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Midgar is a shadow of green haze and smoke in the distance.
Their fight led them out past the plate and into the barren emptiness just outside the city. They’re perched side by side atop some abandoned building alone and empty by the side of the highway.
At some point, the fight petered out due to sheer exhaustion. They’re too evenly matched for any other result. Genesis had known he was too far away from the Shinra building to get what he wanted anyway, and Angeal wouldn’t have started a fight in the first place if his best friend wasn’t actively threatening his protégée. Once Zack was out of danger and Genesis relented, he saw no reason to continue.
The subject has not escaped his thoughts, however.
“Please don’t try to kill Zack again.”
Genesis tips his head forward, offers a sly sideways glance and half a grin. “I make no such promises, my friend.”
Angeal sighs, tipping his head up to the clouds in defeat. It’s possible to see the sky here, unclouded by the pollution of reactors. Genesis watches him, staring openly at the pristine white wings poking out of one side of Angeal’s back, stretched up towards whatever light filters through the grey above. His own wing lays limply at his side, and he idly takes a hold of his loathing for it, turns it over in his mind. It’s an ugly thing, twisted and wretched like a broken limb, without even the good grace to be a pretty shade of black. It’s like there’s a particularly mangled feather duster sticking out of his back.
He hates it.
“He looks like you, you know,” he remarks. “That puppy of yours. Have I ever told you? I’ve always harboured a suspicion that you took a liking to him out of some uncharacteristic sense of vanity.”
Angeal huffs a laugh. “You might have mentioned it.”
“Come, now,” Genesis smiles. And then, “Tell me why, of every First wannabe, he was the one you chose to take under your wing. I don’t think I’ve ever actually asked.”
Angeal smiles a proud, paternal sort of smile. “He wasn’t afraid of us like the others were. Every time he saw me, he’d come up and start a conversation. He used to ask me all these questions about being a First. You and Sephiroth –” Genesis’ lip curls at the name. “– were always too busy training or bothering each other to spend any time around the lower ranks, so I suppose he never got the chance to do the same with either of you. Eventually, I offered to give him a few pointers, and then I was training him every other day. It just… happened.”
“Yes,” Genesis says. “But why? You wouldn’t have wasted your time with him if there wasn’t something about him.”
“He had potential,” Angeal says. “Though it wasn’t just that, I suppose. He’s always smiling. He’s so determined to work hard to achieve his dreams, without ever getting held back by worrying about how he measures up to others.”
Genesis gives him a scornful look. “I take that as a personal affront, you know.”
“As well you should,” Angeal reprimands, purely out of habit. Then he shakes his head. “I just enjoyed training him. That’s all, really.”
Angeal looks at him, properly, in the way that only Angeal ever has, ever since they were children. Genesis can’t bear that look, to know that someone is really seeing him. It does away with so much of the layers of meticulous pretence he’s spent so long constructing. Just one more failure to fuel the sense of futility clawing further up his throat with each passing day.
Genesis has tried to be so many things, and at every single turn he has proven himself inadequate.
He wants to wrench the wing out of his shoulder and stomp on it until it’s a stain of unrecognisable gore beneath his boots. Instead, he wills it away so he doesn’t have to look at it. It retreats into his back with a small shower of dusty black feathers.
“You know, I don’t much mind which course of action you choose to take,” he says. It might be an admission, but he has never once admitted something to Angeal that the other hadn’t already known.
Angeal sighs again. “Really? You wanted me to turn against Shinra.”
“No, I wanted Shinra dead,” Genesis says, snarling around the word. It tastes rotten in his mouth. “I wanted to burn it all to the ground and to stand in the ashes. I never wanted to make you do anything you didn’t want to do. You needed to know, that’s all.”
“I’ll go back soon,” Angeal says.
“Why?” Genesis sneers.
It’s a genuine question underneath the posturing, though. He doesn’t understand how Angeal can stand to be around the people that made them this way, who used them to win wars and be public facsimiles to strength.
“For Zack,” Angeal says simply. “I have to try.”
Try to be good, he doesn’t say. Try to live up to the standard of honour he’s been building for years upon years.
“I’ll never understand you,” Genesis tells him snidely.
It’s not true, though. Empathise with, certainly not – they are too different. But understanding each other is always something they have been able to do.
Angeal doesn’t make any sort of rebuke, however. He just stares up at the sky.
-
Angeal comes to him in Modeoheim.
“Here to capture me for Shinra?” Genesis accuses.
“Must you always assume everything revolves around you?”
Genesis smirks. “Obviously.”
Angeal rolls his eyes. It’s nice, comforting in its familiarity.
“I have other business,” he says. “I knew you were here – there’s a unit on their way here right now, though I suspect you’re aware –”
“I shot them out of the sky about five minutes ago,” Genesis says proudly.
Angeal pinches the bridge of his nose. “I told you to stop trying to kill Zack.”
“And I said I would do no such thing.”
It sounds childish, but he doesn’t care. The degradation has begun to hurt past a manageable level of late, and the mako-based healing solutions to which he’s become accustomed only exacerbate the problem. The skin around the wound at his shoulder has begun to crack, to discolour like crumbling stone. His hair is dull, beginning to thread with grey, and this in particular is an inexcusable offence that Genesis cannot overlook.
He wants to speak of it out loud, to joke about the state of his hair with his best friend, to make light of this. In actuality, he can feel himself dying, and it terrifies him. He’s exhausted. Still strong enough to wipe out battalions, certainly – SOLDIER First class, for fuck’s sake – but he can feel it. He feels scruffy and worn. A part of him wants to run from this place, to get as far away from Angeal as possible so he doesn’t see him like this. Instead, he does what he always does. He carefully arranges his stance into the very picture of lazy surety, lifts his chin, and smirks. He projects the same vicious confidence as ever, dull hair be damned.
Angeal studies him, and sighs.
“Hollander can’t fix this, can he?”
Genesis doesn’t look away. “He hasn’t admitted as much yet, but no, I suspect he can’t.”
“Are you going to kill him?”
“Might as well.”
Angeal looks like he wants to say something to that, but he can’t. His mother is dead because of her part in all of this, and Genesis doesn’t think he is quite so principled as to advocate for the life of the man who is equally, if not more, accountable than she.
“Sephiroth’s shut himself in a room somewhere. I wanted you to know.”
Genesis tuts. “Sulking?”
“He’s holed up with every piece of Hollander’s research he can find.”
Ah, and that hurts. He’s barely stood in the same room as his friend since he defected, has only had proper dealings with Angeal and his puppy, and now Angeal wants him to believe that Sephiroth is actually trying to… to what? To help? Sephiroth isn’t stupid, he must realise that what’s left of Hollander’s research is useless. Everything important has long since been moved. If Sephiroth had any care at all to apprehend Genesis, to bring him back, he would come himself. Not that Genesis would acquiesce, but he has never once won a fight against Sephiroth, and he sure as hell isn’t capable of it now, with his body falling to pieces.
“He blames himself,” Angeal tries.
This is not the right thing to say. Genesis snarls and strikes out at whatever’s within reach – a piece of rubble connects with his boot and goes flying into a wall. Dust and detritus shower the floor.
“It’s still about him. It’s always about him!”
“He’s upset,” Angeal corrects him sternly, “that someone he cares about is dying because of him.”
Genesis draws his sword. He points it right at Angeal’s throat with precision tight enough to shave the stupid stubble right off his chin if he so wished. He doesn’t want to fight Angeal, but he wants to hurt something. Violence curls tight in his limbs.
“I am dying,” he spits, “because I am a poorly created monster whose nature finally caught up to it. I am not dying because of him.”
Angeal shoves the blade away from his neck in a long-suffering sort of way.
“He offered to give blood for you the second Hollander mentioned transfusion, you know. You should’ve seen the face he made when Hollander told him he wasn’t a viable donor – you would’ve needled him endlessly about that. He looked like a kicked puppy.”
Genesis pointedly moves his sword back to Angeal’s neck.
What a thought that is. Sephiroth’s perfect blood in his veins, liquid gold threading through rot. Sephiroth, offering himself up without thought. Sephiroth, upset over not being able to help.
Angeal swats the rapier away harder this time, irritation drawing his eyebrows together. Genesis relents, idly spinning his weapon just to stay in motion.
“Sephiroth isn’t coming after you because he doesn’t want to have to kill you. Or me. You understand that, don’t you?”
“He’ll have to kill me,” Genesis says. “Or I will burn this world to the ground.”
And then Angeal actually laughs. “You’re so dramatic.” And then he gives an odd sort of smile, and something in Genesis aches under all that fury. “I’ll be seeing you, Genesis.”
-
Hollander’s fatal mistake is that, after everything, he underestimated Genesis’ senses. He doesn’t wait until Angeal is far enough from the warehouse to ambush him. Genesis listens as Hollander talks fast and low, excitedly explaining how Angeal is his perfect achievement, how he’s a perfect two-way conduit, how he is stable – unlike Genesis, who is beyond fixing.
Angeal only looks at him with silent disgust and shoves him away, heading off into the snow for whatever business he has here.
Genesis idly wanders back down to the basement, and when Hollander follows some minutes later, Genesis turns his earlier violence to this new receptacle. It’s satisfying to watch Hollander’s face twist in terror at the rapier held an inch from his skin, scared of Genesis in a way that Angeal never would be. He blabbers excuses and promises to work harder on his research and pleads that Genesis can’t kill him, because who will fix the degradation then? Genesis advances on him wordlessly, angry, enjoying the fear in his eyes.
Of course, that’s when Zack and some stupid blonde infantryman show up, and; good. He needs to fight something, has been itching for it for some time now.
He wants this to hurt.
It ends up hurting a lot more than expected.
Ah, well, Genesis thinks as he plummets through smoke.
-
When Genesis realises Angeal is dead, his first reaction is rage.
Rage at Angeal for being so disgusted at himself when he was the success of the two of them.
Rage at Sephiroth for not trying harder to find them both.
Rage at himself for feeling so empty.
Rage at Angeal again. Rage at the fact that the last time they’d seen each other, Angeal had known perfectly well what was coming, and had spent all of his time talking nonsense about Sephiroth instead of –
Rage at Angeal’s sad smile tattooed to the backs of his eyes and rage at the “I’ll be seeing you, Genesis” ringing in his ears, because he will never see Angeal again.