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 Nine
"Hojo, where is professor Gast?" Sephiroth asked the man one morning when Vincent
was missing, and Gast was nowhere in sight for two days. Hojo was arranging materials in the
lab on a table, and had his back to the boy, but Sephiroth knew that he must have started smiling
after the question was asked. "Vincent seems to have disappeared as well, and I know this is not
a coincidence.
"Professor Gast has gone up to the Northern quadrant to study the Cetra," Hojo said,
emphasizing the word professor, as if Gast didn't deserve the title for leaving Shinra. But then,
to Hojo, no one deserved anything, if it was not himself. "The Cetra,"Hojo snorted, "are not to
be trusted. Not with their false conceptions of reality."
"He would leave without telling me?"
"Yes, Sephiroth. He's abandoned the Jenova Project . . . you, for a woman," Hojo
snickered. "That's really what it's all about, you know."
"And . . . what of Vincent?"
"You know how it is in the Turks' business. Everything's risk, risk, risk. Don't worry
though. He's been replaced." Hojo began mixing labeled solutions that popped and fizzed when
they came in contact with each other. Sephiroth watched some of it hit the glass table, then
sizzle into gas, and turned to leave.
"Oh yes," said Hojo, without turning around, "I forgot to tell you . . . The president wants
to speak to you. It's a little experiment of his own." It was then that he turned around to eye
Sephiroth's painfully thin, yet strong frame.
**********
Three knocks came at President Shinra's door, and then silence. The man looked up from
his desk through the top of his reading spectacles, and then, as if by a reflex, pulled them off his
face and let them hang upon a gold chain, a comfortable weight against his fat belly. He got up
to turn the Shinra camera on that had a view of the hall outside of his office. Peering at the
screen, he saw an unusually tall young boy with hair and eyes the result of experimentation;
makou literally encompassing his soul. Opening the door, the president smiled at Sephiroth and
stepped out of his way.
"Come in, I have a request I must ask from you. However, this is, of course, a mandatory
request."
"And what is that, President Shinra?" Sephiroth asked as respectfully as he could,
without letting his hatred of the blimpy man seep into his response. Shinra, having the doleful
expression of a trillionaire murderer on his face, clapped his stubby pink-hued hands together
and two men came in, dressed like -and therefore were- Turks. They came toward Sephiroth,
carrying a long sword in their four combined arms, wrapped in leather sheets and tied with
golden strings. And there was Shinra's logo dangling at the bottom in red; a most appropriate
color.
"No man has been able to carry, nor wield this sword on his own," the president of death
explained. "It is to my understanding that the Jenova Project has given you strength beyond any
man -although it does not appear so- and therefore I offer this sword to you as a test of will and
endurance. If, by the end of three months, you cannot lift this sword, you will have no place in
Shinra. If, however, you can lift the sword, I will take you out of Hojo's laboratory and install
you in the military. SOLDIER, it is termed. You will be supplied with whatever you need to live
on and so forth. You will be taken care of at my expense." Both of the Turks came up to
Sephiroth, cradling the sword, restrained.
The first was a rather tall man, with long black hair like an inverted spider's web threads
strung in lines. He had dull, passionless eyes, and in between them, there was a dot. It was olive-colored, and Sephiroth did not understand what its purpose was. The other man was lean, well-muscled, not feminine in the features like the first Turk. His head was shaved bald, sunglasses
smugly on his face. Sunglasses were the crucifix of Christian faith to the Turks. They
represented death, life, pathos, complete lack of feeling. Anything that would hide their eyes.
Devil's eyes. Pretense. The first Turk did not wear sunglasses, and so Sephiroth saw outright
sin; the disinterest of a man who was all things society named scum. However, society did not
call the Turks scum. Society respects Shinra, so society respects the Turks. Society in its extreme
low accepts all form of authority, especially if society is corrupt; unintelligent; ignorant.
Then, the blade was presented to Sephiroth, just short of his outstretched arms, which he
felt weight settle into. At first, the sword seemed to readily accept him, and then the thing came
crashing to the floor in the front of its long length.
"Tsk, tsk." The president shook his head of sparse straw-colored hair. His chins rolled
upon each other as he nodded to the sword, as if tectonic plates. "You have to channel the
energy within you. Stamina is only part of it. Sephiroth's eyes seethed their forewarned neon
wrath. Was the president mocking him? He, who Sephiroth supposed had never killed directly,
never held a sword.
"In that case, I'll have it done by tomorrow," Sephiroth said, holding back a hiss. The
two Turks looked at him strangely, because, asfterall, they'd needed both theit combined
energies to carry the impossibly long and heavy swor, and he had just now gathered it in to both
arms. Then he went to the door, holding the sword as if it were a great honor, but was skeptical
of all gifts Shinra presented to him. Still the Turks were agape. "May I be excused now?"
"Take the fighting court," the president said, chuckling. "You are a special asset to
Shinra after all."
**********
As soon as Sephiroth got to the fighting court, he chose a corner to hide away in, so that
he would be undisturbed. The first three times he picked the sword up by the hilt, it stayed
elevated for a few seconds, an extension of his will, but then the muscles in his arms tired, and
the blade's front came down to the ground. The length was at least two feet over his own height,
but it was magnificently beautiful after he had unsheathed it. Patiently, Sephiroth took the blade
by the hilt again, this time holding it two-handed. Something, however, changed. As he
concentrated pn letting it stay an extension of his will, the weight seemed to decrease. It was as
if the sword had allowed him to wield it. He opened his eyes, and dropped his left hand, which
he had used to evenly distribute the weight of the heavy sword. It almost seemed weightless now.
He smiled, something he hadn't done with heart since Professor Gast disappeared. He
immediately went to prove himself to President Shinra. This was only the beginning of what he
wanted to aspire to.
Lilith shook her head at the memory that wasn't her own. She missed the intoxicating
link to Jenova. It made her mind the sharp point of a reality that no one wanted her to stumble
upon. Jenova was possession, the Mother. Sephiroth was addiction, the Father. The insanity of
Sephiroth's feverish mind was something that passed the days on the North Crater, until the
clones, black-robed and makou-eyed, mindless drones of Jenova and Sephiroth's bidding (and
she knew that Sephiroth was Jernova's puppet, as she was theirs). The clones all spat nonsense
that sounded like prayer. There was tremendous adoration for Sephiroth, the Father, and
Jenova, the Mother. Cult adoration. Sephiroth was more drugged by Jenova then any of the
clones. Their adoration was for naught. Slaughter upon slaughter came from the Heavens. That
was Jenova's goal. The most unconsciously suicidal was he, who felt himself growing more
hopeless, and it was Cloud who finally let him rest.
She felt the final link break then, and saw his eyes open, aware, for the last time before
he disappeared, becoming the billions of sparks of spirit that receded into Lifestream. As she
closed her eyes, she saw him smiling at her, walking through the snowy fields of his Promised
Land, untainted by alien addiction. It was a silent sanctuary, where death was contemplation:
the Promised Land that Shinra had been searching, and would never find. There was never
worldly paradise.
Lilith was starting to get sick of the North Crater.
There was no place for Lilith in Midgar, nor was there a place for her anywhere else.
The world was the graveyard of the living, devastated by destruction, yet still living, and slowly
re-healing at its own slow pace. There were bodies strewn all about Midgar, hidden, waiting, a
mass of unidentified death. Death that was however, not in vain. The city's vegetation was
growing wildly. Flowers, dandelions, everything. Previously, nothing could grow in Midgar.
Once Lifestream destroyed Meteor, however, nothing would be the same. Almost all traces of
Shinra had been eradicated, all destroyed by the literal Holy spell. Holy got rid of all traces of
Shinra : makou, Jenova . . .but Lifestream, when it appeared, was able to correct the path that
Holy has ridden upon. It was as if by some miracle that Lilith was not dead. All around her, the
clones had screamed in agony, renouncing their cult adoration and took up confusion and death,
their eyes being burned from their sockets, their bodies reduced to bloody pulps of smoldering
flesh that smelled putrid, and liberating. The smell of death in Lilith's nostrils brought her life.
She was still alive, spared like Noah in his Arc, only she didn't give a damn about the word of
god. So, why was she spared by Holy? She had as much Jenova and makou in her blood as
Sephiroth did,maybe even more, considering it was much later that she was able to escape Hojo
than it was for him. Always, she was the experiment he never worked in earnest on. She was
forgotten Eve; Lilith.
She decided she'd leave the North Crater and try to forget Sephiroth, and everything that
had to do with him. She didn't know where to go to again, and she was back to where her first
train of thought was. She didn't know what she was even looking for. Peace? No, she wasn't
bound to Jenova anymore, and wasn't part of some greater whole of evil. Something, however,
made her sad that she was leaving the blooming wound to the planet. When she left, she knew
that it would thrive, and so, she left.
