melodiesoflife | Taking responsibility [Semi-Open]

Entry tags:

Taking responsibility [Semi-Open]

Characters: Vincent, Sephiroth, others [Mostly Open; Refer to the top-level Prompts]
Where: Hospital, Aquares Ixen
When: 9th-14th September
Summary: Some aftermath of the fallout from Sephiroth grieving over Terra being in Crystal Stasis. Vincent helped disable Seph, and is now keeping an eye on him. Some people might want to have words with him about how he did so. In between guarding a Weapon for a few shifts...
Warning: Language maybe? Potential angst?

Sept 11th-13th at various times.
Vincent is one of those who is guarding the Ultima WEAPON'S wreckage. These are the only times he won't be found at the Hospital, keeping a guard over Sephiroth. If you want to interact with him, see here.

Sept. 9th-12th

Vincent will stay out of the way of the healers, but otherwise stay in the hospital and keep an eye on Sephiroth as he sleeps off both the post-Job exhaustion and the sleep status. Making sure the silver-haired SOLDIER is healing well, and not being bothered unduly. Occasionally Vincent will head to the Crystal Stasis wing, visiting those among his friends who are there. Ophelia can also be found bringing him a bag with a change of clothes, and a book or two.

He's unlikely to talk in the same room Sephiroth is resting in, but feel free to come check on the SOLDIER, or yell at Vincent, or check on Vincent.

Sept 13th--Closed to Sephiroth
Vincent has spent the past few days keeping watch over and not quite playing guard for Sephiroth, mostly so that when the other does wake--he can apologize. Also to keep others from overwhelming the silver-haired soldier right away. Sadly, Vincent understands heartbreak; he also knows Seph well enough to have some idea of how, hopefully, to help the other start healing.

September 13th, OPEN

Since part of Vincent's assumed role has been gatekeeper for a very private and recovering SOLDIER, he'll be keeping an eye out to ensure the other doesn't get tired, when others DO come to visit him. This is the prompt to use for visiting Sephiroth--and if you want to do so privately, Vincent can wait outside the door.

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The ease with which Vincent essentially smashed down Sephiroth's attempt at a scathing comeback only turned up the heat under his own anger more. Eagerly it flickered, barely contained beneath skin and behind eyes that still came up flaring in response. Anger...a much easier emotion for him to channel, something that could be burst out and then it wouldn't be inside him anymore. Unlike the unbearable bitter sadness that had festered since they'd come back from within the Rift. Something that he already knew well enough, and knew that he would become closer to naturally...if so-called 'destiny' was any indication.

He sat up straighter, felt a strong desire to stubbornly fling himself from the opposite side of the bed and stride from the room, yet keenly aware of how physical limitations made that scenario pretty limited in it's execution. He didn't need to sit there and take such a suggestion from Vincent, of all people...how could he ever understand...

"Burn my bridges?" He emphasized that middle word fiercely, as if to somehow get Vincent to think about those for a moment. To Sephiroth, although there were others around him that seemed always to be on hand to look out for him, there had been only one bridge, passed all of those defenses he put up, that he'd allowed to be built. If anything had burned it, it had been Crystallis itself by taking her from him...but not so far off the end of that feeling of hatred towards this Planet which was starting to grow, was the vague awareness that it was an inevitability.

It's an oddly familiar hatred, after all.

"-I don't know what you expect me to say to that."

Anger was alright, allowed--it was a natural part of grief. Not that Vincent was certain yet whether the anger was in response to him, or for Terra. He suspected the former however, given Sephiroth's reaction to the words.

"I don't expect you to say anything, but I hope that you'll listen." Vincent replied evenly, keeping his own temper under control. "You're not stupid." Both of his parents were blind, and touched to obsession, but neither of them had been stupid. "I say 'burn your bridges' because there are ties and bonds you possess beyond Terra alone. Whether you want them or not, they exist and did you give them any thought when you gave rein to your tantrum?"

Sephiroth's military career, Sephiroth's reputation among the Heroes and citizens of Aquares Ixen... Even those who considered Sephiroth his 'friend' even if he never acknowledged that word or state, (like Jade and Sheena).

Anger in a logical mind doesn't run for very far without being then picked apart. Though initially it had been directed at Vincent, it quickly turned inward, was directed towards Terra and then passed her -towards Crystallis itself- all while the next part of the lecture was being phrased.

"Tantrum..." The way that Vincent demeaned all of Sephiroth's outburst into being so childish like that didn't sit well at all. Though he knows it had been his emotions riding him, at a level which he hadn't been able to reign in like he had before, to call it a tantrum...that's just insulting. He turns his head away again, reaching across himself with his good arm; slowing down the speed of the twist he'd made as the injury made it difficult, to take the half-full plastic cup of water from the side.

"You're right." He spoke again only after a sip of that water which was needed to clear his throat. "Those other things...my responsibilities, my duties...I've tried but-"

He'd left it for so long. Tried to move on. To carry on. There are larger things at stake. Sephiroth's eyebrows meet and drop in the middle again, but the expression is closer to that sadness than the anger that it's feeding. Touching at something deeper; the sense of no direction that Terra had been helping to guide.

"-it's just not worth it, anymore."

Vincent had been calculating, in his word-choice. It hadn't been a tantrum--no, it was a true expression of grief and anger, when the cause of both of those emotions was so new. But he refused to let Sephiroth indulge in thinking it had been justified just yet--so tantrum. There was a larger purpose to this.

Working towards that larger purpose was why Vincent still stood, and why instead of crossing his arms as the darker man usually preferred, he moved them behind his back. Purposefully slipping into--if not a militarily precise--obviously recognizable 'at ease' stance. A lecture it may've been, but Vincent wanted Sephiroth to listen as well. And to talk, if he so felt like it.

"I'm not talking about your duties or responsibilities. Nor your reputation." A one shouldered-shrug, and Vincent still kept a tight rein on his own emotions. "Certainly, you didn't think about how your actions might reflect on those--but the bridges I mean are personal connections."

A heartbeat, two, and then Vincent spoke more gently and quietly. "You've never been the type to simply give up. I doubt you really would've preferred I'd gone for a kill instead as well."

The open body language Vincent presented didn't seem to be having much of an effect. Sephiroth still recognized the lecture for what it was and the stance just reflected too close to that of teacher, to him, for him to interpret it any other way. After all, such lectures were resultant of failures and that was a thought that he didn't want to sit on for too long; he'd not only failed in breaking Terra out of stasis, or taking some sort of retribution out on Crystallis itself. Sephiroth had been failing in a lot of other ways, for a long time. Failing to keep it together, failing to quieten the over-active concerns he had over himself and his wider role here, failing to remain objective and with his eyes on a clear end-goal.

The fact that there wasn't really a clear end-goal didn't make any difference. The SOLDIER had always had a bar to aim for, before. The end of a mission. The pushing of the bar of his own personal-standard of fitness and swordsmanship. There had always been results for him to then take and achieve better-than, the next time around. It had been a point of his personal pride that he'd always excelled in whatever he set his mind to. Sometime, not so far into his future back home, he'd be referred to as 'perhaps too brilliant'.

"Why not? Do everyone a favor. Prevent that world from going through all of what you saw it go through. Cut short any chance of it spilling over into this one..." Sephiroth hadn't so much ignored what Vincent had said previously rather than biting at the comment that he instantly knew how to answer where he didn't have a come back for the former. Impulsive, quick to react; hardly the calm and calculating man that by all accounts he appeared to be publicly.

"...I've not any better ideas."

Personal connections though. His thoughts backtracked to that one and he looked away from Vincent and down towards his feet. He was going to have to make the effort to try and get up soon, it had already gone past the point at which laying down could still be comfortable.

"It's important to remember, those connections are just as doomed as this world. Even without the apocalypse sitting on the doorstep, people only stretch so far-"

Good thing Vincent was aware that Sephiroth was stubborn.

"So, even if they're doomed, you'll just give them up now?" Even if the other man wouldn't listen yet, hopefully Vincent was giving him things to think about for later. Reminding him there was more than just the moment to worry about. More than just this immediate loss.

"No one blames you for grieving over your loss." Quiet again, and the first time he'd addressed Terra's loss as a 'serious' issue, not as a tantrum. "Grief is painful, and its own kind of madness. But you can't let it consume you."

Bowing his head, finally letting Sephiroth have a break from Vincent's study. "It's a hard lesson, and I know it well. I've made the mistake of doing nothing before, and of giving up. Ultimately, it does nothing to help one's pain and only breeds more."

If anything, Sephiroth's long silences spoke volumes. As Vincent knew he's not very much a conversationalist but when it came to listening, to really taking things in, no matter how he wanted to close himself away his natural thirst for knowledge overrode that somewhat. It's what he did with that information, when it had time to percolate deeper into his thought processes, which would define him going forwards from this point.

He'd made a very sharp point in not meeting with Vincent's eye contact, at all though. Something inside his chest still quivered under the potential pressure that others' judgment might make him feel again. Sephiroth had felt, for a long time, that he was a shadow of the man that he'd come in as and how he was left feeling -utterly destroyed- in the wake of his loss was only further proving it to himself. He'd let himself become weak, and he was starting to hate it.

"I shouldn't have allowed myself to get into this position, in the first place." He eventually made a comment, lowly, but the sincerity -the absolute honesty- with which he spoke that statement might seem haunting; and more than a little inhuman. Indeed, Sephiroth was already in the process of trying to deaden those nerves. To mute that emotion that was more raw still than even the fresh scarring he would have to now nurse.

"I don't understand it...how I managed to set myself up for this fall."

Edited (typoooo) 2016-10-23 21:55 (UTC)

"I do." Vincent responded, dropping the 'at-ease' position since it was clear that it didn't matter. "You're more than just a soldier." Letting that hang in the air.

"Despite what others wanted you to be, you're more than simply a weapon, a soldier. For better or worse, you're human." More human here on Crystallis than he ever had been on Gaia. Much like Vincent was now; no longer a failed experiment, but human.

Human.

Sephiroth closed his eyes and kept them closed for a long moment as Vincent's words struck home. It couldn't easily be seen between the light of the room and the way he'd kept his head inclined but that statement meant more than simple words could have delivered, eyelids shook a little in resistance to the tears that would come after that swell of emotion; he wanted to be done with it already, his eyes already stung.

So there it was, the reason for all of this weakness? The fact that he wasn't all that monster that Genesis had declared him to be, not at all that villain that haunts in the back of his mind ever since he became enlightened to what his future held...furthermore, the proof of that...had been in Terra?

"So it's in the nature of being human, to open oneself up for this? To make connections that only turn around and stab you as deeply as you valued it? I have been betrayed before, Vincent...but it wasn't like this."

Vincent moved the chair, then sat down once more. Since it now seemed as if Sephiroth was likely to listen, and they could actually talk, there was no need in his mind to keep standing. It really wasn't meant to be a lecture, despite how it might appear.

"It's in the nature of humanity to feel and experience emotions, to seek connections with other humans to help us make sense and survive life. Life itself and the nature of existence is entropy, harsh and cold--and so we seek out warmth, connection, others to share things with as balm against the hardship." Softly, trying to offer hope--it wasn't always bleak, even if it often seemed so. Vincent himself had often been far more pessimistic and cynical in his life; yet never quite extinguished a tiny spark of romantic and optimistic hope.

"I've been betrayed too, Sephiroth." Stated with genuine sympathy and no pity. A fact. "This one hurts though, and feels different, as romantic grief is different than others in its intensity." He made no move to replace his gauntlet, instead examining the scarred and weakened hand. "To love someone is madness. To be loved by someone is a gift. Loving someone you love is a duty, but being loved by someone you love is life."

The strong wall of impenetrable soldier that he'd very much been conditioned into being was indeed crumbling before Vincent's eyes. He'd been so ready for those old self-preservative habits of his to set back into place; how it was easier to rely only on yourself, how he'd be stronger if he closed himself off and just focused on the next mission, the next goal...making himself unfeeling, eventually, to the plights of others going on around him. It was a comfortable detachment, and one that Sephiroth had grown used to.

But off the back of Vincent's words, it just wasn't sticking anymore. The long silver braid which had been set against his healthy shoulder dropped back behind him as he shifted on the bed a bit more. The conversation was threatening to touch at the not-quite settled pool of emotions within him again and as a result the often too-stern SOLDIER seemed almost scared as he listened.

"Is that really what you think life is-" He still kept the detachment in his tone, clinging to it as he didn't trust how else he might sound. How his reddened eyes already had started to moisten again, unnoticed by himself, uncontrolled. It made it a little easier, as Vincent drew all attention to the near-enough grotesque mess of flesh that was his ungloved hand. Sephiroth was curious, but a larger part of him felt awkward in that he already knew how Vincent was relating this circumstance.

"I've not ever needed such companionship. Whether it be honest friendship, with others, or if it was romance that I felt with Terra." He couldn't help but narrow his eyes again as he still chewed internally over the concept. Romance wasn't a strong enough word, he thought.

"Yet I've always managed to come through hardships...to carry on regardless. It's a strength that I seem to have misplaced."

"And you will come through this one as well, Sephiroth." Faith in the soft tones. "You have strength, even if it's only temporary strength gained by leaning on those who care about you, until your own is shorn up again."

Letting that hang in the air for a bit between them, hopefully a more comfortable silence than they'd had previously. "It's a hard lesson to learn. I'm stumbling through it myself still." Vincent let out a sigh with the weight of all his years behind it belied by his young looks. "...others can be there with you though, without crowding or having one lose oneself. It makes burdens lighter and more bearable."

Initially, Sephiroth's expression dropped into more of a frown again at Vincent mentioning the temporary strength of others that he was leaning on. He disliked feeling dependent, on anyone, even if the support were there regardless of if he wanted it to be or not. He should be strong enough to stand on his own two feet, else what was the point in existing at all.

In the silence that followed a single tear broke the bottom barrier of one of his eyelids, but invisibly ran down the edge of his face, being hidden by one of his bangs. It was a lesson, indeed, one that Sephiroth wasn't sure he wanted to pay attention to still. He wanted his pain to end up dulled and shoved away somewhere inside of him to be forgotten, not constantly behind the eyes of those that would call themselves friends.

"For a time, perhaps." Again, with the eye-closing in an attempt not to let his emotions boil over. He didn't used to be anywhere near this sensitive and somehow he needed to find his way back to that.

"I'm not sure if I can take the turn around again."

Vincent was sure to give Sephiroth full attention, listening and letting him take his own pace. Including pausing to let himself turn over Sephiroth's last statement. "I believe you can." Softly, measured and clear that Vincent was thinking at least a little out-loud. "But only if you recognize that you're not alone. You're allowed, encouraged, to make connections."

"One of the advantages, to having friends... Even if one is usually more of a loner, having a few friends still helps. It allows one to be stronger, to weather hardships. If one only faces things alone--they keep piling on, until one breaks." Letting crimson-eyes slide over, studying the soldier's profile. "I would rather you didn't break. Not because of fear of what you'd become, because you--yourself, as you are--are worth knowing and being a companion to."

As Vincent spoke further, Sephiroth gingerly opened his eyes again and regarded the other man with a kind-of half-lidded gaze while he were still making the attempt to put his thoughts into some sort of order that he might be able to move on from. Again he twitched those fingers of his damaged arm, where they were bound to his chest still, as if to make sure they weren't just going to stop working. It wasn't only the obvious shoulder injury which was healing after all, he'd laid fists into hard crystal several times as well.

"I don't know if I'm even-" He chewed on the corner of his mouth discreetly, the gesture almost making him seem to pout a little as he thought about that particular word - breaking. Vincent didn't have to spell it out, given the future he already knew about, but it did bring about the consideration as to the underlying causes that might have contributed...might still contribute, in the future as it's yet to have happened here.

"-everyone is alone, in the end."

"That is true. I won't tell you it isn't. But it's also true that we all seek out company, seek out each other, to stem the loneliness and make the hardships of life seem less of a burden." Then Vincent fell silent, letting Sephiroth speak or not.

None of this was an easy conversation, and he was well aware of the fact.

"I've been keeping watch and playing guard, so that others won't disturb you." After several heartbeats. "My responsibility, since I am the one who put you here." He'd do it again, but he did regret it had come to that point. "I can keep watch still, until you're ready to face others."

Initially Sephiroth met Vincent's eye contact again, in fact he pretty much snapped his gaze back up there but the instant reaction; to deny that it were the case with him, fizzled out as the statement was digested. Words fell short of being said as Sephiroth thought back, not only to how his friendship with Terra had first formed, but even further.

How although he first told himself he wouldn't associate with Genesis and Angeal more than he needed to in the parameters of his job, he'd ended up closer to them than anyone in his life previously...had that simply been for the fact that they had been there? Capable companionship? It made sense, Vincent's words of wisdom, but it didn't take long before thoughts sharpened the edges of the betrayal he still often spent too much time thinking about. He'd keep it to himself, here, but yet still he'd not managed to have a friendship that hadn't in some way turned around and hurt him, making him weaker as a result.

"It's human nature all over. Starving for companionship, yet only so far as it serves ones own agendas." There, the crux of Sephiroth's problem with friendship laid bare and with as much unimpressed monotone as it deserved. He'd seen it over and over and more fool him to think it could have been different with Terra. Still, he'd never felt that intensely before about any one single person.

He almost wanted to ask Vincent who exactly had been looking to disturb him, he imagined a significant handful who had been there would probably want words of the stern-sort. Sephiroth was also not naive enough to think that those words would come his way later if they didn't soon.

"I shouldn't need the supervision. This is all my fault, anyway."

That last statement provoked an eyebrow raise. Something seen rarely given Vincent's usual neutral expressions and stoicism. "Aside from the obvious, in that you were expressing your grief and anger, how is this your fault?"

Ironic that, considering Vincent often blamed himself for things that weren't in his control. Or took on guilt for things he had done that was all out of proportion. No doubt Sephiroth would be noting the same thing, but Vincent would not let him comment as an attempt at deflection. IF it came.

"Grief can be a private thing, and in the aftermath it seemed that you would welcome some privacy. Time to collect yourself, to regain some equilibrium, before dealing with anyone else."

Whether Sephiroth should or should not need it, Vincent was there anyways.

"I got carried away."

It was about as simple as Sephiroth could put it, but the weight behind the remark was immense. For just once in his entire life he'd allowed much more of someone else inside the iron-willed walls he kept around himself than ever before. The happiness that he'd felt in Terra's company, the relative-mundane that seemed the brightest thing in the world. His work had been pushed into the background, still there but not so nearly as prominent. The larger problems within Crystallis that he was supposed to be putting his attention towards...

"I let it all carry me away. I knew -know- that stasis is always that grim possibility, but somewhere as I was caught in all of this, it got forgotten."

Green eyes were downcast once more, a few more beats of quiet contemplation before Sephiroth nodded shortly and then looked back again at Vincent. His guardian now, at least for the moment even if he wasn't keen so much on the idea. It would be for the best, at least for the next day or so.

"I suppose that makes sense, too."

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Taking responsibility [Semi-Open]

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finally tag, wasn't sure what else to write.

it's fine, perfect even >.<

Not my quote re: love, admittedly.

<3

Re: <3

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