Title: Forgiveness
Characters: Lazard, Angeal, Zack Fair cameo
Tags: Angst. Missing Scene. Canon Character Death. Regret and Acceptance. Self-forgiveness. Angeal as Psychopomp. Obsession and vengeance as a form of madness is a running theme in the FFVII compilation. Zack is present but only has a small cameo.
Description: In which Lazard joins with the Lifestream.
Note: Psychopomps (from the Greek word ψυχοπομπός, psychopompós, literally meaning the 'guide of souls') are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife. Their role is not to judge the deceased, but simply to guide them. From Wikipedia / Psychopomp (https colon slash slash en dot wikipedia dot org slash wiki slash Psychopomp)
Forgiveness
By
Tiffany Park
Psychopomps (from the Greek word ψυχοπομπός, psychopompós, literally meaning the 'guide of souls') are creatures, spirits, angels, or deities in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls from Earth to the afterlife. Their role is not to judge the deceased, but simply to guide them.
— https colon slash slash en dot wikipedia dot org slash wiki slash Psychopomp
I'm dying.
That was Lazard's thought after he'd defeated the Shin-Ra forces in Banora's ruins. He was finally, inevitably dying.
Lazard knew it wasn't just his injuries from the battle, but also the degradation. He'd been degrading ever since he was fool enough to inject himself with Angeal Hewley's cells. As with a cancer or an autoimmune disorder, his own body was putrefying, destroying itself. The corrosion ran rampant through his system, deep in his bones and sinew, gnawing at every cell in his body, coursing in his very blood. It increased with each breath, every beat of his heart.
It was his self-inflicted destiny. Deterioration. Decay. His body rotted more with each day, each hour, each minute. His hair had become snow white; painful lesions split his faded, chalky flesh. Every little exertion exhausted him and he ached like an arthritic old man. Even the irises in his eyes had been leached of their pigment until they were gray. His vision and his hearing failed him at odd times.
And his wings. Oh, his wings. They burned in agony with every movement, every tiny twitch, until he wanted to scream. Until he thought they'd explode in flurries of tissue, blood, and white feathers.
He stared at the earth, contemplating his approaching end. Zack was still gone, seeking Genesis. He'd missed the fight with Shin-Ra, and Lazard had no idea when he'd be back. He wondered if he'd still be alive when Zack finally returned.
Lazard had saved Zack's unconscious friend, and surprised himself with his own fighting ability. It hadn't been a large force—just a few troopers, really, but before he'd become an Angeal copy they would have easily subdued and killed him. He hadn't thought it possible for him to fight like a SOLDIER, though he supposed he was giving himself too much credit. He was neither enhanced nor trained. Unlike the Genesis copies, he'd skipped the mako treatments when he'd injected Angeal's cells into himself. Who could have administered the mako? After the A-cells had started working, he and Hollander had parted ways. Just as Angeal had parted ways with Hollander and Genesis.
No, Angeal's skills and strength had defeated the Shin-Ra troopers, not his own. He didn't understand how it worked, but he had known what to do on an automatic, instinctive level. How to deal death to an enemy. Efficiently and without fear, without remorse. Like a killing machine, a living weapon.
Like a SOLDIER.
Was Angeal really living on within him, guiding him from beyond the grave? Zack seemed to think so. Lazard pondered that impossibility, then a spasm hit him and he shuddered with pain that spiked through his entire body. His strength drained away until he could do no more than slouch on the ground, leaning wearily against the chair that he'd found for Zack's friend to sit in.
Degradation. This was what Genesis suffered, and for far longer. No wonder he'd gone mad.
It's no more than I deserve for my sins, Lazard thought. Unable to stand, he wallowed in his memories and his self-condemnation.
How had it come to this?
He'd been a blind fool, so obsessed with his revenge for a childhood in the slums, a hopeless and unacknowledged bastard, with a monster like President Shin-Ra for a father. He wanted revenge for his mother, who had suffered and starved herself so he could have enough food. He still burned in anger when he remembered her sad and painful death. He had been utterly consumed with his desire for vengeance: for himself, for his mother, and yes, even for all the other poor, downtrodden bastards Shin-Ra kept trapped in the slums with no escape, no dreams, no hope.
His desire to possess the Shin-Ra company, to take it from the his demon of a father, to tear down its corrupt institutions and remake it into something better, to help the slum dwellers lives—it had all been a ridiculous delusion. The Shinra Electric Power Company was a corrupt entity that could never improve. The company was rotten to the core, just like his body. Full of darkness, like his soul.
It was just like him. Had he succeeded in his vengeance, the company would have continued to decay. It wouldn't have improved life for anyone; it would have remained sick: an oozing, gangrenous blight on the Planet and the human race.
I am a monster, he thought, and there seemed to be an echo in his mind of another voice, another man who had believed the same of himself.
I shouldn't have done any of it, Lazard thought. He never should have thrown his lot in with Hollander and organized the conspiracy, the betrayals, the overwhelming havoc. He'd planned the creation of the Genesis Army. He'd mapped out and stocked the base sites, financing everything with embezzled funds. At the time, he'd believed it justice to fund the Shin-Ra Company's destruction with its own money.
He hadn't just betrayed Shin-Ra. He'd betrayed his SOLDIERs. SOLDIERs like Zack. Like Angeal, and Genesis, and Sephiroth. His SOLDIERs. And Banora's inhabitants. He'd doomed them all with his thirst for vengeance.
Lazard thought of his and Hollander's far-flung network of secret bases and labs, full of equipment that SOLDIERs had appropriated and transported. The same SOLDIERs that he had condemned to become Genesis copies and, in some cases, Makonoids.
He'd stolen so much from Shin-Ra, and from his own people: Money. SOLDIERs. Transport vehicles. Automated intelligent weapons and ammunition. Military materiel. Power sources, batteries, materia.
Lab equipment, so much lab equipment: Mako tanks and mako in large scale storage containers, computers, analysis equipment, lab refrigerators and freezers, autoclaves, incubators, centrifuges, several labs' worth of chemistry equipment and chemicals, electrophoresis equipment, cell culture plates and nutrients...
And the copy technology. Especially the copy technology.
Lazard uttered a single, hoarse laugh full of shame and self-loathing.
Copy technology. What a horrible, horrific euphemism for Genesis and Angeal's own bodies.
There had been hundreds of items Hollander had required, perhaps even thousands, and Lazard never had any real idea about the purpose of it all. The list had been so extensive that he hadn't bothered asking. He assumed Hollander knew what he was doing, and had trusted that the lab supplies were all required for the processes to function, to create the Genesis Army.
What a fool he'd been.
Even learning that Genesis and Angeal's own bodies were the so-called "copy technology" hadn't dissuaded him. He'd been so obsessed that his knowledge of those horrors made no difference to him. He'd used the two Firsts as surely, as callously, as Hollander had.
How could he have betrayed his own men without a thought to their well-being? Genesis and Angeal were people, not objects, despite their cynical, dehumanizing, corporate designations as "copy technology" and "stolen equipment" by the Shin-Ra Company. Just as all the SOLDIERs who had followed Genesis were also people. Lazard had condemned them all to lose their own identities, their unique physical forms, as one by one they became Genesis copies, their minds and even their souls annihilated and subsumed by Genesis's overbearing will and mental control.
So many lies were told to them. He'd ordered them to go with Genesis, ostensibly on a secret mission into Wutai, and then, safe in Midgar, he had reported them as deserters, all for his own plans and all the while knowing he had condemned them. They wouldn't have betrayed Shin-Ra or accepted becoming mindless drones of their own free will, so more and more lies had been needed to convince them.
Genesis Rhapsodos had always been incredibly charismatic, but even he couldn't have talked so many SOLDIERs into betraying their oaths or to lose themselves like that. Instead, they'd been promised they'd be further enhanced, gain strength and abilities comparable to his, that their force would become invincible and then conquer Wutai. They had believed they'd return home as heroes, not lose their identities, their very souls, and die as traitors.
They knew nothing of Lazard's true plan.
None was ever told the real price of their new power. And once they received an injection of Genesis's cells, it was too late for them. There was no going back.
As Hollander had explained, as Lazard himself had learned with his own continuing transformation and subsequent degradation, the mutated Genesis and Angeal cells became shockingly aggressive when placed in a new host.
The equipment, the mako pods—those things had been needed to enhance the copies once they had been infected. Infused with Genesis's cells and fresh mako, Thirds gained the strength and magic of Seconds. Seconds grew stronger still, though only a few reached the level of Firsts.
As Genesis copies, their tolerance to greater enhancements increased, though none became as good as the original. None could truly mimic Genesis.
And the Banora villagers? They were condemned to become inhuman monsters, Makonoids.
Whether he knew it or not, Genesis had done his adoptive parents a favor by murdering them. They had been spared Hollander's tender mercies.
By the time Angeal had been sent into Genesis and Hollander's orbit at Fort Tamblin, all the SOLDIERs with Genesis and the surviving civilians from the massacre at Banora had been transformed. Lacking other human victims, Hollander had settled for creating Angeal copies from monsters, but Angeal hadn't been a voluntary participant. Not like Genesis, who had been invested in Hollander's lies, his hollow promises of a cure for degradation.
Angeal had abandoned Genesis and Hollander before the copies had even been created, and they never fought as well as the Genesis copies. Angeal hadn't been available to control the monsters, guide them in the use of more intelligent tactics and fighting techniques, or drive them to extreme efforts. Lazard assumed he'd have refused even if he'd remained with Genesis. Hollander's Angeal copies had been on their own without any guidance at all and had been all but useless except as distractions and obstacles.
Revenge, Lazard thought, all for revenge. He had destroyed his men in the name of his revenge. They were forever branded as deserters, dishonored, transformed and used as cannon fodder, then forgotten. At the time, it had all seemed so necessary to Lazard, so important. Revenge for himself, his abandoned mother (damn President Shin-Ra to the deepest Wutain hell for using her, and for siring himself), and all the poor slum-dwellers slaving away in the Shin-Ra Company's overbearing shadow.
Revenge he didn't even desire anymore.
As the A-cells multiplied, they took over his body and mind, flooding his tissues with new proteins and hormones, rewriting his genetic code and remaking him into an Angeal copy. In that process, his lust for vengeance had washed away. He had his own memories still, but sometimes his thoughts took new and mysterious turns. Even before he'd noticed the early degradation symptoms, he'd changed deep inside.
For his vengeance, he'd wanted Angeal's strength, his abilities and power. Taking on his physical appearance had seemed a small price to pay. With Angeal dead, he had assumed it would be safe to accept the A-cells. There was no longer a master to direct or control him as Genesis had mentally overpowered his own copies.
So why the change to his very soul?
Was it the cells, rearranging his brain into something resembling Angeal's? Were his strange thoughts the result of his new neural structures, or was Angeal influencing him from the Lifestream? He couldn't begin to guess. He only knew he wanted to help Zack through the tangled mess Hollander, Shin-Ra, and he himself had created, and had watched over Angeal's former student. He wanted to save Genesis from his degradation. After his transformation, he had journeyed the Planet in both those aims.
He even wanted to save the whole world.
Lazard huffed a little laugh. Angeal had never spoken of that last desire, and who could blame him? It was idealistic to the point of absurdity. It was worthy of ridicule, even. Angeal must have known that. No one could save the whole world.
He barely heard Zack return, heard a whisper of sound as something settled against the chair. Through a long, dark tunnel, he saw Zack come and kneel before him. Foreign feelings—Angeal's feelings—tugged at his spirit.
Zack needed to know what had happened...
"Shin-Ra attacked us," he forced out, his voice rough, his throat sore and choking with the effort.
"Save your strength," Zack said.
A meaningless request. Save it for what? He was dying. "I got some help..." he rasped in a hoarse whisper. "From him...over there." With the last of his strength, he gestured to the other remaining Angeal copy, the loyal and brave dog that had given its life to help him, to defend Zack and his comatose friend from Shin-Ra.
Zack stood and walked away, towards the armored dog lying still and lifeless. Lazard's vision went dark. He strained to hear the receding footsteps, but his thoughts drifted. Distantly, he heard Zack gasp and say something, but he couldn't summon up the strength to focus on his former subordinate.
His hand fell to the earth, his head lolled.
Before him, the world grew soft and light, flowing slowly like a lazy stream, full of warmth and glowing fog. Everything else faded into the background. Lazard felt himself straddling a blurry, indistinct line between two realities. Two that were one. He existed between those two places now, one vibrant but harsh, the other numinous, gentle and kind. Welcoming.
Holy.
A man approached, wreathed in golden light, ethereal, transcendent and winged like a heavenly angel. Four creatures gamboled and cavorted about him as though they were happy puppies.
A dog—the Angeal copy who'd joined forces with Lazard and accompanied him into death—yipped suddenly. The armor and trappings that marked it as an A-copy melted away, and it became an ordinary dog again. It bounded toward the glowing man joyfully, taking its place with the other creatures.
The man stopped before Lazard. A guiding hand extended to him, and above, a kind face grew clear through the hazy nimbus of light. A face he knew. The face of a man he had wronged so terribly.
"Angeal," he whispered, his heart filling with guilt. So. Angeal was here to judge him, and would find him unworthy. Lazard saw the wings that emerged from Angeal's right side only, leaving him asymmetrical, unbalanced. A mutation, an experiment, one treated callously, ruthlessly, before he had been driven to seek his own death. Lazard regretted his part in it all. He deserved condemnation.
"I'm sorry, Angeal," Lazard spoke again. "I'm sorry for everything."
"It doesn't matter. Not anymore," Angeal comforted him. "You're finally free. Let it go."
"I'm sorry for betraying you. You trusted me, and I..." He stuttered, guilt and remorse overwhelming him. "I sent you to Fort Tamblin, lied to you. I set you up to see Genesis, to join him and desert Shin-Ra—all for Hollander's and my schemes." Lazard couldn't help unburdening his heart, and confessed his sins expecting not absolution, but damnation. "In the end, I even stole your identity."
"You did well as me," Angeal said with an unexpected twinkle in his eye. "You helped Zack, and I will be forever grateful to you for that. In doing so, you saved his friend and tried to save the world. I couldn't ask for more."
"That wasn't me," Lazard said in denial. "I wanted revenge, to tear Shin-Ra apart and rebuild it into my own wishes."
"You were doing it to help others, even in revenge."
Lazard shook his head minutely. "It was your cells, your genes, molding me in your image. All of me, even my brain. I took on your appearance, your traits and thoughts, your wants and desires. It was you, not me, who wanted to save the world." He didn't want to ask, but he had to know the truth: "Was it just your cells, or was it your will...your spirit guiding me from...from beyond your death?"
"They're one and the same. It doesn't matter, Lazard. Not anymore. Let it go."
One and the same. The physical and the spiritual. Two sides of the same coin. Enlightenment teased but stayed stubbornly out of reach. And then...
"Let it all go, Lazard," Angeal said.
And with those words, with new understanding, Lazard felt something inside give and shift, and the weight of guilt that had consumed him lessened until it was just a dim memory. Angeal's wings no longer seemed unbalanced, but instead a natural part of him. They were perfect. Pure white, snow white, they were beautiful, almost blinding.
The dog whined, and Angeal bent to scruff its ears. The other creatures pressed in, demanding attention which he freely gave.
An odd collection to be so tame and friendly. In addition to the dog, Lazard identified a Griffon, a Hellhound, a Sahagin, and even a bat-winged Ahriman.
"Those monsters act like pets," Lazard said wonderingly.
"The poor things were all mine, my copies. They all come to me here. Most move on fairly quickly, but for some it takes a while. This group merged with me and died while part of me," Angeal said, giving them all a final pat and straightening up.
Ah. Lazard remembered the official report that Zack and Tseng had filed back in another life, and the guilt came rushing back. That transformation, Angeal's suicidal last stand. It was part of Lazard's own guilt, his own burdens. Angeal had fused with his copies to become a horrifying chimera when he'd forced Zack to kill him. At the time Lazard had speculated that he'd wanted a warrior's death, to die in battle rather than from poison, slit wrists, a noose, or a bullet to the brain.
Could any of those methods successfully kill a First Class SOLDIER, even a mutated one? They were inhumanly resilient, after all. Angeal's native, bioengineered physiology and his SOLDIER enhancements probably would have healed him before sufficient damage was done. Was that why he had chosen battle with his former student as the means of his own death? To ensure success, where those other methods might fail?
Lazard supposed it no longer mattered.
It all seemed so distant now.
"They're still too attached to me," Angeal said with a gentle smile for his menagerie. "They'll fade and blend into the Lifestream when they're ready. We all will."
Lazard felt as though he were floating, bobbing along on a sparkling, calm lake. He roused himself to ask, "Why are you here, meeting me? Aren't you ready?"
"I'm waiting for someone."
"Who? Isn't Genesis already here?"
"Genesis isn't here, and won't be for a long time. The Planet has other plans for him."
So Genesis had found a way to survive, after all. The world was full of mysteries. Perhaps he found the Gift of the Goddess in the end. Yes, it made sense that Angeal would wait for him. Him and...and...
"Zack?" Lazard guessed.
"In his time," Angeal replied somberly. "We all die, eventually."
Something inside Lazard wanted to weep at the thought of Zack's future death, and he didn't know if the grief was his own or Angeal's. "What about Sephiroth? He's here, too, isn't he?"
Sorrow crossed Angeal's features. "Sephiroth is caught between two worlds. He's both close and far away, and he's far from ready for release." Another smile, strained this time. "He won't let go of his anger and grudges. He's locked in a prison of competing obsessions and alien imperatives, and there's nothing I can do to help him."
Lazard wondered what that meant. Why couldn't Angeal help one of his dearest friends? And then his thoughts floated off again, losing clarity, becoming cloudy and formless. He struggled for identity, for awareness.
"But I can help you." Angeal again extended his hand. "You need to let go, Lazard. Be at peace with yourself."
Lazard stared at him. That luminous hand, that kind smile... It was so tempting. It would be so easy to take Angeal's hand and...and let go as Angeal urged him to do.
Holding on to himself was so hard. So...unnatural. The physical world receded farther into the background, and it no longer called to him. The numinous world took up his sight, his hearing, all his senses. It was reality, not the brief, mad, and mundane existence behind him. Lazard found he didn't want to hold on anymore. He didn't want to fight or struggle. He wanted to rest.
Angeal waited.
Lazard gazed wordlessly into those deep blue eyes, and something inside him shifted further. He felt light, weightless, and freedom beckoned. He exhaled slowly, one final time, letting his worldly cares slip away with the last of his breath. This was right, and proper. It felt soothing and warm and good.
He took Angeal's hand.
The remains of the physical world faded into soft, radiant light. He heard murmuring voices, and song, and smelled flowers. He tasted honey and strawberries, and fresh-baked bread. His hand became his own again, no longer a copy of Angeal's. Stars twinkled, and comforting arms seemed to embrace him. He felt more like himself than he'd ever felt before.
So this was how it felt to become One with the Planet, he thought, to abandon your sense of self and unite with a greater whole. His hand and arm glowed and became indistinct, translucent and fuzzy around the edges. They slowly dissolved like sugar in warm water, glimmering motes of himself blending into the transcendental light, streaming into the swirls and eddies of life and spirit, joining with the chorus of singing memories.
He saw his mother, his wonderful mother. He saw deceased SOLDIERs and Turks, other coworkers, and even enemies. All now felt like cherished companions. He saw long forgotten childhood friends who hadn't survived the slums, and now they were as bright and clear in memory as when he'd been just seven years old. He saw his life: his triumphs, his obsessions, his failures and betrayals. There was no judgement, no condemnation. He felt acceptance, and love.
It was all good.
The Lifestream remembered. The Lifestream remembered everything.
"It's beautiful," he murmured, and let himself flow into the currents of everlasting joy.
~ end ~
Written September 2021
Revised June 2022
NOTE: After Lazard's role as the two-faced inside man in the events of Crisis Core was revealed, the answers to a lot of mysteries and "How did they pull that off—?" questions about what Hollander and Genesis accomplished suddenly slot into place. IMO, Lazard was a bigger villain than Hollander, as he betrayed all the people who trusted him and knowingly destroyed their lives for the sake of his own anger, resentment, and thirst for revenge. Nothing Genesis and Hollander accomplished could have happened without Lazard financing, enabling, and facilitating the conspiracy and Genesis Army all along. Troops need to be able to trust their leaders, especially during wartime, and he abused that trust, stabbing them all in the back and destroying much of SOLDIER for the benefit of his own schemes. Keeping in mind that Lazard was a Machiavellian villain all along, it's impossible to feel sorry for him when he finally dies.
Honestly, was any executive in Shin-Ra a decent leader? Maybe Reeve, but he had issues, too. If ever there was a group of people who deserved to be flattened by a meteorite...
Here are the letters to Zack that make Lazard's duplicity explicit for gamers who hadn't already figured it out in the gameplay. For those interested, all Zack's emails are available to read at https colon slash slash finalfantasy dot dot slash wiki slash Mail_(Crisis_Core):
From: Kunsel
Contents:
Those copies Hollander made that attacked Shinra...
Did you know that Director Lazard financed Hollander
with money he embezzled from the company?
Seems revenge against the company was
the motivation for both of them.
I can understand Hollander wanting revenge, but why would Lazard?
He climbed up the ladder while he was still young. And he was
always a decent guy. What could he have had against the company?
I do remember him writing about "ill blood" in one of his mails.
Speaking of climbing up, the president's son's already made
vice president. You think Lazard was after the VP's chair?
Received: While building the flower wagon.
~.~.~.~
From: Reporter
Contents:
It seems that SOLDIER Director Lazard, who was recently
reported as killed in action, simply vanished instead.
Sources say Lazard has been embezzling company
money to fund Hollander's attack on Shinra.
It is also believed that Hollander, who was held
captive in Junon, has fled with Lazard's aid.
An investigation has revealed that both men have
held ill feelings toward Shinra. This comes as a
great shock to the parties involved, as members of
SOLDIER have had the utmost confidence in Lazard.
Received: After entering LOVELESS Avenue in Chapter 8.