The doctors could not understand how Angeal was awake. Hojo pushed the chart of inexplicable changes at Sephiroth and left Angeal's room, muttering under his breath.
Sephiroth studied the chart, tuning out Angeal's embarrassed attempts to ward off a nurse, and Genesis' light goading. The sudden turn was inexplicable. He had been scheduled to be woken from the coma in days' time, but nothing had been done yet. They went over everything that had been given to him, tested the IV just in case the wrong thing had been administered. Nothing.
He looked at the blood test results. Could degradation simply withdraw on its own?
"Infinite in mystery is the gift of the Goddess," Genesis said to the nonplussed nurse.
Sephiroth narrowed his eyes. No. It would not.
"I'm sure there's someone else who needs this bed," A groggy, but definitely healthy Angeal said. "It's alright, really."
"We don't know that." Sephiroth put down the chart with a clack and made direct eye contact with Genesis. "We don't even know why you woke up."
Genesis crossed his arms and raised his chin.
Angeal scratched the back of his neck, tugging on the wire taped to his wrist. There were no black lines on his neck, no discolouration on the backs of his hands. "I don't understand how I could have gone into a coma in the first place. SOLDIERs don't get sick."
Genesis sighed and looked down at the floor. "You and I do."
The nurse bowed out, and they explained the Shinra-Approved bare bones of the situation to Angeal. Genesis left out the details about their parents, but Angeal saw the gaps in the story and asked all the worst questions. The colour drained from his face. He looked to Sephiroth to confirm it.
Sephiroth nodded, mute.
Silence reigned for some time.
"How do you feel?" Genesis gently asked.
Angeal wouldn't look up at him. "Like my organs have all been rearranged."
"You have had a lot of surgeries," Sephiroth offered.
"I don't.. it's a lot to take in."
"It is." It had shocked him too at first, but the more he thought of it the more inevitable it sounded. Of course Shinra would try to breed SOLDIERs. They bred monsters often enough in the labs, and monsters rarely turned a profit. Why draw the line there?
Angeal sucked in a noisy breath. He had never been one to jump to conclusions, he would be processing it for months. He dragged a hand through his hair and reached to his shoulder to adjust armour straps that weren't there. His hand fell loose back to the bedsheets.
"I suppose there's nothing to do now but.. keep going." He sounded so lost, sitting in the spotted hospital gown and looking to them for reassurances. Was that… was that how Sephiroth had sounded when he told Genesis there was no other choice but Shinra?
"What were you dreaming about?" Genesis asked. "In the coma?"
"A dragon."
Sephiroth paused. Were all dreams of the Lifestream?
Angeal's brow furrowed as he latched onto the subject change. "It was...singing. It wanted me to sing along too but I didn't know any of the words and kept screwing up the song."
Sephiroth snorted. Evidently not.
Genesis dragged a hand down his face and shook his head. "I'm so glad you're awake."
"I think I preferred sleeping," Angeal muttered.
Genesis scowled. "Well tough luck. You're awake now, and I've been covering your entire workload while you were indisposed."
"You were covering half of it," Sephiroth corrected.
"-You're back just in time to return the favour."
Angeal's eyebrows rose. "I'm convalescing. Sephiroth, show him the chart."
Genesis waved him off. "I'm going on leave, so someone will have to do it."
"What do you mean, you're taking leave?" Sephiroth asked, turning on him. "Now?"
"As soon as Lazard approves it. I've been under a lot of stress, and you know company policy: we can't have high strung First Classes pushing themselves too far. I might snap and burn the whole building down."
Sephiroth sent Angeal a look. It was returned.
"Well, where are you going?"
"Cosmo Canyon."
Hawke waited at the gates of the military airfield on the city's edge and handed over her more-or-less legitimate ID. The round little officer in the gatehouse studied it through round little glasses.
When Genesis had said they should search Cosmo Canyon for information on Thedas she had thought he meant it in a 'wouldn't it be nice?' kind of way, not a 'next Tuesday' way.
She wasn't about to complain though, the offer had come as a pleasant surprise. Maybe he was taking the hunt for Thedas more seriously now, since Angeal was back on his feet and not showing any signs of collapsing again.
She suspected he relished the opportunity to be out from under Shinra's heavy gaze just as much as she did.
The officer squinted at her ID. She mentally cursed the guy who forged it for her. The officer compared it to a record she couldn't make out at this angle, made a note in a ledger, then snapped the ID book shut and handed it back, alongside a shiny visitor's pass on a lanyard.
The mechanical gate clicked and swung open for her. She mentally retracted all her cursing of the forger.
It was a bright and dusty morning on the Midgar plains. The city hulked like a giant cadaver behind her and the crumbling cliffs decorated the horizon in front. The winds were low for the locale, but still high enough to have her eyes feeling gritty and her armour joints filling up with dust. She snapped her sunglasses on and walked through the gate with her head held high, beneath the towering walls of barbed wire.
She felt the delightful déjà vu of legally entering a place she had previously only entered the other way.
Cosmo Canyon was so remote and uninteresting to Shinra that there was no access to it by commercial flights or searoutes, the only option was to get to Junon or Rocket town then endure the overland trail over half a continent. There was, however, a military outpost on the desert's edge that cut days off the journey. Genesis had organised it all, with what she could only assume was a terrible misuse of company assets.
Various Shinra personnel marched and drove to and fro, looking busy. She was supposed to meet Genesis in a numbered hangar and wandered along the signposted pathways in no particular hurry. Airships in all shapes and sizes with spinning rotors in a dozen different orientations taxied up and down runways. They took off and came in to land with great gusts of wind and roaring of engines. A whisper of alarm travelled down her spine. What exactly stopped them from falling out of the sky? They didn't look like any flying thing she'd ever seen, what happened if they ran out of fuel? Or the wind took a turn? Did they just plummet to the earth?
She arrived at the correct hangar, watching an airship with a great metal belly land so heavily the earth trembled. She swallowed. Flying on Flemeth's scaly dragon back to escape the darkspawn had seemed less risky.
"Ms Hawke."
Her head snapped around, the voice instantly setting her on alert.
Tseng stood outside the hangar. His lapels and black ponytail moved in the wind. His expression was hard and unreadable.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"On a jaunty countryside adventure. Where are you going?" she asked, pulling on her most grating smile. Her awareness expanded to include the barbed wire fence in every direction, the watch towers, and the untold numbers of infantry around them. "It's crazy the people you run into at the airport."
"You didn't inform us you were leaving Midgar."
She shrugged, anger blooming deep in her chest. "Didn't inform my hairdresser either."
He stepped closer and gestured for her to walk with him back towards the gate. "Your hairdresser won't miss you like we will."
"A real shame." She didn't move. "I'm sure you'll get over it."
He tilted his head like he was disappointed in her.
"Tseng!" Genesis called out, sharp and sudden. He approached from a side door in the nearby building, his coat flapping violently in the wind and a scathing expression on his face. "How good of you to come see us off."
The skin around Tseng's eyes tightened. "Commander."
"What are you doing?" Genesis demanded.
"Turk business."
He smiled. "What a coincidence. I'm here on SOLDIER business."
"Your friend is a person of interest and doesn't have approval to leave the city."
Hawke's breath caught in her throat. She clenched her jaw.
"Of interest to whom?" Genesis asked.
Tseng raised an eyebrow. "The company."
"Oh? Which department? Do you have a restriction of movement order that overrides Lazard's approval?"
Tseng's expression turned admonishing. Hawke felt the urge to either apologise for something or deck him.
Genesis crossed his arms. "I'll need to see the papertrail."
"There's no need to make this difficult."
"You're right, there isn't. We'll see you when we get back."
Tseng frowned. "And when will that be?"
"In a week or two. We haven't decided yet."
He looked hard at Hawke. She didn't risk saying anything lest she disrupt the careful politics with a careless quip.
"Don't stay away too long," he said. "Aerith may miss you."
He turned and left.
She let out a thin breath. Genesis watched him walk away with a scowl.
"Thank you," she said, dragging a hand down her face. She hadn't known if he could actually win that argument, Zack always acted like the Turks outranked SOLDIERs. She hadn't even known that he would try.
"Don't mention it." He put a hand on the small of her back, beneath her staff, and guided the way to the hangar.
"Seems unlike Tseng not to have all his ducks in a row before making threats," she said.
His lip curled. "Turks. They always want to have it both ways: keeping you under their thumb but not in the books. Useful, but only to them."
"And expendable," she added dryly.
"Naturally."
She was only surprised to learn they were actually answerable to some policy somewhere. She frowned.
"He will have all his paperwork in order when we get back."
"Perhaps, if he decides it's worth the cost. But if you meekly give way then they'll take everything and expect you to thank them for it." He glanced down at her. "What does he have on Aerith?"
"Everything." She shook her head. "She's only free because of delays in project funding."
"Likely why you're not in the books," he said, his expression troubled. "I'll see what I can do."
They entered the hangar, and one of the pilots interrupted to pull Genesis away. Hawke let him go and put her bag down by the wall, content to wait out of the wind. Their little airship was being wheeled out into the bleak morning sun.
The side door swung open and silver hair billowed in. A figure in black followed, brushing their hair out of their face.
Sephiroth in all his glory looked around with narrowed eyes.
Hawke studied him, her head rolling lazily on her neck. In spite of all the propaganda and hullabaloo, he had the audacity to look just like a regular human. Not as tall or imposing as a qunari, nor as ethereal as a spirit. He probably didn't even breathe fire or eat children for breakfast.
She assumed he was looking for Genesis. His gaze passed over her and then snapped back. His eyes widened. She raised an eyebrow.
He stalked towards her, adopting an expression she had learned to dread before she could form full sentences: the 'I'm going to get to the bottom of your bullshit' look.
She stood corrected, when marching towards her like he'd spotted a fly to squash, he was imposing enough to rival a qunari, maybe even the Arishok himself. She leaned back against the thin metal wall, her arms crossed and one leg relaxed and swinging. She had refused to tremble before the Arishok too.
She couldn't think what he wanted from her. Where had he even seen her face to know her on sight?
He stopped three feet away. He was very tall, with a somber face beneath a defined brow. His eyes glowed the colour of raw magic.
"You're a difficult woman to track down."
Both her eyebrows rose. "You're not a difficult man to avoid, I wasn't even trying."
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I thought you were looking for me, you don't know?"
His brow furrowed. "If I knew I wouldn't have been looking."
"Do you often go looking for people you don't know about?" She tilted her head, a small smile tugging at her mouth. "However do you manage it?"
He gave an exasperated huff she wouldn't have expected from such a stoic face. "I know you are associated with Genesis, and that your attempts at redirecting this conversation are clumsy."
She scoffed and decided she wasn't going to be cooperative. "You're looking for someone your friend knows and you didn't bother to ask them?"
"That is not your concern."
"Then why did you bring it up?" She cupped her chin between her thumb and forefinger. "Have you tried being more direct?"
His expression turned nonplussed.
"So why were you looking for me?" she drawled with a grin.
He studied her through narrow eyes for an awkward length of time. He was more awkward than anyone let on.
"I dreamed of you," he said quietly.
She straightened. All her plans of keeping silent went out the window. "When?"
"Months ago."
How had she missed him? How had Genesis? The two knew each other so well their dreams should have been recognisable to each other. It dawned on her. Genesis had recognised the dream, he had just refused to engage with it.
"On the edge of Da Chao?" she asked.
He blinked and nodded. Why was he surprised when he had recognised her? Unless he hadn't really believed the Fade to be real and thought it was just nonsense, or something purely his.
Her arms dropped to her sides. "Are you the bridge builder?"
"Yes."
"Oh."
Which meant he was a Fade shaper, like Aerith. Was he a Cetra too? An insanely powerful one if so, and one who didn't really know what they were doing, given the mess he was kicking up.
"Well, stop it," she said, baffled at the situation. "You're clogging up the place."
"I want to chart it, harness it."
"You can't, it's a dream."
"But you're knowing about it means it is real," he said, stepping forward. "Definitively."
She shrugged. "Sure, but it's still a dream. It doesn't have to play by the rules."
"Why do you have access to it? Who are you?" He took another step forward.
She looked him up and down. What had he actually come here for? Genesis alluded to him a great deal but rarely actually named him. The only concrete detail she really had was that he rejected Genesis' offer to turn on Shinra.
She smiled. "I'm the woman you were looking for."
"I am aware," he said, his brow lowering over his eyes.
"Then why do you keep asking?"
"Why do you keep talking in circles? And why do you keep moving your hand like that, you're not carrying any Materia."
She blinked and looked down. She'd been subconsciously holding the frame of a little shield spell around her fingers, not actually casting anything detectable but holding it at the ready. She looked back up at him, her smile turning toothy.
"How do you know? Did you scan me with Sense? Are you feeling threatened by little old me, serah?"
"I am feeling irritated."
"That doesn't sound like my problem."
"I can make it your problem," he said without much heat, though she didn't doubt it.
"Oh, go on," she said, flicking a limp wrist at him. "Make a scene."
He frowned.
"Sephiroth," Genesis called from across the hanger. "Are you haranguing my guest?"
Sephiroth looked at Hawke like she was a misplaced fork in a cutlery draw, confusing the neatly assembled soup spoons.
"I believe I'm the one being harangued," he replied.
Genesis aughed. "Good for you, Hawke."
"Hawke," Sephiroth repeated, staring her down.
"Yes, Sephiroth?" she drawled.
"Did you heal Angeal?"
She paused. "No."
He narrowed his eyes.
She shrugged. "I did try."
Genesis called that it was time for them to board.
"I will have questions for you when you get back," Sephiroth said, in much the same tone Tseng had used.
"Lucky me." She grabbed her bag. "Nice meeting you, I suppose."
"I suppose," he replied. He nodded and left her in peace.
Genesis sat opposite Hawke in the tiny cabin. It was a small model, the middle point between airship and helicopter. The rotors droned constantly, shaking everything. He undid his seat belt as the ascent evened out, relieved to finally be setting off.
Hawke sat tensed, gripping the seat on each side of her knees and side-eying the steadily disappearing ground out the window.
How could someone bold enough to intentionally antagonise Sephiroth be afraid of mere heights?
He'd overheard most of the conversation. He knew her well enough to know that was what she had been doing, between moments of startling honesty. He wasn't sure if he was irritated at her just coming out and saying things the two had been dancing around for months, or relieved at having the band aid ripped off.
Likewise, he wasn't sure how he felt about the fact that Sephiroth had been dreaming in the Fade alongside them all those months. Years in fact. He was glad it happened immediately before leaving the city so he could think it over at a distance before Sephiroth pressed him for answers he couldn't honestly give.
A gust of wind shook the cabin. Hawke held herself so stiffly against the seat's back she nearly toppled over.
Genesis chuckled. She sent him a death glare.
"I've been wondering, what does 'serah' mean?" he asked, taking pity on her and offering a distraction. "And that other honorific you use, 'messere'? They're obviously not gender based."
"It's social ranking." Her eyes strayed between him and the window. "Serah is for people of equal and lower rank to you, messere: higher rank."
He paused. "You called Sephiroth serah."
"Yes?"
He breathed a laugh. "I aspire to your level of self-confidence, messere."
Her brow furrowed. "You don't think you're his equal?"
"Only someone from a different world could ask that."
"You're both First Class aren't you?" She looked at him with a frown, the window forgotten. "I heard that the general thing was just a publicity stunt and not a real rank."
He crossed his arms. "Yes, and it should tell you something that they were prepared to foist upon him a title entirely inappropriate for SOLDIER's command structure. It doesn't have to mean something in order to mean something."
Her frown grew severe. She leaned forward. There wasn't a lot of room.
"Genesis," she said, slow and uncommonly serious, "'messere' is for people you believe to be superior to you. Nobody deserves to ever hear it from your lips."
His breath faltered in the face of her sudden conviction. In that moment he very much wanted her to kiss him.
"Except for you, presumably," he breathed.
"Only so long as it's with scathing sarcasm," she said, and leaned back in her seat, her shoulders squared and her back straight.
He swallowed.
The rest of the flight passed without incident. Hawke's attention to the window lost its fear and became awed as they crossed over the eastern sea through shredded strips of clouds that rushed over them. Genesis slept for a couple of hours and woke to the sight of her still watching the stream of clouds pour over the wings like the lightest silk.
They chased the sun west and touched down in the early afternoon at a Shinra outpost on the edge of a rocky red desert. He'd flown over it but never explored it before. Hawke, in her sleeveless armour and grey and red leathers, looked perfectly at home against the dramatic backdrop.
They took a buggy from the outpost and set out across the rocky expanse. Eroded buttes rose from the plains, striped with thick bands of red and grey stratum. He drove down the side of the plateau the outpost was on and suddenly there was no sign of human activity in any direction, just beautiful, untamed wilderness.
The wind whipped through his hair, cool enough to counteract the scorching sun. Genesis felt some of the tension he always carried around inside him ease away. There was no Shinra out here, and he could almost believe there was no Blight hiding away in his heart either, just him and Hawke, exploring together.
"What is that!" Hawke called, pointing.
A large winged creature wheeled overhead, then dropped down to land atop a nearby butte. A small flock of them lounged on the rock. Two or three looked down at them curiously. They were twice the size of a person, with a wingspan of about four meters.
"Griffons," he said. "Half lion and half eagle according to the legends."
"I know what a griffon is," she laughed, looking back at him with wide, wonder filled eyes. "They've been extinct on Thedas for centuries."
He slowed the buggy to a stop at the crest of a small hill. She leapt out to go watch. He got out and joined her. Two of the smaller ones, with fluffy downy feathers, kept leaping up and catching the wind in their golden wings. Their shadows spiraled and danced along the valley floor.
"The grey wardens used to ride them into battle."
"Really? Like chocobo?" He could see the logic, but was more interested in her open awe.
"If chocobo could fly," she replied with a wide smile. "They helped win the Fourth Blight. Alas, they didn't survive."
A larger griffon stood and stretched its wings, then soon the others were all up and doing the same, shaking out their feathers and watching the surroundings.
"I don't think they've ever been domesticated here," he said. "They can be dangerous to caravans, I expect you could get work around here culling their numbers."
"Lets just stay out of their path then."
The flock took to the air. Graceful and silent across the rocky wastes, they moved together in formation. They caught the air currents and rose higher and higher, away up into the sky.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews and concrit are all welcome, I'd love to know your thoughts.
Next Time: Bugenhagen.
