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anxiousangerball · 1 year

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Shadow Work

Shadow Question 1:

When did you stop loving yourself?

My response is below. I'm posting it because...well fuck. If I'm going this work for me. I guess I can do whatever I want with it. I'm posting on a whim. Maybe I'll regret it. Maybe I won't.

Unimportant!

The question is for whoever wants to play around with it. (Be gentle on yourself. This journey is already hard enough.)

That one time I lied to my mom.

I was four…maybe five. I cannot remember if my baby brother had been born yet.

Mom was in a bad mood.

She didn’t handle her bad moods very well. She had been taught that being angry was shameful.

Trouble is, anger happens. You can’t stuff that shit deep down and ignore it.

If you do that, then you do things like my mom would do. She would stuff a little bit of anger down each day, and that anger couldn’t get going anywhere.

That little ball of anger inside of her would increase in size.

Soon, it would be too big for her to contain, although she was still making the effort:

She’s doing her thing, not showing how angry she is about all the things, but we, in the household, all knew. We knew when an explosion was about to detonate. We knew. We could feel it in the air of the home. Miserable.

Finally. FINALLY, all of her anger would explode, she would yell, she would lecture, she would cry. She would threaten to run away. Not in that order, of course. (The threat to run away, though...that one always hurt me most.)

Once she'd gotten all that anger out of her system, things would be okay again...until her collection of anger was too big for her body again.

None of this is good or healthy. In case you were wondering.

So, this one evening, Mom was in a bad mood, but it wasn’t bad enough yet to subdue my older sister and I as we got ready for bed.

Our bedrooms were upstairs from the living area of the house, and we were able to hear our parents coming up the stairs. We had been fooling around – a bit hyper, a bit bouncing off the walls. We heard our parents start up the stairs, and I dashed back to my own room, my own bed. I leapt upon the bed and pulled all the covers over me.

I was playing. This was a play action. I was inviting my parents to play hide and seek – of a sort - with me.

Neither of them accepted my invitation to play. My Dad was chill. He didn’t do anything beyond finally kiss me good night after I’d excavated myself out from underneath the blankets.

My mom’s mood had gotten even more sour – I could feel it in the air. So I apologized. I actually said I was sorry for messing up the blankets on my bed – they were all out of order because of how I’d been roughhousing.

My mom said “yeah, well you lie a lot, too.”

(Quick note here. Either my hearing or my auditory processing was never strong. I think auditory processing issues are the culprit, but who knows? All I know is that that is what I heard my mom say. I could be mistaken. I mention it only because, also around this age, there was a moment when I dashed up to my dad to tell him something of vital importance to me. He said “What’s up” I heard “Shut up.” It’s a thing. But, we’re going with what I’m sure I heard my mom say. Because that’s what I reacted to. Hearing my mom say “yeah, and you lie a lot, too.”)

Another aside, I already understood that I had a tenuous relationship with the truth. That, in my mind at the age of 4, was gospel. I struggled with telling the truth. Also, I was a bad child. (I was being raised in a strict Catholic household. I was never going to get out of there with self-confidence intact.) The point is – I could easily believe my mom said such a thing to me because I already understood that I struggled with being honest.

She kissed me good night, turned out my light and went back downstairs.

I started sobbing.

My older sister heard me from her room and tried to figure out what was going on and how she could get me to stop. She had no success. She went down and summoned our folks.

My mom tried to get to the bottom of why I was crying, and I couldn’t tell her. I felt absolutely unable to articulate why I was crying. I didn’t want to tell her that I was crying because I was a liar. (full disclosure, I have no clue how my mom would have reacted if I had said “I’m crying because you said that I lie a lot. I know that that is true, but now I think that are going to stop loving me because I’m an absolute crap human being.” But you know…how a 4 year old would say it.).

So, I didn’t tell her. She was already angry. Then, AFTER BEDTIME! She had this irrational child that she couldn't understand, who wasn’t giving her anything at all to work with. She finally left me to my dad’s care and stomped off back downstairs.

My dad finally managed to get me to calm down. I still couldn't bring myself to admit why I was so upset over the fact that I was a liar and a crap human (honestly – I believed for many many years that I was going to burn in hell because of what an awful person I was. The church always told me how awful I was. I believed them. I am so grateful that, when I was in my 20s, I came to the conclusion that no one should be made to feel so profoundly miserable on a weekly basis by visiting their chosen house of worship. So, I stopped going. Because I deserve to not feel miserable. I really fucking do. No one should feel miserable when worshipping. I will die on this hill.).

I couldn’t tell my dad anything, but at least I'd stopped. He convinced me to talk with my mom again, because my being upset had upset her. It would make her feel better, he said, if she could give me another good night kiss (paraphrasing here, if you couldn’t guess. This is gist, not the actual conversation).

We go downstairs, and I had another conversation with my mom. I still would not tell her why I had been so upset. Mom kept offering guesses. Finally she suggested that I was jealous that my older sister had just gotten new flannel sheets for her bed, but I hadn’t. I told her that that was it. That was why I was so upset.

(As established above, that was not why I was upset. Also established above, I was a lying liar who lies, apparently. I just didn’t want to tell her that she had made me cry because of what she said. I do not know why that meant so much to me.)

So, she promised that, as soon as our budget could handle it, she would buy me a set of flannel sheets as well.

That was a terrible night. My mom called me a liar and then I proved her right. That’s heavy stuff for a four year old. But, because I couldn’t figure out a way to tell my mom what was actually going on, I hated myself even more than I had.

I think that is when I stopped loving myself. What an irredeemable person I was! (Again...I was four. I remember certain things. I remember how that sadness clung in my throat and it ached, ached, ached. I remember the shame. Should a four year old be able to hold that much shame? At that age? I blame the Catholic Church for the assist, along with my mom for her own traumatic upbringing that caused her to hurt those she loves.)

(Not that my dad gets a pass in my childhood…we all made plenty of choices we regret. It’s just…this was a story about me and my mom. And when (and why) I stopped loving myself.)

You know what I hate the most? I don't believe my mom's love is steadfast. I think I will lose it by doing or saying the wrong thing. By making the "wrong" choice. (And "wrong" is just code for something she doesn't agree with. If I had come home with a same sex significant other, that would have been a wrong choice. Just for example.) I feel very tentative around my mom - leaning in to politeness so as not to give offense. I guess I don't want to lose her love, even if I think the way she is choosing to live her life is close minded and bigoted.

What the hell is that? I hate the choices she's making. I HATE them. I am so embarrassed and ashamed that someone who taught me to be kind and empathetic, someone who led my scout troop, and taught us all feminism 101 for fucks sake (holy wow were we feisty when we were pre-teens. I miss that optimism and courage.), someone who was one of my best fucking friends when I was an older teen into my twenties, has grown to be so fucking unkind. That meanness is there there. It's there in how she votes. It's there in how she talks about people different from her. IT'S MOTHERFUCKING THERE WHEN SHE - WITH HER FULL CHEST - PICKETS OUTSIDE OF THE LOCAL ABORTION CLINIC. WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK, MA?! HOW VERY DARE YOU BE SO FUCKING MEAN!!!

This woman pisses me off.

But, also. She's my mom. And I want her to still be my family. I want her to consider me to be her family. But she's grown to be so fucking awful. And I look at her and I feel - in with all the frustration and anger - I feel pity. This fucking woman. She's doing her best, but religion has rotted her brain. She thinks she's being righteous. She goes to mass on the daily, she prays her rosary, she completes so so many acts of service. She reads her bible She reads other religious tomes. She tithes to the church and donates to charity. She thinks she is being good. But when we try to point out her bigotry, she can't hear it. She can't take it in. She won't even try. She's scared. She's being left behind in a world that is adapting because it has to. She's clinging to what makes her feel safe, but her sense of safety HURTS others. It fucking damages others.

I love this woman, but she breaks my heart. I fear her final abandonment of me, even as I don't agree with her current morality. I hate this. No stars. Cannot recommend.

#Mental Health #Shadow Work #Mother Daughter Issues #Working through a memory based on a shadow work prompt #Self esteem #Generational strife #Musings #Not beta read #Probably a bunch of typos #I dunno #Don't know that i have the energy to care.#Politics

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sephirthoughts · 11 days

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Father: Verb

Epilogue (3 of 4)

The long-foretold Lucrecia chapter.

Rating: general

It was a completely insignificant day in late spring, one year, and the sun rode high above the rocky hills and weather-worn karsts of the Nibel region. The wind, up here, was colloquially called ‘the breath of the world’, and one could almost feel the planet’s living vitality in its brisk and spirited gusts, as they strove to toss you right off the mountain. This was perfectly usual, of course, and also much of the reason no one ventured out into this goddess-forsaken waste.

What was different about this day, was that a pair of booted footsteps had joined the wind, in whispering amongst the knee-high sedge grasses, knocking wisps of pollen into the air, and collecting bits of fluff on tall, black shin guards. These were not the meandering steps of a leisure hiker, nor the hurried footfalls of one who’d got lost from the trail, and was in haste to find it again. These steps were deliberate, following some prearranged path, though there was none to be seen, amid the tumbled rocks and windswept brush.

At length, the boots made their way to their apparent destination. It was a secluded mountain lake, crystal blue and nearly perfectly round—no doubt formed in the caldera of some long dormant volcano—that lay at the center of a green and tranquil oasis, hidden away in the inhospitable highlands, like a fairyland in a children’s tale.

At the northwestern end of the small lake, the thunder of the tributary falls rumbled down, from the high ridge. The waterfall was more energetic than usual, today, due to heavy snowpack in the mountains above, this past winter, so misty spray billowed and white foam roiled riotously, in the deep-blue basin below.

When the black boots came to the falls, they continued, undaunted, sure-footed as a mountain goat on the slippery rocks, as the cold spray beaded on well-polished leather, and rolled down in heavy drops, like dew.

At a wave of the hand from the owner of those boots, the waterfall, despite being swollen with snowmelt and rather proud of itself at the moment, stood meekly aside, to let the visitor pass through. There were some, after all, for whom even nature itself had no power to bar the way.

Perfectly concealed behind this glimmering curtain of living glass, was a narrow crevice, hardly wider than a single person. The boots proceeded, turning sidewise, to squeeze through, and vanish into the dark.

Deep inside the mountain ridge, this narrow crevice widened into a traversable path. Deeper still, the path opened up into a glittering cave, of tremendous size, in which the terrific heat and pressure of ancient volcanic activity had caused mass-crystallization of liquefied minerals. This had created the hundreds of strange stalactite and stalagmite columns, which stood like an eerie forest of stone, spanning from the floor to the ceiling of the cave, as far as the eye could see.

Eventually, the densely packed columns gave way to an open area, like a natural amphitheater, where the cave ceiling domed up and the floor smoothed out. At the center of this area, lay a circular pool, of faintly glowing water, which surrounded a much different mineral formation.

It was a pillar, formed of gigantic spars of some naturally luminous crystal, clear and slightly turquoise tinted, like enchanted ice. This pillar and the smaller crystal structures that had grown out from it, acted as the light source in the cave, illuminating the surrounding environment with a dreamy, otherworldly glow.

The light was not the most remarkable feature of this crystal pillar, however. Most remarkable was that, within the main column of transparent crystal, could be seen the figure of a young woman. She was dressed in white, and her lovely and delicate-featured face wore an expression of peaceful repose. Her eyes were closed, and her head slightly bowed, with her hands clasped on her chest, in a posture of prayer.

It was unclear, whether this was the true body of a woman, suspended in the luminous, mako-saturated crystal, or merely a visual remnant, graven into it by the life force of the planet, but the distinction was immaterial, to the one who observed her, now. This was her final resting place. That was all that mattered.

The black boots slowed their pace, crunching over the crystal gravel at a heavy, almost funerary cadence, until at long last, they arrived before the limpid pool, and the woman in her crystalline reliquary. There they stood, for a long time. And for a long time, there was no sound, but the little plashes of dripping water, afar off, in the dark recesses of the cavern.

Finally, a voice spoke softly, into the echoing silence. “So, we meet at last…mother.”

The crystal pillar’s fairie-light shone pale and glimmering on a cascade of silver hair, and illuminated the face of a young man, very like to that of the woman in the crystal. His was a sharper, harder beauty than hers, especially about the brow and catlike blue-green eyes, but his mouth and chin particularly, belonged entirely to her. Seeing their faces together, there could be no mistaking their close relation.

“In the likely case that you don’t recognize me, I am your son, Sephiroth,” the silver-haired man continued. He caught himself reflexively placing a hand over his heart and tucked it behind his back, instead. “I’ve come to…to pay my respects, I suppose. I hope you will forgive me for not coming sooner. My father has gently urged me to visit you for many years, but somehow, I could never bring myself to do it.”

The woman in the crystal remained serene and silent.

“He doesn’t know I’m here today. In fact, I’ve told no one what I intended to do. I couldn’t bear to feel the pressure of their thoughts, on the subject. This…is between you and me.”

Heedless of the glowing, ankle-deep water, he strode directly across the circular pool and stepped onto the disc of stone that formed the base of the crystal pillar. The woman’s figure was suspended a couple of feet above the base, but she was rather petite, and thus he, being nearly seven feet tall, stood almost at eye-level with her.

“You look different, from your photograph,” he remarked, without emotion. “A bit older. Thinner. Of course, when you came here, you were burdened by cares that did not yet weigh upon you, when that picture was taken.”

He reached out his gloved hand, as if to touch the crystal, where her face was, then withdrew it again, straightening up proudly.

“But I’ve not come here to talk about you. I have come to tell you who I am. I am the son of Vincent Valentine. I am now the most powerful single entity on this planet, aside from my father. In my early life, I was raised by various scientists and handlers, in Shinra Manor, to be the first SOLDIER—the flagship of Shinra’s genetically enhanced military. A professional war criminal. But…that never came to be. In the end, I never fought a single battle on Shinra’s behalf.

“When I was fourteen years old, I burned the manor to the ground and escaped with my father. We spent the following years working against Shinra from the shadows; subverting their people, embedding our own in their system, growing inside them like a virus. And when the time came to strike, it was far too late for them to fight us. We neutralized the host and took over, with…minimal bloodshed.

“What you knew as the Shinra Electric Power Company, is now called the World Regenesis Organization. It is still the greatest socioeconomic and political force, in the world, but under the guidance of our people, it is steadily being restructured; from a parasitic behemoth, draining the planet of its life force, to a benevolent, non-profit enterprise, actively fostering the harmonious existence of humans with the natural world.

“It has been…slow going, to be perfectly honest. Most of our work, so far, has been dedicated to undoing the decades of damage done by Shinra, in its previous incarnation. It will take centuries for those wounds to fully heal. But now, at least, there is hope. They even tell me that flowers are returning to Midgar. That is how things currently stand, with me. Of course, we must address the elephant in the room, sooner or later, so let us have it out, and be done with it, shall we?”

He stopped and took a long breath, letting it out slowly, and somewhat relaxing his heretofore stiff, formal posture.

“First things first, it is only right to tell you that my father forgave you, for everything. He never really blamed you, despite my attempts to convince him he should. And I did attempt to convince him he should. Because…I blamed you. That is the whole truth.

“I won’t paint a falsely pretty picture of the catastrophe you left in your wake, to spare your feelings. Your troubles are over. The lives that you left behind—mine and my father’s—have continued on. Sometimes in misery and desolation, sometimes in sorrow and regret, but mostly…in hope. And in joy. You see, the terrible fate you foresaw—the destruction of the planet in a hell of fire, and me as a the angel of death—will never come to pass. But, perhaps I should begin at the beginning.

“Your apocalyptic visions did come true, once. In another future. But in that future, that version of myself found a way to free himself from fate. When his body died, he broke the chains of destiny, and bent the will of the lifestream to his purpose. Freed from his physical form, he traveled backward, through the timeline, gathering each version of us, from each crucial turning point, and brought them to me, to show me the way.

“With their help, I freed my father from Shinra’s slavery, and killed that old monster who tortured us. Yes, I killed Hojo, with my own hands. He has been dead for…seventeen years, now. Hardly time to even begin to undo all the evil he caused. May his houseless spirit wander the netherworld, with neither rest nor comfort, till all his wrongs have been erased from the memory of time.

“But where was I? Ah, yes. After I rid the world of Hojo, and Chaos rid the world of Jenova’s corruption, we began to create our vision, for the future. Since then, I have accomplished everything my other selves died to make possible. I have made all the things right, that went so wrong, in their futures. I have killed those who should have been killed and saved all those who should have been saved—”

He broke off and lowered his head, with an expression of pain.

“I should say…I have saved all but one. My father. I can’t save him. There is nothing I can do, to release him from the fate that you, willing or no, have damned him to. Because of the method you used to preserve his life, he has become one with Chaos. He no longer has a human soul, and can no longer merge with the lifestream.”

He looked up at her again, with his teeth bared and fire in his eyes.

“Do you understand what that means? It means he can never die. People say that I am immortal, but they have no idea what true immortality is. I am only ageless. I can live as long as I wish to, and I can also die. My father will never have that choice. He is truly immortal.

“That is the full horror of the curse you have laid upon him. When the sun burns out and this planet is nothing but a lifeless rock, hurtling aimlessly through the void, he will still exist, in that indestructible demonic form. And there is nothing…nothing I can do, to spare him the torment of aeons, that lies in his future.”

He paused and turned away, cupping his forehead in his hand, and clearing his throat, to regain control of his wavering voice. When he turned back, he appeared perfectly tranquil, again, but for the hint of pink that rimmed his eyes.

“For so many years, whenever I confronted the infinite tragedy that will be my father’s existence, I blamed you. I hated you. I cursed you bitterly. But…that was a child’s reaction, to a blurred and oversimplified understanding of reality. Despite all the knowledge I gained from my future selves, it seems that only experience, earned in the true passing of years, brings wisdom. And with wisdom comes reflection. And regret.”

Reaching into his long, black coat, he withdrew an old, dog-eared, faded and weather-stained book. Some of the yellowed pages had come loose and had been carefully tucked back in, held in place with paper clips.

“I’m sure you recognize this book. This is your journal. Not your research notes. This is the private diary, that you kept hidden from everyone. After your disappearance, it was mailed anonymously to Valentine Manor, of all things, where it lay in the library for many years, disregarded. It was recently discovered by an archivist, and brought to me, after its authentication. I beg your pardon for reading it, without your permission, but you understand.”

Smiling wistfully, he touched the battered leather cover of the book with his fingertips, tracing its surface gently, as if it were the face of a loved one. Then his brow furrowed and he swallowed hard, as if against some tautness in his throat.

“It has been…painful, to read this tale, knowing the end already. To witness, in real time, as it were, the hope and optimism of a young woman, her heartbreak and disillusionment, and her eventual decline into despair.

“But, through the words written here, I have come to know her. I have come to know Lucrecia. A passionate scholar and brilliant scientist, and sometimes, a rather silly and idealistic young woman. I have come to know her hopes and dreams. Her triumphs and disappointments. The fears and doubts she never dared speak aloud.

“I have come to know my mother. Not the lofty ideal I had constructed in my mind, as a child. Not the scapegoat for all my misery, that I made you into, as an adolescent. But the living, flesh and blood woman that you were. The unvarnished truth of you, in all its human ugliness and beauty.

“I know now that you truly did love my grandfather, though you never admitted it, in so many words. The way you wrote of him, in such starry-eyed hyperbole, was both comically trite and infinitely endearing. I know also that you cared deeply for my father. I know the way your guilt gnawed at you, with every word you spoke to one another. The way Grimoire seemed to be looking at you, from his son’s eyes.

“I have come to know also of your love for…for me. You must understand that I had always thought of my conception as the calculated act of a scientific mind, that did not care for the eventual human cost, when there were groundbreaking experimental results to be had. I know, now, how I—how I wronged you, in thinking of you that way.”

He broke off yet again, taking a shaky breath, to steady himself.

“Through your journal, I was by your side, when you made that impulsive decision to create a child, with my father’s genetic material. I felt your horror and grief, at his death, counterpoised with your anxious excitement, as the new life grew in your body. I felt your mind turn, from justification, to hesitation, to abhorrence of the things that you had done to me. I experienced your abject agony, when you awoke from the cesarean operation to find your infant gone, and yourself trapped and powerless to go to him. I heard you weep and beg and plead, over and over, to be allowed to see your son, and I watched those pleas fall on deaf ears. I know now that you never abandoned me and that you loved me, desperately. That you never even held me in your arms, and still you longed for me with every fiber of your being, just as I longed for you.”

A tear escaped and rolled down his cheek, which he quickly brushed away.

“You know, Hojo once told me I never had a name, and that Sephiroth was only a project designation. But I learned from your journal that you had chosen that name, for your future child, long before the project existed. Long before you even met the old serpent.”

He lowered his eyes and touched the cover of the book again, smiling softly, to himself.

“Rather eccentric, and perhaps a bit pretentious, to name your unborn child a collective noun, for the channels of the divine creative force, in the tree of life. But you were young and full of grand ideas. You can be forgiven for such a flight of fancy. And, for what it’s worth, I’ve always liked my name. It sounds enigmatic and imposing, and it is unique in the world. Or—it was, anyway. So many babies are christened Sephiroth every year, now, that the census bureau has become sick to death of it, and lay the blame squarely at my feet.

“But I’ve strayed from my topic. I understand, now, that you were not to blame for the evil that befell us all. Yes, you made choices that led to terrible suffering, but without that malevolent man to perpetrate his atrocities, no choice of yours could have caused things to happen as they did. You made mistakes, mother, but you always intended to do good. He always intended to do evil. That is the great difference between you and him.

“You were deceived and used, then isolated and tormented, by that old viper, just as we were. He preyed upon your ambition, used your hopes and dreams to blind you, and slowly closed the walls around you. Then, he made certain you would blame your own foolishness and weakness, for the results. Finally, when you could bear the guilt and misery no longer, he allowed you to run away, to die alone in the wilderness. He never even sent anyone to search for you.

“I told you that with wisdom comes reflection and regret, and I have tasted this cup to its dregs. My regret has weighed heavily upon me, these past several years. I regret the injustice I’ve done you, by blaming and hating you, for the horror of my life. I regret wasting so many years in bitterness and anger, directed at you, because I couldn’t contend with the real source of all my pain: that for all my power—all my strength of will—there are still those things over which I have no control.

“Mother, I…I’m sorry.” His voice, smooth and steady till now, wavered and broke. For the first time in his life, perhaps, he made no move to conceal or wipe away the tears, that overflowed and spilled freely down his face. “I’m sorry for taking so long to grow up. I’m sorry for not even trying to understand you. I’m sorry for wanting your love so desperately, that a boy’s unrequited yearning metastasized into a man’s bitter resentment.

“The truth is, I only ever hated you for not being there. For not loving me enough to live. I know that is illogical and selfish, but I was a child. All I knew was my own pain. My own need for a mother. I grew so fixated on it, that I became unstable and destructive. That was when the old monster gave me the locket with your photo, and told me your name was Jenova.

“That little thing soothed me more than any of the tranquilizing drugs they tried on me. When I was still very small, I used to open my locket and whisper to your picture, at night, telling you of the things I’d accomplished, so that you’d be proud of me. I used to imagine that the smile in that photograph was meant for me.

“As I grew older, and more hardened by the ugly brutality of my life, I taught myself that such behavior was childish and shameful. I stopped talking to you. I stopped smiling back, when I looked at your picture. But the pain of your absence didn’t heal. It deepened and festered, in the darkness of my loneliness and grief, while the old monster tormented me, in the name of making me strong.

“Then one day…Vincent came. He was brought to me, to be a handler and bodyguard. I’m sorry to state it so bluntly, but he fully usurped your place in my heart, within hours of our meeting. It was not so terribly fickle, as it sounds, though. I knew he was my father, the moment I laid eyes on him.

“Not consciously, of course. I didn’t dare to admit that glimmer of heart-piercing hope into my world of darkness. And yet I knew it. My blood and my bones knew it—that he belonged to me, and I to him. Can I be blamed for transferring all of my childish longing and love, from the mother who was nothing but a picture in a locket, to the father who was solid and tangible, and right in front of me?

“Vincent dawned upon my world like a new sun, and transformed everything I knew, from drab monochrome to brilliant color. He taught me about spaghetti and birthdays, and watched movies with me. He was the first person who hugged me, and he was…he was the first person who ever said they loved me.

“To say that I returned his love would be a gross understatement. I was obsessed with him. Fixated on him. I wanted to bind him to me forever, and never let him escape. I would have burned the world for him, if I thought he wanted it. But, as it turned out, he was a good man. So I became good, too.

“As good as I can be, at least. I am still a man who loves to such excess, that I would unhesitatingly destroy the lives and happiness of anyone who dared stand between me and my loved ones.” He gave a rueful smile. “Our family really is given to romantic melodrama, are we not?

“But despite the grasping, jealous, needy way I loved him, my father never pushed me away. Never told me I was wrong. Never rejected me. Since the day we destroyed the monsters who authored all of our grief, and broke free of the yoke of Shinra, we have never been separated. I don’t mean physically, of course. We are grown men, we can’t be attached at the hip, all the time. But, no matter how far apart we are, we are always together.

“You see, he gave me his heart. That is not a figure of speech, it’s here in my chest, beside my own.”

This time, he did lay a hand on his heart, and from his chest, a pale light shone, between his fingers. “You must remember this. It is the heart you gave him, mother. That he then gave to me, your son. Poetic, no? What did I say about our family and romantic melodrama?

“Speaking of family, what would my grandfather have thought, if he’d known about me? Did he ever imagine that you loved him enough to give birth to his son’s son, just to preserve a piece of him in the world? I wonder.”

He sighed and the light receded back into his chest.

“I wish I’d had a chance to meet him. He must have been a captivating man, to so deeply ensnare a heart like yours, whose first love was always science. For all of the heartache it caused, I hope he at least reciprocated your feelings, to some degree. All the evidence suggests that he did. As did his son. Two generations of Valentine men have died for you, and because of you, one will never die. A heavy burden for even a woman’s soul to bear.”

He smiled wryly at the beautiful face in the crystal, then looked away, clearing his throat.

“That’s…a joke you have no way of understanding. There is a certain person of my acquaintance—a Cetra seer, who reads auras and such things. She told me I had a woman’s soul. I should take it as a compliment, she said, because women’s souls are by far the stronger.

“There are many reasons my soul should seem abnormal, to a seer, but I would like to think that I carry a piece of your soul with me, mother. And that it was part of you, she saw in me. Because the more I am like you, the less I am like that thing. That dead abomination, behind the glass, in the mako tank. Its face haunts me, even to this day, and my body, though purified of its corruption, still bears its marks.”

He placed his gloved hands on his own cheeks, then ran them back through his silver hair, his eyes unfocused, darting back and forth. After a moment, though, he shook himself, and the spell seemed to pass.

“That is the secret I can never tell, mother,” he resumed, looking up at her. “I was born to be a monster. It is only by constant and conscious effort of will, that I have not become one. Not my will, alone, though. I would have given in, long ago. It is the love of my father, and those close to me, that has kept me on the right path. That has stopped me straying into darkness.

“So many suffered and died needlessly, in the other future, who now live happy and free from that terrible fate. They will never know the monster I could have become. But I will never not know. No matter how many I save, how much I change, how much of myself I give to this world, I can never erase the knowledge, that if my steps had faltered but a little, along the path, I would have destroyed the planet, and killed them all.

“I defied destiny, mother. I wiped the slate clean and created a new future, a new fate, and yet…I am still alone. A demon walking among the innocent. A wolf among the sheep. I can wear their hide and speak their tongues, but I can never be one of them.

“That was the real price I paid, to rewrite fate. It wasn’t the death of my physical body, at each inflection point. It was the sacrifice of my innocence, to return innocence to this world. I have paid dearly, for the lives and freedom of all its children. I have paid with my soul.

“My hands are clean, and yet my shoulders bear the weight of ten-thousand sins. How can a soul so blameless in deed, be so blackened in essence? How can I atone for sins I will never commit? How can I heal scars that have never felt a wound? Can I be forgiven, for what I have not done?”

He laid his hands on the luminous pillar and leaned his forehead upon it.

“If you knew me, as I am now, would you love me, nonetheless? Would you ever be proud to call me your son?”

Though he knew it was only childish wishfulness, he could almost swear he felt a faint warmth and pressure, on his skin, as if gentle arms reached out to embrace him, with infinite tenderness and unfathomable love. With that, the gates were flung wide, and the depths of his heart poured forth, a wordless hymn of sorrow and joy, as vast as the heavens and as deep as the abyss.

Borne down by the weight of it, he sunk to his knees, clinging to the crystal pillar, as shuddering sobs racked his invincible body, and tears poured down like snowmelt in spring, splashing onto the crystal-strewn floor at his mother's feet. Even when he had wept himself hoarse, till he had no tears left, he still clung to the pillar, gasping out wet, stuttering breaths, that fogged its glassy surface.

At long last, he grew calm again, and rose to his feet, wiping his face with his gloved hand. Then, peeling off the gloves, he laid his palms on the pillar and let his forehead rest against it, inches from his mother’s lips, whose kiss he would never feel. So close, and yet separated by an impassable divide.

“I’m getting married, mother,” he said hoarsely, after a while. “To my other half, my soul mate, my fated one…I don’t even know what to call him, for I have loved him in so many lifetimes. But in this life, I can finally say I have earned his love.

“I wish that you could know him. That you could see how good he is to me, and how good he is for me. How shall I tell you about him, in a credible way, when to me, he is perfection in human form? He has golden hair and bright blue eyes, like the sky and sea, and lovely little freckles, though he likes to deny they exist. He is small, for a man, but he isn’t the least bit soft or submissive, and his tongue is as sharp as his sword.

“I love him madly, even more when he scolds me. I would do anything for him. I have done everything for him. For my beloved, I have reshaped the fate of this world, with my own hands. For him, I have built this gentle kingdom, ringed in spears, so that he may live in peace, and without fear for the future.

“Back when we were children, walking on the beach together, collecting shells and sea glass, and talking about our hopes and dreams, I did tell him I intended to marry him, one day. But I never attempted to hold him, in my hand. I never attempted to bind him to me, lest I break his wings and suffocate him, with my love.

“Though it cost me deep anxiety and tremendous pain, I let my little bird fly as free as he wished. But he always came back to me, on his own. He loves me, mother. He knows the whole truth of me—everything, even the monstrous things my other selves did in their futures—and still, he loves me. Of all the people in this world, he chose me, to spend his life with.

“I had planned to wait until he turned twenty-one, to formally propose marriage, but when it came to it, he proposed to me, before I got the chance. Of course, he took Knight Fair’s suggestion and did it at a shareholders meeting, in the presence of all our friends and associates. And the Turks, who were there pretending to provide extra security, but really came to see the show.

“It was profoundly embarrassing. And…it was the most joyous moment of my life. To know once and for all, that I was chosen. That I was sought after and desired. That he loved me, as I loved him, and that he wanted to declare it before the world.

“For I always doubt, mother. No matter how I am reassured, I always doubt that I am truly loved or wanted. I feel…alien. As if those around me know I don’t belong, and are only awaiting the slightest pretext to cast me out from among them.

“My psychiatrist—my current psychiatrist, that is, my previous few have suddenly relocated or given up the profession—calls it social anxiety, related to an autism spectrum disorder. I suppose she knows her business, but it seems unfair that my superior brain can suffer from human dysfunction, and yet due to that very superiority, they have yet to find a medication that has any effect on me.

“Before I stray off topic and forget, I should tell you that my father is engaged to be married, as well. To someone my age, no less, the old villain. But everyone thinks they’re a perfect match, and no one is scandalized by it in the least, because despite his advanced age, my father looks as if he’s the younger of the pair. So it goes. I, too, will look younger than my beloved, one day. It will be in the far, far future, since he has been enhanced, but he will grow old. The day will come when he will leave me and return to the lifestream.

“As for my father…even I can’t say what his future holds. I only know I must find a way to save him. I can’t bear to think of him, bereft of everyone and everything he ever knew and loved, facing eternity alone. But even if I can’t alter his fate, I can at least not allow him to face it alone. He does not know, but I have already decided that I will not die, until he does.

“Somehow, I will save him, from the terrible curse of immortality, and only when he leaves this existence, will I consent to leave it, with him. That is my vow, before heaven and earth. My father and I will cross into the afterlife together, or not at all.” He lowered his head and gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I am sorry to disappoint you, mother, but it seems I will not be the one to break the family curse of romantic melodrama. But, with a name like Sephiroth, can you really be surprised?”

In the end, he loitered in that place for many hours, pouring out the minutiae of his life to his silent mother, in the way very young children will do, only all at once and in a torrential flood, since there were three decades of such anecdotes to get through. When he did depart, at long last, he smiled and pressed a kiss to the cold surface of the crystal pillar, where her forehead was.

“I love you, mother. You don’t have to worry about me, anymore. I will be alright. Rest now, and be at peace.”

As he left the cavern, Sephiroth paused and took a last, lingering look at his mother’s beautiful face, before he turned away, again, and the echo of his footsteps faded away, into the darkness.

Had he remained, a moment longer, he may have seen what appeared to be a single tear, roll down the pale cheek, within the luminous crystal. Perhaps a remnant of the young woman’s spirit still clung to her form, and was moved by her son’s love, to this final expression of emotion. Or perhaps it was only a trick of the light.

Several days later, WRO seismologists reported a massive seismic event, in the Nibel region, the likes of which hadn’t been seen in geological ages. When it was investigated, it was found that the quake had been caused by the sudden, catastrophic collapse of half a mountain range, which had been sitting atop a network of huge, volcanic caves, making the entire structure unsupportable. They considered it miraculous that the range had stood as long as it had.

The good news, however, was that there were no casualties, since those highlands were uninhabitable, and no loss of property. That is to say, nearly no loss of property. The tremors were felt all the way in Nibelheim, where multiple cats were startled out of naps, and half a dozen vases were shaken off shelves, to meet their untimely demise on Nibelheim’s famously tough wood floors.

As for a small, volcanic lake, high in the rocky hills, which was swallowed in the collapse; only a few geologists and intrepid mountaineers ever knew it existed, so no one lamented its loss.

THE AUTHOR HAS SOMETHING TO SAY the fun one is next! tons of cameos, ahoy!! hooray tying up loose ends!!!

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