A Flower's Touch Chapter 19: Of the Past: Labs, a final fantasy vii fanfic

Chapter 19 - Of the Past: Labs

Preemptive Notes:

I might be smudging the timeline a bit, IDK. I literally just noticed in my wiki readings that Gast and Ilfana left the year Sephiroth was born, which made an earlier chapter where Sephiroth knew them false. But I also read that Sephiroth considers Gast a greater scientist than Hojo and respected him greatly 'until Gast left Shinra', which was either when Sephiroth was like a year old like the timeline page says (and unable to remember), or later on. Which... is kind of conflicting to read. One of the Wiki entries might be off, IDK.

Not to mention the wiki timeline says Gast meets Ilfana during his travels (as does her own page), rather than Gast's wiki page saying he helped free a captive Ifalna from Shinra (Crisis Core Complete Guide cited...?).

Not to mention the timeline also says Vincent was shot in 1984 (4 years after Sephiroth was born), while Lucrecia's page says Vincent was shot before Sephiroth was even born...

IDK, the whole things a mess to try and sort, so I'm putting my foot down and saying: This is already an AU. In this, I'm assuming Gast/Ilfana left shortly before Vincent got shot a few years after Sephiroth was born because Vincent got fed up with Lucrecia being treated like shit and not being allowed to see Sephiroth. Considering that Lucrecia needed time to fix Vincent/Hojo experiment on him... it would have made Sephiroth... five or six, before heading for Midgar.

*headache*

M-Rated WARNING: Hojo being Hojo.

But seriously, we know Aerith was in Hojo's labs for... what, the 1st seven years of her life? We have little knowledge of that time for Aerith, so I'm going to take creative liberty to absolute destroy the poor young woman. There are so many things Hojo could have done during that time, and seven years is a very long time. Though realistically, Aerith being an infant would limit it. So I imagine from age... 3-7 is where Hojo would really be an absolute psychopathic crazy bastard. Ifalna would do what she could to shield her child, but realistically, she'd have little power.

So yeah... Ifalna and Aerith are in for hell. I have a hard time understand how Aerith could develop into the kind of woman she was while having suffered Hojo for her early years. Elmyra I imagine would have had a huge saving influence, not to mention whatever Ifalna imparted, and Aerith's own will on the matter.

Warnings include: Human Experimentation. Human Child Experimentation. Abuse of a child. Unethical Science. Torture. Emotional Trauma/Damage. Emotional Manipulation/Brainwashing. Captivity. Ect... In general, Hojo being an utter bastard. This is a dark chapter. As another reminder about Aerith, she is currently in a young, teenage body, not a matured one yet. That impacts emotional responses as well. Not that the excuse is needed, all things considered, Hojo would make fully grown tough men cry.

You have been warned.

"No."

It was a word Aerith had been dreading for weeks now, and her knees felt weak. "No?"

Doctor Redman gave Aerith a stern look. "I've been allowing you to push this off for to long Miss Gainsborough, its been almost a month of quick meetings or vague answers. I know, I understand, that this will be incredibly painful to speak of, but it has to be done. I wanted you to feel ready to open up about it to me, but I see that's not going to happen. No more dodging it. Either you accept this therapy and speak, or you don't and I pass it up the chain and you can kiss your career in SOLDIER goodbye."

Aerith let a dry swallow pass down her throat, looking away. "You... you don't know what you're asking of me."

"Probably not," admitted Doctor Redman, "But I do know that you've kept it bottled up for almost a decade, and that's not healthy for you. It leaves lasting impact and can alter your behavior."

Longer actually, but Redman believed it was a vision Aerith had experienced and not time travel.

"I was fine," muttered Aerith.

She had been fine, the flower girl of the slums, life had been simple and fine. Her life in the labs hadn't existed anymore.

Redman hummed. "Aerith."

"Yes...?"

"I want to help you, I truly do, but I can't if you won't let me. So either sit down in the chair, or leave and forfeit SOLDIER."

Aerith struggled with it. She considers, so badly, if she can manage things without SOLDIER. After that first agonizing meeting, which had just been an overview, she weighed that gamble again and again the last few weeks, every time their scheduled meetings had come up and Doctor Redman had let her weasel out of it or not pressed deeply. She didn't want this... she didn't want this at all...

Yet she didn't know if she could do it alone, and as much as every fiber of her being screamed to run away from this, she was not so selfish as to risk dooming the Planet over her own personal fear and pain.

With great trepidation, Aerith slowly, dragging her feet, moved over to the comfy chair in Redman's office and plunked down, sinking into it.

Doctor Redman had a self-satisfied smile on her face that Aerith wanted to hit and make go away. "I'm glad you saw reason Miss Gainsborough."

The woman moved to sit across from Aerith, a pad of notepaper in her hands, pen held between two fingers. "We will, as we agreed in our initial session, start with your early life."

Aerith swallows.

"We will start simple, what is your first memory?" asks Redman, "The very first think you can recollect."

Aerith's eyes go distant for a moment; she feels herself strapped down in a white room, her gut in agony, puke covering the little white gown she was in, whimpering in pain. She sees Hojo peering down at her...

"Aerith!" came Redman's voice, snapping her out of it, "Don't lose yourself in the memory, simply say it."

"My... my earliest memory...," she begins shakily before laughing bitterly, "It's not even of my birth mother. It's me... me puking my guts out from Hojo testing how resistant I was to poison."

There is an air of incredulous about the therapist, "As a how many year old child?"

"I don't know... three?" says Aerith.

"Why?"

Something darkens across Aerith's face. "Comparison."

I'm disappointed in you Specimen A, Specimen S showed not even a quarter of the effects of the poison that you did at his age. So very disappointing...

"To whom?"

Aerith looked away for a moment before muttering, "Sephiroth."

Redman waits.

"He wanted to see how resistant I was to ailments compared to Sephiroth at my age," said Aerith, swallowing again, bitterness flowing from her lips, "He wanted to see how superior Sephiroth was compared to a Cetra. He tested me on everything. Sleep, poison, fury, sadness, petrification, confusion, silence... just... everything."

"When you were a toddler," said Redman with a shake of her head, "That's madness."

"That's Hojo," countered Aerith, not as a defense of the actions, just as an explanation, "And he did this periodically to test for growth in the area, to both me and my birth mother, and each time..."

She swallowed again, "Each time when I failed to meet his expectations..."

I'm so disappointed in you Specimen A, couldn't you even manage a few more seconds?

"...he made it seem to be my f... fault," she stammered, "That I... I was a... disappointment to him."

"Negative reinforcement," murmured Doctor Redman, "Taken to new heights and used against a child. Do you understand what he was trying to do?"

If you can manage to do even half as well as Specimen S did in this test, I may reward you. If not, I will be so very disappointed.

"Yeah," said Aerith, voice dry, "I do now. I'm not stupid."

You don't wish to disappoint me, do you Specimen A?

"I didn't say you were," said Redman softly, "But as a young child..."

I'm so disappointed Specimen A, such poor results must be punished, I suppose since you are to young to weather them, Specimen I will have to bear it instead.

Aerith shivered briefly. "It's worse than that. Whenever... I-I... failed him..."

"You did not fail him," spat out Redman, "That's the conditioning he tried to pour down your throat."

Aerith glared at her, chills turning into hot rage. "I know! Why do you think I don't want to talk about this? I thought I had put it all behind me, that I shoved it down and locked it away! It let me live my life without having me chained down by him and what he did to me and my birth mother!"

Doctor Redman gave her a patient look. "Aerith..."

A disappointed look.

I'm so disappointed Specimen A...

Aerith shook her head violently and rose from the chair. "I can't. I can't. I'm sorry, I just...

So disappointed...

"I can't," she said, shaking and rushing for the door.

"Aerith!"

"I'm glad you decided to rejoin me, Aerith," said Doctor Redman.

"You didn't really give me a choice," muttered Aerith, sinking into the comfy chair, "What, with texting and calling me day after day threatening to have me kicked out of SOLDIER."

"I don't want it to be this way," said the therapist with a sigh, "But you give me little choice."

"You know, I remember Hojo saying something similar to me once," Aerith said snidely.

Doctor Redman glared at her. "I'd prefer you don't make that comparison, if you would, because unlike that poor excuse of a scientist..."

"Human being," corrected Aerith.

"...poor excuse of a human being," agreed Doctor Redman, "I care, and I want to help."

Aerith went silent and just gave the woman a chilly look.

Which the Doctor promptly ignored. "Now, last time you were here, you were saying something about what he does when you don't meet his insane expectations?"

Aerith shifted uncomfortably.

"Aerith?"

"He... punished my birth mother, early on when I couldn't handle it," Aerith said quietly.

"Of course he did," muttered the therapist, jotting down a note, "So, to summarize before we go in depth: he experimented on you, used negative reinforcement whenever you didn't meet his expectations, and punished your mother, making it seem like your fault."

Aerith pursed her lips.

"But it wasn't all bad?" asked the therapist, "Was it?"

Aerith gave her an incredulous look.

"You had your mother, didn't you?" asked Redman, "There has to be something positive in that time you spent with her."

Aerith laughed, a bitter, brittle, hollow thing. "Not really. I was... any time I had with my birth mother was either given to me as a reward for my behavior or test results, as part of an experimentation, when my mother did something to please him, or w-when he needed her to h-heal me. All other times I was alone. Either resting and recovering, waiting for the next session, or studying."

"Studying?" questioned Redman.

"I'm not stupid," said Aerith slowly, "He would never have let me be. Said it would have been a waste for the future of the Cetra. Not to long ago I might have looked like slum trash to most people here, but I can probably explain the scientific method better than most college graduates. He wanted me..."

"To be like he was," said Redman softly when Aerith couldn't bring herself to finish, a tint of horror to her voice, "All the negative reinforcement and conditioning..."

"I'm not stupid," muttered Aerith again, "I figured it out when I was six. It was... part of a project. He wanted me to analyze people and figure out why they did what they did. Gave me some historical figures, then had me do it on those in the lab. The scientists, the other test subjects. He didn't order me to do it to him or my birth mother, but I did anyway, because I thought it would please him to take the initiative."

A broken smile cross her face. "Nothing was quite the same after that. All that time he spent on me, gone the moment I realized my birth mother did everything she did for me, and him... the opposite. Things got worse and worse rapidly. There was a reason my birth mother made a break for it with me when she did."

Doctor Redman said nothing for a long moment, looking like she was trying to swallow something foul. "I see."

No, she really didn't.

"I... have a question though, why do you call her your 'birth mother' instead of just mother?" asked Redman.

Aerith closed her eyes. "Because I hardly knew her. I knew Hojo better than I knew her. I knew Elmyra, my mom, my mother, better than my birth mother in the first year we were together alone. I know... I know that she loved me, deeply, that in the end she gave her life for me, but she always had to watch what she said or how she acted. We were always watched, always listened to. She didn't want to reveal anything to Hojo or Shinra that she wasn't forced to. It's why I knew so very little about my people and my powers. Any time she was overly affectionate, Hojo would have us separated and punished. I..."

"I never had the chance to know her," whispered Aerith, opening her eyes and staring down at her clenched hands, "It wasn't fair..."

"It's... not alright Aerith, but it will be okay," said Redman softly, "Now, I think that was good progress for today."

"It hasn't been ten minutes," muttered Aerith.

"Yes, but I'm trying not to push you to the point where you rush out and I have to wait a week to get you back in here," said the therapist mildly.

Aerith crossed her arms defensively.

"I do have an assignment for you however," said Redman, "For the next time we meet, I want you to think of all you do know about your birth mother."

"So... we're talking about her next time then?" said Aerith.

That... didn't sound so bad for the next session...

"No."

Aerith frowned. "Then why..."

"At the end of each session that we finish about your early life, I want you to tell me a pleasant memory of your birth mother," said Doctor Redman, "It will help to calm you down after a difficult and stressful recollection, and perhaps, offer closure about her."

"She died a long time ago," said Aerith quietly, "I came to terms with it."

"So you say Aerith, so you say."

"Tell me about the average day in Hojo's labs."

Well, that was certainly one way to start a session.

Aerith sighed. "Wake up, be ready when a Turk came to the door, shower, brush my teeth, brush my hair, study until Hojo called for me. Either he'd experiment on me, test me on something, or make me watch him experiment on someone or something else as he coached me through the process. Depending on how long it took or what he did, I'd either be put into another experiment or test, end up back in my room studying, held overnight for supervision, or sent to my birth mother."

"Did he ever have you experiment on someone?"

Aerith flinched. "N... not exactly."

"Explain."

Aerith looked away. "He... had me pretend to be him once, ordering his subordinates how to go through a dissection."

"How did that make you feel?'"

Aerith's eyes went towards the door, hair on the back of her neck rising, squirming in her seat.

"It's alright Aerith."

"It's NOT!" shouted Aerith in a panic, "It's NOT okay! You... you're a therapist! How do you THINK it made me feel?"

"Powerful? In control?" guessed Doctor Redman, "Happy that it was someone else under the knife and not you for once?"

Aerith wilted under the woman's gaze, choking a little. "I..."

"Aerith, you were in an awful situation, feeling that way is, I imagine, a perfectly normal response," said the therapist, "You had no freedom there, and you were constantly hurt and degraded. It's..."

Aerith was shaking her head, shivering. "It's not okay, don't... d-don't you dare say it was! I... I walked..."

She started sobbing. "I walked his people through dissecting a human being! Who was still alive and screaming for the first part of it! I'm... I'm a monster just as bad as he is!"

Aerith curled in on herself, shattered, crying uncontrollably. Redman was there in an instant, arms wrapped around Aerith, whispering soothingly into her ear. Aerith wanted to throw her across the room, reach out and snap her neck, rip it from her head, destroy the one who brought this pain and agony back to her. She didn't have the strength to, her entire body felt like jello.

"I... I didn't want to do it," she whispered brokenly, "But he was watching... had been talking about the opportunity for months... he promised a big reward for me... he would have... would have been so disappointing and angry if I failed him... would have hurt me and mom so badly... msorry-I'msorrysorrysorrysorrysorry..."

She kept whispering it over and over again, even after Redman had broken away. She could faintly hear the dialing of a phone, but couldn't care, couldn't care, couldn't focus on anything but the pain and how sorry she was...

Then strong arms were propping her up, sitting her up and giving her a tight hug. "Hey, Aerith, speak to me."

She saw spiky hair through her teary eyes, a lovable concerned face. "Z-aack?"

He brought up her arm to wipe at her eyes with her clothes, "Hey 'Rith," he said, worry etched so deeply in his face, "Breath in and out, alright? In and out."

Zack was here...

Her lovably, loyal, concerned Zack...

No...

No!

He couldn't be here!

She had never told him about this!

Even when they were together in the lifestream!

He couldn't know!

He'd hate her!

"No... no nonononono," wailed Aerith, "I didn't mean to Zack! I'm sorry, sorrysorrysorrysorry..."

"Hey hey hey! Relax Aerith," he said, his voice in a panic, "Just... chill, chill okay?"

She shook her head, shaking uncontrollably, voice turning into a continuous mumbled apology.

"Ummm okay, Angeal was one thing, this is another, and way outta my league," said Zack, sounding honestly scared, "Doc, she's absolutely freaking, and aside from sitting on her incase she goes violent, I don't know what you expect me to do. I'm not trained to deal with panic attacks or whatever the hell this is."

"I... had hoped her connection to you might help," admitted Redford.

Zack scoffed, sounding more agitated and angry that Aerith could ever remember, and stressed, "Doc, I'm not him. I ain't the Zack she saw in her freaky voodoo stuff. I already gotta measure up against what I heard he would have done, what the trio wants me to be without listening to what I want to be, and now you want me to deal with this?! I care, I really do, but I don't know her. I can't help with this, I'll only make it worse, I already have made it worse, go get someone who does know her for fucks sake! She's got family, right?"

Didn't... know her?

Aerith shakily looked at Zack, a Zack so young... not... not her Zack... not her Zack, she bowed her head down, placing her hands behind it and taking ragged, panicked breaths.

"I... yes, yes, she's got a mother...," stammered Doctor Redford.

"Zack," came a woman's voice, "Don't yell at the poor woman, she's in over her head just as much as you are."

Aerith turned her head, sighting a blue-suit in the door way, woman, not one of the ones who escorted her through the labs... to young... that was... Cissnei? Why was she here? The girl noticed her eyes and gave a hesitant, placative, and fearful smile. She was afraid of Aerith... they were always afraid, or wary, everyday in the labs... always afraid... or studying and curious, even worse...

"I um... I'll call Veld and get a chopper down to Elmyra, just... just watch her, okay?" said Cissnei, stepping out of the room.

Watch her.

Always watching.

Always learning.

Always understanding.

Never alone.

There were always cameras.

She always had to watch how she behaved, or she'd be punished.

Always...

"Aerith? Aerith sweetie?"

Aerith's eyes refocused, finding her mother kneeling in front of her, worry etched into her face. Aerith sobbed and lurched forward, clutching her tightly.

"Ah-Aerith! Aerith! Tight, to tight!" exclaimed Elmyra painfully.

Aerith flinched away and curled in on herself. "Sorry, I'msorrysorrysorrysorry..."

"Merciful gods, what did you do to her?" exclaimed Elmyra, "I haven't seen her like this since she was eight!"

"She's had panic attacks like this before?" asked Redman.

"Panic attacks? You think this is just a panic attack?" came Elmyra at a shrill tone, "This is her entire life crashing down on her again. I'll not ask a third time: What. Did. You. Do?"

"I... I'm a therapist, I was trying to help her come to terms with her early life in...," began Doctor Redman before pausing, "Umm, Zack, you should step out for a moment. This is patient confidential."

"Yeah, sure," said Zack uneasily, "Right, I'll be down the hall."

And he was gone.

Zack's presence was away.

Going away again...

Five years...

Not a sound or a letter or a call...

Just gone...

Abandoned...

Or dead...?

"By early life," hissed Elmyra, "Were you talking about what that bastard scientist did to her?"

"Yes, I take it you are aware?"

Elmyra gave a slightly hysterical laugh. "Am I aware? The girl hardly had a clue that half the things done to her were inhumane and wrong! She expected it to continue! She used to tell me about everything! Everything that happened to her as if it were commonplace. Do you know, after the first few days, she asked me when the men with needles were coming with the injections? Or when she was going to have to go back to the 'experimentation room'? If she was going to be punished for accidentally breaking a dish? If I was going to be the one to do the next procedure? She told me she could walk me through the basics if I was new, even started to before I had to hush her up or empty my stomach. Do you know how long it took me to get her to stop referring to herself as Specimen A? YES, I'M FUCKING AWARE!"

Redman went deathly silent, and Aerith curled tighter at the tone.

"Gods sake woman," said Elmyra, breathless, "I did my best to help her move on and forget for a reason! I gave her a chance to develop into a sweet young woman, in defiance of the hell she went through, and you go and dig it back up. My daughter already has enough on her plate without this."

"It's... not healthy to keep something like this bottled up," said Redman.

"Sometimes, it's not about being healthy, but being able to even function and survive," said Elmyra thinly, "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a daughter to tend to. Afterwards, she's coming back home with me for awhile, you can tell the Turks and the SOLDIERs if they want her back before I get her situated then I will shove my broom up their asses."

Soft hands were on Aerith's face. "Aerith honey? I want you to listen. Okay? Are you listening?"

"Yes," Aerith mumbled weakly.

"Who do we hate?"

Who do we hate... those words were so familiar...

"Hojo," she whispered.

"Why do we hate him?"

"He... he ruined my life," whispered Aerith.

"And what do we do to get back at him?"

Aerith struggled to think. This question... it rang in the back of her mind, an old memory. "We... I..."

"We take back our life and live it in defiance of everything he did," soothed Elmyra, "We are happy, we are carefree, we let nothing bother us, we walk free of any chains he'd use to bring you down, we are nothing like he was. We show him you could still feel, that you still can care. Okay?"

Happy...

Happy tending flowers...

Helping the less fortunate...

Never taking life for granted...

Never letting anything really get her down...

Never crumpling, never giving in to hardships...

Taking life in stride...

Always defiant.

Always her.

She was not an object, she had her own thoughts, feelings, and emotions...

Not Specimen A.

She was Aerith.

Aerith Gainsborough.

Aerith shuddered and blinked a few times, the room snapping back into place for her. "Mom...?"

"Hey sweetie," said Elmyra, smiling with relief, "I was thinking about baking your favorite pie tonight, you want to help?"

"I...," she felt all kinds of dizzy and confused, there was a tint of hurt to everything she felt at the moment, "Yes...?"

"Come on then," said Elmyra, gently tugging her to her feet, "We'll make that pie, then you can sleep with me tonight, and we'll freshen up your room tomorrow. You're going to be spending some time back home, okay?"

"Okay...," she whispered back, "Okay..."

Elmyra led her out of the room, and Aerith didn't look back...

*Knock knock knock*

Aerith glanced up briefly, adjusting the position of the flower vase on the family table. It was almost dinner time, did mom have company coming?

Elmyra walked over to the door and opened it. "Hello...? Oh. You."

Aerith watched, slightly amused, to see Elmyra squaring off with Doctor Redman in the doorway. "Ah... hello. It's... been a month, I was wondering how Aerith was doing..."

"I'm doing A-okay," called over Aerith cheerfully.

Redman looked over Elmyra's shoulders, a little surprised. "Well, that's good to hear."

"You've seen, now you can go," said Elmyra firmly.

"Mom, no need to be rude," chided Aerith before threatening in mock seriousness, "I'll make you swallow a whole spoon of peanut butter!"

Elmyra turned and huffed, struggling to withhold a smile, "Why I never! After all I do for you?"

Aerith giggled a bit. "I know, I know, I'm sooo inconsiderate."

Elmyra smiled fondly at her before sighing. "Alright, you can stay for dinner Doctor Redman, just..."

"I'll try not to bungle things again," said Redman.

Aerith smiled, humming under her breath as helped to set the table. "I don't take offense, I know you were trying to help."

She giggled a little. "Though, you really didn't know what you were getting into."

She laughed. "Neither did Cloud when he stumbled into my life. Honestly, I remember when he tried to sneak out, and found me there waiting. He had noooo idea what I was made of," she put her hands on her hips, "None. At. All."

She snickered. "Especially when I got him to crossdress."

"Oh, you haven't told me that story yet," said Elmyra, "It sounds like a good one."

Aerith couldn't help the fit of giggles that escaped her mouth. "He cross-dressed for a good cause! And he looked good in that dress! I coulda gobbled him up!"

Elmyra just laughed and went back to stirring a pot on the stove, Redman on the other hand gave Aerith a blank look.

"What?" asked Aerith innocently, a mischievous smile plastered across her face, "Oh, right, I suppose I'm getting ahead of the therapy schedule."

"I... you're acting nothing like...," Redman began before trailing off and shaking her head, looking at Elmyra in amazement, "Okay, the first thing that should have been done after she got her visions should have been to stick her back in here with you."

Elmyra smiled a bit, finishing her stirring and walking over to stand behind Aerith, a hand on her shoulder, and Aerith reflexively leaned lightly back into her, something she recalled doing so many times. "I know my daughter better than you can possibly imagine. I had been planning on taking it slow, when I saw how she was struggling, I wanted to gently unwind her. But it appeared best to go back to the beginning, to reminder her why we live as we do, as she once did."

Aerith smiled a little. "It's... been so long since I was a little girl mom. So very long... I forgot..."

Elmyra kissed her cheek. "I know sweetie, I know."

Aerith turned her attention to Redman, and sighed, her cheer slowly bleeding away. "But I know I can't stay here forever."

"Aerith...," said Elmyra with a sigh, "Cant you just enjoy yourself for another few months at least?"

"I need to go back," said Aerith, her voice growing tired, "I need to get this out of the way so I can actually start being a SOLDIER."

"Perhaps... a compromise?" suggested Redman, "That she stay here, in a comfortable and familiar environment, with you present as an anchor, while we go through the more difficult parts of her life?"

"That... sounds reasonable," admitted Elmyra.

"Only for the rest of the labs," said Aerith with a sigh.

"Aerith...," began Elmyra in a warning tone.

Aerith shook her head. "The labs are the only truly horrific part, at least, until I die, and then until the end of the world."

Elmyra gave her a skeptical look.

Aerith didn't acknowledge it, merely turning to Redman. "Do... you want to do anything today?"

Redman hesitated for a moment. "Mmm, I'll settle for a finish to our last meeting."

Aerith tensed.

"...do you recall what I said about how our sessions should end?" said Redman, "With a memory of your birth mother?"

Aerith visibly deflated, relieved. "Ah, yeah. Hmmm..."

She smiled a little. "I got a memory."

"I remember when Ifalna taught me how to listen to the planet," said Aerith softly, "It took me a long time, of just sitting and slowly tuning out everything else, to hear it all the way up in the Shinra Tower. The first time I heard it... it... it felt like coming home for the first time in my life..."

"Before we begin again, do you mind if I record these sessions we have here? To take back and listen to for my notes and session planning?" asked Redman.

Aerith shrugged, doodling aimlessly on a piece of scrap paper. "Sure, why not."

"Alright then. I've thought of a... schedule for this, something you can set at your own pace," said Redman.

"Like what?" asked Aerith, tilting her head to study the therapist.

"Each session, I'd like you to pick something, an experiment, a test, anything that Hojo did to you or your birth mother," said Redman, carefully watching Aerith's reaction, "You get to set the topic for each session and decide if you are ready or not to discuss it."

"Eventually I'll be forced to talk about the worst parts," said Aerith softly.

"The point of therapy is to acknowledge and accept what happened," said Redman, "Though, you and you're mother makes a solid effort of finding a way around that through sheer stubbornness and force of will."

Aerith smiled a little. "We do."

Elmyra chuckled a little from her perch, sitting on the kitchen counter, watching silently otherwise.

"So, one by one, we'll hit everything, more in a session if you feel that you are up for it," said Redman, "Does that sound acceptable?"

Aerith nodded and looked down at her scribbles. "Yeah, I guess."

"So... with that in mind, start small since I sprung this on you all the sud...

"He cut me open."

Redman went deathly silent, paling.

Elmyra sighed. "Aerith..."

"Like a bandied mom," said Aerith matter-of-factually, "Might as well get something heavy out of the way while I'm in some kind of a good mood."

Aerith didn't look up from her doodling. "It was one of the few times he had me numbed. Didn't do that for Ifalna though. I think she had pissed him off or something. She screamed enough to scare me half to death ten times over. He wanted to do a side by side comparison of our internal organs. See how much differed between a human, a half-human half Cetra, and a full blooded Cetra. He poked and prodded, took pictures and samples, even tilted my head up to get a look at what my insides looked like."

"Gods," whispered Doctor Redman, "You don't do or show that kind of thing to a child!"

"I think... maybe some positioning were a little off," mused Aerith, "Or some things were shaped a little differently? Nothing absolutely major. Humans are descended from the Ancients after all. They just lost their ability to hear the planet, to touch magic without materia."

"I... how did... that affect you?" asked Redman, hesitant.

Aerith shrugged, her grip on her pencil tightening and slightly crunching it. "I was numbed, I found looking in at myself a little fascinating, and I was more than used to blood at that point. I was more concerned for my birth mother than me, she was the one screaming her head off. Though... being opened up like that... peeled back... was ick."

"I... I imagine it was," said Redman shakily.

Aerith looked up. Her eyes were cold. "He stitched us back up after, rewarded me with a lolipop for being 'such a compliant specimen'. It was the first one I ever had, I thought it the best thing I ever tasted at the time."

"He gave me that reward a few times," Her smile was mirthless. "I never had a lolipop again after I left the labs. Can't even look at them or people sucking on them without feeling like throwing up."

"I... I see." Redman swallowed. "I suppose... that was a... good session, progress t-towards getting things aired and acknowledged. Do you have a memory of your birth mother to give?"

Aerith smiled with false sweetness. "I thought ahead, it even goes ahead with this session. I remember that Hojo let me and my birth mother spend that night together. Ifalna didn't let the incisions heal naturally, would have left a nasty red line down our bodies. She ran a finger down the line, healing away the irritation, the starting of pain, the cut itself..."

She started at her collarbone and started tracing down slowly through her clothes, humming softly before speaking, "After she was done, she clutched me for hours, shook and cried and apologized to me for having to go through that, as if I had been the one screaming in agony and not her. She always gave such thought to me before herself."

She let all falseness fall away and asked coldly, "Is that satisfactory, Doctor Redman?"

"I... yes," said the therapist, "I think... that will do for today..."

"That was mean Aerith," said Elmyra softly, after Redman had left.

"I consider it payback," said Aerith darkly before musing, "For a therapist, she has a weak stomach. I had better control when I was six years old. I had to."

Elmyra just sighed, and didn't respond otherwise...

"Physical training and fighting were the worst," said Aerith, sipping a bit of ice tea her mother had made, "I always, without fail, was miserable at them. I could never manage to even beat the simplest of monsters. Hojo knew I wasn't a fighter, had no potential for it at that age. I think he did it when he was feeling particularly sadistic, or wanted to berate me for some reason."

Aerith spoke snidely in a nasal tone. "Always so disappointing Specimen A. Specimen S defeated that creature his first time with ease, you couldn't even injure it."

"Did he do that alot?" asked Redman.

"What? Pit me against monsters? Yeah, at least a few times a month from age five onwards," said Aerith.

"I... no, I mean yes, but not that," said Redman, "I meant, did he compare you to Sephiroth alot? I assume that's who he was referring to."

The cup in Aerith hand shattered as her fist tightened. "Every chance he could."

Elmyra sighed. "You're cleaning that up Aerith."

Aerith huffed a little, muttering under her breath as she moved to do so.

"Did you resent Sephiroth for that?" asked Redman.

Aerith laughed a little. "How couldn't I? He was always the measure stick I was held against. It felt like most of the punishments I got were his fault. I..."

She looked away, ashamed. "I hated him, early on. That I could never measure up to him. Whenever Hojo started rambling about Specimen S and how I'd compare in this experiment or that test, I always knew I was in for it. I hated Sephiroth so much..."

She sighed. "When I voiced that to my birth mother... that was the first time she taught me compassion for others. Really taught me it. Because she pointed out that Hojo was doing the same thing to me that had been done to Sephiroth."

"I see," said Redman thoughtfully, "How did that make you feel?"

"Pity," said Aerith, "I suppose. I felt bad for him. I felt... a little relieved, that me and Ifalna weren't the only ones who had suffered Hojo's attention. But... I wished... I could have kept hating him."

"Because you lost something that you had always been able to blame your suffering on."

"Yeah," said Aerith, her voice painfully dry, "Yeah. It took me way to long to realize I should have been hating Hojo the entire time..."

"I remember when Hojo injected me with Jenova Cells," said Aerith.

Redman chocked a bit. "What?! You..."

Aerith shook her head. "Ilfana purged them out of me before they could spread very far. You wouldn't believe how enraged she was. It was the first time I had ever seen her lose it. She wielded her magic with a power I never knew she had, that I've never touched without materia, in this life or the la... the visions. She killed a number of staff, infantry, a Turk I think, and destroyed half the lab we were in. Almost got Hojo before she was pinned down by SOLDIERs. She swore if he ever put them in me again, she'd destroy him, rip his soul apart so that he'd never find peace in the Promised Land. That she'd kill herself, and me, before she let the Calamity take us."

Aerith smiled, it was a savage smile. "It was one of the few times I've ever seen Hojo afraid. He never did try that again."

"She'd... kill you?" whispered Redman.

Aerith shrugged. "It would have been a mercy."

"Did... you understand that at the time?"

"I figured whatever Hojo had done was bad to make Ifalna freak like that," said Aerith, "And... the way I had felt. The burning, sickly, spreading taint. For a moment, before my birth mother purged it..."

Aerith shuddered. "I... I thought I heard a woman's voice in my head... it promised me peace, freedom, revenge, if only I'd listen to her..."

Aerith shook, and Elmyra quickly walked over to place a arm around her. "Shh Aerith, shh..."

"I never wanted to hear that voice again," whispered Aerith, "That voice of nightmares."

Redman looked apprehensive. "So... Jenova is a deceiver then?"

"Oh no," said Aerith, "I don't doubt Jenova would have given me everything I wanted as she twisted me into a tool of her will, making it seem like what she wanted was also what I wanted."

"But... I thought Jenova wasn't awake?" asked Redman, confused.

Aerith sighed. "Her body wasn't active, and she never took an active control of her cells. She's dormant by our definitions, but she's always whispering to those who would hear her will."

"Oh... that's troubling," said Redman.

Aerith shrugged. "You have to be weakened of will for her whispers to really break through and nearby her main body, or so I'm led to believe. So it's generally not a problem."

"Still...," said Redman before shaking her head, "Nevermind. Do you mind if I direct your recollection about your mother for this session?"

"Go for it."

"What is your first memory of her?"

"I... my first memory of Ifalna... was her crying over me while healing me," said Aerith quietly, "I think... it was my first test against a monster, well before I could even think of lifting a basic weapon. He wanted to see if I had any built in reflexes. If i did, they weren't good enough. I was gored, badly."

"Hojo put you into a combat situation when you were basically a toddler?!" Redman's voice had gone shrill, "I thought you said it started when you were five? Which isn't honestly much better."

"Like I said, he called it a reflex test, not a combat test," Aerith grew bitter. "He said he did it with Sephiroth, and he had much better results..."

"That's not actually true Aerith," said Doctor Redman, her voice carefully neutral.

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't reveal anything in particular about you to him, but in the interest of perhaps getting him into his own therapy, I asked Sephiroth a question about his early life in the labs."

Aerith tensed, staring at the woman in shock. "Are you insane?"

Maybe this Sephiroth wasn't crazy, but that was asking for it!

Redman seemed amused at her outburst. "Sephiroth was quite calm and respectful about it. His response was that Hojo didn't got sole control over him until Professor Gast left the Jenova Project. While he admitted to some early tests and lighter experiments, he said the worst of it didn't start until Hojo took over the science department. Any results Hojo compared you to were from a somewhat older Sephiroth, not the same age as you."

A feeling of burning, consuming, fire roiled up in Aerith. "That... bastard. He LIED to me! Of course he lied to me!"

She couldn't help it. She screamed and swept everything off the table in a shattering of vases and plates and tingling of silverware. "EVERY GOAL WAS INTENTIONALLY OUT OF REACH! HE NEVER EXPECTED ME TO MEASURE UP! HE WANTED ME TO FAIL! WANTED SEPHIROTH TO ALWAYS BE SEEN AS BETTER THAN AN ANCIENT!"

"Aerith!" cried out Elmyra.

Aerith saw red for a long moment, and when she came to, find her fist embedded in the house's wall, many punch indents and holes near it, her breathing ragged and labored. Aerith slowly withdrew her hand and slid to the floor, pressing her head against the wall, tears of frustration spilling down her face. "He always spoke of being impartial, about not biasing his experiments with expectations... he's... just a hack, a fake, a psychopath with a degree..."

He sat there for a long moment before rising to her feet and turning, pausing when she saw Elmyra and Redman's fear stained faces. Aerith turned, took one look and the butchered wall, and muttered, "Sorry about the wall. I'll pay for it."

Without further word, she turned a retreated upstairs to her room and sobbed... she had never wanted her mother to be afraid of her...

"Most of the tests he did, the mental ones anyway, were puzzles, or just reciting things I read," said Aerith, "Those... were the better days."

"What kind of puzzles did he have you do?"

Aerith shrugged. "It varied every time. It started with simple puzzle games, but grew into larger logic puzzles, like, if you run X fast for X amount of time with X distance per step, how far could you run."

"He gave you mathematical equations that young?"

"I told you, he never let me be stupid," said Aerith flatly, "Though, even that had its limits. Said the human brain needed at least a few years to begin to understand such complexities. Anything more than picture puzzles and basic math didn't really start until I was five."

She sighed. "When I got bored, I did those in my head to pass the time."

She smiled a little. "You might find this odd, but, you have no idea how happy I was that Elmyra didn't send me to school, or well, the slum version of school. It just... let me be simple for once and..."

"While I'm happy to hear that, kind of, we're getting ahead of ourselves," pointed out Redman.

Aerith wrinkled her nose. "I guess. But yeah, I had that sort of crap crammed down my head almost every day."

"He never really let you have anything or do anything that let you be a child, did he?"

"Not really."

"Do you have something about Ifalna you'd like to share today?"

She smiled sadly. "She would sing quietly to me. She didn't expect anything from me during our time together. It was... soothing, relaxing. She just let me be..."

"He'd inject me with things," said Aerith, "Illnesses, viruses, chemicals, just to see how my body would react to them."

"What was the worst?"

"Well, its hard to say," admitted Aerith, "He'd never tell me beforehand what he was putting in me, and very rarely told me afterwards. Jenova Cells were... ironically not the worst thing I've felt in me. The most alarming yes, but not the most painful. One time..."

She fidgeted. "One time, it felt like my insides were liquefying. You have no idea how painful that was. Even after I was healed, even with my birth mother's magic, the pain stayed for days."

"I believe that's called... phantom pain? No, that's with limb that arn't there anymore, um..."

Aerith waved a hand. "Whatever it was, it felt real. Never screamed like that before or after in my entire life. Hell... I didn't make a sound when I was run through and killed..."

She shook her head when Redman opened her mouth. "I know, I know, ahead of myself. Was just making a comparison."

Aerith ran a hand through her hair. "I've been in all kinds of states from what he put into me. Feeling detached from my own body. Delirious out of my mind. Sicker than a dog. Hyperactive to the point of bouncing off a wall, literally. I think being hypersensitive to everything was the worst. My state of mind changed day to day, he put enough chemicals in me to make teenage moodswings seem pleasant in comparison. Sometimes he let them run their course, sometimes he called Ifalna in to fix me, sometimes he tested some counter-agent, which more often than not made things worse."

"I was a guinea pig," she whispered, clenching her fists tightly and looking away, "His little pet half-cetra."

Redman jotted down a few notes on a pad of paper. "Where does the term 'pet' come from in all of this?"

Aerith scowled. "Because I... I used to follow behind him early on, before I really knew better, like a pet. Even afterwards, when I knew all he brought was pain, I still followed."

"Because there was nothing else."

Aerith gave a humorless smile. "I could have resisted and made him drag me."

"Which would have encouraged punishment, humans do a lot of what they do to avoid pain Aerith, especially children, it's natural."

Aerith looked away and swallowed. "Sometimes, I think there needs to be a line drawn that you can't allow yourself to cross."

"Would you have any concept of that as a five year old?"

"No," Aerith admitted, "Probably not."

"You do know, you do understand, that you are not some pet, not an animal, right?"

Aerith scoffed. "We're all animals Doctor Redman."

"You're avoiding the question."

"I will always be a pet, a specimen, to him," she spat.

Redman studied her across the table, thinking, before saying softly, "It's only a weight if you let it be."

"I know," said Aerith, sighing after, "It didn't matter anymore when I was dead in the lifestream, nothing like that mattered, but... alive... it's..."

"Always weighing in the back of your mind," offered Redman, "Here and now he only has power if you let him."

Aerith pursed her lips. "You really need to rethink that. Because Hojo being anywhere except dead is a power over every living thing on the planet. The only thing currently worse than him is Jenova itself."

Redman went awkwardly silent at that before evidently deciding to end the session, "What would you like to remember about your birth mother today?"

Aerith's eyes went briefly distant, and sadness rippled from her. "She told me of the Promised Land."

"The legend?"

"It's both real, and not real, at the same time," said Aerith quietly, "It's the afterlife, floating in the lifestream, all your worldly troubles left behind. For normal people anyway. She told me, that when we went there, there would be no more pain or suffering. That... if push came to shove, she'd take us both there herself early."

"That's..."

"I was a young child," said Aerith softly, "I didn't understand what she was saying at the time, but... there are some things better to have died than experienced. And I... looking back, I think I was the only reason she hadn't sought the Promised Land herself already. Hojo was far more cruel to her than he was to me. Because... I wasn't the one who had to watch my own child go through that kind of hell..."

"Aerith?"

"Hmm?" said Aerith, looking up from picking around her plate of food at Doctor Redman.

"You've barely said a word since I've arrived."

"Most whats left is just... small stuff... until we get to the final parts," said Aerith quietly.

"You mean what led up to your escape?"

There was no warmth in Aerith's voice. "Yes."

"Do you feel you need time to prepare yourself to talk about this?"

"I've been working towards it since we began Doctor," said Aerith bleakly, "If I must retell it, then I don't have a choice. Telling it now instead of later means nothing to me, it's going to hurt either way, and once I've begun, I don't think I'll be able to stop, because I wont ever be speaking of it again once I'm done."

She can see the queasiness in Redman's eye. The woman knows its going to be bad, and wouldn't Aerith hate to disappoint?

"Do you remember, Doctor, when I told you about figuring out Hojo never gave a damn about me?" asked Aerith, "That the game he was playing was a lie?

"You said you figured it out when you were six? As part of a project to analyze people?"

"Yeah, when I started to finally resist him," said Aerith slowly, "I told you things got worse. That's... honestly an understatement. Because he wasn't pretending anymore, no more of that 'I'm so disappointed nonsense', any fake or mock care he pretended to have was gone. When he called me Specimen A, there was no more fondness, only contempt and irritation. He became brutal in his testing. I was never numbed from that point onward no matter how painful the experiments were. He left me regularly untreated and sometimes wounded to 'test my resilience'. Everything just... went bad, worse than it had been. And... and then... he decided he wanted to try again."

"Try... again?" asked Redman, confused.

Aerith watched her eyes flicker towards Elmyra, for some kind of clue. But this is something she had never told her mother either. She's half the mind to think she's going to flip or lose control half-way through telling this. Or go compleatly dead inside, she didn't honestly know.

"To raise a pet cetra," she said flatly.

"He offered to... what? Take you back?" asked Redman.

"No," said Aerith, her throat clamping up, "He decided he wanted to... to have another Cetra to start the whole process over with. So... he had Ifalna... he... he brought me in... told me it would be... educational to watch... would teach me about reproduction."

Then Redman gets it, horrified. "He had her raped."

Aerith was full on shaking, looking downward at the table, a ragged breath escaping her lips, and for a moment, rather than bury it, she let the memory resurface, saw her mother strapped down and telling her to look away but Hojo wouldn't let her and... she just couldn't, she shoved it back down and locked it away with the rest of the memories to dark and twisted to ever acknowledge, a slight whine of distress escaping her lips.

Elmyra carefully came over, dragging a chair to sit next to Aerith, resting a gentle hand on her own clenched ones.

"There is no depravity that man... thing... would not fall to," said Redman with a sigh, "To make you watch was... cruel and very unnecessary."

"It gets worse, so much worse," was all Aerith could say, and she forced herself to keep going, because if she didn't, her throat was going to close and not open, "My mother wouldn't give him what he wanted. I could feel it, her using her power. Anytime she conceived... she killed it..."

There was a deep, gaping wound in her heart at that, and she rasped out, "She killed innocent, unborn babies, to spare them from Hojo. My brothers and sisters..."

She struggled to continue, "And... and when... when Ifalna wouldn't give him what he wanted... he... he started hormone therapy on me..."

"Please tell me this is when Ifalna took you and ran," begged Redman.

She didn't dare look at either them, didn't want to see the horror or... or pity or whatever they had on their faces. "No, that... that happened after... after she healed the scarring..."

That... was the closest she was ever going to say to what happened, and nothing Redman could threaten her with, SOLDIER or not, would ever change that. The clenched gasp from Elmyra was enough to say that at least one of them understood.

"I don't... don't know if the hormone therapy honestly worked that fast or not... considering it was only a few weeks after it started that... that he decided to test it... I'm doubtful," said Aerith brittley, "Either that... or my birth mother killed it before she took me and ran."

Elmyra was up and out of her chair, squeezing Aerith in what she imagined was the tightest hug of her life. "My sweet daughter... I'm so sorry..."

"Ifalna... killed her way out of the Science Department and ran with me," said Aerith in a hushed voice, "She was... either as mad, or even angier, than she had been when Hojo tried to put Jenova in me. As I understand it, an Ancient is supposed to be peaceful, happy, nomadic tender of the Planet. One of us turned to wrath, who actually knew how to use her power, is a truly terrible thing. There was no mercy..."

"For anyone who got between her and getting her child to safety," said Elmyra in firm understanding.

"I just... if she had that much power, why wait so long?" asked Redman.

"She was afraid, I think," said Aerith softly, "If she failed, and we were caught, she'd never see me again. Hojo would never have given her a second chance to take me and run. She always said there was to much power imprisoning us, with SOLDIER, Turks, the entire Shinra Army, and we were in the most secure place in Midgar. I don't think she ever expected to get as far as we did. But at that point, she couldn't bring herself to wait any longer. Do or die."

Aerith looked up through tearstained eyes at Doctor Redman, "You want to know what my most powerful memory of my birth mother is? It's... its that she died for me. She loved me so deeply that she died for me, broke her own peaceful ways for me, took bullets to protect me, held me tight as she bled out slowly on the train and told me everything would be alright, that rather than take me with her to the Promised Land as she went and not risk Hojo getting me again, she had hope and entrusted me to my mother."

"She loved me so much... and... and I don't love her nearly enough in return," sobbed Aerith, "I never had the chance to learn how..."

Aerith didn't remember much after that, not when Redman left, or the rest of the night, or being led to bed, but when Elmyra climbed in and curled around her, she turned and buried her head into her mother's shoulder and cried until she burned out and slept...

Alberta Redman stared down silently at all the notes she had taken over the months listening to Aerith slowly relive her time in the labs. Every thought she had, every possible treatment plan to help her heal, and wanted to dump it all in the trash bin. She had already felt in over her head to begin with, but now? She didn't have the faintest clue how to help the girl. Because, she wasn't sure the standard procedure would be enough.

Have the patient recall the trauma, help them identify it and what caused it, have the patient to feel and experience it rather than bury it away, encourage the patient to let their emotions to run their course, be willing to listen to and share the burden or bring in someone who can, and finally, help the patient let it go.

Except, she wasn't sure Aerith could let it go. The young woman had glossed over during many recollections, just regurgitating what happened, rather than trying to acknowledge and accept. She had done good, for the severity of the trauma, and Alberta had tried to get her to release her feelings on the events, with moderate success. There was also still a major problem, because frankly, the girl wasn't wrong in thinking that Hojo being alive meant she was never safe. And that was an awful feeling to have. There was little Alberta could do about that aside from find Hojo and beat his head in with a frying pan. She wasn't under any illusions about the possibility of that, so...

Alberta wanted to find a bottle to drown herself in, for a few days at least.

"How in the world is that girl not mentally fractured?" muttered the therapist, staring down at a several page-long list of damaging events and conditions that should have damned that girl to a psych-ward years ago, or made her go cold and cruel. Traumatic childhood was an understatement. It made so little sense to her how the girl could be functional in any way, shape, or form, especially the cheerful teenage girl she had been noted to be. Had briefly touched being again while with her mother...

"And what do we do to get back at him?"

Aerith seemed to struggle with the question. struggled to think. "We... I..."

Alberta considered the memory, pulling at it, twisting and turning and analyzing it this way and that. Elmyra's mantra had more visable effect than the therapy thus far, but, that was to be expected. Therapy was to get at the underlying cause of behavior and help them move on, it wasn't an instant quick-fix, it was a long process with slow, but gratifying results. Elmyra encouraged... burying the hatchet, putting it all away, forgetting or living in defiance of what happened. To prove that Aerith still could. In the face of everything that happened, perhaps it wasn't so ill a decision to give the young traumatized child a chance to live her life...

Perhaps Alberta was being to hasty in her estimates of Aerith's psyche and condition. She still had the rest of the girl's life to listen through. This was but the first, if but horrific, part of it. The next years, up to the time she would have been swept up with this 'AVALANCHE', were implied to have been much better, a time of healing, especially with 'her' Zack Fair.

Yes, because she couldn't disregard that young man's words either. The Zack here was not the Zack Aerith had known, and trying to force him to or imply that he should fill that role was... unwise. She wondered if she should have a quick check in with the young man and see how he was doing; he had his own set of pressures on him at the moment, and a quick chat could do wonders if he was willing.

Because Alberta, in her experience with SOLDIERs, knew they never sought help unless they were forced to, even when they were drowning. SOLDIERs were constantly in warfare over in Wutai, on potentially dangerous missions against monsters, exposeded to extreme levels of violence in their training and sparring, and who knows what else that was classified from her ( knowing they had a bit of space parasite in them definitly made her even more concerned for them). She was of the mind that the vast majority of SOLDIER should have mandatory counseling at least once every few months, especially the top trio, all things considered.

She had been read in on enough to be cleared to treat the Cetra, and that included a large majority of the Jenova Project and it's victims.

Frankly, she wouldn't call them anything else...

Sunday, Sephiroth mused, was supposed to be a day of rest and relaxation, winding down from a week of mindless paperwork and pointless meetings generally, sometimes missions. The ceasefire with Wutai was still up and going, longer than usual to his interest, and considering the President's lack of care for it after the Cetra had said her piece about the Promised Land, might continue to the point of a peace treaty if they were all lucky. He even had went out and bought beverages for the weekly gathering he, Genesis, and Angeal did (now that the latter was finally up and moving again, still moody from time to time).

Yet, he found himself doing his job on his relaxation day in his apartment, once again. He was required to do this, to keep track of the mental status of his SOLDIERs who went into therapy, 3rd Class Gainsborough going home for the rest of her initial treatment had been a... complication. But, Doctor Redman bringing back notes and recordings and observations to her office allowed him to circumvent that. It wasn't difficult to slip in and make copies.

This was the first time however, he sorely regretted having to do this.

He had heard all sorts of admissions, confessions, and painful pasts listening in on these types of sessions before. Feelings of inadequacy, abusive parents, rivalry, jealousy, the pain of losing a loved one, trauma of losing a limb, being the sole surviving of a mission gone bad, ect...

Aerith Gainsborough however, was the first time that anything he heard had struck home so deeply against him. Was the first time he could admit, that someone had suffered through things worse than he had at Hojo's hands. Listening to the recordings, the cracks and pain in her voice as she described her 'sessions' with Hojo, caused him to relive some of his own memories in quiet, comparative, consideration. It also shamed him, because he for once did not want to do this, wanted to turn away from his job and let her past be kept by her and her alone. In Shinra, privacy did not really exist, but... still. He had never spoken of what had happened to him specifically in the labs, if their positions had been reversed, and he found someone poking their nose into it, he... wasn't sure how controlled of a response he would have.

He sighed softly and flicked one of the labeled recordings on, fast forwarding it...

Redman's voice cued in: "I meant, did he compare you to Sephiroth alot? I assume that's who he was referring to.

There was the sound of a shattering cup before Aerith answered, voice tight and angry: "Every chance he could."

Mrs. Gainsborough sighed. "You're cleaning that up Aerith."

The faint sound of Aerith huffing came through a little, muttering under her breath,

"Did you resent Sephiroth for that?" asked Redman.

Aerith laughed a little, bitterness evident. "How couldn't I? He was always the measure stick I was held against. It felt like most of the punishments I got were his fault. I..."

There was a brief pause before she continued: "I hated him, early on. That I could never measure up to him. Whenever Hojo started rambling about Specimen S and how I'd compare in this experiment or that test, I always knew I was in for it. I hated Sephiroth so much..."

Saying Sephiroth had the urge to throttle Hojo would be repetitive and pointless at this point, but he really did want to yet again, take that scrawny neck, and slam him into the wall again and again. Sephiroth had been used, yet again used, without his consent or will. This time, against a little girl. A little girl who had been not only younger than him for these experiments, but unenhanced. Sephiroth had been exposed to mako by this point, any comparisons would be pointless and were, ultimately, just more of Hojo's damnable schemes.

He was loath to admit, how uncomfortable hearing that hatred of him from her. It wasn't as if he had any choice in the matter, he wouldn't have wanted to be used that way against Ifalna's child. He was also not blind to how Hojo was pitting the girl against Sephiroth by doing so. To what end, Sephiroth couldn't guess. Had Hojo wanted Aerith to hate Sephiroth? Look up to him as a goal? Develop a rivalry? Make her feel inadequate in these unfair comparisons? What had been his final goal in this?

Sephiroth shook his head and continued the recording...

Aerith sighed. "When I voiced that to my birth mother... that was the first time she taught me compassion for others. Really taught me it. Because she pointed out that Hojo was doing the same thing to me that had been done to Sephiroth."

"I see," said Redman thoughtfully, "How did that make you feel?"

"Because you lost something that you had always been able to blame your suffering on."

"Yeah," said Aerith, her voice painfully dry, "Yeah. It took me way to long to realize I should have been hating Hojo the entire time."

Sephiroth clicked the recording off and put it down, running a hand through his hair. "..."

How he missed Ifalna. It was the first thought that came to him. That way of compassionate logic had been so brief in his life, and so thoroughly trampled over in years to come. Considering what his 'vision self' had done to Aerith, this moment, when Ifalna had shown her compassion, was probably the only reason Aerith didn't hate Sephiroth guts with an all consuming passion. He shouldn't care to much about that, he never really had before, but... his men hating him could cause complications on missions, bucking orders, and the like. Aerith hating him, someone distinctly important, and with great potential, could have drastic impact. He wondered if she would have bothered revealing the truth of his past to him, or just tried to kill him if she had hated him...

He didn't know what to do with her pity. Generally, he disliked the emotion, especially when it was directed at him. But this wasn't some random person feeling bad for Shinra's pet general for some reason, this was someone who had gone through the labs, who understood that pain. He toyed with the feeling for a bit, not sure what to do with it, before simply pushing it away for the time being. He wasn't listining to this for his own feelings, but to judge Gainsborough's fitness to be in SOLDIER.

He had listened through all of these once before, just to get the general thing down with specific notes to look into certain sections again. Indepth. He picked up another recording and clicked it on...

Aerith's voice chimed in, already shaky. "He... had me pretend to be him once, ordering his subordinates how to go through a dissection."

"How did that make you feel?'"

There was nothing for a moment in the recording before Doctor Redman spoke again, "It's alright Aerith."

"It's NOT!" shouted Aerith in a panic, "It's NOT okay! You... you're a therapist! How do you THINK it made me feel?"

"Powerful? In control?" guessed Doctor Redman, "Happy that it was someone else under the knife and not you for once?"

Aerith choked a little. "I..."

Aerith's voice was... quaking. "It's not okay, don't... d-don't you dare say it was! I... I walked..."

She started sobbing. "I walked his people through dissecting a human being! Who was still alive and screaming for the first part of it! I'm... I'm a monster just as bad as he is!"

Aerith started crying uncontrollably, deeply.

"I... I didn't want to do it," she whispered, her voice having a distinctly broken quality to it at the moment, "But he was watching... had been talking about the opportunity for months... he promised a big reward for me... he would have... would have been so disappointing and angry if I failed him... would have hurt me and mom so badly... msorry-I'msorrysorrysorrysorrysorry..."

Sephiroth clicked it off, lips pursed. All things considered, he ought to pull her out of SOLDIER. It's the cold, logical thought; emotional breaks had no place in SOLDIER. But that would be hypocritical of him, considering that Angeal was still in SOLDIER as a 1st Class. If he allowed himself an emotional response, it would be to gut Hojo with a smile on his face. He considered Hojo's goal here, of making Aerith like him, and found himself distinctly glad that hadn't happened.

Ancients were said to having healing powers, Ifalna proved that true. Having a cetra as a mad-scientist who could experiment, heal the subject, and continue experimenting over and over again... that was a shudder worthy thought. An endless nightmare. Everyone had within them the capacity for good or evil. Sanity or madness. He distinctly understood that considering what he had been told of his 'vision self'. Having Aerith on the opposing end of the spectrum, depending on what stage of enhancement she was at, could be very, very dangerous.

Then again, Angeal had almost killed Sephiroth in his fit of emotional devastation. If he counted that possibility against Aerith, could he consider himself impartial or fair? Now that he thought about it, should he even be doing these anymore? He was already looking the other way in regards to Angeal, he was compromised, but did he trust anyone else to do these and not potentially abuse what knowledge they gained? Aerith herself had many ways in which the knowledge of her past could be used to hurt, to devastate her.

If Sephiroth wasn't doing this, someone else would be. He wouldn't trust anyone else with this responsibility, to not act, for good or ill, on what was learned. Perhaps a Turk could manage to do so, but this was a SOLDIER matter. At the end of the day, regardless of what he thought or felt about what he learned, he was only here to determine if she should be a SOLDIER. Not to act on what he learned in any way, shape, or formed, nor give any indication he knew anything. He had to be able to look his SOLDIERs in the eye, having listened to their personal past, and show no reaction whatsoever. He did not think anyone else but the top of the Turks could manage that type of firm control either.

Now... coming up was what he had noted to be the most interesting part of this, to him at least...

"Merciful gods, what did you do to her?" exclaimed Mrs. Gainsborough, "I haven't seen her like this since she was eight!"

"She's had panic attacks like this before?" asked Redman.

"Panic attacks? You think this is just a panic attack?" came Elmyra at a shrill tone, "This is her entire life crashing down on her again. I'll not ask a third time: What. Did. You. Do?"

"Yeah, sure," said Zack uneasily, "Right, I'll be down the hall."

"By early life," hissed Mrs. Gainsborough, "Were you talking about what that bastard scientist did to her?"

"Yes, I take it you are aware?"

Mrs. Gainsborough gave a slightly hysterical laugh. "Am I aware? The girl hardly had a clue that half the things done to her were inhumane and wrong! She expected it to continue! She used to tell me about everything! Everything that happened to her as if it were commonplace. Do you know, after the first few days, she asked me when the men with needles were coming with the injections? Or when she was going to have to go back to the 'experimentation room'? If she was going to be punished for accidentally breaking a dish? If I was going to be the one to do the next procedure? She told me she could walk me through it if I was new, even started to before I had to hush her up or empty my stomach. Do you know how long it took me to get her to stop referring to herself as Specimen A? YES, I'M FUCKING AWARE!"

"Gods sake woman," said Mrs. Gainsborough, breathless, "I did my best to help her move on and forget for a reason! I gave her a chance to develop into a sweet young woman, in defiance of the hell she went through, and you go and dig it back up. My daughter already has enough on her plate without this."

"It's... not healthy to keep something like this bottled up," said Redman.

"Sometimes, it's not about being healthy, but being able to even function and survive," said Mrs. Gainsborough thinly, "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a daughter to tend to. Afterwards, she's coming back home with me for awhile, you can tell the Turks and the SOLDIERs if they want her back before I get her situated then I will shove my broom up their asses."

There was a rustling of movement. "Aerith honey? I want you to listen. Okay? Are you listening?"

"Yes," Aerith mumbled weakly.

"Who do we hate?"

"Hojo," Aerith whispered.

"Why do we hate him?"

"He... he ruined my life," whispered Aerith.

"And what do we do to get back at him?"

Aerith seemed to struggle with the question. "We... I..."

"We take back our life and live it in defiance of everything he did," soothed Mrs. Gainsborough, "We are happy, we are carefree, we let nothing bother us, we walk free of any chains he'd use to bring you down, we are nothing like he was. We show him you could still feel, that you still can care. Okay?"

Sephiroth turned off the recording and switched to his laptop. This session had thankfully been in the Doctor's office in HQ, so he also had a video of it as well. He watched it a few times, sound off and on, sometimes switching back to the recording with no video, studying body language and tone. This was... probably the most important moment for studying Aerith's character from these sessions thus far.

He couldn't say he didn't understand doing things in defiance of Hojo, it was one of the reason's Sephiroth kept his hair long after all. Aerith's mother had taken that to a whole new level, making it a way of life. It gave Sephiroth a logic conundrum. Was living one's life in defiance of someone truely living? He'd like to think the happy girl she had been noted to be in Mrs. Gainsborough's care would have been her natural state anyway, but he couldn't be one-hundred percent sure. It was, he could admit, likely. But did Aerith herself consider it like that?

He had yet to hear about that part of Aerith's life from her perspective yet. Not to mention, did the Turk profile of her only show what was seen outside the girl's house? What about what happened inside? Currently, what he had heard was a large strike against the girl, even if it was through no fault of her own. Yet... it was to soon to fully judge the girl. Regardless of what he had heard thus far. These seven years of her life were not all of it, a large, potentially dehibilitating factor perhaps, but not all of it.

Still... there was one, personal pleasure he got from all of this.

He reached for what he dubbed his 'favorite' recording and clicked it on...

There was the continues sound of Aerith punching holes through a wall, ranting and crying and screaming before it slowly ended into ragged and labored breathing, soft sniffles."He always spoke of being impartial, about not biasing his experiments with expectations... he's... just a hack, a fake, a psychopath with a degree..."

"I am glad someone finally agrees with me that Hojo is a hack," mused Sephiroth, clicking off the recording.

He looked down at one of the others with a frown, the admission of the rapes, and wasn't quite sure he wanted to stomach hearing that again, but steadied himself to reach for it...

And jolted when the door to his room burst open, and Genesis strode in like he owned the place with a pack of beer in his hand. "I knew it! Working on our day off again! For shame Sephiroth!"

"Genesis!" hissed Sephiroth in frustration, scrambling to close his laptop and gather the copies of Doctor Redman's notes and recordings, "I told you I was to busy for this today!"

Angeal walked in a moment later, with a large bottle of wine. "Sorry, but, you've been busy the last few sundays, you need an actual break for once."

Sephiroth pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. "Give me a moment to put my work away."

They trio settled down a few minutes later, Sephiroth and Angeal in separate chairs, Genesis on the couch, beverages on the table between them. Genesis propped one leg over the other and cracked open a bear. "Ah, there we go. Infinite in mystery is the gift of the Goddess."

"I'm pretty sure beer is manmade," said Angeal dryly.

"Do you know how many different folklores have gods partaking in alcoholic merrymaking?" countered Genesis dryly, "Alcohol is the gift of the gods to man!"

Angeal snorted, and Sephiroth allowed himself a small chuckle. He watched the two of them joke and jeer around with eachother, it was... always refreshing, these short moments. He responded faintly when spoken to, but mostly just allowed himself to bask in his friend's presence, as annoying as the pair could be at times. What Aerith needed, was a pair like these two. Well, she probably needed a great many things at this point...

"Earth to Seph," called Angeal.

"Hmm?"

"Thought we lost you for a moment," the man teased.

"Care to share what has you so dark and brooding this time?" poked Genesis.

Sephiroth considered it for a long moment before shaking his head and reaching for the bottle of wine Angeal brought, pouring himself a glass and taking a sip. He trusted these two with many things, but not this. He gave an indulgent smile and thanks for the wine, and settled comfortably into his chair.

"So, whose turn is it to choose a movie to watch?" asked Angeal.

"Mine," said Genesis victoriously, "And there is this wonderful play I think you neanderthals would benefit from watching, highly educational and enlightening."

Sephiroth and Angeal both groaned as the redhead began flickering through channels, dooming them to a night of painful poetry. Later, after it was said and done, and Sephiroth laid in bed, considering the subject of the Ancient again, he came to a conclusion he really wasn't certain how he felt about.

"If we had the opportunity, and she asked it of me," he mused to himself, "I'd let her kill Hojo instead of killing him myself."

He slowly shook his head, reached over for his lamp, and click it off...

Author's Notes: I'm a heartless bastard. Let me know how I did.

Next up is Aerith's life from Lab Escape - Zack's disappearance.

Will probably be shorter than this chapter. Goodness, I let it drag on a bit.

Review Responses:

Meow Meow Fluff: Happy X-Mas.

Azure Shine: Because they haven't talked about it yet...? This is currently just about Aerith, Sephiroth hasn't approached Lucrecia about the Jenova Project yet.

Guest: Hmm... a Tsviet AU, I'd need to consider just what I'd do, how I'd do it, and how it could possibly differ from cannon. I'd probably go for Shelke main character, but, idk. It would have to depend on what time period I chose. Shelke's initial entry, sometime during her conversion to being emotionally destroyed, or the current Shelke we know before DoC.

Morganna Saphire Raven: Weep for Shelke, weep deeply.

Greatazuredragon: Vessel in more ways than you'd think. *potential spoiler*

Patrick the observer: Yeah... Deepground is going to be 100% converted. Jenova is a cunning, devious, insidious thing, showing love for those it's going to consume one day. There will be more chapters for them in awhile. Got a lot of Aerith stuff to burn through.