Lucrecia Falls - By Crimson Sun
Visitor the Third – Sephiroth
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The night fell heavily. When Sephiroth died, he did not see his own one life pass before his unseeing eyes. He bore witness to four.
Green rain leaked from the swollen murky sky, onto a platform lying in ruins in the midst of a city that could no longer keep afloat. Broken machinery stretched on like bodies in the aftermath of a great war, the acid first polishing their carcasses, then corroding them. A black tube jutted from the wreckage like a tower in the distance. There, blood mingled with rust. The Dead One no longer had a face with distinct features, though the black, fleshy fissure of its mouth was tilted upward. Its last thought lingered in the air like the effects of a lazy drug, weaving through the rain as it waited for the wash of the Lifestream:
At last
In the blizzard, a tiny patch of red fabric billowed in the exposed merciless gale. The mountaintop had ceased to exist; around the Fallen One boulders created a natural hole for the snow to fill; a beautiful grave. It lay on its stomach within a frozen lake of vermilion neatly disguised with white. Farther away, a pile of snow modestly concealed a once-terrible secret. Five sharp, copper-coloured ends broke its surface, being rapidly buried. Above the corpse's head an aircraft fought for balance in the wind, scanning the area fruitlessly for a signal it will never receive. The cold that enclosed upon the body was final. An unchangeable,
Cruel, yet blessed fate
Within the earth the Mother of Monsters was writhing, yet her desire to live was no match for her absolute inability. She could endure being scattered piece by piece across the globe, yet could not tolerate the final devastating blow. She suffered not her own death deep under the rubble of the broken crater, but that of her son's, within whom she had hidden her soul. When the green river stole him in its silent way, she could not fight its invisible waves, which carried them both into the unknown. Her spell unbroken, she chanted without a voice, her eyes never closing: it will unite us, the love I bound
Will unite us in the Lifestream
Sephiroth stepped lightly on a glassy floor, his boots making no sound or prints upon its surface. Sword in hand, he approached the figure of a woman on the other side of the room. Her hands were outstretched, her smile warming; she was sitting in a pool of blood which seeped from her open stomach. He could see through her flesh, her bones ignited in some unearthly light, the same which shone piercing from her eyes. Sephiroth brought the tip of the Masamune to her chest, and she gripped the blade tightly with both hands.
"Sephiroth... my son..." Her sigh stirred something within him; compassion fused with disgust. She guided the sword to her heart and started, inch by inch, to drive it into her body. His fist still on the handle, he was pulled closer to her, yet suddenly realized that he was powerless to stop himself. When he came at last face to face with her, the sword had been swallowed into her transparent body. Her bare white arms looped around his neck and drew him down, so he, trembling, knelt and rested within her embrace.
"They were both wrong," she whispered into his ear. "Vincent told me I could not save you, yet here you are to end my days. Poor thing, what have you been through, constantly at war with yourself? Cyrus had got it backwards. No one could kill me but you, dear Sephiroth, and with you our whole kingdom falls willingly to ruins..."
"Who..." Sephiroth managed to mutter, his spirit coming to rest from its inner turmoil. "Where am I...?"
"I am your mother, little Sephiroth... And now, we are finally together...at the end of the world."
Fine red lines etched into his skin where the boy's weapon had bitten into flesh. Still in Lucrecia's arms, Sephiroth closed his eyes to the blinding green of the Lifestream as it came to merge five souls into one.
AN: COMPLETE.