When does a lifelong friendship cease to be a friendship and start to become something else? And how can you deal with it?
What do you do when you look at the person you have known almost all your life, and suddenly realize you never saw the truth?
When you have touched more than a thousand times before, and all of a sudden, it feels different, sending shivers through your spine?
What do you do, standing at the crossroads, desperately wanting to go back to like it was before, but at the same time long to take it further in the other direction?
Are you willing to jeopardize everything, in order to gain it all or lose everything you had?
This story is dedicated to the wonderful and talented Ayarah Thorne.
Happy Birthday, sweetie! Thanks for being such an inspiration!
First things first: Warning! This is a yaoi story, which means it features a relationship between two male characters (although one of them can sometimes behave a lot more 'girly' than the female lead in my other story ;). If you don't like it, you better don't read…
In my opinion, love is something that happens between two persons, regardless of race, background or gender…
Rated M just to be on the safe side, but there is no explicit sexual content (the stress is on 'explicit', of course. What you make out of the implicit stuff is up to you…).
What I wrote, how and why – kind of…
Just in case you might be curious… A little 'story of the story':
Writing my ongoing story 'Final Fiction', I realized how much I liked the characters Sephiroth, Angeal and Genesis, especially in the way they are before/ at the very beginning of the events of the original 'Crisis Core' game (regarding Sephiroth and Genesis, that basically means 'pre-crazy', or 'before they turn bad' ;).
That's why I had the idea to dedicate a separate story just to those three and their close friendship.
While doing a first project outline, I suddenly realized that I had always thought of Angeal and Genesis as being not only best friends, but actually a bit more...
I don't really know where that thought came from. I can see the point in most other FF VII yaoi pairings (more or less ;), but I never felt that 'natural' about any of the others.
Of course I am well aware of the fact that there is not a lot of supporting evidence in the original cutscenes. It's something that goes on pretty much between the lines, like that side glance at the beginning of the famous 'Angeal-and-Genesis- versus-Sephiroth-training-room-fight-scene'… or it might be just me :)
The only problem I had to solve (because it somehow bothered me) was to find out if Angeal and Genesis are supposed to be related or not (Hollander's information given on that topic is quite confusing)… To cut it short (but I'm happy to discuss that point if anyone is interested), I came to the result that they are not (if Jenova cells were the criterion, half of the cast would be related to each other), but of course you could have another opinion here.
A special thanks goes to Makayla (another talent on this site) for discussing the options with me. Thanks for your endless patience and support!
When the first outline of this story had formed on my mind, I got to know a really kind and loving person, a person whose friendship I value more than anything else. She is simply amazing, and we have so much in common. And I strongly recommend you go and check out her fiction!
Because this special person stated in a comment to my original story that she liked my way to characterize the three top SOLDIERs (*still flattered and blushed*), I decided to dedicate this story to her. The fact that her birthday was coming up was the icing on the cake :)
So once again: Ayarah Thorne, this is for you! Hope you like it.
Connection to "Final Fiction"
Some lines on the relationship between this story and my ongoing project "Final Fiction": you don't have to read them together (if you are strictly against the use of OCs and/or a total Zack x Aerith fan, I understand you might not want to read it at all). Although they are surely somehow connected, they can both be read as a stand-alone.
In "Final Fiction", I kept the possible love relationship between Angeal and Genesis pretty much between the lines (the most obvious hint being the conversation between Destiny and Angeal at the end of Part III, Chapter 2, which ends with a question that is never answered and can be interpreted to everyone's personal liking. The same conversation is picked up here at the very end of this story). Although technically my OC Destiny is present according to the timeline of my other story, I wanted this story to be kind of independent. That's why she is referred to only very shortly in the first chapter, and of course in the final conversation (not by name, though).
The 'soundtrack':
All my writings (fan fiction included) happen to have a soundtrack, some music that (in my point of view) is connected to a certain scene, as it inspired me to write in the first place or just strikes me as a very close match to the emotions displayed. Just to underline that fact, I sometimes use lyrics quotes at the beginning of chapters.
The necessities:
Disclaimer:
The characters (Angeal, Genesis, Sephiroth and Gillian Hewley) and the background belong to Square Enix. I just took the liberty to play around with them, but my writing is purely fan-made, I get no material profit out of it whatsoever.
Or to put it in the well-known shape: They own the neighbourhood; I'm just playing in the backyard.
This story also contains lyric quotes. No copyright infringements intended; all rights reserved and with their rightful owners.
List of lyrics quoted according to chapter (as the titles are not mentioned in the writing itself):
Intro: "Keep holding on" (Avril Lavigne) (I still don't know if her voice confuses me or not… but I quoted this song for the sake of its first lines)
I : "Speechless" (The Veronicas)
II: "Yours to Hold" (Skillet) (I so adore this song ;)
III: "All I have" (The Veronicas)
IV: "More than it seems" (Kutless)
V: "I could get used to this" (The Veronicas)
VI: "Someone wake me up" (The Veronicas)
The song quote Genesis uses in Chapters III and V is taken from Emilie Autumn's song "Juliet" (I just thought it's such an intense line…)
Coming to the end of my introduction, I apologize to everyone who thinks that I abused their beloved characters and to thank everybody else for reading through all of this.
Layout note: The story is divided into seven chapters, some are quite short, and some really long. To make it easier to read, I broke it into 'bite sizes'.
I hope you have as much fun reading the following story as I had writing it.
Oh, and don't forget: Reviews are love :)