Epilogue. The Birth of God
He remembered Vincent Valentine.
In any case, he remembered a dark-haired man in a suit, taller than Hojo and thinner than Dr. Gast, with a quiet, warm voice. He remembered a man telling him about his mother—a beautiful lady, the man had said, and brilliant as well. He remembered asking the man where his mother was. He remembered wanting to know her, wanting to know what it was like to have a mother. The man said she'd gone away.
"When?"
"When you were a baby," he said.
"Did she see me? Did she love me?"
"She saw you, but not for very long. They didn't let her. But she loved you. I know that."
"How do you know?"
"She told me."
"Did you know my mother?"
"Yes, I knew her. I loved her," he said. "I still love her."
"Where is she?"
"I don't know."
"Are you my father?"
He was quiet, for a time. "No." The man had run his hand over the boy's hair, that freakish white hair he would come to hate in adolescence. No one else he'd met had hair like that. The man's voice was very soft, suddenly. He sounded very sad. "No, Sephy, I don't think I am your father."
"Why not? You loved my mother, why aren't you? Why didn't you marry her?" he demanded, as hot tears blinded him. Hojo had hit him for crying, but this man never did. Neither did Dr. Gast, but he didn't come to visit very often anymore.
"I asked her. She said no."
"Why would she do that?"
"You'll understand when you're older."
He'd been a very precocious child. He couldn't have been more than three years old. But he wanted to know about his mother, and he knew that the man wasn't telling him everything. He couldn't stand to be denied something he wanted… "No! Tell me now! Tell me why!"
"I don't know why."
"Why don't you know? If you loved her and she loved me, why aren't you my father?" He wept then, furiously. How dare this man take away from him the only chance he had to be linked to another human being, the only chance he had to belong.
"I don't know," the man said again.
"Why don't you know? You won't tell me! Go away, I hate you! I'm gonna tell Hojo you were here! You're not supposed to talk to me, any of you!" He didn't want the man to go, not forever. But he was too hurt to let it go unavenged.
The next day he told Hojo that the man had visited him.
The man disappeared for a very long time, and with him disappeared the hope of finding his mother.
He didn't see the man again, or his mother either, for a very long time.
But he was never able to forget. He was never able to forgive the man for leaving him, for taking away the only memory of his mother. For leaving him in that closed-up mansion. For leaving him to be what he was: a mutant. A test case. A freak of nature.
Not nature. Science.
A freak of science—no kin, no country, no proper name.
One name only. An un-human name, or so he thought: un-prosaic, family-less, meaningless.
Sephiroth.
the end.
Sarah the Boring sarahtheboring@aol.com
Early December 1999 - November 11, 2001
This story is dedicated to Loo, Dara, Jessi, David, Morgaine, and the dozens of other people who have supported the story since its infancy. Thank you all. You have been an inspiration.
