A/N: Good morning, everyone! Hope you're well and sprightly—I've been absolutely exhausted after the past few weeks, and even though I'm done with my finals I'm still SUPER busy. It's crazy! I want to start chatting about the previous chapter in these ANs and as such, omg, Aster and Rex's friendship absolutely gives me life, you guys. Love them. As for this chapter, here is a little weird-headspace-Aster. Understandable, I suppose, given the situations she has been finding herself in so far. This chapter is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster for her. And of course, it only gets worse from here! Enjoy, and have a lovely week!

22nd May '19

Chapter 12: Through Fault of My Own

Aster woke a few days later to the feeling of a thousand bugs crawling across her body, biting, burrowing beneath her skin. But there were no bugs, only beads of sweat and the ghost of a fleeting nightmare.

The break-in sat on morale like the dead weight of an Adamantaimai, but cadet-life existed in a bubble, a vacuum, separate from the real truths of the military. As such, Tseng never mentioned the incident again, and no one else did, either. It bothered Aster, and it bothered her that she seemed to be the only one bothered about it.

If they were under attack or their defences were compromised, someone needed to do something. Instigate some kind of change. Alas, Aster was merely a cadet, and no one gave much of a crap what she had to say. Genesis's offer to stop by his place was growing more tempting day by day if only so she could have a decent conversation with someone about what happened. It was mostly his reaction that concerned her in the first place.

But then, if it really was a big deal, surely Tseng would be getting more involved.

She funnelled her frustrations into her training. There were so many unanswered questions, so many lies, that the only way to burn away the strain was to push her body past the point it should be physically able so that when the night came, she didn't have the chance to cry. She was out like a light as soon as her head hit the inch-thick pillow.

And the contempt that the squad felt for her had become mutual. She didn't shyly bow away from glares, she met them full on, on more than one occasion resulting in a shove from either one or the other. Aster wasn't always, or even usually, the innocent party.

That bubble of cadet-life was rotting. Roll on pass out. Just a few weeks to go. Life as a Turk selective was making her rough around the edges—inside the bubble, at least. Must be why she loved Tifa's bar so much because her sandpaper skin shed and she resembled more the girl she used to be.

That morning, the army tried to kill the cadets again. A one-mile run, one-hundred pull-ups, two-hundred press ups, three-hundred squats, followed by another one-mile run. Brutal. But she shaved her average mile run time to six minutes and thirty seconds just bringing her within the range she was required to be in for the Turks. It was an improvement.

She overextended her arms and shoulders backwards to crack her aching joints and shook out her ankles. She could feel her helmet sticking to her forehead with sweat, but she knew better by now than to take it off. Bad stuff always happened when she took it off.

Bad stuff happened when she kept it on, too, but hey. That's life.

Incidentally, or perhaps because she tempted fate, the Red Cap—what the cadets had begun calling the instructors—stepped forward towards the cadets, many of whom were understandably star-fished across the ground in pools of their own sweat.

"Attention! I've been instructed to conduct an experiment on behalf of Tseng of the Turks."

Aster pressed her eyes closed, grinding her back teeth, attempting to suppress her growing anger. With a general air of lethargy, the twenty-one remaining cadets lined before their instructor.

"Alright," he said, surveying the sloppy state of the recruits. "He said to pick one at random. Let's go with today's fastest runner. That's you, Huntington."

"Sir," he said.

"You must pick the cadet you think is the weakest."

Aster set her jaw for the incoming blow and resisted folding her arms across her chest. Tseng would be disappointed. He would have been sure to make it sound much more dramatic, to give it the most disruptive impact. The DI was being way too nice about it.

"Doe, sir."

The Red Cap didn't react. "Why?"

Huntington had brown hair and a lanky figure. Aster couldn't hear any snarky inflections to his voice, but she was confident they must have been there. "She hasn't bonded with the squad."

She leaned from formation to snap at him. "I've been working on that!"

"Really?" he said, turning to her with bored eyes. "What's my first name?"

Shit. Aster pursed her lips together and straightened her back with nought to say to mitigate the damage she'd caused. Her face blew hot in embarrassment.

"Enough," the Red Cap said. He looked stiffer than usual, uncomfortable. Aster felt like telling him not to worry; she was getting used to it. "Partner with your closest in height and weight. Get a move on."

That put Aster with Sparrow. He bowed his head in acknowledgement of her, but nervously avoided her gaze. Maybe she frightened him. And that was what snapped her out of the detached mood she had woken with. She consciously looked at her gloved hands, wondering about the monster she may be becoming.

They were instructed to carry each other in an exercise based around carrying the injured or immobilised from harm on the field. Pretty much just basic fireman's lifts, but coupled with running on aching legs, which, to be fair, definitely mimicked the kind of scenario they could very well find themselves in for real.

"You run to the quad, and get in the trucks waiting for you, understood?"

The cadets barked their assent.

"Good. Go!"

For fear of being accused of patronising the boy, Aster didn't say anything. She merely cocked her head in a 'get on' kind of way and lifted Sparrow onto her shoulders as directed. The cadets sprinted to the quad and into the trucks that brought them out into the Midgar Wasteland in uncomfortable silence. For a moment, Aster and Sparrow looked at one another, neither sure what to say to the other, least of all under the hawkish glare of four others, so they said nothing.

Luckily, the ride was short. The trucks came to a stop and they were demanded to switch positions with their partner and run across the rocky crag in a fireman's carry once again, Aster became vaguely aware that there were far more than twenty-one cadets around.

She tried, after Sparrow lifted her and began his run, to get a good, if mostly upside down, view of their surroundings. The dusty, desert-like terrain lifted in the wind and blew into her face. She wiped the spits of stones from her eyes after a breeze and squinted to take in the others surrounding them. There were definitely faces she didn't recognise—although it was hard to tell when everyone was wearing the same goddamn infantry helmet.

Distracted, she was wholly unprepared for when Sparrow's knee gave, and she was thrown into a rolling heap when he hit the ground. The stones and rocks ripped the skin of her arm, and she coughed out a blow of dust.

Sparrow pulled himself back to his feet with shaking knees. "Spa—" she hesitated. "Actually…"

She looked around to check Huntington was nowhere nearby, then rolled to her knees as the others surged past them like a stampede. She asked, quietly, to salvage her pride, "What's your name?"

"Archie," he said, taking her hand and pulling her up without her asking for aid.

"Archie," she repeated. "I'm Aster. You good?"

He nodded. "Sorry."

"It's fine," she said, trying to ignore how his cheeks rounded and his lips were pink bows like that of a baby. This boy truly couldn't have been much older than her little sister, Marina. "Can you carry on?"

"Yeah, think so. S-sorry."

She shrugged as nonchalantly as she could. "Don't worry about it."

He lifted her once more against her better judgment, and this time she paid more attention to his footwork. She feared for just how many times his ankle rolled or he almost tripped and braced herself for impact more than once before the end of the run.

She felt kind of bad for him, even though she tried not to. It's not like he needed her pity. He was undoubtedly the weakest of the group, fairly obviously, and she couldn't imagine how frustrating it must feel to continually receive everyone's condolences for your weaknesses. Her nose scrunched up at the mere thought. At least he made up for it with tenacity. They made it to the growing congregation of recruits not quite last, but not far off either.

The DI ordered the recruits to put down their partners, and Aster slid from Archie's shoulders. The crack of a back smacking into the ground not far away snatched her attention, where Rex lay against a rock and Newberry loomed over him. Rex said nothing, peeling himself from the stone and wincing as he straightened his back, and Newberry stormed off through the crowd of white-shirted men. Aster's breath caught in her throat. Was Newberry targeting Rex to get at her?

Or were they already rivals to begin with? What was it that Tifa had said in the bar that time about Rex being an outsider—?

"Cadets!"

"Sir!"

Wow. The sound reverberated off the barren plain. A lot louder than usual.

The Red Cap rattled off an explanation as to the night's exercise. "We've brought squads A through to D—the rest get to sleep tonight."

Eighty-two cadets. Each of the four squads was split into four sub-groups and supplied with a map, a compass, and rucksacks with further supplies inside—mostly just additional weight to increase the challenge. The goal was to make their way from the random position in which they would be deposited to the location marked on their maps.

The acting commanders for this quarter's recruits dispersed towards their squads. Angeal approached Squad D and cleared his throat. "This is the devised sub-squad list. It is non-negotiable. Each sub-squad gets a leader," he said, clapping his hands together once.

He read out the list. "Sub-squad two leader: Newberry. Team: Doe, Barnhill, Evans, Henderson and Ayres."

Aster didn't react as she stood in a circle with her group. Outwardly, that is. Inwardly her heart pounded against her ribs and made her queasy. She bit her lip. No use being pathetic and childish about it. She reverted to analysing the decisions Angeal made to occupy her thoughts and rearrange them into something more productive than destructive, something Tseng had taught her.

The top performers were squad leaders. Was that a reward, or a challenge? It didn't come as a surprise then, to see the other groups led by Rohrbach, Rex, and the kid that had told her she was weak not hours ago. Her eyes wandered over to Rex, and he stuck his thumb up at her while still talking to his group.

"You," Newberry growled, startling Aster to shift her attention. "Are you even listening?"

She crossed her arms. "Frankly, no."

He shook his head, brimming with hostility. "Who the hell do you think you are? Don't think you're gonna get any special bloody treatment here. For once in your life, you're gonna pull your own weight—"

"Special treatment? Really?" she seethed to keep her voice down, stepping forward, too brave, blood boiling under her skin bursting for the reprieve of finally shutting this idiot's mouth. She clenched her t-shirt and yanked it up, exposing the black and blue bruising that muddied her ribs and abdomen just beneath the underwire of her bra, courtesy of early morning wake up calls. Not the kind you get from a hotel. "It's special treatment, all right. Every goddamned day."

"Are you asking me to feel sorry for you? Maybe if you weren't such a prick."

She yanked the starchy shirt back over her stomach with a white-knuckle grip and a hot face. "What the hell is your problem with me?" she said, half-expecting he wouldn't give her an answer.

"You've not got a shred of basic human decency, that's my problem with you," he snapped, like he'd been holding back from her as long as she had from him. "You're arrogant, prancing around like you're some innocent wallflower and sucking off Surrexit any time the opportunity arises—"

"—What? Leave him out of this, it's not like that at all!" She stepped further into the tense space between them. "Don't be such a coward!"

"Me? I'm not the one with attitude problems or a tendency to bully the weak!"

Air rushed into her lungs, but rage replaced it. "That's what all this is about? Sparrow?"

"You've got no honour," he spat through tight lips. "If you did, you'd never kick a man when he's down."

"It's not my choice," she said, voice rising to a shriek. She bit it down into more of a growl, glancing over her shoulders to check whether they were being watched by their superiors. Angeal was off with the DIs. She turned to meet Newberry's face again, the glare of the lights on his helmet a fiery red like the burning she felt under her skin. "I have to say it, I'm forced to say it, and Sparrow is objectively and, sorry but, obviously the weakest."

The recruits in their group shuffled awkwardly, exchanging uneasy glances, as Newberry took a step closer and Aster didn't back away. Electricity sparked in the space between them in the worst kind of chemistry.

"Take some responsibility for your actions! Stop hiding behind the Turks all the fucking time. You always have a choice—pretending you don't is a poor justification for your shitty behaviour!"

Her voice grew dark and speaking her words rather than screaming them made her fists tremble. Choice? What choice? "You have no idea." She shook her head so hard, her temples throbbed. "I can't lie to Tseng, asshole. The repercussions would be enormous—"

He blew into a full rage, yelling into her face. "Sometimes you've got to do things that don't just benefit yourself, you dumb bitch!"

She shoved him out of their circle, grabbing the collar of his shirt. "You've got no fucking idea why I'm here." Her voice reached the screech she had been trying to avoid, and it tore through her throat. "I'm not exactly here of my own accord!"

At the high register of her shriek, a SOLDIER member from another squad ran over and snatched her hands from Newberry's shirt with an iron lock on her wrists, using the other to block an incoming blow that Newberry had sent for her chest. Aster's heart sank; it was Zack. Of course it was. Squad A and B overseer.

Zack twisted Newberry's fist, forcing his elbow to buckle under the pressure, incapacitating him. As for the girl, Zack firmly pushed her a full step away from Newberry, marvelling at the steam rising from each of their faces—or what he could see of them anyway.

"The hell is going on?" he said, releasing them both. "No one ever teach you guys about the honour of SOLDIER?"

Aster felt Newberry's pointed look and stared at her feet, shrinking away under both his and Zack's gaze. The latter pointed at one of the boys in another sub-squad. "You, over here. And Doe, isn't it?" he said, more tersely than Aster had ever hoped to hear him say her name. "Switch groups."

She looked at him for a moment, rage dissolving into regret, a pounding in her chest. The look in Zack's eyes nearly killed her. Of course, he didn't know that the pathetic cadet that picked fights with boys with anger issues was the same as the girl he had gently healed. The same girl he was spending too much time in the bar for. But the detachment in the sky-blue eyes that she had sworn had been so much more open mere days before caused her empty chest to ache.

She nodded faintly, saluting but not trusting her voice to speak, and switched into Rohrbach's group as instructed. Zack reported to Angeal, who sighed and shook his head. Aster swallowed hard and flicked her eyes to her wrists, feeling the lingering pressure of Zack's hand against them, where before he'd treated them like glass. With red cheeks bearing her shame, she wiped her eyes of sweat, struggling to come to terms with the divide in her life that she had so willingly created, and couldn't so easily destroy.

How did she get into this mess? She slotted into Rohrbach's group as instructed who, thankfully, didn't breathe a word on the matter past his initial greeting in his thick, heavy accent.

"Uh…just none of that here, please."

With her lips pressed in a thin line, she held up her fingers in the a-okay sign and stared at her booted feet, embarrassment a black cloud raining over her shoulders.

She remained quiet. Took orders and followed them perfectly. Acted not a toe out of line and, honestly, didn't feel the need to. Rohrbach wasn't very sociable, but he was driven and knew what he was doing; each member of their team had a job and completed that job efficiently, and such was that there were no stragglers to carry.

The exercise dragged through the whole night.

Winning, even against the other fifteen groups, wasn't something that Aster was able to take pride in. That wasn't for lack of participating. Rohrbach was modest. Each member shared an equal weight of the task and the victory was shared.

It was rather because her heart and head had been hollowed, and she couldn't take the scrutiny of a certain man in a black uniform.

Head hit the pillow just before dawn. Up two hours later. PT. Training. The endless slog.

Even following her Saturday afternoon training with Tifa, she couldn't wind down. Her fingers folded over one another, and she twisted the beads on her bracelet between serving customers, generally holding her muscles tightly to the point she looked physically uncomfortable in her own body.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Tifa asked for the twelfth time in two hours.

The break-in, the body bag threat, meeting Aerith, her conversation with Genesis, the last run-in with Newberry. Aster turned through it all, making severe redactions because she couldn't catch up with the jumbled words as they spilt out of her mouth.

"No matter what I do, what I say, any move I make, it all ends up making the situation even worse than before. There's no room to move in the barracks for all the tension," she said before aggressively sucking half a glass of orange juice up a paper straw like it might do any good.

Tifa touched Aster on the shoulder. "Is it getting to the point where you fear for your safety?"

"It's my sanity I'm worried about," she said, shaking her head. "I know it's staged. This is the situation that Tseng wants me to be in. He's teaching me things, but—"

"—Are you sure about that?" Tifa interrupted cautiously, eyebrows knitting together. "Are you sure this isn't just a really, really bad situation that has a perfectly natural resolution?"

"No, definitely not. This is Tseng's orchestration."

Tifa raised an eyebrow. "You sound paranoid."

Aster's eyes drifted into the swell of the public enjoying their evening with food and drinks and laughter, so far removed. Her eyes drew to the young man with raven hair that fell in quills as he walked in. Secretly her heart sank in shame. Tseng's orchestration did not extend to her self-inflicted personal issues. She couldn't blame him for this. Aster asked if Tifa would mind if she left the bar for a moment because her' thoughts were dishevelled'.

"Don't know if you'll find much in the way of fresh air out there, but…go ahead! Come back when you're ready." Tifa set her hand on Aster's arm. "And if you're not ready, don't come back."

Aster shook her head. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

There wasn't much of a view from the deck of Seventh Heaven. The wood creaked as she leaned against the balustrade. No breeze, no moonlight. Just the smell of cigarette smoke, chemical Mako pollution, and the faint buzzing of the flickering fluorescent sign above the door. But from here, she could allow her eyes to wander along the very different skyline of the slums. The enormous pillar off to the left, and sprawling under-city life around of Sector Seven.

Aster's last encounter with Zack ached. It made her hands shake. The way he had looked so disappointed in her—they precise way she thought of herself.

No, he hadn't known it was her, and frankly, it was getting to the point that even Aster herself didn't know if it was her or a shadow of her, but did that matter? It was her, and if Zack found out the truth, that is what he'd think of her. That is how he'd look at her.

She pressed her eyes closed and inhaled slowly, breathing in the stale cigarette smoke that hung in the air and ignored the bite in her throat that longed for a straight itself. She wanted to restore things to how they knew they should be. And the only way to do that was to see him again, talk to him, as Aster. As herself. Not the soldier. Perpetuate the lie. Strengthen the divide between Aster and Doe.

What a mess. This had been avoidable, if only she hadn't been so insecure. If only she didn't continue to be so insecure. If only she had had the foresight. The strength.

The door behind her opened with a tiny creak. Instinct acted before calm thought, and she whirled around to face him. Zack. Aster's stomach knotted in some rough cocktail of fear and anxiety, but when he smiled at her as warmly as he did when they first met, and as tenderly as he did when he cured her wounds, the icy grip of paralysis melted away from her heart. Not relief yet; her heart was still pounding.

"Hey," she said, levelly thanks to some miracle.

His smile spread. "Hey."

After a stretched beat or two, Aster took a few steps back to make room for him and resumed her position leaning against the railing, though this time with a small smile. He joined her, resting a shoulder against one of the wooden columns and folding his arms.

Maybe she didn't want to live two lives as distinctly as she had been, but if this was her only access to reprieve, she was going to take it. He moved her to laughter in less than a minute, and in the dead air, it was all they could hear.

"What have you been up to recently?" she asked in her lilted voice that, unbeknownst to her, flicked his heart a beat out of time.

"We brought some of the recruits out a couple nights ago for an exercise with maps and stuff. It's pretty boring for the staff 'cause it takes hours, so we make it interesting by running bets and commentaries and stuff," he said, grinning. Wherever this excitement was coming from, he sure hid it well during the actual thing—although, he was a professional, after all.

Aster couldn't stop the small smile from growing. She looked up at him. "You win any money?"

"I did, actually," he said, puffing out his chest with a grin of champions, laughing. "I bet that this one squad would kick the crap out of all the others. Pretty much happened. 'Geal wasn't happy, 'cause I took his gil and he's gotta finish off my paperwork. I got to take one of the caps from a DI, too, and a baton from another. I'm gonna hang 'em in my office." He sniggered to himself proudly. "That squad, though. Almost literally kicked the crap out of the others."

Her cheeks went half a shade pinker than usual and she straightened her back. "What do you mean?"

He snorted dismissively and waved a hand. "It's no big deal. There's always a few cadets that don't get on. There's this chick and this dude that seem to hate each other's guts."

Her apprehension subsided when he started to laugh. "It was kinda cool actually. The guy is your typically oversized teenager on steroids, super broad, maybe this high?" he said, holding a hand at his eye level. "And this girl's tiny in comparison, maybe about as tall as you—probably a bit taller, actually—and anyway, she held her own all right. Pretty sure she started it, actually. Can tell she's trained by Tifa, that's for sure."

Aster deflated with a faint whimper. "What's the matter?" he asked.

She improvised and latched her hands behind her back, narrowing her eyes. "So by proxy, you think I'm tiny?"

"In comparison," he stressed. Then he flashed a white smile. "I actually think you're pretty."

Heart gave out then. Or she was hearing things. Both. Possibly. She swallowed harder—way harder—than she intended or indeed was necessary and glanced back over the horizon of the slums. Zack smiled to himself, reaping enjoyment from her reaction, the flushing of her cheeks.

The over-lights of the slums cut out for the night, plunging them both into near pitch darkness. Aster couldn't help but laugh—must be eleven, then—and gently reached for Zack's forearms. She looked for his eyes, half of his face dimly lit by the lights inside the bar glowing through the window.

He smiled. "Before you go back to work, I wanted to ask you something. Meant to ask last time. An' I've already asked if Tifa could stand to lose you next Saturday."

Aster snorted and raised an eyebrow. "Should I be alarmed?"

"Maybe." He grinned. "See, last quarter's SOLDIER tests have just been completed," he said, apparently stalling before fastening his resolve. "I wanted to ask you if you'll come with me to the inauguration ball. As my date."

Her empty chest filled, set to burst, and in an attempt to control her massively increased heart rate, she teased him, as if that would make it any easier. "What's a girl to say to a legend in the flesh?"

"Um. Maybe yes?" He said, biting his lower lip in anticipation.

Okay, if she wasn't already sold—which she was—she definitely was now. Lip biting is a power play. Even in the dark. Especially in the dark. But that was another matter entirely and sent her cheeks a deep shade of red.

She smiled slowly, widely. "Sounds great."

"Really?" He beamed, eyes lighting up by at least two shades. He came just half a step closer to her. "Can't wait."

He pulled her in for a hug. Despite the weakness of her knees, she stretched onto her tiptoes and slid her arms over his shoulders and around his neck, and if the heat of his body warming her own wasn't already enough, the firm squeeze of his arms encircling her completely overwhelmed her fluttering heart. She could have happily stood like that forever, and in reality it was only a few seconds, but it felt like one long, glorious holiday somewhere warm.

His grip around her waist loosened and her hands slid from his neck and down his chest—which was a deliberate and calculated move on her part disguised as a casual, accidental brush—and they parted, both hesitant in their shared breaths.

It would be so easy, so tempting, to lean in and—

"Goodnight, Zack."

She didn't miss him subconsciously lick his lip. He was thinking about it, too.

"Goodnight," he said with a grin, finally turning and heading back into the bar.

Aster let out one hell of a shuddering breath into the night air with a smile plastered across her face. Her fingers still trembled as they had all day, but for a better reason. She couldn't feel her legs, which wasn't all that unusual these days, but not because she'd been running or squatting or fighting.

Because she had a date with Zack Fair.