HE’D GROW MAD IN SOLITUDE AND self loathing if he didn’t have a shoulder leaning on him for support. genesis doesn’t appear to be particularly friendly, but that might just be shinra’s work — soldiers aren’t meant to be pretty and nice. anxieties would always pervade his thick skull, but kindness and pleasant talk, and above all else, kindred spirits abate such rough thoughts. maybe it is a bit DISINGENUOUS, filling his mind with this conversation to hold personal demons at bay, but the other REMAINS.
❝i … i think he’s fine now. or, as fine as ANYONE can be goin’ through such things. we share a mutual friend, so i think that helps. i don’t know much ‘bout his past, but we’d both FIGHT with tifa.❞
to think that he only just barely TRUSTED cloud, hiding behind a stone faced expression and brash demeanor, but tifa, it turns out, was right about him in the end. he thinks about their midnight meeting, that sense of UNDERSTANDING where cloud knew just who he’s fighting for. a DISTANT smile touches upon his lips, like a ghost, here and gone.
she guides us to bliss, her gift EVERLASTING. he mouths those words, moved naturally. even though there’s more to his fight than gaia’s protection, it still RESONATES within. revenge may be sweet, but protecting her? protecting marlene’s future? that too is sweet, and one day it will sink in how much sweeter it is.
❝if only … i mean, i'n sure of it, but he’s there back in midgar, and we’re here. as FIRED up as i am, s'long as i’m in radiale, feels like i’m a dog chasing its own tail. all TIRED out before i can even fight the fight.❞
|| █ ▌— genesis cares for the planet, in his way. through his goddess, but also through what she embodied. he had to prioritize himself above all else, though. a terminal cellular degeneration did that, after all, didn’t it? selfishness, yes, but more than that: the need to live. what use did he have for a planet he was just going to die on anyway.
he is therefore glad he is no longer dying. he can consider the goddess, her planet, life in general... his own and that of others. he can allow himself to care what happens to others again--heroism, whatever that may be. there are many ways to interpret that concept, genesis has himself chewed over it, tossing the idea back and forth in his mind until he tired of it.
or... mostly tired of it. the definition he’d settled on was something less like himself, lately. less like sephiroth. it took a different shape, one he didn’t really know how to picture.
it wasn’t easy to make sense of such concepts after what he suffered at the hands of shinra and scientists and SOLDIERs.
❝ i’m glad he’s all right now. so long as he has others around him... that should stay that way. what SOLDIERs go through, well, it can leave one feeling very isolated. shinra tended to make us feel very... grandiose and irreplaceable, or very expendable, depending on how they wished to manipulate us. ❞
it’s... not a pleasant topic, but he speaks of it easily enough. time has passed, he is no longer with shinra. he knows he was manipulated.
❝ i understand the feeling... like being trapped, but comfortably. i worry about losing the will to fight. becoming complacent here and letting the anger drain out of me when i return... ❞