A/N: Hi hi, friends! Just to let you know next week's update is likely to come slightly later (I usually post sometime in the morning UK time, but its likely to be afternoon/evening) because I have a graded presentation to give next Wednesday morning so…that will be…fun…if I get a good grade anyway. Hope you've had a fantastic week!

24th Apr '19

Chapter 9: Duty and Friendship

Fine rain poured in sheets from a dark sky. It was the kind of atmospheric rain that soaks from all angles. Tseng had told Aster that she needed to be able to aim and fire despite the weather conditions, and thus began this impromptu training session.

She was laid prone in a small ditch in the dirt behind a short line of sandbags, resting her training rifle against them and aiming carefully and the glowing red centre of the target roughly sixty feet away. When they built Midgar, they laid down only inches of dirt to cover the plate. It was no wonder nothing grew in Midgar. Because of this, the ditch dug in the range was showing the steel beneath the soil, and Aster could feel the cold metal against the skin of her stomach where her shirt had risen. She was connected to Midgar.

She ripped a piece of loose skin from the inside of her lip with her teeth. "There's something I don't understand, Tseng."

Being terse with him since the incident in the training room hadn't been getting her anywhere. Certainly wasn't getting her any answers, and it wasn't going to fix her relationship with her squad, either, so she eventually lost sight of the point and allowed it to dissolve. Not entirely—she was full of contradictions these days—but enough to hold a conversation.

Tseng looked at her. His mannerisms were subtle, she'd learned, but it was his way of telling her to go on. She did. "Why aren't the Turks augmented in the same way that SOLDIER are?"

His dark suit shone under the hefty stadium lights, soaked through, and it hung heavily from him. His short ponytail was shrivelled and his features severe, though the rain didn't seem to perturb him. "Some missions require non-SOLDIER. Covert operations, for example. The eyes would give you away."

Aster pulled the trigger five times, and each time it hit, the red target flashed blue. If there was one thing Tseng had taught her in these short weeks, it was to concentrate on multiple things at once.

"What about when you get too old, or something? Surely, Rude, for instance, would be invaluable in SOLDIER?"

Tseng pulled her up by the shoulder into a kneeling position then shook his head. "Turk defects," he said, then looked at her pointedly, "and Selective rejects, cannot apply for SOLDIER."

"Wait," she said, jerking her upper body to look at him. Her white cadet shirt was more mud than fabric and clung to her skin much like her hair to her face under the rain. "Why not?"

"Because the Turks leave the Turks in a body bag."

A shiver ran up Aster's spine and her finger twitched over her trigger, squeezing it a few times and completely missing her mark. Her hit rate figures fell in response on the electronic, but apparently waterproof, monitor above her target. In a body bag. Did that apply to her, too?

"Pathetic," he muttered. For a moment, Aster thought he was referring to how her heart sank like a stone and wondered how he could tell. "Your practice is horrific—you need to control the weapon. Squeeze the trigger, stop pulling it."

He dragged her up by the collar, forcibly moving her to a standing position and placed a coin on the barrel of her rifle. "If it falls, you've failed. You know what will happen if you fail this course."

Her jaw fell and the rifle sank in her unsteady grip. The coin slipped off immediately, and as she fumbled to pick it from the dirt, Tseng slammed her shoulder blade with the butt of a pistol, eliciting from her a sharp gasp.

She bit hard on her lip and replaced the coin carefully, watching it teeter on her shaking rifle. She couldn't fail.

He gave some kind of sigh that she couldn't place. Was he disappointed in her? Irritated? Something else? "Yes," he said, "The Turks are Turks for the duration of their, however short, lives. Turks-sensitive information as regards the Company cannot be leaked. It is the choice we make."

Something behind her eyes burned. She squeezed the trigger as if it might make the feeling go away, and the coin didn't fall, but her concentration on being gentle overran her focus on aiming. A miss. She tried again and again and again. Just to stop the burning, distract from the ache.

Aster didn't make that choice. The choice was made for her.

Thankfully Tseng didn't await a response.

"Being genetically modified like SOLDIER is like being permanently armed," he said. "And being armed is—"

"—Sometimes unsafer than being unarmed," she quoted numbly, lips moving but eyes fixed on the target.

Tseng looked away. "Exactly. That will make more sense to you one day soon…"

Aster glanced over to him to work out why he trailed off, but when she did, he simply snatched the rifle from her hands and replaced it with the replica pistol he had hit her with instead. She hadn't had a hell of a lot of formal training with handguns yet, but how much harder could it be?

With little guidance, she shuffled into position and narrowed her non-dominant eye, pistol in two hands. Tseng placed the coin above the muzzle. She squeezed the trigger artfully, but her grip was loose. Recoil blasted the gun back into her nose with a sickening crack and a scream when the weapon turned out to be very real and very loaded. She shot out the hit rate monitor in grim irony.

Hot blood splattered from her nose and onto the metal plate in the pit.

"Stupid girl," he growled and snatched the gun from her fingers. "Don't you ever listen to your SAA instructor? Always consider your weapon as loaded and check." He pointed to the safety catch before flicking it. "Treat every weapon with the respect it deserves lest it carve a dent in your face or a hole in your comrade. There is a fine line between being gentle on the trigger and firm in grasp."

"B-but I thought only the highest scorer gets to wield a real gun!" She cried out, cradling her nose and failing to contain the blood spill within her fingers. "I assumed—!"

"Assumption is death," he said and shook his head. "You are dismissed. Despite your idiocy rearing its ugly head again…you did relatively well."

She croaked, "Thanks…?"

Aster endured stares while snatching a clean top and jeans from her locker and slamming it shut. Blood slid from both nostrils and she smeared it across her t-shirt—it was already bloody and soaked so what did it matter? If nothing else her filthy, sodden state proved she wasn't just relaxing while the others had drill every evening.

As she left, she felt Newberry's narrowed eyes against her skin.

Aster knocked on the door to Tifa's apartment. Tifa had her bar and someplace to live bottomside of the plate in Sector Seven but, being a Shinra employee, also held tenancy of a small apartment topside Sector Five, not far from the infantry and SOLDIER accommodation, nor far from the cadet training campuses and main HQ building.

Aster wondered who manned the bar when they weren't around, but she supposed Tifa must have quite a few staff considering she, too, had two jobs. One of their many things in common.

Tifa had asked her to come over when she was done for the evening and thankfully, by some stroke of luck, it was only eight-thirty, not ten or midnight or something stupid like usual. Maybe Tseng had felt bad about her nose and let her off. Unlikely.

Upon opening the door, Tifa blinked as though to clear her vision. "Goddess—what the hell happened to your face?"

Aster grinned with a guilty look in her eye as Tifa shook her head and let her in. The apartment was exactly as Midgar topside living was always hyped up as being. The ceilings were high and the windows were perfect cutouts of the skyline beyond, like wall art. The room was pristine, which Aster completely expected of her tidy friend, but there weren't many adornments or personal possessions around. A TV remote sat on top of a magazine on the coffee table, but that was pretty much it for clutter. The place looked virtually inhabited, like a show home or hotel. Aster figured Tifa didn't spend much time here. The messiest part of the room became where Aster kicked off her boots near the door.

Tifa placed her hands on her hips and gave a stern look. "The face?" Uh oh. Mom voice.

"To be fair," she began, ducking into the bathroom briefly to change her shirt and pants. She called through the door, "it was totally my fault."

"It's not broken is it?"

"Don't think so," Aster said, appearing from the bathroom, wiping her bloodied upper lip on a cleanish corner of her cadet top.

"You know," Tifa said with a wry smile, "I'm starting to think all this comes with the territory of knowing you."

Aster snorted, dropping her dirty clothes on the floor near the couch and flopping down on it. "Makes for some good stories."

"What was it this time?" Tifa asked. She sat on a contemporary armchair with wooden, spindly legs that scuffed against the floorboards.

"Um. Bad weapon handling."

"Rookie mistake," Tifa said, with half a laugh.

A silence bloomed between them. Aster peeled her gloves off and stared at the borrowed watch and bracelet sitting together, aware of the way Tifa was gazing at her own hands before she sucked in her lip and spoke.

"I wanted to know what you know about…" She trailed off, unable to place the right words. "I just wondered if everything was okay after Tseng and Reno's stint in class the other day."

"Oh." Right. That. Aster pulled her hair from the tangled bun on her head and raked her fingers through it, attempting to abate the rain-induced frizz. Buying time, but Tifa's concerned gaze didn't let up.

Eventually, Aster straightened her neck and confidently said, "He's testing me. Everything is a test, and I have to pass. If I don't pass—" She stopped herself and rolled her eyes towards the window. If she didn't pass, they'd take Danny, her younger brother, and place him through the same ordeal she'd been through up until this point. She shrugged, as though she had no weight on her mind. "If I don't pass, bad things happen."

Tifa shifted in her seat. Her lips twisted. "But what if you do pass?"

Placing Tifa's expression was hard. It didn't make sense that she'd be concerned about Aster passing, of all things. She sniffed. "They said they have a test for me and if I do a good job, they'll make me a member of the Turks where I can…work on some task, like a project, I guess."

She was a bit confused, herself, but at some point during all the put-downs and insults from Tseng and cadets alike, she realised she wanted to make it, just to rub it in their faces. But…the Turks leave the Turks in a body bag. Tifa didn't look appeased, so Aster called her out on it. "…What?"

"It's nothing," she said, leaning her elbows against her knees. "Tseng and Angeal were talking about you. I think maybe they meant that task you mentioned."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Didn't say much though. Said it was classified." Tifa tapped her cheek. "I won't lie, it didn't sound great."

Aster watched the second hand on her watch beat thrice, resolve wavering with each pulse. "What they put me through now is in preparation for whatever it is they've got in store for future me," she said, unsure whether she was lying to herself or not. "I hope I'll be ready."

Tifa sucked a deep breath through her nose and smiled. "I hope so, too."

There was a knock at the door that stopped Aster's heart. Tifa trotted over without a sound thanks to her puffy socks that were slightly too large and slipped around her ankles. She pressed a wine-red eye to the peephole.

"Uh—do I hide?!" Aster hissed, painfully aware of the punishments exacted upon cadets out after curfew. Sure, she didn't have a curfew in the same way the others did, but she still sure as hell wasn't supposed to be hanging out with friends when not with the Turks.

"Somehow I don't think you'll want to," she said, a smile teasing her voice. She swept open the door smoothly. "Hey, Zack."

"Hey, Teef! You got a minute?"

"Yeah, come in."

He stepped through the door and his eyes met Aster's.

She stifled the look of horror, but its ghost still haunted the smile she offered in its place. Now, this felt weird. This was her commander, made stark and clear since he stood before her in his uniform very much on duty. If she'd been trying to ignore that fact in the bar, this made it impossible. The ribbed knit of his famous black turtleneck clung to the shape of his body beneath the leather belt stamped with the elusive crest of SOLDIER. His shoulders rested hidden beneath iron and leather guards, hands gloved, but the rest of his arms were free for her to try not to stare at.

She pinched her lips together tightly, ashamed of her unmade-up face and damp hair, face growing red—she could feel it. But, hey, at least she had changed out of her uniform. That would have been a bit of a giveaway.

"Aster—sorry, I didn't know you'd be here," he said, scratching the back of his head. His hair, usually weightless, laid flatter due to rain. He, on the other hand, struggled with the switch from being in work-mode to being thrust unexpectedly into the presence of a girl he knew strictly out of work, and better for it.

But to Aster, he just sounded disappointed, and she tried her best not to let it sting. "Don't worry about it." She jumped to her feet and subtly kicked her sodden uniform under the couch and out of sight. "I'll, uh, go in the kitchen."

"Nah, it's all good. S'nothin' important," he said, releasing his sword from his holster and resting it against the wall. It was freaking enormous, not much shorter than Aster was, really. A two-handed brute with the SOLDIER emblem embossed on the brassy cross-guard.

Tifa closed the front door with a slim eyebrow raised, then drew back towards the living area and plopped back into her weird little modern armchair. "What's up, Zack?"

He threw himself into the couch next to Aster who awkwardly perched back on her seat. "Basically, Angeal said there're some issues in squad D?" he said, pulling a face.

Aster's chest tightened. Oh. She was in squad D.

"He's sent me to do his runnin' around to all of the instructors to tell you guys to keep an eye out and adjust their SOLDIER constitution records accordingly." He shrugged, and his lower lip jutted slightly in a pout. "I've been around 'em. They seemed fine to me."

Aster passed Tifa a surreptitious glance, but the older girl didn't notice. She just sighed and shook her head. "Zack, that's because you're in SOLDIER; of course they behave around you. They all think they've got giant balls until someone like you walks past and they realise, you know, they aren't a big fish in a small pond, they're a newt in an ocean."

Zack started snickering profusely. "This the kinda motivational speech you give in your classes?"

Tifa laughed. "Some of them need knocking down a peg or two!"

Aster smiled casually but picked at her cuticle and chewed the innards of her cheek. She wondered if she fell into that category of individuals. Maybe. Definitely, if you asked certain members of the squad.

"Yeah, I guess I get that. It's always like this though." Then Zack addressed Aster directly. "Last year I had this batch of recruits that used to punch each other up every time the instructors weren't looking. We had to get a DI to keep guard inside their room."

So the situation could be worse.

"Oh, I remember them," Tifa said with a touch of alarm. "They were my first ever trainees. Let's hope squad D doesn't degrade to that."

But it could get worse.

Aster laughed weakly, voice betraying her. "Sounds like you guys have your work cut out for you…!"

Zack waved his hand passively. "It's not too bad. They graduate from basic in like a month. Oh yeah! That reminds me!" he said, physically turning to face Aster on the couch, knee near her hip. "I wanted to ask y—is your nose bleeding?"

Her eyes widened, and she covered her nose. She thought she'd wiped it all away, but sure enough, blood still clung to her nostrils.

"Hey, let me see," he said, pulling her wrists out of the way. "Your nose is swollen. Are you alright?" Then, his back stiffened with an ugly conclusion and his eyes flicked back to hers, wide with concern. "It literally looks like you got punched in the face. Is someone giving you trouble or something?"

"N-no—it's nothing like that. It was just an accident."

For what it was worth, that wasn't a lie.

"Can I heal you? I'm no white mage," he said, still holding her wrists as if they were made of glass, but lowering them against his knee, "but this is no problem."

She hardly breathed her response as he took off his gloves, leaving her staring at her fingers against the fabric of his SOLDIER combat pants, the warmth of his skin emanating from beneath them. Her mouth turned dry, but she didn't notice until he cupped her chin to tilt her head back. The fingers of his free hand hovered above her nose, and she couldn't stifle the breath that shuddered from her lips and tickled his wrist.

His fingers glowed a seafoam green as a soft light shimmered over her nose and lips. The sensation made her giggle, the quelling of the dull ache, the feeling of warmth and prickling that made her want to sneeze and scrunch up her nose as her wounds knitted themselves together.

"Better?"

"Great," she said, breathily.

His smile grew into a victorious grin of its own accord. "You're blushing."

"I am not."

"Are too."

"It's your imagination," she said with the roll of her eyes but flushed further regardless of her words.

He laughed outright and slipped his fingers from her chin. A cold wind replaced his presence, but it was warm indoors. Her skin both seared and shivered in his wake.

"Crap," he muttered when his PHS vibrated with an incoming message. "I gotta go, Still got a couple more DIs to get to and 'Geal is gonna kill me."

"Right—sure," she said, awareness suddenly slapping her in the face and reminding her to, albeit reluctantly, pull her hands away from their rest against his knee. Her chest bloomed in flames of embarrassment. She stood up quickly. "Thank you, by the way."

"No worries. Stay outta trouble, hear?" he said, pointing at her with a smirk.

She smiled and clasped her hands behind her back. "No promises there!"

"Didn't think so," he said, grinning impishly and grabbing his gloves. "Later, Teef. Speak to 'Geal if you wanna know more—he's got more to do with squads C and D than I do."

Tifa pointedly put down her magazine and kicked her legs off the coffee table—no, she hadn't been reading it. She merely had picked it up to blend into the background while she watched her two friends with peeping eyes over the top of the pages. It wasn't subtle and it didn't need to be. They probably wouldn't have noticed her any single action, unless she'd literally sat between them.

"Sure, Zack," she said. "Thanks for the message."

"No prob," he said, seeing himself to the door and grabbing the hilt of his sword. He hesitated as he reached the door handle and gestured to the military-issue boots on the floor. "Uh, Teef? Whose are these?"

Before Aster could choke on her water, Tifa's calm control took over. The girl could have been an actress in another life, seriously. "Oh, Cloud was here earlier."

"They're Cloud's? Really?" Zack took a second look at them and furrowed his brow. Scratching his head, he said, "He's got some damn tiny feet. Later, ladies."

The door closed behind him.

"Hooooly frickin' mother of…" Aster deflated into the couch with a huge sigh into her hands, and Tifa stood over her with a knowing expression holding her features. "Crap. I need to be so much more careful."

A small smirk overtook Tifa's lips. "Yeah, I won't always be there to pick up the pieces, right?"

"Hey, I'm learning from a champ in the meanwhile."

Tifa folded her arms, her smirk growing to a grin. She was biting back words from spilling out her mouth. Aster raised an eyebrow, slowly folding her arms to mirror her friend's. "…What?"

"We gonna ignore the elephant in the room?" Tifa said, and for a moment Aster heard Barret's inflections.

She feigned ignorance with pink cheeks. In response, Tifa held back the two-hundred things she wanted to say to tease the younger girl and instead remained as elegant and in control as ever.

"Aw. Cute," she said, grinning and flopping down into the couch with a soft thump. "But you know, you don't need to take off your gloves to cast magic."

Aster's face grew redder by the second—as much as she tried to pretend anything otherwise. Tifa broke into a grin. "I'm willing to bet he just wanted an excuse to touch you."

Aster's fingers found themselves gently tracing where his had been before them.

"You still up?"

"You're still up? Why?" Aster whispered incredulously to Rex in the bed next to her later that evening. He didn't really respond, but by the sound of his sheets, he had shrugged. She couldn't see him through the darkness, except for a faint red glow from the locked door. If she could have seen, she might have noticed the sweat across his brow, and if she had gotten close enough, she might have heard his pounding heart. A nightmare?

She'd been tossing and turning for two hours, completely restlessly, churning over the day again and again and again. Her conversation with Tseng twisted her stomach, then the image of Zack's face lit by his Cure spell tugged somewhere in her chest, and the whole thing looped continuously, ad infinitum. It was like a rollercoaster with awful lows and glorious highs.

"Well, since you're awake, you might as well have these now," she said, digging her hand down the side of her mattress and slapping a retrieved packet of sweets onto Rex's face.

"Mmffff—" He spluttered to get the plastic off his mouth and felt around his face from the antagonistic wrapper with which she had appeared to have attacked him. "Whazzis? Ooo, mate! Gummy bears!"

"Shhh!"

"You legend!" he crowed.

"Shut up, Rex!" She hissed as loudly as she dared. "You'll wake the entire compound!"

He wrestled with the packaging even louder than he had spoken. Aster facepalmed in the dark. Through her fingers, she mumbled, "Anyway…can I talk to you?"

"Dude, you gave me freaking gummy bears, I'll give my soul to you. Where'd you get these?"

"Tifa's—look that's not important—"

"—Aren't you up at like, four hundred hours tomorrow?"

"Please don't remind me."

"You are one crazy broad."

"Don't remind me that, either."

The packaging split straight down the middle, throwing gummy bears all over his bed after a frenzied attempt to get into them. "Do you know what?" he said, gesturing a sweeping motion to the candies covering his sheets, "I am okay with this."

She tried her best to stifle her laughter. She already felt better. "Listen, I heard that basically our squad is getting put under the microscope since there've been some, um…issues," she said, exaggeratedly pronouncing 'issues' incorrectly for effect.

"Newberry?" Rex mouthed. In the dark. Aster made out what he was implying only after he repeated the action four or five times for clarity, leaning over the space between their beds to increase her chance of seeing.

She shrugged looking uncertainly into his eyes. "Or me."

He nodded and collapsed back on his bed. "Could be. Depends on perspective."

"You're right," she said, nodding to herself. He was honest. Blunt. Kind of what she needed. A bringer of truth no matter the cost—someone she could trust to tell her how it was, not what either of them wanted to hear. "I wanted you to know. I don't want you getting dragged up in whatever crap I cause."

"Where's the fun in that?"

She scoffed loud in the dark, but probably whisper quiet if in daylight. "Are you ever serious?"

"I've had enough seriousness in my life to last me a while." He chucked a handful of gummy bears in his mouth, juxtaposing the weight of his words. This kind of junk food was forbidden in basic training. Apparently, he loved every second of breaking the rules. "If I can, I'd always rather lift the mood."

"Aw," she said, falsely. "Little ray of sunshine that you are."

"Well, some of us have to counter The Cynical and The Sarcastic in this world."

"That was a pointed statement and I feel attacked."

He laughed. "If you take offence then you're just accepting it as the truth."

"Geez," she said, mockingly, tucking her arms behind her head. "Hitting me with the hard stuff at one hundred hours."

"If you want—"

"—Not what I meant."

He grinned up at the ceiling for no one's benefit but his own. The darkness wasn't as lonely with someone to share it with. Lowering his voice to a record level of sincerity, he said, "Don't worry. We're gonna wade through this shit."

He took it that she nodded only by the shuffling of her pillow, but she couldn't respond, because how could she get past a body bag? And if she did get through it, what then? Stay in the Turks for the rest of her life?

The end of the road was a body bag in the best case scenario and in worst.

But she'd make damn sure they'd never seen a Turk like her in the meantime.

This she could come to terms with. It was no good traipsing around like she was being led. Might as well at least start faking it. It was time to stop being forced into a victim position and start being her own hero. Can't protect anyone without protecting yourself first.

Yet she still laid awake. Even after Rex fell back into encumbered sleep. If everything was a test, how badly was she failing? Was she reacting incorrectly? Were they looking to observe other behaviour? Was she thinking about it too much?

The lattermost was the only one she had a definitive answer to: yes.

But Rex was right. They were gonna wade through this shit, and eventually, they'd come out the other side. And hopefully, they'd be better for it.