(Face n. 1. the front of the head from the forehead to the chin; the expression of the facial features; a grimace. 2 the surface of a thing, especially the functional surface of a tool etc.; the upper or forward facing side, the front; the dial plate of a clock. 3. an outward appearance, an aspect. 4. composure; effrontery, nerve. 5. esteem. 6. a typeface. v.t./i. 1. to have or to turn the face towards; to be opposite to. 2. to meet resolutely, not to shrink from; to meet (an opponent) in a contest; to present itself to.)
"The eyes are the window to the soul," Zack says, in that particular tone of voice Sephiroth has learnt means quoting.
There is a single beat pause between 'eyes' and 'are'. The word soul is stretched out, a string of pearls, the sou deep and low, like a tunnel in the dark, making the l following it sound sudden, sharp and high, like a bird bursting free in a flurry of wings.
Could someone else – Zack – look into his eyes and see what is inside of him? He tries to imagine his irises becoming clear as glass, no longer a pale mirror reflecting back everything in their gaze he fails to understand and instead allowing them to look inside of him.
Would they see the retina, the optic nerve leading to the grey whorls and coils of the brain? And within the brain, snaps of electricity, faster than knowledge can comprehend, nerves and synapses, the inner workings of his central nervous system?
Or would they see what Zack's odd little idiom seems to think they would: what he is feeling, coiled tight and small to fit inside his eyes?
To Sephiroth, the eyes are blank and unreadable, revealing nothing. Iris, pupil, sclera. Nothing more. He can examine the pigmentation of the iris, though, finds it interesting to name and chart the colours and composition thereof, like an abstract painting that might tell him something if he stares enough. Other people, however, seem to find this disturbing. Zack says it's disconcerting (disconcert v. to disturb the self-possession of, to fluster) to have someone stare straight into the eyes, by which Sephiroth understands he is acting yet again in a manner that suggests he is utterly oblivious to the subtle intricacies and rituals that structure human interaction.
He finds human faces to be like a puzzle in 3D… no, like one of those immense, intricate pictures formed entirely out of knotted strands that the older residents of the northern continent are famed for making during winter months. Intriguing, but meaningless. Only the basic emotions are open to him; all other emotions are spread like webs across the face, labyrinthine interconnecting strands forming arcane patterns, dizzyingly complex, too overwhelming to decipher either the details or the whole.
For example, Zack has a particular expression when irritated, lowering his brows, narrowing his eyes, mouth tightening in a moue of exasperation. However, a single quirk of an eyebrow destroys this, makes it a self-mocking pout. A slight downward curl of his lips and a tightening of the skin around his eyes hints at fury. If he tilts his head downwards, the edges of his mouth flattened: disappointment.
To Sephiroth this array is bewildering, as confusing to him as the advanced mathematics he practises are to Zack.
His only comfort (comfort n. 1. a state of physical or mental well-being or contentment; 2. relief of suffering or grief, consolation; a person or thing that gives this. ― v. to give comfort to, to soothe in grief, to console) is that his own face, according Zack, is far harder to read. This is because people are used to reading the emotions upon the face, Zack tells him, and because he doesn't know how to express such things as they do, he is therefore a blank to their fine-tuned senses, adapted to minutiae of human expression.
He imagines it sometimes, looking into the mirror – nothing but empty white space in place of eyes and nose and mouth, nothing but void. All his personal features just wiped away, leaving him as blank and inaccessible as the white walls of his childhood, no way in or out.
Zack has an interesting face, like a composition in affability. His smile is wide, and his eyes crinkle at the corners easily, well-worn grooves like corrugated iron above a slightly crooked nose, broken in his childhood. These things talk to other people of sociability (sociable adj. fond of company; characterised by friendly companionship) and laughter and caring (care v. feel concern or interest; 2. to feel affection or a liking for or a willingness to do; 3. to provide for). He is the one who greets the new recruits, the I-care-about-you face of ShinRa military. There is something about his tanned features that sets people at ease, something about all those idiosyncratic characteristics gathered together that says I'm your friend instead of be afraid of me. Everyone but him seems able to understand that language instantly, and gravitate toward Zack, planets orbiting a star.
He wonders what his own features would say if he knew how to speak that voiceless language.
To Sephiroth, Zack's looks talk of genetics, of the dominant characteristics present in Gongaga; the open secret of his heritage written in his black hair and his blue eyes – violet, Zack insists, for how can such a specimen of perfection such as himself have something so mundane as blue eyes – and his slightly above average height.
In Zack's shape and colouring Sephiroth can see that at least one side of his family (family n.1. group of people related by blood, marriage; 2. one's children; 3. people with a common ancestor; 4. group of allied genera of animals or plants, usually a subdivision of an order) once had strong roots in the mountains; in his bronzed skin he can read a genetic propensity to tan instead of burn, bred from countless more generations in the temperate weather of the Gongagan plains.
When he tries to read his own heritage however, his face and body is as blank to him as it is to others. There is something to the slant of his eyes, the construction of his face and his lean build that might indicate something of a Wutai inheritance, but his height is abnormal, as his colouring. He could not say, however, whether these things are natural or a result of Hojo's tampering. He has never seen another individual with hair like his, so he suspects that at least cannot be a gift from his progenitors (parent n. 1. one who has begotten or borne offspring, a father or mother; 2. a forefather; 3. a person who has adopted a child; 4. an animal or plant from which others are derived; 5. a source from which other things are derived).
He doesn't need the presence of Zack's parents to be able to trace the ancestry of their child's face, but the total absence of his own is different somehow. Perhaps the reason he is incapable of seeing his own genetic inheritance as clearly as he can see Zack's is that he doesn't like the thought of what he might find.