A/N: Okay, huge apologies for flaking out on last week's update. Recently I guess I've been seriously doubting my ability to write anything worth reading, but anyway. I'm super sorry, I felt so unbelievably guilty about it—I beat myself up about it for the whole week!

And honestly, it's some kind of out and out miracle that this chapter is on time (although late in the day), too! I've been travelling all day with very little internet access so I thought it was going to end up being tomorrow!

Enough of that though! I actually freaking love this chapter. I'm not kidding or over-exaggerating when I say that I wrote the very first incarnation of this scene in 2012. Yeah. I mean it was cruder then, and I've changed it a lot, but the basic premise is exactly the same. Kind of love it a bit (lot) or at least I love how it plays in my head, haha. And also, I've got some SUPER SNEAKY foreshadowing in this chapter that is literally having me dying right here, right now. It's super, super subtle, honest. The words will mean absolutely nothing until later on, probably about, I dunno, Chapter 35? That's my guess. I have no idea, I haven't written it yet, but that is my sort of prediction. We'll see how close I am, haha. If you ever come back in future and re-read this chapter then I'm hoping the response will be HOLY SHIT IT LITERALLY SAYS IT RIGHT THERE ALL ALONG. But it's so subtle. Might not even pick it up then!

Also: Storey is the UK English spelling when regarding floor heights in buildings—I hope it doesn't put you off too much if you don't use UK spellings where you are from!

Hope you are having a beautiful week. Stay well, friends!

10th Jul '19

Chapter 17: Breaking and Entering

"Zack," Aster said, forcing her words to come out stronger than her chest was feeling them. When his eyes drifted away from her face, she squeezed his corded forearms with a jolt of desperation. "I need you to tell me what's happening."

His resolve must have steeled because he met her imploring gaze again. "We have to get out of here. The building's under attack.

Her jaw nearly hit the ground. Again? she almost cried, but caught herself before it slipped. "An attack? On Shinra?"

An emergency announcement wailed through an intercom. "Actual causality. Actual causality. HQ security breach, repeat, HQ security breach. This is not a drill. All citizens to be evacuated immediately. Sephiroth to President. Rhapsodos and Turks divide between Floor Forty-Five and Sixty-Seven, lead SOLDIER Second Classes. Hewley and Fair, report to the First and Ground Floor, respectively, lead Thirds. Infantry to grounds. Remaining Firsts, report to stations. This is not a drill. I repeat. Actual causality—"

"Sounds like my cue," said Zack.

"Not until we get out of here, it's not."

The light was so low and erratic as the emergency beacon rotated that Aster couldn't make out any hatches or panels. She hammered the buttons on the control panel, hoping the optimistically labelled 'eject' and 'emergency' buttons might bring effect, but the lights behind them had died and the panel was completely unresponsive. She smacked it with the palm of her hand. "Come on, there's got to be a way out in emergencies, right?"

"If there's a power cut, yeah," Zack muttered. "But the alarm system overrides the generator. The elevators are 'SOLDIER-proof'. Figured that if you could trap a member of SOLDIER in here, you could trap any intruders."

Aster remembered a seminar she took way back in Stage One of training describing precisely that principle. At the time, she hadn't thought anything of it. She shook her head in disbelief. "That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard."

Zack reached for a handle near a fault line that Aster could barely make out through the darkness. He yanked the bar, but it looked like his shoulder would sooner dislocate than the catch unlock. "It's no good. Without power it only opens from the other side."

"Are you—" Her voice came out nearly a screech. "Okay, I stand corrected—that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard!"

He snorted, diverting his gaze to the door—sealed shut. "You've got attitude problems."

She followed his line of sight, trying to work out his train of thought. Her answer was autonomous. "And here I was trying to hide that fact from you for a little longer."

"Don't bother, I like it," he said with a flash of a grin.

But their frivolity was suspended by an inhuman shriek that vibrated through the metal walls and struck their spines.

After her bones shivered, Aster muttered, "Maybe we're safer in here."

Zack didn't seem to notice. He ran his palm down the split between the doors and squeezed his fingers into the tight gap. SOLDIER-proof doors.

She raised an eyebrow. "You're not seriously—"

Sure enough, the doors began to pry apart. Zack's muscles quivered against the strain of the weight. "Oh my Goddess," she breathed, as he adjusted himself, pushing one door away with his foot and using two hands on the other.

"Crap," he said, seeing a blank cement wall before them, "we're between floors."

Aster leaned out of the elevator, trusting him to keep the doors open for long enough not to decapitate her. She rested her hand against the wall outside and checked the gap between the elevator and the shaft. Around a foot of room, not a lot, just enough to fall through. Didn't check out the drop. That'd just psych her out.

Zack was just on the verge of begging her to get back inside before she fell out—since his leg was effectively the only thing serving as a fence between her and very sudden death—when she pushed herself back and safe in the elevator. When he let go, the doors slammed shut with such force he winced, and the lift rattled again.

She brushed the dust from her hands. "There's enough room for me to squeeze out."

"What?" His voice bounced from the steel floor and mirrored walls. Volume control was not often his strongest suit. "You can't be serious, it's way too dangerous."

"What else are we gonna do?" They could hear an intercom blaring beyond the shaft, a muffled wail: Threat Level Three. Apparently, the intercom inside the elevator gave up the ghost. Didn't bode well for the power supply to the light then, either. Aster shook her head. "C'mon. If it's any consolation, if I had your strength I'd open the doors for you instead, but that's just not a possibility."

As if she needed to prove it, she wedged her fingers between the doors and pulled. Prying the door open with her foot as Zack had helped none. The door gave only a few inches, slipped from her fingers. Slammed shut.

"If you fall, you'll die," he said, stressing on the obvious.

"If we don't get you out of here, more people will die out there." Threat Level Four, the alarm screamed, faint, like a shadow in the distance. Aster shook her head, feeling the familiar heat of panic growing beneath her skin. "They need your help."

"Keeping you safe is more important."

"You don't mean that!"

He stole her by the waist. "Maybe I'm selfish."

The intensity of his gaze shook her foundations, but she shook her head. Zack Fair was a lot of things. Selfish was not one of them.

"But I know that you're not," she said gently.

His shoulders fell after a beat, proving he knew she was right. One flash of the beacon lit an anxious touch on Zack's features. By the next flash, it was gone. Aster's pretended she hadn't noticed.

She patted the centre of his chest. "Trust me."

As though magnetic, she couldn't take her hands away. It was impossible, for his grip on her waist hadn't yet lessened.

"You die like this and I'll never forgive myself," he said quietly.

A glint caught light in Aster's eyes by the match struck in her smile. "I promise I'll let you mope as much as you want if I do, in fact, die here."

"Holy crap, you're gutsy," he said somewhat bewildered. He shook out his wrists and took a rooted stance near the door.

She spoke with a smirk, ignoring how her hips turned cold from his missing touch. "It's part of the charm."

It was mainly part of the façade, but if it's all the same…

Perhaps against his better judgement, Zack heaved open the doors. His arms like a reverse vice.

Aster sucked a deep breath through her nose, filtering bravery from her nerves. She ducked under his arm, holding onto his waist and ordering her shaking feet. Face to face with him, back to the wall, her held breath quivered out.

Her heels suspended over nothingness. The forty storey drop looked inviting. Inky black, a thick embrace, like falling wouldn't hurt but instead envelop her and pull her slowly.

Most storeys of the Shinra Building were double-height or greater, so the drop was, by her best guess, at least six hundred feet. She could fall that in six seconds. Six seconds and a grip on Zack's waist was all between her and a blunt knock off the mortal coil. Her fingers twitched against him.

"You scared?" He spoke as if his voice might blow her over the edge.

"Yeah," she said. Finally her eyes pulled away from the fall. "But I can be brave, too."

It was the fatigue etched into Zack's muscles that forced her to come to courage. But even on her tiptoes, with a hand on his shoulder for balance, her fingertips only barely scraped the lip of the roof. She would have to jump.

The overwhelming pressure of time consumed her, but not in the movement of seconds. Rather in staccato beats of distant firearms, and groans. Deep, guttural groans that couldn't possibly be human. Yet it all sounded so far away.

She jumped. She didn't want to wager how many bullets or explosions or shrieks and screams she'd need to hear before Zack's limbs would give to the crush of the doors.

Hanging there, the infinite darkness hit her. This was crazy.

It would have hit Zack then, too, she knew, as she shimmied to the right to gain a foothold against the box instead of flailing in the doorway. Hit him pretty hard, actually, because Zack Fair, SOLDIER First Class, youngest of his rank, invincible and unstoppable, was powerless. A feeling he would not have been used to.

No amount of abnormal speed or engineered strength would help him if she were to fall. While he possessed the reflexes to catch her, the door would take him before he could reach. Maybe he'd survive with just broken ribs, bruised organs and a punctured lung. Probably. But not without listening to her screams follow her to a hard end.

He didn't breathe, because breathing would have weakened his stance. And since he didn't breathe, he didn't speak. He didn't close the doors, either, even though he now could have. Somehow, the obsessive, destructive gaze he held on her felt like a leg up. He was there. Powerless or not. And somehow, that alone was powerful.

By now he could have closed the doors to rest his screaming limbs. He didn't. Wouldn't take his eyes off her. "You got this," he said.

Her fingers threatened to snap off, so she yanked herself up, back scraping against the shaft wall like sandpaper, ripping the skin over her shoulder blades.

A groan that rivalled those from beyond the wall tore through her throat as she lunged for a steel fixture on top of the roof. Her fingers brushed it and slipped.

Her scream curdled blood. A scream that went on to haunt Zack's dreams.

"SHIT," she yelped as her back and head slammed back into the cement behind her, before swinging face-first into the elevator wall again. Swaying limply by one hand as sparks flew across her vision. The flesh of her armpit stretched, muscles yanked. Sweat ran down her neck.

Zack spat a few choice words and jerked forwards. "You alright?"

She was convinced—downright certain—that her heart was beating so hard that the elevator throbbed with it. Unable to speak, think, or breathe, she nodded and reached for the roof again.

She couldn't feel her brittle fingers. Yet she dragged her body up and secured a new grip on some kind of piping. Her elbow jutted outwards as she twisted it into an uncomfortable position in the narrow space to lift her ribs over the lip of the roof. She reached for the thick, wound cable that held the elevator aloft, and with a loud, pained groan that reverberated through the empty space, she dragged herself onto the top of the roof of the metal cage. She rolled over with a thump, shuddering. "Holy shit."

Air forcibly rushed back into Zack's lungs at the sound of her voice. The loudest sound in the chamber.

"You okay up there?" he yelled, but he couldn't mask the shaking undertones of his voice. He still hadn't closed the damned door yet. Wasn't going to, either, not until he was absolutely sure she wasn't going to fall to her death. He couldn't possibly have forgotten about the strain in his body, but maybe there were just more important things to think about.

"I'm fine," she called back, breathlessly, dragging herself onto all fours. Breathily hysterical. "Ha! SOLDIER-proof, my ass, huh?"

"Hilarious."

Delirious.

Not willing to trust her balance, she didn't get up. She grabbed a red-painted handle and yanked the stiff bar. It probably hadn't been utilised since installation. It took both hands, but the bolt unstuck and the crank gave. The little trap door caved in.

She leaned into it with a grin, offering Zack her hand.

An inviting hand. The doors slammed closed, and his hand slipped into hers. Tight. Not willing to let go to the tremors of the rattling elevator. He heaved himself through the small hole without letting go.

Aster collapsed back into the metal that her fried nerves now recognised as cold. Sat with their legs tangled together. "Oh my Goddess," she breathed because there was really no more to say. She squeezed Zack's hand, hoping that if she were firm, he wouldn't feel her trembling. "What kind of emergency escape is that?" She shook her head. "Normal people can't pry open doors. If one of us had been alone…"

She trailed off. Her eyes dove over the edge and into the darkness. A few storeys or so down, following a corded cable, the outline of a second broken-down elevator loomed.

As she leaned over the edge, Zack's free hand took hold of her waist instinctively. Eerie echoes from the world on the other side of the shaft circled in the lofty space above them.

Her ribs rattled with a heavy exhale, and as if in response, Zack wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He said she was shaking. She said it was shock. Only then, as she wrapped her arms around his middle, did she realise how weak her body grew.

"If I can make it so that you never have to do anything like that ever again," he said, tucking his face into her neck so his lips just barely brushed her skin, "I'm gonna do it."

Guilt ran her through with a blade. If he couldn't stand this, he'd never approve of what she did. He would never accept her life as an agent in the same military as he. She bit back the pain and swallowed it down as her skin burned under his breath. Her collarbone on fire.

He slowly pulled away with heavy eyelids and a swollen heart. His thumb dragged across her jaw to her neck, and his bright blue eyes trailed from hers to her lips.

A breath whistled over her drying mouth as he leaned into her, and his nose brushed against hers. It was one moment,

interrupted.

Splintering steel screeched from ten to fifteen storeys above. The doors and wall blasted into the shaft with the shower of an unconfined explosion. Aster and Zack ducked under their arms to protect themselves from the slew of debris over their heads.

Zack yanked Aster's hand to stand as one of the doors crashed mere feet from them, and the other blew into the empty space. It clattered into the other elevator beside them, bounced off it, and fell down and down into the six hundred feet of darkness below.

Light streamed from the gaping hole. From it, an unholy axe no smaller than the full length of Aster's body cleaved through the air, carving clean through the steel-wound cables that held the elevator aloft. Counterweight sliced away, brakes failed, the elevator began its rapid descent.

They looked at one another for less than a split second. "Jump!" Zack yelled.

Aster couldn't stop the scream before it came, but it was lost under the rumble of the falling steel box crunching against the failed brakes. They landed atop of the other elevator with the horrific thud of Zack's back against metal.

Heart in her gaping mouth, she stared at Zack wide-eyed until the screeching of concrete and iron plummeted to a deafening crunch deep in the bottom of death. The sound reverberated back up the shaft like the aftershock of an earthquake, a thousand times louder, pounding in their ears and heads.

So too did her heart pound against her chest as she lay strewn over Zack, unable to move.

Her body shivered against his, not yet having had the experience or exposure to cope with shock in the same way Zack did. She quivered from head to foot. Moments slower and they would have been dead. Had they decided to wait in the relative safety of the elevator instead of risking the climb out, they would have been dead. Irrevocably, undeniably dead.

It begged the question: why wait?

There is no perfect time or perfect moment if the end takes you before you can seize it.

Aster grabbed the ribbed-knit fabric of his turtleneck in loose, trembling fists, and pressed her lips to his. Time slowed. Her body melted against his. She couldn't breathe and didn't need breath either, because if this was her last, maybe she could be okay with that.

She pulled away and released his shirt, his breath filling her lungs. It may have been heaven underneath her skin, but hell was around them.

Zack spoke in barely more than a whisper, still so close that his lips brushed hers with his words. "We have to move."

A deep breath hitched in her throat. She closed her eyes and nodded faintly. He sat up and kissed her again, firm, quick, then broke open the seal on the escape hatch to check for stuck passengers. The thought hadn't even crossed her mind until Zack was thoughtful enough to check. Trapped in her small world as always.

There was no one else, besides.

"This is Shinra. All citizens evacuated. "The alarm was louder this time, travelling through the hole in the wall far above.

Zack shook his head and tugged at the guest pass around Aster's neck. "One to go."

She couldn't bring herself to respond.

"Enemy threat Level Five conditions met, that's Level Five conditions met. I repeat- "

Aster pulled herself to her feet by the cabling, willing her knees to hurry up and solidify. She brushed herself free of the shock in her system—or rather buried it—and pressed a hand to her chest in the hope of relieving her throbbing heart. "What does that mean?"

"It's getting worse," he said, standing to meet her. "But I gotta get you outta here first. See that ladder there?"

He pointed to the rungs embedded in the concrete, running against the wall of the doors starting a few feet above their heads. "That's our way out. We can use it to get to an air vent. Can I give you a leg up?" he asked, already folding his hands into each other in a foothold.

With a deft touch to his shoulder to steady herself, she hopped onto Zack's hands and allowed him to launch her up. She climbed up just high enough to leave space for Zack to grab on then, holding tightly with one hand, leaned back to reach out for him with the other. Flashing her a smile, he jumped and snatched her hand and the ladder beneath her.

Their steps against the concrete bars echoed around them as they began the climb.

"Nice view," he called.

"Don't make me kick you off."

Zack laughed to himself until light humour couldn't float the loads on their shoulders any longer.

And as if summoned, a scream signalled that the end of their troubles hadn't been delivered just yet. Inhuman, shrill like nails on a chalkboard, and directly above them, stood an enormous beast from that hole in the wall high over.

It was at least fifteen foot tall and just as wide. Huge arms were sheathed in an olive-tinted armour, in a style Aster was sure she'd seen before, that covered most of its leathery, purple skin. Horns protruded from its skull, for skewering, no doubt, but more fearsomely it wielded a club of which was identical in size to the axe that had cut through the industrial steel-capped cabling of the other elevator like butter with a hot knife. And this looked just as capable. It leaned from its floor and lobbed the giant mace through the shaft straight for them.

Zack launched himself up several rungs like a cat to shield Aster's body with his own, curling around her and preparing to tank the blow. By the luck Aster prayed for, the weapon barely glanced his shoulder guard with a hell of a clang, but the close scrape whipped their exposed skin with the cleaved wind of its path. But despite the threat, she stared up into the face of the beast and her jaw fell low—she recognised the monster: Vajradhara Tai. From her book of fiends. It was her turn to be completely powerless.

But Zack wasn't. He balled his hand into a tight, white-knuckled fist, muscles tensed and strained. His veins, then his skin and hand glowed blue, growing an orb of frigid energy the size of a bowling ball that lit her eyes and face. His hand shook under the intensity before he thrust it toward the beast, releasing the globe of magic to shoot like a missile and embed into the monster's gut.

Nothing happened. Not until the glowing orb exploded from inside the monster into a thousand spears of ice. Shrapnel and shards and glittering flakes of snow shot in every single direction.

Zack tucked himself around Aster as splintering, glass-like projectiles tore small holes in his uniform and grazed his back. But she couldn't look away. The monster, with javelins of ice pierced through its skin, fell paralysed from its perch and collapsed into the remaining elevator beneath them, crumbling the mechanisms under its weight and plunging both down to meet its companion at the bottom of the shaft. Screeching all the way to its bitter end. Errant shards bit straight into her cheekbone and arms, but it was worth the sight.

Sparkling mites of ice like floating diamonds suspended through the shaft. Goddess, it got cold. Like back home. Yet it was gorgeous. Aster had no idea that materia and Zack's strength could combine to be so breathtakingly beautiful and powerful, deadly.

He was so unassuming. But he was also youngest of his class. A prodigy. He was who he was for a reason.

"Shit, these are definitely Wutaian," he said, resting his still slightly glowing—and absolutely freezing—hand atop of Aster's on one of the rungs by mistake and left it there as a happy accident.

She frowned and turned her head to face his, blood cresting her cheek from its icy incision. "What, like the last ones weren't?"

"No, well, I didn't mean," he stumbled over his words. Then it was his turn to crease his brow. "Wait, how do you know about last time?"

"Oh—uh, Tifa told me. They got into her training room."

"Right," he said and squeezed her hand before climbing down around her so she could continue her ascent. "That was what we call an anti-SOLDIER unit. It's Wutaian, but they didn't send these last time. I think they breed 'em or something. They're bad news."

"And we know there's at least one more up there, 'cause one of them threw that axe in here and broke that cable. Double bad news," she said, clambering up quicker than before, eager to get out of the hellhole, even for the good it brought. Her lips tingled.

Zack, unusually sombre, merely replied, "If there's only one more we wouldn't be on threat level five."

At the top of the ladder, still some five storeys shy of the hole in the wall from which horrible screams and clashes of steel emanated, Aster crawled into the duct space, knees clanging awkwardly against the thin metal not meant to support the bodyweight of two fully-sized adults. She resorted to sliding her knees across instead to minimise the noise out of paranoia, but you know, she didn't feel like getting shot at from below from soldiers Wutai or Shinra because someone suspicious was trawling through the air vents. Zack wisely followed her lead.

They met with a metal grill at the end of the vent, through which small voices travelled. She pressed a finger to her lips. Zack nodded. The vent was almost pitch dark, save for the blades of light through the grate that lit Aster's face with golden threads. But it's easier to listen in the dark.

Voices of short and choppy language. Rough and harsh. She recognised it from the slums. The words screamed in her face by the guard and leader in Sector Six bottomside. Not the same, but 'actually Wutaian' was right. She pushed the grate with her palm. It creaked, didn't budge. She peered through it instead.

She held up two fingers to Zack. Two men—no, three, no, more—she corrected, adding digits until she was holding seven. She searched for bodies—alive ones, Wutaian ones. Found a few. But there were too many library shelves in the way of a perfect view. But there couldn't have been any fighting. Not enough noise for fighting.

Chatting, barking, giving orders? Sounds coming from different directions. Rummaging. Searching.

Aster turned herself around as silently as possible and pressed her lips to Zack's ear. She murmured to him, not with intent to send shivers down his spine, though that was the outcome.

"Don't freak out," she said almost silently, and smashed her heel through the grate with an enormous but unavoidable clatter, and shoved herself out of the vent.