#𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐈𝐌𝐄 ⸻ a private & highly selective sephiroth of final fantasy vii. est. 2014, revamped 2019 / 2020. low - activity. crisis core & pre - crisis core - based. not remake compliant. heavily canon divergent / study - driven. informed by comparative literature, cosmic / psychological horror, eschatology, the tragedians, black & women's studies, etc. as beloved by sinna / sidonie.
𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲 𝐢𝐧 : the tools and victims of empire, violence as subjugation, war, and war as the history in the room, innocence neutered from birth, alienation & othering, carrying the sins of your father, the inexorable draw of unseen forces and the struggle against them, a doomed existence, a martyrdom of sorts, being in and of the wake, living in the margins of womanhood, and the yearning for normalcy.
blogroll : @openness & @manipulation
mobile friendly rules under cut.
𝐫𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐬.
i. this blog is permanently low - activity and mutuals - only. i have an office job and a busy life outside of that; this is just a hobby for me! please don’t assume that i will immediately respond to threads or asks, or that i work on a first - come, first - serve basis. i will respond to things as i find the time and energy to do so.
i primarily write in longer - form formats (rarely ever sub - 300 words), in 3rd person. i do not post opens, and usually interact through asks / prompts that then turn into more established dynamics. sephiroth is a very interior character. she does not speak terribly often, usually in short/clipped sentences, and so a great deal of my writing will be focused on how she is perceiving your muse and her surroundings. i try to balance this interiority with action so that threads do not stagnate.
i am always open to having asks be turned into threads! i do try to put a lot of effort into them, so if you see potential in something becoming a longer thread, please feel free to continue the scene in a new post.
ii. my portrayal of sephiroth is extremely headcanon - based and diverges heavily from canon other than what is presented in crisis core and ever crisis (and concepts established in the og, to an extent). please keep an open mind and be aware of this if you’re writing with me! i find that sephiroth’s characterization in most material focuses entirely on her being a foil or dark force who exists to support cloud’s story and has no real substance of her own, which i believe is an unfair flattening of what could be a truly fascinating character.
my main focus with this blog will be: exploring the realities of war, empire and its tools and victims, especially the use of propaganda, narratives of womanhood, alienation / othering, the draw towards and struggle against higher powers / unseen forces, and sephiroth’s desire to, at the end of the day, be ordinary.
i primarily write in a pre-crisis core / post-ever crisis verse that i have constructed over the years. this makes the events of the og, advent children, and the remakes largely irrelevant to me, and i likely won’t write in these verses due to my dislike for sephiroth’s portrayal in them.
i will not write her in any post - nibelheim incident verse– i just do not believe that the person she is at that point in canon is even her anymore, but more importantly, that iteration of her character simply doesn’t interest me.
i am very open to other verses (dissidia, AUs, etc.), we just need to hash them out together.
iii. please read the information i provide for sephiroth and keep it all in mind when interacting with her. do not make assumptions on how you think she ought to react / respond to things based either on canon or the popular fandom conception of this character, or do things like start threads with the assumption that you’ll get me writing fanon yandere sephiroth or whatever the fuck. i’m sure there are plenty of other places you can get that from, i’m just not the one. know that repeated misgendering of sephiroth is grounds for an immediate block.
iv. 21+ only, please. i’m old, this blog has mature themes – i just don’t want to be hanging out with kids. thanks.
v. i have no tolerance for racism / transphobia / misogyny / lesbophobia / zionism / etc.
vi. this blog will contain triggering / sensitive themes. while i will tag content as needed (using ___ /), if you are squeamish, this might not be the best place for you. i write sephiroth as a deeply traumatized individual– because she is! she has endured extreme child abuse as a former child soldier, a shinra lab rat, and what amounts to being a child star. many of my posts will either directly address or make reference to: extreme violence, gore, human experimentation / medical horror, body horror, suicidal ideation, war trauma, genocide, child neglect / abuse, and will often explore unwanted sexualization (i will never write explicit non-consensual anything, though.)
especially in reference to the way sephiroth was abused as a child, it’s not like i’ll ever be writing drabbles/threads where these events are being described at length; it’s just an important aspect to her character and influences how she behaves, and will mainly just be mentioned in meta posts. please treat yourself with kindness, and feel free to sb if any of this makes you uncomfortable.
i myself need nothing tagged. if you need something tagged that’s not a common trigger or is listed above, you can let me know, but please keep in mind that if you’re particularly sensitive to darker topics (within reason, obviously.), you’d be best off not following me to begin with.
vii. i am open to shipping, although that is not my main concern on this blog. if something romantic does occur between our muses, please know that i’m semi - ship exclusive: i will only ship with up to two iterations of a character.
i request that you please also respect that sephiroth is not terribly interested in men.
i, for the most part, do not have any ships that are off - limits (within reason, obviously), but i never want to see sefikura on my dash. this goes for any ship where one party was underage upon meeting and the other was already an adult, but for whatever reason, this one seems to get a pass from most people. i will block you if you rb / post anything sfkr. i just do not want to see this on my dash.
as she is of age in most verses, i also have no reservations about writing nsfw on this blog. it will always be tagged accordingly and hidden under a read more!
viii. i do block somewhat liberally; it is never personal, and has more to do with wanting to curate my space. this does include duplicates. i sb to break mutuals if i think that we will not interact, or if i have made repeated attempts to initiate interactions that have not been reciprocated. i am here to write! i have no desire to collect mutuals as numbers.
ix. on who i will follow / write with: i am unlikely to follow / follow back muses from comics, film, or television, particularly non - animated ones. i don’t much care for marvel or dc, or the rpcs associated with them. i love movies, but sephiroth is not the best muse to put against these kinds of characters outside of sci - fi settings because of how particular she is in conception, which i try to be conscious of. i also am very selective when it comes to muses from overwatch, hoyoverse, aot, you know, the usual culprits. i tend to be extremely selective when it comes to clouds, as well. it’s not personal, i’ve just had some bad experiences over the years.
i love female muses and ocs! i may show some preference for them, because i know that the rpc at large ignores these characters. the most important thing to me in interactions is if i think sephiroth works well with your muse in any form, and if our personal writing styles are compatible. i put a lot of work into creating the version of her that i have on this blog, and i just want to see other people doing the same for their own characters, regardless of their source.
on writing style— i do not much care for purple prose ever, or 1st person perspective in rp. i read a great deal outside of rp, mostly literary fiction, and so i know that i'm maybe unfairly picky when it comes to style ... but i want to be up - front with potential partners. if you do either of these things, i probably do not want to write with you. this is just my preference!
my blacklisted media list is, again, the usual: hp, hazbin, mcu/dcu, marvel comics, stranger things (really any american tv .. lol.). zero exceptions.
x. all of my graphics were either made by theircurse, or myself. my theme was made and coded by theircurse, as well. please don’t pilfer any of these things! it will be terribly obvious if you do!
As she turns to look over the kitchen while Sephiroth considers a reply, her face scrunches with vacant, mindless disgust--Not at Sephiroth's words, no, but at a fly that hovers by the bridge of his nose. It's gone in a flash to zip back into the rot. Even the sink seems to have a smell. When Sylvain opens the cupboard nearest to his eyeline, he finds that all the cups inside are the same. Perfect little mirrors of each other made of that faux-glass that Shinra is so proud of formulating. Why waste natural resources on consumers when you can whip them up a substitute and sell it as innovative. Sylvain's teeth feel like knives in his mouth when he smirks and finds it easier than ever.
"Sheesh, I like to think my stamina's a little better than that." The water dribbles from the tap at first when he turns the knob and just from having his hand close to it he can tell that it's warm. She wrenches the blue-marked handle as far as it will go and turns back to face Sephiroth from the darkened corner. Slowly the dribbles becomes a trickle becomes a gush and the sound of the water is thick as blood. He may not be the hand of god or whoever else Shinra has turned Sephiroth into, but even someone like Sylvain knows that sound too. One of his hands ambles up to scratch at the back of his neck cheekily. "If you killed me, then I'd have something to forgive you for but, uh. I don't really think there's room for someone like me to decide that kind of thing. Not after everything you've done." Her expression does not match the gravity. No use mincing words or meaning. Sylvain doesn't look for absolution anywhere these days. She shrugs and pinches at the rim of her chosen glass / Now points its open face across the room like she might shine a beacon on Sephiroth with it.
"I think you're taking me way too seriously." A chuckle--Here is the return to form. "I was gonna suggest killing your boss or something." Sylvain hates things like ideals; Knights and princesses are fantasy fiction and never once has he hoped for something better than the way things are. But has he ever been so totally alone like she is? With all the honesty that aches to be smothered to death in his chest, he knows he can't say he has. He owes his commander a check-in and his father a location ping and the woman he met in Costa del Sol will recognize his face among the list of casualties if he ever dies in whatever stupid combat zone he's sent to. He had to cut his hair closer to standard after that weekend. Even now his curls crunch on the ends and only half wave where they hang at the nape of his neck and there's little left of the tiny braid he let her tie there. No, he knows he's not like Sephiroth and she will never take him for a friend. "Isn't that what most soldiers wish they could do when they look themself in the mirror? It's like a bandage. A good dream that lets you pretend you did something right in the end." A beat.
Without turning around again, Sylvain sticks her cup backward under the faucet. Another fly zips past her cheek. The smell is worse close up to the fruit. Her smirks shifts flatter. "I know I'm not your friend." What little she does know about all that's happened matters very little in the grand scheme that is Sephiroth. She's lost something again and again and Sylvain isn't under any impression he can save anyone / anything. "If you don't want to talk, just say so. You had us come here--And hey, if you want me to fuck you, say that too." She exhales through her nose but Sephiroth's probably not in any position to find the humor.
𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡: 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐞. the isolation of her childhood is a drop in the big sea compared to this, because now, she has experienced what it is like to be loved, which is necessary to understand the true depth of loss. this pit. it is full of death. her body rests on top of corpses stacked, one on the other. they all have names but sephiroth has lost her own. maybe it was never hers. she could reach out and grab sylvain and beg for him to say it, her name, or give her a new one, make her real again, but instead she remains in her place, fetal - style.
his proposals hit the floor, lifeless, between them. sex is closeness incarnate. she could crawl inside of sylvain and then her flesh would not be so lonely. she imagines what it would feel like, to be inside her, to get rid of any of the space that seems to always exist between herself and other people, and wonders if it would make her feel any better. then: ‘ no, it would destroy us both. ’ maybe killing the president would make her feel better but it would not bring back angeal, and anyway, good dogs do not bite back. sephiroth is no longer a good dog, she gave that up when genesis disappeared but she could bring herself to kill him, but she is the kind that knows its life is at an end, so it drags its dying body below a porch, or under a hawthorn bramble, or under a bed, to pass in solitude. this apartment is her tomb. that is why she has brought sylvain here: to die.
the faucet trickles, then gushes. the chest will do something similar if it is pierced in the right spot. this is something they both know well. her colorless face turns from him once again, as if struck by the back of a hand. “ hmph. ”
too - long nails bite at her calves; her arms have wrapped around them, easier than ever, now, their muscles degenerated, same as the ones in her arms. she doesn’t want to hear about dreams or how sylvain isn’t her friend, would he even want to be? almost petulant, sephiroth speaks to no - one at all, “ i’m bad luck, you know. nothing good happens to the people around me. ” which is to say, i am she, i am a witch, blood - black, do not come to me seeking friendship. it is too bad, then, that all she has ever wanted is a friend. they just have a nasty habit of slipping away from her.
hollander turned her away and the illusion, already thin as a butterfly’s wing, and just as fragile, began to crumble around her. images of putrid flesh came unbidden: when her nails grew too long on tour and they hardened into the talons of a bird of prey and behind a tent she took a knife to them to break them off and buried the claws under fallen palm leaves; the soft spot between her ribs on the left side like the bruise on an apple, it appeared one morning and when her fingers explored it, the flesh started to give way, she had rotted from the inside - out, the next day it had vanished; the thing that had once been alissa, who looked so like the photograph of her mother, turned into putrefying flesh and growths that defied human reason, but sephiroth knew somewhere in some black corner of her heart that this was her, that this was a mirror. she has seen the deformed things suspended in amniotic fluid in hojo’s labs and turned her nose at them, for they are without god, but is she any different? her stomach turns itself inside out. she wants to vomit but her stomach is empty and has been for what feels like days on end.
her eyes have screwed shut but light still gets through them. language is a death trap. whenever she speaks, her words come out wrong, something that someone like him— so effortless in his affect, and managing to stay irreverent even now— can’t understand, she’s sure. “ it isn’t easy for me— talking. ” it comes out ephebic. a tall child is curled up in the chair. its limbs are too long. what is it supposed to do with all this body? the beginnings of a smile have crept across the pale shadow of sephiroth’s face, but only just. “ that’s why they have me read scripts. i say the wrong thing. angeal always told me as much. ”
drop this sunflower🌻 into the inboxes of the blogs that make you happy ! lets spread a little sunshine☀️
VILLAINNNNN NOTHING BUT LOVE FOR YOU!!!! you are so sweet. one of the only hoyo understanders. THEE only maruki understander. supplier of terrible boyfriends for sephi. i'm always so delighted to see you and your thoughts on your muses on the dash .. the love and effort you put into everything is so evident and makes me :). i'm so glad i can do the same for you. <3
❝ You won't , ❞ comes the soft breath , scaled forehead pressing against hers as hands smooth over Sephiroth's . She notes their warmth , the rush of blood that courses through them lifting them so that they rest within the cradle between hip and the jutting spikes of hips . Crown tilting down to watch how she guides the larger , uncertain hands , the cool pad of her thumb smoothing over to feel muscle , sinew , the flutter of a pulse that trembles at her touch ( fearful , distraught at the thought of bringing harm to porcelain skin and marble scales ) . She provides a gentle squeeze as a meager attempt to comfort and steady , to quell the worry that brings those words to the forefront of the woman's lips . Hand eventually draws away , but not without any small amount of difficulty , own fingertips ghosting over the sharpened points that curve and follow the swells and dips of her hips . ❝ You won't hurt me . ❞ She reiterates in a softer breath that mingles with Sephiroth's own , palms caressing jaw to gently usher upward tilt to seal the once open proximity between them so as to stoke the blistering embers that ignite upon contact . Eyes flutter shut as scent and taste fills her , as moonlight filters through the curtains of the window with watchful gaze as Ebony's hips settle on Sephiroth's thighs , tail snaking down into a lax curl , around the base of ankle with a gentle tap on the ground .
The beginnings of a hunger gnaw at her stomach , the hitched breath that snags on the curve of lips as she stays the desire to feast upon her further . The shift of fabric as discarded clothing on the corner of the nightstand drops to the ground , lost in the gasps and quiet moans before they part , the thin silver thread still connecting the both of them as swell of breasts lift with a breath . Slit pupils find themselves dilated , downcast as her hands trail down the front of Sephiroth's chest , against the warmth and softness of unmarred skin , the swell of her breast , taking time in revealing more of what usually finds itself hidden away under layers of clothing and armor . They retrace their path , sweeping over broad shoulder to push back the river of silver to reverently expose the pale expanse of musculature and the sweep of her neck , her throat . The words echo in her mind once again , the breath in lungs stilled as she finds herself in the presence of holiness .
They're damned . Damned by the humans . Damned by the world . Damned by themselves .
Yet they cannot bring themselves to damn each other .
A lingering heat clings to her skin as mouth descends to the crook of neck , depositing petal-soft kisses , the occasional soft scrape of sharpened teeth over flesh a declaration of the desire that presides . ❝ I trust you, ❞ she breathes as mouth lifts to find hers in the moonlit darkness , forms sinking back into the waiting embrace of the plush bed , sheets bunching between clawed digits as own hair spills over shoulders to curtain them together , allowing them these little moments of privacy where roaming hands pull , drag , hold closer and in the face of her trembling power , she finds herself deferent to . Starlight waterfalls over her shoulders as she bows and worships the unmarred ivory of her skin , the light trill of a whimper clicking in her throat at the pressure between quivering thighs . The tremble in muscles caused not by that primal fear , but rather that of anticipated rapture .
i am a victim btw. @michaelslight very under co. but if anyone is interested in juri and miki i'm gonna move them over here! it will remain a very lowkey blog and will probably just be a lot of character studies as i rewatch rgu + adolescence but they are taking up way too much space in my brain rn.
𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭. @theomakhist , from ardyn : “ most of the time, i have no regrets. ”
𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐠𝐫𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐫. they happen so fast, and in such multitude that she has no time to close her eyes. they remain, then, in her memory. they grow fat and take up more and more space inside her with each passing moment, like maggots, or some kind of parasitic worm. one day sephiroth will be nothing but the replay, that endless loop of the moment of collision, of the scalpel. all that will be left of her is the wound. sometimes, she thinks that she would like nothing more than to make love, but there is a foul smell about her, like death.
for this, it is best to keep to oneself. there is a wide gap between herself and the other imperials that is not meant to be crossed. no touching. only look; eat with your eyes. it comes as a surprise, then, when her quiet is interrupted. pink - rimmed eyes flash up and into the face of her would - be invader when the loud strikes of his heels against the tile halt, and not far from her. the heart, that diseased organ, does not stop, but grows very cold. her face jolts away, and unbidden, her mouth purses into a small frown. the chancellor must be particularly bored if he’s picked her as his prey, she thinks.
the blood on her hands is still wet. they will never be clean again. she can scrub and scrub them in her quarters, or in one of the dark iron sinks in the barracks, but the water never runs clear. they wring, thoughtless, in the space against sephiroth’s stomach, maybe because of the sudden attention from ardyn, but more likely because of the itching on the insides of her wrists and between the delicate bones of her fingers. first it is a faint buzzing under the skin, then comes the sting; a bolt of lightning or maybe a piton struck deep into the tissue of every joint and tendon; it is a white - hot hurt, the kind that sometimes leaves her blind, reeling and dry heaving from the intensity of it all. the pains are only getting worse. sephiroth knows the symptoms now, has seen them in others, none of which who lived for long after diagnosis. daemonification, they call it. long fingers curl tightly into the soft flesh of her palms. she does not look at the chancellor, but at the dark shadow he casts. he’s real, then.
ardyn’s voice comes across as mocking, it always does. he has never been sincere, which makes the contents of his statement all the more baffling to the soldier, who knows very little about men and why they do the things they do. why tell her this if he doesn’t mean it? maybe he can smell her weakness on her like the stench of a dead animal. her heavy head falls to one side, streaking her vision with limp, pale curls. “ what great privilege. ” she remarks and is only half as spiteful as she could be. her eyelids fall like the ingots used to counterbalance ships laden with cargo. she is so tired that if she were to fall asleep now, there’d be no guarantee of her ever waking.
“ — what about the other times? ” one foot is in the water. it would be easy to wade in, to submerge herself fully. insubordination does not frighten her— that would require some respect for authority, which is and always has been absent— but there is, to her, a vague sense that it is better to not humor ardyn more than one ought to. ‘ does it make you sick, the guilt? ’ sephiroth wants to ask. ‘ does it crush you when you lay down to sleep? do you hate yourself for what you’ve done?’ she holds her tongue. it has grown much harder to go against the gods as she once had. easier, then, to lay down and expose the belly, to take what is being offered, even if it is the knife.
sephiroth is a parasite. she is both host and the tapeworm. it is crucial in understanding her character to recognize that she herself has very little that she defines herself by, and she only comes to understand any part of herself through the absorption of attributes from those around her. she is the sum of many parts because jenova is actively feeding on her and exerting its will onto her, who already suffers from the derealization of a child soldier and abuse survivor, who is already so hollow and on the precipice of collapse. she must take and take from others to make up for her own lack. tell her what she is supposed to be, but also give yourself to her, so she can pick your brain and your bones clean for any qualities that would suit her. it is a cycle. sephiroth inherited this. why does jenova never appear as itself, plainly? it is always taking the appearances of others, the mannerisms and voices and lives of others. it does this to its child, too. a snake eats its tail ...
there is an inherently (trans)formative quality to this parasitism as well ... the programmed desire to change your flesh in some irreversible way, to absorb, to make yourself into something new using the objects in your environment. think tetsuo the iron man, titane, crimes of the future. sephiroth believes the flesh is sacred but she alone is not enough. when hollander rebuffs her and does not allow her to offer her tissue for genesis, it is a sense of duty that makes her disturbed by her inability to be a donor, but also the fact that she then cannot become a part of him. she is denied this divine intimacy, and that unsettles her. is this reunion? or something bigger? the caterpillar must eat and eat before it can pupate. already, she had memorized his actions and interests, could recite loveless as well as him even though she never particularly cared for it, and thought of it as childish. consumption was the next step, to reduce them both to sameness, but by the time that was an option, he had hurt her beyond any hope for reconciliation.
all this talk of parasites has, however, a racialized quality. i think of the verbiage used to reference black migration to europe, to america, the images of insects, swarms, disease. the myth of the welfare queen, blackness as a parasitic growth on the american state. the way that the ebola epidemic was callously depicted by the media. the wake! the ship! it is queer, too: queerness, especially black queerness, is regarded as a vector for disease, for corruption and illness. aids/hiv in particular, but the way that pundits speak of being queer (and trans, especially) as a virus that infects children. sephiroth is seen as a contagion not just because of the calamity, but because she is black and transfeminine and therefor a threat to white, heteronormative hegemony. this is made literal through jenova’s infection of the cetra, of the clones, of cloud, of zack ... but also the children taken by the remnants, the epidemic of geostigma.
while i don’t acknowledge ac at all, really, geostigma has always struck me as a crude example of queerness as illness. sephiroth and jenova both— feminized threats who are seen as more pure evils than the masculine corporate entity that gave rise to the current unbearable living conditions for all but the uber - wealthy in - universe ("shinra is not the real enemy," right?)— being rejected by the planet in death and in retaliation spreading disease that seizes control of the minds of those infected, which is a trope often employed in anti - communist horror (invasion of the body snatchers being perhaps the seminal example), is ... tone - deaf, to say the least. and the fact that geostigma seems to primarily infect children and effeminate men, easily queered through psychoanalytic readings, is not lost on me. whatever criticisms the og had of corporate greed and the neoliberal world order fall apart the second you examine what happens in ac, or even the end of the og. and by the remakes it is a corpse. the corporation is its own kind of parasite but it is, if anything, more sinister than the creature who cannot help but leech from others for survival, because it is not a living thing. why has its role been diminished once the symptoms of its own system become too large to contain?
this is all to say that yes, sephiroth is extremely dependent. she is a child even as an adult, she cannot live or exist by herself; she does not know how to be alone, because she never was. she defines herself through others. she needs a mother because she is a fledgling with no identity or means to support itself. the cowbird, a brood parasite. it relies on outside care, otherwise it will eat itself into nothing and will not reproduce its own vampiric qualities. but i recognize, too, that this imagery is fraught with implications that do not sit well. her existence is a complicated one, a complication.
Softly illuminated by the faint glow of Kindly Miquella’s cross and perilously lost in thought, Leda seems surprised as she notices someone approaching. Her dark helm lifts with her concealed gaze, the sharp motion of a soldier’s. Still, as recognition enters her voice, so too does gentleness’ frail ghost. Relief: “Oh, it’s you…” Leda’s hand, resting as it always does upon the hilt of her pristine blade, remains unmoved. The immense burden of her thoughts returns to her: her doubts, her worries, her fears. Yet, with Sephiroth in this rare and shivering moment, Leda feels strangely free to express such brittle things. “You felt it, too, didn’t you, not long ago? Tender Miquella’s enchantment has been broken. He must be on the very precipice. The final moments of his journey…” She speaks without restraint for the first time in ages. Each word lilts like music, its rhythm inexplicably drifting. Something feverish lurks within her, a newly reawakened fervor. “But without Lord Miquella’s charm, not all of our compatriots will remain steadfast in their devotion.” Unlike you or me, Leda seems to be saying. Her heart mirrors her polished sword, almost perfect for blood. “I’ve made my decision. Those of us with traitorous doubts cannot be allowed to fester. I will weed out the undeserving… before they beckon our undoing.”
𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬, 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐣𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞. at the junctions where new flesh meets her original body, there is a slight gap. it is in this space that ligament and membrane rub together uncomfortably and sephiroth is left with dull throbbing along her spine, in sets of twos: one right below the other at the wings of her shoulder blades, and the last in the divot above her hips. her body is more now and that means something. these gifts, hacked from the bodies of knights and another beast, feathered and large - bodied, signal that the maiden’s flesh is desirable. she was chosen for this but that does not make bearing holiness any easier.
the earth, softened by rain, gives below her feet. she is weak. this is why the maiden is made heavy by visions of her blade in another’s stomach and the way that blood spilled out over her hands like hot paint. it was so cold in the snowfield that his innards were steaming as they turned outward. iron burned her nostrils and the back of her throat with each gasp of air, but she did not stop breathing, she is still breathing, and that is only by kindly miquella’s grace. this is not something so easily forgotten.
leda looks small like this, which comes as a surprise. the knight had always seemed very large to sephiroth, not in stature but in presence, like a mirror of the lord’s own grace. now, she is dwarfed: hand on pommel, shoulders heavy, she appears to be staring at her companion as she draws closer, though sephiroth cannot see her eyes and does not think she ever has, so it is hard to tell if she is looking at her or past her. unobscured, her own face is pallid in the fetid light of the scadutree. she has never felt the need to wear a helm or head covering like her compatriots; maidens are not warriors, they have nothing to hide, not from god, nor from any who may look at them, and this sort of piety is a hard habit to break.
myriad hands fold over one another, on top of her stomach. her head falls to one side as if it weighs several tons, or least too much for the thin pillar of her neck, swathed in dark cloth but trembling with breath, or maybe it is that the threads holding sephiroth upright were, all at once, snipped. robes and metal plates shift against one another with the irregular movement of her body; light twinkling off the surface of choppy waters. a storm is coming. this must be why leda is humming with something, some kind of frenzy. that sort of fanaticism can make one very small.
“ ... i did. ” in place of any real greeting, she assents. they all felt it, that great severing. a veil was lifted from the eyes of all lord miquella’s chosen, not at first obvious but soon apparent as one by one, her limbs began to feel as though they were again her own. the cotton gauze in her head, too, fell out. ‘ ah, ’ she thought, at the time knee - deep in murky water and with the moon against her back. ‘ the dream has ended. ’ and that is all. some of the others may feel betrayed, though over what, sephiroth cannot fathom. that warmth, that numbing goodness— was that not a blessing? living is much easier with kindly miquella’s hand on one’s back. her head shakes, firm. feathers rustle against her robes. “ little difference it makes to me, however. ”
there are creatures in the deep ocean with growths— appendages of a sort— with their own incandescence, for that far below the surface of the water, it is very dark, and terribly cold. the lights on these beasts are used to draw prey near so that they may be eaten with swiftness. sephiroth’s eyes, peering out from under the shadow cast by the white thicket of hair atop her head, mimic these false beacons. she looks not into leda’s own eyes but the darkness where they should be. they glow softly in the socket. “ my heart remains steadfast. i’ve no intention of abandoning him now. ” she lays herself bare. uphold the contract. no lying. “ — you knew of my purity. you’ve known from the beginning. ” this is why, she thinks, leda has let her come so close. i do not mean physically, for there is always a wide rift between the two women. there is an unspoken understanding that to cross this is to contaminate one another; that their bodies, profane, must keep to themselves. i mean in spirit, or perhaps in heart. why else would she confess like this, and without drawing her blade? there is trust between them, however brittle.
“ the age of compassion …, ” her voice trails off into the mist. the words alone have a strange sort of weight to them, their own power. a minute shudder runs down her neck, then her arms, all the way down to her hips, blanched lashes fluttering at the sensation. spine straightening, one set of hands compulsively grasps one another more tightly, her muscled shoulders drawing back taut. before her god, she is unwavering. this has not changed, and never will. a trembling inhale punctuates that amputated thought, now followed up by another, fully - formed: “ if you’ll have me, i will continue this journey by your side. it will be easier, i think, this way. the culling, that is. ”
