jukeboxhound_backup | fic: eir's tomorrow (ff7)

Slightly revised version. Short explanation here.

Eir's Tomorrow
Interlude I

Author:

jukeboxhound
Co-conspirator/beta:

artimusdin

FF7 || R || Sephiroth/Cloud || chapter: 690 words
The Planet isn't willing to let death take away its greatest weapon. If Cloud can't save the past, then he'll be damned to watch history repeat itself.

Interlude I.

("I'm sorry, Genesis.")

"Genesis?" Angeal moved up quietly behind him until his breath warmed the back of Genesis' neck.

The contact made his skin crawl. He wanted to shove Angeal away, off the dilapidated roof of the church to the concrete below. He wanted to pull Angeal closer until they lived inside the same flesh. "Yes, Angeal?" was all he said, pleasantly, as though expecting to be asked about the weather or how the newest SOLDIER members were doing.

Angeal didn't say anything. Instead he slid his arms around Genesis' waist and pressed his chest against the redhead's back.

"You know, if you stand too close you might catch your death." Wouldn't that be ironic.

"Don't," Angeal said gruffly.

"Don't what? I'm just pointing out a possibility. Your genetics are perfectly fine, after all."

It was a low blow, but then, Genesis had rarely cared about that kind of thing.

("I'm sorry.")

"We'll find Hojo, Genesis."

"Eventually, yes," he replied, knowing Angeal hated it when he was pedantic. "Whether or not anything comes of it save the dead body of a scientist is the real question."

Hollander had been useless. He was just as useless in death, his broken corpse left to rot in his trashed laboratory.

"I've been hearing him," he said suddenly, and smiled thinly when he felt Angeal tense. "The kid's got a good pair of lungs, it's a pity we never had the chance to try out his pretty mouth."

Genesis remembered watching Sephiroth embrace the short, underage cadet, like a god bestowing some benediction on a common worshipper. It was more than Sephiroth had ever shown the other two men, even on the rare occasions they shared a bed; the other two who were just like him and yet still weren't worthy of what he was giving so freely to a child. Except little Cloud Strife wasn't a child, was he? For nearly two weeks his voice had consumed Genesis' thoughts, painrageterror and mineminemine, and for two weeks the bursts of agony that were slowly eating away at Genesis' body had doubled with the instinctive need to followfindprotect.

Not long ago Angeal would've been disgusted with his insinuations, but now he hardly noticed. Maybe he was getting used to Genesis' casual cruelty. Maybe he was finally breaking enough on the inside to match the breaking of Genesis' body. Well. At least Genesis wouldn't go down alone.

"Sephiroth once told me about Cloud."

"Oh?"

Angeal's breath was warm against his ear. It was both irritating and soothing. "It was almost ten years ago. You were away on a mission. Sephiroth was asking for Cloud in his sleep."

Genesis was tempted to say something vicious about that, but it didn't seem worth the effort anymore.

"He said he'd had an angel named Cloud Strife, before he came to Midgar."

Which was no mean feat, given that the boy's file said he had joined ShinRa when he was sixteen. Or, more likely, when he was fourteen. He looked too young and it wouldn't be the first time some enterprising little whelp had managed to slip through the red tape. If Sephiroth had known Strife, it suggested Strife had also been in the Nibelheim lab since Hojo was too paranoid to even consider letting his prize specimen run loose in the nearby village. "Well, that certainly explains Sephiroth's recent behavior."

"What?"

"Strife's similarities to Jenova are hardly coincidental, are they? Little wonder Sephiroth started acting like an idiot schoolgirl whenever the boy was brought up."

Utter stillness.

"And how he was able to confront me in Banora," he mused quietly. I am a WEAPON, the boy had whispered tonelessly. You won't stand a chance against me. Before, Genesis hadn't truly believed. Before. Now, a WEAPON who screamed into the Lifestream like Jenova once had? What had Hojo been getting into?

"We'll find something," Angeal said again, as though blind determination could change reality, as though his once-spotless sense of honor hadn't been twisted into interesting new shapes. Genesis' smile was bitter.

("I'm sorry, Genesis, I – I don't think I can heal you.")

The Cetra girl had looked so sincere, too.

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