The Architecture of Flight: An Original / FF 7 Crossover Fic
Summary: While watching Sephiroth and Genesis teach the children the mechanics of flight in the peaceful valley of Rinnos, Bianca Moore is pulled into a visceral, agonizing flashback of the childhood vivisection where Professor Hojo systematically shattered her wing structure to ensure she remained a ground-based subject for Project N.
Pairing: Bianca Moore (f!OC)/Sephiroth
Other Characters: Aurora, Genesis Rhapsodos, Professor Hojo, Lucien, Angeal Hewley
Possible Trigger Warnings: Amputation (wings), blood and gore, bone snapping, child abuse (flashback), corporal punishment (implied via medical torture), dead dove: do not eat, medical trauma, memories of trauma, phantom limb pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, psychological trauma, vivid descriptions of surgery without anesthesia.
Possible Tropes: Angst with a happy ending, biological family, comfort/hurt, canon divergent, domestic bliss (interrupted), emotional hurt/comfort, family bonding, flashback, fluff and angst, found family, trauma recovery, winged humanoids, Protective Sephiroth, Soft Sephiroth, Sane!Sephiroth, Sephiroth is a good dad
Author’s Note: This piece takes place within the Redemption!AU and was specifically written for @may-lancholy as part of the Alt 2 prompt: Winged Whump.
Please ensure you review the full list of trigger warnings above before proceeding, as this work explores deep-seated psychological and physical trauma. My work always features Dead Dove: Do Not Eat.
Bring tissues since this one made me cry writing it.
The mountain air in Rinnos was a cruel, thin silk that teased the nerve endings Bianca Moore had spent a lifetime trying to cauterize.
Bianca stood on the weathered cedar porch of their home. Her fingers gripped the railing until the wood groaned and splinters bit into her palms. The scent of pine and woodsmoke was a lie. To her, the atmosphere was thick with the phantom smell of a laboratory and the metallic, cold tang of a bone-saw.
Below her, in the golden valley where the wildflowers bowed under a gentle alpine breeze, the impossible was happening.
Sephiroth moved with a grace that was no longer military, but paternal. His silver hair a shimmering river that cascaded down the back of his black leather trench coat. His massive, single black wing was unfurled: a jagged, majestic sail of shadow that drank the sunlight.
Beside him, Genesis Rhapsodos was a flash of crimson. His own single wing—opposite side of Sephiroth's—beat a steady, rhythmic pulse against the air.
They were holding the children.
Aurora, a pale ghost of her father with her light gray hair and wide, indigo eyes, was clutched against Sephiroth’s chest. Her pearl and cream-colored wings—tiny, Downy things that looked like spun sugar—vibrated with a frantic, joyful energy.
Lucien, a darker reflection with his curly black hair and charcoal-colored wings, was tucked into the crook of Genesis’s arm. His small face split in a toothy grin as he batted at the air like a contented kitten.
"Higher, Daddy! Higher!" Aurora’s voice carried up the slope, dinging like a silver bell ringing in a graveyard.
Sephiroth didn't just fly. He hovered. His feet inches from the grass, as his boots barely touched the blades. His expression was a rare, soft mask of devotion as he lifted the little girl toward the clouds.
Genesis and Sephiroth were teaching them the physics of the sky and the way the wind should feel against the primary feathers. He was giving them a heritage Bianca’s body had forgotten how to claim.
Bianca watched, and the world began to bleed.
The green valley flickered, replaced by the stuttering strobe of a fluorescent bulb overhead. The porch railing became a cold, iron restraint. The mountain breeze turned into the recycled, sterile breath of a ventilation shaft.
She was four years old: the same age as her twins were now. She was Subject N01 of Project N, a branch of the Jenova Project.
She was face down on a stainless-steel table that felt like a sheet of ice against her ribs. Her small, indigo and charcoal-colored wings—already corrupted by the infusions she received daily since she was only two—were pinned flat by Hojo’s heavy, green, rubber-gloved hands. Then, her wings were only downy buds of celestial potential labeled as a protentional flight risk. She could hear the wet, rhythmic click of the surgical instruments being laid out on a tray.
"The flight capacity of Subject N is an unnecessary variable," Hojo’s voice was a dry, academic rasp. "We require a ground-based anchor for Project N. Mobility encourages escape. Escape leads to data loss."
Bianca tried to cry out, but the pain had turned her tongue into a heavy, numb slug. She could only watch through a haze of tears as Hojo picked up the heavy-duty shears.
They weren't scalpels. They were gardening loppers: cold and rusted at the hinge.
Crunch.
The sound was the worst part. It wasn't a clean slice. It was the sound of a dry branch being snapped in half, followed by the wet, sickening grind of bone against bone. Bianca felt the white-hot lightning of the central nerve being severed.
"Note the color of the marrow," Hojo muttered. His face leaned so close she could smell the sour coffee on his breath and her blood spackled face reflected within his glasses. "Golden-tinged. High celestial concentration. Fighting the S-cell injections and infusions. Fascinating."
He didn't stop at the feathers. He reached for the humerus of the wing, the delicate, hollow bone that was meant to carry her above the clouds.
Hojo didn't cut. He crushed. He applied pressure until the bone shattered into a thousand jagged needles. The splinters drove outward through the soft, velvet skin.
Thick, dark, blood, shimmering with a golden, celestial luminescence, poured over the table, pooling in the drainage grooves to be collected later. It ran like a river of wasted divinity, dripping onto the floor with a rhythmic, heavy plip-plip-plip.
"Again," Hojo commanded.
The second wing was clipped lower, at the joint. Bianca felt her consciousness fragmenting. Every time the shears closed, she felt a part of her soul being lopped off and tossed into a biohazard bin. The pain was a living thing: a jagged beast that lived in the space between her shoulder blades, gnawing on the ruined stumps that remained.
She remembered the way the blood felt as it cooled. It was tacky, like half-dried glue, binding her to the table. She remembered the way Hojo had sewn the skin shut, the needle dragging through the raw meat, stitching her down to the earth forever: an angel of Shinra who could not feel the sky brushing within her feathers.
"Mama! Look! I'm a bird!" The high, sweet shout of Lucien shattered the memory.
Bianca gasped. Her lungs burnt as if she had been submerged in mako.
She was back in Rinnos. Her hands shook so violently she had to tuck them into the sleeves of her oversized cream sweater. She turned her head and looked at her back, feeling the heavy, cumbersome weight of her indigo and black wings.
The wings were full-grown now, nearly ten feet of brooding majesty, but they were a lie. The internal architecture — the bones Hojo had shattered and the nerves he had cauterized — had never knit correctly. They really were decorative sails, leaden weights that tethered her to the ground. She was a bird with lead in her veins, and she chirped softly, as she looked up at her son and daughter.
The phantom pain flared: a cold, grinding sensation in her scapula that made her want to reach back and tear the wings out by the roots. She could still feel the shears. She could still feel the cold metal closing over the bone.
Sephiroth landed. He didn't drop. He descended like a falling leaf, his boots silent on the grass. After he set Aurora down, his gaze immediately snapped to the porch. Through the Red Thread of Fate, he didn't just see her. He felt the resonance of the bone-saw. He felt the cold, sticky memory of the laboratory floor.
Usually a fortress of Vanguard leadership, his face softened into a look of profound, aching sorrow.
He turned to the kids. "Aurora, Lucien. Go inside and help Uncle Angeal and Zack with the tea. Your mother and I will be there in a moment."
Sensing the shift in the air, the children didn't argue. They scampered past Bianca, their small wings fluttering like nervous moths. Their indigo eyes were bright with the innocent thrill of the sky.
Sephiroth walked up the stairs. He didn't stop until he was inches from her. His presence was a physical barrier against the ghosts of the Shinra Building. He didn't touch her yet. He knew the skin on her back was likely screaming with the memory of the loppers.
"I can still hear the shears, Seph," she whispered. Her voice was a ragged, broken thing. "Every time they flap their wings. . .I feel the bone snapping all over again. I look at them and I’m terrified he’s going to walk out of the trees with those scissors."
She turned her back to him. Her shoulders hunched. The stumps where the wings joined her spine were ridged with thick, knotted scar tissue: remnants of a vivisection that had lasted for weeks. He had held her then, holding her insides within her body as she healed after.
Sephiroth reached out. His long fingers hovered just above the Indigo and dark feathers. He moved with a heartbreaking gentleness. His thumb traced the line of her shoulder blade where the most damage had been done. Through the Thread, he began to pull the phantom pain into himself. His own wing twitched in a sympathetic throb.
"They will fly for you," Sephiroth said. It wasn't a platitude. Sephiroth never said platitudes. The words were a vow. "I will teach them to reach the heights Hojo tried to steal from us. And when they are in the air, they will be your strength. Not your shame."
Bianca leaned back against him. Her head rested against the silver pauldrons of his coat. The cool metal grounded her.
The smell of cedar and the cold mountain air finally began to drown out the scent of formaldehyde. But as she looked out at the valley, the sun dipping below the peaks, she could still see the dark, shimmering stains of the blood on the laboratory table, a permanent shadow cast over the beauty of the world.
She was the former Angel of Shinra, the former Saint of SOLDIER, the heart of the Vanguard, but as Sephiroth held her in the encroaching twilight, she was just a four-year-old girl, still waiting for the shears to stop clicking in the dark.
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Sherlock was standing in front of the window when John entered the sitting room. He must’ve seen John hurrying through the thick drops of rain, must’ve heard him muttering and swearing on the stairs, fighting his way out of his dripping coat.
And yet he was standing there motionlessly, looking out on the street, almost as if asleep on his feet.
John tilted his head. Sherlock had always had these… dark phases, where his state of mind came dangerously close to depression. But since his connection with John became even deeper, since they’d become a “proper couple,” his dark moods were usually not that severe.
Yet they were still worrying John, making him ache.
He stepped closer to Sherlock, bumping into the table on his way, just in case Sherlock really was so deep in thought that he hadn’t noticed John’s presence.
Sherlock didn't move, but when John was close enough to feel the warmth radiating from the other man’s body, he tilted his head ever so slightly. It was a sign, and John let out a relieved breath. It meant, yes, I know you’re here, yes, I want you to be around me, yes, I will be fine.
Carefully John closed the gap between their bodies, pressed his chest flush against Sherlock’s back and wrapped his arms around his torso. He could feel Sherlock lean back into him, and his hands came up to cover John’s on his chest.
“What are you thinking about?” John murmured into the fabric of the dressing gown.
“Nothing,” Sherlock said after a long moment of silence.
“Everything.”
John hummed in understanding. He knew this feeling. Everyone experienced this from time to time. Yet Sherlock’s mind was nothing like John’s, and the man was probably ripping himself and the world apart with an accuracy John couldn’t possibly imagine.
John stretched up and placed a gentle kiss on the nape of Sherlock’s neck, then loosed his arms around his body.
“Come on,” he said, stepping back. “Let’s have a proper day in then. There is kind of an agenda to follow on rainy days.”
He sent Sherlock to light a fire in the fireplace, while he retreated into the kitchen, filling the kettle, placing cups and plates on a tray, together with some of the biscuits Sherlock had made a couple of days ago.
Sherlock was already sitting on the sofa when John re-entered the sitting room, looking at him expectantly, a blanket next to him.
John put the tray on the coffee table, got comfortable on the sofa and motioned for Sherlock to cuddle up to him, then spread the blanket over their bodies.
Sherlock sighed contentedly. “And what else is on that agenda of yours?”
John chuckled, running a hand through the thick, dark curls.
“That’s pretty much it, to be honest. Light a fire, drink some tea. Cuddle up under a blanket. Don’t move. Maybe talk, take a nap, read a book. Listen to the raindrops tapping against the window. Be warm and comfortable.”
Sherlock was silent for a long time.
“Can you tell me something?” he asked eventually. “Anything. About your day at the clinic?”
John lowered his head to press a kiss on Sherlock’s scalp.
“Of course love. Whatever you want.”
And he told Sherlock about Mrs. Gough, who was coming every week, telling the weirdest stories about her cat. He told Sherlock about the little boy who’d almost bitten him in the finger. He told Sherlock about patients and colleagues, until he dozed off in John’s arms, tea long forgotten on the table and the fire slowly dying out, leaving warmth and gently glowing embers behind.
--
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we have each other | buddie | getting together | 1.7k
buck and eddie, waking up after they confessed their love for each other
written for @flufftober alternate prompt 2: rainy day!
Buck wakes up to the sound of rain falling down.
The gentle pitter-patter on the roof grows louder, a rhythmic symphony that draws Buck from his slumber. His eyes flutter open, adjusting to the dim light filtering through the curtains. The rain’s melody beckons him, whispering promises of puddles to splash in and petrichor-scented air to breathe deeply.
Buck loves the rain. He always has. As a kid, he loved going outside and jumping in puddles, stomping around in his little rain boots. It used to infuriate his parents to no end, at least until Maddie took over doing Buck’s laundry and their parents no longer had to deal with his wet, dirty clothes.
Now, too, Buck loves the rain. He loves lazing around when it rains, loves going for jogs in the drizzle. If there’s not too much wind, he likes to open his balcony doors, let the smell and sound drift into his loft.
His muscles twitch with the urge to climb out of bed and press his nose against cool glass, to watch droplets race down the windowpane and see the world washed anew. Maybe he’ll go downstairs, open those balcony doors. But as he shifts, he becomes aware of a warm weight across his torso. Eddie’s arm, strong and protective, holds him close.
Eddie’s arm. Eddie, still asleep. Eddie, in bed with Buck, because Buck isn’t in the loft at all.
Coriolanus was seemingly deep into his book, sitting by the window covered in the pouring rain and unmoving for what felt like hours. Any attempt to move him has been futile. That was until he got to the last pages. You watched intensely as every minute caused him to turn another page, waiting for the moment the book closed.
Once it did, he set it down on the small table next to him. Standing up to stretch, his shirt moving up slightly as you heard his back pop in the silence. He looked over to you, a small smile was on his face before the stern professional look took over once again.
It caught him off guard when you walked over to him, deciding to take matters into your own hands as you grabbed his wrist tightly and started dragging him towards the closed door. Words of confusion started spewing from his lips but it didn't stop you, and he wasn't putting up a fight. That was until the door opened, he heard the rain hitting the sidewalk.
"Don't even think about it." Coryo spoke, trying to sound stern but the attempt fell on deaf ears.
"Oh I've thought about it, its happening." Before he could have any sort of rebuttal, you pulled him out of the threshold with a force he didn't know you possessed.
He let out a gasp as the rain started to hit him, immediately causing his hard to stick against his forehead. A scowl spread across his face but he didn't fight as you pulled him further into the puddled road. Instead he reached out his other hand to grab yours, opting to hold it which allowed you to let go of his wrist.
This time you were pulled into him, still under the torrential downpour, but now also pressed against his newly skin tight shirt. Even with the presence of annoyance he still went along with what was seemingly your plan.
It was a weirdly soft gesture from the man, he refused to let you go, holding you flush against him as the rain fell, swaying you two slightly. A moment of weakness even in the darkness
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
When Kaminari's parents make another bid for custody, Aizawa has to dig into Denki's past to try to keep him out of their hands. What he finds there might change the course of Denki's future…if he can pull it together in time to save his kid before it's too late.
Chapter Four: You Promised
Too bad there wasn’t a law that kept you from being an asshole. Well, a law like that would be hard to enforce anyway, and people would probably abuse the hell out of it to get whatever they wanted. So maybe it was a good thing there wasn’t…but he could still wish there was. That there was something illegal about the way his parents kept trying to contact him, so someone could make them go away for good.
FEBUWHUMP 2024 PROMPTS:
DAY 5: rope burns
DAY 6: "you lied to me"
ALT 2: "i love you"
“You lied to me,” Jazz sounds at the edge of tears.
“What?” He can hear Danny argue. “I did not –”
“You lied to me,” she repeats. “I asked you if you'll be okay. I asked you if you are safe, and you said that you were. You said that I don't need to worry. That it's okay.”
“It was–” the kid sounds confused.
“Being tied to a bed and tortured is not okay!” she nearly screams.
“That wasn't torture–”
“I saw the ropes, Danny.” Her voice is soft and fragile. “I saw how they tied you up to your bed. Just because you told them you were different.”
“They were scared, that's all. You know how they can be. It didn't hurt me.” He still tries to protect them.
“Danny, sweetheart,” she says quietly. “You still had rope burns when I found you. And even if you didn't – even if it was silk ribbons, and you could open it at any time– even if you never got a single scratch – it's still wrong. They shouldn't do it. They should have never hurt you, kiddo.”
There's a long quiet.
Jason takes the chance and takes a quick look across the corner. Dannys sitting there, on the couch, hugging his legs. Jazz is sitting by his side, not touching, a soft expression on her face.
“It wasn't a big deal,” the kid finally whispers. “It wasn't like- well, at the end. You saw. It wasn't that bad. They just did it because they cared, and they didn't want me hurt or–”
He's shaking now.
“I love you,” his sister says and hug him. “I love you, and I care about you, and I promise I'll do my best so one day, you'll learn that love isn't supposed to hurt.”
“Sounds fake, but okay,” Danny says with a cheeck and hugs her back.
He still has healing wounds. His scars are massive and easily observed. His hands are shaking, and he's jumping at loud noises.
He's got a long way to go.
But Jason can see a faint smile on the kid's lips, and something inside is quiet.
(There's still hope.)
(Like it? I have more mini-fics in this au. And full size fics on ao3. please vote in my update poll! And the one for next week! Bc I try to work ahead LMAO)
