A/N: Of course I chose Sephiroth for this one. It was kinda obvious, no?
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII Characters and Places belong to Square Enix.
He had always enjoyed reading.
It was one of the few pastimes that he could control within his life. It wasn't like training, where he had a strict schedule to follow through with day-after-day. It wasn't like paperwork, because only the truly insane thought of paperwork as an enjoyable pastime. It wasn't even like talking to a few of the SOLDIER First Classes that surrounded him day in and day out, discussing battle tactics, past victories and losses, and sharing war stories as they showed off their battle scars (he never had battle scars).
Reading was just a quiet, enjoyable hobby that he divulged every once in a while when the training became too much and the paperwork towered too high and the battle stories became dull and repetitive.
So when they had arrived in Nibelheim—quiet, sleepy and dopey—and he had found the secret laboratory in the secret basement filled with secret books, he had thought himself to be in what he supposed was heaven; he could read and continue with his mission, as it included reading.
What he did not know, as he reached forward to grab the first leather-bound volume, was that he was going to find out his entire life's history within the mouldy pages.