Blood & Sympathy (FFVII: Vincent x OC)

Ch53 - Compassion

Slight incest which is not incest because you'll see...

Everything seemed in place. The heartbeat was stable, the oxygen levels were stable as well. The machines around his bed beeped steadily and she took a moment to take a look at his face. It looked finally at peace. He was resting. It made sense that his energy would be drained.

She had just changed the bags that hung from his hospital bed with another dose of that serum that she had been feeding his blood vessels. It coursed around his arteries and fixed and replaced tissue that the alien had destroyed in his body. The pain must have been intense, but she had made sure she'd given him enough anti-inflammatory pills that would make it bearable.

Of course, there was nothing that this body couldn't handle. That body had been in pain for as long as she's known him. Sephiroth's perfect features looked at peace as he rested peacefully. Hester sat beside him on the bed as she took her moment to stare at him. His hair was no longer that unnatural silver color. They were pale brown and it made sense they would be. It was the same as Dr. Lucrecia Crescent's hair color.

Hester never knew her. She had never even been born when Dr. Crescent disappeared. Her father never talked about her. Hester pursed her lips as she turned at the computers on the other side of the room and she tested if there was any connection to the network. She let out a heavy sigh of relief when she realized that the lines were down ever since Meteor. It made sense since everything had been destroyed during Meteorfall, and Shinra was too much of a mess to restore the internet.

But she was relieved by that. She had done it. She had done everything that old, wretched man had asked her to and he'd promised her to leave her alone. Growing up with Hojo wasn't an easy situation. But he was indeed the only one she had. She had become a Biotechnologist like he wanted her to be, and she had tried her best to be perfect. She had tried. She had tried.

Hojo was never pleased, though. He wanted her to do more and more. She was the perfect child as he called her but she was never enough. She had numerous certificates on everything. She was twenty-seven years old and all she'd done in her life was study and sleep on top of the counters of Shinra's labs.

She'd spent her childhood alongside Hojo in his labs where he showed her first hand his experiments. He was brilliant but nothing mattered to him more than his experiments and his job. Even her. He didn't consider her anything more than a subject. A tool that he thought would continue his work. And she'd come believe that, at some point in her life. He had almost convinced her that that's how a child should be treated. That his idea of her was something that she had to make real. He wasn't a good father. He wasn't. He made her feel useless. He pulled all the pressure on her shoulders all these years. He wanted perfection. And she tried. She tried her best. At first, it was difficult, but then she got used to it.

And then there was Sephiroth. The other perfect child. Shinra sent him in to fight a war while he was still a teenager, and he came back as a War Hero, respected excessively ever since. Everybody looked up to him. Every single candidate in SOLDIER wanted to become like him. And she wouldn't blame them.

She grew up alongside Sephiroth into the Shinra HQ. Hojo stopped experimenting on him when he realized there was nothing left to do to him. Sephiroth would often talk to her about it. About the things that Hojo used to do to him as a kid. Sephiroth wasn't one to open up so easily, but they'd spent their childhoods together, and back then they only had each other until he got friends with the other two First Class SOLDIERs.

And that's when things got messed up. The Nibelheim Incident where she lost him. That was five years ago and so many things had occurred in between, and Sephiroth had caused half of them.