The Door of Souls

by Poisonberries

Lost in the Rift, the warriors of 012 are on the run from gods old and new. As they stumble over delirious landscapes and desolate truths, the Door of Souls is their only chance to find home. But what will it cost to open? Pairings develop. Post 012. Canon compliant for all main games. Disregards "Lightning Returns". Alt-canon XIII-2.

11. CVIII: Maybe Just the Known World

The Door of Souls, Chapter VIII: Maybe Just the Known World

Beta Credit: Distant Glory: a wonder, really.
Thanks (Specific): Inkie and IrenIvy and anon reviewers I haven't been able to respond to. You make me smile.
Thanks (General): For reading along, everyone. The beastly beast is beastly, and I appreciate your patience through long chapters, meta! (and adjective) abuse, and long slogs through swamps of angst.

---

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan (Act III)

---

In the Phantom Village, it's never any particular time. Or if it is, reasons Nero the Sable, it doesn't matter.

Everything's frozen, anyway. He rolls his eyes. Everything's always the same.

Reclined on some idle rooftop, Nero uses the tip of an iron wing to toy with a mote of dandelion fluff that's embedded on the wind. Despite the pressure, it barely moves: trapped as it is with the rest of this place in some castaway pocket of time.

Poor little village, he muses, yawning, ripped from its moorings; tossed like so much garbage into the void. With an idle talon, he slices the fluff in half; watches as the scalpeled puffs of gossamer hover, undisturbed. People statues (or statue-people?), are locked in situ: the standing dead, the conversing dead, the dead awaiting trial, the naked dead, fucking…

Yes – Nero fidgets, a little itchy – it's all so tragic. He smirks beneath his bandages. It's also terminally, criminally dull.

There's a placid, corrosive sameness to it all. The same villagers locked in the same trivial gestures. The same homes with locked doors and open windows and cellars fermenting wine and secrets. The same unrotting fruit, words trapped in mouths, water held hostage between the faucet and the drain.

Same trees, the list continues, repetitive and stupid and banal. Same footprints. Same sky.

Worrying at a stray bandage with pincered fingers, Nero lets his eyes flit over terrain he can recite by rote. It's dusk (as usual) and indecisive semi-darkness quivers over the empty land. There's enough light to see by, he notes, but enough shadow to hide.

Somewhere in his nervous system, the itch niggles. Since Etro dragged him here, the mako in his suit blisters like allergy, and it's quite tiresome. All he likes about the sensation is that it cuts up the boredom. He plays a game: see if he can soothe himself without scratching. Fold and unfold wings. Focus darkness over skin. Twitch. Twitch again.

It doesn't quite work, but it's a momentary respite from the sheer redundancy of it all that Nero supposes will do. After all, Her Providence forbids him from target practice with the villagers. She's been less vigilant lately, so he supposes he could try to snipe one of the smaller ones, but it seems like too much effort.

"Ferryman," Anima enjoys chiding him. Nero's not especially fond of the corpse's affectation – he is no mean servant to any god, let alone the hobbled 'Goddess of Death' – but he likes that he can bother her. "Do you not have something else to occupy your time? A past, perhaps, you might repent?"

Repent? Repent what? And to whom would he offer it, should he ever be so stupid? The lord sovereign of Deepground, perhaps? The god of blood transfusions and wire stitches and blunt little surgical scissors?

Shifting his weight over his sits bones, Nero remembers: remembers the sawing of exposed tendon, the tearing of thin skin and that achingly slow snip, snip, snip. He shudders. No. He will leave repentance to the corpse. She seems to enjoy whining almost as much as smearing herself all over the Last Floor.

But then again – Nero tips a brow – Anima never does have any fun.

In this way, they are similar, Etro and the corpse. They moan endlessly. They cry and tear up their own skin and then destroy themselves with cloying sentiment for their own keening bastards. It's a waste of considerable potential, and Nero finds it distasteful.

Some wombs, he concludes, are best cauterized. Having children drives females to hysterics.

Lying back completely, Nero studies the stagnant clouds. All that said, Etro's been quiet lately. When he was first summoned here, She whispered in his darkness – Chaos, he corrects, now that he knows – quite often. "Stained One, I pity you," She'd say, as if Her pity was something that he should covet. That he's gone so long without hearing Her voice tells him that She's even weaker than he thought.

Without her champion, She's more or less trapped. Stuck sleeping on the Last Floor, between Valhalla and the Rift, one of those She pitied will find a way to crush her heart, soon enough.

Soft nausea drifts through his stomach. Even the memory of Her voice makes him ill.

It's an intriguing set of circumstances, and Nero weighs his options. He could try to take advantage of the respite: stretch the rope; see if he can get loose. But then, without Etro's hand, he risks a repeat of the last time. The coming apart under his bandages. Getting lost in all that Chaos. Having to pluck all the souls he'd absorbed out of the mess one by one.

Losing him.

The shudder that rolls through him is complete. It slithers through the vacant parts of him that used to brim with Weiss, Weiss, Weiss.

Yes. It was all very deeply unpleasant. So he decides that for now the bargain will be kept. And when he brings this Lightning creature to the Door of Souls, he will be released and there will be no more emptiness. He will find his way back to his brother and they will be one again.

Always.

Nero closes his eyes and anticipation snaps in his nerves: sweet, hot, thick. "Soon brother," – he lets the words slip from wet, parted lips – "soon."

Lifting his hand in front of his face, Nero coils his attention around the mirror fragment he's been holding. He's to deliver this to the Lufenian's little pet mage. The Goddess of Death does not accept damaged goods, and since She's too weak to lift Her champion's brand herself, the task must be left to Minwu.

Or what's left of Minwu, at any rate. Nero will grant that between Cid Raines and Cid of the Lufaine, there isn't much. As befits their name, they are quite efficient at what they do, and Nero can respect that.

He shrugs, waits, returns to his examination. The Mirror of Atropos. Nero angles it this way and that, watches the light distort and versionize his reflection. If he tilts it one way, it seems like the bandages that cross his face are sewn into his skin. If he goes the other, it's something – else. Other features, slender and sharp. Unblemished: without dressing, without infection, without wound.

Himself, reconstructed. A million timelines away…

He eyes it, analytical. The world over which Etro presides is peculiar indeed. From what he's been forced to learn of it, all paths lead to a single, inevitable end; and yet still, the haunted mirror taunts. Shows just enough possibility for prisoners to dream of freedom; the already damned, of being redeemed.

Nero narrows his eyes, appreciates the art in such elegant futility. It's no wonder that so many of those who hail from there are even more mad than he.

"Mirror, mirror on the wall," he sing-songs,"who's the strangest of them all?"He toys with the rhyme because he doesn't have much else to do, and one of the creatures he absorbed likes them, but his mind has already left the subject behind.

It's a pointless puzzle anyway. And he is, more importantly, still quite itchy.

Rolling back to a sitting position, Nero clears his thoughts and resumes the more compelling distraction. He folds his wings and then unfolds them. He surveys the mute, paralyzed world below and waits.

Where are they?

The wind doesn't move. Nothing does.

He taps his foot, impatient. They're late, and he has a significant number of other matters to attend to.

It's with something close to relief that Nero finally – finally – hears it. A whooshing, tearing noise that breaks the fossilized silence. His eyes jump from the mirror to the horizon as he notices the crest of magic that the Summoner bears them in on. It's a turbulent, white-capped thing, and when it hits the earth, it crashes: surging up from the earth in a froth of pyreflies and dirt and drab, bloody bits ofwhite and pink and blue.

Ah. A grin pulls the gag at his mouth. There they are.

They skid on the ground until they eventually slide into a jointless, fleshy heap. Nero would compare it to one of the human-shaped skin hills that clogged Midgar after Sephiroth's little Meteor, but this lump seems a bit more lively. Though not by much.

For a reason he can't quite explain, Nero really does expect there to be noise. Piteous little groans or sighs or other low-octave indicia of pain. But after the rush-thump-crash of arrival, for a long time, there's only more of the same, boundless quiet.

Spidering forward, he knots his brow. Nero can't quite see them, so he untwines a sliver of Chaos from his finger and sends it off to spy. It whispers at him, a little vexed at being set to such a menial task, but he quiets must know of they're dead. It will be extremely inconvenient, if they are.

Well, Minwu and Etro's avatar, at least. Those two are the ones that concern him. The others are largely chaff.

"Go, little one," he cajoles.

The Chaos hisses in reply, but it trundles off anyway, obedient. Nero can feel it slither through the still grass, settle amongst their broken bodies, and listen.

"Teefs?" It's the wheedling voice of the boy. Nero is aggrieved that this one has spoken first. He is thoroughly irrelevant. "You okay?"

"I guess," answers the annoying, not-dead one from his world. Her voice is shrill to his ears, and pushes his ear close to a shoulder. "Basically. You? Laguna? Everybody…everybody make it?"

"Two…four…six…I count…seven heads." The fool, now. Nero's patience is beginning to wear thin. "All still attached, more or less."

A grating giggle from the Summoner. "Heads are usually either on or off, I think…"

"Nah." A pause, punctuated by the articulated crack of vertebrae. "With the headache I've got? No. There's definitely middle ground, kiddo. But I'm not complaining about the living bit." There's a rustle of fabric. "What about you, Minwu? You still alive in there?"

At this, Nero tenses. This is a question he is interested in.

"Aye." The voice is weak, but it sounds at least three-quarters alive. Which is sufficient for Etro's purposes. One, he counts, of two. "Aye. After a fashion. Aerith?"

"I'm fine." Ha. This is the dead one, also from his world, whom he has met a few other times. Her voice less annoying than the other one's, although the rest of her makes his skin crawl. "Tifa, is Lightning – "

She hesitates, and Nero doesn't like that at all. He flicks his wings, agitated. "…yeah…" the response is soft and pained, like a bruise. "…yeah, I think so."

Retracting the still-petulant Chaos, Nero hops to his feet. There. Two. Stretching, he flips the mirror fragment in his hand and is satisfied.

He has what he needs to make his delivery. He is one step closer to Weiss, and the thought tingles through him, fleet-footed and light. It is everything he can do not to tap his foot, comport himself in a way his brother might deem unseemly.

Surveying the roof, Nero looks for a way down. Cosmos' refugees will likely drag themselves to the Phantom Village Inn, and he must find a way into Minwu's chambers where they can discuss this. Alone.

There's much planning to be done now. Much left –

"Bring her to Me, Stained One. The need has grown great."

Nero crumples at the sound of Etro's voice. He had forgotten how shocking it is. How, even weak, it bolts through his bones, digs its fingers through his mind. His head snaps back, and even the Chaos that whispers beneath his skin halts, heeds its mistresses' call.

"Valhalla waits. I wait."

Holding his arms over his ears, he tries to block Her out, but it's useless. Her sick and sickening voice is everywhere at once. And while Nero can still feel his own desires, the weight of Her pity is overwhelming. Sadness he has almost forgotten how to feel presses down on him until he finds himself back where he belongs while in Her presence.

Bowing. Scraping. On the ground.

His mouth lolls open, but he doesn't make a sound.

"My Stained One: do you not answer?"

"Yes, your Providence," he finally replies, choked. "I understand."

"Then go. She is needed. I must have her."

Breathing heavily, face flush to concrete, Nero waits until She leaves him and then shudders. It takes him some time to rise, and when he does, it's no easy thing to find his feet beneath him. He stumbles, presses a hand to his chest, tries to shake Her music from his mind.

It's difficult. Very difficult. And it's unhelpful that he cannot seem to stop shaking.

Rubbing a temple, Nero blinks. He is not so delusional to think himself a compassionate creature, but if this is the fate that awaits this Lightning, it is a raw, sore one indeed.

Better to be chained, as he was. To not be taunted by the hope of escape.

Letting out a small growling noise, Nero collects himself for a moment before noting a ladder in the corner. He supposes he could simply ask the Chaos to take him to Minwu's quarters, but that would likely alert the Summoner or the dead-one, and he is not ready to make his presence generally known.

He starts down it slowly. The iron wings weigh him down, but that's no matter. They were a vanity of Deepground. He never had any wish to fly.

Without another thought, he vanishes down the ladder and slips into the alleys of the Phantom Village: another patch of darkness in the borderless dusk.

---

A good sitting-rock, Laguna would like to tell the whole world, is a rare and beautiful thing. Not as rare and beautiful as say, one of those aged scotches everyone's always telling him he should like, or even a solid afternoon nap, but still: just like the best of any good, ordinary thing, it's definitely something worth appreciating.

Worth taking your time with.

This, for example, he thinks, settling his tired and (more than) slightly burned ass on a smooth stone, is a quality sitting-rock. Nice and rain-worn. Perched on an overlook just above the Phantom Village Inn. It's not the Esthari Ritz or anything special like that, but hey, compared to where he just was, he'd say it's pretty near perfect.

Quiet. He folds his ankle over his knee and leans forward; lets the intoxicating sound of absolutely nothing sing in his ears. No face-eating things. Good view. Did I mention no face-eating things?

Whatever. If he did, it bears repeating. No face-eating things is a definite plus to this place, despite the fact that it's otherwise pretty damn creepy. What with the weird frozen people and the perpetual and not especially pretty sunset and everything.

Laguna yawns, focuses on the positives. War's one of those things where a guy's gotta take the moments as they come. Ask for too much, and you'll likely spend the rest of your short life in a funk, but wait long enough and even the worst of times will eventually serve you up with something sweet and small. Some nice, normal thing that makes it easy to remember that life really is a good thing. Worth not giving up on.

Once, while he and Kiros were stuck on one of those scouting missions that always seem to take up so much more of a soldier's time than the glossy (lying bastard) recruitment pamphlets say they will, they came up with a phrase for it: "best in class moment." They'd hand 'em out for things like a favorite song coming in over the radio; finding out the re-up station had fresh, clean socks; a night of leave spent getting right sauced under a sky dipped in stars, just talking…

Laguna smiles but then shivers. His coat went down with the Falcon, and this place must've frozen in autumn because it's chilly in just his tank top. He misses the hell out of those he can remember of them, anyway. Not just because he was pretty damn young and good-looking, and not just because they had nothing to do with running for his life through an Interdimensional Rift – though that's a bonus – but because it was all going to be this wild fucking adventure. Filled with wine and women and derring-do and all that other good stuff.

Pianos and books. Over-stuffed cigars. Those cute little cocktail umbrellas she used to stick in girly drinks.

The memory's fuzzy, but he thinks that Ellone used to take them sometimes and decorate his guns with them. "You try, Uncle Laguna. It's pretty."

A laugh whispers out from between parched lips. She was a special kid, he thinks he remembers. Not too quick on firearm safety though…

He squeezes his eyes shut and ignores the raw, flakey burns on his skin, the rumble in his stomach, the goosebumps crawling down his spine. Back then, nothing was going to go wrong. Nothing – nobody – was going to get lost. Not Kain to that oversized hero complex of his. Not Lightning to whatever evil thing that's stealing her humanity by inches.

Hell. Nothis entire family to a hole in his memory he can't seem to fill up.

The laugh dissolves into a long breath. He's really not the type to get all angsty or anything, but he just can't seem to shake this feeling that he's missing something important. Like not just "Oh, shit, I just spent the night with you and what's-your-name-again" important, but important,important.

It was something that Minwu said. He can't stop thinking about it. "Are you sure it's faeries that come to you in dreams?"

Frustrated, Laguna starts shaking his knee. No. No, I'm not. It's clearly his kid. And if Minwu's dropping hints in that patented "All-Knowing-All-Seeing" white-mage-type way of his, it's also clearly not some shock-induced hallucination curable with some quality time in the loony bin. Sighing, he closes his eyes. No, knowing who it is isn't the problem. It's knowing what – on any earth – she's talking about...

A small, warm hand coming to rest on his bare shoulder snaps him out of whatever it was he was trying to remember, and he's glad of it. He's beat up, his head's swimming in circles, and while he knows he'll have to corner Minwu about it sometime, he figures it doesn't have to be tonight.

Tonight – he closes his eyes, leans into the touch – he thinks he'll just let it ride.

"Are you alright, Laguna?" He knew it was Yuna from the lightness of the touch itself, but it's good to hear her voice anyway. "I didn't think I'd find you up here. I thought you might be sleeping…"

Laguna shimmies over on the rock, pats the open space beside him. "Who, me?" He winks up at her. "Intrepid soldier? Firer of ancient cannons and carrier of First Mages? I'm beyond sleep."

Laughing softly, Yuna settles into the offered space, sets her gaze on the paralyzed village below. "Maybe. But I don't think so." She nudges him with her shoulder and flashes him a quick, glow-in-the-dark smile. "You do sound a little delirious, you know."

Laguna makes an exaggerated show of pressing a hand to his chest. "I'm hurt, darlin'," he feigns. "We're travelling with Mr. and Mrs. Vague-a-Lot and I'm the delirious one?" He pauses, blinks, turns a little serious. "Although, how are they? Really? Last I saw, Minwu was cut up pretty bad, and Light – "

"They're resting." Yuna turns all the way around to look at him. Her face is still streaked with gore, but if he focuses on the bright in the blue-green eyes, he doesn't have to think about it too much. "I saw Sir Minwu to his quarters. And Tifa and Lady Aerith are with Light. I was going to stay, but – "

"Yeah." Laguna finishes the thought for her. He's still not so sharp on what happened up there on deck, but whatever it was – from the way Aerith was stewing and Tifa was saying, well, nothing – it couldn't have been good. He breathes out, bends down to pluck a piece of long grass from the ground, but just like everything else here, it's stuck in time. It won't move.

"Any idea what happened up there?" he asks, giving up. "I mean, I had my hands full at the time, but it seemed like something serious."

The skin between Yuna's brows crinkles. Laguna can tell that she's looking for words to describe what she saw. "I was concentrating on the Sending so I…I couldn't make out most of it. But something happened to Lightning." She pauses, purses her lips. "Something strange, and Tifa got scared. She gave up her crystal to Raines. She just…gave up, I think."

"What?" The second the words are out of Yuna's mouth, memories of the thing Lightning almost turned into barge into his mind in full HD. Unwanted, he remembers the greyness, the blood, the fucking smell. And the terrified disgust he feels doesn't let up when he realizes that she easily could have been one of the demons that attacked them yesterday. That we blew half to hell without a split second's thought.

Bile rises in the back of his throat and he swallows it.

"Did she…I mean, was she…" Yuna didn't extrapolate, so Laguna forces a sour-tasting follow-up question out of his mouth. "She turn on us again? She turn into that…whatever that was again?"

"No, it wasn't like that." Yuna's hand snakes out to Laguna's knee, immediately comforting. "Her l'Cie brand's fine for now, I think. Aerith and I helped her control it. It's something else, something different."

Laguna laughs, pitchy and nervous but more than a little relieved. "Good different? Bad different?" He hooks his fingers into his belt loop, tries on a smirk that doesn't quite fit. "I mean, there's only so many different kinds of monsters you can turn into."

It's Yuna's turn to fidget now. To retract her hand; to nervously push a string of hair behind her ear; to stare off at nothing in particular. "But that's my point, I think," she says, pulling at the frayed edge of her skirt. "What scared Tifa so much…I mean, Light didn't turn into anything. It still looked like her on the outside, but…"

"But what?" Laguna puts his hand on her scraped knee, tries not to think too hard about the gummy stuff under his palm.

"Something's changing her. Completely." She pulls her eyes away from whatever she's looking at and looks at him instead. "I mean, Raines ran her through, Laguna. I couldn't see it all, but" – she shudders, and Laguna squeezes her knee harder – "there was so much blood, and the angle…it should have killed her. It should have killed her instantly. That she's alive…it doesn't make any sense."

"Hey, now," Laguna quips, making an attempt at easy and light. "You're making it sound worse than it is. I mean, there are worse things to have than invulnerability. I think we could all – "

"No." The interruption's so quick and rare and perfect that Laguna's mouth clamps shut right away. "No. I don't think anybody wants what's happening to her. This type of power doesn't come without a price. Whatever's – whoever's – giving it to her is taking something in return. I can't…I mean, I'm not sure if Aerith and Minwu know more, but whatever it is…I don't think she'll be able to get it back again." Her voice goes distant, somber, sure. "It's gone. I know it is."

Laguna lets the silence grow fat between them as a cold conclusion settles in his stomach. He doesn't want to say it. Fuck, the last thing he wants to do is say it. But the evidence has been piling up ever since Light blew that miles-wide crater in the desert, and he can see from the sadness that's settled in Yuna's eyes that she sees it too.

Hell, he thinks. Probably saw it before any of us.

He sighs audibly and then pauses, chews the words a little before he just spits them out. "She's not human anymore, is she?"

"No." The answer comes without hesitation. "No, Laguna. I…I don't think so."

As the words wander off into the stillness, Laguna does two things: breathes out and looks down. He watches the grass not move and the sun not set and wonders just how the hell they got here. Lightning Farron might be just about the sharpest pain in the ass he's ever served with, but she's a damn good soldier and an even better soul.

She sacrificed just about everything she had to close that Rift. First her life, and now, well. Now something even more important, he guesses.

No fair, kiddo. He grinds his jaw. The hand that doesn't have Yuna's knee it clenches to a fist. Good ones are supposed to get happy endings. That's how he'd write the story, anyway. Or would've, before he'd given up his pen for his MP-7.

It's complete bullshit, but Laguna sucks in a breath and pushes the thought from his mind because it isn't over yet. Not even close. Besides, the universe is doing a good enough job beating them up already. Sitting her and moping'll only help it along.

"But she's okay now, right?" Laguna speaks a little too loudly. "There's that at least. And an alive, not-quite human Light is better than no Light at all, right? We'll figure something out." He smiles, chucks her chin. "We did escape the demon bat-manikins, didn't we? We can do that, I'm pretty sure we can do anything."

Yuna's small, quicksilver laugh warms the cold space in Laguna's chest. "Bat-mankins…?"

"That's right." He offers her a wolfish, lopsided grin. "Like Batman, except, with, you know, manikins. Now, don't go using that name without my permission. It's copyrighted material. I'm gonna turn this whole thing into a movie when I get back to Esthar." He winks. "Make a fortune."

"Don't worry." Yuna punctuates her answer by laying a small hand on his forearm. Carefully, so she avoids the burns. "I don't think anyone would want – " she stops herself, unwilling to be rude, even though he's certain she knows it's a joke. "I mean, of course I won't. I'm sure it'll be a big hit."

"You know it," he replies, jaunty. "Who knows, we figure out how to get home, maybe there's a way you could come visit Esthar. Be El Presidente's date to the premier?"

Laguna can feel Yuna tense. The little fingers curl just slightly so the ragged nails chew into his skin. Concerned, the smile slides off his face. "Hey, I'm sorry," he says.

"No." She smiles. "No. It's nothing. I'd…I'd like that, actually. Right after I get back from Zanarkand…"

Blinking, Laguna cocks his head. There's something in the way that she says that word that puts little cracks in his chest, thickens the air in his lungs. Without thinking, he lifts his hand to her cheek and uses his thumb to push some of the crusty grease away. She doesn't resist, but he puts his hand down pretty soon anyway. His fingers are so dirty, all they do is push the grime around.

Her skin's soft, though. And it reminds him of another sunset, another place, another girl.

"Zanarkand?" He repeats the name because he likes the sound of it. It sounds mysterious. A secret-type place. Filled with dreams, like they say in those terrible dime-store romance books.

"Nothing. It's…nothing." If there was a thread of sadness in Yuna's voice just now, she folds it up neatly and then tucks it away. She smiles. "Just one question, though…"

Laguna clears his throat. "Shoot, darlin'."

"What's…what's a Batman?"

The bark of laughter that Laguna lets out surprises him. Stretching, he rolls an arm lazily over her shoulder. "Don't worry about it." Squeezing, he's surprised at how warm and right she feels. "It's just kid-stuff. Just a joke."

"Oh. Really?" She pauses for a second, like she's seriously thinking about it, but when she speaks again her worn-out voice is with mischief. "Sounds a bit cheesy, Laguna."

"Yeah. Yeah, probably does. Probably is." Laguna pulls her closer and a cozy quiet opens up between them before he continues. "Although I think after a buffet of death and destruction, some cheese is a pretty good. Breaks up that nasty, ashy gunpowder taste."

He feels the softness of her laugh before she replies. "Yes," she says. "I think that's right."

It takes a long time for Laguna to speak again. The unyielding stillness of the night, the company, this place seems to beg for silence, but he wants to say it anyway. "He really is a lucky guy, Tidus."

Yuna doesn't answer. But after a while, she sets her cheek against his shoulder and leaves it there. Not long afterwards, her eyes close, and he feels the articulate brush of lashes against burned and blistered skin.

Breathing quietly, Laguna rests his head against hers and lets the unexpected softness of her filthy hair float through him. It's so regular and soothing; so quiet and real, that he can almost let himself believe there's nearly nothing wrong. That it's just an ordinary moment; an ordinary day.

Best in class moment, he thinks, careful not move. It's real fragile, after all. He doesn't want to break it.

---

At the very, very back of the Phantom Village Inn, down the hall from Minwu's quarters, there's a small, careful sick room.

Much like any other sick room anywhere, it has a single bed – for the sick person – a utilitarian night-stand – for the sick person's medications – and a chair – for the sick person's doctor. To let in what little light there is, there's a tiny open window framed with gauzy, indistinctly colored curtains. If there were a wind – Aerith closes her exhausted eyes, imagines – the fabric would blow about: thoughtless, ephemeral, insignificant.

Like the ribbons she tied on the psalters, once a hundred years ago in a church that everyone's forgotten. Bet they're lost now, she thinks, thankfully not feeling much about it anymore. Probably chasing themselves round in circles, somewhere in Midgar's poisoned streets.

The room smells like rubbing alcohol and potions; sterile dressings, iodine. And other than the crooked bunch of undying lilac in the corner, there are no decorations anywhere. Just a shelf filled with stacks of bandages and sheets, all white and precisely folded. The way that Minwu likes.

Shifting in the wooden chair, Aerith sighs, dips a silk cloth in a bowl of scalding water and watches the steam curl around her hand. It's a very ordinary room, really. The only thing that stands out about it is the patient. The anything but normal woman who's lying here, beautiful face slack and sleeping, as if nothing's happened to her all.

Slowly, Aerith picks up one of Lightning's limp arms and continues wiping away at a bloody crust of scab and dirt and clotted crystal. It's immaculate, the skin that emerges. No bruises. No lacerations. No burns.

She takes another long, cleansing stroke. No, there's nothing ordinary about her. Nothing at all.

Breathing out, Aerith sets the cloth in the water again and leaves it there for longer than she should. The heat reddens her fingers, and when she wrings it out see-through bits of skin and membrane come off it in strings.

Aerith blinks, momentarily mesmerized. Black. Clear. Crimson. The oily twist dances, and for a second she wonders whether that's what the water looked like in the Temple of the Ancients when they left her body there. Or if what she does for Lightning, Tifa did for her. Clean the blood off, that is. So she didn't have to return to the Lifestream a messy wreck.

Furious with herself, Aerith gives the cloth a vicious squeeze. This isn't something she's got time to dwell on. And besides, what she's doing – what Lightning's going to have to do – has nothing to do with death. Not her own, anyway.

Although without Tifa's crystal, who knows whether it's even possible anymore. Whether they even have a chance to save anybody's life, anybody's world.

Oh, Tifa. Aerith makes a small, disgusted sound. Tifa, why?

It'll be so hard to do it this way. She's so angry she can feel the tension knot the muscles of her jaw. And we don't have any more time –

Cutting off her own thoughts, Aerith plunges the cloth back into the bowl with more force than she intends. It clatters, and the noise expands until it fills up the entire room.

"I'm sorry, Aerith." Tifa's been silent since they walked in here, sheltering herself in the shadow of the doorframe and trying to make herself as small as possible. "I didn't – "

"It's alright." Aerith hears how thin and irritable her voice sounds, but she can't seem to control it. In fact, it takes almost all her energy to just sit here, not whirl on her friend – her best friend, she'd thought once – in a rage. "What's done is done. We can't change it."

Aerith hears Tifa shift her weight from one foot to another, the way she always did when she was nervous. "I know you're mad at me. But I really thought…" She stops for a second, and the floorboards creak beneath those heavy rubber soles. "I…I don't know. Raines – "

"Is a monster." The razored words cut both ways out of her mouth, but she means them. "An absolute monster. How could you ever believe him? I mean he – " She exhales, gathers her wits. "Just, how could you?"

"I don't know." The voice Tifa uses to respond cowers: small and brittle, it sits in her throat and tries to hide. "He said you were lying. That Lightning was going to end up like him. I just couldn't let that happen. I just couldn't lose…I mean…with you and Cloud and everyone…I just couldn't lose her, too."

The hand Aerith's using to loosen the hardened filth at Lightning's collar freezes along with the rest of her. She has no idea why what Tifa's saying makes her so angry. It shouldn't. Of course Tifa'd be scared. Of course she wouldn't know what was at stake. But even still, Aerith can't understand how someone so strong – so goodhearted and selfless and kind – could be so gullible.

Then again – Aerith shrugs off the shock and rubs harder at Lightning's skin – Tifa never really did understand. The fight against ShinRa: everything with Cloud; trusting everyone she every met…

Aerith hates herself for the conclusion, but she can't help but think it was all just so selfish. Just Tifa Lockheart wouldn't have to be alone.

Yes. She wrings the cloth out over the bowl, listens to the sad, silly plops of water falling back into more water. She does hate herself for thinking it. But she does anyway.

Slowly, intently, Aerith wets the cloth again, forces herself to do what the Lifestream asks of her. Be gentle, forgiving, want nothing for yourself. Try to forget that the girl who's saying she can't lose anyone else is the one who got to live.

Jealousy that she thought she'd left behind flashes, hot and fast, but irrelevant. Who is going to live, Aerith corrects brutally. Who is going to live.

Closing her eyes, Aerith offers the best response she can. "It's not about that, Tifa." Leaving the cloth where it lies, she uses her fingers to separate blood-stiff strands of hair, pulling strings of rose pink from clumps of oxidized brown. "There's more at stake than just...losing friends."

"Okay, but then..." Again, the sound of floorboards creaking treads on Aerith's nerves. "Then what is it about? I mean…are you keeping something from us? What – what was Cid talkingabout?"

And there it is. For some reason, it's this small question that siphons off some of Aerith's rage. Because as furious as she is at Tifa – her naivety; all the things she got to keep – she knows that all the lies here are hers.

Necessary evils, she knows. But evils, nonetheless. Just like what she did to Vaan. What she would do again and again, if it meant this horror would actually mean something good, in the end.

Placing soaked hands in her lap, Aerith lets the quiet fester. Dirty water seeps through the fabric and runs down her skinned knees, and as she waits for enough time to pass for Tifa to feel ashamed, she wonders how she's managed to become such a horrible person.

"I can't believe you just asked me that." Aerith says what will hurt the most. "After all this time, after everything we've been through, you really believe him and not me?"

It's sharp and short and pained, the way Tifa pulls in her breath. "Aerith, wait. You know…that's not what I meant."

"I don't know what you meant, Tifa." Absently, Aerith toys with the ruined fabric under Lightning's left breast. Lifting the flap, she can see a jagged-toothed scar: the only imperfection – the only evidence of violence – she's been able to find on her skin. "If you don't trust me, you don't trust me. There's nothing I can do."

"Aerith. No." Tifa sounds like she's just retreated even further into the shadow, even deeper into herself. "It's just that why would Raines…I mean…I'm sorry."

Fingering the cloth, Aerith neither looks up nor down. The scar is terrible. Puckered and raised, it's just so ugly, so cruel. "It's okay," she says after a beat. There's no need to push Tifa harder. She's done about as much damage as she needs. "You're just tired. A lot's happened. You should go and get some rest."

"Well…" Tifa's voice cracks a little. "But what about you?"

"I'll be fine," Aerith says, expressionless. "Maybe you should go find Vaan. You guys are close, and I think he needs some cheering up. After Fran, I mean."

"I'd rather…" Tifa's voice hasn't gotten any less small or sad, and Aerith crushes the guilt that bubbles in her stomach. "I mean, I want…"

"Please, Tifa." Aerith keeps the words clipped. "Just please go."

"But – I'm sorry." The words come out in barely a whisper, but they linger long after Tifa's footsteps have disappeared down the hall.

"Me too, Missy." The old endearment doesn't quite fit in her mouth. She hangs her head, just a little. "Me too."

It takes Aerith a while to gather her thoughts after Tifa leaves. She feels heavy, she thinks. Like all the lies have an actual weight, and they're pushing down on her shoulders, bending her spine. Leaning over to look at Lightning again, she shakes her head, pushes an almost clean strand of hair from the other woman's face.

Funny, Aerith thinks. All these years thinking about Lightning, bringing her to Etro's Throne, gambling that she – and everyone else – will make the right choice, when the time comes, she's never really stopped to look at her. How youngshe is. How she's spent her whole life fighting or killing or both. How, yes, this is the person whose future…whose whole future…

Lifestream chatters in her ears. "You shouldn't lie to her. At least don't lie…"

"Be quiet." She mutters, a little irate that even after everything she's done, the Planet won't leave her alone, just for a little while. "What do you know about it?"

"I know – " At the sound of Lightning's voice, Aerith nearly falls out of her chair. "That I've got a fucking bitch headache."

Scrambling back to a fully upright position, Aerith's eyes go wide. She doesn't understand. Even if Etro's reaching out to Lightning early, lending her whatever remains of her power, there was so much blood-loss…

Collecting herself, Aerith smiles, doesn't let the surprise show up in her face or voice. "Well," she says, as brightly as she can. "I guess I don't have to ask how you feel."

"No." The word coming out of Lightning's mouth sounds slow and swollen. "You don't. What happened to me?"

"How much do you remember?"

Lightning blinks, lolls her face to one side to rest in the tangled dregs of her hair. "Dead asshole. Giant sword."

"That covers most of it, actually." Aerith answers, laughing softly. "You were hurt. But it wasn't fatal."

Almost automatically, Lightning's hand goes to the scar under her left breast. She feels the ridge of it, traces the slash with fingertips that know exactly what they're feeling, what it means. "It should have been," she says softly.

"You and I both know that's not true." Aerith doesn't volunteer any information Lighting doesn't already know. "Not for you. Not anymore."

"Okay." Lightning nods: as accepting, Aerith thinks, as anyone really could be. "Fair enough. Is it this fucking brand again? Is that thing getting loose?"

"Not exactly." Mindful of the whispers of the Lifestream, Aerith doesn't lie, but she doesn't tell the truth either. "But that's why I'm here: what I wanted to tell you. Anima was right. Minwu and I, we've been studying it…" She pauses. "We think it's possible we can remove it. Heal you. For good."

"Wait." If Lighting had other questions, Aerith watches as the suspicion evaporates from her expression. Her eyes go sharp, alert: like a child's when you shout her name above the crowd. "You can do that?"

"Yes." Aerith looks up at her, and the relief she sees in Lightning's face just about breaks her heart. She goes on. Gives her just the good news. "Give us time, Lightning, but yes, we think we can."

---

Sitting knees-to-chest in some intestinal alley in the guts of the Phantom Village, Vaan thumbs the edge of his new dagger and narrows his eyes at, well, nothing.

Nothing in particular, anyway.

Garbage maybe, he concludes, fastening his gaze on a hulking pile of tin or scraps or whatever. Probably. Garbage is about the one constant in the universe. Every city everywhere has it. Even the screwed-up ones floating around the Rift.

Whatever. He scratches his nose with a free finger. Doesn't matter. Everything's frozen here so if it is garbage, he can't smell it. And even if he could, it doubts it would bug him. After all, although he knows he's as good a sky pirate as half of them out there – Fran basically said so – he's still most at home on the streets.

This is where he grew up. And whatever the sky has to offer – clouds underfoot and overhead, the crazy-sexy curve of the whole world out his window – this is where he'll always belong.

So no. The garbage isn't what bugs him. What bugs him – he stops the repetitive thumbing and just holds the blade up to his eyes – is everything else.

He doesn't even have words anymore for how pissed off he is. With everything.

It's insane. He catches the amber light on his dagger then tilts it up and down, watches it bleed over the steel. There's nothing about what's happened to them that makes any sense at all. Nobody's explained to him what a "Door of Souls" even is, and how the hell they're supposed to open it. Or why Teefs always goes off into those freak trances. Or how Aerith seems to know everything but can't explain anything and acts like she can just do whatever because she's some sacred, magic – he doesn't know – lamb or something…

And Fran. He closes his eyes and will absolutely, seriously not, cry one more time. He will not remember the burning deck, and mother of hell, all that blood, and the way he thought he heard her scream.

He didn't think Viera could sound like that. He didn't think anyone could sound like that.

Vaan tightens his lips, lets his eyes creak open. All he can do is breathe through it. All he can do is stare at this knife, and take off on this walk, and not punch people in the face.

"Do mind the temper," Vaan can hear Balthier tell him like it was some kind of genius discovery. "A man can ruin a lot of fine shirts with random violence."

Despite how crappy he feels, Vaan snorts at the memory. Balthier always did have to sound like he knew everything, even when he didn't. Even when he was just as angry and confused as everyone else. Maybe especially when he was just as angry and confused as everyone else.

Vaan shrugs. He guesses everyone needs a place to hide once in a while. Even him.

Breathing out, Vaan hops to his feet and re-sheathes his dagger. It's still not right. He doesn't get why he can remember Balthier and Fran and Pen so clearly now, but there are still these holes everywhere. Like his mind's this landscape with booby-trap craters in it. He could be walking down a path that seems familiar and then boom. The ground just opens up under his feet and all of a sudden everything's just gone.

Agitated, he closes his fist over his buckler strap. And it's not like Dissidia-amnesia either. That felt like his life was literally right there, right on the tip of his tongue. This feels like something else. Maybe like the one thing that'd connect all these dots just doesn't exist anymore.

For a while after they lost the Falcon, Vaan had thought it was because he was so broken up about Fran. But even though he misses her, he knows that's not it.

It's something more important than that. It's someone more important than that.

The puddle Vaan taps his foot in doesn't splash or ripple. It just sits, unbroken and still: stuck in place.

Making a sharp, disgusted noise, he shoulders out of the alley. He's thought about this too much already and he's sick of it. He needs to clear his head, so he does what he's always done, he thinks. Wanders. Picks a random direction and just walks off in it.

As he moves – idling down narrow canals of cobblestone that wind over each other in knots – Vaan feels the added bulk of his new crossbow between his shoulder blades, his new short-sword at his hip. The weight's comforting: solid. He takes in a long suck of motionless air and one side of his lip twitches up. It's good to have weapons back, at least. They make him feel like even if he'd rather eat a plate of raw Malboro than trust the people who brought him here, he can at least defend himself.

Which is a good thing, he thinks. Because this place gives him a serious case of the creeps.

Stepping cautiously around a little kid frozen mid-tantrum, Vaan lets his eyes prowl over the streets, hovering for random periods of time on all the truly strange things that fill them. There's a woman, for one, tossing the contents of a bucket out of some open window; but whatever the liquid is, it's just stuck in the air like shattered bits of rainbow. And there's a fire too, that someone's started in the public forge, and the sparks that fly off it look like they've been preserved in wax. But still, he thinks what screws him up the most are the petrified-people's eyes.

They're so – he doesn't even know how to put it – alive-looking. Completely motionless, yeah. But also like there's something inside them that's desperate to keep going. Like they're wide awake but can't move: trapped in the act; only want wanting to finish whatever it was they started.

Vaan shudders, decides not to look too closely. It doesn't help that the stuck sunset's poured a piss-colored glow on everything. Or that the crumbling buildings cluster together so closely. A horde of witches, maybe. Or something like that.

Reflexively, he lets his hand drift down to the hilt of his dagger again. Right. Definitely good to have weapons back.

He walks for a while longer in silence – periodically knifing around or over bits and pieces of this village's castaway life – and lets his mind skim over the surface of things. It's weird, but even after everything that's happened here, with Kain and Light and Teefs and that truly disturbed Raines guy, he can't help but wonder about the people they left behind in Dissidia.

This whole thing was for them, after all. So they could get a chance to go home.

Neatly ducking from a main street into another broken-necked alley, he wonders how they're doing. Bartz and silent-Squall the lion boy and that paper-doll-looking girl he found, the one with the empty eyes. And the Onion Knight too. His little brother.

The smile Vaan smiles is crooked, but it feels good anyway. Probably the last thing the Onion Knight ever really needed was an older brother. With that speed he could cut most of the rest of them to ribbons. But it felt right, for some reason, to be looking out for someone.

Even if they don't remember him back, he hopes they're okay. He really, really does.

Pausing for a moment, he crouches, looks up through the narrow gap between the buildings up at the tea-colored sky. The motion pushes the hilt of his dagger into his stomach, but he doesn't mind because looking up always makes him feel better. And the wider the distance between him and the sky, the more impressive it all seems. Like the sky is telling him secrets or something. Like that's where all the answers are.

"We are all in the gutter." Balthier again: pensive this time, swirling red-brown brandy in the bottom of a snifter. "But some of us are looking at the stars."

Vaan feels his smile even itself out a bit. He feels better, he thinks. It's just a little, but he'll take it. He's survived on less.

Closing his eyes, he lets the quiet seep in and some of the anger seep out. He actually figures he'd be perfectly happy to stay this way for a while – not looking at any of the sinister things that live in this town – except for that odd, shambling noise he thinks he hears.

That – wait, oh crap, oh seriously, not again – he definitely hears.

In a single, tidy movement, Vaan's back on his feet with his back pressed up against the alley wall. Because of the noise it'd make, he doesn't want to draw any weapons, so he just breathes as shallowly and silently as possible. He just watches.

He can feel his heartbeat racket in his ribs, but he wills it down. Probably the only thing he wants right now is no more rotting crystal zombies. He's had about as much as he can take of them, thanks.

Vaan stays bolted in place still for long enough to think he might have imagined what he heard. He's just about to relax when he sees it. Something – no, not zombie-looking – tall, he thinks. Definitely shaped like a human, and a guy, but it's not Laguna or Minwu. And there's something hooked over his shoulder…

He blinks.

Then he blinks again.

No way.

It's literally everything Vaan can do not to suck in a really loud breath. Or to laugh out loud: because if he's seeing who he thinks he's seeing, drifting through the alley between frozen trash and people then he's looking at a ghost.

Although frankly – and he really hates the fact that this is true – a ghost would be about the most normal thing he's seen in forever.

"Kain?" Vaan takes a shy step out of the sheltering shadow. Every instinct he's got tells him to stay hidden, but if there's even an off chance this is the real thing; that the one guy they're missing survived that vicious, impossible fall... "Kain?"

At the sound of his voice, the silhouette near the edge of the alley goes still, the way that animals do sometimes when they're being hunted. But as it turns to look at him, the tension bleeds out. The movements go easy and rangy. Relaxed. An arm is raised. It beckons him forward.

Vaan moves cautiously. He's not quite sure what to think. One by one, the features that appear out of the ochre dark seem like Kain. Not that he ever really saw a lot of Kain that wasn't glowering dragon mask, but still. There's the jawline. The ashy, bloody lip-stain. The strange purple eyes he's seen once or twice before.

"Aye." The voice is as curt and superior-sounding as ever.

Breaking into an ambling jog, Vaan rushes a few more paces down the alley, through unsplashing puddles of waste and stagnant water. Up close, there's no question that it's Kain's face, but still something seems kinda wrong with it. He's not all that familiar with Kain's non-smirking, non-dragon-looking expressions, but he can't ever remember seeing even the lower half of his face so relaxed, so unguarded.

"Man." Vaan's not out of breath when he stops, but he feels his adrenaline pick up anyway. "I thought you were dead."

"An exaggeration." Kain folds his arms and smirks. "I assume our allies informed you that I fell. After our little adventure on the bridge I only remember waking up here."

"I don't know." It's true, but Vaan's still wary, wondering why it is Kain sounds like he's talking about the weather when they haven't seen each other in weeks. "From what Light says, that was an insane fall."

Kain shrugs. "We ought to have died in Dissidia, oughtn't we? I'm not one to question."

Fidgeting, Vaan's right hand sneaks just a little sideways from where he's hooked this thumb in a beltloop. A little closer to his dagger. He remembers what Light said now, about somebody who looked like Kain, ambushing them on the bridge; thinks maybe she shouldn't have been so hasty jumping out…

"Yeah, I guess," Vaan says, still probing. "I mean, just waking up here is one thing. But you're not even injured…"

"Who knows?" The man sends him a slow mile that seems detached from his face. "The Rift's a strange place, boy, filled with traps and miracles both. Other than one's allies, one must be on one's guard."

It might be the reference to the Rift that does it. Or maybe it's the 'boy'. Or the vicious twist to Kain's smile that Vaan's never once seen on the guy's face. But whatever it is, he's grateful for it because his dagger's out to block a savage overhead strike before it can take his face off.

"Thanks for the tip." Flipping back, Vaan spits the response and crouches, blade at the level of his eyes. "But I don't think you're my ally. And you're definitely not Kain."

"Wrong again." The smile on the man's face broadens, and Vaan thinks of all the eerie things he's seen today, this actually might be the worst. "I most certainly am."

---

Alone in his chambers, reclining in his bed, Minwu waits. He grits his teeth, and he closes his eyes, and he waits for the nerve-splitting pain to which he has become accustomed.

He waits for his skin to slide open. Nothing. He waits for the feeling of something hot and viscous to slither down his spine. Still nothing. He waits for nausea to cramp his stomach, for the sick taste of vomit to rise in his throat. More nothing.

Sighing, he dares to hope. He twinges in anticipatory disappointment, and yet – merciful, benevolent, nothing.

For all the discipline Minwu has forced on himself, it's not possible to control the shuddering breath that wracks through his lungs. The absence of pain is so profound, he feels it like pleasure, and it tiptoes over his nerves, swift and light.

His eyes flash open. Pulling his cowl from his face, he inhales deeply of the cinnamon scented incense that Yuna was kind enough to light. He drinks in the sight of the books he left open on his desk; the ink and parchment paper; the quill that curves from the pot like the turn of a dancing girl's skirt.

Swinging his legs off the bed, Minwu rests blood-encrusted hands on his knees for a moment before rising; before glorying in the sensation of muscles stretching without tearing. He glances out the window, lets his eyes rest on the pale and dusty gold of the captive sunset.

He smiles.

It's a private, emaciated thing; long out of use. And for a second, he relishes the swift, simple way it lightens his heart before walking the few steps to his chair and returning to work.

There's much to be done, still. He has promises to keep. Ones he made – or perhaps, were made for him – the second he bound a soul to the Warrior of Light.

There would be no more indulgences. No more time devoted to the study of music, or of flowers, or the lore of all those other worlds. Nor would there be anything in his chambers than a simple double bed, a desk, and every tome he could find in any world about Shinryu.

Everything must be bare and simple. Every moment smuggled beneath the observation of the Lufenian's "Great Will" must be used for a single purpose only.

Kill the Dragon.

Destroy it before it gains sufficient strength in Dissidia to glut on the souls in Etro's Gate.

End it. End it all.

Minwu sighs, considers opening an ancient text but then doesn't. For all Cid's scheming – the length of sight he always claimed – the endgame behind his deal with the devil seemed to escape him. But that's well enough, Minwu supposes. The Lufenian's obsession with that vile simulacrum of himself keeps him ignorant, and the ignorance is helpful.

With Ellone's aid, he has located a tightrope. If walked correctly, it will perhaps lead all of them from this place. It will perhaps help him return certain of the things that were lost.

Certain things. Not all. Certain people. Again, not all. And all of it contingent on whether he has strength remaining to pull the brand off Etro's champion, if he can even determine how.

Minwu blows out a quiet breath, and the fingers he was using to flirt with the leather binding of the tome slip to the polished wood of his desk and drum. He is weary of playing puppeteer. But he has yet to find a way to crush the part of him that continues to whisper that there must be another way.

Again closing his eyes, Minwu focuses. He must not allow these thoughts to possess him. Cid isn't here at the moment – he cannot feel that repellent, rusted-tin-tasting presence in his lab – but he's learned the hard way that the Lufenian is nearly always listening, just a second away from tap, tap, tapping on the sides of his skull….

The fingers constrict and stop drumming. With considerable force, they grip the side of the desk instead, and Minwu can feel the crusty Ribbons dig into his skin and cut his circulation.

He's bound them very tightly, after all.

"Stop," he chastises himself out loud. "You must stop."

Minwu knows she's joined him at his desk partially because the footsteps that glide into his room are not accompanied by an obtrusive answer, and partially because of how familiar her fingers feel as they loosen the knots he's tied. Weightless and graceful, they tease at the filthy snarls of fabric until unbroken flesh rises into the dents in his skin, and blood returns to his hand. Eventually, she unwinds them completely and the bands rustle to the floor.

"Silly man," Aerith says quietly, and the gentle hands rise from his arm to push sticky hair behind his ear. "How many times have I told you you've got to leave some room?"

Minwu chuckles, leans into her touch. "Many, I suppose."

"And you don't listen because...?"

"Of foolishness." He turns his head a bare fraction and leaves a kiss on her fingers. "I do not learn so quickly, I'm afraid."

Tension flutters through Aerith's hand. "Stop that."

"As you wish." Minwu has learned not to deny her rebukes. "How is she? Is she awake?"

"Lightning?" she responds, and he can hear exhaustion and something else twist her voice. "She's up. I…I told her. I'm not sure she's thinking straight yet, though because she hasn't asked any questions. I think she's just a bit shell-shocked."

"Understandably." Reflexively, Minwu starts drumming on his desk again. He lets out a long exhalation. "Understandably so…."

Leaning in over the desk, Aerith flips open the tome on the desk and it falls naturally to the section where Minwu's already broken the spine. "Any luck?" she asks. "We're two crystals down now, but if you start removing the brand, I can go…" – she swallows – "I can try and get them back…Raines is still trapped in the Lifestream...Linzei will be distracted…I could…"

"I know." Minwu reaches up and takes the hand Aerith's left on his shoulder. He squeezes it before he points to the text. "But I'm afraid I'll need you here. To be honest, I'm still at a loss. There's nothing in any of her world's analects that gives any clue. Only countless references to Etro's 'pity'." Exasperated, he stops, taps the paper. "It's insensible gibberish. Surely – "

"Surely – " It's a careless, lazy voice that interrupts him. One he hasn't heard in some time. "Surely you don't expect sense from the gods, do you Minwu? Or has so much time in this crypt rotted your brain?"

"Nero." Minwu inclines his head and turns to see Etro's Ferryman reclined indolently in the wooden chair by his bed. "A pleasure, as always."

Beside him, Aerith makes a face. Whatever magic flows through Nero the Sable – and Minwu has not yet determined whether it is Chaos or something else entirely – it is the equal and the opposite of her. Terra corrupt, was it? "Speak for yourself, love," she says.

"Feisty, aren't we flower girl?" The bandages on Nero's face pull in a thin facsimile of a smile. "Death suits you, I think."

"Peace, Nero." Minwu settles a hand on Aerith's lower back, and gently he works to rub away the tension he finds there. "We weren't expecting you quite yet. Is there something?"

Nero's eyebrow's twitch, amused. "There's always something, isn't there? You've been dancing quite the little dance, or so I hear."

Tensing, Minwu's fingers push dents into Aerith's skin. "I assume you haven't come here to level threats." His voice cools and hardens. "Our respective masters have a bargain. And as I understand it, She keeps your brother in rather precarious conditions."

A soft, cruel chuckle seeps out from under the pitted gag. "I wouldn't dream of telling on you Minwu." A metal wing creaks as he extends it, uses it to lay long, elegant scratches on the side of his face. "I can't imagine anything I care less about that your petit revolutions." He crosses his legs, slouches on the chair's rickety arm. "By all means, slay your dragons and throw off your chains, brave servant. I'm only here to send you tidings from the Goddess."

It's only then that Minwu's eyes find the mirror fragment Nero cradles in his right hand. He's surprised it was so well concealed. But then, if one thing can be said of Etro – the most foolish of all Bhunivelze's children – it is that she chooses her servants well.

His eyes narrow. "What is that?"

"This?" Nero says, tilting the glass towards his ruined face as he rises. After a last, searching look, he shrugs and then tosses the fragment over with the ease of indifference. He either assumes someone will catch it, or he does not care. "The answer to your niggling question, Minwu." He offers a mocking bow. "Remember. Offerings to the Goddess must be clean."

It's Aerith who actually manages to snatch the mirror before it shatters on the floor. The second she catches it though, she takes a sharp, caught-off guard breath. A sound that Minwu hasn't heard for quite some time. "Nero," she snaps. "What are we supposed to do with this?"

Pulling himself to his full height, Nero rolls his eyes. "And I'd heard you were supposed to be the clever one." He doesn't look back as he makes his way out the door, wrapped in thick, obfuscating robes of dark. "I'm sure you'll figure it out."

Minwu waits until the chamber has cleared of darkness before speaking again. And even then, still suspicious, he throws glimmering sparks of Dispel on the ground and a precautionary wall of Silence at the door. It's only after the mana's cleared his fingers that he looks up at her and asks, "What is it, Aerith?"

She waits a moment before answering, and Minwu watches as her fingers play over the filigreed frame of the mirror: if possible, both teasing and reverent. "I don't quite know." She hesitates, kneels beside him and then hands it over. "Here."

As soon as Minwu takes it in his hands, he starts to understand Aerith's confusion. There's something very strange about this fragment of Etro's world. A mirror that shows a thousand possibilities, reflections of an even greater number of times…

He can see right away how he might be able to use it to remove Lightning's brand. The manipulation of probability might be enough in itself. But still, and more compelling, there's something more to it than even that.

Aerith's supernatural green eyes scrawl questions in the amber dark. "So what do you see?"

"I'm not quite certain." Turning the fragment over in his hand, he holds it up to the unsetting sun. "Perhaps nothing. But perhaps..." He pauses and cannot strangle the unfamiliar hope that rises in his chest. "…perhaps another way…"

---

Charging through the streets of the Phantom Village, Tifa Lockheart wipes whole regiments of stubborn tears from her eyes. She hates that she's crying. She hates that she's crying again. But the tears don't listen to her. They never have.

Despite all her best efforts, they dribble down her face in greasy smears. She does manage to swallow the sobs though, even if she nearly has to bite through her bottom lip to do so. Pain pulses from the wet and swollen skin all the way up the muscles of her jaw, but it doesn't matter. She likes it, even.

It's normal. It's easy. It's proof that she's not as breakable as she thinks – she's terrified – that she just might be.

It's so childish, Tifa thinks, almost absently avoiding little caucuses of frozen people. She doesn't understand why she can't just be angry, the way Light would be. Why just the smallest comment from Aerith can make her feel like no matter what, she's always going to be wrong. That it's her fault for not understanding everything the way she should, even when nobody ever bothers to explain it to her.

She thought she was doing the right thing. And if what she did really was a mistake, why didn't Aerith say anything…if she knew…

The thought pulls Tifa up short, cuts her run mid-stride, makes her feel worse, if it's even possible. It's hard to blame Aerith for being secretive – if she even is – when she's the one whose got Vaan's ring in her pocket. When she didn't tell Cloud when she met him again all those years ago, all the things he needed to know.

Stationary now, Tifa balls her fists and the tears just fall. And Aerith died to save them. Aerith died and I lived and, oh god, how could I even think...

She swallows and it hurts. All Aerith's ever done is save her life. She doesn't deserve…

Heaving breath out of burning lungs, Tifa grasps for control but can't find it. Eventually, she tries to wipe the tears off again: harder this time, until she feels the skin on her face pull and stretch.

Get a grip, Lockheart. Get. A. Grip. She orders herself to stop, but more tears come out anyway. And after a while, too miserable to even stand there, she settles to her knees in the long shadow of some frozen father who's holding his daughter close in his arms.

She's got brown hair, the little girl, like Marlene's. With a glittering, messy smile that'll rot on her face like that, forever. And as Tifa looks up at her, she finds there's nothing she can do to stop herself from just sobbing, stupidly and alone. Not just for her and Aerith, but for…well…she doesn't even know anymore.

Everything maybe.

Yeah – the sobs come silently and convulsively, like she's hyperventilating, and all of a sudden she's aware that she's still soaked in black blood and red blood and bits of crap that she's got no fucking idea what to call – maybe that.

She's so sorry. For Kain and Light and Fran. For Raines, even, no matter what Aerith says. For all these poor frozen people. For shit, just damn it…

I'm sorry.

Sucking in air, Tifa takes her balled fists and smashes them hard against her knees. Over and again, until there's so much more numbness than pain. And again, for some reason, it's this that helps her pull herself together. This that keeps from her from blubbering like some idiot kid, all by herself.

Clawing the skin on her thighs, Tifa does her best to focus. To tell herself that it's okay, they're still alive. And that there's no way she can do anything for anyone if she's stuck in the middle of nowhere, crying in the dirt.

The conclusion doesn't make her feel all the way better. Not even close, really. But it takes her some of the way. It helps here wrestle the crying to a stop. It helps her get back to her feet.

If it was a mistake, make up for it Tifa. Rubbing her eyes, the decision feels right. It's all she can do. She breathes, regular this time. There isn't any other choice.

When Tifa starts moving again, she goes slowly, driftingly. Her senses are still sloppy from the crying fit, so she feels a little like she's moving through a dream. A still-life dream, filled with yellow water-color light and ageless flowers that recline from window boxes, and silence. A sturdy, invincible silence that's interrupted only by the thump of rubber footsteps against cobblestone.

Well, footsteps and…wait…what...crossbow bolts?

Tifa freezes. Huh? She can't decide if it's real or if she just completely made up that last part because her exhausted mind's a total nervous wreck. She bends her knees, tenses, listens again. It's for sure…something: a click, and lock and a pressurized release and words…

"Okay." A sharp, familiar voice. Another click – loading – a dull twang – firing…"Maybe I would havepreferred…the damn…zombies."

"Vaan!" Tifa breaks into a dead sprint towards the sound, racing down main streets and alleys as fast as she can. "Vaan!"

There's no answer so she follows her instincts and keeps on running. She tracks the sounds until she rounds a nearby corner and sees something that brings her fist to her mouth. Something that she never thought she'd see again, racing up the atmosphere…

The hand that's not at her mouth braces against the alley wall.

"What?" It's a whisper. A surprised and breathy whisper. "Wait. Kain? Vaan – what are you doing?"

Vaan's got new soot on his face that clashes with the old soot, and he's got his crossbow pressed expertly into the crook of his arm. He offers her a quick, knowing smirk.

"Oh. Hey Teefs," he says as if he's asking her to pass the salt. "By the way " – he lets another bolt fly, but it sails wide of its target – "Definitely not Kain. It's…whatever they ran into on the bridge. The thing that killed him."

"What do you mean?" Tifa's still shaking disorientation from her head as she pushes off the alley wall. Putting her arms up to a middle block, she just barely manages to flip away from Vaan to avoid the killing point of a falling spear: the bone-crushing weight of the form behind it.

"Kain – what?" She repeats his name again, needing – somehow – to get through. "What's going on? What - "

With chilling speed and grace, the figure uncoils from the kneel he's landed in and lunges forward. A single motion, uninterrupted. Exactly like Kain. "I would think it obvious," he drawls. "Although I'm told you're quite stupid."

Hopping back on her left leg, Tifa feints under the spear before turning in a hard roundhouse to the ribs of, of – whoever this thing is. "Well," she snarls, using his momentary lack of balance to land a hard right hook to his jaw. "You shouldn't believe everything you hear."

Stepping back, the man with Kain's face snorts, wipes blood lazily from his lower lip. "Ah," he mutters, spinning the spear in guard before resetting his stance with languorous impunity. "Stupid and violent." He charges forward again. "How charming."

Tifa hears the clicking reload on Vaan's crossbow well before she sees the bloody tips of the bolts come through not-Kain's shoulder. "Why don't you just shut up already," he says, voice drenched with disgust. "The real Kain never talked this much."

The man lets out a muffled grunt, and though he nearly drops to his knees, his spear stays firmly in hand. Tifa rushes forward with a sweep, trying to take advantage of the pause, but somehow the bastard sees it and - oh shit – reacts.

She sees it coming but it's too late. Before Tifa can counter or slide out, the butt end of his spear cracks down on her knee. She hears the bone crack, feels the kneecap shift and slide.

"Ngh." Revolting amounts of pain pull a dry heave from her stomach. She closes her eyes for the briefest of seconds, but when she opens them again, all she sees is a blade coming down at her neck. She's certain she's dead, but then there's one, two, three more crossbow bolts from Vaan, and she's able to recover her senses enough to roll away.

The sound of steel tearing flesh is not something Tifa thinks she'll ever get used to. But his time – thank goodness – the spear does rattle to the ground.

"Asshole," Vaan says from somewhere out of sight. "Get off her. Now."

"You are all fools." The words grind from the wounded man's jaw as he rounds on his attacker. Blood's pouring from several of the holes in his chest, and Tifa's got no idea how he's still standing, let alone fighting. He pulls a knife from a sheathe at his belt and lunges forward. Again, that speed. Again that rage.

"She will find you." The words bubble with blood, and Tifa bets that he's got at least a punctured lung, but it barely slows him down. "She's been here thousands of years, awaiting the slag you present at Etro's Throne. You truly think you can escape Her? Her will is complete. It's kinder by far that you die by my hand."

From where Tifa's sprawled on the ground, she can tell there's not enough time for Vaan to reload so he buys time, retreats down the alley. He's too slow, though, and before Tifa can even cry out to warn him, whoever it is in Kain's body has jumped forward, crashing him into a wall.

Tifa can barely follow what happens next, it goes so fast. There's a clatter as Vaan's crossbow is knocked from his hands, a flurried trade in messy, uncoordinated punches, and before she can pull herself to her feet, the terrifying thing wearing Kain's skin has Vaan pinned to his chest and a knife poised at his neck.

Despite the shrieking pain in her knee, Tifa flips forward. The joint basically gives out on her, but she stays upright, and is off at a crazed bolt towards both of them before she sees the knife dig up into Vaan's skin: deadly, menacing, sincere.

"Move and he dies."

"Oh." Tifa freezes. "Oh no."

Maybe it's all the time they've spent traveling together, but even while Tifa's panicking, she knows enough to find Vaan's eyes. He's not struggling, but she can see his nimble hands inch – softly, carefully – along his belt towards his dagger. Stall, is all she thinks. Even if Vaan can't break free, there's no way this guy's going to survive too long with those crossbow bolts in his back. If they wait long enough, he'll be weak…

Tifa's heartbeat won't slow down, and the throb in her knee is making her sick, but she ignores it because she has to. She meets a pair of insane amethyst eyes and searches them for any trace of Kain – the real Kain – that she can reach just for a second. Just one or two is all she needs.

"Kain – " she holds out her hand.

"Are you even more stupid than I thought, whore? That – " he makes a savage gesture with his chin "is moving."

"Okay." The arm drops, limp. "Okay. Kain…Kain what happened to you? Why – The Kain I know would never do this. He's selfless, brave – "

"Brave?" The expression on Kain's striking face twists. "Brave? The dog you know is weak beyond measure. He failed at everything he ever tried; lost everything he ever wanted. He mewls for scraps at Cecil Harvey's feet." The knife comes up higher, draws a thin red line on Vaan's neck. "I've no intention of letting him live."

"Don't you ever say that about him. He did all of it for us." Even through the reflexive, ice-bright slice of anger, Tifa see Vaan's hand stray closer, a fraction of an inch at a time. But wait…Tifa's mind stutters, shocked."But wait...you mean he's alive?"

"I suppose he will be." The words are frothy spit in Vaan's right ear. "Until I kill him. Either way, I still need your crystal, boy."

Vaan lifts his neck, daring. If the cut at his neck bothers him, it doesn't show at all. "So why don't you just off me and take it, then."

"I would if I could, rat," he wheezes. "But Harmony's crystal is a curious thing. It requires you surrender it of your own free will. So here – " the voice is cajoling, urbane " – a bargain. Give it to me, I kill you and leave the whore. Don't," he laughs a short, brutal laugh. "I leave you alive. I take my time with her."

"Sorry." By now, Vaan's finally got his hand on his dagger. And lifting it faster than Tifa's ever seen him move, he cuts a vicious, yawing slash over top of the hand that restrains him. Bone whispers white against peeling layers of muscle and skin, amidst slit purple ropes of vein. "No dice, jackass."

The knife that was at Vaan's neck a second ago clatters harmlessly to the ground. And whatever it is that's inhabiting Kain's shape finally – finally – sinks to the street. Unarmed and bleeding, all he does is breath.

"Now," Vaan grabs his crossbow off the ground and retreats back in front of Tifa. "Who are you? What do you want?"

Doubled over, the man looks up at them with blistering hate. "Everything," he answers in a voice so familiar it sinks through Tifa's stomach like a stone. "Everything I can get."

"Then by all means –" Tifa's head snaps to the source of the words. They barge out of shadow; spill from the mouth of a figure she can only assume has been hiding behind one of the jagged heaps of trash in the alley, just waiting. " – take this."

A hand wielding a rusty mythril knife follows the words. With slick and terrifying precision, it flashes under the kneeling man's chin and neatly slits his throat.

Tifa gasps, shot through with horror. The man falls over and dies, but it doesn't happen the way it does in movies, where people splutter and spit blood and try and say things: confess, maybe. Kain moves professionally, and in one seamless incision he severs both carotid arteries and the jugular vein.

Whatever blood the thing had left in his body has left it before it even hits the ground.

Tifa swallows and averts her eyes, tries not to watch the corpse twitch. And because the blood's not frozen with the rest of the village, it splashes a bit, dark and sticky and wet. It slithers between the cobblestones, alive.

Kain? Tifa almost falls again. If she thought she was losing it before, now she's almost sure. The real Kain? But why would he kill –?

"Do you have any idea what's happening Teefs?" Vaan's backed up so his arms around her waist and he's supporting her busted knee. "Or who the hell that is? I mean, how many pyscho Kains are there out there?"

"I…" she trails off. "I don't know…"

It's only for the quickest of moments afterwards, but for a second, the three of them just stand there, shocked. It's not that Tifa hasn't seen Kain kill before. She has – plenty of times – and he does it with such exacting skill that more than once, when they were travelling together, she'd had to stop and reset: tell herself that he was doing this to help and there wasn't something else behind those beads he used to look at people instead of his eyes.

Traitor. Killer. He called himself those things when she never did. She always figured it was code for "stay away". And yet, as he stands there, looking over the body with naked contempt, she can't help but think that maybe, maybe he was right?

Looking down at Vaan, Tifa just blinks. She blinks and just doesn't understand anything anymore. Least of all who it is she sees when she looks at the man with the blood-soaked left hand.

Kain stands over the body for a little while longer, musters enough strength to kick it heartily before collapsing to the earth. Tifa braces herself for the grotesque noise of a live body hitting the dead, but before it happens, something starts to glimmer in the corpse. It dissolves, begins to come part in little magic orbs that look like Yuna's Sending light. They flock up to the strange, frozen clouds in lazy, golden figure eights.

It would be almost pretty, Tifa thinks. If she could forget the where they came from – she swallows, still uncertain – if she could just be sure….

"Tifa." Almost without her noticing, Kain's come to a knee. He inclines his head, tin-man stiff, but courtly as always. "My apologies…for the mess."

Tifa has to squeeze her lids shut to get the light out of her eyes. But when she opens them again, amidst the spots that float in her eyes, there he is. Oh God. There he is.

His face is gaunt and thin with dehydration. And it's filthy too, just destroyed with dirt and bloodstains and leperous flakes of crystal. But it's the expression that catches her attention. Striking and hawkish as ever, there's nevertheless warmth in his eyes, and his lips are pulled in a smirk that doesn't bear any trace of hate.

"Do you intend to just stare?" There are notes of mirth in his voice that Tifa thinks she'd recognize anywhere: that sharp, unfakeable humor of his that always stuck itself right under Light's skin... "I think I might appreciate…another potion…if you've one to spare."

"Oh, Kain."His name bursts out of her mouth and the taut uncertainty of the moment shatters into a million tiny pieces. "It really is you. We thought you were – "

"Dead?" A smile pulls the corner of Kain's mouth, crinkles the skin around his eyes. "No. Not at this particular moment. Perhaps later."

Despite her busted knee, there's no accounting for the speed at which Tifa's legs carry her to his side, the force that she uses to throws her arms around him. For his part, Kain manages only a small chuckle before putting his hand – hard and tentative, but gentle still, and kind – to the back of her head.

"Oh God. We thought – " she whispers, pulling him tight, half unwilling to believe that he's really here, really still alive. Closing her eyes against more stupid, traitor tears, she clutches his back and y ridges of dirt wedge beneath her nails. "We thought we'd lost you."

"Don't count yourself wrong," he mutters, "quite yet."

Breaking free of his grasp, Tifa pulls back, presses her hand to the sticky flesh at his brow. The skin is terrifyingly cold, and descending the whole length of his right arm, he's tied bands of fabric in rotting tourniquets. Suddenly assessing, her eyes follow them down from his shoulder to his wrist and see that the hand that's visible beneath the cuff of his doublet is as black as the material itself, and rigid with rigor mortis.

Tifa's hand goes to her mouth. She doesn't want it to be true, but a quick glance to the little black worms of magic slithering over the crusty wounds on his chest say that it is. Death magic. Doom, she corrects, remembering everything Aerith taught her in a rush.

Can't be Cured. Kills you faster, the more you move. Oh, oh no.

"We've got to get him back to Aerith or Yuna." Sliding herself in the crook of his armpit Tifa lifts. Kain's six feet and change of solid muscle, and her knee is absolutely killing her, but it's adrenaline doing most of the work. Scrambling in her pocket for a potion, she pulls the cork with her teeth, takes a quick swig she hopes – please, please, please – is enough to get them back."Vaan, hurry."

Holstering his crossbow, Vaan sprints over and takes the other half of the dragoon's weight with ease. "So Kain," he starts. "Just so I know…you got some kind of insane twin you didn't tell us about?"

Kain looks up, seeming vaguely amused. Deep violet eyes that Tifa's never seen so – she doesn't know what word to use, "unbound", maybe – burrow into their sockets. "No."

"Really? But then – I don't get – " He pauses, raises a brow. "Really?"

"Yes."

It's a bit odd that Tifa doesn't quite remember when exactly it was she learned to read Vaan so well, but she watches as he shakes his head sharply and gives up on trying to make any kind of sense of anything at all.

"You know what, Kain," he observes, halfway between wry and confused out of his mind. "You've got some serious issues."

A short, pained laugh. "Fair enough, Vaan," Kain mumbles, half delirious. "Fair enough."

---

Lightning Farron doesn't think that she can really call what she's feeling a headache. Sure, it's pain. And, yes, it's clustered like some kind of puffy sponge of pure fucking agony somewhere behind her eyes. But if she had to describe it, "headache" probably wouldn't be the word she'd go with.

Nailbat to the skull? She toys with the analogy as she makes her way up the overlook above the Phantom Village Inn. Little mice, chewing on my optic nerves? She rolls her head, thinks: "closer", but still, not quite right. That doesn't really capture the nausea, or the dizziness, or the fact that the perfectly solid-looking ground beneath her feet feels like some combination of mud and cotton candy.

Pausing to pinch the bridge of her nose, Lightning inhales, closes her eyes. Hurts like hell.She'll go with that, she thinks. Leave the metaphors to Laguna. He's better at them, anyway.

She's got other things on her mind right now.

"Give us time Lightning, but yes, we think we can." Aerith's promise is more than she could ever let herself believe. "We think we can."

It's stupid to hope for it. She knows that. This thing is a curse from sadistic gods and getting it off her chest would defy everything she's ever known about the world. But still. She guesses that the whole point of hope is that it's stupid. That it's there when it shouldn't be. That it helps you go on, when the rational thing to do would be to lay down arms, concede that the battle's lost.

It's one of those feelings that's halfway between insanity and good tactics, she guesses. Halfway between the one thing she can't let herself feel and exactly what she needs to get the others out of this, even if she can't go with them.

Even if the best she's got to hope for is that Laguna will blow her head clear off before she loses every last part of who she is.

Unthinkingly, Lightning's hand comes to her breast and she presses down on her brand. It's dormant, yeah, but still there. And when she applies circular pressure she can feel heat and slithering black magic radiate out through her nerves. It's thick and hard, too. The flesh as crusty and grey and scab-like as any monster's.

But they bound it. The argument's seductive, and it uncoils in her wind like whispering smoke. It chatters about a home, a future, maybe even a life. Maybe…maybe it's possible.

Lightning clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Whatever. She'll see what they have in mind. Take it one step at a time. "Face forward," Kain had said. It made sense then and it makes sense now. It helps her content herself with the small stuff: with checking on Yuna and Laguna, with finally taking a nice hot bath. Maybe having a night – or endless sunset, or any stray patch of time, actually – that doesn't involve getting shot at.

As she crests the hill, the figures of her friends emerge from the bottom up. First the rock they're sitting on. Then the curve of Yuna's hip. Laguna's bare, burnt arm draped over her shoulder. He's pointing at something off in the distance. Lightning can't tell what it is, or if he's really just making a wide gesture some imaginary destination, but either way, Yuna giggles, musical and soft.

Lightning smiles. It's good to hear.

"Hey, you." Laguna's the first to notice she's come up behind them. Turning, he flashes her an easy grin. "Feeling better?"

"You look a little better," Yuna adds brightly. She turns with him, but her cheek stays hovering in the general vicinity of his shoulder. There's muck on her face, but the blue-green eyes are calm, like she hasn't just been riding shotgun through hell.

Dizzy and a bit caught off guard by their casual closeness, Lightning waits a bit before answering. There's something about the strange, sepia light and the way it glints off Laguna's tags and Yuna's clothes that reminds her of an old war photograph. Of loved ones – parents maybe – welcoming you home.

Lightning blinks, pulls herself out of it. "Better than dead." She stops, rubs her temple. "I think."

"Well now. " Laguna raises a hand in a lanky faux-salute. "That's gotta count for something."

"Who said I was complaining?" A quick smile flits over Lightning's lips before she rolls her weight over her right hip and folds her arms. "I'll take it. Beats getting impaled."

"Light," Yuna begin. "You shouldn't joke abou– Oh." She rises, cuts herself off, makes a small, strangled noise in the back of her throat.

Both Laguna and Lightning notice the expression on Yuna's face drop along with the end of her sentence. For a second, it looks like Laguna's going to finish it for her but then he squints off in the same direction she's staring at, scrambles to his feet, and then breaks off into a run without another word.

"What?" Lightning pivots, not quite understanding what's happening until her eyes find a strange, group-of-people-looking silhouette coming up the ridge. Rushing forward a few paces behind Laguna, she can tell it's Vaan and Tifa, but they're carrying something. Someone –

It's as if she's been lassoed around the waist and then yanked back, hard. She freezes. Her right hand comes up, blocking and holding Yuna behind her. Tensing through the wild dread that's spiking her nerves, she wishes to high hell she'd brought her sword.

"Don't move," she orders. "I mean it."

"Kain!" Yuna cries out, dropping the 'Sir' and doing her best to fight around Lightning's grip. "Oh – look at your arm. Light, I've got to – "

"I said stay back." Lightning is stunned by the deep coldness in her own voice. "We've got no idea who this bastard is."

"Light." Tifa this time, pleading. "It's Kain, I promise it is. We fought the other… I mean, there were two of him, and we – "

Lightning doesn't bother to respond to Tifa directly. "You." She looks right at the man sagging between her and Vaan and crushes the frantic twinges of concern and fear and crazed, idiotic relief racing up from her stomach. She cannot – absolutely fucking will not – let herself believe this. Not without proof. She raises her chin. "What's my name?"

"Lightning." He barely raises his head to look up at her from between limp, grime-soaked strings of hair. "Piqued are we? I trust you're not unwell."

The sound of that voice is like a hard punch to the gut. But it's still not enough.

"Shut up." Lightning still has her arm in front of Yuna. Her fingers twitch for an absent blade. "I asked you a question. You don't come one step closer without answering it. What's my name?"

"Betray our little secret so carelessly, Claire?" The answer is an irritated question, contemptuously said. Sweat's baked into his sneering upper lip. His face is an absolute wreck, she's just noticing, and the jaundice in his skin clashes with the clear, stained-glass irises. "How indiscreet."

Lightning isn't sure if it's the immediate of tension in her muscles that convinces Yuna that this is the real man, or if – likely, actually – the only one who ever really needed proof was her. Either way, she feels a body muscle past her, and she's suddenly alone. Her outstretched arm doesn't do anything. It holds court between nothing and nothing else.

Eventually, she lets it come to rest at her side, but she still doesn't know what to do. "…Kain?"

"Somewhat," he replies. His lips are dry and desiccated, and they pull, a little vicious, a little amused, to one side.

She says nothing. Her mouth doesn't work.

He chuckles weakly. "Suddenly speechless, are we?"

Lightning has exactly zero response. All things being equal, she decides to just stand there. Mostly, she devotes her energy to clenching and unclenching her fists. To swallowing the curses and the long strings of recriminating nonsense words she wants to throw at him, all at once.

It takes her a while to notice he's still looking at her. He doesn't say anything else, though. She knows him well enough to know he doesn't see a need.

Some words try to bully their way past her lips, but they don't get far. Maybe it's because she doesn't want to say them, but it could be because her head's spinning and she can't force any kind of order on them anyway and what the hell, Kain?

Whatever it was, it's too late. Because by the time she's even got an inkling of it, Laguna's already taken Tifa's place under Kain's right shoulder and walked him past her towards the Inn.

The steps are slow and lurching, but he's moving under his own power. A part of her wants to follow after them, but the bolt of relief Lightning feels keeps her nailed her in place.

It's only after she knows that they're all gone that she lets herself breathe. There's no breeze – there can't be one – but for some reason she feels suddenly cold. Or she could be flushed. That's a possibility too. She doesn't really know. She's sure she doesn't care.

"Shit, Kain." She says it and it sounds strange to her so she repeats: "Shit."

No. Not right. That wasn't what she wanted to say. Or how. Closing her eyes, she tries again.

"Thank you," is all she manages. She guesses it's supposed to go out to some kind of god, but she doesn't believe in any, so the stillness will have to do. Anyway: "Thank you."

It's a little better, a little closer. But still, her voice stays precarious, or her thoughts, or maybe just the known world.

---

A/N (2): For those of you unfamiliar, Nero the Sable is a principal antagonist in Dirge of Cerberus. He's an evil creature made mostly of chaos/darkness. Look him up. He's deliciously creepy and slashy and awesome.

NEXT!CHAPTER TEASER: At the Throne of Fell Lindzei, plans for a final battle brew. Meanwhile, in the Phantom Village, Minwu comes face to face with his sins, as well as Cid of the Lufaine.