Chapter Four: Silver Angel
When she awakened, he was standing at her bedside, peering at her through the steel rails on the side of her bed.
She was startled to find a child who was very markedly different from herself. Long, silver hair fell to his waist, his bangs shorter, framing a pale face. He was wearing only a plain, white hospital gown that hung on slender shoulders, and thin slippers between his feet and the cold tile. Bright, emerald green eyes peered at her, glowing with an unnatural light of their own, masking the flicker of his carefully guarded emotions. "Hello." Despite looking so different, he sounded like she felt – timid, a little nervous.
"Hi," she said back. "Are you Sephiroth?"
The boy only blinked and didn't come any closer. One of the rails was still partially obstructing her view of him. "Gast said you were probably listening. I'm…" he awkwardly searched for the appropriate words to say, "…glad…you're up."
There were several beats of dead silence.
"What's your name?"
She opened her mouth to tell him, but hesitated. "I…don't think I should tell you." she admitted, abashed.
Sephiroth tilted his head, obviously thinking this was curious. "Why not?"
"Um, because."
"What am I supposed to call you, then?"
"I don't know. Whatever you'd like, I suppose."
"Hm," he hummed, frowning slightly. "I guess I'll think of something."
As he grew bolder, Sephiroth finally pulled himself up to sit beside her on the bed. The jumping motion bounced the two up and down and she giggled as her body rocked.
Without the bars hiding him from her sight, the girl made another startling discovery. She stopped laughing and gasped, eyes wide with this new revelation.
From Sephiroth's back sprouted a single, ebony wing. The span was easily longer than his outstretched arm; she didn't see how she could have missed it before.
Sephiroth followed her gaze. "Oh," he said, his head lowering and his eyes dimming. "You weren't expecting that, were you?"
The girl couldn't speak, couldn't hardly breathe.
Sephiroth started to slide down her bed when she regained her composure. She seized his hand, surprised at how cold it was. "No!" she cried. "It's beautiful!"
Sephiroth turned to her, surprised. "Beautiful?" He spoke the word disbelievingly, as if thinking that he hadn't heard her right. "No one's ever called it that before…" He sidled back to her side, moving closer than he had been previously.
"Can I…?" She extended her fingers, her eyes simultaneously shining with wonder and pleading for permission.
Sephiroth unfurled his wing as far as he could, sweeping air across her. A feather fell, brushing her face and falling in her lap. Her mouth fell slightly open; it was more majestic than she ever could have imagined. "Go ahead," he said with a small smile. "It's not like it will hurt me."
She reached out and skimmed her fingers across his wing, timidly at first, but soon stroking it longingly. "Can you…fly?"
"Hojo says I might, one day. He would like that. It's why he gave it to me in the first place."
She stopped abruptly, alarmed. "You weren't born with this?"
"No," Sephiroth shrugged. "Just another experiment."
She raised her head to look at him, horrified. "Experiment? Is this okay with you?"
Sephiroth looked at her, confused. She could tell the answer, though he never specified it. "That's the way it's always been."
She looked at him in shock. "This isn't the only thing he's done to you, is it?" Something in his eyes made her afraid to ask for specifics.
Sephiroth shook his head. "It's nothing." Despite his cool demeanor, he didn't manage to convince her that he didn't care about what was being done to him.
"Hojo says the experiments will make me strong, that I'll be a great hero someday," he offered.
"But it's not right-!"
She didn't get a chance to finish, because the pair was interrupted by a visitor.