(Perfect adj. 1. complete and with all necessary qualities; faultless, not deficient. 2. exact, precise. 3.(colloq.) excellent, most satisfactory. 4. entire, unqualified. 5. (gram., of a tense) denoting a completed event or action viewed in relation to the present. Perfection n. 1. making or being perfect; faultlessness. 2. a perfect person or thing.)
"You must be perfect."
These are the earliest words Sephiroth can recall. He cannot tell how old he was then, because he had not learnt to divide up days and nights, weeks and months. He had no concept of time, and none of language – it is hindsight that makes what had been incomprehensible sound combinations form words, form a maxim that will be repeated throughout his childhood (childhood n. 1. the time of a person's life when they are a child; 2. the state of a child between infancy and adolescence), that he must be perfect..
When he was younger Sephiroth understood only that he was capable of many things that pleased the Professors. He knew from Gast's scattered notes that in comparison – to who or what, he did not know and has never been overly concerned by – he was faster, stronger; he was capable, physically, of many things those others were not, and he knew from Hojo's habit of muttering under his breath that this pleased them.
He knew also that he frightened people who did not wear white coats – and eventually even the white coats became afraid. He knew they were frightened because they reacted to him the same way he reacted to them. In this way he learnt he was different, he was not what a child should be.
It did not bother him until he met Zack, and sometimes he could hate Zack for teaching him shame (shame n. 1 emotion of regret and contrition, caused by consciousness of guilt, dishonour, etc; 2. disgrace; 3. coll. unfair happening; hard luck; v. 1. make ashamed; 2. bring shame, disgrace on). Before he met Zack he knew only that he was different; he had not cared over much for other people's responses because Hojo had prized that difference and he had wanted desperately to please Hojo, whose high regard was so rarely given, if at all.
It took him years to see that whatever he did was not enough.
"You must be perfect," Hojo cautioned when he was six years old, watching him with his fathomless black eyes, his skeletal fingers twitching, itching for the tools of his trade, for scalpels and needles and hypodermics, for the thousand different objects with which he might write on the canvas of Sephiroth's skin, to make him into the vision of perfection he could be.
Sephiroth remembers this, oddly, when Zack talks of his parents – loving, embarrassed, deliberately dismissive. He cannot understand why Zack feels the need to pretend his parents are no longer anything to do with him. But then, there are many things he cannot understand.
Perfection, for instance, and why he cannot achieve it.
Sephiroth's writing is neat and regular, so regular it might have been typed. His voice is without inflection and blank; since childhood, it has never been heard outside of laboratories or battlefields to change in pitch or tone. His movements are the minimum required for any action; no energy is expended with needless gestures or pointless moves. He appears among the ShinRa echelons as spotlessly groomed as the prize pet he knows himself to be, no matter what the circumstances.
And yet Hojo is not pleased. He is unsure why Hojo's dismissive attitude continues to gnaw at him – he is like that with everyone after all. It is simply that Sephiroth has spent all his life trying to please him in his command, and has not succeeded.
In his attempt, he occasionally forayed into skill spheres outside of the necessary for his function - perfection is everything, and everything must be perfect - but it only served to widen the gap between perception and reality.
He plays the piano faultlessly but without passion (passion n. strong feeling; enthusiasm; 2. sexual desire; 3. wrath) which renders his performances hollow. He can sketch, and those sketches are uniformly accurate and anatomically correct, and as bland as a medical textbook, simply expressions of technical ability. He cooks for himself and what is made is identical to the last time he used the same recipe.
"You must be perfect," Hojo said, the day he became General. "Perfect, do you understand me?"
He wishes he had said no. What measure of perfection? Hojo's must be different to everyone else's, he decides. And just what were the consequences if he was not?
Hojo expects him to be God, Zack mutters, an edge to his voice that anyone else would recognise as bitterness or sarcasm, when Sephiroth tries to explain just why he is so 'uptight'. "It's stupid, Sephiroth," he snaps, watching him as he covers a sheet with incomprehensible mathematical symbols. "Tell him to shove his perfection up his ass, the hypocrite." (hypocrisy n. pretending to be better morally (moral a. relating to generally accepted ideas of right and wrong; virtuous; of right conduct) than one is -crite, such a person; a. -critical)
Sephiroth stares at him for a long time, feeling something inside of him twist with agreement, acknowledgement that it is stupid, and it is hypocritical of Hojo to expect such a thing from him. But perfection isn't really so much to ask, is it? For someone like him, it shouldn't be so difficult at all.
"You must be perfect!"
If it takes becoming God to at last get that praise, to find perfection, he might just consider it. God seems conspicuously absent, after all, and is he not god for some people already?
But still, it is moments like these that drive Sephiroth to fight. He loves battle. He has never been horrified or disturbed by it – he knows he was bred for this after all. He is pleased when the option arises to take violent means against an enemy. In battle, he may wear as much blood as he wishes. He may stumble or fall, and no one will take note of it. He may yell himself hoarse. He may use more motions than is strictly necessary to his purpose. He may be less than perfect.
And nobody but himself, it seems, can tell the difference.