A/N: Hello, everyone! It is something of a miracle that this update is here on time (and it kind of only is because I'm editing this at 1:48 am). I'm excited about the coming chapters! This is actually the farthest I had ever reached in this story, so I was really excited when I wrote this (I have got like another ten chapters ready, but still) and I'm honestly so happy for realising something so personal to me. And I'm enjoying every second of it. Enjoy the brewing shitstorm!

Thank you so much darkbreeze for the review! Tseng definitely knows a lot of things...but no spoilers here! I'm so happy you're enjoying this story, thank you for sticking with it—that goes for everyone!

26th Jun '19

Chapter 16: Heaven Underneath My Skin

The halls of the infirmary were a heavenly white, with only the occasional nurse or doctor nipping from one room to the next and one ward to the other. Almost every patient within these walls fell on a scale between mission-related injury and significant training-related accidents. Aster was a bit off that scale.

And thanks to the dress, there was some disruption in convincing the triage nurse that she was not, in fact, a civilian. Stating her employee number several times to several different people was not enough to convince them, so eventually, a direct phone call was made from the infirmary desk to the Department of Administrative Affairs to verify that some blonde chick wasn't just lying for free health care.

After all of which she was finally hurried into a vacant room with a single bed and a plush cream chair, and everything thereafter was incredibly prompt, likely at the behest of Tseng's orders. Being a Turks Selective came with its advantages—priority treatment, even for relatively minor injuries.

Aster stomped into the room, refusing to honour the bed with her presence. She claimed, rather loudly, that she was not 'infirm' and didn't need the goddamn hospital, and instead threw herself into the chair and kicked her legs up onto the bed, crossed at the ankle.

This left Rex, definitely not infirm, with nowhere else to sit besides the bed, so he fluffed up the pillows and got himself comfortable for the wait.

"This is pathetic," she said, spitting the words out like they tasted terrible. "I don't need to be here."

Rex's response came without inflection—save for his usual upward twang. "You can't move your index finger."

"I only need the middle one," she growled, flipping him the bird. It wasn't worth the spiking pain that shot through her hand, though she'd never tell him that.

By the roll of his eyes though, he suspected as much. "Don't take it out on me; I'm not the one who stabbed you."

She held her injured hand above her heart as instructed like she was awaiting a high five that she was glad no one tried to give. The temporary bandaging was thick, itchy, and crimson around the fingers. "You make it sound worse than it is."

"You severed an extensor tendon."

Her nose wrinkled, and her voice came like a whiny child's. "First of all, I don't even know what that is. Second of all, I didn't do anything. Newberry severed my sensor tendon."

"Extensor."

"Whatever."

"Did you even listen to the doctor?" Rex asked like he was talking to said whiny child, folding his arms across his chest and cocking an eyebrow upward.

"He was speaking a different language."

"No, it was definitely—"

"—He was speaking University Words and I didn't go to college." She grew sharp edges where once she might have been softer. "Cut a girl some slack, will you?"

He blew a laugh through his nose and shook his head. "You get tetchy when you're in pain."

"Doesn't even hurt."

"And my arse is an orange, amongst other lies."

She puffed out her chest with her next snipe, but quickly let her lungs deflate with defeat. "You know what, I don't even have the energy to argue with you."

Rex frowned and kicked his legs over the side of the bed, elbows on his knees and chin in his hands. It was almost laughable how his eyebrows folded in concern. But Aster didn't laugh. "Sorry, mate. I was only tryin' to keep your spirits up. I know you're alright when you're being shitty with me."

"What, kick the body and if it squirms, it's probably still alive?"

"Pretty much."

She snorted and smiled for the first time in hours. "What can I say? Pain makes me cranky."

"Can't fault you there."

No amount of Cure spells could rejoin severed sinew if she wanted a functional finger again. Surgery was required. It was fairly important to the Turks that she regained mobility—it was her trigger finger, after all—and so she was whisked to the operating theatre within an hour of arriving.

When she returned to the ward with the doctor at her heels, Rex threw a pile of crass magazines full of fake stories onto the bedside table and sat forward. Aster was scowling.

She lifted her hand, still numb from local anaesthetic, much to the distress of the doctor. "Stitches."

Rex shook his head without expression. "What did you expect?"

"I dunno, surgical glue? Something less invasive?" she said, flopping down into the chair and resting her arm against a small table so the doctor could fit a splint and additional bandaging. "Cure spells? Mako? Anything."

The doctor cleared his throat, shaking the thick, grey moustache that masked his mouth. "The splint is precautionary. You may remove it in the morning if you feel comfortable to do so, as long as you keep up with the regular Regen spells that you have scheduled over the next few days."

"Days? I can't use my hand for days?"

"Without the advanced technology Shinra supplies us, Miss Doe, you'd be looking at a recovery period of ten weeks. 'Days' is but a blink in a year."

She grumbled, putting up a fight for the sake of putting up a fight.

"You may continue training, but you will be dismissed from hand to hand combat for four days. You must begin the physio techniques as early as tomorrow morning; localised Cura spells tend to stiffen the joints," said the doctor, pushing his thick round glasses up his nose until they magnified his watery blue eyes.

"Okay." She sighed the shit day from her shoulders. Not just the pain, not just the surgery, but also the remarks, the altercations, the threat. Newberry. "Thanks for everything, Doc."

"Yeah," Rex said, launching from the bed and shaking the doctor's hand. "Sorry she's such a pain in the ass."

"Hey!"

The stiff grey moustache over the doctor's mouth shook with his chuckles. "You're very welcome. Keep out of harm's way, both."

"We would," said Rex, locking his fingers behind his head, "but she's something of a matador."

"Suck mine, Rex," she said, but her smirk gave away her humour. She supposed he'd lifted her spirits after all.

The morning arrived and Tseng did not wake her. For once, she didn't overthink it. Didn't try to pick it apart. Didn't try to find out why, or what it meant, or what he was testing her for. She didn't care. It had been a whirlwind weekend, and she was ready to put it behind her.

Insofar, Newberry had upheld his end of the deal. Not only had he not spoken to her, he hadn't granted her eye contact. Such could very well have been due to the fury that drove through his veins and tightened its grip over his every muscle. Aster could see it in his shoulders, how he fought against the tension in his own body.

While Newberry stewed, fit to burst, with white-knuckled grips of his fists wherever he went, Aster was different. Her jaw was set tightly like she was moulding a gum shield, and her eyes were narrower than usual. Together their moods stank the room out.

However, Aster walked with her head high and her shoulders back. She didn't cower in the toilets during showers anymore. Damp though she was, she threw on her underwear, wrapped herself in a towel, and strode back to her bedside to dress.

They were equals. She'd damn shown them that. The cabinet clattered into the wall with the force she opened it with, not yet cooled off from the events of the day before—even after a cold shower—and rummaged one-handedly through her new collection of ruined uniforms.

"Uh, mate?" Rex asked tentatively, as though expecting the girl to whirl around and snap his head off. As she laid down a tattered cadet t-shirt against her bed, he said, "You want some of my clothes? I mean, I know they'll be a bit big on you, but you'll cope with some significant rolling up of the legs."

"Thanks, but it's alright." Then she pointedly raised her voice so that the one trying his best not to hear her couldn't possibly block her out. "I won't let anyone think they can humiliate me or heighten my vulnerability through something as petty as shredding my clothing." She stared at Newberry. "I won't be a victim."

With which, she pulled on the least destroyed combat fatigues she had. She shot a glare at a boy across the room who was paying slightly too much attention to her dressing before yanking on her shirt. It appeared the fierce determination in the form of flames behind her eyes was enough to convince Rex. He smirked and flashed his brows up at her.

"Ballsy," he said, and his smirk caught alight on her face.

Honestly, they just encouraged each other's bad behaviour.

One of her pant legs was completely missing the front of the thigh, ripped at one of the pockets, and the other was shredded beyond repair like a cat had been bundled in it and scratched itself a hole out. As for the shirt, well, it was missing a sleeve, and most of her midriff bared the elements in stroke-like streaks. Suspiciously like someone had run a dagger through it a few times. Her helmet was good, though, and she re-splinted her hand merely for the sympathy vote from her DI. She didn't want him to kill her, after all. Leave her blue and bruised, but at least leave her breathing. She wasn't an idiot. She knew it was coming.

At least her boots were intact. She stood in formation on the track with the others awaiting the incoming lashing. She anticipated Hell's fury. Got Hellfire.

But not before the two-mile run of the morning, of course.

And so, panting and sweating profusely—by this time somewhat pleased that she was effectively wearing less than usual—she set her jaw, staring forward but avoiding the DI's face as he torrented abuse down and over her. Was just the guy's job. Nothing personal. Not like with Newberry.

"What in the name of all that is holy—" was virtually all that Aster heard from his barrage for a long while. She tuned him out.

"Do you have an explanation, Doe," he screamed from a blistering red face, snapping her back to reality.

"No, sir," she said. Not a grass. Not hiding. She stood a little taller.

"Your clothes just spontaneously shredded, cadet?"

"Sorry, sir. Will get it fixed, sir."

"Did you not think to wear someone else's clothing, idiot?"

She paused. "No, sir."

A faint hint of something like amusement touched her eyebrow. Rex would have been the only one to catch it. He would later go on to tell her that the Tseng vibes were really starting to give him the creeps and kinda turn him on at the same time. She had laughed for about twelve minutes.

Tseng appeared sometime amongst the screaming. The Turk's mouth opened as if he were going to say something, but then he took one look at the state of his cadet's uniform and simply closed his mouth again.

"Staff," he said, with a nod. "And," he sighed, dragging his eyes up her body. "Doe."

She stood to attention as though nothing had changed.

"I'll handle this," he said to the DI, then turned back to Aster. "Infirmary. Your appointment."

"Sir."

On his cue, she marched out of PT, feeling Newberry's silenced eyes on her back. She didn't turn.

The room she was admitted to for her first round of Regen spells—or second if you counted the post-op cast—fit only a chair, a desk, and racks of materia and medical supplies. The nurse worked silently, unwrapping Aster's bandages, while Tseng pressed his back into the door and folded his arms. He regarded Aster coolly. "What was it this time?"

She rolled her eyes. "So accusatory."

"Enough of the attitude, Doe. Snap out of it."

Like he'd offered her a blessing, her shoulders sagged from the dragging weight of her hard-worked bravado. She swore Tseng shook his head. She swore further that she heard him mutter: unbelievable.

"I didn't do anything."

"I find that difficult to believe."

Explaining took the better part of ten minutes between the poking and prodding around of her stitches with Cure and Regen spells. None felt quite as nice as the time Zack had healed her nose, though, but she supposed it wasn't worth injuring herself just to ask him to make it better, as tempting as that may be.

Tseng listened with narrowed eyes, nodding every so often to urge her onward, to prompt detail. He listened long past the point that he would usually tire of her descriptive liberties—accurate as they were. Often Tseng wanted the short of it. This time, it was like he was recording her, committing every word she uttered to memory where it might come useful. Like a scribe was etching her words into his brain. Making a plan. Putting pieces together.

Aster pursed her lips. She was used to other people—especially Tseng—knowing more than they cared to share with her. This was evidently no exception.

"What was I supposed to do?" she said bitterly, letting her hands fall to her sides, one significantly gentler than the other. "Send Newberry a signal saying 'yup, you got me, good job. I am weak!' Or, send him one saying 'listen here you giant piece of dung, I don't live by your rules, I make my own—this is my goddamn body and my life, and I'm sure as hell not gonna let you get in my way'? Spoiler alert: I chose the latter."

Tseng brushed his chin with his hand. "I think you made the correct choice."

Her head reclined in shock. Wind knocked from her lungs. "…Really?"

A small noise of assent rose from somewhere from his throat. "I could imagine Cissnei having the same response. And perhaps myself, if I were in a similar situation."

Eyes wide, she was about to utter her thanks but was interrupted before she had the chance. "Of course," he said, "I would never have found myself in that position in the first place."

Aster shrugged. "I'll take it."

"Anyhow," he said. "I will arrange for a new set of uniforms to be dispensed to you. In the meantime, you will be permitted to wear half of the Turks uniform."

"No way," she yelled, over-excitedly.

Tseng pressed a finger to his temple and squeezed his eyes shut in response. "Keep it down. You're not getting the jacket."

That was how Aster found herself in Skill at Arms training that afternoon in a fitted white blouse and black suit trousers that swept cleanly to her booted heels. Sure, she had the cadet helmet on, but still. The feel of the soft blouse against her skin renewed her determination to get into the Turks.

Newberry did dare a glare, but her attention was absent. The presence of a particular member of SOLDIER swept it away. Her heart fluttered, and she found herself biting down on her lip to stop herself from looking, to stop herself from trembling from the anticipation of his mere presence. Heat rose to her cheeks and she hadn't even looked at him. She actually had to pinch her injured finger just to bring herself back down to Gaia.

That night hadn't left her yet; the memory was still fresh. She wasn't even sure it would ever leave her.

Pistol in hand with elbows locked straight, she adjusted her grip to conceal her stitches. In her distraction, she had forgotten this pistol was a dummy, laser-firing useless thing, not the real one to which she had grown accustomed. As such, she stood too rigidly, expecting a recoil that wouldn't come. She was a stone, but she couldn't help it. Not while he was standing behind her.

Her laser dragged off the target and up the wall when she felt a harm hand against her back and another lifting her wrists, adjusting her posture. Breath caught in her throat. The warmth that radiated from his body enveloped her, intoxicating and attractive, and settled a cloud over her awareness and heightened it only to him at the same time—like cotton wool in her ears under the water, but a feather brushing down her spine clear as a breath of wind. She consciously breathed through her mouth—she couldn't afford to get lost in his scent.

"You need to relax," he said, completely unaware, "when you tense, it makes you tremble. When you tremble, you miss."

Closing her eyes brought her straight back to the ballroom, his hand against her skin, lips inches from hers. If she just turned her head… She swallowed as subtly as she could possibly manage. It felt wrong—it was wrong—to enjoy his company so when he didn't even know he was in hers. She strangled her voice and 'cleared her throat' to distort it.

"Then, with all due respect, sir… I'm going to need you to get out of my personal space."

He laughed outright. "Sorry, kid. Do it right next time and I won't pick on you."

Backing away with his signature slap on the shoulder and moving on to fix the posture of the cadet next over, she immediately missed his presence. The air was cold without him there. She was cold without him there.

She tried not to watch him walk away.

It had been almost a week since the stabscotch incident. Though Newberry and Aster weren't speaking, the tension between them still grew and had nowhere to blow. The barracks became an out and out pressure cooker. Conversation lessened. The atmosphere stuck to the neck like sweat, even long after the room was empty. Things were better for the other cadets when they were fighting. Now, though, the barracks were so saturated with gasoline, allowing them to come to sparks might have disastrous consequences.

When training was relinquished to allow time for the cadets to complete their individual ten-week fitness charts, Aster found herself with nothing to do. Her pass out to the infantry—providing she survived that long—was guaranteed. She was a Selective, not a candidate, after all. She seethed over the thought, then jumped from her cross-legged position on the bed. She could think of a thousand better things to do than sit in that dingy little pressure cooker, and one she'd like to do more than most. After throwing on some different clothes, she headed for HQ.

The ground floor, Reception, was sprawling. The floor tiles were so glossy they appeared wet, reflecting the lights above them like mirrors. It pooled beyond her, reaching a glass sculpture of the Shinra logo that stood twice as high as she. Grand staircases ran either side, winding to the second and third floors, draped in blue and red carpeting.

Aster approached the desk staffed by a few receptionists, ran off their feet by phone calls but smiling at visitors all the same. Executives in expensive suits rushed past and around her as though on fast forward and she was stuck on pause. Visitors stuck out in the loop, with their mouths hanging open at the enormity of the corporate machine. Aster figured that was what she'd looked like when she had first been brought to this building. Sure felt like a long time ago now.

Today she had a different goal, and couldn't use her temporary employee keycard to commit it. A receptionist, with a dazzling smile and false eyelashes so long that her eyelids must have been tired holding them up, provided Aster with a guest pass for selected floors up to forty-nine, upon receipt of her employee ID.

Aster hung the bright orange lanyard around her neck, thanked the pleasant receptionist and headed to the glass elevators beside the stairs.

Inside the glass tube, she swiped the keycard attached to her lanyard and pressed the button for the highest floor of her given permissions. She didn't exactly know where she was going, but hey, she was sure she'd find it soon enough.

The platform sucked her straight upwards and out of the ground and lower floors, quickly sweeping her alongside the outer wall of the building so she could enjoy the view. Alone in the elevator, she could really appreciate the effects of daylight on Midgar, and how the sun burned through the spit of Mako in the air and made it glow brighter, and how the bustle of trains and vehicles on the tracks and highways were so much more visible in the mid-afternoon light.

And more so, she realised just how much far you could see as the lift brought her ever higher—she could even see the cliffside and sloping mountains that were famous in Kalm's backdrop in the distance. The grasslands couldn't be far beyond those. She kind of wished she was headed for floor sixty-seven again, so she could get an even better view, then quickly bit her tongue and scolded to herself that she needed to be more careful what she wished for. The cells were on sixty-seven, after all.

The door opened with a quiet ping, and she stepped out into a corridor of slate-like flooring and grey-wash walls, with an incredible waiting area both to her left and right with modern couches and coffee tables looking out of spotless ceiling height windows. A Third Class SOLDIER was lounging across one while a Second loomed over him, arms crossed firmly over his chest. Aster tried not to giggle at how little the Third seemed to care about whatever he'd done to piss off his commanding Second, and breezed past them as if she knew where she was going.

'Conference', 'Briefing', 'VRS', 'Training Room', 'Materia Fusion'. Not remotely what she wanted. Okay, maybe that last one was interesting, but it wasn't what she needed right now.

More hallways, more corridors, more members of SOLDIER, and more doorways later, and she looked like she was coming into luck. She gently knocked on the door to an office space with a Zack Fair's name on.

"If it's Angeal I'm not here!"

The door whispered open and Aster suppressed a laugh. "That ever fooled him?"

He sprang into motion, kicking his feet off the desk and knocking a stack of files onto the floor. His wide eyes met hers then he doubled over with a hand to his chest. "Yikes, I seriously thought you were Angeal for a minute there."

"We do have the same imposing figure," she said smirking. Heat surged over her shoulders—she wasn't supposed to know Angeal. Then remembered the man was practically famous, so never mind.

The cracks were beginning to show.

"I'm not sure I could swing Angeal around the dance floor in quite the same way," said Zack with a grin.

"Now that's something I'd like to see." She tugged at the lanyard around her neck. "I hope I didn't interrupt anything."

"Nah," he said, rubbing the back of his head, making his hair sway. "Angeal wanted me to get that—" when he pointed to the desk where the papers had been and subsequently realised they were strewn across the floor, he merely adjusted his arm and pointed at the floor instead. "Uh, that done by, like, last week or somethin'. I've been real busy."

"Eating chips?" she asked with her tongue in her cheek, nodding towards the open sharing bag on his desk. She gathered the files by her feet and placed them back on the table.

"Chip-eating does take a good portion of my work schedule, but that's not all!"

She tucked her hands into each other behind her back. "That and trouble-making?"

"Only as much as you, I'm sure." His lips quirked into a grin as he crossed the room towards her and leaned back against the desk. "What brings you here?"

Her cheeks took a questionable shade of pink, but she spoke despite her misfiring nerves. "I wanted to see if you were free to come out for lunch with me."

"Sounds great, I'm starving."

His tongue peeped over his straight white teeth with his smile, and it washed her with relief. She grinned. "Giant bag of chips not enough for you?"

"So judgmental," he said, eliciting a laugh from her lips. "I know a place that does these amazing burgers downtown."

"You know a lot of food places."

"I have a spreadsheet," he said, advancing on her until he was close enough to trail his fingers down her arms to her hands, a mischievous smile taking his features.

"Ah," she said with a cocky smirk, looking up into his Mako lit eyes, "a man after my own heart."

Her overconfidence melted immediately, much to Zack's apparent amusement. He was probably about to come back with some cheeky rebuttal, something to further blush her cheeks, but when he slipped his fingers between hers and she tensed, she gave the game away. His fingertips brushed her stitches.

"Whoa, Aster." He brought her hand up to inspect the stitch-work closer. "What happened to your fingers?"

"Oh, uh, it was an accident."

Up quirked one of his eyebrows. Her half-nod didn't convince him. "You know, 'oh, uh' sounds a lot like a prefix to a lie."

She couldn't help but snort, partially from nerves (because he was just kidding, right? He wasn't a mind-reader), as she forcibly stopped herself from repeating 'oh, uh' by pressing a finger to her lips. "It's fine, honestly. It doesn't even hurt anymore. It was just an ac—incident."

Incident was closest to the truth.

"You sure?" he asked, lips barely moving with the words. He turned her fingers gently, looking them both over. "The city can be a pretty rough place. I know you live topside, but you work in the slums, and there are monsters and stuff down there. Look, if you get into any trouble, let me know, okay?"

She chewed the insides of her cheeks and gave him a smile somewhere between genuine and forced. "Okay…" she said, then an indisputably honest grin overtook her. "But you have to let me know if you're in any trouble, too."

Blissfully unaware of how much she meant it and how genuinely capable of proving it she was, he smiled. "Deal."

Zack led her from the office and down a short corridor, through some double doors and to a different set of elevators from which she came. They opened to the swipe of his keycard, and he followed her into the elevator when it recognised his employee ID.

It was small and a traditional box and mirrors elevator, nothing fancy like the main lobby glass lifts. The ground floor button lit yellow under Zack's knuckle as he pressed it before he proceeded to lean into the handrail. He folded his arms across his chest, his sword clattering against the metal behind him, smirking faintly like he knew something she didn't.

The elevator bobbed and began its descent. Forty-nine, forty-eight, forty-seven, the large monitor above the door read. When she noticed Zack's eyes on hers, she smiled and tentatively set her fingers upon his folded arms. "What're you smiling at?"

"You, I—" he was interrupted by a deafening bang from none too far beyond the walls.

The elevator rattled in response. It ground to a halt. The collision of the brakes forced both into a stumble, Aster clinging to Zack's arms and he to her and the railing. The lights flickered off.

Aster flitted her eyes through the darkness, trying to adjust, find some hint of light. Nothing. So she sought to make his eyes out through blackness. "What's going on?"

Only for their breathing was there a single sound.

Zack looked at her for seven long seconds and swallowed hard. The emergency light flashed on, burning their skin with its red glare.

An alarm blasted. One Aster had heard before. Squeezing his arm, she shot her eyes back to find clues in his, heart beginning to race. She hoped for answers or at least reassurance. But he didn't have any to give.

"Zack?"

"Shit."