Rating: PG

Warnings: Angst

Disclaimer: I do not own FFVII or its characters. I do not make any money from this fiction.

Summary: There was nowhere to hide and no way to bottle it up.

A/N: Written from prompt: Genesis/Sephiroth: breakdown – I never meant for this to happen. Don't know where I found it. If it's yours, surprise!


It was very different in the Lifestream.

There was no sense of time, for one. It wasn't just that time moved differently in the sense that it slowed down or sped up. It just wasn't. There was just…now. The moment in which one found oneself was all that existed.

There also was no pain. No feeling at all, really. Well…qualification. There was no bodily pain, as there was no body. However, the souls that floated within the Lifestream could feel. In fact, they could feel more. Without living to distract them from what was once 'internal' turmoil, souls could feel everything they once spent their life denying.

It was torture.

Sephiroth's soul, despite everything, had been absorbed into the Lifestream after his last confrontation with Cloud. He'd never been here in the truest sense. He'd passed through it, but never really been a part of the mass of energy around him. Now that his soul was stuck in this timeless, lifeless void…he was free, and it was horrible.

Now that he wasn't controlled by the entity he'd called Mother, Sephiroth could see everything. He could feel everything. The grief, the horror, the emotions he'd bottled up deep in his soul his entire life were overwhelming. Emotion had always been the flaw of those weaker, less god-like than him.

Or so Mother had always said.

So Hojo had always said.

Now, it was unavoidable. There was nowhere to hide and no way to bottle it up. The agony was overwhelming, unending hell.

And he'd never meant for any of it to happen.

I know, my ice prince.

Sephiroth's soul could still feel surprise, and, had the body still been intact, he would have been wildly searching for the source of that statement. Although, he already knew who it was. Only one person had ever called him that.

There was an infusion of warmth in Sephiroth's cold, awful soul. He knew that warmth. He'd felt it in the body of the one person who'd ever meant anything to his rather disjointed psyche.

Genesis?

I'm here, as much as I can be.

Sephiroth's soul shuddered at the feeling of firelight warmth melting through the layers of eternal torment. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean for this to happen, any of it.

I know.

Sephiroth was grateful for the comforting presence that wrapped his soul in something that felt very much like welcoming arms. I'm sorry.

I know you are, my prince.

Don't leave me. Sephiroth's soul was pleading. If he'd been corporeal, he would have been sobbing.

I can't stay here long.

Why? Why can't you stay with me?

Because I'm not really here, my prince. I still reside in the land of the living. It was quite the endeavor to find you, just for these few moments.

Please.

Regret and the feeling of being wrapped tighter. I'll stay as long as I can.

Time was a fickle non-existence in the Lifestream, and Sephiroth felt as if Genesis' soul were with him for only the briefest of touches before it faded away into the cacophony.

If he'd been alive, Sephiroth would have screamed.

END