Doctor Hojo did not think of himself as a nice man. He also did not think of himself as a father. Little Sephiroth was his pride and joy, of course, but it was not through the fruit of his loins but the work of his hands that the child was so. He also loathed to think of Sephiroth as being dependent upon the human portion of his genetics. The J cells were what mattered.
But still, you get attached, after all these years. Hojo had gone to university with a woman who talked to the centrifuge in the biology labs as if it was her boyfriend, and one of his classmates in an undergraduate course had once gotten so attached to the mako enhanced bunnies that were his capstone project that he'd gotten permission to take the bunnies home and keep them as his pets. Hojo at least had the excuse of the specimen being human, and also his offspring.
As he checked Sephiroth's unconscious body over with the full gamut of non-invasive diagnostic tests that could be conducted without moving the subject, he caught a soft smile trying to worm it's way onto his lips. The sight of those remarkable cat-slit eyes and their new glowing green colour made Hojo's heart swell with tenderness. Sephiroth had taken the first step towards his true birthright, and Hojo would do anything to help his son realise it in full.
No, he did not like to think of himself as being Sephiroth's progenitor, but Sephiroth was undoubtedly his one and only beloved son. His legacy, his child, the pinnacle of his life and his work.
Hojo had to school his face into seriousness as he exited the room, leaving the peacefully slumbering godling behind.
He had some fine tuning he needed to do to Sephiroth's upcoming course of mako infusions.
Little Sephy looked so angelic, sleeping with a carefree peace upon his face.
Professor Tachibana had missed it. She rarely got to watch him sleep these days. Sephiroth hadn't been this carefree whilst conscious since he was eighteen months old. He was always too cheerful and too angry, a kind of manic energy that left little room for peace.
The too-old intelligence and barely disguised anger at everyone and everything in his life didn't belong to a child raised in his circumstances. Doctor Tachibana tucked a strand of hair behind his ears and smoothed a hand over that lax, unwrinkled brow. His face was still chubby like a little child, though he was tall enough to be mistaken for a preteen. She remembered when he had been just a toddler. He'd learned how to walk a little faster than other children, and his first words had been on the slightly early side. But at six months almost exactly, something had changed within him. His behaviour began to deviate from his previous personality. The brief bursts of strangeness grew longer, until the little baby Tachibana had cared for from birth was totally gone. He had quickly gone from promisingly above average to alarmingly advanced. He no longer picked up things quicker than other children - it was as if he never needed to learn them in the first place. The occasional childish mistake in his rapidly progressing speech and motor skills had been applied as deliberately as the cut of a surgeon's scalpel, and his little petty outbursts almost always belied a deep, frustrated rage.
Her little Subject Y was always angry too, the poor thing, but compared to Sephiroth Subject Y's anger was confused and uncertain, because he had no reference for why he should be angry and who to aim it at. The hidden sharpness within Sephiroth was as finely honed as a blade.
She kissed him on the top of his head and stood.
Perhaps she ought to enlighten Hojo of Sephiroth's true nature. Perhaps she ought to be concerned about what he might do, who he might hurt, how he might lash out against SciDept and Shinra. But she wouldn't breathe a word to another soul.
She was curious what the thing inhabiting Sephiroth's skin would do, when it finally felt like it had enough power to stop pretending.
Yuuki could feel it. He could feel Sephiroth's body, shifting and roiling as it transformed. The thrum of his Reunion call was slowly changing pitch, growing stronger and more distinct.
Sephiroth began to feel less and less like a spare body or a replica of Mother and more like a beacon with his own unique signal. He was warm and prickly and sweet, where Mother was cold and soft and acid sharp, and where the spare Yuukis in the tanks were hollow, empty voids.
Mama didn't like for Yuuki to think of Sephy as his twin brother or an extension of his self, but it was just so nice to not be alone in the world, sloshing around various empty containers and being poured out every so often to measure his practicality.Yuuki smiled and clutched tighter at his Sephiroth doll. He curled up on his bed and listened to the subtle syncopation between the sounds of his own heart monitors and the rhythmic beeping coming from the room next door. It was also nice to see the proof of his hard work. He had suffered so much for Doctor Hojo and Mama, all so that they could make Sephy perfect. Yuuki was made of Sephy's genes, but Sephy was now being remade with a process that had been perfected on Yuuki first. This new sense of Sephy distanced him from Yuuki, but it also brought him closer toYuuki.
Yuuki often dreamed of being like Sephy, being such a perfect specimen that he was allowed outside the labs whenever he liked, to go to school and visit ice cream parlours and borrow books from the library as he liked. Yuuki was jealous of Sephiroth, in a way. But perhaps if Sephy was now getting the same enhancements as Yuuki, that meant that Yuuki might be close enough to perfection one that that he could go play outside with Sephy.
"You are distracted," Carmelin said. Veld's pen stilled, hovering by a hair's breadth over a sheet of paper still warm from the printer-copier machine. He resumed the meticulous motions of his paperwork, initialingeach page of the document and neatly signing at the very end with his deliberate, workmanlike signature. He double checked the notebook spread open in front of him, then wrote in a date that had passed three weeks ago. Finally, he set the document aside and closed his notebook. It was only then that he deigned to look up and reply.
"Sir," he said. "I am worried, not distracted. Those are to very different things.I am perfectly capable of carrying out my work."
Carmelin's handsome face broke into a charming smile that would elicit the trust of anyone from crotchety nonagenarians to little toddlers. Veld's eyebrows knitted together.
"I am aware of my duty," Veld said bitingly. Were Sephiroth to see him, he would be hard pressed to recognise this hard, humourless man as the hapless Veld who he so loved to press-ganginto escapades and shenanigans. Veld's mouth was drawn downwards with characteristic severityas always, but where his eyes were usually wells of warmth, they now better resembled flat, stony chips of flint.
"I hope you are," Carmelin purred. His long golden hair cascaded down his shoulder in loose waves. He swept his hair over his shoulder and directed a sultry look at Veld. "Don't forget who you work for, Veld," Carmelin said. "Don't forget that you are a Turk. The company must come first, always."
Veld's perpetual expression of paternal disapproval intensified into distaste.
"Of course not, sir," Veld answered. "I am always prepared to do must be done."
Carmelin propped his feet up on Veld's desk and hummed noncommittally.
"Veld," he said. "You've already gotten attached, anyone can see that. I'm not going to reprimand you for it. You were supposed to get attached. But tread carefully. You and I both know that Hojo is different from the other department heads in the mind of the President. Whether or not you believe in the Promised Land, the president does.And Sephiroth will lead us there until Director Hojo announces otherwise."
Veld maintained the wet-cat neutrality of his expression.
"Yes sir," he said. "I am a Turk. When I'm on the clock, I believe whatever the company tells me to believe."
"And you are on the clock when you visit your little silver haired duckling, Veld. Don't forget the parameters of the mission."
"Of course, sir," Veld said. He flipped a page and signed on the dotted line. His writing was as neat as ever. "Of course," he repeated, looking Carmelin in the eye. "I wasn't hired yesterday, Director. You trained me yourself."
At this, Carmelin's facade of disaffected seductiveness melted away. His eyes were sharp and his smile was derisive. "Of course," Carmelin said. "I wouldn't have let you maintain your external attachments in Kalm if I didn't trust in your restraint and your loyalty."
"Of course, sir," said Veld. His hands were steady, oh so steady, as he started rubberstamping Internal Affairs' approval for yet another harebrained SciDept proposal. It was not his place to question the company's agenda.
But he was still worried, nonetheless. Sephiroth was not Felicia, sweet and innocent and carefree, but he was a child. A child who depended on Veld. A child who had no adult in his life that was not complicit in his mistreatment. A child for whom a luxurious inner city house worth millions of gil was an afterthought but for whom a haircut to trim his split ends was an ordeal that required the pre-filing of seven pages worth of forms and three signatures.
A child who did backflips in a mako tank, even when he was enduring pain that had made hapless Subject Y weep and cry and beg for death and mercy the whole time he'd been submerged. Sephiroth hadweathered it by singing made up songs and trying to do a 720 degree turn. The CCTV feed projecting directly to the massive monitor behind Carmelin's desk now showed the kid snoozing peacefully, his brainwaves for all intents and purposes reflecting regular, restful REM sleep, but Veld had met Sephiroth's eyes one time too many yesterday, when he'd helped collate the camera feeds from the operation while sitting in this very spot. Sephiroth had a habit of seeking out cameras and staring directly into them, and while it sometimes made the jumpier newbie Turks flinch or laugh, Veld had dismissed it as yet another way Sephiroth was acting out and seeking attention until yesterday. Seeing Sephiroth stare blindly into the camera feed and appear to zone outthoughtfullywhile Hojo had his innards flayed open made Veld slightly more sympathetic to the idiots who flinched and swore that he could see you through the monitor.
A/N: Some POVs from the other characters! I'm hoping to phase out some of these OCs as we get closer to parts of the timeline better detailed by canon. But I'm probably keeping Yuuki for a bit longer though, at least until Sephy has other peers to hang out with. Angeal, Genesis, please why did you have to join Shinra so late, I'm dying. I expend so much effort trying to keep the non-Sephy OCs minimal and my OCs refuse to budge.