Emily wanders far beyond the village, searching for a decent place to lay out her net. ShinRa may have polluted the water, but they hadn't gotten all the water in the world, right? Right. Besides, a girl had to help her family eat, and grandma was getting old.

Emily's feet move swiftly through the dust and dirt, past familiar landmarks that would later help her find her way home. The big, dead tree. The squared-out rock that looks like an old man's face. The huge rock that she and Raz had climbed as kids and Emily still had the huge scar on her leg from. But in a tall tuft of dry grass, another landmark, Emily notices something odd. Tufts of grass don't have feet.

She gets closer, parts the grass, and sees a corpse lying face-down.

Her screams bring every villager that remains.

Kirie looks at the stranger as she sips the tea like she expects poison. Poor thing, Kirie thinks, and skittish as a lightning-struck cat. The woman had introduced herself as Shelke Rui. She seems nice enough. Wutaian, by the looks of her, but not quite wearing Wutai's armor. Kirie's never seen a crest like that on her armor before, for starters, so it must be Wutaian. Furthermore, she's never seen Wutaians employ lady soldiers anyway. One eye is covered by a black patch, the other is a steely grey color that looks around her tiny hut like something was going to jump her from the shadows.

Poor thing.

"Where'd you say you were from?"

"I hail from Wutai, but I was in Midgar until very recently."

Kirie whistles through her teeth. Midgar's not exactly Wutai-far, but it's a trek.

"What happened to your eye?"

The woman reaches up, touches the patch, as though she's forgotten that the patch is there. Kirie almost makes a soft clucking noise. Poor thing. "I… Lost it. There was an accident. It was years ago."

"Poor thing," she says, actually out loud this time. Kirie refills the woman's tea. If nothing else, Shelke seems to appreciate tea, and Kirie can get behind a woman who knows her teas. "You're from Midgar? I didn't think they hired females into SOLDIER."

"They don't usually. D—" She seems to catch herself, clears her throat. Starts again. "I was a prisoner of war, the Wutai war. I was held there for… It's been at least seven years, I believe."

"Messy stuff," Kirie mutters. "ShinRa monsters, taking women in as prisoners. Won't they stop?"

"I suppose not."

"Damn shame… Well, rest up, here, hon. My home is your home, and all that. Do you know where you're headed?"

"I'm not quite sure. Somewhere like the inside of a mountain."

"Inside of a mountain?" She laughed, clearing the small table. "Well, I can't promise it's exactly a mountain, but we watch out for each other around here. You should get some rest. We'll discuss things in the morning."

"Thank you." The woman in front of her bowed her head low. "Your kindness is as a breeze in the hottest summers." Kirie flaps a wrist at her, and points to her sofa. It's a tattered thing, but the throw blanket on the back of it will keep Shelke cool in the night. Kirie's daughter left long ago, but was only an inch off of Shelke's formidable height, so her old clothes will fit. It's enough, Kirie decides. The least she could do to help the poor thing, Shelke Rui.

On Kirie's couch, Argent thinks in the dead of night.

The child is still there, Argent is sure of that much. She keeps one hand over her lower belly, brushing her fingertips over the thin nightgown over her stomach. Her morning sickness won't abate, and Argent is sure of that. She'll have to tell Kirie some other lie to explain that.

Lies are starting to become how Argent runs her life. DeepGround was not a dishonest place, and she was frequently praised by her superiors for her honesty in dealing with uprisings. Except for where it mattered, she thought. Still, she dislikes lying this much. The lies act like spider-web veils, hiding her from everyone here.

"My name is Shelke Rui."

"I am a prisoner of war from Wutai."

"I escaped from the guards."

"I lost my eye in an accident."

"It was difficult."

Only Wutai was a truth, and only because Argent couldn't hide her nationality. She realized that she would have lied about that too, given the chance.

Argent thinks of Nero. "Why didn't Weiss give Nero the clearance instead of me?" "Because Nero would not be able to camouflage his status as well as I can," the answer comes, along with a barrage of other answers. Some are fair, some are cheap shots; all of them are very true. It makes Argent's heart ache to think that Nero, a boy whose enhancements she had honed until he became a man before her eyes, was still trapped underground to mourn his brother.

Argent thinks of Shelke, whose name she now shares. The woman, in a child's body, still trapped away in DeepGround. A girl whose emotions were locked away under layers of ice and blood, in favor of the sort of coldness that she seems to think would benefit her. In DeepGround, scarcely even a day ago, Argent did not mind the girl's plight. It was as insignificant to Argent as a butterfly in a typhoon. Now, living on the kindness of strangers, Argent can only wonder about this strange, new tenderness that welled up in her heart.

Argent gives a rueful smile. Perhaps DeepGround hadn't beat as much compassion out of her as she sleeps restlessly, waking periodically, and finally rising when Kirie does.

Argent gets tired of living on Kirie's kindness after two days. Perhaps on the advice of the old sense of community leaking back into her, Argent insists on doing "something, anything, to help you and this village." Kirie had first flapped her hands at her, insisting that they didn't mind helping someone out of a tough spot.

"There must be something."

"No, dear, don't worry yourself. Get back on your feet, then you can work with us."

"I am on my feet, ma'am. I want to help."

"Well, what can you do?"

"I… I can teach," Argent says, realizing precisely how useless this was in a largely economic-based society.

"Young ones?"

"If necessary. I've… Been told I'm good with children." What Argent had really been told was that she handled new recruits well, and most of those recruits had been under the age of twelve.

"That's fine… That's good. Let me go talk to some people."

That day, Argent stays in the house. She washes windows, dusts the tiny house, and paces all around. She waits. Finally, at sunset, Kirie returns. Torn between badgering the old woman about what she found out and leaving her to relax, Argent starts in tentative neutrality. "How was your day?"

"Oh, fine. It was fine, Shelke. Yours?"

"Anxious."

Kirie reaches up and pats Argent's cheek. "Poor thing. Waiting for those SOLDIER types to come get you? Well, I've got some good news for you. You're gonna be working, starting next Monday. The teacher, name's Brigid, up at the school house, needs someone to help her out. You can help her out with that, if you like."

"Y-Yes! Oh, thank you…"

"Absolutely. Just stay here for a few more weeks, then you can get your own place."

"I can't thank you enough for this. You and your village have done so much for me." Argent finds herself bowing low to the ground, clad in the clothes of one of the other village girls, and completely not herself. Argent smiled, glad for the second chance.

Blood…

Argent was aghast. Blood on the pajamas she had been offered, but that was beside the point. Blood, not from a wound, but from the curse that most women had, save for those who were expecting child.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of, Shelke. It happens to the best of us," Kirie said, taking the pajamas from Argent and fixing the couch up. "Just a little blood."

"Y-Yes… A bit of blood. I… I think I'm in shock."

Kirie shook her head. "Those ShinRa bastards… Probably didn't feed you enough so you could get your monthly passing. Sick… "

Argent watched in detached silence as Kirie made the makeshift bed back up. The hardened swordswoman of DeepGround seemed to no longer exist, beaten down by the kindness of strangers, rather than the heavy blows and long days of experimentation it took to take down her allies. The blood that marred the tiny couch ("I'll pay for it" is met with "Don't worry yourself. It was an accident.") was the lifeblood of the DeepGround Commander, Argent. Argent would restart her life, now deprived of the last vestiges of fealty. She had thrown away her name, her past, and now her very body had thrown away Weiss' own child.

Argent, now Shelke, would enter into this world of villagers and simplicity.

Deep in the mountains, Genesis murmurs, "Awaken," and Weiss' eyes open once more.