Back at it again, but this time with a fantasy AU, starring Shera as the Princess of Midgar, trying to end a war that's gone on for too long, and Cid as a dragoon that is exhausted by the bullshit he faces on a daily basis.
Some small alterations to the landscape made just to make it more navigatable. Warnings for language and injury.
Enjoy, my lovelies~!
She realises, when the guards block her path into the gardens, that she is a prisoner.
Her mother had always said that her greatest downfall was her indecisiveness, the way she'd just go with things instead of standing her ground. But looking at the guilt on the guards' faces as they apologise to her and tell her that she cannot go into the gardens right now, it makes the decision easy.
She needs to leave, and she needs to do it soon.
All she'd wanted to do was go to the water feature at the middle of the walled garden and look at the moon, hanging full and heavy in the sky, low to the mountains to the west, shining blue and beautiful. She hadn't had a mind to escape, but now, as the guards release the cross of their partisans and stand tall again, faces turned away from her once more, she knows that that is what she must do.
It's been brewing for a long time. Her maids had whispered about it, their fathers and brothers and lovers taken from them in the name of the war, the cousins that hadn't returned, the staff that had vanished in the night, only for their names to appear in the lists of the dead a month later. She'd sat and listened to it, and she thinks now, as she makes her way back to her chambers, that perhaps she should have listened harder sooner. She could be out there now, doing what was right.
Her parents are gone, back in Mideel, hoping that the water there will heal the ailment stripping the life from her father day by day. She'd wanted to go, but the Queen had told her to stay, that someone had to remain in the palace. She understands now that it was a deterrent to the Regent. She is old enough to take the throne, to rule, but her father had drafted an article handing power to the Regent in his absence, instead of to his daughter.
She picks at her nails as she crosses the foyer to the stairs, understands in the deepest part of her gut that her father had not written that article any more than he had intended the Regent to take his place under any circumstance.
The throne had never been meant for her, but after her sister – a decade of learning to rule under the banners of war had not done her well, and she feels ill-prepared for it. She doesn't have the strength to seize power, and she is failing her people. So in lieu of that, she must do something. Even if she saves just one man, she will know she has tried, and that will give her strength.
Her maid looks at her as she enters her bedroom, and for the first time in a long, long time, Shera makes eye contact with her. The maid watches her, and Shera lets herself be watched.
'I need to go,' she says, quietly, and the maid nods.
'I know,' the girl replies, with a soft bend of her knee. 'I'll make arrangements.'
Fourteen nights later, Shera is woken from sleep by the soft shake of her maid's hand. She has done all she can, she explains, and hands Shera a knapsack and a stack of clothes. They don't fit her well, but the cap will hide her hair, and the jacket hides what little curve she has.
'It's a new moon,' the maid explains as she weaves Shera's hair into a tight braid against her scalp, tucking it into the folds of the cap. 'There's no light past the gates. Keep your chin up, your eyes down, and just walk. The guards won't stop you.'
Shera looks at herself in the mirror, and straightens her shoulders, heaves a sigh.
'Thank you,' she says.
'I can only give you until dawn,' the maid says, and pushes a strand of hair off the Princess' temple and under the brim of her cap. 'As soon as I should know you're not in your bed, I will have to raise the alarm.'
'I understand,' Shera says.
It gives her a few hours; she's spent days studying the map of the kingdom, and she knows that she can reach Midgar's dock in that time. It's some ways on foot, but she can do it, she thinks, if she hurries. One of the fishermen there will take her to Junon, if she concocts some story about needing to fetch fish for the palace in a hurry, and from Junon she can – she can –
She'll work it out when she gets there. She hasn't left the palace in nearly ten years, and longer still since she was last in Junon. She was a child then, and her father was opening the remodelled lock.
Nobody stops her as she walks through the palace; all of the staff look the other way, and she keeps her eyes averted. She hesitates for a moment, next to the portrait of her parents at the top of the stairs. She hasn't seen them in over a year, nearly two years now, and the Regent has ordered the candle she'd kept lit for her father's health away. She looks at her father's eyes, sees her eyes reflected in them, and stops the next maid she sees and tells her that the Princess has ordered a candle to be lit.
'Yes, My La – yes, sir,' the maid says, with a soft incline of her head.
Shera nods back, just once, and carries on her way. She heads for the main entrance, and then stops. She can't go that way, she knows she cannot go that way. The guards will stop her, because why would a footman use the main entrance, an entrance Shera herself has not been allowed to leave through unaccompanied for almost a decade, and in the last eighteen months, at all?
No, no, she needs to use the servant's entrance, so she turns off and follows a maid through it. When she was a little girl, she used to run around the palace through the servants' passageways, thinking it a fun game to pop out of hidden doors and surprise her parents and their advisors. Now, she feels the weight of the knapsack pressing on her shoulders, thin and delicate as they are, not used to carrying any kind of load. The ache of her scalp where the maid had braided her hair tighter than normal. The itch in her eyes from the disturbed sleep.
In the kitchen, the cook presses a muslin cloth into her hands.
'For the journey,' she says, 'you have a long walk ahead.'
Shera licks her lips, a very unroyal thing to do, and nods.
'Thank you,' she says.
The cook nods, turns away.
Shera goes to the door, through it, and out into the crisp, dark air of the night.
The guards don't stop her on the gate, and nobody stops her to question why she's marching down the road with a knapsack on her back and a sandwich in her hand. If they had, she'd say she was on errands for the cook, and as she walks, she practices dropping her voice an octave lower. It doesn't sound very masculine, but then, she's half the size of most of the footmen, so perhaps she could pass as a boy.
'I need passage to Junon,' she says to herself, bobbing her head and shoulders as if puffing herself up.
She heaves a sigh, looks up at the sky, where there's the dimmest light of stars above her head, but no moon. The edge of the sky is tinted pink; the sign the sun is coming. She hasn't got long left, and the dock is still miles away. She wishes she'd brought a map, but there's only one path to the dock and no doubt they'll know she's going that way.
'There's time to rest later,' she says, and there, she almost sounded like a boy. Maybe.
She shoves the muslin-wrapped sandwich into her pocket, grips the straps of the knapsack to adjust the weight, and picks up the pace.
It's officially past dawn by the time she pulls into Junon. Already the market is underway, a hustle and bustle of unrelenting noise, and such a riot of colour and uniform that she worries she's going to stand out in her plain black livery. But nobody glances twice at her, too busy bartering over silks and mithril and meat. But even with the energy of all the bodies and the yelling and the produce, there's something quiet, subdued about the air. Everyone is – is – sad is too soft a word.
The war is weighing on them, and Shera adjusts her bag, straightens her shoulders, rubs her eyes.
She needs to move. The maid will have raised the alert now, and they'll be searching the palace for her. If she can be on a ship by the time they realises she's not in the palace, she'll be able to stay ahead of them.
If they even bother looking for her. Shinra may just seize outright power now that she's out of the picture. Claim she's indisposed, that he is now de-facto ruler of Midgar. Install Rufus as Prince Regent. She shudders. Half her life has been spent deflecting his advances, which she knows are almost certainly made in an attempt to grab power. There is no love lost between them, and her father's protections had extended as far as they could to prevent their marriage.
But there has been a distinct shortage of suitable candidates for her hand in recent years, what with the accidents and illnesses and deaths, and though she doesn't like Rufus, or think him a particularly suitable husband, she doesn't bear him the ill will to want to hurt him by letting him get close. Those close to her seem to get hurt, and she wonders if she is perhaps cursed.
So many terrible things have happened since before the war, since her birth, and she worries she is the cause of it all.
Still, there is no time to mull it over now, she needs to find passage to as far away as she can get from Midgar, and as close as she can get to Wutai.
She finds the docks easily enough, and nobody asks why she's there, nobody bats an eyelid.
'I'm seeking passage,' she says, in her best footman voice, and the man hauling crates looks her up and down.
'Are you, boy?' he asks, 'and where are you expecting to go?'
Boy! She almost breathes a sigh of relief, almost smiles, but catches herself, straightens her shoulders.
'I want to join the war.'
The man laughs, dumps the crate hard atop another to laugh louder.
'The war!' he crows, 'fucking idiot then, ain't ya? I ain't going that far, but I'm stopping by Gongaga on my way to Mideel.'
Mideel hits like a hammer to her heart, and she bites her lip. Her parents. She swallows. No, no, she cannot go to Mideel, no matter how she wishes to.
'Gongaga will be fine,' she says, with a nod, and digs into her pockets. 'I can pay for passage.'
The man waves her off. 'Fuck off, kid, I don't take money from dead men.'
Shera takes a breath, nods. 'I understand.'
'Do you?' the man asks, and then looks at her, really looks at her. 'Say, you look awful familiar. Have I seen you before?'
She goes cold. Her heart hammers in her ribs. Her mouth goes dry.
'Man, all these kids look the same these days,' the man shrugs. 'Climb aboard, I've just got to get the last crate off and then I'll be making my way.'
Shera does as bid, and finds a dark corner to sit in, pulls the cap low over her eyes. The other men aboard the boat look at her with pity. She wonders how many boys have volunteered for the war and found themselves aboard a ship like this. She wonders how many of them are still alive.
The list of the dead grows longer every day, and she's stopped taking in the names.
The sway of the boat sends her to sleep, and she only wakes when a hand shakes her shoulder.
'Kid, wake up. We're about to dock.'
She rubs her eyes, tries not to resent being called a kid. She's far beyond being mistaken for a child, but then, she's pretending to be a footman. She should at least, as a grown adult, have a shadow along her jaw.
As she gets to her feet and climbs out of the corner to look out over the water at the approaching shore, she rubs her chin.
The sun's moved far across the sky now, beginning to hang low over the mountains across the sea, sending sparks of fire across the waves. It would be pretty, Shera thinks, if it didn't make her think of what lay across the other side of the mountains. The fires, and the blood, and the relentless weight of the world pressing in on everyone there.
'I think you're an idiot,' the captain says, jovial enough as she puts her knapsack back on her shoulders, not that her bones thank her for it. 'I'd go as far away from the war as possible. It's a losing fight, kid. You do know that?'
'But I have to try,' Shera says, and forgets to drop her voice.
The captain looks at her, and she looks at him. She doesn't look much like her parents, the same way her sister doesn't look much like their parents, but portraits of them both have been painted over the years, and their faces are widely known. She's received paintings by people that have only ever seen her likenesses in paintings and prints, and they've at least got the shape of her nose right.
Whether he recognises her or not, he doesn't say.
He turns back to the water and focuses on guiding them into the dock.
'I wish you well,' he says, as Shera boards the gangway to disembark. 'You got a name? I'll look in the lists for you.'
She opens her mouth, takes a breath.
'You'd be the only one who did,' she says, because she doesn't know what to say. 'So don't waste your time.'
And with that, she steps onto the sand of the dock and makes her way to the grassland ahead.
Gongaga is a pleasant enough little village, round stone houses with timber edges and tiled roofs stained blue by the moss growing there. There's barely any commerce here, she can tell, but there is an inn, and though she has done little to warrant it, she longs to put her head down on something not a barrel.
There are barely any people left in the village; women, mostly, and children. No men her age, besides a few with – obvious reasons to have not gone to war. It's quiet here, the children playing sounded muted and subdued. She stands at the gates, where a graveyard has sprung up from the grass, fresh dirt piled in low mounds in front of white stone and feels the ache of her heart beating behind her ears.
'Good afternoon,' says an old man at the graves, leaning heavily on his cane. 'We don't get many travellers around here anymore.'
Her lips twitch, and she tugs her cap low across her brow.
'I'm passing through,' she says.
The man looks her up and down. 'On your way to the war, I suppose.'
'Yes, sir.' She clears her throat. 'Are these your – your war dead?'
'What of them we got back,' the man nods. 'That there's the arm and leg of my boy. All they were able to send us. Rest of him got caught up in one of those spike traps. Nasty things, so they say, tear a man into pieces.'
Shera swallows, puts her hands over her belly, regrets eating the sandwich on her way in. She is no stranger to the horror of the Wutaian forces, having read the papers and the reports she'd managed to sneak from the war room, but there is something about having a gravestone in front of her to make it real. It had always felt so far away. The palace walls were thick, and there were guards on every door. Nothing except a stray cat had been able to get into the palace in a decade.
'I'm sorry,' she says.
'No, no,' the man sighs, looks back at the grave. 'Nothing you could have done. Nothing any of us can do now. The King hasn't been in command for many a year, and that Regent's power mad, they say. I'll be dead before the war is over, I suspect, and then I'll see my boy again in the Lifestream, and all will be well.'
Shera looks at the grave, at him, at the aching spaces in the town where life should be.
'I will do what I can to end it,' she tells him, and her voice catches in her throat, burning on the salt there.
The old man smiles. 'I'm sure you will, and I'll be sure to thank you when I see you again. Now come, you look exhausted, you must rest if you want to end the war. Mrs Fair will do you a fair deal on a bed. Ha – you get it?'
Despite herself, despite the churning bile in her gut, Shera huffs out a laugh, and follows him through the half a street to the inn.
She thanks him, and he carries on his way. For a moment, she watches him, the way he balances his weight against the cane, favouring neither leg in his attempt to favour the other. He looks tired, in pain, old. Her father had looked old when she'd last seen him, greying before his time, and more wrinkles than a raisin.
Turning back to the inn, she enters, and sees a young woman at the counter, arranging flowers in a vase. She's a slender thing, in sturdy boots but a decidedly not-sturdy dress, dirty at the hem, a long braid hanging down her back and swaying with the motion of her head as she looks at the flowers. Shera watches her for a second, admiring the way she's so focused on her task that she doesn't even stir at the door opening.
'Mrs Fair?' she asks, and the woman jumps, turns with a wide grin and a laugh.
'Ha!' she crows, and dusts her hands off on her dress, comes forward to help herself to Shera's knapsack. 'Don't give him any ideas! No, no, she's out back, come, sit down. I'll fetch her.'
The brightness of her eyes, the genuine happiness in her smile, the softness of her hands, it feels – out of place – inappropriate, even. But Shera does as bid, lets the woman set her pack on the floor and push her into a comfortable, overstuffed chair, and disappear through a door into the back of the building.
She's about to doze off when the door opens again and another woman joins the first, wiping her hands on her apron.
'Oh, child,' she says, gentle enough.
'I'm twenty-eight,' Shera says, before she can stop herself.
The woman – Mrs Fair, she supposes, given the circumstance – raises her eyebrows. 'I'm sure,' she says, and Shera doesn't dislike her for the disbelief, but after nearly three decades of deference to her station, the expression rankles.
Just a little.
'Aerith tells me you're a traveller?'
Shera sits a little straighter, rubs her face. 'Yes, Ma'am,' she says, nods her head. 'Passing through. I'm – I'm.'
'The war,' Mrs Fair nods. 'I thought you might be. I won't charge you for the night, we don't charge soldiers.'
'I'm not,' Shera starts, and then stops. 'I have already been given free travel today, and I shan't accept a free bed. I insist on paying.'
The maid had put gil in her purse; plenty enough for the journey. She can pay for a night's sleep in a dying town. They have no men left to break the back of work, and they need all they can get.
Mrs Fair stares at her, and Shera stares back.
After a moment, Mrs Fair laughs, and swipes the end of her nose with the back of a finger.
'Alright,' she says, 'fine! But I shan't take more than fifty.'
'I shall give you one hundred, and not a gil less.'
Mrs Fair has her hands on her hips, and tries to stare her down, but Shera has been negotiating for extra dessert for nearly two decades, and knows how to hold her gaze.
'Fine!' Mrs Fair exclaims, throwing her hands up. 'I can see that I'm beat. Come on, I'll show you to your room.'
Aerith, the woman with the braid and the dress and the too-seeing eyes, swats Shera's hands away and scoops up the knapsack like it weighs nothing.
'You look like you've carried it long enough,' she says, 'it's the least I can do for a soldier.'
But there's something knowing in her tone that makes Shera take a glance back at her as they climb the stairs. Aerith raises her eyebrows, and Shera tugs the hat lower about her ears, feeling them burn.
The room is nice enough, a plain bed and bare floor. A small painting of a lake on the wall. It's nothing much, but it's more than a barrel on a boat.
'Thank you,' she says.
'There's hot water if you need it,' Mrs Fair says, 'a hot bath before bed always does the world of good on sore muscles.'
Shera nods, thanks her, and says that she'll keep it in mind.
'Dinner will be served at eight,' Mrs Fair says, and ushers Aerith out.
Shera listens to their footsteps, and then she hears Aerith say, 'have you heard from Zack?'
Shera doesn't hear the reply; no doubt they're at the bottom of the stairs and back in the front of the inn. She doesn't think on it any longer than it takes to process the words. Aerith's business is her own, and Shera has more important things to worry about. How is she going to get to Wutai, for a start?
And what is she going to do when she gets there?
She's good enough at medicine, her father having had such a yearning for medical knowledge that he was widely considered one of the best physicians in Midgar, despite his royal status. That he took a day a week to discuss the common folks' maladies with them spoke volumes for his popularity, and Shera would have been remiss to not pick up some of the knowledge. She knows how to clean and stitch and dress even some of the worst wounds. She can make basic antidotes and remedies, and though Materia has been shown an effective cure for most illnesses and injuries, it is rare, expensive and unreliable for those not trained to use it. Lucrecia still has scars up her arm from the Materia Dr Valentine had found, or, at least, she had the last time Shera had seen her. Hideous black markings they are, from her palm to her shoulder, like her very blood was poisoned by it. Shera shivers at the thought.
It may not be a lot, but she can help with that. Battlefield first aid isn't what her mother wanted for her, but if it helps, if it draws some closure to the war, if she can send boys home to their families in one piece, or as close to one piece as she can manage, then she's got to at least try. Maybe she'll be able to use the experience to talk sense into the Regent. Get him to call off the war.
She wishes her father were still well, that he could still tell her what to do.
She swallows, thick and hard in her throat, and turns to the window. The sun is hanging lower still over the mountains, and sunset won't be long away. She'll have to move on at first light.
Wutai is still a long way away.
She wakes with a cough and a splutter to the smell of smoke and the sound of screaming.
Scraping her hands across her face, she yanks the covers back, rushes to the window, and sees the village in flames.
'Planet below,' she gasps, and tastes smoke in the back of her throat.
Covering her mouth with the crook of her elbow, she yanks herself into what clothes she can find; her trousers, her shoes, but she can't find the cap or her jacket in the touch-dark of the room. There's no time to repack the knapsack, even if she could see everything that had been in it, the smoke visible enough already in the firelight streaming through the windows. She needs to get out, she needs to leave. The doorknob is hot, but she yanks it open anyway, feels the skin of her palm burn hot and bright as she rushes through into the cloud of smoke on the other side.
Someone is screaming, she can hear them. She knows she's the only guest in the inn, and she hopes that she's the last one in. That Mrs Fair and Aerith and Mr Fair, she hopes they're out already. Mrs Fair had said that they slept on the ground floor. They must have gotten out.
The stairs are licked with flames, but Shera takes a breath, feels it burn in her lungs, sulphuric and hot, and takes them three at a time, stumbling as the wood creaks and cracks beneath her weight. The last few, and one gives beneath her, her foot plunging through the gap. She yelps, and crashes to the ground, her shoulder bursting into an explosion of pain.
'I've got you!'
Aerith, her hands hot and soft in Shera's armpits as she digs them in to lift her upright. Shera wriggles, and her foot comes free.
'You're alright,' Aerith promises, and something hot floods through her shoulder, the trickle of something familiar and yet unknown. 'Come on, we've got to get out of here.'
Shera staggers, but follows Aerith outside. They hit the dirt just as the roof begins to creak. A timber falls, crashes inside, and the walls begin to crumble.
'Fuck sake!' Aerith spits, and her face is both black and red in the light of the fire, blood streaming from her nose and soot across her cheeks like war paint. She wipes her nose with the back of her arm, and smears that alongside the soot.
'Is everyone alright?' Shera asks, calling it over the roar of the flames.
'No!' Aerith calls back, and looks wild, something hot in her eyes, burning so brightly.
Materia, Shera knows, recognises the colour of it. Her hair hangs loose around her face, her dress tattered with burn holes, and she's barefoot.
'Are you alright?' Shera asks instead.
Aerith gestures at the graveyard, where the villagers have gathered. Shera had only counted a dozen or so people in her time in the village, and they're all there, huddled together and dirty, scared, so small.
'I'm fine,' Aerith assures her. 'I just – I didn't – I didn't think the war would come here.'
'The war?' Shera asks, and looks back at a loud crash; another building topples in front of their eyes.
'The war,' Aerith echoes, as they turn back to continue towards the villagers, 'I saw – in one of Zack's letters, he talked about Wutai's – special unit, I guess. You never see them, because they're always in black and they disappear as quickly as they appear. I thought it was just because he was in their land, so they know it, they know where the hiding spots are. But I was sat on the grass and I didn't see anything until the first flames started.'
Shera looks back at the burning village. Most of it has crumpled now. There's barely any of it left. She clears her throat, spits black onto the grass. This is her fault. Word must have gotten out by now that she's not in the palace, and they must be looking for her. If Wutai has caught wind of it, they must surely be looking for her, too. And if they'd found her –
'I need to leave,' she says.
'What?' Aerith asks, wrinkles her nose. 'Why?'
'This is my fault,' Shera says, 'I should never have come, I'm so sorry.'
'What, no, no – this – listen, I don't understand what you've – why you've – I don't get it! Sure, I've wanted to go running into the war, too! My Zack's out there, and I've got nothing to tell me he's still alive, and I've wanted to go and find him! But I know that – I can do more good here.'
'The Materia,' Shera says, and Aerith's eyes harden for a second, something crackling in the air around her. Shera huffs a laugh, coughs until her ribs ache. 'You have nothing to fear from me. I – I envy you, certainly. You are able to do much more to help these people now than I could ever dream of doing.'
'I don't know about that,' Aerith says, soft, and Shera smiles, knows what she means.
'Then you know why I must go.'
Aerith licks her lips, wipes more blood from her nose. They stop walking and stare at each other.
'You aren't to blame for this, Your Highness,' Aerith says. 'It was unfortunate timing, is all. You aren't responsible for this.'
'Everywhere I go,' Shera says, musing, rubs soot from her nose. Her palm aches. 'Everyone I spoke to as a child, all the princes. They all – terrible things keep happening around me. My coming here was a mistake. I am so sorry. Please, let everyone know that I am sorry.'
Aerith watches her for a moment. 'Just after dinner,' she says, 'we received a special messenger, from the palace. The kid said there was one sent to every dock and port from here to Corel. They've put out a bounty, for your safe return. Five million, they're offering. They say you've been taken from the palace against your will. They're blaming Wutai.'
'I left of my own will,' Shera tells her, feels something like anger in her belly, but it's too hot, too fierce. 'I left because I had to do something. I – I didn't even know what it was! But I knew I couldn't stay! I had to do something, because so many people have gotten hurt – and they're hurt now! Because of me!'
'No! This isn't because of you! Fuck sake, this is – nobody knows who you are, and I won't say a word to anyone.'
Shera heaves a breath, two, and then Aerith's hand goes to her hair as she doubles over and throws up.
'You're alright,' Aerith promises her, and how can she be so calm, so at ease? 'You're alright.'
'Why are you calm?' Shera spits, wipes her mouth.
'Because I have to be,' Aerith says, smooths Shera's hair back from her face, cups her jaws. 'No one will say that you're here, but you arrived by boat? You'd better move on before the captain realises you weren't some boy running away to join the war.'
'I'm twenty-eight,' Shera protests, mutely.
'And I'm twenty-four,' Aerith replies, jovial enough, and pats Shera's cheeks. 'There are chocobo tracks near here, if you can catch one, you should be able to ride it around the coast, and you'll be able to cross onto Wutai territory at low tide. Zack says that's how a lot of them got over there in the first assault, they used the tides so the boats wouldn't be seen.'
Shera nods, repeats the instructions to herself. Her palm burns, and she holds it to her chest.
'Are you hurt?' Aerith asks, reaches out, and her fingertips glow green.
'No,' Shera says, shakes her head. 'I'm – I'm fine. Focus on healing these people, they need it more than me.'
Aerith watches her for a moment longer, and then nods. The blood on her lip has dried now, and she looks haggard.
'If you get chance, wash your hands and face in the river,' she says, 'it'll do you good.'
Shera nods. She hadn't even thought about getting clean. Her lungs ache. She wants to sleep, but she needs to move.
'Thank you,' she says, means it for more than the advice.
'If anybody asks, I haven't seen you.'
Shera nods, and heads past the graveyard, keeps her gaze on the floor. The fire continues to burn behind her. The guilt turns over and over in her belly.
She doesn't manage to catch a chocobo despite trying until the sun comes up. She supposes she's slow and stinking of fire. It begins to rain, and she doesn't mind too much. It feels nice on her hand, which now that she can see it in the grey light of the rainclouds, looks angry and blistered. She deserves it, she supposes. She endangered everyone at Gongaga by being there, and she's lucky that Aerith was there.
The war has to end. It has to end, and it has to end soon. If Wutai's forces are finding their way inland, then it's only a matter of time before larger-scale incidents occur. Gongaga was a village of barely twenty buildings, but what if they managed to invade Junon, or reached Midgar? Mideel?
No, she has to end the war. If that means she has to find her way to Wutai proper and barge into the Emperor's pagoda – it isn't a palace, no matter what the Regent called it, it was a pagoda, and the rudeness of naming it incorrectly would not help her – to demand to speak to him, then that was what she would do.
Using the coast as her guide, it only takes her a few days to make it around to the crossing point that Aerith had mentioned. She lingers on one side of an estuary for a few hours, watching the camp there. It's smaller than she expected, and she's not entirely certain she'd be able to cross without being discovered. More to the point, the estuary is too wide, too deep, and too fast for her to cross at this point. She'll have to go inland to find a bridge or a crossing point.
She's tired, she needs to rest. If she can find somewhere secluded, she'll try to catch a few hours. Her feet are sore, her shoes ill-fitting and rubbing at her heels. The rain had soaked her through and left her with a chill. But she thinks of the soldiers not two miles from her, the things that they've gone through in the name of the kingdom – in her name! – and she pushes her complaints aside. She can cope with sore feet and a sniffle.
A half-mile up the path and there's a crossing point, several large stones breaking up the flow of the water. She takes her time crossing them, knows if she rushes, she'll slip. On the other side, there's an almost cave. It doesn't go very deep, but there is an overhang, and it'll provide cover. She can rest there for an hour or so.
Even if she just takes the weight off her feet and takes her shoes off, it's more than nothing. She could do with something more substantial than berries to eat, but that'll have to wait, too, she supposes. She'll work it out when she's got some rest under her.
Nodding to herself, she makes her way into the almost-cave, and settles herself into something resembling a comfortable position.
When she wakes again, the sun's moved in the sky again, the darkness of night creeping across the ground. There's almost a moon now, the thinnest sliver of it lighting the grass into the softest shine of steel.
She wipes drool from her cheek with the back of her hand and leaves the cave. Her stomach grumbles, but she just grinds a knuckle into it, looks at the lights of the camp less than a mile from her current position.
As she'd sat there, resting her feet and brushing the dried blood from the creases of her skin, she'd thought about what to do. She couldn't just approach and ask to go across the crossing; with five million on her head, the soldiers would want to turn her in straight away, and those that didn't would want to do worse. Or so she's heard.
Men get lonely, she supposes.
She's been lonely her whole life. She's not dared to get close to anyone since she was fifteen and the accident that almost took –
Well. That's besides the point now. The point is that she's been thinking about what to do, and the only thing she can think would even have a chance at working would be to update her disguise.
The cap had almost worked, but her face was still visible.
If she had a uniform, however –
The soldiers' helmets covered their faces, their eyes at least, and the chin straps disguised their jawlines. If she could get her hands on a uniform, she could at least attempt to pretend to pass as a solider.
It shouldn't be hard. Stand straight, shoulders back, click your heels. She's watched the guards on the palace do their rounds.
She just needs to find a spare uniform, that's all. Easy.
Right?
She gives herself a shake, presses a thumb into the forming blisters on her palm.
Right.
The camp turns out to be primarily a medical bay of sorts. Most of the beds are gurneys, and most of the soldiers are injured. Most of them aren't wearing their uniforms. There's a pile outside one of the tents. She tries not to think of what the lines of helmets means.
Finding boots in a close size to hers is the hardest part, and she tries not to feel bad about taking a dead man's clothes. But she supposes he's dead. He doesn't need them. She finds a black corner and strips, yanks on the uniform as quickly as she can. She struggles to grip the buckles to fasten them, her hand sorer now than ever, the blisters stopping her closing her fingers, but she manages it. Time is of the essence. She can't be seen without the uniform.
Once she's dressed, she gathers her hair into a bunch and shoves it into the helmet, jamming it onto her head. It's much too big, but at least it covers her face. She tightens the chin strap as much as she can, though it's still too loose, and she catches her reflection in a shield propped up against a tent. She looks like a child playing dress up.
The uniform stinks of blood and piss and sweat, but she doesn't smell much better; strip washing in a river with no soap and no way to wash her clothes hasn't really done her any favours, but she forces herself to think about why she's here. It makes the smell meaningless.
'Grow up,' she whispers to herself, and straightens her shoulders.
Nobody looks twice at her as she walks across the camp. Some of the men are sleeping, some playing cards, some writing letters. Nobody seems to be patrolling. Shera looks at them as she walks, tries to make it look like she belongs. They all look so tired, so young. So frail.
So many boys lost to the war, and so many men taken.
She swallows, lifts her chin a little.
The crossing is visible, low-tide making it a sandy, rocky path a mile or so long. It shouldn't take her long to cross, and if she just, if she just. If she just starts walking, she – her feet hurt, but she could run. A mile wouldn't take ten minutes, surely.
She doesn't know whether she should be worried that nobody stops her.
At the other side, officially on Wutai soil, she turns and looks back. The tide is coming back in. Her timing at Gongaga had been terrible, and her palm feels like a thousand needles are jabbing into it. But the timing here had been forgiving. She turns back to the forest before her, the depths of Wutai awaiting her, and she makes her way through the undergrowth and into the trees.
She sees a fire and heaves a sigh of relief. She's spent a day or more in the forest without seeing a soul, and a fire means people. Thank the Planet, she was beginning to think she was going in circles. She makes a beeline for it, and doesn't care about the noise she makes. She's tired, she's hungry, and she wants to just sit down for three days.
'Captain!' a man yells, from somewhere behind her, just as she breaks the treeline and sees the camp properly.
More accurately, she sees who occupies the camp, and they aren't wearing Midgar uniforms.
Several things happen at once; the Wutaian troops leap to their feet, yelling and grabbing their weapons. Someone yells a string of very loud swearwords, and a spear hurtles past her ear. A body slams into her and knocks her to the floor, knocking her helmet loose and sending it bouncing across the ground. She hears something behind her ears that could have been a dragon's cry, but is more likely the whistle of an arrow. Hands grab at her arms, haul her to her feet, and she sees a – a –
She didn't know they'd sent the dragoons in. She didn't know that the dragoons had thrown their lot in. How long had the dragoons been in the war? Why had no one told her that the dragoons were in the war? She feels something bubble in her chest. It could be laughter. It could be tears. She doesn't know what it is.
She wrenches herself free of the hands grabbing her arms at the same time as the dragoon rips his spear free of the last body and whirls to face her. Her breath catches, tears itself apart in her chest, and she chokes on her tongue. She's only ever seen paintings of dragoons. They haven't set foot in the palace for three centuries. After the way they'd been treated, her father had said, during their involvement in the last war of the kingdoms, when Midgar took most of the power over the eastland, the dragoons had refused to engage with any of the kingdoms again. They traded only as a necessity. She knew they had the faces of the dragons they'd once rode into battle, but to see it in person, to see it so close.
She wonders if this is what fear is.
The dragoon rips the helmet from his head and throws it aside, and before she can take in the disrespect to his armour, he's toe-to-toe with her.
'The fuck were you thinking?' he roars, and she can't find the words, locked eye-to-eye with him.
He has the bluest eyes she's ever seen in her life, and they're meeting her with such a fire that she's surprised she's not burnt from it. Her palm itches, the blisters aching with the grit rubbed into them.
'I,' she starts.
'Captain,' comes a voice, calmer, sensible, placating. 'Captain.'
'What the fuck do you want?' the dragoon – the Captain – demands, whirling on his heel to face the voice, and Shera feels like she's been released from a spell, like the strings holding her upright have been cut. She only barely manages to not crumple.
'Captain,' says the voice again, and Shera finally turns her head to look. A large man, larger than life, six-five at the least, with shoulders just as wide, his head bald but his beard full. He has gentle eyes, she finds herself thinking, her palm still burning with the heat of the Captain's gaze, which flickers back to her. 'Do you – realise – who that is?'
'I couldn't give a shit,' the Captain spits, and jabs his spear into the dirt to rub his hands over his face. He has a beautiful jawline.
'That's the fucking Princess,' says another man, leaner, his skin dark and his broad features full of the crazed bewilderment of someone who can't believe what they're having to deal with.
'The Princess,' the Captain says, and turns back to her, his lip curling. 'The fuck is the Princess doing in Wutai, sneaking into an enemy camp in the middle of the fucking night?'
Shera twists her fingers together. 'I was trying to find a friendly camp, actually. I'm trying to stop the war.'
'Stop the war,' the Captain snorts, and turns away to grab his helmet, jam it back on his head. 'What a crock of fucking shit.'
'We need to take her back to camp,' the large man says, 'if nothing else, we need to move before the bodies are discovered.'
'Whatever,' the Captain snorts, snatching his spear out of the dirt and stomping off towards the trees, 'don't give a fuck, leave her here for all I care.'
The large man pinches his nose. The other stares at the sky and rubs his face.
'Come on,' the large man says, gesturing at Shera. 'Grab your helmet, soldier, let's go.'
Shera stares at him for a second, and then hurries to do as bid and follow him into the trees.