Three Memories of You

The cruelest lies are often told
without a word.
The kindest truths are often spoke
and never heard.

- - Ben Folds

1. Wutai

The memory I return to most often is our time together in Wutai. You were assigned to a mission led by me because you showed promise and talent, but you seemed so nervous and uncertain. Especially around me, you were reverent and terrified. For two days you couldn't bring yourself to look me in the eye. I wanted to apologize to you, though I wasn't sure what I had done. I had cultivated a reputation, or simply surrendered to fate, and it had cost me something in the way of interpersonal relationships. What amazed me most about you was that being around you – or just watching you, because you kept your distance – made me want to step out of my skin, so that I could be normal, so that I could be your friend.

The first day we spoke was clear and beautiful, as were all of those days in Wutai when the war was over, when our mission was to rebuild and survey. I was not proud of what I had done to the town – it was the beginning of a period of self-questioning that was new for me. I had been so sure for so long that I was gifted and that I was using those gifts to change the world for the better, to preach the gospel of Shinra. But after the war was over, after I had time to stand back from my strategies and look over the damage I had caused, Hojo's nagging voice crept back into my head. I began to remember the way he had told me to trust only myself. He had worked for Shinra, too, and as a child I had assumed he meant I should be suspicious of all others, but that Shinra doctrine was still unfalable. After the war in Wutai ended, I began to understand what he had truly meant.

It was fall. The weather was still warm, but there was a persistent breeze, which swept down from the mountains and pushed dust from the rubble of destroyed buildings through the air. Things were foggy, golden and kind. That was the nature of the time when I began to question my life, and when I began to love you.

You were training with Zack and I decided to sit aside and watch. Before you noticed me there you were doing well, nearly matching his skill though he was first class and you had only recently joined SOLDIER. But when you spotted me watching you out of the corner of your eye, you startled, and he was easily able to knock your sword out of your hands. He chastised you gently – you were fond of him, and disappointed in yourself, I could see it. But when I approached you seemed to go from crestfallen and nervous to absolutely terrified. It hurt me a little, and thrilled me, too.

" That was good work," I told you, offering a smile. They didn't come easy to me – I was raised by Hojo, he of maniacal laughter rather than friendly grins.

" Cloud's doing very well," Zack offered.

" Yeah right," you had said glumly, answering him. " You knocked my weapon away – if you had been an enemy I would be dead."

" It's much different when you face an actual enemy," I told you. " Your adrenaline helps you focus, and dispenses with your nerves."

That was the first time you looked at me. You had mako eyes, of course. Like mine. They were full of worship and fear when you looked at me. I wondered why, when our eyes glowed the same way. We were not so different, even then.

" I've never faced a real enemy," you told me timidly.

" You should hope you never do," I said, and Zack looked at me with surprise. It was unlike the great Sephiroth to say such a thing. But I was changing. That change never really took root, because of things that happened soon afterwards. But the doubts were always with me. The wishing that my life was different.

" Is my skill really that terrible?" you asked, fretting aloud and misunderstanding my comment. I laughed, and put my hand on your shoulder.

" I only mean that we should all wish for peace," I said, grinning at you. Your face changed, and you let yourself return my smile. I squeezed your shoulder, and had to walk away. Things I hadn't felt for a long time were rising through me like a warm cloud, and I almost wished them away, though the feeling was a good one. You looked a bit like the president's son, who I had grown up with and had something of a crush on as a teenager. But Rufus was cold and never seemed to even want to be my friend, let alone anything more. I had pined for him, ashamed and lonely, until I finally left to serve in SOLDIER and cast away those feelings, for good, I thought. I did not want to go through that pain again, but you seemed so different from Rufus, so kind and warm.

I saw you again later that night, when the temperature dropped and the men left the camp for the town's surviving bars. It was a clear night, lit by only a tiny crescent of moon, and I decided to join my subordinates at the bar. It was something I never would have considered only a few weeks ago – I had to maintain an elevated status if I wanted to be an effective general, and drinking with the men in a bar would conflict with my superiority. All things Heidegger of Shinra had taught me in my military studies since I was eight years old. But I had never liked Heidegger, a fat and pompous man who let younger, poorer men do his fighting for him, as the rest of the Shinra leadership did. I was tired of following their rules – doing so had made me successful, but only in the ways they wanted. I was lonely. I wanted to learn how to be a human being, and that wasn't in Shinra's plans for me.

When I walked in the bar, the men spotted me and looked surprised – you not least of all. You were sitting toward the end of the bar, a bit apart from the others. It was one of the things I had noticed about you since you had come to the camp, one of the things that intrigued me about you. You reminded me of my myself in the way you seemed to be a loner who wanted to grow close to people but didn't know how. I greeted my men as I moved down the bar, and took an empty seat beside you.

" Hello," I said, smiling and sitting beside you. " What are you drinking?"

" Hot sake," you said, after a moment of stunned speechlessness. " It's cold outside," you offered in way of explanation. I had to stop myself from chuckling at the way you had your hands wrapped around the little stone jug.

" I didn't think you drank," you said.

" Sure I do," I said, though typically I didn't. I ordered a hot sake for myself, and the bartender placed a steaming jug and a matching guinomi in front of me.

" I don't drink much myself," you said, and I believed you. I asked your age, and you told me you were sixteen. I had guessed as much, but it still stung a bit to hear that I was ten years older than you. I found myself wishing that I was your age, that we could bond, overwhelmed by joining SOLDIER and naively sorry that we'd missed the war. I knew it would be harder to foster a friendship with you as your general.

We sat and talked, two inexperienced drinkers getting a little drunk and perhaps sharing more about our lives than we would have otherwise. It was hard for me to tell most people about my childhood, but yours had not been easy, either, though it wasn't quite so unusual as mine.

" Then you never met your parents?" you asked me at one point, a look of great sympathy on your face.

" No," I said. " They died when I was very young." Even then, I didn't entirely believe this. I didn't want to dive further into my past, though. I could sense its darkness, could sense, from the way Gast and the others had kept it from me, that it would only hurt me.

It was you who eventually drove me into that darkness. But that night I never would have imagined it. As you told me about your lonely childhood I felt that I had found a kindred spirit. We walked home from the bar at closing time, after all of the other men had already left, certainly jealous to find me at the end of the bar, offering my company to a teenage rookie rather than those who I had fought with.

You and I stood outside of the camp and looked at the moon. We were in the tall grass beyond the clearing, our eyes on the sky.

" In Midgar I so rarely saw the moon," I said, sobering a bit but still infused with the wistfulness that drinking brings. " I never get tired of looking at it. It's amazing."

" I can't believe I'm standing here with you," you said with a little laugh, the sake making you more candid than you had intended, I'm sure.

" What do you mean?" I asked.

" You're Sephiroth," you had said, as if it should be obvious. I looked down at you, washed in moonlight, and let myself realize how beautiful you were. If only you had known that, in that moment, the great Sephiroth worshipped you. I wanted to run a hand through that soft, blond hair, and I knew that I could. I was a general and you were a rookie – I could have taken from you whatever I wanted. But I kept my hands at my side. Hojo had told me to enjoy the burden of superiority that I carried – he had told me that those of us who were born for greatness were entitled to have what we wanted. But I could not have lifted a hand to harm you.

Not then. Then I walked you to your tent and said goodnight. Later of course, we would hurt each other. But that night I was so infatuated with your innocence that I wanted to sit outside your tent and keep guard. Of course I didn't. I went back to my own tent and laid on my cot, staring into the darkness and wondering if I wanted to fall over the edge of these feelings. As I drifted off to sleep I realized I didn't have a choice.

I didn't have the nerve to touch you for weeks, though I dreamt of it often. I was distracted in my work, though it hardly mattered, as I was overseeing an orderly disaster relief process. It was ironic, and I appreciated the irony: we were left to rebuild the town we had destroyed. Only we were rebuilding it as something that did not threaten Shinra – we were rebuilding what was now Shinra's property. I pitied the people in the village, who had to hide their resentment for us out of fear. They seemed glad the war was over, but ashamed that they had lost.

I became accustomed to taking long walks through the mountains in the evenings. I knew it wasn't an intelligent thing to do – the people in the town resented me, and though I was capable of easily defeating any rebels who aimed to assassinate me while I was walking alone, I didn't know the terrain as well as the locals and there was still a risk of getting hurt.

But I felt safe in Wutai, shrouded in my longing for you.

I personally took you under my wing and helped you train. You got better under my direction, and the skills you possessed, for such a young man, were impressive. After practicing in the wheat fields surrounding our camp we would go for hot noodles and tea together. Sometimes with Zack and the other men, sometimes just the two of us.

But of course you remember all of that.

You were so enamored of me, and I hoped that your fondness for me was in the same vein as mine for you. I was afraid that you were still simply a little boy worshipping his childhood hero, and still not seeing me as an equal, as someone you could found a deeper relationship with. I asked you if you had girlfriends, and you answered quickly that you hadn't. I let my hope grow.

Winter was coming in Wutai, and often the men would sit up at night around campfires, keeping warm by drinking tea and talking about the families they missed, the people they had left behind. Zack had a bracelet that his girl back home had given him for good luck, and he used to twirl it around while he sat talking about how beautiful she was. You and I, we had nothing like that waiting for us at home. I had only the cold Shinra headquarters and Hojo, whose interest in me was nothing like the father whose role he was irresponsibly assigned to fill. You told me you had a mother who you loved but had never felt close to, and no friends to write to, no lover waiting.

We sat apart from the other men because of this. Perhaps they whispered about us – you were too amazed at the luck that had allowed you to befriend me to notice, and I was too used to having people whisper about me to care. But it was one of those cold nights, sitting close to the fire, that I first mustered the courage to touch you. There were other men around, talking quietly. And you may not have even noticed, but I was inching slowly closer to you as we sat together on one of the broken roof beams the men had dragged over to use as benches.

As we were sitting there, talking distractedly about where we would stay when winter came, I laid my arm alongside yours. You did not stop talking, flinch or even stiffen. It was natural, or maybe so timid and small that it wasn't noticed. But I felt inflated by the gesture – you had not rejected me, had not moved away, had not clammed up in awkward response. And as my arm rested against yours I could feel the weight of your body shift – when you sighed, when you laughed, when you turned to look at me. I felt that I had found where I truly belonged at last – beside you.

I never knew for sure if you were responding positively to my advances, or simply passing them off as platonic. After all, you had told me you never had a real friend before, and you knew that I hadn't, either. Perhaps you just thought we were inventing a type of friendship for the two of us, that because we were both starting from clean slates we could make of it whatever we liked.

Sometimes, though, I think you must have known. I was always as close to you as I could be. I put my hand on your shoulder at every opportunity – you must have felt how much I wanted to pull you into my arms. You must have seen, when I looked at you, how I was imagining what it would feel like to kiss you, to smooth your hair, to bury my face against your neck.

But perhaps not. You were a child, after all.

The night after we left Wutai, however: you knew then. For that night I cannot pass you off as innocent, for that night I cannot forgive you.

Zack and I were called away to Nielbelhiem. We were asked to chose two subordinates to accompany us on a mission to investigate a reactor. They were pulling me away from the Wutai revival effort to perform a routine reactor check – I knew that something more than what Shinra would tell me was going on. It was how Shinra had treated me my whole life – as if I wasn't entitled to know the truth, was only expected to serve them blindly, like a prized purebred dog.

I almost didn't want to bring you along. I knew that if Shinra was hiding something from me there was danger involved, and the thought of you facing combat seemed entirely wrong. But they had asked us to bring our two best cadets, and of course Zack suggested you. What could I say? I had the right to override his suggestion, even without a logical reason, but part of me wanted you along. I had fallen in love with you and couldn't bear the thought of being away from you. It sounds ridiculous, but love makes us all fools. Zack and I told you and another cadet that you had been selected for the mission, and the four of us left for Nielbelhiem.

On the way to the coast that night, where we would meet our transport, we camped along the trail. All four of us were tired, and after a quick dinner we laid out our blankets and settled down to rest. My sleeping area was right next to yours, of course. Zack and the other man were quickly asleep, and you were dozing, but I was restless.

There were a plethora of reasons for what happened next. I was afraid that things would change between the two of us on a new mission. I saw you becoming friendly with Zack and I was jealous. I had been longing for your sleeping form beside mine in my cot for months, and suddenly there you were, your hands curled under your chin like the boy that you were. I watched your sleeping face, and my irrational side took over. Soundlessly, I moved my blanket closer to yours. I scooted to you until we were almost nose to nose.

The heat of my breath must have woken you. Your eyes fluttered open, the mako flecks caught the light of the moon, and I was enchanted. I expected you to gasp in surprise, but you only smiled sleepily. You might tell me now that you were half asleep, that you didn't know what you were doing. I would call you a liar. I leaned toward you and you lifted your chin to meet my kiss. I felt you wanting me; I put my arms around you and you settled into them.

I rested my chin on top of your head and breathed you in. The scent of your hair and the feeling of your breath, soft on my collarbone, nearly had me believing that I was dreaming myself. But it was real. I felt reborn, like all things were possible. I only held you for maybe ten minutes, too afraid that the others would wake and catch us. But there was a lifetime in those minutes. There was the love, the warmth, the happiness that had been denied to me.

It was the first and only time I had held or kissed someone, and when I had to let you go, to move away from you was like falling to earth – harsh and stony, a crashing loss. You were asleep, your mouth slightly open, and I watched you still, wanting to move toward you again. I told myself to wait, that we would have this again. I knew that the following night, in Nibelhiem, we would stay in an inn. Plans raced through my head.

This is the way that I want to remember you: asleep beside me, the possibility of holding you again still real. I kept that image with me – your sleeping face, your hand curled under your chin, mouth slightly open, your features relaxed.

You were mine that night. You gave yourself to me. Don't deny it now.

The betrayal that followed was conscious and complete.