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It had been a year almost to the day.
In their perhaps foolish benevolence, the fractured group of SOLDIER First Class’ and their companions had agreed to give Rufus Shinra a chance to show he could be a better man than his father had been. It had not been an easy decision. Genesis himself was more keen on burning the operation down and believed they were only fooling themselves by walking away for so long, but he couldn't deny that none of them were in their best fighting form. Leaving an enemy at their back wasn't ideal, but he understood why this was the decision they'd come to and played along. Despite what was often said about him, Genesis could be reasonable when he saw the point in being so.
It didn’t hurt that it was a sore subject that they all understood. After all, if anyone could understand the sins of the father (and the mother/alien donor/dear Goddess what else for that matter), it was certainly them.
Whether you wanted to count his foster parents, some unknown woman unfortunate enough to have been killed by his own birth – a fact that he took some perverse joy in noting that he had now beaten Sephiroth's record as he'd been approximately seven when he'd taken his first life while Genesis had done it at minutes old – or the man responsible for their entire ordeal, there were no good option for his parental figures.
The only reason he didn't disown his entire biological association with anyone was Aerith.
Aerith, who was also part of the reason he was standing on the sands he'd roamed his entire childhood because it appeared that they had all gone ‘home’ eventually. Angeal had been here before, but Genesis hadn’t been ready to so he had not gone with him. There were lingering aches that had come with a new limb, leaving him tired more easily and snapping at everyone in sight as he adjusted to a new normal. As normal as anything was for them.
Truthfully, Genesis was not ready to be here now either but Aerith’s path seemed more important than his discomfort at seeing the hollowed out ruin of Banora.
If there had been a watch word for their lives at the moment, it would be ‘origins’. It was kicked off by the revelation that Lucrecia Crescent, professional monster fucker and spectacularly late to the party, was still alive in some form. It had sent Sephiroth into a spiral the likes of which they had rarely seen before Cloud and Tifa – the former eager to make sure Shinra had not restarted any funny business in his own home town and the latter running an errand for her own rag tag crew of wide eyed misfits attempting to save the planet from being bled dry – ended up taking him up to meet Sephiroths mother’s former lover in Nibelheim and come to some sort of consensus on what to do with all of it.
Angeal, for his part, had ended up accompanying a sheepish puppy to go and speak to his own parents. It had turned out the little country town had taken in several of SOLDIER’s newest lost lambs and no one knew how to herd them like Angeal. He’d been herding Genesis and Zack most of their lives.
That left Aerith trying to connect with her own heritage, trying to find what was left of the ancient civilisation that hadn’t been drowned, destroyed or hoarded away by Shinra where it couldn’t be found. While Banora had been decimated by Shinra, the caves below were largely intact and within them, the old temple that Genesis had forged his sense of destiny on as a child. If the ruins could help Aerith's quest to find out what it truly meant to be the last Cetra, he could try to give her that.
For her part, Aerith had also just wanted to see the place he'd been raised. Genesis understood that. Angeal still spoke of it fondly, even if Genesis theorised this was some sort of self delusion as a way of coping with it all. From the mounting research and the remains of the original Jenova project, they knew life had begun in Nibelheim for all of them even if no one had stayed there for long but this was as close at it got for Angeal and himself. Sephiroth's childhood home – and Aerith’s – was the cold steel of Shinra’s laboratories. They'd all seen that in one way or another.
Genesis supposed he ought to be grateful for the life he’d had but a terrible thing that could have been worse is not much of a defence. If anything, it seemed to hurt all the more for it.
The sense of betrayal was breathtaking no matter how much time passed. As much as he had longed to leave for some larger life than he had, there was a part of him that had been truly happy here in his childhood. Around every corner, the memory of climbing trees or play fighting on the beach or swimming just beyond where they were supposed to because rebellion had always lived in his bones. In every step, he could feel the weight off that loss and an uncomfortable amount of guilt over ending his foster mothers life here.
Simply put, Banora – what was left of it – broke his heart and there was enough broken in him without forcing himself to confront that.
Yet there they were – two beings embodying the ancient civilisation heralded to the point of being mythic and the remains of the monster that wiped them from the planet. Oh, and they’re related.
Clearly the fates were not only cruel but had a sense of humour.
It could have been worse. There was even a certain beauty in the ruins. It made the place look ancient, the bubbling pools of the lifestream visible beneath cracks in the surface and he wondered if the place would simply come apart and fall into the sea. Whether he wanted it or dreaded the very idea of it, he didn't know. What he did know was that Aerith had shared what parts of her life she could with him and he owed her the same while they still had the option. Too much being forgotten leading to disaster seemed to be a common thread these days.
“Shit!”
Genesis was knocked out of his reverie by Aerith slipping on one of the jagged rocks on the way down, stopping herself just before the plunge. Her dress was caught on one of the jagged edges and she had to carefully extricate herself from it.
“Remind me to procure you some appropriate clothing,” Genesis said, jumping down to meet her. It was different for a SOLDIER, gravity meant little to them where Aerith seemed to make an enemy of it several times a week. He had to be able to do better than Shinra’s designers; he had better taste than balloon pants at the very least.
“For climbing into caves?” Aerith said, taking his offered hand. “Do you foresee a lot of this in my future?”
“Much of what was left of the Cetran civilisation is likely buried,” Genesis pointed out. “Frequent spelunking could be in your future. I’d prefer you had some decent armour regardless. You never know when you’re going to have to use it.”
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt,” Aerith agreed.
It was so strange to think of the contrast between her and the other ‘lab grown’ resident of the house. Sephiroth had always been someone who relied heavily on microexpressions and body codes unless you managed to really piss him off as few people (Genesis notwithstanding) could. Aerith on the other hand presented her emotions like an open book.
Maybe it was another familial parallel between them – wielded correctly, the truth was a better armour than any lie.
"Maybe something for magical resistance," Aerith continued. “I do know a guy.”
“I’m shocked.”
What he had found was that during her years in Midgar, Aerith seemed to 'know a guy' for most things. If they'd met when he was a teenager, they'd have raised hell together. It was hard not to be a little sad they hadn't, but he supposed they would never have been teenagers together. She was seven years his junior and he couldn't imagine his sixteen year old self being all that interested in spending time with a nine-year-old.
It would have been fun to teach her though. Unsurprisingly, she had a natural gift with magic be it runic or materia in the same way Genesis did.
(“I always thought I got that from Mom,” Aerith had told him months ago. They were looking at rapier and the runes he’d worked himself stupid on as a teenager so they’d be perfect for how he fought. “That it all came so naturally because of her. Are you sure we don’t share her?”
Sephiroth, given his up to his eyeballs in the remains of the project, had shut it down. “According to the annotations, they did not meet your mother until after Genesis had already been created.”
“Conceived,” Genesis had corrected him. No matter what they had to deal with, they were still human enough for that to be the correct term.
Sephiroth had waved him off. “Gast was the foremost authority on materia. It’s not surprising that you have a shared affinity.”
Personally, Genesis would like to question those credentials given he couldn’t tell the difference between an alien virus and a set of Cetran remains. However, attempting to point this out resulted in a pillow to the head. Sephiroth picking up Zack Fair's bad habits hadn't been on his bingo card for this year but it was better than obsessive moping. )
“How old were you when you found this?”
Aerith had uncovered the remains of an old desk that Genesis had used, covered in random trinkets he'd felt were important at the time. They seemed almost meaningless in retrospect; ways of trying to prove he was someone special in the vain hopes of convincing himself that whatever he'd been feeling, how out of place and uncomfortable he’d been in the pit of his stomach, was nothing more than mere insecurity.
Idiot.
“When I was young, I once believed there were people who lived down here. So when I chose to run away over something or other, this is where I came in the hopes of finding…something.” It was strange to think about now. The cavern had seemed cacophonous when he'd been younger and it all suddenly felt ever so small. “I was seven.”
“That's funny,” Aerith said brightly.
Genesis couldn't keep the irritation out of his response. “I know I'm struggling to contain my mirth about it.”
“Not funny as in joke funny but–“ Aerith said, looking around. “That's when I was born, when you were seven.”
Interesting coincidence, he supposed.
“Then when I was seven, that's when I ran away too.” Aerith added. “Maybe it's our lucky number.”
“I don't believe in luck,” Genesis replied, but he had to admit, it was a little strange. When she was seven was, he would have been fourteen – the age he'd left for Midgar to join SOLDIER.
It seemed as a family, the seven year itch was a very real thing.
“Why were you running?” Aerith asked, picking up one of the little trophy cups.
Truthfully, he could barely remember what it was for. It had been difficult to think of these memories at all, pushing them out of his mind because they'd just end up tainted by everything he knew now but he hadn't meant to forget them completely. Trying to surgically cut around Shinra's interference with his life was an increasingly difficult task given how much of his life had been because of or inside Shinra itself.
At some point, he was going to have to go up to Nibelheim and talk to Gillian about all of this. Angeal already had to a degree, he knew, but Genesis hadn’t wanted to touch it with a ten foot pole while he was still smarting from their encounter with Jenova. Between the wing, the fatigue and his near death experience, he wasn’t ready to jump into the fight again yet.
Maybe it was time.
On the way back, perhaps. It would give them the chance to verify with Cloud that yes, Reactor One had been cleared out and to discuss in depth more about the reactors effects with Tifa’s people. It had been a source of much debate over the last year.
It wouldn’t hurt to be there for Sephiroth talking to Vincent Valentine either. Given that he'd had a full blown panic attack at the idea of speaking to the woman while she was in stasis, Genesis had wanted to go with him but relented when it was agreed he would go if Sephiroth chose to go and see her. There were some situations that Genesis could light a fire in that apparently could not be solved with magic.
Too much dramatic red in one village made things awkward, it seemed.
Suddenly, he became aware that he had simply not answered Aerith and she was watching him with that oddly knowing expression. “Hi,” she said.
Genesis pushed his shoulder back, ignoring the twinge of it. It had never felt completely right, but it was likely the addition of a limb he’d gone most of his life without affecting his weight distribution.
“It's a complicated memory,” he said simply. “Let me show you the remains, or we'll end up having to spend the night and I may have to find out whether you were joking about the ability to see ghosts.”
It was a more careful walk than he remembered it being, but there was still something soothing about the markings inside what he imagined was an old temple. There were beings of a similar sentience to humans in the Cetran era, beings with extraordinary abilities who could become patrons of places and he supposed he'd always liked to believe this was his own personal version of the Goddess.
“She looks like a priestess,” Aerith said, running her fingers along the chipped mural. “But it's hard to tell. There were so many beings that once existed now only exist as summons, parts of themselves they left behind.”
“I did look,” Genesis admitted. While he had found materia, he'd never managed to actually bring a manifestation forth. “Do you think it's the same era?”
“I think she's connected,” Aerith smiled at him. “The armour looks a lot like some of the other things I’ve seen, like the church carvings in Kalm. Baby Genesis had some good instincts.”
“I wonder where those went,” Genesis snorted.
“I'm serious!” Aerith bounded up in a way not too dissimilar from Zack. He really needed to limit their time together. “You knew people lived down here once, or at least, that this was where people lived before it was buried. You knew something important was here and wanted to stay. I know how you feel – it's like something is singing to me, through me, all of these voices all at once. Like they're whispering or talking in the next room.”
There was an uncomfortable similarity in that to things he knew he'd dreamt of as a child. With this alien mess, he'd assumed that whatever connected them, this was perhaps what he'd been hearing as a small child before he'd come here and the memory had stuck with him.
“Do you know what they're saying?” Genesis asked.
Aerith closed her eyes and clasped her hands, silent for several tense moments before she shook her head. “I feel like I’m eavesdropping,” she admitted. “I don't know if it's meant for me.”
“If there is anyone it is meant for,” Genesis pointed out. “It's you. You might be the last person who can hear it.”
“I don't know about that,” Aerith shook her head. “I think lots of people can hear the lifestream. I just don't think they know how to listen properly, and I'm not sure the lifestream talks back to them the way it does with me sometimes. Maybe they're just saying 'butt out'.”
Somehow, Genesis doubted that.
There had been more and more pressure building somewhere in these pockets of the lifestream, even back at the house. Aerith's discomfort had become all the more obvious the longer it went on, but she insisted it was simply that she wasn't used to how big the world was and it was an adjustment. Almost a year in and the deadline for Shinra's dismantling of anything remotely connected with the Calamity approaching, this wasn't something he could still believe.
It felt as if this was a warning.
“Did you come down here alone?” Aerith wandered off to the crystals, kneeling to touch them.
Genesis shook his head, even though she couldn't see him. “Angeal came along sometimes, but he prefers his roots above ground. I believe the monster remains unsettled him.”
“There's monster remains?” Aerith asked.
Had he not told her about those? Well, it hadn't really come up. This entire trip was organised in just a few days, perhaps in response to his own ill mood. Never did he like to be idle for long.
“I have never examined them closely,” Genesis said. Why, he wasn’t sure. It was something unsettling, this creature caught in the crystalline structure and Angeal had gone so far as to refuse to get even close enough to touch the crystals. Not cowardice, but something else – that instinct again? “Truthfully, I don’t even remember what sort of monster it is.”
As they approached it, Genesis realised that even now, even having seen all sorts of creatures and contraptions, he still didn’t know what it was. Some sort of creature that remained from the Cetran era? There was something about that, something about the concept of the only children of the man who had dug up the remains of a monster from the Cetran era and created this mess, finding another set of remains that they couldn’t identify that sat uncomfortably in his stomach.
Especially when Aerith, having placed her hands on the crystals and gone silent, stumbled back suddenly so fast and with such a yelp that he thought she may have hurt herself. He grabbed her hands, scraping his own on the sharp rubble remains in the process and cursing himself for not wearing his gloves due to the summer heat.
“I realise it’s unsettling–”
“That’s not a monster.” Aerith’s voice had changed. This was not the sing song of her good humour or curiosity but the firm voice she took when things became entirely too serious. “That’s a weapon.”
“A Cetran weapon?” That made no sense. Shinra had been in these caves. If it was a weapon, they’d have hacked it out and used it. Unless they couldn’t extricate it or simply did not know what it was.
“No,” Aerith said. “A Planet weapon. I didn’t know – I thought Mom said that the planet made weapons - and it always sounded like it should Weapons with a big W - to stop Jenova but that the Cetra managed it instead.”
“A weapon to stop Jenova sounds like an excellent thing to have,” Genesis said. Except Aerith didn’t look happy about it. She looked upset, perhaps even fearful. “Why would it be a bad thing? Are you concerned it could fall in the wrong hands?”
“I don’t know,” Aerith said, turning to face him. “Something’s wrong.”
“Several,” Genesis agreed. "Which in particular is bothering you?"
“No,” Aerith said. She was shaking her head, as if trying to clear her mind physically could be done. “Something’s really wrong. I think I can hear it, the weapon.”
“It’s sentient?” It didn’t look as if it was live in any sense, but according to Angeal, neither had the remains of Jenova.
“I can’t explain it,” Aerith said. “I just know something is wrong but I can’t hear well enough to know what it is or what to do.”
There was lifestream running all under the caverns, so Genesis wasn’t sure if there was a place she could get closer to it in a safe way. Not here, anyway.”Is there a way to hear it better?”
“Maybe,” Aerith said. “I know there’s other temples…and there’s the city…”
The former Cetran capitol. The same city Aerith had confessed that she felt terrified of. Why, she had never been able to say, but she said it was as if she was being pulled there and she was afraid of what that would mean for her. That the pull was so strong, but she didn’t understand it and she didn’t want to go there until she did.
“Then what we require is information,” Genesis said. “Didn’t you say Tifa’s little group, they had some experience with planetology? If this is a planet created being, then would they not be who to speak to?”
Aerith looked terribly rigid, as if she was very purposefully refusing to look at the damn thing. “Barret might know where to find someone,” she agreed. “But he’s with Tifa right now.”
“Nibelheim’s not that far,” Genesis said. It was nearer than Midgar. “This doesn’t seem like the sort of conversation you can have on a PHS.”
“No,” Aerith admitted. “Genesis?”
“Last time I checked, yes.” Genesis said.
“This is yours, isn’t it?” Aerith said.
Genesis hadn’t even noticed she was still holding one of his old notebooks. She must have walked off with it. “I’m surrounded by the sticky fingered,” he groused. “If you want to make notes, I had my own book and pen. You didn’t need to bring that one.”
Aerith shook her head. “Did you draw this?”
It was an image of the crystals, but not by his hand. “It looks like Angeal’s handiwork,” he said. “I’m surprised, he always said the sight was unsettling for him.”
“Is it accurate?” Aerith asked.
“Insomuch as it can be from what, a ten year old?” Genesis said. It had been done with some of his colouring pencils by the looks of it, all greens and blues and whites. It wasn’t bad. He’d always had a good eye for this sort of thing; it was why his photography could be captivating. “I don’t understand what art critique has to do with this.”
“There’s no red,” Aerith said bluntly.
“No red?”
Genesis snatched the book from her hand and then looked back at the frozen creature…which sure enough, there were slots on it but not on the drawing. He’d certainly had a red pencil and there was no reason Angeal wouldn’t have included that.
“Well,” Genesis said, looking back at her. “That seems ridiculously ominous. Does the planet manufacture with an on/off button? Is it conscious?”
“I don’t think it’s fully asleep,” Aerith said. “And I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.”
“In my experience, ancient things frozen in structures waking up has been very much not a good thing.” Genesis replied. “Do you think it was the bombing?”
“I don’t know,” Aerith said. “I was so young and I don’t remember everything Mom told me but there might be a way to find out. Sephiroth said those rooms were monitored when he was a child, right? Same time I would have been there?”
“Yes.” Genesis had even found a few of the tapes in his rummaging as a teenager and been disturbed enough to destroy them. “I imagine they’re buried in with the mess Kunsel’s made of the hall closet, there’s an insane amount of tapes in there. You saw Sephiroth having his surveillance obsession in the spring. Do you believe there may be footage of something that could help?”
“I think Hojo liked to keep things on ice just in case,” Aerith said.
“Including his wife, apparently.” Genesis replied. “But fine, we can see if we can track down the surveillance for your childhood as we have with his, we can clear out another closet. Do you remember when she told you?”
Aerith shook her head. “I could ask her.”
Genesis simply stared at her. “I don’t mean to be indelicate, but she’s dead.”
“She’s in the lifestream,” Aerith explained. “When I was really little, I could find her voice so easily…it’s harder now. I can’t really remember what she sounded like but I could still hear her sometimes in Midgar.”
“You can hear an individual voice in the lifestream?” That was news to him.
“I used to see her too,” Aerith admitted. “I didn’t know if it was real…I mean, I thought it was real at the time but when I got older, I wasn’t sure.That maybe it was just my mind trying to give me something to help me stop being scared.”
“Then it appears our salvation lies in finding you a way to communicate more closely with the planet and the lifestream,” Genesis said. He wasn’t even going to try and sort that out right now. “If only to reassure you that on this particular day, I withheld my red pencil from Angeal and there’s nothing to worry about.”
Aerith smiled, a small thing. “You don’t believe that, do you?”
“Gods no,” Genesis admitted. “But I was willing to let you maintain some pleasant delusions until we got to Nibelheim.”
“Aw,” Aerith said. “Let’s not do that though, okay? Lying seems to be the root of a lot of the problems around here and you’re usually the person who likes to cut through the bullshit.”
Genesis could hardly argue with that. “Then I suggest we go find out how to have a conversation with a celestial body and find out what exactly Shinra have done that could be causing such a response.”
“Other than the reactors?” Aerith said.
“It was a weapon for my esteemed alien donor,” Genesis replied. “Not a reactor. The reactors were there when I was a child. I suggest we go talk to what remains of the so-called Jenova experts and see if we can figure out exactly how Shinra has screwed us this time.”
“And you want to see if Sephiroth’s okay,” Aerith said.
Genesis refused to rise to the bait.
“We’re fully capable of multitasking,” he said. “And the deadline is almost upon us. If something is happening that goes against our agreement, I’m looking forward to hanging Rufus Shinra from his oversized vanity project by his innards and getting to say ‘I told you so’ while I do.”