This is an FFVII fanfic by kleptomanic0. The characters are not mine and never were. Otherwise FFVII would be in the works right now for some sweet graphics retooling. No voice acting, though; there'd be too much dispute over that.
A few hours later
Despite having been horribly injured a few hours before, Sephiroth set a fast pace, showing no signs of any weakness or fatigue. He bounded up craggy cliffs and walls of sheetrock with the reflexes of a mountain goat, leaving Aeris gaping and gasping in his wake. More than once she had to use her Cetra-hop to get to the place where he had been, only to see the silver banner of his hair disappearing off into another dark, far-off crevice.
"After all his talk of 'sticking together, it's good for us', he sure is doing his best to leave me behind." Aeris thought darkly as she scaled up a cliff face, alternating moments of physical climbing with high Cetra-hops. Hauling herself onto a wide ledge, she took a moment to catch her breath and looked around. Sephiroth was nowhere to be seen. "Damn it!" She swore mentally as she scanned the area. "Where is he?"
"Do you need me to slow down?" He asked suddenly, dropping down from a higher cliff to land beside her. Aeris would have screamed, but she was too breathless and too tired to manage anything more than a sudden and violent twitch. "I'll take that as a yes," Sephiroth said and sat down, drawing his legs up to chest level and resting his arms atop his knees. "You're exhausted."
Aeris shot him a dirty look—it was his fault she was so tired, but she didn't have the breath to say so. Instead she turned away from him and looked back the way they'd come.
She had to admit she was impressed. What seemed like miles and miles of stone fell away from her in a nearly vertical face, and far down below Aeris could see the wretched little network of stone ledges and tunnels the two of them had torturously navigated only scant hours before, ledges and tunnels that had been dimly lit by the Planet's heart of Lifestream. The rocks they had just climbed up were very dark, almost pitch-black, and Aeris wondered how she had managed to follow Sephiroth so closely. The man was dressed in all black himself. Well—his pants were black. He had lost his coat and gloves a while ago, but she wasn't sure where or even why. True, their brisk pace was good for keeping warm, but he couldn't be that hot, could he?
Surreptitiously she glanced at him; he seemed to be napping, sitting up with his eyes closed and his head slightly bowed, his silvery hair framing his profile like an artist's matting. His hair, like his eyes, seemed to glow, except that Aeris was fairly sure that it wasn't actually doing so. It was just an effect of the darkness that made it seem that way.
Aeris closed her eyes and leaned back against the stone. If Sephiroth was going to take a nap, then so would she. The ledge she was sitting on was fairly wide and long, being roughly about as big as a twin-sized bed. Had she been alone, she would have stretched out on it and fallen asleep right then and there, but Sephiroth was taking up the whole right side of it, and Aeris was not about to ask if she could put her feet or her head in his lap. She tucked her legs underneath her instead and tried to make herself comfortable. But her sitting position didn't really matter; Aeris was so exhausted that she fell asleep within seconds.
Sephiroth stayed awake. He wasn't keeping watch for monsters or anything like that—the ledge they were sitting on was too narrow for monsters to come at them, even if they could fly—rather, he was brooding. Their situation was pretty bad. They had no weapons, no materia, and, most importantly, no food. While he knew he could last without sustenance for about twenty days and without water for about ten (thank you so much, Hojo, you fucking bastard), Sephiroth was certain that his lovely companion was nowhere near as hardy.
"I have to take care of her," he thought, "Otherwise, she will not take care of me."
And that last part was important. Sephiroth looked down at the rips in his clothes, the blood-caked cuts in his gloves and pants that marked the places where the Curse of the Planet had taken hold of him. He had tried to heal himself before the pain and blood loss had taken its toll, but the feeble potion and the sliver of Restore materia he had found had done nothing more for him than create some pretty sparks. Aeris's healing powers, on the other hand, had brought him back almost to full vitality. Whether he liked it or not, his fate was chained to hers until he found a way to break the curse.
She tipped over in her sleep, her head falling squarely into his lap. Sephiroth jumped, startled; none too gently he picked her up and set her upright, folding his arms across his chest and crossing his legs to close himself up as much as possible. He didn't like being touched. He never had. It stemmed from his days as Hojo's lab rat and persisted until the current day. That was why he had done everything he possibly could to look otherworldly and frightening, including bleaching his long black hair white.
He reached up and plucked out a strand of hair. It had been a lark, really, that had made him bleach it. During the Midgar-Wutai war, he had looked too much like one of the enemy with his night-black hair and exotically slanted eyes. In an attempt to blend in, he'd tried to dye his hair blonde, but the dye had reacted with his strange body chemistry and turned white instead of yellow. Before he could dye it a more normal color, he had made his first major victory and his face had been broadcast all over the world - framed by white hair. So he'd kept the dye job. He'd had it for so long that he was more used to it than his natural color. The bad thing about dye, though, was that it faded. Sephiroth could see the dark roots of his hair starting to come in. He felt a surge of worry, but shook it off. So what if the white dye grew out? It would make him harder to recognize. And that was a good thing, what with his most recent actions...
Twisting the hair around his fingers, Sephiroth wondered how he could have been so stupid. Blowing up the world to absorb the Planet's healing energy—even if Cloud and his little cadre hadn't stopped him, he probably would have been killed anyway, what with Meteor and the Planet blowing up in his face. And how could he live, if the planet that sustained him was gone or so badly injured that it was useless? Sephiroth cursed himself for his stupidity, and cursed himself again for his weakness, which had made him believe Jenova's lies and sink deeper into a well of pain and self-doubt that he thought he had closed off long ago. He didn't need a mother, or even someone to love him. He cared for himself, and that was enough.
Thinking such thoughts, Sephiroth closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
Author's note:
The idea of Sephiroth dying his hair didn't come to me until I was typing on this story. But now that I think about it, it seems more and more likely. I mean, think—Lucrecia had dark hair and no traits of albinism (which would lead to white hair). Both Hojo and Vincent (take your pick for his father) both had black hair. Logically, then, Sephiroth's hair would be dark. And he'd look half-Wutaiese, too. Or maybe a quarter. We don't know what Vincent is. So yeah, Sephiroth dyes his hair. I know it can be argued that it happened naturally due to all the freaky experiments that were done to him as a child, but I like the dyeing.