“Oh.” How distant he sounds. How distant he is.
His own memories are in pieces, fragments and bits arranged in such a way that they make up something difficult to parse. There are pieces missing, as well, for the mind can only contain a finite amount before it must replace something with another.
What he remembers are events tainted. The worst of the worst, as the human mind prefers, even if his human mind is not so human anymore. The firsts are his first sword, his first gun, his first kill, his first battle, his first war, his first defeat, his first victory. While other children celebrated such mundane milestones, Sephiroth celebrated the milestones of a soldier.
The eyes, so close to the color of Mako, close again. Briefly, the jaw beneath the touch tenses, but then it goes slack again with a sigh. There was a brief moment of tension, of irritability at nothing except the anticipation that Tseng will be Tseng and lock him out. It is a habit that Tseng has always had, a habit that had lead them here, to this stopping and starting and dancing around one another on tiptoes and eggshells.
“Kintsugi…” the menace repeats, mind puzzling over the why of the subject. The term is a familiar one, but the connection is not entirely there. Connections are difficult to forge these days. Everything is so abstract, his mind unable to draw a line between one thing and another thing. “Repairing broken pottery with gold, isn’t it?” he offers with the surety that if he is wrong, he is at least somewhere in the correct vein. A leg lifts and folds, bare foot pressed into the couch’s cushion, knee pointed towards the ceiling.
“What about it?” An effort offered to continue the conversation.
Yes, Tseng celebrated every small, every mundane milestone. Not because he was overly sentimental, but to spite his profession as a Turk. If he had been around Sephiroth, he would have celebrated his too. Stealing those moments for himself and holding onto some semblance of normalcy kept his feet grounded and head clear – sunshine streaming through beams, a patch of flowers in the church, the girl with grit trapped beneath her fingernails. Most importantly, it kept him somewhat human.
Tseng always was and still is a model Turk, on paper. But it takes a certain kind of Turk to fail to capture a ‘specimen’ for years. Or to look away while a person who considers him an ally is carted away and experimented on. And it takes an especially heartless kind of bastard to accept letters for 4 years from the would-be ‘specimen’ to the test subject while pretending to be oblivious.
Tseng has many facets and sharp edges, and it’s impossible to see all of him at once, but at least all the cracks have been smoothed over. Whatever kind of person he is, or isn’t, he’s fine with it. He doesn’t think the same can be said for Sephiroth.
“Yes,” Tseng says. But as always, subtleties are lost on Sephiroth. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then, really. But maybe Tseng has become too accustomed to Elena; speaking on his behalf before he has finished thinking, pulling words out and placing them in a line before he can stitch them together coherently in his head. She has a knack for it, filling in his silences, and Sephiroth does not. It isn’t his fault they are the way they are.
“The ideology behind it is that nothing is beyond repair.” Whether he’s skating on thin ice or not can only be gauged by his fingertips, which continue to slowly skim across cool skin until they come to rest along Sephiroth’s hairline. If the touch is unwanted, a simple jerk of the head will be enough shake him off. But until then, Tseng will persevere. Better this, than the space between them.
“No matter how broken, you can pick up the pieces and start over.” He swallows, gaze still fixed on the ceiling and wonders if someone as shattered as Sephiroth can ever be mended. Or if he will even try. Or if he even wants to try. A sigh leaves his lips followed by, “This is silly.”
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