A/N: Hey guys! I have so much to say but I don't wanna say it because let's face it, you're not here for my ramblings BUT ilysm thank you all so much for the reviews and follows and favourites and stuff like I read every review and message and then I can't sleep because it makes me so happy and I don't wanna disappoint you and stuff. But ily. It's really so encouraging so I really can't thank you enough, I love hearing from you.

This chapter effectively has a second part so…as Cid might say, hold onto your drawers and don't piss in 'em!

I hope you're having yourselves a lovely week and remaining safe and I will see you with the next update!

27th May '20

Chapter 28: Destitution

Tseng drummed his long fingers against the glass-topped, v-shaped desk in one of the briefing rooms. It was room 08 for the sake of consistency, a value Tseng greatly appreciated where it was attainable. Genesis Rhapsodos had been pulled from the mission currently under preparation in favour of his services being leant to an operation elsewhere, and now they were a leader down. Consistency was already shaken. Fair was late. As was becoming the norm.

The blue light from the mission screen behind him changed to the world map, and the light caught on his cheekbone, creating an awkward glare on the bruise that was still there a week after its infliction. He hadn't treated it. Waste of resources—he'd leave his body to repair what was its own. Briefly the thought pulled him to consider the skin of Doe's neck, and whether or not the grape-sized bruises of fingerprints had yet faded to yellow.

He flipped open his PHS for the fifth time and called her. No response. He snapped it shut and ground his teeth. "I'd be inclined to suggest the pair are busy doing something no doubt unsavoury."

The words were directed towards the shoulder blades of Angeal Hewley. He shifted his weight foot to foot as he crossed his arms over his chest. "The puppy?"

"And his girlfriend," Tseng muttered, tapping the corner of his phone into the tabletop unceasingly as a woodpecker's bill on tree bark.

This mission was already taking time from Tseng that he did not have to spare. Heidegger had personally assured him that his time would not be wasted when he took on the Asura Project himself. He could dedicate his time as and where he saw fit, and that was with the project principal herself. Yet here he was, holed up in a mission briefing room planning a petty mission with SOLDIER, losing time on the operation that could define his career—for better or worse—Heidegger proving once again that his word was as solid as smoke, and losing further time because the member of SOLDIER holding him up couldn't keep his hands off the very girl Tseng was trying to train.

He flicked open his PHS once again and the bracket cracked in discomfort. Flip phones were impractical for angry handlers.

Then the door opened as lazily as the man that strolled through it, and he was grinning as he brought a bun towards his mouth wrapped in a napkin. It never made it to his mouth, because the grin melted off his face when it contacted with the steam rising from Tseng's body.

"Uh, sorry," Fair said. "There was a queue for the hotdogs."

"What?"

"Yeah, I was surprised, too."

"No." Tseng looked beside him. No sign of Aster Doe. "Where is she?"

One of Zack's eyes squinted and his brows pulled together.

"Aster," Tseng prompted. "Is she not with you?"

Zack's Mako eyes flicked to Angeal, then back to Tseng. "No? Was I s'posed to get her?"

Tseng stared at Zack blankly before launching the chair behind his knees back across the room as he rose. His head shook, faintly at first, then rougher, waking up the computer at the head of the conference table with several plastic thuds of the mouse against the worktop, hard as the auctioneer's gavel.

"What is it?" Zack said, but his words floated aimlessly around Tseng's head.

The keyboard clattered like ice in a tumbler as he punched in password by password and blue light stung his eyes. "She always answers her PHS—unless she's with you. Always. I need to find out where she is."

"She's probably just…at the bar or something."

It sounded rather like he was telling himself an unconvincing lie."

"No. She's smarter than that. She's good. She contacts me—even in the middle of a break in."

Zack glanced at Angeal then leaned over Tseng's shoulder to view the computer screen. A map of Midgar loaded up etch by etch and responded poorly to Tseng clicking and further typing. A serial code, another password. The line work of a three-dimensional likeness of Midgar began to scan. Then a red dot flashed up on the screen. The image zoomed beneath the Plate for a birds eye view of the Sector Six slums. The flashing dot nestled in the southwest.

He spat out a curse. "This is not good."

As he stood, the desk chair rolled into Zack's leg.

"Out of the way," Tseng snapped, pushing past him. "I need to retrieve my idiot protege before she's murdered or worse."

"What?" Zack swiped his arm broadly through the air as Tseng passed him. "Why? Where is she?"

Tseng nodded farewell to Angeal and strode from the room.

"Tseng!" Zack yelled, and tore after him.

- Earlier that same day -

Aster had taken on a limp, as though her hip was disjointed, out of place. Rex hadn't asked, because he would have been worried for the answer, and Aster didn't mention it because, well, most of her body ached. This was no different. Nothing special.

But it was a new limp, so it was noted and committed to the features of Rex's face as soon as she strode through the heavy sliding door whose red lamp had loomed over her bed for the past fourteen weeks. It was never guarded anymore. The doors that were guarded now were those that contained the latest batch of recruits on the floor below or above them. They weren't the newbies anymore. They only needed to receive their official accommodation now, at the end of infantry school, and then maybe their statuses as infantrymen—or by then, maybe even SOLDIER—would sink in.

Not that Aster had had the chance to have a heart to heart with the rest of her squad, it was but an assumption.

She hadn't seen much of Rex that day since he had not been in her marksmanship session, so when she did, near his bed, she asked him a question she'd formed early that morning before he'd even woken up.

"Rex, dude—" Living with nineteen men was having ill-effects on her. "How have you managed to drop eight places on the leaderboard? How is that even possible? In two weeks?"

"Oh," he said, making his sun-bleached accent sound even lazier, somehow. "So, you know how we got to start specialising and picking some of our training?" Aster nodded him on. "I took heaps that I hate and am shit at.

"What? Why? You were a good shot, I thought you'd at least take Advanced Marks."

He shrugged. "So I could get better at the stuff I'm bad at. My aim is decent enough to get me into SOLDIER, where I'd be almost exclusively working with a sword, and besides, I still do mandatory Basic Marks. And you're better than me. And it's more important for you to be good with a gun—you do Basic, Advanced, and have bloody additional tuition on top of that with the Turks, right? Firearms specialist seems about right for you."

She frowned and nodded in consideration. "Guess so." she said, then stretched her arms dramatically. Without Surrexit, Aster took second place. "I need competition—and I can't compete with Rohrbach. I hate it, but second is the new first. There's a glass ceiling between us lowly mortals and Lukas Rohrbach."

Although Rex laughed, something knifed through her chest. Old Aster, Icicle Inn Aster, Athlete Aster would never accept second place. Would never have resigned herself to less than the best. A further wedge drove itself between her selves.

She ignored her internal conflict and said, "Put up some fight, man. It's lonely here at the top."

"Arrogant bitch," Harvey Barnhill said in her general direction. His eyes had been particularly red-stung after Newberry made his dramatic exit. Aster couldn't un-see that, even now, several weeks on. She could still hear his pathetic sniffles at night, when they were the only two awake.

Aster pulled open her locker door with a clatter into the wall. A flake of paintwork attached itself to the corner. For a moment she considered not saying a word, but pride is a wild beast over which she had no control. Pick your battles she could hear Rex mutter as soon as her shoulders stiffened.

But Aster had already twisted at the waist and locked on target. "Ten more weeks, sweetheart, and you'll never have to see me again."

Barnhill's eyes widened a fraction like a cat making a decision to run or swipe. He swiped. Had to. He was with his gaggle of buddies, after all. "It'd be earlier than that if I had my way."

"Ooh, I think I'm frightened. What are you gonna do?" she asked with wide, dull eyes. "Spit on my boots? Shred my uniform? Assault me in the shower? Choke me at night?"

Matthew Carpenter, friend of the world, stepped in and diffused the situation at the same time Rex set a stable hand over her shoulder.

"Careful, princess," Matt said, the only one who could say it without sounding like an enormous bell-end, even though he was directly and unequivocally mocking Aster and Newberry's rocky relationship, "some people are into that last one."

The huddle of around six began to laugh, all except Barnhill who could only manage a chuckle to save face, before filtering out for dinner and leaving the room empty. Aster's gaze returned to Rex with a smile like nothing happened.

Rex sighed resignedly. Beneath his breath, he murmured, "You must be exhausted all the time."

"Don't know what you mean," she said, knowing exactly what he meant.

"You coming to mess?" he asked, sitting on the edge of his bed with his hands wedged together.

Aster yanked a set of distinctly non-military clothes from her cabinet. She pulled the zipper down the front of her infantry jacket and it squealed like a kazoo with the rush. "Don't have time."

Rex tipped his head down. The tips of his ears turned pink.

"Don't have time for food? Tseng?"

"Believe it or not, no." A tuft of blonde hair fell from the twist knot at the back of her head as she pulled a black top over her head. She brought the neckline up to her nose and sniffed it. A hint of Zack's cologne hugged its fibres. She dropped it quickly when she realised what a weirdo she must have looked, but Rex was still staring at his hands, tapping his index fingers together absently. "I get to go to mess today, but I'm skipping it. 'Cause at around six-ish or something, Tseng's got one of his Major Important Meetings to attend for an Undetermined Amount of Time so he's had to push back our field exercise until later this evening."

"But," she said, hopping around on one leg as she pulled on a pair of gym pants. "He couldn't find a babysitter. Reno, Rude and Cissnei are all busy, and I've never been taken by anyone else. So I've got from right this second until the moment Tseng decides he's done and wants me back to do whatever I want."

"Zack?"

A golden smile graced her features. Things had been well since their last date. Their schedules still opposed and that wasn't likely to get any better, and it became increasingly harder to pretend they didn't know each other when their paths did cross, but the warmth that spread through the coldest parts of her when she was with him made those struggles not matter.

"No. Nice, though," she said with a snort. "There's an address I'd like to find."

Rex looked up at her again, finally. The cogs turned in his mind through his hazel eyes. His eyelashes were really long, and pretty fair. Not as fair as her own, though, an insecurity that led her to start applying mascara at the tender age of ten, thanks to off-handed remarks from school children. Even chin-deep in muddy, army crawling exercises, her lashes would have a thin coat of mascara applied. It was an old habit now. A reflex.

"What was it again? S Six, SW, two-hundred and—"

"Nine," they finished at the same time.

Aster half-frowned. "Good memory. I only told you once."

He shrugged.

"Southwest Sector Six, right? Surely. But I have no idea what relevance two-hundred and nine has. Building? Street? District? I'm gonna head to Tifa's bar and ask around there, since it's so close to the border and I really don't want to ask around Wall Market if I can help it."

Rex rubbed the stubble of his jaw that Aster knew was getting too long to pass as shadow. Then, he stood up.

"I'll go with you."

"Whoa, whoa," she said, waving her hands. "Not dressed like that you won't. You'll have to dress like a civvy. Can't route through the slums in your uniform without raising a few eyebrows. We don't know where we're going; some parts of the slums aren't exactly pro-Shinra, and we won't be armed."

"Armed with my fists," he said, shadowboxing with added sound effects.

Aster crossed her arms with flat eyes, distinctly unimpressed, but he smirked anyway and opened his locker. It obstructed her view as he dressed, and she considered for a moment that it could have been intentional, but regardless, she wasn't looking, anyway.

"What do you—ouch—reckon's there?" he asked, catching his elbow or something else solid-sounding on the locker door.

"No idea," she said, shaking her head even though he couldn't see her. "'The end is in sight.' Pretty sketch, don't you think?"

"Be real, mate, he was a sketchy dude." Rex closed the door, now wearing a slim-fit dress shirt rolled up to his elbows and a pair of chinos. Aster frowned again. "What is it now? I know that face."

She opened her mouth to speak but closed it again. Opened it. Closed it.

"Fish?"

She formed an 'o' with her lips then, finally, words. "I've never seen you in your own clothes before. It's weird. Don't like it."

He rubbed his neck with a raised eyebrow. "Sorry?"

"You're like…a bow tie and a pair of thick-framed glasses away from textbook nerd."

"Hey, I make it work."

"Do you, though?"

"You are such a mean individual," he said, heading for the door.

"Um." She blocked his way with a hand to his shoulder. "Yesterday you asked me how I could be this ugly with only one head."

"And it's still a valid question." He jabbed her in the nose and left the room.

"What—what it's my nose?" she asked, running out after him, not sure whether to laugh or punch him.

"Yeah, mate. It sticks up like a ski-jump for fleas. It's part of your charm."

"Wow, there's a self-esteem issue I never had until you kindly pointed it out for me."

"Much like my clothes," he said, turning to smirk at her. "What's that? Oh, don't give what you can't take?"

"Fine," she said, throwing her arms up in a truce. She stopped still and smiled sweetly with half a bow. "I rescind my statement regarding your interesting state of dress. You look lovely. Straight out of private education, look at you."

Rex, walking backwards with his hands in his pockets, smirked. "You were a bully at school, weren't you?"

She wanted to gasp in over-exaggerated horror, but she laughed at the same time so ending up just coughing indignantly. "No. Thanks. I was homeschooled as soon as I hit twelve."

Rex spun on his heel. She could hear his smile. "Was that to protect the other kids?"

Aster laughed and chased him down the hall. "God, you are such an asshole!"

The steps up to Seventh Heaven creaked in agony as always. This time it seemed like they might not last much longer. The old, rotting wood steps had seen almost as many spines and faces as they had feet, and the impacts over years forced large fissures into their surfaces. The deck was of the same quality, and the saloon doors gave to the lightest touch and slapped unevenly into one another like the hinges might give at any moment.

It was pretty cramped tonight; the tables were full and people were stood around eating from the containers Aster had seen all over Tifa's kitchen counter and drinking where there were no seats left. The smell of hard spirits, gunpowder, and Tifa's cooking brought with it familiarity unbound.

A few patrons withdrew from the bar with their drinks and a woman Aster did not recognise was stood with a hand on the counter and the other on her hip, with an easy smile—too easy to be new. Easy like she owned the place.

"Who's that?" Rex asked close to Aster's ear so as to combat with the stronger forces of music and general bar noise.

She stumbled into his chest after receiving an elbow to the spine from a wading customer. "Dunno, never seen her before. Come on."

It struck Aster as odd that they had so many customers that Tifa had had to batch cook food, since usually she cooked on the premises fresh, but figured some kind of event must have been taking place since she had been very clearly prepared for it. Maybe this was what Tifa meant by 'deadlines' last week. She must have been cooking meals all day and freezing them, in order to prepare for this swell of customers. She did remember Zack mentioning that he and Cloud helped move a chest freezer into Tifa's spare bedroom. Which was. Yeah. Odd. Good idea, though.

"What can I getcha?" the barmaid asked with a wide, friendly grin. Her cheeks bunched up at the corner of her mouth, sprinkled with freckles. A red headband obscured most of her forehead and pulled back a thick mane of auburn hair that was held in a ponytail, keeping long bangs out of her face.

Aster rested a hand against the counter with Rex wedged behind her. "Hey, uh, my name's Aster. I'm friends with Tifa; I help out here occasionally."

She framed it like a question, then leaned awkwardly since there really was no room amongst all the customers to give the woman a better view of Rex. "And this is my friend Rex."

"Nice meeting ya," she said, extending a hand clothed in a black, fingerless glove. Her knuckles were coated by metal plates. She looked about as capable as Tifa. "I heard about ya. Name's Jessie."

Aster shook it and Rex thereafter.

"Can you help us with something? We're looking for—" Aster glanced at Rex and pulled a face. "A friend? Not exactly. We're looking for someone. I only have this address to go by, or at least I think it's an address, but I don't know enough about the area to find it. Can you put us to the right direction?"

Aster brought up the note she had left for herself on her PHS and placed it face up on the counter for Jessie to read it. The backlight paled her widening brown eyes, shrinking pupils.

Jessie shook her head and pushed the phone back towards Aster. "What do you want to go there for?"

Aster slid the PHS into her back pocket, vaguely aware that the back plate was now covered in beer. "You know where it is?"

"Not exactly," she said. "Just heard of it."

"Will you help us?" asked Rex, leaning his hand against the counter to the left of Aster's waist.

Jessie dragged her eyes from Aster to Rex a few times. Aster doubted an unarmed teenager in a tank top with her scrawny collarbones sticking out and a kid in the slums in a bloody dress shirt and chinos looked particularly threatening, for Gaia's sake. Especially since this Jessie girl had knuckledusters built into her gloves and a chainmail sleeve on beneath her metal body armour.

Aster raised an impatient eyebrow.

"Information is dealt for information here in the slums. Just the way of things, I'm afraid," Jessie said. "I'll tell you where it is if you tell me why you're really going there."

"What?" Rex said, jaw visibly recoiling in confusion. "What could you possibly get from knowing what we're going for?"

"Whatever you could be getting by going," she said with a shrug. "Ain't no way you're going there to find a 'friend', unless you're not quite the person Tifa makes you out to be."

Aster shrugged. The information being asked for was relatively innocuous, so she handed it over with little apprehension.

"Alright. A man tried to kill me. I found this address in his stuff and I wanna know where the heck he's gone."

"Who's the man?"

Aster looked up at Rex again. He was faintly shaking his head, but in incredulousness rather than communicating what he thought she should do. With a sigh, she said, "His name's Jack Newberry. He was a Shinra cadet."

"Huh," was all she said, then her shoulders fell as if she'd been holding them too tightly before. "Okay. For a moment I was worried Tifa would have to cut you out, or something."

"Why?"

"Some real shady characters down that neck of the woods, that's all," she said. She looked relieved. "Watch your back out there. And your front. And sides."

Jessie pulled a napkin out from under the counter and grabbed a marker pen, pulling the cap off between her teeth and scribbling some directions. She spat the cap out with a thunk and it bounced against the counter. "Directions are from Wall Market. Don't want anybody tracing back to here if you drop the note, if you know what I'm saying."

"Uh, right," Aster said, furrowing her brows at Rex who mirrored her expression almost exactly, capable of sharing their emotions without words. "Thanks for this."

She took the napkin and folded it into her palm. With a curt nod, Rex and Aster pulled back towards the door. Rex opened it for her, and glanced back towards the bar as she passed him.

"We're being watched," he said, hardly moving his lips.

"Mm. I thought as much."

The oven-like lamps of the slums bored onto their skin like a film. No reprieve of fresh air. Rex rubbed it into the side of his jaw, as if trying to wear away the feeling. "She doesn't trust us."

"What the hell kinda place is this?" Aster asked, staring at the napkin in her fingers.

"The kinda place you don't make friends, apparently."

"No kidding. Turn back now if you're scared."

"Get off it, drongo."

She didn't ask.

"Directions are from Sector Six, right?" she said, folding the directions up and pushing them deep into her back pocket and patting them there, wary of Jessie's reluctance to part with it. "That's through the gate near the pillar."

Wall Market. Where the air was stale and hazy, thick and visible. Dust, smoke and fog, and it tasted hot and silvery. It filtered out lamps into glowing clouds rather than bulbs, and cast strange shadows over faces. This was the first time Aster had visited at a less respectable hour. It was busier—much so—than last she had been, and women and children were scarce.

A bar from not far down the narrow, stacked streets erupted in cheers and drunken roars, and a humanoid shape launched from its doorway into a scrap heap beyond with the sound of a thousand pots and pans clashing together. No one so much as turned to look.

Paper lanterns hung from a string above their heads before crimson and pink neon signage that cut through the mist. A girl—the only one other than Aster to be seen, who couldn't have been much different in age—stood beneath them, a hand on her neck and a leg poised in front of the other. She swayed faintly as though a breeze pushed her and threatened to topple her in her stilettos, but the plastic fibres of her red bob wig were static. Her eyes were empty over sallow cheeks and the glow of a cigarettes kiss. She wore a yellow bralette and miniskirt, and an oversized bee abdomen and stinger hung from the back of her hips, wings above them. Aster counted each of her ribs.

A round man in a waistcoat managed to shout for her attention without dropping the cigar poking from his moustache. The girl in the bee costume walked into the building behind him with the shake of her hips, but his eyes stuck to Aster.

Rex lowered his voice to only her range and stepped between her and those neon lights. "I get that you don't need anyone, least of all me, but I'm glad I came with you."

She adjusted her posture, cleared her throat and, averting her eyes, grabbed his hand and left the grubby street.

The napkin grew wearier and wearier the more Aster pulled it from her pocket and shoved it back. The ink was bleeding through the fibres of tissue and it was becoming illegible; its health was declining in harmony with the surroundings with each instruction followed—a harmony of discord and decay.

Shadows crept up their necks, acutely aware of scuttling feet through the shadows around them. Monsters, Aster convinced herself. There were no other sounds of much description in the slums. No wind could blow through the leaves of the trees when neither existed below the floating city. In these lesser travelled streets, only the sounds of the rustling from who-knows-where and the faint sounds of vehicles on the Plate high above like a tiny oscillating fan and distant hum of the lights that lit the slum proper could be heard.

She'd let go of Rex's hand after a while, because the sweat on his palms made it harder to pretend they hadn't wandered into a neighbourhood they did not belong in. Though the streets had grown empty a while ago after passing the last of strangers in shredded overcoats and shadows and plumes of smoke, the distinct, familiar feeling of presence and stares stuck as palpably as did the clothes on her back to her skin. This place made Wall Market seem like a children's park, but at no point did turning back cross her mind.

"Butt clenched enough?" she said to lighten the mood. Her lack of smile, the break in her voice, and the growing darkness where the slum overlights didn't reach buried all attempts at humour. Rex tried to laugh out of courtesy.

The path they followed had long since turned from paving, to cobbles, to dirt, and now it narrowed to a junction between two lopsided shacks, and the path beyond it was dimly lit. It was the only way forward, and they had run out of directions on the napkin.

Aster shrugged and headed through the gap. As she did, she stumbled on a twist of rusted metal half buried in the ground and pressed her hand against the wall. Something shifted, and a short section of corrugated iron came loose from overhead and fell into them. It grazed her shoulder, but Rex caught it quickly and shoved it back atop the low roof with a rusty clang and clatter.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Thanks," she said with a nod.

"Hope you're up to date with your tetanus shots."

His attempt at humour was as successful as hers. Aster wasn't as courteous as he, though, and barely even offered a smile. She stepped out into the new, wider and equally empty street and Rex followed her. A weight sat on her chest.

Her throat tightened.

An archway, like a dysfunctional version of the slums gates.

Poor lighting. Pale, lifeless ground, strewn with litter and scrap. A wide, dirt road lined with sheds and lean-tos and barely any concrete structures, gutted carcasses of buildings. Old streetlights. Most of them still working. Some not. One, somewhere, notched approximately two foot from the bottom.

"Oh, Goddess," she whispered. "No, no, no."