[He can't dredge up any satisfaction at Zack's surprise. It didn't change anything - Cloud's actions, or his own.
But he moves a little, straightening just enough to hold out taloned hands and mime wrapping them around an unprotected throat.]
Like getting the last bit of toothpaste out of a tube.
[It's possible his method of toothpaste acquisition is a bit harsher than most people's.
Slowly he lowers his hands again, expression returning to blankness.]
I could have dealt with it, I have all this time until now. I could have held out forever. It didn't matter if he hated me, if he killed me, if he'd do it again given the chance.
[Like getting- god. Gotta wonder what the fuck is wrong with this kid sometimes. (He knows what. He lived it for four years.)
Zack grimaces. He doesn't even know how to begin addressing all of that. This goes so much deeper than he's equipped to handle. It feels like yet another losing battle, like with Angeal, like with Genesis. Like with Sephiroth in the past, in the future, in Nibelheim when all the dreams ended.
He reminds himself: it got as bad as he did because he left. He can't leave anymore. He can't leave it alone.]
He shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry I wasn't there. I didn't know.
You probably weren't supposed to know. It doesn't matter.
[Thirteen took care of being dead before he could do it himself. The experience was not one he cared to repeat, unlike the much nicer second death.
For all that Vincent inevitably greeted his mistakes with a resigned sort of sadness, he missed the man's presence. There has been no rescue, ever, but there could at least be some solace to be found afterwards.
The teen scrubs his face with one hand, sinking a little where he sat, the moment's reignited indignation dying away again to something very like defeat.]
[Zack's quick to shake his head. There's no way he could agree on that. He won't say he wished Sephiroth had told him, though he's thinking it. He knows why. At least, he can make an educated guess. He's too close. It's not his problem. Plenty of reasons not to, probably not enough to say a damn thing.
It sucks. All of it, it sucks.]
I wish it'd worked. I know how bad you wanna fix things. [And he wishes it hadn't made everything worse.] Don't... don't do that again.
[Though he very much disagrees he doesn't argue it, he just gives a slight shrug. Experience tells him how much it matters, and that wasn't going to change. Death was transient. If anyone besides a cleric from another planet found a way to keep him down then maybe it would be more of a concern.
Mentioning it at all, knowing how meaningless it ultimately ever would be so long as death lacked teeth, really did lend weight to Cloud's words. It's all manipulation, isn't it?]
Which part.
[Even now, was any of this explanation anything more than more deception? Why bother with a lie when the truth worked just as well? For all that Zack said it wasn't him and the terrible cutting pain of his words and his hatred therefore weren't Zack's fault or responsibility, he still had those memories. It might have just as well happened to him; Sephiroth didn't know it was someone else at the time when every single sign said it absolutely was the man he knew, including his relic.
An explanation was just trying to downplay what he'd done, wasn't it?]
[The question has Zack confused again, brows furrowing, struggling against the assumption that Sephiroth's being intentionally obtuse. What else could he mean except the only thing done that they're talking about? He looks serious, though, so... okay.]
The- controlling, with Jenova. I don't care if you think it won't work anymore. Don't try it on me. You got no right. It was cruel. I didn't- I didn't think you were capable of that. I didn't deserve it.
[He'd believed in Sephiroth, before. Thought that the cruelty presented in his own timeline was an effect of Jenova, that his friend couldn't do that sort of thing without being driven by alien whispers. To experience it was... beyond wretched. He hadn't personally lived the un-life that Zack had endured, but he experienced it here, for that brief time between leaving Never Fade and fading away in the mud of Exile, remembers his body forced to move on its own, obedient to the whims of the cells in his blood and the orders of an angry teenager.
The point is this, the point is that. Intent counts for fuck all, in his mind. It might not have worked. And if Sephiroth's order had stuck, if he hadn't been able to fight it, if he'd killed Cloud like he'd been a breath away from doing- that would have been a point of no return for them. He'd just as likely tried to kill Sephiroth himself if they crossed paths after. He has limits, lines not to be crossed. Someone willing to do that to a friend is... not someone he wants to be around.]
[Before he can finish saying it, however softly it had been, he silences himself.
It didn't matter that he'd been horrified when he realized why Zack was acting so strange. It didn't matter that his final, vicious order hadn't been unprovoked, or that it wasn't something he'd ever do on a whim out of nowhere. It didn't matter that Cloud and Zack had shattered the fragile dream of being able to defy fate and really help someone, their accusations and hatred like acid in the wound left behind. None of it mattered at all, though maybe it would have if he'd chosen to act differently.
He chose to give in and be what they expected.
He chose to give up. Nobody forced him to take that pain and make it a weapon, and hit them exactly where he knew it'd hurt the worst.
That was all on him. Only him.]
I won't.
[There's no inflection in his voice to color it one way or another, leaning just enough to rest his head in his arms in unspoken surrender. Whether or not he wanted to try to puppet Zack again he couldn't anyway; Zack, as he should be, as he was meant to be, was out of his ability to control. Or that even if the other one were to reappear he wouldn't be able to bring himself to do anything about it. But that didn't need to be said, it'd be singularly unhelpful. So he doesn't. What he does add is quiet, though still audible over the hiss of waves on the sand.]
I already disposed of the remaining samples and infected monsters. I haven't gone back for further instruction.
[Zack waits at first, ready to argue. Yeah, it wasn't him. But Sephiroth thought it was him, which made him capable. The memories aren't going anywhere.
But he stops, and Zack listens instead. And when Sephiroth finishes, his shoulders slump a little, and he presses both hands to his face, rubbing them up and down.]
Okay, [he manages,] Good. Thank you.
[As he drags his hands down one final time, looking over at Sephiroth, Zack has to marvel at how young he looks. Even with the grim new features, the horns and the tail and the claws, looking less human than ever, something out of a summon materia or that freaky demon cave Genesis made him crawl through to kick his ass... even now. Hunched and hiding and quiet, he looks so young.
He takes a step forward, then another, approaching not cautiously, not angrily, just the steady normal stride Zack always uses. Whether he closes the distance fully depends on Sephiroth's reaction to his approach.]
[Was it the compulsion of Reunion that had made the beasts compliant when he slaughtered them, or did they seek release as much as Zack had? If he knew how to tune his senses to their emotions, would he have felt their hatred, their despair and rage?
Though it's absolutely certain Sephiroth knows exactly where Zack is, can hear him moving across sand and then firmer ground, he doesn't move. He hasn't really gone anywhere from his spot on his porch since Zack arrived and that wasn't changing now, resigned to whatever's coming. Whatever Zack intends, there's no effort to flee or defend himself, the creature in the shape of a guard hound still utterly absent.]
You should go, if that's it. He'll be waiting.
[It's not a dismissal, but it might as well be. Isolation was the point of making a home so far from the rest of what passed for Folkmore civilization, and he'd return to it as soon as he was able. There's less risk of hurting someone if no-one was around.
The trouble with young monsters is if allowed to, they grow up.]
[Zack makes a vague noise at the... offer? Request, maybe, but not a demand - acknowledging it but not agreeing, based on his continued movement forward. He climbs the steps, halting when he reaches the top, turns, and sits, cross-legged, right beside Sephiroth, their knees bumping.
[Maybe it should have been a demand, but there's no protest when Zack chooses to sit down instead of ... something else. Shake him like a maraca perhaps.
The question seems strangely off-topic at first, but no, it really wasn't. His actions hadn't been that of the winged heros, had they? After a long, silent moment he turns over one hand to study his own palm, the sharp hooks of claws, the faint scattering of translucent scale here and there, so tiny as to be little more than a dusting of silver on already pale skin. Such hands don't belong to a human.]
I have ... long believed, even before I knew what I was, that I was singularly unsuited to Legend. A killer propped up as a false hero for Shinra's recruitment posters was undeserving of such a station. This is more accurate to reality.
[Myths were typified by their callous cruelty, after all. However accurate that was; he knew at least one myth who didn't deserve such a label at all.]
Okay. [Hm. He can't really argue on the whole Shinra-employed killer thing, he's exactly the same. Seph got the credit but he was doing an awful lot of killing in Wutai the day the war ended. Nevermind the propaganda, SOLDIERs are built to be monsters, not heroes.] That sounds a lot like what you think, though, not how you feel.
[There's a pretty big difference in his mind. Seph might not realize it, might be trying to evade or conceal or bury, but it's important to Zack, especially right now. And he's not so big on logic or understanding of the technicalities or whatever, but he's good with feelings.]
[If it's an evasion it's not an intentional one, he's not used to thinking about feelings directly, or considering why they might be important beyond weakness and tells in enemies to be exploited. Logic was MORE important, reason absolutely paramount; emotions didn't belong on the battlefield and he was never off of one.
It takes thinking about, for a long, long several minutes before he reaches a conclusion. He didn't really dwell on it much. What he felt just wasn't relevant.]
Relieved.
[The conclusion he reaches sounds damning to his own ears.]
[Zack is quiet for a long moment.] Relieved? [he echoes, finally. He doesn't sound bothered or judgmental, more like... thoughtful. It's not an answer he'd expected, but he wants to follow the through-line.]
I know how it sounds. [Like everything else, it sounds bad, and he's reluctant to admit it.] A Legend is expected to give up everything to do what's right. You know how we ... [It's not 'we' anymore.] How they can tell when someone needs help nearby. Who expects it of a Myth? They can't. It's not their problem. It's ... selfish, and petty and small, to even think about putting what I want over what other people need. But to hear the spirits talk, that's what a Myth does.
[Another pause, as Zack leans back a bit, hands clasped to his knees, his gaze drifting towards the sky and the ocean line again. It really is nice, here. The sound of the water hitting the beach, maybe a seagull or two squawking in the background, the salty scent of the wind. Good spot. Good choice.]
Spirits don't know everything. They're just people, too. [Their opinions don't have to count for anything, really.
They know more about the underpinning of this place than we do.
[He didn't mind spirits for the most part. Wouldn't even mind them now if not for the disappointment in the stares of his ex-neighbors as he collected his few belongings and abandoned Lapine and it's pending cold winter.
Winter wouldn't reach here so easily. The desert would see to that. Snow was only a few months away, and he'd rather the soft sand and scorching heat kept comfortable by sea breezes.
What he wanted was for the most part impossible. To be normal, to be human, to have a family..]
I want ... all the normal things I imagine. I want to have friends without worrying I'll kill them. I want to know what it's like to love someone, maybe, and have them like me back even if they know who I am. I want to walk away and forget there ever was someone named 'Sephiroth'.
[He drops his head to rest on his arms again. He still wanted to help people, improve things, fix ... something . Anything. Improve something instead of tearing it down.]
I want a future where the best thing I can do for everyone including the planet ISN'T taking Jenova and killing us both as quickly and permanently as I can arrange for. ....I want a future .. at all.
[He knew what he had to do. He simply didn't want to. Selfish. What good is a weapon that doesn't work?]
[Zack listens, quiet and unusually still. He takes it all in, every phrase, every wish. It really is so normal. It isn't funny, not even a little, but there's something so absurd about it, the mundane nature of each one. Things that any normal person should wish for, should get to accomplish in their lives. And of course it must feel like reaching for the moon for Sephiroth, who has never been allowed to be normal, who's had so many stupid heavy expectations on him from all the wrong people. These are all things he probably could have wished for ages ago, been allowed to want, if he'd arrived in this world without Zack's fumbling awkwardness, or Cloud's contempt, or Vincent's bullet. It's ridiculous. Of course he wants all of that. He should. Anyone would.
In the end, he can't help it: he laughs. It's brief and light, not mocking. He's relieved, too. He lifts a hand and gives Sephiroth's back a companionable thump.]
Is that it? If that's selfish, we should all be Myths.
[It's a story he's heard before, in a sense. 23 tiny wishes, that beautiful, perfect girl had told him, and he'd wanted to hear all of them. But she'd known him, that he'd forget, and had compressed it into one. He wished she hadn't. He wished she'd written down every single desire she'd ever felt, so he could have spent the last few years in this world making every one come true. That girl who had lived a part of her life in a lab, with an awful man, all because she was born different. That girl whose life had been cut short. That girl who he now remembers murdering, not because of his own lack of will or Sephiroth's alien meddling, but Thirteen's magic gone haywire, again.
I want to spend more time with you.
His voice softens.]
You should do it. All of it. Make them all come true. [And for the first time since before Exile he's smiling, that big, honest smile, the real Zack again at last.] Write them down, so we don't forget.
[It is selfish. Accomplishing most of it would require abandoning the entire planet to its fate. Countless people would die. There wasn't enough time for the rest. Zack's laugh is easy, not derisive, but it takes supreme control to not flinch from unexpected contact as much as it always did. Ordinary things, impossible things. It's not Zack's unmalicious laughter that comes to mind, but his hatred. The sound of him screaming.
You did this. We all know you did.
It's because you're exactly the fucking same.
Was this... for me? Or for you?
Even someone like Hojo could be right sometimes, and the man's derision of hopes and dreams had inevitably been right; it seemed he'd needed to learn that through experience. He wouldn't be that stupid again.]
You know it's not possible, right?
[He didn't make Shinra. He didn't build the reactors. He didn't call Jenova from the sky thousands of years ago, and yet if he walked away the results would be his fault. A fish jumps off the shoreline, making a grab for a gull much too big for it to ever actually catch, a brief flash of water and gleaming scale and determined enthusiasm. It plops back into the water, and he watches the spot for a long moment, waiting to see if it stays in the area. An easy dinner, if he could catch it.
'We' felt like an impossibility too. Even if Zack chose to forgive, there was another who never would. Who never should, the way Zack never should.
Get her out of me, and fucking let me die!
Why shouldn't he just walk away? What did he owe to a world who gave him nothing? Why is it his task to remedy all the problems other people have created? What if he did just...]
I dreamed an entire world where it wasn't true, I wanted it so much. I would have stayed there forever if I could. If any of it was real.
[Don't put words in his mouth! Though Zack still doesn't sound angry, certainly not like he'd been in the swamp.]
Look, I get it. You've been dealt kinda the worst hand in the worst game, you've been gunning against the odds and hardly any backup. You've been putting everything on your shoulders, afraid to ask for help because whoever helps you might die. Afraid to trust because either people are so mad about stuff you never did, or you don't wanna cause issues between them and those that'd help. And that's just the things I know about! I'm sure there's all sorts of other problems you've been keeping to yourself.
[His hands fold together in his lap again.]
You're tired, right? Haven't you thought, "why is it all on me"?
["Why is everyone... always pushing things on me?"]
[He's still expecting the fury to come back, and it isn't as if it is undeserved. Zack remembered, after all. Years of torment, perhaps. Terrible things, before he even got around to trying to rip the Jenova from him forceably.
And for a long moment he's tempted to evade. Change the topic to something that left him feeling a little less bare.
That hadn't worked very well. Not much ever really would by his estimate, but actively making things worse did not help.]
... Sometimes.
[More often lately than before, when the entire effort seemed wholly pointless.]
I don't want more people to die, but.. I know how it sounds. I do. If I want to be a real hero, then that means sacrifices, just like all of you have made.
[Zack makes a thoughtful noise at that. All the talk of heroics, any time it'd come up with him in the past- could he blame the guy? He himself had wanted it, ever since he was a child. Sephiroth was the hero he'd aspired to be. Cloud, too. Now the roles are reversed, and it's their example he's trying to follow.]
Do you want to be a hero, still? Or do you think you have to, to avoid being a villain?
Maybe it really is just to prove I wasn't like my future self. I don't know. [He shrugs a little.] The title never really meant anything until Folkmore.
[Until he found out heros were real.]
But the more I think about it.. the more I don't want to. Shinra isn't my doing. I didn't bring Jenova to the planet. I didn't start a war with Wutai. Why do I have to stop all of it? ... Besides the obvious of if I know and do nothing every bit of suffering and death is my fault because I didn't.
[Zack makes a thoughtful noise, nodding halfway to himself. Considering everything, how Seph lived until his arrival here, what he's been through, what he's tried back home, and what's happened in this world... a different answer might've felt less honest.]
The way I see it, you don't have to be a hero. You just gotta avoid being a villain. And I never thought you were a villain at heart, so that way you can stay yourself, and it's the best route to getting what you want.
[Jenova needs him to wreck the world. If she can't get him, then she can sit and rot forever.]
That's what I wanted when you first got here, you know? I didn't want you to have to deal with all this shit. Deep down I knew it wasn't gonna stay secret for long, but I thought, how cool would it be if you could just learn how to be a kid, make friends, have fun. Learn the heavy stuff when you had the support for it. I really wanted that for you.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2025-09-02 01:59 am (UTC)Cloud did what?
[When did that happen? How did he miss it?]
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Date: 2025-09-02 02:38 am (UTC)But he moves a little, straightening just enough to hold out taloned hands and mime wrapping them around an unprotected throat.]
Like getting the last bit of toothpaste out of a tube.
[It's possible his method of toothpaste acquisition is a bit harsher than most people's.
Slowly he lowers his hands again, expression returning to blankness.]
I could have dealt with it, I have all this time until now. I could have held out forever. It didn't matter if he hated me, if he killed me, if he'd do it again given the chance.
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Date: 2025-09-03 02:04 am (UTC)Zack grimaces. He doesn't even know how to begin addressing all of that. This goes so much deeper than he's equipped to handle. It feels like yet another losing battle, like with Angeal, like with Genesis. Like with Sephiroth in the past, in the future, in Nibelheim when all the dreams ended.
He reminds himself: it got as bad as he did because he left. He can't leave anymore. He can't leave it alone.]
He shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry I wasn't there. I didn't know.
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Date: 2025-09-03 02:46 am (UTC)[Thirteen took care of being dead before he could do it himself. The experience was not one he cared to repeat, unlike the much nicer second death.
For all that Vincent inevitably greeted his mistakes with a resigned sort of sadness, he missed the man's presence. There has been no rescue, ever, but there could at least be some solace to be found afterwards.
The teen scrubs his face with one hand, sinking a little where he sat, the moment's reignited indignation dying away again to something very like defeat.]
I do regret it was you. It should have worked.
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Date: 2025-09-03 03:10 am (UTC)[Zack's quick to shake his head. There's no way he could agree on that. He won't say he wished Sephiroth had told him, though he's thinking it. He knows why. At least, he can make an educated guess. He's too close. It's not his problem. Plenty of reasons not to, probably not enough to say a damn thing.
It sucks. All of it, it sucks.]
I wish it'd worked. I know how bad you wanna fix things. [And he wishes it hadn't made everything worse.] Don't... don't do that again.
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Date: 2025-09-03 09:43 am (UTC)Mentioning it at all, knowing how meaningless it ultimately ever would be so long as death lacked teeth, really did lend weight to Cloud's words. It's all manipulation, isn't it?]
Which part.
[Even now, was any of this explanation anything more than more deception? Why bother with a lie when the truth worked just as well? For all that Zack said it wasn't him and the terrible cutting pain of his words and his hatred therefore weren't Zack's fault or responsibility, he still had those memories. It might have just as well happened to him; Sephiroth didn't know it was someone else at the time when every single sign said it absolutely was the man he knew, including his relic.
An explanation was just trying to downplay what he'd done, wasn't it?]
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Date: 2025-09-03 08:00 pm (UTC)The- controlling, with Jenova. I don't care if you think it won't work anymore. Don't try it on me. You got no right. It was cruel. I didn't- I didn't think you were capable of that. I didn't deserve it.
[He'd believed in Sephiroth, before. Thought that the cruelty presented in his own timeline was an effect of Jenova, that his friend couldn't do that sort of thing without being driven by alien whispers. To experience it was... beyond wretched. He hadn't personally lived the un-life that Zack had endured, but he experienced it here, for that brief time between leaving Never Fade and fading away in the mud of Exile, remembers his body forced to move on its own, obedient to the whims of the cells in his blood and the orders of an angry teenager.
The point is this, the point is that. Intent counts for fuck all, in his mind. It might not have worked. And if Sephiroth's order had stuck, if he hadn't been able to fight it, if he'd killed Cloud like he'd been a breath away from doing- that would have been a point of no return for them. He'd just as likely tried to kill Sephiroth himself if they crossed paths after. He has limits, lines not to be crossed. Someone willing to do that to a friend is... not someone he wants to be around.]
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Date: 2025-09-03 09:42 pm (UTC)[Before he can finish saying it, however softly it had been, he silences himself.
It didn't matter that he'd been horrified when he realized why Zack was acting so strange. It didn't matter that his final, vicious order hadn't been unprovoked, or that it wasn't something he'd ever do on a whim out of nowhere. It didn't matter that Cloud and Zack had shattered the fragile dream of being able to defy fate and really help someone, their accusations and hatred like acid in the wound left behind. None of it mattered at all, though maybe it would have if he'd chosen to act differently.
He chose to give in and be what they expected.
He chose to give up. Nobody forced him to take that pain and make it a weapon, and hit them exactly where he knew it'd hurt the worst.
That was all on him. Only him.]
I won't.
[There's no inflection in his voice to color it one way or another, leaning just enough to rest his head in his arms in unspoken surrender. Whether or not he wanted to try to puppet Zack again he couldn't anyway; Zack, as he should be, as he was meant to be, was out of his ability to control. Or that even if the other one were to reappear he wouldn't be able to bring himself to do anything about it. But that didn't need to be said, it'd be singularly unhelpful. So he doesn't. What he does add is quiet, though still audible over the hiss of waves on the sand.]
I already disposed of the remaining samples and infected monsters. I haven't gone back for further instruction.
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Date: 2025-09-03 09:57 pm (UTC)But he stops, and Zack listens instead. And when Sephiroth finishes, his shoulders slump a little, and he presses both hands to his face, rubbing them up and down.]
Okay, [he manages,] Good. Thank you.
[As he drags his hands down one final time, looking over at Sephiroth, Zack has to marvel at how young he looks. Even with the grim new features, the horns and the tail and the claws, looking less human than ever, something out of a summon materia or that freaky demon cave Genesis made him crawl through to kick his ass... even now. Hunched and hiding and quiet, he looks so young.
He takes a step forward, then another, approaching not cautiously, not angrily, just the steady normal stride Zack always uses. Whether he closes the distance fully depends on Sephiroth's reaction to his approach.]
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Date: 2025-09-03 10:49 pm (UTC)Though it's absolutely certain Sephiroth knows exactly where Zack is, can hear him moving across sand and then firmer ground, he doesn't move. He hasn't really gone anywhere from his spot on his porch since Zack arrived and that wasn't changing now, resigned to whatever's coming. Whatever Zack intends, there's no effort to flee or defend himself, the creature in the shape of a guard hound still utterly absent.]
You should go, if that's it. He'll be waiting.
[It's not a dismissal, but it might as well be. Isolation was the point of making a home so far from the rest of what passed for Folkmore civilization, and he'd return to it as soon as he was able. There's less risk of hurting someone if no-one was around.
The trouble with young monsters is if allowed to, they grow up.]
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Date: 2025-09-03 11:48 pm (UTC)Maybe he should go. But too bad, he isn't.]
So. Myth, huh. How you feeling about that?
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Date: 2025-09-04 12:12 am (UTC)The question seems strangely off-topic at first, but no, it really wasn't. His actions hadn't been that of the winged heros, had they? After a long, silent moment he turns over one hand to study his own palm, the sharp hooks of claws, the faint scattering of translucent scale here and there, so tiny as to be little more than a dusting of silver on already pale skin. Such hands don't belong to a human.]
I have ... long believed, even before I knew what I was, that I was singularly unsuited to Legend. A killer propped up as a false hero for Shinra's recruitment posters was undeserving of such a station. This is more accurate to reality.
[Myths were typified by their callous cruelty, after all. However accurate that was; he knew at least one myth who didn't deserve such a label at all.]
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Date: 2025-09-04 12:37 am (UTC)[There's a pretty big difference in his mind. Seph might not realize it, might be trying to evade or conceal or bury, but it's important to Zack, especially right now. And he's not so big on logic or understanding of the technicalities or whatever, but he's good with feelings.]
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Date: 2025-09-04 12:44 am (UTC)It takes thinking about, for a long, long several minutes before he reaches a conclusion. He didn't really dwell on it much. What he felt just wasn't relevant.]
Relieved.
[The conclusion he reaches sounds damning to his own ears.]
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Date: 2025-09-04 12:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-04 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-04 01:56 am (UTC)Spirits don't know everything. They're just people, too. [Their opinions don't have to count for anything, really.
Not Thirteen's, either.] What do you want?
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Date: 2025-09-04 02:36 am (UTC)[He didn't mind spirits for the most part. Wouldn't even mind them now if not for the disappointment in the stares of his ex-neighbors as he collected his few belongings and abandoned Lapine and it's pending cold winter.
Winter wouldn't reach here so easily. The desert would see to that. Snow was only a few months away, and he'd rather the soft sand and scorching heat kept comfortable by sea breezes.
What he wanted was for the most part impossible. To be normal, to be human, to have a family..]
I want ... all the normal things I imagine. I want to have friends without worrying I'll kill them. I want to know what it's like to love someone, maybe, and have them like me back even if they know who I am. I want to walk away and forget there ever was someone named 'Sephiroth'.
[He drops his head to rest on his arms again. He still wanted to help people, improve things, fix ... something . Anything. Improve something instead of tearing it down.]
I want a future where the best thing I can do for everyone including the planet ISN'T taking Jenova and killing us both as quickly and permanently as I can arrange for. ....I want a future .. at all.
[He knew what he had to do. He simply didn't want to. Selfish. What good is a weapon that doesn't work?]
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Date: 2025-09-04 03:49 am (UTC)In the end, he can't help it: he laughs. It's brief and light, not mocking. He's relieved, too. He lifts a hand and gives Sephiroth's back a companionable thump.]
Is that it? If that's selfish, we should all be Myths.
[It's a story he's heard before, in a sense. 23 tiny wishes, that beautiful, perfect girl had told him, and he'd wanted to hear all of them. But she'd known him, that he'd forget, and had compressed it into one. He wished she hadn't. He wished she'd written down every single desire she'd ever felt, so he could have spent the last few years in this world making every one come true. That girl who had lived a part of her life in a lab, with an awful man, all because she was born different. That girl whose life had been cut short. That girl who he now remembers murdering, not because of his own lack of will or Sephiroth's alien meddling, but Thirteen's magic gone haywire, again.
I want to spend more time with you.
His voice softens.]
You should do it. All of it. Make them all come true. [And for the first time since before Exile he's smiling, that big, honest smile, the real Zack again at last.] Write them down, so we don't forget.
[We. He didn't misspeak.]
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Date: 2025-09-04 10:22 am (UTC)You did this. We all know you did.
Was this... for me? Or for you?
Even someone like Hojo could be right sometimes, and the man's derision of hopes and dreams had inevitably been right; it seemed he'd needed to learn that through experience. He wouldn't be that stupid again.]
You know it's not possible, right?
[He didn't make Shinra. He didn't build the reactors. He didn't call Jenova from the sky thousands of years ago, and yet if he walked away the results would be his fault. A fish jumps off the shoreline, making a grab for a gull much too big for it to ever actually catch, a brief flash of water and gleaming scale and determined enthusiasm. It plops back into the water, and he watches the spot for a long moment, waiting to see if it stays in the area. An easy dinner, if he could catch it.
'We' felt like an impossibility too. Even if Zack chose to forgive, there was another who never would. Who never should, the way Zack never should.
Get her out of me, and fucking let me die!
Why shouldn't he just walk away? What did he owe to a world who gave him nothing? Why is it his task to remedy all the problems other people have created? What if he did just...]
I dreamed an entire world where it wasn't true, I wanted it so much. I would have stayed there forever if I could. If any of it was real.
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Date: 2025-09-07 03:29 am (UTC)[Don't put words in his mouth! Though Zack still doesn't sound angry, certainly not like he'd been in the swamp.]
Look, I get it. You've been dealt kinda the worst hand in the worst game, you've been gunning against the odds and hardly any backup. You've been putting everything on your shoulders, afraid to ask for help because whoever helps you might die. Afraid to trust because either people are so mad about stuff you never did, or you don't wanna cause issues between them and those that'd help. And that's just the things I know about! I'm sure there's all sorts of other problems you've been keeping to yourself.
[His hands fold together in his lap again.]
You're tired, right? Haven't you thought, "why is it all on me"?
["Why is everyone... always pushing things on me?"]
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Date: 2025-09-07 04:13 am (UTC)And for a long moment he's tempted to evade. Change the topic to something that left him feeling a little less bare.
That hadn't worked very well. Not much ever really would by his estimate, but actively making things worse did not help.]
... Sometimes.
[More often lately than before, when the entire effort seemed wholly pointless.]
I don't want more people to die, but.. I know how it sounds. I do. If I want to be a real hero, then that means sacrifices, just like all of you have made.
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Date: 2025-09-07 06:48 am (UTC)Do you want to be a hero, still? Or do you think you have to, to avoid being a villain?
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Date: 2025-09-07 09:51 am (UTC)[Until he found out heros were real.]
But the more I think about it.. the more I don't want to. Shinra isn't my doing. I didn't bring Jenova to the planet. I didn't start a war with Wutai. Why do I have to stop all of it? ... Besides the obvious of if I know and do nothing every bit of suffering and death is my fault because I didn't.
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Date: 2025-09-08 10:21 pm (UTC)The way I see it, you don't have to be a hero. You just gotta avoid being a villain. And I never thought you were a villain at heart, so that way you can stay yourself, and it's the best route to getting what you want.
[Jenova needs him to wreck the world. If she can't get him, then she can sit and rot forever.]
That's what I wanted when you first got here, you know? I didn't want you to have to deal with all this shit. Deep down I knew it wasn't gonna stay secret for long, but I thought, how cool would it be if you could just learn how to be a kid, make friends, have fun. Learn the heavy stuff when you had the support for it. I really wanted that for you.
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