It's the kind of clarification that leaves no room for doubt, no leeway for the rhetoric to muddy its meaning. But even then, it is so unimaginable that it still takes a lingering moment for the meaning to entirely strike him.
And of course, Sephiroth's reaction is to consider it so far beyond belief that it's easiest to meet her blame with a sharp offense. It makes no sense. That is not something that he would do — it is simply beyond the pale. He has killed many in the past, all necessity wrought from war, but they had been enemies on the battlefield. He had never taken it upon himself to steal away the life of innocents with his blade for no purpose other than— what? She cannot even give him a reason why.]
You're lying.
[Perhaps not unintentionally, perhaps unknowingly, but he cannot happily swallow this bitter pill without questioning its validity.]
You're telling me that a straightforward mission to clear the area of monsters, and to investigate a reactor leak, led me to slaughter the townsfolk of Nibelheim? Even if the orders had come from above, that isn't something I would do. I'm not a monster.
no subject
It's the kind of clarification that leaves no room for doubt, no leeway for the rhetoric to muddy its meaning. But even then, it is so unimaginable that it still takes a lingering moment for the meaning to entirely strike him.
And of course, Sephiroth's reaction is to consider it so far beyond belief that it's easiest to meet her blame with a sharp offense. It makes no sense. That is not something that he would do — it is simply beyond the pale. He has killed many in the past, all necessity wrought from war, but they had been enemies on the battlefield. He had never taken it upon himself to steal away the life of innocents with his blade for no purpose other than— what? She cannot even give him a reason why.]
You're lying.
[Perhaps not unintentionally, perhaps unknowingly, but he cannot happily swallow this bitter pill without questioning its validity.]
You're telling me that a straightforward mission to clear the area of monsters, and to investigate a reactor leak, led me to slaughter the townsfolk of Nibelheim? Even if the orders had come from above, that isn't something I would do. I'm not a monster.
[He isn’t.]