That leaves an important but unspoken question - how much icecream has Vincent eaten this week? The stuff is strangely addictive.
"Functional, then." Not fine, but operating under acceptable parameters. He could still fight, could still accomplish a mission if he had one, just any down time he had at all was going to be spent terribly distracted. It's for the best Shinra isn't around, somehow lab tests would inevitably crop up right at the wrong moment and he'd fail. How much less functional would he be, without the aid of one of his future victims? Zack didn't have to stay. "...Um. Certain forms of lilies." But those don't go into teas, lilies are toxic to begin with, nobody's about to eat them.
A weakness, but not one easily exploited. Ambushing Sephiroth with a boquet wouldn't do much good.
Easier to exploit would be the flinching unhappiness with his true nature, but prodding at that could end in a fireball. Jenova succeeded, but Jenova didn't care whether or not it ended in flames. "You'd know, wouldn't you," is the quiet murmur, but it's not exactly pointed, or meant to antagonize deliberately. Humans weren't shapeshifters. Humans didn't turn into deformed behemoths and back.
But the Turks didn't exactly hire monsters either.
All three of the names Vincent mentions are known, and two better than the third, by the way his head jerks up. Gast had been .. the closest thing he had to a caring guardian, for a while. Those memories were dim, but they remained still. It.. shouldn't be a surprise that Gast worked closely with the people who both made and destroyed his life, but it stung anyway. "Did she turn you into what you are now?"
Love was a weakness, after all. And someone who could use her own child as an experiment would surely be able to take advantage of someone who loved her.
Vincent will never admit to how much ice cream he had. Never. ...Probably will under the effects of ice cream come to think. But even before that he's had to talk about a lot of stuff he'd wish he hadn't had to.
"Hrmph." That sounds like doubt about being even on a level of 'functional'. Vincent crosses the room with the tea still steeping and holds out the cup to Sephiroth. "Drink."
It's warm, it's soothing. It's said to help with anxiety. There's no caffeine or sugar though some sweetner had been tempting if only to help with shock. Vincent never claimed to have the best bedside manner but his words sound firm.
He won't linger near Sephiroth long, giving the teen room of at least a sword's length. The fluidity of his movements seems to hitch again. It takes him a long time to answer, as if he's struggling to hold back the truth as long as it takes to find the right way of saying it. Not that he can resist forever.
"Hojo gave me this body. Lucrecia... did her part." The last escapes in an expulsion of breath. Only a few weeks sooner and Vincent may have had another means to end his statement. Vincent looks down at partially raised arms. Looking at himself.
"I wouldn't have survived if she hadn't used her earlier research to try and stabilize Hojo's 'failure'." Like the love reflected in his words and expression earlier, there is no denying the depth of disgust and hatred for the professor.
It's Thirteen's fault for making it all tasty. Maybe Sephiroth wouldn't have gotten sick as often as he did this week if it was LESS tasty. A diet of icecream and potato wedges has side effects even for a SOLDIER.
Chamomile tea didn't factor into it, on Never Fade. Didn't now either, he has no idea what he's being handed, and though there's a certain wariness at Vincent's approach, the cup is taken anyway and given a sniff. Tea is not a regular part of his diet either, and this type is entirely new; he waits until Vincent is out of reach again before trying it. It tastes.. bitter. Herbal.
There's no compulsion on him to blurt out the truth, no matter how painful it was, so Sephiroth remains quiet for a time, piecing this with other bits of information. How many people were part of that 'research'? One success meant countless failures, as he had incorporated into himself. Who knows how many children died so he could live. How many people suffered before Lucrecia found the right thing to use on Vincent? "Was Professor Gast part of the experiments used on you?"
It's inevitable he's going to circle back around to his mother, but groundwork had to be done first. Had there ever been anyone, anyone at all in his life who hadn't been using him?
Leaning against the wall and crossing his arms again, this time Vincent's pause is not an effort to fight, but one to recollect. His fingers noticeably tap against his bicep while considering.
"I don't think so," he finally says. "Gast was gone at the time I was shot by Hojo. And I wasn't a willing subject." There's a wry, bitter smile at the memory. "Explaining a missing Turk might have been easier for Hojo if he didn't also have to explain why he was in a specimen chamber."
It's not like Turks didn't die on assignment. Nibel Mountains were a dangerous place. Vincent isn't blind to the fact that someone must have done something to cover up the incident. But... it probably wasn't Gast who might have also been spending more time at Icicle Inn by that point. There were any number of plausible lies, up to and including claims that he'd tried to interfere with the project itself.
Ultimately outside of his own department which was already pragmatic about such behaviors within the company and Lucrecia, there were few who would have seen him as more than a useful but ultimately replaceable asset.
How the hell did such a scrawny, pathetic man get the jump on a Turk enough to put a bullet in him? Little of the tea is actually being drunk, but it keeps his hands occupied if nothing else. It'll go all over the floor in an instant if he chose violence, but for now he did no such thing. No need.
"What do you know of the theories and experiments that went into my creation? Was it Gast's design, Hojo's? Mother's?"
What does he know. At the time, probably more than some scientists gave him credit for as just another background part of security. But the question gives rise to a somewhat pained huff of humor and Vincent closes his eyes a moment.
"Gast was the one to originally study the creature that became known as Jenova. You may have been told this already. It was believed at the time to have been of an ancient race known as the Cetra. So much so the professor named it after his late wife."
That... probably wouldn't have happened if the truth was realized. Probably. Scientists can be... eccentric. Vincent seems to have a reasonable amount of respect for Gast where it was utterly lacking in Hojo's case.
"I know there were at least two branches of the Jenova Project. Project S, the one that took place in Nibelheim, had contributions in equal parts from Hojo and Lucrecia, working off of Gast's findings. Though Hojo played a larger role as your birth approached and was likely the main contributer after."
There is a short pause.
"The details I know, both from before and what I found out after I came to, aren't necessarily complete. But they aren't pleasant either."
Of course Vincent is sure the youth knows that. How could anything be pleasant when people were working to create a monster? Even the earlier concept of a living 'Cetra' was still going to be as a result of a parade of horrors, trials and errors and successes alike.
"Your mother..." He is about to say something; something that will be the truth but also wasn't yet asked for. Does Sephiroth want to stop him or will he let Vincent say it?
"I'm not here for pleasant," is the immediate snapped response, for a moment the steely composure fracturing into frustration and anger. "It's not like it's going to be worse than what I already know." More importantly, how is Vincent fighting off the truth spell's compulsion to simply blurt things out instead of what seems like careful censorship to him? Was there some sort of counter food item he hadn't known about?
No, he's come too far to start second guessing things now. He's here for confirmation, and to fill in gaps Zack hadn't known. He takes a steadying breath and shakes it off. "I'm sorry, that's uncalled for. Please stop trying to filter things. I already know the worst of it. This is just.. filling in the details."
It looks like whatever Vincent was going to say about Lucrecia will not be said then.
"It can be. If Zack told you, I doubt you have the full picture. Or an unbiased one." Vincent returns shortly.
He's not fighting the compulsion or truly capable of it. But the gunman can see ways to direct it while the more painful truths are being collected in some semblance of recognizable order.
"And you know that. Or you wouldn't have brought the ice cream to me." If Zack had been able to give him everything, even if the ice cream had been in play, there's no reason to have come back to Vincent for information.
But the truth that he blurted out just now was one with some force behind it. Even if Zack's reaction was perfectly valid, it had still given rise to some ire. And to think that colored view is the only thing Sephiroth's heard about anything... Vincent takes a deep breath.
"...No, it's not. Uncalled for." His tone is calmer. "But my frustration is. Sorry."
He raises a hand and points at the still empty chair. It really does look comfy.
"Sit down. I'm not going anywhere. This will take a while."
Whatever Sephiroth decides to do at this offer, Vincent begins to speak. Everything he knows, from the reports and memos, to what he overheard. To things he witnessed and their order. Even a small fraction of what he gleaned had been done after Sephiroth's birth. The theories, the experiments. The trials and errors.
Vincent speaks easily on the concepts, not just as one thoroughly briefed, but as if he comprehends their fundamental principles, though never once is there anything that hints he was a scientist himself.
Although Sephiroth is under no compulsion to speak the truth, his flaws were more not speaking about something at all than outright lying. Other people though.. "I brought it because I expect you to lie if you can."
Thus, prevent it. Guarantee truth, even if it's unpleasant. And nothing could really be worse than the mother he'd dreamed of being the one to experiment on him, abandon him, turn him into some parasitic monstrosity. He hadn't felt the need to do the same to Zack, who he was sure .. he hoped he was right, that Zack wouldn't lie about it. He had no reason to keep up the illusion of not knowing now. Sephiroth couldn't give up all trust on everyone, not entirely, but if he can verify, and force truth in the verification..
He doesn't sit when bidden, not right away. He's no scientist either, but raised around them and by them he understood quite a bit regardless, perhaps more than Vincent did if he could get at the actual documentation.
It's .. not worse, than what he'd already heard.
But it does fill in gaps. A lot of them. There's questions, inevitably, for now about the process and what they'd hoped to achieve, though there was no prayer of ever getting a Cetra from an alien parasite. Just a trained killer.
Not all of it is Hojo, as he expected. They were partners, for better or worse, equals in atrocity and ingenuity. Gast might have laid the foundation, but it was Lucrecia and Hojo who built on it with all the morality of any Shinra scientist.
It weighs on him visibly, the mask of indifference cracking again in abject unhappiness, but it's not a new wound, just a week-old one pulled at again, and with it the slow dragging spiral of despair. He'd never had a chance at anything like normalcy, no matter what he dreamed of. It was taken away long before he was born.
There's one question though, that eventually flickers up. Vincent obviously cared about her greatly. And she at least was invested in Vincent as an experiment. Where did that end? "Are you my father?" He doesn't sound fixated on it at least, it's a question, not a confirmation.
"I would have told the truth. But that doesn't mean you were wrong."
Forced truth or not, Vincent knows himself well enough to admit that he'd have found it almost impossible not to avoid some subjects unless asked directly. And who doesn't have a bias when left to their own devices no matter how committed they'd be to the facts?
Vincent may be better at hiding his discomfort. More years of practice. But it's far from perfect and this subject is one of the few that incite signs of emotion in the quiet man. Sephiroth's question brings the man to look up from his reflective poise with sharp attention to meet the teen's eyes.
Jaw is visibly clenched when he just as quickly shifts his eyes away. Is this pain because of a fleeting possibility? Because of the bitter knowledge of who Lucrecia ran to when the peaceful days came crashing down?
"As far as I'm aware, Hojo is your biological father." It's the truth. And it's clear he hates that it is only slightly more than he dislikes being compelled to say it.
Why anyone would willingly and deliberately marry Hojo was honestly the best evidence Sephiroth had for his mother being as utterly awful as the man was. A Turk might not be the ideal partner, but at least if they did terrible things it was because they were under orders to do it. Scientists, in his experience, tested things simply because it was there to test.
The confirmation that the twisted troglodyte of a man was his sire isn't ... as much of a surprise as it could have been. His entire life Hojo had orchestrated everything about his day, from meals to what training he endured.
It's hard to mask the disgust though. "I think I'd rather the alien be my parent after all," he mutters, scrubbing his face with one hand. There were many horrifying revelations to be had, but this one? This one's just disgusting. He already knew Hojo had no morals and no qualms about abusing whoever he chose whenever he chose, Sephiroth was merely one of countless victims. "At least a parasite can't be blamed for being a parasite."
Vincent would love to say something like 'that's giving a parasite like Hojo too much leniency' or 'I can't fault that line of thinking' Neither would be an actual truth.
"We can't choose who our parents are. But creature named Jenova is not, nor ever was." This... has to be the truth, right? Vincent is still looking away.
"...I'm sorry I can't tell you otherwise." That Hojo isn't Sephiroth's biological parent? That Vincent himself isn't? Both could be equally true. It most certainly had nothing to do with his comment regarding the alien.
He could see it another way though, by the way his expression darkens. "I am as much a relation to Jenova as I am to those two scientists." Would Vincent have been a better option? He hadn't been there either, after all, but why would he have been? "And the alien, at least, did not deliberately experiment on her own offspring."
Nothing in Sephiroth's words suggest he's decided Jenova is his real mother and the rest can burn, but it might not be comfortable to hear anyway. No truth spell holds him in sway, his reality was painful enough without its necessity. Aside from the visceral unpleasantness of knowing a monster was part of his genetics, the monster was not to blame. "I have no parents, merely genetic donors."
And if Jenova was still alive, and showed even the barest hints of interest in 'her' spawn, it's no surprise his older self turned on the world so thoroughly. What else was there?
... What else was there even for him, when he returned? He was reasonably sure his team wouldn't reject him but ... "Why did you try to kill me?" That question again, because Vincent hadn't really answered it, and this time he's not leaving open ended options to pick from.
"That thing wouldn't have felt anything remotely like the suffering your mother went through when she realized what she had done!"
No, it wasn't comfortable to hear. And unfiltered words are spoken in the heat of that moment. Vincent visibly winces even as his tongue moves.
"It was a calamity without morals. Whatever you choose to think of your biological parents, make no mistake, Sephiroth, Jenova will never be your benefactor or patron, nor anything remotely like family. It will use you to its own ends."
Vincent is then left with a question to answer. One he partially deflected earlier. But now he can't.
"Because of what you become. And... I did not want Cloud to have the blood of a child on his hands."
Personal... but not a yes or no he'd called it earlier. There was a personal reason he did it himself but the threat itself... that was the true reason.
"I was wrong to focus on the future... your future. Though that won't change my sins."
A bold claim, that the person who experimented on her own baby had any qualms about it at all, when the child was left with the very people who sought to make a weapon of him. It earns a short, bitter laugh; he has no attachment to any of them. Not Hojo, not Lucrecia, and not Jenova. But of the three it's the world destroying calamity that seems to be the lesser evil.
"Then Jenova fits right in with the rest, doesn't she?" His voice cracks at the end; things the elder would long have mastered hiding, pain and disgust and anguish embarrassingly obvious. Everyone uses him for their own ends. He had no family, no benefactors, no patrons doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. It's all because of what he can do for them. "I don't want to hear about the so-called suffering of a woman who'd experiment on her own child and a lover and then leave them to Hojo."
Sephiroth isn't her only victim, just the one still standing, sneering at the idea of cutting off his lack of a future being a sin. It sounded to him like thousands of lives would be saved if someone did.
How many were there? In a terrible way even Cloud was her victim by extension. "Where was she?" Trial after trial, test after test, surgery after surgery at Hojo's cackling whims. "Didn't she want to see what kind of monster all her work and research spawned?" On the questionable bright side, it's not madness. There's no edge of insanity to any of it, just the broken fragments of a shattered impossible dream. Pain can turn to anger so easily, and Vincent is an easier target than Zack, there's far less attachment.
In the wake of Sephiroth's outburst of pain, sorrow and disgust came those three simple words. In face of the teen's despair at all he'd been put through under Hojo's thumb, there could only be guilt and shame for the simple fact that he, not her son, had benefited from Lucrecia's presence.
Without the cloak to hide his face, Vincent can't hide the stricken expression. His empathy for Sephiroth's plight is real. Not a sudden realization that the child before him was the real victim of adults and their stupidity, but something that seems to have haunted the man in some form or another for over thirty years.
"...Lucrecia did not give you up. Despite her misdeeds, her willingness to go through with it despite protests."
His protests which may have caused her to remain silent and complacent in wake of their parting... No, it didn't change that she did it regardless.
"...Despite her actions, she intended to raise you as her own. Love you. Even if that had led to her death in the end."
Vincent doesn't want to look at Sephiroth as the words continue to spill out. But he does... he must if only to confront the horror of the retelling.
"Jenova became a part of her as well. The process put a strain on her body. When you were born, you were taken away and she was not allowed to even see you. Then I was careless and let my guard down. After... Hojo finished his experiment and I was in a unstable state, she used her earlier research to save me."
This time, with a deep inhale of breath, Vincent indulges in a moment of looking up.
"I remember pieces during that. Watching her become more unstable. Pleading for your return. She... her mental and physical state was deteriorating."
Then his gaze lowers and he shakes his head.
"When I regained consciousness, she was gone. I didn't know what happened to her for a long time. I thought perhaps she had died."
There is a bitter laugh that falls from his mouth and seems to twist his expression. Self-loathing.
"You might as well ask why I didn't come. Instead, I let myself fall into a deep slumber, thinking your mother had sought revenge on me for not saving her and you. That it was my punishment to live with the nightmares."
He's managed to regain control of his tone, at least, and that with supreme effort. "Die. Was she dead?" An important question, because it could potentially change much. A dead woman could never go looking for her son. A dead woman couldn't be there to see the results of her work, years later.
"Who protested what they were doing?" Was it her, or someone else?
"No." Vincent knows now. She wasn't dead. Still isn't... exactly. "And before you ask, I don't know if she ever tried to get to you. Or if..."
If she did what Vincent himself did and sunk into her nightmares. It's nice to have a wishful thought that maybe she had tried and failed to get through Shinra to take back her child. But given what he knows now of her mental state at the time? It's best not to give any false hope.
"I know she tried to take her life but wasn't able to die. And that eventually she'd entomb herself."
Vincent has recovered some of his composure. It's still there, the raw discomfort at being exposed and vulnerable, but really what's that amount to in the face of the child he'd wronged?
"I did. I protested human experiments when they first decided to go forward with the procedure." Could he say he'd have gone against it so adamantly if it hadn't been Lucrecia? Some other woman? Maybe he would have had misgivings. He could only hope he felt something for the kid to be born out of that experiment too. But he doesn't need to say all this does he? The experiment went on. Vincent already acknowledged Sephiroth's birth in his tale before getting fatally shot.
"Not hard enough." There's a self recriminating snort, bitter words. His hand comes up as if to adjust his cloak collar higher, but it's not there and thus is drops awkwardly again. "I suppose I would have just been reassigned if I had. But I wanted to stay around. Protect her, even from a distance."
Bitter at his younger, foolish self. Not for loving Lucrecia, but being blinded by it and not doing more.
The heightened emotional response of Legend is not a help on an already tumultuous situation; it doesn't matter what the feeling is, it's emphasized, from fury to despair to the slow inexorable grind of resignation. His training demands he rein himself in, emotional outbursts were shameful at best, and clouded rational thought.
It's hard. Impossible to sort out in even a handful of days, never mind the span of a couple hours. The thought that maybe she'd been coerced, that the reservations had been hers but she'd been cajoled into it away falters; it should have been a red flag to someone that the Turk found something unethical. But it hadn't mattered. Not for Vincent, and not for him. If Lucrecia cared, it hadn't been enough to go after either of them.
Maybe she thought she was bringing their ancestral species back from extinction, not engineering a monstrosity.
"She betrayed you too, you know." The tea, half finished, is set down lest he break the cup accidentally. "No matter how much you cared for her, in the end. She left you behind." Just like she did to him. "It's disturbing to think Hojo might have been trying to do me a kindness, not telling me about her. About him."
In a way it was. Sure it kept him hoping and searching, but it also kept him from the devastation of reality. Kept him tame, predictable. "The locket, a false name. If there's only questions and no answers.. oh, it's easy to dream up all kinds of fantastic impossibilities."
Vincent would love to deny Sephiroth's claim. And in a sense, betrayal is a harsh word for what happened... at least to him. His body even shifts sharply in a gesture of denial. His words are ones he'd have had a hard time, if not found impossible, to voice.
"I don't know. She was gone before I could ask her anything. All I had... decades later, was uploaded memories of how she felt when she was still trying." Memories and emotions. But had she changed her mind? Given up? Ran away? Tried to do something and failed again and again? All of those were possible and some would have mandated that she go into hiding from the Company. But he knows nothing important, does he?
By the time all the words are out, his physical actions are exhausted. Or he is, from the remorseless truth.
"The one time I could was after I met Cloud and found where she was hidden. She... I was too caught up in soothing her fears. Apologizing to her to ask anything I should, damn this ice cream."
Vincent sweeps his arm out. If something had been in range, it probably would have been knocked over or off the surface. Anger is never good for him. Yet it's stymied again. That locket, the picture and a false name. The false name isn't as important. That Sephiroth had the picture...
After all of this, it will never be a surprise again that Sephiroth is .. an afterthought, if he's thought of at all, to what goes on around him. Or what happens to him. It's not really ... ever about him, the more he thinks about it. Like a stage prop in a play, the prop is significant, but it's not the actors. It's there for the actors to react to.
"Uploaded memories?" That Vincent never thought to interfere is .. not troublesome. Vincent's a new player on the field, one Sephiroth's built no real feelings around for years upon years. His mother, however.
Still alive, when he'd be a grown man, when Nibelheim was obliterated. When he chose the alien over the human, because where was the human?
The angry gestures miss the half-full tea cup, but Sephiroth doesn't react to it as if it were an immediate threat or attack, that was ... beyond them, for now. Violence would still be possible, but not based on hair trigger nerves alone.
"...My ... father, I suppose." The locket, the picture. If he had to accept that he was a monster, then he could accept that that inhumanity also came from his supposedly human kin. And it's said about the same way one might say they just found a bag full of rotting rats.
"Yes, uploads of her neurodata to the worldwide network. Hidden. Her research, her memories, emotions. Data related to what she did to me. There might be something about you."
This time, he does have a proper reason for not pursuing it. Someone else was trying to destroy the world and yeet off with all the Lifestream.
"I don't know for sure. What we had been looking for wasn't related to you." Shelke might have, but it was definitely not the time to be looking for nuances about Sephiroth, a man that seemed to have finally been put to rest. And dredging up that sin would not have been an aid to mentally overcoming Chaos.
Vincent's gaze lights on the spoon and the tin cup. Both are retrieved and taken over to the counter. There's a sink of sorts, at least a drain to pour the remaining tea down and a hand worked well pump. Probably to a tank in both cases but irrelevant. Vincent's actions to suddenly retrieve and rinse these dishes is something to keep himself mentally focused and busy.
"Hojo." His ears do pick up nuance Sephiroth speaks of his biological father and it is a grim pleasure that wars against the sinking sensation in his chest. It's nice to know the disgust and hatred are mutual.
Hojo had a photo though. And he wasn't the type of man who cared for things that weren't of interest to him. In some twisted way, that meant the professor had on some level acknowledged 'that woman' as he would come to refer to her. Maybe that in itself was just something meant to anger Vincent at the time.
Referring to her as 'Jenova' to Sephiroth? That was just something he'd come to expect from Hojo. But it explained why Sephiroth had called her that. Vincent's voice drifts over the sound of splashing water.
"You might have to acknowledge Hojo at some level. But you don't need to call him your father."
Though nothing else is said about uploaded data, it's certain he's going to remember it. Information can be retrieved. He intended to - that just added to the things he was going to have to retrieve. It didn't have to be about him in specific, he already knows how that story goes.
Trust but verify. Always get more information.
"I think it's beyond the point of mincing words." It fit the pattern. Why wouldn't Hojo be his father? There wasn't a better option to make the story worse. He felt like a character in one of the telenovelas he liked watching, whatever would cause maximum impact, that was the reality. "It doesn't alter the facts. But it does.. explain some things." He'd always had a sharp mind, for better or worse.
Hojo's unrelenting obsession with him. With 'perfecting' him. Of course it would go beyond merely being a pet project.
"...I never really had a chance to be anything else, did I." And that's terribly quiet, but in the hush of Wintermute and the lack of other sounds it might be picked up on anyway. "From the moment the project began, the outcome was ... inevitable."
Still was, wasn't it. "...How does it end?"
A whisper of thought follows it, immediately. In fire.
Vincent's relationship with his father was never so bad as this and he would be the first to admit it. Yet there is a facet he can draw from it that would still apply.
"A man can be responsible for bringing you into the world, Sephiroth. But that doesn't always make him your father."
The rational mind, the intelligence that understands facts aren't changed by feelings? The gunman recognizes it too. Cup and spoon are wiped dry and put away. Neat, orderly. Vincent turns around to face the teenager.
"Something you learn here." His right hand is placed on his chest. "Not here." It is raised to brush against his brow then drops again. He won't say anymore about it unless he's asked. It's something Sephiroth will have to think over and decide for himself in the end.
He's calm enough again and sober. "Nibelheim? The final confrontation with your future self? Or both?" One might argue that Nibelheim was only the beginning. But it wasn't. And it could just as easily be argued that it is the end of the Sephiroth that had been known.
That's the mincing words he meant; no matter how he sliced it Hojo would still be his father, Lucrecia his mother, and Jenova his ... third, alien optional mother. And the only one regularly in his life was the amoral maniac head of the Science Department. None of them would ever be mom. Or dad. He just shakes his head; there's no .. warm, wholesome connection to the idea of a father to break, it didn't matter.
"All of it. Zack only knew to the point where he was killed." Not by him, surprisingly, but that too was something of a relief. "Thirteen claims we can return to our times and change things, somehow. That not everyone forgets. I..." His fingers curl slowly into fists with a creak of leather. "I might be a monster, but ... guard hounds are too. They don't try to destroy the world. The better forewarned I am the better my chances of doing something."
The huffed laugh is terribly bleak. "And if I forget it's not like anything's lost in the telling."
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2024-05-29 08:18 pm (UTC)"Functional, then." Not fine, but operating under acceptable parameters. He could still fight, could still accomplish a mission if he had one, just any down time he had at all was going to be spent terribly distracted. It's for the best Shinra isn't around, somehow lab tests would inevitably crop up right at the wrong moment and he'd fail. How much less functional would he be, without the aid of one of his future victims? Zack didn't have to stay. "...Um. Certain forms of lilies." But those don't go into teas, lilies are toxic to begin with, nobody's about to eat them.
A weakness, but not one easily exploited. Ambushing Sephiroth with a boquet wouldn't do much good.
Easier to exploit would be the flinching unhappiness with his true nature, but prodding at that could end in a fireball. Jenova succeeded, but Jenova didn't care whether or not it ended in flames. "You'd know, wouldn't you," is the quiet murmur, but it's not exactly pointed, or meant to antagonize deliberately. Humans weren't shapeshifters. Humans didn't turn into deformed behemoths and back.
But the Turks didn't exactly hire monsters either.
All three of the names Vincent mentions are known, and two better than the third, by the way his head jerks up. Gast had been .. the closest thing he had to a caring guardian, for a while. Those memories were dim, but they remained still. It.. shouldn't be a surprise that Gast worked closely with the people who both made and destroyed his life, but it stung anyway. "Did she turn you into what you are now?"
Love was a weakness, after all. And someone who could use her own child as an experiment would surely be able to take advantage of someone who loved her.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-29 08:40 pm (UTC)"Hrmph." That sounds like doubt about being even on a level of 'functional'. Vincent crosses the room with the tea still steeping and holds out the cup to Sephiroth. "Drink."
It's warm, it's soothing. It's said to help with anxiety. There's no caffeine or sugar though some sweetner had been tempting if only to help with shock. Vincent never claimed to have the best bedside manner but his words sound firm.
He won't linger near Sephiroth long, giving the teen room of at least a sword's length. The fluidity of his movements seems to hitch again. It takes him a long time to answer, as if he's struggling to hold back the truth as long as it takes to find the right way of saying it. Not that he can resist forever.
"Hojo gave me this body. Lucrecia... did her part." The last escapes in an expulsion of breath. Only a few weeks sooner and Vincent may have had another means to end his statement. Vincent looks down at partially raised arms. Looking at himself.
"I wouldn't have survived if she hadn't used her earlier research to try and stabilize Hojo's 'failure'." Like the love reflected in his words and expression earlier, there is no denying the depth of disgust and hatred for the professor.
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Date: 2024-05-29 09:02 pm (UTC)Chamomile tea didn't factor into it, on Never Fade. Didn't now either, he has no idea what he's being handed, and though there's a certain wariness at Vincent's approach, the cup is taken anyway and given a sniff. Tea is not a regular part of his diet either, and this type is entirely new; he waits until Vincent is out of reach again before trying it. It tastes.. bitter. Herbal.
There's no compulsion on him to blurt out the truth, no matter how painful it was, so Sephiroth remains quiet for a time, piecing this with other bits of information. How many people were part of that 'research'? One success meant countless failures, as he had incorporated into himself. Who knows how many children died so he could live. How many people suffered before Lucrecia found the right thing to use on Vincent? "Was Professor Gast part of the experiments used on you?"
It's inevitable he's going to circle back around to his mother, but groundwork had to be done first. Had there ever been anyone, anyone at all in his life who hadn't been using him?
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Date: 2024-05-29 09:25 pm (UTC)"I don't think so," he finally says. "Gast was gone at the time I was shot by Hojo. And I wasn't a willing subject." There's a wry, bitter smile at the memory. "Explaining a missing Turk might have been easier for Hojo if he didn't also have to explain why he was in a specimen chamber."
It's not like Turks didn't die on assignment. Nibel Mountains were a dangerous place. Vincent isn't blind to the fact that someone must have done something to cover up the incident. But... it probably wasn't Gast who might have also been spending more time at Icicle Inn by that point. There were any number of plausible lies, up to and including claims that he'd tried to interfere with the project itself.
Ultimately outside of his own department which was already pragmatic about such behaviors within the company and Lucrecia, there were few who would have seen him as more than a useful but ultimately replaceable asset.
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Date: 2024-05-29 09:33 pm (UTC)"What do you know of the theories and experiments that went into my creation? Was it Gast's design, Hojo's? Mother's?"
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Date: 2024-05-29 09:53 pm (UTC)What does he know. At the time, probably more than some scientists gave him credit for as just another background part of security. But the question gives rise to a somewhat pained huff of humor and Vincent closes his eyes a moment.
"Gast was the one to originally study the creature that became known as Jenova. You may have been told this already. It was believed at the time to have been of an ancient race known as the Cetra. So much so the professor named it after his late wife."
That... probably wouldn't have happened if the truth was realized. Probably. Scientists can be... eccentric. Vincent seems to have a reasonable amount of respect for Gast where it was utterly lacking in Hojo's case.
"I know there were at least two branches of the Jenova Project. Project S, the one that took place in Nibelheim, had contributions in equal parts from Hojo and Lucrecia, working off of Gast's findings. Though Hojo played a larger role as your birth approached and was likely the main contributer after."
There is a short pause.
"The details I know, both from before and what I found out after I came to, aren't necessarily complete. But they aren't pleasant either."
Of course Vincent is sure the youth knows that. How could anything be pleasant when people were working to create a monster? Even the earlier concept of a living 'Cetra' was still going to be as a result of a parade of horrors, trials and errors and successes alike.
"Your mother..." He is about to say something; something that will be the truth but also wasn't yet asked for. Does Sephiroth want to stop him or will he let Vincent say it?
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Date: 2024-05-29 10:10 pm (UTC)No, he's come too far to start second guessing things now. He's here for confirmation, and to fill in gaps Zack hadn't known. He takes a steadying breath and shakes it off. "I'm sorry, that's uncalled for. Please stop trying to filter things. I already know the worst of it. This is just.. filling in the details."
Insert hand gestures, fade to black exposition moment here...
Date: 2024-05-29 10:36 pm (UTC)"It can be. If Zack told you, I doubt you have the full picture. Or an unbiased one." Vincent returns shortly.
He's not fighting the compulsion or truly capable of it. But the gunman can see ways to direct it while the more painful truths are being collected in some semblance of recognizable order.
"And you know that. Or you wouldn't have brought the ice cream to me." If Zack had been able to give him everything, even if the ice cream had been in play, there's no reason to have come back to Vincent for information.
But the truth that he blurted out just now was one with some force behind it. Even if Zack's reaction was perfectly valid, it had still given rise to some ire. And to think that colored view is the only thing Sephiroth's heard about anything... Vincent takes a deep breath.
"...No, it's not. Uncalled for." His tone is calmer. "But my frustration is. Sorry."
He raises a hand and points at the still empty chair. It really does look comfy.
"Sit down. I'm not going anywhere. This will take a while."
Whatever Sephiroth decides to do at this offer, Vincent begins to speak. Everything he knows, from the reports and memos, to what he overheard. To things he witnessed and their order. Even a small fraction of what he gleaned had been done after Sephiroth's birth. The theories, the experiments. The trials and errors.
Vincent speaks easily on the concepts, not just as one thoroughly briefed, but as if he comprehends their fundamental principles, though never once is there anything that hints he was a scientist himself.
The sad requirements of 'canon hasn't answered that yet'.
Date: 2024-05-29 11:07 pm (UTC)Thus, prevent it. Guarantee truth, even if it's unpleasant. And nothing could really be worse than the mother he'd dreamed of being the one to experiment on him, abandon him, turn him into some parasitic monstrosity. He hadn't felt the need to do the same to Zack, who he was sure .. he hoped he was right, that Zack wouldn't lie about it. He had no reason to keep up the illusion of not knowing now. Sephiroth couldn't give up all trust on everyone, not entirely, but if he can verify, and force truth in the verification..
He doesn't sit when bidden, not right away. He's no scientist either, but raised around them and by them he understood quite a bit regardless, perhaps more than Vincent did if he could get at the actual documentation.
It's .. not worse, than what he'd already heard.
But it does fill in gaps. A lot of them. There's questions, inevitably, for now about the process and what they'd hoped to achieve, though there was no prayer of ever getting a Cetra from an alien parasite. Just a trained killer.
Not all of it is Hojo, as he expected. They were partners, for better or worse, equals in atrocity and ingenuity. Gast might have laid the foundation, but it was Lucrecia and Hojo who built on it with all the morality of any Shinra scientist.
It weighs on him visibly, the mask of indifference cracking again in abject unhappiness, but it's not a new wound, just a week-old one pulled at again, and with it the slow dragging spiral of despair. He'd never had a chance at anything like normalcy, no matter what he dreamed of. It was taken away long before he was born.
There's one question though, that eventually flickers up. Vincent obviously cared about her greatly. And she at least was invested in Vincent as an experiment. Where did that end? "Are you my father?" He doesn't sound fixated on it at least, it's a question, not a confirmation.
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Date: 2024-05-29 11:33 pm (UTC)Forced truth or not, Vincent knows himself well enough to admit that he'd have found it almost impossible not to avoid some subjects unless asked directly. And who doesn't have a bias when left to their own devices no matter how committed they'd be to the facts?
Vincent may be better at hiding his discomfort. More years of practice. But it's far from perfect and this subject is one of the few that incite signs of emotion in the quiet man. Sephiroth's question brings the man to look up from his reflective poise with sharp attention to meet the teen's eyes.
Jaw is visibly clenched when he just as quickly shifts his eyes away. Is this pain because of a fleeting possibility? Because of the bitter knowledge of who Lucrecia ran to when the peaceful days came crashing down?
"As far as I'm aware, Hojo is your biological father." It's the truth. And it's clear he hates that it is only slightly more than he dislikes being compelled to say it.
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Date: 2024-05-30 12:04 am (UTC)The confirmation that the twisted troglodyte of a man was his sire isn't ... as much of a surprise as it could have been. His entire life Hojo had orchestrated everything about his day, from meals to what training he endured.
It's hard to mask the disgust though. "I think I'd rather the alien be my parent after all," he mutters, scrubbing his face with one hand. There were many horrifying revelations to be had, but this one? This one's just disgusting. He already knew Hojo had no morals and no qualms about abusing whoever he chose whenever he chose, Sephiroth was merely one of countless victims. "At least a parasite can't be blamed for being a parasite."
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Date: 2024-05-30 12:34 am (UTC)"We can't choose who our parents are. But creature named Jenova is not, nor ever was." This... has to be the truth, right? Vincent is still looking away.
"...I'm sorry I can't tell you otherwise." That Hojo isn't Sephiroth's biological parent? That Vincent himself isn't? Both could be equally true. It most certainly had nothing to do with his comment regarding the alien.
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Date: 2024-05-30 12:55 am (UTC)He could see it another way though, by the way his expression darkens. "I am as much a relation to Jenova as I am to those two scientists." Would Vincent have been a better option? He hadn't been there either, after all, but why would he have been? "And the alien, at least, did not deliberately experiment on her own offspring."
Nothing in Sephiroth's words suggest he's decided Jenova is his real mother and the rest can burn, but it might not be comfortable to hear anyway. No truth spell holds him in sway, his reality was painful enough without its necessity. Aside from the visceral unpleasantness of knowing a monster was part of his genetics, the monster was not to blame. "I have no parents, merely genetic donors."
And if Jenova was still alive, and showed even the barest hints of interest in 'her' spawn, it's no surprise his older self turned on the world so thoroughly. What else was there?
... What else was there even for him, when he returned? He was reasonably sure his team wouldn't reject him but ... "Why did you try to kill me?" That question again, because Vincent hadn't really answered it, and this time he's not leaving open ended options to pick from.
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Date: 2024-05-30 01:31 am (UTC)No, it wasn't comfortable to hear. And unfiltered words are spoken in the heat of that moment. Vincent visibly winces even as his tongue moves.
"It was a calamity without morals. Whatever you choose to think of your biological parents, make no mistake, Sephiroth, Jenova will never be your benefactor or patron, nor anything remotely like family. It will use you to its own ends."
Vincent is then left with a question to answer. One he partially deflected earlier. But now he can't.
"Because of what you become. And... I did not want Cloud to have the blood of a child on his hands."
Personal... but not a yes or no he'd called it earlier. There was a personal reason he did it himself but the threat itself... that was the true reason.
"I was wrong to focus on the future... your future. Though that won't change my sins."
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Date: 2024-05-30 02:14 am (UTC)"Then Jenova fits right in with the rest, doesn't she?" His voice cracks at the end; things the elder would long have mastered hiding, pain and disgust and anguish embarrassingly obvious. Everyone uses him for their own ends. He had no family, no benefactors, no patrons doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. It's all because of what he can do for them. "I don't want to hear about the so-called suffering of a woman who'd experiment on her own child and a lover and then leave them to Hojo."
Sephiroth isn't her only victim, just the one still standing, sneering at the idea of cutting off his lack of a future being a sin. It sounded to him like thousands of lives would be saved if someone did.
How many were there? In a terrible way even Cloud was her victim by extension. "Where was she?" Trial after trial, test after test, surgery after surgery at Hojo's cackling whims. "Didn't she want to see what kind of monster all her work and research spawned?" On the questionable bright side, it's not madness. There's no edge of insanity to any of it, just the broken fragments of a shattered impossible dream. Pain can turn to anger so easily, and Vincent is an easier target than Zack, there's far less attachment.
Nobody spoke as if Lucrecia Crescent was dead.
Just absent.
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Date: 2024-05-30 02:52 am (UTC)In the wake of Sephiroth's outburst of pain, sorrow and disgust came those three simple words. In face of the teen's despair at all he'd been put through under Hojo's thumb, there could only be guilt and shame for the simple fact that he, not her son, had benefited from Lucrecia's presence.
Without the cloak to hide his face, Vincent can't hide the stricken expression. His empathy for Sephiroth's plight is real. Not a sudden realization that the child before him was the real victim of adults and their stupidity, but something that seems to have haunted the man in some form or another for over thirty years.
"...Lucrecia did not give you up. Despite her misdeeds, her willingness to go through with it despite protests."
His protests which may have caused her to remain silent and complacent in wake of their parting... No, it didn't change that she did it regardless.
"...Despite her actions, she intended to raise you as her own. Love you. Even if that had led to her death in the end."
Vincent doesn't want to look at Sephiroth as the words continue to spill out. But he does... he must if only to confront the horror of the retelling.
"Jenova became a part of her as well. The process put a strain on her body. When you were born, you were taken away and she was not allowed to even see you. Then I was careless and let my guard down. After... Hojo finished his experiment and I was in a unstable state, she used her earlier research to save me."
This time, with a deep inhale of breath, Vincent indulges in a moment of looking up.
"I remember pieces during that. Watching her become more unstable. Pleading for your return. She... her mental and physical state was deteriorating."
Then his gaze lowers and he shakes his head.
"When I regained consciousness, she was gone. I didn't know what happened to her for a long time. I thought perhaps she had died."
There is a bitter laugh that falls from his mouth and seems to twist his expression. Self-loathing.
"You might as well ask why I didn't come. Instead, I let myself fall into a deep slumber, thinking your mother had sought revenge on me for not saving her and you. That it was my punishment to live with the nightmares."
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Date: 2024-05-30 02:55 pm (UTC)He's managed to regain control of his tone, at least, and that with supreme effort. "Die. Was she dead?" An important question, because it could potentially change much. A dead woman could never go looking for her son. A dead woman couldn't be there to see the results of her work, years later.
"Who protested what they were doing?" Was it her, or someone else?
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Date: 2024-05-30 03:28 pm (UTC)If she did what Vincent himself did and sunk into her nightmares. It's nice to have a wishful thought that maybe she had tried and failed to get through Shinra to take back her child. But given what he knows now of her mental state at the time? It's best not to give any false hope.
"I know she tried to take her life but wasn't able to die. And that eventually she'd entomb herself."
Vincent has recovered some of his composure. It's still there, the raw discomfort at being exposed and vulnerable, but really what's that amount to in the face of the child he'd wronged?
"I did. I protested human experiments when they first decided to go forward with the procedure." Could he say he'd have gone against it so adamantly if it hadn't been Lucrecia? Some other woman? Maybe he would have had misgivings. He could only hope he felt something for the kid to be born out of that experiment too. But he doesn't need to say all this does he? The experiment went on. Vincent already acknowledged Sephiroth's birth in his tale before getting fatally shot.
"Not hard enough." There's a self recriminating snort, bitter words. His hand comes up as if to adjust his cloak collar higher, but it's not there and thus is drops awkwardly again. "I suppose I would have just been reassigned if I had. But I wanted to stay around. Protect her, even from a distance."
Bitter at his younger, foolish self. Not for loving Lucrecia, but being blinded by it and not doing more.
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Date: 2024-05-30 05:34 pm (UTC)It's hard. Impossible to sort out in even a handful of days, never mind the span of a couple hours. The thought that maybe she'd been coerced, that the reservations had been hers but she'd been cajoled into it away falters; it should have been a red flag to someone that the Turk found something unethical. But it hadn't mattered. Not for Vincent, and not for him. If Lucrecia cared, it hadn't been enough to go after either of them.
Maybe she thought she was bringing their ancestral species back from extinction, not engineering a monstrosity.
"She betrayed you too, you know." The tea, half finished, is set down lest he break the cup accidentally. "No matter how much you cared for her, in the end. She left you behind." Just like she did to him. "It's disturbing to think Hojo might have been trying to do me a kindness, not telling me about her. About him."
In a way it was. Sure it kept him hoping and searching, but it also kept him from the devastation of reality. Kept him tame, predictable. "The locket, a false name. If there's only questions and no answers.. oh, it's easy to dream up all kinds of fantastic impossibilities."
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Date: 2024-05-30 06:05 pm (UTC)"I don't know. She was gone before I could ask her anything. All I had... decades later, was uploaded memories of how she felt when she was still trying." Memories and emotions. But had she changed her mind? Given up? Ran away? Tried to do something and failed again and again? All of those were possible and some would have mandated that she go into hiding from the Company. But he knows nothing important, does he?
By the time all the words are out, his physical actions are exhausted. Or he is, from the remorseless truth.
"The one time I could was after I met Cloud and found where she was hidden. She... I was too caught up in soothing her fears. Apologizing to her to ask anything I should, damn this ice cream."
Vincent sweeps his arm out. If something had been in range, it probably would have been knocked over or off the surface. Anger is never good for him. Yet it's stymied again. That locket, the picture and a false name. The false name isn't as important. That Sephiroth had the picture...
"Who... gave that photo to you?"
A question of his own.
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Date: 2024-05-30 06:48 pm (UTC)"Uploaded memories?" That Vincent never thought to interfere is .. not troublesome. Vincent's a new player on the field, one Sephiroth's built no real feelings around for years upon years. His mother, however.
Still alive, when he'd be a grown man, when Nibelheim was obliterated. When he chose the alien over the human, because where was the human?
The angry gestures miss the half-full tea cup, but Sephiroth doesn't react to it as if it were an immediate threat or attack, that was ... beyond them, for now. Violence would still be possible, but not based on hair trigger nerves alone.
"...My ... father, I suppose." The locket, the picture. If he had to accept that he was a monster, then he could accept that that inhumanity also came from his supposedly human kin. And it's said about the same way one might say they just found a bag full of rotting rats.
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Date: 2024-05-30 07:51 pm (UTC)This time, he does have a proper reason for not pursuing it. Someone else was trying to destroy the world and yeet off with all the Lifestream.
"I don't know for sure. What we had been looking for wasn't related to you." Shelke might have, but it was definitely not the time to be looking for nuances about Sephiroth, a man that seemed to have finally been put to rest. And dredging up that sin would not have been an aid to mentally overcoming Chaos.
Vincent's gaze lights on the spoon and the tin cup. Both are retrieved and taken over to the counter. There's a sink of sorts, at least a drain to pour the remaining tea down and a hand worked well pump. Probably to a tank in both cases but irrelevant. Vincent's actions to suddenly retrieve and rinse these dishes is something to keep himself mentally focused and busy.
"Hojo." His ears do pick up nuance Sephiroth speaks of his biological father and it is a grim pleasure that wars against the sinking sensation in his chest. It's nice to know the disgust and hatred are mutual.
Hojo had a photo though. And he wasn't the type of man who cared for things that weren't of interest to him. In some twisted way, that meant the professor had on some level acknowledged 'that woman' as he would come to refer to her. Maybe that in itself was just something meant to anger Vincent at the time.
Referring to her as 'Jenova' to Sephiroth? That was just something he'd come to expect from Hojo. But it explained why Sephiroth had called her that. Vincent's voice drifts over the sound of splashing water.
"You might have to acknowledge Hojo at some level. But you don't need to call him your father."
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Date: 2024-05-30 08:28 pm (UTC)Trust but verify. Always get more information.
"I think it's beyond the point of mincing words." It fit the pattern. Why wouldn't Hojo be his father? There wasn't a better option to make the story worse. He felt like a character in one of the telenovelas he liked watching, whatever would cause maximum impact, that was the reality. "It doesn't alter the facts. But it does.. explain some things." He'd always had a sharp mind, for better or worse.
Hojo's unrelenting obsession with him. With 'perfecting' him. Of course it would go beyond merely being a pet project.
"...I never really had a chance to be anything else, did I." And that's terribly quiet, but in the hush of Wintermute and the lack of other sounds it might be picked up on anyway. "From the moment the project began, the outcome was ... inevitable."
Still was, wasn't it. "...How does it end?"
A whisper of thought follows it, immediately. In fire.
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Date: 2024-05-30 08:48 pm (UTC)"A man can be responsible for bringing you into the world, Sephiroth. But that doesn't always make him your father."
The rational mind, the intelligence that understands facts aren't changed by feelings? The gunman recognizes it too. Cup and spoon are wiped dry and put away. Neat, orderly. Vincent turns around to face the teenager.
"Something you learn here." His right hand is placed on his chest. "Not here." It is raised to brush against his brow then drops again. He won't say anymore about it unless he's asked. It's something Sephiroth will have to think over and decide for himself in the end.
He's calm enough again and sober. "Nibelheim? The final confrontation with your future self? Or both?" One might argue that Nibelheim was only the beginning. But it wasn't. And it could just as easily be argued that it is the end of the Sephiroth that had been known.
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Date: 2024-05-30 09:09 pm (UTC)"All of it. Zack only knew to the point where he was killed." Not by him, surprisingly, but that too was something of a relief. "Thirteen claims we can return to our times and change things, somehow. That not everyone forgets. I..." His fingers curl slowly into fists with a creak of leather. "I might be a monster, but ... guard hounds are too. They don't try to destroy the world. The better forewarned I am the better my chances of doing something."
The huffed laugh is terribly bleak. "And if I forget it's not like anything's lost in the telling."
I swear they better keep the crisis core canon straight that he didn't wake up and wreck this!
From:If it changes anything well oops, we'll retroactively say it happened. c.c
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From:We are going to pretend Vincent did light on these oil lamps coming in because I forgot.
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