I do remember. You were concerned about the events you were told would occur, as well as your own role in them.
[The man he would become, uncharacteristic and unrecognizable. Sephiroth had claimed the reason behind it must be world-changing. Then these details are that information; Itachi finds himself frowning at the watch, leaning forward against the library table.
It isn't normally in his nature to pry, and yet he wants to learn more about Sephiroth, if possible.]
Those from your Planet, several years into the future? Worse, because you still don't see yourself capable—or because of the actions themselves?
Yes. At least five years into my future. One is even further than that.
[His conversation with Cloud had revealed the truth. His conversation with Aerith had revealed just how far he had been willing to twist that truth in his hands, and use it as a means for destruction.
A mind gone astray, all restraint detached. The tea from the festival is trifling in comparison.]
Because those actions mean that I am a murderer. Worse than a murderer. And now I can no longer doubt I’m capable of it. You were right when you said that things could change, in ways impossible to perceive.
I’m restless as a result.
[More than that. Understating the poignant and affecting seems to be a theme.]
[Five years is a significant time. Sasuke is only a few ahead, yet they have still changed the person he is significantly, from what he's witnessed of his brother.
The rest of Sephiroth's confession draws a longer pause. Despite their charged interactions up to this point, they've shared little of themselves on a personal level. He has not opened up to many in this place—those he has, less by choice than Sasuke's relationships forcing his hand.
This he would prefer to do himself.]
Though it may seem unconvincing, or that I'm placating you... I am not unfamiliar with the experience you describe. Our circumstances may be different, but I've also been made to confront a version of myself capable of similar darkness.
[A murderer, worse than a murderer.]
It doesn't go away. But perhaps there is another route, if these events lie in your future and not your past.
I've found it's easier to become restless here, trapped within the limits of one city.
[That is what they have all said to him. That there is another path, another set of choices, than what has already come to pass. He wonders at it, sometimes. Wonders if it’s just wishful thinking, hope lobbed his way to soothe the knives in his mind.
But in a way, it’s appreciated — from Itachi, who offers his own brand of unexpected sympathy, detached from the context of his world, perhaps more so.]
Maybe so. If I return with the knowledge I have now about myself, events won’t align to the future that’s been told to me. My decisions will be different.
You mentioned to me once, in passing, that you had died. Does that affect the future you see for yourself here? Has it made confronting that version of yourself easier?
[Questions born of an overthinking mind, usually kept tamped down tight. He finds himself sending the text before parsing it down; but perhaps it’s fine, if Itachi would rather not speak on the matter.]
And it should be. When armed with knowledge, it becomes possible to make those different decisions. It is something immensely valuable.
[This first response goes, and the next one takes longer to come, Itachi's mind laboring over how to meet the question. He knows Sephiroth will wait. That patience is a balm.]
I've spent nearly half of my life confronting that version of myself. When I did what I chose to do, I understood I would carry the burden until I died. It was a price I accepted.
I don't imagine a future here. Admittedly, I have no choice but to live, so I do. [Even if he doesn't want to.] My younger brother is also here. I'm preoccupied more for his own future, which is still ahead.
Edited (why don't i proof read tho) 2020-06-28 18:02 (UTC)
[They have reached the tenuous point where Sephiroth desires to know more, but knows that this is not a subject lightly pried open and exposed — though he does not know Itachi intimately, this is an easy assumption to make.
He would feel the same way, after all.
And yet, harried as Sephiroth always is by the need to know, with something that has caught his interest and his want to comprehend his own situation by vicariously learning the experiences of others, it pushes him forward nonetheless.]
So death hasn’t given you freedom, only burdened you with another responsibility. Your brother.
[Maybe that is tactless, maybe without cloying kindness, but Sephiroth doesn’t send it to bite. Only to understand.]
I died, too. Or I will, supposedly.
[And then he returned but that’s... complicated. He reins himself in.]
Life gains a different perspective, knowing that. I suppose I’m asking you these questions to better orient myself to this reality.
You don’t have to tell me more if you don’t want to.
[It is an understanding, even as there's an initial, knee-jerk rejection to the idea of Sasuke as a burden. Sasuke is his reason to live. He has always been the one Itachi channeled existence and meaning into, when life became otherwise pointless. Yet Sasuke is his own person here—apart from his elder brother and connected to others, an adult, someone new and unfamiliar. He's seeing that more and more.
And he's also seeing, here, an opportunity for openness. If only it were so easy for either of them.]
I understand. It isn't a matter of wanting. My acts and reputation are well-known in my own world, so that isn't any secret. And I dislike the idea of hiding it here.
[Speaking about those subjects, unfortunately, leaves him bare and vulnerable to the questions of why? To let himself be so known by someone else...]
Least of all to an individual like yourself who warrants honesty from me. If anything I say is useful to you, then I will consider it justified.
If you have time, perhaps we should continue this conversation in person.
[Does he wish to speak about it in person? Text affords the comfort of distance, yet maybe the point is already long moot, given the topic at hand. What’s already been said.
The delay is not as long as might be expected. The response comes with little deliberation this time.]
I have time.
[He sends a location — the south eastern most section of the harbor district, where one can view the inbound ships pass by without getting in the way of the workers expected to tend to them.]
I’ll be here for a while longer if you want to meet.
[And so he will if Itachi comes to find him. Perched upon a rickety bench on a wharf that overlooks the distant creaking of docks stretching out into the sea, he’s quite the sight against the muted colors of dull wood — silver hair spilling across his shoulders, wings draped behind the backrest in a lazy splay. There’s a book in his lap, currently closed, and his gaze is fixed on the horizon, expression as distant as always, the scent of brine ignored.]
[It's a trek from Undermael College to the docks indicated—clear to the other side of the city, in fact—and not one timely managed on foot. Fortunate, then, he's practiced expanding the range of teleportation he can achieve; and fortunate he has the magic to burn for it, yet Bondless and passing that threshold of the third month.
A few strategic jumps, some walking, and a little over an hour later Itachi arrives in the harbor district. He veers southeast. The westering sun is hot on his back through this journey, scent of salt and industrial smog strong in the tepid air.
Sephiroth is not difficult to spy even at a distance, hair illuminated like a blade by the daylight over low warehouses, wings marking him for what he now is in that blatant, animal display. His silent footsteps halt, hesitating meters behind the bench near the cornered wall of a building. It's an uncharacteristic pause before he announces himself—or perhaps Sephiroth will already know he's there. But for a moment he simply looks; the physical memory of their previous encounter rides high into his mind, unbidden, observing that familiar profile and posture. Easier to forget when not confronted with the man in front of him.
Itachi forces himself into practiced composure, sweeps out all lingering thought, then finally approaches.] Sephiroth.
[Even before his slow transformation into a Harpy, Sephiroth’s senses had always outperformed that of a normal human. When he was younger, it was a fact pointed out to him by any number of attending scientists on any given day; that his amalgamation of heightened perception meant that there was very little in the world that could catch him by surprise, flank him unexpectedly. A boon on the battlefield, they had said, just one more in his ever expanding toolset of them.
So even before Itachi approaches, a part of Sephiroth senses him there — the sound of his footsteps, perhaps, or a bracing breath before he deigns to join him. Maybe something more akin to a known presence, harder to quantify.
Yet he doesn’t speak until he’s spoken to first, and only does so after he glances at the other man. The flagging sun, he notes, casts him in strange hues, muddied by the greys and browns of the surrounding docks, the darkening waters churning just beyond.
He thinks of their last meeting, and how different the energy was between then and now — how heated want twists everything into almost-desperation. Everything now feels so sedate in comparison, despite the memory that twinges at the back of his mind. He pushes it aside.]
Itachi.
[A beat. Again, conversation is always such a strained and clumsy art where Sephiroth is concerned.]
...Time seems to move strangely this close to the water. There was nothing like this in Midgar. [Yes, this is a proper hello after their conversation through text, right.] I’ve already finished my book.
[That sedateness is a shared sentiment, but the calm, almost somber nature of this reencounter gives Itachi space to think as he could not before. And the subject they find themselves gracing isn't one he could address without a clear and rational head.
Stepping over to the bench, his eyes lower to it, then he takes the seat to Sephiroth's empty side. They're closer this way—a fact he can't shut out in proximity to the elegant spread of those wings—but this feels more natural than standing for the conversation. He presses back, shoulders straight, and turns a dark gaze onto the ocean's vast, blue line where it touches the horizon.]
You're unused to it, then? I find the sight more familiar. Time does seem to move... slower, perhaps, when close to a body of water. [He eyes the swirling eddies around the wharf, then turns a quick glance to the book in Sephiroth's lap.] Hopefully it was a good one.
[Small talk doesn't truly suit him, so... After a considering pause:]
Do you fear it? The death they promised would be in your future.
[Keenly aware of Itachi’s presence as he settles next to him, Sephiroth wonders if it’s the nature of their conversation ratcheting up this cognizance, or simply the inherent nature between Monster and Witch. But he barely even moves, only the length of feathers and hair ruffled by the breeze gliding in from the brackish waters.
The death of idle banter is never one Sephiroth will mourn, though the answer is not immediate. Like all things lately, there is complication interwoven into how he feels about— anything.]
Fear? No.
[There is so little he fears. Shinra stamped that out of him so long ago, leaving only a deep-seated dread of more nebulous anxieties where they once would have rested.]
Because it would be a deserved death if it came to pass. And an impermanent one. But it makes me wonder of what could have been. If I had been born with a different set of expectations, or none at all, so much could have been avoided.
[Those words, an impermanent one, leave hanging questions. Itachi glances over from the corner of eyes as he listens to the admission in full. He's not surprised Sephiroth holds no fear of death; it would have gone more against his expectation and understanding of the man to receive a different answer.]
You're speaking as though this future is certainly going to occur. Is that what you believe?
[Gaze momentarily drawn to the stir of feathers in his periphery, he maintains an impassive expression. Watching Sephiroth is more compelling now than the ocean in front of them.]
[His lips twitch into a faint smile that is lacking even scant humor.]
I believe the chances of it occurring are the same as it not. Who’s to say otherwise?
[There is no guarantee that anything will change. If things stay the same, then they stay the same, Aerith had said, as simple as that.]
And they’re useless thoughts because I can’t change what’s already happened, or where I come from. [Perhaps related, the question bright enough in his mind to turn his cat’s eyes to Itachi—]
Are you close with your family? You said your brother is here, after all.
[Fair enough logic, and nothing Itachi is compelled to argue. He has no knowledge of these events of the past and future—and very little of Sephiroth’s world itself. He is also not the sort of man to encourage blind-sighted dreams when there is no evidence anything can be altered.
So he lets that hang, knowing he would feel similarly. He understands that feeling, in a faraway and distant way: what could have been. What would never be, now.]
No. My family is dead. [Honesty is deserved, and this isn’t secret.] When I spoke of my reputation, it was due to this. I killed them—all of those who belonged to our clan, except for my younger brother, Sasuke.
[The confession is plain and mildly said as he looks out across the ocean, eyes returned to the horizon line. He wonders how many more times he will have to face this admission, and whether it will ever be enough.]
[How strange it is, to hear that. To a man like Sephiroth, with so much inside of him hinging on a voided sense of family — a sense of belonging — the admission forms a paradox. The unimaginable, to take that anchoring point and abolish it willingly, violently; and balefully curious, the want to know why. To understand intent.
The reasoning is half of the story, after all. He finds he cannot being himself to find scrutiny or judgment in his response, because what sort of hypocrite would that make him? His hands will be stained with so much blood, if the future comes to pass.
Itachi looks at the sea, but Sephiroth can only bring himself to look at the man, as though to pull an answer from his expression before words can do the work for him. A steady, searching look that brightens in the waning sun.]
Why?
[There’s much he could say. Much he might still — but why not begin with the obvious.]
[As in the last time he made this confession, Itachi adopts an expression of blank severity, nothing in his outward demeanor suggestive of interior thought. He anticipates judgment to come, eventually—but he won't wait for it or hold expectation for what it might be. Sephiroth will form his own opinion.
Better to have this out, now.]
The reason is difficult to explain without an understanding of my own world, the one of shinobi—where violence is a language often used between hidden villages in disputes or disagreements. War is common. My home, a place called Konoha, had only recently emerged from the end of one. It left a permanent mark on many, including those within the Uchiha clan.
[It was a war he'd witnessed himself at only four years old, but this he keeps. It's not a necessary piece of information as it had been with Stiles, who might need context—he has the sense Sephiroth understands violence better. Perhaps he's wrong.]
My clan felt repressed and ignored by the village, so they staged a coup and expected I would help. [Itachi's eyes remain on the glittering water at a far distant point.] However, any attempts to usurp power from Konoha were likely to end in another war for the entirety of the population.
[He does, finally, glance to Sephiroth.] I couldn't allow this. [Itachi's voice remains cool and precise delivering that statement of finality. Logical, almost cold.] I don't intend for this explanation to serve as justification. As I said, I understood the consequences of my decision and accepted its punishment. It was necessary.
[He knows the horrors of war, though perhaps his very existence was curated for it, and therefore it is hard for Sephiroth to view it as “horror” in the way a normal man might. Since he was young, he was cutting down too-real holograms of people who screamed like real men would, being lit afire or cut through with his blade in Shinra’s VR training rooms. And the first time he killed a man — at the age of twelve, dropped on the battlefield and pitted as a spearhead against a desperate rebellion — he had watched the blood spill from the open wound cutting across their middle, and could only think of how strange it was that human bodies were so soft, so vulnerable.
But it had been easy to categorize war as a necessity; violence, at its core, was not something to be indulged in by decent people. Sephiroth had thought once that he, too, was a decent person, until he learned of Nibelheim. Now, he cannot know.
In comparison, Itachi’s decision rings with a sort of… merit. A reasoning that is like cold steel as he explains it so Sephiroth, unwavering and sure in his decision. The sacrifice of a clan to avoid another onslaught of war. Good intentions, twisted up in moral greys.
He cannot fling judgment his way, no, not when he cannot say the same for himself. Just a madman clinging to rage and sorrow, declaring a birthright that was never truly his.
Sephiroth’s lost track of the moments of silence that pass before he responds. His tone is the same as before; barely the shadow of anything shaped like disgust mars his features.]
No. It is exactly what I wished to hear.
[The truth. He yearns for it, these days, despite its features always being so ugly.]
[Eyes linger on the other man's profile, unable to read the thoughts within and not truly trying. There's as little to grasp from a look alone as his own expression must yield. Yet Sephiroth's words, blunt and barefaced and straightforward—not seeking to question or criticize—is a strange and soothing balm.
He's endured so much of that, after all. Years of questions and criticism. An entire lifetime.]
... Regret would be meaningless. The past has already occurred, and it can't be changed.
[It's already done and written into the path at his back. Itachi is quiet for several hanging moments.]
If I had been told as a child what I would do, I wouldn't have believed it. Such an atrocity was never my goal. Yet in the end, it was the decision I made, and I intended to die with that version of myself. [As his gaze had drifted away, now it returns, watching Sephiroth.] That is why this place feels unnecessary to me. If we don't retain the knowledge we've earned when we leave, whether dead or thrust into an unimaginable future, then what is the point?
[The million gil question. The same that circles around his mind like a listless predator, and will remain planted there for as long as he remains in this world. He does not think he can give a suitable answer of his own, but it is easy enough to borrow the words of Aerith — her bright hope (an alien thing to his ears), easily spoken to him even while steeped in melancholy.]
A woman from my world told me that we must be brought here for a reason. That our converging timelines must have a purpose behind them, even if it’s just to rally hope. That we can change, or live.
[Her answer, too, flits about in his thoughts; hope and uncertainty biting back at each other. Sephiroth shifts in his seat— a small movement that seems weightier than it is, given how still he had been — and focuses his gaze on the horizon.]
I believe you will have to answer that question for yourself, in the end. And I will have to learn to either accept my future and the person it means I am, or deny fate altogether.
[Maybe the two aren’t unrelated.
Silence falls again. He thinks of how to word his next few sentences, and finds that nothing will make them sound reasonable — there is no greater good in his own actions-to-be, no ends justifying the means.]
There is no justification for what a future version of myself did. I burnt down a village, slaughtered innocents; and then I took that rage and turned it against my entire Planet.
[That hunt for meaning, and purpose—it isn't unknown to him. Surely there is some utility to it as well. Still, Itachi finds it difficult to wrap his mind around the concept, except for as he's already decided: he has little need to be here beyond ensuring Sasuke's continued survival and eventual return home.
Then what of these others? The people he's come into contact with, such as Sephiroth himself, and their own personal struggles... Even untouched by his own world, Itachi finds it difficult to completely ignore. Sephiroth's words aren't wrong; those answers must be sought alone.
At that final confession, dark eyes land on the other man, a long and considering silence fallen between them.]
... That must have required a great deal of power, [his voice comes quiet, low. His gaze doesn't waver from its focus on Sephiroth's profile.] You spoke of a realization. One which changed everything as you knew it. Did it inspire this rage?
[He can think of nothing else, and he understands well the great burden emotion can become.]
[The reply comes darkly, in response to both notions of power and the rage that has enveloped him whole. He can still feel a shadow of it, nestled at his core — an ember that has the potential to turn into an immolation, set upon Gaia simply because the truth had been twisted up in his mind.
This next part is— difficult. It represents a part of himself that he doesn’t share with many, or often, and most simply have to assume that there’s some kind of malaise resting in Sephiroth’s core, for he never references it directly.
Even now, he tries to infuse a cold distance between emotion and explanation.]
You saw me as a child in my memory, once. The inside of the Shinra building. That place is the equivalent of my home — where I had been raised, and all I knew for so long.
[The labs, the tests, the training that would ensure his rise in SOLDIER. All expectation, easily earned, and his version of normalcy. Even now, it is hard to look at it as anything but, despite the bitterness on his tongue.]
I never knew where I came from; who my mother or father was. And when I asked, I was told my mother’s name was Jenova. That’s all I had: a name.
[His eyes meet Itachi’s anew, and he can’t stop his brow from furrowing.]
During a mission, the same that I was pulled from before coming to this world, I would learn that Jenova was an alien creature that had landed on our Planet thousands of years ago. I would mistake that thing as my real mother, wronged by humanity, and that revelation would break me.
[Enough to reclaim a false birthright, enough to detach himself fully from humanity with a disturbing ease — he had never felt close to them, to start.]
But that was never the whole truth. The reality isn’t much better. Shinra took Jenova’s genetic material to create a cross between a human and— [Monster? There is no better word, but he bites it back.] —itself. A hybrid. Me.
[His fingers gently coil against the cover of his closed book.]
I’m only partly human, with that thing’s blood running through my veins. That, I learned here. The others told me.
[In the face of that cool, distanced demeanor, Itachi remains quiet and watchful, undaunted by it. Truthfully he understands no other effective way to communicate difficult or personal information himself. It was exactly as he'd vented the truth to Stiles—so perhaps this isn't truly different.
The words remind him of the sleek sterile halls of that strange building, of his sole glimpse into Sephiroth's world and childhood. Shinra. A name to remember.
Still, to him it has no hallmarks of a home. Even his own had its softer edges: warm food, familial surroundings, comfort in a mother and stern discipline in a father. What Sephiroth is confessing suggests none of that experience. It causes him to wonder how his own life might have been different, without the burden of heritage—only a name.
Wouldn't one feel driven toward more?
Except it seems that truth served Sephiroth's undoing, however half-discovered it was in the end. Itachi's eyes skate across the seascape; he offers that privacy, at least, while the man speaks. Some of it escapes the realm of his knowledge. An alien creature to him is something otherworldly, like a god descended upon the plane. Human nature doesn't shock him as he hears how that foreign creature was used and analyzed, but to corrupt someone else with it...
A hybrid, Sephiroth says. And all that comes to his mind are those green, glowing eyes. Even if they aren't a result of his genes, they remind him of it. The same with the man's fighting prowess, with his too-quickly healed bones.]
I see. [His own voice remains low and quietly modulated as he accepts the very depth of this admission. They've given each other honesty. There's no reason to cast judgment or opinion. And yet—] Of all of those here I've encountered, you seem more familiar and recognizable to me than anyone. Perhaps that difference you describe sets you apart from your own world, but to me, I notice only similarities. If not in our physical makeup, then in our perceptions and opinions.
[To relay this truth — rather than to hear it presented to him, flying from the lips of those from his Planet, ever wary of his reaction — should be some kind of catharsis, he thinks. A ball-bearing pulled from his chest, lifting away the weight of that knowledge and allowing him to breathe. It doesn't, but he finds himself resigned to that, too. Cracking open his chest to show someone else his uncertainties, the ugly insides, is not enough to force them to dissolve in the sun. They've been there for too long, crystallized and nailed into him.
And yet Itachi's words, in turn, feel as much as mutual commiseration as it does natural camaraderie. Sameness is something he's always sought, in other SOLDIERs, in those who might share a similar military background as him, or aligned interests. Yet it's always Sephiroth doing the seeking, with few individuals comprehending that they might offer it to a man so different and oddly distant; so it is a bit like hearing a foreign language for the first time, curious and surprising, to listen to Itachi tout a uniformity between them. A like meets like.
His shoulders rise and fall with an intake and exhale of breath, looking at him while his mind pieces together a reply.]
That's good to hear. Thank you.
[More than once, he's won Sephiroth's gratitude. How odd, that a man arguably as distant as he can be, has still encroached closer than most.
As for his question, there is very little thought given to his reply.]
Right now, there's no choice but to continue exiting in this world. But eventually, Shinra has to pay for what they've done.
[Giving only a nod of his head at that gratitude, accepting it for what sincerity it holds, Itachi's mind fixates on that latter statement. Shinra, again, the entity at fault for twisting up Sephiroth's world and concealing the truth. The thread of vengeance isn't foreign to him, although he can't share it — that feeling belongs to Sephiroth alone.]
Are you the only one Shinra has impacted in this way, or are there others?
[It would help to know the extent of wrongdoing. His mind naturally drifts toward the only equivalent he can draw: Akatsuki. But even they don't boast the same capability Sephiroth has described.]
Do those from your world that are here feel the same toward Shinra?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[The man he would become, uncharacteristic and unrecognizable. Sephiroth had claimed the reason behind it must be world-changing. Then these details are that information; Itachi finds himself frowning at the watch, leaning forward against the library table.
It isn't normally in his nature to pry, and yet he wants to learn more about Sephiroth, if possible.]
Those from your Planet, several years into the future? Worse, because you still don't see yourself capable—or because of the actions themselves?
no subject
[His conversation with Cloud had revealed the truth. His conversation with Aerith had revealed just how far he had been willing to twist that truth in his hands, and use it as a means for destruction.
A mind gone astray, all restraint detached. The tea from the festival is trifling in comparison.]
Because those actions mean that I am a murderer. Worse than a murderer. And now I can no longer doubt I’m capable of it. You were right when you said that things could change, in ways impossible to perceive.
I’m restless as a result.
[More than that. Understating the poignant and affecting seems to be a theme.]
no subject
The rest of Sephiroth's confession draws a longer pause. Despite their charged interactions up to this point, they've shared little of themselves on a personal level. He has not opened up to many in this place—those he has, less by choice than Sasuke's relationships forcing his hand.
This he would prefer to do himself.]
Though it may seem unconvincing, or that I'm placating you... I am not unfamiliar with the experience you describe. Our circumstances may be different, but I've also been made to confront a version of myself capable of similar darkness.
[A murderer, worse than a murderer.]
It doesn't go away. But perhaps there is another route, if these events lie in your future and not your past.
I've found it's easier to become restless here, trapped within the limits of one city.
no subject
But in a way, it’s appreciated — from Itachi, who offers his own brand of unexpected sympathy, detached from the context of his world, perhaps more so.]
Maybe so. If I return with the knowledge I have now about myself, events won’t align to the future that’s been told to me. My decisions will be different.
You mentioned to me once, in passing, that you had died. Does that affect the future you see for yourself here? Has it made confronting that version of yourself easier?
[Questions born of an overthinking mind, usually kept tamped down tight. He finds himself sending the text before parsing it down; but perhaps it’s fine, if Itachi would rather not speak on the matter.]
no subject
[This first response goes, and the next one takes longer to come, Itachi's mind laboring over how to meet the question. He knows Sephiroth will wait. That patience is a balm.]
I've spent nearly half of my life confronting that version of myself. When I did what I chose to do, I understood I would carry the burden until I died. It was a price I accepted.
I don't imagine a future here. Admittedly, I have no choice but to live, so I do. [Even if he doesn't want to.] My younger brother is also here. I'm preoccupied more for his own future, which is still ahead.
no subject
He would feel the same way, after all.
And yet, harried as Sephiroth always is by the need to know, with something that has caught his interest and his want to comprehend his own situation by vicariously learning the experiences of others, it pushes him forward nonetheless.]
So death hasn’t given you freedom, only burdened you with another responsibility. Your brother.
[Maybe that is tactless, maybe without cloying kindness, but Sephiroth doesn’t send it to bite. Only to understand.]
I died, too. Or I will, supposedly.
[And then he returned but that’s... complicated. He reins himself in.]
Life gains a different perspective, knowing that. I suppose I’m asking you these questions to better orient myself to this reality.
You don’t have to tell me more if you don’t want to.
no subject
And he's also seeing, here, an opportunity for openness. If only it were so easy for either of them.]
I understand. It isn't a matter of wanting. My acts and reputation are well-known in my own world, so that isn't any secret. And I dislike the idea of hiding it here.
[Speaking about those subjects, unfortunately, leaves him bare and vulnerable to the questions of why? To let himself be so known by someone else...]
Least of all to an individual like yourself who warrants honesty from me. If anything I say is useful to you, then I will consider it justified.
If you have time, perhaps we should continue this conversation in person.
no subject
The delay is not as long as might be expected. The response comes with little deliberation this time.]
I have time.
[He sends a location — the south eastern most section of the harbor district, where one can view the inbound ships pass by without getting in the way of the workers expected to tend to them.]
I’ll be here for a while longer if you want to meet.
[And so he will if Itachi comes to find him. Perched upon a rickety bench on a wharf that overlooks the distant creaking of docks stretching out into the sea, he’s quite the sight against the muted colors of dull wood — silver hair spilling across his shoulders, wings draped behind the backrest in a lazy splay. There’s a book in his lap, currently closed, and his gaze is fixed on the horizon, expression as distant as always, the scent of brine ignored.]
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A few strategic jumps, some walking, and a little over an hour later Itachi arrives in the harbor district. He veers southeast. The westering sun is hot on his back through this journey, scent of salt and industrial smog strong in the tepid air.
Sephiroth is not difficult to spy even at a distance, hair illuminated like a blade by the daylight over low warehouses, wings marking him for what he now is in that blatant, animal display. His silent footsteps halt, hesitating meters behind the bench near the cornered wall of a building. It's an uncharacteristic pause before he announces himself—or perhaps Sephiroth will already know he's there. But for a moment he simply looks; the physical memory of their previous encounter rides high into his mind, unbidden, observing that familiar profile and posture. Easier to forget when not confronted with the man in front of him.
Itachi forces himself into practiced composure, sweeps out all lingering thought, then finally approaches.] Sephiroth.
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So even before Itachi approaches, a part of Sephiroth senses him there — the sound of his footsteps, perhaps, or a bracing breath before he deigns to join him. Maybe something more akin to a known presence, harder to quantify.
Yet he doesn’t speak until he’s spoken to first, and only does so after he glances at the other man. The flagging sun, he notes, casts him in strange hues, muddied by the greys and browns of the surrounding docks, the darkening waters churning just beyond.
He thinks of their last meeting, and how different the energy was between then and now — how heated want twists everything into almost-desperation. Everything now feels so sedate in comparison, despite the memory that twinges at the back of his mind. He pushes it aside.]
Itachi.
[A beat. Again, conversation is always such a strained and clumsy art where Sephiroth is concerned.]
...Time seems to move strangely this close to the water. There was nothing like this in Midgar. [Yes, this is a proper hello after their conversation through text, right.] I’ve already finished my book.
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Stepping over to the bench, his eyes lower to it, then he takes the seat to Sephiroth's empty side. They're closer this way—a fact he can't shut out in proximity to the elegant spread of those wings—but this feels more natural than standing for the conversation. He presses back, shoulders straight, and turns a dark gaze onto the ocean's vast, blue line where it touches the horizon.]
You're unused to it, then? I find the sight more familiar. Time does seem to move... slower, perhaps, when close to a body of water. [He eyes the swirling eddies around the wharf, then turns a quick glance to the book in Sephiroth's lap.] Hopefully it was a good one.
[Small talk doesn't truly suit him, so... After a considering pause:]
Do you fear it? The death they promised would be in your future.
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The death of idle banter is never one Sephiroth will mourn, though the answer is not immediate. Like all things lately, there is complication interwoven into how he feels about— anything.]
Fear? No.
[There is so little he fears. Shinra stamped that out of him so long ago, leaving only a deep-seated dread of more nebulous anxieties where they once would have rested.]
Because it would be a deserved death if it came to pass. And an impermanent one. But it makes me wonder of what could have been. If I had been born with a different set of expectations, or none at all, so much could have been avoided.
All useless musings now, I think.
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You're speaking as though this future is certainly going to occur. Is that what you believe?
[Gaze momentarily drawn to the stir of feathers in his periphery, he maintains an impassive expression. Watching Sephiroth is more compelling now than the ocean in front of them.]
Why are they useless?
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I believe the chances of it occurring are the same as it not. Who’s to say otherwise?
[There is no guarantee that anything will change. If things stay the same, then they stay the same, Aerith had said, as simple as that.]
And they’re useless thoughts because I can’t change what’s already happened, or where I come from. [Perhaps related, the question bright enough in his mind to turn his cat’s eyes to Itachi—]
Are you close with your family? You said your brother is here, after all.
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So he lets that hang, knowing he would feel similarly. He understands that feeling, in a faraway and distant way: what could have been. What would never be, now.]
No. My family is dead. [Honesty is deserved, and this isn’t secret.] When I spoke of my reputation, it was due to this. I killed them—all of those who belonged to our clan, except for my younger brother, Sasuke.
[The confession is plain and mildly said as he looks out across the ocean, eyes returned to the horizon line. He wonders how many more times he will have to face this admission, and whether it will ever be enough.]
I was exiled for it, of course. The clan-killer.
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The reasoning is half of the story, after all. He finds he cannot being himself to find scrutiny or judgment in his response, because what sort of hypocrite would that make him? His hands will be stained with so much blood, if the future comes to pass.
Itachi looks at the sea, but Sephiroth can only bring himself to look at the man, as though to pull an answer from his expression before words can do the work for him. A steady, searching look that brightens in the waning sun.]
Why?
[There’s much he could say. Much he might still — but why not begin with the obvious.]
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Better to have this out, now.]
The reason is difficult to explain without an understanding of my own world, the one of shinobi—where violence is a language often used between hidden villages in disputes or disagreements. War is common. My home, a place called Konoha, had only recently emerged from the end of one. It left a permanent mark on many, including those within the Uchiha clan.
[It was a war he'd witnessed himself at only four years old, but this he keeps. It's not a necessary piece of information as it had been with Stiles, who might need context—he has the sense Sephiroth understands violence better. Perhaps he's wrong.]
My clan felt repressed and ignored by the village, so they staged a coup and expected I would help. [Itachi's eyes remain on the glittering water at a far distant point.] However, any attempts to usurp power from Konoha were likely to end in another war for the entirety of the population.
[He does, finally, glance to Sephiroth.] I couldn't allow this. [Itachi's voice remains cool and precise delivering that statement of finality. Logical, almost cold.] I don't intend for this explanation to serve as justification. As I said, I understood the consequences of my decision and accepted its punishment. It was necessary.
... Perhaps that's more than you wished to hear.
[Still, it's who he is. He won't hide it.]
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But it had been easy to categorize war as a necessity; violence, at its core, was not something to be indulged in by decent people. Sephiroth had thought once that he, too, was a decent person, until he learned of Nibelheim. Now, he cannot know.
In comparison, Itachi’s decision rings with a sort of… merit. A reasoning that is like cold steel as he explains it so Sephiroth, unwavering and sure in his decision. The sacrifice of a clan to avoid another onslaught of war. Good intentions, twisted up in moral greys.
He cannot fling judgment his way, no, not when he cannot say the same for himself. Just a madman clinging to rage and sorrow, declaring a birthright that was never truly his.
Sephiroth’s lost track of the moments of silence that pass before he responds. His tone is the same as before; barely the shadow of anything shaped like disgust mars his features.]
No. It is exactly what I wished to hear.
[The truth. He yearns for it, these days, despite its features always being so ugly.]
Do you regret it?
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He's endured so much of that, after all. Years of questions and criticism. An entire lifetime.]
... Regret would be meaningless. The past has already occurred, and it can't be changed.
[It's already done and written into the path at his back. Itachi is quiet for several hanging moments.]
If I had been told as a child what I would do, I wouldn't have believed it. Such an atrocity was never my goal. Yet in the end, it was the decision I made, and I intended to die with that version of myself. [As his gaze had drifted away, now it returns, watching Sephiroth.] That is why this place feels unnecessary to me. If we don't retain the knowledge we've earned when we leave, whether dead or thrust into an unimaginable future, then what is the point?
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A woman from my world told me that we must be brought here for a reason. That our converging timelines must have a purpose behind them, even if it’s just to rally hope. That we can change, or live.
[Her answer, too, flits about in his thoughts; hope and uncertainty biting back at each other. Sephiroth shifts in his seat— a small movement that seems weightier than it is, given how still he had been — and focuses his gaze on the horizon.]
I believe you will have to answer that question for yourself, in the end. And I will have to learn to either accept my future and the person it means I am, or deny fate altogether.
[Maybe the two aren’t unrelated.
Silence falls again. He thinks of how to word his next few sentences, and finds that nothing will make them sound reasonable — there is no greater good in his own actions-to-be, no ends justifying the means.]
There is no justification for what a future version of myself did. I burnt down a village, slaughtered innocents; and then I took that rage and turned it against my entire Planet.
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Then what of these others? The people he's come into contact with, such as Sephiroth himself, and their own personal struggles... Even untouched by his own world, Itachi finds it difficult to completely ignore. Sephiroth's words aren't wrong; those answers must be sought alone.
At that final confession, dark eyes land on the other man, a long and considering silence fallen between them.]
... That must have required a great deal of power, [his voice comes quiet, low. His gaze doesn't waver from its focus on Sephiroth's profile.] You spoke of a realization. One which changed everything as you knew it. Did it inspire this rage?
[He can think of nothing else, and he understands well the great burden emotion can become.]
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[The reply comes darkly, in response to both notions of power and the rage that has enveloped him whole. He can still feel a shadow of it, nestled at his core — an ember that has the potential to turn into an immolation, set upon Gaia simply because the truth had been twisted up in his mind.
This next part is— difficult. It represents a part of himself that he doesn’t share with many, or often, and most simply have to assume that there’s some kind of malaise resting in Sephiroth’s core, for he never references it directly.
Even now, he tries to infuse a cold distance between emotion and explanation.]
You saw me as a child in my memory, once. The inside of the Shinra building. That place is the equivalent of my home — where I had been raised, and all I knew for so long.
[The labs, the tests, the training that would ensure his rise in SOLDIER. All expectation, easily earned, and his version of normalcy. Even now, it is hard to look at it as anything but, despite the bitterness on his tongue.]
I never knew where I came from; who my mother or father was. And when I asked, I was told my mother’s name was Jenova. That’s all I had: a name.
[His eyes meet Itachi’s anew, and he can’t stop his brow from furrowing.]
During a mission, the same that I was pulled from before coming to this world, I would learn that Jenova was an alien creature that had landed on our Planet thousands of years ago. I would mistake that thing as my real mother, wronged by humanity, and that revelation would break me.
[Enough to reclaim a false birthright, enough to detach himself fully from humanity with a disturbing ease — he had never felt close to them, to start.]
But that was never the whole truth. The reality isn’t much better. Shinra took Jenova’s genetic material to create a cross between a human and— [Monster? There is no better word, but he bites it back.] —itself. A hybrid. Me.
[His fingers gently coil against the cover of his closed book.]
I’m only partly human, with that thing’s blood running through my veins. That, I learned here. The others told me.
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The words remind him of the sleek sterile halls of that strange building, of his sole glimpse into Sephiroth's world and childhood. Shinra. A name to remember.
Still, to him it has no hallmarks of a home. Even his own had its softer edges: warm food, familial surroundings, comfort in a mother and stern discipline in a father. What Sephiroth is confessing suggests none of that experience. It causes him to wonder how his own life might have been different, without the burden of heritage—only a name.
Wouldn't one feel driven toward more?
Except it seems that truth served Sephiroth's undoing, however half-discovered it was in the end. Itachi's eyes skate across the seascape; he offers that privacy, at least, while the man speaks. Some of it escapes the realm of his knowledge. An alien creature to him is something otherworldly, like a god descended upon the plane. Human nature doesn't shock him as he hears how that foreign creature was used and analyzed, but to corrupt someone else with it...
A hybrid, Sephiroth says. And all that comes to his mind are those green, glowing eyes. Even if they aren't a result of his genes, they remind him of it. The same with the man's fighting prowess, with his too-quickly healed bones.]
I see. [His own voice remains low and quietly modulated as he accepts the very depth of this admission. They've given each other honesty. There's no reason to cast judgment or opinion. And yet—] Of all of those here I've encountered, you seem more familiar and recognizable to me than anyone. Perhaps that difference you describe sets you apart from your own world, but to me, I notice only similarities. If not in our physical makeup, then in our perceptions and opinions.
[Rare enough for someone like him.]
What will you do now?
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And yet Itachi's words, in turn, feel as much as mutual commiseration as it does natural camaraderie. Sameness is something he's always sought, in other SOLDIERs, in those who might share a similar military background as him, or aligned interests. Yet it's always Sephiroth doing the seeking, with few individuals comprehending that they might offer it to a man so different and oddly distant; so it is a bit like hearing a foreign language for the first time, curious and surprising, to listen to Itachi tout a uniformity between them. A like meets like.
His shoulders rise and fall with an intake and exhale of breath, looking at him while his mind pieces together a reply.]
That's good to hear. Thank you.
[More than once, he's won Sephiroth's gratitude. How odd, that a man arguably as distant as he can be, has still encroached closer than most.
As for his question, there is very little thought given to his reply.]
Right now, there's no choice but to continue exiting in this world. But eventually, Shinra has to pay for what they've done.
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Are you the only one Shinra has impacted in this way, or are there others?
[It would help to know the extent of wrongdoing. His mind naturally drifts toward the only equivalent he can draw: Akatsuki. But even they don't boast the same capability Sephiroth has described.]
Do those from your world that are here feel the same toward Shinra?
unseals can of worms
OH BOY
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