(Changeling n. a child or thing believed to have substituted secretly for another, esp. by elves etc.)

There is no one moment to Sephiroth's discovery that he isn't considered human.

He is a year old, and he remembers, as clearly as he remembers the first time he met Zack, Gast leaning over him, his eyes (guilt-stricken (guilt, n. 1. the state of having committed an offence; 2. remorse caused by feeling responsible for some offence) and a word, 'changeling'. He did not discover the meaning of it until he was six, after Gast disappeared.

"It would be unethical… if it were human," the doctor says irritably to a squeamish assistant.

His skin, his blood is burning green, and he is screaming and howling, but only in his head, his face contorted with effort of keeping his screams locked away safe within himself. "Inhuman," one of the assistant nurses says, and he hears it clearly – into utter silence the word 'inhuman' glitters like the sun on the edges of broken mirror pieces.

He sees himself in a mirror for the first time; he sees his own eyes and is afraid of them.

The look on the doctor's face when he tries to pull away, his skin too sensitive to bear his cold professional touch: the angry, insulted contempt of a man for an ungrateful animal he is trying to help against his better judgement.

The looks on the faces of hardened SOLDIERs when he is introduced.

He is standing before the President, and the Turk at his side can't stop looking at his eyes, taking quick, furtive glances, a crow pecking at carrion. Sephiroth stares at the President without blinking, able to see the faint sweat-sheen on his forehead, to hear the rustling of cloth against cloth as he shifts uncomfortably, to smell the faint, acid tinge of his horror (horror n. terror; disgust; repulsion; its cause).

"Angel," a little girl says when she sees him standing on the other side of the street. He knows his own nature when he hears that word: beautiful and monstrous, pitiless in his apparent perfection.

The looks on the faces of grateful SOLDIERs when a battle is over with.

Screaming, a warrior in Wutai colours calls him a monster (monster n. 1. person, animal, thing of abnormal shape or huge size; 2. abnormally wicked, cruel person; a. monstrous 1. like a monster; 2. shocking; 3. hideous; n. monstrosity 1. freak; 2. badly made, hideous object; 3. Sephiroth), and he feels the truth of it in Zack's repeated and insistent denials. "Doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about," Zack says, over and over in different phrases, and Sephiroth reads between the words and knows what is really being said: that if he were not a monster Zack would not feel the need to deny it.

The eyes of hundreds of new recruits, all of them sharing a single thought, wearing a single look: awe. Worship. Adoration.

He used to hear voices beneath the surface and around the corners. The ability died after too long in Midgar, after he realised Zack heard nothing and he pretended he too could hear nothing until the pretence became the truth. He used to feel the Planet's heart beating: a slow, inexorable throbbing beneath the thin mantle of earth, but it was beyond his precious strength to touch back; he destroyed the connection himself. He still feels its wariness of him, knows its word for him.

The word is abomination.

(abominate v. detest, loathe; a. abominable; adv abominably; n. abomination object of disgust)

Sephiroth likes the thought of changelings. It makes him feel part of something, even if it is something twisted and mistaken.

He imagines himself, the infant that was a normal child, sleeping in a crib near his mother. His real mother, not the mother he sometimes hears in whispers when the green is in his veins, in his head. He imagines his mother in earth tones, like the Ancient he half-remembers, singing to her daughter, fearless and devoted (devote v. set apart, dedicate; addict oneself to; devotion,strong affection, adherence; devoted a. 1. zealous; 2. dedicated) . He saw them once. He had envied (envy, v. begrudge another's success, possession etc; feel jealous of; n. covetousness) the feeling between them. So his mother has soft dark eyes – or green, he might be able to stand that – and she has brown hair, or black, maybe? and it's long enough that it slides past her shoulders, long enough for her to gather some in one hand as she leans over his crib and flick it gently across his smiling infant face, painting him in broad strokes.

Maybe his child-self has black hair like his mother or father – why is there no father in this picture? – black as sin, black as the comforting darkness of the womb, of the night, of the freedom from other people. Not bright, pitiless white that pretends to be perfect, that gives the impression of goodness and light; that lights up too much and gives him no place to hide.

He imagines shadows entering the room in the night (the shadows wear Hojo's voice, walk with his hunched walk, move long skeletal fingers in his scissor-handed way) and taking the child, the Sephiroth that would have grown to be a normal man, and replacing it with a white-haired blank-eyed baby with fingers a little too long, eyes that don't blink, a deep adult voice speaking gravely from tiny infant lips. A pale copy. His mother should have thrown him on the fire.

Perhaps the horror of his transformation killed his mother.

He wonders if somewhere out there the shadows have kept the real Sephiroth locked away. If they have, perhaps he will find him one day. See what he might have been. See who he should have been. They will opposites perhaps. His true self will have dark hair, he imagines. Black. He likes the thought of having black hair. He is tired of silver, tired of the spotlessness and the glitter of the word. His eyes… they will be green, he supposes, he is quite fond of the colour; but they will not be tiny pinpricks of gleaming green light in the dark. They will not have elliptical pupils, like a cat, like a serpent – like a changeling-child, needed to save him from the glow of the magic in his body that tries to get out of his eyes. He will not be described as fluid, as feline, as angelic. His true self will smile and laugh a lot, will be a man people are comfortable with, will be someone people are capable of liking, of loving (love n. 1. affection; 2. charity; 3. devotion; 4. sexual passion; 5. sweetheart (sweetheart n. term of endearment for a person one cares for) 6. in games, no score)

He knows this is fantasy (fantasya. 1. imagination; 2. wild, unrealistic idea; 3. fantasia. fantastic a. 1. wild and strange; 2. impractical; 3. coll wonderful). He knows he is as he has always been.

(specimen exhibits signs of advanced growth; does not however respond to visual or auditory stimulus as expected in comparison to conventional standards of development, e.g. does not vocalise or smile in response to being spoken to, shows no excitement at the sound of approaching footsteps, voices etc.)

A note in different writing, too soft and cursive to belong to the professors, angrily struck through.

(Gast's steady, clear hand, Sephiroth walked unaided for the first time today. Very pleased.)

(specimen's co-ordination advancing rapidly. Muscular development and motor skills proceed at accelerated rate. Immune system compensates rapidly for defects made viable by lack of proteins and antibodies present in milk (influence of J cells?). Verbal communication seemingly impaired.)

A picture of himself, solemn and indifferent. His eyes are pale green, his pupils spherical. He is a year old, perhaps – he does not know how to judge the age of a child from size or shape; he has seen so few of them.

(Sephiroth spoke today. His first word(s): Mother. Crisis. Blood. Greengreengreen.

I almost wish he had not spoken at all.)

He imagines having the ability to twist his body into the shape of somebody else, somebody normal. Bones and skin stretched and snapped into a different size and body shape, the cartilage and bone of the face being pushed and pulled into shape like wet clay, every hair removed and grown in another shade, a different length. To change his looks, voice, words; to take the image of someone else and walk in their skin.

Foolishness, as Hojo would say.