The shadow of Midgar swallowed Hawke and Aerith back up.

The first thing Hawke wanted to do was collapse into her bed and vow to never touch a chocobo again. Stupid birds, she felt like her legs were going to dislocate and fall off after the two day ride. She hefted Aerith's bag over her shoulder and led the way through the gate, tired and sore all over.

Elmyra was relieved to see them back safe and invited Hawke over for dinner. She turned her down but hung around long enough to exchange news. The Turks had put on a show of searching the house for Aerith and being stumped at her absence. Hawke had seen them at a distance in Junon too, though none she recognised. She sighed at their antics, and headed back to her place.

She caught sight of Rude standing dramatically in an alleyway on the way back. He gave her a nod.

Back at her house she answered the desperate calls of her landlady and renewed the electrical glyph that fueled the laundromat. Then she had a chat with her pregnant neighbour and enchanted her couch cushions to function as heating pads in exchange for a tupperware full of frozen tom yum soup, then finally, at long last, got inside her own little apartment.

She kicked off her boots, shrugged out of her armour, and collapsed onto the bed with her trousers still on.

The Fade embraced her.

She kept her eyes closed for a moment, enjoying the floating sensation before her mind filled in the blanks. The weight of armour settled onto her shoulders. Her boots were back on but at least her legs weren't sore anymore.

"Infinite in mystery is the gift of the Goddess, we seek it thus, and take to the sky…"

She opened her eyes. The bridge of pearl glowed under her feet, and the City of the Ancients towered in the distance.

Leaning against the railing was Genesis, looking up at the view. He was in his usual red jacket, with a sword at his side and his hair shining in the golden glow of the chandelier hanging above him from nothing in particular.

"...Ripples form on the water's surface, the Wandering Soul knows no rest," he quoted, mesmerised.

"Smart," she replied. "Nobody who wanders the Fade has any business resting."

"A novel interpretation."

"How old do you think it is?" she asked, nodding at the city. Aerith hadn't known and none of their research had been much use.

"Three, four thousand years perhaps. The Ancient's civilisation collapsed under the Calamity two millennia ago, but no one truly knows when it was founded."

She gazed at the soaring towers. It wasn't truly fortified, its battlements were purely decorative. Beauty for its own sake, designed without fear. That made it more dreamlike to her than any river of light.

"It makes current Midgar look rather sad," she said.

"Midgar already looks sad, no assistance required." He blew a hair out of his eyes and stood straight, finally acknowledging her with a look. His complexion was healthier in the Fade, he lacked the dark lines she'd seen under his eyes in the flesh. "Is any of it real? Are the spires sound, can you climb them?"

"It's as real as anything here." She turned from the view and started wandering down the path. "This is a realm of thought, not substance. I've explored some of the lower islands, but I'm sceptical of the heights. It feels like walking over a mass grave."

He frowned, falling in step with her like it was his idea. "You think the Ancients fell here?"

"I doubt it, it wouldn't look so wondrous if they had. That many souls passing through the veil, the sheer amount of pain would drown out any wonder over architecture."

He made a thoughtful noise. It was comfortable walking with him, in the way the Fade often painted the unfamiliar as perfectly natural, as though they had done this a million times before and would a million times more. She hung back and let him lead the way, curious to see where the path would take him.

"You believe in the planetary reincarnation theory," he said after some time. They meandered between the towers, seeing the sights and never arriving.

"Do I?"

"What else did you mean by 'souls passing through the veil'?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Where do you think souls go, if not the Fade?"

"Who says they even exist?" he asked archly.

"Who says you exist?" she replied. They came to a stop under the eaves of one of the outer towers. It looked like the cap of a mushroom. "Perhaps you are the fanciful dream of a spirit roaming the void."

"Perhaps we are but the idle thought exercise of an Ancient in a pearly tower," he said, gesturing grandly above them.

"Or maybe we're Fade memories, half remembered facsimiles playing out endless, meaningless repetition."

He shook his head. "You certainly have a fine grasp of absurdism, Hawke."

"I'm absurd? You summon chandeliers overhead if you stand still long enough."

"I do not."

She grinned and pointed a finger up.

He closed his eyes. "There isn't."

He opened his eyes. There was.

"There, there," she said, crossing her arms and leaning back against the railing. The tower gave off a soft bluish light that made it feel like early spring, and a warm breeze blew through the non-air.

She smiled at the golden network of lights, dripping glistening crystals. It was luxurious, ostentatious, and betrayed a complete lack of control over his own presence here. It was bizarre to see in an adult mage, and frankly unnerving. Thedas' spirits would have swallowed him right up. Maker, just the Fade on its own was dangerous.

"Why aren't you followed by anything?" he asked, a touch snide. "Electrical storms? Greasy fast food trucks?"

"Because I know what I'm doing." She tossed her hair back with a sniff. "We don't even have trucks in Thedas."

He narrowed his eyes, then paused. "Then how do you transport things?"

"Carts. Carriages. Boats. Sacks." She shrugged. "Arms?"

He gave her a suspicious look. "Carts. Pulled by chocobos?"

"We don't have those either."

"Hm. And combustion engines?"

"That's… what cars use."

"Of course not," he said, with a perfectly serious expression. "Cars are run by little demons that are kept in cages under the hood. Everyone knows that."

She narrowed her eyes. "No, they aren't."

"How do you know?"

"Because… I checked."

He smiled and it was infuriating. "Oh, Hawke."

"Shut up." She didn't like to be on the receiving end of smug grins, that was her trick.

"Your world is pre-industrial, isn't it? Medieval."

"We have industry," she said, crossing her arms and hunching up her shoulders.

"Do you have factories and electricity?"

Lightning sparked along her fingers. "Electricity? What's that?"

He smirked. "Bet you don't know how a lightbulb works."

"Do you?"

"An electrical current run through metal twine, protected by inert gases to stop it from burning. That's incandescent bulbs at least, fluorescents and LEDs are different."

"Is… is that all it is?" she asked. His smile turned even more patronising and she pointed a finger at him. "You're acting like that's common knowledge but I have been asking people since I got here and nobody actually knows."

He laughed. "You really don't know."

"Neither do the majority of people on this planet so I refuse to be embarrassed about it."

"Hm. Do you have printing presses?"

"And a thriving publishing industry, thank you very much," she said, feeling like Varric would want her to.

"Cotton gins? Firearms? What's your smelting technology like? Have you discovered bacteria or vaccines- ah." he cleared his throat and looked at the distance between them. "You should get checked. You'll lack immunity to our diseases and vice versa."

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, I'm sure a super bug filled clinic handing out antibiotics like after dinner mints is the healthiest place for me to be."

He blinked in surprise.

"I'm foreign, not stupid."

"You made a joke back in Junon about train tracks," he said, his brow furrowing, "..and silent film era villain stereotypes."

"Universal cultural touchstones, don't you know." She grinned at him and enjoyed the suspicious look she got in return.

"No, not stupid," he drawled. "Not especially wise, but not stupid. Dangerous, perhaps."

She shrugged and turned back to the path. "You're the one with the Spirit of Wisdom in your pocket."

"You're talking about Shiva," he said, trailing after her. She set the pace this time, walking with resolve and not bothering to look up to see what the bridges had to say about it.

"Where did you get her?" she asked.

"I found the summon in a Mako fountain. That's where all Materia comes from. And I didn't... 'bind her', or whatever it is you think I did."

"And yet she is bound."

"She's never spoken of it before. Or at all, for that matter."

"I think it cost her to speak in the physical world."

"Then why call out to you?" he asked, quietly, more like he was speaking to himself.

The glowing path ended and she looked up, satisfied with their destination. She stepped onto a barren island, cold and isolated from the rest. There was no sign of the city.

She turned back at him. He surveyed the bleak scenery with sharp eyes, looking more like an armed soldier than the relaxed tourist of only a moment ago. A cold wind picked up and whipped his coat around him.

"Why not ask her yourself?" Hawke said.

His hand rose to his bracer. "Is it safe to summon such a creature in this place?"

"The Fade is never safe." If there was ever a place to call on a spirit it was the Fade, but she didn't know how that applied to those trapped in Materia. Was there a reason they were sequestered away?

Genesis studied her seriously for a moment. Then he moved to the centre of the small island, raised his hand, and the bracer around his wrist glowed red.

A freezing mist rose up from the ground, filled with whispers and cries it lacked in the real world. Shiva rose up with the chimes of shattering ice, majestic and crystalline. Thick copper coloured cuffs covered her ankles and forearms, hard metal against the flowing liquid silver of her hair and clothing.

She had long pointy ears.

"Shiva," Genesis called out.

She wasn't looking at him, she looked up at the liquid green sky, the thick viscous of the raw Fade. She spun in place, the horizon was interrupted in every direction. She raised her arms and closed her eyes.

"Oh," she whispered, her brow scrunched up in pain, and the seven foot tall spirit fell to her knees and wept.

Genesis stepped back and looked to Hawke with wide eyes. She shrugged, she hadn't seen this coming either. She didn't know spirits could cry.

"It's been so long, so long," Shiva said, her voice a broken symphony, deep and rumbling. She dug her hands into the clay, making fists in the earth. "I never thought to see the Dreaming again."

"Wisdom?" Hawke called tentatively.

Shiva stilled, her head bowed. Her breath didn't hitch, Spirits didn't need to breathe, but she gathered herself and drew back her calm in her own way. Slowly she rose back to her feet.

"Hawke," she said, with a graceful nod.

She looked similar in posture and form to the only other Wisdom Hawke had met, but there were deep lines of grief written into her youthful face. Her eyes were fathomless grey, impossibly old and filled with regret.

"Who did this to you? Why…" she trailed off. She knew why. Spirits had power, and binding them was the only way to leash it. It was always the same.

Shiva blinked, her form stuttering in place. "They… they called me a spy of Mythal."

Hawke's spine snapped ramrod straight.

"Who did?" Genesis asked, his expression open and confused.

"I did not know their names. They shielded their dreams from me, welcomed me, but did not trust my advice." Her eyes lost focus but her form remained steady.

Genesis shook his head, confused. "Who is Mythal?"

Hawke said nothing.

"The Mother," said Shiva.

"Who's mother?"

"Elvhenan. Vhenas theneras," Shiva said, naming the ancient elven empire with the old tongue Hawke understood but shouldn't have been able to. "Arbiter of Justice and Vengeance," she said in common. "Protector. Mother, moon, queen, goddess."

"How long have you been bound?" Hawke blurted out.

"I… do not remember." Her image stuttered again, and ice formed and broke beneath her. She wasn't whole anymore. "Ages passed within the green. The war is over. The Matriarchs no more. Elvhenan no more. No more..."

"The mother goddess?" Genesis asked, stepping forward with reverence. "You are a servant of Minerva?"

"No, Da'len." Shiva shook her head, her shackled hands fell still at her side. "Wisdom is not a servant. Mythal is not Minerva."

He paused. Behind him Hawke couldn't see what he might be thinking, but she saw Shiva's expression turn cold.

"Were you her spy?" he asked.

"I gave her council, as I gave to all. Wisdom is not loyalty. Wisdom is not a soldier. Wisdom holds no allegiance." A sharp whistling wind tore at her clothes. Ice climbed up along her body, cracking and reforming, and her hands shook. "This is not Wisdom."

Hawke took a step back, her hand latching around her staff. If not for whatever hold the Materia had on her, she was certain she would have corrupted and they would have a demon on their hands. Genesis stood before her, undaunted.

"There rarely is any wisdom in war," he said gently.

"And for this we were shackled." The ground beneath them cracked, dry and dead. The wind turned freezing, and howled by. Chains fell from Shiva's cuffs and her wrists bled water. It froze as it fell. The droplets clinked onto the dry earth. "The Dreaming lies fallow, the wall stands strong, my brethren bound and bruised and forced to fight, but the war is over!" Her voice thundered with the wind, a deep and enchanting chorus. There were screams in the wind, the clash of swords and firing of rifles. Cries of elvhen and common mingling senselessly together.

Hawke stepped back again, a barrier spell on the tip of her tongue. She tripped on a body in Wutaian armour.

"The war is over. It's over, it is!" Genesis stood tall in the centre of the collapsing dream. His hands balled into fists and he held his chin high as he yelled.

The dream lost focus, and the howling grew louder. Hawke threw the barrier over Genesis just as bullets ripped through the air, fired by nobody at nothing, the product of another dreamer's nightmare.

"The war is over," Shiva repeated, buckling under the pull of the chains. "The war is over. The war is over, ma ghilana mir din'an, the war is over, the war is-"

The island cracked through the middle.

Hawke slammed her staff into the ground.

Genesis sat bolt upright in bed.

He was trembling and drenched in sweat.

He closed his eyes and counted his breaths, forcing himself to calm down. He wasn't in Wutai. It was nearly four in the morning, he was in his own bed, and the war was over. It was finished, and there was no one to fight. He was back in Midgar, awaiting his next orders. He opened his eyes. The light of Shinra HQ flooded in through the window, green and flashy.

His heartbeat picked back up.

He reached for his wrist with a shaky hand. He wasn't wearing his bracer. Of course he wasn't, he didn't sleep with his armour on. He stumbled out of bed and reached blindly for his armour stand. The bracer was cold to the touch. He spun it around, and the equipped summon materia glowed up at him, still warm and humming with magic.

He clenched his jaw.

The image of Shiva on her knees begging for the war to be over made his skin crawl. Now in the waking world, he was certain she hadn't actually been talking about Wutai, but in the moment it had been so obvious, so visceral and painful.

So what war was she talking about? Had Hawke said? His memories of the exchange were all jumbled and he couldn't remember if she'd said anything at all. Had she even been there at the end? It felt less and less coherent the more he tried to focus.

His mind kept catching on the trickle of icy water weeping from Shiva's manacles.

He'd summoned her all across the world and commanded her to fight for him. Not once had he thought that the cuffs on her forearms could be anything other than armour.

Did it really matter what war she was talking about, when she lived in chains?

He ran his fingers over the warm materia. He dreaded it, but he had to see, here in reality.

He threw his hand out.

The mist swept over the floor of his bedroom, leaving icicles on his thick carpet and against the foot of his bed.

Shiva rose up, silent, graceful, and confrontingly real. She was too big for the mundanity of the setting. She cast an ethereal blue light on him, and spun in place until she was facing him, her feet floating over the ground. her head was bent at an angle to duck under the ceiling.

She looked down on him, and he didn't know what to say.

He ran a hand through his hair, tugging on the strands. He wanted to know more, but this was all new and contradictory. It spat in the face of so much he had always held to be true.

"Who is Mythal?" he asked. He remembered that much from the dream. He didn't think it had been answered.

Her beautiful face was as yielding as a glacier, carved deep with lines of grief. She opened her mouth but no noise came out. She winced then closed her mouth. He felt the drain on his reserves. His shoulders sank.

"What is it you want?" he asked. His voice came out raspy.

She held out her cuffed wrists.

"You want to be free?"

She nodded.

"I don't know how to give you that. If it should even be possible."

She dropped her hands. She didn't look surprised, only resigned.

His phone rang. The director's ID flashed on the screen.

"I have to take this," he said.

She floated, cramped and silent in the space.

He felt absurd at explaining himself to a summon. Then shame at having never bothered before. He bowed his head, and cancelled the spell. She collapsed into icey dust.

He picked up the phone and answered Shinra's summons.


A/N: Thank you for reading! Feedback and concrit always welcome.

Next Time: The price of someone else's freedom.