supersoldier | ( PRISMA INBOX )

[He isn’t busy, but there is a weighted pause before he replies — if only because social calls are utterly unexpected things, so foreign that he consciously makes an effort to speak before the silence drags on too long.

After all, maybe it wasn’t that. Did she need something from him? He can’t possibly imagine what.]

Aerith. I’m not busy at the moment. Did you need something from me? [—he asks, reflecting his thought process.]

Oh — no, I don't need anything! It's only...

[She imagines the myriad ways in which this could go wrong. Did Vincent know he was here? Tifa? Cloud? Not a one of them would approve of this, she knows.

But as always, Aerith made her own decisions.]

I have a garden here now. I don't know if you're a fan of nature, but... I wanted you to know that you could stop by whenever you wanted to, if you do at all.

Zack always liked to see flowers — they're so rare in Midgar, you know.

[He doesn’t know what to do with her clarification. It’s a polite invite — and Sephiroth isn’t so socially inept to not think of it as a friendly one, at that — and those are just as rare as random calls out of the blue from passing acquaintances.

And so he neither accepts nor declines quite yet, only pursues the presented topic further.]

I’ve never seen them growing freely in Midgar. If gardening was a hobby of yours, I can’t imagine the city was very accommodating.

[It’s difficult to know what to say about Zack, like he’s encroaching upon a subject where he has no room to tread.]

Did he help you grow them?

It was.

[She speaks carefully.] And you're right. There was only one place where they'd really grow there. I bet you spent most of your time on the Upper Plate, huh?

[A pause. She fills the space between with a musing sort of hum, like she can't help but fill the gaps in their conversations with sound.] And not exactly — he did help me build a flower cart. It's pretty sturdy!

Yes. Or stationed at HQ.

[There was little need for Midgar-sightseeing for a man like Sephiroth. But perhaps more importantly, there was little want. Though it was forest of dark steel, partitioned by sectors and lower-upper layers, the whole of Midgar might as well have been equated to that Shinra corporation’s interior for the SOLDIER.

Not much time to see growing flowers, never mind how rare they must be. ]

That does sound like something he would do. [Zack, ever helpful, ever eager. Probably doubly so for the girl he liked. If there’s a lilt in his tone, barely there, it’s gone as quickly as it appeared.]

So you sold them, too? [The flowers, he means — why else invest in a cart?]

Just work then, huh.

... Did you ever get bored?

[Maybe she's being too forward, but she's genuinely curious. The idea of being on the Upper Plate made her anxious even now, years separated from it, brave enough to take the routes there to sell flowers. It's the knowledge of being monitored, knowing that she might be grabbed whenever Shinra deemed it necessary.

She had always avoided getting too close to their branded buildings. She could not imagine anyone thinking of it as a home.

She catches the amusement in his tone, brief and fond, and allows her own to soften a fraction. The thought that he might have genuinely liked Zack is not hard to imagine, though it saddens her, all the same.]

I did. One gil for one flower! I'd usually sell out by the end of the day. Everyone seemed to love flowers in Midgar, even people you wouldn't expect.

It’s the novelty. People are always fascinated by the unusual, even enough to take it home with them for one gil.

[Would Sephiroth have bought a flower, starkly bright and organic against the metal and neon of the city, if he had seen her passing by with her cart? It’s unlikely, but he might have paused. Might have considered it for just a fleeting moment, before returning to whatever task pulled him through the rest of the day, as it often did.

He doesn’t know what else to say along those lines, though he supposes it’s more related to her original offer for him to see her garden than the question pertaining to boredom. Yet he answers it all the same.]

As for being bored, there isn’t that much downtime in SOLDIER. [Unless you’re Zack and you get a vacation to Costa del Sol but wHATEVER] But if there was, we’d— [He pauses. It isn’t so much ‘we’ any longer, not after what’s happened with Genesis and Angeal. And so— ] I’d sometimes pass the time in one of the VR training rooms. That was entertainment enough.

Otherwise, you're not often bored if you're kept busy.

I suppose so.

[Training rooms, missions. Always fighting, always struggling. No wonder. To her it seems like such a miserable way to live, and so sad. Never having the space to wonder at life, to enjoy anything it had to offer. And then later, to descend into a madness from which there was no return.

The "we" she is surprised to hear, and files it away for later. Zack, maybe? He'd seemed fond of him (which was still something she was wrapping her head around, that Sephiroth would be human enough to be fond of anyone.)]

Did you...

[How to word this.]

Did you ever do anything else, though? Outside of fighting — ah, I'm sorry if that's too forward. This is just my first time meeting someone so famous! So I'm curious.

[It’s all he knew. What he was trained for, what he ended up being created for, though his knowledge of his origins certainly do not extend that far. But he always existed for a singular purpose — to be deadly strong, quickly efficient, strategic and never hesitating. Shinra's sharpest weapon in their vast armory, used as intended.

Sephiroth is very aware of this, but his vision so obscured by what he’s always done, what his role has always been, that he isn’t so aware to see why being unable to answer her question is… problematic to most people.

After all, to him it’s odd that Aerith believes training, fighting, clashing swords and sharpening skills can’t be enough of an answer.]

There were always mission reports to file. [That was the mildest sarcasm, please don’t take that for a sincere answer. He continues just so she doesn’t.]

Is it so odd to you that a man trained to be in SOLDIER for years would skew his interests towards combat?

Well...

[Unseen, her hands twist anxiously in her lap.]

A little bit? Most people aren't the sum of their work. Like —

[There's the sound of her shifting around. Really she's just hanging upside down on her couch, letting the blood rush to her head. At a distance from him, she finds it easier to relax — it's as if he's less real somehow, or like she can separate the Sephiroth she knew and the Sephiroth this man appeared to be a little easier.] I love flowers! It's something I'm good at taking care of. If all I did was sell and grow them, though, I'd be pretty bored myself. Sometimes I'd do other things. Like haggle in the markets, you know? Or go to see that play that ran every year... Loveless? Read a book, or practice with my staff, or help my mother air out the linen... that part wasn't as fun.

I just wondered, that's all... if you ever felt restless, working all the time.

[Her end reveals shuffling over the audio, whereas Sephiroth is the opposite — quiet footsteps as he crosses over to his apartment window (where upon a stout table next to the windowsill sits a fishbowl, housing a little shiny goldfish that swims in lazy circles) but not much else.]

I think I would be restless if I wasn’t working.

[Which is how he feels now. Why he seeks out those who can spar with him, why he threw himself into the recent Moon Knight’s mission against zealous cultists even though he had criticized their desperation to her not that long ago.]

So you’re going to find my answer lacking. I didn’t make time for things like gardening, or have any inclination to see a play that’s already been drilled into my head. Sometimes I’d read, maybe, but if this boils down to asking what my hobbies are... I don’t know what to tell you.

Hm.

[There's a lull on her end, wherein she tries to figure out an appropriate response that isn't too forward. Normally, she would not be so cautious, but it was Sephiroth. Some discretion was warranted.]

If you don't have an answer, that's fine. I don't mean to pry. I was only curious. There's a lot of downtime here, after all.

... You've seen Loveless before?

[A pause, barely-there, his tone just a notch colder.]

No.

[Though it’s hardly any fault of hers that the associations run unkind.]

Another SOLDIER would always recite parts of that play by heart to me. Again and again, until I had it as memorized as him. I was more than familiar with it.

[The drop in tone surprises her, makes her tense by wary instinct.]

Oh. ... An odd play to quote. It's a tragedy. Kind of overwrought, I always felt. But my mom, she loved it.

[She does not ask about the other SOLDIER. It seems wise not to press her luck.]

You know. I was wondering. Were you born in Midgar? SOLDIERs have leave too, right?

[It’s best, maybe, that she not pursue it. Genesis’ name is marked in his mind by the sting of betrayal, a friendship severed in half without so much as a warning — he would answer her questions if she pressed, but the conversation would run drier, colder.

At least ushering it along seems to dispel some of that same tension.]

Yes. And SOLDIERs have leave if they choose to take it.

[The implication being that he doesn’t.]

Many take the opportunity to see friends and family, usually.

But you don't?

[Of course he wouldn't, she thinks. He thought that... thing was his mother, and that said mother was long dead. But surely someone most have raised him. The idea of a person having no home at all...]

I’ve been with Shinra for as long as I can recall.

[He isn’t hesitant to answer that question, which is so obviously fishing. Upon entry to Nibelheim, he has told the others about his mother, even briefly beginning to mention what little he knew about his father. Both gone from his life, Sephiroth harboring no true memory of either.

Still, there’s no need to delve to deep into the subject at hand, else she start treading on shakier ground — easier to just reply in a generalized manner.]

My mother died shortly after I was born, and my father was never a part of my life. [Both of these are untrue, of course, but ignorance is it’s own form of bliss.]

Shinra is, as a result, a substitute for both friends and family in my case.

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