The Marked - Chapter Two
The lights had been turned off, and the only illumination came from the eerie glow of the mako prisons, in which dangled deformed figures that once, though it was a stretch of the imagination to believe so, might have been human. Lavina swore that the temperature must have dropped fifteen degrees even from that of the hall. Her hand, which she fearfully extended in the room, was tingling from more than just the sudden cold.
She clenched her eyes shut, finding blindness preferable to the mako's luminescence and the darkness, and pressed her palm flat to the wall, moving it up and down the whitewashed stone in search of a light switch. Surely whatever lay hidden in the darkness couldn't be as bad once it was unveiled…
She forced herself not to amend her statement.
This is no place for a child to be born…
First she slipped one arm inside, and then moved a foot to be her doorstop so she could survey the wall with both sets of tentative fingertips. When she found nothing within her arms' length, she instinctively moved a step outward from the doorframe, not realizing until the door slammed shut with grave finality, the sound of a tomb being sealed, that she had crept all the way inside.
Her hands seized the handle in alarm and she screamed, hysteria taking over. She firmly planted both feet, trying to rip the door free as she rammed the handle up and down to no avail. She was locked inside.
It took her a while to compose herself, for her surroundings were something from a nightmare. She hadn't realized how rapid and shallowly she had been breathing until her lungs screamed for air. Shuddering in fright and cold, she slowly sucked in the dry, sterile air until her chest was no longer feeling encircled by constricting steel shackles, though her heart didn't slow its rapid pace.
But there, tucked into a niche behind a desk and file cabinets, a tiny figure writhed in the mako light, choking on its own breath, letting out pitifully weak, mewling wails when it found the strength to breathe. The tiniest hands Lavina had ever seen were reaching everywhere, at her, at anyone, as its equally small feet flailed uselessly.
Lavina stilled, overcome with sympathy for the helpless little creature. All her fear drained, and in its place was a dark-tinted wonder. Here was supposedly the larval form of the strongest man to ever live, and he couldn't even breathe properly.
It should have been ironic, something to smirk at.
It broke her heart.
She no longer had fears or doubts about the child. He would do her no harm, not when he couldn't even sustain himself. Her heart cried for the trembling little boy, and, with hands ready to receive him, she approached.
It was no wonder that the child was crying. The little boy had been set on his back on a metal cart usually used to wheel supplies around the building. With no railing on the cart, it was a good thing that the boy could not control his mobility yet, for if he had scooted a few inches, he would have fallen three feet to the tile floor. The baby had a scrap of some cloth thrown hastily over him, but it was thin, too thin to keep him warm. At his head, a tiny hospital gown was crumpled; perhaps Hojo had meant to dress him, but had been preoccupied with making sure his wife was properly disposed of. His eyes were clenched shut, little wet tears leaving shiny trails on his perfect cheeks.
This precious, new little life had been cast aside, forgotten, set down carelessly.
Lavina shrugged her white lab coat off her shoulders. She had a lavender sundress on underneath, so she would be warm enough, though her arms and calves would be bared to the biting cold. She folded it messily, not really caring about neatness now, and picked him up with hesitant hands, laying the wriggling child onto the coat.
He should have been received in a warm blanket in the first place, she thought. She looked at her starched, pristine white lab coat, knowing that it would never serve to warm him much, but it was all she had, the only thing she could offer to the baby.
It was a harsh, bitter foreshadowing that the child's first blanket was a lab coat.
She quickly tucked the edges close around him, wrapping the boy tightly so he felt secure. As he was bound, the boy stilled, his cries turning to broken whimpers and soft, hiccoughing sobs.
Now that she had done all she could to make the boy warm, she set him in the crook of her arms, holding him tightly, pressing his tiny body to her heart. She rocked her body back and forth soothingly, bouncing just slightly as she whispered to the child. "Hush," she cooed softly. "Shh…it's okay, little one. Don't cry…I'm here….I'm here…."
She fell silent as she truly beheld the tiny little miracle for the first time.
His skin was milky pale, flawless in color and complexion, as cold as marble. Despite his shivering, he still had an immaculate aura about him, a feeling of quiet, budding strength pulsing through his tiny, frail body. Some newborns looked awkward, but his features were as perfect as if they had been hand-sculpted by a master artist. He glowed with new life and serene innocence. His downy newborn hair was the color of moonlight, shimmering in her hands, as light and silky as a dream.
Lavina felt as if she held an infant seraph, that at any moment she would wake to find he was only a fleeting vision.
"What are you?" she asked the child in wonder and awe. She ran a finger over his thin eyebrows, which looked to be a fine dusting of starlight, a hue lighter and softer than his hair. She touched one pale cheeks with her fingertips to feel that he was solid, a real baby, as real as she was, not a phantom apparition.
She let one finger alight on the tip of his small nose, and he opened his mouth, probably expecting to be fed, revealing a very pink little tongue. When he wasn't fed as he had expected to be, he softly moaned and opened his eyes for the first time to see who was doing him this injustice.
There was a glow in his emerald eyes, but from something different than mako. She couldn't place what it was, but it seared her to the core. What was it in this child that captivated her so? The young buddings of fate, perhaps, or destiny?
It was those burning eyes that made her think that perhaps there was something very dark to fear in the core of this tiny seraph.
"What are you?" Lavina asked again, this time more in fear.
The boy only gazed at her with those startling eyes, blinking innocently.
Lavina sighed deeply and readjusted him so he lay on her shoulder. She rubbed and patted his back, hoping that some of the friction would warm him at least a little, as he still quivered occasionally.
A lot ran through her mind in those moments of silence in the mako light. What was she doing? This baby wasn't hers. If she was caught, she probably would be arrested for trespassing on ShinRa property for holding him. There was no doubt in her mind that she was in dangerous territory for her small acts of kindness for the newborn.
And yet, if she didn't help him, who would? From the looks of how he had been cast aside in the cold and darkness on a metal cart, certainly not Hojo. If she left now, was the boy's fate to be raised in such a cold, unfeeling way?
And why was she caring anyway?
"What's your name, hmm?" she asked the child as she rocked him, as if he could answer. She almost wouldn't be surprised if he had, so strong was the intelligence and foreign influence in the depths of his eyes, but the only sounds he made were the warm little puffs of breath against her shoulder. Lavina chuckled softly and got to her feet.
Lavina strolled over to the desk, bouncing the boy gently as she walked, and picked up an open manila file that had been hastily filled out in red ink. Intrigued, she moved back toward the mako light and the cart so she could read by the light of the Lifestream.
All the baby's statistics had been faithfully, though rapidly, recorded. His weight and size were healthy, and all his physical features indicated that Lucrecia had undergone an average birth to give life to a normal baby. Lavina knew without peering at the peculiar specifics that this had not been the case.
On page three of the report, in a handwriting that Lavina knew wasn't Hojo's, was written in an ink as dark as blood Name: Sephiroth – "Pathway to God".
It seemed that Lucrecia's final defiance of her husband had been to give her son a name.
"Sephiroth?" Lavina said, liking the sound of the name and noting how well it seemed to fit. "And it seems you're a little godling after all." It didn't surprise her.
Smiling benevolently, she softly kissed the top of his head, and only then did the last of Sephiroth's chills cease.
She was so absorbed in warming and loving the child that she didn't notice Hojo's return until the scientist turned the lights on, blinding Lavina and baby Sephiroth and catching the young nurse red-handed with the scientist's newest specimen.
"What are you doing with my specimen?"
Little Sephiroth began to wail at the sound of the professor's voice.
A/N: Uh oh....caught red handed by deh HOJO! I don't envy Lavina's position.
I'm sorry it took me so blasted long to post. I've seriously been working on this like mad, but baby Sephy-kins is impossible to describe! I'm still not happy with what I have now, (it does him no justice --- I mean, if he's so perfect as a full grown man, imagine him as a baby! CUTENESS!!! ^.^ ), but I'll take care of that later.
Oh, and also AP and CATS testing kept me away. But it's done, and I only have a few weeks left of school. I'm considering doing a suicide writing dash over the summer, which means I force myself to publish a chapter a day, but that might kill me. I don't know, I'm still chewing on it.
Anyway, Motherland is up too, and I will update that soon as well.
Happy reading and thank you for the support! E-cheese to all! I will write soon!
............If Seph doesn't kill me for calling him cute...................