A/N: Good morning, afternoon, or evening all! Another Wednesday, another update! We have a brief appearance from one of our beloveds today, although we won't see much of him until he takes up a larger role later in the story. Looking forward to that. I'll probably be changing the summary in the next few weeks to better reflect where the story is going, but I didn't do it initially because I didn't want to spoil the events of the first couple of chapters so soon. Anyway, enough of me rambling, enjoy the chapter!

10th Apr '19

Chapter 7: Taken by the Sky

"The bags under your eyes have bags under their eyes."

"Thanks, Rex. Appreciate it."

The hazel-eyed boy shrugged and scratched his back with a training rifle. The fake guns were perfect replicas of those that they would be supplied with upon pass out into the infantry, they even weighed the same with a bulk of roughly ten pounds, but they fired lasers, not bullets. The cadets were given points according to their accuracy, and said points would be converted into scores that would be added to their existing tally on the scoreboard that the DIs liked to lord around to 'promote friendly rivalry'. Right.

Rex didn't even notice the drill sergeant screaming at him from the other end of the shooting range for his handling, shouting, "Well done, IDIOT, you just gave yourself a second asshole!"

He was deducted twenty-five points. That was probably a lot.

"I just thought I'd let you know in case you were unaware," he said with a grin, taking aim at his target thirty feet ahead of him.

"Again, thank you," she scoffed, returning her focus to her own target. The indoor range was cramped and almost wholly metal or grey plastic; it wasn't as nice as the polished wooden floorboards and mirrors of the Hand-to-Hand combat rooms or the gyms, but it was certainly fit for purpose. "You're not looking so great yourself."

"That is objectively incorrect."

Laughter escaped her lips as she fired at her target and it lit up with bright red dots where the laser met. Her surname on the electronic session leaderboard ticked up two places, bumping Rex beneath her. Here, she was fourth. Marksmanship was her greatest strength, owing largely to her experience with firearms in Icicle Inn.

"Better watch out, Rex," she said, turning her rifle over in her hands several times then nodding towards the board when he seemed confused. "You're slipping."

He spun around and regarded the scores with a scrunched nose. Sixth. "I swear I had like, twenty more points than that." He shrugged. Apparently, he got over it quickly. "Meh. Who cares?"

"Other than Shinra?" Aster asked, pressing the rifle back into her shoulder and hiding her smirk behind it, "Rohrbach and Newberry."

Rex snickered and lit the centre of his target. "Yeah, you're not wrong."

The overall scoreboard was only revealed once a week, a complete tally compiled from each category. It wasn't especially important to the cadets—not those who weren't particularly insecure about their ability, anyway—but it was a useful tool for the staff. After all, at the end of basic training and school of infantry, they'd need some kind of guide as to the physical capabilities of the cadets when deciding who would make it into SOLDIER, if anyone.

Despite it only being a guide, and a loose one at that, those with even a thread of a competitive nature saw it as a challenge. The top five, of which Surrexit was a part but Aster not, leapfrogged frequently. Each of them seemed equally eager to attain the elusive top spot. All except Rohrbach who held it most often without seeming to try. A runaway leader.

"Cadets!" The drill instructor called, "Ain't no way we're letting you idiots touch real rifles 'til you pass all your handling tests."

He flipped the catches on a steel case and pulled a gun out of foam padding. It was identical to their dummies yet obvious that it wasn't. He set it firmly into Rohrbach's hands. "So, we'll demonstrate with the highest scorer for competency only."

Aster remembered what Tifa said about the boy's upbringing. Maybe he'd been firing guns and practicing martial arts since the womb. Probably. He was a giant of a kid yet young in features, maybe Aster's age or even slightly younger. His face was long and straight, his hair pale and buzzed short, just like they kept it in the Junon military branches.

He was guided through the loading and firing process while the DI narrated the method to the rest of the group. Yes, he knew his way around it too easily. He'd done this before.

His aim and control were decent, and the instructor seemed happy with the result. Generally speaking, the rest of the high scorers looked somewhat bent out of shape, and the others crowded around and watched because they were made to, not because they wanted to. Being taught to load and fire a standard rifle as she had done countless times before quickly glazed Aster's eyes over with boredom. She considered the implications of publicly placing one recruit above the others. Surely it brewed resentment—that was certainly her experience so far—but in theory, she supposed it would increase competition and therefore productivity. In theory.

Her mind next wandered to how the gunshots sounded vaguely like tiny fireworks, then snapped back to attention at the bark of dismissal.

Mess hall food, though bland and dry, tasted like fine wine and foie gras to hungry cadets. Sleep deprivation was really punching its toll out of Aster by now, as if it hadn't already, and she found herself casually wishing Tseng had locked her in the cell for a few days after all. The cafeteria table suddenly looked like a great pillow, so she pressed her fingers to her burning eyes to resist the urge.

"Where were you last night? They put the princess up in a hotel 'cause she was feelin' unwell after the Unhinger?" said Huntington, number four in the overall rankings, leaning across Rex's chest and lap to jab at the girl next to him.

Rex rolled his eyes and cut in before Aster even got a chance. "Whatever, she's got a pair of tits and still got more balls than you. Will you piss off?" he said, shoving the boy off him and back into his seat. "Tryna murder a cheeseburger here and you're ballsing up my aura."

The boy snorted and shoved Rex back in the shoulder. "You're such a goon."

"Pretty sure you meant god, but alright."

Aster straightened her back, affronted, yet spoke quietly so no one else would hear. "You think I can't handle myself?"

"Nah," he said, grabbing his burger and speaking to it rather than her. "I act in defence of my personal space."

She snorted, mildly amused but not entirely convinced. She chewed her cheek. "I…I wasn't in a hotel, you know."

"Hell, we all know that," said a kid named Matt with apparently good hearing opposite her at the table. "But every squad needs a punching bag."

She looked up with a sour pucker to her lips, unsure what to make of him. "The pleasure is all mine."

He smirked at her gall and she returned the sentiment, that is until she noted the shine to his uncommonly pale grey eyes that reminded her too much of the younger brother and sister she had left behind. Her smile fell and she chucked her desert pot onto Rex's tray.

"Don't know about you but I'm ready for bed," she said, untangling her legs from the stool.

Rex frowned. "What, they gave you the night off?"

The cadets would be free after DI time, but it was exceedingly rare for Aster to accompany them.

"I wish," she moaned. "I've got two hours of Advanced Driving and two after that of PT. If I'm not back in the barracks by twenty-three hundred hours, assume the worst."

He snatched her wrist as she turned away to grab her gaze again, uncharacteristically serious. "Aster, they'll wipe you out."

She shrugged loosely. She was sleep deprived, yes. The past thirty-six hours hadn't been for the faint of heart and she was running on her fourth or fifth wind and force of will alone. Her eyes were heavy and her concentration dwindled, but she carried on because if she didn't, she'd be beaten until she would. Credit where it was due, the girl was tenacious. Maybe to a fault. A fault that Tseng exploited.

She pulled her wrist from his waning grip and grabbed her mostly untouched dinner tray to shake away the intensity of his stare. Then, she left him, depositing the plate to the kitchen on her way out the door, with the uneasy feeling of Rex's eyes between her shoulder blades.

"All in all…it's been a hell of a week."

Aster threw herself into one of the green felt-topped barstools and leaned her head back against the counter in Tifa's Seventh Heaven. As sweat rolled from her forehead into her hair, she reached for the closest damp towel and threw it over her face. She was balanced at an awkward angle somewhat…precariously.

She heard a small thump beside her. Tifa had vaulted herself to sit on the bar top next to her exhausted friend. She peeled back the corner of the cloth to reveal one of Aster's wide blue eyes staring back at her. Tifa paused for effect. "This is a dishcloth."

"Ew!" She tore the rag from her face and launched it behind her over the bar. It slapped into a shelf with a wet thunk. "Why do you keep dishcloths on the bar!"

"Oh, I dunno…cleaning?" Tifa said with a wry smile, handing Aster a clean wet towel to cool her face with instead.

As Aster pressed the cloth over her eyes, cold water trickled across her cheeks and into her ears, but she didn't care. Tifa had intensified their training sessions since recognising some potential in the past few weeks. She had assumed responsibility in some part for ensuring her new friend was ready for whatever Tseng might throw at her next.

Tifa pulled her knees up and rested her feet against one of the barstools. "You must be exhausted. You really don't have to help out in the bar, you know."

"No, honestly, I'd rather be here. I'd rather not rest," Aster said, voice muffled by the cloth. "If I rest, if I slow down, I might not be able to start going again."

Aster over-chewed her words for a moment, having not realised the truth until it came out of her own mouth, then finally pulled the towel from her face. "Besides, where would I go?"

"Back to your barracks?" Tifa suggested, picking at her cuticle.

"Psshhh." Aster rolled her back up to sit in the stool properly. "And do what? With who?"

The older girl shrugged and tucked her hair behind her ear, revealing a pretty pearl drop earring that wobbled at her touch. "You're friends with Surrexit, aren't you?"

"Yeah. He's the closest—only—friend I have in there," she said, then stared out towards the expanse of the slums through the window. "But he's got his own buddies and ninety percent of them can't stand the sight of me. I don't wanna intrude."

Tifa furrowed her brow. "He does?"

Aster broke her gaze with the window to look at Tifa, who was now holding her chin in her hand. "What?"

"Hmm, it's nothing. Just that I had penned Surrexit as a bit of an outsider, but group dynamics do morph as time goes on, I suppose."

Within an hour, both girls prepared themselves for the evening ahead. Aster pushed back into the bar by the creaky saloon doors and noticed a small watch with a slim, black band laid atop of the counter that hadn't been there before.

Frowning, she approached it, looking into the plain white face and catching the hint of her reflection when it hit the right light.

"Oh, that's for you," Tifa said, appearing from the kitchen and forcing Aster out of her skin in fright. She stifled a laugh and nudged the dainty timepiece towards her. "You mentioned Tseng 'stealing time' from you. Thought you could borrow a watch to keep better track."

Aster's smile grew into a beam as she fastened the clasp around her wrist immediately, alongside the bracelet that bore her name. Tifa's kindness really had been pivotal for Aster's survival in Midgar. "Thank you so much."

Tifa shrugged modestly. "I don't really wear watches anyway. They get in the way of the style of gloves I like to wear. But hey, it is technically contraband, so don't get caught wearing it in training," she said, half in her instructor tone but tinged by her smile.

Aster grinned. "Got it, ma'am."

Tifa laughed as she grabbed the beer tap and filled a pint glass for a regular customer that stumbled through the doors. "Can you do me a favour? Let me know if you catch a shock of blonde hair, okay? You'll know it when you see it. There's nothing else quite like it."

"No problem," she said, leaning into the counter and drumming her fingernails on the wood. "I got it. I am in this business. Observation, hunting for people. Intelligence!"

Tifa couldn't help but snort with laughter, promptly covering her nose and mouth behind a hand. "You've been 'in this business' for just over two weeks."

"Four weeks, I'll have you know," Aster said, grinning, "if you count my two weeks in the cell, or whatever it was and add a few extra days for charity."

The nozzle slipped from Tifa's fingers. "Wait, what?"

Her severity made Aster start. Unfortunate timing, as she ended up over-filling a glass for the customer before her. She looked away from Tifa sheepishly to wipe the spill of lager clean.

"Cell? You were imprisoned?" Tifa asked once their customers wandered over to their tables. She mounted the tap back upon its holder. "I thought you were just with the Turks for direct training…!"

"I mean, I was. They just have interesting…methodology," she murmured, with less grit than intended. "In on the fifteenth, out on the twenty-sixth."

Tifa shook her head as if she couldn't compute Aster's words into understandable sentences. "Basic training began on the eleventh. You lost two weeks for no reason?"

"There was a reason!" Aster snapped, desperate to defend the logic, little though there may be. The blind belief that it had been a worthy exercise was all that had prevented her from succumbing to despair. More painful than the experience itself was only the thought of it having been futile. She wouldn't be able to stop the tears. Yet despite this, words of defence wouldn't come. Maybe they weren't really there to start with.

Tifa's wine-red eyes drifted to her watch surrounding her friend's wrist. Suddenly Aster's concept of stolen time made more sense. "Don't let them brainwash you," she said with a motherly edge and stared off at the door.

Aster raked her fingers through her hair and blew a stray away petulantly when it fell into her face. She didn't want to think about Shinra; it felt too good to let her hair down, figuratively and literally. These days it was always pinned tightly to her scalp and pressed beneath a helmet. It was nice for it to fall loosely down her back. It was for this reason that she hadn't braided it today like she so often used to, because the feeling of free-flowing hair had become luxurious and, in a way, sacred. It was clean and soft and pale which shaved years off her face that had been aged by exhaustion—it worked well to counteract the circles under her eyes that no amount of make-up could cover.

And while Aster relaxed into her barmaid role, chatting with patrons and laughing, Tifa appeared on edge. Every few minutes or so she'd throw glances to the door, over the shoulders of her customers or up from a glass she was pouring. When Aster grabbed a bottled beer for a guy with spiky red hair and a black button down shirt—that wasn't buttoned up at all—and noticed he was outright staring at Tifa and she didn't even realise, Aster decided that whoever Tifa was looking for must be really important to have her so sidetracked. The girl looked positively bugged out.

The pace of Seventh Heaven was kind of perfect. There were enough customers to fill all the tables and the room with cheers and laughter and singing—and a good deal of drunken slurring—but not so many that there was no room to move. Work doesn't feel like work when it's enjoyable.

While keeping an eye out for a shock of blonde hair as instructed, Aster found herself watching out for a catch of dark hair, too, consciously or not. And when it appeared, she felt a quickening in her chest and an overwhelming urge to occupy her hands. She wiped them across her apron. It didn't help.

"Staying out of trouble?" Zack said with a smirk, leaning against the counter.

"Goddess, no." Aster snorted then pressed her fingers to her mouth to stop the answer that had already been delivered. She bit the tip of her finger when he laughed. "I mean…you know…of course. I do my very best to avoid trouble at all costs."

"Aw, really? I preferred the first answer."

Tifa scoffed as she popped the cap off a cold bottle of beer with a ring she wore during opening hours specifically for the task. She placed the bottle in front of Zack with a dull thud and quirked up her brow. "The first answer was closer to the truth, anyway."

Aster shrugged exaggeratedly and feigned innocence. "I have no idea what she's talking about."

Tifa's smiley response quickly faded into nervousness when her eyes swept over the crowd. Tifa's nerves alone were enough to put Aster on edge, and a quick scan of the room of bobbing heads showed her a…yellow bird? Aster couldn't see properly, but also kind of preferred to believe a baby chocobo was fluttering through the room as opposed to the truth.

Tifa disturbed her from her thoughts with a touch to her shoulder. "I'll be right back," she said, and opened the bar divide, weaving through the tables.

Aster pulled one of the taps mounted against the counter slowly, watching the amber liquid run down the side of the glass she held at an angle to control the foam.

"So, what brought you to Midgar?" said Zack, taking the recently vacated bar stool and a pull from his bottle.

Her throat dried out. Two reasons: the first being that she had too closely watched his lower lip curl around the bottle and wondered how that might feel—that brought a flush of pink to her cheeks. The second being that, actually, she didn't want to tell him. She didn't want to tell him, but she didn't want to lie to him either, and these were difficult to reconcile with one another.

He paused from his swig, probably wondering what he'd just said that could have made her looked so freaked out and wide-eyed all of a sudden.

His apprehension knocked her out of her daze. "Sorry—I, uh, I used to run figure skating classes for under-sixteens," she blurted out.

She was thankful, then, that a woman in her late twenties with red lipstick that withered away from the edges of her lips flagged her down for an order of a glass of red wine. Thankful for the extra moments to gather herself and solidify her resolve to remain as close to the truth as was entirely possible, while retaining her position as an individual independent from Shinra. It was starting to feel like a dirty little secret. And it was getting hard to say whether she honestly just wanted to separate work from play, or if it was rather something she was ashamed of. Ashamed of her circumstances, of herself.

Thankful, even though the woman was making some eyebrow-raising, albeit drunken, comments about Zack to her friend. He was aware, Aster could tell, though his relaxed posture didn't change. If anything he looked amused. Probably used to the attention.

Aster placed the glass on the counter just slightly too hard, the bang slightly too loud, to interrupt the woman's somewhat predatory grin. Aster scrunched her nose up when the woman winked at Zack as she left.

When Zack looked at Aster and started to smirk, she quickly rubbed her nose with the back of her wrist as though she merely had an itch or was about to sneeze. He didn't mention it.

"Figure skating, huh?"

"Yeah." Her face, her entire demeanour, brightened. Words flowed more naturally again, as they should from an eighteen-year-old girl. Not a soldier. "It was a cute little part-time job that ran perfectly with my training. Skating training, I mean. I do, uh," did, she mentally corrected, "competitions and stuff. Nothing international or anything like that, though."

"Oh, so that's why you're in Midgar?" he asked, cocking his head to the side. "You wanna make it big in skating?"

"Well," she said, and couldn't cage her small, knowing grin. "I'm certainly trying to make it big. Maybe not in skating…!"

As a soft chuckle escaped her lips, it occurred to her that she wasn't necessarily supposed to know what he did for a living, either. He didn't know, after all, that he had passed orders over her, that she was obligated to act at his any given request. He also didn't know he'd rubbed her back and congratulated her as she threw up on a slab of rock under the moon after completing the Unhinger mere days ago—although that bit was likely for the best.

"What about yourself?" she asked casually.

He ran a hand through his hair, raven spikes bobbing in its wake, revealing the glint of a silver earring that caught an orange glow from somewhere in the bar. The label on his beer bottle had become very interesting. He picked at it with his thumb.

"I work for Shinra. I'm with SOLDIER," he said with an unreadable expression though he spoke tentatively like the words were weighted and volatile. Aster supposed that some words really were dangerous in the slums, where the division between Shinra-haters and Shinra-lovers appeared very extreme and very apparent.

She smiled warmly, to let him know in which court she fell. "Knew there was something about those eyes, you know."

"SOLDIER trademark," he said, grinning at her, all prior traces of uncertainty washed away, with overwhelming self-confidence in its stead.

She sighed dreamily, trying not to laugh, dramatically dropping her chin into her hands and elbows into the counter. "The Mako that makes a man a god."

He called her bluff and leaned towards her with an endearingly cheeky smile. "Wanna take a closer look?"

Her chest tightened, one of these days her mouth was gonna get her into some serious predicament, but there was no harm in flirting was there? With her commander…? No?

"Wouldn't I love to," she said, leaning in teasingly only to wander further down the bar just as their faces drew nearer, "but I have a customer to serve."

He chuckled, shaking his head and leaning back in his seat in defeat, taking a long pull from his beer. Eyes following her. "If only I could get you own your own, right?" he called.

"If only," she remarked, rolling her eyes with a sly grin. She could pretend to be smooth on the surface all she liked to anyone who believed, but underneath her heart was pounding and her palms were sticky against the beer tap.

When had all the tables emptied? Where did everyone go?

Aster's peripheral finally widened enough to see past Zack's stunning Mako-infused eyes and beyond into the darkening room. The bar was deserted, and clean, suggesting Tifa had already swept through and moved the empty glasses to the dishwasher. A while must have passed since then, though, since Tifa looked comfortably sat, chatting to a blonde in one of the booths in the corner of the room, near a killer-looking, retro pinball machine that Aster made a quick mental note to try out soon.

"Tifa, there's been a—a mass exodus…!"

The barmaid started to laugh at Aster's completely bewildered expression and slid out of her seat. "We closed about half an hour ago. How did you not notice?"

Aster blinked twice, glanced at Zack, then back to Tifa. She opened her mouth to defend herself—blame sleep deprivation or something—but then she spotted the shock of pokey blonde hair Tifa had asked her to look out for, oh, maybe two, three, four hours ago?

"Um. I think that's the guy you were looking for," Aster stage whispered, but had to curl her lips around the straw in her orange juice so as to not start laughing.

Tifa frowned and placed her hands on her hips, but the smiles on her friends' faces must have weakened her. "Aster, Zack, this is Cloud…a good friend of mine."

Zack twisted awkwardly in his stool to have a look. "Oh, hey Cloud. You still here?"

"No, I left three hours ago," the aforementioned blonde called across the bar, blue eyes bright across the room. Mako-infused. SOLDIER trademark.

"Dork," Zack yelled. "Why you gotta be mean?"

Tifa shook her head incredulously. "You know each other?"

"Cloud and I go way back, Teef," Zack drawled with a yawn, stretching out a limb in every direction. When this compromised his balance on the barstool, swinging back onto two legs and almost falling, Aster almost choked on her drink lurching to grab him. She did grab his forearm, but only after he'd already stabilised himself. They shared a second-too-long glance before laughing.

Completely unaware, Cloud spoke equally as nonchalantly as Zack had, "Yeah, like…six years back? Somethin' like that."

"B-but," Tifa's voice dropped to little over a whisper, "I looked for you. I read all the newspapers, I…"

Cloud's brows knitted together until a small crease formed between them. "Tifa?"

If it weren't for the stripped and gutted state of the bar, Aster would not have heard this exchange. Respecting this, she pretended she hadn't after all. Zack appeared much of the same mind. He looked at Aster and nudged his head towards the door, the unusual quill-like spikes of his hair sway faintly. She nodded and smiled, but it fell as soon as he turned his back to her. The evening was coming to an end. The pause button to her discomfort—to put it lightly—was about to become unpressed.

The pitch-dark slums were eerily familiar after the events of a few nights before. Stepping from the saloon doors, she had expected to meet the cold breeze of the night but instead met just a stiff, stagnant air. It wasn't hot but it wasn't cold, either. Stuffy, even in winter. No stars to be seen, let alone wish upon.

"Can I walk you home?" Zack asked, shoving his hands into his pockets. He walked down the steps outside the bar and turned to her at the bottom. Aster at a couple of steps up made them stand roughly the same height.

She found a quick, relatively harmless…lie. "Thanks, but I'll be staying with Tifa for a while."

Aster thought she caught the corner of his smile twitch just faintly, but brushed the thought away as nonsense. Cloud passed her on his way down the stairs and jumped into the driver's side of the Shinra car they appeared to have arrived together in—probably with others. Cloud must have been the night's designated driver.

Zack nodded at her with a small smile and left for the car. He set his hand on the door handle, hesitated for a moment, then looked back at her. "So…I'll see you again?"

"I'll be here," she said all too eagerly.

He grinned. "Goodnight."