So. I'm in the right fandom for my translation in French. This obviously isn't the translation. I like FF7 and translating gave me ideas, sue me.
I joyously decided to act as if Advent Children had never existed because I'm lazy and didn't want to bother with it.
The title is from the song "Godsent" by Smash Into Pieces.
Saying that Sephiroth had always known that he was different from other children might seem pretentious, but it was true.
He grew a little faster, he was calmer and much more intelligent, he understood quickly how to use materia and he was almost unchallenged in a sword fight. Even Angeal and Genesis, a little special themselves, that he was destined to meet later, couldn't keep up with him. So Sephiroth was different. He didn't need children's things like toys or favorite colors – no matter how much it made Genesis mock him. He was better than that. Professor Hojo always said so.
And the professor wouldn't lie to him.
At least, not about that.
He wasn't naive enough to think that the man never lied to him. He lied on a regular basis after all, often about things like 'this new experiment won't hurt that much' – it did, it always did, but he got used to it in time so maybe that was what he meant – but he was prideful; and Sephiroth was a big part of his pride. He was his son – not that he was ever allowed to actually refer to the professor as his father – and the proof of his successes as a scientist, his prized specimen.
And while he was truly nothing more than a walking mess of complexes, he was also right on that point.
Sephiroth wasn't just better. He was the best.
He worked hard to be. He studied topics that children his age wouldn't even be able to read three words of, he trained even if only a few Turks and experimented soldiers could match his level and he didn't complain when he had to visit the labs.
Sometimes, the professor would reward him with information, the most precious one being his mother's name that the professor Hojo had told him on a day he felt particularly benevolent. At night, when loneliness overcame him – often, so very often – he would silently repeat it to himself like a mantra. Jenova, Jenova, Jenova.
It was easy to let his imagination wander when he was on the verge of sleep.
Professor Hojo had said that she was powerful – just like he said that the brains had come from him. Maybe she was off somewhere, fighting, like strong people had to. Like he would soon be doing too, just as the President Shinra wanted, because of the situation – whatever it truly meant as no one wanted to explain it, as if he was to stupid to understand when he was literally sitting there with a book on astrophysics on his lap – in Wutai.
When he had inquired, the professor had implied that she was unable to meet him and Sephiroth like to think that she was taken prisoner, in a faraway inhospitable land, and that he would rescue her. Angeal and his idealistic views were rubbing off on him. But still, it was comforting to believe that she might be waiting for him, and so, even if things weren't as bad as before because he had friends – plural! two of them! – now, he entertained the idea from time to time.
Then, the war began.
To be fair, Sephiroth knew how arrogant he often was. He felt like he had the right to be. He had the best scores in the VR training room. He had cleared out the most monsters nests around Midgar. He had to be ready for war, or else, who would be?
He had been told that it might be jarring for the troops to be under his orders, even if he officially was the General, even if he was a First Class SOLDIER, because he was twelve – a child in their eyes. That they might try to rebel.
They never did.
Where they fought he would run back to Midgar at the first sign of trouble, Sephiroth easily proved his worth. Despite his young age, he was well-versed in strategy and he virtually didn't make any avoidable tactical mistakes. On the battlefield, he would put himself on the line, just like any other fighter, even if he held the highest rank in the army. His VR room scores also proved themselves to be true and soon, on both sides of the conflict, a nickname spread.
Far away from the only home he had ever known, all alone and surrounded by adults, fighting a war he didn't fully understand, Sephiroth was 'the Demon of Wutai'.
He became a war hero.
He became a killer.
Not that anyone else really cared about that. He wasn't usually allowed weaknesses – only ever let himself indulge around Genesis and Angeal – and even less now that he was the General of the world's most powerful army.
No one saw him throw up in the bushes after the first battle – because VR rooms didn't prepare to kill real, living, breathing people, and even less to do that with enhanced senses. No one noticed that he kept building new camps further than necessary so that the battlefield was always out of view. No one noticed the word repeating over and over in his head to keep him from drowning.
Jenova. Jenova. Jenova. Jenova.
It was his selfish comfort to call for that mother he desperately wished for, safely from the confines of his own mind. The war went on and he got used to it – Hojo often said that he was very resilient – but before long, the habit was ingrained in him, and as it was harmless, he had no reason to stop doing it.
Rotation finally came, almost a year after the begthinning of the conflict. If he was honest, he had almost forgotten that he was supposed to come back to the capital at some point. He still gladly welcomed the news and packed his bags in high spirits; after all, the infantrymen had told him that there was no place like home. And if he hadn't missed Hojo at all, seeing Angeal and Genesis once again was definitely something he was looking forward to. But things rarely went his way , so Sephiroth didn't dare to hope for much.
He had been right to think like that. He had been roped into an exhausting round of tests and experiments at the very second he had landed in the city, and when he finally exited the labs, he had been dragged into a meeting and found himself making a detailed report of the last year – as if he hadn't sent monthly ones – to all the higher ups of the Shinra Company. When he was dismissed, the sun was already setting and the only strength he had left was put into changing clothes and going to bed immediately after.
The second day of his return was less erratic than the previous one, but he woke up with a strange sense of urgency. Even if he knew, rationally speaking, that he was safe – at least safe from the war – here, he stayed hyper aware of his surroundings, ready to strike, as if he was still on the battlefield.
Then, he saw his friends and forgot the feeling for a while. Angeal was still his calm, brotherly self and it was really refreshing after all this time. Genesis, well… To put it simply, Genesis was jealous. It was probably more than just that, maybe an unnamed mix of worry, betrayal and jealousy, but Sephiroth wasn't in his head so he wouldn't go and make wild guesses – especially not about feelings.
Still, he would have liked to properly tell them both that he would have wanted them with him in Wutai, or even better, that he would have preferred to stay in Midgar with them so that he would have never had to think of ways to forget the stench of blood or the sight of piles of corpses. He would have liked to tell them how his mother kept saving him, to the point that he sometimes dreamed of saying her name.
But his duties as the General, combined with his inability to express his emotions, kept him from saying anything, and barely a week after his return, his friends were promoted and sent to Wutai, 'to replace him'. The fact that they were together made his stomach churn with a mix of relief and envy, and he suddenly felt like he could understand Genesis' behavior a little better. And once again, Sephiroth was left alone with his only comfort.
Jenova. Jenova. Jenova.
Angeal and Genesis didn't stay on the battlefield for too long, three months at most. He wasn't exactly sure, because with how everyone in the company seemed intent on drowning him in responsibilities, he had lost track of the time.
Of course, he was glad to have his friends back, but he had the distinct feeling that there was something between them now, born of more than jealousy for his indisputable superiority in almost every area.
They had seen war firsthand now, and Genesis wasn't jealous anymore – even if he really liked the idea of being seen as a hero – yet, it still felt like they couldn't understand. They had never been as perfect as Sephiroth had to be and were allowed small mistakes. They had been together, they had supported each other when things became too much. That made him jealous. He had been alone to fight, alone in his tent, alone on his side of the table during strategy meetings, alone in his head with his mother's name. But he couldn't hold them responsible for his duties as a savior, because he had always been stronger.
Furthermore, he convinced himself as he landed in a safe place, a few miles south of the camp for his new deployment, maybe the war would bring him closer to actually finding his mother. And that was something he secretly wanted to accomplish by himself.
Years went on and so did the war. Everything became a routine that he knew by heart. He didn't feel sick on the battlefield anymore. Steeling his mind and constantly repeating to himself that it was all for his mother, so that they could be reunited – and maybe live together, in a place where the weather would suit her as Sephiroth could withstand anything – made him able to go past the worst things.
At one point, Angeal took a young SOLDIER under his wing; Zackary Fair from a family of farmers in Gongaga, if he remembered the background check – and he was pretty sure he did, because he rarely forgot things. As the four of them managed to get along well despite their glaringly obvious differences, he thought that things were as good as they could possibly get, at least for as long as he hadn't found his mother to add the missing piece to his nearly perfect happiness.
And then, he fought with Genesis.
Not that it was uncommon for them: Genesis liked a challenge and himself liked to indulge his friends. Except this time, the other's taunting went a bit too far for his liking – striking sore spots that he refused to acknowledge on his own – and he may or may not have reacted excessively.
He was sorry to have injured his friend, but after the stern discussion he had with the finance department – a good part of the VR room's repair costs would be deducted from his pay – he couldn't seem to find him. In the following days, whenever he managed to catch a glimpse of him before he left in a hurry, Sephiroth noticed he was limping. Which was strange as the mako in his blood – courtesy of SOLDIER enhancements – should have helped him injuries as light as these. Well, they would have been more serious on a normal man, but Sephiroth had still been very careful. He had destroyed the VR room, not Genesis' body.
He finally managed to meet his friend a day before his next deployment and stiffly apologized – emotions were fickle and unruly things that he couldn't control well. Genesis dismissed it with a wave of the hand, but there was something in his eyes and in his demeanor – it looked suspiciously like the mix of fear and disgust his enemies often wore – that made Sephiroth doubt. Even Angeal stood a little farther away from him, but these two had always been joined at the hip, so it wasn't surprising that he would take sides. Well, whatever was wrong with them, he could deal with it later, when he came back. For now, he had to go back on the battlefield. Wutai was getting weaker by the day; victory was probably only mere months away.
From there, things escalated quickly. The opposing government grew desperate and made mistakes. Fort Tamblin fell, propelling Zackary to the First Class, and just like that, the war – or at least the overt fight – came to an end. It was strange to realize that once he was back in Midgar, he would mostly be doing paperwork and sometimes be allowed to go out to kill monsters, instead of always waiting a new deployment. It also meant that Hojo could make more experiments, and he didn't look forward to it at all.
Right after that, Genesis, and although later, Angeal, distanced themselves from him, pretending to go on missions that didn't exist. Did they think he wouldn't notice? He was their superior. He was the one who approved of their schedule. But as usual, he didn't say anything. Generals didn't feel loneliness, there was no time for such frivolous things.
To make things worse, since Sephiroth wasn't a child anymore, Hojo had stopped coaxing him with informations about his mother, and his relentless quest to find her wasn't progressing at all. 'Jenova,' he asked all the files he had access to. 'Jenova, Jenova,' he reflected on his free time.
And suddenly, Genesis defected. Before he could even try to settle the situation, Angeal had followed him. No matter what he said or did to defend them in the aftermath, he was unable to change the President's mind. When the order to kill them was issued, he felt like ravaging his own office, just like he had broken everything in the VR room during that fight which seemed to have happened decades ago.
He sent Zackary to kill Angeal and Genesis. If they had to die, he could at least do them the favor of seeing a friendly face one last time. He wasn't heartless after all.
Thinking about it, the one who would suffer the most was probably Zackary. And Sephiroth himself, letting his friends die, feeling like he should have, no, could have saved them if they had asked for his help, letting another friend kill them instead of doing it himself because he was too much of a coward, too afraid of seeing hatred on their faces, and the guilt crushing him, suffocating him, what was he even worth if he couldn't keep them alive, couldn't even find his own mother and – Jenova, Jenova. Jenova.
He gave space to Zackary when things were over. It would have felt wrong to intrude on his mourning, especially when he was at least partly responsible for it. Not that Sephiroth wouldn't have liked to share his grief with someone; but there was no one to take the burden off his shoulders. I only he had managed to find his mother, then she would have understood…
In the end, his fellow First Class sought him out earlier than he had anticipated. It looked like he wanted to try keeping their friendship intact. Sephiroth didn't have the heart to tell him that he didn't want to be forgiven – and even less to forgive himself – which would probably end up tearing them apart, pushing them into the cracks and breaks of blame and betrayal. Instead, he just let Zackary do whatever he wanted, even if it meant getting roped into a seemingly easy mission all the way north, in Nibelheim.
On the way there, he realized that the other SOLDIER was probably just naturally friendly – he envied him a little for the way his words flowed effortlessly – seeing how he interacted with the infantrymen. The blond one in particular, looked very close to him. Watching them have fun together pulled at something inside Sephiroth, but there was a job to be done so he ignored it.
If he had known how things would be turning out, maybe he would have addressed it – or maybe, broken as he was, he would have just hurried to get faster to Mother.
The events that led him to lock himself in the Shinra Mansion would forever remain blurry. He could only remember reading file after file, slowly understanding that he wasn't even human, that he had tried so hard for nothing because the war had revealed what he had always been, a monster and… Jenova. Suddenly the name was written on every document. Jenova. Jenova. The more he read, the more he learned about her, until he reached the turning point.
Her location was right there. Jenova. She was in the Nibelheim reactor.
The voice exploded in his head, piercing through the haze. Sephiroth could hear her as clear as day – even if her voice and words felt as dark and mysterious as a moonless night.
He had failed at being a fearless General, failed at being a good friend, failed at simply being human, but he would definitely be a good son. He was certain of it as she encouraged him to join her, to free himself from the shackles that humanity – weak, useless, worthless humanity, inferior being who had dared to keep them separated for so long – had put on him.
After reaching Mother without any problem, Sephiroth didn't think for a second that he would end up falling in the reactor. And yet he did. Pushed down by the insignificant blond infantryman when even Zackary hadn't managed to defeat him.
Things never stopped being blurry after that, but strangely enough, it didn't bother him as much as it would have before. Mother needed him, and for the first time in forever, Sephiroth felt like he truly belonged. No matter what she asked of him, he would gladly do it, just to make her proud. What was the rest of the world worth, in comparison with Mother's praise?
Later, when she sometimes had no demands left that he could fulfill, the – comforting, he was sure it was meant to be comforting – pressure she always put on his mind would go away, and he would spent a lot of this free time trying to piece the latest events together, but there were always things that didn't make sense and Mother didn't want him distracted. He found that he could only think properly in the Lifestream – there had been a short moment after falling into the reactor – and right before ending up there. Which meant that he had to either fall in himself or be pierced by the blond infantryman's sword.
He could remember him. Cloud Strife, from Nibelheim – 'Something went wrong there,' whispered a voice that wasn't Mother's in the back of his mind, 'and that's why he's ready to fight a losing battle.'
Mother said that he was the enemy, the Planet's champion. But when she wasn't there, Sephiroth could remember sky-blue-eyed Cloud watching him with admiration in the chopper, and he struggled to understand when it had changed to painful hatred.
It became an obsession that he inexplicably hid as much as he could from Mother – children had their secrets, he reasoned. He had to understand how, when and why things had changed. Not that he could ask Cloud or his friends when he met them – or saw them from afar – because they always seemed to appear when he was doing something for Mother, and so she was watching. And, he reckoned, they would think him mad if he tried to strike up a conversation when they had obviously come to fight. He could only go looking for answers in the Lifestream.
He was surprised to learn that the girl Mother had told him to kill – he didn't really remember that either, like all the things he did for Mother – had been Zackary's lover. He had never had a lover – the only one who really loved him was his mother, she often told him like she was afraid he would forget – so he had assumed that all the other SOLDIERs were the same. It had sparked something in him and now, from time to time when Mother was away, Sephiroth daydreamed about eyes as blue as the sky and how they would reflect clouds. Cloud.
But he wasn't delusional: he had chosen Mother, so other things would be forever out of reach.
He became even more aware of it when he finally managed to understand everything that he had done after another unprompted visit to the Lifestream – Shinra's reactors were at least good for something – which disappointed Mother, even if she always used that time to learn things of her own, but did he still want her approval?
Yet, Sephiroth couldn't fight her. He was weak, always had been, and even now that he could stay clear-minded when she was watching over his shoulder, he couldn't cut the strings that made him her puppet.
He understood how Cloud must have felt now, trapped in his own head without being able to do anything. At this point, it should have only been something to had to the ever growing pile of his regrets, but of course, it was Cloud that he had once again wronged terribly, and it hurt more.
Maybe that was why Mo- she finally noticed his cautiously hidden fondness. And because she was cruel – perhaps even more than Hojo and, as insane as it sounded, he almost missed the man now – she kept pushing Sephiroth, forcing him to hurt Cloud with every possible mean.
But even Sephiroth – coward that he was, always running away from his feelings – had a breaking point.
And so, after Cloud had once again ran him through with a sword while they attempted to summon the Meteor, when her presence was the strongest, Sephiroth attached himself to her. When the blond would kill him again – and he would, he didn't doubt it – in the last place where he existed, he would drag Mother, no, Jenova with him.
With nothing to pull him out once more, he would be dead, and this time, he would stay dead.
Cloud defeated him and he held tightly onto Jenova's spirit as she screamed and howled, and he casted one last look at the other. He was relieved to find that that dying near a friendly face – no matter how once sided it now was, he still remembered a time before he ruined everything – really was a good feeling after all.
But he would still have to beg Zackary for forgiveness because it seemed like a difficult thing to do. Cloud didn't even like him and he looked pained.
And when he would see Angeal and Genesis again, he would have to tell them that, though it might have been a late decision, he had finally allowed himself to have a favorite color.
Sephiroth was certain that it was the most beautiful in the universe as he dissolved in blue eyes.
I knew from the beginning that there was no way to end that with a happier ending. If it's of any comfort to you, I've made myself hurt too with this one.
