AU. The Shinra have Midgar run by an iron fist. People are kept locked away inside of the city, reserved and oblivious from the war that has left the outside world in ruins. Aerith Gainsborough and Cloud Strife are given a chance to seek the "land of promise" under the influence of the military in search of mako energy, their only chance of escape. But is the Promised Land truly a land of rapture?

Rated for language and drug use.

Author's note: There's one point in the story where a drug is brought up... since I'm too lazy to write this into the story, I'm going to write it here. Two of the characters in this story get high on a drug called LIFE, which basically is a drug composed of mako and other chemicals. Its effects are to dilate the eyes and weaken the nerves to a point where you literally can't feel anything. It also makes you loopy. (to put it nicely) This drug is used in the Shin-ra army fluently during war. Basically they get the soldiers high on this drug and send them into battle so they can't contemplate their danger or the pain that they're undergoing. So basically a guy could get his arm ripped off and he'd still be fighting like it never happened until he experienced enough blood loss to fall.

Also keep in mind that this fic is based around a dystopia, and even could be considered an allegory on certain levels... so keep that in mind when I put in something weird.

Hope you enjoy. :)

breaking doves

By Zakkusu

Cloud Strife bowed his face into the handkerchief, taking no notice as it magically bled into a dark crimson and matted it thickly, veining through the white of the cloth like tiny red spider webs. As he rested the cloth in his hand, contemplating his loss, his fingers reached to his eyes and stripped off the emitting blood, glaring at the knowledge that it was still present and wet between his fingers. Sighing in frustration, the blonde man effortlessly tossed the handkerchief away and watched as the fabric limply drifted to the floor like a crippled dove; its bleeding wings folding beneath its chest as it drooled lifelessly to the floor.

For as long as he could remember he had experienced bad reactions to mako radiation, familiar to the popular consequences of bleeding from strange places in the face, whether the eyes or ears, or wherever else had gotten provoked by the handle of the mako power. It wasn't necessarily uncommon for one to be allergic to mako, but was still considered a rather peculiar trait, especially in the present days where most were immune to the sickness. It was even more uncommon in men, who had been the creators in the reactors to begin with in the earlier days in the midst of Midgar's production. But through it all, Cloud had managed to capture the allergy, and everyday upon his usual procedures at work amongst the factory, never ceased to begin bleeding and tainting his napkin red. His only excuse by the company to keep him in management was for the fact that he was one of the only mechanics in Midgar that could read and display the blueprints of the energy generators, which recently had begun bringing electricity to the top towers of the city. Not that it was a choice on his part to begin with, even if he had possessed any objections. In Midgar the government controlled everything, run by an iron hand tautly clenched into a solid fist. If you were chosen for administration, there was no way out of it.

Blinking away remnants of blood, Cloud wheezed and released his hand from the author cage, his hands burning with green as they snatched free from the wrench that remained tucked tight inside of the gears of the heart. Burns oozed up the flesh of his hands as he yelped with a wild cry, his fingers diving into the flesh of his shirt to help cease the burning with no effect. A drizzle of mist began to yawn from the engine. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.

Steam hissed and whined from the core of the machine as the mako haze grew thick with fog around him. Then with a brief breather, quickly dug into the steam and violently twisted the wrench through the muscle. Rotating the tool with wincing agony and fleshless hands, the blonde man watched as the mist grew thin, brimming merely in the air. Stomping solidly on the settled blood towel, Cloud cursed heavily at his folly and glowered at his misdeed. He hated his clumsy hands. Useless, scrawny fingers they were, always pulling a mistake out of the Pandora's Box. And now they were causing him a distant pain; a twisting, throbbing pain that pulsed through his fingers to his wrists and ceased to free him from their sewing needles. The thread never grew tired of growing.

Leisurely hands of cold water choose to greet him.

"You really need to cool it, man. You're doin' that weird thing again."

As the pain leisurely began to dissolve, Cloud wiped away the blood on his sleeve, sighing in aggravation as it too became matted in a smeared red. "Can it, Reno. You don't know the half of it."

"I'm sure that I don't, Grease."

Though the pain Cloud's lips peeled into a weak smile, his eyes distant as he watched his hands roll and rotate through the cascading waters. Reno placed a bandage roll on the snout of the fountain as Cloud draped his hands and gnawed his teeth through the rough fabric, chewing through the sour yellow material with haste.

"Talk is you're going to be living with Ms. Aerith now. That true, spike?"

Cloud spoke through his teeth, his voice muffled and spoiled. "Sure is."

Reno ran an oily hand through his messy red hair as a wolfish smile produced amongst his lips, his bangs drooling lifelessly amongst his forehead as he bowed with a faithful sigh, strands glued by grease. "Lucky son of a bitch."

Hesitating, Cloud handed back the spool to the man and turned back to face his tools, weaving strings of cord like multicolored spider webs. "Well, I couldn't stay at Vincent's anymore, y'know? It's like a ghost house now. We're both silent around each other."

Reno waved his hand. "Routine, routine..."

"...And I can't put up with routines. Aerith takes things as they are. She doesn't bother with the buggers." The blonde gestured his partner. "Hand me that power cord, would ya?" As Cloud began to weave a web of cord through the bugs of machine and bullet, a bandaged finger clasped between his teeth, his mind began to wander. Vincent was truly a wonder in many ways; a very secretive man, yet highly opinionative. Though he was withdrawn from society, a "house hermit" on many circumstances, he was a daring individual who took power to his speeches and often was one to raise havoc when it came to religious issues. Born agnostic, raised atheist through life's lessons, it was most definitely odd that he came to believe every word of the books even when he didn't lie down his faith to a god or pantheon. He spoke it, he listened to it. He even read it, occasionally. But through it all he preached it like he knew it, seeing only the blacks and whites. Even though Cloud welcomed his respect to the man for taking him in, it was no longer unusual to him the sound of the door stirring up wind behind his neck. Preaching from a so-called "god"—

Routine, it was. Routine, routine, routine.

Not like teens ever got their say in things. Cloud's removal was one of the reasons under this enforced "law", a rebellion against the society of "adults" and their ways of creating their own procedures. As long as he was under Vincent's roof he was to abide by this, and Cloud couldn't find it inside of himself to nod his head. His own strings were handed to him as he began to oppose and took his first real step out the door, and after his first few days on the job it soon began to dawn upon him of how it was a lot more difficult being your own puppeteer than allowing somebody else to work the strings. It was often strange of how life worked like that.

As the boy stimulated throughout the house at an uneasy speed, embracing the cardboard boxes and plastic shopping bags to his chest as he filled them to brim, Vincent's eyes looked away from the notes on his paper and watched straightly. It was true that Cloud was somewhat enthusiastic about leaving; filled with the usual excitement on parting to live on one's own. But yet as Vincent scanned the news lines and contemplated; bringing a taut fist to his chin, spoke with a different tone. "I've been seeing soldiers in town lately."

Huffing with spite, Cloud bit down on his tongue and urged the salty blood to surface. His prior responses in the conversation had been nothing short of syllabic, his hands busy stuffing boxes and shutting lids as he buried them into his chest and ruffled the logos upon plastic carry ware. "They're always snooping 'round like dirty hounds. Ignore 'em like everybody else."

The older man's eyes drifted back upon his papers as he gradually shook his head in his discrepancy. "I greatly oppose your leaving."

It was now Cloud's turn to laugh. As he released a slight chuckle beneath his lip and bit to cease the smirking, the blonde held down the box's flapping brown tongue as he sewed it down with tape. "Deny it all you wish, man."

"I just don't think you're ready for the world yet, Cloud."

"You don't think I'm ready for lots of things, but I figure 'em out anyway."

Sighing as he bit back his discouragement, Vincent waved his head as Cloud advanced towards the doorway with his boxes clutched. He had his youthful smile glued on his lips though it was rather faint, and his sapphire eyes nicked short sheens of pale light to the faint luminosity that brimmed throughout the room. His knees bobbed impatiently with an agitated sigh of displeasure as he took notice of Vincent's resuming lecture.

"Well... good luck, then. Aerith... Aerith is a nice girl."

Cloud appeared taken back as he hefted the boxes further up his chest. His voice appeared somewhat hesitant as he followed his guardian's retort. "She... she is."

As the door closed behind him, the hair on the back of Cloud's neck drew up. It was the strangest feeling. Peculiar not looking back on your past as you blindly follow nameless tracks into the future, giving each a name as you go. The blood curling shivers, the weight of the boxes in your hands. The loud humming of the air conditioner as it hums through out the apartment hallways. Strange... very strange.

As he guided his things further into the hallway, his knuckles white with cold and the green blisters running through the bandages, he soon began to realize that he too was beginning to think about the soldiers. Now that he was on his own, it was as if it had suddenly become a security issue. Like a... threat, damage to some kind of boundary. It was a bit meaningless to him through it all, just a small prick on the finger. It didn't really matter... but it still stung.

God did it sting.

---

Now 'removal' parties were really something.

Screaming in an uproar of laughter, Cloud and Reno slid out the doorway of the inn and took off running in their hysterics. Curses, screams and glass sputtered after them as the two boys laughed away at their problems—perhaps too oblivious to notice.

It wasn't difficult to get away, of course. It never was in a city where security was too loose when it came to the public safety and possessed no real police system. Stuck with two high teenagers in your shop? Chase them out with a bottle and once they're out scream till they high tail it. If they fight back, well. Smack them till they're down. A little bloodshed never hurt anybody, especially when it was the skin of the lower class 'young folk.'

Compelling his spine against the mouth of the adjacent building, Cloud drew back as his eyes kept growing wider. Large and ashy, they were thick and dilated and shrouded a misty green. Though his legs were shivering in spasms, his current state led him to take no notice of it. Instead, he continued his meaningless laughter as Reno trudged along with the song.

"Alive, I tell you!" Cloud's eyes gleamed though they were unmoving. "If I continue... no, must continue! I want to scream! FUCKIN' ALIVE, FUCKIN' LOUD!"

"What you talkin' about." Reno snickered, and seedily slouched to his knees on the ground. "You like it? 'Course ya do... life pills, life pills..."

"They're not dead." Cloud said hazily. "Not till you... squash them, hit them like..." His words grew dizzy with his vision. "Can't think... fuck..."

"But it feels so damn good."

Cloud's jaw shivered as he panted. "Good, good..." The blonde's nails scratched and dug into the cement of the building as his eyes cried tears of blood, sockets brimming with red, leaking with salt. Blood in his eyes, blood in his ears, blood in his body... blood down his legs. He didn't feel anything, of course. You weren't supposed to. The soldiers weren't allowed to, and well... goddamn would it allow some kid to excuse himself.

A punch into the wall, a break of bone—a shatter of blood, a crank shot.

Cloud welcomed himself to adulthood.

Stage One.

...And so We'll Kill the King.

A year later.

It was a musty morning in Midgar as usual; shrouded by the murky clouds that consumed the heavens and beamed down faint webs of weaved light. The world consumed in gray loomed upon the towering cities and crept inside the windows in the form of shadow. Knitting, they formed along the crooks of the teacup as Aerith brought the rim to her lips, inserting the warmth of the steaming liquid as it flushed down her throat and overwhelmed her body. It had been a long morning, despite the few hours that she had grasped of it wandering around the house like a confused puppy, thinking of various things and contemplating such desires. The dreary days kept her inside mourning with the skies in her boredom, and the emptiness of the house upon Cloud's absence made the situation worse upon expression. All that she seemed to possess these days were the words of the newspaper, which ranted seemingly endless on the same stories day after day, gradually slipping in new words to produce a new tale of lore. All lies of the government, of course—nothing new, there. Yet, even though the citizens of Midgar were well informed of the lies that foamed throughout the pages of the papers, the newspaper racks became empty every day by the early afternoon. In spite of everything, a few words were better than no words at all. They were a company to the lonely, to talk of the world unseen. In a city such as Midgar, the only scenery remained tall steel walls that shadowed the mountains and the sky. Those who had dwelled inside long enough could truthfully tell that they had not once felt dirt slip through their toes before, sand seep through their hands, or the mountain breeze kiss their hair into the gale. Midgar was a city of imprisonment, a city where once you got in, you never got out. It was where all those of bad fortune dwelled in the name of fate.

Taking paper in hand, Aerith's fingers bit into the crest of the tabloid as her eyes scanned the headline. Another robbery, another escape—the same old shit, the same old bore. Same news as the frequent articles of the Shinra's goal search, a search for a "land of promise" that destined to be rich and fertile enough to build dreams upon, boundlessly filled with mako energy just waiting to be sucked dry like a needle drinking blood. Scanning the words, Aerith released the newspaper as a click caught her attention. Turning away from the window to the doorway, Cloud Strife shut the door behind him and removed his working jacket, tossing it aside and glancing over.

"It seems rather odd to me."

Aerith looked up at him. "What does?"

"The papers are always mentioning that Promised Land shit—y'know, the casual drift; filled with mako, fantasies." Tugging at the gloves planted on his wrists, Cloud tore off the leather and ran a greasy hand through his golden mane, pausing as his ideas continued by his tongue. "Yet, even though I work my ass off at the factory everyday day on the energy generators, the Shinra are still insisting on putting their budgets into the same old crap. Makes my work a bust— a damn pain in the ass."

Twirling a russet strand of hair between her fingers, Aerith's deep emerald eyes glistened as the blonde man settled besides her. "Maybe it's because there aren't enough generators to gather power to light the entire city. Many sectors are still running their electricity by mako power..."

"But it's less advanced in technology." Cloud interrupted. "It makes no sense why they would invest billions into some mythological trip instead of the construction of new machines. Mako power may be sturdy to an extent, but having worked around it for several years I can easily say that it isn't the best use for power. It causes frequent blackouts and disturbs phone and television transmission in the lower sectors."

Placing the teacup on top of the paper headlines, Aerith watched as the heat streaming down the ribs of the cup engulfed the document in a drenched circle, making the words bleed. Pausing, her hands left the cup, now wet with warmth. "Cloud, it should seem obvious by now that the Shinra keeps many things from its citizens. They have us on shackles, and they know it. It's best just to accept it and not ask questions."

Cloud's face seemed plagued with an unwanted reminiscence for a moment, but with a glisten of his sapphire eyes, grew back into his natural color. Hesitating, the blonde man pressed his spine into the back of the chair and let out an exhausted sigh. It was true that Aerith was very different than Vincent. "It's hard not to ask questions. Really, freakin' frustrating."

"But it's safer." She warned, and clasping her hands as she grasped the fabric of her dress, arose from the table. Heading towards the door, Aerith once again turned Cloud's way. "Let's go for a walk." Bobbing his head in unison Cloud followed, his working boots descending across the flooring. The city streets were no cleaner; filled with grunge that rained from the pillars and shrouded the sky. People traversed like dead things, dogs jerked at their chains and made them scream, howling at random pursuers with their ears pressed to their skulls and claws dug into the earth. Numerous buildings aligned the streets like board signs, all equal in height, equal in appearance. None of the towers differed from one another, besides the colorful sights of the wall market, which remained blinded in old strands of Christmas lights and signs painted in unusual colors and imagery to attract customers. Nearly all markets were empty from their clients, abandoned and forgotten unless encountered on emergency. The only people who made a profit in the market it seemed were the newspaper stands that were frequently packed with people until the early afternoons, and the theatre that only came around to producing a new performance every couple of months or so.

Yes, it was true that theatre was a popular attraction in Midgar, the only form of entertainment available to the people outside of the radio and the televisions that preformed merely the programs created by the Shinra. The theatre was different of course, as it varied from the political issues and lies, expressing instead the imagination of a producer. Aerith and Cloud went together frequently to the theatre, watching the same shows time and again until eventually a new one became preformed on the waxy stages. Always would the actors appear like insects, colorfully coated beings that crept and waved their bodies like dancers upon words. They reminded the people of their own, as they too followed a script stride after stride. Cloud remembered that even Vincent had used to like theater before it got too... 'dreamy', as he called it. He was a realist, not a dreamer—even if he did do a lot of thinking and mourning over losses and the aspects of his books.

Today the theater burst loud cries of music and the pounding of voices, even with the bunged doorways that consumed the outside world in its glamorous beats and motion. The notorious sounds of "Loveless" crept out of the building, and as the pair navigated through the city walk, held the beating inside of their minds as if a new memory. But as they progressed, a moment took in pause as a faint tremor rattled the floor beneath Aerith's feet. Facing her toes, the brown-haired woman looked perplexed and lingered in pause. Everything in the city grew mute in their silence, until a loud snap exploded in the sky rafters and the tremor became violent. Cloud, hurled by his feet, collapsed to the ground with a sickening thud. His teeth snapped together, enclosed on his lip, and blood slurred with saliva drooled from his mouth as he spat forcefully on the concrete as the rumble sustained. An unusual odor consumed the air, humming with the raw stench of eggs, and people's screams and the distressed yelp of dogs devoured the silence.

Cloud immediately became aware of a dribble of blood that had begun bleeding into his mouth. His eyes, veined and irritated, were bleeding.

Grasping the wavering earth, Aerith weighted herself to the ground.

Her heart pulsed out her fear and consumed her mind, and she could neither think of nor feel anything else outside of the blood curling roar that was caged inside the ground, demanding to be set free. It was true that the plates below the upper sectors often experienced such quakes, consequential to the aging supports and the replacement of mechanical parts, but they never lasted this long. They weren't as powerful as these mighty fists were, as haunting.

Arching his neck towards the view of the sky rafters, Cloud's eyes stretched far as his arms immediately grasped Aerith's wrist and forcefully pulled her up. With the quaking of the base, the russet-haired woman's knees crippled at the tremors and kept her weight supported on her friend. "There's something wrong with the plate alignment... something is definitely not right, the quakes have never been this bad." Attempting to stop the flow of blood from his eyes, Cloud covered his eyes with his hand. "There's mako near by... lots of it."

Shaking her head quickly, Aerith gazed off into the distance, watching as blazes of color that were of people spread amongst the sector like a rampaging fire, licking up the earth in its tracks. Immediately she nudged Cloud on, and above the screams echoing throughout the chaos, she exclaimed. "We need to find shelter, find higher ground!"

"It'll be useless. What if the plate is collapsing?"

"It's better than just standing here!"

Running to the rear of the sector seemed endless; shoving past fellow inhabitants bent on evasion and reaching the fire escapes that led to the adjacent plates. The stench was becoming worsened, and a raspy growl whined incessantly— creaking, snapping away in the heavens of the plate as spiders crept away like shadows. Biting their fingers into the crimson rust that planted itself upon the railing, Cloud and Aerith among many others slung themselves over and bent into the enclosed stair way. Huddled together, the mob of children, worried mothers, families and all assortments fought to gain access to the higher grounds, moving up the hall until the final quake effortlessly tossed them away.

Snaps of light glistened in the sky and split like lightning, cords of wire that fastened through the roof of the sector breaching like twigs. It soon became evident as the quakes cleared of the black rain that descended from the sky like diving ravens, developing pools of ebony slime that immediately brought the remaining amblers outside to an abrupt halt. Arms and legs alike became heavy and weighed, forced into unusual positions as the liquid burned like acid into their flesh, arresting them like glue. The rain was abnormal; shadowy and thick, appearing as it smelled. Like bindings of greasy chains they stuck to the flesh of passengers and brought them down to the earth screaming, their skins ablaze in a blistering smoke. Under the ashes they were buried alive, casts of cinders that remained lifeless under the white shadows of the streetlights. From where the first-class sectors used to be there was nothing, nothing but emptiness and the sky, which took on the color of an acid gray. In the distance under the layers of metal plates the Supreme City could faintly be seen; tall and clean unlike every thing else in Midgar, illuminated by lights. The rain had been burning mako—a green energy blackened by heat.

The smell of burning flesh rotted the atmosphere, and Cloud couldn't help but moan in his pain as blood began to emit from his ears and nose.

"What the hell were the Shinra thinking." A woman firmly grasped her blanket-coated child and moaned in disbelief, her voice consumed in their unwanted sobs. "They've buried our homes and families alive!"

Aerith's arm slipped under Cloud's as she moved him away, closer to the exit of the stairway and away from the chaos. The outlet became more distinct now, empty as of the people's disbelief. "Cloud... do you think...?"

Forcefully his words came as he wiped away blood on his sleeves, shivering in his tension. "Yes."

Silence lingered between the pair for a moment until Aerith began to pursue her way up the stairs, her footsteps beginning to sound as they advanced away from the murmurings of the crowd. "You were right. The Shinra are merciless."

"All forms of government are in some way or another, a bunch of slackers relying on the normal folk! Don't tell me that you actually believed that a government is placed to watch over us...it's just an excuse for them so that they can do whatever the damn hell they please, only to kick up crap afterwards to cover up their sorry asses."

"But why kill all of these people?"

The site of a panel on the wall arrested Cloud's gaze, and at once his fingers began to investigate the various buttons that crawled amongst the keyboard like insects. "I don't think they meant to, in the least. All I can say is that the upper-class sectors have been removed, definitely for an advantage over somethin'." A pleasing buzzer activated through the speakers, and a faint smile tugged at his lips.

"Such as..."

A loud creak erupted, sliding apart with a slow and trembling moan as a door confirmed itself by splitting ajar. Cloud responded by walking into the darkened hall. "Aerith, I don't know anything that you don't. That's why I'm asking questions."

The passageway was poorly constructed like all things of the slums, shrouded with spider webs and trash and nearly all things imaginable. Pipes leaked and whined from the outer walls, and something wet was oozing over Aerith's shoe as she winced in disgust. Keeping to the ribs of her partner, the mahogany haired woman looked up at the blonde as his face remained weighed down by difficult thoughts, his eyes appearing a darkened gray to the darkness that swallowed the tunnel in its entirety.

Blinking, Aerith surveyed her new surroundings, the light from the tunnel entrance beginning to fade around them. "When do you think the last time that this tunnel was used?"

"Can't be sure, but it's definitely been some time. You can barely make out the tracks from the train anymore." Breathing a wall of cold smoke, Cloud looked to his feet. "It's really hard to believe that it's been that long since train travel has become illegal... how time flies."

"It's because the trains used to cross the private sectors..."

"They say that it's a way to keep the terrorists out of the governmental sectors, but it's obvious that that's a load of bull. They simply want to keep us dumb. I bet you that on those upper plates of theirs that there is technology far more advanced than any of our generators."

Perusing the exit, Aerith watched below as her boots crested into the metal of the tracks, gliding like oozing oil. As a few more steps became accomplished, she felt her body compress and tense as Cloud's strapping arms coiled around her figure; his hands enclosed over her lips as it muffled her abrupt shriek and consumed her mind in a confused upheaval. Hushing her almost soundlessly, Cloud loosened his grasp around the woman and glanced steadily over his shoulder, his gleaming cerulean eyes surfacing the area in inquiry. His footsteps echoed dimly in the tunnel as his boots waded through the film of water, his eyes awake for movement as his fingers webbed around an object that glittered inside of his pocket. At once his arm swept with a fierce and abrupt movement, flapping like bird wings as a howl from the knife in his hand whistled and drank blood. Crimson spewed into the haze of water and became devoured into a sickening twist of color, a wave of water emitting into the air as the dead man lay limp in the film. A gash wedged through his throat drooled blood and vein, his white eyes eaten by horror motionless and pale with death.

"Take out the man first!" A commander's voice directed from the darkness, and Cloud turned his way.

"Cloud!" Aerith's voice was blaring through the warren as more men bordered them, cocking the barrels of their arms and raising the snout at the blonde man. One by one his arms cut through the air, like a wild animal baring its claws as he brought the soldiers to an immediate downfall. Bullets escaped into the air at his violent retort, and Aerith's scream drank away the flares as a bullet impaled into the flesh of Cloud's chest, his blood discharging into the stream as he crippled and collapsed, skin ashen under the light.

Backing away in disbelief, her heart pulsing and beating rapidly, Aerith cupped her hands over her mouth as she stared wide-eyed at her partner, his body wilted and motionless in the water film. The men in their beetle-black army caps took attention to her now, wolfish smiles peeling away at their lips as they approached her with their gun nozzles. A clap of thunder roared through her ears, and pain like none she had ever experienced before flowed like blood coldly up her veins. Pictures in her sight began to run together, boxes of shapes and frantic colors that fell like vibrant feathers, and eventually the dizziness caught up with her. Face first she lifelessly crippled to the ground, her remaining thoughts concentrating on the faint sound of a fuzzy radio transmitter. The soldiers' mission was complete.

---

When Aerith awoke, everything seemed distant and unreal. Blaring lights cascaded from the ceilings and beamed upon her white flesh in a pale glow, a hissing chime singing within her ears as her vision leisurely began to adjust. Her body felt depressed and weak and cold, and her arms, slumped amongst her sides, felt the bars of the table that she lied upon nearly immediate to her awakening. She didn't move, although—her body tautly lax in its current position. All she could seem to make out was the gleaming suns of light, followed by the rundown, weary voices that drifted adjacent to her stall.

"Are you sure this is what we've been looking for?" A voice questioned beneath the blur of light. Trailing behind, the clatter of tools and machinery clicked and whistled.

"Positive. She possesses the blood..." Aerith's teeth chewed deep into the flesh of her tongue as the hum of a scratching pencil filled the air. "It is very ironic that we captured her under such conditions... mere patrol, even."

"Good thing that the military didn't kill these kids. That would've been our heads for sure." The voice became mute and lingered as more notes were scrawled upon the clipboard. "So when will they be transferred to the prison cells?"

Contemplating her situation, it soon became aware to Aerith that her chest hurt. Pain streamed to her fingertips as her eyes closed forcefully to restrict the ache. Her mind was wandering and webbed, stitched together with many thoughts—most that couldn't be fit together, all jumbled like jigsaw pieces. She couldn't think straight.

Cloud...

Images of the man—his dangerously icy sapphire eyes, glittering unmanageable honey hair—snared her mind like a spider bite.

"Immediately. Take her to the 7th prison story." An unearthly sensation overcame Aerith as tight arms grasped her ribs and slung her body, her eyes twitching with the movement while blood surged through her skull, causing her to arrive in a state of weakness as the world spun around her. Through white rooms with peeling walls, through gray rooms sounded with machinery and equipment and patients, through rooms consumed in rays of bright lights as engines screamed on past her, on and on the world grew within the circle. A dark shadow overwhelmed her as the smell of air became thick and dry with must, and, with her mind traversing in thoughts of many, was relaxed on a bench as her stall was enclosed with a loud rumble. The earth below her was freezing and seemed to be a piece of fantasy. Twitching, she forced her throbbing body to lean straight forward, emptying the depression as she surveyed her new surroundings. Apparently the Shinra's term of "prison" wasn't much different than living in the Midgar slums.

Pipes slept and leaked tears of stale water, producing puddles that drooled through the bars of the cell. The ground, musty with growing age, was tainted a grim coffee color and crept up the walls and formed the development. A tiny sink relaxed against the shelf, worn and cracked with rust. The nozzle had been molded from cheap plastic, and as Aerith twisted the knob with an abrupt snap and squeal of energy, received no more than a few drops of ruddy water as they dribbled away from the nose of the faucet. Remaining on her feet was difficult. Controlling her temptations was worse.

As the water dripped and sputtered soundlessly, her parched throat grew yearning and strenuous, stomach sick and uncomfortable as her body dropped to a ball on the bench. Her hunger left her pain nearly unnoticed The aching in her chest swelled and grew, and as Aerith shivered and shook with her pain, wondered if this was what dying felt like. Would she even remember this, if it ended...

No, it hurt but it was too distant to become a memory. It was a fragile thing, shattered by a mere touch of a finger nail.

She watched unmoving as a spider inched with its shadow and crept up her shoe. One step at a time, to and fro, to and fro... each step by each leg, each mile by each claw. The creature gradually made its way up her body as she offered herself to sleep. There wasn't any pain when you slept. A lingering... emotion... a lingering... experience...

She didn't have the strength of a spider, she didn't have eight legs. Her only two were gone. They were shattered. They were asleep.

Sleep, yes...

It was the best way to escape the mocking.

Author's note:

I am so very tired. I should be sleeping, but no. I'm slaving away on this thing. The things I choose to put my time into. Eh.

Anyway, I hope this story to offer you something different. The next chapter, I promise, will have more action and plot development around it... though this chapter was necessary on many levels.

AUs really are so much fun, though. I love writing them for the mere fact that I can create a new world with existing features and throw in some of my favorite characters :D Please review.

It is a dangerous bidding... to be forced to join an unknown conspiracy, one that even the highest officers are unsure of. To follow the future, to be daring enough to try and seek answers. Almost like Running with Scissors.