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But that breathing you hear, don't mistake it for sighs
Don't you realise they're just battle cries, dear?
The thud of high-heeled boots on the wooden floor sings against the stone, echoing across the bays in a blasphemous challenge to the silence of the Sector 5 slum church. A few woodpigeons shy away from the sonorous intrusion in a hurried rustle of wings: they must be used to far more discreet guests.
The sunset has already begun to filter through the windows, casting colourful shadows on the columns. The last ribbons of light kiss the water of the large pond in front of what was once the altar. As if weightless, the statuesque figure that disturbed the silence of the sanctuary glides step by step across the surface, its feet forming concentric circles as it passes without sinking; the man effortlessly reaches the other shore, like a forgotten rite of passage. Stern blue eyes scan the arches for intruders, relaxing into a smug smile when no one steps forward to challenge his solitude.
His long auburn hair is tied back in a ponytail, an unconscious childish habit, absorbed by maternal complaints: loose would be disrespectful, messy, certainly unsuitable for a place of worship. As if a murderer was fit for a church, no matter how neat.
But this is not a church, not anymore. And not just because the original architecture is severely compromised, with much of the apse collapsed and the nave crumbling. Not just because large sections of the ceiling allow glimpses of the flaming sky. Not even because the shattered floorboards are now home to a rich aquatic ecosystem in perfect balance with its floral enclosure.
This is a cemetery. A single tombstone of polished steel gleams in the last sunlight, bearing no name. No scratches, no rust, not even dust, despite the dirty environment. The sword would smile, if she could, at the devotion shown to her: whoever tends to the flowers, must also take good care of the blade. The metal is warm under his fingers, as if it itself had learned to draw nourishment from the sun, water and wind: a gigantic knife, made into a tree by its floral company.
Genesis Rhapsodos, ex-SOLDIER: First Class for the Shinra Electric Power Company and decorated Commander in the Wutai War, sits down on the bare rock next to the Buster Sword, one leg bent under his right arm, the other dangling over the surface of the water. He hides a sigh behind controlled breaths, and the beauty of this hidden garden offers the perfect excuse not to linger further on the weapon lodged in the ground; not to think of how lonely the hilt looks without two hands to hold it.
“Hey Geal, it’s Gen. How you doing?”
Silence. Of course .
“What a stupid question, isn’t it? You’re dead. Of course you’re fine. Death always looked good on you, as a concept. Pairs well with honour, and sacrifice, and all of that bullshit they used to beat into our young heads.
Speaking of young. And dead — Goddess, it does sound weird when you say it out loud. I hope the Puppy is fine too. We had our moments, you know, but he was a good kid. He’s been the last friend I had, when you think about it, the last one to take care of me after you and Sephiroth… well, you know. You did a good job with him. Too good, in retrospect. It felt so wrong. More wrong than you, somehow —no offence. It’s just that death did not look good on him, you know what I mean. Death never looks good on kids, but it’s different when you know them. When you have tripped them up a few times they tend to grow on you, I have learnt.
I know his little girlfriend is with you too. I’ve been told we would get along, with the whole magic thing, and being sassy, and flirty, and a sarcastic little— ah! Maybe I’m projecting a little too much here. Well, I’ve been told you two would get along too —and she has probably picked the longest straw with you, let’s be honest. Just look at this place: she knows how to keep a garden. Knew. Sorry.”
Even a botanical illiterate like Genesis is able to recognise the radiant prevalence of lilies around the puddle —a carpet of leaves not even remotely resembling the artificial green of the mako, and it is even strange to remember that there are shades other than the one so ingrained in his memory. Most of the corollas are dazzling white or yellow, but here and there a few specimens indulge in the arrogance of pink or red. Water lilies also blossom on the surface of the pool, and in the same bright colours, on leaves the size of serving dishes; even the humble papyrus finds the courage to show off its tiny, moth-like flowers.
He has been told that the modest golden flowers growing in tall panicles where Zack was killed are called yellow loosestrife, and he recognises a large cluster of them here too, surrounded by marigolds and chamomile. Closer to the base of the sword, the only notes of blue spread shyly: forget-me-nots. Unbelievable how such an unassuming plant can issue such a bold command. Is it a prayer? An admonition? A curse?
“You always struggled with flowers in that hole of a flat you called home — not just you, no one questions your green thumb, you touchy oaf ! It's this place. That place. Midgar. The mako-infected air, the smog, the heavy water... I wonder if anyone but you has ever tried to grow flowers in a Shinra apartment. Huff! If only Heidegger knew! He had such a distorted image of you, hyper-masculine and hyper-tough, the kind of guy who beats his wife when he gets drunk. You! You used to sob when you got drunk. And become sappy . You were kind. Kinder than this —what was his word? Oh, yeah— ‘poof’ , for sure.
Well, no more Midgar, now. No more Shinra apartments. No more Heidegger either. No one tries to grow flowers anyway —and don’t you dare look at me, you know I won’t. The only flowers I ever appreciated were the bouquets I used to receive at the theatre. At least back then. I don't know what I think of them now… they are pretty, I guess. I’m glad you have them because you love them — loved? How does it work for you? Do you still care about this kind of stuff?
“I’m glad you have chamomile too. We used to plant it under the trees, for the bees, and the ladybugs, remember? Remember when your mother told us that Dumbapple Honey was relaxing because bees were high on chamomile? ‘That’s why they fly funny!’ And we believed her! Damn, we used to believe everything she told us… you aren’t still angry at her, are you, Geal?
I know that I’m still angry at mine. Mine. ‘My mother’. Sounds funny. ‘My-mo-ther’. ‘Mo-ther’. ‘Mom’. Better not overthink the concept, we all know how it ended for Sephiroth, right? Oh yeah, I know you’re in there too, somehow. Or maybe not. Maybe what was left of you after you were cannibalised by the parasitic alien you called Mother. Did it even leave something, I wonder? Infinite in mystery…
Ah! Go away, you. Go and play with the Puppy, or something, apologise to the Lady if you haven’t already. I was talking to Angeal. Unbelievable, really, always the prima donna... Where was I? Oh, yeah: chamomile .
“I haven't thought about chamomile in a long time. When I think about Banora I rarely linger on how it was before… before Shinra? Or should I say before me? I think about the apples sometimes, but chamomile in particular slipped my mind for a long while. You used to like that stuff, who knows if it was for the actual taste or just because it smelled like home. It always tasted like cat piss to me. And the fucking wasps! It was always full of wasps! We both had our good share of stings, lying around in the orchards all Summer. I know, I know: swapping wasps for the rat-sized roaches of the city doesn’t seem like the greatest deal, but those bitches hurt .
They hurt.
A lot of things hurt back then, and it took me almost ten years to realise how good that hurt was. That fever I had when I was eight, and you told me that if I died you would have killed me — yeah, you said it! Scraping my knees on mako-infused rock, down in the caves. That time I broke my arm falling from our tree. My mother’s remarks —that’s something I picked up straight from her. My father’s belt.
You. You hurt the most, Geal.
“Remember our last Summer back home? I remember the day when the first flowers bloomed on the tree in the courtyard, and my father said we would make time to taste the first apples before we left; when the avenue was so full of flowers it looked as if it had snowed, it was the first and last time we walked together, alone, under the white trees, and it was there that he promised me he would organise a party. A Harvest Festival, he said, but in my heart I hoped it was at least partly his way of saying goodbye to me... silly me. It’s remarkable how delusional a child can be when it comes to begging for a little parental love. Dad was— Mr Rhapsodos was never the type for such sappy things.
But he was right! The apples were ready by August, and Banora was a triumph of purple just in time for the damned Festival. Can you imagine how much they spent on that nonsense? Do you ever wonder how much of that money was directly milked from Mama Shinra's tit? Probably not.
Well, it was then.
“I can still remember the smell in the air, hot, sweet… exciting. Like something foreign. We were still us, and Banora was still Banora, but everything looked different, transformed, as if a veil had been lifted and we could see for the first time.
It seemed that everyone had suddenly learnt to smile and that conflicts had subsided. I think it was the only time our parents had sat at the same table, drinking from the same bottle of cider, laughing at the same jokes. We seemed like one big family —us, them, all of Banora, scattered around the orchards as if we belonged to one big industrious beehive.
And yet I burned. All the time. I burned when we ran to the river and jumped in fully clothed, knowing that in that heat we would be dry by dinnertime. I burned when we threw our heads under the fountain to avoid sunstroke. I also burned when the sun went down and the air became cool enough to roll down the sleeves of our shirts and the girls pulled the hems of their skirts from their belts.
“It was the first apple. It was mine. But you leaned out like a bloodhound to steal a bite, and the juice ran down your chin before you wiped it off with the back of your hand. Even then, years before the mako, your eyes lit up when you laughed. You ran away, leaving me with a bitten apple in my hand, and for the first time I didn't chase after you: with every step you took, I felt a bit of my soul slip away, and I had to see how many bits I could do without before I ran out of breath. Nineteen. Nineteen steps before I dropped the stupid apple on the ground and ran after you, from my house to the southern orchard. And when I reached you, though completely out of breath, I began to breathe again.
Nothing had changed, you were still my friend Angeal. You were still teasing me about my poems and I was still calling you an oaf. We still hit each other just to be annoying. We were still competing to see who could climb this or that tree the fastest, who could pick the most apples in a day, who could drink the most cider without throwing up.
What had changed was that pang in the centre of my chest every time our eyes met across the row. The sweet nausea that gripped me every morning as I came down from the house to meet you. The tongue that stuck to my palate every time I had to answer one of your questions. The constant, unbearable burning of every fibre of my soul after that first, damn apple. It was mine . You never stole from my father’s tree, why did you have to do it from my hand?
“Every single apple after that first one was ruined. Every time I saw you sink your teeth into the white flesh, breaking the thin purple skin, I felt them sink into mine. Every time I bit into one myself, I hoped to taste yours. Every sip of cider down your throat would get me drunk instead of you.
On the last night, you ruffled my hair as you had a million times before, and looked into my eyes by the light of the bonfire, and told me that you were going to dance with the prettiest one in town, and that everyone would have looked at you with envy and admiration. For a second, just a second, my heart danced with you. For a second you smiled at me and I smiled back at you, pretending that we were not in a country town in the middle of nowhere, but in a big city where no one cares if two boys dance together, and I was ready to follow you. Then you patted my shoulder. ‘Wish me luck,’ you said, and I replied that you didn’t need it.
You danced all night with Eden. Her little yellow dress and long blonde hair looked like flames too in the firelight. At some point she lost the ribbon she wore in her hair, and no one noticed but me. At some point you were so sweaty that your hair was dripping and her make up was all smudged. At some point you both kicked off your shoes and danced barefoot on the bare ground until she stumbled into your arms laughing, and neither of you were nearly drunk enough for it to be by accident. She really was the prettiest one in town. Anyone would have been in her place.
“Your mother found me drunk on your porch, sitting on the floor with that stupid blue ribbon still clenched in my fist. She just sat next to me in silence. All she said was that we both knew that moment would have come. Your mother knew, Geal. She always knew.
‘It should have been me! It should have been me!’ I declared it, I shouted it, I whispered it, crying in the arms of a mother who was not mine but who knew me better than mine did. It should have been me, pressed against one of the wild trees outside the village, listening to your sighs against my ear, letting your hands find their way under my clothes, finding out if your lips still had the taste of that first apple. I should have been the one to hide your bites from my father the following day, to blush at your passing, to have my lips swollen like yours. But it was Eden Winters, the baker's daughter, and from that day on I wished to be her, if only for an hour, just to steal the memory of your desire.
Well, who’s laughing now, Eden? I think I succeeded. I could not be you on the night of the Harvest Festival, but you were me in the last days of your life. You wore my bones, my face, my memories, my sorrow. Your identity slipped off you like a blue ribbon during a wild dance. But if you ever loved Angeal, well... there wasn't much I could do about it. You had to die without being able to ease that pain. I am sorry for that. I’m sorry. I’m— oh Goddess, I’m so fucking sorry. I— what have I done, Geal?”
Once again Genesis is curled up on the floor of the Hewley's porch, his tongue knotted at the back of his throat, his lungs full of burning sand, his eyes like raging rivers. Once again the tears flow unstoppably. But Genesis is no longer a boy, the wooden planks replaced by the hard stone of a destroyed church in Sector 5, and the woman who wiped his face that night long gone of her own free will: Gillian, too, chose to die rather than share the world with monsters.
Only a monster could wipe out his entire home village and reserve mercy as an instrument of torture. Only a monster could rip a young woman from her life and transplant her into someone else's, for the sole guilt of finding a sigh on Angeal Hewley's lips, years before, during harvest season.
She had cried, Eden Winters, she had begged, she had called her mother's and father's names, her brother's, Angeal's, the Goddess'. And then, only then, Genesis'. He had not waited for Hollander: it had been he himself who had threaded the needle into her vein, infected her with his diseased blood and untied her as soon as she had stopped struggling. ‘All done, darling,’ he had told her gently, stroking what for the last time was her face. She died a week later in the bombing of Banora, and she was no longer Eden already.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m so, so sorry.”
“Did you love her, Geal? Even for that one night?”
Genesis sneers, a hideous cry that is neither a sob nor a laugh.
“At least we can say that we have both been inside her.”
“The same silly, delusional feeling I had on the night of the bonfire I would experience again and again over the years. It had become an almost daily delirium, as much dreaded as longed for: would I lose you forever, or would I finally win you over if you understood? Or worse, would you have reserved for me one of those sad smiles given to the terminally ill, knowing that you were both the ailment and the cure, and that you could not administer it to me?
I felt it the first time I beat you in sparring, when I let my head fall into the curve of your neck as you laughed hysterically on the floor. I felt it the first night in Wutai, in our shared tent, when you reached for my hand in the darkness to tell me you wanted no one but me beside you in battle. I felt it the first time I put on my red leather uniform and you told me I looked handsome without a hint of irony in your voice (remember my reply? ‘You're not too bad yourself’ . What a hypocrite. You were stunning ). I felt it when I ran off of that bloody helicopter after the battle with the Red Dragon and jumped into your arms in front of everyone, trying not to cry because I thought I would never see you again. I felt it every time I came home and found the flat clean and dinner ready —well, almost ready: 'go take a shower, there are ten minutes left for the potatoes'.
I felt it every time the three of us were in the VR room and you reserved a look, a word, a bit more attention for me than for Sephiroth. When Hollander connected your vein to mine, and with every beat of your heart, the hope that your blood was stronger than mine kept us hoping for a cure, that everything could go back to the way it was: a platonic domestic bliss where I could pretend to have you all to myself without chaining you to my sorrows. Yet, I felt it one last time when you met me in the woods and ran away with me. Me and you, alone against the world. A lot of mes , actually. And I…
"I— oh fuck , I loved you, Geal. I loved you in a way that made me stupid. And mad. And cruel. I still fucking love you, you moron. I loved you from that first apple to the last one I rescued from the ruins of Banora. I loved you after it rotted, and I saved the seeds as if you'd ever come back to plant them. I loved you when your Puppy came to kill me— or so I thought. I loved you when he spared me (I wouldn’t say he saved me: no one could. He tried his best. Good job, Puppy). I loved you in my long sleep and I loved you first thing when I woke.
I always thought there would be a chance to tell you. After we left Banora. After the war. After the rebellion. After Modeoheim. Even after you died. I thought— I thought that when degradation got the best of me, we would meet again, wherever you were. I wouldn't have been ashamed: can you refuse someone's love because of their body, when you are just lost souls swimming in the Lifestream? I would not have been afraid of losing you, in a place of perfect communion. We would even have laughed at silly human divisions and been happy, for once. Perhaps even Eden would have forgiven me. Perhaps even I would have put jealousy behind me.”
Genesis wipes his face with the back of his hand and sniffs twice: he'd like to refresh himself in the pool, but who knows if anyone would consider that disrespectful. More disrespectful than mourning a dead friend on someone else's memorial? Screw it. He cups his hands and splashes his face to wash away the tears; the water is cool, clear, as if it could soothe the heart. Too bad he doesn't have one anymore.
Finally, Genesis stands. He reaches behind his head and lets his hair down, the ribbon slipping delicately from his auburn locks falling free on his broad shoulders; gently he ties it around the hilt of the Buster Sword: frayed, faded, but no doubt still blue, the exact same shade as the forget-me-nots. Definitely a curse: not even immortality would have given him the grace of forgetfulness.
“You know what’s worse in all of these, Geal? Worse than being a monster? Worse than being here without you? Very much likely
forever
. Now I will never get the chance.”