A/N: You guys, my life is a joke right now. I've been studying like eight hours a day for the past three or four weeks and I'm d.y.i.n.g (I'm not very studious). I do love what I study but…I just wanna write. I came up with a super nice little story element that I've written out that takes place in, oh…about twenty-five chapter's time? So that's all good, living for that.

This chapter starts to see a bit of a turn towards Aster's frazzled mental state, who she is personally versus who she is in uniform which is something of a recurring theme throughout the story as a whole. And the plot begins to thicken again from probably here on out, I'd say. Exciting stuff!

Can I just say a massive thanks to anyone reading this, by the way? If you have any questions or anything you wanna say, please do! Anyways, I hope that wherever you are you're having a fantastic day!

17th Apr '19

Chapter 8: The Shift

They did meet again, only it was much sooner than he knew.

First, they met a few days later, when Zack was overseeing the development of cadet training from Stage One and signed off a few documents and barked a few short commands. Aster's heart fully stopped. It was like he had a switch. The laid-back, laughing, and overtly flirtatious gent from the bar was entirely different from the uniformed, experienced young man that stood with his arms folded and feet shoulder width apart while discussing—presumably—the competencies of the squad and the curriculum they were to face with his colleagues.

The charming smile was ever-present, but something was definitely different. But it wasn't like Aster was in any position to pass judgement in that respect. She too was different in uniform. And that distinction was getting worse.

Then, they met once more at mess late in the week, although it wasn't exactly her to whom he came to speak.

"Cadets," he said, not addressing them as a group, but distinctly as a duo.

Aster and Rex shared a surreptitious glance despite her helmet in the way of genuine eye contact—they were getting good at reading each other's expressions by their mouths and nostrils as opposed to the eyes—and saluted uniformly, the former choking on her tongue and so choosing not to speak.

"It's…Surrexit, isn't it," Zack said quietly, dropping to a crouch at the end of the table. He was looking up at them now, and Aster held her hands folded in front of her lips, frightened he might recognise her features up close. But he wasn't even looking at her.

When Rex nodded, Zack's face contorted in a way Aster couldn't understand.

"I don't even know how to say it," said Zack.

Rex cut him off with a light wave and pulled his helmet over his ears. "There's nothing to say. Don't worry about it."

Zack reset his jaw and watched Rex even after he turned his head. Zack's eye twitched slightly before he rose again and gripped Rex firmly on the shoulder. "Alright…" he said, clearly uneasy. "Good to see you again."

Aster watched Zack leave the cafeteria and blew out her held breath. She took off her helmet and set it beside her food tray. "You know each other?"

Rex frowned, tilting his head from side to side but refusing eye contact, deliberating. "Not really. Met him once or twice outside of being here. I guess we have mutual friends."

Aster raised an eyebrow. "Casually having mutual friends with Zack Fair?"

"You jealous?" he said coolly, quirking his eyebrow up identically in response.

"No—what?" she spluttered, face reddening much quicker and more violently than she could have anticipated or controlled, panicking briefly that he knew more than he let on. Realising she was just feeding his mischief, she rolled her eyes. "Get out of here."

"I'd be jealous." He sighed mockingly, resting his chin against his hands. "I'm just a small town boy, and Zack's a backwater god."

Aster scowled at him. "Cute."

He started to laugh. "Sometimes I swear you're a step away from drooling."

Could her face turn any redder? Turns out it could. And did. "It's not that!" she wailed. "Look, I…I know him outside of a, uh, Shinra capacity." She lowered her voice. "Basically, I've got this other job in the slums—"

"A second job?" His jaw almost hit the table. "What are you, some kind of masochist?!"

"SHHH!" she hissed, lunging across the table to clap a hand over his mouth. The hem of her shirt fell into her tray and soaked in the gravy. Great. They blinked once at each other, then she allowed herself to laugh, albeit weakly, to diffuse the attention being drawn to them. Not like any of the cadets gave a damn what she was doing anyway.

"Point is," she said, slipping back into her seat, "I…help out at a bar sometimes—just so I can get out, you know? That where I met him. And I'd really rather he never find out that piece of information."

"You'll get in trouble," he stated matter-of-factly, wiping his mouth with a napkin. He was such a messy eater.

She pressed her cheek against her helmet and groaned. "More trouble."

"It worth it?"

"Yeah," she said, without missing a beat, lifting her head and revealing a red mark impressed on her face from the helmet. "It's kind of like retrieving part of my old life, you know?"

He looked at her quizzically, and Aster found something in his almond-shaped, hazel eyes that seemed to lean closer to green than brown in the harsh cafeteria lighting that lowered her inhibitions. Trust. She told him she was 'collected' from Icicle Inn, that she wasn't here of her own accord, that she was here because her very life and the lives of those she loved were threatened over it. He hung on her every word, listened, even as the other cadets began to fade from the room and head back to the barracks.

A loaded silence hung in the air, worsened by the empty chairs and tables around them. Rex nodded. "I understand. You were 'recruited'. Like plunder."

"No." Her back stiffened, insulted by the phrase. "No, I wanted to be here. This was always a dream of—"

"So you'd be sat here right now, even if the Turks hadn't kidnapped you?"

"I never said I was kidnapped!" she hissed.

He shrugged. "I read between the lines."

She slapped her hands down against the table in defeat. "Alright, fine. I was trying to escape with some kind of dignity intact, but doesn't seem like you'll allow that."

He started to laugh and shook his head. "Self-respect or no, I respect ya. Takes guts to be standing here when it's not where you wanna be."

"But Rex," she said, growing exasperated. Her voice came out whispering, pleading. "Don't misunderstand. I do want to be here." She looked at her hands, the brown, soft leather gloves that covered them, at her helmet by her side, the eye-like lights staring at her, and sighed. "I was just taken unprepared. This wasn't how I expected things to happen."

"'Taken.'"

She pinched her lips together and narrowed her eyes at him. "Do you even have a point, Rex, or are you actively trying to make me feel like shit?"

He shook his head quickly with widened hazel eyes. "They took you from your home, but you're still here by choice." He smiled. Beamed. "You're stronger than they are."

"Thanks," she mumbled into her chest, staring at her food that had long gone cold. 'By choice' he said. Could she really say she was here by choice even though she was under duress? "Keep it to yourself, okay?"

"As if you need the squad to hate you even more than they already do."

Aster clutched her chest dramatically. "Ugh, you build me up to wound me deep."

"I'm not gonna lie to you," he said, snorting.

"Alright," she said, stretching in her seat and stifling a yawn. "That's my entire recent history. What brings you to Midgar, Wise and Mighty One?"

Rex cocked a one-sided, lazy grin and watched his fork as he twirled it in his fingers. He looked like he was nursing a remnant of some old, fond memory. "The usual stuff, you know? Small lonely kid in a small lonely town with a big dream of making it into SOLDIER."

"Relatable," she said with a smile. "You don't have any siblings, then?"

"Nah," he said, raking his fingers through sandy blonde hair. "All the more reason to get out of town."

Stage Two of combat training meant increased working hours but a little more freedom for the standard cadets. This translated to being able to go from the mess hall to the barracks unaccompanied, and that was virtually it. Timings were still incredibly strict, so it was merely an illusion of freedom. Aster saw through it, as an outsider, but it must've felt like a real luxury to the others.

Due to that small change, the world expanded. Their paths crossed with newbie grunts from other squads more frequently; the bubble of a vacuum in which they had existed popped. With this came a boosted sense of competition between squads and individuals alike, and the lack of a constant babysitter swelled the egos of others.

Aster had hoped to be partnered with Rex for Hand-to-Hand that afternoon but instead was paired with the youngest recruit of the lot, a boy named Dylan with vibrantly green eyes who was barely fifteen. He was the odd to her even on the leaderboard, and they were paired on that very basis.

The moves were scripted and…easy. Bordering on too easy. As if Tifa could read minds she punished her for the thought. She introduced a difficulty curve so steep that only the very best were able to stand a hope in hell of keeping up to the task.

Rex called Aster a masochist, but there was Tifa stood at the front of a room full of aching, dying recruits with a damning grin on her face. Behind her, a familiar-looking man in a SOLDIER First Class uniform leant against a wall with a clipboard. He was tall and broad with a severe face even when he smiled, and dark, slicked-back hair. His name was Angeal Hewley, and he spoke amiably with Tifa between her instructions.

Aster groaned and rested her hands on her knees in an attempt to snatch a few seconds break, occasionally glancing at her teacher to make sure she wouldn't notice her slacking. She lifted her helmet to wipe her forehead free of sweat and took the time to sweep the room. Rohrbach, the giant, was sparring with Newberry, suggesting Rex had fallen to third or fourth on the board since he was fighting that Huntington kid—hang on, why was she getting caught up in the scoring again? She rolled her eyes and tried to forget about it, returning to her own partner.

"Cadets!" Tifa yelled, then, with everyone's attention on her, she tucked her hair behind her ear sweetly. "Nice work today! Once these tricky manoeuvres are committed to muscle memor—"

The door smashed open into the wall. Half of the cadet-force jumped out of their skin, and Tifa snapped her head towards it, her long hair swinging over her shoulder.

Tseng strode in, flanked by a redhead in an identical suit, but it wasn't Cissnei. It was rather a young man whose wild hair was pushed out of his eyes by a pair of aviation goggles above his forehead. He was cock-sure and arrogant, one hand in his pocket and the other one tapping his stun-baton against his shoulder casually, like he was ready to take a swing at any one of them at any time.

Tifa gritted her teeth judging by the twitch of her jaw. She regarded them gruffly. "Tseng. Reno."

The latter didn't seem to notice her stiff tone. "Mornin'," he drawled.

The room was still and tense until Tifa put her hands on her hips. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Can I help you?"

"Not at all," said Tseng. "I merely need a moment with the recruits before they are dismissed for PT. You are free to leave."

If it was a suggestion or an order, Tifa ignored it, stood rooted to the spot with ruby eyes flashing in anger. Tseng bored her an inky black stare as he passed.

The cadets stood to attention when he stood before them. "Doe," he said. "I gave you chance to reconsider. Which man here doesn't deserve his place? Which man is not up to the task? Incapable, weak?"

An icicle ran through Aster's chest and its chill spread through her bones. Suddenly her tongue was twice the size. She squeezed her eyes shut. Not again.

Tifa strode towards him. "Tseng, I must object—"

"Then do so," he said coldly, verging on snapping. He turned an unblinking eye. "Go write a strongly worded letter to Heidegger. Book a meeting."

Tifa's nostrils flared, and lips pinched together. Her cheeks were a few shades redder in her powerlessness, her frustration.

"Doe," he said again, and her eyes snapped back open.

Bile fought to rise to her throat, but she swallowed down the feeling and stood in front of spineless, quaking Sparrow once more. This time, she had the decency to look him in the eye, only he didn't meet her gaze.

He stared at his feet, played with his fingers. Beneath his helmet, she could only see the top of his nose and flushed young cheeks. His weaknesses made her uncomfortable. Aster's heart pounded under the strain of so many glares, yet what grew inside her was anger.

She blew a held breath through her nose and shook out her fists. "Sparrow."

"Reason," Tseng said.

Aster widened her peripheral and connected with a pair of blue eyes unknown to her, then brown, grey and green, and although all different, they all carried the same grave, deep darkness of varying degrees of distaste. She folded her arms and looked back at Sparrow.

"He's bottom of the leaderboard, sir, still. Lowest scoring cadet within the squad," she said. "I'm sorry. It's the objective truth, not personal."

"Do not apologise," Tseng said. "I completely agree."

Aster whirled around and snapped, "I wasn't apologising to you."

"Get back to your position," he said, ignoring her. She glanced back to Sparrow, trying to catch his gaze but his eyes were firmly fixed to the ground, unrelenting. She wondered if he was crying. The idea made her skin crawl in pity for a moment, before a thought suddenly dawned within her that actually, maybe his tears were of anger or hatred. That she would understand.

Tseng nodded to Reno who wandered through the cadets with a thoughtful pout. He pressed the tip of the stun rod into the sternum of a random cadet. Good job it was off.

"Your turn, yo."

It was Barnhill, Newberry's right-hand man. For a moment he looked flummoxed, but when Reno lifted the baton, his chest grew with the inflation of his sense of self-importance. Must be enjoying the attention since he lived so deeply wedged in the shadow of Newberry's asshole—or maybe Aster was just bitter and contemptuous because she knew what was coming next.

"The princess," he said, so proud of himself, so full of it. Aster's eyes nearly rolled back into her head.

"Grounds?" said Tseng.

Then Barnhill's voice returned from the haughty, smug voice he'd used before to something almost genuine. And that hit hard. "Total failure to create bonds with the squad, sir."

Her gaze pulled to her feet before she could stop it. She quickly corrected herself and looked directly at Barnhill, but the damage was done. He seemed content in his decision with a pompous grin, and she couldn't fault him for it. It was perfectly valid. And he probably gave a better reason than her own.

"Shame," Tseng said, silencing the murmurs growing from the mass of bodies. "She's got more potential that all the rest of you fools. A prospective Turk, not a bloodthirsty, thick-skulled grunt. She's a thinking soldier. Better. Smarter. Destined for greater things."

Aster's blood grew hot, her cheeks red, as she glared at him. He stared back, the hint of a smirk on his lips, daring her to break formation and open her mouth so he could swipe it shut again.

The tension pulled and stretched Aster to capacity. She would always be first to snap.

She lurched forward. "What are you trying to d—?!"

Reno cracked his baton into her neck at Tseng's command. Aster choked on her voice, doubling over and clutching her throat, coughing and spluttering to alleviate the dizzying pain. When the black spots faded from her vision, she was on her knees, and Reno was pulling up by the armpit.

"Get up," Tseng ordered. "And the rest of you? You're late for PT. Dismissed."

The cadets filed out in heavy silence, each ready to burst under pressure, all for different reasons. With one last glare from the doorway reserved for Tseng, Aster left the room, with a tug of encouragement to the hand from Rex.

When each cadet was gone, voices long since trailed down the hallway, Angeal peeled his back from the wall and unfurled his arms. He approached his colleagues. "Is this wise?" he said.

"And what would you know about training for the Turks, Angeal?"

"Nothing," the SOLDIER member said with a deep voice that resonated from his chest. "But I know enough about the mentality of a pack of new soldiers." He narrowed his eyes, maybe not accusatorially, but definitely questioningly. "You are deliberately turning others onto your recruit. You are isolating her."

"It is for the best," said Tseng. He shook his head and his short ponytail swayed behind him. "She is not for the infantry. She is not for SOLDIER. The moment she comes to rely on anybody or anything but herself and her own arsenal of mental defences and strength is the moment we lose the first decent Selective we've had in years."

"Selective, not Candidate," Angeal murmured, with a hint of remorse. "You think this is finally the one, do you?"

Tseng nodded. "I will make it so."

"What are you talking about?" Tifa blurted out, eyes wide with concern. "What does that mean? What have you got planned for her?"

Tseng turned his back and headed outward with Reno. "It's classified."

Aster didn't go to mess that evening; she hit the gym. She could think of twenty-thousand things she would rather do than go to the gym after an already disgustingly heavy day, including scrubbing the shower room floor with a toothbrush, but this was the only thing she could think of that didn't involve contact with her squad. She couldn't avoid them forever, but she could give it a damn good try.

Tseng had come to expect an explosive reaction from her when she reported for Advanced Driving that evening, for which he was equipped. Instead, she was quiet. Her knuckles were white against the steering wheel all evening, and her posture rigid. Her body tightened in anger.

He observed her as a mechanism over an organism. Quietly assessing the way her brows protruded from her profile from being so tightly furrowed with eyes on the road. The way her lips moved with her speech but she hardly loosened her jaw, and her voice crept out as more of a growl as she gave her steady commentary.

Her anger fed her concentration like he hadn't seen before. Anger that would need harnessing if she were ever to join the infantry or SOLDIER, or in fact, any branch of the military. It was a good job that wouldn't need to happen. She was a tightly wound coil, ready to spring at any given moment, and if it sprang at the right moment, she would be a very dangerous tool indeed.

At the end of the evening, after a night of nigh on silence, Tseng addressed her stewing issues. He said, "So. What are you going to do about it?"

Her jaw twitched as she ground her teeth. "Deal with it."

"Good." And ordered her out.

Her footsteps echoed in the empty hall as she drew upon the sealed door of the barracks. She stood outside for a moment, basking in the red light above it, then saluted the DI stood beside to allow her entry.

The door opened with a whirr and if she didn't know any better, she'd think the room before her was full of wax models for how still they became. She tried not to hesitate before heading straight to her bed which, thankfully, was closest to the door anyway. Wasn't so bad having the worst bed in the room.

When the general consensus was that she wasn't going to say anything, the rest of the room continued about their business, albeit slightly quieter. She sought Rex's gaze, but he was talking to a few of the others nearby and didn't respond to her eyes boring into the back of his head.

The cot creaked achingly as she sat on the edge and pulled off her boots. She joined many of the others who were currently maintaining upkeep; picking lint off their uniform, shining shoes, sweeping the floor, laundry. She noted absently that Rex's empty bed to her right was all made. Perfectly made, with immaculate boots at the foot and uniform folded for the next day at his bedside table. She wondered when and how he got his life together when hers was in smouldering ruins.

She grabbed her rag and polish from her drawer and worked her boots in silence, buffing out the dirt as if it would iron out the mistakes of the past few weeks. Would it be different if she had chosen not to go out with Melanie and Bryan that fateful day?

No, she thought. Firstly because Tseng would have found her either way and secondly? Not having gone on that hunt for the source of the misery of her people was not an option.

She chewed her lip. Was Icicle Inn okay? It had been over a month now.

A sigh tore out from deep in her lungs as she put down her boots and got up to grab one of the newspapers from the table in the centre of the room. If anything happened in town, maybe it would be documented in the news, or so she hoped.

As she walked back to her bed, eyes scanning the contents of the broadsheet greedily, she almost bumped into Newberry. It took her a minute to register that he was stood at the end of her bed, and longer to realise he had an audience.

She looked up at him disdainfully. His eyes were small, his hair dark and his jaw square. He could be pretty attractive in another life, one where his scowl wasn't so set and his mouth didn't turn down at the edges.

"I don't know who you think you are," he said, low, under the noise of the room around. "But your lack of integrity disgusts me."

"Because you're such an upstanding individual—?"

He hocked up a wad of saliva and mucus and spat it on her freshly cleaned boots.

She sucked in her lips and squeezed them tight between her teeth until the pain couldn't override the anger anymore, staring at the slug-like clump of saliva dribbling down the side of her shoe and onto the floor. She snapped frosty eyes up to his.

He snarled at her. "I don't pick on the weak."

Aster grabbed her boot, holding her every muscle unnecessarily tightly. She stared at it, then him. Watched him as he snorted up a second load and spat on it again.

She bit back the gag she was desperate to give, swallowing as hard as she could against the reflex of repulsion; repulsed by his behaviour or his sneer or both.

Not fighting back hadn't been working.

She wandered into the middle of the room by the table again, holding her boot limply in her hand, high near her head. She found his bed.

"You fucking dare—" he began.

She glared straight into his dark eyes. Her hands trembled. Her chest was tight.

He lunged towards her but froze in the instant that she wiped her boot and all of his horrific sputum all over his pillow. For good measure, she smeared the sole across it, too.

Her eyes were such a pale blue, but they'd never been darker at the very same time.

He bolted for her, shoving the table out of the way, but she drove her shoulder into his chest as Heidegger had once done to her. A bad parallel, if that was a sign of what she was to become. At this point, she didn't care.

She held his glare right up in his face, with flared nostrils and flames in her eyes, and shoved with the best of her strength past him and back to her bed.

Rex shared a look with Matt halfway between awe-struck and freaked the hell out and hurried to his and Aster's corner of the room, pushing past Newberry in his wake. He clamped his hands over her shoulders, but when she looked up at him, her face was so contorted with rage that he virtually fell into his bed behind him. They sat facing each other with their knees apart by only inches. With his hands on her shoulders as they were, she felt like a boxer being coached before the last round.

"Don't think about it," Rex said quickly, quietly, as though if he didn't get the words out quick enough she might do something stupid. Goddess knows where he got that impression. "You did the right thing. Barnhill was just licking arse."

She shook off his hands. "Hell, I know that."

"You were the easiest option." She knew that too. He balled his fists between his knees, curled his neck and grumbled, "Wish Reno'd asked me instead."

"And who would you have picked?"

He thought about this for a moment. "Newberry."

Yes. She understood.