"I'll speak to them about it." He'd already opened a dialogue with Mayerling, at that.
Then, thoughtful-- "Merely the physical exercise, or hunting particularly?"
At the further information--or confession to a lack thereof--on Jenova, he's silent a little space of time. "So strange," he says at length, "to imagine a world where you don't have anyone old enough to have known her firsthand." And after only two millennia!
"But, so--for practical purposes, then, you're a new kind of being. Guesswork aside, which metaphor better suits what you know of yourself?" Predator, or disease?
"To hear stories, there were. Gaia's had .. two or three different intelligent species on it besides humanity. One at least regularly lived several hundred years. They're just relics, bones and stories now." He glances in the direction of Casimir, who's resumed watching the mothbird with unblinking regard. "Mother destroyed them, as I did the Rhadorans."
Genocide runs in the blood, it seems. He was following orders, until the last.
That question is weightier than Illarion knows, but the silence that follows it is telling, as it's considered. "Bacteria or virus," he concludes, at great length, and there's not a single shred of emotion in his voice, absolute stillness in himself and not-Omen aside from what's necessary for speech. "Or a form of it. The ones that inhabit host cells and wield control over them. Certain fungus too. She'll kill everything, given the chance. All life. She has no need of their meat, only their life force." In the dark, his eyes are a ring of faintly glowing blue-green around oblong wide pupils, unblinking. "What I do may be hunting. I don't remember a time where I wasn't regularly assigned things to butcher."
He listens, and waits out the silences, and weighs what he's given with the nonjudgmental dispassion appropriate to a Warlord. They're just relics, bones and stories now, and so too had been the Sea People when the pillar of salt and sorrow had finished with them.
To say nothing of the carnage the shrikes had wrought after binding themselves to it, and its persistent visions of the All-War.
"But a disease cannot reckon nor regret the consequences of its actions," he says, soft and thoughtful. "As you can. It can't choose only deserving targets, when given the chance to choose."
He may need to ask after these Rhadorans, in time.
"Yet even humans don't so consistently put others before themselves. Nor elves, nor any other sort of thinking being I've known--" But one other, and how he suddenly and painfully wishes Bigby were here, to speak to this child that's so like him.
"What, then, is a proper ethos for someone of your nature? What would you determine it to be?"
Whether or not Jenova understood what she did, it didn't matter in the end. Entire worlds had fallen to her hunger, and Gaia would have been another.
"Maybe she can't." The boy shakes his head, a slight, brief gesture. "I don't. Not forever. There comes a point where there's no hesitation, no regret, and I am not sure it is coincidence that this occurs approximately the same time humans reach full maturity in body and mind."
It could be. It could be that he's pushed to that point, by the deliberate actions of others. Any mind can break. "I'm not so selfless as you think. If I could .. rip it out, throw it all away, and just be a normal human I.." There'd be no hesitation at all. Even if the cost was that nothing was there to check Hojo, or Shinra, he'd do it.
It's utterly selfish, and he knows it. The same selfishness that would have led him to abandon Sharon to the monstrous illusion of Hojo's tender care, placing his fears and anxieties first. ".. Everything I want is impossible. So as long as I can maintain some semblance of sanity I will do what I must, the only thing I'm good for, and that's .. more death. 'The right people', as if that makes it righteous."
"If you could, you wouldn't be unjustified." To bear all the weight of knowing he was a monstrous alien endling doomed to follow his mother's past atop the ruins of an empty childhood?
No, there was no justice in condemning the youth for wanting to put that burden down.
There is something heartbreakingly familiar in how that wish trails off into nothing, followed by another profession of the impossibility of a better future. It finally breaks Illarion free of his patch of moonlight; he crosses the short distance between them to reach out and rest his hands on the youth's shoulders.
"Sephiroth." Gently said, in the same tone he'd use on one of his own children. Not pitying, not rebuking, but concerned. "She might not be capable, and the man you become might not care. But you, here and now, can and do. Start here, with what you are: What rules do you need, to feel safe enough to learn and grow? What lines must be drawn?"
He knows the difference between justified and good. It would still be the wrong choice, the choice that ends in cruelty and suffering and death, for all that it's justified. If he simply sat on his hands and did a lot of nothing for the rest of his life, that would be with the full knowledge that he could have interfered. And chose not to.
Just like all the people who knew he was in the labs and did nothing.
Although there's a twitch upon being touched, any immediate violent reactions have been long since trained out. But it's a catalyst of a sort, a reminder that he is showing far too much belly and not enough teeth. Like so much else, it would simply have to be put away. This isn't a battlefield but it would lead to them. "Do you ... understand, that's not possible?"
Did anyone? This close, there's no reason to speak loudly, and he doesn't. Illarion isn't shrugged off, but there's a ribbon of tension that doesn't fade. "It can't be separated, I don't need to feel safe to do my job. I'll do what needs to be done." At any cost, so long as the cost is only paid by himself.
"I understand that it appears impossible. I don't know enough to say whether it truly is." He does not say: And you don't, either, because while he suspects it--the very young are driven to think in absolutes--he also doesn't know enough. Not yet.
Sephiroth's other objection, though, is safer territory for an objection. The shrike's tone shifts sterner, more commander than parent. "Yes, you will do what needs to be done; you've made as much clear. But you will not save one person more--might even fail to save any of them--if you squander your resources. If you burn yourself out through worry about what will be.
"No." Now he's carefully examining his own answers before giving them, and when they're ventured it's with the caution of someone who's aim is providing the answer that's expected of them, but not quite sure what that is.
If it's mentioned, it's intended to apply. That's all he needed to know.
Unfortunately for the question that follows, Sephiroth has lived a lifetime under those very expectations. He knows this one, with absolute confidence. Injury didn't matter, it never mattered.
Failure was marked not only in unwillingness to perform, but showing pain at all. "Yes, of course. Depending on the break's location it may not work very well, but under most circumstances I can comply."
...And unfortunately, Illarion cannot say he wasn't expecting that response. It still rouses all his out-feathers and sets his tail bristling.
"Did they really expect you to keep--" He starts, bites off. Lifts a hand to touch two fingers to his brow above his veil, expression troubled. "No, of course. You would have access to healing magic of some kind, I assume, no matter how much you worsened a break?"
"Not always. There will be situations where access to such things isn't possible, so becoming too reliant on them is foolish." These are old and familiar questions, at least, and far more comfortable to deal with. Sephiroth doesn't have to wonder if he's got the answer right, he knows he has.
Which if Illarion was asking, he knew too. It's nice to finally face a test he is certain of the answers for. "If it requires surgery to remedy later, then that is a concern for later, but I heal very quickly and most scenarios take that into account."
Right. Right. Of course; the boy's creators were efficient and cruel but not foolish. The Unearthed soldier in Illarion respects what he's heard of them; they had a unique asset and they'd maximized it.
The rest of him, what little can be roused to actual feeling, would like to efficiently and cruelly rip out their throats.
He drops his hand to his side, leaving the other on Sephiroth's shoulder. "How long have you been training like this?"
Not what he'd intended to say or ask. But-- Vincent had taken him to task for treating Sephiroth as older than his age, playing down the youth's self-presentation as an experienced soldier. It was worth learning the actual span of that experience.
The continued contact is strange, and though he didn't really mind it (at least so long as it didn't turn to violence), it was puzzling. Though he could hide it well, Casimir's confusion is equally intense, turning with careful slowness to watch instead.
As if there's answers to be seen at a distance. "Since I can remember. Presumably before that age, there wasn't much reason to try, children of my planet do not .. gain presence of mind enough til after three or so for real instruction."
It doesn't seem like it's going to end in pain, so why.. maintain touch? What's its purpose?
That such a gesture is near universal for comfort and connection eludes, it's too unfamiliar. His team occasionally offered similar gestures but it had always been a puzzle then too. Touch betrays a flinch, however subtle; Hojo was not something he couldn't discuss without issues for the most part, but he'd searched -- "Yes. Among others. My human mother chose to leave not long after I was born. I was not.. up to expectations, perhaps, o-or.." Hojo wouldn't turn away the aid of another brilliant scientist. She left on purpose. She hadn't cared.
He can maintain a decent stiff upper lip, but the 'omen' he'd forged seems to shrink in on himself a little, ears low, the very picture of canine unhappiness. "..It doesn't matter. I'm capable of doing what I was designed to do."
Touch is a remarkably universal language among social species--one Illarion's only begun relearning himself in the past few years. The Unearthed brutalized it out of themselves; the Knights Pariah hadn't time to deal with any residual needs that clung to their once-living souls. So it had not been until Trench that the shrike had much opportunity to seek and offer touch as comfort--but much as Folkmore did, the Waking World rewarded a certain impulsivity about connecting with others.
Which isn't the largest reason he pulls Sephiroth into a sudden hug as the youth falters and his not-Omen seems to wilt, but it is one of them. "It matters to you. It should have mattered to them."
The words come in an undertone, a rumble in his chest that's much larger than his visible body should be capable of. And once the words are said and the echoes die, he breaks contact, steps back out of Sephiroth's space once more. Not far enough to seem to spurn any reaction he might have to the sudden embrace, but to see what that reaction might be--whether that unease under the youth's skin boils over.
"Though you are, inarguably, capable despite it. That's important to you." Isn't it.
It's a simple part of most things' lives, especially young, but it has been denied him. First for safety reasons, a child with his power was lethally dangerous very young even when it's an accident, and later to prevent weakness and attachment to things not useful. If the enemy knew how easily such things could undo him, they would surely exploit it.
He understood. He did. And yet under the grip of even a veritable stranger such as Illarion, it's suddenly much harder to maintain that careful composure. He hadn't dared return the gesture to Glenn or to Vincent for fear of hurting them and doesn't now - and is spared the difficult choice when the Shrike steps away.
But it hurt more than it ever should to reason, left his throat tight and breath more of a struggle to keep even, and he fidgets in place in its wake, struggling to maintain anything, anything like composure. "It didn't. To anyone." It's quiet, though he'd hardly been shouting til now. "The only one who ever wanted me was my sire, and to him I am the culmination of work and research; if I can't do the one thing I am for then.."
Then the one person who cared, in his own vile and self serving way, would have no reason to at all. "Then there's no point to my existence." The hound dissolves in a roil of black mist, aware on some level that canine body language is more traitorous than human, and a simple bowed head and curtain of short silver bangs hides much. Control. It's never easy, not for any adolescent. It broke often. It's a struggle not to now.
Old, familiar story. I didn't raise you to love someone else, to take some other woman's name! You're nothing to anyone but me!
Nothing but what he could do. Nothing for who he was, because he'd been born for a purpose and if he refused to fulfill it--
Illarion steps in again, lays an arm lightly around Sephiroth's drooping shoulders. Less constricting than an embrace but still tangibly present.
"Is he among those you need to kill?" It's not, perhaps, the expected question, nor the expected reassurance someone else might rush into that void of despair with. But, Illarion thinks, it would be helpful to know the answer.
It's simultaneously a comfort and emphatically not, making it more difficult to think through a response instead of simply reacting. Sephiroth doesn't shrug the elf off. "...He is. The suffering and deaths of countless people, animals and monsters rests solely on his hands, and it will continue if not stopped." It's not something he should be doing, or thinking about. It's far outside even his paygrade.
But there's a burden that comes with knowing what will happen, and then being given opportunity to change it. Nobody else could, not in his time. Nobody else knew.
"So you must, because you're the only one who can," the shrike says, voicing the unspoken.
It would be a horrific burden to bear even for an adult. For someone so young, and so terribly deprived of everything he should've had, should've experienced... Some might say there was an awful kind of mercy in that, but it's not an idea Illarion cares to entertain.
"But it will mean giving up everything else you want." A low sigh.
"Stars and Sacrifice watch over you, you have the heart of a saint."
And that's all that it took. Nobody else knew, who else was supposed to? And once he explained matters - would anyone he told even do anything about it? About any of it?
Would even the Turks with the impetus of one of their own held and tortured and experimented upon, dare take up a weapon against the head of Science? "..No. Anyone would do the same, I think, if they had reason to." Saints weren't real. "And I can't have anything I want, so there's nothing to lose. I have no-one who will notice if I fail, and if I succeed, then there is in turn no-one they can use against me."
"It sounds cruel maybe, but I can't miss what I've never had. Better me than someone with family to return to."
And there it is spoken baldly, so that Illarion cannot ignore it as he'd like. Better me than someone with family to return to did nothing for the hideous injustice of it all.
"'If they had reason to,'" he echoes, and shakes his head in wonder and dismay. "You've named many of the reasons most wouldn't. And you--"
He checks himself; they have been down this conversational pathway before. Moreover, he himself has been in positions before where the only pillar keeping an unfair wrong, an awful lack from crushing him was the idea that nothing better was possible. Hope worked better when one could afford to be irrational about one's situation and prospects.
"It is cruel," he finally says. "It is unfair, but you bear up under it anyway without becoming cruel yourself. That is what I find remarkable.
"Your will and your heart are unimpeachable, but your methods of preparing might betray you. May I make a suggestion?"
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2024-09-17 01:00 am (UTC)Then, thoughtful-- "Merely the physical exercise, or hunting particularly?"
At the further information--or confession to a lack thereof--on Jenova, he's silent a little space of time. "So strange," he says at length, "to imagine a world where you don't have anyone old enough to have known her firsthand." And after only two millennia!
"But, so--for practical purposes, then, you're a new kind of being. Guesswork aside, which metaphor better suits what you know of yourself?" Predator, or disease?
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Date: 2024-09-17 01:26 am (UTC)Genocide runs in the blood, it seems. He was following orders, until the last.
That question is weightier than Illarion knows, but the silence that follows it is telling, as it's considered. "Bacteria or virus," he concludes, at great length, and there's not a single shred of emotion in his voice, absolute stillness in himself and not-Omen aside from what's necessary for speech. "Or a form of it. The ones that inhabit host cells and wield control over them. Certain fungus too. She'll kill everything, given the chance. All life. She has no need of their meat, only their life force." In the dark, his eyes are a ring of faintly glowing blue-green around oblong wide pupils, unblinking. "What I do may be hunting. I don't remember a time where I wasn't regularly assigned things to butcher."
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Date: 2024-09-17 02:06 am (UTC)He listens, and waits out the silences, and weighs what he's given with the nonjudgmental dispassion appropriate to a Warlord. They're just relics, bones and stories now, and so too had been the Sea People when the pillar of salt and sorrow had finished with them.
To say nothing of the carnage the shrikes had wrought after binding themselves to it, and its persistent visions of the All-War.
"But a disease cannot reckon nor regret the consequences of its actions," he says, soft and thoughtful. "As you can. It can't choose only deserving targets, when given the chance to choose."
He may need to ask after these Rhadorans, in time.
"Yet even humans don't so consistently put others before themselves. Nor elves, nor any other sort of thinking being I've known--" But one other, and how he suddenly and painfully wishes Bigby were here, to speak to this child that's so like him.
"What, then, is a proper ethos for someone of your nature? What would you determine it to be?"
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Date: 2024-09-17 02:24 am (UTC)"Maybe she can't." The boy shakes his head, a slight, brief gesture. "I don't. Not forever. There comes a point where there's no hesitation, no regret, and I am not sure it is coincidence that this occurs approximately the same time humans reach full maturity in body and mind."
It could be. It could be that he's pushed to that point, by the deliberate actions of others. Any mind can break. "I'm not so selfless as you think. If I could .. rip it out, throw it all away, and just be a normal human I.." There'd be no hesitation at all. Even if the cost was that nothing was there to check Hojo, or Shinra, he'd do it.
It's utterly selfish, and he knows it. The same selfishness that would have led him to abandon Sharon to the monstrous illusion of Hojo's tender care, placing his fears and anxieties first. ".. Everything I want is impossible. So as long as I can maintain some semblance of sanity I will do what I must, the only thing I'm good for, and that's .. more death. 'The right people', as if that makes it righteous."
no subject
Date: 2024-09-17 03:09 am (UTC)No, there was no justice in condemning the youth for wanting to put that burden down.
There is something heartbreakingly familiar in how that wish trails off into nothing, followed by another profession of the impossibility of a better future. It finally breaks Illarion free of his patch of moonlight; he crosses the short distance between them to reach out and rest his hands on the youth's shoulders.
"Sephiroth." Gently said, in the same tone he'd use on one of his own children. Not pitying, not rebuking, but concerned. "She might not be capable, and the man you become might not care. But you, here and now, can and do. Start here, with what you are: What rules do you need, to feel safe enough to learn and grow? What lines must be drawn?"
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Date: 2024-09-17 10:01 am (UTC)Just like all the people who knew he was in the labs and did nothing.
Although there's a twitch upon being touched, any immediate violent reactions have been long since trained out. But it's a catalyst of a sort, a reminder that he is showing far too much belly and not enough teeth. Like so much else, it would simply have to be put away. This isn't a battlefield but it would lead to them. "Do you ... understand, that's not possible?"
Did anyone? This close, there's no reason to speak loudly, and he doesn't. Illarion isn't shrugged off, but there's a ribbon of tension that doesn't fade. "It can't be separated, I don't need to feel safe to do my job. I'll do what needs to be done." At any cost, so long as the cost is only paid by himself.
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Date: 2024-09-17 02:31 pm (UTC)Sephiroth's other objection, though, is safer territory for an objection. The shrike's tone shifts sterner, more commander than parent. "Yes, you will do what needs to be done; you've made as much clear. But you will not save one person more--might even fail to save any of them--if you squander your resources. If you burn yourself out through worry about what will be.
"Do you know what a moral injury is?"
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Date: 2024-09-17 05:13 pm (UTC)That too is acceptable. Not ideal, he didn't want to die, but since what he DID want was a stark impossibility..
"Yes." He knows because it keeps coming up. "It's a close cousin to hypocrisy."
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Date: 2024-09-17 05:50 pm (UTC)"It's hypocrisy's teeth, that wound us whether we chose or were commanded to transgress our own beliefs.
"Do you think you're immune to them?"
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Date: 2024-09-17 05:55 pm (UTC)If it's mentioned, it's intended to apply. That's all he needed to know.
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Date: 2024-09-17 06:08 pm (UTC)(He may recognize that hesitance and what it betokens.)
"If you broke one of your wings, would you keep flying on it before you healed?"
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Date: 2024-09-17 06:10 pm (UTC)Failure was marked not only in unwillingness to perform, but showing pain at all. "Yes, of course. Depending on the break's location it may not work very well, but under most circumstances I can comply."
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Date: 2024-09-18 04:50 pm (UTC)"Did they really expect you to keep--" He starts, bites off. Lifts a hand to touch two fingers to his brow above his veil, expression troubled. "No, of course. You would have access to healing magic of some kind, I assume, no matter how much you worsened a break?"
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Date: 2024-09-18 05:02 pm (UTC)Which if Illarion was asking, he knew too. It's nice to finally face a test he is certain of the answers for. "If it requires surgery to remedy later, then that is a concern for later, but I heal very quickly and most scenarios take that into account."
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Date: 2024-09-19 09:09 am (UTC)The rest of him, what little can be roused to actual feeling, would like to efficiently and cruelly rip out their throats.
He drops his hand to his side, leaving the other on Sephiroth's shoulder. "How long have you been training like this?"
Not what he'd intended to say or ask. But-- Vincent had taken him to task for treating Sephiroth as older than his age, playing down the youth's self-presentation as an experienced soldier. It was worth learning the actual span of that experience.
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Date: 2024-09-19 09:32 am (UTC)As if there's answers to be seen at a distance. "Since I can remember. Presumably before that age, there wasn't much reason to try, children of my planet do not .. gain presence of mind enough til after three or so for real instruction."
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Date: 2024-09-19 02:02 pm (UTC)"Your father-creator was a part of this? And your human mother?" It's that or she was dead, or fled, he had to think. Though he's hoping for dead.
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Date: 2024-09-19 02:09 pm (UTC)That such a gesture is near universal for comfort and connection eludes, it's too unfamiliar. His team occasionally offered similar gestures but it had always been a puzzle then too. Touch betrays a flinch, however subtle; Hojo was not something he couldn't discuss without issues for the most part, but he'd searched -- "Yes. Among others. My human mother chose to leave not long after I was born. I was not.. up to expectations, perhaps, o-or.." Hojo wouldn't turn away the aid of another brilliant scientist. She left on purpose. She hadn't cared.
He can maintain a decent stiff upper lip, but the 'omen' he'd forged seems to shrink in on himself a little, ears low, the very picture of canine unhappiness. "..It doesn't matter. I'm capable of doing what I was designed to do."
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Date: 2024-09-22 04:50 am (UTC)Which isn't the largest reason he pulls Sephiroth into a sudden hug as the youth falters and his not-Omen seems to wilt, but it is one of them. "It matters to you. It should have mattered to them."
The words come in an undertone, a rumble in his chest that's much larger than his visible body should be capable of. And once the words are said and the echoes die, he breaks contact, steps back out of Sephiroth's space once more. Not far enough to seem to spurn any reaction he might have to the sudden embrace, but to see what that reaction might be--whether that unease under the youth's skin boils over.
"Though you are, inarguably, capable despite it. That's important to you." Isn't it.
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Date: 2024-09-22 06:46 am (UTC)He understood. He did. And yet under the grip of even a veritable stranger such as Illarion, it's suddenly much harder to maintain that careful composure. He hadn't dared return the gesture to Glenn or to Vincent for fear of hurting them and doesn't now - and is spared the difficult choice when the Shrike steps away.
But it hurt more than it ever should to reason, left his throat tight and breath more of a struggle to keep even, and he fidgets in place in its wake, struggling to maintain anything, anything like composure. "It didn't. To anyone." It's quiet, though he'd hardly been shouting til now. "The only one who ever wanted me was my sire, and to him I am the culmination of work and research; if I can't do the one thing I am for then.."
Then the one person who cared, in his own vile and self serving way, would have no reason to at all. "Then there's no point to my existence." The hound dissolves in a roil of black mist, aware on some level that canine body language is more traitorous than human, and a simple bowed head and curtain of short silver bangs hides much. Control. It's never easy, not for any adolescent. It broke often. It's a struggle not to now.
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Date: 2024-09-22 07:03 pm (UTC)Nothing but what he could do. Nothing for who he was, because he'd been born for a purpose and if he refused to fulfill it--
Illarion steps in again, lays an arm lightly around Sephiroth's drooping shoulders. Less constricting than an embrace but still tangibly present.
"Is he among those you need to kill?" It's not, perhaps, the expected question, nor the expected reassurance someone else might rush into that void of despair with. But, Illarion thinks, it would be helpful to know the answer.
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Date: 2024-09-22 07:15 pm (UTC)But there's a burden that comes with knowing what will happen, and then being given opportunity to change it. Nobody else could, not in his time. Nobody else knew.
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Date: 2024-09-23 12:39 am (UTC)It would be a horrific burden to bear even for an adult. For someone so young, and so terribly deprived of everything he should've had, should've experienced... Some might say there was an awful kind of mercy in that, but it's not an idea Illarion cares to entertain.
"But it will mean giving up everything else you want." A low sigh.
"Stars and Sacrifice watch over you, you have the heart of a saint."
no subject
Date: 2024-09-23 12:52 am (UTC)And that's all that it took. Nobody else knew, who else was supposed to? And once he explained matters - would anyone he told even do anything about it? About any of it?
Would even the Turks with the impetus of one of their own held and tortured and experimented upon, dare take up a weapon against the head of Science? "..No. Anyone would do the same, I think, if they had reason to." Saints weren't real. "And I can't have anything I want, so there's nothing to lose. I have no-one who will notice if I fail, and if I succeed, then there is in turn no-one they can use against me."
"It sounds cruel maybe, but I can't miss what I've never had. Better me than someone with family to return to."
no subject
Date: 2024-09-27 04:13 am (UTC)"'If they had reason to,'" he echoes, and shakes his head in wonder and dismay. "You've named many of the reasons most wouldn't. And you--"
He checks himself; they have been down this conversational pathway before. Moreover, he himself has been in positions before where the only pillar keeping an unfair wrong, an awful lack from crushing him was the idea that nothing better was possible. Hope worked better when one could afford to be irrational about one's situation and prospects.
"It is cruel," he finally says. "It is unfair, but you bear up under it anyway without becoming cruel yourself. That is what I find remarkable.
"Your will and your heart are unimpeachable, but your methods of preparing might betray you. May I make a suggestion?"
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