A/N: So, FFVII came out on Switch yesterday! Good stuff. Bought it instantly, obviously, even though I already have two copies of the PS1 game, and have it downloaded on PSP, PS3, PS4 and Steam, but still. Looking forward to playing but I am MAJOR busy. I'm seriously so busy that this chapter was almost late, even though I already had the whole damn thing written (though I did decide to change some stuff up to correspond with later events).

Actually, I cut so much out of this chapter that I am physically aching. I'm trying to keep the chapters to, you know…reasonable lengths? And this one was just TOO long. So I took a deep breath and cut a lot of crap and hopefully…this is fine :) Kill your darlings, as they say T_T I did it…*sniffs* does that make me a better writer…?

27th Mar '19

Chapter 5: Moonlighter

The tall, bald man in a suit—that's Rude—had dragged Aster to Tseng, who initiated a three-hour long Advanced Driving introduction and afterwards, she was brought back to his office where he pulled some kind of large manual from a drawer. He dropped it on the desk with a bang.

"You need to learn this."

"What, all of it?" she asked in disbelief, flicking through the four-hundred or so pages of the textbook. It was full of images, or more like illustrations, of monsters scrawled across the paper and reams of information to accompany them. It was some kind of compendium of monsters hailing from the western-most continent. Wutai. The country with which they were at war. Seemed appropriate.

When Tseng nodded, Aster knocked the worn-leather binding with her knuckles. It was surprisingly solid. "The hell is this…?" she said, under the false impression he wouldn't hear. "School?"

"Knowledge," he said, "that might one day save your life."

She whimpered to herself. "I was terrible at school."

"I know." A faint smirk accompanied him as he left the room. "I saw your grades."

It was nearly midnight when Aster made it back to the barracks and it had been to her greatest relief that lights out had been two hours prior. The others, even if they weren't already asleep, were required to be in bed and not permitted to roam as she was. Another ideal condition for growing contempt.

The room was spotless. She bit her lip.

She never did have to face the other cadets in the aftermath of the night before. Maybe she was glad in a cowardly kind of way, or maybe she'd have rather ripped the bandaid off and dealt with the immediate fallout. It didn't matter anyway since she spent the morning in Tseng's direct care, rising before the sun with a blow to the gut and then, in the Saturday afternoon downtime, Aster was dismissed only to continue with extra training. Make that extra extra training. She was losing track of what she was doing as fast as she was losing sleep.

Finding the Sector One Upper Plate station had been easy—it was right beside its governing Mako reactor. Aster had taken the steps down to the platform two at a time, sinking closer toward the plate along with them. She could almost smell the slums beneath her from beyond the railway tracks, distinctly metallic, to the point it could almost be tasted on her tongue. But then again, it could very well have been blood for all the beatings she had been taking recently.

The old train jostled over every notch on the wearied rails. "Last stop Sector Seven, Train Graveyard. Expected time of arrival is 15:23 pm, Midgar Standard Time."

Handles swung lazily above her head. She shared the carriage with a few others but the purple and blue swelling of her jaw from yesterday's meeting with Rohrbach's steely fist went thoroughly unnoticed. Either the sight was common beneath the plate, or no one gave a damn. Aster didn't know which was worse.

The carriage slowly deserted stop by stop save for a man in a tattered green shirt that rested over his bony ribs and a cowboy hat tilted over his face. His home was wherever the rails would take him; the end of the line. Aster considered this for a short moment before the end of the line was indeed met and the doors flung open.

The air was different here. It swarmed her the moment she set foot to the platform, wrapping every inch of exposed skin like a warm, rotten rag. It felt like filth. She shuddered, but not from cold.

No, the slums weren't cold at all, they were stifling. Heat from the giant lights hanging from the underside of the plate cooked all within the metal walls. Sunlight would not reach, and rain would not fall. The wind would not blow to lift the pressure.

Somewhere deep in the hollow of her cheek, she felt eyes. Glancing to her right, a man in a red uniform as stiff as wooden cladding—similar to that of the infantry captains and drill sergeants— met her with a lacking stare. He was a shadow of a man, a shell, dominant in the jaw and waning in the cheek and socket. War-torn.

He shook his head. The movement was entirely detached from the rest of his body like a doll, his neck but a ball in a chamber. "I'm with the Shinra only as far as this uniform and working their train if you're one of those Shinra-haters."

Aster opened her mouth to speak, but upon realising there was nothing to say, merely closed it and shook her head.

The horizon of the slums was rutted and knotted; grey and black and brown. Impressive in breadth, but nothing like the spectacle that was the city above. Tin roofs jutted and pointed up towards the plate, and some were flat and lost and probably caved in.

Aster chewed at her raw inner lip then looked back at the train man. "Can you tell me how to get to Seventh Heaven?"

His arm like a steel pipe with an extension of a baton pointed into the distance towards a chainlink fence. "Follow the road to the pillar and head directly into the village. Not far. Can't miss it."

She muttered her thanks and took the steps down to the cobbles. The roads of the slums were paved as far as the stones and steel that had been trampled into the hard ground through the passing of people over many years. In many ways, these towns were created by their inhabitants.

Out of the dirt beyond rose a chain fence that cordoned off a spiralling, clunky structure that stapled itself to what was unmistakably the pillar. It stretched tens of feet back and across, a concrete monolith that grew from the ground. Stood beneath the looming column, Aster craned her neck back to search the inky shadows above the lights for the point where the pillar and plate met, but her body stumbled back without balance, hindered by disorientation.

The plate was up there, the lid on the slums kept lifted by the pillar. The pillar held up the citizens chance for breath.

Sector Seven was made up less of brick and building and more of rust and rotted wood. Broken supports lay strewn across the dusty ground in mocking irony. Even the neon green lights that hung over the sturdiest building in the vicinity flickered lazily, dulling and brightening the same patches of the ground green like growing grass, then sucking the life and hope away once again.

Wooden stairs thumped and ached beneath a tangle of limbs as a body rolled over each splintering edge. At the top of the steps, a flow of dark hair twisted back into the light of the building like a gymnasts ribbon jerking, before poorly fitted saloon doors met close enough to be called closed.

The intoxicated man might have looked slightly less ridiculous, writhing there on the ground, if the tiny ponytail at the back of his otherwise bald head hadn't looked glued on, and maybe Aster would have helped him up if she believed he wouldn't fall straight back down again.

"Was'n…even done with my drink…! Did'n even pay my bill…!"

That building must be the bar. Aster folded her arms. "I'm gonna take a guess that you didn't need that last one."

She nudged his arm out of the way with her boot when his reply was lost to an alcoholic gurgle in the back of his throat. In the same way that no one rushed to care for Aster's bruising face, no one offered the man any aid. Maybe because it was self-inflicted, his state. And as for Aster, well, perhaps they thought she'd deserved it, for whatever she must have done. She probably did.

The saloon doors gave to a light touch of her fingertips. A girl by the bar pulled her hands free of leather gloves, old and worn, and only turned to look when the doors slapped back together.

Aster couldn't help but smirk, jutting her thumb over her shoulder. "Did you just kick that drunk guy's ass?"

Tifa crushed the gloves in the palm of her hand and met her smile. "I'm closing until we open again this evening, anyway. How are your injuries from yesterday? What hurts?"

"My pride."

The dark-haired girl laughed and tucked the gloves into her skirt. "Other than that."

"Nothing really," Aster said with a shrug, distinctly brushing her off.

"Your face is still a bit swollen. Sit," Tifa said, pulling out a green barstool and hurrying toward the kitchen. Aster couldn't quite see the kitchen from the bar—it was hidden away behind—but she returned quickly with a bowl and some kind of first aid kit.

"I have to apologise for failing to intervene yesterday. You should never have been put into that position. Cadets aren't asked to fight each other until much later in basic training," she gushed, words spilling out much like the faucet under the bar as she filled the bowl. "What happened yesterday encouraged no form of learning and occupied no skill or finesse or technique. It was nothing more than a couple of inexperienced students wailing on each other until something hurt."

"It's not your fault. Tseng doesn't answer to anybody."

Tifa's eyes gleamed with a touch of amusement. "Don't have to tell me that."

The water slopped up the side of the bowl and splattered the wooden counter. Tifa unloaded the first aid kit in a perfect line, her head down, hair covering her face. It looked like she might be about to perform some kind of countertop surgery.

Aster's eyebrows shot up. "Geez, Tifa, is this an infirmary?"

She smiled to herself and dipped some cotton wool in the water before dabbing it against Aster's jaw. "Sometimes."

If she hadn't believed her, she might have laughed. "What kind of place is the slums?"

Tifa set the cotton down and stared into the grain of the wooden bar for a moment. Suddenly activating an instant ice pack was taking her whole concentration.

"I mean," Aster said carefully, "it just doesn't seem very friendly. I wondered if that was why…"

She trailed off without the words to express the feeling, but her eyes pulled to the first aid kit—that was way less 'first' than 'ready for anything'—and she didn't need to ask the question verbally.

Tifa blew a strand of hair from her face in a sigh. "You're right, it's not the friendliest. And it's not much, I suppose," she said. Placing her words as gently and she pressed the icepack to Aster's cheek. "But to the slum-dwellers it's everything."

"What about you?" Aster asked. "Are the slums everything to you?"

Tifa hesitated then shook her head. "No. But the people are."

"And thus did open the Seventh Heaven Infirmary," she said in a lofty voice. "That it?"

"In a roundabout way. Although," she said with a grin, sweeping her arm in front of the collection of spirits and wines behind the bar, "our methods are questionable."

Aster's smile was smushed by the ice pack, but it still spread to her eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about. Nothing questionable about drowning your issues and injuries in ethanol and various juices."

Tifa may have been about to explain that there might just be, in fact, a small problem surrounding alcohol dependency in the community and that, perhaps, it was indeed questionable to make money out of its dependants, but the door flew open with a crack.

"Tifa!" barked a booming voice. "The mission was a success!"

Wine red rippled in Tifa's impossibly wide eyes, and it rippled in the bottles and half-empty glasses too, all disturbed by the bar stool slamming back into the bar as Tifa jumped to her feet, and quite possibly quaking at the sight of the gatling gun that threw open the door.

"Barret!"

"Y-you!"

It took a few moments for Aster to register that the floating gatling gun wasn't talking or floating at all but was rather attached to a man's arm, a swell of thick and worked muscle tucked tightly beneath a casing of gunmetal. It took her longer to realise he was pointing it at her.

But he mustn't have been, because Aster had never seen this man in her life, and in the next moment, Tifa was starting towards him with her hands in the air saying calm down and let me explain. Aster decided Tifa must have done something to piss off the man of half armament. As far as Aster saw it, it probably didn't take much.

"Barret, this is Aster Doe," Tifa said, tucking her hair behind her ear. "She was recently accepted as a Turk cadet and she's one of my students. I told Tseng I'd catch her up 'cause she's behind."

"Goddess only knows we all need to stay on his good side," she tagged on, muttering under her breath.

Barret's eyes flicked onto Aster's for one beat of his eyelids before settling on Tifa's once more.

The barmaid smiled. "I'm training her, Barret. Who knows where she might end up, huh?"

"On the right damn track, you oughta hope."

"Aster," Tifa said with a roll of her eyes, "Barret is a conservationist."

She raised an eyebrow. "Really? In Midgar? Not a lot to conserve here, huh?"

"And what'd you know?" he grunted. "You ain't from here."

Tifa shook her head and shot a look at Barret that Aster couldn't see. "He's working on finding a new source of energy. He scours the planet for oil fields and otherwise alternatives to Mako."

"An alternative to Mako? That's…"

"Don't say it's stupid!" Barret roared. He raised his gun-arm and swiped it through the air dramatically. Fly-swatting, perhaps, but Aster couldn't help but be extremely glad she wasn't in its path. It must have been like a wrecking ball. His arms were huge, his muscles corded and bulging beneath thick, dark skin. It was no wonder why, lugging that thing around all day.

She shook her head meeker than she had intended and tried again. "I wasn't going to say it was stupid. I was just going to say it sounds…ambitious. You don't hear of many people searching for alternatives."

"No, and that's a damn shame," Barret said.

"We're all so dependent on Mako, aren't we?" she said. "What happens if it all runs out?"

A sound, half-grunt and half-snort accompanied Barret's half-smile. "Don't even wanna think about it—"

Tifa interjected. "That's why Barret does what he does. You should keep that to yourself, though. You know, just in case."

"Oh, yeah, I totally get that," Aster spluttered, nodding, too eager to prove her trustworthiness. "I guess a lot of people would disagree. No worries there, Barret. Nice to meet you."

Barret scratched his temple with one of six barrels on his gatling gun. "Don't need no pleasantries. Jus' keep your word."

"Um. Right. I get that."

Tifa drew her heel along the divide between two floorboards and tucked it behind her other foot. "You said the mission was successful. Find anything new?"

"Uh, nothin' new, no. But we're in a good place now to put a real plan into action. I'm tellin' you, Tifa, good things are gonna start happenin' around here."

She smiled. "We'll talk later, Barret. Right now, Aster and I have training to do."

Barret muttered to himself as he backed out of the bar. "Kicked outta my own goddamn…"

Tifa sighed with her hands on her hips. "Well. Sorry about him." She laughed. "He's a good man, really."

Training near enough destroyed Aster. Going over all the basics she missed, and breakfalls, imperative for preventing injury when hitting the ground and maintaining the momentum of a fistfight—or any fight or scenario that you might find yourself grounded in. Given that it was a one-on-one session, Tifa was able to intensify the curriculum. A few hours rolled by and Aster was panting, sprawled out across a mat in the centre of the bar.

"So, what are your plans for the rest of the day?" Tifa asked casually as if she hadn't just undergone a pretty intense training session.

"I…wait…" Aster sat bolt upright. "I have nothing to do…"

The cadets had part of Saturday evenings off and Sunday was Rest Day. For Aster, every day was a work day, but Tseng gave her Saturday evenings off. Her jaw fell open and stayed there, frozen, for the first time since she got here at a loss. A loss of a goal. Nothing to do, or work towards.

"You're welcome to hang out here this evening if you feel like it. Might even get you a free drink."

Aster smiled slowly, nurturing an idea. "Well, what if I help out tonight? To say thank you?"

Tifa considered this rather speedily. "Okay, but tips are yours and you use them to buy yourself some clothes that aren't military combat clothes, deal?"

"How could I turn that down?" the younger girl exclaimed. "Do you mind if I take a shower first? I'm sick of Shinra-standard military soap; I shouldn't smell like a teenage boy, Tifa! I just shouldn't!"

Her trainer-come-friend laughed. "I actively encourage you to go do so."

When Aster returned to the bar she wore clothes that Tifa generously lent her. Thick leggings and a long t-shirt—that was slightly too large for Aster due to her being relatively flat-chested—all black. Aster's feet were a bit bigger than Tifa's, but eventually, they found some old, comfy sneakers that fit. She approached the bar and tied a stiff apron around her waist, then took the time waiting for Tifa to string her bracelet back together. Five white beads spelt her name, and most of the rest were plain assorted colours.

Tifa appeared, also dressed in a change of clothes, as Aster slipped it over her hand. She nodded towards the fixed bracelet. "Seems important to you."

Her voice startled Aster from her bubble. She rubbed the beads against her skin. Finally, her wrist didn't feel so exposed anymore. "I've just had it since I was small. I've had to remake it several times. Add beads. Get longer string."

She seemed to be rambling as she trailed off. Tifa fastened her own apron. "You look more refreshed than I think I've known you to look since meeting you."

Aster snorted. "You mean less beat up? Thanks to the clothes and makeup you lent me."

Their complexions were dissimilar as far as Aster being as deathly pale as the snowy mountains she came from, but with some combination between a pale concealer and foundation, she matched a colour adequately enough to cover the bruising. It took far more time than she had ever spent on applying makeup before, but she figured she had better not look half dead in front of Tifa's customers. With this in mind, she gave the rest of her features a subtle dusting, too. And the overall effect was, well, a girl who didn't look quite as destroyed as usual. No more and no less.

"The swelling's gone down a lot, too," Tifa said, inspecting the girl's jawline. "So. You ever tended bar before?"

"I've…dabbled," she said, pulling a face. "I've done a lot of odd jobs for a lot of odd people."

Tifa raised her eyebrow with a smile. "Is this one of those times?"

She laughed. Heartily. "Didn't mean that! But, hey, depending on how the evening goes, it could reduce to that."

"Hmm, are you insulting me or my customers?"

"Maybe a little of both," Aster said, with her tongue in her cheek.

The bar was full and it was getting late. The ambience of chatter and clinking glasses, scuffing of barstool feet, boots and laughter was a warming and familiar feeling for Aster. It reminded her of frigid nights in the balmy local back home, where a feast would be held any time she and her band of exterminators brought home a giant prize to share with the villagers and children. The spoils were great, the training beneficial, but nothing was quite as rewarding as watching the steam rise off freshly cooked meat on a skewer in the hand of a child playing in the snow, knowing you provided unity for your townspeople.

It certainly wasn't snowing outside this bar, being a sheer impossibility owing to the city held high over their heads, but this was the closest Aster had felt to home in weeks. She smiled. "I could spend a lot of time here."

A timer went off in the kitchen. "Hey," Tifa said, swarmed by a large order and a few customers leaning over the counter, getting way too into her personal space. She took a moment to push one guy back into his seat. "Do you mind grabbing the fries out of the oven? They're for my friend on the table by the door."

Aster threw a cloth over her shoulder and nodded. "No problem."

She backed into the kitchen and took out the tray, wincing when the heat seeped through the cloth that covered her hands and transferred the fries into a bowl before heading through the crowd, trying not to drop them everywhere as people dancing jostled into her. She reached the table and set the bowl down. "I've got fries from Tifa. Be careful, I burnt my all my fingers," she said with a grin.

"Thanks," said a young man with relatively long, black hair. When he looked up at her and flashed a white smile, her chest tightened. His eyes were so bright, a blue like a tropical ocean with an inviting depth.

Her mouth fell open just slightly and she clamped it shut. Shit. Zack Fair, one of the First Class SOLDIER members overseeing her wave of recruits. The man who escorted her to the infirmary on her first official day of training—she almost hadn't recognised him without his uniform on.

"You're welcome," she choked out, hoping the music would drown out her pathetic whimpering. She wiped her palms across her apron and clutched it at her sides and smiled, thanking every god or goddess she could think the name of that she had worn her helmet throughout their entire first encounter. She didn't need anyone recognising her here, somewhere she finally felt she could relax out of Shinra's reach.

She flinched under the sound of smashing glass. A man a table behind her ripped a bottle of wine by the neck up and into the underside of the table, the sound of splintering glass pattering against the floor audible only for the fact she was listening for it. He lifted the bottle above his head and launched for a fellow, equally rowdy patron.

Aster's eyes widened as she snatched his wrist and dug her thumbnail into his skin. With a yelp, he released his tight grip over the bottleneck enough for her to snatch it from him. Suddenly she saw herself as Tseng, snatching her own wrist when she attacked him with her switchblade. She shook her head vigorously and the daydream faded away.

"Out," she snarled, pointing to the door.

The man, with a bulbous nose and a blotchy face, turned to her, loomed over her. The stench of too much beer and roasted peanuts carried from his bared teeth to her nostrils and earned the scrunching of her nose. Then, she felt warmth across her shoulder blades as someone came up behind her.

Zack's voice said firmly, "You heard her."

The man looked up and over her shoulder and apparently thought better of starting on her, before shoving through the bar doors. Aster watched him storm off and turned to face Zack's bright blue eyes. She could still feel the warmth of his body. Hoping the low light masked the reddening of her cheeks, she took half a step back. "Thanks."

"Hey, it was all you," he said with a shrug. "I was just moral support."

She cocked an eyebrow up at him. "The threatening hired muscle, right?"

"I thought that was your part." A smile grew across his face when she laughed. "My name's Zack."

"Aster," she said and swallowed back the thought that it was weird—weird that he'd already introduced himself to her once before, with his surname, not his fore, and that it was rather like meeting a different person; a version of himself not affiliated with Shinra. "Nice to meet you."

She ducked her head and smiled before retrieving a broom and dustpan to sweep up the broken glass that crunched beneath their feet. Thankfully the wine bottle had been empty. When finished, she leaned against the broom handle turned to find Zack again, leaning against the wall by his table, laughing at something one of his friends had done or said. He must have felt her eyes on him because he met them straight back.

She ground her teeth together until her jaw pulsed as she summoned some boundless courage. Courage like the flame of a matchstick, bright but short-lived. It was all ever she needed. She narrowed her eyes and smiled. "Can I get you a drink? Hired muscle needs paying, right?"

She took his grin as a response and headed back to the bar, dumping the glass into the trash and wiping her shaking hands down on her apron again to steady them. It didn't work.

Tifa thanked her as she passed behind her, then raised a hand in greeting to Zack who had come up to the bar. "Oh hey, Zack."

"Hey, Teef. You good?"

"Great," she said with a charming smile, although Tifa was pretty charming in general. It was in how she held her composed self. "Aster, this is a good friend of mine—"

"—Oh, we already met," he said, and an incredibly mischievous smirk overcame his features. "She's buying me a drink."

Tifa's face was priceless as she looked at Zack accusatorially. Already? The look said, but Aster chose not to meet it. Instead, she reached into one of the fridges and grabbed the same kind of beer she'd seen in his hand at his table, and pretended she wasn't trembling underneath her bravado. Condensation ran over her fingers as she passed the bottle to him, and she wondered if his fingers brushing hers was an accident. She cleared her throat and smiled guiltily at Tifa with half a shrug.

Zack leaned his corded forearms against the cool, polished bar. She did try not to stare at his impressively built muscles, but she could have tried harder. She'd always been a sucker for a decent pair of arms. In less than a question and more of a statement, he said, "You're not from around here."

She rummaged in the pouch of her apron for a couple of gil and dropped it into the cash tray beneath the bar, hoping her cheeks weren't as red as they felt. "I'm not," she said. "How'd you know?"

"Your eyes."

"My eyes?" she asked bemusedly, setting both hands down firmly on the counter. Her pastel shade of blue very literally paled in comparison with his downright luminous SOLDIER eyes. They were highlighted in all the right places by the Mako enhancements that made him what he was.

"Yeah. When people live in Midgar so long, the pollution of Mako in the air, it kinda masks their eyes." He shrugged. "It's not really something normal people would notice."

Normal people? She assumed he meant non-SOLDIER. He continued somewhat hastily, "I don't see that in your eyes. They're perfectly clear. Like icicles!"

"Funny you should say that," she hinted with a smile, turning the beads of her bracelet to occupy her shaking fingers. She mentally scolded herself. Get a grip. "Icicle Inn. And your wonderful self?"

"Me? I'm from Gongaga," he said with a proud grin.

She pressed a finger over her lip suddenly. A smack of realisation and a large portion of guilt was served before her. She was here, enjoying herself. Free, laughing, conversing, while her teammates, as distant as they were, were in bed. Did they think about her? Did they care? If they knew where she was right now, yes, they very much would have cared. Another thing to keep to herself.

And worse came the reminder that the evening could not last forever, time could not freeze to this moment, and no sooner than her head hit the pillow that evening the suffocating life of a cadet would consume her again.

"Zack!"

He twisted his body to scan through the surprisingly dense crowd of people to find a young man about his age, early twenties, with messy brown hair.

"Alright," he called back, standing up. He leaned into the counter to speak into her ear over the growing music and noise of the group that called him. "Gotta go—you here often?"

Her breath caught in her throat but she covered for herself by pulling back with a wide grin. "Every Saturday!"

"Great." He smiled slowly. "I'll see you Saturday."

She held that smile for as long as it took him to turn and leave the building, at which exact moment she collapsed into the mother-of-all-facepalms against the counter.

"You work here every Saturday?" Tifa said, trying not to laugh, apparently having been watching likely most of their encounter. And she was getting way too much enjoyment out of this.

Aster's words came muffled through her hands. "I don't know why I said that."

"Well, I could use the extra help!"

She straightened her back and smiled. "And I could use the extra training."

Tifa grinned. "I'll make you wish you never said it."