Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Apotheosis ❯ Gentle Hands ( Chapter 2 )

Once the doors slid shut behind him, Sephiroth allowed himself to relax fractionally. He'd had no doubt he'd be able to breeze past any staff he encountered; he was, after all, S.O.L.D.I.E.R.'s shining star, and Hojo's special… pet. He regretted having to use his own identification, but it couldn't be helped. This night's repercussions would be so widespread he could not hope to go undiscovered.

This is madness.

Nevertheless, here he was. Moreover, that useless nurse was undoubtedly watching this hesitation avidly on her monitor; that wouldn't do. He set off down the hall, pretending to check each door as his passed.

The girl had sold flowers in Midgar. He knew this because she had frequented the passages between the plates, and he had observed the urchin during his crossings as he observed everything: dispassionately, assessing, calculating. She, like most others, had never dared to approach him, but he had nevertheless filed her existence away in his seemingly endless memory; one never knew what might turn out to be important.

He was not entirely surprised to see her a few months later when he arrived at Hojo's lab for his scheduled treatments. Hojo had never been able to duplicate whatever it was that made Sephiroth… different, but he had never ceased trying. Failing that, the girl was pretty enough; if she survived, well, Hojo's personal tastes ran to the extreme.

She had sat, dull and disinterested, trailing as skein of tubes as Sephiroth stripped and submitted to the usual barrage of tests: blood, tissue, and saliva had been from him as the host of machines Hojo's assistants attached him to ticked off their readings. He had long since given up being embarrassed or discomfited by it; he had been Hojo's all his life.

The injections were another story.

Finally left alone, sick and weak, he had shakily dressed himself and staggered for the door, bereft of his usual catlike grace. Unthinking, he had brushed past the girl--who reached out and trailed her fingers down his sleeve. Startled, he paused, giving her the opportunity to brush the bare flesh of his hand.

The shock of her touch was indescribable; warm, cool, electrifying, soothing; all that and more sparked from that slight contact. More, he felt a new crackling energy react within himself, giddy and enervating. She twitched in response, but continued to stare sightlessly at the floor. Sephiroth shuddered as the force of that energy blazed through him. "What is this?" he breathed, crouching down beside her. "What did you do?"

She finally turned her head, one crystal blue eye visible beneath her mop of hair. "Nothing, " she murmured. "I did nothing."

"I am not a scientist," he said intently. "I do not care how. Tell me what."

She shook her head gently. "I touched you, that's all," she said, barely above a whisper. "I meant to help… I didn't know.." She trailed off, returning her gaze to the floor.

Sephiroth stared at her, wanting to seize her by the scruff of the neck and shake a proper answer out of her, but not quite daring. Whatever the reaction between them had been, it had felt too good to be harmful… but still. He was unable to discern anything from her appearance; just a poor, shabby girl who looked barely conscious. But still… but still. "Can you keep this from Hojo?" he asked. "This incident, and this… reaction?"

No response. In retrospect he was lucky to have gotten her to speak as much as she had; the tranquilizers used on unstable subjects in the lab were incredibly powerful. Sighing, he rose and raked a hand through his sweaty silver hair. "It is unfortunate that you have ended up here," he said finally. She remained silent; unsure of how else to proceed, he turned and left the lab.

Later that night he exploited his new security clearance for the first time. Even so, there was precious little information available. Nothing pertaining specifically to that strange girl; the only unusual item nearly made Sephiroth laugh aloud. Hojo believed he had gotten his hands on a Cetra! He did chuckle; he had thought the good doctor far too old to believe in fairy tales.

A Cetra. A dryad, a nature spirit… a healer.

No, it couldn't be.

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio…

Confused and disturbed, he accessed a mythology database and began to peruse the entry on Cetras. Fairies, healers, an affinity with nature, empaths. Well, that wasn't it; he hadn't felt ill or miserable as she surely had. Guardians of the wild places, creators… a line of text caught his eye.

"Often shrines were built in places reputed to have been homes of Cetra couples; it was believed the energy produced by their touching was the most pure creative force."

She had said she meant to help… and that she hadn't known. Known what? What had caused that spark of power between them?

The energy produced by their touching…

Sephiroth, born and raised in Hojo's lab, had never known exactly what it was that made him different, superior. Well, Hojo was a geneticist; it stood to reason that Sephiroth had been altered somehow, but he had never known the specifics. Even stranger, it now occurred to him that he had never really been curious about it; he who pursued every trail of logic to its bitter end.

How bizarre was that?

He knew that he was unique; Hojo had never been able to produce another specimen as fine as Sephiroth. He had never questioned that failure, but…

…the energy produced by their touching…

…could it be that Hojo failed because he had never been able to acquire more of the material he had created Sephiroth from?

Was that girl really a Cetra?

Was he?

Utter foolishness. And yet… and yet.

He returned to Hojo's research database and began to see just how far his new clearance would take him.

The information he discovered was what led to his presence this evening. The hints that his guesses at his true origins were correct actually disturbed him very little; the forgetfulness, the lack of curiosity… that did. He was not jealous of his unique status, but the little he had been able to glean from his searches had been deeply worrisome. Hojo was not breeding simply for physical superiority, after all; no, that was the last thing the program was aiming for, just a happy side effect. He had been unable to discover what the ultimate aim of the program truly was; he did not intend to give anyone a chance to find out.

Aeris. The name Hojo had e-mailed a request to the Census Bureau to delete from their computers was Aeris Gainsborough. Standard operating procedure; no one could miss a person that didn't exist.

Finally unable to put it off any longer, he stopped in front of her door. His shoulders itched for the comfortable weight of Masamune, left behind for this adventure. Checking his pocket for the hypogun's comforting weight, he keyed open the door.