A/N: Oh my gosh, early update! High fives all round.

Chapter 35

Sephiroth stared at his twice-cleaned-and-polished sword and tried to think of what he needed to do next.

He didn't know.

As the three of them—himself, Shepard, and Genesis—had marched back from Ymir to the closest Shinra base, he had focused on the task at hand: guiding the troopers and SOLDIERs they encountered and getting everyone back safely. The mission was clear: withdraw with as few losses as possible and regroup when they reached safety.

Once they'd reached the base, he had mechanically worked through every task he could think of. That meant hours of tallying the dead, securing medical supplies, and redirecting patrol routes in case the Wutai mounted a counterattack. Finally, he had run out of jobs to do, and now he was trapped alone with his thoughts.

He felt as though he had a brick lodged in his brain, blocking his thoughts from operating properly. A long list of names had formed of those they would have to fight on without. That was hard enough to swallow, but the simple truth, 'Guzzard is dead,' read like an error message he couldn't process.

His eyes followed the curve of his blade. The losses were massive. No other battle had cost them so much. And for what? What had they won at Ymir but corpses? The territory stood empty now, the Ravine awash with blood and the rubble of collapsed tunnels.

Director Heidegger didn't understand—he thought the Battle of Ymir was a victory. The Wutai had suffered heavy losses and no longer claimed a stronghold. Their steady supply route through the heart of the island was disrupted. In Heidegger's eyes that made it a victory. While that was technically true, Sephiroth had seen his men who marched to the Ravine—and the broken few who had returned. He was hard-pressed to call it anything less than a massacre. Heidegger had replied that there were always more troopers, and even SOLDIERs weren't irreplaceable.

Sephiroth had hung up on him.

He got up, uneasy and tense, and started walking, picking a corridor in the compound and squaring his shoulders as though he had a destination. The room functioning as a command centre was down this way. He could get back to work, force this malaise aside.

Guzzard is dead.

He altered his route with a new destination in mind. He'd seen Shepard turn down this way earlier, heading to the empty rooms on the eastern side of the building. With no real plan in mind, he followed her path.

He pushed open the first door to reveal an unfurnished room. A chill wind from the clear afternoon sighed through the open window. Shepard sat on the floor in plain clothes, with one of her arms heavily bandaged. She was leaning against the wall and the disassembled parts of her rifle lay arranged before her as she diligently cleaned and examined them for damage.

She looked up at him.

He paused after closing the door behind him, unsure of what to say—or if he wanted to say anything at all.

After a moment of tense silence, she welcomed him over with a jerk of her head. She patted the floor next to her and resumed cleaning the workings of her gun.

He lowered himself onto the rough concrete, stretching out his long legs in front of him.

Physical contact normally made him uncomfortable—outside the context of combat—but he sat close to her. He couldn't vocalise what he expected, or even wanted, but he felt so lost he couldn't bring himself to maintain the distance he usually preferred. He still wore his leather coat, but had removed his pauldrons.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye with a raised eyebrow. He couldn't meet her gaze for long. Her eyes shifted back to the half-formed weapon in her hands, and she leaned towards him, her shoulder lightly brushing his. The presence and weight at his side was comforting. He leaned back against her, only slightly. She breathed a heavy sigh and kept on working.

He stared out the open window, through the bars to the dark mountains marching into the distance. On the other side of the building the sun was setting in stark reds and yellows, but here the colour had leached away. Guzzard had fought in the shadow of those mountains for months.

Beside him, Shepard finished reassembling the black widow. The monstrous weapon gleamed in the low light. What was the name she had given it? Some alien word he couldn't remember, but he remembered that it meant 'Protector.'

She stared at it with a deep frown. A fine tremble ran through her injured arm, and she put the gun aside.

She hadn't said much on the trek back, grim-faced and unrelenting in her march. When circumstance had demanded it, she'd made a stray comment about their route, and Genesis had snapped.

"What kind of machine are you?" he had demanded, whirling on her. "Do you feel nothing?"

He had never before seen her look so offended as her own anger kicked in. "Don't think just because I don't weep I am not… that I don't…" She'd swallowed thickly and looked away. "He was my friend too."

Sephiroth had never really considered Guzzard a friend, but then, he was the first SOLDIER he had ever met. When he was twelve, let out of the labs for the first time he could remember, Guzzard had been there. He had looked Sephiroth up and down with a deeply sceptical frown, shaken his head with a sigh, and then thrown him a standard issue sword and a shield materia.

He had spent decades doing that: shaking his head, sighing in resignation, then providing all the help he could while Sephiroth rose through the ranks.

He let out a tremulous breath.

Next to him, Shepard ran a hand down her face.

Still leaning against his shoulder, she patted at her pockets and produced a hip flask. The dented cap marked it unmistakably as Guzzard's. She had retrieved his dog tags as well, to be returned to his father.

"I promised I'd have a drink with him after the battle," she said quietly, turning it over in her hands. She uncapped it and took a sip. She rasped a cough. "Oh, that's foul."

She held the flask out to him. Guzzard had drunk from this dented little flask after every battle Sephiroth had ever seen him fight in. It felt right, to do it for him this time. The bottle was nearly empty anyway. With a doubtful look at the inscrutable contents, he took a sip and winced through the bitter alcohol scoring down his throat.

He didn't cough, but he patted himself on the chest and breathed deeply. It wasn't a subtle or complex liquor, but it packed a punch. It felt like he'd dragged sandpaper down his throat.

"What is it?" he asked, his voice raspy.

"He said it was Rocket Rum," she replied. She took the flask back and downed another draught with a wince. "But I'm pretty sure I saw him filling it up with cheap gin."

He gave a weak laugh. "Of course he did." His amusement died off, and he hung his head. Their shoulders were still pressed lightly together, and that grounded him. She was there, mourning the same loss—he wasn't alone.

She handed him the flask. There was barely enough for one last mouthful.

The mountains before them were barely visible now, just a silhouette, disappearing into the night.

He drank the last of the cheap liquor. It burned all the way down.

They remained sitting in silence long after the light had faded. Sephiroth didn't want to be anywhere else.

Finally, Shepard got up, closed the open window, and turned on the light. Its sickly yellow glow was unpleasant to his eyes.

"Do you know how many we lost?" she asked.

"We'll discuss that in the morning. I'll meet with you, Angeal, and Genesis in the command room."

She nodded and bent to pick up her rifle. Her movements lacked the well-practiced grace they usually had, and her right arm wobbled under the weight of the heavy gun. The elbow and most of her forearm were heavily bandaged. In the artificial light the gauze looked ragged and discoloured.

The smell of stale blood hung in the air.

"Have you seen a medic?" he asked.

"I don't think they'd know what to do with me." She shrugged the shoulder of her uninjured arm.

He stood and held his hand out for her arm. She didn't move.

Normally a SOLDIER should have healed by now, but her enhancements were unpredictable at best. He hadn't seen her get injured, but he had noticed the blood-coated damage on her armour. A cure materia still occupied a slot on his bracer; he could patch up whatever wounds remained.

After some hesitation, she extended her arm. Her eyes drifted away from his. He took her upper arm, moving it carefully to avoid doing any further damage.

With well-practiced movements, he removed the bandages. The cloth fell away, and he wasn't sure what he was looking at. She pointedly didn't look, her eyes fixed to the unadorned wall.

"Shepard..."

She looked at him, barely moving her head and stubbornly not looking down at her own arm. He wasn't sure what he actually wanted to say, and she looked away again, her face unreadable.

The skin had been mostly burnt away around her elbow, and underneath was not human. Maybe some of the muscle was, it bled realistically enough, but metal joints and pins, synthetic tendons, and a thick weave of what looked like some kind of subdermal armouring were all glaringly unnatural. She couldn't bring herself to look—he could barely pull his eyes away.

She had told him once, that machines could feel pain.

He stared at the artificial arm, a bizarre melding of natural with synthetic. It seemed to have the same basic mechanics as a human elbow, despite being fundamentally different. His gaze followed the limb up to the woman attached to it, who was doing a fine job of pretending otherwise. He didn't know why it surprised him so much. After all, her mechanical eyes were noticeably artificial, but this hinted at a much deeper level of augmentation.

He found it fascinating, but she obviously hated it. Why? Was she ashamed? She liked robots well enough—why should this bother her? He tried to meet her eye, but she refused to cooperate. Her back was rigid and her eyes hard. She looked the same when expecting to be shot at.

He wanted to ask, to prod until he understood, but he remembered their agreement from the beginning of her time at Shinra. They were to keep no information on her physiology. It was important to her.

He turned her arm slightly in his hands. His cure materia glowed, and the damaged synthetic and organic tissue began to grow back. Whatever she was beneath the skin was her business.

Her skin stretched back across the muscles as it was meant to. He couldn't heal it all the way, so he rewrapped the last stretch of open wound that would take longer to heal.

When he had done everything he could, he relinquished her arm. She examined the bandages and new skin thoughtfully—apparently prepared to look at it again now that the inner workings were hidden.

"Thank you," she said, her glowing eyes meeting his before she disappeared down the corridor.

"You're up early," Shepard said, deactivating her Omni-tool and looking sidelong at Genesis. They hadn't spoken since the return from Ymir, the day before.

The sun had yet to peak over the mountains to the east. The ground within the compound was cold and wet with dew. Her breath turned into steam in the morning air. Summer was ending.

"Even if the morrow is barren of promises, nothing shall forestall my return," Genesis said, standing as though he intended to keep walking. Instead he paused, turned back, and sat next to her on the low bench. He had forgone his leather duster, and dark circles ringed his eyes.

"What's the next line?" she asked into the dark.

"My friend, the fates are cruel," he said softly. "There are no dreams, no honour remains, the arrow has left the bow of the goddess."

"That's grim." She leaned her head back against the concrete wall behind her.

"Which makes it fitting for the occasion." He glanced at her hand where the Omni-tool had faded away. "What were you doing?"

"Reading an old letter." It was from Bakara, sent after the Genophage had finally been cured. Shepard had summoned the thresher maw, Mordin had died, and the Krogan had hope again. They were the words of a woman who knew victory for the first time in a thousand years. It was good to remember, sometimes, that there could still be hope in the face of even the worst adversity and loss.

The silence stretched on for a moment, and he drew out his copy of Loveless. He didn't open it, just stared at it and ran his hand along the cover.

"Mind if I ask a personal question?" she asked.

"By all means."

"Do you worship the goddess from the poem, or is just a symbolic thing?"

"The goddess Minerva? Yes, I do worship her."

"Why?" she asked in quiet curiosity.

He sighed wistfully. "It's an old belief. Most have let it fall by the wayside or pay little more than lip service to her," he said, looking up at the fading stars. "She guides all life on this planet and decides the worthiness of the dead."

"Is she a goddess of poetry too?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact." He smiled faintly, the tension in him slowly draining away.

"And wisdom?" she asked, her head tilted.

He looked at her in confusion.

"There was a Roman goddess called Minerva, back on Earth, thousands of years ago. She ruled over wisdom and poetry, I think.

He sat up straight. "They worship the goddess in space?"

She shook her head. "This was long before we developed flight technology. The Greeks called her Athena, a few hundred years before." She was no scholar, but since becoming close friends with a curious archaeologist, she'd ended up learning such things by simple osmosis. "Although, there's also the old Asari goddess, Athame, who was also said to preside over wisdom, prophesy and fate, among other things." She scowled at the name of the Asari goddess.

"Fascinating," he said, staring off into the inscrutable dark of the early morning. "Are they all the same goddess, I wonder? Does she have control over other planets as well? Or perhaps there are simply different aspects of her on different planets."

"Or it's coincidence." She shook her head and looked away from him. "Nobody worships Athena anymore. And Athame… she was never a goddess. Just a Prothean that was deified over the years." She remembered a desperate gunfight in a temple around a crumbling statue. There had been nothing divine there, just more lies—and the Reapers. Always the Reapers.

She held back a scowl at the thought of Alexander.

"You don't believe in any of this, do you?" he asked. The cold light that preceded dawn was leaching into the sky. It made him look washed out.

"I don't know. The only thing I've ever really known to be true—really, verifiably true—was horrifying. I want to think there's something more than that. Maybe I'm kidding myself."

"Perhaps there are many truths," he offered philosophically.

"Bullshit. There is the truth, and there's the pile of lies. 'Maybes' and 'half-truths' are just fancier lies."

He chuckled bitterly, "I don't think you can force the world to operate according to your standards."

"I can try," she replied lightly.

"By all means, tell the goddess she needs to make more sense. If you die here, she will be the one to judge your worth."

"It's probably too late to make a good impression anyway."

He scoffed and didn't reply. He turned the book over in his hands. It had been a pristine white when the war started, but wear and tear had worn it down to a dirty ivory, with weathered edges.

"What happens to the dead in space?" he asked quietly, still looking at the book.

"Cremation, usually."

He scowled at her. "That is not what I meant."

"It depends on who you ask," she said with a sigh. There were thousands of human religions, let alone those from other species. Funny, that she knew more about alien beliefs than she ever did human ones. "The Drell say that death is like crossing the ocean. Your soul must adapt to another form of life, to withstand a great change. I don't know if I believe it, but I like the idea that the dead are 'across the sea' somewhere. Sunbathing on a beach, probably." Maybe somewhere Thane was soaking up the sun on the golden sand, and Mordin was collecting seashells.

His fingers around the book tightened, his knuckles turning white. "Do you think Guzzard's there? 'Across the sea'?"

"Maybe. He's earned the rest." A fond smile tugged at her face. She could picture it, Guzzard sharing a drink with Ashley, pointedly not asking questions about Legion, and chomping on cigars with Zaeed. "It's a nice thought at least."

The sun would be up soon. The silhouette of the compound steadily came into focus in the early rays. The infantrymen yawning on guard duty would be changing shifts soon. The day wouldn't wait for anyone.

"How do you do it?" Genesis suddenly asked with a bleak voice, looking at her. "How do you just… walk away? Get back up, bark out your orders, and march off to the next battle?"

She bit her tongue before she could snap at him, because she heard the threads of a legitimate question under his accusations.

"Experience, I suppose," she said with a half-hearted shrug. Everything ached, but she'd stopped noticing after a while. "I've lost people before. You have to keep going anyway."

He looked out across the compound, the grey courtyard within thick concrete walls. Shinra made everything out of concrete. "Is that what a hero is then?" he asked, a dark note to his voice. "Someone who's buried so many friends it becomes easy?"

She shook her head. "It doesn't become easier; you get harder."

"And what if I don't want to get harder?" he asked. His back was straight and his arms crossed. He was so much sharper than when she had met him, his words more cutting, and his smiles rarer. The war had already turned him into a hard man.

"Ripples form on the water's surface," she quoted, because she couldn't think of any real answer for him.

A weak smile light up his face, something fond in his eyes.

"The wandering soul knows no rest," he finished softly. His smile turned smug. "I knew you liked it."

"Don't let it get to your head—it's the only line I could remember."

He sniffed and lifted his chin. "There is no hate, only joy, for you are beloved by the goddess."

A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews are the sweet music that sooth the wailing banshees of self-doubt, feel free to comment.

Next Time: Holding back the Harvest