Author's Notes: See chapter one for disclaimer and explanation.
Separate Destinies By Annie-chan Chapter Eleven: Blood RageDeep in the south face of Aerie's canyon, in a room lit only by dim white lamps along the wall, Riku lay curled up in bed, fast asleep. He was on his side, as was his wont, his body totally relaxed. His breathing was soft and steady, his ribs expanding slightly with each breath. He was a perfect study of peaceful sleep.
Suddenly, he turned completely over, going from his right side to his left. He immediately stilled afterward, the turn only a brief burst of motion. If someone had been there to look, however, his face wasn't quite so serene, and he was now holding the bedclothes tight around himself, as if he was cold. He didn't stay still for long.
"Hnnn…" He groaned quietly, jerking slightly, like he was struggling with something, trying to get away. His breathing had become deeper, louder, as it would have if he were nervous, his heart and lungs speeding up. Turning onto his back, he groaned again, almost a whine of fear, his face troubled, pained. He was beginning to sweat, his fingers convulsively clenching and unclenching.
Finally, with a shout, he jerked awake. He lay staring into the darkness for several minutes, his brain struggling to comprehend that he was awake, no longer caught in whatever nightmare had just gripped it. He had heard of night terrors, where a sleeper wakes up from a nightmare but is unable to tell immediately if he is awake or not, but it had never happened to him before, and it didn't cross his mind that he was having one now. All he knew was a stark fear that refused to let him move.
Little by little, his locked joints loosened, and he relaxed again. His breathing and heartbeat were still high, and he was trembling, still scared. He managed to push himself up into a sitting position, clutching the blankets around himself, like he was trying to warm up. If he had been a child, the experience would have sent him into hysterical tears. As an adult, he had a little more control over his reaction, enough to not cry, but he was terrified to get out of bed, afraid of what he may see if he left his tiny island in the darkness of his room.
"Riku?" a soft voice said from the doorway. He froze at the sound, startled and frightened, but then calmed again when he realized it was his father's. "Are you all right?" Sephiroth asked.
Riku was about to ask how his father had known that he had had a nightmare, but stopped. He must have reflexively sent out a distress signal when he woke, disoriented and panicky, and his father had responded to it. "I…I had a nightmare," he said instead, trying to quell his shaking.
He vaguely saw through the darkness a worried frown on Sephiroth's face. "Are you always like this after a nightmare?"
"No," Riku shook his head. "But, this time, I don't think I knew I was awake for a while after I woke." His voice was steadier, yet he still felt cold.
"I see," his father nodded. Even the bravest can be completely immobilized when the brain is confusing reality with nightmare. "Do you want to talk about it? What did you dream?"
For a long time, Riku was silent. He sat in the middle of his bed, balled up in the blankets like a sick person.
"Lie back down, Riku," Sephiroth said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Your back will be sore if you keep sitting hunched like that."
Riku hesitated, then obeyed, laying himself down again. It felt uncommonly good, as if he had had great hardship beforehand, and a proper bed was an uncommon luxury. Pulling the covers over himself again, he looked ready to fall back asleep. His eyes, however, stayed open.
"What did you dream?" Sephiroth asked again gently.
Again, he hesitated, but Riku told his father what he had seen. The whole thing had been so clear and sharp, and it was much more like a vision than a dream.
Riku had found himself on the bank of a lake. He had been unable to judge the size of the lake, as everything had been enshrouded in thick fog, limiting his field of vision. Because of the mist, he had been under the impression that the lake was huge, its scope too big for him to see it all at one glance, even if the fog had not been there. The waters of the lake had not been calm, churning violently as if a storm whipped them, yet he felt no wind. The lake had seemed to be thrashing violently from its own force, something Riku had never seen liquid do. It had been then that he had realized that it had not been water he had been seeing. It had all been deep red, and an acrid stench had invaded his nostrils, making him almost gag in its intensity.
He had been standing on the banks of a sea of blood.
He had wanted to turn and run, unable to look at the gruesome scene, but something stopped him dead in his tracks. To his horror, a hand had emerged at the edge of the blood. The fingers had looked like claws, the nails digging into the soil to find a grip. Another had immediately followed, and they had pulled, dragging forward arms, head, and shoulders onto the shore. Something had been crawling out, and Riku had had a strong urge to wretch.
It had been ylfen, a single feathered wing, the feathers weighed down with sticky blood, sprouting from the back. Long hair had obscured the face, disenabling Riku from identifying who it was. The figure had been so soaked with blood, though, that Riku had doubted that he could recognize them at all. They had been naked as well, their clothes either lost or forsaken.
The figure had sat up from their animal-like crouch, and Riku had seen from the flat chest and broad shoulders that it had been a male. He had backed away, frightened and thoroughly disgusted with the sight. A single thought had kept echoing through his mind: Getmeoutofheregetmeoutofheregetmeoutofheregetmeoutofheregetmeoutofhere…
Slitted green eyes had been staring out at him from behind the matted curtain of blood-soaked hair, and he had given a cry of horror. It was Sephiroth.
His father had given a hissing growl when he had seen Riku, crouching down, threatening like a beast would. Riku hadn't even had time to react, however, before Sephiroth had sprung toward him, bent on tearing him to pieces. Riku had screamed reflexively, throwing his arms up in front of himself to shield his face—
—and, at that moment, he had woken up. He had been back in his bedroom, yet unable at first to recognize it as safety.
Riku fell silent after he finished his explanation, waiting for some reaction from his father. If it was for good or for ill, he didn't know.
"My hands are stained with the blood of many," his father finally said after a long pause. "Perhaps that is the meaning of this."
"But, I know that already," Riku said. "It has to be more than that, if there's any meaning at all."
"You'll have to figure it out, then, because I don't know," Sephiroth shrugged. "And, I think it does have meaning. Not many dreams have absolutely no meaning, especially those dreamed by someone like you."
They sat in silence for a while, each pondering over the dream.
"I'm all right now, Father," Riku spoke up. "You can leave now."
"Are you sure, though?" Sephiroth asked.
Riku nodded.
"All right," Sephiroth conceded. "Let me know if you need anything." He left, closing the door silently behind him.
Riku turned onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. The dim light coming from the lamps cast odd shadows, and he spent a long time following the patterns and shapes with his eyes, mapping out their features. He didn't really see what his eyes saw, however, as he was deep in thought. What could that vision mean? What significance did the blood and the crazed look in his father's eyes have? He had almost fallen back to sleep, his body wanting to leave the speculation for the morning, when a sudden thought came to him, waking him up again.
Two days from now was the anniversary of Wenna's capture and murder. Every year, Sephiroth went out into the Wilds, hunted down a kitsche, brutally killed it, and brought its head back home, stripped of flesh. He had killed scores of kitschen in this way, and there was little chance of him stopping that gruesome tradition.
Was that kitsche blood? he thought. Was that what it was? Was that vision illustrating just how much life he had taken in the name of revenge? Riku had never liked what Sephiroth did every year on that day. It was disgusting, barbaric, and an altogether bad way to deal with the death of his soulmate. Revenge could only be taken so far before it stops being revenge and becomes killing for killing's sake. Riku had never brought his disapproval up, however, because he knew that his father's reaction would be far less than favorable.
Why had his father attacked him, then?
Are we going to fight? Riku mused. Does it have any connection with his killing of kitschen, if the kitschen he's killed are indeed what the blood signified?
He stayed awake for a long time after that, questions about the dream keeping him from falling asleep. However, he could only become so tired, so he finally let his eyes slide shut. He was asleep again within minutes of closing his eyes, and he slept until long after the sun had risen.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Riku was moody the next day, and didn't come out of his room much. He couldn't stop thinking about that dream and what it possibly meant. Apparently, Sephiroth had told the other two what had happened, because no one came to his door to see if he was all right.
Riku was half convinced that the blood had to do with Sephiroth killing kitschen every year in revenge, mostly because of the timing of the dream. There was the possibility that it meant something else entirely, but he was pretty sure that was it. The madness in his father's eyes, if it was kitsche blood, was easy to explain. He had lost his soulmate to them, placing a soul-deep hatred and resentment toward them in his heart. As for why he attacked Riku, the younger man was still pondering. For all he knew, he could have looked like a kitsche to his father, prompting the attack. Perhaps, though, it meant that the two of them would fight concerning this issue in the near future.
Sephiroth hadn't seemed to have much of an outward reaction to Riku's description of the dream last night. This morning, however, Riku had sought out his father's presence in the house and briefly touched his mind. He was worried and disturbed about the dream, but didn't show it to Riku in order to keep his son from getting more upset.
Riku, sitting at the desk, sighed and ran his hand through his hair. The case of keychains was standing open against the wall, and the metal glinted in the white light of the lamps lining the walls. Samara had taught Riku a spell related to a shielding spell that kept dust off the keychains and their case, so that they still looked meticulously shined after several years. He looked at the keychains and let his mind travel back to his childhood before they had even heard of the Keyblade. He wanted to get away from the thoughts of the dream for a little bit, and he soon lost himself in his memories.
An odd sensation pulled him out of his memories again. He wasn't sure what it was at first, but he soon realized that his father had passed the door to his bedroom, going down the hallway. There was murder on his mind.
Because of tomorrow, Riku thought, standing. Going out the door, he caught up with Sephiroth.
"Is tomorrow—" Riku began.
"Yes," Sephiroth said, cutting him off.
"So, that means—"
"I go hunting."
"But…"
"But, what?"
Riku faltered. He wasn't even sure what he was going to protest, but words came out of his mouth before he realized what he was saying. "You need to stop this."
Sephiroth stopped walking so suddenly that Riku almost ran into him. "What?"
Riku mentally kicked himself, but went on. He had already said it, so there was no point of trying to go back. "I think you should stop killing on this day every year," he said. "It's not right."
The slightly taller man turned around, his keen eyes boring into his son's.
"You've caught yourself in a vicious cycle," Riku continued, though inwardly he quailed under his father's piercing stare. "It's become killing for killing's sake. It's no longer real revenge, Father, just hatred. You only draw yourself in further with every life that you take."
"Oh, really?" Sephiroth said quietly. Riku noticed with a start that he was backed against the wall, his father standing awfully close.
"It's barbaric!" Riku burst out…
…and found himself on the floor, the left side of his face hurting like hell. His father's fist had connected hard, and he felt dizzy and disoriented for a few seconds.
"How dare you…?" Sephiroth hissed, grabbing Riku by the collar and hauling him upright again. "How dare you speak ill of her?! She's not worth avenging, is she, or even remembering?!"
"N-no," Riku managed, trying to regain some control over his own balance.
"Liar," his father spat.
"You're drawing conclusions!" Riku shouted, feeling anger rise up within him. His father's thought process wasn't exactly levelheaded, but Riku was getting sick of being accused of things he wasn't even implying.
"Oh, I am, am I?" Sephiroth growled, giving him a shake.
"As long as you keep killing in her name, you'll never let her memory rest!" Riku bit back. "Think about it, Father. Would killing a random kitsche every year and throwing its head into a storage room make her happy?! Would she appreciate the way you cultivate your own madness instead of trying to overcome it?!" His voice lowered, taking on a deadly tone. "If I were her, I'd be severely disappointed in you."
Sephiroth's vertical pupils contracted to mere lines, and Riku felt a wave of rage and hatred so powerful come from him, it knocked down his mental shields and nearly immobilized him in its intensity.
Riku was suddenly yanked away from the wall and thrown against the closest door so hard, the metal peg that held it shut broke, making the door swing inward. Riku hit the floor inside, having felt a few ribs and his left arm break, fighting unconsciousness. He smelled death and realized that he was in the storage room that he had just mentioned.
His father grabbed him by the hair and forced him to look at the disorganized heap of skulls on the floor, his broken bones protesting loudly.
"Look, Riku," Sephiroth said, his voice quiet yet dangerous. "Every single one of these deserved to die. She was worth more to me than all the other life on this planet combined, and they stole her from me. She was meat to them, no different than the game animals they hunt for food. I would kill every one of their accursed race, but out laws prohibit actions that would disrupt the ecosystem. They should count themselves lucky I only kill one of them a year."
"Father…" Riku began, but he was suddenly alone. Sephiroth had left him on the stained floor, pained and bleeding. He lay there for a long time, then finally began a healing spell, slowly knitting his broken bones and soothing away his bruises and cuts.
All he had wanted to do was help.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Riku didn't sleep at all that night. Though he had healed his injuries, he still ached, and there was too much on his mind to sleep. He lay staring up at the ceiling for what seemed like eternity, listening to the clock tick. The hours seemed to strike days apart, and he didn't really pay attention to them.
Finally, in the middle of the morning, he got up again. He was dead tired, yet his body would not allow him to fall asleep.
He went down the hallway and into the front room, finding his brother and sister there.
"Are you all right, Riku?" Darius asked. "You look like you haven't slept at all." He and Samara were normal on the surface, but their air was gloomier than normal.
"Father's gone?" Riku asked instead of answering Darius' question.
"Yes," Samara nodded. "He's out in the Wilds, I imagine."
The Wilds. He was out hunting for a kitsche to kill, if he hadn't gotten it already. Riku felt a surge of urgency, a need to find him and stop him. This wasn't right. He was taking his revenge way too far. It wasn't as if Riku cared for the kitschen—he cared for them no more and no less than wild animals—but it was about time the cycle his father had gotten himself into was broken. He headed for the door to the outside.
"Wait!" Darius called after him. "Where are you going?"
Riku didn't answer, taking to the air and rising up above the canyon walls. From there, he veered toward the gate, picking up speed as he went. The adrenaline released by flight was strengthening him, making him feel less tired.
Outside the gates, the Wilds were less fuzzy to him, and he opened his mind and scanned for his father's signature. Flying slowly, he kept searching in wider and wider arcs, unable to find him until he had stretched his senses to the limit. There, he faintly sensed his father almost outside of his range completely. Pinpointing where he was, he took off in that direction at top speed. He didn't want his father to feel him coming and flee, so he kept his energy to the minimum that he could and maintain his velocity. He had a feeling that, if Sephiroth knew he was coming, he would avoid him, possibly losing him entirely.
Please, let me get there in time, he prayed, his hair whipped back by the wind.
Reaching his destination, he landed hard, out of breath. His lack of sleep had caught up to him, and he knelt there for several minutes, panting, his heart racing. He was on a rocky hillside, and there were plenty of ledges and outcroppings for him to search through, which didn't thrill him at all. He could scan the area again, but he would give his own presence away from this close.
After a while, his breath and heartbeat calm again, he climbed up to the top of a large boulder to get the lay of the land, and found to his surprise that he was directly above his father. Sephiroth was crouching on all fours on a small ledge, watching but unable to be seen from the ground below. His sword was strapped to his back. He was too occupied with watching his quarry to notice Riku's presence, shielded as it was.
Riku shifted his gaze to the ground below his father. A group of kitschen, perhaps a family group, had set up camp on the hillside. The nomadic species was primitive by ylfe standards, yet Riku recognized things that indicated that they would eventually be an advanced society. Perhaps not as advanced as ylfen, but their clothes, movable shelters, and weapons were done with the craft and skill of a people in a constant state of change and improvement.
They were shorter and stockier than ylfen, their skin darker from prolonged exposure to the sun. They were neither ugly nor beautiful, very plain-faced and rough. Their eyes and hair were black. Piercings and body art were common practices, and they seemed to Riku to indicate the social status of the individual.
Riku's sharp ears picked up their speech, and it sounded to him to be a distant relative of the ylfe language. Perhaps the two races once used the same tongue, or were influenced by the same source. Ylfen spoke a smoother, softer language, faster and more intricate than what the kitschen spoke. When Riku had arrived into the One World, he had begun learning the ylfe language before he even realized it, a harmless manipulation spell placed on his mind to allow him to understand what they were saying and answer in the same way, the spell removed when he no longer needed it. He had never asked, but he suspected his father was the caster.
He saw his father draw his sword and stand, revealing himself to the kitschen below him. A cry of alarm rose up, and they tried to flee, but the powerful ylfe warrior cast a spellbinding on them, freezing them in place. Dropping down to the ground, he was head-and-shoulders above most of them, and he spoke in low, strange words. Riku realized with a start that he was using the kitsche tongue. He hadn't known that his father knew it.
Sephiroth paused in front of a young male, and Riku suddenly sprang from his hiding place, making his way down the slope as quickly as he could over the rocky ground. He had waited too long to move. Sephiroth had singled out his victim, and had raised his sword to strike.
No! Riku thought. They can't even run! This isn't fair! "STOP!" he shouted, lunging and tackling his father to the ground.
They hit the ground hard, and as soon as they did, Sephiroth's spellbinding broke, and the kitschen quickly fled. The two ylfen fell prey to gravity, rolling and sliding down the stony hill.
When they stopped, Sephiroth threw his son to the ground with a hoarse cry, the point of his sword digging into the tender skin of Riku's neck. He froze, his eyes wide, when he realized it was Riku whose throat he was about to slit. Trembling, breathing hard, he let go of Riku's collar and backed away, his sword falling to the ground.
Riku sat up painfully, feeling like he was one huge bruise.
"What are you doing here, Riku?" Sephiroth asked, shaken.
"I didn't want you to kill, Father," Riku answered. "This isn't right—" He wasn't able to finish, knocked to the ground again by his father's fist smashing into the side of his head.
"We've been over this already, Riku," Sephiroth bit. "Don't hinder me, or I'll kill you, too!"
"You would, wouldn't you?!" Riku cried, somehow managing to stay conscious, dragging himself back up from the hard ground. "You would kill your son just to take the life of some random kitsche, wouldn't you?! Something is seriously wrong with you, and you refuse to let me help you overcome it! Bastard!!" Riku was seething with rage. He didn't care anymore that his father was mad. He just couldn't take being accused and beaten for trying to help anymore.
"I don't want to overcome it," his father hissed. "This little game you're playing will end messily for you, Riku, unless you pull out early and mind your own business."
"IT'S NOT A GAME!!!!!" Riku roared, lunging at his father again. He attacked blindly in his rage, punching, tearing, clawing. The smell of blood crazed him, and he couldn't stop. He couldn't stop…
Finally, his energy ran down, forcing his movements to cease. He looked down at his father, breathing heavily, sweat running down his face. He had beaten his father bloody, and Sephiroth lay very still, apparently unconscious. Riku couldn't do anything more than sit there, too drained to move.
He yelped in surprise when Sephiroth suddenly threw him off, knocking him to the ground.
"Well, well," Sephiroth chuckled, sitting up awkwardly. "It looks like you inherited my gift for blind rages after all."
"A-are you…okay?" Riku asked, feeling a sick sensation roll through him as he realized just how much he had damaged his father.
"Not really, but I can still move," Sephiroth said with a wry smile. He had presumably regained his composure, no longer gripped by a need to kill.
"I-I'm sorry!" Riku swallowed.
"Don't be sorry," Sephiroth shook his head. "It's been a long time since someone has hurt me this badly. I think I needed that."
"Eh?" Riku blinked.
Sephiroth sighed and didn't immediately reply. He instead pulled his knees up and put his arms around them, bowing his head forward. He appeared to be thinking.
"Father?" Riku ventured, going closer. He winced as he moved, pained from the fall and getting punched in the face. He knew, though, that he probably felt miles better than his father, and Sephiroth wasn't showing much outward discomfort. Riku noticed that he was shaking, and he moved closer.
Sephiroth was crying.
"R-Riku…" he shivered, sounding lost and frightened.
Riku didn't answer, instead putting his arms around his father and squeezing as tightly as he dared.
"I-if it means that much to you," Sephiroth said after several minutes of silence, "I'll try to stop."
"You mean it?" Riku asked cautiously.
Sephiroth nodded.
"Thank you, Father," Riku sighed, greatly relieved.
They stayed like that for quite some time, the father weeping for his lost love and the son trying to comfort him as best he could. Above them, back at the kitsche campsite, some of the stronger males came back to hastily gather up the group's belongings and slip away hopefully unnoticed. They didn't dare bother the two ylfen farther down the slope.
Father and son healed each other, their energies mixing and enhancing each other, closing the wounds and erasing the bruises quicker than if one worked alone.
"I'll remember this," Sephiroth smiled wanly. "You're just as dangerous to upset as I am."
"Not something I'm proud of," Riku said, then gaped widely in a yawn.
"Tired?" Sephiroth asked. "Come on, then." He was also exhausted, despite the healing. He put his arms around his listing son and they winked out, reappearing outside the gates of Aerie. When they got home, they went to their respective bedrooms and didn't come out for quite a long time. Samara and Darius were left to wonder what happened until one of them emerged again. They had expected—though hadn't look forward to—their father to return with a bloody skull, like he did every year on this day. Had Riku worked a miracle?
"Well," Sephiroth said quietly when his two older children had asked him what had happened. He seemed subdued. "Everything has to end sometime, eh?"
To be continued…Author's Notes: Yay! I got this chapter done relatively early! I hope it's good, then. I don't want it to seem rushed. Is it a good thing that I had Riku get Sephiroth to stop killing for revenge? I mean, as Riku said, Sephiroth is taking it a little too far and killing kitschen just to kill kitschen. I hope I didn't disappoint too many of you. I just don't think drawing out revenge forever is a very healthy thing to do. Revenge itself is a dicey business, period, and it runs the risk of spinning totally out of control. Also, I'm hoping the dream sequence came out well. I'm still wondering if I do that sort of stuff okay. Let me know how you like this chapter in a review or an email to mangareader@hotmail.com, onegai shimasu!
