[I will be the death of you]
Title: Flame Silhouette
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (Kingdom Hearts AU)
Pairing: Genesis/Sephiroth
Characters: Genesis, Sephiroth, Zack, Cloud
Rating: PG-13 bordering on R for sexual implications
Notes: For Aki, based on the RP. This started out abstract and turned specific and then abstract and back again and I DON’T KNOW. I didn’t set out to summarize our entire Sephiroth Gaiden but apparently that’s what I ended up doing. Also, the post-DoC arc scene was too much fun to write. I just loved the dialogue we wrote. (though I tweaked it a bit) Despite the fact that I hate fics in which Cloud is sexually abused, apparently physically abusing him is okay with me. >.> Poor kid.
I've been having trouble with endings lately; I don't really like this one, but I was running the risk of rambling on forever, so it'll do.
Word Count: 2,523
It was a cruel game for the Planet to play, though its dealings with him always seemed to have been so. For that skin to be warm beneath his fingers, those lips to respond to his in kind, those hands to still know his body so well-it was unbearable. A vicious illusion as that familiar eerie gaze focused on his face through impossibly long lashes. A nightmare in that silver hair that cascaded over those shoulders onto his chest, its ghostly touch sending shudders through him.
A dream he never wanted to end.
Breath caused that chest to rise and fall, as his own did. That pale skin flushed red under the ministrations of his tongue, sharp with the taste of sweat. It was real, far too real. Though perhaps it was the edge of emptiness, the knowledge that he must be deceived that kept him always hungering for more.
His eyes fluttered shut as he tried to focus on the soft sound of breathing by his ear. His heartbeat-one that continued despite everything-did not seemed to have slowed at all, though neither of them had moved for several hours. The weight sprawled across his back was grounding, at least, if not slightly restricting to his own breathing. He couldn’t bring himself to care.
A slight draft lifted a few tangled strands of hair from his face, but even this slight movement dragged something that might have been a choked sob from between his lips. Frustration rose in him immediately at his lack of control, burning the back of his throat, even as the body above him shifted in response, pressing lips to the back of his neck, murmuring something perhaps meant to be comforting before falling still and silent again from exhaustion.
The quiet was stifling, and he clenched his teeth lest another sound escape, careful not to let any other muscle in his body tense. This loss of self control was not new to him, and neither were the slow-burning anger nor the sense of helplessness it brought. It had been years, perhaps, but he liked the free-falling feeling even less. Feeling. It should have been merely a physical sensation, but the suffocating, viselike grip on his chest was only real in the most abstract and painful of ways.
The mere fact that it was painful still sent him scrambling through his conscience for understanding. It was a journey that always seemed to lead him back to the same place, a place he avoided perhaps out of sheer stubbornness, or what else he did not know.
If anything, he would cling to that last shred of pride for the rest of his life, the rest of eternity. Foolish, and he knew full well, but something within him would not back down. It was the last part of him that refused to be consumed by the burning.
For it did burn, as he had tried to speak with broken words, harsh kisses, hard touches. The truth seared his throat and tongue, choking him. The words so often whispered in his ear would never pass his own lips. He was flame, consumed with need, driven back to the brink of madness by it, but he would never give in. It was not in his nature.
It was, perhaps, the only thing he held back now.
***
He had declined Weiss’s offer of alliance. Perhaps because, as he would never admit, the only three people that had ever mattered to him were dead. Nevertheless, he did let on that he had lost purpose. There was nothing left to gain. There was nothing left to fight for.
Genesis had lusted for power, but only ever for one purpose-the defeat of a single man. With that gone, though his body’s degradation had been halted, the inevitable emptiness began to sink in. He had a life back, but nothing to live for, and the futility of it threatened to consume him. The only thing to do was let go.
So he slept. And awoke again within the darkness, along with the knowledge that something had changed. The world had been torn asunder and he was left again, alone, somewhere among the fragments. Slowly, he came to remember a childhood he had never had, a brother who had not been one before-and yet somehow it seemed right, a small reassurance-and something else. Loss. The power of the darkness surged within him, but emptiness could not fill empty spaces. He returned to the world of light and found a grave, and a familiar face.
Zack had been surprised to see him at first, but suspected nothing-perhaps he considered their parting to be on good terms. Genesis’s memory was the same, but with a different concern on his mind, he paid it no heed. For he remembered much, much more.
And much of it was the darkness.
The darkness he had found refuge in, for it held no threat to someone with his power. No matter how tainted his heart became, it could never be consumed. He had always been a strange child; his natural charisma charmed adults but other children were beings of instinct, and shied away from him fearfully. The only ones who seemed immune to it were Angeal, his half-brother, who had grown up with him, and another boy who shared his power-his curse.
Sephiroth.
He had felt akin to the other at first, drawn to him by their unique connection, one that no one else could understand. Perhaps they were even friends. The three of them spent time together under some semblance of normalcy, but Genesis felt himself growing distant. Unlike others his age, busy with their own small worlds of fantasy, he became fascinated with the workings of the heart-motivation, desire, fear, anger. Soon he learned he could influence such emotions in others, and wasted no time honing his abilities in secret.
But it was not a very well-off part of the city they lived in, so the hearts at his disposal were already corrupt, easy to push over the edge. With each use of his power pain grew in his left shoulder, though he ignored it, and the tendrils of shadow creeping over his own heart as well, for he knew they could not harm him.
One day he awoke from a gripping, painful nightmare to find his bedsheets smeared with blood and black feathers. It was as if the shadows in his heart had manifested themselves in that wing, and he took it as a sign that he had grown more powerful.
That day, a woman was found murdered on her kitchen floor, stabbed to death by the same men whose hearts he had dragged to the very edge of darkness. Her young son escaped unharmed, but was pursued. Yet before he could meet the same fate, he lashed out instinctively, and the last speck of light in their hearts vanished.
They became monsters. Beings of shadow, hearts consumed by darkness that only knew hunger. Genesis would have been fascinated by this discovery, delighted even, but for one thing.
Sephiroth’s wing was white. He had used the same power, twisted those men more profoundly than his friend ever had, but it had been in self-defense. His heart held only a few traces of darkness, that of fear. Genesis was struck by that purity, and the feeling that had lingered around him ever since their first meeting.
He wanted it all to himself.
So he dragged the other into the darkness with him, stripped away what innocence he had left, until he had plucked the last pale feather from a wing that had grown as black as his own. Sephiroth’s dark hair was streaked with silver, his strange eyes weary, glimmering only faintly, but Genesis was all he knew, and the thought of leaving never crossed his mind. That is, until he caught the eye of the Lord of the Underworld, and was offered something more. A purpose. A reason to fight. His skill with a blade, as well as the darkness itself, improved so rapidly that soon enough he had surpassed his old friend. Jealousy burned within Genesis, only intensifying when the other’s attention turned to someone else-a boy who seemed to remind Sephiroth of himself.
Cloud was chosen as his world crumbled around him, given part of Sephiroth’s power, a twisted wing of his own. And eventually he had grown into a man, triumphed over his tormentor, found his way home.
He was the only one who had ever bested Sephiroth.
Genesis set out to break him.
He would not let Zack interfere. To think the failed specimen the fool had given his life for was one and the same with the only man who had matched blades with the god of battle. He was not sure what fueled him-anger? Jealousy?-but it was enough to erase any hesitation as his booted foot slammed into his opponent’s stomach. Something cracked-most likely a rib-drawing a groan from the smaller man. A smirk twitched across Genesis’ lips-it has been disappointingly easy, confirming his suspicions. Sephiroth had not been trying when Cloud defeated him.
In the next moment a flash of light blinded him, slamming into his chest and throwing him backwards. He regained his footing quickly, almost smiling up at the familiar silhouette.
Only this one had two wings.
“So...you’re finally here. I’m afraid I wasn’t quite finished.”
Slitted eyes narrowed even further. “You’re fighting Cloud because I wasn’t here? The next best thing? I’m disappointed you’d settle for less. Leave him.”
Genesis could only sneer. “Protective of your pawn? I never would have thought.”
“You were my example, after all.” A smirk in return. But try as he might, Genesis could see no madness in those eyes.
Something had changed.
He gestured contemptuously at the form sprawled behind the other. “You chose that over me?”
“You weren’t grateful for what you had.” The dangerous edge to that voice was more familiar. Genesis could still get a rise out of him, it seemed.
Then Cloud struggled to his knees, drawing their attention, apparently still intent on fighting. Sephiroth only gazed at him condescendingly.
“Lift that sword, puppet, and you’re out of the game.”
Defiance flared in those blue eyes. “I don’t...belong to you-!”
The hilt of the Masamune against Cloud’s broken ribs sent him sprawling backwards several yards, the pain on top of the beating he had just taken apparently enough to make him pass out. But Genesis could see through the strike, could read the controlled power in it-it was meant to disable, not to kill.
He no longer cared. He had his rightful opponent back.
And so they fought.
With swords, with words, the frustration of the years between them, the years they had lost spilling out in violent strikes, some that drew blood, others that flew carelessly wide. Something fiercer than either had experienced before-Sephiroth never had to try, but Genesis had struggled with all his being to surpass him, and so they were evenly matched-something desperate that needed to be confirmed by steel meeting steel, harsh epithets thrown back and forth.
In the end it could only prove one thing-need. The empty spaces the other had managed to fill over time, not through kindness but necessity, not through friendship but want of something, anything familiar, not through warmth but a feral, hungry flame that fed on the pain they could cause each other.
A battle that refused to end, though perhaps it had a long time ago and it was only Genesis that would not give up, clinging to the consolation that winning would give him, though he knew it was an empty one.
In time swords were cast away, and Genesis found himself relying on words to finish what he had started, the futility beginning to sink in. It was not purpose enough. That was the only thing that could ever frighten him. That perhaps the point of life had ended long before and all that was left to do was feel-the one thing he had always refused-or even build instead of destroy.
He insisted he was incapable of change but the lips against his neck told him otherwise, he claimed they were a disaster but the fingers trailing down the curve of his spine refuted him. He could not refuse this, he craved it more than anything-after so many years alone, touch was intoxicating, the sensation of the other’s breath against his skin alone sent him into shudders of ecstasy. And there were moments of lucidity where he tried to speak of what it did to him but it was like tearing limbs off, one by one. Words were a game to him, they would forever be inadequate; he used them to bind people to him, push them away, wrench them around more forcefully than he could do with his hands. Words were his weapons, his armor, and without them he was intensely lost and helpless.
He hated it.
It was not unlike breaking a dam after so many years, letting the water rush through with thundering force, scouring everything, mercilessly. Only the flood didn’t stop. He was drowning in the silence, a silence broken only by breathless moans and gasps and the friction of skin against skin. It turned him inside-out and left him naked, vulnerable, a part of himself exposed that had never been before no matter how much of his clothing he had stripped away.
He learned to give himself over to it for a time; suffocating in the physical sensations helped him forget that perhaps he was just as weak as anyone else and only hid it better. Somehow finding solace in their tangled limbs and the ache in the aftermath.
Soon enough he realized he was empty again and tried to fill himself with anger, but it bled out of him as if through an open wound. All that he wanted had become wrapped up in a name, a face, a body, a voice, and perhaps it had always been, but he had been blind-blinded himself, indeed.
He could not call it love.
It wasn’t. He wasn’t capable of something so pure. It was want, it was need, it was obsession. That hadn’t changed. Part of him didn’t want it to, because love was something you took for granted and he thrived on the thrill of the unpredictable. He was tempted by the coil of fear that formed in his stomach at the glint of madness in those eyes, the fingers that caressed him so gently one moment but would leave bruises the next. He wanted to know what it was like to be used, tossed aside carelessly again and again, as he himself had done. Whether it was a part of him that wanted to be punished, absolved of all his sins by having them visited upon him, or merely masochism, he himself did not know.
He would not apologize for anything, and he would not call it love.
I hear a voice say "don't be so blind"
it's telling me all of these things that you would probably hide
am I your one and only desire?
am I the reason you breathe, or am I the reason you cry?
always, always, always, I just can't live without you
I love you, I hate you, I can't get around you
I breathe you, I taste you, I can't live without you
I just can't take anymore, this life of solitude
I guess then I'm out that door and now I'm done with you
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (Kingdom Hearts AU)
Pairing: Genesis/Sephiroth
Characters: Genesis, Sephiroth, Zack, Cloud
Rating: PG-13 bordering on R for sexual implications
Notes: For Aki, based on the RP. This started out abstract and turned specific and then abstract and back again and I DON’T KNOW. I didn’t set out to summarize our entire Sephiroth Gaiden but apparently that’s what I ended up doing. Also, the post-DoC arc scene was too much fun to write. I just loved the dialogue we wrote. (though I tweaked it a bit) Despite the fact that I hate fics in which Cloud is sexually abused, apparently physically abusing him is okay with me. >.> Poor kid.
I've been having trouble with endings lately; I don't really like this one, but I was running the risk of rambling on forever, so it'll do.
Word Count: 2,523
It was a cruel game for the Planet to play, though its dealings with him always seemed to have been so. For that skin to be warm beneath his fingers, those lips to respond to his in kind, those hands to still know his body so well-it was unbearable. A vicious illusion as that familiar eerie gaze focused on his face through impossibly long lashes. A nightmare in that silver hair that cascaded over those shoulders onto his chest, its ghostly touch sending shudders through him.
A dream he never wanted to end.
Breath caused that chest to rise and fall, as his own did. That pale skin flushed red under the ministrations of his tongue, sharp with the taste of sweat. It was real, far too real. Though perhaps it was the edge of emptiness, the knowledge that he must be deceived that kept him always hungering for more.
His eyes fluttered shut as he tried to focus on the soft sound of breathing by his ear. His heartbeat-one that continued despite everything-did not seemed to have slowed at all, though neither of them had moved for several hours. The weight sprawled across his back was grounding, at least, if not slightly restricting to his own breathing. He couldn’t bring himself to care.
A slight draft lifted a few tangled strands of hair from his face, but even this slight movement dragged something that might have been a choked sob from between his lips. Frustration rose in him immediately at his lack of control, burning the back of his throat, even as the body above him shifted in response, pressing lips to the back of his neck, murmuring something perhaps meant to be comforting before falling still and silent again from exhaustion.
The quiet was stifling, and he clenched his teeth lest another sound escape, careful not to let any other muscle in his body tense. This loss of self control was not new to him, and neither were the slow-burning anger nor the sense of helplessness it brought. It had been years, perhaps, but he liked the free-falling feeling even less. Feeling. It should have been merely a physical sensation, but the suffocating, viselike grip on his chest was only real in the most abstract and painful of ways.
The mere fact that it was painful still sent him scrambling through his conscience for understanding. It was a journey that always seemed to lead him back to the same place, a place he avoided perhaps out of sheer stubbornness, or what else he did not know.
If anything, he would cling to that last shred of pride for the rest of his life, the rest of eternity. Foolish, and he knew full well, but something within him would not back down. It was the last part of him that refused to be consumed by the burning.
For it did burn, as he had tried to speak with broken words, harsh kisses, hard touches. The truth seared his throat and tongue, choking him. The words so often whispered in his ear would never pass his own lips. He was flame, consumed with need, driven back to the brink of madness by it, but he would never give in. It was not in his nature.
It was, perhaps, the only thing he held back now.
***
He had declined Weiss’s offer of alliance. Perhaps because, as he would never admit, the only three people that had ever mattered to him were dead. Nevertheless, he did let on that he had lost purpose. There was nothing left to gain. There was nothing left to fight for.
Genesis had lusted for power, but only ever for one purpose-the defeat of a single man. With that gone, though his body’s degradation had been halted, the inevitable emptiness began to sink in. He had a life back, but nothing to live for, and the futility of it threatened to consume him. The only thing to do was let go.
So he slept. And awoke again within the darkness, along with the knowledge that something had changed. The world had been torn asunder and he was left again, alone, somewhere among the fragments. Slowly, he came to remember a childhood he had never had, a brother who had not been one before-and yet somehow it seemed right, a small reassurance-and something else. Loss. The power of the darkness surged within him, but emptiness could not fill empty spaces. He returned to the world of light and found a grave, and a familiar face.
Zack had been surprised to see him at first, but suspected nothing-perhaps he considered their parting to be on good terms. Genesis’s memory was the same, but with a different concern on his mind, he paid it no heed. For he remembered much, much more.
And much of it was the darkness.
The darkness he had found refuge in, for it held no threat to someone with his power. No matter how tainted his heart became, it could never be consumed. He had always been a strange child; his natural charisma charmed adults but other children were beings of instinct, and shied away from him fearfully. The only ones who seemed immune to it were Angeal, his half-brother, who had grown up with him, and another boy who shared his power-his curse.
Sephiroth.
He had felt akin to the other at first, drawn to him by their unique connection, one that no one else could understand. Perhaps they were even friends. The three of them spent time together under some semblance of normalcy, but Genesis felt himself growing distant. Unlike others his age, busy with their own small worlds of fantasy, he became fascinated with the workings of the heart-motivation, desire, fear, anger. Soon he learned he could influence such emotions in others, and wasted no time honing his abilities in secret.
But it was not a very well-off part of the city they lived in, so the hearts at his disposal were already corrupt, easy to push over the edge. With each use of his power pain grew in his left shoulder, though he ignored it, and the tendrils of shadow creeping over his own heart as well, for he knew they could not harm him.
One day he awoke from a gripping, painful nightmare to find his bedsheets smeared with blood and black feathers. It was as if the shadows in his heart had manifested themselves in that wing, and he took it as a sign that he had grown more powerful.
That day, a woman was found murdered on her kitchen floor, stabbed to death by the same men whose hearts he had dragged to the very edge of darkness. Her young son escaped unharmed, but was pursued. Yet before he could meet the same fate, he lashed out instinctively, and the last speck of light in their hearts vanished.
They became monsters. Beings of shadow, hearts consumed by darkness that only knew hunger. Genesis would have been fascinated by this discovery, delighted even, but for one thing.
Sephiroth’s wing was white. He had used the same power, twisted those men more profoundly than his friend ever had, but it had been in self-defense. His heart held only a few traces of darkness, that of fear. Genesis was struck by that purity, and the feeling that had lingered around him ever since their first meeting.
He wanted it all to himself.
So he dragged the other into the darkness with him, stripped away what innocence he had left, until he had plucked the last pale feather from a wing that had grown as black as his own. Sephiroth’s dark hair was streaked with silver, his strange eyes weary, glimmering only faintly, but Genesis was all he knew, and the thought of leaving never crossed his mind. That is, until he caught the eye of the Lord of the Underworld, and was offered something more. A purpose. A reason to fight. His skill with a blade, as well as the darkness itself, improved so rapidly that soon enough he had surpassed his old friend. Jealousy burned within Genesis, only intensifying when the other’s attention turned to someone else-a boy who seemed to remind Sephiroth of himself.
Cloud was chosen as his world crumbled around him, given part of Sephiroth’s power, a twisted wing of his own. And eventually he had grown into a man, triumphed over his tormentor, found his way home.
He was the only one who had ever bested Sephiroth.
Genesis set out to break him.
He would not let Zack interfere. To think the failed specimen the fool had given his life for was one and the same with the only man who had matched blades with the god of battle. He was not sure what fueled him-anger? Jealousy?-but it was enough to erase any hesitation as his booted foot slammed into his opponent’s stomach. Something cracked-most likely a rib-drawing a groan from the smaller man. A smirk twitched across Genesis’ lips-it has been disappointingly easy, confirming his suspicions. Sephiroth had not been trying when Cloud defeated him.
In the next moment a flash of light blinded him, slamming into his chest and throwing him backwards. He regained his footing quickly, almost smiling up at the familiar silhouette.
Only this one had two wings.
“So...you’re finally here. I’m afraid I wasn’t quite finished.”
Slitted eyes narrowed even further. “You’re fighting Cloud because I wasn’t here? The next best thing? I’m disappointed you’d settle for less. Leave him.”
Genesis could only sneer. “Protective of your pawn? I never would have thought.”
“You were my example, after all.” A smirk in return. But try as he might, Genesis could see no madness in those eyes.
Something had changed.
He gestured contemptuously at the form sprawled behind the other. “You chose that over me?”
“You weren’t grateful for what you had.” The dangerous edge to that voice was more familiar. Genesis could still get a rise out of him, it seemed.
Then Cloud struggled to his knees, drawing their attention, apparently still intent on fighting. Sephiroth only gazed at him condescendingly.
“Lift that sword, puppet, and you’re out of the game.”
Defiance flared in those blue eyes. “I don’t...belong to you-!”
The hilt of the Masamune against Cloud’s broken ribs sent him sprawling backwards several yards, the pain on top of the beating he had just taken apparently enough to make him pass out. But Genesis could see through the strike, could read the controlled power in it-it was meant to disable, not to kill.
He no longer cared. He had his rightful opponent back.
And so they fought.
With swords, with words, the frustration of the years between them, the years they had lost spilling out in violent strikes, some that drew blood, others that flew carelessly wide. Something fiercer than either had experienced before-Sephiroth never had to try, but Genesis had struggled with all his being to surpass him, and so they were evenly matched-something desperate that needed to be confirmed by steel meeting steel, harsh epithets thrown back and forth.
In the end it could only prove one thing-need. The empty spaces the other had managed to fill over time, not through kindness but necessity, not through friendship but want of something, anything familiar, not through warmth but a feral, hungry flame that fed on the pain they could cause each other.
A battle that refused to end, though perhaps it had a long time ago and it was only Genesis that would not give up, clinging to the consolation that winning would give him, though he knew it was an empty one.
In time swords were cast away, and Genesis found himself relying on words to finish what he had started, the futility beginning to sink in. It was not purpose enough. That was the only thing that could ever frighten him. That perhaps the point of life had ended long before and all that was left to do was feel-the one thing he had always refused-or even build instead of destroy.
He insisted he was incapable of change but the lips against his neck told him otherwise, he claimed they were a disaster but the fingers trailing down the curve of his spine refuted him. He could not refuse this, he craved it more than anything-after so many years alone, touch was intoxicating, the sensation of the other’s breath against his skin alone sent him into shudders of ecstasy. And there were moments of lucidity where he tried to speak of what it did to him but it was like tearing limbs off, one by one. Words were a game to him, they would forever be inadequate; he used them to bind people to him, push them away, wrench them around more forcefully than he could do with his hands. Words were his weapons, his armor, and without them he was intensely lost and helpless.
He hated it.
It was not unlike breaking a dam after so many years, letting the water rush through with thundering force, scouring everything, mercilessly. Only the flood didn’t stop. He was drowning in the silence, a silence broken only by breathless moans and gasps and the friction of skin against skin. It turned him inside-out and left him naked, vulnerable, a part of himself exposed that had never been before no matter how much of his clothing he had stripped away.
He learned to give himself over to it for a time; suffocating in the physical sensations helped him forget that perhaps he was just as weak as anyone else and only hid it better. Somehow finding solace in their tangled limbs and the ache in the aftermath.
Soon enough he realized he was empty again and tried to fill himself with anger, but it bled out of him as if through an open wound. All that he wanted had become wrapped up in a name, a face, a body, a voice, and perhaps it had always been, but he had been blind-blinded himself, indeed.
He could not call it love.
It wasn’t. He wasn’t capable of something so pure. It was want, it was need, it was obsession. That hadn’t changed. Part of him didn’t want it to, because love was something you took for granted and he thrived on the thrill of the unpredictable. He was tempted by the coil of fear that formed in his stomach at the glint of madness in those eyes, the fingers that caressed him so gently one moment but would leave bruises the next. He wanted to know what it was like to be used, tossed aside carelessly again and again, as he himself had done. Whether it was a part of him that wanted to be punished, absolved of all his sins by having them visited upon him, or merely masochism, he himself did not know.
He would not apologize for anything, and he would not call it love.
I hear a voice say "don't be so blind"
it's telling me all of these things that you would probably hide
am I your one and only desire?
am I the reason you breathe, or am I the reason you cry?
always, always, always, I just can't live without you
I love you, I hate you, I can't get around you
I breathe you, I taste you, I can't live without you
I just can't take anymore, this life of solitude
I guess then I'm out that door and now I'm done with you