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rottenpumpkin13 · 2 months

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Sometimes I wonder. Of all the characters in FF7 that were ruined or violated by Shinra….like the OG main cast that were broken by Shinra in different ways…, the common people, the villagers, the SOLDIERs, the employees…all the people that were used and experimented on…the Turks, some of whom were likely orphans cruelly raised by Shinra, the powerful Tsviets and Deepground SOLDIERs, all humans that were tormented and brutally pushed to their mental and physical limits…, and all of Hojo’s broken specimens…

Angeal and Genesis…all of them…

Out of all of these people, many snapped or lost their minds or resisted or became cruel or lost themselves…

But none of them were like Sephiroth. None of them were the strongest warrior of mankind that nearly destroyed the planet out of hatred for everything humans stood for and were. None of them snapped on the level he did where they wanted to destroy the entire world. I had to sit and wonder why.

But then I thought, maybe what sets him apart from all of them is two simple things. His father was the worst of humanity and his partial “mother” was an alien creature set on destroying humanity.

When you think about it, Jenova and Hojo become like two extremes of opposing forces and Sephiroth is the offspring.

I might be too optimistic but something tells me that if he didn’t have these two simple connections, he would have stayed sane or else not lashed out in the most explosive way of all. He would have been more like the others. Maybe hateful of humans like Weiss but not determined to wipe them out.

Shinra ruined everyone, but I don’t think Shinra alone could not have ruined Sephiroth. Jenova and Hojo were the only beings strong enough to push him over the edge when you consider it.

If you think about it Sephiroth was bred from the beginning to inevitably break down.

In my opinion, this isn't the case for other characters. Although everyone had reasons to choose their paths, they didn’t succumb as Sephiroth did. What sets them apart is that everyone had seemingly normal lives until something Shinra-related ruined them. Even Aerith got to experience some semblance of normalcy in the slums with Elmyra, and even Yuffie, who grew up witnessing her country being massacred by Shinra, had the freedom to choose her own path. Vincent, Cloud, Barrett, Tifa, Cid—everyone was their own person with freedom and something that set them apart from Shinra before it ruined their lives in some way.

Sephiroth never had that.

He was raised in an environment that molded him, stripped away his humanity, and reduced him to an obedient killing machine. Despite having humanity and a good heart initially, it had to have been consistently suppressed by Hojo, who lied to him about his mother, the Jenova project, and the entirety of how he came to be.

It looks like Jenova emerged at the peak of Sephiroth's breakdown. Whether she controlled him to some extent or was simply there as he lost his grip on reality⏤serving as his final comfort in the form of "his mother," ⏤is up to you. He snaps either way, whether mind control was involved or not due to the stressors he was facing at the time.

It doesn't help that he's the most powerful being in his universe that was manipulated into compliancy through lies by Hojo from the very beginning. That was a disaster waiting to happen.

Another point is that other characters had time to absorb and reel from what happened to them, unlike Sephiroth. This is what sets him apart from Genesis and Angeal. Genesis had the time to orchestrate a plan, and Angeal had someone there, with events happening at spaced intervals—not all at once, like what happened in Nibelheim, where Sephiroth went from the reactor to discovering everything in the library in the same night.

The moment Sephiroth experienced a shock and broke down, Jenova was there. He had no room to escape, and the one thing he had sought his whole life—his mother—was there. Even if Sephiroth hadn’t burned down Nibelheim or chosen a non-violent path, his actions would still have been inevitably destructive at some point, whether self-destructive or his Jenova cells finally leading him down a path similar to "his mother’s". Hojo spat him out and Jenova lapped him up.

The factors that went into why Sephiroth ended up the way he is are complex as shit but you're onto something when you say Jenova and Hojo are the two catalysts. Without Hojo using Jenova, Sephiroth would've been a regular person.

#ff7 #ffvii #final fantasy 7 #sephiroth #final fantasy vii #ffvii crisis core #ff7 crisis core #jenova #discussion

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dribdrab · 18 days

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Just a little headcanon/FF7 epilogue idea that i couldn't get out of my head. More like a cinematic storyboard than proper prose. we're going for fluffy redemption. but realistic. am about halfway through rebirth so may adjust later or not

--------------------------- [Soundtrack: Eerie, pulsing strings]

Permanent twilight hangs over the glacier.

The air is brittle with dread. It starts with a low, spreading hiss as tiny cracks spiderweb through the ice. Then, with a hideous groaning and grinding, with echoing cracks that sound more like gunfire than anything natural, the barren grey landscape erupts, and the battle against Jenova's final form begins.

[Soundtrack: Jenova: Rebirth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kh0OPbKtYw&ab_channel=MasterSweet]

Zack is going into this fight determined to at least try to get through to Sephiroth before the end. Cloud thinks this is unbelievably stupid. He wants to keep his mind together, for this to be over, for his friends to survive. Or most of them. Don’t think about that.

Jenova’s bulk remains hidden below the shifting masses of ice. The monstrous, bulbous, flailing protrusions that stalk and divide the party across the ice flow are plenty to deal with. Some spew oily, caustic bile that clings and eats away everything it touches. Some are almost mineral and fling spikes of obsidian like arrows. The worst look like they are cut out of a starless piece of deep space. A void, a nothingness that casts no shadow, and snakes its way silently into the heart. Cloud and Zack grimly dispatch one after another. Any short reprieve is a moment to scan the field for allies. Barrett, Tifa, Red, an indistinguishable knot of Turks. Still standing.

A familiar jolt snaps across Cloud’s vision. Aura, electricity, blue, green, cracking his mind like the ice. ‘Zack, he’s here.’ It is not a grand entrance today. One moment Cloud is standing, and the next he’s thrown skidding, barely able to parry Sephiroth’s strike. Metal rings on metal rings on metal, echoing back from the cliffs, and it almost feels clean after Jenova.

Zack speaks insistently to Sephiroth the whole time. Names, missions, honor, friends, memories, places, Loveless, anything. (This probably gets him through as well, Cloud realises later.) Cloud thinks he sees the tiniest hesitation in Sephiroth’s unearthly slitted eyes at the mention of Angeal and Genesis, but the onslaught continues. If it’s there at all, it’s not enough.

Zack catches Masamune in a bind while Cloud shatters an encroaching piece of Jenova.

Zack is shaking with effort, and with hope, and with rage as he looks past the locked swords and sets his eyes on Sephiroth’s. ‘Come back to us, Seph, please.’

Sephiroth seems to falter for a moment. The pressure of the bind lessens. Zack’s eyes widen.

Sephiroth’s eyes stay as malevolent as ever as he takes the opening to blast Zack back into the ridge behind them. It’s brutal and once Zack slides slowly down to the ground, he doesn’t get back up.

Cloud hurls himself at Sephiroth with a strangled yell. The initial flurry is so wild that both swords are knocked away in the chaos. Cloud draws his knife and goes for Sephiroth’s throat. Sephiroth catches his arm less than an inch before it connects and again there is a frantic fight for leverage.

Too long, it’s taking too long, Cloud thinks, as he notices the telltale hum of Masamune being summoned. Oh. He braces himself for the killing blow.

But it never comes.

Cloud is looking into green eyes that are free and alive, and then he looks down and sees that Sephiroth is clutching Masamune’s hilt with both hands and has buried it in his own chest.

[Soundtrack: Apocalypsis Noctis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB2CIDg_CUg&ab_channel=YokoShimomura-Topic]

An inhuman wail splits the air. Forks of lightning strike the earth and silhouette a staggering Sephiroth and Masamune against the roiling sky. Sephiroth twists the sword deeper. The wail intensifies, jagged glass, alien, wrong, and in Sephiroth's eyes there is another surge of clarity. He grips Cloud's arm. Fixes a desperate, shining, human gaze on him, using words and not words to say that Jenova's centre/heart/weak point is in the crater. Sephiroth collapses. Red blood pools in the white snow.

The radio network gets the message to Cid somehow. It could have been a minute or a hour but Cloud sees engine burn through the miasma as the Highwind launches its attack run on the crater.

On the surface, things are bleak. Bodies litter the glacier, and some of the water foaming up from under the ice flow runs rusty with blood. Most of the Planet’s forces have withdrawn to the solid land, dragging their wounded where they could.

On the empty battlefield, Aerith appears to Sephiroth and places her glowing hand by his head - a blessing. Only he sees her, and in his state he can’t really tell the difference between the snowy battlefield and Aerith’s luminous in-between world.

Cloud, Tifa and Red lead the charge. Not one person slows or falters, even when Jenova’s wrath rises up to meet them.

Aerith watches from the land as Sephiroth struggles to his feet behind the dwindling resistance and suddenly blazes with the Planet’s fire. Two white wings, more light than flesh, unfurl like a shield; like a challenge. Sephiroth drags Masamune out and abandons it on the ground. Though mortally wounded, he hurls everything he is into the final assault on Jenova.

In the explosion everything goes bright and loud and then there is no sound at all. Sephiroth ends up collapsed near Zack, lucid for just long enough to meet his eyes. ‘Welcome back.’ They both go under.

[silence]

The night sky and stars twinkle down as the clouds dissipate. Sephiroth's wings disintegrate. It's like blowing a dandelion. White feathers waft across the battlefield, and both SOLDIERs finally look at peace.

[Soundtrack: Zanarkand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHQApVHWRyk&ab_channel=NobuoUematsu-Topic]

Sephiroth wakes up in a secure medical facility. Only short flashes at first - dressings being changed, IVs adjusted, Cloud injured but walking, slowly, Zack being treated in the next bed, a vase of flowers on the table, Cloud and Tifa watching through a window from the corridor. Comes to properly to find Cloud there, staring at the other bed, now empty.

'Is she gone.' 'Yes.' 'Zack?' 'You just missed him.' Sephiroth withdraws even further and will not communicate. Slowly starts being assessed/interrogated, Cloud watching occasionally but never speaks.

Tifa and Cloud talking about how weird this all is, what on earth happened in the final explosion/fight. Tifa notices that the flowers next to Sephiroth are the same flowers that have been there for weeks. They look as alive as when he first arrived. She does not mention this to Cloud.

Sephiroth dreams of Aerith. All very mysterious. 'I don't think the Planet is done with you yet.' Zack is there as well, with Aerith. Sephiroth says he should have died instead. Zack tells him he has no regrets and not to waste the second chance (but in a brasher Zack way obv.).

Weeks later, Cloud finally visits. They can barely look at each other, but both establish that Jenova's pull is gone. Ruminating on why Cloud was able to fight the control but couldn't win, Sephiroth broke completely and was submerged, and Zack seemed entirely unaffected. Zack knew exactly who he was. Cloud + Sephiroth remember him together for a moment before Cloud leaves.

Tifa debriefs with Cloud, encourages him to finally leave the building and get some air now that he is mostly recovered. Cloud is not keen. Tifa brings up the flowers, then: 'There's something else you need to see.' They take their first steps out of the building to find that greenery and vines and wildflowers have sprung up around the shabby med centre in the middle of the slums.

Cloud dreams of Aerith that night. She tells him that Hojo seems to have have experimented on Sephiroth not only with Jenova cells but also true Ancient samples from Ifalna. They remained dormant and undetectable due to Jenova's influence, but when Sephiroth cracked Her control, Aerith was able to awaken them. 'Not too much, though. He's still very lost. A wandering path, that one - I don't know where it will lead.'

'Does he know?' 'Not yet.'

Cloud visits a little more often. They still don't talk much. Cloud reluctantly confirms to those in charge that Jenova's influence is likely gone - he knows because he can feel it himself like a weight lifted. No SOLDIER has had an episode since Jenova was destroyed.

Sephiroth is allowed to leave the room for short periods. It is strange to see him do normal person things like read and eat soup and make tea. He is always locked up at night. He wonders who is changing the flowers. Gradually he realises that they are the same flowers.

Rumours of some kind of planetary imbalance start filtering in. Destructive weather patterns, long droughts, monsoons, wildfires.

Aerith appears to both Cloud and Sephiroth separately and while still being very mysterious, asks them to go seek answers relating to the Cetra and the planet and the imbalance.

Cloud and Tifa talk about whether this is a Very Bad Idea. Maybe, but honestly who knows when you're a normal person being buffeted daily by cosmic wills and mind control and planetary disasters. They talk properly about Jenova's influence on Cloud during their initial missions and how much deeper it must have gone with Sephiroth. Cloud shares his disgust for Sephiroth's upbringing with Tifa. They agree that while Sephiroth is a wild card with dreadful associations for them both, they do trust Aerith and will cautiously see what the future holds.

[Soundtrack: Not alone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyQCR-8Squ4&ab_channel=NobuoUematsu-Topic] I imagine the first flute theme is Cloud and the low strings theme that answers is Sephiroth.

Sephiroth and Cloud set off at dawn on Cloud's bike, driving down the empty highway away from Midgar. (It makes them both jittery to be forced so close together, but they're both too stubborn to show any weakness while the other is looking. It's certainly not a good idea to let go.)

The morning smells like smoke and asphalt and mako, and as the city vanishes behind them, it gradually gives way to fresh and green and freedom. Sephiroth's hair ripples in the wind and reflects the changing sky as the smog lifts. Burgundy, amber, silver.

Seph can't or won't summon Masamune anymore. When it becomes clear they will be fighting through fiends regularly, he uses a staff. His magic no longer works as expected. He finds this deeply frustrating but doesn't show it much.

Sephiroth learning to ride a chocobo is hilarious. He does *not* want help climbing onto its back. Cloud is absolutely fine watching him struggle.

Cloud is his prickly monosyllabic self but Seph notices he's always willing to help the people they meet when they stay in a town, and children always seem to flock to him.

Cloud is injured when a spell of Sephiroth's fails during a fight. Seph goes to patch him up - explicitly without magic because of how often he keeps screwing it up - and accidentally heals him with something innate. Sephiroth is very confused.

Camping in a rocky wasteland, Sephiroth wakes up to find that tiny patches of snowdrops have grown around the shelter overnight.

On the road, Sephiroth suddenly holds up a hand, indicating a monster ahead. Cloud asks how he sensed it so far off. 'I don't entirely know. The birds sounded different.'

Cloud eventually tells Seph what Aerith did. Aerith hasn't appeared to either of them for weeks so they're both in the dark about what it fully means.

Seph starts honing his new magic and quietly helps people they meet - healing small injuries, calming animals, encouraging crops and gardens grown sickly from the shifting weather. Cloud pretends not to notice.

Sephiroth and Cloud start sparring and working out how Seph's new magic can be combined with Cloud's when they fight against a common enemy. Cloud is cautious at every turn and Sephiroth even more so.

They find a small girl who has fallen down a ravine. Sephiroth takes away some of her pain, wraps her carefully in his coat, and carries her far off course to her remote village. He's able to heal a broken leg and some smaller things but during the long night it becomes apparent that there is some kind of internal damage. In the end neither he nor the doctor can save her. She passes on as dawn begins to break. Sephiroth is quiet about it as always but Cloud has never seen him this upset. For once Sephiroth doesn't shy away from contact and when Cloud puts a hesitant hand on his shoulder, he covers it with his own and holds it there. The next night they sleep back to back to be less alone.

Seph redoubles his efforts to master the healing magic. He's always up early, or up late when they camp outdoors, seemingly watching things Cloud can't see and listening to things Cloud can't hear.

Cloud notices that now when Sephiroth works larger healing magic, he clasps his hands exactly like Aerith. Cloud wishes Aerith would appear again, but she doesn't.

*Clifftop training montages, stunning wilderness vistas, dramatic staff magic/giant sword combo fights with sharply decreasing numbers of mishaps* …until:

Cloud doesn't hesitate when Sephiroth sees a slightly too-tall rock plateau ahead and dips his interlaced hands to boost him over. Sephiroth doesn't hesitate when Cloud extends a hand and grips his forearm to help him up in turn.

When Cloud takes first watch and a silent, familiar flash of silver stirs the shadows in his peripheral vision, his breath stays calm. A rough wool blanket settles around his shoulders, and Cloud leans into the steady presence, warmth, cut grass on a hot summer day very slightly before it's gone. Sephiroth notices but later tells himself he's probably imagining it.

They barely need to speak when they fight now. Each covers the other's vulnerabilities without thinking. A flick of a glance flows smoothly into a silent shared intention, and then bursts into a conflagration of burning slashes and iridescent refracting shield veils, and leaves a circle of fallen enemies.

Somehow it is easier to talk by the fire - once it has died down to glowing, gentle embers. Sephiroth tells Cloud what is supposed to be a humorous story from his childhood in the lab and looks up to find Cloud's expressive eyes fixed on his in pity, horror...disgust? Cloud abruptly reaches over and wraps him in the blanket as well. No, something softer in his eyes - compassion.

With more hesitancy than he has ever felt in his life, Sephiroth relaxes his head against Cloud's shoulder. Cloud doesn't let go.

It's nice to feel your heart start beating in time with another person, to feel their breath rise and fall and change your own to match. They stay that way for a while.

In the morning, a patch of little yellow flowers has grown next to the campfire's ashes.

----------------------------

[Soundtrack: Fabula Nova Crystallis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ0Mi3YRtM8&ab_channel=MasashiHamauzu-Topic]

It's like something between Atlantis and Naboo when the Cetra settlement reveals themselves. All waterfalls and rainbows and shimmering air where the bare cliff face had been.

The Cetra will help, but won't reveal themselves directly given their small numbers, and what has happened in the past. Cloud and Sephiroth agree to be their intermediaries and to carry their secret. It's hinted that there are more Cetra and part-Cetra children in the world. (Really, how could Shinra possibly know with certainty that they had searched every corner of the planet?)

Much later, Sephiroth and Cloud return to Nibelheim. Sephiroth won't go near the centre of town, but one morning in the dark says he has something he needs to do. Sephiroth and Cloud walk to the reactor together and there is a familiar echo of dread. As the sun comes up and paints the sky crimson, Sephiroth faces the reactor. He kneels like Aerith at the moment of her death and calls up the full power of the ancients. The sky is gold. Plants and trees and greenery and flowers wrap themselves around and subsume the reactor complex; cracking foundations, returning the doomed experiments to the planet, crystallising the residual mako into a beautiful, glowing spring that reaches toward the sky; a monument to everyone cut down in Sephiroth's past life and a silent promise to atone in the time that is left. Zack and Aerith appear with the first full rays of dawn. Zack embraces Cloud. Aerith kisses the still kneeling Sephiroth on the forehead, smiles at Cloud, and they fade away.

#ffvii #ff7 #ficlet #more of a fic plan that i will never write #but i wanted to get it out of my head somehow #sefikura #but would work without too #if anyone wants to write it and needs a beta reader...#sephiroth #cloud strife #aerith gainsborough #cloud x sephiroth #final fantasy vii #final fantasy 7 #final fantasy rebirth #final fantasy remake #Lmao I stayed up til 3 2 nights in a row and now it’s really long this is how they get u

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doberbutts · 11 months

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Anyway the question that always gets asked whenever I reveal that I'm not actually into the Cloud/Tifa thing is who do I ship them with if not each other.

The answer is a little more complicated than all that because from the start I considered their relationship something closer to a QPR before I even knew what that meant. I was calling them platonic life partners back then. People who don't feel any romantic love for each other but have chosen to stay regardless, or perhaps because.

I think, before, Cloud thought he wanted to be for Sephiroth what Zack wanted to be for Angeal. A puppy-like affection, a mentor/mentee comradery, and a close connection. I think Sephiroth would have hated it. He was cold and standoffish to Zack until circumstances forced them together, and even then he only really opened up due to Zack's connection to Angeal. I don't think having his own "puppy" would have been welcome at all. And I think Cloud would have been forced to come to terms with reconciling his hero worship with the reality of everything.

He and Zack were friends, but Zack was actively dating Aerith at the time, and Cloud didn't know Aerith existed back then. And within the narrative, Zack and Aerith are "parents"- with how often Aerith is referred to as a mother with Zack standing beside her, and Cloud is among those who repeatedly mistake Aerith for their mom. Zack does it once within the complilation, before he meets her for real, Cloud a few times, *after* he knows who she is. Clearly even when [redacted], Zack and Aerith are intended to be read as a couple, but then that once again removes an option for Cloud.**

The others... eh. I could be pursuded with the right argument but within canon itself it doesn't hold much water. Once we eliminate those four, he's got affectionate negging with Barrett, a quiet respect for Vincent, and a mutual back-scratching with Reeve. He's vaguely willing to play ball with Reno and Rude but not willing enough to let his guard down, while he treats the other Turks with some distain. He mostly tolerates Cid and Yuffie he both treats like and calls a child- she's the youngest so fair, but still removes her from the playing field. Anyone else connected to Shinra he actively dislikes, so Rufus and his flunkies are out.

We've got confirmation that he doesn't remember Kunzel and if Tseng remembers who Cloud is, he's being characteristically tight-lipped about it but Cloud certainly doesn't remember him. The OG Avalanche crew all died, even though Biggs lived in the Remake, and they weren't close. The Remnants of course mostly wanted to kill him the entire time. Deepground barely acknowledges his existence. Angeal died before Zack met Cloud and Genesis was too deep in his own shit to care.

So like. That doesn't really leave anyone.

Personally I think Cloud has way too much unresolved grief and trauma that he still has not worked through. It's years later in Advent Children when he's finally able to begin to move on from [redacted], and despite that even more years later in Dirge of Cerberus he's still notoriously distant and moody and prone to flaking. He's still questioning who he really is, can he actually trust his own memories and senses, and how much guilt is he willing to shrug off his shoulders for his actions while under someone else's control.

And I think being a distant moody asshole that pushes your friends away because you don't know if they're actually real or not is a difficult mindset to be in while also trying to be in love. So he doesn't try. His friends do love him anyway however exasperated they may be with him at times when he shuts them out while Going Through It. But it means he's not really building anything with any of them either.

Except Tifa, who keeps a room and a bed and a desk for him when he decides to come back, whose bar he calls home, who adopted a scared little boy with him, who watches their friend's adopted daughter with him. Who takes a family photo of the four of them together, which sits on that desk. Who quietly sorts the research papers as he hunts for a cure for an incurable disease affecting their son. Who yells and scolds him not because he left and stopped coming home, but because he gave up and shut her out when he contracted the same disease rather than letting her help.

"You don't answer the phone, but I don't see you throwing it away."

Out of all the voicemails on his phone, it was hers saying Reno had dropped by the bar looking for him and being vaguely threatening with the kids that got him to go see the Turks. He did not followup on Reeve's invite to the WRO. He didn't go chasing oil with Barrett. He didn't visit Yuffie in Wutai. But Tifa says "Reno was here being his usual weird self, I think something was wrong", and he went to investigate.

I don't ship it. I think he believes he's too broken for romance. And I think she's very patient to wait for him and give him the space he needs. Maybe they're FWB. Maybe it's entirely platonic. But the compliation has shown us that it's *something*, even if it's deliberately vague on what type of something.

**I do sort of like the "first this guy [redacted] my boyfriend, then he [redacted] my girlfriend, after trying to [redacted] my childhood best friend and succeeding in [redacted] my entire village and also my mom. This Sephiroth guy sucks" paired with Sephiroth's "tell me what you cherish most, give me the pleasure of taking it away" vibes of Cloud/Zack/Aerith don't get me wrong, but also as said Aerith and Zack were dating at the time but Cloud does not know who she is (or even that Zack has a girlfriend) and it is Very Important that Cloud not know the name Aerith until after Zack [redacted] which would imply sort of shadey behavior on Zack's part. And I don't really see him as the type to cheat, so.

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