Welcome to Adventu, your final fantasy rp haven. adventu focuses on both canon and original characters from different worlds and timelines that have all been pulled to the world of zephon: a familiar final fantasy-styled land where all adventurers will fight, explore, and make new personal connections.
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year 5, quarter 3
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Sephiroth’s eyes widened slightly in surprise before they narrowed again. For the briefest moment, he lost sight of his target, but it was only a feint. Six feints in rapid succession to be more precise. While the method was careless, there was a certain rhythm to it that Sephiroth couldn’t help but acknowledge. His senseless attacker might very well have had the strength for SOLDIER -- perhaps even a Second Class.
’I don't care what you think. Shut up and fight me.’
A Second Class and nothing more. There was a special confidence that rested squarely between competence and mastery. It spoke highly of itself but rested on a tower of glass. How long would it take for that pride to shatter? It was nothing more than a symptom of mediocrity.
Sephiroth effortlessly sidestepped a blow from above. Metal spikes whistled past his ear. Punching daggers? Sephiroth laughed quietly under his breath.That would explain his reliance on speed and distractions. A flurry of blows followed -- all practiced but lacking control. He dodged them easily. They were rushed, forward, predictable. For a time, Sephiroth said nothing, did nothing, and refused to even lift his sword. His inaction spoke more clearly than any unsaid words.
’You aren’t worth the effort.’
Sephiroth watched him closely for openings of which there were many. Bold. Thoughtless. Sephiroth bided his time. It wasn’t enough to put the man in his place and be done with it. No, he would make his point and grind that ego into dust. Only once his inadequacy had been accepted could his challenger ever hope to improve.
Frustration etched deeper into the man’s expression. His movements teemed with careless aggression. Sephiroth smirked. In a single motion, he stepped into his challenger’s range, twisted in place, and struck once while the man’s arm was extended. The force of the blow thrust his challenger several feet back into the sand, bleeding heavily from the chest. Sephiroth had made certain not to pierce anything vital or even to cut that deep. It was a lesson. Nothing more and nothing less.
With his point made, Sephiroth lowered his blade and watched him, head tilted and amusement obvious. If nothing else, this distraction had entertained him.
The man’s footsteps were muffled by sand. He approached quietly, slowly, deliberately, and still Sephiroth did not turn to face him. It wasn’t worth breaking his concentration.
”You look like a good opponent. Come at me. Let's go.”
Sephiroth paused. ’Come at me?’ He didn’t know that voice. He hadn’t noticed himself being followed. An assassin he would have understood, but that did not appear to be the case. No, it seemed this man had no other intentions than to pick a fight.
”And if I refuse?” A smirk played at his lips. Who was this strange wanderer? Had he purposefully found him or did he seek combat aimlessly and hope to stumble upon those he deemed worthy? Sephiroth uncrossed his legs and slowly descended, landing lightly on the sand. He had known soldiers like him before. They’d always challenged others rather than themselves, too blinded by aggression to learn control. He had easily put them in their place.
Sephiroth turned, and his eyes caught on the man’s strange coloration. Blue. Sephiroth’s brows twitched into a furrow. That color, it was unnatural on any human form. He hardly noticed the wild hair, the pointed face, the hunched mass of muscles at the man’s shoulders. No, there was only that blue. It reflected back at him in the sun, shimmering a dull turquoise that made his head throb. Why did it feel as though he’d seen it before?
A sickly green glow pulsed behind his eyes. He smothered it and forced his mind sharp. This was not the time.
”Your fight is pointless.” Sephiroth’s smirk flickered into place. He pulled his sword from its holster and held it ready at his side. ”Do you have something to prove?”
This should be a fun fight. Or they'll have fun at any rate
I knew mine was a special existence
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Sephiroth listened to the waves. They were cool, calm, crashing. A flock of seagulls lingered nearby, cawing in slow spirals. He felt the rustle of the wind. Tasted harsh salt at his lips. His breath came slow and controlled.
For now, there was only this moment.
It had been weeks since he’d been dropped here -- or had he been abandoned? Even now, he couldn’t say for certain or even hazard a guess. Shinra had broken his mind. Zack and Genesis had convinced him of that much though his memories refused to surrender the circumstances. Genesis insisted he’d died. Something about a mako reactor, but that wasn’t so unusual. Shinra had a policy of declaring their mistakes as fallen heroes rather than deserters. Angeal, for instance.
His balance wavered, and panic struck him for an instant before he managed to right himself. He still hadn’t quite mastered the art of flight. He could on occasion will his jumps higher, his falls lighter, but it was nothing like Genesis soaring about like the seagulls that circled not forty feet away. No matter how they’d acquired this skill (an image of Hojo swam behind his eyes and he quickly banished it), it was something to use even as it disgusted him. He’d come to the coast where the plentiful monsters would ensure his solitude and had settled himself in quiet meditation in the sand. With his mind clear and focused, levitation came naturally. Now he hovered weightless nearly three feet from the ground.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Something cracked from the foliage. Footsteps. Sephiroth opened his eyes and glanced cooly towards the wood brush behind him. He readied himself to snatch the sword that hung from its harness on his back. Whatever approached moved on two legs -- not four -- and with the clumsy purpose of a man rather than a beast. There were few people competent or foolish enough to travel this far down the coast. Had it followed him? The odds seemed likely.
Still Sephiroth waited without so much as turning his head. His senses were honed, his sword hand ready. This was nothing more than a distraction.
It was unnerving hearing a human voice come out of the inky void in front of him. The face (if it could be called that) was lipless and unblinking yet it spoke undeniably as a child. It didn’t seem to notice his hostility, choosing to thank him instead. Sephiroth remained cool and unmoved. The thing reminded him of something that had crawled from the depths of Hojo’s laboratories. It reminded him of something that needed to be put down.
Genesis’ arrival was heralded by poetry. He heard the click of boots behind him as his friend approached from behind his shoulder. Only once they were nearly level did Genesis recoil. “Oh goddess, what’s wrong with its face?” Sephiroth’s lips twitched into a smirk. Genesis had always found a way to convey his thoughts in the bluntest manner possible.
Sephiroth had noticed the box before it was brought to their attention. Weathered cardboard full of snuffling fur and cloying paws. Sephiroth hadn’t paid it much mind (what were dogs compared to the twisted life in front of him now?) but Genesis didn’t share the same conclusions. As soon as he caught sight of the puppies, he turned on Sephiroth with a familiar irritation in his eye.
Sephiroth raised an eyebrow. He didn’t have to say a word. Genesis lost his argument with himself, throwing up his hands in exasperation. He supposed Genesis needed to pin his own conscience against something. Sephiroth’s smirk deepened.
”Feeling pity?” He tilted his head towards the wall. Genesis’ impulses had always been as erratic as they were passionate. Sephiroth wasn’t about to blockade himself against them.
”We’ll go by foot.” Sephiroth glanced at the box. A chocolate brown face popped over the side, scrabbling to escape its cardboard prison. Sephiroth turned and started back towards the street. ”I won’t be responsible for any casualties.”
The night sky was as empty as he’d left it. The moon was clouded. The stars, pinpricks swallowed by gaping black. Sephiroth slowed to a stop, head tilted towards them. The temple he’d left echoed with the tortured cries of monsters. Below him, the streets twisted into shadow, but above, there was nothing but silence. He closed his eyes and breathed the smell of blood and rot. This was no different from the battlefield.
”Infinite in mystery is the gift of the goddess.”
Sephiroth glanced towards Genesis. His friend gleamed with a satisfaction Sephiroth hadn’t seen from him in months. Though Sephiroth had rarely minded Genesis’ company in public, he’d generally tried to avoid meeting him without Angeal or a sword. Genesis was loud, dramatic, and dripping with passion that threatened to burst from him with every word. Maybe, in some quiet part of himself, Sephiroth admired that about him. Perhaps in a quieter place he might have even envied it.
Sephiroth gave a short hum, his lips twitching into something like a smile. How long had Angeal tried to make peace between them? Sephiroth could almost imagine him at their side, arms crossed and beaming with satisfaction. There was no better way to honor his memory.
Genesis offered him a hand. Confusion crossed Sephiroth’s eyes until he noticed Genesis’ extending wing. He intended to fly.
Sephiroth tensed. He had managed it once in a rush of pure instinct, and it had driven him to panic. Part of it had been shock, but not the nausea that struck him now. That weightless sensation, that sense of abnormality, the rolling dread of his own inhumanity. That hadn’t left him.
Still, Genesis watched him, confident and unashamed. He kicked off easily from the ground and hovered there, hand still outstretched. His wing towered above them in a six foot span, and in that moment, Sephiroth felt lost in its shadow. Sephiroth hesitated, eyes wavering, before reaching out to accept Genesis’ hand. As soon they'd touched, Genesis seized him, yanking him up with surprising strength. Sephiroth stumbled forward, startled and unbalanced. His wing thrust itself out on instinct, and before Sephiroth could shoot Genesis an indignant look, he realized his heels no longer touched the ground.
Sephiroth stared at the empty space beneath him. He felt suddenly unbalanced, and he held out his arms as though lurching on a tightrope. He had long ago mastered control of his own body. He could sense every precise movement, sidestep the obstacles at a bullet’s speed, and land with pinpoint accuracy on the most narrow of precipices. He had thought any mistakes beneath him, but here he was, struggling like a child only just handed a sword. His fingers clenched into Genesis’ palm as he tried unsuccessfully to force himself upright. The sense of vertigo nearly swallowed him.
Once they’d ascended, instinct kept him from falling. Genesis took care of the rest, and Sephiroth let himself be led along without complaint. The town was truly dismal from above. He’d seen his share of towns in ruin, but the sight never failed to sober him. The lazy drifting of smoke. The mounds of rubble and dust. The vaguely human figures crumpled into the dirt. Sephiroth had often closed his eyes, arms crossed, in a kind of half-meditative trance rather than glance out the helicopter windows. The soldiers must have thought him focused and aloof. In truth, his actions were nothing to be admired. He’d learned long ago how to minimize the flashes of blood that would seize him, gasping, in the night.
Sephiroth hardly noticed their descent until they’d both perched at the peak of a slanted rooftop. Sephiroth shot him a questioning glance, but Genesis was already overtaken by disgust, disbelief, and then accusation. He demanded to know if Sephiroth had anything to do with the monsters roving the streets. Sephiroth’s eyebrows raised. Did he think Shinra had given him the power to raise the dead? It became quickly apparent that Genesis wasn’t expecting an answer, however, and Sephiroth didn’t give him one. Instead, he followed his gaze to the streets below.
True to his word, the undead had gathered a truly impressive swarm beneath them. Sephiroth watched them impassively. At first he found only the same ruins he'd seen from the sky, but then an irregular movement caught the corner of his eye. A child. He spared one final glance to Genesis.
”Please tell me we’re not getting involved,” Genesis muttered so hushed that Sephiroth was certain they would. In the end, the choice wasn’t his to make. Genesis relented to his better impulses before Sephiroth had the chance.
”Fine, fine! But you go play the hero and fly him up here.”
Sephiroth’s lips pursed at his tone -- hadn’t Genesis been the one to make the suggestion? -- but he didn’t waste time chastising him for it. Instead, he darted forward, jumping from rooftop to rooftop rather than risking an unstable flight. Streaks of fire flew past Sephiroth’s shoulder along with Genesis’ bitter lament. The magic landed, enveloping the street in an explosion of heat and light, as Sephiroth spotted the boy and landed lightly between him and the swarm that stumbled closer with gnashing teeth.
”Stay back.” Sephiroth gave little time to heed his warning before he dodged a clawed hand and returned the blow with a well-placed sword stroke that cleaved the shrunken figure in two. The smell of rot hit him in a renewed wave as dried flesh splintered before him, but he didn’t pay it any mind as he fired off four more slashes of his sword that sent the rest of them stumbling back on recoil alone. In an instant, he was on them, landing a flurry of strikes before his conscious mind could catch up. His blade carried instincts all its own, and with the creatures funneled together into a tight alleyway, it was over in hardly more than a breath.
Heaps of bisected husks twitched with the last of their unnatural life at his feet. Beyond him, human figures streaked by engulfed in flame before losing balance and collapsing into the dirt. Genesis had always been one for spectacle, and even as his nose wrinkled at the acrid smell of burning flesh, Sephiroth couldn’t help but smirk. It felt good to balance the weight of his sword in his hand. It felt better to do it side by side with a friend.
”You shouldn’t be here.”
Sephiroth eyed the dried flesh that peppered his sword. He flicked it off and turned to face the boy, but froze as his eyes caught its face -- or rather, the lack thereof. What had from a distance appeared to be a child looked far more like a monster in its own right. It was disproportioned with clumsy feet, thick hands, and a triangular body completely buried beneath an oversized coat. Above that was a patchwork hat, and in between was…nothing. It was like looking into the depths of the night sky with two shining yellow lights gleaming out like stars.
Sephiroth felt the shock in his expression and cleared it, straightening even as he stared. Something about it evoked a flicker of disgust. He imagined it draped in black, hunched and hissing. His eyes cooled.
”What are you?” He didn’t care for more monsters or some mindless experiment. He'd had enough of that and bristled already with the waste of his time. Already, it seemed this life wasn't worth the trouble of saving.
”My soul, corrupted by vengeance, hath endured torment to find the end of the journey in my own salivation and your eternal slumber.”
Sephiroth could have recited it with him word for word. It was almost funny how a line he’d suffered through so many times could suddenly take meaning. For that briefest of moments, Sephiroth could almost see the appeal of Genesis’ dramatics, but it left him just as quickly as it had come. This was the time for action -- not poetics -- yet the thought still left a lingering smirk at his lips.
’My soul corrupted by vengeance.’ Sephiroth almost envied his passion.
”And you, Sephiroth?” Genesis’ eyes flicked towards him expectantly. ”What do you want?”
For a moment, Sephiroth could only stare at him, bewildered. What did he want? It wasn’t a question he was used to being asked, not even by himself. What he’d wanted had always been irrelevant. He’d had missions, orders, and he couldn’t afford any frivolous distractions. The thought struck as more than a little childish, yet it struck him all the same.
Sephiroth turned from him slowly. The room was ruined both through age, bloodshed, and of course, Genesis. The loose pages at his feet had become suddenly irrelevant. What did he want? It wasn’t paging through old texts alone in a dismal library. It wasn’t training at a lonely cliffside snared by his thoughts as much as his sword, and it wasn’t a life of obedience and meaningless glory. Sephiroth’s brow twitched into a furrow. It was easier to decide what he didn’t want than what he did.
Genesis offered a hand. “My friend, your desire is the bringer of life, the gift of the goddess.” He stood before him, waiting, watching, expectant. Genesis had always claimed that his so-called ’gift of the goddess’ carried as many interpretations as there were desires. Love. Wealth. Power. It could have meant anything, and yet, Sephiroth knew better than that. Sephiroth had struggled with the question, and Genesis had provided the answer.
There had only been one thing to ever make Sephiroth feel truly alive. He glanced towards Genesis’ outstretched hand, raised his own, and then paused. Even now, he couldn’t take it.
”I’ve stayed with Zack in a city by the coast.” He turned away from Genesis, smirking faintly. ”He claims we were friends. You might not remember him.” Even now he couldn’t quite believe it. He’d never taken much notice of Zack except as a promising Second and as Angeal’s protege. Their time together hadn’t been exactly comfortable, but he could see the soldier’s good intentions even so. ”We should work together to find a way to Midgar. I think he could be useful.”
He looked up thoughtfully before starting past Genesis towards the door. This was more his field -- tactics, action, goals. Even so, he felt himself slow to a stop. After all that had happened, it felt wrong to leave it at that.
He fixed his eyes on the shadowed hallway. ”I’m glad to have you back,” he said before starting forward again. Other questions lingered in silent echoes -- Why didn’t you tell me? How could you leave me without answers? Did you not trust I’d take your side? -- but they were nothing but distractions. He’d keep his attention ahead just as he always had. There was no point in dwelling on the past.
I don't know if this partnership is good or bad for them xDD
I knew mine was a special existence
Genesis laughed.
Sephiroth stiffened, muffling a wince. There was no revulsion, no pity, hardly even surprise. No, something bitter crossed his friend’s face instead, his laugh hollow. The sound churned in Sephiroth’s throat, and he wished suddenly that Genesis' eyes would flash with anger again. He knew how to handle his emotional outbursts, but this was something else entirely. Genesis knew something that he didn’t. For the first time in his life, it was Sephiroth who who had fallen behind Genesis' step.
”You don’t remember why I ran off?” There it was again, that bitter, knowing look. Genesis finally had his place of power. Why wasn’t he enjoying it? ”Then let me remind you.”
His answer came in a flourish of black. An angled shadow. A gust of wind. Feathers spiraling weightlessly to the ground. The details flashed before him one after the other until finally the pieces snapped together and Sephiroth’s mouth opened in a silent ’oh.’ It was a wing. A replica of his own down to every last feather. Sephiroth had spent hours examining its crevices, extending it one way then the other, biting his tongue at how natural it felt. This was no accident, but if that was the case, then why did they both-?
Something brushed the tip of his wing. It recoiled away before Sephiroth could glance towards the cause. Genesis. Their wings met like two halves of a bird in flight. ”We match.”
Sephiroth didn’t know whether it was a joke or not. It was sour and humorless, and yet, there was something almost bracing about it. He wasn’t alone. The realization struck him like a shot of cool mako. In this, he wasn’t alone.
”Angeal,” he muttered without meeting Genesis’ gaze. ”What does he have to do with it? Or you?” He glanced hesitantly towards Genesis’ wing. It hovered close to his own. Too close. He stepped away.
”Shinra did this to me,” he said. ”But how could they do the same to you after you defected?” His temple pulsed with thoughts that wouldn’t connect. He touched at the vein, grimacing, before he suddenly stilled. ”After the hospital. They wouldn’t let us see you.” He raised his head until he found Genesis’ eye. ”That was when it happened -- why you left. They-”
Sephiroth’s fist tightened. After all that time waiting, worrying, he'd taken every word they told him as truth. Why hadn’t he questioned? Why hadn't he thought to search for Genesis himself? To leave with Angeal to find Genesis together? Something simmered dark inside him that he had long buried in training and discipline. All his life he’d been taught to bite as he was told and to bow his head at their command. He’d leashed himself, unquestioning, to the will of a master that had only ever seen him as tool. They’d used Genesis just the same, and once their tool had broken…
”They threw you away.” Threw them both away. He had never thought to turn his sword against them, but now his blade thirsted for it. His eyes set into a cool burn. ”Angeal is dead. They don’t deserve honor.”
Genesis’ face twisted with anger as he struck the nearest bookshelf, shattering it into nothing more than scattered pages and slabs of shattered wood. Sephiroth's eyes flicked to the ancient texts he'd sought all along. Some were unharmed. Others ruined. He doubted Genesis cared.
While Genesis’ initial outburst had taken him aback, this one hardly fazed him. In a way, he’d expected this, or something like it at least. Genesis had always been the type to lash out when his emotions flared, and his emotions flared often. Sephiroth stood resolute against them. He would not waver in his own convictions.
’I want to stand beside you now.’ He could leave no room for doubt.
Still, he did not expect what came next. ”You were dead! They said you were dead!” Sephiroth’s lips twitched into a frown. The words felt odd spoken with Genesis’ passion, his cracking voice and equal anger and pain. Sephiroth might have felt surprise. ”You told me to rot! You took a page from my book and burned down a town! And I never saw you again.”
”To rot?” The words struck him. He had little doubt that Genesis could be trusted when he hadn’t had time to think of a lie, but his claims twisted in their own impossibility. After all that had happened, after the nights spent sleepless agonizing over Genesis’ defection, he would never have spurned him that way. The town paled in comparison. Would he have razed a village in his anger? If the circumstances aligned. Would he have forsaken his friend so completely? Never.
”How are you alive?”
Sephiroth glanced towards him. The obvious answer had already struck them both. Shinra was no stranger to public propaganda.
”A cover-up.” It was not a question. He felt his thoughts knit together in sharp spirals. His path of destruction. The memory loss. His supposed death. His lips drew into a wry smirk. ”It sounds as though I turned against them,” he said, glancing towards him. ”They wouldn't waste my life. Maybe they planned to reset my loyalty. Or maybe Hojo just demanded he not lose his 'research specimen.'” The mere idea soured on his tongue. Even in death, Hojo would never have surrendered him to the grave, and if he’d been taken alive…
His stomach rolled. Sephiroth turned to hide his nausea. ”They changed me.” He heard it creep into his voice. A harsh edge that hadn’t been there before. Why was his throat so tight? ”My mind and...body.” Hadn’t Zack told him that Genesis had suffered the same? But how was he to ask?
I’m no longer human. His nausea threatened to overtake him. Showing Zack had proven difficult. Showing Genesis -- impossible. There wasn’t the same bond with Zack. There wasn’t the same vulnerability.
He opened his mouth, but no sound escaped. His will had been stolen. His life, deemed worthless. In the end, he’d become nothing but one of Hojo’s twisted experiments, just as the man had always wanted. Perhaps as had been destined all along.
With no words to offer, Sephiroth was left little choice. His lips twisted with something he couldn’t identify. Perhaps it had something to do with his pounding pulse.
His wing twitched. He had nearly forgotten it, or perhaps he’d chosen not to remember. It edged its way through the slit in his coat, paused, and then extended. Sephiroth’s jaw set. Vulnerable. He hadn’t felt like this since those days of harsh fluorescent lights, vinyl padded tables, and sharp antiseptics, uncertain whether time had passed at all. It felt like baring his arm to the needle. It felt like a mistake.
”They changed me.” Somehow he forced the words through a strangled throat. There was nothing else that needed said.
Genesis’ voice echoed back to him, uncertain and wary. Sephiroth glanced to him. There they both stood in the middle of a shadowed library that smelled equally of dust and blood. Sephiroth bit his tongue and suppressed the odd pull at the back of his mind. He didn’t have time to consider either his dread or the flickering images that spawned it. He was still in hostile territory.
Genesis repeated him blankly, and the source of his anger quickly became apparent. For one reason or another, he’d forgotten the incident that had very nearly killed him. Sephiroth’s eyebrows furrowed. That kind of trauma wasn’t something brushed aside so lightly. Genesis had been near hysterics, pale and weakened and speaking only in poetry. In his delusion, he had even expressed an appreciation for their friendship. Those were the actions of a man close to death’s door. For something to have overshadowed it…
Sephiroth tensed. He was missing something just as he had with Zack. But what could possibly have driven Genesis farther than his own defection?
“The wandering soul knows no rest.” It was an exclamation more like a curse than an insult. ”What do you mean that you haven’t seen me since then? That was over four years ago!”
”Four years ago.” Sephiroth glanced away. It felt impossible -- absurd -- yet hadn’t Zack said as much? ’The last thing we remember are years apart.’ A laugh rose to Sephiroth’s lips, and he touched at his temple, shoulders shaking.
What else had Shinra taken from him?
”They did something to me.” Sephiroth straightened and looked at Genesis straight on. Something dark burned in his eyes. ”My memory’s incomplete. A symptom of mako poisoning.” His lips thinned to a sneer as he paced towards the window. Beyond it, the town reflected a shell of its former self -- deathly and ruined. He’d seen too many places like this. He’d created them on Shinra’s command.
”I met Zack,” he said. ”He looked nothing like I remembered. And he told me…” Sephiroth ran a hand through his hair, head tilted to the ceiling. ”Angeal’s dead.” His own impassive tone surprised him. It should have been traumatic, and yet, he had the sense that he’d already accepted it before. His weakened grief felt like an insult. Angeal deserved better than this.
”Shinra didn't bring us here, but they would have done this to me. Clouded my mind. If I’d fallen out of line, they would have…” His eyes glazed with pain. Why had he devoted himself to them for so long? Why had he never questioned? He’d known on some level that he was nothing but a tool to them. He just hadn’t considered that he might ever become disposable.
”Whatever I did to you, it was a mistake.” Sephiroth’s eyes cooled. Shinra had torn them apart. Of that, he was certain. ”We should have defected with you when we had the chance. Angeal and I questioned…” Nausea rolled in his throat. They’d questioned, but they hadn’t acted. They’d made an agreement to speak with Genesis rather than bring him back to face Shinra’s judgment. Apparently it hadn’t gone well.
He faced him, straight-shouldered and resolute. ”I want to stand with you now.”
Sephiroth recoiled at the outburst, staring as Genesis seized the book he’d been reading and thrust it at the opposite wall. Their eyes locked -- Genesis’ furious, Sephiroth’s taken aback -- before Genesis turned roughly on his heel and stalked away.
Sephiroth watched Genesis like he was a cornered wolf with its teeth bared. It wasn’t that screaming rage was out of character for him -- no, Sephiroth had seen enough of that -- but that it had come from nothing. Not unless Sephiroth’s cool demeanor had somehow set him off. Perhaps he could have seen it if Angeal had done the same, but for him…?
Genesis turned on Sephiroth so suddenly that his coat swished around his heels. ’Healed?’’No thanks to him?’ Sephiroth felt his eyebrows twitch together in confusion. Did he mean from the hospital? But that didn’t seem right. He went on about grudges and something called the Lifestream, and by the end of it all, Sephiroth’s eyes had hardened.
Confusion could only get Genesis so far.
”You’re out of line.” Sephiroth watched him coolly. Genesis’ eyes reflected at him -- fiery, desperate, and hysterical. Sephiroth’s fist clenched. ”If you have something to say, then say it.”
The words came harsh and clipped before he could think them through. It felt right, like talking down a belligerent soldier, but with it came a twinge of unease. Was this really the right way to handle this? After weeks stranded and longing for direction? After all those nights sleepless and pacing in the sterilized halls of a medical ward? Was this what Angeal would have wanted?
No. That was self-evident.
After a moment, Sephiroth closed his eyes, steadied himself, and opened them again. He would walk the high road if it had to be done. Genesis surely wouldn’t.
”We waited for you,” he said. ”Angeal and I. After your accident, we waited for any news of your recovery. It never came.” Sephiroth looked at him directly and tried to meet his eye. ”I don’t know what you’re talking about. You never came to me for help, and I don’t have a grudge. I haven’t seen you since the day you broke Angeal’s sword.”
Lies. Something rolled in his stomach, nauseous and tinged in a deep green-blue. He touched at the side of his head and glanced away. His temple buzzed with static.
