Chapter Text
November, 1997
“Something is on your mind.” It is said as a statement, not a question.
Sephiroth looks up from the email he is not reading. The train rocks him as it pulls them back towards Midgar. Angeal sits across from him. The book he was reading is closed, the page bookmarked with his thumb. He looks at him with eyes that strike deeper than Sephiroth cares for.
“Nothing is worrying me,” Sephiroth says and leans back against the cushions. “Why would you ask?”
Angeal smiles. “Because for the last ten minutes you’ve stared at that screen and no Shinra email takes that long to read.”
Sephiroth shifts and tucks the phone away. “I am just tired.”
The fall colors smear outside the window. The mission they had been sent on was simple. An easy cleaning of a monster den that had taken only a day’s worth of effort.
“When is your next appointment upstairs?”
A river blends into a field. “I’ve still got two weeks.”
There had been checkups for his ears. Mariella had been at none of them. She disappeared from his life. Even when he tries to find a reason to go to her office, her assistant keeps telling him that she is too busy and to redirect any questions to Hojo.
It’s a poor excuse.
“Did Genesis challenge you to another fight?”
Sephiroth feels the laugh in him. “Yes, but that is not a problem.”
“He just wants to prove himself.” Angeal checks the page number and puts the book to the side. He will remember where he left off.
“There are many other ways. I cannot let him win. You know what that will do to him.”
Angeal shakes his head. “Will he float away with a head that big?”
“Exactly. For being the oldest, he does make a concerted effort to act like a child.”
“It’s how he was raised.”
That sends acid down his throat. He ignores it and focuses on Angeal.
“But not you.”
“No, we are friends from two different walks of life. Unlikely but true. It is one of the reasons that we are such a good team.”
That makes them fall into silence. The train has three hours left. Depending on the mission, sometimes they rest through it. The train is for an ease of convenience. Any more remote and they would have required cars. The countryside will turn dry soon as they make way for the desert land that surrounds Midgar.
They will have to contend with the media when they leave the train but that is further off in the distance.
Angeal sits, his arms crossed.
He would listen.
And more importantly with those three hours left, he is patient enough to wait for Sephiroth to tell him. Sephiroth pushes onwards, faces the inevitability and starts talking.
“You know that Hojo is in charge of my health.” Sephiroth starts with something easy and known.
“Just like Hollander is with us.” Angeal nods. “I think you got the worst of the two.”
Sephiroth listens to people pass in the hallway of their private cabin and disappears. “You also know the head scientist of exposure, Dr. Haynes, also supervises my case?”
“She was the one who came when you were hurt. It makes sense.” Angeal’s words are measured and careful.
“…she,” Sephiroth pauses and tries to pick the right words, “she has looked after me more than her job requires.”
“The dogs were hers. We guessed you two knew each other more than a typical doctor-patient relationship.”
We. This has been discussed.
“It was a favor but I have upset her now. She’s avoiding me.”
Angeal stays neutral. “What happened?”
Sephiroth shifts, trying to find the balance of what he wants to say and what is needed for Angeal to help him. “When we were younger, we were closer. I have not listened to her since returning from the war.”
“And?”
“I believe she has given up on repairing the relationship. I frustrate her.”
Mariella’s cold eyes from the night of being hurt are in his mind. She had said that he had brought this on himself. A distance is shoved between them. There was no softness in her hands then and now she is gone. The appointments that she tends to handle have dried up or another more minor doctor has taken her place.
“And you want it?”
“She is valuable to have.” That feels wrong and unexplained, too much put too simply so he adds. “Especially with my therapies.”
That is still a simple answer. The cleanest one that Sephiroth could come up with. It is nowhere near the truth.
Angeal leans forward, waving a hand. “So she is useful to you? I doubt, no matter how she feels, she will shirk her professional duties to you.”
Sephiroth presses his tongue against the roof of his mouth. They are easing into the things that are complicated and where he didn’t want to go. He doesn’t like to look at the mess. They tangle in a way that he will never be able to figure out on his own.
“I saw her two weeks ago, once. She usually talks to me. This time she turned around and walked the other way.”
The things that Sephiroth can’t put into words are in his head. The way that she had stopped dead in her tracks, phone in one hand and a folder tucked under her arm. She had been talking into the speaker. Coldness washed over her when she noticed him. Sephiroth said her name and started towards her.
Her voice had betrayed her, breaking in the middle of some measurement of fluid.
Then it went smooth.
Sephiroth saw the professional.
And Dr. Haynes had swiped her keycard and stepped into another room.
The train rattles. Angeal doesn’t push on the details. He sighs and Sephiroth can see him trying to put the pieces together.
“What do you want here, Sephiroth?”
He sucks in a breath. “To repair the relationship.”
“Do you know what you did?”
“…if we are playing by the rules of logic, yes.”
“Then talk to her. Tell her you regret it.”
Sephiroth shifts. “I don’t think it will do anything.”
He tries to imagine going up to her and saying what? That he realized that it was valuable to have her? That she has been one of the few people to stand by him throughout all of this? That he’s lost almost all connections to who he was before the war and that she is the only one left? He hasn’t apologized for anything in years. He isn’t even sure how to do it. Even then, that is something that he’s not even sure he should do.
He has blamed her for being trapped in Midgar. It is essentially still true but here he is on a train with someone who he feels safe enough with to discuss deep seated problems with. Sephiroth’s hands weave together. Part of him shies away from what it was like when his unconscious body was carted back from Wutai.
How life had been one short path ahead of him.
Now it seems different.
And there was color.
The difference is stark.
Angeal’s eyes watch his face, a reserved judgment hanging in them but it is different. It’s not negative. It’s trying to help him since he has asked for it.
“I’ll think about it.”
Angeal nods, presses on his knees and gets up. “If you don’t try, you won’t know. We’ve got a few hours left. I’m getting coffee. Want it black?”
“It’s train coffee. Milk and sugar. It’ll be burnt. You’ll keep this to yourself?”
The smile makes him relax. “You are my friend. Of course, I’ll join you on that drink order.”
It takes time for Sephiroth to find a way to talk to Mariella. The pieces need to fit together correctly or else everything else would fall apart. So many parts of this have been ruined already. They needed to talk. He wishes that there was a simulation for this. He would run and rerun this conversation until he got it correct.
This is a battle he intends to win.
The environment is key. It dictates everything. At Shinra, she could slip away before he could say the first of the practiced statements. Even if it is in HQ, there are many doors that she has access to that he does not. No. She will be on guard for that. He sees it every time that they brush near each other in the tower. He could not be where she expected him.
Convincing Thea takes a few weeks.
At first, Mariella’s girlfriend tells him to fuck off and threatens to call the police when Sephiroth stands outside her door. He has to quietly remind her that he is, technically, the police. This is a stretch of the truth. The Midgar General Police Reserves are an extension of Shinra controlled under the Defense Department.
Sephiroth is in the SOLDIER branch of the Defense Department.
It’s as vague as Hojo injecting something into his veins and saying that it will only hurt a little.
For Thea, the nuisance is lost.
Her cheeks go red and she tells him to “fuck off to another planet.” The door is slammed in his face. He waits. There are no footsteps on the other side. He checks the streets. It’s late enough that it didn’t draw attention. Sephiroth knocks again.
The slander starts lessening from there.
It takes another trip to Mariella’s to sway Thea entirely. She lets him in. They sit on the strange new furniture in the living room and slowly, Sephiroth explains himself. The mistakes are carved out of him and put on the coffee table. Thea’s eyes are tired but she listens. They start to come to some sort of agreement.
Eventually, she drifts away into the kitchen to get water and he disappears to their bathroom.
Except he doesn’t make it.
The office door is open and it is no longer an office.
In the half darkness, the slats of the crib stretch across the floor. A chair sits by it, new and stiff. The pillow is more like a set decoration than used. Sephiroth’s hand touches the frame. Everything is too perfect for there to be a child living here. Regardless, Thea wouldn’t have spent the last hour leaving the baby alone.
Which one of them then?
The dishes rattle in the kitchen. The eyes of a stuffed dog watch him leave the room.
If Thea knows what he’s seen, she says nothing. He can’t help it. Despite her shape, she doesn’t look pregnant. The circles under her eyes and the grayness of her skin enforce that. Mariella couldn’t be. R&D was famous for their lack of maternity leave. He has to let it go because asking Thea will do nothing but antagonize her. Everything is too delicate to distinguish how much he could push.
Finally, Thea sighs and concedes, telling him the information he needs and giving him a good date to try it. He sets the plans. Thea’s eyes are full of things she does not say but she keeps his secret.
The lab trips start back up before he gets everything settled. Mariella doesn’t join them. The corner of the room is empty as the lab techs draw blood and ask him how he has been. Nothing more is done than a regular physical and an injection that is supposed to somehow stabilize him.
He shivers the whole way down in the elevator. He’s not sure why.
She is waiting to take it up when it stops at the regular R&D floors.
Mariella steps aside, staring into her phone. Total disinterest is plastered across her. At any other moment, he would have tried to talk to her but instead he moves on. They shift separately like set pieces on a chess board. Barely does he catch her looking at him out of the corner of her eye. She jams the closed button and the doors slip between them.
Mariella can’t hide her surprise when the next night, he is waiting on her doorstep.
She walks if she can. Most of the Shinra employees do this because of the pure lack of outside that they get. She’s got a bag pulled over her shoulder and the moon has back lit just how tired her stance is.
Perhaps this isn’t the best night to do this. He is committed. It doesn’t matter.
The bag sways at her side as she stops far away from her own front door.
Sephiroth looks up at her. Part of him wants to stand but he needs to keep himself as minimal as possible. A First Class SOLDIER is not needed here. That strips him of most everything he is. He is himself. What an odd concept.
“I’d like to talk with you.” It’s the line that he thought might work the best. Neutral but requesting, nothing that has a demand in it.
That breaks her out of her shock. “Go to your apartment, Sephiroth. I’ve got nothing for you.”
She walks towards her house, towards him.
“I don’t need anything.” It feels like the right move as her hand stops pulling her keys from her pocket.
“Why the hell are you here then? I am off the clock. You don’t need medical attention.” Her voice is sharp. If he isn’t careful, she is going to push past him into her house and lock the door. The way this plan works is to catch her by surprise and to make her hear his words in a way that she is not prepared for.
There is nothing of surprise in Mariella. The muscles stand in her neck. She’s on edge.
“I want to talk about the last two years.”
“No.”
He sucks a breath in and plays the card. “You kept me here two years ago because you said I needed to rest.”
“Sephiroth, enough, I don’t want to do this,” she says. She moves quickly, trying to pass him on the steps. She manages it because he doesn’t stop her. Instead, he rises to his feet. He puts a hand on the rail and the other in his pocket. He needs to pretend that he is relaxed.
“I have gotten my rest.”
The key is shoved in the lock. “If this is about Wutai, my god, I’ll just throw you back there now. This has been nothing but one long train accident.”
“Mariella.” He walks next to her and puts his hand on her doorknob as it clicks.
She looks up to him with anger in her eyes. “I need you to leave me alone.”
“It was the right decision.”
The words are almost impossible to say. Part of him lashes out against admitting it. Saying this discounts the pain that he has felt. It makes that be something that he shouldn’t have done. It makes the wall of wrongs that Sephiroth has held crumble leaving part of him raw and exposed.
It makes him imperfect.
Imperfection is dangerous.
After all his thought, he realized that this admittance drives to the heart of their problem.
His words pay off as the fire in Mariella’s eyes falters. Her fingers slip away from the keys and she’s searching his face. He keeps his breath even and tries to not flinch.
“What do you want?” This time her voice is soft. “I won’t do this again.”
He lets his hand slip from the door. “That’s all I wanted. I wanted to say that and then perhaps see if you wanted to talk further.”
Her eyebrows dig together as she considers this. At Shinra, Mariella is full of intent. She is reaching towards a goal. Every move she makes is efficient. Here she stands staring at him without a clear reason like a deck of cards scattered on the ground. He’ll wait through her thoughts. This is his move.
Now it is her turn to decide.
A soft smile comes across her face.
He takes a breath to tell her the next part of his plan, about the restaurant reservation waiting for them and how they could try to figure out the rest.
Her fingers clasp his shoulder with a squeeze before dropping away.
“Have a good night, Sephiroth,” She says and reaches back for the door. She doesn’t even seem upset as she turns away. Instead there is a sense of finality. The door opens and then Mariella Haynes is gone.
The lock clicks.
Sephiroth doesn’t wait to listen to her walk away on the other side. This time he knows that she isn’t coming back. The plan didn’t work. She was gone.