Common Grounds

Silence, and the sound of the clock on the distant far wall, nearest the door and right in sight; perfect for teasing you with the lack of time passing – seconds becoming hours, minutes becoming days and a desperate attempt to not think of what that meant for hours long shifts. Nearby a neatly organized bookshelf stacked with very few personal affects, one of the customary vine-like weed plants you would find in an office where conformity was encouraged and a picture that hung perfectly level on the wall. The watercolor lines met together to form a fence and a few dabs of colored paint for a flower buried in snow. Simplistic, quiet, muted. Curved, spiraling incense burned in a holder, a known fire hazard but the almost undetectable scent was relaxing to the person who sat in the rolling chair behind papers and partly illuminated by the clean light. And whatever that person wanted was, very rarely, given.

It was darker in there than it usually was, but it wasn't as if the light was completely necessary, a soft, incandescent hue emerged if you went in far enough to gaze into the eyes of the individual who sat at the desk trying to compose his feelings onto a blank sheet of finely lined paper. A melodious ripple of blue and green, shifting in his curved, cat-like eyes and under pale, silvery lashes, much more severe than usual, but also much more relaxed, personable. Approachable, even.

His uncovered fingers hovered pensively, a mark on the back of one of his hands, altogether inadvertently artistic in the way he held a black ball point pen embossed with a predominantly red symbol near the top, the tiny font proclaiming in official text that it belonged to the company of an evil god. The only god in this world that had any power.

Hands shifted and moved, unsettled, thinking as his faintly glowing eyes stared at the blank page before him. A young general, a master of strategy and born for war, he seemed...peculiar, familiar in the way he cradled then replaced the hardbound journal back on the cherry wood desk, right on top of the calender with its list of events for that upcoming period. All of it was written in the same small, fine print, bits here and there written in another, carefully jotted language made of symbols and strange letter combinations, others still mere permutations of the predominant language written instead with a far more...graceful hand, but still the same small and clear cut pattern. Within it showed a slight slant to the left and an unfortunate tendency to push too hard when writing.

The unmarked page waited, reflecting back his hesitance and insecurity before the pen shifted, hovered, tip perfectly still, ink simply waiting to be used.

Then, he wrote.

I do not know why it is that I am writing, nor do I know who I am writing for. I have felt fear and insecurity creeping over me recently, and it seems it has left with me with a desire to write because I cannot express it in any other way. Here I may have a voice to express my fear, but I am...ironically, afraid of writing it. Strange, unusual, odd... I, me, I feel fear. I have been told that I cannot feel, that I should not. I know how it interferes with the patterns of the mind and how it inhibits making proper correct decisions.

In any case, I am afraid, but what I am afraid of may seem to be...unusual. I have spent many long hours avoiding it, hiding from it and pretending it would never happen – but it keeps returning because it will can. It is amusing that I can correct myself, even here, for fear of saying it once can could make it true. I cannot give it credence, or it will do that which I am terrified of.

I am terrified of being left alone. It is a pit in my stomach that consumes me. Something I care for...immensely, deeply, that it could escape me in the night and I could never know until I awoke. Perhaps I would never find out, perhaps I would never believe it. I don't know if I ever could. I have found myself to...be incapable of accepting that fact because they have been there so long. Hard to think of a time when they do not come back, when I do not have to wait any longer and just reach out in the depths of the darkness that envelops my room and touch skin that is not my own, kiss fingertips, lips and the crease of a crooked smile. Enjoy the tentative tickle of hair followed by the soft, deep sigh.

I... this is. Personal. Embarrassing. Intimate. A collaborative effort for some semblance of sanity. I am...physically more powerful, more visible, more isolated and I carry my own secrets with me to my bed at night. My own secrets.

You have no idea how strange that sounds – how wonderful it feels to be able to say I have my own secrets. My little lies. My inner sanctum of guarded places where I belong. I have sought a personal niche of my own, a place that the professor cannot find in the late night hours that I can go to to be...safe. Secure. Even with something that could possibly get me killed for as long as I can remember, even when I wasn't aware of it. So many others have done the same, and I believe I truly understand why now what that means to have something to hold and to cherish even beyond a material need, a physical lust that doesn't warm the frosted nights any longer.

But...you see now why I can't just let it go, why it hurts knifes its ways through me at the mention of...losing something that is so indescribably precious to me. It fills me with the only sensation of home that I know. Quiet moments spent trading gazes, the laughter at the...silly things. The things we share. How I cannot dream of ever losing it.

Here, in this, I can share I am like all the rest – I am human. I have, in a sense, now my afternoons, my nights, my days, my milliseconds of closeness to look forward to. My whispers in the dark.

A subtle sound, low and consistent in its rise and fall – but faint, lacking the noise that the average SOLDIER walked with, clad as they were in heavy, reinforcing fabrics. It was impressively distinct in its lacking of definitive sound.

The image rose from the page, the black pen paused and the ink stopped flowing, paused, anticipating, unsure.

Quiet wonder, the unease fled, warmed directly as a smile spread over his curved lips, eyes cascading to a brilliantly electric blue edged in green, leather creaking as his weight shifted in the high-backed black chair in the office that had very little feeling except for what filled it now, subject to its masters.

"You're back."

A sinewy form embalmed in a black that never shimmered, never glowed, only absorbed color and light, hair recently freed from a band that was equally dark. The hair that fell across broad shoulders was slightly frayed, streaked in silver and always uneven, wild, thick, a complimentary opposite to the controlled precision with which he moved, balancing, prepared, always poised. An assassin.

The man handed the manila, tabbed folder to the bare-handed general, eyes hidden behind a pair of wraps that lacked the same luster as his skintight clothing did, all quiet, all muted, all adept and perfect for hiding. "Can't keep me away forever, sir; the mission is complete."

Sephiroth placed the folder aside, habitually flicking it open for a moment to look at the blank paper inside. "Excellent." His voice rumbled lowly, unable to keep his smile from curling the edges of his mouth. "On time as usual, Onze le Mechant."