Miasma

Chapter 2

Eight months.

That's how long it had been. Sitting on an unyielding, uncomfortable cot, Sephiroth stared blankly at the far wall and attempted to tell himself that he wasn't losing his mind. Four walls; two opposing surfaces...top and bottom. Steel and titanium, four feet thick with eight feet of concrete supporting it. Padded so he wouldn't attempt to 'terminate himself' by bashing his head into anything. The door was mechanical; triggered by an exterior lock mechanism. No windows, no food hatch, no doorknob. A bed bolted to the floor, a toilet with no lid...also bolted. A mattress and a scratchy coverlet, a flat pillow and a camera inlaid in the opposite wall covered with six inches of bulletproof glass.

Nothing else.

No books, no music and no writing apparatuses. No television or extraneous snacks or drinks. Certainly nothing to build or paint or create; nothing to preoccupy his mind. Meals came three times a day, accompanied by six armed guards whose uniforms were certainly not any SOLDIER-affiliated garb he was familiar with. Exercise was an hour and a half a day; a treadmill in another cell-like room next to his with assorted weights and a stretching mat...but nothing too heavy or strenuous. He was required to drink a gallon of water in a 24-hour period, along with various supplements.

Morning and evening, a nurse came in to check his vitals but never spoke to him. He was allowed eight hours' sleep, but was forced to get up for scheduled 'activities.' His clothes were simple, nondescript scrubs; not unlike the scrubs he'd wore as a youth in a similar situation. The only difference being that they were a slightly different shade of grey and somewhat softer. When he exercised he was allowed sneakers over his socks and ten minutes subsequently in the shower. Looking down at his hands, the green-eyed first clenched them before letting them relax.

He didn't remember how he'd come there.

When he'd fallen asleep at the end of his heat, he had no memory of the hours that followed. His last recollection was of curling around Genesis; warm, safe, and sated. Before that...he remembered Jenova. Huffing, Sephiroth focused his gaze on the wall again. Jenova. She had ruined him. Even now he could remember the way she'd poisoned his mind.
..taken control of his senses until the only thing he could think of was revenge. She'd driven him to henious, unforgivable acts that marred his psyche like thousands of irreparable scars. Sephiroth had killed a great many people before her, but he had never killed without orders, and he had never killed Innocents. He supposed, in the dichotomy of things the terminology of 'innocent' was debatable. But he had only ever slaughtered for a regime, never out of pleasure.

For his first month imprisoned, he'd struggled with it horribly. To the point where the staff were forced to tube feed him to keep him alive. That was only when he was too weak to defend himself...of course. They let him starve for at least a fortnight before he saw a single soul; and he was-at first-glad for it. He hadn't wanted to live because there was no way.he could make up for his crimes, and he didn't want to be part of something terrible anymore. Shinra had used him, used his mind and his strength to secure dominance over Gaia. They had brainwashed him and allowed him to be tortured without a second thought to his well-being. Sephiroth had never pitied himself, would never pity himself. But then, when they couldn't use his mental or physical prowess anymore, they had used his reproductive prowess. And he couldn't tolerate the idea of being part of the makings of what would amount to be a copy of himself. That wasn't life. He couldn't condone creating life to give that life death.

Beyond his starvation and initial refusal to live, the first month was torture in of itself. He was sick, violently sick for long periods of time. When he wasn't vomiting he was lying curled up on the cot inundated with nausea. Later, when he'd recovered somewhat, he acknowledged that the concept of 'morning sickness' was a pathetic joke. Because he was constantly ill. If he wasn't sick he was hungry, but the hunger was a trifle compared to gnawing ache of guilt embedded in his soul. He fought viciously to resist when they finally fed him, but he was too weak from malnutrition at that point and too miserable to focus on escaping. Instead, he lay on the floor after the ordeal and bitterly wished for death.