Disclaimer: I do not own Sephiroth or Final Fantasy VII. It is the property of Squaresoft, who will not sell it to me.
Summary: One-shot, Pre-Meteor. Sephiroth was never normal. How did he live his life? PG-13 for death and torture.
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Demons in the Closet
By T. Axile
It is very white, and the whiteness hurts his eyes. He tries to rub them but he can't. Pain runs through his veins like blood, and he gasps again, very softly, but the man hears it. He comes over, and the boy can see into his flat, bespectacled eyes that magnify his eyes to two times their size. They are very black against the whiteness of the walls.
"You are weak," he says very calmly, but his voice is low and dangerous and makes the boy shrink back against the cold metal table. "But you won't be when I'm through with you." He continues to stare at the boy and something lost and unreadable flashes through his obsidian eyes before going away, leaving them empty. The boy shivers as he walks away. He knows that there will be a punishment for the transgression.
And there is. He bites back a broken sob as the demons come, leaping from shadowy corners and ravaging him. The pain seeps into him, and he hides in a corner of his mind, letting it wash over him. He has learnt to live with it. If he doesn't, he will be discarded like one of the many who have left the lab in body bags.
And I won't! he thinks fiercely, red clouds drifting in front of his eyes. He won't be defeated. He will live. He will be strong. Then he will come back and kill the man for all he has done to the boy.
But now…the boy sighs and lays his head back down on the table. He is so tired…he wants to sleep the nightmares away. Blackness claims him, and he can almost ignore the agony that wracks his small body. He shuts his eyes, but the man shakes him awake, restoring reality and the needle-sharp pricks that makes him bite through his lip to stop himself from whimpering.
"I hate you," he whispers very softly. The man smiles; almost, he never quite smiles and they never reach his eyes. He pats the boy's head, a gesture of affection that is filled with mockery and contrasts oddly with the scene of the little boy strapped to the table and the grown man in the white coat torturing him.
"I know," he says, and the boy believes him.
Later he stumbles back to his own cell and sinks to his knees, fighting the violent nausea that roils restlessly in the pit of his stomach. He does not cry, though the urge is strong. The man has told him that to cry is to be human, and that he is more than human and should not succumb to weak tendencies of the race. The boy only half understands this; what he does understand is that the last time he has cried in his room the man has punished him by starving him for a week. Therefore now he keeps his tears and his pain to himself, and is strangely comforted by the fact that he can trust in himself even when he can't believe in anybody else; because if he does, they will leave him and hurt him worse than of he had not cared for them in the first place.
Instead he curls up on his bunk like a cat and he dreams; in his head a female voice filled with darkness and promise sings him to sleep and in his dreams there is fire and screams and all around him people are dying; screaming, in fear of him.
But strangely he doesn't mind.
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He has grown up; from a boy to a lanky teenager. He walks into the building and all eyes rest on him, conversation stilled, curiosity aroused. It makes him feel claustrophobic. Avoiding eye contact he sits down and the bell rings. The teacher introduces him to the class and someone starts to snigger. "What kind of a name is THAT?" he asks.
The youth looks at him, and he stills. One look, from eyes green as poison and shining with ethereal light. He does not joke; he never likes doing things halfway.
As usual his performance is excellent and the teacher is profuse in her praise. He turns away from her, leaving her staring at her back. He does not want to hear what she has to say; it just serves to remind him that he is not human; never be normal. His classmates look at him, and he can see jealousy in their eyes. He does not care.
After class as he heads to the gym they block his way. Bullies, swaggering and strong, who terrorize the 'fresh meat'. They taunt him. One says, "Silver hair ? My dad works in the lab, buddy, and let me tell you, whatever you are, you ain't human!"
He brushes past them. Ignoring them. They are furious; they aren't used to being ignored. The leader tries to grab him by the scruff of his collar. Fast as lightning, he spins around and slams the boy against the wall, choking him. The boy gasps for breath; his face turns slowly blue and yet he doesn't let go. Someone gasps and runs off; he can hear the soles squeaking off the polished linoleum, probably in search of a teacher.
"Leave. Me. Alone," he says, articulating his words clearly. "Do you understand me, or is your brain too worthless to comprehend?"
The other boy nods eagerly. Coward. He backs away, drops the bully, and leaves. The crowd of watching students part for him; he accepts it as his due, nothing more.
As he had expected, the bully, ego bruised, could not stand being publicly humiliated. One day when the halls are empty he and his buddies team up against the youth who is calmly heading towards his locker. This time they are armed; with swords and knives and guns; the real things, no padding, beads or riot bullets. This time they mean to make him pay.
"You wouldn't want to do that," he says quietly, voice filled with menace. The leader laughs, confident in his superiority. "Why? Scared, alien-boy?"
He regards them coldly, and something in his face shifts, half-hidden in the curtain of his long hair. "I have no wish to hurt you. Turn away, and you may yet go unscathed."
"Ha!" the leader sneers. "You're outnumbered, dude. What do you think you are, invincible? You don't mess with me; we're gonna teach you a lesson about that."
He sighs; closes his eyes as if in resignation. "Don't say I did not warn you."
The five close in, and he explodes into motion. It is incredible; they can see after-images of him seconds after he has glided away from the spot. Heads snap back, noses break, bruises appear. Expert kicks disarm their weapons; at times he grips the blade and discards it. He is like a mountain cat, somnolent and sleepy, until his anger is aroused; then his control breaks into motion, every stroke carefully calculated seconds before motion and precise.
They are down. He stands among them, expressionless; in his mind a voice begs for blood and he cannot tell if it is his own or someone else's because although he understands the consequences he too craves revenge too badly to think rationally.
The decision is made for him. The leader, groaning, shifts behind him. He half-turns, then a bullet penetrates his shoulder, just below the bone. His anger floods back, and he reaches down and grabs the boy. Elegance is forgotten. He hits him, and it feels good; the rough scrape of bone against his knuckles; the splitting open of tender skin and the blood beneath. The boy weakly raises the gun; he knocks it away and jabs two fingers, straight and tensed, into the boy's throat, crushing his windpipe. He gags, suffocating. The youth observes his death dispassionately and walks away without a second look back.
The incident is hushed over, forgotten; labeled as 'self-defense.' But the youth knows better. It is the President who has made him what he is and now Shinra had to cover his pet's messes. They only protect him because they might have to use him someday. So he feels no gratitude. Everyone is self-serving; there is no good in the world. He had learnt that much from the man who had terrorized him in his early childhood at least. But he would not thank him either.
So years pass, and he graduates from military school. The day comes when Shinra decides that he is needed and sends him to Wutai to lead the war with a temporary generalship. No one believes he can do it. But he does; in days when the land of Wutai is rust red with blood Lord Godo himself comes to him bearing a white flag and surrenders. He has won and returns to his city amid roars from the crowd of 'his' people.' His rank is made permanent; the previous one vanishes mysteriously. And that is the way of life in Midgar, he understands. The strong, the cunning, domineering the weak. And when he falls, the dogs will devour him.
And so he remains on top. They think he has it easy; looks, women, stardom, wealth. But they do not know; or perhaps they conveniently forgot, that when he was young he had nightmares and sobbed silently for his parents and they had known, and they had ignored his pleas.
He looks down at the teeming mass of Midgar's upper class below him from the top of ShinRa HQ and he thinks, poor bastards, so easily swayed.
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Life was consistent after the war, all red carpets and flashing cams. He made it a point never to venture outside without a coat with a turned up collar and a hat. He hates the attention, the adoration people bestow on him. What do they think? That he does what he does out of love for this blasted city? He can't care less for Midgar; it has never been his home. It's just that—duty. He doesn't owe anything to President Shinra—a fat slob who got lucky, that was all.
No, he thinks from the privacy of his own apartment, the curtains shut and the door locked, I do it to keep in the game, in the running, because if I don't I'll either go straight back to the lab or be killed. Who ever thought that I had a choice in the first place?—and he will laugh, sharp and jagged as broken glass, and he is glad for the solitude. Because it is the only place where he can truly be himself; after he has disabled all the cams the lab has secretly planted, of course.
Then the glamour wears off and people forget the war. Just as he wants it. And now the days are filled with paperwork and training, and as he teaches a snot-faced recruit how to swing a sword properly his mind is far away, because he can't stand this kind of work. At least in Wutai he got to do something.
In the evening he goes back to his room; not his home, but a place of residence, and he finds his second standing in front of the door and a cheeky smile across his face, and he is suspicious. "What do you want?" he asks.
"You're always so uptight, sir. Come with me for a drink?" the man—no, not really, a youth actually, who still didn't need to shave—asked in a friendly tone. And it was the first time someone has actually spoken to him like this that he does not know what to do, and it is a new feeling.
"I'm busy," he says by way of an excuse.
His second laughs. "Loosen up, sir, it'll do you good. Please? Just this once?" He smiles sweetly, and he finds himself agreeing, more out of surprise than anything else.
His name is Zack, and it is the start of an unlikely friendship.
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The mission: To go to Nibelheim and discover what was disrupting the reactor. He is not happy to participate in what he considers a pathetically simple mission, and he does not like the look Hojo gives him at the end of the briefing. He is in a bad mood and shouts at half the recruits who nearly wet themselves out of sheer terror. At night, Zack walks with him to his residence and tries to tease him out of it, but he is taciturn.
"Is it the mission?" Zack asks. He is more perceptive than people usually give him credit for. He hesitates and then nods. Zack pats his shoulder; a familiar gesture that he would have incinerated most people for. "Relax, sir. It's real easy. Nothing sinister about it."
"Then why send me?" he asks angrily. "I wasn't made General to go kill a few low level monsters running around the mountain! Something isn't right."
Zack cracks a smile. "Watch your ego, sir." He isn't amused and says so and Zack quickly and deftly changes the subject. "Tell you what, sir. After this, when we come back, want to go and watch Loveless with me? I've got a friend on the stage crew and he was happy to give me a couple of tickets for free. I was going to take my girlfriend, but she doesn't want to leave her flowers. How about it?"
Somehow Zack has a way of making him do what he won't normally do. It is a gift, Zack has boasted before. He says that he will see, and he appreciates it anyway. Zack is pleased by the response, and he bids goodbye at his superior's front door.
He sleeps, and for the first time since his childhood, the voice comes back with its images of fire and death. Some part of him wants to answer the insistent call, another part shrinks back in horror and revulsion. He wakes up with his hand half-stretched in front of him and feels oddly cheated; he gets up, dresses, and leaves.
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They arrive at Nibelheim in the early afternoon when the sun is sweltering hot. They are received cordially and given a guide, a young girl with a wide-brimmed hat and an infectious smile. He feels that she might be likable to others, but she is irritating to him, chattering on and on about matters of inconsequential importance and cheerfully ignorant of his annoyance. She is just a girl, barely beyond adolescence at that, so he tries to keep his temper in check.
She takes him to the reactor as instructed, and he leaves her outside playing name-guessing with a guard while he enters with his second. He glances around uneasily at the rows and rows of pods lining the walls…like incubation chambers, he thinks, and his memory stirs in faint remembrance.
(See? You…remember…)
He pauses, confused, dismisses it, and moves on. Aside from the pods, he cannot sense anything out of the ordinary. Zack suddenly lets out a yelp. "There's something in there!" he squeaks, pointing. He goes over to investigate, and as he does the metal door springs open and a monstrosity falls out; he lets out a cry and already he has killed it before he has any real inkling as what was going on.
"Oh my god…" Zack breaths. "It's human…or rather it used to be." True enough, the thing is vaguely humanoid in shape and has somewhat recognizable human features twisted beyond horror. Men who had received too high levels of Mako…his thoughts spin crazily. Does that mean he is like them? Inhuman?
"Let's go." He is beginning to be afraid of what he will find, yet he wants to find it. Like prodding at a broken tooth that would not fall off. His previous irritation has been replaced by a sort of anticipatory dread. The truth…would he find it here?
And does he truly want to?
Behind him Zack follows, trying to keep up, sloshing through the water. He has reached the top of the stairs and now he looks up. A sealed chamber…and carved over the door are the letters, JENOVA.
"That's my mother's name," he says, noting with a sort of detachment that his voice sounds empty and harsh, echoing in the huge reactor.
Zack looks speechless. And then he hears it again, the sinuous voice that had pervaded his dreams last night and every night of his pain-soaked boyhood.
(Go…to the…ShinRa Mansion…to know the rest)
"I will," he says, and means it.
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Against orders he stays on in Nibelheim and searches the mansion. Zack is worried; he can tell. The spiky-haired second had covered it up with a veneer of humor, saying that they would miss the Loveless concert, but he had seen the concern in his eyes. Somehow it makes him angrier and more determined to uncover his past.
He locates the secret passage easily and heads down the winding stairs. His sense of urgency had grown much heavier now, weighing in his stomach and heart, and at the same time it sped his steps onwards. He walks past a locked door and pauses, but his intuition tells him this is not what he is looking for and he speeds on.
He enters the library. It is very old; there is a thick layer of dust over everything. He looks at it through the entrance and shivers; not from the cold, but the chill wind of memory. He knows this place—but from where?
(come)
He follows the seductive siren his steps trace a path over the dusty floor. It tugs him on until he reaches a shelf. He pulls down all the books from it and stacks them neatly on the big oaken desk. He pulls out a chair. Sits down, and starts to read.
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Zack paces worriedly in the inn. He has gone to see his boss earlier, but he had been absorbed in those musty old books, reading extraordinarily fast, long fingers resting on the pages of the book as his eyes roved over the written words. Reading, his eyes somehow alive and more animated than Zack has ever seen, burning with insatiable hunger. Somehow, Zack knows that those books contain the truth.
The truth will set you free, he thinks. But what about his General? What will the truth do to him? Truth has two edges; they can cut either way. He prays for his friend's sake that he will emerge unscathed.
In the sky there is an orange glow. He looks hard at it; how can there be sunset in the middle of the night? Then realization hits him like a bulldozer in the chest. Fire! He dashes out in wild abandon to help, and as the townspeople draw the same conclusion as him the screams begin. Families had turned out of their houses, holding buckets of water; Zack pushes through the crowd, ignoring the curses, thinking of one thing only—to get to his General.
Then the people at the front freeze, and then start to push backwards, making Zack's job harder. He struggles against the tide of the pushing and shoving people, all shouting intelligibly, and over their heads Zack can now see his friend, towering above the rest. He looks somehow…elevated. Different. He is looking at the fire as it spreads, and making no effort to run. Zack grits his teeth. "Sir!" he calls.
He turns and looks at Zack, who tries not to flinch. His hair glows orange where the fire reflects off it, and there is blood splattered along the length of his great sword and black leather. His eyes are half concealed in the shadow of his long hair; they burn with cold intensity. Zack's initial relief at seeing him unharmed is quickly replaced by alarm. Something is wrong… very wrong…
He holds Zack's gaze. Then he flings out the Masamune. It cuts a huge gash in the back of a portly gray-haired man who has tripped and fallen to the ground. Zack gapes as the man gurgles and dies.
"What have you done with the real Sephiroth?" he screams, and tears flood his eyes.
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He knows now. He is a Cetra, heir to the Planet—one of the ancient race who for millennia had been the stewards of the Planet. And the rest—petty humans, sheep to be slaughtered, they who had eradicated the Cetra and doomed them to extinction. He knows, and the truth is glorious; he throws his head back and laughs, because he knows, and he has spent his whole life wanting to know.
And he doesn't much care for humans anyway. He is free now; he is no longer obligated to them, he is his own man. And Mother had helped him see the truth. Together they would clear the Planet of the parasites and he would receive his true inheritance.
But now he looks at the fragile human at the other side of his blade, and he is special; the one person who had ever made him smile, made him laugh and earned his friendship, and he raises his blade then hesitates. In his head Mother is furious; she wants the human dead, and dead now; but he lowers the Masamune and looks at Zack. He is crying; in all their years of friendship, he has never seen Zack cry once and now it is an oddity.
"Bastard! You aren't the Sephiroth I know!" he accuses.
"I know," he replies. "I'm a different man."
Zack's eyes grow round and furious. "You—!" He chokes on his words, and his eyes brim with passion. He has never felt like that before.
"Monster?' he asks mockingly. "Out of my way. I'm going to see my mother."
"Sephiroth!" Zack yells, but a hot burst of fire flares in front of his General, and when it is gone, so is he, advancing into the flames.
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"Terrible…Sephiroth…this is too terrible…" Zack mutters as he runs towards the reactor. He finds a dead man and a bleeding girl inside and gently sets her down in a sitting position in front of a pod. As he had suspected, his boss is standing in front of Jenova's chamber, and there is a rapturous smile spread across his face. Looking at him, arms spread, head raised high, Zack understands. Understands that what smolders in Sephiroth's eyes is pure, raw insanity.
"Mother, I've got a great idea…"he murmurs blissfully, and Zack feels an ache so strong it feels like the Masamune is stabbing him in the chest. Dear god, his friend was hopelessly out of his mind, and he truly believed in his delusion. There is nothing worse than faith in something that has twisted the lies into the truth.
He armors his heart. Then it will be his duty to stop Sephiroth…help him.
"Sephiroth!" he calls, charging forward. The man glances at him, mouth twisted in a sneer. "Didn't I spare you once before? You test my patience, human."
Zack gazes steadily at him, Buster Sword pointing downwards. "That's what I always thought of you, Sephiroth. I never cared if you weren't human. You…you were always my friend."
His eyes flicker, but then the spark is gone. He raises the Masamune and fights. He wins, and Zack is flung to the ground. Blood oozes out of the corner of his mouth, with his last effort he raises his gaze to look blearily at Sephiroth as he levitates, carrying Jenova off with him. He draws in a ragged breath. "I'm…sorry…"
Another breath, sighing past parted lips stained with blood. "I failed you…"
It hurts to breathe…getting harder to draw in breath…
Darkness.
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END.
Author's Ending Note: How weird is that? It starts off with Sephiroth's POV and ends with Zack's. huh. Anyway, thanks if you're reading this, and please review? After all, I wrote this for you. So if you reviewed, you get a hug. (Smiles) Bye, and if you like my work please go and read my novel-length ficcy, There Is Always Light, a Sephiroth-centric. See you guys!
T. Axile signing off
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