[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.
[Being A Hero, all capitals and intentions, was about the accolades. About being noticed, about doing good things and being recognized for it. Posters on walls. He never wanted any of it.
He still didn't.]
I wanted to know, though. As soon as I realized.. someone knew what I was, why I'm different, where I come from.. if I had .. anything beyond the labs, anything to look forward to. I wanted to know so much I used that truth ice cream from last summer on Vincent to force him to tell me what you hadn't.
[Almost absently he digs one claw into the tiny scales along his tail, working on lifting one up. They don't like to, but like a fish's scales, it's possible. What would it have been like, if he hadn't demanded answers?]
I don't regret knowing most of it. It kept me safe, when Jenova entered my dreams. If you hadn't told me, I don't know what would have happened to me. I don't think... being a 'normal kid' was ever in the cards for me, in any time. On any world. But it's a nice thought.
[Zack exhales at that, rubbing a hand briefly up and down his face. Seriously... he doesn't even know what else Vincent had to tell him. Probably shouldn't ask. Did that make things better, or worse...?
He should have asked Vincent so many questions. If only the guy wasn't gone now. If only he hadn't been kind of infuriating to talk to.]
Well, I definitely didn't say, nevermind think, that normal would be a thing. None of us are normal, we can't be normal with what's been put into us. But... yeah, would've been nice. Close to normal's better than not.
[The Turk knew all KINDS of things that Zack didn't, and couldn't have known. It was all very educational, if depressing. He'd have kept hounding about it in more and more inescapable ways if he had to, until he found out. Sephiroth's desire to know overrode the sensibilities of what everyone else would point out gets cats killed all the time.
Even to Sephiroth, talking to Vincent could get infuriating. He hid so much that didn't need hiding.]
No, you didn't. But it's ... part of it, for me.
[Normal. Normal lives, normal families, perfectly ordinary boring expectations when growing up.]
If I hadn't turned out to be unusually strong, would I have just grown up to be a scientist as my human parents had been? That's almost normal. ..A Shinra kind of normal. And then none of you would have gotten dragged into it too. What would you have wanted to do, if SOLDIER was off the table? What did you want to be?
Let's be real, if you weren't as strong as you are, Hojo would've just thrown you away and started over. He's got no use for anybody who doesn't meet his standards. You probably would have been better off.
[It's a good question, though. What would he have done... what could he have been?]
I've had to think about that sometimes, here. Like- could I have been happy, living a different life? Can I be anything besides a SOLDIER now? I dunno. I think if I'd been stuck in Gongaga I'd be miserable. I wanted to do more than just farm mushrooms and chase swamp monsters. If SOLDIER didn't exist, I'd probably be a regular trooper. Probably have died anyway. I was never good at much besides fighting.
[And he was really, really good at fighting. Not like, Sephiroth-level, in his prime, nobody was that good. But he made a mark on his own. Everything else he does just ends up at best passable. Kinda mediocre. He really was a model SOLDIER: good at what he does, obedient, loves battle. How far would he have gone, if Nibelheim hadn't happened? How much would he have tolerated?
He doesn't want to think about that.]
I wouldn't change my life back home. If I hadn't been SOLDIER, I wouldn't have met any of my favourite people. [Not Aerith, not Cloud, not Angeal. Not even Sephiroth.] Here... I can do something else. I think I wanna do something else.
The professor isn't wasteful, I'd have been put to work in some other project I suppose. Many experiments need subjects.
[And yet the idea doesn't seem to bother him. His life would have likely been over long before he was able to form memories, and that ... would have been a far less painful adventure.
But he understood very well the desire to do something else.
Be something else.]
If it's true that there's a way to return the dead back to a life in their own time, then maybe it's something you can aim for, eventually. .. You could try construction. Who needs heavy equipment when the guy you hired can lift a car?
[Zack makes a derisive noise but doesn't comment further on Hojo. He's a waste of air, and he saw plenty of shit science in the four years he was locked up, but whatever. Maybe he just got worse at it as he aged and got more desperate, with his prized creation missing in action.]
On the way back to Midgar I talked about bein' a mercenary. That was the game plan: not just fighting jobs, but any job. Whatever came my way, whatever I wanted to try. How's that for variety?
[He pauses then, his hands clasping together in his lap once more.]
...Here... Sharon said I should try mentoring. It's been stuck in my head since.
You've got time here to learn how to do different things that might be useful for 'any job'.
[What kind of things besides violence would even be expected of an ex-SOLDIER? Especially one who admits he doesn't have much of a different skillset? Maybe all the schools here can be of use for that.
Everyone needs mechanics. Maybe he should suggest it.]
A teacher? [That's what mentoring is, isn't it?] ... If you think you'd like it, why not. Maybe you'll enjoy it.
[Makes him kind of think, he hasn't made the most of this borrowed time, really. He's been floating too much, slacking off. Maybe that's his right, since he died. No responsibilities, no duties, no job except "live". He could keep doing that, could go as long as he lives in this world, untethered from Shinra and everything he used to live for, besides his friends.
That's not really him, though. He's always needed more, more. And maybe it's time to channel all of his selfishness into teaching a kid how to be selfish, himself.]
Teacher's a little too formal for a guy like me. Mentor's more fast and loose. I share what I know and teach what I want. There's even somebody I've got in mind, if he's up for it.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.]
no subject
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?
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.]
no subject
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?
no subject
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?]
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.
no subject
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?"]
no subject
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.
no subject
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?
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-08 10:55 pm (UTC)He still didn't.]
I wanted to know, though. As soon as I realized.. someone knew what I was, why I'm different, where I come from.. if I had .. anything beyond the labs, anything to look forward to. I wanted to know so much I used that truth ice cream from last summer on Vincent to force him to tell me what you hadn't.
[Almost absently he digs one claw into the tiny scales along his tail, working on lifting one up. They don't like to, but like a fish's scales, it's possible. What would it have been like, if he hadn't demanded answers?]
I don't regret knowing most of it. It kept me safe, when Jenova entered my dreams. If you hadn't told me, I don't know what would have happened to me. I don't think... being a 'normal kid' was ever in the cards for me, in any time. On any world. But it's a nice thought.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-08 11:57 pm (UTC)He should have asked Vincent so many questions. If only the guy wasn't gone now. If only he hadn't been kind of infuriating to talk to.]
Well, I definitely didn't say, nevermind think, that normal would be a thing. None of us are normal, we can't be normal with what's been put into us. But... yeah, would've been nice. Close to normal's better than not.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-09 01:26 pm (UTC)Even to Sephiroth, talking to Vincent could get infuriating. He hid so much that didn't need hiding.]
No, you didn't. But it's ... part of it, for me.
[Normal. Normal lives, normal families, perfectly ordinary boring expectations when growing up.]
If I hadn't turned out to be unusually strong, would I have just grown up to be a scientist as my human parents had been? That's almost normal. ..A Shinra kind of normal. And then none of you would have gotten dragged into it too. What would you have wanted to do, if SOLDIER was off the table? What did you want to be?
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Date: 2025-09-11 02:06 am (UTC)[It's a good question, though. What would he have done... what could he have been?]
I've had to think about that sometimes, here. Like- could I have been happy, living a different life? Can I be anything besides a SOLDIER now? I dunno. I think if I'd been stuck in Gongaga I'd be miserable. I wanted to do more than just farm mushrooms and chase swamp monsters. If SOLDIER didn't exist, I'd probably be a regular trooper. Probably have died anyway. I was never good at much besides fighting.
[And he was really, really good at fighting. Not like, Sephiroth-level, in his prime, nobody was that good. But he made a mark on his own. Everything else he does just ends up at best passable. Kinda mediocre. He really was a model SOLDIER: good at what he does, obedient, loves battle. How far would he have gone, if Nibelheim hadn't happened? How much would he have tolerated?
He doesn't want to think about that.]
I wouldn't change my life back home. If I hadn't been SOLDIER, I wouldn't have met any of my favourite people. [Not Aerith, not Cloud, not Angeal. Not even Sephiroth.] Here... I can do something else. I think I wanna do something else.
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Date: 2025-09-11 09:02 pm (UTC)[And yet the idea doesn't seem to bother him. His life would have likely been over long before he was able to form memories, and that ... would have been a far less painful adventure.
But he understood very well the desire to do something else.
Be something else.]
If it's true that there's a way to return the dead back to a life in their own time, then maybe it's something you can aim for, eventually. .. You could try construction. Who needs heavy equipment when the guy you hired can lift a car?
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Date: 2025-09-12 07:28 pm (UTC)On the way back to Midgar I talked about bein' a mercenary. That was the game plan: not just fighting jobs, but any job. Whatever came my way, whatever I wanted to try. How's that for variety?
[He pauses then, his hands clasping together in his lap once more.]
...Here... Sharon said I should try mentoring. It's been stuck in my head since.
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Date: 2025-09-12 07:58 pm (UTC)[What kind of things besides violence would even be expected of an ex-SOLDIER? Especially one who admits he doesn't have much of a different skillset? Maybe all the schools here can be of use for that.
Everyone needs mechanics. Maybe he should suggest it.]
A teacher? [That's what mentoring is, isn't it?] ... If you think you'd like it, why not. Maybe you'll enjoy it.
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Date: 2025-09-17 11:41 pm (UTC)That's not really him, though. He's always needed more, more. And maybe it's time to channel all of his selfishness into teaching a kid how to be selfish, himself.]
Teacher's a little too formal for a guy like me. Mentor's more fast and loose. I share what I know and teach what I want. There's even somebody I've got in mind, if he's up for it.
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