Chapter 110 - On the Fourth Day
September, 2002
It had all been a lie.
Sephiroth wakes up on the floor of the library. He had collapsed at some point. He realizes this distantly. He had collapsed and slept for some uncountable period of time and it had done nothing. His head throbs had enough that all he can do is open his eyes. An ache has settled over his shoulders. It feels like the earliest days of the Wutai campaign where he would spend his days fighting flat out.
Right.
Wutai.
It echoes in him again.
It had all been a lie.
He rolls onto his shoulder. The library is quiet. His fingers work the skin between his eyes. The room encapsulates him. The ceiling light cuts into his sight and he winces against it. He's alone. No one cares anymore. They have left him to this fate. His throat tightens. If he dies here, there will be no one left to mourn him, not the real Sephiroth, just the one that the world has decided that he was.
It's an illusion.
Professor Gast did the hard work years and years ago. Project S was his favorite pet. Project G was the orphan when Sephiroth was birthed. All the initial exposures and experiments, everything that made Sephiroth as strong as he is, were suggestions by Gast and implemented on Project S as a young age.
In 1995, Hollander had said this.
Professor Gast thought of Sephiroth as an experiment. He thought that he had been a child of the mystical race of the Ancients. His mother, JENOVA, hadn't even birthed him truly. The cells, her biological matter, had been shoved into his fetus while hosted by his biological mother. There is a file on his surrogate mother but his hands had shaken when he had realized the subject of the file and he had left it alone.
Even the kindness of Professor Gast had been a farce.
The only comfort with this solution is that it is an easy death. Coupled with that initial sedative, he would drift off asleep and simply never wake up.
Sephiroth had been a child and Gast talked about killing him because he wasn't going to serve his original goal. Because, according to Gast, Sephiroth himself had been a mistake too painful to live.
Shinra has even tagged him for disposal, a full and complete utter erasure.
Hojo had saved him because he thought he might be able to fight. That burns in his chest. It would have been a waste to kill the resource. Hojo had saved his life because of his body and his potential, nothing more.
It takes effort to sit up. His spine clicks into place as he leans against the oak table. There is more to read. There is so much left to go. The clothes are stiff on him. His body strains with the lack of water and food. He blinks and tracks a mote of dust until his focus falters and fails as it floats far away.
What day even is it?
It doesn't matter.
He closes his eyes.
It spreads.
The grief.
Shinra undervalues the work. They always have undervalued the work. Now Project S is an army dog laced with my JENOVA cells.
Sephiroth takes a breath through his nose and holds it. The oxygen burns against his throat.
Prance Sephiroth around as much as you want.
Sephiroth had always imagined some autonomy, some small scrap of his life that was his own.
Make him sit.
The exhale fights him.
Make him play dead.
His lungs lock.
He's still mine.
Hojo has never let him go.
Another lie.
Not the worst one.
Not by far.
He lets the air go and feels himself compress.
He doesn't want to continue.
Sephiroth. The word is whispered into his ears.
No.
Sephiroth, open your eyes.
He's so tired.
I never left you.
Sephiroth takes another deep breath and tries to push out the tension on the exhale.
The voice gets closer. Let her do to him as she wishes. He has nothing left to give.
I have been here the whole time. I have been waiting for you to come home.
That's right. This place. This mansion. The bedroom upstairs. Another lie that he has dismantled. Nibelheim is his home. He grew up here with Mariella until -
That realization is so bitter that he dissipates the thoughts and pulls himself back to the present. It distracts him enough that his eyes open. The naked woman is there. She doesn't stand above him. She doesn't leer. She doesn't loom with her wings spread, blocking out the light. She doesn't stare at him like the judgment he deserves.
She sits on the floor across from him. Her legs are folded to the side. Her eyes watch him, every part of her focus on him. Unlike Zack, she is still. He stares at her. Dark feathers are scattered on the floor. A trail of wet footsteps show her path across the room and now to where she is now.
He tries to speak and then has to swallow before his voice comes out. "You aren't real."
She doesn't move.
I am, just not necessarily the way that you think.
More nonsense that his fuzzy mind can't decode. He shakes his head slowly. The naked woman nods.
It's not time yet. There is more to learn.
"I-" The words catch in his throat, shaking his jaw as they catch.
She waits.
He pulls the phrase together
"I thought-" The words echo in the room. His voice cracks. A tremble breaks out across his chest. His eyes blur over.
"I thought I could be free."
The smile he gets in return is soft.
I know.
"I thought I could-" He cuts himself off. It sounds ridiculous now. He could never have his own life. There is no way to break free from this. There is no escape from the monster that he had been shaped into.
She doesn't touch him but she reaches out her hand and places it between them.
I'm sorry.
He's spilling out now.
"I miss them." The loss hits hard. All the papers, everything that he has read, Angeal and Genesis were not included. They were unplanned. Perhaps they used him in the end but before that, they were his friends, more than anyone else.
"I have read the health reports. I could have-" Sephiroth pauses and takes a breath years ago. "I could have cured Genesis, years ago, and they knew. None of this could have happened but they didn't tell us."
He reaches up and feels the stack of books he left there. His hands are so dry he can't grip the cover so he drags it over the edge. They spill over. The books crunch against the tile in a heap. He scans the black bindings and pulls the one he is looking for. His fingers shake as he flips the pages. The words run together. It reminds him that there is a throb behind his eyes.
He finds the report, then the paragraph and then the sentence.
"Biological transfer through transfusions or therapies could help stabilize Genesis as S cells are more resilient and are not in any current state of degrading," he says and points to the page. It could have been done. Before Genesis rebelled, before Angeal's death, before everything crashed, he could have fixed it. They could have escaped together. Everything could have been different.
She says nothing, just looks at him. He struggles. His body rebels without him. A shiver makes the book drop to his lap. Since she says nothing, the words dissipate into dust. It's pointless. He can't change it. He can't change what has been done to him. He can't change what happened to Genesis.
He's been so stupid.
She shifts. It's on her face. The real reason that she's arrived. The realization that pushed him over the edge. It had overwhelmed him so strongly that he had to sit down which led him to the floor.
"I've been a fool."
They tricked you, Sephiroth.
He closes his eyes.
And they did it because they knew what it would do to you. The quiet persistence keeps him from falling back into his mind. You hated Wutai.
"I fell for it like a child."
You were a child.
He sighs, emotion mixing up in him. "It was them. It was Hojo. It was R&D. I can't remember anything before because they destroyed it all with rudimentary mako exposures. They pretended to be concerned, to try to fix it and to finally shove me at Dinand to become the perfect SOLDIER."
The lab stays quiet. The naked woman says nothing so he says it.
"The perfect monster."
He knows that he should be angry. He knows that he should want to lash out against it all but he's so tired. Every piece of knowledge that he has learned has added weight to him. He's heavy with it. Taking every breath is hard as his mind strings together the signs he missed.
The humiliation rolls onto him like waves.
He can't fight the way he shrinks against the pressure.
Hojo won.
In the end, Hojo always won.
All that Sephiroth ended up doing was run the maze that was set up for him. He worked after goals that he thought were his own but it was nothing more than a plan that Hojo put in place for him to find. He has been trapped by sickness and lies.
Hojo must have been laughing at him for years.
He should have known.
He should have done more.
This is the end for him. He can't see a point. No matter what he does, it will be fulfilling Shinra's goals. He doesn't want to be the monster they have crafted. Fighting them, escaping, all of these choices are animalistically reactionary. He can't carry the weight of what he has learned. The best is if he simply chooses to fade away.
Sephiroth.
It's not done.
You are not done.
A hand spreads across his cheek. He blinks but can't pull back. Instead, his chest locks. Her thumb pulls back his bangs. Urgency is in her face as she wraps her hand around his head. He stares at her. His emotions are pooling back into emptiness. He's too tired to fight her. She's been here for years. He's seen her violence. He knows what she can do.
He swallows. Pain shoots up from his throat. Blood is on his tongue.
Sephiroth. It is not finished.
Her left hand comes up, cupping the other side of his face. The wings spread behind her, helping her keep her balance. Feathers fall to the ground. Now he can see it in her eyes. There is a worry deep inside her. Water dribbles onto his pants. The pressure and warmth against his head is real.
His hands lay useless against the floor. It takes nothing to force everything limp when there is nothing left to fight for.
"If you are going to kill me, just do it. My neck is as fragile as any human's. Snap it. Make it end. Make it stop."
She withdraws like he's burned her. The naked woman rises. Her feet pad against the floor as she takes a few steps back.
I have never hurt you. I will never hurt you.
The dampness against his skin goes cold where she touched him
There is more.
"I do not care."
You have come for the truth.
That drags a pain from his chest.
She stops at one of the shelves he has not made it to yet. Her finger draws against one of the spines.
She turns back to look at him.
At least have the full truth.