Let Me Die
Disclaimer: The author of this work does not own any of the characters contained therein and, in fact, the concept for this story is implied in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.
Lucrecia caught her breath, trying control her crying. "Give him back to me." She said as calmly as she could. She was trying again to convince Hojo to let her care for her son.
"Doctor, I do not think you fully understand the grave implications of your demands." Hojo responded coolly.
She shook her head. "You won't let me hold him... You won't let me touch him. And why?"
"Doctor, this experiment has—"
"Whatever you've done to him... I don't care. He's still human!"
Hojo looked at her solemnly. "No," he said, "he isn't."
"How can you say that?" She looked disgusted. "You don't care? Experiment or not, he's still our son!"
"For the sake of this experiment's success—"
"Oh, always the experiment!—Always!—You don't understand—"
Hojo stood to glare down at her. "No, you don't understand!" Hojo raised his hand, furious, and hit her sharply across the face. Her breath caught in a gasp and she raised a hand to touch her cheek. She stared at the ground in the direction that her face had been turned. She swallowed, tears beginning to come into her eyes. She shook her head and left without another word.
Of course she was angry with me. I could not have expected anything different after what I had said and done to her, but I had not seen her at all since then and it had been more than twenty-four hours since the argument.
I am not one to worry about such things, but I decided I ought to see if she was alright. I asked the first person I came across if they had seen her, and received a disapproving look and a curt, "no."
"Doctor...?" I glanced around the basement expecting to find her crying or else sulking and refusing to look at me. I guessed she was there, as she had developed a tendency to go down there when she was distraught. I found her after a moment.
There was no blood, no sign of a struggle, yet she was on the ground and I could not immediately tell if she was breathing.
"Lucrecia?" I knelt next to her to try to find out if she was alive. She had a faint pulse, and was still breathing, though shallowly.
Only after confirming that she was alive did I notice a spent hypodermic needle on the ground next to her, and on the table a small, empty vial that I recognized as having contained a powerful poison. I took her hand and found a puncture mark on her wrist. I looked down at her, shocked. I lifted her upper body off the ground.
"Lucrecia, what...? ...Why...?"
I could tell that she was conscious when she started sobbing. She slowly put her arms around me, as though half afraid that I would hit her again.
"Kill me," She said softly, still sobbing, "Please..." I was not sure at this point if she was still half-unconscious, or if she simply did not know what she was saying. However, she looked up at me intensely, looking almost angry, and I could tell that she was, in fact, completely lucid. "Please... I mean it." She put her head down on my shoulder. "Professor... If you love me... no... No, if you care about me at all... please." She continued to sob. "I can't live like this... Please, kill me."
I managed to carry her back to her room. In a few days she seemed to have recovered physically, but she never said another word to me, not even to ask about Sephiroth.