Faded Dreams, Falling Like Rain
A Final Fantasy VII Fan Fiction by Sarah Digna Yudlowitz
Dream . . .
Dream of death . . .
Dream of moonlight . . .
Legal Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII and all of its characters belong to the company of Squaresoft. I do not claim these characters or the concept of the game for my own. This work is not to be distributed, sold, or posted anywhere without the consent of its author. Comments and encouragements are always welcomed, as they are a part of the enjoyment of writing Fan fiction. Please take this into consideration while you read the following fiction.
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Chapter Four
The call of Jenova was great. At the time, I could only see through heavy-lidded eyes; eyes that had glowed like a soldier's. In actuality, I had never even become a member of SOLDIER, let alone a first class ranking one. Zack, a guy who I met while joining on a mission to be a guard, pitied me. I could never understand it, but I guess the guy saw something in me that I myself didn't. I was a nobody and half of the time I didn't care. I idolized someone whom I knew I could never emulate, but Zack made me realize that maybe I wasn't getting the point, that I should become strong in knowing that if I do my best, it doesn't matter. In a way, I was using my idol to become something more. But I never did become anything.
Zack told me a lot of things, I guess. He talked a lot, and sometimes that was the only thing that made me focus on reality. It was probably why I didn't become insane. I remember now that after going back home, I watched someone who I had fed off even though I was too weak to become anything aside from a guard, set fire to whom I was. My mother was dead. I remember later in some dank abyss, Zack told me things about Sephiroth, what he had found out about before we had gotten to where we did. I listened, but I knew most of it, especially about my mother. The image of her trapped in an unreachable part of a home I had considered cozy, her skin melting away with the searing hot flames of the fire . . . it was burned into my brain as if my mind was alight with it, too. I remember standing outside the door of my home. It was a home I had lived in for fourteen years, and knew for sixteen, and now it was dying like a faded memory. There was no one outside. Zack and Master Zangan had already searched for survivors, but I wasn't thinking of that then. I suppose I wasn't thinking about anything rather than the searing flames and how all of it had to be a nightmare.
When I had finally come to some revelation, I remembered Zack, frantic but trying to keep cool for my sake, telling me he would go to the Mt. Nibel reactor. He had blamed it on Sephiroth, and that had made me lapse into even more of a dream world, but then, as I thought back on that, I figured I would make use of myself, of my enragement. How could Sephiroth have done such a thing? It didn't make sense, but I hated him for it. Tears burned on my cheeks and blinded my vision as I fled from the flames. I didn't care about anything but vengeance. And I knew I stood no chance at all against Sephiroth, but my death wouldn't matter. It would put an end to the hazy torches of fire and the image of my mother, dead, surrounded and bathing in flames.
Getting there was no problem, I knew the route to take. A memory of Tifa getting hurt because of me on this same journey made me get there even faster, but I could feel myself shaking and I knew I was edgy as hell. Anger made me reckless, and then I was anything but. I could feel adrenaline rushing through me, and it made my head and heart pound, but I was finally there. I came upon a Shinra experiment room labeled "Jenova", remembering Sephiroth telling me to guard Tifa. She couldn't come because Shinra's secrets were behind the doors of the reactor. I hated Shinra, Sephiroth and everything else at the moment and seeing on this road that Zack had fallen injured trying to stop Sephiroth made me even more angry. I didn't feel remorse and I didn't feel scared, I just felt an overwhelming anger. Zack had promised that coming on this particular mission would pay off. He said that because it was dealing with monsters in particular, formed by a malfunctioned reactor, that I would be able to witness a taste of Sephiroth's power. I made sure that Zack was alive, although I noticed a sickle arc running from the hollw of his neck to his navel that could only be the bite of Masamune, Sephiroth's sword. I refused to see the blood, I just snapped my attention away and ran up the stairs, taking Zack's sword with me. I ran away beyond capsules that resembled eggs and through the door labeled "Jenova" . . . and I realized that was what Sephiroth had called his mother. Jenova.
Sephiroth stood upon jumbled wires that disappeared within a large tank, covered in blood. He was throwing a mangled statue aside after caressing the features of its face. As he turned around and looked up at me, an insane look in his eyes and a broad smile, I could see the cold fire that blazed from his makou eyes and my blood boiled. Half of his face was hidden in his almost knee-length silver hair and from where I was, he looked like a bloody god, having bathed himself in the blood of my hometown first, the blood of Zack second, and third, in the blood of Jenova itself. It hung suspended in a watery fluid, more alien looking than anything else I had ever seen, and yet it still managed to have a vague human form, that of a woman. I confronted that man, who looked tainted and ugly in the beauty that he once had.
" . . . Traitor," Sephiroth said, low and calm, his frightening smile leaving his face as he spoke it, which surprised me. There was no insanity in his voice. He was calm and cool, standing there with his Masamune raised, drenched in blood, like himself. He looked down at his hands and started laughing. It was an eery, frightening sound, but my anger still raged at his lack of regret. "They were traitors, Cloud. All of them. You are no different." He turned around and ran his fingers down the glass of the enclosed prison Jenova was held in, his blood soaked gloves leaving a trail over where they traced. Sickly laughter followed once more. "Mother was destined to rule the planet with her superior power and knowledge. Your people stole that right from mother." He paused then to laugh again. "I was given orders to give the Cetra back their peace.We will take it back from you, the ancestors of our traitors, Cloud, by regaining the Promised Land, and mother and I will rule it together."
"I thought that I could trust you. You were my idol . . . and you've torched my dreams," I remember saying. Slowly, my anger began to threaten my resolve and more tears filled my eyes. I know I swiped at them futiley. God knows that at that moment I didn't want to be weak. I didn't even want to be a person. But I was realizing that that would put myself on the level of this . . . this monster. He appeared human, but I knew something in him died. Somehow, I had used that to my advantage. I tried to stab him when he was upon the path that brought us to Jenova, the heart of the reactor, and instead the man fell into the depths of the reactor. I thought him dead for sure. All I could hear was his sickening laughter as he fell,and a cold rush of wind brush against my skin, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. I heard nothing for a while, but a muffled groan coming from the Jenova chamber stirred me from watching Sephiroth's form recede into the darkness, embracing the rushing air with his cackle.
" . . . Zack," I whispered, shaking him gently. He looked up at me with makou-blue eyes, and shook his head a bit as if to clear away haziness. I thought that he would have been dead by now, but I had managed to help him out of the reactor and back to the Shinra Mansion gate. From there, I couldn't go on and neither could Zack. The weight of everything that had just happened was too much for us both and upon the scorched land of Nibelheim, both of us lay unconscious, spinning in a dark black world of nothingness for what seemed like forever.
Waking up, I didn't realize that I would soon wish I had been slain by Sephiroth . The air that surrounded me was heavy and everything glowed with a faint green, stinging my eyes and lungs as I took in each breath, blinked each blink. I felt as if the gravity itself were weighing me down, and the air was almost impossible to breath. I remember peering through that mist-like green, and realizing I was suspended within a tank that instantaneously reminded me of Sephiroth . . . and Jenova. A man's face leered into mine behind heavy-lense glasses, and he smiled in such a way that it made me shiver, and such a task could be accomplished by floating there anyway. I had watched my feet dangle, on the verge of unconsciousness in that tank many times, while listening to Zack as he desperately tried to keep me alive. We found out from this man, who happened to be Hojo of Shinra incorporated, that where we were being kept was the basement of the Shinra Mansion. What happened there I cannot even begin to tell you, and half of it I can't tell you anyway. During Hojo's experimentations on me and Zack, everything was a blur, but I know there was pain. There was always pain. I would not even open my eyes, for the day was meaningless and greeting it was pointless.
The only thing I remember vividly was Hojo's reason for the experimentations. Both me and Zack were injected with Jenova cells and in our prison we were exposed to high degrees of makou. Hojo revealed that we would be special experimentations in the Jenova project. Continuing Professor Gast's research, Hojo devoted himself to learning about Jenova as much as he could. We were told Sephiroth's story, of how he was nothing but an experiment. Hojo had used Sephiroth to study the effects of Jenova on the body and the mind, and later on used members of SOLDIER or people who could take the dosages of Jenova and high degrees of makou used to enhance them. They, undergoing the same experimentation process as Sephiroth, were deemed his clones. Once these clones could be fully termed so, tattoo markings in Roman numerals were given to them, usually being found on their right arm. Sephiroth, being the first to undergo this procedure was the Alpha Specimen, as Hojo called him. I was to be the Omega Specimen. I had forced myself to watch countless times as Zack pulled off the tough guy act with Hojo many times. During one of his more crude experiments which required the testing of the physical endurance makou and the Jenova cells gave the body, Zack would lie completely still on Hojo's experimenting table in such a way that I never knew if he was alive or not, but he was always returned to his prison of makou beside mine, making snide jibes at the "good doctor", and I do use that term loosely.
It was a while before Hojo came to begin experimentation on me. I was brought rations once and a while like Zack, but I also felt as if I were dead, which was a far worse torture then having to take Zack's place. Inside, my emotions were gone. I felt hopelessness. Then, as Hojo finally got sick of Zack's resistence to the call of Jenova, I was made to start my experimentation. When I returned after my abuse later in the day, Zack would keep me conscious, telling me false stories of hope. He said he would gain strength if I would and leave this horrible place behind us to return to Midgar, but he never told me about what we were going to do once we got to Midgar, which is why I thought escaping was hopeless. Apparently, so did Zack.
After a while, I heard voices calling me and I felt such a nagging pull, such a desire to fulfil the pleas that cried in my mind. I thought that I had finally gone insane, and that's when I had started to suffer from Makou Poisoning. Hojo had drowned me in so much that it was killing me slowly, and the voices in my head only made the pain so much worse. Of course, Hojo had found out about them, and had stated that finally "one of his Jenova-X specimens was responding to the experimentations". At that point, I was never left alone. I was never healed of my Makou Poisoning, and I dared not to say anything at all. I didn't cooperate with Hojo's questions, I never showed any real resistence. I just didn't care, and it was breaking Zack's heart. Hojo told us later that there was to be a reunion of the clones with Jenova herself in two years, accompanied by Sephiroth. Hojo's experimentation with us at that time would be to keep us here while Sephiroth, his clones, and Jenova were brought together at the end of what he called the Alpha-Omega differentiation. I didn't understand him . . . I had thought Sephiroth dead. Since I had been put through many of the things Sephiroth had faced his whole life (while he still resisted Jenova's call all the time), I suddenly didn't hate him anymore. I pitied him.
Now knowing that Sephiroth was his own son, I find him even more of an asshole. And . . . knowing that Lucrecia was chosen to "mate with him in order to produce to correct offspring specimen", as he said it, makes me sick . . . and even though I can't make these memories -- or yours for that matter -- go away, I'm relieved that I can finally know who I am. I've been blind for a while in many more ways than one.
Vincent gave a deep sigh, still staring at Cloud levelly as he had the whole time he had relayed this information to him. He too was an experiment, and hearing in full what Sephiroth was had made him feel like he owed Lucrecia even more. His eyes fluttered closed, and when he opened them, Cloud was pacing back and forth, a stubborn look on his face.
"Are you okay?" he asked. "Because I still need to tell you the other half of this story."
"No, I'm fine, Cloud. It just seems like my burden grows with everyone's tale," Vincent replied forlornly. Cloud scowled a bit, choosing not to get too much into Vincent's problems. Later, maybe the others would help the distraught man, but Cloud didn't want to bother. His help wasn't much of the meaning of it. It rather fit under the category of the destruction of one's soul, he thought. At one time, he wouldn't have given a flying shit anyway it went, but Cloud did now want to see Vincent get over the idea of atonement. What happened with Lucrecia and Sephiroth had not been his fault . . .