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, generally speaking 'being' is better than 'owning'. Methinks. Still, Iarba – the one called 'Tonberry' by Genesis – is MY creation and nobody else but my friend Glaurung is entitled to use her apart from me.

NEVERENDING SONG

Part I – DIVER. 5th song

"I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems
got to open my eyes to everything"

Evanescence – "Bring me to life"

He was a failure, he knew that well enough. Incapable of comprehending the complex human behavior and socially inept.

He had to use the articulate language now, like any other human did, and he never knew what to say.

People outside the Lab World rarely exhibited the precise and linear body language the ones working inside the walls used on a daily basis – a set of facial expressions and movement patterns he'd learned to interprete without fail throughout the years.

Everything now was tricky and misleading and the heaps of manuals on Psychology and Sociology and Politics and whatever else were of very little help to him.

Many times he had found himself regretting the simple and comfortable routine of his Lab World, the times when he didn't need to speak to anyone and it was just fine that way because, of course, specimens were not supposed to do that in the first place – and neither was he expected to.

It used to be so easy to communicate with his fellow specimens, the animals inside the cages. Their shrieks and cries and squealings, the barks, the warks, the chirps were clear as day to him and even if he never produced a sound himself, he could answer them without fail and the teeth uncovered in a sneer or downright snarl, the backbone curved, the body strained or the narrowed eyes were always something comprehended by both parts along their ‚talks'.

It wasn't as if he didn't understand, as if he didn't know that all this was to be expected for quite some time. Maybe he had lacked the overview before and therefore didn't see it coming, but now, thinking about everything, it seemed so obvious: he was special. There was something for which they needed him – and him alone. He hadn't been brought up just to be used like all the other animals. He could regret his past life and the routine of the labs – and it was ironical enough that they could cause him to regret a time when he had been treated like any other test subject and a life with neither horizon, nor future or any kind of expectations – but more and more connections clicked inside his mind with each moment passed and now it was more than obvious to him that he had been either created or merely enhanced in order to be of use to someone. To whom? For what? Those were the questions.

But, the same way he knew their experiments went wrong every day only by following all the data processed in the computers, he also knew they had acted terribly wrong in what concerned him.

One didn't even need to be some genius in order to see that, he thought. How would he ever be capable of fulfilling any of their plans out there in a world he knew nothing about? He should have been brought up among people, like one of their own kind, to be able to comprehend them and act alike. Not to be forced to learn about them from heaps of books and huge amounts of files in the computer and other such too stupid things. Books could NOT contain everything he needed to know. If they made mistakes so easily, even in this place that was probably supposed to be a special one in order to bring up, among other things, a special creature like him, how could he be sure the books themselves were correct?? He couldn't. Or, even if – which he strongly doubted anyway – they were correct, how could these people possibly imagine books and programs were enough for such an enterprise? Take the animals for instance. He had lived among them ever since he could remember and he also knew every bit of information about them stocked in the computers. And he realized well enough that the whole quantity of records, as huge as it might have seemed, was far from showing at least half of what he knew about his fellow specimens from his own observations and 'talks' with them.

Were people that stupid?

Was he a genius compared to them?

Were they aware of that?...

It didn't matter. Not for him anyway. He could very well be a genius compared to them, that didn't help too much at the moment. Even if he was such a genius, he had still been crippled by their stupidity and turned into a failure, incapable of comprehending the complex human behavior and socially inept.

He could be the best mind on that planet for all he knew.

But still, beyond all that, he was just a frightened, overwhelmed child.

A/N: Your opinion is always welcome