Chapter Text
Sephiroth suddenly raises his head. He jumps off the examination table and walks towards the glass wall. The child outside takes a step back upon seeing the menacing glint in his eyes, but she quickly gathers her courage again and smiles, moving her lips quietly and exaggeratedly, "Do – you – want – to – play – with – me?"
She knows the glass wall is soundproof, but she doesn't know that Sephiroth's hearing and vision surpass those of ordinary people.
Sephiroth silently gazes at her, neither answering nor leaving. His upper body is bare, with two magnets pressed against nipples, and wires trailing on the floor, connecting him to a huge display screen. The length allows him to move freely around the entire laboratory. Anyone with basic medical knowledge would be amazed to find his heart rate as still as a corpse.
The girl doesn't get discouraged and persists, "I – am – Aeri –"
Several staff turn towards them hurriedly from around the corner, clearly searching for someone. Before she can finish her sentence, they drag her away. Their actions are not violent, at least not causing physical harm. They are not gentle either, although Sephiroth cannot discern gentleness. They exert the same force on non-resisting bodies into the incinerator or the laboratory.
Sephiroth seldom asks Hojo questions, or rather, he rarely asks questions at all. To ask is shameful because it acknowledges one's inability to seek knowledge independently. Tonight he makes an exception, perhaps because of that unfinished name.
"A female test subject of similar age to me, with green eyes. Who is she?" he inquires.
Hojo turns around. If Sephiroth has a question, he always puts aside everything and answers immediately.
"She is a hybrid ancient specimen. Her mother is a pure-blood,” Hojo oddly adds, "and she has not yet had menarche. If you wish..."
Sephiroth looks at him coldly, and Hojo closes his mouth.
Unlike other subjects, when not undergoing examination, Sephiroth is free to move around the sixty-seventh floor of the Shinra building, though he has little interest in this privilege. The next day, he easily finds the cell where the two ancients are held captive. The guards ignore him.
The last pure-blood ancient is sitting near the window, with her cheeks pressed as close as possible to the gaps between the iron bars. As Sephiroth enters, her eyes suddenly widen, and she stands up. The girl is crouched on the ground, using her nails to mark scratches on the wooden board.
"Oh, it's you," she says happily. "I didn't finish my sentence yesterday. My name is Aerith. What's your name? Are you here to play with me?"
The pure-blood approaches them and assumes a defensive posture in front of Aerith. It is meaningless because if Sephiroth wants to, he can snap both their necks in a second. But he takes a step back, intertwining his ten fingers, hanging them in front of him.
Aerith will never know why it becomes so easy for her to sneak out starting from this day. Hojo instructed his assistants that if Sephiroth is willing, the two kids can have casual contact, but if he tries to engage in penetrative intercourse, it must be with that pure-blood adult.
Aerith often visits Sephiroth. Since they have no toys, she shares some lullabies her mother sang to her, or they play house—mostly her monologuing, and Sephiroth stands motionless, neither applauding nor interrupting.
"Today, I'll be the mom, and you'll be the daughter. Look, our eyes are both green," Aerith says. "Now the daughter has a fever, and the mom needs to take care of her." This is obviously drawn from her own experiences.
She asks Sephiroth to lie on the examination table, folds a piece of tissue paper used for wiping medical coupling agents into a neat square, and places it on his forehead, pretending it's a cooling towel. Her hand rests on Sephiroth's hand, preparing to say comforting words, when suddenly Sephiroth jerks his body, startling Aerith, who quickly checks the palm of her hand—there is no secret weapon.
"What just happened?" Sephiroth mutters. He sits up, and the tissue falls to the ground.
"It's just holding hands. Shall we try again?" She holds Sephiroth's hand again.
He understands now. It's the touch. All the research personnel who touch him wear gloves, and Sephiroth still doesn't know how it feels when human skin touches another human's skin. Aerith's hand generates a faint static electricity in his dry palm, as if the Life Stream surges from her fingertips. His heart rate, which beats 20 times per minute, slowly rises like a tide to 40 and then falls back. Is this the power of the ancient? Or is it something all humans can experience?
After that, they play many other roles. For example, teacher and student, brother and sister, husband and wife. Aerith only gathers bits and pieces of information from her mother's words, and her understanding of human relationships is probably not as good as Sephiroth's, who has extensively studied the classics.
Over a decade had passed since they last saw each other, but in a dream world deep in the Sleeping Forest, they were reunited on the eve of Aerith’s ascent to the altar.
"You still have a human heart, Sephiroth," Aerith remarked. "That's why you dream like a human. Do you remember when we used to play house as children? This time, I'll be the star and you can be the human."
Sephiroth was the first to speak, his voice soft and melodic. "You are the star, like a mother who gives birth only to be plundered. There are trillions of stars in the observable universe. It is not they that are precious, but the eyes that recognise them, and the hands that point them out. Aerith, you see them as those fools do, and cannot go beyond what they see."
Suddenly, his black leather-gloved hand cupped her face, its size almost as large as her head. "You were struck twelve times by Cloud, and yet you're still willing to die for him. That's the heart of a mother, and that's what you have, just like the star. She will forgive mankind, but not me. I came to this ocean on a ship, and so shall I depart. The starship is a cocoon, a vessel of transformation and transmutation. Star, I will give you a lavish funeral. Although all lights in the universe are fleeting, that moment of explosion will be dazzling."
*
"We're going on an adventure," Aerith says. She lays on the examination table, weakly speaking. Under the sodium light, her emerald eyes shimmers in a thousand different lights.
Sephiroth remains motionless, but he is listening. His breathing is slow, and when sitting still, he is no different from a statue.
Where are they going? What are they going to do? These questions do not need to be asked. Aerith will ask and answer them herself. Aerith is naturally talkative, while Ifalna, closes off by years of loneliness and successive misfortunes, cannot satisfy Aerith's rapidly developing active mind no matter how hard she tries. Even in the presence of a teddy bear, Aerith can talk incessantly all day. Since meeting Sephiroth, she longs to tell him everything, even tracing back to her prior life – if she has.
"How about going downstairs? I'm tired of the sixty-seventh floor. I've never heard anyone reprimand you, Sephiroth. You can do anything, Sephiroth," the girl calls softly. These four syllables are from the language of Cetra, her mother's language. No one knows what the person who named him was thinking.
Sephiroth's scapula relaxes, with his long muscles rippling. He stands up and motions for Aerith to follow him. The laboratory regularly injects him with small doses of steroids, but once those drugs enter his body, they vanish without a trace. His body seems to have its own logic, unaffected by any external forces.
Hojo believes that Sephiroth is a higher life form and speculates that he will exhibit signs of neoteny. However, this idea proves to be untrue. At the age of ten, Sephiroth's features are no different from an ordinary ten-year-old human child, except for one aspect: his sexual organs have already matured. This is also why Hojo speculates that he wants to mate with Aerith.
Aerith quickly climbs off the examination table—her weakness is half true and half fake. She licks her finger that has just been pricked for blood, resembling an injured kitten. She grabs Sephiroth's clothing and follows him towards the secure access gate of the staircase.
Each floor of the Shinra Building has independent functions, and except for a few decision-making people, the access cards are not universal. However, Sephiroth simply operates his wristwatch for a while, and the door opens.
Aerith asks, "How do you do that?"
"You probably wouldn't understand," Sephiroth replies.
"Tell me, I don't like being underestimated," Aerith proudly lifts her head. "I even think you can't understand many of the stories my mother tells me, but I've told them all to you, haven't I?"
"Shinra believes it's a one-way monitoring system, but there's no true one-way as long as it's connected to the network. I can hack into their security systems," Sephiroth replies briefly.
"So, that means you can escape anytime?" Aerith's voice trembles.
"Escape?" Sephiroth turns around and looks at her coldly. “from where?"
"Of course, from Shinra! These people speak rudely, dragging me and my mother around, keeping us locked up all day, or sticking needles in us. My mother said my father was also killed by them..." Aerith's voice gradually lowers. She realises that Sephiroth does not share the same fate with her. At least on the sixty-seventh floor, everyone treats him with respect. His reasons for wanting to escape are naturally are far from sufficient.
“To where?" Sephiroth calmly asks further.
"To the world!" Aerith raises her head again. "We'll search for the world. The world has forests, deserts, oceans, and lakes. We'll search for people. There are so many people in the world, and they sing during festivals. After leaving the world, we'll return to the planet, and our souls will continue searching, searching for the Promised Land..."
These are all things Ifalna tells her.
Sephiroth turns away from her and starts descending the stairs. He says as he walks, "Humans cannot live in forests, deserts, oceans, or lakes."
It is midnight, and only a few monitoring rooms have staff on duty. The screens flicker with faint light. They have already descended two floors, and the marking F65 is pinned to the wall.
"People who sing during festivals have their own bloodlines, ethnicities, and religions," Sephiroth says.
In the quiet staircase, voice-controlled lights illuminate as Aerith walks—the lights turn on in response to her footsteps because Sephiroth moves silently. He utters the last sentence:
"And the Promised Land belongs only to the Cetra. Aerith."
He rarely calls anyone by their name. That one call is particularly meaningful. He pities her innocence.
Sephiroth brings her to the sixty-second floor, a place he often visits before meeting Aerith in the middle of the night. His eyes can see in the dark, but Aerith can't. He presses the switch, and the massive library, stretching over ten meters high, instantly lights up. Aerith joyfully wanders through the stacks of books, occasionally climbing the ladders to reach higher places, caressing the rows of book spines. Sephiroth always follows two steps behind her, preventing her from falling and hurting herself.
She has no fear of insects, snakes, pain, fire, or heights. She is always excited and affectionate. Sephiroth doesn't know if it's because she is a child or because she is an ancient.
Aerith's physical abilities are limited, and she quickly becomes tired from climbing up and down. She sits on a ladder, swinging her legs. Sephiroth holds a book he has taken from the biology section and reads. Aerith tilts her head, trying to recognise the words on the book spine. She happens to recognise them all: "The Gast Files." Gast is her father's name.
Aerith grabs a book titled "Viruses and the Evolution of Organisms" from the shelf. The cover depicts an elegant double helix, which she finds fascinating. She reads a few lines, not understanding a single word, and shakes Sephiroth's arm.
"Can you read it to me? Your voice sounds nice," she requests.
Sephiroth says, "Novels and poetry are on the other shelves; I’ll take you there."
Aerith shakes her head. She's tired from all the walking and doesn't want to move anymore. She even contemplates having Sephiroth carry her when they go back upstairs. Sephiroth glances at her and accepts the book she chose. He starts reading:
"Evolution of organisms does not only occur through genetic mutations at specific loci. When a virus integrates its DNA into the host cell, it may become dormant, and the viral base sequences are added to the host cell's DNA. These mutations are inherited by daughter cells during cell division, resulting in changes in the genome. When the virus enters the host's genes and replicates, the original host's genes become part of the new host's DNA. If this phenomenon occurs in reproductive cells, evolution takes place. A significant portion of the genetic diversity of life on Earth is hidden within viruses. The human genome, for example, consists of a large part that originated from ancient viruses. Advanced humans evolved with highly developed cerebral cortices, surpassing the intellectual capabilities of regular humans. They can understand four-dimensional space, master complex systems, possess mental attributes that humans cannot comprehend, and perhaps even possess an infinitely developed moral consciousness..."
Aerith rests her head against the bookshelf, and her eyelashes flutter. Sephiroth closes the book and returns it to its original place. He lifts her onto his back as she wishes, turns off the lights, and walks back to the sixty-seventh floor at a leisurely pace.
"Sephi...roth," she calls out to him, half-asleep, with her head against his ear.
As always, he doesn't answer, but he listens.
"If you were an advanced human, what would you do?"
He responds with a question, "If I were an advanced human, what would humans do to me?"
Aerith ponders for a moment. "If it were me, I would bake you jam tarts, give you flowers, be your friend, as long as you don't mind me being clumsy."
Sephiroth emits a quick breath through his nostrils. Was that a laugh? She has never seen him laugh before.
"Aerith, humans survive by excluding the heterogeneous," he says. "They indulge in killing their own kind and are even worse to those who are different. It's a biological trait; they are inherently capable of distinguishing the heterogeneous."
Aerith doesn't respond. She has fallen asleep.
*
"Sephiroth, please, I beg you. Only you can help me!" Aerith falls to her knees, almost prostrating herself, as she clings to Sephiroth's feet.
She is only six or seven years old, raised in the laboratory, where she has learned to mimic Ifalna to perform the Gaia hymns. But she has never participated in any real ceremony. She doesn't know that her posture represents devotion and supplication, a prayer shared across all religions since the birth of mankind.
Sephiroth gently pulls his feet away. "What happened?"
"They took my mother," she says.
"Just a routine check."
"No, no, it's not. She usually comes back within a few hours, at most a day, but it's been three days now. Did they kill my mother?"
No wonder Aerith hasn't come to see him in three whole days. She couldn't bear to be away from Sephiroth for that long, but she was afraid of missing her mother's return.
Ifalna, the last descendant of the Cetra. At first, Sephiroth referred to her as the "adult" along with the researchers, but Aerith didn't like that. "I have a name, and of course, my mother has a name too."
Ifalna means "the final.” When her parents named her, they already understood that she would be the last of their race. She always sat lethargically on a small cushion in the corner of the ancient species observation room, and when Aerith got tired from running around, she would go to Ifalna and nestle under her knee. She would undo Aerith's braids and carefully re-braid them.
"Sephiroth, you should grow long hair too," Aerith says. "Then, Mom can braid our hair."
He glances at the narrow mirror in the corner of the wall, seeing the excited, flushed face of Aerith and his own statue-like figure. He also sees Ifalna looking at him with a mixture of sadness, despair, vigilance, fear, and a compassionate gaze. Sadness and despair, like a fish out of water; vigilance and fear, like a deer fleeing from a wolf; compassion and kindness, like a sheep facing imminent death.
He didn't want braided hair, but the next time the researchers came to clean his body, he used his palm to gently push away the scissors meant for his haircut.
Sephiroth stands up. He removes the experimental clothing from his body without shying away. It has just one zipper designed for easy removal. With single stroke from top to bottom, the clothes shed like a snake's skin, lightly falling to the ground. He changes into a combat uniform used for simulated training. Starting from last month, Shinra has been planning to put him into military applications.
Sephiroth pushes open the door, with Aerith following closely behind. He stops. "I'm enough on my own.”
Aerith shakes her head. "That's my mother. I have to go with you."
Sephiroth stares at her expressionlessly. “Even if taking care of you will distract me and reduce the likelihood of success?"
"Sephiroth, you can definitely save my mother with me around. I just feel it." Aerith closes her eyes. "My mother told me that a Cetra can disbelieve everything in the world but must trust their own feelings."
She is young and petite, but her shadow is cast tall by the light. Her foolish and sincere belief please Sephiroth. He bends down, and Aerith climbs onto his back.
"Hold on tight," Sephiroth whispers, his vocal cords vibrating against her wrist. As soon as he finishes speaking, he moves like lightning, splitting open the laboratory's heavy door. In less than three seconds, he crosses the first fifty-meter corridor, the second fifty-meter corridor in two seconds, and the third hundred-meter corridor in five seconds. Despite his furious movement, his heart only quickens from the deceased to the sleeping.
Aerith's arms tightly grip his neck, the strength enough to strangle a young beast, but the only thing that she isn't afraid of is hurting Sephiroth.
Because he is invincible.
Is he really invincible?
The girl lightly raises her finger, touching Sephiroth's still-developing Adam's apple. If she were to use the attack magic her mother taught her in this spot, would Sephiroth die? What is death, after all?
Sephiroth suddenly swallows. The Adam's apple slides under her touch.
"I need to concentrate," he says. His voice is flat, but she senses condemnation and quietly curls her fingers.
Sephiroth searches the entire sixty-seventh floor with his heightened senses. Soon, a small ringing sound resonates in his mind, causing ripples. He stands in front of a certain room door, his shoulders light like a leopard, and Aerith slides down to the ground.
A faint smell of blood wafts through the crack of the door. He looks down at Aerith and says, "She's still alive. Don't scream, and when you cry, do it silently."
She nods, with hands covering her mouth.
It is a dual-control combination lock that requires two keys held by different people to open. Sephiroth takes a step back, takes a deep breath, and uses his elbow to push open the two-ton iron door.
Ifalna lies naked on the examination table, Her abdomen is open, exposing her stomach, intestines, and the uterus that once carried Aerith. Aerith doesn't scream. She silently sheds tears.
Ifalna turns her head toward the door, revealing a weak smile. She moves her lips but doesn't make a sound. Yet Sephiroth understands the simple lip reading: "My... children... you've come..."
"Aerith, don't cry. You can save her." Sephiroth speaks calmly. "You are a Cetra. You can use magic without a materia. Use Cure magic now to close her abdomen."
Yes, she is a Cetra. When fingers glide through the air, she can draw energy from the void. She can cast spells with the power of earth, water, fire, wind, and thunder. She can command thoughts, dreams, and death. She can peer into the past, present, and future. However, Ifaluna has never taught her those exquisite skills, and perhaps she will never have the chance to. "No, I've tried, I can't..." Aerith kneels on the ground, crying, "I don't know how to do it..."
Sephiroth lifts her up from the ground with one hand. "Do whatever you can do, or else you'll regret it."
Do whatever she can do? Besides singing, she can't do anything.
Then, she will sing.
Aerith doesn't know, in ancient magic, tears are also a catalyst; many rituals have to be performed with tears and blood. She sings in a strange language that Sephiroth can't understand:
“Fogur gaíthe
fri fid flescach,
forglas néol;
essa aba,
esnad ala,
álainn céol……”
(Sound of the wind in a branching wood, grey cloud; river-falls, cry of a swan – beautiful music.)
Suddenly, air rushes in through the laboratory door, swirling around Aerith, creating a vortex in the room, fiercely rustling her clothes.
Sephiroth says, "Not this one, this is the song to summon a storm."
Aerith opens her eyes, radiating with a bright light. She hasn't learned healing magic, but she has known already that her memories contain all forms of magic. Magic doesn't need to be passed down through words. And even if she doesn't have it, she can sing a new song— for every song has its first time being sung by someone.
"Máthair, frisbia, Aerith, immdích..." she chants repeatedly. (Mother, heal, Aerith, protect)
Aerith, attempting magic for the first time, accidentally opened the floodgate of the lifestream.
The past and future converged at this point.
Amidst the green raging waves stood a man with knee-length silver hair, towering and stunning more than gods. His eyes caught Aerith’s and locked onto her. He spoke, his red lips parting to reveal the words:
"Beyond the stars lie other stars, Aerith.
In the Hadean eon, your star has only just begun orbiting.
The atmosphere held fog, becoming a falling ocean; the lava burned, like pairs of furious eyes.
Your star was one among many in the universe, neither old nor young.
Its birth was nothing but an accident of eternal atoms colliding and scattering, much like your own birth.
It is a child trembling and crying at the centre of the universe, just like you.
Raise your wand against me!
Rejoice will I be, if you are able to kill me, for my death will be the miracle of all miracles.
But it is more likely that I will kill you, and your death will be but a commonplace of the spinning wheel of time."
Miraculously, a shimmering green light materialises out of thin air, like drops of water seeping from a sponge. Ifalna's abdominal cavity slowly closes. This is Aerith's first time using magic, and she accomplishes a near-miraculous feat of revival. Exhausted from exerting her power, she trembles uncontrollably, but she finally manages to stop Ifalna's gruesome wound from bleeding. Aerith’s body is drenched in cold sweat, and she can no longer summon any strength.
She tries to continue singing, but Sephiroth stops her. "That's enough. Stop now, or you'll die before your mother.”
Sephiroth is not tall enough to carry Ifalna on his back. He holds Aerith in his arms and looks to Ifalna, who nods, clutching her abdomen, hunching over, and stumbling behind him.
As they leave the 67th floor, the first wave of pursuers catches up to them. Sephiroth has no weapons, but with his bare hands, he swiftly pierces the chest of a security personnel, extracting his hand in less than half a second. In the blink of an eye, the floor is littered with bodies sporting bloody holes in their chests. Ifalna struggles to breathe but manages to say, "Don't... kill them... they're... just children..."
Blood-stained Sephiroth turns around and says calmly, "I don't know how to end a fight without killing."
Besides, in the eyes of young Sephiroth, the value of life has its distinctions.
But then Aerith, who has awakened in his arms, grabs his chin and gently strokes it, as if soothing a cat. "Don't kill them, Sephiroth. Someone has smiled at me... Someone called my name... Someone helped me find my crayons... Someone agreed to let me go out to play with you..."
Sephiroth sighs.
She once received his first smile, and now she receives his first sigh.
He says, "I'll give it a try."
Sephiroth shatters the bulletproof glass window on the locked 67th floor. When people break glass with their hands, they usually use their fists to concentrate the force, but he only needs to push with his palm, causing the entire pane to detach.
Sephiroth has never been on a battlefield and doesn't yet know his physical limits, but he can give it a try.
He lifts both Ifalna and Aerith, his muscles tensing as he firmly holds them in his embrace, and leaps from the 67th floor.
He lands, only feeling a dull pain in his ankles.
"Go. Aerith," Sephiroth says softly. "Escape with your mother."
"Don't you come with us?" Aerith asks in confusion.
"No." Sephiroth looks into Aerith's eyes. "This world doesn't belong to me."
Aerith is about to say something else, but Ifalna grabs her hand and pulls her away. Ifalna looks back one last time at Sephiroth, mouthing the words "Thank you." In that final gaze, there is sadness and despair, like a fish out of water; vigilance and fear, like a deer fleeing from a wolf; compassion and kindness, like a sheep facing imminent death.
Sephiroth watches them depart. The wind blows across his face, lifting the hair that just reaches his shoulders.
Goodbye, my star.
Goodbye, my Aerith.
TBC