Chapter 113 - To Start Anew
September, 2002
The world is odd and disconnected when Sephiroth leaves the mansion.
He can't remember the before. The person he was before he stepped into Nibelheim, into this place, into that lab, Sephiroth knows that man is gone. Perhaps he never existed. Sephiroth isn't sure now. The gravel cracks under his boots as he walks away from the house. His hands are wet with blood. It drips from his gloves. It traces his steps from the place that he had once called home.
His mind is clear. It feels almost sharp against the rest of him. As if he thinks of anything else than what he is doing, he will cut himself deeply. This is the path that he has set before himself.
Perhaps the Sephiroth who left Midgar was just a fallacy constructed by Shinra. They made him. They injected matter into his body. They crippled him. They formed him with gloved fingers. Any sense of self definition had been lost in the process. Even with Angeal and Genesis, they had tried to define him as their friend. The qualities that they wished him to have, they attempted to cultivate in him. When that failed and he could stand up to their expectation, they abandoned him.
When had he been able to be himself? When had he even had the opportunity?
Even before them, it had been Dinand narrowing him into a weapon. Before that, the child from the papers was desperate to please. The interviews and reports indicated that he was driven by the need to please others. Mariella couldn't tell him anything different now. Her body laid broken on the floor where he had left it.
Once the naked woman, his mother, Jenova, had faded, Sephiroth had gone to what was left of Mariella. Somehow, she had already started to go cold. The life was drained away from her face as she had half fallen from her position against the stair rail. His intention had not been to kill her but death suited her.
She had died without forgiveness. It meant nothing. She could no longer think or process it. So he had laid her down in a mock sleep in a stained circle of her own blood. His fingers smoothed back the hair caught in her eyes and mouth. It did not matter to her. The soul was gone. It was irretrievable like all the SOLDIERs that had died in his arms.
She did not get a burial. If Angeal could not have a grave, the world surely dictated that no one else deserved it.
He had tried to feel. It only resounded into emptiness and anger. He's too broken now and it had been her hand to shatter the final piece.
She is the reason that he does not start the burning with the house. If he set that place on fire, it would burn her with it. She would go up into ash, a mock cremation. It could have been fitting but he would rather leave her on the floor to rot or be found. It is just one body of many that he had left in his lifetime.
Most of which he had fought against Wutai, a country that did nothing against him.
It sends a pained cramp up his body.
There is no room for regret.
This is not your fault. None of this is your fault. They are to blame. Never you.
His mother had whispered those words to him over and over. She had held him and squeezed him until he had believed the words. It was not his fault. They had clamped invisible chains around his wrists his whole life. There had been no freedom. They had drugged him. They had tortured him through exposures in mako. He had not known until it was too late.
They are going to get what they deserve now. He is going to erase his pain from the world.
The small town comes into view. The night has colored it in black with the windows shiny in the moonlight. It is night, he realizes, the world is asleep to him. It has truly set its back against him. The people inside could care less about what happened to him. All of these days that he had suffered alone and none of them had come to see him. The only ones who came to him did so out of obligation.
There is a breeze.
It is a strange thing after so much time underground. It brushes against his face as he walks to the center of the town. A thrill lives in his throat. He knows what he is going to do and at any second, this night will light up in an impossibility. Part of him knows that he should be wary. Shinra could have called in their troops but it seems so inconsequential. He would slaughter all of them. He is one of their strongest monsters and his ties to the company are shattered beyond repair.
They are all at fault.
The lamp still stands and waits for him.
The light shines on in the middle of town. It traces a dark line of metal against his path. It yanks a hook deep into his stomach and pulls. Once again, in the back of his mind, it comes to him brokenly. He's been here. This place used to be part of his life. The child that lived here used to consider this place his home.
He cannot feel the significance but he is haunted by the ghost of it.
That stops him.
He shakes.
Mariella's blood is dried on his hands now.
None of this can stop him. He is not done. Emotion, memories, these are all just a fragment of who he was. Their power over him is a distracted wisp clinging to him. Yet, his lungs are locked.
The lamp remains in place. The light stays on. A moth flies around the light bulb. The town sighs in sleep.
Home.
This place used to be his home.
"Sephiroth…?"
The voice knocks him out of his head.
The infantry man, Zack's friend, stands by the open door of the inn. It hurts to try to remember the name but it comes back to him.
Cloud stands in front of him.
"Are you…" he starts and then his eyes drop to his gloves. "Feeling better?"
Having someone here makes Sephiroth focus.
"Why do you care about this town?" His voice cracks with disuse.
Cloud straightens, his hand moving to his side where his gun should be but the holster is empty. "It's kinda where I grew up."
"What does that matter?"
Cloud's hand curls into a fist and he drops it to his side.
It is inconsequential.
He should know that.
Even with a gun aimed straight at his head, Sephiroth could kill him before the trigger was pulled.
"My family is here," the infantry man says.
Family.
It clicks in him.
A family.
He's never had that and yet Cloud says it so casually like it is nothing. Somehow this kid has something that he never had. It couldn't be fair.
"What makes you so special?" Sephiroth hears how he snaps and doesn't care.
Fear comes over Cloud's face. "Sir?"
He abandons the lamp. He walks towards him.
"Who the fuck are you to have that?"
Cloud starts walking back, his shoes tripping over each other.
"W-who am I? I'm Cloud, sir. Cloud Strife."
It's not the answer that he wants.
"I am going to burn this place to the ground," Sephiroth says, "I am going to tear your home apart."
"What-" Then he is turning, mouth open to call for Zack.
The sound goes garbled as Sephiroth's fist collides with the side of his face. His teeth click together and then the boy falls to the ground and Sephiroth is alone again.
He takes a breath.
The shaking has stopped but the pain is burning now, curling everything into hot ash inside.
This place is nothing.
The materia warms at his side.
And he will prove it.
The flame flickers in his palm, real and tangible.
Then he will get his mother.
It only takes one spark.
And he will burn all of this pain out of his life and start anew.