Chapter 59 - Let This End
January, 1994
It comes back to him.
He remembers the medics finding him on the battlefield. He remembers exactly how his body is sprawled across the ground, his right hand pinned under him, his body twisted acutely over itself, his legs going one way, his free arm the opposite like an abandoned doll. He remembers how it all screams.
He doesn't know how long he lays there. Over and over, he tries to get his body to move, to release some of the pressure building up inside him but he is too weak. Nothing will move. Even his body has given up on him. It leaves him trapped to memorize the way that the asphalt digs into his side and how the pain hazes over his mind.
The hands come. The slurred voices, nonsense that his mind cannot parse together. His name is called. He manages to move his head. Stuck hair pulls against his scalp with the movement. That sends out a cry and the hands triple. They are trying to help him. Shinra found him again.
He fights them off but his thrashes are weak.
Please, he wants to tell them, just let this all end.
He doesn't want to be touched. Nothing will change. He wants it all to stop. His life is locked in an endless cycle. He can see the path clearly as the medics peel away his clothes and prod at the chunk that has taken residence in his side.
Every part of him except his mind fights to stay alive. Why should he live? For Shinra? Shinra drives every moment of this misery. He doesn't want to have to figure out how to move forward. He doesn't want to carry this. It is too heavy.
So he summons all his strength and pushes them away.
Yet, once again, he doesn't have a choice.
They pin his hands, ignore his writhing and command him to relax.
It's when they lift him up that he slips away. The pain covers him. It makes him helpless.
He wakes up warm and smothered in white. The SOLDIER room smells clean and fresh. His eyes roll uncoordinated around on the blank walls, the closed door and the IV bag hung next to him. He's alone. It is so incredibly odd. He is used to the people parsing him down to lines and judgments.
Here it is just him.
Nothing is willing to move.
It's fine. He's safe, back behind the lines. His body curled on his side, hands tucked near his chest. He should be worried. He should be embarrassed by how inherently fetal the position is. No. It doesn't matter. None of it does. He is warm and relaxed. The pain is gone. The drugs have taken care of the darkness in his mind.
He's been in medical before for the times where he couldn't heal his own wounds. Otherwise, he refuses to show that kind of weakness. Even with the painkillers, he can feel the throb and pressure of the damage done. The damage done by Dinand. He swallows and lets it go.
It's better that he is here today.
Thoughts connect lazily. He hasn't been transferred to R&D yet. He's too comfortable. The mattress is soft for a cot and a thick blanket has been brought over him. The room smells clean instead of the chemical taint. He's always cold in the labs. The sheets there are tissues, more of an afterthought than a human comfort. Privacy is the most striking. Rarely is there a moment where someone isn't trying to take something from him.
There, he feels like a rat in a cage.
Here, it is quiet.
He's thankful for it.
The drugs ease sleep back over him.
It's easy to give in.
Plastic ripping wakes him up.
Someone has pushed back his sheet and is working on the bandage that has swallowed his entire side. It's hard to breathe. The pressure has built up against his lungs. The pain stays away but it hovers like a ghost. It takes up space but has no inherent substance.
The nurse works. She is young as she dabs and cleans his side. Rust colored towels drop into a container at her feet. The lid snaps closed rhythmically as she works. He doesn't make any noise. He doesn't let her know he woke up.
Mariella used to hum whenever she worked with him. Who it is supposed to soothe, he's never been sure.
She rips open another packet of towels without a word.
Ointment is rubbed in. Phantom coldness comes to the back of his mind. The nurse's face scrunches and then finally she withdraws her hands. The discolored gloves drop in the container. Sephiroth watches as the wound is covered again. Those fingers slip under him to tape it back in place. Finally, the nurse looks up at his face. Their eyes meet. She yells and stumbles back a step.
Sephiroth remains unmoving. She mutters something that is mostly curses. It's too much. A headache forms in his mind. He's spent what energy he has left. Sephiroth steps back into blackness.
He doesn't try to examine his body when he wakes up next. He doesn't need to. So much of him is swathed in bandages. The burns, the cuts, the gouge in his side where there is dip where there should be a straight line, it is countless to him. The medicine is thick as syrup in his mind. The care he is given is intense and constant. They keep trying to heal him with materia. It skitters across his skin, never sinking in. It takes a strong caster to fight through his natural resistance.
The woman, naked and wet, the one who haunts his life, returns when he wakes up alone.
This time she is quiet. She sits on his bed, so close that he can count the wet strands of hair that touch her cheeks. Her eyes look knowingly at him like he means something to her. Emotion curls in his heart. What a joke. The only person who truly cares for him lives in his imagination.
She doesn't move, no need to struggle across the room like when he was a child. She sits on the edge of his bed.
The water stains the covers. Neither one of them move. They are locked in a dance. The movements are already set. She smiles. It's a delusion. A comfort he desperately needs but will never get. Her hips move and she shifts closer, bending the mattress springs. The black wings spread out. Feathers touch the ceiling. He allows himself to slide towards her and pretend that this is real.
Her fingers lay claim on either side of his shoulders. She leans in. Drops of water fall around him, pattering on the pillow.
Sephiroth stills, imagining the compassion on her face that he will never get. It could be there. This close up, he sees bits of himself in her, the way her lips turn, the straightness of her nose, the broken depth behind her eyes. He floats in space with her, everything unreal except for the two of them.
She dips her face.
Her breath, cold and clean, tickles her ear.
She says something sweet, the words indistinct, the meaning he cannot understand.
He moves to touch her arm, to push her back, to read her lips.
When they are meant to touch, she is gone.
The room is empty.
He's alone again.
She doesn't come back.
He falls back into the simple state of being an R&D experiment, waiting for the next injection or treatment that will somehow make him better. He should hate this but he cannot. He simply doesn't have the will.
Parts of him brush against the last moments that are clear in his mind. He shies away. It would hurt too much. Idly, he wonders about the battle. He hopes his unit survived. Grief worms into his throat. He knows the truth. Shinra must have finished off the monster but the cost must have been steep.
The memories press so deep that he strains to look around and escape them. It's a small room. Moonlight pours in from one of the windows. A patient monitor sits next to his bed next to the IV line. His eyes blur over the numbers. A table is lined with medical supplies. A chair sits filled. The sides of the room are dark. It's night. Even the sounds stay indistinct.
He's been going too fast. He feels sick laying here. There is so much to do. He moves an arm, starts to stir, to push himself up.
The woman, the nurse, she rises out of the chair. He jerks, mostly internally, from not seeing her.
The nurse tells him it is okay to rest. Her hands come against his shoulders. She pushes him down as he starts to come back to himself. He can't fight it. She must see the concern in his eyes, the way he needs to be fulfilling his job, otherwise, what is he supposed to do? He doesn't know how to live.
"It's okay," she insists.
He knows it isn't.
She turns away rustling with the supplies.
Sephiroth's mind spins. He feels different, more grounded than before. He sees the wires suck everywhere to him. His hand reaches down, tentative to touch the bandage wrapped around his stomach. The fabric is thick and wide. It swallows the entirety of his middle. He brings up his right hand. Only his fingers sticking out of the white cloth are distinguishable. Fear curls in him. He knew the cost. He paid it. Now what will happen to him?
His hand settles on his chest.
The overwhelming misery is gone. A hollownesss echoes in him. Killing Dinand did nothing. The trouble that he caused will be gone but he will not be able to go back to a life where he was happy. There is no relief. There is just the endless expanse of the war and the lies ahead of him. The lines of stress in him start to return.
"Just sleep through this. It's better that way. You'll heal faster."
He's forgotten to check on the lab attendant.
She's at his IV bag, cradling the clear wire with gloved hands. There is a needle in the port. Liquid is being pushed into the line. He opens his mouth to tell her no but the burn runs his arm as the drug hits his system. An uncontrolled whine comes out of his throat. Her eyes soften. A hand comes against his cheek. It's too personal. He can't help collapsing.
"You'll be okay. Just rest. They are sending you to Midgar soon."
He can't fight it. It's too late. The drug already settles in deep drooling sleep over him.
When he wakes up next, it is for good. It's night again. Things click in his mind, finding the right places, gaining traction. He's awake. The numbness of his body is there but it is manageable. He rises to sit on the bed. The shake makes it impossible to know if he can continue to sit upwards.
He can feel it.
Part of his body is missing. His right side creases in on itself unnaturally. It bends in a way that it isn't supposed to. The skin is tight and angry. He wants to reach down to press in, to discover, but he needs both of his hands to continue to sit up.
The machine he's attached to chirps. He sucks in air, trying to fight off the pressure in his head. He places his hands on either side of him, pushing forward, forcing his weight onto his hips and off his arms. His side crunches the bandages and he leans into it before he can fall back. The room spins with effort.
The blanket is knit across his knees. He counts the stitches instead of focusing on the quivering of his arms. He is paying his price. He knows that. He will accept it. He will crawl away from this pain eventually.
The machine chirps again.
And something shifts on the floor.
The nurse sits up from the pallet, confused and sleepy until she snaps awake as she realizes what is happening.
"Sephiroth, please, don't try to stand up." She struggles to her own feet. "You've still healing from that concussion. We've got to be careful."
He shakes his head. A braid rolls around on his back. She must have done it to him. The bed is swallowing him. The longer he stays, the more likely he will give up, crumble, succumb to everything. It's a poison seeping into his system.
"Your men are all doing fine. We have to take care of you first."
The words prickle him. It picks up his heartbeat. It makes the focus he has sharpen. He stares at her openly.
It could have been the generality of her statements. It could have been her mentioning the medical terms earlier. It throws something strangely into light. Something is missing.
"Where is Mariella?"
She rubs her cheek and tries to fake a yawn. "She's not made it here yet."
Sephiroth tries to calm the panic in his stomach.
That's a lie.
If he has been asleep for days, which he believes to be true, there is no way that Mariella wouldn't have been flown out here. Even worse than that, he knows that she was scheduled to be flown in during the fight to a nearby base.
They had a health appointment the day after the battle at noon.
Sephiroth fights himself. He stops putting the pieces together. He has to be wrong. Perhaps she is simply asleep for the night. Perhaps the front line has remained unstable. Shinra didn't want to risk Mariella.
He can't help the shake that runs through him.
"Has she been in contact?"
"Yeah." But the word waivers.
"What did she say?"
She doesn't answer.
"What did she say?" He asks again.
She looks at his monitor, the telling numbers that strip his composure away into the fear that is underneath it. "She told me about your addiction. How to help your body through it. How to get you on the right meds."
Addiction.
A lie.
There is no addiction.
"Where am I?" He says.
"Sephiroth, I need you to stay calm for me." She looks at him then. A brave face has been pasted over the worry. "You were in a coma for a few days. Your concussion was that severe. You were smashed into a building. At least we're guessing."
"Where am I?" He interrupts her, rising more.
She shakes her head. "If you get too stressed, it could reinjure your brain. We don't want that. You are so fragile. You are growing back parts of organs. I've never seen anything like it."
We.
No R&D.
No "medical" as the Shinra slang calls it.
Just "we."
It makes him go cold under the sheets.
Sephiroth pushes up entirely from the bed, tries to straighten. His whole body quivers. "Answer the question."
"You are safe here."
"That did not answer my question. Where am I?"
He can see her flickering to look away. She doesn't in the end. She opens her mouth and then closes it. He fights to keep himself from reaching forward and shaking her, to spit out the truth that only the power of drugs has kept him from.
He needs her to confirm it.
To tell him so he can finalize the path in front of him.
To understand how much he has failed.
She looks him straight in the eyes.
"I'm sorry, Sephiroth. We are in a Wutai facility."