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Sephiroth
When Sephiroth is a child, there's another kid, younger than he is, in the lab. The other kid is locked in, and of course Sephiroth isn't, but he still feels like they understand each other. The other kid's mother calls the kid she, even though the scientists all say he. Sephiroth almost never hears her laugh, but the few times he does, he's so jealous. He wants to be her friend. He wants to be brave and funny like her.
Then, abruptly, she and her mother are gone. Sephiroth asks everyone, but nobody will say why. Hojo just shakes his head and says, "We're going to get him back."
~
Rotten. Monster. Nothing. Empty. You're nothing. You're nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
The thoughts have been getting worse over the past year. Sephiroth hasn't asked Hojo about them, even though lately he's been spending hours in Hojo's lab. Not because he likes it, but because it's the only place he feels safe. Hojo sticks needles in him, but he never touches Sephiroth in a way that makes his stomach lurch with disgust. He's cold, but he's professional.
Sephiroth is designer-made, a statue, a hole to be filled by whoever is thinking about him. Usually it's the board. They think of him as a real man, muscle and sword and blood. They think of him as an object. (A thing. Empty. Nothing.)
In his own head, he's softer. His hair is short around his shoulders. He wears long, loose tunics and lives in a little house in a field, where he can read books.
Sephiroth is pieces of a person.
When he ships out for the last time (what he doesn't know is the last time), the voices in his head get worse. He knows he's doing it to himself, even though the voice in his head has a ringing, metallic, unfamiliar quality.
Rotten. Monster. Nothing.
He wishes he were nothing. One of the cadets has brought out something in him he wishes he'd never had to look at. The boy, Zack's friend, is not a boy. He slipped through (how? That's a longer story, and one Zack won't tell him--"You won't like it," he says) and he's a infantryman anyway.
Sephiroth has a thousand questions. But he doesn't want to make the boy uncomfortable.
Sephiroth does not want to make war. Sephiroth does not want to be a man.
He doesn't know that in Jenova's language, there is not a word for what he is. Not he or she. Jenova is it and so Sephiroth is it. Jenova is only she because she knows what men respond to.
Sephiroth's steps are heavy as they approach Nibelheim. He's so tired every day. His dreams are strange. Zack keeps asking what's wrong, but he doesn't know.
That night, in the mansion, he has nightmares. Everyone who stays there does, although none of them know why. In his dream, a beautiful thing wraps tentacles around him and pulls him close. He has no choice but to enter it, his cock throbbing.
He wakes up thinking of President Shinra's hand on his knee back in the boardroom. Of the way the board examined him to check on his progress.
He is nothing. He wishes he were nothing.
He calls Professor Hojo that night, at four in the morning, and leaves a message. "What am I?" He's sobbing.
That might be a dream, too.
After the library, it all makes sense. He is nothing. Nothing like anything else. He is a thing, and so he is untouchable. He gives to Jenova and together they are beyond reach.
Kadaj
When Kadaj and his brothers make it to the North Crater, they're late. They've missed the Reunion. What good news, then, that there's another one coming. They know very little about the world beyond the lab. Just what they gathered in the lab. Loz likes exercises and sucking on things. Yazoo likes giving people nightmares and drawing with pens. Kadaj likes his disc player and snacks. There's not much else.
Kadaj is standing on the lip of the Crater when he hears the cries.
Kadaj only knows the lab in the Icicle Area. He knows that things with salt and crunch are good, and rock music. He knows that he loves his brothers. He's not Sephiroth, he just plays him on TV.
He comes over the lip of the crater. There's a child, maybe two years old, sitting on the ground. Its face is smudged with dirt, but it looks happy and healthy. Kadaj has seen stranger things.
"Hi," he says.
The baby picks up a handful of dirt.
"Do you like snacks?" Kadaj asks.
The baby blinks at him.
Kadaj shrugs, comes close, and wraps the baby in the hoodie he's wearing. He stole it from the lab, and it's not really his look.
His brothers come to the edge of the crater, Loz helping Yazoo, who is so slow since their escape.
"What's that?" Loz demands.
"A baby," Kadaj says sharply. Obviously.
"Is it a boy or a girl?"
Kadaj looks at him, mystified. "It's a baby."
"What are we going to do with it?" Yazoo asks. "I want to keep it. Give it to me."
Kadaj hands the baby over, relieved. He's got enough to do parenting his brothers.
Kadaj, Mother whispers. Keep the baby. Protect it.
Kadaj was already planning to. But watching Yazoo with the baby, he can't promise they'll save it for what mother wants.
Aerith
Everyone in the slums knows about Aerith. They know that she's helpful, and rude, and determined. They know she was a boy. Her mother doesn't understand, but she loves Aerith, and Aerith already knew who she was when her mother found her. Her mother has more trouble dealing with Aerith's full-color psychic dreams about death and the Lifestream.
When Aerith meets Cloud, she knows he's like her. Except he's nothing like her. She's like Zack, but he's not like Zack. She realizes pretty fast that he's only like himself. He's ruder than she is, and less helpful. Determined, but in a way that empties and hollows him as he moves. He doesn't want to have things in common with her.
Tifa is a joy. She loves Aerith immediately, wholly, fully. She didn't grow up with Aerith in the slums, but she knows her anyway, maybe because she knows Cloud. The sex is amazing. The hope is breathtaking. Aerith wonders if the way they feel about each other could change the world.
Aerith remembers Sephiroth. He was a quiet boy in the lab, always bringing her things and asking her questions. From the pieces of conversations she gets from Cloud, she thinks he asked Cloud questions, too. He was looking for himself, but he found something else. He found something that used his fear and desire like a weapon, and now it's out of everyone's hands. Despite her dreams, part of Aerith thinks that if she just got close enough, she could change history. She could change Sephiroth.
Aerith knows what happens to girls like her, and she doesn't just want to be another one of those stories from the slums. She wants to stay, or she wants to come back to Tifa and Cloud. She wants to be forever, or at least for long enough to grow up.
Kadaj
When Kadaj and his brothers are about to leave the crater, they hear another cry.
"Wait," Yazoo says.
"We don't even know what to do with one," Loz complains.
But Yazoo picks his way slowly back into the crater. He comes back a few minutes later, cradling something.
"Mother?" Kadaj asks, hopeful.
"Better," Yazoo says. "It's another baby."
Cloud
Cloud hates Nibelheim and Nibelheim hates him. He hacks all his hair off when he's four, and his mom yells at him for taking her scissors. She's worried. That's where everything starts. She's worried, so he's not allowed to do any of the things that make him into himself. He can't cut his hair, he can't tape down his chest, he can't move the city and become a SOLDIER--She's worried.
Punching people in the face isn't the only way to be a boy, but it's the only way Cloud has access to. Being in SOLDIER is about more than just that, but that's part of it. He wants to be strong. He wants his body to mean something to him.
He gets turned away for SOLDIER by the Turks. He finds another way. He does what he has to. Welcome to the city. He's finally signed up as an infantryman. Good enough. He'll keep working and he'll get there.
Live for me, Zack says, and Cloud, numb and sobbing, does. He forgets, after that, what his body looks like. Zack is a SOLDIER and Zack isn't a girl. It makes things embarrassing and difficult when Cloud supposed to have sex. He doesn't want anyone to touch him in places he can't remember having.
He loses things. He's already lost his memories. He loses Aerith. He loses himself and finds himself and loses Sephiroth and when he washes up on the other side of their war against the apocalypse, he doesn't know what he's still got. Himself. What good is that? He doesn't have the tools left to rebuild himself.
Kadaj
"I think we were supposed to do this a little differently," Yazoo says.
"You mean kill him?" Loz again.
Kadaj holds himself perfectly still, focused on the door to their big brother's house. Loz has the second baby carefully tucked in his arms--a real baby, too young to walk--and Yazoo has the other one propped on his hip. The older baby looks like them. The younger one has a soft brown fuzz of hair and bright eyes that follow them when they move.
"It doesn't matter," Kadaj says. "This is what we're doing now." But then he can hear Mothering talking to him, saying, Protect the silver-haired child. Kill the other.
Kadaj eyes the baby in Loz's arms. Where did he comes from, if not from Mother?
Do this for me and I will love you, Mother says. Refuse, and you're nothing. Disgusting. Freaks of nature. Alone, futureless, sick.
The words twist inside Kadaj. Mother is Mother.
Then the door opens, without any of them having knocked. Their big brother is standing there, shock of blonde hair, sleepy green eyes. "Oh, what the fuck?" he mutters.
"Big brother," Yazoo says. "We don't know how to take care of a baby. Do you?"
Cloud takes in the two children, his mouth perfectly round. Finally he says, "Not really. But I have some friends who do. Maybe you should come in."