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The Path to Redemption	By : Nakkinomiko Category: Final Fantasy VII > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 1095 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don’t own Final Fantasy VII or any of its characters. SquareEnix does. I make no money from this…I just like to play with them.

Chapter List
- 4
- 5
- 6
Disclaimer: I don’t own Final Fantasy VII or any of its characters. SquareEnix does. I make no money from this…I just like to play with them.
A/N: Warnings…angst, lots of it.
******
Chapter 5
Rufus arrived at the hospital alone. Reno and Rude had been left behind to keep Kadaj company, and Tseng and Elena were too tired to accompany him. Not that Rufus cared--he got tired of the constant company sometimes. Tonight, he was just happy to get away from Kadaj’s inquisitive eyes. Kadaj knew that something was up, and Rufus felt somehow wrong keeping the truth from him, but wasn’t willing to risk telling Kadaj anything until he knew what state Sephiroth was in.
Rufus took the elevator to the third floor, and stopped at the nurse’s station when he saw that Maggie was on duty.
“Good evening, Maggie,” Rufus greeted.
Maggie looked up, and then smirked.
“Where’s your entourage?”
“I left them home,” Rufus said with a shrug.
“Ah, some much needed quiet time?” Maggie said. She lifted her left hand to push a stray piece of blonde hair out of her eyes, and Rufus felt a frown tug at the corner of his mouth. Her engagement ring was missing.
“Maggie, you didn’t lose your ring, did you?” he asked.
The smile froze on her face before she schooled it away and gave him a weak smile. It was then that he noticed the absence of her customary makeup and the shadows under her eyes. His frown deepened, and Rufus had the distinct feeling he wasn’t going to like what she was going to tell him.
“No. I . . . I gave it back to Daniel.” Her voice was so quiet Rufus had to strain to hear it. “I left work early last night, and went to his apartment . . .”
“Maggie?” Rufus reached out to catch the tears that suddenly started to fall from her eyes.
“There was another woman there,” Maggie finally managed. Her voice was a broken whisper. “He was in bed with another woman. I . . .I just took the ring off and set it on the bedside table and walked out . . .and he didn’t even try to stop me. What does that mean?”
“It means he’s an idiot,” Rufus told her with a sad smile. He gave her his handkerchief. “If you need anything, even if it’s just groceries, you call me, got that? If I can‘t come, I‘ll send one of the Turks.”
“Oh, you really are a good friend,” Maggie said. She used his handkerchief to wipe away her tears. “I don’t understand why you’d even bother with me.”
Rufus made an incredulous noise.
“Maggie, you were right there by my side while I fought for my life, and you were nice to me even when I was being a total ass,” Rufus said.
“It’s my job to be nice to patients,” she said.
“Well, you do it very well, then. It was above and beyond the call of duty where I was concerned, and I won’t let you say otherwise. I was a terrible patient, and you were extremely kind. You came and visited me during your breaks. You didn’t have to do that!”
She was blushing beneath her tears, and she gave him a weak smile. “Thank you, Sir.”
“It’s Rufus, Maggie. We’re friends, and I won’t have my friends calling me that.”
“Okay,” she said. The smile she gave him was a little stronger, and she tried to hand his handkerchief back to him.
“Keep it,” Rufus said. “I have a feeling you’ll probably need it for a bit.”
“Thanks, Rufus.” She folded it and stuck it in her cardigan pocket.
“Will you be okay?” Rufus asked.
“Eventually, I think so,” Maggie said. She was still fighting tears. Rufus could see them welling in her eyes. “It was just a shock . . .but I guess it’s better to find out now than after the wedding. And I’m not looking forward to going back there to collect my things. I feel like such a fool, Rufus! I wonder how long it’s been going on . . .”
“When are you planning on picking up your things?”
“Tomorrow,” she said. “It’s my day off.”
“Call me,” Rufus said. He took a business card out of his pocket and picked a pen up off the desk and wrote his private cell phone on it. “I mean it. Call me when you’re ready to go, and I’ll come help you.”
“You really mean it, don’t you?” Maggie’s eyes filled with tears again. “You know, it’s so unfair that you’re gay. You’re the perfect man, really.”
Rufus gave a short bark of humorless laughter.
“Oh, no, I’m not, Maggie. You’ve got top level clearance. You’ve read all the files. You know my legacy. I’m the furthest thing from perfect. Just ask your newest patient. He’ll tell you all about how imperfect the Shinra family is.”
“You are not your father,” Maggie said softly. “Haven’t we had this conversation before? You are a good man, Rufus Shinra. Nothing will ever be able to convince me otherwise.” She reached out and plucked the business card from his fingers and put it in her pocket. “And I will be calling you tomorrow, so be ready.”
“Count on it,” he told her.
“So, I’m assuming you’re here because of my new patient?”
“You assume correctly,” Rufus said with a chuckle. “So, Nurse Maggie, how is your patient?”
“Still sleeping,” she said with a shrug. “His last dose of sedative was over four hours ago, though, so he should be waking soon. He’s been placed in restraints, as you suggested. And Dr. Graham told me to tell you that Dr. Winterfell will be here in about twenty minutes. She wants to be here when he wakes.”
“Where’s Dr. Graham now?”
“Rounds,” Maggie said. “Doc says you can go see him, though.”
“Thank you, Maggie.” He reached and hooked a finger under her chin and tilted her head upwards slightly. “Keep your chin up, ne?”
She smiled, and this time it reached her eyes. “Sure.”
*****
Sephiroth had been awake for some time, but he had no desire to open his eyes. It was fear that kept them closed. The restraints around his bare wrists and ankles were the first thing he’d been aware of as consciousness had started to creep back to him, and for one terrifying moment, he thought himself back in Hojo’s laboratory. The panic had nearly suffocated him, until he had realized that he was lying in a soft bed rather than atop a stainless steel table. He’d managed to calm himself, then, but he still did not want to open his eyes, because once the panic subsided, the memories had come.
And the memories were so much worse than the panic.
A cold knot formed in the pit of his stomach as he sorted through the past ten years of his life. It was difficult at first, but gradually the bits and pieces started to fall into place. All too quickly he had the big picture of all that had occurred, and it left him feeling horrified and full of self-loathing. What have I done? How could I have let this happen? Because, much to his dismay, there had been a fleeting moment in Nibelheim where he could have thrown off Jenova’s influence. There had been a moment where the sound of Zack’s voice had penetrated his anger and hatred and just for a second he’d been able to differentiate his own mind from Jenova’s. But he hadn’t been strong enough. He’d let his own anger take over, and Jenova had won in that moment.
And Sephiroth had truly given up his humanity. He tried to block out everything that came after that, but it was pointless. The string of memories were like a snowball running down a mountain, gaining size and momentum until it could not be stopped. He found himself fighting tears as he remembered all that had passed, the lives he had taken, and the near destruction of the planet itself. When Jenova had been in his head, whispering to him, it had all made perfect sense. But looking back on it now, he saw it for the madness that it was, and he could only despair.
He was a monster.
“Sephiroth, are you awake?”
He recognized the voice immediately. Penelope Winterfell.
“Yes.” His voice came out a harsh whisper. He heard her move closer to the bed, and he heard more movement. There were at least four people in the room now, maybe more. And still, he didn’t want to open his eyes.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked.
He felt weight settle on the edge of the bed, and then a feather light touch on his face. It was then that he realized he was actually weeping, and that the tears had given him away.
“Dr. Winterfell,” he managed. “I remember you.”
“I see.” Her voice was colored with sadness, that had it been pity, might have angered him. But there was no pity in that voice, only the same compassion that she’d always given him. “How much do you remember?”
“Too much,” he whispered.
“Sephiroth, open your eyes for me, please?” Penelope touched his cheek again with her fingers. “There are people here to see you, and they want to help you, but they can’t if you hide from them.”
Sephiroth swallowed hard, and then opened his eyes. Except for the gray in her hair, Penelope was much as he remembered her being. Her hazel eyes looked down at him warmly, as they always had, even when he was being his very worst--and he’d certainly done terrible things since the last time he had seen her. She smiled slightly.
“I know it’s going to be hard, but we can work through this,” she said. “One step, one day at a time, right?”
“I . . .I don’t know,” Sephiroth whispered. “It’s really bad this time, Penelope. I should be dead. I deserve to be dead! I don’t think I should be helped!”
“It wasn’t entirely your fault.” Penelope dried more of his tears.
“It was!” he hissed. “I could have stopped it, there was a point when I think I could have stopped . . .”
“Stop it,” a low voice commanded from somewhere to his left.
Sephiroth snapped his mouth shut and slowly turned his head. He felt his mouth go dry as he locked gazes with sapphire blue eyes. Those eyes held anger as they looked back at him, and Sephiroth involuntarily pressed himself into the mattress in an attempt to escape their intensity.
“Cloud,” Sephiroth breathed. Of course he would be there. As if they would let him exist without Cloud as insurance. Not that he blamed them. . .oh, he didn’t blame them at all . . .
“I told you to stop it.” His eyes were no less intense, but his tone was softer. “You couldn’t have fought her, and I should know, right? I certainly didn’t mean to give you that Black Materia two years ago, did I?”
“Of course he didn’t,” Penelope said.
“It doesn’t change the fact that I . . .” Sephiroth couldn’t finish the sentence. He’d killed so many. His eyes flicked towards another corner of the room, and he couldn’t quite meet Rufus Shinra’s gaze. He’d killed this man’s father, in cold blood . . .
“Although, I dare say some of your victims deserved it.” Rufus’s voice was low and deadly serious. “My father qualifies, and frankly, you were justified in slaying him. It’s his fault, really, that all of this happened in the first place. I can’t honestly say that I wouldn’t have killed him myself once the truth came out. The things that he did . . . .”
Sephiroth finally met his gaze, and found only compassion there.
“I shouldn’t be forgiven,” Sephiroth found himself whispering.
“We’re going to have to work on that a bit,” Penelope said. She used her fingers to turn his head towards her again. “Sephiroth, there are other things we need to talk about, first.”
He frowned slightly. What other things could there possibly be? What could be any worse?
“How much did you read, when you read Hojo’s journals?” Penelope asked.
Sephiroth closed his eyes and tried to remember. It had been his name that had caught his eyes in the journals, and now that he thought about it, he really hadn’t read much beyond the section that contained the notes from Hojo’s experiments on himself. There had been several other volumes that he’d never even touched that day. He’d snapped long before he’d even finished reading his own information!
“I think I barely skimmed the surface,” Sephiroth finally answered. He opened his eyes again and looked up at her.
“Then you don’t know about your brothers.”
Sephiroth’s eyes grew round. “Brothers?”
“Hojo cloned you,” Rufus said from his corner. “He and my father thought that they could make an army of perfect warriors using your DNA. But they weren’t exact copies . . . he mixed other’s DNA in to see which combinations would work better. There were five total--two died in the lab. Three survived.”
Sephiroth could only stare at them. It was several moments later before he managed to speak again.
“What . . . what happened to them?”
“Yazoo and Loz perished trying to kill Cloud,” Rufus said. He sighed and ran a hand through his blonde hair. “They were trying to protect Kadaj.”
The name made Sephiroth’s heart rate accelerate slightly. I know that name.
“The name means something to you,” Cloud stated.
Sephiroth nodded, not able to speak because he had no words to explain the feeling he had in his gut.
“Jenova used Kadaj to bring you back into the world a second time,” Penelope said.
“And Cloud stopped me . . . again,” Sephiroth whispered. He felt the sting of tears in his eyes again. “What happened to the third?”
“Kadaj is alive.” Penelope smiled down at him. “But he doesn’t like you much.”
Sephiroth frowned and nearly asked her why, but a flash of insight gave him the answer. He laughed bitterly and his lips curled into a sneer. “Because that bitch spurned him for me, didn’t she? She used him . . . just like. . .” A sob caught in his throat, and tears spilled from his eyes. They were hot against his cheeks, and he closed his eyes tightly. In that moment his emotions were so painful that he simply wished to die. He felt Penelope’s hand against his cheek, and then her fingers were smoothing his hair from his face.
“I think that’s enough for today,” Penelope said quietly.
He could not have agreed with her more.
*****
TBC
- 4
- 5
- 6
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The Path to Redemption