40/100: Punishment: Sephiroth/Genesis.
Well, I'm surprised I actually got this far... usually I just give up around 10 or something...
Anyhoo, just angst here.

Disclaimer - All mentioned characters are not mine :3

Punishment

Through The Looking Glass

He was there, standing tall and proud, a red beckon amongst the sea of green fields, revitalised and beautiful like he was on the day they first met. The colour and life had returned to his perfectly rounded and effeminate face and his hair had regained all its fire.

All the features of Genesis Rhapsodos were there, flaunted in this beautiful creature and yet, he was not the same. There was no mischievous sparkle in those spellbindingly blue eyes. There was no more arrogance; his dark wit had all but deserted him and there were no more reasons for him to really smile. Of course, he did smile every now and then as a courtesy to his new companions, but never did it come from the heart; never did he laugh as he had before, filling the air with a musical mirth that would make any songbird envious.

Sephiroth had grown up alone, without friends and feelings, he never had all Genesis took for granted: a family, a village to call his home and someone he trusted without doubt.
Growing up under the constant glare of ShinRa's top scientist, Hojo, who only ever gave the boy weapons and books, Sephiroth never understood the want and need for such sentimental things, until he had met the friends from Banora and formed a bond with them that could never be undone.

The three of them, Angeal, Genesis and Sephiroth, were happy for years, until the first symptoms of degradation started to make them selves known to Genesis.

Not trusting his friends, Genesis bore the brunt of it alone.

Only after Genesis had left, taking Angeal with him, had Sephiroth come to realise just how much he depended on those two. They had taught him things that he could have never learnt elsewhere: how to feel, laugh and love - all the things that made a human, human. And although he was desperate to either bring his friend and lover back to ShinRa or join them, which ever one he could do first, Sephiroth also came to believe that such a desire to be with another was his greatest weakness. It made him turn down missions, inconvenience another SOLDIER, things that he would never have dreamt of doing beforehand.

Then finally, in a moment of desperation, he had lost everything all together, his mind, his dreams and his love. He had severed all ties with the world he had been given by the ones he loved the most.

He watched now, eyes soft and emerald, as Genesis continued his life. It wasn't a pleasant thing at first, looking out through the darkness and gently wavering streams of jade and seeing his redhead locked up in a manifestation of all his lamentations and regret. Every day, he traced every one of Genesis' footsteps, whether or not they were meaningless. Genesis walked out alone, quoting LOVELESS and muttering to himself. Usually, his voice was loud enough for the General to hear, it was bitter remarks, anguished screams of "why?"

Sephiroth never wanted anything more than to answer, if only just to see him smile once more, but his words, no matter how loudly he screamed were never heard.

It was being trapped as a silent voyeur that was Sephiroth's punishment for what he had done to the world, not death.