The Truth beyond the Veil Chapter 3: Breaking from Reasoning and Realization, a final fantasy vii fanfic

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The Truth beyond the Veil

Chapter 3 – Breaking from Reasoning and Realization

"Their need for grief is shattering Earth to pieces. And me, as well."

Sephiroth left the training earlier that day.

He had an appointment – or so he pretended to transform his task into an appointment.

The passage narrowed at his front, and his eyes accustomed to the lack of light. He could barely recall the last time he had been in the most macabre part of the laboratory. He surely did everything to avoid it. The reddish floor paths and the echoes resounding at the steel walls…every single trait of that lab reminded him of the most gruesome things, things that he preferred to forget and to keep out of his mind.

That was a place he avoided at all cost – the place where a dozen of scientists and other science studiers and scholars made the most awful and unforgettable experiences to his mind and body. He could not recall the lines of their faces, the color of their eyes or hair, or the titles of the dusty volumes they held in hand while surveying him. But the treatments they applied to his body…those he reminded with vivid detail. He remembered the strips of leather that bond his wrists; the medical tubes that gripped his body to heavy computing machines that biped at every heart beat that resounded within his chest. The murmurs and whispers as every report was printed and read. More analyses were made, injections, reports, analyses, injections and more reports. More whispers, more pain in his muscles, bones and head. More grief…less hope.

He woke up every morning feeling changes in his body. Strange living organisms crawled under his skin, travelling through his veins, itching, biting, scratching his inwards, until his body was withered by the pain he suffered. Some nights he felt his skin covered in sweat, his muscles tense, his bones strangely stiff.

No…it was illusion to say he had a normal growth. Confined to the laboratory's chambers, he actually never met a boy or a girl that shared their worries and experiences of day-to-day. He lived as an adult. Emphasizing better his feelings, he has lived as an adult specimen. He did was he was told, he moved when they ordered him to move, he talked when they ordered him to talk. Sephiroth had been exposed to all kind of bad treatments, lies, errors, mistakes and omissions. He had grown under a rock, and when he finally got to move it from above his head, the sky fell on top of him.

The scientists infused him with mako to turn him into a powerful human being. He didn't ever ask why they putted him in such special treatment. The truth was that he never knew where he was from. He felt as if he were born from the walls, ceiling and floor of the laboratory. No resemblances, no marks, no past to hold on. Sephiroth had been sent to the Earth to follow men, and to obey them, and no parent was able to stop the abuses they inflicted on him.

Those were the thoughts that came to his mind as he walked by the many craters and lab supplies that officers had deposited in the laboratory. He could see every kind of macabre content: hands and fingers of diverse monsters, blood and urine samples, brains and organs conserved in oil inside jars of glass. Mucus was spread in the floor, leaving an odd smell.

And there she was, leaning to a wall, her small figure enclosed in a cloud of pain that even the bravest of her looks could not hid.

Sephiroth had left the training for her. Someone told Genesis the girl had been left in the under part of the experimenting laboratory, and his red-haired friend, knowing that Sephiroth held a special fascination for the brunette, ran to him informing him about the causalities.

"Aerith" the general said, running to her coiled figure. He raised a hand to her shoulder, trying to comfort the girl.

She groaned and retracted from his touch. A violent look emerged from the core of her eyes.

He kneeled. "What have they done to you?"

A shiver shook her body. Sephiroth heard a sob. Her hands held a firm grasp on the front part of her dress. The man gently took her hands away, ignoring the girl's protests.

"You're bleeding" he stated, feeling a lump in his throat. How could they have done that to her? How could they abuse her body to such futile and meaningless causes? It drove him crazy the way Shin-Ra exposes men and women to that point.

"Let's go" he ordered, trying to get her up. The wound was deeper than he thought, though. As soon as she was up, trickles of blood ran down her legs. The pain made her tremble in his arms. Or maybe it was the repulse she was feeling from men in the moment. Either way, he would not let her bleed to death, so he firmly grasped her shoulders and lead her through the corridors and hallways of the building.

Shin-Ra's headquarters looked like a desert, because of the Wutai interventions. The silence and the absence of people made a lot easier to move and to find a good spot to hide the girl. He led her to the elevator, to bring her to the SOLDIER's floor. After a lot of thought, he decided to leave her in his own private quarters. After all, it was a place where people never entered, and it was surely the safest place to hide an experiment like her.

He was fond about the girl indeed. But fonder he was about the traits that they shared. The fact that they could wander in the Lifestream, feel the soul of the humans and of the nature, united them in an unbreakable bond.

He opened the door to his quarters. The automatic dim light flashed when both of them stepped into the humid room. Sephiroth's eyes started to inspect the room in order to find a nice spot where the girl could rest. He had no idea how much time she had been trembling in that corner, bleeding and suffering from the wound. After all, it was four days ago that Tseng led her into the laboratory. It was almost impossible to calculate the amount of time that the scientists took to make the experiments on her.

Sephiroth's hand touched her arm. She jumped, alarmed.

He had no idea how to talk to a girl who had probably suffered rape. He didn't know how to react, how to act, what to say to her. And he was awfully alone in the building. Secretaries and scientists had gone home to take on vacations, since the company's army had gone to Wutai. Hojo was probably the only man residing in his work room, manipulating his experiments like a mad man. When Lazard told him the battle on Wutai had reawaken, Sephiroth refused to go. He was tired of blood, of rage, of death. Tired to lead young men into war and witness their departures when a bullet hit their skull. And what reputation did he have to maintain now? The reputation of a lonely soldier, who was dying from an auto-immune disease, consuming his energy and his patience for human kind? No, he had long left Shin-Ra's game. He wouldn't fight for his honor until the end, as Angeal used to say.

No, he probably wouldn't die with a sword on his hand, for the sake of others. He was way more selfish than that.

"Do you want to clear yourself? To wash your wounds?" he asked. "Maybe the pain will decrease."

Her eyes rose to meet his. He saw disbelief and fear. She was scared of him. Maybe not as Sephiroth, but as a man.

"I won't hurt you" he assured "I will be here, sitting right here, as you go to the bathroom. Then, you can clean yourself and I will give you something to wear instead of those clothes. I will give you something to eat if you are hungry, too. Then you can tell me what happened."

The girl nodded.

Sephiroth gave her a pair of black, light trousers and a black shirt, "Second door on the right, then."

He sat on the couch as he heard the water running in the bathroom. His mind wandered aimlessly. He asked himself why Hojo did that to Aerith. It had been him? Or was another scientist? And in what purpose, for God's sake? What scientific conclusions were they trying to take from the body of a violated young woman? He remembered the torture. The macabre ideas on the scientist head. However, he had his followers. People who were crazy enough to seek his auto-dominated wisdom and knowledge. Probably puppet's to Hojo's eyes. After all, he said he was the father of Science. Everyone else was a pawn in his game, pawns that he was able to control with the power he had over everyone who was weak enough to fall to his charismatic point of view. But Sephiroth wouldn't fall to his dark purposes. Not anymore, at least.

The sound stopped. His sharp hears heard the water dripping and the ruffle of clothes. Her steps on the bathroom's pavement, however, made no noise.

The door opened. Aerith didn't bother to braid her hair, leaving it wet and loose over her shoulders. The black shirt looked like a dress on her, and he saw the many times she twisted the sleeves in order to reach her wrists. The same she did to the pants that she wrapped to her tiny waist using the pink bow she used to braid her hair with. She had black circles drawn beneath her tired eyes and Sephiroth saw for the first times the bruises she had on her neck.

Aerith sat on the couch in front of him, lowering her eyes.

"Are you hungry?"

She shook her head in disapproval.

"How long have you been curled up in that corner?"

Aerith didn't answer.

"I will give you something to eat, then."

He didn't have much food in his apartment, though. He found a packet of cookies and some water on his bedside table and gave them to her. Aerith ignored the water and opened the cookies packet, hungrily. Two minutes later, the 24 biscuits were gone and a relieved expression was written on her face.

Sephiroth analyzed her expression. She was truly a curious human being. "Who did that to you?"

She didn't answer. He eyes lowered again and a tear shone at the corner of her eye.

"Talk. I can help you."

Aerith hesitated. But as soon as she parted her lips, the words started to flow.

"Hojo brought me to the lab. He was doing the normal routine exams, like always. Then he… said something."

Sephiroth waited. It should be hard to recall the event. It should be painful. The general tried to reach to her mind, tried to loosen up the tight grasp she had over her memories and her feelings. He was sent backwards, though. Her mind was shut down. No one but herself could access the memories.

"He said that my body was ready to do what he wanted to do."

Sephiroth felt rage emerging from within him and running through his veins until it reached his fingertips. How could Hojo do that?

"He tried to…breed me."

"…He what?"

"Hojo tried to get me pregnant from another man. He…-he wanted me to crossbreed with a creature. I don't know if he was human. His eyes were different from anything I have ever seen."

Sephiroth's hand turned into a fist. How did he dare? The act was so inhuman that shocked him. It shocked Sephiroth, a man who had seen everything: mutilations on the battlefield, horrors coming from within his mind, the most awful behaviors of human kind. He had seen everything but now he was horrified. The act of breed a human young girl with an animal was a pure sin! An uncivilized act!

"I don't think he wanted to." Aerith said, shaking. "I don't think he wanted to…-to rape me. Hojo forced him to. I felt it. The…-the shame and the…-the fear, in his eyes."

Hojo submitted many men to his mastery, Sephiroth thought, frowning.

"Was he successful?"

Aerith rolled her eyes, trying to get calm, but furious tears ran down her cheeks.

"I…-I don't know. Now only time will tell. I am so afraid-I…-I don't want to raise this child. A…-A child from a man I don't even know, a child that would be…-be exposed to the most awful experiments. I…-I don't want to. The idea is aw… need for grief is shattering Earth to pieces. And me, as well."

The general fixed his eyes on the girl's poor figure. That girl was too young to have a baby in her arms. She was sixteen, fifteen, he didn't know her age. But she couldn't protect a baby when she wasn't even capable of protecting herself. It would be a weight on her shoulders that would never be lifted.

"You'll stay here with me, now."

The girl lifted her head, surprised.

"What do you mean, here, with you?"

"Here, in my apartment, with me."

Finally Aerith reacted and a panicked look appeared on her face.

"No, I have to leave, I have to go home, I really, really have…"

Sephiroth grabbed her arms when she rose up, shaking from the earlier shock"

"You aren't going anywhere" he stated, forcing her to sit again. "You are still weak from the occurrence, and if you go back to your home, the Shin-Ra scientists will follow you, and force you to the lab. If you didn't get pregnant, they will bring more men to suit their goals. You aren't safe anymore at home."

"I will be a burden" the girl said, lowering her eyes.

"Yes, you will." Sephiroth agreed "You are a sixteen year old girl and I am a grown man of 24, and I have no idea what to do with you. But I can't leave you to devil's claws right now. You are one of them. You can't die under my vigilance."

"What do you mean…one of them?"

"You know, Aerith. An ancient. You can hear the planet's voice – So do I. That's why I can't leave you right now. We are alike; leaving you would be my greatest sin. Like leaving a sister behind. Or leaving a treasure, if you prefer it that way."

"I can't be closed in this apartment for my entire life. I have to face them. If…If I am pregnant, I will protect this child at all costs, no matter what. I don't need you. It would be like living in the wolf's lair."

"No one will know you are here. No one enters my apartment. You are the first one. Maids clean it, once in a while, but they never enter my room. You can hide there then. Sometimes I have to leave, but you wouldn't be exposed to any harm being here alone."

Aerith was shacking. Everything was new for the young woman.

"I don't know you. I have only seen you a couple of times! I will never feel good about myself in this somber place, enclosed like some animal!"

Sephiroth rose up and put his hand on the doorknob, unlocking the door.

"Go if you want. You are free to take your own decisions. But I am tired to be alone. Tired to be the only one who hears the voices. But go, if you think it's the best for you."

The girl looked at him from the couch.

"…I will stay."

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Author's notes: Review please! ^O^