Chapter 100 - Wings
September, 2002
Sephiroth dreams of wings.
This is what his mind settles on as the surgery passes over and through him. He thinks about the feathers that Genesis dropped. The bird who nested on the top of his apartment building. The animal would watch him from the nest, eyes wary of his violence. He thought about flying and falling and flying again. His whole body is heavy, leveled by the drugs pumped into his bloodstream. Regardless, he wonders what it might be like to want to go somewhere and then simply go.
He spirals away from his problems.
He drifts in his own mind not even trying to place it in any sort of reality. Instead the unbelievability of it is what carried him forward. Surely it was impractical but he had seen grown men fly. He had seen faces warped onto monsters. He had slaughtered copies of one of his best friends over and over until it meant almost nothing to him.
What is impossibility anymore? Perhaps he could be like Genesis and Angeal and simply float away until they dissipated. Maybe he would grow a wing too and find his own freedom.
The dream ends slowly.
Sephiroth thought he would wake up somewhere deep into R&D.
Instead when he comes back to, his eyes open unfocused to the sight of his own bedroom. His tongue feels raw and thick. He blinks but his eyes barely react. A weight on him is oppressive. A headache pounds against his mind. His muscles knit together from so much disuse. He hears keys clicking from his living room.
This is wrong. His stomach turns when he tries to sit up. He's too weak. It shouldn't be like this.
A groan comes from him as he rolls onto his back. His lungs fight to expand against the muscles encasing them.
The typing stops.
Something must be wrong. He shouldn't be sore like this. He shouldn't feel swollen. An IV drips next to him. His fingers trace up his side, slipping under the loose shirt. The pain is almost a relief. The shock of hurt is good as he blunders into his own stitches. It had happened. He twists and stares at the sun cutting lines across his ceiling with the sun. He will be free.
Mariella appears in his open door.
How cut down he is as she stands and he can barely lift his head.
"You are okay," she says as she walks over.
"I feel-"
She grasps his hand. "I know. Not good."
The connection makes him close his eyes. It vibrates up in him. She is there. He feels weak like after he was captured by Wutai. His body simply isn't responding. It lays still without him.
"You need to rest. You are adjusting to the new medication and it is taking it fairly hard." His hand is smoothed back onto his chest. "Soon it will be done and you'll bounce back. There is too much mako in you for you to be down for too long."
Perhaps it is the mako that lays on top of him like all of Shinra tower. He wrinkles his face as a shiver passes through him.
"Be patient." Her voice is soft.
Regardless if he is being patient or not, the choice is taken away from him. She turns to his bedside table and slips a dose of something sweet into his line. It goes cold against his arm before it chews away on his consciousness. This is almost better. He stops worrying. His body will recover. No matter what has happened. It has refused to allow him to leave. It will drag him back. Nothing this simple can kill him.
Mariella wakes him a few more times.
The sluggishness crawls off of him like a receding tide. He starts to be able to answer her questions. The sharpness of his voice comes back into his own ears. She watches him. She sees these signs and nods through them. He takes it slowly. His fingers work over the incision. If he presses hard enough, he can feel something foreign move against his muscle and skin.
It takes a few days. His body works into overdrive. It strains to set things right in a way that he can operate but eventually it happens.
Mariella monitors. She tracks his vitals and writes them down. Slowly she takes him off whatever concoction has been easing his transition. He starts to sit up in bed. Soon after, his body clicks further, bouncing into a new level of clarity. The IV is gone. The medication has been swept up. Walking stabilizes. She sits at his dining room stable with her work spread out before her as he stretches his legs.
They are waiting for an attack.
It doesn't come.
Sephiroth hasn't swallowed a pill in five days for the first time in over fifteen years. It is a miracle. His fingers work over the scar that has almost completely faded off of his skin. He has to be careful to make sure that this does not become a habit.
Now, he can move forward.
It does something to him. It almost makes him nervous. He is no longer tied to this organization. Just like Angeal and Genesis, he could leave.
He would leave. He could control his own life.
Sephiroth has to put his hand against the countertop to feel the coldness of the marble. It anchors him back to reality. He isn't gone yet. It isn't done yet.
"Sephiroth, have a seat with me." Mariella leans forward on her knees, elbows planted against them and weaves her hands. He tries not to smile as he takes the seat opposite of her.
Her eyes evaluate how he sits. "You have recovered."
"Yes."
"Good," she says and pauses. A smile reaches across her face. It grows like it isn't supposed to be there. She glances away and when she comes back to him, there is a fire in her eyes. "You need to know that I've just committed treason."
Sephiroth stares at the way that she absorbs the surprise in him. She knew this would shock him by how she smiles back bitterly.
"I thought you said that there is not enough evidence left to be worried about such things," Sephiroth says.
The room is quiet.
She shakes her head. "It's impossible. The records. I may have deleted what I created but that doesn't mean that if the Turks look hard enough, the files won't be found. I have to go."
"Mariella. The Turks will come after you. You are head of SOLDIER exposure."
The papers get gathered on the table. She fixes them into a neat pile. Her fingers draw over her own handwriting and the notes narrating his own condition.
"Fixing you, fixing this mistake, it was one of the last things I needed to do here." She looks up at him full of determination. "I get to leave now too."
She meant this. His heart picked up the pace. She would leave him and it would paint a dangerous target on her back.
"If they find you and you don't come back, they will kill you. You know too much. People, normal people, they can't leave Shinra."
She sighs and leans back in her chair. "I am tired, Sephiroth."
"And you will be tired of running before too long."
Her tone goes sharp. "Won't you too?"
"I am a First. I have training. I can fight back. You have no training."
"I am smart, Sephiroth." She leans forward. "Did you ever consider that?"
"Are you taking Thea with you?"
That cuts her momentum. She opens her mouth and looks away. "I've seen too much. I've done so much. Starting over, even at the risk of death, at least that is a clean slate."
She hasn't addressed the question so he pushes it hard. "What about Thea, Mariella? Are you leaving her too?"
She shakes her head. "She's half the reason I am doing this. We want kids. It turns out she can't carry them. We've tried everything…and adoption isn't an option for us. I want…a child that I can take care of, from the beginning, that I create myself. They can't live here. I don't want them to be here."
"So you are going to run and raise a child. Do you hear yourself?"
"No. I am going to disappear."
"People can't do that. Dead bodies can but not people who want to live lives."
Mariella reaches forward with her hands and takes his. "I've had years to figure this out. Things are set in place. I have made deals. We will be safe."
She has been planning this for years. It digs into his gut. She's been planning to leave him for years.
"Remember you are leaving yourself, at least, eventually. It won't matter then."
He tries to think of a response and can't. She rises from the table. "I've left a phone number on the counter. Memorize it and burn it. Do not put it in your phone. Do not ever call it from a Shinra device. Don't even call it unless you absolutely need something from me. This is a risk but I care too much to leave you alone. I won't do it, not like them. You understand?"
He says nothing. His mouth is dry.
The papers go into the bag she carries and she glances around. The rest of her presence has already been removed from the stripped apartment.
"When do you leave?" He asks.
Mariella pulls the bag onto her shoulder and lifts her hand. She offers him a handshake.
It's enough of an answer.
He stands. The chair scrapes against the floor and he rises up. For once he sees how different they are, how fragile she is compared to him and now she was the brave one, the one to go out in the world. Her face is a familiar one. She looks like she does before any big project, focused and quiet.
"It's done, Sephiroth. I called in the final pieces this morning."
He takes her hand and shakes it. The finality of it brands against his palm. Another person is gone. If he ever sees her again, she will most likely be dead. Mariella smiles and straightens.
"I hope you can live your life," she says, looks him in the eyes and lays her hand on top of his, "on your own terms."
Mariella Haynes is reported missing two days later.
Sephiroth watches the reports come in. As the Director, he can watch the Turks work like ripples on the surface of a pond. They go after her. Some of R&D's labs get derailed. Exposures delay and stall. Hojo sends even more Turks after Mariella and Thea. Their apartment is found empty except for a note saying "I will not miss this life" written in her handwriting.
Most of all, he watches for the details of her death. A week after she is gone and somehow the press found out and thought it important enough to make the third page, Shinra posts a press release that Mariella has been killed as a traitor. This could be expected and does not necessarily mean anything. It is the more detailed report of her death, what should be slipped into her dormant HR folder that he waits for.
It never arrives from the Turks.
The file has "KIA" written on it but without a death date.
Mariella lives in the way that she dies, almost invisible to everyone else.
Sephiroth tries to focus but the tower is even more empty. He has no friends here. The isolation is grating, no longer just aching. He starts to draw up his own plans. He will leave. He will build a life for himself outside this metal plate. It is hard. The life that Shinra has given him has always been supported.
He will have to contend for food, shelter, water, work and fight for a real life. If he grows ill, there will be no one else to take care of him. He will have to have the medicines that he might need. Once the implant wears out, he will have to construct a plan to come back to Shinra or to understand that his time will be up.
It takes up his evenings and his weekends. The plan is constructed, brick after brick. Dates start to settle in his mind. They grow close, more real, more settled. He maps things. He purchases a second phone under a different name. A location, far enough away from society, is found where he might attempt to shelter the worst of the storm.
Then comes the final wait as quietly his money is drained out of his bank. It takes a while to split it between organizations. Shinra doesn't deserve it back when they reconcile everything that he is leaving. He has also bribed several of the organizations to keep a cut of the money out and to hold it back.
Only about 10% of the donations that don't make the books.
And are written into checks to a man that is slowly developing in paperwork and history.
It is Midgar, even the nonprofits are corrupt.
Sephiroth stares out the window of his office. In two weeks, he will never see this city again. The place that has encapsulated so much of his life is going to disappear. Shinra knows something is wrong but Sephiroth is cooperating. He's stopped resisting. He is no longer sick. He is doing his work and being as close to perfect as he can.
It is the quiet before the storm and he wonders which one of them will move first.
"Sir," Alvar says and knocks against the frame of the door.
His assistant will be a loss. Sephiroth will miss him but there is too much on the line to keep it the way it is.
The concern in his eyes. "Would you check your email?"
Sephiroth frowns at the seriousness in his face and the request. It is very rare that Alvar will tell him to do anything. There is a new email in his inbox. It's a Turk report. The subject line makes him drop his thoughts of his escape. The report is almost messy, written in a rush from a redacted Turk in the field.
Genesis has been spotted near a reactor.
At first, he had thought that it was yet another copy. They still drift around in eddies of memories left in space. They exist to taunt and hurt him. It's a trick, a mistake but the photos have been analyzed. The close ups scrawled over in red ink and highlighted. The degradation is authentic. The eyes, the hair, the pieces of his friend are checked and reverified.
It is Genesis Rhapsodos still alive.
It is not a trick or an illusion.
Alvar watches him. Sephiroth can't hide all of the pain. Perhaps there is a chance at his dream. He could talk to Genesis. They could escape together. Underneath that layer of gray and cracking, somewhere, he could hope that his friend may still remain.
The reason that Sephiroth is being informed of this is because they want him to investigate with Zack. They want him to "verify and kill the threat."
He stares at the word threat.
What does that even mean anymore?
Nothing is a threat when you have nothing left to lose.
This would be his last mission.
That night he dreams.
He falls. He drowns. He crawls out of an ocean of darkness. These dreams have become common since the implant. These figments of his memory are laced with impending horror. He fights against something that is unending. If they are the cost to pay, he will pay it. Part of him is so familiar with it that even in his dreams, he knows that there is no finality until he wakes.
This night he has managed to pull himself out of the ocean. He lays on the edge of the stony shore, beached like a dying animal. The waves tug against his feet, slowly creeping closer. That's how this dream will get him. He knows it in his bones. The tide will blanket over him and there is nothing to be done about it.
His arms shake as he pushes himself onto his side. The sky is gray with clouds, no moon or stars in sight. His hair is tangled around him. He thinks of moving but it is too much effort. What does it matter when you are going to die anyways? Air bites his crackle lips. At least this is slow, nothing to fight against. The shivers come and go without his effort. He lays on the dark pebbles and waits.
The coldness makes him close his eyes.
What must he look like?
Gods. With this dream, he is the same level as everyone else. He is just one more human, dying alone. His lungs expand. His shirt sticks to him. Last time he saw Genesis, he was struggling to survive. What will it be like now? In the darkness of his head, the dream of this makes it hopeless.
This is yet another lost cause that he will cut open an artery of his soul to bleed for.
He should try to get up but there is no point. There will always be another death waiting for him. If it is not this, then something else will try to strike him down. At least this is painless for now.
The crunching of the gravel gets washed away by the waves and the sea water still clogging his ears.
He fights to open his eyes as something settles down next to him.
The naked woman.
Her skin is gleaming and real against the dullness he is in. Her wings are tucked away. He doesn't move. Perhaps this is his death this time. Her long fingers reach and sweep around his face, pulling his bangs away from his eyes and lips. Once that is clear, she reaches for his hand. Her skin is searingly warm as she lifts his knuckles to her mouth. It's a dream, he remembers numbly, it does not matter. Nothing does.
Her lips touch his fingers, a feather of a kiss.
Then she speaks.
"Hello," she says, voice smooth and soft, "can you hear me now?"
And for the first time, Sephiroth hears her.