Hawke walked through the slums, her money pouch heavier than it had been. It had been a good hunt until the self-important man in red appeared.

She hunched her shoulders and pulled her fur hood over her head.

She hadn't even searched him for loose coin. But she had left him unconscious in that abandoned field of metal carts. That was probably worse than robbing him, now that she thought of it.

He had that look about him: too powerful to be worth upsetting and aware of it too. Better to leave him to sort his own problems out.

She had healed him, as far as she could at least. He did her a good turn, he deserved the same. The superficial wounds hadn't been very difficult: the slice in his leg and that infected looking mess on his shoulder. It was all she could offer him. She shook her head, her shoulders slumping. Poor guy had the Blight.

She breathed out a sigh. She had her own problems.

The night grew heavier. The plate trapped in the heat and humidity and kept the city smelling like a pile of silage baking in the sun. She had rarely been so glad her tunic was sleeveless.

Were there any stars or moons shining up there, above that metal lid? She heard there was another city up there, clean and beautiful. Was Satina bathing it in her silver light? They probably thought they deserved it too.

She left the noisy streets behind, wandering. She had passed a whole street of taverns and alehouses earlier but couldn't bring herself to go in. A weapons shop boasting some curious magical baubles almost tempted her, but the owner gave her a weird look at all her questions so she moved on.

The pavement soaked up the thud of her leather boots. She kept walking. Past ramshackle houses, collapsing shacks, and abandoned hovels.

A Chantry.

She paused, her breath caught in her throat.

It looked out of place, a tall and proud building of white stone, complete with stained glass windows. The images they depicted were dark and inscrutable, but none of the panes were broken. Its heavy wooden door loomed above her: closed.

There was no Chanter out the front, reciting the Chant of Light. No Chanter's board, requesting help in the community, not even a Lay Sister vainly tending to a dead veggie patch.

Abandoned. Forgotten in the dark.

Hawke climbed the shallow steps. There was no graffiti, no missing slats in the wood.

She lifted her hand to the door. She hadn't entered a Chantry since… since the Chantry. Since she and Anders blew it all to hell and started a war. She couldn't bring herself to touch the door. What right did she have?

The hairs on the back of her neck rose. Someone was watching her.

She scowled. What right did they have? How many dead mages could she heap before this door? How many tranquil? How many children, herded like animals because of what power they might have?

The ghost of her little sister, dead for so many years she couldn't remember her face any more, whispered in a voice she couldn't forget even if she wanted to. 'Why can't I just be normal?' Oh, Bethany.

She flicked her hair out of her face and pushed open the door.

A long hall filled with empty pews stretched before her. Light from a distant liquor shop stabbed in through a window and pooled before the altar, where the floorboards were missing.

Aerith looked up, crouching in a patch of lilies.

Hawke wanted to turn around and walk straight back out. She didn't. She couldn't. She was rooted to the floor only half a step inside.

The door creaked to a close behind her on old hinges.

The little mage stood up, brushing dirt off her dress with one hand and holding a trowel in the other.

"What are you doing here?"

With no other recourse left to her, Hawke smiled. "It's the prettiest building around, thought I'd try my hand at squatting."

Aerith's eyebrows rose. She put her hands on her hips. "You can't squat here, I'm squatting here."

"Ah, you beat me to it," she replied with a snap of her fingers. She edged closer. She nodded at the flowers. What looked like a mint bush was flourishing near the wall and dandelions bobbed about in a warm draught. "Did you grow those?"

"They've always grown here. I just… keep them company," Aerith said, facing the flowers and looking at her from the corner of her eyes.

All the flowers were open, despite it being well past sundown. Hawke hummed. She could feel the echoes of Creation magic in the air. Keeping them company, hm?

She sat on one of the pews, resting her staff against her shoulder. The altar was a strange shape, up on a platform. There was no statue of Andraste or brazier for the Eternal Flame. It probably wasn't even a Chantry really.

Aerith was still looking at her sidelong. A plain dented staff was resting in the flowerbed next to a small watering can.

"How old are you?" Hawke asked.

"Fifteen. Why?"

"How long have you had your magic?"

Aerith hunched in on herself but she took a step towards Hawke, looking up at her. Something hungry shone in her eyes. Maybe it was just the reflected glow of the liquor sign.

"Always," she whispered. "I've always had it."

Hawke nodded slowly. "And those watching the building?"

Aerith's head turned away with a jerk. "You weren't born with your magic?"

"I was about nine when it showed up. I grew into it."

"Who taught you?"

She sighed and let her head fall back, stretching her legs out in front of her. "My father, at first. Then whatever lost grimoires and old journals I could get my hands on. Trial and error."

Aerith took another step closer. "Journals?"

Hawke cracked a grin. "I don't have them on me."

"Can you get them?"

Her grin cracked at the edges. "I doubt it."

"Can you try?" Aerith demanded.

"I am trying." She stood, raking her gauntleted hand through her hair. "There's got to be a mage underground here. Hedge witches or… something. You can't be the only one."

Aerith pursed her lips and stared her down. "I am the only one."

Hawke looked at her sidelong and away again. "Are they going to hurt you? Those who are watching?"

The little mage crossed her arms. She probably thought it made her look more intimidating, but it only showed how willowy she was. "So what if they do? Did you need me to save your life again?"

Hawke opened her mouth to protest but thought better of it. The girl was a plucky thing. She probably had a growth spurt in her near future, but for now, she was short and skinny with dirt under her fingernails.

"I probably deserved that," Hawke said. She crossed her arms and regarded the girl. She was regarded in turn. "What do you want?"

The girl braced herself. She lifted her chin. "Teach me. Teach me how to use my magic."

Hawke shook her head. "You don't know anything about me."

"No, but… I've got a good feeling."

"You should get that checked."

"Don't be mean, Hawke." She put the trowel down on a pew and stuck out a hand. "Well? Do we have a deal?"

Hawke raised an eyebrow; pretty sure she was getting hustled. "What deal?"

"You teach me magic and I won't tell the Templars about you."

She barked a laugh. "Nice. You don't even know what the Templars are."

A grin tugged at the corner of Aerith's mouth before she smoothed it out into an expression that was all Serious Business. "Do we have a deal?"

"First, that's not a deal, it's me giving you something for free, and second…" her shoulders slumped. This was such a bad idea. They were all going to regret it. "Yeah, I suppose we do." She took Aerith's outstretched hand. "Assuming your mother approves."

"Hey! That wasn't-"

"Nope. I'm not going to be the adult woman secretly hanging out with a teenager in an abandoned building in the middle of the night, thank you very much."

"Oh." Aerith blinked. She awkwardly took her hand back. "But, you're not…"

"Not wearing a fine patina of other people's blood? No, no, of course not." She swung her staff back onto her back. "Come on, let's go see what mother dearest thinks."


Aerith's mother reacted about as well as Hawke thought she would. Thank Andraste somebody did.

Her frozen smile was distinctly alarmed as she looked between the two mages standing in the door of her kitchen, soap suds still clinging to her hands.

"What did you say your name was, dear?" she asked, reaching for a tea towel.

"Hawke," she replied with a twitchy smile. She didn't much care for kindly maternal people calling her 'dear', it made her suddenly conscious of her unbrushed hair and all the stains on her tunic. Oh, Maker, how much filth was she tracking onto the rugs? She offered a hand for shaking. It seemed the done thing.

"I'm Elmyra," the elderly woman said, taking her hand and glancing up and down at her. Aerith looked between them with her brows knit together. "Where did you say you were from?"

"Out of town," Hawke hedged.

"Yes, I understood that much." She crossed her arms, the picture of patient maternal disapproval. She was shorter than Hawke, with frizzy brown hair pulled back into a bun, and a thin, worn face that betrayed a life of long hours and few breaks. She had the desperate, gentle smile of a single mother trying to keep some joy in her daughter's life, and the shrewd eyes of a lifelong citizen of the underclass.

"And you're settling down in Midgar?" she asked.

"Ah, no, I'll only be staying for a couple of weeks."

Aerith's shoulders drooped and Hawke winced. Then scolded herself for letting this all get to her. She had a home to return to, things to do and places to be. She still owed Varric a beer and a hearty roast nug dinner. "Maybe a couple of months, but only until I can build up enough resources to leave again."

"And you want to teach my daughter 'magic', in the meantime?"

Hawke shrugged. "She asked."

"Who else is going to teach me?" Aerith pleaded.

"Are you a Cetra, Hawke?" Elmyra asked, politely unmoved. "Descended from the Ancients?"

Hawke… didn't know what that meant. She knew she was being gently accused of being a fraud, but not much else.

"I'm a mage," she hedged. Ancients… like the ancient elves? She hadn't seen any elves at all, only humans. That was weird. There were usually lots of elves in poorer districts.

Elmyra studied her for a moment. Aerith looked beseeching. Finally, the woman clapped her hands together.

"Well, if you're happy to teach, we're happy to have you. I should love to see it. Would you…? If you don't mind?"

"Yes!" Aerith said, bouncing with excitement.

"Of course, not at all," Hawke said. "Here? Now?"

"Let's go into the living room. You can leave your staff and armour here," Elmyra said with a smile and a wink. "Materia doesn't count."

Hawke nodded and did as instructed, pulling off her gauntlet and weapons. It made sense. She did look a bit like a grifter. Probably on account of all those grifts she pulled.

Aerith herded her into the small living room, biting her lip in excitement. She found herself standing in the centre of a rag rug under a warm yellow light that hung from the ceiling.

Elmyra sat in an armchair with her hands folded in her lap, like a kindly judge who was very sorry to have to give you this sentence and hoped you would make better choices in the future.

Aerith stood in front of Hawke, her hands tensing and releasing nervously. "What do I do?"

Hawke scratched the back of her neck. It had been a while since she'd done any actual teaching. She and Merrill and Anders had all talked shop back in the day, before… before, but they had all been experienced mages, well on their way to being experts in their own fields. She had taught Bethany though, in the early days. She cracked her knuckles and shook her hands out.

"Okay…" she began. "What is materia?" May as well start with what her pupil knew.

"The knowledge of the ancients," Aerith replied with a sage nod, "preserved in Mako crystals."

Hawke nodded. That likely meant… "its inactive magic." Probably like an enchantment, lyrium merged with a magical essence to make something that anyone could use. Was that what Mako was? Lyrium?

"What you and I can do is active magic. No piggybacking on anyone else's knowledge, or letting the crystal set the structure or power level, you've got to know it all yourself. You've got to control it all yourself."

Aerith nodded, her eyes serious and her hands clasped in front of her.

"It's harder, a lot harder. But once you know what you're doing there are very few limitations." Magic was a function of belief. Or, as Hawke liked to think of it, a subset of the school of bullshit. You could get away with pretty much anything if you did it with enough confidence.

"Do you know how to cast a spirit bolt? It's about the easiest spell out there."

Aerith shook her head. "I only know a few healing spells."

"Stretch your hand out."

Hawke lifted her own hand and pulled the tiniest smidge of mana into her palm. It hung there, not quite glowing and not quite visible, like a trick of the light that strained your eyes if you tried to focus on it. She formed the outline of the bolt, the simplest twist, and let the mana fall through it. It sizzled into life, a little white ball of energy that would give a mild shock on impact.

Elmyra stood. Aerith stared at it with keen eyes. She let the frame go and it dissipated back into harmless mana.

She took Aerith's outstretched hand and formed the same outline in the girl's palm.

"Oh," Aerith murmured, her eyes losing focus.

"Do you feel the shape?"

She nodded.

"Push your mana into it, let it flood the structure and take on the shape, just…like…" A spirit bolt flashed in Aerith's hand, wobbly and fluctuating in power level, but real and strong and entirely Aerith's. "…that."

"Elmyra," Hawke said, still keeping her hand under Aerith's to hold the bolt in place. "Do you have something we can hit? A handkerchief maybe?"

"Oh, yes, of course," Elmyra said, looking around. She came up with a bright pink feather duster. "Will this do?"

"Perfect. Would you be so kind as to throw it?"

She grinned at Aerith. "Spirit bolts always find their targets, all you have to do is focus on what you want to hit and release it. Ready?"

Aerith nodded, wearing an expression of focus, but with excitement bubbling in her eyes.

"Now, mum!"

Elmyra lobbed the thing in an awkward arc and Aerith dropped her hand. The sparking bolt sprang out towards the feather duster and it occurred to Hawke why it probably wasn't the best object to use for target practice half a second before impact.

The feather dusted exploded in a 'poof' and a rain of feathers.

Hawke snorted a laugh, pink feathers landing in her hair. Elmyra and Aerith looked stunned.

"Oh," Aerith whispered, covering her mouth.

She burst into tears.

"Oh, my darling," Elmyra said, rushing forward and folding her into a feathery hug. "My clever, clever girl." She sniffed and blinked her suspiciously damp eyes.

Hawke retreated to the kitchen.

Her pile of daggers and armour greeted her, glinting coldly in the light. Sniffling sounds were coming from the living room.

She picked up a knife and put it back in its sheath. There. That was better.

A tea kettle sat on what looked like a stove. She poked around with the controls and found it produced something flammable when she twisted the nobs, so she used a little fire spell to get a flame going and the water heating.

Soft and emotionally charged murmurings were still coming from the living room.

She slid another dagger into its sheath.

They were so nice and wholesome. So heart-warmingly domestic. This was going to be awful.

Aerith hadn't even known a spirit bolt. She'd picked it up with very little prompting and likely would have figured it out on her own given time, but she was already being watched. The feeling of eyes on the back of her head had followed her from the chantry building all the way to the house. Whoever it was, Hawke had no doubt they were bad news.

Maybe there were Templars here and they just had a different name.

Eventually, Aerith appeared in the kitchen doorway.

"I will see you tomorrow," she said in a tone that brooked no argument, still wiping at her cheek.

Hawke looked to Elmyra, who was standing behind her and received a nod.

"I suppose you will. Goodnight, Aerith."

"G'night," she replied and then disappeared up the stairs.

Elmyra came into the kitchen proper and regarded Hawke cautiously. The kettle started to whistle. She took it off the stove and busied about making something that smelled like cinnamon. She didn't look up at Hawke until she was pushing a mug into her hands.

"Thank you," Elmyra said in a hushed tone. "I don't think you know how much this means to her."

Hawke looked into the milky depths. "I think I do."

"She went looking for you after you left. That's why she was out so late." Elmyra sighed. "Ever since her birth mother died I think she's felt…" she trailed off then shook herself out of it. "What do you want in return?"

Hawke held up her hands. "Nothing. I'm not… Look, an untrained mage is a danger to themselves as much as the people around them. She's already picked up at least one interested party out there. She'll be safer once she can use her own power."

Elmyra nodded. The tilt of her chin and raised eyebrow said she wasn't fully convinced but was prepared to let Hawke get away with it for now.

"Where are you staying?"

"I'm still sorting out the details." Right. Lodgings. And preferably some food, eventually. When had she last eaten?

"You can stay with us, while you find your feet."

Hawke shook her head and began to stand. "I couldn't do that."

"Nonsense. It's late. Nothing nearby will be open. I'll get you some pyjamas." She bustled out of the kitchen before Hawke could react beyond a startled blink.

Well. That explained Aerith's skills of persuasion.

Elmyra returned, carrying a folded stack of flannels. "Here you are, dear. Upstairs on the left."

Hawke took the clothes and waited for an 'I've got my eye on you,' or maybe an 'if you hurt my little girl, Hawke, you'll be sorry.' None were forthcoming.

"You're very kind," she said into the ensuing awkward silence. She would have felt so much better about it if someone had threatened her.

She slunk up the stairs and found herself back in the pastel-coloured guest room, this time wearing floral bedclothes six inches too short for her.


Genesis looked over the lab results. He didn't understand what most of it meant. The relevant information, however, was in plain English in bold red ink.

"I am still degrading," he said. His shoulders fell. It didn't hurt. Nothing hurt, in a way that he had forgotten was possible. He hadn't realised how accustomed to chronic pain he had become.

"Yes, and at the same rate," Doctor Hollander replied. "There's been no real change. Whatever you did was superficial at best. A dead end."

Genesis looked up at him over the printed results. "Yes, quality of life, how meaningless."

Hollander crossed his arms, his lab coat pulling awkwardly over his yellow t-shirt. "How did you do it?"

"You tell me, doctor," he replied, narrowing his eyes. That was the pattern of these visits, wasn't it? He gave Hollander information and resources, and Hollander used them to conclude that nobody else could help. Just not yet. No cure today. Come back tomorrow, with more resources. Around and around they went, with nothing progressing except the degradation.

Hollander cleared his throat and re-crossed his arms the other way. "I don't think it will last. Your shoulder will reopen. Come back tomorrow, I'll re-examine it."

"Or you could simply tell me you don't know what's happening today and save us both the effort."

Hollander harrumphed. "Genetics are complicated, yours especially. It takes time to get these things right. If you rush you get… mistakes."

A sneer pulled across Genesis' face. It wasn't a surprise that Hollander wasn't happy to see him healing. He had been a showroom piece for Shinra's Science Department too long for that kind of naivety. It was disappointing and infuriating. But not surprising.

"Perhaps," he said, tilting his head and stepping closer to the doctor, "if you had gotten my genetics right from the beginning, neither one of us would be paying the price for your mistakes."

Hollander had the gall to look offended. The snake.

"You're…you're going back to the front, soon. Back to the war," Hollander said, in the least subtle conspiratorial voice Genesis had heard outside of a pantomime. "Are you ready?"

"You really can't rush these things, doctor," he replied. "Strategy is complicated."

He let the lab results flitter to the floor and turned to walk away.

"Genesis!"

"Yes?"

Hollander glanced around, his shoulders hunched. "Tomorrow morning then?"

Genesis smiled wanly. "Perhaps Thursday, if I have the time."

If Hollander was so keen to launch a rebellion against Shinra, he could do it himself. Genesis walked out of the office with something self-satisfied simmering away inside him.

He bumped into Angeal on the way out.

"What are you doing here?" Angeal asked, greeting him with a one-armed hug and a poorly hidden glance at his shoulder.

"What am I doing here, what are you doing here?" Genesis replied. He strategically adjusted his fringe with his left arm in a blatant display of the range of movement in his arm. Angeal hadn't even known to what extent he'd lost it, but he couldn't resist the temptation to flaunt it now that it was back.

"Just a check-up," Angeal replied with an easy smile.

Genesis' self-satisfaction cooled. "What for?"

"Some lingering aches, an old strain. Nothing serious. You look better though, I guess we should all get checked up more often."

He nodded, mute. He gripped Angeal's shoulder. "I'll see you at the bar tomorrow?"

Angeal looked at him oddly. "Of course."

They parted ways and Genesis left the Shinra building for his apartment, feeling the weight of Angeal's ignorant cheerfulness.

Angeal was going to degrade too, Hollander had warned him. They were bred under the same monstrous circumstances, but he'd thought there would be more time. He was older than Angeal and it had taken an injury to trigger his own cellular decay. Hollander had proven himself to know so little that he'd begun to hope maybe he was wrong about that too.

A dangerous assumption.

He needed to find the woman from the slums.

He stepped into his living room. He had forgotten to turn his air conditioner off when he left; the apartment was a blissful cool temperature. What did it matter? Shinra covered his living costs.

He looked around. Comfortable leather couches, magnificent paintings on the wall, and that splendid Wutaian mural. The mahogany coffee table with its single cup stain that he refused to replace so that Sephiroth would be confronted with his sins every time he visited.

He had been slowly removing the personal touches over the last month. He moved his photos from the mantelpiece and painstakingly found all the lost journals wedged between couch cushions and left abandoned on window sills. Getting ready to leave it all behind.

But he couldn't very well leave now, the cure was hiding in the slums somewhere. Angeal needed it just as much as he did. If she could do it once, she could do it again, no matter what Hollander said. All the doctor's grand ideas of revenge and clones and burning Shinra down felt more like delusions when he woke up in the dirt with his injuries healed.

He hadn't even caught the woman's name. She didn't know his either, perplexingly. What did that mean?

He sighed at himself and took his boots off. He was going to find her, preferably before he got shipped out to Wutai again. He had no other choice. But it had been dark and he wasn't paying all that much attention. And then that little monster got the drop on him and it all turned blurry. So what did he know?

She was tall. Possibly even as tall as him. Short black hair in a messy cut, strange armour, and he thought he saw blue eyes but that might have simply been the lightning she threw. She was irritatingly beautiful, he remembered that. The kind of stunning that spat on all notions of docile femininity, like the beauty of a well-thrown blade. Or the golden edgings of sunlight on a black storm cloud.

He couldn't place her accent either. Northern continent maybe? She had the colouring and build for it, but she carried herself like a consummate city dweller.

He should have gotten her name.

He ran a hand through his hair. A dark-haired woman with strange armour? That was likely a quarter of all the women below the plate.

She carried multiple materia and knew how to use them. That narrowed down the pool of suspects dramatically. She was wielding it in public too and he couldn't have been the only one to notice. Perhaps he could start by querying the weapon and materia shops.

Just what did she do to heal him? He carried a mastered full cure himself it did nothing for his injuries. He had as many health potions as Shinra could make at his disposal, and still, nothing. All of Doctor Hollander's expertise. It amounted to nothing.

What could anyone achieve in less than two minutes that all the healing in Shinra couldn't? Who was she?


Aerith watched Hawke try to balance her staff on her forehead. The blade swayed high in the air and she shimmied about to try and keep it upright.

They were in the church, Aerith kneeling by the flower pit in her favourite dress and ready for a day of lessons. She tested the dampness of the soil out habit and smiled down at the white blooms.

There was a crash and a flurry of cursing.

She looked at her teacher in concern.

"Remind me to go over proper weapon handling at some point," Hawke said, rubbing her nose.

"So…" Aerith said. She narrowed her eyes as the woman reached for her staff again, "…magic?"

"Mm-hm?"

"Hawke."

"The first rule of magic," she said, twirling the staff then planting it on the floorboards with a thud, "-is that there are no rules and anything is possible."

Aerith sat up straight.

"The second rule of magic: You can only do what you know you can do. You cannot do what you know you cannot do."

Aerith furrowed her brow. "But anything is possible."

"Correct. Put those two together and what do you have?"

"A riddle?"

"Ha, almost." Hawke sank down cross-legged in front of her, sharp armour bits sticking out in every direction like a lopsided hedgehog. "In training you I am giving you a foundation to build on, and as with any foundation, it supports the building, while also setting its limits. The Fade is a function of perspective, magic a function of belief. What you think, what you know, matters. You cannot build beyond the foundation without going back and redoing it all."

Aerith hummed. She ran her hands through the topsoil. "But everything is possible?"

Hawke held up a finger. "Anything. Not everything."

"I was expecting you to make me chant things or, I don't know, dance in the moonlight, or something."

"Moonlit dancing is magical and don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise."

She snorted a laugh. "We'll do that later then."

Hawke leaned back on her hands and smiled. "I'm bringing it up because letting me train you, letting anyone train you, is letting someone else decide how big the canvas is. But they're also teaching you how to paint and giving you a free starter palette. Pros and cons."

Aerith grew still, her hands still in the soil. "So if I just figured things out on my own, I might develop magic you don't know about?"

"Absolutely, you would. If you did it on your own everything you came up with would be utterly unlike what I do. You might even do things that are impossible because you don't know any better."

"Ha!"

"I pick and mix from a dozen magical traditions. I'm building on what others have already figured out, you won't be able to build that level of complexity by yourself."

She closed her fist in the dirt. "But… the knowledge of the Ancients…" Her birth mother could have done things Hawke never could, she knew it in her bones.

Hawke shrugged, a sad smile on her lips. "You'd have to ask the Ancients. All I've got is the knowledge of the Hawke." She stood, dusted off her hands, and offered one to her. "Do you still want it?"

She took her hand from the flower patch. There was dirt under her nails. "Asking the Ancients hasn't gotten me very far."

"You healed me."

"I did."

She took Hawke's hand. The woman pulled her up and gave her a wink.

"So what's the Fade?" Aerith asked

"Hooo boy," Hawke said, letting out a gusty breath.

The Fade, it turned out, was the Lifestream. Or at least something so similar that Hawke couldn't tell the difference. You could connect with it in your dreams and it was everywhere.

There was no getting around the fact that Hawke was… foreign. If her blatant questions the first day hadn't given it away, then her easy mastery of the most exotic magic would have. She wasn't a Cetra, she was something else.

The planet hummed around her strangely. Most days Aerith couldn't understand it, it was like a low-pressure ache throbbing around her heart. The pressure amped up around Hawke. Twisting into almost a word, on the tip of her tongue. If she had to name it in human language it would have been… Outsider.

"Where are you from again?" she asked, midway through the lesson.

"Hm? Kalm," Hawke replied, not missing a beat in the swinging of her staff and the building of a spell. "Eastern outskirts, near Old Bill's chocobo farm. I can't ride for shit though. Ever been?"

Aerith shook her head. Hawke was good at this. It was kind of scary.

Outsider, the planet called her.

Well, what did it matter? There was nobody else around to teach her this stuff.

She crushed the worry deep down inside her and focused on the lesson.

It was fascinating. She was learning, more than she had since her mother joined with the Lifestream. She swung her humble staff around and the magic released with an oomph that she felt all the way up her arms. The planet hummed around her, and she could have sworn the pressure felt happy for her.

The day drew to a close and they set out for home. Aerith, exhausted, locked the church doors, and Hawke chattered on happily about this and that.

"Who are they?" she asked, her tone unchanging. "The chaps watching from the opposite roof?"

Aerith stiffened. "They're, uh, friends. From Shinra."

"Uh-huh," Hawke replied. She waved obnoxiously.

Aerith followed her line of sight up to Reno and Rude, watching from a position more obvious than normal on a roof across the road.

Reno waved back.

She gulped.

Hang on, no. She wasn't going to hide, she wasn't doing anything wrong. With Hawke standing next to her and magical exhaustion sending tremors through her fingers she felt bold. She waved too. Reno smiled a toothy grin.

Aerith lead the way home.


A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews and ConCrit are all welcome.

Next time: Drinking and Dreaming