Cracks - drabble

Cracks

The cold didn’t bother Sephiroth. It never had done. It was just another of those things that affected everyone else but him. The Nibelheim Mansion was always cold. Unused as it was, the heat had leeched from the building many years before, never to be replaced no matter how much it was used now. The basement was the coldest part of the building. The fire in the grate had not been lit for many years, and some of the shelves that lined the walls had begun to exude the faint stink of damp.

Not that the general was bothered by it. His mind was too busy running over what he had learned to notice. He had cleared the huge desk so he could work and pushed the chair under it. It was a fine desk, the grain of the wood milled perfectly smooth. The varnish gave it a reddish hue, and he walked his gloved fingers over the pattern, determined to feel the pattern where there was none.

He had told the others to leave him well alone. Shut the mansion doors and locked himself away down here to think. What he and Zack had seen in the reactor had shaken him. Those former people, twisted by the effect of Mako and Jenova cells, had reminded Sephiroth of something Genesis had said. What was it? He could remember it as though it had been said moments ago rather than weeks. At the time he had dismissed it as jealous anger, but now?

Was he ‘the perfect monster?’ No. Surely not. It was a mere coincidence that his mother and that thing shared the same name. Wasn’t it. He clenched a fist. Genesis and Angeal… The clench reached his chest and he sucked in a hard breath. He screwed his eyes shut and let out the air out from his lungs. He had to know more. That was why he was here wasn’t it? To learn?

Relaxing his hand, Sephiroth got to his feet and began to scan the shelves. There were files here from decades before, gathering dust and mildew. Those he left well alone. They were irrelevant anyway. He had rough dates to go on, and enough time…

In the end, he found what he had been looking for. Information. Books were strewn all over; he had not been neat in his quest for knowledge. Those that were relevant were on the desk, those that were not he left in discarded piles on the floor. It was hardly the organised system he usually adopted; there was no time for that.

The more he read, the less he understood. One question burned in his mind more than anything else. Why hadn’t he been told? Why hadn’t they bothered to tell him his heritage. He had always known he was different from the other kids. Friendships had always been awkward and hesitant; there was a part of him that had been intensely jealous of Zack’s easy camaraderie with the others. That level of relaxed interaction had always been beyond his reach.

Now he knew why. Genesis had been right. He was a monster. Who wanted to associate with a monster? They may not have known, but they sensed it. Angeal and Genesis. He had believed they were friends. Glancing down at the page he was reading; he was surprised to find droplets of water on it. He grieved for them still, despite everything. Brushing the tears from his lashes with the back of his hand, he frowned and focused on the words. They were safer, stable. Unlike his thoughts, they were immutable. They were truth. They told him that Jenova was a Cetra – an ancient.

Why hadn’t they told him though? He pressed his lips together, picked up the report and walked back and forth along the aisle as he read. What harm would it have done to tell him? Why the lies? What didn’t they want him to know? Was he so dangerous that him knowing who he was put them at risk?

As he read, another truth dawned upon him. The Ancients had settled, found an easier way of life and neglected their duties. They had left the planet open to vicious attack from a Calamity from the Skies. Their abilities had waned, the planet was left weak and vulnerable. As Jenova was his mother, that made him her son. The last survivor of that race so long ago weakened by humanity. Sephiroth shuddered and let the report fall from his hands.

Not one of them would understand. Not Zack, not Cloud, none of them. The one who might have done was in the ground. Nothing more than a bitter memory and a hollow space. How could they understand that their ancestors had betrayed their ideals and left him so alone? No, they were not to be trusted. They had to be punished. As the sole survivor, it was up to him to do so. He had to put it right. He clenched and unclenched his fists.

A strange cackling made him look up. He was alone still. He was laughing. That bitter noise was his laughter. There was still so much to go through, so many reports that the traitorous scientists had written. He would go through them all, confirm what he had learned so far. It made sense, it all made sense. What was left would only cement what he already knew: that he had a destiny!