Many years ago, I worked with a girl named Xvan – pronounced like swan – I thought it was one of the prettiest names I'd ever heard.
The Puppet Master
"Very good, Valentine. Your cooperation is much appreciated," he serenely tells me as he continues to play some kind of puppet master over my actions.
The journey to get where we are felt long and surreal, and now, he sits me on a wooden seat with cushions attached to it after boarding the first ship from Costa Del Sol. It's at the foot of a single bed and built into the cabin walls and floor, and he angelically smiles at me before folding my hands over my lap like he's creating a work of art. When he's done, he pulls the colourless comforter from the bed and tosses it over the mirror as if he has an aversion to something it might reflect.
His face shows no sign to verify my assumption though, and he sits opposite to me to keep watch as the fresh smell of the ocean wafts from the window he opened and he comments that, "I've always loved the smell of the ocean… the fresh air…"
From what I've learned from our travels through warped time and land, he has the ability to make people see what he wants them to see. No one saw us for who or what we really are as we travelled, and I begin to wonder exactly how much of the real him he allows even me to see.
I was almost convinced that no one could see either of us at one point. But he paid for the ticket to the Northern Continent with scraps of garbage and wood chips that he picked from the ground. He's paid for all of our transportation that way, which leads me to believe that the people are seeing something—They're just not seeing the same things I'm seeing.
There were two times that I attempted to lose him, and both times he made me regret it. He's creative with what he does and he has more knowledge on how to inflict pain, both emotional and physical, than I'm comfortable with.
Most of the time he's full of a contagious insanity. Yet there is nothing insane in those piercing eyes of his. There are fluctuations of different emotions—embitterment, hatred—and every now and then he takes a deep breath to awaken something serene and peaceful inside of him in a manner that suggests he yearns for it. He says, like me and like Tseng, that he's afraid of losing himself.
"I know he fears it," he tells me in a quiet form of confidence. "I saw the apprehension in his eyes every time he was faced with the abominations he had to investigate… I saw it when he looked at me…" Then he leans forward and says with a hint of malice that, "It's even there when he looks at you."
He claims to understand it more than either of us though, and he tells me it's because he's already lost himself and that it took every fibre of his exhausted and determined will to rebuild himself into an image of what he once was.
"I fight with the Goddess every second of my waking moments," he tells me, and I assume that the Goddess is Jenova. "There is no reason why I should allow her to take away what I am, and there is no reason why I shouldn't be able to control my own will. It's mine, Valentine—not theirs."
"But it's okay for you to control others," I point out, still unable to move as he holds my gaze and softly smiles at me in the manner of an adult regarding a simple child.
"Time is of the essence and this situation requires it. I wouldn't have taken such drastic measures if you could have proven that you had no intentions of running away. But you haven't been able to prove that, have you?
"Don't think I don't know what goes on in that empty head of yours. You're a simple creature and your priority is my priority. Yet you're willing to go out of your way to sabotage it."
He leans forward then, grabs an apple from the bag that he filled when he took a confusing side-trip through Banora, and he takes a bite while closing his eyes for a moment while he chews on it like he savours the taste before swallowing.
He said it was where he grew up, and apparently, they have the best apples in the world.
"Without me, your dog doesn't stand a chance."
"You forced yourself on him, didn't you…" I accuse, assuming it would explain all the dancing around on the topics as well as the in-depth knowledge that he has on Tseng, as well as his disturbingly insightful interest in the man and the fact that he continues to call him a dog suggests that he has very little respect for him as a man and is therefore worthy of the treatment for an undeserving animal.
He doesn't answer me though. Instead, he carelessly shrugs, takes another bite from his apple, and he lazily leans back before musing that, "I always thought I was the more sensitive one when it came to reading people. But alas, observation was my only strength—my best quality. Unlike others, and much like your dog, I felt that we both had something in common when it came to our inability to express ourselves. But that was all there was—a simple common stance."
"You didn't answer my question."
"You didn't ask a question."
"Did you?"
"When?" he asks.
Then he waves his half-eaten apple to his side and softly laughs. He takes another bite before I even realize what hits me after I'm on the floor from him slugging me so hard that the whole side of my face pulses.
At least, he allows me to rub at the throbbing on my cheek before he drags me by the collar to the side of the bed and hisses that, "He's not the one that got hurt, Valentine. Don't think for a moment that your dog would ever be as loyal to anyone as he was to Sephiroth. Sephiroth was the only one that was ever capable of truly hurting him."
Somehow, I believe I hit a nerve. Though I'm not exactly sure which nerve I might have hit as he calms himself down and almost throws himself onto the bed where he kicks one leg on top of the other and folds his hands over his abdomen.
Part of me says the best thing to do would be to remain silent while I stew over the notion of exposing Tseng to this maniac, but another part of me finds the silence uncommonly uncomfortable. There's something about Genesis' voice that seems to keep things calm as much as they keep me feeling like my head's swimming.
"What did Sephiroth do to him?" I ask, knowing the answer but feeling it might be the best way to help Genesis keep himself under control.
"He lied to him, let his wife know about them, cheated on him while accusing him of cheating, knew what he'd done to him, and then he tried to kill him without ever telling him why."
He lets out a long sigh after that and opens the drawer on the night table behind me, hits my head with it in a way that suggests he did it on purpose, and he pulls out a worn book and starts flipping through the pages. He does it as if he's attempting to avoid something before he quietly says that, "I never would have done those things to him."
He behaves as if he didn't say anything at all before he quickly adds in a manner of frustration, "Not then," and slams the book shut in a way that makes me jump.
"He told Sephiroth he had an affair with you," I openly muse, not really meaning to but it comes out anyway, and in a sordid sort of way, I begin to wonder about it while attempting to get him on a different topic for my own self-preservation.
"Hm," he snorts, and then he wryly grins. "Flattery from a dog…"
Then he takes a bite from his apple and contemplatively chews.
"Besides observation, honesty was my other virtue. I would have told him. I even tried. But Sephiroth, on the other hand, let his guilt get the better of him. He couldn't face the fact that he unknowingly infected his lover. Neither of us could have known what would happen. We were lied to, and for some reason, Sephiroth held me responsible for it.
"I don't think either of us would have allowed ourselves to behave as freely as we believed we could if we'd known. You see, our doctors never considered the possibility of Jenova spreading like a virus," he tells me as he floats his hand through the air to emphasize how easily it spreads. "Perhaps they just never thought we'd be human enough to want to be intimate with anyone, or perhaps they just thought that we'd never get out of the bounds of other enhanced soldiers that were probably already infected.
"But the dog…" he quietly trails off, opens the book again and flips through a few more pages and then carelessly tosses the remains of his apple out the window where it lands with a strange thud and someone complains from the deck that someone threw a Gaia damned apple core at them.
Genesis remains indifferent to it though, and he shakes his head while he stews over something and continues to flip through the pages as if he's looking for something before he finally adds in a manner of anger, "The dog was clean."
Then he closes the book again and turns onto his side so he can look over the edge of the bed at me while he props his head on his hand and continues in a confidential manner, "He was cleaner than clean because of the treatment he underwent when he was a child. Hojo had to ensure that Xvan would never be without her son. He was all she had left, and that lunatic still loved her as miraculous as that may seem.
"As a result, Xvan's little boy had no natural defence against us and according to Hojo's records, all it took was once…"
"Xvan…" I mutter, realizing that Tseng never mentioned his mother's name to me.
"At first, Hojo had no idea what was going on. Sephiroth brought his dog to him in desperation, demanding that he help, and according to his records when he went to remove the Mako in the same manner that he'd done in the past, he found that he suddenly couldn't. It had changed on a molecular level and fused with something else. It was something that shouldn't have been possible.
"You see, the mutations were already starting to take effect. They were triggered by the reaction to the Mako and Hojo didn't know what to do. By that time, the Bitch wasn't only the son of the woman he was still in love with, he was also a prominent figure and close to the President's son who was becoming evermore prominent and influential.
"To top it off, he was a Turk in the higher ranks that people would have noticed if he disappeared. Autopsies would have been ordered and Shinra's departments would have tightened up over the matter once they discovered the abnormalities in his cells. They would have invested heavily into an investigation, which in turn, would have become an obstacle to Hojo.
"Well, he was at a loss to say the least, and he was panicking. So he did what any insane scientist would have done. He sped up the inevitable process and murdered the Dog by suffocating him before the mutations could take on any physical effects. After that, he desperately dug up Dr. Crescent's records to find out more about how she resurrected you.
"However, he had to be more successful than her and he didn't fully trust her research after seeing the results of her last project," he says, and he takes a moment to mockingly sweep his eyes over me to emphasize that I was her last project, "So he decided that he'd also dig up your father's records since he was the original founder on the research of the prisons that harboured Chaos and the others, and he needed all the help he could get.
"After all, he couldn't leave behind any physical signs of what was done and happening, and certainly, there could be no Chaos."
"Of course, the worst part was that he also felt that he had to find a way to eliminate the Dog's wife and his daughter without making it seem like they were terminated. After all, if he was infected, and Hojo had no idea how long he'd been infected for. Well… his wife and his daughter might have been too.
"What to do… what to do…"
"So… He's…" I slowly work out while Genesis takes a moment to brush a few grey hairs from the bed that have fallen from his bangs when he adjusted the position of his head.
"Going to turn into something no one has probably ever seen before and wreak havoc if we don't get to him soon," Genesis finishes. Then he grins a sly grin and openly admits, "Not that I have a problem with that."
"Kjata…" I mutter, and I reflect on Sephiroth telling Tseng that he'd never let that happen, and how they seem to keep telling me that some things are worse than death, "That's why Sephiroth stabbed him."
"Yes," Genesis answers. "It would appear that even with nothing left of whom he used to be, he still remembered his cherished dog and his promise… He left me no other choice. I had to find Hojo's records and the right allies to revive him."
"Why?" I ask. "Why revive him if it's only going to condemn him… and who's your ally?"
"The dog's master is none of your concern…" he mutters while seeming agitated at the grey hairs more than he was before, "And because there's more to the story."
Then he pulls out another grey hair before brushing a few more of them from his shoulders as if they'd been falling out at a steady pace and it's starting to bother him at a distracting level. He's been slowly declining in his youthful appearance since he found me in the caverns and he leans over the edge of the bed to take the summon materia from my gauntlet and hurriedly walks to the small bathroom.
"I'm afraid that in my own haste as a youth, I developed a dependency. Be it a curse, or be it a miracle…"
After that, he closes the door and a bright flash explodes from the cracks, filling up the whole room with a blinding light and I notice that I'm suddenly able to move. Rather than fight or try to figure out what the hell just happened, I decide that the best course of action is to run and I quickly crawl towards the door when my mobility returns in hopes that I can get the hell away from him as fast as I possibly can.
Only as luck would have it, he emerges from the room with more energy than anyone would know what to do with, and he uses it to his advantage.
It feels like I'm being electrocuted from the inside as he quickly covers my mouth with his hand and he tells me not to make a sound.
"I don't recall saying you could leave," he tells me, and he drags me back while I convulse and pry at his hand that suppresses my uncontrolled screams. Then he stops and rests behind me, keeping his knees under my arms and my back against his chest. "I want this trip to go as smoothly as it possibly can… Now… if I remove my hand, will you behave?"
I can only nod as an answer and that's exactly what I do since I have no other choice.
"Good… good…" he says, and he slowly removes his hand while keeping his other arm around my waist to keep me in place.
"I really don't like having to exert so much energy so soon," he soothingly tells me, causing confusion before he tosses the Summon Materia that he took from me onto the bed.
It's completely empty, and I think, Kjata… that's why he wants to keep him alive… while I continue to sporadically convulse in his arms.
"I might make a mess," he whispers and slightly shudders before he gets up and positions me in the corner formed by the bed and the nightstand. Whatever grey hairs he had are gone. He appears more youthful and vibrant as he picks up the empty orb that was collecting something from Tseng, and he snickers before securing it onto the handle of his sword.
"You're… feeding… on him…" I say, struggling to get the words out while my muscles continue to spasm and fail my commands. "That's why… you want… him…"
"At one time, I thought the only way to cure myself was to harvest Sephiroth's cells. I thought they could cure me and I was even so bold to ask, assuming that we were friends. But as it turned out… No… I don't think we were as close as I thought we were, and I thought that… other… matters were behind us.
"It didn't matter though. Sephiroth held a grudge regarding his little bitch and when I finally got my hands on some samples left in Hojo's lab, I discovered that Sephiroth's cells were useless to me… I couldn't understand why I craved for them the way that I did… or even why I was convinced…
"That was until I was alone with Tseng back in Modeoheim. It was a long time since I'd been alone with him… and all the betrayal… what he did to me… how he made me feel… it all came flooding back. I decided I'd let him know how I felt. I'd bottled it up for far too long and I had so little left of myself that I didn't care in the least about any possible repercussions. And it felt. So. Good…"
"You… raped him…"
"No…" he says. "No…"
Then he caresses his bottom lip with his gloved ring-finger and softly snickers.
"I think you might have an unhealthy obsession with that concept. I would never do something like that. Not to Sephiroth's keepsake. I won't argue that he wouldn't have deserved it. But… No… Instead, I pulled out an empty Summon Materia and drained his essence until he was nearly dead. His screams…" he breathes out. "Oh…"
"It doesn't… work… on humans…"
"Who said that Sephiroth's Bitch was human?" Genesis innocently asks. "I thought I was rather clear about what he wasn't… However, I didn't expect him to regenerate so quickly. Nor did I realize I was doing him a favour, or even a favour for myself at the time. I might have killed him if it wasn't for the fact that he reminded me Soldiers were close behind, and that… Zack."
"What… favour…?" I ask, wondering why Tseng would be covered in scars if he regenerated as well as Genesis says he does.
"Taking what I took slowed down his mutation.
"You see, the dog sometimes fell ill and into the care of Hojo. It was arranged that way by Hojo—that he be the dog's personal physician after the Mako incident. He insisted that the Turk needed his close observation because he was aware of the full medical history and his rare condition caused by the accident at the reactor. Of course, it was a little. White. Lie."
"Hojo… kept him… stable…"
"Yes, and it wasn't until shortly before the bitch moved in with Sephiroth that he suddenly started to become aware as to how the dog developed his mysterious condition. After all, who would have imagined that the son Hojo always felt should have been his, and his real son that he created for experimental purposes would have wound up rubbing the flesh under the sheets together. Perhaps it's irony in its purest form," he suddenly muses, and he takes a moment to consider it while staring out the window and suddenly snickering at it.
"Perhaps it's even more ironic than I thought," he musically quips.
Then he turns his attention to me and smiles in amusement.
"You were in love with Hojo's wife, and surely, you were sour enough over the circumstances to feel that Sephiroth should have been your son, and now, you're sleeping with the man he loved."
He outright laughs then, a full, hearty laugh straight from his gut as he arches his neck and looks up to the heavens like he's thanking them for the entertainment. Then he grabs a small cloth from the top of the dresser, sits on the edge of the bed, and starts to polish his boots with it. "This truly puts Loveless to shame."
"What did he do to you?" I finally ask, not really caring about how thrilled he is over the irony, and Genesis pauses for a moment as his eyes bitterly darken and he returns to polishing his boot more vigorously than he was a second ago.
"He said I obsessed over Sephiroth too much—that I couldn't do anything without being reassured that it was equal to or better than what Sephiroth did. Then he discarded me. He acted like I never existed the moment Sephiroth said that he wanted him back."
He almost sounded bitter but he hid it well in a carefree way. Then he makes himself more comfortable on the bed and folds his hands behind his head while closing his eyes and tiredly concluding that, "I'm growing tired of your lack of intellectual stimulus and would rather stop talking to you for now. Do you mind if I take a quick nap?"
And before I can answer, the room goes dark as if he's managed to control me with an off switch.
The journey from Costa Del Sol to Icicle Inn is an eight hour trip across the ocean, and I'm not sure how long I've been out when I hear Genesis talking as if he's talking to someone that isn't here and I open my eyes to see that he's on the phone.
"I told you Valentine was a valuable asset," he says, "and here, you wanted him out of the picture… No…No… Your concerns aren't my concerns in that particular area… I only make the delivery and you uphold my request. For now, Valentine will stay alive until I decide otherwise."
Genesis smiles a bit of a devilish smile as he pauses long enough for the other person to say what they're saying, but I can't hear the other person's voice like I normally can, which almost makes me wonder if he's done something to me or if he's just mad enough to talk to himself while thinking that he's talking to someone else.
"Well consider this, without him it would take me far longer to find your dog… Oh, but surely you're aware that that's exactly what he is to you. There's no need to deny it… Where's Valentine now?" he asks in the form of mimicry as he looks at me and I find that I'm able to move and he smiles as if it's some kind of reward he's bestowed upon me for behaving.
"He's on a leash," he says, and I warily push myself up as if I'm carrying a weight that I almost can't lift. All the while, neither of us breaks eye contact.
I stare at him cautiously and he stares at me in amusement.
"Let's not go there," he says to the other person, and I turn away from him to see that the Northern Continent is growing closer and dusk is disappearing over the horizon in a pale green glow that hangs onto the indigo sky.
Clouds travel land-ward from the ocean and spatter themselves across a sky that's full of too many stars to count as they meet and join above the solitary land mass of glacier and frozen earth.
"You're just as much to blame as I am… Okay… Maybe you're not… Though I would say that you are in the least way, indirectly responsible if not fully responsible for the chain of events that took place after the Temple… I only offered to help."
"Vincent…"
Lucrecia's voice calls to me all the sudden and a sharp pain runs through my temple before I struggle with the weight of my hand to place it over the pain, "Ah!"
"I'll have to call you back… Valentine's communicating with the dead again…"
I haven't heard her voice for so long, I think. I almost started to think of her as nothing more than a dream or a fading memory…
"I'm so sorry… You're going to have to—"
"What?" I ask before my head suddenly starts throbbing in the most malicious way and Lucrecia's voice is cut off while my hands rush to my head and I painfully groan when Genesis supports me from behind by wrapping his arms under mine and across my chest.
"Now, now, Valentine," he urgently says, "I had to cut my meeting short because of you. But I simply can't have you listening to her."
I can hear his breath in my ear. It sounds strange, like it's inside my head and blocking something out as the ship begins to slow and snow from the land starts to blow into the cabin from the window. Then he tells me that if I want the pain to go away that I'm going to have to choose who I'm going to listen to, and I suddenly realize that it's him who's blocking her out.
"She's not the one you can touch," he tells me. "Surely your future fairs better with Tseng, alive and not dead."
"Dog," I dumbly gasp out. "You didn't call him a dog."
I don't really know what I'm getting at though as he pulls me away from the window and drags me to the door, completely ignoring my correction. Instead, all he says is that, "The ship's docking and with this storm coming in from the ocean, it's going to slow us down."
"You down," I correct again. "It's going to slow you down."
"Don't ruin it for yourself. This is your chance to live happily ever after for a change. Isn't that what you want? If you like, maybe we can make him forget who he is so that Rufus doesn't pull the strings anymore. He can be yours without ever worrying about previous engagements—"
"What?" I ask, suddenly dumbfounded by the idea. I don't want him to be a mindless companion. I never did. In fact, I'm suddenly realizing that I like him just the way that he is, complications and all, and I suddenly don't want to be dragged into whatever twisted game I'm being dragged into. I don't want to get off of the ship. I don't want to set foot on the Northern Continent, and I grab at the door as he pulls me back and I wonder why he isn't controlling me like he was before.
Instead, he allows me to claw my way back into the cabin as if he wants me to suddenly defy him, and I have no idea why. But then he defies my suspicion when he pushes me and I knock the lamp off the end table when I crash into it. He clenches his teeth while accusing me of ruining everything.
"If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't be in this situation right now. You took him away, Valentine! You hid him from me and it took me far too long to find him before things got out of hand like they're getting now!"
Then he grabs me by the collar and starts to drag me out of the cabin while I fumble with my gun to unhitch it and toss it away from me.
If I don't have my gun, I think, I can't shoot him with it.
The dream won't become a reality.
And Genesis laughs, extends his arm as if it belongs to some kind of creature I've never seen before. It's not an arm at all. It's some kind of thing that reminds me of a slithering creature as it reaches across the room and wraps itself around the gun to grab it. I haven't felt this horrified and suffocated since the day I woke up in Lucrecia's lab and saw Chaos' hands as my own.
Then he drags me outside and pushes me onto the ground from the deck where I land on my hind-side, and he stays aboard and tosses my gun at me along with an old piece of parchment that's tied with a frayed old string of red thread.
"You're going to need that," he calmly tells me while pointing at the gun. "There are hostile creatures about and without it, you'll have nothing to protect yourself from them, or Tseng."
Then he backs up from the railings on the ship, babying his arm that was something else only moments ago and slowly walks backwards before disappearing into the opposite direction of the exiting crowd as if he has no intention of de-boarding.
No one seems to see either of us and a serene smile softens his angelic face while his eyes never break contact with mine as he fades into the distance. Pale and clear green eyes that resemble the colour Sephiroth's burn their image into my mind and it suddenly hits me that he has no intention of going with me before I quickly pull the string from the parchment and see that it's a map of the area with markings that suggest where he'd like me to go.
"What the hell is going on?" I demand, completely aware of the frantic tone in my voice.
Why the hell isn't he coming with me?
There is no answer though, only a deadening quiet as everything falls silent while the people make their way to Icicle Inn in large numbers and I remain in the disturbed snow where I was tossed, still unnoticed, and I pick up my gun, stare at it like it's a foreign object I'd rather not possess, and I take a wary look around into the darkness where no one is going.
I can sense Tseng there, somewhere. I can hear his heartbeat and smell his scent as if I know exactly where he is, and for the first time since I've known him, I'm desperately wishing that I didn't feel so connected to him.
