Chapter 2
Vincent appeared in his room not long after he returned to Cosmo Canyon. That always seemed to be the word for it: appeared. Nanaki caught his scent before turning to see him; Vincent didn't smell like anyone else in the world, and it was a scent that had put his hackles up when they first met. By now, it was a strangely comforting thing.
"Sahar told me you'd just gotten back again," Vincent said without preamble. "Was it really him?"
"It was," Nanaki affirmed.
Vincent's gaze trailed over him, searching. "...but he didn't attack you."
Nanaki shook his head. "He seemed... strangely calm. Perhaps it's what he was like, before Nibelheim."
"You spoke to him at some length?"
"I did. He says he is waiting to be forgotten. So that he can... try being a man, again."
Vincent strode farther into the room, standing for a moment with his back to Nanaki. Then he turned smoothly and sat on the bench that ringed the wall. "Do you believe him?"
"...I believe it's what he thinks he wants, for now."
"I don't know what to make of that."
"Neither do I," Nanaki admitted. "In a way, it would be easier if he were killing again. Then we could take action."
Vincent's gaze was penetrating. "You don't think this merits any action?"
"You and I have spoken many times about guilt and punishment," said Nanaki. "And in the end, how little they serve."
Vincent's eyes drifted to the photographs that lined the walls of Nanaki's room, eventually landing on the most recent: a shot of Marlene with her newest grandchild. Nanaki had been putting off a visit to Corel to meet her even before the situation with Sephiroth. He hadn't seen Marlene in person since Tifa's funeral.
"...I suppose he was punished," Vincent considered, "and most of those he harmed, no longer here."
"Returned to the Planet," Nanaki agreed.
"They might not appreciate us sending him after them."
Nanaki chuckled. "Perhaps not."
Vincent smiled faintly, but it soon faded. He was looking somewhere past Nanaki's shoulder now. "...I convinced myself it was the only way, before. He was too far gone, and the best I could do to atone was to put an end to it. But now it hasn't ended, after all."
"Do you see it as a second chance?"
"Such things come so rarely. Perhaps I should."
"He always represented something different to you than to the rest of us," said Nanaki.
But Vincent shook his head slightly. "It wasn't only me." At Nanaki's curious look, he elaborated, "Aeris was the one who asked me... what I thought he might have been like, had his mother raised him. She was guarded about it, but she was curious about him."
"We did think he was a Cetra, too, back then," Nanaki reminded him.
Vincent looked back at him. "Did that change anything about what he'd done?"
Nanaki didn't answer. Aeris had seen a commonality between Sephiroth and herself, regardless of his actions. Had she seen one still, after learning what he really was? He'd never had the chance to ask her.
"You've never had any problem with me," Vincent went on, "despite what I am, and what I did as a Turk."
"Are you suggesting I should have no problem with Sephiroth?"
"No. Only that there was a time when I was not the only one who would have given him a second chance. But at that time, he wouldn't have taken it."
Nanaki's tail swished. He had known Aeris such a short time that he didn't know how forgiving a person she was. He did remember her reaction to finding Tseng on death's door, the harsh words she had snapped out before trying to hide her tears. Whether she forgave him or not, her enemy had known her better than her friends, and she had valued that.
Maybe she would have valued knowing Sephiroth, in the same way.
"Well," Nanaki said at last. "We know where he is. Perhaps he'll prefer talking with you instead."
"You won't go again?" Vincent wondered.
"...I'll go with you, once. It was foolish of me to go alone, so I can hardly let you do it."
Nanaki thought that would be his final visit with Sephiroth, barring any developments. He saw Vincent safely through their introduction, and was content to let him take over. Vincent wanted to, and as a consequence, Nanaki saw more of him than he had in years as he reported back and related their discussions.
They didn't always speak of Sephiroth, or only of Sephiroth, but it was strange to realize that his reappearance was what had brought Nanaki closer to his friend again. Old wounds reforging old bonds, he supposed.
Yuffie was furious with them when she found out. Neither of them had told her directly, but they had their mutual acquaintances, and Nanaki hadn't kept it secret from the canyon's leaders. She wasn't going deaf in her old age, but she sometimes pretended it as an excuse to yell in his ear. She wanted to see Sephiroth herself so she could stab him, she said, since neither of them had the guts.
It was quite a journey for an 87-year-old, but Nanaki knew better than to argue with her. Vincent rowed the launch boat ashore, and they escorted her at her pace. Yuffie had always been small, but Nanaki hated the stoop in her shoulders, the wiriness of her arms beneath aging skin. She was strong and healthy for her age, but she was old. She would only get older.
Nanaki had been sure she wouldn't actually stab Sephiroth, but he had perhaps forgotten she remained the bearer of the Leviathan materia. He saw the same rage on her face as must have flashed across his own when he had first seen Sephiroth. The clouds grew dark overhead and the great sea serpent emerged. A torrent of water crashed down just paces ahead of them, sweeping Sephiroth into the pit of the Temple's foundations.
He looked surprised, in the second before it happened. Nanaki prowled the edge of the pit as Leviathan departed, watching Sephiroth pull himself up out of the several feet of muddy water that lingered. His usually pristine hair clung to him dirty and bedraggled. One attack would never have been enough to kill him, but there was something satisfying in seeing him brought to such a pathetic state, as if he were only a man.
Yuffie spat into the pit, humphed with satisfaction, and sat herself down at its edge. She probably hoped to see him make the effort of climbing back out, though Nanaki remembered the man could fly, and in the end, Sephiroth never bothered. As long as Yuffie watched, he remained in the muddy water, slowly combing his fingers through his hair.
So he and Vincent simply sat with her, the three of them talking it all over. They told her of their past conversations and the futility they saw in retribution.
"You guys've gone soft in your old age," was what she said. "I sent a team up to the Forgotten Capital to go diving for the White Materia."
"What?" said Vincent.
"But we can't use it," said Nanaki.
"Says who?" Yuffie demanded. "It's materia. Sephiroth's not an Ancient and he still used the Black Materia, so I don't see why the White Materia should be any different. Maybe one human can't do it, maybe it'll take time to figure out, but I'm not taking Mr. 'You can't ever kill me' at his word."
"...maybe you're right," Nanaki conceded. "But I don't know that he's a threat."
Yuffie looked at him. "People can change, but that doesn't mean they won't slip up. And if Sephiroth slips up, then that's a problem. Call it a contingency plan."
Nanaki nodded, and he wondered why he didn't find her plan reassuring. He and Yuffie had never quite seen the world the same way, but it should have reassured him that she was looking into a way to kill Sephiroth. If he turned out to be dangerous, they would need one.
Did he simply hope Sephiroth never would be? While Nanaki maintained his skill as a warrior, it always felt like a failure to have to solve anything with violence. Maybe, he told himself, that was what he wanted with Sephiroth, too. What else would it be?
Nanaki resumed his visits after that, going on his own every few weeks, as Sephiroth seemed more open when approached alone. When rain threatened on one such visit, Sephiroth led him from the ruins of the pit to the place he used as a dwelling.
He'd constructed it amid the ruins of some other, smaller building on the island, evidence perhaps of a Cetra settlement long ago. One solid stone wall formed the back of Sephiroth's hut, its surface too weatherworn to make out any of its inscriptions, only that there had been inscriptions. Nanaki didn't know what the Cetra might have carved, but he liked to imagine the irony of some faded ward against the Crisis from the Sky.
Sephiroth didn't seem to require food, and he offered Nanaki nothing, but there was a pile of skins forming a kind of bed. Rain pattered against the wooden roof overhead, and Nanaki's tail provided the only illumination until Sephiroth lit an old oil lantern. It was Shinra military issue, and at Nanaki's curious glance, Sephiroth explained,
"Left behind by the team Rufus brought to the Temple."
"Most of them didn't survive, as I recall," Nanaki remarked.
"No," Sephiroth agreed. "It's easier to forget a dead man's equipment."
That didn't trouble Nanaki in the same way. Shinra had been a mutual enemy, and his claws had found their share of soldiers. Their deaths here were unfortunate, but not unjust. Just as much as Sephiroth, they had come here seeking a power to exploit, though they had thought it would be something different.
He didn't know how to weigh the two, sometimes. Shinra hadn't sought the Planet's destruction, but so many had suffered for its greed, and they would have brought the world to a slow and painful end. Sephiroth by contrast had sought the end of everything, but his methods were quick. That Cloud and Tifa had survived him was accidental, unintentional. His aim was death, not pain.
Nanaki thought it more practical than merciful. A soldier's training. So was one any worse than the other, or only different?
"I can turn the lantern off, if you prefer," said Sephiroth.
Nanaki shook his head. "No. I was only thinking. Why come to this island anyway? You could have waited anywhere."
Sephiroth tilted his head, listening to the rain. "I grew tired of the crater," he said. "This place is nearly its exact opposite, and no more likely to attract visitors. Or so I thought."
"You have regular company now," Nanaki remarked.
"Indeed. Though Vincent can be tiresome."
"Tiresome?"
"A part of him wants very badly to make excuses for me," said Sephiroth. "He does the same for my birth mother. But we made the choices we made."
"Your birth mother," Nanaki repeated. "Is that how you think of her?"
"I never knew her. It's apt."
"And you still consider Jenova your mother."
"She was the only person who ever parented me. That she was an alien and didn't really know what it meant doesn't change that."
"...fair enough," Nanaki conceded. Between Hojo's absence of compassion and Lucrecia's utter absence, a genocidal alien who at least granted him an equal place on the throne must have seemed like a wealth of consideration.
"Did you know your parents?" Sephiroth asked, surprising him. "Or were you raised by humans?"
Nanaki had largely avoided talking about himself. He didn't want to provide Sephiroth with anything that could be used against him, nor was he seeking to befriend him. But it felt strange now, in the close confines of the hut, isolated from the rest of the world. If Sephiroth were the last person alive, would he still refuse to answer?
"...both, really," he said at length. "I remember my parents, but they died when I was very young, protecting the canyon from invaders. I was raised by my grandfather, Bugenhagen."
"The scholar," Sephiroth said in recognition.
"Yes. He was old even when I was a cub. I thought he would live forever." And he had lived so long, for a human, almost as though Nanaki's childish wish had had some power. It hadn't, in the end.
"I suppose he's long gone, now."
"...he passed just before Meteorfall. I tried to be very proud, imagining him as part of the Lifestream that night."
Sephiroth regarded him steadily, solemnly. "I remember the feeling," he said quietly. "How hard it was to keep from being swept up in it. Nearly the entire Planet united in the singular purpose of survival."
"But you resisted?"
"...I was at odds with it. I had intended to be at its heart, all that energy rushing into me as the Planet died around us. Its death, my rebirth. Instead it was the reverse."
"...but you felt it," Nanaki said quietly, dropping his gaze. "What it would have been like to be a part of that." Sephiroth had known what his grandfather felt. Unity of purpose, for the Planet's sake.
"For an instant. I could have let go." Sephiroth was still, hands in his lap, breathing slow. "I wasn't ready," he said.
Nanaki looked up at him. "Would you choose differently, if it happened now?"
"......no. I want to live, first."
In the close quarters, he was more aware of Sephiroth's scent. It was as unique as Vincent's, but not so sharply unnatural. He almost smelled human--almost. Beneath it lay the metallic tang of Mako and something subtly and wrongly sweet, like nightshade. It suited everything else about him, a dangerous thing approximating the ordinary and falling short.
Nanaki huffed softly. "If you wish to be seen as an ordinary man," he said, "you might consider a change in clothing."
Sephiroth blinked in surprise, and then laughed. "I suppose it's habit to create this appearance."
"This is your self-image?"
He shrugged. "At first I thought it would be ironic. For Shinra to be devastated by the man they made into their hero."
"Shinra is long gone," Nanaki stated.
"Yes. And so is this uniform, frankly." His appearance changed in the blink of an eye, leaving him wearing a simple black shirt and trousers. He didn't look more vulnerable without the gloves or armor, but perhaps more approachable.
Nanaki had always known at least part of it was an illusion. Sephiroth never smelled of leather.
"Would this attract less attention?" Sephiroth asked. "I don't know the current fashions."
"It's plain enough. But why not change your appearance entirely, if you don't want to be recognized?"
Sephiroth shook his head. "I still want to be me."
"But you won't speak of who you were?"
"...maybe in time."
"Some might take that as a betrayal," Nanaki pointed out. "A friendship built on a lie."
"You think me a hypocrite. I was devastated by deceit and I would use it to seek connection."
"Maybe it's the only way you know."
He hadn't meant it as an insult, but he watched Sephiroth's expression harden as though it had been. He looked away. "......maybe."
It occurred to Nanaki, Sephiroth seemed to lay himself plain with him. If all of this was a deception, then it began with self-deception. Sephiroth thought he was being honest, and they had forged... What? Nanaki balked at calling it a friendship, but it was a connection of sorts.
He could say anything to Sephiroth, and Sephiroth anything to him, because there was no expectation that this would be anything but temporary. They were old enemies, two people who remembered a world most didn't.
It was a way to stave off death, he realized. That world, the journey with his friends, existed in these conversations. As long as Sephiroth didn't lose his patience with it, Nanaki held onto the strangest, most unpleasant proof of their lives.
Was it unpleasant? To reminisce with the man they'd fought, a man who'd hurt them, it should have been. Rubbing salt in a wound, not wanting it to heal. Somehow, it didn't feel that way.
"What is that device, some sort of transmitter?" Sephiroth asked him on one of his visits, as he silenced a message notification.
"A communicator," Nanaki corrected. "This one is satellite capable, when the towers are out of range."
"That sounds expensive."
"The canyon paid for it, but it was, a bit."
Sephiroth tilted his head. "The canyon? It was some sort of gift?"
"Not precisely. We pool our resources; no one pays for anything within the community, and money earned from outside contracts is likewise used to buy anything we can't produce ourselves."
Sephiroth looked skeptical. "...and that works?"
Nanaki tossed his mane. "So far. Not perfectly, of course, but it's only been a decade."
"An experiment of sorts," Sephiroth concluded.
"You could call it that."
"It's certainly not the path to Shinra."
"Unless someone gets very disgruntled with it," said Nanaki, "and decides to reinvent the opposite system."
Sephiroth laughed at that. It was a genuine laugh, and Nanaki felt his whiskers go forward in amusement. A joke shared between friends was what it felt like, but always the reminder hit him a moment later that this couldn't be a friend. There was no justice in granting this man his friendship.
Was it justice, or vengeance? He thought of what he was doing, coming here every few weeks, growing friendlier with this man and insisting to himself all the while that it would never amount to anything. At some point, he told himself, he would simply stop coming. He would put an end to whatever this was, and he would do it because of something Sephiroth had done more than seven decades ago.
Was that cruel?
Nanaki didn't owe him that fresh start he longed for. He didn't owe him lies either.
"It might last, you know," Sephiroth remarked.
"Hm?"
"Your system. The community pool. Hold onto it long enough to make it normal, and people will resist change."
"An optimistic way of looking at it," Nanaki huffed.
Sephiroth shrugged. "It's true, isn't it? It doesn't matter how terrible the circumstance. If people don't remember any other way, the easiest path is to accept it."
Nanaki regarded him thoughtfully. "I wonder if you think it will be the same for you. If no one remembers you being any way but this, will it be easier for you to hold onto?"
"I hadn't thought of it that way."
"No?"
"...people always had some idea of me before they met me," he said. "I never had to introduce myself. There was never once an opportunity to begin as equals."
"But did you feel compelled to be the man they expected?"
Sephiroth considered that. "I always felt I was who I was, but I never fought to correct what they thought of me. I suppose that was easiest."
Nanaki nodded slowly. "But now you don't want to resign yourself to accepting a reputation."
"Yes."
And yet whenever they spoke, Nanaki reminded himself constantly who this man had been. It was the opposite of what he wanted, and yet he had never asked Nanaki to stop coming. "How is it with me?" he decided to ask.
"You think you know me by reputation?"
"I am the one who remembers what you want forgotten."
"You remember it because you were there," Sephiroth said. "You knew me, and refuse to deny what I did. But if you couldn't also accept change, then you wouldn't keep coming here."
Nanaki shook his head slowly. "I am not so adaptable as you imagine."
"I didn't say you had accepted it," Sephiroth stated.
So he knew, then. Nanaki's ambivalence was no secret. "...if this were my last visit," Nanaki said, "what would you do?"
"Would you expect something to happen?"
"What would you do?" he repeated.
Sephiroth looked off into the distance, at the canopy rising beyond the ruined walls of the Temple, or perhaps into the sky above it. "Would you tell me, if it was the last?"
"...I think that's fair," Nanaki decided, knowing as he said it that this wouldn't be the last time. He didn't know if there would be a last time or when it might come, but this wasn't it.
Sephiroth nodded without looking back at him. "Then I suppose I would move on," he said. "This world has other places I might go unseen a while."
He was staying on this island only because of Nanaki. Because being known by his enemy had value to him, even with no forgiveness between them.