Warnings: Rating increase for War atrocities.

Blood

The battle was long over but the rage was still hot inside him. Outside, the conquered city lay cold and still. Smoke still rose from the rubble of the city walls. The stench of blood and gore still filled the streets. Survivors, the walking wounded, crawled, hid, were found and rounded up for interrogation, for torture, for death, whatever awaited the defeated protectors of this once-proud nation.

His heart soared with the dark memory. He had done this, he had ordered the siege, the storm of the beautiful walled city. He reveled in the thought. He saw again, the flash of his sword, the falling bodies, the blood, the dirt, the fear. He had led his men onwards and slashed a streak through the enemy ranks, a bold silver brushstroke against the city's yellows and greens. Mad artist, he splashed his own colors on the canvas, the red of spilled life, the black cloud of death and now, the pale grey gloom that rose from those who were left. Those colors, the pain that went with them, had been his too long. It was easy, in battle, to give the pain away, make it someone else's. He pushed his pain into someone else with every stroke of the sword.

It had been difficult at first, as a raw boy, thrust into the rage of war. Theoretical studies, training on a practice mat, even the matches against deadly opponents designed specifically to test his ability, were nothing compared to the real thing. The sweat, the stench, the absolute despair that surrounded the camps, these were a far cry from his sterile upbringing. Near-constant fear, he had always known, but here, it had a quality of the unknown about it. Here, fear was injury and death, not needles and surgery. But pain, there was always that. He could barely remember his first battle. It had passed in a haze of terror and pain. He had survived, fractured and broken inside at horrors he could not and would not call to mind.

It was easier after that. The situation was different from what he had known before, but he grew accustomed to it and learned to send his mind away. The enemy troops on the battle field were clad always in white armor, in his mind's eye, white, their own color of mourning and death. He did not know what the men he had come to command saw, perhaps no more than the fields of dark opposition and the fierce faces of the enemy. When the full heat of battle hit, Sephiroth no longer saw the hint of humanity beneath the helms. Amidst the white, each glinting eye became that of the monster who had plagued and tormented him all his life. And so, over and over, 'Hojo' died, and the little voice in the SOLDIER's head applauded his newfound thirst for blood while it buried the thought that, in seeking to slay his monster, he had become one himself.

Afterwards, though, it all came back. The pain he had sought to give away could be no one's but his own. The broken bodies that decorated the gruesome fields were only men, men who had died bravely even if their faces were forever frozen in fear. Once the rage passed, he remembered. The monster would always be waiting for him. There would be no escape. He would always be watched and controlled.

He had come to depend on the dangerous rage that gripped him. Out here, on foreign, hostile soil, with troops who feared his brilliant eyes as much as they trusted his authority, the burning violence was all he had. Though it threatened to swallow him, he fed it however he could. There were many ways to cause pain during wartimes.

The girl beneath him whimpered on the straw mat. The pale light that came through the room's one small window showed the pain on her face in sharp relief. She was a delicate thing, fragile, dark-haired and dark-eyed, like all the others. He never troubled with their names, could barely remember their faces. He only remembered the pain he gave them while his blood burned. Some fought him. Some submitted. Some bore all he did to them in near silence. Some screamed till their throats were sore.

This one had given in quickly, perhaps subdued by the smoky cloud of defeat outside. She stared blankly off to the side, unwilling to look directly at him. To do so would be to acknowledge what he was doing to her. If not for her jagged, forced breathing, she might as well have been dead. He growled above her in frustration. His blood burned for a satisfaction that he would not find with this unresponsive body. He pulled himself away and reached for his clothes. He dressed quickly in the dim light, more by touch than by sight and headed for the door. He heard the girl crying softly on the floor as he left. He did not look back.

Awareness seeped in slowly as his blood cooled. Clouds of heavy smoke curled in the still air. There was hardly any sign of life in the streets. A few regular troopers stood guard outside the more intact buildings. They snapped to attention as he passed. He strode forward with no care for where he stepped. His footsteps were sickening splashes on the crimson streets. Above the troopers' chatter and the male laughter from the buildings they guarded, there was a faint wail, the city's cry of despair. He thought of the broken girl he had left behind. There would be others like her, no doubt, who now wept throughout the captured city. So it was for the conquered. They gave way under the victorious, wept and picked up any pieces left afterwards.

'You are victorious!' the voice in his head whispered.

'I feel sick,' he told it and pushed it away. He marched on, letting his ears guide him as he sought to get as far away from that collective wail of woe as he could. Bit by bit, step by step, the air cleared of smoke. The low cries hushed, replaced by wild laughter and oddly enough, music. Sephiroth looked around carefully.

The buildings in this district were more ornate, more constructed for grace than shelter or protection than in most of the city. The streets here were not so red and the air not so foul. There was music, Wutaian music, from many of the upper rooms and Sephiroth heard raucous voices that he recognized as his own officers. The 'entertainment' district, he guessed. Often, such an area was spared the bloody brutality of battle, but what came afterwards was often the same as in any other conquered place.

"Oi!" Someone called out. "Over here, Sir!"

Sephiroth turned towards the voice. It was his First Officer, grinning like a madman as he leaned dangerously far over a balcony. The General sighed, too locked inside himself to care to deal with the bristle-haired man's exuberance. He kept walking but Zack was nothing if not persistent.

"General! Come on up!" He hollered again and leaned so far out that for a moment Sephiroth almost thought the man would fall over. Even as obviously drunk as he was, though, the Zack had excellent balance. Sephiroth stifled another sigh. He stood there in the deserted crossroads for a while and considered his next move. The wind picked up and brought a fragment of the city's lament to him. He trembled as it passed. The noise of the teahouse beckoned, offered refuge. He went in.

Zack met him on the stairs and waved him upwards, chattering all the while. "I was wondering where you were, sir! We've been having such a great time up here! You should have come sooner. The girls are so nice!" Sephiroth stopped halfway up the stairs, utterly unwilling to go down that road again. He glared at his spiky-haired officer, as if the man were to blame for all of it.

Zack seemed oblivious to the glare. "Now don't be like that." He reached out and grabbed Sephiroth's hand. "Honestly, Sir, for someone with your looks, you sure don't seem like you talk to a lot of women." He paused and looked back, curious. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

Sephiroth glared again and yanked his hand away. He stormed past the man and up the stairs, straight into the upper room. All action paused as he stood in the doorway. There were a few officers seated on the floor in varying stages of drunkenness, being served by elaborately made-up geisha. All eyes, were turned in his direction, the glowing eyes of SOLDIERs and the soft, dark eyes of young Wutaian women. All were frozen under his stare.

Something prodded him lightly in the back. "Say 'hello', General," Zack skipped around him and into the room to take a cup of warm wine from one of the girls. "Don't make Mama Ayame mad." He indicated the regal woman at one end of the room with a nod of his head. Despite the title the dark-haired man had given her, she seemed only a few years older than the young girls. She met his gaze full-on with a cold clarity. She was measuring him, he could tell. He carefully schooled his expression to one of blank interest and walked in.

Following Zack's example, the other SOLDIERs resumed their games, the flirtation and the drinking. Perhaps it was more subdued because of their Commanding Officer's presence, but it continued nonetheless. The man himself hardly paid attention to the music, the drink or the laughter. It was enough to be somewhere that the cries of the broken ones could not reach him.

The revulsion that he always felt after his war rage faded was creeping in, an insidious vine that caught his innards and twisted them, tangled in his brain and tormented his heart. He almost wished he could rip the organ out of his body, or peel his filthy, sinning skin away from his flesh. Instead he knelt very still in the Wutaian manner and kept his gaze on the straw mats before him.

Elaborately embroidered crimson silk interrupted his view. The older geisha, Ayame, had come to kneel before him. The General lifted his gaze to study her. Beyond the extravagance of her kimono, she was plainly arrayed. She went without makeup and her hair was arranged simply. Her expression was calm, thoughtful. Her black eyes betrayed nothing. She wore serenity around her like a cool cloak. Sephiroth decided that she needed no other adornment.

"Do you wish something of me?" His voice was quiet, meant for none but her to hear.

"Forgive me if I seem presumptuous," she replied in near-flawless continental speech, though the General felt uneasy at her words. "Perhaps you would prefer more reserved entertainment than this." She indicated the rest of the room with a delicate gesture.

Sephiroth looked around. Zack was trying to see how many teacups he could balance on his forehead and the apprentice geisha were gaily encouraging him. The General sighed. He turned back to Ayame and nodded. She rose with schooled grace and motioned for him to follow her out of the room. He tried to ignore the cheers and bawdy comments the men tossed his way as he left.

The geisha led him down the narrow hallway to a room hidden behind thin paper screens. He paused outside when she stood aside to let him enter. On an impulse, he knelt to remove his boots. He could feel her eyes on the top of his pale head as he worked at the buckles. She almost seemed to approve. By the time he finished, she had lit a thick candle in the spare, elegant room.

It was not exactly furnished for entertainment. Sephiroth spotted several musical instruments, lovingly stored in one corner and a futon in another. An ink painting of Mt. Da Chao hung on the wall to his right. It must have been Ayame's private chamber. He raised an eyebrow at the thought. Was she offering her person as well as her company? She placed a cedar tray before him and knelt on the other side, lit golden by the light of the flame. "Shall I pour you some wine?"

He answered her in her own tongue. "I would prefer tea." The glance she gave him almost succeeded at hiding her questions, but she smiled with a cultured shyness and went about preparing the tea. Sephiroth studied her intently. It kept his mind off other things.

She seemed perhaps a bit more direct than most geisha. In the confines of the small chamber, she eschewed the elaborate ceremony that defined Wutaian entertainment. Sephiroth wondered at the ease with which she did so. If it was a secret skill of hers, to so easily discard what must have been a lifetime's worth of upbringing, he would not have minded learning it. Her continental accent had been nearly flawless. Obviously she was a woman of some learning and knew just how to make her foreign guest at ease. He studied the way an errant lock of hair slipped over her shoulder as she poured the tea. There was a tension in her shoulders as she poured, as if she was nervous despite all other pretense.

She caught his eyes on her. He had long grown past the instinct to look away upon being caught. She turned away and he almost thought she blushed in the glow of the lamp. She knelt before him and picked up her own small bowl of tea with a tiny smile on her face. He raised his cup and returned her smile.

The tea warmed his hands even through the gloves. Welcome heat slid down his throat. He sipped without fear of being scalded and set the delicate ceramic vessel back down on the cedar tray. Ayame had not touched her own tea. That was when he knew for sure what her secret had been.

Already, he could feel the flush, the heat rising from inside to his skin. Whatever she had placed in the tea was strong and fast. His heart began to race. He heard it pounding. His vision grew red, as crimson as the silk on the beautiful, treacherous woman before him. He smiled at her even as he felt his consciousness fade. "I knew," he whispered and slid into a blood-red haze.

He was not angry. No, there was no need to be. If the poison did its job, he would finally be free of pain. There would be no desperate, driving need to hurt anyone else. The cries of the dying and defiled would no longer reach him. His mind would be his alone.

'NO!' The voice in his mind was furious. 'You will not die here!' Sephiroth was amused. He knew it would not let him die. His body was not meant to fail under such a simple attack. His heart seemed about to crush itself in the race to flush the toxin from his body. He felt his skin flare with an invisible fire. His eyes burned like impossibly hot coals in his head.

It faded. The blood color faded from his sight and the fiery rage left his body. He found himself on his side on the tatami floor. The whole thing must have taken only a few seconds. Ayame still knelt where he had last seen her, eyes wide with a shock that was turning quickly into fear.

He rose from the floor to a seated position and stared at her. "A brave effort, Ayame," he said. She backed away from him.

"It's true then!" Her voice was raspy from alarm. "You are no man. You are a demon!"

Sephiroth smiled darkly at her and leaned forward. "I might be, Ayame. I might be."

She scurried backwards in fright, knocking the candle over as she did so. Fortunately, it blew out before it hit the straw. It left the pair in a darkness that was tinted with the blue-green shade of the Planet's own blood. The unholy glow of Mako shone out from the demon General's eyes.

He could see perfectly well in the dark. The geisha's courage seemed to have gone out with the candle. Sephiroth stood and made his way over to where she cowered. He towered over her quivering form. She groped along the floor, reaching behind one of the stringed instruments as he approached. He smiled and knelt down before her. He could smell her fear, almost taste it.

He caught her wrist easily as she swung out. He tightened his grip and the short knife she held fell to the floor. She made a soft sound of pain. He watched the way her brow furrowed as she turned away from his bright stare.

"You never give up, do you?" he asked almost playfully. "Don't you see, Ayame, the battle is over. You lost."

She opened her eyes then, but did not look at him. "I know," she said quietly. "The knife was for me, not you."

Sephiroth let her hand fall and sat back on his heels. "Your city is lost, Ayame, and your country will be as well. Don't die for an honor that will soon mean nothing." Her breathing steadied with his cold words. She turned and looked at him the way she first had. In the dark, her eyes betrayed the secrets she had kept. The confidence and cunning he had suspected shone brightly under his gaze, and with them there was the fierceness of one determined to seize life and wring it for all it was worth, no matter what the circumstances. Sephiroth, a pawn all his life, could only admire that strength of will.

He reached out and brushed the hair away from her face. "You are a very unusual geisha, Ayame," he whispered. If circumstances were different…but they were not. He made to pull away but she caught him at the wrist and stroked the back of his hand. He leaned closer instead then, to claim her lips and was pleased to feel her respond.

The circumstances were what they were, no more, but perhaps, just once, he could seize the day himself, without the influences of his tainted blood. He whispered the woman's name as he parted the blood-red robe and pushed her to the floor.

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Time: 4 hrs 47 mins

Assessment: Took too long to write this one. Author knows this chapter is even more potentially disturbing than the last, but the challenge is about pushing her limits.

Mission: 83.33% complete