Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.

Plot Synopsis: Genesis awakens, redeemed in the eyes of his Goddess, and is freed from his long slumber. His awakening stirs another. Sephiroth/Genesis. Sephiroth's POV (mostly).

Author's Note: My first attempt at non-explicit Yaoi. I have NO idea where this is going, so we'll see how it goes.

Well, I've got a better idea, now:) Reuploaded and beta'd by the wonderful Littlehouseinthewoods, author of 'Minerva's Gift'. It's a friendship fic, a good one, so go read it! Thank you:)

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Final Fantasy VII: Angelic Threnody

Chapter One

'There is no hate, only joy. For you are beloved by the goddess. Hero of the dawn, Healer of worlds.' -Loveless Act II

The chains had been broken.

Pale, shimmering eyes snapped open, their striking emerald depths pulsing with mako-infused light. Elliptical pupils contracted and expanded with each haunting surge of power, yet were unable to penetrate the utter blackness which spread out before them. He could not see, but he didn't need to see to know the truth. He could feel the stirring, the awakening somewhere deep within the bowels of Gaia, and his heart rejoiced in that which would herald his own resurrection.

Genesis.

Long repressed emotions rushed to the fore, staggering in their intensity, purifying in their power. Pride, honor, horror, loneliness, passion-and strangest of all-hope, swept through him, nearly eclipsed by a love so strong that it had all but destroyed The Planet. The force of his feelings was maddening, overwhelming, much like the man who had inspired them, yet they remained true, untouched by his mother's madness.

She screeched a protest, that magnificently malevolent being he called 'Mother', but her voice was had been dimmed by time and defeat. There was virtually nothing left of The Calamity, of the beast named Jenova, and he found himself glad for it. Never again would she darken his thoughts and twist his emotions, or compel him to destroy what little he held dear. Much like his newly awakening lover, he found himself liberated from the bonds of godhood, and the downward spiral that inevitably accompanied such greatness.

He had been called many things in his too-short life: General, friend, monster, hero, demon, weapon, villain, lover, nightmare. . .Now there was only him. A warrior born and bred, educated in the art of war, a swordsman unmatched who fumbled like a child when confronted with simple human emotion. A man with amazing preternatural abilities, one whose name evoked both terror and veneration, but a man nonetheless.

Sephiroth closed his eyes as he searched for the source of Gaia's power, using his mako-enhanced senses to reach into the Lifestream itself, to find the other half of his tattered soul. He smiled unconsciously as he touched the passion, the fire-that was Genesis Rhapsodos. It flowed unabated through his mercurial lover, singeing everything around him with its white-hot heat, including the silver-haired man who had once matched him betrayal for betrayal.

Never again. Sephiroth sent the mental message to his lover, wondering if it would-could-reach him as he was reborn. It was a vow, a promise not to repeat the mistakes of the past, an oath meant to reassure his heart that he would not be betrayed a second time, and that he would never again be forsaken.

Sephiroth frowned as the aura of power suddenly disappeared, his cat-like eyes opening in narrowed slits. As though a wall had slammed down between them, the power was gone, leaving nothing but silence, and an uneasy fear, in its wake. Had Gaia disrupted the bond between them? he asked himself apprehensively. Surely, Genesis wouldn't do such a thing?

Of course not, he assured himself quickly. No matter what had passed between them, Genesis knew-had always known-that he was loved. Sephiroth had shown it in small but significant ways, although he had always regretted that he lacked the ability to vocalize his feelings. Nevertheless, he refused to believe that the other man-friend, lover, and rival that he had been-would turn his back on the passion that even now bound them together so tightly.

Sephiroth fought the urge to curse The Planet for her actions. After all he had done to her in the name of revenge, he understood why she would try to deny him now. Finally, after eight long years, she had chosen a new champion, a new Weapon. Genesis would have been purged of the madness that had accompanied his degradation, his mind and body made whole once more. It made perfect sense that Gaia would attempt to separate her champion from the source of his past downfall.

Not that he would allow it. He had spent eight years-a lifetime, it seemed-trapped in this nothingness, in the void created to keep him segregated from the whole of the Lifestream, forced to watch in maddened agony as Jenova used his form again and again. For a time, he had managed to overpower her will with his own, intent on using his godlike power over his clones to search for the one who meant so much to him. Jenova had proven herself surprisingly resilient, her alien will forceful enough to overpower him whenever he came too close finding that which he so desperately sought.

In the end, his own frustration with his inability to bend the world to his will had portended his own defeat. His fall from grace, which had begun that fateful afternoon in the Nibelheim reactor, had been made stunningly complete. In one endless moment of infuriated agony, he had-to put it simply-given up. His lapse of willpower, while only momentary, had given Jenova all the time she needed to erode what little had been left of his shattered mind. She had forced him to manipulate the boy she saw as his puppet, the young, damaged Cloud Strife, into giving him-them-the Black Materia. Meteor had been cast, his own destruction assured from within, as The Planet's had been from without.

Strife had managed to stop him. The mako-enhanced boy had defeated the monster Jenova had created of him and then defeated his essence in the Lifestream. He hadn't tried to defend himself, only lifted his precious Masamune and prepared for death. A fitting end to the monster he had become.

Only, it hadn't been the end. Holy had risen up from the depths of Gaia, summoned by the Ancient he had so callously slain, the Lifestream itself rising to defend The Planet and its human dependants. As his own life force had dwindled away, seeking to enter that swirling mass of pure mako in the manner of all dying things, a voice had called to pull him from the light. A cry of denial, an endless scream of rage and grief and despair, and the part of him that had survived Jenova's machinations had responded.

Instead of forgiveness and the peace that came with it, he had found himself in this night-black null, trapped by his own burning desire, still tethered to the alien bitch he had so stupidly accepted as his mother. Though weakened, Jenova had had enough power to make one more bid for The Planet. She had reached out to the young ones, the three remnants created by Hojo, hidden deep in the depths of a classified Shinra laboratory. Their lives, an inglorious chain of torturous indignities, had opened them to the horror they had also came to call 'Mother'.

Children, made over in Sephiroth's own image by a conscious-less madman, desperate for an emotional link in a world that couldn't possibly accept them, they responded to that call with all the fervor of religious zealots. Three brothers, born of different mothers, infused with his own warped cells, gifted with abilities far beyond human. Loz had been the first, a corporeal manifestation of Sephiroth's physical strength, well-muscled and surprisingly emotional in way he himself had never been. The second had been Yazoo, a slim, graceful young man, his face and form more reminiscent of his 'Father's', the epitome of allure, Sephiroth's long-suppressed sexuality hidden behind the deceptively tranquil façade that had once been his own refuge.

But the third. . .Sephiroth winced as he thought of the youngest remnant, the boy who'd had the misfortune to inherit his madness. Kadaj had been physically small, petite but muscular, with a swaggering walk that belied the churning mass of self-doubt that writhed within. He had been delicate and childlike, a pretty china doll with the temperament of a shrew, spoiled and pampered by the brothers who adored him, their unquestionable love unable to fill the gaping void inside of him. Only one man had the power to do that, and Sephiroth would always be surprised by who Gaia had chosen.

In the end, that strange, impossible love hadn't been enough. Kadaj had managed to trigger Reunion, and Jenova had once more used his own form to summon Meteor. Cloud Strife had stopped him-them-from destroying The Planet, this time interrupting the silent incantation before it could be completed, but Kadaj had been the one to pay the price for his 'mother's' ambitions. Left broken and battered once Jenova had withdrawn, he had died in Strife's arms, a tragic end to an equally tragic life. His brothers had shortly followed, killed when they attempted to avenge their beloved baby.

Strife had survived only because of his ties to the Ancient, but he had never recovered. Sephiroth had been granted glimpses of the world he had helped create, a place of loneliness and despair, and there were none more desolate than Gaia's chosen hero. Strife hid it well, smiling for the sake of his friends and family, forcing himself to be a part of their lives once again, when all he truly wanted was the release of death.

Gaia, of course, refused to grant such a request. She still had need of her 'Golden Weapon', a mako-enhanced human whose body carried the cells of its greatest enemy. Were Jenova to ever rise again, Strife would be called to combat her. She must have other, separate plans for Genesis, one which he in his exile was not privy to. No matter, Sephiroth told himself firmly. Genesis was alive, and he would find him.

Sephiroth shook himself back to awareness, his body still trapped in the void of endless nothing, but not for much longer. He closed his eyes in concentration and drew on his own innate abilities. There was nothing on Gaia that would stop him, nothing that could keep him from the heart that had been so recently revived. The power he called on was one of the many 'gifts' that he had born with, an endowment bestowed upon him by the Jenova cells he would never be rid of. His tall, deceptively slender form began to flicker in the darkness, each glimmer accompanied by a flash of bright white light, the power which filled the darkness around him enough to rival that of his newly awakened lover.

With an ease born not of arrogance but of confidence in his own abilities, Sephiroth teleported out of the nothingness which had contained him for so long. In an instant he was gone, leaving nothing but the lingering traces of his astonishingly strong will, and the enraged lament of an abandoned mother.