Home and Family

As Genesis lay on one of the cots and waited for the transfusion from Sephiroth to finish, he held a hand over his eyes and chuckled. "I have two younger sisters..." he murmured for the tenth time since the doctor's announcement. It had been almost half an hour since then, as the first thing the doctor had done was take a sample of Angeal's blood to see if it showed the same signs. It did, just to a lesser degree, so the transfusion for both was a go-ahead.

Sephiroth, laying on the other cot, sighed and asked, "Do you think you could stop repeating yourself like a broken record?"

From his chair beside a stunned-silent Shalua, Angeal commented, "I don't think you'd be much better in such a situation, Sephiroth."

The doctor halted the transfusion passing through the wires and the I.V. and told the two men in the beds, "Okay, stay laying down, General. Commander, you're fine to get up as soon as I remove the needle from your arm. I'll take a sample to test later tonight, so don't run off right away. In fact, perhaps you and Shalua should just find a quiet corner to talk in while I'm working with Commander Hewley and the General."

While the man worked on disconnecting the needle and healing the wound it left, Genesis said, "If Shalua has concerns about talking in front of Angeal and Sephiroth, we'll go somewhere she's comfortable. Otherwise, we can stay here."

"There's nowhere more private than here, even with the doctor and your friends here," Shalua answered, voice oddly soft. "But..."

"But what?" Genesis asked as the healing finished and he could sit up. She stayed silent as he sat in the chair on the other side of her and Angeal got up to lay down on the cot. The doctor was hooking the black haired man up to the I.V. as the red haired one prompted her, "Shalua, what thought did you have?"

"Um, just...the name you were born with...Was it really Genesis, or did Mom name you something else before you were called that?" the girl asked.

"Does it matter that much?" Angeal asked as the transfusion to him began.

"What are you talking about? Of course it is!" Shalua stated angrily.

"No matter what his name was, or is, it does not make you any less siblings, does it?" Sephiroth asked, and she froze.

"That's true," Genesis agreed. "But for me, it's more like...What kind of life would I have had if I'd been raised by my real mother? Maybe I'd never have joined SOLDIER if I'd grown up with my mother and sisters, or maybe I still would have and our friendships would be completely different. I don't know that it makes much tangible difference in that sense because those are all 'what ifs' which can never happen now, but it would tell me something about my mother. Was I wanted, or did she willingly give me up, you know? And what about our father, for that matter?"

"She wouldn't have willingly. I never understood why she was so sick all the time (1)," Shalua told them, eyes seeing something far away. "Pictures from when she was younger showed her strong and happy and—healthy, not like I knew her. When she died, it was really just from wasting away. She was an amazing, loving mother, but...it was like she just pined away and lost the will to live. If she'd been suffering over how she lost you, it would make a lot more sense. Still way too sad, but it would make sense." The last two sentences she directed at Genesis specifically. "I actually never met our father, either, I just know Shelke and I have the same father (2), and so do you."

Sephiroth and Angeal traded looks as Genesis rested a hand on the girl's (his sister's!) shoulder and said, "I want to see the home you grew up in."

Shalua seemed surprised, but nodded. "I'm not sure I can go back there, not when I'll have to remember Mom dying and Shelke being kidnapped, but I can tell you where to find it and where I hid the key to the door. I hadn't planned on going back yet unless I had Shelke back, but the Mayor promised to keep it undisturbed for at least a year, and it's only been a month. Nothing about it should be different than the way I left it."

"That's fine. I think it may be better for me to go alone, anyway. It's my own journey, like yours brought you here," the young man—her brother—told her.

At that point, the doctor stopped the transfusion to Angeal and said, "Sorry to interrupt, but the transfusions are done. I need you to stay nearby for at least an hour and to come back in about a week so I can make sure the transfusion is taking hold and the damage is repairing. If the results are positive, I'll give you one more date to come back to me, but otherwise, I'll grab a drink for the General and you four can stay here and talk until the hour's up." He removed the needles from the two men and healed Angeal while Sephiroth's wound closed up immediately, then left the room. A couple minutes later, he was back with a juice can for Sephiroth, then left again.

After Shalua gave Genesis the home address (3) and the location of the key she hid, the four sat around talking about general things, and the girl seemed to be frequently surprised by the opinions Sephiroth and Angeal were voicing. The hour passed quickly, and the blood samples were taken from Genesis and Angeal, the results already showing some minor improvement in their conditions. With that news, they headed out to return to the Shinra building, Genesis promising to return in a few days after he'd visited the Rui family home.

CA

Two days later, he dialed the phone number he had for Edward, and found the boy asking, "Well, have you found a doctor yet?"

Chuckling, Genesis answered, "Yes, I actually did. I also found out I have two sisters, though one was kidnapped not long ago and vanished. That is, she was supposedly kidnapped by the Turks, but she's not with any of the current known departments. Do you know any more about Shalyn Rui or a Shalua or Shelke Rui? Shelke has an ability called Synaptic Net Dive, or SND."

"Um..." the boy on the other end began, and Genesis could hear him shuffling some papers around. "Nothing specific, but there was a note in one file about continued Mako enhancement experiments that said they were looking for someone with SND to test. There's supposed to be a 'Reactor 0' in Midgar where they're doing the experiments in a group called Deepground, but there's no indication about anything else. Well, except that the entrance to both the Reactor and the Deepground facilities is in the Shinra building. I think even Hojo doesn't know anything about it even though they're using his hypotheses and theories to experiment on those people."

"What department is Deepground part of?" the red haired man frowned as he gazed down at his copy of LOVELESS, sitting on the table in front of him.

"They're supposed to be a faction of SOLDIER. At least, that's what the files say, but how they could be effective if no one but the President and the people locked up in it even know about them, I have no idea."

"Well, it's more than I had to start with, at any rate. But you can't confirm that Shelke is with them?"

"No, sorry. It looks like someone comes here about three or four times a year to add to the records and notes, but if their last visit was before Shelke was taken, any record wouldn't have been here. Actually, that's not really true, because there's no records of anyone who is part of Deepground here. It's like they just come out of nowhere, and some were probably born there, not unlike how you, Angeal, and Sephiroth were experimented on before you were even born."

"Yes, that's a problem. People who vanished and whose existences aren't..." Genesis then paused as he recalled something Veld had said. "Edward...there's no record of you anywhere on the Planet before you made yourself unintentionally known to the Turks, and your mental and physical abilities are—intensive. Do you think you were one of Deepground's...?"

"Oh for—!" the boy growled, muttering profanities under his breath. After a minute, he scowled into the phone as he said, "No, I wasn't experimented on. Everything I have is natural and comes from hard training or my father's genetics, since I know he was like me mentally. I know exactly how and where I learned to fight and climb canyon walls and all that, even with six years of my memories missing. Are people here really so stupid and weak that the only way someone can truly be skilled at something is if they were some kind of experiment? I mean, you're not the first one to ask me that recently."

Genesis was legitimately taken aback by the whole statement, but he had to admit the boy had a point. On the other hand, everyone but the Turks had been enhanced or experimented on to have their skills—key phrase being 'everyone but the Turks'. In other words, there were normal people who had such skills, and they invariably found themselves with one particular group...except Shelke.

Remembering what the doctor had asked about the difference in the method of how Angeal and he had gotten the genes, Genesis said, "I'm glad to know you never had to go through that. Going back to the experiments done on Sephiroth, Angeal, and I, what was the actual difference between us to have such different—and deadly—results?"

"The entity's cells were infused straight into Sephiroth while he was in the womb—it was something called 'stem cell infusion'. In yours and Angeal's cases, the doctor the project was named for, Gillian Hewley, was infused with the cells. The mixed cells were taken and injected into Shalyn Rui's unborn baby—you—while Gillian was pregnant with her son, causing the mixed cells in her to transfer to him automatically—Angeal. His makeup was more stable because it was his own mother and happened naturally, but both of you were degenerating. There was an additional problem, too, because as far as I can tell, Sephiroth was given live cells, not the dead ones you and Angeal have—basically, the dead cells put into you started killing your own live cells. That's why Sephiroth's live cells should kick-start your dead ones into regenerating—something even the dead cells can do."

"I guess the fact that there were already dead cells in our bodies would explain a lot of the degeneration by itself," Genesis admitted tiredly as he assessed what the boy had just told him. Gillian Hewley had been like a mother to him growing up, more than his adoptive mother had been, so to hear that she had been part and parcel of taking him away from his own mother, he was shocked and hurt. "Do you think she knew I was Shalyn's son? Gillian, I mean."

"Dunno. They were working on the project together, so even if she didn't know for sure, she probably suspected. I think part of what made your genes so unstable as well was the fact that some of her genes had been put in you, even though you should have biologically been entirely Shalyn's and her—um...not really husband since they weren't married...lover's, I guess—children weren't supposed to biologically have more than one mother and one father."

Genesis went cross-eyed as he realized the leap of logic the boy had made, then gave a small chuckle and admitted, "I guess you have a point in that. If you found the file on Sephiroth, did you find out his family name? We've never heard one."

"You either?" Edward asked in wry amusement. "Well, that's where things get touchy, because he could be Hojo's, or he could be someone else's."

"Ew...Hojo's kid? That's creepy. But seriously, Ed, he's obviously someone's, so if he's not Hojo's, he'd have to be someone else's!" At the teasing, Ed made an interesting indignant squawk rather like a chocobo's sound to express a similar emotion, and Genesis had to chuckle.

"No, there's a specific other person who Sephiroth's mother fell in love with around the time all that experiment was going on, and he might be the father. I can't find any information on who, though, just that Hojo was really pissed about it and called Dr. Lucrecia Crescent a whore in his writings after that time. The only thing I can be sure of is that it was a Shinra employee who was assigned here in the late seventies and early eighties, and it wasn't one of the other doctors. That doesn't leave a lot of people, just the research assistants and the Turks, since SOLDIER wasn't really functional at that time."

"Wait, I thought his mother's name was Jenova!" Genesis blinked.

"If Jenova is, then she's yours and Angeal's mother, too, because 'Jenova' is the name of the entity whose cells all of you were infused with," Ed answered in a darkly dry tone as Genesis' jaw fell open. "No, she's not his mother, just a parasite Hojo wants to experiment with, the sadist. Lucrecia Crescent is his mother, just like yours is Shalyn Rui and Angeal's is Gillian Hewley."

"Oh...You sure have been finding out a lot of information..." the red haired man muttered in a daze, staring out his window at the smog. It was mind-boggling how much the boy understood from books and reports.

After a pause, the boy asked, "Do you know yet if you'll be okay?"

A small smile formed on the man's lips as he assured Ed, "Yes. The preliminary tests after the infusion already showed improvement, so you had it right. I'll know in about a week, though, if the improvement has been continuing as it should."

"Okay, good!" the boy said in a relieved tone. "Angeal too?"

"Yes. We all went at the same time."

"Then that's the only really important stuff. Was there anything else, or can I go back to my reading?"

Chuckling, Genesis said, "That's all, and you can go back to your reading. Bye."

"Bye!" the boy answered, sounding much more cheerful as he hung up.

It only took a minute for Genesis to think he should get in touch with Reeve with the Deepground data, so went for a walk to find Cait Sith. When he found the cat, he whispered to it the data he had on Deepground, then released the cat again, only for Cait Sith to begin following him around—and to keep following him for the rest of the day as he randomly petted the cat in his free time.

CA

The next day, the sun was shining brightly down on the town as Genesis walked into it and quickly located the address Shalua had given him. The townspeople were watching him with cautious suspicion, but were keeping their distance, so he went to the front door of the house and tested the knob. It was still locked, so the man looked for the broken board in the front porch and pulled it up enough to reach the key under it, then went back to the door and used the key to unlock it, letting it swing open to reveal a hall. At that point, he had to pause, feeling nervous about stepping into this home, the home which could have been his if only he hadn't been an experimental subject.

Finally, he drew in a deep breath and stepped inside, the key clutched in a death grip in his hand. There was nothing much in the hall, just a soft, white and green wallpaper above wood paneled half-walls, and from the hall was a set of stairs up, a space like a living room to the right, and a sitting room similar to a den to the left. The back of the house had a kitchen and dining room, the kitchen (and laundry room) behind the sitting room and the dining room behind the living room. Under the stairs leading up was a storage closet and a bathroom with a toilet and sink in it, nothing else.

He was amazed at how well-kept the place was, with rooms in different colors but well-organized and none too frilly or feminine. He saw hints of pink, yellow, and baby blue in each room, but they were minor highlights, never main colors. The living room was largely in soothing greens while the dining room was largely in medium browns which were also soothing, both highlighted in a creamy color with a brown-gray hue. The kitchen was in medium blue and wood tones, and the sitting room was a room where purples and reds were predominant, taking him a bit aback, though it still looked very attractive. The latter also had a piano in it, as well as a few display cabinets and bookshelves.

As he wandered through the house, he saw personal touches of the girls and of the woman who had once lived there, and his fingers drifted over those personal objects, brushing away faint traces of gathering dust. There was nothing which would tell him what he wanted to know in those rooms, however, so he made his way upstairs.

At a glance, he saw four bedrooms and a full bathroom, the bathroom and smaller two rooms on the same side as the kitchen and bathroom on the first floor. Of the two rooms on the left, one was a little smaller and was in the neutral tones of a guest bedroom, while the slightly larger one was in mostly gray and blue with red highlights, but was obviously a young girl's room. The other two rooms were a bit larger, the master bedroom with a checkered blanket and largely in green while the last room was mostly in yellow, burgundy, and purple, also showing as obviously a girl's room. A tomboyish girl.

Genesis chuckled when he saw Shalua's room, but didn't start poking around in either of his sisters' rooms. He was sure their mother wouldn't have hidden anything about him in their rooms, so his first stop was in her room, where he paced on the floor, using his stride deliberately to 'tap' on the floor to find a hollow which was out of place.

Even then, he almost missed the difference in the floorboards where there was a hollow, showing how well-hidden it was, especially since it was right next to the wall beside the closet. Kneeling, he fingered the board he'd felt was odd until applying pressure to the very left bottom corner of it caused the board to pop up. Setting it aside, he looked into the cubbyhole he'd found, and saw three objects in it—a pair of baby booties in green, a hand-written diary, and a small photo album. The height and width of the last was only just enough to fit a four by six photograph, and it was only a quarter of an inch thick.

Carefully, the young man pulled the objects out and replaced the board, then tucked the baby booties in his pocket and flipped through the diary, realizing he'd have to read it to know what it actually said...what she thought of him. Until he got to the last page and found a scrawl in a shaky hand, 'I wish I had never given him up, my dearest son.' He felt his throat tightening, but closed the diary and stuck it in his pocket as well, then flipped through the photo album. It held eighteen pictures, some of a woman with deep red hair and blue eyes, some with a man who had orange hair and green eyes (4), and...a very last picture of a woman holding a baby wrapped in a red and blue blanket.

Slipping his hand into the plastic case holding the photo, Genesis pulled it out to look more closely, seeing how much love was in her expression as she looked down at the baby she held. Flipping it over, he read the inscription on the back, 'My first-born and the new love of my life, Sheridan Rui (5). Welcome home.' Below it was written in a different, more erratic, script, 'You lucky bugger! You've got the best woman in the world wrapped around your finger, and you're only three days old!'

Suddenly, Genesis lost his gravity and dropped to the floor, laughing and crying at the same time as he clutched the picture tightly to his chest, though the laughter didn't last very long.

"Sheridan Rui..." he whispered. "I would have been Sheridan Rui, Shalua and Shelke's older brother...Why was I taken away?"

Slowly, he lifted the photo up to look at it again, tracing the woman's face and his infant form with one finger. She hadn't wanted to give him up. By the sounds of what Shalua had said, the woman had never recovered.

It took him some time to calm his tears and wipe them away, at which time he sat up to look again at the rest of the pictures. His father looked vaguely familiar, as though he'd seen him somewhere before, but couldn't call anything to mind as he looked at the man with orange hair, sideburns, and a habit of wearing sunglasses. Only two of the pictures including him showed his eyes, and Genesis traced the lines of the man's face with his finger on one of those. Another picture showed Shalyn while heavily pregnant as she gently rubbed her belly, which was another picture he traced with his finger. He began checking the backs of the pictures for notes, and quickly found most didn't have any, except for the one of him and the one of his mother while she was pregnant.

On the back of the picture with the pregnant Shalyn, he saw the words, 'I'm fat and ugly.' Those were in his mother's writing, and the wilder scrawl of the one he assumed was his father answered, 'You're going to have a baby, and you're beautiful, Shalyn.' Below that was his mother's scrawl again, 'Flattery will get you everywhere, Kariya.' (6) The man replied with, 'I know. But it's also true. You're beautiful. I just wish Shinra would let us marry.' Finally, his mother's writing answered, 'So do I. So do I.'

It had been an entire conversation and told him something very important—his father's family name was different from his and his sisters', because their parents hadn't been married and they had the Rui—their mother's—name. Maybe his father was still alive, especially since he had the eerie sensation once again of having seen the man or heard his name (or both) at some point in recent enough memory for him to think it was familiar? 'Kariya' wasn't a lot to go on, but he may be able to borrow the Turks' database to find him, especially since he did have the visual of the man. If his father was a member of Shinra. If he wasn't, he might have to ask Reeve for another favor, and the man was already sticking his neck out for him with Shelke...

Putting all the pictures back in the album, he added that to his pocket, then rose to walk slowly around the upstairs again, pausing in each room to imagine the people in the house in them. In his mother's room, he imagined her sitting on the edge of the bed while his father knelt in front of her and they both held their hands to her pregnant belly. Of course, she'd have been pregnant with one of his sisters in that case. In Shalua's room, he imagined books spread on her desk while she practiced hand-stands against the blank wall near the window. In Shelke's, he noted the computer on her desk and imagined her sitting there working on it while holding a fuzzy stuffed wolf—a Kalm Fang, which was purplish—in her lap. It was one of the three stuffed toys on her bed, the other two being a yellow Chocobo and an Ironite.

Suddenly, he had an urge to pick up one of those stuffed toys, the Ironite dragon in pale pink, cream, and grayish-purple. It was fairly small, but its wing-span made it seem a lot larger, so he tightly wrapped the wings around its body to fit it in his pocket. Done with that, he went back downstairs to look around there once more.

And this was the home he'd lost, a home and family he could have loved...

Notes:

(1) I think this was a comment in a flashback in Dirge of Cerberus, where the older Shalua said briefly that six months after their sickly mother died of illness was when Shelke was kidnapped.

(2) Yes, all of the kids have the same father, but no, even Shalua never saw him, even though her mother had Shelke when she was five or six. That leaves two options—their father died or was very good at staying out of sight unless he wanted to be seen. Or both, I guess. I'm going with the 'good at staying out of sight' option.

(3) The town and its location is completely irrelevant because it's never returned to again after Genesis leaves.

(4) Yes, this is a character in the FFVII world.

(5) Obviously a completely made-up name like Shalyn's, but I figured it fit in with Shalua, Shelke, and Shalyn, so I'm working on the premise that their mother is naming them and thought it would be wonderful to give them themed names (two 'Sha's' and two 'She's').

(6) This is a reference to the same character as noted in (4) above. The data on him had a trivia note saying he looked a lot like the character called 'Kariya' from another series, so I hijacked the name to be his. Can anyone guess who he is? :D