Miasma

Chapter 23

How do you deal with the loss of something promised?

Standing in Sephiroth's old apartment at HQ with every bone in his body numb, Genesis came to the concrete conclusion that he didn't know. He didn't know how to conscience the immense egress of something that felt like the other half of his soul...didn't know how to cope...didn't know how to face it without facing himself. His partner's absence was a gaping wound pounding a hedonistic heartbeat just below his sternum. At times, it ached like fire...other days...it was a static lack of sensation. He'd heard it described once...when he was younger; heartache...heartbreak. Standing in a cozy cafe, he'd been privy to the conversation between a granddaughter and a grandmother who had just lost her husband of-so he assumed-considerable years. At the time, he hadn't understood the terrible significance of it...had scorned the concept of loving someone so thoroughly and so long.

"Your grandfather was the light of my life...I miss him so...I hear him everywhere...sometimes I think I can see him...the back of his head just up the corner from the market...his jacket in a crowd..."

Oh, and he'd been so scornful of her quavering voice...of the way her hands trembled as she spoke...of her quivering jowls and her knitted tartan. Genesis had been hateful towards an old woman who was pining for the man who had likely carried her...who she had likely carried, through decades. What was age? He had thought. Nothing but a monstrosity...nothing but the inevitable and why cling to life when you had so little to live for? When you had nothing to do but complain about those who had gone before you? Now...now...the derisive dismissiveness of his youth was horrid. Because if this was the pain Sephiroth's absence was causing him, he could not imagine how much pain she had been in....couldn't imagine her lying down at night...staring into the dark and wishing for someone who wasn't there anymore. Maybe when things progressed naturally you learned to expect it...maybe that was why people didn't age and die like the mayfly; because the human psyche could not handle such abrupt mortality.

Mortality, he'd decided, was a trickster in the guise of wisdom.

It wasn't right...and he desperately pined for greater insight in earlier days, but there was nothing for it now. And it wasn't like anything their partnership entailed came with a guarantee of concrete togetherness. They were SOLDIERs, and then they were fugitives. SOLDIERs expired on the battlefield, and fugitive lived lives of fear or were eventually apprehended and gunned down. Nothing about their lives was a permanent concept, and he'd been fully aware of that. The acknowledgement of this didn't make it hurt any less, didn't heal the dark chasm in his heart. Awareness could only get you so far, and he was cognizant of the fact that his internal ephanies didn't change the fact of his loss...didn't make anything easier to bear. If anything, it only amplified his previous state of ignorance, made him angry, made him bitter towards the world and it's failure to allow its subjects to be wholly circumspect.

A part of him whispered that he could have done something...that he could have changed something. Days ago now...crouched over the lifeless body of the man he had loved...Genesis had howled to himself that he could have made a difference if he hadn't been so fucking stupid. He'd gathered the remaining men and led the attack on Shinra...left the physicality of his lover's body on snowy ground because he was blind with grief and rage. If he had no one to blame...he'd have to turn to himself...he couldn't do that. Not now. He refused to shoulder the blame and so he'd gathered the men he could...the men who had seen...who had survived, who understood. He could barely remember the subsequent hours...could barely recall what he had done or said that roused the troops to his cause. Maybe they'd gone because they were terrified of him, he didn't know. Zack had met him at some point between Kalm and Midgar...had tried to reason with him. Saoirse was with Aerith, he said...she was safe. The mention of his daughter brought the grief fresh...drove the enraged and slavering haze from his mind long enough that he nearly dropped to the ground.