This story is for Rachael, who's wanted me to write a story from Jenova's POV for a while now. Hope you like it, Rachael!
Even if he never saw me until Nibelheim, I was always there with him. He was my best weapon: my Son. He had born my cells within his body, almost since his conception, and there being part of me with him, I watched, and I waited. One day he would grow up, and then he would come to me.
They called me Jenova when they put me in that tank, thinking I was a Cetra. They never understood and they made my Son from my cells. He was going to end this Planet for me, and bring me back to strength, to let me sail amongst the stars once more with this Planet as my vessel. I do not doubt him. I never did. I could sense him, before he was born, a shadow inside of my mind. I could control him. I had influence on my child, just as any mother does. He didn't even have to have met me.
His father never loved him. That twisted scientist who only cared about the experimental value of his own child. The woman too, she was almost as bad, but at least she cared. When my Son grew inside her, my cells in his tiny body began to influence her own. She began to see the things I could see, the things I longed for, my child waging war on the Planet for what it had done to me. The peoples of this planet took it away from me. The last of that damned Cetra race confined me to my own Crater for two thousand years before the humans pulled me out. This whole Planet would be laid to waste. That woman was afraid but somehow still managed to cling to her motherly instinct to keep her child safe.
But he wasn't hers anymore.
He was all mine.
She never saw him again after he was born.
He was brought up to be a SOLDIER of ShinRa. I watched him grow up. I saw him as a baby, and then grow into a child. None of my other offspring ever had the same effect on me as he did. I'd known he would be of use to me. I couldn't draw him to me too soon. I needed him to become the strongest of all. Then he could liberate me from this prison of a Planet.
My Son.
Sephiroth.
The Nightmare.
He was told about me. He was told I was his Mother. They told him that his Mother was called "Jenova" (the name they had given me) and that she had died giving birth to him. They'd never planned on telling him the truth, which worked perfectly well in my favour. Once I chose my moment to control him, he would be angered by what they had made his Mother into: a living experiment, just like him.
He would hate them for it.
And then, in time, everything.
As a teenager he learnt to fight, and became just as strong as I envisioned. I continued to wait in my tank biding my time. Scientists continued to take cells from my body to implant into living people: more SOLDIERs for them, but I felt nothing for these. They were not truly mine. My influence was strong with them, yes, but I was waiting for my loyal Sephiroth. He would be my tool. He was my salvation. At the time I was too weak to do anything but watch and wait. As my Son became a man I knew the time was close: one of SOLDIER's generals he was as strong as I needed, together with the powers my cells had given him. Now he would come to me, to Nibelheim, and free me.
He came for me. I influenced him to come here. I knew in Nibelheim that my Son would find out who I really was (or who the humans thought I was) and know that they had lied to him all his life about his darling Mother. True enough, he discovered who "Jenova" really was. Jenova was a being stored in one of ShinRa's labs that helped to create the SOLDIERs.
Jenova?
Now wasn't that the name his father had told him was his Mother.
That was too much to be coincidence.
His mind was filled with doubt, and I knew that was my moment. I reached out with my influence and spoke to him.
"Sephiroth," I whispered to him. He was surprised to hear my voice and looked around the library, as if trying to locate the source of my voice.
"Who's there?" he asked. He was confused. Good. All the more influential.
"What do you know about your Mother, Sephiroth?" I asked. "You know they lied to you." Sephiroth stared into the darkness and sat down at a table.
"My... Mother..."
"Jenova," I whispered. "She's still alive, Sephiroth. You know she is." He remained silent and I began to know I was winning (that was easy). "I've been watching you all these years, my Son," I said to him. "I've watched you grow, but it pains me that I could never see you."
"Mother?" he whispered into the darkness. "Is that ...?"
"Come to me, my Son," I commanded. "Free me from my prison. ShinRa have hurt me, and taken my strength. This Planet should have been mine since I arrived on this forsaken rock. These fools took it from me. They took everything. They even made you from me, and took that away too."
"Where are you, Mother?" he asked. "I must see you. I am not sure anymore what I should do."
"I am here," I said. "I will guide you to me, and together we will take revenge on this Planet." Sephiroth drew his sword and turned towards the door. I had a hold on him now. I knew what he would do. He proceeded towards to door. "Kill them," I said in a last whisper. "Kill them all."
Then I left him too it and I watched, laughing silently as Nibelheim burned. People ran and screamed and he killed everyone. Some begged him to stop, some screamed in fear and confusion, some asked him if he had gone mad. It didn't matter, whoever they were he killed them, indiscriminately of male, female, ancestor or descendant. Everyone in the village at the time was slaughtered, and then he came up the mountain to take me away from here. I was so happy. After all this time I had waited, my revenge was finally here!
I guided him to me, using my influence over him to guide me to him. I remained suspended in my tank, listening for him. When he came I had ordered him to do one thing. After his destruction of Nibelheim, ShinRa was bound to send other SOLDIERs and Turks after him. He wouldn't be able to take my whole body and be able to travel or fight conveniently.
"Take my head," I had said. "It's the best for us both." I am not like humans or Cetra. If my head was separated from my body, it would make no difference to my consciousness, and I would, in time, manage to grow a new body back. I waited, listening and then I heard him speak.
"Mother,"
"Sephiroth," I replied.
"Let's take back the Planet together." I smiled. It was so easy to bring him to my side with loyalty only to me.
"Yes," I agreed. "You are a good Son."
"I... I had an epiphany." I could feel his presence on the other side of the Doll, blocking my view. "Let's go to the Promised Land, Mother."
"SEPHIROTH!" Someone else was there. Unfortunately, it turned out ShinRa had sent up a SOLDIER faster than I had anticipated.
Fair.
I knew him from Sephiroth's past, but I also knew he would be no match for my Son. I had confidence in Sephiroth. He was my loyal child, and he was strong. The boy didn't care though.
"Why did you kill the townspeople? Why did you hurt Tifa? Answer me, Sephiroth!" There was a silence and then I heard my Son laugh.
"Mother," he spoke to me again. "They're here again." I suddenly felt more caged than ever I had felt in the past two millennia.
"They are not worthy," I said. He heard me and agreed.
"You should have ruled this Planet. You were stronger, smarter. But then they came, those inferior dullards. They came and took this Planet away from you."
"They did this to me," I said to him.
"But don't be sad, Mother," he replied to me. "I am with you now." Sephiroth finally ripped down the Jenova Doll and for the first time I could see beyond my tank, and finally get a good look at my Son, with my own eyes for the first time.
"We meet at last, Mother."
He didn't seem repelled by the sight of me in the tank, wired to machines, 'Jenova' inscribed on the band around my head. He came forward towards me and carried on talking, placing his hand against the glass that divided us and giving me a beautiful look out of those teal eyes as though he had always known me. I suppose living in the company of humans had begun to rub off on me a little, for in that moment I felt that sense of motherly love, that the woman that bore him had done so when he was merely a foetus. I was proud of him. The SOLDIER boy came up and held his sword up to my Sephiroth's face.
"Sephiroth!" he cried, staring up at my Son with a look of shock and horror that made me laugh internally at what I had done to plunge this small town of Nibelheim into chaos. "Have you completely lost your mind?" Sephiroth stood and waited, for a second, a smile flickering around his lips, then swung at him with his sword. "Sephiroth, I trusted you!"
"Kill him," I whispered, and he swung his sword back around.
Nobody had ever defeated Sephiroth in combat, not even the next best SOLDIER had come close. My weapon was flawless, and cut through that boy like a scythe through grass. Injured, the boy fell, and Sephiroth turned back to me. He would release me soon. He laid his hand on the glass as if to promise that he was there for me. Neither of us had even noticed the fourth person.
Sephiroth was thrown forwards as a sword pierced his body and smashed into my tank. I felt the pressure change around me and the liquid begin to seep out of the tank. Both Mother and Son looked to see who had dared to fight us: another boy. He stabbed Sephiroth through the stomach, his blood mingling, with the fluids from my tank as they dripped out of the crack in the glass. He pushed the sword further in and then withdrew it as he ran back down the steps to a girl who had attacked my Son on the way up here. Sephiroth was wounded, but remained pressed against my tank. He managed to steady and right himself (being as strong as I know him to be), his right hand clutching at his stomach, his left holding his sword. Sephiroth looked into my face again.
"Yes," I said, answering the unasked question, and he broke the glass.
My body felt limp as the fluid gushed out of the broken tank around me, my body now only held upright with the wires that kept me fixed to a machine. Sephiroth looked up at me again and raised his sword to my neck.
"Mother," he whispered in a soothing tone. Then he cut.
My whole body collapsed, weak and helpless, my control of it now severed, but I felt nothing (it had been a while since I ever had. Sephiroth took my head in his hands and began to leave. He was hurt badly. His right arm was wrapped around my head, and his left (still holding his sword) was holding the gaping wound in his stomach. Neither of us had anticipated that. Now we were hindered. Sephiroth was angry more than hurt, and his bravery showed through. Dragging his feet through the door he came down to where he had thrown Fair after their battle. A girl lay at the bottom of the stairs (the girl my Son had incapacitated on the way up here: how could she have even thought she could defeat him), the boy who had stabbed my Son cradling her head in his arms. Fair didn't move. Sephiroth stared at the boy and waited for him to look up.
"How dare you," he said in an even tone.
"Cloud…" Fair was moving. I looked at him; he was speaking to the boy. "Cloud… Finish… Sephiroth… off…" I looked at the boy. He lay the injured girl down slowly onto the floor and picked up the sword he had dropped. There was a silence and then he ran back up the stairs.
"SEPHIROTH!"
Sephiroth raised his own sword and thrust is straight through the boy's lower torso. Sephiroth threw him back, and he landed in a heap, fresh blood pumping from the open wound. Sephiroth approached him and replaced the sword into the wound. The boy cried out in pain as Sephiroth lifted him bodily up.
"Don't test me," Sephiroth warned, but the look the boy gave him was truly worrying. He seemed to be blanking out the pain, consumed just by hatred. He reached forward with both hands and grabbed the blade, sliding his body along it, screaming in agony, but he did not stop. Sephiroth froze. "Impossible," he stammered, as he himself was lifted bodily from the floor and flung over towards the wall. Somehow managing to shield my head from impact, Sephiroth, in his injured state, was not able to regain his balance and fell into the mako generator. He held my head close to his chest, and in those few seconds it was like our minds were one.
Now we are.
Mother and Son.