but what if the sword kills the pen? // GENESIS HAS SOFT SKILLS AU

[lovelessinner]

"Am I an human being...?"

Sephiroth asks and Genesis knows the answer. He has been waiting for this moment, repeating the words again and again, the truth he holds over his rival, his friend, his... But Sephiroth sounds raw and vulnerable in a way that makes his something between Genesis' ribs twist. He knows Sephiroth, he would dare to say he knows him better than anyone. Angeal didn't engage in petty rivalries, didn't share the spirit of challenge like they did. Angeal didn't burn for him as Genesis did, still does...

Standing there, waiting for his moment to interrupt, he remembers how the fire suddenly became poison and the jealousy still feels like bile on his throat, the same as the pulsing pain on his shoulder, growing impossible to ignore with each day. It was his own sword, and it could have been almost funny if it didn't become a tragedy so fast.

A tragedy indeed...

But there was more. So much more.

It wasn't always envy, or desperation. The desire of wanting to live knowing he was doomed in favor of the person he once idolized. He wants to claw the life out of Sephiroth and drink it all for himself. But it wasn't always like that and that glimpse, that flash of something broken and fearful in Sephiroth reminds Genesis that...

That everything he wanted, once, was to share an apple with him. The forbidden fruit. And those feelings only grew stronger once he was able to meet the real him. And now there he is, at his most vulnerable. Holding the salvation Genesis craves. It would be so easy to snatch that heart for himself.

'I could make you love me,' Genesis thinks. 'Need me, before I disappear."

It's just a couple of seconds after Sephiroth says those words, but Genesis' mind and heart work faster.

He flies into the scene, the scenario is all his. There's other way he can do this, and all eyes are on him.

"You're the one who gets to decide that, old friend."

Comments

[labgrownmessiah]

"Project G..." The project that resulted in Genesis's conception. Sephiroth crosses his arms, thinking back to the small scraps of notes they found in Hollander's lab at Mako Reactor 5. "An attempt to use the cells of an Ancient to manufacture individuals with the powers of the Ancients at scale." This project had resulted in Genesis's conception, and Angeal's. "That's all I know. Hollander was otherwise quite thorough in removing or destroying detailed records on the project."

He had thought the G stood for Genesis, when he read the project summary. Later, he was corrected - they had named the project for the scientist whose body and labor (literally) formed its basis: Gillian.

Had Lucrecia Crescent collaborated on that project?

[lovelessinner]

"Not an Ancient, but they didn't know that..." He moves a hand to his shoulder, the wound pulsing with the memory. He thought after taking Sephiroth to his side, he could talk more lightly about this. Hah. He feels a stab of pain just by hearing Sephiroth's words but doesn't react to it, Genesis just breathes sharply once and walks around the room to defuse his tension.

"Jenova was the monster the science department found and mistook for an Ancient. Its cells were injected into Gillian. Angeal and I, we were both exposed to Gillian's cells contaminated by Jenova's traits. It wasn't pure enough, it was a... a failed experiment."

Failed. The words carry such venom Genesis can't help but growl them. A failure, he could never rival Sephiroth. Since his birth, he was supposed to lose.

"This is just a conjecture, my friend, but I think when they realized our case was a failure, it was when your mother was pregnant... It was just in time to try something new."

[labgrownmessiah]

Sephiroth's head snaps up.

"You're suggesting -"

(The word J-E-N-O-V-A twists above the reactor door. The pipes pulse, feeding the pods in the room. A monster's womb.)

Gillian, injected with the cells of a monster, had helped to bear two boys into the world. And died by her own hand, when her brood came home to roost.

Sephiroth's breath quickens, in the second after he cuts himself off. His eyes widen. His pupils dilate, and contract. (His head hurts again.) If they injected the mother with the cells of the monster, and found the children to be lacking -

"You're suggesting they chimerized me in the womb."

My mother's name was -

Hojo didn't lie. He told a piece of the truth. From a certain point of view.

[lovelessinner]

Genesis closes his eyes. He remembers when he found out. The pain, the anger, and the feeling of despair grew inside him when he became aware of his monstrosity. But even worse, a lacking monster.

But most of all, he remembers how much he desired not to be alone.

He slowly moves closer to Sephiroth, resting a hand on his wrist, talking close to his ear, low, quiet but sincere.

"You were conceived as any child is. You had a mother like Angeal had. One who resembled you. The rest is Shinra's sins."

[labgrownmessiah]

Genesis's touch is soft; his words are gentle, empathetic. But they fall on deaf ears, on numb skin. Sephiroth jerks violently away from him. "One who resembles me?!" He seizes the portrait and thrusts it towards Genesis. "Which of these people gave me my hair color, I wonder? Lucrecia is sitting - do you think she crowned two meters standing up? In fact -" he flings it back towards the table, where it scatters the silverware and dishes all around, crashing, the tinkling of broken glass - "was it her pupils that slit like a cat's? Hojo told me that was the mako exposure! The mako exposure! Except no one else in SOLDIER developed a tapetum lucidum, did they?!"

Ranting. Deranged. Is this what it is like, to be de-ranged? Un-hinged? Flapping like a poorly bolted door? That feeling is crawling in his veins again, prickling his skin, though rather than coming from all around him, it is calling him, pulling him. The reactor. The answers are at the reactor -

"The thing is at the reactor," he growls, and steps towards the window.

[lovelessinner]

The portrait falls with a crack noise because Genesis doesn't catch it. He's busy moving towards Sephiroth, taking his face in his hands so he will look at him.

"Sephiroth!" He calls him again. If he had a surname, he would call him for his full name, but Sephiroth wasn't even granted that. "Look at me!"

He doesn't look well, it's too much information. Genesis knows it, goddess, he deserted because of this. He drew countless other SOLDIERs to their deaths because of this. Angeal died because of this. But they are together now, things can be different. Their story can have a happy ending.

"That thing is nothing!" He yells. "Don't let it haunt you, not when you're finally close to the truth. Isn't this what you wanted? To know more about your mother? I don't have any idea what my parents looked like but to me... You have her eyes. Those are eyes of yearning, not of a monster."

[labgrownmessiah]

Again, Genesis's voice cuts through the noise, the chaos in his mind - the need that seized him. Genesis pulls him back from the window, turns him, takes Sephiroth's face in his hands. His gloves brush Sephiroth's skin, the leather warm with the heat of his hands. Look at me! he commands, as at the reactor, and Sephiroth has to. His words wash that feeling away, that compulsion that seized Sephiroth so intensely again.

(Eyes of yearning... Right now, Genesis would see the yearning in those eyes, that terrible need. Like a terrified chocobo, bolting, seeking its herdmates, seeking its master. When Sephiroth's eyes were torn from Mt. Nibel in the distance, that need, those reins flew free for a moment. And now Genesis holds them in his hands.)

What was he doing? His search for his mother - the thing that had driven him all his life - has just had a breakthrough, a revelation! Whether he was tampered with in her womb didn't matter - he was still carried there, wasn't he? Sephiroth reaches up and grips Genesis's wrists where they cradle his face.

"We..." Both products - products - of Shinra. Their fates are one. "We have been robbed of our birthright." The right of a child to know his parents. To know his blood. "All this - all this, because Shinra wanted an Ancient. "Hojo, Hollander, Shinra - they wanted monsters, didn't they?" His breathing is harsh. He stares into Genesis as though he had never seen him before. "I think we should show them the fruits of their labor."

[lovelessinner]

Relief flows all through his body. He can do this, they both can. To drag Sephiroth back to the surface feels like the first inch of control over his life (both their lives now) he has had since the degradation started. His shoulders relax, and he sees him and listens to him.

(Of course, he does. He is a poet and a writer, but he appreciates other arts too. Right now, he wishes he were a painter, a sculptor, someone capable of immortalizing that gaze, capturing it just as how he sees it now: it hurts, but he wants to look at it forever.)

He moves even closer and presses his forehead against Sephiroth's. Had Sephiroth ever allowed this much touch?

"Yes," he whispers. "We will, Sephiroth. And we will emerge victorious. Just the two of us."

[labgrownmessiah]

Genesis touches his forehead, whispers to him that they'll emerge victorious. They - the two of them. Alone. No army, no SOLDIER program, no Genesis Copies - none of that mattered. It was just them.

(Something so forbidden, Sephiroth could barely think it. That there could be a Sephiroth that wasn't embedded in the context of the Shinra Armed Forces. That he could be one of a pair. That he could possess someone, for himself, and they him. That they could touch not in violence.)

"Genesis..." he whispers. Like a supplication. Like a prayer. His shoulders tremble.

[lovelessinner]

He finds himself addicted to it. The way Sephiroth says his name, how he seeks for him, reassurance, salvation all of it. Genesis is drunk with the power that this sensation gives him. Knowing so suddenly and surely that Sephiroth is his. Not Shinra's, not Hojo's, not anymore.

Obviously, it goes both ways.

And what better way to celebrate that than to whisper back with a smile...

"Let's burn this place to the ground."