Disclaimer: The characters are the property of the compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Square Enix etc.
Author's Note: I hope this works because for some reason doesn't let me upload or edit documents anymore. In any case, there were rumours that this story was dead. Those rumours were, haha,hmm, exaggerated. As dead as Sephiroth, shall we say? Hello, all, and thank you for your patience, for reading, for reviewing and, if you return to read this, for coming to the Reunion. ;) These two chapters were actually just one chapter but in order to copy and paste it into a fanfic doc, I had to split it. Without further ado, I hope you enjoy! ~ Best, Zen :D
Water gurgled in the cracked gutters, dripped from the stones and drained into green-tinged puddles on the street corners. Everything below the Plate was slick, damp and dirty as though a planet-sized dish cloth from the Soldier canteen been splashed across the streets.
Genesis sniffed and caught a whiff of old chip fat and the sharp bite of mako – the slums even smelled like the dishcloths.
The train spiralled downwards, empty but for Genesis, the toe-tapping, knee-drumming Zack Fair (who had insisted on sitting down beside him) and the grimly quiet Tseng.
Covering his nose with the back of his hand, Genesis wondered, not for the last time, why he was doing this.
To meet this half-Cetra girl on ShinRa's watch list.
To piss off Hollander, rub it in his face that Genesis was his own creature and owed the greasy man-pimple nothing for his role in Genesis's birth.
To be the unpredictable loose cannon rattling around the ShinRa deck that everybody always said that Soldier First Class Genesis Rhapsodos was, because when all he thought he knew about himself was coming apart at its carefully tailored seams, there was a comforting self-affirmation in playing to the expectations others had of him.
Predictably unpredictable Genesis.
The thought made him scowl.
"Come on, Genesis," said Zack, misinterpreting Genesis's expression. "It's not as if you're completely unarmed. If you're in a corner, you could throw that book you're always carrying at them. I bet you could do some real damage to a guy's cranium with that little hardback."
Genesis ignored the uneducated jungle-monkey and glowered at Tseng. "I still fail to see why it was necessary to disarm us."
"As we have already discussed in the briefing," a vein in Tseng's temple twitched and Genesis considered it a small victory, "since we wish to keep the subject of your meeting in a position of good will towards the company, it would be…inadvisable to cause her undue alarm."
"And two strange guys showing up at her house with hulking great swords is pretty alarming." Zack nodded. "Yeah, I'm with you on that, Tseng."
"But my Rapier is part of my regalia," Genesis hissed, gesturing at his red long coat and his favourite boots. "It is my sword and you put it in your stationery cupboard like a common holepunch!"
"It is a very good stationery cupboard," said Tseng blandly. "Even Sephiroth's Masamune would fit in there, at an angle."
Genesis sighed. Tseng would never see the point (the injury! the insult!), even if it was presented to him on Rapier's flaming edge. Rapier was a comrade, a beautiful piece of living fire, a portion of Genesis's soul, and it should not have been put away in a stationery cupboard.
He knew the real reason for why Tseng had insisted that Zack and Genesis be unarmed when they visited the girl, of course. Given how many times Hojo had tried to bring the girl into the Science Department by force, Genesis had to grudgingly concede that it was a reasonable precaution.
"So, you said that this person we're meeting is one of Genesis's fans and that she has a relative high-up in one of the departments," Zack glanced uneasily between Tseng and Genesis, "and that the Turks keep tabs on her for security reasons."
"It isn't unheard of for family members of employees to be targeted by those who wish the Company harm."
Zack's expression clouded. "So, is she in trouble?"
"No. As I said at the briefing, this is purely a goodwill ShinRa courtesy call - an expression of our gratitude to the services performed by her relative. ShinRa takes care of its own, after all."
"Right, so you emptied half a train and sent the rest of Genesis's fans to the other side of the town for a courtesy call?"
"Exactly, Zack. For the security of the subject in question, no expenses have been spared."
Genesis sighed and rolled his eyes to the luggage rack. "My friend, the fates are cruel."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
It means, Zack Fair, that you have been blessed with enough intelligence to detect possible trouble, but not enough sense of self-preservation to avoid it. In short, it was the perfect combination of traits to ensure an early death.
"Well, at least you got to keep your coat. That's got to count for something, right?"
Genesis smoothed his lapels and swept the hair from his face. Tseng could take his Rapier and put in a lowly stationery cupboard all he liked. He would never part Genesis from his coat.
"Let him keep his coat, Tseng. It's practically his second skin! When he grows old and dies, that coat will grow old and die with him." Zack's laughing words had burned in his ears and for a moment triggered a painful swoop of nausea in Genesis's guts and a tide of bitter whispers that said he didn't need to worry about growing old and dying because his body was well on course for dying young and horribly mutated.
The point at which the wing joint grew from his back had throbbed.
Genesis looked out of the window again. It was good to be out of the ShinRa Tower, even for only a couple of hours. Ever since the Soldiers had come back from Wutai it had sometimes felt as suffocating on the Soldier floor as the famously humid Wutai summers, as if they had brought the battlefield back with them. It felt good to have a purpose, to feel as if he was doing something other than wearing down time as time wore down Genesis's body, and not just his body anymore but Angeal's too.
Then there was the question of the Stranger, the elusive Stranger, and as the train wound its way through the sectors Genesis wondered whether it was bringing him closer to answers or more questions, because Genesis knew how to read a script. He could read between the lines and the silences. He didn't have a shred of doubt that the half-Cetra girl meant something to the Stranger. Perhaps even she didn't know it, but it was still something to work with.
A low hum sounded from Tseng's coat pocket and he turned to extract his PHS and flip it open. "Your fans have been successfully diverted to the other side of the slums, Genesis, courtesy of some anonymous tipoffs to your fan forums, courtesy of Reno. You can wear that coat of yours in peace."
Genesis sniffed and tossed his head. "If you could divert my fans so easily, I don't see why you made such a fuss about my coat."
"It's probably because you wouldn't have agreed to give up Rapier otherwise." Zack slapped Genesis amiably on his shoulder – his left shoulder! Damn it, his dead and decaying shoulder that suddenly flared to life as if a brand had been pressed against it, and Genesis couldn't suppress the hiss of pain that forced its way between his teeth. "Oh, shit, sorry! That was your – your duff arm – damn, I'm sorry, Genesis, I'm such an idiot!"
"Our stop," Tseng announced, before Genesis could rally his thoughts from where they had fled and scattered in the face of the hot throb and freeze burn spreading from his shoulder to tear Zack Fair into pieces so small that Angeal wouldn't be able to stick him back together, and he ended up gliding off the train and saying absolutely nothing at all.
To the boy's credit, Zack Fair followed in sheepish, embarrassed silence.
It had been raining under the plate, something that anybody outside of Midgar might have thought impossible, but if the wind blew in the right direction and the right angle, the rain could be driven sideways into the slums, along with rainwater that streamed off the edge of the plate in a glittering grey-green curtain. The rain up on the plate could be heard like a steady drumroll, a rasping, clattering roar in the background of all the clanging from construction works, the slap of cardboard soles on pavements and the splash of puddles being churned up by wheels.
"Do we get a name to work with?" asked Zack, after they had walked several streets from the station and seen little more than a couple of stray dogs scrapping over a bread roll. Not a human in sight, the Turks really had been thorough in making sure that 'ShinRa's assets' didn't come under any unsavoury party's attention – couldn't have the whole world wondering what made a girl so special as to warrant a visit from Soldiers after all. Somebody might try use her and her potential gifts for their own dubious purposes.
"Her name is Aerith Gainsborough."
Zack repeated the name a couple of times over to himself, squinted then nodded. Apparently he had decided he liked it. "And where are we meeting her exactly?"
"Since we felt it wiser not to draw attention to her home, we asked her to choose a location where she would feel comfortable meeting you, and she chose – " Tseng came to a stop on the street corner and motioned at something around the wall, "-there."
In the midst of the tumbledown houses, rolls of chicken wire and broken gutters, was a church.
Genesis had heard that there were still remnants of the Old Midgar buried below the Plate. He had even kept an eye out for them on the occasional patrols and slum clearance exercises he had been sent on as a Third, but he had never seen anything more than a carved marble block re-appropriated as a millstone. To see an entire building, a church to a religion that had died in the bright shadow of mako, was a completely different thing, and despite the crumbling front, the shattered slates and the pale green sheen of mako-infused vapour that had seeped into the stone over time, it filled Genesis with a quiet joy. The Old Midgar imitation architecture houses up on the Plate – all cheap stucco and forgotten symbolism - couldn't hold a candle to it.
"The Sector Five Church?"
Genesis looked to Zack. "You've been here before?"
"Just passed by, really. They used to stick rookie cadets on patrol around here, because it's the quiet part of the slums, relatively speaking. I haven't been here since I made Soldier - never been inside though."
Tseng snapped shut his PHS and tucked it somewhere secret that had no doubt been booby-trapped against pickpockets (and Zack Fair). "Miss Gainsborough will be arriving here shortly. This is where I leave you. I will meet the two of you at the station entrance two hours from now. If you finish earlier, let me know."
"You're not sticking around?"
"Providing that you mean no harm to Miss Gainsborough, there is no need for me to do so."
Which was Turkspeak, as far as Genesis was concerned for, 'I stuck bugs on the soles of your shoes and the backs of your collars, so I will know what you are doing'. Tseng bowed his head, and in three unhurried steps slipped into a shadow and disappeared.
Left to their own devices (or at least, they were given the impression that they had been), there was little to do but wait. Zack squatted down on the church steps and quietly (quietly!? Genesis marvelled, miracles occurred in the vicinity of holy places after all) took in the streets, buildings and mounds of rubble around them. Genesis wasn't in any mood to even attempt holding a conversation with Zack, so he leaned against the door, pulled out Loveless and prepared to reanalyse the third act in the interpretation proposed by the Windscale Theatre 1996 production.
Silence stretched in drips and trickles of unseen water and the murmur of the rain on the Plate above. Genesis was quite content to let it continue, but he could feel Zack's eyes on him and hear the oncoming breaking of silence like a whistle announcing an arriving freight train.
"Say, Genesis?"
The train had come into the station.
Genesis turned his page. "What did I say about first name terms, Zack Fair?"
"Alright, alright, I'm sorry! I'll remember to call you 'sir', but could you just call me 'Zack' like everybody else? It's just that every time I hear my full name it reminds me of my mum, and I get all jittery because it makes me feel like she's going to jump out of the nearest manhole and drag me back to Gongaga by my front teeth."
The idea that Genesis reminded Zack Fair of his mother was, admittedly, more than a little disconcerting. "Very well. Zack…it is."
Zack brightened but became serious again in an instant. "What's this all really about, sir?"
Genesis hummed and turned another page.
"It is about gods. It is about monsters." He turned a page again. "Mostly it is about miserable wretches strung by the ropes of fate between the two, either to be torn apart by the forces beyond their control, or fixed forever in a plane of endless suffering."
"Oh, er, I wasn't asking about the book." And I wasn't answering about it. Zack sighed. "Look, I know you think I'm about as dense a concrete slab, but… I know this isn't some ordinary ShinRa PR stunt, sir."
"Do you now?"
"If this girl you're meeting was really the relative of one of the Department bigwigs, would she really be living down here? She'd be up on the Plate, with all the rest of them, where she could get the sky, the sun and even a bit of a sea breeze on the right days!"
An early death, Zack Fair, Genesis muttered inwardly, that's where you're heading if you keep this up.
Which would hurt Angeal far more than a few bullet wounds from Wutai, and what hurt Angeal tended to impact on Genesis not long after. The less Zack Fair knew the better, he decided, and tried to bury himself back into Loveless Act Three but the soothingly familiar words were sliding out of his mental grasp like rainwater.
Quick to realise that Genesis wasn't as willing to answer questions as Angeal, Zack bit down on his tongue, hummed thoughtfully as he adjusted his angle of attack, and after a while said, "Has this got something to do with what's wrong with you and Angeal?"
"Who said that there is anything wrong with myself and Angeal?"
"You've had that duff shoulder for a while, sir, and when I accidentally – er – tapped it earlier you sounded as if it really hurt, so I guessed that it hadn't healed up yet. Angeal's wounds are taking their sweet time healing up as well." Zack grimaced when he remembered his earlier gaff, before his expression suddenly turned startlingly grim. "Look, Gen – I mean, sir, I've seen guys get shot. Bullet wounds shouldn't take this long to heal! Damn it, if the Soldier's all pumped up in a fight, they heal up even faster and freakier than usual. I saw a guy take a bullet between the eyes, and he was so high on endorphins and adrenaline and shit that the wound healed right over the bullet, and he was still fighting and talking for five minutes after until his brain finally caught up with the action and he snuffed it. Angeal was in a war. They should be trying to dig bullets out of him, not stitch him up!"
Zack drew in a deep, shaky breath and ran a hand over his face.
"It's only stress, Zack." Genesis shut Loveless with a snap and put it away in his inner breast pocket. He stretched his arms and felt a tickling urge to stretch his wing as well, but he ignored it with some effort. "Stress compounded with poor field surgery and, in my case, a botched healing job done by an incompetent fool who couldn't find his own eyes in a mirror even if they winked at him. Angeal is healing, slowly, yes, but he will heal, and you'll do well to remember that our two cases are not linked in any way."
"But – "
"If I come to hear any sort of wild conspiracy theory in the Soldier common room, I don't care if Angeal is fond of you, I will come looking for you, Zack Fair – " Zack winced, "- and I will tie you to a stake, and have it arranged that you are offered up to one of those dragons in Nibelheim as voluntary bait. Am I clear on that?"
"Are you serious, sir?"
"People make so much better bait than goats. They scream louder for better understanding of what's coming for them," Genesis mused and Zack paled a little. "Would you rather face dragons or the Turks?"
"Right," Zack gulped, "I won't say a word, but if there's anything I can do to help, I swear – "
Genesis laughed. "Let's not make any promises that we're not certain we are going to be able to keep."
"It's up to me what promises I make, sir, and if people only took up easy promises, nobody would be making them," Zack responded, then grinned. "Half of the point of a promise is trying to keep one."
He was a naïve, young and dangerously intelligent fool, the danger being mostly to himself.
Genesis searched for the right words and found them amongst his ever trusty quotes: "Men cry not for themselves but for their comrades."
"Yeah. Yeah, they do, but so what if people die trying? At least they tried."
"Well, I for one would rather be alive, and if you stopped to think beyond yourself, for a moment, Zack-it-makes-me-think-of-my-mother-Fair, all the people who care about you would rather you were too. Now, do shut up! I'm getting a migraine."
Zack clenched his jaw and settled back down on the church steps, looking for all the world like a spaniel that had just been scolded, but, of course, Zack couldn't stay silent for long.
"It's got that old world feel to it," he said, peering up at the church behind them, "like any minute bells are going to ring, birds are going to fly by, and a princess is going to come out of those doors."
"That's quite the imagination."
"Not really. All we need is the princess."
Somebody softly cleared their throat behind them. "The doors are open, you know."
Zack jumped and almost fell down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stone steps stood a young woman - or not much more than a girl really, perhaps around Zack's age. She was small. She had a small face with small features, and was smiling a small, slightly anxious, smile. Her hair was long, dark and tied back with a red ribbon. She was pretty, but not extraordinarily so. Her ears stuck out. There were freckles over her nose.
Genesis wasn't sure what he had imagined a girl who was half-Cetra to look like. If asked, he might have envisioned something like a female Sephiroth. He certainly wouldn't have expected the girl to look so ordinary.
It was almost disappointing. She was even wearing a raincoat and a pair of wellington boots (Sensible things, thought Genesis, a little sadly) but he amended his first impression when he met her eyes.
They were green and vibrant, lively, in a way that his simply weren't anymore, and although they didn't have a trace of mako glow there was a kind of light in them that he had never seen in any gaze before: A light that seemed very old and a little distant.
Like starlight, he realised, eyes bright with starlight.
And as soon as he had had that thought something high-pitched, sawing and painful seemed to screech through his bones, like the scream of a cat being stretched across a violin that he could feel with his body rather than hear.
He pushed the feeling down, suppressed it do a dull and thoroughly unpleasant whine. "Miss Gainsborough?"
"Yes, that's me, and you're Genesis Rhapsodos." Her eyes darted from Genesis to Zack. "I'd say the coat gave it away, but you're pretty famous with or without your coat. It's nice to meet you."
"Likewise. This is my aide Zack Fair – "
"Hi!" Zack pushed past him, beaming from ear-to-ear, and pumped Aerith's hands up and down with such energy Genesis wondered if he needed to step in before something broke. "Call me Zack. Don't worry when Genesis says, 'aide'. I think he means 'friend'. He's just too embarrassed to say it."
"Zack – "
"Or it might mean 'wingman', but I don't think so," finished Zack, eyes twinkling. His eyes dropped to the basket in her hand. "Hey, I'll carry that for you if you like!"
Aerith laughed, and this time her laughter sounded surprised that she was laughing in the first place, but genuine and very warm. She swung the basket out of Zack's reach. "It's just some tea! I told my mum I was going out to meet people and she insisted I bring something, so," she held up a thermos and a wax paper bag, "tea and shortbread?"
Genesis's head was swimming. First there was that awful noise plucking at his body like a string. Then there was this half-Cetra girl, in her pea-green raincoat, inviting two deadly Soldiers, who moments earlier had been talking about their comrades getting shot, into a church for tea and biscuits, and on top of it all, if he wasn't mistaken, Zack Fair was flirting with her.
Half in a daze, he found himself holding open the church door and following Aerith Gainsborough into the building, coming to only when Zack seized his elbow. "Hey, sir."
"What is the matter?"
"She doesn't act like your usual fans."
"Yes, it makes a rather refreshing change not having vials of blood and lace things and books thrown at me." Genesis tugged his arm out of Zack's grip. "I hope you remember what I said about wild conspiracy theories."
"Yes, sir. Hey, sir? Hey, don't ignore me. Sir!"
Only Zack could make 'sir' sound like a nickname. "Now what is it?"
Zack glanced quickly down the aisle, where Aerith was walking towards the altar, looking for a dry set of pews. He scrabbled at his hair with his fingers, turned back to Genesis and whispered, "How do I look?"
Genesis slapped him on the back of the head with all his First Class enhanced strength.
Inside the church was cool and smelled of damp soil. Fingers of yellow light streamed in through the windows. A breeze, coiling through the gaps in the roof, stirred the cobwebs on the candelabras and set them gently creaking, and at the far end of the church, just in front of the altar, was a gaping hole in the floor.
It was filled with flowers.
"Whoa," breathed Zack, eyes round as coins, as the breeze capering through the church whipped through the flowerbed and set the white and yellow heads bobbing. "Flowers. In Midgar."
"In November," added Genesis thoughtfully.
"And they're growing in a church - in the slums of all places." Zack shook his head and blinked quickly. "Nobody would believe this."
Aerith had sat down in the second row of pews from the front. When Genesis and Zack joined her, Genesis asked, "Those flowers, Miss Gainsborough - ?"
"Oh, do you like them?" She handed him in a steaming paper cup of tea, which he found himself accepting even though he didn't really want one. A niggling voice at the back of his mind said that he was letting himself get thoroughly swept up by the half-Cetra's girl pace. He tried to deny it and ended up sipping the tea instead. "I've tried growing them in our garden at home too, but they grow best here. Something about the soil maybe."
"What kind of flowers are they?" asked Zack, crouching at the edge of the flower bed.
Aerith put a finger to her chin. "Bellflowers…maybe?"
He snickered. "You don't know?"
"Hey!" She pretended to fume, but she couldn't keep it up for long, not in the face of Zack's broad smile. "They grow here even through the winter and no bellflower I've ever heard of does that."
"So they're a little miracle all of Midgar's own, eh?"
"That's right." Aerith moved out from the pew to squat down beside him, a chunk of shortbread in one hand and her cup of tea in the other. "They're Little Miracles. They're the miracles you find when you're not looking for them, but when you do find them, they'll be there exactly at the time and place that the miracles are supposed to be. There, I've named them."
Genesis, listening to Zack and Aerith, sipped on his tea and tried not to feel so drearily old. He was only in his twenties, goddammit. Sure, his body was falling apart faster than an igloo under a Comet attack, but he was still young.
"Do you tend them by yourself?" he asked, when Zack and Aerith returned to the pews.
"It's just me looking after this patch." She warmed her hands about the cup and chuckled. "Most people around here think the church is haunted, so they don't come near it. I tell them that it isn't but then they end up thinking the same as the rest of people."
"What do the 'rest of people' think?"
"That this church is my church, which is silly really. Anybody can come in here if they liked." Aerith drummed her fingers on the thermos flask cap and it sounded like rain. "Although sometimes it's nice to have some privacy."
If she had the Turks keeping track of her every move and mood swing, Genesis could only whole-heartedly agree, but he had to wonder. If the Turks were really doing what they did best, surely they ought to have known about this little garden that Aerith's sanctuary in Midgar hid? And yet he couldn't recall having seen any mention of the flowers Aerith tended in her file -
That soundless dissonance that had been humming through him ever since he had set foot in the church screeched.
Genesis winced. "Zack?"
"Yes? Are you alright, sir? You're looking a bit green - "
"There's something making a lot of noise up there - " Genesis pointed up to the church rafters, "- and seeing as Miss Gainsborough says that she spends a lot of time here, I think you should go and investigate it for her."
Zack squinted up into the shadows of the ceiling then cupped his ear. "I don't hear anything."
Genesis sighed and sat back in the pew. "That, Zack, is what makes you a Second Class soldier, whilst I am a First."
"Okay, okay! The rafters. I'll check them out." He dropped a couple of squats and winked at Aerith. "Relax. Genesis won't eat you."
Aerith laughed. "I'd like to see him try."
"I'm going to have a word with Angeal when we get back to the Tower," Genesis hissed just loud enough to be picked up Soldier hearing, and, grinning, Zack bounded off to a dark corner of the church.
For a long moment, Aerith and Genesis sipped tea, contemplating the floor, the carved ceiling, the stained glass windows in silence. The Stranger had been right. It was easier to talk Aerith with the friendly, personable Zack as a buffer. Now it was just him and the young half-Cetra girl fiddling with the end of her hair and he found himself suddenly dry for words and grasping for a script that wasn't there.
By the Goddess, Genesis loathed improvisation. He liked having a script to follow, cues to spring from, the pattern and patoir of the dialogue exchange and metre of individual words, a beginning and a middle and a fitting end to things, but ever since that accident in the VR room improvisation seemed to be all that he was doing.
Aerith made no sign of wishing to be the first to speak. She was humming to herself, tapping her boots on the floorboards and smiling around as the rain dripped down the windows.
Genesis drew in a deep breath. "Has anybody told you why I'm here?"
"Tseng said that you wanted to talk to me but he didn't say what about. I'm guessing that it's about me being what I am, and you being what you are."
Genesis stiffened. "What do you know of me?"
"You're a Soldier." She poured herself a new cup of tea and warmed her hands around it. "So you protect the people who live under ShinRa, and I'm one of the many you protect."
He didn't believe her. She was doing just the same as he was, testing him to see how much he could or would reveal, finding out which of the two of them would be in more trouble, more danger, if somebody let slip the wrong thing.
Be straightforward with her.
Genesis gritted his teeth together.
Tell her what you're really there for.
Easy for the Stranger to say, watching all and orchestrating events when and where it suited him from a safe distance. Genesis really needed to make a start hunting him down. Hadn't Zack mentioned that the only people he knew used the Instant Messaging Service were the fan clubs and Second Class Kunsel? Kunsel could make a good (if disappointing) starting point then.
But first, how to deal with this half-Cetra girl, watching him with the guarded eyes of a long-time slum-dweller over the brim of her cup.
He suddenly found himself laughing.
Aerith peered at him with small frown. "Are you alright?"
"A friend told me that I shouldn't lie to you, and I'm finding that I'm not sure that I can."
"A friend told you that?"
"In so many words."
"Who's your friend?"
"I wish I knew." That strange dissonance crackled at the back of his mind, sawed and scraped, and tugged at him to leave, go and leave her alone. No, he stood firm against it. Not until he had something he could take back, to show for his efforts. What First Class Soldier would ever settle for defeat? "I need help for a friend."
"A different friend?" Aerith smiled. "You're lucky to have so many friends."
"He's dying."
"Oh." Her expression folded in on itself and Genesis knew in that one look that she known loss. "How do you think I can help him?"
Genesis rose from his seat on the pew. He had to keep this vague. Even without the bugs probably placed all over him and Zack, if Aerith frequented this church as much as she said, chances were that the Turks had littered the place with bugs, and even if, for some reason of their own, they had no interest in offering Aerith and her secrets up to ShinRa, Genesis doubted they would be so charitable with whatever they learnt about him.
He looked her in the eyes. The thought of startlight crossed his mind again gentle as a spring breeze. "I think you know, Miss Gainsborough."
Aerith flinched. Her knuckles of her hands, gripping her flask of tea, whitened. "Are you here to take me to that man in Science?
Genesis let out a bark of laughter that rang up into the afters, and Aerith's eyes flew. "Me be that sweaty old fool's errand boy? As if I'd ever stoop to such a thing! Never, and I gave him a good scare, so he'll think three times and remember to wear a spare pair of underwear before ever daring to ask such a thing of me again!"
She watched him for a long moment without saying a single word, and, after a while, Genesis had a curious feeling that she was listening and not to him.
A cheery voice floated down from the rafters.
My bonny blue-eyed soldier boy
He went to war last spring
With the bonniest blade on the flat of his back
And the song of his soul to sing.
Oh, good grief, was that Zack Fair singing up in the rafters?
He went with eyes as bright as his heart
The drumbeat sound in his ear
To raise his sword to the whistle of war
To sing for all he held dear.
"Is he okay up there?"
"I'm sure he's in his element, backwater monkey that he is."
Aerith let out a sigh and a smile tugged up the corners of her mouth. "At least he sounds as if he's having fun."
"He bloody well shouldn't be. That song is terrible."
There was a scuffling of wings and panicked cooing as Zack disturbed a flock of pigeons.
Aerith's eyes glittered but then she squared her shoulders and Genesis's heart sank. "I'm sorry, but I can't help you."
"Can't?"
What did she mean 'can't'? Of course, she could. She was a little girl in the slums and he was a First Class Soldier and he was asking her to help him, and she had the nerve to say she couldn't? The gall of refusing him when every day he remained on Lazard's 'alleviated' roster ate at his pride?
And what was Genesis if not his pride?
"Can't or won't? You can make flowers bloom in Midgar! That is a gift of the Goddess if ever I saw one and you say that you can't help me?"
"Sorry, gift of the who?"
Genesis buried his face in one hand and shook the other at the heavens (where Zack was currently scaring off the pigeons). "By the Goddess, does nobody in this godforsaken city read literature anymore!"
"We're not the same," cut in Aerith, raising her voice and something in her tone caught his attention - truth. She was telling him the truth, and as he lowered his hand from his face, she lowered her voice and repeated it, as though to press its meaning upon him. "We're not the same, you see. That's why I can't help you."
Not the same?
What did she mean they weren't the same? She might have been born the way she was and Genesis might have been something spliced together in a petri-dish but -
Oh!
Bitterness welled up and flooded his mouth with a taste like burnt blood.
He could have laughed.
But, of course, why hadn't he realised this earlier? It should have been obvious as soon as he set eyes on Aerith Gainsborough, spoke to her, followed her into the church.
For sing did my blue-eyed soldier boy
A wild song only he knew
That shone from the depths of his heart and soul
That sang in each breath he drew.
He had a black wing itching beneath his skin as if waiting only for the right breeze. He burned things and enjoyed it, wore the colour of fire in his coat, liked to set fire to his enemies and watch them go down like his own personal sunsets. She coaxed Little Miracles out of the dead Midgar soil and had eyes like starlight.
They were not the same. Not in the way Genesis - or Hollander, for that matter - thought.
"Then...what are you?"
That wasn't what he had meant to ask and she knew it. She gave him an odd look that something hissing and ugly at the back of his mind immediately seized as pitying and spat poison into his blood.
"How about we settle for both of us being half-human, but wholly us?"
Settle? Genesis never settled for anything. He got what he wanted, and what he wanted was always what he needed, and what he needed wasn't some sort of consolation gift offered to him out of pity by a silly little slumgirl, who just so happened to be ShinRa's most prized pet!
"What are you hiding from me?"
The low hiss that escaped from his mouth caught both Aerith and a part of Genesis that was rapidly sinking under a dark, venomous haze by surprise. His shoulder throbbed, burned as if fire was racing through it and the wing - that damned wing - there it was, he could feel it ready, barbed hook already digging against his backbone.
"I was told to be nothing but straightforward with you, and, by the Goddess, I've tried, but you - you are hiding something from me!"
He barely heard her whisper, "No", as she stood her ground. That awful dischordant noise that had been screaming under his thoughts through their whole meeting had burst into his head with a clamouring like bells, each bell out of tune and out of time with the rest.
"You know what I am. You know it, I know you do." He had to raise his voice to hear himself over that godawful not-noise! Why wouldn't it stop? What was it? What was it doing to him? "And yet you continue to hide it from me what is surely, as a truth of my own blood, bone and flesh, by every right that is mine to have beneath this sun, mine! And yet, you refuse to tell me, and you will not help me - "
There was a sudden, almighty CRASH! that shook the pews and rattled the floor, bringing down the dust from the rafters in a great chalky cloud.
It cleared away the hideous dischord from Genesis's minds like smoke he hadn't realised was there, and suddenly he realised that he was standing over Aerith with all the ways he knew to kill with his bare hands readied at the tips of his fingers.
Genesis came back to himself with a jolt. "What do you think you're doing?"
There lying on the flat of his back amongst the flowers was Zack, winded and a bit sheepish and covered in pigeon droppings.
Zack laughed and scratched the side of his face. "I did shout 'Look out below!' but I guess you guys didn't hear me - "
"I asked you to check the rafters for any dangerous infestations, not to go up there to have a song and dance!"
"Well, I didn't have my blade with me, so what else could I do?" Zack replied with a laugh, pushing himself up onto his elbows, and finally noticed the flowers that he was squashing beneath him. "Oh, man, Aerith, I'm sorry. I - "
"They'll grow back. That's what flowers do, after all." She approached him and held out her hand as though to help him up. "I'm just glad you had a soft landing. Nothing broken?"
"Nah, I'd have to fall another couple of hundred metres maybe before I break anything."
"So long as you don't go testing that."
Zack probably didn't need to take her hand to climb up to his feet but Aerith looked pleased enough when he did.
Genesis turned away. By the Goddess, what was wrong with him? If Zack Fair hadn't fallen when he had, what would Genesis have done? He could see it now as clear as the light falling through the windows - a strike, a vicious squeeze to her throat, raising bruises on her skin the same yellow and green of the Little Miracles as he choked the answers out of her…
"So, what did you guys talk about?" Zack looked between Aerith and Genesis with a gaze that was a little too knowing for Genesis's liking. "I - er- thought things sounded a little heated from up there."
"It was my fault really," said Aerith quickly and Genesis was quite taken aback. "Mister Rhapsodos only wanted help. I said I couldn't help him and I didn't really give a good enough reason why."
Genesis couldn't allow this – this niceness. She had been terrified. He had seen it. "I spoke out of turn."
"But you didn't let me finish."
"I didn't?"
"I was going to say that, I don't think I can help you the way you thought I could, but I could try another way." Genesis hated the hope that sprung in him at her words, but he hung onto everything that Aerith said as she went on, "I'm - well, like you've guessed - closer to the Planet than most. I could try maybe...talking to 'the Goddess' as you might put it?"
She finished with a wink. Genesis stared. "You can do that?"
"Wait - 'Goddess'? What 'goddess'?"
"Hmm, something like that. It's a bit touch and go, but I might be able to find something out for you. I mean - " Her eyes flickered to Genesis's shoulder and then back to his face " - for your friend."
"If you do that for us and something comes of it, I will do all that I can to ensure that you never find yourself in the hands of the Department of Science." He saw Zack start in the corner of his eye at the mention of the Science Department and kicked himself. No matter, Genesis would have to swear Zack to secrecy later.
Aerith raised her eyebrows. "And if nothing comes of it?"
"I will do whatever I need to do. I'm not a fool who makes promises that he can't keep."
She hummed but seemed neither surprised nor disapproving, only a little bit sad, and Genesis decided then that the Science Department was the last place he would ever wish to see her. It would be like drowning a daffodil under water.
The wind had changed direction whilst they were in the church and it was driving the rain under the plate.
Genesis decided to do what every responsible superior did. He delegated the monkey tasks to his subordinates who either wore cheaper coats or none at all, and sent Zack out into the rain to buy them all umbrellas.
Left alone with Aerith again the dischordant humming seethed at the back of his mind like a warning. He took out Loveless and thumbed through the pages to where he had left off reading, tried to bury himself in the rhythm of the words.
Aerith leaned against the doorway of the church, watching the rain come down green and glittering.
"It's alright," she said, then sighed. "I wasn't that scared."
"So you say."
"Well, maybe I was. Just a little bit. What I'm trying to say is, I think I know what's going on." She cocked her head and tapped her left ear. "I think you can hear it too, but you're…tuned slightly differently. So you're picking up the same sounds as I am, but it's all completely off, and what makes it even worse is that you're so pumped full of mako that it's like having perfect pitch in an orchestra pit full of out of tune instruments."
Aerith sighed and looked out into the rain again. "I think I'd go a little bit mad if that was what I was hearing too."
Genesis lowered his book. "What do you hear?"
"Oh, it's not as if I actually hear the Planet talking to me in words as such, or even in sounds," she chewed her lip and frowned up at the Plate's shadow above them, "but if you could take those little pieces of sunlight that make dew sparkle in the morning and the smell of rain after a whole night of rainfall, and make those things into music, it'd probably sound something like that."
Genesis scoffed. "A whole night of piss rain?"
Aerith snickered. "Beggars can't be choosers."
Genesis wasn't sure that he understood at all what Aerith was talking about, but the next instant, Zack returned, drenched with rain and carrying three umbrellas, and the opportunity to ask had passed.
"I'm sorry about the flowers."
"Stop apologising. You've bought me an umbrella."
"No, really. I feel really bad. Listen, I want to make up for it. I'll take you on a date sometime! Somewhere nice! Genesis can help - I bet he knows some nice, swanky places - "
"What makes you think that I would help you?"
Aerith let out a laugh and hefted pink umbrella to her shoulder. "I might hold you to that."
They said their goodbyes and then Aerith walked away into the rain, disappearing into the green haze of slum vapour, and Genesis and Zack began to make their way back to the station.
As they crossed a cobbled square with their umbrellas in hand, Zack opened his mouth, and said, "You looked pretty angry back there, when I was up on the rafters."
Genesis snorted and, for a while, Zack said nothing, waiting for a reply that Genesis wouldn't give him in a thousand years.
"Stress?" Zack tried to prompt him.
Genesis came to a stop. "Zack?"
"Yes...sir?"
Genesis thought for a moment. "You may call me Genesis."
Then he walked on before Zack tried to do something sickeningly chummy like try to hug him or sling an arm about his shoulders, and Zack's footsteps fell comfortingly into step behind him.