Starless and Celestial Black, a kingdom hearts fanfic

Disclaimer: Slavishly not mine.

A/N: Originally written for the ficlet collection A Riotous Symphony. The idea is that you put your playlist on random/shuffle and then write a ficlet related to or inspired by each song that plays. You only have the time the song lasts to finish; you start when it starts and stop when it stops. I went way, WAY beyond the remit with this one, though, and ended up extending it into a fic of its own. The track that inspired this fic was Starless and Celestial Black from the Ayashi no Ceres soundtrack, which I have uploaded onto my LiveJournal account so readers can understand where exactly this piece of ficcery came from. I'm known as obabscribbler over on LiveJournal, and the account can be reached through my profile here on FFN.

Starless and Celestial Black

It was dark tonight. You could barely see any stars. The moon played peek-a-boo through the low cloud. Cloud looked up at his namesakes, but the sky was even more obscured for him. He shielded his face with his forearm, squinting, but it didn't blot out the lattice of bars between him and freedom.

"Hey!" hissed a voice. "Hey, Cloud!"

He rolled his head to the side and winced. Straw was no comfort and the ground was hard. A familiar face was pressed against the partition between his cage and the next.

"Are you awake?"

He could have given a sarcastic answer, but replied with a weary, "I am now."

"Liar. You were already awake." Tifa tossed her head. She hated inactivity. Being trapped in a space little bigger than a dog crate was her idea of hell. She often talked to distract herself. "What do you think of the new girl?"

Cloud didn't even have to consider his answer. "I think she'll be sold quickly."

"What makes you say that?"

"She's a healer. There's always a high demand for healers."

He had been through three auctions with three different sets of slavers. They were all different, but all the same – all traders in human misery. Even the ones who treated their merchandise well still thought of them as just that: merchandise. They thought in terms of profit margins and revenue, not lives and stolen futures.

There wasn't much market for a boy like Cloud. They were all freaks and mutants here – these slavers were specialists – but your price and how fast you were sold depended on the value of your freakishness. Useful freaks were expensive freaks. Novelties were cheap and hung around like a bad smell. Cloud could grow bat-like wings on command, but his upper body strength wasn't equivalent. He couldn't lift more than any other boy his age. Buyers made the mistake of thinking he could, then sold him on when they figured out he wasn't much of an investment after all. Why feed a slave whose metabolism made him burn off calories and need food faster than an average human, but only work at the same rate?

The little ball of resentment that lived in the pit of his stomach expanded and then clenched. It was something like hunger, but didn't go away with a good meal. He focussed on Tifa. He was happy to be her distraction if it distracted him too.

Tifa glanced at the huddled figure two cages down the row. The new girl hadn't said two words since she was bundled inside. Their little convoy would reach Port Travail in three days, possibly two if they hooked up with a bigger caravan, made up of livestock and other convoys. Caravans were always faster. Chain-gang slaves had to jog to keep up with ox and yak. Slaving was supposed to be illegal, so by necessity routes to and from auctions were long, passing through large stretches of uninhabited wilderness. There was less chance the authorities would catch you if you weren't in their territory.

"I've never seen a healer before," Tifa whispered. "She doesn't look all that special."

This was Tifa's second auction. She possessed incredible strength, but an indomitable spirit that her first owner hadn't been able to break. He couldn't be bothered to make a special effort, either. Much easier to sell her on and get a more docile girl.

"Will you both shut up?" In the cage on Cloud's other side, Squall turned over and fixed them with a glare that could melt metal into slag. "Some of us are trying to sleep."

"You can sleep like this?" Tifa asked incredulously.

"No. That's the point."

Squall, too, was on his third auction. He had been abused by his last owner and was still healing from wounds inflicted by whip and spurs, not to mention the massive injuries on either side of his upper spine. He didn't talk about it much, but Cloud recognised the distinctive pattern of those wounds. Squall was once winged, like him, but not anymore. The cut between his eyes would be a scar, too. Cloud knew Squall didn't hold out much hope of finding a good owner this time. Cloud didn't know the full story, but the last one had decided to punish him for insubordination by taking his wings. There was more to the story – something about the owner's daughter and running away together – but the end result was the same: in a cage, on his way to auction, nursing the kind of bitterness only slaves knew. If there wasn't much market for a weakling flying boy, there was none at all for an earthbound one.

'A good owner'? Cloud scowled. Now there was a contradiction in terms. Anyone willing to buy slaves was automatically evil.

"Are you guys planning a breakout?" Yuffie got to her feet. She was young and small enough to still be able to stand up in her night-time cage. Everyone else could only sit, crouch or lie down. Yuffie always thought they were planning a breakout. She had been captured in a raid on a small mountain village and had never been owned before, so she still held out hope escape attempts would be successful.

The others knew better. Cloud had never known one to succeed. Just look at Squall. At best, escapees were put back in their cages. At worst, they were considered too unmanageable and executed. 'Bad stock', the slavers called them, using the words to rationalise clubs and knives, since bullets were too valuable to waste out in the wilderness, where wild things roamed. Any slaver with a reputation for bad stock lost business, so it made financial sense to get rid of a few difficult slaves and make an extra raid somewhere to restore the numbers.

But try telling that to a little girl like Yuffie.

"Are you?" she persisted. "Can I come? What can I do to help? Are we gonna kill the guards? I know how to do it. I can be all quiet and silent so nobody'd hear me. My dad taught me. He's a ninja. Are we gonna do it tonight? Can we steal the horses, or one of those yak things? They're stinky, but I wouldn't mind if it meant we got outta here –"

"Yuffie, we're not planning a breakout." Squall's voice was tired, and not just from lack of sleep.

She sagged. "Why not?"

"Because it won't work."

"Says you."

"Yes." Squall turned away and settled on his side. He never lay on his back. Brushing against it when they were walking in a chain-gang made him wince and arch like he had extra bad sunburn. "Says me."

Things went quiet for a while. Cloud wondered if everyone had finally gone to sleep. Then he heard someone sniffle.

"I d-don't wanna be a slave," Yuffie whimpered. "I w-want my d-dad." She was perilously close to crying. Crying was bad. It made the guards come, and if the guards were woken in the night they were in a foul mood. Yuffie either didn't know or didn't care. She continued to snivel and suck air in huge gulps.

"Hush," a voice Cloud didn't recognised said softly. "Hush now. Don't cry."

"Wh-what are you –?"

"Come here, up to the bars. Right up close. That's it. I can put my arms through. The spaces are big enough. See?"

Cloud craned his neck. Yuffie faced away from him and the healer girl was cupping her head and one shoulder through the bars. Yuffie's whole body juddered, but her barely repressed sobs eased under the girl's touch.

Cloud stared. After a moment, the healer girl met his eyes over Yuffie's head. Deep sadness sat in those eyes, but none of the bitterness he might have expected, given her behaviour. She didn't look depressed, either, or have the flat stare of a slave whose will had been broken. She just looked incredibly sad.

They stared at each other for several minutes. Eventually she looked down and mouthed something. Cloud followed her gaze. Yuffie had fallen asleep. She looked pale and far too young. What kind of world allowed children to be treated like property?

They were so close to the auction site; it was a safe bet they'd be branded tomorrow. Doing it right before the auction meant there was less chance of infection from dust on the road, so fewer slaves would die or get sick before they reached the podium. Cloud clenched his fists. He wanted to stick the slavers with hot metal and see how they liked it. Slaves who'd had multiple owners had a brand from each auction they'd been sent to. Someone with three different brands would attract only disreputable owners – nobody wanted bad stock. Not for the first time, he cursed fate and luck, plus whatever else he could hold responsible for his life.

"Cloud?" It was Tifa again. She whispered so quietly he could barely hear her. She was watching him watch Yuffie and the healer girl. He hadn't even noticed. How long had she been gazing at him? "What are you thinking?"

"Huh?"

"You're got your thoughtful face on."

"I have a thoughtful face?"

"Sure you do."

"I'm thinking … maybe we should break out."

"They'd catch us."

"They might not."

Tifa raised her head. His voice contained a note she hadn't heard before. It called to her stubbornness and blew on the embers of her spirit, making them glow with hope. He saw it flare in her eyes. Tifa really was a creature of action. "You've never talked about breaking out before."

Cloud shrugged. He wasn't sure why he was now. "We could take out the guards if you had your strength."

Tifa fingered the warded collar around her neck. They all wore them, each keyed by the slavers' magician to their specific powers, so they couldn't use them unless the collars were removed. It was the only way to keep someone like Cloud from flying away, or someone like Tifa from ripping her cage apart with her bare hands. Tifa's shoulders slumped when she tugged and the metal only clanked where the padlock met the hinge.

"They'd kill you." Squall didn't even bother looking at them. He had evidently been listening the whole time, but didn't think their conversation was worth more than perfunctory contempt.

"Not this close to the auction," Tifa replied.

"They'd kill you," he repeated, "and then raid one of the coastal villages to replace you. Then it'd be some other kids in these cages, and you in an unmarked grave."

Tifa's shoulders slumped more. "You're a regular ray of sunshine, Squall."

He grunted. "I'm a realist."

"You're depressing."

"Shhh." Cloud sat bolt upright, banging his head on the top of his cage.

"What?" Tifa sat up slower. "What is it?"

"Shhh!"

She tipped her head to one side. "Can you hear something?"

"I'm not sure."

Finally Squall also sat up and listened, the strain clear on his face.

"Hoofbeats," the healer girl murmured. "And engines."

"Someone's coming." Excitement shot through Tifa's voice. "Someone's coming!"

"Probably just more slavers." Squall was dismissive, but he didn't relax his posture.

"I don't think so." Cloud closed his eyes so he could concentrate better on his other senses. The steady thump-thump-thump was indeed like hoofbeats, although not any he had heard before. Something was odd about them. They were weirdly spaced, either too slow or too fast. The low grumble of engines was unmistakable. It stirred something inside that he had thought long dead: hope.

One of the slavers shouted. The guards posted at the edge of the encampment rushed amongst the tents. A flap opened, revealing a triangle of yellow light. Then another. Then two more. Suddenly the whole place erupted into frantic action. The slavers panicked, running back and forth, abandoning their tents to grab emergency packs. Some saddled their horses. Some didn't even bother with the saddles, just swung onto the horses' back and rode off into the night. The yaks and oxen mooed. Poles clanked as tents collapsed. Everywhere was alive with movement.

"What's going on?" Yuffie rubbed her eyes.

"Someone's coming!" Tifa crouched at one end of her cage, watching everything with eyes the size of soup plates. "They're all frightened, and if they don't want to stick around, it must mean rescue for us!"

"Or bigger, meaner slavers," Squall said.

"Shut up, Squall."

"We're gonna be rescued?" Yuffie shrieked. The roar of a flying machine coming in low over the camp drowned out her voice. She stuck her arm through the bars of her cage and waved madly. "We're here! We're over here!"

All the wakening slaves moved to the ends of their cages to see better. Two more flying machines appeared. Then the birds came: giant yellow things with huge beaks and claws. They trampled the tents and tossed their heads like horses. The men riding on their backs had to yank their reins to keep them on course. The oddness of the hoofbeats finally became clear: feet, not hooves, and two, not four. One rider pointed at the line of cages and shouted to the others. They advanced en masse. Several of the more timid slaves fell back, whimpering and shielding their heads.

"Gods, just look at them. They're children."

"There's got to be at least thirty cages here, most of 'em full."

"Those bastards. Those absolute bastards."

"I knew that tip was a good one. Didn't I say that tip was good?"

"Yeah, yeah, we know. For once a tip you got in a bar turned out to be true. Whoop-de-friggin'-do. Now help round up those slavers before they all get away."

"Not much chance of that; not with the Air Force here too."

"Yeah, and we'll never hear the end of how they performed a daring rescue in their fabulous new gummi ships while we rode around on our giant chickens – blah, blah, blah. Tax munny at work, and us left in their dust. It'll be a media field day, and you can bet those Air Force guys won't miss the opportunity for a photo op with the most pathetic of these kids so they can drum up more public support and get even more extra funding. And you know where the munny will come from, don't you? Our stipend, since obviously we couldn't possibly have pulled off this mission without the Air Force's generous help."

"We can hear you."

"What?"

"We're right here, and we'd appreciate it if you'd quit complaining and get us out of these cages." It was Squall, being as diplomatic as ever.

The man who had spoken looked caught between abashed and confused. "Uh, right. Sorry, kid. I was just … Look, if we open these cages now, I'm betting some of you are going to bolt, and with all this hullabaloo, we can't let that happen. You could be trampled, or get lost, or worse."

"So instead you're going to leave us in here? Oh, good plan. Top notch. What's your name? I need it so I can complain to your commanding officer."

The man balked. "You're not like any slaves I've rescued before."

"I'm sure they were all pathetically grateful and willing to lick your feet in gratitude. I'm just tired, hungry, cramped and pissed off. And I hate the taste of boot polish."

"Squall!" Tifa hissed.

"Squall, stop being a butt-head or they might not rescue us!" Yuffie yelled.

Cloud had noticed the insignia on the man's shirt. The same one was on the giant birds' bridles. It had been on the flying machines too: a flower surrounded by a circle of hands, each gripping the wrist of the one in front to form a never-ending chain. "Who are you people?" he asked.

"We're the Long Patrol," the man replied.

Squall snorted. "An illuminating answer. Not."

"Whose territory are we in?" Cloud specified. "Where are you from?"

"Oh, we're from Radiant Garden."

Not somewhere Cloud had ever heard of. Then again, he was a mountain boy from the cold north, and every auction he had been in had either been in a desert region or a port town. He hadn't seen snow in over five years. Somewhere called Radiant Garden sounded like a temperate place. He imagined cool rain in Spring, sunny Summer days, speckled with trees that turned orange, red and gold in Autumn and lost their leaves in Winter. In his home town of Nibelheim the only distinction between seasons was whether you hunted mountain goat or raided wyvern nests for eggs, and if you could use your front door instead of climbing out your bedroom window onto a hard-packed snowdrift.

The rider hadn't finished speaking. He took on the tone of someone who had learned a speech by rote. "We uphold the law set down by Lord Ansem, equitable ruler of the Garden and its surrounding provinces; one of which is the absolute prohibition of slavery, or anything amounting to, similar to or approximating slavery or the denial of basic human rights to humans or equivalent species."

"Good to know," Squall said. "Now let us out."

The man turned this way and that, his expression clearly saying he wished he hadn't been the one to strike up a dialogue with the uppity slave kids. "Um … my captain should be around here someplace. I'll … I'll just go and, uh, get him. You kids just, uh, wait right here."

"Like we're going anywhere?" Squall muttered as the man hastily rode away. "I think we've been rescued by idiots."

"You're the idiot, Squall!" Yuffie railed. "If they leave us behind, it'll be all your fault!"

"They won't leave us behind. I've seen their kind before. That'd mean too much paperwork to explain where we went. It's much easier for them to do this by the book." He narrowed his eyes. "Exactly by the book."

He was right. Once the slavers who hadn't escaped on horseback had been rounded up and handcuffed, the Long Patrol riders finally dismounted and read them their rights. During this time the three flying machines alighted at equal points around the encampment, which Cloud guessed was to prevent anyone making a break for it. More men and women in uniform emerged from these machines. Though these uniforms were different than the Long Patrol's, they all had the same insignia. Finally, a collection of blankets, med-kits, trolleys and other things where wheeled down the gangplanks and brought to the cages. The Air Force people weren't taking any chances over what state the slaves were in.

Cloud waited his turn. Eventually his cage was approached by a man with hair as blond as his own, but cut short and stuffed under a headband. He used an instrument rather like wire-cutters to shear off the lock, but gave Cloud a baleful look before opening the door.

"Don't run."

"I wouldn't get far."

"Don't seem like that mattered to a couple of your pals."

"They're not my pals." Cloud caught Tifa's eye as she, too, crawled stiffly out of her cage. "Well, not all of them."

"Uh-huh. Watch yourself, kid. Take it easy an' stand up slow."

Several vertebrae cracked as Cloud straightened and took his first breath as a free person in over five years. He met the blond man's eyes. "Thank you."

The man grunted, but he seemed pleased. Not many of the others had said thank you. Those who hadn't tried to run away had collapsed weeping or been too shocked to say anything much. "What's yer handle, kid?"

"Huh?"

"He means your name," Squall said impatiently. He was still in his cage, fingers hooked through the metal and watching the wire-cutter with a hunger even he couldn't disguise with apathy.

"Oh." Cloud could have kicked himself. What a great first impression. "I'm Cloud. Uh, Strife. Cloud Strife. That's my name."

The man nodded without comment, transferred the cutters to his right hand and stuck out his left. "Captain Cid Highwind of the Radiant Garden Air Force, Gummi Division. But y'all can call me Captain Highwind." He winked.

"Fine, great, wonderful, can you let me out now?" Squall demanded. "I'm the last one still in here. Is this how you treat everyone who pisses you off by not showing enough boot-licking gratitude?"

"Keep your hair on, kid." Captain Highwind snip-snip-snipped and Squall crawled out like the metal was burning his hands and knees. "An' who might you be?"

"Leon," Squall said without hesitation. "Just Leon," he added, catching Cloud's confused eye.

"Well, 'Just Leon', you an' your buddies here better mosey on over to that there guy an' gal wearin' the medical crosses. They got blankets an' hot drinks an' they'll check y'all out for medical type stuff." Captain Highwind shrugged. "I don't pretend to understand none of it. I just fly, yell at people who fly, an' fix stuff that should fly be ain't flyin' no more." He stumbled backwards. "What the hell -?" He looked down at where he had nearly trodden on Yuffie, who should have already gone to the medical people but was staring at him with disturbing intensity.

"You saved us?" she demanded.

"Uh, in a manner of speakin'. Whoa, what the fu –" He raised his arms, elbows to the sky, and looked around helplessly as she hugged his knees. "Uh, can somebody take this, uh … I ain't so good with … a lil' help here?"

The healer girl gently prised Yuffie off him and guided her towards the medical personnel.

Cloud headed in that direction as well. He leaned towards Squall as they walked. "Why didn't you give him your real name?"

"That is my real name."

"No it isn't –"

"It's my real name now. Squall Leonhart was a stupid slave who couldn't do anything right and suffered the consequences of it. Leon can be anyone he wants." Squall-Leon glanced at the sky and shifted his shoulders back, as if compensating for a weight that was no longer there. "Anyone and anything."

Cloud couldn't argue with that logic. It wasn't as if they had documents or passports saying who they were. If Squall wanted to make this into a new start in more ways than one, that was his business. Cloud was more concerned with his empty, aching belly and the prospect of a hot bath, warm blankets and someone telling him he was free now. He couldn't hear those words enough: he was free. He was free. Maybe if he said it enough it would sink in properly. Everything was still numb. It didn't feel real. He wasn't a slave anymore. Nobody owned him. He wasn't going to auction. He wasn't going to be branded. He didn't have to sleep in a cage or worry about being destroyed as 'bad stock'. He was free.

Some time later he sat on one of the trolleys, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, sipping a mug of hot, sweet liquid the medics told him would help. It did, and it tasted great too: minty and sweet with only a slightly bitter aftertaste. He lowered the mug to find a pair of green eyes he had seen for the first time only an hour earlier.

Had it really only been an hour ago they had been in those stinking cages, talking about a breakout they knew they would never actually attempt?

"Hi," said the healer girl.

Cloud swallowed so fast he nearly choked. "Hi-ourgh-huh-huh." He coughed, thumping a fist against his chest. When he could speak again, he muttered, "Uh, hi."

She perched next to him on the trolley and fiddled with her own blanket. It was yellow and fluffy. It reminded him of the giant birds – when he asked, the Long Patrol riders had proudly called them 'chocobos'. A couple of the men had chuckled that Cloud's hair resembled a chocobo's back end, although not when they thought he could hear.

Silence stretched between Cloud and the healer girl. He wondered why she had come over to him. Yuffie was still following Captain Highwind around, much to the medics' annoyance. They wanted everyone to stay put so they could be catalogued. Cloud shook his head; no, not catalogued, that was slaver jargon. The medics wanted their names recorded in the little handheld computers the third set of Radiant Garden personnel carried – people in smart black suits with ties knotted to the neck and creases you could cut your fingers on. They didn't look at all rumpled, despite the confusion around them. They also didn't talk much. It was the medics who had told Cloud the questions were so they could try to find the kids' homes and reunite them with their families. He hadn't said anything to disabuse them of this idea.

It was a nice plan, but some of the slaves had been too long in the hands of others. Their homes either didn't exist anymore, they couldn't remember them, or they just plain didn't know where they were. Map-reading wasn't considered important in a lot of places. Nibelheim was such an insular town, people rarely went beyond its borders. Before he was captured, Cloud had never been further than the woodland directly outside. He had no idea which mountain range it was in, or even which direction you had to point on a compass to find it. No way did it appear on any maps, even if he could read them. Yuffie was too young to know much about geography, and both Squall – no, Leon now – and Tifa had been thrown out of their villages. Tifa's neighbours had been afraid of her strange powers, while Squall's appearance marked him out as a bad omen, best removed if they didn't want bad luck to follow. It was little wonder he was so bitter, and a great wonder that Tifa wasn't.

"So … we were lucky, huh?" Cloud said at last.

The healer girl nodded, but didn't say anything. Hers was the kind of silence words sank and disappeared into without trace.

"I'm Cloud."

"I know. Cloud Strife. I heard you telling the Data Requisition Agent. That's what the ones in black are called."

Cloud pulled a face. It seemed a long and vainglorious name for someone who tapped at a square of wires and metal and made sucking noises through their teeth when they couldn't spell your name right. "So who are you?"

"Aerith." She slid her eyes sideways at him. "Aerith Gainsborough."

"Have you, uh, been … like this … for long?" He spiralled a hand, wondering why words suddenly eluded him. He wasn't a chatterbox like Yuffie, but he never usually had problems talking to people.

"You mean have I been a slave for long?" Aerith's eyes slid away again. "No."

"So you'll be going back to your family when these Radiant Garden guys find them, huh?"

"No." She fiddled some more with the blanket. A thread came loose. She wound it around her index finger, then unwound and wrapped it around her middle finger instead. She unwound and rewound it until each finger of her left hand bore little red marks and discoloured tips. Then she started on her right hand. "I never knew my dad, and my mother died when I was little. My foster mom was nice, but … there was a disease. It spread incredibly fast, and it was fatal if you caught it. It wiped out a lot of the city where we lived. Our house was in the slums, and everyone was packed in tight there. There wasn't much room for cleanliness – or even fresh water sometimes. It was a perfect breeding ground for sickness."

"Could you heal the people who got sick?" Cloud asked hesitantly.

She shook her head. "I didn't find out I could heal people until this girl I went to school with got sick. She fell down on the way home one day. She was coughing up blood and I got scared. The next thing I knew …" She trailed off. Cloud wondered if he should press her, but eventually she went on without prompting. "It's hard to describe what it's like to heal someone. Afterwards, I rushed home. I was so happy. My mom was in bed. That should've been my first clue. She always went to work after I left for school, but I didn't realise … I just rushed upstairs and started shaking her when she didn't wake up. Then I noticed the bloody tissues. And that she wasn't breathing." Aerith shut her eyes tight. Her eyelashes glistened, but no tears fell. "I thought people would be happy about what I could do, but they blamed me. They thought I'd been hiding my abilities all along, working for the gangs in the neighbourhood, killing off those who wouldn't pay them protection money. They tried to force me to heal more people, but I couldn't control it. I couldn't do it on command." She stopped again. It didn't matter. Cloud could guess what had happened next: people driven to do terrible things by desperation and the urge to blame someone – anyone – for something beyond human control.

"They sold you, didn't they?"

Aerith nodded. "To buy medicine. It was expensive. I think they got a lot of munny in exchange for me, so maybe I did help cure people after all."

At least he had been captured. He had fought back. He couldn't imagine the betrayal of people he knew just giving him to the slavers. Cloud had a sudden urge to put his arm around her. He wondered where it had come from. This girl was a stranger, and he was usually as tactile as a wyvern with a sore tail. Added to that, he still wasn't sure why she had chosen to come and sit by him, and tell him her story. Wouldn't one of the Data Requisition Agents have been a better choice? They could have gone to her city and punished the ones who had done that to her. Desperate and sick or not, selling a child into slavery was still wrong on all levels. He was just a kid, and a homeless one at that. What did she expect him to do about it – or for her?

"What city was it?" he asked, for want of something to say. As if he would know it? He barely knew where he was now.

"Midgar."

"Um …"

"I've made you uncomfortable."

"Uh …" Cloud scratched the back of his head. "Kind of. I'm not sure why you told me all that."

"You have kind eyes."

Not the answer he was expecting. "Oh … kay."

"I guess I just wanted to tell someone who might understand. When I caught you looking at me before, I thought maybe that might be you. You looked like the kind of person … Never mind." She made as if to jump down from the trolley. "Sorry, I'll leave you alone –"

"No, wait." Cloud caught her arm. The action made him spill what was left of his drink. It tipped into his lap, scalding liquid going instantly through the thin fabric of his pants. "Ahh!"

Sudden bright light blossomed above him. Despite the pain, he looked up. What appeared to be a flower composed entirely of light rotated over his head, scattering dazzling petals that sank into wherever they touched. The scalding pain instantly eased. When the flower folded in on itself and vanished, he was fine again.

He looked back at Aerith. "Was that you?"

She nodded. "I didn't mean to. It just happened. Like I said, I can't control it."

"It was beautiful," he said before he could stop himself. Instantly he wanted to take the words back. They made him sound like a sissy, not someone who had survived years as a slave. "Uh, I mean … Hey, look, one of those Data Reccy … Reck-wi … one of those guys in the black suits is coming over. And Captain Highwind, too."

"Everythin' okay over here?" Captain Highwind enquired. "I done saw some weird light a few seconds ago. You kids all right?" He was genuinely concerned, not fake-concerned, like some of the Radiant Gardeners who just wanted to go home already.

"We're fine." Cloud edged closer to Aerith and put an arm around her. "We weren't doing anything wrong."

"Never said you were, kid." Captain Highwind's face registered regret, but it was gone in an instant.

"Oooooh, you two are huggiiiiiing." Yuffie wiggled between the two adults and grinned at Cloud and Aerith. "That means you're in looooove!"

Cloud turned bright red. He told himself it would be wrong to kick Yuffie. She was only a little kid, after all, and riding high on a special kind of euphoria. "Am not," he grunted, retrieving the arm and sitting on his hands so there would be no question about it.

Yuffie kept grinning. "Hey, Cid says his gummi ship can go, like, a million miles per hour, and it's really cool inside, and he has a wrench, and a hammer, and a screwdriver in his toolkit, plus lots of other cool stuff, and –"

Captain Highwind looked like he was reaching the end of his tether. He hooked his hands under Yuffie's armpits, hoisted her up and dumped her between Cloud and Aerith. This suited Cloud fine. Yuffie made a good, if wriggly, buffer between them.

"Here, you hang onto her while I, uh, go inspect the ships." Captain Highwind said. He all but ran away.

Yuffie watched him go. "But I wanted to see the engines!"

"You can see them later," Aerith soothed. The Data Requisition Agent was tapping his handheld computer. "We're going to ride in them back to Radiant Garden."

"Are we?" Yuffie eyes shone. "Really? You're not making it up?"

"She's not making it up," said the Agent. "You'll need to see about air-sickness pills, but we're taking all you kids back to the Garden with us."

"For real?" Yuffie looked ready to burst with delight. "Cool! But I won't need any dumb pills. I'm not gonna get air-sick."

"Even so, you'll need to be checked out first. From the Garden, we'll be able to find your families."

Her expression faltered only slightly. "You'll have to try really hard. Mine moves around a lot."

"We'll do our best. Lord Ansem is completely anti-slavery and takes great pains to eradicate all of it within his kingdom."

"He's a king?"

"No, but he rules the kingdom."

"How can he rule the kingdom if he's not a king? You gotta be a king to rule a kingdom, otherwise it'd be a lord-dom, and he couldn't have a crown. Does he have a crown? Is it big and shiny? Can I wear it when I get there? Would it fit me? I wanna wear the crown! I wanna be a ninja princess, and wear a crown, and kick all the nasty slavers' butts, and –"

Cloud tuned her out. He looked across what had been the slavers' encampment to where Leon and Tifa were being inspected by their own medical personnel. Leon was very slowly removing his shirt to show them the stumps of his wings. Tifa pointed to her collar, clearly wanting to know why nobody had removed it yet. She caught Cloud's eye and rolled hers. Her message was clear: adults were useful, but they could also be really tiresome. Judging by his expression, Leon thought likewise.

Cloud didn't know what it was, but something changed at that moment. It was as if the fabric of the universe at that moment and in that place had been plucked, and everything was resonating back into place, the pieces knitted closer together than it had been before. He felt connected to people in a way he hadn't felt since he last saw his mother. It was unreasonable, since he barely knew them, but he and these other newly-freed slaves had shared something few others ever would. It had forged a bond between them; thin as filament, but stronger than steel. They were the outcasts and outsiders amongst the outcasts and outsiders. When the other slaves returned home, they would be leftover. All they had, from this point on, was each other.

Something tugged at the edges of his senses. Aerith was looking at him. She knew it too. He could see it in the sadness of her eyes, which had gained a thin edge of something else, like if you took a piece of costume jewellery and cut it in half so you could see the gold leaf around the cheaper interior. It took a moment, but Cloud recognised it. He had seen it more tonight than he had in all the last five years put together.

It was hope.

Yuffie grabbed his face and dragged it down to hers. It broke the moment spectacularly. "Hey!" Cloud yelped, as his cheeks and lips were squashed inwards into an unnatural pout.

"Those guys were right," Yuffie said seriously. "Your hair is like a chocobo's butt."

Aerith giggled. It was a nice sound. Cloud hoped to hear it more in the future; which he actually had now.

He had a future. It was a wonderful thought.

I'm free. He moved his shoulders, wondering what it would be like to let his wings extend and soar through the skies in his own chosen direction for once. No more chains. No more slavery. I'm finally free, and nobody will ever own me again.

Fin.