Author's notes: Depicts AeriSeph pairing. If you don't like it, then go away. Reviews are welcome. Flames are not. Flamers will only be pointed and laughed at and ignored.
Disclaimer: I don't own FF7. I don't own Squaresoft. Please your head. All original character belong to me. Take them and die. And yes, I have PMS.
Vile
Rose
Chapter 1: The Voices
By: Silver Countess
Sunlight filtered through the broken stained glass windows of the chapel, one of the few places of the lower plate where the sun still shown through, illuminating the dilapidated interior of the church and filling it with warmth.
A lone woman knelt at the center of the church. Head bowed, not in prayer to the gods, her mahogany locks cascaded down her shoulders as her hands busy tending the flowers blooming through the soil beneath the cracked boards.
Emerald eyes lightened up as she saw one of the rose bushes had finally started to bloom. She gently placed a finger at the flowering bud and whispered to it. As if by magic, the bud shivered and began to unfurl its petals to reveal a beautiful red rose.
Then quite suddenly, the soft smile disappeared from her as she crushed the rose into her delicate palm, ignoring the sting of the thorns imbedding her skin as she ruthlessly yank the flower off its stem.
She gritted her teeth, clutching the remnants of the rose on her fist as hot tears began to form and cloud her vision.
"Why?"
The word came not by a shout but by a hoarse whisper. Her breathing grew rapid and the tears by now had streaked her face. She opened her palm to release the ruined flower and the thorns embedded on her skin and gazed at the blood now dripping from the small wounds.
"Why?"
That one word echoed with it a great deal of sorrow and terrible loneliness that cried out from the very core of her soul. She could never forget the years she had spent wondering what was wrong with her. Years spent searching, asking for questions, reasons why others seemed to either fear or scorn her, simply because she had this power… She held up her blood-streaked hand and saw that despite the freshness of the blood, there was no pain…and no wound to mar her flesh.
It was her gift that had done this. This power contained not in a small orb of condensed Mako sold in materia shops across Midgar, but power that actually flowed through her veins and coursed through her blood. The innate power—or talent as an urbane gentleman would have called it—was the thing that set her apart from others and what had made her so different…so inhuman.
Church Witch. Devil Child.
Names whispered and hissed through others lips. Many of the slum dwellers seem to sense she was not completely human, as she often saw the contempt and wariness in their eyes every time she passed. Women hid their children from her. Men spat on the ground where she treads as the elderly bowed to pray to some forgotten god for mercy at the site of her.
All these she bore with her head bowed in acceptance for some forgotten punishment of a crime committed by her ancestors. Strangely enough, only the orphaned innocents came to her, seemingly unafraid of the fact she was not completely human.
That's right…not completely human.
Cetra.
A word whispered by some god-awful voice from her nightmares. The word she had only heard once or twice from Tseng, the same word that he used to describe her birth mother.
Ancient. Cetra. Magical beings that were once said to have lived so long ago in the frozen wastelands of the North. A special race that had special gifts of healing and magic, the power to bring life in barrenness, to speak with the Planet and to converse with the unknown spirits, those were the very same gifts she too had and the same reasons people cringed away from her.
She sighed, picked up her trowel and started to till the earth. Again and again she tried to brush away the ugly memories of her childhood but it kept on returning, as if goading her to remember those awful times.
"Nobody loves you because you're a freak!"
Stop.
"Freak! Freak!"
Stop. Please...
"Little witch who talks to ghosts! Nyah, nyah, nyah!"
Whatever did I do to make you hurt me?
"Weirdo! You're not like us!"
I'm not! I'm not! I'm not any different...please stop...
"My mommy says you're a demon because you can make plants grow here."
But I'm NOT a demon…why won't you believe me?
"Because you're different from us, that's why."
The children's horrible laughter still echoed on her ears and even on her dreams. Many nights she had wept on her pillow while her foster mother Elmyra soothed her to sleep. Soon she learned to avoid the children and their neighbors, focusing her attentions on her mother's garden and the flowers at the church.
The trowel hit the earth with much harder force than it should as tears began to well up on her eyes again, asking to the silent gods 'why.'
Why indeed? Why did it have to be her to carry…this…curse? She thought angrily, remembering all the times when she spoke of the souls of those who had passed to the wrong people at the wrong time. She could still remember the sharpness of the rocks hitting her bare flesh and the loud shouts. And things even went downhill after that when the Planet's consciousness made itself known to her.
The cry of the Planet was beyond endurance. The voices moaned, screamed and howled in her head in a terrible symphony that nearly drove her mad. She recalled how her body shook and her eyes clenched shut as she fought in vain to shut out the voices.
And then she heard them.
The voices of the long forgotten, of the Ancients that had lived joined with the cries of the Planet. Now there was not one but two consciousness tormenting her and fought over her, both of them crying out their pain, their suffering and their anger.
She didn't know what to do with them. The voice of the Planet was an echo to her constant suffering. The source of it all was the Mako reactors that constantly drained her of her lifeblood. The Planets cries were directed against Shin-Ra.
The voices of the Ancients however were different. Their voices were clearer and their intentions were more than just vague, they were crystal clear. And it only wanted one thing.
Revenge.
Why they asked for it, she did not know. There were many things she did not know about her people, her mother had died too early for her to tell her anything. But what she knew was that the voices of the Ancients wanted no less than revenge and it was going to be through the blood of the thousands.
She shivered as she continued to till the soil. Her body felt cold all over at the thought and the anguish the voices made her feel. The trowel began to till the earth faster, thrusting it hard into the ground. Her fear was suddenly replaced by anger, anger to what the Planet and the dead were doing to her.
The dirt began to fly as she was now stabbing the ground brutally almost completely unaware of her surroundings until a small uncertain voice piped up behind her.
"Ms. Aeris…?"
That brought the emerald-eyed young woman back to reality. She blinked her eyes and turned around to see a frightened little dark haired girl in tattered clothing holding a basket of flowers.
"Ruth?"
The little girl's eyes lit up and came closer. Little Ruth noticed that she was sweating and looked quite a sight that she suddenly dropped her basket and ran toward her. "Oh, Ms. Aeris!" she cried out in worry. "What happened?"
Aeris tried to smile reassuringly. "I'm alright Ruth," she said, as she self-consciously tucked a stray strand behind her ear and changed the subject. "So what brings you here? I thought you and Leo are playing."
The girl smiled and nodded. "Yup, but a man stopped by to tell me to tell you that he'll be stopping by to see you in an hour."
"A man?" The little girl nodded.
"Yup! A tall man with red hair tied in a rat's tail. He had sunglasses and had strange scars on his face," she indicated by trailing two fingers at each cheek.
Aeris smiled. She immediately knew who that man was. After all, she knew of only one man who fit that description. However the girl misinterpreted her smile and grinned.
"Is he your boyfriend, Ms. Aeris? Ooooooohhh! Ms. Aeris has a boyfriend!" the child sang loudly.
A blush stained Aeris cheeks as she tried to plant the seedlings into the soil. "Of course not! He's only just a friend."
The little girl laughed. "Okay, if you say so," then she winked and skipped toward the church's door. Aeris waved goodbye and the little girl left, leaving Aeris to resume planting.
She was patting down the earth when it happened. The voices of both the Planet and the Ancients screamed into her mind at once, causing her to fall to the ground her body shaking as she desperately tried to push them out of her mind.
But it didn't stop, instead the voices intensified until it was too much for poor Aeris to bear and she lost consciousness on the church's floor.
How long had it been since he watched the night sky like this? Flat on his back with only the sleeping back between him and earth. Five or was it six years ago? He couldn't really remember. He yawned just as a shooting star whizzed through the sky when he remembered.
That's right…it was five years ago, on his last assignment to Nibelheim.
"You should be asleep."
He smirked at the authoritative feminine voice that spoke to his mind.
"You have a lot of things to do tomorrow so you must rest."
"I'm not sleepy," he answered back to the voice in his mind silently. The voice however wasn't amused and if it were possible sounded irritated by his stubbornness.
"Tomorrow is a big day for both of us, you know that don't you?"
"Of course, of course," the man replied silently, rolling his beautiful green eyes upwards to what he knew would be another nagging. Ever since the voice inside his head had made itself known to him, he had barely had a moment's peace. Still he was not an ingrate. It was because of her that he was alive now.
"Do you still insist of remembering that?" Now the voice sounded amused, like a mother who has found her son to be playing the same puzzle over and over.
He shrugs. "I can not help but think it. The memories still haunt me even in sleep."
"It is a way of the Mother to make you remember your mission," the voice explained to him. He was surprised at the answer and why he didn't ask sooner. The voice only chuckled.
"Silly human, all you had to do was ask."
The man rolled in his sleeping bag as his long silver hair shone underneath the moon and the stars. His long sword, a six-foot long katana lay within an arm's reach at his side as the campfire cackled merrily.
"One should do something with one's hair. You shine like a beacon even at night. Maybe a dye would suffice?"
The man chuckled at the suggestion and closed his eyes to sleep as the memories of that fateful day began to return.
"Damn, I just can't wait for this mission to be over!"
Sephiroth glanced back at the spiky dark haired young man. "What has gotten over you today, Zack?"
The man called Zack grinned at his superior officer and friend. "Well remember the babe I ran into at the clinic?" Sephiroth mentally banged his head on the wall, as he rolled his eyes silently. He should have known why Zack has been so excited. Ever since he had met this girl—Zack had refused to let him meet her for some obscure reason—he had started acting like an over infatuated school boy. Sephiroth had allowed Zack to yak all he wanted about her as he basically tuned out everything he had said, until something made him sit up and look at him attentively.
"What did you just say?"
Zack looked slightly annoyed. "Haven't you been listening? I said that I was planning to propose on my girlfriend when I get back."
Sephiroth was surprised, he was happy for Zack but it was still very sudden. They had only known each other for barely a month, three weeks at most!
The dark haired man noticed his stare and fished out from his pocket a small box and showed him the engagement ring. Zack looked smug at the surprised look in his commander's face when he pocketed the ring.
"Congratulations," Sephiroth finally said, a little stunned. "So when do I get to meet the lucky lady?"
"Probably not until after the wedding ceremony. I don't want her to change her mind and all that."
So that was why he didn't want him to introduce her. Sephiroth smirked. "Are you afraid I'd steal her away?"
"Nahhh…not anymore anyway," he smirked back. The truck they were on suddenly went to a stop. "Hey we're here."
Sephiroth nodded and stepped outside the outskirts of Nibelheim. He could hear Zack commenting with one of the soldiers about it being his hometown but he wasn't interested. They were there to investigate the mako reactor monsters that were terrorizing the village.
They had been in the town for less than a day when Zack had been acting…strange. They were on the way to the Mako reactor in the Nibel Mountains when Zack had begun having strange nightmares. He spoke nothing of it and often shrugged it off. Soon Sephiroth noticed the dark rings under his eyes and how easily exhausted he became. Zack also kept muttering about the strange voices that were bothering him. By the time they had reached the Mako reactor he was a complete mess.
Sephiroth had to send Zack back to the village and investigate the reactor alone. What he found there shook him to the core. Human…or what looked to be a humanoid monster placed inside the mako pods far longer than what was deemed safe.
It made him sick just to look at it. He knew that SOLDIER were exposed to mako to enhance some physical abilities but to actually put a living breathing human for long periods of exposure…
He shook his head and continued to inspect some of the pods. He noticed that some of the pods were either destroyed or open. The source of the monsters soon became quite apparent. He ordered his men to shut off the valve feeding that was feeding the pods with mako. Then he ordered them to systematically destroy the creatures inside by cutting off the oxygen supply.
The men were busy with their orders when Sephiroth noticed a door marked 'Jenova' it was the name Hojo had told his mother had. He pushed a couple of buttons and the metal door slid open.
Sephiroth stepped in and suddenly took a step back. Inside the small room was a huge cylindrical glass cage filled with liquid and submerged in the liquid, to his horror was, was a decomposing body of a woman.
Sick at the sight he had seen, Sephiroth immediately left the room.
Two days later they were back at Nibelheim. A soldier had reported to him that Zack had fallen even more ill. He had a high fever and had been suffering from a fever induced hallucinations. Sephiroth went to see him and found Zack in his bed, thrashing and moaning. The physicians in charge of him were clueless as to what could possibly cause this. Sephiroth however had other things in his mind and went off to the Shin-Ra mansion.
He spent his days at the basement library, poring over every scrap of report done by that insane professor on his mother—if it is his mother—Jenova. He went through files, documents but with every time he knew he was about to find something, pages were torn off. He couldn't even find Professor Gast's notes, which he knew Hojo ripped off the pages.
The only thing he knew was that the 10,000-year-old corpse they found in the Northern Crater was resumed to be the remains of an Ancient and there was no apparent logic that that creature was no way in any shape or form could be his mother.
He was flipping through another journal when a breathless soldier came rushing into the library, injured and his uniform torn. Blood was gushing through a slash on his shoulder.
"General!"
Everything was soon forgotten, his inner torment and his uncertainty with his identity as his instincts as SOLDIER soon kicked in.
"What's going on?" he demanded from the soldier, as he staggered to stand smartly before his superior.
"It's Zack, sir, he's gone insane!"
"What?! How did this happen?" he roared, in his anger and surprise the books and journals that piled at his side toppled to the dusty floor.
"It's true, sir. Officer Zack Buster just stepped out of the infirmary and started butchering people. He attacked the other soldiers and then the civilians. We tried to stop him but he was too strong!"
"Why didn't you call me sooner?" he demanded.
"But we did! It was just nobody could find you and the others were too busy trying to keep Zack from killing us!"
Sephiroth cursed. It was his fault, he shouldn't have locked himself like this. Now his men and the townspeople were paying for his carelessness. "Where is Zack now?"
"The last time we saw him, he was on his way to the Mako reactor."
Sephiroth wasted no time in leaving the old mansion. He ordered the remaining soldiers to tend to the injured and to save what was left of the burning town. He followed the trail back up to the mountains. It took him no more than a day and a half, climbing it without rest or sleep until he reached the reactor.
Blood.
That was the first thing he saw the minute he stepped inside. Blood of the remaining soldiers left to stand guard. He saw their bodies, lying nearly everywhere like discarded dolls, all had the huge tell-tale slash done by Zack's huge sword.
Sephiroth drew out the Masamune and cautiously looked around. He noticed a trail of blood leading to the monster pods and the room where Jenova was held. He cautiously followed it, quietly treading the narrow catwalk leading to the room. He looked around for any sign of him but found no one. Then suddenly, the doors to the Jenova room slid open and stepped out Zack, holding a decapitated head of Jenova in his hand and his bloody sword in another.
"Zack."
Zack flinched, hearing Sephiroth's calm voice as he looked up at his superior officer. His usual happy blue eyes were wild, sweat glistened in his brow as he looked around like a confused little boy.
"Sephiroth?" he whispered brokenly, almost uncertainly as he blinked back dazed at him the head he was clutching in his hand forgotten. "Oh gods…" he moaned, looking around at the dead men, "What have I done…? The voice, the voices…oh god those voices," he moaned and wept pitifully.
Sephiroth approached him cautiously but Zack's head suddenly snapped back at him. "Don't come any closer!" he screamed at him, his eyes now wild with rage. "All of you, stay back!"
"I'm alone, Zack. There's nobody else," he said calmly which seemed to enrage him more.
"Lie! LIES!" he spat back, spittle flying from his mouth. "Death, death to all of your kind! That is what they wanted so I'll give it to them!" he raved at him.
"His mind is gone, taken by Old Ones. You must kill him."
Sephiroth was startled at the voice that spoke to him in his mind. Who are you? But the voice ignored him.
"He will kill you and many more if you let him live. There is no other way," the feminine voice said firmly yet regretfully.
He must be losing his mind! Sephiroth thought to himself as he tried to assess the situation and a Zack continued to rant and rave. He kept mentioning voices, voices that commanded him to do unspeakable horrors, and Sephiroth then truly realized the voice was right. Zack was no longer himself but still he hesitated. Of all the people he knew, Zack was the only person who he considered remotely as friend, and he hoped that there was a way to help him.
In his hesitation, Zack seemed to have snapped from his moaning and gazed at Sephiroth with a maliciously look. He threw aside the decapitated head, and raised the huge sword over his head. He then lunged at him, crying out his battle cry.
Fortunately, Sephiroth was quick and parried his blows. It was quite apparent that Zack's insanity had not hampered his fighting skills in any way. They moved quickly around each other, swords slashing forcefully. Sephiroth grunted at the strength behind the sword. Zack truly deserved his title as second in command, but that was it, second best only to him.
Sephiroth could not suppress a victorious smirk as Zack lost his sword, but the victory was short lived as he suddenly lunged at him, his claw like hands reaching to strangle him or push him off the catwalk.
"Fool! Kill him now!"
He acted more out of reflex than by the voice's command and he thrust his sword to stab him. The sword went through the young man's body easily but the force of his lunge was too great and Sephiroth lost his footing on the slippery catwalk and plunged to the swirling mako pool beneath him.
The last thing he saw was Zack's peaceful smile and the blonde man screaming his head off at the top of the catwalk.
"Wake up, its morning."
Sephiroth groaned under the covers as he slowly tried to sit up. Now he remembered why he disliked camping. Rocks, particularly sharp ones, have a tendency to hide under his sleeping bag.
He stood up and stretched his tired muscles and proceeded to the usual chores of camp and fixing a quick breakfast. Two hours later, he was packed and resumed his journey back to Midgar.
Crazy Pen Archives: Where the Pen is crazier than the sword.