I never got to hold him.
Never once, after they tore him from my body, did I get to cuddle my tiny son, or hold him to my breast.
But for nine months, I cradled him in my womb and gave him all of my love.
Hojo may have thought of my darling child as an 'experiment' or a 'specimen', but he was always a baby to me.
I was a weak woman, a foolish woman, to agree to what Hojo planed. I thought, foolishly, that it would make my husband love me again.
It didn't, if anything, he treated me colder than he'd ever done during our marriage.
I had stopped being a woman to him, at that point, and had become another specimen; one who had willingly took her chains.
Oh, Holy, so many times, I wished I'd listened to Vincent in those first fragile months and sped away into the night.
I wonder, where we'd be now, if I had? My little boy, Vincent and I?
I surely wouldn't be a prisoner here, hardly a mother; practically just a brood mare to produce what is needed and be put to pasture. Only Hojo's pasture is hardly a place of comfort. A tiny, ten by ten cell is what I call home now, with a rickety cot and a toilet as my only companions.
One of the assistants, bless her, has brought me two picture of my little Sephiroth. They're hardly more than specimen shots for his file, but they're of my Sephiroth and that's all that matters. I treasure those two tiny pictures, one of him bare hours old, and the other taken just recently, of him at nearly a year.
My precious child, my little one, the life I thought would win my husband's affection.
The only person that comforted me in those long months is gone now. My foolishness has likely killed him as well.
Oh Vincent, you should have run when you had the chance. My poor, beautiful, Vincent, would that you never have loved me, Hojo would have never noticed you if you hadn't.
I'm like King Midas of legend, only everything I touch doesn't turn to gold. Everything I love turns to dust or stone.
I wish that I'd run away when Vincent asked, we'd be somewhere safe and far away. I know Vincent would have loved and cared for my son. We would have been safe, and my poor Sephiroth would have never grown up like this. In a lab full of people who care nothing of him but what he can do for them.
It haunts me in my dreams at night, the thought of what might have been, the life I could have lived.
I hope that someday, my little Sephiroth will find someone to give him the love I won't be allowed to. I hope, and pray and dream, that Vincent will come and take us away from this terrible place. I stopped hoping for my husband a long time ago, but I can hope for his son…and, though I don't deserve it, I hope for myself.
It's strange, when I was a little girl and as I grew, I wanted nothing more than a child of my own, and now I have one and I can hardly be called his mother. I carried him, my body nurtured him, but once he was born, he was cut from me like the fragile umbilical cord that held us together. But I love him still, so very much, with every beat of my heart, I love my son, my little Sephiroth.
If the Planet decides to hear one prayer from me, it is this; let him grow up happy, loved, and cared for, let him bring to the world, not the pain his father has brought, but all the love his heart can hold. Let him love.
I do not think I will be there for his tomorrow, I want to be there for my son, but right now I don't deserve to be called his mother.
Dr. Lucresia Hojo.
