This is what I've wanted to do all along. This is what I wanted to begin with. The story of the three friends: Sephiroth (Crescent), Genesis Rhapsodos and Angeal Hewley. Whoever may want to laugh or cry or get hurt or comfort each other together with us, welcome on board.

Disclaimer: I own nothing of FF7. Then again, I own nothing whatsoever. But hey, „nihil habenti, nihil deest"! Still, Iarba - the one called 'Tonberry' by Genesis - is MY creation and nobody else but my friend Glaurung II is entitled to use her apart from me

NEVERENDING SONG

Part I – DIVER. 1st song

"…I've become so numb without a soul
my spirit sleeping somewhere cold"

Evanescence – „Bring me to life"

The high steep cliff stood right above the abyss. It was the last line of resistance land put against the raging assault of water. Large boulders lay fallen at its foot and more were still detaching from the precipitous wall and diving into the deep with thunderous splashes. Waves ceaselessly broke at the foot of the cliff and, despite its dizzying height, sometimes they reached its upper edge sprayed in a cold mist.

The place was deserted – and a gloomy one as well. Noone ever came there. It was beautiful though, beyond ordinary daily beauty. Wild and dark. A place for broken or tormented souls, seemingly.

Especially at dusk.

He stood there on the very edge of the fjord, gazing aimlessly at the horizon. Shapeless rags of clouds lay spread over the sky like bloody reminders of a fierce battle.

Nothing could be read on his stone-still face. Nothing of what was really going on inside him.

But what was there, inside him?

Nothing.

Of course he wasn't crying.

Of course.

He never did.

What was the point in doing that? Crying was for the weak, they had told him that a long time before. He had told him that years ago.

Yet that wasn't the reason why he was not crying now. He wanted to. He wished so badly he could just let go of it, let his too-long imprisoned tears fall down on him. Like humans did.

Let them shower him like a downpour, flood everything and let him drown in that ocean of sorrow.

He just couldn't.

He didn't dare to.

Because, somehow, he was sure they would know. He, that frightful man, would know.

He kept gazing aimlessly at the tormented sky, while the strong wind was wildly blowing his long strands around him, trying to push him over the high edge.

In the blazing light, his hair looked blooded. And if his pain and emptiness could spill out from him like blood from a wound, then it would have been. Everything around would have been painted blood-red. Yet in that place the sky, the sea, they already looked that way and maybe that was why he kept coming there. Because it was as if his own sorrow had erupted there long ago, staining, tainting the whole place and now it fit him; it became his own. He belonged there in that sea of blood. It was a place for him – and him alone. Where he could drown in his own hollowness and try to lose himself in it, to become one with the whole nothingness around.

Years of lifeless life. All those years when he didn't really live, he just existed. A mere animal pushed forward and driven by the daily routine of the labs.

At the time he didn't think anything of himself. He didn't even consider himself human; that thought had never crossed his mind.

How could he have thought of that?

His world, back then, was clearly divided in two planes. The humans were those walking freely all over the place. They didn't look perfectly alike, but they all wore white lab-coats over other various pieces of clothing. On the other side there were the animals, him included. Animals were inferior beings, created only to serve as testing material for the humans.

Animals didn't wear clothes; of course, why would they? Only humans did.

Animals lived in cages all of their lives. They didn't think or speak, nor read or write – and never left the labs. He saw many of them born there and then he saw them dying. None of them died of old age.

He was there too. He could never remember living anywhere else and he didn't even know that world could mean more than those labs. For all he knew, the universe was made of labs, with humans in white coats and animals like him in cages.

He knew he was a different species though.

He had never seen anyone like him in the labs. For one thing, he was wearing clothes too. Just a dull grey overall made of paper-like fabric and some elastic-bonded bags for his feet, but he wasn't naked like the other test specimens. And he looked very close to a human. Yet he didn't regard himself as one, because he knew all too well why he was treated differently.

He was poisonous to the touch.

Deadlier than any snake, it seemed. The overall was only a protective means for the humans, to avoid getting in contact with the lethal substance he was sweating through his whole skin.

Apparently many of the humans loathed him for that. The Professor had repeatedly experimented with his poison, making him touch various animals and even a few people and studying the time it took for them to get merely nauseous, severely sick or even die. Half a minute of his touch in the heart area would kill a well-built, healthy man.

He had been called ‚the freak'.

He never thought much of that either at the time. Most probably it had to be a name connected to the species he belonged to and thus he didn't take it as an insult, which now he knew it had been. He didn't expect them to care for him, nor hate him either for that matter. Animals weren't to be cared for or hated. They were there only to be used.

Still he could remember one human that had treated him differently. In a pleasant way. That had been years before, but he could still recall it. He rarely forgot anything.

At the time that one had been The Professor and his name was Gast. Professor Gast. He used to come into his cubicle and talk to him, especially late at night, when all was still and quiet.

When he lay there sick after the mako dips, The Professor would come and hold his little hand. And, even though he had to wear a thick glove when he was doing that – and the mere touch of that glove made his already sensitivized skin burn even worse, the child was grateful, he couldn't say why.

It didn't last too long though.

One day – or better said one evening, because the evening was the moment when most of the humans working there were leaving somewhere else and others came to take their place, fewer ones though – one evening thus, The Professor came into his cubicle when he was just about to go to sleep and did something he had never done before. He took him in his arms and held him close against his body. The child had no idea what the meaning of that gesture was. He only knew that usually human touch on him meant cuts and injections and other painful things. Even The Professor had to hurt him sometimes, though he was always addressing him in a tender voice when he did it, to soothe his fright and pain. Furthermore, that particular time The Professor wasn't wearing his usual protective gloves and that was in fact what made the child strain and raise his palms instinctively to try to stop the man from touching him, to keep him at a distance. But the scientist had still held him tight against his chest while he kept whispering sorrowful words that he as a child couldn't really comprehend, but that he could never forget either. And after all these years, they were still carved into his mind like hot iron imprints:

„I am sorry! I am so sorry!... What have we done to you?... What have we turned you into?... You would be better off dead. I am so sorry... We are all monsters here..."

And his tears fell on the child's pale face.

Then he was gone. For good.

After his departure, during that year there had been many changes in the way things went inside the Lab World. One of Professor Gast's assistants took his place and became the Professor.

His name was Hojo.

Then they had all moved to another place. Somehow the child had the impression that the new place was quite far from the previous one. Not being able to picture great distances, he couldn't say how far. He also had no memory of the moving in itself because he had been drugged and when he woke up, he was already in the new labs. And everything was different there – the walls, the so much larger spaces, the light, the instruments, the computers, even the air. People were different too. Only two or three remained from the old team that he knew, the others were all alien faces to him. Here there were much more of them and they acted even colder than the ones he used to know.

The other assistant of Professor Gast, doctor Hollander, was nowhere to be seen as well, ever since they had moved.

The child was six years old.

A/N: I owe you all an apology for the long wait. You probably thought that I must be dead or something, huh, the few of you who read the prologue and waited for more. No, I'm still here, but I had some hellishly busy months and, even though the first chapters are written already, my betas are busy too with exams and this kind of stuff. But I can assure you this is going on. Slowly maybe, but it IS moving.

So stay tuned for more and leave your reviews please, so I'll know whether you like this or not and what you do/don't like.