[It's not hard.. to guess why his older self went crazy. Be it alien or be it scientist, the truth is a terrible, poisonous thing with no happy outcome or reason behind it.
He's paying attention enough to see the wince, and begin the careful process of trying to remain as neutral as he possibly can seem to be. Seem to be is the important part, the monitors still betray it with every heartbeat, but he's going to make an effort at it. He can worry about being a ... deliberately engineered monster. A part parasite creation, as designed by his own mother. ...
... He can worry about it on his own time. Later.]
I'm sorry. This is upsetting you.
[It's quiet. Steady. There's no need to be loud, this close.]
You don't have to say anything else.
[He wants to know. That's how he dies, isn't it? That's one of the reasons the Firsts were past-tense, he's willing to bet. All dead. Did he kill them? That sounds like pain. Deep, personal pain.
No, [He's quick to shake his head.] That's the easy way out. All this happened because no one told him the truth- the real truth, and all of it. Secrets aren't gonna help you. And I dunno if anyone but me can explain.
[Cloud was there, but why would he want to? Tifa's not here. No one else was there to witness it. He's the best suited. Anyway, there's no way to share this that won't end in someone getting hurt. He's always carried it. He can carry it a little further.]
I'm sure you can guess, he hurt people. Killed a lot of 'em. Set Nibelheim on fire. He... wanted to take over the planet. For Jenova. Because he thought it's what she wanted, or because Shinra locked her up. I dunno. He said a lot of nonsense. Jenova was still alive, I think, and she gets into peoples' heads. I never knew how much was him, and how much was her.
[He glances sidelong at Sephiroth, then away again.]
[Nibelheim. A strange place to begin world conquest.
It seems strange and ridiculous at first flush. Burn down some nowhere town and declare planetary takeover, for an alien parasite? Then again, if the alien parasite was alive, and could get into another's mind, if she cared where his actual parents did not.. maybe it wasn't so ridiculous.]
I'm pretty sure the only person in my head is me.
[That's what that look is for, isn't it? The teen's smile is brief and terribly bleak. It doesn't last, and the far wall is studied instead.]
But if you're hoping to avoid that killing a lot of people thing. My team and I are the reason there's one Rhadoran left. It's too late for that.
[He's fourteen and genocide had been carried out with very little hesitation by any of them. Sure, there'd been a bit of protesting but orders were orders. Killing didn't bother him. It's a SOLDIER's profession.
There's exceptions, by the slow query that follows.]
[Zack snorts a half-laugh; it isn't funny, it's just one of those things.]
There's not a SOLDIER in the world that doesn't have a body count. Usually you can pretend it's for a good reason.
[Not... so much, in this case. Or many other cases, in retrospect. That's the problem with Shinra. Everything looks clean until you peel back the layers.
At the very least, for the last question, he can shake his head.]
It wasn't you. Or... him. We fought, and he took me out, but I didn't die. You don't have to worry about that.
... He isn't, at all. He'd wanted answers, he'd been chasing them his whole life, but as fantasies went he'd always dreamed of better, not somehow impossibly worse. And nothing he can think of refutes any of it. He'll find a way to verify, one way or another, and be absolutely certain.. but it fit, uncomfortably well.
Why he didn't look much like the picture of his mother. If he was part alien experiment, he wouldn't, would he? Why would his parents stick around if he was just..]
Jenova. The alien. [Quieter still.] Can she control people? Get inside their minds. Make them do things.
[It could be some hope that maybe he doesn't go mad, he just loses control ... but Sephiroth is thinking of the angry, hostile man who confronted him on the road between the Burrows and Kuma Lisa. I know exactly what you're capable of. Better than you.
If she could do it.. And he'd been combined with her cells, some inhuman awful hybrid.
Even the Turk was frightened when he'd first approached. Frightened? Angry?]
[Zack hesitates, looking deeply uncomfortable. Is this too much? Opening a door that can't be shut, once the words are out. Or maybe the door's already been left ajar by someone else. He got that idea from somewhere.
He'd said it was important to get the truth out. He can't back off, now.]
It's never happened to me, [he admits,] But I've been told that it's... possible. Those who carry her cells can be, uh. affected.
[He scratches at his hair again. Auuugh, he hates this so much.]
You don't have to, though! She's not here. She can't order you around or make you do terrible things. You have the choice, to be good, or... to be a monster like her. It's wrong to control people.
[The hesitation is telling in of itself. Not only is it possible, it's something he's done before. It's both a relief and profoundly unsettling to finally have a reason for why that man acted the way he did, the things he said. Sephiroth would never be able to provide assurance that he wouldn't, because that too could be manipulation, couldn't it?]
Your .. blond friend. He's one of them, isn't he.
[He didn't have a choice about being a monster. That was decided for him before his birth, and through any incarnation, in any time, it's agonizingly painful knowledge. Even at fourteen, he's struggled with who he is, what he's supposed to do, where he comes from. Why he was different.
Now he has those answers. At least some of them.
But there was still no great pull towards doing terrible things for the sake of being evil. There's little temptation to try to control someone else, at least right now. He was wrong about Vincent, the Turk wasn't from the past at all, it had to be the future. Just like Cloud, and just like Zack. The wing not damaged by gunfire moves beneath comforting blanket, to rise and drape across his head and chest like an arm thrown up, neatly obscuring almost the entirety of him from sight. Blanket, bandages and feather conceal everything else.]
Thank you for telling me. For what it's worth.
[Points to him for sheer self control, that sounds almost normal.]
[Zack doesn't - can't - answer the first question. He doesn't know what Cloud did or how they met, but it's not his place to give anything away there. Maybe his silence is answer enough, but he's not going to say it.
"For what it's worth"? He wonders about that. What could this do? Would it be enough to prevent anything? Here, or back home? Or is history doomed to repeat itself? Are they doomed? He feels badly, seeing Sephiroth close himself off. That, too, is a repeat. Finding out the truth leads to isolation, pushing people away. It fills Zack with a quiet, helpless fear, the memory of those frightful days in the mansion library buzzing around in his mind.]
You had a right to know, [he manages to say weakly, anyway. It's the truth. All of it is. He may not like it, but still.]
[Silence is confirmation, but it drives no sudden desire to put Cloud's words to the test and see if he can control anyone. The idea is nauseating. All of it was. He's a little hoarser when he speaks again, struggling around the tightness in his throat and the burning blur of vision. He will not cry. He won't. He's not a child. He will not.]
Is there anything .. else. I should know.
[He'd asked. He'd wanted answers. He would have pursued them through whatever avenue he could get, beneficial or not, friendly or not. It's already more than he can sort out immediately, everything he'd thought about himself now in doubt. Everything he'd wanted, now forced to be looked at through a filter of is it him, or is it the monster he really was?
There was no point in pursuing his mother, she's another Hojo, and he the grand experiment; there was no loving maternal figure who'd simply been taken from her child, no miracle reunion one day against all impossible odds. No bright future, just more death. Beneath his shroud of feathers and blanket, the shame of hot tears drawing lines down his face can't be seen, the hitch in his breathing muted.
How long did it take last time for revelation to turn into destruction? A week? He wouldn't be in top fighting form by then. An easier conflict, should it happen again. A recovering child is not the menace a grown man is.]
[Good question. Is there? He could provide a hundred more details - the people who got hurt who might also come after him, the cascading effect of all those experiments and what it had done not just to him and Cloud but anyone unlucky enough to carry Jenova's cells, his eventual return years later and another attempt to destroy the world, his sword cutting down the life of the person he and Cloud love most, so much more - but it's all hearsay from Cloud and he's already provided the broad strokes, enough to paint an ugly picture. The kid deserves time to process. And maybe taking it slow, instead of a week of constant doom-spiralling, will help prevent the worst that could in theory come.
More than that, though... looking at Sephiroth, this small, kid version who was only looking for his mom, for the first time freed from the leash of Shinra he's probably known his whole life, drowning in the awful revelation of his future... Zack doesn't want to say more, even if there was anything. The time for big reveals and talking is over.]
...Just one thing. Back then, he ordered me out. Made me leave. I thought he'd be okay, even though he'd never acted like that before. I've... always regretted that.
[Could he have done anything to stop it? Interfered with the madness? Maybe, maybe not. It could have been too late from the start. But the what if always bothered him. He should have been there for his friend.
He reaches out, sneaking under the wing-and-fabric blanket Sephiroth has created to touch his shoulder.]
I'm not going anywhere this time. You're not alone.
[Years ago, doing such a thing as reaching out a comforting touch to someone like Sephiroth, fifteen years further grown and further isolated, might have changed everything or changed absolutely nothing, in time such weakness would be even more taboo than it was now. But he's not there yet. For all that he resented how people treated him because of it, he was still very much an adolescent with painfully little real experience with anything outside of Shinra; people do not by and large touch Sephiroth unless they're actively trying to harm him, or are scientists. Kind touch was even rarer; exceptions were so few that he could probably count them on his hands with fingers left over for his entire lifetime til now. Although there's a subtle flinch on contact, Zack isn't snarled at or swatted away, but somehow it makes it that much harder to maintain anything even remotely like composure.
It fails, by the low sound of misery that follows.
Speech had been uncomfortable enough in the wake of the ordeal he'd been through at the hands of Vincent, but now it's all but impossible, unhappy revelations succeeding where pain did not. What could he say even if he could? Apologize for people not yet killed, terrors yet unleashed? Ask what happens next? Request he not be treated like the monstrosity he was? Zack already knew what he was when they first encountered each other here, and hadn't rejected him outright even though he'd had every reason to. That meant something, didn't it?
Pale fingers close around Zack's wrist, already calloused in spite of habitual gloves, feather light instead of the force he could likely bring to bear even now. It would be effortless to pull away and shake him off. Nothing is said. Not aloud, not through some strange alien communication cells-to-cells. But it may as well have been anyway, unspoken but clear regardless.
[Yeah, no link required, there. He gets the message loud and clear. Zack shifts in his chair, not pulling away from that soft grasp. Instead he scoots the chair a little closer, leaning in.
And he does exactly what Sephiroth does yet does not ask for: he stays. He doesn't leave.
This time he'll be right here, where he's needed. With his friend.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
He's paying attention enough to see the wince, and begin the careful process of trying to remain as neutral as he possibly can seem to be. Seem to be is the important part, the monitors still betray it with every heartbeat, but he's going to make an effort at it. He can worry about being a ... deliberately engineered monster. A part parasite creation, as designed by his own mother. ...
... He can worry about it on his own time. Later.]
I'm sorry. This is upsetting you.
[It's quiet. Steady. There's no need to be loud, this close.]
You don't have to say anything else.
[He wants to know. That's how he dies, isn't it? That's one of the reasons the Firsts were past-tense, he's willing to bet. All dead. Did he kill them? That sounds like pain. Deep, personal pain.
Did he kill Zack, too?]
no subject
[Cloud was there, but why would he want to? Tifa's not here. No one else was there to witness it. He's the best suited. Anyway, there's no way to share this that won't end in someone getting hurt. He's always carried it. He can carry it a little further.]
I'm sure you can guess, he hurt people. Killed a lot of 'em. Set Nibelheim on fire. He... wanted to take over the planet. For Jenova. Because he thought it's what she wanted, or because Shinra locked her up. I dunno. He said a lot of nonsense. Jenova was still alive, I think, and she gets into peoples' heads. I never knew how much was him, and how much was her.
[He glances sidelong at Sephiroth, then away again.]
Kind of hoping we never have to find out again.
no subject
It seems strange and ridiculous at first flush. Burn down some nowhere town and declare planetary takeover, for an alien parasite? Then again, if the alien parasite was alive, and could get into another's mind, if she cared where his actual parents did not.. maybe it wasn't so ridiculous.]
I'm pretty sure the only person in my head is me.
[That's what that look is for, isn't it? The teen's smile is brief and terribly bleak. It doesn't last, and the far wall is studied instead.]
But if you're hoping to avoid that killing a lot of people thing. My team and I are the reason there's one Rhadoran left. It's too late for that.
[He's fourteen and genocide had been carried out with very little hesitation by any of them. Sure, there'd been a bit of protesting but orders were orders. Killing didn't bother him. It's a SOLDIER's profession.
There's exceptions, by the slow query that follows.]
Are you one of them? Do I kill you too?
no subject
There's not a SOLDIER in the world that doesn't have a body count. Usually you can pretend it's for a good reason.
[Not... so much, in this case. Or many other cases, in retrospect. That's the problem with Shinra. Everything looks clean until you peel back the layers.
At the very least, for the last question, he can shake his head.]
It wasn't you. Or... him. We fought, and he took me out, but I didn't die. You don't have to worry about that.
no subject
[He seems to be taking it well, all told!
... He isn't, at all. He'd wanted answers, he'd been chasing them his whole life, but as fantasies went he'd always dreamed of better, not somehow impossibly worse. And nothing he can think of refutes any of it. He'll find a way to verify, one way or another, and be absolutely certain.. but it fit, uncomfortably well.
Why he didn't look much like the picture of his mother. If he was part alien experiment, he wouldn't, would he? Why would his parents stick around if he was just..]
Jenova. The alien. [Quieter still.] Can she control people? Get inside their minds. Make them do things.
[It could be some hope that maybe he doesn't go mad, he just loses control ... but Sephiroth is thinking of the angry, hostile man who confronted him on the road between the Burrows and Kuma Lisa. I know exactly what you're capable of. Better than you.
If she could do it.. And he'd been combined with her cells, some inhuman awful hybrid.
Even the Turk was frightened when he'd first approached. Frightened? Angry?]
no subject
He'd said it was important to get the truth out. He can't back off, now.]
It's never happened to me, [he admits,] But I've been told that it's... possible. Those who carry her cells can be, uh. affected.
[He scratches at his hair again. Auuugh, he hates this so much.]
You don't have to, though! She's not here. She can't order you around or make you do terrible things. You have the choice, to be good, or... to be a monster like her. It's wrong to control people.
no subject
Your .. blond friend. He's one of them, isn't he.
[He didn't have a choice about being a monster. That was decided for him before his birth, and through any incarnation, in any time, it's agonizingly painful knowledge. Even at fourteen, he's struggled with who he is, what he's supposed to do, where he comes from. Why he was different.
Now he has those answers. At least some of them.
But there was still no great pull towards doing terrible things for the sake of being evil. There's little temptation to try to control someone else, at least right now. He was wrong about Vincent, the Turk wasn't from the past at all, it had to be the future. Just like Cloud, and just like Zack. The wing not damaged by gunfire moves beneath comforting blanket, to rise and drape across his head and chest like an arm thrown up, neatly obscuring almost the entirety of him from sight. Blanket, bandages and feather conceal everything else.]
Thank you for telling me. For what it's worth.
[Points to him for sheer self control, that sounds almost normal.]
no subject
"For what it's worth"? He wonders about that. What could this do? Would it be enough to prevent anything? Here, or back home? Or is history doomed to repeat itself? Are they doomed? He feels badly, seeing Sephiroth close himself off. That, too, is a repeat. Finding out the truth leads to isolation, pushing people away. It fills Zack with a quiet, helpless fear, the memory of those frightful days in the mansion library buzzing around in his mind.]
You had a right to know, [he manages to say weakly, anyway. It's the truth. All of it is. He may not like it, but still.]
no subject
Is there anything .. else. I should know.
[He'd asked. He'd wanted answers. He would have pursued them through whatever avenue he could get, beneficial or not, friendly or not. It's already more than he can sort out immediately, everything he'd thought about himself now in doubt. Everything he'd wanted, now forced to be looked at through a filter of is it him, or is it the monster he really was?
There was no point in pursuing his mother, she's another Hojo, and he the grand experiment; there was no loving maternal figure who'd simply been taken from her child, no miracle reunion one day against all impossible odds. No bright future, just more death. Beneath his shroud of feathers and blanket, the shame of hot tears drawing lines down his face can't be seen, the hitch in his breathing muted.
How long did it take last time for revelation to turn into destruction? A week? He wouldn't be in top fighting form by then. An easier conflict, should it happen again. A recovering child is not the menace a grown man is.]
no subject
More than that, though... looking at Sephiroth, this small, kid version who was only looking for his mom, for the first time freed from the leash of Shinra he's probably known his whole life, drowning in the awful revelation of his future... Zack doesn't want to say more, even if there was anything. The time for big reveals and talking is over.]
...Just one thing. Back then, he ordered me out. Made me leave. I thought he'd be okay, even though he'd never acted like that before. I've... always regretted that.
[Could he have done anything to stop it? Interfered with the madness? Maybe, maybe not. It could have been too late from the start. But the what if always bothered him. He should have been there for his friend.
He reaches out, sneaking under the wing-and-fabric blanket Sephiroth has created to touch his shoulder.]
I'm not going anywhere this time. You're not alone.
no subject
It fails, by the low sound of misery that follows.
Speech had been uncomfortable enough in the wake of the ordeal he'd been through at the hands of Vincent, but now it's all but impossible, unhappy revelations succeeding where pain did not. What could he say even if he could? Apologize for people not yet killed, terrors yet unleashed? Ask what happens next? Request he not be treated like the monstrosity he was? Zack already knew what he was when they first encountered each other here, and hadn't rejected him outright even though he'd had every reason to. That meant something, didn't it?
Pale fingers close around Zack's wrist, already calloused in spite of habitual gloves, feather light instead of the force he could likely bring to bear even now. It would be effortless to pull away and shake him off. Nothing is said. Not aloud, not through some strange alien communication cells-to-cells. But it may as well have been anyway, unspoken but clear regardless.
Don't leave.]
no subject
And he does exactly what Sephiroth does yet does not ask for: he stays. He doesn't leave.
This time he'll be right here, where he's needed. With his friend.]