Sephiroth sat in silence in the back of the car, studying a downy, black feather.
Hawke had agreed to speak with them. She even offered her own home as a meeting place and said they could come over immediately. A proffered olive branch he had not expected.
The weak afternoon sun disappeared behind the plate as they descended. Angeal kept tapping his fingers against his leg in an inconsistent rhythm, and Genesis drove with the slight jerkiness of motion he always did when irritated.
A sense of foreboding churned deep in Sephiroth's chest.
They had all listened in on the conversation between Hawke and Genesis, and the later had clearly wanted her to delay to give the two more time to scheme. She saw no reason not to just get it over with though, and insisted. 'Lancing the wound before we slice open another,' she called it.
Sephiroth's opinion of her rose grudgingly.
He turned Genesis' feather over in his hands, holding it by the shaft. It was inky black, soaking up the light and letting none through its vane even when he held it up to the giant lamps under the plate. It didn't look like a bird's feather.
Threatening Hawke with Shinra had been a miscalculation. He had proposed it purely as a theoretical, but the strength of Genesis' reaction surprised him. It had hurt as well, that Genesis would side against him before being honest with him.
He lowered his face.
He was going to get answers. That was more important. The madness of the last year- the madness of his entire life: it would all be accounted for. He tucked the feather into a pocket inside his jacket, and rolled his right shoulder.
They pulled up on a narrow, quiet street, with a line of houses opposite a defunct canning plant. They got out, and Genesis approached the last house on the row. They were all of a dated style with roofing that implied they went up before the plate did, but the weight of the nearby pylon had impacted the ground and put them all at a slight lean. Abandoned furniture and rubbish sat in piles out the front. Someone a couple of houses down was burning refuse in a barrel.
He hadn't expected her to be living under the plate. Why would an alien with untold supernatural power live in squalor? The grandeur of the hunter from his dreams made it look pathetic. But even the heights of Shinra were pathetic in comparison to the ancient peoples and that lofty royal family. Had Hawke been cast out? Was she in exile here?
Genesis led the way up to the door on the first floor and knocked. The wind pelted them with the grit of the under plate while they waited on the porch.
Hawke opened the door. She was in the spiky single shoulder armour he had seen her wearing in the lifestream. She looked the three of them over with a raised eyebrow and a quirk in her lip, before letting them in without a word.
It was an empty box. There were blackened spots on the walls, no furniture, and a low ceiling. Cold light streamed in through barred windows over frosted glass in the large empty living room. It felt like a prison cell more than a home. The olive branch was barren.
Aerith was standing awkwardly by the window. She waved, and he nodded back.
There was an awkward round of introductions.
"I thought you lived here?" Sephiroth asked.
"I did yesterday," Hawke replied, and swung up onto the kitchen counter, the only possible seat. "I'll lock up after we're done."
Genesis tsked and Hawke gave him a flat look. They swapped a complicated series of expressions before she shrugged and he shook his head.
"I take it we can speak openly here?" Sephiroth asked. They were standing in a tense circle around the empty space. Genesis leaned with his hip against the counter at Hawke's side. He suspected it was in part to hide a lingering injury.
"It's been recently debugged." She leaned forward on her elbows. "So. What shall we talk about?"
Genesis cleared his throat. "Would you bring us all up to speed, please, Hawke? Where you're from, what you are, and why you're here."
She nodded and wove a tale that Sephiroth would have dismissed as utter fantasy only a year ago. She came from a world named Thedas, which was the local name for the planet Sukra. Others from her planet had invaded once, long ago. She considered herself a human, but had a powerset akin to a Cetra, and her dreams connected her to the Lifestream. She wielded power utterly divorced from materia and was of interest to the Turks because of it. Sephiroth listened in silence, soaking it up. She was more forthcoming then he expected, after her caginess at the airfield.
Genesis and Aerith clearly knew it all already, but Angeal was baffled.
"This is ridiculous."
"Tell me about it," she said, leaning back against the splash board.
His forehead furrowed and he looked at Sephiroth and Genesis. He looked shocked at whatever he saw on their faces, and he turned back to Hawke.
"Were you in the ambulance?" he asked after a long thoughtful silence. "On the way back from the Sleeping Forest?"
Hawke paused. "I didn't think you'd remember that. You were in a bad way."
"You were healing me? With your… I hate to call it magic, but..."
She shrugged. "You'll just have to get over it. It is magic."
Sephiroth assumed somewhere Hojo would be twitching at the superstitious terminology. He himself had destroyed a reactor in his dreams and caused a catastrophic meltdown, he couldn't reasonably dismiss it now.
"But I'm not much of a healer," Hawke continued. "Aerith did the real work after the fact."
"...Thank you for trying," Angeal said with a nod to both of the women.
"We can try again later, if you like. Maybe make some of the symptoms more bearable."
They agreed to that, and then she looked to have reached the end of her spiel and looked at them for questions. Sephiroth couldn't wait any longer.
"Tell us about the Evanuris."
She fixed him with a sharp look.
"Tell me about Aega first. What did she say, and why did you kill her?"
"She said I was the son of- Andruil." It was the first time he had said the name out loud, in the waking world. It felt strange on his tongue and he faltered, then rallied. "The Calamity. Surely Aerith told you that already."
Aerith hugged her arms around herself. "I didn't believe it. How could anyone be descended from the Calamity?"
Hawke's expression gave away nothing. Sephiroth did not trust it.
"You are one of them, aren't you? The Evanuris."
A startled laugh burst out of her. "No, I'm definitely not. I'll take that as an ill informed compliment though."
"Aren't you?" he pressed. "Your name comes up in the same breath, and you hail from the same world. You know exactly what I'm talking about."
"It's not- Are you a Shinra? You know all about them, everyone associates you with them, you must be a Shinra."
He narrowed his eyes. "So you work for the Evanuris?"
"The Evanuris haven't been a faction in thousands of years, all that remains is folk tales. Nobody even remembers the name. Most people don't believe they ever existed." She looked down and her face turned oddly cold. "That era is over."
"How do you know the name then?"
"I... learned it… in the Fade."
He frowned. "Did you drag us all the way out here to lie to us?"
She glanced at Genesis. He raised an eyebrow.
"Hawke?" Aerith asked with alarm.
"I picked up some of the memories of Mythal, the head of the Evanuris, on the journey over here. Andruil's Mother."
Aerith straightened. "What."
"It wasn't by choice."
"Do you remember the Calamity massacring the Cetra?" she demanded.
"No. I don't have much control over it, but I haven't seen any Blight on Gaia in the old times. I think the war was nearing its end by the time they made it and infected the elves, the Cetra had their backs against the wall."
She looked embarrassed about it, Sephiroth couldn't be sure whether or not that was covering dishonesty. The Lifestream hadn't shown him any of the ancient times until she arrived, presumably reawakening those memories.
Aerith was still staring at her, her lips thinned.
Hawke sighed. "I don't know, Aerith. I didn't really know any of this ancient stuff before I got here. No more than what the legends say."
"Why are you here?" Sephiroth asked.
"I don't know."
"How did you get here?"
"I fell through a magic mirror then woke up in the slums. I don't know how."
He tsked. "What do you know?"
"Ask me some questions. Let's find out."
"Who was Andruil?"
She didn't reply for a moment. She looked down and narrowed her eyes. When she spoke, it was in a low, distant voice.
"She took the gathering storm, trapped its fury in golden limbs, and strung it with the screams of the south wind.
Andruil, blood and force, your people pray to you. Grant that your eye may not fall upon us. Spare us the moment we become Your prey."
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Even Genesis looked unnerved.
"She was the goddess of the hunt," she continued, uncaring for the looks she was getting. "Legends say she was charged with feeding the people and protecting the forests. She married the goddess of animals and navigation." Hawke took a bracing breath and cast Aerith an apologetic look. "I remember the most feared general of the Evanuris, who slaughtered her way through the Cetra long before she became the Calamity or got infected. Who hunted her own people for sport when she got bored."
Dreamlike images of a hunter haunted Sephiroth's mind. The woman who took Cetra strongholds with unwavering fortitude and cunning. Who acted on her own orders, without apology. Who stood on her own strength and made the whole world shake.
"She was a monster," he said.
Hawke shrugged. "I'm sure she considered herself perfectly righteous as she enslaved worlds and massacred whoever it pleased her."
Angeal put a hand to his temple. "How can this be relevant? It was all thousands of years ago, what does any of this have to do with the Blight? What does a dead general from another planet matter?"
"We see a dragon in our dreams," Genesis said. "Who do you think it is?"
"That's ridiculous."
"When the war of the beasts brings about the world's end, the goddess descends from the sky... wings of light and dark spread afar."
"You've seen her?" Sephiroth asked.
Angeal frowned at him. "I'm not connected to the Lifestream, or whatever this is. It's just a dream."
"You know it isn't," Genesis snapped.
"Not everything is some fated premonition."
"Not everything, no," Hawke interjected. "But I have bad news for you about that dragon. Although I suppose we don't actually know its Andruil, it could be some other corrupted old god."
Angeal turned back to her with dread on his face.
It proved to be fully justified. Hawke told them what the degradation really was, what the Cetra in their desperation had made. The image of that chained down elf did not compare to what the corruption had grown into.
And they were all infected. All of SOLDIER had to be, given what Sephiroth knew of the enhancement process. How many others had caught it? Shinra was not careful with its hazardous waste. How far had it spread, and what horrors would rise up when the hands on the reins of the corruption ordered them to stand?
Terrible realisation filled the room.
Gaia had barely survived the first time.
"It should be my duty to fight this," Aerith said. She sounded determined. It was laughable. Perhaps it had only taken one Cetra to make it, but it had left the lab now, the testing phase was over. The specimen was unleashed.
"As far as I know only Grey Wardens can kill what Andruil has become, and even that is not easy or without sacrifice." Hawke looked grimly at the three SOLDIERs and bowed her head. "Until the song gets too loud and you lose yourselves, you're the best we've got."
Could they kill Andruil? Sephiroth thought back to the great feats the Lifestream had shown him. He was not equal to those of old. But then… he had never tried such things. How would he know? Genesis had learned to shapeshift, however clumsily, what else could they do?
"But my ancestors made this," Aerith was saying, wringing her hands.
"Can't you figure out how to reverse it?" Genesis asked. "You were making progress."
"I thought I was copying a healing technique but I was just copying the problem. I think I only made it worse."
Hawke shook her head sharply. "Angeal woke up. If you had made it worse, he would be dead."
Unease ran through the room.
Genesis put a hand as if to stall the dread. "It made a difference. Whatever the Cetra did is in the past, you made a difference. Would you be prepared to try again anyway?"
Aerith looked between them, uncertain.
"Please." Angeal said.
"Okay."
Hawke hoped down from the bench and ushered Angeal and Aerith towards the centre of the room, telling the other two where to stand to not get in the way.
Sephiroth found himself standing with Genesis by the window while the two women discussed complex magical technique. Outside the light was dying, the yellow glow from the nearest street lamp drifted through the window, weak and sickly.
Angeal sat on the ground. Aerith kneeled to enter a healing trance, and Hawke carved support glyphs into the air around her. Power warped through the room in a brazen display that would put any SOLDIER's materia prowess to shame.
A hush fell over the room. The sense of casting pulled the air taut, making the hairs on his arms tingle.
"This will likely take some time," Genesis said quietly.
Sephiroth nodded and together they watched. Aerith muttered something. It wasn't the same technique she had used last time, Sephiroth felt her brush the Lifestream but she wasn't fully entering it. Probably just enough to recruit a spirit's assistance.
He glanced at Genesis, who was watching Hawke.
"You asked me about summons once," Sephiroth said. "Whether or not their existence was an abuse, and if we were complicit in it. You weren't being metaphorical."
Genesis looked sidelong at him. "As I recall, you said that there was nothing to be gained by refraining, that their fates were sealed so we may as well take advantage."
"I did not. I said killing them was not freedom, and everyone was subject to some abuse of power, in some capacity."
Genesis turned quiet and watched the magic display. "Why are we arguing, when we agree with each other?"
"Did you kill the summon?"
"She asked me to. Shiva's remains birthed the new crop of spirits in Midgar."
"Was it worth it?"
"She was in pain, Sephiroth. She had been shackled for milenia, forced into becoming something she wasn't."
"Would you have chosen the same? Death if you cannot have freedom?"
Genesis frowned. "I don't know. Would you?"
"Your friend would, I think. She would choose death before accepting subjugation." He had seen the type in Wutai often enough. Rows of warriors who fell on their swords before the Shinra war machine could swallow them up.
"And you?" Genesis asked, more insistently, an eyebrow raised.
Sephiroth closed his eyes and breathed in slowly. "I'm alive, aren't I?"
"These aren't the only options. We can make a new path for ourselves."
Sephiroth opened his eyes again. "'We.'"
"Just because your flesh isn't rotting off your bones doesn't mean we haven't been painted with the same brush." Genesis made a noise of frustration. "I'm not free either."
Sephiroth looked at him. Genesis didn't look back, instead scowling at the circle of magic. The glow was building.
"Why am I not sick?" Sephiroth asked.
Genesis shrugged. "Hojo?"
"I doubt it, he had Angeal in his care for months and couldn't do anything, not even to prove the point to Hollander. Why am I different?"
He smiled bitterly. "If I knew that…" Genesis stopped and shook his head. "Nothing is immune to the Blight. Only inoculated enough to slow its spread."
"Not even the all-powerful Evanuris?"
"The corruption matches the strength of its host," he replied. "Not even the Evanuris."
The spell finished building, and then coalesced around Angeal. It sank into him from head to toe, and then the glow faded away.
Angeal opened his eyes, and Genesis stepped forward to check on him. Angeal was rolling his wrist around, checking the break. He looked better, but not as well as he did when he woke up from the coma. Aerith checked him over, and shook her head.
Hawke noticed Sephiroth staring and came over.
"That wasn't the technique Aerith used last time," he said.
"That one is more intensive, and needs to be somewhere the veil is thinner."
He nodded.
She watched him. "Did you want to ask something else?"
He looked away, disliking the gentleness of her tone.
"What else can you tell me about Andruil?"
She scratched the back of her head. "I know a few of the surviving stories about her. How she got tricked by the god of rebellion. How she met her wife. How she went hunting in the void once and came back mad, and only Mythal was strong enough to hold her down long enough to remove the madness."
She stopped and frowned.
"I think I have memories of that one. Or whatever inspired the legend."
"Tell me."
"I can't."
"Hawke. Please."
"These memories weren't formed in a mortal brain, they don't fit right. I can coax the Fade into reading them for me, but if I try to remember while awake I get nothing but a migraine."
"So show me in the Lifestream."
She studied him. Her eyes flashed yellow for a moment. Odd.
"Fine. Climb the cliff to the campfire and I'll show you."
"Tonight."
"I can't guarantee I'll dream tonight, I'm not like you. I'll come as soon as I can."
He sighed but let it go.
"Where is she? Andruil?" He wanted to call her Jenova but didn't dare. It was too precious to say out loud before he knew for sure. "Could Shinra be holding her captive?"
Hawke barked a laugh, grim and short lived. "If Shinra had a living elvhen Goddess on their hands there would not be a Shinra anymore. You'd be the proud subjects of the second Elvhen empire. Or just darkspawn, I suppose."
"Where is she then?"
"You tell me."
He frowned.
"All blighted creatures are connected. You can sense those two, can't you?" She nodded back at Genesis and Angeal.
He narrowed his eyes and thought about it. They were right there, what was there to sense? But as he concentrated… yes, he could. He could feel the presence of both of them, extended out beyond himself. And even further, a SOLDIER patrolled along the nearby main road. He lifted his head at the realisation.
Hawke nodded. "Where is Andruil?"
He looked to the west.
With night swiftly descending, the group split up. Those who could dream agreed to try and meet up in the Fade at Hawke's campfire. Aerith left first, then Sephiroth and Angeal found their own ways home, and Genesis waited until they were all gone.
Hawke stood in the empty husk of a house and felt about the same. The talk had gone better than she'd expected but she was so worn down by it all. It felt more real now that there was a Blight on the horizon, after being faced with the three people most likely to have to face it down.
Genesis pulled the door shut after Sephiroth left.
"What are you going to do?" he said.
"Probably the same thing I did during the last Blight." Show up, give her all, achieve nothing, flee. Hope someone who knew what they were doing figured it out.
"I meant tonight."
"I've got to drop the house key off to the landlord." She scrubbed a hand down her face. "Then I suppose I'll go brood in a cheap and nasty motel somewhere."
"Why?"
"The Veil's thin and patchy everywhere in this city, it doesn't really matter where I sleep."
He gave her a look. She looked right back.
"Come home with me, Hawke."
She thought about turning him down. Her self respect, wherever she'd abandoned it, would probably have insisted. He looked at her like he understood. After the trip to cosmo canyon they had just shared, she really didn't have it in her to keep her distance. He felt safe.
"Alright."
She locked up and left the place behind.
It was a quiet drive up to the plate. Dusk was falling and the roads were busy. Genesis drove with a wince, his side was probably aching more acutely again.
"Why must it be a Grey Warden who defeats the Archdemon?" he asked, after fifteen minutes of comfortable silence.
She sat up in her seat. "I didn't say?"
"No. But you did say that even they couldn't win…'without sacrifice'."
No, of course she hadn't said it.
"That's why it has to be a Grey Warden," she said quietly.
"Ominous." He glanced over from the road. "Why?"
She didn't want to say it. She wasn't even supposed to know, but Anders was a chatty drunk.
"The hero of Fereldan died to end the fifth Blight," she said. "It's a trade."
"No." Genesis shook his head.
"Blight connects everything back to the archdemon. When their physical body is struck down, their mind will jump to the nearest corrupted creature and shape shift back to their dragon form. A warden is corrupted but so long as they're still in control of themselves, there isn't room for an archdemon. The process destroys them both."
"That can't be the only way. I refuse to believe that's the only way."
"I could kill Andruil a thousand times and she would revive a thousand times, until one of you was the nearest available body."
"We will find something else."
She looked down at her hands. She'd never been very good at finding a third way. Maybe he would do better.
"Even the Cetra couldn't kill her. I doubt it was for lack of trying." And Aerith's healing had been less effective today than ever before.
"SOLDIERs are designed to kill monsters. This is what we do."
Yes, in a very real sense, they were.
It went very quiet in the car. They arrived at his place. He turned off the engine but kept staring at the steering wheel.
"You're not dead yet," she said. It wasn't much, but it was true.
He looked up, his jaw clenched. "No. We're not. Come on."
It was dark by the time they walked into his apartment. She took off all her spikes and armour. She felt smaller without it all, but this was one of the few places in the city where that was alright.
She went and opened the door to the balcony. The rotting city stretched out below her, with all its glittering lights and muted noises. The highways snaked around the buildings and stretched over the gaps between the sector plates. The Shinra building was hidden on the other side of the building, as were most of the taller skyscrapers.
"Sephiroth will be waiting for us in the Fade soon," she said.
"He can keep waiting."
She heard a cork popping somewhere behind her, then the clinking of glasses.
"It's been a long day, we have earned thirty seconds to breathe." Genesis joined her on the balcony and handed her a glass of red wine.
She accepted it with a heartfelt, "thank you."
There was a very slight chill to the wind, but otherwise it was a warm night. Genesis had taken his coat off, and tipped his head back, letting the wind flow over him with a sigh. The skin on his left arm was discoloured.
She sipped her wine and relished the warmth down her throat. She leaned forward, propping her elbows up on the balcony, and holding the glass over the edge. Genesis draped a loose arm over her shoulders, a comfortable weight and warmth. She leaned her hip against his.
For a time they simply enjoyed the moment. The landscape of yellow, blue, green, and red lights got brighter and brighter as the night grew darker. Only a faint murmur of traffic reached them. There were no clouds, neither were there any stars.
"What would you have done if you never joined SOLDIER?" she asked. "If you could have done anything in the world?"
He hummed in thought. "I would have liked to write an opera. A full scale Wagnerian style production perhaps, all the singing in Latin or high German."
She smiled down at the city. "Loveless?"
"Even I would not dare to begin with Loveless, I would have to earn it. I'd have to start with something humble." There was a thoughtful pause. "Hamlet maybe."
She looked back at him. "And once you'd worked your way up to it? Would you put on the definitive production?"
"Could there ever be such a thing? Doing it once wouldn't satisfy, I'd have to put it on multiple times, exploring different interpretations and endings."
"Sounds like more of a production house than a single opera."
"I'd have no choice but to open my own theatre company."
"Alas." She stood fully again, facing him. "And then what? Once you had the company?"
"I would put on a different version every year, lending the spotlight to up and coming talent, keeping the industry alive and invigorated with new voices."
"You'd share the spotlight, would you?"
He sipped his wine. "I would be very gracious in this alternate career of mine."
She laughed. He smiled at her.
"What would you have done, if fate hadn't dictated you lead a life of necessity?"
She shrugged and looked out at the city again. "I don't know. I do enjoy what I do, I've got the right temperament for mercenary work."
"That wasn't the question."
She thought about it. Dreams and ambitions were so important to him, but she'd never dared do more than envision what her next step had to be. Except, that wasn't wholly true. In between the chaos and the highs and the lows, she'd wanted more.
"I would have liked... to study magic. To really study it, purely for its own sake."
"Haven't you already?"
"I'm over-specialised. All my power is geared towards being as sharp and explosive as possible, I don't know how to do anything else. But maybe I could have studied other disciplines and techniques that... that have nothing to do with combat."
"Like what?"
"I don't know." She shrugged at her own absurdity. "Is it possible to recreate ancient magic or has widespread belief changed so much that the effect is fundamentally different now? What happens if you mash multiple schools of magic together? Towers age runic theory merged with Cetra creation magic. What happens if you marry Avvar spirit techniques to mortalitasi summoning? Black age tevinter glyphs with modern marcher glyphs, Divine age wisp invocation with, I don't know…"
"Materia crafting?" he suggested, running a hand up and down her arm.
"Why not? Maybe I could create my own custom-made Materia."
"Could you?"
"Who knows? Magic is limitless in theory but so bogged down by life. Imagine what you could do if you were free to simply… try."
He looked at her so tenderly.
"That's what we'll do then," he said. "After everything is resolved, I will open a theatre company and you will experiment on every magical discipline you can think of."
"I'll expect a seat reserved for me at every opening night."
"Of course, you'll have your own box. And I'll be privy to all your most interesting research."
"Naturally. Every good researcher needs the feedback of their peers," she said, smiling through the moisture in her eyes.
He brushed a hand over her cheek. He sucked in a breath, hiding a pained grimace. "We can argue over which magic school makes the best foundation for triple stage glyphs."
"Or whether or not the play should get a happy ending this time."
He put a hand on her jaw and brought her lips to his. She wrapped her arms around him. He swept his tongue into her mouth and she pressed herself against him without reservation. He picked her up.
On his bed they striped each other bare and traced into their skin the kind of future they would have wanted to share.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews are all appreciated.
Next Time: Remembering the Calamity.