Sephiroth leaned over the map table, head swimming, and blinked through a constant blinding migraine. His eyelids felt like sandpaper and he curled his hands into fists where he leaned over to get a better look at the myriad colored markers to hide the tremor that had set in roughly six hours ago.

His eyes strayed to the notebook he'd flipped through, desperately trying to remember what the hell all the colored markers had meant - obviously they hadn't had that written down anywhere useful, couldn't risk someone coming in and taking a picture of it with all the notations of which marker was an asset and which a target and all the locations of supply and weapons caches…

Wood splintered beneath his fingers the way his head was splitting open and he couldn't fucking remember where they were, what they were doing. There was a calendar, at least, and he knew it was accurate because when every day felt horribly the same he'd made it a habit to tick them off and feel like time was progressing in some fashion that made sense.

Time travel… that… that did really ruin your sense of time and space. Genesis joked all the time that one of all of them were going to snap one of these days and take everyone else with them and damned if not too long in the future they all really did. One by one, leaving a trail of blood and smoke and broken things in their wakes.

But he'd woken up as green was closing over his head, as he drowned in Mako and choked on his own madness. He'd woken up with his nose pouring blood and bile burning the back of his throat with the knowledge of how to try and fix all of this.

There was so much to do and all of it had to wait until this stupid fucking war was finished and he could probably do it in a couple of weeks if the colors in front of his eyes would stop blurring.

How had he dealt with this the last time? He stumbled away from the table and raised the lid on his footlocker to see if he had any painkillers that would work - or was he not supposed to take those? He thought he might have a concussion, could remember having a few back then… back now? He bit his tongue and tasted blood at the ridiculous sound that nearly bubbled out of his throat then lost the fight and thought he might have giggled for the first time… ever.

There on the inside of the chest's lid was a recruitment poster. It was one of the ones that just had outlines of men in SOLDIER uniforms surrounded by smaller photos of infantrymen. The entire thing was so covered in gouges you couldn't make out the phone number. He remembered teaching himself to fling stray pins into it as a target, nearly wiping out the outline that was meant to be his.

The 'l' was sliced out from one word - leaving the much more appropriate 'gory' in its place.

Something about the inanity of it all settled Sephiroth as he let himself fall onto his ass and put his head in his hands. He breathed in and out, falling into an exercise he could barely remember learning and had used even less. He'd been so proud of his control, that sharp mind and iron will that had been beaten bloody into him by Hojo and Shinra until the mask became the man or maybe the mask was all that was left at the end…

But he was breathing, he remembered that, and kept doing it.

He had to finish the war in some way that made Shinra look or at least feel good and not do so much damage to Wutai to the point an entire country was turned into a tourist trap. He wanted to just make everyone pack up and go home. This was so pointless…

He swallowed the burning in the back of his throat again.

Finish the war

Keep Genesis and Angeal and eventually Zackary alive and probably the boy... Cloud, who'd killed him. Whoever he was, Sephiroth owed him… something. He was important too.

But… finish the war first. Then deal with Hojo and that Jenova… thing… pretending to be his mother and take down Shinra somewhere in there or fix it or… he was getting ahead of himself.

He stared at the poster again. Somehow he had to turn all this gore into something resembling glory so he could get on with everything else. He blindly reached up for his notebook and pencil and began to plan.