Author's Note: Like the summary said, this is an oneshot from Genesis's perspective after Sephiroth and Angeal have died. And like my stories, this has a very real background behind.

This was written listening to "Beauty of the Beast" by Nightwish, which I recommend listening.

DISCLAIMER: I HoshisamaValmor don't own Final Fantasy VII or any of its characters. I don't own the song "Beauty of the Beast" either. I own the feelings and reality that made me write this fanfic, and unfortunately no one can claim them but me.

All of my songs can only be composed of the greatest of pains
Every single verse can only be born of the greatest of wishes
I wish I had one more night to live.
~ "Beauty of the Beast", Nightwish

Life was truly a tragic irony. How long had he wished to establish the parallels between LOVELESS and reality. Wishing such a thing was evoking tragedy itself, but it gave a pleasant tone to life. Finding the similarities in the smallest things, in the situations life presented him, or in the biggest of aspects of people, and himself. Most SOLDIERs were so vain, as were their lives. Genesis had made a point in not becoming a vain being, and not living a vain life. The parallels of existence worked for him as perhaps a small, yet important piece of fulfillment.

But life is much more cruel than any poem, than any fiction. Evoking a poem and establishing its parallels with life can hardly turn the events worse than what they evolve into naturally. And now that he had yet again a crushing proof of it, the irony of how all his devotion to a mere poem was in fact so meaningless when compared to reality crushed him.

Now, they were both dead. No accurate parallels could be made without the two remaining friends, and now they were dead. He had, in a way, planted the seed that made things escalate, but he hadn't had a clear idea of how the events would turn. Thinking back about it, Genesis didn't know why he revealed himself to Sephiroth and the puppy, Zack, and shared the information about Jenova he had learned about. He knew Sephiroth wouldn't help him stop his deterioration; he was far too proud and loyal to the ShinRa Company to help a traitor. Genesis probably wanted to anger and disorientate his old friend.

Things escalated quite a lot, didn't they.

Genesis hadn't stayed to watch Sephiroth's downfall to madness. He had just confirmed with Hollander, who in turn had heard it from Lazard.

"An incident happened in Nibelheim. The whole village has burned to the ground, and Sephiroth is dead. So is everyone else from the investigation team."

ShinRa liked to attribute the label of 'incidents' to whatever situation they couldn't have predicted, like the Mass SOLDIER Desertation Incident. It made things sound lighter for the other employees and public than they actually were.

Everyone was dead. All of Genesis's friends. Even if they turned against each other in the end, they had been friends. And they were dead. Even the boy apparently, Angeal's puppy, had perished in the midst of Sephiroth's rampage.

LOVELESS wasn't as cruel as life was.

Three friends. One is imprisoned, one takes flight, the remaining friend becomes the hero. Who was the hero, then? Being the only friend alive didn't make Genesis the hero. He didn't feel like one. He was a rotting monster - that was no hero. Maybe he was the imprisoned one; imprisoned in a decaying life and solitude.

After the fall Sephiroth had undergone, he had stopped being the hero as well; he took flight.

That left Angeal. Maybe Angeal was the true hero of the three friends, maybe he had always been, and the inheritor of his legacy earned his title. Even Zack the puppy could be the hero.

Genesis pressed his fingers against his closed eyes. LOVELESS was very difficult to interpret sometimes. Especially when his mind wasn't focused.

It was normal his mind wasn't focused. He felt like he was having an existence crisis, no matter how cheesy and immature that notion seemed. Because, what did it matter now? What did LOVELESS matter now? They were dead. And by the looks of things, so would Genesis be, soon. 'Deterioration' was but a sounding euphemism appreciated in poetry and the likes. He was dying, the nerves and muscles and organs of his body would decay and rot to the point when his heart would simply be unable to beat anymore. What did LOVELESS matter now? There was no point in it. It wouldn't change the reality he found himself in.

A rather frustrated sigh escaped Genesis's lips, and he found he had been holding a Stupid Apple next to his lap, which he didn't even remember he had. He glared at it with his now grey eyes from the deterioration process and threw the apple to the ground, like Sephiroth had done when he refused helping the red haired ex-SOLDIER. Sitting on the edge of the window of the old shack Hollander had made into their latest provisory residence, Genesis followed the pale fruit as it rolled on itself along the dust-filled floor, and then turned to stare at the equally whitened sky.

There had been a time when Sephiroth was Genesis's hero. There had been a time when Genesis and Angeal would sit in Banora's fields, wondering how being a SOLDIER would be like. There had been a time when Genesis would recite LOVELESS to Angeal and Sephiroth enough for them to know the verses themselves by heart. There had been a time when unmistakably, they had been friends. Before that training session during the summer, two years ago. Before any of them knew anything about Projects G or S, or about Jenova.

For such a mind as Genesis's to admit that, indeed, ignorance could be bliss, showed how much the current state of his reality affected him. He wished he could feel those feelings, that emotional warmth of friendship, again. That the parallels could have a reality to attach themselves into again. That everything hadn't rotten away and turned them against each other, and that he hadn't been left alone.

"I wish I had one more night to live." And that was new. A non-LOVELESS quote. Was that a personal quotation, then? It certainly felt like one. It had enough of a philosophic tone to please him. "I wish I had one more night to live". It had just the amount of different and multiple readings as the quotes from the epic poem had. Right now, the reading he gave it was of how he wished to live one more night of the old times. The times that were forever gone.

"What was that?" a voice came from the door, and Genesis saw Hollander pick up the White Apple from the floor and then straitening up to meet his glare. Genesis's expression had reduced itself into a single one regarding the man responsible for his creation. "You were muttering that poem again?"

"What do you want?" the ex-SOLDIER asked rather arrogantly, not bothering replying to the rhetoric comment of the scientist.

"I saw Hojo," Hollander said, walking through the room calmly. Genesis raised his eyebrows slightly. "I was pretty sure that he wouldn't let the S cells die completely. After all, Sephiroth was his great triumph. He will surely reproduce them, copy them. You will still be able to find the closest cells to Jenova's, and stop your deterioration."

"Will I?" Genesis said coldly, even though his smirk didn't follow his tone as usual. He had to make Hollander pay the slightest for his past experiments, and he wished he could make him pay greatly. He owed that to Angeal, and himself. When time came, Hollander would truly work hard to find those cells. He would share the same fate as Genesis otherwise.

But everything in its due time. Right now, Genesis found that the only way he could presently "live one more night" of a lost time would be to meditate on his memories, on that window and under that enlightened sky. Hollander was not to be part of them.

"Leave me," he ordered, turning his eyes to the fields and the sky once again. The man protested, stating that Genesis should be the most interested in stopping his deterioration, and he certainly was, but on the present time, he needed to be alone.

He had to order Hollander out twice before the scientist finally left, and the silence from the house together with the soft whispering of the wind outside surrounded him at last.

Putting a little thought into it, Genesis was grieving. He failed to do so properly when Angeal died, and maybe now with another loss, the consequences of both deaths made him finally stop and understand that the weight they carried needed grieving.

Maybe LOVELESS didn't really matter. Maybe he always gave it a much bigger importance than it deserved. But there would come a time when indeed, the memories attached to LOVELESS would matter. He had to at least keep those.

Maybe that time started now. Even if it lasted just one night.

~おわり~

I'm not like Genesis, though. I can't keep anything related to the worthless LOVELESS in my head, because I am killing my Angeal and my Sephiroth and they are going to die even if I stop. And I'm going to be alone in a very upsetting reality.

I don't know if the verse transcribed about the 'three friends' is correct or not, I wrote it from memory, and from the original Japanese version. Never heard it in the English dub, dunno.

Reviews are appreciated, but we're not gonna die from its lack of existence.

See me ruined by my own creations. ~ Romantice, Nightwish