Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Rising Through the Ranks ❯ One Golden Day ( Chapter 2 )

One Golden Day

"Sephiroth! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Hojo snapped at the boy. "Get your hand out of there!" Both Sephiroth and the lab mice he was playing with jumped at the sound of the scientist's voice. Sephiroth spun around, wide-eyed, but as he did so, his elbow hit the poorly balanced lid of the tank and sent the metal grating crashing to the floor. The six-year old winced at the sound, then opened his eyes to see the mess it had made. There was a pretty big puddle where the attached water bottle had hit the tiles. The food pellets that had landed in it were already swelling to sogginess.

The child sat very still on the stool he had dragged over to reach the top of the lab bench but the look on his face soon turned to one of defiance. Hojo narrowed his eyes at the boy and continued the staring contest that had been waging since the child's birth. Sephiroth turned away first, but with such an air of precocious nonchalance that Hojo found no satisfaction in it. Honestly, the boy could be so aggravating.

"Boy, how many times do I have to tell you to leave the test subjects alone? They're not pets!" Hojo stalked over to pick up the lid and brushed past the silver-haired child. "What would happen if you got bitten?" he fumed as he slapped the grate back into place. "Some of them are carrying diseases and you don't know what you might contract if something happened!"

"Yes, I do," Sephiroth countered, looking up through his wispy bangs. "The label on the tank says you haven't done anything to these yet."

Hojo's peered through his glasses at the boy. Sephiroth had learned to read very early on. At first Hojo was pleased with the evidence of the specimen's superior intellect, but sometimes he wondered if it was just more of a problem. "That doesn't matter. They can still bite."

Sephiroth eased himself off the stool, falling the last few inches to the ground. "They won't bite me," he said quietly as he began to push the heavy thing back into place. "They like me." When he judged that he had gotten a far enough distance, he turned back to face the tall man. "It's not my fault they can't stand you."

Hojo would have spluttered if he was the type to do so. Sephiroth could already read the tell-tale signs of rage. The scientist was rigid. His lips were pressed thin as if he sealed a slew of screams behind them. Sephiroth braced himself.

"Go to your room, Sephiroth! I'll come and get you when its time for the next round of treatments." Hojo stood still. Obviously he was not going to budge until Sephiroth did as he was told. The child knew it could have been worse. It was a small, sad victory that it was not, but Sephiroth was satisfied with it. He turned and left the laboratory to walk down the narrow, artificially lit corridor that led to the hole in the wall called his room.

Hojo watched the exit for quite while after the child went through it. That boy was becoming too much to handle. He was too energetic to be allowed to roam the labs any longer. It was a good thing certain arrangements had been made. Soon, the child's burgeoning energies would be put to proper use and the next phase of the experiment would begin. Hojo nodded to himself, picked up the sealed tank with its furry white occupants.

In the split second between hearing the splashing sound from beneath his shoes and feeling the floor slide out from under him, he made a mental note to call a janitor in to clean up the puddle.

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Sephiroth sat on his narrow bed, leaned back against the cold, white wall and closed his eyes. There was no point in keeping them open. His room was little more than a box, four white walls, just far apart enough to hold the bed and the old file cabinet that served to store his clothes. The fluorescent lighting above was always too bright and was never turned off. There was no switch inside the room. The only ways in and out of the room were the door (and the keypad would let him in, but not out) and the air vent near the ceiling.

Sephiroth smiled. Hojo never came in here. The scientist always sent one of the assistants to get him. Gast occasionally came in, but the place was too cramped for an adult to stay long. The boy swung off the bed and went to the lowest drawer of the file cabinet. He had time, he knew. The next round of treatment was not for an hour or two yet.

The draw opened with a squeak. Inside were small white t-shirts and shorts, the only type of clothing Sephiroth had ever been given. He reached in and rooted around under the neat piles. His fingers closed around his prize.

It was a book, the only one that was truly his own. Gast had gotten it for him one day, simply because Sephiroth wanted something more than reagent labels and scientific journals to read. Hojo had also been angry that somebody kept pulling out his journals and leaving them all around the lab, putting them back out of order if they did at all.

Sephiroth liked his book much more than the journals. True, the journals were about any and everything at all and his book was only about plants, but his book had pictures, nice pictures. He could read the words just fine, had read them so often that he could recite the entire thing cover to cover and hardly bothered with them anymore, but the pictures were the true prize. Sephiroth went back to his bed to enjoy the sight.

He liked the lightly colored illustrations but it was the photographs that drew him in. He turned to the colored plates and touched an image. This place, this place was not just on white paper. It was real and it was outside the lab. The plant in the photo was a short one, with gnarled branches and thick leaves. The caption declared that the photo had been taken near someplace named Cosmo Canyon. Sephiroth liked the way that sounded. He closed his eyes and leaned back to imagine what it might look like.

Perhaps what he saw in the photograph was all and Cosmo Canyon was like a great field of rock with stumpy desert plants bearing large white flowers. Perhaps it was a towering city in its own right, a palace carved from stone.

Perhaps time was slipping away and he would be taken for his daily treatments soon. Sephiroth looked at the door. He could hear footsteps out in the corridor. People hardly ever came down that way if it was not to take him outside to the lab. The boy jumped off the bed and hurriedly returned his prize to its hiding place.

A mere second after he shut the draw, the door slid open. Sephiroth tensed, but instantly relaxed when he saw that it was Professor Gast. Sephiroth ran over to the man to hug him around the knees. Gast was nearly bowled over by the small child. He laughed as he reached out to press one hand on the wall.

"Easy now, Sephiroth," he said, laughing. "You'll throw us both down." He patted the child's snowy head and tossed the empty duffel bag that he had brought onto the bed. Sephiroth looked up but did not let go.

"You didn't come to see me for two whole days," he said, sounding just a bit disappointed.

Gast regarded the boy. "I had to see about arranging something, Sephiroth. Something just for you, in fact." The curiosity was evident on the boy's face, even behind the chin length bangs. It really was time for a haircut.

Sephiroth turned around and looked at the bag that Gast had tossed onto the bed. "What's that for?"

"Pack your things, Sephiroth. You're getting a new room."

"Oh." A small hope died before it could rise. Sephiroth went to his little file cabinet and did as he was told. He packed his book in at the very bottom of the bag, unable to bear thinking about the pictures. Maybe, just maybe, the new part of the laboratory would look at least a little bit different.

"Ready?" Gast was still smiling. Sephiroth nodded. The scientist took his hand and led him out of the little, white hole in the wall.

__________________________

"This is my new room?" Sephiroth was astounded. Who would have thought that such a place lay just a short walk from the cold white laboratory? He stepped inside. The duffel back slid off his shoulder and hit the floor.

The place was huge. The white walls seemed so far apart. The tile did not seem so cold. The bed looked just as much as the last one had, but there was an actual chest of drawers in one corner and a child-sized desk and chair in another. What was really amazing though, was the window. It was small and high, almost as near to the ceiling as the air vent was, but it was a window nonetheless. Sephiroth walked right towards it. He wanted to press his face against the glass and see outside, but the sill was above his head. He frowned, then looked at the doctor.

Gast laughed. "Don't worry. You'll grow. Don't you want to take a look at the rest of the place?" Sephiroth wandered over to the desk and stared at the thing as if he were afraid to touch it and claim it for his own.

"What's this for?" He put one small hand on the back of the chair.

Gast grinned at him. "That's the best part, Sephiroth. You're going to school tomorrow. You'll need that to do your homework." The boy's glowing eyes widened with surprise.

"I'm going to school?" he asked in disbelief.

"Well, in a manner of speaking." Gast scratched his head. "It won't be a school like what other children go to." Sephiroth blinked. He had never met another child. "You'll have a series of one-on-one tutoring sessions," Gast continued. "The tutors the Presid - I mean, that we hired are all experts in their fields. You'll be learning from the best."

Sephiroth's hand fell from the chair. He turned towards the window again and stood right where he was. He looked up and saw what seemed to be a dull grey sky. He felt his eyes sting. There was an emptiness inside that did not come from missing lunch. He bowed his head and hid his face behind his hair. A window he could not even see out of. How fitting. If not for the fact that Gast, Hojo and the assorted assistants and technicians clearly went somewhere else in the night, Sephiroth might have doubted that there was anything at all beyond the lab.

"Sephiroth? Don't you like it?"

The boy turned and looked at the scientist from under his bangs. Gast looked so hopeful. Sephiroth kept his head bowed so that the man could not see his face. He liked that his hair was long enough to hide behind.

"Sephiroth?" Gast asked again.

"It's nice," Sephiroth replied quietly. Gast exhaled and a bright smile lit up his face. Sephiroth felt a little guilty about the lie. The man must have put a lot of effort into setting things up for him and the room was much nicer than his old one. So what if the window was just a pinhole. Sephiroth would be going to school in the morning. He smiled, for real this time. "Will I get books to read for school?"

"More than you'd want, I bet." The scientist came over to ruffle Sephiroth's hair. The boy bore it stoically. Only Gast could do that, nobody else. "You've got a tough schedule ahead of you. The assistants will wake you in the morning to take you to breakfast as usual, but then you have a session with your math teacher. It'll be a lot of work after that." Gast smiled at the little boy, who seemed not so young sometimes. "I know you'll do well."

Sephiroth smiled back and began to unpack his things. Gast pitched in willingly even though there was not much to do. They were almost done when Hojo appeared in the doorway, scowling.

"Get settled in later, boy. It's time for your mako treatment."

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Awareness seeped back slowly to the small boy on the bed. He didn't know which made him feel worse, the pain and illness that usually came from the mako shots or the knowledge that the start of school did not mean the end of the treatments. He would continue to have one every evening, just as he had before. Sephiroth could not make himself move.

Waiting for the shot was worse than actually getting it. Hojo always administered it himself and he took such a long time getting ready. He would hold the vial up and make sure that Sephiroth saw him fill the syringe with the pale green liquid. The needle itself hurt but the boy had long grown used to that pain. It was afterwards that the real problems started, the lightheadedness, the blindness, the searing fire in his veins.

Gast had been there to hold his hand today, but Sephiroth often wondered why the man never asked Hojo to stop, not once. Maybe he couldn't. There were others, Sephiroth had come to realize, people he had never seen, like this President person that nobody ever wanted to mention. He seemed to be the one who wanted all this done. Sephiroth could not even imagine why. At this time of day, all he knew was pain.

He opened his eyes. The light was not too bright. The bulb was in fact off. That was another amazing thing about this room. He could control his own light switch. Or he would be able to as soon as he could reach it. Sephiroth vaguely remembered Gast lifting him off the examination table. The nice doctor must have flipped the switch. It was just the kind of thing the man would do. A small mercy.

The only light in the room came from the little window. Despite the pain and weakness in his body, Sephiroth fought to sit up when he saw the square beam of light. It was strong and such a bright yellow that it seemed gold. Specks of dust danced within it and became golden sparks, bright with their small portion of the sun's borrowed glory. Sephiroth grabbed the metal railing headboard for support and pulled himself up.

The light was a beautiful, pure color, like the light on the trees in his book. It had to be real sunlight. Before he realized what he was doing, Sephiroth had swung his feet off the side of the bed. He was shaky when he stood but that did not matter. There was real sunlight in his new room and that meant that the window did indeed face the outside.

He stood in the path of the light and let it hit him full in the face. It was bright, not quite blinding, but warm. Sephiroth closed his eyes and smiled. So this was what sunlight felt like. He wondered briefly if the plant in Cosmo Canyon felt the same when the sun shone on it. He hoped it did.

The light dimmed a bit and Sephiroth grew alarmed. The square of light was moving slowly. He had to find some way to get closer to the window so he could keep it for as long as possible. He looked around quickly. He hobbled over to the desk and began to pull it closer to the dresser. Even for his young body it would have been an easy task if not for the lingering weakness. He had to stop twice to let the dizziness pass.

Finally, he heard the sharp thump of wood hitting wood and knew that he had his furniture where he wanted it. He jumped up onto the desk and scrambled onto the dresser. It was shaky, but he stood on it anyway. It put him just on eye level with his little window. The tiny patch of sky that he could see glowed a beautiful deep golden color that no artificial light could imitate. Suddenly it did not matter how small the window was or how high up. He had a piece of sky and it was enough just to know it. He thought his heart would burst out of his chest from beating so hard.

He reached out to touch the glass, though he felt the dresser wobble beneath him and he was more than a little dizzy. He misjudged the distance and leaned too far. He did not have the strength to cry out as he fell but he caught a glimpse of soft yellow cloud through the window as he did. In the split second before he hit his head on the desk on the way down, he was happy.

__________________________

"Of all the stupid things to do, boy, you had to get me woken up for something like this." Hojo kept grumbling as he cleaned the cut on Sephiroth's head. "Pass the bandaid." Gast did, smiling. Sephiroth was officially his project but Hojo was adamant about carrying out most procedures on the boy himself, and that included emergencies like this. Gast let him. Sephiroth was the man's son, after all, even if they had decided it was best not to let the boy know for the moment.

The brown-haired doctor was curious though. "Sephiroth, what exactly were you trying to do when you fell.?" The child had a very blank expression on his face, as if he were in a completely different place. Gast wondered if the boy had even heard the question. He was just about to repeat it when Sephiroth answered.

"I was trying to see out of the window," he said in his quiet child's voice. "I was still dizzy from the shot."

"Oh," Gast said, and nodded as if he understood completely. Hojo just kept grumbling about lost sleep and puddles. He finished the job up quickly and walked out of the lab, muttering to himself all the while. "Hm," Gast nudged the sullen child. "He's nutty, eh? Didn't even say 'Goodnight'." Sephiroth said nothing. Once Gast was sure that the other scientist was out of hearing range, he reached into his pocket and drew out a lollipop. "Here you go. Just promise me you'll brush your teeth afterwards, okay?"

Sephiroth smiled weakly. The bandaid was half-hidden by soft, silver hair. "Okay."

"Come on," Gast took the boy's hand. "You should get some sleep. You still have lessons in the morning."

__________________________

Sephiroth lay very still in his dark room and decided finally that he liked the place very much. Gast had moved the desk back into place for him. They had finally finished unpacking. Sephiroth's book lay on the little desk, opened to the page with the photograph of the twisted desert plant. The doctor had stayed for a while to make sure that the boy was alright, but Sephiroth had already retreated into himself. Gast had hugged him goodnight and turned off the light. The man had stood in the doorway for a while, looking at the little window.

"Look, Sephiroth," he had said before he left. "There's a star!"

And so Sephiroth had seen his first real star. It was nice, he thought, just like in the pictures, but nothing like the bright yellow sun. A little smile graced the silver cherub's face as he slipped into dreams of walking into golden light.

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Time: 4hrs

Assessment: Adequate

Mission: 33.33% complete