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.]]

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[nohometown]

"Zack is good. I like him." There are few people indeed he would say that about. Sephiroth, the child, nods, but there is still uncertainty in his eyes, and he turns away, taking a step back. He asks a question.

"Do you really think Angeal was wrong?" Suddenly, the child isn't a child any longer, and suddenly, he is standing farther away, a taller, more distant figure, brought back to himself by a grief the child can't understand or contain. That child had never had a friend. But then, Sephiroth hasn't truly been a child for a long time.

"Things aren't necessarily that simple, that easy to classify. Whatever he was, he wasn't an ordinary SOLDIER. He wasn't even like Genesis or myself. They would have taken him prisoner, because he deserted. They would have given him to those who would have used his genetic material in ways we cannot imagine. He made sure it was destroyed. At times I do believe he was wrong, but at times, I think that was the bravest act I've ever known. Or it could be that both are true. He gave up all his honor, for us." Right or wrong, it hadn't been an honorable way to die, and honor had mattered so much to Angeal. He's angry at Angeal, but as always, it's hard to dislike him. Even when he was making one of his speeches about honor and dreams, it had been difficult to be annoyed with him (not that he hadn't managed it).

He wishes he could hear one of those speeches again.

He shifts the conversation to Hojo without mentioning his name. "By failure, I mean those things he deems successes."

[findmyownreason]

He watches the physical shift, eyes narrow and wary. It's one thing to deal with the child with the adult's mind. It's another entirely to see his enemy in the form he's familiar with. The conversation doesn't shift to madness and taunts though. Cloud forces himself to stay still and not react.

Tseng thinks that Sephiroth, if pushed right, may kill Hojo. Cloud should want that. But Hojo was the only one that saw potential in him, even if it was twisted and ultimately wrong. Without Hojo he would never get the injections. Without the injections, he wouldn't be SOLDIER level. And he wouldn't be able to protect the people he cares about. He may still be broken and fractured inside, might never be whole again - but he'd take it all, all over again, to gain the SOLDIER abilities he had now. If Hojo was killed early -

so was his only chance to finally be strong enough and fast enough to make a difference. His friends, Tifa, wouldn't care. But he would.

"Don't know about Angeal." He'll admit it. "I know that it hurt Zack and it hurt you. That you both still needed him. I left the people that needed me, thinking I was doing what was best for them and it almost cost us everything." He's not about to take his eyes off his enemy, or what will one day become his enemy - maybe - but he shakes his head briefly. By this point whether Angeal was right or wrong is mote. It's done and everyone's left trying to pick up the pieces. Or at least Sephiroth and Zack were. Are. Death, Cloud's noticed, doesn't seem to bring a lot of closure with it most of the time. It certainly never has for him. "It really comes down to what his choice does to you now - and what decisions you make because of it."

A beat.

"And Hojo's probably the last thing I'd rely on for a measuring stick of what's a success and what's not."

[nohometown]

He doesn't step any closer, conscious of Cloud's wariness of him. He has no intention of agitating him further, but he's curious about him. He stands still and calm, makes no move, hostile or otherwise. He doesn't speak of his grief. He doesn't talk of such things even with those who are close to him. He keeps it to himself. "Angeal was a great man," he says instead, soberly. "It is a shame you didn't know him." For him, this is practically gushing.

"Of course not." He smiles at Cloud's obvious statement concerning Hojo. It's a bitter smile. "He's an ignorant, irrational, failure of a scientist. That's why I'm sorry to be his experiment." He wouldn't speak those words aloud when awake, but they come out here, sharp and quick. He knows there's some spark of--would you call it genius?--in the man, but it's dimmed by his neuroses, his complexes. He'd even go so far as to call him mad. "There are few who know him better than I do." He'd grown up with him. He'd studied him. Yet the thought of killing Hojo doesn't occur to him, not even now.

He'd grown up with him, and he'd been conditioned by him. Whether because of that conditioning or the fact that he wouldn't deign to do so, he has no intention of killing Hojo, not directly. Hojo isn't worth the effort. What he's done has been done, as far as Sephiroth is concerned. Sephiroth's plan is quite different.

"What I will do now..." He pauses. Being backed into a corner is far from an ideal position, but that's where he finds himself. He must make his own way out. "I have few options. Angeal and Genesis were right in one respect." He looks up at the sky thoughtfully. It's gray now. There's a storm coming. "I want to leave ShinRa." He's been considering that possibility, if only faintly, since before Modeoheim. Modeoheim had changed things. He knows he can't simply leave. ShinRa won't allow that. He's their property. He turns back to Cloud. "I'll take SOLDIER with me, and as much of the army as will come. And they will come. They'll come for me." It wouldn't be uncalled for to say he's arrogant; enough people do, and it doesn't bother him. But what he speaks is the truth in his time. He's their hero. They depend on him.

"I'll have to start a war."

[findmyownreason]

Cloud's not sure what Sephiroth having an army will do. It could save quite a few of the soldiers. Or it could just be giving a madman an army to control as well. Every little thing they change, that Sephiroth changes, changes everything. He can't guess at this Sephiroth's future anymore.

"Don't go to Nibelheim. It's a trap."

Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was all coincidence. But Cloud had had plenty of time to think about it in the ensuing years and it had always seemed suspicious that the pieces had all been brought together so conveniently at a time like that. He doubted anyone would have imagined the outcome but he could wonder if it hadn't been set up to test some kind of outcome.

"Take Zack with you. Convince him to go. And bring Aerith. Zack will know where to find her. She's - special. She might be able to help you when the time comes."

Or he might be selling her off to an earlier death. But he thought not. Hoped not. Not if Zack was with her. She'd be safer with Zack than anywhere.

Right?

Pale eyebrows coming down, he had to frown.

"I don't know what else to tell you. I can't even tell you how things turn out if you change things. I - trust Zack. And Aerith. Take care of them. If you can. They're important." To me. He doesn't add it because he can't fathom the right way to ask the man that killed one of them to guard them instead but it's on his face. He and Sephiroth aren't friends. They're not even, as far as he's concerned, allies. But they both care about Zack and that's enough. He dredges his mind for any last minute advice he can give, still not sure how he feels about helping the man that tried, several times, to take his entire world away from him but - if he can think of the right help, the right moments to warn about -

maybe he can save some of those worlds...

"Shinra already started the war. You're just finally giving the other side a fighting chance. I - wish I could help more."

And the strange thing is, he realizes, that he means it. It's funny, in a way that doesn't involve any laughing. The Sephiroth he knows has wanted to change the world. This one actually might. He can only hope it's for the better. One last thing.

"If you meet a cat riding a moogle, don't trust him. But if you can win him over, you couldn't have a more useful ally."