A/N: LMAO I said I'd take a week off because I was starting uni again and took off FIVE MONTHS. YOU GUYS. SORRY. I'm. laughing. You're probably not. Sorry about that.

Short fic update: I've now got like ten chapters ready for publishing but again, uni hit me like a freight train so what I'm gonna do is update maybe once every two weeks instead of once a week? Still Wednesdays, of course. That's our thing now, me and you. Right? Me and you! Yeah, you!

ALSO, Legacy is a year old tomorrow? What?

Short life update: I still write loads, I still hate my degree, I think I love FF7 even more than I ever have in my LIFE, and I started live streaming (again)—my twitch handle is NOT the same as my fanfiction one, however, so if people want it maybe DM me or post a comment or something and I'll send it to you OR maybe I'll eventually shot that shit into my bio (we play a crap load of FF over there and we have a LOT of fun because guys—I wish I was like Aster but in reality, I'm totally a Rex).

AS ALWAYS, I hope you're having a fantastic week, month, year, and I will be back with another upload in a couple of weeks time! A Wednesday, of course!

26th Feb '20

Chapter 25: A Secret I'd Quite Like to Keep

The debrief was contained to a large boardroom on the forty-eighth floor of Shinra Headquarters. Like a formal dinner, the seven members of SOLDIER involved in the mission, plus Rude in Tseng's stead, lined the table. At the head sat Lazard Deusericus, a man whom Aster had brushed acquaintance with on scant occasion. He was the Director of SOLDIER, and his elbows were pressed against the surface, gloved knuckles at his chin. Aster always thought that gloves that weren't for combat or cold weather were a sign of a man hiding his intentions. That could have been the case, but on Lazard it seemed in a strange, unexplainable way that it was a respectful gesture, like the curator of an exhibition of ancient tomes wearing them so as to not damage her artefacts.

The infantrymen lined the edges of the room with their right fists tucked into their left palms behind their backs. Rifles cleaned, unloaded, and hanging slack near their hips at the end of their canvas straps. They stood like statues, suits of armour there solely to mark the walls of a corridor in a medieval castle. Purely aesthetic editions to the meeting. Part of pomp and ceremony. Not one of them opened their mouths, because each of them knew their place.

Rude was there specifically so that Tseng did not need to be. This was a SOLDIER debriefing. Tseng would be needed elsewhere. His presence was much as that of the infantry: maintenance of appearances. Procedure and policy.

So, Zack did most of the talking. A consummate professional, with less formality than that Aster would expect to be delivered from say, Angeal or Genesis. He delivered his report to Lazard who peppered it with questions full of military buzzwords and phrases like 'operational security', 'kinetic activity' and 'execution analysis'. Phrases which loosely translated in plain language to 'what went wrong', 'how much blood was lost' and 'who can be blamed for the errors'.

"Finally, sir, performance was at a peak. The guys did great," Zack said after a decent thirty minutes, bringing his hand down onto Cloud's shoulder sat at his side as he did. "I was pretty damn impressed by our SOLDIER squad leaders' responsiveness to orders and ability to adapt quickly to contribute to the success of the mission. Camaraderie is so important and it brings instant trust. I knew you all had my back out there and we seriously worked like a well-oiled machine. Makes me proud call myself leader of the unit. Proud to wear this," he said, pulling at the SOLDIER insignia branded into the leather belt over his abdomen.

Backs straightened and postures rose. Tiny movements individually, but when performed simultaneously by a roomful of people the effect is greater, the same as the rise of a single follicle versus every hair on an arm. This was the effect Zack had on the men he led. It was nothing short of a superpower, that perhaps even he didn't know he possessed.

With a nod, Lazard sat back in his chair. "Well said. If that is everything, we may conclude the debrief. Congratulations all on a successful mission."

Though Zack smiled, his eyes were blank. There was something deliberate about where he looked, and more importantly, where he didn't.

He escorted Aster back to the barracks accompanied only by the sound of the world around them. The barracks were silent. It felt strange when they were empty, and it was clear by the state of the atmosphere that they had been empty for several days. It was like walking into a school during the evening. Vacant, soulless. Stale.

The door slid shut with the same mechanical whirr but the sigh was different. The wind didn't move when the door closed—it never did. But it felt unnaturally still. As though even the motes of dust that hung in the light were frozen.

The beds were uniform and there were no personal effects left on show. The chalkboard still loomed near the door to the showers, and the stick of chalk was out of place from where the DI had smacked it down, because someone had used it to draw something vaguely phallic. Presumably in the elation that followed pass out. The room was as it was left, of course. But it wasn't. Slightly off.

The boots were gone.

In fact, Newberry's whole station had been erased of any trace he had ever been there. Like he never existed. He only remained in the imprint he left on her neck—but even that was fading to a sickly yellow-green—and in her memories of him. Aster perpetuated him.

But where were those boots?

One day, would they be reissued to another cadet? Would anyone ever find that small slip of paper and read its dire message? Or was she the last to lay eyes upon it? The last ever to receive its warning.

The end is in sight.

She sighed, put her helmet down on her bedside table and slapped her gloves on top of it.

"You got the worst spot in the room, huh? No one wants the cot by the door," Zack said over-casually. Trying to hide that he was placing his words the way he would place the final Ace on a tower of cards. The only purpose was to fill the silence, but empty words can't fill a void.

If Aster was that tower, she toppled at the sound of his voice. "Uh—yeah. But I don't mind. I can stay out of the way."

Zack ran his hand to the back of his head. He was staring at the chalkboard.

"Five or six weeks ago, I pulled the Turk selective off one of the other recruits. She was screaming at him. He pulled back to smack her one right in the teeth. That was you."

All the less than savoury things she did, he knew. And if he didn't, he'd find out. Aster swallowed as her spine sought to shrink away from her skin and her stomach hollowed. She didn't say anything, because he didn't need an answer. It wasn't a question, and he was speaking more to the empty room than he was to her.

"I guess a lot of stuff makes sense, now." His eyes flicked to the cowl around her neck, then to her eyes. For a moment he dragged his teeth over his lip. "Was it him?"

Newberry, Jack, struck through with chalk. She touched her fingers to her neck.

"Yeah."

Zack returned to muttering, staring back into the chalkboard. "I guess that's why you were so certain he wouldn't attack you again. You knew he wasn't going to make it another night. You sent him off."

Actually, no, but she didn't correct him. All she knew was that he wasn't stupid enough as to try again that very next night—and she didn't even know that for sure. It was just a feeling. A hunch. And it happened to pay off.

"I didn't know a lot about him," Zack went on. "I knew that the drill instructors were reporting issues to Angeal, and he used to mention them to me sometimes. A couple of cadets that couldn't see eye-to-eye. It's not uncommon, happens in almost every squad for at least a time. But this…"

He trailed off because there were no words.

"What about those stitches?" he asked. "Was that him?"

Aster unfurled her fingers. So many healing treatments had been undergone since that incident that the injury that might have taken ten weeks to heal with Icicle Inn's traditional methods took less than three in Midgar. It hadn't scarred, although there was a faint pink cross no bigger than an asterisk on a keyboard where one of the stitches had healed slower than the rest. Even that would likely be gone in under week.

"I got cocky and he punished me for it," she said.

Except that wasn't what she believed at all. She shook her head and turned to Zack to correct herself. "Well. No. I was standing up for myself. He took all my stuff, threw it around, tore up my uniform. Then he stole my switchblade—it was a present from my little brother and it means a lot to me. Said I'd only get it back if I didn't flinch in stabscotch."

"You played his game?"

"I won his game."

Her hubris made him smile, but it slipped.

"What about the bloody nose?" he asked. "You remember when I came to Tifa's and you were there?"

Aster frowned. Of course, she couldn't forget how Zack stole her breath and mind so wholly, and how she hadn't felt the same since, but why had her nose been bleeding?

"Oh," she said, remembering. "No, that was from a pistol recoil in training. That was a mistake."

The words fell heavy and silence resumed. It was an unwelcome reminder of her position.

"I guess it all makes sense now. Why you freaked out when you saw Tseng at the ball. Why you were so desperate to help defend HQ during the raid. Why you were so competent." He hesitated. "Does that mean all that stuff about the monster exterminating team in Icicle Inn was a lie to justify why you were so…non-civilian?"

She shook her head. "N-no. That was the truth. Everything was true, I just left out the…this bit," she said, waving her hands towards the room and letting them fall to her sides again. "I was an ice skater and monster-hunter. Those two skillsets have helped me here."

Zack nodded slowly. Rewriting his assumptions about her, she presumed. Replacing fiction with fact and building up a clearer, more accurate picture of who she was. It was her fault, there was no denial there. She rattled his trust.

She didn't go into further detail about her issues with Newberry, though. Not with intent to hide, or for lack of trust, just that, as her dad would grimly remind her on the daily: there's no point beating a dead chocobo. Mentioning their daily arguments and blows or the day he knocked her unconscious in the shower room would serve nothing and no one but discomfort for both of them.

Discomfort was already in abundance.

Zack glanced back to the chalkboard. "Third," he said, quietly, almost absently. "You must be doing really well."

"Fourth."

"Don't be modest."

Aster folded her arms and scowled sidelong at nothing in particular, anything that wouldn't combust from the bitterness in her stare.

"That's definitely not what this is," she said.

She dropped to sit on her cot and her leg gave way with a sharp twinge in her thigh. She sucked a hiss over her teeth and clutched the muscle she must have pulled pretty badly during the mission.

"Didn't you injure your leg?" Zack asked. "Slash wound?"

"Yeah, other leg, though," she said, pulling the ankle of her combat pants out of her boot and ravelled the fabric up to her thigh. Superficially it was relatively unscathed. A deep, black and purple bruise on her knee had formed in a perfect line and corner from where the edge of her kneepad had dug into her flesh following a fall, and a surface graze scratched across the side of her thigh, but otherwise it looked as though this leg had not been through a war zone.

Zack sat beside her and pushed his palm against the muscle from above her knee and up to the rolled up fabric. The pressure ached with relief.

"That hurt too much?"

"No, it feels good."

He lifted her leg over his knee and increased the pressure of his hand, pushing upwards until his fingertips slid beneath her pant leg and back. It made her squirm. She didn't know if it was the pain, the relief, or something else. But he always had his gloves on. She wanted him to touch her without them. She watched him.

"You know, you can go to a therapist by the infantry gym while you're on duty if the pain doesn't lift," he said, with a flat, unsteady voice, like he was uncomfortable with it. "You can go anytime. It's usually quiet around brunch, when most people are training. You just hafta ask your instructor to excuse you."

He didn't look at her and she wasn't listening to him. She could hardly see the colour of his eyes through his lashes. Straight nose. Thicker lower lip.

"You seem to really be feeling it. You'd probably feel a lot better afterwards."

Aster leaned forward and blurted out, "Can we go out again? Maybe sometime this week?"

He looked up from her leg and his hand stopped moving.

"I wanna keep seeing you," she said. "I wanna see you more."

He didn't say anything for a moment and her ribs tightened into a vice around her heart.

"I—I understand if you don't want that. I won't be—" Hurt would be the wrong word. She'd be hurt whether she wanted to accept that or not. "Offended," she chose.

"It's not that," he said, "Aster, I'm not supposed to date you. Fraternisation, they call it. You're under my direct command. They strip ranks for that kinda stuff."

She felt her pulse in her throat. "Really?"

"Yeah, sometimes," Zack said, and his hand loosened against her thigh, releasing the deliberate pressure over her muscle. Now it rested like it lived there, like it was the only natural place for it to be. "If not demotion then punishment."

"Man," he said, rubbing his face with his free hand. "Wonder what Angeal's gonna think."

"Um, Angeal already knows."

"What?"

"He recognised me on the day of the raid. He told me that if I didn't tell you, he'd tell you himself, in fewer words."

"Huh." Zack scratched his head. "But Angeal loves the rulebook."

"Tseng also knows. There's not a lot I can hide from that man."

At this, Zack's spine tensed. She could feel it in the flexion of his fingers. "What did he have to say?"

"Told me it would be better if I had no connections. For my own sake. That if I became a Turk, I could have to hurt you some day." She slipped her leg off his knee and stared at his hand. The thick black leather was soft through wear, but that one layer was one layer too much for her. "He didn't say anything else. I don't think he cared. As long as I do what he says, he doesn't care about anything else."

"Does anyone else know?" he asked. Weighing up the damages.

Aster shook her head. "Except our friends. Tifa, Cloud. Surrexit."

Zack nodded slowly and his eyes drifted someplace far away.

She placed her hand over his and wrapped her other one gingerly into the crook of his elbow, forefinger grazing the swell of muscle beneath his skin. "You won't get demoted. I'll tell them I deceived you, or, you know…they never have to know it ever happened. We can just leave it to rest."

"What?" He turned to her, gaze ripping from the edge of the room. "No, I'm not breaking things off with you. I wanna keep seeing you. We can be discreet. If there's no military upheaval, they won't care. People meet and even get married in the military all the time—it's only when it's 'inappropriate' that it becomes punishable."

Like a commander dating a grunt kind of inappropriate, no doubt.

She blew a soft laugh through her nose. "You, discreet?"

"Yeah. Chill. Not conspicuous."

"Zack Fair? Not conspicuous?"

It felt good to see him smile again.

"That's right," he said.

Aster's hardened face wasn't so ready to crack. "That sounds like you'd be taking a risk for me."

"Then don't look at it like that," he said. If he was putting on a brave face, he was extremely convincing. "I'm taking a risk for me. I'm being selfish. I'm not risking punishment so that you can be with me. I'm risking punishment so i can be with you. It's a personal choice. It's not on you."

Then, he shrugged. "'Sides. They won't punish me."

"'Cause they won't catch you?"

"Nah, 'cause they need me," he said, as though it were God-scribed law of the land. "Being First comes with privileges. I get more than just a bigger apartment."

Yes, he got respect. A certain level of leniency on his leash. Because he could do the work of ten Seconds singlehandedly. Because he had done. Because he did every day.

He sobered from his spike of confidence. "And they probably need you, too."

"Actually," she said with a slight snort, "Tseng has made it his life mission to ensure that I don't come to that misguided conclusion."

"'Course he has. He has to keep the balance of power in his favour."

"Maybe," she said, eyes drifting away. If she was as expendable to Tseng as Zack had suggested, she couldn't see any power within her grasp.

He touched her cheek to bring her back. "It must be hard to be here when it wasn't your choice."

"I try not to think about it. Fear as an entity is tireless and crippling, so I can't stop or it'll catch up with me. Sometimes I wish I was back in Icicle Inn, protecting the townspeople from the monster problems but then if I do make it and become a member of the Turks for real, I can devote myself to solving that issue. I'm getting training that I could have only dreamed of back home."

He brushed his thumb across her cheekbone. "Where did you get this drive from?"

Blackmail, she wanted to say. Whether the threat was placed over her brother's freedom or her own life, choice had been removed from the equation. It wasn't drive. It was a reaction. Fight, or freeze. Try, even when there's no hope left.

Aster looked at his vibrant blue eyes as they flicked from hers to her lips and back. He leaned into her, and as his upper lip brushed hers, she pressed her hands to his chest to push him away. His heart stopped against her fingers.

"Zack," she said, barely more than moving her burning lips. "Are you sure you're okay with…everything?"

"No." He pulled back. "I'm not. I don't really know what I feel. Or think. It'd be one thing to find out you're infantry, but another entirely to find out you're the Selective. What bothers me most is why. What the hell do the Turks want from you? Yeah, that really friggin' bothers me. Tseng's a shifty bastard and I don't trust him."

Aster clamped on her tongue to bite back the urge to defend him, largely because she didn't know where the compulsion came from. Her chest blew hot and it rose to her cheeks. "I thought for sure the whole idea would repulse you."

"It does," he said flatly, but honestly, then added a smile. "But you don't repulse me. Actually I find myself liking you more every time I see you."

Her returned smile was thin and small.

"We'll find out what your task is and we'll get you through it," he said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "There's still hope, you know. The future isn't pre-ordained."

She nodded. "I know."

"I gotta go before they start wondering where I am," he said, standing from her tiny, barely shoulder-width cot. It was difficult to believe that once Zack had been younger, shorter, less capable, and in a similar cot and uniform as she.

She stood to meet him and nodded. Then, she tiptoed to settle her chin on his shoulder, arms around his neck. Her eyes stayed stuck open because there were nightmares behind her eyelids.

"Yeah," she said, clutching the back of his neck. "I'm sorry, again."

"For what?" he asked, softly in her ear, with his arms firm around her waist. She could feel him faintly shake his head. "What you are? Or what you've done?"

"Both," she whispered.

Sleep didn't come easy and when it did the nightmares arrived. She would be tireder waking than prior to rest. The dreamscape morphed from false to reality when the firing of a single bullet towards the head of a faceless soldier—friend or foe unclear—turned out to be nought more than a heavy rucksack being thrown down near a bed.

Aster's eyes flashed open. He hadn't even been particularly loud, the boy. She'd had to sit up and check the chalkboard to remind herself of his name: Henderson. Best part of twelve weeks sharing a room and yet she still barely knew anyone. She laid back in the bed until the cadets—no, the soldiers—began to file back home in earnest. They brought with them the raucousness the infantry is known for, as if they'd cocooned from timid cadets in their hometowns and emerged into the military as gun-toting, potty-mouthed, arrogant butterflies.

"Nice seeing you, 'princess'," said Matt as he sauntered in past her, then physically recoiled from the sour expression that pinched her features. "Shit—too soon?"

Matt had probably been the most consistent with her, besides Rex. Never been anything less than cordial. To anyone. He was one of those universally liked people with a boyish wit, big laugh and gaggle of swarming friends. Not an enemy. Aster had to remind herself of that.

She touched her lips to release her furrowed scowl. "Sorry. Tilted me for a second there."

He snorted and slung his rucksack over his shoulder. "If you're that quick to anger, I'm gonna have fun over the next few weeks."

"Watch out or I might just end up—"

"—Kicking me out of the military?" he said with a grin. Pushing buttons. The dimples on his cheeks made it hard to get mad. Maybe that was his charm.

The ghost of a smile passed over her face. "Actually, I play a mean game of stabscotch and you look like an easy match."

Matt laughed and strode up to his bed. "Dick."

Suddenly, Aster got an overwhelming feeling that Matthew Carpenter was the recruit that drew the phallus on the chalkboard. She snorted to herself and folded her legs beneath her, watching the laughter and conversations that bubbled in the room. Still an outsider watching in, like a shunned child in a playground, but better. The rot in the atmosphere had mostly cleared, all that remained was that which clung to her skin.

A backpack hurtled towards her head and narrowly missed. It hit Rex's bed and bounced to the floor with a deceptively loud thud. The owner, the aforementioned blonde whose head was now buzzed at the sides and still long and sweeping at the top, grabbed her in something too rough to deserve the title of hug—more of a tackle—and proceeded to smack the hands and bump shoulders with anyone nearby who would entertain him.

Aster regarded him with a poorly contained snort. "Glad to be back?"

"Frothing, mate, you know me," he said, flopping down against his cot which creaked beneath him. His bones must have smacked straight through the thin mattress and into the beams below. "Just love these shitty beds."

"Eight weeks and you'll be out of it for good."

"And I am so ready for that," he said.

"Did you have a good time at home? Your family okay?"

"They're," he hesitated. "Yeah, they're okay. Considering."

"Considering what?"

Rex looked at her and grinned. It didn't reach his eyes. "Considering I'm gone, obviously. Mum and Dad were clingy. I'm the shining ray of light in their lives."

"I'm surprised your big head fit through the door."

"Was a squeeze, I gotta be honest," he said. "How'd your mission go?"

The mission was a success because everyone that needed to be dead was dead and everyone who needed to be alive was alive. Shinra suffered no fatalities which seemed almost like a miracle after everything Aster had seen, but it was bloody and brutal and more violent than ever anticipated. Everyone always thinks they know what they've signed up for when it comes to the military, and they're always wrong. Aster didn't know what she hadn't signed up for. Reality can prove to be blacker than the imagination can prescribe, at times.

But she didn't say this aloud, because it wasn't what he asked, even if she thought he'd listen to her. Instead, she said, "All went according to plan."

Her mind trailed to the plan to get information from the two Crescent Unit officers and Tseng's improvisation thereafter.

"Well, almost," she added.

And Zack discovering her military identity was no plan of hers either.

"Good-o," he said. "You didn't get hurt?"

"Not really."

"Lucky," he said. "So, you didn't get any free time?"

Aster shook her head. "Got back a few hours ago."

"I guess you prefer it that way," he said, mentally summarising all the things she'd told him over the previous couple of months. "If you had the choice would you stay here or go back to your old life?"

It wasn't a choice she had so it wasn't one she liked to think about. If it hadn't been Rex that asked her, she probably wouldn't have entertained the question. But it was, so she sighed inwardly and did just that.

"I suppose there are things for me in Icicle Inn and things for me in Midgar," she said, stretching her legs to rest her feet against his bed while her hips remained on her own. "But if I went home temporarily, I wouldn't want to come back."

"Is that true?"

The question hit her with a fist. Was it true? Did she hate this life as much as she thought? Or did she love it but hate the circumstances? And what kind of person was she if she could find comfortability in a situation like this?

Rex noticed she'd frozen up. He shrugged. "Don't feel too cut up about it. Travel is a thing. You don't have to swear yourself to one country for the rest of your life."

"Is that true?"

Rex frowned. "Probably not. Kind of tied to our jobs. Married to Midgar."

"You're a beautiful bride."

"Thanks," he said, completely deadpanned. "I guess you didn't get to…you know."

"What?" she asked with a frown.

He cocked his head towards Newberry's bed.

"Oh."

"The hell did you think I meant?"

"I thought you were asking about my sex life."

"What?" His voice squeaked out at least half an octave higher than usual. "No—no way. I view you as a sexless being; incapable."

Aster spat out a laugh. "I'm that gross?"

"N-no, that's not what I meant," he spluttered. "I meant that you—I don't even imagine that you—"

"Well, stop imagining me naked!"

Rex had bloomed from dusty pink to vivid cerise on the colour chart. "I don't—I meant—"

Aster interrupted him with a veritable explosion of laughter. "Are you okay? You look like you're about to suffer an apoplexy."

"You're mean."

The laugh strangled itself in Aster's throat as she laid back against her bed and came out sounding funny, which finally brought a laugh out of Rex, too.

She said, "No, sadly, is the answer to your earlier question. Didn't get chance. I intend to find out more, though."

"I think he lives in Midgar, you know."

"Which means I'm not safe yet."

"How can you go from laughing like a gassed-up hyena to the aftermath of a tranquilliser in less than three seconds?" he asked, though she was still chuckling. "You're so gloomy when you tell the truth."

"Would you rather I tell you happy lies?" she said with a big grin.

"Always."

"Okay," she said with her tongue in her cheek. "I like your new haircut."

"I actually hate you."