Skeletons Coming Out Of The Closet [Open To Zack]

[silver_soldier]

"I...guess we've been keeping a lot of things from each other, huh?"Sephiroth shrugged slightly, feeling the movement shift his wing. It was his turn not to be able to meet Zack's eyes now, the first time in memory he could recall being ashamed enough about something to warrant such a tactic where his best friend was involved. "I suppose it depends

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[twilight_dark]

After having so many people in the room, the silence and emptiness of it now was striking. It made the situation that much more suffocating. His eyes fixed on Sephiroth's wing as it moved, but they soon left it in favor of the floor. "Why couldn't you tell me before it fell?" he asked, hoping he didn't sound too much like he was accusing his friend of keeping things from him.

If this had been going on since he was a child, he'd had all the time in the world to let him know, hadn't he? What, had Sephiroth not trusted him enough at that point? He guessed that was understandable, but it still hurt to think about. He could agree to the fact that there hadn't been a very good time after they met up again, but before...?

"Me neither, but we can't ignore it forever." Zack wasn't the sort that took solace in running away.

[silver_soldier]

"Long story short, I didn't know." Sephiroth rubbed his temple. He could hear his friend trying to sound neutral as he spoke, and just as clearly could hear the faint hurt in his voice. How to explain...?

"Ansem captured me and started his experiments on me, just before the fall of Hollow Bastion, when he discovered me in his laboratory under the castle. I may or may not have mentioned as much before. But what he discovered me doing was reading notes on an infant he'd experimented on years ago, a random orphan he'd picked because there was no family to ask questions, a child he injected with darkness and then kept an eye on as he grew up. I'm sure I don't need to spell it out." He ran a hand through his hair absently; he felt curiously numb, and saw no reason not to lay everything before Zack; how much worse could it get, after all? "You may as well know that Ansem credited the darkness for all the physical and mentral prowess his specimen exhibited; he even theorized it might have affected hair and eye color, although he never

[twilight_dark]

So he didn't remember. That, Zack could understand. Cloud had the same problem, didn't he? It made him wonder if there was anything in his past that he'd blocked out. He certainly didn't like the thought, though he wasn't presumttuous enough to believe he'd somehow been strong enough to remember everything. Still, even if there was something, how would he have any way of finding out? Any records were probably long gone--and maybe he was better off not knowing

[silver_soldier]

"It is," Sephiroth agreed, quite emphatically. "Bad enough to have served under someone you find out wasn't worth your loyalty, or even to find out that he wasn't worth it for all the time you'd known him; but finding out that everything in your life was built on lies..." It went beyond the feeling of having merely been tricked, then. It became a self-doubt so immense that there was simply no way of reconciling it - there was nothing in Sephiroth's life, even now so long after leaving Ansem behind, that he could feel certain of having accomplished with his own skill. Even his own body was a tool of Ansem's, using its darkness to do what Sephiroth would never know whether or not he could have achieved otherwise.

"I remember the experiments Ansem did on me as an adult clearly enough. I was too young to remember anything the first time around, however."