My Vietnam

14 June 2014

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This is a FFVII fic by klepto_maniac0. I own no concepts and no characters except the ones you've never heard of, which means they're ones I've made. I freely admit I will take liberties with the FFVII canon because this is an alternate universe fic (in case you haven't figured that out already.) That's why some details are different, some events are ignored, and some people don't exist or act in a different capacity. Ain't fanfic fun?

"My Vietnam" (henceforth shortened to MYV) is a continuation of "Put Your Lights On" (PYLO), but it is not necessary to have read PYLO before reading this story. Whenever PYLO-specific events are referenced, the pertinent chapter will be indexed in the author's note.

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Seishi

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Ten different papers, seven from the Continents, two from unaffiliated states, and one from Wutai, all saying the same thing. The Continental ones were full of grief and pathos. The unaffiliated states were respectful. The Wutaiese one was very clinical, but between the lines there was a great deal of glee that warmed Seishi's heart.

Sephiroth was dead.

The last of her rapists was finally dead.

Seishi ran her hands over the papers, caressing them with hands that were more bandage than flesh at this point. Every paper had a picture. A different picture of the man that all Wutai hated, the man whom no one hated more than Seishi. Those green eyes burned in her nightmares and glowed before her when remembered fear struck again. That long white hair, bleached dead like dried bones, wrapping around her fingers and throat. The papers wrote about his strength and his discipline but only Seishi knew what he smelled like; blood, iron, musk, and the sour tang of unrestrained cruelty. They were such nice pictures. None of them showed any trace of the man who broke her arms just by squeezing, nor of the one who had crippled her just to prove a point. Sadist. Torturer.

And all at the tender age of seventeen.

Two pictures stood above the rest. The first was from the Wutaiese paper, not showing Sephiroth as he was now but as he appeared as The Great Demon. Taken during the first disastrous attempt at peace, he was the epitome of an arrogant son-of-a-bitch, contempt shining from his eyes and his hair pulled up in that high, long tail. He wore his armored coat and a high-necked chainmail shirt to a peace conference, all but ready to start killing again. Hours after this picture was taken, he had. It had been a very badly executed conference.

The other picture was more recent, taken probably within the last year. It was shockingly domestic. Sephiroth, thinner of face and thicker of frame, wearing a plain black suit and a white shirt without a tie, catching his daughter as she jumped out of a tree. It was definitely a staged shot, but a lovely one. In a flowing white dress of haute couture, the daughter looked as beautiful and light as a fairy.

Just like Seishi had at that age.

Seishi ran deadened fingertips over her daughter's face. Toriko, Tori-chan, how tall she had become. It physically pained Seishi to see the joy on her face as she looked into her father's eyes, but like everything else in her body, her ability to feel distress was dying too. Love remained, though. And Seishi loved her daughter more than she hated her rapist. The most terrible gamble of her life had paid off, though had Seishi known she would live so long, she never would have let Toriko go when she was only seven.

"I honestly thought I would die that month... The pain was so bad. How could I know it would get even worse?"

These days, Seishi could sit up, feed herself, and write. Everything below the waist was practically dead, somewhere between paralyzed and rotting. She'd stubbed her toe a few months ago and the flesh had split open inside the bandages, soaking the gauze with blood and pus for a whole day before anyone had noticed—and it hadn't been Seishi. Now she was without her right leg from the knee down. Ironically she had more sensation out of this phantom limb than she'd had from the real one; in the night she woke up from hypnic jerks and kicking at imaginary assailants.

Little Tori-chan had never cared about that. When Seishi woke gasping in the night, her nightmares ablaze with green eyes and black leather, Toriko had always been awake. So quiet, so attentive. She'd wiped Seishi's fevered brow and changed her bandages every day, never complaining or being difficult in the least. It was like she knew that her birth had nearly killed her mother, first during the actual birthing process and then later, when Lord Shusaku had thrown both of them into the street. Oh, Seishi had been tempted to drop her into a gutter then...

...but Toriko hadn't had any more choice about being born than Seishi herself had, and she had looked too much like Seishi's little sister. Poor Shicho. She had died of starvation at barely three years old, following their mother by a few days. It was so wrong. The okamisan had paid plenty to have Seishi in her house and the money should have been enough to support a family of three. Instead Seishi's worthless father had run off with the lump sum and left his wife and daughter alone. By the time Seishi found out about the perfidy, it was too late.

(Well, it had been too late then. Revenge was still sweet twenty years later.)

"Wait for me, little sister," Seishi murmured. "I'll be there soon."

"Mistress?" Soft little footsteps from behind. "Did you need something?"

"Nothing, Yoko."

Despite the dismissal, Yoko came and fluffed the pillows at Seishi's back. She was almost as attentive as Toriko, but then no one could match Toriko's gift for knowing exactly when and what was needed. Seishi looked at her handmaid with a cool eye, not for the first time. Yoko and Tsukiko were useful girls, but she'd adopted them in a fit of weakness; peas in a pod, the twins had reminded her powerfully of her own lost daughter. Now, however, they were growing up and while they were cute, they looked nothing like the Toriko of now. They were fullblood Wutaiese, which had never seemed more irritating than at this moment.

"Calm yourself, Seishi. You miss your child. It's natural. But you can't fault the girls for not being Toriko."

"Yoko, bring Nanashi to me," said Seishi. Nanashi, known publicly as Mineko, ran the Blue Lotus o-chaya for Seishi, but before she had become the boss she had been Seishi's right hand...

...and her blade.

And as Nanashi came to the small, dark chambers that Seishi had set aside for herself, Seishi was pleased to see that years of business management had not visibly softened the kunoichi's figure.

"How may I be of service, my lady?" Nanashi asked, kneeling. It was as much to see Seishi as it was to show respect.

"I want you to contact my daughter," said Seishi, and Nanashi tensed. "I want to see her."

"I will do my best, my lady," said Nanashi. "However, the Shin-Ra have closed ranks about her since the Demon's demise. This assignment may take some time."

"See that it does not," said Seishi. "I have a limited amount of time."

Nanashi's lips thinned. Normally she argued with Seishi, saying that she would be fine, she wasn't about to die. But Nanashi had seen enough people pass away that she could smell death coming for someone. Those were her words. Seishi had always smelled of rotting meat from the disease, but Nanashi told her that the smell had changed; it had become very bitter, much like when an organ was pierced. That was when the hollow reassurances had stopped.

"I'll do my best," Nanashi repeated, not unkindly. "Do you have any message for her or anything you want me to take?"

"Indeed I do," said Seishi. "Toriko has gotten taller and her reach has changed. She's old enough for real katana, don't you think?"

"Old enough, yes. Willing enough? I doubt it," said Nanashi frankly. "She had a hard enough time hitting opponents with sakabatou the last time I saw her and it was never due to a lack of skill."

"She may hate violence all she likes as long as she is versed in it," said Seishi. "With the De... Her father gone, she will need all the strength she can muster."

"Do you think she's under attack, my lady?"

"No. But she is vulnerable, and the four year gap between me giving her to the Turks and her appearance at her father's side bodes ill." Seishi looked at Yoko, who was waiting by the door. "Yoko, bring me the boxes."

"Boxes?" Nanashi repeated.

"Katana are hard. There's also a soft present."

In a while Yoko reappeared, followed by a somewhat sleepy Tsukiko; both handmaidens were rarely awake at the same time, finding that if one worked while the other slept, Seishi would never lack for care. Each girl stayed awake for about twenty hours and slept for eight, causing overlaps at peculiar times.

"One of your old kimono, my lady?" Nanashi asked, eyeing the wide, flat box Tsukiko brought in.

"The very last," said Seishi. "My very favorite. I would like very much to see my child wear it before I died."

"Then would it not be more prudent to have it waiting for her here?"

"That kimono is to go to my daughter at all costs," said Seishi, her one good eye narrowing. "I would prefer to see her in it. But I also accept that it may not come to pass."

Nanashi sighed. Dipping her head, she said, "My lady, I will deliver these presents for you. And I will relay your request. But..."

"That is all that needs said," said Seishi. "You are dismissed. Yoko, Tsukiko, help Nanashi pack."

"Yes my lady," they all chorused. Once they had left the room, Seishi sank back against the pillows and shut her eyes. There were some other things for Toriko too, if she wanted them. So far she hadn't rejected any present Seishi had sent her, but she had always been so quiet and dutiful that knowing her real mind had been, well... Almost impossible.

"She told me that she loves me very much, so why is she not here? Why has she not left the Shin-Ra to be at my side? She is wealthy now and she has influence of her own. She could be here."

Toriko hated her on some level. It was the only logical explanation and one that Seishi could understand all too well. What sort of person would try to kill her child, no matter the cost to herself? What mother would think about smothering said child after birth? That phase hadn't lasted very long, but the memory of her treachery haunted her almost as much as green eyes did.

"I sent her away. It was really for her own good."

Whatever Sephiroth had been to Seishi, he had been a better parent to Toriko than Seishi had. Seishi could admit that much. With Sephiroth, Toriko never starved or hid in the streets. She never had to see him disgrace himself with drunks and beggars. She never had strangers try to kill her and tell her that she should die.

Instead, Toriko had wealth and status. As a child of the Shusaku family, she should have been nobility. She should have inherited large amounts of land and wealth, as the first and only child of Lord Shusaku. But no, the old bastard was determined to have a son, a fullblooded son, never mind that ten years of striving on three different women had produced nothing. Oh, Seishi hated Sephiroth with her entire being, but there were definitely fibers of herself that hated Shusaku alone. Served him right he'd died without an heir. Served his two older wives right that he'd forgotten to leave them anything, and now they lived as dowerless spinsters in their girlhood homes while Shusaku's nephew took over his holdings. Perhaps it was better that Toriko hadn't been raised as a Wutaiese noble. As the Shin-Ra Princess, she had the world at her feet.

"So why would she ever come to see a wretched half-mother?"

Closure. They both needed closure. That was it. Seishi wanted to see the child she never/always wanted one more time.

"I was cruel to her when last we met. That is not the last memory of me that I want her to have. There is so little time to make more."

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a/n: Looking forward to getting into this relationship more too.

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