They first met when she was seven and they were nine and eleven, respectively. She'd glared at them, wary after moving to Banora from the slums of Midgar, not saying anything until the older, dark-haired boy had stepped forward with a small smile on his face and his hand outstretched. "I'm Angeal, and this is-"
"I'm Genesis!" the brunette had cut in, always so insistent on introducing himself, just to prove that he could and that he was him, not just Angeal's little tagalong. He had smiled too, and, brushing aside his best friend's hand, had embraced the little redheaded girl in a surprisingly big embrace for his little frame.
"I'm Zea," she'd replied, though her response had been slightly muffled from her mouth being blocked by Genesis' sleeve. Introductions out of the way, the two boys had dragged her off to play, the bonds of friendship already forming.
The townsfolk said that they were like toys connected by a string, Angeal in the lead with Genesis trailing after him and Zea never far behind the brunette. They were inseparable, always together, triplets in all but age and birth. So it wasn't surprising when Genesis first tried (and failed) to woo Zea, or when Zea began to blush whenever Angeal so much as glanced her way, or when Angeal started letting the stubble on his chin stay stubble just to taunt Genesis in his own little way.
It wasn't surprising, either, when Angeal and Genesis were recruited into Soldier and insisted that Zea come with them. They all trooped off a few days later, Angeal in the lead with Genesis trying doggedly to keep up and Zea right behind him, laughing and helping him along.
When the trio fought their first battle, they were all Third Class Soldiers under a slightly more experienced Second Class, who was taking his orders from a First Class who was hiding safely back at Shin-Ra headquarters behind walls and a commlink. They'd all spilled blood, and lost some too, but they'd fought back to back to back and made it through somehow.
When the battle was over and Genesis was emptying his breakfast behind a bush with Angeal holding back his hair and Zea mopping his forehead with a damp cloth, the Second Class came over to them and congratulated them on a job well done. The two helping Genesis looked up at him wordlessly, then turned their heads simultaneously and joined Genesis on their hands and knees.
The trio met Sephiroth for the first time when they got back from their trial missions as Second Class members, when Hojo and Hollander were performing routine check-ups on the newly-promoted Second Class Soldiers.
This time it was Genesis' turn to glare at the newcomer; Zea, on the other hand, shrank back behind Angeal, at least as far as she could while Hojo inspected her arms for damage. Angeal, still the ever-friendly one (although his glowing personality had dimmed slightly with age and the horrors they'd all seen as Soldiers), just smiled his small smile and reached out his hand to the silver-haired general.
None of them had seen Genesis since he was released from the medical wing after the training accident, and they were all worried. Zea followed Angeal like his own shadow, never straying from following the path his weary feet drew through the corridors of Shin-Ra. Sephiroth was almost always in either the VR training room, the library, or his own bed, almost never taking time to eat or shower.
When Genesis finally reappeared, his clothes were bloody and torn, and there was a large, obvious hole ripped in his cloak and shirt near his left shoulderblade. The other three rushed him to Hollander, who gave the brunette painkillers and put him on bed rest for the next couple of weeks, or until he got better.
Genesis refused to speak of what had happened to him while he had been gone, but what he muttered and screamed in his nightmares was more than telling enough. Hojo's name came up too often, and Genesis' screams split their eardrums until it felt as though their eardrums were constantly thrumming. Zea cried on Angeal's shoulder, choking back sobs so as to not wake Genesis from his disturbed yet healing sleep,
It was the first time any of them had ever seen her cry.
Angeal had followed Genesis, surely enough, just as Zea had earlier told Sephiroth he would. It was hard to tell which betrayal hurt her more; the fact that she had locked herself up in her rooms in First Class barracks and refused to see anyone but Sephiroth, and very rarely Hollander, didn't help matters very much. Word in Shin-Ra was that Zea had in fact left the night after Angeal, and the general and the scientist were merely trying to keep up appearances and morale.
But the rumors were put to rest when the redhead was rushed out of her room on a stretcher, long, bloody cuts covering her arms and legs, and an odd pair of white wings sprouting from her left shoulder.
Sephiroth held back Zea's hair as she retched into her toilet, broken sobs interspersed with the intermittent heaving. Tears ran down her face and dripped off her chin into the toilet, sparkling like crystals in the putrid mix below.
The report had come in just minutes ago, both Sephiroth and Zea having been called into the Director's office to hear the news. Sephiroth had paled beneath his silver hair, and Zea had run from the office without so much as a salute or a "By your leave, Director". Lazard had asked the general to follow her and make sure that she was all right, but the First Class Soldier had already run out the door after her before Lazard closed his mouth. Now here they were, in an apartment that suddenly seemed far too lonely and a child that would grow up without a father if its mother didn't die from grief first, and it all seemed so senseless now that Angeal was dead and Genesis was dying. What was the point, they mused separately as they stood up and Zea weakly wiped bile from her lips, if two of their three best friends were already gone?
Sephiroth sat down heavily on his bed and buried his face in his hands, allowing himself a small moment of weakness. Reeve had told him as soon as he'd returned from his mission, and for that the silver-haired general was grateful, but he almost wished that the head of the science department would've waited until he at least had gotten a little sleep and cleaned himself up.
He'd just returned from looking for any signs of Genesis when Reeve had sprung upon him as soon as he walked through Shin-Ra's front door, looking worried and almost beside himself with something more than sadness but not quite grief. Sephiroth thought at first that perhaps some idiot had done something with Angeal's body, stolen it or desecrated it or mutilated it, but the first words out of Reeve's mouth had instead been about Zea and her unborn child. Sephiroth had run full-tilt toward Zea's room, ignoring the pleas for him to stop and to not go into her room because they were considering it a crime scene until they knew whether she'd been murdered or if she'd committed suicide, and almost knocked her door down to see what exactly had happened.
Zea's body lay in the middle of the room, the Buster Sword driven through her chest. Her eyes were closed and there was a small, faint smile on her lips, the smile that their tight-knight little group of four had always called the 'Angeal smile'. Her previously slightly rounded stomach was flat again, normal, blood pooling around her legs and the wound in her chest. Sephiroth had gagged and ran even faster, if that was possible, back to his room.
Now he was here, sitting on his bed with his head in his hands and cursing the world and Genesis and Angeal and Lazard and Shin-Ra and everything else. But then a voice spoke to him, a voice that was soothing even though it rasped and shrieked and wasn't of this world. Sephiroth recognized it as his Mother, knew that Mother was with him, Mother was inside of him, Mother WAS him.
And Sephiroth oh-so-slowly went insane.
If Cloud just squeezed his eyes shut a little tighter, he could almost see them, see them laughing and talking and actually happy for once. All of them, the ones Zack had told him about, Genesis and Angeal and Zea and a small boy-child that Zack hadn't, and the ones he knew, Zack and Aeris and Sephiroth. He could see them all, smiles on their faces and happiness in their voices, and Cloud felt tears start to his eyes. That happiness wasn't his, never would be his, and it wasn't theirs, either, not really, because all he was seeing was one of Zack's memories.
That was all any of them were, memories, but Cloud was going to make sure that they would always be remembered if it was the last thing he did.