope, teaching him at every turn that human warmth was never for him.

Or perhaps it wasn't Shinra. Avalanche had discovered his weakness for her too, and they, too, needed a powerful puppet.

Damn!

And he had made it so appallingly easy for them.

"You think I'll let you run now? Who's paying you? Who?"

Green white light glowed on her face as she repaired the damage to her jaw. "Seph, this isn't you!" she cried, wriggling against his grasp. "Honey,wake up!"

Oh, I'm awake. Finally. You drugged me. Made me dream. But now I see.

"Do you think I haven't played this game before? Do you think I don't know what you're doing? Baiting me to test my reactions, laughing at me all the while? Who were you thinking of when you lay in my arms? Was it Shinra? Was it Cloud? Was it Vincent Valentine?"

Her words were steady and surprisingly calm. "There's never been anyone but--"

"Liar!"


This was not her Sephiroth. This was no one she knew.

She had to get away, and quickly.

She had seen flashes of this man, the cold and cunning killer, when they first met and in video clips. She should have expected this-- healing meant reopening a lot of old wounds, reliving torture he had only survived by burying in the recesses of his mind. What had so nearly driven him mad in Nibelheim five years ago was not only Jenova's presence-- it was facing what he had forced himself to forget.

Even worse, Shinra's lies and Jenova's false promises bred in him a deep-set fear of betrayal. How often had he discovered that those who held all his trust and loyalty were deceiving him, using him-- mocking him? Too many times for one life.

And Jenova remained in him still, Aeris could see her in his glowing eyes. The Dark Harbinger had seized these fragile moments, when all his defenses were down, to turn him against her.

Gods, why did I think I would have more time?

What had he dreamed?

He twisted her arm behind her until she panted in pain.

"Seph, stop this! If you want to make love again, we can, but--!"

His lips curved gently against her ear and his breath was warm, but his words were pitiless steel. "I'm not going to make love to you," he purred. "I'm going to fuck you."


He hadn't meant to, until she said that, had not consciously acknowledged his tense discomfort down there, but he was suddenly, keenly aware of how tantalizing her bare body was. And the effect her squirming had on him.

He wrenched her head sideways and crushed his mouth down on hers in a punishing kiss.

Gods, it felt good: the thrill of absolute dominance, of forcing his way through the trembling resistance of her lips.

He released her long enough to grasp at the strip of pink he had seen from the corner of his eye. His hand closed over the ribbon even as she struggled out from under him, rolling away and floundering to her feet. He was on her in a flash, slamming her back to the ground and twisting her to her back. He seized both of her wrists in with one hand and pinned them above her head. His free hand groped her breasts and his mouth bruised hers-- taking, taking.

"I hate you," he whispered, and meant it. "You make me weak."

"Sephiroth, please, come back to me. Seph, tell me what's wrong!"

"Sssh, now, no talking."


As he gagged her with her own hair ribbon, she thought: This is him, too. I knew that from the beginning. Part of him fears me for making him feel, and his fear makes him Shinra's Fury, the Butcher of Wutai, the Waking Nightmare. Part of him cannot accept anything beautiful happening to him, and will try to drive us apart.

Besides that, his was a devilish beauty, and loving him was loving a flickering flame: searing, capricious, and never truly tame. Was it a secret wickedness of her own that drew her so inexorably toward him? Some part of her that wanted to lie exposed beneath his darkest desires, wanted to make him hunger for her beyond all sense of conscience?

She fought, though, beating him with her fists and clawing at his arms. But she may as well have been hitting the gem-lined walls. He finished tying the knot and tested the tension of the gag, then, almost as an afterthought, splayed her arms out, holding her down by wrists held level with her head.

Above him, the night sky darkened as clouds blotted out the stars. Not rain clouds, but a billowing smog-- a sick, tainted ash blacker than the night, and she remembered, suddenly, that this man wielded enough power to overcome all her healing skills. He pushed her legs apart with his knees, spreading her open, and showed his teeth-- something between a exultant leer and a snarl. His black wing unfurled: shadow in the unnatural night.

She stopped speculating about her sexuality. Now she only hoped she would live. If no miracle intervened, if no one came to save her, she might well not see the morning.

What had called to him five years ago, had claimed him tonight.

The dark god had come into his power.