Author's Notes:  RRGH!  I'm late with this chapter, too!  This is also my third attempt to at least start the chapter.  *sigh*  Well, at least it's here, right?  Better late than never at all…

See chapter one for disclaimer and explanation.

Separate Destinies By Annie-chan Chapter Ten:  Visions in the Hallway

Darkness.  Darkness was taking him, pulling him downward and inward.  It surrounded, penetrated, and consumed him, and he felt nothing.

A sensation came to him, an all-gripping cold.  It came not from without but from within, an icy rush of dread as he realized what was going on.

Heartless! he cried silently, his voice gone.  They have me!  They've taken my heart!  Had he even tried to speak, or was he just thinking the words?  He didn't know.

The slow seconds passed, and the cold feeling faded as he made another realization.  He was wrong.  The Heartless didn't have him.  He remembered walking down the main hallway of his home when the darkness and nothingness suddenly came to him.  He must be having a vision, his body fallen to the smooth limestone floor.  But, a vision of what?  Past?  Present?  Future?

It was strange.  Usually, he was in darkness for a few seconds at most, and he could then see what there was to see.  He guessed he had been in darkness now for at least a minute, and he could see and hear nothing yet.

He set down gently on an unseen floor, and the moment he did, the darkness melted away.  He was in a room he recognized as his own, but that wasn't him kneeling in the middle of the floor, practicing a simple parlor trick involving lights and sparkles.  It couldn't be.  Riku didn't come to the One World until he was full-grown, and this child looked about three-quarters his height and build.  It was Sephiroth as a child.  It had to be him.

So, Riku's bedroom must have once belonged to his father.

The door opened, making the boy look over.  Two ylfen, a man and a woman, came in, and the child jumped up and latched onto the woman in a hug.  These two must be his parents.  The mother looked soft and gentle, her light brown hair falling in a wavy mass down her back, though her blue eyes showed that she was sharp of mind and of wit.  The father looked sterner and harder, perhaps even cold.  His eyes and hair were very dark, contrasting dramatically with his son's looks.  Sephiroth was colored like neither of his parents, making Riku wonder if he didn't resemble a grandparent more closely or something.

Riku couldn't catch words, but he knew what they were saying, nonetheless.  It was like he was reading the meaning of their unheard words from their thoughts.  The father told the boy that he would like to test Sephiroth again, to see if he had improved any in magic or physical combat since the last time.  The mother vaguely protested, pointing out that Sephiroth wasn't old enough to start formal training, and that pushing him too hard as a child may have negative results.  She relented, though, when the boy insisted that he had improved, and that he'd show his father how good he had become from just practicing by himself.  His eyes were bright and determined, full of a child's fire and enthusiasm to prove himself.  The father gave a smile, then the whole thing faded to black, only to be replaced by another scene.

It was very short.  Sephiroth, barely an adult, stood poised in a grassy area, his incredibly long sword held at the ready, seemingly pausing in practice of his swordsmanship.  His face was calm, but his eyes were blazing.  A warrior's soul burned beneath his skin, and a youth's naïveté and zeal added to the light coming from his eyes.  He had no idea of the joys and the sorrows that he would experience in his long life.

Or the madness, Riku began to think, but his surroundings changed again.  He was now in the master bedroom, and the bed was occupied.  Wenna was in the bed, lying on her back, one delicate hand level with her head.  She wore nothing as she lightly dozed, covered just by the bedclothes.  Beside her, her lifemate lay.  Sephiroth was on his front, propped up on both elbows, his hands folded loosely on one of the pillows.  He was watching his mate, a loving and indulgent smile on his face.  He, the incredibly powerful Sephiroth, looked tame and yielding as a kitten, willing to obey her every command, no matter how silly or pointless it was.  Riku had little doubt that that was very close to the truth.

Though he looked no different at first glance, Riku was still unused to seeing his father like this.  His eyes were bright, unclouded, unjaded, his smile neither tainted nor forced.  The sorrows and disappointments he had experienced thus far were small, easily forgotten.  Life was still a mostly enjoyable prospect.

So…innocent, Riku thought, then frowned at his word usage.  Usually, "innocent" was used to describe the inexperience of children.  Still, it fit in this case.  His father, at this point, had been largely naïve about death, true unhappiness, pain deeper than mere flesh wounds…he had had limited experience with the negative things in the world.  In fact, a huge percentage of ylfen were like that.  They knew little of life outside their shielded cities and towns, their largest burden until their death or the loss of a soulmate being the wearisome passage of their ageless lives.

It was far from perfect, but the ylfe society was probably as close to a utopian civilization as a society could get without its members losing individual self and spirit.

Riku pondered this.  He could see no malice or oppression in the government, but he was still troubled.  It seemed like his father's people were afraid of change.  Still, the ylfen had lived their lives like this for hundreds of thousands of years, maybe more.  He still wasn't sure how long ago it was that their primitive ancestors first formed an organized society.

If they live like this voluntarily, then who am I to change it? Riku thought.  They are harming neither themselves nor others.  The biggest shame is that they are willingly refraining from changes merely because they like where they are now.

Now that he thought about it, it wasn't his place to say that human society was better than ylfe society any more than it was their place to say the opposite.  The human idea that change meant improvement could be just as blind and badly informed as the idea that change meant problems.

His attention was suddenly yanked back to the vision at hand.  The scene had changed as he had mused over the pros and cons of society, and he felt his heart squeeze painfully at what he saw.

It was nighttime, and he was near the canyon edge above the city.  A bonfire burned brightly, and several silent people where gathered, watching the flames.  This wasn't a regular bonfire, but a funeral pyre.  It was Wenna's funeral pyre, actually.  Ylfen did not bury their dead, burning their remains and letting the wind carry the smoke and ash away.  They loved nature dearly, and their final resting place was spread out over the land at nature's whim.  It was a fitting end.  The absence of a grave to visit used to bother Riku, but he hardly thought about it now.

He couldn't find Sephiroth at first, though he saw Samara and Darius.  Darius had his arms around his sister in a comforting embrace, and Samara's head was bowed and her right hand was in a loose fist on her chest with her left hand over it, as if her heart hurt.  Or, perhaps she was praying.

Riku went around to the other side of the fire, away from the canyon edge, and found Sephiroth.  He was nearer the flames than anyone else, and he was on both knees on the ground.  Despite the high heat, he appeared to be freezing.  He was hunched and stiff, shivering visibly, his breath shaky and shallow.  A black shroud he clutched around himself, gripping the fabric as if he meant to tear it with his fingernails.  Even his wing looked cold, huddled against his back, the bluish-black feathers ruffled up as if trying to hold warm air against the skin.  Riku could see little of his shadowed face, save what the flickering firelight revealed, but he could tell that his father was weeping silently, hot tears flowing relentlessly from his exhausted, reddened eyes.

No one, not even his own children, made a move to console him.  His grief, his suffering, was too profound.  Nothing could give him solace.

Nothing, except perhaps death.

He was kneeling very close to the edge of the flames.  Much too close, in Riku's opinion.  Small tongues of fire every once in a while licked lightly at his hair, his skin, his clothing.  It's like he wanted to be burned alongside his love.  He probably did.  Riku had never seen it himself, but he had heard stories of grieving ylfen burning themselves on their soulmate's pyre, unable to face even one day without them.

Riku felt a rush of anger, but it wasn't at any particular person, nor was it at the concept of killing oneself to be with one's love.  He was angry at fate itself.  Sephiroth should have died that night.  He should have let the flames consume him.  He should have joined Wenna immediately and been spared the pain of living without her.  Instead, fate kept him from dying when he should have.  It kept him alive for hundreds of years in madness and hopelessness, just to father one child with a human woman who thought that many sex partners was a noteworthy achievement.  If Sephiroth had died, Riku's soul would have been born as some other couple's baby.  Human or ylfe, he did not know, but he would have had different parents.  But, he had to be Sephiroth's son, he had to be the "best" candidate to wield the Keyblade when it finally appeared ages after Wenna had died.  Fate didn't care about the people it used like pawns on a chessboard.

"Curse fate!" Riku hissed, wishing that there was some physical thing, some personification of fate that he could strangle for being so uncaring and callous.

"Riku!" a faint voice called.  He looked up, startled, as if he expected the mourners to be looking at him.  That was ridiculous, as he wasn't really there, and the funeral pyre wasn't really taking place.  He then realized that he heard the voice inside his head, and someone was calling to him from the real world.  "Riku!" it called again, louder, and he recognized it as his father's.  The scene around him faded into black, and he felt his awareness pop back into his physical body with a bit of a jolt.

"Riku!" Sephiroth said again, shaking his son gently.

"Mmf…I'm awake," Riku muttered, blinking his eyes open, looking like someone dragged reluctantly from a deep sleep.

"Are you okay?" his father asked.

"Yeah," he nodded, sitting up.  "Just…saw some stuff."  He wasn't looking directly at the older man, and in fact didn't really want to at the moment.  He knew his eyes would give something away.  He didn't like his father knowing when he saw visions of him, though he wasn't sure why he felt that way.

"What did you see?" Sephiroth asked slowly.

Riku rubbed his temples, flipping his long hair back from his face, still not making eye contact.  "It was of the past.  I couldn't change it, no matter how I tried."

Sephiroth tilted his head and eyed him.  For a long time, neither of them spoke, Sephiroth searching his son with his eyes and Riku trying to avoid eye contact without looking like he was.  "Where are you heading?" Sephiroth asked, finally speaking.  "Do you need help?"  He didn't like it when his son seemed troubled by a vision, yet refused to say what it was of.  It worried him to no end.

"I'm fine," Riku answered, standing.

"Are you sure?" his father asked, standing as well.

"Please, Father, don't worry about me," Riku insisted, half turning as if to leave.  "This doesn't concern you."  It was a flat lie.  What Riku saw had everything to do with Sephiroth.

"Then, who does it concern?"

Riku stopped, caught off-guard.

"Well?" Sephiroth continued.

The younger man sighed deeply, his shoulders visibly dropping.  "You," he said quietly.  "I lied.  I saw you."

"Was that so hard?" his father asked.  "What did you see?"

"Four things," Riku explained.  "You and your parents, soon after you became an adult, and you and Wenna were the first three.  All were just random things that could merely be my seeing abilities stretching their wings.  The fourth one was—"  He paused, wondering how to put this.  Sighing, he just said it straight out.  "The fourth one was Wenna's pyre."

Sephiroth stood very still, having no physical reaction to that save a change in the light coming from his eyes.

"You should have died then!" Riku burst out, not aware of what he was saying until he had said it.

Sephiroth's eyes closed, and he nodded slowly.  "Yes…yes, I should have."

"And…a-and, you survived only because of me," Riku muttered, guilt stinging him.

"Don't think like that," Sephiroth sighed.  "It's not your fault.  You couldn't control who fate conspired to be your parents, so you mustn't feel guilty about it."

"Why are you still alive?" Riku suddenly asked.  His eyes widened and a sick feeling washed through him.  He shouldn't have said that.  It made him sound like he wanted his father to die.

"Do you wish me dead, Riku?" Sephiroth asked, eyeing his son strangely, waiting for his answer.

Riku grit his teeth behind his lips and turned his face away.  "If it will end your suffering, then yes."

Sephiroth's gaze lowered.  "I do long for death, Son," he said.  "I can't count the number of times I've contemplated taking my own life, but I still can't die yet."

"Why not?" Riku asked, looking back at him, and almost stepped back in surprise to find that his father had dramatically closed the distance between them.  One of his hands was resting lightly on Riku's shoulder, the other brushing the hair from Riku's eyes as if to inspect his face.  "Me?!" he barked, feeling a rush of anger.  "I still won't let you die?!"

"It's not that," Sephiroth shook his head.  "You don't have to let me die, so I misspoke.  It's not that I can't die yet, but that I won't die yet.  There's still something I wish to see through."

"What is it?"  Riku looked troubled.  What else could be important enough to delay the death he so desperately wanted?

"I want to make sure that you are doing well on your own," Sephiroth answered.  "You were born under some very unusual circumstances, and a life as a crossbreed of two very different races could have had disastrous consequences on you.  You could have felt…isolated, shunned, a freak.  I don't know if I showed it, but I was constantly afraid that you would become bitter that you were like no one else.  I still am."

"Father, I am doing fine on my own!" Riku insisted.  "Yes, I did feel like I didn't understand anybody and nobody understood me, but those feelings quickly passed.  I don't think about it at all anymore.  Don't worry about it."

"I'm sure you are," Sephiroth nodded.  "I don't think I can go, though, until I'm completely satisfied."

"Please, don't prolong your pain on my account," Riku said softly.  "Father, please…"

"I'm sorry, Riku," Sephiroth answered.  "I'm grateful that you worry about me like this, but I wish you would stop.  It can't be good for you."

"Samara and Darius don't do anything for you!" Riku growled, shaking.  "They do nothing to help you!  It makes me sick!"

"That's not true," Sephiroth said.  "They do enough to help me.  They just don't try to change my situation like you.  I'm not saying you're doing the wrong thing," he added quickly, seeing Riku's scowl, "most ylfen just wouldn't attempt to help me in that way.  See, I confuse people."

"Confuse people?"

"Yes.  You are right in that I should have burned myself that night.  The pain of being consumed in her flames would have been nothing to the agony I've endured without her.  Since I didn't die then, I should have died soon after.  No one has survived anywhere near this long after the death of their mate, and I'm afraid most ylfen, including my own children, see it as unnatural and wrong.  It doesn't matter why fate kept me alive.  They're leery of me, that's all."

"You're their father!" Riku cried.

"Riku, stop," Sephiroth said, his voice hardening.  "I won't have you speaking of your siblings like this."

"B-but…!"  Riku was cut off.  His father had his arms around him, holding him in a tight yet gentle hug.  He relaxed slowly, returning the embrace.

"I'm sorry, Son," his father murmured.  "Things will only happen the way they are meant to happen.  Please, stop worrying about the future and just live."

Riku slowly nodded.  "Yes, Father.  I…love you."

Sephiroth chuckled.  "I love you, too, Riku.  Do you need help going where you're going, or are you still fine?"

"I'm still fine," Riku answered, pulling back from Sephiroth.  "I'll see you later, then?"

Sephiroth nodded.  "Get along, and perk up some.  You're starting to look too much like me."

Riku looked at his father a moment.  His blank face as he had said that last sentence made it impossible for Riku to tell if he were joking or being serious.  He finally turned away and went on his way, slow and silent.  He had a lot to think about.

To be continued…

Author's Notes:  Fluffy father-son bonding flavored with my trademark angst.  We learn some about Sephiroth, but it's otherwise a harmless little chapter, if I do say so myself.  I think I confused some people, though.  This isn't what I originally planned to have as chapter ten.  I had told some of my friends what I was planning it to be, but it just wouldn't come out, no matter how much I thought on it.  I then told some of those people that I was scrapping my original idea and moving up my idea for chapter eleven to chapter ten.  I ended up not doing that, either.  I came up with this for chapter ten, so chapter eleven is chapter eleven again.  You get what I'm saying, right?  Sorry for the confusion!  ^_^;;  I hope I didn't make the sap in this chapter too cheesy.  I hate it when that happens, and I think it ruins the scene.  Anyway, sorry for the delay in getting this posted, and I really hope I'll get chapter eleven posted relatively soon.  Let me know what you think of this in a review or an email to mangareader@hotmail.com, onegai shimasu!

SIDE NOTE:  I don't know how many of you noticed, but the descriptions I used for Sephiroth's parents could be applied to Hojo and Lucrecia.  There's obviously a different family history between them than there was in Final Fantasy VII, but I wanted his parents to at least have the same look that they did originally.  I won't be bringing his parents into the story anymore, so don't ask about what hidden meaning that vision had.  There isn't any hidden meaning.  None of Riku's first three visions in this chapter have any specific importance, to tell the truth.  I just wanted to illustrate to readers a little of how Sephiroth was before half of his soul was ripped away.  Don't overanalyze this like an English teacher would and insist that everything has some ulterior significance, please.  You can't imagine how that attitude toward literature annoyed me in my English classes.  Can't something just mean what it means for once?