For some reason, Sephiroth had expected to wake up angry. There was something he had been furious about before falling asleep, but he just woke up feeling drained, not wanting to deal with… anything. He ran a hand over his face and then pulled it away to stare at it. He hadn't fallen asleep with his gloves on since the worst parts of Wutai, when he'd learned to sleep armed and armored no matter how uncomfortable it was. He looked above him at the rustic wood beams that crossed the ceiling of their room in the Nibel Inn, the dark wood stark against the white plaster.

He forced himself to sit up and swing his legs over to sit on the edge of the bed. His boots were off at least, but fallen over and half under the bed rather than neatly paired at just the right spot for him to grab them easily. When did he come to bed? He moved to strip his gloves off and they stuck to dried sweat and had to be turned half inside out and peeled off of his hands. The room spun around him lazily when he stood and he held out one hand to catch his balance.

What?

He swallowed, or tried to, his throat so dry that it made a clicking sound and spasmed instead of being soothed. He stumbled, stumbled , into the tiny bathroom of the room, not bothering to find the light switch. He could see the sink, that was all that mattered. Lukewarm water spilled from the tap, splashing across the veneer of fake marble as he thrust his cupped hands beneath it and lowered his head to drink from them. His mouth tasted foul as he sucked down the water, or no, maybe it was the old sweat on his palms that did it. He didn't care, filling his empty stomach with water was what mattered.

And then he choked, leaned over and heaved most of it back up. Foolish, he reminded himself, drinking like that when he'd had neither food nor water in days… days?

He rinsed his mouth out, taking only a few ounces of water in this time, and turned the lights on. They were harsh and yellow over the mirror, and did his pallid complexion no favors. He looked… terrible. Dark circles were smudged beneath his eyes, the sclera around his irises red and blotchy, and he was filthy. He shrugged out of his coat, unclipping the straps over his chest to pull the stomach guard off, but was distracted by the pale lines crossing his chest where they had been. Grime outlined the cleaner skin, dug in deep furrows along the stripes where the leather had stuck to him.

His hair was worse than he thought he'd seen it in years, tangled and hanging limp around his face. He ran his fingers through a few strands, grimacing at the oily feeling clinging to them. What had he been doing? How had he ended up like this, filthy and starving so badly that he vomited from drinking water?

The reactor

Genesis

The basement

His mother

He leaned his weight on the sink as he continued to take in his filthy visage, his heart rate increasing and his breaths coming weak and shallow. There had been many times in his life, so many times he couldn't count them all, that he'd lost time. As a child he would go to sleep and wake up some indeterminate time later in such a state that he was aware that things had occurred which he could never remember. They'd become less frequent as he'd aged, but he could distinctly remember the very last time - right before he'd been deployed to Wutai.

He still had the small scar where he'd cut the electronic tracking device from his thigh. It had been hard to get to, in the back and near the bend of his knee, and he'd carefully opened the hem of his jacket and stitched the tracker in. The jacket, and later the long leather coat he wore now, had become part of his image such that he never traveled without it. He knew that if he was separated from the tracker by any significant distance that they would simply drug him again and replace it with something even harder to remove.

The length of time he'd lost now… it had been long enough that he'd nearly died, hadn't it? How long could he go without food and water? The answer was likely that he could survive a significant amount of time, much longer than any normal person. More than any human.

Monster, something whispered insidiously in the back of his mind. He shook it off, knuckles whitening as he gripped the edge of the sink and felt the plastic and wood crack beneath his fingers. A faint bubble of humorless laughter was slapped back into his mouth, his hand covering trembling lips as he tried to get hold of himself. He was better than this, wasn't he? He was better. He had been made to be better .

Sephiroth winced. Made - he'd been created, hadn't he? Down in that lab with its poisonous library. Poisonous , yes, that was the word for it. It sapped his strength, his will, his tether to who and not what he was. 'Ignorance is bliss' had been an idiom he'd never really understood until that moment.

A monster

I'm a…

He shoved that away, asking himself if monsters cared about how they looked? Did a monster feel shame at being so filthy?

He resumed trying to comb his fingers through his hair, succeeding only in making it worse. He gathered the mass of it over his shoulder and tried to begin at the bottom, frustration bubbling up the more he tried and the worse it tangled. He met his eyes in the mirror, rimmed in black and red, and a strange calm washed over him.

Flicking the tangled mess back again, he felt his pocket for his room key where he'd put it the day before- days before. How long? It didn't matter. The clock over the front desk said that it was nearing 1600 and glancing out the window he could see the light growing dimmer.

"Do you perhaps have a pair of scissors and a comb I might use?" he asked, hands resting flat on the counter to hide the way they shook.

"I uh, sure," the woman behind the desk stammered, grabbing a comb wrapped in plastic from a drawer and then rooting around in another to draw out a pair of battered looking scissors, "The comb's yours to keep, but I'm gonna need the scissors back if that's okay sir? I mean you could keep them I guess and we'll get a new pair but you know… Whatever?"

"I'll bring them back," he promised, turning and walking toward the stairs and feeling so weighed down he had to struggle to stay upright. He wondered if he needed more sleep, or he conjectured that he might need real sleep. Spelled unconsciousness wasn't the same thing, and that had likely been how far Zack had been pushed in order to separate him from his obsessive studying. The more he thought about it, the blur of the past however many days churning in his skull, the more it felt like a trap. He'd only ever lost time at someone else's whim. Had he been drugged down there?

Back in their room, the mirror showed exactly the same as it had a few minutes before, but this time he focused fully on his hair. He loved it, or at least he used to. He'd originally grown it out as one of the only visible acts of rebellion he'd ever indulged in. See, he'd said, I can have something beautiful and my own and it doesn't hinder my efficiency or prowess in any way. He'd fought tooth and nail to keep anyone from cutting it, lashing out and even becoming violent the last time someone had tried.

Sephiroth's long hair had been the one solitary thing that belonged to him when everything else, from his diet to his underclothes, belonged to Shinra. Even his supposed title of 'general' was a farce, merely dressing for the public display that was his life. But of course Shinra owned him , and because nothing could ever be out of their control, they'd begun to use his image to sell expensive hair care products. The posts on his 'fan club' claimed that he used whole bottles of the specially formulated shampoo and conditioner daily. He'd never even seen a bottle except in advertisements, continuing to use what Shinra provided for him.

He reached back and began to try and snip at his hair with the pair of scissors. His hair fought back, a few strands falling to the floor but not piling up in any satisfying way. He twisted his hair into a tail, hacking away at it with the obviously dull implement until he tossed the scissors into the sink and stalked back out into the main room.

Masamune rested where he would have left it in the corner by his bed but it was much too large to try and take into the bathroom and too unwieldy to to twist his hair behind him and cut it. He pulled the mass of tangled silver to one side and sliced the sword's blade through it. He held the severed clump of hair and watched as it slipped through his fingers onto the worn brown carpet.

The setting sun's light was angled away from the window, shadows growing in the room as he stood there. Sephiroth couldn't remember feeling so light. No feeling of something dragging him down or holding him back.

The door swung open behind him. He turned and watched as Zack's eyes widened, gaze drifting over Sephiroth's shoulder and then down to the mess of hair on the floor and the strands still clinging to the sweat on Sephiroth's palm. He didn't realize until Zack had looked that he still held Masamune. He did something he'd never done. He dropped it. He suddenly couldn't stand the thought of holding the weapon when Zack - Zack was looking as though he was worried Sephiroth would use it . He turned away, back to focus on the darkening window.

"Heeey… man," Sephiroth hadn't heard Zack sound quite that… nervous, before. Or perhaps it had merely not been aimed at himself. He'd heard the other man's voice turn soft and calm trying to calm down an injured or trapped civilian. It worked well on someone who was on the verge of panic or dying or both.

"You cast Sleepel on me and dragged me up all of those stairs, didn't you?" Sephiroth asked, his own voice sounding dull and emotionless even as his thoughts kicked back into gear and began to spiral. He turned to look where Zack stood just in front of the door, holding a few plastic grocery bags that were so full they looked like they might burst.

One cheek hollowing for a moment as Zack bit at it, "Yep."

Sephiroth nodded, "You did well, thank you."

He didn't miss that Zack slumped in relief. It was clear that the younger man had expected him to be angry. He wondered how he had been behaving, how he'd treated Zack before he'd been forcibly 'nap tapped' as the other man had called it once before.

Zack stepped further into the room, dropping the overflowing bags onto the table in the corner - barely catching one as it slid off and placed it a little more gingerly on the chair. The younger man busied himself with unpackaging his haul of goods from the little general store, snapping on a lamp against the encroaching dark.

"You've gotta be hungry," Zack said, and Sephiroth hated that the words were still gentle and careful as though Sephiroth were some skittish animal. Bread and meat and something that only resembled cheese in that it was the correct color were laid out in an assembly line fashion.

"Here, drink up," Zack said as he tossed a bottle of something virulently green in Sephiroth's direction and licked mustard from his thumb.

Sephiroth examined it, eyes flicking over the image of an apple surrounded by stars with the words 'galactic green apple' blazoned across it. An electrolyte supplement, clearly made for children. He twisted off the top and grimaced at the artificial sweet and sour flavor that should never have been combined in his opinion. He sipped it slowly, ignoring the taste. He'd had worse, and at least it wasn't the vitamin gel that came in SOLDIER ration packs that stuck to your tongue long after they'd been consumed.

He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed nearest him, the one originally claimed by Zack, and accepted the half sandwich held out to him. Zack's gaze was mostly focused on his half, casting glances at Sephiroth with a worried expression. In three bites, he finished his half of the sandwich and began to make another, seemingly on autopilot. He cut it into four triangles this time, offering one of them when he'd seen Sephiroth had finished his own and relaxing a little more when Sephiroth took it.

"You feeling okay bud?" Zack tensed again and Sephiroth felt a pang of unease. What had he said to him, what had he done?

He gave Zack a significant look, turning his attention toward the pile of hair on the floor, and then back at his fellow SOLDIER. "No," he said, "I don't believe I do."

After another long, expectant, moment, he added, "How long was I down there?"

"Ten days," Zack said, rolling a bottle of water between his hands, "you kept telling me to go away, and I get that you were upset but… it got weird. It was when… when you stopped yelling at me that I got really worried. It was like I wasn't there, or maybe it was like you weren't there. When you started laughing… that was it for me. I had to hit you with Sleepel three times before you dropped."

"I don't remember," Sephiroth admitted, trying to recall what he remembered last - which was more than a little horrifying in itself, "I don't remember anything after leaving the reactor, in fact. So… for what it's worth, I apologize."

"Nothing to be sorry for," Zack said, reaching out and putting his hand over Sephiroth's where it rested on his knee, "I mean you were kind of due a little bit of a breakdown don't you think? And hey the only damage is your hair which is pretty normal for a freak out I think. I've got a cousin who does that at least once a year. She either cuts it all off, one time she even shaved her head, or she dyes it some crazy color that drives my aunt up the wall."

Sephiroth huffed something that might be related to a laugh, reaching up and feeling how much shorter the hair was on one side of his head compared to the other. He watched as Zack drank his water, tilting it up and draining it just as quickly as he'd demolished his food before.

"Do you remember what I said before?" Sephiroth's whisper was strangled, the words coming sharp and broken, "Do you want to leave?"

Zack's head snapped back to him and his expression became even more concerned, the glow of his eyes brightening as they widened in the dim light, "I don't give a crap about that stuff Genesis said, I'm not abandoning you! I'm not like him ."

Sephiroth shook his head. An unfamiliar warmth blossomed in his chest at Zack's words. "I meant… Do you want to leave Shinra? With me?"

"Wait, for real? For realsies? Right now?" Relief flooded over Zack's face and he leaped to his feet, the rest of his sandwich forgotten on the table, "Aww yes, hell yeah, can Cloud come?"

"I believe he will have to come whether he wants to or not," Sephiroth said, gravely, "otherwise he will be left at the mercy of the Turks trying to find out where we've gone."

"Oh damn, the Turks," Zack reached back and rubbed the back of his neck, frowning slightly, "What do we do about them… I guess it's pretty cliche, but we could totally fake our deaths right? Think they'd buy it?"

Sephiroth felt strangely at a loss, "I suppose it will depend upon how well we set the stage for our supposed demise. I believe it wouldn't be terribly difficult in my own case… I nearly died already, didn't I?"

Zack looked down for a long moment before throwing his duffel onto the bed and beginning to pack everything away. "I wasn't going to say anything," his voice was uncharacteristically quiet, "but, yeah I think so… you really don't remember?"

"No," Sephiroth said, hating the admission that he had been so entirely out of control, "I only remember feeling that I could not leave until I'd uncovered every possible secret from the books and papers… but now I feel sick at the thought of trying to learn more."

"Look," Zack said, began shoving his clothes in his bag before shaking his head and dumped it all out again, "it doesn't matter where you came from or who your parents were. Genesis' parents were pretty shit too and, well, that's kind of a bad analogy since he killed them and all. What I guess I'm getting at is that having shitty people who made you or gave birth to you or however it happened… is just nothing to do with who you are now, who you wanna be. But you deserve a chance to decide who you want to be and how you want to live the rest of your life. That's open now, you know? We take off, we try to make them think we kicked the bucket, and see what happens. I mean, hell, who exactly is going to be able to take the two of us down?"

The thought of the future being open was intoxicating. The thought of a metaphorical and physical road stretching out in front of them, leaving their past behind, left him feeling as light as the moment he'd sheared off the heavy weight of his hair.

"The three of us," Sephiroth added, his head spinning from everything Zack had said, "Do not discount your trooper friend, he is the only one who seems capable of keeping up with us. And he seems knowledgeable of the local terrain and how to survive in it far more than we do."

He watched, bemused, as Zack began to scatter his things back roughly where they'd been. The other man caught his confused look, "Oh, well, if we're dead we wouldn't exactly be taking our stuff. Like, leave the room like it is and we'll go get some clothes somewhere else. There's a hunting and fishing store down the road that has clothes and boots. We can get away with some of what we have with us buuuuut we gotta ditch our uniforms.

Sephiroth followed Zack's pointed gaze at the long leather coat and both of their sets of pauldrons and stomach guards. He sighed, "You're right, of course, and anything provided by Shinra could have some sort of tracking device. Particularly in the wake of the mass defection, it would make sense for them to add them to all the SOLDIERs armor and uniforms.

"Damn, I hadn't even thought of that," Zack dropped back into the chair he'd vacated and silently finished the food he'd made, a thoughtful expression drawing his lips down and his eyebrows together.

Zack was quiet for awhile longer, rooting through the plastic bags on the table and rearranging their contents, "I have an idea, it's kind of fucked up, but it depends on whether or not you called anything in before going down there."

"I did not," Sephiroth answered, eyebrows knitting together as he pulled his PHS from his pocket. "Even if I'd been in my right mind I couldn't have unless I used the telephone in the Inn's lobby, which would be poor protocol. I believe Cloud mentioned the only place you might get a signal was from the top of the water tower. Although, he might have been joking." He turned the screen toward Zack, showing that there was, in fact, no signal,

"Cool, that helps a lot," Zack sat on the corner of his bed, crossing his ankle over the opposite knee and bouncing his foot rapidly and running his hand through his own hair as he thought. "Okay so, a lot of people maybe might have seen me drag your ass through town. So how about this: Tomorrow I get Cloud to buy us some clothes and everything. When the Turks or whoever shows up they'll ask around about what we were doing but they won't ask about Cloud probably except maybe talking to his mom. So after that, maybe probably the day after tomorrow, we make a big deal about you going back to the mansion with me trying to obviously stop you."

Sephiroth nodded, the plan so far seemed to be a sound one. Cloud, for some reason he hadn't wanted to pry into, didn't want to reveal himself to the townsfolk other than his own mother. He would be the ideal one to obtain whatever supplies they might need, particularly if he took off his uniform. He hoped that Cloud would be amenable to such a request, and there was also the thought that if they were presumed to be dead his mother would be informed of such. Even if Cloud only aided them and did not join them on their escape, he knew the younger man well enough that he wouldn't volunteer the information.

"And then," Zack's contemplative expression became a lopsided grin, "I call in that you're acting all weird and stuff and me and Cloud are going back up the mountain to look at the reactor. I throw me and Cloud's gear down that same crevasse where the bridge broke and Jenison fell… hopefully it'll look like all of us bit it. Then you dump your stuff in the basement and ummm maybe set it on fire a little bit? It's probably safe to do that. Ish. I don't think it'll spread or anything. It's not that close to town and it rained pretty bad so the trees should be safe. Ish."

"How did you become so devious?" Sephiroth asked, turning the idea over in his head and finding few holes in it for a hastily cobbled together plot.

"Hanging out with Turks, really," Zack shrugged, hopping back up again, "I need to run over to get Cloud in on this, I'll be back." The other man stopped suddenly, reaching out a hand to pull Sephiroth to his feet.

He went still as Zack wrapped his arms around him, one of his hands wrapped around his waist and another gently cradling the back of his head, "We got this bud, even if it doesn't hold up too well we'll be long fuckin' gone by the time they do figure it out."

Sephiroth melted into the hug, slumping down to put his forehead on Zack's shoulder, "I'll leave everything to you," he said, "I don't believe my judgment has been the best lately."

Zack chuckled, the vibration of it settling into Sephiroth's bones, "Like I said, if anyone is long overdue for a bit of a breakdown it's you dude."

Sephiroth felt a pang of disappointment when Zack pulled away. The other man ran a hand through Sephiroth's ragged hair, then looked down at the mess on the floor, "I'll fix your hair tomorrow before we go, but well… let's leave the mess here. Sells you going a little nuts doesn't it? Not that I think you're actually crazy, but you know what I mean."

"It's… fine," Sephiroth murmured, hiding a wince, "I suppose it could have been much worse than just my hair."

"Hoo boy," Zack let out a rush of air and grabbed Sephiroth's shoulders and jostled him into turning around, "let's not talk about worst case scenarios right now. First order of business, we all need something other than a uniform to wear." Zack walked behind Sephiroth and casually stuck a finger into the back of his pants and tugged the waistband open.

Sephiroth jerked away, spinning back around to face Zack, "What are you doing?"

"I'm just checking the size," Zack said, all innocence - or at least a thin veneer of it covering his wild streak of mischief.

Glad for the reprieve of the dark turn their conversation had taken, Sephiroth huffed in mock annoyance, "You could have asked."

Zack crossed his arms over his chest, mouth thinning into a flat line and one eyebrow raised in a frighteningly good imitation of Angeal about to lecture him that made Sephiroth's chest twinge with pain, "Do you know without checking?"

Sephiroth took in a deep breath through his nose and let it out slowly, "No," he admitted, "they've always just delivered my clothes to my room."

"That's what I thought," Zack's grin returned and he walked backwards to the door, "lemme see your boot size and I'll be back in an hour or two with Cloud."

Sephiroth was intensely aware of the eyes tracking his every movement as he passed through the center of town, an expression of frustration and anger on his face, as he made his way back to the mansion. He hid the anxiety he felt at the thought of entering that insidious place with his hands balled into fists, not bothering to hide the way his shoulders rose like the hackles on a wolf.

He'd never much thought of himself as a good 'actor'. It was more the opposite that he'd trained himself into - showing nothing in his stance and expression. He was always careful to admit nothing so mundane as emotions or any thoughts deeper than obeying orders and getting his paperwork completed to the usual meticulous standard he was held to.

It didn't take any skill to simply stop hiding the frustration and anger he felt towards this entire farce of a mission, the entire farce that his life had become. He would never be able to prove that this had been a setup, although the parameters for this particular experiment eluded him. He and Zack had spoken long into the night, Sephiroth allowing the younger man to pick holes in the sparse bits of information he could recall consuming. He wanted to blame Genesis for tipping him over the edge, but he'd just been the last straw on the chocobo's back. Seeing the name plate over the Jenova specimen had been enough, finding the laboratory and its library had nearly driven him fatally insane.

Zack had voiced many theories, the most logical of which was that it made little sense to send Sephiroth to Nibelheim for anything other than that he learn this information and act on it. Two First Class SOLDIERs was definitely overkill for something like this but Sephiroth had already been in a strange frame of mind before they'd left and Zack had been more focused on seeing Cloud's hometown to question it.

What whoever had set this up wanted from him was a mystery, and the person in charge of this scheme was undoubtedly Professor Hojo. A nonsensical and insane plot from a far less than sane man.

Speaking of Zack, he stomped up to him just at the edge of town - close enough for the watchers to get a show but not close enough to hear what he said. His face was schooled into a mask of frustration and concern, although his hissed words were much different than any of their audience would expect.

"Cloud has everything ready behind the building," he said, "and he's cut the power in case there are cameras in there. There were two different lines, like you thought, one to the upstairs bit and one to the basement that was running on backup power. We'll meet you in the yard out back once we get back from setting up our bit. Your new stuff is just inside the door so you can change."

Sephiroth kept walking, seemingly ignoring what appeared to be an argument, and shoulder checked Zack out of his way. Once he'd arrived he slammed open the door to the mansion, the door cracking off of its hinges a little more forcefully than he'd planned, but it made some of the boiling frustration at the entire situation ebb the tiniest amount. The second-hand camping pack Cloud had purchased for him was a dark green, a scribble of permanent marker obscuring the name of its previous owner. He stripped efficiently from his uniform, bundling his clothing and armor to one side and dressing in the the things Cloud had also procured - although rather than buying it at the thrift shop he'd gone to for Zack's he had admitted the shirts and heavy canvas trousers had been his father's before he had died…

There was something about that, the fact that Cloud could easily have gone and bought other things for Sephiroth rather than giving something that clearly… meant something, something more than just a favor. Zack had teased the trooper, now AWOL with the defecting SOLDIERs, that he must have received the shortest possible genes in his family tree for his father's clothing to fit Sephiroth's much taller and broader frame.

The building was dim even in the morning light, the dirty windows letting only a few stray sunbeams. Even with his enhanced vision that allowed him to see in near complete darkness, the flashlight clipped onto a headband he always kept packed in his survival gear came in useful as he began to descend the steep staircase.

Down in the basement, he dropped his uniform onto the desk strewn with papers and books. The back of his neck prickled, the feeling Angeal had once described as someone walking over his grave. Ironic, he supposed, since this was going to be feigned as such. He looked around at the mess, wondering how many of these books he'd read and what he'd thought he was learning from them. The nearly two weeks were a complete blur, for all his attempts to remember. His fingers twitched and he curled them against his palms, feeling his nails bite into his bare skin, fighting against the mad and overwhelming urge to pick up one of the books and begin again.

He spun away from the shelves and stalked toward the room that Zack had mentioned before being full of coffins. The resting place of Hojo's research subjects perhaps, although why he'd bother entombing them instead of simply having them discarded was confusing - rather, instead, he wondered if they had been here before the scientist had set up shop. He didn't think any of the occupants would mind being relocated to the main room to be scattered beneath Sephiroth's gear before he made use of the Hell-Firaga Materia that he had borrowed from Zack. The lock was dangling from where Zack had put it back, and Sephiroth plucked it from the latch and tossed it aside.

The room was round and rather cramped, a handful of coffins lying open to bare their contents to the cold air. He supposed he was correct at the age of the tomb, the rough walls looked as though they had been here far longer than the tenancy of the scientists who'd once made this place their personal playground and Sephiroth's personal childhood hell. Still, they'd obviously been in here. A rolling cart sat just inside the door, scalpels and needles neatly stacked on the tray - one side holding used blades coated in rusty brown blood and empty syringes and the other the same items sealed in protective plastic and unused. Sephiroth stopped himself when he realized his hands were cupping his elbows, thumbs curled around the inner curve as though to protect his own veins.

He checked the open coffins one by one, widening the beam of his flashlight with the press of a button. The light cast macabre shadows on the walls as he peered around. He plucked out a humerus from the most likely looking candidate in the most left-hand coffin to measure against his own arm but a soft sound from the only closed coffin in the center of the room made him still. He turned slowly to examine it and noted for the first time that heavy latches held it shut by force. He heard the sound again, a thin whine, so quiet a normal person would never perceive. Likely nothing more than a monster sealed within, but somehow still breathing… some horrific experiment no doubt… but sympathy, or perhaps even empathy as yet another of Hojo's subjects, had Sephiroth moving to open the lid. There was a difference he couldn't quite explain between killing a monster with fire that was attacking you or otherwise a danger to others, and letting one die in a fire set for selfish reasons. He'd put whatever it was down, it felt like the least he could do. The very least. Masamune at the ready, he clicked open the latches holding the lid shut and flipped it open.

It was uncertain who was more surprised that instead of a monster he discovered there was a man within. Wild black hair surrounded a pale face, dark brows furrowed as though in obvious pain. The deep red of the fabric wrapped around him and his own dark hair made him look even more pallid than he might in the daylight. His thin chest rose and fell, not quite even, stuttering in apparent misery with one hand wound into the fabric covering him in a tight fist. Sephiroth watched, readying himself to reach out, when the man's eyes opened and he gasped in a harsh breath, eyes crimson but Mako bright.

He didn't seem to completely comprehend who stood above him as he spoke in a voice long disused, eyes fluttering closed again with a sigh of resignation, "Come to tear me open again? It's only been, what, six months since the last one came?"

"I have not come to harm you," Sephiroth said, carefully. The man's opposite hand was wrapped in a prosthetic tipped in sharp claws. He could see where it had scored marks into the wood inside the box where his arm lay. The close quarters and unwieldy gauntlet would have made it impossible to lift and bend the arm to scrape the lid open to free himself. But he might use it now if he could, if he thought Sephiroth one of his torturers. A feeling of horror settled deep in his stomach at the realization he might have killed the man by accident if he hadn't checked.

The man gave a breathy laugh, "The one before the last one said that too."

"I'm not one of Hojo's assistants," Sephiroth insisted, "Rather, I'm another of his experiments about to slip my leash. Let's get you up and out of here before I set this entire place on fire."

Crimson eyes focused on him, a little more lucid at the realization that this could in fact be a rescue. He seemed to finally take in Sephiroth's appearance, eyebrows raised slightly, "I am Vincent-" the man said in his raspy voice, cutting himself off before he could give a surname, "who are you? Why should I trust you?"

Sephiroth offered his name, adding, "And you don't seem to have much to lose if you don't, but trust me or not I will carry you out of here."

"You are…" Vincent unwound his fingers from their pained fist against his heart, using it to push himself up. The limb visibly trembled beneath him and he hissed, grabbing the side of the coffin with the clawed hand that seemed to cause him just as much pain. "Yes, I will come then."

Sephiroth lent a hand to help Vincent climb from the coffin, steadying him when his knees buckled and he would have slumped to the floor. He ducked to take the man's weight, pulling his arm over his shoulder. Vincent weighed near to nothing, far less than someone his height should be. He wondered if he himself would have been reduced to such. Could Sephiroth himself die from hunger or thirst? Or would he merely weaken over time? That had potentially been the experiment that was being conducted upon this man.

He couldn't stop himself from scoffing quietly at the soft protest of being able to walk.

"I'm sure," Sephiroth said in the same dry tone he would have used if one of his own men were injured and insisting they were fit for duty, "but can you climb the forty or so steps up to the exit? In the dark, no less."

Vincent glared up at the narrow wooden staircase that spiraled up into the deep shadows that even the bright beam of the flashlight couldn't completely reach to their end. He gave a disgusted sort of sigh and let himself be conveyed up the steps on Sephiroth's back. It was clear he was determined to stand beside Sephiroth's pack where he'd placed it near the back door, when he should by all rights need to sit down - but then he'd spent however long, years Sephiroth assumed, and two decades when he decided to ask. Sephiroth would fight for any scrap of independence as well and he found he admired the effort.

He left the other man with one of the protein bars Zack had bought the previous day and a bottle of the same type of electrolyte drink - this time named 'Starburn Strawberry'. Vincent grimaced at the taste much as Sephiroth had, but didn't stop taking tiny sips of it as Sephiroth returned to the basement.

It took a frustratingly long time to move all of the bones from the skeleton to be arranged on the floor beside the desk, but he thought it would be convincing enough if the bones survived the fire at all - they couldn't afford to take chances, not when it would be the Turks and the Science Department doing the investigation. So, he staged his own pitiful death as much as he was able. His uniform was arranged more or less the way it should be and he had to hope his boots would burn enough that it wouldn't be obvious the bones hadn't been inside. His coat, and the tracking device stitched into its hem, went over the back of the chair that he overturned beside the arrangement.

He supposed that the whole thing was a little more elaborate than it needed to be as he stepped back to critically examine his work before aiming the first concentrated burst of magic on the desk beside the 'remains'. All of the books and paper piled on its surface and scattered in heaps around it caught instantly, two and then three more spells hit the shelves and the Mako tank in the corner - the Mako residue burned gold as it flamed to life much hotter than even Hell-Firaga could manage.

From the top of the steps he threw more down, feeling the drain on Mana acutely, burning the stairs and hopefully destroying anything else. He'd tossed another into the room full of coffins, hiding the escape of their new companion as well - just in case… A moment of pettiness shot through him as he watched the flickering glow at the bottom of the shaft. It would be somewhat satisfying if Genesis were to be pinned with his murder, a much neater explanation than an accident and incredibly plausible once word of Genesis' appearance in Nibelheim reached the correct ears.

He and Vincent, who insisted he no longer needed any assistance, waited only a short time for the other two members of their party to arrive - it had taken Sephiroth more time than he'd anticipated to arrange everything below, long enough for Cloud and Zack to complete their errand.

"Holy shit," Cloud burst out as they passed through the tree line and into the Mansion's backyard. Both men looked winded, the blond's untamable hair even more unruly. He'd had the benefit of being able to simply use his own clothing and boots that he had left behind before traveling to Midgar. The rifle he had slung over his back was taken from his own home, the Shinra issued weapon having been tossed into the ravine with his uniform. Zack hadn't been able to leave his behind, and Sephiroth had said nothing when he came back with it still on his back with the straps of his harness clipped onto his belt rather than the stomach guard he'd tossed to the literal and metaphorical wolves. Masamune was infinitely easier to hide, regardless of her massive size - she was effectively a summon, in a way. The dai-nodachi wouldn't be searched for

Cloud stopped and bent over to lean his hands on his knees, catching his breath before he glanced around Sephiroth to stare at Vincent, "There really was a vampire down there?!"

"I am not a vampire," Vincent's weary tone was mixed with amusement, his head ducked down to hide his expression. He looked different in another set of the clothing Cloud had provided. He had insisted that Sephiroth take the coat, assuring him that he did not feel the cold. Vincent was nearly as tall as Sephiroth, enough that the dark jeans and sweatshirt didn't look out of place. The clothing he'd been wearing was unsuitable, the black fabric worn from the time he'd spent unmoving and heavily stained. It didn't help his case about whether or not he was undead that the clothing he turned and tossed into the building was covered in old blood from the experiments he had suffered at the hands of Hojo and his scientists. They'd go up in flames with the rest of the building soon enough, long before anyone even noticed the fire and tried to put it out.

Sephiroth looked at the man sidelong, then turned back to Cloud, replying to his question with an entirely straight face, "I did find him in a coffin."

"Well Mr. I'm not a vampire," Zack said, giving a short nod as Vincent gave his name, and stood up from where he'd dropped to the ground behind Cloud to catch his own breath, "welcome to our defecting from the pseudo government road trip."

Something cracked behind them in the house, the smell of smoke and burning Mako sending the four of them walking into the huddle of trees behind the Mansion and beyond to a dirt trail none of them so much as stepped on to leave a track. They walked on either side, slowly, with Sephiroth keeping a sharp eye on Vincent. Clearly enhanced by whatever experiments had been performed on him, two of the flavorless meal replacement bars and a bottle of the children's electrolyte drink was not enough to reverse the effects of what must be years of intermittent torture and starvation. He was still not entirely steady on his feet no matter what he insisted.

To a lesser extent, Sephiroth kept an eye on Cloud. There was still blood drying on the palm of his left hand, and while a spell had healed the injury the blood loss could only be cured with time and care. He and Zack had performed the most physically arduous portion of their ruse - climbing up to leave parts of their uniforms in the deep ravine beneath the broken bridge on the mountain. They had needed enough of their own blood to be convincing, letting it soak into rips in the fabric and parts of their armor. Enough blood to be realistic had taken a toll on both of them.

Zack was a SOLDIER and thus more likely to survive such a fall, but he was no Cuahl to always land on his feet. Anyone could be unfortunate enough to land badly and be killed from that height. The many monsters and Nibel wolves would likely be drawn to the sound and scent of blood, leaving enough tracks to add to the illusion.

Cloud had also known it was necessary to say nothing to his mother, leaving to join Zack without a word of warning, and the way he tossed a look over his shoulder seemed worried.

Gimme a sec guys." Zack said as he pulled out his PHS, flipping it open and frowning at it. He stepped further from the road, walking in an ever widening circle amongst the trees. He stopped after the third turn, "Got a signal, yes!"

Punching in a number, Zack took a deep breath, "This is the worst part, I'm going to feel shitty forever. I'll make it up to him someday." They all stood silent as Zack shuffled in place with an uncomfortable expression.

"Hey Kuns," Zack winced as the other SOLDIER must have greeted him warmly, The sound on Zack's PHS was turned down too much for any of them to hear the response, his hearing acute enough that anything louder would be just this side of painful, "I need a favor cause I can't get through to Heidegger I'd appreciate it if you could call this in for me. I've barely got a signal as is and I don't want anyone at the Inn to hear this… yeah… no, everything is going to shit here."

Zack flicked his gaze up at Sephiroth, mouthing, 'I am so sorry' before continuing to set out a mixture of truth and lies that would be difficult to unravel when the evidence would do well to corroborate the story.

Sephiroth simply nodded. They'd spoken at length of what would need to be said. It was required that he sound… unstable. As he truly had been, for those days he'd lost. He had left the mess of hair in the middle of the floor where he'd dropped it, although they had carefully swept up the shorter strands left from Zack's mostly successful attempt to even out the lopsided mess that cutting his hair with a sword had caused. That had been flushed down the toilet, the comb and scissors left beside the heap of silver on the floor.

It had been a wild and sudden decision, even though it continued to feel immensely satisfying to leave the weight of it behind. It incidentally served to sell the story of his descent from rational thought, along with the simple play-acting on his aggressive return to the Mansion.

They had left most of their gear, at least the things they would have left behind as unnecessary to fulfill their mission. Zack taking his survival gear, emergency rations, and repair kit for his uniform were something he could be expected to take on a hike up a dangerous mountain.

"Do you know if Sephiroth ever checked in?" Zack continued, "... I didn't think so… we got up the mountain to check for leaks at the reactor, looks like it was a setup cause Genesis… no… no the real one, yeah I don't know… Look Seph and him got into a fight, like a screaming kind not the stabby kind…"

"Then Sephiroth locked himself up in some secret library thing in this big old house that belongs to old man Shinra. Got him out for a night but he took off again today after freaking out! One of our infantry guys said he saw Genesis fly up the mountain again and me and him and Cloud are going up to check it out… yeah just… I mean what else are we gonna do… things are weird up here. If I don't call back in a couple days... Yeah… yeah me too."

Zack stared at the PHS, then snapped it in half and dropped it to the ground. A few heavy stomps was more than enough to crush the device before flinging the remains out into the forest.

"Well… that's that, I guess," Zack sighed, then grabbed Cloud by the back of his shirt and yanked him into a hug, "we'll figure something out about your mom too, but it'll have to be a while."

"Yeah," Cloud ducked out of the circle of Zack's arms, remaining quiet as they made their way down the sloping road, leaving it behind entirely when it curved away in an inconvenient direction. Their trip was somber and silent for quite a while, the thoughts that had been racing in Sephiroth's mind since the night before slowing as he listened to the wind rustling through leaves turning brown and drifting to the forest floor all around them. He pulled one from his hair, twirling the stem of the golden leaf in his fingers before letting it continue its path to the ground.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd just… not had a thousand things to think of, to worry about, to question. His mind was blissfully quiet, growing more so the further they traveled away from the mountain. There were many things that could go wrong, and several that were mostly probable, but they'd talked their options to death the night before and this plan was the most likely to succeed.

Sephiroth turned his musings to watch as Cloud ducked down every once in a while and, strangely, plucked up rocks and tucked them into a pouch hanging from his belt. His curiosity was sated not long before dusk as Cloud pulled one of the stones back out and settled it in a bit of leather attached to a pair of cords. He eyed something in the brush and stepped quietly back to give himself room - he spun his sling, releasing it just at the right moment. He smiled faintly as he followed the trajectory of his makeshift missile, returning to the group with a rabbit as well as the rounded stone he'd used to kill it. Mostly white, the onset of autumn triggering its fur's transformation from brown to become more camouflaged in the winter snow, the creature was surprisingly large.

"How'd you do that?!" Zack bounced back from where he'd taken the lead, "that was so cool!"

Cloud shrugged as though his proficiency meant nothing, "Ma taught me, it's a lot better than a rifle if you have to conserve ammo."

"You gotta teach me how to do that," Zack said eagerly, "but like tomorrow cause it's getting dark and stuff."

Vincent spoke up for the first time since they'd left the Mansion behind, "An impressive skill, and a useful one. I think I would like to learn as well, until I can procure a weapon myself."

Cloud flushed, clearly surprised and pleased to have a skill most might call primitive be praised and lauded as something worth teaching, "It's not hard," he demurred, "I've been doing it since I was a kid, it's actually kind of better than a gun for hunting small game because it doesn't make a loud noise that could scare off anything around you so you can pick off a few squirrels in an afternoon."

The younger man made a broken off squeaking sound when Sephiroth added his own interest in learning the weapon, "To be honest," Sephiroth said quietly, "I've never seen a weapon I did not want to learn to use. While I favor the sword, I'm passable with most firearms and other bladed weapons. The sling seems much more convenient than a dagger or shuriken, since you can replace a stone much more easily if you happen to miss."

Once they'd found a place to settle for the night Cloud was both neat and quick as he cleaned and dressed the rabbit and two of the aforementioned squirrels he'd taken down while demonstrating how the weapon worked. He wrapped the parts unsuitable for eating in the skin and fur of the animals and carried it into the woods away from their camp to distract any predators from harassing them. They were respectfully quiet, their keen hearing allowing them to pick out what he thought might be a murmured prayer to a local god of hunting or some such, although it was in no language Sephiroth had ever heard.

"You can't eat just rabbits or you'll get sick," Cloud said, crouched by the fire as Zack finished stripping the bark from three sharpened sticks and hung the animals from the simple frame he had built over the fire. Sephiroth wasn't certain whether his fellow SOLDIER… now fellow deserter… had learned his survival skills from his trainers or from growing up near a much different sort of wilderness than the Nibel mountains. His own had come from trial and error, more error than trial when he was quite young.

"How come?" Zack asked, settling back and resting his weight on his hands.

"It's called 'rabbit starvation', although it can be caused from a meat heavy diet of some other animals as well," Sephiroth explained, "the meat is so lean that you don't get the proper nutrients without augmenting it with carbohydrates, it is also called 'protein poisoning'."

"When we come to a town I'll purchase more supplies," Vincent said, having been quiet ever since he'd been forced to sit and rest while Sephiroth and the others made camp, "I won't be looked for after all. Make a list of what we might need… this is new to me." It sounded as though it was hard to admit such a failing, and Sephiroth could relate to the frustration of being unable to do something.

"What do you think about Raphael?" Zack asked suddenly, turning and looking at Sephiroth with a contemplative expression.

Sephiroth frowned, then realized what the other man meant, "Even with my hair shortened and covered I am rather hard to disguise."

Zack shrugged, "Still should pick one though, 'cause eventually we'll get far enough that nobody's going to care or at least won't give us up since the further we go the more people hate Shinra. So, you know, Seph, Raph, both angel-y names right?"

"It's suitable," Sephiroth said, unpacking the bottles of water from both of their packs and handing them out.

"I believe I can simply use my own name," Vincent spoke up, "as I've been likely considered dead for the last two decades, but I can't think of many things that rhyme with Zack."

"Mackintosh," Cloud answered as he took the rabbit from the fire and cut into it, nodding to himself as he clearly decided it was done, "make it your last name and we'll call you Mack."

Zack grinned, accepting his portion as Cloud made certain everyone got equal shares, much more palatable after having liberally dusted the meat with salt and some mixture of herbs he'd been thoughtful enough to bring from his home. Salt and seasoning hadn't been something Sephiroth would have thought of, having gone without every time he'd needed to stretch out his rations with game meat. "That works," Zack agreed, "but what about you Cloud?"

Cloud smirked back, taking a bite of food and answered, "Sky or Skylar, obviously."

"That isn't anywhere close to 'Cloud'," Sephiroth said, "if we're going by things we'll answer to easily. Why choose Sky?"

Cloud shrugged, "Because it's kind of similar to Cloud and the only thing that's close is 'Claude' and no thank you. Claude sounds like a prick."

Sephiroth muffled a snort of sudden laughter, the first time he'd truly smiled unrestrainedly since before this disaster of a mission. Cloud seemed inordinately pleased for having caused his outburst, his face turning red in the firelight as he turned his attention away.

He felt something in him relax, the very last bit of tension he'd carried for… years. Years, and years. He reached up and ran his fingers through his hair, down the shorter strands that were more or less neatly cropped just below his ears. To think… all of this, from the simple, and somewhat mad, act of shearing off his hair.

He had a feeling, being entirely honest with himself, that he had been close to what they'd feigned. Something about that impulsive act had grounded him in the present, bled away his feverish need to return to the books and papers and what seemed more and more like carefully curated venom. Why else would so many of them be only about himself, about Jenova, who may or may not have been his mother? But it didn't even matter did it? It didn't matter who had created him, she was nothing more than a donator of DNA. No more important than Hojo was, and Sephiroth had never had interest whatsoever in claiming him as his father regardless of their shared biology.

Once, he had thought of Genesis and Angeal as something vaguely resembling a family, siblings at least, but he'd felt that association fade rapidly when the two had abandoned him. He would have gone with them if they'd asked, just like this. Zack could have left him too, could have defected without him when he'd become so obsessed with the past. He'd been so elated with Sephiroth's suggestion that they run, so much so that Sephiroth ascertained that Zack was already planning such a thing himself. He could have defected alone, or merely with Cloud… But he hadn't. Even when Sephiroth had apparently heaped abuse on him, Zack had refused to leave him alone.

Sephiroth watched Zack ruffle Cloud's hair and then nudged his shoulder until Cloud laughed and shoved him away. Vincent was staring into the fire with a faint smile on his own face, the second smile since he'd been dragged bodily from his erstwhile grave. His own widened as Zack looked up and met his eyes, the other man's grin turning softer as he got to his feet and moved to sit between Sephiroth and Cloud.

Zack gave a deep and performative sigh, looping one arm around Cloud's shoulders and the other around Sephiroth's waist. He pulled them in, hugging both of them tightly, and Cloud made another of those interesting squeaks. Sephiroth couldn't bring himself to make such a sound, but he wondered if Cloud's thoughts ran the same direction as they both leaned their weight on the man between them.

He wasn't certain he could call Zack anything like a sibling, not when their relationship… or at least Sephiroth's end of it, had shifted over time. From pseudo mentor, to friend, to perhaps something else one day, now that no barriers of rank stood between them. But family, of some other sort, he would lay claim to that.

He wrapped his arm around Zack, just below Cloud's. A fresh road was unfurling in front of them and he felt the chains of duty and control slip from his wrists. It wouldn't be an easy road, not when Shinra might suss out their ruse one day, but nothing was ever easy.

Especially so when it was worth it.