Author's Notes: Takes place a while after the last battle in FF7. Just a little one-shot, written and edited in the space of about an hour and a half. There are some weird places where the formatting is wonky and there are spaces between paragraphs--I can't seem to fix it, no matter what. Fanfiction.net's fault, not mine. The reading shouldn't be affected, however. Enjoy!

No matter what anyone says, he is my son.
Ever since I first laid eyes on my darling boy, I have known that he is mine. Though he was born from the womb of another (Lucrecia--that accursed human whore, who mothered him no more than a fish which leaves her young to live or die in the cruel waters of fate) he is mine and mine alone, my Sephiroth. I knew this as soon as he came for me.
I remember my first glimpse of him. He came to save me from my steel prison, my loyal, beautiful boy. He tore asunder the thick wires piping Mako energy and human blood into my twisted body. Just like a guardian angel, he easily ripped the hateful mask of metal off of me, and said such comforting words of hatred and revenge. He would have saved me then, but for the coming of the blonde man. I remember the clash of blades, the agonized screams of my boy, the hideous sight of Sephiroth's body falling into the bowels of the reactor.
The Shin-Ra came to take me to a 'safer location' after that. I despaired, and lost the will to exist. With my angel, my Sephiroth gone, I had nothing. Grief overcame me and I fell into slumber, uncaring what experiments were carried out on me. Cells were ripped from me, machines prodded and poked my body, entire pieces of my flesh removed. But I remained in my self-induced coma. Not even when Hojo removed my head did I stir from my hibernation. People came to look through my window, to point and laugh at my hideous form. A freak, they called me. Nothing more than a headless bitch to them. Their spiteful words stirred my consciousness, made me want to rise and strike them as dead as I believed my son was. But I did nothing, believing there to be no point. If my sweet son was not there, there was no point in anything any more.

Oh, the joy I felt when I felt his presence nearby once again! I awoke the second his foot crossed the boundary of Hojo's doorstep. He could hear my voice in his head, fevered and weak, and he wasted no time in starting towards me. One fool, a lab technician, dared to stand in the way of my perfect child. My boy didn't even stop walking. The obstacle was felled with a single slice of the Masamune, as wheat before a scythe would fall. "Oh, Mother," he whispered, tearing the door of my holding cell from its frame with delicate strength. The saline mixture they had placed me in to preserve my body flooded the laboratory floor. Sephiroth did not even notice, so great was his anger. "What has that bastard done to you? I'll kill him, Mother. Kill them all." He severed the wires, the tubes, the restraints holding me with his bare hands, and held my naked body to him. I felt his hot tears drip onto my skin. I wished for nothing more than to be able to hold my boy in my arms and comfort him—but the tongue that could speak soothing words was in my missing head, and my arms were too weak to move on their own accord.

Sephiroth knew what needed to be done. He dried his eyes, and took me away from that horrid place after his revenge had been exacted upon the President of Shin-Ra. As we traveled, towards the Crater where I had first been excavated from the earth by the humans so many years ago, I grew stronger. My boy helped me, of course. My devoted son did everything he could to hasten my recovery from the injuries Shin-Ra and Hojo had inflicted upon me. He stole medicines from the labs of my tormentors, which he applied to my unmoving frame. He used Materia to repair some of the worst damage that had been done. And for my shattered soul, he held me against him, and I listened to his heart beating as he told me of his plans, his dreams, his love for me and only me.

And I loved him back. I fought his enemies as soon as I was well enough; three times, I fought the blonde man who had tried to kill my precious Sephiroth and his friends. Three times I fought, and three times was I defeated, but each time I did what I could to buy my son the time he needed. I heard his wail of anguish in my mind when my last form was defeated, and with all my final vestiges of strength I begged him to succeed where I had failed, to triumph over those who were so inferior and establish himself as the God of the Planet.

Then, it happened. My sweet angel fell from the heavens, felled by the blade of the despicable blonde who had defeated him once before. Sephiroth and his opponent went into Lifestream. My boy never reemerged. The humans, believing themselves victors, emerged from the collapsing Crater, survived Meteor and Holy, and began to make lives for themselves. They grew, they multiplied.

They forgot.

But I am not defeated. My cells remain scattered amongst the peoples of this earth, my body once again buried under rock and dirt. But I am alive. I remain. And I remember my loving child... my Sephiroth. The humans made a mistake in standing against my son. And they will pay for it dearly. Their cities will fall. Their bodies will sicken and fester with sores. The earth on which they live will redden with the blood of their fallen. They will live in constant reminder of the agony my poor, precious son felt in his defeat.

A mother's love is eternal...and so am I.