A/N: Warning! This is going to not be a funtime sunshine ride! This is Sephiroth and Cloud being raised and experimented on in the lab beneath the Shinra Mansion - they only have each other for comfort and aid. There WILL be comfort moments but it's definitely heavier an the hurt than the comfort. Sephiroth is seven and understands things aren't normal but doesn't understand how badly he's being treated and therefor his standards for things he thinks is okay is skewed by a mile. He tries, so hard, though
Chapter One: A New Subject
Sephiroth turned a page in his newest physics textbook, eyes skimming over the words he'd already read hours ago and fitting them more firmly in his memory. It was true that he could read incredibly quickly and retained nearly all the information he read, but he sometimes felt he was missing some… nuances. There seemed to be subtext meant to be humorous, possibly what were called in-jokes meant for other PhDs or perhaps university students but he was missing some sort of context.
He supposed he'd understand them when he was older, he was only seven and the books were of course meant for adults - although he found them easy enough to understand on a technical level he knew this wasn't usual for someone his age.
If he didn't have it all memorized by tomorrow he'd never get a chance to read it again unless he could find it on the shelves he wasn't allowed to touch. He'd been pretending it took him longer to read them so they'd not be taken away so quickly. He only had room for one big textbook, or maybe two very small ones, in his favorite hiding place. Someday he'd be tall enough to reach the top of the bookshelves and maybe he could slide what he wanted to keep hidden way up there on top, unseen.
The familiar sounds of the lab that always filtered under the door were interrupted by raised voices. With his advanced hearing he could always hear every step of the professor's lab assistants and every whispered comment but from the sound of it there seemed to be something unusual happening upstairs. He'd never been particularly interested in going outside unless he got to go up into the mountains and research how to fight the local monsters.
He wasn't allowed to actually fight anything, not until he was big enough for a sword, but he knew he could if he had a chance. There was something about the wildness of the rocky crags and the many hollows and cave systems of the Nibel Range that drew him to it, but the village itself had never really piqued his curiosity.
"This is so fucked up," that was Dr Rivers, her voice high and thin with something like anxiety. Sephiroth wasn't very good at working out people's emotions just from their voices usually but he was best and most familiar with any type of fear… "I don't know how I'm going to be able to go out to the inn anymore after this."
"He can't really just take it right?" Michaels, one of the newer assistants, cleared his throat, " right ?!"
"Do you see a child-welfare office around here?" Dr. Rivers sighed, "Apparently the mother didn't know who the father was and now that she's dead…"
"The fuckin' mayor wants her house to rent out," that was the hazardous materials specialist Ms Morgan, she kept insisting Sephiroth should call her 'Linda' but he knew that as soon as he did he'd get punished for disrespect, "I heard he was going through their stuff before the poor lady was even cold."
"You know what he'll do with it," Dr Rivers said, after a short silence of everyone shifting around.
"You mean we…" Michaels gave a huff of a sound that wasn't a laugh.
"This is so fucked up," Ms Morgan muttered, "I want rotated out of here, like, yesterday."
Sephiroth brushed his hair back and opened his door to step into the hall, walking silently to peek his head into the main room. The group of adults became silent, looking at him.
Ms Morgan shook her head and said, cryptically, "Hypocrites, the lot of us."
Sephiroth turned away and began the slow ascent upstairs. It wasn't as though he wasn't allowed to move freely through the house, at least now he could, but he'd been forbidden when he was younger and now it was a habit to try and not care about mysterious things.
But this was something new and interesting. Nothing different or interesting had happened since the previous winter when the whole mansion had been surrounded by so many feet of snow that light could barely get through the windows on the first floor. He wanted to know what had the usually stoic medical personnel acting so emotionally. He really wanted to know what 'it' was that they were talking about and who had died.
Professor Hojo was locking the front door of the mansion as Sephiroth entered the main room and he frowned. A colorful bundle of cloth was cradled against the man's thin chest and his shuffling gait was much livelier than usual, "What do you think you're doing up here Subject S?"
"Nothing, the techs are being loud and annoying," Sephiroth answered, which was accurate but not the real reason - that was usually enough for the scientist. He didn't want details unless he'd asked for them, he was too busy and important to be bothered with minutiae.
"They're always loud and annoying, barely useful most of the time," Hojo sniffed disdainfully.
"More than usual then," Sephiroth shrugged, pretending he didn't care what the thing Hojo was carrying was. But oh he hoped he'd find out.
Either his play at indifference worked or Hojo didn't care if he knew what he was doing - it was sometimes hard to tell but generally if he wanted to know something he couldn't outright ask about it. The asking was the forbidden part for some reason and not actually wanting to know whatever it was he'd been curious about.
"Hold this, like I was, keep it upright against your shoulder or you'll damage it," Hojo shoved the bundle into Sephiroth's hands unexpectedly, leading the way back to the secret door and clomping down the stairs, leaving Sephiroth to both hold whatever the thing was and close the door as well.
"Don't drop it," Hojo called back over his shoulder, "there's no knowing when we'll have an opportunity like this in the future."
Sephiroth followed obediently, the steep ascent little more than an annoyance - Hojo had to hold the railing, while Sephiroth was far more agile and could have taken the journey into the depths with a few easy bounds back and forth. If it weren't for whatever it was in his arms he probably would, just to irritate Hojo in a way he could justify as training.
He trailed closely behind Hojo into the tiny exam room he used for the most mundane aspects of his work, more of a miniature phlebotomy lab than anything else. He stayed in the doorway as Hojo dug around in a cabinet before coming out with a packet of wet wipes that he tossed onto the thinly padded exam table in the corner.
"Clean it up, I'll be back in a moment."
Finally getting the chance to sate his curiosity, Sephiroth carefully opened the package to discover an infant. It was pale and quiet and its face was sticky with tears, tiny pink lips trembling as it stared listlessly up at Sephiroth. It smelled unpleasant. He didn't think infants were supposed to be so… he couldn't think of a word which was odd for him. It seemed weak, which a baby inherently was, but he'd once found a collection of never opened child development texts and all of them implied this was not a good sign.
He was correct in his first assumptions that its diaper hadn't been changed in some time as he stripped it out of the blanket and the filthy cloth tied around its bottom. The infant was male, making a soft displeased sound as Sephiroth cleaned him efficiently with the wipes. Weren't infants loud? There were whole chapters in the books about how to calm a crying infant and what to do if it wouldn't be quiet. Some, apparently, would be inconsolable for hours for no discernible reason. The wet wipes filled the bin beside the table and he turned back to the blanket to examine it. He thought it was… pretty. It looked hand made, like someone had put effort into it, like someone had cared about this poor creature. The fabric was all different colors and types of materials, some soft and worn thin and some newer and a little bit more rough - corduroy and cotton and wool. Over the whole thing, in white thread, stylized clouds were stitched in each square. In one corner, even more carefully stitched, it said 'Cloud Strife August 11 1986'.
The baby was so fragile, it didn't look four months old, Sephiroth thought. It was too thin, and it… he was clearly miserable, and hungry. It disturbed Sephiroth how much it reminded him of a starving Nibel wolf cub he'd come across. Its mother and siblings had died and he'd been following the tracks of another as a learning assignment. He'd felt so bad for it, knowing he couldn't help, so he'd cut its throat.
It was a strange thought that it would be better off here . Being in the lab wasn't ideal… Well, Sephiroth knew his situation was abnormal according to the child care books, but it wasn't that bad. And, of course, he wouldn't be here alone. Slow death from neglect or exposure would be worse.
Sephiroth shoved aside the knowledge of the monsters that came out of other parts of the lab. The ones that looked like they had human bits to them, like maybe they'd been people once or parts of them had been.
After a moment he carefully folded the blanket and hid it in the bottom of a drawer full of seldom used materials. He wasn't even sure why he did it. The blanket was dirty, it smelled of unwashed baby and feces, but there was just… it was important. Someone would probably find it and throw it out anyway, but he crammed it into the very back of the drawer and rearranged the old equipment and stacks of paper medical gowns they never bothered to use.
He'd just closed the drawer and stood when Hojo returned, snapping a pair of latex gloves onto his hands. He had a positively gleeful twist to his lips, the same expression he wore when he wanted to test a new hypothesis that would usually end with Sephiroth being given iron supplements and plastic cups of juice to recover from the blood loss.
Sephiroth hovered, curious and feeling a bit of that anxiety that the assistants had shown as though it had been contagious.
"We're very fortunate to have this new subject," Hojo chortled, "almost slipped out of my grasp - the mayor's wife wanted to keep it but they have one almost the same age and Lockhart naturally didn't want to let a little cuckoo into his household leeching food from his larder."
The scientist brushed past him, waving back towards the door with one hand before he none too gently lifted the baby and held it just above the padded table. He nodded to himself as it kicked slightly. "If you're going to be nosy go and see if Morgan's finished cleaning that medical cot and bring it here."
Hojo called back after him as Sephiroth slowly left, "and tell Rivers to add formula to the requisitions form and fetch some now from the town. Puny little thing, can't even run proper tests until it has some meat on its bones."
A small, faint, whine followed Sephiroth down the hall and he picked up his pace. He wasn't running, he wasn't allowed to run in the lab unless it was on the treadmill, but he hurried.
He usually hated when Hojo told him to order the other adults around but this time he didn't care, it wasn't for something silly this time. Usually they did what he told them with visible resentment but today they looked… he wasn't sure what the emotion was. They weren't whispering to each other now, and for some reason none of them would look him in the eye…
The baby was making little hiccuping sounds when Sephiroth brought the wheeled plastic box in, the sides still damp from being wiped down and the plastic-y mattress zipped into a tight cloth cover that smelled of the same harsh sanitizer as his own sheets and blankets in his room.
"Here, hook this up to the cot like so," Hojo muttered, picking the infant up and placing it inside the box and indicating how to set up the small IV bag that was already dripping through the tube. It looked huge where it entered the crook of the little arm, tape holding it in place.
The scientist's frown turned thoughtful and he began to set up for a blood draw, a single tube's worth rather than the four or five they usually took once a week from Sephiroth. "Hold his wrist, gently mind you they break so easily at this age - although not for long once we start it on Mako."
The baby began crying when the new needle slipped into the vein in its forearm, the rapid pulse in its wrist fluttering against Sephiroth's palm where he very, very, carefully pinned it down.
Something must have shown on his face, although he'd tried to keep his own expression impassive, because Hojo scoffed as he shoved a tiny wad of cotton into Sephiroth's fingers so he could put pressure on the puncture wound after he pulled the needle out.
"Oh it'll learn to stop screeching before long," he said, pulling his gloves off and tossing them into the garbage can, " you did after all."
He pulled out a clipboard and fastened a set of fresh papers to it, "Let's see, what shall we call it?"
Hojo wasn't talking to Sephiroth, of course, but he couldn't stop himself from answering anyway, "Subject C?" When the scientist raised an eyebrow at him he shrugged, "the blanket, it said his name started with a C. Like I'm S…"
Just like the blanket that he'd hidden secretly, Sephiroth wasn't sure why he didn't just say that the baby had been named 'Cloud'. It felt too personal, the information somehow too important for anyone but him to know. It wasn't like anyone else would ever use it, so why did it matter if Sephiroth was the only one who knew it? It made him feel warm, in a way he couldn't explain, that only he could call him Cloud even if it was just in his head.
"Hmm," Hojo scribbled it down, tapping his pen against his lips before beginning to fill in the rest of the medical chart. The information was sparse for now: just blood pressure, pulse, weight and length, and approximate age - Sephiroth kept that birth date locked in his chest too, another little point of data that maybe someday he'd be able to share with Cloud when he was old enough to keep secrets too.
Hojo dropped the clipboard into the holder at the foot of the cot and Sephiroth glanced at the words scribbled at the very top of the paper where it stuck out.
"Project: Squire"