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."
It can eat at a person though. When you don't mince words when your mind sorely needs it. Vincent isn't trying to dissuade the teen right now though. There's far too much going on and since he didn't ask, it's unlikely he'd be receptive to it anyway.
It will be on the Turk's mind though.
"Alright." Vincent's eyes shift away again momentarily. Even the Fox has said something about people being able to go back and maybe remember, maybe change their fate. Just another reminder of the mistake made by going after the boy.
"I only know about the events at Nibelheim through Cloud..." And there it is again. A recounting as it was told to him; the retelling after Cloud had regained his senses and remembered the true events.
Vincent doesn't hold anything back even if it is likely to overlap with what Zack said about Cloud and Tifa's experience. But though there is some empathy for his friends for their sake in his tone, his voice seems neutral. The terrors of Sephiroth's culling were not his to experience or hold burning in his heart. Sometimes there is guilt but not just over not being there to try and stop Sephiroth; also not waking to help him.
"I know Zack and Cloud were kept in Nibelheim and underwent experiments for the next five years..."
Then a loose and brief overview of the escape and Zack's subsequent final stand that gave the mentally compromised Cloud shock enough to function and escape. He would like to have not spoken of that at all without Cloud's consent and it's very clear he's discomforted that it slips out. But it's part of this curse.
The reason for guilt becomes clear as the tale lightly touches over pieces of moments he picked up of the group's raid on the Shinra Building to rescue Aerith and journey in pursuit of 'Sephiroth' and 'Reunion'. All very secondhand and unsurprisingly spotty because of it.
"Cloud and his allies came to Nibelheim and found it rebuilt and populated. Shinra's cover-up of the incident." Vincent's eyes distant; somehow these are easier memories. Still couched in personal secrets, but not the deep, ugliest ones that left him raw and feeling wounded, vulnerable.
Well he deserved that at the very least.
"He took the time to wake me from my slumber. Told me his story. I... saw it as another sin. To not have acted to help you. Instead I had sealed myself away." Keeping the world safe from his literal monsters was only a small part of that. Vincent shakes his head, dismissing a new round of personal blame. They've been over that.
"Cloud was insistent. I finally decided to go if only to get revenge on Hojo. It was likely he'd show up on the way. Maybe a small part of me realized I couldn't just keep hiding. Hrmph."
Another interlude of story. This with more detail, sometimes pausing to catch his breath, maybe even moving to add another log to the fire. It is, after all, a very long story. The visage of Sephiroth, the 'clones'. There won't be much spoken of the lighter moments. Sephiroth wants to know of what happens to him.
Temple of the Ancients, Cloud, Meteor, ...Aerith. As the story goes on, Vincent gets more attached to people, care about events and he can't keep that out of it. The WEAPONS, though there's a slight, odd twitch Vincent gets when he speaks about them. The final push to the Northern Crater.
"I did not go with them. I returned to Midgar with Yuffie to help with evacuations." He probably mentioned her name somewhere. If not, yet another to mark down.
By this point, his voice is more hoarse than usual.
"There's... more." But he needs to pause and this time he's struggling to do so against the urge to continue. Abrupt motion takes him swiftly to the wine and glass. There was a corkscrew ready to be used but practiced motions have it opened and a swallow or two poured so he can soothe his throat.
He remains silent this time, there's no need for interruption. Some of it is just verification, and when things line up, it makes the rest that hadn't been verified ... extremely likely. There are details this time that had been left out, in an effort to spare him further torment over the inevitable that lay ahead. But the force of the magic Thirteen applied meant there was no recourse this time but the truth, no matter how much it revealed.
The fire is watched instead of Vincent.
Cloud's at the time unreasonable aggression is better understood, now. What he'd been made to do. What he meant by knowing Sephiroth's capabilities better than he himself did, beyond merely sharing Jenova in their blood. And it wasn't just about Cloud, but about Aerith, whom had been mentioned but there was no face to put to the name, the true last Cetra. Killed, like so many others.
The true depths of what Zack was willing to just ... let go, was profound. They should have all taken up weapons as soon as the Fox brought him here.
Found a way to make it stick.
That Vincent hasn't spoken of being dead, and nobody said anything about Cloud being dead either, they had to have finally won, but Vincent chooses a terrible moment to pause at. Or the exact right moment for a cliffhanger. "..Would it be easier to write?"
The only thing said, this entire time, and with no inflection at all.
Another measure is poured out. It is purposefully small, like the earlier bit had been. This is left ready. Though he tilts his head for a moment, Vincent shakes his head.
"No, there's no compulsion to tell you the truth when I think about writing it."
Which is the truth in itself, but the sign that he paused to consider it means he might have intended to be honest anyway.
"Don't worry. I deserve at more than this level of discomfort." At least Sephiroth's question about writing had given him a little more time to collect himself. And the last part that concerns Sephiroth in specific is... shorter by comparison.
"Cloud stopped what the you of my past had become. Jenova... and that Sephiroth. It was blocking the planet's response to Meteor. Soon after, Holy came and... was bolstered by the Lifestream. Meteor was averted."
He might add in a few details here. Things he heard, that the others who had gone into the Crater had told him. Eventually, Vincent had drifted away but not for the usual reasons. Geostigma had begun to manifest in the wake of the Lifestream's emergence and Jenova's legacy within it.
The search for a cure, investigations into the root case. The Remnants, Rufus and the remaining Turks' descent into the North Crater to retrieve what remained of Jenova itself... Fools who could not leave enough alone.
Though leaving it there would have allowed Kadaj to find it sooner. Time was brought with their actions for better or worse. But the end came with the return of that Sephiroth, manifest in the strongest of the Remnants. Again the obsession with Cloud, again a clash... and defeat. No Meteor though. No Holy.
And though it bears the burden of being a final push after a long, long dialogue and hard for those reasons, the retelling of the events over those two years was comparably short. In part it was easier to assemble in hindsight and with firsthand knowledge throughout. But in a way it was also... less. No less deadly perhaps, or lacking in threat. Nothing of Lucrecia, here. There's nothing to mention. He'd not brought it up earlier either, when recounting the actions of that future version of the teen.
"That was the last. It's been a year since then. Geostigma was cured. That Sephiroth has disappeared or gone dormant again." He takes up the glass and allows himself the drink. The way he looks at it suggests Vincent feels it's not nearly enough but he forces himself to put it down and return the cork to the bottle.
Sometime through the explanation he finally sits down, but not on the chair. The floor will do.
'Monster' is an inaccurate description of Sephiroth. What was higher on that scale? He truly was Jenova's son, of all three 'parents' - a calamity, spawned by a calamity. Things the son of scientists alone could never accomplish had been wreaked not once, but twice, world ending threats that if they'd gone unchecked would have erased all life on Gaia.
Even Hojo wouldn't try to destroy the world. He'd have nothing to experiment on afterward.
Again Vincent isn't interrupted, there's no questions to be had that he thinks there'll be an answer for. He just draws his knees up to his chest and rests his head on them, arms crossed, trying and failing to grasp the enormity of harm he inflicts. None of it is a real shock this time, not the same way finding out what he was thoroughly destroyed any sense of where he belonged in the world. But it keeps him silent and more or less still even when the Turk finishes speaking.
It's never weighed as something that might happen, and something he could avoid.
How can he change something that's in other people's pasts? The silence ticks on, punctuated by the pop of the fire.
It's a blessing Sephiroth did not ask him anything that would trigger the compulsion to speak about Chaos and Omega. Someone might think it would prove humans are just as terrible. But all it would sound like is that Sephiroth's sire would be more than capable of razing the world for his own ends. Small wonder he followed in those footsteps.
Vincent needs a few of those precious, silent seconds to recover. Physically and emotionally he's spent. But his gaze doesn't leave Sephiroth; especially since the teen has finally stopped standing and simply sat on the ground.
He slowly closes the distance, his footsteps for once pointedly there. He'll get within an arm's length away and drop to crouch on one knee. With his right hand, he aims to bring it to rest on Sephiroth's shoulder.
"Sephiroth." There is a thin strain in the man's voice; the kind that suggests he will be feeling it in the morning. But Vincent doesn't care. "If you get that chance to remember everything you learned here, don't let my past shape your future."
His head dips briefly. Vincent still can't say anything that isn't true to his knowledge and it brings a sigh from him. He looks up again with as an intense, earnest expression as he can muster. He wants the boy to know that it's him speaking; not just what the ice cream is forcing him to admit.
"I don't know if Thirteen told you the truth. But if she did... then do what you want to do. We all failed you. Me, Hojo... Lucrecia."
Has Sephiroth tried to withdraw from the touch? Let it happen at all? If the hand was allowed to rest it will gently, albeit awkwardly, seek to squeeze a little.
"Being a monster... doesn't mean you have no humanity. Or that you can't choose to live as a human. It took me... a long time to learn that lesson. I hope you come to understand that sooner."
While he's not directly watched it's certain Sephiroth is paying at least some attention to what Vincent is doing, especially when the Turk approaches, and then kneels. He's not used to contact, even though his team was more liberal with it than anyone ever had been in his life, and it's hard to repress the twitch at a hand on his shoulder, but Vincent's not immediately thrown off. There's too much else to consider besides that.
The WEAPONs are .. .. they're interesting but in a dull, distant sort of way that doesn't really have his focus right now. Maybe one day he'll think to ask about it, ask about all of them, but if he never becomes a threat to the world they should remain slumbering, distant menaces. Things that do not need to be stirred.
Things that never should have been roused to begin with.
On some level he's aware this is not the sort of thing a fourteen year old should have to deal with. That normal kids are busy with schoolwork or friends or having fun, not having their lives unravel thread by thread until there's nothing left but pain and uncertainty. He couldn't handle it any better than he would in another fifteen or so years, the only difference is the lack of his other 'mother's' influence to tip it all to violent destruction. It's going to take a long time to sort through it, come to terms with any of it, and make any real conclusions about what to do. Was it reassuring to know at least one of his mothers (if not both) actually had wanted him, experiment or no, and being left with Hojo was not part of the plan?
That too would need to be worked out in time, and try to figure out if what she meant outweighed what she did.
Maybe it would. He didn't have anything else.
"I might not have a choice." Time could be a closed circle, and all Thirteen's intentions could be meaningless. What has happened may always happen. He couldn't really grasp it, the numbers and scale involved. It left him a little numb, which might be better than abject horror.
Vincent is warmer than expected. Somehow he'd expected the chill, clammy touch of the dead. It didn't balance, being a monster and a human, he couldn't do both, and the choice was taken out of his hands already. How could he live like that? Try to be normal? He never was. There weren't a lot of places suitable for a monster in a human's skin, except maybe Folkmore. .. And Shinra. Vincent's fate was surely unsanctioned. The loss of a Turk to experimentation wouldn't be allowed. The things done to him would likely be seen as excessive, likely they had no idea. Whatever the process, it had worked, and that was what mattered to them.
But they offered structure that til now had been perfectly acceptable. And outlets for what he wondered now was that monstrous instinct to kill. Could possibly stop him if things got out of hand, he wasn't the only active-type SOLDIER preparing to be tested on the battlefield.
Do what you want to do. "You were born a human. You lived as one most of your life." There might have been shouting earlier but he's .. been quiet since. "I.. don't even know what it really means."
The touch of the dead or the ephemeral, barely there brush of a ghost. He gives off that impression. Vincent has probably surprised a few people since his transformation.
"Who knows?" If Sephiroth has a choice. "Going to give up before you even try?" That is one-hundred percent Vincent Valentine, no ice cream needed. Really, it's getting harder and harder to see the teenager as Sephiroth. At least, not the Sephiroth he glimpsed in the battles for Gaia's future.
That had seemed a gross caricature of what's before him now. If only he had waited longer and gotten to know the teen before... sigh.
Vincent isn't the best at comfort, as it was said before. The awkward way his hand rested in comfort, the brief squeeze. His hand drops away but... he isn't going away. Instead there's a shift of his stance and he just drops to sit alongside Sephiroth, legs loosely stretched, arms draped over bent knees and just inches away from shoulders touching.
He hears what might have been shouting once, if nothing more as a faint asperity in the complaint.
"I've been a monster as long as I was human," he points out. His physical appearance might make that hard to reconcile. "I barely remember what 'human' feels like." Honestly, it's more of a sense that he knows he once was. Sleeping had done little to preserve that feeling; every transformation, with control or without it, had stripped steadily it away.
"Is it better having always been one? Or knowing you were once 'human', but became a monster?"
Neither is better. The question's answer is a zero-sum game of comparisons. As Sephiroth says he doesn't know what 'human' means. Vincent lets out a huff of dry, mirthless humor.
"I don't think anyone really knows what it means to be 'human'." His head tilts so that he's looking at the teen settled next to him. "I've been thinking lately that it's better to focus on what it means to live."
Somehow touch made it harder to maintain any measure of control over his emotions, more than being a Legend or just a hormonal teenager did. But this time maybe the dim firelight will make it easier to hide its proof. "If I thought it would stick, yes. Then no one would have to bear the burden of getting rid of a 'kid'." It's a frank admission; the gun still stuffed in his jacket would be put to use, and there would be no struggle. He was expendable to begin with, and the price of his life is far lesser than the thousands he'd be responsible for. Sheer pragmatism alone meant it wouldn't be worth the risk, and he wasn't so attached to life that he'd fight for it. But it was pointless to try. Not just here.
Not just here - he'd returned twice before after being killed, on Gaia. Lucrecia had tried, and been unable to die. Jenova, trapped for thousands of years in stone, had not died either.
Saying it's all the same is a luxury only those who've experienced being human can have, and it reminds Sephiroth that he is not speaking to a close friend ... not that he really had any of those to begin with .. and thus should be more mindful of what he admits to. "If you don't know what it means."
Then the exercise of pretending to be human was pointless. "It makes pretending harder."
"Without Jenova's remains, it might be different. Whether you can die. What you become." If you could call them remains. Not here in Folkmore, but... home. But even without the added presence of the alien, who's to say Sephiroth would ever find peace even in the Lifestream? Linger, drifting. Never being allowed to truly join with the planet.
"Don't misunderstand. I don't particularly believe in 'what ifs'. But I never thought I'd be kidnapped by some strange creature and brought... here."
Sure, without the specific factors that led to Sephiroth's descent to madness, he'd at least maintain his self. 'Different' doesn't mean good. It can possibly mean a lot of lives saved. Vincent is well versed in cruel reality, else he'd have never gone after a teenager in the first place. Still, within the context of one's own time, what happens when something breaks the cycle? Or maybe he has to consider all the hope his friends subscribe to is rubbing off on him.
His words fade for a time, returning to watching Sephiroth and listening. For a moment, Vincent's brow furrows. It's... true. There is at least a difference between remembering what being human was like; he knows the norms. It's worth a pause for thought.
But the question that comes remains the same as he had originally intended to ask.
"Is that what you've been doing? Pretending?" It's not just an attempt to suggest that Sephiroth naturally shows human traits. Clumsy, young ones from a routine indoctrinated from birth. But 'human' in not wanting to be a monster, not wanting to hurt others or be a horrible calamity.
Vincent's tone indicate it's a question seeking what Sephiroth knew before he came here and learned of the future. If he always felt he was pretending. Was he pretending even now?
There's a downside to being in a lab all his life. He understands some of it. "Either I have the same number of cells from her today as I did when they manipulated my embryo, which is unlikely, or they're part of me and replicated along with every other cell in my body." This is strangely detached from the horror of the rest. He could hear it all being said in Hojo's voice. "Based on the fact that I don't really look like either of my human parents, I don't need an external source. I am the source."
The coloring is wrong. Their eyes are not unnatural the way his are. They can't hit people with cars, survive falls from hundreds of feet up, and more. There would be no removing Jenova from his body, there wouldn't be enough human to keep him alive.
"You were kidnapped?" He went willingly. He didn't remember everything about the long walk here, its explanations, its strange sights, but he did remember going deliberately. Being asked; it hadn't felt like a compulsion. He harbored no resentment towards the Fox at all, the world she'd built was a refuge for so many.
It had its costs, as everything did. But they seemed worth it, especially for those who had nothing to return to. And he knew several people now, without anything to return to.
In the end, irrelevant. Willing or not, they're here. He hesitates to answer the question about whether or not he's been acting this whole time, but slowly, there's a nod. He has been, in fact. It's not what Vincent had hoped for, perhaps, but it was still reality. "I've ... had to guess, a lot, about how I'm supposed to act; what I'm supposed to say or do. Until Rhadore, my contact with anyone outside the lab was minimal. I wasn't allowed such ... distractions."
On one hand that's exactly the sort of shit one might expect out of Hojo. Isolation meant an easier controlled product. On the other hand, it made Sephiroth's discomfort with the idea of people getting hurt by him or around him who didn't deserve it as instinctive as the urge to kill was.
"Hmm." Vincent can't refute it by any knowledge he has, though he follows it well enough. There's just no way to tell from here. Though he has some suspicions that it wasn't just Sephiroth's genes. And perhaps not just the mental break. There were still many mysteries about Jenova.
It's a matter to let rest for now.
"Hrmph. I didn't want to keep everyone waiting." He was asked, Vincent's fairly sure. It doesn't mean he was interested; Thirteen thought she knew better and then he was following anyway. Or she needed him for some reason? It was frustrating, even if some of those friends were here. Even if there was someone else he was especially capable of confronting. That was not Sephiroth.
But at the same time, it's turning out he might be helpful here. Atonement? He won't look at it like that. But at least he will take responsibility.
The nod... No, Vincent did not wish to see that. But as Sephiroth continues to explain, what starts as concern for the teen's true nature behind a mask is replaced. Quiet sadness. Regret. Anger, toward Hojo though little less at his own past foolishness.
"Sephiroth... that's not because you're a monster or an experiment." For a brief moment, Vincent's eyes close. "Those are skills you learn from meeting many people and experiencing many things. Being confined to a lab with only... whatever Hojo allowed, it's no wonder you struggle."
Look at Vincent, trying to explain how social skills are developed. It actually brings another scuff of near-humor out of him. The sort of sound that he tends to make when he's reflecting on himself.
"...And people, humans... they can struggle to connect even when they live 'normal' lives."
Though Sephiroth is pretty certain otherwise, as the same result would happen from a monster, save the isolation and rigorous training would produce more predictable results, arguing for why he's what he is, is not going to do him any favors. He still needed to figure out what turns this admittedly life-altering information into something that sets him to trying to destroy the world multiple times.
Later. There's always later, when he had just himself and an otherwise empty house to consider, or the long flight home.
Maybe he'd walk.
"You must understand." He can wrap neutrality around himself like a shield, however tenuous it is. "I can't afford to think it's fine and normal. Not until I ..."
No, this isn't right, it's not going to work. He needed to get control of himself; Hojo might be a hateful creature of a human being, but he was right about one thing, emotions got in the way, and he was embarrassing himself. It's one of his earliest lessons. It doesn't matter what he felt.
When he finally composes himself enough to speak again, he does seem remarkably calm. "In light of ... all of this. I'll do what I can to start putting contingencies in place. If I understand the roles we're handed by Thirteen, so long as I still have feathers I should be .. reasonably safe for others to be around. If that changes, then it would be best to treat me as a clear and immediate threat." Legends could become Myths, wings traded for fangs and claws.
Vincent can practically see the shroud of rational, realistic thought rise up in defense around the teenager. Something to shield him from too many hopeful words. But Vincent can't fault the realistic argument either. Answers, particularly such vital ones, aren't going to be had if Sephiroth just chooses the one he wants to be true and shut the others away.
So the gunman doesn't insist. Instead he offers a nod.
"Alright. I understand."
He really does.
"Keep it in mind. I'm forced to speak the truth right now. You should weigh it against whatever else you discover." It's just another bit of data to analyze. Not... just a hope. Vincent starts getting up from the floor. After a moment he offers his right hand down to the boy.
"I know I'm partly to blame. But...being raised in the lab. What you've gone through. Those aren't normal experiences. Not for humans, not for monsters."
The talk then turns to what might be used in Folkmore to recognize the changes in Sephiroth. Vincent turns his own thoughts to it.
"Hmm. Do you know how long that takes? I don't know if it's instant." And for a threat like that Sephiroth, the quicker the tells appear the better it is to trust them. "I'll have to start investigating roles again," he can be heard to mutter.
If nothing more, he's taking the warnings and contingency quite seriously.
"If you were my sire and not the Turk assigned to guard two of my parents, then yes, it would be partly on you." It's pretty cut and dry as far as he was concerned. "Turks don't exactly go around stealing babies. Or interfering with the science department. It's not your job. And it sounds like up until you were shot, you did what you were supposed to."
Their job is murder and espionage, and apparently, guarding nerds. Hojo and Lucrecia are still alive, so mission accomplished. The hand offered to him is studied for a long moment before it's taken. His grip is ... very careful. "Given .. what I am and what I will do, the lab and SOLDIER may be the best place for me." His chances of causing undue harm with other enhanced fighters around him are smaller than if he had free reign. Zack simply wasn't enough on his own to do anything about it.
Cloud however, was. And Cloud is another SOLDIER, whether by treatment or by training. And with both of them here, with a cetra and a Turk as backup.. Sephiroth's reasonably sure he wouldn't get far before he was brought to an unceremonious stop.
Role switching however is a mystery. "No. I've heard of it but haven't seen it. Much like the claims of resurrection." Which reminded him. There's a pause and a frown. "I really would have let you, you know. I just wanted to do it somewhere easier to clean up and store my belongings, and set up some video recorders in case I forgot anything."
Vincent does turn his head. It's... clear he doesn't feel at all like he deserves that consideration. Yeah he was doing his job. But after he could have come. Gone for Sephiroth. Raised him? At least given him something more than Hojo. The gunman wasn't asked a direct question regarding what Turks do and so doesn't feel the compulsion to answer. Or maybe the effect of the ice cream is lessening. Still, he's coming to realize that Sephiroth's ideas of what his former department did for Shinra is missing a few pages of harsh facts. Particularly as Shinra's power grew in scope.
Who he might consider in some near future whether it's possible to summon that neurodata version of the professor, load it up in a VR device and strangle him. Not happening of course. No one needs that around and escaping somewhere. But it's nice to dream.
"SOLDIER... maybe," Vincent will admit that. It'd provide outlet, even structure as well as a group of individuals who are... well, sturdy. "Lab..." This is mentioned with a shrug. He can't really argue that having a system in place to monitor Sephiroth's unique condition isn't a good idea, even if it's for purely medical reasons.
"The isolation... That's what's dangerous. It will prey on you. Make it easier to be controlled with no one to turn to."
By Hojo? Jenova? He doesn't say. Vincent's grip wraps around Sephiroth's; firm and confident. Whatever strength he has is something he's well versed in.
"It's fine you know. To hold on."
He'll pull back and seek to help the teen up. But he won't immediately let go.
Another soft hmph escapes at the reminder of the whole ordeal about being allowed to kill Sephiroth. It's morbid and terrible but Vincent also fixes his gaze on the teenager with a look that borders on 'are you kidding me right now?'
"I think all that preparation would have ruined the surprise." Because yeah, Vincent wasn't going to kill him if he'd just come back. And trying to surprise him... well, he would have known something was up when Sephiroth was laying out all the recording devices at the very least.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
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."
no subject
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?
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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!
Date: 2024-05-30 10:13 pm (UTC)It will be on the Turk's mind though.
"Alright." Vincent's eyes shift away again momentarily. Even the Fox has said something about people being able to go back and maybe remember, maybe change their fate. Just another reminder of the mistake made by going after the boy.
"I only know about the events at Nibelheim through Cloud..." And there it is again. A recounting as it was told to him; the retelling after Cloud had regained his senses and remembered the true events.
Vincent doesn't hold anything back even if it is likely to overlap with what Zack said about Cloud and Tifa's experience. But though there is some empathy for his friends for their sake in his tone, his voice seems neutral. The terrors of Sephiroth's culling were not his to experience or hold burning in his heart. Sometimes there is guilt but not just over not being there to try and stop Sephiroth; also not waking to help him.
"I know Zack and Cloud were kept in Nibelheim and underwent experiments for the next five years..."
Then a loose and brief overview of the escape and Zack's subsequent final stand that gave the mentally compromised Cloud shock enough to function and escape. He would like to have not spoken of that at all without Cloud's consent and it's very clear he's discomforted that it slips out. But it's part of this curse.
The reason for guilt becomes clear as the tale lightly touches over pieces of moments he picked up of the group's raid on the Shinra Building to rescue Aerith and journey in pursuit of 'Sephiroth' and 'Reunion'. All very secondhand and unsurprisingly spotty because of it.
"Cloud and his allies came to Nibelheim and found it rebuilt and populated. Shinra's cover-up of the incident." Vincent's eyes distant; somehow these are easier memories. Still couched in personal secrets, but not the deep, ugliest ones that left him raw and feeling wounded, vulnerable.
Well he deserved that at the very least.
"He took the time to wake me from my slumber. Told me his story. I... saw it as another sin. To not have acted to help you. Instead I had sealed myself away." Keeping the world safe from his literal monsters was only a small part of that. Vincent shakes his head, dismissing a new round of personal blame. They've been over that.
"Cloud was insistent. I finally decided to go if only to get revenge on Hojo. It was likely he'd show up on the way. Maybe a small part of me realized I couldn't just keep hiding. Hrmph."
Another interlude of story. This with more detail, sometimes pausing to catch his breath, maybe even moving to add another log to the fire. It is, after all, a very long story. The visage of Sephiroth, the 'clones'. There won't be much spoken of the lighter moments. Sephiroth wants to know of what happens to him.
Temple of the Ancients, Cloud, Meteor, ...Aerith. As the story goes on, Vincent gets more attached to people, care about events and he can't keep that out of it. The WEAPONS, though there's a slight, odd twitch Vincent gets when he speaks about them. The final push to the Northern Crater.
"I did not go with them. I returned to Midgar with Yuffie to help with evacuations." He probably mentioned her name somewhere. If not, yet another to mark down.
By this point, his voice is more hoarse than usual.
"There's... more." But he needs to pause and this time he's struggling to do so against the urge to continue. Abrupt motion takes him swiftly to the wine and glass. There was a corkscrew ready to be used but practiced motions have it opened and a swallow or two poured so he can soothe his throat.
If it changes anything well oops, we'll retroactively say it happened. c.c
Date: 2024-05-30 10:49 pm (UTC)The fire is watched instead of Vincent.
Cloud's at the time unreasonable aggression is better understood, now. What he'd been made to do. What he meant by knowing Sephiroth's capabilities better than he himself did, beyond merely sharing Jenova in their blood. And it wasn't just about Cloud, but about Aerith, whom had been mentioned but there was no face to put to the name, the true last Cetra. Killed, like so many others.
The true depths of what Zack was willing to just ... let go, was profound. They should have all taken up weapons as soon as the Fox brought him here.
Found a way to make it stick.
That Vincent hasn't spoken of being dead, and nobody said anything about Cloud being dead either, they had to have finally won, but Vincent chooses a terrible moment to pause at. Or the exact right moment for a cliffhanger. "..Would it be easier to write?"
The only thing said, this entire time, and with no inflection at all.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-30 11:42 pm (UTC)"No, there's no compulsion to tell you the truth when I think about writing it."
Which is the truth in itself, but the sign that he paused to consider it means he might have intended to be honest anyway.
"Don't worry. I deserve at more than this level of discomfort." At least Sephiroth's question about writing had given him a little more time to collect himself. And the last part that concerns Sephiroth in specific is... shorter by comparison.
"Cloud stopped what the you of my past had become. Jenova... and that Sephiroth. It was blocking the planet's response to Meteor. Soon after, Holy came and... was bolstered by the Lifestream. Meteor was averted."
He might add in a few details here. Things he heard, that the others who had gone into the Crater had told him. Eventually, Vincent had drifted away but not for the usual reasons. Geostigma had begun to manifest in the wake of the Lifestream's emergence and Jenova's legacy within it.
The search for a cure, investigations into the root case. The Remnants, Rufus and the remaining Turks' descent into the North Crater to retrieve what remained of Jenova itself... Fools who could not leave enough alone.
Though leaving it there would have allowed Kadaj to find it sooner. Time was brought with their actions for better or worse. But the end came with the return of that Sephiroth, manifest in the strongest of the Remnants. Again the obsession with Cloud, again a clash... and defeat. No Meteor though. No Holy.
And though it bears the burden of being a final push after a long, long dialogue and hard for those reasons, the retelling of the events over those two years was comparably short. In part it was easier to assemble in hindsight and with firsthand knowledge throughout. But in a way it was also... less. No less deadly perhaps, or lacking in threat. Nothing of Lucrecia, here. There's nothing to mention. He'd not brought it up earlier either, when recounting the actions of that future version of the teen.
"That was the last. It's been a year since then. Geostigma was cured. That Sephiroth has disappeared or gone dormant again." He takes up the glass and allows himself the drink. The way he looks at it suggests Vincent feels it's not nearly enough but he forces himself to put it down and return the cork to the bottle.
It's going to have to be enough for now.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-31 12:23 am (UTC)'Monster' is an inaccurate description of Sephiroth. What was higher on that scale? He truly was Jenova's son, of all three 'parents' - a calamity, spawned by a calamity. Things the son of scientists alone could never accomplish had been wreaked not once, but twice, world ending threats that if they'd gone unchecked would have erased all life on Gaia.
Even Hojo wouldn't try to destroy the world. He'd have nothing to experiment on afterward.
Again Vincent isn't interrupted, there's no questions to be had that he thinks there'll be an answer for. He just draws his knees up to his chest and rests his head on them, arms crossed, trying and failing to grasp the enormity of harm he inflicts. None of it is a real shock this time, not the same way finding out what he was thoroughly destroyed any sense of where he belonged in the world. But it keeps him silent and more or less still even when the Turk finishes speaking.
It's never weighed as something that might happen, and something he could avoid.
How can he change something that's in other people's pasts? The silence ticks on, punctuated by the pop of the fire.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-31 01:14 am (UTC)Vincent needs a few of those precious, silent seconds to recover. Physically and emotionally he's spent. But his gaze doesn't leave Sephiroth; especially since the teen has finally stopped standing and simply sat on the ground.
He slowly closes the distance, his footsteps for once pointedly there. He'll get within an arm's length away and drop to crouch on one knee. With his right hand, he aims to bring it to rest on Sephiroth's shoulder.
"Sephiroth." There is a thin strain in the man's voice; the kind that suggests he will be feeling it in the morning. But Vincent doesn't care. "If you get that chance to remember everything you learned here, don't let my past shape your future."
His head dips briefly. Vincent still can't say anything that isn't true to his knowledge and it brings a sigh from him. He looks up again with as an intense, earnest expression as he can muster. He wants the boy to know that it's him speaking; not just what the ice cream is forcing him to admit.
"I don't know if Thirteen told you the truth. But if she did... then do what you want to do. We all failed you. Me, Hojo... Lucrecia."
Has Sephiroth tried to withdraw from the touch? Let it happen at all? If the hand was allowed to rest it will gently, albeit awkwardly, seek to squeeze a little.
"Being a monster... doesn't mean you have no humanity. Or that you can't choose to live as a human. It took me... a long time to learn that lesson. I hope you come to understand that sooner."
no subject
Date: 2024-05-31 07:52 pm (UTC)The WEAPONs are .. .. they're interesting but in a dull, distant sort of way that doesn't really have his focus right now. Maybe one day he'll think to ask about it, ask about all of them, but if he never becomes a threat to the world they should remain slumbering, distant menaces. Things that do not need to be stirred.
Things that never should have been roused to begin with.
On some level he's aware this is not the sort of thing a fourteen year old should have to deal with. That normal kids are busy with schoolwork or friends or having fun, not having their lives unravel thread by thread until there's nothing left but pain and uncertainty. He couldn't handle it any better than he would in another fifteen or so years, the only difference is the lack of his other 'mother's' influence to tip it all to violent destruction. It's going to take a long time to sort through it, come to terms with any of it, and make any real conclusions about what to do. Was it reassuring to know at least one of his mothers (if not both) actually had wanted him, experiment or no, and being left with Hojo was not part of the plan?
That too would need to be worked out in time, and try to figure out if what she meant outweighed what she did.
Maybe it would. He didn't have anything else.
"I might not have a choice." Time could be a closed circle, and all Thirteen's intentions could be meaningless. What has happened may always happen. He couldn't really grasp it, the numbers and scale involved. It left him a little numb, which might be better than abject horror.
Vincent is warmer than expected. Somehow he'd expected the chill, clammy touch of the dead. It didn't balance, being a monster and a human, he couldn't do both, and the choice was taken out of his hands already. How could he live like that? Try to be normal? He never was. There weren't a lot of places suitable for a monster in a human's skin, except maybe Folkmore. .. And Shinra. Vincent's fate was surely unsanctioned. The loss of a Turk to experimentation wouldn't be allowed. The things done to him would likely be seen as excessive, likely they had no idea. Whatever the process, it had worked, and that was what mattered to them.
But they offered structure that til now had been perfectly acceptable. And outlets for what he wondered now was that monstrous instinct to kill. Could possibly stop him if things got out of hand, he wasn't the only active-type SOLDIER preparing to be tested on the battlefield.
Do what you want to do. "You were born a human. You lived as one most of your life." There might have been shouting earlier but he's .. been quiet since. "I.. don't even know what it really means."
no subject
Date: 2024-05-31 08:33 pm (UTC)"Who knows?" If Sephiroth has a choice. "Going to give up before you even try?" That is one-hundred percent Vincent Valentine, no ice cream needed. Really, it's getting harder and harder to see the teenager as Sephiroth. At least, not the Sephiroth he glimpsed in the battles for Gaia's future.
That had seemed a gross caricature of what's before him now. If only he had waited longer and gotten to know the teen before... sigh.
Vincent isn't the best at comfort, as it was said before. The awkward way his hand rested in comfort, the brief squeeze. His hand drops away but... he isn't going away. Instead there's a shift of his stance and he just drops to sit alongside Sephiroth, legs loosely stretched, arms draped over bent knees and just inches away from shoulders touching.
He hears what might have been shouting once, if nothing more as a faint asperity in the complaint.
"I've been a monster as long as I was human," he points out. His physical appearance might make that hard to reconcile. "I barely remember what 'human' feels like." Honestly, it's more of a sense that he knows he once was. Sleeping had done little to preserve that feeling; every transformation, with control or without it, had stripped steadily it away.
"Is it better having always been one? Or knowing you were once 'human', but became a monster?"
Neither is better. The question's answer is a zero-sum game of comparisons. As Sephiroth says he doesn't know what 'human' means. Vincent lets out a huff of dry, mirthless humor.
"I don't think anyone really knows what it means to be 'human'." His head tilts so that he's looking at the teen settled next to him. "I've been thinking lately that it's better to focus on what it means to live."
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Date: 2024-05-31 10:11 pm (UTC)Not just here - he'd returned twice before after being killed, on Gaia. Lucrecia had tried, and been unable to die. Jenova, trapped for thousands of years in stone, had not died either.
Saying it's all the same is a luxury only those who've experienced being human can have, and it reminds Sephiroth that he is not speaking to a close friend ... not that he really had any of those to begin with .. and thus should be more mindful of what he admits to. "If you don't know what it means."
Then the exercise of pretending to be human was pointless. "It makes pretending harder."
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Date: 2024-05-31 11:40 pm (UTC)"Don't misunderstand. I don't particularly believe in 'what ifs'. But I never thought I'd be kidnapped by some strange creature and brought... here."
Sure, without the specific factors that led to Sephiroth's descent to madness, he'd at least maintain his self. 'Different' doesn't mean good. It can possibly mean a lot of lives saved. Vincent is well versed in cruel reality, else he'd have never gone after a teenager in the first place. Still, within the context of one's own time, what happens when something breaks the cycle? Or maybe he has to consider all the hope his friends subscribe to is rubbing off on him.
His words fade for a time, returning to watching Sephiroth and listening. For a moment, Vincent's brow furrows. It's... true. There is at least a difference between remembering what being human was like; he knows the norms. It's worth a pause for thought.
But the question that comes remains the same as he had originally intended to ask.
"Is that what you've been doing? Pretending?" It's not just an attempt to suggest that Sephiroth naturally shows human traits. Clumsy, young ones from a routine indoctrinated from birth. But 'human' in not wanting to be a monster, not wanting to hurt others or be a horrible calamity.
Vincent's tone indicate it's a question seeking what Sephiroth knew before he came here and learned of the future. If he always felt he was pretending. Was he pretending even now?
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Date: 2024-06-01 12:02 am (UTC)The coloring is wrong. Their eyes are not unnatural the way his are. They can't hit people with cars, survive falls from hundreds of feet up, and more. There would be no removing Jenova from his body, there wouldn't be enough human to keep him alive.
"You were kidnapped?" He went willingly. He didn't remember everything about the long walk here, its explanations, its strange sights, but he did remember going deliberately. Being asked; it hadn't felt like a compulsion. He harbored no resentment towards the Fox at all, the world she'd built was a refuge for so many.
It had its costs, as everything did. But they seemed worth it, especially for those who had nothing to return to. And he knew several people now, without anything to return to.
In the end, irrelevant. Willing or not, they're here. He hesitates to answer the question about whether or not he's been acting this whole time, but slowly, there's a nod. He has been, in fact. It's not what Vincent had hoped for, perhaps, but it was still reality. "I've ... had to guess, a lot, about how I'm supposed to act; what I'm supposed to say or do. Until Rhadore, my contact with anyone outside the lab was minimal. I wasn't allowed such ... distractions."
On one hand that's exactly the sort of shit one might expect out of Hojo. Isolation meant an easier controlled product. On the other hand, it made Sephiroth's discomfort with the idea of people getting hurt by him or around him who didn't deserve it as instinctive as the urge to kill was.
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Date: 2024-06-01 02:13 am (UTC)It's a matter to let rest for now.
"Hrmph. I didn't want to keep everyone waiting." He was asked, Vincent's fairly sure. It doesn't mean he was interested; Thirteen thought she knew better and then he was following anyway. Or she needed him for some reason? It was frustrating, even if some of those friends were here. Even if there was someone else he was especially capable of confronting. That was not Sephiroth.
But at the same time, it's turning out he might be helpful here. Atonement? He won't look at it like that. But at least he will take responsibility.
The nod... No, Vincent did not wish to see that. But as Sephiroth continues to explain, what starts as concern for the teen's true nature behind a mask is replaced. Quiet sadness. Regret. Anger, toward Hojo though little less at his own past foolishness.
"Sephiroth... that's not because you're a monster or an experiment." For a brief moment, Vincent's eyes close. "Those are skills you learn from meeting many people and experiencing many things. Being confined to a lab with only... whatever Hojo allowed, it's no wonder you struggle."
Look at Vincent, trying to explain how social skills are developed. It actually brings another scuff of near-humor out of him. The sort of sound that he tends to make when he's reflecting on himself.
"...And people, humans... they can struggle to connect even when they live 'normal' lives."
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Date: 2024-06-01 08:37 pm (UTC)Later. There's always later, when he had just himself and an otherwise empty house to consider, or the long flight home.
Maybe he'd walk.
"You must understand." He can wrap neutrality around himself like a shield, however tenuous it is. "I can't afford to think it's fine and normal. Not until I ..."
No, this isn't right, it's not going to work. He needed to get control of himself; Hojo might be a hateful creature of a human being, but he was right about one thing, emotions got in the way, and he was embarrassing himself. It's one of his earliest lessons. It doesn't matter what he felt.
When he finally composes himself enough to speak again, he does seem remarkably calm. "In light of ... all of this. I'll do what I can to start putting contingencies in place. If I understand the roles we're handed by Thirteen, so long as I still have feathers I should be .. reasonably safe for others to be around. If that changes, then it would be best to treat me as a clear and immediate threat." Legends could become Myths, wings traded for fangs and claws.
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Date: 2024-06-01 09:52 pm (UTC)So the gunman doesn't insist. Instead he offers a nod.
"Alright. I understand."
He really does.
"Keep it in mind. I'm forced to speak the truth right now. You should weigh it against whatever else you discover." It's just another bit of data to analyze. Not... just a hope. Vincent starts getting up from the floor. After a moment he offers his right hand down to the boy.
"I know I'm partly to blame. But...being raised in the lab. What you've gone through. Those aren't normal experiences. Not for humans, not for monsters."
The talk then turns to what might be used in Folkmore to recognize the changes in Sephiroth. Vincent turns his own thoughts to it.
"Hmm. Do you know how long that takes? I don't know if it's instant." And for a threat like that Sephiroth, the quicker the tells appear the better it is to trust them. "I'll have to start investigating roles again," he can be heard to mutter.
If nothing more, he's taking the warnings and contingency quite seriously.
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Date: 2024-06-01 10:09 pm (UTC)Their job is murder and espionage, and apparently, guarding nerds. Hojo and Lucrecia are still alive, so mission accomplished. The hand offered to him is studied for a long moment before it's taken. His grip is ... very careful. "Given .. what I am and what I will do, the lab and SOLDIER may be the best place for me." His chances of causing undue harm with other enhanced fighters around him are smaller than if he had free reign. Zack simply wasn't enough on his own to do anything about it.
Cloud however, was. And Cloud is another SOLDIER, whether by treatment or by training. And with both of them here, with a cetra and a Turk as backup.. Sephiroth's reasonably sure he wouldn't get far before he was brought to an unceremonious stop.
Role switching however is a mystery. "No. I've heard of it but haven't seen it. Much like the claims of resurrection." Which reminded him. There's a pause and a frown. "I really would have let you, you know. I just wanted to do it somewhere easier to clean up and store my belongings, and set up some video recorders in case I forgot anything."
... No, he really is his parents' son.
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Date: 2024-06-01 10:40 pm (UTC)Who he might consider in some near future whether it's possible to summon that neurodata version of the professor, load it up in a VR device and strangle him. Not happening of course. No one needs that around and escaping somewhere. But it's nice to dream.
"SOLDIER... maybe," Vincent will admit that. It'd provide outlet, even structure as well as a group of individuals who are... well, sturdy. "Lab..." This is mentioned with a shrug. He can't really argue that having a system in place to monitor Sephiroth's unique condition isn't a good idea, even if it's for purely medical reasons.
"The isolation... That's what's dangerous. It will prey on you. Make it easier to be controlled with no one to turn to."
By Hojo? Jenova? He doesn't say. Vincent's grip wraps around Sephiroth's; firm and confident. Whatever strength he has is something he's well versed in.
"It's fine you know. To hold on."
He'll pull back and seek to help the teen up. But he won't immediately let go.
Another soft hmph escapes at the reminder of the whole ordeal about being allowed to kill Sephiroth. It's morbid and terrible but Vincent also fixes his gaze on the teenager with a look that borders on 'are you kidding me right now?'
"I think all that preparation would have ruined the surprise." Because yeah, Vincent wasn't going to kill him if he'd just come back. And trying to surprise him... well, he would have known something was up when Sephiroth was laying out all the recording devices at the very least.
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