Cloud is unsure if he's ever seen Sephiroth smile like this. Just smiling gently down towards an animal that knows it must rely on people like him to take care of it. It is one of the most genuine things in the world, to the blond. If he delves back far enough in his memory, there is a faint flicker of recognition towards this. From a time just before disaster. A time that Sephiroth mentions just after Cloud conjures it up in his mind's eye. For a second, he wonders if there is mind-reading at play (it would not be the first time), but certain words echo in his head as his anger and anxieties rise.

There's healthy suspicion and wariness ... and then there's paranoia. Don't mix them up.

Words a younger Sephiroth, unknowing of the full scale of his future atrocities against Cloud, said to him. SOLDIER to SOLDIER. He exhales a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding, and nods.

"I remember it. Been studying your work on the field for a while before I joined SOLDIER." That is merely a way for Cloud to talk around being one of Sephiroth's biggest fans. Everything he knows came from picking up newspapers, magazines, and anything he could get his hands on that featured the Great War Hero. Sephiroth was the reason he even enlisted. This is something he does remember, despite the scrambled everything, and despite how it doesn't quite perfectly slot in with the other memories Cloud is capable of recalling. Regardless, he knows that...Kinder version of the silver existed at one point. He knows it well.

The appeal to Cloud's empathy stuns him for a few beats. Not just for what it is, but with how painfully heartfelt it reads coming from Sephiroth. The cognitive dissonance is too much to bear, and it takes him a few moments to say anything more in response. When he does speak, it is to ask a question.

"If I did believe it, and I mean if...How did you recover?"