"...I don't know." Sephiroth continues slowly petting the chicken in his lap. Does she have a name? He wonders if Angeal mentioned it and he missed it, in his unease and anxiety. But then Angeal only just started keeping these chickens; perhaps he doesn't even have a name for her yet. "You may as well ask me why I'm not a semi-conscious partial corpse still floating in the Lifestream. It shouldn't be possible, but somehow...it is."
He shakes his head. "Before we were brought here...Genesis, Angeal, and I were all brought unexpectedly to another strange world before this. A simulated world. There, at least, it made some sense - that our consciousnesses had simply been uploaded into a simulation, which could be programmed in whatever ways its creators wished. If they simply programmed Jenova not to affect me, or if Jenova is such a separate consciousness from myself that it and I could be uploaded independently of each other...then it would follow I wouldn't be affected there. And the one time I left the simulation for a real world, when they somehow restored a true body to me...Jenova was there, waiting for me. Trying to take control of me again. Even with help, even knowing it might happen...I barely maintained control. It felt like holding back the tide - fighting against the entire ocean.
"In a place like this, that is no simulation...the same should be happening to me again, one would think. But Jenova is...distant. Merely an echo. I don't know if it's the magic of this world that is suppressing it, or - the dragons we have been bonded to, perhaps. I do know it is no longer the only other consciousness inside my mind. Whatever has largely silenced it...there seems to be no immediate danger. But as to what has done so, how it is I am myself again..." He shrugs, helplessly. "I know little more than you. All I can do is play the hand I've been dealt. I'm alive again, and myself again. Questioning it seems...almost dangerous in itself. And after thinking I had lost everything it was possible to lose, some of what has been lost has been restored to me. I would...rather focus on that."
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He shakes his head. "Before we were brought here...Genesis, Angeal, and I were all brought unexpectedly to another strange world before this. A simulated world. There, at least, it made some sense - that our consciousnesses had simply been uploaded into a simulation, which could be programmed in whatever ways its creators wished. If they simply programmed Jenova not to affect me, or if Jenova is such a separate consciousness from myself that it and I could be uploaded independently of each other...then it would follow I wouldn't be affected there. And the one time I left the simulation for a real world, when they somehow restored a true body to me...Jenova was there, waiting for me. Trying to take control of me again. Even with help, even knowing it might happen...I barely maintained control. It felt like holding back the tide - fighting against the entire ocean.
"In a place like this, that is no simulation...the same should be happening to me again, one would think. But Jenova is...distant. Merely an echo. I don't know if it's the magic of this world that is suppressing it, or - the dragons we have been bonded to, perhaps. I do know it is no longer the only other consciousness inside my mind. Whatever has largely silenced it...there seems to be no immediate danger. But as to what has done so, how it is I am myself again..." He shrugs, helplessly. "I know little more than you. All I can do is play the hand I've been dealt. I'm alive again, and myself again. Questioning it seems...almost dangerous in itself. And after thinking I had lost everything it was possible to lose, some of what has been lost has been restored to me. I would...rather focus on that."