2-9. The Ones Most Loved
The underground rooms of the Shinra Mansion never seemed to change. The hallway's stone floor echoed with their footsteps, and when they stopped at the door to Hojo's laboratory, silence fell thickly around them.
In the hidden room the mice continued their endless, futile struggle, and at the end of the row, Hojo's prize specimen watched with pink crystal eyes. Hojo snapped the lights on, flooding the room with its cold, clinical glare, then, after a moment of contemplation, flicked off one of the switches. The light retreated to a grayish half-glow that threw spidery shadows of the cage bars on the walls. He extended a thin hand toward a large padded chair which, she was certain, had not been in the room during her last visit. Lucrecia numbly sat down. Her hands clutched the arms of the chair, and the black vinyl padding squeaked faintly with the friction. The air was cool and sterile, but she found it hard to breathe.
I just want this to be over.
Her dry throat finally found the power to speak. "You have ether? Chloroform?"
Surprised, Hojo turned from the papers on the desk. "Of course."
Lucrecia nodded. "Use it."
Hojo watched her for a long moment, an unreadable mixture of emotions on his thoughtful face—analysis, agreement, insult, anger…
Attraction?
"It's not that painful a procedure, my dear."
She closed her eyes. "I don't want to be there."
The scientist did not answer for a long time. He bent behind her chair and loosened a clamp; the chair reclined backward, like a dentist's chair. With six or seven pushes on a pedal, it ratcheted upward a bit. Lucrecia concentrated on breathing steadily. The rest of her emotions had fled, retreated down a corridor and locked it behind them. All that remained was emptiness, resignation, and the twinge of fear that Hojo never failed to inspire. Everything else was stifled. Almost everything else.
Hojo stepped away from the chair. "Fine then. If you're unable to cope with the stress of the experiment… Really, Lucrecia, I'd expected better of you."
Lucrecia opened her eyes, a small ember of anger burning in her numbed heart. "And I expected better of you…Hojo." The names Shelan had recited echoed in a distant corner of her mind. How dare he call me by my name, as if he knew me…but… how dare I protest? I came here, after all…
But I'll be damned if I ever call him "sir" again.
Hojo looked away, a small, regretful smirk crossing his face. "You don't understand," he said. "I thought you might…well, no matter." He looked down at the papers again, shuffling them almost nervously.
"I should ask you," he said, after a pause. His voice was controlled, almost inflectionless. "Are you pregnant already, by the Turk?"
Lucrecia swallowed. "I don't think so."
"Hm," Hojo remarked. His dark eyes strayed to Lucrecia's left hand on the arm of the chair. After a moment he lifted her hand in his own chilly fingers, studying Vincent's ring with clinical detachment. Lucrecia pulled her hand away, as if in a delayed reaction. She stared fixedly at the ceiling.
Hojo's voice was quiet and musing; in a normal room she would have barely heard it. "You're beautiful, you know…when you let yourself be." Lucrecia swallowed hard, her muscles tensing slowly. "In the square today…I'd never seen you so…vulnerable." His nimble fingers brushed the small diamond on her left hand.
Lucrecia's stomach seized in a tense knot. "If you touch me I'll kill you."
His hand dropped away as he abruptly turned back to the desk. A deep chill settled over his voice. "You'll be unconscious, my dear. You won't even know it."
She shoved away the thought of it, longing to sink back into numb indifference. "I'll know."
"Will you," he remarked softly. He turned back toward her, a smirk skewing his thin mouth. "So you'll kill me? And end up in prison for the rest of your life? That's hardly the way to achieve your ambition…"
Lucrecia closed her eyes, feeling the antiseptic chill seeping into her skin. She knew what would stop him…possibly the only thing that would stop him. It was difficult to form the words, to force them past her lips. "I-I'll kill the child."
Hojo paused. The smirk had vanished. In is eyes and over his thin features she detected a trace of suspicion: he knew she couldn't kill it any more than he could. But he wouldn't risk testing her. Their futures, their dreams depended on this. "Very well then." He sighed tonelessly. "A controlled procedure is more dependable, after all. An experiment is worthless if it can't be repeated…."
"Just…get on with it."
Hojo clicked his tongue disapprovingly. "Patience." He made a few notations on the papers, checked his watch, and wrote something else. Finally he stood up, tucking the pen back into the pocket of his lab coat. He cleared his throat. "Now, you're sure you want it to be done artificially."
"Yes. Right now if you slept with me I think I'd kill myself."
Hojo nodded, and looked down at his folded hands. He was grievously insulted; Lucrecia sensed that he would never forget the slight. But he would not risk his experiment for it.
"Very well," he said again, and silently crossed the room. He returned with a dark brown bottle, meditatively drew a white handkerchief from his pocket, and soaked it in the contents of the bottle. With one hand he felt her pulse, pressing her wrist with fingers that shook almost too slightly to detect, and with the other he enclosed her nose and mouth in the cloth. Lucrecia closed her eyes before the fumes hit her, disgusted that the last thing she saw would be Hojo's face.
"To destiny," Hojo said with a twinge of sarcasm, just before Lucrecia slipped into oblivion.
Unconsciousness let go of Lucrecia by degrees, reluctantly releasing her from a sleep without dreams. A bright, yellowish light wedged under her eyelids, and she turned away with an involuntary groan. She dimly realized that the fabric under her cheek was linen, not vinyl, and this struck her as odd. But she didn't know why this was odd, or where the light came from, or what had happened…the last thing she remembered was…
Hojo.
She shivered, huddling farther into the pillows. Her mind was clearing, the haze lifting at last. Pillows…I must be…home.
Safe at home, she added, but did not believe it.
Blocking the light with her hand, she opened her eyes a sliver. The bland familiarity of her room in the Nibelheim inn swam into a nearsighted soft-focus. The sunlight, looking almost alien in its clear, natural vibrance, streamed through the open windows. Midday… it had been almost noon when she'd gone to the lab. Had any time passed at all? What if…
It happened, she corrected herself, with flat certainty. Don't fool yourself, there's no way you can get out of it now.
Lucrecia closed her eyes again, letting her hand fall onto the quilt. Her mind was still a little clouded, but blurs of memory swam through the gray blank that lay between this room and the underground laboratory. She remembered the chill in the air, the faint scratchings of the mice, the sharp, numbing fumes of the anaesthetic…
And Hojo's last words. To destiny.
She lay still for a moment, thinking, waiting for some sign from her body, some animalistic memory soaked through the skin. There was none. In the existence that lay under consciousness, she had sensed no fear, no violation or restraint. The bastard had kept his word after all.
And yet…
A voice spoke from somewhere on her left, between the bed and the door. It was quiet, with a seamless, practiced calm. "Is it true?"
Lucrecia turned toward the sound. Vincent sat in a chair by her bedside, his hands folded in his lap. His suit was immaculate and his face expressionless, but in his eyes darted a pain beyond expression.
His voice wavered slightly, took on a note of urgency. "What Hojo told me. Is it true?"
She swallowed. "What did he tell you?"
Vincent's hands came apart, clenched in fists on his knees. "That you…that he…" His head dropped into his hands, his hair falling into his face. Her name was part moan, a cry of desperation. "Lucrecia… it's not true, is it?" Vincent looked up at her, the mask cracked; his dark eyes begged for a truth that did not exist.
She could not answer.
Vincent stood, restlessly, paced without direction in the confines of the room. His speech was as disjointed as his movements. "I was on duty on the Reactor path… I got a call… Hojo said to come to the Mansion basement. I went. And you… you were lying on the steps, at the bottom of the staircase, and he… Hojo said he couldn't carry you any farther… I asked what happened, if you'd fainted, and he said you'd been sedated… I asked why and he told me… he told me… is it true? You let him do that, you let him… let him impregnate you for the Project, Lucrecia, tell me it's not true. Please." He stopped pacing and stood helplessly by her bedside. "It's not true, is it? Hojo lies all the time, everyone knows he does…"
Her voice finally returned, reluctant to leave her throat. "Not this time."
Vincent slowly sank back into the chair. Lucrecia could not look into his stricken eyes. "It's true," he said softly. "You're…"
"I think so."
"By him, by that…monster."
"I think so."
He raked his hands back through his hair, and sighed heavily. His voice, apart from a quaver of hurt, was genuinely calm. "Why?"
"I had to."
"But…why? Why did you have to…"
She sat up, leaning back on the headboard. She looked at a corner of the ceiling as she spoke. "For me, for us, for Shinra, everything. You wouldn't understand…trust me on this."
"I did trust you," he said quietly.
A pang of hurt and regret twisted her heart, but she went on, clinging to logic. "Vincent… please. This isn't forever, I'll be fine in nine months. In fact, I'll be better than I ever was. Just trust me."
The room was quiet for a long moment. "All right." Vincent crossed his arms over his chest, absently tucking his right hand under his left arm. He stared into the space around her body, as if he, too, could not bear to make eye contact. "Is this what you want to do?"
Lucrecia nodded before the word could form. "Yes."
"Are you sure?"
How can we be sure, in this world? Where nothing, not even science, works as it should? What's left but empty plans and the hope that you can somehow make it less depressing than it is?
Vincent's voice took on an edge of urgency. "Lucrecia, are you sure?"
She could not answer.
"All right." His eyes rested on her hand where it lay on the quilt. For a long minute he said nothing. When he spoke, the question was soft and very serious. "And…what I asked you yesterday morning?"
Lucrecia looked down at the ring, remembering—not the moment when Vincent asked her, but remembering Hojo as he studied it, remembering the cool, precise touch of his hands on it… She slipped the ring from her finger, fighting back a distant prickle of tears. "I'm sorry, Vincent…I can't take this now." She leaned over to Vincent, pulled his numb left hand forward, and slipped the ring onto his thin finger. It just barely fit him. She turned the diamond, the stone Hojo had touched, away from the outside, hidden in his hand. "I don't deserve it."
Vincent was quiet for a long time. His hands came together, fingering the fine gold of the ring, but he did not remove it. In his eyes were the first traces of tears, over a kind of blank, uncomprehending acceptance.
Vincent…forgive me. Please…say you forgive me…
He began slowly, "I don't understand this, this thing you've decided to do. I don't think I ever will. But if you've decided…I can't stop you. I just don't want it to hurt you. And I…want you to be happy."
Her voice was set, unmovable as stone. "I will be."
Vincent nodded. His tears did not fall—she knew they would not, as long as she watched—and his voice was calm. "I wish you hadn't done this…but if you're sure, I'll trust you."
Do you… the thought came again, and before she realized it, she'd said it out loud: "…forgive me?"
"What?"
She licked her lips and repeated it. "Do you forgive me?"
Vincent looked away for a moment, thinking. The fingers of his right hand still toyed absently with the ring. At last he nodded. "I forgive you. I love you; I can't help but forgive you, even though you've hurt me more than anyone ever has. But… him… I'll never forgive him."
Somehow…neither will I.
Vincent fell silent again, and under the thin, fuzzy aftereffects of the drugs, Lucrecia's mind lay still. The sunlight streamed over their frozen bodies in the warm April afternoon, but both of them had ceased to care.
