The rhythmic thud of your shoes echoed through the hospital corridor, a place that looked more like a decaying ruin than a psychiatric ward. Peeling wallpaper, cockroaches skittering past your feet, and doctors who had long since retreated into their offices or locked wards. Suddenly, a haunting wail from one of the patients tore through the entire wing, shattering your train of thought.

No, that voice was far too high-pitched to be Sephiroth’s.

You were Sephiroth’s biological mother, reappearing after thirty long years. You never held him as an infant, never called him, not even on his eighteenth birthday when he stood at his graduation. But did you ever truly want to, after all those recurring nightmares of the monster your child was destined to become?

Did you still want to see him after Nibelheim? After the horrors of Geostigma?

While the rest of the world celebrated a holiday, you were stuck at work when the call came. An offer to see him after all these years. Some strange impulse had driven you here, and now you stood before his door, double-checking the room number written on a scrap of paper.

"Don't be shy, go on in," - rasped the foul voice of an orderly.

He unlocked the door with a sharp click, yanked the handle, and shoved you into the room with a fluid motion before you could even react.

"Don't worry, he’s had his dose of sedatives for the day!" - The man barked as he slammed the door shut, locking you inside with your son without a second thought.

A second later, a small key was slid through the gap under the door. No guards, no witnesses, no escape. Just you and Sephiroth, who sat motionless on the edge of the bed.

He didn't move. Even when the door slammed shut and the key clattered against the tiled floor, Sephiroth remained still, like a wax figure. His long silver hair veiled his face, falling over his shoulders in a dull silk that had lost its former luster. Slowly, with a terrifying fluidity, he raised his head. The gaze of his vertical pupils, glowing with a toxic Mako light, pierced through you before you could even take a breath. In that look, there was no recognition of a son seeking his mother, no resentment of an abandoned child. There was only an endless, cold abyss. Sephiroth watched you as if he were studying an insect under a microscope, a creature whose significance to him had long since withered into nothingness. His arms were bound, heavy straps pinning his elbows tightly to his torso, yet even in this state, he managed to look as though he were the one allowing them to hold him, rather than the other way around.