Chapter One:
Renascent:
Rising again into being.
Someplace, sometime, someone.
There was no warning. Years passed, lives were lived, highs were had and lows were scraped by, and then, one day, the sky fell down upon their heads. A rain of blaze and smoke and a burning ball of fire.
No one had picked up on the meteor that had came careening into their planet, their earth, their home. Not the Muggle devices, not the astronomy towers littered throughout the Wizarding world, or Cetra as the Muggles were beginning to call them since the fall of the Statute of Secrecy two years passed, not NASA or the Ministry or a small child doing a science project on a Sunday evening.
One morning the sky had simply lit up like the fourth of November, and people all around the world, for one single moment, stood together as one to watch the fire drizzle down like tinsel blown in the wind. Japan had been the worst hit, but there had been no major casualties. There had been nothing to worry about then. A pretty light show that had come and gone in twenty-four hours.
No one had known any better.
"I've been called to go to the crash site. Apparently the Muggles say something has survived the burn-up in our atmosphere. I head to Japan tomorrow. Isn't this fantastic, 'Lock? I doubt it's any sort of normal specimen or debris if the Muggle government has reached out to us for support. I get to be one of the first to see it! Oh, I better pack those runic scrolls if I want to-"
Hermione Granger was excited, hair crackling in her magic and fervour, already hunched over a Charmed extended bag, shoving in books and potions kit, and little silver apparatus Hemlock Potter had no hope in naming, inside. Hemlock's gut sank into the dark with them. Dropped right down to her cold, static feet.
Something… Something didn't feel right.
"Are you sure you have to go? Seen as the bloody thing has gone and crashed into Japan, why aren't the Japanese Wizards and Witches being called in? Scotland's a bit of a stretch to outsource assistance."
Hermione waved her off, shoving tightly bound scrolls into the bag. Stop, Hemlock wanted to say. Don't go, she wanted to plead. Please, she would have happily begged. Something is horribly wrong, and I can feel it looming right over us. Yet, she didn't. Hemlock Potter said nothing because nothing was wrong she kept telling herself, over and over and over again.
It was only a meteor.
What trouble could a bloody space-rock really cause?
"Britain is the foremost nation in magical astrophysics, and seen as the Japanese Department of Magics is Britain's MoM goodwill sister we've been asked to lend a hand. As Astronomy Professor at Hogwarts of course Shacklebolt would ask me first if I wanted to participate. Don't look at me like that, 'Lock. I'm sure if anyone suspected anything untoward they would have called you in too."
Would they?
No.
Unspeakables typically only got called in after the fact. When the corpses were made. When the bad stuff needed a sterile and thorough clean-up. When shit had already hit the fan, and the only option left was to the let the dogs of war free and hope they didn't gnaw their own legs off before they did the enemies.
Hemlock Potter, something else entirely, was naturally only called into a blow-up far later than that.
You only wanted the Deathly Hallow on scene when things were utterly and completely fucked. You didn't send a nuke to deal with a mugging, and you didn't send Hemlock Potter to a place without good bloody reason. Typically that reason, in her twenty-three years of life thus far and her seven-year record dubbed the Deathly Hallow, was the fuckin' apocalypse.
This, a little shower from outer space, was not an apocalypse. Really, it wasn't. Even if Hemlock's senses were screaming, shrieking, screeching at her that something was horrifically incredibly WRONG. The ground beneath her feet felt-
Soft. Spongy.
Something bellow was rotting.
Something was dying.
Something was-
Screaming.
Hemlock shuffled in her Thestral hide clad uniform, hand mindlessly falling to the hilt of Gryffindor's sword strapped to her hip. Her fingers tightened around the pommel. Even this age old action at this point did not give her courage as it so often had in the past.
It was fine. Hermione would be alright. She was just over-reacting. Hemlock hadn't been sleeping right for a while now and-
It was just a space-rock.
Hemlock's gut dropped lower, something cold snaking down her back that coiled and squeezed, and she asked herself the same question that had plagued her since the sky first opened up.
Why?
There had been no warning. Why hadn't there been any warning? Why had no sensors or spells picked up the thing the size of a small bus heading right for them? Why-
Hermione was before her, hands braced on Hemlock's shoulders, eyes crinkled in the balmy smile the brunette Witch beamed at her. The sunlight from the kitchen window made her hair shine gold. Hemlock would always remember that cinnamon freckled smile.
"You're doing it again, letting that mind run away with you. Not every bed has a monster lurking underneath it."
All the ones Hemlock Potter had ever slept on had. In one form or another. A fist-happy Uncle, or soul-ripping Dark Lord, or-
Or a meteor that had come without warning.
Hermione patted at her shoulder's and let go. Hemlock missed the comfort immediately.
People hardly touched her these days. Afraid she would suck the very life out of them on contact.
Hemlock could control that now. She hadn't had a slip like that in months.
"Lighten up. I'll be back before you know it, Ron will be back from his Quidditch tour by then surely, and we can all head down to the Hogs Head for a good pint and a job well done!"
Hemlock-
Hemlock did not argue anymore.
She helped Hermione pack. She saw her off to the Apparition point the next morning. Hemlock would come to regret that much later. She should have told Hermione not to go. She should have dragged her off by her frizzy, sunshine hair, and locked her inside Grimmauld Place. She should have-
Hemlock should have listened to her gut.
Why?
Because Hermione was right. The brunette Witch was back before Hemlock knew it. Back and bed-bound and dying from some sort of disease no Muggle doctor or Wizarding healer had ever seen before. Some kind of parasitic creature that had latched onto her own cells and feasted.
The last time Hermione Granger held Hemlock Potter's shoulder there was no sunshine or golden hair, and no cinnamon spiced smile. Only a quarantined Saint Mungo's bed, a pain-waned face, a cold-lax grip, and a bloody splutter that rasped in a fading chest that fought for each and every breath.
"Don't trust her. She lies, 'Lock. She lies."
Hermione had been the first to become sick.
She wasn't the last.
Hemlock set out for Japan the very day they changed the sheets on Hermione's empty hospital bed.
She missed the funeral, but Hemlock would not miss her mark.
No One's P.O.V
Hemlock Potter did not live. Not in any sense of the word. Here, in the empty place, she did not think, she did not dream, and there was no concept of her. Her magic existed there, in the dark, in the void, in the quiet, in the place that was not ever really a place, her essence, what one might call a soul, but herself?
Not truly.
There was no sense of control, no memories to recall, no emotions to be had. Anything and everything but the very magic of her being was gone. Locked away somewhere else.
Buried.
There was only… There was only-
Only sleep.
Sweet, dark sleep.
Her magic rolled, stirred, churned, like the waves out at sea, like cotton spun to thread, trundling in the green and gold and a splash of soot black.
And spun.
And spun.
And spun.
Out and out and out into the empty.
Sleep, and sleep, and sleep in nonexistence.
No thinking, no dreaming, no Hemlock.
No time. All time. Before time.
Sleep.
SLEEP-
Until one day there was a spark.
Until one day there was a voice.
Heal!
No One's P.O.V
"I did not request any new Materia."
The man before General Sephiroth shrank back from the door, from the towering figure and the even longer shadow that engulfed him, neck recoiling into the collar of his Shinra uniform as if the flimsy linen could protect his delicate neck.
It couldn't.
If Sephiroth so chose to, he could snap his hand out before the tiny man could blink or scream or cry out, his thumb and fore-finger would meet around the fifth vertebrae, such a thin, fragile neck it was, and with a simple twist of his wrist the crunch of bone would be-
"I-… I was told to safeguard that package and ensure it arrived in your hands, General. Orders from Professor Lynas and approved by Professor Hojo."
Ah.
A name the General knew well.
Perhaps too well.
And still, Sephiroth did not take the quivering package held out towards him from the outstretched arms of the mousey man bowing his head. Instead, he repeated himself.
He would not do so again.
"I did not request any new Materia."
Sephiroth did not need it.
Sephiroth never needed it.
The man, Cornyn by the lab chip on his coat pocket, darted a glance down the long, dimly lit hallway, flickering to the other side, back again, searching for an answer, for words, for something to say, for a way out.
"I, well, I have orders to confirm-"
A voice from Sephiroth's back piped up from beyond the doorway he stood in, smooth and fragrant and teasingly bright.
"Just take the delivery, Sephiroth. We move out anytime now, and I would rather spend that time relaxing than hearing that poor boy pissing himself if you keep scowling at him like that."
From around the bend, Genesis Rhapsodos grinned, teeth a white flash on his slim face. An imposingly tall man on his own, though smaller than Sephiroth, he cut a rather impressive figure in the room behind, if not somehow catastrophic in the way all tragic champions were.
With no hope of being anything but.
His red hair, as red as his trademark coat over his SOLDIER blacks, fell about his face in choppy wisps, giving him a soft look, downy-feathers and silk, a look found most frequently at home in the pages of the romances and tragedies the First-Class SOLDIER was often found reading in the growingly scant spare time they had between missions.
Ardent, some would say, by the soothing cut of his eye and the tilting slope of his jaw.
Pretentious, Sephiroth knew.
Another voice joined the fray.
"What's going on?"
Angeal Hewley's thudding steps were heard loud and clear long before he too made his presence known in room. The shortest of the trio, Angeal was also the broadest and, feasibly, the most severe looking. Razor-sharp, keen, his dark brows under a spate of darker tresses, Angeal was a man made of piercing lines and squared strength, and a soft, soft soul hiding beneath the rebar.
Genesis slapped the copy of Loveless he had in hand closed.
"Sephiroth is scaring the help again."
Ignoring the barb, Angeal turned to the man in question, silently cocking a brow.
"Mmm."
Was his only answer, as the General reached out into the hallway and, finally, took the small, square box. The man bowed deep and darted down the hall without so much as a peep, towards the elevator, the escape that would lead him away from the topmost floor of the SOLDIER barracks in Shinra headquarters, where the First-Class's had their apartments.
The door clicked shut and locked on impact.
"The last of the supplies?"
Angeal inquired as Sephiroth moved back into the room in a languid gate, between the packed bags and the swords leaning against the wall ready, like the men, to move out as soon as the order came down from Heidegger.
"Yes."
Sometimes, rarely, Sephiroth wondered why he unpacked at all. He lived in those duffels these days, he lived in his SOLDIER blacks, he lived in the razor edge of his great katana, and by the state of the war effort, it would not be over anytime soon.
He wasn't sure he wished for it to be.
He was bred for this.
What was he without war?
What were any of them?
Genesis dashed his book on the side table.
"Materia. So, what is it? Summon? Wind? Thunder? Don't tell me it's another Chakra."
Sephiroth fired a glance down to the small box lid, weighed it in his leather clad palm, warm, oddly warm in his hold, to the paper tag taped on front.
He recognized Hojo's handwriting, and his stomach churned, though nothing flickered across his stone-cold face.
Bury.
Breathe.
Burn, a darker voice added.
"Healing."
Angeal kicked back against the wall, crossing his arms over his broad chest.
"We haven't needed to use Healing since our cadet days. Why give us something to carry that we won't need to use?"
Genesis huffed, waved his hand flippantly in an elegant wave, and moved in deeper to the room, towards his own pack, preparing to check his own supplies.
"Just ditch it."
And Sephiroth did, placing the small box on the table beside the book, gloved hand flexing in the sudden draft of cold, just as the signalling beep rang out in the room in a beat of three.
The SOLDIERS, one by one, pulled out their PHS's.
The same message flashed on all screens.
Helicopter pad 6. Five Minutes.
The room came to life in a flurry as bags were slung over shoulders, and swords, long, wide, and winged, were strapped to backs and hips, and together, the SOLDIERS began to filter out the door.
When Heidegger said five, he meant two, as when Shinra said they wanted a war won, they meant yesterday.
Sephiroth was the first out the room, Genesis not far behind. Angeal, nevertheless, stalled at the door.
He gave one last glance back.
The room was empty now, sparse and impersonal, everything they were trained to be.
He caught sight of the little black box with the little yellow tag.
Angeal frowned and turned, determined to walk away, to get his head in the game, to strategize the mission plan in neat little lines and-
Turned back.
He retraced his steps, reached out, and let his hand hover over the box.
He could…
He swore…
He could almost… Feel it. The magic inside. Coaxing, slick, warm.
Very, very, warm.
Better safe than sorry. If Shinra were giving them Healing Materia, this mission could get… Messy.
"Angeal, Hurry up! Heidegger won't like it if we make the transport wait for us!"
Angeal turned back around at the sound of Genesis's voice, and marched from the room, shutting the door behind him with a click, and a clack, and a latch.
The room fell to black.
The little black box was hot in Angeal's pocket.
Zack Fair's P.O.V
It was all Zack Fair's fault. It had been a rooky mistake, something a Third-Class would have done, not a Second, and definitely not the SOLDIER under Angeal's personal mentorship. It was all Zack Fair's fault, and seeing Angeal laying on a cot in a tent at the edge of the makeshift base in hostile territory, bandaged leg propped up on the end on the few pillows they could pilfer from the surrounding camps, the guilt he was suddenly stricken with was heavy and hard and kept him rooted to his spot.
The guilt also played out unmistakably across his pallid face in the low light of the tent.
"I'm sorry. I didn't see them coming up from behind. I thought the coast was clear-"
Angeal smiled at him from the bed.
"It was an easy mistake to make, Zack. Do not beat yourself up so much."
The mission had been relatively small, a simple push back on the Wutai forces encroaching on a mountain side far too close to Midgar for Shinra's peace of mind. The First-Class's sent out to deal with it had taken Zack, along with a small squadron of Seconds, with them believing it would be a good training exercise in operating on a foreign soil.
It was supposed to be a direct drive forward. Nothing more, nothing less.
Just like all the other times.
Each day Wutai was loosing more ground, more footing, and it wouldn't be long before Shinra's forces made it to Fort Tamblin, their heart.
Soon it would be over.
Not if he got Angeal, one third of the First-Classes, killed by his carelessness.
Angeal had taken Zack out on a brief search task up north, a quick and effortless dip forward to scout out the terrain. They had not taken any other Seconds with them; most having been taken with General Sephiroth and Genesis to attack the seven Wutai Cells encamped at the base of the mountain. It was supposed to be swift and uncomplicated, a combing out of the path they would take up towards the cusp of the mountain when the General and Genesis returned.
Only Zack had not seen the two Wutai splinter Cells coming down from the mountain forest until it was too late. They must have broken off from the group down below and taken a pass upwards, the locals knowing these woods far better than Zack, born and bred in the city of Gongaga, and by the time they had hit, it had been too late.
Far too late.
One plucky Wutai gorilla fighter had gotten a lucky and clear shot with their dagger, a dagger that had been thrown through the air, sailing, where it had sliced itself home in Angeals' left calf before the First-Class had taken the lead and demolished the Wutai units.
They had managed to make it back to camp, sending the few Seconds left to clear out the bodies to keep their location hidden, and though the wound was shallow, none lethal, the limp in Zack's mentor's gate ate fiercely at him.
Anything that would slow a persons movements here was… Problematic to say the least.
They still had three days marching to do. A SOLDIER never retreated until the job was done.
Angeal had told him that.
The flap of the tent opened. Wide-eyed, Zack spun around.
The General himself towered at the entrance, dipping low to slip into the fold, followed by Genesis.
They still had blood on their faces, a streak of soot and smoke, the ash of a burned encampment.
The raid had gone well then.
"We heard you had taken a hit."
Angeal nodded, went to heave himself up, wincing as the temporary bandage around his leg pulled tight on the wound.
Zack shrank back.
Maybe the wound was deeper than he first thought and-
And Angeal cut his thoughts clean off.
"Nothing major. I will be ready and well by tomorrow evening."
General Sephiroth hung back by the tent flap, in the shadows of the flimsy material, long silver hair tied back from his face, though his parted fringe still escaped in hoary strands to flutter in the breeze.
No matter how many times Zack Fair ever saw the General up close, he always had that first thought all over again.
Don't move.
Like staring down a big, white tiger, or an albino fire Drake, something dangerous, something deadly, Sephiroth had a gravity to him, a flare in the fight or flight response ignited in a single Mako enhanced glance.
Only, it was always flight that got rubbed the wrong way. As if Zack's mind new that fighting, whatever struggle he could put up against the General, that anyone could put up, would never be enough.
You did not put your hand in the maw of a hungry tiger and expect to come back with all your fingers.
And yet, no matter how you saw the General, with blood on his face or without it, in the iridescent glimmer of his serpentine eyes or lounging in the shadows of the training yard watching the Thirds exercise, there was never, never an outward sign of the danger sensed, and that made the nerves in Zack's brain crossfire.
Instinct and memory warring.
Hence the freeze, thus the don't move.
The General smiled pleasantly, lightly, if lesser than most, more a twitch of the lips than a glimmer of teeth, he never lashed out without calculation, never barged or stormed or swaggered down a hallway, and he never yelled, Zack had never heard him so much as raise his voice, always speaking in that lilting lullaby of smoke and something distinctly sleek like polished jade.
Just as he spoke right then, soft and deep and dark as the shadow he made his home.
"We do not have that long. We must move ground tonight. By the base of the mountain we caught sight of another five Wutai garrisons marching in from the east. We need to make it to the mountain top before they arrive, to cut them off and force them into a pinhead. There is no time to wait. It appears the intel Shinra had on Wutai forces in this area were… Lacking."
Angeal attempted to raise himself off the cot, talking as he went.
"Then we move now. I am perfectly able to-"
His left boot hit the thin plastic sheet of the tent, and immediately gave out as weight was applied.
Zack darted forward-
Genesis was across the tent before he could reach his mentor, grasping at the broader man's arm to stop him from falling.
Zack grimaced.
The wound was definitely worse than first thought. Perhaps even poisoned, the Wutai frequently dipping their weapons and blades and feathered darts with toxins. What were they going to-
Sephiroth lurched out of the shadow, feet contrarily silent contrasted to his immense size, hooking a thumb into his leather glove, and with a slip, a free, pale, nimble hand held aloft towards a heavily leaning Angeal, palm up, open.
"Do not be foolish, Angeal. Give me the box."
Angeal frowned before his face broke into a rare, lopsided smile, chuckle rich and thrumming like a beat of a drum.
"You knew I took it?"
Zack stood rooted to where he was, even as Sephiroth refrained from answering, merely flexing his fingers.
With Genesis balancing him, Angeal dipped a hand into the pocket of his trousers, and produced-
A little black box.
But Angeal did not let go, he held it over the palm, cautious, timid. Zack had never seen his mentor hesitate before.
Almost as if he didn't want to part with it, that teeny, tiny box, and-
The wound must really be bad.
Eventually, Angeal dropped it, arm sagging back to his side.
The box made the short distance to Sephiroth's hand.
Genesis helped lower Angeal back down onto the wonky cot, jutting his chin in Zack's general direction in the silent order to move out the way.
Zack stumbled back until he almost went tumbling out the tent, back saved by the plastic, mutely watching.
Angeal grunted as his own back hit the threadbare mattress, as Sephiroth tore the yellow label and popped the lid on the little box and-
Scowled.
Genesis squinted over.
"Is something wrong?"
Sephiroth dipped into the box with his bare hand and, from the cushion of red and gold silk, plucked out the ball of Materia, holding it up.
Green, was the first thing Zack saw. Green like summer grass and treetops, the kind that Aerith grew around her home, green like-
Like Mako, bright, impossibly bright.
Not like Mako, like-
Like the Mako tanks in the belly of Shinra. Power condensed into something it should not fit, something that could barely contain it.
The speckles of black came next. Dark things, flecks and fragments that, like blood splatter, formed a greater shape.
A line.
A circle.
A triangle.
Sliced, splintered, together as one across the curved face of the Materia.
Genesis whistled long and low.
"That doesn't look like any old healing Materia. What is that?"
Angeal propped himself up on his elbows, imaginably to get a closer look at the Materia, careful not to disturb his leg.
"Perhaps an experimental one from the Research and Development department? That boy had said Professor Hojo had approved its use."
Yes-
Yes.
Zack himself had used some of Shinra's prototypes before. Given, never a prototype like-
Like that.
Then again, Zack was merely a Second. Only the Ancients knew what resources Shinra heaped on its Firsts.
Sephiroth said nothing but, nodding to Genesis, motioned for the others give him space. The General came close to the bedside, knees knocking the dented frame, holding out the Materia in his bare hand, out over Angeal's leg.
"Heal."
And-
Nothing happened.
"Heal."
Sephiroth frowned, finger's tightening, stretching around the orb, and for the first time, Zack heard the General growl.
"Heal!"
And-
It all happened at once.
Red striking light exploded out of the Materia, there was a moment where the General yelled, as if someone had reached into his chest and wrung the very air from his lungs, weaving, and then-
Boom.
Zack was swept of his feet as the tent exploded and he was sent flying through the air. His back struck the ground outside, yards away, thrown clear out, he rolled, the back of his head bouncing off a rock, something sharp and hard, and the world span sickeningly, the light still flashing spots of crimson sun in his face.
He groaned, whined, tried to lift himself up when the world outside finally flipped itself the right way, the sky up and the ground down, heart back in his chest and not in his throat, and as he came to his knees, his stomach roiled sickeningly.
He sucked in a breath and-
Magic, fiery and intoxicating, burned its way down his throat.
It-
It tasted like honey and lemon.
A hand clamped down onto his back, fingers wrapping into the wool of his vest, heaving him up.
He stumbled and crashed into Genesis.
The world wavered and-
Zack blinked, dumbfounded.
Their campsite was in shambles, razed, tents torn and left to flutter away, caught in tree branches and stagnant pond, cots broken on mountain side as Seconds sprawled about the place, mystified by the explosion, fighting to a stand, words of a Wutai attack already making rounds.
Angeal.
Zack got his footing and swivelled searching-
Angeal was already up beside Sephiroth, the taller man taking the brunt of his weight as Zack could hold a feather. Sephiroth turned to face the pair not three feet away, peeking through a long silver lock.
"I dropped the Materia."
Zack glanced down on instinct, spotted the General's pale hand-
Pale, bloody hand.
Across the back of it sat five slashes, almost bone deep.
Three for the triangle.
One for the line.
One for the circle.
Blood dripped down the index finger, splattering onto the dirt trod ground below.
Genesis braced beside him.
"It must have rolled in the tent and-"
He, as Genesis did, as Sephiroth and Angeal did, glimpsed towards where the tent would have been. The faulty Materia couldn't have gotten far as the epicentre of the explosion. It should still be right where it-
There was no Materia, no soft glow in the oncoming evening giving its place away. There was only a figure-
There was only a girl.
Huddled right where the heart of the tent used to be, where the burst of magic had exploded, the girl was crouched in on herself, folded, knees drawn up tight, arms rigidly wrapped around the limbs, face shoved down deep between the legs, chin towards her chest, face hidden from view.
She was-
Naked.
Naked and… Steaming, as if she had been dropped from a very hot place into something cold. Pale, small, so very small, she couldn't be taller than Zack's chest if she stood upright, the crossed limbs barely kept her dignity intact, but the crown of sunset hair, curly, coiled, an explosion in its own well-earned right, a mass that swept down her form in waves of amber fire to flutter at her back and stooped feet, covered what legs left bare, leaving only peaks of light skin.
There was a terrible trembling to her form, a bone marrow deep shake, the kind you couldn't control, the kind that reminded Zack of the baby goat he had seen in his childhood, fresh from the birthing barn, quivering as it took those first tender new steps into a big wild world.
Zack's first thought was Summon, the next was a hazy no.
Summoning Materia typically looked less… Human. Bound in form from their phenomenon beginnings, their physical manifestations being renditions of the elements and powers they wielded.
Infret crackled.
Shiva hailed.
This-
This wasn't a summon.
This was something-
Zack took a step forward, went to help the girl, and she, finally, looked up when the branch beneath his boot gave way with a muted snap, face peering out.
Zack only saw the eyes.
The greenest things he had ever seen.
Green and unbearably brilliant, excruciatingly dazzling, a green that burned.
His spine locked, his feet braced, his heart stopped, and it was that singular, all consuming thought all over again, ringing in his ears, strumming in his blood, shouting in his crossfire nerves.
DON'T MOVE.
And then she smiled, and she had dimples.
"Hello!"
A.N: Still in that hell-scape that is known as writer's block. I'm taking the age ol' advice of just trying to write myself out of it, and so, here we are lol! I know it's not much, and possibly not the best, but it is all I've got right now so I hope you guys liked it!
THANK YOU to every one who was kind enough to review, follow and favourite. Really, cheers! As always, if you could, don't forget to drop a review and I will hopefully see you all soon!