OPEN POST; [ SEPHIROTH / FFVII ]

[supersoldier]

those chosen by the planet.

(( despite the ominous choice of music i default to a pre-nibelheim canon point, but can play post-nibelheim upon request! ))

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[supersoldier]

[The hour is late, but Sephiroth’s sleep schedule is later. His body has long adjusted to the hours of both endless experimentation and military training — two worlds of different methodologies, but the similarly strict timetables. Thankfully, his body performs well above the normal standard; a 3 hour night’s worth of sleep is the expected for a man groomed to be the perfect SOLDIER, the perfect specimen.

He’s only just returned from a mission, but already he’s changed into more casual clothing, early preparation for when sleep does visit him. He doesn’t expect anyone to come knocking at his door at this hour—rarely does he expect anyone to come knocking at his door at all—but a voice calls his name softly through the frame soon followed by a rapping of knuckles.

Mother.

There’s no halt or hesitation to his step. The book he was reading is set aside on the seat’s armrest, and he stands and strides over to his door, swinging it open wide to meet Lucrecia. His features soften slightly, but they always do around her.]

It’s late, Mother. [The pot calling the kettle black, but at least he’s a highly trained and easily adaptable pot.] This is a bad habit of yours.

[asimetrica]

Is it?

[she questions the hour, not really minding being called out for her so-called bad habit. days inspired by coffee and energy drinks will catch up to her as the years go by, but at this point in her life she is used to sleeping whenever the fancy strikes her.]

[allowing herself inside past her towering son (and when did he grow so tall? she always wonders, remembering when he barely reached her shoulders, every time), she moves into his dormitory. it's his permanent residence, so it looks almost normal, with a kitchenette, a bathroom, and a living area separate from where his bed is.]

—sorry to bother you, [she motions towards the clipboard before her] but this couldn't wait.

[a glance around the place, everything is kept quite minimal, quite muted. a soft sigh follows, some amount of guilt at this life that he leads—because she allowed for it.]

[lucrecia allows herself to smile as she spots the book he was reading, and she walks on over, reaching for it, careful to not lose the page he is on.]

'Incredible Ecosystems Found In Nature.' [she recognizes this book, then smiles up at sephiroth.] Mail did reach you despite being on your mission.

[the book she had gotten for him, for his birthday, which unfortunately he had spent away in the frontlines doing his job as SOLDIER. he did receive it, after all.]

[supersoldier]

[The environment in which Sephiroth grew up in has informed his living space. The Shinra building is sprawling and opulent, but the science department is only sprawling — cold, sterile, function over form. Naturally, his dormitory reflects these spartan tendencies, only further bolstered by his time in the company’s military.

But there are personal touches here and there, so many of them provided by his mother. Books and trinkets hailing from places beyond the city’s walls. A little wooden representation of a water molecule sits on an end table at the other end of the room, something she had bought him when he was only eight. And now, another book to add to the collection.]

Yes. It’s an interesting read. But I’m sure you’ve already thumbed through it.

[Her mind was always so brightly inquisitive, but not in the off-putting and invasive manner of the other scientists and researchers. Sephiroth takes after her in that way, but only half as prominent.]

Thank you for it.

[She can sit wherever she pleases; Sephiroth hardly needs to extend the invite to his own mother.]

Is something wrong? [Green cat’s eyes alight on the clipboard.]

[asimetrica]

[her smile only grows as he thanks her, and although she hugs the clipboard of information to her chest, she allows herself a glance down at the open pages of the book—dragging her palm down one of them, remembering how she took notes of this book when she first read it before sending it to her son, a message in the cover page, wishing him a happy twenty-first birthday. affection from sephiroth was... scarce, but he expressed himself differently, she knew.]

[taking a paper clip that sits on the seam of her shirt, lucrecia puts it to the page, so it works as a bookmark of sorts as she closes the book and sets it gently onto the side table, spurred by his question of whether something is wrong.]

[shaking her head, she responds, just as she takes a seat on the chair he had occupied before her arrival.] Nothing is wrong on the latest report. [she sets the clipboard down on her lap, thumbing over the few papers worriedly, then looks up at her boy.] But I have some concerns, of a more... personal nature.

[he isn't a boy anymore, a child who needs protection or comfort from his mother, and yet her expression pinches in worry as she looks down again but urges him to take a seat; she scoots to the edge of the seat and pats down the arm of another nearby chair (although sephiroth rarely has visitors, friends or guests), hoping he'll acquiesce.]

I know that charts and reports only provide numbers and methodical results, which is what fits best a scientific model, but I also know that it doesn't spell out the whole story, not with — human samples. [the SOLDIER program, a possibility thanks to what sephiroth has been through since a child; human samples are not without name, for the research department.] Your most recent transfusion...

[were he to sit, as asked, lucrecia would reach her hand out to his, hold it tightly in her own, warm palm.]

Was it truly painless? With no secondary effect as before?

[supersoldier]

[He’ll sit, of course, as he always does. Sephiroth may not show affection in overt ways, sometimes not even in subtle ways, but that he sits when suggested by Lucrecia means something. The ease of which he perches on the edge of the adjacent couch, leaning forward as though to be both closer and attentive, is proof of it, just as he had done so many times over these last 21 years — to be closer to his mother, a source of comfort after a long round of testing, or an endless day of training.

Eyes latch onto the clipboard and all that it entails—no doubt today’s results and medical notations on the transfusions, a process which took nigh half the day to complete—and he turns her question over in his head, feeling the warmth of her hand atop his, curling his fingers gently in response.

His brows cinch; she worries for him, as a mother should. And as any proper son should feel in return, he doesn’t want her to worry — here in his room, at 1 in the morning when she should be asleep. Her hours were just as bad as the Professor’s, he thinks, though her visitations were far more welcome, being both family and a kinder presence.]

The transfusions are... [And yet he cannot lie, casting his eyes to the side for having even considered it.] ...they’re never kind, Mother. The mako is always harsh.

[Or whatever concoction they’ve flung together for the week. Yet it always possesses that telltale glow.]

But I’ve adapted to it. My body has. [He looks at her again, trying to read her expression, and trying to will comfort there.] A half hour in, and I don’t feel anything at all any longer.

[The Jenova cells, unknown to Sephiroth still, care very little for the invasion of mako, warring against it before forcing it to behave on his veins. The real infusion of strength, down to the DNA level, had been injected into him so very long ago.]

It’s no different than before. Why are you worrying? Is the formula that experimental?

[asimetrica]

[that's what she worries about; adapted. it would make sense, after all, but the transfusions are invasive not just because of the procedure but because of what is being injected in his veins, as an all-time the host of jenova cells.]

[it is still a hypothesis, still on the theoretical stages, but lucrecia wonders how long it will take before the cells take over its host—or if it will at all. part of hojo's ravings describe it as such a fascinating process to observe, not caring an ounce for what it could mean to their son. if sephiroth steels himself to not show pain, to express that he doesn't feel anything after an amount of time, it will only mean that he would be deemed capable of withstanding a more powerful dosage so that the research can move from theoretical to downright experimental.]

[she has seen doctor hollander's boys, how they've started to react negatively to their own exposure of type-cells, and she doesn't wish to see the same to befall her son.]

Let me see.

[she sets the clipboard down on the floor almost like an afterthought as she rises to her feet and steps closer to sephiroth, drawing back the sleeve of his arm back so she can see where the puncture of needles dig into his skin almost like a permanent fixture since he was but a baby.]

[his skin so fair, untouched by the sun under all the leather he wears and these halls he roams, only marred by the holes where the needles sat. she thumbs over them gently, noting the bruise-like coloring around them, but already at a stage of several days of healing, likely to be gone in the morning. frowning, lucrecia tilts her head, and presses lightly into them.]

—does it hurt? Even just a little?

[but sephiroth did ask her questions, and she promised him to be as honest as possible, to the best of her ability.]

The dosage was a little stronger than usual. The department is working on trying something stronger, depending on how you [your body] react. [she takes this opportunity to place her hand atop his head, to slowly brush back his bangs by carding her fingers through them, gently combing them at his back.] I would rather it not go into those trials, not yet. Especially when we have this Genesis and Angeal situation in our hands.

[supersoldier]

[He has grown up in these labs, on this floor. The entirety of the building is the same as his home, and the testing is the routine that fill his days while he's here. He dislikes them, of course, but he dislikes them in a way that a child dislikes doing chores; they are a tedium, and they feel unnecessary in their constant nature. No, it's the faces that he dislikes more than the procedures, the scientists that are not her, and make him feel as though he isn't in the room even as they poke and prod at him, even as they praise the results of his tests and trials in a way that only bolsters their own pride. He hates that distance; he feels it enough (different, an unusual man even in a brigade of unusual SOLDIERs) without their aid.

With his dislike being held more towards the personnel than the actual operations, he does not see them in the same kind of dangerous light as Lucrecia. They are, after all, his reality -- he grew up with them as fervently as she was raised by him, to a degree. The transfusions, the blood samples drawn, the almost daily assessment of his physical and neurological systems... those are merely old, tiring friends of his.]

It doesn't. [His arm exposed like this, it's almost habit that he makes a fist. Fingers curl in gently without thinking, moving muscle beneath skin.] I could probably handle a stronger dose.

[His mind flashes back to two old friends, friends no longer.]

Genesis and Angeal... they were a different case, weren't they? Projects all on their own. It isn't the same with me, Mother.

[So he believes.]

[asimetrica]

[his words—i could probably handle a stronger dose—give her pause, and her eyes harden as she looks at his face, at how unmeasurably jaded he has grown to these procedures that have been an intrusive part of his life for as long as he can remember. it is to be expected, that a human specimen would still have emotion and a will of its own, regardless of how much this kind of life has drained from sephiroth in that department.]

Don't utter such words, pumpkin.

[she chastises, quietly, pulling back and arranging the sleeve to remain neatly unrolled over his arm. she does not use the term of endearment often, not since he's grown older, anyway.]

[it's enough for her to pick up the clipboard again and step back towards the kitchenette, figuring she might as well get them some tea. she notices a dead succulent in its small pot in the sink, and wonders how many times sephiroth has endeavored in trying to keep a plant, either as a gift from someone or out of his own volition, to no real success.]

[ignoring it—she fills up the kettle, and places it over the stovetop, letting the electric burner come to life.]

They were under Doctor Hollander's supervision, yes. [and yet...] You're... different. Special. [she reaches for some cups and sets them down on the counter, turning to face sephiroth.] And yet human, prone to something going amiss. I could not bear for things to be rushed, chasing for a result, born out of stubbornness and someone else's pride, and for you to suffer for it.

—so, I do not want you to be saying that you could handle a stronger dose, not even as a joke. I know consent isn't something that you've been allowed, but to say such a thing is as good as signing a contract.

[her worries, as his mother, come in waves that crash and beat against the scientific, logical droll that has always spurred her to inquire more.]

How do you feel, anyway? About Genesis and Angeal. [softer, no longer the sharpness in her voice present.] You were friends.

[supersoldier]

[Her instructions are a clear result of that motherly concern, the want to avoid Shinra’s testing going too far, wracking his body into something ultimately useless. And he understands it, in the limited way a son can—he thinks if their roles were reversed, he would feel the same—and yet it does not stop the way her imploring rakes against his pride. Sephiroth possesses that, too; a trait, perhaps, that runs in the family.

But as the kettle warms, the stove humming with newfound energy, he finds he cannot bring himself to argue the point.]

…Yes, Mother.

[For what need was there for a stronger formula, more rigorous testing, when already none could match him? He has no doubt that the Professor himself wants to test his limits, to see how far above and beyond he can bound above what’s possible for a man (and if he were to be truly honest with himself, he does wonder it at times, too), but that would be a goal born of hubris more than necessity.

What’s the point of a weapon that can already kill quickly, efficiently, and making it even more so? An argument could be made for fear and intimidation purposes, but he’s seen how enemy forces look at him from across the battlefield — he has that in droves already. However, he cannot make a promise to her that he cannot keep, and the addendum comes swiftly.]

But you know that it’s inevitable. The results speak for themselves.

[The numbers never lie: his vitals are good, better than ever. His performance matches. The science will want to push harder, as it always does.

That said, the question about Genesis and Angeal causes him to cast his look away from her, brings something a bit cooler into his demeanor. It’s easy to fall into such a habit when he’s displeased, or uncertain, or finds it difficult to articulate himself. Distance in all things.]

We’re not friends any longer. [One is gone, one is a traitor.] Those bonds were tested, and they broke. It’s likely better that way.

[asimetrica]

[didn't they already achieve what they initially sought out to prove? what would happen to a living organism if jenova cells were infused, a part of the alien that crashed into the planet thousands of years ago? it's almost disorienting how their research used to have a clear focus before, but now seems to spiral into flights of hyperbole and fantastic scenarios that aren't quite based on scientific foundations.]

[who is she for hojo to listen to her, anymore? —if ever?]

[her opinion on the subject has changed, obviously, ever since she became a mother. is it safe in shinra anymore? is sephiroth safe? is he safe to others? they are soaring too close to the flame that will inevitably burn them.]

[the water warms in the kettle, and she sets down the tea bags, watching carefully as sephiroth reacts—his constant distancing, not from her, but from the topic at hand. all too primed to want to ignore and remove any ounce of sentimentality and weakness from himself. a SOLDIER, through and through, no doubt.]

[sephiroth never really got the chance to make friends, so when these two boys came into the department to join him in the program, it was his first time being around someone his age. lucrecia remembers a similar young girl, the ancient, in another floor altogether, and had no envy for the life she, too, had been robbed of. she was secretly happy that ifalna had escaped with aerith, and wondered so often, if she, too, could have the courage to do the same with her son. what kind of life would that have been, anyway—?]

[the kettle sings, drawing her out of her thoughts, and she pours the water, and she sets the cups down on the coffee table, and she sits by her son, again.]

But you were friends. [and that's important; worth remembering.] You may be the perfect soldier in every way, but you are not immune to pain. [gently, as she tries to meet his eyes.] Did you not consider leaving with them? Not even once?