Teenager Sephiroth writes someone a love letter. Young Genesis finds that super interesting. He tries to get involved, tries to help him. His efforts are not welcomed, and the letter doesn't get send.
Notes: Shameful self-plagiarism. I changed the character names.
“Sephiroth, what are you writing?”
“Nothing!” He put his arm over the paper. He was writing outdoors, on one of Genesis’s reading spots. He hadn’t expected to meet his friend here.
“Can’t I see?”
“No - not yet. Go away, Genesis.“ He angled his body so it would shield the paper.
Genesis settled down on the grass beside him. He pulled out a stack of books and took three minutes to decide which to read.
The afternoon passed.
“Still not done?”
“No.”
“Can I read it now?” Genesis asked.
“No.”
“When can I read it?”
“When it’s don-hey! Don’t look!” Sephiroth folded over the letter.
“There’s a spelling mistake in the first sentence.”
“Where?” He leaned back.
“Here, let me.”
“Don’t just pull the paper away!”
“Yes, but Sephi,” he held him back with one arm. With the other, he held the paper out of Sephiroth’s reach.
“Give it back.” He wasn’t going to struggle to get it.
Genesis gave the paper back because Sephiroth had asked. But he pointed at the second line. “Look. I’m kind of liking you, doesn’t sound good. It doesn’t get the message across. It is better to say, I’m crazy in love with you and think about you day and night. That has more effect!”
Sephiroth said nothing.
Genesis looked up to check his expression.
Sephiroth said “ok,” in a small voice.
“But I can write that only if you feel that. You do feel that, right? You must only write it if it’s true.”
Sephiroth nodded.
“Where is your pen?”
Sephiroth gave him his pen.
Genesis scratched out the words. He put the paper on Sephiroth’s shoulder. “Stand still.” And he wrote the better version in miniature scribbles at the top of every crossed-out line. “Now, next sentence.”
A few days later:
“Did you give the letter away?”
Sephiroth shrugged.
“And?” Genesis pressed on.
Sephiroth shrugged again, and made a face. “My crush read it, and thought it was stupid. Nevermind.”
“Hmph,” Genesis put his hand on his hip and shifted his weight to the other leg.
Sephiroth thought the position only stressed how tall and handsome he was.
“Then it’s not worth it. You must find someone that appreciates your efforts. Let’s go pick up Angeal. Ah, I wish I would get love letters! That would be amazing. I would nail them above my writing desk.”
the chosen one is most commonly used to symbolize the light side, and the heart of the story. unlike the warrior, they barely ever choose to fight on the front lines of a battle. although they will stand up for what they believe in, they do it in a way that is diplomatic, so that they don't create more conflict than there already is. they do not feel the need to be credited in their achievements and victories, and would rather have their confidantes and comrades have the eternal glory and spotlight. they are content with the happiness of those they care about, and place friendship over all else. the chosen one is always picked for the role, hence the name. their fate was placed upon them from birth, and due to their hero complex, and need to help the meek, they follow instructions, and do what needs to be done.
fictional characters that are chosen ones: harry potter (you saw that coming from a mile away), frodo baggins, percy jackson, katniss everdeen, jon snow, daenerys targaryen, elizabeth bennet, patroclus, buffy summers
other personality types that go with this: gryffindor, slytherin, thunderbird
Like every Wednesday, Sephiroth stops by at 3 to bring Hojo fresh groceries from the super market. He's got two bags hooked on one arm, that are filled to the brim with healthy foods.
He uses the key to open the door, and notices there is a vein on his arm that pops out, is he getting that old? He turns the key, but the front door is still on the night lock.
Sephiroth sighs, forgetful old man, and rings the doorbell. And rings. Not a sound.
No answer on his mobile phone either. Sephiroth contemplates if he should just enter. A broken door would expose an elderly person, certainly someone as unpopular and infamous as Hojo himself, to certain dangers. Burglary. Talk about the visit of a locksmith would fill up the silences though.
Sephiroth presses the metal door gently and it gives way. Inside, it is quiet. It smells like musk and unopened windows and hyacinth: the plant is right by the door. Sephiroth had given it to the Professor. A scan through the rooms leads to nothing. He is not in the tiny garden, either.
He climbs the stairs. He’s not been upstairs in many years and doesn’t remember the hallway. He knocks, but it turns out that door leads to the bathroom. It’s dark inside and a spider in the corner is dead so he plucks it out of its webbing and flushes it through the toilet.
The next door is the closet, with a folded-up Christmas tree he hasn’t seen in years. It reminds him of a conversation the had a long time ago: Professor, your dick is like a Christmas tree: it is dead from the root up, it stands only once a year, and the balls are just for decoration. He closes the closet door, smiling to himself.
Then the third room, is the bedroom. He has not been here since Hojo moved in many years ago. The walls are decorated with drawings, photos, fanart, posters, advertisements commercials. Sephiroth steps into a kaleidoscope of himself, and the thousand self-stares he gets are unnerving than a mirror house.
He finds Hojo in bed, fast asleep?
“Professor.”
Dead.
He lies there, calmly. His face looks infinitely more gentle with his hair tousled (”you should braid it before sleeping”). His glasses are on the nightstand. The serene look and manner of death strike him as unfair.
Sephiroth calls Shin-Ra. Tseng is as socially competent as not to say, I’m sorry for your loss. He just 'hm-hms’, and says, we’ll pick up the remains.
Sephiroth glances around the room. He turns on the television. The news plays. In a few hours, there will be propaganda reels of how wonderful Hojo was, and how much he contributed to science. Sephiroth will be asked for statements.
He presses the EJECT button on the old-fashioned video player, and the device opens its beak and spits out a videotape. It is a security camera video of them in the science department, the label thorn off. He puts it in a videotapebox, will take it home. Then the news item shifts to a music item, but Sephiroth questions if this could be called music at all. He switches off the television again.
Sephiroth turns around. He leaves. He is about to close the bedroom door, then glances in one last time. He looks at the old man’s face. Then he closes the door for good.
He doesn’t attend the closed casket funeral.
But he makes sure Hojo’s full name is written correctly everywhere.
It’s a fanon thing, love. In my case, this tidbit of Vincent is heavily influenced by @drakonlily and @kingofbeartraps. :) Hope this answer your question.
Think about the concept of ‘prisoners.’ Prisoners have no outside-world life. They are at the mercy of their keepers. Meals will come - there're merit to keeping them alive. When the prisoner is not of use, there is always the firing squat. Their stay will end someday, but it won't end today. They are here, today. And 'today' often lasts too long.
What is the worst punishment for a misbehaving prisoner?
What punishment do they bestow upon the worst of the worst?
Solitary confinement.
"Try Doctor Hojo."
"Go away. I have no time to play house with you," the Doctor said.
Sephiroth didn't know how to play house, but he did know how to play dead. Then you lay on the floor and didn't move and didn't breathe. Playing house seemed boring. Houses just stood at the side of the road. Would you need to put your hands up to make a roof? Maybe.
Silly Doctor, Sephiroth thought. What fun would it be to play house?
"Let go of my sleeve, Sephiroth," the Doctor said sternly. "I have more important things to do today."
"What things?"
"Not that anything would make sense to you - you're a child. Go read up on your biology and books and we'll talk in a few years."
Years!
"But-!" he started. A few hours were too long. After hours came days and then months and then years. He was five-and-a-half. He didn't want to stay away from Doctor Hojo for years. How many years?
He tugged the white sleeve again. "But I want to talk to you now!"
"I don't have time for you." The doctor put his clipboard between his teeth.
Sephiroth was picked up with two of Hojo's massive hands under his armpits. He was scooped up onto Hojo's arm. It wasn't a normal scoop. The doctor was annoyed, that much could Sephiroth tell.
From his spot at the arm, super high up, he could oversee the entire world. Well, not the entire world but at least the entire laboratory room. He reached out and touched the doctor's clipboard. He tugged it.
The doctor moved his head to the left side: the clipboard slid out of Sephiroth's grasp. Then the doctor started walking. "Homf," he said with the clipboard between his teeth, meaning ‘don’t.’
Sephiroth tried to pull it again.
"Honfff!" the doctor said again, and Sephiroth giggled.
Hojo put his shoulder against the door and pushed it open.
They walked through the hallways, and Sephiroth was enjoying the ride. The doctor didn't pick him up as much as he had before. And the entire world bobbed up and down with every step. it was funny. He reached out and took the metal pipe of the doctor’s glasses.
"Sefferroff, shoff," the doctor warned.
Sephiroth giggled at how his own name sounded. He tugged the glasses hard, and with some effort they slipped off the doctor's face. He held them up. The world was all funny and blurry. He put the black frame on his own nose and ears. The world was blurry. He cross-eyed.
"Spending quality time with your son, I see?" the Professor Gast said.
"Shuff uff," Hojo muttered.
"Oh, I even understood that. Don't let the boy hear you utter that."
"Shuff uff," parrotted Sephiroth. "Shuff uff."
"Shufsh," Hojo said.
"Oh dear," the Professor said, but he was smiling, so Sephiroth thought he was having fun too and making the Professor laugh.
"Shuff uff," Sephiroth grinned. His eyes were adjusting to the blur of wearing glasses.
"Here, let me take that from you," the Professor said.
"Fhang yoo," the doctor said and lift the clipboard, but the professor took the glasses from Sephiroth's face. He held them up.
Sephiroth's eyes instantly changed back to understand the normal world.
Doctor Hojo gave Professor Gast a you-ve-been-naughty look. He was all frowny and the corners of his mind tugged down.
Sephiroth ducked his ears between his shoulders and was quiet.
The Professor took the legs of the Professor's glasses and wiggled them forth and back. "Huh, this one is a little bit unstable. Stand still, I'll put them on. Thereee you go. Is everything clear again?"
The Doctor said nothing.
The Professor said: "Right, let me get that clipboard."
"I see two big problems and one's right in front of me. The other's on my arm."
"You drooled all over the status report of the bone marrow examination of JENOVA's right hand."
"Take him to his room." Hojo said and held out Sephiroth.
"Those are nice teeth marks." Gast ran his finger over the half-circle of dents that were now in the paper.
"He's a bug to have in the labs."
"I was thinking-"
"I'm done with him."
"- we should do a dental examination as well."
Sephiroth hung in Hojo's outstretched hands.
"What? Teeth bone marrow?"
"Teeth bone marrow last. Making a print, checking for causes of cavities, food the cetra ate, contrast to human teeth - we've not spent much time on her teeth yet. Nor her face."
"Let's wait until the machine spits out the results first," Hojo said. "Let's work systematically."
"Yes, yes,... systematically..." the Professor said. He flipped to the second page of the scribbles, and rubbed a hand over his brown moustache.
Sephiroth imitated the gesture and rubbed over his upper lip.
"Take him to his room," Hojo said.
"Hm-hmm..." the Professor replied. His eyes remained fixed on the papers. Then he slowly...ever so slowly, turned left.
- "Professor."
Gast dippped his head.
- "Professor?"
Gast sleepwalked into the direction where Sephiroth and Hojo had come from, and he was staring at the scribbles on the clipboard pages. He flicked to the third.
Hojo sighed.
He took Sephiroth back onto his arm, and breezed through the dark hallways up to the boy’s room. Not his upstairs bedroom with the green walls and the toys. They went to the specimen hall, to Sephiroth’s other room.
Sephiroth waved at the creatures in the stone cubes that had one glass wall. None waved back, not even the big furry creature. He seem to be asleep. It was a shame, because he was nice to talk to. He was funny. He said strange new things about the world outside. “Doctor, please wait, please.”
Doctor Hojo stopped walking.
Sephiroth reached out. He stretched and stretched until he could put three fingertips on the glass.
The red dog opened his eyes. He jolted awake, and looked at the general direction of Sephiroth and Hojo. Then it swished with its tail. It dragged over the floor.
"May I play with Seto III?"
"No you may not." Hojo started walking again.
"Why do I may not?"
"He can't talk any more. He lost his tongue."
"I can help. I'll search for it."
"It won't be coming back."
"But I'll help looking! Maybe it's under the cabinet upstairs, just like where I finded your car keys!"
"Don't raise your voice when you're next to my ear." The Professor opened the door of a rather large box that was Sephiroth’s specimen room. Originally the specimen room had been meant for Dualhorn babies, but there hadn't been a baby D-horn in a while, and a while back Professor Gast had assigned it to the boy for when they were busy.
The floor and walls were white. Books were scattered over the floor. There was a chair. A mattress with a blanket: in case they worked late, or forgot him. Sometimes they forgot. Then Sephiroth had to sleep down here.
The Professor put him down. He put a hand on Sephiroth's back and pushed him to the door. "Stay in here for now."
Inside, Sephiroth turned around. "But I want to stay with you."
- "Not today. Doctor's busy."
Sephiroth pouted.
Hojo shut the door. He paced away.
Sephiroth was alone. He looked around the room. "I want to play house," he said to himself.
He aligned the books as if they were a street, and then walked over them. He jumped, and pretended to be a house. He put his hands over his head with his fingertips touching and his elbows out. He pretended that tiny doctors and professors walked over the street and said, look this is a nice house, we should live here.
And they would walk through the front door that was the space between his legs, and then climb onto his knees, and grab his clothes.
He stood there for a long time.
Eventually he decided that it wasn't as much fun as playing dead. When he played dead, at least the scientists came running.
He sat down and started reading. But he already had worked his way through Mr. Grey's big Anatomy book, and there was no part of the human body that had any interesting bits. He knew everything, from tailbone to funny bone.
He sat and read until his legs hurt, and he wanted to run. But running indoors wasn't allowed. Then he started walking. He walked four, twelve, 85 round through his quarters. He counted his paces until he lost count. Sometimes it was twenty steps for a round, sometimes it was nineteen. Sometimes it was twenty.
And that's the environment he grew up in.
Days of silence, and silence. The cell Sephiroth was in, was soundproof, and made of three walls and one mirror. From the outside, the mirror was normal glass, but from the inside, Sephiroth only saw his own reflection.
Green eyes, white hair. He learnt what he looked like by staring at himself. He learnt to hate his image, learnt to love it. The exact features didn't matter, but his green eyes and white hair were the reason why he was in here, thus the reason why he stood out. The days passed and the nights passed, and Sephiroth grew up. They changed his books. At rare times, he was taken out for a test in the pit.
One day Doctor Hojo came in. “Congratulations, you’re six now.”
Sephiroth looked up from a chemistry book that didn't belong in the hands of a boy his age. "Doctor?"
"Sephiroth, what is a Diels-Alter reaction?" The Doctor sometimes asked random questions, to test him.
"It is an organic chemical reaction between a conjugated diene and a substituted alkene, commonly termed the dienophile, to form a substituted cyclohexene system.”
"What do we at Shin-Ra use it most for?"
"In synthetic organic chemistry."
"I didn't ask what where we use it, but what for," the doctor said, stressing the last word. The man lingered at the door, and Sephiroth knew that if he said this wrong, the doctor may leave again, to get a different book. But then he might forget Sephiroth... and then who knows what time doctor Hojo would get back!
The boy hastened to say: "As-! As a reliable method for forming 6-membered systems with good control over regio- and stereochemical properties!"
"What's most unique about the Diels-Alter?"
"You can reverse it. Under certain conditions!"
“What’s that called?”
“Retro-Diels-Alter?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes?”
"Excellent answers," the doctor said. He gave Sephiroth a faint smile, and walked into Sephiroth's room. He put his hand under Sephiroth's chin, and curled his fingers repeatedly, like he would tickle a dog or cat under the chin.
It gave Sephiroth a warm feeling. He looked up and tried to lean into the hand.
Just as he did that, the doctor put it back in the pocket of his white laboratory coat. "Well done. Keep studying. Do you have any other questions?"
"I do have a question."
"Let's hear it then."
"Who's my mommy?
There was a space behind the shell of Sephiroth’s ear and the start of his hairline that the Doctor scratched his fingernails over.
Sephiroth wondered if a Retro-Sephiroth-Alter reaction was possible. Would that bring her back?
Crimson-Sun and THEGenesisRhapsodos stayed over at my place this summer. We went to Animecon cosplayed as Hojo, Genesis, and Sephiroth. We went to towns, to the beach, and we had great fun!
Sadly we had to say bye to Dyana after a week, but Crim stayed over two more weeks. We went to Amsterdam, London (where we met up with friends like Sanguinesaint, Lilly-White, Pledgethornthief, and Asreoninfusion) and to Giethoorn (the "Dutch Venice").
Crimson-Sun and I had a good talk, and we are no longer together as a couple. That's all. We had a great time will continue to be good friends.
We watched FFVII ACC at the computer at the morning of Crim's departure, and we still can't believe it: FFVII REEEMAKE!
Crim, Dya, you were wonderful friends to have over at my house. The photos above are my favourite moments with you. You've been wonderful and kind and understanding and sweet to me.
I felt like I should give some love to some of my other mutuals, too.
askthewutaiwarhero/ mobsterqueen: Is it weird that I think of you as sort of my awesome little sibling? I want to introduce you to the world and show you off and let everyone know how sweet, cool, and talented you are. You write a great Seph, you always have something nice to say about my work, and you’re one of the people who’s given me free art! I never thought I’d earn art from anyone, but there you go, turning out the most in-point portrait of Rapier.
cloudvelundr: You’re smart as a whip. When I read your writing, your headcanons, I feel like I should take notes and stick it somewhere into Hybridization- or any other fic where people visit Nibelheim. Your redesign of Rosso was scary-awesome, and you should definitely submit that to repair-her-armor. I know the submit page says their on hiatus, but they’re actually kind of back! You too, cloudgeal--send those awesome designs in, because you both deserve recognition.
asreoninfusion: You let me play in your sandbox and that’s awesome. Plus, you’re going into a science-related field and that’s equally awesome? You’re gonna be that scientist who works her research into her fics and turns out the most scientifically plausible smut ever. Seriously, I look forward to seeing what you do in life.
goddamnitaisha/ rp-sephiroth: You’ve given so much fun while making me tear out my hair. You handle your studies with such aplomb, and you get so much shit just done. Face it, it’s not Sephiroth who’s motivating you to overcome--you’re the one who created such a realistic Sephiroth for yourself that you can motivate yourself to do anything. You’ve given life to your own life coach.
vorpalgirl: Last not at all least, my buddy vorp. I’ve lost track of how long we’ve known each other. We’ve followed each other from website to website, beta-ing and inspiring each other. We have our disagreements, but we get over it. Your husband’s a lucky man, and I’m a lucky friend. Plus, you ship me and my boyfriend and that’s too damn cute.
