Thagirion

by joudama

Instead of waiting to breed new Ancients, Hojo decides to simply create a new one from Aerith and a terrorist who remembers more than she should. AU; written for help japan.

4. What Is Inside

A/N: Ahaha, I exist. It's been a rough few years, and I fell out of ficcing because I didn't really have time or the energy because first my job was sucking my soul away, then I changed jobs and had a two-hour commute each way, which killed my free time. But then I listened to Hamilton, and decided it was time to "write like I'm running out of time." That's how y'all got the end of TTYNKAP in one big burst, and why you're hopefully about to get the end of Thagirion as well.

This is for illumynare, who won my help_japan auction. :D

Part III:

中心にあるのは

[What is Inside]

私という存在の核心にあるのは無ではない。荒れ果てた潤いのない場所でもない。私という存在の中心にあるのは愛だ。

-村上春樹、1Q84 Book 2

/-

Two years ago

/-

"Do you see now, girl," her master say sharply. "Do you see with your own eyes what they can do?"

"No," Tifa whispers, and falls to her knees at the sight. "No, this can't be right, how-" she says, shaking her head furiously in her confusion, unable to believe what her eyes are telling her.

It is Nibelheim. Nibelheim as it had been, before Sephiroth and the other SOLDIERs came. But...but it's not right; none of the people there are right. She can tell that even from here; her eyes have always been so sharp her father used to say she had dragon eyes, able to spot even a hillclimber goat on the side of the mountain from far away. The people there look so much like people who had died, but they aren't, even though they live in houses identical to what had had been there. It has been less than a year, but already, there is no sign of all the destruction of that terrible night. "No."

"This is what they do, girl," her master says again, but there is no anger in his voice anymore, only sadness. "Nibelheim was never destroyed, no one was killed, and they made your memories a lie. You are the one no longer in step with the reality they have made. This is their power. Your home is a lie, Tifa Lockheart, but they will make you a liar and kill you for it to make that true. Do you see now? So chose. Go back there and live a lie, or disappear and have no past. But the path you're trying to create now will only end with you hunted down and erased. If you want your revenge so badly, stay in the shadows. Wander and strike. And have no past. Because only this is the reality that exists now."

She looks at what had been her home, and the tears begin. Her master comes over, and covers her eyes with a hand, shielding her from it, and guides her away.

/-

There was a smart rap at his door, and Hojo looked up from his notes in annoyance, then saw the clock.

"Come in," he said, not bothering to stand until he knew he'd have to for convention's sake.

It was ten o'clock on the nose, exactly when his new assistant was to present herself. The door slid open, and his new arrival walked through.

When the door slid to a close behind her, he stood.

"Ahh, Dr. Laumbe," Hojo said, smiling in the bland way he had to for these tedious social interactions. "Please, have a seat," he said, gesturing to the seat he had placed in front of his desk for this.

"Thank you. And a pleasure to finally meet you again," Dr. Laumbe said, giving him a faint bow he hadn't seen since his time in Nibelheim, one likely long-ingrained in her and that she hadn't dropped even years out of the Narsland area - you could always tell who was from there by that Wutai-esque bow they had retained.

Her eyes gave it away, too - dark brown, almost black, and that familiar shape.

They'd met, once, not long after she was assigned to Junon after the war ended. Prior to the end of the war, she'd been a military doctor, one of the few women in ShinRa's military and one of the even fewer female doctors.

She had the same stiff, military way of standing that rubbed Hojo the wrong way - everything about her was no-nonsense and nothing like the young women who normally worked around ShinRa, all carefully sniffing for a husband. And at 35 and unmarried, it was no wonder she seemed to have thrown herself into her work; it was quite clear she'd have little choice. Her clothing was functional, she wore no make up and only small studs in her ears and a plain bracelet with a small round gem on it on her left wrist, and she made no attempt to hide the beginning of grey barely visible in the dark blonde - which was an unusual color for northerners and had doubtless caused her trouble in her life - at her temples.

Really, he preferred the interchangeable, fresh-faced young girls with their make-up and perfume and heels, and legs that would wrap so tightly against him. They used him to get up the ladder, he used them for a fuck, and everything was simple that way because he usually had no other use for them and he knew how to handle them.

Still, she wasn't there to give him something to look at, but to manage his samples, and everything in her files indicated Laumbe would be more than capable in that respect. And despite the military background, she had a brain for science and medicine, in theory.

Hopefully.

And also hopefully, the moronic troopers and guards would respect a "kindred spirit." At the very least, they would have to respect her rank.

She sat down, retaining that same stiff, military posture, but she at the least tempered it with a smile; at least that one thing seeming feminine about her manner.

Really, it was too bad ShinRa seemed to have almost utterly run out of pretty young female scientists. He was going to have to speak to someone about their hiring.

"So. You come quite highly recommended. There are very few people that have such excellent results with the SOLDIERs in Junon."

Her smile seemed to tighten slightly. "I suppose it helps that I've seen combat as well. I was a front line medic for several years, before finishing my medical degree. I've seen what they've seen. It helps."

Hojo fought the urge to roll his eyes. "Yes, yes. Seen the 'horrors of war' that breaks some of the weaker ones who should have been washed out of the selection process. We've refined the process to admit fewer of them, but some still slip through the cracks from time to time," he said. "Your work with the more mentally damaged SOLDIERs has actually been a great help to the project."

Laumbe was still holding onto her smile, but it seemed strained. "Yes. Well. Thank you. Helping them is why I focused on psychiatry after the war."

"That is part of why I'm bringing you on for this…special project. It involves a new, experimental form of the SOLDIER process, and I'd like to have you on monitoring it."

The woman seemed to perk up slightly at that. "Oh?"

"As you know, the SOLDIER program has only used male subjects to date. However, I would like to see what might happen if we tailored to process to women."

"You're putting women into the program now?" Laumbe said in surprise.

Hojo gave her a smile. "In a manner of speaking. They are...prototypes, in a way. A test of a theory, if you will. And with both your background and gender, you seemed a good fit for aiding in Project O."

Laumbe smiled brightly, and showed the first flash of enthusiasm he had seen in her for anything other than getting out of Junon. "Well, count me in for this project, then," she said. "I welcome any chance to allow more women into ShinRa's military. And despite some...difficulties, I've enjoyed working with the SOLDIERs so far, so I look forward to whatever I can do to help aid the new program," she said, and Hojo pushed up his glasses to hide another smile.

"Excellent. Currently, the two sa - test subjects being used are both rare cases. One in particular is from an area with a high natural level of mako exposure, so we're expecting to learn a great deal from her no matter what the outcome of the main experiment. Discovering her was, in fact, the impetus for this."

"Oh?" Laumbe said, looking as through she were trying to decide how to process all of that.

"Natural exposure since being in utero seems to cause extra sensitivity to mako. Which leads to the hope that she will 'take' faster and more fully to the SOLDIER process. I'll be comparing her overall process to a male control from the same area in another facility. You will, however, simply be monitoring the two test subjects here and making sure things run smoothly, should you choose to accept your promotion, of course."

"I see no reason why I wouldn't so far," she replied back.

"Excellent. Oh, and, Dr. Laumbe," Hojo said suddenly.

"Yes?"

"You're from Narsland, correct?"

She frowned slightly, as if in confusion. "Yes, that's right."

"Urtharbrun, was it? That's on the other side of the valley from Nibelheim. I was stationed out there for a bit. Tell me, have you ever heard of the Ohnegesichterin?"

She blinked. "Ohnegesichterin? The hungry ghosts in the mountains?" she said, sounding surprised. "Well, yes, I've heard of them. You'd probably be hard-pressed to find anyone from the north who hasn't."

"Do you think they're real?"

She let out an equally surprised-sounding laugh. "There are a lot of things out in the mountains in the Narsland region, but no one has ever actually come across an Ohnegesichterin. If there were real, you would have thought someone would have long ago caught one. They're just fairy tales." She gave him a puzzled smile, but her brow was wrinkled. "Why do you ask? I didn't think anyone outside Narsland even knew about them. They don't even have a name in Standard!"

"No reason," Hojo said. "I only learned on them when I was in the north, and have been doing a bit of cross-cultural study since," he smiled in the way he knew to be disarming to young women, and was pleased to see it worked to some extent on Laumbe. Good. "Come with me, and I'll show you what I'm working on now."

He stood up, and she followed suit. "This way, doctor," he said, gesturing, then stopped. "Is that a bracer?" he asked, staring at the bracelet she wore that he only just now noticed wasn't just decorative.

"Yes," she said, her voice sounding distinctly no-nonsense.

"You'll have to remove it."

"No."

"Excuse me?" Hojo said, completely affronted.

"It only has a Sleep. It is purely defensive and nothing to be concerned of."

"That doesn't matter. It is materia that has not been authorized for this project."

Dr. Laumbe gave him a steely look. "I don't care," she said flatly. "I keep a Sleep materia equipped at all times. Especially if I am dealing with SOLDIERs."

Hojo gave her a strange look.

"They are bigger, stronger, and faster than I am," she said, her voice flat. "And some of them in Junon were a bit...twitchy. Especially after the war. You know what being assigned out to Junon means," she said pointedly. He thought that was a bit rich, since she likely had no idea WHY Junon had been designated the hole they sent the SOLDIERs having breakdowns to - after Genesis, Angeal, AND Sephiroth failed spectacularly, ShinRa had decided to try to cut off at least some of the risk of losing their investment, and set up the psych facilities at Junon. The war had had nothing to do with it, but he saw no reason to disavow her - yet - of her beliefs. "Having a Sleep has probably saved more than one SOLDIER from a court-martial and me from getting my neck snapped by someone having a flashback when I'm trying to administer tests."

Hojo gave her a patronizing smile. "That may be so, but you won't need it."

"Fine, I get twitchy without it," she said, overriding him, and he felt a sting of irritation. "Like I said. It has saved my life more than once. I will not unequip it."

Hojo found himself wondering if this woman was going to be more trouble than she might be worth.

"It is, as I stated, purely defensive, Professor. You needn't worry about me casting Sleep willy-nilly. Unless my life is in danger, it's just a pretty little gem on my bracelet. I've written up reports for every time I've had to subdue someone with a Sleep. It's a last resort."

As much as Hojo hated to admit it, the woman had a point, and it was a far better route for restraining samples when they grew…unruly…than the current one, for all that had offered new insights. And if worse came to worse, it wasn't as if the small amount of mako used for a Sleep would cause the data to be skewed TOO much.

"Very well," Hojo said magnanimously. "Keep it, but use it only when absolutely necessary. I won't risk my results being skewed any more than they have to be."

She frowned slightly. "I'm not sure how a Sleep could possibly skew your results, sir, but it is and always will be a last resort. I prefer to use my words."

"Good. Now, before we were interrupted," he said, and ushered her through the door.

/-

They trade off who prepares meals. Her master is used to cooking for himself, and it always surprises Tifa a little for a man to cook his own food - it just wasn't like that in Nibelheim.

Tifa had long been the one cooking at home - she had taken over cooking after her mother died - so she is used to it.

She doesn't really know when she starts doing it. Maybe because it is a nice day - early spring, not too warm and not too cold - there are no monsters about, and the trees are just beginning to bloom a beautiful pale lavender almost the same color as the Bergtränen near home that will be blooming soon. But she starts humming as she cooks, and then that turns into her singing quietly.

It is a song her mother used to sing, one that is a well-known and traditional song around the Mt. Nibel area. It is an old song, and so, like most old songs, in dialect.

'Wait, my lass,' the young lad said,

I'll cross o'er the mountains

And far to the sea,

And there I'll make my name

And when I a famed man be,

You will be my bride'

His lass, she bade him on his way,

And then to him she said,

"Where you go, there will I be

If you go to the mountains,

Then I'll be your path

And guide you your way home

If you go far 'cross the sea,

Then I'll be the star

That lights you back to me

"Standard," her master says sharply, though his face had no mouth to speak.

Something in her snaps; is tired; it has been a long day of traveling and training, and this small thing is all she has now to connect her to her mother. She knows to only use Standard when they are near people, and until that instant, when she speaks to him, but this - this is her own time, to herself, and she is suddenly angry beyond belief he would try to dictate how she speaks - how she sings - to herself. "Ich will nicht!" Tifa yells angrily in Narslandische. "Ich will nicht vergessen! Ich werde nicht vergessen!"

The open-handed slap her master gives her across her mouth is the first and only time he had ever struck her. Yes, she has been hit by him many times when she was training, but this is different; this is something devastating in a way that none of the bruises she's ever gotten from being taught to fight have ever been, and the taste of blood in her mouth now is unlike all of the other times she has tasted it.

"You speak using words that have vanished from the world," he says sharply. "Never speak them again, unless you wish to vanish as well. They will be your downfall, and I will not let them be mine as well."

Her master walks away from her angrily, and that day is the last that Tifa has a dialect to speak.

—

Anneke stopped short when they entered the experiment facility.

At first, it was the sheer scale of it that caught her by surprise. This was nothing like the medical facilities at Junon. Junon had been a training facility, true, even though it now had its own reputation because of the SOLDIERs who were sent there after their initial training there, but there was nothing like what was housed in the ShinRa facility in Midgar.

But what made her breath catch was when she caught sight of the two test subjects.

"Professor - ," she began, then stopped because she really had no idea how to even proceed.

Hojo gave her a faint smile. "Yes?" he asked, as if two half-naked women floating together in a tank of mako were normal, and she really had no idea how to process that.

She took a deep breath, then spoke very carefully. "Why are they in one tank?"

Hojo's smile actually brightened, which was not the reaction she had been expecting in the slightest, and it made her feel slightly more unsteady even as it made her hope there was a rational explanation for this.

"What do you know about the SOLDIER process, doctor?"

She blinked, feeling like she had been doing a lot of it that day. "Only the most basic information about the outline of the process, sir. And what I've been told by SOLDIERs at Junon. But they said very little, and what they said, I can not repeat because of doctor-patient confidentiality," she said flatly.

"Tell me what you can, then," Hojo said, sounding bored.

"That they were given injections and then underwent mako immersion."

"Ahh, yes, the very basics, then," he said. "The injections are a special compound that changes their very DNA," Hojo said, his faint smile returning. "Their genes are infused with those of an Ancient."

Anneke felt her eyes widen, and she stared at him. "But...but they're - "

"A myth?" Hojo asked with a slightly mocking smile. "If they are a myth then, behold, a mythical creature. Or half of one," he said, and pointed to one of the young women in the tank, the one with long reddish-brown hair. "Her mother was the last full-blooded Ancient on this planet. And the DNA used in the SOLDIER process is from the DNA of a preserved Ancient found where that one," he said, now pointing at the other woman, "was born and raised."

Anneke felt as if her breath had been knocked out of her. "Amazing," she breathed.

"And they are in the same tank because it is hoped that proximity will help with the process. A kind of imprinting, if you will. Both of them, starting with treatments soon after this one, will be treated with the cells from the original Ancient sample, since this one is only half an Ancient, and it's hoped it will strengthen her own abilities. If this works," Hojo said, "it will yield amazing new potential for the program. And science, of course," he ended. "Even if we learn nothing that will aid the SOLDIER program, it will not be a complete setback, because it will teach us more about how mako is absorbed and processed by the body, which will still know too little about. It is, in a way, carefully controlled mako-poisoning that helps create SOLDIERs, even though we know very little about how it actually works."

"Of course," Anneke repeated, still feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything she had just been told. She'd often wondered about the process that had created SOLDIERs, who had both shone on the battlefield and come to her broken by the war, but it was a closely guarded ShinRa secret, and she'd never thought she'd ever really find out, let alone the depths to which it ran. She'd often wondered if it was war or the mako that had broken so many of those men, and here was a chance to get into the thick of the studies of it and see what happened as it was happening, not fuzzy secondhand accounts from boys who barely knew any science beyond what they'd poorly absorbed in school.

"Still interested?" Hojo asked slyly, and Anneke, her eyes still on the two women in the tank, nodded. "Good. Once you've signed your transfer papers...that's when you'll really start to find out just what kind of work is happening here."

The professor turned and walked out of the lab, clearly expecting to be followed. Anneke headed after him, then paused and looked back at the girls again over her shoulder. The rush of excitement was almost enough to extinguish the slight unease leftover from first entering the room. Almost. Close enough to be getting on with. She was a scientist and this promised all kinds of new potential. It wasn't like she hadn't been involved in any of ShinRa's bizarre work before, and this was a step up from her, being transferred from her work monitoring the SOLDIERs in Junon to here assisting Hojo. And all the possibilities -

The girls were clinging to each other in the tank, and Anneke hurried out the door after Hojo.

/-

Tifa woke slower and slower with every time in the mako.

Aerith had no way to properly time it, of course - there were no clocks in their sterile cell - but she could feel it, the same as she could feel how the wrongness seemed to be deepening and taking root in the other woman somehow. It frightened her, almost irrationally, the longer it took Tifa to wake, but she had no idea what she could do to halt it.

She could only wait, and hope Tifa would talk to her. Would talk at all, rather than stare blankly at a wall until she fully came back to herself.

The silence this time stretched on and on, and finally the silence became too heavy to let continue.

"Tifa? Tifa, answer me. Are you all right? Wake up! Tifa! Please?"

The silence dragged on, but then Tifa stirred, just slightly, on her bed.

Aerith was up before she knew it, on her feet and heading to Tifa's side. She sat down on the bed next to Tifa, who was lying on her back, and put her hand on Tifa's shoulder, shaking her slightly to try and wake her up further.

She didn't how long it took for Tifa to finally - finally- open her eyes. But when she did, her eyes were glassy, unseeing, and Aerith scrambled up onto the narrow bed and curled up on her side next to Tifa. Aerith rested her cheek on her hands and waited, watching Tifa slowly come back to herself.

It took so long. It took far too long. And the tendril of wrong she had felt seemed to have thickened; turned into ivy vines that would cause - were causing - what was underneath to crumble unseen if not ripped away soon.

But she didn't know how.

"Ae-Aerith?" Tifa finally said in a small, uncertain voice, turning her head to look at Aerith.

"I'm here. And so are you now. Welcome back," Aerith said and tried to smile. She knew it didn't work very well, but it was all she had. "Are you all right?"

Tifa's opened her mouth, and then her face fell, crumpling into something scared and pained. The sudden fear on her face made something lock up inside Aerith. Tifa always seemed so strong, aside from the terrifying blank times, and Aerith felt the same overwhelming protectiveness wash over her that she felt when they were out of the tanks and Tifa was still unresponsive.

The same protectiveness, and the same sense of helplessness, and without thinking, she wrapped her too-weak arms around the other woman. Tifa tensed for a moment before she turned on her side to face Aerith, the two of them unconsciously mimicking their positions in the tank. Tifa took a deep, shuddering breath, closing her eyes as she suddenly pressed her forehead against Aerith's, and Aerith tightened her arms around her.

Aerith could feel Tifa's faint trembling, and raised her hand to tuck Tifa's head under her chin, and held her like she would a scared child.

They sat like that for several minutes before Tifa spoke, her voice thick and high-pitched with fear.

"Something is...it's wrong, but...but I don't know what. I feel...hollowed out," Tifa said, and her hair was soft under Aerith's chin. Aerith said nothing, only twined one hand in Tifa's hair and waited Tifa to speak. Tifa's words came slowly, as if she were struggling with them. Even back when Tifa had been wary and reticent, she'd never had such a hard time putting her words together. "It's like...like...as if every time they, they stick me with, with needles then in that, put me in that, that tank, parts of me are just getting, getting scooped out like ice cream. And like all that will be left is an empty box, all dented and, and ready to be thrown out."

It was a child's metaphor, in a voice that was just as much like that of a wounded child, and it hurt Aerith's heart so badly so could feel tears pricking her eyes.

"Tifa, I promise you. I promise. I don't know when and I don't know how...but we will get out of here. I know it can be done because my mother did for me. And I promise you, I'll get you out. And we'll find the Promised Land my mother told me about, and I...and somehow, we'll be safe. I'll fix this. I will. I can do it there. I just...I'm sure of it."

Tifa didn't say anything, just pressed her nose against the hollow at Aerith's neck, and began to hum a song she sometimes would sing to herself sometimes when she washed her clothes in their small sink - a song in the dialect of her home, that Aerith couldn't understand a word of - and they lay together, huddled on the narrow bed, and both eventually fell into a fitful, exhausted sleep.

/-

It didn't take Anneke long to get everything squared away - she had been living in a ShinRa dorm in Junon, and they had assigned her into rooms in the ShinRa tower on the floor many of the other scientists lived in. She packed herself up quickly and made the arrangements to have her belongings moved. It was the last day at Junon that had been the hardest, saying good-bye to many of the people she had gotten to know and treated, but she wouldn't lie to herself - she was excited, so much she felt like a child the night before her first day of school, barely able to sleep because new things would be happening soon.

She busied herself the last few days before she began working at ShinRa Tower, after she had already moved in, by wandering around Midgar and trying to get a feel for it. She'd lived there before, briefly, as a student, but that had been below-Plate. Above was like a different world.

She also made sure she would be prepared for whatever Hojo threw at her - she reviewed the surprisingly thin materials on what he was doing, strongly suspecting that much of it had been redacted and would stay that way until she was on-site. But that was fine; safer, she knew, to keep everything on site and run fewer risks of information being stolen or leaked.

Hojo met her when she arrived at the labs the next morning. Hojo was an odd man, and something about him put her off, but she wouldn't deny that the man was a genius. He could be charming, she knew, when he tried to be, but there was something false about it.

She spent her most of first day at ShinRa Tower reading through all of the files she was now provided with - I was right, she thought, the files I got before were much, much thinner than this. It was a lot to take in; she spent most of the day at her desk with pen and paper and a highlighter close at hand, jotting notes and marking things that seemed to be of interest.

There was a knock on her office door that broke her concentration. She looked up to see Hojo looking amused in the doorway. "While I appreciate your zeal," he said, and it sounded like he was about to start laughing, "you can go home now."

Anneke was startled when she looked at her clock. "When did it get this late?" she said in surprise - it was almost 2030, well past time for her to have left. "Professor, is it all right if I take these with me?"

He frowned and shook his head. "On-premise only, doctor. Even if you live in ShinRa Tower. This work is at the highest level of security."

She sighed. The highest security level meant all documents were on-site only, and even memory sticks would be scanned before allowed in or out. "Ah. All right. Back tomorrow, then," she said, then rubbed at her eyes.

"Bright and early," Hojo said, his good humor returning. "Tomorrow you start working with the samples."

Anneke felt a tiny smile touch her lips, and Hojo beamed.

/-

It was hard to tell in the cell how much time passed. There were no windows, so they couldn't see the lights of the plate going up or down to mimic the sun - or see the sun itself; Aerith had no idea if they were above Plate or below, or even if they were still in Midgar - and there were no clocks in their cell. The counted the time by when meals arrived and the changing of shifts, and the days by when the scientists came to drag them off into the mako tanks.

The weeks, Aerith counted by how often the troopers lost their temper with Tifa and attacked her, and she had a sinking feeling one was coming up soon, especially since Tifa had seemed so fragile lately. She had a horrible feeling Tifa would lash out sooner rather than later.

They both looked up when they heard the heavy footsteps of troopers coming towards their door. And pretty much as Aerith had feared, Tifa rolled off her bed and onto her feet in a way that never ended well. It just wasn't in Tifa not to fight, no matter hopeless her odds or how many times it ended with her bruised and bloodied. As much as Aerith hated seeing Tifa afterwards, she deep down admired how Tifa refused to make it easier for them. She couldn't stop them, but she wouldn't go easily.

The door opened, with two troopers and a woman Aerith had never seen before instead of the researcher who had always been there, coming in. "Both of you, on your feet and hands where I can see them!" one yelled, as the other readied his bracer.

Aerith knew that one by his voice and she felt her stomach instantly go as cold as a Blizzaga. She didn't know his name - or any of their names - but she knew his voice, and he was the more vicious of the troopers, the one who seemed to hate Tifa the most and who got violent the fastest. He was the one who had first broken Tifa's jaws, all those weeks or months ago, and quickest to hit with the butt of his rifle. Aerith got off of her bed meekly, hands raised, and she watched the woman out of the corner of her eye to see how she reacted.

Her reaction was one that made the first touch of hope Aerith had felt in a long time rise tentatively in her. The woman actually looked slightly stunned by both the troopers actions and then Aerith's own overly subservient one. While Aerith normally did as she was told, she played it up today, specifically to see what the woman would do. The woman's slight frown and double take indicated that whatever she'd been expecting, it hadn't been this.

Tifa was also frowning at Aerith's reaction, and it seemed to make her belligerent mood worse, which was the last thing Aerith wanted. She narrowed her eyes, and instead of raising her hands, she went out of her tense position into what Aerith knew by now was one of her fighting stances - and it was one of her more versatile ones, one she called a cat stance, where her weight was deceptively mostly on her back leg instead of equally balanced like it looked, so she could attack as fast as a Thundaga bolt from it.

"I SAID hands where I can see them!"

"You can see them," Tifa said, a combative smile on her face that was all teeth. "Look, they're right here. Want a closer look?" she asked almost sweetly, making her hands into fists and holding them in such a way that Aerith knew the second that trooper got near her, Tifa was going to launch an almost blindingly fast attack.

"Tifa!" Aerith yelled, "Please! Don't antagonize him, you know he - !"

"You and your godsbedamned smart mouth," the trooper said, ignoring Aerith. He had a short temper, and Tifa was very, very good at setting it off. He stepped forward and lifted his rifle, clearly intending to hit Tifa with the butt of it before she could strike at him, when the woman beside him let out a sharp, "Trooper, stand down!"

The trooper startled, instantly reacting to the command in it, and even Tifa did a double take at it. Aerith felt her own eyes go wide at the sharpness in the other woman's voice.

"But ma'am," the trooper began, "This one is - "

"Sir," she snapped, narrowing her eyes as she corrected him. "I was ShinRa military before I shifted into the medical and research side, and you will respect that. And you will obey my orders, without comment or excuses, or I will have you demoted back down to 'private' so fast your head will spin, corporal."

The woman then gave him a tight smile, and Aerith just blinked. "Or, if 'sir' is too difficult, how is 'Sergeant Major'? I was a ShinRa army medic, corporal, before I completed my medical training, and the 'army' part wasn't for show. I started OUT with a higher rank than you. So stand down."

"Sir!" the trooper said sharply, going stiff as he realized just how much she outranked him, and Aerith and Tifa looked at each other.

"Good to see we're on the same page. Do not contradict me again," the woman said, narrowing her eyes. Her spine was ramrod straight, almost as if made of steel.

"Sir, yes, sir!" he barked quickly, and stood down stiffly.

The woman turned to face them, and gave them both a faint smile as the steel in her spine seemed to soften. "Hello. My name is Dr. Anneke Laumbe. I've been brought on to keep track of and take care of you two," she said, and Aerith was shocked at being spoken to, after all these endless days, weeks, and months, like a person. The small touch of hope she had felt before grew stronger at it - the only way her mother had been able to escape with her all those years ago was because of her father. She didn't know this woman, but if she really did see them not as "samples" but as humans, deserving of the courtesy of an introduction...

It may have been only the slimmest of chances, but she would take it; would grasp at it with both hands as desperately as she could.

"My - my name is Aerith," she said, swallowing and stepping forward, and letting a bright smile come onto her face. "And this is Tifa," she said, gesturing at Tifa.

Tifa's jaw clinched, and she said nothing, just kept her wary gaze on the trooper and stayed in fighting stance.

"Pleased to meet you," the woman said, giving them a faint bow, and both of the troopers were open-mouthed at Laumbe. I can work with this, Aerith thought. And I have to."Let's begin then, shall we?" she said brightly. Then she turned to level a sharp glare at the trooper who was always the most violent with them. "After the Confuse has been cast, you will stand down until I give the order not to," she said. "Only if there is a clear and present danger of injury will you be given permission to lay hands on either of them. And you will keep your firearm holstered until otherwise authorized. Am I clear?" she said, narrowing her eyes.

"Yes, sir," the trooper said, with a look on his face like he had tasted curdled milk. "Understood, sir."

"Good," she said. "Ladies, I believe you know the drill. Let's just go ahead and get started, since I don't want to start out behind schedule. Derrison, if you please," she said through tightened lips while giving the other trooper a nod, and he raised his arm with the bracer and cast.

/-

The winter is beginning to break.

It is still bitterly cold, since they're close to the mountains, but Tifa had grown up in these mountains, and she knows what the air feels like when the season is finally changing.

She doesn't know why they were back in Narsland, since her master has always refused to answer whenever she asks where they're going. She accepts that she must simply trust in him and go where he leads. He is her master and he is sometimes capricious and inscrutable. But he is still teaching her, and she wants him to continue, so she has learned to bite back her questions, for all it galls her not to know.

But now she knows. She knows this area, this valley. She knows it best from the other side, but still, she knows it.

They are close to Nibelheim. She is close to home.

She won't ask him to take her home. She doesn't know if she wants to go; if she is ready to go...or if she's ready to not go; if they continue past Nibelheim, no closer than they are now. She's not sure which will hurt more, seeing it or being so close and not knowing what has become of it.

They walk through the valley without a word. The valley is patchy with half-melted snow, but peaking through is the surest sign yet of spring - the delicate purple bergtränen flowers, which have begun to fill the valley with their scent.

She is so close to home she can taste it. Mt. Nibel is looming before them, and once they cross it, only a day or so...

Her master stops abruptly. "You know where we are," he said, turning towards her.

Tifa nodded.

"Do you know why we're here?"

She shook her head, not knowing where this conversation could be going.

"We are going back to Nibelheim. Because you are going to see," her master says, his voice as blanks as his smooth, featureless face, "exactly what there is for you in your old home. You still rage, loudly, and rail against ShinRa despite everything I have told you. So you must see for yourself, since my words consistently fall on deaf ears. You will see exactly what ShinRa has done and the power they have."

He turns and walks away. Tifa stands there, open-mouthed, and the wind blows through the flowers; the scent of the bergtränen filling the air and her nose, obliterating all else.

/-

Anneke was preparing for a fight, but she had already decided she would not be backing down.

"I want Trooper Oritz removed from this assignment," Anneke said, deciding not to waste any time on a preamble once the door closed behind her in Hojo's office.

Hojo raised an eyebrow. "Oh? I've no idea who he is; they all look alike with their helmets. Why do you want him removed?"

"He is unnecessarily violent and antagonistic towards the test subjects. Tifa - XVIII," she said to his blank look, "in particular." After she had seen how he had reacted to Tifa, Anneke had gone back through their notes on the subjects, and had seen redacted medical reports of injuries. She had no idea how badly Tifa had been injured, but Anneke was no fool.

"Ahh, yes, that one. Yes, he has been a bit of a problem. Hot headed. But," Hojo said, giving her a shrug, "he is also good at handling XVIII. She is...violent, when she wishes to be."

Anneke felt her eyes narrowing - it didn't make sense that a volunteer subject would be a violent case, let alone so violent she required such harsh treatment, and if she was that violent, why under the Heavens were they using her as a test for SOLDIER? It seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. "Why is she so violent?"

Hojo looked annoyed. "Why should I know? You are the one with a knowledge of psychiatry. That IS why you were brought on," he said sharply. "Calm her down."

Anneke felt her chin raise defensively. "Then get rid of Oritz. As long as he's there, she will likely remain antagonistic. I can tell you that right now. And that will likely get worse as she undergoes SOLDIER training."

"Changing the rotation will be difficult."

"Why do I even need two troopers? I am already equipped with a bracer and I did serve in the war, so I'm strong enough to cast rudimentary materia without problems. Instead of one trooper guarding and one casting, give me one trooper and a Confuse of my own."

"Now Anneke..." he began, and she felt herself bristling.

"I have handled full SOLDIERs in the midst of war flashbacks on my own, professor. That is why I am here, is it not? I will not be able to 'handle' them if they see me with the enemy. And Oritz is the enemy to them, that much was very clear."

Hojo waved a hand in the air. "Fine, fine, if you think you can handle the samples without as much backup, I don't care. The idea for bringing you on was so I would not be bothered with these mundane trivialities."

She fought the urge to grind her teeth. "Thank you, sir," she said instead.

"Is that all?"

"Not quite. I'd also like to change procedure a bit. I think it might be best to cast Confuse closer to insertion in the tanks. It just seems...cruel to do so in their room. As well as dangerous. It means there is greater need for restraints and a greater risk for injury."

"The troopers are armed and wearing armor. XVIII can't injure them too badly."

"I wasn't talking about them, I was talking about her. And, if she is starting the SOLDIER process, her not being able to injure them unarmed will not last long. Trust me on that," Anneke said darkly. It was suddenly clear to her that Hojo was underestimating what exactly a SOLDIER was capable of, for all he was the father of the project. Or perhaps he was underestimating his test subjects because they were women. Either way, something like that could be a fatal mistake, and she would be damned if she would be the one paying for it.

She had let her guard down once around an unstable SOLDIER. And it was why she had never gone unequipped again. She still had nightmares, of glowing brown eyes too close to her own, and the feeling of rock-hard hands in an unbreakable grip around her throat before being thrown like a rag doll across the room.

Underestimating SOLDIERs was not a mistake she ever made again.

"Anneke, I am a busy man. These petty logistical details are taking time away from my research. Do whatever you want with the rotation. I don't want to be bothered with anything that's not data. Am I clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"You may go," he said dismissively, looking back down towards the paperwork he'd been looking at when she came in. "I'll send you the personnel roster so you can adjust it to your liking. This is your job, not mine," he said, and she could tell when she had been dismissed.

"Thank you, sir," she said, standing and giving a bow even though he didn't bother to look up, and she felt a small thrill at the carte blanche that his words meant.

/-

When Tifa finally opened her mouth to speak, her words were not what Aerith was expecting.

"Why are you sucking up to them? To that…that bitch?"

Tifa almost never swore, and the few times she did, she always tripped over the words a bit. Because she used them so rarely, the times she did, they always felt stronger and more vehement than the casual and vulgar curses of the troopers are them. Aerith found herself slightly taken aback by them, but decided it wasn't the time to address whatever had caused so much instant venom.

"Because she might be a way out," Aerith said simply. They were curled up on Tifa's bed, as they often were after the experiments now. Tifa still woke too slowly, but she seemed to come back to herself faster this way, and Aerith wouldn't lie to herself and say she didn't find her own comfort in being so close to another person after whatever it was they ShinRa scientists were doing to them. Tifa's nose was pressed against the hollow of Aerith's throat, and being so close, Aerith could feel all the tension practically radiating off of the other woman. Tifa had been awake for a long time before she'd spoken, first lax then trembling as she tried to put herself together, then slowly growing tenser and tenser, all the while not making a sound. "We can't stay here, Tifa. We can't. But we can't escape on our own. There's no way we can get out without help. We're going to need someone on the inside to help us out, or we'll be here until we rot. Or Hojo is finished with us," she said, bitterly. "And I don't even want to think about what kind of state we'll be in by then."

"I don't like her. I don't trust her," Tifa finally said, her voice shaking slightly, and still with that too-young tinge it had when she was still recovering. "She's a scientist! She put us in that tank. She - she ordered them to hit me with that Confuse like it was nothing."

"That's neither here nor there," Aerith replied sharply. She softened the snappish words by twining her hand in Tifa's long hair and letting out a sigh. "Just...just play nice with her. We have to make her see us as people. Not…not samples. Not subjects. People.We need her to let her guard down around us so we can escape."

"I'm not sucking up to her," Tifa said hotly. She tightened her hands around the cloth of Aerith's scrubs at her waist. "I won't do it."

"Then don't," Aerith said, putting her chin on the top of Tifa's head. Tifa let out her own sigh, and Aerith could feel the soft flutter of the other woman's eyelashes against her neck as she closed her eyes. "But I will, Tifa. I'll do whatever I have to to get us out of here. We have to go, and sooner rather than later," she ended, biting her lip. She didn't want to say it, but the creeping wrongness she'd felt in Tifa was growing, and growing faster than ever, and there was something about it that terrified Aerith in a more unsettling way than she had words to express. "And this is the only way I can see to do it. It's the only way that I know canwork. Security is too tight on us. We need someone on the inside to help up, or we'll be lab rats forever."

"I don't like it," Tifa said in a small, tight voice.

"It doesn't matter," Aerith said softly, and rubbed her cheek against the top of Tifa's head. "And for the record, I don't like it, either. But I'll do what I have to to get us out of here."

"You act like I'm helpless," Tifa said. "Like I can't help."

Aerith laughed. "'Helpless' is the last word I'd use for you. But you're...you're so straightforward and honest. And that's good," Aerith said vehemently, hugging Tifa at her words. "But it won't get us out. It's a detriment in this...this twisted place. I've been dealing with ShinRa a lot longer than you have, and I grew up under the Plate, in some pretty tough areas," Aerith said. "I can play their game a little better.

"Besides, we're a team. We have to work together!" Aerith said with a smile. It didn't matter if Tifa couldn't see it; she'd hear it in her voice. "I butter her up so we get out, you beat the daylights out of everyone in our way. I'm...I'm not so good at that part."

Tifa laughed. "You've got a point. I'm way better at punching the stuffing out of people and at blowing things sky high."

"I'm leaving it to you to leave this place in shambles," Aerith said, relieved to hear Tifa's soft laugh.

"I will," Tifa said, her voice more muffled as she pressed her face slightly closer to Aerith's neck. "I'll burn it to the ground, same as they did to...to...I won't let anyone touch you once we get out of this cell. I promise."

"I'm holding you to that," Aerith said, her voice barely above a whisper, and she bit her lip, hoping that they wouldn't get out too late. She didn't know why Tifa had changed what she was going to say mid-word, but she didn't think it was because Tifa didn't want to talk about it. She'd sounded like she either couldn't gather the thought or couldn't recall it, and neither boded well. The tendrils were growing; were beginning to burrow into TIfa even more, no matter what Aerith did. It was beyond her ability to fix, but she hoped...if they could get to her mother's Promised Land, then maybe...

Long moments passed, before Tifa spoke, her voice sounding half-asleep. "I wonder what season it is."

"It's been so long. But...maybe spring? I'd like it to be spring."

"Me, too," Tifa said. "There were flowers that bloomed in very early spring, little purple ones that had the most amazing smell. They were called...they were...they... They were little purple flowers that would fill the entire little valley near home with their scent. It's how we knew spring had come, when we saw them starting to peep through the snow."

"We'll have to go see them when we get out," Aerith said, not missing how Tifa had struggled, and Tifa nodded.

"Tell me about them. About Nibelheim," Aerith said, and haltingly, her thoughts broken in places and fractured; stuttering and tripping over words and names that wouldn't come, Tifa did.

Or rather...Tifa tried. And that was enough.

/-

Dr. L has arrived, and is making changes that will hopefully end these ridiculous uncontrolled-for eruptions. And also she hopefully will not bother me with anymore tedious interruptions. Especially now that we are at a delicate stage.

I will be leaving the day after tomorrow to obtain data on the samples who had been able to defeat S. They are both quite disappointing - I am more and more convinced that it was a fluke they defeated S - but they should provide suitable control data for Project O, especially the male Nibelheim sample. When I return, we will begin full genetic manipulation of the samples in Midgar using the Jenova cells. The Midgar Nibelheim sample has been showing signs of mild mako poisoning, as well as responding as expected to Compound 164, and the introduction of Jenova cells should speed this process. There are also reports of growing closeness in the Midgar samples along with the XVIII-A sample using her abilities as an Ancient on XVIII, all of which mean the imprinting stage should go more smoothly (it is also hoped that splicing genes from the full-blooded Jenova sample into XVIII-A will increase her own abilities as an Ancient, since she is only half). If that does happen, I may use the other Midgar sample to see if that makes more feasible as a clone of SOLDIER Z instead of an S. clone, since both were utter failures in that respect. The male Nibelheim sample may not be a complete waste, if this research proves fruitful.

All in all, these are exciting times.

Hojo's notes on subject XVIII, p. 597

/-

Anneke sat back in her chair with a sigh. Professor Hojo was almost ridiculously demanding when it came to documentation. For everyone but himself,she thought in annoyance, because the man was well-known for his ability to push off paperwork he saw as beneath him onto other people, as Anneke had learned to her detriment. 'Project assistant' had also translated into "paperwork monkey," and when she wasn't documenting every speck of information she had observed or obtained from the test subjects, she was was doing Hojo's abandoned paperwork.

Still, it would be good to make herself somewhat invaluable to him. Anneke wasn't the most ambitious of people, but she also wasn't completely lacking in it, either - while she would have been content out in Junon, she'd take advantage of this chance to make a name for herself. She knew that it was because of her experience with SOLDIERs that had her out here, but she wasn't completely sure how treating SOLDIERs with PTSD exactly translated into overseeing an experiment to test if women could be brought into the project, other than she would know better than most signs of mental distress, but she wouldn't question it.

She frowned suddenly. She knew signs of PTSD, yes, but neither of the test subjects should be experiencing that. The SOLIDER program had strict psychological requirements, made stricter after the (highly classified) desertion of Generals Hewley and Rhapsodos, followed by the even more highly-classified loss of General Sephiroth and Lt. Fair. She'd only met one of them, General Hewley, when she was stationed in Wutai, and it was hardly under the best of circumstances - in the middle of a pitched battle, spells and gunfire thick in the air, and she'd still been a combat medic, trying to make it through to the injured. He'd seen her, yelled, "YOU! You're a medic?!" then was grabbing her arm and dragging her even more into the thick of it, keeping the enemies off of her while she clutched at her medical kit and tried to keep up. He dragged he over to several badly-injured men, and kept the Chochung projectiles and attacks off of her while she worked. She'd done her best, but Cure, Life, phoenix downs, and modern medicine only went so far, and two of the men still died before reinforcements could arrive.

Hewley'd been a good man, and she could tell the loss of men he'd tried to get help for weighed on him. Years later, when she looked back on both what she'd seen of him that day, and the few rumors she'd heard about his disappearance (and presumed death), and with what she knew now, she had no doubt the war had been more than he could stand, and perhaps it had been that more than anything else that had defeated him.

But that had nothing to do with her situation now. She specialized in PTSD. There was no reason two healthy girls who had volunteered for this would be under the same stresses as troopers and SOLDIERs who had seen warfare. She wasn't the only psychiatrist ShinRa had; why bring her on?

Something about the situation nagged at her, but she put it out of her mind. Who was she to question her luck?

Still, she thought, I need to observe them carefully. I need to get a baseline for who they are, so if I see a problem developing, I can say something. I'll talk to them a bit,she decided, get a read on them. How can I catch a problem if I don't know them first?

Likely that was it. It would be easier for her, a woman, to talk to two young women, and she would know if the mako was making a difference, or if the testing was getting to them. While there were other psychiatrists, there were very few women psychiatrists on the ShinRa rolls, and even fewer who knew what SOLDIERs were like and had heard from them what the process was like and the stresses that alone caused.

So it's decided, she thought, and nodded once to herself. They're my patients AND my subjects. I want this to go well, and if Hojo wanted a psychiatrist to assist him, well, it had to be for a reason, so that's what he's getting for them.

Still. Something didn't quite...I'll look over the notes again, she thought. There's got to be a hint in there why Hojo would want to bring on a psychiatrist rather than a researcher.

That settled, she picked up her pen and went back to filling out the mountain of paperwork Hojo had left behind.

/-

It was morning, and Aerith was guessing by the way her stomach woke her up that it had to be close to breakfast time. What day - how long since before they went into the tanks, or since they were brought back - she had no way of knowing, and it had long ago ceased being anything relevant. The routine was the same, even if the particulars were unclear.

The routine changed, however, when instead of the food being shoved unceremoniously through a slot in the door, the door instead opened, and the scientist from yesterday walked in, a wary trooper carrying two trays of food.

"Good morning, ladies," the woman said. "How are you?"

Both Aerith and TIfa just stared at her, dumbfounded. They looked at each other, before they looked back at the woman, and Aerith finally let out a confused, "Fine...?", her voice rising to make it a question. The trooper seemed just as wary as they did as he put the trays of food down, for all Aerith couldn't see his face.

The woman - Laumbe, if Aerith recalled correctly - blinked slightly at their reaction, then continued. "I was unaware that was such a difficult question. And there really is no right answer to 'How are you', other than a lie. You don't need my approval for your answer."

Tifa continued to stare at Laumbe. Tifa's bewildered and distrustful stare seemed to make Laumbe stumble somewhat. She focused her attention on Aerith.

"Is there anything that you need? It does seem like your accommodations are a bit...austere," she said, seeming to search for a delicate way to describe the sparse room. Both she and Tifa were wearing a pair of scrubs, with their clothes from before carefully hung and drying on the rungs of their bed frames.

"That's...that's one way to describe it," Aerith said, forcing a smile, falsely bright, to flicker across her face. Be friendly,she thought. Make her like you.

"Is there anything you need?" the woman asked again, giving the room a quick sweep with her eyes, then looking back to Aerith.

Tifa continued to stare, frowning. She only took her eyes away from the woman's face to take in the bracelet at her wrist, one very clearly equipped with materia.

"We're fine," Aerith finally said. "As much as we can be, anyway. But...a hair brush or two wouldn't go amiss."

That line made the doctor frown slightly, but the expression was quickly gone. "All right," she said, giving Aerith, and then Tifa, a small smile.

Aerith returned it; Tifa did not.

"Enjoy your breakfast. I just wanted to check in on you this morning. If you need anything, please, let me know," she said, and gestured with her head for the trooper to leave. "Good-bye," she said as she left, and Aerith and Tifa looked at each other again.

/-

"Ma'am," the trooper said once the door was closed. "I just want to state again that I don't think it's a good idea to go in there without armed escort."

"Nothing happened," Anneke said, feeling annoyed.

"This time," the trooper, Gonzales, said. "The red-headed one is usually OK, but the other one, that brown-haired girl...she's dangerous, ma'am."

"But all she did was glare at me. I've faced worse."

"This time," Gonzales repeated. "But ma'am, she's dangerous. She's a terrorist, did you know that? And a trained fighter. When she goes on the beserker, it takes at least two troopers to contain her."

"Again, noted," Anneke said.

"There should be two troopers at all times," he said, as if he had to said it to her before they even got to the door.

"I have seen combat, trooper," Anneke said, beginning to feel annoyed. "And I have faced down SOLDIERs, alone, having war flashbacks, and done it armed only with a bracer equipped with Sleep. Are you trying to tell me I should be afraid of two girls barely old enough for their Coming of Age?"

The trooper faltered at Anneke's sharp tone.

Anneke continued, irritated at once again having to assert herself and her orders. "Your concerns are appreciated and noted. However, my orders - and make no mistake, these are orders, trooper - stand. I have seen how some of you treat those girls and it is of no surprise to me that one of them is violent. You bring it some of it on yourselves, and it is going to stop.

"Get used to the new status quo, Gonzales. If you're so afraid of a teenaged girl, perhaps you should be reassigned."

She would give Gonzales credit. He didn't shrink back at the subtle insult. "I served in Wutai as well, ma'am. And that's how I know teenaged girls can be just as deadly as full-grown men. The teenaged girls over there would go just as suicider as their men. So...so just please don't underestimate her. Either of them."

Anneke softened slightly. "Noted," she said, but this time gave him a slight smile. "If there's even the slightest hint of this going south, we'll up the security. But let's see for now, all right?" She tapped her bracer. "These has served me well. I will use it if I need to."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"Now. I have some work to do. Thank you for your concern. Really," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"You're welcome, ma'am," he said, and Anneke dropped her hand and headed towards her office, mulling over his words - specifically that she was a "terrorist."

There had been no mention of that in the files. She frowned as she closed the door to her office as she realized there had been no mention at all of not only the girl being a terrorist, but of her past. For either of them.

She sat down at her desk, and tapped her finger against it as she thought.

/-

The doctor was carrying a bag, and that put Tifa on the defensive. Aerith could see it instantly, the wariness that shot through the other woman like an electric shock.

"I know it's been a few days, but I believe you asked for this," the doctor said brightly, seeming to ignore the way that all of Tifa's hackles went up, and she pulled two hairbrushes out of the bag. "I hadn't had time to go out shopping until yesterday."

Aerith blinked. She hadn't honestly expected the ShinRa doctor to listen to her request, let alone grant it. "I...thank you," she said, taking them from Laumbe. It was a small thing, a simple thing, and yet it sent waves of gratitude through her. She fought the urge to clutch them to her chest when she had them in her hands; something so small and yet something so normal, something that had been kept from them for so long, something that made them human.

"Had they not given you hairbrushes before?" the doctor asked, her eyes slightly wide. Aerate wondered how much she had given away, then felt something in her go cold and calculating.

"No," she said, choosing to give into the urge to clutch the brushes to her chest. "We've been given the very basics - toothbrushes, toilet paper, soap, two changes of clothes, other necessities - but someone must have decided brushes were too dangerous.

"Too dangerous? It's a hairbrush!"

Sorry Tifa, Aerith thought, then continued. "They don't trust us with anything that could be made into a weapon. I'm almost amazed they gave us toothbrushes."

The woman looked mildly appalled, but Aerith knew that above all else she had to be careful- push too hard and Laumbe might see through it, go too slowly and she might get swallowed up into the ShinRa mindset.

"Thank you," Aerith said instead, and tried to let all of the gratitude at them that she genuinely did feel come out.

"It...it was nothing," Laumbe said, but she looked troubled, and inside, Aerith let out a shout for joy.

/-

I have returned from the second testing site and examined Sample Z and C. I am more certain that C will make an excellent control sample. I switched them to a dummy solution to return their readings to a baseline, and will monitor both Nibelheim samples as things progress. I almost wish I had sent Dr. L there instead of assigning her to Project O, but I can not deny that since she has started working here, there have been fewer disruptions with XVIII and fewer injury reports on her, which should ensure it is at an optimal baseline, as well as allow to me see if pain had had an effect on her absorption of the compounds. It can be reintroduced if there is a lessening of absorption rates.

It will also be interesting to see the effects on XVIII-A as theJenova cells are introduced. Will this strengthen its abilities as an Ancient, I wonder? Tests will definitely need to be performed.

Hojo's notes on subject XVIII, p. 632

/-

The winter is beginning to break.

It is still bitterly cold, since they're close to the mountains, but Tifa had grown up in these mountains, and she knows what the air feels like when the season is finally changing.

She doesn't know why they were back in this area, since her master has always refused to answer whenever she asks where they're going. She accepts that she must simply trust in him and go where he leads. He is her master and he is sometimes capricious and inscrutable. But he is still teaching her, and she wants him to continue, so she has learned to bite back her questions, for all it galls her not to know.

But now she knows. She knows this area, this valley. She knows it best from the other side, but still, she knows it.

They are close to her hometown. She is close to home.

She won't ask him to take her home. She doesn't know if she wants to go; if she is ready to go...or if she's ready to not go; if they continue past the town, no closer than they are now. She's not sure which will hurt more, seeing it or being so close and not knowing what has become of it.

They walk through the valley without a word. The valley is patchy with half-melted snow, but peaking through is the surest sign yet of spring - the delicate purple flowers, which have begun to fill the valley with their scent.

She is so close to home she can taste it. The mountain is looming before them, and once they cross it, only a day or so...

Her master stops abruptly. "You know where we are," he said, turning towards her.

Tifa nodded.

"Do you know why we're here?"

She shook her head, not knowing where this conversation could be going.

"We are going back to town. Because you are going to see," her master says, his voice as blanks as his smooth, featureless face, "exactly what there is for you in your old home. You still rage, loudly, and rail against ShinRa despite everything I have told you. So you must see for yourself, since my words consistently fall on deaf ears. You will see exactly what ShinRa has done and the power they have."

He turns and walks away. Tifa stands there, open-mouthed, and the wind blows through the flowers; the scent of the purple flowers filling her nose and obliterating all other smells before dissolving her nose away.

/-

Something was...different. Aerith was unsure exactly what it was, but something was very, very different.

Very, very wrong.

She didn't know what it was that they had done to her, but they had done something. Something was different and something was wrong.

And it wasn't just wrong with her.

She could...hear her own heartbeat. It was louder, pounding in her ears. And everything was...sharp. It was as if the world had suddenly grown edges where before it was rounded, and the contrast of the world had been turned up several notches. Everything was more, but not like it had been before. Before, she could feel the pulse of life around her, but now...she had always felt as if she could see the strings of life, stitching it all together, but now she could see how to pull it apart instead of knitting it stronger, and something about that left her feeling cold.

She realized she was shivering. She didn't know when she had started, or why, but...

Her teeth were chattering and she was shivering and shaking and everything was so cold...

Everything after that was a blur.

/-

She was in Tifa's bed. That wasn't uncommon, not after they woke from the mako, but it was the first time that Aerith had no memory of how she'd gotten there. And this time, she wasn't the one holding Tifa, to see her through the worst of it until she came back to herself - she was instead in Tifa's arms, clinging to her as she would have her mother when she was frightened by nightmares.

The world was still too sharp; the threads of life still too pullable, and she shut her eyes and buried her face against Tifa's shoulder. She felt Tifa stir against her and she clutched at the scratchy, flimsy shirt of Tifa's scrubs even tighter.

I can't, Aerith thought, suddenly panicked. I can't be strong, not right now, I can't something is...don't push me away, not right now, I can't, please...

And Tifa, bless all the gods, didn't push her away as she came to, as she still sometimes did, Tifa only let out a faint, distressed sound of her own, and wrapped her arms tighter around Aerith.

"Something...something is wrong," Tifa said, her voice sounding strange, and Aerith shut her eyes and pressed her face tighter against Tifa, and then she nodded. She could hear Tifa's heart beating, quick and panicked, and some part of her...some terrifying, alien part that she had never felt before, relished that panic. She nodded again, then tears burst from her eyes and she wept, wept at how the world had been flipped on its axis and turned upside down, at that horrible, hateful feeling inside her that had been somehow put inside of her, and Tifa, first tentatively and then more certain of herself, stroked Aerith's hair until she stopped.

/-

Aerith's feeling that something was very, very wrong with them, something new and terrible, was reaffirmed when she finally blearily looked up and at Tifa.

"Tifa...your eyes," Aerith blurted out. "They're...they're..."

Tifa's eyes were as round as Aerith knew hers had to be. "Glowing," she said, and swallowed.

"Yeah. How did you...?" Aerith began.

"Because yours are," Tifa said before she could finish the question, and things suddenly began to make a sick kind of sense. Aerith had seen eyes glowing like that before, like Tifa's - and like hers, for all part of her desperately wanted to reject it - she had seen blue eyes glowing like the sky she never saw.

"SOLDIERs...they're turning us into SOLDIERs," Aerith whispered, more to herself than to Tifa.

"No. No. No, no, no, no, no!" Tifa let out, first slowly, then in a long, panicked stream. "No no no no no, they can't, they - !" she said, jumping out of the bed almost violently. She ran to the mirror and peered at her own reflection; her hands gripping the edges of the sink as she did so.

"No...no no no no no, they can't; I can't be, this is, no - !" she yelled, and suddenly, the edges of the sink made a horrible wrenching sound, as the metal twisted under Tifa's hands.

Tifa let go of the sink and backed away from it as if it were on fire.

She turned to Aerith, her eyes wide and panicked. "I can't...they can't do this to me, I don't want anything to do with ShinRa, or SOLDIERs, especially not SOLDIERs, bot after they...they destroyed my home, destroyed Ni - Ni - my home, they destroyed it, they took it away from me, they can't, they can't, they took my...my father? - and now - !"

Tifa whirled around and ripped the sink out from its fixture to the wall, and slammed it into the mirror, shattering it into a rain of shards, with a loud cry, then hurled it across the room, screaming. Aerith watched, wide-eyed and shocked, as Tifa began to throw everything she could get her hands on, wrenching and twisting metal, yet making not a dent in the walls of their cell.

When everything in the room was all but destroyed, Tifa stood in the middle of the chaos, breathing heavily and blinking back tears of rage, bleeding from her hands and tiny cuts from the shattered mirror that even now were starting to heal as Aerith watched, then Tifa sank abruptly down to her knees with a sob.

Aerith was by Tifa's side before she knew she had moved. It made it easier, it was something stable, to try and calm Tifa down. It was something she could do, despite how inside of her something felt twisted; something that she understood, even if now she could see now how changing a word or caress could break Tifa further. She pushed those alien ideas away as vehemently as Tifa had destroyed the room; rejected those strange and foreign thoughts suddenly inside of her, and did so by clutching tightly to what made her her, at that feeling that told her how to protect instead of destroy.

"I can't. I can't, I can't, I just can't be," Tifa said in a broken voice. "They're...everything I hate, everything I fought against, they...they destroyed my home, my father, they..." she said, before her voice cracked. "I can't be a SOLDIER, I can't!"

"And you won't," Aerith said, despite the tendril of wrongness now inside her whispering to say the opposite. "You won't be what they were. You won't do what they did. We won't be what they want us to be. We won't!" Aerith said, her voice rising and vehement, and her words both for Tifa and herself. She wouldn't be the thing they were making her into; the thing that could only destroy. She wouldn't be that thing, and she for damn sure wouldn't let Tifa become that thing either.

"We're not going to be SOLDIERs. We're going to be something else entirely," Aerith said, and the certainty in her voice surprised even her. "And they're going to find out the hard way they shouldn't have done this to us."

"No. No, they shouldn't have," Tifa said, and there was fire in her voice.

Good girl, Aerith thought, and ignored how that alien thing in her seemed to smile.

/-

The words came out of Anneke's mouth before she even realized she'd opened her mouth to say them. "What under the heavens - ?!"

The room was, to put it kindly, a disaster area. There had clearly been some attempt made to clean, but only so much could be done about a sink ripped from its mooring and flung so hard it was twisted and bent, a smashed mirror, and a bed frame twisted almost beyond repair.

Well. If nothing else, the levels of destruction showed that the reinforcement of the walls for SOLDIER-level punishment had been adequate. Little else had been, but that had been, at the least.

The brown-haired woman, Tifa, glared at her from a corner of the room that she had clearly staked out as her territory. Tifa was sitting in the corner with her knees drawn up and her head buried in her arms, but she'd looked up to glare before dropping her head back, so only the top of her head was visible.

Aerith, the other subject, didn't look much happier to see her. "What are you doing to us?" she said instead, and the anger in her gaze and voice were almost palpable. "Why are you turning us into SOLDIERs?"

Anneke blinked. This was...not what she was expecting. "What happened here?" Anneke said.

"Answer my question!" Aerith yelled.

"Answer mine first," Anneke snapped, unaccustomed and ill-appreciative for being yelled at by those under her care. There were times when it was unavoidable, and times when it was therapeutic, but often it was something needing to be put down and soothed, and quickly. That was even more true when dealing with SOLDIERs, who needed to be calmed quickly - or given a chain of command to follow - when they were having meltdowns.

Suddenly, Anneke could see why Hojo might have wanted someone like her on hand.

"What does it look like?" Tifa said unexpectedly, raising her head. The heat in her gaze was almost palpable, and Anneke found herself mentally reaching for her materia; ready to cast Sleep should the need arise.

"It looks like someone ripped the sink from the wall and threw it into every available surface," Anneke said, keeping her voice mild.

"Aren't you a sharp one," Tifa let out, then wrapped her arms tighter around her knees and glared.

"Well. There's your answer," Aerith said, lifting her jaw. "Will you answer mine now?"

"You're not being turned into SOLDIERs per se," Anneke said, knowing how important it was for honesty right now. Both women looked like they were ready to launch themselves at her throat, and while she'd certainly seen that before, it was unnerving seeing it from someone like Aerith, who until now had been unfailingly polite. "However, you are being treated as prototypes for a plan for potential female SOLDIERs. Until now, the program has been exclusively male. You'll change that," she said, and smiled, filled with pride.

And she realized a second later that she had done the wrong thing.

"Are you fucking kidding me?!" Tifa roared, jumping to her feet. "The last fucking prototype...your fucking Se-Sephi...that first fucking SOLDIER you grew in your labs, he...he fucking destroyed my home! Burned it all! And the others, they helped him and...and...my father, he...SOLDIERs..."

She broke off, almost incoherent in her rage, her hands balled into fists and her entire body shaking.

"I think you should leave," Aerith said, and there was steel in her voice. "I think you should leave right now."

There were times when you stayed. There were times when you pushed. And there were times when you left, and Anneke knew when it was time for which. "I think perhaps you're right," Anneke said, because as suddenly as she was filled with questions and concerns, she knew now was not the time to push. Clearly there were things she had not been told and questions she needed to take to Hojo, but more than that, she needed to not be in the room right now - not when people fresh and new to SOLDIER strength were not adjusting well and in no mood to discuss it, and it was clear she would not be able to actually help them adjust, not yet, and might do more harm than good by blundering about not knowing the situation; harm both to them psychologically and to her physically. She would return in an hour, after they had both calmed down. "I'll be back, when you're ready to talk," she said mildly. She knew you couldn't force anyone to talk, let alone SOLDIERs, and now was not the time. They needed to process this, and she needed to find out how it was they hadn't known this was going to happen. "I'll leave. It's clear you're upset, and I do want to know why."

Tifa responded to that by screaming, then moving so fast she was almost a blur, picking up the twisted remains of the sink and flinging it at the wall by Anneke's head.

The wall barely dented; the sink crumpled.

"Please. Leave," Aerith said, breathing hard through her nose and each word clipped and careful, and Anneke ducked out of the door as soon as she could get it open, with her heart in her throat and beating far too quickly, and ran.

/-

Hojo looked up from his paperwork with slight annoyance when he heard a firm rapping on his door. It was rare that he felt like paperwork and didn't foist it onto others, but when there was paperwork only he could do, and he was in a mind to be bothered with it, he didn't like being disturbed. And here was someone disturbing him.

He pushed the button for the intercom. "Can it wait?" he said, not bothering with niceties.

"No," Dr. Laumbe's voice said back to him, and Hojo sighed. Laumbe had been good at making sure he was not bothered, all in all, so he figured it must be something in need of his attention.

"Very well," he said crossly, and pushed the button to unlock and open the door. "Come in."

Laumbe walked in stiffly, and sat down in the chair across from just as stiffly. "Professor, something a bit...disturbing has happened."

Hojo put down his pen. "Yes? Can you not handle your job?"

Laumbe bristled. "I can and have. But I have a few...reservations, and things I would like to have cleared up about the project."

"Go on, then."

"First, just to let you know, the reinforcements for SOLDIER-level occupants was insufficient. They are still secure, but...the proper reinforcements were not made, especially given the...history...Lockheart has with violence against troopers," Laumbe said, and frowned as she spoke, as if something were occurring to her. "The walls held, but little else did in light of her...tantrum today," she said, after having seemed to search for the word she wanted. "I would have liked to have been apprised of what reinforcements had and had not been done, so I could have tried to have had the gaps filled," she said, frowning again.

Hojo could tell why she was still single. The woman might have been attractive if only she would smile, but she seemed to prefer screwing her face up like she was smelling something bad. At least she's good at her job, he thought.

"Such as?"

"Lockheart - " she began, and Hojo spoke over her.

"Subject XVIII," he said curtly.

"She has a name."

"It is a subject. That is how you will refer to it."

Laumbe blinked and frowned again, then continued without amending her opening. "Ripped the sink from the wall and destroyed it. She - the subject also destroyed their beds. The only thing that held was the wall. The most damage it took was a dent when she flung the sink at wall by my head, which will attest to how much force she - how much force was involved."

"Why did it throw a sink at your head?" Hojo asked, curious despite himself.

"Because I told them they were the tests for allowing women into the SOLDIER program. I thought they would be pleased. They...were not. Which leads me to why I am here."

Hojo gestured for her to go on. He had the feeling things were about to become...tedious.

"And why are you here?" he asked, steepling his fingers together.

Laumbe took a deep breath. "They way they reacted has led me to believe that they did not know what was going to happen, and that if they had, they would not have agreed to it. The way they are acting made it seem as if...as if they had volunteered for or consented to any of this medical testing."

Hojo smiled. "That's because they hadn't. They are subjects, Dr. Laumbe. Samples. They have no consent to give or rights to volunteer."

"What do you mean, they didn't volunteer?" Anneke said, sounding horrified, and Hojo groaned on the inside. This is why he hated working with women sometimes; they were far too soft.

"As I said. They are test subjects. Nothing more. XVIII is a terrorist and responsible for more than one power plant bombing. And XVIII-A is an escaped subject. Or rather, a stolen subject. It was stolen by a former employee for his own...purposes. Subject XVIII-A never should have left the labs to begin with. It has been and always will be ShinRa property."

"That's - " Anneke began, seeming more and more appalled as Hojo spoke. "You can't - this is unethical!"

"Unethical?" Hojo said, his voice rising with anger on the last note. "Dr. Laumbe. I have a question for you. Where is it, exactly," Hojo said coldly, "that you think the advances for the SOLDIER program came from?"

Anneke faltered.

"They came from test subjects, born in this lab. It was human testing that created them. And let's take this further," Hojo said, just as coldly, "where do you think our knowledge of treating illness and the progression of illnesses comes from, nothing? Do you think everyone ever used in science signed a nice little waver," he said with a sneer, "before doctors and professors tested new procedures on them? Are you really so naive? Do you have any idea what this could mean for preventing and treating mako poisoning in the future? Right now, the biggest thing limiting the SOLDIER program - and the greatest risk to those working in mako reactors or studying mako - is the risk of mako poisoning. If we do not understand how it works and every step of how the mako disrupts the brain, then we have no hope of ever being able to treat it. Yes, we are inducing mako poisoning in someone with a rare susceptibility due to life-long mako exposure, in order to find a way to undo the damage that is caused. My intended end result," he said, narrowing his eyes, "is that XVIII not be one of the drooling husks that mako poisoning normally ends in. And that if, gods forbid, the subject does give in, that we learn more about how it progresses and better discover how to treat it. Because right now, we have nothing.

"I was willing," Hojo said, carefully letting a touch of what almost seemed like pain in his voice, "to sacrifice my own son for the sake of improving the world, and you falter over a terrorist? Someone who has bombed Midgar and already caused death and destruction? Are you that weak-willed?" he said, and shot a glance at the bracer she kept equipped, than back at her face. She looked stung by that, and a muscle in her face twitched.

"Empathy is a laudable trait," he said, lying with a glare, "but it has no place in the laboratory, where sacrifices have to be made for the greater good. What is 'unethical'? To risk countless thousands of lives for two, and two who would see others dead themselves? How many have died in bombs these terrorists have set? How many workers became mako poisoned themselves because of the bombs the very terrorist you're talking about has herself set? That last bomb they planted, three workers got mako poisoning. What happened to them, you can lay at her feet. Should she not be a part of their aid?

"And how many people didn't die because the SOLDIERs were able to end the war more quickly? How many will not suffer because of what we learn here from them? You're angry over two when the future lives that could be saved here are in the hundreds of thousands. Have you no sense of balance, or has empathy," he said, spitting the word out with the same disgust he'd had calling her 'weak,' "robbed you of that as well?" He pushed up his glasses. "It was empathy that first caused you to need that Sleep materia you yourself call a crutch, correct?"

She flinched again, then went ramrod straight as her face went red.

"I understand," she said, her voice quiet and ashamed. "I - I withdraw my objections. If you will excuse me," she said, and gave him a quick bow, not meeting his eyes, before hurrying out of the room.

A slow smile broke out over Hojo's face.

Really, it was far too easy sometimes.

/-

She felt like a fool. She could feel how red her face was, and she hated it.

As much as she hated to admit it, Hojo was right. Scientific and medical progress didn't come without sacrifices. Someone had to be the ones they learned for, so they could save countless lives later. What were one or two lives, in the face of countless hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps millions, that could be aided by what was discovered?

And if what he'd said about Tifa was true, that she was a terrorist...

Mako poisoning wasn't pretty. It wasn't nice, what it did to someone. It could rip away someone's mind; leave them so they had nothing left. You would be just an empty husk, and it was only if you were lucky, if you were very, very lucky, that you managed to somehow regain some kind of personality and consciousness afterwards. Most, the vast majority, were just left...empty, as if their souls had been ripped right out of their bodies.

That was what had happened to the victims of the last terrorist attack. The one Tifa - XVIII, she told herself firmly - had been involved with.

She couldn't afford to be soft. She couldn't. Anneke already knew the risks of getting too invested in your patients' lives - it was something that was far too easy to do when you listened to them sob through memories of the war - and, as Hojo had pointed out, now kept material equipped at all times as a result of her own weakness and empathy.

You have to toughen up, girl, she thought to herself. Think about what this could mean. What we could discover. Who we could one day save.

Anneke closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then raised her head, opened her eyes, and walked forward.

She wouldn't be so weak again.

/-

Despite the initial...uncertainties regarding Dr. L and her overly anthropomorphizing the test samples, things have at last settled down, and she seems fully invested in the project now. The latest sets of numbers are very exciting. The samples have taken on even more SOLDIER traits. More importantly, XVIII is beginning to show symptoms of mako poisoning, but not nearly to the extent that the other N sample has. Contact with the XVIII-A sample may be why the mako poisoning is developing at a retarded pace. I will increase its mako exposure, as well as introduce some genetic material from the A sample, to see if it either speeds the imprinting process or retards the mako poisoning further - either direction will prove invaluable and may allow recovery of the first N sample.

To increase the chance of imprinting, however, I believe that reintroducing injury to the XVIII sample may be necessary. There has been a drop off in the A sample using it's abilities as an Ancient since the cessation of injury to XVIII, which may explain why it has been exhibiting them less. If there is no need, of course, it will not expend the energy.

I will see about reassigning that Trooper Laumbe had removed, but adjust the schedule so he is here on her off days. I wouldn't want to risk her empathy making another unwelcome appearance.

Hojo's notes on subject XVIII, p. 642

/-

Tifa was...not all right.

She hadn't been anything that could be called "all right" for a long time, but it was almost as if being turned into a SOLDIER had broken something inside of her, and Aerith had no idea what to do to fix it.

It didn't help that whatever they had done to her had made it harder for her to hear what was wrong.

"Tifa?"

"What?" Tifa finally said shortly, looking over at Aerith. Until then, she had been sitting on her bed, staring off into nothing with no expression on her face. Just...sitting there, not moving, not looking at anything, not doing anything. Tifa wasn't one to normally sit still for very long – she could be still and easily, could almost radiate stillness some times – but it never lasted long, because even her fits of stillness usually only seemed like interludes. But this...it was as if someone had unplugged her, or broken her strings. Or ripped something vital away from her.

Aerith knew far too well that it was most likely some horrible amalgam of all three.

"Are...Are you OK?"

Tifa just looked at her. "Are you seriously asking me that question? Here?"

Aerith felt her shoulders slump. "I know that - " she began, then stopped abruptly when the door opened. A scientist, who wasn't Dr. Laumbe, holding a clipboard walked in, accompanied by several troopers, far more than usually came for them, and, most worryingly, who all seemed heavily armed.

Tifa suddenly sprang to life, leaping to her feet with her teeth bared.

"Nuh uh uh," one of the troopers said, and Aerith felt herself go cold at that voice.

Him. The one that used to enjoy pushing Tifa just so she would attack and then he could hit her. He hadn't been around since that first day Dr. Laumbe had come, but now he was back, and Dr. Laumbe was no where in sight.

Tifa let out a scream and launched herself at him almost instantly, moving so quickly with her new SOLDIER speed that she was almost a blur.

They were apparently anticipating her speed, and she was hit with a Slow almost immediately. It brought her back to normal speed, and then she was hit almost immediately with more spells, until she couldn't movie.

It wouldn't last long, but...

"Miss me?" the Trooper who had long tormented Tifa said with a smile, and Aerith knew things were about to become very, very bad.

/-

They trade off who prepares meals. Her master is used to cooking for himself, and it always surprises her a little for a man to cook his own food - it just wasn't like that back home.

She had long been the one cooking at home - she had taken over cooking after her mother died - so she is used to it.

She doesn't really know when she starts doing it. Maybe because it is a nice day - early spring, not too warm and not too cold - there are no monsters about, and the trees are just beginning to bloom a beautiful pale lavender almost the same color as the flowers near home that will be blooming soon. But she starts humming as she cooks, and then that turns into her singing quietly.

It is a song her mother used to sing, one that is a well-known and traditional song around the area. It is an old song, and so, like most old songs, in dialect.

'Wait, my lass,' the young lad said,

I'll cross o'er the mountains

And far to the sea,

And there I'll make my name

And when I a famed man be,

You will be my bride'

His lass, she bade him on his way,

And then to him she said,

"Where you go, there will I be

If you go to the mountains,

Then I'll be your path

And guide you your way home

If you go far 'cross the sea,

Then I'll be the star

That lights you back to me

"Standard," her master says sharply, though his face had no mouth to speak.

Something in her snaps; breaks. She is tired; it has been a long day of traveling and training, and this small thing is all she has now to connect her to her mother. She knows to only use Standard when they are near people, and until that instant, when she speaks to him, but this - this is her own time, to herself, and she is suddenly angry beyond belief he would try to dictate how she speaks - how she sings - to herself. "Ich will nicht!" she yells angrily. "Ich will nicht vergessen! Ich werde nicht vergessen!"

The open-handed slap her teacher gave her that wiped away her mouth was the first and only time he had ever struck her. Yes, she had been hit by him many times, when he trained her, but this was different; it was something completely devastating in a way that none of the bruises she'd ever gotten from being taught to fight had ever been.

"You speak using words that have vanished from the world," he said sharply. "Never speak them again, unless you wish to vanish as well."

Her teacher walked away from her angrily, and that day was the last that she had a mouth to speak with it at all.

Tifa had often, before Dr. Laumbe started, been in terrible shape after the experiments. But she was so much worse now, and that despite her SOLDIER abilities and strength.

The Troopers had hurt her, very badly, and she'd had to watch as they did so. Tifa was strong, but strength had limits and even SOLDIERs could be hurt, and those damned Troopers had seemed to take the fact that Tifa could take more damage to be a challenge. Aerith had screamed at them to stop, had tried to pull them away and get in the way, anything to make them just stop, until they hit her with a Sleep, and then there was nothing until she woke up outside of the tanks, back in their cell, both reeking of mako.

Tifa's body healed faster now, on its own, and that was a small comfort. The bruises that would have been there after a beating were almost gone; the internal damage faded to survivable, the bones already beginning to knit together.

Aerith could feel the power to fix it all in the scraps of life around her, but she could also feel how to rend it all apart; how to slow that healing process down and shatter it, and that terrified her.

"Tifa...Tifa, are you all right?!" Aerith asked, a note of desperation in her voice.

Tifa didn't answer; just stared up at the ceiling blankly, humming a song she would sometimes sing to herself when she was bored, but in a strange, hesitant and disjointed way that terrified Aerith.

Aerith got off her her bed and walked over to Tifa, and sat down next to her on Tifa's bed.

Tifa didn't move for the longest time, and Aerith could all but feel the pain radiating off of her. But she waited, not sure anymore what the right or wrong thing to do was. So she sat there, hating everything, hating how hurt Tifa was, hating how she didn't trust herself to try and fix it anymore, hated being here.

Tifa continued to stare blankly at the ceiling, humming disconcertingly, and Aerith despaired.

Tifa continued to stare at the ceiling, even when she tentatively moved her hand, until her fingers brushed over Aerith's.

Aerith felt her face crumple, felt something in her bend and break, and she wrapped her hand around Tifa's, so tightly she could feel the bones inside Tifa's hand and fingers being pressed together; clutched at Tifa's hand even though she knew it had to be hurting the other woman, and then she tried to force herself to let go, to stop, to -

"I miss the flowers. What...what were they called? They were blue..." Tifa whispered softly then trailed off, and Aerith began to hum the song Tifa had been humming wrong; the song that Aerith sudden realized she hadn't heard Tifa sing or hum until now in a very long time, that song from her home, and that was something that scared her far more than the times Tifa had hummed it oblivious to everything around her.

She never sang it anymore, that song in her Narsland dialect that Aerith couldn't make heads or tails of, and hadn't for the gods only knew how long, when before, when they had first arrived, she would sing it to herself almost fiercely, as if to remind herself of who she was.

Aerith had heard it enough times to know how it went, but she wondered how long before it was too late and there was nothing else she could do but hum songs she couldn't sing.

"I'll get us out of here," she said suddenly, almost desperately, breaking off the words and relaxing the grip she had on Tifa's hand. "Somehow, I'm going to get us out of here."

Tifa didn't answer, but she squeezed at Aerith's hand this time, as tightly has Aerith had been to her own, and stared at the ceiling in silence.

Anneke picked up her cup of coffee and took a sip as she read over the paperwork and test results. Things were definitely looking promising - Aerith and Tifa (no, she told herself. She had almost broken herself of the habit, but it still remained. They're not "Aerith and Tifa." They're XVIII-A and XVIII) were showing a smoothing out and strengthening of the results of undergoing the SOLDIER process. XVIII's results were worrying, but only insofar as they indicated the beginnings of mako poisoning. But despite that, she was still up and about; still functioning relatively normally, and the results were already intently promising.

She froze just as she was about to take another sip.

"Healing increased...how would they know that?" she said to herself, frowning. There had been notes about XVIII-A using her latent Ancient abilities to heal injuries XVIII had received - and oh, by the gods, just imagine if they could figure out how she did that; it could revolutionize everything they knew about medicine and treatments - but those had ended when Anneke had reassigned the abusive Troopers. So how had...?

She put her coffee mug down. The dates on those results was from a week she had been in Junon. The doctor who had taken her position had asked her to come back for an emergency with one of the SOLDIERs. Hojo had let her go without complaint, and now she found herself suspicious as to why the man, who had a reputation for not playing well with others, hadn't said a word.

It didn't take long to pull up the records and see who had been on staff that day, and her eyes narrowed in anger when she saw Oritz's name before she let out a sharp curse in Narslandish.

She had had him removed for a reason, and seeing both his name and the notes on injuries and the speed of healing were making her see red.

It was one thing to cause damage in the hopes of improvements for the good of everyone. But this, this was just one man's sadism and cruelty being given sanction, and it was disgusting.

She was putting her foot down on this one.

"What do you want?" Aerith said, instead of a greeting, when Dr. Laumbe walked in.

The older woman flinched slightly, before she frowned. "I came to see how you're doing. And to find out what happened a few weeks ago, when I was away."

Aerith slouched back against the wall instead of sitting up straight on her bed, as she had been when the doors first opened.

"Why do you want to know?" she asked warily.

"Because I think something that shouldn't have happened did. Something I specifically changed the staff assignments here to ensure it didn't. But I need to know exactly what."

"That trooper that hates Tifa happened," Aerith said, and she didn't try to keep the bitterness out of her voice. "We're supposedly SOLDIER-equivalent now, right? Didn't mean anything, not when they've got Materia and we don't," she spat out, narrowing her eyes at the equipped bracer Laumbe had equipped.

Laumbe stared at Aerith wide-eyed and seeming shocked at Aerith's outburst, and Aerith found herself not giving a single damn. "Tifa, I'd like your point of view," Laumbe said, turning to face Tifa, and Aerith laughed bitterly before looking away.

Tifa didn't say a word. Not a single thing, just glared daggers at Dr. Laumbe and settled into a sullen silence.

"I can't do anything if you won't talk to me," Laumbe said, and Aerith wanted to scream. "Listen, I know you don't like or trust us, but - "

"Just stop," Aerith interrupted. "Tifa hasn't said anything for...I don't even know how long. Time doesn't matter in here. Two weeks? It's been too long, is what it's been. If I can't get her to talk, you're really not going to."

Laumbe looked shocked. "What?"

"She hasn't said anything. Not a word," Aerith said, and she felt as if her heart were breaking. She wanted to hold on to her anger, but she couldn't, not in the face of something like this and someone, even if it was fake, seeming like maybe they cared. There had been nothing but silence from Tifa since that horrible day. She would sometimes hum brokenly, but there hadn't been any words. Not a single one. Tifa would nod or shake her head, and she would gesture, but...but nothing else. And the worst thing was, Tifa was acting as if she had always been mute; as if she had never had words to speak, and it terrified Aerith to no end, because when she reached out, with that part of her that was old, all there was in Tifa was a black nothingness; as if the tendrils of wrong she had felt for so long had eaten away like ivy at the structures underneath, and they had all started to crumble away into dust.

"This is...I should have been notified of this," Laumbe said, seemingly more to herself than to Aerith or Tifa.

Aerith laughed. She couldn't help it, and the laugh felt wrong. "Who would have told you? Do you think anyone listens to us, let alone even talks to us? Says more to us than to bark orders? They all probably think it's better if we can't talk," she ended in a mutter, the words bitter, as they anger came back.

"Well, I'm talking to you," Laumbe said, frowning. "And I want to know what happened. Now more than ever."

"What happened is ShinRa kidnapped us. What happened is ShinRa is running sick experiments on us just because they can. What happened is that they're destroying us, bit by bit, eating away at what we are, just because we're not people to anyone here. Just samples."

Aerith remembered all too well, the days and weeks leading up to she and her mother escaping; remembered her mother telling her, fervently, that her name was not "the impure sample." And then to be back here, to be back to being 'sample', being XVIII-A, not even the 'name' she'd had as a child...

"They're doing worse than killing us," Aerith said, and looked away, looked at the corner, so she wouldn't burst into tears.

It didn't work. It didn't stop them. But it at least slowed them, made them something should could blink away and ignore.

There was a long silence before she heard the sound of a door opening.

She almost thought she heard a whispered, "I'm sorry" before the door closed shut again.

Upon Dr. Laumbe discovering that the Trooper she has issues with had been reassigned back to the project, she threatened to quit the project unless he was removed permanently, I've had to temporarily remove him. It's tedious to find another Trooper as capable as him in regards to pain experiments, but not impossible, whereas replacing Laumbe would be far more tedious, despite her tendencies. She is mostly on board and hasn't raised any objections otherwise, so I can throw her this bone.

More importantly, XVIII is showing definite signs of mako poisoning, and, most promisingly, despite this, she is far more functional than the other Nibelheim sample was at this same stage of poisoning, and she shows signs of mirroring what XVIII-A does, meaning she may be developing Ohnegesichterin 'face stealing' traits and imprinting. There does seem to be some flow in the opposite direction, as evidence by Dr. Laumbe's notes about XVIII-A being more angry than it used to be, but that is of little matter, provided it is small. It could, in fact, but useful, if that blowback can be used to make the Z sample more pliant.

If this continues as I hope, I may be able to both recover the first Nibelheim sample and the SOLDIER Z sample as well.

Hojo's notes on subject XVIII, p. 692

After several hours of staring at the ceiling of her bedroom and realizing that no matter how long she stared at it, she was never going to go to sleep, Anneke heaved a signed and got out of bed. She headed to her kitchen and began making herself a cup of herbal tea. She was able to keep herself from thinking while she was making it, but while she waited for it to brew, her thoughts finally broke through. The conversation with - the samples, she told herself firmly - had gotten to her more than she would have liked. She wished she could have taken some of the files home with here, but Hojo had been insistent that everything stay on site.

Hojo was right. She knew he was right...she kept telling herself she was right. This was the ugly side of medical progress. It was something that sometimes had to happen. Sometimes people had to suffer, in order to soothe the suffering of countless afterwards.

But by the gods, it was hard. It was so hard.

It just didn't make sense for Tifa to have gone mute. Or rather...yes, that was a sign of mako poisoning, but it was a sign insofar as once someone was so far mako poisoning that there was nothing left of them that they couldn't talk, but this was...this was something very different. It could have been trauma-induced, but that was very rare in adults, and Tifa had shown no signs that her trauma would manifest like this. It was possible that it was something medical, because the gods knew mako could do strange things to you, but it also could have been psychological, and...

She felt the urge to scream as she felt herself being pulled in two very different directions. If it was medical, she was to document the effects on her sample and watch how it progressed. But if it were psychological...

If it was psychological, she was to treat her patient, and a patient...a patient could not be a sample.

Hojo was right. This is what had to happen, she had to let it go, to not let it get to her.

She kept telling herself that as she drank her tea, and she kept trying to make herself believe it.

When their food came that morning, Aerith looked up briefly when the slots opened, but she couldn't bring herself to get up to get them. She felt so tired, even though she'd just woken up. She wanted to close her eyes and drift back off to sleep. It was easier to spend the days like that, just...drifting.

A piece of bread was unceremoniously dropped on her face.

"What on - !" she started, knocking it off her face and sitting up. Tifa was standing at her bed, holding a tray of food. She pushed it out towards Aerith, and Aerith sighed. "Fine, fine, I'm up," she said, and took the tray. Tifa nodded, then went over to her bed and picked up her tray, then brought it over to where Aerith was, and sat down next to her, picked up her own piece of bread, and deliberately took a large bite.

Aerith blinked slightly, then gave a faint smile. "I'm eating, I'm eating," she said, shaking her head, feeling a pinprick of happiness that Tifa was doing something. Tifa wasn't as active as she had been, and there were growing patches of time when Tifa would just...sit in a blank silence, feeling empty somehow, and Aerith would find herself desperately trying to draw Tifa back, to make her react, to make her seem alive again...

She'd needed Tifa to...to not be like that today. She hadn't realized it until just now, but by all the gods, she'd really, really needed that.

And right now, Tifa was glaring at her, until Aerith picked up a piece of fruit and put it in her mouth.

"See?" she said, then Tifa gave her a look but went back to her own food. They ate in silence, as they did everything now, and when the food was gone, Aerith took both the trays and stuck them back through the slots.

Tifa stayed on her bed, sitting there, in such a way that Aerith couldn't go crawl back into it like she wanted.

Aerith stared at her.

Tifa stared back.

Aerith's shoulders slumped, and she sat down next to Tifa with a sigh,

"I'm tired," she said.

Tifa didn't say anything.

"I don't know what to do," Aerith said.

Tifa didn't say anything.

"I'm scared," Aerith whispered.

Tifa didn't say anything.

Aerith put her head on Tifa's shoulder, and Tifa didn't say anything. But she did rest her cheek on the top of Aerith's head, and they just stayed like that. In silence.

And Aerith felt, someone, just a little bit better. She didn't know what to do, and she didn't know how long this would last, but she did know at least she wasn't alone. She put her hand on Tifa's, and Tifa turned her hand over, and their fingers twined together, before Tifa went faintly slack in a way that made Aerith's heart thump hard in her chest.

She shut her eyes and held on tighter to Tifa's hand, and they stayed like this, silently sitting on the bed, until the Troopers and doctor came to take them away, into the mako tanks.

Anneke walked into the cell, expecting anger or rage or...sullen silence, or something, but there was just...two girls, sitting next to each other on a bed, one looking ready to break and clinging to the other to keep that from happening, and the other...

Samples. Not girls. They're...

She hit them with Sleep so she didn't have to look at them looking like that anymore, at Aerith looking broken and Tifa looking...blank.

She made the Trooper pry their hands apart and she couldn't watch when he did.

Hojo was...he had to be right.

He had to be.

She suspected she wouldn't be sleeping well again tonight.

"Do you see now, girl," her master says sharply. "Do you see with your own eyes what they can do?"

"No," she whispers, though she has no mouth, and falls to her knees at the sight. "No, this can't be right, how - " she says, shaking her head furiously in her confusion, unable to believe what her eyes are telling her.

It is her home. Her home as it had been, before Sephiroth and the other SOLDIERs came. But...but it's not right; none of the people there are right. She can tell that even from here; her eyes have always been so sharp her father used to say she had dragon eyes, able to spot even a hillclimber goat on the side of the mountain from far away. The people there look so much like people who had died, but they aren't, even though they live in houses identical to what had had been there. It has been less than a year, but already, there is no sign of all the destruction of that terrible night. "No."

"This is what they do, girl," her master says again, but there is no anger in his voice anymore, only sadness. "Your home was never destroyed, no one was killed, and they made your memories a lie. You are the one no longer in step with the reality they have made. This is their power. Your home is a lie, girl, but they will make you a liar and kill you for it to make that true. Do you see now? So chose. Go back there and live a lie, or disappear and have no past. But the path you're trying to create now will only end with you hunted down and erased. If you want your revenge so badly, stay in the shadows. Wander and strike. And have no past. Because only this is the reality that exists now."

She looks at what had been her home, and the tears began. Her teacher came over, and wipes her eyes away with a hand, and guides her away.

Anneke hated that she was right, that she hadn't slept that night. But at that sleepless night had been productive; she'd spent most of it continuing the research she'd started on the treatment and symptoms of mako poisoning, looking for some cases in the literature about symptoms like XVIII was having.

She pushed away how hard it was to think of someone she had seen trying to give and draw strength to someone else as a thing.

She'd been doing reading all day, and she kept on doing reading once she got home, and...nothing. There was nothing. There were no cases that she had found that followed the trajectory Tifa seemed to be on.

Which would indicate something mental, but...but that didn't fit anything of what she knew of Tifa's personality.

There were pieces here, pieces she was missing, and that itched at the back of her brain as badly as trying to figure out how to even think of the two girls in the cell.

She was going to figure this out. She was going to spend the next few days going over every scrap of information she could find in the labs, in her and the other scientists' notes, in the literature, until something made all of this make sense.

Because...because what if Hojo wasn't right?

And it was that question, more than anything else, that was starting to keep her awake at night.

Things were...things were not all right.

Aerith didn't know what had happened, but had a horrible fear that they were both reaching a tipping point - while Tifa had been the most tested upon, Aerith knew from the tendrils growing now within her that she was in just as much danger as Tifa was. But Tifa...

Aerith had no idea if she was staring into her own future, seeing how now Tifa couldn't react to anything; was suddenly an empty shell. Aerith had no idea if it was too late or not, but she felt a growing horror as Tifa just...sat, empty and blank.

She wouldn't let that be her future. She wouldn't become that. And she wouldn't let Tifa stay like that.

"Find your promised land. Find your promised land," Aerith whispered to herself, clinging tightly to her mother's words to her.

She couldn't wait any more. They couldn't wait anymore. They had to get out. And they had to do it now, before it was too late for the both of them.

But she had no idea how.

Panic blossomed in her chest as Tifa stared blankly out into nothingness.

When Anneke next went to see her test subjects, she was taken aback. XVIII was sitting quietly on her bed, but XVIII-A was breathing in frantic puffs and was wild-eyed.

This was a dangerous situation. Both girls had SOLDIER-level strength and speed, but none of the military discipline that also usually went with them. And it was as if the world were upended - Aerith had always been calm and, honestly, docile. She had shown occasional fits of temper, but they had all been in either defense of Tifa or when she had learned what had been done to them. But this was something else; this was Aerith in what seemed to be a full-blown panic attack, and that was something that was dangerous when it involved SOLDIERs.

"Aerith. Aerith. Listen to me. Listen to my voice," Anneke said, going over to Aerith and putting her hand on her forearm - not in a way that could be seen as threatening.

And Tifa just stared out, unseeing and unresponsive.

"Look at her!" Aerith screamed. "Look at what they - what you've - done to her!" she yelled, her voice going shrill and cracking.

Her hands were shaking. She was shaking.

"Please," Aerith said desperately. "If you have ever had even the tiniest shred of humanity...please, let us go. This isn't right. What they're doing to us, to her, it isn't right! And if this goes on any longer, there won't be any way to fix it!"

Laumbe swallowed thickly.

"They paid me to be a scientist. A doctor," she said, more to herself than Aerith, as if Aerith wasn't even there. "But this is something...this isn't what I signed up to be," she finished under her breath. She shut her eyes and took a deep breath, and visibly hardened before Aerith's eyes. "Do you know what you're asking me to do? You're asking me to throw away my entire life, my entire career, everything I've worked this hard for," Laumbe said, frowning. "If I helped you...this isn't something that will just get me a reprimand and a bad mark or something. It means I never work as a scientist or a doctor anywhere on the planet again. I'd be so blacklisted I'd be lucky if I could even get a job so much as cleaning a lab or a clinic."

She shook her head, backing away. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but I can't," she said. "I can't just throw everything away like this," she said in a panic, and took off down the hall so quickly it was almost a run.

Aerith sank down to her knees and just tried to breathe.

The security cameras almost scared her off. But she walked past it, as she often did - she had been in Hojo's office before, when he wasn't there - he'd asked her once to send him one of his floppies - floppies - via the ShinRa courier when he was at another ShinRa location.

She hesitated, then walked calmly over to where the floppies were, picked them all up, then sat down and popped the disk into the computer.

She had to know.

Once the computer finished reading the floppy - who even uses floppies anymore? she thought - she clicked on one of the files, holding her breath and hoping she'd be able to guess the password.

She almost gasped when the file just opened. There was no password. None. Nor was it encrypted. She could scarcely believe it. Hojo was a genius, but this was incredibly...stupid. No encryption, no passwords, and on floppies he just left sitting around? Mind you, there were few computers that could actually read floppies; hers certainly couldn't, and you couldn't even buy computers now that could. In fact, often the only ones she knew of that couldwere...the ones that Hojo used.

No wonder he doesn't bother password-protecting them, she thought, as a lightbulb went off and she found herself feeling a grudging respect for Hojo. The very format is protection nowadays.

The first floppy held little of value, as did the second and third, but the fourth disk she popped in contained a folder entitled "Subject XVIII and XVIII-A," filed with files - spreadsheets and text files, including one labeled "Notes."

She took a deep breath, then stuck her memory stick into the computer and copied the entire folder.

As soon as it was done, she put the floppies back, powered off the computer, and left, keeping her head high and trying not to let her shakiness show.

In the silence, she told Tifa stories. It was all Aerith could do. She filled the empty silence with stories. Stories about how she met Zack, stories about the quiet, still church where she would spend her time, stores about evading the Turks.

The stories about evading the Turks always tasted like ashes in her mouth, but she told them anyway.

And still Tifa sat, dull-eyed and hollow, unresponsive and blank.

She picked up a hairbrush and went over to Tifa. Tifa moved easily where Aerith moved her; pliant and malleable. She sat Tifa on the floor and sat on the bed behind her, with Tifa's shoulders between her knees. She picked up the hairbrush from where she had placed it on the bed, and began gently brushing Tifa's hair, since Tifa couldn't even do that for herself now.

"Did I ever tell you about when I was a little girl and decided to color all over the walls of my house?" Aerith said, her voice wavering at first, but steady by the time she finished the question. "Oh, my mother was so angry..."

It wasn't until nearly two days later that Anneke finally gathered the nerve to actually look at the files. She had shoved the memory stick into her purse and left it there, and hadn't touched it since. But it had nagged at her; haunted her, and now, when the lab was quiet and she was the only one there, she finally took it out and plugged the memory stick into her laptop - her's, not the computer at her desk. She hesitated clicking on the folder, then took a deep breath and opened it, and clicked on the first "Notes" file.

She had to know. She had tried to forget about it, get her head back, but she hadn't been able to. She couldn't let it go.

She had to know.

She hadn't gotten far before she started to feel uneasy. The unease only grow, turning quickly into queasiness the longer and more she read.

When she finished, she swallowed thickly as she leaned back into her chair.

It took her a minute to realize her hands were shaking.

"An Ohnegesichterin...he's trying to turn that girl into an Ohnegesichterin?!" she whispered.

She knew the stories - she was from Urtharbrun; of course she knew the stories of the faceless women of the mountains, who tempted children and fools to trade their faces and left them empty blanks.

She also knew, of course, that Ohnegesichterin did not exist - they were surely just folktales to explain mako poisoning that could happen to people who fell into the mako pools out in the mountains - which in a way made whatever it was that Hojo was trying to do worse. He wasn't trying to genetically manipulate a monster into existence, he was trying to erase a girl's mind and replace it with something else. There was science and there was madness, and as she read Hojo's notes, she realized what side of the line that Hojo was on.

What side she was on. She felt sick, but she knew that if she hesitated - if she even stopped to think at all - that she would rationalize this like she had rationalized everything she had done up until that point and everything she had been a part of; would let that other part of her, let the Dr. Laumbe so fascinated by what they could discover, take the place of Anneke. It was now or never. She deleted the files and was on her feet before she'd even finished the thought. -

It was much later than it normally was when someone came to their room; late enough for Aerith to wonder for one panicked moment if she's lost track of time. But no - the lights had dimmed, meaning it was light, and she reckoned that they had another hour or so before the lights were turned completely off automatically, when it was fully "night." And yet, here was Dr. Laumbe at the door, alone.

The doctor walked in with a wan smile, then set down the medical bag she was carrying, another oddity. She did sometimes come in with one, to check on them, but this late? "I was a little worried about Tifa there," Dr. Laumbe said. "I want to double check her, since her readings seem off." Aerith nodded, and moved slightly to the side warily, not sure what exactly had gotten Dr. Laumbe's attention today - Tifa was no different from her normally worrying state, or nothing had changed since Laumbe'd rushed out before. But...but she'd said readings, and Aerith knew that ShinRa was monitoring them and routinely did test and collected blood from them. Had something happened? Aerith knew that Tifa felt wrong, but nothing had - "You have fifteen minutes before the next patrol," Laumbe said quickly under her breath as she pretended to examine Tifa. "There's an elevator out the back that will let you out. You need a pass card to use it." Aerith was jolted suddenly out of her worried thoughts and for a moment, wondered if she had heard Dr. Laumbe wrong. Then it clicked, and her heart leapt with something she hadn't felt in a long time.

Hope.

"Where can I - ?" Aerith began, and Laumbe made a wry face. "I expect a good bump on the back of the head now, so I can plausibly say you hit me, then hit me with the Sleep I keep equipped. And took the pass off my coat," she said, her voice still at a whisper too low for the cameras to pick up, but good enough for what Aerith's hearing would catch, and she looked down at her badge meaningfully. "Go. Now. Before - before I change my mind," she said, and her voice shook. "Thank you," Aerith said, her knees almost going weak. She had been almost completely useless at the martial arts Tifa had tried to teach her, but some of it had sunk in. The blow she delivered to the back of Laumbe's head was neat, tidy and effective, and stronger than she had expected, so much so that it knocked the woman out cold. Aerith checked quickly to make she was all right, then swiped the card and the bracer, and hauled Tifa to her feet. "Let's go," she whispered against Tifa's cheek, and prayed to whatever gods might hear her prayer that they either escape or be killed quickly, because she wouldn't let this go on any more. Or the strength for her to kill them both if neither looked possible. Tifa's hand in hers, she took off at a run, and Tifa, unresponsive and blank, stumbled blindly where Aerith led. -

Aerith didn't even realize until they got to the elevator just how high up they were. She'd known the ShinRa building was tall, but that many numbers on the elevator almost boggled her mind.

It was practically a maze just navigating the elevators. A nerve-wracking series of changing elevators and false-starts, all of them almost seeming like they were designed to slow people down. And there were the troopers, patrolling the building in set intervals, that had to be avoided. It would have been easy, perhaps, to just cast Sleep on all of them, but what happened when they woke up? She had to get as much distance as she could between them and ShinRa before their disappearance was noticed. Every second felt like live wires against her skin, but she knew she had to take her time.

When Aerith finally managed to get them out of the building, the shock of cold hit her almost like a blow. She and Tifa had been living in a controlled environment for so long that she'd had no idea what season it was, let alone what the temperature would be, and while the only clothes they had were the light, spring clothes they had both been wearing when they were captured. By the feel, it was almost time for the Mid-Winter Festival. But she had no idea; the cold was like that of mid-winter under the Plate, and things were very different Above.

For one thing, it was snowing.

Aerith had only seen snow in pictures and on vids; a dreamlike thing that wasn't actually real, no more real than any other imagined thing artists could create, or fantasies spun from a storyteller's mind.

She knew what snow was, or had had some theoretical thing that existed, like Bandersnatches and gods of summonings, but out was entirely something else to see them with your own eyes...or, in this case, feel it against your own skin.

Aerith couldn't help it; she let out a tiny gasp at the sight and feel of it, and looked around in wide-mouthed wonder at her first glimpse of snow.

She suddenly felt very small, as if the world contained so many more wonders than she could conceive of. And she felt hope; hope because if the world could contain something like this, a wonder that was for so many so mundane, then perhaps her Promised Land wasn't just her mother's fairy stories, but a thing that could work miracles. "Flee Midgar, and find your promised land," Aerith whispered. "We'll get there, and it will fix us both. I'll make this right," Aerith said, now to Tifa. "I'll make this right for you. I promise."

She squeezed Tifa's hand, and took off for the shadows, shaking off her wonder. It would wait. It would have to. They would escape ShinRa, escape Midgar, and when she found her Promised Land and Tifa was better, she'd make Tifa take her to her homeland, to the wild mountains and wild flowers she had so often spoken of when she could still speak, and they would see the wonders that filled the world.

- They were being stared at. Aerith could understand why; two greatly underdressed girls, one looking lost and one barely following in a stumble, rushing through the streets.

The cold should have felt colder, Aerith knew. It had been a shock at first, but then had felt like nothing more than a cool Autumn evening. And then she remembered Zack, telling her about Modeoheim, and how much snow there had been...and how he hadn't even needed a coat, thanks to being a SOLDIER.

But no one knew they were SOLDIERs. They just saw too underdressed girls in the snow, and it meant they stood out.

Aerith ducked them into an alleyway, and sat Tifa behind a few boxes. "Stay here," she said, and Tifa simply stared out, sitting where she had been sat. "I'm going to get us something to wear so we stop sticking out."

Tifa said nothing, but it felt right to be talking to her; telling her what was happening.

It didn't take Aerith long to pop a simple locks - she was a slum girl, and it wasn't like she'd found her church sitting there empty and open all those years ago. It hadn't been a skill she used often, but It still only took her only a little while to pop the ones on a clothing store.

She suspected she could have just broken the lock with her bare hands, but she wasn't quire sure if she was mentally ready for that yet. She felt an almost hysterical laughter try to bubble up at the idea, and so she shied away from it. That was something for later, when they were somewhere safe.

She grabbed two coats, both of which from the feel costs more than anything Aerith had ever touched in her life, and both of which would be long enough to cover their clothes, and two hats. That would be enough for both of them, and would more than make them fit in with the people bustling around the city in winter gear. Then she froze, mouthed, "Sorry," and took several hundred gil she could from the cash register.

They would need it.

She picked up a purse and a wallet, pulled out the tissue paper filling the purse, and filled the wallet, and stuck it into the purse. She put on one of the coats and a hat, and carried the other out to Tifa.

"OK, Tifa, here you go. I know these aren't really your style, but I hope you like them anyway," she said, and held up an unbelievably soft woolen - cashmere, the label said - coat that was a pale pink and reached mid-calf on the her. "I know, pink doesn't seem to be your thing, but it looks so nice, with your black hair," she continued as she put it on her. The knit hat, like a beret, was just as soft, and she put it on Tifa's head with care, the same kind of care someone who could afford a coat like Tifa was wearing.

When she led Tifa out onto the main road, no one's eyes caught on them now. No one saw anything more than two pretty girls, out together on a crisp winter night.

At least, that's what Aerith prayed they saw.

And they had wasted enough time; Aerith knew by now that Dr. Laumbe had to have woken up and have alerted ShinRa security that they had escaped. They had to get away, and get away now.

She walked them until she came to a city map, and her eyes alit on the train station. They could use the train to get some distance between them and ShinRa, and it would give her some time to figure out where exactly to go. It was risky, but it was less risky than staying Above Plate.

She had to get Tifa to the church, but suspected that's where the Turks would look for them first. It was a risk she had to take, though - more than anything else, it was her place, and it would help her quiet that terrifying voice in her head, telling her how to destroy.

She needed to rehear how to heal.

They got on the train and sat in the first car, nearest the conductor, since she figured anyone looking over at them would pay more attention to him driving than to them, and Aerith let herself relax.

They hadn't been on the train more than fifteen minutes before there was an announcement. "Passengers, we are sorry for the inconvenience, but we've just been informed that we need to make an extended stop at the next station. Once we get to the Reactor Station, please remain in your seats. There will be a security check there, and no one will be allowed to depart until the train has been cleared."

Aerith felt her heart sink.

She wouldn't let them get caught her. She wouldn't. She had to get them off the train, even though it was risky, and even worse, because she knew the Reactor station would be crawling with -

Aerith's eyes went wide, as she realized this was exactly the station they wanted to be at. The reactor, after all, would get her where they wanted to go. It was, after all, the way that Zack Fair had taken the first time they met. "Let's go," she said, squeezing Tifa's hand, and stood up and rapped on the glass to the conductor's area. "I'm sorry, but could you please let us out?" "No one is allowed - " he began, and Aerith gave him a pleading look. "My friend is sick," she said, and in a stroke of timing, Tifa started to list over slightly, and her head dropped onto her chest. "I'm trying to get her to a doctor, but she's getting worse, and..." she said, trailing off, and leaving the rest unsaid but understood - a security check of the entire train would take a very long time. The conductor looked at Tifa, then bit his lip, and looked at the rest of the train. Everyone was looking at the other doors, except for one older woman giving him a disapproving look that softened when she looked over at Tifa and Aerith. He sighed, and opened his door, and gestured to them.

Aerith quickly hauled Tifa up, grateful that for all Tifa was blank, she wasn't a dead weight - she would go where lead, and that was enough to perhaps give them a chance, when they had little time and a woman carrying another would garner attention one woman leading another by the hand wouldn't.

"You can wait here, so they'll check you first," he said. "That will get you out fastest."

"Thank you," Aerith said. She knew it was as good as they got - if ShinRa wasn't looking for them yet, they could be out before the word did. And if they were...

Well. She was a slum girl, and now she was a SOLDIER. It would not go so well for the ShinRa goons as it had the last time they had come for her. -

The conductor opened the door for the ShinRa troopers once the train had pulled into Midgar Reactor station and come to a stop. "I know you need to check everyone, but there are two girls and one of them is sick, who need to be checked first. If you could look at them so they could get to a doctor, that would really help them out," he said. He tilted his head towards them.

The Trooper shrugged. "As long as they aren't the girls we're looking for, they can leave. Send them out and I'll check their information while the rest of the boys check the train."

"Appreciated," he said, then stepped of the train so Aerith and Tifa would have a clear path out.

Aerith had been listening carefully to the conversation, despite seeming to be fussing over Tifa. Her heart was pounding in her chest - they didn't have ID, and they most likely were the two they were looking for.

Things were about to get messy, and she was glad that they would at least be outside, away from other passengers and hopefully the conductor who had tried to help them. But this was going to be a fight, and she was ready for it. Aerith carefully led Tifa off the train, making sure the purse she had stolen was hanging on her elbow, so she could easily slip in down to use as a weapon if need be.

As soon as she got them off the train and looked up, the trooper swore.

"Shit! It's them!" he blurted out, clearly shocked.

Aerith took advantage of his shock to drop the purse to her hand, and fling it at his face. He was wearing a helmet, but still flinched back at something being thrown at him, and Aerith hit him with Sleep.

But they had been seen, and soon enough, there would be more troopers swarming out towards them..

They were going to have to fight.

She grabbed Tifa's hand, and was about to run when the conductor got in front of them. "I can't lt you - " he began, and Aerith hit him with Sleep before he could finish the sentence.

And then, they ran from the station, into the belly of the beast.

The first floor was almost easy.

The second, after word had spread, was far less so.

She fought her way up. More Troopers, more guard machines, more monsters, more guards, more with each floor, as everyone swarmed in to catch them. She fought them and fought to protect Tifa, who could only stand, unseeing and unmoving, as the troopers aimed for her, trying to take out the "weak link" or keep Aerith distracted.

It seemed like it would never end. Like there would be on more ladder, one more floor, one more group to fight, and she was beginning to think it would never end. She was barely holding on, barely able to keep going, and only did because she had to. She would fight until they were free or dead, because they were not going back.

One more ladder.

One more floor.

One more -

One -

The cold was a moment of shock, like it had been when they first got out of the ShinRa building. They were out.

She'd had to carry Tifa up all the ladders, and now she put her down and dared to take a breath. The snow on her face was a miracle, sign they had made it. She grabbed Tifa's wrist and led her to the edge of the top of the reactor building. They had reached the roof, finally, finally, and all they had to do was -

And that instant, she felt the bullets slamming into her back; more of them than she could count. She fell forward, knocking Tifa off the edge even though she still held her hand. Tifa dangled from the edge, her wrist tight in Aerith's grasp all that kept her from falling into whatever lay far, far below. She...she couldn't feel anything. Not anything below the small of her back, where one of the bullets had hit. Above it, there was pain, so much pain she could barely even register it. She hadn't been expecting it, and hadn't had a Barrier or anything up to protect her - she had exhausted herself fighting up, and it took more energy than she had to maintain it when she didn't need to. And now, it felt like circles of burning pain lancing through her, and the blood. She could feel the blood, flowing both into her and pouring out of her. She could feel it flowing into her belly. She could feel the labored sound of her own breathing, of a lung that is no longer filling, and how each rasping breath was causing air to fill the cavities of her own body. I'm dying. Oh by all the gods, I'm really dying. She knew, then, that even with the full power of the limit break she could feel beating wildly within her, that it wouldn't be enough - it was too late, there wasn't enough time; a threshold had been crossed, and she was too far gone. She was too far gone, but...but Tifa wasn't. She could feel Tifa's wrist in her hands, and the little voice that had always told her how to heal told her, that Tifa had been hit, was hurt, but she could survive it; the light of life was still flickering strong inside her. And...wait. Tifa's eyes were open, but now something was different, there was something almost there - Aerith used the last of her strength and spoke, the words desperate. "Please," Aerith whispered, struggling with her words as her lung, the only one working, spasmed. She managed to reach out with her free hand, the one not holding on to Tifa, and touch Tifa's face. Something flickered again for the briefest moments behind eyes that had been so blank, and Aerith felt the tiniest spark of hope, hope that it wasn't too late for Tifa, even if she knew it was for her. She felt the limit break finally hit and gave into it, focusing all of it on Tifa, healing all of the other woman's wounds completely and exhausting the last of her own strength. "Live. And remember. Live for me. Remember for me." - Take this face, then, Aerith says, and the girl who has lost her face thinks her very beautiful, shining like a goddess in the darkness. Take my face, since you have none, Aerith says, and the girl who has lost her face wants it - she wants her face, wants a face again, wants to be, wants to remember - The girl who has lost her face reaches out, reaches towards Aerith's, and Aerith closes her eyes. Then her eyes, nose, lips, her face, are wiped away. The girl who has lost her face stares at the emptiness that had once been a person with a name for a moment, then raises her hands to her own face that is not, and as she draws her fingers across it, she draws features, feels them rising under the tips of her fingers, feels a name and memories and who she is come to her again as she slips on the other girl's face that is now her own; feels herself become again. - "Down, they're down! Get them, hurry up! Don't let them escape!" Distantly, Aerith could hear their voices and knew they had very little time left. She looked at Tifa again, for one last time. Their eyes met, Tifa's eyes suddenly sharp and aware, for an instant, and Aerith gave her a beautiful, wavering smile verging on tears. Tifa mirrored that wavering smile, and the tears in Aerith's eyes overflowed. "Find your Promised Land...and see the sky for me," she whispered through the blood in her mouth, the words more breath than sound, the last of what little breath she could manage, and she let go of Tifa's hand. She didn't even feel it when Tifa's hand slipped from hers, or the tears on her checks, or when the troopers, a hair too slow to stop her from letting go of Tifa, grabbed her.

"Dammit, a Cure, does anyone have a - !"

The blinding pain was gone now, and there was only the warmth of her mother's - her real mother's - smile, from all those years ago, welcoming her. And then, there was only the fragrance of lilies and the warm, white light of the Lifestream that burned away that evil thing that ShinRa had put inside of her, and set her free.

/-

And as she goes into free fall, as she falls through the air to the church below, Tifa turns her face to the sky...and remembers.

/-

End Part 3

-

What's at the core of my existence isn't nothingness. It's not that desolate, arid place. What is inside of me is love.

-Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 Book 2