Sephiroth sat on a grassy hillock and enjoyed the sun's warmth on his face. The breeze was warm too, lifting his hair and making the grass sway in waves across the rolling hills. A lone cicada chirped by a fallen tree to his left.
Further down the hillock an upturned tank ticked as its engine cooled. Bodies spilled from its bisected shell, bleeding into the grass. A Wutaian captain lay face down next to him. The wind picked up the torn sash of his uniform and blew it down the hillside, fluttering in silence over the countless dead. He closed his eyes and thought about the warmth of the sun again.
Sephiroth always dreamed of the Da Chao massacre. When he was younger the dreams had been frantic, stumbling over bodies and waiting for the next attack. He spent long nights standing at the ready, sword drawn, waiting for a blow that never came but was always on the verge of descending.
It grew normal. He realised it was a dream. The bodies never ran out of blood or turned stiff, no matter how long they sat in the dirt. The scene never changed and nothing happened.
Until the night before, he thought, opening his eyes. He had been lying down in the grass then, when Genesis and a woman he didn't recognise appeared on a ridge in the distance. He sat up but they retreated back the way they had come without doing anything.
Immeasurable hours later, a cry had rung out and sparks split the green sky like falling stars.
Nothing had happened since. It stuck with him though, the sound and explosion had come from the same direction as Genesis. It was a meaningless dream, of course, but it made him curious.
He rose from the grass and began to walk. The hills and craters rose and fell as they should, and the uprooted birch trees lined the destroyed valley as his memory dictated.
Then it all ended. The grass stopped with a sudden cliff, with nothing below it. The green of the sky stretched down with no horizon to interrupt. The sparks of light had both come from beyond this point. Interesting. His dream battlefield was on a floating island. There was another further down, and several more in the distance. Off to the side there hung a thick patch of darkness, too dark for his eyes to see.
In reality the Da Chao valley had been surrounded by temples he had bombed into rubble. He didn't want to see that either. He turned back from the edge to look at the fields of destruction.
Irritation flashed through him. Why was he stuck with this? He didn't want any of it, it hadn't been his idea to fight here, to lay waste to this sacred grove. Shinra told him to. He scowled. He wished he could pave it all over, seal it in.
He blinked, and it was gone, replaced by concrete. In fact he wasn't sure he did blink, it was like the world blinked, and the green of the valley with all its dead disappeared under a flat expanse of concrete. It looked like little more than a car park now.
He let out a breath. That was better. Could he have done that at any time? Of course. It was his dream, who was to say what it would hold, except for him?
He strolled away from the cliff's edge, contemplating the matter. Time slipped away from him.
The sash of a Wutai uniform blew against his leg. He looked up. The bodies of Da Chao were surrounding him again. The concrete remained, the ruined trees hadn't grown back, but the dead had returned, in accurate numbers and positions too. Interesting. What were the dream's mechanics that made them materialise?
He studied the surroundings. Against the grey concrete it had an effect that looked very much like Midgar. A smile tugged at his lips. He concentrated.
The surroundings warped again and he was standing in the foyer of the Shinra building. It was imperfect, the lighting was wrong, and the foyer was never this empty, but the layout was perfect. He concentrated on the lights, and they resolved from a weak and watery yellow to the harsh spotlights of the real thing. He nodded, satisfied with the result.
Now for the test: he closed his eyes and let himself relax.
After sixty seconds he cracked an open. The bodies were back, bleeding all over the foyer, in the exact positions he remembered them, where he and Genesis had put them. It felt different in the foyer.
He sat up on the big marble counter and spent the rest of the dream polishing Masamune.
The notion of his dreams didn't mean anything to him when he rose the next morning. He didn't consider it all as the week stretched on.
He fell asleep in his living room one night, sprawled out on the couch with a book.
He opened his eyes in the Shinra foyer, surrounded by bodies. It was the first time in a decade he hadn't dreamed of the valley. It shocked him so thoroughly he woke again. The tv was on, muted, shining obnoxious colour across the room.
He turned it off and went to bed, shaking his bed at himself. Chances were he wouldn't dream again that night, he barely slept anyway. He lay awake, staring at the ceiling, and wondered why he felt unsettled.
He closed his eyes, breathing out through his nose. He opened his eyes in the foyer again.
"What do you hope to achieve?" a voice asked.
He spun around.
An elderly Wuteng woman stood in the foyer, watching him with an inscrutable look.
He had no idea what to say. Did he have to say anything? She wasn't real, and yet there was something quietly confronting about her. She wore humble clothes of the sort he had seen all over southern Wutai, but she didn't look out of place in the foyer. She felt incongruously more native to his own dreamscape than he did.
Her eyes lowered to the carnage. Her expression didn't change, if she was afraid she hid it perfectly. The silence stretched on. He wished the bodies weren't there.
"But they are," she said, with a wispy, inhuman voice. "And you can't make them go away."
Unease slid down his spine.
She raised an eyebrow at him. "Perhaps because you don't really want to."
He drew himself up. "I am not ashamed."
"No?" She approached, moving so lightly she seemed to float.
"Who are you?" he asked.
Her brow furrowed and she thought about it. "Reflection," she finally declared, savouring it.
"What are you?"
"Reflection," she said again.
She stood between him and a light bracket. The yellow beams shone through her. Was he translucent too? He looked down at his hands: no, he was not. He knew full well that dreams were simply a side effect of the mind processing old memories. By all logic she was simply a product of his imagination. His instincts said otherwise.
"Where did you come from?" he asked.
She hummed. She was short next to him, slightly shrunken but her back was straight. He studied her face and found it incongruous with her supposed age. There was something incredibly young in her eyes, even the weathered typography of her wrinkles looked somehow fresh.
"She watched the flowers growing over her mother's grave, watered with tears and regret…" she said quietly, her gaze unfocused. "Would she have approved? Was it enough? Would she be proud? …And so I was."
"I see," he replied, even though he didn't. "And what are you reflecting on now?"
"Blood on marble tiles." Her eyes snapped up to his. "They suit the foyer better than the valley soil. No grass to grow over them and disguise what was. Would those who shelter in silk suits and behind chrome desks be ashamed? Would they step around the bodies and try to keep their shoes clean? Or would they walk through it, proud, trailing red through the halls?"
"Stop!" he ordered. He took an aborted step forward, jolted by hearing his own thoughts parroted back at him. He had felt the very words being parsed out of his mind.
She gazed up at him, placid and thoughtful. Reflecting upon him. He sucked in a tense breath.
"Don't do that again," he warned.
"You called and I answered."
He shook his head and turned away from her. He stalked out of the foyer and found himself on the flat island of concrete. He picked an unexplored direction and started walking.
Reflection followed him, sedate, silent, and observant. He didn't acknowledge her.
The concrete came to an end and he halted at the bizarre sight before him. He had expected perhaps to find the valley again when the concrete ran out.
Half a pearly white tower stood on the island's edge. It was slender and graceful, built of a moulded material that glowed faintly. It must once have been part of a much larger structure, his instincts said it had likely functioned as a watch tower for the building proper.
Where the building must have once stood, there was a black hole. He didn't know how else to describe it, even though the description couldn't possibly be accurate. It floated slightly above the ground, its pull distorted the air and ground around it, constantly sucking everything into a whirling vortex. The island itself curved away from it, as though carved away by its presence. Only a single wall of the tower remained, the furthest from the anomaly.
"What is this?" he asked.
"Life, tapped," Reflection said. "The power that flows in your veins."
He raised an eyebrow. "It's... Mako?"
That made no sense.
It required investigation. He cast a barrier over himself and approached. Reflection did not follow.
The air around him warped and lost colour saturation. It was like heat distortion, but far too close and swirling in a spiral towards the epicenter. He squinted at it. He could see in the darkest night, but there was nothing to be seen within.
He reached the tower and braced his back against it. The glowing barrier rippled against the pressure. He could feel it tugging on his magic and making the little hairs on arms stand up.
He knocked at a crumbling segment of the wall. A piece came loose and shot into the anomaly, arcing through the air. The masonry disappeared without a trace. It had to have gone somewhere. So either it was a wormhole transporting matter and energy, or a transformer changing matter into energy.
Or it was neither of those things, because the laws of physics didn't apply to dreams. He shook his head at himself for getting drawn into the illusion. This was little more than a simulation, he knew that.
It was time he woke up.
He dropped his barrier and stepped out from behind the tower's wall.
The pull caught him immediately. It yanked his feet out from under him and hauled him forward. The green surroundings disappeared in a flurry of darkness. The tingling along his skin turned into a vice and he couldn't move. He expected an approximation of physical pain.
Instead it tore at something deep inside of him, shredding his thoughts. His mind, spirit, self began to crumble, splintering. Panic gripped him. Unable to move, unable to think, unable to be-
He lashed out, blinding casting ultima. The darkness roared like collapsing heavy machinery and then blinding light exploded.
He woke with a splintering headache and drenched in sweat. He sat up and examined himself, needing to reassure himself he wasn't injured. The strain of that tearing sensation stung deep in his chest. He put a hand over his racing heart. When was the last time a simple nightmare had unsettled him so badly?
He rubbed his fingers together and felt the numbness of intensive magic casting. But there was no magic in the air, he hadn't actually cast anything.
Maybe he was ill. He would have to report to Hojo for a physical. Dread joined the list of his symptoms.
The shrill ring of his phone disrupted his line of thought. He snatched it off the bedside table. He answered and the Director cut him off before he could say anything.
"There's been a catastrophic meltdown at Reactor four."
Genesis was having a very strange week.
Breaking Shiva had been tumultuous enough of an event, with its many implications for the world, not to mention the rest of his summon spirits. Then Hawke panicked and went into hiding and he had coaxed her back out with a most unexpected and endearing conversation about foreign literature. He woke the next morning to a reactor meltdown. The president was convinced it was a terrorist attack.
He met Sephiroth at the scene of the incident, and stared up at the mess.
Meltdown wasn't really the right word. The Mako had crystallised. All of it, violently, and in every direction. He stared up at the giant Mako crystals piercing through every pipe, reservoir and reaction chamber. He tried to theorise what could cause such a thing, but came up empty. Sephiroth stared at the wreck with narrowed eyes but offered no opinion.
They checked it over for signs of sabotage and found nothing. And really, what were they expecting? Genesis couldn't comprehend how anyone could have intentionally achieved what Shinra's experts hadn't even thought possible.
"It shouldn't be possible," he muttered, staring down at the solidified main reservoir. The entire reactor was unsalvageable. Sector four was without power until they could reroute reserves from one of the others.
"It happened. Therefore it is possible," Sephiroth replied at his side.
"Which means almost everything we know about Mako is wrong."
The only other person with more Mako running through their veins than Genesis did not look amused.
"Do you think it was sabotage?" Genesis asked, when Sephiroth held his silence.
"I don't know."
"That will sound very convincing on our report."
"The Science Department will decide what happened," Sephiroth said, squaring his shoulders. "There is no evidence of tampering here." He turned and stalked away.
Genesis watched him go, nonplussed by his sudden need to be mysterious. But his conclusions were correct, and ultimately there wasn't anything to be done about it.
The Science Department declared it a rare natural phenomena, which was code for 'we have no idea'. The news had already reported it as an attack, and the President decided they needed a greater military presence to reassure people.
He worked long pointless hours and felt a familiar weakness gnawing at his bones. Hawke offered to heal him but he simply didn't have the time until everything calmed down. They agreed to meet up afterwards, but for the moment he had no choice but to push through.
As consolation, he messaged her requesting poetry from Thedas at the end of day, when he finally returned home, tired and frustrated. She would reply with anything from sprawling epics to bawdy limericks, and it improved his mood significantly. He got the feeling it did hers as well.
It was a development he could not have predicted. He hadn't expected to even have a real discussion on Loveless that night on the phone. He didn't generally quote more than a line anyone besides Angeal and Sephiroth. He was well aware most people had no interest in it and he had no interest in exposing something so precious to him to disdain and mockery. Hawke did mockery so very well.
Her genuine interest shocked him. Her wistful understanding and comfort with the medium even more so. She wasn't conscious of the snobbery of academia, the feverish reverence of Midgar's theatre scene, or the disdain of the rest of the world. They sank into a comfortable back and forth that lulled him into a place without pretense that seemed fully the antithesis of her smirking, apathetic facade. He sat in his library nook, a glass of wine in hand and the crumbs of some cheese and crackers on the table nearby, and waxed poetic late into the night.
What a contradiction of a person she was. He wondered at it before finally a gap appeared in his schedule.
He waited for her at the top of the steps of the Midgar Museum of History.
Around him people in business attire walked by or sat eating their lunches in the weak sunlight. It was a large stone building of the classical style for this sort of thing, despite being only twenty years old and all the stone imported. It was beautiful nonetheless, and not even Shinra owned. It was Shinra approved though, naturally.
He was delighted to be out of uniform for five minutes, and wore a casual charcoal vest over a burgundy shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He was attracting all the usual looks of admiration, but that was his burden to bear.
Hawke arrived looking distinctly less feral than normal. He spotted her before she did him and watched her climb the stairs in a flattering high waisted black skirt, a billowy blouse in copper, and large opaque sunglasses. He had strictly informed her that armour wasn't venue appropriate, as she gave him the impression that, much like Sephiroth, if left to her own devices she would wear pauldrons and a sword to the dentist. She had grumbled about it, thus proving him correct.
"So, am I sufficiently disarming?" Hawke asked when she reached him, taking off her sunglasses with a flourish. The sun was high in the sky, shining in her black hair and casting their shadows in sharp relief down the stairs.
He looked her up and down appreciatively. "Do you mean disarmed?"
"I do not," she replied with a smile.
He chuckled. "Then yes, to anyone who doesn't know better."
"You look quite disarming yourself."
"Oh?" He raised an eyebrow and placed a hand on the small of her back to guide her towards the entrance. "Are you going to lay down your weapons for me?" He felt at least one knife strapped to her back.
"Only the ones you can find," she replied with a saucy wink and a laugh.
She turned a blinding smile to the greeter before he could respond and then they were buying tickets and making their way into the halls.
After Shiva's mention of a war between their precursor peoples, he had intended to bring her here. In truth he doubted there would be much of anything to find, but if the historical record held any mention of Thedas and its people, this was the place to look.
He was also incredibly curious to see what someone from a pre-industrial, largely oral culture would make of the historical exhibits.
The answer swiftly proved to be fascination.
He had been here before, he was friends with the curator, but he had never studied the displays with the intensity Hawke did. She read everything, she asked questions, and she theorised as she went: building her knowledge base as they passed from room to room. She understood the functionality of some of the older exhibits, but was woefully ignorant in other areas. She consulted with him and listened intently to his answers, replying with information mentioned in passing on some tiny placard three rooms ago. He watched with wry amusement as she tried to make sense of a diagram on early Mako production. She was an information sponge with no apparent saturation point.
He shouldn't have been surprised. She wouldn't have integrated so swiftly into Midgar's culture if she wasn't an insatiable learner.
She was also an insatiable flirt. He rose fearlessly to the challenge.
They passed through Shinra's early years and Midgar's founding, then further back through the Eastern migration, the feudal era, and reclamation period. There was nothing Hawke recognised as hailing from Thedas, not even in the Cetra wing.
They came to a halt in a room of glass cabinets, each full of painted amphorae from Mideel. Hawke looked surreptitiously over her shoulder. The only other person was a high school student scribbling in a notebook by a distant cabinet.
"May I?" she asked quietly. Half a second later the slightest touch of healing magic brushed against him, like a knock at the door.
He held out his elbow for her and continued what he was saying about the use of colour in Mideel artwork.
She nodded along, tucking her arm into his. The warm weight of her healing magic sunk into him at the touch of her fingers against his skin. Physical contact made for greater depth and precision, she had explained to him. The tide of magic sanded away the rot, leaving him raw and clean. His breath hitched and she picked up the conversation without pause.
There was something tantalising about doing it in public. He could not be so much as suspected of needing medical attention, it was utterly unacceptable. But there was something intriguing about how smoothly she could cast with nobody noticing. How triumphant it felt to pull it off under everyone's noses. He stood taller, stronger, and tossed his hair back.
She squeezed his arm and let go when she finished. They reached the end of the exhibit and her shoulders fell.
"Don't despair just yet, I've one more idea," he said, touching her lightly on the arm. "I'll be right back."
Hawke watched him go speak quietly with the nearest custodian. They turned and led him away somewhere.
She'd had a lovely time, even if she had found nothing that truly helped.
Genesis was charming company and very well educated, which made him the perfect companion for this kind of reconnaissance mission. And he was wearing the tightest jeans in existence, inarguable proof that there was still good in the world.
The truly ancient relics had proved to be thin on the ground. A large part of the Cetra exhibits were recreations of items too fragile or broken to be displayed. Some of it was outright fabrication, fanciful artist's renderings of what might have been. The theorising about how cetra magic worked gave her a good laugh. It was interesting, she would definitely bring Aerith here, and it was good to know what the official story was. Not remotely connected to Thedas, was what it was.
She looked through a display case of arrowheads. Somewhere out there Varric was still fighting Corypheus. Hopefully. Surely.
Somewhere out there her brother was still dying of the Blight, same as Genesis.
She had promised herself she wouldn't get her hopes up. She was a dirty liar. She heaved a sigh.
Genesis reappeared with a tall woman of Wutaian descent in a tailored suit and heels that tapped sharply against the tile floor. She carried herself like a monarch in the heart of her domain. Hawke smiled.
"Hawke, this is Ettie Lackner," Genesis said with a gesture when they reached her. "She's the museum's curator and an old friend."
"Oh, I read your book," Hawke blurted, shaking her hand.
Ettie blinked. "Did you?"
"Well, I perused it," she replied. "Northern continent… matriarchal grave goods?"
"One of my earlier works." She nodded, satisfied. Long, thin chains of silver moons and stars dripped from her ears and shimmered with her every move. "What did you think?"
"Very insightful," Hawke replied, scrambling. She had read the book, it was the least racist and fanciful of those she'd found at the library, but she hadn't been expecting to report back on it to the author. "I found your thoughts on alchemical equipment fascinating."
"Really? Are you a chemist?" Her eyes narrowed. "Are you from Shinra's research department?" She cast Genesis a scathing look.
"No!" Hawke held up her hands, "Andraste, no, I just... travel a lot. You see things like that in the wilderness, it's a part of good bushcraft. I've calcified remedies on similar setups myself."
"Have you?"
"I'm not an expert," she hedged.
Ettie studied her with alarming intensity.
Hawke glanced at Genesis for clues. He looked tremendously amused but declined to offer her a lifeline. The bastard.
"I have a working replica in storage," Ettie said brusquely, drawing out her phone. "Would you care to come back and give me a demonstration? I'm available next Thursday at 10am or the Tuesday after, same time?"
"Sure, why not. Tuesday?"
"Tuesday." Ettie tapped the appointment into her phone. "This way, please." She turned on her heel and cut a path to a nearby staff-only door.
"You had better think of a decent cover," Genesis said quietly, trailing behind with Hawke for some marginal privacy. "She's going to hound you until she's satisfied why you're familiar with thousand year old equipment she had to piece together from scraps."
Ah. She probably should have deduced that much.
"Old journeyman traditions?" she offered.
He raised an eyebrow, far too amused. "I wish you luck."
Damn. It was all his fault, he was so engaging a conversationalist she was liable to let her mouth run and just say any old thing. She was about to lay down her accusations, before deciding he would likely be far too pleased with himself if she admitted it.
"Where are we going?" she asked instead, while Ettie keyed in a code for the door.
"To behold the works not on display," he said.
"Too hot for the general public?"
"Oh yes, simply salacious," he drawled.
The door swung open and Ettie led them behind the scenes, through offices and corridors until they reached what felt like a workshop.
Now this was more like it.
Dirty and broken artefacts were being cleaned and documented at workstations around the room. It wasn't the smooth, perfectly posed performance of the public area, and the relics were the kind of things Hawke was used to finding sticking out of the dirt on Sundermount, and in about the same condition. Cracked pottery shards and rusted metal sat in baked clumps of dirt in large plastic tubs, wedged between cold coffee mugs and various brushes and tools Hawke couldn't name.
The handful of people at work looked up and called out various greetings. The people were friendly and seemed to know Genesis already. Most of them looked like their lunch breaks had ended too soon and they were eager for a distraction.
Ettie explained that they were processing the last of the artefacts from a recent dig on the Northern continent and led them around the room making introductions. Hawke didn't think she'd ever get over seeing the kind of enchantment equipment she had once browsed markets for, haggled over, and then hauled home on her back, in crumbling ancient pieces and being talked about like it was a rare mystery. It was familiar, so much of it she understood or could intuite the functions of, but all of it was slightly off. Unmistakably Gaian.
She had learned from her blunder back in the public area and kept her mouth firmly shut from anything but open ended questions. One of the younger workers was a student on placement who was eager to goof off for the rest of the afternoon and latched onto Hawke.
She was telling her about what she was working with, a tray of assorted metalwork, and picked up a piece to show off the scoring.
At the bottom of the tray sat the broken tang of a curved dagger, still caked in solid earth.
It was a dar'misu.
Hawke's heart skipped a beat. The traditional knife of an Elvhen hunter.
The handle and hilt had rotted away and the blade was rusted and snapped in two, but she knew it on sight. One of her earliest daggers had been a dar'misu and the unusual shape had thrown her knife work off for months.
She looked up and made urgent eye contact with Genesis. She didn't know what he saw in her expression, but he looked shocked. He came around to her side of the table.
The woman telling Hawke about the style of belt buckles they'd found faltered at the sudden shift in attention.
"What is this one?" Genesis asked, pointing down to the portentous relic.
"We think these are human crafts brought to the site later," Ettie said, joining them.
"What makes you say that?"
"The Cetra didn't bury their dead with weaponry, and what we have found is not in this style."
Hawke bit her lip. She wasn't supposed to know anything, wasn't allowed to recognise it, and she didn't know how to ask if it had been an elf's grave.
"Was it inside the structure?" Genesis asked, placing a supportive hand on the small of her back.
"What remained of it," Ettie replied. "The grave mound was opened and looted by later human settlers."
Hawke nodded. Some things were the same no matter what world you lived on. "Did they take all the grave goods?"
"And the remains. Cetra bones were said to be powerful talismans."
The conversation proceeded from there and Ettie led them onward. Hawke gave the knife one last wistful look.
She was so relieved to have seen it. It was nothing she could use, it solved nothing, but she felt lighter. She wasn't cut off forever and she wasn't crazy, there had been others. However many thousands of years ago it may have been, her people had been here.
It was enough.
She followed the other two into the next room and stopped dead in her tracks.
A full size Eluvian Mirror stood supported by wooden struts. Every inch of the frame was carved with halla and dragon sigils. The most Elvhen spear in existence pierced through its centre, surrounded by smashed glass.
A/N: Thank you for reading! Reviews are greatly appreciated :)
Next Time: Somniari, plural.
