Sober

“Doctor Hojo, come quickly!” A nurse shouted from down the hall. “We have a situation!”

I dropped my files and ran for Admitting, wondering what could possibly be so urgent. Accidents happened around here all the time, but they were rarely life-threatening.

The havoc in Admitting took a moment to filter. I first saw Valentine, held back by a contingent of Shin-Ra guards, and it made my heart sink. Looking toward the direction of his desperation, I saw Lucrecia on a stretcher borne by two men in the green suits of Botany Bay. She had tendrils of vine wrapped around her, and they were…squeezing.

“Let him go,” I snapped to the guards. “Let him go before he transforms and eats you.” I bent over Lucrecia. One of her vines tried to grab me. I hacked it off with a hastily grabbed scalpel. “Lu,” I murmured. “Tell me what this is so I can treat you.” Everywhere the vine touched her, she displayed contusions, bleeding and welts. It looked as if she was allergic to the plant, but I guessed it had poisonous properties to begin with.

“Sentient…strangle vine,” Lucrecia whispered just as Valentine swooped in. “Call…containment team to Botany. It’s still… growing.”

I gave an order to that effect, and then motioned Valentine to the side. “Don’t touch her,” I warned. “The vine is still alive and it looks like…” I met Lucrecia’s eyes. “It looks like it propagates by eating flesh.”

“Correct.” Lucrecia winced. “Kanaye, get it off of me before it starts burrowing under my skin.”

“Too late,” I said calmly. “Let’s get you into surgery before it finds a vital organ.”

In mere moments I stood in the O.R., Valentine beside me in scrubs. I’d forgone a surgery nurse, afraid the vine would spread from here. “Are you washed?” I asked the Turk, who’d gone so far as to remove his gauntlet.

“Someone sprayed me down with antiseptic,” he said, reaching for Lucrecia’s hand.

I slapped it away. “Don’t,” I warned. “The vine is seeking any host it can grab.” I put the anesthesia mask over Lucrecia’s face, giving her what I hoped was a calming smile. “Relax, Lu,” I told her. “We’ll get you fixed up in no time.”

She smiled at me before slipping under.

“Can you save her?” Valentine asked, his voice rougher than usual with tension.

“Of course.” I donned gloves and began hacking the vine away. “Get her clothes off, but don’t touch the vines.”

We worked in unison for long minutes. I found a vine trying to enter her through her naval, and another inching toward her vagina. I sliced them both before they could go in, then began opening Lucrecia up to remove the one that had buried itself under her armpit. “Douse her in rubbing alcohol,” I ordered. “Everywhere but her face.”

With nervous hands, the Turk did as I said.

I found the end of the vine attempting to twine around fatty breast tissue. I removed it and stomped it to paste under my boot heel. “Turn her over, Valentine.”

I only saw a single vine lodged just underneath her skin, right above her buttocks. I pulled it out and dropped it into a vial, shutting it with a secure cap. “More alcohol. Cover every inch of her with it, except for her soft tissues.”

“Soft..?” Valentine blushed and began splashing the disinfectant. He avoided her vagina.

“You can hold her hand now,” I said, dragging my ex down the table and putting her feet in stirrups. “I have to make sure none of it lodged in her uterus.”

I remembered this part of Lucrecia very well. She had beautiful parts, really. Even her insides were lovely. I felt glad she’d passed that onto our son. Sephiroth was exquisite. I couldn’t imagine the clone holding out against him long…

It surprised me Valentine didn’t protest me doing the thorough pelvic exam. “Will she be all right now?” he asked quietly as I covered her with a sheet. He held her hand gently but firmly.

I looked at them both a moment. As much as I’d enjoyed having Valentine, I could see he truly loved Lucrecia and wouldn’t be unfaithful to her. I wouldn’t dare attempt to break them apart anyway. Maybe I was wrong and true love did exist in this world. Maybe she could stay faithful to him…

“She’ll be fine,” I assured, raising the collection vial up to the light. “You might want to remind her what happens when Jenova cells are introduced into photosynthetic life forms. Do ask her where she got a collection of J-Cells, won’t you?”

“This…vine is of Jenova?” Valentine swallowed hard, his red eyes looking to me in horror. “Please tell me that isn’t so, Hojo.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” I said. “Whatever dear Lucrecia is doing looks interesting, though. She’s managed to cross plant and animal life.” I smiled down at her unconscious face, feeling proud. “I knew she could do marvelous things if she only could get into botany.”

***************************************************************************************************************


Not two weeks after Lucrecia’s close brush with strangle-vine death, she came to visit me in my labs. I looked up from my microscope, watching how her approach rattled a few of my male techs and two or three of the females. Her loveliness could entice anyone to infidelity, I felt certain.

“Kanaye,” she greeted with a small grin. She held up a cryogenic case. “The cells you wanted.”

Pleased, I took the case. “Where did you get them, my dear?” I asked.

She affected a charming, coy demeanor. “Oh, I had them stored pretty deep. That’s about all of them, though.”

“Thank you for sharing.” I hadn’t really anticipated she’d tell me where she’d kept Jenova cells. I sat on a stool and gestured for her to join me. “Where’s your Turk?”

Lucrecia frowned slightly. “He didn’t come with me today.” She leaned her elbows on the table and began that pretty pouting I knew so well. “I think I made him mad.”

“He didn’t like you using Jenova.”

“Right.” She sighed. “He never understood me as well as you did, Kanaye. I’m sorry I hurt you with him.”

“We got a beautiful, accomplished son, anyway,” I remarked, putting another slide under the scope. “It’s all in the past, Lu. Try not to think about it.” I realized I liked her better as a colleague and a friend, but I wasn’t sorry I’d fucked her and got Sephiroth.

“But, I can’t help it,” she protested. “So many mistakes, by all of us, so many tears shed from selfishness and anger.” She picked up a pencil and began to doodle on one of my clipboards. I felt a pang of nostalgia. At one time I’d had fifty clipboards with her impromptu artwork on the back, everything from sketches of me, the prototype for Valentine’s gauntlet, and realistic representations of genitalia. “It’s better now, of course; we’re all alive, even if we are…altered.”

“Your lover isn’t the same man you left so many years ago, is he?” I asked, abandoning my slides.

“No, he isn’t.” She turned her beautiful but unhappy green eyes to me. “You aren’t either. I feel lost, Kanaye.”

I nodded. Reaching across her, I hit the mandatory break button, announcing without words to the occupants of the room that they were to vacate for half an hour. As soon as we sat alone in the lab, I lit a cigarette and leaned back. “Except for mania, I’m fairly much the same, I think,” I said.

“No, you aren’t,” she argued. “The differences would be subtle or invisible to someone who’d stayed alongside you all these years, but you’re very different to me.” She put her chin in her hands and stared at the far wall. “And Vincent is even more so. He took all that moralistic ideology in his psyche and morphed it into a very strict code. He’d no more think of playing footsie with another man’s wife now as he would cut off a limb.”

I had to laugh. “Lu, tell me you aren’t attempting to get him into a threesome?” She’d tried that with me many times, to the point I acquiesced once or twice.

She blushed. “I tried to talk to him about it, but he wouldn’t even pretend understanding. He was mad at me for three days afterward.”

“He’s not the type of person to share,” I replied, smiling a smile only half bitter. “You’re such an able amateur psychiatrist; why can’t you see that many people are too possessive to have open relationships?” I stubbed out my smoke and lit another. “Out of curiosity, who did you suggest to him?”

She blushed even harder. Covering her face with her hands, she began to giggle. “You, Kanaye.”

Our laughter filled the room. I felt a part of my soul healing. “My dear, that will not happen,” I said, wiping water from my eyes. “I couldn’t bring myself to go back to women, and he’d never agree to share or lay a finger on me.”

…Not with the knowledge of my identity, anyway…

“I know, I know,” she protested.

“But, it’s good to know you still find me tempting.” I winked at her and she giggled again.

“I always did,” she said. “I didn’t cheat on you because I didn’t like you anymore, you know.”

“I know it now,” I assured. “I don’t hold hard feelings, Lu. I realize you aren’t the type to commit. Some people just aren’t that way. Maybe you should open up to your lover and tell him that.”

Lucrecia rolled her eyes. “It’s like talking to a wall. He’s closed off.” She sighed again. “I think I’m going to have to dump him. Oh, I hate to do that! He’s wonderful and caring and loyal.”

“And he wants total commitment from you,” I deduced.

“Yes. Total.” She swung her eyes to me again. “What would you do?”

“Me?” I smiled. “I’d make a perfect clone of myself, teach it fidelity, and let him go to town.”

“Be serious!”

“I am. I’ve cloned myself a few times.” I frowned, trying to think. “I believe the only one still alive is living in Bone Village. He should be about sixty now. I should go visit.”