Date: 2008-05-21 11:50 Subject: FFVII Fic: Interrupt Security: Public Mood: apprehensive Tags: darkfic, fandom: ffvii, fic, sephiroth, title: interrupt

Title: Interrupt
Author: SkyFire (rabid_plotbunny)

Fandom: FFVII:CC
Character(s): Sephiroth
Rating: PG13
Summary: Shinra makes a decision and Sephiroth must face the consequences.

Warnings: WIP. AU, darkfic. And I mean Dark Fic. As in not happy, at all, period. Death-themes abound, though no one dies in it.

Notes: The fic I've written and posted in this fandom have so far been light, cracky things. With perhaps a side of angst, but primarily cracky. This is not one of them. This is unlike anything I've posted in this fandom, and though it does have a few more chapters written (though the fic as a whole is not finished), I'm not sure if I should post them. This chapter, by itself, does stand alone, though, so here it is. If anyone likes it, there will be more. If not, then there won't and this is it.


Disclaimer: FFVII and its compilations belong to some huge company and not me. *sobs*




Sephiroth paced his apartment in Shinra's SOLDIER complex, eyes taking in everything and nothing as he waited for that inevitable knock on the door. A quick glance at the clock on the wall, then away. Soon, soon.

Too soon.

It was almost funny in a way, how he couldn't simply sit still and wait. Him, who had been known for endless patience while waiting in ambush in Wutai. Who could sit without fidgeting during insufferably long speeches at the inescapable Shinra board meetings.

There was something about this that he just couldn't wait for sitting down.

Probably because he was more than a little certain that when that knock came, waiting on the other side of that slab of metal would be Death, come to take him at last.

He'd never been one to just let it have him, no matter the odds.

Still, it begged the question of why he was still there, still waiting, at all. He was the strongest man in SOLDIER, in all of Shinra; surely a little escape was not too much to ask...?

But no; he'd never been one to run, not even from this.

And so he paced.

There wasn't much to see, he noted absently as he rounded the couch once more. No personal effects left lying around, no nicknacks, no pictures. His apartment reflected nothing of the man he was. Unlike Zack's, with its colorful, cheerful chaos, just barely managing to meet Shinra's standards of cleanliness. In sharp contrast, his own living space was virtually identical to how it had been the day it had been given to him. The couch had been moved slightly, and on the floor was a handsome fur that he had been given as tribute from the Emperor of Wutai when he accepted their surrender. Other than that, his living room was empty save for the standard furnishings, doubtless identical to those in every other apartment on that floor.

He supposed that would make it easier for them to empty it out... after.

After.

He swallowed thickly, frowning slightly as he tried to figure out what was happening to him, why his chest and throat hurt, why his eyes burned. He looked around, blinking hot eyes as he tried to figure out if someone had perhaps let some sort of irritating gas into his quarters, but saw nothing. Why was he feeling this? What was wrong with him?

He was halfway through planning a visit to medical to get checked over when he stopped dead, struck again by the knowledge that it didn't matter. If he was sick for the first time in his life; if he was well. None of it mattered. Not anymore.

It was hard to swallow around that thickness but he managed. Great. Now his nose was getting stuffy. Was it normal for a cold to set in that quickly? Zack had caught a cold once, but the details eluded his memory....

Zack. He wanted Zack there, with him, even though logically he knew that it wouldn't change anything. In his barren home with only the humming of the fridge, the ticking of the old-fashioned clock, waiting for a fate he could not escape, he didn't want to be alone.

His phone was open in his hand - it was not trembling; he did not tremble! - before he had finished the thought. He stared down at the screen, thumb poised on the speed-dial for Zack's phone, for a long moment before slowly folding it shut once more, the dry snap! of the clasp making him grit his teeth against a surge of emotion he couldn't identify. He couldn't call him. Wouldn't. Asking Zack to come, to force him to bear witness to it for his own comfort, was the epitome of selfishness and he couldn't do that to Zack.

No matter how much he wanted to.

This time the pacing led him to his bedroom. He looked it over with a stranger's eyes and saw nothing. It might as well have been a hotel room; nothing to mark it as uniquely his.

He'd been given a choice, by the scientists and Shinra. Not a very good choice but a choice nonetheless, and he was grateful for that. As much as he could be. At least it let him be there, in familiar quarters, instead of the lab when they gave him the injection. He'd started out in the labs; he refused to end there as well.

He turned away, making his way back to the living room, letting his feet lead the way since his sight had become suspiciously blurry. Maybe the gas was invisible?

Sephiroth sat down on one side of the couch, the little-used cushions hard and unwelcoming around him, and stared at the television that had come with the place. He'd never even plugged it in. Maybe he should.

A bitter snort. A bit late now. All those years, raised and trained to be the perfect soldier, the perfect SOLDIER, to sacrifice self in the name of work, duty, and responsability, with never a free moment to himself outside of sleep. All those years, and what had it gotten him?

A small, twisted smirk. A one-way ticket to nowhere, courtesy of President Shinra. Hojo must be furious.

There. At least there was one good point to it.

He stared at his reflection in the television screen, at the reflection of the clock. When he looked at it that way, it seemed to be ticking backwards. He looked away.

The fridge cycled off, leaving him to bathe in the sound of the clock ticking onward with unstoppable regularity. It didn't care what it was ticking towards; its entire life's work focused on sending those needles past the same twelve numbers over and over and over, and never getting anywhere.

In that way, he supposed he was a little like the clock. He'd worked early, worked late, worked more than most anyone in Shinra except perhaps the head of the Turks, and had nothing to show for it but an empty apartment and a pair of friends who had left him behind without ever once asking if he might have wanted to go with them.

He shook his head at that last thought. He knew why they hadn't asked; they'd known he wouldn't go, that responsability and duty would force him to try to get them to stay, and to report it immediately if he couldn't. They'd known him better than most, and they had left unheralded. It still stung, but he could understand.

He still had a lot to learn about this 'friendship' thing.

...Or not.

He glanced at the time, let out a tiny sound of frustration when he saw that the needles had barely moved, that specified time creeping up with all the speed of a slug hit with Slow Materia.

Quiet, filled with that rhythic ticking. Someone passed by outside the door, boots dull thuds against the stone floor. He relaxed slightly one they were past, only then realizing that he had tensed up.

This was no good.

He got up, went over to the monstrosity he'd been told was an 'entertainment unit' and crouched down by the wall to one side of it. A quick, appraising look behind it, then he reached for the wires.

It might be too late for it, but there was nothing else to do. No paperwork, no figuring out strategies to keep what he'd fought for under Shinra control, no arranging the SOLDIER schedules. Everything had been reassigned, delegated to someone else. He would never do any of that ever again.

He picked up the remote, turned the giant monster on. Flipped past one channel after the other. He didn't feel like watching the news, or the weather. Neither one had anything to do with him anymore. Still flipping through the channels with one hand, he found his phone open once more in the other.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he'd hit the button.

Ring. Ring. Ri- "Seph?"

"..." He opened his mouth to speak, but that annoying thickness in his throat rose up once more and he found that the words simply wouldn't come. From the television, bright colors caught his attention and he stared unblinking as some sort of incredibly poor animated predator somehow managed to get itself crushed beneath a boulder it had been trying to drop on a speedy, beeping avian.

"Sephiroth? Hey, you okay?" Zack's voice, slightly distorted by its digital journey yet unable to hide the man's open concern. "Is that the TV? Seph?"

He closed the phone, unable to make a sound, and focused on the bright images on the screen before him.

He really should have done this before.

The knock, when it came, startled him. A quick glance at the clock even as he turned off the television confirmed that the hour that had seemed so reluctant to come had indeed snuck up on him.

He was not shaking.

END? TBC?


Thoughts?