[It’s once more similar to what Cloud had told him, barely even couched in differing rhetoric. And it should provide more comfort than what it does, if not for Aerith being correct on all other accounts — the endless sense of being different, and being alone, and the rest of this ugliness that had long crystallized at his core, cannot be swept away with a handful of reassurances. He only knows how to keep it all locked inside, to let it sit and weigh and fester, as she said. The reason Sephiroth allows anything to slip through now is due to extenuating circumstances; both his affected mind and a subject too cumbersome to know how to truly process.

But as he looks at her, pale brow pinching above searching eyes, perhaps her words are just enough to win the smallest of acquiescences, dulling the hardest edges of his uncertainties.]

You’re so certain that the future isn’t already written. Even though you and Cloud have already lived it.

[Hasn’t it gained permanence through that alone? He wonders if the future is as malleable as they make it sound.

With that, a full accedence seems to overcome him, and Sephiroth takes that once-offered seat — the berry-drunkness has him sinking low to his knees, pressed into the blades of grass beneath him. His wings are so long that his flight feathers protest and splay across the ground.]

And if we return to Gaia and nothing changes?