Chapter 108 - On the First Day
September, 2002
Sephiroth stares out the window as the sun rises on a new day.
He's in a small room on the second floor of the mansion that faces Nibelheim. He blinks against the light. Sephiroth is not sure how long he's been standing here. This room had snagged him, pulling him to a stop in his exploration. It is nothing special. The blue curtains have faded with age. The small bed has been stripped with a white sheet thrown over it. The desk is empty. There are a few children's books stacked in a corner. A dead plant is a skeletal remnant of itself on the windowsill. Sephiroth had sat on the bed for a moment. It felt odd, like a piano out of tune, nothing he had seen was right.
Then he lost time.
And found himself staring at a candy wrapper hidden under the desk.
This place is nothing significant but Sephiroth cannot find the will to leave the room.
He draws his fingers against the window ledge now. Dust collects against his fingertips. The rug beside the bed had broken into pieces when he walked over it. It smells wrong here. The air is stained with disuse. No one had cared for this place in a long time.
He needs to move on but the thing under the numbness cannot get him here. It haunts the edges of his mind but cannot touch him.
You found it.
The words drift in from behind.
He thinks about turning to face the illusion that he had tried to kill but instead he continues to stare out the window. The naked woman will remain or she will go and there is seemingly nothing that he can do about it. He might as well not grace her with his attention.
I am proud of you.
"This is not home."
Silence.
His throat tightens. "I was not born into a family. That is the prerequisite for a home. I was given to a woman and she raised me with a paycheck."
Silence again. It drags out like a knife through his skin until it tears a line too deep for him to stand.
He turns around and he is alone. The doorway is empty. She had been there. The edge of something creeps against his mind. It's enough to break him from the reverie. He has time in the mansion but he has limited time. He will be found. It is only logical. Zack Fair will eventually think to search this place.
It is unreasonable for him to just dwell in one room if there is no reason. Just feeling something different does not justify his actions to stay. There is only one more area on this floor to explore and then he will have to move on. He will have to stop hiding. He will have to face Zack Fair.
He stares at the stripped mattress and places his hand on it. The springs creak with age. The dust shifts like the bed is about to come back to life. His heart shifts in his chest under the numbness.
It clunches.
Sephiroth forces himself to let go of the mattress.
It is just a bed.
Nothing more, nothing less.
It will be left to dry rot in this room.
Sephiroth's shoes scuff against the rug and he leaves it behind.
It is as if the stone door is meant to be found.
The wall panel is half jammed open when he enters the room. It doesn't take much of his training to understand what he sees. The leather of his gloves is smooth on the hinges and mechanics until he finds a piece of rust shoved into one of the rails. He takes one of the chairs in the room and breaks the chunk into pieces. It echoes throughout the room. He pries the remaining pieces out.
The door frees itself with a click and slides fully open into a stairway leading underground. The air is cool and fresh. The first smell of something not abandoned in this whole house.
Sephiroth knows it should be impossible. Yet, the smell of mako wafts up from the spiral staircase. It's enough to draw him down the stairs. There is no report that the mansion is being used for any in depth work but this is Shinra and nothing has hindered Shinra from occluding the truth.
The lab in the basement is more extensive than he thinks it should be. It stretches most of the footprint of the mansion. Most of the equipment is clean but decades old. The examination table looks more familiar with the coat of rust than a patient. Other things are newer. The room is flooded with the green light of the mako tanks until Sephiroth snaps on the overhead lighting.
This lab has been used more recently than not. Otherwise these machines would have died. Dust would have draped itself over the equipment. It would have felt abandoned.
This could explain the unusual monsters that they had found up at the reactor.
Monsters.
The numbness shifts like a wave, growing thin in places.
No, the things that they found in the reactor could have been made here. Sephiroth waits. That word causes no reaction in him. Those bodies could be things for now. It is just a concession. He is aware but the word "monster" is like picking a seam he is not ready to unravel. He has just managed to put himself back together. As for the lab, Hojo might have small satellite labs anywhere in the world that might host some of his more illegal projects.
Projects that might produce the highest results at the most risk would be born somewhere isolated.
Somewhere isolated where there might be very little memory of a child who floats in and out of existence.
Sephiroth's boots click against the tile as he circles around the lab. The naked woman had yet to arrive again. He is alone. She will be back. There is no doubt in him. Probably he did not have clearance to be in this area. It's almost a laugh that comes out of him at that thought. What a pointless concern, he surely now does not have the clearance to be anywhere anymore.
If he has yet to be fired, he will be fired. It could be as simple as abandonment of position. It could be as complicated as treason. Regardless, any remaining vestiges of power are gone from him.
He'll be Hojo's lab rat if he returns to Shinra. The cage is waiting for him.
This lab is condensed with material and a library of backlogged reports bound into books. No light reaches here. He is underground. The hundreds of pounds of ground leave a pressure on his shoulders. There is something else creeping under his skin. It is the edge of something sharp. It makes him restless as he circles the main area of the lab again. Why is there newer equipment here? Hojo should not have had the time to travel here.
Genesis might have gotten his answers in this room. He could have explored the mansion too. This might have been the place where he spun his lies into a new reality or where he discovered the truth of Sephiroth's heritage. The room remains the same as he moves through it. The door up the stairs is open. Zack could be looking for him. Anyone could come down here and find him and he would have very little explanation as to why he is here other than the truth.
A few folders sit forgotten on a desk. A pen and scraps of illegible notes are on top. Sephiroth's fingers hover over them before stopping. He feels like he is on the edge of falling again. The decision is impossible to make. If he reads what is here, it could hurt him. If he does not read what is here, it will haunt him for the rest of his life.
His fingers trail over the rough cardstock of the folder. It thrills him. It breaks through the blankness into something that isn't initially painful. It is a natural emotion. He's interested in it. Once, he remembers Genesis sitting across from him on the train, a small notebook in his hands. His lips had moved in an invisible count. The pen in his hand scrawled line after line.
Then Genesis traced a part of his arm or his stomach or leg and then wrote another line.
Sephiroth had asked him what he was doing.
"I am keeping track, darling."
"What are you keeping track of?" Sephiroth ignored the nickname. It's only meant to bring a rise out of him. A tease, harmless as a tap on the shoulder, these had escalated over time. Genesis would call him more and more affectionate names as a secret. That jerks something in him now. It's a bitter thought that they might have joked. How could Sephiroth have allowed himself to be so close to someone that a pet name could be so familiar and accepted?
How vulnerable he had been.
Genesis had laughed at the question and switched seats, coming to sit next to him. Sephiroth can remember how warm he was, the firmness of the leg pressed into his thigh. Why had this been the definitive detail that had been pressed into the curve of his mind?
"Look," Genesis said and divided the notebook into two sections. The cursive inscribed injuries, countless brutal moments of when flesh had been ruptured and changed. Both lists were the same except the second one is longer. Dates stretched back years.
"This." He flipped through the first list. "is how many times I've been injured and what happened."
Genesis smiled as he got to the second list, flipping page after page. "These are all the times that I have healed others. Remember this one?"
The notepad was given over. There were a few bloodstains on the book, Sephiroth realized, fingerprints smudged against the faded papers.
The line read: Jan 23 1994 - Sephiroth - Gunshots. Massive injuries. Blood lost. How-does-he-still-have organs? I managed it. Passed out after. Happy First Class promotion prize.
That was one of the darkest days of his life. Genesis had been there, holding onto his life for him.
"Why? Why do you do this?" Sephiroth gave it back.
Genesis smiled then. "Morbid curiosity."
Sephiroth stands in the lab and looks down at the folder.
He hadn't understood the idea of morbid curiosity then but now it sinks into his skin. It is the wrong thing. He knows it now. If he knows what is good for him, he would leave. He would stand against this want and leave Nibelheim. He would start his life over. He would drop this want into the past.
He would take Masamune and cut all of this free of himself.
He sees the tab on the folder.
Project J & Project S - Findings - 1985
Project J.
Project Jenova.
Project S.
Project Sephiroth.
His mother and him were coupled together in Shinra files years ago.
Sephiroth looks up at the door, daring the world to stop him.
The room remains silent.
He is alone.
"Morbid curiosity," Sephiroth says and he hooks his fingers against the edge of the folder.
And he flips it open.