...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?"
Life wasn't fair, and he'd long since come to accept that. The alternative - that he'd done something to deserve it - was less pleasant. Could he be punished by fate for things fate itself ordained he do? "Give it time."
It's little more than a mutter. Things go bad sooner or later. He's determined now to make things right but that changes eventually doesn't it?
He expects this is leading to another round of 'just put everyone else around you in the path of a ravening planet-eater', and slow resentment settles in by degrees as he doesn't answer the question of if he's taking suggestions right away.
"If your suggestion involves finding 'allies' in my time with which to lead to the slaughter, then I suggest you walk away right now, because if you remain I will prove your assessment of what I am like a lie." Though his voice is quiet, there's no mistaking it's a threat.
The threat, in turn, gets a half-amused huff out of the shrike. "After you've already made it clear you won't put anyone in the tyrant's maw in your stead? I'm an opinionated optimist, young man, not an idiot.
"No. My suggestion is you pace yourself better. You are mentally and spiritually flying on that broken wing, without any guarantee someone will repair what you've made worse. And if no one can before you're returned to your world, then you've put yourself at a further disadvantage."
And yet it was something everyone harped on, as if this poor helpless kid needed a babysitter, needed people to do the work for him - when the people 'doing the work for him' would inevitably be in the way, and not likely to last long at all.
He's skeptical that's not actually Illarion's goal with what he says next, either. "Thirteen could send me back at any moment she wishes. I don't have a lot of time to waste, and I know I'll have at least a couple of days of preparation for deployment in Midgar." There's no point in pacing when it's a sprint and he doesn't know how long he has before the bell's rung. "There's too much that needs to be done in the meantime."
Truly, it is still a suggestion even Illarion thought might have benefit--if he could learn enough of the situation on the ground that Sephiroth expects to return to. And if the shrike himself could properly convey that "allies" didn't have to mean other front-line fighters. Even with a scant two days to prepare, there might be options.
But leave that all aside; Illarion doesn't know enough, yet, and it's not germane to his current argument. "If there is already too much to be done, then you acknowledge you'll need to make choices on what you can and can't do before you return," he points out. "You've had a think already about your priorities? Determined what you can afford not to learn?"
"I do. I'm not as young and naive as you think, as everyone thinks." That's an age old problem, something he's been fighting against ever since the lab decided he was fit enough to serve. "I've been doing this my entire life. Whatever you think, whatever you expect when you see someone my age ... you need to throw it out. It doesn't apply."
What a world it would be if it did. If he was a normal teenager, doing normal things. With only normal teenager things to worry about, like homework and gossip and goofing off. "If I were ten years older nobody would be telling me I need to 'pace myself' or re-evaluate what I've already been evaluating for months. Nobody plans my lessons, no-one sees to my meals, makes my bed, makes sure I'm keeping my skills sharp, or anything else. I'm not a child. I just look like one." He's said that before - maybe to Illarion, maybe to others, and it's an old and frustrating complaint that isn't going to end until he was visibly stronger than everyone around him.
And a part of him is painfully aware he never should have had to do any of it.
"I would tell even your Mr. Valentine this if he were working himself to death with the same reasoning." Illarion's tone is even, without heat--but the retort's fast enough to imply some buried emotion on his part. The pause that follows, long enough to imply introspection, and it's punctuated by another quiet huff.
"Though you're not wrong that your apparent youth affects my reasoning. My people are, like many, very protective of the young." And it went without repeating that Illarion is equally of the opinion Sephiroth should never have been in this position--
But that bird's already long flown. What remains is to make the best of the feathers it had left. "I don't want a parent's control of your life, let alone your schedule." How happy the man he'd been would have been to take it, though, if he could have liberated a much younger Sephiroth from his creators. Not all the stories told of elves and their kidnapped changelings were lies.
"I am asking as one who's trained and commanded soldiers. Do I understand correctly your previous commanders--your creators--expected you to do anything you were commanded to until ordered otherwise--or your body failed you?"
Edited (fixing my braindead moment) Date: 2024-09-28 07:52 pm (UTC)
This is one of those questions that don't quite make sense. He knows how orders work. He's issued them, he's obeyed them.
As much as he's skeptical anyone else would get such a warning, he doesn't bother to point out he's hardly working himself to death. He eats, he sleeps, he even pencils in a little bit of 'recreation' so people will shut up when they ask what he does to relax. "Yes, of course. That's how orders work. When deployed, and unable to perform as expected, you are in turn expected to use your best judgment. I obey, just as those under my command are expected to obey me. To the letter."
That confirmed that suspicion. "The model soldier," the shrike murmurs, "by a certain definition." Theirs not to question why, theirs but to do and die. The line occurs unbidden; he doesn't wince, but thinks of it.
So were the Unearthed.
"That's an ideal that presupposes your commanding officers will always use you rightly. But you've decided to kill yours because the world will be better for it, yes?"
"Unless militaries are run vastly differently on other planets than my own, that's the standard." He was designed for it, after all. Knowing that didn't make it less bitter, but he was resigned to that portion of his role in life. There would be no escaping the killing, it might as well be turned in a reasonably beneficial direction.
The boy pauses, frowning, then shakes his head. "So far no one in my direct chain of command is in need of excision. My creators are a different department."
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timeasmymeasure
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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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
Date: 2024-09-28 01:36 am (UTC)It's little more than a mutter. Things go bad sooner or later. He's determined now to make things right but that changes eventually doesn't it?
He expects this is leading to another round of 'just put everyone else around you in the path of a ravening planet-eater', and slow resentment settles in by degrees as he doesn't answer the question of if he's taking suggestions right away.
"If your suggestion involves finding 'allies' in my time with which to lead to the slaughter, then I suggest you walk away right now, because if you remain I will prove your assessment of what I am like a lie." Though his voice is quiet, there's no mistaking it's a threat.
no subject
Date: 2024-09-28 02:23 am (UTC)"No. My suggestion is you pace yourself better. You are mentally and spiritually flying on that broken wing, without any guarantee someone will repair what you've made worse. And if no one can before you're returned to your world, then you've put yourself at a further disadvantage."
no subject
Date: 2024-09-28 12:58 pm (UTC)He's skeptical that's not actually Illarion's goal with what he says next, either. "Thirteen could send me back at any moment she wishes. I don't have a lot of time to waste, and I know I'll have at least a couple of days of preparation for deployment in Midgar." There's no point in pacing when it's a sprint and he doesn't know how long he has before the bell's rung. "There's too much that needs to be done in the meantime."
no subject
Date: 2024-09-28 01:38 pm (UTC)But leave that all aside; Illarion doesn't know enough, yet, and it's not germane to his current argument. "If there is already too much to be done, then you acknowledge you'll need to make choices on what you can and can't do before you return," he points out. "You've had a think already about your priorities? Determined what you can afford not to learn?"
no subject
Date: 2024-09-28 02:47 pm (UTC)What a world it would be if it did. If he was a normal teenager, doing normal things. With only normal teenager things to worry about, like homework and gossip and goofing off. "If I were ten years older nobody would be telling me I need to 'pace myself' or re-evaluate what I've already been evaluating for months. Nobody plans my lessons, no-one sees to my meals, makes my bed, makes sure I'm keeping my skills sharp, or anything else. I'm not a child. I just look like one." He's said that before - maybe to Illarion, maybe to others, and it's an old and frustrating complaint that isn't going to end until he was visibly stronger than everyone around him.
And a part of him is painfully aware he never should have had to do any of it.
no subject
Date: 2024-09-28 07:18 pm (UTC)"Though you're not wrong that your apparent youth affects my reasoning. My people are, like many, very protective of the young." And it went without repeating that Illarion is equally of the opinion Sephiroth should never have been in this position--
But that bird's already long flown. What remains is to make the best of the feathers it had left. "I don't want a parent's control of your life, let alone your schedule." How happy the man he'd been would have been to take it, though, if he could have liberated a much younger Sephiroth from his creators. Not all the stories told of elves and their kidnapped changelings were lies.
"I am asking as one who's trained and commanded soldiers. Do I understand correctly your previous commanders--your creators--expected you to do anything you were commanded to until ordered otherwise--or your body failed you?"
no subject
Date: 2024-09-28 08:03 pm (UTC)As much as he's skeptical anyone else would get such a warning, he doesn't bother to point out he's hardly working himself to death. He eats, he sleeps, he even pencils in a little bit of 'recreation' so people will shut up when they ask what he does to relax. "Yes, of course. That's how orders work. When deployed, and unable to perform as expected, you are in turn expected to use your best judgment. I obey, just as those under my command are expected to obey me. To the letter."
no subject
Date: 2024-10-10 06:19 am (UTC)So were the Unearthed.
"That's an ideal that presupposes your commanding officers will always use you rightly. But you've decided to kill yours because the world will be better for it, yes?"
no subject
Date: 2024-10-10 02:17 pm (UTC)The boy pauses, frowning, then shakes his head. "So far no one in my direct chain of command is in need of excision. My creators are a different department."