Well, I didn't get the twenty reviews so this chapter didn't go up early. Thanks to sunset in love, Houkakyou, The Ninja And The Writer, Kitsune Onna1, Thunderstorm101 and wanderingmusician who actually did review, so this chapter is for you guys. You rock!

Correspondences

The disk Sephiroth's Turk had given Genesis did more than shake his world; it upended it, scattering loose pieces everywhere then shattered its foundations. The Crimson General stared vacantly into space while Angeal desperately flicked back and forth through the files, looking for inconsistencies Genesis knew his lifelong friend would never find.

Except Angeal was not merely a friend; the honourable brunet was his cousin as well as a being a fellow experiment.

Genesis jumped when someone knocked on his office door. They'd picked his office to read in since he used it so rarely no-one had bothered to put in a microphone. SOLDIER hearing meant you could pick up on the buzzing of electronic bugs. Sighing, he went over and yanked the door open; Sephiroth was standing outside.

"How bad is it?" the Silver General whispered once the door was closed again with them both on the inside, tone somehow less harsh than usual. Genesis' eye twitched. He did not want Sephiroth's pity. He opened his mouth to say something flippant and snarky when Sephiroth cut him off.

"Look," the black-clad General hissed through gritted teeth, "I am the clone of a Turk Hojo organised a 'laboratory accident' for with a bit of DNA from two other scientists mixed in to add some variety. One of said scientists was the surrogate who gave birth to me and had J-cell injected into her so they would transfer to me in the womb. After being born I was left in Hojo's care and raised in his lab as an ongoing experiment and test subject until I was fourteen. My Turk progenitor and only genuine parent is Vincent Valentine, only child of Grimoire Valentine, who also gave you that disk and was herself one of Hojo's experimental projects before he locked her in a coffin to keep her away from me. Now, how. Bad. Is. It?"

Genesis... stared. Sephiroth never shared personal information. Ever. It was all locked down tighter than President Shinra's personal bank account. Wait a minute...

"The Turk in your office this morning is your mother?"

Sephiroth actually smirked, the humour animating his face as his eyes sparkled. "You all jump to conclusions far to easily," the Silver General said blandly. "I said nothing to suggest she was anything else."

Genesis couldn't help it. He fell over on the floor and roared with laughter. The chuckles soon devolved into semi-hysterical giggles as his eyes teared up but the drop in tension was nonetheless a relief.

"Genesis?" Angeal said worriedly, looking from the hysterical redhead on the floor to a vaguely smug-looking Sephiroth leaning on the closed door. "What's so funny?"

"Valentine is actually Sephiroth's mother, Angeal," Genesis managed to get out between hiccups. "They were having us on. Sephiroth, son of Vincent Valentine." The giggles overwhelmed him again.

Angeal blinked. "Vincent Valentine? A woman? Wait- that was Vincent earlier?" A pause, broken only by Genesis' uneven breathing. "Sephiroth's my nephew?"

That set Genesis off again, wheezing and pounding the carpet with his fist as he rolled across the floor.

"I'm your nephew?" Sephiroth repeated, bemused, which only made Genesis laugh harder. Cetra his ribs hurt.

"Yes," Angeal confirmed, pointing to the computer screen as Sephiroth wandered over to look. "The Chaos Project was the start of it all. It lasted five years, from 1970 to 1975 and ended with the death of Grimoire Valentine in an explosion in the lab. Since it was his project, funding was cut off and everyone working on it was reassigned.

"During the project itself professor Valentine went through lab assistants like water, needing new ones every eight to ten months as they succumbed to various cancers and tumours, yet Grimoire himself remained perfectly healthy despite working on the project personally throughout.

"Professor Hollander later theorised that Valentine's genetics were somehow more resistant to mutagenic factors, so when Project J -whatever that is- entered the final experimental phase they decided that the best choice for a specimen was one with Grimoire Valentine's DNA in. I'm actually his son, conceived from a frozen sample in the ShinRa cell bank. Genesis however came into the project completely by accident when Grimoire's younger brother Codex Valentine had an affair with President Shinra's wife and got her pregnant. She promptly went to Hollander for an abortion, but he persuaded her to go through with the pregnancy and promised to make the child disappear. Apparently he told the President the child was both legitimate and a stillborn. Anyway, Hollander couldn't use Mrs Shinra as a test subject so he injected my mother's infected cells directly into Genesis' developing foetus. For some reason or other after he was born Hollander decided Genesis was a failure and he was handed off to foster parents in Banora."

"So you are my uncle and Genesis is my cousin once removed," Sephiroth concluded.

Genesis laughter finally devolved into real tears. "I'm a failure, a dud," he muttered viciously.

"So was Valentine," Sephiroth said, cool voice cutting through the rising fog of misery. "Yet she told me that she refuses to be defined by the idiocy of narrow-minded scientists playing with things better left untouched. Apparently the family motto is 'Valentines overcome'."

"I think I'll stick with Hewley," Angeal said dryly. "'Angeal Valentine' doesn't really sound right."

Genesis was feeling horribly off-balance but if Angeal could crack a joke then so could he. "I'll keep Rhapsodos. We don't need two General Valentines, especially when there's a Turk Valentine as well." He climbed to his feet and froze as a hand touched his upper arm.

Sephiroth looked slightly uncertain, but said, "There is nothing wrong with tears."

"What, so you cried when you found out?" Genesis snapped.

"Yes."

The answer silenced the redhead. Sephiroth had cried. Had actually admitted to him, Genesis Rhapsodos, who always teased and poked at the Silver General's foibles, that he had cried. Another one of Genesis' lifelong certainties crashed and burned. " I never had a mother and I was told Hojo was my father, Hojo who never hesitated to cause me pain and to whom I was a specimen, not a person," the Silver General continued slowly. "Angeal's mother loves him; your foster parents clearly cared for you. I've never had anyone like that before." Sephiroth paused, looking terribly young and fragile to Genesis for one frightening moment. "She told me she intended to kill Hojo for me. No-one's ever offered to do that before either."

Genesis had been vaguely aware of Sephiroth's dislike for the professor in charge of the SOLDIER program but hadn't known the hatred went that deep.

"What I want to know is what these J-cells are," Angeal said into the silence, "and what they do exactly. Hollander's notes suggest the effects are positive yet the peripheral data Valentine placed on the disk is overwhelmingly negative. So why the contradiction and who is right?"

"There was another disk with a 'J' on it," Sephiroth said distantly. "Valentine still has it."

"I have a sister," Angeal said suddenly, "and she's a Turk."

"Technically a former Turk," Sephiroth corrected.

"A former Turk then; she's twice my age, Sephiroth's mother and one of Hojo's old science projects," the Dark General went on, eyes going glassy, "and she still looks twenty despite being older than my mother. Gaia and Cetra I need a drink."

"We all need drinks," Genesis decided. "Lots of drinks. You two get the paperwork dashed off and I'll rope the puppy into helping me buy all the alcohol we can carry. Come by my place as soon as you've finished and we'll all get drunk together. Bring the disks; we don't want anyone else to find them."

"Until later then," Sephiroth said with a nod before turning on his heel and walking out the door. Genesis stopped by the bathroom to clean up before heading to the lift: his life may have just been kicked over but that was no excuse to look less that utterly magnificent.

"My friend, do you fly away now? To a world that abhors you and I? All that awaits you is a somber morrow no matter where the winds may blow." He quoted softly to himself, then shook his head resolutely. He refused to run away or even entertain denial in the face of this new knowledge, especially when Sephiroth -who he could see was barely clinging onto his composure by his fingernails- was standing firm and meeting the issue head-on. Even if the morrow is barren of promises nothing shall forestall my return. The Iceberg and Angeal were family -real family now it so happened- and even Angeal's puppy wasn't bad. They would stick together. Besides, Vincent Valentine the former Turk was his cousin too and she seemed to have a plan. If she'd waited this long and spent this much time digging into the Science Department's sordid history she had to have some kind of plan. Especially since she had been a Turk once.


More Genesis, who is more complicated than anyone else bar Sephiroth, and they all decide to get drunk until the shock wears off. By the way, Vincent gets her twisty Turk nature from her own mother; Angeal's honest straightforwardness is all Grimoire Valentine.

Since twenty reviews was too ambitious, how about ten? Again, I have a new chapter lined up ready to post if ten different people give me some feedback and review.