[He wonders at that family dynamic. What it might be like, to have a mother as a constant, a father a bit more distant, and a bevy of siblings to keep one entertained. Were the days filled with noise, with compromise and cooperation, a home full of warm bodies to annoy each other, or keep each other company? He imagines, if nothing else, it would stave off any sense of loneliness.

My ma was a saint. Sephiroth turns over those words, the past tense. His brow furrows, wondering if he’s overstepped, but then Luka sends the question right back at him, and he shakes his head. The gentle tug and pull of his hair, deft fingers working through the silver, is felt all the more prominently because of it.]

No.

[No, his childhood consisted of a rotating staff of scientists with Hojo always at the helm. His family was a seventy-storey building planted in the middle of Midgar, his hearth and home the laboratories within. Glass, steel, businessmen and military uniforms.

He’s silent, wondering how to broach that subject. What to shear away and what to reveal — and he decides, in the end, that there’s really nothing to keep to himself. What did it matter?]

I don’t have any siblings. My mother died soon after I was born; I know nothing about her, other than her name. And that’s more than what I know about my father.

[But there’s a detached way in which he says it, purposefully unaffected.]

I was in the company's care, so they raised me. If you count that as family.