Parenthood'z Nightmare

Chapter XI - Nightmares

The therapy sessions weren't that bad, Sephiroth decided. There was no clinical smell to set off his defences, a woman would ask him a lot of questions and a man would ask Alice to draw something, but Alice mostly sat on a beanbag looking terrified... until the day she drew something, something that had Sephiroth removed from his duties to approach President Shinra's office, where he found Scarlet and Tseng sat with Hojo, waiting for him.

"What's this about?" He asked, striding in, his defences high. "My men are to be shipped to Wutai within the week and you'd have me sit here so they can enter warfare unprepared?"

"Be quiet and sit down!" Hojo squawked.

Sephiroth scowled, but recalled the hold they had, not only over him but also his daughter. He adjusted his coat and sat in the only spare seat – beside Hojo and his victorious expression.

"How are you finding the therapy sessions?"

Sephiroth bristled at the President's words. "Private." He snarled.

"Alice drew this yesterday," Tseng began, as if to stop the President's disgruntled anger from sparking at Sephiroth's tone, "in a non-Shinra clinic."

Sephiroth snatched the picture from Tseng's hand. It was the drawing Alice had drawn yesterday in the child therapist, Dr Collinwood's; room.

After four weeks of hour-long sessions, during which Alice did nothing but sit stiff as a corpse on a beanbag in the corner, she had finally moved, nervously picked up a crayon and scribbled. That was all Sephiroth had been expecting, a scribble... not detail, as he'd watched her lift crayons of every colour.

Dr Collinwood described Alice as 'exceptionally gifted artistically' after examining the worrying details in the picture.

A round faced stick figure with two yellow lines of hair and blue drops hanging from green splodge eyes wore a triangle green gown with a red scribbled front laid on a grey oblong. Another grey oblong was beside it with sharper lines of red and black overlaying it.

Blue squares were drawn in grey squares like computer screens and hovering over the table was an identifiable figure, a stick figure with a single long line of brown emerging from the back of his head, his smile dotted in black crayon below round glasses, he'd a purple line for a tie and a grey outline of a white coat. He seemed to have a knife in his hand which somehow made the grey binds on Alice's stick figure wrists noticeable.

Sephiroth had worried; the therapist had been a little speechless and decided he'd arrange a lengthy meeting between him and Sephiroth.

"How did you get this?" Sephiroth growled. "Am I being followed?"

"Of course you are!" Shinra announced.

"The Professor has given you one of his leading experiments," Scarlet began, her voice always sultry, especially around him, "experiments like that have secrets that should remain secret."

"Drawing pictures for strangers is unethical!" Hojo decided.

Sephiroth did all he could to stop his chest from heaving. He was trapped in a room with his worst enemies speaking about Alice as if she were a rare piece of china!

"Is therapy really necessary?" Tseng drearily asked.

"What good will discussing such important events with scarcely qualified strangers do for anyone?" Hojo persisted.

Sephiroth glared at him. "If you didn't want these things discussed with strangers you shouldn't have done them in the first place."

"Measures were taken to ensure the subject behaved, how DARE you –!" President Shinra raised a hand to silence him.