It was a lovely day below plate and Aerith was feeling cute as a button in a blue dress with yellow flowers stitched onto its spaghetti straps.

She met Zack at the playground. It was their third date but they weren't calling them that. They were just hanging out. Hanging out was safe, hanging out meant she wasn't crushing on someone who worked for Shinra and showed up literally in their uniform.

Reno stopped following her as Zack arrived.

"Hey, let's go above plate," Zack said. "I know somewhere you might like."

She bit her lip. She'd never been above plate before. The shafts of light falling to the ground were stark and dangerous, rubbish and refuse and worse things fell from above. But she had seen photos.

His smile was infectious.

"Okay," she said with a nod, and then fetched her phone.

"Oh, you're-"

"Hi Hawke," she said when it picked up, holding a finger up to interrupt Zack. "I'm going up plate, can you tell Mum?" She put her hand over the mouthpiece. "Which sector?"

"One," Zack said.

"Sector one. We're getting lunch, I should be back before five. Mm-hm. Nope. Mm-hm."

"Give me a call if you need a pick you up, and don't let the Bootlicker try anything," Hawke said, with one of her laughs that implied she wasn't really joking.

"If he does then you can kick his butt," Aerith replied, winking at Zack.

He held his hands up in mock innocence, playing along, mouthing 'I would never!'

"Okay, let's go!"

She led the way to the train station, chattering and confident.

"Take me to the surface world, show me the sun!" she demanded as Zack bought the tickets.

Then they stood up between the packed seats and the nerves she had been ignoring snuck back in and made themselves known. The train shook as it left the station. The last time she had been up plate it had been in Shinra custody.

Her smile turned shaky.

"So, um." She scrambled for something to talk about. "Are you getting 'shipped out' soon?"

"I'm on standby. It's so boring!" Zack said gamely. "It's like I've been hung out to dry."

"Standby? Does that mean you could get called on at any moment?"

"I could, but Commander Rhapsodos is pretty much handling it." His expression turned grim. "I don't think it'll last much longer."

"You won't get a chance to miss me."

"Or brag about you to the boys!" He held onto the overhead handle slightly behind her, not quite putting his arm around her but imitating it well enough. "Tell them what a cute girl I've got waiting for me back home."

"Waiting for you?" she asked, tilting her head coyly.

"What, is there someone else?"

"Oh, dozens."

"I'll fight them all!" He pulled a heroic pose.

They giggled and she leaned into him a little as the train jostled. She always forgot how much fun he was.

The train came out of the tunnel and bright noon sun pierced through a sun shower and the grimy train windows. Her mouth fell open. She didn't remember it being so big.

"Welcome to the city of the future!" Zack said.

"It's really beautiful." She hated that it impressed her.

"It suits you."

"Mm-hm," she replied, raising an eyebrow. Shinra's metal city suited her like the air suited a fish.

"It's not even finished yet. There's going to be, like, a hanging garden up on that ledge on the Shinra building, Angeal says. They're still making the water systems and stuff, and the office levels get priority, but it should be done in like three more years."

Zack rattled off more facts and lead her out from the station and around the sights, giving her the grand tour.

She'd seen most of it on brochures and on the news, but it was bigger and brighter in person. The sky was so big and sunny she kept shielding her eyes and instinctively standing under shade whenever they passed some.

If Zack noticed he didn't say anything or let it interrupt him, but he did detour through shaded areas a lot.

She watched and listened, nodding along where appropriate. His enthusiasm was infectious, as usual.

She could see why Hawke called him bootlicker. She'd even said it to his face a couple of times, and he thought she was having a laugh. Which she was, but Aerith suspected she meant it.

They settled on the edge of a perfectly manicured park. It looked very odd to her as they approached, the green of the grass and trees bright and strange, the movement in the wind not quite right. Then they reached it and she realised: it was fake. All fake. Astroturf, not grass, and plastic trees with stitched on leaves. She smiled as she and Zack sat sprawled on the scratchy imitation grass. Shinra could take the sky and everything else, but only she had real flowers.

"Did you know there used to be an even greater city here?" she asked when the conversation drifted.

"Did there?"

"Mm-hm." She hadn't seen it yet, the Fade city of Ancients Hawke spoke of, they didn't always enter the Fade at the same time and her looking for it hadn't produced anything, but she was going to track it down eventually.

"The Ancients built a giant metropolis here out of pearl and light," she said, lifting her arms dramatically.

"I thought the lost city of pearl was on the northern continent."

"There was more than one," she chided.

"Oh, my bad."

"It was on great big floating islands, held up with magic. Towers and trees reaching between the islands, even the river floated." It sounded outrageous even to her, but it was magic. Anything was possible. She smiled smugly. "It had all sorts of magical things Shinra can't even imagine."

"Floating islands? Like the plate?" he asked, smiling.

"No!" She swatted his arm. "Better than that."

"Must have been something." He leaned his head back and stared up into the big blue sky. "How high up do you think they went, the islands? Do you think they could float through the clouds?"

"All the way up into the sky, to see the stars," she said sagely. "And all the public bathrooms were free."

"That's the dream."

A breeze drifted through the park and ruffled his hair. It carried a wonderful smell of sizzling meat and deep-fried things.

"You know what else is pretty magical?" he asked, looking back down at her. "The best kebabs in Midgar."

They chased the smell back to a food truck.


Hawke piled all her worldly possessions onto her bed. She had trespassed on the Gainsborough's hospitality long enough.

Elmyra had kindly provided her with some cardboard boxes for the move, a very optimistic number of them in fact. Hawke looked at her diminutive pile of belongings and felt rather pathetic.

Oh well. There was always more stuff to acquire and promptly lose.

She carried the boxed up things down to the front door, where she saw Reno lounging out in the garden, half sitting on the fence in a very intentionally present and unmissable manner. He was letting her know he knew she was moving and undoubtedly where to.

"Hey," she called.

"What?"

"If you're going to hang around, you can help carry stuff."

He slouched his way in and she dumped a box into his hands. There were only two, she would carry one filled with assorted sharp things and the maintenance thereof, and glowing HP and MP bottles.

He reached into the box he was holding and pulled out a mug with 'a wizard did it' printed on the side.

She left a note for Elmyra, who was still sleeping off a long night's work, and left it on the kitchen table. Then she locked the door behind her, slipped the key underneath it, and that was that.

"So," he drawled, "Upscaling?"

She snorted and they turned away from the happy little family home and down onto the busy, dirty main road.

It had been nice. They deserved someone equally nice to share it with. They wouldn't miss her.

Her new place was only a short walk, only a couple of blocks away.

It was tall square building leaning at a slight angle and painted an indeterminate grey. Older than Shinra itself, it had probably quite nice once, but the weight and pressure of the nearby pylons had impacted the foundations: thick cracks ran through the walls. The whole place was humid, the wooden walls oddly spongey, and the rental agreement was mostly instructions on how often she had to scrub away the black mold.

They stood outside looking up at it for a moment.

"So do I breathe the hay-blown airs of home," Hawke said, with unjustifiable optimism.

"It's not that bad."

"I've certainly seen worse." She pushed the front door open and handed him her keys. "Upstairs, first on the right. I'll be up in a moment if you want to go plant your spying glyphs and such?"

"Yeah, you're not that important," he said, taking the keys and sidling up the stairs.

She put her things down, patting a little ice glyph onto the outside of the box, and went to go find the landlady.

She was a tiny Wuteng woman with severe frown who owned both the building and the laundering business downstairs. She wove between the towering industrial machines, all but one row of which were quiet. They specialised in businesses who needed clean linen every morning and they had to get it all done overnight.

"Let me see then," the lady said, her arms crossed and her thin lips pursed.

"Behold!" Hawke said, before slapping a modified lightning glyph on the back wall, right above a mess of wiring. She had been working on it since she figured out the relationship between the wires in the wall and electricity. The glowing circle sank into the wall and disappeared.

She reached down and unplugged a multi-box. The row of washing machines kept going.

The landlady looked between her and the machines with her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed.

"Is it a trick?"

"Of course it's a trick, a trick that'll cut your power bill in half."

"Materia?"

Hawke winked.

The woman patted the wall, leaned her ear against it, and inspected the loose power plug. Her eyes turned calculating. "How long-?"

"Two days, then you'll need me to come in and redo it," Hawke replied, drawing the rolled-up bundle that was her rent from her pocket and tossing it into the air a couple of times. They had agreed on less than a third of the woman's asking price if she could pull it off. Given what she knew of Shinra's prices, the woman was getting the better end of the deal. "Perhaps… you ought to be paying me."

"Tch." the woman snatching the money from mid-air. "I'll see you in two days."

Hawke chuckled and made her way up to her new home. Reno was lounging about and helped her unpack by offering a useless commentary. Then they went up to the roof, she ordered a pizza, and they spent the rest of the afternoon doing nothing.

Reno's leg started seeping blood, a reopened wound from activities she didn't ask about and he didn't explain. She handed him some bandages.

It must have rained up top, the weather was distinctly drippy. There was a pond of unknown depth by the corner of the building, where a thin stream of brown oily water fell from the plate, like a water feature.

"How's the veggie patch doing?" he asked as he rewrapped the ugly gash on his calf.

"Oh, well enough. The first shoots of the seedlings are showing, and the saplings are loving it. We're probably leaching all sorts of horrible things up from the soil, but fresh food is fresh food no matter how squishy and off coloured."

He scoffed. "You won't get food from it. Nothing worth the hassle anyway."

"Sure we will. If you can grow boutique-quality flowers, you can grow some cheap tomatoes." She watched the dirty water glisten in the neon light of the slums as it fell. She hoped Aerith was having a nice day up plate.

"Nothing good grows down here, don't let the flowers trick you." He leaned back on his rickety chair, propping one leg up on the ledge. "This is it for us. Why waste the effort?"

"Yes, why should we slum dwellers try for anything better, says the man in a suit and tie."

He sneered. "Not wearing a tie."

"Spiritually wearing a tie."

"Never been spiritually anything."

"But you got out," she said quietly. She had too once, she moved into a manor, much to the horror of everyone else in High Town. There was always a way out, a way to make things better. "I know you don't live below plate anymore. Don't 'down here' me."

"And how many sticky-fingered street-rats took my place?" He took a bite of cold pizza and chewed it with his mouth open.

"But none of them has your charm," she drawled, letting it go. She held out her hand and he threw her a greasy pizza slice. She thought that he probably needed to believe that the slums couldn't improve. They all had their little lies they clung to.

"You know the city's gonna kill you right?" he asked later when what little light there was had started to dim. "Sooner or later. Same as me, same everyone."

"It'll be public service if it does," she replied with a snorted laugh. "But nobody's really dead until there's a body."

He laughed and struck a match to light his cigarette. "Cheers to that."


As night fell the building trembled with the churning of the washing machines downstairs.

Hawke closed her eyes in a noisy, cramped room and opened them in the silence of the Fade.

The laundromat didn't have Fade presence here, but Hawke was starting to. She was sitting on a log by a little campfire, nestled onto the ledge of a cliff. She looked down over the edge, and there, down below was Aerith's house. A familiar tea kettle was hanging over the fire, and she didn't need to check the water to know it wouldn't be just slightly too cold to make a drink with. The usual clay earth had turned into gritty sand.

She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees and stared into the fire. She knew this campfire. It had followed her for years, all across Thedas, whether she was dreaming in the Deep-roads or in the alpine heights of Skyhold. It wasn't a real place, but an amalgamation of places and feelings that had become part of her. An empty log sat opposite her on the other side of the fire.

She knew that if she looked up, the giant copper statue of one of Kirkwall's twins would likely be nailed into the cliff, weeping into its hands. She didn't look up.

"Hey!" Aerith's voice called out.

She looked down at the winding narrow path of shifting sand that climbed the cliffside and was met with a panting, steely-eyed Cetra.

"You didn't tell me you were moving out!" she said when she got to the top, pointing accusingly.

"You knew I was going to."

"Not without saying goodbye."

"I'm still here," Hawke said. "Now you've got your privacy back and Elmyra's not trying to provide for three."

Aerith pursed her lips. She glanced up at the cliff face above them and grimaced.

"What is all this?" She sat on the empty log opposite Hawke, only suddenly she wasn't opposite her, she was adjacent to her, and there was still an empty log opposite Hawke. She looked between the three seating options in confusion.

Hawke chuckled. She had some control over her impact on the environment, but most of it was subconscious. She didn't care to examine whatever great truths it told about her, but she was more than happy to find a use for it.

"The Fade reflects whoever is in it," was all she said. She got up and held a hand out to Aerith, pulling her up.

"So how was your date?"

"It wasn't a date," Aerith replied, mirroring her hunched posture.

Hawke raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, it might have been a date. It was pretty good."

"Nice! Are you going to see him again?" she asked, strolling down the path to the level ground.

Aerith hedged around the question as she followed but it sounded like the answer was in the territory of a 'yes'.

Hawke smiled. It was probably not a good idea for a mage only just outside of Shinra custody to be dating a member of their most elite army. Then again, it might be the only insurance she could get. When your freedom was an indulgence someone else extended to you and might revoke at any moment it paid to invest in every defence you could. Not that Aerith viewed Zack in that light, but the point stood.

She led the way down and past Aerith's house. The gritty sand and shifting pathways had spread far beyond the campground, it circled the house now, Hawke was pleased to see.

"This reminds me of the Wounded Coast," she said pointedly, loudly, and the Fade obliged. Aerith trudged through it with some difficulty, using her staff as a walking stick. She would get used to it and when she did her grasp of the Fade would be much stronger for it. The wandering pathways were one of the best fortifications you could get in this realm.

"Are you taking me to see the City of the Ancients?" Aerith asked, tense and excited.

"I did promise."

"Why can't I find it on my own? I've gone looking!"

"There's your problem," Hawke replied, picking her path at random. "Don't go looking, go finding."

Aerith huffed. "What does that even mean?"

"Ever had a dream where you're being chased by something and it never catches you but you have to keep running? Or you're chasing something but it's always just out of sight?" She thought of long spider legs and green sizzling magic the second she said it, then shook herself to dislodge it. "Looking and finding are completely different exercises," she finished, trying to sound academic, but her voice turned thin. "The Fade loves a good hunt."

Aerith looked at her sceptically. "How do you find something without first looking?"

"I tend to strategically stumble upon things."

She laughed. "That's so silly."

"Go on, you try." Hawke stopped walking and put her hands on Aerith's shoulders, gently turning her around to face in the general direction. "Don't worry about whether or not you know the way. Assume you do and take us there."

She hesitated. "But I don't."

"But the Fade does."

"Hmm." She started walking, then looked back over her shoulder and pointed threateningly. "I know you know the way, you'd better not be just having a laugh."

"The way is forwards. It's always forwards."

They left the shifting sands behind. They passed the shadowy chantry building that was called a church. Flowers bloomed in the windows and spilled out alongside a soft light through the open door. It was quiet even for this empty corner of the Fade.

"Why do you hate lilies?" Aerith asked.

"Got trapped in a conservatory for three weeks, there was nothing to eat but the lilies," Hawke replied, her eyes fixed straight ahead. "Did you know you can eat the entire plant?"

"No, you can't."

"You can if you're not afraid of a little gastronomical distress."

Aerith snorted, and they kept walking.

The mother of pearl bridge sprung up before them, anchored into the side of the island and leading off into the green void. Aerith gasped. She straightened her shoulders and took a bold step out onto it.

Hawke watched her stay there for a moment, one foot on the ancient accomplishment of her ancestors, the other on the cracked earth of Midgar.

"Do you think…" she whispered.

"Only when awake," Hawke said, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. It didn't pay to doubt your own worth when suspended on a magical bridge over an unending abyss.

Aerith stood straight again, tossing the braid of her hair back. She stood fully on the bridge and nodded at herself. She led the way with feigned confidence that made Hawke proud.

They rounded the corner, and there it was, tall and magnificent, the City of the Ancients, gleaming in the distance. Aerith stopped and put her hands over her mouth.

"It's so much bigger than I imagined."

Hawke leaned on the railing and let her have her moment. It looked the same as it had the last time she saw it, some weeks ago. The proud metropolis of a people utterly unbothered by the laws of reality. Tevinter would be so jealous.

"How do we get there?" Aerith asked.

"Keep following the bridge," she replied, with no idea whether or not it would work. Last time it had led to Genesis' island, but he was off in Wutai now and there were no spirits or other dreamers to say which way the bridge had to go. Sometimes just deciding something would happen was enough to make it so.

Aerith nodded and led the way again. It took far less time than it should, given how expansive the view was. They arrived at the base island of one of the lesser towers.

Spikes like on a seashell spiralled up the wall, all the way up to the top, which was hidden from view from the ground. Soaring bridges connected it midway up to other nearby towers.

In the distance it had all looked like a mausoleum, more memorial than anything living.

Aerith set foot on the island and it was like it remembered it had once been alive. The tower's pearlescent walls glowed with depth and recognition, soft grass swayed beneath their feet. She walked forward and set her hands on the walls. A breeze picked up where before all had been still.

"I can hear it," she murmured. "It's… it remembers."

"What does it remember?" Hawke asked, worried.

"I don't know. But it's remembering it really strongly!" Aerith gulped in a deep breath. "We have to go inside."

They circled the tower, Hawke trying to keep a reverent silence, and Aerith looking around with her eyes open wide. They found the entrance and hesitating at the door.

"Do you want to go first?" Aerith asked quietly.

"I don't think I can," Hawke replied. She slung her staff off her back and twirled it in her hand. "But I've got your back."

"That's not what I meant." She gestured with both hands at the towering thing. "It's… it's so much. And I'm just… little old me, you know? Only… only half a Cetra."

"Hey." Hawke lowered her staff. "You're only the most powerful Dreamer on Gaia. This is your inheritance." She gestured at the door with her head. "Hasn't it waited for you long enough?"

Aerith pulled herself up, then pushed forward.

The door lacked substance and swung open with a ghostly after-image. Light glowed from the walls and drifted down in shafts from the higher levels. A spiralling staircase ran up the walls, breaching up through the many levels. From inside they could see that the walls were paper-thin, more suggestion of structure than anything else. They tentatively climbed up in contemplative silence, convincing themselves and the Fade with each step that it ought to hold them. The different levels held furniture and tools they couldn't name or even fully see sometimes.

The floor lacked substance in places and they didn't risk stepping out beyond the stairs.

Given what she had learned of the Cetra, this city hadn't been lived in, not even dreamed in, for thousands of years. That it was still standing was astounding, but the wear of time was evident. Things they couldn't identify lost cohesion the more they looked at them. The very act of observing it was both reinforcing it and wiping it away.

She looked down and was saddened, but not surprised, to see Ferelden stonework supporting the stairs they had climbed.

Where Aerith touched the walls they glowed brighter and stronger, but she didn't know any more about the architecture than Hawke did and the tower's secrets grew inscrutable when she tried to comprehend them.

They reached a wide opening that led out of the tower and onto a bridge without railings.

They didn't risk it, its glowing tiles were translucent.

"What is that?" Hawke asked, pointing out through the door.

From the new height they could see more of the city, but on its outskirts three dark patches intruding on the soft white light. Two floated in the distance, far from the city, but one of the ominous dark spots was on the side of an island, that must have held multiple buildings once. Now only half a wall and a crumbling little watchtower remained, visibly fraying even at this distance. The city's light was warping and getting dragged into the hungry black void.

"It's like it's eating the city away," Aerith said. "What could- oh." Her lips thinned. "They're Mako reactors. This is the Lifestream, after all."

"Maker," Hawke muttered. She disliked Shinra on principle, but siphoning away the Fade itself? "How many did you say there were?"

"Eight in Midgar. I don't know how many across the planet. Maybe fifty? A hundred?"

Hawke grew still. And this was where their electricity and much-vaunted technology came from? It was just Magic in a different hat, after all. The veil already felt thin and tattered around Midgar.

"I wonder what will happen," she said slowly, "when the veil gets too thin to support them, or whatever substance it is they're feeding off of runs out." With so many of the things, if they went wrong the consequences would make Corypheus' breach look like a stubbed toe in comparison.

Aerith didn't reply.

She led the way further up. With the imagery of the reactors in their minds, the thinness of the walls seemed to offend Aerith more. She trailed her hand along the wall and railing and everything within reach as she went. A line of strength spread out from her touch, the tower humming with potential, both new and remembered.

The stairs ended and they stepped out into the open air. A domed roof held up by delicately carved pillars stretched out above them. The power that been humming up through the building at Aerith's touch quietened and the air felt like it was waiting.

The Cetra stood in the centre of the flat circular platform, with complicated patterns laid out in mosaic under her feet, and looked around in awe. It was a work of art that would make Val Royeaux jealous.

This was a place of great ritual and power. It reminded Hawke of the Elvhen ruins she had discovered with Merrill, had the elf been here she would have offered a prayer. But it wasn't Elvhen, and Hawke didn't know what the place wanted.

The floor gained strength under Aerith's steps, and she made out sparkling thin grooves between the tiles. They turned to channels that ran up the columns and into the dome. She looked up. The very top of the dome was carved out like a reservoir. All the channels leading up into it made it look like a many-petalled flower. Or a spider.

She looked down at the wide-eyed Cetra, turning in circles to look everywhere at once. Probably a flower.

"I'm going to cast something," Aerith whispered, and Hawke didn't think she was talking to her.

She swung her staff in a wide circle, magic sighing down the wooden shaft. A simple healing spell, from the creation school.

The building sang with it. The floor shone with power and the hum that been building throughout the tower burst into light and joyous noise, suddenly solid and real. Aerith laughed and spun with it, dancing in the cacophony. Her arms rose and the magic coursed through the tower and up the columns, painting colour into the structure and collection in the dome. It gathered, bright, alive and growing.

Hawke hung back and watched from the entrance. She was so happy for her. Tears glinted on Aerith's face in the light and Hawke wanted to cry too. A mage welcomed home.

With a cry, Aerith pointed her staff straight up and the magic in the dome burst. It exploded in a burst of petals and leaves that rained down upon them.


A/N: Thanks for reading! I'd really appreciate feedback on this story, all reviews and con-crit are welcomed.

Next Time: Genesis, the Blight, and lots of yelling.