A/N: Sorry for the long break, I'm still here! Still going! Hopefully there won't be any more long breaks before the end, but I won't be updating every weekend anymore either. Thanks for bearing with me.

Hawke's house was bugged.

It wasn't the first time, after the interrogation when the Turks 'figured out' that she was a Cetra, they left behind a parting gift in the kitchen light fixture.

She stood in the doorway, peering in at the little home she'd found. She hadn't moved in months, instead she'd acquired a couch, placed it on a rug she liked, and even hung up a couple of thrift-store paintings of rugged coastlines and an angry looking seagull.

It had all been tampered with. There was no visual sign of it, but she knew deep in her bones they'd infected it all to catch her.

She stomped in, called up a leashed electrical wave and passed it over the couch. The edges sparked and burned , before a hidden listening device threaded into the seams crackled and popped, leaving blackened patches on the thread-worn upholstery.

She scowled and ripped the wiring out with her bare hands. The electrical wave hummed with power and she swept through the entire house, uncaring for the burn marks she left in the walls and ceiling and furniture. She tore out every bug she found, her jaw clenched, and left them strewn through the halls.

She hauled the couch, the chairs, and table out, pushed down the front stairs, and left on the curb. The other slummers wouldn't care about the burn marks and torn corners. Maybe the protestors could add them to their barricades. Shinra bullets wouldn't be stopped by a couch but an MP's baton probably would. It'd burn well too, when it came to that.

Exhausted and feeling just as hollow as the cavern of a house, she collapsed onto the now stripped bare mattress.

The Fade closed in around her.

It was cold.

The whistling wind over the cliff face burrowed into her ears, and the chill sank into her. She felt the secure weight of her old armour strapped to her body and opened her eyes to the cliffside campfire.

Rebellion sat on an adjacent log, wearing Anders' face. He smiled and offered a little wave. She considered punching him. She could knock him backwards over the log. He'd probably get too much of a kick out of it, and she'd have to hear that crunch Anders' nose made when it broke again. She scowled into the glowing embers.

He felt stronger than before, more than the vague notion of a feeling he had begun life as. He had been well fed.

"Is it you? Are you fuelling the chaos in the city?" she asked.

"Shinra fuels it," Rebellion replied darkly. "Decades denied the light of the sun fuel it. I merely fan what has already sparked."

His imitation of Anders had improved. The barely subdued rage in his voice, the bow of his back, and the white knuckled hands clutching the staff against his shoulder, it stabbed at Hawke with familiarity. A decade of old arguments rose in her mind, and tides of righteous indignation pulled her in so many directions.

"Have you seen the results?" she said, hating herself for it. "Curfews. Mass arrests. Blood in the streets, prices skyrocketing, and the army closing in from every direction."

"Further fuel. Rebellion only grows the more they try to crush it."

"And if Shinra cuts off food supplies?" she demanded. "When they send the tanks in? When they drop bombs, hell, they could drop anything from up there. Then who will feed you thoughts of rebellion?"

He raised an eyebrow at her. "There will always be those who take a stand."

She scoffed. She dragged her hands down her face. She felt gritty with sand and dried blood.

"You're not Victory," she forced out. "You're not Wisdom, you're not Strategy, you're not even Hope!" A lump stuck in her throat but she scowled through it. "You're just blind resistance, regardless of the cost, or who ends up paying it."

Anders looked at her pityingly.

"Would you prefer a peaceful subjugation?" he asked.

"I would prefer to survive."

"They would prefer you do not."

She looked away. She knew full well there were no right choices, she didn't need a spirit only a year old to point it out.

"You're very young," she said. "You don't understand."

He nodded. "You are not young. You have seen much and garnered great understanding." He leaned heavily on his staff, stabbing into the rocky sands. "And yet you cannot leave the city. You aren't allowed."

She clenched her fists. Rebellion watched her with his head cocked.

A knife sank into his chest, wielded by no one as it stabbed through his back. Hawke wanted to look away but couldn't bring herself to. She hadn't been there when it happened to the real Anders'. All she had was the aftermath. A glint of metal in his breast. Dark, viscous blood dripped down his arms and along the staff.

"You had the courage of your convictions once," he spat, with all of Anders' rage in his dark, shadowed eyes.

"I believed it made a difference. Once."

Rebellion gave her a reprimanding look. He abandoned Anders' form and shifted into something smaller. Aerith's emerald green eyes looked up at her. The same knife glinted in her chest and blood stained the front of her pink dress.

"What will they take from you next?" she rasped, her mouth red.

"Stop it."

"What difference will it make?"

Hawke's stood. "Stop it."

The spirit smiled. "Make me."

She grabbed the spirit by the back of the neck and threw it over the cliff's edge.

The whistling wind caught them and they fluttered away. The blood splatters on the rocks remained, as did the gnawing grief and resentment in her chest. Hawke stood alone on the ledge.

Somewhere, someone was knocking on something. She blinked, and was lying on a stained mattress in the waking world, drooling onto her arm in the middle of the day. Knocks on the front door rang through the empty house.

She hauled herself up and opened the door. Aerith stood on the doorstep.

"Hi," Hawke said, unsteady still. There was no blood running down Aerith's front but the expression on her face implied a kind of metaphorical stabbing.

She held the door open for her.

Aerith looked up at Hawke, in the muddy light of the strangely bare living room. She was hollow-eyed and pale, and in her full armoured get up, despite being at home in the middle of the day.

It made her Aerith feel marginally better about the flighty and weak heartbeat that kept bubbling up in her throat.

She'd been swallowing the dread down for days, trying to fake a smile. Elmyra kept giving her those soft, worried looks and tender hugs, and Tseng gave her assessing looks that she just knew amounted to a whole page of analysis in her file somewhere. She wanted to scream.

"You look like shit," Hawke said.

"So do you."

She smiled like smashed glass and leaned against the bare wall, staring at the ceiling. "I feel like it too."

"Same."

"What happened, Aerith?"

She hadn't thought to actually tell her the truth. It felt like her own private shame, like so many other things. Too horrible for anyone to ever know.

Hawke's icy blue eyes rested on her, steady and patient, despite her own demons. Hawke could handle horrible things.

She opened her mouth and the words tumbled out of her. Everything Aega had showed her, how Coerla had corrupted the living Lifestream into the Blight and sewed it into a prisoner of war. The accusations she threw at Sephiroth. How he'd killed the ancient spirit with his bare hands.

Hawke nodded along. She slid down the wall to sit on the floor, and Aerith joined her on the cold linoleum, under the barred window. She hugged her knees to her chest.

"Huh," Hawke said, at the Blight's origin.

"I'm… sorry," Aerith forced out. It didn't feel right, and Hawke shook it off.

"It's not yours to apologise for."

"I know, but…" So much damage had been done, so long ago. It was too big to grasp. But Hawke had lost family to it. She was still losing Genesis to it. Aerith had no idea how to fix it.

"It was self defence. They made the Blight in self defence." Hawke's head thudded against the wall. She laughed, weak and unhinged. Her shoulders shook and moisture shone in the corners of her eyes. "Oh, that figures."

"It's not funny."

She snorted and ran a hand down her face. "They weren't the first to make a catastrophic mistake with the best of intentions." She looked down at her gauntleted hand and her amusement drained away. "And they certainly weren't the last."

Aerith stretched her legs out in front of her. The light from the windows cast a long striped shadow on the floor in front of her. She didn't want to sit like a scared child, hugging her knees, helpless and waiting for someone else to fix it all.

Nobody could fix it. But she wasn't helpless. She made her own mistakes.

"I made a deal with rebellion," she admitted.

Hawke's focus snapped up to her.

She shrugged. "I kept meaning to tell you."

"What did you give?"

"A memory. In exchange for the route to the forest."

"What memory?"

She resisted the urge to hug her knees again. Her shoulder's sank and she couldn't meet Hawke's eyes. "I don't know. I can't remember."

"Oh, Aer."

"It was something from that night with the chocobos. I don't know."

"When we sat under the stars?"

"Maybe. I don't know what happened, or why rebellion would care about it. That's why I stopped Sephiroth from trading a memory to Aega. Instead he gave her bahamut, which she shattered. I don't know what that means. And she gave us the memory of Coerla… I don't know what any of it means. I'm starting to think I don't know much of anything."

Hawke stared at her. She squirmed, hating the pity.

"You looked up at the stars and held your mother's materia," Hawke said, with quiet intensity. "The one Coerla made to put a shield around the whole world. You decided you were going to bring down Shinra. You asked me to help, and I promised you I would."

Aerith stared back at her.

"You believed you could," Hawke said.

"I don't remember believing that."

"You believed it… and you were right."

She swallowed. It sounded familiar. There was a void inside of her where she could believe that conviction once sat. It didn't fit in now, now matter how she tried to squeeze it in.

"I thought I had inherited responsibility." Aerith shook her head and felt too small for all of this. "Now it feels like I only inherited arrogance. And mistakes."

"You are not their mistakes. You're not even your own mistakes."

She smiled bitterly. "We're stuck with the consequences anyway."

"Yeah."

She sighed and Hawke joined in. Her eyes felt sore and itchy even though she hadn't been crying. The cold floor was making her bottom numb. She looked around the living room.

"Hawke, where's all your furniture?"

"The Turks looked at it for too long so I threw it all away."

A laugh cracked out of her, somewhere between a snort and a giggle. "You idiot."

Hawke grinned. "Wanna get something to eat?"

They helped each other up, stepped out into the looming, angry city that played jailor to them both, and went looking for hotdogs.

Above the plate, inside Sephiroth's apartment, Genesis stared at Angeal.

The lights were off and the curtains half drawn, leaving the light murky and green tinged. Angeal looked up from his forest of potted plants that had taken over the living room. They smelled sweet with sickness.

Genesis' eyes caught on the bandage wrapped around his wrist. Cracks in his skin crawled up his forearm. He looked haggard. Goddess, it hadn't even been two weeks.

"You're back," Angeal said.

Genesis marched forward and pulled him into a hug. Angeal was slow to react, exhaling hard at Genesis' arms wrapping around him. Genesis held him tight for a moment. He had stopped losing muscle mass, but he felt different still. It was all wrong. The humming song in his head sounded louder when he was holding him.

"Good to see you too," Angeal said, with a sardonic chuckle. He patted Genesis on the back with the pruners he was holding.

"Your house was empty." Genesis pulled back. "What are you doing here? I thought you were in a coma again or maybe they'd-" he cut himself off.

"They'd what?" Angeal scoffed. "What more can they do to me?"

"That's a stupid question and you know it." They both knew Shinra was perfectly capable of disappearing failures and embarrassments, no matter how studiously they had pretended not to see it in the past. They had thought themselves untouchable then.

Angeal looked away.

"How was your trip?" he asked quietly. "Your green grocer?"

"Magnificent," Genesis replied, waving the subject away. "You moved in with Sephiroth? Why?"

"I... had a fall."

Genesis stared at him.

Angeal refused to meet his eyes, looking down at the set of pruners in his hands. "I won't be going back to active duty."

"Angeal…"

He turned back to the plants, idly snipping off a dying branch. Some kind of pest had eaten into them, turning leaves yellow and oozy.

Genesis hauled in a breath and looked away.

"Shinra did this to us," he rasped. Anger was easier than grief.

Angeal inspected a sprig of tender new growth, and found it damp and sticky with rot. He sliced it off.

"Did I tell you I had a strange dream while I was comatose," he said. His voice was quiet and distant. "I was surrounded by monsters, but they all had my face. They spoke with my voice, and had giant white wings sprouting from their sides."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm... not really sure. I'm not sure of much these days. What are your dreams like?"

It was a question so unlike Angeal that Genesis didn't know what to say. The whole conversation in the green half light felt surreal and inexplicable.

"There are no dreams, no honour remains."

Ange gave a wincing smile. "They infected some animals in the labs with my cells. Trying to isolate the illness." His work with the plants slowed, until he was just feeling the texture of a dying leaf between his fingers, the pruners waving indecisively next to it. They creaked in his closed fist. "I thought they would die."

"What happened to them?"

"They didn't die." The pruners broke in his hands. The crunch of the metal tearing snapped him out of his fugue and he dropped it. He looked up, suddenly present and desperate. "What honour can a monster have, Genesis?"

"You're not a-"

"I've dedicated my life to SOLDIER. I recruited children to this. I thought I was helping."

"You were helping," replied Genesis, the part of him that still clung to his fame and prestige. It came out weak.

"I'm a disease!"

"No! We are not culpable. Shinra spread this Blight, we are not the monsters."

Ange shook his head, the desperation leaking out of him. His shoulders sunk. "What difference does it make? My whole life is a lie."

Genesis gritted his teeth. He refused despair or helplessness.

He threw out his hand and unfurled his wing. There was a burst of inky feathers and the now familiar warping sensation growing out of his back. He stood tall and let his hand drop.

Angeal staggered away from him, his mouth agape.

"Even if the morrow is barren of promises, Nothing shall forestall my return," Genesis declared.

Angeal stared at him, leaning heavily against the table. Slowly the shock drained from his face and was replaced by unabated horror.

Hawke's unshakeable acceptance had lulled him into seeing the wing in a poetic and benign light. Shape shifting as an expression of ancient magics. In the face of Angeal's mute revulsion it stuck him anew just how big and invasive it was, filling the living room and scraping both the ceiling and the floor. It hung over his left shoulder like a looming spectre. He wanted to shrink away now, hide the shame of it from him. His hands pulled into fists.

"We are what Shinra has made us," he said, refusing to hide, refusing to apologise. "But we are not dead. Not yet."

"Genesis…"

Sephiroth opened the front door.

He stopped in the doorway, his eyes anchored to the wing.

Genesis didn't know what to do. The gut churning shame spiked, but he was even less inclined to hide from Sephiroth. No matter how much he fell short of the man's perfection. He swallowed thickly and stood tall.

Sephiroth closed and locked the door behind him, never looking away.

"So that's what Hojo meant by mutations."

Genesis scowled. "It's not a mutation."

"What is it then?"

He snapped his mouth shut.

Sephiroth approached and slowly raised a hand to it. Genesis jerked the wing back before his fingers could brush a primary feather.

Sephiroth's hand curled shut, before he dropped it and looked at the two of them.

"You know that the elvhen were shape-shifters, then?" he said, thoughtful. "Did Hawke tell you?"

"What?" Angeal asked, with a startled, incongruous laugh.

Genesis stared. "How do you know that?" He folded up his wing and banished it. Telltale loose feathers swirled in the draft of its departure.

"So you did know. Do you know about the Evanuris? Who Andruil is?"

"What are you- is this about Aega?"

"This is about what you have kept hidden," Sephiroth said. "What do you know about Andruil?"

"Nothing." Genesis shook his head. "I've heard the name, nothing more." She was the hunter god, wasn't she? The one whose spear broke the mirrors. He had seen her discussing an ancient war with Mythal in Hawke's memory, in the conquered city of the Cetra, deciding whether or not to slaughter her own returned POWs.

Sephiroth must have seen the recognition in his expression. His eyes narrowed and he nodded.

"What are you two talking about?" Angeal asked.

Sephiroth looked between the two of them. "Hawke will know."

"She has nothing to do with this," Genesis snapped.

"She knows the full truth, doesn't she? I want to speak to her."

"I assure you she doesn't. She's just some under-plate civilian."

"Don't lie to me," Sephiroth said, stepping closer.

"I'm not lying," Genesis lied.

Sephiroth's expression turned calculating. He stepped back. "She obviously has illegal access to classified information. If you're going to keep hiding her, I will have her brought in."

Blinding fury ignited in Genesis' veins, coupled with fear. He fell very still, swallowing down the choking bulk of it. He lifted his hand and let it rest on the hilt of his sword.

"You will have to cut me down first."

"Genesis!" Angeal cried.

Sephiroth's forehead creased.

"No! You had the chance to be open about this before and you didn't want to hear it." He pointed a finger in Sephiroth's chest. "You didn't want anything except quiet concessions then. Why should I give you anything now?"

Sephiroth slapped his hand away. "I didn't want anything except concessions?"

"You're still threatening me with Shinra!"

"We're on the same team here," Angeal said, pinching the bridge of his nose and sounding more like his old self.

"Are we?" Genesis demanded, staring down Sephiroth. "We are dying, and he wants to arrest one of the few people who can actually help just to get his own way."

"You are keeping everyone in the dark on subjects that concern us all," Sephiroth retorted, his hands balled into fists at his side.

"You've known about the degradation for months. What have you done with that information besides lick Shinra's boots and watch us crawl to an early grave?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"Anything! Anything at all! Except useless silence and throwing blame!"

"Your diseased DNA is not my fault!"

Genesis lunged at him.

Angeal grabbed him.

"Enough! For planet's sake, enough!" he yelled, forcing his way between the two of them with strength at odds with his previous resignation.

Sephiroth looked down at Genesis, motionless, but his hard expression cracked.

Angeal's forearm across Genes's collar bone pushed him back.

"There's nothing any of us can do, yelling won't change that." His head dropped. "Don't call our DNA... diseased, Sephiroth."

Genesis shook his head and stalked away. The sweet smell of the rotting plants was getting to him, just as much as the little song in his head that wouldn't go away.

He glanced back at Sephiroth. Was he hearing it as well?

"What do you know?" he asked.

"Aega told me what you wouldn't. The Cetra infected us with a bioweapon."

"I… I didn't know that."

"Didn't you? Hawke didn't tell you?"

"She didn't know either." He looked down, trying to put together all the pieces. It made a terrible kind of sense. No wonder Aerith had been so distraught.

Angeal made a grunt of frustration. "Is anyone going to explain just what, in the planet's name, you two are talking about?"

Genesis shared a look with Sephiroth. He lifted an eyebrow to say 'you do it.'

Sephiroth's brow lowered in a deflection.

"We should hear it from the source." Sephiroth crossed his arms. "Enough rumour and secondhand information."

Genesis scowled and turned away. At this point they really did need to bring Hawke in, but he was loath to share her. He exhaled heavily. She was more than capable of handling the pressure, but she was already juggling the Turks.

"I will ask her if she will speak to us. If - if - she says yes, then we will abide by her terms."

"That isn't-"

"No." He glared over at the two of them. Angeal was giving him an odd look.

"Hawke's not a SOLDIER, she's not even an employee. She doesn't answer to any of us and I am not letting you put her in danger."

"We're not going to hurt a civilian, Gen," Angeal said.

"No. You are not."

Sephioth nodded stiffly. "I don't want her in Shinra hands either."

Angeal dragged a hand through his hair. "Why would Shinra even want a…a farmer?"

"Because she's not a farmer," Genesis replied.

"What is she?"

He turned away to call her. A still image of her grinning face looked up at him from his phone, one finger over her lips with her other hand carved a swirling glyph through the air.

"She's an alien," said Sephiroth.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Sorry we didn't get to the Hawke and Sephiroth face off this chapter, there ended up being too much that had to happen first. All feedback is welcome.

Next Time: Sephiroth vs Hawke, round 2 (for real this time)!