Genesis dreamed.

He hadn't entered the Fade since he and Hawke had summoned Shiva. He slept fitfully, all too aware of where the Shiva summon sat in the drawer of his bedside table and hoping not to rest so deeply he would be confronted by it again. By the end of the week he was too exhausted to do anything about it.

He opened his eyes to a mansion under a green sky. Golden light danced over thick grass dotted with wildflowers, and dumb apple trees curved through the lavish halls.

There were less exterior doors than he remembered.

He stood in the entrance of the library that was half orchard. It had been an open plan layout before: now it was rather like a maze with shelves, trees, and dead ends winding senselessly around him. It was utterly silent.

It had never occurred to him before how little control he had of his dreams. The mansion felt like a part of him, it was clearly assembled from his subconscious, but it was invasive and unaccountable. Taking some intimate, indescribably facet of himself and broadcasting it across the landscape. Could he command the walls to rearrange themselves? The dumbapples to give fruit?

The watchful silence in response to his barked orders said he could not. Or at least, not like that.

Hawke had apologised for the nightmare the last dream had spiralled into, but that was only reasonable if she had the power to control it. She didn't act like she did. She didn't always act reasonably either.

He pulled a book off the shelf. It was heavy and solid, unnamed and leather bound, with the smell of an old tome. He resisted the urge to flip it open, he knew from experience that hours would slip past, before he would look up with no memory of having actually read anything. It seemed so mean spirited of the dream realm to present him with books he couldn't actually read.

A muted knock sounded behind him.

Hawke stood in the doorway, leaning her hip against the side post.

"Hawke." He inclined his head and slotted the book back onto the shelf.

"Evening. How's Angeal?" she asked.

"Better." He turned and crossed his arms. "I believe he noticed we were up to something."

She cracked a smile. "But we were so very subtle."

"Your identity and magic is a secret still," he said with a sniff, "and it is purely down to my quick thinking and fabrications."

"Hey now, I'd like to see you cast something so intrusive on a seasoned warrior without them noticing."

"I am not a healer."

"Neither am I, look at me."

He did so. She was fully armed and armoured, to an extent he hadn't seen since the day he met her in the train graveyard. Her dream self was somehow mundane and grounded against the slightly unreal and changeable backdrop. She was a comforting anchor for the eyes.

She winked and showed her profile. "This is my good side."

He raked his eyes back up her form. "Quite."

She flashed a toothy smile.

He sobered a moment later. "Hawke… we should talk about Shiva."

"Ah. Not here." Her expression shuttered.

He shook his head. "It's painful for her to speak in the material world, I won't put her through that."

"I mean not here in the mansion. I don't want her to spiral into despair again."

"What's wrong with my mansion?"

She looked around, tilting her head back to look up. There was a balcony above them of distinctly Midgarian design intruding on the old world elegance. Now that he looked at it, he was struck by its oddity, the bare metal supports and glass railings. Had that always been there? It was a nonsensical addition. The dumb apple trees curving over the railing didn't suit it at all.

He narrowed his eyes. Why were there trees inside his house?

"This is a place of... very strong feeling." Hawke said, sounding distinctly mysterious, and like she was covering for an observation less complimentary.

She shook her head and disappeared down the corridor. He followed her, observing the treacherous surroundings as they went. Hawke moved with confidence through the halls, her body coiled and ready for anything, vigilant in a way she wasn't even in the heart of the Midgar slums. She faced the Fade like a familiar opponent, one she had regarded with respect.

"Where are we going?" he asked, as they traversed the orchards and then left them behind entirely. Pathways wound in circles and crossed over themselves without the scenery ever repeating.

"Somewhere a little less..." Hawke searched for a word.

"Yes?" he drawled.

"...melodramatic," she drawled right back.

He narrowed his eyes and had the perfect response for that on the tip of his tongue, when something under his boot crunched.

There was a clump of thick green grass intruding on the bare clay ground, with something caught in the blades. He kicked at it, overturning what had drawn his attention.

It was a clay Wutaian talisman, the sort they carried for luck into battle. It had shattered under his weight. He looked up.

A ridge of upturned earth blocked the way forward, cutting through a grassy mound. It looked odd under a bright white light, like scorching noon without a sun.

Hawke slowed her pace, her hand straying to her staff. "What is this?"

He felt a shiver of unease run up his spine. He drew his sword and together they climbed the ridge.

A silent battlefield stretched out below them: rolling hills torn open by bomb blasts, white birch trees snapped and uprooted, and scattered in the lush green grass in every direction, motionless bodies in Wutai uniforms.

"No. Stop this," Genesis said, rooted to the spot. "I don't want to dream of this."

"It's not me, these aren't my memories." Hawke said, her grip tightening around her staff. "I don't know what this is."

"It's the Da Chao massacre." He couldn't take his eyes off of it.

She stepped back off the ridge. "We should leave."

It was exactly as he remembered it, the rows of impact sites along the hills, the swathes of forest sliced clean in two, the rich glossy colour of bloodsoaked dirt. It was garish in the bright light, cheery and gut churning. "It's wrong. It wasn't noon when the fighting stopped. It was sunset."

"Who else was there? Who would dream of this?"

He tore his eyes from the massacre to her look of genuine curiosity. She didn't know. The battle famously only had two survivors. Genesis swallowed harshly.

"Let's turn back." He sheathed his sword and marched back down the ridge. He couldn't confront this here.

He walked like he knew where he was going for long enough that the silent battlefield disappeared behind them. Hawke called his attention and redirected him towards another path. He refused to be shaken and faced it with his head held high.

She didn't ask. He was grateful.

"This way," she said, at the base of a towering cliff. A path of shifting sands lead up its side, exposed and exhausting to labour through. The height gave them a view of the surroundings. Empty dreamscape stretched out below, featureless and grey. It felt barren.

A hideous copper statue jutted out from the cliff face, looming high above them, the only break in the empty surroundings. It was in the shape of a man, nailed to the wall and weeping into his hands. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and he felt his back bowing as he walked, boots sinking into the sand.

"What a terrible place."

"But it's my terrible place," Hawke replied, looking like she'd never been more comfortable. She walked light-footed and with a swing in her step.

"Is this where you dream?" he asked, horrified. He stumbled over what he was going to assume was a rock buried in the sand.

"Mm-hm."

"How is this less melodramatic than a mansion?"

"It's safer." She shrugged. "I'm not a Fade Shaper, I can't control the surroundings, but I can sort of… passive aggressively manipulate it into co-operating. All this," she waved her hand at the path and the statue, and at a campfire that appeared on a ledge cut in the cliff side when she turned to it. "Perspective tricks. They keep the dream from spiralling out of control."

He regarded the humble fire pit and the logs around it. "Tell me how it works."

She did so. They sat around the fire and spoke for what felt like hours. The glow of a long day at its end lit upon the cliff but never darkened into night. He looked out at the unshaped Fadescape beyond the cliff's edge, making more sense of it as she spoke.

"So this emptiness is unnatural, without Shiva and her kind."

She prodded at the fire with a stick. "It would be where I'm from, but maybe it was always this empty here. I don't know."

"Shiva will know," he said. He didn't reach for the materia.

She looked up from the fire and they studied each other for a long minute. She reached out a hand and he passed her the materia with some relief. In the real world he would never do such a thing, but he had felt the strength of Shiva's meltdown last time pierce through him. If the whole point of this was to keep it under control, he would rather Hawke be the summoner.

She studied the red orb for a long moment. Without so much as standing, she gestured with it at one of the empty logs.

"Will you sit with us at our fire, Wisdom?" she asked quietly. "We seek your counsel."

There was no explosion of ice, no triumphant twirl.

One moment the log was empty, the next Shiva materialised upon it, her long legs crossed loosely beneath her. Cold mist whispered around her log and her silver gossamer clothes swayed in a cold wind that rose with her arrival. She sat with her eyes closed for a moment, and her shoulders slowly sank with relief. Icey tears dripped steadily from her shackles.

"Why would you seek out wisdom now, when you never have before?" the spirit asked.

"Better late than never?" Hawke offered with a self deprecating smile.

Shiva levelled a look at her with a shapely eyebrow raised. Hawke cleared her throat sheepishly and looked at him for back up.

"You said you walked the earth during the age of the Ancients," he said.

Shiva tilted her head. "I walked the Fade."

"What was it like?"

She cast her gaze beyond them and breathed out slowly. "The Children of Gaia filled this realm with wonders. Nomads in the waking world but natives of the Dreaming. Almost spirits. They delighted in creating and exploring: their artists were unmatched and their curiosity boundless. They looked upon the Elvhen and did not know to be afraid."

"Are you one of these Elvhen?" he asked, as fascinated as he was alarmed.

She shook her head. "I am a Spirit of Wisdom."

He narrowed his eyes. "Are you a child of Gaia?"

"No. We visited this land… were welcomed and grew within the stream." Shiva flickered out of focus, like a film skipping a frame, a full body stutter. "I gave counsel to matriarchs and clansmen and learned from them in turn. We walked together…" she stuttered again, then grew still, "…for a time."

"What happened then?" Hawke asked gently.

Shiva took her time answering. She flattened her hands on her knees and held herself taut.

"I do not know. They did not trust me to know. Not the Cetra, not the Elvhen. The People warred with Gaia's Children. I tried to return but a wall had risen. The way was shut, only the mirrors remained, and they were too closely guarded." She flickered again, and grief flashed across her face, carved deep into her features. She looked unfathomably old. "Leashed. Corrupted. Forced to fight…" Her body lost its definition, an uncertain thing his eyes couldn't fathom, pulling against her shackles.

"Wisdom." Hawke's voices cracked through the air.

The struggle halted. Shiva looked like herself again. She closed her eyes, pain engraved in lines on her forehead.

"'The People?'" he asked, too curious to leave it alone. "Do you mean humans?"

"No," Hawke replied. "That's what the Elvhen, the old elves, called themselves. They were like the Ancients of Thedas."

"What did they want? Why did they attack?"

"I don't know," Shiva ground out, her eyes still closed.

"Who started it?"

"Genesis," Hawke cautioned.

"I don't know."

"Who won?" he pressed.

"I don't know!" Shiva cried. Her image fluctuated, flashing with light and stuttering painfully. "It was not Wisdom, this is not Wisdom!"

"Shiva." Hawke's voice called like a whip crack again, bringing a silence to the little camp. The fire crackled between them and a cold wind swept along the cliffside, whistling over their little alcove. It was such a mundane little place that it suddenly couldn't support panic.

"You're safe at my fire, but the wilds are still out there," Hawke said gently. "Don't lower your guard." She sent him a sharp look. "Stop aggravating her."

He drew in a breath. He had intended to come here and ask how to set her free, but she presented a window to a history nobody in modern Gaia even had a name for. He forced his questions back. That wasn't what they were here for.

"Please," Shiva said. Her voice shook. "Do not ask me more about the forgotten ages."

Hawke added logs to the fire and prodded glowing embers. Nobody spoke for some time as Shiva settled into herself again. Genesis rose and reached his hands out to the fire. It felt distinctly like a late autumn night, as though they were taking a short rest on the way to somewhere safer before the true cold set in. That was the trick of it. The setting told the world itself that this a temporary safe haven. Not a fortification inviting challenge, nor a welcoming home with doors designed to open.

"What do you want from us?" Genesis asked.

Shiva's eyes were grave. "You know this already. Asking with new words will not change the answer."

"You want to be free."

She nodded. "Ma ghilana mir din'an."

Hawke shook her head. "How do we do that?"

"Destroy the materia."

"That won't change anything," he said, looking between them with narrowed eyes at the foreign exchange. "A new materia would just grow back in a Mako fountain somewhere."

"Let me shatter it here, in the realm in which it was made. Not the hollow copy you keep in your armour."

"Then you will be free to roam the Fade again?" he asked.

"No."

He frowned. "What else do we need to do then?"

"It's not that," Hawke said, rising to stand by him at the fire. "Ma ghilana mir din'an - guide me to my death. She won't survive."

Shiva remained seated, looking straight ahead with her hands on her knees. "I am broken and corrupting. My form is held in place by my chains, without them... I will crumble away."

He stared hard at her. "Wouldn't you rather be healed?"

"I am not flesh, child. Wounds of the Spirit do not heal over and scar. There is… little left of me."

"You've saved my life more times than I can count, Shiva." he swallowed harshly. "I don't want to kill you. That isn't freedom."

She offered him a sad smile. "Others will spring up from my ashes. Give them the freedom you would have granted me, perhaps they will give you your own in turn."

"And the price?" Hawke asked darkly.

Shiva looked away from them again. "Can the full price of a decision ever be truly known?"

"I know how out of our depths we are, making a decision none of us really understands."

"Shiva is a sentient creature," he said, frowning at Hawke over the fire. "We have no right to choose for her."

"She won't survive to know about it, but we will. We are talking about literally killing the embodiment of Wisdom and unleashing who knows what!" she replied, gesturing vaguely.

"It's a risk I'm prepared to take," he said, shocked at her sudden vehemence.

"You don't even know what you're risking."

"What then? What's on the line?"

"Spirits will be born from her remains. New ones, different ones. They will take back this realm and reshape it entirely, Gaia itself will be changed."

He pursed his lips. "They lived in communion with the Cetra and the Planet once."

"Two thousand years ago, but the world as you know it is built on a foundation without them."

He threw out a dismissive hand. "The world can adapt. The Summon Spirits are a people, with as much right to self determination as any of us."

"There's no un-ringing the bell, Genesis!" She ran a hand through her hair and looked away, out over the cliff's edge, to the unshaped plains below. "I want to free her as well but there will be a price to this, and I don't know who will be stuck footing the bill. But it will be our fault." She clenched her jaw. "For better or for worse."

"There is a price for choosing not to, one that she pays daily," he hissed, pointing at Shiva. "Only we have the power to set her free and end her pain. If we choose not to, that is our fault."

She looked at him, her eyes wide and harrowing. She had a faded old scar right under her left eye, close enough that the initial injury must have threatened to blind her.

"I started a war once. In the name of freedom," she blurted. She sucked in a ragged breath and shook her head. "I just made everything worse."

He paused. She stood in her bloodied armour and didn't try to look away or take it back. The shroud of chaos and mystery fell away and he understood her.

"You can make this better for Shiva," he said, lowering his voice. "Or you can cut yourself out of the story, pretend at ignorance and powerlessness, and let the world rot." He met her gaze and waited for the verdict.

She swallowed harshly. Finally her eyes dropped. "You're a very convincing speaker. You should give Ted talks."

"Hawke."

She scowled into the crackling fire, but couldn't sustain it. Her expression faded into something achingly sad. She looked back up at him. "Set her free. Maker forgive us, we have to set her free."

"You do not have to," Shiva said, finally rising from where she had watched them. "For choosing to do so anyway, you have my gratitude."

Hawke nodded, still looking like she was at a funeral. In a way, she was. She held out the Materia to Shiva.

"I'm sorry," she said to nobody in particular.

"You always are," Shiva replied, taking it from her.

She sniffed. "Fine, I rescind my apology."

Shiva reached down, and cupped Hawke's cheek with one of her giant hands. "Do not cling to regret so tightly it poisons your soul, Champion."

"I will… try."

"Oh, child."

Shiva straightened and looked at Genesis. Convinced though he was of the righteousness of his cause, her attention left him disquieted.

"Dreams of the morrow hath the shattered soul," he said softly.

"You will make yourself weaker by granting me this."

"I don't want power taken from those in bondage. The decision is yours, regardless of my opinions."

"The world will be changed," she said, her voice a haunting chorus.

"The world changes every day." He lifted his chin in spite of his trepidation. "I am not afraid of playing my part in it."

She bowed her head. "Thank you."

The blood red orb looked wrong against her blue skin and silver glow. She retreated from the fire until she stood on the cliff's edge, then turned back to look at them.

The two mortals faced her, side by side.

She held the materia in both hands. It's glow grew brighter. The red shone against her, and the light within it churned. She looked up at them with a pained, triumphant smile. The materia cracked in her hands.

Shiva cried out, her teeth clenched. She shattered. Light and ice exploded, underscored by a bone deep sigh of relief that sang out across the Fade.

Genesis awoke to weak sunlight leaking in through his windows. He rolled over, pushed his blankets aside and reached into his bedside table. The materia inside it did not glow. It was cold, grey, and cracked in two.


A/N: Thank you for reading! Reviews and concrit are welcome.

Next Time: The Da Chao Massacre