005 ☄ the sky is low, the clouds are mean

[nohometown]

It's quiet and cold, and there's snow on the ground, blanketing bare, blackened earth that nonetheless shows through here and there: soil where nothing grows, not even in winter. In the distance, a city looms darkly: vast and industrial, walled and tiered and towered; its lights beneath the gray sky shine like pinprick eyes of red, green, and gold, some blinking and some unblinking.

There are few moving shapes on the barren terrain stretching away from the great city. Here and there an animal, or monster, stirs, raises its head, but it's an empty place overall, as there is little here to sustain either predators or prey. At first, there don't seem to be any humans present in this desolate area, but there is one. It's difficult to see him at first because he's small and pale, his silver hair and gray clothes difficult to pick out against the snowy backdrop. Yet he is there, moving from place to place with an almost unnerving quickness, in a direction definitively away from the city, carrying supplies on his back, and with a small sword at his side.

He's only a child, but he's alone out here.


[[ooc: another gratuitous child Sephiroth post. He's considering leaving his current employ with the Shinra Company, and so he's dreaming of himself leaving Shinra as a child. Replies will come from pinnaculum.]]

Comments

aw, thank you ♥

[pinnaculum]

Though he's moving quickly, he pauses and turns when he hears his name.

She's familiar to him, and she's not affiliated with Shinra as far as he knows, so he comes to a complete halt, regarding her curiously. He glances back toward the city, anxiously, but there's no sign of any pursuit. "Hello. What are you doing here?"

[waterfell]

Her sword is held loose at her side; no threat to Sephiroth, but present. She gives a minute shake of her head.

"Just what were you planning?" She trades question for question. That he's running is obvious.

[pinnaculum]

His own sword remains sheathed as well. He doesn't expect she will attack, though he doesn't drop his guard.

He hesitates, not sure if he wants to share his plan with her or with anyone, but he does answer. "I'm traveling." Though it is a slightly evasive answer.

[waterfell]

"Secretly," she observes like a quip. "So, want to tell me the rest? Or should we turn around and head back?"

Information for permission. Or something like that.

[pinnaculum]

"Yes. I would not be allowed to go, otherwise. I am not permitted to leave the laboratory on my own."

He shakes his head. "I will not go back." A simple statement, with a trace of stubbornness in it.

[waterfell]

She understands. She goes back, time and again, because there are reasons to prefer the place she's wanted, acknowledged, considered.

But she runs to the lake so many times, or even to the human world.

"If not back, where will you go?" It's the most reasonable of questions - and often the most difficult.

[pinnaculum]

"I don't know where," he admits, "but I have to go. I will not find a place unless I leave to look for one."

He lets out a breath, not quite a sigh, his breath rising visible, like a fine mist, toward the sky.

[waterfell]

"Going without a clear plan was a mistake," Mercury says bluntly, because there's no use coddling even a child - perhaps especially a child, when the child is this one, and determined on such a dangerous course. She tilts her head as she examines him.

And then she turns around, as though leaving; but she waits for him after a few steps. There should be shelter somewhere, at least; and then somewhere to go. He knows the landscape better, but she can prompt him to decide the best direction.

[pinnaculum]

"There was no way to make a plan from the lab," says Sephiroth, not an excuse, simply a fact. He would not expect or know what to do with coddling, as he has never received it.

"Where are you going?" Sephiroth asks, not following. "That isn't the way." He isn't one who prefers to follow, not even as a child. He moves in another direction, instead, across the pain.

[waterfell]

She hesitates. Can he be trusted with the direction, when he's flying by the seat of his pants? (It rather ruins the effect of her own gesture, but she tells herself that isn't the part that matters.)

"Are you sure?" It's bland, and direct. If he has any doubt, they're figuring it out for certain before they go on and get themselves lost.

[pinnaculum]

"Yes, I have studied the maps extensively. This way is better." He might not have an ultimate destination in mind, but he had considered various factors before setting out, measuring the merits of various routes and considering which Shinra would expect him to take.

It's dangerous, no matter what, but Shinra is the most dangerous. "We cannot go to Kalm because they'll look for me there. We need to go southeast."

[waterfell]

He's done his research. Well, she would have, too. Still, it makes him worth listening to. She nods, and heads in the new direction.

It takes awhile before she says anything further. There's no need. Then, out of the blue, the needless question comes anyway: "Why did you decide to do this?"

[pinnaculum]

Sephiroth isn't a particularly talkative child, and he accepts her presence without the need for much conversation.

However, when she speaks, he answers promptly. "I do not wish to be the property of the company. I do not wish to be an experiment."

[waterfell]

She nods again. Making his own way and chasing his goals is to be encouraged.

"Without any help," she comments. It might be praise, but it's ambiguous if it is. The truth is that it's making her realize he's alone.

[pinnaculum]

"That's right," he says with a nod, matter-of-fact. Who would help him? "Now I must find a place where I can hide."

[waterfell]

There's a woman next to him. Maybe that's someone.

"You could do it another way," she offers. "Keep moving." A moving target is much harder than narrowing in on a stationary one. She should know, after her time researching Sailor V for the senshi - and later, gathering information for the Dark Kingdom.

[pinnaculum]

"Should I always keep moving and never stop?"

It sounds lonely, doesn't it? Always having to move, never being able to stop or stay anywhere.

He turns to her, his hair moving in the cold wind. "I will, if I have to."

[waterfell]

"That's right," Mercury says, with little respect for what Sephiroth might be feeling. "If you want to escape, you won't be able to rest."

Her lips quirk sideways, briefly. "Thinking you can't do it?"

[pinnaculum]

"I can," he says, turning away again, a mountain range rising in the distance now as the city dwindles behind them.

"Look," he says, then disappears, reappearing again several yards ahead. He requires little rest, and he's fast, resourceful, trained for survival.

Behind is the lab, ahead is endless journeying. Is that all there is for him?

[waterfell]

It is. That's what escape means: Always looking over your shoulder. It's better, she's discovered, to make the life she wants within the life she doesn't.

But she won't argue with Sephiroth's choice, either. It's a valid one, and one that's crossed her mind more than once.

"You're clever," she concedes. "What you should consider next, are the abilities of the ones they'll send after you."

[pinnaculum]

"I will have to kill them when they come," he says calmly, a very unchildlike sentiment, though even as a child, he was being trained to kill, conditioned not to react emotionally. "No one's abilities are like mine. I'm different. I always have been."

He knows that something is very wrong. In his current state, he's not quite sure what it is, but there's something...

"I don't know why."

[waterfell]

It's not unlike that frustrating sense of something missing she often has. She's learned to associate it with the senshi, with the memories of before she learned the truth - and thus, to disregard it, or at least tell herself she has.

"That's something else you won't find back there," she says. It may be the place with the answers, but no one is going to give them to him there.

[pinnaculum]

He closes his eyes for a moment. "I know that already. He doesn't tell me anything."

He opens his eyes again. They look even brighter in the black and white landscape, which makes the faint glow in them appear stronger.

"I'll find out myself."

[waterfell]

It's familiar. Maybe, in some unfathomable way, that's why she's helping this child. Or maybe it's much more practical than that and, already knowing where this ends in so many worlds, it's better to encourage any step away from that.

Maybe it doesn't matter which, as much as she used to think it always did.

"Finding out for yourself is best," she agrees. "There's no one else to give you a true answer." For all that she complains of the deceit of the sailor senshi, she knows the Dark Kingdom hadn't told all the truth, either.

[pinnaculum]

"Yes," says Sephiroth, unaware that in the ordinary course of events, finding out for himself would end disastrously.

One can find a lie for oneself as easily as one can find the truth.

"There's no one I can trust," he says. All those he trusted turned against him... Although as a child, what he feels is a lack of faith in the company, in his keepers. In the professor.