Work Text:
The sun is shining through the window and the faucet is running.
Lucrecia rubs her hands together underneath it, letting the water wash over for about a minute before she lifts them up, flicking her hands a bit before picking up a towel and wiping her hands off. She reaches her hand out to the hand sanitizer placed near the sink, squeezing a bead of it out before thoroughly rubbing it all over her hands. She moves to reach for her gloves, before remembering she’s at home now—not at the lab. She retracts her hands and shakes her head, sighing to herself.
When she hears footsteps, she turns her head, seeing wide eyes peeking around the corner, and she smiles faintly. “You don’t have to hide, I can see you.”
He continues to hug the corner of the wall, and she walks over to him, picking him up and practically hugging him. Despite the fact he had walked all the way to the kitchen, he still weighs the same as he did when he was a baby, in fact, he looks the same too. She thinks she’s just too tired to really notice him growing that much, though. She’s sure when he’s a toddler and is running about she’ll notice more.
She moves some of his silver hair out of his face, and he quietly yawns, like he was too scared to wake a sleeping world. “Let’s get you back to bed.” She adjusts her hold on him, now cradling him in her arms.
She heads down the hall to the bedroom, moving to place him back in his crib, but he adamantly refuses, shaking his head in protest, his tiny hands firmly holding onto her sleeve. This protest is completely welcome; she does not mind holding him for a bit longer.
“What do you wanna do?” Lucrecia leans close to his face, and he points one of his hands at her. “Oh, but mom has work to do.”
However, looking into his eyes as he tugs on her sleeve, still pointing, she supposes it can wait.
She decides to lay down on her bed, holding him up and above her, and he lets out a small giggle. She makes a faint airplane sound, moving him around in a circle, and he flaps his arms up and down like a bird, giggling more. Then, she rolls over onto her side, gently placing him down too, and letting him roll onto his back, kicking his legs out a little.
He rolls around a bit more, and thus some worry that he may roll right off creeps in. She sits up, picking up one of the smaller towels she had lying around for one of the many, many possible emergencies that could present themselves. She wraps it around Sephiroth slowly, making sure it wasn’t too tight, but wasn’t too loose as she didn’t want it to undo itself in seconds, either, successfully safely swaddling him.
His little limbs move a little under the soft towel, and he wiggles a bit too, making Lucrecia hold her hand over her mouth, trying not to laugh, yet she fails, easily. This makes him show a prideful expression on his face, or, well, as best as a baby can. She continues to laugh, and when it finally dies down, she leans close to his small face; pressing her lips against his forehead and giving him a kiss.
She lays right back down on her side, resting her head on her hand, staring into his eyes while they stared back. His eyes were a beautiful hue, reminding her of crystals they had studied many times before back in the lab, and near his silver hair, it was… a geode of sorts, to her.
Drip, drip.
Lucrecia pauses.
Drip, drip, drip.
Did she turn the faucet off?
An unforgettable feeling of dread rests on her chest like a heavy blanket. Soon his laughter sounds like a repeated radio broadcast glitched, looping over, over, over, over, over, over, over,
Drip, drip, drip, drip.
She cannot swallow, she cannot move, she cannot avert her gaze, she only finds herself staring longingly at her son. The cold of the sheets settles against her, feeling rough the longer she lies there.
Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip,
At least she got to hold him this time.
Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip,
That’s all she’d really ask for.
Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip,
drip, drip.
She wakes up.
Her eyes take a moment to fully peel themselves open, begging not to see the same stone walls. A sharp sting dances across the surface of her skin; she knows better than to expect something new.
She’s still here.
She slowly places her hands against the ground, her nails have dried blood underneath them and have chipped many times, whether from punching or clawing. She pushes herself up and off of the ground, her eyes still struggling to remain open, especially when her hair falls in front of her face.
How unfortunate.
The stinging remains, and she brings one hand up to her face, her fingers feeling across the scratch now on her cheek.
Drip, drip, drip.
She looks over only to see her own reflection in crystals, ones with the same color of his eyes. And then, she sees the water from above dripping down, down, down into a pool of water. There, she sees herself too. In the crystal, she finds herself looking more pristine, neat, put together, like a painting, while in the water, she looks dead.
“Why?” Her eyes snap right back to the crystals, a hiss leaking out from her teeth.
Her body feels like it wants to regurgitate everything inside her. Oh, so that’s the answer she chooses, so be it.
Drip, drip.
“How cruel are you to do that to me, first you do not let me die, and then you let me dream things—” her nails dig into the stone. “You let me dream sweet things, like you have not— like you have not made me dream worse. This is not a mercy.” There is silence, and when there is a drip, she echoes herself, glaring at it as it falls. “How cruel you are…”
The clock ticks by. There is splashing within the tub.
Lucrecia finds herself lost in a repetitive cycle before she blinks, hearing laughter alongside another splash. She looks down, part of her pant leg now soaked, but she can’t find herself feeling agitated at all. Instead, she crouches down to the tub, placing a hand in the water and lightly flicking some water onto his forehead.
He pauses for a moment, his eyes widening, before he lets out another laugh. She easily finds a smile on her face.
She looks to the floor, noticing some of the water on the floor, and she picks up a cloth to clean it up. She feels his eyes watching her intently, curiosity is almost all she sees in his gaze; and what else she’s seen within it, something she’s seen in her own eyes, she rather not think about. “Caught mom rambling to herself there, didn’t you?” Sephiroth tilts his head, and she shakes hers, pushing the toy floating boat towards him, and he hugs it, poking at the cabin that sits upon it.
His hair has gotten longer, she notes. It hasn’t grown too rapidly to be abnormal, but she has noticed he almost has a full head of hair now. He didn’t seem to have any genetic condition, so she’s been operating under the assumption that he merely got a lucky pick of a genepool in that lane. A very lucky pick, all things considered, he has not gotten sick despite multiple instances where the circumstances have aligned for him to develop a flu, or to have a concerning cough that turns out to just be him needing more hydration.
Everything falls perfectly into place with him, and it, for some unknown reason, bothers her deeply.
Seeing him so healthy should be a virtue, but to her, it’s not.
It feels like tides retreating from shore, far enough that they disappear as a blue line against the horizon.
She looks up at the clock, and raises an eyebrow upon noticing—the hands on it are not moving. She hums, patting Sephiroth on the head before standing up, going over to the clock and tilting it to the side before readjusting it to be centered. When that doesn’t get it working, she carefully picks it up and off of the wall, looking behind it, furrowing her eyebrows when she finds nothing noticeably off with it.
The sound of something being submerged under the water quickly makes her head snap to look back, but she just finds him pushing the boat down to watch it pop back up to the surface.
A sigh of relief escapes from her mouth, and she places the clock back on the wall, deciding it’d be best to fix it later. She returns to his side of the tub, resting her arms on the edge. She wonders, partially, if he’ll remember something like this later in his life. She likes to think he will. Though, she finds her gaze moving back to his eyes, a color that is so beautiful, but has begun to become stained with shades of green. She isn’t sure why or how, at first, she convinced herself it was natural, he was still growing after all. Now, she isn’t sure.
Expectations can make or fail a scientist, and for her, she’s not sure what to think of hers. They’re met, yes, but at the same time, parts of them are not.
She then blinks, shaking her head a bit and rubbing her eyes, sighing again and leaning her head on her hand. She sees her son looking back at her, even though his hands continue to prioritize plunging the boat up and down.
At times, she’s felt he can read her mind; not literally, but he can judge by her facial expression. She will admit, it’s irrational to think that, but with his eyes that peer at her, almost glowing… it’s hard to merely dismiss, is all. Because of this, she has made the habit of doing her best to not allow herself to ramble in her mind around him, trying to only do it when she knows he is not there. Which has proven harder than one may think.
She really just wants to focus on him, at the end of it all.
She puts a nail in her mouth and chews on the end of it, grinding her teeth together with it in between. How long had she exactly been letting Sephiroth bathe? Well, the clock hadn’t stopped ticking that long ago, so Lucrecia looks back at it, noting the time.
It probably is plenty past the time for him to get out now.
She stands up again and pulls a towel off of the shelf, unfolding it. She gets splashed again, and she bites her tongue, but smiles at him and shakes her head.
“Alright, I get it.” She leans down, stretching the towel out. “You just want to continue—”
The water ripples and she finds that she has no reflection in the water.
She looks at him, and he stares back, unmoving, so she looks back at the mirror, stepping backwards and staring directly at herself. She walks back over to the water. Nothing. She can see the boat and Sephiroth, but not herself.
She leans closer to the water, hesitating before moving one of her hands through the water, and watching it make small waves, the reflections warping alongside the water’s surface. Her mouth is agape, like a wide chasm. She can tell it is because she feels it, it does not show in the water, and neither does the towel. She waves the towel around with her other hand, and nothing comes of it.
When she pulls her hand out of the water, some stray droplets run down it, and drip, drip.
“Oh.” And her heart sinks.
Drip, drip, drip.
She didn’t get to hold him this time.
Drip, drip, drip, drip.
She supposes it wanted to make a point.
Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.
Drip,
In between her eyes, a droplet lands. Soon, another follows suit. Drip.
She opens her eyes to her own reflection. For a moment, it makes her physically flinch back, despite the fact she’s already lying down. It takes her mind a moment to slip out of the deep slumber it was in, fully registering and taking in the fact—it’s a cluster of crystals, sprouting from the roof of the cave. She breathes out, not that any tension is relieved when she does so, but she remembers she needs to.
Drip, drip.
Two droplets land in between her eyes, and she bites her tongue, pushing herself up.
“You didn’t have to do that.” She says, looking up at the reflection, one she does not deem as hers in this place. Too neat, too tidied, too much of a picture frame. “You didn’t have to do that at all.”
Drip, drip, drip.
This time, one droplet manages to land on the back of Lucrecia’s neck, and she stands, fingers curling inwards and nails digging into her skin.
Drip, drip, drip, drip.
“I want to claw my way into myself and rip you out, but I know that won’t work. It hasn’t been a viable option for a long, long time. Do you pride yourself in this?”
Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.
Three, this time, land on her neck, one after another. She looks up, and steps away, staring at the cracked stone like it's an unseen animal stalking her.
“This cruelty… showing me—no, I don’t even know if he’s alive, is my son alive? Will you tell me even that?” Her hands move to her arms, and she firmly squeezes them both, as if trying to ground herself in the middle of a spinning nightmare. “You won’t, I know you won’t. You’re showing me— you only show me a husk of what he is or was. A husk.” She hisses the last part like it’s dust seeping through her fingertips.
Drip, drip, drip.
She gasps for air, trying to stabilize herself, but a sob breaks from her throat. “I want my son.”
Drip, drip, drip.
“I just want my son.”
Drip, drip, drip, drip.
“And I know you will not give him to me.” She looks in the direction of the sound.
Drip, drip.
From the other side now, she looks there too.
Drip.
Her voice cracks. “But I miss him.” She knows, there is no point to this, to saying this out loud to a thing that will not listen, to a thing she wants to rip out even if she had to use her very own teeth; there is no point to her. To Lucrecia, there is.
Drip, drip, drip.
She buries her face within her hands, fingers feeling for strands and nestling their way in, cracked nails catching on some, and oh they tug, but she cannot bring herself to care for that.
Drip, drip.
She drops to her knees, if they scrape, so be it. His face, she has seen him grow yet at the same time she hasn’t at all. She wants to feel his hair between her fingers, she wants to wrap her arms around him, she wants to see his smile, truly anything—anything at all. She’d soothe him by brushing her fingers through his hair, and her mind influences her body, as her fingers begin to mimic the movement she could imagine herself doing. She does not care for the pulls and tugs it begins to turn into, only whispering to herself,
“I just wanted to hold him.
I just wanted to hold him.
I just wanted to hold him.
I just wanted to hold him.
I just wanted to hold him.
I just wanted to hold him..
I just wanted to hold him…”
Drip.
“I JUST WANTED TO HOLD HIM!” She shrieks.
And it echoes.
“There. Alright,” there’s the smell of a fresh cut apple that wafts up to her nose, and she gently slides the knife’s handle in between his hands. “Just like we practiced now.”
Her hand hovers above his; he straightens his posture and stands on his tip-toes, his chest puffed out.
“Ready?”
He gives an affirmative nod. Lucrecia wraps her hand around his, and they pick the knife up together. It’s strange, his fingers are not so small anymore, yet still, they’re smaller than hers. Their grip on the handle is decent, as much as a child could do, and his eyes flick to the knife specifically, more so than the apple half that sits in front of them.
He lifts the sharp end against the apple’s inside, then, he flattens it right down the middle. The half then becomes even more halved, and Lucrecia finds a smile on her face, giving Sephiroth a pat on the head. “There we go, see? You’re learning very well.”
Her phone rings, which makes her admiring eyes drift over with a tired drawn-out blink. She kisses Sephiroth on the cheek, placing the knife back down next to the cutting board. “I’ll be right back.” She picks up the apple piece, handing it to him. “Take a bite while I go deal with work, alright?” Sephiroth valiantly bites down and gives another nod.
Lucrecia gives a flatter smile to him this time and walks over to the phone, picking it up and bringing her nails to her mouth. She lightly taps her teeth against them as she hears a familiar voice on the other end, and her eyebrows furrow, though she takes a deep breath. “Yes, I made sure—” Pause. “What do you mean? I…”
She ignores the sound of the creaking of the stool Sephiroth climbed onto, assuming he’s sitting down.
“I did, no, I swear I did.” More tapping along her nails, upon a reply, a strike of something enters her chest and makes it feel like an ache, and she begins gnawing at the nails in her mouth.
It creaks again, and her eyes flick to see Sephiroth leaning against the counter, likely staring at the apple. “Just— if you can’t reach it, let me know— no, I’m not talking to you— sorry, sorry. Right, yes, I know— check-up? That early? No, he doesn’t need it. I know I’m confident in my answer, he’s my—”
The slam of a blade against wood freezes her entire body up. The scent of a sweet apple is now replaced by something metallic, overwhelming, and yet at the same time, completely organic; blood.
The phone drops right out of her hands, banging against the counter top before hanging by its cord, and the unanswered inquiry becomes nothing but static.
Drip.
Sephiroth stands at the cutting board, holding his finger, eyes wide, and he’s not crying. But Lucrecia rushes over, hugging him close with one arm as she looks at it. It’s not good. It’s not a light cut, either, in fact, it’s deep. It isn’t severed, so, she, she can figure this out—she knows she can. The sight of the blood slowly pouring out of his finger, down onto the cutting board, and she looks at the knife, it’s smeared with blood, somehow, wait, how much is he losing? She has to keep track, she has to—where did she keep the bandages? She knows, she knows—she ignores the reflection she sees within the knife, of him with long hair and a dark cloak akin to that of a reaper, she ignores it deeply and fetches the box of bandages, letting Sephiroth run his cut under water, she rummages through so much supplies she had for so many of these emergencies, for ones she prepared herself for, yet she feels herself scrambling and lost.
Drip.
She bandages it up a bit too tight and Sephiroth seems deeply uncomfortable with it, but it’s not about his comfort now, it’s about the blood loss. She scoops him right up, Still ignoring the knife that now seems less like one and more like a sword, one she does not know the name of but knows her son would wield with ease, and she runs. She runs, runs, runs, and runs. Till her feet are no longer carrying her and neither are her legs, till she feels like a bird spreading its wings and diving.
Drip, drip.
And the phone is left, staticky, and unanswered. The buzzing only grows louder, louder, louder, louder, and louder, before a firm voice comments; “Well, what were you saying about that check-up? Seems like it was quite necessary after all.”
And it goes dead.
Drip, drip, drip.
Drip, drip, drip, drip.
Lucrecia’s eyes shoot open, she forces herself onto her side and then upward, face to face with a hanging crystal that hooks down. She sees the reflection, and for a moment, it flickers, like one would change a television to another channel briefly before returning to the scheduled program; a woman she does not recognize, but looks like her, in some way, and at the same time, is a warped thing of what she does not want to call herself. “You.” She breathes, the air coming through her teeth feeling like a cloud of mako, and it makes a sound not too different from a whistle.
Her eyes are wide, circles under them, and she feels her whole body now tense. Everywhere she looks, there are clusters of crystals, which is strange, as she swears before there were not that many, but can she really trust her mind at this moment? She sees the reflection flicker in another crystal, and she stands, staring right at her. “You are terrible.” She heaves with her whole chest, and swirls around when she sees it dance across the crystals like a lighthouse sweeping over the sea. “You…” She swallows the stuffy air down her throat. What does she even call this thing aside from what it already has been? A plague, a calamity, a parasite? Before, she remembers, she wrote such a passionate report on this, on the progress of her and her son; the symptoms then were tolerable, and now, they’ve entirely consumed her.
A scientific discovery that turned into a terror.
Lucrecia supposes, she deserves this, entirely and utterly.
And yet, even sitting with the fact she deserves this, she knows she does, now there is an anger she feels boiling to the surface; why? She does not know, she gnashes her teeth together and furrows her eyebrows. She has cried so many tears here, and now it taunts her, and she lets out a shriek before collapsing to her knees with a splitting headache. She pulls right at her scalp, eyes remaining open despite the growing pain, and she thrashes herself around—hitting her leg against one crystal, and her hand slams into another.
Thus, she finds herself lying on the floor again, tears falling from her eyes, and she still only feels this inconsolable fury.
In a terrible, terrible way, this fury, this wrath, in the moment she feels nothing but the urge to tear her skin until she sees bone, this is the closest she’s ever felt to her son.
She doesn’t know why.
Is this what he felt in death?
She lays there, with labored breath, and a curse slips through her teeth, at first a murmur and now a hiss. “Fuck you.” She crawls towards the hanging crystal, glaring at it. “You, you did not have to do that, you did not have to do any of this.” Her hands reach out to it, and the nails dig in, despite her not having them sharp enough to call claws. “What gave you the right?”
There will be no answer, as she refuses to give any.
She is crying, she feels sorrow beating in her chest, and her hands are shaking, her vision is blurry, and her face is entirely soaked. She stares at the perfect reflection of her. “I want,” my son. But she cannot find the strength within herself to finish it.
She places her forehead against the crystal, her breathing sounding like that of a dying wish. She closes her eyes, the thrum of something within the crystals synchronizing with her heart, and she pries her eyes open, her eyes lingering at its points.
Lucrecia knows she’ll supply her a lullaby, but she cannot bear to hear it one more time. She stares at her reflection right in the eyes, which stares back, unblinking.
She tries to figure out what she thinks of this; is she unfazed, expectant, amused? Whichever it is, Lucrecia does not have time to decipher, and she knows there is no point to it, in the end of things.
Her arms go slack to her sides, and she lets herself fall. Over, over, over, over, over, over, over, and over again.
She refuses to let herself fall asleep again, lest she dream of that again.
But she knows, no matter what she does, at some point, she will.
Drip,
And she will hold her son.
And she will wake up to hate it.
Over,
Drip,
Over,
Drip,
And over.
Drip.
A stream of blood trickles down the crystal, trailing all the way down into water.
Drip.
The water flourishes into a deep red.
Drip. Drip.
Drip. Drip, drip.
Drip, drip. Drip, drip.
Drip, drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The crickets chirp.
Lucrecia stands in a dark room, in front of her sits a crib. She knows she is in the bedroom, because of the slowly rotating stars set above his crib. It always lulled him to sleep with ease. Beneath it he lays, sleeping soundly, the single noise from him being his small breaths. Even the crickets seem to not be trying to wake him with their tune.
She puts a hand on the crib, and runs a hand through his hair.
Her mouth stretches into a smile, one that has been long worn out from being of adoration and more of a faint memory. She strokes his hair, she wonders, is this what he looked like?
To never see someone grow; is that not already mourning? Only knowing the glimpses of what she gave her, with the next thought in her mind, she wonders if he lay like she did in that cave at death’s door; alone. No mother to hold him, yet more to remember him.
She cups his face with her hand, feeling his skin against hers.
The crickets quiet, as if at the wake of a funeral.
How do you grieve a son you never got to hold?
She looks towards the open door, out to the windows that show the dark sky. She looks back to him, sleeping, and she carefully scoops him up, still bundled up in his little blanket. Hugging him close to her chest, she places two fingers on his heart, feeling its beat. Her own is in her throat, but she ignores it, mind set on focusing on hearing his.
She walks through the empty home, the creaks of the floor following behind her like a ghost, and soon she reaches the front door, opening it and looking up to the sea of stars. She steeps out onto the porch, moving over to the untouched rocking chair and sitting in it, her eyes drawn back to Sephiroth. She begins to rock back and forth, staring at him.
The crickets have gone silent, beckoning her to join their song, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to mourn just yet.
She breathes, hearing the creak of the chair, back and forth, back and forth. Lucrecia looks back to the stars, stopping as she leans back, and bringing Sephiroth closer to her, whispering in his ear; “Do you see the stars up there?”
He shifts slightly in his blanket.
“There’s constellations, up there. You can see one right now.” She points to it, as if he can see it. “They believe that one is of a Cetra. They’re kind people who lived here before us.”
A soft, incoherent reply.
“Dr. Gast would’ve loved to tell you all about them, I’m sure. You know, he was a nice man, I think you would’ve liked his stories.” Her gaze returns to Sephiroth. “I wish you could’ve met him.”
He turns his head toward her, as if he was listening. She continues on. “That one up there, it’s a flower, one that means reunion.”
Back and forth, she rocks. “Some say it matches the color of the stars, with yellow petals. Even though stars are not quite yellow… but in your little mind-” she taps his forehead- “I’m sure they are.”
“That one is of…” A pause. “I don’t recognize that one.”
While some constellations have bright stars, that one is adorned with them. It looks like a circle, and what seems to be a trail of smaller, yet even brighter stars behind it—“A meteor?”
It is her, him, and the silent night.
And she knows that she has not seen it before, and she has heard of many.
It shines brighter than the moon.
Sephiroth visibly moves more at its light, his eyes wrinkling together slightly as if it is a light she turned on in a room. She places one of her hands over his face to shield his eyes from it.
That is one she has to have had made up.
It has to be.
She would remember otherwise.
“That’s enough of stars for now,” she says, slowly, and looks towards the open forest she faces.
She breathes, hearing not a single cricket sing nor anything make a sound, not even the leaves. Her eyes latch back onto him, she cradles him closer, sighing quietly to herself. He clearly still remains somewhat restless. She resumes rocking back and forth again to see if it remedies it, but he still looks close to waking up.
She rather the lullaby to bring him to sleep be hers and not her.
Her lips now cold, she rubs them together slightly as she starts to hum. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”
Something within the woods moves.
Creak. “You make me happy,” a part of her voice cracks, and her eyes soften as she stares at him. She hopes his life was bright. “When skies are grey.”
Back and forth—something is stepping through the blades of grass—back and forth.
She presses a kiss to his forehead, lightly touching her forehead against his. “You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you.”
It climbs up the stairs, one by one, and stops when Lucrecia leaves the words hanging in her mouth.
“The other night dear, as I lay sleeping,”
There’s a creak from the steps, as if the thing itself was pausing to listen.
“I dreamed I held you in my arms.” She brushes a strand of his hair out of his face. “When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken. And I hung my head, and cried.”
The funeral has begun.
“You are my sunshine.” She hugs him, so, so close. “My only sunshine. You make me happy…” She presses another kiss to his nose. “When skies are grey. You’ll never know dear, how much I love you.”
Creak.
Shakily, she exhales, her chest aching while she murmurs to him, staring at him. “Please don’t take,” it almost gets caught in her throat; “my sunshine away.”
“Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
Lucrecia opens her eyes, holding nothing.