Sephiroth, of course, rises with Cloud. His hand remains rock-steady in Cloud's the entire time, letting the blond brace himself as much as he needs. His hand, when released, lowers - slowly - to his side again.
"For whatever it's worth, in my world - my timeline - your group does kill him." Sephiroth sighs. "I wish I could find any satisfaction in that, but he was - will be, I suspect, in any timeline, under any circumstances - an unrepentant, amoral madman until the end. But perhaps that doesn't matter. Even if something snapped in him, and he suddenly regretted all he'd done, feared death and begged for his life...I doubt anything he could suffer would feel like justice. Like my own suffering in the Lifestream, at the hands of my own victims. Pain that serves nothing, solves nothing. I wouldn't hate him less...and it wouldn't make anything better. Perhaps you'd feel the same, as well."
Though, of course, he's only extrapolating. It's equally possible other victims might be more righteously sadistic...but, if there are victims like that, he doesn't quite think that would be Cloud. Or Nanaki, or any of Cloud's friends. At heart, all of them are good people - it's why they go through so much, sacrifice so much, for the sake of the world. Righteous rage they may feel, and deservedly so, but he thinks they would feel the same emptiness and meaninglessness in revenge that doesn't redress that he's perceived. That he feels, thinking of Hojo suffering. Hojo deserves to suffer, far more than any of the people he's harmed, but it wouldn't improve anything. Not really. Beyond, at least, stopping him from continuing to make the world worse. Good for a bitter smile, perhaps, and no more.
"I'm sorry. It seems as though the only certainties I can give you are ones you'd prefer not to have." As far as Sephiroth can tell, the divergence point of their timelines...it seems to be after Cloud's return to Midgar, after Zack's death. He doesn't fully understand it, but there can be no doubt that everything prior to that point seems to be the same for both of them. There's no doubt, after all, that this Cloud was in Hojo's care for those four years; their connection was hint enough, and now Cloud's own memories confirm the circumstances under which that connection was created were indeed the same. The Nibelheim massacre was the same. Sephiroth suspects that, if he questioned Cloud's life back as far as he cared to go, everything he knows of Cloud through Jenova, that it would all dovetail exactly. There's hardly a reason for anything else to vary, anyway; certainly all preceding events were not particularly major events in Cloud's life. Aspects of his relationship with Tifa, perhaps, but then if those had changed, wouldn't Cloud's relationship with Tifa now - would his joining AVALANCHE at all - have changed to reflect that? No; it seems there is a distinct branch, somewhere between their worlds, and Sephiroth feels he's at least able to pin down - roughly - when it happened. Primarily observation and process of elimination, but he feels there might be a touch of intuition involved as well.
But...well, as he's said, the unfortunate aspect of that is primarily that all he can do is unearth the traumas Cloud's own mind has tried to lock away. Things that happened before Midgar. Any reassurances about the future, any happy endings there might be...they won't mean anything to a Cloud who isn't guaranteed to reach them. For whom things are already very different, and may only change more. Sephiroth would like to hope that, somehow, they can change for the better - if nothing else, perhaps Aerith doesn't have to die - but hope isn't something that comes easily to him. It never has.
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"For whatever it's worth, in my world - my timeline - your group does kill him." Sephiroth sighs. "I wish I could find any satisfaction in that, but he was - will be, I suspect, in any timeline, under any circumstances - an unrepentant, amoral madman until the end. But perhaps that doesn't matter. Even if something snapped in him, and he suddenly regretted all he'd done, feared death and begged for his life...I doubt anything he could suffer would feel like justice. Like my own suffering in the Lifestream, at the hands of my own victims. Pain that serves nothing, solves nothing. I wouldn't hate him less...and it wouldn't make anything better. Perhaps you'd feel the same, as well."
Though, of course, he's only extrapolating. It's equally possible other victims might be more righteously sadistic...but, if there are victims like that, he doesn't quite think that would be Cloud. Or Nanaki, or any of Cloud's friends. At heart, all of them are good people - it's why they go through so much, sacrifice so much, for the sake of the world. Righteous rage they may feel, and deservedly so, but he thinks they would feel the same emptiness and meaninglessness in revenge that doesn't redress that he's perceived. That he feels, thinking of Hojo suffering. Hojo deserves to suffer, far more than any of the people he's harmed, but it wouldn't improve anything. Not really. Beyond, at least, stopping him from continuing to make the world worse. Good for a bitter smile, perhaps, and no more.
"I'm sorry. It seems as though the only certainties I can give you are ones you'd prefer not to have." As far as Sephiroth can tell, the divergence point of their timelines...it seems to be after Cloud's return to Midgar, after Zack's death. He doesn't fully understand it, but there can be no doubt that everything prior to that point seems to be the same for both of them. There's no doubt, after all, that this Cloud was in Hojo's care for those four years; their connection was hint enough, and now Cloud's own memories confirm the circumstances under which that connection was created were indeed the same. The Nibelheim massacre was the same. Sephiroth suspects that, if he questioned Cloud's life back as far as he cared to go, everything he knows of Cloud through Jenova, that it would all dovetail exactly. There's hardly a reason for anything else to vary, anyway; certainly all preceding events were not particularly major events in Cloud's life. Aspects of his relationship with Tifa, perhaps, but then if those had changed, wouldn't Cloud's relationship with Tifa now - would his joining AVALANCHE at all - have changed to reflect that? No; it seems there is a distinct branch, somewhere between their worlds, and Sephiroth feels he's at least able to pin down - roughly - when it happened. Primarily observation and process of elimination, but he feels there might be a touch of intuition involved as well.
But...well, as he's said, the unfortunate aspect of that is primarily that all he can do is unearth the traumas Cloud's own mind has tried to lock away. Things that happened before Midgar. Any reassurances about the future, any happy endings there might be...they won't mean anything to a Cloud who isn't guaranteed to reach them. For whom things are already very different, and may only change more. Sephiroth would like to hope that, somehow, they can change for the better - if nothing else, perhaps Aerith doesn't have to die - but hope isn't something that comes easily to him. It never has.