childrenofbahamutlogs | Howling and Hollow (Cloud Catch-All)

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Howling and Hollow (Cloud Catch-All)

WHO: Cloud Strife and YOU
WHAT: What does your heart desire? (A place for planned threads outside prompts!) Cloud is settling in.
WHERE: Around Town and the outskirts, depending!
WHEN: A week or more after arrival, ongoing.
WARNINGS: Probable mentions of mental health struggles and trauma.

SUMMARY: A catch-all for Mister Final Fantasy! Here he is, trying to...Leave. Inevitably, he will be settling in, whether he likes it or not. What are those weird bumps hidden in that chocobo fluff hair? He fell and hit his head, probably.

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If Sephiroth noticed the dumbstruck look on Cloud's face over his compliments, the actions of the chicken he's holding distracted from it too quickly for him to comment. Which, honestly, Cloud is probably grateful for.

The little chuckle, however...that, he notices. His senses are still acute enough to detect a laugh from across a not-overly-large chicken pen, at least. His head snaps up to look at Cloud, and his expression is...honestly more than a bit fascinated. Those slit pupils even seem to be larger than usual. "Does she?" he says, rather distractedly. "I wouldn't care to see how she expresses dislike, then."

A pause. "I never imagined I would see you smile around me."

"You never dealt with an angry chicken? Count yourself lucky. They're worse than any monster or trooper I ever had to deal with." Cloud says, shrugging, his overall look still softer.

Blond brows arch when Sephiroth snaps his head up and gazes right at him. The expression on his face is something Cloud certainly never expected to see either. He reacts like a cat seeing something interesting- widening pupils included. It reads as genuine fascination with none of the wicked or malicious undertones Cloud is so very used to seeing in his nightmares. Such an expression makes Sephiroth look oddly gentle, which is a thought that immediately startles Cloud when he catches up with himself.

"Better start thanking that hen, then."

It was definitely moreso his hero speaking to him like he was. Not that Cloud believes he will ever admit it.

"Never thought I'd talk to you normally either, but here we are. Not sure what to do about it."

Of course he has questions. Plenty of them. About the younger version of himself, about Midgar, about his future. How much of it does he truly want to know? That question is what sees him waiting for a bit.

"As I said, animals frequently don't like me. I simply avoided them in most capacities...until I met Angeal, at least."

He looks down at the chicken again when Cloud suggests thanking it, and then at his leg. "No," he says after a moment, with a faint note of wryness in his voice. "I don't think I will."

One has to draw the line in the sand.

"I admit, I don't know what to do either. How do you converse with the boy who killed you? With the boy who was right to kill you?" He looks down at the chicken again. "To someone whose life was ruined by your existence?"

There are more questions he thinks, but doesn't say, because it's not Cloud's place to be burdened with them. How does one live with guilt they can never assuage, cope with sins and failures they can never offer any recompense or atonement for? Those are his questions to answer, not Cloud's. Cloud has already had to carry the weight of others' problems enough, Sephiroth's perhaps most of all.

"I expect you have questions about...your future that I'm privy to. For now, at least, it's likely best if you don't ask them. Knowing about the memory issues you're suffering from is one of the pieces of information I have from that future, and until you've gotten your past straight, trying to understand the future as well would likely be too much for you. I've already done enough damage to you; I won't risk more." A pause. "As for the memory issues themselves...I would like to help you untangle them, but it would mean trusting my word over your own memories, and to allow me to help you...relive trauma that not only will your own mind resist, but that I had some hand in creating. I know full well how little reason and inclination you have to do that."

He strokes the chicken in his lap. "I want you to be able to see clearly. In my time...it was Tifa who helped you through those difficulties. I can never inspire the trust in you she does, or play the role she did, but perhaps...if I prove myself to you, over time, I might eventually be able to help you in my own way. But right now, I lack the tools. I could tell you everything you needed to know as we sit here, but without your trust in my words and intentions, it would either mean nothing, or make your situation far worse."

It's...important to him, that Cloud knows that Sephiroth wants to help him. That the only reason he isn't being more direct is because he recognizes how bad an idea that would be in the current circumstances. That if they can change those circumstances, together, then Sephiroth's hands will no longer be tied.

"I ask your forgiveness for nothing else - I have no right to - but in this, at least, I ask your forgiveness if I choose to hold back certain information from you about yourself. If I do so, it's because I believe it would be harmful not to."

"...You sound like you mean it."

It's a simple, small thing that Cloud says in return to Sephiroth, but for a man like him, the meaning is momentous. A verbal admission of understanding. Of meeting Sephiroth where he claims he is at.

Cloud is a kind soul deep down, and despite his trauma, he wants to believe those words on some level. There is an undeniable and oh-so-human level of consideration in all that Sephiroth is saying and doing. If nothing else is clear, he can at least say a monster wouldn't put in so much time thinking about regrets like this, or means of atonement. Or...About him so much, in ways that aren't malicious.

He's tired, really. Tired and wanting this all to end. This seeming fucked-up chain of suffering that all leads back to Shinra. Maybe this is step one. Or fifty, with where things stand between them. The one option that always seemed so wildly out of the realm of possibility stands tantalizingly close: cooperation.

Sephiroth knows things. If he wants to help, then it could change the game for Cloud, and perhaps the both of them. While these vague talks of memory issues and dire truths are no less frustrating or alarming...A path to investigating seems to be starting to reveal itself. That's more than nothing for a man of action.

"That's a start right? Towards what you're saying you want to try. You show me. Show me you do mean it with time. We'll see." His eyes are a measure gentler than what Sephiroth had probably ever seen directed his way by Cloud Strife. There's no anger, no rage, merely a cautious, measured curiosity atop something softer.

The hen in Cloud's lap makes a cooing sound as he scritches at one of her cheeks. The other birds wandering between the two men also appear to have happily settled in where they are, fluffed up and at peace.

"Dunno how long any of us are going to be stuck here, but Angeal sure thinks it's gonna be long."

"For myself, I hope it is." Sephiroth looks down at his chicken again, who seems to have comfortably settled back in after her little demonstration. Is shitting on someone a power play? Possibly, for a bird. Sephiroth certainly wouldn't rule it out. "I certainly don't have anything to go back to. Even if I could somehow go back to our world alive and sane, which seems unlikely and hardly worth the risk my continued existence would pose...almost everyone I cared about was dead even before Nibelheim.

"To be myself again, with friends, free of ShinRa...in both the simulation before this and now, it's more than I ever believed I could have. More than I deserve, perhaps, but...no matter what punishment I may or may not deserve, Genesis and Angeal deserve happiness. And they want it with me. Even if it might please others to see me suffer, even if it's what I deserve...I won't grieve them to suit other people." A pause. "That's why I defended myself, when you attacked me. If anyone has a right to strike me down, if not an imperative, it's certainly you, but...for them, I have to live. The world may be better off without me, but they would suffer, and they've suffered enough."

If this sounds like something Sephiroth has thought a lot about, has had to justify to himself over and over again...well, that's truth in advertising.

"But for however long or short a time we have here...I'll do whatever I can to demonstrate to you that their happiness doesn't need to come at anyone else's expense. That I'm not a threat to the world as I am now, that I have no wish to harm anyone or do anything beyond having the sort of quiet, peaceful life I always thought was beyond my reach. I had a taste of it, in the simulation. It's all I want now." A beat. "That...and to have back a few others I have lost. But that's not up to any of us, I suppose."

"So you were in that simulation thing too, with Angeal. He told me about it. Said he...Met a few of my friends there. That they're doing okay." Aerith, Tifa, and Red, to be precise. Cloud had a suspicion these three Firsts stuck together- after all, even in SOLDIER they were nigh inseparable- but hearing Sephiroth speak from his heart like this is something genuinely stunning for Cloud to hear and experience. There is no questioning the feelings he carries for both Angeal and Genesis, so strong that he wants to keep on in the face of endless, horrific guilt. Sephiroth- this one- is capable of so much more than the torture and monstrous acts Cloud experienced firsthand.

Cloud wonders- how did any of his friends respond to this Sephiroth, who seems just tired, and hurt? Did they have the same experience as he is having right now? A crisis? It even seems there were other friends Sephiroth had there too, that he's missing. It is so achingly human.

"I've been...Worried, leaving them behind."

A small flicker of the Cloud beneath the baggage and damage shows with those simple, soft words. A glimpse of a Cloud Sephiroth knows more than the blond has any clue of. More than he knows himself.

"I met most of them, as well. Aerith was...far kinder than I deserved. Tifa accepted my presence, and I can hardly blame her if she could do no more. Red XIII...we became quite close. He and I had more in common than I believe he ever realized, as victims of ShinRa." A beat. "Barret punched me, which was fair. Though he wasn't in the simulation long, so we never really had the chance to - converse. For me to try to talk to him at all. I don't know if he would have heard me out or not, but the chance never arose to begin with."

Is it simply natural for Sephiroth to share his interactions with Cloud's friends, or on some subconscious level, through their connections with Jenova, is Sephiroth responding to Cloud's unspoken question? Difficult to say.

"I don't think you need to worry about them. They're all strong and capable. I think you need them more than they need you." Belatedly, Sephiroth realizes how this sounds, and hastens to explain further. "That is to say - you're like me. You struggle to live only for yourself. You don't really know who you are or what you want, so you devote yourself to others...and if you can't do that, you drift aimlessly."

Sephiroth fears he may have soured...whatever this is, and drops his gaze. "I...didn't mean that in a bad way. I simply recognize it well."

"You too, with Red, huh..." Cloud muses aloud, with surprise. He doesn't fully realize how Sephiroth is answering a question he did not ask aloud, not with how interested he is in the answers. Anything about his friends. About how they handled being in a situation like this one. Anything he can take to feel a little less crazy in this. Each response does seem like it tracks, though. Red went through so very much at Hojo's hand, Aerith is kind to a fault...Tifa, with her caution given the shared trauma of everything, and Barret punching him is right on point. "...Dunno. Probably would have to hit you a few times, then hear you out. Barret thinks with his heart all the damn time. You show him you got one, and it could have gone ok. Or at least been where he would leave you alone but keep an eye on you. Who knows." Cloud shrugs.

Upon hearing it said that Cloud needs people more than they need him, he bristles a bit- His shoulders tense, and his brow knits. The hen in his lap stirs with a slightly startled sound, and mako-eyes focus more sharply upon the silver-haired SOLDIER. What Sephiroth follows with makes him feel seen in a way that causes him to recoil, to want to cover himself and hide instinctively. Is Sephiroth in his head again?! That has to be it, this was all a tr-

But then comes the clarification, and Cloud realizes something incredible. The change is written on the blond's face, which shifts from stern and bristling to genuine, wide-eyed shock.

Sephiroth is trying to relate with him. To say he understands, because it is his lived experience too. It leaves Cloud speechless for a few beats. He hasn't felt this exposed or seen since being around Tifa or Aerith.

"It isn't really a good thing. Even if you didn't mean it badly. A strong person should be able to work alone." Or at least know who he is on his own, he adds silently. What is there to him when no one is around? Nothing.

You know better an unfamiliar voice retorts in Cloud's mind, before fading away. It isn't like the other two he's heard (or been actively tormented by) before: One that speaks in fiendish whispers and sounds like Sephiroth, and the other bright and comforting- familiar despite there being no recognition. No, this one is more stern.

Cloud merely shakes his head.

"Perhaps. I don't know if he could forgive someone who served and empowered ShinRa for so long, however...or who killed so many for them. Perhaps we'll find out...though again, that is hardly up to us. Who appears and who leaves in these worlds we're pulled to against our will seems to be up to fate."

He looks up at Cloud at the other man's words, listening intently...and then shakes his head after a moment. "I can't say whether it is or not, I suppose. I don't know any other way to be. I was never...particularly encouraged to develop a sense of self, a will and ambitions of my own. When you make a sword, you don't want the sword to decide who it cuts. I know a person is supposed to be more than orders and what other people tell them, but I was never meant to be a person. Just a weapon." A pause as he looks down, seeming to search inside himself for his thoughts. "But if living my life for others makes me weak, then...I still prefer it to the strength ShinRa taught me to have."

It's shocking how much Cloud feels he can relate with Sephiroth on feeling no sense of self, something Cloud has never had the opportunity to do before. He wishes he had words for that, but for now the softening once again of his expression will have to do. He has enough to process right now before thinking through how to respond to the situation as a whole.

A sword. Sephiroth is comparing himself to a sword. For whatever reason, this stands out to Cloud especially, slotting all his suspicions and thoughts on the man's younger self right into place. The boy's bitterness contrasts starkly with the older Sephiroth's quiet, understated sadness, but both versions of him approach his being a weapon as a matter of fact.

Cloud knows no man is honed into a weapon easily. Especially not by Shinra, and especially not the science department specifically. Humanity is a rare thing over there. Most who show it, he heard (and assumed) didn't last.

Despite all that, Sephiroth says he prefers living for those around him over his power. In one swoop he denounces Shinra, but also says something that strikes Cloud as almost noble. Stiflingly and achingly kind in its message.

Something a good person or maybe even a hero might say.

How could a man saying something like this with such conviction be the same as the one who razed Nibelheim, and seemingly tortured Cloud for sport? How can Cloud keep up suspicion? The walls are crumbling in a way he doesn't think he will be able to rebuild later.

The mental journey reflects in his eyes, stopping at something of understanding. "I...You don't know who you are either?" With how perfectly Sephiroth read Cloud before, he slips some, perhaps subconsciously accepting the pretense of toughness simply will not work here. Or perhaps he desperately needs connection enough to shove that defensive urge back. "I had a normal childhood though for the most part. Good family. No messed up science, not until I got made into SOLDIER." A light shake of the head. "Maybe I'm just degrading early. They say lots of SOLDIERs do it after enough time."

"Between never being encouraged to be a person at all, and finding out that some unknowable amount of me and my very existence is owed to Jenova, having its alien presence in my head...not only do I barely know who I am, sometimes I wonder if there is enough of me to be someone at all." Sephiroth closes his eyes. "Whether everything that makes up what I consider myself is just...another aspect of Jenova, with delusions of individuality seeded in it by my mistakenly believing I was ever human. A monster aping being a person, and doing it badly."

He breathes out, slowly. "In truth...being a monster would be so much easier. Simpler. It's all ShinRa wanted me to be, taught me to be. It's certainly all Jenova wants me to be." Then, softer - "But it was never what I wanted."

And that one tiny scrap of individuality is what he's been clinging to, desperately, his entire life. It would be easier to let go, yes...but the terror that he, himself, would simply cease to exist entirely if he did is far greater than the effort that holding on demands. When the margin by which one exists as a distinct entity is so slim, defending it becomes...everything.

It really is the only thing that makes him him. That has ever made him anything but a weapon, or a virus.

The talk of degradation tightens Sephiroth's throat. "While I can't go into detail," he says after a moment, "I can at least say that your situation is unique. You won't have to worry about degradation the way other SOLDIERs do. I can explain why eventually, but for now, you can at least have that reassurance. The difficulties you're experiencing are mental, not physical, and can be addressed and treated as such - with care. I have seen you fully recover from them in my own time, so I know it's possible...though as I said, you were helped through it by Tifa, someone you trust implicitly, so I'm working at a much greater disadvantage when attempting to help you in her stead."

As awkward as he is, and as tough as Cloud attempts to appear on the surface, there is no chance he can avoid the feelings that Sephiroth's words stir in him. They reach down deep to an immutable piece of him that has always been there from the start, in spite of what he's been through: His kindness. While the silver speaks in an even tone for the most part, the slight changes in volume and shifts of expression, small but visible to Cloud, read as so much more. He can feel a level of exhaustion and hopelessness, but also a thread of determination. It makes his chest ache in an unfamiliar way, to hear Sephiroth voice his dark thoughts on himself.

This man was his hero, once. Though it may take time to fully process and accept it (and thus completely derail the reality and grudge that kept Cloud himself moving forward), Sephiroth might, in this place, still be the man who a young Cloud followed with a dream and stars in his eyes. The man he aspired to be like. Strong, and able to leave an impact on the world around him. He maybe always was that man. Sephiroth's determination to live outside of Shinra and their fucked-up machinations reads as equal parts honorable and gut-wrenching. A monster wouldn't take the hard route. A monster wouldn't try to live in spite of the circumstances of his birth, against staggering odds and crushing guilt.

"Monsters don't care like this." He gives a gentle shake of the head. "Monsters don't worry about what they are."

Sephiroth never wanted this. Sephiroth never relished the burning of Nibelheim, and Sephiroth never was truly the one finding pleasure in Cloud's continued suffering. That is where this entire train of thought leads. Scary, uncertain territory, but territory Cloud's innate kindness wants to reach for past the grudges that held him up before. Anything that might be a path away from the suffering. Not just of his own, but of the entire Planet back home, it seems.

So it isn't physical. Cloud knows better than to press that subject, given what Sephiroth says after. "Don't think a monster would offer to help a guy who just tried to kill him either, right?"

"I wonder." Sephiroth still isn't looking at Cloud, but he doesn't seem to be intentionally looking elsewhere; he seems, rather, as though he's looking at nothing, perhaps because he's looking inside himself instead. "I wonder whether I'm truly not a monster...or if I am a monster, and perhaps what I'm meant to do is redefine what that means. Not every monstrous thing I've done was because of Jenova. At what point do one's actions define one's nature? And if they do...then I suppose the only hope one has is that you can change how you are defined by what you do, and so long as one is in control of oneself, you can choose to do things differently."

He shakes his head. "But...mostly I try not to indulge in those thoughts. Genesis and Angeal...they think of themselves as monsters, too, for their own reasons. Reasons even less their fault than my own. And Angeal, in particular, doesn't think of being a monster with any nuance. Rather than let themselves consider themselves monsters if I think of myself as one, and see that hurt them...I will continue to say that none of us are."

He glances up at Cloud again at last. "But monster or not...you deserve what has happened to you, what has been done to you, as little as anyone can deserve it. And Jenova has...focused on you, on tormenting you, in ways it hasn't with anyone else. Perhaps killing the perfect vessel Hojo created for it, dealing it the immense setback it suffered in needing to find a way to exert its influence through the Lifestream...maybe that explains its fixation. But certainly it targets you in a way it hasn't anyone else. So while there are many victims of me, and of Jenova...in many ways, I feel you have been put through the most. And anything I can do for you seems like not nearly enough."

From what Cloud has been able to gather from both this Sephiroth and the younger, his recent altercations with ShinRa, and his (apparently) fractured memories...Cloud isn't so sure about Sephiroth's actions being any more his own fault than the other Firsts. Or any SOLDIERs for that matter. Jenova was not the only monster in his life. In all their lives. Cloud was just whisked away from his fight against those very monsters that worked alongside her. Enabled her. It is with a pang that he realizes Sephiroth is trying to do things to help others at his own endless expense. Lifting those around him whilst turning a purposely blind eye to himself- a self he does not fully know. It feels familiar. Close to home in an uncomfortable way the blond is not ready to unpack fully.

"You're as much a monster as any SOLDIER who got dragged into the crap ShinRa fed them. Even less if you were born into it. Jenova might be fucked up, but you weren't exactly taught or set up to be anything but a weapon. Didn't you compare yourself to a sword? I know how the Science Department worked," Cloud grimaces at that. There's horrible whispers of things like Deepground, which he knows all too well is so very real. That isn't even counting the cruel experimentation going on basically in the open at the labs- at least for those in SOLDIER to see.

"What matters is you didn't want it. You still know you didn't. That part is your nature. The actions that you took were what you were taught, or forced to do- and never agreed with at the end of the day. Doesn't mean you didn't do those things and are blameless. But I-" He hesitates, looking away. This is genuinely a little scary for Cloud to admit, and to reaffirm. To say this is a tangible start of letting go of things he hadn't realized kept him going back home: "I don't think the guy I am talking to now is a monster. Dunno if this guy right here with a chicken shitting in his lap would be able to do the things he did to innocents before with a clear head." He isn't positive, of course. Scars as deep as Cloud carries, both physical and mental, do not heal overnight or even over years. But a cold read judgment of things in the moment? Just from this conversation and the one before? It has him questioning a lot. "Doesn't look like redefining what a monster is to me. Looks like taking back your own life for once."

Cloud can feel his stomach twist into knots at the mention of how hard Jenova seems to be after him- and how deeply Sephiroth feels he needs to make things up to him. Is it fear? Anger? Frustration? ...All of the above, as well as something unfamiliar to him that makes his heart beat just a little faster. What has been done to you stands out as a little strange to Cloud. The burning of Nibelheim was more of something that happened, and not done to him directly. Most everything was a sort of something that happened to him. Did Sephiroth just let something slip? What could that be?

"I don't know what the hell that thing wants with me. Probably is a grudge over the setback. It...She? Said a lot about needing me around. With your face. Tried to control me a few times. Mostly just sent me into a state where I couldn't function. Whatever it is, and whatever happened, I haven't really felt it here."

Edited 2024-11-16 23:27 (UTC)

"It's true I was not given...choices," Sephiroth says, somewhat reluctantly, as if he grudges himself any grace at all. "Or any guidance that could be relied on to be worthwhile for many years. But even on my very first deployment...perhaps even before..." He lowers his eyes. "I knew something was...wrong. That I was wrong. That what I was doing felt - terrible, and I hated it. But - I made myself do it anyway, because I was afraid. Afraid of being weak, old-fashioned...worth leaving behind. Everything I was told soldiers with compassion were. Afraid of abandoning the only instructions I'd ever had, the only way of being I was ever told was correct. Afraid of having nowhere to go and nothing to be, if I stopped being ShinRa's perfect weapon.

"But I knew, still, that I was wrong. From the first. And I only realized it more deeply the more years passed. And yet I kept doing what I knew was wrong, for selfish and cowardly reasons. How can that be excused so easily? If I can be considered...less responsible for the atrocities I committed when my body and mind weren't my own, how is my responsibility not mine when they were?"

He sighs, shaking his head. "Forgive me. I know...these aren't questions you can really answer for me, about events you had nothing to do with. I don't...believe you undertook enough missions for ShinRa, certainly not the kinds of missions I did, to be haunted the way I am by what you did in their name." This is Sephiroth, very delicately, navigating around the fact that he doesn't even know what missions Cloud did undertake as a trooper, if many at all, and certainly none of them major or glamorous. What missions Cloud may have done other than the Nibel reactor mission, Sephiroth wonders if Cloud's memory has even retained them. But certainly Sephiroth is certain Cloud never slaughtered civilians for ShinRa. "But it's difficult to know the extent of what I've done - with a clear head, as you put it - and accept those weren't the actions of a monster. To the people of Rhadore, of Wutai...I was a nightmare. No malevolent demon could have done worse to them. Does my reluctance and regret change that?"

He shakes his head again. "You don't have to answer. Again - it's not an answer you can give me. But...you've always had a kind heart. Don't let it be so quick to absolve me."

At Cloud's acknowledgment that he hasn't felt Jenova in this world, Sephiroth nods slightly in agreement without lifting his head. "Considering I don't even feel it active within my own mind...I doubt it's active in this world at all. You don't feel anything like its oppressive presence because it's not there to feel. Only the echoes of its pull." Then, a touch hesitantly: "I worry, at times, that its obsession with you is that it wishes to make you its new host. With my own body dead, it would no doubt benefit from a living vessel. In my own timeline, in your initial encounters with it, your fractured mind was...rather weak to its influence, which would only have encouraged it.

"But if it's any comfort in the wake of such a disturbing suggestion, you also become uniquely resistant to that influence over time - especially when your memory issues are addressed. Even if I wished to tell you why that is, I can't - I simply don't know what allows you to shake it off where others can't. But the fact remains that whether or not Jenova wishes to make you its vessel, I don't believe it could succeed - regardless of whatever it may think, or want."

It's a lot to take in, but Cloud is fully certain of a few points whilst listening to Sephiroth: first, the man has thought about this to an agonizing extent- remorse is barely brushing the surface. He near sounds tortured, which in turn tugs at that kind heart of Cloud's that Sephiroth mentioned. Second, some of the answers he's looking for....Are not fully ones Cloud can give, and they are both aware of that. It sounds like whatever training Sephiroth was given, though, must have been magnitudes worse than even that given to typical SOLDIER Firsts.

He listens attentively, petting down the hen's back as his expression shifts in small ways. A slightly knit brow, a twitch of the lip, a widening of the eyes to the smallest degree.

"Yeah. I can't give you all those answers. I barely have my own. Plus we were playing for the same team that set up what happened in Wutai. Not my place to forgive you for that."

Cloud's memories of Wutai are absolutely not his own. But for now he can agree he likely contributed significantly less to the "war effort" than Sephiroth, by miles.

Rhadore...That, however, is a name he's only heard in passing, on magazine profiles regarding the great hero. Cloud makes a mental note to ask around about that one- pressing Sephiroth further into pain doesn't seem like a terribly appealing option right now. He must really be in some strange world to be worrying about that.

"But moving ahead does a hell of a lot more than sitting with it." Which, it seems, Sephiroth is doing some of by reaching out to Cloud in the first place.

A chill runs up and down the blond's spine at the mention of being vulnerable to Jenova's influence, and its likely want for a new physical host. How much of the strange whispers he heard were Jenova all along? "...Well if it isn't here, at least I get a break."

Cloud Strife has no clue just how much he really needs a break.

"Yes." Sephiroth nods slightly. "When I was in the Lifestream...the consciousnesses of those I had killed made their presence known. Their grief, their rage...their suffering. They - made sure I experienced as much of it as could be communicated. And I couldn't begrudge them that. How could anyone?"

A pause. "But...I don't know that my pain lessened their own. It didn't ease their regrets, didn't right any wrongs that had been done. It was just...more pain. The time I experienced their suffering felt interminable, but...it passed. I don't know if they simply lost interest, or couldn't maintain focus to inflict prolonged torment, or if...perhaps they recognized that it served no useful purpose. All I know is that eventually, their pain faded, and I was left with only my own. But...it did feel pointless, in the end. Pain without purpose.

"The guilt I carry now...I don't carry it in self-indulgence. I carry it as a reminder of those I've hurt, those who have to carry their own weights because of me. I don't feel that I have the right to an unburdened life when I've dragged so many others down. But...if I can still find happiness beneath those burdens, then perhaps they can as well." He nods again, a bit more certain now. "Because you're right. Moving forward is the only way. Especially when there are so many who will help us shoulder the weight so that we can keep going."

Sephiroth's description of the pain he felt in the Lifestream is numbing. Perhaps if Cloud were home, he would feel some sort of smug satisfaction over it- that the man was getting what he deserved. But like this, it leaves the blond hollow. Especially as Sephiroth describes his realization that the cycle of suffering was pointless.

The resolve that then appears to wash over Sephiroth has a sort of satisfaction and...something light settling in Cloud's chest to flutter there. For a brief moment in time, Cloud swears he feels positive emotions in Sephiroth's presence for the first time in what feels like forever.

It will be a hell of a lot to unpack later. For now, he gazes at the hen in his lap with a barely-masked fondness.

"Finding good people will do that." A realization Cloud was approaching himself back home, before being sent here. He says it not only to Sephiroth, but to the both of them. Cloud only wishes with another pang that the others were here for such a realization to happen. He cannot believe he misses them, but their absence and the return to a lonely, aloof quiet in his life puts things into startling, inevitable perspective. At the very least, wildly, it seems Sephiroth wishes to help shoulder his own burdens- many of which were indeed caused by the silver himself. Yet more to unpack alone.

"...Don't expect the Buster Sword at your throat again, then. For now."

Sephiroth's lips quirk, ever so slightly. "Did it ever get so far as my throat?" he asks, mildly. Is he teasing? Maybe a little bit. Don't give yourself too many airs, Cloud. Whether or not Sephiroth lives or dies isn't entirely dependent on Cloud's mercy. "But I appreciate the reprieve...for now."

A pause. "Would you like me to leave you with the chickens? I believe my presence here has accomplished everything Angeal could have hoped it might." And, rather more than that...Sephiroth feels as though he doesn't want to push his luck too far. Doesn't want to overstay his tenuous welcome with Cloud, or risk damaging the progress it feels like they've made. Better to pull back for a time, he thinks.

Besides, they've been talking about some very heavy subjects, and Sephiroth feels that both of them can only keep that up for so long before they need a break.

Cloud swears that had to be a genuine, lighthearted tease, which may be the most shocking thing of all over this entire fucking rollercoaster of a conversation. Perhaps it is just the contrast with every other time he's ever been taunted by the man- or, rather Jenova. "Yeah, well better watch it. I can take it back as fast as you get it. Make sure to get the throat."

That, from Cloud, is absolutely his own awkward tease back, even if the veiled threat isn't fully out of the realm of possibility just yet. The slight upward quirk of his lips and slouched pose give it away.

The blond is absolutely exhausted, and it truly sets in when thankfully, Sephiroth offers they part. Some quiet with the birds sounds much needed right now, and he can only imagine -

...He can imagine that Sephiroth is just as tired from speaking of these things. What kind of weird timeline is Cloud in now, where he offers enough grace to Sephiroth to think he's capable of being emotionally drained?

Whatever!

"...I think that's good. I still got work to do here for that meddling asshole anyway. You're distracting." Though his tone is brusque, Cloud's features remain softer. The tiny smile remains for a few seconds more, then fades. The overall whisper of softness doesn't go away until Sephiroth's form inevitably recedes from the chicken pen.

A single word leaves Cloud's lips, quietly, when the silver is far enough away that he figures he won't hear it. One that surprises him.

"Thanks."

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Howling and Hollow (Cloud Catch-All)

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