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Genesis follows Sephiroth to Nibelheim - of course he does.
He knows what is stored there, Hojo’s prized secret, an ancient and ruinous monstrosity whose cells run rampant through the bodies of SOLDIERs. The ploy is obvious, though he knows not its goal, but it is not what Hojo seeks to awaken by placing Sephiroth within Jenova’s reach that interests him.
What interests him is simply Sephiroth himself, as it always has been.
He stares down from the iron beams of the reactor’s roof in silence, eyes fixed on the light that reflects off the back of silver hair. The sight is familiar, as is the fire it stokes in his heart, resentful and adoring in equal measure - always chasing after Sephiroth, left in the wake of the world’s perfect hero, desperately trying to grasp the sparks of his attention even as they slipped through his fingers.
But the longer Genesis stares, he feels the gap between them widening, a yawning chasm that he cannot hope to cross.
Here was Shinra’s perfect monster, returning to the arms of his mother unharmed - the years had not withered him, had not stolen the strength from his limbs or the lustre of his hair and skin, had not forced misshapen growths through yielding skin in a haze of blood and pain and slick black feathers.
The bile rises in his throat at the rush of bitter anger but he swallows it down to fuel the fire burning in his chest, the sensation familiar by now like the embrace of an old friend - not that Genesis had many of those, these days.
His eyes hadn’t failed him even when his body had, and so he tracks the fine tremble of Sephiroth’s hands as he stares at the misshapen creatures, the discarded precursors to perfection. The facade that had been drilled into him was cracking, falling apart at the seams, the trembling questions Sephiroth throws at Angeal’s boy a swan song for Shinra’s flawless general.
He wishes fleetingly, though, that he had told Sephiroth he loved him just once, before he stopped being sure whether or not it was still true.
“Am I...a human being?” Sephiroth asks, voice pained, and Genesis smiles. He needs Sephiroth’s cells more than anything, the only path he has left, and finally he can offer something Sephiroth desires just as much - answers.
“No such luck.” He calls out, a sweet poison dripping from his words, “You are a monster.”
The tremble of Sephiroth’s hand stills as he deflects the blast - good, Genesis thinks.
“Sephiroth,” Genesis begins, but Sephiroth still won’t turn to look at him, “you were the greatest monster created by the Jenova Project.”
Face me, look at me - look at what they did to me.
“Genesis!” Zack calls out, face twisted and tumultuous, “So you are alive.”
Am I?
“I suppose I am, if you can call this living.” He runs his hand down his face, highlighting the pallid cast to his skin, and feels it crack and flake beneath his worn gloves. His bones creak at the movement, the ever-present pain shooting through his muscles every time they shift.
He’s sick of it, sick of hurting, sick of the tremble in his limbs, the way he can barely hold his sword, the way it hurts to think through the fog that permeates his mind, and salvation stands right in front of him if he can just-
“What is the Jenova Project?” Sephiroth asks, Genesis focusing on the familiar voice as he slowly turns back to him. Sephiroth is facing him now - good, look at me, you can save me - brow furrowed but eyes as piercing as ever.
A fleeting memory strikes him, a flash of Angeal’s laughter and Genesis’s red gloves smoothing away the wrinkles in Sephiroth’s forehead - don’t look so dour at a press function, my dear, it’ll haunt you for weeks - and Genesis buries it beneath the way his chest aches as he takes a deep breath.
“The Jenova Project was the term used for all experiments relating to the use of Jenova’s cells.” Sephiroth turns away from him again, eyes downcast.
“My mother’s...cells?” The bewilderment on his face, in his voice, infuriates Genesis - how blissful such ignorance must be, to not know of the monstrosities that birthed you.
“Poor little Sephiroth,” he taunts, and some truth seeps into the words even though he intends them to hurt, “you’ve never actually met your mother. You’ve only been told her name, no?”
His muscles ache, and Genesis lowers himself to sit on the stairs, masking his weakness behind a cocky posture and bold words.
“I don’t know what images you’ve conjured up in your head, but…”
A shadow of delight unfurls in his bitter smile - let Sephiroth have his foundations crack under him, leave him flailing and alone in the dark like Genesis was, let them be equals at last.
“Genesis, no!” Zack yells, but Genesis pays him no mind.
“Jenova was excavated from a 2000 year old rock layer. She’s a monster.”
The shock painted across Sephiroth’s face is both familiar and unfamiliar - how unlike Sephiroth to be so shattered, but fear and anguish had been Genesis’s constant companion for so long.
We are the same, you and I, he thinks desperately, so please-
“Sephiroth, I need your help. My body is continuing to degrade.”
Perhaps it is too much to ask a friend who Genesis had betrayed, abandoned, and now irreparably hurt - but it is his last hope, a prayer from one monstrosity to another for a damned salvation, two monsters wrought of Shinra’s hubris who were both more alone than they had ever been.
“SOLDIER 1st Class Sephiroth!” He calls, a reminder, and Genesis watches the way Sephiroth’s back straightens up. The sight of it makes him waver for a moment, the fog taking hold of his mind once more, but he shakes it off as he continues, “Jenova Project G gave birth to Angeal and monsters like myself.”
Genesis smiles, stretching out his arms in a facsimile of his old theatrics, but the movement nearly makes him falter from the pain.
Weak, feeble, pathetic-
“Jenova Project S,” he continues, ignoring Zack’s quiet murmur, “used the remains of countless failed experiments to create a perfect monster.”
And how it burns that even in their bodies wrought of an ancient aberration, irreverent mockeries of the Goddess’ work, Sephiroth is ever-perfect, while Genesis withers in the shadows.
“What do you want of me?” Sephiroth’s voice is low, venomous, his face a portrait of heartbreak and loss that twists something in Genesis’s chest, some lingering spectre of sympathy that was buried beneath his anger.
“Your traits cannot be copied unto others. Your genes can’t be diffused. Therefore, your body cannot degrade.”
Sephiroth would never feel the slow crawl of death like Genesis does, like Angeal had - but pity the dying, fair one, not the dead.
“Share your cells with me.” A last prayer as he moves to stand alongside him, both of them equals in monstrosity at last, Genesis repeating well-worn words in some measure of comfort to both himself and Sephiroth, “My friend, your desire is the bringer of life, the gift of the Goddess.”
Sephiroth’s glare burns through the dumbapple he holds out, cutting right through to Genesis’s decaying soul. His profile as he turns to gaze upon Jenova’s doors is achingly familiar, poised and proud, and Genesis feels his own fingers now begin to tremble.
Sephiroth, please.
Sephiroth’s shoulders set determinedly, jaw shifting, and Genesis wonders if he made a mistake.
“Whether your words are lies created to deceive me or the truth, that I have sought all my life...it makes no difference.”
Sephiroth reaches up, pushes the offered gift out of Genesis’s hand in disgust. The dumbapple hits the ground.
“You will rot.” Sephiroth says, and Genesis stops. The mako glow of Sephiroth’s eyes, this close, illuminates through the fog that settled over Genesis’s mind in a moment of sickening clarity.
You’re abandoning me. I’m dying, and you’re abandoning me.
I drove you away.
I love you, but it’s too late. What am I doing?
I hate you, I hate you so much, you’re just what Hojo wanted, an unfeeling monster-
Sephiroth turns without hesitation, away from Genesis, and leaves him behind.
“I see,” Genesis says to the empty room, to the Goddess, to himself, to his traitorous heart, “perfect monster, indeed.”
The familiar words of Loveless bring him no comfort. He will rot, but the world will feel the fury of his end - and let Sephiroth see him in Genesis’s final moments, and know he could have stopped the cold hand of decay.
He leaves the apple there, one of the last of its kind.
Genesis does not want to watch Nibelheim burn. The glow of the flames reaches his tiny hideout in the Nibel mountains, fire stretching across the sky, and he turns away.
He doesn’t have to look - he knows monsters, what Sephiroth can do. But curiosity draws him closer anyway, a perch far above the reactor, close enough to see - Shinra.
He thought he would find a triumphant Sephiroth, and yet all he sees are a swarm of scientists, and the sight of them makes him sick.
“Professor Hojo needs to know what happened to Sephiroth. Find out at once!” The tallest one says insistently, voice carrying to Genesis’s enhanced ears, and one of the more timid amongst them shuffles backwards slightly.
Hojo. Hojo is here.
“B-but the security footage - he fell into the reactor! Surely no one can-”
The reactor?
“Shut up!” The taller scientist barks, “We don’t leave until we have what Professor Hojo wants.”
No, no, no-
If he had not been degrading, Genesis’s tight grip would have shattered his sword’s grip in moments. But his feeble muscles can only summon a phantom of their old strength, and he simply flexes his fingers around the familiar shape. It’s not possible for Sephiroth to fall like this - before Genesis gets his chance to take the last life he values for himself.
Genesis waits, and waits, until the scurrying of scientists slows, until the snowfall blankets their footprints, before he ventures down from his spot. The area around the reactor is quiet, the snow crunching softly beneath Genesis’s feet, and as he climbs the stairs slowly he finds that his legs still of their own accord.
He wants to see it for himself, so he pushes on.
The security footage isn’t hard to find - Hojo’s men are sloppy, incompetent, no doubt blanketed in the security of Hojo’s own hubris. Genesis is sure that Shinra will come clean all of this up before long, but for now he fast-forwards through the endless blank days, trying to find a glimpse of his rival - his friend.
And then he sees - he sees-
The grainy figure of Sephiroth reaching its arms out in reverence, in belonging-
The trooper’s furious grip on Angeal’s sword, he would never have turned that sword on Sephiroth, it was never meant to know his blood-
The way the trooper dangles in the air, suspended by the Masamune-
Sephiroth, falling, swallowed by the depths of the reactor-
Genesis’s grip on the security console tightens, metal buckling beneath his grip, and he thinks faintly oh, so I have some strength left in me after all.
Sephiroth is-
When you hate someone, does it burn this much to lose them?
Genesis straightens, turning his back on the screen, on the truth he doesn’t want to see. He walks measuredly out of the reactor, down the metal steps that clink with every footfall, and back out into the frigid snow.
Genesis laughs.
He laughs until he is howling, bent over and on his knees as he supports himself with one hand. He laughs until he is crying, tears he forgot how to shed streaming down his face until his laughter turns into choked sobs, the force of them against his chest pushing until he coughs violently, breath strained. Flecks of blood fall from his lips onto the snow, staining the perfect white, pinpricks of red amongst the monochrome as the frost blends in with the grey of his decaying body.
Sephiroth is gone, defeated by some nobody trooper whose name wouldn’t be remembered.
What a terribly tragic end for a hero - and for Genesis’s last hope at salvation.
The five years are not gentle - Genesis wonders, in fits of hazy irrationality, whether the snows of Modeoheim and Nibelheim had crept up through his limbs, regrets staining him with white.
But then the white is gone, the degradation healed, but Genesis is as lost as before - spurned by his Goddess for his sins, cast out from paradise, and so terribly, terribly alone.
Zack leans him against a chair, basking beneath the Banora sun, and Genesis turns his face into the warmth. The light glints off Angeal’s sword, that damned trooper who carries Sephiroth’s cells propped up behind him, and if Genesis closes his eyes he can pretend.
Pretend it’s Angeal’s broad shoulders that carry the buster sword, warm hands and an easy smile as he throws Genesis a dumbapple.
Pretend it’s Sephiroth that sits beside him, a smile that’s both stilted and genuine fixed upon his face, caught between his habits of decorum and the way Genesis’s arm slides around his shoulders, kissing him on the cheek, it wouldn’t kill you to relax, even for the great Hero of Wutai, the words lacking any real bite despite the spark of true bitterness Genesis had always held close to his heart.
A heart that aches now, to have loved and hated in equal measure, and to mourn the loss of it.
“Angeal, the dream came true.” He murmurs, even if it’s a lie.
He’d shattered his dream with his own hands, broken beyond repair.