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.
That little hiccup of sentence flow tells him something else was supposed to go there but has been edited. It's filed away for later, he knows there'll be no answer if he asks now. "I really don't think you should try to draw comparisons to a computer program," he says, voice briefly pained. Some simulations were very lifelike! This sounded more like people just messing around, especially when he weighed square grapes into it. Changing things was as easy as changing a few lines of code. Nothing could safely be extrapolated from its experiences without knowing much more about how its programs worked.
Things like changing into dragons is likely not a universal script.
The concerns of Sephiroth about how the future might go are valid; the younger is chained to a relentlessly malignant fate, and it's not likely any bright spot of a simulated world where his dear dead friends return to him are slated to follow. There is no happy ending awaiting him should he return to his time and place, not even if he waits the decade or so between them. Even the temporary comfort of having a pair of trustworthy friends of his own, ones who stay for years .... that will eventually fail too.
It must. Their fate is long decided, just as his is.
But the illusion of a good outcome is there. Sephiroth seems better adjusted in ways he can't really come up with words for, happier when he speaks about Angeal and Genesis, more welcoming of the idea of things he'd normally call blatant weakness.. something changes. And it seems to be for the better. "I know so."
He can only guess from the other side it doesn't look like much. But from where he sits, it's nothing short of a miracle. "Maybe I'll never get the normal life I've always wanted.. and maybe there's no Mother to ever be found, waiting for us." And that still stung, bitter and acrid in the back of his throat if he dwelt on it for long. "But you've got something worth living for. That's better than having so much to die for."
"Yes." And Sephiroth's voice is stronger now, as he gains confidence in the words he's saying. "I have...many things to live for now." He looks down at his younger self. "And...I intend to see to it that you do, as well. Without having to wait so long. You know how well I understand our life before that time. And you may not even possess the context to understand yourself how badly we need such things.
"You know how it is when, out in the field, you end up occasionally having to disregard your basic needs. And how, after long enough, your body seems to reach a state where you no longer feel the hunger, or thirst, or exhaustion. So many of your basic needs have gone unaddressed for so long that you won't truly feel how starved you've been until you finally taste what you've been craving." He shakes his head slightly. "And perhaps that's for the best. But...I want to give you those things. Or at least help you find them elsewhere, if I can't provide them. You don't need to go without - and I know how happy they can make you. How happy they made me. I want that for you, as well. And in a place where time works so unpredictably, I won't simply wait for it to run its course."
His life before being forced here was ... not the best, he knew that, but it was also all he knew. Having no choices about when to sleep or wake or what to wear or even what meals he ate certainly was restrictive to most people, but it was his entire life. And for all his older self's reassurance that it was a good thing, that it would make him happy to have all of it stripped away, he felt unanchored.
Purposeless. What was he, if he wasn't to be the company's weapon of mass slaughter?
The older of the two had found purpose in his friends, a pair that he himself may never meet ... not the way he's supposed to, at the ages he's supposed to, with the power imbalance between them nullified by the equality of age and adolescent awkwardness. Where was he going to find something similar?
Did it still work, if sought for that purpose alone? "In that case, I hope you know what those things are, because I don't. Aside from .. perhaps, having family, I don't feel like my basic needs haven't been met. And please don't say 'friends'. I'm not sure I'm ... all that eager to try that kind of companionship again."
That would inevitably change in time, whether or not he wished to deny it part of him was still very much a pack-living creature without its pack. "Especially if I might turn into a dragon and eat them."
"They are an aspect of those needs, certainly...but they are hardly all you've been lacking that everyone ought to have. Things like feelings of safety and security. The freedom to make your own choices, and decide what it is you wish to do with your life. Having fun and variety in your life, rather than sterile and rigid routine. Being able to socialize and meet with other people freely, and not having the terms and situations in which you may do so constantly dictated to you - or such opportunities being denied altogether." A muscle in his jaw tightens. "Not being subjected to torture. Nearly everyone you've ever known, including the scientists and ShinRa executives who have mandated the terms of your existence, has been able to do all of those things. Many of them are considered basic human needs.
"It has never been right, normal, or necessary for them to be withheld from you. People who have never been so deprived themselves decided you hardly needed such 'indulgences' as the ones they have always enjoyed without a second thought. It wasn't done for the purposes of making you a better soldier. Soldiers, including you, are human - " His own doubts argue against the words, but he overrides them for his younger self's sake and continues. " - and if they wanted a superior human specimen, they would provide for human needs. They've chosen not to do so because they think they can make a human into something inhuman. Better than human, in their eyes. They think if they deny you most of things required to make you a person, they can make you instead into a mindless weapon that happens to have a pulse. Hojo is attempting to do, biologically, what Scarlet does with machines. Only a scientist as egotistically inept as he is would attempt the illogically stupid, and only executives as corrupt and blinded by potential profits as ShinRa's would fund it."
Is someone a little heated? It's only ever about Hojo and ShinRa that Sephiroth speaks with such palpable bitterness - anger, even. And in truth - the anger is new. Something hot that seems to have been sparked by the sight of his younger self, viewing what was done to him from the outside.
This must be how Angeal and Genesis and Lazard felt looking at him, all the time. It explains a great deal of their behavior in retrospect.
"But despite everything they've done...you are still human. You are, in fact, a far better result in every way than their unsound practices and morally bankrupt ideas should have ever been able to produce. All the more reason why you deserve more and better than you have been given. As I said, I will happily provide any of those things that I can...but it's critical for you to recognize that those things are important, and deserved, and everything you have been told about not needing them - the ways they have justified denying them to you - were self-serving excuses you may discard as lies. I know you crave many of the things you tell yourself you're not meant to want; that is because you need them, and those who told you not to want them managed to convince you that it was your own body and mind that were lying, instead of them. It may be...unsettling, even overwhelming, to allow yourself to indulge in what has been forbidden to you, but you should try to embrace those things, however slowly and cautiously. The way you will thrive when given the appropriate resources will be a more effective demonstration of the lies and incompetence of ShinRa than anything I could ever say. But to find the proof, you will actually need to run the experiment."
Sephiroth closes his eyes, trying to...pull himself back. It's not often he gets as emotional as that outburst - which, by anyone else's standards, would still seem pretty levelheaded - but he feels as though he's just exploded, and needs to calm down.
"As for companionship...I understand," he murmurs. "When I first met Angeal, not long after Rhadore...I wanted nothing to do with him. I tried to drive him away entirely. He refused to give up on friendship with me, however. At the time, it was - deeply aggravating. Even painful, at moments. But I bless his stubbornness now. While closing myself off was understandable under the circumstances, and what I thought would be best for myself and anyone else who might become involved with me...it wouldn't have made me happy, and it wouldn't have really helped anyone else. The circumstances surrounding Glenn and his squad were unique. It is fine to take time to process the hurt, but there is no reason to conclude that all your efforts in finding friendship will lead to the same results. Even without myself as proof that isn't true, people are far too different to assume what will happen. What leads to a disastrous outcome with one person may be a perfect success with another."
Softer: "I know how deeply it hurt you. Better than anyone. And that is indeed the risk you run when associating with other people. But the happiness you experienced with them was deeper than any you had experienced before as well, wasn't it? You can't make gains that significant without risking equally significant losses. Just like on the field - you keep fighting, with the goal of winning more than you lose. But you can't win, or even improve your win/loss ratio, if you never engage. You simply concede."
Some of this had been said before, or at least hinted at. And none of it aligned with what he knew of life. It keeps him quiet through all of it, the words sitting uncomfortably alongside an already overwhelmingly unnerving (not frightening, he doesn't feel fear, he's been told so for years now--) day. He knew that his life was irrevocably different from everyone else's, that he endured things the rank and file did not, had restrictions they did not, but that was the price of being raised by Shinra, of being their pet engine of destruction. Of so-called perfection. As the lab had higher standards for him, so too did he have higher standards for himself.
..But it had worked, hadn't it?
The pain and suffering, the lessons and demands and orders, the tests and experiments and procedures. It had worked, he would grow to become exactly what they'd been looking for, and would become a template for the rest of SOLDIER as he was meant to be. Else Angeal and Genesis wouldn't have joined, or Cloud Strife .. whether or not he did was still up in the air but the methods trialed on himself was obviously used on them to great success.
Accepting the idea that it could have been done another way would be accepting a life that had been singularly unhappy for the entirety of his memory, had been a waste.
All of it pointless. Everything he'd endured would also become pointless. Everything he was would be without meaning. Adrenaline with nowhere to go, encouraged by a sharp spike in heart rate, cycles into a brief shiver that is fought down to stillness with effort. Meaningless.
It's obvious to him that at some point in the future he turns this into something other than bitter despair at the meaningless of their existence, decides to make the choices that turn it from utter failure to something more tolerable, why else would he be so obviously passionate about it? Maybe not to the degree of fire and bluster that others could when properly motivated, but these long speeches ... were not something he did without significant motivation. Where others might hear neutrality and calm, he hears ribbons of hostility threaded through all of it, as if it had been a personal affront, the retrospect of years' more experience apparently changing everything. When he's stronger. When he's tougher.
It's not an indignation he can share yet. Not while knowing if he returns to Midgar as he is he can look forward to more tests and experiments, knowing there's a futility in thinking he'll be safe and protected, knowing that even in an ideal situation lingering here that he is expected to walk knowingly into more pain, confusion and uncertainty and call it good.
Conceding sounded good right about now. "I can choose what I want to do?" He runs the pad of his thumb across the tips of nails working on slowly becoming claws, still soft and unlikely to stand up against even a little pressure, but there was promise of change in the slight curve and fragile points. "What if I choose to do none of that?"
There isn't, really, an actual choice at all in that. It would be made for him, by the simplest impulses of human nature. Humans were inevitably driven by an inherent social nature, and even SOLDIERs hunted best in packs. Childhood resistance to it did not change the older Sephiroth's fate when it came to his closest companions, it would not change the younger's either.
Sephiroth hadn't entirely expected that response - he knows how badly he wanted what he now has when he was younger, after all, although perhaps distance from the heartbreak of Rhadore and any feelings of loyalty to ShinRa has dulled his memory of just how deeply his younger self might resist any change to his status quo - but that doesn't slow his answer. To him, there is only one possible answer. "Then at least it will be your choice," he says simply. "Not something forced on you, or demanded of you."
Even if there turned out to be some sort of temporal causality, and his younger self refusing to follow his path meant he, as his older self, would lose every aspect of his life he now values, his morality and independence from ShinRa and the friends and lovers he's managed to acquire...he can't find it within himself to push his younger self into doing things against his will. (Well...within reason. He feels no compunctions about, for instance, refusing to let his younger self do things like pluck his own scales. But there's a large difference between restricting him from taking actions that would cause harm to himself or others and denying him proper agency in his own life.)
"I doubt you would be happy with such a choice...but I'm not trying to force you to live a certain kind of life. There's very little I wish to force you to do at all." A beat. "Except to stop plucking your own scales. Hurting yourself is not something I'll permit."
He understands the illusion of choice very well; when there really is no say at all in anything that mattered, claiming otherwise could still be a useful tool for control. When everything his older self knows and loves hinges on those decisions, if they truly were so important, then inevitably he'd be pushed to make those same choices. Gently, harshly - it wouldn't matter much so long as the end result was desired. He wouldn't refuse for obstinacy alone, much spoken about was more valuable than his decisions and he's had a lifetime of knowing things that needed to be done would be personally painful.
An actual choice is harder to accept.
The unease wasn't gone, not about his future nor about the changes going on, that tiny array of unwanted scales thoroughly unwanted. He couldn't have both safety in relying on Sephiroth's protection from the curiosity of scientists if he returned with the smattering of scales, not while also expecting to have the same future that was the other's past. "They don't stay removed anyway." It's a displeased grumble, a safer subject than the rest. "It's pointless. I can feel them coming back." But they itch while growing back in, had itched when appearing to begin with.
But being rid of them was the only way he'd get to the point he's supposed to reach.
"Then leave them," Sephiroth says, which he feels is a perfectly reasonable response under the circumstances. "If you feel the need to take some kind of action against these changes, I suggest research. Within reason," he adds, a touch hastily, remembering his own deep dives desperately seeking information without food or sleep. "Sacrificing your own health is not productive, and I don't wish to have to drag you out of the library to enforce basic self-care." Though the implication is that, if his younger self makes it necessary, he's nonetheless prepared to. "But it would be far better to seek an effective way to stop or reverse these changes than to keep pursuing destructive, ineffective ways."
A beat. "However, you need to also be prepared to accept the possibility that the solution you want may not exist. Or that the best way to weather this is to allow it to pass naturally. Assuming the legend of those heroes is accurate to our own experiences, then to be able to be either fully human or fully dragon would involve deepening our bonds with these dragons, not fighting them. There isn't any proof that will work for us...but we also can't disprove it without testing it."
"..I'm sure I would remember necessities such as food and rest," he says, utterly and completely wrong in his confidence about that fact. It's going to be a lifetime problem that keeps reoccurring, but for now he's still under the impression it won't be. At some point he'll have free reign over a library or data center and find out otherwise.
At least he's well used to things he wants not being possible.
The pointlessness of removing something that'll simply grow back isn't lost on him at least. "Hoping for the best while not preparing for the worst seems naive." How does one prepare for this kind of thing? How do you prepare to become a literal monster? "...I know Wutai's successfully tamed behemoths. I don't know if anyone's tried to tame dragons."
"From personal experience, I assure you that you would not." Sephiroth's tone has a touch of dry humor in it. He wants to make it clear that while he has no faith in his younger self in this area, it's because he knows it's a weakness of his. That there's no shame in having or admitting to such a weakness when they both share it.
"As for preparing for the worst...do you actually have any preparations that could possibly be made? Do you even know how bad it could be, never mind what preparations would be necessary?" Sephiroth shakes his head. "It's one thing to plan for a worst case scenario when it is possible to plan, and when you know what the worst case scenario is...but in this, I don't think either of those things is true. You're dwelling on anxieties when there's not really any positive action that can be taken to address them. That's not pragmatic, it's a self-destructive distraction. Hoping for the best doesn't prepare you either, but at least you won't be strung out and emotionally exhausted for whatever comes next, so it's still more beneficial than imagining nightmare outcomes you can't do anything to prevent, whether you foresee them or not."
He gives his younger self a slight shoulder squeeze. "As for taming dragons...it may not be necessary. But I suppose only time will tell."
That sure was a barely-there grumble under his breath; he's still pretty sure he wouldn't need to be dragged out of a library just to do things like eat or sleep, but the little new niggling doubt that maybe he wouldn't is annoying enough to earn a mutter.
Being vaguely disgruntled over the reassurance that he would forget basic needs, when he already occasionally forgot basic needs when sufficiently distracted (but not as yet, avoiding meals) wasn't enough to shake the disquiet of the rest, and he remains quiet for a minute or two, slowly piecing together the why of it.
It means admitting things he'd rather not. But if he couldn't anywhere else, surely he could here. "I can't .. do nothing, and hope it works out. I don't know how you can. Sitting idly by and pretending there isn't a problem never works, won't make me stop thinking about it and won't make it less terrifying." Fear has been beaten out of them both long since, according to the aides in the science department. But he's pretty sure it hadn't. "You know having someone say, 'well don't dwell on it' not only isn't possible, it tends to make you think about it more, not less. Any kind of preparation at all is at least action, and keeping that energy moving in some direction instead of ... waiting to explode."
But DOES he have preparations that can be made? "I have some ideas." It's added rather quietly to the rest; he hasn't had long to think of any but something was better than nothing. "I won't know how well they might work until it's too late to change course though."
"I've learned there are things well beyond my or anyone's control," Sephiroth replies, rather softly. "Though, more even that that...I've learned how finite and precious the worthwhile things in life are. I could tear myself to pieces trying to avoid the worst case scenario, knowing that it may well find me anyway and render all my efforts useless...or I could spend quality time with the people I love, while I have the chance. Considered that way, the choice is obvious. For you...you struggle with that because you haven't formed such deep connections yet, haven't found people whose company is enough to pull you from your fears for the future."
A pause. "You realize you don't need to wait for your Angeal and Genesis to make friends, you know. Whatever happiness you can find in the present, you ought to. And in many cases, it's not possible to build towards a happier future without some efforts in the present. I worry that you are so focused on trying to prevent something you have no proof will ever happen, that you couldn't prevent even if it does happen, that you will entirely isolate yourself. A story in which a person strives to avoid tragedy to such an extent that they remain forever fearful and unhappy...that story is a tragedy still, whether the person avoids catastrophe or not."
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timeasmymeasure
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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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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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Date: 2024-11-06 09:48 pm (UTC)Things like changing into dragons is likely not a universal script.
The concerns of Sephiroth about how the future might go are valid; the younger is chained to a relentlessly malignant fate, and it's not likely any bright spot of a simulated world where his dear dead friends return to him are slated to follow. There is no happy ending awaiting him should he return to his time and place, not even if he waits the decade or so between them. Even the temporary comfort of having a pair of trustworthy friends of his own, ones who stay for years .... that will eventually fail too.
It must. Their fate is long decided, just as his is.
But the illusion of a good outcome is there. Sephiroth seems better adjusted in ways he can't really come up with words for, happier when he speaks about Angeal and Genesis, more welcoming of the idea of things he'd normally call blatant weakness.. something changes. And it seems to be for the better. "I know so."
He can only guess from the other side it doesn't look like much. But from where he sits, it's nothing short of a miracle. "Maybe I'll never get the normal life I've always wanted.. and maybe there's no Mother to ever be found, waiting for us." And that still stung, bitter and acrid in the back of his throat if he dwelt on it for long. "But you've got something worth living for. That's better than having so much to die for."
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Date: 2024-11-08 01:05 pm (UTC)"You know how it is when, out in the field, you end up occasionally having to disregard your basic needs. And how, after long enough, your body seems to reach a state where you no longer feel the hunger, or thirst, or exhaustion. So many of your basic needs have gone unaddressed for so long that you won't truly feel how starved you've been until you finally taste what you've been craving." He shakes his head slightly. "And perhaps that's for the best. But...I want to give you those things. Or at least help you find them elsewhere, if I can't provide them. You don't need to go without - and I know how happy they can make you. How happy they made me. I want that for you, as well. And in a place where time works so unpredictably, I won't simply wait for it to run its course."
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Date: 2024-11-08 08:13 pm (UTC)Purposeless. What was he, if he wasn't to be the company's weapon of mass slaughter?
The older of the two had found purpose in his friends, a pair that he himself may never meet ... not the way he's supposed to, at the ages he's supposed to, with the power imbalance between them nullified by the equality of age and adolescent awkwardness. Where was he going to find something similar?
Did it still work, if sought for that purpose alone? "In that case, I hope you know what those things are, because I don't. Aside from .. perhaps, having family, I don't feel like my basic needs haven't been met. And please don't say 'friends'. I'm not sure I'm ... all that eager to try that kind of companionship again."
That would inevitably change in time, whether or not he wished to deny it part of him was still very much a pack-living creature without its pack. "Especially if I might turn into a dragon and eat them."
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Date: 2024-11-15 07:55 am (UTC)"It has never been right, normal, or necessary for them to be withheld from you. People who have never been so deprived themselves decided you hardly needed such 'indulgences' as the ones they have always enjoyed without a second thought. It wasn't done for the purposes of making you a better soldier. Soldiers, including you, are human - " His own doubts argue against the words, but he overrides them for his younger self's sake and continues. " - and if they wanted a superior human specimen, they would provide for human needs. They've chosen not to do so because they think they can make a human into something inhuman. Better than human, in their eyes. They think if they deny you most of things required to make you a person, they can make you instead into a mindless weapon that happens to have a pulse. Hojo is attempting to do, biologically, what Scarlet does with machines. Only a scientist as egotistically inept as he is would attempt the illogically stupid, and only executives as corrupt and blinded by potential profits as ShinRa's would fund it."
Is someone a little heated? It's only ever about Hojo and ShinRa that Sephiroth speaks with such palpable bitterness - anger, even. And in truth - the anger is new. Something hot that seems to have been sparked by the sight of his younger self, viewing what was done to him from the outside.
This must be how Angeal and Genesis and Lazard felt looking at him, all the time. It explains a great deal of their behavior in retrospect.
"But despite everything they've done...you are still human. You are, in fact, a far better result in every way than their unsound practices and morally bankrupt ideas should have ever been able to produce. All the more reason why you deserve more and better than you have been given. As I said, I will happily provide any of those things that I can...but it's critical for you to recognize that those things are important, and deserved, and everything you have been told about not needing them - the ways they have justified denying them to you - were self-serving excuses you may discard as lies. I know you crave many of the things you tell yourself you're not meant to want; that is because you need them, and those who told you not to want them managed to convince you that it was your own body and mind that were lying, instead of them. It may be...unsettling, even overwhelming, to allow yourself to indulge in what has been forbidden to you, but you should try to embrace those things, however slowly and cautiously. The way you will thrive when given the appropriate resources will be a more effective demonstration of the lies and incompetence of ShinRa than anything I could ever say. But to find the proof, you will actually need to run the experiment."
Sephiroth closes his eyes, trying to...pull himself back. It's not often he gets as emotional as that outburst - which, by anyone else's standards, would still seem pretty levelheaded - but he feels as though he's just exploded, and needs to calm down.
"As for companionship...I understand," he murmurs. "When I first met Angeal, not long after Rhadore...I wanted nothing to do with him. I tried to drive him away entirely. He refused to give up on friendship with me, however. At the time, it was - deeply aggravating. Even painful, at moments. But I bless his stubbornness now. While closing myself off was understandable under the circumstances, and what I thought would be best for myself and anyone else who might become involved with me...it wouldn't have made me happy, and it wouldn't have really helped anyone else. The circumstances surrounding Glenn and his squad were unique. It is fine to take time to process the hurt, but there is no reason to conclude that all your efforts in finding friendship will lead to the same results. Even without myself as proof that isn't true, people are far too different to assume what will happen. What leads to a disastrous outcome with one person may be a perfect success with another."
Softer: "I know how deeply it hurt you. Better than anyone. And that is indeed the risk you run when associating with other people. But the happiness you experienced with them was deeper than any you had experienced before as well, wasn't it? You can't make gains that significant without risking equally significant losses. Just like on the field - you keep fighting, with the goal of winning more than you lose. But you can't win, or even improve your win/loss ratio, if you never engage. You simply concede."
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Date: 2024-11-15 02:48 pm (UTC)..But it had worked, hadn't it?
The pain and suffering, the lessons and demands and orders, the tests and experiments and procedures. It had worked, he would grow to become exactly what they'd been looking for, and would become a template for the rest of SOLDIER as he was meant to be. Else Angeal and Genesis wouldn't have joined, or Cloud Strife .. whether or not he did was still up in the air but the methods trialed on himself was obviously used on them to great success.
Accepting the idea that it could have been done another way would be accepting a life that had been singularly unhappy for the entirety of his memory, had been a waste.
All of it pointless. Everything he'd endured would also become pointless. Everything he was would be without meaning. Adrenaline with nowhere to go, encouraged by a sharp spike in heart rate, cycles into a brief shiver that is fought down to stillness with effort. Meaningless.
It's obvious to him that at some point in the future he turns this into something other than bitter despair at the meaningless of their existence, decides to make the choices that turn it from utter failure to something more tolerable, why else would he be so obviously passionate about it? Maybe not to the degree of fire and bluster that others could when properly motivated, but these long speeches ... were not something he did without significant motivation. Where others might hear neutrality and calm, he hears ribbons of hostility threaded through all of it, as if it had been a personal affront, the retrospect of years' more experience apparently changing everything. When he's stronger. When he's tougher.
It's not an indignation he can share yet. Not while knowing if he returns to Midgar as he is he can look forward to more tests and experiments, knowing there's a futility in thinking he'll be safe and protected, knowing that even in an ideal situation lingering here that he is expected to walk knowingly into more pain, confusion and uncertainty and call it good.
Conceding sounded good right about now. "I can choose what I want to do?" He runs the pad of his thumb across the tips of nails working on slowly becoming claws, still soft and unlikely to stand up against even a little pressure, but there was promise of change in the slight curve and fragile points. "What if I choose to do none of that?"
There isn't, really, an actual choice at all in that. It would be made for him, by the simplest impulses of human nature. Humans were inevitably driven by an inherent social nature, and even SOLDIERs hunted best in packs. Childhood resistance to it did not change the older Sephiroth's fate when it came to his closest companions, it would not change the younger's either.
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Date: 2024-11-18 10:17 am (UTC)Even if there turned out to be some sort of temporal causality, and his younger self refusing to follow his path meant he, as his older self, would lose every aspect of his life he now values, his morality and independence from ShinRa and the friends and lovers he's managed to acquire...he can't find it within himself to push his younger self into doing things against his will. (Well...within reason. He feels no compunctions about, for instance, refusing to let his younger self do things like pluck his own scales. But there's a large difference between restricting him from taking actions that would cause harm to himself or others and denying him proper agency in his own life.)
"I doubt you would be happy with such a choice...but I'm not trying to force you to live a certain kind of life. There's very little I wish to force you to do at all." A beat. "Except to stop plucking your own scales. Hurting yourself is not something I'll permit."
this is tougher cuz a week after arrival instead of more time to adjust.
Date: 2024-11-19 10:54 am (UTC)An actual choice is harder to accept.
The unease wasn't gone, not about his future nor about the changes going on, that tiny array of unwanted scales thoroughly unwanted. He couldn't have both safety in relying on Sephiroth's protection from the curiosity of scientists if he returned with the smattering of scales, not while also expecting to have the same future that was the other's past. "They don't stay removed anyway." It's a displeased grumble, a safer subject than the rest. "It's pointless. I can feel them coming back." But they itch while growing back in, had itched when appearing to begin with.
But being rid of them was the only way he'd get to the point he's supposed to reach.
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Date: 2024-11-22 12:10 am (UTC)A beat. "However, you need to also be prepared to accept the possibility that the solution you want may not exist. Or that the best way to weather this is to allow it to pass naturally. Assuming the legend of those heroes is accurate to our own experiences, then to be able to be either fully human or fully dragon would involve deepening our bonds with these dragons, not fighting them. There isn't any proof that will work for us...but we also can't disprove it without testing it."
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Date: 2024-11-24 01:54 am (UTC)At least he's well used to things he wants not being possible.
The pointlessness of removing something that'll simply grow back isn't lost on him at least. "Hoping for the best while not preparing for the worst seems naive." How does one prepare for this kind of thing? How do you prepare to become a literal monster? "...I know Wutai's successfully tamed behemoths. I don't know if anyone's tried to tame dragons."
There's a whole franchise about that actually Sephlet
Date: 2024-11-27 12:49 pm (UTC)"As for preparing for the worst...do you actually have any preparations that could possibly be made? Do you even know how bad it could be, never mind what preparations would be necessary?" Sephiroth shakes his head. "It's one thing to plan for a worst case scenario when it is possible to plan, and when you know what the worst case scenario is...but in this, I don't think either of those things is true. You're dwelling on anxieties when there's not really any positive action that can be taken to address them. That's not pragmatic, it's a self-destructive distraction. Hoping for the best doesn't prepare you either, but at least you won't be strung out and emotionally exhausted for whatever comes next, so it's still more beneficial than imagining nightmare outcomes you can't do anything to prevent, whether you foresee them or not."
He gives his younger self a slight shoulder squeeze. "As for taming dragons...it may not be necessary. But I suppose only time will tell."
that's training! gotta tame them first!!
Date: 2024-11-28 01:43 am (UTC)Being vaguely disgruntled over the reassurance that he would forget basic needs, when he already occasionally forgot basic needs when sufficiently distracted (but not as yet, avoiding meals) wasn't enough to shake the disquiet of the rest, and he remains quiet for a minute or two, slowly piecing together the why of it.
It means admitting things he'd rather not. But if he couldn't anywhere else, surely he could here. "I can't .. do nothing, and hope it works out. I don't know how you can. Sitting idly by and pretending there isn't a problem never works, won't make me stop thinking about it and won't make it less terrifying." Fear has been beaten out of them both long since, according to the aides in the science department. But he's pretty sure it hadn't. "You know having someone say, 'well don't dwell on it' not only isn't possible, it tends to make you think about it more, not less. Any kind of preparation at all is at least action, and keeping that energy moving in some direction instead of ... waiting to explode."
But DOES he have preparations that can be made? "I have some ideas." It's added rather quietly to the rest; he hasn't had long to think of any but something was better than nothing. "I won't know how well they might work until it's too late to change course though."
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Date: 2024-12-13 01:12 pm (UTC)A pause. "You realize you don't need to wait for your Angeal and Genesis to make friends, you know. Whatever happiness you can find in the present, you ought to. And in many cases, it's not possible to build towards a happier future without some efforts in the present. I worry that you are so focused on trying to prevent something you have no proof will ever happen, that you couldn't prevent even if it does happen, that you will entirely isolate yourself. A story in which a person strives to avoid tragedy to such an extent that they remain forever fearful and unhappy...that story is a tragedy still, whether the person avoids catastrophe or not."
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