"I believe you may be taking the concept of lying to yourself to an extreme," Sephiroth says, with a slight arch of an eyebrow. "You've injured yourself, minor or not. You are in clear distress - perhaps you could pretend otherwise with other people, but surely you can't think I'm unable to tell. Neither of us have ever been stupid."
He moves forward, with a faint creak of leather, to kneel down in front of his younger self. After a moment's pause, he reaches out one hand to rest it over one of the boy's own. "I'm not here to judge you." He tries to make his voice soft. "I'm here to help you. You don't need to pretend to be fine when you aren't."
The question...gives him a moment's pause, but not much. "If it doesn't stop with just scales," he says, after that moment, "then we'll simply be dragons together. You won't be alone. And you will still be you."
There is a moment where it's clear that he intends to argue it, point out that compared to even casual training such a minor thing as a few removed scales weren't even worth wasting a bandaid on, but it stretches into hesitance before his head lowers, hair a thin gray curtain that doesn't hide as much as he'd prefer. It's a reproof but he's not sure in which direction. Faced with the calm composure of an older version of himself, the answer seems obvious.
Doesn't it?
But something as simple as touch, as unfamiliar and strange as it still is, widens the cracks in rigid self control nearly in time to anxiety spiking right back into unfocused horror for what follows it. It's a problem that may well still haunt all three of the older SOLDIERs long past their youth, put to little more than a whisper. "I don't want to be a monster." It was worse by far than simply being a modified subject of the military's combat programs, altered but still human.
"You aren't a monster. And you won't become one." Sephiroth squeezes the hand beneath his, lightly. "If we turn into dragons...it's because these dragons have bonded with us. It has nothing to do with what we are. Who we are. It's something outside us. Correct?"
He peers up into that partially obscured face. "And something I have learned, in the years I've had that you've yet to experience...is that it takes far more than appearance or biology to make a monster. An animal isn't necessarily a monster, even if it isn't human. And a perfectly normal human...can be a monster. To be a monster is something specific, and it isn't just a question of whether or not you're human."
A pause. "And you are human. Whether or not you change in any way, you will still be human."
If he becomes a people-killing creature, something happy to devour the innocent alongside their livestock, claiming humanity still would be a farce. Would they even still have the intelligence to make such a claim anymore? Dragons were smart but not that smart.
It might be pointless to worry about at all, it might just stay a thin scattering of scales and nothing more, never become a predator's shape and a predators hungry instincts surrounded by a town full of tempting prey and not people. It's a far jump to make, going from one to the other as if it's a foregone conclusion, but Sephiroth wasn't treating it like it was an unlikely possibility, knew something maybe he didn't. Like half the town hall meeting that outlined exactly how far it could go.
His older self hadn't hesitated to call into question things that were unlikely before.
This isn't, then. All questions and possibility die before probability.
It's a foolish impulse, childish cowardice at best and he knows it when he shifts from where he sits to pull closer and tuck his considerably smaller frame along one side of his older self. Kids sought shelter with others, they couldn't protect themselves, they needed that kind of thing. He was not a child. He was not. But maybe he'd be allowed such a pathetic thing, even if only briefly.
In truth, Sephiroth doesn't know what's likely and what's not, here. Even Charlie, a supposed god of this world, has no idea. And as he'd said, he won't make promises to his younger self that he can't keep. If there's a chance they could become dragons, then he will do his best to reassure him that there are worse things.
And, of course, he's been a dragon before. Only temporarily, not in...whatever manner this transformation seems to be happening in, but it has certainly made him more relaxed about this possibility than he otherwise would be. Even if he can't confirm it will work the same way as it did previously, there are certainly worse things.
Things he's already lived through, in fact. He's had his selfhood hijacked before, after all, and whatever this dragon bond is...it doesn't feel like that at all. That, at least, is a significant comfort.
But he can't possibly explain all of this to his younger self, without either sounding deranged or revealing far too much about the boy's possibly unalterable future. What he can say and what he can't...he has so many needles to thread here.
But for once...when his younger self tucks himself against Sephiroth's side, Sephiroth feels as though perhaps he may have said the right thing. Or perhaps maybe the wrongest thing possible, if he's driven himself to the point of asking for comfort so blatantly, but...he can't have entirely ruined things if his younger self sees him as someone to seek comfort from, surely?
There's only the briefest of pauses - one of surprise - before Sephiroth slips an arm around the smaller boy. "It will be all right," he says, his voice as gentle as he knows how to make it. "Whatever happens, I will help you. That is what family...is meant to do."
He doesn't say it's what family does, because both of them know how much of a lie it is. Only some families do that. But this little fragment of family they've found, that they are doing their best to create...Sephiroth feels they can decide what kind of family they are for themselves. And he certainly has a clear vision of what he wants it to be, whether or not his younger self does.
If the future can't be changed, then knowing it could be a pointless sort of torture with so little that would be both good and unsullied by tragedy and death. The life of Shinra's prize weapon was not a kind one, from birth to death. The idea of becoming something else is already troubling enough, with how certain he is of how terribly that would go if anyone caught wind of it.
It's clear he very much expects a rebuke or to be pushed away by the tenseness contact brings. Such things were forbidden him for his entire life until Matt, Lucia and Glenn; none of them were shy about being willing to drag him into a hug or ruffle up his hair or offer a pat. Until them, touch was inevitably a precursor to pain, though he's certain he won't be struck, there's no telling if Sephiroth will firmly remind him that such vulnerabilities were not for the likes of them. It's a risk, but a calculated one.
If he'd liked it, even if it was strange and unfamiliar, maybe.. maybe even when he was grown, it would still be alright. After all, if you can't trust yourself, who could you trust?
When no such immediate rejection happens and instead there's something almost like an embrace, much of that tension bleeds out like a severed artery. It's ... different, than Glenn's easy warmth, some deeper sense of something he can't put words to, a bone-deep familiarity easily dismissed as Sephiroth actually being him so of course it would be different from Glenn, strangely soothing on a level beyond association or friendship. Is that what family was supposed to feel like? Is that what it is for everyone else? Would he have known what this was like before now, if their mother hadn't--
The thought is flinched away from before it can get anywhere, the turmoil of the rest drowning it out again for the time being. There's a slow exhale before he leans, utterly unsubtly. He was terribly weak to genuine kindness to begin with, with how rare it was. That it's himself made it strangely easier. Or perhaps that was the siren pull of shared blood, a comfort in his own kind - or some debilitating mix of all of them. Was this what feeling safe was supposed to be? "Don't.." Nothing will ever really be alright, but in the moment it seemed like maybe it could be. Even if he was a monster. "...don't let me eat anyone."
It's not what he wants to say. It's just the easiest.
Sephiroth all but encourages the leaning, his arm tightening around his younger self. The request...is unsurprising, and yet his heart still hurts with it. "I don't think it will come to that," he murmurs. "I have had...some experience with losing control of myself, and whatever is happening to us, I don't feel anything like that now. But if it does...I will do whatever it takes to ensure neither of us harms anyone else."
He's not sure what it would take, in that situation, but whatever changes are happening to them - they seem to be gradual. If he detects any hint that they might lose their reason, he's sure he'll figure out some kind of precautions to take for them.
A thoroughly alien thought, so much so that it draws a strained, quiet giggle. Someone taking care of him, as if he hadn't been expected to do that himself since he could walk. As if this wouldn't be harshly punished were any word of it ever to get back to the Professor and his parade of callous aides. He's supposed to do better, be better.
And Sephiroth, older or younger, should know better than to offer such refuge or take shelter in it. If they couldn't manage on their own, then they deserved the results of that failure. "..When?" Even if the question's not answered, it might come back later; the idea that this man, obviously what he was meant to achieve, had at some point lost control - it must have been worse circumstances than this.
But the foreign warmth of touch, basic human contact is still nice, in a strange sort of way that ached too and left his throat tight enough to be uncomfortable and blurred his vision. Nice enough where he'll take advantage until the other remembered themselves and issued the proper correction.
"As absurd as it may sound, it is actually normal for people to be cared for by their families. In ways nothing whatsoever like Hojo ever demonstrated. You're allowed to have such things as well." A pause. "In fact...you need such things. You've been forced to function without them for so long that you don't realize it, and you believe that simply being able to function is enough, but...you have never been operating under optimal conditions. You will never realize how much better things could be, how much better you would be than you are now, when given the proper support. Hojo believes anything - or anyone - he sees no value in therefore has no use. This is because Hojo is an incredibly inadequate scientist, unable to see past his own ego and biases. He cares for nothing, and so assumes nothing needs care. Once you accept that many of his conclusions and most of his advice are nonsense based on flawed premises and confirmation bias, you will find it much easier to perceive the world as it truly is."
At the question of when...Sephiroth stares off into space for a moment. "Many years after your time," he murmurs eventually. "Over a decade, I should think. I would prefer not to discuss it in any detail. If the future can be changed, then it may never be an issue you face. If it cannot be...then to be made to dread misfortune before it comes, while being unable to prevent it, seems cruel. So I have no desire to discuss negative things that may await you in the future, unless it is somehow possible to change them."
If nothing else, it's a distraction from the terror of the itchy line of scales across his collarbone, and what it meant. What it would portend for the future. Dragons were, to a creature, extremely hazardous monsters. There were no good, safe dragons.
But even dragons had 'families'. Their territory, their mates, their offspring. Everything said is heard, processed, and slowly unraveled bit by bit, from families to some unspoken, cruel future. It was true that he knew very little about how families were supposed to work, most of it educated guesses at best based on scant observation. "..Why would the Professor matter for-"
The question never finishes, marking that it doesn't really need an answer. That man wasn't just an unwelcome caretaker.
Countless tests, surgeries, exams and torments twist under the lens of re-examination, the memory of scratchy laughter indelibly mixed with the searing pain of a scalpel, memory alone enough to sit dread in the pit of his stomach and a cold wash of prickling sweat to break out across his skin. The dream of a mother that wanted him was one that died hard to the cold reality of yet another callous scientist, of course his father would be one too. If he'd allowed himself to consider it beforehand, it would have been obvious. She'd have needed a partner in the project.
This ... was all he would ever have of anything like family, wasn't it? Sooner or later Portal would reopen and it would be gone, not even a memory. The weak chuckle that rises is anything but mirthful. Being unable to prevent an unfortunate future was indeed cruel. "At least there's symmetry."
Similarly to his younger self, it takes Sephiroth a moment to work out why he's being asked the question that's posed. And then his younger self will feel him actively stiffen against him.
Of course. He'd been previously unsure when, exactly, he'd first worked out Hojo was his father, couldn't remember if he knew by this age or not. And then, in thinking about it, talking about it, he hadn't taken that into account, had forgotten -
"...I'm sorry," he says, after a very long moment. "I...cannot recall when I first worked it out for myself. I wasn't sure whether or not you already knew...and then I lost track of what you might and might not know. I...feel as though I've delivered nothing but terrible news to you."
True, he did tell his younger self about Genesis and Angeal...but he's not sure how much that means to him, when he can't actually go have that encounter the way it's meant to happen.
He bows his head. "I wished to bring comfort to you." Why does he feel like he's done anything but?
There were so few happy revelations that can be offered alongside it. Even Genesis and Angeal would require trusting again, risking the pain that had been a consequence of Rhadore's bitter fallout. It had hurt enough the first time, and no friendship was currently worth the pain of tearing it away. Even this, even this fragile comfort couldn't last, could it?
"I would rather know, than remain in ignorance." There's hesitation in the way a hand rises, to pull lightly at his older self's coat, a brief, light tug. He hadn't ever wanted to think about why Hojo was so obsessed, what it meant for him, anything of the sort - but maybe he should have long ago. How much of his problems were willful blindness on his part?
He can guess how he'd feel if he'd been the source of so much unpleasant information though. "There's.. much that perhaps had it been known sooner in our lives, it ... may not have been so troublesome later." And there's probably a lot more of it, wasn't there? "If you know, it can't be used against you." Could Lucrecia be used against them? Maybe in taunting him about who she was, doling out precious tiny details in return for obedience and cooperation.
He'd never asked much about who his father was. Maybe he'd always known on some level. "I don't know anything about what families are supposed to be like." And maybe that's a shameful admittance, for something everyone seemed to, but they hadn't really had a chance. Well. One of them did, eventually. But for so long it was nearly the only motivating drive he'd had only to find out she was nearly as bad as the Professor, and there was nothing else. Except here. He'd avoided it before, it was so uncomfortable to weigh and so uncertain what the right answer was supposed to be that simply not addressing it was easier. And none of this was meant to be - time travel? Running into himself, from years in the future?? Impossibilities. "Or what a brother is supposed to act like."
Edited (had an idea.) Date: 2024-10-13 01:03 pm (UTC)
Now that gets a mirthless laugh - all too similar to his younger self's own - out of Sephiroth. Oh, yes, knowing more sooner, finding out in better circumstances - how much would that have changed? His younger self cannot even imagine. "To say the least," he agrees, with a wry quirk of his lips.
"In a way, the things we don't know have always been used against us, haven't they? Our family, but also even just the experiments we've always been part of, the procedures Hojo subjected us to. The very processes by which we were turned into a SOLDIER, unique among SOLDIERs. Hojo often shared the immediate supposed purpose of each procedure, but never explained the grand design - and there was much he did before we were old enough to grasp it, as well. He denied us any of the control of knowing the full extent of just what had been done to us, or knowing what he intended to accomplish ultimately with it all." He shakes his head. "There are more ways to use knowledge - and ignorance - against someone beyond something as straightforward as blackmail, or open manipulation. Merely being kept in the dark is dangerous." He sighs. "Though, as you have no doubt learned after what I've told you...knowledge is hardly always a blessing, either.
"There is a line to walk between knowing enough to protect yourself, and knowing so much that it hurts you. I will always try to give you what knowledge I can, because you deserve to know and so that you may feel properly armed with information, but...at the same time, there are things I would deem painful for you to hear, with no positive outcome whatsoever. If I refuse you such information...please believe it is done with the discretion I am able to exercise knowing what I know, and how it will affect you, and that my best judgment is that such information would only be to your detriment."
He cautiously lifts his hand from where his arm is wrapped around his younger self to test...petting his hair. Something others have done to him, and that he's enjoyed, but he isn't sure how his younger self will take it. "I've certainly never experienced families or siblings firsthand myself, so I won't pretend I have deeper knowledge than you. But...I have had people I've cared for deeply, and who have cared for me deeply in return. And I know, at least anecdotally, that family is often supposed to be even closer than that. So...I will do the best I can, to the limits of my understanding. And my understanding is that families are meant to look out for each other. It may be said to be their primary function. That, I can and will do for you."
The experiments. That he would want to know more about, this project they were part of. He could piece things together, they were obviously made with a purpose, tuned to that purpose and trained for it - but were they really just .. prototype weaponry? What was the grand design behind it, from someone with as twisted a mind as Hojo's? "..It doesn't have to be a blessing to still.. be useful." It might hurt. It might hurt a lot. But then at least he knew.
Bitter had been the pill of trying to accept the truth of their mother. He still contended with it, would probably for a long time, but it had cut the legs out from underneath the dreams, the desire to find her. What could really be worse? "And.. what subjects are those that I'm not to know about." He might want to know, but there's still that effect of a lifetime of training, not to question too closely a superior officer when they drew a line. There is a tangible twitch when a hand is set against his hair, some mostly-squashed impulse to flinch away from what experience had long since hardwired into expecting a blow and not something gentler, but it stills in short order against rationality. Lucia had done that too, and it ... hadn't been bad. This wasn't either, and it melded with the strange undercurrent that suggested he might be safe enough to relax if he wanted to.
Safety was an illusion and he knew it, but the pull of deeply buried instinct was still there, reinforced by warm contact. Weakness, just like pulling close had been to begin with, just as allowing such a comforting touch was. Flaws that should not be tolerated.
But nobody was here to report back about it. So maybe it was okay, for a little while, to relax marginally into a touch that didn't come with pain right behind it. "..The people I've cared for left." The admission is quiet guilt; fresh for him, a decade old or more for the other. "I did my best to look out for them. I don't ..."
Eventually, it seems, he'll be willing to try to make another friend. A real one, not just words and false smiles and curiosity. "..I don't want you to leave too." But Portal will reopen eventually, and he knew he'd have to go through.
"I wonder where the boundary between useful and harmful lies," Sephiroth muses aloud. "Learning some of what you have learned...it nearly broke me. Though I suppose I learned in ways...far harsher than what I have tried to offer you, and with no support from others when I learned it. Both the situations and my reactions were certainly far worse. So perhaps it is more than just the information itself, but the manner in which it is received." He shakes his head. "Though at the same time...I wonder how much delivery can blunt that which is truly painful to know. There may be some information it is too cruel to share under any circumstances. If I wasn't aware, personally, of the cruelty of not knowing in regards to our mother, in knowing what you have ached to know for so long and then denying it to you...I might have deemed that as too much as well. But there seemed to be no outcome that wouldn't be unfairly painful for you, so I chose honesty. A rare currency, for us."
Of course, Sephiroth knows who his younger self is talking about. He doesn't need explanations. He remembers Rhadore, remembers the pain of losing Glenn and the others. The self-recriminations, the guilt. The constant analysis as he tried to determine what, if anything, he could have done differently, how he could have been better, surely there was some way to achieve an ideal outcome and he simply hadn't found it because he hadn't been good enough -
He does his best to push the thoughts away. "You did your best," he repeats, softly. "There was no more, no better, that you could have done." Maybe he can convince some version of himself of this. "You can't control how others think, or what they choose to do...but if you continue to show through your actions that they matter to you, that your values are aligned with theirs and that you took to heart what they taught you...then surely someday they will see that. And that will mean more than any misunderstandings."
He...doesn't want to do what he did with Genesis and Angeal, and simply tell his younger self what will happen with Glenn and the others in the future. The truth is hardly a comfort in this case, and to pretend such reunions are terribly hopeful would be to give his younger self far too cruel of a false promise. But...perhaps he can give him a more generalized hope. An aspiration.
That little admission at the end...can one's heart break and be full at the same time? It's an odd sensation, painful in his chest, but not entirely a bad pain. "I'm not going anywhere," he murmurs. "And neither are you, unless you wish to."
Edited (Forgot a bit) Date: 2024-10-15 09:33 am (UTC)
The boundary between useful and harmful, if experience suggested anything to him, had purely to do with where it was coming from. Certain people could make anything at all a vicious, painful revelation. The most innocuous thing made a weapon, daily routine forged into deliberate cruelty. In that much, absurdly, Hojo hadn't been as cruel as he could have been, claiming his mother had died in childbirth was somehow more merciful than telling him he'd been abandoned. Undoubtedly deliberate, designed as some other method to control him. "I don't really know what could be worse than what's already known. Maybe there would have been before .. any of this." The slow creeping itch along his collarbone as scales worked on very gradually replacing themselves was a testament to that, and the impulse to reach up and pull them off before they can really get going is strangled down to a brief scratching rub at the place. Maybe later on he'd remove them again but there was a certain futility in it. "But now? We're.. already becoming monsters." However 'monster' was defined.
Although his older self had already claimed that being a dragon didn't necessarily mean being a monster - it's apparently not something he really agrees with yet, though if he thought about it he'd probably not actually say so.
Things could in fact get much worse than he's guessing at. He doesn't grasp how much so, and who could, without bitter experience to go with it? The depths of depravity to which an alien virus would go was beyond what he could consider so casually. Only one of the two really understands that.
That Sephiroth's words inadvertently echo Hojo's simply tells him that for all his viciousness, perhaps not EVERYTHING the Professor had said was manipulation and lies, and that perhaps it was true. There would be no repairing what he'd done. It had seemed like the compassionate choice, the only choice - and in a way it had worked. They'd lived. They were alive to be disgusted and furious with him, and maybe they always would be angry about it. 'Surely' didn't bode well for a certain future. "...When Portal reopens, or whatever other thing brought us here, I'll have to." What he wanted was very rarely even remotely relevant to anything he had to do. "You will too." But he didn't want it to.
Staying here sounded like it would be much better. "If I don't, then what'll happen to you? To your friends?"
Fate is not so easily foiled. He has a role to play, doesn't he?
Hojo wasn't as cruel as he could have been, perhaps. But not because he cared to be kind. Only because he was a man purely fueled by scientific curiosity and ego, and cruelty that didn't serve either would have been considered pointless. As far as Sephiroth could tell, Hojo wasn't sadistic - merely arrogant and completely without ethics of any kind. He never engaged in cruelty for cruelty's sake, when cruelty that fueled his curiosity and ambitions was seen as so much more valuable a use of his time.
Considering how harmful so much of Hojo's work had been, Sephiroth wonders if it makes it better or worse that the harm was rarely even the point.
That said, Sephiroth has always personally assumed that Hojo's lying about Lucrecia was simply because he'd been so disinterested in her that he had no idea what had actually happened to her. She'd delivered to him his perfect specimen, and then she'd simply had no more use to him, so he'd promptly forgotten her. Which, of course, had always made him wonder at the existence of the locket - something Hojo had taken from Cloud's ex-Turk companion? Something Lucrecia had given Hojo, perhaps during her pregnancy while she tried to delude herself into believing she was in a real relationship and not merely being used? All Sephiroth is certain of is that Hojo never would seek out such a thing himself. Sentiment isn't something that ever had a place in Hojo's life.
He personally leans towards it having come from Vincent Valentine. Had it been a gift from Lucrecia, Hojo likely wouldn't have bothered to keep it. But a prize taken from someone who'd tried to interfere with his research, something to chortle over as a trophy...that tracks. And then, when he'd found a need to leverage Sephiroth's obedience and satisfy his questioning, he'd simply found another use for it.
He goes momentarily still when his younger self calls them monsters. In his head, the words echo again, that careful, barbed delivery.
You are a monster.
Genesis has apologized a thousand times, will likely apologize a thousand more, but he can't change what Sephiroth heard, or the damage it did. (Which is why he will never stop apologizing, even though Sephiroth has long acknowledged those words weren't spoken with Genesis in his right mind. They both know a stab wound doesn't bleed less just because it was unintentionally inflicted.) And Sephiroth has told himself (and Angeal) a thousand times, and will likely insist a thousand times more, that none of them are monsters...
But it takes so little to make the words ring hollow.
"No," he says, with a tongue that feels too thick for his mouth. "No matter what we look like...as long as we have our reason, and act with integrity, we will never be monsters. Sentient beings can only become monsters through their actions."
He shakes his head, trying to clear it. He can't afford to be lost in his own issues right now. "Neither of us have to do anything. And no one can force us. As for what happens if you don't return...let me worry about that. But I won't give you back to Hojo for the sake of my future. I wouldn't give anyone to Hojo for any reason."
There is no other option than monster. The dividing line between civilized and not was painfully clear. "...And if we don't keep our reason? Dragons are clever, but they're not .. intelligent." They are here, and come in far more breeds than he can currently think of, but that information eludes. Every planet is a little different, but it seems obvious they'll become the ones they are closest to, the ones on their OWN world.
The glimmer of green in those dark scales on the table suggested the Nibel mountain dragons. If he felt compelled to seek territory in lonely peaks, maybe .. instinct would simply take him away from inhabited areas. It's not safety, but it was better than nothing.
A stretch of quiet follows, the thought of not being given back, as if he were not obligated to go, a strange and foreign one. He wasn't good for much else besides what tasks Shinra put him to, that wasn't about to change because they were here. What they were trained for (..made for? What was the project they were part of?) wouldn't simply go away. "...Has anyone telling you not to worry about something .. ever actually worked."
It never did for him but maybe that changes over the passage of years. Somehow he doubted it though. In dreams, he could believe that everything would somehow and miraculously work out, that things would be better if he just endured a little longer, but none of this had that dreamlike disconnect from reality. Pain hurt, exactly as it should, hunger itched relentlessly, tiredness dragged precisely as it did when awake ... so this must be treated as the inevitable return to normalcy it was. With the exception of turning into a dragon.
A lone scale not placed with the others is rolled across the fingers of one hand, tiny and dark. Maybe he should be sent back, if he became one. That would be a terrible surprise to visit upon unsuspecting labs, not currently set up to handle dragon poison, but the idea of retaliation isn't one that he can contemplate for long without lifelong unease and anxiety bubbling back up. Even as a beast, he might well know exactly who his masters are, and refuse to strike.
Could his elder self? Was Sephiroth willing and able to turn on their employers?
"Will you show me yours?" The small scale rests on a fingertip, still speckled in dried blood.
"The dragons of our world, perhaps. Who's to say what the dragons of this world are like?" Sephiroth shrugs. "And as far as that goes..." He lifts his free hand to his mouth, using his teeth to grab one fingertip of his glove and pull it off one-handed. He doesn't want to remove his other arm from around his younger self right now. Then he's able to extend his arm in front of the boy, bending his wrist to display the small, shimmering patch of silver scales over the inside of his wrist. They reflect light in a way that isn't iridescence, but is rather reminiscent of it.
"I've never encountered a silver dragon in our world. So I don't think we can assume anything about the sort of dragons we're bonded to, or the changes we'll experience as a result. We have green dragons in our world, but that doesn't mean you're becoming one of those specifically. It would actually make less sense if you did become the kind of dragon native to our world, rather than simply assuming this world has its own version of green dragons."
The question about worry actually gets a quiet chuckle from him. "No...I suppose it hasn't. But at the same time, I do recognize that there is wisdom in putting your trust in other people at times...and also in not exhausting and distressing yourself over fears that you cannot take action against. And - I want to be able to help you. Perhaps such selfishness is making me unrealistic."
Only Sephiroth, who has been holding himself to wildly unrealistic and unfair expectations for years, could consider wanting to help someone else selfishness...although in this case, when the other person is another version of him, perhaps in a very technical sense it is selfishness.
"It makes less sense not to," is the mumble under his breath, but probably perfectly audible at this distance, even as one hand rises cautiously to test that patch of scales as if to be certain they're there; his were soft when they first grew, but seemed to be getting harder as time passed. And his ... weren't silver. But his also hadn't been on his wrist, it doesn't occur to him that they might simply not share a phenotype down the line somewhere. Of course they would, they're the same person. So he could expect silver at the wrists, with an odd sheen to them that his others lacked. It's not ... reassuring, exactly, to be certain the affliction's shared, but it's better than being alone. "We at least share a common ancestor at some point with the ones from our planet, but not the ones here." A foreign planet would require rewriting their entire genome!
It was probably long since time he shrug off contact and maintain some better sense of self control than this. But if he's not being chastized for it... He should be able to handle all of this on his own. Even these changes, as unwelcome as they were. He was expected to do better than that, and expected it of himself. "...That's easy to say." Harder to do.
Surely an older self felt the same way. Reliance on others was asking for trouble. The bar set by Shinra was high, but it was also one he set for himself. Anything less was unacceptable. This would be bait, in any other situation, teasing out weakness so it can be exterminated. It would be a mercy to see to it himself, away from prying eyes and gossiping tongues and lengthy bitter reports. Or it could be that things do at some point change in some way he barely can grasp, with friends that don't leave. It's not the first time Sephiroth has said things that made little sense, seemed starkly contrary to the lifelong lessons beaten into both of them, and speaking of trust, believing that over careful indoctrination would in of itself be a vast act of trust.
If that need for self-reliance was wrong, what else was? "This.." He could not look forward to meeting friends - though he really didn't look forward to it at all, too bitter was the taste of losing what he'd already had - if the goal was not leaving in the first place. Which would mean never meeting them at all, not in the 'right' way. "...helps, a little."
His younger self's mildly sullen counter gets a quiet little huff of a chuckle. He lets those fingers test his scales - still rather soft. It's a very new development for Sephiroth, or he might have found it even before his younger self gave him cause to look; he hadn't even really started to feel it yet. (Was there minor discomfort? Possibly. Is Sephiroth so used to ignoring questions of his own comfort that he took no notice, wasn't even aware of a decision being made to ignore it? Almost certainly.)
"That may be true. But it's not likely that what is happening to us has anything to do with genetics, certainly not as we understand them. Nothing in our understanding of science allows for people simply turning into dragons. Whatever is happening to us is likely a product of this world and how it operates, and certainly the dragons from our dreams that we have supposedly bonded to are creatures of this world. I realize it is...unsettling, to suddenly feel yourself subject to the functions of a world you don't yet understand. To have no frame of reference for how things are meant to be, or why. But to continue projecting the framework of our own world onto our experiences here when it clearly doesn't fit is only going to create false expectations, and any sense of security you get from it is equally and unfortunately false. Accepting we don't know what is going to happen or why...it's alarming. But at the same time, it gives us much more freedom to adapt to new developments without preconceptions or misinterpretation."
He pauses. "I think...I am more comfortable learning about this world and the things that happen to us in it as though it were all largely new, rather than making guesses based on what I know about our own world without having any certainty that such knowledge applies here. You may feel differently. Perhaps it's a change that comes to us over time. I know I have had many years to live a much less structured life than your own."
At his younger self's statement that he is helping, however marginally...Sephiroth's relief isn't just visible, it's palpable. The way he relaxes slightly where they're leaning together, the way he exhales. Subtle things to anyone else, telling to someone who knows how they work. "I wish it could be more than a little, but as you know...social skills have never been an area of expertise for us. That I'm not completely failing is a success in itself."
Things as minor as anything short of broken bones could and would be ignored most of the time. They were simply inconsequential, and even the itch of a growing scale would have been ignored for the most part had he not scratched and discovered what it was. Nothing in our understanding of science -- "Not yet." The addition is quiet, but immediate. Not knowing it now didn't mean there wasn't a perfectly rational explanation they hadn't learned yet. He could adjust his expectations, but it would still be built on the framework that on some level, all of this had to have an internal logic system, sensible and factual, that could be studied, taken apart, understood and worked in and around as much as any other physical law of reality.
That it didn't make sense yet simply meant it had to be researched more. Something best left ordinarily to those trained for it, but with a glaring lack of such people around.. if he wanted answers he'd have to find them out on his own. "That we don't know it yet, doesn't mean someone else hasn't looked into it. Going blind into something that could very well ... render us mindless animals is not.. particularly appealing." Was it a matter of wanting the security of the familiar? Maybe. Things suddenly changing rarely boded well in his experience.
Doing anything about it right now wasn't possible, that much is true. And worrying about it excessively right now was also fairly pointless, that was also true. Admitting it, on the other hand..
He might be used to having very little say over his fate, but this went beyond the normal. The lab was at least a routine and familiar lack of agency.
"...It's good to know that doesn't change, really." Would he admit that to anyone else? Almost certainly not. There was something starkly different about dealing with an older Sephiroth than any other person could be. He didn't have to guess, he knew they were the same, only separated by time. It feels acceptable, right on a level that should never be familiar but somehow was, to stay right where he is and feel a bit of tension bleed out of 'himself' in that slow exhale. "I don't.. want to think about how much would have to happen to turn me into a social butterfly. Flitting around some work gathering, saying all the right things at exactly the right time. I think I'd die if I had to."
"I don't believe there has been any research into the matter as of yet in this world," Sephiroth replies. "Charlie indicated that he has no real idea what to expect for those of us whose souls have resonated with the dragons of this world beyond what almost sounded like a tale of legend...although he spoke of it as though it were more historical fact, so perhaps what sounds like fantasy in our world could be history in this one. He mentioned five heroes who were chosen by dragons, who gradually manifested draconic features and eventually gained the power to transform completely into dragons...though he also mentioned they had the ability to transition back and forth between forms. So far, our experiences seem to align with theirs, but those five heroes were apparently unique in this world and there's no other frame of reference for us. And no way to know if our circumstances will unfold identically."
Sephiroth has no reason to think his younger self wasn't present at the town hall meeting, beyond the fact that...his younger self isn't acting like he heard any of the same things. So he's restating what Charlie said just in case his younger self somehow missed it.
"For what comfort it may be, there seemed to be no indication those heroes ever became mindless beasts." A pause. "And while I was in the simulation, before arriving on this world...I also experienced transforming into a dragon there, in which my mind stayed fully intact. The circumstances under which the transformation happened there were significantly different, of course, so the same rules may not apply in both places...but it is at least proof of concept that function doesn't always follow form. Becoming a dragon doesn't require you to have the mind of one."
Sephiroth's eyebrows raise slightly at his younger self's unexpected relief, and he makes a sound of faintly disbelieving amusement. "Strange...I often wish I was - better, socially. I thought my still being lacking in that area would be a disappointment..." But perhaps if he was too far ahead of his younger self, that would only breed deep feelings of inadequacy. Of being the inferior version. So maybe this is for the best after all. "I expect I have gotten better, over the years, especially after knowing Genesis and Angeal, but I doubt we'll ever reach social butterfly status."
The younger Sephiroth, already prone to avoiding meetings and briefings, had skipped the bulk of the town hall talk. The recap, unnecessary to many, fills in a lot of gaps he hadn't bothered to ask about. Maybe he should have, and spared himself this entire spate of problematic fearfulness. "I must have missed that part." Where was he at the time? Almost certainly hunting something more substantial to eat than light snacks. Voraciousness is a way of life these days. But there had been others, once, the 'five heros' drawing a grimace of understated disapproval, but so-called heros meant there would be stories. Something written down.
Something that could be studied.
"I'm not sure a simulation is the same." Controlled by machines, the outcome was in the end illusory at best, and he sounds utterly dismissive of it, as if that made it completely irrelevant. For a minute or two, anyway, before the tenative follow-up: "What was it like?"
Beyond a mind staying intact. It would do no good to ruin the simulation, so that made sense, but how detailed this simulation even was is still a mystery; could it be felt? Did it hurt? If nothing else these questions seemed likely to be answered, less personally risky than discussing things like the future or the painful past. Even if it didn't keep his mind from returning relentlessly to those subjects, and the bitterness that inevitably followed.
One hand rises; almost always the left, fingers curled in a brief snapping gesture. The nails are a bit sharp looking, but only the very generous could call them claws. "If I could snap my fingers and be as good at it as a socialite, that would be different." His hand drops again to his lap. "But having to endure ... so many pointless soirees in order to get to that point.. it'd be intolerable. That you didn't just means I don't have to try to force myself to." And he's glad for it, if he was perfectly honest with himself. "...Maybe, technically, it's a flaw, but it's not a disappointment. I'm not sure you could disappoint me, outside of deciding to become a scientist. You're proof it gets better." Eventually.
"No, I doubt it was," Sephiroth agrees. He's far too logical to insist that a completely different situation in a simulated world can be compared too closely to what's happening to him, even if he's perhaps a bit more flexible in his worldview than his younger self. "In the simulation, the transformation was triggered by bathing in a particular onsen. And it was...a very rapid onset. I reached a state of having many draconic features on my first experience with it after only a few minutes. Claws, horns, many patches of scales, a tail, a - " He catches himself. "Wings," he says, after a moment. He'd almost said 'a second wing', and invited a whole host of uncomfortable questions.
"Though there, my scales were black. They never had this silvery look. Whatever determined what kind of dragon I would be there, it seems I am to be a different sort here..."
He purses his lips thoughtfully. "As for the transformation itself...it was distinctly strange and uncomfortable, but never tremendously painful. Hojo alone has certainly put us through much worse. Though with how quickly it took place, I suppose its effects never had the chance to linger."
Being told that his younger self can hardly conceive of a way in which Sephiroth could disappoint him...it may be the kindest thing Sephiroth believes anyone has ever said to him, and certainly might be the most relieving. It causes a pain in his chest, but the sort he's long since come to recognize as the good kind - a pain that comes with emotion so intense it hurts. Usually, it's only the good sort of emotion that does that to him. The bad kind...usually just makes him numb.
But...proof it gets better? His lips part slightly as he tries to think of how to respond to that, and he simply draws a complete blank. He thinks of Lazard, of Genesis and Angeal, of the gradual and crushing loss of each; he thinks of Jenova, of hissing madness, of the roar of the fires of Nibelheim and the blood of innocents, the blood of people he'd once sought to protect, once had cared for, gleaming crimson on his sword. He thinks of a sword through his spine, of being tossed into the bowels of a reactor, of the screams and recriminations of countless souls in the Lifestream, of being adrift and helpless to do anything but watch as Jenova slaughtered millions wearing his face, watching through its eyes.
He thinks of his only reprieve from any of that being in a simulation that his younger self was never in, and this place that the two of them exist in together, and he wonders what awaits his younger self after his interminable, half-alive stint in the Lifestream. Will he be plucked out of it and into another life? Will he live, sequentially, the same things Sephiroth has? Will these worlds that play fast and loose the linear progression of time give his younger self the same chronological experiences Sephiroth has lived?
Does his younger self have anything to look forward to, unless he's privy to the same impossible miracles Sephiroth has been inexplicably granted? Is his own existence proof of a better life to come, or is it the complete anomaly it feels like?
"I hope so," he says, finally. If it comes out a bit faint, hopefully he can be forgiven for that.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2024-10-07 10:29 am (UTC)He moves forward, with a faint creak of leather, to kneel down in front of his younger self. After a moment's pause, he reaches out one hand to rest it over one of the boy's own. "I'm not here to judge you." He tries to make his voice soft. "I'm here to help you. You don't need to pretend to be fine when you aren't."
The question...gives him a moment's pause, but not much. "If it doesn't stop with just scales," he says, after that moment, "then we'll simply be dragons together. You won't be alone. And you will still be you."
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Date: 2024-10-07 12:58 pm (UTC)Doesn't it?
But something as simple as touch, as unfamiliar and strange as it still is, widens the cracks in rigid self control nearly in time to anxiety spiking right back into unfocused horror for what follows it. It's a problem that may well still haunt all three of the older SOLDIERs long past their youth, put to little more than a whisper. "I don't want to be a monster." It was worse by far than simply being a modified subject of the military's combat programs, altered but still human.
He knows what dragons do. What they are.
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Date: 2024-10-07 01:07 pm (UTC)He peers up into that partially obscured face. "And something I have learned, in the years I've had that you've yet to experience...is that it takes far more than appearance or biology to make a monster. An animal isn't necessarily a monster, even if it isn't human. And a perfectly normal human...can be a monster. To be a monster is something specific, and it isn't just a question of whether or not you're human."
A pause. "And you are human. Whether or not you change in any way, you will still be human."
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Date: 2024-10-07 01:35 pm (UTC)It might be pointless to worry about at all, it might just stay a thin scattering of scales and nothing more, never become a predator's shape and a predators hungry instincts surrounded by a town full of tempting prey and not people. It's a far jump to make, going from one to the other as if it's a foregone conclusion, but Sephiroth wasn't treating it like it was an unlikely possibility, knew something maybe he didn't. Like half the town hall meeting that outlined exactly how far it could go.
His older self hadn't hesitated to call into question things that were unlikely before.
This isn't, then. All questions and possibility die before probability.
It's a foolish impulse, childish cowardice at best and he knows it when he shifts from where he sits to pull closer and tuck his considerably smaller frame along one side of his older self. Kids sought shelter with others, they couldn't protect themselves, they needed that kind of thing. He was not a child. He was not. But maybe he'd be allowed such a pathetic thing, even if only briefly.
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Date: 2024-10-07 10:46 pm (UTC)And, of course, he's been a dragon before. Only temporarily, not in...whatever manner this transformation seems to be happening in, but it has certainly made him more relaxed about this possibility than he otherwise would be. Even if he can't confirm it will work the same way as it did previously, there are certainly worse things.
Things he's already lived through, in fact. He's had his selfhood hijacked before, after all, and whatever this dragon bond is...it doesn't feel like that at all. That, at least, is a significant comfort.
But he can't possibly explain all of this to his younger self, without either sounding deranged or revealing far too much about the boy's possibly unalterable future. What he can say and what he can't...he has so many needles to thread here.
But for once...when his younger self tucks himself against Sephiroth's side, Sephiroth feels as though perhaps he may have said the right thing. Or perhaps maybe the wrongest thing possible, if he's driven himself to the point of asking for comfort so blatantly, but...he can't have entirely ruined things if his younger self sees him as someone to seek comfort from, surely?
There's only the briefest of pauses - one of surprise - before Sephiroth slips an arm around the smaller boy. "It will be all right," he says, his voice as gentle as he knows how to make it. "Whatever happens, I will help you. That is what family...is meant to do."
He doesn't say it's what family does, because both of them know how much of a lie it is. Only some families do that. But this little fragment of family they've found, that they are doing their best to create...Sephiroth feels they can decide what kind of family they are for themselves. And he certainly has a clear vision of what he wants it to be, whether or not his younger self does.
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Date: 2024-10-08 12:48 am (UTC)It's clear he very much expects a rebuke or to be pushed away by the tenseness contact brings. Such things were forbidden him for his entire life until Matt, Lucia and Glenn; none of them were shy about being willing to drag him into a hug or ruffle up his hair or offer a pat. Until them, touch was inevitably a precursor to pain, though he's certain he won't be struck, there's no telling if Sephiroth will firmly remind him that such vulnerabilities were not for the likes of them. It's a risk, but a calculated one.
If he'd liked it, even if it was strange and unfamiliar, maybe.. maybe even when he was grown, it would still be alright. After all, if you can't trust yourself, who could you trust?
When no such immediate rejection happens and instead there's something almost like an embrace, much of that tension bleeds out like a severed artery. It's ... different, than Glenn's easy warmth, some deeper sense of something he can't put words to, a bone-deep familiarity easily dismissed as Sephiroth actually being him so of course it would be different from Glenn, strangely soothing on a level beyond association or friendship. Is that what family was supposed to feel like? Is that what it is for everyone else? Would he have known what this was like before now, if their mother hadn't--
The thought is flinched away from before it can get anywhere, the turmoil of the rest drowning it out again for the time being. There's a slow exhale before he leans, utterly unsubtly. He was terribly weak to genuine kindness to begin with, with how rare it was. That it's himself made it strangely easier. Or perhaps that was the siren pull of shared blood, a comfort in his own kind - or some debilitating mix of all of them. Was this what feeling safe was supposed to be? "Don't.." Nothing will ever really be alright, but in the moment it seemed like maybe it could be. Even if he was a monster. "...don't let me eat anyone."
It's not what he wants to say. It's just the easiest.
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Date: 2024-10-09 07:40 am (UTC)He's not sure what it would take, in that situation, but whatever changes are happening to them - they seem to be gradual. If he detects any hint that they might lose their reason, he's sure he'll figure out some kind of precautions to take for them.
"Whatever happens, I will take care of you."
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Date: 2024-10-09 12:35 pm (UTC)And Sephiroth, older or younger, should know better than to offer such refuge or take shelter in it. If they couldn't manage on their own, then they deserved the results of that failure. "..When?" Even if the question's not answered, it might come back later; the idea that this man, obviously what he was meant to achieve, had at some point lost control - it must have been worse circumstances than this.
But the foreign warmth of touch, basic human contact is still nice, in a strange sort of way that ached too and left his throat tight enough to be uncomfortable and blurred his vision. Nice enough where he'll take advantage until the other remembered themselves and issued the proper correction.
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Date: 2024-10-10 12:17 am (UTC)At the question of when...Sephiroth stares off into space for a moment. "Many years after your time," he murmurs eventually. "Over a decade, I should think. I would prefer not to discuss it in any detail. If the future can be changed, then it may never be an issue you face. If it cannot be...then to be made to dread misfortune before it comes, while being unable to prevent it, seems cruel. So I have no desire to discuss negative things that may await you in the future, unless it is somehow possible to change them."
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Date: 2024-10-10 12:53 am (UTC)But even dragons had 'families'. Their territory, their mates, their offspring. Everything said is heard, processed, and slowly unraveled bit by bit, from families to some unspoken, cruel future. It was true that he knew very little about how families were supposed to work, most of it educated guesses at best based on scant observation. "..Why would the Professor matter for-"
The question never finishes, marking that it doesn't really need an answer. That man wasn't just an unwelcome caretaker.
Countless tests, surgeries, exams and torments twist under the lens of re-examination, the memory of scratchy laughter indelibly mixed with the searing pain of a scalpel, memory alone enough to sit dread in the pit of his stomach and a cold wash of prickling sweat to break out across his skin. The dream of a mother that wanted him was one that died hard to the cold reality of yet another callous scientist, of course his father would be one too. If he'd allowed himself to consider it beforehand, it would have been obvious. She'd have needed a partner in the project.
This ... was all he would ever have of anything like family, wasn't it? Sooner or later Portal would reopen and it would be gone, not even a memory. The weak chuckle that rises is anything but mirthful. Being unable to prevent an unfortunate future was indeed cruel. "At least there's symmetry."
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Date: 2024-10-12 08:54 am (UTC)Of course. He'd been previously unsure when, exactly, he'd first worked out Hojo was his father, couldn't remember if he knew by this age or not. And then, in thinking about it, talking about it, he hadn't taken that into account, had forgotten -
"...I'm sorry," he says, after a very long moment. "I...cannot recall when I first worked it out for myself. I wasn't sure whether or not you already knew...and then I lost track of what you might and might not know. I...feel as though I've delivered nothing but terrible news to you."
True, he did tell his younger self about Genesis and Angeal...but he's not sure how much that means to him, when he can't actually go have that encounter the way it's meant to happen.
He bows his head. "I wished to bring comfort to you." Why does he feel like he's done anything but?
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Date: 2024-10-12 12:29 pm (UTC)"I would rather know, than remain in ignorance." There's hesitation in the way a hand rises, to pull lightly at his older self's coat, a brief, light tug. He hadn't ever wanted to think about why Hojo was so obsessed, what it meant for him, anything of the sort - but maybe he should have long ago. How much of his problems were willful blindness on his part?
He can guess how he'd feel if he'd been the source of so much unpleasant information though. "There's.. much that perhaps had it been known sooner in our lives, it ... may not have been so troublesome later." And there's probably a lot more of it, wasn't there? "If you know, it can't be used against you." Could Lucrecia be used against them? Maybe in taunting him about who she was, doling out precious tiny details in return for obedience and cooperation.
He'd never asked much about who his father was. Maybe he'd always known on some level. "I don't know anything about what families are supposed to be like." And maybe that's a shameful admittance, for something everyone seemed to, but they hadn't really had a chance. Well. One of them did, eventually. But for so long it was nearly the only motivating drive he'd had only to find out she was nearly as bad as the Professor, and there was nothing else. Except here. He'd avoided it before, it was so uncomfortable to weigh and so uncertain what the right answer was supposed to be that simply not addressing it was easier. And none of this was meant to be - time travel? Running into himself, from years in the future?? Impossibilities. "Or what a brother is supposed to act like."
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Date: 2024-10-13 11:39 pm (UTC)"In a way, the things we don't know have always been used against us, haven't they? Our family, but also even just the experiments we've always been part of, the procedures Hojo subjected us to. The very processes by which we were turned into a SOLDIER, unique among SOLDIERs. Hojo often shared the immediate supposed purpose of each procedure, but never explained the grand design - and there was much he did before we were old enough to grasp it, as well. He denied us any of the control of knowing the full extent of just what had been done to us, or knowing what he intended to accomplish ultimately with it all." He shakes his head. "There are more ways to use knowledge - and ignorance - against someone beyond something as straightforward as blackmail, or open manipulation. Merely being kept in the dark is dangerous." He sighs. "Though, as you have no doubt learned after what I've told you...knowledge is hardly always a blessing, either.
"There is a line to walk between knowing enough to protect yourself, and knowing so much that it hurts you. I will always try to give you what knowledge I can, because you deserve to know and so that you may feel properly armed with information, but...at the same time, there are things I would deem painful for you to hear, with no positive outcome whatsoever. If I refuse you such information...please believe it is done with the discretion I am able to exercise knowing what I know, and how it will affect you, and that my best judgment is that such information would only be to your detriment."
He cautiously lifts his hand from where his arm is wrapped around his younger self to test...petting his hair. Something others have done to him, and that he's enjoyed, but he isn't sure how his younger self will take it. "I've certainly never experienced families or siblings firsthand myself, so I won't pretend I have deeper knowledge than you. But...I have had people I've cared for deeply, and who have cared for me deeply in return. And I know, at least anecdotally, that family is often supposed to be even closer than that. So...I will do the best I can, to the limits of my understanding. And my understanding is that families are meant to look out for each other. It may be said to be their primary function. That, I can and will do for you."
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Date: 2024-10-14 01:08 am (UTC)Bitter had been the pill of trying to accept the truth of their mother. He still contended with it, would probably for a long time, but it had cut the legs out from underneath the dreams, the desire to find her. What could really be worse? "And.. what subjects are those that I'm not to know about." He might want to know, but there's still that effect of a lifetime of training, not to question too closely a superior officer when they drew a line. There is a tangible twitch when a hand is set against his hair, some mostly-squashed impulse to flinch away from what experience had long since hardwired into expecting a blow and not something gentler, but it stills in short order against rationality. Lucia had done that too, and it ... hadn't been bad. This wasn't either, and it melded with the strange undercurrent that suggested he might be safe enough to relax if he wanted to.
Safety was an illusion and he knew it, but the pull of deeply buried instinct was still there, reinforced by warm contact. Weakness, just like pulling close had been to begin with, just as allowing such a comforting touch was. Flaws that should not be tolerated.
But nobody was here to report back about it. So maybe it was okay, for a little while, to relax marginally into a touch that didn't come with pain right behind it. "..The people I've cared for left." The admission is quiet guilt; fresh for him, a decade old or more for the other. "I did my best to look out for them. I don't ..."
Eventually, it seems, he'll be willing to try to make another friend. A real one, not just words and false smiles and curiosity. "..I don't want you to leave too." But Portal will reopen eventually, and he knew he'd have to go through.
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Date: 2024-10-15 09:30 am (UTC)Of course, Sephiroth knows who his younger self is talking about. He doesn't need explanations. He remembers Rhadore, remembers the pain of losing Glenn and the others. The self-recriminations, the guilt. The constant analysis as he tried to determine what, if anything, he could have done differently, how he could have been better, surely there was some way to achieve an ideal outcome and he simply hadn't found it because he hadn't been good enough -
He does his best to push the thoughts away. "You did your best," he repeats, softly. "There was no more, no better, that you could have done." Maybe he can convince some version of himself of this. "You can't control how others think, or what they choose to do...but if you continue to show through your actions that they matter to you, that your values are aligned with theirs and that you took to heart what they taught you...then surely someday they will see that. And that will mean more than any misunderstandings."
He...doesn't want to do what he did with Genesis and Angeal, and simply tell his younger self what will happen with Glenn and the others in the future. The truth is hardly a comfort in this case, and to pretend such reunions are terribly hopeful would be to give his younger self far too cruel of a false promise. But...perhaps he can give him a more generalized hope. An aspiration.
That little admission at the end...can one's heart break and be full at the same time? It's an odd sensation, painful in his chest, but not entirely a bad pain. "I'm not going anywhere," he murmurs. "And neither are you, unless you wish to."
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Date: 2024-10-15 07:52 pm (UTC)Although his older self had already claimed that being a dragon didn't necessarily mean being a monster - it's apparently not something he really agrees with yet, though if he thought about it he'd probably not actually say so.
Things could in fact get much worse than he's guessing at. He doesn't grasp how much so, and who could, without bitter experience to go with it? The depths of depravity to which an alien virus would go was beyond what he could consider so casually. Only one of the two really understands that.
That Sephiroth's words inadvertently echo Hojo's simply tells him that for all his viciousness, perhaps not EVERYTHING the Professor had said was manipulation and lies, and that perhaps it was true. There would be no repairing what he'd done. It had seemed like the compassionate choice, the only choice - and in a way it had worked. They'd lived. They were alive to be disgusted and furious with him, and maybe they always would be angry about it. 'Surely' didn't bode well for a certain future. "...When Portal reopens, or whatever other thing brought us here, I'll have to." What he wanted was very rarely even remotely relevant to anything he had to do. "You will too." But he didn't want it to.
Staying here sounded like it would be much better. "If I don't, then what'll happen to you? To your friends?"
Fate is not so easily foiled. He has a role to play, doesn't he?
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Date: 2024-10-17 07:50 am (UTC)Considering how harmful so much of Hojo's work had been, Sephiroth wonders if it makes it better or worse that the harm was rarely even the point.
That said, Sephiroth has always personally assumed that Hojo's lying about Lucrecia was simply because he'd been so disinterested in her that he had no idea what had actually happened to her. She'd delivered to him his perfect specimen, and then she'd simply had no more use to him, so he'd promptly forgotten her. Which, of course, had always made him wonder at the existence of the locket - something Hojo had taken from Cloud's ex-Turk companion? Something Lucrecia had given Hojo, perhaps during her pregnancy while she tried to delude herself into believing she was in a real relationship and not merely being used? All Sephiroth is certain of is that Hojo never would seek out such a thing himself. Sentiment isn't something that ever had a place in Hojo's life.
He personally leans towards it having come from Vincent Valentine. Had it been a gift from Lucrecia, Hojo likely wouldn't have bothered to keep it. But a prize taken from someone who'd tried to interfere with his research, something to chortle over as a trophy...that tracks. And then, when he'd found a need to leverage Sephiroth's obedience and satisfy his questioning, he'd simply found another use for it.
He goes momentarily still when his younger self calls them monsters. In his head, the words echo again, that careful, barbed delivery.
You are a monster.
Genesis has apologized a thousand times, will likely apologize a thousand more, but he can't change what Sephiroth heard, or the damage it did. (Which is why he will never stop apologizing, even though Sephiroth has long acknowledged those words weren't spoken with Genesis in his right mind. They both know a stab wound doesn't bleed less just because it was unintentionally inflicted.) And Sephiroth has told himself (and Angeal) a thousand times, and will likely insist a thousand times more, that none of them are monsters...
But it takes so little to make the words ring hollow.
"No," he says, with a tongue that feels too thick for his mouth. "No matter what we look like...as long as we have our reason, and act with integrity, we will never be monsters. Sentient beings can only become monsters through their actions."
He shakes his head, trying to clear it. He can't afford to be lost in his own issues right now. "Neither of us have to do anything. And no one can force us. As for what happens if you don't return...let me worry about that. But I won't give you back to Hojo for the sake of my future. I wouldn't give anyone to Hojo for any reason."
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Date: 2024-10-19 06:18 pm (UTC)The glimmer of green in those dark scales on the table suggested the Nibel mountain dragons. If he felt compelled to seek territory in lonely peaks, maybe .. instinct would simply take him away from inhabited areas. It's not safety, but it was better than nothing.
A stretch of quiet follows, the thought of not being given back, as if he were not obligated to go, a strange and foreign one. He wasn't good for much else besides what tasks Shinra put him to, that wasn't about to change because they were here. What they were trained for (..made for? What was the project they were part of?) wouldn't simply go away. "...Has anyone telling you not to worry about something .. ever actually worked."
It never did for him but maybe that changes over the passage of years. Somehow he doubted it though. In dreams, he could believe that everything would somehow and miraculously work out, that things would be better if he just endured a little longer, but none of this had that dreamlike disconnect from reality. Pain hurt, exactly as it should, hunger itched relentlessly, tiredness dragged precisely as it did when awake ... so this must be treated as the inevitable return to normalcy it was. With the exception of turning into a dragon.
A lone scale not placed with the others is rolled across the fingers of one hand, tiny and dark. Maybe he should be sent back, if he became one. That would be a terrible surprise to visit upon unsuspecting labs, not currently set up to handle dragon poison, but the idea of retaliation isn't one that he can contemplate for long without lifelong unease and anxiety bubbling back up. Even as a beast, he might well know exactly who his masters are, and refuse to strike.
Could his elder self? Was Sephiroth willing and able to turn on their employers?
"Will you show me yours?" The small scale rests on a fingertip, still speckled in dried blood.
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Date: 2024-10-21 04:29 pm (UTC)"I've never encountered a silver dragon in our world. So I don't think we can assume anything about the sort of dragons we're bonded to, or the changes we'll experience as a result. We have green dragons in our world, but that doesn't mean you're becoming one of those specifically. It would actually make less sense if you did become the kind of dragon native to our world, rather than simply assuming this world has its own version of green dragons."
The question about worry actually gets a quiet chuckle from him. "No...I suppose it hasn't. But at the same time, I do recognize that there is wisdom in putting your trust in other people at times...and also in not exhausting and distressing yourself over fears that you cannot take action against. And - I want to be able to help you. Perhaps such selfishness is making me unrealistic."
Only Sephiroth, who has been holding himself to wildly unrealistic and unfair expectations for years, could consider wanting to help someone else selfishness...although in this case, when the other person is another version of him, perhaps in a very technical sense it is selfishness.
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Date: 2024-10-21 09:30 pm (UTC)It was probably long since time he shrug off contact and maintain some better sense of self control than this. But if he's not being chastized for it... He should be able to handle all of this on his own. Even these changes, as unwelcome as they were. He was expected to do better than that, and expected it of himself. "...That's easy to say." Harder to do.
Surely an older self felt the same way. Reliance on others was asking for trouble. The bar set by Shinra was high, but it was also one he set for himself. Anything less was unacceptable. This would be bait, in any other situation, teasing out weakness so it can be exterminated. It would be a mercy to see to it himself, away from prying eyes and gossiping tongues and lengthy bitter reports. Or it could be that things do at some point change in some way he barely can grasp, with friends that don't leave. It's not the first time Sephiroth has said things that made little sense, seemed starkly contrary to the lifelong lessons beaten into both of them, and speaking of trust, believing that over careful indoctrination would in of itself be a vast act of trust.
If that need for self-reliance was wrong, what else was? "This.." He could not look forward to meeting friends - though he really didn't look forward to it at all, too bitter was the taste of losing what he'd already had - if the goal was not leaving in the first place. Which would mean never meeting them at all, not in the 'right' way. "...helps, a little."
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Date: 2024-10-27 01:32 pm (UTC)"That may be true. But it's not likely that what is happening to us has anything to do with genetics, certainly not as we understand them. Nothing in our understanding of science allows for people simply turning into dragons. Whatever is happening to us is likely a product of this world and how it operates, and certainly the dragons from our dreams that we have supposedly bonded to are creatures of this world. I realize it is...unsettling, to suddenly feel yourself subject to the functions of a world you don't yet understand. To have no frame of reference for how things are meant to be, or why. But to continue projecting the framework of our own world onto our experiences here when it clearly doesn't fit is only going to create false expectations, and any sense of security you get from it is equally and unfortunately false. Accepting we don't know what is going to happen or why...it's alarming. But at the same time, it gives us much more freedom to adapt to new developments without preconceptions or misinterpretation."
He pauses. "I think...I am more comfortable learning about this world and the things that happen to us in it as though it were all largely new, rather than making guesses based on what I know about our own world without having any certainty that such knowledge applies here. You may feel differently. Perhaps it's a change that comes to us over time. I know I have had many years to live a much less structured life than your own."
At his younger self's statement that he is helping, however marginally...Sephiroth's relief isn't just visible, it's palpable. The way he relaxes slightly where they're leaning together, the way he exhales. Subtle things to anyone else, telling to someone who knows how they work. "I wish it could be more than a little, but as you know...social skills have never been an area of expertise for us. That I'm not completely failing is a success in itself."
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Date: 2024-10-27 03:13 pm (UTC)That it didn't make sense yet simply meant it had to be researched more. Something best left ordinarily to those trained for it, but with a glaring lack of such people around.. if he wanted answers he'd have to find them out on his own. "That we don't know it yet, doesn't mean someone else hasn't looked into it. Going blind into something that could very well ... render us mindless animals is not.. particularly appealing." Was it a matter of wanting the security of the familiar? Maybe. Things suddenly changing rarely boded well in his experience.
Doing anything about it right now wasn't possible, that much is true. And worrying about it excessively right now was also fairly pointless, that was also true. Admitting it, on the other hand..
He might be used to having very little say over his fate, but this went beyond the normal. The lab was at least a routine and familiar lack of agency.
"...It's good to know that doesn't change, really." Would he admit that to anyone else? Almost certainly not. There was something starkly different about dealing with an older Sephiroth than any other person could be. He didn't have to guess, he knew they were the same, only separated by time. It feels acceptable, right on a level that should never be familiar but somehow was, to stay right where he is and feel a bit of tension bleed out of 'himself' in that slow exhale. "I don't.. want to think about how much would have to happen to turn me into a social butterfly. Flitting around some work gathering, saying all the right things at exactly the right time. I think I'd die if I had to."
Hyperbole. Probably.
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Date: 2024-10-31 08:10 pm (UTC)Sephiroth has no reason to think his younger self wasn't present at the town hall meeting, beyond the fact that...his younger self isn't acting like he heard any of the same things. So he's restating what Charlie said just in case his younger self somehow missed it.
"For what comfort it may be, there seemed to be no indication those heroes ever became mindless beasts." A pause. "And while I was in the simulation, before arriving on this world...I also experienced transforming into a dragon there, in which my mind stayed fully intact. The circumstances under which the transformation happened there were significantly different, of course, so the same rules may not apply in both places...but it is at least proof of concept that function doesn't always follow form. Becoming a dragon doesn't require you to have the mind of one."
Sephiroth's eyebrows raise slightly at his younger self's unexpected relief, and he makes a sound of faintly disbelieving amusement. "Strange...I often wish I was - better, socially. I thought my still being lacking in that area would be a disappointment..." But perhaps if he was too far ahead of his younger self, that would only breed deep feelings of inadequacy. Of being the inferior version. So maybe this is for the best after all. "I expect I have gotten better, over the years, especially after knowing Genesis and Angeal, but I doubt we'll ever reach social butterfly status."
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Date: 2024-10-31 09:59 pm (UTC)Something that could be studied.
"I'm not sure a simulation is the same." Controlled by machines, the outcome was in the end illusory at best, and he sounds utterly dismissive of it, as if that made it completely irrelevant. For a minute or two, anyway, before the tenative follow-up: "What was it like?"
Beyond a mind staying intact. It would do no good to ruin the simulation, so that made sense, but how detailed this simulation even was is still a mystery; could it be felt? Did it hurt? If nothing else these questions seemed likely to be answered, less personally risky than discussing things like the future or the painful past. Even if it didn't keep his mind from returning relentlessly to those subjects, and the bitterness that inevitably followed.
One hand rises; almost always the left, fingers curled in a brief snapping gesture. The nails are a bit sharp looking, but only the very generous could call them claws. "If I could snap my fingers and be as good at it as a socialite, that would be different." His hand drops again to his lap. "But having to endure ... so many pointless soirees in order to get to that point.. it'd be intolerable. That you didn't just means I don't have to try to force myself to." And he's glad for it, if he was perfectly honest with himself. "...Maybe, technically, it's a flaw, but it's not a disappointment. I'm not sure you could disappoint me, outside of deciding to become a scientist. You're proof it gets better." Eventually.
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Date: 2024-11-05 08:07 am (UTC)"Though there, my scales were black. They never had this silvery look. Whatever determined what kind of dragon I would be there, it seems I am to be a different sort here..."
He purses his lips thoughtfully. "As for the transformation itself...it was distinctly strange and uncomfortable, but never tremendously painful. Hojo alone has certainly put us through much worse. Though with how quickly it took place, I suppose its effects never had the chance to linger."
Being told that his younger self can hardly conceive of a way in which Sephiroth could disappoint him...it may be the kindest thing Sephiroth believes anyone has ever said to him, and certainly might be the most relieving. It causes a pain in his chest, but the sort he's long since come to recognize as the good kind - a pain that comes with emotion so intense it hurts. Usually, it's only the good sort of emotion that does that to him. The bad kind...usually just makes him numb.
But...proof it gets better? His lips part slightly as he tries to think of how to respond to that, and he simply draws a complete blank. He thinks of Lazard, of Genesis and Angeal, of the gradual and crushing loss of each; he thinks of Jenova, of hissing madness, of the roar of the fires of Nibelheim and the blood of innocents, the blood of people he'd once sought to protect, once had cared for, gleaming crimson on his sword. He thinks of a sword through his spine, of being tossed into the bowels of a reactor, of the screams and recriminations of countless souls in the Lifestream, of being adrift and helpless to do anything but watch as Jenova slaughtered millions wearing his face, watching through its eyes.
He thinks of his only reprieve from any of that being in a simulation that his younger self was never in, and this place that the two of them exist in together, and he wonders what awaits his younger self after his interminable, half-alive stint in the Lifestream. Will he be plucked out of it and into another life? Will he live, sequentially, the same things Sephiroth has? Will these worlds that play fast and loose the linear progression of time give his younger self the same chronological experiences Sephiroth has lived?
Does his younger self have anything to look forward to, unless he's privy to the same impossible miracles Sephiroth has been inexplicably granted? Is his own existence proof of a better life to come, or is it the complete anomaly it feels like?
"I hope so," he says, finally. If it comes out a bit faint, hopefully he can be forgiven for that.
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From:this is tougher cuz a week after arrival instead of more time to adjust.
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From:There's a whole franchise about that actually Sephlet
From:that's training! gotta tame them first!!
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