She frowns at his answer. "I don't think it was as much of a choice as you think." Her tone is careful, thoughtful, as she steps a little closer. "You've spent your whole life being told you're a monster, Sephiroth, trained to obey no matter what. Add in the struggles this place adds on, the isolation, the lack of guidance... why wouldn't you eventually give in?"
She remembers him in Hojo's lab—small and used, measuring his worth only by what he could endure. It's hard to see him as anything else, even now, changed as he is. To her, he's still a child, still wrestling with who he is, who he'll become, and who he could be.
More than this, for sure. More than just a monster.
"But when I look at you, I don't see a monster. Not even now. You're still that kid in Hojo's lab, doing what he's told even though it hurts, not realizing he deserves so much better than that." The way he hadn't wanted Hojo to die. The fear in his eyes. The reluctant trust.
Those that didn't mean it badly called him a cyborg instead of a monster, a different form of engineered weapon but still, ultimately, inhuman. A perfect creation. The culmination of countless research projects and vast amounts of money. He'd come to terms with it, more or less.
He'd come to terms with what was expected of him, more or less, and the price it would demand. So why was it fraying now? "That's a nice way to spin it," he says after a long uncomfortable moment of silence. "It's good for making me seem like an innocent victim, but I'm not." There's a subtle shift in his posture, from wariness to uncertain disquiet. He'd thrown a similar accusation, right before his wings burned to ash. Treat someone like they're an irredeemable monstrosity long enough, and they'd believe it. Tell them they'll fail..
Well. He failed. "I'm responsible. Cloud and Zack merely pointed out the obvious and I got tired of hearing it. I'm not a monster because of what was done to me, Sharon. I am because of what I choose to do with it. Even when I tell myself I'm trying to help, it's not about helping anyone but myself. In hindsight it's pretty obvious."
He was never going to forget those furious words, or Zack's broken agreement with them. And how right they were.
He never should have been a legend to begin with.
"And don't believe everything you've heard about the lab." Cloud's perspectives would by necessity be distorted. Aerith might give a more accurate view, but did she and Sharon talk? In dreams things had been different. But only in dreams would any of it be possible.
Sharon listens, her expression carefully composed. He is a victim, innocent or not; he was born into an impossible cage with no way out. He was molded into a weapon, taught to be useful, to be emotionless—or at least to fake it convincingly.
"You're not a monster at all," she says on a quiet exhale. The fact that he truly believes he is cuts deep, because how many times has she stared into a mirror and seen one herself? Even before the fire, before she turned Silent Hill into a ghost town—and then she became the very demon they said she was. But when he keeps talking, she straightens, confusion pulling her brows together.
"I didn't hear about the lab from anyone." The memory lives inside her, sharp and unshakable. The horror of watching that small child hop onto the examination table as if it were routine. "Wait—do you not remember? Mayerling remembered the memory we experienced together, I thought you did, too."
"Agree to disagree. You don't know what I've been doing. I'm no different than my future self, or my.." It's been well over a year since he learned the truth of what Hojo is, and his mind flinches still from the idea of calling him 'father'. "Creator." The screaming had been the same, hadn't it. His willingness to completely disregard it in pursuit of his goal.
The petty vindictiveness that followed.
Shared memories were occasionally part of Trials, but he doesn't recall one happening. No one had ever discussed what happened during Donatello's efforts to bridge worlds, and so there is no immediate connection to it at all; his almost-blank confusion isn't faked. "I remember my childhood very well, but I don't recall a Trial here that shared any of that."
The look she levels at him makes it clear she disagrees, strongly, but she lets it pass. He's been told the lie so many times that he's accepted it, surrendered to the idea that he can't be anything else. He doesn't need to be a hero, sure, and he's made his share of mistakes, but that doesn't make him a monster. Not yet. Not by a long shot.
"You really don't remember?" The words sting, and she instinctively crosses her arms, brow knitting tight. "It was back in February, after everyone finally got free of Donatello's bullshit. You couldn't have been more than eight or nine. I snapped Hojo's neck and tried to get you out."
Good people don't do the things he's done. That she's willing to let it go (for now) is taken at face value, and he puts it aside as well. It stalked his thoughts and nightmares regularly anyway, it wasn't as if he could escape it.
Besides which, what she says next thoroughly disrupts that entire chain of thought.
It's painfully obvious he does know exactly what she's talking about by the way he goes utterly still. Not at first, calling Donnie's efforts bullshit draws an unsubtle irritated lash of tail and little else; Donatello didn't do any bullshit he was helping people and it would have been amazing, ages didn't mean anything either but he remembered with a clarity that defied how dreams normally went, a single one where his subconscious had for some unknown reason latched onto the idea of Sharon being willing to extricate him from the hell that was Shinra's sixty-eighth floor.
And how the Professor died in that dream.
As false as it had been, as delusional as he'd been to even imagine such a scenario, it had brought him comfort in the intervening months. Made Jenova's efforts to win him over just a bit more difficult.
He remembered. And that someone else could impossibly remember it too stops him dead.
He remembered the other dream in the same night, for its horrors and difficulties it too had left a warmth behind he cherished. But they weren't real. "That was a dream. It wasn't.." Sephiroth's denial falters into uncertainty. People hadn't discussed what happened aloud, at least nowhere he'd heard of it.
"...That was you?" It sounds weak to his own ears, pathetic and small. Really her, and not just some idealized, dramatized version he'd invented. "You would have.. would you really have tried to.."
Sephiroth goes still, and Sharon watches the realization break over him. He tries to push it away, to deny it—proof that he's spent the past six months convincing himself it was just some vivid dream. Something his mind made up. It never once crossed his mind that it was real. And when he finally speaks, his voice is small, as small as the child he was then.
As small as the child he still is now.
"Why wouldn't I?" She could answer the question herself: because no one else would have. Because no one else did. Sharon knows that feeling all too well: being treated as something less than a child, having adults look the other way when it was easier, or more useful, to ignore the harm and abuse. That kind of dismissal scars in ways most will never understand. But she does.
"I'd have torn that whole place apart to protect you, to-to avenge you. I hate Hojo for what he did to Cloud and Zack, but seeing you just..." Her voice falters, breaking sharp and sudden, and she clears her throat hard, trying to force the surge of emotion back down.
"I couldn't have left you to that. I would've never left you to that."
"Because no one else ever had." It's an echo of her own thoughts, a shared experience for all that the exact circumstances differed. "No one thought it worth bothering over." Not either of his mothers, not Professor Gast, the earliest memories of something like kindness he had. Not Vincent, trapped in a hell of his own. Not even Glenn, Matt and Lucia years later.
He'd given up on any thought of rescue long ago. But it had been a nice dream, a consolation even if it hadn't been real, let him muse now and again on how things might have been different, if it hadn't been just a dream. If someone else had been there, not afraid of him, willing to help, able to do the things he couldn't bring himself to do. Like kill the chief source of his torment. He couldn't even do that now.
It's still a dream. None of it was real, but it had been shared, those private faded childish hopes laid bare to someone else. It had been strange and wonderful, even for a little while, to be able to rely on another. To feel safe, to believe even for a little while things might be okay.
After a long moment he shakes his head a little in an effort to shake the thought off too. "It ...." A breath. Steady. "It doesn't matter now. At best, maybe in some reality or other there is ... another you, and another me, and things went differently." Alternate realities can be so close to the ones already known, like Zack appearing twisted by Jenova but still having the right relic for the one Sephiroth knew. "Don't let it bother you." Or bother himself, for that matter. It might shake the tenuous peace he had with his upbringing and let wrath boil back up that it took a woman from an entirely different reality to be the first to even consider trying, and if even one did even in shared dream, maybe he didn't deserve everything that--
Sharon grimaces at his words, the mirror of her own thoughts, and it hits too close because she knows exactly how much it hurts. There's nothing worse than realizing the people who were supposed to care, the ones who should have cared, chose to look away. It shattered her as a child, just as it's shattering him now.
Her chest aches as she reaches out, resting a hand on his shoulder. She knows what he's doing—trying to shut down, to give her an easy way out—but she sees straight through it. She's done the same damn thing herself.
"Sephiroth, it will always bother me. I wish—" she stops, biting her lower lip hard, "I wish I could've changed things for you. But just because we can't rewrite your past doesn't mean we can't build you a better future." Even if that future only exists within Folkmore. "You deserve good things. Happiness. Love. Family. I know you don't believe it, but you do."
There's a tangible twitch, some reflexive urge to jerk back or prepare for attack that is squashed before it can go any further. It's always an unpleasant dichotomy, between being okay with contact, even wanting it badly sometimes, and the lessons of a lifetime in a lab.
It would be easier if she were angry. If he could provoke her into hostility and accusation, which given the things he'd done, the things he'd been doing, would be right and deserved.
Being tired of hostility over things he hadn't done was very different. He'd earned this.
"It doesn't matter if I do or not. You can see that, don't you? Even if I rewrite the future, even if I don't burn down that stupid little town, it's not going to give me my mother back, or a father, or..." Any of it. The planet would still be the planet, with the same people doing the same things. "..Or all the other things. Even the man I'm supposed to become was alone in the end, and he'd had friends. They left him. What chance do I have?"
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2025-09-21 01:35 am (UTC)She remembers him in Hojo's lab—small and used, measuring his worth only by what he could endure. It's hard to see him as anything else, even now, changed as he is. To her, he's still a child, still wrestling with who he is, who he'll become, and who he could be.
More than this, for sure. More than just a monster.
"But when I look at you, I don't see a monster. Not even now. You're still that kid in Hojo's lab, doing what he's told even though it hurts, not realizing he deserves so much better than that." The way he hadn't wanted Hojo to die. The fear in his eyes. The reluctant trust.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-21 02:18 am (UTC)He'd come to terms with what was expected of him, more or less, and the price it would demand. So why was it fraying now? "That's a nice way to spin it," he says after a long uncomfortable moment of silence. "It's good for making me seem like an innocent victim, but I'm not." There's a subtle shift in his posture, from wariness to uncertain disquiet. He'd thrown a similar accusation, right before his wings burned to ash. Treat someone like they're an irredeemable monstrosity long enough, and they'd believe it. Tell them they'll fail..
Well. He failed. "I'm responsible. Cloud and Zack merely pointed out the obvious and I got tired of hearing it. I'm not a monster because of what was done to me, Sharon. I am because of what I choose to do with it. Even when I tell myself I'm trying to help, it's not about helping anyone but myself. In hindsight it's pretty obvious."
He was never going to forget those furious words, or Zack's broken agreement with them. And how right they were.
He never should have been a legend to begin with.
"And don't believe everything you've heard about the lab." Cloud's perspectives would by necessity be distorted. Aerith might give a more accurate view, but did she and Sharon talk? In dreams things had been different. But only in dreams would any of it be possible.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-21 03:15 am (UTC)"You're not a monster at all," she says on a quiet exhale. The fact that he truly believes he is cuts deep, because how many times has she stared into a mirror and seen one herself? Even before the fire, before she turned Silent Hill into a ghost town—and then she became the very demon they said she was. But when he keeps talking, she straightens, confusion pulling her brows together.
"I didn't hear about the lab from anyone." The memory lives inside her, sharp and unshakable. The horror of watching that small child hop onto the examination table as if it were routine. "Wait—do you not remember? Mayerling remembered the memory we experienced together, I thought you did, too."
no subject
Date: 2025-09-21 01:23 pm (UTC)The petty vindictiveness that followed.
Shared memories were occasionally part of Trials, but he doesn't recall one happening. No one had ever discussed what happened during Donatello's efforts to bridge worlds, and so there is no immediate connection to it at all; his almost-blank confusion isn't faked. "I remember my childhood very well, but I don't recall a Trial here that shared any of that."
no subject
Date: 2025-09-21 11:14 pm (UTC)"You really don't remember?" The words sting, and she instinctively crosses her arms, brow knitting tight. "It was back in February, after everyone finally got free of Donatello's bullshit. You couldn't have been more than eight or nine. I snapped Hojo's neck and tried to get you out."
no subject
Date: 2025-09-21 11:31 pm (UTC)Besides which, what she says next thoroughly disrupts that entire chain of thought.
It's painfully obvious he does know exactly what she's talking about by the way he goes utterly still. Not at first, calling Donnie's efforts bullshit draws an unsubtle irritated lash of tail and little else; Donatello didn't do any bullshit he was helping people and it would have been amazing, ages didn't mean anything either but he remembered with a clarity that defied how dreams normally went, a single one where his subconscious had for some unknown reason latched onto the idea of Sharon being willing to extricate him from the hell that was Shinra's sixty-eighth floor.
And how the Professor died in that dream.
As false as it had been, as delusional as he'd been to even imagine such a scenario, it had brought him comfort in the intervening months. Made Jenova's efforts to win him over just a bit more difficult.
He remembered. And that someone else could impossibly remember it too stops him dead.
He remembered the other dream in the same night, for its horrors and difficulties it too had left a warmth behind he cherished. But they weren't real. "That was a dream. It wasn't.." Sephiroth's denial falters into uncertainty. People hadn't discussed what happened aloud, at least nowhere he'd heard of it.
"...That was you?" It sounds weak to his own ears, pathetic and small. Really her, and not just some idealized, dramatized version he'd invented. "You would have.. would you really have tried to.."
no subject
Date: 2025-09-22 01:39 am (UTC)As small as the child he still is now.
"Why wouldn't I?" She could answer the question herself: because no one else would have. Because no one else did. Sharon knows that feeling all too well: being treated as something less than a child, having adults look the other way when it was easier, or more useful, to ignore the harm and abuse. That kind of dismissal scars in ways most will never understand. But she does.
"I'd have torn that whole place apart to protect you, to-to avenge you. I hate Hojo for what he did to Cloud and Zack, but seeing you just..." Her voice falters, breaking sharp and sudden, and she clears her throat hard, trying to force the surge of emotion back down.
"I couldn't have left you to that. I would've never left you to that."
no subject
Date: 2025-09-22 02:30 am (UTC)He'd given up on any thought of rescue long ago. But it had been a nice dream, a consolation even if it hadn't been real, let him muse now and again on how things might have been different, if it hadn't been just a dream. If someone else had been there, not afraid of him, willing to help, able to do the things he couldn't bring himself to do. Like kill the chief source of his torment. He couldn't even do that now.
It's still a dream. None of it was real, but it had been shared, those private faded childish hopes laid bare to someone else. It had been strange and wonderful, even for a little while, to be able to rely on another. To feel safe, to believe even for a little while things might be okay.
After a long moment he shakes his head a little in an effort to shake the thought off too. "It ...." A breath. Steady. "It doesn't matter now. At best, maybe in some reality or other there is ... another you, and another me, and things went differently." Alternate realities can be so close to the ones already known, like Zack appearing twisted by Jenova but still having the right relic for the one Sephiroth knew. "Don't let it bother you." Or bother himself, for that matter. It might shake the tenuous peace he had with his upbringing and let wrath boil back up that it took a woman from an entirely different reality to be the first to even consider trying, and if even one did even in shared dream, maybe he didn't deserve everything that--
no subject
Date: 2025-09-26 11:10 pm (UTC)Her chest aches as she reaches out, resting a hand on his shoulder. She knows what he's doing—trying to shut down, to give her an easy way out—but she sees straight through it. She's done the same damn thing herself.
"Sephiroth, it will always bother me. I wish—" she stops, biting her lower lip hard, "I wish I could've changed things for you. But just because we can't rewrite your past doesn't mean we can't build you a better future." Even if that future only exists within Folkmore. "You deserve good things. Happiness. Love. Family. I know you don't believe it, but you do."
lurches upright ok
Date: 2025-10-04 12:03 am (UTC)It would be easier if she were angry. If he could provoke her into hostility and accusation, which given the things he'd done, the things he'd been doing, would be right and deserved.
Being tired of hostility over things he hadn't done was very different. He'd earned this.
"It doesn't matter if I do or not. You can see that, don't you? Even if I rewrite the future, even if I don't burn down that stupid little town, it's not going to give me my mother back, or a father, or..." Any of it. The planet would still be the planet, with the same people doing the same things. "..Or all the other things. Even the man I'm supposed to become was alone in the end, and he'd had friends. They left him. What chance do I have?"