***Chapters all in italics are flashbacks.
Chapter Two: Little Stranger
A young boy sat at the foot of the hospital bed, legs crossed, as he watched the bed's sleeping occupant. He blinked once, twice, then three times, but nothing changed. She did not even stir. He frowned in impatience as he blew his long bangs out of his face.
He only half heard the door open and the professor enter. The older man laughed kindly. "Thought I might find you here, Sephiroth. How long have you been here? Hojo's been looking all over for you." When the boy didn't answer, the professor shook his head. "Have you been enjoying yourself?
Sephiroth frowned, but tilted his head in curiosity, not taking his inquisitive gaze off the bed's occupant. "Who is she, Gast?" he asked simply.
"Are you interested?"
"No," he insisted. "I don't care. I'm just…wondering. That's all."
"I see."
Sephiroth huffed softly. Gast often played these types of games with him.
"What's her name?" Sephiroth asked after a long silence.
"We don't know. She's not in the records," was the curt, but not unkind, reply. "Maybe she'll tell us when she wakes up."
"How'd she get here?"
"Unfortunately, Professor Hojo found her."
The boy fell silent, and the aura around him grew tense with dislike. "So Hojo's going to…"
"Don't worry about her," Gast said it calmly, but with an air of disapproval. He put a hand on the Sephiroth's shoulder. "Nothing has happened yet."
Sephiroth pushed the hand from his shoulder. "I know that."
"All right. Just in case you were worrying."
"I wasn't."
"Good, I'm glad." Gast went elsewhere in the room and began to record something on a chart. As hesitant as Sephiroth was to approach the sleeping girl, curiosity got the better of him, and Gast's unsatisfactory answers propelled him onward. He scooted up so he sat at her side, dangling his legs off the side of the bed.
As far as Sephiroth was concerned, he was the only one his size in all of Shinra – it was eerie to see someone who he could at least meet eyes with, if he wasn't taller than her. He squinted his eyes in concentration. She was blonde, and about his size. That was all he knew about her, and it bothered him.
"What are those red spots on her face?" Sephiroth asked, pointing to the band of dots under her eyes.
"Freckles, Sephiroth."
"I've never seen them before."
"They're quite common."
"Then why haven't I seen them?"
"You haven't been outside Shinra…yet."
Sephiroth disregarded the comment. Gast had been promising he could see the outside world for as long as he could remember. It hadn't happened yet.
Distractedly, he began to play with the wires that ran into the girl's wrist and hand. When he tired of this, he picked up her hand and thoroughly examined both sides of it.
"Let her rest, Sephiroth," Gast admonished.
Sephiroth pouted, but put her hand down as Gast had instructed.
"Do you want to help me take her vitals? It would be good practice for you."
"No," he said.
"Then could you move over so I can get to her?"
Sephiroth silently complied, returning to the foot of the bed.
The boy watched intently as Gast took her temperature and blood pressure, and then gently turned her on her side to press the stethoscope to her back.
"I'm glad that you have someone here that's your own age now," Gast said. "It's not good for you to be so alone."
The boy glared, his pride wounded. "I don't need anyone."
Gast laughed in a soft, melancholy way. "If you say so, Sephiroth." He draped the stethoscope around his neck and hung the other equipment on the wall. "She's doing just fine," he said, adjusting her hospital gown to expose a part of her shoulder. He swiftly administered an injection – the girl hardly winced – and then laid her on her back and adjusted the sheets around her. "We probably ought to let her rest now."
"Can I stay here?" Sephiroth asked eagerly. "I promise I'll be good!"
"She won't wake for hours at the earliest," was Gast's firm reply. "And you have somewhere to be."
"Oh." The word was quiet. The excitement that was previously in his voice was gone. The weight on her mattress shifted as he slowly but obediently left her side.
"If it will make you feel better," Gast added, "I'll bring you here after your treatment."
"Hojo won't let me," the boy stated simply, the resentful note still in his voice.
Gast was undeterred. "Let me deal with him. You'll see her later, I promise. Say goodbye, now."
Sephiroth's tone was confused. "She's asleep, she can't hear me."
"You'd be surprised. She's been fidgeting; perhaps her senses are already intact."
Sephiroth leapt back onto the bed beside the girl, compressing an area in the mattress near her hip. "Bye," Sephiroth said, and then added in a whisper, "wake up soon!" He tentatively touched her hand once more.
Gast lifted him from her side. "Come on. You'll see her later today."
Sephiroth couldn't help but notice how Gast bolted the door behind them as they exited.