Work Text:
Crrshhack!
Genesis’ heart thumped in his throat as he startled awake. All was grey and muted in the typical fashion of night. His cot in their tent in Wutai was as scratchy on his skin as ever. His breath stuttered in short gasps and his blood pumped urgently.
Something was wrong.
What had that noise been? It had seared his ears, raised the hairs on his arms. Attack, in screamed, threat!
Blearily, he peeled his eyes free from their encrusted closure and reached for Rapier—but his fingers brushed no waiting hilt, nor did the familiar wellspring of magic answer his call.
Shapes began to solidify in the exhausted darkness. Angeal was beginning to rise as well. He was faster than Genesis—he always had been more of a morning person. He glanced at the Buster, then began to make instead for the standard-issue sword by the flap of their tent—and oh, there was Rapier, where he’d left her last night.
Another armored figure was moving by the flap. Goddess, if some cannon-fodder infantryman had come to disturb him for nothing again, and he was found to be this alarmed about it, he never live it—
Angeal reeled back. Genesis lunged.
The skin of his hands met the skin of a bare neck. He could barely tell the throbbing pulse in his own fingers from that of the jugular struggling beneath them. Wutaian eyes flashed up into his, mako light reflected back at him in a deadly glint.
Genesis squeezed. Skin gave way with a slight crick and a squish and a gurgling pop.
The black of his nails was stark against the slight bit of white amidst red. Only one pulse remained, but it beat fast and hard enough for two. The wheezing ghost of a last breath cooled his thumb against the swampy humidity.
Something brushed his shoulder and with a jolt he hurled himself away, only to meet gentle, familiar faintly glowing eyes. Angeal. Angeal was alright. And gently taking his hands and pawing at his side, rubbing something rough across them—the bottom of his turtleneck, he registered after a moment. It came away sticky and dark.
A twig breaking under a ninja’s boot had been what had woken him. Barely notable to a normal human. Like a thunderbolt to someone enhanced.
An ambush. Oh. They were being ambushed.
Angeal pulled him to his feet and murmured something, catching his eyes and grounding them. Genesis blinked hard and shook him off, sliding his hand around Rapier’s faithful hilt instead. His slippery hands did not fit as they usually did into the indents his calloused fingers had worn. The leather chafed against his bare skin.
He shivered, he knew not whether from energy or chill as his bracer closed around his wrist and he burst from the tent, Angeal close at his heels sounding the greater alarm.
Fire danced from Rapier’s blade as she hewed through the neck of another ninja. She sung as she cut through air and bone alike. Genesis slew ninja after ninja as each replaced another fallen comrade, a midnight hydra. Its blood spattered against him, making little mark against the crimson already adorning him. Soon enough, the burned stumps of its hundredfold necks smoldered, and none came to replace them.
Gunfire retorts led him back to his stray surviving comrades. The dull sheen of less-than-ornate SOLDIER pauldrons sprawled in the mud forewarned him that not all of them remained. But his did.
He watched Angeal cut through one of the few remaining ninjas with that ridiculously unreliable broadsword of his and abruptly turned on his heel—the strays would be fine with their mama bear protecting them. Angeal was better at putting out fires anyways; and he’d gotten an annoying scratch on his side, he couldn’t remember when exactly, that was starting to sting.
Genesis’ lip curled at the flies he could already spot buzzing through his tent flap. He had not by any means forgotten the mess that awaited him inside, and he wanted to be rid of it as soon as possible. He ducked in after the carrion-insects and looked down at the corpse.
He reeled back as if struck. The remains of the neck were barely recognizable as such. A carnage of blood and tissue sprawled upon the jagged imprints of two thumbs. He had done this, with his bare hands—and it had taken him as much effort as it would have to squash a grape. The results looked similar, as well.
He’d seen it before, when he’d caused it. Why was it affecting him like this now ? And why did it have to be so damn hot in this goddess-forsaken swamp? He’d killed many times before; this should be no different than those. He should be fine. He flexed his fingers around Rapier—she, at least, did not cave in around them. He staggered to his knees and retched into the mud.
“Gen!”
Again, there were hands hovering around him while he crouched dazed in the dirt. Angeal’s hands were attempting to tame his bangs as he trembled—they were as warm and slick as anything else in this hellish place, but far more welcome. They held the same terrible strength as his own, and yet were far more gentle.
How Genesis longed to lean into his oldest friend, to accept the comfort always so readily offered. Instead, he held himself upright with mannequin arms—they felt too numb, too foreign to be his own. Dear Angeal remained at his side until he was merely gasping air, not gagging it; he knew not how long he was gone after that, only measuring time from one breath to the next.
Angeal did return, pressing a flask of unusually cool water to his lips and guiding him—or mother-henning him perhaps, since Genesis’ weak protests did not seem to mean anything to him—to his feet and into a now corpse-free tent.
“I’m fine,” he bit out unconvincingly as he lowered himself heavily back onto his cot.
“Okay. At least let me look at the gash you got defending me so heroically? For my sanity’s sake.”
Oh. Genesis thought he remembered seeing a flash of a knife before Angeal reeled back, now. He must have missed the pain in the adrenaline.
Something of his surprise must have shown, because Angeal gave him the look that meant he was no longer asking. Genesis relented, grumbling as he allowed his standard-issue turtleneck to be pulled up.
“See? Fine.” It was already halfway healed. He hissed as Angeal put something on it that made it sting like hell.
“Now fine,” Angeal sassed him. He bared his teeth halfheartedly in reply and avoided eye contact when his friend looked at him long and hard. “Gen.”
“What.”
Angeal cupped his hand around Genesis’ cheek. He shivered when the pinkie brushed his bare throat, but did not pull away. “Thank you.”
Genesis breathed out carefully. “My friend, your desire is the bringer of life, the gift of the goddess.”
What a truly great and terrible power they wielded! All their human powers made excellent, surpassing—like gods among men. Beyond dangerous in the wrong hands, assuredly. But he had used it to protect Angeal. He could use it to protect so many, if he was the best he could be—he could be a hero.