"Agreed," Sephiroth says, looking relieved. "There's...a great deal I'm reluctant to tell him. If he knew what his life will look like, in its entirety...I don't know how he could keep going. Especially without the promise of the accidental afterlife I've found myself in, where I've actually been able to find happiness. I did have years of...contentment, I suppose, with Genesis and Angeal in SOLDIER. I was happy when I was with them. With Lazard, as well. But so much of my work in SOLDIER was...unpleasant, at best. Traumatic at worst. The three of them gave me a reason to keep going, but they couldn't erase the suffering...and eventually, I lost all three of them. And then lost myself, not long after."
He glances away. "How can I tell him about that? How can I tell him that what he has to look forward to in life is the loss of the people he's learned to love, culminating in madness and death? That he won't even properly die, but will be locked in a semiconscious purgatory of endless guilt and watching his body commit atrocities under his name? That the happiness I have now, the happy ending he thinks I somehow guarantee, is something outside the true reality of our world, that may never happen to him? The same way my own childhood years never involved coming to this place, even though he has?"
He closes his eyes. "I will...need to explain Jenova to him, at some point. I've told him the truth of our mother, which I spent my entire life searching for...and never even truly found until after my death. But his ultimate fate...I can't tell him. Part of me hopes that somehow he can be spared from it, but if he can't...no amount of guilt can make me feel as though he deserves to live with that knowledge." He breathes out, slowly. "I'm glad you agree."
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He glances away. "How can I tell him about that? How can I tell him that what he has to look forward to in life is the loss of the people he's learned to love, culminating in madness and death? That he won't even properly die, but will be locked in a semiconscious purgatory of endless guilt and watching his body commit atrocities under his name? That the happiness I have now, the happy ending he thinks I somehow guarantee, is something outside the true reality of our world, that may never happen to him? The same way my own childhood years never involved coming to this place, even though he has?"
He closes his eyes. "I will...need to explain Jenova to him, at some point. I've told him the truth of our mother, which I spent my entire life searching for...and never even truly found until after my death. But his ultimate fate...I can't tell him. Part of me hopes that somehow he can be spared from it, but if he can't...no amount of guilt can make me feel as though he deserves to live with that knowledge." He breathes out, slowly. "I'm glad you agree."