Sacrifice
By Karen Hart
Disclaimer: Xenosaga and its related characters, settings and trademarks are owned by Monolith Software and Namco Bandai. I write these fanfictions for love of the game(s) and make no money off of them.
Suou supposed he was a sinner. A huge sinner, even. The biggest.
He stared down at his wife lying prone under the covers, face peaceful and tried not to wince. There were no laugh lines near her eyes or the little mark that argument made, just a pretty face and smooth skin and brown hair. Like a doll. So he hardened his own face and forced a severe look into his own eyes before turning to face the assistant on the other side of the room. "Once her values have stabilized completely, we'll begin process 306." The words were harsh and cold, befitting a scientist.
For a moment he is startled when he sees movement under the blanket, a twitch where her left hand would be. But no, it's not consciousness, just the drug they administered to make her more "amenable" to linking to U-DO. Not that she needed it, considering why she was there. He calmed down. There was nothing special.
He tried not to think of the actual experiment, because then he'd tear Aoi—no, don't think of her name, she's just "the subject" now—from the bed and the electrodes from her body and try to shake her to an awareness that would never come. And he'd fall against her body and cry until all he had left were strangled gasps, at which point the guards would come in and escort him to a place where a complete stranger would put a bullet through his head.
The U-TIC Organization didn't take well to betrayal.
So he didn't think about any of it, just told himself that it was the only available option. Instead he thought of the rumors, because in a roundabout way, they made him feel better…no, not better, justified. They said he was cold. He supposed he was. They said she was his first choice for the experiment. She was. They told themselves it must be tearing him up inside. It was. They said it was only knowledge he really loved, and that he'd thrown his wife on the altar of science. They were wrong.
It was not the altar of science, in fact, but the altar of his daughter—their daughter—that he threw his wife on. For Shion he would perform every atrocity, if it meant she would never have to lay on one of those beds. He was sure Aoi—stop tormenting yourself, Suou—would understand.
He was fairly certain Shion didn't know much about her mother, not when she'd only been four when Aoi—it's not so bad now—had finally collapsed. He knew she didn't know her mother was an artist, or that the framed, hazy watercolor of the white-sailed boat leaving the port was hers. And Shion didn't know that her mother loved to sit next to the big window in the dining room and stare down at the ant-like people far below their apartment while she sipped her coffee. But there were things Shion must have remembered, like Aoi in the kitchen, making cookies that were harder than the plate they sat on and a gigantic mess of the counters, because she kept fingering the apron her mother wore.
Naturally she would ask Jin about their mother, because Jin was old enough to know what she was like. Jin, for his part would stammer something nervous and incoherent, because for all his natural calm and dignity, he was even now grieving, even if the mother he mourned was still breathing and the blood was pumping quite naturally through her veins. To Jin, she was gone, in a way that was worse than death, because it made them hope. So, disappointed, Shion would go to her father and ask him about her mother and he'd tell her Aoi was a wonderful person, and then he'd look at his watch and tell her it was getting late and she should go to bed, even if it was only eight thirty and she could've stayed up a whole half hour later.
Suou frowned, and shook his head. He was woolgathering when he needed to be at his sharpest. The assistant asked if he was all right. "I'm fine," he lied. "Actually, I'm a little nervous about how this will go." He hoped the assistant would misunderstand him. He got a nod of comprehension—the assistant had misunderstood. Good.
They hit touchpads and entered codes and passwords. Devices beeped, receptive of their commands, and Aoi convulsed. Suou watched startled in half horror, half sickened fascination as her limbs locked up and her hands clenched the sheet and the mattress under her, her throat working furiously. "Abort the program!" he shouted, his mouth forming the words before he was even fully conscious of them. The machines were silenced, and Aoi collapsed on the bed, death-still once more.
He frowned again, this time at the stream of data that was flowing across the screen of his PDA. A subconscious reaction to an unidentified stimulus? That made no sense, as there was no way for Aoi to be aware of anything in the real world, subconsciously or otherwise. Which meant more tests, new ones and ones they'd repeated half a dozen times, just to be sure.
He shook his head a second time, then saved the data and switched the PDA off, instead sitting down and focusing on the bedside terminal. They would figure out how to use that fear of U-DO to awaken the Zohar, and it would all be resolved. They were making progress, even in this failed test, and it was only a matter of time.
Aoi's sacrifice would not be in vain.