This one's for you, Vilya!
"Genis?" Raine asked softly, approaching the young child. He looked down at her from the tree branch, his legs swinging on either side of it. The tree shaded his face.
"What?"
"Why are you in a tree?"
He looked away, somewhat sadly. The leaves rustled around him, one or two brushing across his face in the wind, as though wiping unshed tears. From Raine's view, it looked like his mouth was moving, but the leaves were too loud in the wind for her to hear him.
"What's wrong?" she asked delicately. "Is there something-"
"It doesn't matter," he said above the muffled din. "I just... nah!" he smiled broadly, turning his head to look at her, to reassure her.
The tear trailing from his right eye, collecting on his chin and falling to a branch below him betrayed his efforts.
"Come down," the professor said softly, soothingly. He shook his head.
"I just... I wanna be alone up here for a little while, Raine," he replied.
"I don't want you to be alone up there for a little while, Genis," she said, somewhat more forcefully, but those loving, almost motherly instincts softened her words.
Genis folded his arms across his chest, tilting his head back. He ignored how his exsphere pressed into the side of his left arm. He ignored it entirely, because thinking about it would remind him of Marble, and remind him of one more person who could be here today, who could be here to remember that it's...
But they'd all forgotten. So it didn't matter.
"Look, just forget about it, okay?" he sighed. "There's nothing for you to worry about! There are more important things for you to-"
"Are there?"
Genis looked down again; down at his sister staring up at him sincerely, honestly.
"At least come down?"
He didn't want to. He wanted to just sit in the tree (he swung his leg back over the branch), to think about today (he grabbed the branch he was sitting on firmly), to wonder how everyone could have...
He dropped to the ground. She hugged him, pecked him on the forehead (he blushed), and drew him back to the campfire over the hill.
He moved over the crest to look down at them, at all of them, standing there with presents outstretched in caring hands, their voices raising, all of them, Lloyd's, Colette's, Sheena's, Zelos', Presea's, Regal's, chorusing, "Happy Birthday, Genis."
"Did you think we forgot?" Raine smiled beside him.
"The professor would have killed us if we had," Lloyd laughed.
Raine kicked him for entertaining the thought that he would forget his best friend's birthday (and because he thought she was violent), and sat down to enjoy her brother's night.
He was older, but still so young; so wise, yet so naive.
But she loved him just the same. They all did.
Happy birthday, Vilya!
