Chapter 52 - Misguided Attention

January, 1992

"I'll see you tonight. Room 722."

The woman in front of Sephiroth smiles and slips a hotel card in his breast pocket. Her fingers rest on his suit and her eyes crawl over him looking for the connection. He doesn't move. Her fingers drag down the red fabric of his jacket. How that slip of a dress stays on her is a complete mystery to him. She steps back. One more soft smile comes across her painted lips. It would be enchanting to most. Then she disappears into the crowd at the winter gala.

Sephiroth sighs. The orchestra drones in the large room. Crystals hang from the ceiling like snow. The marble floor is covered with the richest of the rich of Midgar as they celebrate the end of the year. From the corner that he's tucked into, the sight is a beautiful painting. The women are in lavish dresses. The men are dressed in suits pressed into straight lines. Only around the edge are flashes of legs and modernity.

He has been placed here, another feature to keep their sponsors happy as they pay for the war.

He aches. His mind turned off hours ago. It's barely midnight and he wants to drag himself back up to his room and give up this charade. Shinra jerks his leash. PR's written orders come to mind. He must stay at or near the party until the early hours of the morning. He must talk to guests. He must offer dances to specific women with rich husbands. He must humor these idiots where he can. He must perform. Even what he wears, a deep red suit that makes his hair a brilliant white, was laid out for him.

They paint him in blood and power.

At least he had switched out the white undershirt for a black one. He's not innocent any longer. There is no reason to pretend.

The red wine rolls down his throat. He dips his hand into his breast pocket and finds the plastic card. It's thin between his fingers. It goes into his pants pocket where it clicks along with the others. Laughter breaks the noise level. The loudness makes him shift his weight. His mind calculates what he could use to fight. It's too late in the evening for this.

His eyes roll across the dancers aimlessly. He has completed all the required tasks. Now he has to wait and then it will be over. He doesn't want to think about how these people are funding the deaths of the men that he sees everyday. Do they even know where Wutai is?

His attention snags.

Across the room, the Vice President stares at him combing over Sephiroth's face and hair. He is tucked at a table surrounded by guests. Clearly, the people talking are not enough as his head turns ever so at their contact across the room. Those eyes aren't needy like the woman. They are possessive. Everything he sees is his birthright. Sephiroth turns away. Who will be the poor man who falls for the VP tonight? His broken heart will be strung out and added to the ones staining the shirt around Rufus' neck.

He dodges the groups as he slips out of the main hall. Rufus' gaze needles him the whole way. The hallway is empty as he walks out. It's a relief to his ears as the din dies. Alone. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair, trying to pull the snags free at the end. Another thing that PR has decided to control. Long hair, they say, will be perfect.

He misses the short cut.

The silence feels like a blanket. Idly, he walks towards the front lobby, taking his time with this task. He mentally plucks at the knitted muscles in his neck and back. His fingers are loose because he's trained them to be. If not, they would have been in fists. The air feels cold. Public likes to touch him. Tonight has been no different. Strangers put their fingers on his arms, chest, back, body, anywhere, to prove that he is real. It makes his skin crawl. He has to allow it. Even when every part of him wants to lash out and break every bone in front of him, his only defense is a patient look.

He is familiar with the lobby as he comes to it. It stretches upwards like a courtyard, revealing the twenty levels of rooms. Couches and even a small restaurant fill the space. Dancing elevators run up and down one side. Shinra spared no expense. He digs the plastic cards out of his pockets and goes to a help desk.

Surprise flickers behind the employee's eyes for a moment before she smooths it over with a smile. "How can I help you tonight, sir?"

Couldn't he just be unremarkable for once?

"These were given to me. I don't need them." He puts the cards on the counter. "Can you do the following for each room?" He adds a small printed paper to the pile. The instructions are simple: send a single rose with chocolate to each room with a PR crafted note and a credit card number to charge for the service. The note varies from event to event, just in case there is a repeat attempt.

She reads the note and the smile breaks. "Of course, sir."

"Thank you."

"Taking a break too?" A voice asks to his left.

Sephiroth half turns, already knowing who it is. A Turk relaxes in one of the couches nearby. He's one of the newer additions. Still, he is one of the few that bother to speak to him so Sephiroth has equally bothered to remember his name.

"Returning these."

Tseng takes a drink out of a short glass in his hand. "Humor me. How many tonight? The Turks keep a bet when they can."

He glances at the woman. She counts them. "Eight."

"Did you ever keep any?"

"No."

"Some of those women seem more than keen."

They are keen for a man who doesn't exist.

Instead he says, "Casual is not my preference."

"Good for you."

"Are you in the VP's compliment tonight?"

"I'm on the job, yes."

Sephiroth doesn't prod the evasiveness of the answer. Shinra keeps them tied tight. Having occasionally worked with the Turks, he knows how important it is to keep secrecy. Sephiroth walks over and leans against the back of an armchair. He hears whispers behind him. A camera clicks. He ignores it.

"Long night?" Tseng focuses behind him before returning to him.

"You could say that."

Tseng raises his eyebrows and takes another drink out of his glass.

"Drinking on the job," Sephiroth comments.

"I could say the same for you."

The glass of wine still hangs in his hand. It's a prop, what people expect of him, he refuses to drink outside of these functions. There is no need.

"I don't have a gun tucked in the back of my pants."

Tseng laughs deep in his chest. "Oh you don't need one, Sephiroth. You could kill everyone in this room, including myself, without a weapon or materia."

Sephiroth untangles himself from the chair. "Fair weather on your assignment."

"Always." The Turk's look is steel.

Sephiroth doesn't respond to it. He should get back to the ballroom before he is missed.

His phone stops him halfway back. It continues to buzz until he pays attention to it. Rafi is annoyed by her final exam score. Sephiroth leans against a wall, texts her back that he's working an event and thumbs the phone to mute. He'll get back to her. Being seen actively texting would be taken as a sign that he doesn't want to be here. This is yet another behavior that PR has scolded him on.

The list of his problematic behaviors is stifling.

Somehow there is always one more to add to the list.

"Does he understand that pain is a normal part of the process?"

Sephiroth's attention snaps up. Another familiar voice echoes down the hall. He waits, leaning against the wallpaper. The heels tap against the carpet.

"Fine. Increase the dosage of fentanyl but no more. That drama boy's body is already working overtime with the soak. It might knock him out. Could be a blessing. Text me the results. I'm at the gala so I can't take another phone call."

Mariella clicks around the corner, rolling her eyes at her phone. He's seen her in the black dress several times now but it always surprises him. Her practical apparel is strict and regulatory. It is necessary for her job since sometimes she still supervises exposures herself. This dress fits her in a different way. It shows that she is a person and a woman outside the weight that Shinra put on her.

The annoyance drops away from her face as she spots him leaning up against the wall.

She smiles. "Taking a phone break too?"

"Maybe. I didn't see you here earlier." He toys with standing up formally but decides against it. This is Mariella. She will not expect what the others do.

"I got called in late. A donor had SOLDIER questions. Thea had to spirit my outfit here." She stops near him. "I assure you, the donor could have had his questions answered by searching the internet."

"They are always that way."

His attention draws to the dress strap that has slipped. A scar, white and brilliant in the fluorescent lights, digs under her collarbone. It's a gunshot wound. He didn't know that when he was younger. The surgical scar cuts through it. It had been complicated. He had asked once. She had said it had happened in a different life and that was the end of the matter.

"How's Orlin?" She hadn't noticed his stare and he drags his eyes away from whatever mistake got her shot.

"He's doing fine. We both are." It's barely the truth.

Mariella's face flickers. "I'm sorry about Dinand."

Sephiroth fights the emotions in him. After he grew sick and had to be returned to Midgar, Shinra had to transfer Dinand to Sephiroth's base for security purposes. In the process and with a recommendation from a certain VIP, the transfer raised him to First. Sephiroth found out shortly after his horror of an interview with Hojo. The HR email kept him up for three days in the ICU. The announcement photo showed Dinand with his arms crossed and eyes staring down the lens. The black shirt was wrong. It is so entirely wrong. How could someone who had done something so terrible earn the rank of First?

He refused to tell the nurses why he couldn't sleep.

The doctors didn't warn him when they finally slipped something into his IV and he had drifted off.

Dinand will still be at his base when Sephiroth returns to Wutai. He tries to put it out of his mind and promises to keep distance between them. He has already written up the request that Dinand be transferred back to his previous location. That will handle it.

Mariella checks her phone. "I've got an infamous drama queen in exposure. Have you heard about him yet?"

"Infamous?" He shifts thankful for another topic.

She shakes her head and slips her phone away. "Lazard is flagging them both for possible new Firsts, depending how they take this second round of mako and their performance after. Friends since childhood. It's cute. One adores you."

That tightens his throat. "That's misguided."

"Sephiroth, you are doing a great job."

That makes his emotions break through the mask on his face for a moment. She's just lying to help him and to help herself with all of this. Tension moves in him tighter and tighter. He's ridged against the wall. Neither the woman tonight nor Tseng's comment had helped him. It shouldn't have bothered him. They are compliments technically.

Mariella pauses a moment and then speaks, "Everything okay?"

She's seen him at his worst. She's seen him bleeding in his bed after Dinand's final attack or even earlier, the earliest memory he has, of Wutai's torture ending him in her arms. There is no illusion when she asks this question. She already knows the answer. She's not asking about his emotional state. She's asking him if he wants to talk about it.

He drops his hands by his side. "I'm not getting as much sleep these days. Shinra keeps me busy."

It's a half truth. Mariella nods. She's not even surprised. "You aren't taking the sleeping pills?"

"No."

"Even when you are here at Midgar?"

"No."

He couldn't stand them.

Again, the understanding is easy on her face. She waits for him to say more. He holds her gaze and tries to tell her again what's really wrong. He's not sure how she doesn't see what everyone else wants to see. They see the sex appeal, the posters, the destruction, the power, the allure that Shinra has painted around him. It's not untrue but it is like a glass ball. The illusion gives depth that isn't there.

He swallows, dryly. "You look nice."

It makes her laugh. "You do too."

He weaves his hands. He doesn't want to handle these emotions.

"Dance with me."

He looks up at her. "Sorry?"

"I changed your diaper for two years. If you don't want to talk about it, the least I can do is have you ask me for a dance in that expensive ballroom. Make the time go faster."

He pushes off the wall and straightens. It is easy to fall back into formality. The emotion automatically shuts down.

He performs, leaning into a slight bow and extending a hand. "Mariella Haynes, may I have the next dance?"

"Who is asking?"

He pauses. The room drops in temperature. He drops into a true half bow, hair rolling over his shoulder and his hand extending. It is a mockery of a prince's bow. Clarence worked with him three hours to get it right. It's the one he has used on every old rich woman on his list.

"Sephiroth, ma'am, SOLDIER First Class in Shinra's Commanding SOLDIER Forces in the prevailing Wutai War." He writhes in himself as the title plays along. The words drill into the floor. He can't look at her so he studies the flower pattern on the carpet. Mariella wants the dream that all the rich women wanted tonight. He'll deliver it. Whore himself out to her as well. Why not.

"No."

That makes him hitch and look up, hand halfway between them.

Her face is calm and unamused as she comes over and grasps his fingers. He straightens, uncertain, standing higher than her now. Part of him remembers when he used to look up at her. Her eyes show an unexplained emotion.

"Is it still possible to just dance with Sephiroth? The boy I knew once?"

"Of course," he says, ignoring the jerk in his stomach.

How could she not see that he doesn't exist anymore? That the boy died on the battlefield or even earlier, screaming on the floor of the sim?

The relief on her face makes the lie twist in him.

"That is an invitation I would accept."