"Funny you should say, as it was quite the opposite for me." He referred to others' arriving in Crystallis and rebuking their title as 'Hero'. To Sephiroth, at least at the time, it had been almost expected. He'd come into this world as exactly that, after all.

"I quickly took to this whole arrangement as surely as I'd taken to any mission I'd ever been assigned. Determined to be every bit the Hero that my prior reputation had always painted me as-"

He spoke with a definite edge of bitterness, his arms creeping up to be folded across his chest as he recounted those first precious months in Crystallis. All the adjusting to the different parameters of existence here, the more-human limitations that he'd found himself lowered to, the chances at mending friendships that should never have been broken. The ache to his wrist, through repetitive-strain, which at the time he'd been certain would never go away.

"-it could not have been a crueler joke. Needless to say, I didn't get so far before...questions became apparent."

Sephiroth then searched Ellie's face, he was confident enough that he didn't need to explain exactly what questions had started as tickles to his subconscious thoughts yet over time had become inflamed and festering as facts were made clear.

"Sephiroth the Hero was a lie, from the very beginning." Hmph. It didn't quite sting as much to say that, anymore. "After all, that's not how it works. How could a Calamity spawn be in any way a Hero?"