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"Do you feel better?"
Angeal put on his most reassuring smile. "Don't worry, it's just a bruise."
His day had been weird. Honestly, weird was far too weak a word to describe it. Waking up in a desert when the last thing you clearly remembered doing was dying in a frozen wasteland wasn't something that happened every day. As Angeal had walked towards the city he'd seen in the distance he had tried to figure out how he'd gotten here, and made very little progress in that regard.
It wasn't that his mind was a complete blank. There were some flashes. People Angeal had known, their voices coming to him as if from under water. People Angeal had never seen before. Muddy memories mixing together in no clear order. Somehow, Angeal was certain that he had succeeded in dying, which led to the very relevant question of how and why he was now alive.
So Angeal had walked to the city that he, somehow, knew was called Edge. The settlement that had grown in the time since he had died, which, somehow , he knew had been roughly a decade. And he had wandered the streets, mind overwhelmed by what he was seeing. He had thought he had been walking aimlessly, but if that had been the case then how had he ended up seeing Genesis of all people?
Genesis hadn't noticed Angeal, for his part. For all that Angeal looked too big to walk around unnoticed, he knew how to make his presence unknown. He had followed Genesis from a distance. Genesis, whose hair was long and once again fully red, not a white strand in sight. Genesis, who looked older than the last time Angeal had seen him, but not really that much, more late twenties than the early thirties he was in.
And then Angeal had gathered up his courage and followed Genesis into a bar. He needed answers, after all. Perhaps he had hoped Genesis wouldn't make a scene in a public place.
That was how Angeal had ended up sitting on a bar stool, an ice pack pressed over his left eye, with a child sat next to him, watching as a woman with black hair and impressive biceps had an animated, whispered argument with Genesis on the other side of the bar.
"Are you sure?" the child – she had said her name was Marlene – asked. "Genesis used to be SOLDIER, you know. He's very strong."
She didn't seem to have any idea who Angeal was. Why should she, when she might have been born after Angeal had died? "He is strong. Do you know him well?"
Marlene shrugged. "He's friends with Tifa and Cloud. My dad doesn't like him tough, he says he's shady."
"He can be, I suppose."
"Do you know Genesis?" she asked.
"We... We were friends as kids."
Everything else that had happened since was too complicated for Angeal to try and explain it to a child.
He readjusted his ice pack. Genesis had a real fucking mean right hook. It was something Angeal felt he should have known, but Genesis had never been one for fist fights. They had had the hand to hand combat training, but Genesis had always relied on that as last resort, preferring the finesse of a sword and flashiness of magic. If it came down to it, he tended to bite and scratch like a wild animal.
That was probably why Angeal had let himself be hit. He had been bracing himself for Genesis to react badly, but expected to have to avoid being stabbed or burnt. Not punched. Ice or not, he was going to have one hell of a black eye.
Genesis and the woman who had introduced herself as Tifa were still whisper-fighting in the corner. He couldn't see their expressions clearly, but body language was clear. She had her arms crossed, her back straight, staring up at Genesis. As for Genesis, he was gesturing and firmly not looking in Angeal's direction, his voice occasionally raising enough for Angeal to make out a couple words.
He looked... well. It was like the degradation had never happened. Angeal didn't think he had ever seen Genesis wear his hair so long before, the strands slightly messy in a way that was no doubt accurately studied. His fashion sense still leaned towards red and black. There was something left of his SOLDIER uniform there, in the turtleneck he had under the coat.
Angeal wanted to stand and touch him, assure himself that Genesis was real and solid and as strong as he had ever been. Which was ridiculous, Genesis had already proven his solidity. The only reason Angeal didn't was because he didn't want to risk a second black eye matching the first.
Genesis and Tifa seemed to have reached an agreement. They walked up to Angeal, Tifa with a smile she must have worn just to put him at ease, Genesis with a deep, familiar scowl.
"So, maybe we should start from the beginning," Tifa said. "You are SOLDIER First Class Angeal Hewley, is that right?"
"Angeal is fine," he replied, forcing himself to look at her and only her as she spoke.
"Alright, Angeal. And, there isn't really a way to ask this that isn't very blunt, but you are aware that you are..."
"Dead," Genesis completed.
"Yes. I remember that much."
Tifa nodded. "And do you have any idea why you suddenly are not?"
Angeal shook his head best as he could while keeping the ice on his face. "Afraid not. I remember... dying, that's the last clear memory I have. Then I woke up a little outside of town."
"Nothing in between?"
"Not quite," Angeal said. "There's some things that I feel I know, but I wouldn't be able to tell you how. Like that this place is called Edge and was built after Midgar was destroyed. Don't know any of the details tough."
For some reason, he also felt he had seen Tifa before. In blurred ways, standing in a small town, trekking through a tundra. If he really focused on the paper thin memory he could tell she hadn't been alone, but her companions were a mystery to him.
Somehow it felt like Sephiroth had been relevant there. Sephiroth who...
Angeal sat straighter. Sephiroth was dead, wasn't he? Sephiroth had snapped, lost himself the way Genesis had when the degradation hit – worse, maybe – and then he had died. The knowledge cemented itself into fact within his head.
"Something the matter?" Tifa asked, noticing Angeal's shift.
"Did... Did Sephiroth have something to do with what happened to Midgar?"
It was Tifa's turn to visibly tense.
"Seriously?"
Angeal turned to Genesis, who had thrown his hands up with the outburst. "Genesis?"
"Don't Genesis me, you piece of shit – Marlene, do not bring up the swear jar now. You decide to come back to life after having thrown yourself on the closest available sword a decade ago, and the first thing that comes out of your mouth is asking about Sephiroth? Do you want me to send you right back to where you came?"
For some reason, Angeal's mind got stuck on the part about swear jars and how they applied to Genesis.
"Marlene, go upstairs for a moment, alright?" Tifa asked.
"I just remembered something–"
"I don't care," Genesis interrupted. "Try to remember how you went from the grave I put you in to here, then maybe we'll talk about Sephiroth."
Angeal hadn't given thought to what had happened to his own body after death. The options would have been buried, cremated, or handed over to Hollander to harvest samples. It was good to know Genesis hadn't opted for the latter.
Truth be told, Angeal wasn't sure how to feel about being alive again. He had wanted to die, had planned it. Maybe it would come back to him soon. But for the moment, the sheer confusion that came with not being dead was trampling any other feeling he had about it. That, and a budding sort of shocked relief that Genesis was Genesis. Furious and not handling it well, as always, but alive and healthy and sane enough to live with other people and have friends and get chided about swearing by children.
That was a story Angeal would want the details of. How Genesis had gone from half-dead and more than halfway insane to this.
"I don't know what happened," Angeal said. "As best as I can say, I was dead up until I wasn't. No clue who or what brought me back."
"Are you sure it can't be–"
"It can't be that he came back like Sephiroth, no!" Genesis snapped before Tifa could finish. "Can you trust me when I say G-cells don't work that way? And with Jenova gone, who would even be pulling the strings?"
Angeal frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"About things that are not our current conundrum."
Angeal could accept that answer, given Genesis no doubt had matured a far better understanding of G-cells than Angeal ever had, but he didn't have to like it.
***
The conclusion was that no one had a clear idea of why Angeal was back. He was taken to a doctor for some check ups – something that made Angeal bristle at first when it was suggested, but he was promised that the WRO didn't share Shinra's taste for impromptu human experimentation. They found nothing wrong with him. Oh, the wings were there, hidden just below his skin. There were genes in his DNA he had no business having and there was still mako in his veins.
But there were no traces of DNA damage consistent with degradation. No leftover proof of the stress Angeal had put his body through, at the end, by absorbing all those copies. No sign of the blows Zack had inflicted on him. He still carried scars he had earned earlier in life, his body in the same state it had been in the weeks prior to his death. As far as anyone could tell, at least. Most of Angeal's medical files had been lost; he wouldn't be shocked to hear Hojo had deleted them from Shinra's database after his death as a last fuck you to Hollander.
Either way, here he was. Alive, healthy, and purposeless in a world that had left him behind a decade past. Once the initial shock wore off, Angeal was nothing but lost.
They found him a place to stay in Edge. Considerate, he supposed, they must have figured he wouldn't like being held in some cell in the WRO headquarters without reason. He could walk around, go shopping, grab a drink at Seventh Heaven if he wanted. His house was only fifteen minutes from the bar. An opportunity to socialize, for him, a way for someone to keep an eye on him, for the WRO.
In all of this, he had no idea what to do. He had only ever been SOLDIER and then a fugitive. Was he supposed to get a job and build himself a life? And what would he do, even? His only competences aside from fighting were related to farm work and there was very little of that happening here, when Midgar's desert persisted.
All of that without even getting into the issue of what Angeal was. A hybrid monster, custom made and let loose, the kind of thing Angeal used to hunt down for Shinra. He had been given more information on Jenova, of course. Having all the details of what that thing had been – what scientists understood of it, at least, alien as it had been – wasn't exactly a comfort. Angeal was nauseated to know what lurked in his DNA. He was so very acutely aware that he might have become like Sephiroth, had things been just slightly different.
However, there was also a sense of... detachment. The knowledge hurt, but it didn't tear him from the inside out as it used to. Perhaps death had helped settle his psyche. Perhaps it was the fact Angeal was surrounded by fellow freaks. The head of the WRO ran things with the aid of an army of robotic cats. Cloud, who had grudgingly said Angeal could call him if he needed anything, carried chunks of Sephiroth's own mangled DNA and a green shine in his eyes.
There was Genesis, too. Cured, but not returned to the blank slate of humanity. His clothes had holes in the back, not ripped but carefully sewn, perfect for a wing to slip through. Angeal hadn't seen a sword in his hand ever since coming back.
Not that he saw a whole lot of Genesis, really. He ran into him sometimes. When it happened, Genesis only had a freezing cold shoulder to offer him. Sometimes he ignored Angeal entirely. Others he exchanged few terse words, throwing barbs at Angeal and looking very close to repeating the punching performance.
Angeal understood. His death had been, well, a wrench into Genesis's plans. For all that Genesis had turned a new leaf, no one held a grudge like he did. Angeal's reappearance must had dragged that betrayal back up.
He also wanted to think that seeing your best friend back from the dead would be destabilizing for everyone. Truth was, he didn't have a clue where they stood. Angeal had grown to resent the degrading Genesis, he couldn't deny that. For his part, Genesis had had ten years to come to get over Angeal, and it wasn't as if they had parted on the best of terms.
It wasn't as if Angeal could figure it out on his own. Genesis kept himself as unapproachable as possible, and Angeal decided not to push too much. After all, Genesis's anger was far more dangerous when it froze than when it burnt.
Besides, maybe Angeal wouldn't even need to figure it out. Death had spat him out, death could claim him back any day. Just because he was physically fine it didn't mean he was back in this world to last.
***
Angeal looked at his phone, finger hovering over the call option. Phones had evolved a lot, since he'd died. The model they had given him had come out right before Meteorfall, and it had taken Angeal many baffled minutes to work out how to use it. On his own, because physically and, by all means, mentally, he was still in his early twenties and while he had never been the most technologically inclined he wasn't ready to feel old enough to be asking how to use a phone.
After three weeks of this unasked for second shot at life, Angeal had tried asking Cloud about Genesis. He had been given a general run down of events after his death, but not the details. Not what was Genesis up to lately, how he had befriended the strange assortment of people he spent his time with, all of that. It ached, not knowing Genesis.
Cloud had just given Angeal Genesis's number. He was straight forward like that. Or maybe just uninterested into getting into other people's personal drama. There was something closed off and almost skittish about him that reminded Angeal of Sephiroth back when they had first met. Angeal knew better than to say that outloud.
He had saved Genesis's contact in his phone. Now he looked at it, wondering if Genesis would even pick his call up. Did Genesis have Angeal's number? Had he blocked it, the way he seemed determined to block Angeal out of everything else?
Sighing, Angeal pressed the small green icon and put the phone to his ear. It would be a lie to say Angeal had never been a coward about anything, but calling Genesis was something he could do.
The phone rang. It went on and on, not picked up. Maybe Genesis just thought Angeal was a random number calling about this or that scam, if such things still happened. Eventually the rings stopped, sliding into voice mail.
"Hello, this is Genesis Rhapsodos's number. I clearly have other matters to attend to at this time other than answering this machine, so if you have something important to say you may leave me a message. I may reach back to you when the fancy strikes. Speak, and farewell."
Angeal couldn't help the corner of his lips turning up hearing it. Genesis never listened to voice mail. He used to say if it was important, people would call him another time. But he never could resist the temptation of changing the pre-recorded message to something a little more personal.
Wondering if time might have changed some things, Angeal cleared his throat. "Hey, it's Angeal. Cloud gave me your number. I was wondering if we could have a chat, at some point. You know, just to... Yeah. You know. Catch up a little. Give me a call if you're ever interested."
He liked to think he would have said something more coherent, had Genesis been the one to answer and not the machine.
***
Angeal never did receive an answer to that, and so he figured Genesis still didn't listen to voice mail. Never had anyone be able to force Genesis Rhapsodos to do something he didn't want, even if Angeal had done his best to try. But if Genesis didn't want to see him, that could work. It wasn't like Angeal had any inherent right to Genesis's time or attention.
He wasn't really okay with that. All his life, Genesis had been the one Angeal could always count on. Their relationship had fractured during the year or so between Genesis's defection and Angeal's death, but they had still been together during it. Fellow discarded experiments, made inhuman the same way, by the same people.
Knowing Genesis was nearby itched in the corners of Angeal's awareness. He desperately wanted to reach out. Ask what was Genesis angry about, Angeal abandoning him or Angeal having been spared the degradation or whatever else.
Mostly, Angeal wanted to know how Genesis had refitted himself into a normal life. He had been unhesitating to call himself a monster back then, almost proud even, in the way Genesis always shielded his insecurities from others. Monsters they still were. Not having weapons at his disposal didn't erase who and what Angeal had been. His biological reality was undeniable.
Genesis had friends. Genesis had a house. Genesis presumably had some kind of job, unless the WRO subsidized him the way they were currently giving Angeal the money he needed to live. But Angeal was freshly back from the dead, so he figured he was being given a little extra help. Somehow, Genesis was the functional member of society here.
And Angeal was there at the edges, cut out of everything including the life of the only person that was left. He probably would have been better off dead. For a moment – many moments, really – he contemplated dying again, but then reasoned if he could be given a second chance he could be given a third too.
Being idle became unbearable fast. He offered his time to the WRO, quickly saying they didn't need to give him weapons if they didn't feel comfortable with it, he was willing to do whatever, a way of thanking them for trying to work out what kind of glitch of the Lifestream had put Angeal back here. It went without saying he didn't need weapons, not really. His bare hands were enough to kill. If he put his mind to it, he might even figure out how to make his own copies without Hollander's assistance.
There were efforts to revitalize the environment, now that Midgar was no longer draining mako like a black hole. Angeal was no scientist. But he had once been a boy from a farmer town, and more than that, he was a wall of superhuman muscle who could trail behind people who knew what they were doing and carry instruments and soil samples for them. It could be a way to kill time like any other. Maybe to even make himself useful to this world, for once.
He tried calling Genesis again, just to hear what Genesis would say. Laugh and ask why Angeal was allergic to staying away from plants, half-mocking and half-caring. More likely, a chilly good for you before hanging up.
Instead Angeal ended up hitting voice mail again.
"So, WRO found me a job. They're trying to see if they can convince the grasslands to move a bit closer to Midgar. They're doing some field surveys, mapping out soil properties, stuff like that. I don't really get the fine details but I figured I don't have anything else to do other than waiting for someone to guess why I'm alive again. They could send mechas to do the heavy work but they say they prefer human intelligence for this. It's plants as always, I know. Just thought I'd let you know, I might be away for a couple days every once in a while."
Of course, there was no answer to that either. Genesis hadn't shown any interest in what Angeal did nowadays, why would he expect him to care if Angeal was trekking through the wastes?
***
At times, it hit Angeal how much he had lost. Not in terms of time, but of people. His parents had died well before he did, but anger at the lies had made it hard to mourn his mother properly. Sephiroth was dead, for good. Zack had also died, and in some way that was the worst. The news hadn't been shocking for Angeal, more like being reminded of yet another thing he knew without knowing how he did, but that didn't make the fact any less painful.
Zack had been the youngest of them. Not that Angeal had been old, but Zack had been a kid. One dragged into games he had been too young to play, who had been growing into a fine man last Angeal had seen him. Still, a kid nonetheless. Full of so much life and energy he used to make Angeal feel almost elderly.
In a sense, it was Angeal's fault too Zack had died. Not only his, he wasn't so self-centered as to deny all the other factors at play, but he had been Zack's mentor. He had recommended him for First. He had tried to teach Zack to be a good SOLDIER but never outright dissuaded him from the program.
Cloud had given Angeal a rundown of what had happened. He had offered to take Angeal to see Zack's memorial, too, but Angeal had declined. There had been no blame towards him as Cloud spoke, but that might have just been because Cloud looked like he blamed himself too much to consider an alternative.
All that grief was the kind of thing that might drive a man to drink. Angeal had a high alcohol tolerance and a metabolism that worked too fast for him to enjoy being drunk, so all he was left with was staring at the wall of his room with a silent phone pressed against his ear.
"Why was no one else brought back?" Angeal asked. "You all say Sephiroth can't anymore, it makes no sense for me to be here. I don't even deserve it. I asked for it. Think this is some kind of punishment?"
It felt like punishment, when he saw Genesis and Genesis steered away from him.
"Do you ever miss them? Sephiroth, Zack... I know you and Zack weren't exactly close, but I don't think you hated him. He was just like us, stupid earnest kid thinking he was making a difference." Angeal sighed. "Guess that might have been reason enough for you to hate him."
He didn't ask if Genesis had missed him. Angeal did, desperately. More than the others, because Genesis was here and sometimes he was even forced to greet Angeal when they met. The bruise on Angeal's face had long since healed and Angeal almost wanted another, if just to have some form of contact.
Maybe Genesis had realized at some point Angeal hadn't been worth it. At least Genesis had been good at being a monster, and he was good at being a monster who pretended to be human too. Angeal didn't know how to handle either.
***
It really didn't matter whether Angeal was armed or not. All he had been given for self defense when accompanying WRO scientists out of Midgar was a gun, same as everyone else. Near pointless, he had never been good with ranged weapons. Best he could have done would have been hitting someone in the back of the head with it.
When the group had been attacked by some stray monsters, Angeal hadn't bothered with it. Fists, the old fashioned way. They might not have been enough with some creatures, but a couple daring ogres? Not that easy on Angeal's knuckles, but the scrapes would heal.
He hadn't missed the wary glances the others had sent his way the rest of the time. There was a difference between seeing that the man next to you is large and muscular, maybe even knowing who he used to be, and watching him plummet monsters with ease. Inevitable to wonder how easy it would be for Angeal to do the same to a person.
Angeal watched his hands. The scrapes had stopped bleeding, bruises bloomed. No one trusted a massive man who had clearly punched something hard. Mako tinged eyes made people wary, when they were able to tell what the owner of those eyes was. The world had almost ended thanks to the thing lurking in Angeal's DNA.
Sometimes he could forget. If he really tried, he could almost pretend he was just a man living a life that wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible either. Other times, he could tell himself something bigger than him had decided he was to live. Not that he was grateful to whatever that was, but sometimes a man had to know when he wasn't the one in charge.
But other times. Angeal had never stopped being some bio-engineered freak with the cells and the power to twist other creatures into a mockery of himself. SOLDIERs were just SOLDIERs, enhanced but not inhuman. Cloud hadn't been born the way he was, he wasn't a walking biohazard whose own mother (and biological father) had pumped full of alien cells just to see what would happen.
The phone rang empty, the noise echoing in Angeal's ears. "How the fuck do you do it, Gen?" he snapped as soon as he reached the voice mail. "How do you live a normal life, knowing what you are? I don't– We're– I should be dead, Genesis. Not just because I died, what did I do to deserve to live? There's good people, the folks from WRO and at the bar and trying to make a life in this city, where do we fit? I did nothing good."
He nearly threw his phone in a corner once he was done speaking. There was no more Shinra, no more copies, no more Jenova even, but what stopped Angeal from going down that road again? His morals? Fat fucking good had being moral been. He could tell himself he'd try to be a good man, and then walk down to the Meteorfall monument to see how good men ended up.
His stewing was interrupted some half hour later by a brisk knock to his front door. It had Angeal flinch. He never expected anyone. Every once in a while he exchanged a few words with his neighbors, to be polite, but they weren't close enough for them to show up to his house unannounced.
Confused, he went to see who it was. The confusion turned to shock when he saw red on the other side.
"Are you going to stand here all day?" Genesis said, after Angeal did nothing but stare at him. "Invite me in already, will you?"
"Genesis," Angeal said, dumbly. He moved aside. "Sure, come in."
"Much obliged."
Angeal blinked, wondering if it might make Genesis disappear. His hand was numb as he closed the door behind himself.
A long breath, and Genesis fixed him with a stony glare. "You just do it."
"Uh, what?"
"Living," Genesis said, "when you are like this. You suck it up, accept you are an abomination against nature, and move on."
It took a moment for Angeal to process that. "You've been listening to the voice mails."
"Obviously."
"You never answered," Angeal said. The words stung his mouth as he spoke them.
"I'm answering this one, because it sounded a little too bordering on suicidal from a man who has killed himself before."
It wasn't, not quite. Angeal hadn't yet been feeling that bad. "Why? Do you care now?"
Inactivity might be making Angeal's reflexes slow. He barely even noticed when Genesis grabbed him by the collar and slammed his back into the closest wall. It kind of hurt. Genesis's furious face prevented Angeal from focusing on that.
"Do I?" Genesis hissed.
"You tell me," Angeal said, grabbing Genesis's wrist. "You've been avoiding me this whole time."
"I have, yes. Can you guess why I'd be avoiding my dead best friend who committed suicide through his pupil? Any reason at all why that might be hard for me?"
"You punched–"
"You died," Genesis snarled, ignoring Angeal's words. "You decided dying was better than trying to live with the hand we'd been dealt, you roped Zack into it, and you left me to drag your corpse all the way back to Banora. You didn't even tell me."
Angeal's heartbeat and Genesis's ragged breaths filled the sudden silence. "I didn't know how to talk to you anymore."
Something else twisted Genesis's expression. Pain. Guilt, the emotion so rare on him that Angeal barely recognized it.
"I know," Genesis said, and let Angeal go.
They stared at each other for a long moment. Angeal could have stood straighter, but he didn't, letting his back rest against the wall behind him. He didn't know what to say. It was terrifying, not knowing what to say to Genesis.
Then Genesis turned. He shrugged off his coat, placing it on one of the chairs in Angeal's small kitchen-slash-living room. His shirt was backless. On the patch of bare skin Angeal saw scars, gnarled and ugly, spreading from a place on the shoulder barely hidden by fabric.
Angeal felt nothing when the wing spread out. It folded close to Genesis's back. The black was deeper than Angeal remembered, more vibrant.
"Have you used yours since coming back?" Genesis asked, voice neutral.
"No."
"It's the most convenient way of traveling out of Edge. Nowadays it's stopped bothering me."
Angeal wasn't aware it had ever bothered Genesis. Well, he had guessed, but Genesis had never said so openly. To an outside observer, he had embraced it with the same gleeful anger he had for being a monster.
Genesis turned around. He had managed to school his features, emotions shoved somewhere deep. "You should meet Cloud's extended friend group. There is a talking dog there, he looks straight out of some children book. And a man who was put through so many experiments it almost makes the Jenova projects look tame. Oh, and did you know Shinra also used my DNA to conduct a series of even more secret experiments to create even more dangerous supersoldiers? One of them works for Reeve now, they've fucked her up so much no one understands what is going on with her body anymore."
"Are you here to tell me that all of you managed to figure it out, so I can too?"
"It's not so bad, being a monster," Genesis said.
For him, maybe.
Looking down, Genesis murmured, "I do miss Sephiroth. He was a victim too, worse than us even. I can't say I miss Zack all that much, but I think about him every once in a while. I like to think that the both of them would have gotten in line to punch you right behind me."
"They might have," Angeal said. Zack, for sure. Angeal figured he'd deserve it from him most of all.
"I missed you too."
Angeal's heart stuttered.
Genesis snorted, derisive, although Angeal wasn't sure who the derision was for. "I wanted to bring you back and kill you myself, you know? Everything in my life had been a lie, other than you. Nothing made sense anymore other than you."
"And I left you," Angeal said.
"You did." Genesis's lips twitched. "And when I saw your face again, it all came back. How dare you make me mourn you and then reappear right when I had managed to get over it."
"Your mourned me?"
Genesis's body language said he was very close to hitting Angeal again. "You know what, fuck you. I was not at my best when you died, sure. Not at rock bottom, either, you weren't around to witness that part. I was angry and yes, I was scared out of my fucking mind, and the hormonal imbalances weren't helping. But my best friend killed himself and I wasn't gone to the point of not crying on your corpse."
"I guess I see why you're angry at me," Angeal conceded. If Genesis had died back then, crazed as he was, Angeal would have been gutted. Genesis had always been good at turning everything he didn't want to deal with into pure, explosive anger.
"I really hated you back then," Genesis said. "And then the Goddess saw fit to cure me of the brainfog and neurological damage and I had some kind of clarity at last, and I got to wonder how much of your death was to blame on me."
The forced neutrality of his voice cracked over the last part. Angeal hadn't heard that kind of shaky pain from Genesis since they were teens, back when they were still young enough to huddle together after ugly missions and confess to each other they had both been kept up by nightmares for days. Vulnerability had become harder with time. For both of them.
"It wasn't because of you," Angeal said.
"Maybe not. I didn't really help either, did I?"
Arguing with that would have been a lie.
"I feel ashamed," Genesis confessed. "And angry. Frightened, even."
"What are you scared of?"
"That you'll decide to die again right when I get used to having you back."
Angeal closed his eyes, breathing in deep. "I don't know why I'm here, Genesis. I don't even know if I can just die."
And that was far more terrifying than Angeal could be suicidal. If nothing else, people had some kind of control over their own death, if they so wished.
Slowly, Genesis stepped forward. There was no violence from him this time, verbal or physical. One arm rose to wrap around Angeal's shoulders, another went around his side. Angeal felt dizzy when Genesis tucked himself against Angeal's chest. He didn't remember the last time someone had hugged him.
"I'll help you figure it out," Genesis said. "If you'd like me to."
"I just want you to stop avoiding me."
Not to start acting like he used to, before the degradation. Angeal knew that it was impossible for them to simply go back to their old relationship. Nevermind Genesis now had a full decade of life over Angeal. But at least they could talk, sometimes.
"I suppose I've done enough of that."
Angeal wrapped his arms around Genesis in turn. Carefully, to avoid touching the wing, because it might no longer freak Genesis out but it did when it came to Angeal.
Genesis squeezed Angeal. "Hi, Geal."
"Hi, Gen," Angeal said.
"How was your day?"
"Could have been better."
"Want me to dramatically lay around your house and read you a Loveless excerpt you've heard a thousand times before?"
That wouldn't really fix much of anything. Angeal would still not know why he was alive, both of them would still be monsters, would still be near strangers after years of separation. There weren't even a lot of surfaces to lay on in here.
"That'd be nice."