"You need a nickname," Zack said, striding into Sephiroth's office and closing the door gently behind him. The statement was made so matter-of-factly it seemed almost as if it might be impossible to argue, like a simple truth of the universe. Sephiroth didn't believe in simple truths.
"What, just because you have one?" he asked drolly.
Zack grinned. "No, because your name is such a mouthful. You're intimidating enough without three whole syllables. Let's shorten it!"
"I am not intimidating."
Zack burst out laughing. "Didn't you make that lab tech wet his pants last week?"
Sephiroth frowned. "I did not touch him."
"Noooo," Zack agreed, drawing out the sound. He was still grinning, Sephiroth noted with annoyance. "You just stared at him, and stared, and kept staring, and right when he thought you were about to stab him just for existing, you looked away, and he was so relieved he peed himself."
"If Hojo wants to hire spineless wimps to work in his labs, that is his business, not mine," Sephiroth decided grumpily. "I cannot be held responsible for the bladder functions of everyone in the building."
"Of course not! But still, you could lighten up a bit."
Sephiroth frowned. "I am plenty light."
"Mm-hm."
"I have silver hair and a pale complexion," Sephiroth offered.
"You don't own a single article of clothing that isn't black."
"My eyes glow in the dark."
"No one's ever seen you smile."
"That's a falsehood," Sephiroth pointed out. "Plenty of people have seen me smile."
"But they usually die immediately afterwards, right?"
Sephiroth shifted uncomfortably in his office chair. Zack's assessment wasn't entirely inaccurate.
"Sephiroth, you are a gloomy man."
"Do you think it would help?" He asked, almost morbidly curious. Sephiroth had never really been comfortable being surrounded by people, but the extent to which even his closest coworkers avoided him was painfully obvious. With Genesis and Angeal gone, really the only people who would speak to him without saluting were Zack, Hojo, and his enemies on the battlefield.
"What, a nickname? Totally!"
Sephiroth's frown deepened. "I meant smiling."
"Oh."
"If you don't think it would help, why did you even bring it up?"
"Well… it's not that I'm against it or anything, I would love to see you smile. I just… I'm not sure I would recommend it for, you know, out there." Zack waved an arm widely at the floor beyond the walls of Sephiroth's office. "You might spook 'em."
"You mean they would think I had gone insane and was about to kill them all."
Zack flinched. "Well… why not just start slow?"
"With a nickname."
"Look, people see me hanging around you, they know you tolerate it and you must be some kind of human – after all, you'd have to be pretty fucked up to resist my charms, amiright? – and that helps. But let's face it, they all also know I'm a total pain in the ass who bugs everybody. My hanging around you is more proof of my brain damage than your affability, you know? But mostly I think because you hold me at arm's length, just like everybody else."
"I – what? I do not."
"You totally do, Sephiroth. And I'll give it to you, there aren't very many other people even coming within arm's reach of you in the first place, but you don't give me much room to be your friend."
"You have the keys to my office so that you can sleep on my couch whenever you want."
"And I appreciate those keys, don't think I don't!"
"You barge in here when I'm working and tell me all about all the ridiculous things happening in your life, most of which you bring down on yourself, and I never kick you out," Sephiroth went on, getting more agitated.
"Also appreciated. Although I don't know what you mean by bring things down on myself. I'm just unusually unlucky, I swear."
"I'm unendingly lenient about your rampant and chronic tardiness."
"Hey, I'm never late to real missions, only the paperwork bullshit."
"It's still part of your job, Zack, you're my second in command. I need you to do all of it, not just the parts you enjoy."
"I'm also trying to be your friend, Sephiroth, and while I appreciate the freedom you give me, I won't stop being your friend just because you tell me to man up and act like a professional."
Sephiroth stared at Zack for a long moment, face unreadable. Zack shifted nervously in his seat and lowered his eyes respectfully, worried that he had crossed a line. Was he wrong? Did Sephiroth not think of them as friends? Sometimes it was hard to know with the prickly General, but for all his bravado Zack really, genuinely liked the man, and wanted him to be happy. At first, he thought the General's self-imposed isolation was really just that: self-imposed. But lately, it had seemed more like Sephiroth was only imposing because he didn't know how to be anything else.
"So," Sephiroth said slowly after a moment.
"So," Zack sighed.
"The nickname?"
Zack looked up, startled and hopeful, and saw only calm patience in the General's eyes. Zack decided to go for it. "You let me give you a nickname – and call you by it in front of people – and in return, anything you tell me to do for work, I do. Any professional boundaries you give me, I follow. I will," Zack took a deep breath, "I will be your lieutenant. And your friend."
Sephiroth seemed to be considering the offer, although at best the look on his face was somewhere between confused and constipated. "You can give me a nickname," he said after a moment, and Zack let out a breath he hadn't known he had been holding, "but I'm not going to give you any orders or boundaries. You – you're already my lieutenant, Zack, it's not a job position you were hired for, it's who you are. Sometimes I need you to be the guy who barges into my office and distracts me when I've been working too long. Sometimes I need to come back here and see you sleeping on the couch and be reminded that not everything that happens here is tedious, boring, or downright bad. I need you to just – be you, Zack."
Zack grinned. "Now there's an order I can follow," he said heartily.
"You know…" Sephiroth trailed off.
"Hmm?"
"I do already have a few nicknames."
"The Demon of Wutai doesn't sound any less intimidating than Sephiroth, I can tell you," Zack said, but although the words were stern his voice was light and happy. "We need something that makes you seem more approachable, not less."
"The Silver General?" Sephiroth suggested. "It sounds… light."
"No, it sounds like someone is about to be beheaded by Masamune. We need something more… you. Like Seph."
"You're suggesting a derivation of my own name? In that case, 'Seph' is acceptable."
"Eh," Zack seemed dissatisfied. "I dunno, it all right, I guess. You really like it?"
Sephiroth attempted a shrug, although it was a gesture he knew he had never quite perfected. Zack seemed to understand. "You are the one who will be using this 'nickname.' It is your opinion that matters."
Zack seemed to be mulling it over, but Sephiroth was sure he didn't really like 'Seph.' He wasn't sure if he could make suggestions – so far he'd been shot down – but Zack said they were friends, and friends had conversations. Conversations took two people, so surely Sephiroth was allowed to participate, even if he did think Zack should be the one to name him. Taking a deep breath and reminding himself Zack probably wouldn't abandon him at this point, even if he did somehow manage to make an extreme social faux pas by suggesting his own nickname – stranger things had turned out to be social faux pas in the past – Sephiroth took a deep breath and suggested, "How about Roth?"
Zack looked up at him, startled, and then something that looked like happiness crossed his face only to be swiftly replaced by displeasure. "Urrgh, no way!" he laughed. "It makes me think of Mothra."
Sephiroth sat quietly, stumped. He had never heard of Mothra, but he seemed to be unfavorable to Zack. Zack seemed displeased, and yet he had laughed – but Sephiroth couldn't see the joke. "Mothra?" he tried.
"Yeah, you know, the giant monster, Mothra," Zack said, still chuckling.
Sephiroth frowned. "I have never encountered this creature," he stated flatly. "Is it very dangerous?" It wasn't always the case that larger monsters were more dangerous than smaller ones, but still, Sephiroth was uncomfortable with the idea his SOLDIERs would be facing an enemy of which he himself had no knowledge.
"Well, yeah, sort of," Zack said. "But it's not real. It's from a movie."
"You are telling me someone made up a giant, dangerous monster for the sake of entertainment?"
Zack smiled brightly. "That's it exactly!"
"And this creature's name sounds like part of my name."
"Through no fault of your own, I promise!"
Sephiroth frowned. "I am not certain I understand, but you may choose a nickname other than Roth if that is preferable to you." Why anyone would bother to invent a terrifying monster when so many ran amok throughout the world was beyond him – and as to why people would spend money to think about such a thing, why, it was entirely unfathomable.
Now it was Zack's turn to make a face, to Sephiroth's ever-mounting confusion. This conversation made less sense the longer it went on, and he would be pleased when Zack finally settled on something and moved on. "I dunno," Zack said musingly. "Roth rules out the end of your name, and Seph covers the beginning, so what else is there? I guess maybe we should go with Seph, after all?"
No, Sephiroth thought, and was a little surprised at how strongly he felt. Zack was obviously still uncomfortable with the name Seph, for whatever reason, so Sephiroth could not allow him to use it.
"What about the middle?" Sephiroth suggested, somewhat tentatively.
"What? The only letter we haven't covered is the I. I can't call you I, that would be really confusing. And I would seem crazy. I mean, I, Zack, not I, you – er." Zack offered Sephiroth a helpless look as he gave up.
"You could use more of the middle than just the I. Let's see… the ph preceding makes a compound noise, so keep that together. Phi… Fish?"
Zack looked like he had swallowed a bug. No, wait, he went to that stand in Wall Market that sold fried crickets on purpose, and ate bugs there all the time – he looked like he had stepped in Behemoth manure. "Why?" he asked, sounding completely aghast.
Sephiroth was mildly annoyed. He was still not sure why they were bothering with a nickname in the first place, so why Fish was so inappropriate was somewhat confounding.
"Fish have argent qualities, especially on their underbellies. Actually, this could be good… you start calling me Fish as phase one, and then for phase two I start smiling, and by phase three everyone will be calling me Shark-face behind my back. Problem solved."
"No, problem not solved!" Zack howled, laughing uproariously.
"Well if we take one more letter it becomes Fear and I think that defeats the purpose," Sephiroth said rather huffily. The more he thought about it, the more he liked Fish.
"The way people slur your name it would be closer to Fur," Zack said, recovering from his guffaw. "That's kind of nice, a good connotation – fur, fluffy, kind of a 'fua-fua' feeling there – yeah, that's nice and warm and soft! How about Fur?"
"Absolutely not."
"Whaaaat? Come on! Hey, you know the first rule of nicknames is you don't get to pick your own, right? I'm calling you Fur from now on!"
"Since when was that a rule?" Sephiroth asked defensively. He was suddenly feeling quite cornered.
"Do you think I would've chosen Puppy for myself? Hell, no! But now we go together, puppies should always have fur. Oh, now I'm thinking of terrible things," Zack said, suddenly sounding quite morose.
"Well stop. As far as you're concerned, puppies always do have fur, so don't worry about it. But I don't like the connotations of being your fur, and as your superior officer and more importantly," Sephiroth didn't feel this next point was more important, but suspected Zack would, "the recipient of the nickname, I hold ultimate veto power. You absolutely may not call me Fur."
Zack pouted, but recovered quickly. "Ok, ok. I think we're onto something with these middle-section names, though. What happens if we add another letter? Fura? Oh, now you sound like a spell!"
Sephiroth cocked his head to the side thoughtfully, then picked up a piece of scrap paper from his desk and scrawled something on it quickly. He stared at the note for a moment, and then handed it to Zack.
"'Phiro,'" Zack read, pronouncing it Fura, "That's what I just said."
"Not using the pronunciation of Sephiroth, but just by itself," Sephiroth suggested. "Phiro." He said Fear-o, but somehow it didn't sound fearsome.
"Phiro," Zack copied, feeling the sound on his tongue. "Phiro. Huh. You like it?"
"Does it matter?" It certainly hadn't seemed to up to this point.
"Of course it matters," Zack said patiently, "Didn't you just say that the recipient gets final veto power? I don't wanna get attached if you're just gonna chuck it in a minute."
"So you do like it," Sephiroth said.
"I like it. I think it's a great nickname! Much better than Seph, ugh," Zack made a sour face, and Sephiroth determined to uncover just what his lieutenant found so distasteful about Seph sometime soon. "But do you like it? Will you be ok with me calling you that?"
"I think so. It seems… right."
"It does," Zack agreed heartily. "Phiro. Phiro! Phiro," he practiced, alternating his tone significantly with each recitation, unintentionally giving Sephiroth a strong feeling of what it would be like when Zack called his name casually, in shock, in exasperation, in delight.
With a start, Sephiroth realized he was looking forward to it.