Chapter 72 - Legacy
May, 1996
There is an elevator in Shinra that goes by several different names.
Sephiroth expects that he knows only a few of the titles. It's become the obsession of most of the employees. Their comments about this fixture in HQ are mostly fleeting and in his peripheral. Most of the names are phallic in nature like "the dick", "the erection", but not all of them are that way. "Ride to Glory" but also conversely "Ride to Hell" are equally popular.
The strangest part to Sephiroth is that none of the staff will ever see the inside of this elevator.
The structure is itself not remarkable. It is a small VIP elevator that runs down the side of the building that makes stops only at the levels that they frequent. Therefore the VIPs can avoid interacting with the main personnel. It is not more exciting than that. Yet the fixation is remarkable. They want to see it. They want to ride in it. They want to destroy it. Sephiroth had not cared. He had not seen it. He hadn't even cared to seek it out.
Now he is riding in it.
The music is the same that plays in the regular elevators. The floor is marble. Midgar itself lowers slowly in a bow as he stares out the window. It is a long way from the 29th floor to the 65th. He tries to control the question that sits powerfully in his chest. The worry about what must be wrong with him has already made it hard to focus. Now he is dispersed as he rises directly to the floors of a man he hasn't seen for years.
But perhaps, he is jumping to conclusions.
At least he knows, at this point, that Mariella would do her best to help him with this new spiral that his body had taken. This could mean specialized equipment on the upper floors. Regardless of their personal feelings, he knew that she would focus until she solved it.
Yet, it hadn't been her to walk into the patient room on the 29th floor.
It had been this almost faceless lab tech who told him in no uncertain terms that his appointment was on the 65th floor.
Sephiroth had asked why and got the simple answer that the appointment had been moved. What was he to do then?
The back of his throat is hard. She would have warned him. She knows him well enough. This sudden change sets him on edge.
It would be one simple email.
The lab tech sighs into his phone spinning through the latest photos on social media. Sephiroth can feel his own phone buzzing in his back pocket. Genesis had constructed a group chat between the three of them and now uses it primarily as his own personal vanity mirror.
It did have some practical uses. Angeal had dropped a message between the stream of selfies saying: "Good luck today, Sephiroth."
They knew some. He hadn't told them everything. It's impossible still, no matter how hard he tries, to open every part of himself up. He turns away, stares out the glass wall and traces the lifeblood of Midgar through the streets. Morning traffic clogs the streets. His fingers wrap around the phone. It buzzes twice against his palm and then he turns it off.
He will catch up later.
The elevator stops and the smell of cleaner and fake lemons floods in. His stomach crawls. If he isn't nauseous already, he is now. Bad memories that he tried to forget are all over him. How long had he lain in a bed waiting to get better? How many times had the slip of a man from this floor crawled over his body and injected substances into him?
And now he is stepping into his territory.
Maybe it is Mariella.
There were two emails in his inbox.
An instinct to fight rises in his blood as he steps off into the indiscriminate hallway but he feels like the floor isn't catching him. He is falling back down the 65 floors.
The new patient room is like the old one except there is a cloth gown waiting for him. He's left alone with clear instructions. It never goes this way. The beige door clicks shut before him. It could be locked. Not that it could truly hold him. His eyes dance over the patterned blue squares on the fabric folded on the table.
He pulls out his phone.
The contact is far down the list. The last message is explaining his rapid request for emergency pills from last year because Genesis had dosed his pack in water. The pack was an accident. His shirt and pants were not.
Mariella doesn't answer. It goes straight to voicemail. He hangs up before it records. She could be readying the equipment.
The gown sits. She would have explained first.
His hands start to shake. The phone calls her office. The assistant on the other line tells him politely that she is working in R&D with a request for no interruptions. He asks if she is on his way to his appointment. The laugh is short on the other end.
"Wouldn't you know that, Sephiroth?" The assistant asks.
That stings.
He hangs up. It's ten minutes past the start of his appointment. The gown waits. The strings hang over one end. He cannot. It's too much. It's too close to being sick. He settles in the patient chair by the desk. If it is Mariella, she will understand.
The truth already sits next to him, invisible but as solid as the fact that he is on the 65th floor.
It's Hojo who walks through the door.
He looks different than when he went on this years long sabbatical. Most of the weight has left him. His limbs are thin and sharp. It doesn't change the way that he moves smoothly into the room. His face is all eyes and teeth as he smiles. New scars lace across his hands and neck catching white in the fluorescent lights as he settles in front of the computer and unlocks it.
"Good morning Sephiroth. After all these years, you are still not good at complying with instructions."
The air has been sucked from the room.
"I scheduled this appointment with Mariella."
Hojo laughs, opening programs and typing without even looking at him. "You are sick. Do you think that a halfwit like Mariella can do anything about that?"
"This appointment is supposed to be a readjustment of my medication. That's too small of a problem for you." He keeps his voice steady. He hopes that he is right.
There is a smell coming off Hojo. It's a ghost, nothing more than a thought that crawls up into the back of his mind. On those polished black business shoes, there is blood. It's fresh.
Hojo leans back in his chair, eyebrows digging together. "The medication just masks the problem. You are growing sicker. Those pills are like putting a bandaid on a leaking pipe."
Sephiroth dies to check the door but he keeps his eyes fixed on the man in front of him. This danger is too great to look away from.
"My body has a constant reaction to itself. It's not growing, simply changing. All I need is a new dose. It's been this way for years. That's all I require."
"And I've been sick of this for years," Hojo's voice is even as his eyes pick apart Sephiroth's mask, digging into the soft fear underneath it. "Daily pill after daily pill. Emergency pills on top of that. Face the facts Sephiroth. You are failing. All SOLDIERs fail eventually but yours has been absolutely unique in its premature nature. Is that what you want? To be a failure?"
Hojo's hand waves. Under one of his nails, Sephiroth can see a black smudge. His cleaning has been less than thorough.
"I have been able to do everything that has been asked of me with minimal disruptions."
"Only because of my department. Wouldn't you want something more effective?" Hojo leans forward. A hand is placed on his chair arm. Sephiroth holds himself tight enough that only his stomach jerks away at the action.
"More effective?" It comes out distant on his tongue.
"How about no side effects? How about you get to feel normal?" Hojo says it so smoothly. Sephiroth knows the hook is sliding under his skin but it eases in so slowly that he barely notices it.
"That's impossible." It has been this way his whole life. There have always been side effects. His life has been a broken combination of compromises and weaknesses.
"Is it? Don't you think that science has not changed and improved since you were a small child hooked up to his first IV?" A laugh enters the back of that question. The memories are there but foggy with age. He remembers laying in his first sick bed in fear of dying.
Sephiroth shuts the rush of memories down. "I would rather have a straightforward conversation than a walk down memory lane. Neither one of us has the time."
Hojo's lips curl at his reaction. He did not win, Sephiroth tells himself, he did not concede.
"Fine then. You are sick. Yet, interestingly, other SOLDIERs are dying of things that do not affect you. I want to know why. I want to fix your medication. I want to use your data to help fix them and fix you."
"This is a therapy consent form." Hojo shifts back in his chair and pulls a small tablet out of his pocket. Silvery fingers wake up the surface. It's a form with the signature line and an empty thumbprint square. Hojo skims the document and offers it over.
"You will have to sign on to the project."
Sephiroth reads the details on the page. Appointments. Possible alternative medications. Being on call. Consent to examinations. Agreement to participate in therapies. This is Hojo. He knows this man. There are people who walk into his lab that never come back out again. There are hidden words. Traps sit in these clauses.
"You would like me to agree to this now?" He asks.
Hojo nods. "Time is imperative. You are failing at a rapid rate."
The tablet shakes in Sephiroth's grip.
Steady hands have not returned to him. It surely wasn't worth the risk. All he needs is another pill and then another one after that and then onward for the rest of his life. The chains dig deep. A part of him is always afraid of another collapse. Every moment he missteps, he worries. That feeling is more of a constant companion than the other Firsts. If he could be more free of this, he could make choices about his life. He could think again beyond the next pill he would have to swallow. What would that be like?
Hojo sits next to him smelling of the last person who signed a similar document.
Sephiroth hesitates.
The scientist talks again, filling in the silence. "You are intelligent enough to know my methods. I cannot baby you. We both know this will not be easy but surely you want to be sent back to Wutai like the other Firsts do? Do you want to live a proper SOLDIER life?"
The tablet goes back on the desk. Sephiroth locks it.
"This sickness is not keeping me from Wutai."
Hojo shrugs. "You are confident for not being one of the people sitting in that room when the decision was made."
"I am sure."
"Oh but do you see my dear Sephiroth, I know. I was there. Your behavior was certainly worrying at the time: the abnormalities, the way that you were starting to push against orders, the simple fact you allowed yourself to get captured, the drinking," Hojo pauses and puts the next words together carefully, "the killing done at the time."
That raises Sephiroth's heart into his throat. Dinand's death has always been marked off as a regular causality. The body went into a mass Wutai created grave. Even when he was asked, Sephiroth had a simple story of a lucky soldier and his own regret.
"That certainly is what brought you home in addition to Mariella's overbearing and stifling mothering nature."
Sephiroth wouldn't defend her when she was the one that was supposed to be sitting in the chair. He stares at the red box across from the examination table where used sharps went. He remembers when he was in Wutai collapsed on the floor after ignoring appointments. His commanding officer had injected him with medication. He hadn't even known at the time that was possible.
"They are deploying me around the country now. It is only a matter of time before they send me back to Wutai." It is a weak statement.
"They won't. You are a liability. The war has stagnated. Lazard is afraid of you falling into enemy hands again. Can you imagine that disaster?"
"He has not mentioned it to me."
"Because he is trying to keep you happy. I thought you were smarter than this, Sephiroth. People do have the capability to lie."
"I am aware."
A fuzz is growing in the back of his head. This is not the time for an attack. He leans back in his chair and presses his spine against the cushion. The shirt sticks to him. He should leave before this gets too dangerous. The emergency pack is clipped to the inside of his pants. He could take that.
But that would just be admitting to weakness.
"I want to get this fixed. You want to get this fixed. I'd like you to break open this war again. You were one of the first SOLDIERs that we created. You carry…a legacy." Hojo taps the tablet, wakes it up. The document waits for him. The words are smudges now.
Sephiroth tries to focus on his breathing. "I need time to think."
His voice sounds foggy to his own ears.
"You've thought enough." Hojo is steady in the spinning room.
He's crashing. Sephiroth realizes it as pain strings through his stomach, sharp and new.
It slips over him. Frustration makes him sick quicker. So recently after the last one? Thoughts start to disintegrate from each other. The pills should help. His fingers crawl for them. This shouldn't be happening in front of Hojo. The bottom of his lungs locks. He tries to rise. He needs to leave.
His hands make it to the arms of the chair but he can't rise. The weight is too much. Hojo watches him strain to make his knees work. His stomach curls. Not here. Not in front of him. Not like this. The chair sinks as he falls back. It keeps him there.
The breath he takes is shaky. He needs to take the pill and rest. It needs to work again. The effort sways his head as he maps the path for his hand. Shifting, he reaches for the pack digging into his side.
His hand stops without him. It jerks, immobile.
Hojo has leaned over. His fingers wrap around his wrist. The digits are freezing against his skin. He is being touched. He is so unsteady and this man has chosen to hold him.
"Those pills won't help you. You are already too far gone for that," Hojo says.
"I-" It drags out, none of his usual articulation. He doesn't even know where he is trying to go. His lips move in empty sounds.
"What a lost little child."
Sephiroth blinks. The fog has almost overtaken him now, he can see it. How can Hojo be stronger than him? His arm moves away from himself. His fingers don't ball when he asks them. They stay straight and limp. A smile leaks from Hojo. Sephiroth recognizes it. He's had it himself. It's the feeling when the prey stops running.
"Sign this. I've got an IV already for you in a room over, something nice and sweet. I'll have the nurse get you a heated blanket to help. You are due for a nice long rest."
A rest. He hitches his breath. A second of fear strikes him before the exhaustion takes over again.
"It's good to know that simple stress is still a trigger for you." Hojo croons. "You've always been the sensitive type."
His hand makes it over the form. He pulls away once but it isn't enough. Hojo lines up his index finger with the screen. Sephiroth's eyes dip. It's too much stimulus. He's scattering. This shouldn't be happening. He needs to fight but there is nothing left in him. He's been cut free from himself.
"We will get you all patched up." It echoes in his ears.
His head rests against the back wall. His body has given up. Oxygen. That's what he needs. Simple oxygen. Everything burns. The air is thin. He needs help. A heartbeat pounds against his scalp. His mouth cracks open to swallow more air but even that is growing to be too much effort.
Fingers trace up the side of his face, freezing lines of his skin.
He tries to open his eyes and they fail him. The cold tips run into his hairline, against his scalp and then snag away, catching strands of his hair. The hair pulls forward until it slips out from behind him and falls against his shoulder. Hojo is still talking but the words sound unstrung. He tries once to pull himself out of drowning. His face clenches and then falls.
That's all he can do.
The hand curls around the back of his skull, pulling him forward. His spin bends forward like a limp doll. Unconscious snaps his ties slowly with reality. This is wrong but there is nothing that he could do about it. He's forgotten how to move.
A kiss lands against his forehead.
"Still as beautiful as the day we started."
He is set back against the chair carefully. Nails catch against the back of his ear as the hands leave him.
Hojo's shoes tap against the tile.
Sephiroth forces his eyes open as the door closes.
He sees what he is afraid is there.
A dark scrawl is across the signature line. His thumb print is confirmed next to it. His hand rests next to the screen. It's numb and disjointed from him.
All he can do is shiver and wait.