Lucrecia - 1977/1979
Lucrecia opened her eyes. The world settled back over her, fit to smother her.
"Lucrecia?"
It didn't surprise her that the voice wasn't Hojo's, but that it should belong to Gast confused her. Wasn't he at Headquarters?
Her confusion must have shown on her face. "I just got back yesterday," he explained, and he hesitated.
He wanted to ask, but he didn't know how. Lucrecia didn't need to look to feel the bandages secure around her wrists. They felt like shackles.
She wondered who had found her. Not Vincent. Certainly not Hojo. He had what he wanted from her, so she was immaterial now. How long had he known that, before she realized it herself? She didn't think he'd seen her that way in the first years of their marriage. They had been a team in those early days, though he had undoubtedly always thought of himself as its leader.
She had moved to the inn in a meaningless rebellion against that. She couldn't stand him, she wanted to get away from him. She hadn't realized how intensely it would isolate her from everything. She carried company secrets within her own body, after all, so the villagers couldn't be permitted to interact with her. Even Vincent had made sure of it.
Of course Vincent had made sure of it. It was his job. Protecting company assets. She had broken it off, she had told him not to interfere, and so he had long since ceased to be her co-conspirator in minor infractions. The longer it went on, the more she hated him for listening.
Some days she had screamed at him for the rote performance of his duties. Bringing her meals in place of the kitchen staff. Guarding her door against intrusion and making certain she spoke with no one. Not even him. Never once had he reiterated his wild proposal to abandon the Project and disappear together.
And now he was dead.
They had torn her son out of her, and Hojo must have seen no more need for either of them after that. He had used up everything she had--her intellect, her body, her will--and now he had what he wanted. He didn't need her, and by extension he didn't need Vincent to guard her. If Hojo had found her, he would have let her bleed.
One of the inn's staff, then.
"I should never have left," Gast said at last.
Lucrecia turned her head away. The curtains hid her view out the window, but she'd seen that view a thousand times. The water tower in the square and the houses across the street. They never changed.
"Headquarters asked for you," she murmured.
"I didn't have to go. I knew you weren't well. I just... I thought all you needed was time. I convinced the President to let us continue the work in Nibelheim a while longer before moving to the new lab. But..."
"But...?"
"Maybe you ought to go home, Lucrecia. Your family lives in Kalm, don't they? I think it would do you good to get away from all this for a while."
Lucrecia didn't answer him. Hadn't she tried to get away from it? She had tried to get away from it forever, and someone had stopped her.
Of which of her failures would her parents be most critical? She had written them years ago, smugly telling them how many of her male colleagues she had beaten out for the opportunity to work on this Project with Professor Gast. She had torn up the reply telling her she had bitten off more than she could chew.
They had never supported her in her career, they had never supported her in her marriage, and what a crowning moment for them that they'd been proven right so spectacularly. She couldn't handle this. She didn't want to handle it. She didn't want to handle any of it.
"If I had known how hard this would be on you," Gast said softly, "I would never have agreed to let you do it."
Tears pricked at her eyes. "It was my choice," she snapped. "Mine. This wasn't your fault."
If she was a failure, then at least let her own it. To have allowed someone else to lead her into it was worse.
Gast seemed taken aback. She never had let him see her sharpest edges. As the head of the Project, she couldn't have him think she was incapable.
Not that she could hide it now.
"...has there been any news of Vincent?" she asked, her voice hoarse. Gast would know nothing of what had really happened, but she didn't know what lies Hojo might have told him.
The days after Sephiroth's birth had been a blur. When her fever had finally broken, she had waited for Vincent, but all she found was food left outside her door. The innkeeper hadn't seen him.
The bloodstain on the floor of the lab had told her everything, even if Hojo hadn't.
Gast shook his head. "I spoke with the village headman. No one has seen him. Hojo says he sent him up to the reactor to investigate a power fluctuation..."
Gast trailed off, and Lucrecia looked away again. What he left unspoken was not disbelief, but the conclusion that they had lost Vincent to the treacherous slopes.
It wasn't the story that Hojo had told her, and she could expose him for it. But to do so would be to expose herself, too. Gast didn't know the extent of Hojo's character, but neither did he know exactly what a miserable person she was.
If she explained to him the affair, what would he think of her then? Hojo already kept her from her son. If Gast knew who she really was, would he be any different? Would he even believe that Hojo would do such a thing, or would he dismiss it for the paranoia of an already unwell mind?
Telling him wouldn't bring Vincent back. But if she kept silent, then at least she held onto some shred of Gast's regard. Without Hojo or Vincent or her son, that was all she had.
"Is Headquarters going to send someone else?" she asked.
"Is that all you have to say?"
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know... He was a member of our team, and I know you two used to get along."
They used to get along. Gast had such a sharp mind, but he never applied it to the observation of other people. He would never know the half of what had gone on in that house.
Lucrecia shook her head. "I just... I can't think about it now. I can't."
Gast sighed. "Yes, I suppose they'll have to send someone else," he said. "Hojo didn't think to notify them with how busy he's been, and I haven't made the call yet. I wanted to talk to you... about them sending an escort for you."
"To take me home?" Lucrecia asked bitterly.
"I think it's for the best. Not forever. But you need to get better."
Not forever. Did he not see this as a definitive answer? "...and then, you'll let me come back?"
He hesitated. "We'll see how it goes. I don't want to keep him from his mother, you know, but at the moment, you aren't in any state to take care of him."
Lucrecia pushed herself up slightly. "But you wouldn't keep him from me, if I was well. If I got better."
"No," Gast confirmed. "I just want what's best for you. For both of you. For all of us."
If she got better, then Gast would let her see her son. And Hojo couldn't say a damn thing about it, because Gast was his superior, and his was the word that counted with Shinra.
"...does the Company know what I've done?" she asked. He hadn't called them yet.
"I've spoken with Hojo about it," he said, because of course he'd discussed her situation with Hojo before speaking to her directly, "but I don't think the President needs to know. We'll call it a medical leave. You had a hard pregnancy."
Lucrecia closed her eyes. "Thank you," she said.
It made sense that the person who knew her least would be the one to offer her a lifeline. Could she blame Vincent for pulling away, or Hojo, for turning against her? She had had such an inflated opinion of herself. Brilliant enough to be worthy of this Project. Deserving of more affection than one man could offer her. Looking back, it was hard to comprehend her own energy, throwing herself full-tilt at everything.
She'd been insatiable, and now she just felt empty.
Was it even right for her to reach for anything again? Perhaps the greatest gift she could give anyone was to fade away.
But first, she wanted to see her son. At least once, she had to see him.
It took nearly two years to convince them.
Gast made her see a shrink, paid for by the Company. Not someone to be trusted, and so she didn't. She said not one word about the Project, because if she showed herself to be a potential data leak, they would never allow her back. She was careful. She offered up 'breakthroughs' about how her parents' criticism had affected her childhood, and pretended that staying with them offered her an opportunity for reconciliation.
She told them nothing either. Gast had given her a tiny photograph of Sephiroth asleep on Hojo's chest. She kept it with her, always, because she couldn't risk them going through her things and finding it. She wasn't permitted the privacy of locked doors or unread journals; she was a danger to herself. She tucked the photo into her hair when she bathed, in case they walked in.
Living with them again made her want to tear her hair out, but she didn't want to wake one morning to find nothing left of them but a smear of blood on the floor. They didn't know she'd had a child. They had no idea what the Project was. That was for the best.
Some days, she had to laugh at herself. If her shrink had any idea the things that actually went through her head, would he label it paranoia?
Vincent wasn't dead because he'd been a data leak. He was dead because he'd crossed Hojo, because he'd fucked her for months under Hojo's nose, in Hojo's bed, at Hojo's workstation.
Wasn't that the reason? Jealousy would require Hojo to care for her, but maybe he'd only taken it for an affront to his pride, that another man had slept with his wife. He didn't care about her, but she'd belonged to him, so he couldn't permit it.
Or maybe he did still care.
Or maybe it had been something else that they'd argued over that day in the basement. Whatever it was, she knew it was her fault.
She folded down the corner of the photograph with Hojo's face in it. This wasn't about him. There was nothing there worth salvaging.
Lucrecia assumed that Gast received regular reports on her mental state, but he didn't communicate regularly. Occasionally she'd get some vague assurance that things were going well. 'Things' meaning Sephiroth, she hoped.
She dreamt about him sometimes, or she thought she did. A pale-haired infant sitting in the shade of the trees behind the mansion, out of sight of the villagers, grasping pine needles in his fingers. Their scent was vivid, as if she were there. It was strange, when she felt no nostalgia for Nibelheim in her waking hours. Why not imagine him anywhere else?
Then, Gast sent notice that they had relocated to the new lab in Midgar. It included an invitation to visit. A date and time for an escort to retrieve her.
It was the next stage, her foot in the door. For the first time, she would see her son.
Lucrecia had never been to the headquarters in the center of the newly-minted city of Midgar. Only the first of its raised sectors was complete, the bones of the others extending out over the towns below, and that was all that Headquarters had been when they had left for Nibelheim: bones. Now it rose fully-formed, a towering monolith looming over the surrounding land. One might imagine a dragon perched atop its peak.
Her escort drove her to a train station at the base of the central structure, and they rode the rest of the way up, spiralling around until they reached the so-named Sector 0. An old poster on the wall as they exited celebrated the grand opening of the Sector 1 rail line, while newer ones detailed plans for its expansion into the soon-to-be-completed Sector 2. There was no mention of Baldheim, the town 50 meters below them. Vincent's hometown. Like him, it was set to be buried in shadow and forgotten.
No one here cared about the past. They were building the city of the future.
Lucrecia hadn't spared any thought for it in ages. Conversely, her idle curiosity over the plans had evaporated beside the potential of the Project. What did architecture matter compared to the de-extinction of the Cetra?
Now, she didn't care about that either. There was only one Cetra who would ever matter to her.
Gast met her in the lobby, smiling the moment he saw her. He looked, basically, the same. He was in need of a haircut, his common state when he was busy. He took her hand with an enthusiasm that suggested he might have hugged her if he hadn't thought it unprofessional. She found herself overwhelmed, not knowing what to say.
"You look good," Gast said. "It's good to see you."
Lucrecia nodded. "It's good to see you, too," she echoed, and the words might have been rote, but she really did mean them.
Gast waved her escort off and guided her towards the elevators. "What do you think of the new headquarters?" he asked her.
"Shiny," she observed. Her heels clicked across the floor with the precision of a metronome. The glass walls of the elevator were pristine.
Gast laughed. "That's one word for it. It lacks the character of the mansion, but I get the feeling none of us will have to waste any time banging the furnace into submission."
Lucrecia smiled faintly, as if Nibelheim were something they could look back on and laugh about.
"So, Sephiroth is here...?" she ventured cautiously.
"Naturally," said Gast. "We've set up a nursery for him inside the lab. It's still a bit bare-bones after the move, but we'll make it nice for him."
Inside the lab. She didn't know why any part of her had expected otherwise. Sephiroth's very existence was a company secret, Hojo couldn't very well take him home on public transit every night. But at the same time, she felt an echo of the rage she'd felt at her own confinement in the Nibelheim inn. What would that isolation do to him?
"Hojo and I practically live in the lab anyway," Gast confessed. "No one prepared me for how much work it is to raise a baby, even without the research aspect."
"He's still a handful?" Lucrecia asked.
"Always," Gast replied fondly.
They got off at the 66th floor; the elevator had no direct access to the lab. One flight up the stairs, and they were in the halls of the lower level, as pristine and colorless as the rest of the building.
There were no windows to the outside. Instead, there were windows into observation rooms. Gast guided her to a stop in front of one.
Through the glass was a strange sort of nursery. A colorful rug covered the metal floor, and pictures of various animals had been taped to the wall in a slapdash effort to decorate. There was a crib in one corner, a low table and chairs, a box that could have contained toys, if she was being optimistic.
Hojo sat on the rug with a baby, her baby. Sephiroth's back was to the window, wispy silver hair falling just past the nape of his neck. Hojo was attempting to show him flashcards for simple words, but Sephiroth kept grabbing the cards and tossing them over his shoulder.
"...Hojo is frustrated because he isn't talking much yet," Gast explained with some amusement. "He's very bright, he clearly understands a good deal of what we're saying, but he seems to prefer keeping us in suspense."
"What... what sort of words does he say?" Lucrecia managed. She had missed his first word.
"'No' seems to be his favorite, I suspect he gets that from Hojo. And he says 'kibba' to mean 'clipboard.' He always sees us with them and he wants to play with them. So if some of our notes are a mess, that's his fault."
Lucrecia nodded, her eyes never leaving Sephiroth. He'd gotten so big, without her.
"...would you like to meet him?" Gast asked gently.
"Yes," she said. "Very much."
At the touch of Gast's key card, the light over the door turned from red to green, and it slid open. Lucrecia followed him inside.
Sephiroth looked up at their approach. His eyes were a bright green, a trait that he had inherited from neither her nor Hojo's family tree. Like his hair, it must have been Jenova's influence.
It didn't trouble her if he didn't look like her. It was better if he wasn't like her. He was beautiful. He was perfect.
"Sephiroth, I would like you to meet someone," said Gast, ignoring or not seeing the irritated look that Hojo gave him. "This is Lucrecia."
Not Lucrecia, your mother, but that could come later. Did he know what it meant to have a mother? Had they told him about her? Or was she, to him, a blank slate?
Lucrecia sank to her knees on the carpet.
Sephiroth was holding a card with a picture of a bird. He hesitated, and then held it out towards her.
"Is that for me?" Lucrecia asked.
Sephiroth said nothing, just held out the card. She took it. Her fingers were so close to touching his. She wanted to pull him into her arms.
But Gast and Hojo were watching, and Sephiroth didn't know her. She had to hold herself in check. Some part of her screamed that she had no guarantee of another meeting, that she should seize the opportunity to hold him, to hold her son.
She wanted more than one meeting. She wanted to know him. She wanted him to want to be held. Gast and Hojo were the arbiters of that possibility. She had to prove to them that she could compose herself professionally.
"Thank you," she managed, lowering the bird card into her lap.
Sephiroth twisted around, picked up another card off the floor, and held it out to Gast. "Po Gah," he said.
Gast chuckled and knelt down to take it. "I get 'shoe,' do I? I'm flattered."
"The point of these is not for him to pass them out," said Hojo.
"What's the harm?" said Gast. "I'm sure it helps with his motor skills."
"And he's learning generosity," Lucrecia added, for the first time looking directly at Hojo. "Some people never master that."
Hojo scoffed at that. "I'm not getting into one of your arguments."
"Agreed." Gast cast her a look. "Are the two of you going to be able to work together like professionals?"
"Of course," Lucrecia said smoothly, biting back every accusation that flashed through her mind. She'd gotten much better at that, during her time away.
"I said I wouldn't get into it," said Hojo, meeting her gaze. No, that was never his game. He always wanted to play the reasonable one, even when his actions were anything but reasonable, and he'd wait until he worked her up into a hysteria to proclaim his the superior intellect.
She'd had a lot of time to think about that, but she doubted he had. In the time since she'd seen him last, Hojo hadn't pursued a divorce, but it wasn't because he wanted to hold onto their marriage. She was sure it had simply slipped his mind. Lucrecia thought it might be more satisfying to be his widow.
But she couldn't risk her access to Sephiroth. Hojo might have been able to get away with murder under the Company's nose, but Vincent had only been a Turk. They had value as a group, but any individual was considered replaceable. The Company's lead scientists weren't.
She would have to undermine him first. Devalue him in the eyes of the Company. If he found himself in harm's way after that, it was no great loss to anyone.
For all that, he wasn't her priority either. Sephiroth was. So she would play whatever role they needed of her to stay here with him and watch him grow.