A/N: Not sure if I'll ever continue this further, but it was an idea that popped fully formed into my head that I figured I might as well share. Hope you enjoy!

Sephiroth became aware of himself in stages.

A light was on above him. The air smelled stale and was thick with dust. His cheek was pressed against something hard. His back was uncomfortably hunched over. Muscles ached like he'd fallen asleep at his desk once again.

Wait.

His Jenova infused body was too superior to feel such things… The last thing he remembered was…

He jolted up, sitting straight and proper despite the protests of his back. Eyes heavy with exhaustion flitted about the room, taking everything in, hunting for threats. He found none in the dead silence of the library.

A stray piece of paper detached from his cheek and fluttered onto the desk he'd fallen asleep on.

Was he in the lifestream? But none of his memories had ever felt so real when he revisited them.

Before him sat a familiar antique wooden desk. Books were stacked high in multiple towers, almost blocking out the sight of the empty shelves lining the room. On the floor around him sat piles of the books he'd impatiently discarded for their useless content.

Sephiroth reached out through his connection to Jenova, searching for the truth. The answer came all too quickly. He was sitting in the hidden lab under the mansion in Nibelheim.

It was real.

A laugh unexpectedly barked out of him. He smothered it with a fist, his shoulders shaking with the effort to contain it. The action was automatic, his body acting out of habit. The laughter died down as the truth sunk in.

He had his old body back. Complete with all its old habits and idiosyncrasies. They had yet to be washed away in the gauntlet that was the lifestream. That sea of souls that had corroded his skin and stripped at his spirit until all that remained was the essential essence of himself.

He held his hand before his eyes, alternating between making a fist and stretching it out, watching the black leather flex. It felt odd, to be so contained in a simple body.

Out of nowhere, a sharp pain ripped through his temples, making him almost double over at the unexpected assault. He bit back a groan as green static filled his mind and his vision swam.

It was Jenova. Calling to him. Trying to bring about Reunion.

It had been so long that he'd forgotten what it felt like to be on the receiving end. He'd experienced the initial call for such a short amount of time before he'd fallen into the lifestream. It had taken him years to subdue Jenova and gain control of their connection.

With a level of effort that surprised him, he managed to push back on the insistent call until it was just a dull ache behind his eyes. Mother was getting impatient, she'd felt his attempt to reach her, but he was in no rush. He didn't even know what day it was.

He leaned back into the green cushions on the old wooden chair and brought out his phone, pausing for a moment at the lock screen. The date was September 28, 0002. It also informed him that he had days worth of unread messages and missed phone calls.

How long had he been down here? He couldn't remember. The span of time between discovering Jenova at the reactor and emerging from the mansion to burn down the town and reclaim her had passed in a haze of Hojo's messy scrawl.

After a couple of attempts to unlock the phone, he tossed it onto the desk, unable to remember the password. It didn't matter, the battery was about to die anyway.

He drummed his fingers on the desk, debating what to do. He wasn't sure how long he had before someone would come down and disturb him. There were vague memories of food being left for him at various times while he'd been researching, but he'd barely touched it. Too busy feverishly devouring the books for information. Now there was no need, he knew all there was to know about his creation. The answers he'd sought in life had been revealed to him here and in death.

There was nothing for him in this dusty old library anymore. He could go out there now and burn the town to the ground and reclaim Mother for himself. Or he could just leave her there and return to Shinra, as if nothing had happened… he smirked and dismissed the thought. As entertaining as it might be, he was loath to give up his freedom. He'd been out from under their thumb for too long to return now.

Plus, if he wanted the damn headache to go away he'd need to make contact with her sooner rather than later and regain control over their connection. Being back in his old body limited him in that respect. He could no longer reach across the planet and touch all the different parts of Jenova scattered through Hojo's experiments.

But first… he stood up and walked over to one of the messy piles of discarded books. First he wanted to remind himself of why he'd been so determined to kill every single person in the town. The act that had led to his fall. He remembered being disgusted with them. Outraged on behalf of Mother for what they'd done to her. He'd read something in these books that led him to hate the town, but what?

Now that he had intimate knowledge of two of its inhabitants, he found himself wanting to remember. And with no one to rush him, not Mother nor Shinra, he could take his time and properly examine the documents.

He'd revisited the mansion once on his long search for the black materia. He'd also discovered the reason the clone following him so closely was also fighting him at every turn. And why it insisted it was a person with memories of its own. Hojo's notes on the boy who 'killed' him had been most illuminating. It had given him no small degree of satisfaction to discover Hojo had written Cloud off as a failed clone; proving his incompetence as a scientist yet again.

Cloud had interrupted him before he'd been able to reread the older documents. Though Hojo had cleared out many of them to make room for his experiments on the townsfolk.

After digging around in one of the discard piles, and slowly creating a new one, he found a hint of what he'd been looking for. It detailed an agreement with the mayor of Nibelheim, stretching back many years, and listed the names of the people who'd been 'donated' to Shinra for experimentation. His eyes scanned the list until they snagged on a name.

Well now. This certainly could make things interesting.

Now he remembered.

Tifa sprinted up the mountain, breath coming in harsh pants from both the speed with which she climbed and from the sobs that threatened to clog her throat. She didn't look back, couldn't bring herself to see the red haze of the fires still consuming her town.

All she knew was that Sephiroth had done it. That Sephiroth had then gone up to the reactor. And that Papa had followed him.

She couldn't believe it. It just didn't feel real. Sephiroth was a hero! He'd come to town to save them from the monsters. Why had Shinra done this? They were just a simple mountain town. There was nothing here. They weren't a threat.

That cute, black haired SOLDIER had been so friendly.

How could they?

How could they do this?

She reached the reactor in record time. The door, that she'd been blocked from entering the week before, sat open at the top of the metal stairs. She flew up them and was inside the reactor before she could let herself second guess her actions. She had no plan. All that drove her was a desire to find her Papa and demand answers from Sephiroth.

He'd been so polite to her while she'd led them up the mountain. He hadn't even blamed her when the bridge had fallen out from under them. She'd felt a flush of pride when he'd allowed her to continue to lead them after that. It had felt so good to have her skills trusted.

How could he do this?

The inside of the reactor was an unfamiliar mess of pipes and catwalks. She stalled briefly, overwhelmed by the acrid smell and confusing layout.

"Sephiroth!" a voice called out from below.

Tifa rushed to the edge of the catwalk, clutching the railing in tense hands. That had been her papa's voice! Below her, an unmistakable head of silver hair entered a door surrounded by whirling gears.

Papa was hot on his heels, bellowing, "We followed Shinra's orders for all these years! Why now-! Why- Urk."

"PAPA!" Tifa screamed.

Sephiroth's long thin sword protruded out her papa's back. He'd been stabbed right through the chest. It couldn't be real. It just couldn't.

Her papa screamed when Sephiroth casually lifted him off the ground, still impaled on the sword, and walked deeper into the reactor.

Frantic, desperate to save her papa, Tifa looked for a way down. The catwalk she was on extended around the wall and led to stairs that slowly crisscrossed down to the lowest level. But it would take too long! By the time she got there Papa would be dead! She searched for another way, a ladder, a pipe to climb down, anything!

Two chains dangling from the ceiling caught her eye. They led right next to a pipe that connected to the platform. Tifa launched herself at the chains, not giving a thought to the haze of green mako that would greet her if she fell.

Years of climbing up and down the mountain gave her the grip strength to descend quickly. Impatient and terrified, she jumped the remaining few meters.

She took off at a run towards the door Sephiroth had disappeared into, dreading what she would find. It was dark in the small passageway and when she came out on the other side, she was momentarily blinded by the red lighting.

"Tifa! R-run. Get- ugh."

Tifa gasped. She barely paid any attention to the strange pods lining the room and up the stairs to another door. She even ignored Sephiroth, who was walking along a row of the pods, reading numbers out loud. All she could focus on was the sight of her papa, suspended in the air by Sephiroth's sword, where it had been stabbed into the wall to the far left.

"Papa!" she cried, rushing to his side.

Thank the gods he's still alive!

"No- Leave-" her papa gurgled, crying out in agony when she tried to wrench the sword free from the wall.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

She whirled at Sephiroth's voice. He was right behind her!

"You!" She fell into a fighting stance, fists shaking in fear and rage. "Let him go!"

"Oh?" the amusement in his deep voice, so different from the soft monotone he'd spoken with before, made her briefly falter. "But if I do that, he won't survive long enough to see the truth."

Truth? What truth? How dare he- was all she could think before she launched herself at him, screaming, "How could you do that to him?"

He swatted her fists aside, not even bothering to retaliate. She immediately spun into a roundhouse kick, only to have her boot caught in one hand.

"How could you do that to our town?" Using him as leverage, she jumped and spun, her free leg aimed right for his face. It forced him to drop her boot to dodge, letting her land on her hands and flip herself back into a crouch.

"That's a question you should ask your father."

"Huh?"

"Did you think I wouldn't notice?" Sephiroth directed his question to her groaning papa. "That someone had clearly been tampering with the pods?"

"N-no. N-no one-" her papa tried to speak through the blood he started coughing up.

What were they talking about? Why did her papa understand his cryptic words?

Sephiroth turned his back to them, resuming his examination of the pods, completely ignoring and dismissing her. Part of her wanted to launch herself at his back and take out her fury with her fists. But another wet cough from her papa had her running back to his side, desperate to try and get him down from the wall.

"Ah. Here it is. The one that brought us here in the first place. Of course."

Tifa sniffed, tears beginning to leak out the corners of her eyes as she tried to slowly work the sword free from the wall.

"Leave... her..." her papa said while reaching past her to Sephiroth.

"I imagine this town told stories to hide the ugly truth." Tifa tried to shut his voice out, she shouldn't care about what that monster had to say. But something about the way her papa was acting, even while dying, made her wonder.

"Tifa, don't..."

"What happened when someone got sick? Were they sent to get treated? Somewhere over the mountain perhaps?"

His words triggered a memory from her childhood. Of the days after her mother's death when Tifa had tried to find her in the mountains. How could he possibly know that?

"Don't- Don't listen-"

"It's Ok Papa. I'll have you free soon."

"He is merely paying the price for his negligence." Sephiroth's voice wormed its way into her head; she couldn't block it out like her papa wanted. "And for the lives of those he built his wealth on. A Shinra employee to his core."

What was he saying? Papa was the mayor because he worked hard. Not because...

"Look around you, Tifa." She couldn't help it, her grip on his sword slackened and, through her tears, she looked at the pods around them. The human shaped pods. "This is the price your town pays to have a mako reactor. Did you never think it was strange? That Shinra would build one in such a remote location? With no obvious benefit to themselves?"

She shook her head in denial and thought, He's lying. He has to be!

So what if they were questions she'd asked herself as she got older? As her papa dropped hints that she wound soon be old enough to be told a family secret?

"Sh-shut up!" she yelled at him.

She didn't know what he was talking about and refused to care. All that mattered was saving her papa. She firmed her grip and resumed trying to wiggle it free. Sephiroth wasn't even paying attention to her, too busy speaking and playing with something next to one of the pods.

"Don't look- the pods- Tifa don't-" She hushed her papa. She'd get him out of here. It would all be fine.

Everything would be fine.

"Didn't your mother get very sick one year?" She froze her frantic soothing, her papa's blood staining her hands.

"How… how do you know that?" Horror, at his words and what they might mean, stalked her like a wolf in the grass.

"You climbed the mountain hoping to find her, didn't you?"

Tifa almost demanded he explain how he knew that, but the sudden flash of guilt in her papa's eyes froze the words in her throat.

She'd long wondered about her papa's obsession with hiding her when she was sick. He'd even gone so far as to make up a story that she was camping in the mountains, not vomiting and wanting to die in bed.

Everyone in town always got so scared whenever someone they loved got sick. Just like her mama. Why was he asking her about her mama?

Tifa couldn't ignore his words anymore. "What- what are you trying to say?"

"Would you like to see her again? Your mother?" Sephiroth asked casually, like he wasn't saying something impossible.

Tifa gasped. Mama was alive? No. She shook her head, that had to be a lie.

But Sephiroth was opening one of the pods. And papa's hands weakly tried to hold her in place as she stood. His hands left bloody streaks on her arms.

"She'll... die... stop..."

With a hiss of steam the seal broke, releasing more of the sharp and acrid smell of mako. A creature slumped forward onto the lowering door.

"What- What's-?" She clenched her fists. "You expect me to believe this is Mama?"

The humanoid creature writhed in obvious pain. It bared teeth sharp enough to tear flesh. Horns protruded from the side of it's head, partially covered by a head of dark brown hair. It was a monster.

"You-" she crouched, ready to launch herself at the cruel man for taunting her like this, while her papa slowly died at the end of his sword. But then something familiar flashed before her eyes. A piece of metal, embedded in the flesh around the monster's neck, sparked a precious memory. One of her mama, sick in bed, gifting Tifa a necklace that matched her own. So they'd always be together, even after she was gone.

"I'd thought these creatures to be makonoids. Monsters created by mako. But in the basement of the mansion, I discovered that they need a template for the mako to latch onto. And that they have been refining the process here."

"Shut up. Just shut up! I don't believe you." Tifa backed away, from both her barely conscious papa and the thing Sephiroth claimed was her mother. "This can't be-" her voice cracked, "this can't-"

The creature lunged at Sephiroth, who negligently slapped it down and sent in skidding on the metal floor to land at Tifa's feet. She tensed, fearfully, ready for it to attack.

But the creature wasn't aggressive at all. Instead, it reached weakly for Tifa. She was too horrified to do anything but stare at the clawed hand.

"Interesting." Sephiroth said, detached and clinical. "So my hypothesis was correct. The bond between mother and child remains intact."

"Wha-?"

"She recognizes you."

Her papa coughed violently and said, "I'm sorry Tifa. I'm so- sor- sorry."

Tifa shook her head. Her eyes stung horribly. Her fists were shaking. What was her papa saying? Why would he- why would he apologize unless-? Was this actually her mama? Her mama who had been dead for seven years?

Sephiroth walked past her and casually gripped the hilt of his sword. "Father's are such a disappointment, aren't they?"

A gasp and a thump came from behind her, but she couldn't look. She was too scared to look.

Sephiroth walked past her and the creature again, her papa's blood staining his blade.

Tifa clenched her head between her hands. She didn't know what to do! Or what to believe! Papa was dead. Sephiroth had killed him. But Mama was here? And Papa had known? It couldn't be her. It just couldn't! It was just too cruel!

A green hand, claws carefully curled inward, clutched at her boot.

"Ch-chika," the monster, voice thin and reedy, said.

"Mama?" Suddenly she was a little girl again, desperately climbing the mountain for the chance to see her mama. Only her mama, from a family of chocobo herders, called her that nickname.

"Mama!" she knelt, tears building around her eyes.

This was horrible. Everything about this was horrible.

The monster, her mama, cradled one of Tifa's hands in its own. She let the tears flow as her mama struggled to speak, repeating the word 'chika' over and over.

Tifa didn't know how long they stayed there like that. If Sephiroth said anything else, she didn't hear it. She only had eyes for her mama.

She'd been here, in the reactor, for all those years. Was Sephiroth telling the truth? That Nibelheim was only given a reactor so Shinra could experiment on them? Every time she'd stayed up late with the lights on, or used the oven, or had a hot shower, had her mama been the one paying the price?

"Sephiroth!" a voice cried, startling her. "Where are you!? Explain yourself Sephi- whoa! Tifa look out it's a monster!"

A flash of metal was her only other warning. Instinct took over. She kicked out at the massive sword descending on her mama and sent the black haired SOLDIER stumbling back.

"Stay away!" Tifa cried, blocking him from getting closer to her mama with her body.

"What? But-"

"Don't be so heartless Zack," Sephiroth said from the top of the stairs. "She's just been reunited with her mother." The door behind him, with the word JENOVA written above it, sat open behind him.

"Uh-? But- Fine, I don't get it, but one thing at a time." Zack visibly shook himself and turned away from Tifa, taking few steps up the stairs and saying entreatingly, "Please Sephiroth. You must have had a good reason for what you did. Right? So why- why did you set the town on fire?"

Cold eyes cut over to her as Sephiroth answered, "Is justice, for all those you see before you, not enough?"

Tifa sucked in a sharp breath at what he was implying.

"What are you talking about?" Zack asked, confused and frustrated. "I thought they were monsters?"

"Mama's not a monster!" she cried. Shinra had done this to her, to all the poor sick people of Nibelheim. That didn't make them monsters!

The two men looked at her in surprise. Zack looked away first, clearly not believing her. But Sephiroth… there was a look in his eyes she didn't understand.

"Zack. Shinra turned these people into what you see before you." He pointed at Tifa's mama. "As to what I'm doing… isn't it obvious?" His cold and controlled voice gained an intense and almost frantic edge. "I'm going to destroy Shinra and everything they built. Until all that remains of them is a fading memory. This town is just the beginning. The planet is mine. And I will not stand for those worthless creatures stealing one more soul than they already have."

Tifa shivered. For a moment there, he didn't look human. Deep bags, that she'd never noticed before, gave his face an almost skull like appearance.

"I thought… when you said you were going to leave Shinra… I would have come with you." Zack said quietly, almost to himself. He sounded like he was in pain.

"Would you really?" Sephiroth sneered.

"Yes!" the word burst out of Zack. "But this… this is too much!" The man brought his sword up and pointed it at Sephiroth.

"No. You're not the Sephiroth I used to know!"

"Hmm, very well, if this is how you want to do it."

A burst of lightning flashed out from Sephiroth's hand.

Tifa curled over her mama, protecting her from the sparks. A control panel behind them exploded.

All around them, the strange tanks hissed open.

"You think you can stop me?" he said, smug and condescending.

With a cry, Zack launched himself at the cruelly smirking Sephiroth.

Tifa didn't know what to do. The two fought too fast for her eyes to keep track. All she could do was stay put as they clashed over and around her.

Her mama groaned in her arms.

The other monst- people groaned in their open tanks. Some of them tried to climb out, while others didn't move at all.

She should help Zack fight Sephiroth, shouldn't she? He'd set her whole town on fire. He'd killed her papa. She hated him… didn't she?

But then he'd also told her the truth about her mama. She refused to look at the slumped form of her papa. He papa who'd known the whole time. Who'd apparently come up to the reactor to visit mama, without telling Tifa.

She didn't know what to do.

A crash, followed by the rending screech of metal, pierced her ears.

The two men disappeared into the upper room, the only sounds the ringing of their swords.

She may not understand everything that had been said or what was happening. But one thing she did know. Her mama was in her arms. And she could save her.

Resolute, she swung a mako-green arm around her shoulder. It was awkward, and she had to readjust them as soon as she stood, but she could do it. With her mama's clawed feet catching on the metal, she slowly walked to the exit.

She made it into the main reactor room, already dreading all the stairs she'd have to climb to escape the place, when the sound of pounding boots on metal made her freeze. A Shinra trooper, the one who'd stopped her from entering the reactor the first time, ran at her, gun drawn.

Before she could do anything to protect her mama, hands gripped her shoulders and a low baritone whispered in her ear, "Careful now." She gasped and tried to twist away but Sephiroth held her in a vice. "If you move, you'll break the illusion."

To her shock, the trooper ran right past her with a cry, and threw himself past the other mako-people that were stumbling around.

Something wet dripped down her arm.

Tifa twisted, and he let her, to see him standing, unharmed from his fight with Zack.

Except… she could still hear Zack's cries and the clash of swords in the other room. And the Sephiroth in front of her was holding something strange and dripping in his right hand. His sword was nowhere to be seen. The bags under his eyes were gone.

"What-?" she asked weakly. This was all getting to be too much. She didn't understand. She just wanted to go home. Back to a world where her papa loved her. Where he hadn't lied about her mama's death. Where he hadn't let Shinra turn her into a monster.

"Tifa," he said, strangely intense, "Do you want your mother to live?"

What a dumb question. She nodded, unable to speak past the fear closing her throat.

How was he here, talking to her, but also in there, fighting with Zack?

"Then give her to me," he said. She gripped her mama tighter and took a step back. "Take us into the mountains where Shinra won't find us."

"Why- why should I help you." She found her voice at the sheer audacity of his request. "You killed papa!"

"I saved your mother. From a fate worse than death." His voice gained a cruel edge as he said, "Did you not hear her, when you were little? Crying out for you to find her?"

Tifa shook. How did he know? How could he possibly-?

"Come," he said, offering her his hand. "With your help, I might even be able to save the others." He motioned to the other mako-people, those that could stand, that were cowering from him in the doorway.

She hated this. She hated all of this! Why? Why did it all have to happen?

Tifa wanted to slap his hand away and take her chances by herself. He'd just done horrible, horrible things.

But if he could really save her mama... she nodded.

Sephiroth hefted her mama over one of his shoulders, like she weighed nothing.

Tifa led Sephiroth down the mountain and into a cave system that connected to one of the other mountains.

The thing he was carrying, that had dripped a strange sticky fluid onto her, stopped leaking as soon as they were out of the reactor, leaving no trail as they ran.

It would all be all right, she told herself. He would help mama. It didn't matter that he felt like a Nibel dragon stalking her every step, playing with her, waiting to strike.

By the time they reached a secluded spot, far from the reactor and the circling helicopters, she'd forgotten about the sticky fluid that should have still been on her arm.

She didn't notice that it had been absorbed into her skin.