Something screeched in her ears.
She sucked in a deep breath and opened her eyes. Everything was a fuzzy gray, full of bright spots as she sucked in another breath of blessed air, not liquid.
Something beeped a quick rhythm beside her head. The squealing quieted down to a background itch of her ears.
Everything was so loud, compared to that other place, where she had seen Jamie. Held her hand.
'Jamie, her name was Jamie. Was Roceler there too?' the realization was slower than it should have been. 'Yes, Roceler was there.'
The spots in her vision cleared quickly. Her head swam. "Jamie?" she tried to say. Instead, she rasped a noise that sounded strange to her ears, and started a hacking cough. She regretted trying to speak, even as she had tried to call out for a dead woman.
'Never forget who you are.' Marin, her name was Marin. What was her last name?
'Don't let them take that from you.'
Marin moved to soothe her throat, only a thin sheet gave any resistance to the movement. She licked her lips, they were dry and cracked. She needed something to drink, her throat was ragged and she was thirsty. Something was taped to the back of her hand.
Wiggling her toes, she was without shoes. At least she was dressed, even though it was in another hospital gown. Another ShinRa-branded one.
Soft footsteps padded towards the curtain that surrounded Marin's bed. A hand reached out and pulled the curtain open. "You're awake." the woman said.
Marin tried to say yes. She only went into more hacking coughs.
"Don't try to talk, you've been out a while."
Marin worked her fingers open and shut. She coughed some more, trying to ask for water. Before Marin just mimed for a drink of water.
"I said don't talk. Here, let me get you some water." The woman disappeared behind the curtain, returning to offer Marin a cup of water.
Marin tried to sit up, she remembered fire and burning. But there was no more pain. And even under a thin sheet she was more than warm enough.
The water tasted like metal, it was the strongest flavored tap water she had ever tasted. She spat it back into the cup.
The nurse rolled her eyes, "It's just water. You'll get used to it."
Marin watched the nurse while she tried to drink the water again. 'My tastes did change.' She thought. She might be tasting the minerals from the pipes the water had run through. Whatever the taste was, it hurt to swallow. At the same time it was a relief to swallow something.
Marin no longer had a dry mouth, she could lick her cracked lips. "How-" Marin coughed again.
The nurse chided her, "tsk-tsk. Your throat needs more time."
Marin looked annoyed, she started to sit up, but stumbled. Clumsy and awkward.
"Lay back, I'll get something for your throat in a minute."
It took an hour before Marin could talk without coughing. The nurse had the answer to everything. This one was actually kind. Kinder than Marin expected in ShinRa.
Marin figured out that the rapid beeping was her heart rate. Faster than felt normal, but the nurse reassured Marin that there was nothing wrong with her vitals. She had an iv drip into her left arm.
Marin was told that she had been out for three weeks.
"Three weeks?!"
"It happens sometimes." the nurse, 'Layla' according to the name tag, told her. "You're the last of this batch to wake up."
"This batch?" Marin's mind was finally clear enough. She could read the tiny ShinRa logo on Layla's badge. Marin threw her head back in frustration onto her pillow. All roads lead to Midgar, and ShinRa was at the center of that. Marin hated that.
'This batch.' Marin wasn't the only one. And she had no idea who else had made it though the Mako shower.
'Wait, the Mako.' During one of the periods Marin was alone, she looked at her own arm, flexing it. It felt like someone else's arm, and she was inhabiting someone else's body. That wasn't her arm, with those corded muscles looking back at her.
Feeling her underarm though, she found the same scar in the same place. Checking under the front of her gown, her other scars were there, and so were more muscles. Marin had changed while she slept.
'Marin, Marin Oakley. That's my name. I slept through most of September. I missed my birthday.' Not that Marin had many people to celebrate with. Her friends from K-Town were all gone.
'Wait K-Town. But I came from Icicle Inn before that…' Her head swam. Biting her tongue she remembered that Icicle Inn was a secret.
Marin temples pulsed with pain, she hadn't had enough water. But the nurse was gone for another, Marin didn't know how long.
Layla reappeared and Marin asked for more water, while her head pounded.
Marin scratched the back of her neck while the hairs there stood on end. It was like something was crawling up her neck. But there was nothing there, just the pain in her temples.
'Never forget who you are.'
"I'm Marin. Marin Oakley." She whispered to herself. "I miss Jamie., Danny, hell even Sam. We're from-" K-Town didn't sound right, but it was all Marin could think of. Kuar-Glen to outsiders. Marin remembered, there was nothing left of the town. K-Town had been wiped from the map when the reactor blew.
She could remember a column of greenish-white smoke, the boom. There was nothing of K-Town left. Except Jamie, Danny, Shawn and her. And now they were gone.
Marin was thinking of her friends, her new friends. When Layla came back with more water.
'Jazz, Lina, Jom, Fen, Gina…' Marin listed her friends, and the one she even didn't like to herself as she drank the water and her headache passed after a few more glasses.
"Can you tell me your name?" Layla asked brightly.
"Marin Oakley."
She asked Marin another question. "When's your birthday?"
"I just missed it." Marin rubbed her forehead and temples, hoping that the dehydration headache didn't come back. Or why this one had stabbed her temples.
"Oh yeah?" Layla asked. "When was it?"
Marin rattled off the day in early September she was born on.
"Well, now. Happy belated birthday! How old are you?"
"Nineteen."
"Well, that's a little old for SOLDIER. But welcome to your new job."
"Thanks." Marin told her. 'I guess.'
"Where were you born?"
"K-Town."
"Excuse me?"
"Sorry, Kuar-Glen."
"All right, where is that?"
"North of Rocket Town."
"Hmm." The nurse checked her clipboard. "You don't sound like you're from that area."
"What?" Marin felt something die in her stomach, she wasn't hungry anymore."
Layla had a huge grin on her face, "You sound more like you grew up in Midgar like I did. Anyway. I have to run the rest of your first check-up. Now that you're awake."
Marin looked puzzled, "What do you mean I sound like I'm from Midgar?" Marin had no idea what the woman meant.
"Don't worry about it dear, let's check your vitals and walk before your run."
Marin was full of questions, and the nurse didn't answer any of them.
"Okay." There was nothing else to do but comply.
Marin was a SOLDIER now, first she had to get accustomed to the changes. Walk before she ran, as it were.
Looking above her, the background squeal flickered in time with the light in the ceiling above her head. Marin could hear the hiss and crackle of the ceiling light. It was louder than she had ever heard florescent lights make before. There was more than walking that she would have to get used too.
Marin was relieved to not be itching or burning all over anymore. She remembered the ripping and pulling of her skin, but awake she could find no damage. That other place, made of white, that turned red. It had been some sort of dream or hallucination caused by the Mako.
She leaned closer to the mirror in the bathroom. Her steps were already steady. Though her left arm was still sore, as much as it was thicker than before. Her Right arm, her whole body was different, had more omph to her movements.
A different face looked up at her. Not unrecognizable, it was just sharper, in stronger relief.
Her eyes were still blue around the edges, but brighter. The gray that used to ring her pupils was green now. The green shot from the pupils and across the iris. She had Mako-eyes now. What had been a stormy-sky was now a blue-green.
She cared not for a metaphor and moved on. Flexing her hand in the mirror, her body was quickly feeling like her body. She squeezed her fist like it was her fist. But it didn't look like her fist, for one thing it was a little thicker. Her arms, her legs her feet. She had never been skinny, but now there was already more muscles under her skin. The layer of fat over her old muscles were more defined. Even as she still had a soft profile, she could feel the tension underneath. Take a pinch of her stomach fat and feel the resistance of her abs under that flesh.
Looking into the front of her hospital gown, it was a relief to see the scars again, still unchanged. Sucking in a deep breath, she braced the sink and held her breath, counting. She let go when spots reappeared in her vision, she could hold her breath twice as long as before. And her lungs could hold more, somehow. Or she was better at using was what air was in her lungs. Or both?
She was in a hospital room in thin slippers. She wasn't cold at all in the thin gown and pants. Her bed only had the thin sheet over her. Hospitals were always cold to Marin, but she wasn't cold now. In face, Layla had been wearing a cardigan under her uniform.
Feeling her side, her curves were still her curves, but they resisted her touch. She was less soft, as much as she was as curved as she was before. It felt like she had the same body as before, the same profile. But the muscles under her skin were a bit more than they were before. Her body was a different body.
Marin hated it already, she wanted her binders back, for some feeling of normalcy. Something she could control. No doubt none of them would fit, not that she remembered where she left them.
She could remember having several binders of different colors. But she hadn't worn them in nearly a year for some reason. Marin remembered shopping in the city, and not getting a new binder. She did not feel safe to wear them in Midgar.
'Besides, I don't want to find out the hard way that the people here aren't fond of the gender fluid.' It wasn't safe to be her self, especially not here.
Marin struggled to remember exactly why she didn't feel safe. Other than a bias to not trust ShinRa or anyone who worked for that company. Even as SOLDIERs were property of them. Marin wasn't buying into their bullshit. She knew that much.
She remembered something else, Sephiroth. Shutting her mouth, she knew not to speak of him out loud, not yet. Not unless the two of them were alone.
As far as she knew no one Marin knew had been waiting for her to wake-up. Jamie was gone, long dead on Mount Nibel. Sephiroth hadn't appeared from behind the curtain. There was just the nurse. Off to take the results of Marin's physical exam, and fetch Marin's first meal.
Marin rubbed her cheeks. She had more definition than before. She didn't feel any stronger, but she could pull her jaw muscles a little harder, before she reached the point of pain. 'This is going to take getting used to,' she thought. 'Just so I don't accidentally hurt someone.'
She looked in the mirror one more time. Remembering a dream of Roceler and Jamie. 'I'm sorry Roceler. Whoever you wanted me to meet, I'll never know unless I dream that again.'
Marin remembered her grief, and what she had said to her dead girlfriend.
'Wait for me Jamie. Wait for me.' Whether Jamie really was in the Lifestream, or it had just been a Mako-induced dream?
Marin prayed that Jamie would wait for her just the same.
She had been dragged into SOLDIER, but she had every intention to live at least a little longer. 'Wait for me.'
Interlude 1
Jamie stood in the remains of Marin's life. She had finally convinced Marin's mother that her daughter had been lent some very important things from Jamie. And Jamie came to get them back.
'You owe me for this Shawn.' Jamie swore to herself. She would get a favor out of her brother later. Until then, she was going to poke through Marin's old bedroom, in her old house, back on Earth.
The carpet was clean, the desk had been cleared of it's clutter. And there was a thin layer of dust on everything.
Jamie suspected that Mrs. Ito hadn't dusted since Marin had gone 'missing.'
'I feel like a thief.' Jamie thought as she poked through her girlfriend's bedroom. Marin would have been okay with it, if it would help their situation. But Marin wasn't around to ask.
Marin had been missing for a year and a half. Jamie figured that the bedroom was as Marin had left it. Except for the bedsheets. Jamie remembered something about Marin mentioning that she had appeared in the ice and snow in her pajamas. The bed looked made, not slept in.
Mrs. Ito had been taking care of the room, even as over a year of dust had accumulated on everything.
Jamie felt like she was disturbing a memorial, she she looked on the shelves, the furniture. Looking at what Marin had left behind.
'She's alive. But trapped in a stupid game. She's okay, she has to be.' The alternative was not worth thinking about.
Jamie had eschewed dating anyone else in the meantime, even as Marin's parents denied that anything bad had happened to their daughter. Everyone held their breath, waiting for the parents to give up and have a funeral for Marin.
Her wallet and valuables, even her shoes were still in the house. Marin had seemed to just disappear in the night. At least her parents were finally above suspicion of Marin's murder.
How cruel, for Jamie to know the truth, even as the police had questioned everyone nearly a year ago. At the end of the day though, no one could produce a body, so there was no sustaining a murder investigation for this long.
But the Ito's, and everyone else, still hoped that Marin would reappear somehow.
Everyone but Jamie, Danny and Shawn. They were the only ones that had been to that other place, where the world of Final Fantasy Seven was real. At least to them. All three of them had seen or felt death coming to them, before they had appeared back on Earth, very much alive.
Shawn had been thrown off a cliff by ghosts, Whispers he called them. Shawn was the only one who had seen them, outside of the video he had shown Jamie and Danny. And at the bottom of the cliff, Shawn had landed on his ass on the pavement in this city. Not splattered at the bottom of a crevasse.
Jamie had felt the pincers of that monster grab around her in the night, and felt her body moving in the air before she had woken up in her bed, unharmed. As well as unarmed of the things she had been carrying that night on Mount Nibel. Even her pajamas were intact, despite replacing them with other clothes in that other world.
Danny had seen fire and felt the heat, before he had opened his eyes, back in a cardboard box. The one that he had been sheltering in the night his parents had kicked him out of their house.
After so much fire and death on that other planet, Danny being black and gay felt like such a minor problem. Compared the the trials they had faced on the planet Gaia. Until Danny was back on Earth, still without a home. Shawn had taken him in since. The second Jamie had graduated, she had moved in with them. Shawn and Danny were the only ones who understood what had happened in that other place.
As far as Jamie's parents were concerned, Jamie was living with her other female college friends. Too busy with school to host her parents. Too busy shielding Shawn from their parents, and the man he had become after he had finished college.
With Marin still missing, Jamie re-introducing Shawn to their parents was less important than getting Marin back. At least Marin's gender fluid tendencies were accepted by her parents. Jamie was still trying to figure out how to introduce Shawn to their mother and father without them freaking out. When Shawn was ready to do so anyway.
Then there was Danny's time on the other world. He had joined, then left AVALANCHE. After the four of them had more or less survived their disastrous road trip on Gaia. Things like rent and high school felt trivial problems. But they had to be handled while they were on Earth. As Marin would say, rent was their 'today' problem.
Danny's return was the most mysterious of all. While Shawn and Jamie had come 'back' to Earth the moment they left. Danny had been back in that alley months after he had left Earth. Time was not linear it seemed. He had been the first to be ripped away from Earth, and the last to return, by their calendar. He also had to contend with being declared dead by his family. He had joked that he had visited his own grave, which had long since been exhumed, not that anything had been buried inside.
Danny getting undeclared dead had been a huge issue, in their time back on Earth. But the paperwork and lawyers involved didn't touch on Marin still being missing, or how.
It was all still a mystery. Including the mechanic that had moved them in the first place. They didn't know how they left, or how to get back.
Shawn remembered that Marin had mentioned that she had a golden coin, just like they all did. And that she hadn't taken it with her to Gaia.
The two-headed Chocobo gold coin. That hadn't existed anywhere until the game trailer a little while ago. And yet all four of them had one long before. A real gold coin copy of a prop that no one else in the world had. In the game it was it was just pixels.
Jamie swept the dust off Marin's books and instruments. Her ocarina and electronic keyboard just sat out in the open. They weren't in their cases or dust covers. No doubt Marin had gone to sleep, expecting to play them the day after she had disappeared.
Jamie clutched the small clay instrument to her. Marin had breathed and drooled into the thing, gross she knew. It would be long dry by now, but Jamie squeezed the round blue pendant ocarina to her stomach. Jamie was holding something Marin had held. She had no idea how to play it, music wasn't Jamie's thing. Marin had practiced, but had only played Jamie 'happy birthday' for her the once. But it was Marin's thing, her way of taking care of herself. And Jamie could hold a piece of Marin by holding the bit of glazed clay.
"I'll find you." Jamie promised the room. She opened the drawer below that shelf and found more ocarinas. Putting the blue one in a pocket. She pulled out one of the other small ones that had been stored in it's case. Marin had several, and two of them could easily fit in Jamie's pocket. Case and all.
Sweeping her long dark brown hair, covered in a bit of dust, behind her dark ear. Jamie, to her friends, Jameela to her parents, located the giant coin by the alarm clock.
A little larger and thicker than a silver dollar, it wasn't real gold by Shawn's determination.
Sweeping the dust off, she could see how it matched the one Jamie and the other's had. The giant face and tail of one of those large birds on one side. With a matching side on the other. A two-headed coin, that Shawn argued was two-tailed because it was an animal face. Jamie didn't care for the difference, only that she had found Marin's.
Marin had gone missing in 2019. It was 2020 now. Everything was different, the world was a different place. Jamie had promised Marin's mother that Jamie had a tiny social bubble. And Marin's mother had shut Jamie down, disbelieving that Coronavirus was even a threat. Not letting Jamie in until she put her 'stupid' mask away.
'Wouldn't that be something. If the three of us finally solve everything. Only to get sick from Covid. Or worse, take the disease to Gaia.' But it was one problem at a time.
Jamie would just scrub down when she got home. Hoping that Marin's idiot mother wasn't just infecting Jamie. Jamie had washed her hands as soon as she had come inside, in case she was a carrier herself.
Leafing through Marin's music books, Jamie found an old one that looked the least arcane to Jamie. One of the old beginning ones Marin had handwritten. Stuffing it inside the box of Marin's Play Station console. She packed up the black box. Marin's mother had paid so little attention to her daughter, that Jamie had convinced Mrs. Ito that it had been a loan, before Marin had gotten sick. The thing was coated in dust, un-played for the entire time it had been left in this room, connected to the small television.
'Now Danny and Shawn can play that damn game. You owe me a favor too, Danny.' Jamie was determined to not play the Remake of the game they had been stuck in. She was already stealing into Marin's bedroom and taking things.
In the hopes that Jamie could get back there and give Marin her music back. Or better yet, get her back to Earth.
With the big box in her arms, and all the contents inside, the coin in her pocket. Jamie bade good bye to Marin's mother.
"Don't get up, I can get the door myself." Jamie told her host. The only one in the house, Marin's siblings were out, thankfully.
Mrs. Ito didn't even try to get up from the couch. She had holed herself up in the living room, watching television.
Jamie left Marin's mother behind. She knew all about what Mrs. Ito was like, from Marin. That she hadn't been more of a hassle was the most surprising. The woman had ruined her girlfriend's life. Such that, if Marin was still here, they would be together apartment hunting by now.
'If Marin hadn't hurt me by ghosting me, we would still be apartment hunting right?' Jamie convinced herself that that was true. Marin cutting her off for months had hurt so much, Jamie had been considering ending it and being just friends on that other planet. But she had never gotten the chance to let Marin down lightly. Her secret girlfriend, they could finally be themselves on that other planet, only to be separated again, by Jamie returning to Earth by force of death.
And as far as anyone on Earth knew, Jamie and Marin were only best friends. Friends enough that Jamie could go into Marin's room, and take what she needed. What Shawn and Danny had told her she needed.
Jamie had no intention of breaking it off now. She just wanted Marin back, here, and safe.
'We get Marin home. And she can have this stuff back.'
Interlude 2
"YOU STILL DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY I AM HERE?" The being asked Ardyn.
Ardyn didn't answer, keeping his ignorance to himself and not guessing. The other being like him had found Ardyn stumbling. And was trying to help Marin Become.
The voice continued, "OURS IS A COMPLICATED LOT. MORESEO WHEN WE BECOME. A DANGEROUS TIME FOR US, AND THE COCOON.
Ardyn looked over, he hadn't said anything but had thought there was only a danger for the one growing and changing.
"WE ARE BEINGS OF CHANGE. WE CAN BE ANYTHING. BUT WHEN WE START TO CHANGE, TO BECOME LIKE THIS. IT IS A GREAT PERIOD OF CREATION AND DESTRUCTION."
"I didn't destroy anything when I Became like this."
"AH THAT IS WHERE YOU ARE WRONG LITTLE ONE. YOU FAILED, BECAUSE YOU DESTROYED YOUR CHANCES, TO BECOME LIKE ME."
Ardyn would frown if he had a face here.
"YOU ARE STILL A BEING OF CHANGE, BUT YOU ARE NOTHING LIKE ME." They touched the single thread, the one between the stars. The stars represented possible realities more than light. But stars is what one would understand to look here.
Marin was on one end, somewhere in that mess. The other end of the thread lead elsewhere, her link back home.
When Ardyn had detected that she had started to change, to Become. He had placed that thread to send her somewhere her potential for creation and destruction wouldn't destroy her home. Not that she would be staying there after the Change. The universe was so much bigger than any one planet and the universe in side it. A part of Ardyn missed where he had come from, but he was something else now. His people would not, could not, understand. They would see the man that had left them, and he would see them and everything else his senses picked up now. The universe was a different place to him now.
All the stars around them were full of possibility, possible realities. The destruction of some errant dream was far better than one's own home. Ardyn had thought.
But he had never imagined that she would take it all for real. That she would shrug off the end of that thread, chuck it into a canyon. Now Ardyn couldn't find her presence inside that other reality. She was lost to him. An entire reality to search, meanwhile she was still Changing.
It was a dream to her, but she took it for real, and her Change was creating it to be more real.
The other being continued in the silence. "WE ARE ALSO BEING OF CHANGE AND STASIS. AND IF YOU HAD NOT LOST TRACK OF THIS ONE, I COULD HAVE BROKEN IT'S STASIS YOU HAD INFLICTED ON IT. SPREADING YOUR STASIS ABOUT LIKE A SIMPLE BEING'S DISEASE. BUT I CAN FIX ALL OF YOUR MISTAKES NOW THAT I AM HERE."
Ardyn had been dealing with this being for so long, he knew how useless an argument or debate would be. He just stewed in silence, knowing them to be wrong. Ardyn wasn't a mistake.
His name might have been manufactured by a simpler brain that did not understood what she was seeing. Not yet. Not until Marin was done changing.
"NOW WE WAIT."
"For what?" Ardyn asked.
"FOR IT TO MAKE A DECISION."
"For her."
"THEY ARE JUST-NO I WILL NOT ARGUE THIS AGAIN. WE WAIT FOR IT TO CHANGE, TO BECOME. AND DECIDE."
"Decide on what?" Ardyn couldn't help himself, he had to know what Marin had to decide.
"ON WHAT IS MORE REAL. HER CHANGING. OR THE POSSIBILITY SHE FOUND HERSELF IN. WITH NEITHER OF US CLOSE ENOUGH TO GUIDE HER TO THE TRUTH."
Ardyn knew of another, so did the other being.
On the other end of that thread, was Marin's friends. People Ardyn could communicate with when the other being wasn't around. The tokens they held meant Ardyn could find them no matter what, as long as they kept them.
'Yes, her friends can find her, when I can't.' But Ardyn kept that to himself. And waited for his moment.
Marin had thought that basic training was intense. Third Class training was something else.
She had been shoved back into training the second her health had cleared. The coughing and cobwebs had lasted hours. She was already up and running again before then.
When you could move quicker, jump higher, think quicker, hear more, and see further. Combat was something else. There were a few minor accidents at first, while her and the other trainees were still getting adjusted to their body's changes. Though the others had already had weeks on her to adapt.
Considering the changes to the body during her teen years, which had taken years of getting used to. Including the parts of it she didn't like bouncing around some days. Marin needed hours and days to get used to being a SOLDIER.
She was ambushed on the third day after leaving the forty-ninth floor's medical wing.
In the atrium the other trainees, the other third classmen, were crowded around one of the tables. Marin knew something was up when someone started hushing up as she approached. Her neck prickled as one of the other tables watched, Zack was watching with friends. His grin made Marin worry a little less about what was coming.
"Hey Marin, third class!" Lina had broken away from the huddle. She took in the look on her face, "Now, don't be alarmed. One of the second classmen told us you missed it so-"
Jazz parted the group, revealing what was on the table. "Happy belated-sorry-we-missed-your-birthday!" she had a huge smile for Marin.
Marin stepped up to the table, where a tray from the cafeteria held some snack cakes. The one in the middle had a candle on it, unlit.
"Sorry we didn't light it," Jazz came up alongside Marin. "We asked, but it would set off the building's sprinklers."
"Thanks." Marin's face fell. In all of this mess, in training, she had put aside missing her birthday. Zack hadn't forgotten, the other third classmen hadn't forgotten.
"I don't see Jom around…" Marin asked Jazz. "Where's Greely. Fen Greely?"
Jazz and Lina's faces fell, before they put a smile back on.
"They didn't make it." Lina said.
Jazz only shook her head, before putting a brave face on and pointed out the last-minute birthday cake. "You were the last one to wake up."
Lina cocked her head at Marin, "You sound different… Ow. Jazz?"
Jazz had cuffed Lina.
Marin let the conversations wash over her while she looked at the pile of food on the table, propping up an unlit candle.
'There's only fourteen trainees left, plus me. Did they need a reason to celebrate?'
Marin put on a small smile and made a show of blowing the unlit candle, before picking it off and taking a bite of the snack cake from the commissary. They could be found in vending machines all over HQ. The other trainee's grabbed their own cakes from the pile, some splitting one in half between a couple of them. Not enough cakes to go around.
The sweet filing, the texture of the bread, it reminded her of sicking-up in the shower, a night of violence. She wanted to wretch at the memory of two people turned into four pieces, her throat burned as she swallowed the piece whole. She found her self coughing as she choked down the piece, trying to get past the taste and not remember what those bodies had smelled like. That metallic smell to the air, there had been so much blood.
A distant memory of eating the snack cakes after her debrief. That's all it took, that and vomiting them up in the shower.
Sephiroth had done that violence to protect some of the trainees, including Marin.
She had feelings for the one who protected her. And he would do murder to keep her safe. Even if those men had been trying to kidnap here to who-knows-where. They were most definitely dead now.
Marin debated with herself, thinking 'He did it to protect me. And the others.'
"Marin, you OK?" Jazz asked. "You look green."
"It tastes different." Marin choked out.
Jazz took a test bite of the half of her cake. "I guess, but it's not bad."
Marin shook her head. "I'm still getting used to the differences."
Jazz gave Marina concerned look but shrugged in the end.
Lina came around the table, "How old are you now?"
"Nineteen."
"Wow, I didn't realize, that's old for a SOLDIER." she said.
"Thanks Lina." Marin still hadn't taken a second bite.
Lina put her hands up, "Sorry, sorry. It's just-"
"Lina," Jazz started, "Get your foot out of your mouth. Marin's not the only 'old SOLDIER' among the Thirds now."
"How old are some of the others?" Marin asked.
"The oldest Thirds are twenty five, I think." Jazz said. "Not everyone makes it to second class."
"Even less make it to first, right?" Marin asked.
"You got it." Jazz told her.
'I'm in the program. I don't need to advance, I just have to survive long enough to get out.' Marin thought to herself. Now that she had been taken this far. She needed to leave to be in a better position to help others. 'Wait, help who?' she ate her snack cake while trying to remember.
That didn't help Jom though, or whoever else hadn't made it out of the Mako shower. 'What good am I as a survivor if no one else makes it?' She thought. Even as she was thinking of protecting the world from ShinRa, beyond that of the people in the room with her now.
The other Third classmen started bubbling over about the extra privileges ShinRa dangled in front of the second and first class SOLDIERs. Like a first could wear their uniform how they wanted. Kit out their equipment for missions how they wanted. Which explained Genesis' and Sephiroth's different clothes and weapons. Firsts could refuse missions without penalty. And every new rank was an advance in pay.
Marin kept her thought to herself, while she washed down the taste of her rising stomach with terrible coffee. 'Great, I make it to first class and I can choose what socks I wear every day.'
There was also the extra energy she had noticed in training. Both for what she was capable in a day, as well as her friends could now. Bored teenagers were one thing, but bored SOLDIERs were something else. The now bright-blue or Bright-green eyes shared between all of them made the changes more obvious. Marin couldn't put her finger on what, other than that things were different now, for all of them.
There was an energy about them that hadn't been there before, 'What did we give up for this? Other than our freedom? What have I lost having this foisted on me?' Marin regretted not running sooner, but she knew that she would. She had to leave, get out from under ShinRa's thumb. She hadn;t forgotten that plan, even if her first attempt hadn't worked.
Marin just had to keep moving forward, until she had the opportunity to use what she had gained for the benefit of others. And not for the company.
For the sake of her friends, she washed down the rest of the snack cake with the coffee, for whoever had spent their Gil on the impromptu party.
Keeping to herself, while this mood hung over her, was impossible. But she could keep her words to herself. While she brooded about being a SOLDIER now.
Someone patted her on the back, it felt like a slap, but she was too strong to get pushed forward.
"Hey, Marin. Glad to see you up and about."
"Thanks Zack." She turned around and told him, grinning widely.
"There it is." He smiled wider at her smile, "We were getting worried there. Especially your other friends."
Marin shrugged, "I guess I just wanted to sleep in before getting back to training."
"Hah!" Zack slapped her on the back again.
Marin was able to shrug Zack off before her jokes were any more strained. The others didn't leave her in peace, she did what she could to get to the Third class barracks, in between more training.
Marin sat on her bed in the women's half of the Third class barracks. It was used by anyone who hadn't secured their own housing in the city yet.
It gave her that moment to be alone, before she would have to leave for more training.
Bad coffee had washed down the cake-like snack and put aside the memory of smelling blood. A lot of blood, and the contents of some of those men's organs.
Marin was still disturbed at what she had seen. Even if it hadn't been much worse than anything she had seen in VR training. Even as she knew that that training wasn't real.
She tried to shut it off like VR, and seal away the memories of what had happened. The fake people and monsters that Marin had cut down in training. Yet it couldn't compare to the real thing, the smell of their insides and all that blood.
Even if Sephiroth had done it in defense of others. They were people and now they were gone. Her neck prickled at the thought of the horror of that night, coupled with her feelings for him. That the later overrode the former didn't bother her, and that managed to bother her. It did not turn her feelings away from Sephiroth.
Marin rubbed across her midriff at the thought of being cut there. And those men hadn't died right away either.
She squeezed her eyes shut, recalling one of them call for his mother, the other was wordless and both had lay there in pieces,.
Marin grabbed onto a song, trying to drown out the memory while she paced the room. 'What would Jamie think?' Marin thought. But if Jamie was still alive, if they were still together. Things would have turned out differently.
It had been more than nine months now, she imagined what Jamie's voice even sounded like.
'Marin.' Remembering the word from a dream.
"Jamie." Marin said.
"Marin?"
Marin turned at the sound, that was not in her imagination. "What?"
"There you are," Jazz stood near the doorway. "Leonard won't like it if we're late."
Marin grabbed her helmet and followed Jazz out. Leonard was one of the Firsts that ran their training.
"Who's Jamie?" Jazz asked on their way.
Marin avoided a full answer. "Just somebody I used to know."
