"You're such a good boy, Sephy," Yuuki whispered, nestled up to me. I had been conned into curling an arm around him and letting him lean his head on my shoulder. He nuzzled me like a cat, taking joy in how the S cells that made up each of us flared and called out to each other. His little pale face was drawn with misery, and his red eyes were brownish with the heightened green glow of mako as it pumped through his body.
I ran my free hand through his long two toned hair. My silver hair was ethereal, but the mix of silver and black on him made him look like he was graying prematurely. I had pulled it into an elegant chignon that made him look like a little kid trying to look mature and adult but instead just ending up being more innocent and adorable. The impromptu hair styling hadn't been my idea. Yuuki made me too uncomfortable for me to extend my harebrained impulses towards him. But Yuuki had wanted to do my hair - I was now sporting messy tangled pigtails - and then he had wanted his hair done. And what Yuuki wanted, Yuuki got.
"I'm not a good boy, Yuuki," I murmured. His hair smelt of the same fourteen scents as my own. "You are a good boy. I am a pain in the behind and an endless annoyance to everyone who knows me."
"You don't annoy me, Sephy," Yuuki said loyally. He snuggled up harder into my side, and I snuggled him right back. "Anyway, I'm not talking about how you're annoying. I'm talking about how you never say no to the mako. Doesn't it hurt you?"
His face was buried in the junction of my neck, and he mumbled his question as if he was afraid of reprimand.
I glanced at Ansel and Miele trying to coax an escaped mutant Jumping to stop chewing the printer paper. Then I glanced up at the camera in the corner of the room.
"Sometimes," I said in a low voice, not moving my lips, "what you want matters. But sometimes, you don't have a choice. I'm not a good boy, Yuuki. I just don't ask for anything I won't get. Sure, it hurts just as much, but I think it's different for me. Stillness and boredom are more difficult to bear than pain. I'm wired that way. I think you're just wired differently from me. I think being bored and under-stimulated would be better than agony for you. Or maybe it's that you never get to be truly still or truly bored."
"Of course I never get bored, Sephy," Yuuki said. "You are always here and so is Mama. And I hear Weiss and Nero sometimes too, even if they sound funny and aren't as clear. But I can't focus on all of that when it hurts and I'm scared, I can't hear any of you and I can't make myself remember that not all of my bodies are in pain. It's so big and it eats up all of me and I can't think of anything else. Every time I die it feels like all of me is dying, forever."
I sighed and pressed him to my side more tightly.
Was it a good thing, that he hadn't totally become dissociated from his fear and his pain? I didn't know. He was still innocent, in that way. I was almost never panicked like Yuuki often became, but all the things I tucked aside and ignored because I was powerless against them built upon my heart like layers of limescale on a mirror. But he was experiencing so much trauma that having to deal with it in the moment had to be hurting him worse. And besides, Yuuki weathered much worse things than I ever would.
"Yuuki," I murmured, my lips against his ear. "You are a brave good boy. It's alright to be scared and it's alright to be angry. No one likes to be in pain. No one likes being hurt. I just don't like failure, so I never struggle when I know it's futile, that's all. I promise I'm always as angry as you are. Why else do you think Hojo had a little accident earlier this year?" I was more angry than, really, since Yuuki didn't truly understand all the ways his life was fucked up.
Yuuki looked at me with wide eyes.
I put my finger to my lips and winked. "Don't tell anyone, or the Turks are going to disappear me forever," I told him, "but I jammed the elevator when he was in a hurry so he'd have to take the stairs, then I found a surveillance deadspot and iced up one of the steps with an Blizzard spell. Then after he slipped I cast a Fire and got rid of the evidence."
Yuuki giggled, almost directly into my sensitised left ear. I felt slightly bad for lying to him, but I couldn't tell him about the mind control, especially not when I didn't know how sensitive the microphones were and the surveillance in this room would be actively archived as experimental data, since it showed Yuuki and I getting our shots. Also, I'd imagined pushing Hojo with my own two hands so often and so vividly, planned it with such meticulous detail and fantasised about it in such depth that I almost felt like it actually happened.
"Also," I whispered to him, "you don't have to be obedient to Tachi and Hojo. You don't have to do what they say. The important thing is to protect yourself as much as possible, without getting caught and making things worse. That's why I'll risk making Hojo angry just to be annoying, but am always so obedient about getting my shots. If you can go away to another body for a while without being noticed when you're in pain, then you should. If you want to come live inside me for a little bit when your shots hurt and I'm not in pain, then you can do that too. I'm not strong enough to protect you now, but I promise I'll find a way to take you away from this place, and we won't have to be specimens anymore."
Yuuki thought about this.
"I don't wanna leave Mama," he said. "I won't leave Mama. Sephy, don't leave me here. When we're both big and strong, can't you just make Hojo and Mama stop experimenting? Then we can be a proper family together. Mama and me and you and Hojo and Mother. And your Doctor Lucrecia too. And we'll live in a big house together and we can go to school and be in the same class and play in the park. And we'll keep a Jumping in the yard with lots of grass and we can go and play tag and hide and seek and go swimming at the beach and make pancakes together in the morning, and I can keep all my other bodies out in the yard so they get lots of sun and Mama won't make me take my vitamins anymore."
I digested this with a grimace on my face, thankfully not visible to Yuuki who was still burrowed against my neck.
"We would have to move out of Midgar," I murmured. "If you want a grassy backyard.'
"Back to Nibelheim," Yuuki said. "We can go back to the big house in Nibelheim. And we can have another house in Costa Del Sol, where they give you little umbrellas for your juice so that it doesn't evaporate in the sun. And another house in Wutai, so we can go fishing together. And another house in…"
I would have loved to zone out and stop listening, but it wasn't like Yuuki had anyone else he could share his childish dreams and fantasies with, so I listened intently and made noises at all the right places.
I also had dreams of a nice big house, with a grassy yard and a family, an indoors cat rather than a pet Jumping, my real parents instead of these mockeries of parenthood that were responsible for Yuuki and I. Maybe Lucrecia could come visit, and my real mother would gossip about how cute and clever I was as a baby, and Lucrecia would tell my mummy about how I'd saved the world and defeated the evils of capitalism once and for all and ended a climate apocalypse, and I would bring Yuuki with me and let him live in the next house so he could be around if he wanted to see me, but not sleep in the same house. After all, Yuuki still made me squirm with guilt and discomfort every time I saw him. It shouldn't have been me feeling that way. It should have been Hojo and Lucrecia and Tachibana, but no, it was me who felt ashamed and guilty and uncomfortable, every time I remembered why Yuuki existed.
I wrapped both of my arms around him and hugged him tighter, careful of his IV line. He was trembling slightly from the pain, and his cold sweat had soaked through the back of his scrubs. He had to be losing a bunch of electrolytes.
"Would you like some juice, Yuuki?" I whispered in his ear.
He shook his head against my shoulder.
"Don't need any more fluids," he murmured. "I'm already a big sloshy water balloon."
"Alright," I said quietly. I wasn't used to being alone together with Yuuki, really. The vague pity and condescending guilt I felt for him was being thrown back in my face by his sweet, human childishness. There was a self in there, a whole person, buried beneath the mistreatment and the body hopping and the fact that he was my clone. He wasn't just a specimen, a victim, a burden on my conscience. He was also a living breathing little boy, sweet and good natured and angry and frightened and annoying and hurt and timid and tender and human. He was so much of a person. He was nothing like me, and probably nothing like the real Sephiroth.
There was no mention of a Subject Y or a Project Y in any game I'd played or read the wiki for. There was no mention, despite all the dirty laundry of Hojo and Lucrecia and Gast being aired out, despite the reveal of Project G and Deepground and the Omega Project and the Ravens and the various versions of Sephiroth cloning.
I really, really didn't like my suspicions about Yuuki's future prognosis, but I couldn't exactly ignore them. I didn't have anything I could do, though. I was hardly in charge of Yuuki, and not privy to a large portion of what was inflicted upon him. Nevertheless, I bit back the resentment I had nursed for Tachibana for all these years since the first time Yuuki exploded, and began to ask her for more details about Yuuki's status and his medical details.
I hoped that Yuuki would stay alive for long enough for me to figure out how to get into contact with Ifalna. If Gast survived, she would probably still be with him, wherever that was, likely still Icicle Inn. I thought about it intensely, and decided that this was perhaps the time when I could try proactively asking, for the first time in my whole miserable life, for a responsible adult's help.
I had to wait until the end of the injections though. It got more and more harrowing, each time we were put through it. We got more and more used to the pain and discomfort, nominally, but the unpleasant side effects also grew worse. As the weeks dragged on, I began to experience a sharp, shooting pain in spots all over my body. After a few more rounds and more scans, Hojo determined that my body was rejecting the little sensors/trackers he had implanted all over my body, and I had to get all of them except the most surface ones just under my skin removed. Hojo dumped the task of designing new trackers that wouldn't be rejected by my body on his underlings. Much later, when the prototypes started coming in, I was perversely glad Hojo tested each new model on me, instead of on Yuuki. I was now hardy enough for that kind of experimentation not to cause lasting physiological stress in a way that would damage my growth. Yikes.
At the end of the course of injections, the two to three days between injections were no longer enough for me to stop feeling horrible. The last two weeks were simply constant but fluctuating levels of pain, with not even a single moment of reprieve. The chronic nature of it made it easier to ignore when I could be distracted, but when I became aware of it again it seemed to grate on me more deeply, like my nerves themselves were rebelling. I couldn't focus enough on meditation even when I wanted to contact Lucrecia. I could hear her, vaguely, but she was used to closing her off psychically to distance herself from Jenova, and thus was much quieter in my mind that Genesis or Angeal. Even quieting down enough to hear Genesis and Angeal as I sometimes did was too great a task by the end. I had to be focusing on something outside of myself, not within, if I wanted to stay sane. I listened to a lot of audiobooks.
It was a warm and minimally overcast day in Midgar when an assistant removed the catheter on my arm and declared that I had finished my last cycle of injections - for now, anyway, as Hojo was busy adjusting the timing and dosage of the next course of treatment, based on how I'd reacted to this round. I gave the woman a thumbs up and curled up more tightly on the bed in monitoring room 1A. Next door in 3A, Yuuki was making soft whining sounds in his sleep, already having been un-cathed. The pain didn't fade straightaway once the infusion stopped - the body had to process it, and as saturated as we were, it took several hours for the intensity to start fading, and the next three days for it to fade to a level that was easier to ignore. Veld pushed me out in a wheelchair at my insistence on day two, and I spent the next week in bed, having my meals delivered and reading through an old classic novel from before Shinra, about a little human boy's adventured in the land of the Cetra. It made the Cetra seem very Elvish, in a Lord of the Rings way. I supposed historical fantasy was just regular historical fiction, if you lived in a world with materia and a precursor race and all of the bullshit with the Lifestream. And talking sentient lions.
I didn't get out of bed straightaway when I stopped being in pain, but rather napped for several more days in order to catch up on all the shuteye I missed while it hurt too much to sleep.
About two weeks after my last infusion of mako, I finally found the energy to get up at the crack of dawn as I always used to. I returned to my morning exercises, and once I'd showered and had breakfast, I finally sat down in my quiet, well insulated meditation room with the sound dampening foam stapled to the walls and the constant smell of sandalwood and the big soft beanbag that I found easier to withstand than a regular cushion on the floor.
The familiar scent settled me. I was thoroughly sick and tired of stale air conditioning and the scent of misery, which was what the labs smelt of at all times. I inhaled deeply, closed my eyes, and relaxed back into the embrace of the beanbag.
I focused on my breathing at first, in and out, in and out, slowly and steadily. Parts of me that had been tense and knotted for the past two months began to slowly relax. My jaw unclenched, my shoulders relaxed backwards. My eyebrows lost the wrinkle between them. I breathed deeply.
It was almost no effort at all to slip past the darkness behind my eyelids and into the gray beyond the petty confines of my own self. I reached out, tugging on each thread of connection. There was Jenova, who never shut up, soon may she die. There was Yuuki, but coming from a direction that wasn't immediately within Shinra Building. It was from the direction of Sector Six, so perhaps Tachibana had taken him to her apartment. Angeal and Genesis were far away enough that they seemed to overlap as I sought out their direction. The weaker pulses of Deepground stretched below. All the human specimens of various ages and genders and levels of sanity, some in comas, others thrashing and very much alive. Gillian, in Banora with Angeal and Genesis. The softer fuzzier connections of the SOLDIERs with inert J cells. The faint presence of scientists and various other Shinra personnel who didn't know they had been contaminated.
And out in the distance, from the direction of Nibelheim and Rocket Town, Lucrecia Crescent.
I reached out for her, following along the thread of our connection until I was almost pressed up against her mind. Then I tugged on that connection insistently. There was no response at first. I tried again, this time pulsing the signal with this world's equivalent of code. "S-E-P-H-I-R-O-T-H".
After several repetitions, she opened herself up cautiously. I could probably have forced my way in, but I wouldn't do that to my own mother. Without a good reason. I wouldn't do that to my own mother without a good reason.
As she opened herself up to me, the grayness I was traversing lightened into a world of brilliant white. Faint impressions of the blue sky and the green earth seemed to impose themselves translucently onto the vision. Lucrecia appeared, dressed in her customary outfit, her arm wrapped around a transparent, flickering figure in a red cape.
"Sephiroth?" She studied me closely, then reached her arm out and scooped me to her side, so that Vincent and I bracketed her, him with his head on her shoulders, me with my head pillowed on her chest.
"Hello," I said quietly. I gave her a small smile. It lacked my usual enthusiasm, but it was about as much real energy I could pull together right then. "How have you been, Lucrecia? Is that Vincent?"
Lucrecia kissed me on the forehead and seemed to sniff my hair. I endured it without complaint. "You've lost weight," she said instead. "And you haven't been sleeping properly."
The mental representation of myself that she saw was not my exact physical self, but rather how I conceived of myself in that moment. The sight of the bags under my eyes was probably enough to tell her how long they'd persisted.
"I'm a growing boy," I said, subdued. "I. I hadn't been sleeping much, but don't worry, I've shut myself in my room for the last week to pay back the sleep debt."
Lucrecia looked tired and sad. "Oh," she said, but didn't press further. "And how have you been otherwise?"
"It's been boring,"I replied vaguely. "I haven't been attending training for the past few weeks. But I learned how to play the trombone." I didn't want to burden her with the details.
"How have you been?" I added, cuddling up to her and closing my eyes. I could almost smell her, and she was warm but insubstantial to the touch. "Did you go to Nibelheim for Vincent? How was he?"
"I didn't need to," she said. Her fingers carded gently through my hair. "He was with me when I woke up. He'd been living in the cave for some time by then. Watching over me."
"Wow. Creepy, but okay," I replied, unable to keep from smirking. Making fun of Vincent was slowly bringing me back to life and out of my deep exhaustion. "Watching the girl you like when she sleeps isn't exactly the Chaddest of moves, Vincent."
"I have no idea what that means," Lucrecia informed me. "Is that schoolyard slang for something?"
"It means he doesn't seem like he has any charm. You know. Not very good with women, et cetera."
Lucrecia seemed exasperated, which was the first thing I'd seen her feel outside of sadness, regret, and careful, subdued calm.
"Don't make fun, Sephiroth," she said, though it was hardly a reprimand. "Vincent is a good man. He is… too good for me, I think."
I very nobly said nothing. I had many, many thoughts about their stupid relationship.
"And how are things progressing, on the Jenova front?" I asked.
The corner of Lucrecia's mouth pulled downwards into a frown.
"Not well," she said. "There is too much activity in both the reactor and the Mansion. It would be difficult for us to infiltrate, even with Vincent's…enhancements."
My lips pulled back into a grimace despite myself. Yikes. Enhancements were not the word I would have used.
"Then…If…" I said hesitantly. "If you can't destroy Jenova straight away, could I ask you and Vincent for a… a favour?"
"What's wrong, Sephiroth?" She asked immediately. "If you need any help at all - do you need me to come get you?"
I made a face.
"Not me," I said. "I can take it. I need to take it. I'll need the power, in the times to come. But Yuuki and the other subjects… Yuuki especially. I… I feel responsible for him. And I can't just. Leave him to Hojo's tender mercies, if I have any choice."
Lucrecia looked horribly sad.
"Yuuki…" She sighed. "I. I will speak with Vincent," she promised.
"Don't…" I hesitated. "Don't come if you might get caught," I said at last. "His life isn't in immediate danger, but yours would be if Hojo saw you again…"
Lucrecia kissed my cheek.
"Let Vincent and I worry about it, Sephiroth." She met my eyes searchingly. "Would you really want to stay there?"
I looked away.
"Shinra is making me into the ultimate weapon," I said, uncomfortable. "Shinra will enhance me to the peak of my potential, and I will be trained in all the ways that I need. I've seen the plans for Project S. Hojo hasn't stopped selling President Shinra on the Promised Land, even though Jenova isn't a Cetra. The President thinks that Wutai knows where the so called Promised Land is, and he plans to have me lead the army that will invade it. The plans for war have been brewing for… some time, now. I don't want to fight their war. I don't intend to do. But before the declaration of war, Shinra plans to turn me into a weapon of mass destruction first. And if I could be the weapon that destroys Shinra and all the threats they bring - Jenova and WEAPONs and all, then I can't make any other choice."
Lucrecia looked very sad.
"You are a child, Sephiroth," she said. "A child. My child. There are others whose responsibility it is to do all of that."
I shrugged. "Yeah," I said. "There's plenty of dissidents around, getting arrested and blowing up outposts or whatever. Nothing wrong with that, they do good work. But they're hardly going to be able to cut through the entirety of SOLDIER or the forces of Deepground when push comes to shove."
Lucrecia's delicate face twisted in pain. "Vincent…" she began, but stopped before she said anything else.
"Vincent is capable," I agreed. "But he can't fight alone. And he's not going to be the safest bet against WEAPONs, as the bearer of Chaos."
Lucrecia bowed her head and was silent for some time.
"I have begun my own enhancements," she said quietly. I tensed, then forced myself to relax.
"Oh?" I said. "What kind?"
"Mako," she elaborated. "No demons, if that's what you were worried about. No additional J cells, either, but otherwise not too different from the procedure you're getting. Less thorough, since we don't have access to refined mako or immersion tanks, but I've jury-rigged a natural mako spring to bathe in instead."
"Oh," I said.
"I've read all the files you sent Vincent," she said gently. "Sephiroth. You are a very, very brave boy."
I bared my teeth in an approximation of a smile, but it just made me look like I'd eaten something unpleasant.
"I am an oversized silver guinea pig with a god complex," I replied.
Lucrecia huffed out the tiniest of laughs at that.
"Sephiroth," she said. "You are the children of two evil mad scientists, and imbued with the DNA of a world eating Calamity. As long as you seek to help rather than hurt others, I will count that as a victory on the mental stability front."
I slumped against her side.
"Will you tell me about your travels?" I asked her. "I'm sure you've been having plenty of cool adventures with Vincent on your way to Nibelheim."
She hugged me closer and hummed in thought.
"Well," she began, "the problems all started when I realised that my very expensive designer shoes were not waterproof."
I laughed, and listened as she recounted her journey from the Mako cave to Nibelheim.
A/N: YAY, we're at the end of the enhancement arc. Time for action and plot and violence and shenanigans and Seph getting to Do Stuff rather than have things done to him!. I am thoroughly tired of emotionally draining descriptions of medical abuse, phew.