Chapter 69 - Trying

November, 1996

When Sephiroth finally looks up, Mariella is staring at him.

Usually when he comes in for a requested blood draw and physical, it is a nurse. They will sit him down, examine him, give him a ball to squeeze and allow him to not say a word outside of "yes" and "no". It takes twenty minutes of slow breathing and feeling cold gloved fingers kneed his body.

Sephiroth keeps this time separate in his life. It compacts and goes into a box. He can place a lid on top and not dwell in it. As R&D inspects his body and the needle draws away his blood, he can allow himself not to think. He can float. Part of him remembers life before the war when R&D was all that he had. It's simple to revert back to that now, to dip his head and allow them to do what they will without fighting.

They will take what they want if he fights or not.

It's normal for a SOLDIER.

They all have to do it. These days, Sephiroth takes the easiest path.

Except it is not available today.

Mariella Haynes is the one to come into his room. It hits him like a kick in the gut. She should be too busy for a routine physical. She heads Exposure. She should not be here. What bad news is she about to impart on him? How could she make it worse than it already is? What else is there to take away that she hasn't already?

He sat on the edge of the examination table and waited for her to say it.

But she just smiled, said good morning and got to work. If she notices how tense he is, she says nothing. They do nothing special. The normal questions are asked. The stethoscope runs the usual path on his back. The blood pressure cuff hisses as it releases. The light hurts his eyes as she sweeps it over. The swab is cold as it cleans his arm.

It is routine but they both know she is overqualified. This is a waste of her time. He doesn't want to be here. She shouldn't want to be here. He has to remember to keep his fingers loose and relaxed.

Mariella keeps that eye contact for a second too long and drops back down to focus on the blood draw.

"Squeeze the ball a few times."

It's been too long since he disappeared from her front door. If she was going to ask why, she would have before now. The foam in his fingers compresses as he works it. It flexes the muscles in his arm. The needle rides within his vein. The prick of pain is small and forgettable.

There must be bad news coming. They are going to take away something else. There isn't much left but surely they had found something else that isn't good for him. They will sterilize him further. Perhaps they will stop him from spending time with the other Firsts. It is a theoretical waste of time. That potential loss is a dull thump against him without a real reason.

Masamune? No. Shinra thinks of her as an asset.

The time spent on the roof?

He closes his eyes against the headache.

"Good. Halfway there. Doing okay?"

A ridiculous question.

"I'm fine, doctor."

That snags her smooth actions, stuttering them. The practiced neutral face fades for something close to pain but it disappears. Her hand holds the needle steady against his skin. Her thin fingers look impossible against the muscle he carries.

Her mouth opens, she holds the words in and then they come out quiet. "I remember when I could pick you up."

He stares at the foam ball and the distorted Shinra logo on it. Why would she be mentioning this? They didn't need to dig up the past. He didn't want to look back. He didn't want to remember how their lives were intertwined before she trapped him.

"That was long ago."

"You were afraid of storms. You were two? Three? I'd have to carry you back to your own bed." She stared at his skin. "You used to wrap your arms around my neck and refuse to let go. I'd have to peel you off."

Sephiroth says nothing.

She laughs to herself. "You hated math. You'd sulk any time we worked on it, head on the table, on the edge of a complete tantrum, always. It was cute. You were as stubborn then as you are now."

"I don't remember that."

"No. Of course. You wouldn't."

He shifts in his seat. This is getting too close. If he could have his way, he would be out of this room but they are stuck together. Instead a sigh comes out of him. He squeezes the ball again, trying to make this hurry. They aren't friends. They are nothing more than a patient attached to a doctor who controls his life.

"You seem to have made friends." She tries again.

The hairs rise on the back of his neck.

He stares ahead. "They have attached themselves. I am no longer sure of the qualities of friendship."

The jab hits home by the squeeze of her fingers.

It's true.

Even with them, Angeal and Genesis are still trying, weekend after weekend to get him to come out of his shell. It's hard. He's not sure why he keeps saying yes. Without the dogs, it seems impossible to hide. He goes but he doesn't enjoy himself. The walls he has built are too strong. They scratch at them but they haven't gotten deeper. It's not a conscious behavior. It's reflexive.

The best he can do is continue to say yes.

He stares at the photo of the beach ahead of him. Patients are supposed to envision themselves there. Vacations are an unreality. He just wants to fight, to go back to not being able to think, to not have to handle his life. Everything else is insignificant.

"Charlie misses you."

There it is. There is the reason that she is there.

"Surely you and Thea suffice."

"I've sent emails and texts but none of them seem to go through. Why don't you stop by? Just to see him?"

"And why would I do that?"

She pauses, emotion hanging in her. "Because he is growing old. We all are. Some things need to be done before it is too late."

"It's too late for that, Mariella." He doesn't mean for it to come out soft. He can't do this. It's easier to put everything on her, to make her the thing to brick up, to blame on. It isn't his fault. He has done only what he has been forced into doing.

"This Saturday around ten, come by the house."

This is too much.

"No. Unless this is a doctor's order, I will not." He closes his eyes as the final vial fills. The sting tells him that the needle has been removed. A swab presses over the spot. He refuses to wear bandaids. The minuscule wound will stop bleeding in a minute. The cut itself is so small that he could walk out now.

"I'd like you to come over."

"No."

She blows out a breath. Her hand comes over his free one and he flinches away. He stares at the photo. The beach's waves look fake and artificial. He's only been to a vacation orientated beach a few times and never for his own enjoyment. It felt wrong. He was alone there but he is alone everywhere.

What should it matter, he realizes, he has always been alone. Seeing Angeal and Genesis together proves it.

"I just need you to hold the cotton, Sephiroth. No more than that." Mariella's words are terse.

That wakes him up. He replaces her fingers on the cotton and hates how they connect. She turns away in her chair, working the computer, defining him in zeros and ones. An incorrect assumption compared to everything happening in him. He sits stiff backed, waiting. The quiet of the room is hard in his throat. There is nothing that he can say to make her understand. Her lips are tight lines. She won't listen.

The edges of their lives rub against each other sharp and painful.

The disagreement hurts him.

They are too different and they can't fix it.

He peels off the swab, sees the star of blood on it and throws it in the trash can.

When she turns back to him, it is with all the professionalism she has.

"There is an infestation of monsters midcountry."

Sephiroth watches her carefully. He hasn't been allowed outside the confines of a driveable distance of Midgar. She is calm as she speaks. These words have been well practiced.

"Lazard and I have agreed that your skills will be well suited for it. This is a one time release from your no fly order and we are assigning Angeal to come with you. It's a small mission. You should be back by Thursday. We will send you the details. Do you have any objections?"

Excitement and fear mix strangely in him.

"None at all."

They don't speak again.

After the year, it does something to Sephiroth when Midgar disappears in the background.

He stares out the window as the desert grows to surround the city and completely swallow it. His fingers drag down the glass. The muscles in his chest lock. The apartment is clean. The mission is planned to take two days but he emptied out the fridge. Even his desk and computer in Shinra has been organized. Since the briefing was put on his desk, he has not stopped thinking about this mission.

Now the airplane hums. He finds himself being shuttled off to an unknown town to battle.

Sephiroth isn't worried about the monsters that they will find. His mind has slipped into a decision. The conversation with Mariella and their complications settled everything. The memory went hard and solid. His fingers trace the leather of the armrests. No, the only problem left are the eyes following him from the moment they took off.

Angeal has been uncharacteristically silent with the usual smile wiped off his face. He sits in a chair across the row opposite of him. He sees more in Sephiroth than he likes him to see. Neither Lazard nor Mariella have given a reason for Angeal's presence. They weren't briefed together.

Angeal's mission could have been colored in a different light than his own.

The solid bulk in the other chair hasn't moved since take off. The buster sword and a standard sword lay across the arms of another chair. Maybe he is always this way during missions. Sephiroth has never been directly assigned with him. Still, he knows he is wrong. Sephiroth can't look away as Angeal studies him.

The usual conversation doesn't seem appropriate.

It is Angeal that breaks the silence.

He leans forward, trying to remember how to seem warm. "I've not seen you assigned elsewhere in a very long time."

They are going to dive straight into the issue. It's one of the things that Sephiroth likes about Angeal.

"It's been a very long time."

The why sits between them. Genesis has no problems shifting the blame onto Sephiroth for all the missions that Angeal and Genesis are put on because of him. He points it out weekly and states that Sephiroth is too lazy for it. He's never corrected him. He's never wanted more questions. He has allowed them to think whatever they wish. It is easier than the reason why they put the order in place.

Yet, here they are both assigned to a mission that doesn't require a First.

Sephiroth has to wonder what Lazard said. What justifications were given for such an action. Angeal stares at him. There is something mixed in those eyes. It's heavier than the weight of Sephiroth's discomfort. He pushes forward. He has to explain himself now before it is too late.

"What do you know about me?" Sephiroth asks.

Angeal blinks and settles back, weaving his hands. The plane engine mutters in the background.

"I'm not sure what you mean by that, Sephiroth." It is said so carefully. This is his warning. Angeal is giving him an out if the regret has taken him too far. This is why Sephiroth stretches forward.

"What do you know about what happened to me?"

Angeal looks away, out the window and works hands. He picks his words with steadiness. "I don't know everything. I don't want to know everything. Each man's business is his own. Both Genesis and myself were at the battle. I was more involved than him. At that point, I was a First. He was still a Second."

He stops abruptly.

Sephiroth shifts. "Keep going. I will not break over something I experienced."

Angeal finally looks at him somber and quiet. "There is kindness in not bringing up the past."

"Do you know why you are here?"

A sigh comes out of Angeal. He presses his back against the chair and runs a hand through his hair.

"I know some of the details of your last battle. That your mentor was killed in battle, that…it was a hard fight."

A hard fight.

Sephiroth watches his face but there is nothing else in it. It was a simple fact. His betrayal, his murder remains hidden through the cost of a everyone else. Dinand's body was dumped with the rest of them, buried with respect but without return.

"You don't have to decorate it, Angeal."

The actual capture was kept away from the media. Shinra had been hoping to get him back and to sweep it under the rug. To a degree, they succeeded. The men that noticed that he was missing were told to keep it to themselves. A special squad was constructed that dealt with the negotiations. Those that did go to the media were laughed at. No one would believe such a story of Sephiroth being captured by Wutai.

Yet, Genesis had been the one to heal him on the way back to Midgar. That had given him the promotion to First. Therefore, without Sephiroth knowing that Angeal had been there, Angeal had to know what had happened. Genesis couldn't keep his mouth shut to save his life. The two of them are inseparable, like oil in water, distinctly separated but drawn together by something that Sephiroth will never have.

Angeal continued. "I was the only First available. I directed the military aspect of getting you back. I was there when you returned, albeit in the background. I knew your…condition. I understand their decision to keep you here afterward."

That made Sephiroth suck in his breath. He didn't need Angeal to agree with them. While he had asked, he hadn't expected Angeal to say that, to be digging like this, trying to create a response which Sephiroth can only imagine is for some sick version of gratification.

Angeal shifts in his seat.

"But, I can't imagine that happening and then being ripped away from the only world I knew. I'm sorry, Sephiroth. I wish I had known you sooner, we could have helped." Angeal sounds so earnest that it makes Sephiroth feel ill. He leans forward, a hand breaching the hallway between them. "Let's make this a good mission. Fight with honor, do our best and make it back home?"

It raises the fight in Sephiroth's throat. He doesn't want to agree. He doesn't want to lie to this honest man. He doesn't want to tell him that he doesn't have a home to come back to, just keys to a coffin that somehow belongs to him and only holds grief. Everything is still wrong even though they have tried to make it right.

The hand waits.

Sephiroth shakes it, wordlessly.

It's the best he can do.

The town is unremarkable. Their issues don't matter. The faces of the people are just like any other people in any other place. The two Third Class SOLDIERs and Angeal do the talking and the planning. Sephiroth doesn't have the heart. Being away from Midgar feels wrong. The city had caged him in but it also protected him from the open sky and all the space that he had become expected to fill.

Instead he is unprotected. His back crawls with the emptiness. He is alone even when surrounded by allies. The others are unaffected as they explain over maps. Sephiroth stands back. Angeal keeps catching his eye as if in question as he takes over leading the mission. It is easier. Angeal has the character to lead. Sephiroth doesn't have the focus for it. He doesn't even try.

Soon it won't matter.

The next day they set out before the sun.

It is farming country. The fields are blanketed in white, an early snow. It looks like the white canvas sheets that SOLDIER used to throw over its dead before pick up. The backings of the sheets were sprayed with plastic to keep the blood from soaking through. It was almost easy to imagine that they had a peaceful death.

"Remarkable, isn't it?" Angeal asks next to him as he drives the car. His face is red from the weather. It makes him look more human, suffering from the cold. Temperatures rarely make a difference to him.

Sephiroth nods because it is easier to agree. It's a trained behavior. Years and years of HR drilled in him to be polite and to take the connections offered even if he doesn't feel them. If the point itself is inconsequential, what is the worth of arguing? It makes them feel as if he empathizes. This is not him reacting. It is another facade.

His throat is rough. After talking about the battle, his mind hangs tight on a logical assumption. This might be his only chance to ask. They are alone in this car. The others took another car.

"Angeal, about our last Wutai battle."

His shoulders go stiff. "What about it?"

"A Second. Orlin Chau. Was he under your command?"

Angeal blows out a breath. "It's been more than a year. You know the turnover rate."

That didn't answer the question.

"Did you know him?"

Angeal stares ahead. "I did. I assigned him to lead a squad. I knew you two were close."

The past tense of that sentence ticks up Sephiroth's heart.

"What happened to him?"

Angeal shakes his head. "I don't know, Sephiroth. There were so many injured. When you and Dinand were both gone, your troops got redistributed quickly between myself and Genesis. It was a confusing time."

The car goes silent. The snow makes them appear to move in place.

"I know…" Angeal's eyes slide to him. "I know that he was injured trying to save the other men. It was bad. He was triaged directly to the doctors. I doubt he made it and I haven't seen him since. I'm sorry."

Sephiroth presses against the cushion of the seat and closes his eyes. Mariella lied. He lets that grief well up in him and settle. It was another cushion in the cell he had been forced into.

The fight will take over him soon, he thinks to himself, it has to. Even with the small missions around Midgar, it takes very little for him to fall back over the edge. It'll be easier. After that, it could all be so incredibly simple.

Angeal leaves him to his thoughts.

It takes little for Angeal and Sephiroth to find the escaped bloodhounds' tracks. The paw prints scuff up the perfect snow, a flurry of activity and claws as they savor their freedom. As predicted, once the tracks are found, they carve their way up to the distant mountains. Angeal and Sephiroth leave the Thirds with the trucks and set out towards the range and wilderness alone.

Angeal continues to talk for the first mile before his voice fades into nothingness. The paw prints streak across the ground, easy to walk along. Sephiroth watches the horizon and tries to remember how to fight with someone of similar caliber. It is foreign. He has seen Angeal fight. He knows how this would be done but his mind fixates on the details. It has been so long since Shinra sent him away, especially with another high class SOLDIER. It shifts the ground under his feet.

With a small pack of bloodhounds nesting against a mountain wall, there is no need for Angeal. Sephiroth could handle this by himself. The team of Thirds could do this as well. Angeal's eyes are hard after he is silent. His hair falls in his face. Angeal is never blocked off from him but something is there stirring under the surface.

If it was Genesis standing here instead of Sephiroth, he would know what to say to put him at ease.

Instead it is him and his inadequacies and the silence stretches further under the crunch of their boots.

They hear the monsters before they find them. They yip and fight among themselves. Most likely, a den or at least a broken idea of one born from some inherited instinct, has been created within the forest they have entered. When Angeal draws the sword from his back, Sephiroth's heartbeat rises into his ears. The steel tosses him back to the last time he had seen so much of it and the pain that came after.

He summons Masamune to distract himself.

Sephiroth worries that she won't come. That somehow the summon will betray him now more than ever. Instead she comes to him. She purrs into the back of his mind, swelling with power as the solidity of the pommel fits against his palm. The sword's edge turns silver in the reflection of snow. It hollows him. He's used Masamune in combat but the apprehension of using her now is undeniable. He knows what he is walking towards.

One long whistle breaks his thoughts.

Angeal stands next to him, studying the weapon. "I've seen the photos but never in person."

"She's usually the last thing people see." Sephiroth tucks the weapon against his arm, keeping the steel from catching the trees around them.

"She's a beautiful summon."

It's the admiration in those words that turns Sephiroth's stomach to rock.

"Let's get this done, Angeal."

They close the distance within an hour. The bloodhounds are half asleep in the morning light, a pile of red flesh and claws. Ten of them lay in a heap, the ten missing from the accounted logs. They barely stand a chance. Sephiroth lets Angeal decide how to strike.

They will fight quickly and hard.

"Allow them to die without suffering" is how Angeal describes it.

Sephiroth can't look him in the eye.

Angeal comes from the front. Sephiroth is instructed to cut them off when they decide to flee. They shriek into wakefulness, eyes wide with the SOLDIER plowing straight towards them. Two spring towards Angeal and another skitters across the ground in confusion. The snow is pounded hard from their attempts to dig a burrow against a tree. The remaining monsters freeze.

While Angeal does not have the dexterity that Sephiroth has, he makes up for it in other ways. The sword swings in an arch and the first bloodhound's head comes clean from his body. The second is caught mid-leap, unable to stop the momentum. Angeal's body moves, slipping out of the way. The monster crashes past and Angeal is after a third.

The scream crashes against Sephiroth's head. The blood from the first bloodhound melts the snow. The animals cough and gag in mortal wounds never to be repaired. The motion of the fight blurs as he feels his grip on Masamune loosen.

The battles in Midgar were different. Small affairs. He was always leading a group of SOLDIERs or infantry. Here Angeal doesn't need him to lean on for support. He can handle himself in a fight, meaning that Sephiroth's attention is only on himself.

Sephiroth has been hanging in a state of inactivity with fighting. He's done it but the stakes have never been high. Now he is not supervising. There is no camera watching. No PR illustrating him fighting, narrating what he does to put in a magazine. They need to fight off the monsters.

It dregs a reality back up.

The Sephiroth he knew, the one from Wutai, slips back over him like a glove. It wipes clean his mind.

The power he has clicks as he starts towards the remaining knot of monsters. They scramble as he walks out from the trees, his blade out and to the side. Angeal's sword plunges through one's spine, nearly cutting the body in two. Masamune rises to Sephiroth's cheek and he drives forward.

The bloodhounds themselves are of no consequence. They are friction and resistance against a sharp edge. Two of them go down, eyes rolling white and teeth bared clean. The lives snap and constrict into final moments. His arms guide the weapon as he chases down one trying to escape.

The monster crashes down as it loses a back leg. Sephiroth steps close and plunges the sword down, snapping the ribs and digging deep into the animal's heart. As the point hits the ground, the tension runs through him like a sigh. It feels so good to do this, to do what he is supposed to do, to be useful.

That stops him.

The monster squirms as it dies, the blade pinning it against the ground.

The realization of his actions stab into him.

He is being used.

That fear makes him stare down at the writhing skin and muscle beneath him.

He sees himself pinned there.

He is being used again.

Shinra released him. They took him and temporarily sent him in the direction of something that he could destroy. He is feeling happy because they allowed him to feel.

This is in no better state than he was last year. His body seethes, craving more just like when he was desperate for the blood of Dinand. How is he any different than these bloodhounds? They are kept in cages until they are released to attack and kill. The animal below him whimpers. It's lifeblood stains both their feet.

It is heavy. The thoughts crowd over him. The invisible chains around his shoulders drag. He steps back. He can see the disgusting state of himself.

The air is sucked from his lungs.

Shinra is using him as a weapon to clean up their own mess. This is their test run and he is performing perfectly. They will continue to do this. He is starved enough from stimulation that he will be thankful for every occasion.

He will fall again. He'll crash. He will sink back to where he was. The ground will slip under him and smudge into blood and gore. Before that haze seemed like a blessing but here, half sunk into it, he scrambles for clarity.

He will get hurt again. He will bleed until he is spent, until he is tended by the enemy who would not kill him because they saw how weak he was. The hopelessness will embrace him. Nothing has truly changed, just the illusion that Shinra has cast over him. There is no pride in this work. The grander of the program was long sucked out of him by Dinand.

He'll drown again.

Fear sews his heart.

He never wants to be that far again.

There was a comfort to it before. Now it is like a sickness shaking his arms and drawing sweat out of his skin.

Masamune draws out the now dead animal in a clean move and Sephiroth turns back towards the fight. His step forward crunches through the ice layer and he falls forward with a jerk.

A bloodhound flies back, Angeal's sword cutting it from back to front. It thunks hard against a tree and slumps at the base, guts spilling like a drink on carpet. Angeal spins, already facing the one trying to sneak up behind him. He doesn't notice him.

One of the remaining monsters finds Sephiroth. Drool hangs from its lip as it snarls. This one is anger and fury. The claws dig into the ground as it walks towards him. There is no illusion here. In a matter of seconds, it will spring forward, the classic attack.

Muscles in its back clench with a readiness for a kill.

It'll come straight for his throat, bioengineered jaws crushing his neck, making easy work of weak tendons.

Sephiroth stands only watching. Grief holds him in place. Darkness whispers in his thoughts.

He remembers his cleaned out fridge. The bed is made. The folders are neatly lined up on his desk. He remembers how he thought this could go.

It could be spun as a mistake, a lucky shot, a rusty skill, anything. Sephiroth could never do this himself. He has too much pride but for it to be something else, it would be acceptable. The Great Sephiroth grows old and slips away into the news archive. He's already halfway there. PR rarely calls on him. The world knows him but he has been chained to a desk.

Everything could get so simple. The problems of everything at Shinra would be minimized into nothingness. He would no longer have to struggle with solutions. He would not have to confront his ceiling alone every morning. Even his emotions, they would not matter. It coats him thickly. His grip on Masamune holds firm but it drops to his side. This is his chance. It may not happen again. He never fights alone.

But he isn't now, is he?

Angeal watches him. The rest of the bloodhounds are scattered around him. Angeal's face is set, chest gasping for more air. The anger of the fight mixes in his face with the grief of killing. He used to remember that. He remembers being a boy, stepping on a battlefield being terrified at what the cost of a human life was.

It was nothing except an illusion.

Life costs nothing and it gives nothing.

The bloodhound snaps at the air as it stalks forward.

Sephiroth could still let it happen. Angeal would watch. He'd keep the secret. Honor would close the truth from the world.

He would lie for him.

The bloodhound's growl vibrates in his blood.

A frail thought seeps into the back of his head.

What of them?

Angeal's eyes catch his again.

They are so familiar to him now in their complexities and sincerity.

What of the promise he made to Angeal to come back? What of the paper printout of the Loveless ticket that Genesis stuck to his fridge? What about the weight of his hand on his shoulder as Genesis proclaimed that they were going to see it together? The best seats in the house, he had said. He remembers the warmth he felt when Angeal had beat Sephiroth in the weight competition? All that companionship sewn between them. Had it not done something?

It had colored something different in his mind than the emptiness.

One excuse at a time, they slowed him down.

Charlie's glassy eyes echo back from memory, his head heavy on his chest.

That draws on him in thin threads. If something happens here, that will disappear as well. That loss is sharp. It is bitter with something intangibly real.

Yet, there is no half measure in death.

Did he want to lose all of this as well? Was that not a color in a world of gray?

The bloodhound's shoulders bunch as his eyes blur.

He cannot stand in both places.

Shinra's poison is in him.

There is no escaping them. He cannot stop that misery. He can't leave. He is sick.

The shambles of the mess of his life sit around him but he has given up. He knows that. He died in the battle with Dinand. He's just been dragging himself around waiting for something like this. There has been more effort lately, mostly fueled by the other Firsts, but none of it has been his own design. They can only do so much.

The tension in him ticks up. Everything in him is torn down the middle. This has been his plan.

Angeal waits for his decision. The blood drips down his sword.

His heart clenches.

He has to decide.

The bloodhound forces it. It growls. Teeth show. Claws dig into the frozen dirt. The monster springs forward.

Masamune catches it, striking it clean across the throat and chest, driving it down. The body skitters against the ice.

Sephiroth can't breathe.

He looks up.

Angeal is still watching him.

Something turns him.

Perhaps.

He wants to try again.