Chapter 25: The End of the War
"What do you mean he's gone?" It was a simple question without a simple answer. A question asked in a calm tone, but laden with unbridled madness and fury. Genesis glanced warily over towards Sephiroth who was staring at his apartment, practically sniffing the air to take in the fact that his mate was no longer inside. In fact, he hadn't been inside in probably days...maybe weeks.
"He ran away," Hojo spoke, no remorse or worry in his tone as he told probably the most dangerous man alive that his mate...the only thing he cared about in the entirety of the world had ran from him.
"Cloud doesn't do anything that you don't know about," Sephiroth started, voice clipped and full of anger. They had gotten back from Wutai. They had gotten back from winning a war and traveling half way around Gaia...and Sephiroth had dutifully gone straight to see his mate. The one who had managed to quell his heart.
...Only to find that he wasn't there.
"Blondie couldn't have run far, right?" Genesis questioned. "Not in his...condition." When he had left Cloud had been mostly dead. How had he even managed to get outside Midgar's walls? Sephiroth was right...if he had left...he had been allowed to leave.
"Where's my mate?" Sephiroth asked, a tumultuous calm just under his voice.
"Why would I know?" Hojo questioned, eyebrow raised.
"Tell me," Sephiroth spoke. "Tell me now!" he hissed, voice breaking. "You have no right to keep him from me."
Genesis reached out, looking down the hallway to make sure nobody else saw the leader of Shinra's army in such a state as he tried to comfort him. "Seph, you aren't going to get answers from him."
"Yet," Sephiroth started, voice an icy anger. "He has all of them."
"Why don't you answer a question for me when it comes to the Omega," Hojo started.
"Your son," Sephiroth corrected with a hiss. "He's not just an Omega."
"We see things very different, Sephiroth," Hojo informed him, leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed. "He's just an Omega."
"He's never been just anything," Sephiroth argued, eyes slitted and practically glowing aqua as Genesis attempted to press him back. "Where is he?"
"Dead," Hojo spoke quickly, no emotion in his tone that should come from saying those words about his own son. "He miscarried and bled out."
"What!?" Genesis exclaimed, at the same time as Sephiroth withdrew his sword and slammed it against Hojo's neck, slamming him up against the door.
"Do you think you're funny?" Sephiroth questioned, his eyes bright pools of aqua, pupils all but gone as blood dripped down the scientist's neck.
"Not particularly," Hojo replied, not seeming to be phased at all by the death literally pressed up against his jugular. "Just wanted to see how you would react."
"Give me my mate, or I'll pull out your lying tongue through your throat slit," Sephiroth promised him, and Genesis noticed how something seemed to be almost moving just underneath his leather jacket around his shoulder blades.
Genesis glanced nervously around, feeling the rage emitting off of Sephiroth...and the power. The lights in the hall had begun to flicker, and he saw Sephiroth's teeth grow just before a wing split out from the back of his jacket.
….One black wing. Like a dark angel. Though he was fully aware that Sephiroth was anything but. He had been witness to the slaughter of the Wutai in order to win the war quickly to return. It had been inhumane. Sephiroth was every bit the monster of any child's fairytale. He was a trained killer...an army onto himself. The wing was yet another distinction raising him above the rest of them into a SOLDIER class all his own.
"Where is he?" Sephiroth spoke, and there was death dripping from his tone. Even Hojo looked alarmed as he stared passed the teeth and eyes at the wing that slandered him as something beyond Alpha...something beyond human.
"That's very interesting." The scientist spoke in a calming demeanor, obviously being able to tell when he had gone too far as the hallway of their quarters became peppered in raven-like feathers. "You're mutating...or perhaps...discovering latent abilities. You must let me take you to the lab."
Genesis scoffed quietly, lest he draw the attention of the man practically radiating like a bomb. Asking Sephiroth to do something in the best of times was risky. Asking him to go get experimented on when he looked so close to snapping was a level of stupidity he didn't realize the scientist was capable of...nevertheless...he couldn't just let Sephiroth kill him.
"Seph," he tried. "Hojo isn't the only one to ask. Calm down and we'll find him."
"Find who?" Was the question asked, and Genesis groaned at the coming confrontation as Zack came down the hallway with his travel bag. He knew he had tried to come up later than Sephiroth...less he see any of their reunion. He supposed none of that mattered now. He had always liked Zack, but the SOLDIER would snap back from all of this. ...Sephiroth wouldn't snap back. "Seph...what is that?" Zack set down his bag, clearly realizing what was happening with the Alpha as he held his hands up as he approached. "What's going on?"
"Lieutenant Fair," Hojo greeted, throat bobbing along the blade pressed against it. "Just the person I was coming to see."
Zack's eyes narrowed as they focused in on Hojo, before flickering back to Sephiroth. "Is Cloud okay?"
Growling filled the air as Sephiroth turned those glowing eyes onto Zack. "He's missing. Ran away apparently." Each word spoken with such underlying malice that Genesis had the urge to grab Zack and run. "Why were you looking for him, Hojo?" Sephiroth asked, not bothering to look back at the scientist as his death glare was narrowed on Zack.
Hojo pressed his glasses up his nose, careful with every movement as a tendril of blood seeped down onto the collar of his lab coat. "I synthesized more of the antidote. I was going to give it to the Lieutenant to administer to the Omega when he finds him. It is made out of his venom after all."
Sephiroth seemed flinch at the words, slowly turning back towards the head of the science division. "I should kill you."
"You should," Hojo agreed. "Yet, you won't. He'd be dead right now without the antidote. I've been administering it to him while you've been off winning a war for our President. If you kill me...you lose your source."
"Zackary...do something. He's going to go postal," Genesis whispered under his breath, motioning to Sephiroth.
Zack swallowed audibly, raising an eyebrow as Sephiroth's wing straightened into the air. "You think I'm the best one to keep him rational? He despises me now."
"Just do it!" Genesis hissed, grabbing him by the arm and thrusting him forward.
Stumbling forward, the SOLDIER shot him back a glare before actually reaching out to lay his palm on Sephiroth's winged shoulder. "Seph. Calm down and we'll find him."
"So you can heal him?" the Alpha questioned, not looking away from Hojo's dead eyes. "So you can save him again when I can't?"
"Seph that's not.." Zack tried, but was interrupted.
"Isn't it, though?" Sephiroth asked, taking a step back as he sheathed the Masamune, standing shoulder to shoulder with Zack. "Where is he, Hojo? Lie to me again and you won't like the results."
Hojo sighed, pulling out a handkerchief from his pocket to press against his neck to staunch the flow. "I suppose it's always important in experimentation to know when to draw back, lest you ruin everything and have to start over. Cloud is in Nibelheim."
"What?" Sephiroth questioned slowly, inhaling sharply to try to control himself as Genesis watched the wing disappear into a cascade of feathers against his now ruined coat. "Why?"
"I imagine for all those answers held just beyond the veil," Hojo mused. "Or did you tell him just what you had discovered about the reactor the last time you were there?"
"Why was he allowed to leave?" Sephiroth countered with, ignoring the accusation. "He's under lock and key."
"Sephiroth," Hojo began placatingly. "You make deals with devils, and then you wonder why they stab you in the back. You should really decide where your loyalties lie...especially when those loyalties felt the compulsion to slip your mate a key."
"Hand Zachary the antidote," Sephiroth managed, and Genesis saw his back practically heaving as he struggled for control. He had no idea who Hojo was referring to, but Sephiroth clearly did, and from the narrowed glare on Zack's face he clearly knew as well.
Hojo glanced towards Zack, slowly handing over the vile. "Remember that I helped you." The..scientist glanced back towards Sephiroth. "I'm the one that keeps him alive."
"You do," Sephiroth agreed, voice a chilled calm. "You're also the one who has tortured him his entire life. You're the one that let him leave...and don't say you didn't, because I know you don't let him do anything you don't want him to. Nevertheless...you may still be useful."
Genesis saw the SOLDIER's thumb pop his sword out of the hilt, and he barely had enough time to scream his warning before Sephiroth whipped around with the sword, slitting Hojo's throat as blood sprayed all over the hallway.
"Sephiroth!" Zack exclaimed, crouching down in front of Hojo as his hands pressed against the gushing wound.
"Relax," Sephiroth started, resheathing his sword as he stared down at the bleeding man in disdain. "I didn't cut his carotid. He'll live if he keeps pressure on the wound." His glowing eyes roamed over Zack, and then glanced back to him. "You will both be shot on sight for participating, however. We probably should get going and take advantage of whatever head start we're going to get." He stepped closer to the man coated in his own blood. "Help him put pressure on it Zachary. We have to go now."
"Are you insane?" Zack questioned, not letting up on the pressure as glared back at the man. "They're going to come after us. They're going to kill us for this!"
Sephiroth cocked his head as Zack brought Hojo's hands up to his own mouth to stop the bleeding. "That's an interesting smell on you."
"Is it annoyance?" Zack questioned, eyes furious as he stood up away from the bloodshed.
"Infidelity," Sephiroth replied, staring the other down as his cheeks lit up pink. "Ah, so it's true. Who was it? Who did you go to while you thought nothing of him?"
"Don't speak to me of infidelity," Zack murmured. "I assure you...you won't enjoy my points of debate."
"We need to go," Sephiroth spoke in reply, and Genesis focused in on the way Hojo was clinging tightly to his wound.
"Obviously, Sephiroth," Zack murmured. "You've doomed us to hell."
"And what if there is no hell? What if we just sink into the planet?" the Alpha questioned. "What then of your morality, Zachary? Should I tell Cloud that I smell Reno all over you?"
"Should I tell him that you slit his father's throat?" Zack questioned right back. "Or is murder no longer at the top of your moral outrage? Though I suppose it wouldn't be...not after Wutaii."
"I didn what I had to," Sephiroth replied, eyes narrowed at the insinuation.
"Keep telling yourself that," Zack bit out. "Maybe someday it will be true."
Sephiroth glowered at the SOLDIER, before those glowing eyes turned to Genesis "Are you coming? I can't guarantee your life here, but if you leave with us that will crumble to ruins."
Genesis shrugged. "Never been one to turn down excitement...especially not when Omegas were involved."
"I hope you get what you want, Genesis," Zack managed, wiping his bloody hands along his pants. "You deserve this pain."
"They're not all like him, you know," Genesis assured him. "They're not all like Cloud. Perhaps you should both learn that and find a different fixation."
Sephiroth walked over to him, leaning down as he still managed to tower over him.
"Try it some time...you might like it."
"I hate you," Genesis spoke. "I hate you for forcing this on me for someone you think you love."
"I know," Sephiroth responded with. "We're going though. So suit up." He looked towards Zack. "I imagine I can pry you away from your...prior commitments."
"You're a bastard," Zack replied, lips curled up above his teeth. "You've damned us all."
"Maybe," Sephiroth agreed. "I may have condemned us to death, but he sees the inside of that reactor...he'll wish for death long before Shinra reaches us.
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A/N-I know it's been awhile since I've updated. Honestly, I backed myself into a bit of a hole, and was convinced everyone hated the story now. I had since gotten a plan to crawl my way out that I hope you all will like. I apologize for the short chapter. It was just kind of a jumping off point towards the final chapters. It also helped that I decided to slingshot myself back to the beginning of quarantine and play FFVIIR again. In any case...I know this was short and relatively uneventful, but hopefully you all are still liking the story!