InsaneJournal

"Falling Into Grace," Final Fantasy VII:Crisis Core, Sephiroth/Aerith
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Word count: 941
Summary: And I am falling into grace, into the unknown, to where you are.
A/N: Ahahahaha late like a late thing. Blame the US election eating my brain. The title comes from the Lifehouse song "Unknown"--"And I am falling in grace, into the unknown, to where you are." This went...somewhere I wasn't expecting. And HOW.
Prompt: Oct 21 - Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, Sephiroth/Aerith: AU, what if Sephiroth, not Zack, had fallen through her roof that day? – “I'm Aerith. You came falling from above, gave me quite a scare.”

--

He was falling.

Sephiroth was no stranger to falling, no stranger to being in the air and the sensation of moving within it. He had long trained in how to use the air to his benefit in fighting.

This was different. There was nothing controlled about this. This was a freefall, looking up to see the Plate growing further away from him.

This, he thought, is what it truly is to fall.

His mind was almost startlingly clear, and he wondered with surprising calm how Angeal's puppy faired. And it was easy, then, to recall the mission, and to think that he would not have to lie like he had planned--that he had truly failed it.

It was a relief.

His own time with ShinRa, he knew, was limited--sooner rather than later, it would be he would "die in combat," and he wondered who would be sent out to do it.

He was falling.

He knew what to do, how to use magic to buoy himself and control his descent. It would be an easy thing of it.

Instead he turned midair, so now he faced the structure--a church--rushing up to meet him.

I doubt this will kill me, he thought, but it will hurt quite a bit.

He closed his eyes, and almost smiled.

--

When he woke up, his first thought was that he was in far less pain than he should have been.

His next thought was that he was facing the wrong way--he was quite certain he should have landed face-first; instead he was lying on his back.

His third thought was that there was a young woman staring down at him.

"Oh, good. You're awake," she said. She was sitting in a crouch, her arms wrapped around her knees and her blue dress tucked decorously around her legs. "You came tumbling down from the sky. It gave me quite a scare!" she said and smiled, and Sephiroth had the oddest thought that she seemed very familiar.

He peered at her, trying to figure out if he had ever seen her before, then frowned, his eyes settling on her hair. It was her hair, he thought--it was the same color as Genesis'.

"Um, are you OK?" she said, sounding uncertain, and her eyes seemed, for a split second, to go a deeper green.

He wondered how hard he had hit his head.

"I believe that I'm fine," he said, sitting up. She leaned back as he started to move, shifting her weight back and resting more on the heels of her feet. Something about her put him on edge, but he had no idea what it was. He finally settled on the fact that she, through no fault of her own, had put him in mind of Genesis, and with the state of things being what they were, that was certain to put him on uncertain footing. The man had gone insane and dragged Angeal into his insanity, and seemed bound and determined to drag everyone down with him...and perhaps he should stop thinking about this, because he was frowning slightly, and the girl was pulling back slightly. "Where am I?" he asked, shaking his head slightly as if to clear it.

"The slums," she said simply. "This is an old church under the Plate," and Sephiroth could remember now, clearly, falling forward into it, and closing his eyes. It was only that landing seemed to be gone, and perhaps that was the best. He looked around, and blinked slightly at the most impossible sight he had ever seen.

Flowers.

Flowers, blooming from the pulled-up floorboards, letting off a faint scent he identified as lilies.

There was no way that flowers could bloom--that plants could grow, let along thrive--in this place where the sunlight never came. They were an impossibility, and the impossible was something he had learned long ago should be mistrusted.

I should be injured, he thought suddenly, looking up to see where he had fallen through the ceiling. I didn't try to catch myself. I fell through and crashed into those pews face-first, and I don't even have a scratch.

He turned to look sharply at the girl and the uncertain and uneasy feeling in him intensified. And he suspected that he was scaring the girl now, the way he was scrutinizing her, but that was of no import. He trusted his instincts, and his instincts were telling him, impossibly, that this slight, slip of a girl was dangerous. "Who are you?" he asked, and the words came out like an order.

The girl bit her lip and swallowed, then she raised her chin sharply. "Aerith. Aerith Gainsborough."

"Are you the one who healed me?" he said, making a stab, and by the way her eyes widened and shifted away guiltily, knew he was right.

"Your forehead was bleeding," she said, and one hand reached out for him. On instinct he pulled back and the girl, Aerith, blinked, her hand still hovering in midair.

"Thank you for the healing, then," he said, and rose to his feet. The longer he was there, the more something inside him screamed to get out, to get far away from this place and this girl with Genesis' hair and eyes green as his own, and he was almost unaware of how his hand had moved to the hilt of Masamune. He only noticed when the girl's eyes followed his hand and she bit her lip again.

He tried to silence the insane urges in his head as something stirred and screamed, and in that moment, he understood Genesis' madness.

--