guestservices | AUDIENCE FOR: Butt Strife

And if other people feel like it's worth talking about? How do you tell them no?

[listen they are same hat. he is now just nosy.]

After you reach the goal you have set and get everyone to safety. That should be the priority.

I don't know. People didn't try to get me to talk about anything this hard before this place. Maybe in the Realm, but then I had the advantage of not remembering jack for them to ask about.

[ a little. dryly on that one. ]

People generally take no better back home.

[ most of the time they are dealing with their own shit and no one has time to fully address anything also that helps ]

[. . .]

I had almost all of memories wiped several decades ago. It's both weird and frustrating when people ask me about things I don't remember at all. It wasn't really until recently that people tried to ask me stuff, too.

Most people are good at leaving things alone. But eventually you meet someone stubborn enough who won't. That's all.

... What's with everyone in this place and memory stuff?

[ half to himself, a little wry, a little wary. he shakes his head because this is Not nico's problem to deal with ]

Stubbornness is definitely the one trait everyone here's got in common. [ himself included, he knows. ]

[shrug.]

It's not really a common factor I wish I had with people. And I'd say I'd like if people were a little less stubborn, but that would be a lie. Stubbornness is probably going to be what helps you guys win.

Yeah, probably. [ he can agree to that. there's a long pause, though, because it's a subject change but. buuut. ] How do you deal with it? The forgetting.

[mmm....]

...for a long time, I didn't really. Not very well. For a while, I don't know if I really understood just how much I had forgotten. Maybe I thought that was normal. Kids forget things sometimes, but I still knew a lot of basic facts. I knew my name. I knew I was ten. I knew some of the things I liked. And I knew my sister and I only had each other. After she died and I was alone it got worse. I wanted to get answers. I was willing to do whatever it took to get them but eventually I had to stop and reassess what I was doing with my life and what ghosts I really wanted to chase.

Even now, it comes and goes. Sometimes I remember things like learning about terza rima in elementary school but I can't recall the last thing I ate. I can remember certain conversations with my father in the most inappropriate moments, but I can't always clearly picture my mother's face. Everything has changed so drastically from what it was before I lost those memories that sometimes I accidentally find new things that make it worse.

[none of this is reassuring, but.]

...but like I said. Eventually everyone meets someone stubborn enough to stick around and try to help you remember the things you forget or make up for the gaps you can never recover. I've forgotten a lot, but a lot of the things I do remember aren't always good either. Having some people who don't know how to back off does help a little to try and put things together.

[ oh he's kind of sorry he asked. he didn't want to depress nico, for one. (and some of the rest of those feelings sound too familiar, and he is not sure he wants to address that possibility fully currently.)

... he hesitantly reaches out to squeeze his shoulder once before removing his hand ]

Sorry. I wasn't...

[ trying to remind him of said bad stuff? he frowns, relents; ]

I don't know if it is a memory thing. Not totally. But there are... gaps. [ and that's why he asked, he means. ] I don't know.

[he doesn't seem that sad, or maybe he's just constantly miserable enough it's looped around to normal. so he lets the shoulder squeeze happen before shaking his head.]

You didn't do anything wrong. But I thought context would help. [there's a soft hum to that though.] ...how noticeable are these gaps?

... There's things that are clearer. And stuff that feels more... muddled. I know it... had to have happened, but I can't always remember the details. [ there's another pause ] ... Five years ago, I don't remember what happened after I killed Sephiroth. I don't remember... most of those years. I know I spent some of it traveling back. That I decided to go back to Midgar to be a mercenary. But the rest is all-- a blur.

[...there's a pause.]

But he didn't stay dead. Right?

No, he didn't. [ a little darkly ] ... I don't know how, but he's done a lot of stuff that should be impossible.

[give him a second to think.]

What exactly is he? When people don't stay dead, it usually means either they weren't killed with the right kind of weapon, they're not fully mortal, or there's something deeply wrong with the planet that death doesn't stick.

... I'm not sure.

[ there's a pause ]

There's some stuff wrong with the planet, but I don't think that's why. [ he's not entirely sure because it's complicated, but. ] Back then, he said... his mother was a Cetra. We call them the Ancients. They're the people that were there before us on the planet. [ he frowns a little more deeply ] ... Aerith is one.

[ he doesn't know if jenova actually is a cetra, because she looks. fucking weird. then again cloud did mostly meet her head and then the rest of her body sans head. so. ]

[sure, okay, that makes sense.]

By nature, we're harder to kill, too. [they're not cetras or anything, but they are designed differently.] But that doesn't mean it's impossible. You think he's telling the truth?

... He sure seemed to think so. [ cloud's eyes look a little faraway for a second before he shakes his head ] He's definitely not human, anyway. Not fully. I've seen his mother. Or... what's left of her. So... yeah. Maybe that's how he did it.