[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?
[Questions both with laughably easy answers, though not particularly simple. The faces of those from Gaia flash across his mind, one by one, each affected by Shinra in their own way, each wronged by the megacorporation’s greed, their secrecy, their corrupt desire for power. For so long, he had never seen Shinra’s influence as a stranglehold over the Planet; he believed that AVALACHE’s claims of its corruption was the result of zealotry, extremism overblown. The original group’s violent nature had only aided that notion.
Now, the lies have dissipated, one by one. And his once-gilded ignorance has been wiped clean in equal measure, something that should feel more freeing than suffocating, surely. Someday, maybe.]
There are others. Ask any of those from my Planet, and they can give you their grievances. An old friend detained and experimented on, then gunned down by the very army he had been loyal to for years. Another also treated in a similar manner, joining an eco-terrorism group to quell Shinra’s draining of Gaia’s resources. Its very lifeblood, keeping the city of Midgar running.
[One can imagine the level of influence such a business would hold — political, socioeconomic, military. Shinra was Midgar.]
The woman I mentioned, she was detained in a laboratory when she was young as well. Shinra sought the use of her unique heritage, and of course they believed throwing her to the science department was the most expedient way of doing so. All for their own gain. She smiles often, but I imagine she had lost much in those years.
[Her mother, no doubt. Sephiroth deigns not to go too deeply into any of it.]
I have... had other friends, too, affected by the company’s experimentation. One’s body is failing him, degrading slowly over time. The other is dead, slain after transforming into a monster.
[He’s sure the point is made.]
To them, people are tools to be used. Little more than that.
[If not for all else he's come to learn of Sephiroth these past few months, as well as the man's honesty and general demeanor, he might take these words with more caution and skepticism. It's the certainty—and the vast number of stories described—that coaxes Itachi into believing what he's told. Still, there's such complexity to it he can't hope to grasp without a direct experience of this world. Gaia.
It makes him curious enough to wonder what it would be like. Visiting, seeing the place where Sephiroth came from, however twisted it might be.
It isn't as though he's a stranger to such corruption.]
The woman you mentioned, then she is another Mirrorbound? [It's less question than confirmation.] I see. A wonder that one singular entity could maintain so much control, but if it's as you say, and they maintain that hold over all resources...
[It would make sense. They stand in a position of power.]
Some parallels exist in my own world, but they're most often isolated to agents acting on their own. [Orochimaru comes to mind, briefly.] It sounds as though you'll have plenty of allies against Shinra, should that day come. Are there any individuals you're personally familiar with in the organization? It may also be possible they'll arrive here.
[That woman — Aerith — had illuminated the truth as well as Cloud. But she, too, had known Shinra as an invasive force in her life and the Planet as a whole. Her heritage ensured both.]
I know many from Shinra. It’s impossible to not grow accustomed to the faces of those who run the company. President Shinra and his son; their loyal Turks, those who do the company’s dirty work.
[And Itachi too will be keeping an eye out for the appearance of those aligned with Shinra—as well as anyone else from Sephiroth's strange world. It does make him wonder at the logic behind the selection of individuals brought here.
He falls silent in the wake of that proclamation nevertheless. Final and foreboding. They've shared so much in this conversation that, for a moment looking out at the ocean, he's surprised at himself for the vulnerability. Yet Sephiroth has never been difficult to speak to.
For now, at least, they're left to their own thoughts.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[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.
no subject
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?
no subject
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.
no subject
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
Now, the lies have dissipated, one by one. And his once-gilded ignorance has been wiped clean in equal measure, something that should feel more freeing than suffocating, surely. Someday, maybe.]
There are others. Ask any of those from my Planet, and they can give you their grievances. An old friend detained and experimented on, then gunned down by the very army he had been loyal to for years. Another also treated in a similar manner, joining an eco-terrorism group to quell Shinra’s draining of Gaia’s resources. Its very lifeblood, keeping the city of Midgar running.
[One can imagine the level of influence such a business would hold — political, socioeconomic, military. Shinra was Midgar.]
The woman I mentioned, she was detained in a laboratory when she was young as well. Shinra sought the use of her unique heritage, and of course they believed throwing her to the science department was the most expedient way of doing so. All for their own gain. She smiles often, but I imagine she had lost much in those years.
[Her mother, no doubt. Sephiroth deigns not to go too deeply into any of it.]
I have... had other friends, too, affected by the company’s experimentation. One’s body is failing him, degrading slowly over time. The other is dead, slain after transforming into a monster.
[He’s sure the point is made.]
To them, people are tools to be used. Little more than that.
OH BOY
It makes him curious enough to wonder what it would be like. Visiting, seeing the place where Sephiroth came from, however twisted it might be.
It isn't as though he's a stranger to such corruption.]
The woman you mentioned, then she is another Mirrorbound? [It's less question than confirmation.] I see. A wonder that one singular entity could maintain so much control, but if it's as you say, and they maintain that hold over all resources...
[It would make sense. They stand in a position of power.]
Some parallels exist in my own world, but they're most often isolated to agents acting on their own. [Orochimaru comes to mind, briefly.] It sounds as though you'll have plenty of allies against Shinra, should that day come. Are there any individuals you're personally familiar with in the organization? It may also be possible they'll arrive here.
no subject
[That woman — Aerith — had illuminated the truth as well as Cloud. But she, too, had known Shinra as an invasive force in her life and the Planet as a whole. Her heritage ensured both.]
I know many from Shinra. It’s impossible to not grow accustomed to the faces of those who run the company. President Shinra and his son; their loyal Turks, those who do the company’s dirty work.
If any arrive, I won’t hesitate to confront them.
no subject
He falls silent in the wake of that proclamation nevertheless. Final and foreboding. They've shared so much in this conversation that, for a moment looking out at the ocean, he's surprised at himself for the vulnerability. Yet Sephiroth has never been difficult to speak to.
For now, at least, they're left to their own thoughts.]