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]

For twenty-four hours, Sephiroth's head has hurt. It began shortly after their arrival at Nibelheim, a tightening in his temples as he gazed out at the landscape at the Nidhogg Inn. Then, a minor headache in the morning, slightly twingeing when the bright rays of the early morning sun glanced into his eyes on the climb up the mountain. Then, a roaring, a pounding drowned out briefly by the roar of the waters of the Gunnthra River. He had two arms, to save two lives with, but only managed one. A fifty percent success rate - an absolute failure. A man was dead because of him.

Now - as they had entered the facility - as Sephiroth had approached the reactor core - as his eyes had landed on the name embossed over the door to what should be the reactor's heart - his head had begun to throb. His breath unsteady. Something was wrong here. Something was waiting here. Something was chewing on the inside of his skull. The pods - meant to condense mako into materia - were infested, alive, like so many spider eggs. Crawling. His skin is crawling.

(My mother's name was Jenova -)

Why is it that the pipes branching out from that door like veins and arteries from a heart seem to twitch and pulse when he catches them out of the corner of his eye? This isn't right. This isn't right. (His thoughts are racing.) He had thought - maybe talking to Zack would get his head on straight. Explaining things to Zack always made things seem a little clearer, just for a moment. But in this room, belonging to R&D's Hojo himself, the terrible calculus had begun to come together.

(Why was Hojo so secretive about Jenova? Why was Sephiroth reminded so often in his youth not to ask around about her? Why wouldn't he replace the picture Sephiroth had lost at Rhadore? Why couldn't Sephiroth meet her, not once, even in his adulthood, after achieving enough accomplishments of his own? Why was her name on the door to the heart of the first mako reactor ever built? Why was that mako being pumped into animals and twisting them into monsters? Why was that monster so anthropomorphically shaped?)

With numb lips, he had said, I always knew that I was different. That I... was special. The walls pulse in time with his heart, quivering in his chest. Does he hear whispers at the edge of his hearing? Are those shadows at the corners of his sight? Sephiroth can barely hear Zack, trying to get his attention, fussing at him - he shoves him away. He can't bear it right now, can't bear his questions, his pity.

(If animals pumped with mako become monsters, and humans overdosed with mako become monsters, and SOLDIER operators are dosed with mako, and Sephiroth is the first SOLDIER, and his mother's name is Jenova, and 'Jenova' is printed on the door to the mako reactor, then - then, - then!- )

(I'm not a cyborg!)

"Am I... a human being?" he whispers, staring at his shaking hands.

(The walls are closing in. The pipes seem to pulse. Pumping blood. In time with his heart. Maybe - he should approach the door. Maybe - it's time. (What time?) Maybe the time - has come. (His head throbs.))

And then - another voice.

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

The walls stop closing. Sephiroth looks up. Standing perched on the stairs, farther up the walkway, is Genesis. His hair streaked with white, his skin sallow and flaking, his wing curled in towards his body, but his eyes still burning bright, as bright as his resolve.

(That's - that's right. Their intelligence said Genesis might be here. Sephiroth's thoughts wrench out of their spiral. Genesis is here, after all. The result of Project G. Hollander's project. A project...)

Sephiroth looks up at him, his lips pursed tight. He holds out his right hand in a halt gesture behind him. Just in case Zack got any ideas.

"Genesis," he says. Softly, warily. "What do you know?"

never go back to a place where you once were happy | banora caves

[lovelessinner]

So... This is this is really happening.

It wasn't an elaborate trap, nor a moment of weakness that Sephiroth would later regret. Sephiroth trusted him, and it made something flourish within him when he thought all that was left were ashes.

They are in what is Genesis's mother base, under the ruins of Banora, inside an intricate system of caves that gave life to the underground Banora compound. A place rich in Materia, with its eternal emerald glow. A place he found when he was a kid, for more innocent purposes. It feels nostalgic, but raw too. Because Hollander held his experiments here, too, and Genesis' copies are inside those jails, waiting for their leader.

Genesis extends his arms and looks at Sephiroth. His hair was more white strands now, and parts of his skin cracked as if it were to fall like a broken porcelain doll. But there's still life in those eyes.

"Here we are, old friend."

could go to hell but we'll probably be fine | banora caves

[labgrownmessiah]

A day later, after Genesis has rested, Sephiroth has taken inventory of the weapons, munitions, supplies, and personnel in the caves. He has assessed the defensibility of their position.

Right now, he is using a whetstone and a nearby water source to sharpen Masamune. He has taken his coat off to do so, having cleaned and scrubbed the leather and hung it to dry out behind him. His muscles ripple beneath his skin in the soft light from the caves.

Finished with the task, he sets the whetstone aside, and oils up a rough cloth, with which he begins to wipe the blade.