[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
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.]