ambersweet: (Default)
Amber Sweet ([personal profile] ambersweet) wrote2010-11-10 02:12 am

Final Fantasy 7: Before Crisis : Normal

Title: Normal
Pairings/Characters: Sephiroth, Zak
Rating: G
Summary: He was supposed to be extraordinary in every way, and anything less - anything normal - was unacceptable.
Words: 310
Requested by: [personal profile] starfleet
Warnings: It's 3:00 AM. Do you need another warning?


Normal.

As a child in the labs, it had always meant failure; he was supposed to be extraordinary in every way, and anything less - anything normal - was unacceptable.

Once in SOLDIER, it meant something else. Still less-than, but everyone was less than him - extraordinary in every way echoed in his head, whispered through his veins, pounded in his ears while he ran, fought, tried to sleep. But at the same time, "normal" became something lacking in him, missing like his parents, his hometown, his childhood. Fatherless, homeless, extraordinary and abandoned, there was nothing about him, the Silver Demon of Wutai, that was normal.

Normally - and that word again, always that word, weaving through the background - it wouldn't bother him. He was something else, beyond dumbapples and backwater towns and mother-baked brownies. But with Genesis gone (they said dead; they were wrong about that but missing, yes, and changed, profoundly changed) and now Angeal compromised, he was left with the boy. Angeal's puppy, he might as well have a tail to wag, bright and friendly and breathtakingly normal. And somehow in his normalcy he treated Sephiroth as if he might be normal too, just another mako-eyed SOLDIER, as if with enough courage and effort and honed will, Zak could be like him.

He wouldn't be normal, couldn't be normal, normal meant a single wing and a cascading immune system, on its way through mutation to shutdown, failure, death, endless broken clones shoved haphazardly onto monster bodies. Extraordinary in every way had to mean this way, didn't it? Or what was the point of all of it?

No.

He couldn't focus on it. That way lay madness. Better to listen to the boy talking. Maybe talk to him. It wouldn't be poetry, like with Genesis; it wouldn't be tactics, like with Angeal. It would be different.

Normal.
finch: (Default)

[personal profile] finch 2010-11-10 03:15 pm (UTC)(link)
How do you make Sephiroth a woobie without woobifying him? Awesome. ♥
starfleet: Profile of a robin (The Vigilante)

[personal profile] starfleet 2010-11-10 04:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, I really like this. Seeing something through Seph's eyes is a really interesting angle that I wouldn't have thought to write from. Thank you for writing it. :D
wandererriha: Art by Mercer Mayer (Red Fairy)

[personal profile] wandererriha 2010-11-10 11:08 pm (UTC)(link)
<3