InsaneJournal

Paper Angel 3/4, Final Fantasy VII (Sephiroth and Zack)
Title: Paper Angel, 3/4
Author:dogmatix
Rating: PG
Warnings: Zack being not-Zack
Word count: short-ish
Prompt: Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, Zack and Sephiroth: role switch - Zack as the bad guy, Sephiroth as the good guy.
Summary: In the absence of Her Son, he will do.
A/N: @_@ I'm having the worst time just sitting down and typing this, and also I haven't finished CC yet, dangit. So, a work in four short parts.



Green. Everything was green. You started to hear them when you'd been in long enough, the voices. Laughing, screaming, crying, whispering, they dance on the edges of your mind like butterflies.

He wasn't out of the green much, and it was difficult to think even then. Not because of the green - mako, he remembered sometimes - but because of everything else.

No longer a prize specimen, but only a disappointing failure, there was no longer a need to keep him functional.

He remembered waking up once, alone. Vertical, head hanging until his chin touched his chest, it had taken him a while to notice. He'd felt lightheaded. No, no not quite. The back of his head had felt... light, wrong. Actually, he hadn't been able to feel it at all. The back of his skull, that was. He hadn't known why Hojo would remove that back of his head, but he'd never questioned that the man would.

Without thought, he'd slammed his head back onto the wall behind him, only to feel bone connect with metal and a resounding clang to back it up.

He must have looked just as blank-eyed as the boy then, thoughts hiccuping slowly into motion.

Hojo had cut his hair. It wasn't even long enough to brush his shoulders. He simply wasn't used to the absence of weight and so it felt like there was nothing there.

He'd laughed then, that Hojo would resort to such petty measures. Laughed until tears tracked his pale cheeks and black spots whirled in his vision. Laughed until they came for him again.

There was a boy he'd see sometimes, grown to a young man now. He didn't want to think about that, about how much time must have passed in here. The young blond stared now with glowing empty eyes, both better and worse than the screaming, pleading, sobbing.

They were connected.

He'd heard the scientists talking. They were trying to turn the boy into him, into Sephiroth. Effectively, anyway - giving him the same basic cocktail of chemicals and mako that had made Sephiroth into such a monster. And Sephiroth could feel him, stronger even than that he'd felt Fair that night. Sometimes, he knew without sight what the boy was seeing, felt without touch when the boy was in pain. They resonated, he and Zack's friend. Strife. Cloud. His.

When the opportunity came, it was unexpected. Left relatively unattended while lucid, and within sight of Masamune's summon materia(today was a weapons skill test), it was beyond easy to kill the three guards, retake his weapon, and locate his blond. Several white coats were spotted, stained, streaked, and smeared with lifeblood-red when Sephiroth, dressed in SOLDIER greys and hefting Cloud over his shoulder, trotted out of the lab, alarms blaring behind him.

The air was chill and clear, and Sephiroth breathed deep of freedom.